Tue, May 13, 2025 10:32

Check out these two recent articles exploring the influence of 4chan’s “shitposting” on internet culture and politics.

In a Wired article, Ryan Broderick examines the pervasive influence of 4chan-like sites on the mainstream internet. My main memory of the site is my friends using its random posts to view shocking, often sexually explicit and racist content, which I felt was affecting their views. His refresher on 4chan’s functionality was helpful:

4chan users were anonymous, threads weren’t permanent and would time out or “404” after a period of inactivity, and there were dozens of sub-boards you could post to. That unique combination of ephemerality, anonymity, and organized chaos proved to be a potent mix, immediately creating a race-to-the-bottom gutter culture unlike anything else on the web. The dark end point of the techno-utopianism that built the internet. On 4chan you were no one, and nothing you did mattered unless it was so shocking, so repulsive, so hateful that someone else noticed and decided to screenshot it before it disappeared into the digital ether.

Charlie Warzel’s article in The Atlantic discusses the current US administration’s and the official White House X account’s use of cruel shitposting content as a political tool:

[T]he White House account manages to perfectly capture the sociopathic, fascistic tone of ironic detachment and glee of the internet’s darkest corners and most malignant trolls. The official X account of the White House isn’t just full of low-rent 4chan musings, it’s an alarming signal of an administration that’s fluent in internet extremism and seemingly dedicated to pursuing its casual cruelty as a chief political export.

The US administration’s dehumanization of migrants exemplifies how shitposting’s strategy of maximizing reactions while minimizing effort can undermine serious conversations.