[MattDemers]

I think people also don't acknowledge how much terminology, slang and other culture originate and spread there. When it breaches into Twitter (usually through funposters) people kind of ignore the unsavoury origin and rewrite the history. The anonymous nature kind of provides that petri dish of "if it's strong culture, it'll survive or be modified."

[hotfist]

This absolutely was the case for a long time. It was the cultural center of the internet where nearly all memes sprang from or gained traction and context before leaving orbit for the greater internet.

That has not been the case for years though. I'd say it shifted to twitter as things shifted to inseparably political on almost all of 4chan maybe 6-8 years back and then shifted away from twitter a while after elon bought it and a lot of people started to bail. and I honestly don't know where exactly it's shifted to now, but I'd have to guess tiktok and similar new platforms.

But regardless I do think 4chan has lost nearly all of it's cultural influence, but still maintains it's notoriety.

[packetlost]

I think it's less the case now, but 4chan is absolutely still the source of new slang. It's just less concentrated on that one platform these days.

[corimaith]

People were using "Based" and Gigachad in the late 2010s for years before the mainstream picked it up in the 20s.

Also for indie video games, many do find their attention and early fanbases on /v/ before they spread out to twitter. Largely because /v/ is very information sensitive and will pick up primary news usually minutes after they arrive.

[YurgenJurgensen]

‘Slop’ was a 2024 Oxford Dictionary word-of-the-year candidate, and what most of the people using it probably don’t realise is that it originated on 4chan as an abbreviation of ‘goyslop’.

[saagarjha]

"Slop" has an etymology that extends far beyond 4chan.

[el_cujo]

I think this was true at one point but not for the past 5-10 years. Based off of using the site I feel like now a lot of things start on other sites (particularly smaller accounts on twitter), get aggregated and popularized on 4chan, and then get picked up on other sites (often regurgitated back to twitter). Knowyourmeme shows this for a lot of things that people typically attribute as original to 4chan. There was definitely a time when a ton of stuff originated on 4chan but these days everything is so interconnected with the same people posting on twitter, reddit, and 4chan that I think 4chan gets a lot of unearned credit

[giancarlostoro]

Don't forget the slurs. They have some unique slurs in there that have backstories too.

[thih9]

> how much terminology, slang and other culture originate and spread there

Could you give some examples? The more unexpected, the better.

Preferably with sources, because tracing word origin is difficult enough on its own.

[dmonitor]

Wiktionary has a surprisingly robust list

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_4chan_slang

[thih9]

Note, some of these are associated with the far right.

> fren later came to prominence on sites such as 4chan and the subreddit /r/frenworld as a dog whistle used by far-right white nationalists and fascists to refer to each other

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/fren

[tokai]

Should be noted that they have a history of trying to co-opt neutral terms and symbols. Like the frog and the ok gesture.

[FiniteField]

Pepe the frog became associated with the online far right because it was a commonly used memetic avatar in general 4chan culture, and became intertwined with the space's shift to the political right in a fairly organic way. The association was boosted by (IIRC) the 2016 Clinton campaign's assertion that it was a far-right symbol, which was obviously embraced by those people as a sort of irreverent statement. Likewise, there may have been some very thin, actually existing connection between the far right and the "ok" gesture, but it really came about as an association that was imposed by the media and subsequently embraced by that community. To say these terms were "co-opted" isn't really correct.

I think there's actually a better case to be made that the pipeline of "co-option" (if you want to call it that) is stronger in the reverse direction. I posted a sister comment to yours about that.

[tokai]

>actually existing connection between the far right and the "ok" gesture but it really came about as an association that was imposed by the media and subsequently embraced by that community

There wasn't any connection. You are running things in reverse. There was an explicit concerted effort to 'take it over'. With celebrations when it succeeded as the media to the bait.

[NewsaHackO]

Why does that matter?

[anigbrowl]

So you can have a clue who you're talking to.

[immibis]

because if you're trying to say a site was a positive influence, because it created a number of Nazi slurs and dog whistles... complete the sentence yourself

[FiniteField]

>Note, some of these are associated with the far right.

I think that should be trivially obvious based on the discussion at hand. What is interesting, though, is how so many of these terms came into public use as well-known, generic terms, despite the far right being poison to any normal person's reputation. Even many of the ones containing obviously offensive components have made it into wider use in some clipped form. Eg:

- based

- goyslop -> slop

- normalfag -> normie

[lukas099]

I could be wrong but I don't think 'normie' came from 'normalfag'. I'm somewhat skeptical that 'goyslop' was the first use of 'slop' in this way too. And of course 'based' comes from rapper Lil B.

[jdminhbg]

I think "normalfag" is a backformation from "normie"; at any rate, "normie" is itself 4chan slang that entered norm... ie... usage one way or another. "Based" was coined by Lil B but absolutely entered wide usage via being adopted as a meme by 4chan.

[boyesm]

Moot lists some examples in this video:

https://youtu.be/a_1UEAGCo30?si=JMVO5ox3K2AhxrMY&t=97

[52-6F-62]

I thought culture was a “solved problem” now that we have AI.

I can’t keep up anymore.

[52-6F-62]

Well either people thought my comment was to be taken literally, or they believe 4chan is culture and other hurting cultural gatherings like midsize live music venues were not.