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You seem to be far more versed in the ways of 4chan. I have spent a few hours there a few times, long enough to understand the draw and that it wasn't for me, a

by skolor 17y ago

You seem to be far more versed in the ways of 4chan. I have spent a few hours there a few times, long enough to understand the draw and that it wasn't for me, and I have several friends who spend time on the various boards there. Would you mind explaining a few things? I've seen "chans" refer to several things, both the various boards (/b/, /g/, /r/ and the like), and referring to individual people. Which way are you using it, and why (as opposed to using it the other way)? Peaked in size I understand that 4-chan servers tend to be very heavily trafficked, to the point that many people have said "DOS attack on 4chan? Is the internet on?" or something of similar meaning. Is this what you mean, or does it have to do with some kind of critical mass relation between Anonymous contributors and how much Original Content can be created/consumed (I would assume there is a peak point for that, although I don't have the slightest idea where that would be). news ways to branch out I was under the impression that 4channers held a generally negative feeling for any other boards, tending to call them "imitators" and the like. What makes you think that a sufficiently interesting person could change that, considering the anonymous nature of 4chan (thus making it impossible for any person to actually back up how interesting they were, historically). Back in the glory days I see this often, although it seems to be more a state of message boards in general than 4chan, although it does seem particularly loudly voiced on 4chan. Would you mind elaborating what those glory days were like, sense it certainly seems to me that some of the most impressive things to come out of 4chan have happened recently (Chanology, the Times poll rigging, and the like). Sorry if I read too much into what you said. I've wanted to ask someone about their 4chan experiences for a while, but none of my friends want to admit to much, so I was hoping the semi-anonymity of HN would help a little.

pyre 17y ago
> I've seen "chans" refer to several things, both the various boards (/b/, /g/, /r/ and the like), and referring to individual people. Which way are you using it, and why (as opposed to using it the other way)? 'chans' refers to imageboard sites in general. 4chan arose out of a 'need/interest' in creating an English-language version of 2channel (2ch.net) from m00t who was a 'goon' from the SomethingAwful forums. It was originally 4chan.net until the domain was 'hijacked' by a hosting service, so then it became 4chan.org. Since then there have been multiple boards spawned from 4chan (since the image board software open source, though 4chan doesn't release their internal modifications to it to my knowledge): iichan.net 7chan.org 420chan.org etc. These are collectively referred to as the 'chans' much in the way that Unix-like operating systems are referred to as '* nixes' (edit: sorry only way to avoid turning it into italics). If you want to have a more comprehensive listing look to http://shii.org/2ch http://shii.org/2ch > Peaked in size I understand that 4-chan servers tend to be very heavily trafficked, to the point that many people have said "DOS attack on 4chan? Is the internet on?" or something of similar meaning. Is this what you mean, or does it have to do with some kind of critical mass relation between Anonymous contributors and how much Original Content can be created/consumed (I would assume there is a peak point for that, although I don't have the slightest idea where that would be). 4chan can be and is DDoS'd. The traffic to the site is MASSIVE (they've had to upgrade hosting several times and at least a couple of years ago or so they were constantly maxing out a 100Mbps connection), but they are occasionally taken down. Note that there is a significant amount of spam to the boards with links to malware or other sites trying to promote themselves (or just spam trying to 'flame' the 'community'). A number of DDoS attacks were initiated by way of uploading an 'image' that was just a javascript file with the extension changed. The text of the post then instructs the user to save it to '4chan.js' and double-click on it. Unfortunately there are a lot morons that do this and (at least the site admins claim) that this infects their computer somehow (I suppose the browser; most likely IE and Windows users) making them a 'zombie' in a 4chan-directed attack. The admins then need to try and post information on how users can remove this stuff from their computer. This is sort of ingenious if you think about it... The best way to DDOS 4chan is to infect all of its users with something that increases their normal traffic to the site 10 fold or more. > Back in the glory days I see this often, although it seems to be more a state of message boards in general than 4chan, although it does seem particularly loudly voiced on 4chan. Would you mind elaborating what those glory days were like, sense it certainly seems to me that some of the most impressive things to come out of 4chan have happened recently (Chanology, the Times poll rigging, and the like). This is just people being nostalgic to the past. There are people that claim that site was 'never good' and people that claim all of the 'newfags' are 'the cancer that is killing 4chan.' (At one point 7chan.org was hijacked to redirect cancer.org) 'Anonymous' is such a hodgepodge of differing opinion that you really can't get a single unifying view-point on anything. There are people that go on 'raids' to hijack people's emails and whatnot... and there are other 'Anons' that are referred to as 'white knights' that try and warn people that have been targeted. Sometimes 'glory days' posts are nothing more than trolls trolling other trolls too. You really can't take too much on the site seriously.
- unalone 17y ago
  This is just people being nostalgic to the past. There are people that claim that site was 'never good' and people that claim all of the 'newfags' are 'the cancer that is killing 4chan.' I was referring to the fact that once upon a time 4chan wasn't about the memespawning and repetition. The memes were just a part of the larger community that was /b/. What I find funny is that you can see 4chan's community spreading to other sites. Reddit is now fully infested with meme generation, and it's just started to have the same set of people artificially creating memes and getting scolded by long-time users. I'm curious to see how Reddit survives, considering it both has user-based content moderation and subreddits to stave off the so-called cancer. Now, of course, Hacker News has recently made the tip into memeage, and I'd suspect within a year we see a meme or two that's become a big part of the site. It's taken a surprisingly long time to tip, but it's tipped.
  - Radix 17y ago
    Which memes do you recognize as appearing on HN? The only one I can think of is Erlang references. I like the idea of labeling poor arguments against pg's disagreement hierarchy would make a useful meme, though I'm probably wrong and can't see it. e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=829337 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=829337
    - unalone 17y ago
      Erlang was more of an inside joke. I'm referring more to the Kanye jokes I've seen here, and similar mainstream memes being quoted within the month or so since I started using HN again. Used to be people memeing like that would be downvoted instantly. Now we've grown to the point where meme recognition is more of a factor than Hacker News guidelines. It's a very, very, very slow fall, but it's a fall.
      - joeyo 17y ago
        Part of it is that memes transmit so rapidly now to a pretty large percentage of internet users thanks to Twitter, Facebook and friends. All the old ways to transmit memes (irc, SA, chans, ytmnd, etc) are still active too, but the lag time between meme creation and meme saturation is way smaller than it used to be. So people are naturally becoming accustomed to seeing them in more venues. It's not like memes are unique to the internet (see: Sometimes the Dragon Wins, for example) but their speed of infection and increasingly large reach is quite astounding.

by skolor 17y ago

pyre 17y ago

> I've seen "chans" refer to several things, both the various boards (/b/, /g/, /r/ and the like), and referring to individual people. Which way are you using it, and why (as opposed to using it the other way)? 'chans' refers to imageboard sites in general. 4chan arose out of a 'need/interest' in creating an English-language version of 2channel (2ch.net) from m00t who was a 'goon' from the SomethingAwful forums. It was originally 4chan.net until the domain was 'hijacked' by a hosting service, so then it became 4chan.org. Since then there have been multiple boards spawned from 4chan (since the image board software open source, though 4chan doesn't release their internal modifications to it to my knowledge): iichan.net 7chan.org 420chan.org etc. These are collectively referred to as the 'chans' much in the way that Unix-like operating systems are referred to as '* nixes' (edit: sorry only way to avoid turning it into italics). If you want to have a more comprehensive listing look to http://shii.org/2ch http://shii.org/2ch > Peaked in size I understand that 4-chan servers tend to be very heavily trafficked, to the point that many people have said "DOS attack on 4chan? Is the internet on?" or something of similar meaning. Is this what you mean, or does it have to do with some kind of critical mass relation between Anonymous contributors and how much Original Content can be created/consumed (I would assume there is a peak point for that, although I don't have the slightest idea where that would be). 4chan can be and is DDoS'd. The traffic to the site is MASSIVE (they've had to upgrade hosting several times and at least a couple of years ago or so they were constantly maxing out a 100Mbps connection), but they are occasionally taken down. Note that there is a significant amount of spam to the boards with links to malware or other sites trying to promote themselves (or just spam trying to 'flame' the 'community'). A number of DDoS attacks were initiated by way of uploading an 'image' that was just a javascript file with the extension changed. The text of the post then instructs the user to save it to '4chan.js' and double-click on it. Unfortunately there are a lot morons that do this and (at least the site admins claim) that this infects their computer somehow (I suppose the browser; most likely IE and Windows users) making them a 'zombie' in a 4chan-directed attack. The admins then need to try and post information on how users can remove this stuff from their computer. This is sort of ingenious if you think about it... The best way to DDOS 4chan is to infect all of its users with something that increases their normal traffic to the site 10 fold or more. > Back in the glory days I see this often, although it seems to be more a state of message boards in general than 4chan, although it does seem particularly loudly voiced on 4chan. Would you mind elaborating what those glory days were like, sense it certainly seems to me that some of the most impressive things to come out of 4chan have happened recently (Chanology, the Times poll rigging, and the like). This is just people being nostalgic to the past. There are people that claim that site was 'never good' and people that claim all of the 'newfags' are 'the cancer that is killing 4chan.' (At one point 7chan.org was hijacked to redirect cancer.org) 'Anonymous' is such a hodgepodge of differing opinion that you really can't get a single unifying view-point on anything. There are people that go on 'raids' to hijack people's emails and whatnot... and there are other 'Anons' that are referred to as 'white knights' that try and warn people that have been targeted. Sometimes 'glory days' posts are nothing more than trolls trolling other trolls too. You really can't take too much on the site seriously.

unalone 17y ago
This is just people being nostalgic to the past. There are people that claim that site was 'never good' and people that claim all of the 'newfags' are 'the cancer that is killing 4chan.' I was referring to the fact that once upon a time 4chan wasn't about the memespawning and repetition. The memes were just a part of the larger community that was /b/. What I find funny is that you can see 4chan's community spreading to other sites. Reddit is now fully infested with meme generation, and it's just started to have the same set of people artificially creating memes and getting scolded by long-time users. I'm curious to see how Reddit survives, considering it both has user-based content moderation and subreddits to stave off the so-called cancer. Now, of course, Hacker News has recently made the tip into memeage, and I'd suspect within a year we see a meme or two that's become a big part of the site. It's taken a surprisingly long time to tip, but it's tipped.
- Radix 17y ago
  Which memes do you recognize as appearing on HN? The only one I can think of is Erlang references. I like the idea of labeling poor arguments against pg's disagreement hierarchy would make a useful meme, though I'm probably wrong and can't see it. e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=829337 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=829337
  - unalone 17y ago
    Erlang was more of an inside joke. I'm referring more to the Kanye jokes I've seen here, and similar mainstream memes being quoted within the month or so since I started using HN again. Used to be people memeing like that would be downvoted instantly. Now we've grown to the point where meme recognition is more of a factor than Hacker News guidelines. It's a very, very, very slow fall, but it's a fall.
    - joeyo 17y ago
      Part of it is that memes transmit so rapidly now to a pretty large percentage of internet users thanks to Twitter, Facebook and friends. All the old ways to transmit memes (irc, SA, chans, ytmnd, etc) are still active too, but the lag time between meme creation and meme saturation is way smaller than it used to be. So people are naturally becoming accustomed to seeing them in more venues. It's not like memes are unique to the internet (see: Sometimes the Dragon Wins, for example) but their speed of infection and increasingly large reach is quite astounding.