It’s very interesting that the founder of 4chan ended up being super liberal leaning.<p>I remember when I first visited 4chan sometime in 2006. It was totally unlike anything I had seen before. I remember feeling as though I had found an entirely new universe to explore and exist in. Back then, when you refreshed b, no matter how frequently, there was essentially no recycling of threads. The volume back then was so high that browsing b was like swimming in a vibrant ocean of the future — a relentless torrent of human thought and memes. Back then, memes were exclusive to 4chan. Nobody knew what a meme was and you could only find them on 4chan. I remember when memes starting appearing on clothing and mainstream places it felt very weird. B is now a shell of what it used to be. In life, every once in a while you get to experience something like early b. I hope I get to do it one more time before I die.
> Notably, it was never publicly revealed what sort of position he was offered at Google. Given Poole's natural inclination toward privacy, and in wake of the negative attention that 4chan brought to him in more recent years, it's likely that he's living contentedly as a Google employee and will be out of the public eye for good.<p>Chris Poole's LinkedIn says he's a PM in Google Maps: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-poole/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-poole/</a>
There are features of 4chan that I don't often see discussed that I think contribute to the communities ease of conversation.<p>Firstly that all conversations are flat and always chronological. This might not sound very interesting but it reduces the cognitive load of moving through a thread, everyting is very predictable.<p>Second is that any post, from any thread, on any board, can be referenced by any other post. The ease at which narrative can be strung together by reference is probably one of 4chan (and other image boards) best features. The fact that you can just hover over a link like >>45646435645 and it shows you what the post said negates the need for nested conversations and produces a narrative of conversation that is both simpler than nested forums because of the 0 nesting, but also more complex because of the expressiveness of referencing anything.<p>I'm not sure if the second feature requires the first to work as a mental model, or it would get very messy.
I find it sad that a project with as much cultural influence as 4chan didn't make the owners sufficient money. It's sad, because the whole idea behind 4chan is that people can be unfiltered and say what they want to say. But sadly, this means that the site can't make much money, because advertisers aren't willing to risk advertising on the site.
This is a blast from the past! It inspired me to check out the 4chan article on Wikipedia, which I rewrote over 10 years ago (omg). It was a fun topic to research and to try and write formally about.<p>Very impressed to see it’s still at featured article status (the highest an article can go)! I got tired of WP not too long after writing that, so if any anyone reading this has helped maintain/improve it since - thanks, anon.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=4chan" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=4chan</a>
4chan was the best. It was meme culture before meme culture. In fact, I believe that's where the modern usage of the word comes from (ytmnd used "fad" for the same concept). I spent so much time on there 15 years ago when I first entered college.
An HN comment the other day mentioned how most Americans, no matter how high reddit was up the Alexa rankings was, rejected knowing what the website was. I just feel like 4chan was much more influential in individuals' lives, no matter how large its userbase was at the peak; yet people reject it in the same exact manner...
The timeline is off re: his departure. He had already banned Gamergate discussion prior to Wu injecting herself into the story. There's also no mention of XOXO Fest which is where he actually made the decision to enact the ban and Sarkeesian was a keynote speaker. There are other inaccuracies but those are the big ones.
Does it strike anyone else as odd that a person who was so passionate about protecting people's privacy would end up joining Google - a company infamous for invading privacy?
>Philosoraptor.jpg><p><a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/philosoraptor/photos" rel="nofollow">https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/philosoraptor/photos</a><p>>There is a prototypical technology postulated that can read auditory cortex and translate to synthetic speech,<p>E.G <a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/ai-thought-to-speech/" rel="nofollow">https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/ai-thought-to-speech...</a><p>there is another tech that involves stimulating otic organs with a laserbeam or phononbeam:<p>E.G. <a href="http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack_files/03files/Sonic_Projection.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack_files/03files/Sonic_Proj...</a><p>so if every thing that every other person thought was available to be heard by any other person in a mutually anonymous manner, what would we have?<p>would it be like 4chan? is there something inherent about human nature, or about the medium itself that promotes the degradation of a hivemind situation to something so negatively primal as 4chan/b/ ?<p>we could conduct this experiment in reality very soon.
would the physical consequences be any different, in the 4chan scenario there is a disconnect, victims are given some respite by simply logging off. How would this "evil_skullnet" differ when it is in place 24/7/364.25/ ?
I looked up to him once, because I really liked 4chan, but what did he really do?<p>He copied 2ch to make 4chan and also raised some donation money to buy a bigger server when it grew in popularity.<p>He got lucky with 4chan but never turned any profit with it, which is kinda okay, I think.<p>But even after he got known for being a owner of a big site, all the opportunity that comes with he turned into basically nothing... it's like he didn't learn anything from creating 4chan... so much wasted potential
It's so weird, I was just googling him yesterday after years of not ever thinking about him. It was interesting that he's gone to Google now.
People try to over analyze the appeal of 4chan, but I really think it's quite simple:<p><a href="https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19" rel="nofollow">https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19</a>