from Hacker News

4chan's chaos theory

by bl4k on 3/10/11, 1:03 PM with 22 comments

• by DarkShikari on 3/10/11, 2:25 PM

  It's practically a rule of the internet at this point that every single news article about 4chan will basically only talk about /b/, even though there are dozens of other boards with millions or tens of millions of posts. This is like an encyclopedia article about Asia that only mentions China.

  For some reason, /b/ seems to be the most interesting to the media outlets -- this lets them talk about Anonymous, hacking, lolcats, and other things that the media seems to like, without having to explain difficult things, like what "Dungeons and Dragons" or "Yaoi" or "Touhou" are.

  Perhaps this is for the best, lest the rest of the site be overrun by the "Eternal September" that hit /b/ years ago. There's some surprisingly good communities left, with topics ranging from 3D modeling to tabletop gaming.

• by jedsmith on 3/10/11, 3:14 PM

  I walked the street during Project Chanology, and I'm not particularly afraid to admit it -- it was a long time ago, though. These days, I wouldn't dream of admitting being associated with Anonymous. Somewhere between then and now they really lost their way; Anonymous isn't about media appearances (which they seem to love now. CNN? really?) nor the infamy, it's about committing to an ideal that a bunch of "overnight neckbeards" believe in. That was the power I signed up for, and it was impressive to behold. I really felt like the Internet could catch on and do some good in the real world, but then it all went to hell.

  Then again, maybe I'm wrong, and Anonymous means something a lot different than I thought it does.

  I'm convinced now that Anonymous is down to a small group of people who are basically really clever botnet herders. LOIC itself is a clever way to get a large botnet with fairly little effort. Since they operate under a guise of religious zeal and fervor, they largely get positive attention from the media for doing something that all Internet operators hate. As such, they're a pretty big threat to the operations community, and they're just discovering how to wield that power. The media eats it up because it's a story that sells itself.

  When is the last time Anonymous actually picketed something to take their message public? Now their modus operandi seems to be to basically be that group of script kiddies that everyone hates, and punish groups they disagree with by hitting them with over 9,000 cable modems. That isn't to say that wasn't a part of Chanology, but I felt like the picket lines had a more positive effect than shutting down Scientology's Web site.

  It's been a pretty sad transformation to watch.

• by Jun8 on 3/10/11, 3:53 PM

  The article has an overall feeling of wide-eyed female (because expectation is that she'd be even more alienated from technology than the regular clueless male VF essayist) journalist, ooh-ing and aah-ing her way into dark and deep geek secrets, like how you would feel if you were transported in time to a Templar secret gathering. Low-orbit ion cannon, DDoS (she even explains this for "the nerds out there"), what are these terms?

  My questions are (i) Why don't magazines like VF put someone more technically knowledgeable to cover stories like these or (ii) if they're not going to bother with (i) , why even cover the story?

  In this regard, the New Yorker is much better, I think. They either don't jump on the wannabe bandwagon for the latest tech meme or if they decide to do it, do a good job.

• by GHFigs on 3/10/11, 3:37 PM

  Better than a lot of the press on 4chan and Anonymous, but still pretty cringe-inducing.

  The middle third or so is good--they talked to moot, and give a pretty good description of at least some of the content--but then that's bracketed with the standard "Anonymous is Legion" story about Scientology protests and Wikileaks DDoSes, with media whore Gregg Housh being literally the beginning and end of the article.

  It's frustrating to feel that there is something genuinely interesting going on there (and a dozen other places on the web with just the right conditions) but find that attention only ever seems to be directed at the shadows cast on the wall.

• by TimothyFitz on 3/10/11, 4:05 PM

  For any Hacker News readers at SXSW, Team Canvas will be around, drinking at other company's parties because our booze budget is still $0. Text me (http://TimothyFitz.com for my phone #) if you'd like to hang out.

  Edit: In case you're wondering, in that photo Chris is working on Canvas via Skype chat.

• by alexophile on 3/10/11, 3:35 PM

  "...posting under deadpanned handles like Coldblood and Tux, the latter a possible shorthand for the group’s logo, which features a man in a tuxedo, sans head."

• by corin_ on 3/10/11, 3:12 PM

  I like VF, but was rather disappointed with this article, remarkably boring.

• by MichaelGG on 3/10/11, 7:11 PM

  "On one hand, Web sites are property, and taking them down is stealing, in a way."

  Wow, that's a bit misleading. The only way you to "steal" a website is to copy all the files then delete them, maybe. A DoS might "steal service", but that's about it.

  What's wrong with "On one hand, web sites can be like stores, and taking them down is obstructing commerce, in a way." ? Are people not capable of handling nuance and ambiguity? Must everything be forced into "theft"?

• by maus_ on 3/10/11, 3:58 PM

  Why do journalists never cover other online internet communities? (like something awful)