This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
/vt/ being down right as Gura retires is a tragedy, but in general the site seems to have been in serious decline for years now. Didn't they get rid of the "unique ips" counter in threads because it showed there were usually only a few people posting?
Previous times there's been a 4chan issue people flooded into refugee/bunker boards, but either I'm out of touch with the altchan scene or there just aren't enough people to notice now.
Kind of sad to see people keep repeating this.
For many hobbies and interests, 4chan is THE biggest public (i.e. not a discord) forum on the internet. Bigger and more active than whatever the corresponding subreddit is. For a lot of more niche video games, the most active community is the corresponding /vg/ thread. /ic/ is the biggest art/drawing forum on the internet. etc.
Depends on the thread and how active the board is, but for a lot of long-running generals it wasn't uncommon to see 80-90 unique IPs.
A lot of communities are setting up at 8chan.moe.
Because it's true. There are some niche topics for which you can't really find similar discussion elsewhere, and I like checking those threads, but I only need to do that once a week at most because of how slow they are.
But as a whole, in order to use the site you need not just an addon to filter like 90% of the threads on the board because they're general that offer no value, or a bait thread, and then once you find a thread you gotta filter another 30% to get rid of the inane shitposting that's easily filtered. Then you need to read the 60% of the other shitposting that you can't filter, and then you're left with something that actually has value.
The quality of almost all the boards is at an all time low. /n/ is almost dead, /g/ is complete trash. /v/ has been trash for a decade.
/lit/ is completely worthless. The only good general on that board was removed by the jannies. /sffg/ isn't quite as bad as the big subreddits for discussing fantasy/sci-fi. But the smaller ones like /r/rational are way, way better.
/vg/ has some good threads on niche topics. But here's the thing, if it's too niche, then it'll get kicked off the board by yet another gacha general. Which means even good threads still have to have some sort of shitposting to fill the dead air, which in turn just lowers the thread quality.
Would I prefer to have a good 4chan alternative with better site design and more attentive moderation over our current set up of having isolated Discords and subreddits and other sites instead of having one site for everything? Of course.
But at this stage of the internet, I don't see how you can grow a community for a site like that. 8chan was built on being for the kinds of people that were kicked off of 4chan, and in turn it means its quality will forever be low.
I still check the 4chan archives regularly because you can find a lot of useful info there, but the site itself is just not worth using for me.
More options
Context Copy link
Gamergate continues to be the Franz Ferdinand of Internet history. I hadn't actually noticed many people flooding in to 8chan because til my home boards are hidden by default
Yeah. I first discovered /r/shitredditsays around 2012, which was my first exposure to wokes as we know them today (there were precursors before then, but they didn’t quite have the final form they would come to have). But at that time you could still believe the “it’s just a few crazy college kids” meme. Gamergate in 2014 was when wokeism suddenly hit the mainstream and they showed that they had substantial cultural power (ok, maybe not mainstream mainstream, but at least mainstream in the sense that their influence was extending beyond their own curated spaces).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
They keep repeating it because it's true.
tg has basically become a sterile shell taking over by various tranny jannies and/or Big Business shills(When you have 4chan of all places defending the female Custodian debacle in Warhammer threads of all places, you know things are fucked up), whereas k has turned into constant Ukraine spam where any bitching about that will have people calling you a zigger.
Now, that doesn't mean that other boards haven't taken up the slack - vt is as schizo as ever - but there's been a significant decline in alot of old boards with nothing to replace it.
It's a really big site. YMMV depending on what boards and threads you go to. As of Monday I had multiple threads across 4 different boards that I would check on a daily basis, and quite a few other boards I would check in on at least once a week.
After all this time it's remained my single favorite place on the internet and I'll be incredibly sad if it doesn't come back.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I would have agreed with you only 5 years ago. I used to browse /tg/ a lot, but the quality on there has steeply declined. Very few stories are posted there any more, and all discussion threads are derailed by posters spamming NoGames or accusing other posters of being Bumpfag. I can't speak to the other boards, but that one used to pump out so much iconic content and has been reduced to a shell of itself.
I used to treasure /tg/ as a creative outlet and source of inspiration. Putting a fresh idea on there got people riffing, shitting-on, and yes-and-ing it for days, in retrospect it was like an LLM with a quirky, rotten, beautiful soul instead of hollow obsequiousness. Made a setting with their help, my content is still on 2d4chan to this day. Ran a quest I never finished. I kept going back to poke the dead cat, hoping it will get up again, but it just posts empty engagement-farming threads.
I was in the middle of refining a short story that really only works in the context of /tg/'s board culture. My feedback on the first draft amounted to "This feels like 2012 again. What happened to us?"
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link