In 2002 Something Awful was the place to be. Next came YTMND, and from 2003-2006 4-chan was the greatest thing ever. So what do you think is next?
It's unlikely, but if 4-ch were to suddenly explode in popularity I wouldn't be too surprised.
TEXT ONLY WEB-BASED DISCUSSION BOARDS
INTELLIGENT DISCUSSION
PLEASE GOD PLEASE
gaia-online
sad but true
>>and from 2003-2006 4-chan was the greatest thing ever.
Holy shit, where was I when this happened?
>>3
INTELLIGENT DISCUSSION
The only way we'll become popular (which would be horrible) is if one of us hijacks a bus and does some suicide bombing.
>>7 even then I bet 4chan would get the credit.
4chan is filled with a bunch of kids who claim they don't want to become popular, then when they do, they do everything in their power to exploit their presence as some 'Anonymous' entity by raiding. Yet they still complain when new people drop by.
In short, they're a ship of fools. They become so full of themselves that they'll keep sailing north until they crash into ice. At least /b/ is like that.
Back in the older times we really didn't want to become popular.
>>7
I volunteer this guy:
http://4-ch.net/general/kareha.pl/1199050678/1
And with the Scientology raid, now their fantasy is to get into the history books.
No it's won't. A couple of minute-long television reports and a few magazine articles doesn't mean anything. I mean, it's popular on Digg, but Digg is a lot less important than Digg users like to think it is.
>>14 said that's what the fantasy is, not what's going to happen.
Some people predict epic fail, where the Scientologists bring out the big guns and end up putting protesters in prison. Others predict epic win, where Scientology crumbles at the sight of a thousand Guy Fawkes masks singing Rick Astley songs, or at least it gets on the news, or at least they get laid at the protest.
I predict epic meh. Twelve guys milling around, a few in the one black suit they bought ten pounds ago to wear to job interviews. One dude in an afro wig who takes it off when he spots a black guy two blocks away.
I predict epic penis. Twelve guys with their penis out milling around, a few in the one black latex suit they bought ten pounds ago to wear to bdsm sessions. One dude in an afro wig on their sack who takes it off when he spots a black gay two blocks away.
>>16
I disagree, there was this news article claiming around 200 anons showed up to one event. I don't have a link, it's somewhere on partyvan.info's Chanology page.
Not to say this is a good thing, though. Anonymous is dead. Luckily we're 404 - Name Not Found.
ANONYMOUS IS FUCKING DEAD.
Also, this scientology shit isn't going to do anything. It's going to be a couple fags in suits protesting in some mid-sized city. I'll bet 100 bucks they don't get 60 seconds on TV - anywhere. IRL raids are fucking fail/cancer.
>>14
Would a 200-word article in the Economist be close enough? I gasped when I read it. Got a leader on the cover, too.
>>22
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10609174&CFID=10002682&CFTOKEN=90764f73e32d7cb9-0A380107-B27C-BB00-0129C3976CFBC9F7
There was also a little line on the cover "The Internet Vs. Scientology," or something like that.
I'm usually against raids, but considering Scientology is the oldest enemy of the Internet, counting all the way back to the USENET days, this is actually a somewhat noble cause.
I don't particularly condone their methods, but I hope this helps raising awareness to what Scientology really is. Most people have no idea Scientology is an evil cult that does nothing but extract money, blackmail people and use their Unlimited Lawyer Works to keep functioning. Kind of like a Mafia with a religious façade. Wait -- that's exactly what it is.
shut up about anon we went off topic
>>1
Somethingawful and 4chan have not been a "big internet thing". They spawn a lot of irreverent humour and in-jokes popular among a segment of the geek/gamer/otaku crowd, but aren't really that relevant in the big scheme of things on the net. SA was at its cultural influence zenith in 1999-2001 or so, or whenever they were spawning stuff like All Your Base. Gradually they started tightening posting standards, and got a boost in quality but it seems to have hindered their propensity for generating fast-spreading memes and jokes. 4chan has gradually taken over SA's role of being the "center of internet comedy", probably in large part due to lack of moderation and restrictions, as well as many of the early users coming from SA. Memes like rickroll and chocolate rain have spread much farther into the greater non-internet masses than anything SA ever generated. Possibly due to there simply being more internet-literate people around now. YTMND was never all that popular to begin with.
For all the popularity 4chan has gained though, it still pales in alexa ranking when compared to 2channel. It's only now with this anonymous activisim thing that it's starting to reach into the scale of the cultural influence in america and worldwide that 2channel has achieved in Japan.
For proper scale "big internet thing", I think you'd be looking more at something like search engines to portals to Google to blogs to social networking to Youtube+flash video.
>>30
Holy shit, scratch that. 4chan is even past 2ch now. It's not the most accurate measurement, but it's still pretty impressive.
>>31
Comparing apples with oranges too.
4chan is in rank 298 now and it's going up.
>> 30
Are we measuring the "big internet thing" with the overall internet population or with the net addict sort of crowd?
I think the latter counts more, since they invest more time in the internet than do the general populace of say, myspace. I imagine 4chan is far more popular among heavy users.
bah, i wish there was a new thing
4chan died and that is it so far, the entire web has now become a mainstream thing such that there are no more 'things'
there will be niche sites left to enjoy, like this one, but no BIG THINGs
>>31
2channel's base is just Japan (130 million). 4chan's base is basically the whole world, with North America dominating. 2channel might actually still be ahead for now, but Futaba has certainly been left behind.
>>35
Actually I suspect Myspace users would be more committed in a sense. They at least have to set up a page and try to gain online friends etc etc. Vast majority of 4channers just download pictures. If every visitor was making posts then all of 4chan's boards would be another /b/.
Sadly I think the proportion of people posting is even lower on iiChan. I think a lot of visitors just view iiChan as a picture repository they can download from and then go to 4chan to actually interact and have fun. No wonder really when newcomers (and oldtimers) are met with near-total silence however much they post. Very encouraging indeed...
everybody hates me. today in my school bullies put me in the trashbin and urinated on me. woe woe woe
google.
4 real :p
GOING OFFLINE
VR social spaces are the next big thing, though unfortunately they're being pushed by the establishment as a new form of social engineering/mind kontrol.
online suicide pacts
actually it is already a big trend in Japan since like 2001
coud gaming
cloud
cloud gaming
you will be able to play far cry 5 on Pentium III
i hope this website at least gains a bit in traction, this website is interesting but doesn't deserve to be exposed to the cancer of the newer sites.
I check back here every couple of months or years. Coming back always makes me happy. Sometimes I can pick up a conversation from before. If 4-ch started moving faster it would lose this feeling of being a safe haven to return to every once in a while.
>>52
It's already starting to get too fast for me:
crowdfunded suicide pacts on blockchain with livestreams
we all kill ourselves in a lulzy way and our family gets $$$
good bye mafia bets
more spyware
Ay anyone here want to add me on fortnite ;^DDDD
The centralization of the internet to a few websites.
I know it might be retarded to say this about Internet culture, but I highly recommend you guys read Oswald Spengler's "Decline of the West". Although he can get a bit autistic with pseudo-metaphysics, his main ideas are on point, but the Internet is recent and clear evidence that his historical model can apply to even subcultures AS LONG AS there is a higher-ideal(s) and enough stimuli and people to participate. (Despite that, if you want a long-lasting culture, religion IS necessary. Materialism does not a culture make.)
>AS LONG AS there is a higher-ideal
looks like we're fucked
>>60
Religion is a materialism. Naturalism forever.
I liked using reddit back in 2017, but it's been getting worse and worse.
I think it peaked at r/place.
next big internet is livestream hardcore henry
I was playing uplink the other and then i found out it has an IRC client in it. I think that's gonna be big
For my circle it's telegram, but the circle is kinda bubbled up for my tastes. I mean you don't have that sense of exploration you had.
>>66
I think that's the problem of the contemporary internet, people circle the wagons and retreat into places they think they can express themselves. That's why I'm here at least lol
I don't think there will be another good communications platform for a long time. The world is shrinking every day and everyone knows everything. The internet has run its course as a medium, and we'll probably be very old or dead by the time the next big thing becomes a practical reality. Sucks...
we need Another Medium
>>68
I think there's plenty of great communication platforms today. From a purely objective standpoint modern social media and chat platforms are way better for communication than sites like this one.
I think your problem, and indeed the problem of most people here, is that you've fallen victim to the generational gap. The world you understand is shrinking rapidly as sites you once cherished either die or change to the point where they're no longer recognizable, and a new generation with different norms and values begins to outnumber yours.
Things change with time. The world you knew isn't coming back, and the new generation doesn't want it back. I've met zoomers who've called old geocities sites eyesores and have no idea how to even use the likes of IRC, let alone the desire to do so
The reality of the situation is that things change with time. You can either accept it and move on with your life, or stay here, wallowing in your misery.
>>70
What kind of communication though? The nu-internet is great for dank cringe memes and terrible for any kind of serious discussion--and that's by design. reddit and twitter were not meant to be used for discussion, unlike forums which were specifically made for that purpose. Imageboards work ok as long as there isn't too much traffic. But reddit and twitter is where all the "serious discussion" is supposed to be happening.
Usenet was 'made for serious discussion' yet in retrospective, it was also full of angry nerd flamewars and stupid 90s jokes in place of memes.
I'm not sure the shortcomings of discussion on the Net are stronly tied with technology used.
twitter posts are limited to very few characters, so that already prohibits serious discussion. It's also transient in nature, not meant for drawn out discussions that could last for days, weeks, months or years. It's meant for announcements and "here's something I bought today" type of messages. Parsing twitter discussion threads is also difficult.
reddit threads are transient as well. A thread typically has a lifespan of 24 hours or less, maybe a few days on a slower sub, and in very active threads only the users who get in on the ground floor are likely to get their comment seen. Unless they "hijack the top comment for visibility," as they often have to do. If they make the mistake of saying something the collective disagrees with, their comment is collapsed and banished to the bottom. Even the visibility of the thread itself is dependent on people's votes. And like twitter threads, it's hard to parse reddit threads because of all the nesting, collapsing and moving comments (moving in the sense that when they are voted up and down their position on the page also shifts). You don't even get notifications for anything except direct replies to what you wrote.
reddit also by its nature encourages constant reposting and rehashing, and this in conjunction with voting conditions people to automatically accept and adopt popular views. Repetition + social proof = it must be correct.
On a related note, some have speculated that phoneposting has changed the way people post on 4chan. Interacting with a thread on a phone is much more cumbersome and encourages more shallow interaction, and posting on the go doesn't make people dedicate their time and attention to the thread as much as they would on a computer. Ban evasion is also way easier. This all leads to decreased post quality. Fast 4chan threads also encourage fast posting, which is bad for quality.
>>73
Reddit works well when used for its intended purpose; being a content aggregator. Things are split off into different boards so you can find subjects you like, and then people post links to things within that subject. Votes and karma are perfect when you're looking for recommendations, not so much for discussion.
It's called tiktok OP. No one who is sane can look at tiktok content without dying of "epic cringe" as the kids these days call it.
Looks like it's actually spamming dead textboards with (unfortunately, not dead) memes.
It's not like there are any live textboards to spam.