Old 4chan becomes a trending aesthetic for TikTok zoomers

[☉Kud]

These kinds of people do not even watch Lucky Star, as @turntableToothache said.
They constantly make le funni femcel memes about Konata, when not only is Konata relatively well-adjusted even despite her circumstances (her mother died in childbirth and her father is an antisocial otaku who lends her dating sims, a scenario that would usually set someone up for failure irl) with her having a part-time job despite being in high school and having an active friend group, however if they had actually watched the show they would realise that there is already a character that would fit most of what these kinds of people want in a character.

I think the thing about Gen Z not engaging with the source material they aestheticize might come from how they instead engage with the "media" of it. This "media" could be that of memes and clips posted about the source material around the internet. My zoomer ass definitely remembers watching clips of Lucky Star and Nichijou on YouTube instead of watching full episodes, which I, elementary aged at the time, had no idea how to access. They only engage with characters like Konata from media of the source material instead of source material itself, hence the varying degrees of misconceptions or disregard of her character and the preference for perceiving her as a self-deprecating stoner otaku femcel. It's also why the associate these anime with internet nostalgia and webcore.

 

[mydadiscar]

Matter of fact, I was actually thinking the same exact thing recently. Youtube recommended me the entire dubbed show in 480p one day, and I thought, why the fuck not? Let's take it back to the 'good old days'. It was mostly how I remember it. I got a lot more of the reference now that I was no longer a dumb grade schooler. The one thing that struck me the most, however, was the Lucky Channel bits

Honestly, I only watched Lucky Star once, and by the end of it Lucky Channel was the only thing I was still watching it for. Maybe I'm just not that into slice-of-life? Who knows, but to me it was the highlight of the series.

 

[JulienYvon]

Yeah, there's even a "clone" of old 4chan called Heyuri, in which most of the userbase is clearly underage and autistic due to their infantile sense of humor and roleplaying that we still are on 2007, just like other similar shitty 'retro websites' like Spacehey or Bitview.
But I'll give them credit for something, they really seem to be trying to capture that oldschool 4chan feeling, the site even has a board for lolicons and it's not hard to see people posting gore or hardcore pornography.
This is concerning, but hey at least they seem to be having fun I guess

Holy shit i just looked at Spacehey and right of the bat just by the aestethics of the users i can even taste the amount of underage grooming and subsequent allegations that is going to come out of that site. The site looks a fucking FBI honeypot to attract pedophiles and sexual deviants like insects to sugar. Just wait for some time and see the amount of allegations that will come out of that site

 

[XEmoCatX]

"4chancore" has recently become a fairly trending aesthetic on sites such as TikTok, Pinterest and the like, with young people romanticizing oldweb memes and artstyles commonly associated with 4chan, as well as directly referencing the site culture and media from the time (pedobear, m00t, yotsuba, anon, azumangah daiohm lucky star, etc)
This was popularized by an artist called "canihavepromo" or lottie, who made animations reminiscent of the oldweb

View: https://youtu.be/IplMxCqJums?si=OznlQA5ut7SuxR8m


View: https://youtu.be/zcGyfxs3E4Y?si=UAcZwBGo8dCxsTLI

She was later cancelled for drawing loli, and being groomed by some pedophile or something, but that's another story.
In any case, old 4chan has now become an aesthetic that interests young people in TikTok. Perhaps they are fascinated by the prospect of a site where you can say controversial things like "kill" "rape" "faggot" "jews did WTC" without having to self censor, with many of them being scared and thinking of 4chan as part of the "Dark Web"
You can see this in this old Zone 4chan animation,

View: https://youtu.be/A-dI3l7INjY?si=gkzQmxFwXDmUCEV6


If you go to most recent comments, you will see many underage users commenting about how spooky and scary 4chan is, but how super cool and a e s t h e t i c oldweb was, in spite of all the scary things like slurs, pornography, and people having the ability to freely express themselves without being censored.
Now if you go on TikTok, you may find 12 years old uploading fake videos of themselves going to 2007 4chan as a sort of brag, but also as a form of escapism from our depressing current online landscape. Choosing to fantasize about being 12 in 2007 and browsing /b/, you know, the ideal childhood.
For any oldfags present, how does it feel to see your culture being skinwalked by TikTok zoomers for social media clout?
As for me, I can only remind y'all of the wise words of the once great George "Big" Floyd:

View: https://youtu.be/1f7i1HIm7-g?si=5fn6XQbK_kTumplP

I'm happy that TikTok users are interested in old internet (old forums for example) but at the same time I feel like they would use it for trendy stuff and probably doesn't actually care about it. I also think they would screw them up.

P.S I don't think they will handle 4chan that well.

So I have mix feelings about it.

 

[Lumine8]

That would be a disaster, it would destroy the platform and ruin the culture we have here, we would simply be overrun and then corporatized. although i think we should have a procedure if such an incursion event would happen, i think i'll make a thread on that.

Its hilarious how this sounds like ur preparing for a hurricane or something,i'd hate it if this site was overrun by tiktok considering its pretty calm

 

[Lumine8]

They develop aesthetics and interests that are popular only because everyone else is doing it, they may not even like it at all, they just have a desire to fit in because there's no creative space to output their thoughts successfully, this is what zoomers would call "certified NPC moment". Labelling and categorizing people into groups has been a major mistake for society as a whole and is the main reason why we can't band together to get the old web back, we are forced to be polarized by these big corporations, while here on agora, there is no labelling(unless you're a retard)

Before i deleted tiktok i was broke 24/7 because half the shit i used to buy was on there,now i have a bunch of useless shit thats only useful every like 6 months (if im lucky)

 

[Lumine8]

Have you seen what "their culture" consists of? It's edited wojacks, quirky corpo accounts, stealing for tiktok clout, mediocre white women getting popular and skibidi toilet. I'd rather them steal old shit and revive it.

Theres also diddy jokes,and cancelling whichever tiktoker pisses them off that week and "talk tuah" ??? My brother is VERYY into tiktok and its starting to piss me off

 

[XEmoCatX]

cancelling whichever tiktoker pisses them off that week and "talk tuah" ???

Sound like Twitter too, they will cancel people for stupid reasons.

Anyway, there are some good stuff on TikTok but unfortunately the algorithm prefer rage bait/controversial stuff more. Stupid/dangerous trends tend to get more views than talented TikTok videos such as art, actual dancing etc.

 

[Don Thuselah]

I think it's the other way around actually, culture is usually produced and managed by people in the upper 20's ~ 40's which at this point is the Millennials and given that Millennials are absolutely infested with anti-culture they haven't really produced anything significant and are far more likely to destroy promising ideas or old concepts rather than further refine them. So rather than take on from the Millennial line of non-cepts zoomers are attaching to older, far culturally stronger elements like 4chan, various older musical styles (the retrowaves), and other notable aesthetics.

As someone who discovered 4chan in high school, through the fat weird kid explaining to me that it was like fortune but the #4 and Chan and that it was full of memes and fun stuff I think the things you tend to dismiss about millennials are things that they kept alive or pioneered. 2004 Chan is millennials in their teens keeping things going, same with the synth wave stuff. The problem we have is that the information has become so stratified and gate kept that you'd never find anything beyond the central repository known as 4chan.
It's a digital etch a sketch for millennial culture that couldn't stick around but bled into the surroundings. Don't take 4chan away from the millennial culture because they were and are still there too. But we have sanitized ourselves outside of the corners of the internet to appeal to the boomers who ran things, to the point of not having a lasting legacy after our high school Midwest emo days.

 

[Some_porcupine]

The problem we have is that the information has become so stratified and gate kept that you'd never find anything beyond the central repository known as 4chan.
... But we have sanitized ourselves outside of the corners of the internet to appeal to the boomers who ran things, to the point of not having a lasting legacy after our high school Midwest emo days.

I don't get you but I feel you

Can you repeat it in English, please? This is either nostalgia bait, or spiritual type stuff a la willhelpme (user)...

/

To me, "kids" (b. 99-09+) sanitized themselves they want it or no, because ... All futures "prepared" (in 50-60s) for us, are just fables. It feels like you can't win - so why to "play" - economy, ecology, hope, wonder, no progress... All gone, we know we can't give in, but we entrapped ourselves, so neither give out...
We can blame "system", but who makes, or listens , to such? It's the people... Call me crazy, hell yeah you are in agora, babe... - conspiracy! --- that was the way - to break the spirit, to make life hell, depending on "luck, power or success"...
Sometimes I think in Renesance, the people had it better than now - because they couldn't know of all , all they can see but nothing to be able to do, world so complex and full of intrigues, yet , ruled by idiots and old ladies in city councils, deciding "democracy" for others in town... No - always was that...
It is funny how other side of the world is closer to us, than our hometown, really!...

 

[Don Thuselah]

I was born before 99.
The renaissance you're speaking about is a spiritual one. It's also a bureaucratic renaissance that needs to happen too.
You can't do anything without barriers for entry, no longer can a draftsmen become an architect, no more will we see cross compatibility with skills. Partly because there is an entire lexicon for each industry.
Your lamentations are valid, but the people in power have hedged their bets against this very thing, to untangle this web is to try and convince everyone to switch from imperial units to metric, it takes generations.
These problems cannot be solved earlier than a few generations. But they are problems that must be solved.

 

[Sketch Relics]

As someone who discovered 4chan in high school, through the fat weird kid explaining to me that it was like fortune but the #4 and Chan and that it was full of memes and fun stuff I think the things you tend to dismiss about millennials are things that they kept alive or pioneered. 2004 Chan is millennials in their teens keeping things going, same with the synth wave stuff. The problem we have is that the information has become so stratified and gate kept that you'd never find anything beyond the central repository known as 4chan.
It's a digital etch a sketch for millennial culture that couldn't stick around but bled into the surroundings. Don't take 4chan away from the millennial culture because they were and are still there too. But we have sanitized ourselves outside of the corners of the internet to appeal to the boomers who ran things, to the point of not having a lasting legacy after our high school Midwest emo days.

I really should have been more specific, there is a very definite line between early and late millennial contributions and it probably would have been better to describe it as pre and post woke instead, with most millenial contributions now taking place post woke which is causing people to go back to earlier contributions rather than building off more recent things.

 

[404 Username Not Found]

Everything on tiktok is a fucking aesthetic - there's probably a stubbed-my-toecore or some shit on that site. I don't know what it is about that site specifically that causes it but I never see it on any other social media to that extent. Maybe something about how it only has relatively short video posts and no image, text or longer video posting capabilities (as far as I know) means that it can only transfer relatively "simple" information like aesthetics.

I keep seeing this image posted now and then and it's so mind boggling how anybody chronologize the internet in this way.
It's like people born after 2009 think scene girls and lolrandum xd humor lasted until 2016 when Trump started making videos saying "these kids are the most cringiest ive ever seen lemme tell ya folks they make want to drink bleach" over gameplay of him playing CSGO
It's like the late zoomer version of this:

I think it's ironic in how complaining about how much they hate political commentary being everywhere they themselves end up engaging in political commentary about political commentary. Very meta. And I'm now doing political commentary on political commentary on political commentary.
Also, tumblr both was relatively well-used pre-2016 as far as I know even if I never used it at the time and hasn't really been relevant for a while, at least with the crowd that would also post wojacks or use tiktok.

 

[Some_porcupine]

Everything on tiktok is a fucking aesthetic - there's probably a stubbed-my-toecore or some shit on that site. I don't know what it is about that site specifically that causes it but I never see it on any other social media to that extent. Maybe something about how it only has relatively short video posts and no image, text or longer video posting capabilities (as far as I know) means that it can only transfer relatively "simple" information like aesthetics.

I think it's ironic in how complaining about how much they hate political commentary being everywhere they themselves end up engaging in political commentary about political commentary. Very meta. And I'm now doing political commentary on political commentary on political commentary.
Also, tumblr both was relatively well-used pre-2016 as far as I know even if I never used it at the time and hasn't really been relevant for a while, at least with the crowd that would also post wojacks or use tiktok.

Related: if you want to say something related too, you can, if you want, in (my) thread Young people giving up;

same wavelength and critique on this-like type behaviour, "societal changes" plus anecdotal (still) album of "proofs" in post(meta)modernity. Take a peek if you are curious and or want to talk this more; I think they (threads) are related, or at least, your posts made them so...

 

[404 Username Not Found]

Related: if you want to say something related too, you can, if you want, in (my) thread Young people giving up;

same wavelength and critique on this-like type behaviour, "societal changes" plus anecdotal (still) album of "proofs" in post(meta)modernity. Take a peek if you are curious and or want to talk this more; I think they (threads) are related, or at least, your posts made them so...

Eh, as someone who is a zoomer himself and therefore largely interacts with zoomers - I'd say that this is something that (anecdotally to certain areas in the UK) doesn't seem to be around IRL and therefore is largely online and moreso largely on sites on tiktok or pintrest (the latter I believe being exclusively image-based and therefore also limited in the information they can express). People who get hyper focused on the state of society and therefore regress into nostalgia for a time before they were born/came of age tend to just become "back in the day" style conservatives, and a lot of people who freak out about society turn to stuff like socialism. I'd be willing to bet the type of communication possible on tiktok plays a large part in this

 

[Some_porcupine]

Eh, as someone who is a zoomer himself and therefore largely interacts with zoomers - I'd say that this is something that (anecdotally to certain areas in the UK) doesn't seem to be around IRL and therefore is largely online and moreso largely on sites on tiktok or pintrest (the latter I believe being exclusively image-based and therefore also limited in the information they can express). People who get hyper focused on the state of society and therefore regress into nostalgia for a time before they were born/came of age tend to just become "back in the day" style conservatives, and a lot of people who freak out about society turn to stuff like socialism. I'd be willing to bet the type of communication possible on tiktok plays a large part in this

So you say yourself you are guilty of this as well, then?
I mean, problem isn't that much of nostalgia on my thread that is so, it is much so that but opinions on things i miss, 90-y2k-00s positivity...

 

[404 Username Not Found]

So you say yourself you are guilty of this as well, then?

I can't see how I implied that. I meant that I don't think this is exclusively a reaction to the "societal changes" of post-modern reality - as IRL people don't tend to act like that, aestheticism of the good old days tends tends to be caught up with conservative policies rather than internet design and others react to the modern reality with imagined futures like socialism rather than imagined pasts. The point was the aesthecism of old websites is probably tied to how limited tiktok can be at what media it allows as a post (not as a comment or hyperlink).

 

[Some_porcupine]

I can't see how I implied that. I meant that I don't think this is exclusively a reaction to the "societal changes" of post-modern reality - as IRL people don't tend to act like that, aestheticism of the good old days tends tends to be caught up with conservative policies rather than internet design and others react to the modern reality with imagined futures like socialism rather than imagined pasts. The point was the aesthecism of old websites is probably tied to how limited tiktok can be at what media it allows as a post (not as a comment or hyperlink).

Well sure, no one else imagined nothing else, maybe except mutualism (tribalism), to "fight draconian cyberpunk crapitalism" , who is to blame, "to sell you your dreams", with tricks and soul sold/scarred, included?!

 

[turntableToothache]

I think the thing about Gen Z not engaging with the source material they aestheticize might come from how they instead engage with the "media" of it. This "media" could be that of memes and clips posted about the source material around the internet. My zoomer ass definitely remembers watching clips of Lucky Star and Nichijou on YouTube instead of watching full episodes, which I, elementary aged at the time, had no idea how to access. They only engage with characters like Konata from media of the source material instead of source material itself, hence the varying degrees of misconceptions or disregard of her character and the preference for perceiving her as a self-deprecating stoner otaku femcel. It's also why the associate these anime with internet nostalgia and webcore.

It's easier to watch slop video essays on how the shit they "consume" (exclusively through tiktok reels and twitter posts) is a hidden gem, than it is to actually go and watch it and form an opinion of their own. They want the clout and aesthetic of being a Nichijou or what have you fan without having to put in the herculean effort of interacting with the source material. It's a combination of zoomers and their decreasing attention spans, paired with the typical tech-illiteracy they have these days, where if you it's not on Youtube, or a streaming site ala Netflix, then it might as well be impossible to watch at all, add a desperate need to be seen as being "in it" to that and you have a bunch of hylics pretending to be fans of le edgy or a e s t h e t i c animu media from the 2000s for clout. That's why nowadays it's so common to see these retards being shocked and appaled to find out their favorite animuh is actually problematic because it includes a rape joke in the second episode (they didn't get past the first one)

 

[Don Thuselah]

It's easier to watch slop video essays on how the shit they "consume" (exclusively through tiktok reels and twitter posts) is a hidden gem, than it is to actually go and watch it and form an opinion of their own. They want the clout and aesthetic of being a Nichijou or what have you fan without having to put in the herculean effort of interacting with the source material. It's a combination of zoomers and their decreasing attention spans, paired with the typical tech-illiteracy they have these days, where if you it's not on Youtube, or a streaming site ala Netflix, then it might as well be impossible to watch at all, add a desperate need to be seen as being "in it" to that and you have a bunch of hylics pretending to be fans of le edgy or a e s t h e t i c animu media from the 2000s for clout. That's why nowadays it's so common to see these retards being shocked and appaled to find out their favorite animuh is actually problematic because it includes a rape joke in the second episode (they didn't get past the first one)

I think while what you're saying is rooted in truth, the vast majority may be a consequence of this information war being waged against the generations. While tech illiteracy was something that has been an issue for each generation up to a certain point, the vast majority aren't as dumb nor astoundingly myopic as you are alluding to. We are the product of our generation and while we may stray from the mould in certain ways, generally we are never as bad as the stereotype.
I've interacted with zoomers and their problem solving skills are good, they tend to dismiss the culture of victimhood wherein they are all victims and perpetrators if only for the fact that when times are good it's easy to find a reason to lament. When times are hard the lamentations are too easy to get hung up on than the imaginary bullshit we idled are time with earlier.
We're encountering another generation defining problem that has changed many people's outlooks on life and their actions and I see it every day.
While I don't think you're entirely wrong when viewing gen z from the internets and only the internets, the chronically online aren't the only metric one must use to measure the mettle of a generation.