Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Blue Ball Machine

blueballfixed.ytmnd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 137 posts

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#51

Post by doublerabbit »

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.

> To say it has single handedly started a movement is a huge stretch.

I disagree. Anonymous was an substantial movement.

4chan has long existed before the concept of facebook and to compare 4chan to the new trends of the likes such as facebook or reddit when 4chan is it's own, you can't.

Reddit and Facebook have all been designed to cater to the masses; 4chan not so.

To rule out that 4chan has never been influential is incorrect.

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#52

Post by api »

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.

It’s more likely that it was just one of the places that movement coalesced. Others include Reddit before they ban hammered a lot of that stuff, Twitter, and Telegram.

As for the origin of the movement I remember saying exactly this way back in 2008 after the bank bailouts:

(Paraphrasing a bit)

“People don’t realize how much trust has been lost. People want pitchforks. I don’t think they care whether the far left or the far right is handing them out.”

The far left did hand out a few, but they tended to sublimate all their anger into race and minority grievances. Their pitchforks didn’t have enough mass appeal, especially to the white working class killing themselves with opiates.

The right handed out more classical pitchforks with more mass appeal. They went for the old timey scapegoats of immigrant and minority hate and good old fashioned antisemitism (thinly veiled).

They were also the only ones who started talking about “elites.” I remember reading an actual quote on Reddit back then that stuck with me: “if we can’t destroy the financial industry from the left we’ll do it from the right.”

Americans have a short memory. We’ve already forgotten the Bush administration and how it burned a century of goodwill toward our country and a trillion dollars or two in Iraq. We’ve already forgotten how banks that imploded were rescued in such a way as to give the executives leading them a bonus and a promotion for imploding them. (The blame for that goes to both Bush and Obama for doing nothing to intervene.)

So now people are like “where did all this populist rage come from?” They blame crap like gamergate and 4chan when those were just small lightning rods for niche communities. The USA around the turn of that decade was a pile of oily rags waiting for a source of ignition.

The alt right and Trump just saw an opportunity. They didn’t create it, nor did 4chan.

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#53

Post by justusthane »

junon wrote: post #27
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/

For those as confused as I was, turn the volume up.

Thank you!

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#54

Post by 0dayz »

metadat wrote: post #24

Reminds me of https://floor796.com/ Though floor796 is way more rich and interesting, and still receiving additions every few days.

That's amazing.

Reminds me of those early 2000s Russian ones.

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#55

Post by rtz121 »

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.…

[flagged]

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#56

Post by Avicebron »

api wrote: post #52
maxcoder4 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s more likely that it was just one of the places that movement coalesced. Others include Reddit before they ban hammered a lot of that stuff, Twitter, and Telegram. As for the origin of the movement I remember saying exactly this way back in 2008 after the bank bailouts: (Paraphrasing a bit) “People don’t realize how much trust has been lost. People want pitchforks. I don’t think they care whether the far left or…

I mean from looking back as a non participant in either (way too young to even care), it seems like occupy Wallstreet and the alt right pretty much pretty much had a similar message, some people have used money and power to make the US far more unbalanced and it's grinding people down. So 2008 seems a good benchmark

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#57

Post by FabHK »

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.

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 media and even mainstream media, they originated on Tumblr and 4chan, respectively. I wonder whether one could quantify/measure it somehow.

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#58

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

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 have it backwards. The alt-right didn't come out of 4chan. It came in and displaced the existing culture. The term 'election tourist' (referring to the 2016 US Presidential elections) is still a common pejorative.

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#59

Post by whaleofatw2022 »

api wrote: post #52
maxcoder4 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s more likely that it was just one of the places that movement coalesced. Others include Reddit before they ban hammered a lot of that stuff, Twitter, and Telegram. As for the origin of the movement I remember saying exactly this way back in 2008 after the bank bailouts: (Paraphrasing a bit) “People don’t realize how much trust has been lost. People want pitchforks. I don’t think they care whether the far left or…

Yep, and I think that's why so many folks jumped from Bernie to Trump during/after the primaries. They couldn't be given a fair chance for peaceful change so they went for the other change option.

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#60

Post by krapp »

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.

> To say it has single handedly started a movement is a huge stretch.

As far as the alt-right goes, this is true, but they're definitely responsible for Pizzagate and QAnon. One might consider those the genesis of a "post alt-right" movement but it might also be too soon to tell.

Post reply on HN