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 worldās miseries so that others could enjoy life. That kidās name? 4chan.
4chan is 99% deplorable garbage. I wonāt even go into /b/. Helllll no. But oddly enough, some of the internetās 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 Iāve 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 thatās where they donāt get banned for using the n-word.
it would be a lot less extreme than 4chan is
I donāt really think so, every online fora Iāve 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.
Iām often hearing that 4chan is āunmoderatedā or has āthe bare minimum of moderationā, which just doesnāt 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, itās likely there because itās allowed to be there. They arenāt struggling with moderation. The fact that itās 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 70ās, and āInternet Memeā from Godwin in the early 90ās, 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 āmemeā 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 Iām from memes were something youād only ever see on 4chan and people on Facebook and any other ānormalā social media (or people) had no idea of what the fuck even was a meme.
I rememeber because I was like āthis people are degenerates but itās 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 thoseā.
And to be fair memes nowdays are rarely as āobscureā as those old ones.