Discussion culture

Yeah from this comes the interesting part: Veeky Forums is disproportionally influential to internet culture compared to its size. Could the fact that people who come here like this pick up parts of its culture through this process? Is the ingroup mechanism's main function on Veeky Forums to make the culture spread?

>are people online anonymously naturally cordial to each other?
No. Take Veeky Forums for example. You have boards where people are always unnecessarily hostile and cancerous toward each other (/b/ and /pol/ are the most cancerous by far, which is why I avoid them like cholera), while on the other hand, some boards like Veeky Forums are surprisingly chill and friendly. So, as you pointed out yourself, it depends on the site's culture.
>Are hot discussions on Veeky Forums filled with actual vitriol or are they just playful back and forths?
Plenty of vitriol around here, particularly in threads on politics or whenever /pol/ starts the 45291727th holocaust thread or "Germans were the good guys" thread. Other discussions are tamer, though. As for banter, it is in a very sad state on the entirety of Veeky Forums. It's rarely as playful or as funny as you would expect of banter, most of it being shitposting tired and unfunny old memes that had already been run into the ground. Not to mention the propensity of autistic posters to turn fun discussions into vitriolic rants because they either try banter but have no idea how to do that beside annoying as many people as possible or because they take everything too seriously and enjoy being angry at people on the internet.

>Could the fact that people who come here like this cause them* to pick up parts of its culture through this process?

People who learn to appreciate Veeky Forums come to value freedom of speech as the preeminent virtue of a free society, this is the chord that binds seemingly disparate types from libertarians to neonazis to shitposting trolls. Speaking as someone living in an Orwellian nightmare of a country with NO right to free speech, I can only hope that this shared internet value becomes more prevalent not just here but everywhere. Veeky Forums has taught me that if you don't have free speech, then you don't really have ANY rights.

The cool thing about anonymous discussion. Is that it limits the biases to only te information being presented. So i dont know if the user talking about victorian era tribal communuties is really a young kid, or an old professor, or a movie star. So it forces me to focus on what is being said.

Now to those not trained in analysis and critique can easily fall prey to the red herrings and ad hominens or just general shitposting, which ends up in alot of butt hurt and flame wars.

Those who can look past the shitposts usually just view it as banter or try to explain it away in psychological subtext.

>The cool thing about anonymous discussion. Is that it limits the biases to only te information being presented. So i dont know if the user talking about victorian era tribal communuties is really a young kid, or an old professor, or a movie star. So it forces me to focus on what is being said.

This is what moot always claimed, but I'm not sure it's entirely true. People here tend not to give others the benefit of the doubt, someone posting about Victorian pub culture is more likely to be accused of talking shit than to have his views fairly examined. OTOH, this situation is preferable to the normal meatspace situation of deferring to "authorities", but it's not the unalloyed good that you and moot make it out to be.

Reddit is more moderated than Veeky Forums for those reasons too.
And when everyone has to follow a certain rule for posting they end up all sounding the same and not saying anything new.

It's less the moderation and more the lack of true anonymity, people are social animals and can't help but try to save face when they feel their socially constructed identity is under threat. Simply by attaching a consistent name to every post you make, you ensure a certain level of conformity and groupthink. Look at the sad history of internet forums for endless examples of this. Veeky Forums's anti-fragility is due almost wholly to the default absolute anonymity here, much more than to the historically hands-off moderation.

>pol taught me the Jews are in charge f everything
Why allow wrong ideas to be thought, how good have antifa marches been for society

For the very simple and I would have thought obvious reason that you won't always (ever?) be the one deciding what is "right" and what is "wrong". If you don't want people sending you to jail for wrongthink, then the answer is to not have laws criminalizing thought / speech.

Its an interesting characteristic of the anonymous movement.
Compared with other groups who try to keep others out by having rigidly defined tenants and morality as well as certain rituals for joining and maintaining membership. That even if you wanted to infiltrate and subvert the group. You would atleast have to submit to them, and conform to their standards.

Now take anonymous. Its tenants state that you belong to this group regardess, becuase of modern society you are treated like an anonymous person, maybe just a number or a statistic but rarely anything more than that in the ideological scheme of things.
And then you also say that this group pretty much believes in everything but most notibly how much intitutional oppression is going on.

With these two things this is pretty much telling everyone to try and infiltrate this group or change it.
But choas is always changing. Its an interestibg comment on power struggle.

One of the closest things i could call an anarchist collective.

Its only those sheep that believe that anonymous is only what ever some fuckdick in a joker mask and voice distortion on a youtuve clip is saying.
If really take time yo read through posts on here and on other forum yoy will note that this is simply not the case.

Trying to invade Veeky Forums is like pissing into an ocean of piss. There is no structure to subvert, and the only effective tactics here are to employ the same exact type of shitposting that the natives already use. I'm not sure I'd describe it as anarchistic, because that implies a certain level of respect for the notions of equality and anti-hierarchy, which some 4channers have but which are far from being dominant or even widespread memes here. It's more like a brutal state of nature, where the strong do as they wish, and the weak suffer what they must. Only because the only weapons anyone has are words (and images), the overall effect is altogether less oppressive than the lack of societal norms would suggest.

well moot left because of some nasty consequences of anonymity here: a lot of people flock to it when they feel that they can't voice their opinion elsewhere, because of the site's reputation fringe people come here first. Because other sites don't have as much free speech we have to deal with a very large number of web outcasts here

Its the nature of anonymous too.
The discission and its participants change over time.

Its eady to fall prey to the shitposts.
But usually as long as you remain firm and try to consistantly post. I think you'll find the discussion you'll be looking for. It wont be as consice probably and it wont be in just one thread. Stuff here usually is an ongoing discussion anyways.

But for the record i didnt say it was an unalloyed good.
It the reason why i've stuck with Veeky Forums instead of having a reddit account.

When it comes to preferences everyone has to weigh their own peronal pros and cons.

Anyone who spends time on the internet will shortly realize that humans are by nature aggressive, volatile, and petty.

We also would not have advanced as a species without this trait, so it's not really a bad thing

I think it's more that humans tend to create in groups and out groups by nature and they're vitriolic to the outgroup, in this thread there's no vitriol as there are no distinguishable groups.

Moot left because he didn't want his whole life to be Veeky Forums. he started the site when he was an underage banned weeab, he's now 30 and looking to make an actual life for himself. he was always clear that he would never sell Veeky Forums, but when Hiroshimoot expressed an interest he saw his opportunity to sell Veeky Forums with a clean conscience and leapt at it. From his appearances since leaving it's clear he still loves the site and still posts here frequently.

Do you think he still holds the same views of anonymity as he did when he started the chins?

I have found that every post, no matter how good, attracts shitposters and trolls. The trick is to learn to spot them and to ignore them, something that requires possibly years of lurking to master. But yes, once you break thru, you find that there are good discussions happening here all the time, you just have to filter out the 99% of posts that are essentially just "noise".

We are vitriolic to the in-group too if we have the pretext of anonymity

As soon as we understand we can post something anonymously and it's not being said by US as an individual, just some voice in the cloud, we go buck wild like a shark feeding frenzy

even in-groups stop mattering once we remove ourselves from the consequences of our speech

I think this is quite revealing about our true nature

Anonymity makes it impossible for us to be fully prosocial, because we can't tell our friends from the trolls and the pissbabbys.

I think broadly yes but he has had more experience with and has seen more facets of it, I don't think he ever believed that anonymity wouldn't be a threedimensional issue.
I believe he has made it clear that certain events like the australian hacker pushes him over the edge, but sure they were only catalysts.

He's grown up online, I'm sure his views have become more nuanced but yes, he's still a champion of anonymity online.

>they were only catalysts.

As you get older your tolerance for foolishness diminishes. I'm sure running Veeky Forums was an absolute pain in the ass, but moot resisted many offers to sell Veeky Forums and only sold it to hiroshimoot because he knew he could trust him to preserve and understand the site's culture.

I guess you're right

The siginificant difference betwern karma or reddit gold and getting (you)'s is that nobody knows who (you) are.

Depends on type of people you associate with.

Most people do not want anonymous discussions. This is why most people goto sites like facebook.

Of those people, some occassionally wander into anonymous sites and pretend its like their normal facebook except without identities, so they think they can lie/cheat/post shits/etc. These individuals are not meant for Veeky Forums.

For the genuine few who enjoy actual discussions without need for identity, this is haven. Lies are merely a tool for norms with identity.

The main problem of user discussions is that people are bit full of themselves and do not understand their limits. Hence make hyperbole arguments all the time.

I find that theres a huge crowd mentality here,
Or atleast the appearance of one.

I have noticed that ideas are latched onto and run with and others are just forgotten in a day.
I think it does depend on how you "market" your idea.
But if a person starts making pretty accesable memes then everyone will be doing it.

It seems like theres a lot of people who are waiting for others to do something, like have a irl meetup, or POSTING MORE OC GODDAMMIT.
But once they do, the ball gets rolling until the memes start giving people headaches.

I guess im saying that anons, especially new anons tend to take their cues from other anons. Seeing Veeky Forums as more of a social media platform rather than a blank canvas for ideas.

Has to deal with not worrying about the reprocussions

Like you ain't gonna be punched or shot at by niggerposting on here.

This makes sense if you dont understand that all talk in the form of informal discussion
Is just
Bullshitting.

>It seems like theres a lot of people who are waiting for others to do something, like have a irl meetup, or POSTING MORE OC GODDAMMIT.

These are newfags who don't yet understand how Veeky Forums works. They're an inevitable result of Veeky Forums's sudden fame, but they're also necessary to bring new blood to the site. They also tend to self-segregate on boards like and so they're less of a bother than they might otherwise be.

>But if a person starts making pretty accesable memes then everyone will be doing it.

Making a good meme is much more difficult than most people assume, really even the most skilled memer will only get a "hit" one time in a hundred. Getting into the heads of a million anonymous strangers is more luck than skill.

You think this because you're a newfag. Veeky Forums has deep conversations in between the memeposting, you just have to learn the dialect.

I can agree with you if by 'deep conversation' you mean indepth and intriguing about the topic at hand, like sometimes on Veeky Forums or /out/ or even /mu/ etc.

On all the boards really, even /b/ has it's moments. It does vary a lot from board to board tho, the smaller boards tend to be more on-topic than the bigger ones.

Im not saying i havent gotten valuable insights from other anons.

Im saying that coming in wanting focused directed goal oriented and meaningful discussion in the first place then 4can should be the first place you hitup.

The great thing about shitposting is that it cuts the tension and we immediatly realize we are wasting our lives typing on the internet being arm chair fuckwits.
Sure anons have spurred movements but that came about becuase there was something galvanising in the bullshit.
But like some other anons said that coming here and assuming people arent being disingenious and talking out their ass, have actually landed some anons in the emergency room.

*Veeky Forums shouldnt be the first place you hit up.

Yeah but the site is intimidating and can be waste of time because you often have to wade through oceans of fluff and trash to get to the good stuff

Yes, which in turn encourages people to shitpost and thus contribute to the sites culture. Those who stick with it will eventually find what they're looking for, those who don't probably didn't belong here anyway. /tv/ calls this effect the "pleb filter", and there's something to be said for the notion.

>we immediately realize we are wasting our lives
>we

>The great thing about shitposting is that it cuts the tension and we immediatly realize we are wasting our lives typing on the internet being arm chair fuckwits.

There's soemthing to be said for this. Sites with pseudo anonymity or (even worse) no anonymity at all encourage people to affect a serious and self-important air, Veeky Forums with it's totally irreverent ethos punches thru this and in so doing ironically allows people to be more "themselves" than they can be anywhere else outside their dreams.

Sadly, it runs out that what most people are "really like" is a shitposting assclown.

I think it contributes to the 'you will never leave' effect by making the search some sort of addiction

Once you get used to Veeky Forums, no other site can compare. The absolute freedom to opine on any topic with zero social repercussions is itself addictive.

What Veeky Forums really helped me with is that its more or less okay to be yourself.

Indeed. It reveals a secret that you'd otherwise go your whole life not knowing, which is, people are essentially just idiots like you and I.

So what country do you live in?

Airstrip One.

>Why allow wrong ideas to be thought
That's exactly the logic anti-fa marches under

So that no dogma emerges or is suspected by the populace.
Also who says the state is a fair arbiter in what's right or wrong at all times.

>So that no dogma emerges or is suspected by the populace.

This is the theoretical value of free speech, but it's questionable (free speech hasn't saved the US from massive political polarization). The practical benefit (who is to say what counts as "rightthink") is far more compelling. It's easy to say "Nazis shouldn't have free speech" but the recent SJW foolishness shows that even a fairly clear concept like "who is a Nazi" can be twisted out of all recognition.

it is not questionable as it is a necessary consequence of everybody being equal for the law. People from the past shouldn't be allowed to establish dogma over you because that would mean they'd have enjoyed more freedom than you do.

>The only parts of Veeky Forums that are truly cancerous and infested with in-group out-group mentalities are the various "general" threads, and those are that way mostly because they encourage tripfaggotry, which of course violates the anonymity principle.

t. Rob, still mad he got kicked out after all these years

>it is not questionable as it is a necessary consequence of everybody being equal for the law.
This is a completely different argument.

>People from the past shouldn't be allowed to establish dogma over you because that would mean they'd have enjoyed more freedom than you do.
Free speech does nothing to protect people from the establishment of dominant ideologies, since the rich benefit more from it than the poor do (of course the rich can get round restrictions on speech too, so they'll always have an advantage when it comes to pushing an agenda).

I have no clue who you're talking about but this is EXACTLY the kind of petty, pathetic, normie social score-keeping that makes generals so cancerous.

Free speech has limits user, like everything does.

Should it have, tho? People often cite the "don't shout FIRE in a theater", but why should that be illegal per se? You could criminalize the EFFECTS of such speech, making the shouter liable for any damages caused, but by criminalizing the act of speech itself I for one think SCOTUS was in error.

No it doesn't 'protect', all it does is to assure all citizens are equal to the constitution.
And yes it's different from what I previously said

>all it does is to assure all citizens are equal to the constitution.

No, it doesn't. A rich man has more "speech" than a poor man. The rich man can buy a newspaper, for instance, or pay shills to spread his ideas. Legal equality is enshrined in the US Constitution, but free speech is about natural rights, NOT about equality.

Free speech is part of the liberal human rights phase, the protection from the wealthy you are on about comes from the later socio economic wave
(Equality in this context is 'people being equal for the law' which was how it was understood during the liberal phase.)
The thing is, they compliment each other, they are all opposed to a rule of a certain few, the 'few' having been different in each phase.

t. R&i

Equality under the law predates liberalism and was inherited by the Americans from the English Common Law. Free Speech is quintessentially Liberal and belongs to the Whig tradition that shaped and has utterly dominated American politics, but it's roots lie in individualism not in egalitarianism or any notion that "all views are equally valid".

Yes that is true, but I was talking about the constitutional phases, the first of which was the liberal phase.

bumpity

>Not really, sites with severe moderation breed passive aggressive dipshits, sites with weak moderation breed openly hostile cunts.

This. People are cunts to each other regardless of moderation, it just takes different forms.

For example:

>Veeky Forums, anonymous, almost no moderation, openly hostile cunts who will shitpost and be contrarian just to do so because their identity isn't tied to individual posts, posters will directly say non factual stupid shit just to disagree

>PA, heavily moderated, have profiles, political debate will be filled with posters trying to be clever and farm awesomes and agrees like open mic night, direct contradiction with factually incorrect posts and when proven wrong will then attack tone or shift target but won't outright troll or call you a cunt, will make posts that are meant to address a given poster but won't quote, will make implications of racism, sexism, homophobism, Islamophobism etc. to try and undermine argument

Ah yes, another soft cunt who couldn't take the memes.

Yeah, usually instead of considering the content of the post, anonymity just allows people to assume the worst about any poster who says something they don't like and make ad hominems anyway. You see it everywhere. Someone gets triggered and their first response is "You're obviously underage/a shill/jewish/a virgin neckbeard/a numale/[insert other board or website here]"

>

It's insane to me that if you've been here long enough, you can deduce exactly what board/other website a poster is from just by the way they structure sentences. For example, if you've browsed /a/ for long enough you can tell exactly which posts are made by people who also visit /v/, /pol/, etc frequently. It's also super easy to spot someone who is a reddit native who's migrated here. The smaller boards are harder to tell, but you can definitely see a clear posting pattern for /a/, /v/, /pol/, /tv/, and /sp/ users. That being said I think /a/ and /jp/ are the only large boards that keep the original board culture alive. Apart from /pol/ I've watched the other boards deteriorate in discussion over time as major events (GG, the fappening, Trump) brought an influx of underage retards and reddit refugees who don't understand how Veeky Forums operates as a whole.

Anime, manga and esoteric weebshit like kigurumi, denpa, or junior idols aren't normalfag friendly like videgames, sports, and tv are.
Its all about that board subject and how willing the enthusiasts are to being hostile towards newfags.

high

This is changing insofar as anime is concerned. Its popularity has increased a lot with normalfags and you can see the influx of reddit migrants into /a/. The birth/maintenance of generals, Naruto being accepted, and dubs-posting becoming a bannable offense all stem from this influx. It's definitely on better footing than /tv/ and /v/ which are worse than /b/ at this point though. You can still see /a/'s core oldfag userbase in manga threads and it is leagues different in discussion quality from the DBS/SnK/Boruto threads.

up?