So, I wondered in type a while back why the news outlets haven’t figured out that 4chan is behind the recent denial of service and graffiti attacks on Ashley Tisdale and prominent hip-hop sites like SOHH.com. It appears that the network hive mind is now vaguely aware of the “the 4chan,” and have sent agents in to do preliminary profiles.
Both Time magazine and the Wall Street Journal dropped a pair of feelgood stories about the site Wednesday. The Time article, while lacking the WSJ’s thorough explanation of memes, is far better written and takes an adequately skeptical tone about some of the site’s less savory attributes (gore, racism, sexism, asshattery, etc). The Time reporter was also not taken in by the site owner, “moot,” and moot’s suggestion that his real name is “Christopher Poole.” The initials of that name, “CP,” are also 4chan’s shorthand for “child porn,” the one type of image that 4chan prohibits and its rowdy members always try to sneak into the site while moot isn’t looking.
Predictably, 4chan’s longtime lurkers (“oldfags,” in the board’s parleyance) are not too happy about the number of siteseers (“newfags”) the articles have attracted to their mental junkfood buffet. Like a gaggle of xenophobic monkeys, the “oldfags” have greeted visitors who announce themselves with a barrage of gore and scat pictures. Nice.
There is already the perception among the “oldfags” that a “cancer” of teenage twits is already ruining the anarchic cleverness of 4chan’s random /b/ channel. And now the mass media have discovered 4chan. You know what that means – the FBI ain’t far behind…
