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So, this may come as a shock, but I'm currently considering deleting my account by next weekend. I didn't want it to go unannounced similar to how many users end their life on this site, so I wanted to let you guys know.

Why am I deleting? The main reason is because I'm not having as much fun on this site as I used to. The site's just become not what it was back when I first joined. I guess that may be due to my changing perception of meme-generators over time, but my criticisms extend to the community as well, which has been increasingly toxic ever since early-mid 2018. With that great divide of the streams we had not long ago, fun stream's became mundane while the politics stream has, despite what the rules say ("Humor and discussion around U.S. and world politics. Criticisms and debates are encouraged, but be constructive and don't harass anyone."), become anything but that. Back in the day, the political discussions on the website managed to make me a better person overall, changing my extremist views into more moderate approaches (though I accomplished that more thoroughly by finding some YouTube videos).

Firstly, a bit off topic, but I want to rant about the politics stream again. Some of you may be wondering, what's wrong with the politics stream?! It's perfect. It's middle-ground!
A) No it's not. It's not middle-ground. It is very much right-leaning to the point where the site actually praises the Republican party. Back in the day, while the site's right-leaning bias was still obvious, at least users would speak an opinion that both parties were bad. Heck, back in those days, james3v6 (a right-leaning libertarian on this site), got many appearances on the front page. I have my disagreements with him, but at least he was way more respectable in comparison to the users who get on the front page today. (I'ma try to avoid naming names) This leads me to my next issue.

If you do, I would be sad to see you go. I remember commenting on your creations when I was new here.

What I miss most about those days are the users I like that are now inactive or users that I liked that have deleted their accounts. Sometimes they come back, sometimes they don't.

I hope I don't have to look for you in the wayback machine.

Hey, thanks for the comment. It makes me feel appreciated. I'll miss you as well.

I should mention, though the old days are a factor, it's not the biggest factor as to why I'm leaving. I mainly wish to leave because I want to move along with my life and do other things, and IMGflip is currently taking time away from me.

That being said, I'll most likely be gone this weekend. I may come back, or I'll keep my presence on my site alive. That way I won't be forgotten.

B) The politics stream is just an echo chamber. IMGflip was an echo chamber back in the day as well, but at least the people who made the front page were respectable. Nowadays, the quality and thought of political memes has degraded drastically. Here's how to be a political account on IMGflip nowadays:

Step 1: You're username should reflect what your memes preach. call yourself something like "MAGA_trump", "patriot_trump", or "maga_patriot" to let brainless people know that you're real woke and intelligent, while also letting sane people know that deleting their account is the better option. You'll sound like a facebook page on IMGflip.
Step 2: Either steal some political cartoon and smack a caption over it, make some post about tide pods or being offended with a picture of a grumpy old person to display your emotions, or have some black-bordered image with impact font slapped above and below the central image in this format: 2td844.jpg (click to show)
Step 3: Feel the ecstasy of viewing your post on the front page.

(insert inspirational story about starfish here)

If you think about it, many of the reasons you're listing that the site sucks (especially the political-related ones - I only read your first two comments, because I got bored) can be flipped around on you as reasons you should stay - you're one of the relatively few bringing an alternative viewpoint to the table.

Regardless of political views, you're one of the coolest users on here, and you actually are funny. I'd hate to see you go.

Fair point; I'm one of the few alternative-viewpoint bringers left. However, the main reason I'm considering deleting is because I want to move on from IMGflip and occupy my life with something else, and keeping me on IMGflip would potentially prevent me from doing that. I know it seems that I'm doing it because of the politics stream, based on my (midnight) rant. I do say at the end of said rant that it could improve.

The reason I'm letting everyone know I'm deleting my account is so it isn't a surprise to everyone when it happens (like ghostofchurch's and robbiehurz's accounts being deleted were sudden). That way I can say my goodbyes.

Life balance is important... I didn’t have it a few years back, and was spending most of my time on imgflip.... now I’ve got more of a balance, and achieving goals outside of meme-ing. I hope you keep your account, and visit us - maybe the needle will swing back to more moderate times. If you delete your account, we will never know if it’s really you. Ha ha, of course we will - you are unique and no one can compare to you !

C) The newer users are the worst. We've gotten a few good eggs, but then we have people like this: 2w8axx.jpg (click to show)
That's user's not the only one after Octavia either. There are plenty now. imgflip.com/i/2rv660
2w8b6x.jpg (click to show)
Then there's that infamous purgeboy, but let's not get started on him (no one likes him anyway).
(I'm leaving names out for this one) I have tried to debate some of the newer conservative users on this site, and I can't remember a single one who actually pushed for a constructive debate. They couldn't reply to me without speaking in second person narrative and calling me a "democrat". One user, who I thought was different than the others, proved me wrong at the latter when I opened up a discussion about the baby boomers' impact on society. I admit, I was being a bit harsh on the debate, and my bitter rhetoric ran off the wrong way, but this person shut down all debate with me. Judging by the amount of discussion on his memes, I doubt he enjoys having actual discussion on his memes as much as he enjoys front page ecstasy.

Then there's another group of people who are bad at actual discussion: the liberals. Yes, the liberals have gotten progressively worse. That would include me if I didn't call myself something that doesn't roll off the tongue with such ease as the world "liberal". Anyway, it's no wonder that you liberals out there are being called "alts"; you guys sound EXACTLY THE SAME!! This is how to be a liberal on IMGflip nowadays:

Step 1: Use the same lame tactics that the right uses except just as bad, but possibly worse.
Step 2: Always name call. No room for actual debate! Just name call over and over and over--
Step 3: Steal my tactics. (See No. 2... oh FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU--) This one requires a bit of explanation.
Some time ago, Ben Shapiro memes were popular among Reddit users making fun of Ben Shapiro's style. Along with those, people have been mocking boomer-produced memes that get popular on Facebook. I've also using the meme formats to mock the easy-to-understand boomer formula of IMGflip images. I know it's seen as an ad hominem fallacy (thanks for revealing the user-base of this site, btw), but that's because I haven't made this aspect about it clear:
I'm mocking the style of the meme that is being utilized because of its usage among people who claim that they can "meme" while using a format that's been dead since 2010. (brace yourself, the anti-elitists are coming, as well as those r/bruhmoment users). This type of style is associated with Facebook users, particularly baby boomers, hence why not just me, but quite a few others in our youth today are referring to this style as the "boomer meme".

Then there are the IMGflip liberals: they see my style of commentary, and think, "HMMM!!! Today I will belittle everyone I meet by misusing the memes that MyrianWaffleEV introduced to us and gain moral high ground!" When I saw this happening, that put me off of using that format.

**No! The memes about Ben Shapiro and boomers are not about calling Republicans racist and what-not. They're meant for mocking the format of basic IMGflip memes and "Ben Shapiro owns" compilations. Thanks for ruining that for me. Call me elitist, but that is how you make me feel. What does it say about you when you're making memes in the exact same style, but unironically?!**

I've tried using the "boomer" argument less often as of recently due to the misinterpretations associated with it. However, I'm already convinced that I encouraged this toxic style of debate and misuse of commentary format just by putting up a few stupid memes. Nowadays, the only liberal I have real respect for on this site is Octavia_Melody because he actually tries to have a reasonable discussion, and he doesn't go around flaunting the memes I used on this site as if he knows everything about them. Most of the other users, however, are awful.

With that being said, I want to make it clear that I don't hate anyone on this site (that's a lie; I hate everyone, apart from Octavia... though we have our disagreements, he's been a humble friend to me since early-2016, and his heart's clearly in a better place than mine; he doesn't deserve all of the hate he gets nowadays), and I don't want to just be bitter about this website. From my standpoint, I see the politics stream as a place with great potential. I just wish the go***mn mods would step up and do something about it so we can have actual discussion again! Now, the time I came from wasn't perfect. You'd see this kind of thing on the front page of IMGflip a lot. However, when you were caught being vicious, you were properly ostracized for it. Nowadays, the bad outweigh the good. This is why I'm deleting my account. I wanted to make a change, but at the same time, I'm being prevented from getting on with the rest of my life as a person who isn't formulaic and mundane as the rest of the site.

I have did some long, hard thinking when deciding to delete my account. I will say, for as long as I've been on this site, I've been hoping for a rush of dopamine every time I logged on. That's part of why I've been sticking around this long; I can't believe it either. For those who tell me it's time for me to move on... well... you've got a week of me left; I'm deleting my account next weekend. I've made sure to archive myself on the Wayback Machine, by the way. That way people can see my account still, and possibly make history documents about my pointless presence on IMGflip. Now to get along with the rest of my life.... in a week.

I may not agree with you with that for the most part, but I respect your opinion.

I don't see the Imgflip liberals as getting worse. I see them as fighting against the Alt-Right NPC army that dominates the whole site.

Sure. We may sound like one another. We may barrow tactics from one another.

But that's all because we've gone desperate.

Sad to see you go but I can see why. This place has changed from what it was and I too have little joy logging on. The site has become almost hard to flip through. It's a bunch of streams but little content... repost and filler than anything else. Laters :(

Please don’t leave or delete your account. We need you to combat the Alt-Right (and Alt-Left) zombies / russian bots. We need your unique flavor to kick it up a notch, give spice to life Waff’Dib, and just make imgflip a better place. I (We) haven’t been around much but I’m still sad if you do leave.

You're welcome. Thank you for being a great friend.

I don't have much else to add, though I agree with everything you say, including around the changing environment starting from when Invicta left... his memes had more self-awareness and actual humor to them compared to the trash we see nowadays.
I'll let you know that I have changed my mind about deleting my account, but I'm going to be inactive on it, rather.

I wish you the best as well. :)

Hey guys, letting all of you know (hopefully you see this) because I can't reply to everyone. After reading the responses to this, I am considering keeping my account open, but I won't be active on it as much as I used to be due to events in life and the site not being as fun for me as it once was. I would also like to thank everyone for reaching out to me; I didn't think I'd get this much notice. For now I'll be in-and-out, but not likely to be deleting this account. Again, thank you everyone.

Meme moar and have fun!! I like how we can express our opinion and political viewpoints here but I don’t know what good changes to policies it will do to create an overall better society or government. It’s all for fun here IMO, which life is about, to me.

I went about two or three weeks without posting in politics and when I finally came back, I could see why I left. Eh, Imgflip did this to themselves. By caving into the minority who wanted politics out of the fun stream, they only made it worse. They also created a "repost" stream, which I can't for the life of me understand since they continuously feature repost after repost.

I think the majority of the front page memes in the politics stream are made by trolls who just want to fight. If you truly want to debate and discuss politics and other issues, here's a site I found several years ago that allow for actual debate. https://www.debate.org/

I wouldn't delete the profile, I would just leave it and if you ever decide to come back or post something randomly, you can jump right back on. I tried deleting my profile a few times, but it would never allow me to do it. Not sure why. But I'm glad they didn't.

You and I disagree on most things politically, but you never were a hateful liberal like some users on here are (laonsite), who always just mock and belittle anyone who thinks differently than they do. Basically, they don't want discussion or civil debate, they just want to call names and erase any type of civility.

Hope you stay active, if not every day, at least here and there.

When the separation of streams occurred, I also had disagreements with it. It ruined everything that was set in stone in the past. By making the politics stream, they created one of the worst echo chambers in the site, where one can get to the top by making the most basic of ad hominem fallacies.

Thanks for the site. I may not spend too much time debating politics like I used to due to some factors outside of IMGflip, though I'll look into it.

Well, on the plus side, I've decided not to delete my account after seeing the replies on this thread (which I made so everyone can voice an opinion on my departure). I will still be leaving though, and will delete all cache, cookies, and history related to activity on this site instead. Then I won't be tempted to come back, but if I want to do something, I can.

Thank you for that. I think the same about you, and come to think of it, I wouldn't be the same person I am today without debating with you or others like you. Believe me, the people who make the top of politics aren't the only kind of bad people on this site. There are many liberals on this site who are also hateful, similar to laonsite.

I will try to keep this account open. If it doesn't work out for me, I'll probably delete it. Again, thank you for your thoughts.

There. I got that damn thing off my chest.

plese do <3

Do what you want to do. It's okay if you leave. This is kind of a cesspool anyway.

But it would be kinda nice if there was a way to still stay in touch.

I have considered leaving myself. But I chose to stay because, well, being a troll to right-wringers is just that fun.