Meme pages plan mass revolt against alleged Facebook bias | Hacker News Reader

Meme pages plan mass revolt against alleged Facebook bias

dailydot.com

59 pointsadamnemecek65 comments

topic: a number of these have "Japanese" in the titles. There is a internet-subculture called "vaporwave" connected with the "dank meme" people. There are...inspired by Japanese culture, they most likely aren't Japanese.

OT rant: this page has made almost 600 requests in the last 4 minutes[0]. My connection isn't the best and I'm seeing a direct effect. Is this the new standard for news sites?

And it's still pulling shit in.

[0] http://pasteboard.co/7XrZrRbhY.png

EDIT: 600, I can't count. Don't worry, it did reach 700 and kept going :)

There's a new subsubculture of vaporwave called simpsonswave (https://www.reddit.com/r/simpsonswave/)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTfa-9aCTYg

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1188-what-the-hell-is-simpsonw...

I really love the development of "internet culture".

I don't think they're inspired by Japanese culture as much as have random Japanese characters for no reason and sometimes random anime characters as some form of irony.

Vaporwave is inspired by hollow consumerism and the false promise of technology ("vaporware"). Vaporwave takes it aesthetic from dated software, corporate brochures, etc. of the 80s and early 90s and often takes samples from muzak that would've been heard in a garish shopping mall of that era. The Japanese artist names and song titles originate from, I presume, the tech and manufacturing boom in Japan during the 80s and 90s, a time period when Japanese products constituted a large part of the American consumer experience.

Hence the dramatic ellipsis before "inspired."

Full disclosure, I'm a pretty big fan of vaporwave "music".

Ah, my eyes somehow missed them! I've always wondered why Japanese characters of all things, but they do have good typography.

For those interested in vaporwave here's a "documentary" [0]. If you're interested you should listen to this album [1]. I like anything by t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者, like [2] and [3] are good albums. There's a related genre called Future Funk [4]. There's a few albums that mix trap with vaporwave like [5] (my all time favorite song right now) and [6].

Here are some more albums I like [7] [8].

If you want even more then here's a list of around 200 albums [9] and of course, if it's not your cup of tea, feel free to dismiss this as a bunch of hipster shit.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdpP0mXOlWM although I think he's really stretching at times.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9L4q-0Pi4E ２８１４ - 新しい日の誕生/Birth of a New Day

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PdDI2swEaw t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 - 現実を超えて

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQxLkMZpqog t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 and Vincent Remember - ｉｎｔｅｒｓｔｅｌｌａｒｌｏｖｅ

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki-fATpXa00 Saint Pepsi - Private Caller

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQxDM2K-hd0 Blank Banshee - Teen Pregnancy

[6] https://youtu.be/hDR7dWeEecs?t=3m11s VAPERROR - Mana Pool

[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvU3JkngqvE S U R F I N G - Deep Fantasy

[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQjJnGCTf3w Vincent Remember - The Page Master

[9] http://vaporwaveultra.tumblr.com

Worth noting that the genre first started with Daniel Lopatin / Oneohtrix Point Never's work as "Chuck Person" and sunsetcorp. These are generally considered the very first vaporwave tracks:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RFunvF0mDw - nobody here

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unN7QvSWSTo - Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1

Subjectively, I find this work (and Lopatin's other projects) to be superior to nearly all of the so-called "meme vaporwave" that popped up as a result. I do enjoy telepath/HKE/2814's ambient work, but it's not really vaporwave akin to either the Chuck Person style or the Vektroid style.

In line with the thread, all three of those styles were definitely initially signal boosted by 4chan and "meme culture" / Internet irony culture / "weird [X]" / whatever some media outlet wants to call it.

If you're interested in the music of 2814 and t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 then I highly recommend you check out DARKPYRAMID [1] and チェスマスター [2] too.

Also, a couple of great future funk albums I'm into at the moment are [3] and [4] - you might like them (if you haven't seen them already of course).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc6ldi6APWM DARKPYRAMID - A Heart Full Of Love [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2mHUc0lIOM チェスマスター - I Am Chesumasuta [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cxKq9gvaOs Yung Bae - Bae [4] https://vantagenoise.bandcamp.com/album/metro-city Vantage - Metro City

I seriously hope that page is broken, for my own sanity.

Re: rant.

Yes, that page is insane. Started the fans spinning on my laptop.

A lot of this content originates from 4chan and other image boards.

Don't forget Turntable.fm which was ground zero for much of the original Vaporwave movement. Sadly the site itself is no longer with us.

This reminds me of one of my favorite Onion headlines:

    RETIREES RISE UP AGAINST GANG VIOLENCE
    All are killed

Do these pages make money by reposting content from other people and sites or do they just like getting likes?

Most do it for fun, when pages usually monetize, it's usually from selling shirts. Advertising is a big no-no in this community and often lead to loss of likes and comments including the words "shill"

Some pages have there own websites which get ad views and the reposts help drive traffic to their website

I think the underlying problem here which will have to be addressed at some point is that there's no recourse and often no real communication when a company decides to ban a person or delete content.

There needs to be a consistent freedom-of-information style mechanism where someone can request a review of a decision by a human, and a non-generic explanation, accompanied by a chance to download a copy of the deleted content.

The issue with that is we are assuming that someone has the same freedoms in a public park that they do in a hotel lobby. Some are truly unalienable, but if the manager wants you out, damn your freedom, you're on private property.

I'm not sure what the remedy is, if there can be one. fb is essentially a social utility, but it is a private entity and since you click a checkbox under a terms of service, so they can do whatever they want.

The same "private property" where I can run a segregated lunch counter or refuse to bake a gay wedding cake?

Sorry, truly private property and the previous principles of negative freedom of association died a hard death in the 1960s, and it's only a matter of time until Facebook et. al. are brought to heel (or worse).

>The same "private property" where I can run a segregated lunch counter or refuse to bake a gay wedding cake?

You are being banned from the lunch counter based on who you are, not what you are doing at that lunch counter.

A difference without a distinction when who you are, a non-"liberal"/progressive/Leftist member of the "Right" is the real reason, the "what you are doing" is just providing the evidence of what you are.

I notice you're not extending your argument to the latest example I cited of forced baking of gay wedding cakes. In that case, until the gay couple reveal they are such, there's no's issue, e.g. they could meet a Biblically observant baker half-way by substituting a M/M or F/F figure at the top after taking delivery, and customize the frosting if needed/desired.

Don't ask, don't tell, more traditionally "live and let live", is a old American tradition they could tap into if they were only looking for a solution to line item on a wedding checklist. But that's not their agenda when they make their demands of such establishments, they're demanding full acceptance of who they are with the full coercive force of the state behind them.

    fb is essentially a social utility, but it is a private entity

So... Not a utility

Call me a dick but I don't believe Facebook "owes" anyone a review or explanation. You're playing in their sandbox.

When a social network manipulates its way into a controlling position in people's lives, that network should have much stronger controls than some random site. We are talking about the scale of continents here, not sandboxes.

No it shouldn't, it doesn't owe you anything. There is a really inflated sense of self going on here.

Think of all the garbage that gets posted by people everywhere. Would you want to deal with the expense and overhead?

You haven't really said why.

Although that's true, they also shouldn't be surprised that people call them out for it, and try to organize actions against them.

really thought provoking material here

It really did make me think. Are they planning on rigorously testing different types of content to uncover bias? I'm not sure that publishing the intent beforehand is good, but OTOH Facebook probably isn't paying close attention.

It'd be interesting to see other types of posts be tried across different pages to reveal bias. But it has to be properly done, so FB can't deny it later.

it is.

for me, memes were part of rehabilitating political views I might have never considered as legitimate otherwise

say what you will about memes but i think that the fact that people are making memes hints at the fact that they are trying to fill some sort of creative void. yes, they are stupid but it's a step up from the previous state which was no creative expression at all.

> the previous state which was no creative expression at all.

The previous state of what? When was this?

Science fact: creative expression was invented in 2009.

Pre-memes.

There was no creative expression before memes were invented?

(To be clear, my position is that you are selling memes short. "They are stupid" misses the entire point of what's valuable about them, and more importantly, which ones are valuable.)

On average, they are somewhat stupid.

fill some sort of creative void

memes are the only culture we're producing right now

> memes are the only culture we're producing right now

We live in an age where you can access any genre of music, any artwork, any TV shows and any movies from any culture on planet Earth with the click of button. We live in an age where people with obscure artistic talents can find online communities and actually make a living. People who are hobbyists can create high quality podcasts and youtube videos and have a global audience of millions, without any need for a middle man.

If you truly believe that memes are the only form of culture being produced right now, you live under a rock.

> access any genre of music

You can access it as a consumer, but you cannot use it in the continuation of culture. I have lost count of the number of times I have watched entertainers on YouTube briefly panic when themselves or a guest starts singing (badly) a few bars of a song or humming a culturally-important melody. The fear is usually based on past experience with YouTube's ContentID system detecting the "song" and sending all revenue from that video to someone else.

People can create wonderful content on youtube, but they shouldn't have to live in fear of losing all profit and even their entire channel over 5 seconds of bad folk singing.

You can access it as a consumer, but you cannot use it in the continuation of culture.

Very important point.

The media produced there comes of the same forms/motivations telling the same stories again and again.

1) Profit-driven

2) Gov't-funded (state welfare art to reinforce state propaganda tropes)

3) Promotion of a social cause everyone already knows about or already half-heartedly believes in

Everything produced of the above 3 forms will be forgotten within 20-50 years and adds nothing to the discussion and advancement of art, culture, or philosophy.

It's the only culture people are __in mass__ producing right now.

I think he is being sarcastic.

no, i'm actually being genuine. i can only watch pulp fiction so many times before i realize the same movie is being made over and over again

no, i'm actually being genuine. i can only look at image macros so many times before i realize the same image macro is being made over and over again

there's much more to memes than image macros

that's like saying "seen one painting, seen them all!"

The previous state was using text to get a thought across. That's not creative?

Many more people express themselves publicly through memes than through text.

(citation needed)

This site is literally unusable for me. I don't know what it's doing in the background but I can't let it load. I had to open it and immediately start the Safari reader to be able to read this article.

Umatrix makes it work for me. Even if you set it to default allow, and blacklist sites like this, it's worth the time to set up, imo.

Can't blame Facebook for not wanting to get slogged down in angsty "existential" memes.

It's pretty bizarre how 4chan of all places turned out to be the cultural epicenter of this generation. All these meme pages are just reposting content from there.

Not sure why you were downvoted. Something Awful, while incredibly influential early on, didn't really grow because of the paid nature of the forums. 4chan exploded because of the anonymous nature of the memes. They were funny, and they weren't tied to the creator to boost his or her internet points. They are pure ideas coming from the level playing field that is Anonymous. Awful and great stuff arose out of it when its biggest competitor was flash-based stuff from ebaumsworld, funnyjunk, black sheep, and newgrounds.

Now I'd say Reddit is a huge influencer but it is fragmented (as opposed to a single /b/) and still tied to internet points. And missing the pink babies from Something Awful.

There is something beautiful about how pure the content on 4chan is because there's no e peen.

Unfortunately, the ephemeral nature does have its downsides. It guarantees that most of the posts will be short, stupid reposts of old content. However, you can't have true anonymity without the limited lifetime of posts. Also, it accelerates natural selection. Garbage memes won't make it to the next thread.

And people who try to build an identity are almost always disliked (though the ones that persevere make the site more fun).

Depends what you consider "fun". A so-called namefag posting in a thread out of the blue can completely derail it merely by their presence.

4chan, or more specifically, /b/, moves fast and several mechanisms (like the 150-image limit per thread) are in place to keep it that way. The limited lifetime and ephemerality of content encourages people to save things they find good, to be reposted later and frequently for others to see.

Therefore the /b/ experience, although often trashy at best, vulgar and hateful at worst, does allow good content to organically bubble to the top, and not just by absent-mindedly clicking the 'reblog'/'retweet'/'share' button, but by individuals uploading the same saved image or composing a derivative work. It's the internet equivalent of one-off barroom quips, of graffiti in bathroom stalls, of spray paint tags on urban blight. It's us humans at some of our best, and some of our worst.

> The limited lifetime and ephemerality of content

While I love[1] the idea of having a place for ephemeral anonymous communicationj, that may have been only a local feature. As Jason Scott said[2], "You're like, 'No one notices if I post on 4chan.' [...] I have ten million archived threads of 4chan, for five years." I'm sure that number has grown in the years since he said that. 4chan only seems ephemeral.

[1] I totally agree about /b/ (and the rest of 4chan) being raw unfiltered humanity; it's a lot of junk, a few examples of humanity at its worst, and a handful of creative gems. A majority, I think, is simply people trying to express themselves in new ways. We need a place for that kind of free experimentation.

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq70QKa7588#t=545

Archives of individual 4chan boards are also growing more in demand. The more niche boards seem to like being able to search through past discussions. It's extremely useful for finding new artists via /mu/, for example.

And of course, by the time it's on Facebook and "regular teens" use it, it's as far removed from 4chan as HN is. Post one of these memes there and you'll get flamed for being a "normalfag".

tired: I CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER

wired: #dicksout for Harambe

anonymity fosters honesty

honesty fosters new art

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