Wow, the comments on this thread are much more divisive than I thought.
I've always felt that the 'there are only two internet cultures: 4chan and tumblr' has felt somewhat accurate. Unfortunately moreso now that /pol/ and /r9k/ have taken over broad swathes of the internet.
It's sad to see how far this old haunt has fallen. Lurking /v/ in my early/mid teens was a formative experience for me. It wasn't as hateful as it was, until Gamergate.
/r9k/ is such a weird situation, because its original incarnation prided itself on being an intellectual bastion on the site. The robot meant that you couldn't meme so easily; you had to attempt to write something substantial or meaningful (or at least original). Most were simply discussions, but you'd also get creative gems like futureguy's sobering predictions (well, history, for him).
tfwnogf really did kill everything.
> I've always felt that the 'there are only two internet cultures: 4chan and tumblr' has felt somewhat accurate.
"Somewhat accurate" is exactly right.
This formulation overstates the number of Internet cultures by one, in that the deepest and most shameful secret of both websites' most avid users is that they have always been both websites' most avid users.
Other than that, there's nothing wrong with it.
> in that the deepest and most shameful secret of both websites' most avid users is that they have always been both websites' most avid users.
This isn’t true at all.
> This isn’t true at all.
Many will say the same.
Still, both cohorts' language and behavior evince continuous cultural cross-pollination from around 2012 (at least; I wasn't paying serious attention much sooner), at a rate and scope both well in excess of broader culture's adoption of same as substantially attributable to either source.
That still has to be explained, and I would be curious how you do so, although you'll almost certainly prefer to keep trying to indict the factual claim.
> Still, both cohorts' language and behavior evince continuous cultural cross-pollination from around 2012 (at least; I wasn't paying serious attention much sooner), at a rate and scope both well in excess of broader culture's adoption of same as substantially attributable to either source.
Do you have any evidence or anecdotes to explain why you believe that?
> you'll almost certainly prefer to keep trying to indict the factual claim.
Because the claim isn’t convincing. I saw plenty of content from Tumblr in 2014 despite not actively using it, and I could probably pass an ideological Turing test for a user of the era, but that doesn’t mean I was using both websites. You obviously have to have someone taking screenshots of these posts for each community to be aware of the other in the first place, but the core demographic of users on each site did not substantially overlap.
"Most avid users," I believe I said. You seem to exclude yourself from the category, so it isn't surprising you should have a perspective other than that I seek to describe.
As for the rest, I made a general factual claim that I'm happy to discuss, but I do not know you and neither can nor care to attempt to speak to your personal situation, so if you continue insisting on the latter I'll have to demur from further participation. I'm a student of and commentator upon the moment of history in which I happen to have found myself, rather than a social scientist or indeed any other kind, and also not your father confessor. If the result of my observation and analysis fails to satisfy your standard, that's okay by me.
Or we could try to have a conversation about it, I suppose. For example, what explains the trend of both cultures' slang growing more similar over time? Merely circulating receipts to make fun of doesn't seem likely to have this result; why socially adopt language unique to a common object of social-bonding contempt? And so forth.
I obviously don't have a lot of data for or against, and I think neither does anyone else for events too recent to have more than begun to be studied. I am one unemployed software engineer. You are free to demand I exceed in result the entire professional vocation whose job is this kind of analysis, but I can of course do nothing in response save disappoint.
> "Most avid users," I believe I said. You seem to exclude yourself from the category, so it isn't surprising you should have a perspective other than that I seek to describe.
I was an avid user and I read your post correctly the first time. Most users did not browse both platforms. Most avid users did not browse both platforms.
> Or we could try to have a conversation about it, I suppose.
I don’t see the point when you’ve already admitted that you do not feel inclined to provide any evidence (anecdotal or otherwise) to support your claim.
> I don’t see the point [of trying to have a conversation] when you’ve already admitted that you do not feel inclined to provide any evidence...
I would feel badly about that if you showed any interest in adhering to the higher standard you espouse, or indeed to any standard: you're an "avid user" now, but "I saw plenty of content from Tumblr in 2014 despite not actively using it," you said upthread just a little while ago.
Unless we mean you to say you were "avid" but only on 4chan, I'm not sure how this is intended to be taken, but that doesn't actually matter because I'm speaking of what I have observed among a cohort in which you have, I repeat, affirmatively disclaimed membership, rendering your observations of your own behavior moot in this context.
It's no fun bullshitting when only one party involved realizes that's what they're doing.
> you're an "avid user" now, but "I saw plenty of content from Tumblr in 2014 despite not actively using it," you said upthread just a little while ago.
I was an avid user of 4chan, not Tumblr.
> I'm speaking of what I have observed among a cohort in which you have, I repeat, affirmatively disclaimed membership, rendering your observations of your own behavior moot in this context.
You wrote:
>in that the deepest and most shameful secret of both websites' most avid users is that they have always been both websites' most avid users.
The plain reading of this claim is that the power users of both websites used both websites. I have no reason to think that this is true, and you haven’t made any argument as to why you think it is true. The way you are reading what you have written would make your claim tautological: i.e. “The users who used both websites used both websites.”
The argument hinges on what you mean by "avid," which you have opted not to define. There's nothing concrete here for me to address.
This is the kind of thing I mean when I say we're both bullshitting and you don't realize it. I haven't defined the word in my own usage either, nor indeed intended anything more by it than to denote those passionately enough interested not only to participate in the culture but to observe it as they did so, and who went different places to inhabit different sides of themselves the way people have always done, especially while young with identity still malleable, for as long as there've been people.
That vagueness is fine for my argument, which after all is just that I've seen what I've seen and it's interesting to talk about that. Yours is "no you didn't and we have to fight about it," and I admit that is getting me a little curious as to why all this would mean so much to you over a stranger about whose opinion of you you've no obvious cause to care. You're making a federal case of a colloquial statement. Why?
> The argument hinges on what you mean by "avid," which you have opted not to define.
Tiresome.
> which after all is just that I've seen what I've seen and it's interesting to talk about that.
My argument is just that I’ve seen what I’ve seen and it contradicts what you’ve seen.
Well, at least we can agree we're both bullshitting, then. You won't, but we could. Other outcomes were possible: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43706093
I’ve stated my argument plainly. You are being evasive because your argument is unconvincing. Review the site guidelines; you are violating several of them.
Flag my comments, then. Or does this throwaway of yours lack sufficient karma as yet for that? I forget, but I think probably.
Mr. Gackle has had words with me before when I have caused the need; if he or his new offsider whose name I forget feels the same need now, no doubt they will again so remonstrate. In the meantime you, in seeking to speak from their cathedra, fail to impress.
Take your meds.
Oh, honey, that's sweet of you and I appreciate it, but it's been many years since I had trouble keeping track of such things. Seven sharp this morning, just like every other day.
I disagree with this statement, but I get what you're saying.
Two communities with distinct cultures, whose membership nonetheless overlaps, are still two distinct cultures.
They may influence each other through that overlapping membership, but that does not mean they're the same.
I'm not sure if you're arguing that the overlap was less than I describe or that it was negligible. But I would soften my prior claim far enough to say that, while each site had its own constellation of cultural tropes and styles with which the median user of that site would primarily identify, a large minority or more of each site's most prolific cultural transmitters was broadly and continuously informed by participation in both cultures, such that those cultures tended over time to express increasingly similar behaviors, utterances, and semiosis, despite over the same span each growing overtly more hateful and contemptuous of the other.
(A Freudian might reduce this to superego vs. id, a Jungian to animus and anima. I'm not any of those kinds of mendicant, and make no assertion as to etiology. But it is anything but controversial to suggest we have recently changed our environment in ways that can be unexpectedly dangerous for the young and others whose personalities are incompletely or imperfectly developed.)