4chan was a place where people who felt out of place everywhere else could go to finally find a place to fit in. And, of course, to fall into various subcultures around the site, ranging from rather mundane – /an/, the animals and nature board, was pretty tame, as was /ck/ the cooking board, and both had occasional vegan threads – to absolutely toxic, namely /v/ (console war dickwaving and the eventual genesis of Gamergate), /tv/ (lots of straight-up pedophiles there), and /b/ (the source of 4chan’s reputation). People would treat each other decently enough on the former, if a bit brusquely, but people were absolutely vicious on the latter boards, and in the spirit of being the no rules place, pretty much anything went short of actual illegal stuff.
So why stick around? Like I said, it was a gathering place for social rejects. There were plenty of social rejects among social rejects, and there was also a powerfully persistent culture of community-enforced anonymity. If you were to append a name to yourself, you had better have a good reason for it. Otherwise you’d just be reviled as an attention-seeker. Never be an attention-seeker. Never stand out from the crowd. Be part of the swarm. Fit in. You have to fit in somewhere. YOU WANT TO FIT IN. :bateman-ontological:
A bunch of broken people gathering together in one place to perpetuate the toxic behaviors they’ve been on the receiving end of will not breed healthy minds or spirits. But loneliness is incredibly painful. Persistent, unchosen loneliness is one of the most painful emotional experiences there is. And it will drive people to seek out, and wallow in, incredibly toxic places. Because at least they’re accepted there. So long as they don’t break social protocol.
Honestly this is the best summing up of 4chan I’ve heard. It wasn’t the worst place ‘back in the day’, but admittedly it was a recipe to become what it is today.
The format was also just good at creating things that resonated with its community. And honestly pretty good at creating things that resonate with the rest of the world - everyone speaks fucking 4chan speak now. Doxx, weeaboo, raid, and all sorts of other shit, plus half the internet memes in the 2000s came from there.
Most online forums at the time had literally a fucking signature field under every post, and they tended to be pretty small and reputation-based. They were all about forming little cliques and reputations.
4chan was the only really anonymous board and they haaaated people who used the username feature that was available.
So it was a laboratory for content. Boring stuff got no responses other than maybe “sage” or a slur plus a sage (users could reply without bumping a thread to the top, to avoid keeping alive a thread they don’t like - called a sage).
That’s why it created all the memes and eventually catalyzed the American fascist movement. It was a competitive laboratory for attention full of people desperate for attention and overloaded with spare time.
