The way I read it, 4chan is like a concentrated version of what it was like to be a teenager at the edge of society. You stir the pot and feed off the energy that people respond with.

If you live in a Christian conservative community, you leave pamphlets full of gay porn outside church. In a progressive community, you make racist websites about interracial dating.

They aren’t pro gay porn or pro racism, they’re pro getting a reaction out of people, that they find hilarious. We encourage them with our outrage.

"4chan is like a concentrated version of what it was like to be a teenager at the edge of society"

Which teenagers and which edge of society, I'm fairly certain they're not all the same. Also your post is what every reader of 4chan says when the discussion comes up.

I'm not a reader of 4chan. I just know people that are, and I try to have empathy for other people's situations.

5 males aged 13-15 with basic self-taught networking skillz could wreak a huge amount of havoc such that it would throw off observations that are based on web activity. It is one of the reasons that anecdotal observations of online behaviors I consider to approach zero value, with some exceptions.

And, obviously, a lot of those kids are older and still engaging the same juvenile behaviors.