I'm old enough to remember when 4chan was self identifying as the Internet's hate machine, before xkcd referenced it as such: https://xkcd.com/591/
Sometimes people insist that's all role-play and irony; others insist that if it ever was, it certainly isn't now.
But regardless, I remember pre-2005, and it wasn't all like what I saw the two times I looked at 4chan. Bits were. Bits were much worse. But mostly, mostly, people were kinder… at least, unless political tribalism came up.
