[simias]

That's a romantic way to look at it I suppose. As somebody on 4chan for a little more than a decade now I'd say that it slowly moved from an anarcho-libertarian community who loved gratuitous provocation to an alt-right echo chamber, at least as far as the big boards are concerned.

"Hitler did nothing wrong" went from a provocative joke to a political stamement. 4chan is the embodiment of "any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company".

That puts modern 4chan in the somewhat ironic position of being actually on the side of the American government for the most part something I couldn't really imagine 2007 ever endorsing, regardless of the who's in charge.

[Kattywumpus]

> "Hitler did nothing wrong" went from a provocative joke to a political statement.

I'm sort of fascinated by the phenomenon, which I think of as "LOLgical argument". You start off with a joke where the humor is based in an extreme and socially transgressive statement. It could be "Hitler did nothing wrong," or "The Earth is flat," or any number of similarly absurd ideas. The original users are trolls who privately do not actually believe what they are saying, but enjoy "rustling jimmies" and the increased status their daring obtains.

But as more members of the community join in, the original statement loses its edge, and even more transgressive poses are needed to continue the joke. Often this means doubling-down, and telling others that you do indeed believe the thing that they had, at some level, still been treating as a punchline.

This meta-joke involves finding "proof" that the shocking thing you said before was actually true, and demonstrating your commitment, by creating memes and other "evidence"-based arguments for it. In doing so, you begin to create a community that becomes indistinguishable from a community that actually believes the original statement.

As these arguments pile up, even trolls who started off disbelieving their original statement find themselves surrounded by "evidence" they were right all along. There is a swell of camaraderie as those who were bold enough to question the official version of reality begin to support each other. The community pressure, the ego boost of having discovered some secret suppressed knowledge, and the psychological difficulty of abandoning their previous position all contribute to the complete conversion of a troll into an earnest believer.

I find this fascinating because it works in such opposition to the ways we normally talk about convincing people of new ideas. It's not the logic of the argument here that leads people to a new conclusion but rather the logic of the joke, the idea that the funniest punchline to an absurd joke is to actually believe it. When enough individuals in a community feel that way, they can actually end up convincing each other.

So it's not so much that the community becomes "flooded by actual idiots" as it is the original trolls who become believers themselves.

Vonnegut once wrote, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." He was probably more right here than he knew.

[simias]

I think your analysis is accurate. These past years reddit's "The Donald" community is a prime example of that, except it went through all phases in about a year, maybe even less.

But I also think you need to take into account that many of the original users who genuinely did not seriously believe the "Hitler did nothing wrong"/"Hearth is flat"/"Donald Trump would make a great president"/... meta-joke end up leaving when things get serious. It's actually a feature for the extremists who push these ideas, if you're not with them you're against them, it's all about creating an echo chamber at this point. Reddit is terrible for that because of the moderation and voting system but even on 4chan good luck trying to argue against the hivemind, you'll just get insulted over and over until the thread 404's. Eventually you give up and stop bothering.

[jquery]

4chan has always been flooded by idiots. Society around it has changed and 4chan’s beliefs on how to maintain its first amendment rights against a state apparatus that increasingly threatens its existence has gotten a bit sharper in tone, but “Hitler did nothing wrong” is still the joke it always was. There are a few actual nazis on the board, but that has always been the case because nowhere else are they tolerated; perhaps you have the rose-colored glasses? Polite society has also defined classical liberals and anarcho libertarians both as “alt right”, the label is increasingly watered down to mean anything not progressive enough.

Besides, 4chan is still the fedora-tipping site that mocks religious fundamentalists, it’s just progressives have become just as uptight and strict about their sacred beliefs (if not more so), so 4chan mocks them too. Because it’s funny.