Current Events > I love that ContraPoints video on incels and her description of how 4chan works

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD2briZ6fB0" data-time="

She talks about how 4chan works about 23 minutes into the video if anyone cares.

I don't watch a whole lot of ContraPoints videos, but I watched this one a few months ago and her description of how 4chan works is so accurate it's stuck with me. Basically she says that 4chan's negativity works like an anti-hugbox that feeds into people's isolation and self-loathing. While I never went to /r9k/, /b/ or /pol/, I've spent time on some of the safe for work 4chan boards during the shittiest parts of my life and that's exactly how it affected me. On the bright side, going there made my left-wing beliefs stronger.
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I've never posted on 4chan in my life (hurr durr n-word hurr durr f-word is 50% of the content) and I'm still negative, though.

These forums are only outlets for what was already there.

People will will be alone and bitter about it regardless of the internet. Some will deserve it. Some just had bad luck.
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4chan bad!
Gamefaqs good!
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Beveren_Rabbit posted...

4chan bad!
Gamefaqs good!

Just because 4chan is bad doesn't mean Gamefaqs is good.
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4chan bad!
Reddit bad!

I don't post or go on those sites but 4chan bad!
Gamefaqs good! Everyone on 4chan the same! Every board culture is the same! Gamefaqs good! We individuals! We no hive mentality!
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Beveren_Rabbit posted...

4chan bad!
Reddit bad!

I don't post or go on those sites but 4chan bad!
Gamefaqs good! Everyone on 4chan the same! Every board culture is the same! Gamefaqs good! We individuals! We no hive mentality!

I just said Gamefaqs isn't good either.
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Sometimes it's funny though >_> Just for how dumb it is
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The same thing that makes GFAQs better than 4chan is what makes it trash: The mods.
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Beveren_Rabbit posted...

We individuals! We no hive mentality!

Go on the politics board. Their is a ton of hive mentality going on.

Orange man bad!
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Beveren_Rabbit posted...

Orange man bad!

You drunk?
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Beveren_Rabbit posted...

Orange man bad!

r u ok
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CProtectionSvce posted...

Beveren_Rabbit posted...

Orange man bad!

You drunk?

0xDEFECADE posted...

Beveren_Rabbit posted...

Orange man bad!

r u ok

He is drunk. Someone take him back to the politics board.

CProtectionSvce posted...

Beveren_Rabbit posted...

Orange man bad!

You drunk?

I guess he's offended I insulted 4chan because he's one of those people who got programmed by it.
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Having spent my late teens and early twenties on /r9k/ (ironically, it was originally recommended by someone on CE), it's seen better days. Early on, it was a combination of a lot of different boards - /lit/, /sci/, /his/, etc. - and saw a great deal of vibrant discussion as such. There was always a misogynist underbelly though, but it was 4chan after all.

Over the years - though 2010 was the worst with respect to this - new boards were created, effectively stripping the board of meaningful discussion, leaving its ugly underbelly - /r9k/ basically became a hugbox for what are now known as incels, though I can't post what they called themselves at the time here.

Then in 2011, moot deleted it and /new/ (intended to be a current events board, but got hijacked by by what would become known as the alt-right and became a proto-/pol/), and they congregated on a spinoff imageboard for a few months where they dealt with less strict regulation of /new/ making incursions into /r9k/ and spewing alt-right drivel.

So, late 2011, moot recreates /r9k/ and /new/ (as /pol/). /r9k/, consequently, was contaminated for a while with /pol/'s talking points (though it seems to have fallen by the wayside over the years, especially since the last election cycle), while /pol/ has fully embraced its identity as a board for fringe politics (though there are more mainstream political types, that the rest of the board loathes tremendously). The rest is history.

A strange phenomenon I've observed on /r9k/ in the years since leaving is girls going there for attention, and creating discords where tons of her orbiters congregate and vie for her attention. The old guard, having presumably grown up and moved on, really wasn't fond of that kind of behavior from guys or girls there and actively called it out with respect to both, but the new guard really refuses to take responsibility for themselves. Perhaps it's a maturity issue most eventually grow out of.
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I've never really posted on 4chan but I always here about them when they have some kind of prank going on or something. Their little capture the flag game with Shia LaBeouf was impressive, not even gonna lie.
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i cant watch contra videos
she talks too pretensiously
who died and gave her a phd in incels exactly
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Ryuko_Chan posted...

i cant watch contra videos
she talks too pretensiously
who died and gave her a phd in incels exactly

Eh, my main complaint is that they're not to the point; lots of interruptions, not good for listening to in the background. It's self-indulgent and a great way to kill off the attention of people that aren't diehard fans.
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TheMikh posted...

A strange phenomenon I've observed on /r9k/ in the years since leaving is girls going there for attention, and creating discords where tons of her orbiters congregate and vie for her attention. The old guard, having presumably grown up and moved on, really wasn't fond of that kind of behavior from guys or girls there and actively called it out with respect to both, but the new guard really refuses to take responsibility for themselves. Perhaps it's a maturity issue most eventually grow out of.

Where /r9k/ gets weird is when incels take the next step and become "traps".
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I've said it before, but I'll say it again. I've had people on anonymous imageboards tell me to kill myself, but nobody on those boards ever mocked or shamed me for having cancer unlike a certain user on gamefaqs.
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PoorAndLonely posted...

TheMikh posted...

A strange phenomenon I've observed on /r9k/ in the years since leaving is girls going there for attention, and creating discords where tons of her orbiters congregate and vie for her attention. The old guard, having presumably grown up and moved on, really wasn't fond of that kind of behavior from guys or girls there and actively called it out with respect to both, but the new guard really refuses to take responsibility for themselves. Perhaps it's a maturity issue most eventually grow out of.

Where /r9k/ gets weird is when incels take the next step and become "traps".

That's the next step. The usual journey of someone on one of those anonymous imageboards is typically "i like girls">"wait, these girls are dudes?">"eh, it can't be gay if they're cute and feminine">"maybe i'm gay, too">"i like wearing girls' underwear">"am i cute, daddy?"

That's usually the journey of someone that spends enough time on those sites. Not everybody, but a good number find that playing the role of a female gets them the sort of attention and connection they never had as some dude (at least, that's part of it and that's what I think. I could be completely, totally wrong).
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PoorAndLonely posted...

TheMikh posted...

A strange phenomenon I've observed on /r9k/ in the years since leaving is girls going there for attention, and creating discords where tons of her orbiters congregate and vie for her attention. The old guard, having presumably grown up and moved on, really wasn't fond of that kind of behavior from guys or girls there and actively called it out with respect to both, but the new guard really refuses to take responsibility for themselves. Perhaps it's a maturity issue most eventually grow out of.

Where /r9k/ gets weird is when incels take the next step and become "traps".

Ah, forgot about that, though they've always been around. Many of them have orbiters these days too.
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EverDownward posted...

Seems to be a pretty reasonable analysis.
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TheMikh posted...

Having spent my late teens and early twenties on /r9k/ (ironically, it was originally recommended by someone on CE), it's seen better days. Early on, it was a combination of a lot of different boards - /lit/, /sci/, /his/, etc. - and saw a great deal of vibrant discussion as such. There was always a misogynist underbelly though, but it was 4chan after all.

Over the years - though 2010 was the worst with respect to this - new boards were created, effectively stripping the board of meaningful discussion, leaving its ugly underbelly - /r9k/ basically became a hugbox for what are now known as incels, though I can't post what they called themselves at the time here.

Then in 2011, moot deleted it and /new/ (intended to be a current events board, but got hijacked by by what would become known as the alt-right and became a proto-/pol/), and they congregated on a spinoff imageboard for a few months where they dealt with less strict regulation of /new/ making incursions into /r9k/ and spewing alt-right drivel.

So, late 2011, moot recreates /r9k/ and /new/ (as /pol/). /r9k/, consequently, was contaminated for a while with /pol/'s talking points (though it seems to have fallen by the wayside over the years, especially since the last election cycle), while /pol/ has fully embraced its identity as a board for fringe politics (though there are more mainstream political types, that the rest of the board loathes tremendously). The rest is history.

A strange phenomenon I've observed on /r9k/ in the years since leaving is girls going there for attention, and creating discords where tons of her orbiters congregate and vie for her attention. The old guard, having presumably grown up and moved on, really wasn't fond of that kind of behavior from guys or girls there and actively called it out with respect to both, but the new guard really refuses to take responsibility for themselves. Perhaps it's a maturity issue most eventually grow out of.

This is interesting. I wasn't aware of /r9k/'s history but I know the board's misogyny influences the rest of 4chan.
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If nothing else, 4chan is usually good for some entertainment.
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hyperpsycho posted...

I wasn't aware of /r9k/'s history but I know the board's misogyny influences the rest of 4chan.

I'm skeptical as to how much of it stems from r9k. There were parallel trends on Reddit and other forums as /r9k/ developed/declined, and presumably cultural diffusion between them. The other boards on 4chan also seem to make a distinction between /r9k/'s misogyny and their own, and after a certain threshold is reached posters get called out as such.

With this in mind, I'm led to believe the forces driving its development are much bigger than one board or site, while its existence on other boards is sort of a default inclination among users that is just suppressed by enforcement of different topics for discussion.
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TheMikh posted...

hyperpsycho posted...

I wasn't aware of /r9k/'s history but I know the board's misogyny influences the rest of 4chan.

I'm skeptical as to how much of it stems from r9k. There were parallel trends on Reddit and other forums as /r9k/ developed/declined, and presumably cultural diffusion between them. The other boards on 4chan also seem to make a distinction between /r9k/'s misogyny and their own, and after a certain threshold is reached posters get called out as such.

With this in mind, I'm led to believe the forces driving its development are much bigger than one board or site, while its existence on other boards is sort of a default inclination among users that is just suppressed by enforcement of different topics for discussion.

I think you're right. Reddit has some pretty nasty misogynistic subcultures and they probably influenced 4chan too.
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A lot of 4chan is ironic tho.
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When people talk about 4chan, they mean /b/, sometimes /pol/. To be fair, that's 90% of the traffic. The blue board are pretty wholesome, but all of them combined don't come close to the traffic of those first two boards.
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Turbam posted...

A lot of 4chan is ironic tho.

You can only do something ironically for so long before you start doing it unironically
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hyperpsycho posted...

TheMikh posted...

hyperpsycho posted...

I wasn't aware of /r9k/'s history but I know the board's misogyny influences the rest of 4chan.

I'm skeptical as to how much of it stems from r9k. There were parallel trends on Reddit and other forums as /r9k/ developed/declined, and presumably cultural diffusion between them. The other boards on 4chan also seem to make a distinction between /r9k/'s misogyny and their own, and after a certain threshold is reached posters get called out as such.

With this in mind, I'm led to believe the forces driving its development are much bigger than one board or site, while its existence on other boards is sort of a default inclination among users that is just suppressed by enforcement of different topics for discussion.

I think you're right. Reddit has some pretty nasty misogynistic subcultures and they probably influenced 4chan too.

I think that's backwards. 4chan came first, the communities branched from there.

Turbam posted...

A lot of 4chan is ironic tho.

It used to be. I remember the point where I realized a lot of them were no longer joking. It felt like learning Santa wasn't real all over again.
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Evening_Dragon posted...

When people talk about 4chan, they mean /b/, sometimes /pol/. To be fair, that's 90% of the traffic. The blue board are pretty wholesome, but all of them combined don't come close to the traffic of those first two boards.

The /pol/ influence seeps onto the blue boards.
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Turbam posted...

A lot of 4chan is ironic tho.

They lost the right to use that excuse almost a decade ago
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hyperpsycho posted...

Evening_Dragon posted...

When people talk about 4chan, they mean /b/, sometimes /pol/. To be fair, that's 90% of the traffic. The blue board are pretty wholesome, but all of them combined don't come close to the traffic of those first two boards.

The /pol/ influence seeps onto the blue boards.

Every issue about women and minorities turns into a /pol/ circlejerk.
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