this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2024
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I heard a story about a whole world that was perfect because they locked a kid up in a room and threw all the bad stuff in there with the kid. The poor kid suffered all of the world's miseries so that others could enjoy life. That kid's name? 4chan.
4chan is 99% deplorable garbage. I won't even go into /b/. Helllll no. But oddly enough, some of the internet's best memes come out of there.
Assuming only a place of pure misery could produce those memes
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
4chan is what the internet would look like if everything had the bare minimum of moderation. Actually a very interesting case study about the human psyche, and I've had many a interesting conversation on there, especially early internet days.
Is it a shithole? Overall, yes. But the right board at the right time is truly early internet ethos.
If the entire internet was as unmoderated as 4chan, it would be a lot less extreme than 4chan is.
But since there are only very few places like that, all the weirdos and nazis congregate there, cause that's where they don't get banned for using the n-word.
I don't really think so, every online fora I've been a part of starts unmoderated, and it works, for years sometimes. But every single time without fail when a platform reaches a critical mass, moderation becomes necessary.
I think putting a digital mask on shows the true nature of people, and moderation is the only way of keeping conversation* civil on the internet.
Maybe, if you're determined to preserve a certain culture on a specific site. But as long as movement between sites is pretty easy (was quite common in the days of forums), then the community could self-regulate reasonably well. Either the weirdos would leave, or the constructive members of the community would leave and the site would get shut down. Either way, the problem solves itself without moderation becoming necessary.
IMO, the only reason we "need" moderation is because we've decided that the site itself needs to be preserved. That's the mindset that needs to change. Sites should come and go and take the trash out with it.
Well, yeah. Storing your potatoes in the dark is also not "necessary" if you're willing to just throw them away when they sprout. But wanting to preserve things we like is a given to most people.
I think that's true if you only have a handful of options, but if you have hundreds to choose from, it's easy to pick up and move elsewhere. That's the nice thing about small communities, it's easy to join multiple and then leave if a couple turn bad. But if you only have one or two, you're going to fight to fix it.
I prefer the small community form of moderation, the community ostracizes those that behave poorly, and if that doesn't work, the community moves elsewhere. That's how social relationships tend to work, and that's generally how the early internet worked. Now that everything is so centralized, things get more complicated.
I'm often hearing that 4chan is "unmoderated" or has "the bare minimum of moderation", which just doesn't line up with reality. Many boards have strict and specific rules about what content is allowed, what is banned, and how said content should be presented. Just listing some rules off the top of my head: you must have a minimum number of pictures to start a thread of /s/. Normal hentai porn goes into /h/, weird fetish stuff goes into /d/. No western art allowed on either. Content that breaks the rules gets removed within hours, sometimes minutes.
If you see something that you find disagreeable on a 4chan board, it's likely there because it's allowed to be there. They aren't struggling with moderation. The fact that it's still online in the clearnet after so much media attention proves that they have enough jannies to take care of the illegal stuff at least.
Content and formatting rules are just to keep things on topic. When people mention the bare minimum of moderation, that is literally the bare minimum, and I never said they are struggling with it. They just choose to not remove any inflammatory or borderline content because they want to be that place.
Okay, then that means I misunderstood your comment. Seems like we're on the same page.
It’s the primordial soup of internet content.
Isn't the concept of a meme itself a leak from 4chan?
The original idea of a meme came from Dawkins in the 70's, and "Internet Meme" from Godwin in the early 90's, talking about message boards, usenet, listservs, etc.
4chan did not start the concept, no. Lolcats came from 4chan, iirc. But internet memes predate the existence of 4chan.
Well the word "meme" comes from Dawkins, but his usage was not to label the idea we talk about when we talk about memes.
I know for a fact where I'm from memes were something you'd only ever see on 4chan and people on Facebook and any other "normal" social media (or people) had no idea of what the fuck even was a meme.
I rememeber because I was like "this people are degenerates but it's fascinating the whole layers upon layers of insane meaning that they managed to cram into single pictures, I wonder if people outside this bubble would ever understand those".
And to be fair memes nowdays are rarely as "obscure" as those old ones.
No, it was Godwin for internet memes.
If you mean image macros, sure. That's a subset of what a meme is.
Many forget that a meme is simply a concept or idea that grabs hold within a human community and is propagated and promulgated. Patriarchy is a meme. Capitalism is a meme. Doing ‘bunny ears’ behind someone’s head in a photo is a meme (h/t Parker and Stone). Doing cave paintings of animals is a meme. Fashion of an era is a meme. Our entire social structure runs on memes.
You think you're funny but you're just cringe
The Mysterious Hacker 4chan