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Loading ...I’ve been observing 4chan.org for the past few weeks and due to our assignment (an intervention of some sort) – I decided to post (anonymously) an image to the board. I had to make a few decisions: a) which board I wanted to post to b) what I would post to receive some response.
After observing the /b/ random board, I was way too intimidated especially because I am new to the site and a lot of people could pinpoint and were relentless to the newbies. There are a lot of threats on those posts of computer hacking, etc – which I didn’t know whether to take seriously or not so I decided to go to a different topic board.
My friend showed me this site a week or two ago, and I thought I would post an image from there. It’s basically a tumblr site someone created where they would remove Garfield out of the Garfield cartoon.
Most of the images are of John just talking to himself, and it’s pretty depressing when you think of it (whether or not Garfield is there). I went to the Cartoon and Comic section of the site and posted the image there.
I reloaded the site after a few minutes to see if I got a reponse and I noticed my post was missing. I thought it had been deleted, but after reading the FAQs I realized after some time your position on the page changes based on response(?) – so my image slowly moved towards the back.
After some time, I finally received a response. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted. Note: It’s pretty sarcastic. The image was new to me, but I guess to these comic and cartoon fanatics, it wasn’t that interesting. Perhaps I could have written some more interesting text to initiate more of a response. I don’t know, but I think I got off lightly in terms of negative responses so I’ll take it.
For my next blog, I’ll try to explore a different topic and try again. I think I might have a better response the next time. I feel like the only things that get a lot of responses are perverted or nostalgic – so I’ll go down the route of nostalgia.
Comments
along the same lines, i wonder how the existing members get “street cred” on such an oppressive site.
i think you might be right with the idea that these comic fanatics may have already seen that particular website. it wouldnt surprise me considering the amount of time these people explore the web. a lot of the stuff i’ve seen on 4chan and other sites are genuinely new. maybe you could make your own image using photoshop or something similar. they also tend me be more crude and offensive as well…maybe you’ll get somewhere with that.
i love the Garfield w/o Garfield website. such a silly idea and im all for silly
Maybe I don’t have the most refined sense of humor, but I found your Garfield minus Garfield cartoon quite funny. I am not at all personally familiar with 4chan, but as you mentioned, it seems pretty harsh to move postings with few or no responses to the back of the listings. And I’d imagine that this type of interface setting breeds harsh treatment of newbies, especially if their first few times participating in the contribution of content is simply to get a feel for how the site works.
Also, I think it will be interesting to see the response you get in posting something that you feel will hit the nostalgia nerve. Because age is pretty important in determining if someone will feel nostalgia in connection to a particular posting, it will shed light on the general demographic interacting on 4chan.
Yeah, I totally agree with you.
A lot of the cartoons, comics, shows people talk about are definitely not things I grew up with. It’s a period of time well beyond my years. I guess that shows in my posting of the Garfield cartoon because that is something I enjoyed a lot as a child.
There’s no “cred” on /b/, from what I’ve learned, since everyone’s anonymous. However, you can easily be outed as a “newfag” by posting something that blatantly contrasts the culture of the board. On the other hand, what is prized on 4chan seems to be “original content”. This could be in the form of a story that gets repeated often, known as “copypasta” (copied and pasted text), or a bunch of Photoshopped images with similar themes.
If you want to try to “get” some of these jokes, check out these pages:
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Memes
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Copypasta
and check out the section at the bottom. Obviously the lewd and crude rules of 4chan apply. Hopefully my leftover research of Anonymous will help you fit in with these miscreants 
hmm i was looking for the series of images that were photoshopped with michael j fox as an example of the more crude content…
basically they have a picture of MJF then a big + sign and then the result.
ie michael j fox + nitroglycerin = explosions
So what is the objective or purpose of the site? Just a place to generate discussion? It seemed like the site does not encourage new members to participate.