[jarcane]

Well, when 4chan started it was basically just a porn board. The idea of actually hanging around was akin to being someone who’s really dedicated to their pornhub comments.

It took a few years of those few dedicated weirdos bouncing off each other (and their Japanese equivalent boards) to fully metastasise into the face of modern neofascism.

[Karrot_Kream]

Hm? From when 4chan was just a board with no other boards, it was a _lot_ of stuff. The original board distinction (/a/ and /b/) was made because eventually anime content and "other"/meme content collided in the interests of the board users, so they were separated. It's hard to see the viewpoint in our politically charged time, but the origins of 4chan were just about people interested in anime saying whatever. The frequency of the content often meant that it was mostly just kids with too much free time (as I suspect a lot of *net Fora tend to be). The board changed a lot over the years, but initially it was just a place for anime-oriented talk.