BO didn't sperg out as much as the retards that won't shut up about him doing things they disagree with like to pretend. The majority of leftypol users didn't notice or care. There's a significant portion of the board that comes here for a few threads in particular and don't venture much outside of them, because this board is filled with so much trash. They weren't effected by BO banning a dozen users arguing with them about barrel bombs or whatever the fuck.
If anyone would like to show me proof that BO is the one ruining Holla Forums I'd be more than happy to see it, because all the evidence I have and have seen is that BO's tantrums/spergouts/pranks/whatever hardly effected board population at all.
Last year, Holla Forums's active users peaked around 1600 from the middle of August to early September, declined, shot back up in October, but then started to decline again in November.
But that's true for every board on Holla Forums. Holla Forums is down 1400 users from its peak. Is BO responsible for that, too?
Holla Forums isn't being run any differently now than when it first started. The only things that have changed are
1. the users
2. the narrative
I don't know why, but there's been a dedicated effort to demonize BO and try to replace them. Depending on who you ask, BO is a double agent for Holla Forums, r/socialism, the FBI, or some kind of tranny cabal bent on ruining leftypol because…
It's easy to believe this shit because no one pays attention unless BO is doing something they don't like or there's some other kind of drama. They imagine some kind of mod cabal of shadowy gestapo ordered to ruin Holla Forums some reason they never articulate. Even though BO's been in charge from the beginning, he only wants to destroy Holla Forums now, but only in the most circuitous, illogical ways. It's fucking Holla Forums "the jews are worthless untermenschen but also world controlling masterminds" cognitive dissonance. BO is both incompetent tranny and scheming mastermind.
Again, I've never seen any actual evidence posted. Sometimes there'll be a screenshot of someone saying something, without any context or source, but that's the extent of it, at least from what I've seen. I don't think BO is the reason Holla Forums is in the state its in.
If it is BO, then why didn't board pop drop when these actual "spergouts" were happening? A lot of hay has been made over the Bunkerchan migration, but if you actually go back and look at the thread you can see that opinions were heavily mixed. That was probably one of the most acrimonious exchanges, but board pop only climbed from there.
In my opinion the variables effecting board pop are the seasons. Population was highest over the summer, but right now Holla Forums is about at the pop it was at this time last year.
There's also the board atmosphere. I don't think I'm imagining it when I say that Holla Forums has been an increasingly unhappy board. BO's unhappy. The mods are unhappy. The users are unhappy. People get fed up with the board for various reasons and they leave because they're no longer enjoying themselves or finding the stimulating content that brought them in the first place. The worse people feel, the worse the content, and the worse people feel in a vicious cycle that culminates in misery increasing until people get fed up and leave.
I think in part a lot of people want it to all be BO's fault, because that's an easy answer to a complex problem. It's not the board dynamic driving people away, or the constant shitposting, or the decline in discussion quality and frequency–it's just that faggot tranny! Toss them out and we can go right back to business as usual.
And if that's the case, then /leftpol/ is already fucking doomed. If it wasn't BO ruining Holla Forums, then it's leftypol that ruined leftypol. Trying to make "old leftypol" doesn't make any fucking sense, both because leftypol itself was a product of unique material and temporal circumstances, but also because we're seeing where "old leftypol" leads. It would be like trying to make "the old Soviet Union." It doesn't matter if it's Stalin or Brezhnev in the chairman's seat, we know where that path ends up.
If Holla Forums can't be fixed, then the only real option is the revolutionary one, and that isn't "just do the same thing all over again'' in the futile attempt to try and recapture bygone days.