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4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

wired.com

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Re: 4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

#11

Post by josefresco »

Indeed, nearly every evil of the internet begins, or picks up steam, on the site. To invoke yet another metaphor: It’s a breeding ground. (The fact that 4chan has been called so many things suggests a feeble attempt to make sense of chaos.) Many of the recruitment techniques of the so-called alt-right were piloted there; many white nationalists started out as 4channers. It’s unclear if or how one ages out of the site—but it is clear that it unleashes trolls on the real world.

Sounds like a great place.

Re: 4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

#12

Post by bluetidepro »

izzydata wrote: post #10

As someone who has frequented 4chan for nearly 15 years I don't think you want 4chan to die for many reasons. If 4chan is gone then all of the time people spend there will be spent somewhere else. Maybe the internet is too far gone to be significantly impacted, but I'd rather not test it. Most of 4chan boards aren't really that bad though.

> Most of 4chan boards aren't really that bad though.

This is an important note that I feel like not enough people understand. Too many people just think 4chan, and then think of all the messed up stuff on something like /b. There is lots of stuff on 4chan that is completely normal and not toxic/illegal. Although, I will admit that I usually just browse reddit, personally.

Re: 4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

#13

Post by taneq »

Shank wrote: post #3

> Yet this cannot last. At 15 years old, 4chan has reached adolescence. Up till now, trolls—children—have been in control. It’s not so funny anymore. After all, even the lost boys had to grow up. Just because one can write that it cannot last doesn't make it so. Putting 4chan in terms of "human age" and development does little to quantify anything. Facebook is 14 and Twitter is 12 and that doesn't say anything about…

> Someone seems inclined to still pay for the servers

It kind of seems like a tradeoff between creating a focal point where that kind of individual can congregate (keeping them away from 'normal people') and maintaining a cesspool where that kind of individual breeds. Depending on what's actually happening (and even figuring that out would be an interesting research project) other major sites might even be bankrolling it to help keep their own sites cleaner.

Re: 4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

#14

Post by deft »

How many of these anti-4chan articles are written by people that regularly use it? I'm guessing zero. 4chan is an interesting site and has better discussion from a broad userbase than reddit or here. Plenty of interesting projects were born out of 4chan, particularly /g/ but the other boards have created valuable things for humans in general, not just internet culture. The positives IMO come from the whole "FREE SPEECH" attitude, that also leads to the negatives. 4chan's soul is in trolling, memes and productive creativity. They go hand in hand.

Try using 4chan and ignore the crap you don't care about. It's exactly like reddit, everyone says stay away from the defaults. In 4chan's case, stay away from /b/, /v/ and /pol/ and you're unlikely to see anything graphic or demeaning beyond general discussion boards...

Projects I know that were born on 4chan: tox.im - /g/ TurtleCoin - /biz/ NetRunner - /g/ Others mentioned in the article, notably project chanology.

Editing this comment just to say that my point wasn't that toxicity, racism and sexism are okay to just ignore... my point was we already ignore that everywhere else on the internet. Look at youtube or reddit comments. If you can't see how it's the same you're just better at ignoring it on your platform of choice. I'd say it's more concentrated on 4chan yes, and I've probably gotten pretty good at filtering it out myself. But this problem is all over the internet and writing a piece about how 4chan "needs to grow up" isn't much of a revelation. The whole internet needs to.

Re: 4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

#15

Post by chillingeffect »

izzydata wrote: post #10

As someone who has frequented 4chan for nearly 15 years I don't think you want 4chan to die for many reasons. If 4chan is gone then all of the time people spend there will be spent somewhere else. Maybe the internet is too far gone to be significantly impacted, but I'd rather not test it. Most of 4chan boards aren't really that bad though.

I've been there almost as long, and it's true most boards are boring. I like the diy and music boards, for example.

But it seems you're "implying" that if we weren't there we'd be somewhere else the same or worse. I suggest there are many better places we could be. What we do there isn't a function of ourselves alone. We are a midpoint between ourselves and our environment. I would much rather go the playground and kick a soccer ball around or play basketball, but there isn't one around open after dark :(

And I can't stand the egoic virtue-signaling/posturing on fb so I go to 4chan to get a more down-to-earth conversation experience. If i melt down on there, no one cares. My FB world is completely uptight and ready to ostracize on a hair trigger. Of course 4chan is also full of people faking badassery, but it's not attached to individual egos. That's what's amazing about anonymity that moot could never articulate: it doesn't make much sense to lie, because it doesn't really increase your standing because no one knows who you are! So people are much more honest and forthright. yes, that's often ugly, but it's better to know about than to fear it.

Now the part that anonymity doesn't solve is that although the individual ego is dissolved, the way is paved for group egos to form. And as we've seen, especially on /pol/, these collective identities have flourished.

Re: 4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

#16

Post by tossandturn »

zeperoni wrote: post #5
Shank wrote: post #3

> Yet this cannot last. At 15 years old, 4chan has reached adolescence. Up till now, trolls—children—have been in control. It’s not so funny anymore. After all, even the lost boys had to grow up. Just because one can write that it cannot last doesn't make it so. Putting 4chan in terms of "human age" and development does little to quantify anything. Facebook is 14 and Twitter is 12 and that doesn't say anything about…

Adding to this, it's not a static group of people on there growing old together. There is a a consistent group of adolescents reaching troll age and joining in.

Yeah, I was on 4chan as a 16yo-20yo regular lurker starting back in 2004; never an active poster, just commenting randomly and joining in conversations on various boards. It was a decent anonymous community, sometimes I'd wander over to /b/ and it would be like walking past an apartment building at night and seeing completely random (sometimes disturbing) things going on through all of the windows; lurking on /b/ was the online equivalent of being an active peeping tom in a neighborhood without curtains.

When moot sold the domain a few years ago to a former 2chan admin, I noticed it barely changed. But I haven't really visited much since 2009 or so...

Re: 4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

#17

Post by izzydata »

chillingeffect wrote: post #15
izzydata wrote: post #10

As someone who has frequented 4chan for nearly 15 years I don't think you want 4chan to die for many reasons. If 4chan is gone then all of the time people spend there will be spent somewhere else. Maybe the internet is too far gone to be significantly impacted, but I'd rather not test it. Most of 4chan boards aren't really that bad though.

I've been there almost as long, and it's true most boards are boring. I like the diy and music boards, for example. But it seems you're "implying" that if we weren't there we'd be somewhere else the same or worse. I suggest there are many better places we could be. What we do there isn't a function of ourselves alone. We are a midpoint between ourselves and our environment. I would much rather go the playground and k…

I completely agree about the anonymity. That is really the core of 4chan and what I find appealing about it. Everything that is said there is for the sake of the thing being said and not about building yourself up as a persona.

There needs to be other sites that don't have usernames in any way. Even if you attempt to ignore it, it somehow is always relevant. Somewhere such as Reddit in particular always comes down to being a popularity contest and it will skew what people are willing to say in order to get the most likes.

Re: 4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

#18

Post by taneq »

josefresco wrote: post #11

Indeed, nearly every evil of the internet begins, or picks up steam, on the site. To invoke yet another metaphor: It’s a breeding ground. (The fact that 4chan has been called so many things suggests a feeble attempt to make sense of chaos.) Many of the recruitment techniques of the so-called alt-right were piloted there; many white nationalists started out as 4channers. It’s unclear if or how one ages out of the site…

They're ignoring the fact that much of current internet culture also originated there.

Re: 4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

#19

Post by pscnv »

bluetidepro wrote: post #12
izzydata wrote: post #10

As someone who has frequented 4chan for nearly 15 years I don't think you want 4chan to die for many reasons. If 4chan is gone then all of the time people spend there will be spent somewhere else. Maybe the internet is too far gone to be significantly impacted, but I'd rather not test it. Most of 4chan boards aren't really that bad though.

> Most of 4chan boards aren't really that bad though. This is an important note that I feel like not enough people understand. Too many people just think 4chan, and then think of all the messed up stuff on something like /b. There is lots of stuff on 4chan that is completely normal and not toxic/illegal. Although, I will admit that I usually just browse reddit, personally.

There is nothing illegal in 4chan, and if there is, it gets removed quickly.

Re: 4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

#20

Post by ekianjo »

abhiminator wrote: post #8
Shank wrote: post #3

> Yet this cannot last. At 15 years old, 4chan has reached adolescence. Up till now, trolls—children—have been in control. It’s not so funny anymore. After all, even the lost boys had to grow up. Just because one can write that it cannot last doesn't make it so. Putting 4chan in terms of "human age" and development does little to quantify anything. Facebook is 14 and Twitter is 12 and that doesn't say anything about…

> Putting 4chan in terms of "human age" and development does little to quantify anything. Drawing parallels between the two exemplifies poor analogous journalism on the part of WIRED. > The internet makes sense in metaphors. (from the article) No, it does not. However, it helps immensely in crafting the opening salvo of a clickbait-y article to drive site views.

> poor analogous journalism on the part of WIRED.

Has Wired ever been known for good journalism? It's pretty much always been tabloid level: shallow articles on most subjects with pompous headlines.

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