Chan influence on internet culture

I apologize because this is probably the epitome of a newfag question. Is the idea that Chans are the driving force shaping internet culture accurate? Back when I used Reddit people often spoke of 4/Holla Forums as these mysterious all powerful forces who were the source of all memes and internet trends.

People blamed the rise of far-right views on reddit/youtube entirely on Holla Forums and spoke with awe at the power of 4chans crowdsourcing. Obviously the idea that image boards have some unique power is bullshit, but people on Chans do seem very dedicated to producing OC, memes, YouTube videos, and more generally shilling their ideology through raids and crossposting.

I ask this because it seems like more and more Holla Forumsyps are coming over to our side by the day and I wonder about whether Holla Forumss growth opens the door to more broadly moving internet culture in a leftist direction.

Other urls found in this thread:

podomatic.com/podcasts/dietsoap/episodes/2016-11-23T20_55_28-08_00
twitter.com/AnonBabble

Imageboards attract a particular kind of person and the format makes it easy for ideas to transfer quickly, mutate quickly, and importantly to remain coherent while doing so. Since identity isn't part of the equation except for humongous faggots like me, you generally only need to see a single thread to grasp the entire conversation. On platforms with persistent identities, there's a lot of insider background that few people will ever understand. It's not that imageboards are the originators of memes, it's that they're originators of broadly relatable memes because they're made by people who are happy to cut through bullshit right to the heart of the matter and don't have the contextual baggage that would keep a meme made on Facebook an in-joke between friends.

To respond to this specifically, culture in general is moving left as a result of the material conditions changing. Working people are squeezed harder and harder so more readily look for and accept alternatives to the current system.

a lot of new memes i see come from tumblr and twitter. reddit never creates anything

That's by design. It's supposed to be for content aggregation.

It was somewhat true a decade ago but for quite a while only social media has really mattered in the grand scheme of the Internet.

Somebody recently posted a podcast that addresses this in part. In it some academic gives their analyses of imageboard culture. Here is the link:
podomatic.com/podcasts/dietsoap/episodes/2016-11-23T20_55_28-08_00

In the podcast the ideology and appeal of the 'alt-right' - or ironic contrarians - is discussed at length, so I will not waste words on it here. There are some things not mentioned in the podcast, however, that I would like to address. I attempted to do so in a reply to , a post I completely disagree with.

Within the imageboard context, the term "meme" (me-me, may-may) was used as a derogatory term for injokes that were lifted from the original community to another one that doesn't grasp the jokes meaning. This is the reason why reddit was originally hated. Not because they are unfunny, not because they are liberal, not because of their moderation: because people copied jokes from imageboards and posted them on reddit, who then changed the joke and/or ran it into the ground.
And this goes further back then just reddit: before reddit you had "memespouters", users who would repeat chan-jokes outside of its online context. This was ostensibly peoples main gripe with Holla Forums and Holla Forums posters. And if we go really far back, you had "reaction image fags": people who reposted other peoples jokes rather than making new ones.

Imageboards have always had a culture of creation. In fact, there was a brief return to this after the first (or second if you count the one before gamergate) move to 8ch: original content was considered the primary social currency. This attitude seemingly dissipated the months after, though this mentality stuck to some degree. (Like Holla Forums's own 'OC' thread.)
But this culture was insular and the jokes were never universal. They were never intend to be shared outside the original community: the exclusivity was what gave the jokes their charm. "Rage comics" were irreversibly ruined the moment they were taken out of the context of mspaint comic threads (threads wherein users quickly draw up comics in ms paint, usually about something unfunny and mundane). The charm was was not the face at the end: the charm was the sharing with the community. Reddits (former?) fixation with the punchline exposes this lack of universality: they didn't get the content and instead transformed the object of the content into something else.

There is an important difference between reddit and imageboards: their originary concepts. Where 4chan was conceived as an insular community for fans of a culture to discuss that culture, reddit originated as a media aggregator to be used by anyone. The concepts the websites rest on are at odds and as a result the communities behave differently. This difference is neatly exemplified in their design: where the individual is irrelevant on 4chan; you are a nameless and faceless, there solely to discuss the topic; reddit promotes finding and sharing content with upvotes (or punishing poor contributions with downvotes).
These differing cultures aren't exclusive to imageboards: contrast reddit with tumblr. Tumblr also has a culture of creation, but with the intend of being approachable to anyone. As a result, both content consumers and content creators flock to tumblr to share media. You can find many professional, oftentimes veteran, creators on tumblr, sharing their media for free. Tumblrs clandestine presentation and competing culture of creation has put it at odds with 4chans grimy presentation, but both are different from Reddit which lacks a culture of creation.

Finally, I should address the spread of exclusive content. First, a member of the original community shares the content in another community, not realizing the meaning does not carry over. You can see this on the various Holla Forums facebook and twitter appendages. Secondly, as a result of the first case members of the other community go to the original community for more/new content to share further.
This is where the reddit mindset is important: as reddit by design rewards sharing popular content - regardless if it is original. Users who, either appreciated 4chan content, or saw it was popular went to 4chan looking for similar content. As these users weren't familiar with the culture and so never took the time to understand the meaning of the joke. As a result they reap content with reckless abandon, creating a new, self-perpetuating, copycat culture. You can see this behavior on r/4chan.

In conclusion: imageboards benefit from their culture of creation, their insularity and their exclusivity. As users are promoted to create a lot of content is made, their insularity provides authenticity to what is created and make it appealing to members of the community and the exclusivity of it all provides an air of mystery. However, this definitely does not make them the "driving force of internet culture" - a cursory glance at just youtube can inform you about that much. What would be more accurate is calling imageboards the driving force of internet pop culture: imageboards used to influence the more out-there and esoteric content of the internet. Stuff that you'd share, just because it was different from the grain even if you had no idea what made it stand out.
After all: imageboards are the "armpit of the internet".

This is all roundabout and reductionist (I haven't even touched on user psychology, material background and many other, relevant factors). Regardless, I hope I have given you a general idea of the history and culture of imageboards. To prevent misconceptions from forming, I have written a few notes:
The things I sum up about reddit are not an endorsement: all of those things are valid criticism of some sub-reddits, but these criticisms were not the original point of contention that made 4chan users hate reddit.

I am not claiming reddit is exclusively an aggregator, nor that imageboards are exclusively originator. There are communities within reddit that are quite prolific, while there are boards on 8ch that barely create original content. However, each website has a dominant culture and I think my analysis holds up well for these.

Tumblr is very diverse: it is not exclusive to its notorious, psuedo-feminist community.

This is a broad intersection of the history of 4chan as a content generator. Chances are I made small mistakes here and there. However, I'm confident most of this will hold up, as I am a content creator myself with many, many, many years of experience with producing content for imageboards.
There is also the issue of later generations of users building myths around certain cultural concepts. The best example is "normalfag" and is always good to ruffle some feathers: "normalfag" was not, originally, used as "normie" is used now. "normalfag" was originally used as an insult for people who pretended they were 'normal', or people who were obsessed with appearing normal. (Which shows how insular 4chan was: it was inconceivable for an actual 'normal' person to show up, instead it were weirdos pretending they were normal. It fits right alongside "there are no girls on the internet [4chan]") The fabrication that it is a surrogate for "normie" or 'normal' is definitely created later.
One can also think of 'newfag' and how the meaning of that term has transformed throughout the years.

Can't stress enough that, to users of imageboards, any given imageboard is more than just a plateau to make things. It is a community in the full sense of the word.

That second picture was laughably pathetic a decade ago and it still is now.

Goes to show how deeply rooted the "outcasts versus the mainstream" culture is.

no the second picture is a good description of the utility of this subculture. Its not something to be proud of, being sociopathic hyenas who don't take anything seriously and laugh at the world burning while they're trapped inside it without any escape. But, its accurate, shitty content though.

Stop already

just report

You agree insofar that imageboards create content that has a broad appeal given that other communities re-use the content. I never said OC was supposed to be shared, just that because it had no identity-based context and was more effective a making an impact that the result was that it would get shared and shape more derivative content. If you add the exclusivity/insularity/grit that just adds appeal for people to go to imageboards looking for content. I struggle to see where your posts contradict my point.


IIRC it used to be against the rules to post OC on reddit.

It's "asshole of the internet"

Op here that was very insightful and interesting thank you for taking the time to type that out.

The description of image boards as a community really resonated with me. This is going to sound stupid and sappy as fuck but I really do feel a deep connection and love for the user base here after only having used Holla Forums for a couple of months.

Some of that comes from the fact that people see eye-to-eye with me here than any other subculture I've been a part of (its easy to find anti-idpol communities and leftist communities but there is not much overlap between the two). Its not that alone though, there is something unique about the format that makes conversation seem organic and leads to a lot of hilarity and good discussion.

Its strange because I've been quite active on Reddit for years but never felt the same kind of connection I do to this community, despite the fact anonymity prevent the cultivation of personal relationships. If Reddit shut down tomorrow I wouldn't give a fuck but if this community did I would be deeply upset.

I also find it interesting that anonymity seems to incentivize content creation when it should do the opposite according to the mainstream conception of human motivation (people create for attention/reward).

P.S.
You've inspired me to learn how to use photoshop so I can make OC.

Get the fuck out of here spnbmb, you're a dipshit.

Recently i've seen quite a few facebook memes on some of the boards on half chan something which would of been seen as alien two years ago.

This image looks like it has gone through the pipeline once already.

You forgot about Ebaumsworld with their truly capitalist tactic of putting their own watermark on content produced on pre-Google YouTube and Newgrounds who themselves made videos of old 4chan memes ("meems" is correct–"me-mes" and "may-mays" was a joke to mock people who did not know what they were). That was when 4chan started getting territorial about memes.

Ah, those were the days.

They have come to destroy our world and our way of life.

these memes make me remember how little I miss old chan culture

When in crisis capitalism used it's last resort, barbarism, to survive.
That's why there is a rise of far right movements.

This time, however, because of access to informetion and entropy, this tactic is less effective, as right wing leaders fail to deliver and people can communicate and create far more easily.

Imageboards, same as every aspect of online social networks, are only a reflection of the grated image of society as a whole.

Indeed, when I read "they're killing chan culture" all I can think is "good riddance".

Before the word "meme" was used in an internet context. Fuck I miss being 14.

Found this old ass pic in my hard drive (check the filename). Even back then a few people were self-aware enough.

Imageboard memes really are not universal in anyway. Not even 'broadly relatable': that's the mistake people who share imageboard content outside of an imageboard context make. The material manifestation of a cultural object is only part of the instance of that cultural object. Changing any facet of a cultural object will create a new cultural object.
Essentialists fight me


With more flexible norms (both of the social and group variety), people are more prone to try their hand at making stuff even if they expect it will be bad. I imagine that plays part in why imageboard users tend to be more productive and also more adventurous in what they create. (For better and worse, mind.)

Also: don't get the wrong impression from what I wrote. It was intended as a plastic analyses of the culture of creation found on imageboard. It is definitely not an endorsement of imageboard communities.
I can't recommend imageboards for their community aspect anymore and would instead caution against feelings of solidarity and unanimity with the collective. Holla Forums has been - and on some level remains - the exception thanks to many users literacy and distaste for imageboard rhetoric.
If you go to say, Holla Forums, you will find many caustic users and a persistent, virulent toxicity that is rooted deep in the boards culture. The days of imageboard communities merrymaking are over and genuine camaraderie is largely isolated to the smaller boards and smaller communities.

That said: create!

Holla Forums has always been shit. Nothing has changed about that.

I think it is precisely this which appeals to me (and, if I may be so bold, most others here). When I compare Holla Forums, /tg/, or /a/ to other venues of discussion on the same subject, there is a cloying hｕgbox atmosphere outside of imageboards enforced not just by hotpockets, but by the swarms of fragile sycophantic personalities that are drawn by their antics. Only a handful of other sites that are explicitly "toxic" like RPG Codex seem to be free of this for any length of time.

It is also, I suspect, what allowed Holla Forums's unique mix of leftism, political incorrectness, and (via /lit/) theoretical erudition to condense.

The aggression, slurs, porn, gore, edgy tankies, nazi raiders, and constant trolling are not merely a side effect of our location. As I learned from comparing USENET to mailing lists back in the day, they are the only thing preventing the board from turning into DailyKos or Tumblr.

I personally always viewed that notion as giving them too much credit, although clearly they're influential to some extent.

is that like /tg/ minus Holla Forums?

I absolutely believe that an internet community needs to allow awful shit in order to be able to produce anything of value. That is why the only internet communities that do produce what the rest of the internet consumes are full of various amounts of racial and sexual epithets, CP and other disturbing porn, trolling, and everything else that every marketable internet forum bans on sight. Creativity flourishes when the right to be offended goes unenforced.

No, it's Holla Forums, but specifically focused on WRPGs, and with less children. The closest thing to /tg/ minus Holla Forums was TGDMB, but since it's goon-originated, the censorious PC bullshit is starting to seep in.

Makes me sad. /tg/ can was decent before the did the fusion dance with Holla Forums. Now it's as bad as it sounds. Internet nazi larpers crossed with actual real life larpers.

It's the Spectacle on turbo.

Despite what idpolers of all stripes believe, culture is downstream from material conditions. Chans do not create it, they just channel it, provide the downtrodden with an outlet to talk frankly and without reservation about things they can't say elsewhere.

Back in the Bush years, neocons were insufferable and 4chan kept joking about the falling twin towers. Last few years, it was neolibs and their SJW lackeys, so ironic racism was a natural counterpoint. I'm not sure what the new mainstream consensus and its unspeakable taboos will be, but once we reach it, chans will be there to shit on it.

Here's hoping we'll go against capitalism at large this time around.