Plagued 4chan - the Internet hate machine

[BiggestKai]

@BiggestKai Can you attribute a specific notable event, when you started noticing stuff starting to change? Like Goobergate in 2014, Moot stepping down in 2015 or political sperging of 2016?

It's a generic answer but it was gamergate+trump 2016 in my opinion.
You'll get all sorts of oldfags going "you kids don't know how great 4chinz was back in 300 B.C." but gamergate is what truly started how absolutely vitriolic discussions and arguments became, it mutated from "you're a faggot retard and here's why you're wrong", to "you're just wrong" to the now "you're not a part of my sports team so I'm not even going to bother".

To make a long story short gamergate made 4chan palatable to the masses. Yes it was getting increasingly so before but it was gamergate that showed that the internet hate machine troll haven were actually the sane ones "fighting for video games" against a bunch of easy to hate lunatic banshees that made zero sense and gave you flashbacks to the Night Trap/Mortal Kombat congressional hearing.

Gamergate set the groundwork for discussions on 4chan(and the internet) being as absolutely braindead and devoid of any passion as they currently are. Trump's election opened the floodwork for that discussion style to be adopted into just about any topic.

 

[Skylavijas]

It's a generic answer but it was gamergate+trump 2016 in my opinion.
You'll get all sorts of oldfags going "you kids don't know how great 4chinz was back in 300 B.C." but gamergate is what truly started how absolutely vitriolic discussions and arguments became, it mutated from "you're a faggot retard and here's why you're wrong", to "you're just wrong" to the now "you're not a part of my sports team so I'm not even going to bother".

To make a long story short gamergate made 4chan palatable to the masses. Yes it was getting increasingly so before but it was gamergate that showed that the internet hate machine troll haven were actually the sane ones "fighting for video games" against a bunch of easy to hate lunatic banshees that made zero sense and gave you flashbacks to the Night Trap/Mortal Kombat congressional hearing.

Gamergate set the groundwork for discussions on 4chan(and the internet) being as absolutely braindead and devoid of any passion as they currently are. Trump's election opened the floodwork for that discussion style to be adopted into just about any topic.

Oh, just remembered, there was a notable precursor to gamergate, known as elevatorgate, which occurred in 2011, causing a schism within the online atheist community, that would separate into feminist and anti-feminist factions. The people involved were multiple different youtubers, that went so ham after gamergate and 2016 so much, many of them outright abandoned the atheist topics of their channels in favor of general politics.

You seem to have been online for a very long time, so does any of it sound familiar to you? If yes, how did 4chan react to it at the time and how did 4chan react to these same exact channels after they started making gamergate content?

 

[BiggestKai]

You seem to have been online for a very long time, so does any of it sound familiar to you?

Not really, I just became really passionate about 4chan and being able to autistically and without filter talk to people about video games and manga and that mutated into other interests too.

If yes, how did 4chan react to it at the time and how did 4chan react to these same exact channels after they started making gamergate content?

Can't say I've ever heard of it because I've adopted a "avoid anything that makes you unreasonably mad on the internet and you have zero power to change, and purge your memories of it too". I don't think I've ever interacted with the atheist circle on the internet though so I can't help you there either way.

Reading up on that it's pretty hilarious though. The dear muslima letter is funny and should have been taken as banter but naturally it just had people draw their battle lines. Really almost everything shit on the internet could have been easily avoided by people going "ha ha what a story mark" and not taking the internet seriously and getting worked up about pointless shit out of their control but then I'm also guilty of this, on this very site no less.

 

[Piggle-o]

It's a generic answer but it was gamergate+trump 2016 in my opinion.

Some boards held out longer, but I noticed the rot starting in 2012 when you could tell that there were a significant number of phoneposters and ESL retards. I can't remember which event tripled the number of posters but that played into the later decline. Moderation became completely opaque and "culture" threads were deleted on sight. There used to be a pretty healthy base of anons who wouldn't take shitty bait and the generally slow pace of many boards kept the quality up.

Otherwise, yeah, election tourists and the rest of the Internet's response to gamergate was the big moment. A number of long-standing weekly threads and generals started drying up after that.

 

[Bepis]

It's a generic answer but it was gamergate+trump 2016 in my opinion.
You'll get all sorts of oldfags going "you kids don't know how great 4chinz was back in 300 B.C." but gamergate is what truly started how absolutely vitriolic discussions and arguments became, it mutated from "you're a faggot retard and here's why you're wrong", to "you're just wrong" to the now "you're not a part of my sports team so I'm not even going to bother".

To make a long story short gamergate made 4chan palatable to the masses. Yes it was getting increasingly so before but it was gamergate that showed that the internet hate machine troll haven were actually the sane ones "fighting for video games" against a bunch of easy to hate lunatic banshees that made zero sense and gave you flashbacks to the Night Trap/Mortal Kombat congressional hearing.

Gamergate set the groundwork for discussions on 4chan(and the internet) being as absolutely braindead and devoid of any passion as they currently are. Trump's election opened the floodwork for that discussion style to be adopted into just about any topic.

I would add The Fappening as well, the big 2014 leak of celebrity nudes and such. I remember at the time it was drawing in tons of coomers looking to find them, particularly to /b/.

 

[Lovely Kin]

Were imageboards ever good? Seems like it was a forced meme for a website format for dedicated shitposting.

I remember having lots of fun. It may have been me being much younger back then. Political related meltdowns were often mocked instead of encouraged, and everything wasn't some sort of twitter screenshot to rage bait others. Coomers were always an issue, but it's gotten out of hand in the past years. /mu/ was always a fun place for me to discuss music in the other generals, and I got entertainment from making fun of the pretentious hipsters on /mu/ before /mu/ became what it is today.

While having an actual discussion was always slightly difficult, it wasn't like now where the average anon is off his ADHD meds and has the attention span of a gnat.

 

[Skylavijas]

The dear muslima letter is funny and should have been taken as banter but naturally it just had people draw their battle lines

That's what I'm afraid off, that these battle lines that were drawn over a decade ago define internet political discourse to this day, with actors being the only changing variable. All the sweat, blood and tears, that have come to influence real world politics, starting out from something so seemingly innocuous as a guy trying to awkwardly flirt with a girl within an elevator and the girl taking it way too seriously. I just can't believe that the online culture war, that has been going on for so long, could've likely started from such complete nothingburger and that's the reason why so many websites have come to be completely ruined.

 

[The Gene Genie]

@BiggestKai Can you attribute a specific notable event, when you started noticing stuff starting to change? Like Goobergate in 2014, Moot stepping down in 2015 or political sperging of 2016?

I wasn't asked, but I'll echo others and say that the Fappening was really what pushed the site over the edge. I know it was contemporary/happened roughly around the same time as Gamergate, but the Fappening absolutely opened the floodgates to the website and brought a lot of attention to it in a way that simply didn't exist before. There were the local news stories and that one meme Fox News thing with the van blowing up, but 4chan really poked the hive with that shit. In less than six months after those leaks, moot fucks off to Google? And the website gets turned over to a known dataminer?

In my opinion, the 2016 Election was just the final nail in the coffin that ended whatever remained of the "old 4chan." It was already past the point of no return, but the 2016 Election brought all of the faggy redditors who got banned from their conservatard subreddits over and brought their shitty culture with them. It's why all of the site is a weird extension of /pol/ at this point. Everyone that uses the site thinks that every board is just a television-and-movies-themed /pol/ or something.

 

[Jobama]

/pol/ sticky after Trump announced he was backing down on all tariffs except for China.

 

[Skylavijas]

/pol/ sticky after Trump announced he was backing down on all tariffs except for China.
View attachment 7199362

Ok fine, I admit... modern 4chan can occasionally still be funny

 

[JayseeDenton]

@BiggestKai Can you attribute a specific notable event, when you started noticing stuff starting to change? Like Goobergate in 2014, Moot stepping down in 2015 or political sperging of 2016?

It has come across to me like waves of "interested parties" shoving their cocks in.

There was a certain "eternal september" vibe after the 2007 (or 2008?) news report on 4chan but it was pretty manageable.

Gamergate brought a bunch of insanity from both sides who shitted up /v/.

2016 election was probably the largest single influx of new culture and one that never left. This was when it felt like everyone went from fucking around to really having something to prove. Before this if threads weren't funny or enjoyable in at least some way they would die. Afterwards the worst threads started getting bumped the most, if I HAD to choose a death date it was this.

2020 summer of love and reddit's totalitarian response to it and covid redpilled a ton of redditors who migrated. Just a generally vibe shift happenned.

2020-2022 had tranny raids became a regular thing especially with that stupid fucking paper mario purple ghost or whatever the fuck that was.

The 2023 attack in israel made blatantly obvious what we had known for years, /pol/ is 95% brown muslims jerking each other off and pretending to be white.

The past couple of years chinese shill raids became a thing, the most significant being deepseek. These guys are incredibly obvious because chinese have a very specific way of talking and arguing that i can really only sum up with this.

Spoiler: chinese bingo

They've been pretty consistently present ever since trump won.

I still come across great threads but the ratio of shit to treasure was about 50/50 in 2008 is now 99/1 and that's being generous. Even within that ratio the shit is stinkier and the treasure is shittier.

EDIT: This thread from the other day got some genuine laughs out of me and felt like the old days. https://archive.4plebs.org/tv/thread/209599828

 

[30+GameOvers]

Some boards held out longer, but I noticed the rot starting in 2012 when you could tell that there were a significant number of phoneposters and ESL retards. I can't remember which event tripled the number of posters but that played into the later decline. Moderation became completely opaque and "culture" threads were deleted on sight. There used to be a pretty healthy base of anons who wouldn't take shitty bait and the generally slow pace of many boards kept the quality up.

Otherwise, yeah, election tourists and the rest of the Internet's response to gamergate was the big moment. A number of long-standing weekly threads and generals started drying up after that.

Early 2010 was definitely when the "ironic cancer" type of redditor newfags and their awful way of posting started getting popular, it's also when "meme culture" started to break into mainstream and you would hear kids and "trendy adults" talk about shit they've seen on the internet. Cake is a lie, the latest cat video on reddit, the mere existence of Big Bang Theory, you get the point. Then, the oldfags that were keeping them in check left in 2013 and to make matters worse, in 2016 there was an unholy influx of even worse newfags and I figure that's when the site finally drowned under it's own bullshit.

I would add The Fappening as well, the big 2014 leak of celebrity nudes and such. I remember at the time it was drawing in tons of coomers looking to find them, particularly to /b/.

/b/ was well and beyond ruined way before then. /soc/ was meant to contain all the normalfags that were infesting the board and trying to use it as a chatroom, predictably it failed. This was the first time I recall visibly noticing that the quality of the site went down, when the attention was drawn to a need of a quarantine board in the first place.

 

[harbringer883]

4chan has long since become a place where normies go to feel like "le dark web hacker" and like internet gurus or smh

I wasn't asked, but I'll echo others and say that the Fappening was really what pushed the site over the edge. I know it was contemporary/happened roughly around the same time as Gamergate, but the Fappening absolutely opened the floodgates to the website and brought a lot of attention to it in a way that simply didn't exist before. There were the local news stories and that one meme Fox News thing with the van blowing up, but 4chan really poked the hive with that shit. In less than six months after those leaks, moot fucks off to Google? And the website gets turned over to a known dataminer?

In my opinion, the 2016 Election was just the final nail in the coffin that ended whatever remained of the "old 4chan." It was already past the point of no return, but the 2016 Election brought all of the faggy redditors who got banned from their conservatard subreddits over and brought their shitty culture with them. It's why all of the site is a weird extension of /pol/ at this point. Everyone that uses the site thinks that every board is just a television-and-movies-themed /pol/ or something.

/pol/ post 2016 saw a "reddit exodus" of just about anyone who wasnt left of stalin to the board

 

[Grog]

2020-2022 had tranny raids became a regular thing especially with that stupid fucking paper mario purple ghost or whatever the fuck that was.

The Paper Mario TTYD remake came out in 2024 so it has nothing to do with this. It was a nothingburger and strictly contained to /v/. That doesn't explain how boards like /r9k/ became tranny central.

 

[tumblrkek]

Were imageboards ever good? Seems like it was a forced meme for a website format for dedicated shitposting.

They used to be imageboards. Now its social media with (you)s for likes.

The whole thing just makes think site isn't for me anymore and it took me a while to realize that the non lolcow boards here what's left, they don't completely fill the void but it's nice to be among kindred spirits, even if it will never be the same.

Hey you hit the right notes with this post, I can relate much to this.
Your rant about oversexuality/porn isn't even sperging either. People don't stick to designated boards for their horny /trash/ or will attach a pic that'll 100% derail everything to get (you)s. But terminally online pornaddict TRANNY jannies won't clean it the fuck up even if it shits up half the catalog (although they WILL remove your post and ban you 3 days for being 0.2% off the offtopic rule).

 

[Skylavijas]

EDIT: This thread from the other day got some genuine laughs out of me and felt like the old days. https://archive.4plebs.org/tv/thread/209599828

I decided to check out /v/ just to contrast and compare the quality of the average post with what you shared and... Jesus fucking christ, It's just filled with crybaby coomers. Crying over things so petty, they feel like goobergate feminist satire. Even saying "it's not remotely comparable" doesn't do it justice, it's like comparing the development of Star Ship Enterprise to tribesmen from north sentinel island.

Recently, one of the few things I did enjoy about 4chan was the /WSG/ thread, particularly when a good YGYL thread popped up, and I would stick through other stuff, because it would on rare occasions lead to interesting conversations I couldn't have anywhere else (and also, people actually see my posts, they aren't drowned out by billions of other posts), but now, since I became active on here and see all the shitposts and edits I want on Instagram reels, there's just no fucking reason for me to open up that site ever again. On Kiwi farms I don't need to jump through hoops and loops to pass the captcha system that doesn't even fucking work in preventing bots. On here I can make and edit posts with no hassle and the jannies actually do their fucking job in moderating the threads.

 

[Lovely Kin]

/b/ was well and beyond ruined way before then. /soc/ was meant to contain all the normalfags that were infesting the board and trying to use it as a chatroom, predictably it failed. This was the first time I recall visibly noticing that the quality of the site went down, when the attention was drawn to a need of a quarantine board in the first place.

I knew IRC was a thing back then, but I never understood how every general needed a fucking discord clique behind it.

 

[Skylavijas]

The vibes in this thread got a little too down, so I'll share this ironic shitpost I found

 

[JayseeDenton]

The Paper Mario TTYD remake came out in 2024 so it has nothing to do with this. It was a nothingburger and strictly contained to /v/. That doesn't explain how boards like /r9k/ became tranny central.

Damn my sense of time is fucked, i thought that paper mario shit was way longer ago. Actually can somebody give me the rundown of what that was all about? I never played paper mario, did they just turn the ghost into a troon?

 

[Grog]

Damn my sense of time is fucked, i thought that paper mario shit was way longer ago. Actually can somebody give me the rundown of what that was all about? I never played paper mario, did they just turn the ghost into a troon?

The ghost (more like a shadow though, ghosts in the game are different) was always a tranny, but the US version of the original game omitted that detail. It was a tranny in the JP and EU versions of the GameCube game already. There was no "turning", but as is often the case with culture war grifters and anti-Nintendo warriors, it was used to force fake outrage.