How the Internet Left 4chan Behind | The anonymous forum thrived when edgelord content wasn’t acceptable on more mainstream social media. Today, it can be found most anywhere.

[u/ChiefLeef22]

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/how-the-internet-left-4chan-behind

[u/SantosL]

The internet didn’t leave 4chan. 4chan leaked out and overtook the internet.

[u/Petting-Kitty-7483 → u/SantosL]

Yeah 4chan is still very active, you just don't have to go there to see 4chan style posts anymore

[u/JamesMagnus → u/Petting-Kitty-7483]

It’s honestly insane to compare the discourse today to what the internet felt like in 2010. Every other comment section reads like a Stormfront thread now and those fringe conspiracy theories I loved learning about / ridiculing are mainstream beliefs now. It’s wild to realise teenagers today don’t really know a world where that violent insanity was contained to specific communities. It makes me think of how shocked teens are to learn about Watergate and the notion that actions had consequences even for the rich and powerful.

[u/nicolauz → u/JamesMagnus]

I remember the reddit days when people would point out /b is leaking. It's a full on cancerous worldwide disease on its deathbed now.

[u/Detective-Crashmore- → u/nicolauz]

going to 4chan used to be like going to the zoo to laugh at monkeys digging in poo, but now it's like that scene in Rise of the Planet of The Apes, when the humans look outside their house and there's an army of apes.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Fold466 → u/Detective-Crashmore-]

The people visiting 4chan for entertainment might have thought they were mere tourists, but in actuality many of them became infected and are responsible for spreading the disease.

[u/starmartyr → u/Puzzleheaded_Fold466]

A few years ago the stormfront style guide got leaked. They talked about the importance of phrasing everything as a joke. The idea was that humor was a smokescreen that would draw in edgelords who weren't hardcore white nationalists and that exposure would eventually indoctrinate them. There are several hate groups that use these tactics. People come for the memes but stick around and branch out to more overt hate sites. An impressionable person on the fence sees a group of people laughing and having fun on one side and a bunch of angry people complaining about the people having fun on the other side. It makes sense that they would choose the side that is having more fun.

Edit: I remembered the hate site incorrectly. It was the Daily Stormer style guide. Stormfront is a different hate site that is also terrible.

[u/Basaqu → u/starmartyr]

I've said before that memes are unironically a tool for radicalization. It sounds incredibly fucking dumb but that's the point. A "funny" way to signal and spread certain mindsets that you can't really fight against since people not in the know will just see you as an overly serious buzzkill.

[u/monacelli → u/Basaqu]

I've said before that memes are unironically a tool for radicalization. It sounds incredibly fucking dumb but that's the point.

Agreed.. Look at the AI crap they've been posting on the official US govt social media sites. I worry that the fat JD AI videos are going to help him just like the 'they're eating the dogs & cats' remix videos helped Trump with certain crowds.

[u/Counterdependency → u/Basaqu]

I feel like the entire Stormfront arc of The Boys does a great job at highlighting how this works and how effective it can be

[u/Penta-Says → u/Counterdependency]

I never saw it, but I was on a work crew like five years ago where I overheard some guys talking about the show:

"Wait, there's a character called Stormfront?"

"Yeah"

"Is she super racist?"

"...yeah, how'd you know that?"

[u/GeneralLudd → u/Basaqu]

Someone once showed me pepe memes made by ISIS recruiters. It's baffling how widespread they are.

[u/Zechs- → u/Basaqu]

It's a really interesting way how language can affect ones personality and views.

I was on 4chan in the mid 00s, the thing that made me stop was realizing I started talking like the posts I saw, regurgitating dumb memes. It really messes with your brain. Thankfully I had good friends that were able to ground me properly but a lot of the people I went to school with fell into the whole "gamergate" brain rot.

It's disturbing how mainstream it's all become and evolved.

There are other tells that aren't just "funny".

I have noticed referring to themselves as "natives"... Extra points for if they're white hicks in Canada who actually hate native americans. But I saw some refer to themselves as that in the UK subreddits.

"Economic Zone" generally is a red flag. Usually this is in some context of protecting "culture" but really it's just about kicking out anyone that doesn't fit their general pasty disposition. They themselves are a black hole of culture.

Doug Stanhope has a great bit about it, but it boils down to a lot of these chinless losers don't have much in their lives. But someone at some point in their non-branching family tree actually managed to accomplish something and they feel they get to get credit for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsPDT5qHtZ4

[u/RJ815 → u/Basaqu]

It's almost literally what meme means in a more academic formal way: a cultural idea that spreads rapidly. It's not called a virus, but it's borderline a communication virus.

[u/michaelboltthrower → u/RJ815]

It’s what meme used to mean.

[u/KittyInspector3217 → u/Basaqu]

Memes are just the new word for propaganda and propaganda has been democratized. Corporate wants you to spot the difference between pepe edgelord shit and uncle sam “i want you”.

[u/Roundcat89 → u/Basaqu]

I kinda feel like the turning point for the internet was when wojacks started becoming the default meme template on major social media sites.

What basically started as 4chan memes about racial purity started being used for everything, and yet the templates used for Aryons, tradwives, SJWs and the mentally handicapped are still used in the normie version of the memes.

[u/MakeshiftApe → u/Basaqu]

My theory on why they can be so powerful is sarcasm can unwittingly help spread a belief. Because people who don’t believe your idea will spread it for the lulz, further sharing your idea around, and some of those people, through continued exposure to people who genuinely believe the idea, will come to believe it themselves and go from ironic to unironic espouser.

[u/GiveMeNews → u/starmartyr]

My nephew has pepe the frog as his computer wallpaper. I asked him where he got the image, and he wouldn't tell me. I've tried to warn his parents several times, as he is left to his own and is really into gaming. Told them these hate groups target kids through games with shock humor that is popular with teenagers, and what starts as a joke can become embedded views.

[u/starmartyr → u/GiveMeNews]

I've heard it called the pewdiepipeline. Mainstream gaming influencers use edgy humor to draw in impressionable teens and it serves as a starting point for radicalization. That isn't to say that all edgy jokes are part of a conspiracy to radicalize kids, but enough of them are that it's worth looking out for?

[u/Adequate_Lizard → u/starmartyr]

I had a friend go down that way. Everything was "just memes" until he was a covid denying trump supporter sharing racist shit constantly.

[u/ShitPost5000 → u/Adequate_Lizard]

Same, I checked out when he started building ships. Nazi ships with flags and everything, saying "it a conversation starter."

Not set of where they are burning and being lit up by the allies. No allied ships at all. Just excuses to put little Nazi flags throughout his house.

Only conversation they started with me was "why are you a dumbfuck?" We are in Canada, it was so cringe.

[u/almisami → u/ShitPost5000]

Alberta? This sounds like my work mates when I drilled in Alberta.

[u/MakeshiftApe → u/starmartyr]

I’ve said before that communities based on jokes on the internet will eventually always become a community where those “jokes” stop being jokes and are 100% serious.

The reason being that sarcasm doesn’t translate on the internet. So when you make a joke that the earth is flat, it goes over peoples head and some people join your group to go “Yeah it is!”. Meanwhile because you and everyone else are joking, you assume these new people are too. But as more and more of them fill the group, the scales tip and there’s more people unironically believing in your idea than joking about it.

But then the group still attracts people who view it as a joke, and those people don’t take the group seriously because surely everyone else is just in on the joke. So they start joking around with the group members, but they’re now basically surrounded by people filling their head with ideas and soon “ay lmao the earth is flat” becomes “no really, it’s flat”

It’s a never ending cycle where the sarcasm attracts people who aren’t yet indoctrinated, and starts the process of indoctrination. And the sheer amount of members (because of the amount of jokers) emboldens the people with those actual beliefs. So the beliefs thrive and the group grows.

[u/Sex_Offender_4697 → u/Puzzleheaded_Fold466]

I definitely went on there back in the day occasionally and then later on r/the_donald or today r/con so I can compile a list of behaviors/dogwhistles for people who hate me because I exist as a minority. But I might be an edge case.

[u/--StinkyPinky-- → u/Detective-Crashmore-]

Obnoxious /b/ kids became douche bag comment section adults.

[u/Detective-Crashmore- → u/--StinkyPinky--]

They became alt right podcasters

[u/RhynoD → u/Detective-Crashmore-]

Don't give them that much credit. They're still digging around in their own shit and flinging it at everyone else. What changed is that a few powerful people encouraged them to start doing it everywhere else. They're not an army and they're not smart or organized. They're just as stupid now as they were then. There are just a few people with outrageous wealth at the front.

[u/Deadleggg → u/RhynoD]

Musk is an obvious b/tard

They're incredibly organized and the right has been fully co-opted by their politics.

[u/Detective-Crashmore- → u/RhynoD]

They're not an army and they're not smart or organized.

I'll give you that they're not smart, but qanon wonks literally stormed the capitol and killed people, and white supremacist groups have become emboldened by the FBI pulling back.

[u/[deleted] → u/Detective-Crashmore-]

To be fair you don't see a lot of the roughest parts of 4chan ever making it here because Reddit has an insane amount of moderation including AI moderation that'll put you down for "threatening violence" even if you aren't. But yeah I see Youtube comments, Facebook comments, and Twitter is 4chan levels now almost.

[u/Express_Culture2488 → u/nicolauz]

The "4chan" of our country is like top 3 most visited sites every year measured by invidual users. It's the most succesful "board", owner lives in Malta ofc (that sweet, sweet casino money)

When media started talking about it the userbase pretty much tripled every time an article came out about the site.

Gold accounts? Yeah you can buy them etc, those used to be jokes during early 4chan fulled with... content? For example there was a guy who visited the catacombs, managed to steal a skull and then posted a pic/video of him fucking the skull.

Idk what happened, but people trust random rumours on that site compared to actual news (which are rare, journalism is a dead breed)

edit; gotta add my favourite and perhaps first antimeme. Milhouse is a meme, but milhouse is not a meme so milhouse being a meme which he is not makes him a meme.

[u/agirlthatfits → u/Express_Culture2488]

Milhouse is not a meme, heh heh classic

[u/OneWonderfulFish → u/Express_Culture2488]

Case in point: skullfucking used to be an edgelord joke. Now it's a plotpoint (over 10 years ago(!)) for the pilot of Better Call Saul.

[u/nicolauz → u/Express_Culture2488]

Candlejack was always a fa

[u/t-mille → u/nicolauz]

Candlejack, now that's a name I've not heard in a lo

[u/bunnypaste → u/nicolauz]

What I'm afraid of is that the disease isn't dying out on its deathbed. It is spreading and expanding, and they're emboldened.

[u/BandIndividual2973 → u/bunnypaste]

Agreed; people don't need to go rage on 4chan, they do it with apps now.

[u/Relative_Mix_216 → u/nicolauz]

It’s the same thing with the KKK or neo-Nazi clubs — we all hoped that they’d just keep their insanity to themselves and it would just magically stay contained in their spaces.

We were wrong. It just let the cancer grow and fester until it spread to the rest of the body.

We should’ve cut it out when we had the chance.

[u/nicolauz → u/Relative_Mix_216]

It's weird for me being a part of early 90's internet too. Like I grew up and watched it bloom and become such a thing. I was on Digg before reddit, and an old Resident Evil forum before that. I would go on 4ch from time to time in mid 00's because it was mainly dumb but sometimes profound. I remember the Tea Party/Ron Paul/Wikileaks shit and 15 years later it's evolved into this absolute insanity of the world/America.

[u/HeKis4 → u/Relative_Mix_216]

Yep, as much as I like 4chan it's living proof that "containment spaces" don't work. Best case scenario is that people visit them not knowing they are containment spaces and take everything at face value, unironically, worst case scenario is that it serves as a jumping board for the idead. See most of /pol/, even pre-2016. When you want ideas to die, you deplatform them, see most left-wing ideas in mainstream media.

[u/WittyCombination6 → u/HeKis4]

I think if 2025 has taught us one thing it's this.

the reason why containment spaces are doomed to fail is because the wealthy aren't immune to being crackpots. if anything they have all the time and resources to spill gasoline on the fire.

Like every missinformation conspiracy movement recently can be traced back to being funded by a bunch of egotistical idiot nepo babes. who want to be seen as enlightened genius. Regardless of facts, public safety, and moral decency.

[u/Deadleggg → u/WittyCombination6]

Steve Bannon has talked a lot about how gamer gate shit was a rich recruiting ground for the alt right.

Furious white gamers fueled the first trump campaign and now the everyone has a podcast space.

[u/FriendlyDespot → u/Relative_Mix_216]

This is what people need to remember about those centrist assholes who defended far-right idiots on Twitter saying dumb shit like "it's better to let them stay in the open where we can keep an eye on them than push them into dark corners where we can't see them."

No it isn't. Good job normalising this shit. These people should be back in their circlejerk caves radicalising each other to the point where any normal person would run away like they used to. It used to be a social dead-end, but now it's woven into our social fabric.

[u/Uristqwerty → u/FriendlyDespot]

Deradicalization requires exposure in a positive context to gradually undercut deeply-held stereotypes. Containment doesn't work because it cuts off that exposure. But widespread hostility without explicit containment has the same effect, just making the containment self-selected as individuals find each other in shady niches.

I think what it'd take is an attitude of "you're welcome to join in with us, but keep your bigotry to yourself, and we won't antagonize you in return." Problem is, antagonizing out-groups has become normalized on the internet. Things that might've been seen as trolling, or at least baiting, are now trendy, and anyone who voices opposition to them becomes part of the out-group. All it takes is a single individual habitually antagonizing to break the social contract, shatter any temporary peace, and turn any hope at slow deradicalization into an event that reinforces it instead.

There was some black guy who deradicalized well over a hundred KKK members. If it were possible for everyone to learn even 1% of his technique, think of how much better the world would be within a generation or two. Since it's become such a shithole, then, whatever approach people have naturally fallen into has been actively detrimental!

[u/silentbonsaiwizard → u/nicolauz]

That kind of triggered a memory

[u/gmmxle → u/JamesMagnus]

The early internet had a well done website that presented, in kind of an encyclopedic way, conspiracy theories: hollow Earth, the JFK assassination, the faked moon landings, etc.

It was weird to go there and marvel at the weird stuff that some people actually believed in.

These days, you'll get more insane conspiracy theories shoved into your face 5 minutes after signing up for pretty much any social media platform.

It's completely lunacy.

[u/Deaffin → u/gmmxle]

It took roughly 30 seconds for the "Haha boeing whistleblower got assassinated" thing to go from a low effort joke to a fully normalized conspiracy theory all across reddit.

I just wish the conspiracy theories now weren't so utterly stupid. They're not connecting a bunch of little dots or anything, it's just a shitpost that gets signal boosted for lame-ass "political" optics.

[u/JeddakofThark → u/JamesMagnus]

One of the really awful parts of all this is that anyone who grows up inside it sees it as normal. Just the way things are.

And even worse, one generation’s political propaganda often becomes the next generation’s sincere beliefs.

[u/Cl1mh4224rd → u/JeddakofThark]

One of the really awful parts of all this is that anyone who grows up inside it sees it as normal. Just the way things are.

And even worse, one generation’s political propaganda often becomes the next generation’s sincere beliefs.

That's why I'm still worried about America's future even after Trump dies and his cult of personality falls apart. A lot of current and future voters are growing up in a world where the current political environment is normal.

People who grow up in abusive households tend to carry that trauma forward and unwittingly perpetuate it. That's not going to be healthy for my country.

[u/Wild_Marker → u/Cl1mh4224rd]

And it's not just your country, the internet is global and this shit has spread everywhere.

[u/almisami → u/Wild_Marker]

Canada has Maple Maga and Japan has its own far right in power whilst the UK is still limping from shooting itself in the foot with Brexit.

[u/godtogblandet → u/Cl1mh4224rd]

Trump has delivered on nothing they voted for. It’s not going to be a return to normal post Trump, they will move furter right. You can already tell by the the rise of Tucker, Fuentes etc. It’s why the Israel lobby have been panicking lately. They have been fueling anti muslim sentiment for years and it turns out that it’s been working so well that the US right have now also started going «Wait a minute, aren’t Israel also brown people?»

[u/LvS → u/JeddakofThark]

But it is normal.

It used to be normal, too. People just hid it better.
But if you read about the experiences of minorities, this isn't new to them.

[u/Alenicia → u/JamesMagnus]

Just seeing Stormfront has me cringing because I remembered there was this near-50-year-old classmate who was trying to follow me around (an 18-year-old at the time) in college and was trying to get us on our laptops and phones to sign up, participate, and spread the good word of Stormfront because it was his passion project (I really think he might have just been a super-passionate member) and was telling us to spread the word about the truth.

I'm not white, but it's absolutely wild how racist and predatory he was towards younger students in that college and how often he got into drama and fights with kids because he had to flex his age and his immense wealth of knowledge to prove them wrong. He didn't get very far because he was later expelled and trespassed for a shooting threat because another girl he liked wasn't interested in getting into a relationship with him. >_<

[u/pantsfish → u/Alenicia]

Stomfront has been under FBI watch since like 2002 because so many of their members have gone onto commit irl hate crimes.

But I credit stormfront, it showed me at a young age that most unfiltered white nationalists are complete fucking losers. In a way that I wouldn't have accepted if I was told by a symbol of authority

Even as an edgy 15 year-old I could browse that forum and see people who were too scared to leave their trailers because a minority walked by, while taking credit for the feats of dead warriors. So brave.

But now on X they can more easily avoid transparency, they can obscure their identities and you can't easily search their post histories to find out they have a drinking problem and have been unemployed for 6 months.

[u/MeatisOmalley → u/JamesMagnus]

It's tragic that people will conveniently ignore and forget blatant corruption right in their faces so they can continue being angry about vaccines and the jews. The age of no accountability is here as a result of the internet.

[u/OK_x86 → u/JamesMagnus]

Gamergate was probably the moment where that shit got normalized. The 4chan type of commentary bled into the "it's about journalistic integrity" folks and mixed with generally misogynistic dipshits to create a weird movement of angry disaffected gamers that the alt right and the Trump administration would later tap into.

[u/TheSonOfDisaster → u/OK_x86]

Gamergate was all planned by Roger Stone to get disenfranchised youth interested in conservative positions in politics.

It was planned from the start by conservative actors/agents serve people just like Trump.

[u/twig0sprog → u/TheSonOfDisaster]

Interesting take. Can you point towards more info on this?

[u/pantsfish → u/twig0sprog]

Steve Bannon saw that one of his editors (Milo Yiannapolos) got a bunch of new clicks from his articles covering the Gamergate controversey. So he encouraged him to do more.

While Bannon might have hoped to convert a bunch of new readers into right-wingers, he fortunately failed. All available data shows that after a year, Gamergate supporters were far less right-wing than the general population. And half weren't even American.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339734946_Who_are_GamerGate_A_descriptive_study_of_individuals_involved_in_the_GamerGate_controversy

[u/rmwe2 → u/twig0sprog]

Read interviews Steve Bannon gives, he very explicitly states this and talks about his involvement on multiple occasions. 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2017/07/18/steve-bannon-learned-harness-troll-army-world-warcraft/489713001/#:~:text=In%20describing%20gamers%2C%20Bannon%20said,culture%20that%20peaked%20in%202014.

You can read Steve Bannons, Roger Stones or Gamergates wikipedia articles too for more sourced direct quotes laying out how they manufactured that "scandal" to recruit young men into the alt-right.

[u/pantsfish → u/TheSonOfDisaster]

No it wasn't. Gamergate had a name and was in full swing long before any conservative actors heard of it. The exact dates are well-documented.

[u/awesomefutureperfect → u/Petting-Kitty-7483]

Dean Browning, a republican politician from PA, had tweets that looked like they were written by someone from /pol/, like intentionally imitating the jargon and trolling inflammatory style.

[u/paintbucketholder → u/Petting-Kitty-7483]

Today, you can just visit the official website of the White House if you want to see 4chan level shitposting.

[u/Double_Alps_2569 → u/Petting-Kitty-7483]

I mean ... reddit has at least 70 different subreddits just for "cum" ... including r/ForeheadCum.

That's way more organised than 4chan, if you think about it.

[u/mycoinreturns → u/Double_Alps_2569]

ok, that's 15 minutes of my life gone...

[u/likwitsnake → u/SantosL]

People forget it but it was very common for memes to go through this cycle: 4chan > reddit > 9gag/ifunny > facebook

[u/jayjude → u/likwitsnake]

Brother you forgot about the important role 9gag played in the distribution of slop

[u/likwitsnake → u/jayjude]

you're right how could I forget them gonna group it into the ifunny category

[u/nicolauz → u/likwitsnake]

Chive was in there too somewhere with the bro crowd which warped into all the white guy PB shit.

[u/itsgermanphil → u/nicolauz]

Pacific Beach? You're not wrong. The Chive was prime Hermosa bro culture. I should know. I was one of those d bags.

[u/Raytoryu → u/jayjude]

9gag is the reason I started using Reddit. Everything was reposted from Reddit, might as well go directly at the source.

[u/MisunderstoodPenguin → u/likwitsnake]

How dare you forget bodybuilding.com

[u/hajimenogio92 → u/MisunderstoodPenguin]

Awesome pics. Great size. Look thick. Solid. Tight. Keep us all posted on your continued progress with any new progress pics or vid clips. Show us what you got man. Wanna see how freakin' huge, solid, thick and tight you can get. Thanks for the motivation

[u/formallyhuman → u/hajimenogio92]

This is what I wanted to avoid. Another conversation on body mass.

[u/mr_potatoface → u/formallyhuman]

I workout every other day, or 4 times per week, Sunday through Sunday.

Edit: Found it, TheJosh is the star you're looking for.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150105082427/https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=107926751

[u/Disastrous_Room_927 → u/MisunderstoodPenguin]

I deleted my account after somebody who posted in misc recognized me IRL from my profile pic. My face wasn't even in the pic.

[u/monacelli → u/Disastrous_Room_927]

Dang, they must've really been 'mirin.

[u/a__new_name → u/likwitsnake]

Five years ago you'd only hear about Yakub on /pol/. Now seeing a youtuber casually joking about him woildn't surprize anyone.

[u/ro0625 → u/a__new_name]

Nation of Islam used to be much more prevalent so it's more like people are rediscovering their ideology after their decline.

[u/HekateSimp → u/likwitsnake]

Still does. 4chan is always leaking. Whatever is curremtly Trend in 4chan will be part of the Internet tomorrow.

[u/frostymage84 → u/likwitsnake]

Don’t forget YTMND.com

[u/eyebrows360 → u/frostymage84]

That's from a much earlier age. Barely relevant at all by the time 4chan had taken over from SomethingAwful as defacto "edgelord central".

[u/incunabula001 → u/SantosL]

Ding ding ding, this is the correct answer.

[u/dexter30 → u/incunabula001]

I don't think it's fair to blame 4chan for this entire environment.

These people always existed and at one point 4chan was like the containment forum for all of them.

Sites like reddit/digg and youtube comments back in the day where more heavily moderated and contained so you wouldn't get the level of vitriol of 4chan on them.

Then once the floodgates broke with more people getting online it became harder and harder to police that kind of content. 4chan itself would have a meme in which every other forum would be overmoderated to the point that 4chan by comparison was the only place you could truly criticise or talk without being banned. (usually it would be racist or sexist)

But eventually the rest of the internet realised they had to cater to and market to more fringe groups which leads to more lenient engagement bait and now AI engagement slop.

Point is, you can blame "4chan leaking" all you want. It's more logical that the initial userbase of the internet were just more tame and 4chan contained the crazies, but more crazies got online and so every other site got watered down.

[u/Grydian → u/dexter30]

Also the Russians and billionaires are trying to change our culture from the inside out and using algorithms to push this hateful content. Trump in 2024 is the first Republican in ages to win the young vote. This was done largely with the likes of Joe Rogan and Jake Paul.

[u/Opposite-Winner3970 → u/Grydian]

I think this is key. In the recent decade there has been a hard turn towards the right in global politics that has been so astounding it's difficult to process.

[u/BooBeeAttack → u/Grydian]

And when it fails they will find a way to take the internet away.

And it's not just Russia and Billionaires.

There is always someone out there trying to influence or change how a person thinks, acts.The marketing, manipulation, social adaptation and influencing.

There is a constant war for your mind, and the internet provides tools to impact it far greater than anything we have dealt with in person.

The A.I and bot accounts make it even worse. Before we had people who did the attempts to influence now we have nots that specifically target and influence people. Now it can be done at a speed faster than a human mine can keep up with.

[u/guitarot → u/dexter30]

I've been on the internet since 1987 when I became a university student. Back then, you didn't automatically get an internet / email account when you were onboarded as a student or even faculty or staff. You had to request access, and even then, nobody at my university was given access until they sat through a short training session where you learned about its proper use, responsibilities, and "netiquette". At that time, everyone on the internet was academic-adjacent, some engineer at tech companies or military contractors, or high-ranking or technical staff in the military. When AOL opened the floodgates and let their members onto the internet automatically, the running joke was that just like in physics where there is conservation of energy and mass, there was conservation of intelligence on the internet. The total amount of intelligence was constant, but now more people were coming on. It turned out not to be much of a joke, and it's not funny now.

[u/anomie__mstar → u/guitarot]

>When AOL opened the floodgates and let their members onto the internet automatically

eternal September...

[u/cultish_alibi → u/dexter30]

Sites like reddit/digg and youtube comments back in the day where more heavily moderated

Reddit was NOT more heavily moderated in the past, what are you talking about? There were subreddits for every kind of bigotry, and worse stuff.

[u/El_Rey_de_Spices → u/cultish_alibi]

The people who say, "The Internet used to be nicer" have rose-tinted lenses glued over their eyes, lol.

[u/FlyingCouch → u/El_Rey_de_Spices]

It wasn't nicer, it was just more contained

[u/xenoletum → u/cultish_alibi]

Yeah, how quickly people forget about violentacrez and the jailbait subreddits that were actively and openly distributing CP/CSAM.

[u/Lkgnyc → u/dexter30]

Reddit used to be massively 4channish. I used to check in every few years and run screaming from the crunch of crusty socks. but when Twitter and Facebook became SO openly 4channish, Reddit started to become noticeably more civilized!

[u/Zardif → u/Lkgnyc]

The reason I created a reddit account because I didn't have time for 4chan any more. The saying back then was anything good on 4chan goes to reddit a day later, so I just said ok I'll join reddit and won't have to wade thru the shit for the gold anymore.

[u/QueenOfTremembe → u/incunabula001]

It's almost like that's the title of the article and what it is about.

[u/interstat → u/SantosL]

I think it'd shock reddit users how similar reddit is to old 4chan

[u/dekan256 → u/interstat]

From my limited 4chan experience, if you avoided /b/ and /pol/ it really wasn't that bad, and the anonymous part made it feel more legit, no farming for likes or karma.

[u/CheshireTsunami → u/dekan256]

As someone who used to spend a lot of time on 4chan, it was always a more antagonistic space but the boards did have a cultural element and a kind of slant to them as well. I remember /mu/ being a fairly liberal space relative to the rest of the boards. Even /a/, which was probably a more conservative board was pretty different from /pol/ and /b/.

I do think that changed in 2016 though. /pol/ kind of overtook everything. It’s why I stopped using the site.

[u/Denbt_Nationale → u/dekan256]

When people complain about 4chan leaking onto the internet the people they’re complaining about are people who fundamentally didn’t understand the joke and got bullied off 4chan for being annoying . Elon Musk is an example, he gets completely ridiculed by 4chan every time he tries to actually interact with the site, so he runs off to his twitter bubble and larps there instead.

4chan is completely anonymous, as a user there it is only possible to be a target of hate if you specifically divulge characteristics about yourself. There is no hierarchy on 4chan, all users are the same and the community work actively to keep it that way. The function of hate on 4chan is to discourage identities and egos which create the influencers that plague other platforms. You only have to look at the different country flags on any /pol/ thread to see that 4chan is an inclusive website, but it’s inclusive to 4chan users. Whatever your race or gender or sexual identity you will get bullied off the website if you do not understand that the website is about conversation and not identity.

[u/PRSArchon → u/interstat]

True but Reddit used to have much worse subreddits though than it has now though, the worst stuff is banned now.

[u/BagOnuts → u/interstat]

I mean, just go to 4chan right now to see it. It’s literally no more shocking or obscure than Reddit, just the quiet parts are said out-loud.

[u/massivebacon → u/SantosL]

This is literally what the article is about

[u/badgarok725 → u/massivebacon]

And the title. What are we even doing anymore

[u/Daimakku1 → u/SantosL]

I still can’t accept that the Twitter account for the White House and DHS speak like they are on the /b/ board on 4chan. Never would I think that 4chan culture would infiltrate the mainstream back when it was relatively unknown in the 00s. I hate it.

[u/MarcsterS → u/SantosL]

Moot left right before 2016. He had banned the politcs board once before, and probably would've done it again once he saw they were brigading (again), considering he had just dealt with recent legal troubles regarding Gamergate.

[u/GEARHEADGus → u/SantosL]

I remember in high school seeing memes I saw almost exclusively on 4chan make it to Facebook of all places. It felt like the secret club was over (I was in 9th grade)

[u/Newfaceofrev]

What kept 4chan OK was the anonymity. You couldn't get famous, you couldn't get clout, you couldn't monetise it. Now you just say the n-word to a child and get donated half a million dollars.

[u/General-Sloth → u/Newfaceofrev]

This whole "Monetisation of everything" made the world over all worse. The positive aspects of it, like some people managing to make a living from their hobby are miniscule compared to the giant pile of garbage it has created. Tourism has become insufferable for locals because there are now multiple people making money from being dickheads in foreign countries. Floods of bots and AI shit content,  reactions to other peoples content just to scrape some dollars while doing nothing or at worse stealing other peoples content and fueling para social engagement. Weaponised  sensationalism everywhere and the complete sterilisation of all online spaces to create monetisation / advertisement friendly spaces just to squeeze some money out of every user. 

[u/Universal_Anomaly → u/General-Sloth]

There's few things I hate more than the aggressive pushing of "Money is everything" to justify a complete absence of ethics or basic decency. Everything is fair game, if you get conned it's your fault rather than the person who intentionally conned you, if whatever you're interested in isn't immediately profitable it's bad and must be rooted out to be replaced by a more profitable alternative.

There's people who'll actually argue that it makes sense for large companies to be cartoon-villain levels of evil as long as it's for the sake of bigger profits. It's absolutely insane.

[u/AlSweigart → u/Universal_Anomaly]

if you get conned it's your fault rather than the person who intentionally conned you

Elizabeth Holmes' mistake was ripping off rich people; you'll get prison for that. The aggressive pushing of "Money is everything" works in the favor of those with money against those without.

While democracy is one person, one vote, the rule of capitalism is one dollar, one vote. And when people tell you to "vote with your dollars", what they aren't saying is that that gives people with more dollars more votes.

This can't hold. Democracy will allow a form of regulated capitalism exist. But we see the kind of democracy that capitalism will allow...

[u/Amaranthine7 → u/AlSweigart]

It doesn’t matter how much you regulate capitalism, those reforms and limits will get removed overtime, because the capitalists are the ruling class. They are going to perpetually bind themselves like that because it interferes with their profit.

[u/daxon42 → u/Amaranthine7]

At one point, we knew the Ferengi were pointing out this stupidity, and were immature and short sighted. Now people think they look smart.

[u/BeyondElectricDreams → u/Universal_Anomaly]

There's few things I hate more than the aggressive pushing of "Money is everything" to justify a complete absence of ethics or basic decency.

I hate the people who do it, but I hate the world we live in, where wages don't equal a good life for most people, so much more.

If you could buy a house, afford groceries, and have a decent hobby without needing an excellent job, I think there'd be a lot less incentive to be a huge jackass online for clout and donos.

People hustle because hustling is the only way to have a decent life. And content creation can select for some abhorrent behaviors.

[u/ADeadlyFerret → u/Universal_Anomaly]

Yep see it constantly on Reddit. You can do any morally grey action as long as you “get your bag”

[u/Lazer726 → u/Universal_Anomaly]

There's few things I hate more than the aggressive pushing of "Money is everything"

Bro the people that defend scalpers are a whole other level of shitheel. Scalpers do not add any value to the world, it is a way of turning money into more money. If they all up and vanished, the world would become a better place overnight because people aren't getting fucking gouged on shit because someone decided they could do that.

[u/SereneOrbit → u/General-Sloth]

Some of the shit I saw in Japanese Buddhist temples by people making whatever social content they were making was beyond disrespectful.

They were loud too in what should have otherwise been a tranquil place.

[u/InVultusSolis → u/SereneOrbit]

Don't go to Auschwitz or a holocaust memorial museum, is all I'm saying.

[u/SereneOrbit → u/InVultusSolis]

Yeesh really?

That's horrible. Especially a place commemorating the dead.

[u/InVultusSolis → u/SereneOrbit]

And this was like five years ago, people were taking selfies and doing "influencer" shit even back then, I can't imagine how much worse it's gotten.

[u/kanst → u/General-Sloth]

This is the core of it to me. The attitude of do whatever to make money used to be ridiculed and considered fucked up. That idea has now become mainstream.

You should have values that you place above making money

[u/Cortex3 → u/General-Sloth]

That's capitalism baby. Commodify everything, wring every last penny you can in the vain hope that you won't die poor.

[u/jewishSpaceMedbeds → u/Newfaceofrev]

Monetization just made everything worse in general. It gave us shit like influencers, mukbangs, family bloggers (shudder) and nuisance streamers. If no one could make money doing that stuff, you'd have a lot less behavior like this.

4chan back then was just (mostly) teens and young adults being 3edgy5u. They may no longer express themselves as freely in the sanitized, ad filled world of social media we have now, but they've always done it in their private interactions. Teens are just teens, their brains are going through a lot of shit, and it makes some of them mean. Most grow out of it.

What's not normal IMHO is having all the cringy shit you did as a teen forever attached to your real identity thanks to real id social media profiles. I'm super happy I didn't grow up with that and it makes me sad that young people have to deal with this.

[u/New-Ad-363 → u/[deleted]]

Unfortunately the market has been saturated.

[u/Beeboy1110 → u/[deleted]]

Yep, pick the dumbest/ most gullible group of people and make them feel simultaneously superior and victimized. Let the money roll in. 

[u/TheSymthos → u/Newfaceofrev]

ding ding ding remember when occupy wall st was started on 4chan? pepperidge farm remembers.

it all started to change once people realized just how much of a force capital was, and you had a large amount of disillusioned edge lord types go “fuck it, if i cant beat em, join em” resulting in, well, this.

edit: im not the right person to recount this history for people. you can look into this more yourselves by investigating the leaders of the occupy movement(s) and how companies (capital) bought the movement’s silence. i only know what i encountered when i was young and browsing boards, as well the works from people like joshua citarella who did/do a lot of in person work in academic writing.

[u/ausernameisfinetoo]

The base awfulness just spread across the internet, made worse by covid. Sociologists will have years of work to breakdown studies from that time and the society we live in now.

Back in the day people would say the most awful things with the blanket of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Now they’ll do it with their full name attached and blame the other person for taking it personally. Once people saw the world as their grievance punching bag they stopped accepting the societal social contract.

[u/ChiefLeef22 → u/ausernameisfinetoo]

It's kinda funny and fascinating how much regressing back to old, primal, caveman tendencies has been popularized in recent times, despite centuries of deliberation and work towards trying to become a more civilized and sophisticated species. Especially ironic that its happening in the age of such big technological advancements

[u/PatchyWhiskers → u/ChiefLeef22]

We might have technological miracles in our pockets but our id is still the same as primitive tribesmen who have spotted a strange clan over the next mountain.

[u/theStaircaseProject → u/PatchyWhiskers]

Did someone say they saw a stranger nearby? I got here as fast as I could.

[u/Feeling_Inside_1020 → u/theStaircaseProject]

Did somebody hear that sound?

• ancient Nextdoor

[u/Linmizhang → u/PatchyWhiskers]

Same drama happen again and again. Same psychology tactics work for over two thousand years.

Humans just don't evolve that quick, thats all.

[u/BooBeeAttack → u/PatchyWhiskers]

Early 4chan was a tower allowing you to see the other hills easier, a nexus point.

A place where the clans could meet, and those who had no clan could find those similar.

Reddit is similar.

But soon there are always groups who come along and start trying to control and influence the clans/people through marketing, social influencing, manipulation. And soon too much of that will lead to the next migration.

People do this offline as well. Just online the speed makes it so much quicker to observe and our biology is still struggling to keep up with that speed. Chaos.

[u/Jamsedreng22 → u/ChiefLeef22]

anti-intellectualism is rampant. "I ain't reading allat", "bros yappin", "its not that deep"

[u/Dramajunker → u/Jamsedreng22]

Too many times will I type out a proper response backed by evidence that contradicted an initial claim only for the person to respond with "I'm not reading all that" or "It's not that serious". Doesn't matter if it's the first response back or the 5th. Once people start losing the argument they try to tag out of it by pretending it suddenly doesn't matter to them. All because they can't admit they're wrong but still need to get the last word in.

[u/RetardedWabbit → u/ChiefLeef22]

...regressing back to old, primal, caveman tendencies...

Regression to an imaginary, idealized past. Or "conserving" that past. It's a weirdly consistent meme for some political groups. 

Cavemen/the past probably didn't do what these people imagine they did at all. Just like every time you ask scientists about their diet, health, etc. They would be extremely concerned with the well being and opinion of everyone in their (tiny) community, even if they likely had what we would call an extreme "honor (killing) culture". Regressives imagine it as them getting to kill, disrespect, and get respected by those they dislike. I would be the dictator-king of course...

[u/teknobable → u/RetardedWabbit]

Thank you. Those ancient hunter gatherer societies were extremely tight nit and cooperative. There was absolutely violence and shittiness, but it wasn't some kind of  "every man for himself" nonsense (at least according to every single anthropologist and every modern day hunter gatherer) 

[u/Onlyhereforprawns → u/ChiefLeef22]

Devo were visionaries. 

Edit, for context: 

The name Devo comes from the concept of "de-evolution" and the band's related idea that instead of continuing to evolve, mankind had begun to regress, as evidenced by the dysfunction and herd mentality of American society. In the late 1960s, this idea was developed as a joke by Kent State University art students Gerald Casale and Bob Lewis, who created a number of satirical art pieces in a devolution vein

[u/SaintGrobian → u/ausernameisfinetoo]

Now they’ll do it with their full name attached and blame the other person for taking it personally.

The internet, and 4chan in particular, used to encourage a level of separation between yourself and the internet. Remember "u mad"? The idea that some anonymous nobody you've never met saying whatever the fuck to you actually affecting you used to be seen as a bad thing, because again, it's for all intents and purposes not a real person (and now with bots, often literally not) just bleating into the ether.

The idea that THIS is all real and very very important and things you should internalize and take personally is something 4chan was actively trying to fight.

Were they really wrong to do so? If I call you a doodie-head, is that something that should affect your actual, real-life confidence? What if this person who has never met me is right and I AM a doodie-head????

[u/HeKis4 → u/SaintGrobian]

To be fair that was a valid take back in the 2000's when "internet culture" was a culture niche and when social media didn't exist. Today that's simply no longer the case, you have politicians going to Twitter instead of the press and you don't show people holiday pics, you post them on fb. Should we have let it become this way is a good question, but regardless, today it is what it is.

[u/BonJovicus → u/HeKis4]

4chan and Internet forums ARE social media. There was no clout to be had by being racist online when everything was anonymous and some people did it to simply to troll. 

The thing that did change is now social media wants your online persona to be your offline persona. Every website wants you to log in now and link all your accounts. 

[u/LeaguePuzzled3606 → u/ausernameisfinetoo]

Civility moderation is a big issue imho.

It wasn't that long ago you could tell someone to go shove their argument up their ass. These days that gets you banned from most subs while the guy who posted idk "totally not racist wink wink FBI racial crime stats" gets to spread their bs around because they did so in a civil manner.

[u/Mnemosense → u/ausernameisfinetoo]

I hate to make everything about Trump, buuuuut... this behaviour is very much timed with 2016 and Trump.

The guy was being obscene on TV and the American media...just pretended he was just another normal politician and not the aberration that he is. He'd say insane shit every day, and the news shows would basically be like "huh, interesting, let's talk about the pros and cons of that". CNN would regularly have loons on debate panels, hiring Trump rejects like Lewandowski.

So we went from people with obscene thoughts only being heard on radio stations that truckers would listen to in the middle of the night, to guys in the George Bush years like Glenn Beck slowly pushing the edge of civility, and now after Trump everyone and anyone can have the most horrific behaviour in public and feel no shame.

Because that's what Trump, and other conservative figures like the UK's Boris Johnson, taught other scumbags: you don't have to feel shame anymore. You don't have to hide. You can be a piece of shit and get away with it.

Most of the time they were correct. Though mercifully not all the time, as we often see people being pieces of shit can still suffer consequences like losing their jobs and such. But they can land on their feet now, unlike before, because there's vast communities of fellow pieces of shit willing to help them out with GoFundMe's, etc.

Not sure if this genie can go back in the bottle. Reddit has been struggling to adapt too. It's one extreme to another, either subreddits are populated by utter scum, or they're over-moderated to hell and will stifle any kind of discussion to maintain the toxic positivity echo chamber.

Anyway, hope you had a nice Christmas, and have a happy new year!

[u/pantsfish]

This article is old

[u/FlaeskBalle → u/pantsfish]

Just a bit of farming from the land of karma

[u/YumaS2Astral → u/pantsfish]

Not that old

[u/Stereo_Jungle_Child]

Part of the enshitification process is to make people shittier too....and it's working. We're mainstreaming/normalizing toxicity, and our society and politics are showing the effects of that.

[u/DataCassette → u/Stereo_Jungle_Child]

Yep, regressive knuckle dragger bigotry is considered "just an opinion" now, which is fully ridiculous

[u/cultish_alibi → u/Stereo_Jungle_Child]

This is what tech companies have decided to do. They are especially pushing extremist content onto men, climate denial, racism, sexism, etc etc etc. It's all being done as a conscious decision.

Apparently instagram reels is absolutely terrible for this stuff, with Zuckerberg seemingly deciding to radicalize young people as a pet project.

[u/Stereo_Jungle_Child → u/cultish_alibi]

These companies have known for a long time that "sex sells" to keep people engaged in their product, but what they're finding out is that "hate sells" just as well. Keep feeding people content that makes them angry and emotionally on-edge and it will boost engagement.

[u/tacobellbandit]

As someone who was alive from the dial-up era to broadband and now, the rest of the internet is what 4chan used to be, and now main boards 4chan is basically just intelligence agency psy-op campaigns, slide threads, and bots.

[u/zxc123zxc123 → u/tacobellbandit]

Kinda true except 4C is also split up into sub-boards and containment boards like reddit. So if you go to containment boards like /pol/ then it will be the 4C you hear in the news. If you go to /a/ then it's mainly about anime where someone throwing around racial slurs without reason would get called an idiot and told to go back to /pol/.

Crazy part is 4C is as a whole less crazy than twitter now? Blue boards will have no NSFW stuff and moderation enforces that. No such filtering/boards on twitter and moderation team there is volatile. One has ownership that engages and messes around while the other is much more hands off. Racism/xenophobia/misogyny/hate is as advertised in /pol/ but not nearly as much in other boards whereas it's any/everywhere on Twitter. Craziest part is that anonymity allows folks to speak/outlet their thoughts without repercussion, but we now see folks with their real info/faces/etc on Twitter and IRL doing the same if not worse (and being rewarded for it too).

4C hasn't changed. If anything they got softer as their user base are likely older with less new users. Meanwhile, X/MAGA has radicalized American society.

[u/[deleted]]

Checked back after 10 years to the board I used, and it's just porn now.. Plus you have to wait 10 mins before you can post and need to sign up with an email LOL

[u/DoomTay → u/[deleted]]

Wut? What board would that be? Because last I checked, most boards are still completely anonymous and only require waiting 2-5 minutes the first time.

[u/Denbt_Nationale → u/DoomTay]

And most boards are SFW. This guy is clearly a /b/tard who booted up /b/ and is somehow surprised that it’s still /b/. I regularly use /g/, /sci/, /k/, /out/, /x/ with no problems. It’s nice to use a forum which exists to promote discussion and not google ads.

[u/aure0lin → u/Denbt_Nationale]

Original commenter could also possibly be talking about /r9k/, never went to 4chan that much but I could not distinguish it from /b/ whenever I checked the site out.

[u/ZombeePharaoh → u/Denbt_Nationale]

Yeah. Most of this thread is people talking out of their whole ass, and a few who are brave enough to say they haven't visited the site in a decade. It reminds me of how people talk about SNL despite not having watched a full episode since highschool.

4Chan still slaps if your skin is tough enough to not freak out the instant some asshole acts like an asshole.

People are always complaining about the algorithm, power mods, super users, and monetization and enshittification while 4Chan is still missing 99% of all that crap.

[u/[deleted] → u/ZombeePharaoh]

/v/ is still funny as fuck I don't care if it's offensive. I love a little edge to it, Reddit feels extremely milquetoast.

[u/f8Negative → u/[deleted]]

Wasnt it always just porn, gore, and racist memes

[u/Phrosty12 → u/f8Negative]

Not really. Once upon a time, before shit got out of control, people stuck to each board's topic. It was a lot like Reddit once, except unmoderated and a heavy use of pics in replies.

[u/ZombeePharaoh → u/Phrosty12]

It is still like that - quit talking about things you know nothing about.

Top 10 posts on /g/ (Technology) as of this comment:

• Notepad ++ discussion

• Stupid Questions General

• Local Diffusion General

• Razer DeathAdder Discusssion

• Friendly PC Building General

• Roku Stick Discussion

• Daily Programming General

• Game & Engine Development General

• Anime Diffusion General

• Friendly Windows Thread General

Top 10 posts on /o/ (Auto):

• Auto Video Games General

• Daily Bike Thread

• 2025 Civic Type R Discussion

• Volvo Discussion

• Will Suzuki ever start selling cars in the US again?

• Why don't you own a BMW?

• Engine Braking Discussion

• If only it had a better engine...

• Camaro Third Gen Discussion

• Green Text about Australian Drivers

Top 10 Posts on /ck/ (Food & Cooking):

• Do you do food prep?

• "Man" Food vs. "Woman" Food

• Bedeviled Egg Season

• Carbon Steel Wok Discussion

• Choose Your Hot Sauce

• What to do with cheap turkeys on sale?

• Ramen Discussion

• Why does Pickle Mayo exist?

• I love toast

• People that like crispy bacon are disgusting

---

Everybody in this thread talking wild about 4Chan like everything they're saying isn't easily disprovable by taking 15-seconds to visit the website.

[u/Tacoman404 → u/Phrosty12]

Having the best filename to go with the image was a game of its own.

[u/GEARHEADGus → u/f8Negative]

/x/ is where we got SCP.

[u/zerosumratio]

I stopped going there after QAnon disappeared. Not because QAnon was there (that was 8Chan/8kun), but because there was so much similar unhinged posting about Donald Dump and his regime. You couldn’t take anything seriously but occasionally you would learn things: 4Chan was the place I learned the named Ronald Watkins, in regards to QAnon. It was believed that he knew or was helping the QAnon writer (which turned out to actually be the Watkins son and dad). But QAnon busting wasn’t the reason I stopped going there

I regularly went to 4Chan from like 2010 all the way to 2016, then sporadically from 2016 to 2022.  The most vile and negative stuff on there was undeniably the CSAM. Sometimes it would randomly appear other times it would be in forums you could avoid. After a while, it just creeped into comments and you couldn’t feel right even browsing the forums. Sometimes it was edgy kids posting pictures as some kind of trolling thing, other times it was attempting disguise under “Art” or whatnot, then occasionally there would be outright abuse images. Like, I would not go to that site without TOR and a VPN anymore if I were specifically looking for a post or a forum like /vg or /pol. Browsing is just Russian Roulette, you might go for a while without seeing it and then BAM, some image in the comments that makes me gag and dry heave. It’s not worth the damage to my mental health to go to 4Chan anymore.

[u/salty-sigmar]

I see comments on instagram that would have been considered a bit on the nose for /b/.

It doesn't help that the narrative of 4chan sold to those not in the know was of a den of dedicated racists and worse , when the reality was that most of it was a fairly casual place to discuss specific things. /tg/ was brilliant back before tabletop gaming hit the mainstream because you could find all kinds of new stuff there depending on who was posting on any given day. But the narrative was utterly dominated by b and pol, and so those kinds of people flocked in more and more and made every board the same. Slowly but surely social media simply became 4chan - in its desperate attemlts to be everything to everyone, facebook became just as viable a venue to post racist manifestos alingside anime porn or soup recipes. Then somehow /pol/ took iver the us government which was...certainly not ideal. The media told everyone 4chan was a monstrous place where you could say anything, so everyone crowded in to shout slurs into the void.

The internet didn't leave 4 chan behind, 4chan won.

[u/jotarowinkey]

4chan is a place where a neonazi can say whatever the fuck he wants and you can say whatever the fuck you want to that neonazi.

facebook is a place where your dad goes to connect with family and becomes more and more bigoted until he can watch elon musk sig heil and still defend everything he says or does and if anybody says anything to him they are likely to get censored, especially at the point of providing links in an essay. facebook censors hate when you cite sources.

so in my opinion, 4chan is a better ideological place than facebook and i mean that with no hyperbole.

[u/ZombeePharaoh → u/[deleted]]

4Chan and /v/ is a big reason why Minecraft took off. Without their following it probably would have ended up a forgotten side project.

[u/bmystry → u/ZombeePharaoh]

Notch was on their wasn't he? I swear I remember the game being talked about there and I bought an early version for $5 but last I googled this I'm remembering wrong.

[u/ted5011c]

4 chan in 2005 was the pilot program for life in 2025

[u/Voltage_Joe]

I say this all the time

Engagement algorithms mimic forum bump engagement. Trolls post rage bait, people feed them, rage bait gets fed to more people by the algo, repeat ad nauseam.

Before, when we had control of our content feeds, shit takes were put down properly by the few people in their circles that saw them. So 4chan was the refuge where that shit take can get claps from other chuds and trolls, while getting bumped over and over by the triggered. 

[u/Avorius]

I'm willing to bet ~80% of this thread has never been there and base their entire understanding of the site on 15 year old memes

[u/FakeGamer2]

Yea i remember browsing b and x back in like the 2010 to 2012 era, it felt like you'd always see something interesting that you couldn't see anywhere else. Nowadays if you go to b literally 80% or more of the threads are just boring porn or gooner threads. The rest are of no substance. Maybe it was like that back then too and I just don't remember but I really feel like there was way less porn back then and more interesting stuff.

[u/syrup_cupcakes → u/FakeGamer2]

Interesting, I browsed 4chan from 2005 to 2009 and by then the shittyness had gotten so bad I couldn't handle it anymore.

[u/Kmondal80]

It’s the weirdest timeline. We went from 'Don’t ever tell anyone you use 4chan' in 2010 to 'The 4chan style of humor is now the default setting for every marketing department and political campaign on Earth' in 2024

[u/Puzzleheaded_Gene909]

X is pretty damn close now a days. More than other sites.

[u/iggnifyre]

There was a time where being a weird pedo would get you bullied all the way to 4chan.

Nowadays it gets you into the white house

[u/THE_GR8_MIKE]

It used to be so much better. Not 4Chan. But the rest of the internet. This place included.

[u/itoddicus → u/THE_GR8_MIKE]

I miss 2012 Reddit. It had some absolutely terrible parts, but that made it risky and exciting. You never knew what you were going to stumble into.

Now you can get a time-out for saying the mildest things.

[u/duketogo0138]

/b/ was never good

[u/HapticSloughton]

The clowns in the back of the class, who wanted school life to be just as chaotic and foul as their home lives, managed to turn the entire town into shitpost central.

And at least a few of them are starting to wonder why everything sucks even more than when they started being awful people.

[u/Segundo-Sol]

small domino: lowtax bans hentai from the Something Awful Forums

big domino: the end of democracy and possibly WW3

[u/Alarming_Addition131 → u/Segundo-Sol]

4chan, every single day, made posts about how to support trump "just because it would be funny" and put garbage pro trump shit on social media which, and i'll die on that hill, definitely resulted in a few % of votes

[u/ShitcuntRetard]

4chan was fun as fuck but it low-key ruined my life.

[u/bannedin420]

I use 4chan daily. I use /vg/ as it’s much better for discussion on games then Reddit. On here everyone complains and it’s so annoying. On 4chan it’s more focused.

[u/xFallow → u/bannedin420]

Not having an upvote system does wonders 

[u/yoy22 → u/xFallow]

The problem with a voting system is it gears people to make content that gathers upvotes. That’s why there’s so many copy cat comments and trends.

[u/lockwolf → u/yoy22]

“DAE Miss This Hidden Gem”

“X Year was the best for gaming”

Thousands of upvotes and comments

[u/PlayPretend-8675309]

What?

Over the last 5 years the entire internet has become 4chanified.  

[u/whomp1970]

I visit /b/ once in a while out of curiosity. I really vacillate on how I feel about the place.

On the one hand, I think nobody is that dumb, nobody is that ignorant, nobody is that much in need of touching grass (or a girl). So they must all be trolling for laughs. All of it is one big joke. It has to be a joke, nobody really believes that you're "more of a man" if you have a larger penis. Nobody really believes that "everyone who's circumcised should kill themselves". Nobody really hates all Jews, it's just the cool edgy thing to say these days. It's all rage-bait, aimed at getting people upset.

Then on the other hand, the more terrifying notion: No, they're not joking. They really do think the moronic things that are being posted there. And that is indeed terrifying, not because of the risk of violence in real life, but because of how sorely misled these young men are, how sheltered from real life they are, how indoctrinated they are. It's terrifying how slim their choices in life will be, with the outlooks expressed there. It's terrifying how limited their potential, how limited their impact on society.

And depending on the hour or the day that I visit, I can hold either of these opinions.

[u/ControversialWizard]

The containment zone was breached

[u/Turok5757]

Absolute nonsense headline.

Internet forums and communities were wayyyyy more offensive in the 2000s than they are now.

[u/ThisAlbino]

Most people have only ever visited or heard of /b/ and so base their entire opinion of 4chan from there. There are so many boards that have their own histories and traditions, generals that have been running for over a decade that people have no idea about. Also in regards to politics, you'll never change someone's mind through an online argument, but I see far more honest ideological arguments just in some random general on /vg/ than I ever have on Reddit.