>In my experience, the most fun that I've had on the chans has been in the 'general' themed threads.
The most fun I ever had on 4chan was in two types of thread
1) threads where memes were created real time
(real memes, hand drawn with MSpaint, not that lazy AI slop)
regardless of those threads being generals or single event threads with no fixed basis
2) dump threads
(where lots of informations about a specific topic got posted, there was lots to learn from those threads)
The sense of community you talk about, I saw that in the prepetuation and evolution of the created memes, and of the informations shared between people searching and discovering new things
But I think only a minority of real people had that same idea of fun and of community, and most people would agree more instead with your idea of fun inside generals
Though general threads, when they become too fast, they always carry the risk of turning into walls, stopping any new thread from getting visibility, noise drowning everything out around them, slowly making the people making new threads give up. Fast generals are the most fitting example of "make the boards boring by posting content with the same language but which is meaningless"
So it must be warned and cautioned about generals potentially turning into a cancer, and to be wary when they start to act that way
So long you are aware of the risk, go for it