/meta/ - Ruthless criticism of all that exists (in leftypol.org)

Endchan and 8kun are far worse, almost no one visits those sites anymore. This site at least has some posters every day. Most image boards have a couple posters per weak, pretty much dead.

>>28958
the various splits and purges have taken their toll on the userbase each time, plus /leftypol/'s cultural moment has sort of passed. The raison d'etre of /leftypol/ was to be anti liberal identity politics but still radical left. This was appealing in the late 2010s as it was part of the anti sjw backlash as /leftypol/ fit in with both the surging interest in socialism thanks to the sanders/corbyn era and the backlash against the neoliberal girlboss / everyday feminism / buzzfeed style left-liberalism of the late obama era.

Now we live in a much darker period where the threat isn't woke neoliberalism which I would argue is already exhausted as a concept so much as far right theocratic schizos versus a collection of demoralized randos who don't want that.

The fact is the post-occupy wall street/sanders zeitgeist of the 2010s has passed and sanders losing+the failure of the 2020 BLM protests essentially blackpilled a bunch of lefties who either morphed into hipster reactionaries or just turned schizo or gave up on politics altogether.

Anyone smart from this site (who isn't addicted at least) who's read any theory at all realized this site is retarded and moved on to greener pastures, likely relatively obscure left wing reddits, dis.cords, or real life organizing. That leaves the remaining base as a bunch of theorylet ziggers/dengists who just cheerlead anti americanism, eceleb bullshit, and occasional hap00nings.

Plus like most imageboards the userbase is aging and getting too old to meme or even be bother to try and meme anyway

>>28960
It's happening to both the left and right, other than the strange 'Q' conspiracy addicts flooding a couple of 8kun boards, so many previous image board users have abandoned the culture to move on to other platforms and I've heard some of the old fags from decades past may have already abandoned the internet altogether as it's become unrecognizable.

>>28960
>muh anti-americanism
>>>/meta/28953 needs to happen ASAP

>>28960
>>28961
Pretty much this. I mostly just come here to gaze upon news and happenings around the world- but the user base is in a strange sort of limbo- both being self aware that hardly anyone reads their theory as we see with the emergence of the 'Zoid, but also enough that we're starting to heal from old BOs nonsense.

At this point it's like visiting an old house- so many memories, but so many cracks, and you wonder if it'll ever fully repair or just decay.

>>28962
thanks for illustrating the point

The Chapotraphouse forum on reddit was banned, ever since people don't have any content to repost here.

>>28960
Good post.

>/leftypol/'s cultural moment has sort of passed. The raison d'etre of /leftypol/ was to be anti liberal identity politics but still radical left.
This. I'm not sure if the current userbase realizes it, but /leftypol/ was a breath of fresh air back in 2015.
/pol/ had completely taken over 4chan at this point, meaning you couldn't discuss video games on /v/ or music on /mu/ without people sperging about cultural Marxism and n*gg*rs.
On the other hand, you had many people supposedly from the left who routinely came up with arguments like "voting for Hilary Clinton is more radical than for Bernie Sanders because she is a woman".
It was a hard time to remain sane as a socialist, online discourse became increasingly more political yet people seemed to have lost the plot completely.

/leftypol/ was great because you had plenty of imageboard posters who were also tired of this shit.
People would post original memes, weren't afraid to use crude language, etc. It wasn't contrite like many other leftist spaces tended to be — both online and IRL — where people would take themselves very seriously as the harbingers of the revolution.
Moreover, quite a few posters came from /lit/ and had read at least basic theory. The userbase was diverse, there were MLs of course, but they weren't the majority, there were also a lot of anarchists, "leftcoms" (non-Leninist Marxists) and even a few socdems, and there was an invective to effortpost in order to prove they were right on such and such issue.
I learned many things about socialism during the first few years I started browsing /leftypol/ and I'm really grateful for this.

>The fact is the post-occupy wall street/sanders zeitgeist of the 2010s has passed and sanders losing+the failure of the 2020 BLM protests essentially blackpilled a bunch of lefties who either morphed into hipster reactionaries or just turned schizo or gave up on politics altogether.
I don't think that's the case. In fact, I would say socialism is much more mainstream these days.
As far as I remember, talking about Marx wasn't seen in a positive light in the 2000s and early 2010s. Marx was equated with the bad aspects of AES, and movements like Occupy Wall Street were more inspired by democratic socialism and anarchism, but then most people thought of these movements as idealistic and utopian, even when they were asking for rather tame reforms.
This has changed since the late 2010s, and especially after COVID. A subreddit like /r/antiwork being talked about on TV was unthinkable, but here we are. Zoomers aren't afraid of Marx anymore because they don't envision better alternatives that would exclude Marxian theory.
In general, people are more polarized in their political beliefs nowadays, and therefore /leftypol/ kinda lost the edge regarding socialist theory it once had.

>Anyone smart from this site (who isn't addicted at least) who's read any theory at all realized this site is retarded and moved on to greener pastures, likely relatively obscure left wing reddits, dis.cords, or real life organizing.
I realize posting on /leftypol/ has diminishing returns year after year, and I realize I should rather explore my other hobbies, which are more rewarding, and read books or good blogs rather than scrolling here, but like any addiction, there is always that little voice in your head that says "what if you took a little peak, just one last time" and next thing you know, you are posting in half-a-dozen of threads

>That leaves the remaining base as a bunch of theorylet ziggers/dengists who just cheerlead anti americanism, eceleb bullshit, and occasional hap00nings.
The zigger/dengist thing is the logical conclusion of old BO's meltdown, /leftypol/ never really recovered from it IMO.
If you remember back then, it wasn't only about Rojava, but also about the Iranian protests of 2017-2019. Expressing online support for Iranian workers who were protesting against corruption and the shitty state of their economy on an obscure imageboard was deemed to be supporting American imperialism.
This mindset is due to the former realpolitik of the USSR, which has been throughoutly internalized by some Marxist sects, and made a comeback on /leftypol/ but also other places like Twitter X.
Wasn't Old BO a Marcyite? I guess this is a reminder that getting involved in IRL orgs can be counter-productive sometimes. I also blame Paradox grand strategy games for this mindset, who tend to potray politics as something that happens from the top-down instead of the bottom-up.

>Plus like most imageboards the userbase is aging and getting too old to meme or even be bother to try and meme anyway
There are quite a few zoomers on the Matrix chat, but it's true that people who started posting on 4chan in the late-2000s/early-2010s are now in their 30s if not 40s, and you need to get a life outside of the internet at this point, even as a matter of economic well-being.

>>28958
too much moderation. every mod has carte blanche to remove what they don't like and call it "spam". month-long bans are handed out for shitposts. any time anyone mentions this, they are called a schizo by the jannies at best, and at worst they're banned.

they give site-wide bans, and then ban you for " ban evasion" when you complain about your ban on /meta/.

The same thing that happens everywhere. The worst people/posters post considerably more than anyone else. It all turns repetitive shit.

>>28958
Management, splits and general imageboard death

>>28966
>I don't think that's the case. In fact, I would say socialism is much more mainstream these days.
much like avocado toast, artisanal [insert x] and other artsy hipster shit it just sort of became mainstream culture since yesterdays hipsters are todays middle class suburbanites.

All imageboards are dying.
>>28966
Agreed but "dengism/zigger" is not a real problem. We've always had right wingers and nazbols and generally they get shut down or banned. The pro-China (so called dengists) and anti-imperialist/anti-colonialists (so called ziggers and multipolaristas) which are almost one and the same, have solid arguments and are at least just as read as the detractors.

The board has gotten way better in terms of idpol (complete rejection instead of half assed rejection) and a much more solid understanding of identity issues as they relate to society, class, and praxis. We have an LGBT thread that isn't constantly bombarded by queerphobia or accusations of being bourgeoise, that alone is a massive improvement of the userbase.

>>28966
Good post as well.

Just alittle comment:
>I realize posting on /leftypol/ has diminishing returns year after year, and I realize I should rather explore my other hobbies, which are more rewarding, and read books or good blogs rather than scrolling here, but like any addiction, there is always that little voice in your head that says "what if you took a little peak, just one last time"
It is addictive, but it's also one of the few places where I can scratch my shitposting creativity.

All other image boards – except /GET/, some foreign language boards, and that one kpop imageboard I found months ago – are filled with nazis because banning them would """""attack""""" free speech, making the sites low quality unless you just want to complain about X minority every other sentence.
It makes me wonder if imageboards as a concept would've still been popular if Moot had a back bone and banned all stormposters

I'd use social media, but the big meme ones are designed to just consume content, and the ones more focus on community have toxic communities for various reasons.

>>28966
well said
>pic
That image unilaterally sounds up all my feelings about a portion of the userbase here. I often ask myself, "I mean if we all read the same theory how the fuck are these guys so off the mark? Have you guys even read the same things (Marx and Lenin) wtf?"

>>28967
this. also mods banning VPN ips.
the mods really stifling the culture.

>>28971
this is one of the post 2020 retards

>>28966
>/leftypol/'s cultural moment has sort of passed.
Well damn this is a new angle. I guess we should all just retreat into reddit or some other captured shit. I love these demoralization posts. They always get much more insistent as shit gets worse in the west.

damn this thread got me sap af I think I may be one of the few zoomer posters here and also completely missed the peak era of the sight by a few years. I've been phoneposting and lurking this imageboards since middleschool but literally didn't own a PC until abt a year or two ago. lmk if theres any chill life boat servers fr. fwiw the site is slow and low pop but that gives it kinda of a cozy feel. Generally speaking I still get a good discussions(fucking galaxybrain tier by 4chan standards) as long as you avoid certain generals. I get annoyed by the whole socialism is when the government does stuff and has decent foreign policy crowd but they're only a problem cuz issa slow and small sight so a couple no-lifers can easily fuck up all discussion. It's still annoying to have some guy who has a cold war americans understanding of socialism shit there pants everytime someone has a slightly different opinion then them. Like >>28971 said alotta Dengist posters are great and have convincing arguements. Its basically the Leninhat-Tankanon users who would be annoying no matter what tendency they want to misunderstand that are the problem. I also suspect at least one or two of the mods actively side with them but thats pure speculation. tbh I could see the site having a resurgence if chan culture in general does just cuz its the only imageboard I know of that effectively purges nazis that alone makes it way more appealing to new people than any other board. ik this corny but if anyone wants to drop a fbi.gov server link I do need some chill commie servers again cuz my old acc got deleted.

>>28973
Mfs need to learn to do their research and organize whatever theory they own.
There is a point to quoting everything marx, engels and lenin wrote like the gospel. Most of it is accurate for the time. Their lives are well understood and so are the caveats i.e. specific tactical positions.
Better yet, quote often and for every time explain the circumstances of the quote and why it may be applied outside of them.

most users left last year i think
it's gone the way of every imageboard

>>28971
>have solid arguments
pretty much every interaction i've had with them has been them throwing a bad faith tantrum
these are people who have been isolated from society and developmentally inhibited as a result, i think

Oh yeah, to give a little credence: school and universities are starting.
So that will also affect numbers.

The only solution to counter that is promoting the app more, and if I wasn't for my ADHD kicking my ass so much, I'd contribute to it.
Sadly I'm still trying to find a job as a cs graduate, even though I graduated back in May.

>>29187
*Have started and been going for weeks.

>>28958
While appreciate the simplicity of the imageboard template, Lemmygrad has better content and is more versatile.

Imageboards are dying out sadly. 4chan is a cesspool of mental illness that barely gives any cultural "fruit" that it used to give, while smaller chans are mostly frequented by at best dozens of users and are practically deserted at worst. It is likely not as much of an issue of the imageboard medium itself., but the fact tha corporate social media platforms like Dickscord and Reddit have been successful at coralling people from smaller platforms in general through the network effect. Lately there has been a bit of opposite trend, but it is still not much to count as a defunite return to the previous state of things.

>>29207
That's not even talking about the flood of redditors since 2016, coming in with retarded takes. There's a reason /pol/ = reddit is something even people on 4chan say.

>>29227
rightwing reddit

>>29207
>It is likely not as much of an issue of the imageboard medium itself
nah that definitely plays a big part

>>29229
Nope, not just rightwingers.

>>29227
>flood of redditors since 2016
Oh, that started waaaaaaay sooner.

>>29279
redditors started going to 4chan a while before that, but 2016 is when it really took over.

>>29229
Both redditors and /pol/tards are liberals and bloodthirsty.

>>28978
>Better yet, quote often and for every time explain the circumstances of the quote and why it may be applied outside of them.
Underated

We need to do aggressive outreach campaigns.
Imageboards and non-big tech forums and social media are dying. They're harder to find and unfamiliar. If we want to maintain a decent size, constant outreach needs to be made. Any community that doesn't have constant new members means it will shrink. Leftypol is not an exception.

We need organized campaigns and distributed efforts. We need systematic and organized outreach to communities in other social media. We need to teach newcomers how to use the site, how to separate the wheat from the shaft.

Leftypol is slower because it's identity is radical left politics. That's it. Lainchan, Heyuri, Futaba etc. all have their own unique niche cultures that keep people coming but you can get radical left on fbi.gov or Reddit or anywhere else. As imageboards last, they become a drain on their admins and when you have a life it can be taxing so they become less involved in building a unique community and the site users are the same. People fall into repetitive habits and get complacent. Imageboards have become a subculture and generally on the internet they are portrayed negatively as cesspools filled with everything corporate liberal social media hates. There are a lot of zoomers who use 4chan, but they are try hards who play into a faulty perception they have about the site's culture, which is one of the reason its so shit.

>>29187
APP?

There's an app?

>>29189
It's also filled with dengoid mods which will insta-ban your account for expressing the minimum doubt about "AES" countries, or even just poking a hole in the arguments of some passerby vegan.
They're VERY strict and not in the correct way

>>29230
The interface is mediocre. Also, having no account (even a shadow one that isn't visible from the comments) doesn't help

>>29531
>anti-veganism banned

based????

>>29531
>>29531
That's better than here where the"anti Dentists" can quite literally shitpost relentlessly in bad faith without even making an argument (take a look at the Deng thread and how many one line/one meme shitposts there are) while pretending to be debating. You cunts should be auto banned for it but the mods let you be and this site is dead because of a concerted effort to target and harass everyone identified as an actual good poster (IntBrig anon, Sabocat, Leninhat, etc.) with nonstop adhom for months on end until they quit so you could turn it into an echo chamber of CNN talking points. Fuck off.

>>29539
>can quite literally shitpost relentlessly in bad faith
Bullshit, I've explained and elaborated on so many of the flaws of "multipolarism" and dengist revisionism. Got a fuck ton of bad faith arguments too. Man the fuck up. Only when your side gets shit on (because the amount of vapid condescension and anti-marxist rubbish is just so damn annoying to the userbase that shitposting is the only way to shut you fuckers up) you start crying foul and calling for bans because some anons were mean to the "good" posters. Eat shit.

>>29520
>you can get radical left on fbi.gov or Reddit or anywhere else
No you really can't, the filter for the first one is a good indicator of why, for that site, and plebbit is fucking radlib garbage central. At least here radical liberal idpol gets hard pushback.

>Lainchan, Heyuri, Futaba etc. all have their own unique niche cultures
So does/did leftypol. You're a bit new but this community is over a decade old. It's always been small, and the only reason 8ch leftypol had a larger IP count was because we got a lot of tourists from other boards on the site. Also Lainchain and Heyuri aren't significantly more active than us either tbh.

Most pro-communist content and memes that circulate the internet come from here. Alunya is the creation of one of our users and even places like lemmygrad was created by users of this site.

Admittedly quality has gone down, partially because of liberal idpol getting more of a pass in recent times and lopsided moderation.

>>28958
ive just joined, hell you can still find my previous post on the first page of this board here (trot one)
i think its also because this place is kinda obscure, a lot of people still use 4chan who arent racist and dont use /pol/ because they hate all other social media being shitty and not allowing them room to speak about shit that isnt ignored well enough and/or they prefer the image board format and/or just hate the sign up glowie shit to do anything

this place is pretty obscure i literally only found it due to an anon on /lit/ telling me and a few other commies to fuck off and linked to this place

theres also the problem of not enough boards, 4chan has a morbillion boards that are all pretty frequently used (except sci and p tho) the only things that arent related to theory that are the main subjects of talk (and dont always lead back into theory talk) are tech, hobby, anime, games, akm and music

theres also the problem of the fact that having a version of 4chan that is dedicated to marxism is cool and all, it limits its userbase to marxists while 4chan is definetly surrounded by centrists and racists and its mods and admins are all centrists, its only explicitly politcial board is /pol/ so while is dogshit biggot politics infest the site, people can and do just ignore it and continue to talk about anime or games or tech or bizness

i think the solution might be a new "annonymous" image board (just one that doesnt require sign up) that still uses the jannie, mod, admin system that has 1 just 1 board dedicated to politics and ideally it would be a leftist, god hopefully a marxsist /pol/

also this site not having adds on yt or google and shit also hurts, having like 2 adds would bring in like at least a hundred new people

>>29543
forgot to mention theres also the cost of living crisis, forcing people to spend less time online due to electricity bills and also the rapid shitting of the bed of social media companies (twitter, facebook, snap chat)
people are now coming out of their neolib alienation again and have better shit to do

>>29539
This is true. Anti-deng .neet trolls are just lazy at this point.

Atleast anfem poster would try

>>29540
>smug reaction image
>no arguments found
typical just like how I dropped in to post one counter pointing out how you were blatantly lying using mainstream news sources and you totally ignored the post.
>>29546
Anfem wasn't even trying to debate and everyone was fine with her because no one expected it to be a serious discussion.

>>29541
>It's always been small,
Shut the fuck up newfag. 8ch/leftypol had over a 1500 unique users PER DAY at times. Otherwise it stayed at 600-1000 per day. It was in the top 4 boards, with /pol/, /v/ and /tv/.

You can spin whatever narrative you want, anyone can go on Web Archive and see for themsleves you're full of shit.

And no, it hasn't existed for 10 years, it was started in 2005. 2023-2005= 8 years. lrn2math

>>29541
>even places like lemmygrad was created by users of this site.
lemmy and lemmygrad were created by a redditor, that's why it is a clone of reddit. You're just a matrixfag repeating 2nd and 3rd hand info from unreliable sources.

>>29548
Those numbers are not per day. They're per 3 days if I'm not mistaken.

>>29551
>"Active users" is short hand for "number of /16 subnet ranges to post on this board in the last 72 hours".

>It is not a perfect metric and does not account for number of lurkers (users who only read the board and do not post) or the number of users sharing an IP range (for example, all Tor users are considered 1 "active user").

>In the entire Internet, there are only 16,384 /16 ranges (also known as Class B networks), with 65,536 addresses per range. So, if /v/ has 3000 ranges ("Active users"), that means its posters represent 18% of the possible number of ranges in the entire internet. Many ISPs only have one or two ranges.

>>29543
>this place is pretty obscure i literally only found it due to an anon on /lit/ telling me and a few other commies to fuck off and linked to this place
Huge issue.
>also this site not having adds on yt or google and shit also hurts, having like 2 adds would bring in like at least a hundred new people
We could buy sponsorships with the leftist YouTube creators. Win-win.

It's pretty active for an imageboard with no ads or bots. I go to the overboard every few hours and aside from the accasional dryspell it's always got something interesting happening on the overboard. Some boards out there can only juggle a handful of generals.

>>29550
I just checked, you're right. And I was wrong about IPs, it's not IPs, it's /16 subnets.

>"Active users" is short hand for "number of /16 subnet ranges to post on this board in the last 72 hours."

>It is not a perfect metric and does not account for number of lurkers (users who only read the board and do not post) or the number of users sharing an IP range (for example, all Tor users are considered one active user).

>In the entire Internet, there are only 16,384 /16 ranges (also known as Class B networks), with 65,536 addresses per range. So, if /v/ or /pol/ has 3,000 ranges (active users), that means their posters represent 18% of the possible number of ranges on the Internet. Many ISPs only have one or two ranges.
http://web.archive.org/web/20170805212639/http://8ch.net/activeusers.html

1647/16384 = 10%

Posters on /leftypol/ represented 10% of all possible /16 ranges on the internet.

Thanks for correcting me, 10% of the internet sounds much better than 1500 unique IPs.

>>29554
Yup, 10% of the internet posts on leftypol. Why didn’t I know this before? Lol you stupid faggot

>>29554
lol, 10% of the internet is wild. I just remembered it wasn't an intuitive calculation. I mean we could do the same here and we'd probably get wild numbers too. Fact of the matter is that leftypol's core userbase is way more mature both in age and ideologically than back then. Plus, we get way less raids and Nazis posting. Plus we don't have the endless "gender critical" flamers or the relentless psychotic incels.

8ch's death started a serious decline in imageboards. Not to mention that the original appeal of leftypol was basically to provide some sanity in a political atmosphere that was intoxicated beyond sanity with identity politics, both "wokescolds SJWs" and right wing morons who debated first year "SJW" college students. It was crazy, I think we've memory-holed how fucking insane shit was back then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDYNVH0U3cs

>>28960
I still post here occasionally and have been on leftypol since like 2015, but yeah, this is all pretty spot on. imageboards in general have become quite irrelevant unless you're one of the aforementioned far right schizos engaging in some mass hysteria intensification/self-harm on 4chan, and this has affected a lot of the rest of the internet that isn't domesticated big tech platforms

we're living in a dark timeline

>>29555
>Yup, 10% of the internet posts on leftypol
Not any more, those were the 8ch days.
>Why didn’t I know this before?
Because you don't know much in general.

>>29556
>Fact of the matter is that leftypol's core userbase is way more mature both in age and ideologically than back then.
Just because you say it's a fact doesn't make it so. I think the user base is less mature now than it was back then. When's the last time you saw a good, OC effortpost? "look at all them words" was a post on 8ch/leftypol
>Plus, we get way less raids and Nazis posting.
Then what's with all the bans, IP logging, deletions and draconian moderation?
>Plus we don't have the endless "gender critical" flamers
No idea what that means, the culture war ruined your brain.
>or the relentless psychotic incels.
They've all gone to /siberia/.
>Not to mention that the original appeal of leftypol was basically to provide some sanity in a political atmosphere that was intoxicated beyond sanity with identity politics,
lol no. It was a place to meme, joke and talk about politics that wasn't a Nazi-infested shithole. Nobody went to /leftypol/ for "sanity".
>both "wokescolds SJWs" and right wing morons who debated first year "SJW" college students.
<muh culture war
>I think we've memory-holed how fucking insane shit was back then.
No, you've just internalised the insanity and you don't notice it.

I don't think you're a good fit for this community.

>>29552
most ones i can think of would have issues with the f slurs usage here, hell i dislike that and they probably would not like most of the users and mods stances on "identity politics"
legit only ytbers who would maybe promote is like maybe Agent Kochinski and some other streamers, but do we really want that complete garabage to infest this place?

>>29548
>Shut the fuck up newfag
I was posting in /leftypol/ since before the /leftpol/ split
>8ch/leftypol had over a 1500 unique users PER DAY
<shows collective data not per day data
<"What are tourists"
<"What are VPNs"
Not to mention that 1,500 IPs is fucking piddly shit compared to any of the primary 4chan boards. /trash/ alone chews through over 2000 posters a day and /pol/ has even higher numbers, in part because /pol/ is infamous. Old leftypol was a lot more famous than we are now. and while we're still one of the largest actually leftist sites on the internet, to pretend we're as big (lol) as the 8ch days is to be disingenuous or deluded and even then we weren't big.
Also you aren't an oldfag either, you literally looked the numbers up on United Chans. I know that because I personally saved literally thousands of 8ch pages over the years on wayback and archive.is, and I know that you'd have to dig for hours to find the specific screencaps
>It was in the top 4 boards
Back in 2016-2017 which was the peak of leftypol posting and simultaneously when a lot of people left 8ch in general because Watkins enacted a ton of new bans and purged a bunch of porn boards such as /fur/ or /d/ having hundreds of users leaving for julay.world or other places and many users of /k/ and /pol/ also abandoning the site at that time. /d/'s BO specifically locked down their entire board, so that nobody could use the place after they left.
Thus by the time 8ch was taken down for that shooting psy-op 90% of the boards on 8ch were all but dead and leftypol dominated the remnants of a dying site.

>it hasn't existed for 10 years, it was started in 2005
<2023-2005= 8 years
<lrn math
23-5 = 8 huh? lrn math huh? LMAO, I'm assuming your retarded ass meant 2015 and not 2005. In which case you're still wrong because 8ch/leftypol was launched in 2014. GETchan was launched back in 2011 or so and many users of GET also became users of /leftypol/, although GETchan and leftypol didn't start associating openly until 2015. bunkerchan.org is the imageboard that came out in 2015 and used lynx as a basis.

And yeah a decade is about right, because /leftypol/ arose as a split-off from /pol/, with years of stormfags pushing us out of their echochamber. By the time the board was formed we already had a coherent userbase of well-read marxists, that's how we managed to form a coherent group after leaving /pol/ and why we had a bunker to fall back on when 8ch went down.

>>29549
>that's why it is a clone of reddit
lemmygrad was created by a redditor, true, but they were also a user of this site and so are many of the posters, idiot.
>matrixfag
No you salty bitch, I have never been on matrix and the mods can attest to that. My information comes from actually being here/there when these things went down.

>>29560
> only ytbers who would maybe promote is like maybe Agent Kochinski
LMAO, the word-filter should say it all Trot-newfriend

>>29562
>Also you aren't an oldfag either,
Been posting on /leftypol/ from the start, you have heard of me or perhaps even talked to me if you have been as long as you say. I was also active on the DJ music/chat, and I used to talk to pyongyang and space_ on IRC (before the split)
>you literally looked the numbers up on United Chans.
I don't know what that is. I posted a screenshot from web archive. I know where /leftypol/ was on the leaderboard because I saw it there.
>Thus by the time 8ch was taken down for that shooting psy-op 90% of the boards on 8ch were all but dead and leftypol dominated the remnants of a dying site.
That's how I know you weren't there. /leftypol/'s spike in popularity had nothing to do with exodus frok 8ch that happened AFTER /leftypol/'s peak. /leftypol/ got a bunch of new users during the 2016 US election and a lot of people stayed.
>And yeah a decade is about right, because /leftypol/ arose as a split-off from /pol/, with years of stormfags pushing us out of their echochamber.
There was no /leftypol/ community ten years ago. You had people (including me) making communist threads and generals on 8ch/pol/.
>but they were also a user of this site
Proof? Granted, I don't use reddit a lot, perhaps he has talked about it. I do remember the announcement thread on r/communism lemmygrad was created.
>My information comes from actually being here/there when these things went down.
And yet…

>>28960
>Anyone smart from this site (who isn't addicted at least) who's read any theory at all realized this site is retarded and moved on to greener pastures, likely relatively obscure left wing reddits, dis.cords, or real life organizing.
>Greener pastures
>Left reddit and diskkord

>>28958
Is it surprising it was more popular when it was part of a much more popular site like 8chan? It was in like the top or 3-5 most popular on that site too so it was right there at the top of the list. People go to 8chan because they want to see 8/pol, see leftypol rught below it in the list and check that out as well.

But I think imageboards in general just had their moment in 2016. The pepe and etc. getting mentioned everywhere in the mainstream. It was just a fad now 7 years later it's just the perpetual afterglow of the 2016 craze.

>>29559
>Then what's with all the bans, IP logging, deletions and draconian moderation?
What's wrong with IP logging? Draconian moderation has been a thing on leftypol since 8ch.
>No idea what that means, the culture war ruined your brain.
<I don't understand therefore you're crazy
What a moronic response. If you don't understand something, ask instead of being arrogantly ignorant. Fucking moron.
>I don't think you're a good fit for this community.
hahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahaha cope, moron.
>>29560
>users and mods stances on "identity politics"
Users and mods have generally a Marxist take on identity politics. Some users have moronic unironically reactionary positions, but its the minority.
>>29564
>talked to pyongyang and space_ on IRC
Yikes. Just FYI, old doesn't mean you're an authority on anything.
>>29565
True. But I think there's a big need for a place like leftypol on the internet. With diskord and reddit being honeypots filled with bots, idiots, clout chasers, and censorship a place like leftypol fills a nice niche.

A huge issue I think is that the community here depends on mods to do things rather than have the initiative to do stuff themselves. Particularly with stuff like outreach or advertising. Mods are primarily content moderators, not community managers.

>>29564
>I used to talk to pyongyang and space_ on IRC (before the split)
Bruh, you might be right that we probably talked, lmao.
>That's how I know you weren't there
LMAO I used 8ch almost exclusively and I remember quite clearly that literally dozens of boards that had plenty of users in 2015 and 2016 were fucking dead by 2017
/monster/ /fur/ /d/ /cake/ /strek/ /co/ etc. were all high in posting numbers and then it all just died. even 8/pol/ sagged in PPH massively even before El Paso
>/leftypol/'s spike in popularity had nothing to do with exodus frok 8ch
That's not what I said you speedreading dingbat; I said that leftypol's increase in PPH during its peak also came around the time that most of the rest of the site was dying, something that people talked about on leftypol a lot, and claiming that both the site was dying and that "muh BO killed le PPH" even though the split with /leftpol/ was barely a dent in our numbers.
>/leftypol/ got a bunch of new users during the 2016 US election
True, and around the same time, other boards began hemorrhaging users back to 4chan or other imageboards. I even recall this because I lurked 4chan at the time and there were tons of posters mentioning how they left infinitychan because of Watkin's new rules and other reasons. I never claimed that leftypol wasn't gaining new users, but my point stands that even at peak PPH leftypol wasn't even comparable to 4/pol/ or similar boards and a number of factors led to it being 4th/3rd in 8ch, not just the increase in users.
>Proof?
<prove an anon posting here was also a poster of reddit
I can't prove that because they didn't even namefag and even if they did, we don't have Tripcodes. Also /leftypol_archive/ wasn't properly implemented at the time. They posted here for a while and then shilled lemmygrad here. They claimed that part of the reason they created lemmygrad was because leftypol was too crass and filled with newfags that had abysmal takes (fair points)

>>29566
>Just FYI, old doesn't mean you're an authority on anything.
Never claimed I was, I'm saying I was there to see for myself the things people here are talking about.

>>29567
>I said that leftypol's increase in PPH during its peak also came around the time that most of the rest of the site was dying,
Not true. It peaked during and after the US election in 2016. In pic related you can see /pol/ and /v/ have the same numbers as the year before, while /leftypol/'s are halved.
>"muh BO killed le PPH" even though the split with /leftpol/ was barely a dent in our numbers.
Except it wasn't. /leftypol/'s numbers fell drastically, not everyone went to /leftpol/, a lot of people just left for good. /leftpol/'s numbers were about 400-500 right after the split, iirc. Then due to space_'s mismanagement it got overrun by Nazis and /pol/yps. /leftypol/'s numbers have never recovered to pre-split levels.
>I can't prove that because they didn't even namefag and even if they did, we don't have Tripcodes.
So what is your proof he was a /leftypol/ poster?
>They posted here for a while and then shilled lemmygrad here.
I don't doubt someone shilled lemmygrad here, but from what I understood, creator of lemmy was not a fan of chance, that's why he made a reddit clone.
>They claimed that part of the reason they created lemmygrad was because leftypol was too crass and filled with newfags that had abysmal takes (fair points)
Then why did he say on reddit he did it in response to reddit admins banning/cracking down on communist subreddits?
https://old.reddit.com/r/socialistprogrammers/comments/cww5am/the_left_reddit_alternative_is_up_communismlemmyml/eyfs1dl/
https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/cqgztr/fuck_the_white_supremacist_reddit_admins_want_me/
https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/cuqm7p/the_reddit_alternative_is_up_please_read/

Maybe someone from lemmygrad posted on /leftypol/ to advertise their community (I imagine the GenZedong types use imageboards), but I don't think the creator spent time doing it. They did most of the campaigning on reddit.

>>29569
forgot pic

>>29569
>why did he say on reddit he did it in response to reddit admins banning/cracking down on communist subreddits?
That is true, but the guy was also a poster here for a while in part due to the reddit exodus to leftypol, only for a lot of them to get push back for being oversensitive about leftypol users being more crass and open about opinions.

>/leftypol/'s numbers fell drastically,
For a time yes, but we were growing again right up to the time that 8ch went kill.
>/leftypol/'s numbers have never recovered to pre-split levels.
True, the l*ftychin split didn't help

Frankly at this point we're just arguing details, since my point remains that we started small and our peak was still pretty small we had higher PPH but the number of core users that posted on leftypol specifically rather than just posting on 8ch in general was lower in the 600-800 range, which I posted about. Many people have left and joined since then. honestly I don't even get what the fuck this argument is even about at this point we've gotten way off topic.

TL;DR: /leftypol/ has never been a major player in the over-all imageboard world, we primarily dominate the leftist niche however and the lack of real competition for 4chan other than 2ch and its variants, means we aren't nobodies either. We have however declined in influence, as only 2 years ago 4/pol/ couldn't go a day without mentioning "leftypol"

Ja ne.

>>29572
My bad, I thought you were going for the angle of "this place is just as good/big as 8ch/leftypol/", when it isn't. Then someone said people here now are more mature.

>>29573
Yeah no, I was just saying we're not a big group in general even at our peak posting levels.
>Then someone said people here now are more mature.
pic rel

>>29563
lmao did not expect that haha
>>29566
regardless of whether its a marxist take on it or not or even if its correct, a majority of popular left ytbers are anti this sites majority's view on "idenity politics"

>>29575
>this sites majority's view on "idenity politics"
Which is?

something I've noticed on a few image boards where moderators become personalities is

a) they feel the need to constantly be active. A moderator who does nothing is seen as not contributing. This leads to more and more moderation

b) very specifically to image boards, but when moderators take it upon themselves to "remove the shitposters so the proper conversation can be had" they think that the user base can be split into good posters and bad posters, without realising the majority of the user base on image boards are doing *both*. By dishing out bans to perceived shitposting all they are doing is removing valuable users. However the mindset is that they would rather remove 10 users if it meant that in those ten one genuine griefer/troll was removed. They seem to have forgotten what made chan culture appealing in the first place.

C) Moderator over action leads to a culture of suspicion and paranoia. I haven't been here for a few months and it has been so depressing to see the posts on the main board filled with people accusing each other of being government shills. It's so depressing to see the board like this. It resembles a sort of mirror universe of /pol/

d) moderators create a list of rules with the intent to hold themselves accountable and add an open to interpretation rule that basically means they can ban anyone they want. 90% of bans end up being through this rule.


tl;dr. Moderators

>>29577
im talking about the f word comrade, its really not that hard to figure out

>>29583
Specifically on the use of the f slur? I see. There's some historic reason for that but doesn't necessarily justify it. Homophobia, nor any other queerphobia for that matter, is allowed and a bannable offence. Regarding the use of the f slur, I don't know, we could always word filter it to something else. Maybe word filter to fascist?

>>29583
Cont.
Part of the reasoning behind allowing the use of some slurs is to not take words more seriously than the content. When other forums ban you for saying "stupid" for ableism, here you're able to not feel so strangled and be banned for choosing the wrong words. You will get banned if you justify eugenics against non-smart people or some shit.

Leftypol hails from an era where the internet left was absolutely obsessed with word policing and identity politics. There's some generational trauma.

>>29547
>smug reaction image
>no arguments found
My argument is that this kind of condescension makes you look like a whiney bitch and that is why posters don't want to deal with your bullshit. Thank you for proving my point.
>you were blatantly lying using mainstream news sources
<you used mainstream sources therefore you are lying
So you are just accusing anons who all have different sources (and not to mention different takes on China) you don't like as "blatantly lying". Yeah, eat shit buddy and also get some help.

>>29584
>>29585
HOLY SHIT
>TALKING ABOUT GETTING ADDS FOR THIS PLACE
>ANOTHER PERSON SAYS THEY CAN SPONSOR LEFTTUBERS TO ADVERTISE THIS PLACE
>I-ME-NOT YOU, SAY THAT MOST POPULAR LEFTUBERS WOULD TAKE OFFENSE TO SEEING THE F SLUR HERE
>NOT A FUCKING SCREED AGAINST YOU GUYS USING IT OR EVEN AN ARGUMENT NOT TO OR THAT ITS GOOD THAT OTHER PLACES BAN USING IT
>JUST A FUCKING FACT

how are you people this fucking dense holy shit

>>29595
Bruh, I didn't take it as a screed. Just giving context for it and advancing the conversation…
chill :)

>>29585
>Part of the reasoning behind allowing the use of some slurs is to not take words more seriously than the content
The slurs aren't merely allowed. They're ritualistically invoked in an effort to drill home the lesson of taking content more seriously than wording. There's a sense of dependence in using them to prove a point that you feel you could not prove otherwise. It's a fundamental, deeply patronizing insecurity that assumes people must be constantly reminded how to engage with arguments because they allegedly can't be trusted to engage in good faith by their own wits. I frankly suspect this commitment is driving away even more people than those who are merely offended by the sight of slurs

>>28958
It's just the natural course of things. As a rule of thumb, the main gateway to a spinoff is always going to be the site it spun-off from. Once the connection is severed, be it because the cultures diverged too much for a smooth transition from one to the other, or because the parent site board ceased to exist, you're basically running off inertia in terms of public knowledge, and once that inertia runs out, you're going to find yourself with far fewer posts from casual users and far fewer new users discovering the site. I've been along long enough to see this happen to multiple imageboards I use regularly; it's not unique to Leftypol.

Leftypol isn't a wasteland; it still has a large and active enough userbase that things can be measured in terms of posts-per-hour rather than posts-per-day. What's important now is that we focus on keeping it going as its own thing, as opposed to acting as part of the "imageboard community".