>>1037
I'm a zoomer but I remember the culture that forums used to have, and always thought that anonymous imageboards were meant to subvert forum culture. Forums for a long time were explicitly built around creating a digital identity, often to the detriment of any kind of meaningful conversation. Reddit kinda inherited that vibe by encouraging as much updoots as possible, leading to cabals of autists who won't log off talking to themselves.
Chans subverted that, and were a product of a specific point in time. Anonymity allowed one to be free from consequences, and allowed individual posts to stand on their own merit rather than character or reputation. One of the runaway consequences of this is that it encouraged a death spiral of self awareness and irony to stand out. Weeb autismos with no real personality to socialize with could find solace in a collective community of likeminded teenagers, and the lack of accountability enabled raw and meaningful socializing and learning compared to forums and other social media which felt almost corporate in comparison.
But 13 year old /b/tards from 2007 are in their 30s and balding in a world that is objectively worse in every way, having witnessed the few things they held dear degrade. It's not the imageboards that have become erratic and cynical, but the people within them as a sociological phenomenon. All the things that were a product of imageboards in their prime(the secret club, the novelty of japanese media, computers, the humor) have either died, or have completely lost their luster due it everything becoming normalized and people squeezing the joys of their youth for serotonin in a world that otherwise doesn't provide it. How many people are still digital natives and chan/anime adjacent in their mind but don't really game, watch anything, learn anything, or do anything but doomscroll between shifts at work and sleep? These things are reflections of the people who made and occupied them, in the same way few people can truly capture the magic of a past era of music because it no longer lives in its original context. Everything in the moment is a new and evolving thing.