since I'm a little low on sleep today, I'm probably going to repeat myself on posts I've made about this before, but let's analyze general behavior patterns of people who frequent imageboards and their cultural influence
so, 4chan culture has always spilled out onto the web to some degree, and I don't think that inherent fact is much different in recent times since the dominant social and video media platforms have made it clear that they don't really care about this stuff
the exterior of it is certainly different though, kind of a rewind of 2014 in some ways. the two big things I've seen is feigned ignorance from self-identified members, and the outpouring of mostly sanitized snippets of content meant for people who probably used to browse the site when they were younger. the latter is what keeps it still in the online public consciousness, the former is how they try to keep an influx of users
you've probably seen popular accounts that are like "greentext out of context" which pull curated selections of posts that suggest the personality of a depraved terminally-online dude without directly showing that that's the prevailing personality of that place. it's not some deep propaganda arm of the community, but them subtly advertising themselves with the stuff that doesn't put people off as easily
the other type is a little less common to see, since members of that site veer between doing it very skillfully or being so socially-disconnected that they fail to realize what is and isn't obvious dogwhistling and give away the whole ruse right away
let's center on the more careful ones. I saw their type come out of the woodwork during discussions on reddit about alternatives due to the reader app apocalypse a few months ago. lemme give you the general idea:
"Honestly, and I know this sounds nuts, 4chan. The weird racists are all on /pol/, whereas /v/ is a pretty chill place for discussions around games and industry news"
you know that this is some grade-A bullshit. it doesn't matter whether they're lying to you about the content there, or lying to themselves that the obvious right-wing political bent of the site is not actually political because it's not expressly about politics. either way they're lying to someone
they'll play innocent about the fact, because it's easy to act casual and wait for when someone with a radar for this stuff points out the lie, then spring the old "you're just tilting at windmills" act to make their enemies look paranoid. alternatively they'll just ignore it because they know that the reactionary part of the culture is more well-known and less acceptable nowadays, so answering the response only risks giving away the game
automated moderation systems are really easy to sidestep because there are a million ways to be bigoted without explicitly using words that trip the sensors. what matters is flying under the radar of moderators for sites like reddit, where mods can recognize explicit bigotry but not dogwhistles
if neither exist and they're not trying to soft-advertise the site to onlookers, it's full power level time. this is why youtube comments are such a fucking abyss, they roll around like piggies in the mud there cause they know nobody will stop them. recent twitter is the same deal
as usual, I don't have a call to action here. stick to communities where you know the admins are wise to that routine, avoid going into discussion areas of sites where you go to get general content. maybe this kind of thing will eventually suffocate itself, but until then: you aren't making yourself stronger by subjecting your brain to it, just as a person doesn't level up if they catch covid 10 times