Also, it wouldn't be fair to attribute all the things you've cited to 4chan only. Something Aweful contributed to the birth of many "early" memes for instance. And I think the rage comics were infamously made popular by reddit (4chan had "MS paint comics" and such).

And even before that (or possibly not before that), I remember going to emule to download what were essentially memes. A lot of them spreading partially via email.

But I think in the least 8 years, 4chan has really become the main birthplace of memes.

ADTRW was just the anime forum. The admins called it that to annoy the anime kids. They would all hang out on 2chan, the japanese precursor to 4chan.

FYAD was the forum with no rules. It was (is?) basically /b/ but this is back in the day so it was much smaller, everyone knew everyone else. It was basically a little clique that would sit there making injokes.

I never really went in there, but the notable thing about it was that the mods would constantly abuse the css and js on the forum theme to the extent that it would often crash some browsers. It was pretty funny. Oh, and there was always one mod who was elected from the userbase every month, the "idiot king" who would rule with an iron fist. In short, like online gaming, it would be great in theory except for the fact that everyone else there is an antisocial teenage nerd.

Also, the memes that originate elsewhere are still made popular due to 4chan's influence. e.g. "trollface" apparently comes from deviantart but is commonly used in rage comics (I think).

There are a few similar comic artists. Notably 3-Angled-Blue, who drew some amazing MS Paint comics that are slowly being made into rage comic templates.

Some people spend way too much time on the internet; I can guarantee you that 99% of America, has no clue what 4Chan, Rage Comics, lolcats is. Anonymous and the 1% movement (but you may have to say Occupy Wall Street to the 3 million remaining people) may be the exceptions because of the media coverage.

And meme's are far from profound, humor, yes you could argue to be considered profound, but meme's? A silly time-waster at best but generally worse then a joke told among friends. You can't find a meme and share it with friends with the same impact (whether online or in person) as:

One day little girl comes home from school, "Mom, today some boy showed me his penis." Mother exclaims "What?!" Little girl says "Yea, and it sort of reminded me of a peanut." Trying not to laugh, mother asks "Is that because it was so small?" Little girl laughs says "No. Because it tasted so salty."

And I think 4chan has a huge influence. It is a very powerful site in tech culture, which is pretty large I think. Tech culture might be smaller by numbers than the so-called mainstream but it's plenty large enough to be self-sustaining and have its own sense of identity.

And come on, it's where all the memes are born. That's profound. What other startup can claim to be such a big influence on western society?

I think 4chan definitely has a huge influence on the tech sector, but in terms of straight-up 'influence' vastly more people follow celebrity gossip than memes. That might change (it probably won't -- we're prone to hero-worship, whether or not its movie stars or tech icons).

Celebrity news is the lowest of the low; nothing but easy-to-read brain candy for bored, boring housewives.

I don't really read celebrity news, but I have read rage comics and memes back when Reddit had them frontpaged, and if you think they're more than easy-to-read brain candy, I think you're mistaken.

I think the process by which 4chan operates in media is far more sophisticated, less centralized, less commercial and (perhaps surprisingly) less cynical than celebrity gossip that is created en-masse for money by large national media corporations for top-down consumption. By the time a meme makes it to facebook it's been largely stripped of its participatory power and becomes a one-way medium, but that's just at the periphery of the meme-propogation, the people that just consume it with their electronic feed tubes. But the process of creating this content before it gets to the edge web is a chaotic, churning process of evolutionary competition, mutation, selection.

This is worthy of study. It is participatory culture in the making, what the creative commons and the free culture movement always wanted. There may not be a lot _fundamentally_ new here, except in the context of the 'net in which it is being created. And the medium shapes the message. The web is a "new place." and there are people in it that are, right now, creating the native language of a place that has never existed before. These are exciting times. I think that the messageboard one day will be recognized for it importannce in the history of the WWW, and the Internet in general.

But I wish I had more than one upvote to give.

At least, in the western world. I don't know how popular Shakespeare is outside of that. On the other hand, I don't know how popular celebrity news is either.

That is one hell of an assumption. For one thing, most people who are literate, are not literate in English.

40 years since The Holy Grail was filmed, it is still often selected as the funniest film of all times.

There is an impact. But it is a young people's thing, give it some time and it will become part of the cultural heritage of the early 2000's and 2010's.

When those people grow up, and achieve control over the popular media, suddenly we'll start seeing references to this period of culture in the new media of the day. It'll be seen as much more important than it is now as well, as the educated middle classes exert their control over cultural memory.

Also at some point the children of todays students will likely decide that memes and early internet culture in general is retro, and it'll all be vogue again, and we can complain that it's not as good when its holographic or something.

This can be seen in music. Jazz used to be a scary sound that would cause your daughters to start having sex with black people, now it's the height of sophistication. At some point in the last 15 years hip-hop became an art form in the eyes of the media elite. The current resurgence in commercial rave music is partly to do with the veterans of the 90s scene being in a position to start large businesses. At some point in the future the extreme, venetian snares end of electronica will likely be looked upon as jazz/classical is now.

http://www.sixt.de/php-entwickler

I'm a high school teacher. I can guarantee you that 99% of kids 13-18 know what Rage Comics & lolcats are. The youth of today are the first Internet generation. They have spent their entire lives immersed in Internet culture. The true impact of this generation will start to be felt in 10-15 years.

-- Danah Boyd (retelling her friend's saying)

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/06/12/for-the...

That was actually me. I suggested it to Chris Anderson originally.

(Also, the memes=funny pictures thing drives me nuts. But then again I started memepool.com in 1998 or so...)

---

A surfing editor named Anderson asked the moot the URL to his imageboard, a place popularly supposed to give insight into humanity's character. The old moot said, "Go straight to /b/." After he typed several characters, the moot said to himself, 'He also is a common b-tard.'

This incident was told to joshu who said, 'Wait until I investigate.' The next day he went and asked moot the same question, and moot gave the same reply.

joshu remarked, 'I have investigated that moot.'

The underlying joke is that those who have met me realize that I am in no way a zen monk. I am more of an anti-Buddhist, seeking to achieve a state of complete Worry.

Also, some of the boards are full of people who can be described as insane- despite not having porn/gore/etc. For example, /g/. I don't agree that it's inaccurate to say 4chan is vile in general, and I certainly agree with the sentiment that 4chan is the best and worst of the internet- or at least the social part of the internet.

/g/ isn't insane, you're taking everything that people say on 4chan seriously. Which is a mistake.

Huh? No.

And I say this as a regular visitor of /x/. The mods seem downright useless some days.

/x/ is the only board that actually does get raided. it's probably the worst board on 4chan (i'm a pixie AMA).

There is some genuinely interesting stuff on /x/ once you filter out the fakers and the roleplayers.

I realize mods on 4chan is a touchy subject, but /x/ could use a good mod that deleted excessively repetitive threads. there are some boards where that's not such a big deal, and some boards that thrive on repetitive and troll threads (I'm thinking of 4chan's pressure release valve, /pol/). But /x/ would be better served by having a mod conscientious of, not so much curating good content or killing trolls, but deleting the EXTREMELY repetitive threads that inevitably go nowhere.

Also, it is a matter of opinion if the roleplayers are a problem. I would argue that the lazy, bad roleplayers are the problem. I think they add color when they're good. Part of the excitement of /x/ is that it exists on the fuzzy periphery between fact and fiction.

i do like x's archived threads, where people dump youtube videos and wiki links

Why are you avoiding parts of 4chan because you don't like other parts?

Additionally, there is an HTTPSEverywhere definition (you have to specially get it from their website) that forces all the 4chan content through SSL to prevent snooping by exit nodes.

4chan ruleset is here: https://gitweb.torproject.org/https-everywhere.git/blob_plai...

Download and place the file in the HTTPSEverywhereUserRules/ subdirectory in your Firefox profile directory. In Tor Browser bundle, the location for your profile is: {wherever you installed tbb}/Data/profile

When you're in TBB, navigate to http://4chan.org. If it doesn't switch to https automatically, then click the HTTPSEverywhere icon up in the corner, and make sure the 4chan.org rule is checked. Page should refresh, you should see that it is now https.

"And come on, it's where all the memes are born." It is not where all of the memes are born, much less the useful ones. If you claim otherwise, please tell me what I am missing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0

A 4chan meme making its way into Apple goes to show how influential that site can be.

Speaking of influential, check out the extensive Wikipedia page on the meme. The RickRoll has showed up in the Macy's Thanksgiving parade (with Rick Astley in person), a video from Nancy Pelosi, and a tweet from the White House Twitter feed. It is fully part of the pop culture.

Don't forget the Anonymous cracking outfit.

My point is that he is vastly overstating its influence. The millions of 4chan users have produced _maybe_ as much influence as a single pop music star.

"The millions of 4chan users have produced _maybe_ as much influence as a single pop music star"

You answered your own question.

Don't you see? The fact that meme now connotes a "funny picture" is itself a meme.

Right now, it's the internet. In just a few more years all of us will become "the old guys" and our younger brothers and sisters will come up with something new - my sister already thinks I'm lame for liking the internet so much and sharing silly pictures and stuff. And she doesn't understand why cats are so cool. She's only 7 years younger.

The thing is, you have to look at memes in a broader sense than just "picture of X with something written on top and on bottom in big bold text". Yes, that's what some people call a "meme" these days, but I mean them more in the sense of a cultural parcel that is distributed between people in a common-ish medium.

I remember in primary school one of the memes (called fads back then) was that everyone suddenly started using yo-yos. Anyone who was between 10 and 14 had a yoyo and you could instantly connect with them, there was instantly something to talk about. Etc.

But here's the real kicker, the memes of today are the first in history that are trully global. And without delay. It took almost 10 years for hippies to arrive in my neck of the woods and they were never pretty big. Punk was a big quicker, it had a delay of only a few years.

Modern culture, mostly the memes, has zero delay. And that's amazing.

I bet hippies weren't too big or popular with the 12 year old crowd either when they were at their peak.

And BTW, Justin Bieber IS an internet meme. He was made famous through a youtube video clip that got him the attention of big producers, a contract and eventually "real" fame.

I HATE them.

Isn't this just relying on the scheduler which is probably a minheap?