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“for the lolz”: 4chan is hacking the attention economy
- jk4930 16y agoFirst, it's "for teh lulz". Second, it's not 4chan but ebaumsworld. Third, tits or gtfo, Danah.
- steveklabnik 16y agoShe actually says at the bottom that she spelled it 'lolz' because she prefers it that way. Trolling is an art.
- sp332 16y agoillustrated: http://moronail.net/img/1286_moot_trolling_is_a_art http://moronail.net/img/1286_moot_trolling_is_a_art
- steveklabnik 16y agoThis is actually why I've reverted to saying "is an," because then people go "oh, no, you messed it up." And then I smile with that face. It gets too deeply recursive too quickly. Trolls trolling trolls who troll trolls.
- count 16y agoIt's trolls all the way down.
- stcredzero 16y agoYou've just confirmed all of my worst fears about the true nature of human beings. Time to move on to psychopathy.
- rayval 16y agoTrolls buffalo trolls that troll Buffalo buffalo trolls. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo
- mishmash 16y ago"Trolling is a art." FTFY.
- mkramlich 16y agoregarding "tits or gtfo": the interesting thing is that she may have already done that, and you just don't know. There's quite a bit of anonymous flashing pics both there and on the Internet in general. Not that I'd know, I've just had people tell me this.
- WalterGR 16y agoBy bringing down the level of discourse here, you've magnificently proven NathanKP's point.
- hack_edu 16y agoSocial Engineering has a long history in 80s and 90s hacker culture. Kevin Mitnick and Kevin Poulson utilized some sort of social disruption in nearly all of their hacks, skills cultivated from when they were younger and more abrasive. To further back up the thesis, Kevin Mitnick, grew up as a Ham in the midst of the amateur radio boom. Before the big days of phreaking kids would do the exact 'for the lulz' routine, disrupting and confusing a system full of weaknesses to probe and abuse.
- adamdecaf 16y agoAnd before Ham kids would run around town and wreak havoc, either at the local bar, shop, or stall. Why? Because kids are curious and "do it for the lulz".
- adbge 16y agoOnce you understand 4chan, you don't want to analyze it. I'm convinced that anyone who posts an analysis regarding 4chan does not have enough experience to accurately analyze 4chan. The author makes a couple good points, but I think her writing would be better served by not tying in 4chan as some sort of example.
- stcredzero 16y agoOnce you understand 4chan, you don't want to analyze it. Only those who don't understand 4chan say that.
- robotempire 16y agoI heard true Scotsmen truly understand 4chan.
- antipaganda 16y agoOnly Irishmen bring up true Scotsmen all the time.
- mkramlich 16y agoI liked the quote on the lower left-hand side of her post the best. Since still relevant to web culture, reprinting here: "Facebook is so endlessly social and inclusive it sometimes reminds me of one of those mega-nightclubs from the late ’80s (Palladium, the Limelight, etc.), only without the music, the alcohol, the drugs, the lights, the sweat, or — it must be said — the people." -- Lucinda Rosenfeld
- NathanKP 16y agoHere is the comment I submitted to the article on Danah Boyd's blog: I disagree that 4chan is a community of hackers for one simple reason: to me a hacker is someone who gets things done. 4chan and other sites that focus on memes are attention diverters, full of people who jump from one lol to the next. In contrast a hacker is someone who is willing to focus time and attention on one thing until he excels in it. The 4chan mindset is not a long term, viable one, because the lulz distract from any real good that can be done. Sure you can pick through the porn, rubbish, and hate in 4chan and come up with examples of great things being done, but if you look at real hackers, such as the internet entrepreneurs that are creating web startups at http://news.ycombinator.com http://news.ycombinator.com you see many great things being created with little rubbish, not a few great things mixed into volumes of lulz. I don't look to 4chan to create long term internet change. They are great for creating laughs, but the next Facebook, the next Twitter, the next great internet technology will not arise from them. It will arise from true hackers who still hack in the traditional sense, by writing code and coming up with innovative technological ideas.
- philh 16y agoYou could say: a 4channer is someone who is willing to focus time and attention on getting lulz until he excels at it. (See: Time 100 poll.) Sure, the lulz is a distraction from doing real good, but so was phreaking. It turns out that the skills used in both lulz-getting and phreaking can be used for good as well as evil. (See: Project Chanology, Dusty the cat.) They're not hackers in the same sense that many of us are. But that wasn't how the term was used in the article, so big deal.
- stcredzero 16y agoThe disturbing thing about this, is that "skills used in...lulz-getting" are also useful for political manipulation and black ops propaganda.
- daten 16y agoI think both this article (and others like it), and your comment, are giving the users of 4chan/b/ way more credit than is deserved. Any useful output that comes out of 4chan could be achieved in a much more intelligent and efficient way. At best they're taking a brute force approach, throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. People who are easily impressed by the results are ignoring the noise. I also worry that the amount of child porn that's regularly posted on /b/ could come back to haunt Mr. Poole if he tries to us his fame to launch a real career.
- stcredzero 16y agoI would argue that 4chan is ground zero of a new generation of hackers – those who are bent on hacking the attention economy. The very term "attention economy" is a key bit of awareness. There has always been an Attention Economy or Attention Ecosystem. It's central to culture and politics. It's central to media. It's especially important to the web. It's fundamental to human dominance mechanisms and decision making. I think there's more than just marketing here. I think this is more like a cultural movement, with a network of personal relationships, an ideology, and differing levels of involvement.
- robotempire 16y agoMedia is already late to the game. Guaranteed there is already a replacement for 4chan of which we've never heard but is spewing memetic galaxies like a dorky black hole.
- bitwize 16y agoIt's called Reddit. Where the bacon have you been, man? Everybody knows that bacon narwhal narwhal bacon bacon goes great with Guile.
- TeHCrAzY 16y agoReddit seems to act as a filter between /b/ and the SA forums http://forums.somethingawful.com/ http://forums.somethingawful.com/. Much of the bullshit and extreme racism/gore/child porn/other distasteful content is skimmed over, and the true amusing gems are pulled into the (more) mainstream reddit/digg worlds.
- mootothemax 16y agoOh for goodness' sake move on! I'm struggling to think of any capitalist adventure that won't go against the ire of 4chan. Which is great 'n' all, but one should know one's target audience. Target appropriately and you will succeed. Fix someone's problem, and you'll get money for it. Even 4chan users' money... I hope.
- epi0Bauqu 16y agoIncidentally, I've been trying to advertise on 4chan and they will not return my emails.
- BoppreH 16y agoA quick correction: all articles that I've seen mentioning "4chan" actually mean "/b/." Sure, the board is huge and by far the most famous, but it's not even responsible for the majority of the site traffic. There are dozens of different boards and, with very few exceptions, they are mostly sane. I bet the people who write those articles don't even know about the literature and science boards that are just like any other forum, but without the user names. But I guess that cooking, animals and fitness don't bring enough pageviews to be mentioned.
- hugh3 16y agoY'know, I wasn't aware that there was a science section on 4chan, so I decided to check it out. At this very moment the front page of it is: 1. Someone comparing black people to chimpanzees 2. "Hey /sci/, in the future, will we be able to use stemcells and nanobots to turn into IRL furries?!" with a picture of a furry 3. Something about how we should get more science funding by convincing everybody that an immensely fuckable race of space babes lives at Alpha Centauri 4. "I am thinking of growing a beard. Will it improve my science?" 5. An atheists-vs-Christians flamewar (or an attempt to start one, I don't know whether any Christians actually showed up) And so forth. I wouldn't say "mostly sane". On the other hand you could probably call it relatively sane.
- mitjak 16y ago>omething about how we should get more science funding by convincing everybody that an immensely fuckable race of space babes lives at Alpha Centauri And that is not genius.. why?
- jrockway 16y agoThe hentai forums tend to stay on topic.
- hugh3 16y agoI'm going to file that under "stuff that I'll take your word for"
- c00p3r 16y agoI probably biased against 'MS researcher', and phrases like 'I grew up in a community of hackers', but... =) 4chan is, in the first place, the strong illusion of a crowd of young, non-serious people. It is totally different from any other community, where mostly mediocre and quite selfish people are trying to show up, praise themselves and impress others (read: facebook), where social exhibitionism and friend-counting flourishes. 4chan, with its anonymity, is definitely a time-wasting, the main activity of any young generation. =) And of course, it is also a slot machine, with several positive feedback loops, especially if you're admire and love 'freshness' and youth. btw, its sub-culture and slang are self-evident, not a rocket science. It is just a cyber community of nonconformist youths, along with a bunch of various freaks. You may find something like that in any city's outskirts. =)
- nickzoic 16y agoStill trying to work out if "at the tale end" is a dumb typo or an incredibly subtle pun.