General Mayhem

About

aOLhater – "Genmay, The only place where you give guys pictures of hot women, and they start talking about pokemon"…
Mayhem – Consider yourself Warned.

Excerpt from UrbanDictionary.com

General Mayhem is an online community through which many memes have passed that have evolved into what many recognize as 4chan memes or even lolspeak.

In the beginning…

The first incartnation of General Mayhem began as the off-topic area of [H]ardforums.com, the vBulletin counterpart to HardOCP.com, a hardware overclocking page started by Kyle Bennet in 1997.

• The original General Mayhem appears in archive.org circa 2001.

According to The "Official" Unnoficial Genmay FAQ General Mayhem had over 40,000 users and contained more posts and threads than all of those in the other subforums on [H]ardforums.

The FAQ also states that Bennet found the forum's users to be causing too many problems with other forums, and could not justify the bandwidth costs for a forum frought with potential liabilities.

According to Wikipedia, those users who disagreed with the decision to close General Mayhem were banned. General Mayhem was closed on July 3rd, 2002.

Genmay.com

On July 4th, 2002, the day after General Mayhem closed, three former users all decided to buy variants of the genmay domain.
M|22 (Sanjay Sabnan) purchased genmay.com, FLECOM bought genmay.net, and James Crivellone bought genmay.org. The three agreed to direct all three domains to the same server where they would start their own General Mayhem board. Right from its inception, Genmay users had a rivalry with SomethingAwful.

June of 2003: Before 4chan

The "Official" Unofficial GenMay FAQ was written in 2003 by GenMay user Traxx and lists a number of catch-phrases and other terms that the community found to be pertinent to their culture. This is not to say that all of these memes necessarily originated on GenMay, but their presence on the forum in June of 2003, four months prior to moot's founding of 4chan is worth noting.

The following are some select excerpts taken from the FAQ pertaining to elements commonly found in many other memetic hubs today:

• "Kittah" and "Internet. Serious Business."
  

  
  What is the “kitttah?”
  The official animal of GenMay and the way Cartman from the show “South Park” says “kitty.” Remember, the internet is serious business. Also a series of animated .gifs created by mr_brett proclaiming a variety of phrases sparked this common rewording. Variants: doggah, bunnah, etc.
  

• "Cliche Kitty" (See: Every time you masturbate)
  

  
  What is “cliché kitty?”
  A little striped kitten bounding in a field, used in a number of photochops.
  

• "Fap" (Common on 4chan. Origin: Sexylosers.com)
  

  
  What is “fapping?”
  The sound made while masturbating. Guys fap. Girls paf or “squish.”
  

• "KthxBye" (later became kthxbai, a lolspeak term)
  

  
  What is “kthxbye?”
  More AOL-speak. OK, Thanks, Bye! Used to end a discussion with the ownage. As in: “I am right, you are wrong. Very very wrong. kthxBYE!
  

• "Noes" (also became a lolspeak term)
  

  
  What is “noes?”
  Funnier way of expressing “NOoooOOOooo!” The suffix -es is being added to existing words for comical applications, generally used in the same manner.
  

• "Pwned" (uncertain origin: see Owned)
  

  
  What does it mean to be or get “owned/pwned/phowned/phlowned?”
  The ultimate word. It can convey a variety of feelings, actions or occurrences. It can be funny, painful, ironic, depressing, etc. You’ll know you have been when you are.
  

• "Teh Goggles" (A Simpsons reference. See:The Googles)
  

  
  What are “teh goggles?” Why do they do nothing?
  An oft-quoted line from The Simpsons. It is used to describe an unpleasant visual image, such as goatse, tubgirl, etc. The pictures viewed would be so horrible, the goggles would indeed do nothing. Also used as “the protective eyewear, it is ineffective.”
  

See the FAQ hosted on Genmay for more information.

General Mayhem on StileNET

Jay Stiles is the founder of stileproject.com and the larger network of sites called StileNET which includes theforum.com which also includes a General Mayhem section. Further research is needed to verify the when, how, and why behind StileNET's General Mayhem.

In 2001, theforums.com had not yet been purchased by Stile Project. The first archived version of theforums.com on archive.org from December of 2003 shows that they had a General Mayhem section.