4chan Is Dead. Its Toxic Legacy Is Everywhere
4chan Is Dead. Its Toxic Legacy Is Everywhere
It’s likely that there will never be a site like 4chan again. But everything now—from X and YouTube to global politics—seems to carry its toxic legacy.
Archived version: https://archive.is/20250422233152/https://www.wired.com/story/4chan-is-dead-its-toxic-legacy-is-everywhere/
I really appreciate seeing an article written by someone who is actually familiar with the culture and history of the site.
Qanon and Actual Nazis were not 4chan norm back in the day. The alt right nazi hateful shit was posted but it was more like larping/shock value immature crap and nothing like what we see in the mainstream social/media today. Misogyny too. I'm not denying that there weren't people there who meant it but it was 99% shitposting. There's also the hacktivism, social activism, soooooooo many memes like as substantial as YouTube as establishing the humor culture of the internet. I find the site so fascinating and much more than some cesspool of evil it became.
It is weird it is gone. I suspect moot is not so interested in sticking his neck and wallet out to protect the freedom of speech for facscists trying to destroy democracy and that's why it's not back. I'm pretty sure 4chan has been down before for various reasons more substantial than hacking but it could be fabricated memory
Moot sold 4chan years ago.
moot sold the site to hiro in 2015, but I think your reasoning is valid - it's possible hiro is not too eager to defend the fascists who infested 4chan, and simply won't bother to put the site up again.
If that was the case he could have deleted /pol/ and banned its users. 2016 would have been a great time for that.
Fair point. And frankly, he should've done this.
What the fuck are you talking about? Stormfront came in in 2012 and it's been nazis all the way down since
And 4chan normalized it, and recruited legions of pissed off, horny young boys.
It's more that they colonized than normalized, meaning they kept shitting up the place until nearly everyone not racist left in disgust
Then they looked around and saw mostly racist posts and concluded that it was 'normal' and then Steve Bannon directed all their ambient anger towards Gamergate and the rest is history, disgusting bigoted history.
Yeah, there's a lot of revisionist history ITT, if I had to guess, it's because people don't want to admit/accept that it was already an extremist site by the time they were frequenting it.
