5 ms·

4chan is obnoxiously and brainlessly countercultural to the point of contrarianism, though. It used to be a fun place where people didn't care so much about so

by Taywee 4y ago

4chan is obnoxiously and brainlessly countercultural to the point of contrarianism, though. It used to be a fun place where people didn't care so much about social conventions and focused mostly on having a good time and poking fun at each other, but it's degraded into just hating anything and everything that they can attribute to anybody they don't like. I've seen tons of cases where they were on-board for something until it became mainstream and then viciously attacked it. There is "alive and well" counterculture, but 4chan is "automatic, boring, annoying, kneejerk" counterculture. It's like a sad shell of what it was, with all the fun sucked out of it.

mantas 4y ago
A lot of counter-cultures attack their owns once it becomes mainstream. Edit: downvoters should ask a punk or metalhead what he thinks about certain bands that went mainstream.
ipaddr 4y ago
It sounds like you grew up and are beyond the childness. Don't take that experience away from others.
- Taywee 4y ago
  It's not childish anymore. It's just angry and cynical. It looks less like the shit-talking edgy teenagers having fun being idiots like it was in 2007, and more like unhinged, hateful, contrarian paranoid schizophrenia. I wish the people on 4chan had the stupid childish fun that I did 15 years ago.
  - skyyler 4y ago
    >and more like unhinged, hateful, contrarian paranoid schizophrenia. You and I did not use the same 4chan in 2007... I learned new slurs there, ways to insult people that I could have never imagined. I read posts from a schizoid that claimed to have evidence that the government was influencing his life through the ratings of popular animes on My Anime List. I saw child porn get posted regularly. I saw extremely hateful posts about women, extremely hateful posts about people that aren't white, extremely hateful posts about literally anyone. I believe you're looking back with rose tinted glasses.
    - Taywee 4y ago
      I was a teenager, so it's possible to a degree, but the things you're listing in my memory were there in significantly smaller degrees, and have since completely taken over the site. Back in the day, there was a hell of a lot more "Yellow van", "epic for the win" and the like. Now it's 'america is a far left cultureless “nation” and its tranny enabling (((mutts))) will never be white no matter how much they inbreed with other “whites” in their shithole trailer park'. Yeah, the disgusting stuff today always was there, but it was a relatively small part of the site, and now it's the vast majority of it. I'm not going to pretend that it was ever "good", but you can't pretend that it hasn't changed at all.
      - skyyler 4y ago
        I don't think the ratio of shit:lulz has changed. I think your ability to tolerate shit to get to the lulz has changed.
        Taywee 4y ago
        You can look at some old archives: http://yotsubasociety.org/ http://yotsubasociety.org/ and https://purl.stanford.edu/tf565pz4260 https://purl.stanford.edu/tf565pz4260 I'm downloading it now to look. I have a strong feeling that 2007 /v/ will look strikingly different from modern /v/.
        skyyler 4y ago
        I'm sure that it will be different. Dubs guy hadn't given way for Patrick Bateman worship yet. I don't think that it would be any less hateful, though. It's just that most of the hate was ironic early on... There's just this weird thing about how if you perform a ritual ironically, you're still performing the ritual.
        Taywee 4y ago
        That last line reminds me of the old refrain: "Ironic shitposting is still shitposting." Also that old fake Descartes quote: " Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company."
  - ur-whale 4y ago
    > the stupid childish fun that I did 15 years ago. You realize you've just confessed you've grown old (and likely cranky)?
    - Taywee 4y ago
      It happens to the best of us. Personally, I don't think 30 is all that old, but I am cranky. I also don't think there's a "getting out of touch" aspect of holding the opinion that silly stupidity is not the same thing as angry paranoia.
      - germinalphrase 4y ago
        You’re a old young person, but you’ll be a young old person soon enough.
        notch898a 4y ago
        IMO having a kid is the cutoff between old young and young old. Have a kid and the walls move in fast. Used to live in alternative shelters, backpacking in the outdoors for months on end? Yeah child services says that's substandard housing and abuse. Hell there were child abuse investigation just for a family backpacking the Appalachian trail, and that's a boring ass well planned thing that even old square fuckers can relate to. Used to psychedelics or other drugs? Yeah the kid is trained at a very young age by police officers at the school to snitch you out, and they get them young enough they won't have a filter. DCS and/or criminal charges incoming. Used to go overseas and do super dangerous stuff? Suddenly any family or friends that tolerated that say you're a piece of shit for risking your when a kid relies on you and the judge is gonna say even if you earn enough doing that to support the kid it's still not enough because the kid needs 20% of the imputed income you could make as a conservative working stiff no matter if they were fine before during the times you were making less, don't agree well then off to jail. Your life is surrounded now by mandatory reporters. The doctor, the teacher, the therapist. Yeah, all mandatory reporters. Say something they don't like as a child-free and nobody gives a shit. Have a kid, fuck nah their alternative views are signs of abuse. Send in the investigators and let them sort it out. And the people making these judgement calls are judges, lawyers, DCS workers. People plugged into the system. Not necessarily politically conservative but conditioned to fall within the norms of the system. Hell even SBF (the guy that never wears a suit even for billion dollar investment meetings) wears a suit in front of a judge, that's how conservative that system is. You learn to keep your mouth shut. You learn to living in the boring ass house that has occupancy certification. You espouse the most boring views that will not anger a mandatory reporter. You diligently pay the taxes the government uses to drone strike brown people ovrseas. You refrain from drugs. You don't take risks that will result in not being able to make 20% of the imputed income you need to stay out of jail. Wait 18 years and you can be old young again.
  - roncesvalles 4y ago
    It really depends on the board that you're on. /g/ imo is one of the best tech forums that I'm aware of, as long as you don't get fixated on the occasional crudeness and racism. /pol/ is just racists and incoherent rambling. /tv/ is a good forum for critical takes on media but again requires weeding through the bad parts.
  - lm28469 4y ago
    You probably changed more than 4chan changed in the last 15 years
Eupraxias 4y ago
Any counter-culture requires there to be a culture. We have no counter-culture, because there is no longer a strong, central culture. 4chan is one of many siloed cultures, not a counter-culture.
- everdrive 4y ago
  I don’t wholly agree with you, but this is an interesting point. What does it mean to be “counterculture” in our increasingly fragmented culture? Perhaps the current debate here is so frenzied because each debater is speaking from their own island of culture, and some “other” mainstream always seems larger than their own?
  - Eupraxias 4y ago
    Thank you, I don't entirely agree with myself, and feel that it is too reductive a statement. It is at least worth considering that countercultures contrast best against cohesive cultures. We're now lacking both, mostly due to the transformations of the information age and how that has split many homogeneous cultures into numerous segregated identity clusters. For what it is worth (which is nothing) in 1992 I predicted what we see now; it has unfolded exactly as I expected.
everdrive 4y ago
> 4chan is obnoxiously and brainlessly countercultural to the point of contrarianism, though. It would be a mistake to think that counterculture is inherently a good thing, or that countercultures of the past did not have their own pockets of “obnoxious and brainless contrarianism.”

by Taywee 4y ago

mantas 4y ago

A lot of counter-cultures attack their owns once it becomes mainstream. Edit: downvoters should ask a punk or metalhead what he thinks about certain bands that went mainstream.

ipaddr 4y ago

It sounds like you grew up and are beyond the childness. Don't take that experience away from others.

Taywee 4y ago
It's not childish anymore. It's just angry and cynical. It looks less like the shit-talking edgy teenagers having fun being idiots like it was in 2007, and more like unhinged, hateful, contrarian paranoid schizophrenia. I wish the people on 4chan had the stupid childish fun that I did 15 years ago.
- skyyler 4y ago
  >and more like unhinged, hateful, contrarian paranoid schizophrenia. You and I did not use the same 4chan in 2007... I learned new slurs there, ways to insult people that I could have never imagined. I read posts from a schizoid that claimed to have evidence that the government was influencing his life through the ratings of popular animes on My Anime List. I saw child porn get posted regularly. I saw extremely hateful posts about women, extremely hateful posts about people that aren't white, extremely hateful posts about literally anyone. I believe you're looking back with rose tinted glasses.
  - Taywee 4y ago
    I was a teenager, so it's possible to a degree, but the things you're listing in my memory were there in significantly smaller degrees, and have since completely taken over the site. Back in the day, there was a hell of a lot more "Yellow van", "epic for the win" and the like. Now it's 'america is a far left cultureless “nation” and its tranny enabling (((mutts))) will never be white no matter how much they inbreed with other “whites” in their shithole trailer park'. Yeah, the disgusting stuff today always was there, but it was a relatively small part of the site, and now it's the vast majority of it. I'm not going to pretend that it was ever "good", but you can't pretend that it hasn't changed at all.
    - skyyler 4y ago
      I don't think the ratio of shit:lulz has changed. I think your ability to tolerate shit to get to the lulz has changed.
      - Taywee 4y ago
        You can look at some old archives: http://yotsubasociety.org/ http://yotsubasociety.org/ and https://purl.stanford.edu/tf565pz4260 https://purl.stanford.edu/tf565pz4260 I'm downloading it now to look. I have a strong feeling that 2007 /v/ will look strikingly different from modern /v/.
        skyyler 4y ago
        I'm sure that it will be different. Dubs guy hadn't given way for Patrick Bateman worship yet. I don't think that it would be any less hateful, though. It's just that most of the hate was ironic early on... There's just this weird thing about how if you perform a ritual ironically, you're still performing the ritual.
        Taywee 4y ago
        That last line reminds me of the old refrain: "Ironic shitposting is still shitposting." Also that old fake Descartes quote: " Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company."
- ur-whale 4y ago
  > the stupid childish fun that I did 15 years ago. You realize you've just confessed you've grown old (and likely cranky)?
  - Taywee 4y ago
    It happens to the best of us. Personally, I don't think 30 is all that old, but I am cranky. I also don't think there's a "getting out of touch" aspect of holding the opinion that silly stupidity is not the same thing as angry paranoia.
    - germinalphrase 4y ago
      You’re a old young person, but you’ll be a young old person soon enough.
      - notch898a 4y ago
        IMO having a kid is the cutoff between old young and young old. Have a kid and the walls move in fast. Used to live in alternative shelters, backpacking in the outdoors for months on end? Yeah child services says that's substandard housing and abuse. Hell there were child abuse investigation just for a family backpacking the Appalachian trail, and that's a boring ass well planned thing that even old square fuckers can relate to. Used to psychedelics or other drugs? Yeah the kid is trained at a very young age by police officers at the school to snitch you out, and they get them young enough they won't have a filter. DCS and/or criminal charges incoming. Used to go overseas and do super dangerous stuff? Suddenly any family or friends that tolerated that say you're a piece of shit for risking your when a kid relies on you and the judge is gonna say even if you earn enough doing that to support the kid it's still not enough because the kid needs 20% of the imputed income you could make as a conservative working stiff no matter if they were fine before during the times you were making less, don't agree well then off to jail. Your life is surrounded now by mandatory reporters. The doctor, the teacher, the therapist. Yeah, all mandatory reporters. Say something they don't like as a child-free and nobody gives a shit. Have a kid, fuck nah their alternative views are signs of abuse. Send in the investigators and let them sort it out. And the people making these judgement calls are judges, lawyers, DCS workers. People plugged into the system. Not necessarily politically conservative but conditioned to fall within the norms of the system. Hell even SBF (the guy that never wears a suit even for billion dollar investment meetings) wears a suit in front of a judge, that's how conservative that system is. You learn to keep your mouth shut. You learn to living in the boring ass house that has occupancy certification. You espouse the most boring views that will not anger a mandatory reporter. You diligently pay the taxes the government uses to drone strike brown people ovrseas. You refrain from drugs. You don't take risks that will result in not being able to make 20% of the imputed income you need to stay out of jail. Wait 18 years and you can be old young again.
- roncesvalles 4y ago
  It really depends on the board that you're on. /g/ imo is one of the best tech forums that I'm aware of, as long as you don't get fixated on the occasional crudeness and racism. /pol/ is just racists and incoherent rambling. /tv/ is a good forum for critical takes on media but again requires weeding through the bad parts.
- lm28469 4y ago
  You probably changed more than 4chan changed in the last 15 years

Eupraxias 4y ago

Any counter-culture requires there to be a culture. We have no counter-culture, because there is no longer a strong, central culture. 4chan is one of many siloed cultures, not a counter-culture.

everdrive 4y ago
I don’t wholly agree with you, but this is an interesting point. What does it mean to be “counterculture” in our increasingly fragmented culture? Perhaps the current debate here is so frenzied because each debater is speaking from their own island of culture, and some “other” mainstream always seems larger than their own?
- Eupraxias 4y ago
  Thank you, I don't entirely agree with myself, and feel that it is too reductive a statement. It is at least worth considering that countercultures contrast best against cohesive cultures. We're now lacking both, mostly due to the transformations of the information age and how that has split many homogeneous cultures into numerous segregated identity clusters. For what it is worth (which is nothing) in 1992 I predicted what we see now; it has unfolded exactly as I expected.

everdrive 4y ago

> 4chan is obnoxiously and brainlessly countercultural to the point of contrarianism, though. It would be a mistake to think that counterculture is inherently a good thing, or that countercultures of the past did not have their own pockets of “obnoxious and brainless contrarianism.”