4 ms·

I think this is a real Columbus Egg situation. There was no Reddit when 4chan popped up. It was 2003. As much as /b/ was an ocean of piss, so much of what we no

by moate 5y ago

I think this is a real Columbus Egg situation. There was no Reddit when 4chan popped up. It was 2003. As much as /b/ was an ocean of piss, so much of what we now consider "internet culture" consolidated or spawned there. Of course parts of it were absolutely terrible then, but to distill it down solely to OP's post is a lot of selective editing.

selimthegrim 5y ago
Let's not let Lowtax off scot-free here, even if he is a documented horrible human being SA deserves some share of the credit.
- russdpale 5y ago
  Of course. The mods did try and fight the surge of idiots, but in my opinion there was just no stopping it. SA was too toxic with its history of "free speech", and the FYAD sub leaked over into other forums and the mods just coulnd't keep up. That toally toxic mindset just set en masse from what I remember. Even after the outflow to 4chan in 2003-2004, SA was never the same (and never has been). Eventually, when Digg and reddit came around they were better alternatives and I basically left SA at that time and it seems a ton of people did as well. SA never got as bad as 4Chan, but it had pockets that were almost as bad (such as the goon squad). From 2004-2007 I didn't really post on the internet at all. Ill check on it a few times a year, and I keep up with some friends I made there, but now its just a shell of what it used to be with an old outdated interface.
- moate 5y ago
  I mean there's a handful of sites you could point to that were also important, but the point was a 2 sentence description of 4chan's cultural significance and importance is lazybad. It feels particularly lame on a site called "hackernews".
  - Lammy 5y ago
    They are talking about Lowtax/SomethingAwful because 4chan was a direct outgrowth of the ADTRW/SADCHUB/RaspberryHeaven communities that discovered 2ch and world2chan around 2003. Its OP was edited in 2007 and I assume the original is lost, but here's the 82-page 4chan announcement thread on ADTRW originally posted in September 2003: https://forums.somethingawful.com//showthread.php?threadid=724028 https://forums.somethingawful.com//showthread.php?threadid=7... A lot of 4chan's initial userbase and staying power came from SA banning a big chunk of that community earlier in 2003 over differing cultural standards between their subcommunity and the SA admins: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=429748 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=42...

by moate 5y ago

selimthegrim 5y ago

Let's not let Lowtax off scot-free here, even if he is a documented horrible human being SA deserves some share of the credit.

russdpale 5y ago
Of course. The mods did try and fight the surge of idiots, but in my opinion there was just no stopping it. SA was too toxic with its history of "free speech", and the FYAD sub leaked over into other forums and the mods just coulnd't keep up. That toally toxic mindset just set en masse from what I remember. Even after the outflow to 4chan in 2003-2004, SA was never the same (and never has been). Eventually, when Digg and reddit came around they were better alternatives and I basically left SA at that time and it seems a ton of people did as well. SA never got as bad as 4Chan, but it had pockets that were almost as bad (such as the goon squad). From 2004-2007 I didn't really post on the internet at all. Ill check on it a few times a year, and I keep up with some friends I made there, but now its just a shell of what it used to be with an old outdated interface.
moate 5y ago
I mean there's a handful of sites you could point to that were also important, but the point was a 2 sentence description of 4chan's cultural significance and importance is lazybad. It feels particularly lame on a site called "hackernews".
- Lammy 5y ago
  They are talking about Lowtax/SomethingAwful because 4chan was a direct outgrowth of the ADTRW/SADCHUB/RaspberryHeaven communities that discovered 2ch and world2chan around 2003. Its OP was edited in 2007 and I assume the original is lost, but here's the 82-page 4chan announcement thread on ADTRW originally posted in September 2003: https://forums.somethingawful.com//showthread.php?threadid=724028 https://forums.somethingawful.com//showthread.php?threadid=7... A lot of 4chan's initial userbase and staying power came from SA banning a big chunk of that community earlier in 2003 over differing cultural standards between their subcommunity and the SA admins: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=429748 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=42...