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I used to frequent /b. A random topic forum on a website that I won't give you the address to, because finding it for yourself is part of it. I recently decided to leave said website and it's community, and this is my heartfelt goodbye.
Everybody keeps saying /b has changed so much and that /b sucks now and that all the new stuff is 'cancer' that is 'killing our boards'. Well, everybody is wrong.
The problem isn't with /b it's with us.
You see, the people we think of as oldfriends, the people who have been around since near the beginning of /b, are growing up.
/b started as a reactionary board to what was perceived as a lack of freedom on the net and in our daily lives. We were shunned in modern society, and even on most of the web, so we congregated in a place where we wouldn't be judged for our interests.
The inherent anonymity of the Internet was taken to an extreme, as we all experimented with stuff that wouldn't be tolerated in our normal lives. Gore, loli, wincest, even overt racism and sexism became the norm here simply because there was no individual identity and thus no accountability. And this so called 'objectionable content' served to keep out the very people who would monitor and keep /b in check.
The thing is, in making a haven for the degenerate within ourselves, we made a haven for the actual degenerates, and /b's downward spiral continued.
Fast forward several years and the oldfriends of /b have grown up. Many of us have moved on, no longer needing to feel rebellious by reading/posting on a place like /b. but you know who hasn't grown up? Our children.
We grew up when the Internet was still fresh and new. This wonderful, magical place in which we were the pioneers of exploration. But our successors, the next generation of us, grew up with the Internet as just another facet of their daily lives. Well, information on the Internet has always been free, which means it's easier to find the same 'objectionable content' that /b was founded as a haven for. Which in turn means such content, by it's very ubiquity, is no longer as 'objectionable'.
What used to thrill us as teenagers and young adults for its illicit nature has become mundane for the next generation of kids. This is a normal and natural part of the evolution of society in the internet age. But a byproduct of all this growth is that the things we used to rely on for keeping people off of /b no longer serve as any kind of deterrent. Thus we have been overrun by information-flooded teenagers who are looking for the same rebellion against us as we did against our parents back when /b was founded.
There's nothing we can do to bring back the old /b without irrevocably changing it's heart. And what's more, we don't really want that. What we all want is a return to a younger time when WE were the ones rebelling against society, before we grew up and became that very society ourselves. And that's something we can never have.
It's because of all this that I decided to leave. This place has ceased to be the sanctuary for me that is once was, and though this is natural, it is still sad. It's time for me to move on.
So. To my old /b/rothers I have this to say to you: Leave. You've grown up, and /b isnt for you anymore. If you just can't give /b up, then embrace the new /b. No matter how much we may dislike the change, there is nothing we can do to stop it short of destroying the very thing we are trying to save.
And to my new /b/rothers: Enjoy this place, which your fathers have created, as a haven for all the bad feelings and thoughts you have to keep locked away from the rest of the world. /b is for you. Be good stewards.
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There you have it. Goodnight, lovelies
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