No, I never went down that rabbit hole, which is interesting in hindsight. I went straight from old-school forums and chatrooms (where I’m sure I was very obviously a child) to Reddit.

By the time I was hearing about it it was just “that Nazi pedo incel site”.

Because it is

From what I heard, there was more going on initially. It’s just that that’s what tends to collect in totally unmoderated spaces, and 4chan fell victim to it.

No, as someone who dabbled in it very early on (like 2008) it has always been that way. Maybe the full on Nazi stuff was a bit later, but it was always filled with blatant racism.