How The Internet Became Real Life
When online absurdity shapes our reality
Remember when the internet was just something you used to watch porn and 4chan was just a shitty website for anime nerds and not a crystal ball shaping and predicting our future derived from the most contemptable fingertips to ever touch a keyboard? I know it’s hard to recall, but once upon a time, the internet was niche and 4chan was considered fringe. Fox News essentially denounced it as an “internet hate machine.” This was when the site, while still abhorrent, was significantly more influenced by the Left than the Right.
While the website was temporarily taken down recently (it’s back), its influence over internet culture and our modern world is undeniable.
But first, a little history: Back in 2003, a man according to internet lore to be named Christopher Poole, aka MOOT, decided to make a website to discuss anime with his online friends. The website was to be modeled after the wildly successful Futabachan or more commonly known in English as 2channel — a Japanese forefather to 4chan that launched four years prior in 1999. That was 26 years ago.
Fuck, we’re getting old…
Anyway, while Poole’s intentions may have been pure, as the website started to gain popularity, its content ranged from unpredictable to downright illegal. Internet pedophiles with an interest in Hentai (a pornographic style of Japanese animation that often depicts underage girls in sexual situations) flooded the website with images of pedophilia, some were just artistic renditions drawn by deranged people, others were legitimate photos of children being sexually abused.
In 4chan’s defense, this wasn’t all the website was, but due to an almost complete lack of content moderation, certain unsavory elements temporarily found a home on the site. In 2006, when the mainstream media started paying attention, Poole announced a new moderation policy and finally starting kicking the pedophiles off the website.
4chan resembled the world in the sense that it had all walks of life, but in their most unfiltered form due to the site’s infamous anonymity. But not everything that derived from that anonymity was awful. 4chan, before becoming a hot bed of internet racism, was also a foundational pillar of online left wing activism. No… seriously. The hacker group known as “Anonymous” (a reference to how 4chan users are always given the username ‘Anonymous’ unless opting to use a trip code)
Anonymous, while hard to fully define their core ideology as a result of their anonymity, often fought for social justice causes. Most notably, Anonymous was a massive organizing factor in Occupy Wall St. The virality of the movement would’ve been impossible without 4chan. I know that sounds counterintuitive today, but it’s true — 4chan was a hotbed of left wing organizing. In 2014, Anonymous utilized 4chan to launch massive hacks against the Ferguson, MO Police Department to disrupt communication systems and vandalize their website after the murder of Michael Brown by former Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson.
But 4chan’s legacy, and its impact on our society is much bigger than a den of faceless pedophiles sitting uncomfortably close to a group of internet do-gooders all lumped together under the shared banner of anonymity. 4chan birthed what would soon become the defining characteristic that truly differentiated the internet from everything else: memes.
What started as just text added to an image with the intention of comedic effect primarily on 4chan, has become a cultural currency synonymous with all things internet. But memes didn’t end online. Memes are now responsible for the success and failure of everyone from porn stars all the way up to politicians. Due to the real world outcomes of online culture, the line between the internet and the outside world is blurring in ways that are easily observable but hard to define.
But if you’re familiar with 4chan, and its influence on the internet, as life more closely resembles the internet, it is inevitable that society shares more and more parallels with 4chan, as it is the internet’s overlooked cultural nucleus.
The signs of the internet’s 4chan-flavored infiltration into real life first occurred to me in Portland, Oregon. Portland is a city with very little influence on international or even domestic politics, but it’s a city that loves low stakes violence and a little bit of political pageantry. I remember wandering aimlessly through Downtown Portland when I witnessed self-described members of ANTIFA dressed like ninjas square off against self-described Patriots wearing American flags. One of them, who I assume was the leader of the Patriots was dressed like the comic book superhero, Captain America. I stood there and watched these groups taunt each other until a few reluctant punches were thrown and eventually broken up by the police. Antifa got away, as did most of the Patriots other than the guy dressed as Captain America. He got maced by one of the Antifa ninjas, and was pouring milk on his face when the police arrived.
It was one of the silliest things I had ever witnessed. But it perfectly represented the culture war in its entirety. Two groups of internet-influenced proletarians fighting each other in real life in similar fashion as they would on 4chan or any other forum board for the same exact reason, to desperately give their lives meaning. At least Antifa is self aware, but the fascists Antifa should ideally focus their violence on are people who wear suits, not costumes. I don’t see the average MAGA supporter as my enemy. They’re our brothers and sisters. We’re all in the same class struggle together. They just have bad information. When we fight each other, we empower the elites we hate. But whatever.
There’s no question that memes and internet mores were shaping our reality on a cultural level, but now the kind of behavior acceptable on a Discord server has found its way into the highest levels of public office and private enterprise.
Elon Musk’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) which essentially functions as a right wing policy initiative to slash social safety nets for middle and working class Americans is named after a meme that originated on 4chan in 2013. The DOGE meme was introduced to Musk by Grimes (arguably one of the most successful e-girl’s of all time) Musk liked the formerly dead meme so much that he bribed Donald Trump, a nepo-baby who trolled his way to becoming the President of the United States, to name a department tasked with taking away your social security after a fucking 4chan joke. Like really think about that.
If that doesn’t convince you, maybe this will: a DOGE employee who publicly goes by ‘Big Balls’ was just interviewed by Fox News about how he is helping reshape the US Government.
Let me reiterate: A teenager named Big Balls is in a role overseeing the finances of the US government at the behest of a neurodivergent billionaire and geriatric shit poster.
Like it or not, we live in the internet now, and the culture of the internet is often accidentally decided by 4chan.
The only way to change that is to educate our population well enough to read between the lines and critically think about the content they consume online. With that said, here’s a video of our Secretary of Education getting a Stone Cold Stunner by Stone Cold Steve Austin. In other words, we’re fucked.
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