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.