Insiders of 4chan and/or the other social-engineering prankster groups will either be the Yippies of their time (flashy but ultimately irrelevant) or they will become a new "in" network that will leverage their ability to manipulate media to turn financial and political resources to their advantage, co-opting societal resources and, based on their ideology, further eviscerating our society's ability to maintain itself in the process.

It's not that they would be the only ones. They would be just the latest in a long series of societal exploiters. The Internet has merely provided them a virtual gathering place where the minions of chaos can organize just enough to propagate their ideology, but not enough to provide a useful target.

In other words, I wonder if they going to become a new establishment, or are they merely going to parasitize it?