That was my reaction too. Beyond statistics, this will make it easier to develop all sorts of user-facing and machine-to-machine applications -- for sharing, grouping, ranking, and linking items, and even for 'overlaying' the content on top of other social networks.
I'd expect the API to be grow and mature over time, and am curious to see what comes out of this experiment.
Garbage dump is entirely appropriate. I have no idea how anyone older than 20 can tolerate 4chan.
>Do you think that people posting gore do it because they enjoy the content?
I think there are those who post gore because they get pleasure from grossing people out, outraging people or otherwise eliciting a strong emotional reaction (which is probably what you mean by "shock value") but I do not think that is all of it.
I think a significant fraction of the people posting gore do it because it will induce others to post gory pictures that the OP has not seen yet. And I think that they want that because they derive pleasure from seeing people and animals being harmed.
One of the reason I believe that is a book I read called Among the Thugs, in which a reporter spent some time hanging out with British football hooligans. He reported that after running with the hooligans a while, engaging in violence and contemplating engaging in violence became pleasurable. This and other things suggest to me that many people are capable of deriving pleasure from seeing people get fucked up once they've acquired a taste for it.
The main reservation I have about 4chan is that it seems to be enabling many to acquire a taste for it (and for other things like harassing people on Facebook).
It doesn't take spending a lot of time in any nerd culture group to see that the racism, sexism, and homophobia are not ironic at all. Case in point, the enormous administrator/moderator-led backlash on SA in the past ~year against anyone daring to not openly welcome the death of anyone who is not a white cis male.
Yes, it does.
> you need to take a step back and look at where you are - the internet. Well...
I suggest reading this introduction to the subject of "why second degree&ironic gay bashing work only if there is real homophobia somewhere": http://www.queerty.com/does-calling-someone-a-fag-really-mea... I have better articles about sexism and homophobia but there are written in french.
However, it does mean that people like you don't go there, so it's a pretty good thing that they have that slang.
BUT, be careful with the concept of 4chan and "no retribution". There have been countless examples of 4chan "reacting" to threads, I'm sure I don't need to go into detail here.