I heard someone saying this place was a big influence on internet culture, but that era ended a decade ago. Before that,>a meme would appear on 4chan>someone would export it elsewhere >It would go mainstream in the span of 1-3 yearsThen 4chan nearly stopped producing its own memes, started importing them from elsewhere, and its overall impact on internet culture greatly diminished.Which may be true, but I got the impression that 4chan inadvertently upgraded from >influencing internet culture to >influencing general culture.Memes are faster and ultimately shallower. At best, they're a vehicle for deeper ideas they can't really express in full; without those ideas, a meme is ephemeral and gets quickly forgotten.But those ideas are heavier, the process of spreading them is way slower, and it's much harder to get people to fully embrace them. So I looked at a bunch of non-mainstream ideas and fringe concepts that were popular on some 4chan boards around decade ago, and checked where they are now in terms of general appeal and popularity.I'm posting a bunch of examples in the replies, but the question is:>Is 4chan actually impacting culture in the long run, rather than simply making memes?Or,>Is 4chan merely a predictor of whatever the mainstream will embrace in the span of a decade?The second option is still plausibile becauseA) despite changing through the years, 4chan is and was always largely anti-mainstream. No matter the subject, what's popular on the dedicated board is almost always an outlier/minority position in that field/hobby/interest.and,B) the general culture is cyclical, people tend to distance themselves from stale positions/ideas/beliefs and even embrace what was previously unpopular.So 4chan ends up being "avant-garde" without actually impacting the culture; the world gradually and spontaneously adopts 4chan stances and ideas without even acknowledging or realizing it.
>>18621019You're pissing into a sea of piss, OP. Touch grass.
>>18621019Examples:>2015: /r9k/ is talking about chads VS incels, hypergamy, claims look is everything, adopts the concept of "lookism" and comes up with the word "looksmaxxing"; a bunch of totally incomprehensible words and ideas outside of the board (and a few very minor spinoff forums)>2026: looksmaxxing is a worldwide phenomenon that invaded social media, then the news cycle, spawning microcelebrities and a cult following among the youth>2015: /pol/ is producing some fringe memes about jews; the fringe ideas they express would get you banned on every platform and 100% ostracized by society >2026: nearly everyone under the age of 35 is an antisemite, openly opposes zionism, knows about the alleged Greater Israel plans and so on (left or right, worldwide); there's a growing, enormous focus and scrutiny on the Israel lobby and their influence on politics >2015: /x/ is entertaining itself with a bunch of made up horror stories they pretend are real (an unspoken part of the game is larping and assuming the pastas/greentexts you're reading or writing "may" be real); they're either made by them or intercepted and popularized on the board >2027: the "as seen on /x/" is basically a horror subgenre with big Hollywood productions, videogames, podcasts, documentaries and so on (everyone has heard of SCP foundation, Slenderman, the Backrooms, the Rake...); common concepts such as creepypastas, analog horror, liminal spaces etc were heavily influenced and popularized by /x/ and are still massively popular on social media
>>18621019>>18621021More:>2015: /v/ is complaining about videogames and SJWs infiltrating AAA studios and vidya journalism, wants the industry to crash >2026: vidya journalism is utterly dead, the concept of woke/DEI entered mainstream discourse and is despised by half the target, 1/3 of the AAA industry was fired and the whole thing is collapsing in real time >2016: a fraction of /pol/ is looking into alleged elite pedo groups and there's a mass censorship attempt on the subject, everything vaguely related to the "pizza" conspiracy is immediately removed from every platform (even the dedicated wiki, which features a big picture of Epstein on the homepage, is suddenly deleted) and whoever talks about those ideas without explicitly trying to "debunk" them is branded as dangerous schizo>2026: literally everyone knows elite pedo groups are a thing, everyone believes the entire political system is Epstein-adjacent and the actual ideas behind pizzagate (not the tinfoil watered down crazy strawman version described and defamed by MSM sources) went from fringe lunacy to common sense Of course, both options could be true at the same time: 4chan having a minor impact on the general culture while acting as a limited predictor of certain waves and ideas.
i don't think it's so much the case that 4chan influences anything anymore, rather, every other space on the internet got folded into 4chan culturei read someone say once that if you were on 4chan in the 2010s you basically have already seen everything on the internetlooksmaxxing, wojaks, hyperborea, all the "cool" "edgy" memes are basically recyled shit from 4chan over a decade ago
>>18621021I don't even understand why looksmaxxing somehow became a mainstream normie thing in 2026 all of a sudden. It isn't even an incel thing now, but rather some general manosphere thing
>>18621126I have a strong suspicion that social media algorithms are intentionally pushing it because it's effective at getting teen boys to buy cosmetic products. I do not recall any other trend getting pushed this hard for so long if there is no marketing power behind it.
>>18621019Bronys are 4chan's fault
Well... when I got invited here it was a hush hush thing, you recommended it to people who were "on it". I think that 4chan inherently attracts that kind of individual, and the "loser incel" is just a stereotype to discredit what comes out of here. Anonymity is more than just not taking a name when posting, its part of becoming a collective consciousness. We are the collective consciousness when we post here and whatever we say ends up manifesting in the pool of ideas (or rather, talking about certain topics puts them in overtons windows)
>>18621019>I heard someone saying this place was a big influence on internet culture, but that era ended a decade ago.Don't remember where I heard it but turns out m00t was contacted early on to try and make this place a right wing breeding ground, using old school shock humor as a gateway to racist beliefs and thought.Been here since 2004, seems to check out. I think it worked. This place kinda sucks now in a different way from how it sucked before.
>>18621210>Don't remember where I heard it but turns out m00t was contacted early on to try and make this place a right wing breeding ground, using old school shock humor as a gateway to racist beliefs and thoughtIt's the leftist conspiracy theory according to which Epstein created /pol/ to divert attention from "class war" whatever that means
>>18621236Been here for a bit, seems legit.
>>18621247>Zionist Jew created modern antisemitism because... reasons I guessVery legit yeah
>>186210194chan does very little organic creation of memes for fun these days. What happened was basically that in around 2012-2015, big players realized that 4chan was a perfect place to plant push and organize their shit and ran by a small group of anonymous nobodies who, due to 4chans moderation culture, had absolute power, were faceless, and could easily be corrupted and infiltrated. So what has happened since then is that the original 4chan culture has effectively been wiped out on all fast-moving boards who today largely operate as a battleground between different institutional players trying to push out their stuff. These player have less use for truly original content. They only need content as a vehicle for their narratives.Therefore, the core 4chan values of deep hostility to outsiders who didnt conform, to identity, to platforms politics and taking stuff too seriously, and fanatic celebration of complete anonymity and original content for the entertainment value have been completely kill.One obvious example is the introduction of flags and id's on the boards that the institutional players want to control. The reason for this is that without those measures any individual anon faget can balance any big well financed player by applying insane amount of autism and samefagging. This would kill their model for forcing their cancer. They need to rig the game so the people who has the budget to pay 5-6 people or more can keep the threads they want in the catalog and control the consensus in the thread.So these things taken together means that 4chan is today just another "channel", just another battlefield for the same cancer we see everywhere. Summerfags will never know what we once had.
>>18621254The hows its and what fors aren't important faggot. I'm saying everyone is more racist now and in my day it was funny nowadays you queers are all gay for the same skin tone.
>>18621258What
>>18621261That's right. Balls are touching.
