Users’ ontological encounters with synchronicity, anonymity, and ephemerality engender distinct discursive processes that lay down principles for future communal practices and archive maintenance. 4chan’s cybertextual and lusory qualities are thus imbricated in its production and preservation of institutional memory in a uniquely transient setting. This lusory behavior galvanizes permutative, combinatorial, and transformative discursive play. It also occurs around the negotiation between ludus-rule-governed systems with a predesigned goal, ending with a clear triumph or defeat-and paidia, objectiveless, freeform, explorative play founded on the pleasure of the player’s mental and physical exertions (Frasca). This interaction transpires largely around trolling and memetic activity. These properties, intrinsic to 4chan’s discourse, suggest that 4chan is best read as what Aarseth termed a cybertext, where active engagement is pivotal to literary exchange and the manufacture of meaning4 (1). Where relevant information is lacking, 4channers must seek out paratextual evidence, link to other boards, or delve into their personal archives to make information institutionally significant. Link: To become a valuable user, 4chan Anons must maintain a consistent presence, peruse vast amounts of content, and develop a discerning eye for valuable cultural capital representative of 4chan’s history, politics of duplicity, and implicit social rules.

Archived 4chan threads