4chan is gay
The community played a central role in fueling Gamergate, an aggressive harassment campaign targeting women in gaming. The early days were filled with absurdist humor and meme-making genius, but underneath was a growing current of toxicity.
Fueled by complete anonymity, fleeting threads, and an anything-goes ethos, 4chan rapidly became a digital playground for raw, unfiltered expression. Posing as a GameStop with a rare copy of Battletoadsa thread on 4chan generated over calls in two days—proof that strangers could summon real-world chaos for a laugh.
Unlike Facebook or Reddit, 4chan never kept archives. It was harmless, hilarious fun—the kind that could make a year-old wake up the whole house laughing at 2 a. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in Octoberthe site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from video games and television to literature, cooking, weapons, music, history, technology, anime, physical fitness, politics, and sports, among others.
Now, 4chan is gone—reportedly wiped offline by hackers from a rival message board. Once Elon Musk took over Twitter in and embraced many of the same edgy, controversial takes, there was no longer a need for a place like 4chan. The internet had absorbed its worst tendencies and turned them into entertainment.
By the s, 4chan had stopped being a fringe site and started shaping public discourse. Threads would vanish if inactive. And nowhere embodied that untamed energy more than 4chan. Over time, 4chan became synonymous with cyber harassment, coordinated trolling, and doxing campaigns.
Inspired by the Japanese imageboard 2chan, he built a scrappy, Western version focused on anime discussions. It created a race to the bottom: whoever could be the most outrageous or offensive the fastest won the attention of the moment. It was where internet culture was born—and later, where it was twisted into something darker.
Who Or What Was
Please stop saying “traps are gay” Illustration by David Sohn If you’ve spent any time in the degenerate cesspools of 4Chan and Reddit, you’ve likely heard the phrase “traps are gay” thrown around casually. Posts were anonymous. 4chan may be dead, but its toxic legacy lives on It is likely that there will never be a site like 4chan again.
4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard site. Part of what made 4chan so unpredictable—and, at times, so dangerous—was its design. In the early s, the internet felt like the Wild West—a chaotic frontier filled with quirky ideas, creativity, and bizarre humor.
It had pockets of unexpected warmth and community. Those who use it typically have a poor understanding of its far-reaching implications, or even what it means.
List of LGBTQ YouTubers
Trolls on the far-right messaging board 4chan have been strongly condemned for attempting to clog-up a suicide hotline for LGBT + youth. Either way, its legacy is impossible to ignore. Registration is not available, except for staff, and users typically.
On Tuesday, members of 4chan allegedly plotted to clog-up. As the platform grew, so did its reputation. This built-in impermanence meant that users felt free to say and do anything, knowing it would likely be erased within hours. The image includes a logo of an organization that does not appear to exist and experts say began on online internet forum 4Chan to spread disinformation.
Its many boards covered everything from tech and photography to comics and even cooking. That was just a taste of what 4chan would soon become: not just a chaotic message board, but a proving ground for online radicalization. Then it became a launchpad for far-right ideologies that spread from niche internet spaces to mainstream politics.