No one spams racist garbage despite not being racists because they want to create chaos and are fishing for a reaction.
Now, its true, that people who are racist and also attention seekers might be motivated more by the latter than the former in doing that, but that’s a different issue.
And the source article from 404 Media is very much about how this is happening despite the Bing tool that they conclude is being used for much of it itself being largely crippled to prevent “harmful” images, and explicitly calls out the point that the result is that non-harmful use is being sacrificed, with no meaningful impact on harmful use. Which, I would think, would be a message that someone who sees the 4chan use as of no more negative significance than “toilet graffiti” would fully back, since crippling tools to ineffectively prevent “toilet graffiti” is even more problematic than doing though in a (failed) attempt to prevent something that might be more important to prevent.
That's a bold statement and clearly untrue. A boatload of people gets their kicks out of pretending to hold any number of offensive views just to get a rise out of people online.
When I was a dumb 16 year old that was one of my favorite past times. Only works on people who don't believe anyone would do such a thing...
It speaks to your character that you wouldn't even immediately consider it.
Ask yourself what the point of your comment is. Are you really in a position to comment on another's character?
Don't do that.
> Don't do that.
You literally just fucking did that.
Such cheap attacks don't have to be tolerated and it's perfectly fair to point them out for what they are.
I didn't seek out a random comment to take a potshot at - you directly replied to me with a comment that contains nothing but a mean-spirited dig.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
What's some belief you pretended to have, but you really didn't?
Whatever I knew would get a rise out of my audience.
The "head in the sand" approach doesn't work here.
The idea that all of these people are “just harmless trolls” is unsupportable nonsense. It’s wild how many people want to jump to the defense of these morally repugnant people, though.
But I refer you to "Popehat's law of goats". He who spams racist garbage...
Sure they do: they're called "trolls". That's not to imply that no 4chan users are racist, but the claim that "no one" would do it without being racist is absurd.
Counter Arguments has a fantastic video about this.
Maybe there's some that actually are, because of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012082
Ask yourself why any actual racist without any intention to cause chaos would engage in this behavior though. It's clearly just intended to offend, racists or not.
He who fucks goats, either as part of a performance or to troll those he deems has overly delicate sensibilities is simply, a goatfucker.
Because being racist as a hobby isn't really something non-racists tend to do.
In the end some will think it's satire, some won't but will still laugh because it's stupid, and some will get mad.
Actual racists lost, 4chan got a laugh, and outrage culture got played again.
In general I find myself agreeing with your comments in this thread but here I disagree.
It's tempting to find the overall societal benefit from those actions but I don't think there is one. Or it's much more subtle than this.
I also think that it's mainly done to create chaos and get a reaction and not so much to spread x opinions. But just randomly throwing shit into the world *mostly* makes everyone get used to the smell of shit while they hate you for it. But in my experience it *usually* leads to more shit and not less shit.
doubt it.
won't change the beliefs of anyone looking at it one way or another.
the people participating in it, though, after years of spewing out racist garbage risk without any self-reflection risk going down the spiral of "hey, this one actually makes a valid point".
and i suspect that most of them are just flat out racist and not just memeing for the lulz.
And then fucking a goat ironically looks an awful lot like fucking a goat.
It’s certainly impossible that people hurt by, say, racism might have legitimate concerns about the virulent spread of more racism by actual, literal racists on 4chan. No, it’s actually black people, for instance, who dislike racism, or Jews who think anti-demotion is bad, who are to blame.
Brilliant.
They're obviously not. You may have the same moral judgement about these people, and that's fine, but that's not the same as reality.
And it ABSOLUTELY matters, because if you want to do something about this then you need to actually understand the problem on a meaningful level, which includes people's motivations. You're never going to solve anything you don't understand (except, maybe, by accident).
A prime minister who fucks a goat because he's being blackmailed to do so is not the same as someone who does so for pleasure (who is different still from someone who does it for sadistic reasons). To describe all these as "simply a goatfucker" would be silly, even idiotic.
It's one of those nice-sounding one-liners that falls over with even the most superficial and casual of scrutiny.
No, you're completely off the mark here. It's done because they feel these things deep down and can't talk about them with people in real life to avoid being ostracized by what few friends they have left (or maybe they're super popular, I don't know). Yes, perhaps the _absolute_ most extreme things that are said there are not serious. However, the least extreme sentiments there (which would be considered extremely offensive in polite society) are 100% genuine.
Don't you think doing it for a joke would have gotten old by now? No one really talks about 4chan and no one goes there that doesn't already know what to expect. Ergo, no one is really shocked by any of these things anymore.
Again, I know this is a hard pill to swallow and I can see that you're trying really hard to avoid it but most of the racist sentiments on 4chan are genuine.
It would if it didn't keep getting results, like we see with the above news article.
I'm sure that a good chunk of people who hang out on Facebook and Reddit also believe in those things, but that somehow never leads to blanket accusations targeting everyone with a Facebook of Reddit account.
This is like writing newspaper articles about toilet graffiti. You're making the artist's day.