this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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4chan teaching 4chan how to be human is nice.
Everyone generalizes 4chan when in reality they're usually talking about the people that browse /b/.
4chan can be a wholesome place in the right boards.
happens more than you might think. 4chan is a weird unique place. it's mostly unmoderated, which makes it the default locale for a lot of unsavory people tossed out of all the nice clubs. but it's not ONLY the unsavory people (the worst of which tend to keep to themselves anyway)
mostly, the result of the low level of moderation and lack of personal control over what you see (no "feeds" or anything, it's just a plain forum) is that you see a lot of people "raw".
they have no account attached to their posts, certainly no real identity. can this make shitty people feel emboldened to say shitty things? yes. can it lead to surprisingly meaningful moments of actual vulnerability between people who have no reason to hide? yes that too.
most of the non-extremist users of the site are, I think, people who prefer and engage with the latter, while just scrolling past the cringe edgy teenagers and dollar tree nazis thinking they have a secret club.
it is hard to find this kind of honesty and depth on other social media sites. reddit was a bit closer than the rest for a while when they had a very liberal registration policy (email didn't even need to be verified so throwaway accounts were common and accessible) but I think they've cracked down on that a bit in the name of ad profile profitability. even having an account that can "be found" by people you know or future friends you meet on the site can keep you from being willing to be totally open. on low-moderation anonymous forums like 4chan, there's no reason to worry about your "persona" or reputation. in fact, users who seek either tend to be universally ridiculed for it and told to return to other vapid sites.
it also has a reputation for its users being, um, generally some kind of neurodivergent. I think this is because of the very low quantity of social rules that have any consequence. social rules are exhausting, easier to just stay quiet past a certain point.