4 ms·

4chan was founded in 2003. I think reasonable people probably disagree on what constitutes the “early” internet and this is where the argument is. Google had be

4chan was founded in 2003. I think reasonable people probably disagree on what constitutes the “early” internet and this is where the argument is. Google had been around for 5 years by this point and I (and I suspect many others) remained blissfully unaware of 4chan for a long time after 2003.

ArinaS 2y ago
I think anything before Frutiger Aero became popular (and it didn't in 2003) can be considered "early" Internet.
- vlovich123 2y ago
  I hope you realize the irony of picking an arbitrary OS theme, something that has no correlation to the Internet in any way, as a meaningful point in the history of the Internet. As I said it’s all arbitrary. I might pick the time around Google’s founding as the early Internet, others might pick Yahoo, others might pick anything before eternal September.
  - rob 2y ago
    You're trying to argue that 2003 isn't the early Internet. Seems like you're trying to have your "Ackchyually..." moment right now because you didn't know 4chan existed.
    - vlovich123 2y ago
      No, I’m saying the Internet was already in mass adoption for the preceding decade. Talk to old timers and they’ll reminisce that the early days of the internet were great until Eternal September in 93. Others will reminisce about the days of BBS. I’m saying “early internet” is a relative term that has more to do with the person interpreting than any objective definition.
      - hollerith 2y ago
        I put the start of the mainstreaming of the internet in July 1993, the month a cartoon was published in the New Yorker captioned, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you%27re_a_dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_... Before then, it was quite unusual to see coverage of the internet by the mainstream press (and what coverage I saw took a theoretical or "far" view, i.e., as part of a discussion of governmental policy). After then, coverage exploded. This is an American perspective: the timing was probably different in other countries.
      - BoingBoomTschak 2y ago
        Let's just call it "pre Facebook/Twitter" Internet, then. Because that's what it is.
    - acheron 2y ago
      2003 was after the dot com boom and crash. There is no possible definition of "early Internet" that can include 2003.
  - tsumnia 2y ago
    It's clearly when AOL started offering a monthly subscription for unlimited Internet usage.
- klodolph 2y ago
  Frutiger Aero didn’t exist before 2017.
  - ArinaS 2y ago
    It did since at least 2004[1]. [1] - https://yenimedya.aydin.edu.tr/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/3.pdf https://yenimedya.aydin.edu.tr/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/3....
    - klodolph 2y ago
      That’s dated 2023… am I missing something? The aesthetic did not exist in 2004. It was created in the late 2010s by juxtaposing materials from the early 2000s. This created a new style from old materials. The same way you might combine art deco motifs in new ways in the 1980s, inventing “art deco revival”.
      - ArinaS 2y ago
        > "The aesthetic did not exist in 2004" Well, this research states that "Between 2004 and 2013, Frutiger Aero was influential in advertising, media, stock images, cinema, gaming, and spatial design". That's page 4.
        klodolph 2y ago
        There’s no justification given or source cited. You can’t just dig up a paper somebody wrote that agrees with you—you have to actually read the paper to understand what it says and what support it gives to that position. I see NO support for this position. No reasoning, no primary sources, no secondary sources, not even the personal experiences of the author. I have not seen any evidence that Frutiger Aero existed before 2017, and 2017 seems like the most likely creation date to me. That’s when it was created, by combining materials from the 2000s in new ways. Call it “bricolage”, perhaps. Addenda: if you scroll through Google Image search results for Frutiger Aero, you’ll see what looks to me like an obvious lack of actual materials from the 2000s. I see a screenshot of Windows XP, a screenshot of the Nintendo Wii home screen. Maybe a few other random screenshots of apps or web sites. As far as I can tell, Frutiger Aero was invented by taking these few materials and extrapolating a whole aesthetic movements out of it. I see a lot of artwork dated from the 2020s labeled as Frutiger Aero—that’s the true nexus of the aesthetic, Gen Z adults recreating a half-remembered image from their childhoods. Which is fine. It’s just not from 2004. Like how Vaporwave is not actually from the 1990s or 1980s, Vaporwave is from the mid-2010s. I love Vaporwave, but I know that it’s not from the past; it’s a modern remix of elements from the past.
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  Early Internet is before the Web was its main thing. Early Web is before most netizens (remember that?) had ever heard or seen the term "blog", and much of the web was folks' "home pages" on whatever weird topic they were interested in (some were effectively "blogging", but that wasn't a term yet—"web log" might see limited use). This was the Nerd Web. Mid-period is from the rise of "blog" to the rise of the smartphone, Google capitulating in the never-ending war on spammers and ruining itself instead, and Facebook coming about. Roughly '08 would be the end of this period. Call this the Macromedia Flash Web, perhaps. Everything since that is the Late, or Hellscape, Web, an age dominated to an extreme degree by spam, scams, ads, astroturfing, and absolute insanity becoming normalized and spilling over into real life. This is the part that made it clear we'd have been better off never inventing any of this.
JKCalhoun 2y ago
Regardless of date bracketing, I can miss 80's punk and not miss slam dancing. Maybe someone can list some positive internet culture we got from 4chan that I am overlooking.
- doublerabbit 2y ago
  4chan is widely known for /b/ but it had and has much more than /b. /b was always known for its murk. Each chan sub category tended to their own niche community and rivalry was little. /f/ in its hayday was a wonderful creative group for Flash animations and with existent of NewGrounds made the internet fun. It's how I learnt flash and how YTMND came to be.
  - throw10920 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - bruhwait 2y ago
      [dead]
  - matheusmoreira 2y ago
    /g/ has a daily programming thread. I remember the SerenityOS developer used to post webm demos there. I remember seeing plenty of cool stuff. Someone on /vr/ once started a thread about SNES homebrew and actually made a /vr/ themed one. I wonder what happened to that guy.
    - vermilingua 2y ago
      /dpt/ was where i did a good deal of my learning during university, and the constant /g/entoo posting taught me far more about Linux than I would have learned on my own or through uni.
      - matheusmoreira 2y ago
tanepiper 2y ago
4chan: Because even Something Awful had some kind of flawed moral compass
- tonfreed 2y ago
  So did 4chan, god help you if you abused a cat
  - shadowgovt 2y ago
    There are some things not even Doom music can fix.
- username332211 2y ago
  Funny. The moral compass of most people on the internet tends to be disordered enough to make me think Something Awful must have been truly horrific. For far too many people "I have a moral compass" seems to mean "I don't even have the self-awareness to realize what I'm doing is evil".
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- snvzz 2y ago
  You seem to be confusing 4chan (chaotic good) with kiwifarms aka the farms, the true evil descendant of Something Awful (which was chaotic neutral).
arkh 2y ago
Yup, ytmnd predates it a couple year.
rjbwork 2y ago
r9k is the origin of a huge amount of modern youth culture and slang. The obsessive vanity and "looksmaxxing" and all the associated terminology comes directly out of the incel culture on that board. It is extremely mainstream now.
xeromal 2y ago
I think that's simply which generation is talking. I'm an average (oldish?) millenial and 2003 is about that sweet spot of when I cut my teeth on the web. I was online before getting my butt kicked by koreans on starcraft but I can find old posts of mine starting in those early 2000s.

ArinaS 2y ago

I think anything before Frutiger Aero became popular (and it didn't in 2003) can be considered "early" Internet.

vlovich123 2y ago
I hope you realize the irony of picking an arbitrary OS theme, something that has no correlation to the Internet in any way, as a meaningful point in the history of the Internet. As I said it’s all arbitrary. I might pick the time around Google’s founding as the early Internet, others might pick Yahoo, others might pick anything before eternal September.
- rob 2y ago
  You're trying to argue that 2003 isn't the early Internet. Seems like you're trying to have your "Ackchyually..." moment right now because you didn't know 4chan existed.
  - vlovich123 2y ago
    No, I’m saying the Internet was already in mass adoption for the preceding decade. Talk to old timers and they’ll reminisce that the early days of the internet were great until Eternal September in 93. Others will reminisce about the days of BBS. I’m saying “early internet” is a relative term that has more to do with the person interpreting than any objective definition.
    - hollerith 2y ago
      I put the start of the mainstreaming of the internet in July 1993, the month a cartoon was published in the New Yorker captioned, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you%27re_a_dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_... Before then, it was quite unusual to see coverage of the internet by the mainstream press (and what coverage I saw took a theoretical or "far" view, i.e., as part of a discussion of governmental policy). After then, coverage exploded. This is an American perspective: the timing was probably different in other countries.
    - BoingBoomTschak 2y ago
      Let's just call it "pre Facebook/Twitter" Internet, then. Because that's what it is.
  - acheron 2y ago
    2003 was after the dot com boom and crash. There is no possible definition of "early Internet" that can include 2003.
- tsumnia 2y ago
  It's clearly when AOL started offering a monthly subscription for unlimited Internet usage.
klodolph 2y ago
Frutiger Aero didn’t exist before 2017.
- ArinaS 2y ago
  It did since at least 2004[1]. [1] - https://yenimedya.aydin.edu.tr/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/3.pdf https://yenimedya.aydin.edu.tr/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/3....
  - klodolph 2y ago
    That’s dated 2023… am I missing something? The aesthetic did not exist in 2004. It was created in the late 2010s by juxtaposing materials from the early 2000s. This created a new style from old materials. The same way you might combine art deco motifs in new ways in the 1980s, inventing “art deco revival”.
    - ArinaS 2y ago
      > "The aesthetic did not exist in 2004" Well, this research states that "Between 2004 and 2013, Frutiger Aero was influential in advertising, media, stock images, cinema, gaming, and spatial design". That's page 4.
      - klodolph 2y ago
        There’s no justification given or source cited. You can’t just dig up a paper somebody wrote that agrees with you—you have to actually read the paper to understand what it says and what support it gives to that position. I see NO support for this position. No reasoning, no primary sources, no secondary sources, not even the personal experiences of the author. I have not seen any evidence that Frutiger Aero existed before 2017, and 2017 seems like the most likely creation date to me. That’s when it was created, by combining materials from the 2000s in new ways. Call it “bricolage”, perhaps. Addenda: if you scroll through Google Image search results for Frutiger Aero, you’ll see what looks to me like an obvious lack of actual materials from the 2000s. I see a screenshot of Windows XP, a screenshot of the Nintendo Wii home screen. Maybe a few other random screenshots of apps or web sites. As far as I can tell, Frutiger Aero was invented by taking these few materials and extrapolating a whole aesthetic movements out of it. I see a lot of artwork dated from the 2020s labeled as Frutiger Aero—that’s the true nexus of the aesthetic, Gen Z adults recreating a half-remembered image from their childhoods. Which is fine. It’s just not from 2004. Like how Vaporwave is not actually from the 1990s or 1980s, Vaporwave is from the mid-2010s. I love Vaporwave, but I know that it’s not from the past; it’s a modern remix of elements from the past.
alabastervlog 2y ago
Early Internet is before the Web was its main thing. Early Web is before most netizens (remember that?) had ever heard or seen the term "blog", and much of the web was folks' "home pages" on whatever weird topic they were interested in (some were effectively "blogging", but that wasn't a term yet—"web log" might see limited use). This was the Nerd Web. Mid-period is from the rise of "blog" to the rise of the smartphone, Google capitulating in the never-ending war on spammers and ruining itself instead, and Facebook coming about. Roughly '08 would be the end of this period. Call this the Macromedia Flash Web, perhaps. Everything since that is the Late, or Hellscape, Web, an age dominated to an extreme degree by spam, scams, ads, astroturfing, and absolute insanity becoming normalized and spilling over into real life. This is the part that made it clear we'd have been better off never inventing any of this.

JKCalhoun 2y ago

Regardless of date bracketing, I can miss 80's punk and not miss slam dancing. Maybe someone can list some positive internet culture we got from 4chan that I am overlooking.

doublerabbit 2y ago
4chan is widely known for /b/ but it had and has much more than /b. /b was always known for its murk. Each chan sub category tended to their own niche community and rivalry was little. /f/ in its hayday was a wonderful creative group for Flash animations and with existent of NewGrounds made the internet fun. It's how I learnt flash and how YTMND came to be.
- throw10920 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - bruhwait 2y ago
    [dead]
- matheusmoreira 2y ago
  /g/ has a daily programming thread. I remember the SerenityOS developer used to post webm demos there. I remember seeing plenty of cool stuff. Someone on /vr/ once started a thread about SNES homebrew and actually made a /vr/ themed one. I wonder what happened to that guy.
  - vermilingua 2y ago
    /dpt/ was where i did a good deal of my learning during university, and the constant /g/entoo posting taught me far more about Linux than I would have learned on my own or through uni.
    - matheusmoreira 2y ago

tanepiper 2y ago

4chan: Because even Something Awful had some kind of flawed moral compass

tonfreed 2y ago
So did 4chan, god help you if you abused a cat
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  There are some things not even Doom music can fix.
username332211 2y ago
Funny. The moral compass of most people on the internet tends to be disordered enough to make me think Something Awful must have been truly horrific. For far too many people "I have a moral compass" seems to mean "I don't even have the self-awareness to realize what I'm doing is evil".
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
snvzz 2y ago
You seem to be confusing 4chan (chaotic good) with kiwifarms aka the farms, the true evil descendant of Something Awful (which was chaotic neutral).

arkh 2y ago

Yup, ytmnd predates it a couple year.

rjbwork 2y ago

r9k is the origin of a huge amount of modern youth culture and slang. The obsessive vanity and "looksmaxxing" and all the associated terminology comes directly out of the incel culture on that board. It is extremely mainstream now.

xeromal 2y ago

I think that's simply which generation is talking. I'm an average (oldish?) millenial and 2003 is about that sweet spot of when I cut my teeth on the web. I was online before getting my butt kicked by koreans on starcraft but I can find old posts of mine starting in those early 2000s.