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Without a doubt, /a/. What used to be one of the most popular boards on the site is now a slow, boring, unpleasant mess. How did this happen?
It was sort of a perfect storm of nonsense. There was a very brief time in "nerd culture", about a year and a few months ago, when anime became "cool" for a little while, probably fostered by One Punch Man, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, and Kill la Kill, all very American-pandering, airing somewhat close to each other, which naturally led to an influx of newbies that didn't know anything about the medium storming into /a/ en masse.
Now, this normally wouldn't be a problem - like the industry it surrounded, /a/ was extremely exclusionary, but that was the point - it was the one place on the internet where you could discuss anime & manga with people who actually knew and gave a shit about anime & manga. But it just so happened that at this time there was a major moderation shake-up in the wake of Moot leaving the site, and as such threads that normally would get deleted (Naruto threads, rec threads, etc.) were not only staying alive, but were staying active due to the influx of said newfags. Oldfags felt betrayed and left, and the ones that remained demanded more moderation which led to a bunch of newfag mods that didn't really understand the board culture.
/a/ staples like Daily Japan Time, It's Time , and Every Day Until Christmas threads got deleted while the newfag threads stayed up. Content consisted entirely of seasonal show discussion, tumblr memes, and any show that didn't fit in the the current zeitgeist being labeled "weaboo", as if it weren't the anime board of a Japanese cartoon website. For a while, that was just how it stayed, and /a/ transitioned from being one of the most stable boards on the site to one of the least.
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