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The Morality of the Memes: Democracy & 4chan
“Man is least in himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
- Oscar Wilde
Enter the anonymous, masked, world of 4chan. A world full of racism, gay bashing, to gays bashing gays and fathers asking for pictures of girls their daughter's age. Horrifying? Weird? Why? Fascinating! The community is creative without any named creators. Its close to transparent as you can get, and yet it still holds onto solid beliefs. The freedom to live a complete moral fiction is something niche communities have tried to achieve, but masked behind screens and keyboards, anonymous masked interaction can be taken to a whole new level. 4chan is a truly blank virtual world, with none of the rules and regulations of the former.
A real world example of masked communities: Someone on the top of a building about to jump. If the audience is a small local group, people will generally abide by social norms and encourage the person to step back. But, if the group below is so large that the individuals in the crowd are 'masked' so to speak, people will begin to yell, 'jump,' 'do it' etc. Interesting, scary, but interesting. Now, how does this translate online?
With the opportunity to ignore cultural moralities 4chan has invented its own. It is perhaps the 1st social community with enough unique characteristics to be declared the 1st online civilization. 4chan may be an amoral place but we are living in some amazing wonderful times when people have the freedom to easily redefine who the are and self organize however they please, as long as it's for the LULZ, of course.
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about me
I am investigating interfaces, interaction techniques, and visualization methods that help people understand their lives through exploring their own personal information
Check out my current projects - atomate, eyebrowse and poyozo
email: brennanmoore@gmail.com
twitter: @zamiang
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