Be the change you want to see

It's the natural cycle of life that things change and people move on, and that can't be changed. Though the extent of that change is decided by the people who make the good times so good. The hard part of it all is realizing that when you want your golden ages back the first person who needs to spur it on is yourself. If the progenitors of the golden years were able to do it then you can as well by grabbing them by the balls and making them scream out in glory again.

Don't let yourself be swallowed up in apathy and entropy. Resist and fight on for the future. I've already come to terms with that the old people who we lost to IRL probably aren't going to come back to revive the good old days so new blood is necessary and generational differences likely aren't too different aside from the cultural references one gets. But as Tony himself said "Remember when is the lowest form of conversation" and it's true. If you can't get anything moving beyond the past you'll always be stuck longing for it.

>>97314
I'm a 2020 newfag, so I can't resonate with what you are saying. Maybe you are one of the original oldfags.
Guess what, I want to go back to 2008 when everything was still mostly offline and Nokias still ruled the mobile phone world and things were still fun to do.
Is it going to happen? No.
More importantly, would you be happy if it happened? In my case, no. I, and probably you, would still find ways to be miserable. So the only thing you can do is find new things to enjoy and stop weeping over the past. Case in point, 4jp had become repititive and boring, so I came here. 4chan wasn't even my first imageboard, i started off from an obscure, regional one. It slowly became unusable, so I came to 4chan. For now I like posting here. Maybe I will grow tired and move on. Learn to let go, anon. That's the way things go. All your "last seen online 7 years ago" friends have likely moved on with their lives. If you had any friends as a kid, they're also out there, living their lives in the present instead of the past. You should do the same thing. All those memes and jokes and posts were fun in their time. You're making them live too long. They are best left in fond memories.

>>97318
if you joined the fanbase in 2020 you never knew the good jp, it went to shit after 2015
actually the decline started sometime in 2013

I know I can't turn back the time, I can't change the wrold nor myself nor freeze things and keep them forever the way they used to be. It's just that I feel like I keep being stuck in reality that is progressively more foreign to me. As for my friends from my youth, that is a good example: I am very nostalgic towards their past selves, the way they used to be and look in middle school, but couldn't care less about their adult selves. I actually met them as adult(s) a few years ago and only felt frustration, as these people were strangers to me. I keep having dreams about their middle school selves all the time tho.

>>97319
>It's just that I feel like I keep being stuck in reality that is progressively more foreign to me
You and I, anon. It feels like I fell asleep sometime in 2013 and woke up in 2023 and I know nothing around me, or that everything I remember had been a dream. Haven't gotten a grip nor figured out just what is going on. But once you spawn on the map, you have no choice but to play the game. And since you have no choice, might as well accept the things and the rules you don't like. That's my policy, anyway.

>>97319
It's the advent of Discord grooming servers and social media. I have witnessed a common aspect to everyone who I've followed and known who progressively became more and more crazy and seemingly bipolar, they all became more and more active in social media.
It does not help that kung flu had everyone become a shut-in and mostly communicate through social media. In my case I was already far used to that lifestyle and mostly spent the quarantine days torrenting movies and anime but I've seen former friends become completely different people (for the worse) after becoming active in those platforms. Entire online niche groups became infested with this mental virus. It makes me want to become a hermit in the woods.

I think Touhou should be allowed to continue until Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom and then be frozen. But /jp/ really should have stopped before 2015...
There's a lot to miss, but one thing I always get sad about is the Aizu-Wakamatsu train stream. Whenever I check the board out of morbid curiosity the thread is still going, but with different streams, and much lower activity... I miss everyone being together at Aizu-Wakamatsu.
If I ever go to Japan I still want to visit that train station and see it with my own eyes.

>>97322
tbh I think it's a miracle touhou is still alive after so many years as a fandom. Now in 2025 more years have passed since 2008 then in between 1997 (first touhou game) and 2008.

Although the quality of main touhou games have been steadily declining since touhou 11 if not earlier, as well as Zun's character design ability, there is still a lot of content made through fangames and artists. I am really grateful I can still enjoy touhou project now, even though it's not such a big thing as it used to be. And the new fumos and some merchandise is just awesome.
It's just that...interacting with the fanbase now feels a bit...hollow. I am aware it may just be my nostalgia, we do experience world differently when we are younger (for the better). I can't really put my finger on it. Maybe shitposting changed? Actually the concept of shitposting for fun, ironically or not, seems to have died. The various personas, both avatarfags and tripfags and actually namefags too, that made these imageboard communities so fun (even as we made fun of them and called them cancer) seem to be gone too. Other communities seem to be obsessed with pedo hunting or infested with people who are into le niche thing because it's niche and not because they actually like it. Like otaku hipsters, I guess?
The entire otaku thing also became political, somehow. Suddenly it's not ok to say nips or japs, suddenly, all kinda swear words we used to throw at each other are now slurs even though we never meant them as such.

I am just ranting now, I guess. I guess, well, it's kinda my fault too, because around 2015 I left 4chan for a few years, frustrated with various events there and because of some pretty serious events in my real life too. I continued playing touhou games and music, but wasn't very active in any community, and when I came back around 2019 or maybe 2020 I found out that the home I always took for granted is gone. It's only been getting worse since.

One of my biggest reality check moments was I think somewhere in 2018 tho when someone online told me to guess what they hold in their hand, and the correct answer that I didn't even think to think of was smartphone. I got a functional smartphone around that time too, and only recently learned to type with my thumbs.

I think if you can sift through all the noise then you can find that there's some good content still being made out there and keeping yourself isolated from the rest of the terrible space that online threatens to become actually makes you feel a lot better. The couple weeks that 4chan was down proved this to me more than anything else in that I enjoyed every second of my day while posting and gaming and watching some anime. It proved to me that there's not much that's needed to recapture the feeling of being on the internet for fun besides having some other likeminded people to have fun with. Really I think if people were just able to break down the social barriers that we've built up that prevent us from truly connecting with each other over online communication then we can probably enjoy ourselves just as much as before. And I do think there's barriers that people have put around themselves, it's similar to what you describe in "The entire otaku thing also became political, somehow. Suddenly it's not ok to say nips or japs, suddenly, all kinda swear words we used to throw at each other are now slurs even though we never meant them as such." just having that thought in your mind causes somewhat of a mental block that keeps you from trying to enjoy yourself in that usual way.

>>97323
The funny thing is that 4/jp/ is way better off, even at its current state, than the entire rest of the site. Going from 2016 /vr/ to 2023 /vr/ was heartbreaking, /a/ similarily was made into a no fun zone thanks to janny incompetence. /v/ was dogshit since 2011 but damn is it not a completely rotting crumbling corpse in its current state compared to 10 years ago.
/jp/ is definitely in a worse state than in 2015 yet it still has retained many aspects that maintain some of a quality standard in the board.

sorry

>>97326
>laughing emoji

go back

>>97328
he said sorry

>>97314
lol I miss when whining about the old internet was the least of my problems. And so will you.

This type of negative thread really isn't my thing and I don't want to "contribute" to it. Good things are still around. I hope people like OP will eventually focus on making things nice instead of negative.

Well Touhou is still insanely popular and there are still nice people hanging around on the internet. Rather than being a nostalgic hangout could this place just be a hangout? There's no getting back to the past, but somehow even though websites die and software dies as users migrate, new communities keep popping up. Sometimes you might even meet old friends. I've got faith that likeminded people always find eachother in this world.
As for the games, you can still enjoy all the old stuff and there's new ones being made. If you somehow got back to the "golden age" it would just end again. Or if it persisted it'd probably get stale for you eventually. The feeling of experiencing something for the first time can't be replicated but that's just how it is.
And for the community, ehh I don't see it going anywhere anytime soon.

>>97331
I think I will keep it short for this reason.

Looking at various recent /poll/s, Kissu seems to have between 20 and 30 active users and has enough activity to where I can check /all/ multiple times in an hour and not be disappointed with a lack of posts - I'd even have considered this a healthy community on a big portal in the 2000s. I'm having the time of my life here with actually good topics, conversations and people.

Many sites in the internet have had their rise, peak, decay, and fall. My first case was YTMND, and then Bungie's The Flood forum. Now 4chan is in its decay phase. The hack made me go to a handful of altchans, including Kissu, and realize that there are still sites experiencing their rising phase. In other sites like YouTube, I have curated and molded the algorithm to show me the stuff I like. The result is that I've been feeling pretty cheery and optimistic recently. It's up to (You) as to whether you want to feel sad about the past prime of your favorite site or move to greener pastures and relive them in a different way.

I remember people were waxing nostalgic for "the good ole days" in fucking 2011 even, including on Jaypee.
We're just old and sentimental.
In many aspects things actually are worse, but we still have just as much (and more) entertainment to engage with than back then.

I'm not getting caught up in anymore regret whirlpools.

>>97336
>I remember people were waxing nostalgic for "the good ole days" in fucking 2011 even
understandable

>>97314
I'll echo what another said. We're just old and sentimental. Much of our enjoyment comes from our own perspective and we have a greater degree of control over that than you give faith to. Touhou in particular has had its ups and downs, and it'll continue to change for better and worse until the day ZUN dies or stops working on it. There's quite a lot of things I don't like about it and pine for pre-TH11 days, but there's also a lot of things I do like, even up to now that I would miss had things ended at LoLK or IN. My philosophy is to look forward to new things, but be selective. The best Gensokyo is the one in your heart, and Touhou will only die if you stop talking about it.

>>97325
4/jp/ has always lagged behind the rest of the site by years. It's why it was so nice since most of the time you could trust that it was bearable compared to everything else around it. I'm just selective for what threads I'm looking for, and I'm happy with that.

>>97331
Complaining is all well and good but it's not going to go anywhere if it's just going to be a pity party. Be the change you want to be is still a true statement, even if it feels like pissing into a pond. Worst that can happen is your thread gets a few posts and dies, but there's nothing wrong with bumping it yourself either since popping back up to the top can kick off discussion again.

>>97334
>youtube
I just spammed "dont show me this channel ever fucking again" to almost everything, now all that shows up is things I like.
If I ever use "shorts" it's literally all videos about woodworking/cars/animals or educational. If you see brainrot it's YOUR fault.

>>97365
do you need an account for that

>>97368
you can do that two ways, the first is with the account, the other is with a third party application like freetube.

obviously without an account you won't have the algorithm cater to you individually, but you can still curate your recommendations by filtering out videos and channels locally

>>97314
>touhou to be mainstream and good, and otaku culture being for otaku and not swarmed by normies
These are mutually exclusive.

>>97383
mainstream in otaku culture I mean, as opposed to being semi niche like now