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Why is it that whenever a mainstream site like Wired pumps out an article looking down their noses at some "problematic" online community, it's immediately obvious that the author has never been part of said community and instead bases their overly simplistic views on an hour of research.
I've always thought 4chan was beautifully designed. Its hyperfunctional in a way that wired.com designers will never know because they are too busy injecting ads into every inch of available space.
I could tell after first two paragraphs, that the author did not spend more than 15 minutes on the site itself and most of her "facts" come from lazily googled trivia.
I spent more time, than I'd like to admit on this and similiar imageboards. I still visit it semi-regulary (only fitness board nowadays), but this description as place where only edgy teenagers go to bully other people is plain wrong and misdirecting. Will you be judging Reddit next, solely by /r/politics, or /r/The_Donald, which both are terrible communities? Because that's what you did, with mentioning only /b/ and /pol/ as the core of 4chan.
My advice for the author: LURK MOAR :)
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 SPEE…
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 SPEE…
Imagine a place where people don't take things that seriously and things are just weird enough that the inside jokes keeps all the outsiders out and alienated. Everyone else is sitting around the virtual campfire telling jokes and sharing stories. 4chans all reaching (and not-just-/b/-and-/pol/) bad rep comes largely in thanks to people who obviously don't browse 4chan or have only taken a look at /pol/ or /b/. They took a passing glance, maybe for a day or two, saw nothing but inane bullshit, and (justifiably) moved on with their lives. 4chan has a lot of shit, I don't deny that and I don't blame anyone for not having the desire to wade knee deep in it. Although wading through only the deep end of it skews perspectives heavily.
Notice how this article purposefully cherrypicks boards like /pol/, /h/, and /y/ instead of the less egregious boards /g/ (technology), /o/ (automobiles), /his/ (history), or /co/ (comics). One would leave with the idea that 4chan is nothing but a place for hentai and alt-right hate groups. Even among itself /b/ and /pol/ are disliked among the site. They're considered containment boards that prevent other boards being shit up. But one wouldn't understand the concept of a "containment board" if one doesn't browse 4chan. In fact - most articles about 4chan don't even use the term "containment board" because the authors never lurk long enough to discover the term.
>There was a time, a couple of decades ago, when trolls didn’t really exist online
Are they talking about pre-Usenet days? I don't remember a time online when trolls didn't really exist.
>And because each message board is limited to 10 pages of posts, most messages get bumped off the server within a day, if not hours. It’s pretty much unusable for the uninitiated.
This is by design. Hence "Lurk more." Imagine trying to jump into an hour old conversation having heard only the past 10 seconds of it. Nothing you have to say at that moment could have any relevance to the conversation because you still don't know what the conversation is even about. Now imagine that conversation has been going on for 15 years and you've only just showed up an hour ago. Oh - it's also in a language you can only half understand and can't speak yet. Nothing you could say is important, you're missing any useful information, can't identify greentext and copypasta from actual opinions and information. The concept of lurking before contributing to a discussion is seemingly lost in a post-Usennet, post-forum internet.
>And Gamergate, the smear campaign against female game developers?
Audibly laughed. They're still sticking with that? Gamergate has, and you can count yourself, has "harassed" far more males than females. Almost all journalists - and almost all peddling bullshit. Saying someone is spewing bullshit isn't harassment. Although I do love how Elon Musk became an alt-right, anti-Semitic, GamerGator because he dared speak out against the media.
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 SPEE…
> ignore the crap you don't care about
The problem is that plenty of people seem to use it for recruiting to make the world worse for non-users, whether by campaigns of organised harassment or disinformation, or other means.
> 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…
So this is what the article is about. /pol/ offended some journalist's sensibilities. I bet they're laughing at him right now.
> "The design remains proudly undesigned" I've always thought 4chan was beautifully designed. Its hyperfunctional in a way that wired.com designers will never know because they are too busy injecting ads into every inch of available space.