So... I've used 4chan as my only internet outlet my whole life. With all the meta on /qa/ that came from moot's resignation and all these new boards, I started looking at my old 4chan pics, and found pic related. Every community has its own personality, and I started wondering about how they are today. I spent some time on Reddit, Tumblr, started reading tweets, even checked out Gaia Online.
Everything is fucking awful. I don't have to tell you that 4chan is shit, because you see the endless shitposting everyday, but holy fuck, the circlejerking, drama, and utterly shit tastes that other forums have.
Can you give me your opinion on the internet in general? What important forums/communities are out there? How are they? What's your experience with them?
Here's a list off the top of my head, help me expand on it.
Normalfag social sites:
Facebook, Google+, Youtube, VKontakte, Twitter, Yahoo!, Peeple (coming soon)
Content sharing:
Reddit, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, Digg
Blogging:
LiveJournal, Blogspot, Myspace
"News":
Neogaf, IGN, Gawker Media (Gawker, Deadspin, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, io9, Kotaku, Jalopnik, Jezebel), normalfag media forums
Music:
Last.fm, Bandcamp, genius.com, SoundCloud
Webcomic forums:
MSPaint Adv., prequel, xkcd, smbc, Dinosaur Comics
Drawing stuff:
pixiv, DeviantArt (is this still alive?)
Serious (or at least trying to be):
Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Stack Exchange network
Non-normalfag net:
encyclopedia dramatica, UrbanDictionary, Uncyclopedia, Conservapedia, Kiwifarms, Stormfront, TOR in general
I'm a bored teen tier:
Habbo, Gaia, NewGrounds ,Channel101, SomethingAwful, TVTropes
Meme machine:
KnowYourMeme, 9gag, cheezburger.com (ICanHasCheezburger, MemeBase, etc), FunnyJunk, canv.as (RIP), YTMND, Meme Generator
The chaniverse:
4chan, 2channel, Futaba, 8ch, wizardchan, 420chan, ñchan, krautchan, anonchat
Oldfag stuff, even if they are still in use:
Usenet, c2.com and the WikiWiki (RIP), IRC chats
I don't know shit about porn sites.
And there's this:
http://orig01.deviantart.net/91af/f/2014/070/a/5/map_of_the_internet_2_0__by_jaysimons-d781bst.jpg
Also, I just checked the "Tumblr" entries in UrbanDictionary, and it's so nice to see the pre-2011 ones, when Tumblr was just a place for odd and lonely people that spent their time on the net. When the Tumblr stereotype was that of a virgin hipster girl posting helvetica-captioned pics. I want the 4chumbler era back.
>>395370
Why's the tumblr girl wearing Shirou's shirt?
![4chumblr[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/CfpcMwA.jpg "4chumblr[1].jpg")
>>395373
idk, it's not consistent even in the same pic
>>395367
I used to think the internet was really good because when I was younger I was really into learning stuff.
I taught myself programming languages and learned about using Linux, used tech sites and things like that.
Something was always missing since it wasn't really just hanging out and socializing, but it was still good. 4chan filled that gap for me years ago, and now I actually spend most of my time here.
When you're looking at communities built around having fun or sharing subjective content (like art) those sites all tend to have shitty communities)
I started going back to my roots recently though, checking out the more technical sides of things like stackexchange (programming and science basically) and it's so much more laid back. It might not be as engaging and sociable as community and content oriented sites like 4chan, but it's still as nice as I ever remember it being as a kid.
I wonder why all the socialmedia sites, and even 4chan, can't get their shit together.
There a lot of really small niche forums out there with good content. I personally spend a lot of time on Pastel Land Forum. It's a nice forum with a small, close-knit community, but it's mostly for discussion for flash games make by Mateusz Skutnik so I don't expect that many people here will care about it. Also, I suggest you check out some of the smaller English textboard communities such as Tablecat Lounge and The Unholy Citadel of 6ch.
Play online games and find friends to play with. It's like a forum except you only have a select few and your inside jokes don't get abused.
>>395433
>>395388
>>395385
Sorry, it came across wrong. I'm not looking for any other place. I just wanted people to talk to me about their experience with other communities.
For example, I always read TVTropes threads on /co/, where they talk about the batshit insane stuff the admin did, or about KiwiFarm's shenanigans with Chris Chan.
I'm looking to have a boarder picture of the net, from people who've been there.
>>395370
Why are we next to 9gag and not Reddit and Tumblr? Jesus christ what a wasted oportuniy.
>>395367
>I started looking at my old 4chan pics, and found pic related
B-but reddit told me 4chan used to be a liberal paradise!
>>395453
Because it's secondary niche stuff so you don't see icky shit on those forums.
>>396065
OP here, you are fucking idiot. I remember very well my first impression of that picture at it was one of absurdism, because "lol hitler, and lol a parrot, where did that came form?"
Do not try to retcon 4chan. If you want to play aryan make believe is your fucking thing, but I remember when the most popular things around here were Fight Club, American Psycho, V for Vendetta and American History X. But they were not held as standard of living, they were good stuff that one way or the other appealed to counter-culture. I remember there being lots of thread on /b/ about anarchism, how to dodge the police, how to get off the grid, and you couldn't say you believed in God without being called an idiot.
>>395385
>I wonder why all the socialmedia sites, and even 4chan, can't get their shit together.
Because they're for fun. Tech forums aren't for fun so you don't usually stick around for small talk and banter. There's no reason to go off topic on there.
>>396065
4chan used to be apolitical, maybe slightly liberal (at least socially)
>>396074
Your first impression was wrong, because you are a retard who didn't leave /b/ until a couple of years ago, which is why that when you did leave, you thought 4chan suddenly got invaded by nazis. True oldfags know that 4chan (other than /b/ and cuck boards like /co/) know has always been a white nationalist paradise.
>>396079
>white nationalist paradise
Well more unapologetically racist towards everyone.
>>396079
This famalam.
David Duke literally makes 90% of 4chans profits.
>>395367
>tfw youtube is now just twitter with videos
>>395370
>4chan started out as virgin boys
>tumblr started out as virgin girls
>4chan today is far right
>tumblr today is far left
why did they have to become hamplanets
>>396079
now you are gonna tell me what I did here all these years?
"History is written by the last shitposter standing"
>>396075
Not him, but almost all tech forums I remember had offtopic sections for fun, tech stories, discussing news, inside jokes, etc.
>>395370
>when Tumblr was just a place for odd and lonely people that spent their time on the net
Also for posting porn.
Everyone seems to overlook this fact.
There might be a loud group of retarded Americans -redundant, I know- using Tumblr for their socio-political bullshit but Tumblr is home to thousands upon thousands of profiles posting porn. There are also many Japanese artists who use Tumblr as well.
>>396079
>True oldfags know that 4chan (other than /b/
/b/ and /a/ are the oldest legacy boards..
Even true Scotsmen think you're trying too hard.
>>396139
>Also for posting porn.
>Everyone seems to overlook this fact.
>There might be a loud group of retarded Americans -redundant, I know- using Tumblr for their socio-political bullshit but Tumblr is home to thousands upon thousands of profiles posting porn. There are also many Japanese artists who use Tumblr as well.
Oh great, you're one of those people.
>>395367
hnngg deviantART is a qt
>>396150
Deviantart for sex.
Facebook for cuddling.
>>395367
I've always loved traditional chatrooms/old sites
By far the best would be multiplayerpiano.com/lobby , the site has a chat with a piano synthesizer anyone can play (you can mute the piano fyi it gets fucking horrible) and most days the chatbar is pretty comfy
>>396148
>you're one of those people.
One of those people who understands things instead of spewing bullshit statements because they know others will blindly accept them?
The fuck were you trying to insinuate?
>>396154
4chan has basically became a chatroom with images.
>>395367
>replacing green no face anon for your deviantart /pol/ fantasy
Fuck off
>>395367
Most normalfag sites aren't discussion based, so they're just praise echo chambers. I won't go into them.
Supposed "content sharing" sites are pretty awful in my opinion, with them profiting of basically nothing. They keep legions of users due to their promise of internet meme points (this is specifically reddit). Tumblr is more of a blogging site, which was somewhat fun in the beginning, and has now evolved into an entirely different animal. The "you only see what you want to" mentality is incredibly hurtful to the internet as a whole, as one can create uncontested circlejerks, where there's never a reality check. I'm not familiar with Pintrest or Instagram, but since one of the two is owned by Facebook I plan to avoid it.
Blogging sites have fallen off the curve (Myspace has even disabled their blogging, instead trying to make it big as a music sharing site). For the most part they're fine, but it depends on the content of the blogs you follow. They're not geared for discussion, for checking in on other's lives is their foremost purpose.
News sites today (or at least niche ones like Gawker and Buzzfeed) have stopped reporting news and have began presenting opinion as fact. This garners people with like mentalities, where these companies use writers to twist people's viewpoints, and keep them coming back to read their news (and post shitty comments). Now of course, this isn't done on purpose, but happens as a side effect of the previous point. Gaming "news" sites are joke, and I won't even bother.
Music sites are normally comfy, but not a platform for discussion. I like them, specifically Soundcloud.
Forums can be great or shit depending on the topic. Most platforms for it like vbullitin suck, but the communities can be great.
1/2
>>396205
Deviant art is awful and very much alive. Haven't seen that other one.
Most serious sites are great. Wikipedia's community in particular is pretty damn amazing, minus the fact that since their job is "run an encyclopedia for free" they tend to dramatize everything. And I mean everything. Try looking at their "Requests for Admin Intervention" page.
The non normalfag net is okay, if that's what you want to define them as. ED has gone to shit in terms of community, but is still funny. Unencyclopedia is just a more politically correct version. Kiwifarms is a joke. A lot of the dark net can be friendly. Try it out some time.
>I'm bored teen teir
The name speaks for itself. TVtropes can be somewhat interesting, but I don't mean the community.
>meme machine
Nah. Canv.as was an interesting idea.
Some chans can be alright. 4chan is seen as the awful place everyone eventually moves out of. Much like how this site sees /b/. I enjoy places like /magic/ and other single board sites, but because of how tightly knit the communities are (without names) and the quality of posting one is held to. Textboards like world4ch are meh, but Unholy Citadel is pretty great. In essence, if you're looking for discussion, smaller niche chans are normally better than larger ones, just because people are less likely to flame.
I don't have a ton of experience with usenet, but I do with IRC. The latter is entirely based on the subject of the chat, and isn't exactly open to newbies (I.E. Big Circlejerk). However, you can get relevant discussion if the users of the chat really care about whatever subject you're looking to speak of (what an awful sentance).
2/2
I want to lick DeviantArts feet.
>>396207
Thanks for the thought out reply. I only put canv.as there because of it's intended purpose, but certainly is above the others. I was a canv.as "beta hipster" myself. Despite being a small community I added it to the list to see what people had to say about it.
>>396179
>replacing
>/pol/ fantasy
No, stop, read >>396074. There are many versions of the picture, and the Hitler is fucking joke. That one was in my old folder, it says May 2010 if you care
>>396092
Because it only makes our hate boners harder
>>396207
>Wikipedia's community in particular is pretty damn amazing
Not the English language part of that community.
It's full of ideological driven who actively censor content which portrays certain groups in a negative light and manipulate entries to display certain groups in a negative light.
>>396362
It truly is tragic that you can't turn Hitler's article into a hagiography, but you can probably argue about it as much as you like.
>>396205
>niche ones like Gawker and Buzzfeed
Not that I disagree with you, but how are gawker and buzzfeed considered niche?
Also, what are your thoughts on medium? It seems to be popular among artisan tech bloggers.
>>396207
>4chan is seen as the awful place everyone eventually moves out of
But they're so fucking insular and generally ded
>>395367
I've always liked website interpretations.
>>396417
>PRESS
Of all the terrible mistakes that moot made, replacing /new/ with /pol/ may really top the list.
>>396079
Look at him, look at him and laugh.
>>396139
Tumblr is the number 1 place for sfm porn and has various excelelnt fetish artist like the boogie.
>>396251
I liked it while it was alive.
>>396403
Maybe not niche in userbase, but in comparison to NY Times or the like, it's a bit smaller. The idealology they support is also much narrower than a bigger, more sprawling news-source.
>Medium
Huh. It seems like a much more updated version of 64Digits. I'll have to check it out.
>>396405
>insular
Not entirely. Many of them are welcoming to newbies, if you're somewhat polite and lurk before posting.
>ded
Now there's a point. Many smaller chans may only garner 10-100 posts a day. But I'm okay with slow. They can't occupy your day, but can sure make it more interesting. Here's a list of pretty much every known chan. Many are dead or inactive (or Russian), but there's a few gems in there.
http://pastebin.com/6rS9n2cZ
>>396507
>excellent fetish art
Yessir. The one positive use of the site.
>sfm porn
I'll pass.
>>396518
>>insular
I think he means too niche, like made for a single country, or entirely about drug use. The best chan community I've seen so far is wizarchan... but I have very little interest in those discussions, and why spoil their fun and break their no-chads rule
>>396507
>>396518
>>sfm porn
What exactly is sfm? It does have a distinctive style, but the only specific property I can pin down that makes it stand out from regular 3D r34 is the over-use of ambient occlussion.
>>396533
>wizchan
While a wholly nice chan overall, I do say there are some better ones out there. It's a nice place if you can look past the succubi memes.
SFM stands for "Source Filmmaker," a software made by Valve. Google can fill in the rest for you.
>>396537
>Source Filmmaker
I'm an idiot, I always disregarded all those google results because they didn't sound porny.
I never put two and two together that that's the Source rendering enginge. Shows how little I care about vidya
>>396079
>>396537
>succubi
>a meme
It's a word filter newfag
>>396772
The whole mentality was what I was referring to, not that.
>>395367
What... what about Usenet? We're still here, you know!
>>395367
>non-normalfag
>urban dictionary
>>396903
yeah, I didn't know where to put it. I run out of characters the whole name was "Non-normalfag net (that is, you have to be at least a bit internet savvy to know them)"
When I came across it it was "da shit", and it contained only obscure slang.
