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4chan Founder “moot” to Speak at TED
- clistctrl 17y agoI was more excited to hear Bill Gates was going to speak.
- onewland 17y agoIn all fairness, as much as you may not be a Bill Gates fan, it's pretty difficult to suggest that he's as unimpressive as the founder of 4chan. All the 4chan guy did was make an unmoderated message board.
- vaksel 17y agohere is a question...was 4chan the first image board, or did it just use the main image board script?
- bugs 17y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan#Background http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan#Background
- DanBlake 17y agoBetter question- How does 4chan keep itself from getting raided for the endless amount of CP that gets posted there?
- ErrantX 17y agoBecause it's mostly a non-issue on 4Chan.
- jgrahamc 17y agoWhat's CP?
- rms 17y agoNFSW http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/CP http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/CP Also, CP stands for Christopher Poole. It is quite likely that Christopher Poole is a fake name, chosen becase of the CP meme.
- jgrahamc 17y agoThanks. I was being dense. I assumed it was Copyright Protection.
- pyre 17y agoI'm pretty sure it's a fake name. 4+ years ago I mailed something to him and the name he gave with the mailing address was completely different (no I don't still have the mailing address, I'm not that organized) and I've heard that same name bandied about elsewhere (at least the same first name). But who knows it could also be fake.
- aceofspades19 17y agoUmm 4chan is moderated thats why it doesn't get raided by the FBI, you obviously have never been there
- pyre 17y agoIt's unmoderated in the sense that the bare minimum amount of moderation happens. (to remove illegal content to avoid getting shut down/raided)
- andreyf 17y agoHe already did. Released misquotes into the audience while talking about malaria: http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_unplugged.html http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_unplugged.html
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- bugs 17y agoI don't really see any good from him speaking, at worst he will pull off a giant troll and his whole speech will be a flop, and at best he will be talking about 4chan's culture.
- randliu 17y agoHe's spoken before at a conference at Harvard, and at least had some things interesting to say. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E_bYRZT5-E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E_bYRZT5-E (part 1) Don't ask him how to make money though
- TeHCrAzY 17y agoIt's interesting, all up, the money making idea. Even though /b/ contains the best and worst of the net, the other boards are quite reasonable (as long a /b/ stays up to keep the trolls from wandering). Is the sites image so bad that advertisers can overlook such an opportunity for targeted ads? (ie. its unlikely anyone would be in the anime board if they weren't quite interested in anime)
- Perceval 17y agoI guess I'll be the first to speak up in defense of m♡♡tles speaking at TED. It's clear that he's relevant to the HN community, given that 4chan is a startup begun from his mom's basement when he was just 15 years old. Despite misinformation about 4chan being run for a loss, he does make money and can afford to run the site without ads from time to time. He took some available code (2chan's), which was initially very simple, and grew it into a profitable site that is ranked in the Top 1000 on Alexa and that has an outsized influence on internet culture. That's an extremely rare phenomenon, and one that most people here would ostensibly like to repeat. I'm sure that even if his TED talk features inside jokes it has the potential to be really interesting, and certainly doesn't warrant the prima facie dismissiveness from the other commenters here.
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- bugs 17y agoThe thing people don't really want to repeat is that he has essentially created the [I want to say Vegas] of the web, where everything is great in short bursts etc but if you end up staying you realize how scummy the place really is. This is why his site has a hard time gaining revenue even though being in the top 1000 on Alexa, no reputable business is going to advertise where porn and violence are the norm. If you are going to gain anything from what moot has done it is that the idea of anonymity is a very powerful thing.
- JCThoughtscream 17y agoExactly what can Moot offer, in terms of discourse? Moot's fame was very much a matter of happenstance and ungodly luck - the whims of the internet, rather than anything innately genius about his approach or handling. It'd be like asking a kid that's, by chance, made a paper airplane with an unusually long flight time about aerodynamics.
- scythe 17y agoConsidering the amount of failed *chans that showed up both before and after 4chan - world2ch, 5chan, etc, I wouldn't count Moot as merely lucky. At the very least, he kept the site sane by continuing to run it -- in contrast with, say, the constantly fluctuating staff at 7chan.
- Falaina 17y ago4chan survived out of his sheer stubbornness to run the site at a loss for a long period of time and refusing to sell it to some porn network (possibly on multiple occasions?) It's impressive he was willing to spend the past 6 years running; 4chan clearly means a lot to him, god knows why.
- alex_c 17y ago4chan clearly means a lot to him, god knows why Forgive me if I presume too much, but it sounds to me like you've never had a wildly successful project of your own.
- Falaina 17y agoI was just making light of the... dubious content that springs forth from 4chan. I do understand how he could be quite proud of the fact he created such an incredibly popular site.
- viraptor 17y agoThere's something in the 4chan's community. For some reason 4chan survives, even if admins decide that for a week the whole site will be pink text on pink background (or was it some other colour) and will have an annoying song playing in the background -- exactly with the intent of driving some people away. Maybe it just crossed the critical mass and luck or inconvenience doesn't matter anymore?
- kn0thing 17y agoI'm very excited about this. Chris Anderson asked for an intro to moot (who I only barely know through ROFLCon[1]) earlier this year; when he said it was to have him speak at TED, I was floored. The thought, "Chris Anderson reads 4chan?! Maybe even /b/?" crossed my mind only for a moment -- instead, it dawned on me just how obvious a speaker for a session on "provocation" he would be. I was impressed he'd be on the TED radar, frankly, which goes to show how ignorant I am. The theme of the 2010 TED is "What the World Needs Now" -- for all of the garbage on 4chan, it represents the 'cost' of the free and open exchange of ideas that is the Internet. I'm expecting a thoughtful talk from Chris. But even if he trolls TED, it'll still make for a great talk. And in a way, further underscore the importance of provocation (at least for some) in what the world needs now. [1] http://breadpig.com/blog/category/rofldna-project/ http://breadpig.com/blog/category/rofldna-project/
- vaksel 17y agoit's not really surprising that he is on their radar, 4chan is pretty much synonymous with the underbelly of the internet + they are a pretty big site by traffic alone(Top 750 website)
- c3o 17y agoI heard him speak at a media arts festival here in Vienna a few months ago. I'm pretty sure he won't be trolling TED or throwing around in-joke references: He actually seemed pretty sick of all the mindless repetition of memes (and how could he not be?). He's a smart and thoughtful guy, was very humble, self-deprecating and sarcastic, and had a bunch of interesting anecdotes to tell -- although it did appear that he fairly randomly stumbled into the situation and doesn't have many deep, original insights on online communities/social software/the meaning of life, the universe and everything. Then again, I believe he same may be said of Jimmy Wales, for example...