I don't think you can make specific philosophical assertions about a very large group based off a hobby. Just like we can't say that all react developers are minimalists, we can't say all WSBer's are nihilists or anything else.

I think you have some very fundamental misunderstandings about 4chan, including who it was composed of and what both their stated and achieved goals were. As a hint, remember that 4chan is a chan made up of several sub-boards with different user niches across boards. Even if we narrow it down to /b/ or /pol/, you still have competing internal factions and different movements across time.

Nor is your quote an example of nihilism, even in context. Nihilism is a rejection of perceived realities and the certainties tied to those realities - someone who believes truth doesn't really exist is engaging in a form of nihilism. You seem to want to say something like "they're attacking social norms" as best as I can understand.

> we can't say all WSBer's are nihilists or anything else

This type of counterargument seems to be very common in the internet.

Can you explain how valid you consider "we can't say all X" argument being in general? How can you make reasonable arguments about group or people so that this argument is not valid.

So usually a setup of "All Xs are Y" is used to setup a straw man. By taking a large and diverse group and simplifying it down to a single viewpoint (that's not a tautology) then you're setting up an out group to be attacked under a single characteristic. An example of this usually goes: "Well, Christians believe the world was created in 7 days, and since we have good evidence the world wasn't created in 7 days, Christians must be insane." You just took 2 billion different people, who are spread across factions with internal debates and arguments, and simplified them into a straw man that at most represents a small percentage of that slice.

Sometimes we do want to make broad statements. "Kids like minecraft!" is kind of wrong, but it's kind of right and isn't necessarily a straw man. It'd be more accurate to say something like "About 70% of kids report playing minecraft"[1], or we can keep to anecdotal evidence: "all my nieces and nephews play minecraft". Those statements are generally correct. We still have some data problems - a kid is generally going to give you the answer they think makes you happier, and they're probably pretty relaxed about half-truths to annoying uncles/aunts asking them about gaming habits.

If our goal is to make truthful (as in, accurately representing reality) statements, then we need to be precise and avoid broad strokes when we describe a group. [2]

[1]: I'm making that stat up as an example

[2]: On the other hand, if our goal is to define an out-group and attack them, then broad strokes and vague insults are really useful and hard to counter

> we can't say all WSBer's are nihilists or anything else

The parent poster didn’t say that, though. They said that the group was nihilist. A community can have a shared attitude and outlook; that doesn’t mean that outlook is shared 100% by the members of that community.

4chan is still mostly teenagers and 20-somethings from middle class families shitposting for fun

Qanon disagrees.

4chan trolling nearly resulted in a coup, its reached a new level of seriousness.

A coup can't succeed without support from the military, the police or a majority of the population. A few hundred badly organized crazy people can't perform a coup, they can however perform acts of terrorism which is what they did. Crazy people sometimes kills high level politicians, there are many cases like that in history, doesn't mean it was a coup or it was even near succeeding.

Unsuccessful or incompetent coup attempt is still a coup.

I guess I'll be pedantic for a moment. A coup, by definition, is a seizure of power from government. If they are not successful at seizing power, then it was not a coup.

It was an attempted coup.

If I show up at the capitol building alone and demand to be put in charge, is that also a coup attempt? Obviously where you draw the line is subjective, but this event never had anything close to the requisite backing to become an actual coup, so calling it that feels a bit disingenuous to me. What it was is a riot and and an insurrection, but not a coup.

It's an insurrection (non-government/military attacking government property/people). A coup would be if it was another wing of the government or the military doing the attacking.

Does the POTUS count as a wing of the government? The POTUS and some members of congress? It was not a coup, but I'd call it an attempted coup.

The police let the terrorists in and DC authorities were denied National Guard resources by Military authorities.

There are several documented terrorists who are active duty police officers and the terrorist who was killed was an Air Force officer.

Seems like this coup attempt had plenty of support from the Military and Police.

It was more of an erection of the village idiots, than an actual military coup.

The belief that a bunch of 20 year olds can joke a president into office, stage a coup using memes or currently take down Wall Street with emojiis is the funniest thing and is itself a joke created by and believed by these forums.

>4chan trolling nearly resulted in a coup

A few things:

1. It wasn't a coup, it was a protest to protest the unfair election and overall left wing bias. Same way BLM was to protest the unfairness of how black people are treated.

2. It was mostly organized on Facebook and the general "normie" web

unfair election? what exactly do you mean?