I just had no idea what 4chan was for years and years until just then it was explained with a conversation on IRC. Now I’m even more confused, but I can see where a lot of people’s internet ‘humour’ comes from or inspired from. The whole thing has me thinking… It struck me like being back as a High School Teacher before the hordes of teens who were all desperately trying to impress each other with how dumb or immature they could be. It seems the whole internet meme culture is like an intellectual black hole and a form of automated passive opiate to better the conditions for transitional fascism. The dumber you all the easier it is to control you all and have you believe we don’t control you.
This may just be my own ‘getting too old for all of this’ tendency or just plain confusion. But every time I see a “LOL” expressed with utter seriousness without a hint sarcasm or parody I feel yet another pang of remorse thinking “is this the best humans can do?”.
I don’t know what to say. I thought I’d start a thread on it.
4chan cracks me up and is a great source for strange music.
as for people who post there… hey, it’s the bottom of the internet,
so what can you expect, right? let’s not judge a book by its anus.
I think I’ve only been on that site a couple of times, but it seems kinda fun. I dunno, zing images make me laugh. I spent a long time on a forum a bit like that when I was younger, and for all the horribly offensive jokes and mad hentai, it is just teenagers having fun.
Every forum has it’s trolls and in jokes and whatever, it’s not like this forum making jokes about gay lol cats is massively intellectually superior to that.
EDIT: actually, disregard a lot of what I just said, I just went there, my eyes are forever burned.
Does something have to be suprise? That’s another internet disease IMHO: We cannot possible talk about the basics or stuff that has already been discussed. Only internet noobs do that, and God bless 'em.
The fact that people are looking for ways to be Above and more knowledgeable to again be more secure with themselves.
and some people can’t shake that way of being, when growing into
adulthood.
Actually, there’s some people just sitting there and waits for subjects to arise that they can push in the face of others to come up.
This is a great way of learning stuff, but you need to have skin like a
rhino.
Good and Bad, i personally love the chatrooms and backalleys ;D
Before I start, I should state that I am not, and never have been a /b/tard… and I don’t make it a habit of hanging around on any of the sites listed on overchan, 4chan included.
It greatly amuses me that someone from IRC of all places is condemning a site like 4chan as being an intellectual void.
That being said, the /b/ (random) section at 4chan, which is the source of most of 4chan’s controversy, is nothing more than a place the fetishizes the obscure. Just like people who listen to noise music, /b/tards enjoy seeing the randomness that humanity has to offer… they like seeing how many messed up cultural references they can find. There is definitely something intellectual about what they do, and if you can’t see it, then your head is stuck in a box.
/b/ isn’t about being immature so much as attacking the very concept of maturity. They like to laugh at the fact that what they do is considered immature.
Perhaps what’s more immature is labelling an entire community immature because of the immature actions of a few immature people?
I think that conner and byte (mostly the part about maturity) pretty much describes the concept behind /b/.
I’ve never been active on /b/, I mostly followed their creations via encyclopedia dramatica for the last two years, and I believe that it gets dumber and dumber every day.
One important point that could describes what /b/ is… it’s that they think they are serious and important, if there’s some drama going on /b/ they won’t keep it for themselves, they spread it around on other media websites such as youtube.
about the “lol” I don’t see it as mmd does… personally I use it as someone would use “I’m” instead of “I am”. Just a simple abbreviation.
Everyone has valid points. I hear what you are saying, and mostly expected it when starting the thread. I guess I could clarify my position: rhetorically asking not so much “why is 4chan so bad?” (which inherently it isn’t) but THIS question: “why do people behave in disappointing ways?”. This could include:
Homophobia
Racism
Lack of empathetic communication
Acting below one’s potential with deliberate seriousness
Prejudice
Contextual-less vulgarity without wit
Proliferation of a cultural integrity (or lack of it) that allows for shallow world view
Homogenization of thought focused around distraction
The legitimization of violence as a means for solving problems
Potential for excessive computer use leading to poor exercise and diet
Etc… (probably more things I can’t think of)
But I’ll stop there because I already seem like an old granny with her head stuck in a box.
They behave like this for 3 possible reasons (I think) depending on who behave like this.
1st: ignorance.
2nd: immaturity
3rd: because it’s shocking.
/b/tards and encyclopedia dramatica peeps are all about shocking. When someone is outraged by their content, they are rolling on their floors laughing their ass out loud.
because it’s not allowed I reckon. This kind of stuff in conversations in real life gets really dull really quickly. Don’t quite understand why it seems to feed of itself on the internet.
All things I’d prefer to live without. All things which exist on /b/ … and also exist elsewhere on the internet. /b/ doesn’t censor these things however, and I think that in itself is an interesting, and somewhat lofty goal… freedom of speech. Sure it’s filled with lameness, but it’s still more freedom than most mediums provide. I personally think the stuff in this category falls under the “few immature people” that I was referring to. Perhaps it’s all of /b/, I don’t know… but I know that not all 4chan browsers are there to be biggoted asshats… most of them are actually there to masturbate to manga and hentai.
Minor offenses to be sure… Welcome to the generation Y. Again, not the fault of 4chan… nor the domain of all of it’s participants. It is however, a side effect of an unhealthy society.
I personally think this is the point. Doing things that are “below one’s potential” is a completely legitimate use of time… it’s only because our society has pounded guilt into our heads that feel we need to be productive 100% of the time. Let loose. Have some pointless fun. It’ll do you good.
Oh come on dude… this is just funny. A slob is a slob… don’t blame 4chan or computers. I’m a pretty huge geek myself, and the Renoise forums or irc channel doesn’t have any link to my health or hygiene.
