What Google And Facebook Get Wrong About Self Expression And Identity
Google and Facebook would have you believe that you’re a mirror, that there is one reflection that you have, this one idea of self. But in fact we’re more like diamonds, you can look at people from any angle and see something totally different.
4chan founder Chris Poole discusses the problem with personal identity as conceived by Facebook and Google. Basically, that they expect us to maintain a single, consistent persona throughout life, which is not how we actually exist:
4Chan, Anonymous Wreak Revenge On MasterCard, PayPal, Banks
The Faces of Anonymous. Photo: Vincent Diamante (CC)
I’ve not thought too highly of the hordes at 4Chan until now, but Julian Assange needs some help and they’re doing what they do best, making massive coordinated attacks on Assange’s various foes, as reported by ArsTechnica (since that report was posted MasterCard has also come under attack):
The forces of Anonymous have taken aim at several companies who are refusing to do business with WikiLeaks. 4chan’s hordes have launched distributed denial-of-service attacks against PayPal, Swiss bank PostFinance, and other sites that have hindered the whistleblowing site’s operations.
A self-styled spokesman for the group calling himself “Coldblood” has said that any website that’s “bowing down to government pressure” is a target. PayPal ceased processing donations to the site, and PostFinance froze WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s account. The attacks are being performed under the Operation: Payback banner; Operation: Payback is the name the group is using in its long-running…
An Interview With 4chan’s Christopher Poole
The New York Times sat down for an interview with “Moot,” real name Christopher Poole, founder of 4chan. Poole discusses the (lack of) sales offers for the site (the biggest bid he’s received was for $45,000), his efforts to keep 4chan secret from his family, and his own fear of and lack and control over the site’s users.
You go by the name “Moot.” Why?
As a teenager, I used to use the nickname “Moo” as a moniker online, and then I turned into “Moot” for fun, which I didn’t even realize was a real word at the time, and it just stuck with me.
How old were you when you started 4chan? I was 15. I’m 22 now.
We Are Anonymous. We Are Legion. We Plead Guilty In Court.
From TechCrunch:
On Thursday 8 January 2009, then 18-year old Mahoud Samed Almahadin (aka Matt Connor aka Agent Pubeit
) took off his shirt, proceeded to rub vaseline all over his upper body and subsequently used it to hold toenail clippings and pubic hair. He then ran into the New York Scientology building, tossed some books around and smeared the mixture on objects.
After his greasy raid
4chan Being Blocked Again, This Time It’s Verizon
Ken Eakins writes via Sittingnow.co.uk:
DO WANT … on Verizon!
4chan site owner m00t has posted to the 4chan blog, and Twitter, that Verizon wireless, are blocking both in and outbound web-traffic to 4chan.
Unlike a recent scare involving AT&T last year, m00t believes that this time it’s for realsies, from the 4chan blog:
Over the past 72 hours, we’ve been receiving reports from Verizon Wireless customers having difficulty accessing the image boards. After investigating, we found that Verizon is dropping traffic to/from boards.4chan.org, only on port 80 (HTTP). No other subdomain/IP/port is affected, which leads us to believe this block is intentional. A call was placed to their support staff last night, and we were told that the ticket would not be looked at until Monday at the earliest, and: “You’ll need the customer to call to request it be unblocked…”
If you’ve been affected by this block, please contact Verizon Wireless customer support.…
Welcome to the Weirdest New Internet Pastime: Chat Roulette
Fast Company’s Cliff Kuang reports:
Welcome to Chat Roulette. It’s simple: The site pairs you with a random videochat partner. You can click “next” any time, or stay with your current pairing.
Then things start tripping into psychedelic performance-art territory. As a friend says, “It’s the Internet. UNFILTERED.” The big lure is basically seeing something strange–or doing something so strange that you blow your partner’s mind.
You might see people in horrifying masks dancing around. Chinese users seem to love virtual high fives. One person’s shtick is a puppet who makes like a caring psychotherapist and will sit with you for hours. A friend reports a man holding up a sign that said, “Assroll?”–and promptly rolling over backwards, naked. (Nudity is hard to avoid.)
Also, challenges are big–successively crazier things. You might start by eating a page of your favorite book. You might end by calling your mother and screaming that you’re being murdered. Think of YouTube, with even more exhibitionism because everything is live and nothing is being recorded.
This appears to be the place where all the freaks trawling 4chan–a bulletin board better known for inventing LOL Cats and Rick Rolling–have migrated their insanity. And it’s insanely addictive–basically like a slot machine where instead of cherries, you’re hoping for the strangest that humanity has to offer…
4chan: The Future Of Human Consciousness, A Drug, Or Just Filth?
Author Jason Louv (Generation Hex) argues in all seriousness that 4Chan is “our best preview of where human consciousness is going,” calling them a “freebased version of mankind’s new drug of choice…”
4Chan users are “the Magellans of media desensitization,” showing us “the chaos at the edge of human perception, where the mind has consumed so much information through artificially enhanced sensory inputs that it begins to break down and cannibalize itself.”
“The kaleidoscope of the Internet is more endless, more distracting and more mutating than even the most potent psychedelic drugs could have ever prepared us for,” and 4chan is “the ultimate, final trip,” as users “abandon the grim reality of their parents’ basements to wallow in infinite, recursively self-referential filth.”
If the internet will change the human experience, then 4Chan represents “a new frontier…the most interesting angle we have on the evolution of human consciousness.”
Or, to put it another way, “It is…
