Quit Imageboards, man.

One day in the year of our Lord CY+3 I will probably just throw my hands up and I proclaim "Fuck it, I'm out." and that will be it.
And from then on, there won't be much of a reason to regret that decision.
Right now I'm gonna tell you exactly why that is.
Before I continue, I should make absolutely clear that I don't think 4chan is entirely bad.
4Chan and /pol/ aren't entirely bad, here, you can quote me on it.
Even now I will much rather waste an afternoon on here with oyu guys than on BuzzHeeb, 9fag, R*ddit, www.epicmemepoopfuckingmemestolencomicshitvortex.com or whatever.
There were a few things here and there that I even look back on with nostalgia.
That one time where there way an ISD "fringe investigation" that had the /SIG/ threads and even a thread I posted in the screencaps comes to mind.
Goddamnit, that's already two years ago!
For what it's worth there's no other place on the internet quite like 4chan.
From time to time the people here really can generate some genuinely funny, hilarious and/or interesting content and discussion.
At least that's what I remember.
That said there's a side to 4chan but as it seems /pol/ specifically that I just want to take a minute to briefly cast the spotlight onto.
I'm addressing this mainly to Anons who actually frequent here.
Unlike the trite MSM stuff this is not to look in from the outside with ridicule and contempt.
I just want to have an open and frank discussion about why leaving is becoming inevitable and why, in my extremely arrogant opinion, you should probably think (and do) the same.
So, where do we begin?
There are so many different, related angles to this that it's hard to know where exactly to prod at the mess.
We can start with a purely utilitarian concern, which would be efficiency.
First let's ask, why do you go to 4Chan and what do you get out of it.
Do you want humor, or see what the latest news on something is?
Maybe you want to get some nice pdfs or some info that is usually only posted here as far as you know?
Or maybe you want to go /d/... and dig up some pictures of a confe/d/erate soldier Frankly fucking Anne... and then transforming into a canon?
Whatever.
It could be anything, but whatever it is you want, you know that there are way more efficient delivery systems for whatever that thing that you want is.
Let's suppose I come here for reading interesting stuff and finding though-provoking material that you don't find in "the mainstream".
Now let's not start sugarcoating, 99.9999% of everything here is utterly useless and gets you nowhere you want to get to or even be at.
If I simply take one of the many archive-links or the mega.nz folders or the archive.org pages Anons keep linking here and download a few, I have enough material to literally last for years.
With a few gigabytes I basically build a near-indefinite reservoir of that .0001% of content that I actually might want and nothing else.
I can go to my download directory, copy this, delete that, remove this. convert that and put the other thing onto my e-book reader.
Then I can just close the site and go do whatever else I want to do.
Meanwhile looking for this directly here I would have to wade through an ocean of crap to get to what I want, or make a thread myself and wait for posters to come.
Even with 4chanX or the Firefox extension on, with tons and tons of filters you're still inevitably going to see a ton of shit that you're indifferent to at best and that will annoy and distract you at worst.
There is absolutely no escaping it.
It's easy for outside forces to get 90% into a habitual, ADHD-addled stupor simply by randomly auto-posting from a sporadically updated catalogue of (bait)threads that get auto-posted here.
Frequently Anons here get so predictable and emotional that some people literally just post bait threads for shits and giggles and no alterior motives, watching the amgered but impotent replies come in.
Even if you could easily filter people semi-permanently it wouldn't do much good just due to the sheer number of people combined with the overall format of the site.
Anyway, obviously the real use for a message/image-board is to make connections with people and actually discuss things.
That is the primary function of a message board of any kind, but because almost everyone on 4chan is anonymous that doesn't really happen here.
Even if you happen to have a great conversation with somebody who really seems to share your tastes or your sense of humor.
Even if it seems like you two could already have been freinds for years, you'll likely never be friends with that person or learn anything about them.
You'll remain just as ephemeral as you were here on day one.
I also think it's largely for this reason that 4chan tends to attract people with with low self-esteem, underachievers, cynics, the chronically unemployed, social avoidant people and similar demographics.
People with an overriding sense of futility in their lives, who feel worthless as individuals, who feel like nothing that they do matters or makes a difference.
People like that are going to be much more likely to want to subsume their individual identity in a larger group, but not in a positive way, that would take too much effort for them at that point.
It gives them a sense of belonging and purpose that they otherwise wouldn't have without having to go through the effort of finding a worthwhile group to interact with and establish themselves in.
Also having no persistent identity or means to truly connect with other people is appealing to people like that because it acts as a shield from rejection (and sometimes doxing, I know, I know).
These walls of make-believe insincerity are built to keep negative stuff out, but all it really does is confine them inside and let the negative stuff in anyways and echo anyways.
Now the problem with having a bunch of people who aren't the happiest or most purposeful with no rules should be obvious.
It's like any other echo chamb where the extreme as you validate each other and fill each other's heads with ideas.
The beliefs that you share in common are only going to grow more pronounced and extreme as you validate each other and fill each other's heads with ideas.
Most people here are just as malleable as they claim their NPC enemies are.
You may also have noticed that the overall atmosphere here often tends to be pretty hostile and cynical.
When things like "I have seen this and think that that could be cone, what do you think?" come up, you know what the response to that thread is going to be.
Either it'll drown in the sea of slide-threads (even if there's nothing to slide for once) or it'll be "It's shit, shit, this is shit, that's shit, you're shit, I'm shit, he's a shit, she's a shit, we're all shit!".
That doesn't exactly help things either if you're already downtrodden and unproductive.
You hang out with people who will tell you to put your head in the microwave for posting a meme they don't like all the while they don't have shit to actually say about the topic at hand.
It's probably going to make you even more bitter and unproductive.
Generally hanging around here where that kind of thing is the norm is going to influence your personality and make you as an individual a more sour, aimless person.
You might say "Oh that's not true, I'm not like that it's just a website, I'm me you cuck! I am separate from that.".
You know that's just not really true.
You should ask yourself: "Would I be the same person today if I had simply taken the few crumbs and left here?".
It's not possible to let your brain marinate in mist of anger, resentment, hostility and bad attitudes for hours and not have it influence you on some level.
It just is not possible, especially if you were young when you first started going here, which is probably the case for most of you.
It's like the saying goes "You are the company you keep.".
Your personality doesn't exist in a vacuum, humans are social animals and your behavior and attitudes are influenced by the people you surround yourself with.
Another thing is that 4Chan just tends to be very addictive and time consuming.
4Chan eats up your time, cuts into your productivity and puts hurdles between you and the things that you actually want to get done.
There were times where I'd have something that I was actually in the process of working on and then all of a sudden be like "Why am I here on 4chan?".
I had actually zoned out and habitually come here without even being aware of what I was doing.
It's going to be harder for you - to fullfil your to-do, or get a job or whatever, when you have this habit, this addiction, this sword of Damokles hanging over you.
It's not just going to be harder to to do well in terms of responsibilities, but but also just to do the things that you actually enjoy doing.
On /v/ people used to talk about how they had to motivate themselves to get off 4Chan to play games.
They probably spent 10 times as much time arguing and insulting each other on /v/ than they ever did actually doing what they proclaimed to like.
Because this is happening you're less able to do stuff, it's going to harm your self-esteem even more and just keep feeding into this whole cycle of bullshit.
It's really important to do things, even if it's just pointless leisure activities and hobbies in order to actually feel good and have some kind of sense of self-worth.
You're actually doing so little and the bar for productivity sinks so low through it, that you can do literally almost anything else and still be putting your time to better use.
Really the most important thing that you should ask yourself is "Is it making me happy and better?", are you "Having fun?".
If the answer is "Yes." as in "Oh yeah, I love all the stupid memes and reaction images and petty bickering over stupid bullshit for hours and hours!" then disregard this all.
If every day you come home or when you wake up and then go "Oh boy oh goody I can't wait to see what's happening on /pol/ today!" if that sounds like you then feel free to sage and downboat this thread.
What I'm going to assume for most Anons over the age of 16 or 17 is that the answer is probably going to be along the lines of "Nah, not really." or even a firm "No!".
If that is the case, then what the fuck are you doing here?
You're gonna die, the things you most likely claimed to matter to you are geing destroyed, you're, gonna be around for another 60 or 70 years at best and then you're gonna be dead, forever.
Don't waste one more second on this thing that accomplishes nothing and doesn't even make you happy.
It just makes me think of being in a bad relationship where all this "lady" is doing is aggravating you and sucking up all of your time and energy but you don't leave because you're in this haze of familiarity and complacency.
There's just enough sparsely laid little nuggets of satisfaction to keep you from snapping out of it, when really what you need to do immediately is to recognize the situation and just tear off this band-aid.
Just get out don't waste one more second.
I understand that it might seem stupid and melodramatic to make such a big deal out of a website where 15 year olds go to post shitty memes and argue about things they won't influence or even have a bearing on.
And for most of the non-15-year-olds on here, it is, it's not like the complacency is life-threatening.
However, a website or a message board in this case is really just a means of communicating with other people.
Imagine for a moment picking up a phone and a voice on the other end blurting "What do you think about this pointless article from 3 years ago?" or "European women are degenerate!", you know, the works.
You answer "No it's not you fucking kike-shill!" or "Go gas yourself you worthless cunt".
Imagine spending only half an hour (or even more?) every day on the phone with that guy.
Imagine doing this for years always talking about the same stupid, meaningless shit.
Nothing ever changes, you never learn anything.
You don't even get to know the the ather Anons that you (subconciously) think you're somehow "on a team" with (for the lack of a better way to put it) even slightly.
It's just the same stupid bullshit day after day after day.
Eventually one of your actual friends is probably going to say "Hey you know, I'm kind of worried about you. Maybe you shouldn't... maybe it's not so good for you to spend so much time talking to that weird phone guy.".
You retort "Whatever it's just a phone number, who cares, yeah, whatever fuck off lmao."
Do you see how insanely retarded that is?
It's not about the number, it's not about the over-priced rectangle of glass in your hand, the satellites or the radio signals.
It's about the human being those things connect you to.
4chan is a tool that connects you with thousands of people.
When you go there, you're not just staring brain-dead at random pixels on a screen (or so I hope), you're communicating with people and participating in a community.
And that community is a community that wastes your time, damages your self-esteem, reinforces bad attitudes and habits and makes you a worse human being.
That's my opinion at least maybe a bit heavy-handed I guess.
Howeverm even if you're like how I was, if you're like most people... probably (I hope anyway), where 4chan isn't really a part of your life and it's just a thing that you do to waste time.
At this point in time that you are likely to even read this post to here you lose nothing by giving it up.
Generally I think what this is about is just being aware of habits and things in your life and periodically asking yourself a few questions about them.
Thins like "What is this accomplishing? What is this doing for me? What is it doing in relation to my goals?" and if your answer is "Nothing." you have to cut that thing out.
I just want to restate by "accomplishing" I don't mean you have to go around winning Nobel prizes and changing the entire world.
If you like nature or and even only simple walks are fun for you and they have a positive role to play in your life, then then do exactly that.
It seems like people spend so much time and energy on things that serve no purpose and that they don't even really like. It makes one go "Why?".
Just "Why? You don't have to do that, you don't deserve to do that so... fucking don't.".
It may be expressed in a "more nuanced way" or you might think "But here's an exception you VPN-Kike!", but when push comes to shove, that is really all there is to it.
It's as simply as that.
See you, Anon.