4chan: Beyond one billion

Right now, it's the internet. In just a few more years all of us will become "the old guys" and our younger brothers and sisters will come up with something new - my sister already thinks I'm lame for liking the internet so much and sharing silly pictures and stuff. And she doesn't understand why cats are so cool. She's only 7 years younger.

The thing is, you have to look at memes in a broader sense than just "picture of X with something written on top and on bottom in big bold text". Yes, that's what some people call a "meme" these days, but I mean them more in the sense of a cultural parcel that is distributed between people in a common-ish medium.

I remember in primary school one of the memes (called fads back then) was that everyone suddenly started using yo-yos. Anyone who was between 10 and 14 had a yoyo and you could instantly connect with them, there was instantly something to talk about. Etc.

But here's the real kicker, the memes of today are the first in history that are trully global. And without delay. It took almost 10 years for hippies to arrive in my neck of the woods and they were never pretty big. Punk was a big quicker, it had a delay of only a few years.

Modern culture, mostly the memes, has zero delay. And that's amazing.

Also, some of the boards are full of people who can be described as insane- despite not having porn/gore/etc. For example, /g/. I don't agree that it's inaccurate to say 4chan is vile in general, and I certainly agree with the sentiment that 4chan is the best and worst of the internet- or at least the social part of the internet.

And even before that (or possibly not before that), I remember going to emule to download what were essentially memes. A lot of them spreading partially via email.

But I think in the least 8 years, 4chan has really become the main birthplace of memes.

Also, the memes that originate elsewhere are still made popular due to 4chan's influence. e.g. "trollface" apparently comes from deviantart but is commonly used in rage comics (I think).

40 years since The Holy Grail was filmed, it is still often selected as the funniest film of all times.

There is an impact. But it is a young people's thing, give it some time and it will become part of the cultural heritage of the early 2000's and 2010's.

And I think 4chan has a huge influence. It is a very powerful site in tech culture, which is pretty large I think. Tech culture might be smaller by numbers than the so-called mainstream but it's plenty large enough to be self-sustaining and have its own sense of identity.

When those people grow up, and achieve control over the popular media, suddenly we'll start seeing references to this period of culture in the new media of the day. It'll be seen as much more important than it is now as well, as the educated middle classes exert their control over cultural memory.

Also at some point the children of todays students will likely decide that memes and early internet culture in general is retro, and it'll all be vogue again, and we can complain that it's not as good when its holographic or something.

This can be seen in music. Jazz used to be a scary sound that would cause your daughters to start having sex with black people, now it's the height of sophistication. At some point in the last 15 years hip-hop became an art form in the eyes of the media elite. The current resurgence in commercial rave music is partly to do with the veterans of the 90s scene being in a position to start large businesses. At some point in the future the extreme, venetian snares end of electronica will likely be looked upon as jazz/classical is now.

I'm a high school teacher. I can guarantee you that 99% of kids 13-18 know what Rage Comics & lolcats are. The youth of today are the first Internet generation. They have spent their entire lives immersed in Internet culture. The true impact of this generation will start to be felt in 10-15 years.

Don't forget the Anonymous cracking outfit.

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A surfing editor named Anderson asked the moot the URL to his imageboard, a place popularly supposed to give insight into humanity's character. The old moot said, "Go straight to /b/." After he typed several characters, the moot said to himself, 'He also is a common b-tard.'

This incident was told to joshu who said, 'Wait until I investigate.' The next day he went and asked moot the same question, and moot gave the same reply.

joshu remarked, 'I have investigated that moot.'

  "Aren't we all pretending all the time?"

On Hacker News, I expect that my posts will (for better or worse) someday come back to haunt me. Indeed, if you apply to YC, I believe one of the application questions asks for your HN username. This being the case, there are certain arguments and jokes that I have had to refrain from making. I've even had to apologize OOB every so often to people here for being hot-headed (I believe I once said some nasty things to one of the senior Apache folks...awkward).

On 4chan, these "vile posts" are honest expressions of either the poster or of the facade the poster wishes to maintain--and in a completely anonymous setting, it's easier not to pose at all. An interesting research question would be to compare the normal posters to the non-anonymous "tripfags" and "namefags" (users who post under the same username and signature--terminology is as found on the chan), but I honestly have no idea how that might be done in any useful sense.

The entire mindset of interacting with complete strangers, and especially knowing that you may well never share a thread with them again, is hugely liberating. You can make and laugh at jokes that otherwise would be in poor taste. You can discuss trivial things very seriously, and serious things very lightly, and be assured that you won't be tagged/branded permanently as a fool or a fetishist--consider what we've done to losethos here, and how at this point even if he started posting coherently he'd still downvoted into oblivion.

  "Are you implying that I'm only truly me when I'm vile 
  (for example)?"

My experience, for example, is that I am just as much the humble helpful hacker given debugging help and useful links on the /pr/ programming board as I am the mean-spirited hateful troll on /adv/--and on any given day, I may do the opposite. Seeing my behavior when held to no external standard has been enlightening, and proven to be a useful data point in self-discovery and self-betterment. I try to help more and troll less now. :)

Tell me, as sociopathic as channers may be--how closely do they compare with the bankers and financial quants, politicians who drop bombs, or the data mining folks intent on converting our social media signals into ad revenue?

Yet somehow we made it into 2009, and things began to look up. Long plagued by an inability to attract mainstream advertising, I partnered with an individual who took over representing 4chan's ad inventory, and for the first time in years the site began to break even.

That, combined with the plausibility of the following, leads me to believe he receives massive government subsidies:

http://i.imgur.com/Dyo66.jpg