Why did this happen? What caused this?
>>38949089
Feminism & the sexual liberation of women
Goobergate and then Trump's election
AKA when memes became reality
Elitism stopped being a thing.
>>38949126
I do agree that ''meme'' have gotten really popular as a term the last few years for some reason. Things used to be simply viral
>>38949126
Gamergate happened in 2014 right? Would make sense why there was such an increase then
First it was Gamergate. Then /pol/ got media attention. There was a huge migration from reddits r/the_donald to 4chan, during the 2016 election. /Pol/fags are newfags.
>>38949089
2014 was when the celenrity nude leak happened. You know how many mouth breathing normal fags read those shitty celeb news websites right? Everyone covered the leak and named 4chan in their articles.
Also the secret club mentality is non-existent
What is R1 & R2? I doubt many here today even know
>inb4 muh seekret club
>>38949726
that increased the traffic by 1/3, which then increased again, I think by gamergate, from then on, it was the presidential election and those cancerous videos on youtube of EPIC 4CHAN TWICH RAID among other things that I'm not aware of.
>>38949772
Also, on youtube, many video makers do "meme origin" videos which reference 4chan as well as shit like "Top 5 scacry true 4chan posts" Which are always retardedly incorrect and unresearched.
I remember a video by Top15s that pronouced NEETbux as netbux, he didn't even know what the fuck her was even talking about as he read the screencap.
>>38949089
4chan being in the news and lack of elitism and hate for newfags and phoneposting
>>38949089
Nude leak, gamergate, and then Trump.
Major thing I blame though is people talking about their online life offline. Keep that shit separated nigger.
ah, so this is why i cant go on /pol/ anymore
>>38949089
The spike at the latter half of 2014 was the fappening.
I find that lot of people know of 4chan, like Fox News knows of 4chan. It's some internet boogeyman that is the worst place on the internet. I've heard my normie ex-housemate say "I've been on 4chan once, it's a sick disgusting place" like it was something to brag about and she watches those ghost reality shows and "documentaries" about the occult.
>>38949270
It ramped up in the 4th quarter of 2014, right where that graph shows a huge spike.
I think its all the "stories from 4 chan" stuff from youtube, basically some guy with a manly voice reads some threads and people eat it up
It's just the result of a natural progression. Early in its history the internet wasn't so ubiquitous in daily life. At that time dial-up internet and broadband coverage were about the same. Jump ahead five or six years and broadband coverage accounts for about 90% of internet access. Jump ahead a few more years and you get the rise of smartphones. Throw in your social media and various types of blogging, video and streaming sites, gossip sites, and so on and it's now normal for people to be online all of the time. At this point there are people even here that have never known a time where always-on high speed internet wasn't a part of everyday life.
4chan has all the while become ever more famous. Early on you might have stumbled into it from another forum about anime or video games or some other site about loser nerd interests. Later you might have traced some image macro back to its origin or primary purveyor. Incidents continue to pile up, increasing its notoriety. First is small stuff like Internet Hate Machine or Project Chanology or the Time poll.
Over time they continue to expand in scope and response. You get Anonymous and Gamergate and the Fappening and the 2016 U.S. Election alongside the explosion in phoneposting. 4chan is no longer some evil mystery to scare children on Gaia or tumblr, even if it's still largely misunderstood by the general public.
>>38949854
also plebbit, as other anons have mentioned. fuck them
>>>/pol/136666677