
4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager - artsandsci
https://www.wired.com/story/4chan-soul-of-the-internet
======
deft
How many of these anti-4chan articles are written by people that regularly use
it? I'm guessing zero. 4chan is an interesting site and has better discussion
from a broad userbase than reddit or here. Plenty of interesting projects were
born out of 4chan, particularly /g/ but the other boards have created valuable
things for humans in general, not just internet culture. The positives IMO
come from the whole "FREE SPEECH" attitude, that also leads to the negatives.
4chan's soul is in trolling, memes and productive creativity. They go hand in
hand.

Try using 4chan and ignore the crap you don't care about. It's exactly like
reddit, everyone says stay away from the defaults. In 4chan's case, stay away
from /b/, /v/ and /pol/ and you're unlikely to see anything graphic or
demeaning beyond general discussion boards...

Projects I know that were born on 4chan: tox.im - /g/ TurtleCoin - /biz/
NetRunner - /g/ Others mentioned in the article, notably project chanology.

Editing this comment just to say that my point wasn't that toxicity, racism
and sexism are okay to just ignore... my point was we already ignore that
everywhere else on the internet. Look at youtube or reddit comments. If you
can't see how it's the same you're just better at ignoring it on your platform
of choice. I'd say it's more concentrated on 4chan yes, and I've probably
gotten pretty good at filtering it out myself. But this problem is all over
the internet and writing a piece about how 4chan "needs to grow up" isn't much
of a revelation. The whole internet needs to.

~~~
aspaceman
> using 4chan and ignore the crap you don't care about.

Can you even imagine using 4chan as a woman or a black man? Like not only in
real life do you have to deal with people being racist as hell, but hey here's
this forum that's entirely shameless about it too.

You seem to believe that folks can just ignore being called the n-word day-in
and day-out as if it doesn't really affect them.

The only people who can go to 4chan and just ignore the toxic stuff are the
people who aren't affected by the toxic stuff.

~~~
jimmies
Although I am not black, I am Asian, and can be described by a word started
with C (/csg/ if you lurk /g/), and more accurately G. I would be offended if
someone calls me that in real life.

On 4chan though, I myself really don't get offended in any way. Someone
explained it this way: you're only supposed to be offended if someone calls
you a n* f* in a setting that not everyone is. On 4chan, everyone is already a
n* f* so it kinda levels the playing field.

I get it that others minority people might not share the same view.

~~~
aspaceman
> you're only supposed to be offended

Folks have the right to be offended whenever they want to be.

If you aren't offended, then that's your decision and you're free to make it.
But ultimately I still believe you should respect the opinions of those who
are offended. If they hate 4chan, I'm not going to argue with them about it.

There's a lot of folks in this thread claiming that if you're offended by
speech on 4chan, then it's really _you_ who has the problem and that's mainly
who I'm trying to address.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
People have a right to be offended and the offender has a right not to care. I
certainly don't endorse 4chan culture but it's different from what you think.

~~~
aspaceman
What is it that you think "I think" 4chan's culture is?

I am saying that 4chan is not a safe place if you are black or most
minorities. Period. I don't care what 4chan's culture is because it doesn't
matter for the sake of this point.

~~~
Anon1096
And what everyone else is saying is that you're wrong. Just like the article
writer who thinks they know everything about 4chan without going on it, you
presume a lot about the site that just isn't true. Calling names on 4chan
isn't really an insult. It's just the way everyone talks to each other. And
race or gender isn't really relevant, and you'll get called racial slurs no
matter your background.

------
Shank
> Yet this cannot last. At 15 years old, 4chan has reached adolescence. Up
> till now, trolls—children—have been in control. It’s not so funny anymore.
> After all, even the lost boys had to grow up.

Just because one can write that it cannot last doesn't make it so. Putting
4chan in terms of "human age" and development does little to quantify
anything. Facebook is 14 and Twitter is 12 and that doesn't say anything about
them. They all have their own problems, but if this age metaphor is to work,
then 4chan should be "more mature" than its younger siblings. It isn't.

4chan is also not going anywhere fast. Someone seems inclined to still pay for
the servers, and until that time stops, it's probably going to say well and
truly the same. That's just what you get when you have an anonymous
imageboard. But, even if something happened and 4chan shutdown, you'd still
have any number of chans that still exist as clones. It's trivial to find
them. You can close the pool, but there are infinite pools to close.

~~~
creaghpatr
The more facebook and twitter and youtube censor their users, the more gravity
will shift to 4chan, it's the law of conservation of speech on the internet.

~~~
SiempreViernes
Between 2003 and 2015, the worldwide internet penetration rose from 12% to
44%, that's 2.4 billion more internet users, but somehow there is a
"conservation law of speech"?

------
AJRF
> "The design remains proudly undesigned"

I've always thought 4chan was beautifully designed. Its hyperfunctional in a
way that wired.com designers will never know because they are too busy
injecting ads into every inch of available space.

~~~
bluthru
I wish the comments would nest, even if it's just one level like Stack
Exchange.

~~~
matheusmoreira
There are 4chan browser extensions which have this feature.

------
local_yokel
Summary: grouchy suburban dad who realizes he isn't cool anymore shakes fist
at rebellious neighborhood kids, shouting that they need to grow up.

Why is it that whenever a mainstream site like Wired pumps out an article
looking down their noses at some "problematic" online community, it's
immediately obvious that the author has never been part of said community and
instead bases their overly simplistic views on an hour of research.

~~~
0x00000000
Purely optimized for clicks and shares. Also, any amount of perceived approval
of something controversial will get a nuclear reaction from Twitter demanding
the author's job or going to the advertisers saying "look at this stuff that
they are okay with!"

~~~
mikec3010
>a nuclear reaction from Twitter

Ironic isn't it? Author can't express a particular view about a website that
became popular because it protects people from the consequences of expressing
unpopular views.

------
zhte415
> There isn’t darkness without the light, it seems. So it’s probably fair to
> say 4channers are, at least a little bit, right: Their haven is the soul of
> the internet, the deep source of its sights and sounds, for worse and,
> occasionally, for better.

I couldn't see much notable in the article, aside from a negative slew at the
start, and some 'the other side of the coin' in the above quote.

15 years is noteworthy, however, and I'm surprised so short, as I started
visiting it back in 2003/2004; it seemed about as busy then as today. 4chan
hasn't changed much from an external perspective. Traffic has probably been at
stable levels for years, while the price of traffic has fallen.

I quite enjoy it's existence. There is a great diversity between message
boards. Some are the reverse of b and pol highlighted in the article, as is
the case on Reddit. Anonymous can be good. a la Hacker News's freedom of
registration.

~~~
stats-then-now
>Traffic has probably been at stable levels for years, while the price of
traffic has fallen.

Absolutely not! Please take this the wrong way, but I don't see how an old
friend could have not noticed the __MASSIVE __increase in traffic (and the
problems it brought).

Here's some official 2005-2013 traffic statistics from the 10 years
anniversary panel I compiled just to prove you wrong:
[https://i.4cdn.org/s4s/1527869817275.png](https://i.4cdn.org/s4s/1527869817275.png)

Cheers.

~~~
zhte415
The stats - Incredible how anaecdotal observation and recall differs. Bias
too: Perhaps I'm not viewing the site as a whole and new boards, increased
linking, whatever, thanks for stats.

Old friend - Certainly. The fact the idean of anon is default (though
optional) means each post can be besed on it's on value / meritocrious as it
carries no internet points of the 'owner'. Anarchy, but the negative that term
often brings should not be carelessly and automatically applied.

~~~
stats-then-now
Yes, that's actually very interesting to me, since I've never heard that from
anyone before. Do you happen to have a small secluded place for a homeboard?
Are you /jp/ or something like that?

I've noticed over the years that the bigger a board grows (see /b/, /pol/,
/v/) the worst the quality and serious discussion gets, and the more
funposting there is.

Every year people complain that their boards are getting worse, part of it is
just those people growing older, but the other part is the community becoming
larger, different, and noticeably more mainstream.

------
no_one_ever
This is a really sensationalist article. I'm not going to ignore the parts of
4chan highlighted by the article, but there are some really good boards you
can visit where the level of discussion is far superior than what you would
find in most corners of today's popular forums. Personally I don't participate
in any conversations, but I'll read the threads on the boards I find
interesting.

If anything, 4chan is an authentic reflection of the internet's user base.
You'll find both gold and garbage depending on what you visit and frequent. It
is unfair to broadly paint the site as only containing the worst of human
nature. If you were to similarly depict other popular websites like Reddit in
the same fashion, you would get something just as horrifying.

------
m0ck
wow, this is an example of some horrible, horrible journalism.

I could tell after first two paragraphs, that the author did not spend more
than 15 minutes on the site itself and most of her "facts" come from lazily
googled trivia.

I spent more time, than I'd like to admit on this and similiar imageboards. I
still visit it semi-regulary (only fitness board nowadays), but this
description as place where only edgy teenagers go to bully other people is
plain wrong and misdirecting. Will you be judging Reddit next, solely by
/r/politics, or /r/The_Donald, which both are terrible communities? Because
that's what you did, with mentioning only /b/ and /pol/ as the core of 4chan.

My advice for the author: LURK MOAR :)

~~~
fareesh
So many of these "journalists" are just filing stories with barely any
research because there are no consequences. When you pick a topic like 4chan
and you are criticized, absolutely nothing will happen to you. In fact, all
you need to do is say "racists and misogynists are after me" and you will
become the next story. There will invariably some subset of clowns who say
hateful stuff on social media, and they will be held up as the norm.

The media has also turned up their "if you criticize our work it means you
hate a free press" sensitivity meter, so as such there will never be any
consequences for poor quality journalism unless the problem is fixed at the
editorial level. There is no incentive to do it though.

------
izzydata
As someone who has frequented 4chan for nearly 15 years I don't think you want
4chan to die for many reasons. If 4chan is gone then all of the time people
spend there will be spent somewhere else. Maybe the internet is too far gone
to be significantly impacted, but I'd rather not test it.

Most of 4chan boards aren't really that bad though.

~~~
chillingeffect
I've been there almost as long, and it's true most boards are boring. I like
the diy and music boards, for example.

But it seems you're "implying" that if we weren't there we'd be somewhere else
the same or worse. I suggest there are many better places we could be. What we
do there isn't a function of ourselves alone. We are a midpoint between
ourselves and our environment. I would much rather go the playground and kick
a soccer ball around or play basketball, but there isn't one around open after
dark :(

And I can't stand the egoic virtue-signaling/posturing on fb so I go to 4chan
to get a more down-to-earth conversation experience. If i melt down on there,
no one cares. My FB world is completely uptight and ready to ostracize on a
hair trigger. Of course 4chan is also full of people faking badassery, but
it's not attached to individual egos. That's what's amazing about anonymity
that moot could never articulate: it doesn't make much sense to lie, because
it doesn't really increase your standing because no one knows who you are! So
people are much more honest and forthright. yes, that's often ugly, but it's
better to know about than to fear it.

Now the part that anonymity _doesn 't_ solve is that although the individual
ego is dissolved, the way is paved for group egos to form. And as we've seen,
especially on /pol/, these collective identities have flourished.

~~~
izzydata
I completely agree about the anonymity. That is really the core of 4chan and
what I find appealing about it. Everything that is said there is for the sake
of the thing being said and not about building yourself up as a persona.

There needs to be other sites that don't have usernames in any way. Even if
you attempt to ignore it, it somehow is always relevant. Somewhere such as
Reddit in particular always comes down to being a popularity contest and it
will skew what people are willing to say in order to get the most likes.

------
mabynogy
/g is interesting especially /g/dpt (the daily programming thread). Today's
thread:
[http://boards.4chan.org/g/thread/66170997](http://boards.4chan.org/g/thread/66170997)

------
josefresco
_Indeed, nearly every evil of the internet begins, or picks up steam, on the
site. To invoke yet another metaphor: It’s a breeding ground. (The fact that
4chan has been called so many things suggests a feeble attempt to make sense
of chaos.) Many of the recruitment techniques of the so-called alt-right were
piloted there; many white nationalists started out as 4channers. It’s unclear
if or how one ages out of the site—but it is clear that it unleashes trolls on
the real world._

Sounds like a great place.

~~~
taneq
They're ignoring the fact that much of current internet culture also
originated there.

~~~
Brakenshire
Seems to be something people repeat for the 'anarchic creativity' narrative
rather than an actual truth.

~~~
SiempreViernes
I think knowyourmeme can attribute quite a few memes to 4chan, and the
traditional account is that both Anonymous and the alt-right was spawned
there, so they certainly did contribute to internet culture.

The question is really how many lolcatz do you need to balance out one
radicalized incel?

------
forgottenpass
_There was a time, a couple of decades ago, when trolls didn’t really exist
online_

To put this in context, Eternal September was in 93, and Slashdot was started
in 97. But apparently moot imported trolls from Japan in the early 2000s?...
or something? I didn't really bother trying to understand.

------
forgottenpass
When did new immigrants to the internet stop learning about the things we
long-considered to be emergent phenomena of social interaction on the
Internet? Eternal September eventually became known as a breaking point where
what "is" and what "ought" will never be the same again. It seemed like we
resigned to mapping/understanding the ways conversation breaks down so we
could practice good mental hygiene of recognizing it, and stopping ourselves
from accidentally getting sucked into it. Why did we loose the collective
wisdom of social systems at scale?

tl;dr: Who am I to blame for the fact WIRED of all places is writing hot takes
about social dynamics of the internet like a Dad that just got their first
smartphone?

------
Nadya
_> 4chan has never been a nice place. Most people don’t spend time there_

Imagine a place where people don't take things that seriously and things are
just weird enough that the inside jokes keeps all the outsiders out and
alienated. Everyone else is sitting around the virtual campfire telling jokes
and sharing stories. 4chans all reaching (and not-just-/b/-and-/pol/) bad rep
comes largely in thanks to people who _obviously don 't browse 4chan_ or have
only taken a look at /pol/ or /b/. They took a passing glance, maybe for a day
or two, saw nothing but inane bullshit, and (justifiably) moved on with their
lives. 4chan has a lot of shit, I don't deny that and I don't blame anyone for
not having the desire to wade knee deep in it. Although wading through only
the deep end of it skews perspectives heavily.

Notice how this article purposefully cherrypicks boards like /pol/, /h/, and
/y/ instead of the less egregious boards /g/ (technology), /o/ (automobiles),
/his/ (history), or /co/ (comics). One would leave with the idea that 4chan is
nothing but a place for hentai and alt-right hate groups. Even among itself
/b/ and /pol/ are disliked among the site. They're considered _containment
boards_ that prevent other boards being shit up. But one wouldn't understand
the concept of a "containment board" if one doesn't browse 4chan. In fact -
most articles about 4chan don't even use the term "containment board" because
the authors never lurk long enough to discover the term.

 _> There was a time, a couple of decades ago, when trolls didn’t really exist
online_

Are they talking about pre-Usenet days? I don't remember a time online when
trolls didn't really exist.

 _> And because each message board is limited to 10 pages of posts, most
messages get bumped off the server within a day, if not hours. It’s pretty
much unusable for the uninitiated._

This is by design. Hence "Lurk more." Imagine trying to jump into an hour old
conversation having heard only the past 10 seconds of it. Nothing you have to
say at that moment could have any relevance to the conversation because you
still don't know what the conversation is even about. Now imagine that
conversation has been going on for 15 years and you've only just showed up an
hour ago. Oh - it's also in a language you can only half understand and can't
speak yet. _Nothing_ you could say is important, you're missing any useful
information, can't identify greentext and copypasta from actual opinions and
information. The concept of lurking before contributing to a discussion is
seemingly lost in a post-Usennet, post-forum internet.

 _> And Gamergate, the smear campaign against female game developers?_

Audibly laughed. They're still sticking with that? Gamergate has, and you can
count yourself, has "harassed" far more males than females. Almost all
journalists - and almost all peddling bullshit. Saying someone is spewing
bullshit isn't harassment. Although I do love how Elon Musk became an alt-
right, anti-Semitic, GamerGator because he dared speak out against the media.

------
danmg
In related news Wired Magazine is 25 years old and doesn't understand 'kids
these days.'

------
matheusmoreira
>Not that you’d want to be there. The most popular boards on 4chan are
typically /pol/, a place for what they say is “politically incorrect” (read:
racism, misogyny, homophobia)

So this is what the article is about. /pol/ offended some journalist's
sensibilities. I bet they're laughing at him right now.

------
myf01d
4chan is the last and only bastion of free speech on the internet. I know most
here still think it's about trolling/racism/sharing shocking images, but I've
seen there the most interesting discussions that cannot be found anywhere
else. I agree that /pol/ is full retards, but there is also /his/, /g/, /sci/
and /mu/

