[HN Gopher] 4chan founder Chris Poole has left Google
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       4chan founder Chris Poole has left Google
        
       Author : b5
       Score  : 187 points
       Date   : 2021-04-23 16:28 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
        
       | ibn-python wrote:
       | Him becoming a PM for Google Maps seems surprising to me
       | considering his entrepreneurial background, but I can't deny I've
       | also considered making the jump now and then from The dev life
        
         | rodolphoarruda wrote:
         | > "Him becoming a PM for Google Maps seems surprising to me
         | considering his entrepreneurial background (...)"
         | 
         | Yes. This is an extraordinary business case for strategic HCM
         | discussions.
        
           | yaacov wrote:
           | I don't know what that means, can you elaborate?
        
             | phonethrowaway wrote:
             | human capital management
        
       | rubyist5eva wrote:
       | I didn't even know moot was there to begin with.
        
       | cavisne wrote:
       | " Poole lasted just five years at Google, which CNBC notes is
       | usually just long enough for any employee's shares attached to
       | hiring to vest. It sounds like Poole never found a solid landing
       | spot at Google, as he had three different positions during his
       | five years."
       | 
       | Lol such a dishonest representation of FANG employment. Well
       | above average (2 years) a year past the vesting cliff, and about
       | average in terms of team switches
        
         | joshuamorton wrote:
         | > Well above average (2 years) a year past the vesting cliff
         | 
         | This is sort of misleading. The 2 year quote often thrown
         | around is a measure of the average tenure of current employees
         | at the company, not a measure of the average tenure of people
         | leaving.
         | 
         | I like to note that a company with exponential growth (and all
         | of the major tech firms, excepting perhaps microsoft since it's
         | been around longer count here) can have a seemingly low tenure
         | by that first metric even if no one has ever left the company.
        
         | dang wrote:
         | That was from https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/4chan-
         | founder-chris-.... We've since changed the URL - see
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26916649
         | 
         | That spin had so much torque I'm surprised the article stayed
         | motionless.
        
         | staticassertion wrote:
         | 5 years at Google is forever, and it's not uncommon at all for
         | people to jump around projects at the company. It's also a full
         | year beyond what's necessary to vest. Really silly way to write
         | that.
        
           | lucb1e wrote:
           | European here - what's it mean to vest shares? It sounds like
           | some sort of stock options became unlocked? I haven't heard
           | of this thing before, just of stocks being part of salary for
           | small startups that don't have actual money to pay you (or at
           | least, that's what I've heard warnings for on HN).
        
             | johnzim wrote:
             | Yep - your options trickle in over a vesting period.
             | 
             | Typically there's also a 'Cliff' at the start - a period
             | during which no options are available to you.
             | 
             | addendum: the 'standard' Silicon Valley stock option deal
             | is: 4 year vest, 1 year cliff.
             | 
             | Eg: first 12 months, no options
             | 
             | Day 1 of 13th month - 25% of your options are available to
             | you
             | 
             | Then the rest of the 3 years vest at a regular pace with
             | the remaining 75% of your options dropping on a monthly
             | cadence
             | 
             | The exception being Amazon who basically give you nothing
             | for 2 years and then ramp up significantly.
        
               | joshuamorton wrote:
               | Worth noting that Google and Facebook no longer have a
               | cliff, and Google has also started experimenting with
               | frontloading your initial vest (something like
               | 40/30/20/10) to avoid the "dreaded" fifth year drop.
        
             | sixstringtheory wrote:
             | Yep you got it. Usually you vest 25% of your hiring offer
             | per year, so after four years you're fully vested. Some
             | companies skew it towards later in the four year period to
             | keep folks from jumping ship after the first payout
             | ("golden handcuffs"). I've seen Amazon's stock vesting
             | schedule set at 5-15-40-40.
        
             | anonuser123456 wrote:
             | Big corps pay RSUs as part of your compensation package.
             | 
             | This helps them reduce compensation during hard times.
             | Salaries are very sticky; it's hard to cut salaries. So
             | they offer RSU comp because it's tied to stock price. When
             | the company is doing poorly, they can pay less. But it also
             | lets the pay high compensation and retain long term talent.
        
             | subsubzero wrote:
             | depends, for a public company like google when you get
             | hired in addition to base salary you may get a yearly bonus
             | and also RSUs which are free google shares, dispersed
             | evenly over 4 years. When you get to year 1 at the company
             | you get the first years shares(1 year vested) deposited in
             | your brokerage account, and then they "vest" and are given
             | to you on a quarterly cadence until the 4 years are up(if
             | you are employed the entire time).
             | 
             | In addition to the initial grant at year 2 during your
             | review some employees get more shares on top of the initial
             | grant(that vest over a certain time frame, usually 2-4
             | years), these are called stacking RSU grants and its why
             | people stay at FANG companies a long time as these grants
             | stack higher and higher all the while your career
             | progresses and the company stock goes higher.
        
       | Graffur wrote:
       | Crazy that he is 'Google caliber'. Kinda reduces the allure of
       | the Googler tbh
       | 
       | How he avoid cancel culture is beyond me
        
       | andrewmcwatters wrote:
       | It's hilarious after all these years shitty journalists still
       | believe Anonymous is a hacker group rather than just some kids
       | trolling.
       | 
       | I mean imagine if Facebook had the option to be anonymous somehow
       | on their platform and called everyone Unnamed who hadn't finished
       | their registration or didn't want to.
       | 
       | You'd see Unnamed responsible for nation-state sponsored
       | terrorism and manipulating the votes of other countries. What a
       | joke.
        
         | cl0ne wrote:
         | "the hacker known as 4chan"
        
         | cygx wrote:
         | Curious definition of 'kids trolling', I have to say.
         | 
         | DDoS attacks as well as actual hacks were performed in the name
         | of 'Anonymous', and at the time of the Stratfor hack, various
         | LulzSec members were already in their late twenties...
        
       | johngehrig wrote:
       | Long time HN lurker here -- I find the mention that he was a PM
       | with Google Maps to be particularly interesting. In case it has
       | gone unnoticed, "Google Maps" and Google's associated business
       | product "Google My Business" appear to be silently being
       | developed into Google's successor product for Google+. Google My
       | Business now allows business owners to "post" updates to their
       | Google Business listing which appear on Google Maps as posts
       | "From the owner," and, once posted, users with Google Accounts
       | can interact with and "share" these posts. Google My Business
       | also appears to be replacing Google Beacon, a physical device
       | once needed for location-based ad-targeting, now deprecated in
       | favor of directing businesses to connect their Google My Business
       | listing to their Google Ads (AdWords) account.
        
         | WanderPanda wrote:
         | And there is also this thing (don't recall its name) where
         | celebs can post short stories now, answering e.g. questions
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | Apocryphon wrote:
       | What did he actually do there?
        
         | hatsunearu wrote:
         | PM for google maps
        
         | adamrezich wrote:
         | seems like, initially, they hoped he'd help make Google+ the
         | Next Big Thing
        
         | zamadatix wrote:
         | "Google hired Poole in 2016 to work on the company's doomed
         | social media project, Google+... After Google+, Poole
         | apparently joined Google's experimental "Area 120" group and
         | eventually moved on to be a product manager for Google Maps."
        
           | jandrese wrote:
           | An uncharitable opinion might be that Google hired someone
           | with previous social media experience in a last ditch effort
           | to figure out a way to make Google+ a success.
        
             | at_a_remove wrote:
             | M00t did have a greatly contrasting view to The Zuck. The
             | Zuck -- one identity, one you. M00t talked about "facets,"
             | a face you show, just one plane out of the multihedron of
             | You. It's a bit more than Billy Joel's "The Stranger," is
             | the "you" that you bring to work, or maybe just the one you
             | show your boss. The Zuck just had everything all out there
             | for everyone. M00t's insight is that people really really
             | did not want to do that, everything from your personal
             | political leanings to not wanting your grandmother to know
             | about your fursona.
             | 
             | It is a smart hire in that aspect, but Google+ was going to
             | be an also-ran and I don't think M00t alone could save it.
        
               | jandrese wrote:
               | I guess Google+'s "circles" concept would be helpful in
               | maintaining different facets, but ultimately all social
               | media is public so that's kind of a silly thing to even
               | try to do.
               | 
               | If you don't want your wild Fursona to be associated with
               | the same account that you use for your highly
               | conservative church groups then putting them on the same
               | account is not a good idea.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | meepmorp wrote:
             | How's that uncharitable? That's probably why the hired him.
        
               | jandrese wrote:
               | It paints a picture of a panicked Google exec going "oh
               | shit G+ is swirling the drain, is there anybody at all
               | with successful social media experience that can save
               | it?"
               | 
               | Then they hire the first guy they find, even though his
               | site and G+ are almost polar opposites. G+ fails shortly
               | afterward.
               | 
               | Not exactly a fair assessment of the situation.
        
       | vmception wrote:
       | weird article, who cares? I care enough to point out the
       | following:
       | 
       | like literally what is the point of this to lead people to talk
       | about unrelated aspects of 4chan and _maybe_ how that influenced
       | his time at Google
       | 
       | but the article describes an extremely normal and extremely
       | extended time at Google
       | 
       | what...?
        
       | fudged71 wrote:
       | The topic of him working at Google came up very recently. Is that
       | why he's leaving?
        
       | moksly wrote:
       | It's interesting to see how Moot gets the blame for the all the
       | things that happened after he sold off 4chan.
       | 
       | Especially when you consider how anonymous and the occupy
       | movements were all the rage among woke leftists a few years back,
       | and they originated from 4chan.
        
         | moate wrote:
         | 1- who the hell is "Moot"? 2- Back in the moot-run days of
         | 4chan, it really was a completely different world. All the
         | weird meme-culture we have now started there. /b/ was both the
         | greatest and worst thing simultaneously. You had literal nazis
         | and neckbeards working together to dox pedos. It was just a
         | completely different place from what it's become all these
         | years later.
        
           | filoleg wrote:
           | Since your (1) went unanswered, Moot is Chris Poole's online
           | handle (on 4chan specifically, which is somewhat special,
           | given that users on 4chan usually post anonymously) that he
           | was mostly known by before becoming a semi-celebrity.
        
             | cygx wrote:
             | That was a rhetorical question, pointing out the incorrect
             | capitalization...
        
           | moksly wrote:
           | I think the internet is just different. Content creation has
           | become something people do in pursuit of profit rather than
           | something they do out of interest or just the lulz.
           | 
           | People don't spend 9 days creating the perfect YTMND thing
           | because they can spend that time on Instagram, YouTube or
           | whatever in pursuit of enough fame to create a career out of
           | it.
           | 
           | The only reason we still have so many memes and so many (less
           | than an A4 page) blog posts is because of how little effort
           | it requires with modern tech.
           | 
           | I think 4chan is actually one of the places that has changed
           | the least. I mean, /b/ without talented users is just 100%
           | shit instead of only being 99% shit, but /tg/ is exactly the
           | way I left it a decade ago.
        
             | Blikkentrekker wrote:
             | It feels as though "internet culture" of the old days have
             | been limited excessively, and the entire internet been left
             | beholden to the standards of U.S.A. professionalism, indeed
             | because of profits, because the advertiser so demands it.
             | 
             | Boards have increasingly enacted rules to cater to
             | advertisers as they found out that simple word filters to
             | stop "bad words" from being mentioned improve their
             | advertisement revenue.
             | 
             | I remember _Reddit_ when the purpose of the voting system
             | was encouraging a laid-back approach by moderators on the
             | logic that objectionable content would be downvoted, and
             | hidden, so that those who did not wish to see it could
             | ignore it, but that 's long gone now, and moderators are
             | highly zealous and on top of that one has the hivemind
             | voting system to deal with.
             | 
             | Internet indeed became a pursuit of profit, rather than
             | memes for fun.
             | 
             | And indeed _4chan_ never bowed to advertisers and
             | consequently actually is not that profitable despite being
             | one of the largest websites.
             | 
             | The culture on, say, _IRC_ channels which do not rely on
             | advertisement is very different from on websites that do
             | and typically enforce various language filters.
        
             | moate wrote:
             | I completely agree. The internet is a completely different
             | space from where it was 20 years ago. Tech ate everything,
             | so everything is the internet now.
             | 
             | Back then we cheered when "legit" tech appreciated those of
             | us from the backwater meme-world by hiring our "leader".
             | Now it seems like tons of people get into things with that
             | as the goal.
        
             | redwall_hp wrote:
             | > I think the internet is just different. Content creation
             | has become something people do in pursuit of profit rather
             | than something they do out of interest or just the lulz.
             | 
             | This is something I've been kind of depressed about lately.
             | I grew up with the internet of the early 2000s, through the
             | blog boom and the early days of YouTube. I used RSS, and
             | was into things like Creative Commons and GPL. Free culture
             | stuff. We had a wealth of cool things that people were
             | making _just because they wanted to_ , and crass commercial
             | motive was hardly something that crossed peoples' mind.
             | Just as app stores killed free web games (far more than the
             | demise of Flash), the growing commercialization of the Web
             | has eroded the wonderful mashup culture that permeated it.
             | 
             | I've been thinking about it a bit lately because I got
             | turned onto actually listening to Hatsune Miku music, and
             | it's a terrific example of what once was: remixing, memetic
             | evolution and building something bigger collaboratively.
             | (Miku has been vaguely on my radar all along, but I never
             | bothered to give the stuff a fair chance until I realized a
             | Wagakki Band song I liked was a cover of one of the most
             | popular vocaloid songs, Senbonzakura.)
             | 
             | * The Leakspin meme was a thing in the early 2000s,
             | combining the Finnish folk song Ievan Polkka with a random
             | anime clip. That was all over the place back then, and I
             | wasn't even a 4chan user.
             | 
             | * Some guy in Japan used the relatively new synth voice
             | bank VC01 Hatsune Miku to release a sort of cover of Ievan
             | Polkka, including a silly redrawing of the box art, which
             | blew up on the Japanese streaming site Niconico and later
             | made it onto YouTube. Which has lead to the character being
             | associated with leaks/spring onions. [1]
             | 
             | * Someone else made the song "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya" with
             | the same voice, which was later covered with another synth
             | voice and then paired with a now famous animation of a pop
             | tart cat. [2]
             | 
             | * The growing "memetic velocity" surrounding a character
             | derived from a synth voice and the anime art on the box it
             | came in resulted in an absolutely fascinating music scene
             | where synth artists bill themselves as producers and give a
             | performance credit to the synth, releasing their amateur
             | music for free on video sites (and sometimes getting album
             | deals as they grew in popularity). And eventually you get a
             | worldwide phenomenon with global tours of a hologram
             | performing with a live band, drawing from thousands of
             | songs and visual artwork created by whoever wants to
             | contribute. A "wiki celebrity," so to speak.
             | 
             | Kind of random, I guess, but reading up on how that all
             | connects (and was going on in the background of related
             | memes that I was aware of) has kind of restored my faith in
             | the Internet. I think that if you get enough creative
             | people together, you're going to end up with some cool
             | stuff. The question remains, though...would it happen
             | today? (And if not, what do we need to torch to fix it?)
             | 
             | [1]
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku#Cultural_impact
             | 
             | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyan_Cat
        
       | khazhoux wrote:
       | Only met him briefly and spent about an hour with him, but he
       | left a huge impression. Great guy, and good luck to him on
       | whatever's next!
        
       | AzzieElbab wrote:
       | It is amazing how consistently tech journalists manage to outdo
       | mainstream journalists in incompetence and ill intent
        
       | newsclues wrote:
       | I miss canv.as
        
         | adamrezich wrote:
         | canv.as always seemed like a great idea, ahead of its time, as
         | far as letting people make memes easier... but now, flash
         | forward to today, and original content on 4chan is at a
         | proportional all-time low. users there always say things like
         | "someone take this image and shop [x] in" instead of doing it
         | themselves in mspaint.
        
           | dfxm12 wrote:
           | Unfortunately, this happens in all kinds of communities,
           | physical and digital. A place is hip because creative types
           | concentrate there, contribute to each other, pushing each
           | other's boundaries to create new things. Consumers notice
           | these new things, come in to consume, but make no effort to
           | contribute back to the community. The creatives eventually
           | move on either because they've become unwelcome or realize
           | they have not much new to learn, and the consumers are left
           | behind wondering why their community doesn't feel hip any
           | more.
           | 
           | I never try to take for granted when I'm involved in artists'
           | spaces, FOSS projects, hacker spaces, etc. The point is to
           | continue a cycle of learning and contributing back, not
           | consume until all the resources are sucked dry...
        
         | koboll wrote:
         | Same. Managed to capture the creative aspects of 4chan meme
         | culture without the toxicity. I loved creating memes there. I
         | had a little following too. Then it died and it all went up in
         | smoke and there's nowhere else like it.
        
       | russdpale wrote:
       | Literal definition of failing upwards. He isn't a boy genuis, he
       | copied code from japanese websites and then fostered one of the
       | most toxic communities in human history. At google, he took a job
       | from someone who was almost certainly way more qualified, both
       | technically and morally.
        
         | chad_strategic wrote:
         | > At google, he took a job from someone who was almost
         | certainly way more qualified, both technically and morally.
         | 
         | Get the impression you work at google?
        
           | chad_strategic wrote:
           | I'm always perplexed that I get down-voted. Seems like a
           | reasonable question. The reason I asked the question, well
           | because I was curious to see if the commentator had more in
           | depth insight into the google / Moot issue.
           | 
           | Google seems to make a ton of money in advertising, etc. But
           | it can't seem to create a social media network that anybody
           | want to use.
           | 
           | I'm not exactly sure that a commenter has the ability to
           | judge someone's experience and potential job performance. It
           | also sound a little bitter and not support with any facts to
           | support the claim.
           | 
           | I don't know Chris Moot and know a little bit about 4chan.
           | I'm not a big fan of google either.
           | 
           | It seems like Google execs wanted to hire what they thought
           | was the hot new star. You see this happen a lot in Hollywood.
           | If you can't produce new ideas from within your organization,
           | it smart to out source that talent.
           | 
           | Those execs that probably dropped a lot of money Moot are
           | probably out of a job as well.
        
           | russdpale wrote:
           | No, I don't work and google and wouldn't work at google, but
           | I know a lot of people who do.
        
         | slackfan wrote:
         | For as much as I disagree with this comment, it also isn't
         | really wrong.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | beervirus wrote:
           | Why would you disagree with something that isn't wrong?
        
           | moate wrote:
           | I think this is a real Columbus Egg situation. There was no
           | Reddit when 4chan popped up. It was 2003. As much as /b/ was
           | an ocean of piss, so much of what we now consider "internet
           | culture" consolidated or spawned there.
           | 
           | Of course parts of it were absolutely terrible then, but to
           | distill it down solely to OP's post is a lot of selective
           | editing.
        
             | selimthegrim wrote:
             | Let's not let Lowtax off scot-free here, even if he is a
             | documented horrible human being SA deserves some share of
             | the credit.
        
               | moate wrote:
               | I mean there's a handful of sites you could point to that
               | were also important, but the point was a 2 sentence
               | description of 4chan's cultural significance and
               | importance is lazybad. It feels particularly lame on a
               | site called "hackernews".
        
               | Lammy wrote:
               | They are talking about Lowtax/SomethingAwful because
               | 4chan was a direct outgrowth of the
               | ADTRW/SADCHUB/RaspberryHeaven communities that discovered
               | 2ch and world2chan around 2003. Its OP was edited in 2007
               | and I assume the original is lost, but here's the 82-page
               | 4chan announcement thread on ADTRW originally posted in
               | September 2003: https://forums.somethingawful.com//showth
               | read.php?threadid=7...
               | 
               | A lot of 4chan's initial userbase and staying power came
               | from SA banning a big chunk of that community earlier in
               | 2003 over differing cultural standards between their
               | subcommunity and the SA admins: https://forums.somethinga
               | wful.com/showthread.php?threadid=42...
        
         | faeriechangling wrote:
         | What does qualified mean to you? If he received "formal
         | education".
         | 
         | Moot for better or for worse held together one of the larger
         | sites on the internet while managing a team of mods and the
         | simple fact that 4chsn was never shut down is in itself an
         | achievement. I have a hard trouble not seeing him as having
         | serious management chops. He frankly is probably more qualified
         | than many people who got into Google for little reason other
         | than excellence at math puzzles and formal education which are
         | hilariously mediocre qualifiers.
        
         | AllegedAlec wrote:
         | Holy shit imagine this salty about a guy who admined a
         | Czechoslovakian turnip farming forum.
        
           | goldenchrome wrote:
           | Imagine being salty about a guy who rarely posted on a
           | Martian chicken breeding forum
        
           | at_a_remove wrote:
           | "Toxic," that wound up over a Bulgarian dog-spinning board.
           | Whew.
        
         | aeturnum wrote:
         | I imagine Moot wasn't hired for technical skill exactly, but
         | for his years of experience trying to shape a difficult
         | community. I'd be interested in a breakdown of how Moot
         | "fostered" the toxic aspects of 4chan. One could say that any
         | anonymous community will be toxic and harmful to the general
         | world, but that feels like a conclusion that is drawn after
         | watching 4chan metastasize.
        
           | formerly_proven wrote:
           | Claiming 4chan is a uniform community is like saying Reddit
           | users form a coherent community.
        
             | krapp wrote:
             | >like saying Reddit users form a coherent community
             | 
             | Which, let's be fair, people do all the time, especially
             | here.
             | 
             | Also, plenty of people who frequent 4chan and defend it
             | against criticism often speak of its culture and how
             | outsiders don't understand its quirks, so clearly it does
             | have something of a coherent community.
        
               | SyzygistSix wrote:
               | To the extent that the medium is the message, forums do
               | encourage certain types and qualities of interaction. In
               | that way, many, many subreddits are alike and there is a
               | single culture to it.
               | 
               | Also the larger a community gets, the more mediocre and
               | average it becomes and the more the culture that is
               | reinforced by the medium comes to the fore.
        
             | Oddskar wrote:
             | Couldn't the same thing largely be said about any major
             | social network? Facebook isn't really a uniform community I
             | would argue, nor is Whatsapp. Sure they have certain
             | demographics that are larger than others and so on, but so
             | does 4chan and reddit.
        
         | dang wrote:
         | Please don't post personal attacks to HN. Whether or not you
         | owe $person better, you owe this community better if you're
         | participating in it.
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        
       | devenblake wrote:
       | > Poole's 4chan is an anonymous, ephemeral imageboard that is
       | often given the title "cesspool of the Internet." The site is
       | broken up into boards of various topics, and some of the more
       | lawless boards are home to all of the worst characters on the
       | Internet, like school shooters, child pornographers, and racists.
       | It's also the birthplace of a lot of Internet culture, like
       | Rickrolling, lolcats, and, more recently, Pepe the frog memes and
       | the alt-right. The site gave rise to the Internet hacktivist
       | group Anonymous and is often used as a dumping ground for various
       | hacks like the Nintendo Gigaleak. Poole sold 4chan back in 2015,
       | a year before joining Google.
       | 
       | I don't think it's fair to say this without clarifying that a lot
       | of the Q and other deranged stuff started happening after moot
       | left. Nor is Pepe really a recent meme (somewhere I have Pepes
       | saved from like the mid '00s), nor is Anonymous really a _group_
       | (but that 's questionable and a debate that isn't really
       | relevant)... I know there's very little expectations when it
       | comes to reporting on web subcultures but come on, this is common
       | knowledge (maybe that's why it isn't clarified?).
        
         | bigth wrote:
         | Quality of reporting on arstechnica has notably gone down over
         | the years, while bias has visibly gone up.
        
         | throwaway823882 wrote:
         | The only thing common about knowledge or sense is that most
         | people don't have it
        
         | LinuxBender wrote:
         | I think it's also worth adding that the memes didn't even
         | really start on 4chan. They mostly started on ytmnd and then
         | 4chans beta site started on servers that belonged to ytmnd/max.
         | 4chan did however lower the bar to entry for sharing memes.
         | Making gifs/mp3's for ytmnd was a put-off to many.
        
         | pavel_lishin wrote:
         | > _I know there 's very little expectations when it comes to
         | reporting on web subcultures but come on, this is common
         | knowledge_
         | 
         | To you and I, maybe! But even arstechnica's readership may not
         | be aware of all this stuff.
        
         | base698 wrote:
         | Because articles are meant to sell ads through sensationalism
         | not to inform?
         | 
         | Propaganda to teach that anything free is dirty/salacious to
         | keep people in their walled gardens.
        
           | Lammy wrote:
           | Needs moar yellow van
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=128IR21ZQa0
        
         | neartheplain wrote:
         | It's worth noting that the Pepe meme has continued to evolve,
         | and is no longer associated solely or primarily with 4chan. The
         | streamer community in particular has adopted, rehabiliated, and
         | popularized Pepe as a mascot and chat emote. For example,
         | here's Pepe and the "poggers" meme in a recent stream from
         | Pokimane, a streamer with over 7 million followers who made
         | Forbes' 2021 30 under 30 list:
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETBUJkVMnpc&t=70s
        
           | watwut wrote:
           | The original author of Pepe put some work into deassociating
           | it from Pepe The Meme. He hated the while thing.
        
             | cl0ne wrote:
             | Yeah, I talked with Matt about it at a party around the
             | time he was going into lawsuits with Alex Jones and some
             | alt-right people. He's a really nice dude. He hadn't been
             | very familiar with 4chan before Pepe became a meme and was
             | bummed that Pepe was being branded a hate symbol since he's
             | writing children's books now. #savepepe
        
           | Ataraxy wrote:
           | It was a big thing on Twitch long before any of the negative
           | associations were made with it via media.
        
             | throwaway3699 wrote:
             | Yup. The GPs viewpoint could only have been discovered
             | without firsthand knowledge of the situation.
        
         | coliveira wrote:
         | Why do you think this is not relevant? Everything that came out
         | of 4chan is not a surprise, it was accepted there from the very
         | beginning. It just took proportions that nobody would expect.
        
           | nemothekid wrote:
           | The reason I think it isn't relevant is I think 4chan would
           | be different if moot stuck around. moot had a sort of
           | dictatorship power that allowed him to kill trends - for
           | example GamerGate "died" on 4chan (leading to 8chan and
           | friends) because moot decided one day that GamerGate was done
           | on 4chan. I can't say for sure what 4chan would look like but
           | I felt moot had a more tasteful and less ideological driven
           | approach to running 4chan.
           | 
           | There was an article in Motherboard[1] how /pol/ is being
           | idealogically driven due to moderation choices. I don't
           | believe moot would have allowed such an ideologically driven
           | moderation changes to continue for so long. (IIRC, moot had
           | deleted /pol/ twice, once as /n/ which he removed for being
           | too much like stormfront).
           | 
           | [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7aap8/the-man-who-
           | helped-tu...
        
           | devenblake wrote:
           | I meant the Anonymous group/movement/"which group?"/whatever
           | debate is a bag of beans to be spilled another time.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | makomk wrote:
         | Media reporting on anything involving 4chan has always been
         | terrible. I remember a story about, I think, Emma Watson that
         | turned out to be literally fake news - as in, it came from an
         | already documented fake news site run by a known serial hoaxer,
         | was laundered into legitimacy by increasingly reputable
         | publications, and eventually ended up being reported as true
         | everywhere including places like the BBC.
        
         | beaconstudios wrote:
         | you'd think this would be common knowledge given 4chan is
         | literally an open website, but I always hear these mythologised
         | recountings of it like it's some kind of mysterious
         | inaccessible cult. It's just reddit for people who hate reddit.
        
           | throwaway0a5e wrote:
           | "Reddit without the good manners"
        
           | whymauri wrote:
           | >like it's some kind of mysterious inaccessible cult.
           | 
           | It's pretty interesting, because as long as I've been
           | conscious on the Internet it's always been posed as an
           | 'inaccessible cult.' Probably due to all the inside jokes, I
           | guess?
        
             | superflit wrote:
             | The 'inaccessible cult.' is about the structure of the
             | board.
             | 
             | First time you go there is a Chaotic mess that feels you
             | went back to 90's.
             | 
             | Then in shock you start to see the subs like /pol/ then you
             | click and bam More chaos.
             | 
             | Threads and threads you are more lost.
             | 
             | Then you click catalog and set order Reply-by-count.
             | 
             | Then it does start to make sense. You read people talking
             | in two ways. On the text and on the image attached.
             | 
             | It is full-duplex com.
             | 
             | In the 90's I used to read my Mainstream media + Pravda
             | (the other side) jornal.
             | 
             | Now I read the local MSM and 4chan (the other side )
             | jornal.
        
               | the_lonely_road wrote:
               | I made it to the site finally and but I got wrecked by
               | step 2. Where is /pol? There is no politics section
               | listed under Boards except "Politically Incorrect" which
               | can't be what you mean as I was immediately hit with the
               | full n-word and wish I had used an incognito browser...
               | 
               | Do many HN users actually frequent this website or should
               | I be reinstalling my OS right about now??
        
               | tudelo wrote:
               | It's exactly the reason people complain about anonymous
               | image boards. But that's what it is. Even the "SFW"
               | boards are filled with stuff that you might find
               | distasteful or downright wrong.
               | 
               | You are safe... don't worry. Unless you started
               | downloading stuff from random users on 4chan. But if you
               | did that i'm not sure we can help you!
        
               | lightspot21 wrote:
               | yep - that's /pol/ - it stands for Politically Incorrect
               | 
               | 4chan's indeed a cesspool, and /pol/, /b/, among some
               | others are the worst. In fact, they're called
               | "containment boards" for this very reason.
        
             | dfxm12 wrote:
             | _it 's always been posed as an 'inaccessible cult.'_
             | 
             | You gotta ask yourself "by whom?". Actual users of the
             | site, people having serious discussions about the site,
             | writers of pop articles aimed at non-users of the site, or
             | someone else?
             | 
             | Even then, you have this conflation of /b/ (or I guess
             | these days /pol/) and 4chan at large. Some communities are
             | more welcoming than others.
        
           | weeblewobble wrote:
           | I haven't been on there in a long time, but I remember it
           | being really really hard to use, especially for newcomers.
           | Tons of random crap, no ranking or voting system to bubble up
           | things that are worth reading, lots of gore (and worse),
           | inside jokes, spam. That's why people think of it as
           | mysterious and inaccessible.
        
           | HerbMcM wrote:
           | Anyone admitting that they browse 4chan risks losing social
           | cachet. Risk is too great either in an internet forum or news
           | articles. The recent Q documentary on HBO was refreshing in
           | that the person doing it actually knew how to explain things
           | even if it feels like it's filler though. Then again that's
           | someone on HBO who's been given permission to be edgy (try
           | pausing some of the posts in the first few minutes).
        
           | newacct583 wrote:
           | > It's just reddit for people who hate reddit.
           | 
           | That's true on a technical level only. But culture matters.
           | 
           | Attitudes like yours were why 4chan was such a surprise to
           | the rest of us. The culture that we all thought was just
           | "ironic" and "edgy" with its casual racism turned out to
           | be... kinda actually racist when right wingers decided to
           | weaponize xenophobia and bigotry. The groupthink of a bunch
           | of almost-exclusively-male incels turned out to be hiding
           | genuine misogyny once they had an enemy to point themselves
           | at in gamergate.
           | 
           | Culture matters. Being an "open website" just describes how
           | it happens, not why.
        
           | Rompect wrote:
           | I wish there was a mainstream site which has 4chan anonymity
           | and fast pace + reddit thread format. Both become hardly
           | usable with either elitism, censorship and people who think
           | upvotes matter or an absolute cancer to follow conversations
           | in threads.
        
             | JeremyBanks wrote:
             | Without censorship... so you want a place with nazis?
             | 'cause that's what happens.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | lamp987 wrote:
               | This If people's opinions arent watched, selected and
               | filtered, we might get another third reich soon.
        
               | therouwboat wrote:
               | "You gotta let nazis be a little nazi, otherwise they are
               | going to start killing people again."
        
               | at_a_remove wrote:
               | Indeed, we need a strong regime to overlook and approve
               | everything, on each and every commentary platform, to
               | make sure that wrongthink does not occur, otherwise, we
               | might have a totalitari- oops, too late.
               | 
               | Nothing has more of a "Whoever fights monsters ..." vibe
               | than the endless fixation on Nazis. I suppose we will
               | have to amend the Four Horsemen of the Infoacalypse from
               | "drug-dealers, money-launderers, terrorists, and
               | pedophiles." My vote is that we put "Nazis" in place of
               | "terrorists," given that a well-known anti-DDoS service
               | decided to revoke protections for Stormfront while still
               | providing services at the time to ISIS. Yes, that ISIS,
               | the slow-motion, lovingly filmed execution of infidels
               | ISIS.
        
               | SyzygistSix wrote:
               | Yeah... you just have to make sure the solution isn't
               | worse than the problem. This works okay for a forum or a
               | private club. Not so much the world at large.
               | 
               | Because it never stops at just filtering out the Nazis.
        
               | mrkstu wrote:
               | Without censorship... so you want communist pinkos? Cause
               | that's how you get communist pinkos.
        
               | leetcrew wrote:
               | assuming this is in good faith, please take a look at
               | this list of banned subreddits:
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_commun
               | iti...
               | 
               | though the world is probably better off without a lot of
               | those, they are not all literal nazi subs.
        
               | whymauri wrote:
               | GP is probably referring to Voat, which was a Reddit
               | alternative with less censorship that went down the
               | gutter within a year.
        
               | jandrese wrote:
               | It won't be 100% Nazis. You'll also have the spammers,
               | pedos, and assorted wingnuts.
               | 
               | Trolls can always take over unmoderated forums because
               | while they can drive the reasonable users out by reducing
               | the signal to noise ratio down to a useless level, the
               | reasonable users have no power drive them out. It's a
               | completely imbalanced power dynamic. All forums need some
               | sort of moderation or they will always collapse once they
               | grow beyond a fairly modest threshold.
        
               | leetcrew wrote:
               | "reasonable users" is doing a lot of work here. not
               | everyone desires the same level of discourse you do on
               | every site they visit. /b/ has just about the bare
               | minimum level of moderation needed to comply with US law
               | and a lot of people seem to enjoy using it.
        
               | jandrese wrote:
               | /b/ is a good example of a forum that is only trolls at
               | this point, and as you note it does have some moderation.
               | 
               | Some of the other forums on 4chan might be better
               | examples, but even those have some moderation. Forums
               | like /tg/ have managed to hang on alright, although their
               | total post volume per day is quite small compared to /b/.
        
               | leetcrew wrote:
               | > /b/ is a good example of a forum that is only trolls at
               | this point
               | 
               | and some people enjoy that. you don't have to go there if
               | you aren't one of them.
               | 
               | you're not describing some platonic ideal of an internet
               | forum. you're just describing what you personally want
               | out of one.
        
               | jandrese wrote:
               | Sure, if you want a forum that is only trolls then go
               | ahead and leave it unmoderated. Just don't act surprised
               | when suddenly Nazis show up.
        
             | batch12 wrote:
             | I built this [1] and took it down when I quickly realized I
             | would not have the time or desire to devote to keeping it
             | going.
             | 
             | Edit- it had live (think chat room) but threaded comments
             | and was anonymous (temporary, randomized identites)
             | 
             | I haven't had the heart to completely decommission it yet
             | so I've stood it back up so you can see what I am talking
             | about .
             | 
             | [1] https://blahalla.com
        
               | ALittleLight wrote:
               | This looks pretty neat. Two suggestions: show the room
               | list on the home page and put the about stuff somewhere
               | else. People will figure out what the site is by seeing
               | or interacting and the faster they can the better.
               | 
               | Second, names could be more distinct. The fact they all
               | begin with the prefix "user" (from what I saw) is
               | redundant. Could you mix and match from a short-words
               | list to create unique and memorable names? e.g.
               | RedFoxFun.
        
               | batch12 wrote:
               | Good ideas and both easy to implement. Thanks for the
               | feedback
        
               | edrxty wrote:
               | That name is beautiful
        
               | batch12 wrote:
               | Thank you- names are the thing I am worst at I think.
        
             | tomatotomato37 wrote:
             | I'd even take an imageboard with reddit or HN moderation
             | over the reddit-style of social media sites we have today.
             | I'd even allow mandatory registration if the posts
             | themselves are still anonymous to other users
             | 
             | Anonymous posting prevents weird popularity cliches from
             | taking over, and post linking via ID allows multiple
             | conversations to flow much smoother than reddit's tree-
             | structured comments. I'd also say that sequential ranking
             | over popularity upvote would prevent as many low-effort hot
             | takes/jokes from always being at the top of each thread,
             | but I'm practice that doesn't really seem to play out like
             | it should.
        
               | obviouslynotme wrote:
               | I think 4chan with only slight moderation would be
               | amazing. Get rid of all porn and illegal stuff. Keep the
               | rest. You could advertise and keep the FBI participation
               | to a minimum.
        
               | punchclockhero wrote:
               | There's always been moderation for illegal content and
               | the janitors do a good job deleting porn from the
               | worksafe boards.
        
               | batch12 wrote:
               | yeah that's what I was aiming for, but without the images
               | and karma-- that's why the users were temporary. No need
               | to whore for internet approval because it really doesn't
               | matter.
        
               | cl0ne wrote:
               | https://ratwires.space
               | 
               | Anonymous textboard written in Crystal.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | mhh__ wrote:
           | > It's just reddit for people who hate reddit.
           | 
           | Isn't that hackernews
        
             | pix64 wrote:
             | > > It's just reddit for people who hate reddit.
             | 
             | It's just reddit for people who hate
        
             | beaconstudios wrote:
             | No hacker news is just reddit with a disdain for low effort
             | jokes and a more technical/verbose focus. Most of the lame
             | part of reddit culture is still here.
        
             | VWWHFSfQ wrote:
             | it's also hacker news for people who hate hacker news
        
               | krapp wrote:
               | That would be lobste.rs
        
               | dariusj18 wrote:
               | It's the internet for people who hate.
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | adamrezich wrote:
       | he'd only been at Google for five years? seems like a lifetime
       | ago!
        
       | ericbarrett wrote:
       | Chris Poole visited the Facebook campus in 2011, while he was
       | still running 4chan, for an hour-long talk and some questions.
       | About thirty engineers attended. The Anonymous hacks had been all
       | over the news for the last year or so, so a couple of jokers
       | showed up in Guy Fawkes masks, and kept them on for the whole
       | thing.
       | 
       | During the Q&A, Poole answered a question from one of the masked
       | employees. After his answer, he asked, "Did that help, Steve?"
       | Shocked, and no doubt a bit intimidated, the employee asked how
       | Poole knew his name. His answer: "Well, I read your name on the
       | badge clipped to your belt."
       | 
       | Poole was smart and thoughtful and I was quite impressed (not
       | just with his eye for detail). Not surprised he lasted so long at
       | Google.
        
         | zumu wrote:
         | > Not surprised he lasted so long at Google.
         | 
         | Is it hard to 'last' at google? I have never gotten that
         | impression.
        
           | causality0 wrote:
           | The median tenure of a Google employee is 1.1 years.
        
             | throwaway3699 wrote:
             | Does that include contractors It's generally expected you
             | spend six months just ramping up, so this number is really
             | skeptical for me.
        
               | mark_l_watson wrote:
               | I heard that contractors last, on average, a few months
               | longer than employees.
        
             | Arcuru wrote:
             | I'm fairly sure that these very low numbers for median
             | tenure (not just for Google but the other tech companies as
             | well) are a result of the huge percentage of new hires.
             | That number does not mean that the average Google employee
             | will only be at the company for 1.1 years.
             | 
             | e.g. if nobody ever leaves the company, but you always
             | double the number of employees every year by very
             | aggressive hiring, the average tenure according to that
             | metric is 1 year.
        
               | ineedasername wrote:
               | I don't think Google's hiring is increasing fast enough
               | to explain the low rate. It looks like they increased
               | about 10% from 2019 to 2020.
               | 
               | However, it's also unclear exactly how 1.1 number is
               | calculated. It looks like it comes from PayScale, which
               | doesn't give, as far as I can tell, a methodology:
               | 
               | Is that the median amount of time that all current
               | employees have had with the company so far?
               | 
               | Or is it the median of all of the employees that used to
               | work there & moved on, which would exclude people that
               | have continued to work there?
               | 
               | Or is it some type of survival analysis that takes such
               | factors into account?
        
               | sushid wrote:
               | It's anecdotal but my understanding as someone who hasn't
               | worked there is it seems like either people leave < 2
               | years or have no plans whatsoever of ever leaving.
        
               | dmos62 wrote:
               | Pretty strange place where the average employee is
               | perpetually a new-comer. At least that's the picture this
               | painted for me.
        
             | rawtxapp wrote:
             | Like someone pointed, majority of them are new employees.
             | Most of my friends left around the 4 year mark when they
             | hit the compensation cliff.
        
             | mathattack wrote:
             | That's tilted based on how much hiring they're doing. A
             | company that nobody leaves that hires 100% new employees
             | has a median tenure of 1 year. Even if the growth is 50%
             | per year, your median tenure will be less than a year and a
             | half no matter how much your turnover will be.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | m_a_g wrote:
             | Wow, I am surprised. Any ideas why so short?
        
               | kyawzazaw wrote:
               | Job hopping pays more? And also at Google, it is know to
               | be promoted only with new launches.
        
               | lozaning wrote:
               | Only have to work there a day before you can quite and
               | start referring to yourself as ex-FAANG
        
             | tdeck wrote:
             | At least in engineering that doesn't comport with my
             | experience at all. I knew maybe a couple of people who left
             | the company over 4 years. If anything people seem to stay
             | much longer at Google.
        
           | seriousquestion wrote:
           | HBO's Silicon Valley even lampooned how easy it is to stick
           | around, with "Big Head" and others hanging out on the roof
           | all day.
           | 
           | "Rest and Vest" is a thing.
        
             | birdyrooster wrote:
             | I spent four months at Google collecting double pay and
             | stocks and had no responsibilities. They literally paid me
             | to vacation (e.g. I went to visit Google Japan while
             | chilling), rest and to enjoy life without work. I didn't
             | like any of the other teams at Google which I was eligible
             | for so I left for Apple.
        
               | samspenc wrote:
               | Could you clarify what you mean by "double pay"? Do you
               | mean you 2x the hours you would normally have worked or
               | something else I'm missing?
        
               | birdyrooster wrote:
               | It was salary, and it was a multiplier given on that base
               | salary while we looked for other opportunities at Google.
               | This is how they deal with folks who are left over after
               | reorganizations or divestments.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | yreg wrote:
         | He was interviewed on TED around that time
         | 
         | https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_moot_poole_the_case_fo...
        
         | Graffur wrote:
         | Sorry but that story does not scream 'smart'
        
       | blissofbeing wrote:
       | "only five years" that's a long time in my opinion to be at one
       | company.
        
         | techsupporter wrote:
         | Meanwhile, I've been at the same company for longer than a
         | couple of my coworkers have been alive (though I've changed
         | jobs twice in that time) so "only five years" sounds
         | comparatively short to me.
        
           | xtracto wrote:
           | My wife has been at her current company (large like
           | freescale, flexctronics, jabil) for 8 solid years , and she
           | is still going strong.
           | 
           | Meanwhile I've been at 4 startups, from seed to Series B . I
           | just get bored so easy.. after 3 or so years I NEED a change.
           | Or maybe is because startups dont care about w/l balance and
           | drain you until you quit.
        
             | datameta wrote:
             | This is not a hot take - genuinely curious as someone who
             | had been at a few startups: do you think the fintech side
             | of startups embodies the burn and churn strategy moreso
             | than other sectors?
        
             | Graffur wrote:
             | So you never stick around to see your production code?
        
         | carabiner wrote:
         | The original CNBC article
         | https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/22/4chan-founder-chris-poole-mo...
         | lacks this editorial spin. Tech people hop around a lot, 5
         | years is a solid tenure.
        
           | scotth wrote:
           | And three positions inside the company seems about right as
           | well.
        
             | seattle_spring wrote:
             | > Poole lasted just five years at Google, which CNBC notes
             | is usually just long enough for any employee's shares
             | attached to hiring to vest
             | 
             | They make it sound like he barely managed to get any stock.
             | That's like saying, "person worked at X for 1 year, just
             | long enough to get 1 year's salary." Well, yeah, but if
             | they left in 11 months they'd get 11 months salary. It's
             | not like if Poole left at 1 year or 4 years or anything in
             | between he would have left with anything different
             | proportionally to his tenure.
             | 
             | What an odd article.
        
               | somerandomness wrote:
               | It's typical to get a larger 4-year grant at hire. It's
               | common to complain about comp drop after 4 years
        
               | dmoy wrote:
               | Also it doesn't really match with reality, since they'd
               | usually get refresh grants and have a rolling four year
               | window at all times.
               | 
               | The article sounds like the reporter heard a soundbyte
               | about google's typical four year vesting period, and then
               | did zero actual research into what that means.
        
               | ryandrake wrote:
               | I don't know--I've heard a lot of people here noting the
               | "4 year cliff" at most tech companies, not just Google.
               | Not all companies give refreshes, and of those that do,
               | it's usually not enough to make up for the initial grant
               | going away.
               | 
               | I left my last job pretty much on the day of my 4 year
               | anniversary because I'd otherwise be taking a 25% comp
               | hit in year 5. It's definitely a thing.
        
               | pmkiwi wrote:
               | Pardon my ignorance but what is the "4 year cliff"
               | exactly?
        
               | bzbarsky wrote:
               | When you initially start at Google, say, you get an RSU
               | grant that vests over 4 years. So for 4 years you are
               | getting your salary and on some schedule also getting
               | stock. The stock can be a quite large portion of your
               | total compensation (as in, comparable to the base
               | salary).
               | 
               | After 4 years, unless you got refresher grants, your
               | compensation is just your salary, so you effectively make
               | less money than during the first 4 years. At that point
               | the incentive is to move to some other company and start
               | the 4-year clock again...
        
               | pmkiwi wrote:
               | Ok got it! So I guess the only way for Google to keep the
               | best performers is to eliminate this cliff by giving RSU
               | and/or offering a significant pay increase.
               | 
               | Thank you for the explanation ;)
        
           | russdpale wrote:
           | Depends on the company, I work in tech but for an old
           | company, 5 years isn't very long and there isn't much room
           | for any movement.
        
             | karmasimida wrote:
             | For Google it definitely is. Most people jump at 4 year
             | cliff, if they have the option
        
             | tedivm wrote:
             | The fact that there's not room for movement is exactly why
             | people leave companies, not a reason to stay.
        
               | russdpale wrote:
               | True, but this is a company where when I logged on the
               | other day there was an article about a guy retiring after
               | 52 years as a delivery driver. Yes, that's right, fifty
               | two years at one company, although I imagine he did small
               | package delivery and feeder work (trailer loads). So not
               | just one position, but pretty close.
        
               | meepmorp wrote:
               | On the other hand, that kind of job is stable, pays well
               | enough, and doesn't demand much outside of 9-5. For
               | people with families, that's a lot more appealing than
               | you'd think.
        
           | dang wrote:
           | Ah ok, we'll change the URL to that from
           | https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/4chan-founder-
           | chris-.... Thanks!
           | 
           | Actually we should already have changed it - that's standard
           | practice when one article cribs from another. But I missed it
           | in this case.
        
         | theandrewbailey wrote:
         | Sounds like he moved around a bit, so it's not like he was
         | working on just one thing for 5 years.
        
         | Andrex wrote:
         | Ron Amadeo is a talented reporter but his transparent
         | smarminess towards anything Google-related has become
         | exhausting in recent years.
         | 
         | A lot of the time it may be warranted. But just as often, like
         | in this article, it definitely is not.
        
         | kingsuper20 wrote:
         | >only five years" that's a long time in my opinion to be at one
         | company
         | 
         | I've never worked anywhere where people were much use before
         | 2-3 years in harness. Too much domain knowledge maybe.
        
       | okareaman wrote:
       | I've spent a fair amount of time on 4chan/pol/ for over a decade
       | and my opinion is moot is a decent guy who sold it after he tried
       | to reign in GamerGate and was loudly criticized on the site for
       | it. I don't think Google would have hired him if it weren't for
       | that redeeming quality.
       | 
       | I'm fascinated by 4chan because it is a kind of underground
       | United Nations. It's anonymous so people around the world can
       | express themselves - even in a way I might find horrifying - and
       | I can get an idea of concerns people have, though they might be
       | concerns left unsaid im polite society.
       | 
       | It's anonymous but your national flag is automatically assigned,
       | and if you hide this or use a "meme flag' like a pirate flag, you
       | will be criticized and ignored as a likely troll, trying a "false
       | flag" operation.
       | 
       | 4chan/pol/ is interesting, I don't know about the other boards
       | since I don't visit them.
        
         | hourislate wrote:
         | I have found I can spend hours on 4chins reading some of the
         | most interesting stuff on the Internet. It takes some work and
         | time but there is gold there. There are some scary smart/genius
         | anons posting.
        
           | okareaman wrote:
           | This too. There are some really smart people arguing
           | positions that I never see argued in the mainstream press. I
           | have much better understanding of pro-gun people now than I
           | used to. I still don't agree with them, but I am closer to
           | understanding.
        
             | xtracto wrote:
             | That's the reason I frequent r/ccw . Although I'm not from
             | the US, I find interest in understanding the CCW culture;
             | Their reasoning and thoughts. I've learned quite a lot from
             | there through the years.
        
           | causality0 wrote:
           | Indeed. /pol/'s main value is entertainment at the sheer
           | level of batshit insanity but the number of times they've
           | either been startlingly prescient or else had serious insider
           | knowledge is significant. I've seen things there that took
           | days to hit CNN. For example, claims about Peter Bright's
           | pedophilic exploits hit /pol/ years ahead of his arrest.
        
             | dls2016 wrote:
             | This really gets to the core of my love/hate relationship
             | with the "weird" internet. I was an Ars-poster ~20 years
             | ago and hadn't heard any of those rumors. Never ventured
             | into 4chan for more than 5 minutes at a time. But I did
             | spend a lot of time in the Gawker comment section and
             | reading things like the Crazy Days and Nights blog. It
             | definitely gives you a different perspective on journalism.
             | There are so many stories which exist in a different plane,
             | completely known by mainstream journalists but unreported
             | for decades. It's insane.
             | 
             | Always reminds me of the classic 1978 Johnny Rotten
             | interview BBC interview where he calls out Jimmy Savile.
             | (Video features a gross Piers Morgan pretending like he
             | never heard about Savile.)
             | 
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4OzI9GYag0
             | 
             | We don't need the white supremacy, but we as a society do
             | need the crass asshole who's not afraid to knock down the
             | elites by a peg or two. (And the John Stewart "jesters" of
             | the world do not count.)
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | at_a_remove wrote:
         | I have been on 4chan since at least '05, according to my files.
         | The way people write about it is just ... such a Rorschach
         | blot. Just as an example, that "redeeming" word you used, I
         | would have said "damning." I watched the spin machine rev up
         | like a centrifuge before that really hit the press, I read the
         | ZoePost early on and thought Depression Quest was just awful
         | before I knew word one about who wrote it.
         | 
         | There's so many boards, each with its own culture, but people
         | get out of it whatever bugbear they desire.
        
           | watwut wrote:
           | Depression quest being good or not, being only for some kind
           | of person or all is completely irrelevant. And should be
           | irrelevant to anything that happened after.
           | 
           | Even if it would be the worst game in the world. Cause the
           | really normal response to and small game you don't like is to
           | not play it and maybe write a bad review. Not what happened.
        
             | at_a_remove wrote:
             | Correct, but also correct that afterward, you could not
             | critique the game at all without being "a literal Nazi."
             | The journos (as shown in their private mailing list) closed
             | ranks amazingly quickly. I watched perfectly reasonable
             | critiques get removed from comment sections before the
             | comment sections were inevitably shut down "to promote
             | better discourse."
             | 
             | As usual, it isn't the crime, it's the coverup that gets
             | you, and GamerGate was a great example of that.
        
               | watwut wrote:
               | There is literally no wonder they "closed ranks" given
               | crap that was going on. And I know, because I personally
               | seen that crap. The level of asshollery going on in
               | general absolutely makes understandable that someone
               | would go trigger happy.
               | 
               | And no, the whole issue was not about quality of single
               | indie twine game. That is just nonsense.
        
               | PicassoCTs wrote:
               | It was a attempt by obviously outsiders to establish
               | cultural dominance in a sphere, where they were neither
               | welcome nor wanted.
               | 
               | Call it SJW-Colonialism and it was repelled by the
               | natives. To go to battle to tell people what they should
               | accept as their escapism, from up high, was a new low.
        
         | bumblelad wrote:
         | >I'm fascinated by 4chan because it is a kind of underground
         | United Nations.
         | 
         | Always fascinating how they refer to themselves.
         | 
         | You have n-words.
         | 
         | Then potato n-words for the irish (and lithuatians)
         | 
         | Pasta n-words for italians
         | 
         | Bongs for the british
         | 
         | Leafs for canadians
         | 
         | Burgers and Amerimutts
         | 
         | Toothpaste for the netherlands
         | 
         | Gypsy for hungarians and romanians (who are at a perpetual
         | shitposting war against each other)
         | 
         | Hohols for the ukranians
         | 
         | Finngolians
         | 
         | The usual suspects for anyone of any asian country, extra
         | special hate towards the chinese and Xi's internet army.
         | 
         | and on and on
         | 
         | No matter what nation of the world you are from, they will find
         | an insult for you. It's endearing in a way really.
         | 
         | Oh and also there's someone shitposting from a research
         | facility in Antarctica.
        
           | pgt wrote:
           | In a way, it's more equitable if everyone has a slur.
        
             | okareaman wrote:
             | I asked an Australian once why everyone was a C word and he
             | said it was easier than remembering names.
        
               | artursapek wrote:
               | lmao love me some Aussie humor
        
           | causality0 wrote:
           | I think there's a certain value to that. Sort of a modern
           | take on memento mori, but for everyone.
        
           | solosoyokaze wrote:
           | > _You have n-words_
           | 
           | That you have to blank that out and none of the others,
           | should tell you everything you need to know about how equal
           | or "endearing" this is.
           | 
           | Bongs, Leafs, Burgers... This is all white supremacy no
           | matter how someone tries to reframe it.
        
         | superflit wrote:
         | Welcome to /pol/ you will never leave.
        
           | okareaman wrote:
           | It's more interesting now for a couple of reasons. The board
           | was raided by "social justice warriors" during GamerGate and
           | many stayed to keep arguing. Another reason is 4chan/pol/ is
           | tamer that it used to be. The worst kind of uninteresting
           | stuff moved to 8chan after GamerGate.
        
             | TigeriusKirk wrote:
             | I suspect some also go siphoned off when the larp that was
             | Q migrated from 4chan to 8chan.
        
         | pcbro141 wrote:
         | We're talking about this site? (NSFW):
         | https://boards.4chan.org/pol
         | 
         | Looks more like an international white supremacist convention
         | than United Nations to me.
         | 
         | And I'm not saying that just because they love using the n-word
         | so much, but that is one of the reasons.
         | 
         | Most posts on there don't seem to be from a diverse audience.
         | They mostly seem to be from the perspective of a young racist
         | white male audience, which is a very small percentage of the
         | world population.
         | 
         | It's very obvious 4chan pol is disproportionately young white
         | supremacist males with all the n-word, misogynist, anti-Jew
         | obsession, white nationalism obsession that dominates the
         | discussions.
         | 
         | I guarantee you the discussion/perspective there is
         | overwhelmingly dominated by young white males with very few
         | female perspectives (50+% of the population) and non-White
         | perspectives (majority of the population).
        
           | occasionally4ch wrote:
           | We're talking about these white supremacists? Google image
           | search "pol meetup"
           | 
           | https://i.kym-
           | cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/001/975/547/c10...
        
           | urthebiased1 wrote:
           | You know there's plenty of antisemitism around the world,
           | especially in places like Iran, which officially denies the
           | Holocaust, that isn't coming from a "white supremacist"
           | place, especially not in the context of American white
           | supremacy.
           | 
           | Considering that we know for a fact that you don't know the
           | ages, genders, nationality, or races of the people with these
           | beliefs, and can only see their beliefs posted anonymously on
           | 4chan, and then you think you have enough information to
           | extrapolate that these people must be white, male, and young,
           | says a lot more about YOUR prejudices than the people on
           | 4chan, quite frankly.
           | 
           | You see hate and just assume the hateful are the gender,
           | race, and age, that you perceive to be the enemy.
        
             | pcbro141 wrote:
             | White males make up a disproportionate amount of white
             | nationalists compared to the total population
             | (obviously...?), and white nationalism is
             | disproportionately represented on that board. Thus I
             | suspect that white males make up a disproportionate amount
             | of posters on /pol/.
             | 
             | I'm sure there are other races posting racist things there
             | as well, but I said _disproportionately_ young white males
             | tend to post white nationalist talking points, which I
             | stand by and this shouldn 't offend anyone.
             | 
             |  _I am in no way implying most white males are white
             | supremacists._ I 'm saying most white supremacists are
             | white males which is an uncontroversial obvious statement
             | that I stand by.
             | 
             | You cannot convince me that most white nationalists are
             | non-white, that's a silly deflection.
        
               | [deleted]
        
           | hnbad wrote:
           | I can only recommend watching Innuendo Studios' _Alt-Right
           | Playbook_ series for a deeper understanding of the dynamics,
           | but if you don't have the time I'd at least recommend
           | watching this one:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMabpBvtXr4
           | 
           | All of 4chan, but especially /b/, is built around "haha just
           | kidding ... unless", ridiculing people for getting offended
           | while "trolling" with the most nefarious opinions and
           | defending them "as a joke". This escalated with /pol/ which
           | at some point became mask-off unironically white supremacist.
           | 
           | This is not just about 4chan being too white and too male and
           | everybody self-identifying as NEET (whether as a joke or in
           | earnest). The perpetual "ironic" regurgitation of racist,
           | misogynist and anti-Semitic talking points attracted Nazis
           | because it allowed them to hide in plain sight and they very
           | successfully used it as part of their pipeline by getting
           | people to repeat their jokes until they stopped laughing.
        
             | sudosysgen wrote:
             | I second the recommendation. Basically, /pol/ centers
             | around irony poisoning. But definitely watch the Innuendo
             | Studios series.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | okareaman wrote:
           | That's partly true but I like to know what that group is
           | thinking. As bad as it is, I don't detect any energy towards
           | violent overthrow of the US Govt as was expressed by Timothy
           | McVeigh in Oklahoma City. Maybe elsewhere, but not on
           | 4chan/pol/
           | 
           | There are a lot of people on 4chan from non-European
           | countries. I've seen vile anti-semitism expressed by someone
           | with a Saudi flag. It's not uncommon.
        
             | sudosysgen wrote:
             | There is a lot of energy at violently overthrowing the US
             | Government. That sentiment is expressed every time you hear
             | the word "ZOG" or "Golem". It takes a while to parse
             | through it.
        
         | tqi wrote:
         | > and I can get an idea of concerns people have, though they
         | might be concerns left unsaid im polite society.
         | 
         | That's an interesting point. How do you tell if something is a
         | real concern that is left unsaid vs just a fake concern? Or the
         | difference between a concern that is quite prevalent vs a
         | concern that is just being astroturfed?
        
           | lobstrosity420 wrote:
           | You can't, really. But no internet forum is immune to
           | astroturfing and lying. Be it Hacker News or Reddit or 4chan.
           | Just use your best judgment and don't take any of it too
           | seriously.
        
         | pcbro141 wrote:
         | In order list of threads from browsing /pol/ for people who
         | want to know how 'diverse' it is without visiting:
         | 
         | - 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.
        
           | robot9000 wrote:
           | Maybe it's not diverse because people like you who hold
           | opposing viewpoints are not interested in changing their
           | opinion despite the fact that you can post just as much as
           | they can without being judged for who you are.
           | 
           | Is this something you have considered?
        
             | pcbro141 wrote:
             | I have never considered justifying the killing of all non-
             | Whites, oppression of homosexuals and women, no. And I
             | never will entertain any 'opinion' or argument in favor of
             | such heinous crimes against humanity.
        
             | electrondood wrote:
             | Account is 12 minutes old.
        
               | robot9000 wrote:
               | 2 hours old now.
        
               | [deleted]
        
           | andyxor wrote:
           | /pol is awesome what are you talking about
           | 
           | it has nothing to do with race, calling George Floyd an
           | overdosed junkie is just stating the facts.
        
             | the_benno wrote:
             | Cops aren't allowed to murder people on sight -- "junkie"
             | or otherwise. Never understood why people seem to think
             | this is a compelling argument.
        
               | andyxor wrote:
               | he had like 3 times the lethal dose of fentanyl besides
               | having a sick heart, it's in his coroner report.
        
               | jrsj wrote:
               | There is an argument being made by many on the right that
               | the overdose was his actual cause of death because he
               | spoke of not being able to breath etc before he was
               | restrained & had a large amount of fentanyl in his
               | system.
               | 
               | 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.
        
               | illiilliiililil wrote:
               | Why couldn't he breathe in the back of the car?
        
               | andyxor wrote:
               | 'speedballs' and exertion from resisting arrest, he
               | swallowed his entire stash of drugs to avoid going to
               | jail
               | 
               | 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
        
               | jrsj wrote:
               | I'm in no way a medical expert but probably the fentanyl,
               | or a combination of that & panic.
        
               | andyxor wrote:
               | the autopsy report said he had a heart failure
               | "complicating" restraint.
               | 
               | 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
        
               | JohnBooty wrote:
               | In the U.S., it's still murder and/or manslaughter
               | (depends on jurisdiction) if you physically assault
               | somebody and they die as a result, even if your physical
               | assault was not the sole reason they died.
               | 
               | I'm not even making a moral argument here. That's the
               | letter of the law. (Again, laws vary by state)
        
               | andyxor wrote:
               | there was no assault though, but reasonable use of force
               | according to MPD police training materials presented in
               | court.
               | 
               | 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.
        
           | Anon1096 wrote:
           | There's plenty of other boards on 4chan where you can find
           | people from all viewpoints posting. /cgl/ is well known to be
           | majority female, and posters on /lit/ usually express center
           | or left viewpoints. Even on /pol/, within a thread there will
           | often be dissenters from the normal far-right average poster.
           | Compared to other sites like Reddit where communities and
           | posters with certain viewpoints are straight up banned, it's
           | a breath of fresh air.
        
           | mschuster91 wrote:
           | There were better days, many years ago... eventually _all_
           | not heavily moderated communities will suffer their version
           | of Eternal September.
           | 
           | 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.
        
             | JohnBooty wrote:
             | Agree 100% with every word you wrote.
             | eventually all not heavily moderated communities
             | will suffer their version of Eternal September.
             | 
             | 4chan really is the ultimate example of what happens to
             | unmoderated free speech zones. It really _was_ better, once
             | upon a time.
             | 
             | 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.
        
           | ineedasername wrote:
           | I disagree: That is an extremely diverse selection of hatred,
           | with the occasional inane entry.
        
             | Blikkentrekker wrote:
             | It's not nearly as diverse of hatred that _4chan_ has to
             | offer.
             | 
             | /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.
        
           | iitqkzbjak wrote:
           | Racism, gore, pedos, endless endless pornography...
           | 
           | 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.
        
             | Blikkentrekker wrote:
             | Most boards on _4chan_ are designated safe for work and
             | racism free, and will quickly earn one a global three day
             | ban for posting pornography and gore.
             | 
             | 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.
        
             | ggvvfdde wrote:
             | It's funny. I've been browsing 4chan all month and I havent
             | seen any gore or pedos. Maybe a few leud pictures (less
             | than 10). Maybe you should actually visit the site instead
             | of just spreading misinformation.
        
               | ineedasername wrote:
               | I took you up on that, and visited the technology
               | interest area /g/
               | 
               | 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.
        
               | GauntletWizard wrote:
               | I used to see pedo pics on 4chan... occasionally, if not
               | frequently. That was well before the site gained it's
               | alt-right reputation, though, back when it was more
               | focused on simply "internet outcasts" and very gay
               | friendly.
        
             | JohnBooty wrote:
             | very clever people posting there
             | 
             | Cleverness is orthogonal to depravity, right?
             | 
             | 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.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | factsaresacred wrote:
             | You could be describing Twitter.
        
           | filoleg wrote:
           | >almost surely disproportionately posted by young white men.
           | 
           | 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.
        
             | ineedasername wrote:
             | What exactly was the bait in a front page filled with hate?
             | 
             | 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?
        
             | pcbro141 wrote:
             | I didn't 'take the bait', what you're doing is gaslighting.
             | 
             | 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).
        
               | filoleg wrote:
               | Never called you a snowflake, but your whole framing of
               | the situation reads exactly like what a journo would
               | write while lacking any semblance of understanding of the
               | source material beyond just the surface level.
               | 
               | >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.
        
               | solosoyokaze wrote:
               | > _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).
        
               | filoleg wrote:
               | Well, for just a singular example from /pol/ (since it
               | isn't a board I frequent much at all given the super low
               | signal-to-noise ratio, I prefer more hobby-specific
               | boards, such as /o/ for car-motorcycle discussions and
               | /mu/ for music-related stuff), people there were looking
               | into and brought upon pedophilic allegations against
               | Peter Bright years before he got actually charged with
               | those (which actually happened just last year[0]). Mind
               | you, not claiming that 4chan had anything to do with the
               | guy getting eventually caught. But the fact that they had
               | those allegations with basic reasoning and evidence
               | before there was even a whiff of it in public is
               | definitely something.
               | 
               | 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_b
               | ounds,...
        
               | solosoyokaze wrote:
               | Trolling journalists doesn't sound like "gems", it sounds
               | like a waste of time (and I'm no fan of most
               | journalists).
               | 
               | The Peter Bright article you posted has no mention of
               | /pol.
        
               | filoleg wrote:
               | >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.
        
               | solosoyokaze wrote:
               | You claimed there was something beyond the surface level
               | racism and white supremacy, but you haven't really
               | provided that. Trolling journalists doesn't make them any
               | less racist, especially when they use racism for
               | trolling.
               | 
               | 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.
        
               | filoleg wrote:
               | > You claimed there was something beyond the surface
               | level racism and white supremacy, but you haven't really
               | provided that.
               | 
               | 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.
        
               | fighterpilot wrote:
               | I know there was a correct math proof to a novel and
               | nontrivial problem that was put there by some anonymous
               | user (probably not in pol but in 4chan). Forgot details
               | of it
        
               | setr wrote:
               | It was /a/, the anime board, of all places
               | 
               | https://mathsci.fandom.com/wiki/The_Haruhi_Problem
        
               | cygx wrote:
               | /sci/, actually - cf https://web.archive.org/web/20181024
               | 190314/https://warosu.or...
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | okareaman wrote:
               | Do you understand the concept of a "containment board"?
               | Because that's basically what 4chan is. Everyone there is
               | aware that "3 letter" agencies are monitoring. https://ww
               | w.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Containment%...
        
               | seriousquestion wrote:
               | Not recognizing it as trolling and intentional agitation
               | makes it more dangerous. You are taking the bait as the
               | Christchurch shooter intended;
               | 
               |  _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...
        
           | seriousquestion wrote:
           | They are agitators and trolls, and you took the bait.
        
             | SkyMarshal wrote:
             | This statement is simultaneously both true and false.
             | 
             | 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.
        
             | pcbro141 wrote:
             | The young white supremacists being radicalized online are
             | taking the bait.
             | 
             | 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.
        
             | solosoyokaze wrote:
             | Are the posters in this thread arguing that George Floyd
             | was a junkie, trolls too? There is a _ton_ of legitimate
             | white supremacy here masked by  "trolling". It's just a
             | convenient cover, but the beliefs are authentically held.
        
               | [deleted]
        
             | timdev2 wrote:
             | Are you familiar with the rule of goats?
        
           | ggvvfdde wrote:
           | The diversity pushed by academic institutions and tech
           | companies is the same. They want people from different
           | backgrounds and locations, that are all the same politically.
           | If you disagree with a progressive policy, you get the boot.
           | 
           | 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.
        
           | vorpalhex wrote:
           | Subcultures have shibboleths. In the same way WallStreetBets
           | wasn't making fun of the mentally handicapped, it would be
           | dangerous to take any chan at face value.
           | 
           | 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.
        
             | pcbro141 wrote:
             | > The 4chan shibboleth attacks everyone
             | 
             | 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.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | jth102099 wrote:
               | Oh jeez, you weren't joking! I just visited there and I
               | can't even believe that people write things like that.
               | They should have their freedom of speech taken away.
        
               | vorpalhex wrote:
               | People don't self identify as "Straight White Male", it's
               | not really a good insult base. You want to insult their
               | country of origin (Ireland, Canada), their hobbies
               | (anime, weightlifting, smoking pot) or their inability to
               | get laid.
               | 
               | "White people have poor taste in food!" isn't very
               | punchy, is it?
        
               | pcbro141 wrote:
               | "British people have shitty food can't get laid" is kinda
               | different from "all k*kes and ni**rs need to legit be
               | exterminated", isn't 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.
        
               | vorpalhex wrote:
               | You aren't going to hear "British people have shitty food
               | and can't get laid" because it's not really insulting.
               | 
               | 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?
        
               | pcbro141 wrote:
               | That was exactly my point, the jokes against whites there
               | are nothing compared to the vitriol and calls for mass
               | murder posted against non-Whites.
               | 
               | 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?
        
           | Zababa wrote:
           | The board is called "politically incorrect" so of course
           | that's what you'll find here. /pol/ is often referred as a
           | "containement board", which means a board made so that people
           | stop discussing certain topics in other boards while using
           | the excuse that they don't have anywhere else to go. This
           | way, other boards aren't polluted by things that people are
           | fed up with. In some way it's a bit like a trashcan, once
           | trash has a designated place to go, you can stop having trash
           | laying around for no reasons.
           | 
           | 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.
        
         | Blikkentrekker wrote:
         | _4chan_ is obviously not repraesentative for the public at
         | large, no forum is, and that different subboards have very
         | different overall views there highlights this.
         | 
         | Most of the other boards hate /pol/ by the way and " _Go back
         | to /pol/._" is commonly heard elsewhere, which shows the
         | differing views.
        
         | bruiseralmighty wrote:
         | Started as a /b/tard circa '08 and now read mostly /pol/ and
         | /lit/ because their threads most often follow an argument to
         | its completion. This makes for good reading IMO.
         | 
         | Still go back to /b/ occasionally although the flavor of that
         | board has shifted to a more twitter-like direction that I do
         | not favor. It remains one of the few places online where I can
         | read shitposts with actual artistic merit. Some Facebook groups
         | are only just now maturing to the stage where good satire
         | exists.
         | 
         | I have a theory that forums mature like humans going from
         | childhood name-calling to adult dialectics. But then again /b/
         | seems to be regressing so maybe I just don't know what I'm
         | talking about.
        
           | sudosysgen wrote:
           | Wait, have you ever had an argument go to completion on
           | /pol/?
           | 
           | I almost never have. On /lit/, maybe, but on /pol/ either you
           | get no actual engagement, all the serious replies are drowned
           | by spam and the thread necros, or one of the argumentators
           | when called out simply stops replying or switches to
           | shitposting.
           | 
           | You can sometimes have a good argument to completion, but
           | it's very rare. Unless the argument is something the 4chan
           | hive finds uncontroversial or is empathetic to.
        
         | JohnBooty wrote:
         | I've spent a fair amount of time on 4chan/pol/          for
         | over a decade and my opinion is moot is a          decent guy
         | who sold it after he tried to reign          in GamerGate and
         | was loudly criticized on the          site for it. I don't
         | think Google would have          hired him if it weren't for
         | that redeeming quality.
         | 
         | This is my personal impression of moot as well.
         | 
         | Some private pictures were taken from a user's account on my
         | old site, and published to 4chan circa 2007. Chris was very
         | sympathetic and was eager to help take the pics down and/or
         | find the culprit.
         | 
         | Even though parts of 4ch turned into an absolute cesspool, that
         | is _not_ who moot is. He simply created an anonymous free-
         | speech platform.
        
       | RobRivera wrote:
       | heres to you, nicola and bart
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | ramosu wrote:
       | What will be left for Google?
        
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