I was already a married ‘adult’ with a child of my own by the time 4chan arrived on the scene and had spent enough time online since the early 90s to know what had arrived. It was created by a 15 year old so there’s no surprise that it was populated by 1. kids and younger adults without life experience having any regards for ethics, morals, legality, or even thoughtful reasoning, and 2. evil creepy older fucks that migrated from Usenet’s darkest corners looking to take advantage of those kids, together who created the most fucked up collection of forums with the some of most vile and evil content possible because moderation was just not done. It fucked up a lot of social radars for the young people that became engrossed the chan-troll lifestyle and community.
I even attribute it to why we have Qanon grandmas now, the Q conspiracy made the jump from chan conspiracy trolling to my in-laws cousins believing its real because their Facebook feed is where they do all their best research. I even give it a lot of credit for the rise of Trump in 2015-2016, as I watched The_Donald on reddit explode from the chan kids pouring in with their obvious trolling, then the braindead right wingers embracing the literal crazy.
I’m glad you grew out of it.
I was already a married ‘adult’ with a child of my own by the time 4chan arrived on the scene and had spent enough time online since the early 90s to know what had arrived. It was created by a 15 year old so there’s no surprise that it was populated by 1. kids and younger adults without life experience having any regards for ethics, morals, legality, or even thoughtful reasoning, and 2. evil creepy older fucks that migrated from Usenet’s darkest corners looking to take advantage of those kids, together who created the most fucked up collection of forums with the some of most vile and evil content possible because moderation was just not done. It fucked up a lot of social radars for the young people that became engrossed the chan-troll lifestyle and community.
I even attribute it to why we have Qanon grandmas now, the Q conspiracy made the jump from chan conspiracy trolling to my in-laws cousins believing its real because their Facebook feed is where they do all their best research. I even give it a lot of credit for the rise of Trump in 2015-2016, as I watched The_Donald on reddit explode from the chan kids pouring in with their obvious trolling, then the braindead right wingers embracing the literal crazy.