>>280>I feel like these fears account for some of the elitism that really flared up in the past few years, and led to a lot of the un-comfy xenephobic behaviors. The racism is pretty disappointing though, and isn't really funny when it's indistinguishable from all the other semi-ironic political crap that's everywhere now.>As much disdain there is for the whole idea of chans as a 'secret club', to some people like me it really was something special, and ceased to be special when it hit the mainstream. Again, this is just my random thoughts and experiences.I wholeheartedly agree. While it might seem foolish at first glance, I kind of miss the old "sushi rollymous is legion" thing, minus the angst angle. It was a really unifying idea that permeated race, religion, and gender in the sole idea of being a united faceless entity of internet weirdos, script kiddies, anime and video game fans, etc. "Hivemind" and "groupthink" have pretty negative connotations but *chan without identity politics differentiated it from reality and separated it from the rest of the internet from its inception to somewhere around 201X.
I've been frequenting a few smaller imageboards outside of sushi and I have to say that interesting and active discussion these days is particularly hard to find. I'm not a fan of the 8gag posting culture that seems to be seeping everywhere where people make empty, angry/bitter/holier-than-thou posts that somehow are supposed to be regarded as objective truth because of that holier-than-thou attitude. Somewhere along the line, being rambunctious and wild on chans (mainly 4) turned into being an obnoxious, predictable bore who could only babble about botnets and rattle off canned "[x] is spyware/a meme/for freetards/etc." phrases.
I don't think the idea of the "secret club" is something to be looked at with disdain, and I don't think it ever was supposed to be. 4chan was an incredible place when I was lurking in '06 before Chanology hit; I had never been on a website like it despite being a YTMNDer before and thinking I was in some secret part of the internet while there. Both of those websites to this day have never been replicated for me in terms of sheer uniqueness of the userbase, and every day I'm a little more sad that the pendulum of life hasn't swung back to those wonderfu
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