There are the memes, comics, copypastas, acronyms, and slang recycled endlessly in a digital echo chamber largely devoid of moderation. reveals what it has in common with the still-popular internet communities it predates, Reddit and 4chan. is inescapable.Ī cursory scroll through the Misc. To appropriate Rule 34, if it exists, there’s a Misc. The Misc., as the predominant section of an internet community with such immense popularity and longevity, has cemented its place near the top of Google’s search results for any query imaginable. Myspace-Myspace!-didn’t exist until three years later. The forums first became active in 2000, a time before Wikipedia and when “Skype” was neither app nor verb. As of January 2018, these members of have made more than 137 million posts on the forums, including 90 million on the Misc. The number of people who are Aware, it turns out, is over 16 million. “Participate at your own risk, some content NSFW,” reads the description of the Misc. And both are on the lone section of the forums that’s explicitly unrelated to fitness: the Misc. Both have been viewed almost 3 million times. Specifically, women members would “love to pound.” While one thread features pictures of “ petite/slim girls ” and the other of “ athletic girls ,” both are an endless stream of lightly Photoshopped near-nudity and predictably lecherous comments. On the forums, the two most popular threads of all time are not about deadlifts, intermittent fasting, or maintaining motivation.
![men with tongue rings be like im not gay meme men with tongue rings be like im not gay meme](https://compote.slate.com/images/618321f9-e2e7-48ff-ae67-1bf9eaf8f452.png)
Quora is an asylum of techies questioning their morality and their stock options its second-most-upvoted answer is a “soul-satisfying” account of a sales bro helping a homeless man. Reddit stans for Barack Obama and elaborate pop-culture GIFs. Twitter embraces celebrities and #brands.
![men with tongue rings be like im not gay meme men with tongue rings be like im not gay meme](https://post.healthline.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/gay-couple-portrait-a-day-of-life-morning-in-the-bed-room-1200x628-facebook.jpg)
![men with tongue rings be like im not gay meme men with tongue rings be like im not gay meme](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Zg5gIEeXCrYR20f0rittbnzq20g=/0x0:609x511/1200x800/filters:focal(257x208:353x304)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/63781023/Screen_Shot_2019_05_09_at_4.02.47_PM.0.png)
On the internet, where people become data and popularity is conveniently quantified, it’s easy to learn what a community values most.