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SXSW Core Conversation: Gaming the System With 4chan
Panel: Gaming the System with 4chan (Twitter hashtag: #gamingwith4chan)
Date/time: 5 p.m., Saturday
Panelists: Christopher Poole (4chan), Jason Scott (Web historian).
The gist: Christopher Poole, the founder of the controversial, highly trafficked site 4chan.org (600 million page views a month with about 8 million users, he says) sat atop the back of a chair, looking impossibly young for someone whose site has caused so much grief (and, to be fair, laughs-out-loud). Known more famously as “moot,” was paired up with tech historian Jason Scott, who provided some uproarious commentary on how sites like 4chan and WIkipedia resemble games where the point is to do battle with others online. Sites like MetaFilter and SomethingAwful were cited as good communities that take action and have taken measures to weed out trolls (mostly by charging small fees that have a large impact). Despite the site’s reputation for being synonymous with Web trolls, Poole comes across as smart, extremely self-aware and bemused by the goings-on of the site. He does delete posts and moderate the wily community, but it has a brain and a life of its own. He says the site works for what it is, so he won’t mess with the recipe and make any major changes anytime soon.
Quotes: “Before trolls there were bureaucrats.” — Scott. “4chan is like an RPG that mounts a quest every 30 seconds.” — Scott. “4chan functions like (expletive). It looks like (expletive). At one time we were probably the largest site using Times New Roman. So we switched to Arial.” — Poole. “Does anybody here really hate my Web site?” — Poole. “They would just (expletive) steamroll the Internet!” — Poole, on what would happen if he shut down 4chan and let loose 8 million rabid users on the rest of the Web.
Takeaways: Sites like Wikipedia are just as much game sites as 4chan — on Wikipedia you compete with other people with knowledge as if you’re engaging in a video game boss battle. On 4chan it’s a contest to post the best stuff, start memes and gross each other out. Though Poole is creator of a site where people frequently harasses people and posts the worst of the Internet, he seems no more in control of it than anyone has over the whole of the Internet.
- Omar L. Gallaga
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: Internet, SXSW 2010
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By Omar Gallaga
March 15, 2010 4:00 PM | Link to this
Fixed! Thank you.
By Versa Dave
March 15, 2010 3:21 AM | Link to this
You may want to change your link to 4chan. It's .org, not .com.