For users who aren't familiar with 4chan - this post describes only one board - /pol/, where you can find hateful posts about every race and religion. 4chan have 30+ boards in total
To add context, every male in my high school went on that site. Pol was just a place crazy people posted. We used to laugh and read eachother dumb copypastas at lunch with gorgonzola cheese rhymes and bad puns.
The average 15yo boy have enough mental hygiene to know everything you read online is false. The website is not a nazi factory.
How many mass shooters had obvious 4chan radicalization roots? Christchurch definitely.
> everything you read online is false
In its own way, this is also poisonous. It enables holocaust denialists and anti-vaxxers: after all, vaccines and holocaust memorials are on the mainstream internet, so they must be false, right?
> The average 15yo boy have enough mental hygiene to know everything you read online is false. The website is not a nazi factory.
The real problem is when the internet leaks and boomers assume everything they read online is true.
Worst part of it all? My parents always told me not to trust what's on the internet, and now I have to tell them 99% of what they see on FB or whatever is AI trash and lies.
Adding even more context /pol/ is about who can be the most edgy edgelord of the hour. I doubt there are more than half a dozen actual racists people on it not counting 4Chan-GPT.
It doesn't even describe /pol/. This is what 4chan thinks of /pol/ but when you actually go there there is a pluriformmity of opinions and it's indeed mostly just about current events.
The biggest good thing that came out of 4chan and 8chan to me is that it made me extremely weary to ever trust second-hand reports about some place and made me better at identifying reports that read like “This person dislikes this place, never visited it, and just reasons together what it's like.”. It also made me try Tumblr. I heard terrible things about it how it was filled with “social justice warriors” and stuff and unsurprisingly, when actually trying it it was nothing like that and just a fairly chill place where people mostly blog about fiction and pornography and share their thoughts. Even when ignoring the filter and logging out and going to what is trending, almost no content is political.
I remember when 8chan went down and all the news reports and forum posts basically said it was basically Stormfront but I was there at the time and it was nothing like that. People just posted cat memes, talked about fiction, talked about life and dating and stuff. One had to dig on very specific boards to find that kind of content.
People talk a lot about “places”, online or offline or even fiction that they clearly have no firsthand experience with, and just reason together about what it's like. They just “expect it to be like that” based on some image they create in their head, or some cherry picked examples they've seen and start to treat it like fact. It's especially weird when it's about something they clearly don't like, some kind of book or television series of which, despite clearly disliking it, they can supposedly tell you exactly what it's like... well, they've never seen it, they just reasoned it together in their head based on some things they read about it and their own expectations.
I frequent 4chan a lot; it's nothing like this description indeed. I don't frequent /pol/ because I found the discussions to be completely empty but I tried it and it was nothing like that. Even within 4chan I read all sorts of things about other boards that are just not true when actually visiting them. /pol/ isn't a far right echo chamber, /r9k/ isn't full of lonely incels, /lgbt/ isn't some social justice warrior hub despite what one might read about those places on other boards.
This is /pol/ focused, yes, but the other boards aren't separate worlds. It's all part of what many call the "alt-right pipeline" and it's subtle and insidious.
For example, many (particularly women) have consumed Candace Owens's content about the Blake Lively / Justin Baldoni saga, just like many followed certain creators with the Amber Heard trial. Both of thse fall squarely on the alt-right pipeline.
So you may start folloing 9gag. Particularly if you're young, you may enjoy being "edgy" but a bunch of that is actually normalizing right-wing views. Even seeking validation on /b/ fits this.
How "subtle and insidious" is it really?
I'd say it is shifting the blame of personal responsability to a website. Me and some of my friends use(d) 4chan and we never fell into the pipeline. To the contrary there is a strong left-wing camarederie. And I'd wager that we recognize subtle right-wing views more easily. One doesn't learn about these views by looking at a twitter screenshot but by engaging them.
We should stop treating right-wing ideology as a mind-parasite. And if we do it anyways, we should accept that some people want to get "infected".
wegfawefgawefg|10 months ago
The average 15yo boy have enough mental hygiene to know everything you read online is false. The website is not a nazi factory.
Philpax|10 months ago
pjc50|10 months ago
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqx4wlynjw5o
How many mass shooters had obvious 4chan radicalization roots? Christchurch definitely.
> everything you read online is false
In its own way, this is also poisonous. It enables holocaust denialists and anti-vaxxers: after all, vaccines and holocaust memorials are on the mainstream internet, so they must be false, right?
GuinansEyebrows|10 months ago
rescbr|10 months ago
The real problem is when the internet leaks and boomers assume everything they read online is true.
Worst part of it all? My parents always told me not to trust what's on the internet, and now I have to tell them 99% of what they see on FB or whatever is AI trash and lies.
LinuxBender|10 months ago
Zr01|10 months ago
[deleted]
Blikkentrekker|10 months ago
The biggest good thing that came out of 4chan and 8chan to me is that it made me extremely weary to ever trust second-hand reports about some place and made me better at identifying reports that read like “This person dislikes this place, never visited it, and just reasons together what it's like.”. It also made me try Tumblr. I heard terrible things about it how it was filled with “social justice warriors” and stuff and unsurprisingly, when actually trying it it was nothing like that and just a fairly chill place where people mostly blog about fiction and pornography and share their thoughts. Even when ignoring the filter and logging out and going to what is trending, almost no content is political.
I remember when 8chan went down and all the news reports and forum posts basically said it was basically Stormfront but I was there at the time and it was nothing like that. People just posted cat memes, talked about fiction, talked about life and dating and stuff. One had to dig on very specific boards to find that kind of content.
People talk a lot about “places”, online or offline or even fiction that they clearly have no firsthand experience with, and just reason together about what it's like. They just “expect it to be like that” based on some image they create in their head, or some cherry picked examples they've seen and start to treat it like fact. It's especially weird when it's about something they clearly don't like, some kind of book or television series of which, despite clearly disliking it, they can supposedly tell you exactly what it's like... well, they've never seen it, they just reasoned it together in their head based on some things they read about it and their own expectations.
I frequent 4chan a lot; it's nothing like this description indeed. I don't frequent /pol/ because I found the discussions to be completely empty but I tried it and it was nothing like that. Even within 4chan I read all sorts of things about other boards that are just not true when actually visiting them. /pol/ isn't a far right echo chamber, /r9k/ isn't full of lonely incels, /lgbt/ isn't some social justice warrior hub despite what one might read about those places on other boards.
jmyeet|10 months ago
For example, many (particularly women) have consumed Candace Owens's content about the Blake Lively / Justin Baldoni saga, just like many followed certain creators with the Amber Heard trial. Both of thse fall squarely on the alt-right pipeline.
So you may start folloing 9gag. Particularly if you're young, you may enjoy being "edgy" but a bunch of that is actually normalizing right-wing views. Even seeking validation on /b/ fits this.
arandomusername|10 months ago
beeflet|10 months ago
No offense, but this just sounds like gossip
attemptone|10 months ago
We should stop treating right-wing ideology as a mind-parasite. And if we do it anyways, we should accept that some people want to get "infected".
bobsmooth|10 months ago
busterarm|10 months ago
You literally are making shit up.
CodeCompost|10 months ago
/s