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Wow, the comments on this thread are much more divisive than I thought. I've always felt that the 'there are only two internet cultures: 4chan and tumblr' has

Wow, the comments on this thread are much more divisive than I thought. I've always felt that the 'there are only two internet cultures: 4chan and tumblr' has felt somewhat accurate. Unfortunately moreso now that /pol/ and /r9k/ have taken over broad swathes of the internet. It's sad to see how far this old haunt has fallen. Lurking /v/ in my early/mid teens was a formative experience for me. It wasn't as hateful as it was, until Gamergate.

h2zizzle 1y ago
/r9k/ is such a weird situation, because its original incarnation prided itself on being an intellectual bastion on the site. The robot meant that you couldn't meme so easily; you had to attempt to write something substantial or meaningful (or at least original). Most were simply discussions, but you'd also get creative gems like futureguy's sobering predictions (well, history, for him). tfwnogf really did kill everything.
throwanem 1y ago
> I've always felt that the 'there are only two internet cultures: 4chan and tumblr' has felt somewhat accurate. "Somewhat accurate" is exactly right. This formulation overstates the number of Internet cultures by one, in that the deepest and most shameful secret of both websites' most avid users is that they have always been both websites' most avid users. Other than that, there's nothing wrong with it.
- lurk2 1y ago
  > in that the deepest and most shameful secret of both websites' most avid users is that they have always been both websites' most avid users. This isn’t true at all.
  - throwanem 1y ago
    > This isn’t true at all. Many will say the same. Still, both cohorts' language and behavior evince continuous cultural cross-pollination from around 2012 (at least; I wasn't paying serious attention much sooner), at a rate and scope both well in excess of broader culture's adoption of same as substantially attributable to either source. That still has to be explained, and I would be curious how you do so, although you'll almost certainly prefer to keep trying to indict the factual claim.
    - lurk2 1y ago
      > Still, both cohorts' language and behavior evince continuous cultural cross-pollination from around 2012 (at least; I wasn't paying serious attention much sooner), at a rate and scope both well in excess of broader culture's adoption of same as substantially attributable to either source. Do you have any evidence or anecdotes to explain why you believe that? > you'll almost certainly prefer to keep trying to indict the factual claim. Because the claim isn’t convincing. I saw plenty of content from Tumblr in 2014 despite not actively using it, and I could probably pass an ideological Turing test for a user of the era, but that doesn’t mean I was using both websites. You obviously have to have someone taking screenshots of these posts for each community to be aware of the other in the first place, but the core demographic of users on each site did not substantially overlap.
      - throwanem 1y ago
        "Most avid users," I believe I said. You seem to exclude yourself from the category, so it isn't surprising you should have a perspective other than that I seek to describe. As for the rest, I made a general factual claim that I'm happy to discuss, but I do not know you and neither can nor care to attempt to speak to your personal situation, so if you continue insisting on the latter I'll have to demur from further participation. I'm a student of and commentator upon the moment of history in which I happen to have found myself, rather than a social scientist or indeed any other kind, and also not your father confessor. If the result of my observation and analysis fails to satisfy your standard, that's okay by me. Or we could try to have a conversation about it, I suppose. For example, what explains the trend of both cultures' slang growing more similar over time? Merely circulating receipts to make fun of doesn't seem likely to have this result; why socially adopt language unique to a common object of social-bonding contempt? And so forth. I obviously don't have a lot of data for or against, and I think neither does anyone else for events too recent to have more than begun to be studied. I am one unemployed software engineer. You are free to demand I exceed in result the entire professional vocation whose job is this kind of analysis, but I can of course do nothing in response save disappoint.
        lurk2 1y ago
- helle253 1y ago
  I disagree with this statement, but I get what you're saying. Two communities with distinct cultures, whose membership nonetheless overlaps, are still two distinct cultures. They may influence each other through that overlapping membership, but that does not mean they're the same.
  - throwanem 1y ago
    I'm not sure if you're arguing that the overlap was less than I describe or that it was negligible. But I would soften my prior claim far enough to say that, while each site had its own constellation of cultural tropes and styles with which the median user of that site would primarily identify, a large minority or more of each site's most prolific cultural transmitters was broadly and continuously informed by participation in both cultures, such that those cultures tended over time to express increasingly similar behaviors, utterances, and semiosis, despite over the same span each growing overtly more hateful and contemptuous of the other. (A Freudian might reduce this to superego vs. id, a Jungian to animus and anima. I'm not any of those kinds of mendicant, and make no assertion as to etiology. But it is anything but controversial to suggest we have recently changed our environment in ways that can be unexpectedly dangerous for the young and others whose personalities are incompletely or imperfectly developed.)

h2zizzle 1y ago

/r9k/ is such a weird situation, because its original incarnation prided itself on being an intellectual bastion on the site. The robot meant that you couldn't meme so easily; you had to attempt to write something substantial or meaningful (or at least original). Most were simply discussions, but you'd also get creative gems like futureguy's sobering predictions (well, history, for him). tfwnogf really did kill everything.

throwanem 1y ago

> I've always felt that the 'there are only two internet cultures: 4chan and tumblr' has felt somewhat accurate. "Somewhat accurate" is exactly right. This formulation overstates the number of Internet cultures by one, in that the deepest and most shameful secret of both websites' most avid users is that they have always been both websites' most avid users. Other than that, there's nothing wrong with it.

lurk2 1y ago
> in that the deepest and most shameful secret of both websites' most avid users is that they have always been both websites' most avid users. This isn’t true at all.
- throwanem 1y ago
  > This isn’t true at all. Many will say the same. Still, both cohorts' language and behavior evince continuous cultural cross-pollination from around 2012 (at least; I wasn't paying serious attention much sooner), at a rate and scope both well in excess of broader culture's adoption of same as substantially attributable to either source. That still has to be explained, and I would be curious how you do so, although you'll almost certainly prefer to keep trying to indict the factual claim.
  - lurk2 1y ago
    > Still, both cohorts' language and behavior evince continuous cultural cross-pollination from around 2012 (at least; I wasn't paying serious attention much sooner), at a rate and scope both well in excess of broader culture's adoption of same as substantially attributable to either source. Do you have any evidence or anecdotes to explain why you believe that? > you'll almost certainly prefer to keep trying to indict the factual claim. Because the claim isn’t convincing. I saw plenty of content from Tumblr in 2014 despite not actively using it, and I could probably pass an ideological Turing test for a user of the era, but that doesn’t mean I was using both websites. You obviously have to have someone taking screenshots of these posts for each community to be aware of the other in the first place, but the core demographic of users on each site did not substantially overlap.
    - throwanem 1y ago
      "Most avid users," I believe I said. You seem to exclude yourself from the category, so it isn't surprising you should have a perspective other than that I seek to describe. As for the rest, I made a general factual claim that I'm happy to discuss, but I do not know you and neither can nor care to attempt to speak to your personal situation, so if you continue insisting on the latter I'll have to demur from further participation. I'm a student of and commentator upon the moment of history in which I happen to have found myself, rather than a social scientist or indeed any other kind, and also not your father confessor. If the result of my observation and analysis fails to satisfy your standard, that's okay by me. Or we could try to have a conversation about it, I suppose. For example, what explains the trend of both cultures' slang growing more similar over time? Merely circulating receipts to make fun of doesn't seem likely to have this result; why socially adopt language unique to a common object of social-bonding contempt? And so forth. I obviously don't have a lot of data for or against, and I think neither does anyone else for events too recent to have more than begun to be studied. I am one unemployed software engineer. You are free to demand I exceed in result the entire professional vocation whose job is this kind of analysis, but I can of course do nothing in response save disappoint.
      - lurk2 1y ago
helle253 1y ago
I disagree with this statement, but I get what you're saying. Two communities with distinct cultures, whose membership nonetheless overlaps, are still two distinct cultures. They may influence each other through that overlapping membership, but that does not mean they're the same.
- throwanem 1y ago
  I'm not sure if you're arguing that the overlap was less than I describe or that it was negligible. But I would soften my prior claim far enough to say that, while each site had its own constellation of cultural tropes and styles with which the median user of that site would primarily identify, a large minority or more of each site's most prolific cultural transmitters was broadly and continuously informed by participation in both cultures, such that those cultures tended over time to express increasingly similar behaviors, utterances, and semiosis, despite over the same span each growing overtly more hateful and contemptuous of the other. (A Freudian might reduce this to superego vs. id, a Jungian to animus and anima. I'm not any of those kinds of mendicant, and make no assertion as to etiology. But it is anything but controversial to suggest we have recently changed our environment in ways that can be unexpectedly dangerous for the young and others whose personalities are incompletely or imperfectly developed.)