5 ms·

The 8chan story: Destroyer of worlds

7 points by smacktoward 7y ago

s9w 7y ago
This hit piece is emberassing. It's full of lies, a blatant swing against anything the author doesn't like, from the chans to Gamergate to Trump. Void of any sound reasoning. Dismantling the mental gymnastics this would take long and probably get anyone banned who tries. But who cares, it has lots of pictures of sobbing girls, so burn the constitution. It even calls Gamergate misogynistic - what a joke.
- dang 7y ago
  It's against HN's rules to use this site primarily for ideological battle, which you've clearly been doing. If you keep doing that, we're going to have to ban you, so please stop. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - s9w 7y ago
    It's a bad article, I called it out on that. That is being done all the time. It is not an ideological battle, certainly not "clearly" so.
    - dang 7y ago
      What I said was that you've clearly been using HN for ideological battle. That's clear from your comment history. It's not what this site is for—actually it's worse than that: it destroys what the site is for, i.e. intellectual curiosity. Therefore we have little choice but to ban accounts that do that, regardless of what flavor of ideology you favor.
      - s9w 7y ago
        I don't deny that I usually selectively comment on things that hit a nerve - often that is when lies being told about things I know a lot about. Interpreting that as an ideological battle is a little far fetched, no? Many many users here comment exclusively on their agenda, and with much harsher words than mine. I have never seen any action taken against these. I don't even see a political angle here - genuinely so. If it were about other topics that go more in line with the HN community, this article would have been called a conspiracy theory. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20325213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20325213 from today - same dubious quality of content, also being called out. If you say that my ideology is 'clear', I'm wondering what it is? I'm a huge proponent of free speech and not a fan of lies. That's mostly what I post and vote about. And I belief that is in the spirit of this site.
        dang 7y ago
        I didn't say your ideology was clear. I said it's clear from your account history that you're using the site for ideological battle. That's the obvious conclusion when I see someone commenting about 8Chan, Gab, Voat, The_Donald, AOC, the Christchurch shooting, Fox vs. CNN, transgender in the military, Soros, and precious little else. This is not using the site for intellectual curiosity, HN's intended purpose; this is agenda driven. That's breaking the site guidelines regardless of what your agenda is. Please stop doing this. We don't want HN to be taken over by flamewars, and we ban accounts that are pushing it in that direction. There are other places on the internet for this sort of thing; please do it at one of those instead.
        s9w 7y ago
        These topics usually aren't brought up by myself - most often I just reply to them. Is the problem that I'm mostly talking about these? I feel like a lot of people talk mostly about a limited amount of subjects. If I were to reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20334332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20334332 - that would most likely get me into trouble? Even if the topic is clearly against the guidelines and I could give some reasons to why, and reply against the lies that are spread there? That thread is a shitshow compared to things I say, with the unwanted points being downvoted in seconds.
        dang 7y ago
        Yes, the main problem is when an account is using the site primarily for political or ideological battle. Take a look at these explanations that I've posted in the past, and let me know if anything is still unclear. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20primarily%20test https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... If you know of other accounts doing that which we haven't asked to stop, it's likely that we haven't seen them.
    - 0815test 7y ago
      As a user here, your comment was clearly not up to the well-known standards of this site, and even this reply doesn't really help. I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but I don't know how I could put it more politely than that. If you're going to comment here, you're expected to put at least a modicum of effort towards gratifying intellectual curiosity; whereas you literally aren't saying anything ITT that we couldn't easily expect the average 8chan denizen to say anyway! The fact that this all involves contentious, ideological etc. topics only makes it worse, because it's that much rarer that people will engage with these topics in a way that's appreciative and respectful of intellectual curiosity, especially if they're being flamed in the 8chan-like style.
- happytoexplain 7y ago
  Since Trump and Gamergate are inherently antagonistic things, it can be hard to distinguish fair criticism of them from unfair ideological exaggerations about them. Anecdotally, I've spent a huge amount of time on /v/, including during the Gamergate formation, and I even browsed 8chan, and I don't see anything way off base in this article.
Uptrenda 7y ago
It's a mistake to take Internet culture and compare it literally to real-world happenings because the two don't mean the same things. Here's a simple example of what I mean. In real life: if someone makes a racial slur they know that its offensive and if they continue to act this way we can say with confidence they're a racist. But the same actions on an image board can be done by anyone with little consequences. If there's no consequences, then that means the words context on an image board is significantly different to the real world. As such, you end up getting kids and other people casually using racial slurs to seem 'edgy' or rebellious. The question I ask is are any of these people actually racist in real life? If they're not knowingly thwarting social norms, and there's no harsh consequences for doing so, then I argue the words don't have the same meaning as they do in real life. Since that's the case-- we cannot say 8chan is a "hate speech" website. Most of the comparisons from mainstream media miss this point, and it only highlights how terribly out of touch these old-timers are with how the youth of today express themselves. To really bring this point home, one of the main benefits of using image boards like 8chan is they provide a safe place where you can freely express your ideas without the fear you've somehow upset some crazy person. Such discussions could never take place on a site like Facebook where behavior has to be hyper-mediated with respect to everyone else. Now to directly address the point of the shooting: recall what happened with Columbine. Shortly after the shooting, these so-called experts started examining the interests of the shooters and they noticed one alarming peculiarity! Both shooters were fond of the video game series 'Doom.' How many of you have played Doom before? Killed anyone lately? These reductionist arguments always seem to have an agenda to express. In my opinion, the agenda is all about dismissing uncomfortable aspects of how people think and feel about the world, and how they've been treated. I don't know why the Christ Church shooter did what they did. But I can tell you with absolute certainty no amount of examining how many times the N* word appears on /pol/ is going to give you any profound insights here. Most of what the shooter put out are actually red herrings designed to make politically correct people go around in circles exactly like we're seeing now, and the references to memes made throughout the shooters writings were made in the same way. So if you want to understand why the shooter did what they did, you're going to have to dig a lot deeper than blaming it all on a website. >From the link: There’s no room for argument about whether hate-filled internet message boards encourage real-world violence: they do, and none more so than 8chan. Yeah, good reasoning. There's no room for arguing about whether this article is wrong: it is, and no more so than in this quote.

7 points by smacktoward 7y ago

s9w 7y ago

This hit piece is emberassing. It's full of lies, a blatant swing against anything the author doesn't like, from the chans to Gamergate to Trump. Void of any sound reasoning. Dismantling the mental gymnastics this would take long and probably get anyone banned who tries. But who cares, it has lots of pictures of sobbing girls, so burn the constitution. It even calls Gamergate misogynistic - what a joke.

dang 7y ago
It's against HN's rules to use this site primarily for ideological battle, which you've clearly been doing. If you keep doing that, we're going to have to ban you, so please stop. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- s9w 7y ago
  It's a bad article, I called it out on that. That is being done all the time. It is not an ideological battle, certainly not "clearly" so.
  - dang 7y ago
    What I said was that you've clearly been using HN for ideological battle. That's clear from your comment history. It's not what this site is for—actually it's worse than that: it destroys what the site is for, i.e. intellectual curiosity. Therefore we have little choice but to ban accounts that do that, regardless of what flavor of ideology you favor.
    - s9w 7y ago
      I don't deny that I usually selectively comment on things that hit a nerve - often that is when lies being told about things I know a lot about. Interpreting that as an ideological battle is a little far fetched, no? Many many users here comment exclusively on their agenda, and with much harsher words than mine. I have never seen any action taken against these. I don't even see a political angle here - genuinely so. If it were about other topics that go more in line with the HN community, this article would have been called a conspiracy theory. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20325213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20325213 from today - same dubious quality of content, also being called out. If you say that my ideology is 'clear', I'm wondering what it is? I'm a huge proponent of free speech and not a fan of lies. That's mostly what I post and vote about. And I belief that is in the spirit of this site.
      - dang 7y ago
        I didn't say your ideology was clear. I said it's clear from your account history that you're using the site for ideological battle. That's the obvious conclusion when I see someone commenting about 8Chan, Gab, Voat, The_Donald, AOC, the Christchurch shooting, Fox vs. CNN, transgender in the military, Soros, and precious little else. This is not using the site for intellectual curiosity, HN's intended purpose; this is agenda driven. That's breaking the site guidelines regardless of what your agenda is. Please stop doing this. We don't want HN to be taken over by flamewars, and we ban accounts that are pushing it in that direction. There are other places on the internet for this sort of thing; please do it at one of those instead.
        s9w 7y ago
        These topics usually aren't brought up by myself - most often I just reply to them. Is the problem that I'm mostly talking about these? I feel like a lot of people talk mostly about a limited amount of subjects. If I were to reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20334332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20334332 - that would most likely get me into trouble? Even if the topic is clearly against the guidelines and I could give some reasons to why, and reply against the lies that are spread there? That thread is a shitshow compared to things I say, with the unwanted points being downvoted in seconds.
        dang 7y ago
        Yes, the main problem is when an account is using the site primarily for political or ideological battle. Take a look at these explanations that I've posted in the past, and let me know if anything is still unclear. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20primarily%20test https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... If you know of other accounts doing that which we haven't asked to stop, it's likely that we haven't seen them.
  - 0815test 7y ago
    As a user here, your comment was clearly not up to the well-known standards of this site, and even this reply doesn't really help. I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but I don't know how I could put it more politely than that. If you're going to comment here, you're expected to put at least a modicum of effort towards gratifying intellectual curiosity; whereas you literally aren't saying anything ITT that we couldn't easily expect the average 8chan denizen to say anyway! The fact that this all involves contentious, ideological etc. topics only makes it worse, because it's that much rarer that people will engage with these topics in a way that's appreciative and respectful of intellectual curiosity, especially if they're being flamed in the 8chan-like style.
happytoexplain 7y ago
Since Trump and Gamergate are inherently antagonistic things, it can be hard to distinguish fair criticism of them from unfair ideological exaggerations about them. Anecdotally, I've spent a huge amount of time on /v/, including during the Gamergate formation, and I even browsed 8chan, and I don't see anything way off base in this article.

Uptrenda 7y ago

It's a mistake to take Internet culture and compare it literally to real-world happenings because the two don't mean the same things. Here's a simple example of what I mean. In real life: if someone makes a racial slur they know that its offensive and if they continue to act this way we can say with confidence they're a racist. But the same actions on an image board can be done by anyone with little consequences. If there's no consequences, then that means the words context on an image board is significantly different to the real world. As such, you end up getting kids and other people casually using racial slurs to seem 'edgy' or rebellious. The question I ask is are any of these people actually racist in real life? If they're not knowingly thwarting social norms, and there's no harsh consequences for doing so, then I argue the words don't have the same meaning as they do in real life. Since that's the case-- we cannot say 8chan is a "hate speech" website. Most of the comparisons from mainstream media miss this point, and it only highlights how terribly out of touch these old-timers are with how the youth of today express themselves. To really bring this point home, one of the main benefits of using image boards like 8chan is they provide a safe place where you can freely express your ideas without the fear you've somehow upset some crazy person. Such discussions could never take place on a site like Facebook where behavior has to be hyper-mediated with respect to everyone else. Now to directly address the point of the shooting: recall what happened with Columbine. Shortly after the shooting, these so-called experts started examining the interests of the shooters and they noticed one alarming peculiarity! Both shooters were fond of the video game series 'Doom.' How many of you have played Doom before? Killed anyone lately? These reductionist arguments always seem to have an agenda to express. In my opinion, the agenda is all about dismissing uncomfortable aspects of how people think and feel about the world, and how they've been treated. I don't know why the Christ Church shooter did what they did. But I can tell you with absolute certainty no amount of examining how many times the N* word appears on /pol/ is going to give you any profound insights here. Most of what the shooter put out are actually red herrings designed to make politically correct people go around in circles exactly like we're seeing now, and the references to memes made throughout the shooters writings were made in the same way. So if you want to understand why the shooter did what they did, you're going to have to dig a lot deeper than blaming it all on a website. >From the link: There’s no room for argument about whether hate-filled internet message boards encourage real-world violence: they do, and none more so than 8chan. Yeah, good reasoning. There's no room for arguing about whether this article is wrong: it is, and no more so than in this quote.