Rolling With the Punches On the Internet
I’ve gotten old enough that I’m tired of being defensive. It’s not that things don’t rile me up, but it’s not the way to go on the internet for endurance and for the distance.
Perhaps it is the inner /b/-tard inside of me, but I really enjoy the day of ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWER. And 90% of it is because the lot of them decided to drop by my blog yesterday as a part of some kind of meme chain. Has anyone else been affected?
I normally don’t (actually, pretty much never) browse any part of 4chan save for being linked to it from some online chat place, so after realizing something is up when a trickling stream of 4chan-esqe users leaving the same comments on the blog. A quick look in /b/ told me the rest.
I think as much people may be disgusted with 4chan, it’s really a good standard to gauge how ready you are to handle your stereotypical male, 18-34 demographic audience. It’s like learning how to deal with trolls who do so not out of vendetta but out of social engineering and “the lulz.”
Does that count as a part of this? More on that in a later post hopefully.
The common mistakes is to get hung up with what these guys may have already done. They may have staged an invasion to your domain on the internet; pushed you and your regular users out of your comfort zones; exposed you to obscene language and pictures; and generally cause disruption, logical ones and physical ones. Maybe they pissed you off and got under your skin.
But to react on that is to really, well, LOSE. It’s a true sign that you are really not any better than they are, even if in reality you have done nothing wrong. And the same principle applies to their teasing–it’s not about what you’ve done, it’s about what you’re going to do. Indeed, we do not live in the past, but the present.
Clearly the average /b/-tard doesn’t work on the same cause-effect patterns one would expect of people living in the real world. Yet the principle of causality still applies; the goal just to figure out which rules matters. You don’t have to play by their rules just because they don’t play with yours, but why be a stickler to rules when the whole point behind them is to engineer people’s behavior? It is more productive to simply understand and predict their behavior and act accordingly.
And usually by this stage, if you have realized this, you’ve already done all you needed to do.
I guess this is why there was this article today in the news. Clockshow needs more indie cred. Tagging it with Urotsukidoji should help amirite?
Being a 4channer for a good many years have def taught me the value of taking things at face value and not letting a troll ruin your day. Strangely enough its kinda help translate to real life for me as well. You just can’t take other peoples opinions and actions (that aren’t life threatening of course) to heart. Some times you just got to be in the moment and enjoy.
Now go out throw reason to the curb and FIGHT THE POWAH!!!
Being a /m/an has taught me the value of being thick skinned and thankful that I have the power to delete. I can tolerate things to a point, but I have no quibble about using modly powers. Roll with it if you have to but if you can do something about it then by all means and any means fix it to a degree of satisfaction. 4chan is the closest thing we will ever get to anarchy and as such I think it is a great way to measure humans when they can don the mask of anonymous. 4chan is pretty much a picture of internet culture and it does us little good ot rage about it. Trolls will come and go you can either toll harder or ignore, not much else you can do about it.
Like Sherman said, “If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking.” I am sure the same can be applied to internet in general.
FIGHT THE POWAH!!!!!!!!
lulz I remember my first day on 4chan I fell for a troll HARD and once this had been brought to my attention, I’ve never fallen for one since, lol. I love /a/ - as much as people bash it there are a lot of really experienced anime fans on there with meaningful opinions and at times (usually 8PM+) they are really helpful. If you realize they don’t really hate, they just love harshly, it’s a lot of fun.
I learned this type of thing listening Howard Stern years ago. He had one of his cronies heckling people at either the Grammies or the VMAs. Michael Stipe got all uppity and looked like an idiot. Steven Tyler rolled with it, got some laughs, and looked like a total pro.
I’d be flattered a little if my blog attracted that sort of attention, but I’d also be a bit annoyed that my comments were being spammed (I love TTGL as much as the next guy, but that would play merry hell with my sidebar)! At the end of the day, I’ll never understand 4chan humour but can let it slide as long as it’s just some netheads having a laugh and isn’t malicious. It looks like you have some comment deleting to do, which is a nuisance; on the other hand it’s not as if your blog was seriously hacked or anything, which isn’t so bad.
In order to play along, yeah, you do have to do something. But that’s not a big deal. If people are going to bother to click on a link and write a comment, the least I can do is moderate them :)
I’d been going to FARK since before 4chan existed, and that worked pretty well as training for identifying trolls. It was always amusing to see people fall for a troll and then after realizing they were trolled, turn the trolling into a meme to use on other people.
(”I work for this company so I am getting a kick out of these replies”)
(”I hit it. Hard. You see, my friend…”)