Read Online EPIC WIN FOR ANONYMOUS by Cole Stryker - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Cole Stryker
Ads: Link
that’s left to float down the stream until it eventually drops off a waterfall, never to be seen again. When someone bumps a thread by posting, it’s as if a kid picks up the boat and places it back at the mouth of the stream. If enough people post in a thread, the boat can live on that stream for as long as a few hours—but will eventually, inevitably, be left to reach the edge of the waterfall.
Even the most popular posts are deleted, creating a perpetual churn of new information. Trying to capture it all would be missing the point. You just jump in somewhere and climb out when you get bored. There is no hierarchy of content to help you find the best bits. You can’t search or filter the content in any way. The site flies in the face of every user experience trend and rule that’s ever been codified. It’s just a massive, unorganized jumble of unrelated information. Your experience with 4chan at any given moment will be completely different from someone else’s, even if you’re on the same board.
4chan users deal with the ephemerality of content by maintaining “/b/ folders,” which are collections of previously posted favorite images, GIFs, and copypasta that they keep on their hard drives. In the years before the rest of the web started documenting meme culture (in Know Your Meme, Memegenerator, etc.), having a stockpile of /b/-worthy images on hand was essential. Sometimes /b/tards play a game where someone will write, “Post the fourth image in your /b/ folder,” or “Post the scariest image you have in your /b/ folder.”
I spoke with a 4chan user who goes by Jkid, who recently created a wiki site called Yotsuba Society (Yotsuba is Japanese for
4channel
), which he envisions as a database of information about chan culture, managed by a team of die-hard “chanthropologists.” Yotsuba Society, according to Jkid, is made for people who are deeply into imageboard culture, not just lulz. I asked Jkid about his /b/ folder.
There are many rare pictures that you can’t find on Google search. What you see on 4chan, even on the slow boards, you may not see for a long time, if ever. That’s why I archive every thread I click on.
Jkid calls this impulse the “prime
imageboard
directive.” He sees himself as a historical archivist, having collected over 87 gigabytes of material from 4chan alone. He also collects information from other chan boards. Eventually he hopes to document the history of chan culture, from the perspective of the moderators behind the scenes. He manages a volunteer staff of nine, all who hope to create value for the community by documenting their corner of the web.
Another way /b/tards preserve 4chan culture is by submitting particularly epic threads to http://www.4chanarchive.org, a site that accepts user submissions and allows the community to vote on a given thread’s worthiness for inclusion in the archive. It basically serves as a “best-of-4chan” collection, and browsing the site can in some ways be a much more fulfilling experience than slogging through 4chan. I often feel that one must trudge through miles of garbage on /b/ to find the occasional gem—though perusing old threads at 4chanarchive lacks the suspense of seeing stuff go down in real time. 4chanarchive not only saves the page, but all of the images hosted on the page as well. According to the FAQ, the site receives between six thousand and eight thousand daily unique visitors. The top viewed thread on /b/ right now at 4chanarchive is “Men laughing alone with fruitsalad.” /b/tards have collected dozens of stock photo images featuring men laughing while eating fruit salad. I can’t not laugh as I scroll down the page, seeing these cornball shots with the same bizarre theme.
The MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and University of Southampton researchers recently performed a comprehensive analysis of 4chan’s anonymity and ephemerality called
“4chan and /b/: An Analysis of Anonymity
Even the most popular posts are deleted, creating a perpetual churn of new information. Trying to capture it all would be missing the point. You just jump in somewhere and climb out when you get bored. There is no hierarchy of content to help you find the best bits. You can’t search or filter the content in any way. The site flies in the face of every user experience trend and rule that’s ever been codified. It’s just a massive, unorganized jumble of unrelated information. Your experience with 4chan at any given moment will be completely different from someone else’s, even if you’re on the same board.
4chan users deal with the ephemerality of content by maintaining “/b/ folders,” which are collections of previously posted favorite images, GIFs, and copypasta that they keep on their hard drives. In the years before the rest of the web started documenting meme culture (in Know Your Meme, Memegenerator, etc.), having a stockpile of /b/-worthy images on hand was essential. Sometimes /b/tards play a game where someone will write, “Post the fourth image in your /b/ folder,” or “Post the scariest image you have in your /b/ folder.”
I spoke with a 4chan user who goes by Jkid, who recently created a wiki site called Yotsuba Society (Yotsuba is Japanese for
4channel
), which he envisions as a database of information about chan culture, managed by a team of die-hard “chanthropologists.” Yotsuba Society, according to Jkid, is made for people who are deeply into imageboard culture, not just lulz. I asked Jkid about his /b/ folder.
There are many rare pictures that you can’t find on Google search. What you see on 4chan, even on the slow boards, you may not see for a long time, if ever. That’s why I archive every thread I click on.
Jkid calls this impulse the “prime
imageboard
directive.” He sees himself as a historical archivist, having collected over 87 gigabytes of material from 4chan alone. He also collects information from other chan boards. Eventually he hopes to document the history of chan culture, from the perspective of the moderators behind the scenes. He manages a volunteer staff of nine, all who hope to create value for the community by documenting their corner of the web.
Another way /b/tards preserve 4chan culture is by submitting particularly epic threads to http://www.4chanarchive.org, a site that accepts user submissions and allows the community to vote on a given thread’s worthiness for inclusion in the archive. It basically serves as a “best-of-4chan” collection, and browsing the site can in some ways be a much more fulfilling experience than slogging through 4chan. I often feel that one must trudge through miles of garbage on /b/ to find the occasional gem—though perusing old threads at 4chanarchive lacks the suspense of seeing stuff go down in real time. 4chanarchive not only saves the page, but all of the images hosted on the page as well. According to the FAQ, the site receives between six thousand and eight thousand daily unique visitors. The top viewed thread on /b/ right now at 4chanarchive is “Men laughing alone with fruitsalad.” /b/tards have collected dozens of stock photo images featuring men laughing while eating fruit salad. I can’t not laugh as I scroll down the page, seeing these cornball shots with the same bizarre theme.
The MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and University of Southampton researchers recently performed a comprehensive analysis of 4chan’s anonymity and ephemerality called
“4chan and /b/: An Analysis of Anonymity
Similar Books
