Tits or GTFO serves a very important role in the culture of 4chan or at least it did at one point. Back in the day, girls on the Internet were few and far between. Merely being female made them a rarity and subject to all manner of fawning over. A girl could do absolutely dumb shit: my boyfriend has been away in Iraq for three months and I’m a month pregnant, tee-hee! No matter how dumb the shit they pulled, white knights would come to her defense: if he dumps you over something so trivial, he’s a jerk! I would be honored to raise your little bastard! (yeah, right…)

It really was like that. I’m not kidding. This was especially true on SA, the evil step-father of 4chan. Hell, people used to get banned there for calling dumb bitches dumb bitches. The rule developed on the chan side almost instantly and it was a healthy backlash against female bullshit at the time. Any thread anywhere could be instantly ruined with the appearance of “I’m a girl, lol” or anything at all like that. Hell, you could not be a girl and say it and set off a shitstorm. In the anonymity of 4chan, there’s no way to be certain (and in reality, no way with a registered username either, so what the fuck did it ever matter?).

TITS OR GTFO was born out of this. It’s a simple rule. It levels the playing field for everyone and assures equality and civility in every conversation (relative to the background noise of course, so everything is always a clusterfuck anyway). The rule was supposed to prevent things from being ruined by the trump card of “I’m a girl, lol.” It was a problem at the time.

These days, the Internet sex ratio is approaching that of reality which means females online aren’t nearly as special anymore. Will tits or GTFO GTFO itself? I doubt it because it’s just so fun to shout, especially in response to would-be attention whores. Besides, sometimes it actually works…