Happy 20th birthday, 4chan. You've definitely...had an effect.

Wtf didn't know lowtax is dead

I'm probably skipping some steps, but lowtax banning hentai drove the weebs to 4chan, and 8chan. 8chan was the home for all the "Q" posts that started Qanon which riled up the Republican base and led to the Jan 6 insurrection

They birthed and normalized shitty internet behavior: rickrolling on the lighter end, trolling, doxxing, and swatting.

They would also do shit like make fun of mentally handicapped people, which would lead goons to harassing the victims IRL and teaching kids that this was all OK.

And they would go after people who talked shit about about them, criticized them, or otherwise attacked them. The 4chan army would come out in force and try to ruin people's online existence.

Before Q-Anon showed up, they had started calling Trump God Emperor during the election. I think they may just have chose him as the candidate who would cause the most chaos, but it's easy to see how others others would take their goals more seriously and want Trump as president.

And the cycles of shitty behavior over decades attracted more and more rightwingers. I used to think of them as a chaos collective, but the politics swung hard right.

And then they spread to other platforms with r/the_donald, pepe the frog, and calling each other pedes.

Bunch of degenerates are terminally online on an almost anything goes website.

Stormfront and others see the site as ripe for manipulation and recruiting.

Over a decade, 4chan is dragged rightward by concerted effort from various fascist groups.

Manipulation of social media increases into the 2010s, fueled now by governments attacking mostly the USA and Europe.

QAnon gains popularity after others on 4chan fail; CIAnon, FBIAnon, etc etc. Right wing, hateful, insane, or just plain dumb normies all slurp up the conspira-juice.

russian asset becomes president. Incompetently tries to destroy government and nation while stealing as much as possible.

russian asset loses election. Decides to try to destroy the USA a bit more by declaring the election fraudulent without a shred of evidence. Tries hard to get result flipped to republicans for... reasons.

Dumb ex president thinks he can just demand Congress elect him. Holds a rally the same day as the election is certified, tells attendees to "fight for America's future, let's march to the Capitol, I'll be right behind you!"

After they organized partially on 4chan, Enthusiastic chodelet troglodytes storm the Capitol.

Christopher Poole founded 4chan because some hentai-relates things were banned on something awful. 4chan's /pol/ was an early seedbed for right wing extremism. Also the first QAnon posts came from 4chan.

In addition to the other replies you got, if you're interested there's a book called It Came From Something Awful that explains a lot of internet history.

I suppose 4chan was created after hentai was banned on SA. 4chan is also where the whole Qanon shit started, which led to said event.

The rough story is that 4chan grew out of the old SA forums, and that 4chan was instrumental in the development of the alt-right.

I’m not explicitly endorsing this narrative, but despite being somewhat reductionist, its broad strokes are relatively accurate.

At a guess:

Sad SomthingAwful users create 4Chan > sad 4Chan users create 8chan > QAnon > Jan 6th

But I would also like a detailed explanation.

There's a great documentary call Q: Into the Storm that was on HBO that covers the history of how Qanon came to be. The short version is what the other person who replied wrote.

The first part there is a big reason behind why 4chan was started and the big block relates because a lot of the far rights coordination online stems from 4chan and 4chan initiated movements. I'd argue pepe and all the memes around Trump was instrumental in getting him elected 2016 and that started on 4chan. Also the whole qanon thing had a lot to do with 4chan and that was a big part of why Jan 6th went down.

I assume the first event is how 4chan got started, and 4chan is where Qanon got started