The Meme Wars: 4Chan Was Murdered For Betraying Wojak

In this episode, we explore the intriguing story of 4Chan's downfall and the rise of SoyJack Party. The discussion delves into the history and cultural shifts within 4Chan, its eventual corruption, and how a new ironic far-right culture emerged from SoyJack Party. We also touch on the significant hack known as 'Operation Soy Eclipse' that exposed 4Chan's vulnerabilities. Join us for an in-depth analysis of how internet culture is evolving and what it means for the future of online communities.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I'm excited to be with you today. Today we are gonna be talking about the hacker known as four Chan and how he died, you know, no, no. Four chan is, and I would argue, and one of the arguments of this episode is gonna be, you don't even, to be so sad, the four chan environment had become.

So corrupted by the time of its death that nothing of the host survived. Wow.

All right. I'm not talking to that thing in your head. I'm talking to Skara. Nothing of the host survives. Your friend had a feeble mind. It suffered greatly and gave it easily.

Malcolm Collins: You know, it, it was, it was no longer the site that it used to be. And that its death was not like wokes or something coming for it. It was the new form of new Right. Culture coming for it, attacking the old rights, [00:01:00] pathetic extremism.

Right. You know? Okay.

I always thought the Freakazoid theme song seemed bizarrely spot on as a theme song

For OG four Chan culture.

So let's see if I can get away with posting it. Is

textbook case by Seman. Check your computer.

Malcolm Collins: Anything you wanna say or you know about this before I go deeper?

Simone Collins: I actually don't know anything about this and so I am extremely curious to see what has happened because I remember for a while it was four chan and then there was eight Chan and I don't know who's what or where's where. It all seemed so ephemeral to begin with, so I'm very keen to hear what's going on 'cause I never really hung out Fortune, unfortunately.

Malcolm Collins: [00:02:00] Yeah, I mean, I've always been adjacent to it and everything like that, and I've read it, but I've never really enjoyed like posting in it. Mm-hmm. I, I just, I might. Be a humble man. But I just really enjoy when people aate me for my post every Yes. This, this I, this

Simone Collins: anonymity thing really

Malcolm Collins: isn't

Simone Collins: our

Malcolm Collins: game.

Every other major new right figure, you know, you, you talk about like Bronze Age pervert or like R nationalists or like any of these people, they all started pseu anonymously, not me. Oh, no, no. Even just play video games

Simone Collins: to no audience at all. You either play as yourself or as one of our kids. So like you're still like, it's always you in some way.

Yes. Everybody must

Malcolm Collins: praise me. I, why would I write something without expectation of adoration?

Simone Collins: Well, no, but even in video games, that's my point though, is even when there's literally, I. No audience, you still want to be yourself or us. 'cause you identify as your family

Malcolm Collins: or Yeah, yeah. I typically do. Well, or [00:03:00] one of my descendants or something like that is like, what am I, I'm like, okay, this is like a hypothetical descendant or something.

So that's, that's just the way I interact with the world. It needs to be me. Okay, buddy. But anyway, and I, I love that this is antithetical to the new Right. In many ways because all the other new Right. We're all, you know, whether it's, it's, it's, you know, zero HP or Bronze Age pervert or R Nationalist, and yet I'm like,

Simone Collins: here I am.

Malcolm Collins: But it doesn't mean that I wasn't influenced by four Chan culture and I didn't enjoy four Chan culture, but I do think that it lived out its lifecycle. So let's talk about why. Let's talk about what happened.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Wow. This is the end of an era. If, if this is real, how it's playing out, and it may

Malcolm Collins: not come back.

It really may not. So the, the what took it down with a hack called Operation Soy Eclipse. And I'm gonna try to give you guys the most comprehensive view of this. Okay? Anywhere fine. The story begins in September, 2020 when four chance's, QA questions, an answered board was banned. This board originally a space for meta discussions has become a hub for [00:04:00] a specific subculture of users who reveled in creating and sharing soy jack memes.

Caricatures, mocking perceived weaknesses of their ideological opponents. So if you're not familiar with soy jacks, I will throw some on screen for you here. You definitely know what they are. They're those little like, outlines of characters. When you think of like a meme face, that's soy jack, frequently.

When four Chan's moderators shut down qa, these users felt betrayed, accusing the site of stifling their community. In response, a user known as Scoot launched soy jack party or soy jack party, a new image board dedicated to soy jack memes and the irreverent culture that thrived on qa. Now, I want to take a, an aside here because I was in like, okay, why did they ban?

Soy jack. Well, yeah. I mean

Simone Collins: it's, it's four chan too. There should be nothing off limits,

Malcolm Collins: right?

Simone Collins: No. Presumably,

Malcolm Collins: but literally the only reason they banned it and this, this, this, I think shows the beginning of the rot. Okay. They banned it because they were mad that it had become low effort [00:05:00] posting only soy jacks.

And it's like, yeah, because this is where the soy jack culture had grown. You didn't. Yeah. And it'll pass.

Simone Collins: Like if it's not funny, it will pass. You don't have to worry about it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but they didn't like the mods. Literally, like, it wasn't like it was offensive. It wasn't like it crossed any boundaries. They just didn't like their culture and style of humor.

And I am like, okay, that is where you, this is, this is for many people who don't know, like. Four chan is where the Brony culture originated. 'cause people wanted to be subversive against the extreme hate. You know, often you get hatred, often you get like condescension of certain groups. And when you had, that was in the four chan culture, the first culture that grew in opposition to that were brony.

This was a group that was being like, Hey, let it subversively. Be sincere about the things we like. Be sweet, be loving, be kind to each other, like let us subvert [00:06:00] the subversive culture's expectation. With kindness. Yeah. And then they'd get banned from all the boards at first, and they're like, okay, we'll consolidate you into the my laurel pony forms.

And this is where mods are asleep, post ponies comes from because they still love to mess with the other boards by being sweet and wholesome in a culture where, you know, CAP and everything like that was how you like, freaked people out. It was like, let's show Sweet Ponies because that'll really annoy 'em.

But within this. What soy Jack represented, and we'll get into this in a bit, is in contrast to the right-leaning extremism of Fortune Chan, like sincere hatred. It was an ironic hatred. It was like a post ironic lifestyle and way of engaging with content and information. Mm-hmm. That is muc