Fox News: 4Chan: The Rude, Raunchy Underbelly of the Internet

Fox News has an article about, 4chan, the internet cult that has made memes like lolcat, anon, shoe on the head, duckroll, rickroll, and over 9000. It's interesting to see how the public media especially Fox News portrays this internet group.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,512957,00.html

There is an old FoxNews video floating on the internet about 4chan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLoFUEjlvUI

Spoiler:

You know what's also funny is CNN refuses to acknowledge this group as the start of the Rickroll meme. CNN claimed it came from Family Guy.

4chan seems to me to not be a true social network. Although it is apparently a fairly busy website (sad statement on the human condition?), everyone is "anonymous", which means that distinguishing even an online identity for a node cannot happen. A person can state they were a poster from before, I guess, but people might not believe them. (Apparently there is some mechanism to obtain a "name", but I spent 5 minutes on the b board to see what it was like, and didn't see anyone listed as other than "Anonymous") In that sense, there are no nodes to connect to. On most forums, games, and blogs, people are required to register, giving a distinct identity to its users (to create individual nodes). However, this 4chan site does not give its users identities. I guess it could be a network if you made it one based on information nobody has (many of the people who use that website probably need to use proxies) such as a link if two users have ever posted in the same thread, then you could make a very large network. However, any links in this network show no actual connections between users, provided users have enough sense not to post any personal information on a website like that. What is amazing is how a network without distinct nodes to organize users by functions as well as it does at accomplishing tasks. The website invasions that they talk about seems easy enough to do (post a link, say "go here"), but things like hunting down an animal abuser or an e-mail hacker (faster than the FBI?) takes some coordination I would think. They have also organized protests in the real world, a big jump from anonymous posting on a shady forum.

On an aside, it's interesting to see what people will say or do under the guise of anonymity (nothing traces them back to their social network anywhere else). Is that what people would be like if that sort of behavior didn't have consequences outside of 4chan, in a consequence-free environment?