This is pretty much what happened. In the late 00’s stormfront infiltrated the mod team and used the site’s mostly invisible moderation to platform nazi shit while shutting down counterarguments and opposing viewpoints, with predictable results.
It was always horrible, but it used to be horrible in nonspecific and often intentionally contradictory ways. Now it’s horrible in a small number of very specific and coherent ways.
I remember reading about Stormfront specifically targeting the chans, sensing that their alienated, socially maladjusted audience could be receptive to their message
Yep. I feel it’s also important to recognize the role Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica played in defining the science of manipulating maladjusted young men when they astroturfed gamergate into existence. Really wrote the playbook for turning 4chan into your personal army.
Fuck, Chanology was probably an op too, a test run for everything after.
Was that the anti-Scientology thing? I kinda thought that just took off because it was easy feel good activism that made edgy nerds feel important
IIRC many 4channers thought that and the other """"good""""" Anonymous stunts were deeply cringe and damaged their reputation as tough guys that call each other slurs while bullying kids into suicide and watching snuff videos on their cartoon image board
Yeah, it was, and yeah, they did. Given everything that has transpired since I’m coming around to the idea that it was an op. 4chan, without permanent identity or user reputation, was an ideal testbed for mass social manipulation on a scale unimaginable in the 1960’s and 70’s.
Chanology as a movement wasn’t very successful, but as a proof of concept it was incredible. To get more out of the next thing, they pushed the community to become more receptive to ideological messaging, then re-ran the experiment (gamergate). Gamergate was a huge success, and now we see the same tactics repeated over and over again across the internet. Take a vitriolic and alienated community, radicalize them, use their newfound ideology to make them pick up a cause and fight for it.
It was weev and his whole crew, wasn't it? I distinctly remember a turning point on the chans where they hated everyone in a south park misanthrope kind of way to praising weev and hating everyone in a klan sort of way.
I wouldn’t be surprised, but weev was never on my radar. He was just a weird and shitty figure popping up in the periphery from time to time, which I think is how he wanted it.
This is pretty much what happened. In the late 00’s stormfront infiltrated the mod team and used the site’s mostly invisible moderation to platform nazi shit while shutting down counterarguments and opposing viewpoints, with predictable results.
It was always horrible, but it used to be horrible in nonspecific and often intentionally contradictory ways. Now it’s horrible in a small number of very specific and coherent ways.
I remember reading about Stormfront specifically targeting the chans, sensing that their alienated, socially maladjusted audience could be receptive to their message
Yep. I feel it’s also important to recognize the role Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica played in defining the science of manipulating maladjusted young men when they astroturfed gamergate into existence. Really wrote the playbook for turning 4chan into your personal army.
Fuck, Chanology was probably an op too, a test run for everything after.
Was that the anti-Scientology thing? I kinda thought that just took off because it was easy feel good activism that made edgy nerds feel important
IIRC many 4channers thought that and the other """"good""""" Anonymous stunts were deeply cringe and damaged their reputation as tough guys that call each other slurs while bullying kids into suicide and watching snuff videos on their cartoon image board
Yeah, it was, and yeah, they did. Given everything that has transpired since I’m coming around to the idea that it was an op. 4chan, without permanent identity or user reputation, was an ideal testbed for mass social manipulation on a scale unimaginable in the 1960’s and 70’s.
Chanology as a movement wasn’t very successful, but as a proof of concept it was incredible. To get more out of the next thing, they pushed the community to become more receptive to ideological messaging, then re-ran the experiment (gamergate). Gamergate was a huge success, and now we see the same tactics repeated over and over again across the internet. Take a vitriolic and alienated community, radicalize them, use their newfound ideology to make them pick up a cause and fight for it.
It was weev and his whole crew, wasn't it? I distinctly remember a turning point on the chans where they hated everyone in a south park misanthrope kind of way to praising weev and hating everyone in a klan sort of way.
I wouldn’t be surprised, but weev was never on my radar. He was just a weird and shitty figure popping up in the periphery from time to time, which I think is how he wanted it.