“for the lolz”: 4chan is hacking the attention economy | Hacker News Reader

“for the lolz”: 4chan is hacking the attention economy

zephoria.org

47 pointsinmygarage40 comments

Here is the comment I submitted to the article on Danah Boyd's blog:

I disagree that 4chan is a community of hackers for one simple reason: to me a hacker is someone who gets things done. 4chan and other sites that focus on memes are attention diverters, full of people who jump from one lol to the next.

In contrast a hacker is someone who is willing to focus time and attention on one thing until he excels in it. The 4chan mindset is not a long term, viable one, because the lulz distract from any real good that can be done. Sure you can pick through the porn, rubbish, and hate in 4chan and come up with examples of great things being done, but if you look at real hackers, such as the internet entrepreneurs that are creating web startups at http://news.ycombinator.com you see many great things being created with little rubbish, not a few great things mixed into volumes of lulz.

I don't look to 4chan to create long term internet change. They are great for creating laughs, but the next Facebook, the next Twitter, the next great internet technology will not arise from them. It will arise from true hackers who still hack in the traditional sense, by writing code and coming up with innovative technological ideas.

You could say: a 4channer is someone who is willing to focus time and attention on getting lulz until he excels at it. (See: Time 100 poll.)

Sure, the lulz is a distraction from doing real good, but so was phreaking. It turns out that the skills used in both lulz-getting and phreaking can be used for good as well as evil. (See: Project Chanology, Dusty the cat.)

They're not hackers in the same sense that many of us are. But that wasn't how the term was used in the article, so big deal.

The disturbing thing about this, is that "skills used in...lulz-getting" are also useful for political manipulation and black ops propaganda.

I think both this article (and others like it), and your comment, are giving the users of 4chan/b/ way more credit than is deserved.

Any useful output that comes out of 4chan could be achieved in a much more intelligent and efficient way. At best they're taking a brute force approach, throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. People who are easily impressed by the results are ignoring the noise.

I also worry that the amount of child porn that's regularly posted on /b/ could come back to haunt Mr. Poole if he tries to us his fame to launch a real career.

Project Chanology is pretty much a failure. Sure they got together and did some funny things, but scientology is still around. Dusty the cat was nice, but as I said, that is just one small thing amid tons of rubbish.

To say that 4chan is a way to do good is like saying that rolling dice is a good way to get the answer to an addition problem. Sure, you will occasionally get a good answer, but it would be much better to use a decent technique to get good results consistently.

I think 4chan gets too much credit for the few good things they do. They are like an application of the monkeys pounding away on typewriters theory. Eventually those monkeys might produce a few interesting words, but most of it is just going to be a mess. Likewise, 4chan may occasionally produce some good results, but in my mind any good they do is far outweighed by the bad.

Clearly, the term hacker is broad and holds connotations that vary from person to person. Personally, though, I don't view 4chan as a community of true hackers, just a community of clowns that occasionally does some good, but a lot of bad as well.

To say that 4chan is a way to do good...

He didn't say 4chan was a way to do good. He said 4chan can do good or it can do evil, but the real point is to get lulz (regardless of good or evil).

Project Chanology wasn't a failure if you look at it on a "how many people know what Scientology really is" level. The "raids" were widely reported, at least at first, and really pushed some of the info into the minds of the general populace.

Oh comeon, the Church of Scientology had enough power to take on the IRS and become tax exempt. Surely it is impossible to kill an organization powerful enough to take on the IRS. But Chanology accomplished its goal of spreading the word and harming Scientology's public image enough to put a huge dent in the supply of would-be-converts.

Social Engineering has a long history in 80s and 90s hacker culture. Kevin Mitnick and Kevin Poulson utilized some sort of social disruption in nearly all of their hacks, skills cultivated from when they were younger and more abrasive.

To further back up the thesis, Kevin Mitnick, grew up as a Ham in the midst of the amateur radio boom. Before the big days of phreaking kids would do the exact 'for the lulz' routine, disrupting and confusing a system full of weaknesses to probe and abuse.

And before Ham kids would run around town and wreak havoc, either at the local bar, shop, or stall. Why? Because kids are curious and "do it for the lulz".

Once you understand 4chan, you don't want to analyze it. I'm convinced that anyone who posts an analysis regarding 4chan does not have enough experience to accurately analyze 4chan.

The author makes a couple good points, but I think her writing would be better served by not tying in 4chan as some sort of example.

Once you understand 4chan, you don't want to analyze it.

Only those who don't understand 4chan say that.

I heard true Scotsmen truly understand 4chan.

Only Irishmen bring up true Scotsmen all the time.

A quick correction: all articles that I've seen mentioning "4chan" actually mean "/b/."

Sure, the board is huge and by far the most famous, but it's not even responsible for the majority of the site traffic. There are dozens of different boards and, with very few exceptions, they are mostly sane.

I bet the people who write those articles don't even know about the literature and science boards that are just like any other forum, but without the user names. But I guess that cooking, animals and fitness don't bring enough pageviews to be mentioned.

Y'know, I wasn't aware that there was a science section on 4chan, so I decided to check it out. At this very moment the front page of it is:

1. Someone comparing black people to chimpanzees

2. "Hey /sci/, in the future, will we be able to use stemcells and nanobots to turn into IRL furries?!" with a picture of a furry

3. Something about how we should get more science funding by convincing everybody that an immensely fuckable race of space babes lives at Alpha Centauri

4. "I am thinking of growing a beard. Will it improve my science?"

5. An atheists-vs-Christians flamewar (or an attempt to start one, I don't know whether any Christians actually showed up)

And so forth. I wouldn't say "mostly sane". On the other hand you could probably call it relatively sane.

>omething about how we should get more science funding by convincing everybody that an immensely fuckable race of space babes lives at Alpha Centauri

And that is not genius.. why?

The hentai forums tend to stay on topic.

I'm going to file that under "stuff that I'll take your word for"

First, it's "for teh lulz". Second, it's not 4chan but ebaumsworld. Third, tits or gtfo, Danah.

She actually says at the bottom that she spelled it 'lolz' because she prefers it that way.

Trolling is an art.

illustrated: http://moronail.net/img/1286_moot_trolling_is_a_art

This is actually why I've reverted to saying "is an," because then people go "oh, no, you messed it up."

And then I smile with that face.

It gets too deeply recursive too quickly. Trolls trolling trolls who troll trolls.

It's trolls all the way down.

You've just confirmed all of my worst fears about the true nature of human beings. Time to move on to psychopathy.

Trolls buffalo trolls that troll Buffalo buffalo trolls.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo

"Trolling is a art."

FTFY.

I think you just got reverse trolled...

And that teaches me not to post before reading the entire thread. :)

regarding "tits or gtfo": the interesting thing is that she may have already done that, and you just don't know. There's quite a bit of anonymous flashing pics both there and on the Internet in general.

Not that I'd know, I've just had people tell me this.

By bringing down the level of discourse here, you've magnificently proven NathanKP's point.

I would argue that 4chan is ground zero of a new generation of hackers – those who are bent on hacking the attention economy.

The very term "attention economy" is a key bit of awareness. There has always been an Attention Economy or Attention Ecosystem. It's central to culture and politics. It's central to media. It's especially important to the web. It's fundamental to human dominance mechanisms and decision making.

I think there's more than just marketing here. I think this is more like a cultural movement, with a network of personal relationships, an ideology, and differing levels of involvement.

Oh for goodness' sake move on!

I'm struggling to think of any capitalist adventure that won't go against the ire of 4chan. Which is great 'n' all, but one should know one's target audience.

Target appropriately and you will succeed. Fix someone's problem, and you'll get money for it. Even 4chan users' money... I hope.

Incidentally, I've been trying to advertise on 4chan and they will not return my emails.

Media is already late to the game. Guaranteed there is already a replacement for 4chan of which we've never heard but is spewing memetic galaxies like a dorky black hole.

It's called Reddit. Where the bacon have you been, man? Everybody knows that bacon narwhal narwhal bacon bacon goes great with Guile.

Reddit seems to act as a filter between /b/ and the SA forums http://forums.somethingawful.com/. Much of the bullshit and extreme racism/gore/child porn/other distasteful content is skimmed over, and the true amusing gems are pulled into the (more) mainstream reddit/digg worlds.

Still trying to work out if "at the tale end" is a dumb typo or an incredibly subtle pun.

I probably biased against 'MS researcher', and phrases like 'I grew up in a community of hackers', but... =)

4chan is, in the first place, the strong illusion of a crowd of young, non-serious people. It is totally different from any other community, where mostly mediocre and quite selfish people are trying to show up, praise themselves and impress others (read: facebook), where social exhibitionism and friend-counting flourishes.

4chan, with its anonymity, is definitely a time-wasting, the main activity of any young generation. =) And of course, it is also a slot machine, with several positive feedback loops, especially if you're admire and love 'freshness' and youth.

btw, its sub-culture and slang are self-evident, not a rocket science. It is just a cyber community of nonconformist youths, along with a bunch of various freaks. You may find something like that in any city's outskirts. =)

I liked the quote on the lower left-hand side of her post the best. Since still relevant to web culture, reprinting here:

"Facebook is so endlessly social and inclusive it sometimes reminds me of one of those mega-nightclubs from the late ’80s (Palladium, the Limelight, etc.), only without the music, the alcohol, the drugs, the lights, the sweat, or — it must be said — the people."

-- Lucinda Rosenfeld

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