isn’t a secret underground organization.
Of course, it’ll be distributed threw BitTorrent right?
Oh fuck me. I hate this little cunt.
I make a follow-up post, unlikely to be believed. “I’m writing a book about you. What do you think about that?”
That’s pretty cool, OP.
We think you’re asking for more trouble than it’s worth. Seriously.
Rule 1 and 2. you will die soon
OP, kindly an hero [that is, kill yourself] immediately. As if anyone gives a fuck other than cancerous summerfags [also called noobs] like you
I’d love to help you out with the book in any way, writing it or just online distibution/marketing, or design. Willing to get some help?
OP, are you ready for the potential shitstorm aimed at you?
Cool story, bro.
The thread continues with various empty threats, insults, and a few surprisingly sincere optimists who tell me they can’t wait to read the book. One person Photoshops a pirate mustache onto my face and posts it. Another writes:
Don’t publish your book, you faggot. You probably suck at writing and are trying to scrounge money together because you know you’ll never have an actual job because you majored in journalism. Your days are numbered, Cole.
The thread continues, devolving into a loose argument about whether 4chan is worth writing a book about. Soon, someone posts an inappropriately graffitied photo of me, yanked from my personal blog. Time will tell if the /b/tards actually try to find out where I live or target me in any way. Probably not, but I’m not going to go any further out of my way to invite harassment.
Calvinball
I have used the word
game
to describe the experience of /b/, and more broadly, 4chan and the Anonymous movement. I believe people are drawn to /b/ because it’s a ludic playground, where the rules are perpetually being redefined.
Play can be defined as any activity that is done for personal enjoyment. In its barest definition, a game is structured play. (Unstructured play being something like daydreaming, blowing bubbles, or frolicking in a field.) A game must have an achievable goal, with walls erected between the player and the goal that make it a challenge to reach. These walls are rules that define the game. One could say that 4chan is a game in which the rules are in a constant state of flux.
It reminds me of Calvinball, from the comic strip
Calvin and Hobbes
. In the first Calvinball-related strip, creator Bill Watterson defined the only permanent rule of Calvinball: You can’t play it the same way twice. So Calvin and his imaginary tiger pal Hobbes are constantly reinventing the game, bickering over the rules every step of the way. The strip lampooned the childhood tendency for groups of kids to make up their rules as they went along, when tempers, politicking, cheating, and boredom make strict rules difficult to uphold.
There are very specific games happening within each individual thread of 4chan, and one can observe 4chan as an ongoing global metagame like Calvinball. Sometimes the goal is to piss people off. Sometimes it’s to make some specific person’s life miserable . . . or wonderful. Other times the object of the game is to confuse outsiders or wreck others’ idea of what the game is about.
Mine is a generation raised by video games, which teach children to test the boundaries of their rule sets, mess with their environments, and memorize entire tiny universes until they’re able to spot and exploit holes and glitches. Computer hackers identify with this impulse to a large degree. For them, systems are made to be mastered, broken, and messed with. When playing a game the way it’s supposed to be played gets boring, they seek out cheat codes and other ways of essentially “breaking” the game. It’s one thing to beat or win a game, but can you say you’ve truly mastered a game until you’ve broken it?
This kind of metagaming is not limited to video games. Think of all the various ways people find to enjoy
Of course, it’ll be distributed threw BitTorrent right?
Oh fuck me. I hate this little cunt.
I make a follow-up post, unlikely to be believed. “I’m writing a book about you. What do you think about that?”
That’s pretty cool, OP.
We think you’re asking for more trouble than it’s worth. Seriously.
Rule 1 and 2. you will die soon
OP, kindly an hero [that is, kill yourself] immediately. As if anyone gives a fuck other than cancerous summerfags [also called noobs] like you
I’d love to help you out with the book in any way, writing it or just online distibution/marketing, or design. Willing to get some help?
OP, are you ready for the potential shitstorm aimed at you?
Cool story, bro.
The thread continues with various empty threats, insults, and a few surprisingly sincere optimists who tell me they can’t wait to read the book. One person Photoshops a pirate mustache onto my face and posts it. Another writes:
Don’t publish your book, you faggot. You probably suck at writing and are trying to scrounge money together because you know you’ll never have an actual job because you majored in journalism. Your days are numbered, Cole.
The thread continues, devolving into a loose argument about whether 4chan is worth writing a book about. Soon, someone posts an inappropriately graffitied photo of me, yanked from my personal blog. Time will tell if the /b/tards actually try to find out where I live or target me in any way. Probably not, but I’m not going to go any further out of my way to invite harassment.
Calvinball
I have used the word
game
to describe the experience of /b/, and more broadly, 4chan and the Anonymous movement. I believe people are drawn to /b/ because it’s a ludic playground, where the rules are perpetually being redefined.
Play can be defined as any activity that is done for personal enjoyment. In its barest definition, a game is structured play. (Unstructured play being something like daydreaming, blowing bubbles, or frolicking in a field.) A game must have an achievable goal, with walls erected between the player and the goal that make it a challenge to reach. These walls are rules that define the game. One could say that 4chan is a game in which the rules are in a constant state of flux.
It reminds me of Calvinball, from the comic strip
Calvin and Hobbes
. In the first Calvinball-related strip, creator Bill Watterson defined the only permanent rule of Calvinball: You can’t play it the same way twice. So Calvin and his imaginary tiger pal Hobbes are constantly reinventing the game, bickering over the rules every step of the way. The strip lampooned the childhood tendency for groups of kids to make up their rules as they went along, when tempers, politicking, cheating, and boredom make strict rules difficult to uphold.
There are very specific games happening within each individual thread of 4chan, and one can observe 4chan as an ongoing global metagame like Calvinball. Sometimes the goal is to piss people off. Sometimes it’s to make some specific person’s life miserable . . . or wonderful. Other times the object of the game is to confuse outsiders or wreck others’ idea of what the game is about.
Mine is a generation raised by video games, which teach children to test the boundaries of their rule sets, mess with their environments, and memorize entire tiny universes until they’re able to spot and exploit holes and glitches. Computer hackers identify with this impulse to a large degree. For them, systems are made to be mastered, broken, and messed with. When playing a game the way it’s supposed to be played gets boring, they seek out cheat codes and other ways of essentially “breaking” the game. It’s one thing to beat or win a game, but can you say you’ve truly mastered a game until you’ve broken it?
This kind of metagaming is not limited to video games. Think of all the various ways people find to enjoy
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