Probably.

Most of them have jobs now.

If so then they were always normalfags. Oldfags can be normalfags too.
I firmly believe anyone who can use a _casual_ site with profile point systems is a normalfag.

I would give anything to find a community free from those faggots. But alas, it seems to be impossible.

>>4
How old are you? What's your day to day life like?

>>5
There's no need to make this about me.
The statements stand on their own.

>>4
Some of them probably are halfway normal(though none are likely all that much so), but even without that they can start going on such sites because they're there, everyone uses them, and theyre useful for accessing some niches.
4chan became totally worthless sometime in the 2010s, and plenty of its boards had ceased to be worth using quite early in the 2010s.
meanwhile, retreating to small imageboards is, for the moment, like moving away to a rural cabin somewhere. Theres less activity on any of the smaller imageboards I use than on say, 7chan in '08/9, or lainchan at its peak. There are some that are still decently populace, I think, but they're either niche, represent some specific strain of imageboard culture not everyone is part of or interested in, or they're only active on their /b/ or whatever.
Ive come to hate the constant flood of information on something like popular 4chan or twitter or whatever, and even moreso when its carefully filtered like big social media sites allow you to. But it seems perfectly expected that a good portion of old users would just get with whatever everyone else is using. After all, the community they knew is dead, just like for me.

Not only did reddit steal internet culture, but it stole forum culture too. People sometimes have no choice but to use reddit/discord servers if they have a specific hobby these days.
>>1
It depends. Some old drawfags are typical tumblr/twitterina "uwu i post unfinished doodles once a week on social media now give me money" people while some old /b/tards are probably rotting in a jail cell.

>>7
4chan isn't that bad, dramaqueen.

>>9
Yes it is.

What's a normalfag and why is it bad?

>>11
They're like the things you find when you're having trouble walking, and you look at the bottom of your shoe.

>>11
In my opinion the simplest explanation is this:
>Someone who wants, or expects, that the same dynamics which apply offline should also apply online.
A non-normalfag doesn't give a shit about real world issues when online. And in my opinion that _exactly_ describes the state of the older internet.
I think it's actually really difficult for new anons to understand that these days, because the way we communicate online is dictated by the majority, and today the majority is normalfags. Everything about the way we interact, even here and now, was sculpted by normalfags.
Without any decently sized non-normalfag infested community on the internet it was inevitable. So there's really no shining example today that can be used to compare and contrast.

But, perhaps it makes more sense with some examples. So take the issue of racism for instance: A non-normalfag says he doesn't give a shit about that online, not because he doesn't give a shit offline, but because it literally has 0 impact on their online life.
A normalfag has a very hard time understanding that concept because he would subconsciously connect the two and start forming theories and implications to explain why you would say such a thing, or try to explain why you wouldn't care offline (like being ignorant or "american")

As another example consider all the people these days who use "incel" and "virgin" like actual insults all of a sudden.
Back in the day almost everyone just pretended to be a virgin even if they weren't, and would have almost taken those insults as compliments because it's funny to do so.
Again, it's another issue that actually has 0 impact on your online life and in all honesty it should be considered laughable or bizarre that anyone would think you'd actually give a fuck. Only normalfags think it actually matters in this digital world. It matters to THEM, and they EXPECT that it matters to me too.

That expectation is the root annoyance many of us have toward normalfags. It wouldn't really be so bad if they just had their values and we had ours. But it's this fact that they expect I have the same values they do that's why normalfags used to be so hated.
Anons could feel them changing the game up with those strange new expectations of internet behavior as more and more of them were using our communities.
And for good reason too, because I believe that expectation has nearly encompassed all facets of online life today. The normalfags dominate the culture, and if they expect offline dynamics, drama, and concerns to apply online as well then that's typically how everyone else views it too since they're the majority now.
The end result is you can't tell a fucking joke anymore without some normalfag ruining it with their silly offline concerns.

Don't even get me started on how social media sites like facebook, reddit, twitter, and google are literally the engine feeding the normalfag mentality (hint: they're FORCING people to think a certain way because the normalfag mentality is a pile of gold to them, and they're mining the shit out of it).

The norm in the 90s was to act different from everybody else. Nowadays literally everybody tries as hard as they can to fit in. Maybe it has something to do with fear culture or a lack of parents telling their kids to try to be different

>>13
Its worthy of note that as the influx of normalfags has imposed IRL onto the internet, bullshit born out of insular internet communities starts seeping into IRL too. Think of how echo chambers(be they provided by a corporation or deliberately manufactured) turn people into insular, paranoid zealots, incapable of dealing with anyone who disagrees with them beyond throwing autistic temper tantrums or smug self assured dismissal.
Most of this is born out of how big social media sites are structured: feeding the used a stream of worldview affirming "content" boosts engagement time and ad revenue. Ragebait and even flamewars both work as worldview affirming content.
Therfore, any webshit company that grows large will have it in its best interests to integrate features like this if it doesn't already have them
This process depends on the invitation of IRL drama onto online social spaces, though. So bringing IRL shit online creates something new, resembling neither the old orientation of normal folks towards the real world, nor the internet nerds escapism/forum drama/various internet crap.

>>14
The west is becoming more like japan in all the worst ways. The only people who talk to me IRL are the sort of people who'd offer me a cigarette while they're at it. Most of them are my parents or grandparents age.

Have sex.

Technically if you browsed 4chong during 2008-2012ish you'd be considered a normalfag. Like twitter and reddit today, they made most of the internet's popular memes (which they later got discredited for which is why OC production stopped)

>>13
Except that this is a very Eternal September way of looking at electronic communication. Before the proles were allowed online, it was all military and university personnel. Given that it was a new medium, old social expectations were not only expected but enforced. That meant that social decorum, proper spelling, real names, and intellectual honesty were a given. The internet wasn't something you did, it was just another resource/utility like a library. People had real lives outside of their machines and they weren't placed into the Skinner Boxes of algorithm-dominated social media, online gambling, and pornography. (Though, admittedly, that last one appeared fairly quickly.)

No, in my opinion, the problem with online communication is the same one that religion has: money got involved. Business people always seek a way to make a hobby into a cash-cow. And since most small communities can't sustain themselves financially, someone with money and business savvy will always take advantage.

>>19
Its true that the internet was dominated by real life ettiquette and decorum at first, but its a good thing that that changed. Seniority doesnt give something a special place that makes it better. Remember, "/b/ was never good." Anonyous forums were something new once too. Nu-4chan isnt bad because its new, its bad for other reasons.

>Its true that the internet was dominated by real life ettiquette and decorum at first, but its a good thing that that changed.

Honestly, I don't agree. I prefer to use e-mailing lists because a more mature crowd tends to use them and the cyberkiddies don't know about them. The conversation quality is immensely better on every level.

>Remember, "/b/ was never good."
4chan as a whole has had few redeeming moments. It lacks proper moderation and attracts edgy dumbasses.

I feel like /v/ overtaking /b/ as the face of 4chan was the turning point. /v/'s aggressive, elitist mindset poisoned the whole site, and now everyone thinks that they're too good for honest discussion, shits on popular things simply because others like them, and considers themselves the center of the universe

>>22
I'd say no. There were multiple signs of feeling superior to the rest of the internet and even society sown before partially based on widespread meme propagation and being the masterminds behind internet culture at that point in time. Rule #2 is very much the epitome of elitism.

anyone else think old pictures of moot are weirdly aesthetic?

>>24
lawl you picked the blurriest most uninteresting screencap. Can't even fuckin see him

>>19
>That meant that social decorum, proper spelling, real names, and intellectual honesty were a given
I'm the anon who wrote that huge post, and I hate to pull this card, but I think there's a misunderstanding here (granted it may just be that I'm terrible at explaining this shit, which could be why that post was so fucking long in the first place)

But I don't think politeness, for example, has an inherently "real world" flavor, so it's not really what I was referring to.
One great example of the real world dynamics I was trying talk about is that we're seeing an all-time high (at least relative to 4chan) of people insulting others based on real life stuff. E.g. that you're "fat", a "loser", a "virgin", a "tranny".
And why should anyone care about such things on the internet? I don't know about you all but the ONLY thing about those insults that actually feels insulting is that they are accompanied by the underlying assumption that I'm supposed to give a shit about them. I feel like that mentality basically undermines everything that used to be so great about the internet.

The problem is that mentality is the majority now, so just ignoring it isn't going to change the fact that the majority thinks I got BTFO for being called a tranny, and all I can do is roll my eyes at how stupidly trenched in real life drama the internet is now.

>>26
Adding on to my post. I know those sorts of things were always used on 4chan even in the past, but it really was completely different.
I got called a virgin plenty on old 4chan but it was actually funny. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think there's anything funny about it today, it feels like the people saying it are dead serious and actually believe it's supposed to make me feel bad about my real life or something.

Am I making sense or should I just stop posting?

>>25
yeah I know, it was just what I had saved already because I didn't feel like looking for a better picture.

>>27
You're making sense.
One thing I really noticed about 4chan's current set of jokes is that they're all exclusively mean-spirited and cheap insults toward some group the Anon does not like. I know 4chan was pretty hostile to begin with, but there was a sense of implied light hearted vibe to their old jokes.
- /v/-man was angry, but the fact that he was so angry was a ridiculous joke and he became endearing.
- Epic Fail Guy was a loser, but his failure was a ridiculous joke, and he went on to become Slowenn Faillann, who pierced the heavens with his failure.
No one to my knowledge used angry /v/-man or Epic fail guy like they do Wojak and its mutations.

When people use Wojaks and Pepes, they are serious to a distressing degree. They not only relate and project their own personalities on these two cartoons, but the try to squeeze anyone they dislike in to them. What's worse is that the insult Wojaks are all the same: "This person is bad because they disagree with me, look at how bad they are". Wojak, Soyjak, Zoomer, NPC, Brainlet, they all can be summed up in that one sentence. The cherry on top of the cake is that these jokes are more often than not forced on Anonymous by some organized party from a chatroom. There's not real fun, nothing forms naturally, it's all business and joy has no place.

>>26
>>27
Not that anon, but to me what you're saying definitely makes sense and, to my delight, is pretty much the exact same thing I've been moaning about to myself for quite some time now. I was already working on a response, then realized it was basically just repeating everything you've already said.

I'm mad at myself for always being so unmotivated in regards to writing sufficient replies and joining interesting discussions and / or conversations. I want to, it's a very enjoyable thing in my head, but somehow I always lose my drive and that's really frustrating to me. In any case, I really value your contribution and enjoy reading here.

>>26
>>29
Precisely this, and to add my experiences:
Back in the day when people got called virgins on forums and whatnot, I perceived it as a humoristic jab low-key poking fun at general "outdoor" society for making an unnecessarily huge deal out of it, for example adults constantly nagging teens if they "got a girl already or what". Said jabs most of the time were intended to be enjoyed by both sides, it's like how some jokingly respond with hacker accusations to any showing of a code or a screenshot of a command prompt.

The way I see it, the majority of the internet nowadays seems to consist of the same simpleminded imbeciles we used to poke fun at with said jokes and which we usually could take a break from by browsing the internet. At the present time though there's no fun allowed.
I'm sure there still are lots of niche places capturing the "old spirit", but they're tough to find.
Another problem is that, whenever someone's trying to start a new and better community with a solid amount of active members, it has to be advertised somewhere, and that will inevitably gather the attention of a not insignificant amount of /v/-tier wannabes trying to fit in and miserably failing because they mistakenly believe constant virulence and derailments are the definite way of communicating on such sites. The only way of fighting back against this are active mods who actually care and don't stop caring.

>>31
>The only way of fighting back against this are active mods who actually care and don't stop caring.
The problem with this though is a lot of anons hate rules of any kind, so even some among your target audience would choose to avoid your site.
It would have been easier for a large site to do something like that (like 4chan) but all the momentum is gone, so you're just getting users trickling in little by little onto alt-chans, and when the existing users start seeing new users running away because of rules then they're going to lose the motivation to stick around too.

I think one of the worst things to come from the modern internet is something that >>32 hinted at, which is the rise of a strange sort of hybrid of radicalism and populism.

It used to be generally understood that you didn't really get involved with things that you don't understand and don't affect you or someone you know. Nowadays, everyone feels the need to stick their noses in everything. There's people who've never met an immigrant in their life weighing in on immigration policy, white women giving lectures about black rights, men who've never touched a gun let alone shot one talking about gun rights, ect.

It's as if the janitor felt qualified to help design a rocket because he works at the company that's making it. No, fuck off. You know nothing about rockets. Your opinion has no value and doesn't deserve to be taken into account.

>>3
A job? In this economy?

>>29
This is a good way of looking at newer Wojack/Pepe variations.
Personally, I think some are actually legitimately funny. But all of the funny ones are used not as insults, but representations of their creators.
Zoomer memes aren't funny. But 30-year-old boomer ones are. And I'll never dislike regular sad Wojack.
I'm certain some of you hate all of them, but that's how I see it.

>>31
This post touches on something that I think deserves to be elaborated on.

In my opinion, the main difference between the old web and the modern web was that nobody really cared that much on the old web.

Now get me right, I'm not saying that nobody cared ABOUT the old web. You had people studying the internet from a sociological standpoint pretty early on. No, what I mean is that the people who were putting shit up on the web back then saw it as "just the internet". You'd get mocked for taking shit too seriously because nobody on the web saw any real world significance in what they were posting. It was a separate realm from real life, with the only overlap between the two being conventions held by the larger communities like furries or anime fans

Nowadays, the internet has grown so connected to real life that you HAVE to take what you see on it seriously.

>>36
I started to realize this all too when I came to the conclusion that the only thing which would actually fix all the problems is for everyone telling a joke or being silly to have some kind of magic "this is a fucking joke" label on it.

People really are just more serious than they've ever been online, and the saddest part of it all (and most annoying part which actually gets under my skin) is they really honest-to-goodness believe that they're less serious than the internet used to be.
It's really weird, because I think a lot of them even fool themselves. Like they actually feel frustrated online all day, but because they post memes that imply they're smiling/laughing while arguing they start to somehow believe that they are too.

I dunno. I suppose I'm trying to understand a type of mentality that, as you even said yourself, I used to go online to get away from because I never understood it.
So maybe it's the same online now, and I have no chance of understanding these people. To me they just seem like angry cryababies who can't let anything go, but they swear they're not.
I don't get them, at all.

>>37
Yeah, whether it be 4chan or twitter, its just a bunch of people getting (seemingly) incredibly angry over the most inconsequential shit. I genuinely can't imagine using the net only to complain about something and post a depression meme.

>>38
But at the same time you're complaining about other people complaining

>>36
>>37
I wish pic related was still just a joke.
Like many other jokes it ended up being taken too seriously.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1yJ8eeI2js

yeah, i realized the irony in my post as i posted it. at least i don't post depression memes

>>42
>>39

one of the best threads i read in my life thanks anonS

And yet, so much more could be said. I feel like there are so many unstated assumptions and inarticulated experiences in this discussion.

>>45
IMO there's really not too much to discuss. 4chan's an anonymous site, so it's hard to say what happened to most of the early guys.

ｷﾀ━━━(ﾟ∀ﾟ)━━━!!

we use Mastodon/Pleroma now

>>48
What goes on there? Kind of hard to build a community when it's all decentralized. My impression was that it's mostly used by Japanese artists (and people who follow them) who make art that is too "spicy" for the Twitter crowd.

>>48
>Mastodon
What's the point? It's just like another twitter, with censorship galore. Are you talking about Pawoo?

>>50
Mastodon/Pleroma (or more properly ActivityPub) is a massive network of 4 million users. A lot of popular Mastodon servers do have censorship; however, do a tiny bit of exploration and you'll find the free speech servers that basically allow networking with all nodes in the network.

What's the point? Well, "twitter like" experience without ads, tracking, stupid character limits... and if you're a programmer it's extremely easy to write bots or other tools that play with the technology. Most of the heavy duty users are old skool 4chan ppl so it has a comfy and familiar vibe. Unfortunately most of the heavy duty users are also programmers, so that can be tiresome if you're not a 1337 supa haxxor.

FUN FACT: Mastodon and its initial tools were designed by Secret Area of VIP Quality, a community I consider to be a sibling site of 4taba!

I thought you were referring to the main server of Mastodon. Excuse me for my assumption.

>>52
The whole point of Mastodon is that it's decentralized. Different servers can allow different things, so being banned from a server doesn't outright erase what you say. It's less "you're not allowed to say that" and more "I'm not willing to host that". You can always find a different server, and barring that you can just start your own and make your own rules.

>Mastodon and its initial tools were designed by Secret Area of VIP Quality
Really? Where can I read more about this?

I think Mastodon is a good template, but it's limited by the people using it. It's a skeleton without the flesh and blood to get it moving. The Japanese instances of it seem good, but I can't understand what they're saying so I can't say for sure.
It reminds me of the old days of Ultima Online and the contrast to today's MMORPGs. A big part of UO's magic was that a whole bunch of different player types were 'forced' to exist in the same world. You had a whole lot of interaction that would never happen if the PKs all sat in one corner, the crafters sat at the table, and the roleplayers were outside, etc. Similarly, Mastodon takes a minority of people, then separates that minority into their separate instances and there isn't a community as much there is a group of cliques with walls between them. But, maybe it's just the result of the modern internet. I wouldn't willingly share space with the slacktivist types so I'm guilty, too.

>>55
Think of Mastodon less as one giant community and more as a platform for several smaller ones. Kind of like Discord, but with servers hosted by the users instead of a single company. The idea is that it's easy to move from instance to instance, so if one of them goes bad you're not locked in to using it.

>>55
>Ultima Online
Theme parks won out over sandboxes. Where we're going there will be no more communities, only platforms. I think this'll happen to the chans, too.

>>55
>I think Mastodon is a good template, but it's limited by the people using it.
so do you use it?
i am @look@birds.garden

>>26
>>27
This was a constant headache when I still posted on 4chan. Inevitably, any argument would abandon the original topic and become about who people thought I was, because that's apparently the only thing that matters on an anonymous site. "Autist" and "weeb" were the most common accusations, and I would also very often get identified as some specific user or off-site person that I had either never heard of and/or bore no resemblance to. If you think it was somehow different in the past, it's only because you were naive. 4chan was always a site for normalfags where you are not supposed to stand out, no different from reddit. When you now mention that you watched an anime, and people hysterically shit on you for being a "weeb," you can thank early 4chan for that. Not twitter, facebook or reddit.

hfghf

Normality doesn't exist and constantly trying to be the opposite of a normalfag is simply slave morality and you're a literal shadow of what you hate the most.

>>61
Idiot.

Yes to twitter.

>>62
He's right though. A normal person doesn't exist, only people with varying degrees of closeness to the ideal of a normal person.

Also obsessing over doing the opposite of what the group you hate does make you but a reaction to "normalfags" instead of your own person.

It's all mental gymnastics. Pure humanity condensed into bite sized chunks nothings change really except the same protocols.

It's kind of hard to say. Being an anonymous imageboard means that we know very little about the vast majority of the people posting there, and further complicating things is the multicultural nature of 4chan (probably inherited from SA), with different boards having vastly different userbases, even back in the early days.

Worldwide Internet users
Users \t\t\t2005 \t2010 \t2017 \t2019
World population \t6.5 billion \t6.9 billion \t7.4 billion \t7.75 billion
Worldwide \t\t16% \t30% \t48% \t53.6%
In developing world \t8% \t\t21% \t41.3% \t47%
In developed world \t51% \t67% \t81% \t86.6%

It'll be difficult to find them, there are many more people on the Internet than there used to be. All the interesting people were already on it ten years ago, with the exception of new generation users. Most new users are funneled into a shrinking number of centralized corporate websites. If you were an oldfag and migrated to these centralized places, the noise must be deafening.

>>68
Where did you get the numbers from? The sheer scale of human population is truly impossible to fathom. I still struggle to believe that a funny cat image can get 10 million+ views in less than a day. How are there that many people looking at something? It boggles the mind.

>All the interesting people were already on it ten years ago
This does seem to be the case, but I wonder if it's just a matter of getting older. Things that are novel and interesting for a 13 year-old getting his first smartphone will certainly greatly outnumber the things a 40 year-old that's been online for 25 years would. He doesn't really have anything to offer the second person, either.

>>69
>Where did you get the numbers from?
They're from wikipedia article about the Internet.

>This does seem to be the case
Even with the disconnect between young vs old, the key thing I've noticed is the signal to noise ratio. Many of the once useful commerce websites have turned to shit after a wave of tirdworld scammers. Search engines are saturated with SEO shit or prioritized the big corporate websites.

Many zoomers aspire to be "social media influencers". That term wasn't in widespread use prior to ten years ago; it sounds like marking lingo that leaked into the public lexicon. Is it weird that "social media" existed before the term did?

>>4
>I firmly believe anyone who can use a _casual_ site with profile point systems is a normalfag.
I don't think this is true. Someone can hold his nose and dive in, that doesn't make him a normalfag. The definition given by >>13 is the best and clearest one for making sense of the internet.

What can a zoomer do for the imageboard culture of the present and the future?

>>72

Learn the origins, lineage and the culture of what imageboards and textboards were back in the day and try to adhere to them.

i found many niche internet communities through using mastodon/pleroma, neocities and indie search engines.

only an absolute retard would be proud of spending all his life on that shitty website.
it brought nothing but ruin to my life.
not only did i lost the love of my life because of it, but my ability to trust anyone as well.
if there is anyone who has any respect for themselves, do not waste more of your life there, i have sadly discovered this way too late

>>75
Imagebiards are for the cool guys

>>76
More like the mentally insane
The unhinged/sane post ratio seems to be 99/1
Not counting places with small traffic like these.

>>77
People who post in places like this have their own mental problems.

>>78
It's a milder form to be sure. No one here thinks they're in a competition to get the most attention to their posts.

>>79
since when do people think others do things for attention? I can get it on some social media platform, but nobody is really gonna care for some post that will fizzle away with time.

>>1
The good oldfag diaspora is on twitter and discord, and only there. Mastodon or any other alternative is for the oldfag diaspora that ended up turning into trannies. One thing you can be certain of is that everyone that matters abandoned the dead carcass of imageboards and migrated onto persona networks.

4cuck oldgods browse soyjak.party

>>82
Not anymore.

R.I.P. 'arty.

>>81

Funny how that works. I am an oldfag and when I tried to get into Mastodon, I just couldn't. But I'm still on Twitter all these years after some retard in #/jp/ convinced me to join.