4chan's chaos theory | Hacker News Reader

4chan's chaos theory

vanityfair.com

63 pointsbl4k22 comments

It's practically a rule of the internet at this point that every single news article about 4chan will basically only talk about /b/, even though there are dozens of other boards with millions or tens of millions of posts. This is like an encyclopedia article about Asia that only mentions China.

For some reason, /b/ seems to be the most interesting to the media outlets -- this lets them talk about Anonymous, hacking, lolcats, and other things that the media seems to like, without having to explain difficult things, like what "Dungeons and Dragons" or "Yaoi" or "Touhou" are.

Perhaps this is for the best, lest the rest of the site be overrun by the "Eternal September" that hit /b/ years ago. There's some surprisingly good communities left, with topics ranging from 3D modeling to tabletop gaming.

"This is like an encyclopedia article about Asia that only mentions China."

Good point, and they should've at least mentioned the other boards, but this article was written for Vanity Fair not Wired. They know their demographic probably can't or won't differentiate - it's all on the same site.

Or they are focusing on what they expect to be the most interesting to a general audience - not Touhou games.

For sure, articles cater to their audience, but are we still writing articles on /b/ in 2011? This is like the articles in 2008 explaining this new phenomenon called "blogging" -- this isn't even new in the mainstream media, let alone our typical news sources. It's just repetitive garbage that could have been written with 15 minutes of copy-pasting from Encyclopedia Dramatica and 500 other previous articles on the topic.

There is a difference between focusing on a certain part of the whole and speaking as though that certain part is entirely representative of the whole. It's less like talking only about China in a discussion about Asia, and more like using the words "China" and "Asia" interchangeably. Touhou and tabletop games may not be of interest to a general audience, but these things don't necessarily have to be discussed in depth; they can be covered as briefly as a sentence stating that "4chan hosts a variety of boards catering to various interests, including video games, Japanese culture, and cooking."

I think that's pretty much the definition of stereotyping and patronizing.

/b/ is the most interesting thing about 4chan. People don't write about the other sections because they are boring and not especially different from the many other D&D forums.

Strong agree. It confuses me when people respond to articles about Anonymous and /b/ by saying, "You know, there are lots of other boards on 4chan!" My perennial answer is: So what? /b/ is the only one whose influence leaks out of 4chan itself, like rainbow-colored smog billowing out of a dilapidated smokestack. The article isn't like an encyclopedia entry on Asia mentioning only China; it's like a little kid opening a package of Starbursts and eating only the pink ones. Everyone knows they're the tastiest, and only candy apologists insist otherwise.

Yuck! The pink "strawberries" are the WORST!* I have a pile of them underneath my monitor when I'm unlucky enough to get one in the little two-packs.

* Out of the original flavors (orange, lemon, cherry, and strawberry.)

I walked the street during Project Chanology, and I'm not particularly afraid to admit it -- it was a long time ago, though. These days, I wouldn't dream of admitting being associated with Anonymous. Somewhere between then and now they really lost their way; Anonymous isn't about media appearances (which they seem to love now. CNN? really?) nor the infamy, it's about committing to an ideal that a bunch of "overnight neckbeards" believe in. That was the power I signed up for, and it was impressive to behold. I really felt like the Internet could catch on and do some good in the real world, but then it all went to hell.

Then again, maybe I'm wrong, and Anonymous means something a lot different than I thought it does.

I'm convinced now that Anonymous is down to a small group of people who are basically really clever botnet herders. LOIC itself is a clever way to get a large botnet with fairly little effort. Since they operate under a guise of religious zeal and fervor, they largely get positive attention from the media for doing something that all Internet operators hate. As such, they're a pretty big threat to the operations community, and they're just discovering how to wield that power. The media eats it up because it's a story that sells itself.

When is the last time Anonymous actually picketed something to take their message public? Now their modus operandi seems to be to basically be that group of script kiddies that everyone hates, and punish groups they disagree with by hitting them with over 9,000 cable modems. That isn't to say that wasn't a part of Chanology, but I felt like the picket lines had a more positive effect than shutting down Scientology's Web site.

It's been a pretty sad transformation to watch.

the downside of anonymous is that anybody can claim to be from the group and pop their head up on CNN

considering what anonymous stands for, I think it is safe to say that anybody claiming to be part of the group while participating in a live on-air discussion on a news network, is not from the group and definitely doesn't understand it.

I think you're way too pessimistic. Anonymous is anyone and everyone who wants to be Anonymous. Even if the current people called Anonymous in the lime light right now aren't what you would hope for it's still an inspiration of what can happen.

I remember years ago someone warned against a company angering the internet. I laughed. What is the net going to do? Spam email them? Shut down their network documentation? BFD. Anonymous is like in the matrix where Agent Smith managed to escape the virtual world and could affect things in the real world. That is power and that is potential.

> Anonymous is anyone and everyone who wants to be Anonymous.

Well, that's simultaneously the benefit and the drawback. Nightly News ran an exclusive the other night that interviewed some chain smoker who whored it up as well, and the piece highlighted Anonymous's accomplishments of taking down VISA and MasterCard. That's what Nightly News indicated that they were known for. I don't even recall if they mentioned Scientology, and if they did, it was in passing.

Regardless of what Anonymous can be, the media has latched on to the "computer hacking," and that's what Anonymous is now to every non-informed person who gets their information from press. A bunch of basement computer nerds, triumphing over old money establishment with all the suspense of a Grisham novel; that made a lot more headway in the international media than Project Chanology ever did, because it's a more interesting story.

The important part is that Anonymous isn't making strides to fix it: they're learning where the reward is, and all of the recent operations have lingered in that area -- countless SQL injections and DDoS attacks later, any possible positive outcome for Anonymous has long been overshadowed by the destructive. Even if, as you say, all of the destructive ops have been the work of a group that's genuinely out of touch with what Anonymous should be, the inherent drawback to anonymity itself means that their tactic has won the fight.

>Regardless of what Anonymous can be, the media has latched on to the "computer hacking,"

The media is going to link bait and, frankly, a lot of them make money off the current establishment and don't like upstarts rocking the boat. Personally I would ignore the media aspect because there is no reasonable way to appeal to the Fox/CNN crowd.

>any possible positive outcome for Anonymous has long been overshadowed by the destructive

I disagree. You yourself have different goals and focus on different victories they've had. Every person like you can be the change you want to see tomorrow.

Dabblers never understand what it is they're dabbling in. That can't be fixed. And making the world a better place normally comes at the expense of those who gain from it being as it is. These two facts combined mean Anon will always have a bad rep with the uninformed no matter what anyone does. I say one should just ignore it and do what we can for the causes we care about. If the world gets better for people do we really care so much who gets the credit? Credit is good to get people involved but I would argue that most of the ones who can make the difference will know who was actually responsible and will get their motivation from results.

The article has an overall feeling of wide-eyed female (because expectation is that she'd be even more alienated from technology than the regular clueless male VF essayist) journalist, ooh-ing and aah-ing her way into dark and deep geek secrets, like how you would feel if you were transported in time to a Templar secret gathering. Low-orbit ion cannon, DDoS (she even explains this for "the nerds out there"), what are these terms?

My questions are (i) Why don't magazines like VF put someone more technically knowledgeable to cover stories like these or (ii) if they're not going to bother with (i) , why even cover the story?

In this regard, the New Yorker is much better, I think. They either don't jump on the wannabe bandwagon for the latest tech meme or if they decide to do it, do a good job.

If the tech magazines rarely put knowledgeable reporters on anything, why should Vanity Fair?

Better than a lot of the press on 4chan and Anonymous, but still pretty cringe-inducing.

The middle third or so is good--they talked to moot, and give a pretty good description of at least some of the content--but then that's bracketed with the standard "Anonymous is Legion" story about Scientology protests and Wikileaks DDoSes, with media whore Gregg Housh being literally the beginning and end of the article.

It's frustrating to feel that there is something genuinely interesting going on there (and a dozen other places on the web with just the right conditions) but find that attention only ever seems to be directed at the shadows cast on the wall.

For any Hacker News readers at SXSW, Team Canvas will be around, drinking at other company's parties because our booze budget is still $0. Text me (http://TimothyFitz.com for my phone #) if you'd like to hang out.

Edit: In case you're wondering, in that photo Chris is working on Canvas via Skype chat.

"...posting under deadpanned handles like Coldblood and Tux, the latter a possible shorthand for the group’s logo, which features a man in a tuxedo, sans head."

I like VF, but was rather disappointed with this article, remarkably boring.

"On one hand, Web sites are property, and taking them down is stealing, in a way."

Wow, that's a bit misleading. The only way you to "steal" a website is to copy all the files then delete them, maybe. A DoS might "steal service", but that's about it.

What's wrong with "On one hand, web sites can be like stores, and taking them down is obstructing commerce, in a way." ? Are people not capable of handling nuance and ambiguity? Must everything be forced into "theft"?

Why do journalists never cover other online internet communities? (like something awful)

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