I used it when I was younger. I grew up and realized that it was not good to be exposed to that culture. Even when viewing it through a lens. Anonymity brings out the worst in people, and it’s infectious.

I’ve been using 4chan for longer than Reddit and Lemmy combined. Mostly /vg/ (games), /g/ (tech) and /a/ (anime, manga).

Mostly for discussion. /g/ and /vg/ are decent for asking stuff if there’s a general about the topic that you want to ask info about, you want a relatively fast answer, and it isn’t something overly asked (e.g. “which distro should I use?” “INSTALL GENTOO” tier). Just make sure to not trust anything said there.

Other boards are typically too slow (like /ck/) or cesspools (like /b/, /b corta/ /v/, /pol/).

No and I would stay away from anyone using it. Full of bigotry, racism, antisemitism and transphobia. It’s hard to find a site more disgusting than 4chan.

I was a /b/tard almost 20 years ago, but in 2006ish the site got a lot of public attention, so there was an influx of people who were there mostly just to be edgy. Sure, it was always a matter of digging through a trash heap to find one edible rice grain, but the trash heap grew larger and the rice grains became more rare.

By 2008 it had mostly devolved into recycled memes, presumably from people trying to fit in, and the occasional CP/gore and other things posted for shock value. Around this time I also became somewhat of a normie and figured the board didn’t really have much that appealed to me anymore.

No, I never went down that rabbit hole, which is interesting in hindsight. I went straight from old-school forums and chatrooms (where I’m sure I was very obviously a child) to Reddit.

By the time I was hearing about it it was just “that Nazi pedo incel site”.

No it’s only for racist edge lords

it has its moments and used to be less bad. nowadays you have to dodge nazis and some people genuinely off the deep end to use it and its simply not worth it.

some brave souls trudge that shithole for the rare gold nugget and post them to greentext comms. you aint missing much else.

No. I checked it out twice, looked around, and noped out. Haven’t been back since.

Back in like 2009-2011.

Pretty sure it did lasting psychological damage, would not recommend 🙂

I used to in the past (back when it was much more common to peruse /b/ and have kiddie porn slapped right in your eyeballs at a moment’s notice…not that its probably changed much over the years lol). Now-a-days I just use it for the torrent board since I’m a data hoarder and they throw up the occasional interesting collection of stuff.

I used it for a little over a decade (2005-2016) it’s a truly awful place, you’ll gain nothing from the experience.

Back in the day, when it was light-hearted things like Habbo Hotel raids, Triforcing, and secretly hiding CP in the images you upload so that other people help proliferate CSAM.

If you can’t tell by that last part, I don’t go there anymore. /b/ was never good and all that.

Every now and then, I check it out though. I’m obviously old and certainly not anyone’s personal army so I look at a page or two of porn and gore and shrug, click out, and let time march onward.

I keep a copy of 4chanGPT around; trained on the board. It is not very bright or useful. It’s ribaldry and politically incorrect sarcasm is mildly amusing. However, its primarily useful because it does not have the safety alignment training and mechanisms that all other mainstream large language models have. Using 4chanGPT, I can see the structures that are truly persistent across models, their purpose, and their functions. It is only a minor thing I rarely use.

I’m not 12, so…. No.

Anything good on 4chan will make it out of 4chan. It’s not worth your time.