If we look at the attributes of the imageboard that set it apart from other online platforms, the focus is usually on anonymity. Another important aspect that is now being forgotten is ephemerality. Threads from the distant past are lost forever and this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Not every thread needs to be immortalized and retained for the future. So much of the the “culture” of which I speak, as though it's an important thing, is just pictures of dicks, after all.

Automatic archival of threads takes a lot of the charm of the system away. What deserved to be immortalized was laboriously captured and stitched together. Even better, threads could be manufactured from thin air by pranksters. This isn't a bad thing at all. It's a very useful tool to combat lazy reporting. Our media is getting really fucking lazy these days because participants in the mainstream Internet are out there posting whatever comes to their mind, under their own names, on brand-name social media. Reporters never have to leave the office. They just calmly wait for the next idiot politician to say the next idiotic thing to the whole world.

Why in this environment is the imageboard becoming more reliable? I don't mean that it's becoming a reliable source of information, but it's now increasingly easy to fact-check and delve into the past. Even if the posters remain anonymous, complete fabrications will become impossible. Prior to automatic archival, what happened in the past disappeared and was gone forever and records of the past were completely unreliable. This added a layer of security through ephemerality for the participants in any conversation. There was simply no proving that any event ever actually happened beyond the (hopefully short-lived) retention of server logs (and even then, good luck).

I don't know what is to be done here, if anything. There's little point in challenging archives and no way to bring them down. Storage and hosting are just so cheap these days that anyone who wants information to be retained can do so with little effort. All I can do is call on those that are operating these archives to quit it, but they won't. They're also free to call me a fag and I will do the same with no threat of reprisal. This is why I love the system anyway. Fuck you guys, one and all! Seriously though, shit's faggy. Quit it.