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4chan is one of the closest things we've gotten to that in the open web, and back when I used to use 4chan with any regularity over a decade ago, I recall thinking that it was not only usable, it was far more usable than any other "social media"-type websites, along with having an overall better social ecosystem (the enforced anonymity might have been the key to that one, though). Seeing how social media websites have evolved in the time since, I get the sense that the comparative advantage of 4chan has only gotten greater (though it seems 4chan itself may have changed in that time to become worse, so who knows).
4chan was massively toxic but the anonymity and completely ephemeral nature of the threads meant you could just... walk away.
Nothing would follow you past that one thread/interaction.
No long-term social consequences. No need to worry that someone would e-mail your boss (well, minimal, if they captured your personal info it could be merciless). You could get trolled into an incandescent rage and then the thread would fall off the board and that was that.
The current version of social media is putting your personal identity next to every opinion you ever uttered and storing it for years on end, often making it trivial to search it up later.
Which lends itself to people policing themselves and each other more heavily, and empowers targeted, relentless bullying.
This is the main reason that I am happy beyond belief that the majority of my internet posting as a younger man was on 4chan. The quality of the conversations and content that came up was the main motivating factor at the time, but not having all of my stupid opinions and mistaken beliefs from when I was younger and dumber irrevocably attached to my name is such an incredible benefit that it makes me appreciate my time there even more.
Same.
I never had a truly 'edgy' phase but I tried out a lot of ideas and argued a lot of stupid points of view, some of which I believed and some of which I didn't, and finally got really good at just ignoring trolling and shallow critiques in favor of just making an argument and sticking with it until someone actually counters your point directly.
Which I still try to employ in forums like this.
And reddit did you the favor of suspending your account lol.
Going on two years, and it's the best thing that could have happened to me.
I can still access my old comments, though.
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