17. Understanding the Boys and Men of 4Chan w/ Dale Beran

Writer Dale Beran visits to discuss the far-right online subcultures he documented in his excellent 2019 book, It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office.

I ask whether the cohort of alienated, terminally online young men still exists and whether it lost power after gaining it. TLDR? The specific 4chan generation has aged or splintered, but the type endures, and its ideas have been mainstreamed—especially through Elon Musk’s transformation of Twitter into a platform that rewards provocation and misinformation.

Did these young men ever face a real ideological fork? Do they regret that meme-friendly scapegoating traveled faster than deeper structural explanations? We also whether the left should start meming harder.

DALE BERAN is a writer and artist whose work has been published in McSweeney’s, Quartz, The Huffington Post, The Daily Dot, The Nib, and The Baltimore City Paper. He has a BA in classics from Bard and a JD from Fordham. He lives in Baltimore.

All theme music by the amazing www.kalliemarie.com.

Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times (North Atlantic Books, April 2026).
Preorder: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/807656/antifascist-dad-by-matthew-remski/

Instagram: @matthew_remski

TikTok: @antifascistdad

Bluesky: @matthewremski.bsky.social (Bluesky Social)

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AntifascistDad

Chapters

(00:02:34) - From Something Awful
(00:11:19) - Anti-Fascists Dad on The Alt-Right
(00:19:19) - The Left and the Far Right
(00:24:45) - The Memes on the Shooting
(00:28:19) - On Mediums and the Left
(00:38:06) - 4chan: Anonymity and the Alt-Right

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