The anonymous forum thrived when edgelord content wasn’t acceptable on more mainstream social media. Today, it can be found most anywhere.
I never used 4chan myself but I was in high school in the late 2000's and knew folks in my computer science classes who used to spend much time there. The late 2000's was before "mainstream social media" right? Only facebook.com was there and you could post whatever you wanted including "edgelord" stuff on facebook of the late 2000's as that version of facebook wasn't really moderated...
And then you had reddit also which at that time had many subreddits where you could post anything including 4chan stuff. I remember people on reddit back then complaining that reddit was for people too scared to go to 4chan. And I would laugh at the comments because they basically described me back then haha.
Mainstream social media stuff that this article talks about...that happened later in the 2010's....
Also it is still so surreal to me to see prestigious publications like the New Yorker talking about 4chan. Back in the 2000's and early 2010's 4chan was one of those super nerdy silly kinda dumb underground things that you didn't really talk about in public because it would be cringe worthy. I remember in 2016 when somebody shouted "PEPE!" at some Hillary Clinton rally and looking at the video of that and feeling cringe. The thought that history students in the future would have to study memes and the thought that people in the "real world" like CNN would be writing about some dumb silly nerd meme website was so bizzare. Even now in 2025 the fact that The New Yorker has this giant article about 4chan is so weird to me.
4chan...those "edgelord memes"....crazy reddit subreddits....Pepe the frog....
All these things were not supposed to change the "real world." Like I said earlier, I never used 4chan myself, but I really don't think anyone actually using 4chan or any of us using reddit back in the late 2000's or early 2010's ever imagined that anything posted on those sites would ever have any impact on the real world. The internet was just this place where nerdy people could go to post silly shit. What the hell happnened?
Just ridiculously stupid, juvenile stuff. Being "edgy" on 4chan was often just copy-pasting the n-word or "JEWS" a thousand times. That feels really so tame to what goes on there now. Looking through this archive, it all feels so... disconnected from reality. It was all so fake and stupid.
These elite "hackers" were often just pwning people who reused passwords, and then posting gay porn on their MySpace. When Fox News did a report saying that "4chan are hackers on steroids. They can turn your computer into a bomb!", they all laughed because they knew they're not capable of that. And then Anonymous? I mean the V for Vendetta masks? So stupid lol.
It all changed as time went on. I remember seeing a tweet around 2015 that said something like "it's crazy how I can type something in this box that would destroy my life", except it wasn't a joke.
Reading through the links you posted from the 2000's it's interesting how...innocent some of those users seem.
The word "innocent" may seem absurd to describe 4chan users...but those comments really do come off as being posted by kids in suburban middle class families who seem gleeful they can anonymously say things on a computer that they cannot say in real life at school or at home because their teachers or their parents would put them into time out or something...
I don't think anyone would ever use the word "innocent" to describe 4chan of the 2010's or nowadays though
Technically I think we were first with deviantART, 2000. Myspace was after us, only thing I know around the same was was Habbo Hotel, but it didn't come out of beta till 2001 iirc. Either way, I was dealing with edgelordies uploading crazy shit to dA long before 4chan. The things I've seen...
4chan is composed of different boards. There's/b/ which used to be fun/funny to go to, back in the 00s up until probably 2012ish. There's /pol/ which has always been a shitshow and has become synonymous with "4chan" when people think of it these days. And a bunch of others. Think of it like maybe you go to /r/showerthoughts or /r/cats but you'd never step foot in /r/the_donald (when it existed) or /r/feet (not shaming, just using for range). The same goes for 4chan. Personally, I'd go to /b/ (random) or /m/ (mecha).
It was never cringe to talk about 4chan openly back then because most people didn't even know about it, and for those who did it was like a secret badge/nod to those who knew.
Before 2012 it was also a hub for Anonymous, lulzsec, and others, and was a force behind Occupy Wallstreet, protesting the church of scientology and spreading word about Lisa McPherson, taking down gov sites in protest, Stratfor leaks, and far more focused on taking action on issues related to civil liberties.
Then in 2012 it really went down hill after Jeremy Hammond got arrested, after Sabu snitched on him. Yes, moot owned the site, but I'm of the opinion that due to the arrest/snitching, moot had to go against the "anonymous" ethos of 4chan and give access to everything to the fbi for "national security" reasons because they got spooked after the whole Occupy movement and the activity of activists on the site. The whole site turned into total garbage in a really short period of time following, and became flooded with a completely different crowd, a ton of brainrot (more so than before), way more right leaning posts/posters, and wayyy more porn than usual filled boards like /b/. Then when moot started another business (or he got a higher position at one of the big tech companies... I forget) and sold off 4chan, it became an absolute cesspool for the things listed earlier.
Tldr - it used be good... stupid but good. Now it's garbage, full of maga bs, and brainrot.
I am old enough to remember a time when your internet persona was not linked to the real world.
No I cannot openly post about how much I fucking hate religious people because who knows my next employer may very well be a card carrying Christian (they are rare here but do exist).
Anonymity has it's place.
This article seems wrong to me.
The anonymous forum thrived when edgelord content wasn’t acceptable on more mainstream social media. Today, it can be found most anywhere.
I never used 4chan myself but I was in high school in the late 2000's and knew folks in my computer science classes who used to spend much time there. The late 2000's was before "mainstream social media" right? Only facebook.com was there and you could post whatever you wanted including "edgelord" stuff on facebook of the late 2000's as that version of facebook wasn't really moderated...
And then you had reddit also which at that time had many subreddits where you could post anything including 4chan stuff. I remember people on reddit back then complaining that reddit was for people too scared to go to 4chan. And I would laugh at the comments because they basically described me back then haha.
Mainstream social media stuff that this article talks about...that happened later in the 2010's....
Also it is still so surreal to me to see prestigious publications like the New Yorker talking about 4chan. Back in the 2000's and early 2010's 4chan was one of those super nerdy silly kinda dumb underground things that you didn't really talk about in public because it would be cringe worthy. I remember in 2016 when somebody shouted "PEPE!" at some Hillary Clinton rally and looking at the video of that and feeling cringe. The thought that history students in the future would have to study memes and the thought that people in the "real world" like CNN would be writing about some dumb silly nerd meme website was so bizzare. Even now in 2025 the fact that The New Yorker has this giant article about 4chan is so weird to me.
4chan...those "edgelord memes"....crazy reddit subreddits....Pepe the frog....
All these things were not supposed to change the "real world." Like I said earlier, I never used 4chan myself, but I really don't think anyone actually using 4chan or any of us using reddit back in the late 2000's or early 2010's ever imagined that anything posted on those sites would ever have any impact on the real world. The internet was just this place where nerdy people could go to post silly shit. What the hell happnened?
> The internet was just this place where nerdy people could go to post silly shit. What the hell happnened?
Right. The whole internet and the culture around it changed.
Early 4chan really was just stupid silly garbage. Did you know there's an archive of old 4chan posts from around 2006-2008?
https://old.sage.moe/b/thread/85525276 (sarah palin email "hack")
https://old.sage.moe/b/thread/9691632/ (just a random thread.)
https://old.sage.moe/_/articles/glossary/
Just ridiculously stupid, juvenile stuff. Being "edgy" on 4chan was often just copy-pasting the n-word or "JEWS" a thousand times. That feels really so tame to what goes on there now. Looking through this archive, it all feels so... disconnected from reality. It was all so fake and stupid.
These elite "hackers" were often just pwning people who reused passwords, and then posting gay porn on their MySpace. When Fox News did a report saying that "4chan are hackers on steroids. They can turn your computer into a bomb!", they all laughed because they knew they're not capable of that. And then Anonymous? I mean the V for Vendetta masks? So stupid lol.
It all changed as time went on. I remember seeing a tweet around 2015 that said something like "it's crazy how I can type something in this box that would destroy my life", except it wasn't a joke.
Florian Cramer is a scholar who puts things into a wider art/historical context: https://www.diaphanes.com/artikel/anonymous-imageboards-meme...
Reading through the links you posted from the 2000's it's interesting how...innocent some of those users seem.
The word "innocent" may seem absurd to describe 4chan users...but those comments really do come off as being posted by kids in suburban middle class families who seem gleeful they can anonymously say things on a computer that they cannot say in real life at school or at home because their teachers or their parents would put them into time out or something...
I don't think anyone would ever use the word "innocent" to describe 4chan of the 2010's or nowadays though
I never got into 4chan because I used irc, looking at those threads, reads like irc logs.
What exactly is stupid about Anonymous?
> Also it is still so surreal to me to see prestigious publications like the New Yorker talking about 4chan.
Needs moar yellow van: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=128IR21ZQa0 (2007)
> What the hell happnened?
The people who did post on 4chan became adults. I say "became adults", not "grew up".
Technically I think we were first with deviantART, 2000. Myspace was after us, only thing I know around the same was was Habbo Hotel, but it didn't come out of beta till 2001 iirc. Either way, I was dealing with edgelordies uploading crazy shit to dA long before 4chan. The things I've seen...
4chan is composed of different boards. There's/b/ which used to be fun/funny to go to, back in the 00s up until probably 2012ish. There's /pol/ which has always been a shitshow and has become synonymous with "4chan" when people think of it these days. And a bunch of others. Think of it like maybe you go to /r/showerthoughts or /r/cats but you'd never step foot in /r/the_donald (when it existed) or /r/feet (not shaming, just using for range). The same goes for 4chan. Personally, I'd go to /b/ (random) or /m/ (mecha).
It was never cringe to talk about 4chan openly back then because most people didn't even know about it, and for those who did it was like a secret badge/nod to those who knew.
Before 2012 it was also a hub for Anonymous, lulzsec, and others, and was a force behind Occupy Wallstreet, protesting the church of scientology and spreading word about Lisa McPherson, taking down gov sites in protest, Stratfor leaks, and far more focused on taking action on issues related to civil liberties.
Then in 2012 it really went down hill after Jeremy Hammond got arrested, after Sabu snitched on him. Yes, moot owned the site, but I'm of the opinion that due to the arrest/snitching, moot had to go against the "anonymous" ethos of 4chan and give access to everything to the fbi for "national security" reasons because they got spooked after the whole Occupy movement and the activity of activists on the site. The whole site turned into total garbage in a really short period of time following, and became flooded with a completely different crowd, a ton of brainrot (more so than before), way more right leaning posts/posters, and wayyy more porn than usual filled boards like /b/. Then when moot started another business (or he got a higher position at one of the big tech companies... I forget) and sold off 4chan, it became an absolute cesspool for the things listed earlier.
Tldr - it used be good... stupid but good. Now it's garbage, full of maga bs, and brainrot.
Moot first got engaged in growing Canvas Networks, then got a job at Google.
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19119576
I am old enough to remember a time when your internet persona was not linked to the real world.
No I cannot openly post about how much I fucking hate religious people because who knows my next employer may very well be a card carrying Christian (they are rare here but do exist). Anonymity has it's place.
Where else am I going to find coupons for a free X-Box?
they just moved to x