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Comment by ipnon | Hacker News Reader

I regrettably still frequent a certain infamous image board which has been often described as the "cesspool of the Internet." The noise to signal ratio is shockingly high, the risk of brainwashing and indoctrination is ever present. One must always be on guard, but I'm in love with the Wild West feeling. Anything goes, and it feels like going a Indiana Jones treasure hunt for fresh and original content. It's also given me a thick skin in online discussions. I've been called every insult in the dictionary.

It's an antidote for the curated, ad profile targeted, walled garden web we've slowly constructed around ourselves. They have a saying: "don't forget, you're here forever." 16 years later ...

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I used to frequent said imageboard as well! I owe to it a lot of my initial curiosity in technolo/g/y that ultimately led up to the career I have now, but I couldn't ever go back. There's a certain "voice" attributable to the board as a whole, the same way HN is known to have a voice (e.g. "HN would think X about Y"), and its infectious cynicism started to take root and corrupt my daily thoughts, eventually becoming the voice of my own depression. I lost of lot of time and energy thinking that repeatedly exposing myself to that was making me stronger, when all it was doing was wearing me down and destroying me.

If you're still enjoying it, more power to ya! I sometimes still miss it myself, and whenever I drop by I remember both why I spent so much time there and why I left. Just a fair warning to anyone who might want to give it a try. That saying isn't kidding... it really does stay with you forever.

Assuming we are talking about the four leaf clover website, I wish that people would stop painting that place like you do. Anything goes? No, there are pretty strict rules that are actively enforced. The hard part of the "hunt for fresh and original content" is because this website is mostly used by the same people all the time. If anything it's not a cesspool, it's a giant circle jerk. Wild West feeling? There's not much wild west, mostly people repeating the same talking point over and over again, or talking about their hobbies.

> It's also given me a thick skin in online discussions. I've been called every insult in the dictionary.

That's something I can't understand too. Most of my discussions there are relatively civil. Most of the time when things start getting polarized discussions get not constructive at all, but this is true of HN too. There are lots of insult thrown around but it always goes both ways and it's easy to avoid it.

There is only one board there where I have meaningful discussions and actually learn things. Everything else is straugt garbage. It feels like a chore to browse any of the popular boards.

I am actually very curious of which board you are able to have meaningful discussions

/g/

For me /g/, /p/, sometimes /tv/. You have to judge the tone of thread from few comments.

  16 years later ...

It took me around five years of online language practice to become bilingual. To each his/her own, and maybe I'm some kind of elitist, but I personally wouldn't trade that for five years of exposure to racial slurs and memes about bodily functions.

Probably 4chan.

GIRUGAMESH

Kiwifarm?

Wikipedia?

Sergey Brin's microblogging platform: thefacebook.com

4chan is not that bad, just stay out of /pol/

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