Didn't expect to ever see this thing again. Search engines literally reroute you to child protection services if you look for it.
... pedobear as a meme does actually significantly predate /pol/.
However...
A thing that a lot of people don't seem to know is that 4chan exists because m00t / Chris Poole got banned from Something Awful for posting way way way too much hentai, including loli.
4chan exists primarily because m00t grabbed a number of his hentai/loli loving friends from SA, and made his own forum/board, with black jack and hookers.
Pedobear previously existed as a meme on 2chan, the Japanese board that m00t seems to... have basically ripped or copied or otherwise acquired the source code of, to then modify a bit and make 4chan.
https://knowyourmeme.com/sensitive/memes/pedobear
If my memory serves me correctly, I stopped using 4chan entirely when in 2008... and I swear that this happened but I don't have any proof...
... m00t basically put up a sort of admin message for around 12 or 24 hours saying that as a result of significant media attention that had been garnered by some combination of 4chan's latest online / real world stunts...
... well, he was now directly cooperating with the FBI and had essentially set up a direct moderator account for them.
That message was then removed.
So... yeah, by my recollection, 4chan has actually been an FBI honeypot since 2008.
And I would also make a reasonable guess that they do this (amongst many other reasons) so that they can build up the archive of CSAM that they curate and maintain, that they then use in a kind of content ID like system to track the spread and proliferation of CSAM, to be able to easily identify it on a seized computer.
... I guess also a lot of people probably don't know the FBI does that.
At least now everyone can just generate their custom CSAM based in pictures of anyone they now! This world is a joke.
Fellow meme connoisseur/scholar.
... I would like to think I consider myself retired at this point.
I am in fact, too old for this shit.
Fellow meme historian!!
(Or more like eyewitness of the great meme events of 3000 years ago.)
3000 cycles.
Not years.
Its like Tron.
Time moves at a different speed in this place.
Recently unfrozen caveman UseNet wizard/admin looking around the modern web: 
Epstein was on 4chan.
That's his fursuit.
oh...thought pic represented xi (commie dictator of China)
Taiwan is an awesome country btw!
You're thinking of this meme.
Both are bears, so I can see the confusion you had.
I actually bet there's a pedo bear image somewhere in the Epstein files.
No, that is tRump.
Saw that in Japan in 2014.
To Catch a Predator 2: The Big Leagues
"Impossible" - Thanos
Uh oh, now the 4chan party van is coming (feds coming to take you away)
Määbe Ämerikkka Grääbe Ägäain :DDDDDD
Is that Danganronpa?
Sure is lil buddy 👍
Yeah the art style is familiar
Probably the one who strangled Jeff in that cell
Really?
A group so degenerate they don't even shitpost??
Me?
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