Trolling, anonymity, the internet community, and you! (somewhat rant-y)

[renegade7]

Recently, I read a story (though it is old news now) about some people on the /b/ board of 4Chan who decided that their beef with 9gag warranted the following action: on a suicidally depressed teenage girl's youtube video, they pretended to be 9gag users and told her on her video's comments to kill herself. Apparently this would make /b/ look so much better than 9gag.

About a week ago I finally got signed up for internet connection stable enough to handle voice chat in online games, particularly Xbox Live. Holy shit. I thought people were just joking when they said people said offensive things there. Like it was just the occasional socially incompetent reject who tells people they should kill themselves/get raped in an alley/get back in the kitchen (for female players)/and a whole number of more offensive things. Crap, was I wrong. I am never using my headset in a random matching game again.

So, why do I bring this up? I mean there are plenty of discussions here on the Escapist about trolling and smack talk on XBL gone too far.

Well, as many of you have hopefully noticed, some people are trying to censor the internet. And there is PLENTY of incentive for them to do so. The only reason they don't is because someone who believes in free speech steps up to defend it.

But much of the stuff I have seen and heard is utterly indefensible. With all the politicians and CEOs of billion dollar companies saying things like "The internet is a haven for pedophiles, pirates, criminals, and socially inept man children" why in the FUCK would you think it's a good idea to, say, troll a suicidal teenage girl just to make your forum site look better than another?

Please, don't give me anything about "Well, I don't see why I should care about someone I've never met". If that's your attitude, you are EXACTLY the sort of person the internet censorship lobbies are trying to paint us as. Same goes for "Well I was just having fun, if it was offensive to you you're just a wuss" and "It's not like they'll ever see me in person so it's okay for me to be an offensive asshole". My apologies to offensive assholes everywhere, by the way.

So please, just think about what you say before you say it, and how that will make you look. You may feel nice and safe behind your curtain of anonymity, but the internet is a COMMUNITY now. A grown man yelling at girls and women on XBL to "GET BACK IN THE FUCKIN' KITCHEN YOU WHORE" (and yes, I did hear several different people say that or things very like it) does not reflect well on this community and makes it VERY difficult for people who are trying to protect our right to free speech to do so.

I like the internet. I don't want to lose it because someone ABSOLUTELY HAD to make the sexist/racist/otherwise horrifically offensive remark that becomes the stereotype of how everyone in the online community behaves. Thank you and good night.

EDIT: you are correct. /b/ is not the entirety of 4Chan. This has been fixed.

 

[General Twinkletoes]

They don't give a shit. These people are just idiotic scumbags who don't realize how awful they are, or they just don't care. Especially 4chan. I don't like 9gag, but the people who go on it aren't fucked up. Every time someone says they browse 4chan, mainly /b/, I lose a lot of respect for them, because it means they genuinely find that shit funny.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

If anything on the internet should get censored, it should be 4chan. Then, find somebody skilled in teh hax that can intercept Anonymous midway and censor them, too, for they shall surely have an uproar over the kaplowyboompow over 4chan.

 

[Zhukov]

Every time someone says they browse 4chan, mainly /b/, I lose a lot of respect for them, because it means they genuinely find that shit funny.

Yeah, I must admit I do this too.

It's not entirely fair, but I still find myself thinking, "Whelp, no need to spare the slightest thought for anything that they say ever again."

 

[MrBoBo]

One of the problems with 4chan is that once you see the extreme to it's extent, it eventually becomes numbing like a drug loosing it's effect. I enjoy visiting and reading encyclopedia dramatica but I think the cynicism and narcissism has become abit redudant and seems to be a crutch they lean too heavily on now. I'm not suggesting it should pussy out and become something crap like "oh internet" but it does get abit "eh" after awhile.

Thats the case with alot of the internet I suppose. I recall being something like 16 and seeing a fairly well known execution video of a Russian getting his head cut off with a knife. Couldn't sleep for a while and felt shocked. Now whenever you see any of these shock clips, it's nothing. It's mental the way the internets open nature changes your perception of the world.

 

[Dandark]

The people who do this kinda thing have no idea they are being assholes or they don't care. Some of the kids can grow out of it and realize how ****ty they were being but these people will alway's exist. They always have, it's just that the internet gives them a safe way to be assholes to everyone.

Although there are plenty of these people, I would not think it's worth censoring the internet over.

 

[chadachada123]

They don't give a shit. These people are just idiotic scumbags who don't realize how awful they are, or they just don't care. Especially 4chan. I don't like 9gag, but the people who go on it aren't fucked up. Every time someone says they browse 4chan, mainly /b/, I lose a lot of respect for them, because it means they genuinely find that shit funny.

That's...not...true...

I browse /b/ because it can be a good source of info on what's important on the internet today, not because I'm amused by their worst kinds of trolling.

Not that I don't find amusement from harassing 9gag, since they totally started it. I just no longer find amusement from the more-sick things that /b/ does.

Plus, though 4chan and Anonymous contain the worst of the worst internet actions, they have also been the main actors in the best of the best internet actions. They have single-handedly caught child molesters and cat abusers and people posting bomb threats, reporting all of these individuals to police. I have personally helped with reporting one such person, a kid who abused his cat on webcam, to authorities. The cat was rescued, hell yeah. (Just search Kenny Glenn for information on that case)

Another such case can be read about here, where 4chan sends a ton of birthday letters to an old war veteran on a whim: http://gigaom.com/2010/09/02/4chan-decides-to-do-something-nice-for-a-change/

/b/ is, by definition, random. Its users can do sick shit, funny shit, happy shit, awesome shit, or any combination of them. Doesn't mean that its users are all irredeemably immature assholes, though.

Edit: Got so caught up in defending /b/ that I forgot to mention that I pretty much only browse it for porn these days. The only part of 4chan that I use frequently is /mlp/ because, well, ponies.

 

[CommanderL]

I know what 4chan is but what is this /b/ thing mean

 

[Smeatza]

4chan was once (and probably still is) the most popular English language image board on the internet. So it stands to reason that there are more dickheads frequenting the site, simply as more people do overall.

In any case, it's only /b/, one small part of the site, where you're ever likely to encounter something hateful or disgusting.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

I know what 4chan is but what is this /b/ thing mean

In 4chan they have multiple boards, like we have here. They have stuff like /co/ (cartoons), /v/ (videogames) and /mlp/ (ponies). The /b/ board is the random board, you can post anything you want in there except for obvious child porn. Also, pretty much everyone's anonymous there, you can still get banned though. So yeah, it's a place where a bunch of anonymous people can post anything they want. Of course there's gonna be assholes and dicks (sometimes literally), but due to the fact that it is the RANDOM board anything can happen. The preconception that if you browse /b/ you are automatically either an arsehole or a child molester or something worse is pretty much wrong.

Also, some of the trolling done on /b/ is genuinely really funny. The one with 9gag and the suicidal girl wasn't. But stuff like the image that says to search for "lolita" into a website called "imagefap.com". If you do do that a message comes up saying you've searched for illegal content and the FBI will come soon. Of course it's fake, the FBI actually won't come. But it's really, really funny seeing the amount of people who are stupid enough to fall for something so obvious.

 

[CommanderL]

I know what 4chan is but what is this /b/ thing mean

In 4chan they have multiple boards, like we have here. They have stuff like /co/ (cartoons), /v/ (videogames) and /mlp/ (ponies). The /b/ board is the random board, you can post anything you want in there except for obvious child porn. Also, pretty much everyone's anonymous there, you can still get banned though. So yeah, it's a place where a bunch of anonymous people can post anything they want. Of course there's gonna be assholes and dicks (sometimes literally), but due to the fact that it is the RANDOM board anything can happen. The preconception that if you browse /b/ you are automatically either an arsehole or a child molester or something worse is pretty much wrong.

Also, some of the trolling done on /b/ is genuinely really funny. The one with 9gag and the suicidal girl wasn't. But stuff like the image that says to search for "lolita" into a website called "imagefap.com". If you do do that a message comes up saying you've searched for illegal content and the FBI will come soon. Of course it's fake, the FBI actually won't come. But it's really, really funny seeing the amount of people who are stupid enough to fall for something so obvious.

Thank you mr Zombie toastington Of the south southern toastingtons


People are dicks On the internet they can be annoymous dicks so the dickery increases

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

If people don't have some sort of consequence of their actions they turn into animals. Any instance of 'humanity' is just the pressure from societal constructs. The internet proves this better than anything. Without the guilt complex, people descend into being little more than rabid dogs.

We can't build societies around rabid dogs, and the internet gives us the opportunity to embrace international society like no other technology ever has.

Ergo, we need to get rid of the rabid dogs.

I may support freedom of speech in theory. I may think that the freedom the internet offers is one of the best things about it, in theory. But the overwhelming evidence is that most people can't be trusted with that freedom. Thus, since I also believe freedom is a privilege not a right, if you can't exercise your freedom responsibly, you need to be shut down.

I'd like to believe the internet could be a force for good, but unfortunately I have yet to see real evidence that any sliver of good outweighs the monumental amounts of bad.

I saw a great argument against the free internet that pointed out that the Wild West was a great society, as long as you were a gunslinger. But you couldn't have modern America if the Wild West had stayed wild. I don't know what the internet would become with wide-ranging censorship, but until proved otherwise I'll believe it's better than what we have.

 

[Esotera]

Yay, another weekly thread equating everyone who visits 4chan is a /b/tard, brilliant computer hacker, and an out-of-control troll. I don't know how on earth people can categorise an entire website just like that.

There's not really much you can do to stop serious trolling other than reporting it and not rising to the bait, and this sort of sucks. But it's definitely not an argument for net censorship (good luck censoring people being assholes on the internet), just an argument that the website owner should have a robust system in place that allows comments to be very quickly removed, or voices to be banned.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

If people don't have some sort of consequence of their actions they turn into animals. Any instance of 'humanity' is just the pressure from societal constructs. The internet proves this better than anything. Without the guilt complex, people descend into being little more than rabid dogs.

We can't build societies around rabid dogs, and the internet gives us the opportunity to embrace international society like no other technology ever has.

Ergo, we need to get rid of the rabid dogs.

I may support freedom of speech in theory. I may think that the freedom the internet offers is one of the best things about it, in theory. But the overwhelming evidence is that most people can't be trusted with that freedom. Thus, since I also believe freedom is a privilege not a right, if you can't exercise your freedom responsibly, you need to be shut down.

I'd like to believe the internet could be a force for good, but unfortunately I have yet to see real evidence that any sliver of good outweighs the monumental amounts of bad.

I saw a great argument against the free internet that pointed out that the Wild West was a great society, as long as you were a gunslinger. But you couldn't have modern America if the Wild West had stayed wild. I don't know what the internet would become with wide-ranging censorship, but until proved otherwise I'll believe it's better than what we have.

In other words:

I like free speech! But only when people are saying what I think they should say.

That pretty much sums up near every post in this moronic thread.

Not really.

I'll happily debate with people who are saying things I don't agree with. I've argued with loads of people who have views I strongly disagree with online and in real life. What marks these as actual debates is that the people involved don't devolve into pointless insult battles most of the time.

Human interaction is not standing in the street screaming 'U r al;lk bteh noobvs. pwned headshot!!!!1!!!!1111' If you did that in real life you would be regarded as being mentally deficient in some way. Human interaction has words, it has conventions, it has the unspoken understanding that you don't immediately start insulting people, and if you do you are considered rude and unlikeable.

I like free spech when people are actually speaking, not loudly parroting the same unfunny memes and slinging racial slurs around at anyone and everything. I believe free speech is linked to the responsiblity to speak sensibly. And if you can't rein in your urge to insult and attack everyone you speak to them I don't think you should have the right anymore.

 

[Rastien]

Don't knock 4chan till you take the plunge and browse some of the boards, as someone has said it has the very best and very worst of people on the internet.

It aint all about /b/ dont be hatin