• @CodingAndCoffee@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I’m probably skipping some steps, but lowtax banning hentai drove the weebs to 4chan, and 8chan. 8chan was the home for all the “Q” posts that started Qanon which riled up the Republican base and led to the Jan 6 insurrection

    • Gargleblaster
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      292 years ago

      They birthed and normalized shitty internet behavior: rickrolling on the lighter end, trolling, doxxing, and swatting.

      They would also do shit like make fun of mentally handicapped people, which would lead goons to harassing the victims IRL and teaching kids that this was all OK.

      And they would go after people who talked shit about about them, criticized them, or otherwise attacked them. The 4chan army would come out in force and try to ruin people’s online existence.

      Before Q-Anon showed up, they had started calling Trump God Emperor during the election. I think they may just have chose him as the candidate who would cause the most chaos, but it’s easy to see how others others would take their goals more seriously and want Trump as president.

      And the cycles of shitty behavior over decades attracted more and more rightwingers. I used to think of them as a chaos collective, but the politics swung hard right.

      And then they spread to other platforms with r/the_donald, pepe the frog, and calling each other pedes.

    • @Oiconomia@feddit.deOP
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      182 years ago

      Christopher Poole founded 4chan because some hentai-relates things were banned on something awful. 4chan’s /pol/ was an early seedbed for right wing extremism. Also the first QAnon posts came from 4chan.

    • zedtronic
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      132 years ago

      In addition to the other replies you got, if you’re interested there’s a book called It Came From Something Awful that explains a lot of internet history.

    • @eg_taco@lemm.ee
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      72 years ago

      The rough story is that 4chan grew out of the old SA forums, and that 4chan was instrumental in the development of the alt-right.

      I’m not explicitly endorsing this narrative, but despite being somewhat reductionist, its broad strokes are relatively accurate.

    • @boonhet@lemm.ee
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      72 years ago

      I suppose 4chan was created after hentai was banned on SA. 4chan is also where the whole Qanon shit started, which led to said event.

    • @hedgehogging_the_bed@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      At a guess:

      Sad SomthingAwful users create 4Chan > sad 4Chan users create 8chan > QAnon > Jan 6th

      But I would also like a detailed explanation.

    • @eco@lemm.ee
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      32 years ago

      There’s a great documentary call Q: Into the Storm that was on HBO that covers the history of how Qanon came to be. The short version is what the other person who replied wrote.