A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and Its Effects on the Web [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and Its Effects on the Web [pdf]

#61

Post by anon6778 » Sun, Jun 25, 2017, 3:15 PM UTC

Trill-I-Am wrote: post #40

devmunchies wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree to disagree I guess. I wasn't even talking about politics. I was talking about the left-wing PC culture that is throughout society for the last few years. Can you say with an straight face that most universities, for example, aren't more extreme left than in the past? EDIT: In the past a progressive candidate wouldn't have even stood a chance, now one of them almost won.

How much exposure to "extreme leftism" would you say you get on a day to day basis at your job, in your informal social interactions, etc.?

For me it's not so much the day to day interactions, which are largely apolitical[1], but the culture we consume. For example the latest E3 showcases had quite an emphasis on "diversity". On most days there will be some story about wage gap, harassment or other sexual missteps on the HN front page and various online newspapers. Now that's the daily surface stuff. This is not bad in itself most of the time. I do not deny that some of those social issues are real. But occasionally they go into the other extreme where they start to seem threatening or grossly stereotyping.

And then there is that background noise with shitstorms trying to get people fired over things they said (remember the nasa T-shirt guy? or brendan eich?), products boycotted over guilt by association and so on. But they make you ask yourself "could this happen to me?". Say the wrong thing and get fired because someone is OFFENDED about a joke or affiliating with the wrong people?

I have also seen github projects that I use suffer just because someone didn't like some language. This concerns me because when people push their preferences on the entire platform instead of subcommunities it becomes a cultural monoculture instead of a more compartmentalized system.

[1] The only exception I recall is the discussion about which gender inputs we should support in software forms where some suggested we should support the whole facebook madness.

Re: A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and Its Effects on the Web [pdf]

#62

Post by vertex-four » Sun, Jun 25, 2017, 3:15 PM UTC

devmunchies wrote: post #30

vertex-four wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't currently do anything.

Are they being literal about "x.com"? I thought they were just just saying .com

wand3r is, as a joke. sotojuan isn't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com

Re: A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and Its Effects on the Web [pdf]

#63

Post by badsock » Sun, Jun 25, 2017, 3:17 PM UTC

devmunchies wrote: post #29

aphextron wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm definitely falling into the "X.com used to be so much better back then!!" trope but I really hate how much /pol/ culture spread throughout 4chan. I think most of us who grew up on 4chan since '04 feel the same. The cancer of /pol/ and the rise of the 'alt-right' completely took over the culture of the site. It's sad, but I can't bring myself to visit even the SFW boards anymore.

I hope its easy to see that the rise of this "cancer" and the alt-right was a natural response to the rise of the extreme left throughout popular media and in society in general. There is nothing wrong with moderate conservatism, but when one must keep their conservative views in the closet, and anything conservative (on Reddit, Twitter, or simply at work) is seen as an inferior view point rather than just a differen…

Something that's popular is practically by definition not on the extreme any more.

In most of the developed world the Democrats would be considered a moderate right-wing party, and the Republicans a far-right theocratic extremism party (like, say the DUP in the UK, or CHP in Canada).

What you're seeing is a ground-shift in values, and what used to be considered OK is now considered extreme, and is therefore being shifted into the margins of the discussion.

To put it in sharper contrast: if you started loudly expressing the most mainstream views of the 1700s in today's society, you'd get a lot of people trying to shut you up and, failing that, marginalize you. And, probably, they'd be right to do so.

Re: A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and Its Effects on the Web [pdf]

#64

Post by yedava » Sun, Jun 25, 2017, 3:20 PM UTC

fiblye wrote: post #9

peruvian wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's crazy is that in the Bush/early Obama years 4chan was fairly liberal in terms of politics.

I think one important question to ask here is: what caused the huge shift? Because it's something I noticed as well. Something happened that has pushed much of the general internet and large swathes of the "geekier" parts of the net to the right, and it doesn't seem to be letting up. The media ran with the "Russian shills" thing for a while, but it seems to be running out of steam and people I've known for years who…

I think part of the reason is the changing demographics of the geekier parts of the Internet. As hitherto absent groups of people entered geekdom, it produced a defensive reaction.

The way I see it, it is easier to express liberal sentiments than to actually walk the talk. Kind of like how it's easier to profess feminism when it doesn't require any effort from your side than when you are married and have kids and are expected to equally share household responsibilities.

Re: A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and Its Effects on the Web [pdf]

#65

Post by devmunchies » Sun, Jun 25, 2017, 3:20 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #48

devmunchies wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree to disagree I guess. I wasn't even talking about politics. I was talking about the left-wing PC culture that is throughout society for the last few years. Can you say with an straight face that most universities, for example, aren't more extreme left than in the past? EDIT: In the past a progressive candidate wouldn't have even stood a chance, now one of them almost won.

How do you interact with "universities"? Personally I have no idea what the typical atmosphere is on university campuses. Of course I'm aware of the protests that make the main stream media, but it seems silly to just assume that those small numbers of protests are broadly representative.

Good point. I guess I don't interact with them anymore, but I'm a conservative who graduated in the arts just a year ago, so its recent history to me. In all of my literature classes, the content was mostly left leaning.

Re: A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and Its Effects on the Web [pdf]

#66

Post by uw_rob » Sun, Jun 25, 2017, 3:21 PM UTC

devmunchies wrote: post #37

woodruffw wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The extreme left throughout popular media? I watched a neoliberal win the democratic primary this past year. We can talk about whether the media was biased in her favor, but that would strengthen my point: they chose her over the progressive candidate. I really don't like this sort of "look what you made me do" thinking, especially when the reaction is to their own boogeymen. If the alt-right wants to blame the left…

Agree to disagree I guess. I wasn't even talking about politics. I was talking about the left-wing PC culture that is throughout society for the last few years. Can you say with an straight face that most universities, for example, aren't more extreme left than in the past? EDIT: In the past a progressive candidate wouldn't have even stood a chance, now one of them almost won.

> Can you say with an straight face that most universities, for example, aren't more extreme left than in the past?

You shouldn't make a claim and then ask someone else to disprove it. What numbers are you basing this belief off of? How do you define extreme left? Do you consider beliefs like evolution and global warming to be extreme left view points?

According to [0] it seems that the number of professors who consider themselves liberal has increased by about 10% in the last 60 years. But the definition of liberal has become much more inclusive over the last 60 years as well, so I am not sure how meaningful this is.

[0] Gross, Neil. Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care? Most of my quick research was based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_bias_in_academia#cite_...

Re: A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and Its Effects on the Web [pdf]

#67

Post by blfr » Sun, Jun 25, 2017, 3:22 PM UTC

dghughes wrote: post #26

fiblye wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one important question to ask here is: what caused the huge shift? Because it's something I noticed as well. Something happened that has pushed much of the general internet and large swathes of the "geekier" parts of the net to the right, and it doesn't seem to be letting up. The media ran with the "Russian shills" thing for a while, but it seems to be running out of steam and people I've known for years who…

I'm on mobile so I didn't read the pdf. But I'd say related to the itle is overly PC people highly vocal aka SJW as people say. It's the left equivalent of far right. The other thing I think is US style politics as a Canadian it amazes me that is is so absolute you're Democrat or Republican. Most western countries have multiple political parties covering many shades politics. People in the USA from my viewpoint seem…

it amazes me that is is so absolute you're Democrat or Republican

This may be true in general but isn't true of alt-right communities who coined the "cuckservative" meme. They were no fans of the GOP.

Re: A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and Its Effects on the Web [pdf]

#68

Post by gizmo » Sun, Jun 25, 2017, 3:22 PM UTC

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #21

KirinDave wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a statement without a lot of actual backing. Folks claim it, but it's difficult to prove. Meanwhile we can prove that Republicans suppressed certain types of voters post VRA-repeal. We can prove that laws banning felons from voting impact some groups more than others (unfairly, I might add). We even have evidence (if not conclusive proof) that spearfishing attacks on US voting staff changed voter rolls. It is…

I agree that those are issues that should be addressed, but if you feel that Trump's rise wasn't legitimate, then I urge you to spend some time in an area of the country that voted for him. There are many, many areas of the country where people feel like their quality of life has been on the decline for decades and who have lost faith in normal politicians. The "altright rhetoric" may not be influential to you, but i…

Trump's rise wasn't legitimate because it was essentially a con job. Folks in rural parts of the country have been hurt by 30 years of anti-worker policies and, to an extent, globalization. In part they got neglected by regular politicians, but in part simply because jobs moved as the world changed they got left behind.

Trump ran a campaign blaming immigrants and Muslims while promising to bring back coal and renegotiating all trade agreements, a.k.a. "winning". The entire campaign was a big lie. Trump lies on a scale that is not comparable to what regular politicians do -- his salesmanship skills allow him to tune in to whatever people want to hear. When the connection between campaign promises and policy gets totally severed democracy dies.

White rural America has every right to be angry, but that doesn't excuse embracing a racist con artist like Trump.

Re: A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and Its Effects on the Web [pdf]

#69

Post by sinxoveretothex » Sun, Jun 25, 2017, 3:23 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #48

devmunchies wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree to disagree I guess. I wasn't even talking about politics. I was talking about the left-wing PC culture that is throughout society for the last few years. Can you say with an straight face that most universities, for example, aren't more extreme left than in the past? EDIT: In the past a progressive candidate wouldn't have even stood a chance, now one of them almost won.

How do you interact with "universities"? Personally I have no idea what the typical atmosphere is on university campuses. Of course I'm aware of the protests that make the main stream media, but it seems silly to just assume that those small numbers of protests are broadly representative.

> Of course I'm aware of the protests that make the main stream media, but it seems silly to just assume that those small numbers of protests are broadly representative.

You have to assume that a protest is representative of something larger.

It's not like there's the normal population and then there's a few hundred people crazy enough to protest for reason X. Much more likely, they have a network of support, people who aren't as convinced as them, but who do agree with them to a large degree and those people have their own network with whom they sort of agree and so on and so forth.

The same applies for any group, no matter how extreme really.

EDIT: Also, I live in Montréal, Canada. I can assure you our universities are infested with "leftist thought", even the engineering ones (and having visited the humanities ones, the infestation can be shockingly intense). There is one wall in UQAM (like, in the school, facing some gathering space) where someone wrote "let's throw the blood from our diva cups in their faces". There absolutely is something going on.

Re: A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and Its Effects on the Web [pdf]

#70

Post by devmunchies » Sun, Jun 25, 2017, 3:24 PM UTC

travmatt wrote: post #59

jeffry233 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see plenty of conservatism all over Reddit and all of those other places you mentioned. It happens in boring threads on boring articles that aren't politically charged. What causes the downvotes is the way the ideas are presented. If you write your comment like you're a writer for the Rush Limbaugh Show, you're going to be downvoted. There is plenty of room to discuss conservative ideas without resorting to the rhe…

I'm also old enough to remember /r/chimpire and other explicitly racist right wing subreddits who had massive support, well before the rise /r/the_donald. Hell, I even remember discussing the organized stormfront propaganda raids. To me, crying about the lack of conservatism is just code for "people don't follow my ideologies exactly, therefore I'm being oppressed." I follow plenty of subreddits where there is plenty…

> people don't follow my ideologies exactly, therefore I'm being oppressed

Thats a nasty little remark. Keep it civil.