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As another person who spent a long time on there, I now feel like the opposite effect ends up happening. Sure, it's anonymous. But the short-term nature means
by rtpg 10y ago
As another person who spent a long time on there, I now feel like the opposite effect ends up happening.
Sure, it's anonymous. But the short-term nature means that the prime objective when posting something is to get replies. So you get some troll bait or other things sure to get replies.
Everyone else is doing the same, so you develop a vocabulary based primarily around saying and responding to memes.
If the communication were natural, why is 80% of it memes?
Because of the FOMO, you get an effect similar to many MMOs. In order to participate, you must spend a lot of time on the image board, on IRC, making sure that you're doing your thing.
So you end up with a bunch of people who spend their (usually teenage) lives online absorbing as much image board culture as possible to "get good" at it. It's the ultimate clique. Everyone wants to be part of the secret club (sometimes quite literal: the IRC channels like #/v/ would spend their time creating private sub-channels to have "real talk").
I know on some of the lower-traffic boards you'll find some "real talk" happening, but even then it's usually layered underneath snarky "contrarian trueisms".
It's the ultimate secret club for people who think they get the internet, and gets pretty close to a religion. Remember: don't say you came from reddit.
- niftich 10y agoThis is definitely a lot of what goes on today. Despite the anonymity, there's a metagaming, social signalling aspect that comes from adhering to the tropes and catchphrases, being mean to newbies, displaying the mandatory -isms, playing up the bravado and machismo of a veteran, or for maximum trolling, roleplaying different people in sockpuppetry. I'd love a study that explores these motivations, of getting nameless credit and validation solely in one's own mind. In fact, in response, a different board, /s4s/ "shit 4chan says", was created to absorb some of this deliberate behavior. Despite that, /b/ is considerably more meta than it used to be, but most of it is due to market segmentation: there are specific sub-boards with their own distinct cultures that differ from those on /b/ and manage to be useful for information exchange. Posting on /b/ is very much a conscious choice on part of the author, and comes with all the risks and rewards: perhaps your content will be appreciated, perhaps it will be ridiculed. Perhaps you're inflaming actual people's passions, or perhaps you're being fooled.
- spdionis 10y agoThis means that if I say I come from reddit I'd get lots of replies right?
- snerbles 10y ago> Sure, it's anonymous. But the short-term nature means that the prime objective when posting something is to get replies. So you get some troll bait or other things sure to get replies. This can be traced to updates to 4chan's post linking system that highlight replies to your post with a (You). Like upvotes, (You)s are a feedback signal of attention.