this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
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4chan, in part, ruined real life. So much of the initial meme buzz around Trump came directly from 4chan - god emperor, etc. /b/ and /pol/ had large coordinated campaigns to boost Trump for lulz and to fuck with people. These made the news occasionally and were sometimes quite wide-reaching. Edit: not to forget Qanon, pizzagate, etc.
Additionally, 4chan is responsible for a massive swathe of meme culture more broadly. Most people don't dredge its depths or even know "the hacker named 4chan" exists, but it has been a massively influential force.
imo redditors and 4channers think too highly of themselves if they believe they have real influence on elections. Most people aren't online (except for Facebook), and politics are much more readily explained by material causes such as the Dems fcking up the post 2008 economic recovery and going for austerity instead of investment. The biggest proximate cause (non-material/economic) is just that hilldawg ran a bad campaign that didn't focus enough on swing states (but she won the popular vote, congratulations).
There have been dark corners of the internet for several decades now. 4chan is just one. Trump didn't achieve popularity because of it. There aren't enough users, and there certainly aren't enough politically and economically influential users, for that to be true.
QAnon started on 4chan lol