It has been brought to my attention by my friend webb that someone has been posting about me to the 4chan imageboard /g/. Just to clarify, this is not me. I wouldn’t dream of self-promoting on 4chan.
That statement aside, I’d like to take a minute to actually talk about 4chan and give y’all the usual lecture about how all social media is bad. I’ve done it before with the Fediverse, when I talked about how it not only allows for centralized censorship, but more generally, rots your brain.
“B-but they’re better than Reddit!”
Some may argue that “imageboards”, social media systems that rely on inflammation to rank posts are a better alternative to voting-based websites like Twitter, Instagram or Reddit. Yeah! In the same way, nicotine gum is a “better” alternative to smoking nicotine; it’s much better not to take any nicotine in the first place. Face the facts: People are wasting unreasonable amounts of their:
- Time
- Energy
- Effort
For websites and systems that do not benefit them whatsoever. In fact, in many ways websites like Instagram and Reddit have an upper hand to 4chan simply because they’re more popular with people, meaning their users may be somewhat inspired to spend some time out of the app and with their friends who also (likely) use the very same app. The “best” parts of 4chan are always those which leak into other social medias and spread to real life experiences; essentially, the more actually social the website is.
Free Access to Explicit, Illegal Content
Also, here’s a friendly reminder that explicit content is illegal in most nations. 4chan is notorious for its very crude culture and userbase, and the website offers free, unfiltered access to explicit content to all of its users. The little time I’ve spent on /g/ (the 4chan imageboard themed around technology) also indicates that entirely unrelated conversation must be plastered with images of “anime catgirls” and other such heinous, inappropriate suggestive imagery. It might be the fact that a large proportion of the userbase is composed of men (and young men at that) but it’s still completely unacceptable for this to be “normal” and I implore all users of this website to stop using to prevent the spread of this behavior.
Memes and /b/
Here’s a story some of you might know: Long ago, before time had a name, the 4chan “random” imageboard (/b/) was king of all memes online. It was where everything was happening; all the drama, all the funny images, and all the useless fighting with 9gag. That was 10 years ago. Wake up. The internet “golden age” is long over, and now it’s up to you to stop going to these dead websites.
Written by Alex [→ Reply-To]