How the Internet Left 4chan Behind

4Chan was where I learned that the Internet could be bad. In 2003, it faced the site during high school in 2003 by an American teenager named Christopher Paul (known as his user, Moot). Paul copies the format of the Japanese messaging panel, nicknamed 2channel; Users in 4chaan can spread an unidentified mixture of a non -filtered mixture of texts, images and animation GifS. It was not difficult to find illegal materials on the Internet, but 4chaan was an early center – or “dumping land” may be more appropriate. The site has been immersed with pornography, pirated files, and not subject to dating or politics. Her background, pale yellow gradient, still give me a slight Freson, like a Playboy A case hidden under the bed. I often test the control sets on a library or school computer Lan Internet connection by trying to download 4chaan. Usually, it will not succeed, which has not been hinted to the site: Even adults know its name at least, and it justifies a place in the ban lists.

In 4chant, user names were most often “unknown” or a series of numbers. I never published, but I understood the attractiveness of hiding behind a mask and became one of the crowd. The site shape is a collective identifier that can be called in the web browser, years before the start of the Digital gang wars in Twitter. Learning the colloquial forum was the key to understanding its jokes: Lulz, Fren, TFW, Troll. Participants were deleted when they stopped getting a new post, which usually occurred quickly, especially if messages fail to provoke. At a time when the Internet was still locomotive, 4chan guaranteed fixed energy, regardless of day or night time. But as the social media scene arose around it, during the twenty -two, and other sites competing as spaces for “Shitposting”, this digital term for art, 4chan faded in connection. In 2015, Paul sold him to the owner of 2channel, the Japanese site that inspired him. They survived as a ships of the Internet – linguistic, and lean, and in a state of detained development – that is why it was not completely surprising when 4chaan disappeared on the fourteenth of April. The Spinoff Forum called Soyjak.party (even more and more political beings from its predecessor) received credit for penetrating and closing the site.

After a week and a half, 4chaan returned to the online return during the weekend, but an atmosphere of embarrassment is suspended on his return. The infiltrators leaked the source code of 4chans, along with the accounts of the unknown volunteer supervisors. “It is a fairly old internet infrastructure,” Jared Holt, a researcher at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, who focuses on local extremist movements on the Internet. Instead of a complete destruction act, the penetration seemed a dwarf, which is in the secondary school of 4chaan after two decades of the presence of the forum. Once a digital habitat for political error, a starting land of INCEL culture, white power groups, group shooting data, and more, 4chaan is now one of many platforms that lead to hatred. President Donald Trump’s social reality is also, as with Barler, the right -wing video site that offers “real freedom”. There is Patriot’s victory, a type of cloning Redit that focuses on Trump. Kiwi Farm, a center known for online harassment; And X, under the ownership of Elon Musk, has eased the content modification policies and allowed the type of conspiracy theories and graphic images that have once flourished on 4chan. “4chant has been paid mainly to the right.”

What cannot be denied is that 4cha helped form the environmental system as we know. This type in the actual time that occurs on X, Tiktok and Video Podcasts; “Owns” culture, Clapbacks, and Putdowns online – all crystallized on 4chan. The site showed, before many people realized this, that the Internet is mainly in the state of nature, and hosted a war for everyone against everyone. Cole Stirker, editorial advisor in Los Angeles and author “”Anonymous Winger: How did the 4chand Army invaded the web?“From 2011, the influential forum’s position was summarized as“ wrongly totally playful. ”4chaan played a role in the acceleration of digital culture, which is the attack by the discourse in the form of one million multimedia particles. Today, fluency extends at the highest levels of power. Studio GHibliIt does not resemble more than 4chaan function in its nihilistic mixture of implicit violence and absurd humor. 4Chan flourished when the Edgelord content was not acceptable in the prevailing social media channels; Now it can be found anywhere.

When 4chaan returned online, a mail The company’s blog indicated that the site suffers from a lack of resources that prevented the team from upgrading its servers. The publication said that the damage caused by the penetration was “disastrous”, but during the stoppage period, the team finally moved to a new guaranteed infrastructure. Although the jobs that allow users to download new publications and pictures have remained in a state of decline, and some features have not yet been restored, the blog post announced, “4chan has returned. No one -web site can replace it, or this society.” Even if 4chaan can restore its location as an online extremism, the truth is that more and more extremism occurs in private digital ports. School shootings were Plan and broadcast Unlike the decentralized chat platform. The brain poisoning is now perpetuated through closed groups on Telegram or Signal, which provides some encryption and automatic erasing messages. in SemaforJournalist Bin Smith recently destroyed the news of a group of influential group chat that includes the Silicon Valley investors, media directors, politicians, and writers, including Maga-friendly investment capitalist Mark AndersonThe right -wing entrepreneur who turned into a politician Vivic RamasuamiAnd the anti -dining author Thomas Catterton Williams. Chats had Jokey names like “The Last Men, apparently” and hosted sniping talks on the workplace’s workplace and the rise of China, which provided tests of the opinions of these declared numbers. “Each group chat ends with the presence of memes and humor, and the goal of collective chat is to approach the objection line without stumbling,” Andrinks told PodCaster Lex Fridman in February. 4Chan can disappear with the same ease again, but its sensitivity fades into the corner of Grong from our brains, which is the shitposting thread that can never be erased. ♦