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

4chan: Beyond one billion

4chan.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 133 posts

Re: 4chan: Beyond one billion

#81

Post by jiggy2011 »

jmduke wrote: post #78
enko wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't believe I'm saying this but it's almost offensive to me that you're comparing 4chan to celebrity news. 4chan is friggin' high art compared to that shit. Celebrity news is the lowest of the low; nothing but easy-to-read brain candy for bored, boring housewives. And I think 4chan has a huge influence. It is a very powerful site in tech culture, which is pretty large I think. Tech culture might be smaller by num…

The argument isn't that 4chan doesn't have its own identity, its refuting this: And come on, it's where all the memes are born. That's profound. What other startup can claim to be such a big influence on western society? I think 4chan definitely has a huge influence on the tech sector, but in terms of straight-up 'influence' vastly more people follow celebrity gossip than memes. That might change (it probably won't -…

I'm sure more people read celebrity news than read Shakespeare, but which has a bigger influence on culture?

Re: 4chan: Beyond one billion

#82

Post by fragmede »

clockstrikesten wrote: post #24
ionwake wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i would say government at a guess

The site owner recently revealed he pushes 3500000 GB per month. My lowball estimate puts that at roughly $77,000 per month, just under a million dollars per year to keep the site running. There are no ads on /b/, which is the main board, representing I'd guess 95% of the entire site's traffic. That, combined with the plausibility of the following, leads me to believe he receives massive government subsidies: http://…

According to http://content.4chan.org/tmp/extensions.html they did 1.65 only petabytes for the month of June 2012, so where are you getting your 3.5 PB number from?

Additionally, https://www.cloudflare.com/plans seem to suggest the bulk of that costs an unbelievably low $3k/month.

Re: 4chan: Beyond one billion

#83

Post by joshu »

Swizec wrote: post #23

While I no longer visit 4chan regularly, I love its extensive influence on human society. * lolcats * rage comics * anonymous * a lot of the 1% movement * getting random people in jail because they think animal cruelty is funny * making Moot TIME's person of the year and getting him a TED talk -> http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for... While most of what goes on there hinges somewhere between…

> getting him a TED talk

That was actually me. I suggested it to Chris Anderson originally.

(Also, the memes=funny pictures thing drives me nuts. But then again I started memepool.com in 1998 or so...)

Re: 4chan: Beyond one billion

#84

Post by samstave »

Swizec wrote: post #23

While I no longer visit 4chan regularly, I love its extensive influence on human society. * lolcats * rage comics * anonymous * a lot of the 1% movement * getting random people in jail because they think animal cruelty is funny * making Moot TIME's person of the year and getting him a TED talk -> http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for... While most of what goes on there hinges somewhere between…

I agree with some of what you said, but rage comics are a cancer on the internet and I wish I had a universal rage blocker.

I HATE them.

Re: 4chan: Beyond one billion

#85

Post by nateberkopec »

Karunamon wrote: post #50
nateberkopec wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>implying /b/ actually goes through with all those raids /x/ is the only board that actually does get raided. it's probably the worst board on 4chan (i'm a pixie AMA).

>implying /b/, /mlp/, or /v/ aren't actually the worst boards on 4chan There is some genuinely interesting stuff on /x/ once you filter out the fakers and the roleplayers.

definitely not implying that, those boards are horrible.

i do like x's archived threads, where people dump youtube videos and wiki links

Re: 4chan: Beyond one billion

#86

Post by jmduke »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #81
jmduke wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument isn't that 4chan doesn't have its own identity, its refuting this: And come on, it's where all the memes are born. That's profound. What other startup can claim to be such a big influence on western society? I think 4chan definitely has a huge influence on the tech sector, but in terms of straight-up 'influence' vastly more people follow celebrity gossip than memes. That might change (it probably won't -…

I'm sure more people read celebrity news than read Shakespeare, but which has a bigger influence on culture?

That's a pretty brash claim. Shakespeare's been around for centuries, and has most likely been read or seen by more people in the sum of that time than celebrity news.

Re: 4chan: Beyond one billion

#87

Post by sp332 »

ianstallings wrote: post #57
nateberkopec wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole "4chan is vile and horrible" thing is getting old. 4chan is not /b/, and vice versa. There are a lot of boards on 4chan that are perfectly normal, with no gore threads/porn/etc.

But why would I go out of my way to visit a place that has that stuff on it in the first place? So I can be associated with sociopaths? I'll pass and get my content elsewhere.

What do you mean by "place"? And why would you be associated with people on the boards you don't visit? (Also basically everyone on those boards are anonymous so you won't have an identity to "associate".)

Re: 4chan: Beyond one billion

#89

Post by JonnieCache »

Swizec wrote: post #33
simias wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you (and probably many others) are conflating 4chan with its /b/ board. There are several communities with their own "ecosystem" within 4chan, even if there's some overlap of course. Also, it wouldn't be fair to attribute all the things you've cited to 4chan only. Something Aweful contributed to the birth of many "early" memes for instance. And I think the rage comics were infamously made popular by reddit (4…

Something Awful and Newgrounds were a good place to spawn memes back in the early-ish days of the web. When memes were still flash videos and such. And even before that (or possibly not before that), I remember going to emule to download what were essentially memes. A lot of them spreading partially via email. But I think in the least 8 years, 4chan has really become the main birthplace of memes.

4chan was arguably born out of a combination of the FYAD (fuck you and die) and the ADTRW (anime death tentacle rape whorehouse) subforums at something awful.

ADTRW was just the anime forum. The admins called it that to annoy the anime kids. They would all hang out on 2chan, the japanese precursor to 4chan.

FYAD was the forum with no rules. It was (is?) basically /b/ but this is back in the day so it was much smaller, everyone knew everyone else. It was basically a little clique that would sit there making injokes.

I never really went in there, but the notable thing about it was that the mods would constantly abuse the css and js on the forum theme to the extent that it would often crash some browsers. It was pretty funny. Oh, and there was always one mod who was elected from the userbase every month, the "idiot king" who would rule with an iron fist. In short, like online gaming, it would be great in theory except for the fact that everyone else there is an antisocial teenage nerd.

Re: 4chan: Beyond one billion

#90

Post by kevinpet »

RollAHardSix wrote: post #35
Swizec wrote: post #23

While I no longer visit 4chan regularly, I love its extensive influence on human society. * lolcats * rage comics * anonymous * a lot of the 1% movement * getting random people in jail because they think animal cruelty is funny * making Moot TIME's person of the year and getting him a TED talk -> http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for... While most of what goes on there hinges somewhere between…

Influence on Western Culture? Why don't you go read the news, the Patterson break-up has had more of an effect on Western culture then 4Chan could ever hope to succeed. Some people spend way too much time on the internet; I can guarantee you that 99% of America, has no clue what 4Chan, Rage Comics, lolcats is. Anonymous and the 1% movement (but you may have to say Occupy Wall Street to the 3 million remaining people)…

Who's Patterson? The personal lives of celebrities tend to not make it into history. 4chan is at the very least the other guy who invented the telephone (or am I thinking light bulb) but got beat to the patent office.
Post reply on HN