/lit/ - Literature

>>7156978
Post it on /qa/, it's the closest thing to a meta thread.

I've been on this website for like 9 years. Maybe 10. I've seen some massive shifts. I've seen some weird memes that I wish stayed around. I am okay with this thread being here because I think it will elicit better responses than on other boards.

Ask me questions I'll tell you some things bro I'll tell you some things.

>>7157053
Share a few of the memes you wish would've stayed around. I've lurked on-and-off for 6-7 years so I'm curious if I'll recognize anything.

>>7156978
It's hard to put a finger on anything specific. The memory plays tricks on you, and I've not been hanging out here much recently. That's how time goes.

However, I think the important factors in creating the board culture are, first, the complete openness; second, the intense, ferocious criticism and self-policing which it led to, and which in a lot of ways is the flipside of the openness. Most people notice that you can post anything you want here; that's obvious and comes from the anonymity. But it's also the case that you can respond however you want. This is fundamentally different from most discussion communities, where there's some rules, or some structure, or some mechanism in place that controls and limits the kind of discussion and the responses. So it's hard to really call people out on their shit without running the risk of bans or downvotes or whatever, and that's a controlling mechanism. Unless someone is really bad, they can probably get away with low-grade shittiness.

That's completely different from here, where you can call someone a shithead for basically no reason. And I think that's had a profound impact on the site's culture - because you can't necessarily get away with dumbass nerd bullshit or idiotic memes or hugbox-y crap. The standards are, in some way, higher. There will always be someone along to call you a dumbass, and you gotta defend yourself. But in a way that just doesn't involve popularity contests or cliques for the most part. It's a completely different method of policing content.

And then of course there's the elements of it that just come from, you know, being a bunch of alienated nerds who all share nerd interests and feelings.

>>7157053
Been here as long.

You know acat?

>>7157053
I'm curious on how you found 4chan and if you wished you never did

>>7157060
I can't remember the specifics but completely randomly people would be like "this thread is filthy lets clean it up! this message brought to you by dial" or something and they always posted the same picture of soap. If it weren't the literal manifestation of "forced meme" I'd love to shitpost it in shitty threads all the time.

"doesn't afraid of anything" was one of those 4chan phrases that arose out of a weird weird engrish typo but it was so much fun to say that to myself.

Shoe on head became super boring super quick but I remember once we invaded some guys boring camshow and we kept posting about "shoe on head" that he broke down and cried on cam. It made the whole meme worth it.

"I can see the audio" was a weird meme. I still don't understand why people tried to force it since it was useless without the context and not usable in other situations but GOTTA MEME BRO.

>>7157075
I tried to use a trip so i could be identified but it didn't work for no reason I can figure out OH WELL

I couldn't tell you how I found this website. I think some internet friend showed me. Back then there was no incentive to go on 4chan to be edgy. The place was a pissing contest of the grossest porn and the scariest sexual fantasies and everyone had photoshop and tried to one up each other for nerd dominance. I love the fuck out of it.

This place is nowhere near the same and I miss the fuck out of it but that's only because I rose-colored-glasses the fuck outta my memories and don't remember how much shitty shitty shitty trolling their used to be.

Old 4chan was pretty anti-furry back in the day but nowadays being a furry is tame compared to the other weirdos who try to win the "i'm the grossest" race to the bottom.

For the record in the entire time that 4chan has been around people have argued about the correct way to sage so people would just say "sage goes in every field" and despite the fact that was CLEARLY A MEME people would argue that sage in the name field or title field did nothing EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME like somehow if you didn't sage perfectly it ruined it.

But yeah people thought if you saged a thread enough it would get deleted and other urban legend bullshit.

>>7157088
The anti mainstream mentality was here since the start?

>>7157088
It's legitimately crazy to think that I've been visiting this place since I was, like, 15, and I'm 25 now. I legitimately graduated from high school, went to college, and graduated from college all in the time I've been posting here

literally been posting on /lit/ for its entire lifespan as well

>>7157100
It was a website for perverts and weebs hell yes it was anti-mainstream.

oh yeah the biggest oldfag/newfag difference is .RAR archives in pictures

You could take a .rar and append it to the end of .jpgs and you could do this in the command line of windows you didn't even need a special program. So people hid some sketchy shit in certain pictures (child porn, always child porn, CP for days).

But the flip side was book threads. People would take text files and put them in an .rar and attach it to a picture of the cover. So you would click on it and it would just be a normal picture. You would right click and select "open with" and you could use winrar and it would work like a normal archive.

These threads were great but there was a weird meme about people requesting the book "House of Leaves" because the book is written in a weird way and there are like weird liner notes and shit so it was impossible to create a .pdf or text document so it never ever could be posted. Haven't thought about this shit for like 4 years so this is some fun nostalgia.

>>7157120
Well, not mainstream it's different from anti-mainstream

If you say reddit in here people will kill you

>>7157130
remember the plague of squares

also that one stupid fucking spam thread that would always show up, and then the one copypasta about I CUM ON CAT HE HISS AT ME or whatever

good times

>>7157104
When was /lit/ first introduced? I first started coming here in 2011, and I assume it'd been going for a couple of years before that.

>>7157132
>remember the plague of squares

Seems like yesterday....

I got here just before Boxxy broke.

>>7157135
Spring 2010, I want to say? I really don't remember the date at all, though - I'm mostly going by what was going on in my life at the time. I'm pretty sure it went up spring semester of my sophomore year at college, which would have been 2010.

>>7157135
Did you know that /lit/ was originally a spinoff board from /r9k/ and before moot killed /r9k/ by attracting all the crossboarder scum to make ronery threads, /r9k/ had the "pretentious hipster shitter" reputation reminiscent of the reputation /lit/ has among the more illiterate boards on this site?

Funny how things change over time, huh?

WHEN I WAS

oh my god that was the worst. Everyone posting the lyrics to I can't remember I have to look it up...

So basically people would post the lyrics to the song "Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance and holy shit people fucking posted that like it was their job. The threads would offer nothing. They just posted that fucking thread OVER AND OVER AND OVER and it barely differed and it was just shitting up 4chan with no variation. Christ everyone who posted that shit should be put to death.

>>7157142
Eh, that's not entirely true. The ronery shit started quite early in /r9k/'s existence - I would say within a year. Well before /lit/'s creation and before there was any cross-boarder shit. In fact, that's why /adv/ got created in the first place - as an attempt to quarantine that shit from /r9k/. One which failed miserably, but still. Also... I might be misremembering, but I feel like there was a time when /adv/ existed but wasn't officially listed as a board? So you had to just know the URL? that was weird

Anyway, t he arrogance was definitely also a quality of the board, and /lit/ is an obvious successor in many ways, but relationship shit had a long history on /r9k/ and came into existence pretty naturally and inevitably.

>>7157142
I posted on /r9k/ and it was pretty fun at first because people basically were like "okay can't repeat myself gotta be original" and so they tried to discuss things people didn't talk about on /b/. The trolling was weird and confusing and I loved it. People were personal but it was like "hey here's a thing I feel/do but I go on 4chan so here's my twisted take on it." That shit didn't last long.

>>7157146
I feel like the introduction of captcha is really underrated as a major change in the history of 4chan

>>7157158
the early days of /r9k/ were legitimately great, yeah. it's a shame that it couldn't last, but that's the Internet.

>>7157155
This guy is 100% correct.

ALSO I remember cracky-chan holy shit memory lane tonight.

ALSO one of the best things to look back on is THE ALMIGHTY LINE TRAP!

Back in the day there were thread upon thread upon thread about how that was totally a girl or totally a boy and Line Trap would post pictures on her Myspace (yes Myspace) that only fueled the fire.

Like nowadays Line Trap is Bailey Jay the pornstar who has awards and does an internet show with Jim Norton.

But back then there were people who were praying for Line Trap to be the correct gender that makes their masturbation okay. People would post her in "hot chick" threads and people would always be like "I've got some bad news, that's a dude."

At one point Line Trap posted pictures on her Myspace of her breast growth after taking hormones and Myspace took them down. It was a fucking scandal that rocked /b/.

>>7157155
Within a year seems right if I remember my timeline correctly, but the thing is, the change in "mentality" happened very abruptly and it was literally, 100% moot's fault for making constant retarded stickies and announcements and bringing up the fact /r9k/ exists and talking about roneriness - which until that point was just a very small, irrelevant part of the board. Most people on /r9k/ back then were closer to butterfly (just remembered the name of a tripfag, I think her name was "Soviet Lesbian", I wonder if that was butterfly herself since she's an old hag) than to dumb frogposters of today.

/r9k/ used to have this one writefag, our own version of John Titor. I think he was just referred to as "future bro". A guy who claimed to be a time traveler from the future. He'd come by every couple of weeks, talk about how the world works in the future, answer some questions, generally it was just fun, nerdy suspension of disbelief and we all played along with it. He was away for a month when the whole "migration" happened and when he came back again to make a new thread, to do the same thing he's always done, like 75% of the posts in that thread were crossboarding newfags who just came to /r9k/ in the past month and started shitting on him and calling him a loony. I stopped posting on /r9k/ after that thread.

This was all years ago and I'm terrible with dates so I might have got some details wrong but I'm pretty sure that's how it happened. I'm pretty sure all this happened before /lit/ was even made.

>>7157199
I don't remember why but for some reason I stopped browsing 4chan, but I suspect it had to do with both Fallout 3 coming out and being legally able to buy 40's of steel reserve for $1.79 a bottle but here's how I remember it.

Soviet Lesbian totally rings a bell. I can't remember any specifics (my memory is fuzzy and so is my blood alcohol content) but yeah /r9k/ almost immediately branded itself as "the sophisticated /b/" which you know in itself was a weird contradiction but /r9k/ had a decent level of self-deprecating self-awareness.

I stopped posting after a while and I think right when I stopped the board was being shitted up with a lot of "relationship" bullshit. Not like today with the "hey guys a girl said she likes me should I murder her parents" but like in the "there's this relationship problem and I have no friends plz halp" but that shit went south nearly IMMEDIATELY.

I remember when moot deleted /r9k/ I was happy to see it go.

I am almost scared to go back and look at it now to see what's become of the place.

A question for all the oldfags in here: What are your thoughts on /s4s/?

>>7157235
A cesspit of trolling and trolling and more trolling and troll troll troll troll troll troll

And that's all the attention I ever paid it.

>>7157235
It's just dumb, harmless fun. I visit the board a couple of times a day to laugh but never posted there. Probably one of the top five boards on this site.

>>7157070
Well said anon.

>>7157235
it's pretty funny. dumb, but funny. i don't really care enough to keep up with stuff like that anymore but it seems like an amusing and good board.

>...how this site changed over the years creating this distinct subculture.

I've been around for about two thirds of 4chan's existence. Make of that what you will. I've bounced around the boards in my time here, usually being absorbed into one or two at a time. The last board I've participated in to any meaningful extent and hold any smidgen of allegiance to is /lit/.

Here are my impressions.

What has not changed:

1) Content creation.
2) Resource concentration in the form of share threads and request responses, and good recommendations for educating oneself on the fundamentals of various subjects.
3) Epic stupidity.
4) Entertainment value.
5) Traditional media misidentification and general cluelessness about it.

What has changed:

1) Content development. Once something good comes along, it moves off-site.
2) Support infrastructure for coordination, contact, and storage has moved off-site. Off-site storage was alway the way, but today extensive dedicated websites are created, and quality discussion moves off there as well.
3) Board direction and management. Not by the staff, by the users. Gone are the innocent days of sage bombing and so on. Again, it's moved off-site. Various clicks of users coordinate what flies and what dies on a board. Even in the face of resistance by the staff (though sometimes with the staff participation). Staff can push things around short term, long term the off-site factions hold sway. Try to launch something without their approval is the next best thing to a guarantee of failure.
4) Identification with the site as a group. People make use of 4chan, but they don't care about being a part of it.
5) Advertisement and commercialization bot Spam. The site's managed to survive its first brush with such noise, and then kept ahead of the curve.