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Comment by gadders | Hacker News Reader

If it wasn't for 4Chan, we might never have solved the Haruhi problem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superpermutation#Lower_bounds,...

I used to go on a curated version of 4Chan via Telegram. Yes there is a lot of racism (although it flies in every direction, between every ethnicity you could imagine) but there is also (due to the anonymous nature) some genuinely interesting discussions. I remember one thread about aircraft carriers being of no use being debated by US and UK submarine officers.

There are also some genuinely funny bits. There was a guy in Greece who had found out that as long as he never graduated, he could live a basic life for free at university. His nickname was Dormogenes.

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It is the freedom that comes from being anonymous.

To mock and ridicule, yes. to speak your mind, sure, But first and foremost to discuss between true equals, because you can only be judged by what you write, because the value you are bringing to the discussion comes from your words and not from your reputation as the real-world human you are.

Being free to discuss controversial topics without having repercussion to your job or family (which is why doxxing was so frowned upon back then)

Being free to do some stupid childish fun, just for laughs.

Something we still had when it was just forums, even though we did have accounts they did not represent our whole persona, and we could be different people on different platform.

Something that was almost lost for good when normies invaded the internet due to social networks. It's not completely lost yet, and we must fight to keep it.

>There was a guy in Greece who had found out that as long as he never graduated, he could live a basic life for free at university.

I remember him. Sadly he got evicted in the end. F.

Unless it was someone else larping as him, as recent as feb this year he posted that he's still living there (apparently got an extension or something). He was arrested, but he got released within a few days.

“Raided”

https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/462625379/

More like Φ probably

there is a great clickhole headline that your comment reminds me of

"Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made a Great Point"

4chan has produced some hilarious/interesting stuff, and they have also driven people to suicide. i suppose it is up to everyone individually to make the value judgement there.

> and they have also driven people to suicide

As has Reddit, Facebook, etc.

Bad things occasionally happening on a platform doesn't make the platform/site inherently bad.

weird combination of "what about" and misinterpreting my comment.

Not really when you were holding up causing suicide as why it's bad when every high traffic social network has done that.

yes, you are repeating the "what about" part. my comment has literally nothing to do with other social networks.

if it helps, feel free to apply the original quote to facebook or whatever when they do something good. but this article and comment chain is about 4chan. so i am talking about 4chan.

"Whataboutism" is just the cry of people upset others disagreed with their stance in a way they disliked.

lol, what are you talking about? i said i was reminded of a quote, that is it. no one disagreed, they just said “other people do it too” and put words in my mouth so they could argue about something.

like, what “stance” do you think i am even trying to take?

Well, much like HN, 4chan is a couple dozen boards of different topics frequented by something like 22 million unique users every month. So of course there's going to be good things there. And of course there's going to be bad things there. You don't get to pick and choose.

Trying to make a "value judgment" and boil the whole thing down to "4chan good" or "4chan bad," seems with even the most generous interpretation... incredibly reductive and foolhardy.

i wasnt trying to make any sort of profound point. i was reminded of an applicable quote i like, so i posted it.

and of course my comment is reductive, it is a total of 3 sentences. i dont really know what nuance you were expecting to get out a 3 sentence comment.

everything is gray, with both good and bad. 4chan included. there we go -- more true, less interesting.

Replace "4chan" with "humanity in general" and your statement still holds true.

I mean that's pretty vacuously true, since (the community of) "4chan" is a subset of (the total population of) "humanity in general," but it's a stronger and more interesting claim to make about the subculture in question.

If anything, the person you were replying to was intentionally describing how 4chan is less dissimilar to humanity in general than its typical portrayal, so responding with a dismissal that that makes them just the same as everyone else is really just affirming their point.

"4chan has done these" and "humanity has done these" are equally vacuous.

sure, yeah, the original quote was about a person instead of a website, so that makes sense.

Societies drive people to suicide in general. Families also do. I don't think the solution is to make the world a padded room.

>I don't think the solution is to make the world a padded room.

..neither do i?

I haven't gone on in many years, almost decades. I feel like it was both a huge waste of time but also useful. I eventually lost interest in keeping up with it all. I am surprised anyone's mind can handle being there for long. Even m00t himself left and I don't think ever came back.

While there's plenty of legit, true racism throughout 4chan I was always struck by how incredibly specific it could get. Like "Congolese Bantus subjugating pygmies" kind of specific.

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