Like yeah its ideology was poorly articulated and delivered condescendingly and cringe and often cynical or opportunistic and just as often the work of teenagers, but it was also one of the first big online communities I can recall to take a consistent and uncompromising stance against at the time near-universally normalized forms of bigotry like ableism, fatphobia, and transphobia.

That’s not to trivialize the very real and foundational work of all those who came before, but for many people, myself included, it was my very first significant exposure to any of these ideas. I feel like all the best modern online leftist spaces take the same basic stance against those bigotries but from a much more mature, systemic, and materially grounded angle.