Thursday, May 21, 2009

7 - No Membership Cards There Either

I found this today.

Now, you may be thinking 'that's not stupid, that's horrible!' and perhaps you're right. The act isn't the Stupid Thing of the Day. The thing that jumped out of the page for me was this:

4Chan is an organised group that describes itself on its website as the "home of the sickest, strangest, and most horrifying stuff on the internet".


4Chan, for anyone who doesn't know yet, is a very large bulletin board where visitors can post images of whatever they like. There are some general categories that cover just about any topic you can think of, including some you probably wouldn't want to think about. Users can comment on pictures, but they don't have to identify themselves (and indeed, most don't). As a result, it's just about the least organized thing imaginable, not a group. Of course, there are plenty of groups based there, and these can be good or bad or very bad, but the whole thing is no more a group than, say, any given large city.

I don't expect news organizations to have knowledge of obscure internet goings-on, but 4Chan's visible enough that I hoped that technology reporters would know what it is. Apparently I was wrong.

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