4chumblr’s divorce: Revisiting the online culture wars through the 2014 Tumblr-4chan raids

Abstract

This text concerns conflict between users of 4chan and Tumblr, two groups said to have formed a vanguard to the ‘online culture wars’ of the last decade. Specifically, I focus on a 2014 clash known as the ‘Tumblr-4chan raids’. Predating the more infamous Gamergate controversy, I see this event as a useful alternative microcosm to study polarisation among online subcultures in the mid-2010s. Drawing from subculture studies, I first theorise cross-site clashes as puncturing a sense of ‘subcultural territoriality’ whereby an online platform is appropriated as a secluded refuge. Through a quali-quantitative archival study, I find that the raids were initiated and exacerbated by trolling 4channers rather than a clash between equal sides. I ultimately argue that the feud partially arose out of 4channers’ reactionary ‘media ideologies’ on the Internet, wherein sensitivity, empathy, and care were seen as incongruous with ideas on the online as brutal and unforgiving. Next to better-known political clashes between feminists and anti-feminists, the paper thus highlights the polarising role of media ideologies at the onset of the ‘online culture wars’ in the mid-2010s.

No Space for Reddit Spacing: Mapping the Reflexive Relationship Between Groups on 4chan and Reddit

“…Yet both 4channers and Redditors alike have long been stereotyped through geek masculine tropes, for example as fedora-wearing “nice guys” in desperate, cringe-worthy pursuit for female affection, a stereotype often deployed self-deprecatingly and entwined with other “manosphere” discourse on “incels” and “betas” (Brooke, 2022; see also Figure 9). The absence of these geek masculinity-related terms in the top co-words suggests how such shared associations had not been at the forefront of the 4chan–Reddit rivalry (even if “tumblr” and “twitter” in /pol/’s co-words indicate an association between Reddit and platforms often stereotyped as feminine and “censorious”; Hagen, 2023). Yet “Reddit tranny” indicates how transphobic derision did fuel /pol/-anons’ Reddit resentment, raising questions on mutating forms of gender-based antagonism between the sites.…”

“…Less attention has been paid to cross-site relations between comparably subcultural spaces. Several studies have dealt with “internal” conflicts between subreddits (e.g., Buozis, 2021; Efstratiou et al, 2022; Marchal, 2020), while other texts have touched on 4chan’s “symbiotic” relationship with Tumblr (Beran, 2019; Hagen, 2023). Yet the 4chan–Reddit rivalry has only attracted sparse scholarly attention, even though it marks a historically significant online linkage, as I will go on to show (for exceptions, see Donovan et al, 2022; Gallagher & Topinka, 2023; Trammell, 2014).…”