6 ms·

Disagree. 4chan is great and important. It shaped the Internet we know today in so many great ways, and in a few cautionary ways as well. Moot should be proud.

mda 11y ago
I am curious, could you think of some examples of the great ways it influenced the internet?
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  Much of the dank memes that have become completely mainstream in social media can be traced to 4chan in one way or another. Something Awful also used to be responsible for a lot, but lost relevance a long time ago. I don't know if this is "great" as in implying a positive value judgment, but it is great in magnitude.
  - xeni 11y ago
    Something Awful is also the only reason that 4chan exists in the first place. It was created as a refuge for the SA anime forum (ADTRW) after Lowtax purged the users from Raspberry Heaven (the SA DC++ hub for anime). Nearly every founding admin/mod was a permabanned SA user.
    - bydo 11y ago
      Not really. A lot of the mods were current or former FYAG/FYAD posters. Only a few were banned, and the big anime witch hunts came much later. Raspberry Heaven was kind of a splinter from the semi-official SADCHUB. Lowtax never had any influence on either. RH and ADTRW actually both had their own off-SA fora created to avoid the overall SA attitude, though neither was used much. When moot created 4chan it was more out of the general fascination with 2chan's image boards, particularly /a and /b, which were mostly random (but not 4chan /b random) artwork, without much commentary.
- mih 11y ago
  Off the top of my head, memes are one of the biggest contributions. Examples such as nyan cat, rickrolling, crudely drawn cartoons etc. Not to mention 4channers once even rigged the Time man of the year poll. One can also find negative influences such as extreme trolling. The influence is not on the technical side of things, but more to do with shaping internet culture.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- dvdcxn 11y ago
  Look past the media slant and you will find one of the last true bad lands of the internet, mired in post irony, where speech is free and each poster's opinion is as equally without value as another. Where unpopular opinions are given as much weight as popular ones (i.e. barely any). Its equal parts a utopia and a cesspool. Without it, there would be no such thing as "internet culture".
  - thornofmight 11y ago
    > one of the last true bad lands of the internet Absolutely true, and a great way of putting it.
  - VLM 11y ago
    As a practical example, /out/ and /diy/ are two of the only places on the internet where you can get useful information about gear. Everything else is tainted by ad money. When the competition is 99% pimping and astroturfing for advertisers, being 10% useful and only 90% noise makes /out/ about ten times as information dense as any other place on the internet. This is why people who don't read or agree with /pol/ none the less welcome /pol/ as it keeps the advertisers away. Given the choice of ruining /out/ or making moot a billionaire, oddly enough the users of /out/ prefer having a nice clean place to hang out, sucks to be moot. /fit/ ironically does not discuss actual fitness, but is more a social group for people into fitness to discuss seemingly everything except fitness related issues. On rare occasion /fit/ will actually talk about gear and then the advice is good AFAIK. There is unfortunately some bro-science on /fit/ mixed in with real science, then again asking ecological science questions in /out/ would get equally dumb answers, but the dumb answers on /out/ would be more self aware of their own ignorance, whereas on /fit/ its here's my anecdote, "anecdote" being latin fancy speak for "fact", or at least the guys on /fit/ like to think so. /out/ has a bad fascination with gadgetry, there must always be a pointless eternal thread about giant rambo-style "survival" knives, as a containment thread to keep them out of the real discussions. The concept of the containment thread or containment board is possibly a 4chan innovation and a real advance in social media and online discussion? /b/, which is almost yet not entirely a cesspool, has had better literary criticism of this site than /biz/, which is funny. The standard deviation of quality on /b/ is extremely high. The std deviation of quality on /out/ is much lower but the average quality on /out/ is much higher than /b/. If nothing else, as a lab of observations about anonymous discussion, its interesting. I'd propose a general rule that the more focused the board, its heights of brilliance will be lower and further between at the same time as the average level of discourse increases.
- Vaskivo 11y ago
  Not all of it was "great", but definitevely left their mark on the internet and in society: Of the top of my head: - The thousands of memes, from rickrolling to rage comics. - Dusty the cat - Project Chanology - Gamergate - The Fappening - Karen, the school bus monitor - Snakes on a Plane (movie), Cave Story (game) and many others became highly successfull after becoming viral in 4chan. - Risk of Rain (game), Engine Heart (tabletop rpg) are commercial products that were created by anons with the help of 4chan. - Many other free quality media being created, from videogames (Katawa Shoujo), to tabletop rpgs (Adeptus Evangelion), wargames, comics, music, etc. [0] - 9001 lulz/day [0] I would know more, but I mostly browse /tg/ and /v/ related boards.
  - surge 11y ago
    I believe Minecraft also first gained initial popularity there or where it was initially exposed to a larger audience, back when it was still alpha. 4chan is where a lot of things took root or first came to be "before they were cool", and they might never have been cool or gone unnoticed on other communities. It was a catch all for the best and worst of what you could find on the Internet. It's a place where the worst and best of human behavior is laid bare, uncensored, and could be dealt with or discussed on equal terms and some of the most honest discourse (in terms of true opinions) took place no matter how ugly or uncomfortable the subject matter was. That has value, if nothing else to better understand how messed up society and humans are when they aren't being polite or fearful of consequences. It rids you of any naivety you might have once had, even if its not a place you want to spend any amount of time or participate. If nothing else, it gives the worst of those people a place to go instead of poisoning other online communities with their insanity.
    - Vaskivo 11y ago
      Yeah, I remember buying minecraft from all the 4chan viral, weeks after survival mode was announced (and infinite mode was to be released). Nowadays, I feel proud of it. Although Minecraft isn't "my kind of game", I feel like I made a difference in the game industry/panorama.
- Ono-Sendai 11y ago
  Anonymous.
- munificent 11y ago
  I think 4chan reserves props for much of the discrediting of scientology over the past few years.
austenallred 11y ago
I was talking about what he will be known for (which is pretty much /b/ and /pol/), not what 4chan is. That's a much different conversation, and not exactly black or white.
- Vaskivo 11y ago
  Is /pol/ really that noticeable from outside 4chan? I've been a 4channer for a long time, and only recently I've been noticing /pol/.
  - austenallred 11y ago
    Yes, mostly because of their brigading, etc.
  - wisty 11y ago
    Reddit's worldnews?

mda 11y ago

I am curious, could you think of some examples of the great ways it influenced the internet?

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
Much of the dank memes that have become completely mainstream in social media can be traced to 4chan in one way or another. Something Awful also used to be responsible for a lot, but lost relevance a long time ago. I don't know if this is "great" as in implying a positive value judgment, but it is great in magnitude.
- xeni 11y ago
  Something Awful is also the only reason that 4chan exists in the first place. It was created as a refuge for the SA anime forum (ADTRW) after Lowtax purged the users from Raspberry Heaven (the SA DC++ hub for anime). Nearly every founding admin/mod was a permabanned SA user.
  - bydo 11y ago
    Not really. A lot of the mods were current or former FYAG/FYAD posters. Only a few were banned, and the big anime witch hunts came much later. Raspberry Heaven was kind of a splinter from the semi-official SADCHUB. Lowtax never had any influence on either. RH and ADTRW actually both had their own off-SA fora created to avoid the overall SA attitude, though neither was used much. When moot created 4chan it was more out of the general fascination with 2chan's image boards, particularly /a and /b, which were mostly random (but not 4chan /b random) artwork, without much commentary.
mih 11y ago
Off the top of my head, memes are one of the biggest contributions. Examples such as nyan cat, rickrolling, crudely drawn cartoons etc. Not to mention 4channers once even rigged the Time man of the year poll. One can also find negative influences such as extreme trolling. The influence is not on the technical side of things, but more to do with shaping internet culture.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dvdcxn 11y ago
Look past the media slant and you will find one of the last true bad lands of the internet, mired in post irony, where speech is free and each poster's opinion is as equally without value as another. Where unpopular opinions are given as much weight as popular ones (i.e. barely any). Its equal parts a utopia and a cesspool. Without it, there would be no such thing as "internet culture".
- thornofmight 11y ago
  > one of the last true bad lands of the internet Absolutely true, and a great way of putting it.
- VLM 11y ago
  As a practical example, /out/ and /diy/ are two of the only places on the internet where you can get useful information about gear. Everything else is tainted by ad money. When the competition is 99% pimping and astroturfing for advertisers, being 10% useful and only 90% noise makes /out/ about ten times as information dense as any other place on the internet. This is why people who don't read or agree with /pol/ none the less welcome /pol/ as it keeps the advertisers away. Given the choice of ruining /out/ or making moot a billionaire, oddly enough the users of /out/ prefer having a nice clean place to hang out, sucks to be moot. /fit/ ironically does not discuss actual fitness, but is more a social group for people into fitness to discuss seemingly everything except fitness related issues. On rare occasion /fit/ will actually talk about gear and then the advice is good AFAIK. There is unfortunately some bro-science on /fit/ mixed in with real science, then again asking ecological science questions in /out/ would get equally dumb answers, but the dumb answers on /out/ would be more self aware of their own ignorance, whereas on /fit/ its here's my anecdote, "anecdote" being latin fancy speak for "fact", or at least the guys on /fit/ like to think so. /out/ has a bad fascination with gadgetry, there must always be a pointless eternal thread about giant rambo-style "survival" knives, as a containment thread to keep them out of the real discussions. The concept of the containment thread or containment board is possibly a 4chan innovation and a real advance in social media and online discussion? /b/, which is almost yet not entirely a cesspool, has had better literary criticism of this site than /biz/, which is funny. The standard deviation of quality on /b/ is extremely high. The std deviation of quality on /out/ is much lower but the average quality on /out/ is much higher than /b/. If nothing else, as a lab of observations about anonymous discussion, its interesting. I'd propose a general rule that the more focused the board, its heights of brilliance will be lower and further between at the same time as the average level of discourse increases.
Vaskivo 11y ago
Not all of it was "great", but definitevely left their mark on the internet and in society: Of the top of my head: - The thousands of memes, from rickrolling to rage comics. - Dusty the cat - Project Chanology - Gamergate - The Fappening - Karen, the school bus monitor - Snakes on a Plane (movie), Cave Story (game) and many others became highly successfull after becoming viral in 4chan. - Risk of Rain (game), Engine Heart (tabletop rpg) are commercial products that were created by anons with the help of 4chan. - Many other free quality media being created, from videogames (Katawa Shoujo), to tabletop rpgs (Adeptus Evangelion), wargames, comics, music, etc. [0] - 9001 lulz/day [0] I would know more, but I mostly browse /tg/ and /v/ related boards.
- surge 11y ago
  I believe Minecraft also first gained initial popularity there or where it was initially exposed to a larger audience, back when it was still alpha. 4chan is where a lot of things took root or first came to be "before they were cool", and they might never have been cool or gone unnoticed on other communities. It was a catch all for the best and worst of what you could find on the Internet. It's a place where the worst and best of human behavior is laid bare, uncensored, and could be dealt with or discussed on equal terms and some of the most honest discourse (in terms of true opinions) took place no matter how ugly or uncomfortable the subject matter was. That has value, if nothing else to better understand how messed up society and humans are when they aren't being polite or fearful of consequences. It rids you of any naivety you might have once had, even if its not a place you want to spend any amount of time or participate. If nothing else, it gives the worst of those people a place to go instead of poisoning other online communities with their insanity.
  - Vaskivo 11y ago
    Yeah, I remember buying minecraft from all the 4chan viral, weeks after survival mode was announced (and infinite mode was to be released). Nowadays, I feel proud of it. Although Minecraft isn't "my kind of game", I feel like I made a difference in the game industry/panorama.
Ono-Sendai 11y ago
Anonymous.
munificent 11y ago
I think 4chan reserves props for much of the discrediting of scientology over the past few years.

austenallred 11y ago

I was talking about what he will be known for (which is pretty much /b/ and /pol/), not what 4chan is. That's a much different conversation, and not exactly black or white.

Vaskivo 11y ago
Is /pol/ really that noticeable from outside 4chan? I've been a 4channer for a long time, and only recently I've been noticing /pol/.
- austenallred 11y ago
  Yes, mostly because of their brigading, etc.
- wisty 11y ago
  Reddit's worldnews?