4chan certainly isn't mainstream. Being somewhat well-trafficked != mainstream.
> Being edgy and racist isn't countercultural, certainly not nowadays.
That's just so obviously wrong, it's hard to know where to start. I mean, pretty much the entire media and business apparatus of the country spends a lot of effort loudly condemning those things. You might have the arrived at the wrong impression because those groups have the goal of achieving something close to total extermination of those things, so counter-productively give even small instances massive amounts of attention.
> I mean, pretty much the entire media and business apparatus of the country spends a lot of effort loudly condemning those things.
... and it's widely claimed by many that they're out of touch with Real American culture for doing so.
There's no easy, solid definition here. Disney and DeSantis are fighting over culture hot potatoes; which one is "establishment" and which one is "counter-culture" in that fight? (Neither, really. Both are establishment, and both are a little counter-cultural.)
4chan has become a lot less shocking than it used to be. That's a bit of a cultural shift in its direction.
Sorry, but I think you're confused about what "mainstream" is. Some congressional back-bencher saying something controversial, which we walked back and was then immediately stricken from the record is not proof a thing is mainstream. In fact, it's proof that it's not.
And we're talking about 4chan here, and wouldn't they just use the n-word?
There is also whole media apparatus and leaders of political party dedicated to promoting racism and "edgy" stuff. They even claim themselves to be the only real Americans.
Maybe the observation is that each platform can be countercultural roughly once, after which they come to be associated with a certain culture of their own. Then, in order to counter that new culture, you need to move to a different platform. It's like the thesis-antithesis-synthesis cycle.
