|
>>
|
No. 38568
[Edit]
>>38566
>My hypothesis is age, how modern culture legitimized the internet as an important thing, and the fact it's the same small handful of jaded folks using these boards.
I agree, that's part of the reason, especially the second point,
but specifically the idea that the internet is an important part of the real world.
That just draws in the wrong kind of people.
However the internet was pretty important to a lot of people even back then, with communities at each others throats and constant drama and whatnot.
Yet it was still different.
I suppose it boils down to the fact that back then the internet was more fractured and diverse, thus those conflicts were just localised things, and would register as merely a curiosity outside of their respective area. Each on their own would merely be good for a laugh, but there were so many unrelated things happening all the time, that the internet itself felt fresh and alive.
Today probably 90% of the population of the internet is involved in the same topics, on the same few sites, all of which bleed over into each other, making the internet this huge monolithic blob, even if technically you have different sites.
This in turn leads to the dead and sterile feel that so many people notice.
Another thing i notice, is that people seem to have much more defined expectations of what they want out of their online interactions, and demand exactly that, over and over again. For example, my recollection of my first couple years on /b/, is that there was much more variety in threads, and while most things were not exactly to my taste, every couple minutes a new threads would pop up that caught my attention, and it would usually get responses, making the act of F5ing for hours actually worthwhile.
The last time i've been there however, it was just mostly the same stuff on the first page, and everything that did not match one of the popular topics, would just sink like a stone and be gone in minutes.
>I also sometimes post on a forum about a niche sport, but even there reddit seems to have taken most of the userbase, I find it bizarre how a lot of people just accept the homogenization of the internet
People really seem to crave a neverending loop of the same thing, and i just can't understand that.
>>38567
>I think imageboards have some intrinsic, unique appeal, so it surprises me that among the constant waves of new, young people om the internet, more aren't drawn to them. Perhaps 4chan had something else that helped it take off outside of being in the right place at the right time, and more recent imageboards lack these qualities.
4chan is massive though, and as for other imageboards, i guess it's just that 4chan is already there and it's good enough for most, so it absorbs most users, especially when most of those are hyper focused on just consuming a limited number of types of content and nothing else.
I think this trend in people is the main reason why everything gravitates to the same places, and why 4chan itself has become so homogenized.
|