do you use 4chan?

I used it when I was younger. I grew up and realized that it was not good to be exposed to that culture. Even when viewing it through a lens. Anonymity brings out the worst in people, and it's infectious.

I've been using 4chan for longer than Reddit and Lemmy combined. Mostly /vg/ (games), /g/ (tech) and /a/ (anime, manga).
Mostly for discussion. /g/ and /vg/ are decent for asking stuff if there's a general about the topic that you want to ask info about, you want a relatively fast answer, and it isn't something overly asked (e.g. "which distro should I use?" "INSTALL GENTOO" tier). Just make sure to not trust anything said there.
Other boards are typically too slow (like /ck/) or cesspools (like /b/, ~~/b corta/~~ /v/, /pol/).

I was a /b/tard almost 20 years ago, but in 2006ish the site got a lot of public attention, so there was an influx of people who were there mostly just to be edgy. Sure, it was always a matter of digging through a trash heap to find one edible rice grain, but the trash heap grew larger and the rice grains became more rare.
By 2008 it had mostly devolved into recycled memes, presumably from people trying to fit in, and the occasional CP/gore and other things posted for shock value. Around this time I also became somewhat of a normie and figured the board didn't really have much that appealed to me anymore.
- I was a casual /b/tard around that time. I never saw CP, luckily, or maybe I just skipped those threads by reflex, but a lot of gore went by. There was a lot of fun image macros and stuff. Bur after a while I dropped out of it. I think it was about the same time I got really addicted to stumbleupon. Stumbleupon was my first tailored algorithm and my dopamine receptors haven't been the same since.

No and I would stay away from anyone using it. Full of bigotry, racism, antisemitism and transphobia. It's hard to find a site more disgusting than 4chan.

No, I never went down that rabbit hole, which is interesting in hindsight. I went straight from old-school forums and chatrooms (where I'm sure I was very obviously a child) to Reddit.
By the time I was hearing about it it was just "that Nazi pedo incel site".
- Because it is
  
  From what I heard, there was more going on initially. It's just that that's what tends to collect in totally unmoderated spaces, and 4chan fell victim to it.

No it’s only for racist edge lords

it has its moments and used to be less bad. nowadays you have to dodge nazis and some people genuinely off the deep end to use it and its simply not worth it.
some brave souls trudge that shithole for the rare gold nugget and post them to greentext comms. you aint missing much else.
- YLYL posts have some great memes. Until the typical cunts get on there and post the and stupid shit over and over

No. I checked it out twice, looked around, and noped out. Haven't been back since.

Back in like 2009-2011.
Pretty sure it did lasting psychological damage, would not recommend 🙂
- did you look at poop

I used to in the past (back when it was much more common to peruse /b/ and have kiddie porn slapped right in your eyeballs at a moment's notice..not that its probably changed much over the years lol). Now-a-days I just use it for the torrent board since I'm a data hoarder and they throw up the occasional interesting collection of stuff.
- Ooh, they added a torrent board? Gotta check it out.
  Fellow datahoarder.
  
  There a lemmy spot for that? I found the data hoarding community on reddit just before they killed 3rd party apps and have been wanting to find my people again since.

I used it for a little over a decade (2005-2016) it's a truly awful place, you'll gain nothing from the experience.
- My name is Boxxy
  
  Reading that made me feel like I lost The Game. That's a bit of Internet history I am happy to forget.

I keep a copy of 4chanGPT around; trained on the board. It is not very bright or useful. It's ribaldry and politically incorrect sarcasm is mildly amusing. However, its primarily useful because it does not have the safety alignment training and mechanisms that all other mainstream large language models have. Using 4chanGPT, I can see the structures that are truly persistent across models, their purpose, and their functions. It is only a minor thing I rarely use.
- I'm surprised it doesn't just output the n-word non-stop.
  
  Then you sorely misunderstand what 4chan is about and hyperfocus on the offensive parts.

Back in the day, when it was light-hearted things like Habbo Hotel raids, Triforcing, and secretly hiding CP in the images you upload so that other people help proliferate CSAM.
If you can't tell by that last part, I don't go there anymore. /b/ was never good and all that.
Every now and then, I check it out though. I'm obviously old and certainly not anyone's personal army so I look at a page or two of porn and gore and shrug, click out, and let time march onward.

I’m not 12, so…. No.

I used it around the time of Epic Fail Guy and barrel rolls. It was fun for a while but I eventually realised that it was the same jokes and content going around again and again. Then someone posted a spoiler for Bioshock and I was done with it.
As for tech answers it’s probably about as reliable as an AI. I wouldn’t expect people to generally lie to you but there would be the occasional bit of bullshit from some troll from /b/. I’m sure you’ll get abuse if people think you’re being stupid, probably worse than a Linux forum.

Anything good on 4chan will make it out of 4chan. It's not worth your time.
- Yeah, I enjoy the 4chan highlights. Some of them really know how to entertain. But those communities have like a couple posts per day out of probably a higher volume of posts than Lemmy sees on its entire network.
  Just like Reddit or here. The memorable threads are rare, you'll go through hundreds of average ones for each one that gets adopted into the lore.

Any time I've ventured into 4chan, it's mainly been for the lulz. I never gained any knowledge that could be called "useful" from the experience.
IDK, it doesn't seem like a worthwhile way to spend your time, especially if you're looking to gain something from it.
I mean, if you're bored and just want to get some cheap laughs or something, I guess it's useful, but actual factual information? Not so much.

I remember browsing /b/ to be edgy as a teen back in 2003-2006, nothing more.

No I don't. I just know that it is the source where if you ruffle the wrong feathers, which is hard to gauge because anyone can decide to be an asshole at a given. Then you're just going to be in for a miserable time. 4Chan has built up it's reputation throughout the 2000s and into the 2010s, as a place where people are rabidly mischievous and utilize what anonymity they have to drive anyone insane if they think someone ran afoul with them.
4Chan was really what gave birth to places like Encyclopedia Dramatica, their ranks have long infected Reddit and they once used to have been behind the whole Anonymous movement.
Not a crowd to fuck with. Just imagine messing with the cool kid in school and suddenly during recess you're encircled by their 20 friends and they just have a field day with you in however they see fit.

I won't moralize because that never stopped anyone from doing anything, ever :)
What I will say is, with the vastness of the internet available to me, I would not personally choose to sift through the reams of malice and hate to find the useful grains that no doubt exist, buried.
Plenty of other permissive fora where even somewhat radical ideas can be expressed but without the embrace of genocide, Neo-Nazism and rape.

for wallpapers

I know that the chans were used for orchestrating some of the various harrassment campaigns that have happened throughout the years, including most of the gamergate BS. They're such chaotic spaces I can't imagine trying to pull off any prolonged actions on them, and the automatic pseudonymity really brings out the seediest people possible.

I went on a few boards. /wg/ and /po/ is interesting. (Do not put an l there's that's a mistake) /g/ was interesting at times. I visit it a lot less these days, but I still check /wg/ for wallpapers.

No but I’ve always been curious but never found an app for iOS and I just can’t be bothered using the browser for sites I would use a lot.

No, never.

Fuck no

I frequented /v/, /int/, and a few other boards about one dozen years ago. Now the only things that I touch are a few of the archival websites, and even then only rarely. Occasionally I’ll visit an archive to look for images or clips, and more unoften I’ll look up a phrase or word out of curiosity, but that is the extent of it. I haven’t posted anything on the official website in a very long time (and I’ve never posted anything on the archival websites at all).

I like it for sports like footy because it captures its chaotic nature

No, but I've been on rotten.com (don't bother clicking the link; the site is long gone) back in the day... similar experience

No. Never have. Everything I've read about 4chan makes me think it's not the right forum for me.