I've seen this exact thing discussed on Agora Road and yeah part of me wishes hobby related spaces made a comeback. You guys got lucky with 39chan and Vocaverse. Plenty of fandoms should have decentralized discussion spaces like that not just Vocaloid.

>>936
Modern forums are dead on arrival unless you have a way to promote them which is already hard due to dicksword and social media like twitter and reddit existing. Reminder that 39chan flopped hard during the short time it was a forum.

things are just different now in a bad way


web surfing is dead and it's stunningly difficult to get the masses to participate in it (or to get them somewhere that doesn't just lead them back into the same 5 sites everyone uses for everything), even among more technical users
modern Google sucks - yes, there are other search engines, but they've mostly always sucked
the encroaching problem of AI spam bullshit sites and posts has made it even harder to find shit that way
everything becoming algorithmically driven has meant that people get pushed into the same corners of the Internet

I try to promote small sites, I abandoned my social media accounts, I basically do live the "small web" at this point
I don't even go to 4chan anymore, even before the recent hack

like, I guess I do use YouTube still, but the YouTube algorithm has changed in such an ugly way that a: stuff I want to see isn't promoted to me, and b: creators are forced to dance to its tune if they want views

>>937
it's painful
I go to exactly one phpbb forum now, and activity has cratered in the last 4 years

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>>937
I browse some comfy forums that are still alive but they are very niche and the users there are like here in which they prefer a decentralized web experience that isn't engulfed by social media and chatting apps. They also aren't as active as say something like 4chan but they are slow and comfy. The problem is these sites are rare not because nobody wants to use them because of some modern convenience like social media/dicksword, but because it is generally hard to get the word out on them and things have to be kept more low key due to the ever present threat of spammers, bad actors who just want to turn the site into toxic social media sphere 2.0, and (as much as people don't want to admit it because of their fear of zoomer derangement syndrome to the point where they endlessly defend zoomers and claim that there is nothing abnormal that wasn't seen in previous generations) netiquette is kind of dead in the generation that grew up largely with social media omnipresent and hammering down morals onto people. it leads to a lack of nuance with people on the internet just going "this is fire" or "this is cringe" without discussing why they like things or being more in-depth. its frustrating trying to explain this too, even on imageboards, because they just assume your some boomer or le wrong generation crowd for pointing out some obvious Achilles' heel with the current generation.

I did a write up of my thoughts on the issue with a kind of relevant vocal synth related example, so continued in the next post

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>>939
I speak for myself as a late 90s zoomer, there's a lot of problems with our generation that won't go away if we just shut our eyes and pretend everything is fine, especially when you got idiots in the fanbase now whining about songs like Zaako (which to fair, is a shit, bandwagoning song made to capitalize on the mimukauwa nice try's popularity which is a song i have my own grievances with) but conveniently ignoring that Kaai Yuki as a voicebank was designed and made to appeal to lolicon otaku with the no explicit songs rule just added as a CYOA (cover your own ass) measure (she even has a Randoseru for god's sake lol, they know who they were trying to appeal to).
(continued in next post because lol word limit)

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZaZhdZl0coU

>>940
When I see absolute idiots, like the western producer TONE, make songs using Kaai Yuki to criticize Hiiragi Magnetite, oblivious to the complete irony in using Kaai Yuki at all, it kind of becomes emblematic of how people grew up with these sort of things but were just blissfully unaware of the context nor do they wish to understand such in the heat of controversy. They just nod along in agreement about the new controversial song being morally bankrupt, while just completely ignoring the foundation was corrupt from the beginning and that the new stone is just a piece of the building. You can either take it or leave it, but you can't pretend the building is pristine without the stone.

In case you caught on to what I was trying to illustrate here, this is the very same modern net culture that permeates the overall zeitgeist online and causes more seasoned users to not share their alternative platforms in a form of gatekeeping, while also isolating within them and very small bleed over, if any, to other alternative platforms.
(continued in next post)

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>>941
Which causes a twofold problem with the new audience of the web being generally unaware of these platforms and experiencing culture shock to them, prompting them not to engage and stick within their own social media bubble which has more convenience and less weird people in their view. And when old web nostalgia or decorum is en vogue, its usually hilariously out of step with the values and culture that created it (example: emo/scene/goth fashion and its origins contrasting with the "revival" styles of hyperpop and emo rap that feel like dragging an unknown corpse rather than a love letter to the style). Even when twitter tried to revive neocities it was relatively short-lived and out of place/try hard for what they were trying to accomplish because they see the aesthetic and not the context that allowed the aesthetic to thrive (a lot of which was problematic in its own regard, different from the problems the revival faces).
(continued in next post, body limit sucks let me schizo rant)

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>>942
Combine all this with the continual consolidation of the internet to just a few sites and services that gets the job done but doesn't do the job particularly well and you got a fragmented set of ideals both new and old swimming in a sea of shit that is the modern internet.

But I will give the naysayers who defend zoomers to the bone one thing: they are right in that the core essence of the internet hasn't changed much other than get a bit more annoyingly moralistic and brainrotted. Much of it is a service issue, with algorithms designed to keep you hooked but result in a feedback loop of sensationalism and drama by design to profit off every time you get angry, horny, or curious. Youtube is a good example of this, with the continual focus on long form content of nothing valuable but enticing nonetheless via clickbait or appeals to care about issues you otherwise would've just ignored. On one hand, we have a socially conscious society that is being built but driven entirely by emotion instead of rationale, which can be both a good and bad thing. On the other hand, the topics and leisure that we spent our time with in the early days of the internet are increasingly pushed out for relevancy of whatever is trending both artificially and organically. But outside the algorithm hell, lies an internet dormant and ripe for a revival. And I think people are starting to wise up and look for alternatives, both old and new. It's one of the only ways I can attribute this site's rise.

(continued, fuck body limit)

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>>943
And its for that reason that I don't think forums are completely dead even if only imageboards without registration requirements are now gaining more traction than them. I think once more of the new generation realize they can have a username that isn't tied to their other usernames or identity, and the pain that comes with that, I think forums will be back in albeit smaller functions, just like the aforementioned forums I mentioned before. Hell, drama forums like kiwifarms are starting to grow again after a period of downturn, and I think its only a matter of time before interest-based/hobby forums make a comeback.

Meanwhile chatting apps like dicksword are starting to show their limitations, especially as dicksword becomes a publicly traded company and people are growing more weary to it.

A lot of words just to get to my initial point but fuck brevity anyways, its overrated.

>>942
>emo/scene/goth fashion and its origins contrasting with the "revival" styles of hyperpop and emo rap that feel like dragging an unknown corpse rather than a love letter to the style
Nailed it. I'm also an old zoomer and i've always thought that a lot of this 2000's aesthetic stuff people create nowadays always felt forced and completely inaccurate to that time period.

as a zoomer on the younger side of the spectrum i feel especially ashamed being part of this side. i learned internet etiquette and 'matured' much faster than my peers, since i was using the internet at a very young age. most if not all of them engage in this type of slop internet shit without looking further outward when they should be knowing better. bleh. i'm very tired i don't know if anything i said made sense or even added to the conversation, which is another thing!

sites like reddit and whatever are mostly kind of built for insightful conversation, right? but people treat it like any other social media, where you upvote if you agree or downvote when you disagree, but it's meant to be whether or not it contributes to the conversation meaningfully. something something modern social media has done so much damage and it'll probably get worse and we'll all get categorised "old man yells at cloud" once and for all

Good posts all. I hate to say it, but we’re old men yelling at clouds already. It feels like people have no incentive to make things better and every incentive to make things worse.

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>>949
Chill, we're not that old. The average 39chan user is probably between 18-32 years old (assuming >>948 isn't underage and looking to get B&)... unless you consider that old then fuck man, don't do me like that.

Also I agree with the Len anon that if this site exists and people use it then it means there's a demand for independent hobby discussion sites. And it's not just 39chan. Whether you like it or not, Vocaverse exists since 2020 and people use it, and the same goes for UtaForum.
The demand is there, it's just that it's hard to get people to use the websites unless they're already well established and/or have ties to other websites or popular figures in said communities, who tell people to go there. I've been on 39chan since there was a fandom culture board and the moment it partnered with Wapchan it became bigger and more active. We're still slow, obviously, but not dead. People post here everyday.

>>942
I'm a fan of Neocities and I like seeing what people make there but forums and imageboards scratch a certain itch for me that personal sites and fansites don't. I'm a lonely dude who's autistic about his interests but social media is the absolute worst if you're like me. When you're not being fed negative posts it's because you're in an echo chamber. Forums are the ideal way of discussing shit.

>>950
>assuming (Me) isn't underage and looking to get B&)
i knew someone would say that lol
you guys do know people born in 2007 are turning 18 this year, right?

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>>952
So you're 18? Also yeah i'm aware, because guess who also turns 18 this year

>>953
>Hagsune Miku

>>953
yep, i only remembered miku being the same year after i hit new reply
remember to anticipate for the barrage of stupid 'miku is legal' jokes

I have been seeing random youtubers encourage people to create their own personal websites instead of using social media and it seems to have worked to some extent so hopefully people will learn from this and use it to make social spaces that aren't garbage. The fact that we have indie vocaloid discussion sites in the first place is already a miracle.

>>953
stop giving me heart attacks please, it feels like only yesterday that one 10th anniversary medley came out

>>957
Vocaloid is 21 years old anon

>>950
We’re on the younger end of people who feel this way. My favored (relatively popular) bbcode forum has a median age of 40. When I start to feel upset that people don’t care if shit is terrible and can’t appreciate good stuff I feel like it’s me that’s alienated and old.
>>951
>>956
Agreed wholeheartedly.

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I plan on launching an otaku culture forum soon, though I'm not sure how many people would be interested and I'm not 100% sure if it'd succeed in the first place. It would not be limited to /jp/-like topics though, it'd be for anime, manga and otaku topics in general. Also due to me being a NEET without NEETbux it'd have to be hosted on ProBoards.

>>960
i'd be interested in that
the only forum like that which i've used is MAL's forums which are... a cesspool. would be nice to have an alternative

>>961
Anilist has a forum and from i recall their mods were pretty anti-bs, shutting down most threads about how certain anime are immoral and stuff. I stopped using that site ages ago and never went on the forums much though so don't take my word for it.

>>951
This, i crave social interactions over the internet but dicksword is ass, Reddit is ass, Chatrooms are dead

>>941
Honestly i still enjoy TONE's old music regardless of what happened during the Zaako incident. I remember before he made that song he was actually loved on this site and you'd see his stuff pop up on /rvr/ every once in a while.

>>948
Reddit was never good and Digg was even worse. It's good as a Google alternative because Google completely fucked the way their search engine works but that's about it

>>956
>>959
>>963
Completely agree, hobby discussion websites are dead and i believe they need to make a comeback. I'm a millennial in his early 30's so as a teen in the 2000's i remember i'd lurk sonic romhacking forums. A lot of those no longer exist now. Appreciate that Sonic Stadium is stil alive and kicking though.
The few hobby forums that haven't shut down only have about three posters and the rest have all closed down or moved to the cancer-aids cesspool that is dicksword.

But it's not hard to see why so many forum users made the switch to dicksword. The UI is normie friendly, it doesn't cost anything to run a server, enforcing rules is easier because you can see everything and you've got people discussing things in real time without needing to refresh the page.

I agree that dicksword is not ideal for discussing your hobbies and i even see zoomers share this sentiment. I hope they eventually realize that social media is not the answer and start creating their own social spaces: fanfic/art communities like ao3 and deviantart, forums, fanpages with chatrooms

>>972
They do, but they're almost always just reboots of older versions of social media sites like Facebook, pre-Musk Twitter and MySpace, clearly made for people who missed out on the originals. It's unoriginal and almost never works.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=8RM215PSq-g

>>969
I have mixed feelings on TONE. On one hand, he makes decent enough (although samey, and derivative of older vocaloid styles) music, on the other hand his antics outside of music greatly annoy me. He has recently been doing livestreams where he talks like a yassified male bimbo in AAVE, which even though I'm far from a person to scream from the mountain tops about political correctness, feels like cultural appropriation and forced considering he's not black and used to talk like any normal asian dude in the US. Double this with the fact that he incessantly talks about politics and how bad racism is on his tumblr (or at least did, I checked his tumblr recently it seemed more like an art dump now which is at least better), while doing something like that really feels like he's a hypocrite who's trying to grandstand than have coherent values. He also just kind of seems like a dick and dealing with him in some dicksword servers kind of solidified this feeling, even though I personally never had much interaction with him in that environment.

>>974
Guess it's time to (insert drumroll here) separate the art from the artist. Shame because i think he's very skilled as a producer and one of the few people to get the 2000's sound right.

>>973
I recently found out about https://sheepishpatio.net/ which i think is trying to be a hobby forum. The UI is a bit messy for my standards, I'm old and used to phpBB, but I suggest checking it out.

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>>974
i don't want to be That Kind Of Person but, unfortunately that "stan twitter yass queen" personality is what hooks people in the vocalsynth scene nowadays. if you notice most people in the vocaloid community, UTAU and more are a bunch of people that come from stan twitter or are getting into it, basically if you're not like that in certain communities you're a nobody. gotta try and attract more people besides getting into discourse, y'know?

>>976
there's been a pop gay side of the fandom for a while (circusP and kira for instance) so it doesn't really surprise me when another western producer is like that. stan twitter was the actual worst thing to happen to them though since now they're all married to a dogshit website

https://youtube.com/watch?v=7QV63XHoenU

>>977
vidrel didn't embed, oops

>>977
i mean at least circusP and KIRA don't get into discourse (correct me if i'm wrong since i don't recall any drama with them). and they're not annoying. the annoying ones are mostly the ones who are like chronically online on twitter, get into drama and have like 9453959539359 mutuals that are exactly the same or whatever. but yeah i think that since the stan twitter users migrated to the community it feels like kind of obligatory to be like them

>>979
There was the circrush drama years ago but it was a notherburger basically

Mikudayo ## Moderator Sat, May 31, 2025, 08:48 PM No.981

Keep the fandom drama stuff in >>335

>>938
Youtube feels like TV

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>>1014
youtube\twitch (and even imageboards to some extent) promised FLOSS independent p2p media, from indie creators, where you could watch equal people like YOU.
but everything hijacked when money come in place.
big players & big money joined scene corrupting it

>>941
Literally every japanese comment I see in this video is dogpilling on it lmao.

>>941
Man that sucks i liked that producer

I think eventually we'll see a rise in indie social media and perhaps forums too. We're already seeing the former with Mastodon and Misskey instances, which are admittedly not the best thing but it's a start.

>>1308
Microblogging sites suck in general

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I'm convinced that I've been dead since 2020 and this is hell.

https://x.com/itchio/status/1948266771234140617 [Embed]

Show the video in this Twitter/X post

>Online Safety Act
>Credit card processors
>KOSA
The internet is fucked isn't it?

>>1390
i hope this bullshit gets pushed back severely. for the time being though, yeah, things are fucked if it continues this way

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This is one of the few times I'm glad I live in Latin America. I don't doubt that they'll eventually fuck us over seeing how things are going in Europe and the US but fortunately we're not being affected yet...

This feels like the end of the world, or at least the good things left in the world

https://youtube.com/watch?v=8OyBtMPqpNY

>>1395
We're heading there anon. The meteorite is next.

>>1394
What sucks most about this is that people will just continue using the service. Sure, spam Twitter, Reddit and all those sites with blogposts about how you're quitting YouTube over the AI age verification, we'll see you tomorrow. We live in an era where what's already big is too big to fall and it leaves no room for competition. No one's gonna be using Odysee or all those "alternatives". Never in my life have I heard about a direct competitor to a big website that has succeeded. Remember Bluesky? Yeah it's still around, but it's a ghost town of a place.

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>>1412
And what sucks even more is that it's just gonna keep happening. Companies will keep fucking us in the ass and we'll just take it like good boys. I'm part of the problem myself, don't get me wrong. But I'm not exactly close minded either. Was there a competitor with an actual userbase I'd move there in a heartbeat but let's face it, that's never happening. And in the small chance it happens, enjoy it while it lasts. YouTube too started as an indie site by three dudes. Look where it is now.

tl;dr: doomerism, words words, etc

I hate the modern state of social media and how cliquish everything is. Even video game mods tend to be locked behind servers and often anyone outside the "clique" is looked down upon or ridiculed. I miss the pre-2020 internet.

>>1461
The internet was already like this before 2020. I think the late 2010's was when it started to get really bad. 2016 was the beginning of the end with smartphones becoming more accessible and dicksword launching.

>>1413

You can decide to contribute to the websites and make it great.

Also not sure if you can even add monetization on the decentralized oddysee

I don't use TikTok but I'm hearing that they now require you to verify your age in the US if their AI detects you're underage and some random Minecraft/Roblox youtuber allegedly got locked out and almost deleted because the AI thought he was underage?.

Actually fucking dystopian if true.

>>1476
this is true, happened to kreekcraft, a roblox youtuber. hes like 26

>>1477
>Roblox
No wonder

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xJIS3KjinPc

>>1394
Well shit, they're rolling this update tomorrow

>>1489
Does Nicovideo still have those foreigner restrictions that were mentioned on /mmd/ a while back? If not then it could be a decent alternative but at the same time if too many foreigners join it'll turn into cancer aids and alienate the original audience.

>>1491
it does but even the japanese don't really use niconico these days. its like newgrounds at best in terms of traction. everybody really moved to youtube

>>1492
Ye, it’s best for VocaColle these days

>>1491
There's an extension called otoDB that can bypass the foreigner restrictions on NND, though I doubt enough people will use it just to upload on there.

I'll always be a Bilibili shill. I finally reached level 5 after like 6 years so I can send codes (once a month) for others to skip the "hard" otaku quiz.
There's a few Japanese vocaloid producers who officially post their works there too.

>>1497
Holy shit ty anon

>>1497
All it does is change your user agent to Googlebot, you don't need a bespoke extension for that.

https://mmaker.moe/2025/01/niconico-geo-block-user-agent-spoofing/

>>1576
Help I'm retarded, how do you do this?

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What are the odds that Toriko's voice provider went MIA because of all these recent stupid UK laws?

>>1610
You guys have the chance to do something really funny. A fanloid in response to OSA/KOSA/SCREEN.

>>1659
good idea

>>1660
So a robot fanloid with cameras everywhere

>>935
I blame the O.S.A
More: https://www.myallsearch.com/search?q=online+safety+act

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>>1659
its hard but i gave it a shot

>>1668
love it. she should have her own thread on /leek/.

>>1669
thanks, feel free to suggest improvements, a name or something.

>>1668
Looks too loli, you should've made her an angry British mom

>>1671
I just drew her in a chibi art style, cause i'm not too good at detailed drawings.
>you should've made her an angry British mom
I want her to be a mockery of censorship as a whole not just the UK goverment's, that's why I made her hair cover one of her eyes and put an eraser in her pocket.

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I've seen so many people say they'll move away from the big platforms that require age verification, but eID and Age Verification would be mandatory for all websites, there wont be any alternative places to go or an "indie web" a term i've seen recently used a lot. It's not exclusively governments pushing for it, it's large corporations like Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc. So they can further solidify their grasp on the internet and snuff out all potential competitors.

The Reason? eID and Age Verification would be impossible for small websites, forums and imageboards that are ran as hobby projects by a single person at worst, and a team of like 5 at best. They simply would not have the capital to hire even the most bottom of the barrel "company" to verify any kind of IDs that would be used for Age Verification. It would cause all these small hobby run places to die, suddenly it's no longer hosting from an old thinkpad or renting a cheap VPS as the upfront cost for creating your own website, you also have to tack on an even more expensive company that would likely only work by contracts that ensures X amount of months to be hired for Y money.

Some might be able to get away with the SA approach of paying for an account, others could do staggered registration where after a number of new registrants is met the owner/s would foot the bill to verify them as a batch, but by the time that happens would those new people even remember they made an account or want to use it? Most don't want to pay to make an account (or donate to keep the power on). It's pretty doomer but it's the conclusion I have come to and it seems to be the most likely reality, it's a pretty bleak situation all around.

>>1678
Cont. Although you might be able to get around it by going Tor exclusive that brings it's own set of problems that a lot of people wouldn't want to deal with, discoverability and the reputation of Tor as the "illegal drugs and cp place" being two of them.

Thanks for participating in my TED talk, /g/.

>>1671
Why not a loli who's also an angry british mom?

>>1680
Nah, she's perfect the way she is

>>1679
I don't think Tor even has that reputation anymore. It did in the early 2010's when all the Youtubers made the deep web look like this secret dark place where crminals like terrorists and pedophiles would hang out. But at this rate I think everybody knows that's not the case. A lot of mainstream websites have Tor versions, including Facebook. Not to mention some modern browsers like Brave have Tor integration.

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>>1668
i hope we get to see more of her in the future

>>1696
Ditto, cool doodle

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>>1682
You're right about that, in recent years it's started to lose it's taboo reputation and become more acceptable, I suspect in a post eID world it might lose even more of it's reputation overtime and become something more acceptable and a tool for protest with Tor only websites as it has a proven track record of operation, compared to some random shmuck coming out of nowhere and saying he's crowd-developing the Internet 2.0. I do have concern over "Chat Control" and what it might pose towards usage of Tor and it's future development, especially if other countries begin to enact their own version of it.

>>1697
thanks

>>1682
Back when I was into creepypasta I remember people made the deep web sound scarier than it really was. It was always described as this place where you're guaranteed to find red rooms (livestreams where they torture people) and illegal porn. Ironically you are more likely to find all that on the clearweb than the deep web. Just look at that recent case of the French streamer who was tortured and killed on Kick.

So Windows 10 support ends next month right?

>>1850
Unless you get an LTSC license. I’m just dual booting Win10/Linux where the Win10 only gets used for music software.

>>1850
I would sidegrade to Win 10 LTSC and ride it out until 2030 when support ends for it, afterwards I dunno, if proton isn't playing nice with some of my games then I might dualboot Win11 LTSC.

win11 looks okay but i'm too broke to buy a whole new laptop when i literally just bought a pre-owned one. linux for me it is

>>1885
Linux is the better choice anyway. I just rec going with Mint and if you need W11 for work or something just dual boot it.

>>1885
Linux is a better experience than win11 outside of software exclusivity. It’s also more lightweight, so you’ll get a longer life out of the laptop.

>>1850
2 days left

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>>2117
So.. Linux, right?

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RIP Windows 10

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When did the internet become so full of irony poisoned brain rotted idiots? It’s so frustrating

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>>2280
Mid 2010's

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not sure if it's the right place to do so, but windows 11 is driving me crazy. not even windows XP, 7 and 10 had these incredible update fuckups...

>>2415
Linux time babyyy

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Osana, you motherfucker

>>2464
It's only gonna get worse

>>2415
Time to go to Win10 LTSC

:)

>>2281
I'm still shocked we're still trapped in the "post modern" meme era.

Honestly, the reason the old web is nearly impossible to replicate and why not that many "hobby sites" exist is mainly because they're unprofitable to modern day creators.

People these days are out there chasing money and fame. Thats been the goal since around 2015. I swear people then used to literally make fun of anyone even thinking about starting a Patreon.

>>2479
More like some unholy amalgamation of post-irony and surreal where most of it is created by AI.

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The problem is that the modern web we see today is the exact intended result of the web of yesterday. This was the dream and its fully being realized.

The web has been integrated into society. Nerd/web culture has been normalized. Nobody is being bullied anymore yet everything feels more hollow than ever before.

Honestly, I don't think there's even much value inherently in trying to regain the past especially Web 1.0 and 2.0 eras. I mean thats why the retro web movement died so fast. It was all purely about capturing nostalgia content.

It wasn't about improvement or learning our lessons from the past but merely creating a Papier-mâché version of the internet. A fantasy.

>>2481
I mean for me personally the future isn't this or atleast the traditional concepts of forums or a centralized web. I don't think the solution is as easy as lets create a website that will solve our problems.

Yes it could in the short term. Maybe even create cultural small hubs that allow a small quiet shelter away from the bigger spaces. However, there's nothing stopping these spaces from just disappearing due to lack of money, or the mod/founder of the forum got a gajillion $$$ and became rich before completely changing the entire purpose of the site.

We're just repeating history and people see that.

The only thing I can think of personally for the future is decentralizing the web and social media. Splitting them apart and allowing the people to run their own spaces and be able to easily recreate it on the fly, much like the TPB was. One server dies or mod is on a power trip; time to go to a new site and see all my brain rot there.

We have to end separation from the web and create a unification of sorts for all users.

>>2481
The problem is that a lot of the indie web is based almost entirely on being "retro" rather than creating something new using what we've learned from the past. I'm a zoomer myself, but I noticed that the majority of people in my generation (especially those born after 2004) who can code websites would rather recreate something they've never ever used like MySpace than bring something new to the table.

The reason sites like MySpace succeeded in the past is because they did something new or improved upon an existing concept. And the whole culture that heavily carried that era at the time wasn't forced like it is today: no one did the "rawr xd waffles" thing to pretend that it was 2006, because it WAS 2006.

>>2483
I also forgot to mention that the majority of these projects are developed within private dicksword servers filled with immature people who can't help themselves but start pointless drama. Which in turn ends up with the project falling apart within months, never giving it time to fully develop.

That being said I do think the "indie web" has potential, but things aren't looking good now.

>>2481
>This was the dream and its fully being realized.
Were you alive for the beginning of the Web? Integration with real life was never the goal itself. Much of the early WWW was concentrated to hacker culture and cyberpunk interest precisely it was a separate world that wasn't bound to physical realities. Even in the hogwash that is the promise of "global villages" (more recently "global town squares" as characterized by Elon and others), people were "netizens" because they weren't bound to their nationalities. The other promise was a democratic marketplace of ideas where only the best ideas succeed, which I think we can all say has roundly proved to be a failure as participation has expanded.

The promise of the web, at least in the hacker ethos sense, was Second Life. You still see some of that now (VRChat) and you even see some of it in the ambitions of large corporate players (Meta), but I would not describe what I see looking at the Web now as it being fully realized. Academics resisted government encroachment on the Web and missed that it was really corporations they should have been more suspicious of.

I think it’s simpler than that. The internet used to have more websites that were structured so you’d talk on them. Due to corporate interests, social media is structured so you stop having productive conversations and start scrolling.
Retro revival movements have missed the point by combining certain aspects of the old web (independent websites that don’t interact directly) with the new web (websites that are basically a personal profile of you) in a way that’s especially ineffective to communicate with. 39ch is the opposite where it combines a site structure that works with a dedicated subject matter weirdos want to discuss. To me that explains why 39ch is a successful retro project people like to come back to.

>>2486
I wouldn't call 39chan a retro project, because all imageboards look and function the same way. 4chan for example has looked the exact same for decades.

The reason 39chan works is because imageboards are essentially no different from forums, except you don't need to make an account which makes them more accessible. That plus the fact that Vocaloid is no longer dead as it was in the 2010's.

It's also well maintained. Running any imageboard is dangerous due to the fact that they become targets for bot farms dedicated to spam CSEM/CSAM the moment they go live. But on 39chan that hasn't been a problem since the beginning of the year due to the heavy moderation, filters, captcha changes, etc.

>>2486
39chan succeeds because you can say you like Mimukauwa Nice Try without having a bitch screaming in your ear about morals and bad tuning kek.

>>2486
Technically Vocaverse also exists and that is a pretty succesful one. One thing I realized is that Vocaloid fans, especially older ones, are sort of used to forums due to how prominent they were during the 1st golden era of Vocaloid. Before Vocaverse there was VO and Vocaloidism, then came UTAforum for everything UTAU. 39chan is more recent but I'm surprised it's not completely dead given how niche imageboards are in the current decade.

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Thanks Osana

>>2490
KOSA passing in this form would be seriously defanged without the duty of care. Feasibly it could go through on party lines now but it's just an even more weaksauce FOSTA this way. More important to watch the other bills that advanced with this like age gates on social media or app stores, but those have even less of a backing.

There's not going to be serious appetite for KOSA next calendar year if they spin their wheels on healthcare again, but I'd say it's probably foregone now that it passes along with COPPA 2.0 because they're the milquetoast middle ground and do basically fuck all.

>>2490
>>2491
If there's any sort of civil liberty being infringed then there's no doubt that it would go through the Supreme Court. They're there for a reason.

Vimeo got killed

>>2564
Wtf
It’s just daily motion for alts now ig? Or are there others?

Your fortune: Very Bad Luck

>>2565
There's more recent YT clones, it's just that they tend to have tiny niche userbases.
>Bitchute - facebook conspiracy boomers
>Odysee - middle aged gamers
>Vidlii - autistic children
Unless YouTube gets hit with some kind of antitrust action, it's pretty unlikely that we'll get any more "mainstream" sites.

(Also Vimeo isn't literally dead yet but it's on track to EOS in a few years)

>>2566
All of the ones you listed are shit but at the same time I couldn't think of a good one myself

>>2566
>it's pretty unlikely that we'll get any more "mainstream" sites.
I wouldn't say it's unlikely. The corpos will try. And although I doubt they'll ever make one as mainstream as the original it'll probably still have its own small userbase the way Bluesky does.

>>2569
Even Bluesky only has as many users as it does because Twitter has the worst admin of all time

>>2566
>it's on track to EOS in a few years
That's doubtful, even for a Bending Spoons acquisition. Vimeo whitelabels far too much video for there not to be a revenue stream they can extract almost forever. It's more plausible that you see them clamp down even further on the free plans, like when WeTransfer started limiting free transfers in a month, but it's not like they've been a serious YouTube competitor for years. Evernote has been sucked dry and it still probably has enough inertia to go another decade with barely any feature development being done it.

i just think everything is schizonitemare
this may just be me getting old, but i really don't like the direction most of the internet has taken for late. too much ragebait.

>>2573
i dont know what most of those words mean but i agree

>>2574
just content that is inflammatory on purpose. it seems to be the only thing the internet can provide nowadays.
I blocked access to multiple websites because of it.

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Flash is officially dead and buried. Adobe is discontinuing Animate in March.

>>2588
adobe once again being one of the worst fucking companies ever

>>2573
>too much ragebait.

I agree. Really don't care for the constant whataboutism and heavy handed "moderation" that does nothing but curate echo chambers and consolidates communities into ephemeral hellscapes like dicksword.

Feel really lucky to have found this obscure site.

>inb4 its not obscure lul

I couldn't find it through any search engines under the flood of ai article spam.

>>2594
i mean 39chan has grown a little in recent times (probably because of smith hioka and canon) but overall its still a niche lil corner of the internet and the majority of the vocaloid community doesn't know/care about it.

>>2595
Sounds like its for the best. Its nice to be in good company here with other Vocaloid and UTAU fans.

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>>2588
Well that didn't last long now did it?

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The mass adoption of generative AI has left me thoroughly disillusioned. I'm not going to make any moral arguments against generative AI (controversial topics are against the rules), but aesthetically, I find AI generated content unbearably mediocre. All of it has this uncanny sameness to it; the words, the colors, the sounds, can be, and often are, more acceptable to the palate and easily consumable than poorly made human text, art, and music, but it is never exciting; it is never interesting. I never feel inspired by it, or left in awe by its sublime qualities, or frustrated by creative decisions or technical failings. I never feel that it speaks to me, or that it aligns with my taste and interests; I can never form an opinion about it, or develop feelings other than resentment at its existence. It is just there, taking up space.

>>2610
They call it AI kuso for a reason.

Personally what I'm tired of is the integration of AI into things that don't need it, and seeing older people fall for AI genned videos. My dad is in his mid 60's and often sends me funny AI generated dog videos that he found on Instagram. I'm young so I can immediately tell when something's off about those videos but my dad can't. And this is just funny dog videos, when this shit starts being used for propaganda it's going to have disastrous consequences, but i don't wanna get into political territory.

>>2611
>when this shit starts being used for propaganda it's going to have disastrous consequences
Uh... Miku, I'm pretty sure that has already happened.

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waow! thank you Google AI Overview!!!1
Anyway, here's what I was actually trying to find:
https://nitter.net/huhuuhusab/status/1762844742256361740

>>2613
Feels so wrong to see the full version of this after being used to the emote

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IRCbros we won

>>2617
>IRC
>dicksword
Nah, what we gotta do is we gotta go back to Steam group chats like its 2010

it really just seems as if the internet isn't really a place anymore if that makes sense

>>2619
Browsing the modern internet feels like waiting in line at an amusement park, passing 3 “must be this tall to ride” checkpoints along the way, and then there’s no ride but there is another checkpoint. Also ads.

>>2620
yup, it's just the bread an circus expression all over again

>>2620
Ublock extension, my guy

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The hell is Hiroyuki doing

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>>2784
Whatever it is i wouldn't get too excited for it. Even without AI the concept of it sounds shitty.

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>>2784
>>2785
https://automaton-media.com/en/news/4chan-owner-hiroyuki-evangelion-director-hideaki-anno-and-gackt-to-participate-in-humanitys-last-non-ai-made-social-network/
>brand-new VR service
>smartphone metaverse
It sounds indistinguishable from a silicon valley web3 grift made to siphon money from investors, and never deliver anything of value to the customer; only it's five years late and Japanese. I guess we can now expect tech companies to weaponize the public's growing dissatisfaction with AI to sell the same bullshit back to us. Furthermore, it's just more confirmation of what we already knew: hiroshimoot does not care about 4chan. moot made a lot of poor decisions, but I think he at least cared about the site, until he sold it. I don't know what the hell Anno's doing here, but I haven't really liked anything he's made in a long time, so whatever, have fun I guess.

>>2786
>Metaverse in the big '26
I couldn't be less interested.

Also Hiro left 4chan to rot after the initial Q&A in 2015.

>>2785
Sounds like vtuber or pngtuber models for video calls by that description. Makes sense if you know that in Japan this even is being done in work places where disabled and anxious people are working remotely and appear on screens in some stores with avatars to talk to customers. Nothing unique about this though because you can already do this on a computer by faking a webcam feed but for a phone app that might be new.

>>2788
The stupid part about this is that the lack of a video feed actually makes it more vulnerable to AI spam. AI can recreate human voices fairly convincingly, but video is more difficult. The problem will be even worse if they have voice changers built directly into the app.

>>2789
It could be though I am not sure if that is an issue in Japan. Also not clear if this is basically like Zoom or Mumble or if it is more like LINE instead.

Tech giants should just give up and stop trying to make more social media. All of it ends up the same way.

>>2791
They are too busy latching onto the pseudo-AI grift from their investors to make that much social media but it makes sense some of the biggest most profitable tech companies have been just social media sites.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=T4Upf_B9RLQ

Someone needs to make a talkloid MMD version of this or something. Do it

Not enshittification related but where do you guys go to talk about shit you like aside from this site and possibly other imageboards?

>>2862
specifically asking for non-SNS sites here, or at least some obscure ones

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>>2862
>>2863
Nowhere at the moment. I don't like making accounts for websites. I used to try to post about stuff I liked on 4chan (not Vocaloid related), but I got sick of the lack of moderation and the toxic board culture. This site scratches the itch, so I don't need anywhere else right now. Check out the friends of 39chan on the homepage I guess. Sorry if this post is not very helpful.

>>2862
Personal website and blog. Sometimes I send cold email if someone else lists it on their site. IRC I think counts as obscure now, go on Rizon and find a channel or two with people doing more than idling.

Functionally you can use SNS the same way if you treat it like a diary. I post shit to Bluesky and Mastodon that don't really get much attention either.

>>2863
I post on the Something Awful forums. I agree with >>2866 that the pro strat for SNS is to just post and not engage in conversations.

>>2862
Some sites with forums focused on hobbies or niches like the paranormal are more active than smaller imageboards like this. I prefer pseudonymous forums over more anonymous like imageboards actually because you can form deeper relationships with people and better gauge their opinions easier able to give them contact info while not having to mix online life with your real identity or deal with only people who use major SNS but some are overtaken by the same SNS addict types too but they at least can be partially avoided or otherwise be blocked once you identify the toxic users. Also Tumblr used to be decent outside of the occasional random harassing me and the moderators doing nothing when I reported them for mass harassment of users but I had not used it in years so I don't know what it currently is like but I made a number of friends from it in past.

I post on https://zdiskuss.com/ and the forums there. It's like deviantart.

>>2868
What forums are you visiting anyway because the only forum i use (vocaverse) is active but this site moves faster.

>>2868
>I prefer pseudonymous forums over more anonymous like imageboards
The fact that I don't have to worry about people reading my post history (besides site staff) is a big part of why I prefer imageboards over other websites. I did make a Reddit account once, but I embarrassed myself and deleted it almost immediately.

>>2871
Reddit is complete garbage to post on. It’s Yahoo Answers to me.

>>2872
Reddit is shit but come on, don't speak of Yahoo Answers like that. That site was great lol.

>>2871
People will say you're overanxious (still probably true) but honestly I don't think it's such a weird fear to have these days. Post history only enables someone to dig up dirt if you get your fifteen minutes of fame. I used to feel weird about imageboards having persistent archives, but it kind of balances the need for being able to search conversations (which general search engines now suck at) while still letting people be looser with posting.

>>2870
Since when are we faster than Vocaverse? I thought that was *the* vocaloid forum?

>>2875
I use both Vocaverse and 39chan and i've noticed that the level activity on both sites kinda depends on community happenings. Though on 39chan another thing that helps is OC, which fortunately there is a lot of. The leekaloid threads for example are exclusive to this site and people make a lot of original content for them which keeps them active.

>>2874
>I used to feel weird about imageboards having persistent archives
I felt the exact same way. I also used to only post on fast boards because I had anxiety about my posts being visible for so long; I got over it obviously. I still have to constantly remind myself that the only person who really cares about what I post is me.

>>2877
i'm happy with imageboards (especially 4chan) archives. it preserves internet history.

>>2870
I am not currently on any singing synth based sites other than this and only been here a few months. Just currently active on MyAnimeList since like >>2864 I don't like making accounts very often because some OCD like issues I have. The vocaloid discussions there are not as active as here but overall relatively active spread across many different topic boards making it seem less active than it is. I was active on other places but only one still around I am perma banned from for no reason.

>>2872
Yahoo Answers was toxic but kind of fun that way on some sections.

>>2871
I kind of get it but it's also not really that big a deal since you just blend in with everyone else and it's often a lot harder to search forum posts over Xitter or Facebook posts and they generally aren't used to train pseudo-AI like Reddit is.

>>2879
Lord imagine an AI trained off of 39chan. Hope they like Sonika

>>2868
Part of me wishes imageboards were a more popular format because they're ideal for discussion but at the same time i can see why they're kinda niche. The moment your imageboard site goes live you'll start having to deal with weekly CSEM spam coming from botnets that try to adapt to your methods of dealing with it. It sucks, it's hard to completely get rid of (hell, you might even need fingerprinting in extreme cases), and your moderators will have to sit through some really disgusting images but it happens to all of them. The other issue is that there's a stigma against imageboards where people will put them on the same level as extremist neo-nazi sites. That's mostly untrue, of course, since 39chan is probably as tame as an imageboard can get. But the stigma remains.

>>2881
That's true, even 2chan has to deal with that type of spam. The reason it doesn't happen here is because we have a lot of filters put in place and a captcha that only the target audience will understand, but trust me it did happen in 39chan's early days. I think it completely stopped around the time Hioka did his first interview.

>>2880
don't give them any ideas

>>2881
>That's mostly untrue
idk a lot of imageboards don't censor hate speech, nor ban off-topic politics, and are generally just awful places to be. /qa/ and its successors actively revel in the depravity. I feel their overall reputation is deserved. I'm just thankful that this site exists.

>>2884
Pretty much all of our affiliates do though. Wap for example completely bans hate speech. And look, I didn't mind people saying slurs on imageboards back in the day, it was part of what made the internet more "free" in a way. But the thing is that back then they were used as regular insults the same way you would use "idiot", nowadays they are used to derail threads into /pol/fuckery. Take boards like /jp/ on 4chan for example. If you mentioned something most people disliked the least they did was call you a faggot. Now it just devolves into this "us vs them" political bullshit that ends up consuming the entire thread and the people who have no interest in that sort of discussion end up leaving.

>>2885
Also this isn't just imageboard websites like 4chan. It's the internet as a whole. Twitter is the most notable example since anything you say will eventually be twisted into the same kind of shit.

>>2884
i get what you're saying but imagine doing the same with forums just because there's a couple bad ones. that's how i see it.

>>2876
vocaverse is active actually. i'd argue 39chan is faster just because you dont have to log in to post plus the oc as that one guy mentioned, but its still alive and well after all these years. maybe its rose tinted glasses but i kinda liked vocaloid otaku better lol.

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>>2872
sorry anon but yahoo answers was better than reddit

>>2881
The ideal to me would combine features of imageboards and forums. Basically pseudoabonymous with ability to post anonymously for more sensitive topics while having an identifier avatar in those cases (those geometric things) to know it is the same anon posts and update posts live on the page. Ive seen these both done before in past before the 2010s.

>>2564
works for me

>>2889
I think i remember seeing a kpop imageboard where you have to make an account to post but the posts are still anonymous

>>2891
On some help site I used in past you had an account and by default it posted with your avatar and username but if you checked a box before posting it made you anonymous with one of those identification images so people knew which anonymous user they were talking to so they did not get mixed up or impersonate each other and it was a very chill community where no one seemed to abuse the feature.

>>2887
>imagine doing the same with forums just because there's a couple bad ones.
I think the reason that this happened for imageboards is because if somebody knows what an imageboard is, they probably associate it with 4chan; even before /pol/, 4chan was already infamous. Imagine if someone's first thought upon hearing the word forum was poopy farts.
>>2889
>an identifier avatar in those cases (those geometric things)
I don't think I've seen this before. Does this function differently from poster IDs that some boards (like /pol/) use?

>>2893
Meh, it's not like 4chan invented the concept of imageboards, but it is the biggest imageboard OUTSIDE Japan so i guess it makes sense.
>poopy farts
what

>>2894
2channel is about as controversial if i'm not mistaken lol. Also anon probably meant poopyfarts, that one harassment/stalking forum.

>>2895
ah it's a wordfilter, but based on that description alone you probably know what i meant

>>2889
The social media platform Plurk has something like this, where you can make anonymous starting posts and anyone that replies is also anonymous and gets an identifier name. It's a mostly Taiwanese userbase
https://www.plurk.com/p/3ifa0ab0rz
Here is an example thread about Miku's V6 design

>>2893
>I don't think I've seen this before. Does this function differently from poster IDs that some boards (like /pol/) use?
It usually consists of triangles in a sort of pinwheel like pattern in a square canvas with different colors and is generated automatically. It works surprisingly well to instantly recognize someone. Im not sure what it is called but I see it mostly on comment sections of news sites and blogs so it must be a specific plugin or something. I always found it kind of cool. I will get back to you if I find what it is called.

>>2897
OK found it. There is a few actually.
Identicon (this sometimes is used as a generic term too)
Jazzicon

Then there are more image based ones like Robohash

>>2895
Yeah, 2ch went to shit in similar ways. Probably not a coincidence since Hiroyuki owned both

>>2895
>>2904
Technically 2ch is a textboard. It's now called 5ch and owned by Jim Watkins - the same guy who bought 8chan (re-branded as 8kun, with a different site now calling itself 8chan) - from Fredrick Brennan (aka hotwheels). The original owner of 2ch, Hiroyuki Nishimura - the same guy who bought 4chan from Christopher Poole (aka moot) - now runs a rival site, also called 2ch.

Like the other sites mentioned here, 2ch developed a reputation as a website popular with the far-right (Japanese ultranationalists). What's relevant to /leek/ is that 2ch is the site that originated the VIPPERLOIDs made by users of the /news4vip/ board.

2ch (the textboard) often gets confused 2chan (the imageboard, aka Futaba) which was originally a textboard created as a refuge for 2ch users back in the site's early days. I don't really know much about Futaba's reputation, but I think they're the ones responsible for memeing Mikudayo into existence.

Anyway, the Nameless Rumia's Wiki goes into more detail about all this along with other similar obscure internet trivia:
https://namelessrumia.heliohost.org/w/doku.php

>>2905
Interesting site. There's some stuff on there I haven't seen written up in English.
Jim Watkins deserves to go to super hell 100000 times for letting the 2ch archive servers rot.

>>2905
From what i heard he doesnt even own it he stole it. I think some day someone needs to hack the site and return it to the rightful heirs if so.

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>>2907
>he stole it
Sounds like the legal argument for that didn't work out, unfortunately. Watkins has no business owning a site he doesn't give a shit about.

>>2907
>>2908
Yeah, my post makes it seem like Watkins simply bought 2ch/8chan which is wrong; he was involved in their operations in some capacity before assuming full control; after he took over, both websites have been notably mismanaged. Wikipedia also covers this, but it's too complicated to get into the details here.

Watkins is shady as fuck, but I don't really trust Nishimura to give an accurate accounting of events, and given what he let happen to 4chan, I don't really care if he ever gets his site back. Watkins obviously shouldn't own it, and he probably belongs in prison.

>>2908
Was this under Japanese law? Japan seems to have some pretty screwy legal processes.

>>2909
Yeah I dont care if it is Nishimura just anyone but Watkins and in Japan or at least fluently and preferably natively speaks Japanese should own it if they are part of the community on it.

The internet feels very mean nowadays. Not like it’s ever been a nice place but it feels so vicious now. I feel bad for kids who have to grow up in an environment where every single fuckup is documented on Google Docs. I don’t know how I made internet friends in the first place, and it doesn’t seem worth it anymore.

>>2913
You could be my friend.

>>2913
Yeah it is social media algorithms causing a mass psychosis event and it's so depressing and disheartening how it destroyed so many people turning them into mindless drones for government agents and corporate overlords.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Escapist_(magazine)
>dispute over missed payments, donations, mismanagement
>contractors quit except for Yahtzee
>gamergate
>staff cuts
>editor-in-chief fired
>entire video staff quits, forms Second Wind
>rest of staff laid off
>now posts AI generated articles and gambling
I never read The Escapist much. I preferred watching their video series - especially Zero Punctuation - because I was lazy and reading is hard. I've also never really liked most gaming journalism; I have disdain for anything I perceive as being too corporate. But finding out that The Escapist's hollowed out corpse is being puppeted as an AI generated content mill to promote gambling... I don't really have the words to describe this feeling ...this sense of dread.

Mikudayo ## Mod Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 05:39 PM No.2925

quick note, i'll be locking this thread if shit gets too political or goes off the rails

>>2924
Every so often I see this happening to a site I used to browse in the 2000s. Not even corpo stuff, just popular blogs and fansites. Something about it feels more depressing than just letting the site die.

>>2925
If it was what I said, I don't find acknowledging who benefits from the unintended consequences of turning people against each other to increase ad revenue to be political. I know some people try to frame it that way so I get why you might be trying to warn.

>>2929
One forum I used was shut down by Proboards because the admin became unable to be contacted. There was really no reason to do that since the site was moderated and had no issues. Funny how sites from the 90s are still around though I guess because hosting for decades was cheap in the past.

>>2925
Enshitification is inherently political but you do you. Every post here has been benign anyway.