This is the dumbest nitpick, but:

> 4chan's design is early web 2.0

Web 2.0 (even early) was very JS heavy, coming down from the advent of Mootools/Prototype/etc and had a very specific visual design sense.

4chan is easily the last of the Web 1.0 sites, probably up there with Craigslist. They very much "just fucking work".