/32/ - Psychopolitics

>>1352

it might also be TeleComix involved, they have a history of not liking anon culture. and it fits their MO.

http://telecomix.org/firstmanifesto.txt

http://telecomix.org/

https://www.flickr.com/groups/datalove/

they use a great deal of newspeak babble to confuse people as to the ends but they are nonetheless interesting specimens of utter hypocrisy.

>>1847

also from what I've read and seen social manipulation through dataflow is rather their bag. they seem to get a kick from offering free information but actively working against it as the same group sided with AT&T against net neutrality and also with Angela Merkel in the EU. they have strong links to swedish thinktanks, and everything they do has a swedish intonation. even down to the rather strong social-marxist theory.

http://datalove.me/

http://ensorcel.org/

http://n-o-d-e.net

>>1847

They are just hipster idiots who like edgy occult symbology. They have done a few "ops" that they have publicized, but I believe that if they were doing anything today, they would be bragging about it.

WRT the thread topic, we need to have serious analysis of how forum moderators both promote and undermine. This was a primary factor in the 4chan exodus, gamergate, and half a dozen different Reddit dustups.

>>1902

>analysis of how forum moderators both promote and undermine

That's a good idea. It seems obvious that heavier moderation can have both positive and negative effects on online communities, but has anyone ever bothered making a list of the pros and cons?

>>1922

all online communities are a reflection of the users at-large

if you want to stop attacks you need to kill the attackers >>1951

>>1986

If only that post was less obviously bait it would draw much more attention. It already ticks several boxes for the board: cuckoldry, interracial relations, Jews, ancient pagan religion, conquering one's enemies, rape and "anti-white". Even with the obviousness of the intentional inflammatory tone it still got two replies, although those might have been from OP samefagging.

If the poster wanted to achieve better results and make a resemblance of a rational argument they could have compared the charitable nature of Christ with communism, criticized the idea of "turning the other cheek" and forgiveness in general, ridiculed peaceful disobedience (and perhaps later ridicule Ghandi as well) or even pointed out that the pope is South American. The fact that such low quality bait (to use the popular expression) possibly achieved results is a testament to how low the board has stooped.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are people trying to come up with bait specifically for this board. I wonder what that would comprise of, and how the BO would deal with it (if at all).

>>1988

That's an /intl/ meme, just so you know. Whether or not it's actually an /intl/ poster, I'm not sure.

>>1922

An approach must take the attitudes and culture of the community at heart. As much as people laugh at moderators being "janitors," it is very much a public service position. Pros and cons vary from one community to the next for this reason.

I'll give you guys the inside scoop because I like what /32/ and /bmw/ do.

The mod team had some individuals who absolutely had to go. One was a German Jew. Another was /intl/ faggotry, and another was some type of Jew shill as well.

The original BO was almost always absent and was largely naive about the way the world works.

The German Jew was purged, then the /intl/ goon had some sort of dramafest with the Jew infiltrator, and they both decided to quit together. Board Ownership then passed to the new BO.

/pol/ itself is under CONSTANT attack, and shills and goon/intl autists are always primed to activate the plan of the moment. This does not include the non-stop influx of spam, shitposting and shilling.

If you want to know what the mods really do, take a look at https://8ch.net/log.php?board=pol

>>1991

There's one more in the team that absolutely has to go, but you all won't pull the trigger.

>>1993

If you truly believe that, you're completely deluded.

>>1991

I'd say there's no evidence that ownership ever changed. Don't forget that the "/intl goon" and the "Jew infiltrator" did their little spat out in public, then suddenly decided to quit and transfer ownership to another volunteer that was already on the team.

To an observer with a working brain, there's no way to know if ownership really changed, or if any of these characters were even real to begin with, or if the new owner is just another sockpuppet.

I thought the whole process was suspicious, pinning all of those shill dig threads, then saying shills aren't real, then having a public fight that should have been private.. on and on, it just looked like psyops.

I don't know what the solution is. Owners and vols could dox themselves but nobody would want to do that for obvious reasons, it would make them a target.

The only thing that seems halfway workable is for another board to be created that never makes these kinds of mistakes, never proves itself to be untrustworthy, and does not allow new people on the team.

>>1993

I know who you're talking about, and that character does the most antagonistic things but never gets removed... hmmm. Kind of like a buffer. If things got bad enough that character would be sacrificed, the community would be happy, then some months later there would start to be problems again with another character. Does that make sense?

Also, I think 8chan is eventually going to die due to the raiders here. They've done an extremely good job at making everybody distrust each other. Attempting to make a comment on /pol/ usually ends with me rage-quitting after a back-and-forth with one of the shills or trolls (or whatever the fuck they are). We're simply not allowed to have nice things and it seems damn near impossible for the smaller boards to gain any traction, and if one did gain traction it would be targeted for destruction.

Another related topic that I'd love to talk about is "muh hugbox". As in, every time somebody says they want moderation, there's ten people to chime in immediately "you just want a hugbox". Where did that originate, and where did it become popular? I know that /int/ was pushing that a lot for awhile, along with the related meme "heh pill", but I'm pretty sure that started somewhere else at an earlier date. It has become the go-to way to shut down moderation across many sites these days

>>2031

>>2032

>>2034

Good posts. There are a lot of uncritical and easily manipulated people. Uncritical in the sense that they do not step back and question things.

Outsiders have converged upon this site to muck it up specifically. The useful idiots do half the work for them.

>>2035

I just want a community that is middle-ground between dumb and genius. Social media destroyed that middle ground everywhere. Now we have SJWs, and of course the flip side which is being manufactured here at this moment. If done properly, both "sides" make money off of useful idiots. But the main point is, there's no place without ID that provides middle ground

I spent seriously like 20 minutes trying to come up with something more worthwhile to say here. It's late for me

>>2031

>The only thing that seems halfway workable is for another board to be created that never makes these kinds of mistakes, never proves itself to be untrustworthy, and does not allow new people on the team.

Unless every BO and vol doxxed themselves, there would be no way of knowing if the people who started this new board are the same as the former trouble-makers.

>>2032

>I think 8chan is eventually going to die due to the raiders here.

What do you mean by "die"? Lose traffic until it becomes irrelevant? Drop in quality until it is just a couple thousand /b/s and /intl/s put together?

>it seems damn near impossible for the smaller boards to gain any traction, and if one did gain traction it would be targeted for destruction.

The people who ruin communities strive for attention, that's why smaller boards don't appeal to them. The best solution is for people who are interested in productive discussions not to shy away from posting in these small and slow boards, and perhaps have a plan in case there is an overtaking by the trouble-makers.

>Another related topic that I'd love to talk about is "muh hugbox". As in, every time somebody says they want moderation, there's ten people to chime in immediately "you just want a hugbox". Where did that originate, and where did it become popular?

That's a critical matter that definitely deserves attention. In the same way that when people usually refer to bureaucracy in a negative way they are not referring to Max Weber's original idea but a corruption of it, those who complain about moderation have a habit of equating any moderation with excessive moderation (Which I cannot help but compare with the anarchists who see every law as oppressive and every authority as illegitimate).

>It has become the go-to way to shut down moderation across many sites these days.

Only if the moderation allows it. There we find a problem: how can the moderator tell apart the claims of those who are genuinely interested in improving the board with those of the subversives whose only goal is the destruction of any and all authority? If the mod chooses to ignore the requests, he may become truly tyrannical, and alienate his original demographic. If he caves in to their requests of less moderation, he might abandon those who rely on him to maintain a standard for the community.

>On a daily basis I'm amazed at the depth of the gulf between my own ideas about what a good board should be, and the twenty or so posters that are there yelling "rulecuck" and "hugbox" at the first suggestion that something is not appropriate.

Out of curiosity, what are your ideas on how a board (and perhaps this board) should be?

So many people claim "hugbox", but they don't realize that the general culture of the community is as important as (if not more important than) the moderation when it comes to that. No reasonable person can claim that /pol/ is not a hugbox, and that is primarily caused by the posters who claim "shill", "slider" and "troll" at every anon who dares disagree with them, not by the moderation. (That's how I see it, at least. I don't really stay on top of these matters).

>>2037

>I just want a community that is middle-ground between dumb and genius.

I think this board seems to be filling that niche for the time being.

Do you guys think I over-moderate?

>>2038

I'm not that anon, but a good board is the natural outgrowth of boards like this one. The only other boards that I could say were of note are /polpol/ and at some time or another in the past, /pol/. A board that's straightforward and sincere, not riddled with groupthink, and with the genuine insight to provide great discussion. I remember saving a number of posts by anons here into PDF's because of their sheer quality on topics that I'm certain will never be discussed at such depth ever again on /pol/. The embodiment of the 'net's potential, especially in the days of social media turning people into breathing content aggregators, is rare and that much more beautiful as a result.

>>2039

From what I've seen, no. Then again, I rarely browse here, and it seems like the nature of the posters forces this board to self regulate, but I may very well be wrong.

>>2038

>What do you mean by "die"? Lose traffic until it becomes irrelevant? Drop in quality until it is just a couple thousand /b/s and /intl/s put together?

Here's how I see it. The raiders will continue to pressure Hotwheels into staying in IRC and ignoring the problems plaguing the community, taking advantage of loopholes created by his policies, such as the the "American law is the only global rule" one. He made that rule, not understanding the complexities and ambiguities American obscenity laws and judicial precedent, and now has to try to dance a line that he can't even see, all while his users scream at him and attack him for not creating a definite answer to an indefinite problem. So he stays away from it, rather than risk compromising his principles and taking a strong approach. This show of weakness only encourages more to pressure him, and breeds uneasiness in bystanders who want to know that the site owner still supports them. This uneasiness will affect 8chan's bottom line in the future, as good, supportive posters leave and the trolls stay. Softserve will fail to cover bandwidth costs, and a demoralized HW will shutter the site in 2017 at the latest, instead focusing on developing for other sites.

As for board quality, I can see everything going the way of /v/ and /pol/. Little real content, good posters having to swim through a sea of garbage to find something worth discussing, and ending up either leaving or shutting themselves away in a smaller board that never grows.

>The people who ruin communities strive for attention, that's why smaller boards don't appeal to them. The best solution is for people who are interested in productive discussions not to shy away from posting in these small and slow boards, and perhaps have a plan in case there is an overtaking by the trouble-makers.

I would contest it's a sadistic glee they get from manipulating masses. The attention is just a side effect, but turning a normally content community into flailing puppets on your strings would be what they're after.

>That's a critical matter that definitely deserves attention. In the same way that when people usually refer to bureaucracy in a negative way they are not referring to Max Weber's original idea but a corruption of it, those who complain about moderation have a habit of equating any moderation with excessive moderation (Which I cannot help but compare with the anarchists who see every law as oppressive and every authority as illegitimate).

A hugbox doesn't have to be moderator-created. It is a way to talk down strong moderation, but a flawed one. For instance, /v/'s almost religious love of Kojima is not moderator-created. Strong moderation stifles creativity, not discussion. That is where the problems with strong moderation and imageboard culture come from, not creating a consensus.

Now, strong moderation can encourage a consensus and a hugbox, as seen on /pol/. I'm of the opinion that bad moderation can create a bad community, but it can't fix one. Not on an imageboard, where your IP is your only identity, and IP obfuscation or changing is as easy as downloading a proxy addon like Hola, or disconnecting for 15 minutes. Moderators are stuck playing whack-a-mole with troublesome users.

>Only if the moderation allows it. There we find a problem: how can the moderator tell apart the claims of those who are genuinely interested in improving the board with those of the subversives whose only goal is the destruction of any and all authority? If the mod chooses to ignore the requests, he may become truly tyrannical, and alienate his original demographic. If he caves in to their requests of less moderation, he might abandon those who rely on him to maintain a standard for the community.

Ultimately the question has to be whether the moderator wants a smaller community with less original content, or a larger, more vibrant, more creative community with less quality discussions and a larger report queue. If there's a rapid influx of new blood, as we're currently seeing with /pol/, this question has to be answered early on, and the users have to be fine with losing either the quality of discussions they had, or the freedom they had. As we saw with /v/, Mark sided largely with freedom, letting the newcomers run his board into the ground. Now that he's somewhat trying to enforce content, people are complaining because he waited too long. The problems he could have fought in December, and had an understanding user base, became the new normal by July.

>>2038

>Out of curiosity, what are your ideas on how a board (and perhaps this board) should be?

>So many people claim "hugbox", but they don't realize that the general culture of the community is as important as (if not more important than) the moderation when it comes to that. No reasonable person can claim that /pol/ is not a hugbox, and that is primarily caused by the posters who claim "shill", "slider" and "troll" at every anon who dares disagree with them, not by the moderation. (That's how I see it, at least. I don't really stay on top of these matters).

This is all true. /pol/ and /v/ cannot be fixed because the vast majority of the users don't want it to be. Any chance they had to stop the downward spiral of the two boards came and went. No moderation can make those communities good. GGHQ tried that approach, making stringent, heavily enforced rules to expel troublemakers, and just ended up with an oversterilized environment, full of users either walking on proverbial eggshells with their thread choices, or openly thumbing their noses at moderation, knowing full well the banhammer's coming.

Being a hugbox is about how a community handles debate rather than how the moderators behave regarding shitposters. The /v/ Gamergate general is a hugbox of the worst kind, where uncomfortable opinions offered without posts earlier on in the thread to "build karma" results in everyone redtexting one another to filter you, or telling you to go to /ggrevolt/. This has nothing to do with moderation. If you don't agree with the general zeitgeist, you are not welcome. Moderation cannot fix that.

As for how to create a high quality board? At this rate, the only answer is "muh sekrit klub."

>>2054

Theres the very real issue of shitposting becoming mainstream. A long time ago in chan culture shitposting wasn't really as prevalent as it is today. Trolling was just trolling, el rusemaster if you will, but the sheer amount of "crap for craps sake" was basically unheard of.

I don't know if you can completely blame it on "normies" either.

On the topic of inter-board drama, /intl/'s latest raid (and this thread in particular >>>/tg/147206) "redpilled" me a bit.

I find it hard to believe the power and "pull" of memes, identities and societal expectations; to be more specific, the extent to which some people will perform mental gymnastics to avoid coming to unpleasant conclusions, such as a sudden awakening to a lack of support for "real" free speech, even though the conclusions they come to are only thought of as negative thanks to popular perceptions.

For example, let's say you do not support free speech. So what? You are a dreaded "rulecuck", or perhaps an "authoritarian". So what? Why do you not see that a meme-buzzword like "rulecuck" only has power over as you so long as you allow it? Why are you so scared of gaining that moniker? Are you personally weak? Do you fear that you are alone and marginalized in your views? Do you believe that ideals only acquire legitimacy when they are adopted wholesale? In which case, how does an ideal become legitimate in the first place, if they all start off as illegitimate? Isn't that and the meme-buzzwords themselves part of a construct that exists solely to legitimise the current ideal-power-structure? If legitimacy is necessarily born out of illegitimacy, does it even exist at all? What even is legitimacy, and how, when, and why did the ideal of legitimacy itself become legitimate?

Is the only real question in political philosophy "What is, by the most objective metric, the most effective form of government for a given unit of people?" and perhaps, "By the most objective metric, Which unit of people should the most ideal form of government be constructed for, to bring the greatest benefit to all people?".

I always thought of shitposting as the perfect way to draw attention away from trolls. People seems to stop taking the bait. If only the quality posters realized that, though...

>>2032

I find myself agreeing with you.

I personally regard /2hu/ as my anchor on 8chan. Having a nice /v/ is a bonus, but what really made me stay was /2hu/.

I've seen the active user count jump thrice already past 100 sustainably this year: all three instances led to board quality declining.

The first ended in a catastrophic board drama event that drove off half the population off the board I myself would have left if it wasn't for me having exams during those three fateful days, and partially resulted in the former BO quitting. The most recent resulted in waifufaggotry taking over the board occasionally, but it's slowed down since Rugga and co. stopped spamming the board.

At the end of the day, only /sp/ really views /2hu/ in a positive light anymore, and I'm not even sure of that

>>2126

Some do. It depends on the community, really. /v/ and /pol/ don't get it and likely won't. /tg/ and /sp/ seem to.

>>2132

I hear you about catastrophic drama happening after a population balloons. The problem is that now we're getting to the point where people peel off after the drama, things are condensed and slowed from where they were, and more people slowly leave. We're seeing a lot of attrition on /sp/ at the moment.

And yes, /sp/ still likes you largely, though they've more or less gone isolationist, in a way. Board drama normally gets sagebombed when it comes up there, since people are tired of it and want this site to be something to enjoy rather than be upset about. They kind of feel alone in having the mindset where you can be unhappy with aspects of the leadership above you, but tolerant of it to a point.

I never understood where the conspiracy theories about 2hu coordinating raids on IRC came from. Any insight on that? It was something kicked about when the raiders were still on /int/. Also, there seems to be a development where the raiders are trying to find a new board, since there was a board change on /intl/. It'll be interesting to see where it goes.

>>2137

If I'm not mistaken, it was something /int/ started because /2hu/ now had its own IRC, back when they were still relevant.

Either way, the retards at /pol/ ran with it and they ended up getting raided by weebs of all kinds.

>>2137

I don't know if Hotwheels ate the last part of my post, or if I should sleep already.

/sp/ and their GET Watch not a general is actually one of the few comfy but not dead places to discuss 8chan and its boards as a whole.

I have no idea how our /sp/ turned out this way, OC-generating, shitposting, and still managing to remain on-topic half the time.

I think we have to consider the very likely possibility of a paid-for attack

Consider voat's problems, it was clear there were people from reddit (the company) involved there. You have some heavy investors who put a lot of money on reddit and expect results. Knowing how they operate, expending a few tens of thousands of dollars getting a massive DDoS going and calling in for favors to hosting companies and the like seems plausible, after all they can't risk their shares going to hell because of some copycat like voat.

On that aspect consider how 4chan has most likely gone 100% commercial after moot decided to leave. He probably sold the site (perhaps he sold it years ago in exchange for the investments for his failed canvas startup) and whoever owns it right now is planning to turn 4chan into a profitable company, and seeing that 8chan is its only considerable rival in the western market why wouldn't they pay for raids and DDoS?

>>1847

Wow, I haven't seen such a rambling concentration of stupidity like the one in those links in a long time...

>sweden

This country is truly becoming the bane of western intellectualism, sometimes I wonder how things would turned out to be if sweden had been occupied by the USSR at the end of WWII just like hungary or romania were.

>>1847

Any chance of someone making a archive link of these?