All of these things are correct, but I would like to posit there was a specific era when it actually became intolerable, and that was about 2013 or so. It was a gradual process, but you noticed more and more “normal threads” getting hijacked and brigaded. Baw threads, or threads where people would post tumblr core sad images (mostly about missing ‘her’) got hijacked by incels (who said something like, “shes fucking chad bro” although the incel vocabulary had yet to be calcified.) You laugh you lose (YLYL) threads got brigaded by people “banana posting” or flooding the thread with images of a specific meme of a banana opening his peel like a trench coat and “exposing” himself to a pair of apples. It was boomer shit, but their alleged point was that YLYL was cringe.

Now, were Baw and YLYL cringe? Maybe. But they were also like, “normal” threads. Normal users would come and post normal content. YLYL threads (and their cousins, Epic threads) were how board culture was preserved, posting collages of greentext posts of particularly noteworthy threads or stories or interactions. The point wasn’t to point out cringe. It was to radicalize young male users who self identified as unlucky in love, to degrade board discourse so no one wanted to even post in “culture” threads, and to either radicalize the young and impressionable who might be receptive to Nazi messaging, and to push away those that were not. 4chan always tolerated Nazis, and there is an old proverb against it.

Moot used to get a ton of hate from the Nazis, because he actually tried to police them. I don’t know if they targeted him or just got lucky, but they had been trying to get rid of him of a while. He left after users found his girlfriend was cheating on him, and posted the photos on 4chan. months later, trump descends a golden escalator…

I miss /tg/. it held out longest from the /pol/ siege. Like nazis would still be there, but it was still a place where you could talk about games and be reasonably sure people wouldn’t talk about nazi shit. I lurked until maybe the first Trump election, whereas I had given up on the rest of the boards long before.

I have this dream that one day I’ll like, sit next to him on an airplane and have a chance to ask him.

I wonder about this sometimes.

Poole knew he had a contentious base of users. I remember in 2013 or 2014, 4chan users posted photographic evidence his gf was cheating on him, and I think it broke him. I dont blame him for selling the site, but 18 months later… I wonder if Moot knew he was holding back the end of the world.

its like… getting a whiff of something I haven’t felt in a long time.

I got banned in 2019 for hate speech against cops.

Oh I get it now

I got banned in 2022 for hate speech against Cops. Ive been lurking with libreddit.

I’ve found Gmail really hates firefox, especially with VPN. I have to use one of those masking extensions. I’ve found that its basically locked me out of my student email.

Okay, but with Luigi, it was self defense.

Removed by mod

has anyone tried Friendica? is it devoid of people?

I do it manually with 5e.tools.

Streaming services. I’ve been balls deep into piracy since I was a kid but I remember once I was house sitting and my friend had netflix and I Was drunk and wanted to watch He-man. I turned on their netflix and it didn’t have it. I was like, why even pay for this shit whats it good for? I have been morally opposed to paying for streaming ever since. Ive been taking some classes recently and some of the Gen Z kids are like, baffled I don’t have spotify. I am baffled they can’t pirate songs. My friends, you dont have to pay for that single. I can download it during the span of this conversation with my phone.

Also on that note, any of WotC’s D&D tools. I remember the D&Dinsider debacle. 4e was a cool game but basically unplayable without some automation. They tried downloadable software but found people had way too easy a time hacking it. So they launched a constantly crashing version behind a paywall that ran on silverlight (so it couldn’t run on Mac. As a webapp.) And hackers still kept up the downloadable character builder with updates. It was more consistent, didn’t crash, and is still functional to this day. I ban D&Dbeyond from my games. I encourage everyone to use 5e.tools (if they must play 5e).

coprophagia- the consumption of feces.

“This guys name keeps showing up all over this case file” “Thats because he’s the victim!”

I primarily use Discord as a one stop shop to play and run dnd campaigns. I first hopped on it around 2017, and its was way better than any other group chat app. Around the pandemic all my groups started playing on it and it became relatively seamless. I joined exactly one streamers discord but that is totally it. In general I wouldn’t expect it to be a good archive, or forum, nor do I expect it to be secure. I use armchord on PC. I started using it before it was enshittified. For what it does, it does it pretty well.

For the record, I have used matrix and Signal. I think both have the issue that a critical mass of my friends don’t use them. I liked Signal a lot when it had SMS support. I used it as a my primary SMS app, and some of my friends had signal as well, so that was cool. now its more like a specialized messenger app, and I fucking hate having yet another one of those on my phone. Matrix encryption keys are giant stumbling blocks to my friends who do give a fuck. I play ttrpgs with some people who could not give a fuck. I would have to set up the server, set up the account, and then I would have have to do the encryption key for them. And like people say, Matrix logs you out every little while. You can turn notifications off and totally forget about it. For my non techy friends, this is literally a bridge too far.

I literally have two friends who think Matrix is cool. No one else even has an account, much less a server. And the support to meet people who have this app is very limited. Cool, but I think it will always be a niche.

I went to my banking account page, where I can make transfers and look at my money. My ad blocker had blocked a GIANT ad in the center of the screen.

Oh boy Jill. I was crushed to learn about her transphobia. And also her cringe book.

I stuck with Babish through his expensive weird era because I still felt like I was learning something about cooking, even if i couldnt make his three day Troy pizza casserole or whatever. I still felt like I was becoming a better cook. Recently he switched up his editing style to less voice over, hands only content and more click baity listacles, and more videos where hes messing around in the kitchen. I liked watching the hands only stuff because I could see what he doing, and there wasnt any emphasis on his face, so there less emphasis on his personality, and therefore I felt a little less intimidated as far as trying it myself. The voice overs were also really concise. The end result was also really light weight, and felt like a recipe that didn’t have all the SEO “my grandma taught me how to make this cake before she died” garbage.

Alvin is still making videos in the classic “Babish” style on the Babish channel, and I still watch the vids Andrew puts out in that style, but if i can see his face, I wont even click on the video.