There is nothing particularly new or interesting about 4chan. They’re essentially an aggregation service that focuses exclusively on internet news. They find memes in the wild and report on them. The only meme I credit to 4chan is the meme that 4chan creates memes. Maybe they’ll actually make it true.
As for the idea that 4chan is a new level of depravity soiling the purity of the core of the internet… 4chan ATE MY BALLS.
Me neither, but that site’s the devil and Disaster Kid kinda freaks me out. Well, a lot, actually.
waves fist melodramatically at sky
Damn you, 4chan, and your insidiously entertaining internet memes, daaaaamn yoooou!!!
Too bad you can’t post pics here. My serious contribution to discussing 4chan is to troll pics of rabbit-chan with the text:
Hai guys! I’m kinda new here, but if you all can count to 10 I’ll post titties 
Troll/joke of that is that her looks turns on nerdy internet dwellers, and there are hundreds of pictures of her, but there are no pictures of her tits.
4chan is a great place to troll, since you’re trolling trolls - or as they say, trolling 4chan is like peeing into a sea of piss. 4chan simply is NOT about serious discussion. It’s the internet equivalent of scribbling on the bathroom walls at high school. It has its odd appeal, but taking over the world? You’ve been trolled. GTFO Newfag?
That is so weird. Almost 4 years ago? I swear I have never seen this reference and then it seemed to explode in popularity a few weeks ago. I thought it was something that happened very recently.
Here’s your problem right here, there has yet to be an entire generation that has always lived with the Internet, because there is still a sizable chunk of teens today that don’t have regular access to the Internet and even when they do get on have no idea what to do once they’re on. Do you how many kids are out there who buy MP3 players and think all they have to do is plug it into a computer where it will be automatically filled with music? Trust me, it’s more than you think.
Secondly, 4chan is basically the ultimate echo chamber. Even among people who know what it is, that’s no guarantee they’re a 4chan user. It’s massive size and influence is precisely because it moves so fast and allows anonymous posting.
The Wikipedia article on 4chan mentions their Alexa rank hovers around 1,000. Which is pretty good. But it pales in comparison to sites like Facebook, Wikipedia or IGN.com (never heard of it? It likely has 3-5 times more users than 4chan). The real sites that are shaping the way people (not just ADHD addled ass holes) communicate. Hell, I run a site that topped out at an Alexa rank of 50,000 and I’ve seen stuff that I and other writers have written permeate into the wider web. The Internet is fractured enough that anybody can “make an impression” on the Internet at large if you define the term “Internet at large” narrowly enough. And when the memes are centered around noise, they disappear quicker and more completely when they do run their course.
While 4chan may be popular among the core group of 4chan users (which by its very nature is setup to make 4chan look popular among everybody), to say its going to “take over the world” is an absurd (and ultimately meaningless) statement.
This too, shall pass. How many people nowadays are speaking cockey slang?
This vid is exactly what the OP thinks will happen IRL.
As much as /b/ has spread across the Internets and permeated RL I have not noticed anything remotely happening like this video.
This is hilarious and safe for work. Well there is cussing. Just no nudity
Internet Commenter Business Meeting
On behalf of the other 4chan boards getback2 /b/.
bcoz tehn tehy will cum4tehJ00z?
No really I don’t care. I spent a wee time on 4chan about if not over a year ago. I’ve ignored it for a long time, & find it tl;dr in general–a great mass of too much to take in. I’d sort of forgotten it; I hang out here, or on LJ, or deviantArt, or some of the wikis, but 4chan–meh.
One of the main allures of 4chan is that there are absolutely no rules. Every forum out there has some kind of rules or etiquette, such as swear filters, no pics posting (or no posting porn), signing your posts, things of that nature. On 4chan you can post whatever you’d like, from advice threads to kitteh porn to calling everyone fag. There have always been areas of humanity where we completely slough off the rules of society and behave like the animals we are. Some examples are public hangings, bathhouses and molly houses, some would argue sporting events like the World Cup (and the accompanying riots afterwords). Sure, those are all real life events and the internet is just ‘oh just turn off the PC’, right? Well for many people, Internet is Serious Business.
Hi-effin-larious!
Actually there are some… boundaries whose crossing can lead to banning. I’ve seen a supposed screencap of a user’s account of someone banned, with the message from admin explaining exactly why (unacceptable pic). You do not want to know the level of crass extreme of human filth that would require admin intervention on /b/.
I fail to see how that is in any way shape or form something any reasonable person would enjoy.
This is a good example of what I am talking about… that sort of scary mob mentality.
But this one was done in MPSIMS just recently. I didn’t know why they were doing that so I had to look it up. And I see a lot more of that kind of humor here than I did before.
I’m also seeing this behavior here as well. I can think of two posters that have created a huge amount of threads about basically nonsense. And they hardly even return to their threads. I believe this to be an influence of that culture.
I’ve also been seeing many more posts with one-liner posts that don’t even relate to the OP. I suspect that humor is coming from this type of posting as well.
I do think that this culture has spread somewhat to the Dope. As far as the real world, I’m not sure. Separating this culture from the regular fast-paced, impatient culture influenced by other factors is not easily done. This might be a chicken-egg question.