Aside from the fact that you pretty much took the bait with /pol/ there, you should take a look at their irl meetups and compare them to average reddit meetups. You would be wildly surprised by how non-white the average 4chan meetups are.
It's not that I'm a 'snowflake' or 'I don't understand chan humor', what they're doing is actually fucked up and dangerous even if they justify it as 'trolling' or 'irony' that should be ignored.
There is nothing normal about that boards pre-occupation with calling for racial extermination. I don't give a damn if they're posting that 'ironically', there is nothing normal about that type of constant, obsessive 'joking' about mass murder behavior to that degree, and repeating those things so much can lead to people truly becoming obsessed with those ideas, then justifying and actually carrying those actions out (like the Christchurch racial terror attack).
One of the goals of his bloodshed, he wrote, was to “agitate the political enemies of my people into action, to cause them to overextend their own hand and experience the eventual and inevitable backlash as a result.” He said he wanted to “incite violence, retaliation and further divide.” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/world/asia/new-zealand-gu...
I mean this is just flagrantly wrong.
>what you're doing is gaslighting
How does me saying that the 4chan isn't as white-dominated as you say it is (with a hard proof, given that you can literally take a look at pictures from irl meetups from both 4chan and reddit, and then compare yourself) count as gaslighting?
>There is nothing normal about that boards pre-occupation with calling for racial extermination.
Will it make you feel better, if I told you that you can go and see those threads in many directions, including Indian-poster threads getting into extermination-tier shitfights with Paki and Israeli posters, as well as threads where Italians and Polacks call for mutual genocide? And let's not forget the asian continent shitfight threads, where there is an eternal argument between Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean posters trying to prove to each other who should've genocided whom at which point in history, with occasional oil being poured into the dumpster fire by Vietnamese and Indonesian posters.
The board isn't pre-occupied with racial extermination. It is pre-occupied with edgy content that you cannot find elsewhere. Given that knowledge, it is understandable why most of it ends up being just wild trash. But there are definitely occasional gems in the rough that can be found there that cannot be found elsewhere.
Can you give an example of a gem? I've only seen the racist trash side (that's certainly what's on the board as of right now).
Or when they had "journalists" from big publications trying to go there and interview people on the boards, they got fed so much misleading and obviously bs info on purpose before being chased away, it was definitely entertaining to observe. Especially given how obvious it was that the "journalists" in question came in there with a very specific narrative in mind already, and it all got crumbled pretty much in real time.
Not even mentioning stuff like a solution to a novel math problem (which other commenters have already mentioned), which ended up being cited and is relevant to actual ongoing research in a specific math area.[1]
Do those things count as "gems"? That's purely subjective. But that's the kind of stuff I personally appreciate seeing there.
0. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-journalist-convi...
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superpermutation#Lower_bounds,...
The Peter Bright article you posted has no mention of /pol.
It wasn't supposed to, I just posted it for the context of the court case I was talking about. It would be more weird if the court decision included those, since they didn't contribute to his arrest or anything.
If you are curious, you are welcome to go to any 4chan archiver websites and search for his name to see those conversations.
>Trolling journalists doesn't sound like "gems", it sounds like a waste of time (and I'm no fan of most journalists).
What sounds like a waste of time to you might sound like good entertainment to others. If anything, I would say that the "journalist" going directly to 4chan and attempting to "interview" people there was much more of a waste of time.
There doesn't seem to be anything "deeper". Just straight up white supremacy.
[EDIT] (since I'm now throttled for some reason)
You can go on /pol right now and see it's full of white supremacy and hate. You claimed there's some deeper meaning to all of that. There's not though, it is exactly what it looks like.
You seem to be hyperfixating on one out of 3 examples I mentioned. Did you miss the part about a proof for an unsolved math problem or early allegations against someone who went on to be charged for that exact same thing years later?
Not even mentioning other boards that are hobby-specific, like /o/ (car-related stuff) or /fit/ (fitness related stuff). If you see no value in it, that's fine. But "everything i don't like has no value" is not the way to live life.
There should be a "BS Law" were someone claims to have evidence, then refuses to present it no matter how pressed.
He claimed they had a math proof, as we see from the other comments, that wasn't /pol.
He claimed they trolled journalists. Whatever.
He claimed they had something to do with convicting a sex criminal, then provided zero evidence to back that claim up.
In no way is any of this justification for the racism that is the central message of /pol.
I never said it was from /pol/, it was from another 4chan board (/sci/). And I also brought up other boards as well, so I don't know what to tell you.
You also say that my claim about Peter Bright allegations is unverified, but again, I literally was there when those conversations took place, and you are also welcome to go to any 4chan archiver website, search for that name, and you will see the results from those years.
I have no horse in this race, but the only one moving goal posts here is you.
Here's the OP:
And why would I judge an online community based on the offline actions of a very small sub population?
Should I be impressed that non-white people also go there to spew hatred unrelated to white nationalism?
Shibboleths exist to exclude people outside the subculture stereotype - and a good way of doing that is to be offensive. Some subcultures desire to remain as subcultures.
Part of why shibboleths work is because we as a species tend to stop engaging rationally the moment we feel attacked - we switch to being defensive and actually entrench our own values further.
The 4chan shibboleth attacks everyone. No matter who you are or how you identify you're going to be debased and mocked openly - that's kind of the point.
I see plenty of posts attacking and calling for the killing and complete extermination of non-Whites, Jews, homosexuals, and women all over the place but 0 posts attacking straight white males for being straight white males.
Gee, I wonder why that is? I really wonder who is posting all these white nationalist talking points, it's truly a mystery. Could be anyone.
Because that's already done on Twitter; it would be quite boring to pretend that it's something taboo.
"White people have poor taste in food!" isn't very punchy, is it?
They tell jokes about white ethnicities, but don't speak unironically, constantly, and at length about why whites should be racially exterminated like they do towards non-Whites, Jews, Muslims.
I'm not saying all this to imply that /pol/ is even handed but they simply don't talk like "white people have bad food! Lol they season turkey with water!". The entire self justification for their behavior in many cases revolves around believing others hate them as much as they hate others, and people are liable to spread anti-white hate speech just to agitate.
That other stuff? That got you mad. You've got multiple threads running about how terrible it is - and there's a good chance you don't even identify as one of those groups.
But let's assume for a moment that 4chan really is concentrated evil. You do realize you are basically advertising for them right now?
Does one have to be non-White to be opposed to the mass murder of non-Whites? Shouldn't every non-racist psychopath White person be offended by the idea of mass murdering non-Whites?
It's not much fun trolling in alignment with the status quo. People already consider it passe.
I honestly don't know the answer to complex questions such as "should this be allowed" or things like that, I'm just glad I can discuss other things in peace and know that political discussion elsewhere can be reported and will be deleted, or even have the user banned.
Yet when people mention that they visit 4chan, they talk about the 'very clever people posting there'. It's like mentioning that you regularly go paddling in your local river in order to collect tiny nuggets of gold, without mentioning that your local river is a flow of excrement, nuclear waste, and malignant psychopaths.
Post #1: Comment using the N word
Post #2: Someone using "fag" to insult people who, presumably, use Arch linux. (The term was Archfags)
Post #3: In response to something about headphones: "that deaf faggot [n-word]"
So it's funny. I've been browsing 4chan for 5 minutes and couldn't avoid racism & homophobia in the very first things I saw. Maybe you should actually visit the site instead of just spreading misinformation.
If you find that hard to understand, maybe stay away from HN where we try to have at least some minimum of reason in our discussions: you either lack that by minimizing racism and hatred to "bad words" or you are a troll arguing in bad faith.
Nope, it's still me, I'm right: I just saw a whole new group of content on the first page of /g/, still lots of racism & homophobic slurs. A an even mix of f- & n- words, though it also included these two gems: "tranny fa--ot shitskin" followed by "Holocaust never happened"
So nope, nothing is conflated for me and I haven't jumped anywhere. My feet are firmly planted in the land of "4Chan has lots of racism & hate speech". I don't know what land you're in if it's a place where calling someone a "fa--ot [n-word]" doesn't get categorized into some sort of hate speech.
This is the main point of contention. No one denies that such words are a common occurrence on 4chan, but you believe these words are automatically indicative of racism.
Are you open to the idea that someone who refers to himself as “an Archfag” is simply communicating on his being an Arch Linux user, and not otherwise intending to communicate his sexual orientation, and certainly not to proffer a negative view of his own sexual orientation?
You got this wrong, it's not an insult. Somethingfag such as "oldfag", "newfag", "Archfag", etc. are not insults whatsoever. They're shibboleth terms for "old users", "new users", "Arch users".
Your entire premise is incorrect.
>2) The language of the insult is a comparison to another group of people.
No one is being insulted, so this point is also wrong.
>3) Being a member of that group is supposed to be a bad thing, which is what makes it an insult.
You're projecting here big time. No one there is tying any negativity or positivity to the "fag" suffix, only you are.
>4) Therefore the person believes that group of people is in some way inferior, bad, or otherwise undesirable in some way.
Nonsensical since nothing is being tied to inferiority, "badness", or anything undesirable.
You still don't get it.
I don’t agree with people getting too insulted by any of this. It’s not edgy. It’s corny and part of the gate keeping. Both sides don’t get it at times. At least when the using side seriously thinks there’s nothing wrong at all, ever, with the usage. Again, I don’t think the word usage matters at all. I was once a “/b/tard”.
The extremes of saying it’s so bad or saying there’s nothing wrong at all in any way shape or form are both incorrect.
I think you interpret these words are insults when they are simply descriptors.
You keep saying they are used so commonly but you don't provide any context for these quotes.
Let us consider: https://desuarchive.org/g/search/text/archfag/
On the first page of 25 comments, 10 were used in a manner of disagreement with the person referred to, 5 were self-descriptors, 5 were in praise of others, and 5 were with no positive or negative inference to it.
If we search or "Arch user" instead:
https://desuarchive.org/g/search/text/%22arch%20user%22/
We get rather similar results.
> So let's break it down:
Given that the phrase “Arch user” is used insultingly with the same frequency, would you apply the same logic to the word “user”?
I'm refuting those claims, which are falsifiable, your claims are not and are merely a moral axiom such as “Stealing is bad.” which entail no factual, falsifiable component.
4chan most definitely exists in the real world and is subject to its morals. It doesn’t matter if you use a slur at a private club, Internet forum or at home. It doesn’t change its offensiveness.
No one is being called a "fag" though.
>A slur you’re arguing it’s ok to use.
I've successfully argued that "Archfag", "oldfag", etc. are not slurs, and are therefore OK to use. QED.
Wrong, 4chan is a subset of "the greater real world", and therefore has different sensibilities, culture, etc. Exactly how Blacks can say the n-word and it's not offensive, they have their own sensibilities and customs, and are a subset of "the greater real world." QED. Argument is proven factually correct here. I win.
>Your entire premise is faulty, because it does.
Just proved my entire premise is logically consistent and bullet proof.
> "Fag" is a slur on planet earth (where the 4chan users reside). There's no argument beyond that.
Stop shifting the goal posts. No one is calling anyone "fag" in this instance. Even then, using the logic above it is not a slur.
>There's no argument beyond that.
You're right, because I 100% proved my point and there's no argument that can say otherwise.
I win. Any response from you is you admitting that I'm right and that I won.
Good thing I'm neither, and you discussing with me proves that I'm not. QED.
>Sorry, I'm done with you.
Glad you admit defeat.
>"Fag" and the N word are slurs,
Except no one is calling people those. Stop moving the goalposts and stop creating strawmen.
>and there's no escaping that
Just did above, with bulletproof logic. QED.
>no matter what your cognitive dissonance says). I hope you grow up someday and learn this.
There's your famous IMAX-level projection!
I won.
There's no other way to use these words. They're always racist and homophobic. That's the point, /pol is a cesspool of racism and homophobia.
The way this thread progressed was very fascinating to read.
First, an absurd baseless generalization was made. Then, when challenged, the generalization was narrowed down a bit. Then it was narrowed down again and again until we got this comment which asserts an outright lie.
These words aren't always used in a racist and homophobic way. 4chan is proof of this.
Try to step back and move into another level.
What are words?
What is this "vibration of air molecules" hitting my ear?
What is the meaning behind them?
Why so?
Do these certain "frequencies" always mean a certain meaning? Always?
If you wish to still call that “racism and homophobia”, then neither of which necessarily has anything to do with race or sexual orientations, or even disdain. — you should also know that your usage of these words is then quite nonstandard, and does not align with what most mean with them.
The word “nigger”, in particular, has been of particular interest of study in how depending on context the word can very much be about race, and negatively so, to a simple form of address that has no implications of race.
You mentioned /g/ -- there is a daily programming thread on that board with a very long history. I've seen some really interesting projects posted there. Some even made their way here eventually. SerenityOS for example.
If you can't, or rather won't, see beyond that. Then it's just not for you. And that's fine.
But what people have "kindly" explained have merely been justifications for racism and other hate speech that all seem to ultimately boil down to it being normal for 4chan. That, and the excuse of "oh but they don't really mean it" is pretty thin justification.
A very simple pattern of 4chan posting culture is to offend others in order to provoke a debate about what you actually want to discuss. It's the 4chan version of clickbait. The /g/ catalog is absolutely filled with people doing this. Want to talk about Linux? Pretend you're a superior Windows user and mock Linux for not having some feature. File picker thumbnails are a common example. This happens all the time and can generate some rather unique discussions.
Because it's anonymous, you'll see a lot of frowned-upon behavior which can nevertheless be interesting. Everytime some drama happens on GitHub or LKML there might be a random 4chan thread discussing it in the usual offensive tone. It's interesting to read about what people think, especially opinions they wouldn't express if they had to sign the post with their real names.
I do this with investment ideas on /biz/ regularly, particularly in the stock market general thread and have had some very enlightening debates as a result.
it's offensive to outsiders....to keep them out lol
A thought provoking message. Just quoting it for posterity. Carry on.
It's definitely there. Not in /pol/, but /pol/ is a subset of 4chan.
very clever people posting there
Nobody denies the extreme cesspool-like aspects of some corners of 4chan.
The one thing you can uncontroversially say is that 4chan is diverse. It's almost like reddit, where each subreddit has its own distinct culture, mods, etc.
I would say that overall, 4ch does attract... a pretty clever crowd. Almost everything there is layer upon layer upon layer of self-reference and iteration. Meta on top of meta on top of meta. Not saying you have to be a genius to "get it" but I don't see a dummy enjoying it.
I'm also saying this as somebody who doesn't particularly like the place. I grew out of that shock humor stuff about two decades ago.
Although I'm also not sure how clever a person really needs to be to understand multiple layers of meta: "Meta" is so ingrained in cultural DNA at this point that anyone born in the last 25 years will understand all of it on nearly an intuitive level, and anyone over that age will still have been bombarded by it for decades-- long enough to mostly still get it.
This is very strictly enforced in practice, one doesn't see any nudity or gore remain up on those boards for more than ten minutes before a janitor catches it.
Pornography is allowed on all boards that aren't designated “safe for work”, but gore is only allowed on a very select few.
In general I have much less of a problem with porn or gore than I do with raging hatred.
Especially when they openly admit doing this for political reasons.
may be 4chan is not for you if you don't have a sense of humor or too brainwashed to only see black and white everywhere.
/pol/ is a U.S.A. board that takes a firm single side in the U.S.A. culture war.
Most 4chan boards are largely outside of it and the hatred one sees there does not align with any of the two factions in the U.S.A. culture war and the hatred that flows is indeed very diverse in that sense.
I have never seen this kind of content on Twitter or Facebook, in my own feeds or in trending topics. I would have to actively look. I have however seen a ton of real diverse content from a diverse group of people. This is a lie that where the intent is to downplay the white supremacist content.
It really fucking sucks that you're in my industry.
Communities with no moderation at all sans removing child porn and copyrighted content (to avoid getting v8 by the feds) will always be overtaken sooner or later by the content you just listed because this sort of stuff gets driven out of communities that care about at least some decency. The exception proving the rule is r/worldpolitics, which has no rules per se but there's enough porn to drown out hate speech.
eventually all not heavily moderated communities
will suffer their version of Eternal September.
Unfortunately, it's hard to cite 4chan as an example when talking about the merits of unrestricted free speech vs. moderation/curation since most people think it was always that bad.
You would be surprised.
Using the 4chan JSON API, I looked at the /pol/ and /int/ boards to see the range of countries posted. /int/ has posts from 99 unique countries. /pol/ has posts from 100 unique countries, but many of the 'countries' are just labels naming a specific flag, for example "LGBT". (Note that "White Supremacist" is literally a flag/label you can choose... But so are "Tree Hugger", "Anarchist", "Facist", "Hippie", and "Black Lives Matter".) I tried to make a pastebin but their filters didn't like the word "white supremacist" so here's the code instead: https://pastebin.com/9FhDM8Ch
Given the list of countries, I'd say it is nearly impossible that most of these people are white. Some of these people are definitely using VPNs to change their country code, however it's also important to note that many VPNs are banned from posting without a 4chan Pass. They cannot all be VPNs.
Without spending too much time on it, I found two pictures of /pol/ meetups online:
https://www.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/7qt0h5/4chan_pol_mee... https://www.reddit.com/r/Cringetopia/comments/b3ggfx/4chan_m...
(Trigger warning, the second picture shows Nazi symbolism.)
In both pictures people of color are present, and in one picture white people make up 50% of the crowd. This doesn't make what /pol/ says OK and that I don't condone racist speech online, but it does suggest many of the comments in this thread are incorrect about 4chan's demographics. Ultimately we do not know what 4chan's demographics are.
Why did I bother? For a few reasons: I like Chris Poole and to my knowledge, he's never supported bigotry directly, he just strongly believes in the value of online anonymity. It pains me to see people painting him as a racist. Nobody calls Jack Dorsey a racist when racist things are posted on Twitter. I also don't like it when people imply that people who post racist things must by default be white, or that white people are inherently racist, e.g. "4chan is a racist website so they must be all white". I also am quite interested in the topic of online moderation and how we can create spaces that allow for privacy/anonymity while curbing bad actors. For something else interesting on this topic, this paper is about white supremacy present on Twitter: https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs2191/f/downloa... Note that the paper is from 2016 and white supremacy is still in full-force on Twitter, and really any popular social media site.
That being said, the initial autopsy said this was only one factor and most people with this view are misreading that autopsy, which still stated the primary cause of death was compression of the neck.
This bullshit conspiracy theory should die already.
George Floyd had less fentanyl in his system at time of death than over 75% of the people that the police examined during routine DUI cases taken when were alive and not dead due to fentanyl overdose.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/04/16/fact...
Those parroting the fentanyl conspiracy theory are desperately grasping at straws to try to justify their irrational beliefs.
to make matters worse he had severe hypertension and was hospitalized in 2019 during similar arrest with BP of 210 on 130, his heart just couldn't handle it this time
Does that "exertion" include a grown man kneeling on your neck while you repeatedly and desperately tell him that the knee on his neck is stopping him from breeding?
Because, even taking that claim at face value, it's pretty clear that removing the risk factor of having a grown police officer kneeling on your back and neck in a way that's stopping you from breeding would be something that did wonders to your ability to continue breeding and not die.
Enough with this bullshit whitewashing of a brutal police murder.
noone was kneeling on him in the back of the car if you watch the full footage
there are 16 min of body camera footage before the viral video with Chauvin started, check it out
Did George Floyd died in the back of the car? Or did he died after the police officer spent over 8 minutes kneeling on his neck until and after he lost conciousness?
Enough with this bullshit. It's absurd how these mental gymnasts try to inflate the relevance of trace amounts of a recreational drug as a smoking gun, which mind you was already thoroughly ruled out, but having a grown man kneeling on your neck for over 8 minutes after until the very moment the person dies is somehow worth no consideration?
based on expert testimony and autopsy report he died from cardiac arrhythmia caused by drug overdose and exertion from resisting arrest which his sick heart just couldn't handle.
He might have survived only if he didn't swallow his entire stash of fentanyl & meth to avoid jail and vigorously resist arrest, but unfortunately he did.
This politicized case will be thrown out on appeal, as jury was obviously intimidated by mobs on the streets and politicians like Rep. Waters calling for violence in case of non-guilty verdict. One of the alternate jurors actually admitted it in recent interview, that they were scared to go against the mob "verdict".
When asked to clarify coroner said he meant in medical sense, as in "heart failure complicating leg surgery", i.e. his death was not expected from restraint itself
I'm not even making a moral argument here. That's the letter of the law. (Again, laws vary by state)
In fact they could have escalated it at least two levels to more restricted prone position and use of taser, but they didn't, and called an ambulance several times to expedite it.
this case will go to appeal and possibly the supreme court, as there was significant interference with the jury by the media, and even US representatives calling for violence on the streets to intimidate the jurors.
noone dies from back of the neck pressure unless there is physical damage and none was detected, not to his skin, nor deep tissues based on autopsy report, there was not enough pressure to cause suffocation
GF died from fentanyl overdose and sick heart which could't handle him resisting arrest for so long
The jury was obviously intimidated by the mob, let's hope for appeal and supreme court having enough sense to overturn this bs verdict.
The bait is this silly narrative that the reason they talk in depth and at length everyday about exterminating non-Whites is because it's elaborate "trolling" to own the libs, until they start sprinkling in enough "justification" and repetition to radicalize you into becoming a white supremacists.
Sadly many young men are taking the bait and becoming radicalized online.
It's true in that yes they are agitators and trolls.
But it's false in that the line between unserious troll and serious activist was blurred or erased long ago, and most recently with Trump being elected president.
It's no longer possible to distinguish between unserious troll attempt and serious statement when such a large audience subscribes to the trolling as their actual reality.
Ken White’s rule of goats:
“The Rule of Goats applies. Slightly paraphrased — for this family newspaper — the rule states: If you kiss a goat, even if you say you're doing it ironically, you're still a goat-kisser.”
You don’t get off scott-free just because you say “I was only being ironic“.Is this something you have considered?
4chan is the same. They accept anyone from all over the world. The majority of posters are foreign. If you disagree with their narrative or political ideals, they insult you and tell you to leave. Except on 4chan you don't get banned or your life ruined for disagreeing. It's an actual safe space for ideas.
It's hilarious how similar they are.
- Anti-vax
- Anti-gay parents
- Goose
- Ben Shapiro praise thread with a dash of anti-semitism and a whole lot of "i hope all ni**rs die"
- Praising George Floyd mural vandalism
- Anti-transgender
- Praising white nationalism/white ethnostate
- Praising 'national rape day'
- Anti-Islam
- Anti-race mixing
- Illuminati
- Celebrating police shooting blacks
- British royals news
- Anti-mask, anti-Biden
- Silver
- Anti-liberal white women as betrayers of the white race
Keep in mind I just am reading the threads in order. This is not diverse at all. Maybe 'diverse' in the sense that these white supremacists are posting from across North America and Europe. This is almost all far right white supremacist and misogynist talking points (strong overlap between the 2), almost surely disproportionately posted by young white men.