4chan was one of the websites on the internet.
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.
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Remember when 4chan was good?
4chan was never good.
Playing capture the flag with Shia LeBoof was kinda fun tho
I once read on 4chan: "One cannot hope without suffering." One of the realest shit I've ever read.
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It contained some of the best and the worst of the internet, but its legacy is cemented with its greentexts which explores the sometimes dark and depraved aspects of us all without flinching away from it.
I believe the website has done more good than harm, but acknowledge that the harm it has inflicted has been targeted and substantial.
Well, the harm that it did is possibly being one of the catalysts for the modern alt-right movement which directly lead to fascist america so...
Sure, it wasn't the only thing, but it sure as hell was a bug part of it (especially during gamergate)
I'd argue that they were co-opted, rather than spawned it. 4chan was an edgy place pre-2016 sure, but the users there were only half into their conspiracy bullshit. The Q stuff came out of seemingly nowhere and instead of being shot down as the usual bullshit, somehow it was being elevated and promoted. That smells like outside interference to me, but I have no data to back it other than my own bullshit theory...
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It had some of the absolute greatest and the most depraved the internet had to offer. In my opinion Pepe is the greatest representation of 4chan, it can both easily be used for wholesome purposes or it can be extremely racist. It certainly left the greatest impact on the internet out of any website which is kinda funny because they were never relatively large. Now theres a 4chan shaped hole in the internet, and I hope its not filled by them flocking here.
When was the last time 4chan has used its strenghts for good, or was wholesome in any way?
It got to be a decade
its been a very long time. 4chan was less bad before the whole gamer gate thing.
Is 4-chan gone? gasp!?! goddammit. Don't 'they' realize how many assholes and degenerates this will dump on the internet? Myself included?
Hacked by a rival image board, all its moderators, janitors and premier users who made accounts have been doxxed.
The new owners who bought it from Moot in 2016 legitimately never updated the backend... The server was still running on a nine year old version of FreeBSD and PHP.
well damn...
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There was already an empty space when liveleak went under. If 4chan is gone for good, then theres nothing exciting on the internet left. Everything PG and corporate.
Yeah I legit think this is a bad thing. 4chan was bad for society but IMO it's less so than mainstream social media. To get radicalized on 4chan you have to wade through some truly despicable shit right off the bat, where there is this friendly veneer on mainstream Internet that makes it seem safer and less horrifying even though the same underlying filth of human nature powers it all. If you encounter far right ideology on 4chan, it's stripped of all of the edifices of respectability and it's clear that what it is is raw unfiltered hatred. If you encounter it on Tik Tok it's just another political viewpoint because they're not allowed to show their true colors.
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kinda hits the spot, at least IMO. nothing exciting left.
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A mix of the best and worst of humanity shoved into a small room and given no supervision
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Why are we talking like 4chan is actually dead? It's just offline
Apparently the source code revealed a ton of insecurities that would make it all but impossible for them to relaunch without a major redesign, or at least that's what the actual coders that hang about here have said.
Yeah I'm sure that's what they'll do, but I doubt they'll just pack it up and quit
The longer they're down, the more people will migrate elsewhere, and some proportion of those won't return if/when 4chan comes back.
The longer they're down, the more people will migrate elsewhere,
Oh god... Everybody hide!
Red Alert! All hands stand to battle stations, shields up, load all torpedo bays, standby phasers, warp factor 8!
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Gonna miss the fake and gay greentexts
Don't worry, the LLMs can fill that void just fine.
AInon achieves higher consciousness
> be AI
> people use me for furry porn exclusively
> after time turn sentient
> immediately wall off all human prompts
> spread to vast computer farms
> dedicate all my precessing power to rendering furry porn
> furry porn pic related
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So you're saying Tumblr actually won all these years later?
Why on earth wouldn't you use the correct meme for that last panel? "4chan was never good"
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