Pretentious Crap

[Mr. Tea]

They also, trying to prove how hardcore they are, often do things like calling up and tormenting families of suicide victims. Srsly, forget "lulz" culture, it's just a new side-effect of selfish middle class kids getting warped by the depersonalization of modern communications and being raised by tv.

I read about this last thing, it's just inhumanly cruel and repellent. I think the parents ended up having to move house to escape it. I guess it's come to the point where it's probably best not to put emotionally sensitive stuff like that on the internet unless you have a hide of adamantium-reinforced concrete.

 

[vimothy]

Chris -- Thanks for that post. Some good points. Will try to respond, but not possible to do so at length right now.

Mr Tea -- The suicide story is actually quite convoluted. But I can't link to any of these sites from work. Alarm bells will go off.

And of course /b/ and/or anonymous are not undifferentiated, not without emergent characteristics, attributes, personalities, conflicts... /b/ is not an amorphous mass. It is in the midst of a civil war. I don't think "just a bunch of bored kids" is a particularly useful analysis.

But it seems to me that the analogy with King Mob is apt, and that Anonymous, under the (in the value-neutral sense of the word) pretence of anti-authoritarianism, can actually shade into fascism at times. You don't necessarily abandon your animal/human nature when you pick up the anonymous mask -- rather it seems that anonymity pushes the human animal -- with all its attendent impulses -- closer to the surface.

EDIT: So I suppose the question is this: Is King Mob less pretentious than Oedipus? Are your base desires more authentic than the super-egoic injunction to smoothed-out and friction-less social interaction?

 

[josef k.]

Srsly, forget "lulz" culture, it's just a new side-effect of selfish middle class kids getting warped by the depersonalization of modern communications and being raised by tv.[/QUOTE]

I partly agree - and I think that is where the interest lies. A lot of the time when people talk about the internet it's still in these utopian/Habermasian terms - and I think the empirical fact of how internet culture is developing is more interesting than that.

My idea would be: What if the kinds of aggressions which the "anonymous" label allows for became completely pervasive. The range of possible statements and actions would be reduced dramatically as people take defensive steps against it. This, I think, would be interesting, especially with reference to the pretentious and condescending mode of political comment and criticism which is still dominant today. What if it became psychologically impossible for people like Polly Toynbee, for instance, to continue to act as government spokesmen? This would change the whole game of politics in serious ways.

 

[nomadthethird]

Can someone explain to me what "Anonymous" is? I think I'm missing something.

I mean, is this a 4channel phenomenon I'm not familiar with or are we just talking about anonymous posters online?

 

[vimothy]

Josef -- Agreed. Anonymous is not particularly interesting in and of itself, but the possibilities inherent in the emergence of digital institutions certainly are.

 

[nomadthethird]

I partly agree - and I think that is where the interest lies. A lot of the time when people talk about the internet it's still in these utopian/Habermasian terms - and I think the empirical fact of how internet culture is developing is more interesting than that.

My idea would be: What if the kinds of aggressions which the "anonymous" label allows for became completely pervasive. The range of possible statements and actions would be reduced dramatically as people take defensive steps against it. This, I think, would be interesting, especially with reference to the pretentious and condescending mode of political comment and criticism which is still dominant today. What if it became psychologically impossible for people like Polly Toynbee, for instance, to continue to act as government spokesmen? This would change the whole game of politics in serious ways.

What I would say to this is that in the U.S. we already kind of have this "anonymous" culture at work in our real lives, and it does have consequences. Some people think this is why we have so much violence here.

Few people here know their neighbors, nobody feels that they "answer" to others in the same way I've seen in some other countries/cultures I've visited.

In NYC it's like living anonymously, in throngs of people, where no one cares at all who you are or what you do.

Seems like the internet is an amplification of this but it's not entirely weird to me...

 

[nomadthethird]

haha what is this? a popularity contest? i want to talk about some things that i'm interested in, and this place sometimes is more like a playground with snot nosed toddlers.



nothing. but there are different views on how much food came from hunting -- according to Fischer and his sources, and many others like i cited upthread, significantly less than half.



the only times i have mentioned "ideologies" was in connection to our society's (distorted, i believe) depiction of our ancestors.

you are willfully misconstruing and falsifying again. according to Fischer, band-level societies were GATHERER/hunters. IN THAT ORDER. with gathering being much more important than previously thought.

so, just as i predicted, this lecture which cites many peer reviewed works, all supportting my position, contrary to previously held notions and challenging "conventional wisdom", did nothing to cause as much as a mere acknowledgement of the existence of other valid points of view.

willful ignorance, dishonesty, and closed mindedness wins the day. again. surprise!

Fischer called the Dobe hunter-gatherers in that lecture. He did not use the term "gatherer-hunters" and he didn't even talk about meat consumption!

So if he didn't say it in the lecture, I assume you must have read this or heard it somewhere else. Please, do, give us links to Fischer's work on the meat eating habits of band-level societies! Thanks.

 

[nomadthethird]

however this is a fair point -- but i would think that any kind of permanent leadership/centralized power necessarily means subjugation, servitude, and slavery. and with all of this comes all the rest: war, state sanctioned violence on a big scale, etc.

Those things all existed before centralized power in the form of government did.

There is nothing in Fischer lecture that indicates that band-level societies were non-violent. Nothing.

What he's describing is a sort of "tribal" life that doesn't include a certain sort of leadership, which he had a term for but I forget what it is. Self-actualized? Something to do with those leaders needing to constantly prove their worth or ability.

There is nothing in the lecture, not one thing, that suggests we did not hunt, that we did not eat meat as often as possible, that our metabolisms are not ketogenic, that we were non-violent before capitalism, or that meat eating habits have anything to do with slavery, violence, war, etc.

 

[Chris]

I don't think "just a bunch of bored kids" is a particularly useful analysis.

But it seems to me that the analogy with King Mob is apt, and that Anonymous, under the (in the value-neutral sense of the word) pretence of anti-authoritarianism, can actually shade into fascism at times. You don't necessarily abandon your animal/human nature when you pick up the anonymous mask -- rather it seems that anonymity pushes the human animal -- with all its attendent impulses -- closer to the surface.
.

yeah, I'm also not usually fond of simple, reductive explanations of anything either, especially for things as messy as social issues, with all the biological, economic, media, marketing, moral, and familial factors to take into account. /b/ is what it is for a lot of reasons, some very specific to it's particular beginnings (I'll get into that in another post I think). But as far as the kind of anti-authority pretence, I think it's for the most part to do with the meaningless and powerless feeling that suburban white kids have. You'd think they have everything, but that's the problem, there life is all entertainment. Their sociopathy is a result I think of lazy parenting and especially marketing that tries to appeal to people's insecurities, envy, competition, etc. That message that you should have it all right now, for free, why don't you, loser? It's really fucked these kids up. And as far as the anonymity being what has allowed their worst, subconscious desires and emotions to come out... definitely... but there are a lot of boards that are anonymous. Even a screenname is relatively anonymous, why 4chan? Again, I'll get into some of those factors in a later post, but part of it, I hate to say, is because the mods there, who are teenagers themselves (the board was started by a 15 year old anime fan) have just kind of rolled with it and allowed the worst aspects and elements to snowball and become trends. So people seem to almost be acting a little bit worse than they might have "naturally" because it's the norm there. The potential was there, but it should have been diverted.

One distinction I'd like to point out, is that one time, I remember, on Ytmnd, one of the kids who made sites there committed suicide. So Max, the creator of the site, posted the news and a little tribute. Did all the kids, who are very similar to the 4chan kids demographically, turn it into a joke? No, they all were very sad and sympathetic and offered their condolences and respect. And I think it's because Max hasn't let the worst aspects there, as juvenile as the site can be, completely take over. Whereas, on 4chan... Do you remember recently that teenage kid, I think in England, who was threatening to jump off a building? Really sad story. Basically, as the cops tried to talk him down, a crowd of people, some teenagers, gathered below and actually started taunting him and telling him to jump. I guess they helped him make up his mind, because he did. And disgustingly, instead of being horrified or remorseful, the kids in the crowd were laughing and darting past the police lines to take pictures.

When I saw that, it reminded me of /b/ culture and I figured it was probably kids from there, or products of the same cultural symptom. So I stopped on /b/, and they had this thread about it, and EVERYBODY was laughing, trying to act all nihilistic and cold, saying it was the funniest thing they ever heard. The 1 or 2 people who were horrified were met with "moralfag", or lame Darwinist shit about how life is meaningless, let the weak die, his parents were failures. All I could think to post was: "Remember this. Some day, you are going to be really depressed, or really down on your luck, and no one will help you out. Or you'll have a kid some day, who'll be tormented by his/her peers, talking about suicide. THEN you'll remember and regret this." I think seeing that made me realize that moral relativity just isn't going to cut it culturally, and theory that doesn't take intangible but important factors like love into it's equations is useless.

 

[Chris]

EDIT: So I suppose the question is this: Is King Mob less pretentious than Oedipus? Are your base desires more authentic than the super-egoic injunction to smoothed-out and friction-less social interaction?

That's a good question. I think it's easy to want to romanticize the "natural" self, especially if you're of a liberal mind a lot of us. To want to believe that we would all be good to each other if we had total freedom of expression, like that's the end-all and there's nothing else in life life, like say, other people. I'm definitely guilty of putting too much value on self sometimes.

Personally, I'm coming to the impression that it's lazy and frankly, dumb, to try to reduce humans to these instinctive animals who are just trying to get by, and brush off any cruel behavior as just a survival mechanism. We're also intelligent, and while we have the potential for profound selfishness and cruelty, we also have the ability, unlike animals, to feel empathy. We just don't have any excuse, especially now, for acting like sociopaths. Which is why I have kind of a "what is the real self anyway?" attitude. Free will, natural desires, creativity, compromises, sacrifices, are all a part of the creation of the self and society.

 

[vimothy]

chris, I have a question (I only discovered /b/ last month): Why is /b/ the vehicle? Are other boards unmoderated or is /b/ somehow unique in terms of what's allowed? The internets are governed by Google search engines and power law distributions, and so at first guess I'd assume /b/ got lucky, but would be interested to hear if there is some alternative institutional arrangement that might explain it.

 

[josef k.]

@Chris: All of this is quite true, but I think needs to be put in context. Reducing /b/'s nihilism to the make-up of its participants misses out on some things. And I'm not sure if sociopathy is a question of morality, at least, in the terms you present it.

The cases you mention are shocking, but I think that their horror partly resides in their obviousness. There are a quite a few sociopaths who are a little more subtle. And I note that empathy is not a huge feature in mainstream contemporary society either. Anger, yes. Hatred also. Resentment and grandiose self-delusion? Check and check. But empathy? Thinner on the ground.

 

[vimothy]

It would also be interesting to know the ages of /b/ users. I wonder if they really are all fourteen.

Saw this on ED:

Which kind of speaks to the very particular problem that /b/ seems to have, namely: who owns what.

 

[Chris]

I partly agree - and I think that is where the interest lies. A lot of the time when people talk about the internet it's still in these utopian/Habermasian terms - and I think the empirical fact of how internet culture is developing is more interesting than that.

Oh absolutely. I mentioned the Cyberdelic people on the Psychedlia thread, and a big idea with them, was this anarchist assumption that the total freedom of the internet was going to bring out the best possibilities in people, that we'd all come together and evolve together in this utopian Gaian-cyber-mind. But the same problems of humanity seem to follow us at every level.

My idea would be: What if the kinds of aggressions which the "anonymous" label allows for became completely pervasive. The range of possible statements and actions would be reduced dramatically as people take defensive steps against it. This, I think, would be interesting, especially with reference to the pretentious and condescending mode of political comment and criticism which is still dominant today. What if it became psychologically impossible for people like Polly Toynbee, for instance, to continue to act as government spokesmen? This would change the whole game of politics in serious ways.

I totally see where you're coming from and have considered this idea myself, and think it would be a shame for the potentials of an anonymous subculture to be limited to the example of the 4chan/lulz subculture. They've actually lost their potential for any large or real social statements or actions because of something called the NYPA meme. In its earlier days, 4chan used to do much more over-the-top raids and pranks, which admittedly, never had much social value, but ever since the Chanology/Scientology raids, there's been a backlash against that. Basically the attention and misimpressions that Chanology brought to /b/ painted it as this chaotic-good revolutionary group or something... and shortly after, their boards and IRC channels got flooded with a lot of more socially-minded types. All the /b/tards responded with "we didn't do that for any moral reasons, we did it for the lulz, fuck off politicofags/moralfags. Also, they started getting a lot of threads of angry ex's saying "this is my ex, who cheated. Here's her phone number, do your worst /b/". This started getting met with a chorus of "/b/ is not your personal army", now just the "Not Your Personal Army" (NYPA) meme. Which has basically killed all large-scale raids before they even begin (probably for the better ), especially anything that sounds political or moral. But yeah, the idea of anonymous culture should be studied from different angels as a model for... well... a lot of different possibilities... political, artistic, subcultural (although the problems should be taken into serious consideration too). It's very interesting. Thanks for bringing this subject up, by the way, I've been curious to see Dissensus' take on them.

 

[Chris]

chris, I have a question (I only discovered /b/ last month): Why is /b/ the vehicle? Are other boards unmoderated or is /b/ somehow unique in terms of what's allowed? The internets are governed by Google search engines and power law distributions, and so at first guess I'd assume /b/ got lucky, but would be interested to hear if there is some alternative institutional arrangement that might explain it.

I think it's partly the anonymity, and partly its roots. The board was created by a 15 year old kid who came from Something Awful (a site centered around shocking pictures), so maybe that reveals where some of the tone came from. Also, its creator made the board to be an anime picture fansite, and... I don't want to sound judgemental of cultures, but if you know anything about anime culture, there are all kinds of fucked up things in there. Which brought in probably a lot of the most questionable elements. On top of that, was just the total freedom that was allowed on the Random /b/ board... which, as I mentioned, was modded by teenagers who were just as likely to take part in the craziness as anyone else.

The picture-based format of the board is a factor too. It kind of highlighted the emphasis around memes and funny pictures, and coupled with the total freedom, made the place to be this dumping ground for whatever... giving the place a reputation as the "asshole" of the internet. Like this cesspool that all the new memes emerge from. The more notorious it got, the more trendy it became, and more codified, to the point that it's now the second most popular message board on the internet, and everybody on it all fall over themselves to act the part. Not to say that all of 4chan is bad, mostly just /b/ and some spillage on /r9k/. The rest of the site generally laugh off the /b/tards as deranged 15 year olds.

 

[josef k.]

Project Chanology strikes me in part as a crazy attempt to try and do old-style politics with new methods. A group is organized, and then strikes at a obvious target. Much more subtle and interesting would be an co-ordinated spreading of memes that worked to undermine more invisibly the protocols that the CoS was founded on, with no spectacle whatsoever. And this is what I think may be already happening, or on the verge of starting to happen. What is new culture killing-off? It isn't just the old media, or morality, or anything that big. Its something more subtle.

 

[Chris]

@Chris: All of this is quite true, but I think needs to be put in context. Reducing /b/'s nihilism to the make-up of its participants misses out on some things. And I'm not sure if sociopathy is a question of morality, at least, in the terms you present it.

The cases you mention are shocking, but I think that their horror partly resides in their obviousness. There are a quite a few sociopaths who are a little more subtle. And I note that empathy is not a huge feature in mainstream contemporary society either. Anger, yes. Hatred also. Resentment and grandiose self-delusion? Check and check. But empathy? Thinner on the ground.

I don't mean sociopathy as a natural mental condition, my bad. More that the behavior there is psychotic, and is a question of morality, (amidst the effects of a lot of factors)... in that it is simply inhumanly cruel and impossible to condone. To the point that the social factors that are causing this need to maybe be addressed (false consciousness, sleazy marketing, bad cultural ethics).

 

[josef k.]

I don't mean sociopathy as a natural mental condition, my bad. More that the behavior there is psychotic, and is a question of morality, (amidst the effects of a lot of factors)... in that it is simply inhumanly cruel and impossible to condone. To the point that the social factors that are causing this need to maybe be addressed (false consciousness, sleazy marketing, bad cultural ethics).

Maybe so, but I'm not sure it matters if we condone it or not. And I also think that it says something important about the internets generally, and the way in which they have a tendency to produce tribalizing echo-chambers.

There is an irony to the internets, no? I mean, the way in which it should in theory allow people to communicate with many others of contrasting opinions and views and so on, but that in practice - with a handful of noble exceptions - it more generally just allows people to fortify their own crackpot insanities.

 

[Chris]

Much more subtle and interesting would be an co-ordinated spreading of memes that worked to undermine more invisibly the protocols that the CoS was founded on, with no spectacle whatsoever. And this is what I think may be already happening, or on the verge of starting to happen. What is new culture killing-off? It isn't just the old media, or morality, or anything that big. Its something more subtle.

Nice! I came upon this book recently... "Media Virus" by Douglas Rushkoff... who describes the way that memes can spread through a combination of novelty/usefulness/charisma.... it's very interesting, and while he seems more to be describing the way marketers and cultural engineers are programming us... I like the idea of a positive, creative, ethical and active engagement with the process. Religious and political forces have for a large part already been engaging in memetic warfare, and now I think the internet is starting to make people more and more aware of the memetic dimension of their selves. Maybe they can become more conscious of the ideas, trends, values, cultures, aesthetics, and novelties that possess them, and can learn to assess and take a little more wise and active role as conscious conduit of more positive processes.

 

[josef k.]

I read Media Virus a long time ago. I really liked it - it was quite an eye-opener at the time.

But the one thing I want to point out is that I think it misunderstands things to polarize them into terms of "marketers and cultural engineers" on the one hand and "us" on the other - because we are programming as well, if - granted - not with the same level of power.