Funnyjunk is the name of a website that was created in the early 2000s as (presumably) a direct competitor to sites like Newgrounds, Something Awful, and Ebaumsworld, although this comparison would be lost on all but the most senior of the site’s
oldfags. Today, the site competes with 9GAG, iFunny, and other major social media outlets that all tower over Funnyjunk in comparision.
The site’s primary function is to hold a repository of memes, dank memes,
deep fried memes, and, most notably, shitposts. The site is a nexus for people to steal, remix, and share these coveted internet goods and then post them on
r/funny,
r/memes, or Instagram. Alternatively, one can find “
wholesome memes,” which are
Reddit-tier edits of animals and people being happy. There is also the news and half the site is a repository of porn.
In 2014, during the debacle following Gamergate, thousands of users were banned or removed from forums and message boards for discussing
Zoe Quinn or gaming journalism at all, let alone in a critical light; even the owner of 4chan, moot, had his moderators remove any discussion off his boards. The admin of Funnyjunk, Kim Jong-un, saw this mass-exodus and capitalized on it by maintaining the site’s strict adherence to freedom of speech. In turn, this lead to an influx of politically-minded individuals, mainly those leaning to the political right. A similar case happened in 2019 on Tumblr, but for porn artists and consumers.