Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan's Army Conquered the Web

by Cole Stryker

This isn’t so much a book about how technology is changing society as it is the story of how technology expanded the scale of human creativity and social interaction that already existed and was just waiting for the right platform. When that platform came along, creative participatory culture went global—and just like that things were never the same. This isn’t just a book about 4chan. It’s a book about you.

Content is no longer valuable. We simply have too much content. There’s more content being produced in a day than we could consume in our entire lives. Advertisers are in the business of creating content that’s no longer valuable. We should be focusing more on curation and engagement.

There probably aren’t that many genuine pedophiles on 4chan in the same way there aren’t very many genuine white supremacists on 4chan, or in society at large. People who behave outside the range of social norms tend to attract the most attention. Furthermore, trolls like to break the rules, and one of the only rules on /b/ is “No CP.” Like the rampant racism, homophobia, and sexism seen on 4chan, the site’s obsession with child pornography is rooted in irony, for the most part.

But why would anyone joke about child pornography and child predation, two of the most universally reviled behaviors in human history? On 4chan, it’s precisely because they’re the most universally reviled behaviors in human history. /b/tards love nothing more than shocking NORPs with behavior that takes on the appearance of deviance.