Note: this article was originally written in March, days after the Christchurch Terror Attack. Rest in peace to all those murdered by the far-right and its enablers.
In the days following the Christchurch Terror Attack, I found myself thinking about 4chan and similar sites after learning that the alleged shooter posted his intent to carry out the attack on 8chan, a “free-speech-friendly” alternative to 4chan. But 4chan’s existence, throughout its time on the internet, has at times been described by some as a “brilliant, ridiculous and alarming” community but an abhorrent, evil cesspool of hate for others. From my own experience of visiting the site for a number of years, I decided to take a more critical look into how it gained its reputation.
I can’t exactly remember when I first went onto 4chan. But I am certain that I first visited the site in the late 2000s, when I first heard its name thrown around online. I remember that it felt was difficult for me at the time to navigate, difficult to understand the culture that surrounded it, which then made interacting and connecting with the community an impossible task.
At the time, as a teenager, I really wanted to be involved in the community. So I took to viewing adjacent websites. Encyclopedia Dramatica (warning: extremely NSFW), a wiki-based website is the only one I remember viewing with any frequency. I kept up with the ongoings of 4chan by perusing the latest articles, with mixtures of shock and disgust. But, at times, with joy at the various things I learned. I felt clued in, in a sense.
This isn’t intended to function as biography or research, but rather a glimpse into how 4chan and the modern far-right identify themselves. Through my foray of Encyclopedia Dramatica, one of the things that stood out to me back then was how cynical and snide the “voice” of every article was. Understandably, a wiki-type website needs to have a “voice”. It is one of the things that keeps the tone of the website consistent, that leads it to feel like it’s been curated by a knowledgable person or group, that may even act like an authority on the subject.
But when this voice serves to curate articles that disparage women and minority groups under the guise of “humour”, it quickly becomes a disorientating and nauseating experience for those who stumbled upon the site in good faith. The sort of articles on the website back then and now, however, took the South Park-like approach of excoriating almost the subject of every topic it covered, with a reporter from Ninemsn (now Nine.com.au) calling it “Wikipedia’s evil twin”, going on to say that “A search through its archives will reveal animated images of people committing suicide, articles glorifying extreme racism and sexism, and a seemingly endless supply of twisted, shocking views on just about every major human tragedy in history.”
But this article is about exploring 4chan, not Encyclopedia Dramatica. So what is the importance of exploring it? It is the principle of “lurk moar newfag” (or, “lurk more, newbie”) that dominates the website which is of importance. Doctors Hui-Min Lai and Tsung Teng Chen produced research into the comparison of “posters” (people who regularly contribute to the discussion) and “lurkers” (people who do not post, or post infrequently). In their research, they talk about the importance of lurking using previous research, but one thing that really stood out to me as a key part is the following:
“Lurking is an essential part of the process when a newcomer joins a community. When a newcomer joins first joins a community, he or she is unfamiliar with the environment and needs to watch and learn in order to adapt to the community’s culture. Once a lurker is familiar with a community, his or her behaviors may change, and he or she may choose to do more than just lurk.”
The key takeaway here is the “his or her behaviours”. On 4chan the concept of “lurk moar newfag” translates into spending more time consuming and understanding the social norms on the website, which necessitates having an awareness of events that occurred on the website. Thus, a wiki-type website, which catalogues events that occurred in proximity to the website and its users is important to eventually contributing to discussion without ridicule.
But on websites such as 4chan, the things that end up being ridiculed and even being perceived as “weird”, are things like suggesting people not be racist, be abusive towards minorities or use slurs to insult. Spend long enough on any of 4chan’s boards, even the ones that prohibit not-safe-for-work content, and you’ll some come along some variant of the homophobic F-slur used both in a (it pains me to say this) positive and negative way. The usage of the N-word is widespread and varied. Posters at one point in past years argued that they used it in the way that the comedian Chris Rock did in his stand-up routine called “Niggas vs. Black People”, in which the word was used to denigrate those who “glorify ignorance and sloth, and brag about fulfilling minor responsibilities”.
While some users may believe they use the word in only this way, I am certain that it is likely not the only reason that many posters used and continue to use that word. Bigotry, in an attempt to disguise itself, will employ any method to avoid accountability for its actions. A popular one that exists on 4chan is the usage of a red herring, with the individual pointing out an issue at hand (such as using a slur) turns into the “bad person” for doing so.
An example of this reasoning could follow as such: in a society where discrimination and slavery was made illegal and recognized as wrong, why are they insisting on “dividing” us further, by restricting use of words to a particular race of people? Perhaps they are the real racists for doing so, and not the people actually using racist slurs in the first place.
At other times, thereply would be dismissive, with the person typically either being accused of “virtue signalling”, which accuses the person of a performative showing their righteousness, or instead being laden with further slurs, violent threats or a combination of both. Whatever the action, the response to the argument is effectively deflected as a result.
Chris Rock went on to later admit that he had never performed the routine again, because “some people that were racist thought they had license to say n—–. So, I’m done with that routine.” In the interest of clarity, I am not accusing Chris Rock for making a racial slur “okay” to use, nor am I arguing that it is his fault that people chose to use his reasoning within his act. One can understand that a comedian’s job is to tell jokes, not to necessarily dispense facts. But the truth of the matter is as such: one has to be careful with the words they use, particularly when in a position of influence.
And this circles back into my earlier point: the 4chan rhetoric of dismissing valid criticism and the site moderators refusal to censure or restrict the usage of slurs ends up carrying an important message: being accepted into this community requires adhering to the status quo. In this instance, this translates into not having an “identity” that’s worth defending. For if you do, you’re giving an insight into your identity, which ends up casting aside some degree of anonymity and must be seeking some form of attention.
However, this isn’t always the case. Over the last six years, 4chan has come to be prominently known as a right-wing community. How did a website that rejected all forms of identity, save for anonymity, arrive at this? The answer is a simple one: that identity can’t ever truly be rejected. Doctor Marina Oshana, in her book “The Importance of How We See Ourselves : Self-Identity and Responsible Agency”, argued “without confidence in the stability and temporal continuity of our identities, we would be at sea, our ability to navigate our world compromised.” And what shows this moreso than anything would be the GamerGate controversy.
The roots of the GamerGate controversy started in August 2014, when a female game developer was attacked online over allegations surrounding her sex life. It quickly escalated into the harassment of others female developers, then donned the guise of “fighting for ethics in video-game journalism”. But whether the latter claim was true or not, the damage was done. As the reporter Erin Carson said:
“Today, angry internet mobs routinely use the threat of rape, bombings and assassinations as a way to lay claim to whatever it is they think they’re losing to what they describe as political correctness. And along they way, they’ve adopted new approaches that combine old-school write-in campaigns with internet terror efforts like publishing people’s private information online, with the intent of bringing chaos and fear into their lives.”
What this has to do in relation with 4chan is important: an examination of the chat logs from an IRC (internet relay chat) channel used by many 4chan users, revealed more of what we have come to expect. David Futrelle, a freelance writer who examined and sorted the chat logs, reports that “They express their glee at the thought of ruining her career; they fantasize about her being raped and killed. They wonder if all the harassment will drive her to suicide …”
This circles back to the idea that identity can’t ever truly be rejected. Using demographic statistics provided by 4chan’s advertising page, it claims that roughly 70% of its user-base is male and that 47% of its posters are from the United States, with the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia following at 8%, 6% and 5% respectively. The ethnic make-up of these countries are all at least 70% white, so assuming that a similar proportion exists on 4chan, one can see where the shared identity exists. I earlier stated that it was something of a cardinal sin to give an insight into your identity on 4chan, but this was not entirely true. What would be the cardinal sin was revealing that you were not a white, male 4chan poster. This shared identity of whiteness, alongside the denigration and suppression of other identities, has made 4chan fertile ground for the breeding of far-right white nationalists, free to instil their ideas without fear of censure.
And that they did. The researcher Jared Holt, who specialises in covering the white nationalist movement in America, reported that “The alt-right grew in part by injecting itself into subcultures on platforms such 4chan boards … that were energized after GamerGate.” These same people united under the banner of Donald Trump, whose “constant railing against “political correctness” and “fake news” and eagerness to exploit fears of immigrants and people of color were music to the ears of the alt-right”.
4chan initially gained its identity as a site that respected nothing, that would make fun of everything and anything. From its anonymous nature, it tried to reject the politics of identity, to cast itself apart from the rest of the society that was so seemingly concerned about how it used words and the implications that it carried. But it failed in this by not examining what its own identity became. After all, believing nothing should be sacred or respected is a school of thought in itself, an ideology. A moral position.
On an ending note, Doctor Oshana also argued in her book that “our interest in moral matters fuels our interest in identity”. And from a place that ends up rejecting identities that are not its own, white and male-orientated, it ended up coming to terrorize those that dared to challenge the status quo, escalating to areas outside of its website and culminating in domestic terrorism.
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