Is Veeky Forums a legitimate subject for academic study?

Is Veeky Forums a legitimate subject for academic study?

arxiv.org/abs/1610.03452

Yes this place is a goldmine for data mining at least theoretically. You could extrapolate a lot of information useful for analysis such as general anonymous interaction between humans, what makes a quality troll, what incites response, shared traits among trends/memes that start here before expanding elsewhere(what makes something go viral), picture analysis (of original phone pictures of things like cars, rooms, clothes, etc.) to estimate average wealth of poster combined with an abstract intelligence analysis to see which boards contain people worth advertising to, just off the top of my head.

Sociologists, businesses, machine learning enthusiasts and people who generally enjoy learning new things would be licking their chops if a proper API for this website released, or if historical instances of the post database accompanied with some more in depth information such as IP geolocation, number of times a request was made to see a thread by client IPs (to see what people click on and lurk in but not necessarily post in), and a couple other things for the entire website were released by the admin.

I can't tell if this is an amazing post-ironic work or if you're retarded

If you don't see this place for the data mining wonderland it is, you're blind. There are millions of unique posters here a day, and someone with admin access literally has their fingertips on information that gives you the rawest look at the human psyche on a plethora of topics. I wouldn't be surprised if different companies like Google or IBM had specific positions where they paid a worker to try to land a position as a mod or admin here so they could get access to more useful data than what you get by just scraping the html or using the shitty APIs.

Sure, why not?

you mean all things you can learn in the world if you surround your self with friends who have friends?

See, being anonymous is nice if you dont feel like you can voice your opinion irl but many people dont feel that way and will be completely candid with you especially if you have a relationship with them, so there's really nothing you can take from Veeky Forums in that respect. You literally just have to be around people to understand how to incite a response, be a quality troll...etc (You are saying the people interested in this stuff are socialogists, buisnesses, and enthusiasts. They all have better respective routes for this sort of information (Colleagues, BNI, Enthusiast specific sites))


You cant even reliably watch trends here because the sarcasm is so recursive so you'll never be able to tell who's *actually* trolling about the new Nintendo and who's not, or even who's interested because many people come here just to get some kicks and will say whatever they think it takes.


I do think there is a wealth of information here, but i dont think we have much use for it. Maybe art, like an AI that reads every post on Veeky Forums and tries to make memes or is a chatbot.

>page 10 has the dirac delta """""""""""function""""""""

yep, its a meme.

I think you're misunderstanding me. The point isn't to learn how to make friends or just see what gets people to respond. I'm talking about finding hard predictors correlated with response. Doing analysis by demographics to find suitable targets for business. Finding general trends which hold across geographic location and culture that are pervasive in the online community.

This goes beyond talking to your friends and seeing what makes Bill laugh. This is finding out what might make an unknown person with given traits buy your product, use your services, vote for you, believe a lie, motivate action by large groups of people, etc.

Yeah i did sort of misunder stand what you wrote.


If that happened i think Veeky Forums would lose it's entire user base. I really dont think user would be happy to hear hiro is selling ip's and "posting profiles". Maybe i'm still missing that point?

To the second part of your post, i would say they already do that it's called focus groups or blind studies. PLUS you cant take anything an anonymous says as something they actually believe, its the nature of the site.

Well the point isn't in evaluating posts to see what people believe. That'd be stupid. You evaluate objective truths about anonymous online communication to see what's correlated and what has predictive power.

You wouldn't read a post and think "user is a unicorn because he said so in this post", you'd be interested in looking at data such as which threads got loaded the most by unique IPs, which phrases trigger positive or negative response among unique IPs (possibly within a certain geographical range), which images in the database are unique and new to the internet, have cell phone meta data attached to them and can be combed to form information about a boards population? What exactly makes it such that one meme gets more unique content than another. What makes something become a meme? What is the power that a meme truly holds in the mind of a person? Can it be crafted and used to influence a person?

Some of this you can already do, but like I said, the APIs suck shit and there's a lot more user information the administration keeps the really juicy info under lock.

Studies on Veeky Forums aren't uncommon.

Nice statistical study but was a mathematical theory that explains why this is the case never studied?

I don't know.
Presumably not. However, it would be interesting to see the backend of the posting system that this place uses and see what makes it tick.

Apply for a mod position.

>implying Hiro lets anybody see this place's underbelly
Mr. Imgonnasellyourinfo keeps all the good data to himself.

It has nothing to do with the way it assigns numbers.

If a board was a single huge thread then the numbers would have the usual distribution.

The reason the numbers are not distributed like that is because instead of one number line, we have like 50 number lines all with gaps. 50 threads open at all times all rolling numbers. The question is really why this system makes that happen.

Most likely just shit engineering.
It's clear that the system isn't autonomous as dubs and certain numbers have been completely disabled in the past.
There's a level of design in the way it works.

I wrote about Veeky Forums in a freshman English comp class. Got an A. But definitely learned to never try to write about this place again.

It's like handing in a paper about which teenage mutant ninja turtle is the coolest. That, or it's the same quaint "Anonymous crowds are capable of barbaric acts because dehumanization" crap that 60 Minutes did better than you.

>Anonymous crowds are capable of barbaric acts because dehumanization
But that's untrue.
It's about the ability to speak without being judged.

If I say "all fucking niggers need to be hung by their necks until they die" on FB, my mother can see it, my friends can see it, and future employers can see it.

Here, it doesn't matter.

On Veeky Forums you see truth and real opinions more often than anywhere else online.
If anything, it's a commentary on how society punishes those who dare to step outside the acceptable limits we impose on ourselves.

Oh. So you're saying you want to write a paper about how Veeky Forums is a place for you to be overtly racist. Well that makes perfect sense. Godspeed, faggot.

I was talking more about /b/ raids and Mitch Henderson there bud. You can go ahead untrigger yourself now.

You missed my point entirely, idiot.
It's not about racism, it's about the ability to be racist.
It's about the ability to say things that wouldn't be acceptable anywhere else.

Why do you think /pol/ is almost entirely right-wing? Is it because they're all just being racist for the kicks, or because right-wing opinions will get you shitlisted almost anywhere else online?

With anonymity comes safety. Whether that means being racist just for the sake of being so, or wanting to discuss taboo things with other like-minded people, it doesn't matter.

If a paper were to be written on this, it'd be on what opinions are most commonly held on places like Veeky Forums and 8ch compared to those held on FB and Twitter.
It'd ask the question "what makes these things more suited to be said anonymously?"

Faggot.

But those haven't been relevant since 2012, pal.

tl;dr

this guy is literally x teir and wants to use memes to control people so have fun arguing with him in circles

who

Everything here, especially pol, should be taken with an equally unhealthy serving of salt. If you cant do that then Veeky Forums will totally ruin your life.

Ironically /pol/ has become an echo chamber where dissent opinions get memed on and ridicules.

>since 2012
Gamergate, fappening, 2016 election, etc. Are all examples of anonymous users being concentrated into a collective consciousness and imposing their will on the internet. Whether or not you agree with morals behind those actions, you can't deny that there is something magic which happens here which takes mob mentality to another level and literally has the power to change the course of history (or at least a nations news cycle for that week). People do and accomplish things here that they would have never been able to plan or even think of on their own.

Memes definitely can control and corrupt thought. Building a predicitive classifier to see what makes a for a high quality mind virus would be pretty worthwhile.

I would argue that those actions stem from a sense of community though.
Familiarity among users through shared opinions and general agreeableness.

You and I are much more likely to do some awful shit together in a raid thread than we would be if a random website opened up tomorrow and encouraged people to do their dirty work there.

Simply by being a poster on this site and being able to mingle with everyone else without sounding like a fucking shill or redditor, you gain a trust that can't be found anywhere else.

Of course you're right about those things, but I think they're a byproduct of "friendship" had between users, not the ability to do whatever the fuck you want to.

Youre right that we dont bend to the will of people who sound like obvious shills or redditors, but youre wrong about trust and friendship. Nobody is friends here. We don't recognize each other as a result of the anonymity. We recognize if someone sounds like they've been here a while and what they say or suggest others do sounds like it goes with our interpretation of the board culture. For all you know that guy posting infographics and telling you to make an account on Twitter and skew media polls got here last Tuesday, just lurked for a day, paid attention to how everyone else talks here, and is playing everyone to the tune of the current hot topic issue.
It doesn't take a genius to realize shills and redditors are hated here, and that throwing in a dash of cynicism, hate, and reaction images will probably lead to very few people questioning if you are a member of the community. Just avoid certain phrases, throw out an insult here and there, post a picture of a smug anime girl and half of this website could potentially be putty in your hands if you know what's what.

I think the kind of people that can do that are far and few between. I've been here since 2006 and newfags stick out like a sore thumb to me.
You think there weren't companies that studied how /pol/ behaves and reacts during the election? Every fucking time, no matter what, shills were found out and ridiculed.
>pic related but take it with a grain of salt
I think there's just something about this community that can't be just absorbed like you say.

forgot the fucking pic

it's not but it won't stop liberal arts retards pursuing a phd from """studying""" Veeky Forums.

this was published.

>tfw you have an "unfortunately rare pepe"

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Saw this study. I think it was done by some people at Columbia or something.