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Blue Ball Machine

blueballfixed.ytmnd.com

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Re: Blue Ball Machine

#91

Post by sen_armstrong »

kevindamm wrote: post #65
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…

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 as provenience, when the archive itself might be younger than the meme.

You can find discrediting examples in the mid-2000s thread collection the internet archive recently released ("archive ten billion"): memes appear in the chanological record years before they anywhere Google knows of. But how can you know that's the real origin? Even "Know your memes" first appears in there as a /b/ catchphrase in April 2006, but you must notice that's also when the /b/ posts in the collection begin.

Edit, another example:

4chan is also known as a Mongolian basket-weaving forum, among other things: corruptions descended from the meme of referring to anime as "Chinese cartoons". An old 4chan saying, as KYM finds? No, it came from that Russian anime newsgroup, ru.anime.chainik, after its parody FAQ from 2002 was translated by users of an associated LiveJournal group and added to a since-deleted Uncyclopedia article.

  Q: Что такое аниме?
  A: Китайские порнографические мультфильмы.
The full FAQ is on the author's website, which is still online, shounen.ru/anime/tech/afaq.shtml But is it entirely original to that newsgroup? Some of those terms seem to have come from FIDO...

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#92

Post by snvzz »

codingdave wrote: post #62
AlecSchueler wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very little in human history has had the reach of those websites you're talking about, and on those users tend to be in their own bubbles. On 4chan, with its millions of users over the past couple of decades, attention is centered around a few boards.

I think you are underestimating the reach of TV before the internet.

Producers vs Consumers.

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#95

Post by davedx »

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/

https://catchthatdruid.ytmnd.com

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#96

Post by underlipton »

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've tried to square the racial-justice-amorality of the "someone fck sht 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 from our history of racialized classism.

I don't know how you convey to such people how these problems don't get solved without rectifying the racist underpinnings - that "that's not okay" only gets teeth when "that's okay because it only happens to 'those' people" is no longer accepted. Only then do you see a substantial decrease in face-eating leopards.

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#97

Post by earthboundkid »

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.…

Dale Beran's It Came From Something Awful is a good history of the evolution of the scene from edgelords to alt right.

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#98

Post by slingnow »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #46
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.

Very little in human history has had the reach of those websites you're talking about, and on those users tend to be in their own bubbles. On 4chan, with its millions of users over the past couple of decades, attention is centered around a few boards.

Very little?

Let me introduce you to: newspapers, radio, television, books.

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#99

Post by api »

underlipton wrote: post #96
api wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'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 neighborhood surrounded by crime? Are either of these better or worse off than a gay or trans person who's been bullied and ostracized by their community, or a battered wife whose community sides with her abuser, or a woman who was raped and forced to bear the child?

It's very easy for populist demagogue con artists to pit these groups against each other or focus all these groups' anger at one third party scapegoat ("the Jews," "the rich," or some foreign enemy are popular choices) in order to gain power.

A big problem is that real solutions to these problems don't fit nicely into 140 characters. They require that people stop and take the time to understand one another and the historical forces that created their situations, empathize with one another, and find win/win solutions. Populist demagoguery, scapegoating, and totalitarian schemes do fit neatly into sound bites, so they're easier to spread especially in an era of collapsing attention spans.

Re: Blue Ball Machine

#100

Post by [deleted] »

couchand wrote: post #74
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…

The MLK quote is "a riot is the language of the unheard", and the full context is rich: > And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquili…

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