Artificial Intelligence
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- hans_glib0
XIII. QBN Meets AI
14. The AI invasionQBN's relationship with AI is itself a historical arc.
The archive has long-running threads covering:
DALL-E
Midjourney
Stable Diffusion
Runway
AI image generation
AI design
AI's impact on creative workOne thread specifically documents early experiments with Runway Gen-2 video, with users reacting to the results as the technology started becoming accessible.
And then QBN eventually did what QBN does best:
It asked ChatGPT to write a rap song about QBN.
The resulting rap describes QBN as a place where designers “rebel,” fight over fonts and trash-talk each other's work.
That is almost too perfect.
QBN spent decades creating its own culture and eventually made an AI explain the culture back to it.
- Ironically, this thread isn't mentioned in the list of AI threads.CyBrainX
- hans_glib0
XIV. The State of QBN Saga
15. State of QBNThis has now become an institution in its own right.
The 2023 edition reached 414 responses.
The 2024 edition reached 434 responses.
The 2025 edition reached 408 responses.
And there is now a State of QBN 2026 thread.
The funniest thing about these threads is that they're simultaneously:
annual reports
community therapy
political battlegrounds
shitpost repositories
historical archives
evidence that QBN is somehow still aliveThey are essentially QBN's oral history written down in real time.
- hans_glib0
XV. The “We're All Old Now” Era
16. The QBN gerontocracyThis deserves Hall of Fame status because it's probably the defining late-QBN joke.
People who joined QBN in the early 2000s are still appearing in threads.
The later blog discussion contains an old member returning after years away and remarking that the place is now essentially six old men who used to have design careers.
The response from another old-timer:
“nobody can leave here. Nobody!”
That's the QBN lifecycle:
Young designer → regular → old-timer → mysterious username → immortal forum entity.
- hans_glib0
XVI. Car of the Day
17. The Car of the Day industrial complexThe Car of The Day thread is another enormous institution, running across dozens and dozens of pages.
This is less one iconic moment than an entire QBN subculture.
It has produced the characteristic QBN automotive vocabulary:
“holy fuck”
“she so purdy”
arguments about what constitutes a sedan
absurd custom cars
engineering arguments
increasingly ridiculous YouTube discoveriesOne memorable description of an ugly car:
“A Corvette hate-fucked a Beetle...”
That sentence alone earns its author consideration for the QBN Writers' Room.
- hans_glib0
XVII. The “X” Logo War
18. The Saltire ApocalypseSomeone asked why the “X” treatment had suddenly become fashionable.
QBN immediately disagreed about whether it was:
an X
a saltire
a trend
something that had been around forever
or merely something the original poster had somehow failed to noticeThen Sureshot informed everyone that Malcolm had done it in the 1950s and the Terminator had done it in the 1980s.
When challenged, he doubled down by claiming:
“terminator X was a DJ in the 80's.”
That is pure QBN.
Hall of Fame category: Design Argument That Became Nonsense
- hans_glib0
XVIII. The Political QBN
19. The political transformationThis needs a distinction.
Some of the biggest threads in modern QBN are not “funny iconic moments.” They're enormous political and cultural arguments.
For example, the War thread reached at least 627 responses.
Likewise, there are enormous threads on:
Donald Trump
the Intellectual Dark Web
COVID
AI
NFTs
war
Israel/Palestine
Elon MuskThese are historically significant because they show how QBN changed.
The 2024 State of QBN thread contains a particularly revealing complaint: one member wanted QBN to return to design discussions such as Univers vs Helvetica and whether David Carson was really a genius, rather than the endless political arguments.
That's not just a complaint.
It's the Old QBN/New QBN dividing line.
- QBN has always been mostly nonsense. Look how old _Randomize Me is and how useless it's been. That's just one example of hundreds.CyBrainX
- hans_glib0
XIX. The NFT Era
20. QBN discovers NFTsThe NFT thread became another giant archive of early-2020s internet insanity.
There are discussions of:
NFT marketplaces
digital art
huge prices
scams
money laundering
celebrity NFTs
Melania Trump's NFT
artists suddenly selling work for absurd sumsAt one point QBN users discussed a Melania Trump NFT auction whose winning wallet reportedly appeared connected to Melania herself.
The reaction was essentially:
“You can't make this shit up.”
In retrospect, the NFT period is one of those eras that will probably become more hilarious with age.
- hans_glib0
XX. QBN Itself as a Character
21. QBN breaking and being resurrectedQBN's infrastructure has repeatedly become part of the story.
The archive contains users complaining about:
broken passwords
broken CSS
dead image links
Imgur problems
site changes
registration problems
missing functionality
disappearing usersAnd then the site comes back.
The later blog discussion contains the perfect summary:
“qbn got borked
then fixed
so nothing new really
carry on”That should probably be printed on the QBN server rack.
- hans_glib4
The QBN Mount Rushmore
If we're talking about people rather than events, my preliminary four are:
Sureshot
The old-school archetype. One-liners, trolling, randomness and genuine participation.
Nairn
Modern QBN chaos merchant and one of the people most responsible for turning ordinary threads into lore.
Palimpsest
The man who looked at an internet argument and thought:
“This needs referees.”
The collective Old Guard
Ultimately QBN's greatest character is the community itself. The fact that usernames from the early 2000s can still appear alongside people who joined much later is extraordinary.
The most important discovery
The really interesting thing from digging through this isn't a particular meme.
It's that QBN has an unusually long collective memory.
A normal social-media community constantly replaces itself. QBN didn't. Old usernames remain recognisable. Old jokes resurface. People remember ancient arguments. Threads from 2003 sit alongside discussions from 2026. The site's own failures become folklore.
That's why something like the Palimpsest/Rendle “fight” can become legendary: there is enough institutional memory for the joke to accumulate history.
QBN isn't just a website anymore.
It's basically an internet village with 24 years of grudges, inside jokes, recurring characters and archaeological layers.
- My summary here too is complete bullshit.
What is this shit?Nairn - ^ there he kicks-off again!! causing chaos!dee-dubs
- "QBN isn't ___, it's ___"yuekit
- the chinese llm is doing a shit job of summarizing qbn :DArchitectofFate
- i knew you'd be big fans. wondering about getting chatgpt to summarize this thread and see if it explodes in a feedback loophans_glib
- e-pillmonospaced
- ^ Why did e-pill leave us? Why doesn't everyone know membership is for life?CyBrainX
- In a SaaS world, QBN remains like that hacked creative suite version from 2011 you have somewhere. It stays.maikel
- we web like no oneprophetone
- hedgeneverscared
- I still live and hate this place all at the same time! 25 years baby!lvl_13
- *love. Fucking fat thumbs does it again.lvl_13
- so i asked shatgpt what it thought of your comments and it spewed out another load of ai bollocks apologising for being uselesshans_glib
- which i'm not going to post, don't worry... but it did say this:hans_glib
- The fact that QBN immediately started mocking an AI's attempt to explain QBN might be one of the most quintessentially QBN things I've encountered in the archivhans_glib
- e-pill left because there were comments against Zionism that he didn't likeGuyFawkes
- We're lucky son of a bitches!canoe
- *We're lucky sons of bitches!canoe
- CUNTGPTrobthelad
- i tried this last year using notebook lm and it was similar outcome, it seemed to do a surface level scan, find a few user names and then build them outautoflavour
- to be fair, its so much data.. and so of the juicy bits happen in the comment section alsoautoflavour
- My summary here too is complete bullshit.
- NBQ000
Great
- ShenanigansTV9
For the last few months, I've been working on a Macromedia Flash-style vector app. It's at a point where I feel like it's good enough to share. Give it a go and let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions.
- Nice!prophetone
- this is amazingautoflavour
- nah for real, when flash died so much of my digital drawing died with it, illustrator was so cumbersome and just didnt do what flash did.autoflavour
- this is legit amaze. are you planning on releasing it as a standalone app? nothing against the web version, but offline is everythingautoflavour
- and if so, please for the love of all that is holy dont do subscription model. OWN THINGS BE HAPPIERautoflavour
- ownthingsbehappy.com… .. just registeredautoflavour
- This is bonkers. Can we see some examples of stuff you made with it?yuekit
- Wowcanoe
- I've not gotten to make much with it yet, as I've been trying to make something and in doing so find and fix the bugs. The abstract flower is my test art.ShenanigansTV
- There is a Trace Bitmp function as well, which is a separate software that I had to integrate into the main app.ShenanigansTV
- I hear you on the not getting to use your own project. apart from endless testing and refinement, im yet to to actually properly use my app chopgridautoflavour
- yuekit1
Anthropic just passed OpenAI in quarterly revenue for the first time more than doubling to $11.6B while OpenAI grew 18% to $6.7B.
Anthropic also reached a small operating profit making the gap even more notable as the two leaders scale on very different trajectories.
- Cool for Anthropic. Haven't used anything OpenAI in more than 2 months.NBQ00
- https://archive.is/9…yuekit
- burn them allrobthelad
- To some extent I think it shows the importance of branding. Anthropic successfully established themselves as premium brand in the AI model space.yuekit
- ShenanigansTV8
Built a browser version of the 909 drum machine. Turn some knobs, lay down a beat, and mess around with it if you need a distraction. It works on mobile too. Let me know if you find any bugs or features you wish existed. Link in the comments
- https://rumpshaker-f…ShenanigansTV
- Why aren't my images loading!!! fuggShenanigansTV
- fun!monNom
- Wow impressive! What do you use for the sound generation?yuekit
- It's 100% real-time synthesis with the Web Audio APIShenanigansTV
- I put it in the AI thread because I'm vibe coding these things. There's a lot I have no idea what's going on in the guts of it. I feed it manuals, screeen caps,ShenanigansTV
- And then I play with it and think about things I wish it did to make jamming more fun. I recently added some step hotkeys for chopping. Never played a 909 IRLShenanigansTV
- This is probably the most fun thing I've worked on. I've added numerous functions and enhancements over the last 24 hours.ShenanigansTV
- Very nice!srhadden
- Don't see the tempo slider on mobile (android)srhadden
- Oh it's in the setup tab, oksrhadden
- That's very cool. I just wish I would understand what I am doing. :)Longcopylover
- There is a help button. I also updated it with more featuresShenanigansTV
- renderedred0
- This same things can be applied to humans. Religion to control the soul "mind" and propaganda telling you the good thing is bad and that the solution is goodShenanigansTV
- It seems the things that breaks people out of cults would also be able to break the mind virusShenanigansTV
- Don't see the tempo slider on mobile (android)srhadden
