4 ms·

When reporters on Twitter freak out about the trolls on 4chan like it's some disease infecting our precious wholesome web, I can't help but remember (through my

by kody 7y ago

When reporters on Twitter freak out about the trolls on 4chan like it's some disease infecting our precious wholesome web, I can't help but remember (through my biased lenses of course) when most of the web (that I visited) looked like 4chan. What the folks who think the web is 'degrading' don't seem to realize is how much of a wild west it used to be, and how much corporations have tried to (and somewhat succeeded in) sanitizing it.

hooande 7y ago
if most of the web that you visited looked like 4chan, you should have been going to different sites
- GrayTextIsTruth 7y ago
  The subtle shaming and holier-than-thou policing, like in your comment, is more harmful and toxic than the trolling. It’s what is fueling the polarization IMO. Look now I’m doing it, it’s contagious.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
GrayTextIsTruth 7y ago
This is my experience and perception as well. I don’t understand people who think it’s always been some civil gathering.
- at-fates-hands 7y ago
  > I don’t understand people who think it’s always been some civil gathering. In the early days of social media, the idea was to create engaging communities, which I felt for the most part happened. I was on a LOT of social media platforms in the mid aughts and really got a lot of it with the people I connected with. For me, it was actually quite positive and healthy then. In the last eight years or so? I had to get off. The overwhelming negativity, the weaponization of the platforms, the "cancel culture" and a rash of other things just make a majority of the platforms completely unusable now. On top of that, you add in the incredibly poor track record these platforms have with user data and privacy, the non-stop tracking, and the thousands of ads in your feeds? It used to be a joy to use these platforms. Now it's gotten to a point where I'm not sure what the point of social media is anymore.
JohnFen 7y ago
> I can't help but remember (through my biased lenses of course) when most of the web (that I visited) looked like 4chan. Interesting. I don't remember the web (or the pre-web internet) generally looking like 4chan in the earlier days. Pockets of it always did, of course. But we are both engaging in a statistical error here -- we're using sample sizes of one. Your experience and mine may differ quite a lot simply because we hung out in different parts of the internet.
- kody 7y ago
  It really is interesting that our anecdotes can be so different. I'm assuming you're older than me (25) since you mention the pre-web internet, so I'd also guess that by the time you were on the web/pre-web internet you would've had a more developed filter than I. My introduction to the web progressed roughly with watching my dad use BBS -> playing Neopets and Runescape -> becoming very involved with Runescape forums -> running a Runescape forum (first introduction to moderating user-submitted content at the age of 10. Yeah...) -> getting involved with video game modding communities, which meant I was spending all my free time browsing forums, following every link, completely absorbed by everything the early web's computer game communities churned out. My experience probably would've been very different if I hadn't been able to get around the parental controls my parents used, or if I had been interested in different hobbies with a more approachable web presence. I've been nostalgic for the "old web" lately, but I'm also very, very grateful that I haven't clicked on an inconspicuous URL that turned out to be a jumpscare, virus, weird porn, or gore in quite a while. EDIT: I don't want to imply that the Disturbing Web == Videogame Web; that just happened to be my experience.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > I'm assuming you're older than me (25) since you mention the pre-web internet This is an excellent point. You're younger than my eldest child, and I was active on the internet from way back when it wasn't available to the general public. That has to color our experiences -- even if only in that what you consider the "old days" and what I consider the "old days" are entirely different eras.
  - 7y ago
TuringNYC 7y ago
>> When reporters on Twitter freak out about the trolls on 4chan like it's some disease infecting our precious wholesome web Without making excuses for 4chan, perhaps the reporters should freak out about their own behavior first? So much of the news-media has an incredibly narrow focus, almost to be lying by omission. For a minority member of society, reporters are the 4-chan. One of thousands of examples: https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-harvey-20170829-story.html https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-harvey-20170829-story.h...
- watwut 7y ago
  However, this factor is better now then it used to. If anything the previously less represented groups have much more ability to make themselves heard then before. The mass media used to be more uniform before the internet got popular.
adultSwim 7y ago
They were right to freak out. Swastikas and the n-word being tolerated as "jokes" for years was a breading ground from which militant fascists emerged.
- throwawaysp376 7y ago
  The suppression of speech you dislike is a much clearer indication of fascistic behavior than that of the people vocalizing such speech.
thrower123 7y ago
This aligns very much with what I remember of the old PHP and BBCode forums in the early 2000s. Things were all over the place, and flamewars ran rampant. Most of them were run by people where modding was not their real job, just a fun hobby, and a fair number ended up going a little Stanford Prison Experiment.

by kody 7y ago

hooande 7y ago

if most of the web that you visited looked like 4chan, you should have been going to different sites

GrayTextIsTruth 7y ago
The subtle shaming and holier-than-thou policing, like in your comment, is more harmful and toxic than the trolling. It’s what is fueling the polarization IMO. Look now I’m doing it, it’s contagious.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

GrayTextIsTruth 7y ago

This is my experience and perception as well. I don’t understand people who think it’s always been some civil gathering.

at-fates-hands 7y ago
> I don’t understand people who think it’s always been some civil gathering. In the early days of social media, the idea was to create engaging communities, which I felt for the most part happened. I was on a LOT of social media platforms in the mid aughts and really got a lot of it with the people I connected with. For me, it was actually quite positive and healthy then. In the last eight years or so? I had to get off. The overwhelming negativity, the weaponization of the platforms, the "cancel culture" and a rash of other things just make a majority of the platforms completely unusable now. On top of that, you add in the incredibly poor track record these platforms have with user data and privacy, the non-stop tracking, and the thousands of ads in your feeds? It used to be a joy to use these platforms. Now it's gotten to a point where I'm not sure what the point of social media is anymore.

JohnFen 7y ago

> I can't help but remember (through my biased lenses of course) when most of the web (that I visited) looked like 4chan. Interesting. I don't remember the web (or the pre-web internet) generally looking like 4chan in the earlier days. Pockets of it always did, of course. But we are both engaging in a statistical error here -- we're using sample sizes of one. Your experience and mine may differ quite a lot simply because we hung out in different parts of the internet.

kody 7y ago
It really is interesting that our anecdotes can be so different. I'm assuming you're older than me (25) since you mention the pre-web internet, so I'd also guess that by the time you were on the web/pre-web internet you would've had a more developed filter than I. My introduction to the web progressed roughly with watching my dad use BBS -> playing Neopets and Runescape -> becoming very involved with Runescape forums -> running a Runescape forum (first introduction to moderating user-submitted content at the age of 10. Yeah...) -> getting involved with video game modding communities, which meant I was spending all my free time browsing forums, following every link, completely absorbed by everything the early web's computer game communities churned out. My experience probably would've been very different if I hadn't been able to get around the parental controls my parents used, or if I had been interested in different hobbies with a more approachable web presence. I've been nostalgic for the "old web" lately, but I'm also very, very grateful that I haven't clicked on an inconspicuous URL that turned out to be a jumpscare, virus, weird porn, or gore in quite a while. EDIT: I don't want to imply that the Disturbing Web == Videogame Web; that just happened to be my experience.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > I'm assuming you're older than me (25) since you mention the pre-web internet This is an excellent point. You're younger than my eldest child, and I was active on the internet from way back when it wasn't available to the general public. That has to color our experiences -- even if only in that what you consider the "old days" and what I consider the "old days" are entirely different eras.
- 7y ago

TuringNYC 7y ago

>> When reporters on Twitter freak out about the trolls on 4chan like it's some disease infecting our precious wholesome web Without making excuses for 4chan, perhaps the reporters should freak out about their own behavior first? So much of the news-media has an incredibly narrow focus, almost to be lying by omission. For a minority member of society, reporters are the 4-chan. One of thousands of examples: https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-harvey-20170829-story.html https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-harvey-20170829-story.h...

watwut 7y ago
However, this factor is better now then it used to. If anything the previously less represented groups have much more ability to make themselves heard then before. The mass media used to be more uniform before the internet got popular.

adultSwim 7y ago

They were right to freak out. Swastikas and the n-word being tolerated as "jokes" for years was a breading ground from which militant fascists emerged.

throwawaysp376 7y ago
The suppression of speech you dislike is a much clearer indication of fascistic behavior than that of the people vocalizing such speech.

thrower123 7y ago

This aligns very much with what I remember of the old PHP and BBCode forums in the early 2000s. Things were all over the place, and flamewars ran rampant. Most of them were run by people where modding was not their real job, just a fun hobby, and a fair number ended up going a little Stanford Prison Experiment.