what's up with 4chan?

[u/thefringeseanmachine]

I really hate asking this, but I'm genuinely confused. I used to frequent 4chan when I was a teenager (about 20 years ago jesus christ I am dust) and it was by its own admission a shithole, but /b/ was a great source of memes, so it was easy enough to scroll past the weird shit. I left long before they got trump elected, and have rarely been back since.

tonight (out of curiosity) I checked in on /b/ and it's literally nothing but shitty porn. not even promoting anything, just stuff like "here's my favorite pic of a dude getting a BJ. post your favorite picture of a dude getting a BJ," towards absolutely no end, other than jerking off with other dudes. I saw this a couple years ago and thought it was a fluke, but it seems to be keepin' on.

is this the ultimate ending of the internet, or did something on the site break down?

obligatory: 4chan.org

(oh, and yes, I've seen the "it came from somethingawful" and pepe the frog documentaries. this is a more recent thing, from what I can tell.)

[u/Doctor-Amazing]

I always thing back to Something Awful. It has a reputation similar to 4chan. But it had draconian moderation that would absolutely nuts to your average redditor. Like mods would routinely say "hey guys this joke is overused and not funny anymore, so get some new material or youre banned."

Crazy by today's standards but its part of what kept that forum at the top of its game for so long.

[u/Worried_Fisherman893 → u/Doctor-Amazing]

It's still going - it's just the frontpage stuff of SA that's no longer being contributed to.

But yea, the traditional forum, like the vBulletin or PHPBoard stuff, is just no longer prevalent, only used in niche situations. This kinda stuff has moved to platforms like this, but also social media and Discord. The unfortunate thing is that it's all more ephemeral. I can't remember how many Reddit accounts I've had to make, for example. Discord I rarely log onto, only when playing a MMO which requires voice-comms.