You know what? Everyone on 4chan and 8chan should be on a terror list. Every single incel. I couldn't give a single shit about their "freedom of speech"
[A screenshot of a messageboard thread is shown. There are 3 images in the screenshot, all of crudely drawn green snakes. The images of the snakes connect together, despite being posted in separate posts by separate users. The second image of a snake has a caption of "sssssnek" and a comment after all three snake images states "Whoa, watch out, you scared me there for a bit."]
Actually a cold blooded snake might well be the best emblem to represent the users of 4chan and/or 8 chan. Well known for their publishing of pedophilic content and love for showing kids getting gored to death.
Which is why Saudi Arabia gave Elon Musk $22B to buy it without any expectation of a return on their investment. To them, the destruction of twitter was the goal.
Twitter has its moments. I am a bit of a soccer-dad and all the local stuff was always there. Library programs, outdoor events, playdates, etc. it was pretty easy with a few minutes to figure out all the stuff I could do with my kids any given day vs going to ten or so different websites.
It is true that when I see something from 4chan that I don't understand, I have to approach it with the well earned assumption that it is somehow racist or fascist. This snake thing... I can't just assume it's shitposting. With 4chan it could be anything.
that's exactly the point of that thread, there's no need for a reason in everything, sometimes people are silly and enjoy being silly just for the snake of being silly
80% of 4chan is shitposts with no hidden meaning.
The remaining 10% is people dog-whistling to each other through shit-posts, hoping one will slide into the 80% undetected.
And 10% horrible things that the janitors have to clean up.
No offense but if you think there's any kind of subtlety on 4chan I dare you to browse /b for two minutes. No dogwhistles, just regular, very racist and antisemitic whistles.
/b/? We're not in 2003 anymore, amigo. /b/ is mainly tranny porn now. There's no more raids and such. We 4channers got old and now simply drink our beers and laugh at the world. 4chan is and always have been chaotic neutral. The weapons boards /k/ for example is very pro Gun rights but also very pro Ukraine. They cheered Hamas but now shit on Houthis. /pol/ is actually reddit refugees and Indians. All other boards treat /pol/ with disdain, except /tv/ which is also full of election tourists. /int/ is bizarro /pol/ which hates right wing America but also Indians and Polacks. There is no rhyme nor reason to 4chan. It simply is.
I did as you suggested and I saw people singing slurs around like it's nothing almost immediately. I suppose perhaps given that you have used one in your comment I shouldn't be surprised that it passes you by, but that is exactly the kind of overt racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia that, I assume, the previous comment was talking about.
Edit: oh, and the rest of it is mostly loli porn. So. That's a good reason to stay away.
Why is there so much fearmongering around 4chan? Everyone that doesn't use it seems to think of it as an anomaly; when it is nothing but a somewhat "radical" (that too only some boards) social site. Also banning & doing something along those lines to the users of 4chan is the shittiest idea of all time.
People are dumbass normies who fear anyone slightly different than the mould. You don’t have facebook and instagram? Fucking weird. You don’t know the latest influencer trend? Outcast. You think capitalism is evil and the normalcy is harmful to society? Terrorist.
I still remember that story about how someone's boyfriend was radicalized by 4chan and they noticed by "checking his 4chan account" and I think talked about PMs lol
The /tg/ board was the source of some of the greatest tabletop RPG content I ever saw in the 2010s, really great discussions and whole homebrew systems born out of threads that just pitch cool ideas. Of course it came with the same veneer of snark and shock comments as the rest of 4chan but that was on every site in the 2010s. I haven't been back there in a long while so I can't speak to it these days.
Oof I used to be a regular on r9k and now I cringe so hard about it. Thank God it was anonymous.
I was going through a tough time and the people there accepted me and engaged with my posts. In hindsight I think people just connected with my anger, but the venting was helpful.
At some point a friend saw my laptop and said "holy shit you're asking 4chan for advice, hahaha what the fuck is wrong with you" and she laughed until she was wheezing, and I never went back on again.
Because it and 8chan are racist shitholes that have produced numerous mass murderers, most notably the Christchurch murderer that killed 51 people at a mosque.
I don't think such sites "produce" mass murderers; they certainly contribute to the accleeration of their extremity--I don't deny that--but no site can "produce" mass murderers, there has to be some preeminent malignity present in the person.
It's interesting that your more nuanced take is barely breaking even compared to the "video games cause violence" type inflammatory take you replied to.
We all came here to make fun of the dumb twitter post and then comments with the same energy are being applauded.
I think you're arguing for a distinction without a difference. If the seed of malignancy would not have grown without finding fertile soil, how can you prove it existed? Why is it more fitting to blame this metaphysical and unknowable thing rather than these very real cesspits?
I don't think the disposition to evil needs a "fertile soil". For instance, there are evil men in convents--and in quite a high degree too--that harm others in order to break the monotonicity of their life; now, would you say a convent is a "fertile soil" for growth of evil--should be the contrary. The artificial spite is a product of, as I've mentioned, a boring and monotonous life, and it so happens the easiest mode available to break this is harm towards others.
In case of natural malignity, the influence on the actions lies not in something mundane as boredom but other natural causes--be it from parental abuse, &c. but I concur that I've no scientific knowledge in this field. And, thus I believe that the ones that hold malignity through nature (in contrast with the artificial one) are able to create an environment that accomplishes, or perhaps, breaks, as I've said above, their disorder's whims. And the chans happen to be a pre-existing place with like minded people that nurture each other's "seeds", but even in the lack of these imaginary soils, the seeds will grow without any problem.
4chan is so full of teenage racists, incels and general dipshits that I can't help but think anyone who defends it is also a racist, incel, or generally a dipshit who hasn't graduated high school yet. Posts like the OP here are the exception, not the rule.
Yep, 4chan is the Nazi bar of the Internet, and cherry picking an example of innocent shitposting means nothing.
It had its moments, twenty years ago, but all the worthwhile anons left ages ago.
There's even a fairly famous quote from a 4channer about it.
"Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe they're in good company." -Descartes né Anon
Of course, Anon still missed the real lesson.
There are always far, far, fewer people "just joking around" than the good people in the room want to assume.
It's kinda funny because even all the other boards on 4chan make fun of /pol/. The people that use 4chan outside of /pol/ are very aware of what goes on in that board. /x/ is the dopest board on the Internet if you like sci-fi stuff and the whole website originated around anime to begin with, so /a/ probably one of the biggest boards still.
Last time I went there, a while back I admit (before it became mainstream knowledge), it wasn't moderated out at all.
It wasnt nudes (although didn't look very deep) but they were posting little girl and salivating.
Scary how many people in here are anti free speech. Yes, they're stupid, cancerous, lot of white supremacists, and all the scum and villany etc , but like, the point of free speech is that you're allowed to say that shit.
Make a threat? Absolutely, track IPs and investgate logs, lawful actions against unlawful acts. But to flat out ban every one you disagree with? Disgusting. And you should be ashamed of it.
Any kind of freedom ends were you are violating the freedom of someone else. Spitting hatred against women and minorities has nothing to do with freedom of speech.
Saying hateful, dumbass shit doesn't violate anyone's freedom. Denying them their right to congregate, get equal service in business, have bodily autonomy, etc. does. However, speech alone is not enough to equate to action, in most cases.
That depends entirely on your definition of freedom.
If someone were to punch me, it would violate my freedom from being punched/ bodily harm.
This is illegal in the US.
If someone were to insult me, it would violate my freedom from being insulted (maybe psychological harm).
This is legal in the US but illegal elsewhere.
speech alone is not enough to equate to action
Speech is not something that happens to you, it's something you actively do. It is always an action.
As much as I dislike people spitting hatred at women, LGBTQIA+ folks, and POCs, this is still freedom of speech. You don't have to enjoy it, you don't have to listen to it, and you're certainly free to remove these people from your personally owned spaces. But it doesn't change the fact that people should be allowed to say whatever the fuck they want, otherwise we literally are punishing people for thought crimes and edgy jokes.
People should be judged for their actions, not their words. Words don't actually mean anything without action behind them.
I'm a gay man, and I've definitely given out the occasional f slur pass. Why? Because I honestly think it's funny as fuck when my best friend of 20 years calls me that. He doesn't hate me, he knows and loves my partner like a sibling, and he is my brother. It would be so fucked if he got in some kind of actual trouble for that...
The dangerous thing with speech is the ability to radicalize people. I mostly agree with your comment but it's a more complex topic than "until you don't do something bad you're fine".
So you get a bunch of radicalized people that say shit but don't do anything about it?
In order for that group of radicalized people to be dangerous, they would have to do something right? Maybe that means March around in Nazi regalia, maybe that means some sort of assault or altercation. But it's at that point that those people should be charged, not when they are online saying dumb shit.
It isn't JUST speech that radicalizes people. There are a plethora of underlying material conditions that contribute as well, but nobody here is talking about any of those. We can't just prevent people from saying bad things, we have to address things like education, poverty, inequality, housing, and journalistic integrity before we can just punish insulting sentiments.
I think their point is that you don't throw them in prison just for saying it. If they actually do it or influence others to do it then that's very different. I always try to think how a law could be twisted or abused, and once you make simply saying something illegal that opens the door to a lot of authoritarianism.
If they're just saying that, I certainly don't want to be around them but I don't think they should go to prison. If they act upon that, that's entirely different and should be treated as a hate crime.
Also, you just said it. Does context matter to you? What about intention?
Why does your freedom of speech cover insulting me? It doesn't make any sense? Instead of me having to remove myself from public spaces to not get insulted, the people insulting in public spaces should be removed????
Because what is insulting enough to warrant removal is extremely subjective. Pretty much everyone agrees there's a line somewhere, where people draw that line is very different. I would never even consider trying to stop people from making bad edgy jokes, but I will tell them the joke isn't funny and they just seem like a bigot if that's what I think.
I also wouldn't consider 4chan a public place. Someone holding up a sign in a train station that says "gays are an abomination" I would agree should be removed as they are actively making a public space hostile to someone. But then I'd also put different standards on a non-spontaneous demonstration, as those have to be cleared beforehand and won't happen on a super frequent basis, and there needs to be some way to voice any opinion that doesn't outright call for violence.
Well you guys do realise though, that outside the US, in a damn big ass amount of countries, insulting people is illegal and not considered freedom of speech?
I am not in the US lol. Insulting people is in fact illegal here, that doesn't mean i necessarily agree with that in a general capacity. There was a famous case of a politician here a few years ago that sued and had someones house raided over them insulting them on twitter (with a very harmless insult too), which is absolutely ridiculous.
Oh wow now you really showed me. I have the right to bear arms so I will arm myself with a nuclear bomb. When anyone steps on my property lawn I will detonate it.
That's fundamentally not the same thing, don't be obtuse for the sake of debate points.
Insults and general demeaning comments should not be punished in the court of law. Saying offensive things should not be punished in the court of law.
As I said before, the action/intent is the part that should be punished. Providing private information about someone who you disagree with or want to incur harm upon is an action with malicious intent.
As a leftist, I fail to understand why we always jump to tone policing and purity politics? We can identify the material conditions that cause radicalization and general bigotry and act upon these things, but we always just jump to punishing people for being radical bigots, which only further galvanizes those positions.
We're not making these spaces smaller, we're making them more volatile by doing this. They see these conversations and think "this is why we have to remove leftism, because they will punish us for crimes we have yet to do" and that's precisely what this argument is.
Well I'm holding you in contempt in court for making a joke that I didn't agree with. I hope you're ready to pay a huge fine, because this is an open and shut case.
Because otherwise you run the risk of being bigoted about bigots. Ironic. Keep them in the open, learn what they think, be prepared to shut them down at every available opportunity - show them the error of their beliefs again and again and again. History suggests that banning things doesn’t make the problem go away. It just drives it underground, out of sight, where they can mutate and coalesce without anybody from the outside knowing or realising… then we all be fucked.
I’m passingly familiar with Popper’s work and it probably goes some way to explaining why I advocate for public intolerance, rather than tolerance, of these sad, lost and potentially dangerous individuals.
The second video was age locked - I’m sure it is full of good points - but I can’t comment on it directly.
I meant a more vernacular meaning to “shut them down” - I.e. telling them firmly that they are mistaken and offering them a different insight.
As for logic I’m not sure it’s much use as most extremism tends to come from the heart rather than the head, so to speak. All I hope is that I can plant a seed of doubt… whether it grows or not is beyond my control.
People generally have a bit of a herd mentality - hence the growth of echo chambers online and in popular legacy media. If you spend all your time surrounded by only your own views you’ll never expand your outlook and will, in all probability, become even more entrenched. I’d hate to think what kind of a c*** I could be now if 35 years ago some people hadn’t called me out and made me reassess myself and my views towards certain sections of humanity.
Freedom of speech works out when everyone's speech is equal. But in the real world, it isn't. if it were, the minority wouldn't have to fight for their rights and the laws would apply the same to the majority.
"free speech" is clickbait for the racists, created by racists to drown out the opposing voices of minority while calling it equality.
Your "freedom of speech" was added in the constitution on December 15, 1791. It took almost 200 years for the cilvil rights movement in 1950s for the black people to have equal rights.
Don't flaunt it like it has any shred of importance beyond what the majority of the US population uses it for. And it's to be racist bigots.
Didn't freedom of speech protect the civil rights movement more than if it weren't in the constitution? Just because bad people make use of this right, doesn't make it inherently bad. It's not concern trolling because we think you're overcorrecting, and any attempt to censor 4chan will lead to either "angering the wasps" or censorship of benign ideas.
Just know that I am arguing in good faith because I know that the people who decide what to censor will overcorrect, and I think that causes more harm than good.
8chan and 4chan were instrumental in creating the disease that is gamergate and the subsequent online shitheaps it produced. Including but not limited to Trump's term.
It was a watershed moment for the alt-right's propaganda machine. It's defined fascist recruiting tactics ever since and it absolutely played a role in Trump's election. Gamergate was a dramatic shift of the status quo, as ridiculous as it was, to diminish it's role in shaping the last few years is just ignorant
Gamergate got co-opted by Milo. Steve Bannon took him in and used the tools learned from gamergate to weaponize disaffected white males. This led directly to the rise of trump. It wasn't the only thing that got trumplethinskin elected, but it was part and it was intentional.
I meant as part of creating and fostering gamergate. The GG subreddit was pretty big. And talking about Trump, /r/TheDonald was pretty big and fairly influential, as far as subreddits go.
Im unfamiliar with gamergate. The internet says it was 4chan and other trolls. And like i said those subreddits were isolated in my viewpoint. /trump and all other conservative communities would commonly ban anyone with a different opinion than the hive mind. No room for discussion.
/news was always posting stories of republicans being shitheads. And people wouldnt get banned for just having an opinion, theyd just get downvoted into oblivion.
Atleast this was all how i tailored my reddit feed when i used. I had no desire to see bullshit lies from republican news sites. So maybe my viewpoint was mostly democratic...
Just be grateful you weren't there in the early days like I was.
Scrolling /b/ was a Russian roulette of shock porn, gore, snuff and CP. How I managed to see what I did back in the day and turn out as "normal" as I have, I have no idea.
On the plus side, I remember being around for that guy fucking the human skull he smuggled from the catacombs 🤷🏼♂️
Yeah. I was on around that time too. I have no idea why I spent so much time there but I'm honestly surprised I turned out okay. Not even a little desensitized... I don't think.
i spent too much time on 4chan growing up; it's the most in depth and fascinating and insane glimpse into the human psyche we have available. you see someone post the worst evils imaginable then people replying to that post with better and more cutting humor than anything aired on TV
Yeah I was on there a lot in the mid 00s and stopped going on it after the scientology protests. The site basically created internet humor as we know it and I was enough of a loser at the time to be highly online. There was something very accepting about the site in a weird way, and I'm not the sort of person you'd expect would have been a b-slur.
Met a friend's partner recently and she said something funny in this oddly familiar way... the type of person I'd least suspect, but yup, a fellow mid 00s b-slur.
I accidentally clicked on a monkey rekt thread and it was just monkeys getting tortured. There was a funny gif of a monkey getting hit in the balls though.
