Summary of Dale Beran's It Came from Something Awful

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 I went to an anime convention in Baltimore thirteen years ago. I didn’t like anime, and I felt too old for the event, but I went out of curiosity. What I saw was the same kids in costumes.

#2 4chan. org, the website that Poole founded, was used to trade pictures of anime girls with his friends. It was eventually used by millions of people to trade pictures of anime girls with their friends.

#3 4chan, a post-cultural garbage heap, transformed into the post-cultural garbage heap upon which the events of our age stood. It was a place to post content and talk to people online, but it also became the birthplace of the alt-right.

#4 Media reports, Trump, fake news, late-night TV, and talking head pundits on 24-hour cable news all tangled up into the heap of social media are the source of confusion. The book attempts to explain how this all came to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Mar 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669376316

IRB Media

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Insights on Dale Beran's It Came from Something Awful

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I went to an anime convention in Baltimore thirteen years ago. I didn’t like anime, and I felt too old for the event, but I went out of curiosity. What I saw was the same kids in costumes.

#2

4chan. org, the website that Poole founded, was used to trade pictures of anime girls with his friends. It was eventually used by millions of people to trade pictures of anime girls with their friends.

#3

4chan, a post-cultural garbage heap, transformed into the post-cultural garbage heap upon which the events of our age stood. It was a place to post content and talk to people online, but it also became the birthplace of the alt-right.

#4

Media reports, Trump, fake news, late-night TV, and talking head pundits on 24-hour cable news all tangled up into the heap of social media are the source of confusion. The book attempts to explain how this all came to be.

#5

From the 70s to the 90s, countercultures would emerge to combat the forces of materialism and marketing, only to be swallowed whole by marketing campaigns that adored selling transcendence and rebellion. By the 80s, counterculture had been defeated and co-opted.

#6

4chan, a site that was originally created to allow its users to share images and jokes, was eventually converted into an alt-right platform. Its users were so far removed from society that they began to obsess over it, and they clung to race as a means of self-definition.

#7

When I was young, I spent most of my time unemployed or unemployable. I drifted from gig to gig in the service economy, quitting jobs that somehow paid less from sitting at home selling virtual items on the internet. I always ended the story proudly, saying that the pieces were probably still there, rusting away at the bottom of the lake.

#8

My father crossed the border into the West from Czechoslovakia with a friend, and he was never able to explain who helped him or how he got the Nazi gun. He kept our passports up to date and bought many new guns to replace the one rusting in the lake.

#9

I had to throw away my father’s collection of American consumerist junk when he died. The house was full of purchases, and I was