3 ms·

There is no Internet culture, just a bunch of pop culture references that the Reddit/4chan/whomever groupthink have deemed fashionable to talk about. It's just

There is no Internet culture, just a bunch of pop culture references that the Reddit/4chan/whomever groupthink have deemed fashionable to talk about. It's just like pop culture: everyone likes something because they think everyone else likes it. Sure, it has some intrinsic value (else it wouldn't have surfaced), but the real value is saying, "I'm a part of this group." It's entirely transient, and intended as a distraction, nothing more. But, more to the point, any criticism of Reddit is potentially viewed as an insult to the precious 'culture' that has been so pain-stakingly upvoted and meme'd to death. Reddit, like most aggregators, makes it far too easy to comment, and far too easy to vote on comments and stories.

resu_nimda 14y ago
> There is no Internet culture Seriously? Your comment is largely hyperbolic animosity. Yeah, I get that endless image macros and memes are seen as a low-brow form of culture, but "internet culture" is very real and goes way beyond that. I don't understand why you've dismissed it entirely.
- mattgreenrocks 14y ago
  How does it go beyond that? I'm willing to be wrong here. If you lump movements like open source and such in, I see your point. But often, self-identified "Internet culture" seems virtually indistinguishable from pop culture.
  - resu_nimda 14y ago
    I'm basically talking about online communities. 4chan, reddit, somethingawful, various game forums, and on down to all the myriad niches, including this one. True, their contributions to culture have varied wildly along the scales of importance, intellectual value, or whatever metric you choose. Some examples, though, of what I would consider to be generally culturally impactful movements born of internet culture: Anonymous, WikiLeaks, Occupy, digital piracy, and the gradually changing way people are learning to interact and communicate ("kids these days, with their phones"). Edit: And politics - Ron Paul and libertarianism, twitter everything, youtube debates. And I'm not saying I support all of these things, just that they are pretty widely relevant.

resu_nimda 14y ago

> There is no Internet culture Seriously? Your comment is largely hyperbolic animosity. Yeah, I get that endless image macros and memes are seen as a low-brow form of culture, but "internet culture" is very real and goes way beyond that. I don't understand why you've dismissed it entirely.

mattgreenrocks 14y ago
How does it go beyond that? I'm willing to be wrong here. If you lump movements like open source and such in, I see your point. But often, self-identified "Internet culture" seems virtually indistinguishable from pop culture.
- resu_nimda 14y ago
  I'm basically talking about online communities. 4chan, reddit, somethingawful, various game forums, and on down to all the myriad niches, including this one. True, their contributions to culture have varied wildly along the scales of importance, intellectual value, or whatever metric you choose. Some examples, though, of what I would consider to be generally culturally impactful movements born of internet culture: Anonymous, WikiLeaks, Occupy, digital piracy, and the gradually changing way people are learning to interact and communicate ("kids these days, with their phones"). Edit: And politics - Ron Paul and libertarianism, twitter everything, youtube debates. And I'm not saying I support all of these things, just that they are pretty widely relevant.