Big inspiration for the question is the assertion I've seen on Lemmy a few times that this user base is as bad/misogynistic/hateful. But also just curious.

I used to be a regular on /tv/ and /r9k/ between 2011-2015, I was even a tripfriend on /r9k/ for a while. It was very entertaining, all the interesting schizos were on the chans at some point. I even "drew" my own wojaks and pepes, lol, but only once each because I have no artistic talent, I'm just a big yapper.

None. I just know 4Chan from memes and !greentext@sh.itjust.works

/b/ and /v/ semi randomly, /tg/ more when it was created. Then I took a year off snd the place was ruined with ragecomics and all the other zoomer bs.

None, ever, because I’m not a degenerate Nazi fuckbag

Some number of years in my teens browsing mostly /b/.

Looking back it's interesting to see how much the company you spend your time in makes you become like them. It pretty successfully radicalized me into many stereotypical right-wing beliefs. Then when Trump got elected I over-corrected to the other extreme. I've since settled somewhere in the middle and now it's curious to see this exact same influence on other people I hang with. I was under the illusion that the thoughts and beliefs were mine but they weren't. I simply adopted the views of the group wholesale. Then I discarded them all and did the exact same thing again from the other extreme. We're so gullible.

I frequented /b/ a few years ago, and i would frequently see threads with nazi stuff, white supremacist bullshit, maga glazing, some actual delusional conspiracies (those where real fun) and just to spice it up, the occasional neighbourhood racist going on a bender. But all of the above was only like 10% of the traffic, the rest is litterally all porn and not even good porn ngl. If i had to say the stories are worse than the actual board, not a good place still but not as atrocious as its made out to be. Pretty much instagram reels but dialed up a bit

/p/ (photography), /g/ (computer)

i used a filter in 4chanx to hide some words i find offending. it's true there's many hateful/misogynistic/racist people there, but there were also many interesting stuff. they have a very minimal moderation policy, i'm not sure if it's a good thing.

haven't went there much lately though.

Exactly 0 minutes and 0 seconds.

Here and again, less as a place to interact and more how one might look at a perti dish on a lab. A lot of Internet culture has been born there in a virtually unrestrained chaos, no accounts, no names, no reputations, just doing whatever comes to mind and seeing what sticks.

That lack of any real reputation or responsibility lends itself to people letting out their worst parts that they wouldn't publically sometimes, but can also let people explore other ideas they might not elsewhere too. Just so long as one doesn't take it too seriously and has a stomach for some nasty shit it can be interesting.

I went over a couple of times in like 2012 just to see what all the fuss was about. Probably less than a half hour total on b.

I always liked the greentext stories on various boards, however.

I lurked most of the time, especially when the captcha system got out of hand.

Mu, co, tv, r9k, trv, TG, v, fit, ck also, po & toy when I wanted something I wasn't interested in doing but wanted to see something other people liked. Also the porn boards.

I visited pol to see news, but didn't agree with the opinions there.

The site has a bad reputation due to b and pol. The other boards have a lot of interesting new culture stuff and honest opinions that are pragmatic and nihilist.

Unfortunately lots of astroturfing also happened there.

I also hung out in 420chan and britchan. Those were a lot slower, and RIP. It's just a nice format for a board.

Not a Nazi

Degenerate

You're using concepts the Nazis used heavily in the same way that they did, just against them. You might want to interrogate that.

Outspoken monotheist, Muslim persuasion. 🤓 And I wasn't then, lol, that's a more recent development. At the same time, much of the content was just depressed teens being edgy, not necessarily evil or overly malicious. /tv/ was basically all memes! Let's not forget the chans had blue and red boards and blue boards were sfw. Fashion, cooking, technology, and many other boards were pretty "normal".

Peace, brother. ✌️

I used to lurk /v/ and post semiregularly on /vr/.

Those are the most tolerant boards, and you can still get called a slur for liking 'the wrong' Pokémon game lmao.

I remember checking out /lgbt/ in college, and I think my mental health is still recovering.

You might want to interrogate that.

shines a light in the face of using words against nazis TELL ME WHY YOU DID IT!

right up until end of 2016

Yeah, mostly this.

My only exposure was screenshots of /r/ and /b/ posted to reddit

Same. Like tourism into an exclusion zone to see the mutated local biota. Then promptly getting tfo and taking a mental silkwood shower lmao

We live in a world where I'm now seeing various slurs that originated in Nazi circles being used as regular slang.

"Degenerate" as an insult is based in social degeneration theory, notably something coined by the original Nazi party to describe people they classed as sub-human, and they thought were leading to the degeneration of society.

Forgive me for not liking when people use concepts coined by the Nazis in the same ways the Nazis used them, just on different groups. It's not like classing people as sub-humans has lead to problems in the past or anything.

Yes, fuck Nazis, but also fuck Nazi ideas, and maybe we shouldn't be using them.

On the other hand. We should take things from Nazis and use them as we see fit because Nazis shouldn’t be allowed to have things.

Used to look at /b/ fairly frequently. Eventually though it just turned into constant really boring porn (like, "rate my friend/girlfriend/sister" and a load of boring pictures of an attractive person who is almost certainly unknown to the OP)

It contained a lot of new, funny stuff, before then. A lot of racism and paedos, too, but I was never easily swayed on anything so it didn't change my views. Back then I thought a lot of most extreme views were just ragebait, and didn't take them seriously, due to how far away they were from any views I'd hear elsewhere (online or in real life) by serious people. With the Nazis coming out of the woodwork with Trump, I don't know how true it was. I still tend to think quite a lot was not reflective of the views of the person posting it, but realise that a fair amount will have been.

I have never frequented the more mundane boards as I always felt like I could find that stuff somewhere else easier to use.

Yeah I'm not disagreeing. It just sounded funny and I decided to make a silly/bad/stupid joke.

/b/ when I was an edgy teenager. Not proud of it, but here we are.

What the Nazis had was bigotry, and violence, I'm good???

And we should take those things from them so they don’t have them anymore. You see what I’m saying.

Ahh, sorry, misunderstood!

/b/ and /r9k/.

/b/ because edgy teenage humour. /r9k/ because that's where the fellow incels hung out. Before incel got such a bad name.

At some point though i noticed that /b/ was sharing nazi/racist/homophobic "jokes" but they weren't really funny and nobody really seemed to be laughing any more. And quit r9k because incel stopped meaning "foreveralone virgin" and started meaning "serial killer/sex offender in training".

No worries, all good.

Love the introspection here, way to grow :)

/g/, because it was one of the only places I could ask tech questions without needing an account

im sure I have been on it because I heard about it and wanted to understand it and if its what im thinking it is its all haphazard and unorganized and I can't see anyone spending time on it. you know its a bit why I was never wild about chat clients like discord. lived up to its name the way everything is just chaos to me.

From like 2004-2006 and mostly /b/ because I was an edgy teenager. Probably some others but I honestly don't remember much of 4chan

I forgot about 420chan

0

That's because marijuana affects memory.

I lurked a bit in high school, and I'm pretty sure it fucked me up for years. Once reddit took off I switched over to that, since you could access screenshots of memes without exposing yourself to the horrors of 4chan itself.

Lmao I never went there and hardly partook so that's probably more the case

I haven't spent any time there. 4chan's reputation makes it seem like it's not the internet experience I'm looking for.

A few years in high school, mostly /b/, then much less as I found other chans and eventually settled on 420chan. I thought the incel/MGTOW/neckbeard population of 4chan was insufferable, annoying, woe-is-me, crybaby losers who found a way to blame everyone else for their own problems.

420chan was much better; it was full of reckless idiots, jaded addicts, and degenerate losers who found a way to blame society and "the system" for their own problems. Totally different. Not the same flavor at all.

When 420chan started to die, I started trying out Reddit. I stayed there until the API-pocalypse, where I switched to the Fediverse; first Lemmy, then here because, while leftist, I can't stand tankies.

Yeah that's been how I've viewed it since 2009ish. Only ever lurked there. I used to like spooking myself on /x/ when I was a young teen. The sfw boards always had pretty reasonable content. /b/ had its place for memes and general wild shit. Lots of good video game, meme and general pop culture stuff. It always had a spectrum of normal people, edgy users and literal proud Nazis/extremists. Its always been a place to go to see the most recent horrible thing thats happend. I'm pretty unaffected by seeing horrible shit so I've always been able to wade through that to find interesting posts. That said, almost all of the worst things I've ever seen have been on 4chan. Nowadays its really shitty with nearly zero redeeming qualities. Only time I visit it now I go to the catalog on /b/ and search for ylyl threads. I find 1-5 good memes per 150 image thread, the rest is typically deplorable. Plenty of memes I've harvested there have gotten hundreds to 1000+ upvotes here.

Not everyone who uses Lemmy is a tankie, right? Yeah the worst users on the 4chan spectrum are literally the worst humans, agreed. Used to be plenty of good shit on there though. Granted I used it most a decade+ ago. I'm a leftist and nothing I've ever seen there has swayed me from that stance.

/r9k/ was always a fucking trip. I only ever lurked but I used to frequent lot's of boards. Now I solely see if theres a decent meme to find in a ylyl thread once or twice a week.

I agree with pretty much everything you've said.

Damn and I thought 2009 was early.

Yeah pretty much all of the worst pieces of media I've seen have been on 4chan.