Correct me if I'm wrong but, you and others are saying that posting racial slurs, CP and gore for shock value are an integral part of the culture?
I don't understand why it's important to be flamed at all by people who are anonymous? I might banter with friends, but there's a shared history of understanding there; in an anonymous message board there's none of that so I don't understand what it's trying to achieve?
No, that stuff is gross and you block/avoid it. The integral part is that the forum uncensored - even if a large quantity of that uncensored content is unwanted.
And fwiw, 4chan is only one example of a (nearly) uncensored board, it's far from the best or nicest.
> I don't understand why it's important to be flamed at all
That's not the important part, but that you can have the conversation at all. The idiots running around screaming are like ghosts in Harry Potter, distractions if you let them be but almost invisible if you ignore them.
> racial slurs ... are an integral part of the culture?
Well sometimes yes, actually. Like the now banned subreddit, 2balkan4u, sometimes "hate subs" actually aren't. I'm familiar only via gaming friends, but it's basically people who've come together around "hating" each other for ethnic reasons. It doesn't look friendly but is, with people bonding over their shared history - often dark - and collectively watching the world go by from a cynical pov. It's like therapy and the hanging out with the only people who understand you, something many veterans feel even when meeting ex-"enemy" combatants. A sanitized version of this wouldn't work.
I don't understand why it's important to be flamed at all by people who are anonymous? I might banter with friends, but there's a shared history of understanding there; in an anonymous message board there's none of that so I don't understand what it's trying to achieve?