EPIC WIN FOR ANONYMOUS (13 page)

One board, “Solitary Man,” seems to be a place for lonely males to commiserate. I’ve found a thread in this board titled “What do you prefer in the opposite sex?” The first post, penned by an alleged 16-year-old boy, details different characteristics, like height, age, education, and attractiveness. The thread continues with people contributing characteristics like “kind person,” “looks like Cameron Diaz,” “likes housework,” “loves animals,” and “beautiful Japanese.” Within ten replies, a troll offers his idea of an ideal woman, with wings growing from her head, raptor claw hands and feet, and, of course, beautiful breasts.

Because the site doesn’t allow images of any kind, the users have developed a form of visual communication based on ASCII art.

These can be simple emoticons, like this angry fella, a 2channel emoticon, or
kaomoji
:

Some of them contain thousands of characters in order to create almost photo-realistic visual representations.

Each discussion thread can potentially contain up to a thousand posts, which either “age” or “sage.” Saged posts (from the Japanese
sageru
) move down to the bottom of the thread, while aged, or bumped, posts float to the top. This dynamic method of arranging content was eventually borrowed by 4chan’s founder.

2channel is a place to argue, vent, cajole, insult, and goof around. The users are sarcastic and sophomoric, and have developed a dense internal lexicon. Those who aren’t in the know are said to be
kuku yomenai
, or someone who “can’t read the air.” In other words, a noob or newfag.

2channel can get pretty dark. In 2000, a 17-year-old kid posted a message claiming that he was about to hijack a bus, an act that he carried out an hour later, stabbing one passenger to death. Racism, especially toward Koreans, is rampant. Mass suicides have been organized on the site, and criminals have boasted about their plans before committing crimes hours later. Interestingly, many notable documented events resulting from or announced on 2channel has a Western analogue on 4chan. The cultures are so different, but the technology influences human behavior on a deeply similar level.

2channel also has a heartwarming side. Consider Trainman, an anonymous 2channel user who regaled the community with a story fit for a romance novel. While sitting on a train he noticed an attractive woman. A drunk man boarded the train and began to harass the other passengers, who ignored him. Then he began to sexually harass the woman. Despite being an introverted geek, Trainman took action, fighting off the man until the other passengers were able to alert the conductor.

The woman thanked him profusely and asked for his address so she could send him a token of appreciation. A few days later Trainman received a beautiful French tea set. Overwhelmed by her thoughtfulness, he returned to 2channel to update an expanding group of interested fans and ask for advice. As a self-conscious nerd, he had no idea how to respond appropriately. The folks on 2channel convinced him to contact the woman. He eventually worked up the courage to ask her out on a date, his first.

Then, per 2channel’s advice, he got a new haircut, bought a snazzy outfit, and picked up some contact lenses. His first date was a success, and he continued to keep 2channel abreast of his progress. After a few more dates he and the woman began texting regularly, and eventually Trainman confessed his love, which she returned. Trainman triumphantly announced their shared affection to 2channel, whose users banded together for an ecstatic online celebration.

Trainman’s story is now folklore in Japan, having been adapted for television, film, and manga. Though many are convinced of the story’s authenticity, it’s never been proven, and neither Trainman nor his lover have ever come forward in real life.

In a 2003 interview with
Japan Media Review
, Nishimura laid out the site’s appeal.

Q: Why did you decide to use perfect anonymity, not even requiring a user name?

A: Because delivering news without taking any risk is very important to us. There is a lot of information disclosure or secret news gathered on Channel 2. Few people would post that kind of information by taking a risk. Moreover, people can only truly discuss something when they don’t know each other.

If there is a user ID attached to a user, a discussion tends to become a criticizing game. On the other hand, under the anonymous system, even though your opinion/information is criticized, you don’t know with whom to be upset. Also with a user ID, those who participate in the site for a long time tend to have authority, and it becomes difficult for a user to disagree with them. Under a perfectly anonymous system, you can say, “it’s boring,” if it is actually boring. All information is treated equally; only an accurate argument will work.

2channel is now considered a media powerhouse on par with the country’s biggest magazines and TV channels. And it’s completely open and free for everyone, not just for viewing but for contributing and collaborating. 2channel behaves not only as an alternative media source, but as an ombudsman that is continuously keeping the Japanese mainstream media in check.

4chan Godfather: Futaba Channel

Futaba Channel, or 2ch, is an image board that was launched in 2001. The community is more focused on otaku culture than 2channel is. Futaba Channel contains around one hundred boards, some of which are devoted to images, some of which are text only.

I wander onto Futaba Channel and sure enough, it looks almost exactly like 4chan. I pick a board at random: “Two-dimensional Gro.” I’m met with a warning page:

You are about to enter the grotesque image board.

Images on the grotesque image board may cause serious consequences.

I enter the board, consequences be damned. It’s full of images of anime girls being suspended by hooks, or stretched out on examination tables while being disemboweled, or smiling sweetly while bleeding, apparently from having been recently quadruply amputated. Yuck.

I try the newest board, called “Nuclear.” It’s a forum for people to discuss the potential for nuclear fallout, primarily related to the Fukushima power plant. There seems to be a lot of anger being expressed toward the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the fourth-largest in the world, regarding its handling of the Fukushima nuclear accident in the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

“No nuclear power plants should be up and running properly in a country that cannot handle a nuclear accident,” writes one understandably resentful poster. Everyone seems to be arguing about who is to blame for the perceived lack of preparedness in the aftermath of the disaster.

This kind of venting is something that Japanese people probably wouldn’t feel comfortable with in real life. Futaba Channel and 2channel, with all their oddities, seem to offer a release valve for the Japanese.

The forums also provide an opportunity to achieve social good. In October of 2004, thousands of 2channel users rallied to help in the aftermath of the Niigata Prefecture Chuetsu earthquake. Right now, I’m seeing hundreds of threads buzzing with people sharing information and offering to help one another in the wake of the recent tsunami and earthquakes.

Collecting Bite-Sized Memes:
You’re The Man Now Dog

In 2001, back in the United States, Max Goldberg launched the online community You’re the Man Now Dog.

The site began as nothing but the words “You’re the man now dog” written in ASCII text on a black background, at http://www.yourethemannowdog.com. The line is prominently spoken by Sean Connery in the trailer for the 2000 film
Finding Forrester
. By the end of the year, Goldberg had changed the site to include a tiled image of Connery, an audio clip of him saying the quote, and accompanying text reading the same. It was absurd and useless, and people appreciated it for exactly those reasons.

I remember someone sent me a link to it back in 2002. By the time the audio clip had repeated a third time I’d thrown my head back in laughter. Who made this? What does this mean? Why that specific line? The ludicrousness of it all. YTMND is an early example of the single-serving site, a URL reserved for an exceedingly singular, and usually trivial, purpose.

Over the next few years, creative goofs would apply the YTMND model (a pic, a sound clip, and text) to different weird pop-culture icons. So many people created derivatives that Max eventually decided to set up a site to host all of them, and //www.ytmnd.com was born.

The top-viewed YTMND is a clip of a prank call that was originally recorded by comedian Tom Mabe. The second is a massive animated GIF image created collectively by some clever Something Awful goons. The YTMND wiki explains:

The Blue Ball Machine is one of the most frequently-viewed pages on all of YTMND. The site is a patchwork of animated GIFs linked together accompanied by a looping hook of the song Breakfast Machine from the film Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. The concept was conceived by Andorion, who created a template and some sample tiles and a thread for others to contribute, and the individual images were created by hundreds of Something Awful forums goons. Each image has three balls enter and leave at particular spots at any frame which is a multiple of 30, but otherwise the content is up to the creator. It has earned this title by accruing a staggering four million pageviews since its inception in October of 2005.

The third is called “Breakup Letter: Dramatic Reading,” which features a narrator reading an inarticulate breakup letter as though it were a dramatic Shakespearean monologue, while trying not to giggle:

Dear Loser,[Chris]~~~~!!!!!

I thought you liked me you said it yourself I hate you. People only say you asked me out because you needed a date for the dance and that after the dance you would dump me well guess what bastert i dumped you cause you were thinking that i cheated on you i didnt so like idiots that you guys are and so smart that you are you called me a slut. I hung up on you cause you tol me it on the phone

That’s a small taste, but you get the idea. Moving down the list I see an animated GIF of Paris Hilton that shows her using the same facial expression in every photo. Another has the opening sequence of “Cowboy Bebop,” only with audio of a Bill Cosby soundalike scatting over the original music (Cosby Bebop).

The appeal of YTMND is that it allowed users to crystallize a single, self-contained bit of absurdity into a unique URL that they could easily share with their friends. There was also a feature that allowed people to rate the clips, so the best ones rose to the top. For a time in the mid-2000s, YTMND was one of the most powerful Internet meme aggregators.

The Memesphere Expands

From the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, the Internet birthed hundreds of smaller sites that have come to be known as early Internet memes themselves, or that hosted viral content before viral content was recognized as something new. I’ve already told you about “Gonads and Strife,” a cartoon from Threebrain, a flash animator who also released such viral sensations as “Sorry Your Mom Died” and “Monkey Salad.”

realultimatepower.com is a good example, and it somehow remains intact after all these years. The homepage begins:

Hi, this site is all about ninjas, REAL NINJAS. This site is awesome. My name is Robert and I can’t stop thinking about ninjas. These guys are cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet.

Facts:

1. Ninjas are mammals.

2. Ninjas fight ALL the time.

3. The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.

It goes on like this. I distinctly remember the pure delight the childlike wording of this home page brought to my college dorm. This stuff was our generation’s
Monty Python
. It was fresh and funny and it felt like nobody seemed to quite get it but us.

In 2004, Quiznos ran a campaign featuring the Spongmonkeys, who had achieved viral fame with an animation called “We Like the Moon.” Joel Vietch had originally created the video for his goofy animation site http://www.rathergood.com in 2003. The ads featured the bizarre creatures singing “We Love the Subs.” The monkeys were among the first, if not
the
first, Internet memes to be used in advertising. The bizarre nature of the Spongmonkeys ads confused many TV viewers, and the requisite explanation was, “Oh, it’s just this weird thing from the Internet.”