It’s been ten years since Gamergate happened. I never cared about it, but the fallout surrounding it lead to a portion of the 4chan userbase to move to 8chan. It was a wild time, the freedom we had. Didn’t like the moderation on a 4chan board? Make the board on 8chan. Make a board for a specific interest. I remember so many people moving over to the site, including content creators like drawfags. It was such a breath of fresh air to be able to post and not be so bogged down by the moderation of 4chan. I remember in the early days of posting and having Hotwheels replying to something I said, it felt nice having that connection with the admin of the site. It felt like the dawn of a new era. Of course, the good times didn’t last forever. I seem to remember a solid six months where 8chan was busy, but then as 2015 rolled on you could feel it wasn’t the same, and people were quietly going back to 4chan, even the ones who proudly said they wouldn’t. I stopped visiting the original 8chan sometime in 2016 or 2017, because it felt so dead. Then the original site was taken offline in 2019. Now with 8moe, a spinoff of the original site, it feels like a shell of its former self. In the decade since Gamergate happened, there has never been a single event that has caused a mass migration of 4chan users to go elsewhere. Despite the fact that people proclaim 4chan has gotten worse and worse over the years, people still stay there, stating there is no place else to go. 8moe still exists. So the question I’ve been pondering for the last little while is this: why do people stay using 4chan when they have alternatives? Will there ever be another event that will cause 4chan users to leave en masse? Or will everyone who likes the image board lifestyle just stay on 4chan 4ever?