Hacker News Reader

> I don't think that a place with this much toxicity can rightly be called egalitarian.

You don't make a village by welcoming anyone and everyone. An egalitarian country with strict immigration laws and rampant racism towards foreigners is still egalitarian within its own populace. Likewise, simply because people who disagree with 4chan's abrasive culture don't feel welcome there doesn't make it any less egalitarian within itself.

What does 'egalitarian within itself' mean for an online community where everybody can join? How do you get to have 'rights and opportunities' and how to you keep 'the others' out?

Egalitarian in the sense that nobody is untouchable and everybody gets shit from everyone else. Rights and opportunities are built into the system by anonymity, minimal moderation and the resulting lack of power structure. Others are kept out by self-selection.

Usually, egalitarianism is defined by laxity on the axes most used for discrimination, like race. If your race literally matters less than your tolerance of racism (or free expression of other types of hate speech), and what matters more is the quality of your code in /g/ posts, I would say that's "egalitarian".

Being absolutely egalitarian is a fantasy. No one does that. The government is not egalitarian on the axis of murdering people. Universities are not egalitarian on the axes of failing all your classes constantly and not being able to pay for them. Workplaces are not egalitarian to open racists or people who post on HN all day instead of getting anything done. There's always some elitism at play, relevant to whatever's being emphasized (being a good student, being a good programmer, being a good worker, etc.).

Part of the elitism on 4chan is tolerating horrible cringe banter and opinions. I think that's fair given that the rest of the Internet is elitist on the basis of being as nice as possible and mindful of the algorithmic censors to not upset advertisers' spice flow.

> that the rest of the Internet is elitist on the basis of being as nice as possible

I strongly disagree - tone policing isn't about being nice but about appearing nice. And lately even that pretense is not required when talking about the right groups.

>People who face discrimination and hate speech IRL will, on average, surely have less tolerance for it online than people who don't.

Or maybe its the opposite, because we know words on a screen are not violence. 4chan is egalitarian in that everyone is an n-word, everyone is an r-word and anonymity means we are all the same. There's a reason unnecessary tripcodes are frowned upon.

4chan is what I associate with early 2000s internet. It hasn't changed. The only evolution being having newer, more popular insults, like autist, i guess.

We all called each other various slurs back then and the only reason you'd get mad or emotional over it is because you hadn't been on the internet for long enough. Or if you're getting rekt in a video game and they're rubbing it in, i guess.

The mainstream platforms that have appeared since only brought politically correct faux civility that hid the aggression behind a system of rules that has only made communication less genuine and more toxic. Strip away the identity behind a post and only the content remains. And that's why it works. It shuts down behaviours looking to cultivate a persona, which is bad for engagement, but good for content.

> The mainstream platforms that have appeared since only brought politically correct faux civility that hid the aggression behind a system of rules that has only made communication less genuine and more toxic.

This. I'm not exactly making an argument that slurs increase genuineness, but forcefully stripping them away definitely does not decrease toxicity. Nobody is suddenly a nicer person just because they can't call you a ***. They just find another way to be an asshole, and maybe work a little extra-hard while they're at it.

In some ways it seems to make the waters more difficult to navigate. You try to engage with people in earnest and get subtly accused of all sorts of bs. Sometimes it's easier if someone just drops a few choice expletives at you and you both just move on with life.

I do wonder how much hate speech, especially in the early 4chan years, was a deliberate shield against those _not_ targeted by such speech but still cannot ignore it. Think of white people who would post a "how dare you" rant when they see the n-word or male feminists. It's a way to keep out the moral guardians and cut down on behavior I like to call "dogshitting." Unlike sea-lioning and its "per our previous conversation…" off-topic nature, dogshitters nominally address the parent post… with nitpicks irrelevant to the thread's larger topic.

Really? Would you not think that being anonymous, performative moral actions would be fewer than a social network which was tied to an actual identity?

I don't understand why in your example, the point couldn't be made without specifically using crude language. It doesn't seem like that racial slurs would contribute to the threads topic.