>>1375600>>13756012016 is sort of the 2nd worst; the real worst is 2014.
https://encyclopediadramatica.online/G*merGate"Gamergait" (The real name is filtered for reasons) happened which a lot of faggotries and glorified drama slapfight happens, and Christopher Poole is against 4chan side, yadda yadda yadda. Telling you this would be waste of my time and emotions, so I link the source. It was so retarded, that Moot quit and gave the site ownership to Hiroyuki, the creator of 2Chan [Japanese 4chan, the site that inspired the birth of 4chan]. Hiroyuki is somewhat worse with his scandals about ripping people off and stealing data creations, blah blah blah. Again, it's too much shit information, but it's one of the reasons why 4chan has gone to big shit.
2016 is another moment 4chan has gone DEEPER shit when Donald Trump got elected to be President of USA, which invited newfags [like you] and other cancerous retards to this site, disrespecting cultures and funtimes.
IMO, what defines newfags are "normal people who is so fucking boring and doesn't give a shit about the culture nor having fun. They just want to post how retardedly sexy their GF is and stupid real life shit." You could say they're bloggers. Another normalfags are Pepeposters and Wojackposters, but I'm too busy to write more of this shit.
>TL;DR 2014 is end of good times for 4chan. 2016 and /pol/ basically put 4chan on mainstream, which is like beating a dead horse with a dildo and other shit