It was an art forum but super edgy and toxic. They would be horrible to any new artist and if they didn’t improve quickly, they would continue to bully. They would even do the lolcow thing with some people. They hated deviantart because they felt it was too soft.
It was also populated with professional artists from the games/movies industry. So you would have these industry leads shitting on literal children for drawing poorly.
I know a few of them splintered and started conceptart.org, which tried to be more professional about it. But the owner and his friends used it to grift. Eventually the owner (who started a production art company an used the site for recruiting) got accused of being a creep. I just remember their attitudes and the way they would present themselves like rockstars.
Anyways, I saw someone mention SomethingAwful and it got me thinking about all the old forums from the 00s that, in retrospect, were fucking horrible.
Also LUElinks. That was more like right on the edge and was close to when 4chan started.
I always thought the original LUE was just /b/ before /b/ within the constraints of a forum, but I guess there’s apparently spinoff sites that make even more compelling cases for “4chan was inevitable.”