

4chan vs Scientology: really?  - knieveltech
http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-10/mf_chanology

======
dkarl
It's the opposite of Gandhi's nonviolent resistance. Instead of acting as a
moral foil, they act as a moral mirror. Both methods force to the surface
judgments that people have already made but have avoided acknowledging. When
people read about "a man slathered in Vaseline and covered in pubic hair and
toenail clippings storm[ing] in and... desecrating a place of worship" and
find themselves wondering which side they're on, they can't deny that they
have little respect for Scientology.

------
aarongough
Anonymous's video proclaiming their intent is truly epic. It's interesting to
note the lack of coherence and describable goals in cruise's video when
compared to the Anonymous video.

There's a Scientology church near where I live, and every time I see Anonymous
members outside it I make it a point to stop and tell them that I think
they're doing a good job...

I always take heart when I see people standing up against something they think
is wrong, regardless of their effectiveness.

~~~
netsp
I don't really understand what it is about Scientology that pisses people off
that much. You seem to be able to rally people against it more easily then you
can against skinheads.

What gives?

~~~
jonny_noog
I think one of the main things that pisses people off about Scientology as
opposed to skinheads (to use your example) is that no one really thinks that
skinheads and their associated organisations are legitimate despite any
efforts to make themselves seem so. No one is clamouring to give skinheads tax
exempt status as non-profit/religious outfits.

Scientology tries to maintain a veneer of legitimacy while in reality, being
pretty damn shady. By and large, I suspect they seem far more hypocritical to
Anonymous, et al than many other questionable fringe groups, such as
skinheads. If there's anything that really sets off activism on the Interwebs,
it seems to be hypocrisy.

Plus have you actually read about the beliefs and teachings they push while
demanding that people pay for the privilege of receiving them? Have you read
about the "Sea Org" and so on? Whacky stuff.

~~~
aarongough
Exactly. I get pissed off because they stand on the street and smile at you,
trying to hand you a leaflet, while others inside quietly work at helping
their fellow converts shut down contact with their family and friends, then
encourage them to pay their way to enlightenment.

I think Scientology is a cult, and I think that it's acceptance as a religion
by government gives it a sheen of legitimacy and makes it more accessible than
it ought to be.

~~~
netsp
Let me play devil's advocate.

People with new found faith often become alienated from their friends and
family outside this circle. Sometimes it is because the conversion process is
similar to rehabilitation and it is necessary to be removed from some of the
problematic context. Sometimes it is lack

Church fund-raising is something quite common. Many of the most benign
religious communities manage to raise significant portions of their devotees'
incomes. You might not agree with the ends of some of these religious groups.
But when I agree with their 'mission,' I usually don't see this as a bad
thing. We live in a time of plenty. I assume few Scientologists starve.

What is the actual difference between a cult and a religion? It certainly
isn't about the specifics of the beliefs. It isn't about size. If you want to
make 'they are a cult,' your argument you should probably define cult and
explain what is wrong with a cult. If it a specific practice or practices (cut
ties, raise money) you object too and think should result in lost legal
status, why not base your argument on that and drop the label.

What gives the government the right to decide what is a religion and what is
not anyway?

------
skolor
_the last of the epic trolls_

Really, wired? My experience with 4-chan has generally been that whatever you
say about/of/to them, they'll try their damn hardest to prove you wrong. Give
them enough time, and order will rise out of the chaos that is Anonymous.
Sure, it will eat itself, and descend back into the depths of madness
eventually, but something will rise back into its place.

I would bet, given another decade or two Anonymous, whether it be the 4-chan
brand or from other meeting place, will do something that tops even this. As
the Internet and networks in general are rising more towards the public eye,
the memembers of Anonymous, who are mostly young, technologically adept
individuals with questionable morals, will gain more and more relevance. Like
it or not, there is a draw to Anonymous, and where there is technological
interconnection it will exist and thrive.

~~~
unalone
I'd bet they top themselves within a year or two. The chans may have peaked in
size, but what that means is the people who are most interesting there are
going to be finding new ways to branch out to avoid newfags. I'd bet they
consolidate and end up with something even more intense than 4chan was back in
the glory days.

~~~
skolor
You seem to be far more versed in the ways of 4chan. I have spent a few hours
there a few times, long enough to understand the draw and that it wasn't for
me, and I have several friends who spend time on the various boards there.
Would you mind explaining a few things?

I've seen "chans" refer to several things, both the various boards (/b/, /g/,
/r/ and the like), and referring to individual people. Which way are you using
it, and why (as opposed to using it the other way)?

 _Peaked in size_ I understand that 4-chan servers tend to be very heavily
trafficked, to the point that many people have said "DOS attack on 4chan? Is
the internet on?" or something of similar meaning. Is this what you mean, or
does it have to do with some kind of critical mass relation between Anonymous
contributors and how much Original Content can be created/consumed (I would
assume there is a peak point for that, although I don't have the slightest
idea where that would be).

 _news ways to branch out_ I was under the impression that 4channers held a
generally negative feeling for any other boards, tending to call them
"imitators" and the like. What makes you think that a sufficiently interesting
person could change that, considering the anonymous nature of 4chan (thus
making it impossible for any person to actually back up how interesting they
were, historically).

 _Back in the glory days_ I see this often, although it seems to be more a
state of message boards in general than 4chan, although it does seem
particularly loudly voiced on 4chan. Would you mind elaborating what those
glory days were like, sense it certainly seems to me that some of the most
impressive things to come out of 4chan have happened recently (Chanology, the
Times poll rigging, and the like).

Sorry if I read too much into what you said. I've wanted to ask someone about
their 4chan experiences for a while, but none of my friends want to admit to
much, so I was hoping the semi-anonymity of HN would help a little.

~~~
pyre
> _I've seen "chans" refer to several things, both the various boards (/b/,
> /g/, /r/ and the like), and referring to individual people. Which way are
> you using it, and why (as opposed to using it the other way)?_

'chans' refers to imageboard sites in general. 4chan arose out of a
'need/interest' in creating an English-language version of 2channel (2ch.net)
from m00t who was a 'goon' from the SomethingAwful forums.

It was originally 4chan.net until the domain was 'hijacked' by a hosting
service, so then it became 4chan.org. Since then there have been multiple
boards spawned from 4chan (since the image board software open source, though
4chan doesn't release their internal modifications to it to my knowledge):
iichan.net 7chan.org 420chan.org etc. These are collectively referred to as
the 'chans' much in the way that Unix-like operating systems are referred to
as '* nixes' (edit: sorry only way to avoid turning it into italics). If you
want to have a more comprehensive listing look to <http://shii.org/2ch>

> _Peaked in size I understand that 4-chan servers tend to be very heavily
> trafficked, to the point that many people have said "DOS attack on 4chan? Is
> the internet on?" or something of similar meaning. Is this what you mean, or
> does it have to do with some kind of critical mass relation between
> Anonymous contributors and how much Original Content can be created/consumed
> (I would assume there is a peak point for that, although I don't have the
> slightest idea where that would be)._

4chan can be and _is_ DDoS'd. The traffic to the site is MASSIVE (they've had
to upgrade hosting several times and at least a couple of years ago or so they
were constantly maxing out a 100Mbps connection), but they are occasionally
taken down. Note that there is a significant amount of spam to the boards with
links to malware or other sites trying to promote themselves (or just spam
trying to 'flame' the 'community').

A number of DDoS attacks were initiated by way of uploading an 'image' that
was just a javascript file with the extension changed. The text of the post
then instructs the user to save it to '4chan.js' and double-click on it.
Unfortunately there are a lot morons that do this and (at least the site
admins claim) that this infects their computer somehow (I suppose the browser;
most likely IE and Windows users) making them a 'zombie' in a 4chan-directed
attack. The admins then need to try and post information on how users can
remove this stuff from their computer. This is sort of ingenious if you think
about it... The best way to DDOS 4chan is to infect all of its users with
something that increases their normal traffic to the site 10 fold or more.

> _Back in the glory days I see this often, although it seems to be more a
> state of message boards in general than 4chan, although it does seem
> particularly loudly voiced on 4chan. Would you mind elaborating what those
> glory days were like, sense it certainly seems to me that some of the most
> impressive things to come out of 4chan have happened recently (Chanology,
> the Times poll rigging, and the like)._

This is just people being nostalgic to the past. There are people that claim
that site was 'never good' and people that claim all of the 'newfags' are 'the
cancer that is killing 4chan.' (At one point 7chan.org was hijacked to
redirect cancer.org) 'Anonymous' is such a hodgepodge of differing opinion
that you really can't get a single unifying view-point on anything. There are
people that go on 'raids' to hijack people's emails and whatnot... and there
are other 'Anons' that are referred to as 'white knights' that try and warn
people that have been targeted. Sometimes 'glory days' posts are nothing more
than trolls trolling other trolls too. You really can't take too much on the
site seriously.

~~~
unalone
_This is just people being nostalgic to the past. There are people that claim
that site was 'never good' and people that claim all of the 'newfags' are 'the
cancer that is killing 4chan.'_

I was referring to the fact that once upon a time 4chan wasn't about the
memespawning and repetition. The memes were just a part of the larger
community that was /b/.

What I find funny is that you can see 4chan's community spreading to other
sites. Reddit is now fully infested with meme generation, and it's just
started to have the same set of people artificially creating memes and getting
scolded by long-time users. I'm curious to see how Reddit survives,
considering it both has user-based content moderation and subreddits to stave
off the so-called cancer.

Now, of course, Hacker News has recently made the tip into memeage, and I'd
suspect within a year we see a meme or two that's become a big part of the
site. It's taken a surprisingly long time to tip, but it's tipped.

~~~
Radix
Which memes do you recognize as appearing on HN? The only one I can think of
is Erlang references. I like the idea of labeling poor arguments against pg's
disagreement hierarchy would make a useful meme, though I'm probably wrong and
can't see it.

e.g. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=829337>

~~~
unalone
Erlang was more of an inside joke. I'm referring more to the Kanye jokes I've
seen here, and similar mainstream memes being quoted within the month or so
since I started using HN again.

Used to be people memeing like that would be downvoted instantly. Now we've
grown to the point where meme recognition is more of a factor than Hacker News
guidelines. It's a very, very, very slow fall, but it's a fall.

~~~
joeyo
Part of it is that memes transmit so rapidly now to a pretty large percentage
of internet users thanks to Twitter, Facebook and friends. All the old ways to
transmit memes (irc, SA, chans, ytmnd, etc) are still active too, but the lag
time between meme creation and meme saturation is way smaller than it used to
be. So people are naturally becoming accustomed to seeing them in more venues.

It's not like memes are unique to the internet (see: _Sometimes the Dragon
Wins_ , for example) but their speed of infection and increasingly large reach
is quite astounding.

~~~
unalone
I've never heard of Sometimes the Dragon, actually. And it's not about meme
transmission: They've always been fast. The thing is, memes reflect a
community's insider aspect. If you see a meme and allow it, you're allowing
that self-congratulatory "We're on the Internet and know what the Internet
thinks" aspect in. I mean, memes convey no useful information; they derail
threads; very rarely is a meme used alongside relevant information. So on a
site that uses upvoting/downvoting, as is all the rage here, a meme posting
gets upvoted by all the people who kneejerk upvote memes, and downvoted by all
the people who think that the community is worth more than a meme posting.
(You can get that pretty clearly in this case, since memes usually aren't
funny or clever beyond being repetitive, so don't get upvotes by non-
kneejerkers.)

So when I joined Hacker News, a year and a half ago, memes weren't posted.
Ever. It was antithetical to the idea of Hacker News. This was a place where
serious-minded people talked about a very particular subset of information,
almost all coding/business-related. When I joined, this was still almost
entirely the case. Thing is, I joined at the same time that a lot of Redditors
were also jumping ship, and we left for the same reasons, and we came to a
community that was not what we wanted. Back when Reddit started, it was a geek
haven, too, but geek havens are boring to nongeeks. What made Reddit so cool
was when it became a center for interesting, unique links; problem was, when
it did that it became nongeek, and so lots of people that weren't into the
whole programming scene joined, and after a while the people that joined
weren't interested in the community. So kind of like how 4chan got big when
people heard it had awesome stuff, then got overloaded with memes, Reddit went
through the same trend, and as it did, Hacker News went through the first
major chance, which is that its community started being shared not just with
coders but with people who just wanted big and detailed conversations. People
like me, in other words.

There're a set of stories that don't feel oldschool Hacker Newsy. This is one
of them. It's an _interesting_ story, but it has nothing to do with hackers.
And as much as I care about the community, I voted it up, because I and some
users like me have an ulterior motive. I don't program, so I benefit when the
top stories are dramatic ones and ones about _social_ things rather than about
programs and companies. I don't want Hacker News, I want old Reddit, and so
that's how I attempt to shape the community. I still like conversation and
interest, but I'm focused on a noncoding environment, ignore the programming
stuff.

Still following me? Sweet, because I'm not the only sort of person who found
Hacker News. We also saw a slew of wantrepreneurs and karma hounds. (To be
fair, I'm also a little of each.) We had a ton of people join this community
to promote their startup/get into YCombinator, and a few people who joined to
gain karma points and "win", because any site that assigns a score to things
works like that. Now, on Hacker News things aren't nearly as bad as they are
now on Reddit, and HN is declining much more slowly, but what it means is the
community's become bombarded with basically every small announcement you can
imagine (remember when Facebook released usernames?) from the people who want
points, and a ton of self-serving spam from everybody who owns a blog or a web
site and wants attention. This further dilutes the site focus, especially when
the various types of diluters work in tandem—the people, for instance, who
will submit any story featuring/written by/commented on by a YCombinator
graduate, excusing themselves with the "YCombinator news is hacker news" line
that pretty much always works. So the original community, which is composed of
sharp clever entrepreneurs, is slowly growing outnumbered on two fronts, both
the non-coders and the people who want HN worsened for selfish reasons.

This isn't anything new. Last year, for instance, I had a fun thread where one
guy made 20 throwaway accounts during an argument with me, upvoting himself
and downvoting me to oblivion, all to promote a blog post. There've been
several waves of newbies to Hacker News, and usually they either leave or they
get incorporated with little damage. But Hacker News is becoming more and more
well-known (fun story: one of the thirteen-year-old kids at the summer camp I
worked at read Hacker News in school when he was bored), and with each
successive wave we're failing to maintain that core focus. Or rather: We lost
the core focus a long time ago, so that programming is only the central aspect
of the site as frequently as blog drama or tech gossip is, and now the
secondary focuses—good conversation and relevant discussion—are similarly
slowly caving away. More and more people are downvoting based on disagreement,
which is where it starts. In the month since I started posting again on HN,
I've noticed that a lot of my posts are getting pummeled down in the first few
minutes after I post them, then slowly voted back up. Other users and I have
had discussions about that here. It's a sign that people are treating these
conversations as games, where getting more upvotes means you're "winning"
right fight. That means the door is open for more sensationalist postings,
since those gain traction faster particularly when downvoting submissions
isn't allowed. When you have 'turndead' on, you'll see it's not that
surprising for five of the top thirty posts to be dead posts that moderators
killed.

To make matters worse, Paul has shown quite a bit of apathy regarding this
site. He sees it as a static community where no new features means no new
change in community sentiment, and he's mistaken. I've seen a lot of
complaints in the last week alone about broken features, moderator abuse,
etc., complaints reaching almost the degree they were at back when forums had
almost seen their intellectual heyday. In fact, the situation's very
analogous. Social news is hitting the mainstream, and at the same time it's
hitting the limits of what it's able to handle without breaking down. The
Internet is moving more and more towards the new Twitter style of navigation,
where each person is a single voice capable of choosing their own news, and
the tech elite are moving towards that, be it Twitter, Tumblr, FriendFeed, or
Facebook. There, you have _all_ the power, no moderation required. Here, a
site can last maybe twice as long as a forum, but it collapses all the same. I
don't know if Paul's thought about this or cares much about it, but Hacker
News is not invulnerable. It's past its prime by now, its most passionate
users are growing dissatisfied, and it's not capable of reacting quickly
enough to save itself from all the external troubles that are plaguing it more
and more.

Which brings us back to memes. Memes are a sign of the end. They're what
happens when a web site both acknowledges an external Internet and so loses
its own unique voice, and begins generating its own inside jokes as a form of
compensation. We're there. Erlang was the big warning sign, but we're at the
point now where people have begun using Internet jokes for quick upvotes. And
it's not a huge "this is the end of the HN" thing. It's slow, and subtle, and
people don't mind much that it's happening, don't mind that some smart people
are leaving or that the occasional joke's slipping in. But it certainly _is_
happening, like it's happened to every site I've used save two: SomethingAwful
and Metafilter, whose moderators work hard as the dickens to make sure the
sites maintain their focus. On Hacker News, the moderators aren't fast enough
or vicious enough to prevent things. What its method of quietly "killing"
posts doesn't understand is that banning users wasn't just to stop them from
arriving. It was to warn other users, very blatantly, that some shit was good
and other shit was shit. Of course, SA and Metafilter also charge for
admission, which goes a long way toward preserving community.

Long story short: Sites can be studied by how they treat memes. Social news is
theoretically a way to prevent corruption, but it buckles under too much
weight, particularly now that the people that should be defending networks now
have an opt-out system they can use to avoid the hassles altogether. So now,
instead of downvoting fiercely and giving the community a focus, they either
join in or don't put up much of a fight and my mom got scared and said you're
movin' with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air. I whistled for a cab and when it
came near the license plate said "Fresh", and it had dice in the mirror. If
anything I could say that this cab was rare but I thought "Man, forget it yo
homes to Bel-Air."

~~~
joeyo
I may respond to more aspects of your comment later, but I wanted to make a
few quick points.

    
    
      > They've always been fast. 
    

Yes, and now, I'd argue, they are even faster. Unfortunately, I am not aware
of any good studies about meme transmission rate-- it's the sort of thing that
is difficult to measure without affecting the meme in the process of
measuring. Data from a botnet would be ideal.

    
    
      > The thing is, memes reflect a community's insider aspect. If you
      > see a meme and allow it, you're allowing that self-congratulatory
      > "We're on the Internet and know what the Internet thinks" 
    

This is of course true. But don't forget that much social behavior is about
fitting-in better with ones peers. It's a signal that says "I belong here" or
"We are a part of the same tribe". Again, not unique to the internet at all.
It's just much faster lately.

    
    
      > usually aren't funny or clever beyond being repetitive, so don't
      > get upvotes by non-kneejerkers.
    

I don't claim to have a complete theory of humor, but a big part of what makes
something funny is repetition coupled with subtle changes in the pattern. Many
memes, especially of the ytmnd or 4chan variety, tap into this to great
effect. I can think of more than a couple which I thought were uninteresting
in their original presentation that became outstanding after several
iterations.

Also, note how many memes use self-reference and absurdity. This is the
essence of post-modernism. Again, this is nothing new, but memes certainly
allow exposure of these themes to a very broad audience.

Finally, with respect to your assertion that "very rarely is a meme used
alongside relevant information," I note that your own post contradicts this.

~~~
unalone
_This is of course true. But don't forget that much social behavior is about
fitting-in better with ones peers. It's a signal that says "I belong here" or
"We are a part of the same tribe". Again, not unique to the internet at all.
It's just much faster lately._

Oh, absolutely! It's the same reason why music scenes fall apart and various
cities rise and fall as the center of activity. Once something gets known past
a point, it gets diluted. The Internet's just the latest thing to stop being
cool when people get more involved.

 _I don't claim to have a complete theory of humor, but a big part of what
makes something funny is repetition coupled with subtle changes in the
pattern. Many memes, especially of the ytmnd or 4chan variety, tap into this
to great effect. I can think of more than a couple which I thought were
uninteresting in their original presentation that became outstanding after
several iterations._

Definitely. I love memes. But they've got the same 99:1 ratio of shit:clever
as anything else. The problem with them on a social news site in particular is
that because they're such an everybody-knows-us safety net, once they gain
traction they drown out other things, and they work with both dumb and clever
people. Compare that to actual discussions, where the good tends to rise to
the top since the bad is either easily identified or _can_ be identified.

 _Also, note how many memes use self-reference and absurdity. This is the
essence of post-modernism. Again, this is nothing new, but memes certainly
allow exposure of these themes to a very broad audience._

Agreed again. Problem again is that they don't coexist well with other
elements of conversation. (I have the same problem with people who quote memes
in real life. Very unappealing, that.)

 _Finally, with respect to your assertion that "very rarely is a meme used
alongside relevant information," I note that your own post contradicts this._

I saw an opening and had to go for it. Didn't want to be giving memes a bad
name. ;-)

~~~
joeyo
It sounds you we're pretty much in agreement and you just find memes annoying
in some contexts. No argument there. I wouldn't look for them to go away
anytime soon, though. If anything I'd expect things to get considerably
"worse" in terms of some especially prevalent memes becoming further embedded
in culture. It doesn't look like lolcats are showing any signs of slowing
down, for example.

------
JCThoughtscream
It should be noted that the 4chan macroculture's rather divided as to whether
or not Anonymous as protestors should really be considered Anonymous as
representative of the *chan culture as a whole. 4chan's founder, Moot, has
expressed a rather large level of disdain for the protest movement.

~~~
ivanstojic
Even suggesting that Anonymous by and large takes any interest in what Moot
thinks shows just how misinformed you are. There's more to a spear than just
it's point.

~~~
JCThoughtscream
Suggesting that a segment of Anonymous /doesn't/ treat him as a figurehead is
possibly equally misinformed.

Actually, the only informed statement to make about Anonymous is that there
isn't such thing as a capital-letter Anonymous. Considering them the funhouse-
mirror version of Iain M. Banks's Culture is closer to the truth than
otherwise.

~~~
jerf
I get a Stand-Alone Complex feel out of them, only with less mystery as to the
source of the memes. That concept is closest to capturing the way highly
ordered things happen far out of proportion to any individual plan.

(I highly recommend Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. It is one of the
best near-future prediction shows I have ever seen, if not the best.)

------
kingkawn
this link sent me on a 2-hour bender. thank you.

~~~
knieveltech
If it only took two hours, it wasn't a bender.

