Can someone explain to me why they keep focussing on 4chan and not 'chans' in general? AFAIK 8chan's /pol/ has had a bigger impact this time around because they censor less. (Not censoring doxx information and such)
The higher ideal: the philosophical context of freedom through anonymity resulting in great creativity is completely drowned out by the petty stuff.
There's a reason it creates a major portion of culture,memes, and ideas on the internet. It's one of the few places unimpenged by materialism or status or th ability of your boss to find your account. This means every one is simply judged by what ideas they create and I think thats a beautiful thing.
And it drives higher quality content because of it. Most people do not realize that a lot of the popular memes and internet jokes shared on more mainstream platforms originally came from the "chan" culture.
To your point though the high quality content is often difficult to find in the cesspool of low-quality spam on these boards.
4chan has spawned a lot of memes because it was one of the earliest places people appreciated that sort of low-effort anyone-could-do-it content, but to say it drives high quality content is to decry any competently drawn stick figure as bourgeois.
II I_
There's clearly even some overlap with HN.
A bunch of indie games started their life there too.
And then there are derivative and mashup works like fanart, translations.
I only visit a few boards, so i'm probably missing a lot.
4chan, Reddit and HN are Internet natives.
Facebook and Twitter are fucking tourists.