Reddit's Altruism Compared To 4chan's Trollism
from the but-are-they-the-same-people? dept
There's a wonderful saying that I keep seeing get passed around lately, that:Reddit makes me like people I've never met, while Facebook makes me hate people I know in real life.While I believe the quote actually started with Twitter in place of Reddit, there's certainly an element of truth there (no matter which service you're talking about). Mathew Ingram points us to an excellent listing of some amazing stories of altruism performed by the Reddit community. The post lists out 25 separate -- and often quite amazing -- stories of true altruism from the Reddit community. It's really quite an uplifting piece, and if you've spent time in the Reddit community, you're sure to recognize many of these stories.
It's also a nice antidote to all the claims we hear from people who think that the "online mobs" out there only perform acts of malice and attacks. Of course, stories of such things are often dominated by stories of sites like 4chan. But what really strikes me about all of this is that in my experience, it often feels like there are many of the same people who hang out on both sites. While I'm sure there are many who spend time on one or the other, in the Venn Diagram of both communities, I would imagine there's a fair bit of overlap. And yet, people always talk about how the 4chan (mainly /b/) community is the worst of the worst when it comes to doing despicable things, and here's a situation in which perhaps the very same people are seen doing amazing things. There's even one "crossover" story, involving a situation that originated on 4chan, where someone had posted an image of an upcoming 90th birthday party of a guy who... looked a bit lonely in the picture (his family later denied this...). However, both the 4chan and the Reddit communities jumped onto this and decided to "cheer the guy up," sending him tons of presents, and even having a bunch of folks (from both communities) show up at his party.
I'm not sure exactly what this all means, but it does seem like the rather simplistic story you often hear in the media about the "hurtful" nature of online communities is often ignoring that the very same people can be amazingly helpful at times as well.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: 4chan, altruism, communities, reddit, trolling
Companies: 4chan, reddit
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
It's more like pub on a Saturday night, where everyone goes to get drunk before having to back to their day jobs.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
As for the overlap between them - no surprise at all, especially when the situation appears to be one of "justice". It's more the drama of ideals, being involved on a ground level with it, that appeal to the vigilante fantasy streak that exists in all of us to some extent.
The power to help, in whatever way, is terribly alluring. Throw in anonymity and it can get bold, even dark, but alleviating the despair of helplessness? Major mojo.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
As for the overlap between them - no surprise at all, especially when the situation appears to be one of "justice". It's more the drama of ideals, being involved on a ground level with it, that appeal to the vigilante fantasy streak that exists in all of us to some extent.
The power to help, in whatever way, is terribly alluring. Throw in anonymity and it can get bold, even dark, but alleviating the despair of helplessness? Major mojo.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Misclicked!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Humanity showing through
The average non-sociopath has strong feelings of right and wrong, and it's cross-cultural. These online community actions are simply the expression of those feelings. If they feel that someone is taking advantage of others (Scientology) they fight against it. But it's not for kicks, it's not just "because". It's got a social reason behind it.
It's also why a bunch of people randomly decided to help some guy celebrate his 90th birthday. Being altruistic is a good feeling (again, for non-sociopaths). Helping others because you can is natural.
We seem to forget that underneath all this, we're all still very human. There's nothing "odd" about any of this behavior if you actually understand people and their motivations beyond purely fiscal pressures.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Humanity showing through
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Id
I don't understand why the place responsible for a huge number of popular, funny memes can be seen as such an evil place. Is rickrolling really that horrific?
I'm having trouble finding the evidence, but I also know of a case where someone posted a picture of his underage daughter and one of her friends, saying he was thinking about arranging to have sex with her. Within a few hours, 4chan had sorted out who this guy was, and contacted both the school and police to warn them of a potential pedophile.
I'd never call it specifically "good" or "altruistic". It's just human.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Id
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Id
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Id
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
reddit is a sit in
4chan is a riot
(digg is the clean up crew after a protest) thought i'd add that one as well
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
4chan my eyes bleed after a scroll. Not necessarily because of the content, but because of the repetition, and how 99% is rehashed shit for the 1% gems.
Reddit is slowly entering mainstream, which is sad in a way, the site isn't like it was 3 years back, and the top 50 rated comments are predictable recognizable memes from the past few months.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Flip side of @
There are some very good anarchists, and then there are the others-- you know, the ones in Washington, er... I mean DDOS'ers.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
4chan goes both ways. I've seen them do some nice things. They helped find the guy that killed the porn actress in the midwest. They find people who threaten to bring guns to schools.
I've also seen them totally screw over people for small things. Heaven forbid someone under 18 posts naked shots of themselves with a traceable iPhone. The pictures will be sent to their schools, family and neighbors. And there's a small handful who post CP but hopefully a few arrests will stop that.
Pick on /b/ because it's often out of control, but they do some good.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
They just really really like to punish idiocy.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Evidence?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Evidence?
Even despite that many redditors would actually agree with that there is?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Evidence?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Evidence?
The media focuses rather a lot on the negative side of social networks. (ZOMG SEXUAL PREDATORS!!!!111)
But they ignore the beneficial sides, as shown in these tales of altruism right in this story.
Those are known facts too.
What kind of evidence were you expecting?
btw, that was not what you said in your initial post.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Evidence?
Sorry I was watching He-man on youtube LoL
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Evidence?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101113/22385711859/reddit-s-altruism-compared-to-4chan- s-trollism.shtml#c474
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Evidence?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Seriously 4Chan seems like the little girl in the story bellow that stabs the fish gets all bloody and keeps saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry" LoL
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-fish-almost-destroyed-my-childhood.html
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Reddit People
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/e8b53/my_18_year_old_sister_has_been_missing_f or_a_week/
The comments from some people make me want to puke. But I digress, there are douchebags everywhere nowadays.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Survival of the fittest
In the schoolyard, the bigger stronger kid pushes the smaller weaker kids around.
In the workplace, in order to climb the ladder you need to be a bigger yes man than your competition.
On the Internet, the technology savvy people have an advantage over the technology challenged.
Many members of reddit and 4chan are tech savvy. And just like you can't say all bullies are the same or all corporate scumbags are the same, you can't say all tech savvy people are the same.
This, my friends, is my rambling, meaningless insight of the day. Do you see what the stresses of real life do to the human mind? I need to nuke RIAA's Website in order to clear my mind and then maybe I'll help someone out on Reddit.
Also, never trust anyone who says, "my friends"... but I'm not really a dishonest person, I just felt like using that phrase for some reason... maybe I'm losing it. I don't know. I'll stop now.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Evidence?
Which they can. See all the cases of them hunting down and reporting people who post videos of them harming animals etc.
Personally I see 4chan kind of like a developing foreign country.
Everyone tells you all these horror stories about it and how terrible it is, then you go there and talk to the people and find out they're just like everyone else.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Evidence?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Reddit is worse than 4chan
I've never seen such a group of immature, pot-smoking, haters and perverts than on Reddit. The stories of Reddit altruism are propaganda and almost all factually incorrect.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Reddit is worse than 4chan
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Reddit is worse than 4chan
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
To me, /b/ (and the rest of 4chan) is my escape after a stressful work day. Granted, I'm more into /d/ and /r9000/ for whatever reasons. But on a first hand account, there's quite a bit of overlap from 4chan and the rest of the interwebs. It's anonymous setting makes it easier to share information, but is also ripe for exploit from just a few people to derail a board or thread. But as it was mentioned, the nature of the situation is much like the id of the internet. Just a raw stream of data, all uncensored and unfiltered that tickles up to many of the other sites that oldfags and newfags go to.
It should be noted that while 4chan is considered the source, it's not the only chan out there. You have many other "chans" out there built by previous members of 4chan who wanted to take their content to a more dedicated location. There's sites like bbwchan which are more dedicated to p0rn, 7chan is a more of a forum in comparison to 4chan. 420chan and gurochan started originally about the subjects as mentioned, but have spread out to additional topics unrelated to the original mission, but still having their own autonomous communities. Even though you have many of these sites around, they'll all usually get lumped together back with /b/ on 4chan, no matter how remote they are.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Reddit is still sexist
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Reddit is still sexist
Aside from that, I fail to see the rest of the boards being anything like what you mentioned... (aside from seduction of course, but they're he anti-twoXchromosomes...)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Reddit is still sexist
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Filling Gaps.
Just like journalism used to do: Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
my 2 cents
while on reddit you get karma and so. its not exactly 2 plus 2 straight forward, but this distinction seems to me to be important.
also all the cancer on reddit is confined to a few circlejerking subs and it is pretty easy to avoid it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
reddit is good
http://techdraginfo.blogspot.com/
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
When you can make a difference by making some lonely old man's day, you do it, be it Reddit or 4chan.
When you can make a difference by harassing the shit out of some dumb bitch who posted her contact information, you do it, be it 4chan. Not reddit though, because you're limited in identification: pseudonymity is not as safe as anonymity.
The only real differentiating factor in all of this is that 4chan is more anonymous than other websites, while also being populous. Besides all that, it's just people trying to leave their mark on the world. 'Good' or 'bad'.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Thanks, and...
I like both of the sites, 4chan is not full of dumb idiots, they are very smart at times, and very helpful as many of you have said, but all of 4chan shouldn't be at blame. I spend the majority of my 4chan time on /wg/, /r9k/, and /tv/ where there is virtually no harm or harassment, if you think you know all of 4chan and you think you can sum all of it up with /b/'s actions then maybe you should take the time to go on there more often, because you don't know the other half of 4chan.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
fanboi
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]