this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
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I believe this post, like many others are correlating the creation of the /pol/ board on 4chan after moot had a conversation with Epstein or something.
Acting like /pol/ and 4chan is solely responsible for the entire situation is just a vapid braindead take, much less the idea that a political board on a popular forum hangout is some meniacal master plan...
Obviously all this Epstein shit is heinous af, but acting like he's the origin of all evil just fucking hilarious "this is your brain on religion" logic. That being said, Epstein would definitely make a good "Satan's avatar" in a story...
Firstly, what do you mean solely responsible, secondly, groypers, pepe the frog, wojaks, incels, the proud boys, whoever was running Ron Desantis' media accounts and throwing sonnenrads behind his head in promotional videos, and many people currently working for Trump right now have roots in 4chan.
Frankly, I think you're getting a bit defensive.
[edit] Oh, I always forget about QAnon. That's like the first one I should say. The capital riot was QAnon. That's 4chan, man.
Incels didn't originate with 4chan, 4chan just gave them a more visible home than they had previously.
And? 4chan was a shithole. I don't know why I'd be defensive over it.
I just thinking blaming edgelord neckbeards with terminal online syndrome for the current political landscape is a cop-out and naive at BEST.
If that's a defensive position to take of 4chan your bar is extremely low.
There is a lot of blame to go around but 4ch was the face of it and the place to foment, it's not a cop-out to suggest that in the same capacity GamerGate was the direct project of Steve Bannon there is a degree of "culture-bending" by people who see the culture's stress points. The scars go back to the foundation of the country sure, but people actively work to keep the wounds open and weeping. How do they do that? Were they supposed to take power through one-off wing nuts like Timothy McVeigh, Randy Weaver, William Luther Pierce? Those guys could be incendiary but they couldn't penetrate the culture itself, the right had to come up with a way to sell their shit in the 21st century. 4chan brought them all onto the information superhighway, merging the culture of Something Awful, Stormfront, and every contrian-filled anime BBS board. It doesn't all trace back to Epstein but it does all trace back to class war, white supremacy, sex trafficking, and patriarchal chauvanism, and these were the tools available to them.
I think I agree with everything you said except that 4chan was the face of it. Even in the digital realm alone, there are far larger and far more toxic avenues, and one of the largest is staring at most everyone in the face every day. Facebook has been far worse imo than 4chan could ever dream to be, for the very same reasons 4chan is condemned.
I'll concede that could be my subjective viewpoint tho based on my interactions with both of them.
A cop-out from what?
Appropriately attributing blame to those who perpetuate it. It is possible that 4chan was a useful tool, but 4chan itself is hardly invested it keeping everyone divided to pull people away from actual issues.
They also pale in comparison to the influence political leaders, mass media, and billionaires have.