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/
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.