/r9k/ - ROBOT9999

Something I've always found fascinating about this board is that most people here are fairly young. You'd think that a community of people using software as outdated as imageboards would be a bunch of oldfags who miss da heckin old internet, but most people are like 16-25. Even with the cacacaust there's still tons of underaged people on the site, it's a common joke that most people here are underaged.

I'm 19, I was not around for the peak of imageboards or the "old internet", by the time I started using imageboards 4cuck had long fallen off. I personally started using the 'arty after discovering it through SPVA. At first I really didn't like it much, imageboards weren't familiar to me and I felt out of place

Now I love it. The soysphere combined is pretty much the only site I use outside of youtube.

I think what really drew me was the anonymity and free speech. I think the only true way to have free speech is through anonymity, even if there are no rules on a site you'll still be pressured to conform to certain social rules if your activity is tied to a name.

On the 'arty, you can say whatever you want without people ever being able to tie it to you. You can be a chud in one thread and being a leftist in the next without people ever knowing. This is why I hate namefaggotry and don't use the boorum, even an anonymous account draws attention to you.

This is more of a personal thing but I think I'm drawn to anonymity so much because when I'm in normal communities I often end up sperging out and then either getting kicked out or leaving out of shame. I've lost countless friends to this, I don't really blame them because I did act like a retard, but it still hurts losing people over something you can't control. This board is unironically one of the few places I feel safe on.

Elaborating more on the old internet thing, I think it's interesting that this site is one of the last places which actually functions like the "old internet". We use old software like imageboard, boorus, and ircs, we aren't monetized in any way, we use the site out of passion rather than a desire for popularity or wealth, we don't rely on other websites like fandom or discord, and we mostly have free speech and anonymity here, two core principles of the old internet era.

Millenial trannies love to jerk off about the old internet but the soysphere is unironically one of the last places that operates like it, and they hate us. It's even more fascinating that the actual people on this board weren't even alive for that time period.