this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
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Hot take, but I dare say 4chan was the source of as much of what's good in internet culture as it was for much of what's the worst in internet culture.
Rickroll, Caturday, the modern meme format, reaction gifs, "TLDR", Anonymous (well, the good versions of it), spoderman, Rule 34, trollface, rageface, quite a bit of pet abuse justice, ... they may have even successfully set back AI chatbots nearly a full decade with their gaming of Microsoft's Tay chatbot... quite a lot of modern Internet slang such as win, fail, an hero, based, copypasta, creepypasta, "god tier", lulz, moar, sauce...
The thing about anarchy is that it brings out both the best and the worst.
The modern meme format was around before 4chan. They were called "image macros."
I'd argue that demotivational posters were even older, right? These were even printed out before internet access was wide spread.
If you trust KnowYourMeme, the phrase “image macro” was coined in 2004 and popularized in 2005. 4chan was started in 2003.
I don't trust Know Your Meme for exactly that kind of bullshit. They were called image macros even in the late 90's on forums and Usenet.
Think they are talking about rage comics, wojack, and whatever the new one is called.
I think that most of those evolved elsewhere and were taken over to 4Chan.
You think wrong. 4chan's impact on internet culture late 2000s and the entire 2010s can't be overstated. And that includes getting Trump elected twice.
I'm extremely skeptical of the first use of "TLDR" coming from 4chan specifically.
Yeah not absolutely every meme/slang listed might be originated on 4Chan. TLDR seems to have originated or at least popularized by the SomethingAwful forums, which together with ebaumsworld could be considered the parents of 4Chan (with cross-pollination by Newgrounds?). But 4Chan was the crossroads of all these memes coming together, germinating and spreading to every other site shortly after.