
My next chapter - dorianm
http://chrishateswriting.com/post/140641275808/my-next-chapter
======
c3534l
Moot has always appeared to me to be a very talented and bright person. I
think it's a mistake to judge him by what some people will say on an anonymous
image board. The influence of 4chan on internet culture cannot be ignored:
everything from LOLCats to advice animals and countless internet slang terms.
He's also had a very unique and unusual experience being in charge of a group
of people who believe the internet should be controlled chaos. In my opinion,
Moot is a lot like Mike Judge after he did Beavis and Butthead: it's too easy
to dismiss him because what he created is a bit crass. But he's a smart and
talented person who will most likely go on to build a reputation beyond his
first big thing.

~~~
Jerry2
> _The influence of 4chan on internet culture cannot be ignored: everything
> from LOLCats to advice animals and countless internet slang terms._

Moot is not community. You cannot credit him with the inventions that his
community came up with. His site was the catalyst, of course, but how much
credit should he personally get for it?

Maybe you could judge him by the success (or the lack of it) of DrawQuest and
Canv.as.. the two projects that he spearheaded and got VC funding for.

~~~
user8341116
And 4chan itself is just a clone of a Japanese imageboard, 2ch.

~~~
Koahku
*2chan, also known as Futaba Channel. Futaba is a "clone" of 2ch with support for images.

------
themoonbus
I'm interested to see if this is part of a movement by Google towards a
different notion of community & identity than Facebook.

Moot has very different position than Mark Zuckerberg when it comes to
identity online: [http://venturebeat.com/2011/03/13/4chan-moot-christopher-
poo...](http://venturebeat.com/2011/03/13/4chan-moot-christopher-poole-sxsw/)

~~~
Jerry2
He backpeddaled from that position fairly quickly. Moot banned Tor use on
4chan, he banned VPN use, proxy use was banned, he added ban-tracking cookies,
he added unique IDs, he aded country flags to many boards that didn't want
them, etc.

He supported anonymity for publicity and did a lot on his site to dissuade its
use. When he gave interviews on 4chan, he used to tell everyone that "4chan is
not anonymous".

About the only thing that's left on 4chan that's "anonymous" is the default
username: which is still "Anonymous".

You have more anonymity on HN with a throwaway account than you have on 4chan.

People also give him too much credit when it comes to community organizing as
well. He got lucky with 4chan when he copied 2chan and catered it to english-
speaking audience. When he tried to actually create something from scratch,
both of his apps failed miserably.

~~~
Mithaldu
There's a difference between anonymity of a user to other users, and tools
being used by the administration to track and deny bad actors.

Besides, i'm pretty sure HN can track people across accounts as well, and if
it hasn't banned proxies yet, then only because they haven't been abused
enough.

~~~
Jerry2
How is using a default name like Anonymous or "Anonymous Coward" (or some
other default name on other sites) different from making a throwaway? Making a
throwaway might take you few seconds longer but to an admin, it's exactly the
same thing. Your IP is tracked in both cases.

It's just that "Anonymous" username is EXTREMELY DECEPTIVE since you're NOT
ANONYMOUS at all!

~~~
provingmypoint
OK, here's a throwaway account, for which I had to pick a different user name
a few times because of the name restrictions (not to mention a password).

You, on the other hand, are not using a throwaway account, so I can tell that
you seem to have a rather violent dislike of moot. If this were 4chan, I would
have no idea that you made 3 separate posts trying to tear him down.

~~~
squeaky-clean
> You, on the other hand, are not using a throwaway account, so I can tell
> that you seem to have a rather violent dislike of moot. If this were 4chan,
> I would have no idea that you made 3 separate posts trying to tear him down.

It's been a while since I've visited 4chan, but didn't they add some sort of
user ID to comments at some point? Like, they could still generically be
'Anonymous', but there was some sort of ID or hash you could ctrl+f to find
other comments by that person within that thread.

~~~
Nonnymous
You must be thinking of forced IDs, the feature itself is several years old
but it's been turned on and off through the years.

Something that isn't very well known is that 4chan is actually a lot of
smaller communities with only partial overlap, and the culture can differ a
lot depending on what board you are.

A strangely effective rule of thumb is that the smaller the community is, the
friendlier it acts. IDs are only enabled in the bigger and most controversial
boards of the site, where people otherwise don't hesitate to abuse their
anonymity.

------
GuiA
Everyone's gotta pay the bills. If you're thrifty, 4-5 years at a company like
Google can get you .5-1 mil for your next venture (maybe more, maybe less,
depending on your bonuses & promotions, how well the stock performs, etc.)

I wouldn't expect any meaningful new product or anything to come out of this -
if I had to guess, he was probably hired as an IC. Don't expect him to become
some sort of new figurehead at Google for anonymity or identity on the
Internet.

Have fun Chris.

~~~
ForHackernews
> hired as an IC

Please expand uncommon abbreviations.

~~~
osullivj
Individual contributor, as opposed to team lead or manager.

~~~
tinalumfoil
Thought it stood for Independent Contractor at first. Didn't think Google
hired those.

------
sharkjacobs
I would be fascinated to know what kind of position he was hired for.

~~~
duskwuff
New maintainer for Memegen?

([http://www.buzzfeed.com/reyhan/inside-googles-internal-
meme-...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/reyhan/inside-googles-internal-meme-
generator))

------
pinewurst
Curious how he fits into the goals of "Googliness" for new hires.

------
rdl
Wow, congratulations!

------
ybrah
Everything moot does leaves a 4chan shitstorm in its wake.

------
tychuz
Who is moot?

~~~
roadnottaken
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Poole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Poole)

------
fredfoobar42
I'm really not sure how I feel about this. Moot created the biggest, most
toxic garbage fire of an internet community, refused to take management of it,
and walked away when it became too toxic for anyone to deal with. In a way,
he's a perfect new hire for Google, but Google usually doesn't leave quite so
much devastation in its wake.

~~~
JoshTriplett
While it might be incredibly toxic at times, it's also the source of quite a
lot of interesting Internet culture and movements, many positive works, and a
ton of creativity. It's a microcosm of the worst _and_ the best of what the
Internet can pull off.

Don't dismiss it out of hand as exclusively negative.

~~~
fredfoobar42
Time and time again, the hands-off moderation of anything on 4chan beyond
child pornography has had knock on effects in the real world. GamerGate began
life on 4chan, and is still making women's lives miserable. All you have to do
is ask Allison Rapp, their latest victim. <[http://kotaku.com/the-ugly-new-
front-in-the-neverending-vide...](http://kotaku.com/the-ugly-new-front-in-the-
neverending-video-game-cultur-1762942381>)

While moot did, eventually, push GamerGate discussion off 4chan, he took
forever to do so, and walked away from the site not long after. By not taking
a stance on harassment and abuse earlier on, however, he created conditions
for such a culture to flourish on 4chan.

Is there interesting and positive stuff on 4chan? Almost certainly. Would it
still exist had moot taken a stronger stance on dealing with toxic posters?
I'll go out on a limb and say yes.

~~~
DanBC
Wait, what makes you say GG started on 4chan? There's plenty of places that
are more pro GG than 4chan.

~~~
fredfoobar42
Because it did, when Zoe Quinn's ex-boyfriend posted on /v/ to get people to
start harassing her.

~~~
DanBC
Thanks. I should have just read the wikipedia article.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy)

> Quinn's former boyfriend, published the "Zoe Post", [...] The post was
> linked on 4chan,

~~~
13thLetter
Just FYI, reading the wikipedia article is a really bad idea. A variety of
fanatics, political obsessives and involved administrators have been squatting
on it for months; it's a dumpster fire.

