>> 21/03/11(Thu)8:59:47am No. 9737 >>9733 That's the joke! 2ch was never really "underground" to begin with due to its immense popularity with a wide variety of demographics, its generally above-board topics, and how much of its culture made its way into mainstream Japanese pop culture The term "underground" on the Japanese web - much like the Western one - was more commonly associated with 90s and early 2000s hacker/criminal culture (hax, warez, pr0nz, CP, drugz, and generally just "beating the system"), and the likes of early Ayashii World sites These days it refers more to BBSes on the dark web like OnionChannel (Onionちゃんねる) and Kogarasumaru (小烏丸), which (allegedly!) cover similar kinds of illicit/illegal topics as their 90s counterparts In case it wasn't obvious already: the "itai kopipe" (painful copypasta) in the OP - first posted to 2ch in August 2006 - was a self-deprecating embarrassing story, and the 2-page manga someone made featuring it is intended to be comical The copypasta became popular because it represented the stereotypical wannabe-badass teenager who viewed 2ch as an exclusive underground website for "yabai people" - despite the fact the site was mostly just otaku messing around and not all that "underground". This made many 2ch users laugh, experience strong feelings of fremdschämen, and feel embarrasment over their own "dark pasts" as edgy teenagers Regarding how 5ch/2ch is viewed today: some sentiments I've seen around the Japanese net say that 5ch/2ch is depopulated compared to how it used to be, a lot of it's culture (slang, kaomoji, AA, etc.) have become "obsolete", and the advent of smartphones and matome (summary) sites have changed its culture from a "lurk 6 months before posting or prepare to get torn a new one" to a more "casual BBS"