19 ms·

Chris Poole

441 points by doppp 11y ago

mhurron 11y ago
Ya, but it's all moot.
rdl 11y ago
When I read the title I thought it was about moot joining USV as an EIR or partner.
- austenallred 11y ago
  I had the same thought. I'm a little disappointed this isn't the case, actually.
  - fluxquanta 11y ago
    The article mentions sitting down for lunch last week...business meeting?
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - teacup50 11y ago
    Ugh. The last thing a smart, creative young person with a soul needs is to be sucked into the VC empty-air universe.
    - argonaut 11y ago
      I'm not criticizing Chris Poole at all, but if your value metric is doing "good in this world," I'm pretty sure Union Square Ventures has brought about more good in this world than 4chan has.
      - austenallred 11y ago
        Something tells me parent has a skewed understanding of what (good) VCs do.
      - LLWM 11y ago
        I think you have a twisted, corporate definition of "good".
- biot 11y ago
  Up to the very end I thought it might turn out to be a eulogy, especially given that the title was just "Chris Poole" and not "Chris Poole: Life After 4chan" or something similar.
fein 11y ago
Huge respect for Chris, and I'm very happy he's feeling that sense of relief. I took a shot at moderating a few smaller subreddits, and managed to find myself hating every moment spent doing it. It sure makes the majority of internet look like selfish ingrates, even though it's usually just a vocal minority. I just stay away from Reddit now for the most part; primarily due to seeing the kind of place you get when the barrier for entry is non existent.
- janny_throwaway 11y ago
  >primarily due to seeing the kind of place you get when the barrier for entry is non existent. you think reddit's bad, try 4chan! I was 4chan "janitor" (lesser-mod) for 18 months or so and I agree, these sorts of positions really twist your perception of the community you're moderating. When you're buried in reports -- and these are 4chan reports, which means not just spam, but gore, cp, raids, etc. -- it becomes all too easy to dole out harsh penalties to people who may have just made an honest mistake. I essentially stopped browsing 4chan for fun; I saw it only through the lens of the janitor interface. Chris, to his credit, frequently expressed his gratitude to the volunteer staff for doing what he knew was a thankless, soul-crushing job. He wondered aloud why we didn't go volunteer our time at a puppy shelter or something instead. I'm sure he asked himself that question too. I'm no longer in that position; I outed myself as a janitor and was immediately terminated. I've come to the conclusion that I'm not really suited for these sorts of roles. Having access to privileged information and special powers makes me uncomfortable. The good news is that I've recently returned to 4chan as a regular, anonymous user, and I'm really enjoying it. I hope Chris experiences something similar. He deserves it.
  - castratikron 11y ago
    Reminds me of the Mark Twain story "Two Ways of Seeing a River". You ought to check it out.
    - janny_throwaway 11y ago
      Lovely. Reminds me of this quote from Lorraine Daston: The marvel that stopped us in our tracks—an aurora borealis, cognate words in languages separated by continents and centuries, the peacock’s tail—becomes only an apparent marvel once explained. Aesthetic appreciation may linger…but composure has returned. We are delighted but no longer discombobulated; what was once an earthquake of the soul is subdued into an agreeable frisson.… The more we know, the less we wonder. I feel this personally when learning a new piece of music. All the gestalt beauty drains out as the song is reduced to a mountain to be conquered rather than a landscape to be appreciated. By the time I've memorized all the notes, a grim irony sets in: when I listen to a recording of the piece, I am no longer capable of hearing what I initially set out to replicate.
randall 11y ago
mirror?
- onewaystreet 11y ago
  The site's not down it's just slow.
  - syncsynchalt 11y ago
    It's throwing an immediate db connection error currently.
- jhardcastle 11y ago
  http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Fb0CBW295KsJ:avc.com/2015/09/chris-poole/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Fb0CBW2...
542458 11y ago
I don't blame Chris for selling in the slightest and I'm happy that he's been able to let go, but I kind of wish he had found somebody a little more likeminded to take over the place. Chris has always been an excellent citizen of his own community, and always seemed to really "get" what made a lot of the community work. Other than one incident at the end of his tenure, "m00t" was always very well-loved (for somebody on a site that hates everything), and understood how to shape vibrant communities with a fairly light hand. Hiroyuki Nishimura's past doesn't really suggest the same sort of community-mindedness. Maybe with 4chan's current size that sort of involvement is irrelevant, but I hope it won't negatively affect the site.
- scandinavian 11y ago
  Probably not easy finding a buyer at all, so I don't know if he had the option to be picky to that degree.
- monaway 11y ago
  >Hiroyuki Nishimura's past doesn't really suggest the same sort of community-mindedness. That's putting it lightly. http://www.anonymous-japan.org/fake2ch/ http://www.anonymous-japan.org/fake2ch/ Japanese netizens absolutely loathe him on a level that makes westerners' mixed feelings toward moot seem glowing in comparison. https://imgur.com/a/o8ruh https://imgur.com/a/o8ruh Here's what the current lead developer of 2ch (@CodeMonkeyZ) thinks Hiroyuki's plans for 4chan are: http://pastebin.com/8bfsk6jP http://pastebin.com/8bfsk6jP
  - pervycreeper 11y ago
    To be fair, most of the major internet companies intend to monetize your data. This doesn't sound much worse, even if these allegations are true.
    - nyolfen 11y ago
      running a deep state culture-sculpting psyop in addition to monetizing user info is a little bit more than generic ad profiling
Dragonai 11y ago
I think it's pretty safe to say that no one's really been through an experience remotely similar to Chris's. There's no community like 4chan, with respect to both its scale and its pervasiveness in both internet and real-life culture. Being at the heart of such a community through its high and low moments is an enormous load to bear, and Chris shouldered that responsibility for 12 years without buckling. Huge congrats to him and I wish him the best.
- dang 11y ago
  This is a perceptive point. Chris' achievement is deeply impressive in far from obvious ways. The more one learns about it, the more impressive it gets. It's pleasing to see a post honoring him do so well here. Good luck, Chris!
- hkmurakami 11y ago
  2chan and Hiroyuki?
- WallWextra 11y ago
  And he was a kid.
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  Agreed - I don't think of him as someone who's super-expert on the internet so much as super-expert in people, having monitored such a diverse and complex community on 4chan for so long.
cromulent 11y ago
A lovely article from an unexpected source. This is another nice one about Poole: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/4chans-overlord-christopher-poole-reveals-why-he-walked-away-20150313?page=2 http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/4chans-overlord...
vernie 11y ago
I'm always expecting articles about multimedia or video compression from that domain, and I'm always let down.
tibbon 11y ago
I'm really glad Chris has found a way out of 4Chan, so he can pursue other awesome things. I've only hung out with him a handful of times, but always found him to be a pretty inspiring and funny. On to new things!
angersock 11y ago
Good points, but a minor pet peeve: It's moot, not Chris. Maybe Chris Poole, but again, probably moot. Has been moot. Always will be moot. Are you friends with him? Do you have lunch with him? Do you work with him? In all odds, no. It's really quite annoying seeing people refer to people by the first names like they actually are familiar with them. Were you a fan of Steve? Ever go on walks with Zuck? Seriously, it's so fucking phony--especially when the person in question already has a name they're well-known by in their community.
- fwn 11y ago
  I bet that's something nobody on 4chan ever wasted a single thought on.
  - Koahku 11y ago
    Actually someone did >>Do you prefer Chris, Christopher, moot, mootykins, or some other nickname. (In public obviously). >Chris IRL, moot online. https://archive.moe/q/thread/176519/#177568 https://archive.moe/q/thread/176519/#177568 (Warning, may be very heavy to load.)
- userbinator 11y ago
  Calling him Chris and not moot helps put into perspective the fact that he's a human with his own identity and life, and not just someone posting with an online pseudonym. In summary, I think that's a moot point.
- dang 11y ago
  We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10267960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10267960 and marked it off-topic.
caractacus 11y ago
I've often linked Chris Poole's approach to this with Matt Haughey at Metafilter. I can remember being amazed at how well mathowie moderated metafilter with a remarkably light touch and yet still set the tne of the site. Moot was less keeping the users in line than keeping the rest of the world out but their ability to not interfere at times when I think most of us would want to say or do something is an incredible skill.
joshu 11y ago
Not surprising. Community creators end up hating their communities. This is one of the reasons I did not put comments in Delicious.
- TheCowboy 11y ago
  Did you end up hating Delicious? Any thoughts on its current state?
  - joshu 11y ago
    The lack of conversation didn't allow it to become a community. I still miss it. I don't really use the current one, but have made a few attempts to reach out to the current owners to help out.
- gozo 11y ago
  I think "real" communities work, were people have common interests, self-organizations, transparency etc. A lot of communities don't work because there nothing at stake. I think you could randomly ban 25% of HN and it would, excluding any eventual outrage, be largely the same.
  - joshu 11y ago
    I mean online communities?
- prawn 11y ago
  In my experience (10+ years running a forum), it's more love-hate. There are the ridiculous trolls and idiots being a magnet for legal threats, but there are also those regulars who contribute sensibly and really care about their participation.
stevebmark 11y ago
Is this article just saying "running an internet community is hard?" Pat on the back to someone who created the one of the most actively harassing communities online? TL;DR I knew moot?
- ljk 11y ago
  Eh not saying 4chan is the perfect community, but many online communities are just as, if not more, "actively harassing". There are other sections outside of /b/
codezero 11y ago
I have a lot of respect for Chris for all his dedication. I remember being a bit gobsmacked when I sent in a few bug reports for DrawQuest when it was launched, and in the middle of the night I got an email back from Chris thanking me for the bug reports. I continued to send in bugs, and he continued to reply to my emails – pretty amazing dedication. When I initially emailed in, I didn't even realize DrawQuest was one of his creations.
resonanttoe 11y ago
I don't disagree with any of the assertions in the... article(?). But whats the point of this and why does it need attention? Communities feel ownership. Owners have conflicting responsibilities. The bigger the community the bigger Points 1 & 2 are. All true, but relevance to anything of anything? Very strange posting.
- fredwilson 11y ago
  my blog is my public diary. i write it for myself for the most part. if people choose to read it, that's their choice.
ousta 11y ago
to me it is as if the internet as an invention culminated with 4chan. it is indeed a big moment to see the most humble genius - and probably the one big who never made big money out of his visions - of this internet bubble handover to someone much more like what we could expect of an owner of a crazy board. 4chan is for me a fantastic website, laboratory and show on what mankind can bring to us. It led me to be depressive far too many times, led me to mistrusts humans and sometimes try to trust again, led me to think that any other media was boring, any other activity was second to it. I don't buy the stuff people adoring steve jobs or mark zuckerberg buy. those tech marketers who selling themselves as icons, stars and some idealistic values of what america is. Rather than that I buy an idea of the internet that is encompassed in the character of Chris Poole, an humble guy who created something far much bigger than him and got shit happening to him as his baby demon was out of control. This guy is like the inventor of tetris. a forgotten genius that will never earn anything out of his invention but will still make more smiles on faces than any google or facebook.
greggman 11y ago
Chris did a great job. Unrelated though, it will be interesting to see how the new owner handles 4chan. 2ch is almost entire run but pron ads and ads for very scammy looking companies.
- ljk 11y ago
  Especially for people with 4chan pass, hope what happened to 2ch users won't happen to them - http://www.japancrush.com/2013/stories/huge-leak-of-2ch-users-personal-information-shocks-netizens.html http://www.japancrush.com/2013/stories/huge-leak-of-2ch-user...
  - Koahku 11y ago
    Right now the pass payments are processed by Stripe so I doubt the same could happen.
tednash 11y ago
Agreed, huge respect for Chris. Having been at the helm of a (nowhere near as big) social->turned anti social network I can relate to elements of the complexity around running 4Chan. Excited to see what's next.
pervycreeper 11y ago
>And he’s come out the other side with his soul and his spirit intact. I have trouble believing this one. Poole has stated that the controversies 4chan was involved in in September had a big negative personal impact, principally dealing with legal threats from celebrities who had their photos leaked on the site. Two other events, which he conspicuously hasn't commented on would have unquestionably left scars on his ego and soul: the 8chan exoduses and 'cuckgate'. I would speculate that these had a far greater negative personal impact on the poor guy than any of the others. Some of the best original content creators and experienced posters migrated to 8ch, taking the mantle from 4chan as the authentic core of internet culture. It's evident that at least a couple of years ago, moot took some pride in 4chan's leading place in contemporary culture, so to lose the one single point of pride associated with the site must have been a big blow. In his farewell livestream, he responded to repeated questions about 8chan by talking about just about every other 'chan'-style site on the internet, making the omission very obvious, and indicating it was something he took personally. Second is the situation with one of his friends with whom he was very clearly in unrequited love being revealed and mocked by his own board, giving rise to the current ubiquity of the 'cuck' meme across the internet (and even spreading into mainstream American politics). I know if I had been in his place, this second event would have been quite devastating not only for destroying my hopes and illusions of love and connection with this girl (she even joined in the mockery in a way), but also for having it be that basis of my ignominious fall from beloved benevolent dictator to a hated object of mockery and derision across the entire internet. When you take these last two events into consideration, I don't think anyone could blame him for his decision to quit. Hope he has a much better time in his future endeavors.
- tomatohs 11y ago
  Your comment is entirely speculative pessimism. Please leave the trolling to 4chan.
  - pervycreeper 11y ago
    Out of consideration for all parties involved I only included enough detail to give a big picture sense of what those events entailed, but rest assured that they were pretty well documented at the time. Take home message is that the users got very personal at the end of moot's tenure.
lawnchair_larry 11y ago
Well that isn't a very useful title.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
huskyr 11y ago
> There aren’t many who understand the Internet like Chris. > (...) I am talking about the social architecture of > the Internet. I think i'm not the only one interested in how Chris understands the internet. Maybe he should write a book.
- donkeyd 11y ago
  It would probably be the only book in existence to correctly explain what 'Anonymous' is. I'd read it.
  - wingerlang 11y ago
    Are there other books out now? Why do they fail at explaining it? I doubt that Poole is the only one in the world that really understands what 'Anonymous' is.
- bru 11y ago
  His Ted talk (https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for_anonymity_online https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_fo...) is very interesting.
LulzSect 11y ago
Thank you Moot.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  >I was pleased when I learned that his drawing-related site had to be shut down. He didn't deserve to have one. This is possibly the most hateful thing I've seen on HackerNews. Surely there were other approaches you could have taken. Surely there are other sites that have been attacked by 4chan's users and come out the other side.
ionwake 11y ago
Space cowboy
ryan-allen 11y ago
I absolutely adored the Canvas app that he made. I don't know why it went under, but I found it much more approachable than Reddit, as you could modify people's creations along with making your own. I had to block it for myself at work because I couldn't stop using it. Ah, the stickers! I miss it!
Uptrenda 11y ago
I guess the ride ends after-all. Goodbye m<3<3t.
pingou 11y ago
Can someone explain the comments on the linked page? Is that a new sort of robots posting nonsense and replying to one another? OR is it an 4chan elaborate joke? That's the first time I see that.
mashed_potato 11y ago
F

Chris Poole

441 points by doppp 11y ago

mhurron 11y ago

Ya, but it's all moot.

rdl 11y ago

When I read the title I thought it was about moot joining USV as an EIR or partner.

austenallred 11y ago
I had the same thought. I'm a little disappointed this isn't the case, actually.
- fluxquanta 11y ago
  The article mentions sitting down for lunch last week...business meeting?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- teacup50 11y ago
  Ugh. The last thing a smart, creative young person with a soul needs is to be sucked into the VC empty-air universe.
  - argonaut 11y ago
    I'm not criticizing Chris Poole at all, but if your value metric is doing "good in this world," I'm pretty sure Union Square Ventures has brought about more good in this world than 4chan has.
    - austenallred 11y ago
      Something tells me parent has a skewed understanding of what (good) VCs do.
    - LLWM 11y ago
      I think you have a twisted, corporate definition of "good".
biot 11y ago
Up to the very end I thought it might turn out to be a eulogy, especially given that the title was just "Chris Poole" and not "Chris Poole: Life After 4chan" or something similar.

fein 11y ago

Huge respect for Chris, and I'm very happy he's feeling that sense of relief. I took a shot at moderating a few smaller subreddits, and managed to find myself hating every moment spent doing it. It sure makes the majority of internet look like selfish ingrates, even though it's usually just a vocal minority. I just stay away from Reddit now for the most part; primarily due to seeing the kind of place you get when the barrier for entry is non existent.

janny_throwaway 11y ago
>primarily due to seeing the kind of place you get when the barrier for entry is non existent. you think reddit's bad, try 4chan! I was 4chan "janitor" (lesser-mod) for 18 months or so and I agree, these sorts of positions really twist your perception of the community you're moderating. When you're buried in reports -- and these are 4chan reports, which means not just spam, but gore, cp, raids, etc. -- it becomes all too easy to dole out harsh penalties to people who may have just made an honest mistake. I essentially stopped browsing 4chan for fun; I saw it only through the lens of the janitor interface. Chris, to his credit, frequently expressed his gratitude to the volunteer staff for doing what he knew was a thankless, soul-crushing job. He wondered aloud why we didn't go volunteer our time at a puppy shelter or something instead. I'm sure he asked himself that question too. I'm no longer in that position; I outed myself as a janitor and was immediately terminated. I've come to the conclusion that I'm not really suited for these sorts of roles. Having access to privileged information and special powers makes me uncomfortable. The good news is that I've recently returned to 4chan as a regular, anonymous user, and I'm really enjoying it. I hope Chris experiences something similar. He deserves it.
- castratikron 11y ago
  Reminds me of the Mark Twain story "Two Ways of Seeing a River". You ought to check it out.
  - janny_throwaway 11y ago
    Lovely. Reminds me of this quote from Lorraine Daston: The marvel that stopped us in our tracks—an aurora borealis, cognate words in languages separated by continents and centuries, the peacock’s tail—becomes only an apparent marvel once explained. Aesthetic appreciation may linger…but composure has returned. We are delighted but no longer discombobulated; what was once an earthquake of the soul is subdued into an agreeable frisson.… The more we know, the less we wonder. I feel this personally when learning a new piece of music. All the gestalt beauty drains out as the song is reduced to a mountain to be conquered rather than a landscape to be appreciated. By the time I've memorized all the notes, a grim irony sets in: when I listen to a recording of the piece, I am no longer capable of hearing what I initially set out to replicate.

randall 11y ago

mirror?

onewaystreet 11y ago
The site's not down it's just slow.
- syncsynchalt 11y ago
  It's throwing an immediate db connection error currently.
jhardcastle 11y ago
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Fb0CBW295KsJ:avc.com/2015/09/chris-poole/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Fb0CBW2...

542458 11y ago

I don't blame Chris for selling in the slightest and I'm happy that he's been able to let go, but I kind of wish he had found somebody a little more likeminded to take over the place. Chris has always been an excellent citizen of his own community, and always seemed to really "get" what made a lot of the community work. Other than one incident at the end of his tenure, "m00t" was always very well-loved (for somebody on a site that hates everything), and understood how to shape vibrant communities with a fairly light hand. Hiroyuki Nishimura's past doesn't really suggest the same sort of community-mindedness. Maybe with 4chan's current size that sort of involvement is irrelevant, but I hope it won't negatively affect the site.

scandinavian 11y ago
Probably not easy finding a buyer at all, so I don't know if he had the option to be picky to that degree.
monaway 11y ago
>Hiroyuki Nishimura's past doesn't really suggest the same sort of community-mindedness. That's putting it lightly. http://www.anonymous-japan.org/fake2ch/ http://www.anonymous-japan.org/fake2ch/ Japanese netizens absolutely loathe him on a level that makes westerners' mixed feelings toward moot seem glowing in comparison. https://imgur.com/a/o8ruh https://imgur.com/a/o8ruh Here's what the current lead developer of 2ch (@CodeMonkeyZ) thinks Hiroyuki's plans for 4chan are: http://pastebin.com/8bfsk6jP http://pastebin.com/8bfsk6jP
- pervycreeper 11y ago
  To be fair, most of the major internet companies intend to monetize your data. This doesn't sound much worse, even if these allegations are true.
  - nyolfen 11y ago
    running a deep state culture-sculpting psyop in addition to monetizing user info is a little bit more than generic ad profiling

Dragonai 11y ago

I think it's pretty safe to say that no one's really been through an experience remotely similar to Chris's. There's no community like 4chan, with respect to both its scale and its pervasiveness in both internet and real-life culture. Being at the heart of such a community through its high and low moments is an enormous load to bear, and Chris shouldered that responsibility for 12 years without buckling. Huge congrats to him and I wish him the best.

dang 11y ago
This is a perceptive point. Chris' achievement is deeply impressive in far from obvious ways. The more one learns about it, the more impressive it gets. It's pleasing to see a post honoring him do so well here. Good luck, Chris!
hkmurakami 11y ago
2chan and Hiroyuki?
WallWextra 11y ago
And he was a kid.
anigbrowl 11y ago
Agreed - I don't think of him as someone who's super-expert on the internet so much as super-expert in people, having monitored such a diverse and complex community on 4chan for so long.

cromulent 11y ago

A lovely article from an unexpected source. This is another nice one about Poole: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/4chans-overlord-christopher-poole-reveals-why-he-walked-away-20150313?page=2 http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/4chans-overlord...

vernie 11y ago

I'm always expecting articles about multimedia or video compression from that domain, and I'm always let down.

tibbon 11y ago

I'm really glad Chris has found a way out of 4Chan, so he can pursue other awesome things. I've only hung out with him a handful of times, but always found him to be a pretty inspiring and funny. On to new things!

angersock 11y ago

Good points, but a minor pet peeve: It's moot, not Chris. Maybe Chris Poole, but again, probably moot. Has been moot. Always will be moot. Are you friends with him? Do you have lunch with him? Do you work with him? In all odds, no. It's really quite annoying seeing people refer to people by the first names like they actually are familiar with them. Were you a fan of Steve? Ever go on walks with Zuck? Seriously, it's so fucking phony--especially when the person in question already has a name they're well-known by in their community.

fwn 11y ago
I bet that's something nobody on 4chan ever wasted a single thought on.
- Koahku 11y ago
  Actually someone did >>Do you prefer Chris, Christopher, moot, mootykins, or some other nickname. (In public obviously). >Chris IRL, moot online. https://archive.moe/q/thread/176519/#177568 https://archive.moe/q/thread/176519/#177568 (Warning, may be very heavy to load.)
userbinator 11y ago
Calling him Chris and not moot helps put into perspective the fact that he's a human with his own identity and life, and not just someone posting with an online pseudonym. In summary, I think that's a moot point.
dang 11y ago
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10267960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10267960 and marked it off-topic.

caractacus 11y ago

I've often linked Chris Poole's approach to this with Matt Haughey at Metafilter. I can remember being amazed at how well mathowie moderated metafilter with a remarkably light touch and yet still set the tne of the site. Moot was less keeping the users in line than keeping the rest of the world out but their ability to not interfere at times when I think most of us would want to say or do something is an incredible skill.

joshu 11y ago

Not surprising. Community creators end up hating their communities. This is one of the reasons I did not put comments in Delicious.

TheCowboy 11y ago
Did you end up hating Delicious? Any thoughts on its current state?
- joshu 11y ago
  The lack of conversation didn't allow it to become a community. I still miss it. I don't really use the current one, but have made a few attempts to reach out to the current owners to help out.
gozo 11y ago
I think "real" communities work, were people have common interests, self-organizations, transparency etc. A lot of communities don't work because there nothing at stake. I think you could randomly ban 25% of HN and it would, excluding any eventual outrage, be largely the same.
- joshu 11y ago
  I mean online communities?
prawn 11y ago
In my experience (10+ years running a forum), it's more love-hate. There are the ridiculous trolls and idiots being a magnet for legal threats, but there are also those regulars who contribute sensibly and really care about their participation.

stevebmark 11y ago

Is this article just saying "running an internet community is hard?" Pat on the back to someone who created the one of the most actively harassing communities online? TL;DR I knew moot?

ljk 11y ago
Eh not saying 4chan is the perfect community, but many online communities are just as, if not more, "actively harassing". There are other sections outside of /b/

codezero 11y ago

I have a lot of respect for Chris for all his dedication. I remember being a bit gobsmacked when I sent in a few bug reports for DrawQuest when it was launched, and in the middle of the night I got an email back from Chris thanking me for the bug reports. I continued to send in bugs, and he continued to reply to my emails – pretty amazing dedication. When I initially emailed in, I didn't even realize DrawQuest was one of his creations.

resonanttoe 11y ago

I don't disagree with any of the assertions in the... article(?). But whats the point of this and why does it need attention? Communities feel ownership. Owners have conflicting responsibilities. The bigger the community the bigger Points 1 & 2 are. All true, but relevance to anything of anything? Very strange posting.

fredwilson 11y ago
my blog is my public diary. i write it for myself for the most part. if people choose to read it, that's their choice.

ousta 11y ago

to me it is as if the internet as an invention culminated with 4chan. it is indeed a big moment to see the most humble genius - and probably the one big who never made big money out of his visions - of this internet bubble handover to someone much more like what we could expect of an owner of a crazy board. 4chan is for me a fantastic website, laboratory and show on what mankind can bring to us. It led me to be depressive far too many times, led me to mistrusts humans and sometimes try to trust again, led me to think that any other media was boring, any other activity was second to it. I don't buy the stuff people adoring steve jobs or mark zuckerberg buy. those tech marketers who selling themselves as icons, stars and some idealistic values of what america is. Rather than that I buy an idea of the internet that is encompassed in the character of Chris Poole, an humble guy who created something far much bigger than him and got shit happening to him as his baby demon was out of control. This guy is like the inventor of tetris. a forgotten genius that will never earn anything out of his invention but will still make more smiles on faces than any google or facebook.

greggman 11y ago

Chris did a great job. Unrelated though, it will be interesting to see how the new owner handles 4chan. 2ch is almost entire run but pron ads and ads for very scammy looking companies.

ljk 11y ago
Especially for people with 4chan pass, hope what happened to 2ch users won't happen to them - http://www.japancrush.com/2013/stories/huge-leak-of-2ch-users-personal-information-shocks-netizens.html http://www.japancrush.com/2013/stories/huge-leak-of-2ch-user...
- Koahku 11y ago
  Right now the pass payments are processed by Stripe so I doubt the same could happen.

tednash 11y ago

Agreed, huge respect for Chris. Having been at the helm of a (nowhere near as big) social->turned anti social network I can relate to elements of the complexity around running 4Chan. Excited to see what's next.

pervycreeper 11y ago

>And he’s come out the other side with his soul and his spirit intact. I have trouble believing this one. Poole has stated that the controversies 4chan was involved in in September had a big negative personal impact, principally dealing with legal threats from celebrities who had their photos leaked on the site. Two other events, which he conspicuously hasn't commented on would have unquestionably left scars on his ego and soul: the 8chan exoduses and 'cuckgate'. I would speculate that these had a far greater negative personal impact on the poor guy than any of the others. Some of the best original content creators and experienced posters migrated to 8ch, taking the mantle from 4chan as the authentic core of internet culture. It's evident that at least a couple of years ago, moot took some pride in 4chan's leading place in contemporary culture, so to lose the one single point of pride associated with the site must have been a big blow. In his farewell livestream, he responded to repeated questions about 8chan by talking about just about every other 'chan'-style site on the internet, making the omission very obvious, and indicating it was something he took personally. Second is the situation with one of his friends with whom he was very clearly in unrequited love being revealed and mocked by his own board, giving rise to the current ubiquity of the 'cuck' meme across the internet (and even spreading into mainstream American politics). I know if I had been in his place, this second event would have been quite devastating not only for destroying my hopes and illusions of love and connection with this girl (she even joined in the mockery in a way), but also for having it be that basis of my ignominious fall from beloved benevolent dictator to a hated object of mockery and derision across the entire internet. When you take these last two events into consideration, I don't think anyone could blame him for his decision to quit. Hope he has a much better time in his future endeavors.

tomatohs 11y ago
Your comment is entirely speculative pessimism. Please leave the trolling to 4chan.
- pervycreeper 11y ago
  Out of consideration for all parties involved I only included enough detail to give a big picture sense of what those events entailed, but rest assured that they were pretty well documented at the time. Take home message is that the users got very personal at the end of moot's tenure.

lawnchair_larry 11y ago

Well that isn't a very useful title.

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huskyr 11y ago

> There aren’t many who understand the Internet like Chris. > (...) I am talking about the social architecture of > the Internet. I think i'm not the only one interested in how Chris understands the internet. Maybe he should write a book.

donkeyd 11y ago
It would probably be the only book in existence to correctly explain what 'Anonymous' is. I'd read it.
- wingerlang 11y ago
  Are there other books out now? Why do they fail at explaining it? I doubt that Poole is the only one in the world that really understands what 'Anonymous' is.
bru 11y ago
His Ted talk (https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for_anonymity_online https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_fo...) is very interesting.

LulzSect 11y ago

Thank you Moot.

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voltagex_ 11y ago
>I was pleased when I learned that his drawing-related site had to be shut down. He didn't deserve to have one. This is possibly the most hateful thing I've seen on HackerNews. Surely there were other approaches you could have taken. Surely there are other sites that have been attacked by 4chan's users and come out the other side.

ionwake 11y ago

Space cowboy

ryan-allen 11y ago

I absolutely adored the Canvas app that he made. I don't know why it went under, but I found it much more approachable than Reddit, as you could modify people's creations along with making your own. I had to block it for myself at work because I couldn't stop using it. Ah, the stickers! I miss it!

Uptrenda 11y ago

I guess the ride ends after-all. Goodbye m<3<3t.

pingou 11y ago

Can someone explain the comments on the linked page? Is that a new sort of robots posting nonsense and replying to one another? OR is it an 4chan elaborate joke? That's the first time I see that.

mashed_potato 11y ago