>much of what's posted on 4chan is ironic, deliberately inflammatory
This hasn't been plausible, much less true, for 10 years. I don't know how anyone can look at, for example, Payton Gendron's manifesto and say it's ironic. Were the bullets he fired ironic as well?
There is an entire generation of users, who are probably the bulk of users now, who were never in on the "joke" (if there ever was one).
There is a huge difference between "livestreaming a shooting on facebook", and writing a 200 page manifesto about how /pol/ redpilled you. I guess all 200 pages were just "banter". The guy practically wrote a book on being radicalized by /pol/, and that to you, is the same as opening up Facebook and clicking the "record" button.
I thought the same the first time I heard about a livestream murder on FB. I thought: I'd shut that feature off instantly if I were in charge. No way I could live with my conscience if someone used my platform for murder attention.
This hasn't been plausible, much less true, for 10 years. I don't know how anyone can look at, for example, Payton Gendron's manifesto and say it's ironic. Were the bullets he fired ironic as well?
There is an entire generation of users, who are probably the bulk of users now, who were never in on the "joke" (if there ever was one).