I thought those didn’t exist! The countdown clock for Emma Watson, which was supposedly a 4chan effort to attack her for her pro-feminism speech at the UN, has now been revealed to be a marketing stunt by a PR company hired to discredit 4chan.
There is more than enough disgusting stuff spread by 4chan to go around, so this company thought that a smart way to protest nude photo thefts was to…accuse them of imaginary nude photo thefts? Way to shoot yourselves in the foot, guys. Actually, I guess those phonies can’t damage their reputation any more — they’re professional trolls.
Hmm that is a risky move by that PR firm. A small group of 4chan members will see this as a challenge and just for kicks perform a tit-for-tat action, probably while kicking themselves for not thinking of trolling the world by launching that clock themselves.
Idiots. Idiots, idiots, idiots. All the legitimate misogyny 4chan has to offer, and you decide to feature something you made up yourself. Not only are you reinforcing the beliefs of misogynists who think all accusations of misogyny are false, you’re making feminists look bad by associating their cause with something so blatantly deceptive.
Doesn’t really matter if it was a false flag op or not. I visited 4chan multiple times after her speech, and they were rooting for the website to be legit, in addition to saying other nasty shit about Emma. It’s really sad when the most positive support you read for a woman who stands up for feminism is “she’s still hot, I’d still fuck her.”
Stop. Just stop. If you’re gonna defend and support feminism then fucking do it openly and in no uncertain terms… Quit FUCKING AROUND…..
Wut? How does that even make sense? Who in the world would pay for such a brain-dead stunt?
And what PR firm with an ounce of sense and experience would actually agree that this was a good idea? One that doesn’t want any other clients ever again is my guess.
Were there not, in fact, a number of comments on 4chan, cheered by other commenters, also threatening this? Seems that 4chan, regardless of whether this website was its work, has attracted a community that revels in these sorts of threats. Lying about your opponent is always a bad strategy. Intentionally tricking your ostensible allies is worse. But what 4chan actually encourages is worst of all.
I’m also pondering the wording of the open letter that replaced the nude photo threat. It says: “the internet NEEDS to be censored”, which is an argument not many, even of 4chan’s critics, would advocate, certainly not in as many words. First you orchestrate this “trick” to make people who dislike 4chan dislike 4chan, then you advocate outright censorship, actually calling it censorship (seriously, what marketing company in their right minds doesn’t know that the word “censorship” is a non-starter in the United States? Even people who advocate censorship don’t call it censorship, that’s bad marketing.
There may well be more to this than has yet been revealed, but I’m not going to speculate on what it is, or whether we should chalk this up to a further conspiracy or to utter incompetence.
I’m hoping that 4chan will announce that the false flag was a false flag, and then that another bunch of yahoos will announce that the 4chan announcement was a false flag of a false flag of a false flag.
I’m calling hoax on this hoax.
http://web.archive.org/ shows that from May of 2000 up until just last month, rantic.com was “Rantic Records” and for most of that time did nothing but forward to https://www.myspace.com/ranticrecords/
Last month it was hacked by 4chan for what was claimed to be retribution for it posting a hoax that GTA V for PC had been cancelled.
http://web.archive.org/web/20140830111838/http://www.rantic.com/
Please.
4Chan members hacked the site.
They posted the fake GTA V rumor.
Then they made it look like they got hacked *because* of that rumor.
A month later they use it to host their attack on Emma and then made up a fake “Rantic Media” to take the blame.
And the news media can’t even be bothered to investigate.
The plot definitely is thickening here. Seems like 4chan’s members are in damage control mode. Just like “notyourshield” and gamergate to begin with.
@PZ #7 and joefulgham #8: OK, I guess I will speculate. We still don’t know if 4chan was behind the whole thing (or some other idiots). We don’t know if “Rantic Marketing” actually exists at all. The Mashable article is utterly lacking in journalistic effort. The whois information for rantic.com:
Registry Registrant ID:
Registrant Name: Registration Private
Registrant Organization: Domains By Proxy, LLC
Do marketing companies routinely hide their domain ownership? It seems like that would just be a company name or some executive of the company.
Rantic seems to be a 4chan controlled entity:
Dammit. Redundancy is what I get for typing slow, I guess.
@Jacob Schimdt: I wouldn’t call it redundant, you added some new information and a new source to look at.
Wonder why the Mashable writer is so entirely incurious about the rotten stench of this story of his?
“…clock has been replaced with a banner that says, “#shutdown4chan” and an open letter to President Barack Obama that claims celebrity publicists hired the marketing company to popularize a call for Internet censorship and the end of 4chan.”
The list of celebrities that sprung to my mind first includes Tom Cruise and John Travolta. There’s history.
But seriously, to popularize a call for internet censorship? Trolls trolling trolls.
I’m still suspicious.
Ah. I posted @15 without refreshing (oops). I was responding to the original report about it being a false flag. Looks like my suspicion was warranted.
BusinessInsider via WHTM:
So the false flag is a false flag?
Immature assholes in it for the lulz.
Goodness, it’s trolls all the way down, ennit?
Who Cares @ 1:
You might want to start clicking on links provided in the OP before you comment.
There’s no way that someone actually trying to shut down 4chan would say, in so many words, that “the internet NEEDS to be censored”.
Just saw this alleged revelation on Reddit. Now it’ll be in the consciousness of the dudebros.
Related or not, 4chan is mad because moot fired all the new mods and appointed new ones “who are sympathetic to the SJWs” (per a user on Reddit), resulting in bans for objectionable posts. Perhaps 4chan is doing this to itself because they’re pissed off.
*fired all the old mods and appointed new ones.
They’re also threatening to leave en masse on Oct 1. I’ll believe it when I see it.
From LicoriceAllsort’s link
WTF? When did “I’m going to be a total arsehole to everyone” become an ideology?
bargearse:
You don’t know many conservatives or libertarians, then?
Moggie@26
Touche. I suppose it’s my bad for expecting better of people.
Wait… is it even possible to discredit 4chan? Spending a couple of minutes there should do that well enough.
lolwut
Doesn’t matter who did it, or whether it was for the lulz. Threatening to release nude photos of Emma Watson still has the effect of silencing women. It’s still misogyny. It’s still an instance of Lewis’ Law.
@Licorice #24
They’ve been threatening to leave many times a year since I was a 4chan user (c. 2007). They won’t leave because they have nowhere else to go. Few websites would tolerate the same kind of garbage that flows through 4chan (especially /b/) on a daily basis.
Does it really matter who did it or why? The point is that a threat, fake or not, should never have been deemed in any way acceptable by anyone.
Here’s an article about 4chan’s recent dissatisfaction with moot. They have a screenshot of a post from “[what] seems to be an older, more socially conscious Moot” from 9/18:
The linked post is a comment he made in May 2013:
He’s threatened to pull the plug on 4chan a lot over the years, every time he gets fed up with its bullshit. He tries to genuinely scare users into begging him not to, then uses the opportunity to reestablish his ground rules for what he will and won’t put up with. I’d guess that the recent FBI investigation after the nude celebrity leaks must be wearing on his patience. And, dunno, at ~26 yrs old maybe he is starting to mature beyond 4chan.
They’re going to massively reduce the strain on 4chan’s infrastructure to cost Moot money? That’s goddamn hilarious.
Could someone let me know if 4chan is merely part of a much larger commercial enterprise? I’m genuinely confused as to point in LicoriceAllsort’s link that 4chan brings moot $150k/yr, but is barely sufficient to cover costs.
The two options I see are:
(1) Less profitable sites piggy-back off 4chan,
(2) 4chan only exists due to moot’s generosity, and these idiots are going to walk off into the sunset and realize they have nowhere else to go.
If #2, BWAHAHAHAHA.,
gog @ 31
Yes, and this one probably won’t be successful, either. They also frequently rail against moot, as you know. What seems different to me—as a very casual, sometimes-observer of the mess that is /b/—about this time is that moot seems to have backed up his threats with some big changes to the mod team. While it likely won’t kill /b/ outright, if it continues, it may shift the community in palpable ways. What are your thoughts?
Regarding where they’ll go, reportedly many of the old mods (per reddit) and users (source) have migrated to 8chan and set up shop there.
Anyhow, to ensure this stays relevant to the OP, Rantic Media, the PR company that was mentioned (but not named) by PZ, has 4chan’s fingerprints all over it. 4chan is palpably unhappy, seemingly more so recently, so there’s a motive to smear 4chan. “Rantic Media” is an anagram for “Incite Drama”, so it could all be for the lulz. Or to cause trouble for moot, with or without the explicit purpose of shutting the whole place down. Or all of this speculation is just incorrect, who knows.
To someone else’s point, this is all still incredibly shitty for Emma Watson, who’s been caught in the crossfire. It’s awful that this distracts from her terrific talk at the UN.
Damn, this is false flagception.
Come on, folks. If you would be mad at someone lumping all atheists together as misogynists because of Thunderfoot, don’t lump all of the thousands and thousands of visitors to 4chan together the same way because of a sub-population.
I wish people wouldn’t paint all of 4chan as /b/. 4chan has 60+ different sub-boards devoted to a variety of topics and interests, of which /b/ is just one. Every board has its own differing culture and community of regulars. Most of them look upon /b/ with disdain. “Go back to /b/” has traditionally been a common retort throughout 4chan when someone has said something particulary stupid or hateful, although these days, /pol/ (the politics board) has easily usurped /b/ as official cesspool of the site. My point is, a great many people use the interest boards on 4chan to discuss video games, comics, music, anime, and so on without ever stepping a digital foot in /b/.
I have no problem with this. Go for it.
Fuck ’em. Fuck every goddamn one. Drag them off their computers and make them break rocks until they’ve paid back their debt to society for allowing them free reign to exist.
/trollsallthewaydown
A subpopulation that is enormous and one of the driving forces of the site that (anecdata) causes all my friends who visit 4-chan admit the place is a cesspool of assholery?
PatrickG
(2) is essentially the case, however the walk off will be minor and temporary.
I strongly suspect there may be some sort of hidden financial support of the site from somewhere (via donations/bitcoin).
Helliot @ #40, you know what I wish? I wish that people wouldn’t post completely tone-deaf defences of 4chan, failing even to acknowledge the especially shitty thing that’s been tacitly condoned by the mere fact that a space capable of hosting the kind of vile shit we’re talking about even exists.
You have not earned my sympathy for yourself (if I am correct in presuming you to be a 4chan user) by failing to mention the threats against Emma Watson and the complete fuckery that is /b/ by defending a place that hosts /b/ because people on /pol/ are worse and people on the rest of 4chan aren’t all bad and there exists a rich community. So the fuck what?
I would encourage people to continue to conflate a part of 4chan with the whole if it weren’t so goddamned juvenile and entirely beside the point.
How much do you care about 4chan being conflated with /b/? If it’s enough to respond to this comment, it’s way too much
Strewth & helliot
How’s about you try cleaning the cesspit in your backyard, instead of complaining about the neighbours being nasty about the smell?
@Licorice #36
I haven’t visited or observed 4chan in about five years, so I can’t speculate as to what will happen and be accurate at all. I think the old /b/ joke comes in to play: “Remember when /b/ was good?” “/b/ was never good.”
@ Strewth, helliot
Addressing a community with members that do shitty things as a group is appropriate. Making a group feel bad about allowing some of it’s members to do shitty things is not only totally valid, but implicitly assumes that not all of them are bad (or at least able to worry about social proximity to people acting like psychopaths and sociopaths).
We talk about how the satholic church looks bad because of what it lets priests get away with and that does not assume all catholics are just like them. But the shame by association matters.
Thomathy
That’s cool. I wasn’t looking for sympathy. Just wanted to express an opinion. And I didn’t mention the threats against Emma Watson, because that’s not something I’ve seen on 4chan.
Why? Because you say so? Because you’re the supreme arbiter of things worth caring about? Get bent.
Daz
I’ve e-mailed moot on several occasions expressing negative sentiment about some of the more odious parts of the site. Beyond that, there’s not much I can do. And it may be there’s not much moot can do either. It should be noted that things like campaigns of harassment and such are against the site rules; people do get banned and threads promoting “raids” get deleted. The problem is that the 4chan userbase is very large and the moderation staff is small and all-volunteer. Throughly moderating a board that receives the volume of posts that /b/ does is an exercise in frustration.
helliot
Then vote with your feet. There are other social media available which do seem to be able to operate without the extremes of hateful behaviour seen there.
Daz
I’m not going to abandon communities I enjoy because they share a server with other, less agreeable ones. People post plenty of hateful shit on Facebook and Twitter, but I bet a lot of you still use those sites.
Helliot …the picture you’re painting of yourself as a member of 4chan is doing more to undermine any notion someone might have had that 4chan can host a safe, productive community space than anyone conflating /b/ with 4chan as a whole.
And no, the amount you care about 4chan being conflated with /b/ is not an arbitrary measure of mine, but a reflection on yourself and your apparent ignorance and unwillingness to self-educate. For numerous reasons, it is literally beside the point that anyone may conflate 4chan with /b/. You’re not being aware of the smearing of Emma Watson on 4chan is a funny thing, because that’s what all of this is about. And 4chan as a whole, despite your milquetoast defence, is among the deepest bowels of the internet. It says very little good about 4chan as a whole that /pol/ is regarded as more of a cesspool than /b/ by 4chan users.
So, yeah, you might take that implicit suggestion of mine and quite it. If you’re concerned about the image of 4chan and of its users, this is hardly the place to make a stand (which would require some action other than digging, anyhow).
helliot #50
They don’t merely share a server. They share a name, a structure and a management. To take an example, if Thunderfoot had been allowed to continue posting what he was posting on FTB, in spite of objections by users, I would not now be a reader or commenter on any of the blogs hosted by that network. And I highly doubt I’d be the only person who left in protest.
Moot could make it a members-only site, with revocable posting rights. They could institute a harsher, less seemingly whim-driven moderation policy.
And this is a large part of the reason why I don’t use facebook and seldom bother with twitter. That said, both of those sites do at least attempt to clean up the most extremely hateful content. (Which is not to say that I don’t have problems with their priorities in regards to such matters.)
Thomathy
Oh no, no part of 4chan is going to meet this community’s definition of a “safe space.” I never meant to imply that. Even the /lgbt/ board is full of irreverent and “offensive” discourse. Not trying to convert anyone here. I literally just wanted to post an opinion about something that annoys me. People replied. I replied back. So it goes.
Perhaps the fact that I’m not aware of it goes to show that it’s not as prominent as you may think?
#40 helliot
Still OK with it?
@helliot
Ok, you’ve expressed your annoyance. You’ve indicated you feel no responsibility for what happens on those parts of 4chan that you don’t bother to frequent. You have no plans to try and effect change. By any definition, you simply don’t care.
So, really, you’re just here to whine about how people should understand you better. Noted.
Also this:
The correct reaction to immoral behaviour is not “Go do that out of my site so that I can ignore it.” It is “Don’t do that.”
Helliot @ #53, Oh, what a relief! (*bolts suddenly upright from the chaise*) And please, it’s not as though I’ve never browsed through 4chan boards. I was not in the slightest worried that you were trying to convert anyone. But it is odd that you’re annoyed by broad brushes and ever so cute that the words ‘irreverent’ and ‘”offensive'” show up in your comment one with scare quotes and the other without. I guess someone who frequents 4chan as a user would be doubtful about what might constitute offence.
It shows no such thing. You’re a single data point and you came in here commenting on your annoyance with broad brushes on an article with links to the subject at hand and as much access to 4chan as anyone. Spare me.
shikko
Yes? I’m not going to pin the hateful actions of a few dozen on two billion Christians. That’s absurd. Comparing the WBC to /b/ isn’t even a good example for the point you’re trying to make. WBC is tiny compared to all of Christianity, while /b/ is the largest board on 4chan.
PatrickG
That’s pretty fair, I guess. Never claimed I was doing anything great.
helliot
Congratulations. You’ve succeeded in not doing anything great.
Yeah, I use Facebook. And when people say “Here’s some fucked up shit about Facebook”, I say “Yeah, that’s fucked up. I’ll join you in lodging a complaint.” What I DON’T say is “Wa-ah! Wa-ah! I love Facebook! You’re painting us all with a broad brush! I’m a good person! Why are you persecuting me?!”
So, there you go, champ.
I assumed you couched this passive-aggressively because even you’re dimly aware that this is about the dumbest fucking thing you could say on a blog full of atheists/skeptics/people who generally know how reality works.
Or anything at all. Fuck, now I have an even lower opinion of 4chan users. Before, I just thought they were fucking assholes. Now I know they’re whiny dimwits as well.
I’m really at a loss here:
1) Shows no indication of giving a fuck about people harassing women.
2) Does give a fuck about people referring to some shithole as the extra-shitty room in the back corner of that shithole, as if anyone except the shithole residents themselves are supposed to give a fuck about that.
Yeah, it’s a tough call for the likes of me. Do we have a Supreme Arbiter of Things Worth Caring About around here? Surely, we need an authority like that to make such a judgment call.
Or perhaps you don’t know as much about 4chan as you think you do. Lots of possibilities with a sample set of 1.
Then you are part of the problem. The participate is to condone. To condone is to enable.
@62
I’m sorry, did I make an insufficient show of social justice piety? I think that harassing women (or anyone) is BAD. I admit that there is a great deal of vile, misogynistic, and racist trash on certain 4chan boards. I do not however, buy into the concept of guilt or shame by proximity. The boards I participate in aren’t like that, and so I do not feel responsible for the ones that are. And yeah, this is kind of an issue that may not be so relevant to anyone here, but hey, I saw a post about 4chan on Pharyngula, and so I decided to weigh in on 4chan.
@helliot
“Go back to
/b/4chan.” FTFYYou’ve got problems there. Fix ’em
I disagree with this. I don’t think helliot needs to give up 4chan. It’s even possible that the parts of 4chan helliot spends time at are the opposite of the darker corners.
But if helliot is uninterested in changing the less savoury face of 4chan, then helliot should not complain about 4chan’s reputation.
You know, 4chan doesn’t have to host /b/. They could have, and enforce, decent community standards if they wanted to.
How about if users of 4chan pretty much are essentially judged by everyone outside of 4chan almost entirely on the content of /b/, instead of defending the honor of 4chan and saying “we’re not all like /b/, really we’re not, we don’t do that on MY part of 4chan”, what if users of 4chan said, “hey, we’re sick of being judged based on /b/ and that everyone thinks we’re synonymous with it. You need to clean it up or get rid of it or we’ll stop using the site until you do.”
Instead we have users of 4chan (maybe it’s just /b/?) getting mad and threatening to leave when the host threatens to implement some kind of standards.
I have visited 4chan and even posted there a few times, but almost all my activity was in the artwork or /ic/ section. I have still seen some oppressive fuckwaddery over there. One /ic/ poster asked if I was a “n*gger” because of all the African characters in my art while another teased me for “loving the dark meat”. And then there was the time when one /ic/ thread I started inadvertently degenerated into a whole racist mud-slinging fest. I can attest from these experiences with 4chan that the vile elements are not all confined to /b/ or /pol/ but have spilled into other areas of the site.
The scariest thing about 4chan is that even if you would prefer to dismiss it as an insignificant cesspool not worth bothering with, they actually do have a widespread influence on Internet culture. For example, the current “My Little Pony” fandom that has stretched all over the place had its roots in 4chan. Underestimate these guys’ ability to infect the entire Internet at your own risk.
helliot:
Why am I having a hard time taking helliot at their word? What is it about the scare quotes and snarl words that seems to be sending a signal to my bleeding heart librul brain…
Speaking of communities addressing the shitty behaviour of people within it, is no one going to address Ally Fogg’s “What about the men?” dismissal of the HeForShe campaign? He presently seems far more concerned with explaining how his logic is unassailable rather than remark on any of the MRA-like commenters his actions have drawn out.
You could stop defending the fucking site, and its users for starters. Even if you don’t have the decency to leave it yourself.
I don’t read the comments on Ally’s blog since he has indicated his disinterest in defumigating the slyme, but I occasionally read his articles — and even for him, this is a really poor effort at recentering and derailing the campaign by asking, “What’s in it for ME?” (Answer: helping women and girls helps everyone.) The word pettifogging seems only too apt for self-styled Ally on this occasion — his objection to a single phrase of five words is petty in the extreme.
You’re right about that, Matthew. I always figured Ally’s purpose here was to attract the ‘pitters so they’d leave others alone, kinda like a trap crop.
Does it even matter what their game is? What they did is reprehensible, full stop.
@ Matthew – There were a few of us giving it a shot over there. I was respectful … It devolved pretty quickly though, as you read.
I remember visiting 4chan from time to time and seeing a community with a lot of ill-behaved morons and a lot of committed fans of various interests. Over time the lax moderation has led to the intemperate morons taking over more and more of the signal. So I almost never go there any more. I do understand that there will be people who are part of various fannish communities feeling powerless to change the wider 4chan culture, but it’s not the only bulletin board service out there. So move.
You forgot /sp/, which has always been full of racism as far as I can remember. Or /vg/, which is chock full of the same bullshit that infects the so-called gamer culture. Or the porn boards, where racism and misogyny are used as punctuation marks…
I made one comment early on, but saw it was pointless really.
My first and last comment on that blog, I think.
I mean seriously, what was it, something along the lines of “she didn’t mention violence against men one of the 5 times she mentioned violence, so I’m not gonna sign it!!!” or whatever?
The only word I can think of is pathetic.
Well, whiny too, but that may be impolitic. So pretend I didn’t just type that.
The real question must be why the so-called “legitimate” media ran with this story, when there was never any particular reason to believe it. The answer, of course, is that even a fake story about nude celebrity photos is good titillation material. And which editor would dare to be the only one who simply ignores a story that everybody else is reporting on with blaring headlines?
csrster #80
Normally, I’d agree with your cynicism unreservedly. There has, though, been a slow trickle of stories in the media pointing out online harassment of women, where no such titillation-opportunity was present. I think it’s just becoming too damn noticeable and obvious to ignore.
What I find disgusting about the fake call to censor the internet is it’s trying to equate a person’s right to privacy with censorship. They speak as if the community has a right, nay, a duty to rifle through people’s private photo collections and publicize them, and it’s censorship if they aren’t allowed to do so.
Naturally, a lot of these ‘private information wants to be free’ people hypocritically rail against the government rifling though their private collections. It’s bad enough to think about it in gender-neutral terms, but the fact that we’re talking about women’s private photos certainly plays a huge part in allowing these people to get away with diminishing their rights.
Matthew Trevor
Seriously. I know commenters here are discussing it and commenting on his blog is pointless, but really FTB bloggers should be calling it out. I’m not seeing anything so far and if it doesn’t happen, that’s enough bullshit for people to start wondering about supporting FTB in general. Fine, keep the odious fucker because “you don’t have to tote the party line to be here” but don’t fucking ignore problematic bullshit your token Anti-Feminist Dissenter puts out. It’s like they kept Thunderfoot Lite because “hey, he did great anti-creationist videos!” Ugh.
@7: sounds a bit like the beginning of an infinite regression there. :) I thot atheism eschewed such concepts.