Andreessen: Modern toxic internet culture originated in console gaming lobbies
Marc Andreessen · Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz on a16z’s New Media Strategy · Mar 18, 2026 · at 44:48
Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), traces the history and genealogy of online toxicity and outrage culture.
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“Basically, like, it actually turns out there's, like, a genealogy to it, and it actually turns out, like, a lot of it is literally, literally, it's like Call of Duty lobbies for online gaming, so it's, like, literally, like, online gaming lobbies because, like, when the Xbox and the PlayStation You know, kind of rolled out voice you know, voice interaction for the first time. You know, they're like, oh, it'd be great for players to be able to talk to each other, and it turns out you just get, like, you know, twelve-year-old boys in these lobbies just, like, torching the fuck, you know, out of everybody, and literally trying to get under their opponent's skin, and then being willing to, you know, anonymously say absolutely anything to do it. Right, and so that led to, you know, very, very coarse, very vulgar, very offensive, you know, kind of thing, and then that, you know, kind of flipped, you know, that kind of culture kind of expanded into early internet forums like something awful. And then it started metastasizing into things like you know, like YouTube comments. And then, you know, and then obviously social media kind of blew that open.”
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