5 ms·

I think you're misinformed: the real source of all internet culture is and was ebaumsworld.com. Seriously, though, internet culture is more than just /b/. Th

by panic 11y ago

I think you're misinformed: the real source of all internet culture is and was ebaumsworld.com. Seriously, though, internet culture is more than just /b/. The Something Awful forums (where 4chan was born, after all), Fark and YTMND contributed a lot. More recently, sites like Reddit, Instagram, Vine and Twitter have become much more relevant than any 4chan board.

sentenza 11y ago
Also, what about Slashdot? The Jargon file? Usenet? I've been on the Internet since the mid-90s and have purposefully avoided 4chan since I first heared of it. At no point has it been difficult to avoid 4chan. I gather it has been very influential in the niche of image memes and I vaguely remember something about teenagers calling everybody a "fag" a few years back, but otherwise I couldn't say what the influence has been.
- DanBC 11y ago
  You'd have to make special effort to get some of the Usenet references. meow? snuh? McQ sigs? borkborkbork? yEnc sucks! None of these had much lasting impact. There's a bunch of stuff from 4chan that you have heard of, even if you don't know it came from 4chan.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - gozo 11y ago
    The legacy of mediums like Usenet isn't jokes but companies, applications, organisations etc. If you grew up during the heyday of Usenet (or BBSes, IRC, some forums, mailing lists) you had a pretty good chance of going on to do something in computing. Joke can help people come together but they doesn't form the substance of a culture. I guess people from 4chan could go on and be the next generation of marketers or something, but I doubt it.
    - 9872 11y ago
      Yeah, because it's not as if people like Mark Zuckerberg or Taylor Swift have any influence on the world today.
      - gozo 11y ago
        Not, what I can see, because of 4chan nor because of 4chan culture. By comparison, I know numerous people that started with BBSes, got involved in the demoscene, went on to work for and/or start games companies.
  - Torgo 11y ago
    plonk! ;-)
    - tired_man 11y ago
      I remember Plonk! You must be a bit old ;-)
- bitzerlander 11y ago
  Totse anybody?
dktbs 11y ago
> The Something Awful forums (where 4chan was born, after all) Would you mind explaining this? I have read that moot was originally an SA user and posted on there to announce when he first launched 4chan. Is there any connection beyond that?
- 9872 11y ago
  A lot of ADTRW moved because SA had draconian policies against so much as discussing stuff like piracy, sexy anime babes, etc, except to condemn it and talk about how you're totally not into all that stuff.
  - astrange 11y ago
    The history of SA was all very interesting. There was a culture of very long decent posts I always wondered how to replicate - you still have the user base with too much free time these days, but they might have too many demands on their attention span. In 2000 or so, SA was set up as a sea of quality in an internet whose users really weren't ready to be good forum posters. (Like: children, racists, perverts, really angry teenagers, people with signatures of anime characters holding huge swords, furries) The anime forum was opened because nobody else wanted to read the threads, but they mostly left it alone. As the years went on quality went down as the user base got too large, so the admins started effectively a left-wing death squad called Helldump dedicated to finding reasons to ban everyone. It was pretty puritanical in the American sense, so nearly all the long time anime posters got banned for being "probably a pedophile". One person I knew was banned for a slightly too sexy image posted 10 years before and had since become the pilot of Marine One. It's a little surprising they were never sued for libel. SA inspired the rarely-used "user was banned for this post" label, but mostly showed the importance of not having a post history.
- justtopostthis2 11y ago
  moot was active on Raspberry Heaven, SA's anime forum IRC chat/DC hub, when 2chan.net was really popular there. He didn't start it in isolation and decide to post on SA - most or all of the original mods and users were from RH. I don't have logs from when it was first started but here's a fun quote from a few weeks after: [2003-10-14 02:51] <rizzou> hey moot - there's this cool website at http://www.4chan.net/ http://www.4chan.net/ you should check it out. it's really looking like the next big thing, you know? A few days later 4chan started killing the shared server it was hosted on by fellow SA forums member nem (I remember seeing load averages of like 80000), and had to find its own home.
9872 11y ago
SA is dead and YTMND was never more than a flash in the pan. Vine and Twitter are certainly more important today but reddit and instagram have a serious dearth of original content. The best they can hope for is internal drama and popularizing stuff 4chan came up with.
LinuxBender 11y ago
ebaum actually just copied everyone's stuff. The original start of this fun was ytmnd.com, created by Max, the same person that actually developed 4chan's test servers before it was launched. Ytmnd was too complicated for many folks (to make an animated gif and an mp3 that would sync together) so people flocked to the 'anonymous' boards. It's too bad really, because ytmnd was a lot of fun.

by panic 11y ago

sentenza 11y ago

Also, what about Slashdot? The Jargon file? Usenet? I've been on the Internet since the mid-90s and have purposefully avoided 4chan since I first heared of it. At no point has it been difficult to avoid 4chan. I gather it has been very influential in the niche of image memes and I vaguely remember something about teenagers calling everybody a "fag" a few years back, but otherwise I couldn't say what the influence has been.

DanBC 11y ago
You'd have to make special effort to get some of the Usenet references. meow? snuh? McQ sigs? borkborkbork? yEnc sucks! None of these had much lasting impact. There's a bunch of stuff from 4chan that you have heard of, even if you don't know it came from 4chan.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- gozo 11y ago
  The legacy of mediums like Usenet isn't jokes but companies, applications, organisations etc. If you grew up during the heyday of Usenet (or BBSes, IRC, some forums, mailing lists) you had a pretty good chance of going on to do something in computing. Joke can help people come together but they doesn't form the substance of a culture. I guess people from 4chan could go on and be the next generation of marketers or something, but I doubt it.
  - 9872 11y ago
    Yeah, because it's not as if people like Mark Zuckerberg or Taylor Swift have any influence on the world today.
    - gozo 11y ago
      Not, what I can see, because of 4chan nor because of 4chan culture. By comparison, I know numerous people that started with BBSes, got involved in the demoscene, went on to work for and/or start games companies.
- Torgo 11y ago
  plonk! ;-)
  - tired_man 11y ago
    I remember Plonk! You must be a bit old ;-)
bitzerlander 11y ago
Totse anybody?

dktbs 11y ago

> The Something Awful forums (where 4chan was born, after all) Would you mind explaining this? I have read that moot was originally an SA user and posted on there to announce when he first launched 4chan. Is there any connection beyond that?

9872 11y ago
A lot of ADTRW moved because SA had draconian policies against so much as discussing stuff like piracy, sexy anime babes, etc, except to condemn it and talk about how you're totally not into all that stuff.
- astrange 11y ago
  The history of SA was all very interesting. There was a culture of very long decent posts I always wondered how to replicate - you still have the user base with too much free time these days, but they might have too many demands on their attention span. In 2000 or so, SA was set up as a sea of quality in an internet whose users really weren't ready to be good forum posters. (Like: children, racists, perverts, really angry teenagers, people with signatures of anime characters holding huge swords, furries) The anime forum was opened because nobody else wanted to read the threads, but they mostly left it alone. As the years went on quality went down as the user base got too large, so the admins started effectively a left-wing death squad called Helldump dedicated to finding reasons to ban everyone. It was pretty puritanical in the American sense, so nearly all the long time anime posters got banned for being "probably a pedophile". One person I knew was banned for a slightly too sexy image posted 10 years before and had since become the pilot of Marine One. It's a little surprising they were never sued for libel. SA inspired the rarely-used "user was banned for this post" label, but mostly showed the importance of not having a post history.
justtopostthis2 11y ago
moot was active on Raspberry Heaven, SA's anime forum IRC chat/DC hub, when 2chan.net was really popular there. He didn't start it in isolation and decide to post on SA - most or all of the original mods and users were from RH. I don't have logs from when it was first started but here's a fun quote from a few weeks after: [2003-10-14 02:51] <rizzou> hey moot - there's this cool website at http://www.4chan.net/ http://www.4chan.net/ you should check it out. it's really looking like the next big thing, you know? A few days later 4chan started killing the shared server it was hosted on by fellow SA forums member nem (I remember seeing load averages of like 80000), and had to find its own home.

9872 11y ago

SA is dead and YTMND was never more than a flash in the pan. Vine and Twitter are certainly more important today but reddit and instagram have a serious dearth of original content. The best they can hope for is internal drama and popularizing stuff 4chan came up with.

LinuxBender 11y ago

ebaum actually just copied everyone's stuff. The original start of this fun was ytmnd.com, created by Max, the same person that actually developed 4chan's test servers before it was launched. Ytmnd was too complicated for many folks (to make an animated gif and an mp3 that would sync together) so people flocked to the 'anonymous' boards. It's too bad really, because ytmnd was a lot of fun.