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 worldâs miseries so that others could enjoy life. That kidâs name? 4chan.
4chan is 99% deplorable garbage. I wonât even go into /b/. Helllll no. But oddly enough, some of the internetâs best memes come out of there.
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 Iâve 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 thatâs where they donât get banned for using the n-word.
it would be a lot less extreme than 4chan is
I donât really think so, every online fora Iâve 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.
Iâm often hearing that 4chan is âunmoderatedâ or has âthe bare minimum of moderationâ, which just doesnât 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, itâs likely there because itâs allowed to be there. They arenât struggling with moderation. The fact that itâs 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.
The original idea of a meme came from Dawkins in the 70âs, and âInternet Memeâ from Godwin in the early 90âs, 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 âmemeâ 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 Iâm from memes were something youâd only ever see on 4chan and people on Facebook and any other ânormalâ social media (or people) had no idea of what the fuck even was a meme.
I rememeber because I was like âthis people are degenerates but itâs 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 thoseâ.
And to be fair memes nowdays are rarely as âobscureâ as those old ones.