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The 20-year-old at heart of web's most anarchic and influential site

guardian.co.uk

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Re: The 20-year-old at heart of web's most anarchic and influential site

#31

Post by mcu »

The truth is, 4Chan is full of some of the best people in the world.

It has changed in the last few years and the change has been even more dramatic in the last 6 months or so. The long September started last year and now people are coming to 4Chan expecting nothing more than to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war. They have no interest in the history of 4Chan or in creating new content.

They come because it's trendy.

Just like Usenet, /., Digg, Reddit, and someday HN, the people who matter will leave and find a new home.

Re: The 20-year-old at heart of web's most anarchic and influential site

#32

Post by vaksel »

DaniFong wrote: post #22
vaksel wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I don't mind the inappropriate jokes/posts, sure some are racist, some are sexist, some are just plain disgusting, but that's the whole point, in the age of political correctness its actually refreshing. Step outside your comfort bubble. And hey...if you don't like it, nobody is forcing you to go there. Everyone likes to talk about freedoms we get in this country, yet these same people who wave the flag, h…

One cannot simply escape the influence of 4chan by not going there. It is a cesspool, and the memes that breed there spread elsewhere. Do you think the players of Habbo wanted the influence of /b? And the violent culture there was shared by meankids.org when they started to frighten Kathy Sierra -- it was only a short jump from there to the death threats, and now they've inflicted harm. She will never be the same.

maybe you should just move to China, I think their bill of rights will suit you better.

Re: The 20-year-old at heart of web's most anarchic and influential site

#33

Post by DaniFong »

vaksel wrote: post #32
DaniFong wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One cannot simply escape the influence of 4chan by not going there. It is a cesspool, and the memes that breed there spread elsewhere. Do you think the players of Habbo wanted the influence of /b? And the violent culture there was shared by meankids.org when they started to frighten Kathy Sierra -- it was only a short jump from there to the death threats, and now they've inflicted harm. She will never be the same.

maybe you should just move to China, I think their bill of rights will suit you better.

No, I'm certain it wouldn't.

Re: The 20-year-old at heart of web's most anarchic and influential site

#34

Post by 423qagrdf »

adrianwaj wrote: post #30
vaksel wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be disgusted all you want, nobody is forcing you to visit that site though. Going to sites where you disagree completely with their philosophy is called trolling. You want a moral 4chan style site, go to christchan(real site btw)...thats the thing with the internet, sites that people want will always stay alive. I mean look at 4chan stats: "Current users: 29,989", that's almost 30,000 users using the site at…

Dude, I wouldn't defend Hitler for having the right to publish Mein Kamp. At the end of the day, you've got to use your discretion as to who you're defending. And in your defense, are you merely attacking the attacker? If so, then you can expect a counter attack, and you are being a hypocrite.

I would defend Hitler's right to publish Mein Kampf. Unfortunately the Internet is forever and this could be taken the wrong way so I'm posting under a sockpuppet.

Re: The 20-year-old at heart of web's most anarchic and influential site

#35

Post by [deleted] »

423qagrdf wrote: post #34
adrianwaj wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, I wouldn't defend Hitler for having the right to publish Mein Kamp. At the end of the day, you've got to use your discretion as to who you're defending. And in your defense, are you merely attacking the attacker? If so, then you can expect a counter attack, and you are being a hypocrite.

I would defend Hitler's right to publish Mein Kampf. Unfortunately the Internet is forever and this could be taken the wrong way so I'm posting under a sockpuppet.

[deleted]

Re: The 20-year-old at heart of web's most anarchic and influential site

#37

Post by adrianwaj »

vaksel wrote: post #32
DaniFong wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One cannot simply escape the influence of 4chan by not going there. It is a cesspool, and the memes that breed there spread elsewhere. Do you think the players of Habbo wanted the influence of /b? And the violent culture there was shared by meankids.org when they started to frighten Kathy Sierra -- it was only a short jump from there to the death threats, and now they've inflicted harm. She will never be the same.

maybe you should just move to China, I think their bill of rights will suit you better.

Can't say a bad word about 4Chan, only about people that say bad words about 4Chan.

Re: The 20-year-old at heart of web's most anarchic and influential site

#38

Post by menloparkbum »

vaksel wrote: post #24
DaniFong wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree pretty strongly here. The data point I want to pick out are the existence of trolls: people who end up destroying enlightened discussion and replacing it with a bigot firefight. There are many ways to reduce freedom of speech. One can be coerced, or one can be denied access to the time required to think of and say something useful. But there's another kind of denial -- when a conversation turns ugly, many…

a) There is more to trolling than "bigot firefights". That's amateur hour. Real trolling is coming to say a PC forum and calling them retards for not owning a mac b) And I would hardly call 4chan a big firefight either. Its not like its stormfront, its not like the site is only about racism. That's the whole point of the site, everything that is not illegal goes. And who are you to impose your morality on other peopl…

Trolling is a lost art. It used to be quite funny. The original sense of the word meant baiting USENET newcomers along with incorrect nonsense. Sort of like how Australians try to trick tourists with lore about "drop bears" or a goofy uncle would go on about snipe hunting or cow tipping. Now it simply means name calling and general offensive behavior, which isn't nearly as clever or fun.

Re: The 20-year-old at heart of web's most anarchic and influential site

#39

Post by a-priori »

423qagrdf wrote: post #34
adrianwaj wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, I wouldn't defend Hitler for having the right to publish Mein Kamp. At the end of the day, you've got to use your discretion as to who you're defending. And in your defense, are you merely attacking the attacker? If so, then you can expect a counter attack, and you are being a hypocrite.

I would defend Hitler's right to publish Mein Kampf. Unfortunately the Internet is forever and this could be taken the wrong way so I'm posting under a sockpuppet.

I agree. Regardless of its content, Mein Kampf is historically significant. For that reason alone, it should be published and kept in libraries so that historians, students and history buffs have access to it.

At the time he wrote it, if I ran a publishing house, I wouldn't have printed it. However, if I were a politician, I wouldn't have blocked it from being published.

Words on a page don't hurt people, people do. By all means, punish the people for their actions, but silencing them does nobody any good. They'll find a way to be heard anyways, and then all you've done is give them notoriety.

(I'm not using a sock puppet to post this -- if someone takes this the wrong way it's their own damned fault)

Re: The 20-year-old at heart of web's most anarchic and influential site

#40

Post by adrianwaj »

a-priori wrote: post #39
423qagrdf wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would defend Hitler's right to publish Mein Kampf. Unfortunately the Internet is forever and this could be taken the wrong way so I'm posting under a sockpuppet.

I agree. Regardless of its content, Mein Kampf is historically significant. For that reason alone, it should be published and kept in libraries so that historians, students and history buffs have access to it. At the time he wrote it, if I ran a publishing house, I wouldn't have printed it. However, if I were a politician, I wouldn't have blocked it from being published. Words on a page don't hurt people, people do.…

"However, if I were a politician, I wouldn't have blocked it from being published." Tell that to the 50 Million people that died as a result.

You couldn't have been a politician to block it unless you were a part of the Nazi party, or an opposition party who I think were outlawed anyway.

Thoughts lead to words lead to actions. If you sanction the words then you sanction the action to a great degree - especially when the this flow on effect is rapid. If you feel the strong should survive, then give them free reign, but to stand there in smug glee saying, "I let them publish Mein Kamp, but didn't do so myself" to me resembles the same evil as doing nothing in front of the cattle trucks as they were being loaded.

The difficulty is that at the time, you couldn't really speak out.. and if you did, you might join the rank and file of those destined for death. In this environment, people's souls are silenced and one can become spineless.

History is reoccuring, Iran is building nukes to take out Israel and eventually other non-Muslim countries who don't cower to Islamic ideals. Hiding this latter reality is what assists Iranian nuclear development. This freedom-for-all line of thinking says "Everything's hunky dory, as long as Israel has anti-ballistics, then it's fair game. As long as I can throw abuse back at you then great." But it is not the case that freedom is always 'good' and restriction is not, because evil must be ruthlessly exposed and curtailed for there to be any evolution, and for higher states of hapiness to be experienced.

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