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Blue Ball Machine

blueballfixed.ytmnd.com

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Re: Blue Ball Machine

#101

Post by bloopernova »

maxcoder4 wrote: post #42
resource_waste wrote: post #40

Part of me likes all the insanity with the internet back then, with mixed feelings. I probably got computer skills wasting time on YTMND for one reason or another. I 100% attribute 4chan's b for inspiring me to program. Their raids inspired me to learn programming when I was a teenager. But... I see that the alt-right came out of 4chan and the previously funny memes were no longer funny memes but serious accusations.…

I think you give too much agency to 4chan. It's just a imageboard - an internet forum - that happened to have some subforums related to alt-right. Maybe it had (has) a bad influence on people, but it's hundred times smaller than Facebook, Twitter or Reddit. To say it has single handedly started a movement is a huge stretch.

Stormfront targeted 4chan because the "not your personal army" crew could be easily turned into whatever the white supremacists wanted.

All you had to do was say "this will offend people" and 4chan rushed off to do exactly that, over and over.

4chan was originally just a contest to show how much something doesn't bother them, because they were still competing with each other like a clique of schoolkids, and any feelings were viewed as weakness.

Also, 4chan spawned QAnon. That was absolutely "starting a movement".

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#102

Post by KittenInABox »

api wrote: post #99
underlipton wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried to square the racial-justice-amorality of the "someone f ck sh t up, I don't care who" crowd with the racist sources of many of their grievances (as someone who can't afford such extravagant feelings). The roots of so many of our issues with abuse of the downtrodden, the impunity of the elite, the distrust of populist-minded institutions, the misplaced trust in monsters who whisper sweet words, etc., come…

A huge problem is that a lot of poor white folks see attempts to rectify racial or other injustices as a slap in the face, because they see themselves (perhaps correctly) as among the downtrodden. It turns into a battle of comparing wounds. Is a poor white person with no health care and no job prospects living in a dying town better or worse off than an urban black kid who grew up with a broken family in a bad neighb…

Another issue is that class-based inter-racial cooperation was actively persecuted and propgagandized against by the government. Fred Hampton was an American activist who was building a coalition across racial divides. The FBI launched an entire political campaign to sow dissent against him specifically and, when that wasn't working, the police shot him in his bed.

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#103

Post by eddieroger »

darylteo wrote: post #50
Jordan-117 wrote: post #18

https://freecow.ytmnd.com/ https://takemeoutflanders.ytmnd.com/ https://finalstaringcontest.ytmnd.com/ https://vaderloveschristmas.ytmnd.com/ https://sixtymins.ytmnd.com/ https://tequilatts.ytmnd.com/ https://butteringobama.ytmnd.com/ https://pianos128.ytmnd.com/ My favorite: https://whatyouseewhenyoudie.ytmnd.com/

Mine will always be https://picard.ytmnd.com/

Same vein: https://rikerlean.ytmnd.com

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#105

Post by filoleg »

ryukoposting wrote: post #73
FabHK wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, the book The Identity Trap by Yasha Mounk attributes the popularisation of what it calls the Identity Synthesis to social media such as Tumblr, then later Reddit, Twitter, Instagram; and web sites such as Thought Catalog, later Jezebel, xoJane, Rookie Mag, and the Daily Dot, then everydayfeminism.com, Salon, Vox. I think it's conceivable that, while these ideas on the left and right later entered all social med…

As someone who was exposed to 4chan at far too young of an age, I don't buy this. There's no political philisophy happening on /pol/, nor has there ever been. Granted, I avoided that board like the plague, but cursory glances never showed me any novel ideas being formulated. Even if there is real conversation of various political ideologies, it's drowned out by a sea of kids who think it's cool to say the N word onli…

> There's no political philisophy happening on /pol/, nor has there ever been.

Agreed, but to be fair, /pol/ was created with the officially stated goal of acting as a containment board. And tbh, that’s exactly what it still is to this day.

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#106

Post by throw4847285 »

silverquiet wrote: post #63
api wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I’d gone around the Internet screen shotting comments from Reddit and Twitter from 2008 until 2016 so future historians could understand. A lot of this stuff got purged. Some others I remember (paraphrasing): “I can’t throw a Molotov cocktail into the White House but I can throw a Trump.” “I hope Trump does as much damage as possible.” “When Trump said he’d do something about outsourcing I decided I’d die for…

> In some ways America’s short memory is a strength. It keeps us from getting caught up in stupid ancient conflicts like the Middle East. America tends to at least mostly move on. But it also means we walk around in this perpetual fugue state not understanding why anything is happening. I recently heard that depressed people are unable to habituate to things. I think I might be very depressed because I was never able…

Yeah. The real reason America doesn't get caught up in stupid ancient conflicts is two fold:

1. The conflicts in the Middle East aren't ancient. They originate in the 19th Century at the earliest. 2. When you're the world's current most powerful global empire, you have the privilege of forgetting. Chile can't forget. Cambodia can't forget. Nicaragua can't forget. Etc.

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#107

Post by kevindamm »

sen_armstrong wrote: post #91
kevindamm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would posit that the proportion of "originated from 4chan" notes on knowyourmeme.com are an indicator of its outsized influence.

I wouldn't bet much on KYM's provenance research. Memes spread so far so fast on the information superhighway, those that started on some Korean photography forum or Russian anime newsgroup, you'd never know if you weren't there ... or know where to look. KYM often cites 4chan because it's popular, in English, and well-archived (ironic indeed) and KYM editors will take the earliest hit from the third-party archives a…

Thanks for your reply and examples, very informative. I agree it's an awful metric but seemed it might hold water when I first typed it. Full disclosure, I have never actually visited 4chan despite ample opportunity.

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#109

Post by starmftronajoll »

Jordan-117 wrote: post #18

https://freecow.ytmnd.com/ https://takemeoutflanders.ytmnd.com/ https://finalstaringcontest.ytmnd.com/ https://vaderloveschristmas.ytmnd.com/ https://sixtymins.ytmnd.com/ https://tequilatts.ytmnd.com/ https://butteringobama.ytmnd.com/ https://pianos128.ytmnd.com/ My favorite: https://whatyouseewhenyoudie.ytmnd.com/

This variation on the Vader meme still makes me laugh

https://vaderfortune.ytmnd.com

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#110

Post by teucris »

resource_waste wrote: post #40

Part of me likes all the insanity with the internet back then, with mixed feelings. I probably got computer skills wasting time on YTMND for one reason or another. I 100% attribute 4chan's b for inspiring me to program. Their raids inspired me to learn programming when I was a teenager. But... I see that the alt-right came out of 4chan and the previously funny memes were no longer funny memes but serious accusations.…

You got a lot of great responses to your observations around 4chan, partly debating whether it should be to blame for the growth of the alt-right. I think it boils down to one simple thing: 4chan was unfettered. Anyone could go there and do anything - learn to code, coordinate a LOIC attack, draft an Anonymous army, or brew an ultra-conservative movement. Those things will happen in places where there aren’t guards in place. The fewer of those places there are, the slower things on the fringe will develop. If an open forum is shut down, these things find new places to grow. But they won’t stop.
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