Check'em: An Analysis of Online Group Identity on 4Chan

Bakalářská diplomová práce

OLDŘICH CHMELA

Brno 2021

FILOZOFICKÁ FAKULTA

Check'em: An Analysis

of Online Group Identity

on 4Chan

Vedoucí práce: doc. Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph.D.

Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky

Obor Anglický jazyk a literatura

CHECK'EM: AN ANALYSIS OF ONLINE GROUP IDENTITY ON 4CHAN

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Bibliografický záznam

Autor: Oldřich Chmela Filozofická fakulta Masarykova univerzita Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky

Název práce: Check'em: An Analysis of Online Group Identity on 4Chan

Studijní program: FF B-FI Filologie, bakalářský studijní program

Studijní obor: Anglický jazyk a literatura

Vedoucí práce: doc. Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph.D.

Rok: 2021

Počet stran: 69

Klíčová slova: 4chan, počítačově zprostředkovaný diskurz, online skupinová identita, hnutí incel


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Bibliographic record

Author: Oldřich Chmela Faculty of Arts Masaryk University Department of English and American Studies

Title of Thesis: Check'em: An Analysis of Online Group Identity on 4Chan

Degree Programme: FF B-FI Philology, Bachelor's degree programme

Field of Study: FF AJ English Language and Literature

Supervisor: doc. Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph.D.

Year: 2021

Number of Pages: 69

Keywords: 4chan, computer-mediated discourse, linguistics, online group identity, incels


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Anotace

Tato bakalářská práce popisuje a analyzuje diskusní fórum 4chan.org, jeho obecnou

lingvistickou stránku, lexikon a jeho morfologický systém. Vysvětluje i jeho historický

kontext. Prezentuje mechanismy, kterými se diskurs na 4chanu řídí. Dále podrobně

vysvětluje důležité koncepty, které jsou k porozumění informací na této stránce třeba

znát, jako například koncept CMD. Zvláštní důraz je kladen na funkci čísel, jež mají na

tomto fóru svoji speciální roli. Konkrétněji popsáno je také slovo faggot a jeho

morfologie, jejíž analýza poskytuje hlubší pochopení slovotvorbě a slovníku, jež

uživatelé 4chanu užívají. Dále je práce doplněna o korpusovou analýzu, která se věnuje

především frekvenční analýze, kolokacím a kontextu, v jakém jsou jednotlivá slova

užívána. Práce bere v potaz také politické a sociologické implikace obsahu diskusí i

korpusu. Nakonec je ještě pro úplnost informací práce rozšířena glosářem, kde jsou

stručnou formou vysvětleny vybrané termíny specifické pro 4chan.


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Abstract

This thesis discusses and analyses the overall linguistic atmosphere, vocabulary and

the morphological system of the discussion forum 4chan.org. The historical context is

also discussed. It also explains the mechanisms that affect the discourse on the forum.

Important concepts such as CMD and others, necessary understand its specific form of

discourse are explained. Special focus is given to the function of numbers, which play

a special role within 4chan’s user dynamics. Extra focus is given to the lemma faggot

and its morphology, which in turn provides for a deeper understanding 4chan’s

lexicon. Political implications, stemming from the contents of the forums as well as the

corpus are discussed. Additionally, the thesis contains a corpus analysis which works

with frequency analysis, collocations, and the context in which are the most frequently

used words utilised. Finally, the thesis is accompanied by a glossary which includes a

selection of the most important keywords and describes them in a brief way.


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Declaration

I hereby declare that this thesis with title Check'em: An Analysis of Online Group Identity on 4Chan I submit for assessment is entirely my own work and has not been taken from the work of others save to the extent that such work has been cited and

acknowledged within the text of my thesis.

Brno May 16, 2021 ....................................... Oldřich Chmela


Šablona DP 3.2.2-ARTS-dipl-obor-anglicky (2021-04-29) © 2014, 2016, 2018–2021 Masarykova univerzita 9

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all my family members for being supportive throughout the

whole process of my writing this bachelor’s thesis. I would also like to thank my friends

for their equally important moral support, as well as the teachers and other staff

members of the Department of English and American Studies for their help, patience

and understanding.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Table of Contents

List of Figures 13

List of Tables 13

Glossary 15

1 Introduction 17

1.1 Computer-mediated discourse .................................................................................... 18

2 Methodology 20

2.1 General overview of the topic, choice of material ................................................ 20

2.2 Technical aspects of corpus creation ........................................................................ 20

2.3 Overview of the corpus contents ................................................................................ 21

2.4 Preliminary analysis of the corpus ............................................................................. 22

3 Historical, technical and cultural background 24

3.1 Historical background ..................................................................................................... 24

3.2 User demographics ........................................................................................................... 26

4 4chan’s characteristic phenomena and mechanisms 28

4.1 Temporariness ................................................................................................................... 28

4.2 Bumping ............................................................................................................................... 29

4.3 Archiving efforts ................................................................................................................ 30

4.4 User moderation, janitors .............................................................................................. 31

4.5 User identity ........................................................................................................................ 32

4.6 Post IDs ............................................................... Chyba! Záložka není definována.

4.7 Dubs, trips and other discourse-altering numerals ............................................. 35

4.8 Check’em, Mr. Bateman .................................................................................................. 36

4.9 Links to the incel movement ........................................................................................ 38

4.10 Tits or GTFO and 4chan’s misogyny .......................................................................... 40

4.11 Other forms of user identification .............................................................................. 42

5 Morphological and stylistic aspects of the forum 43

5.1 The curious case of the word fag ................................................................................ 43

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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5.2 Newfags and oldfags ........................................................................................................ 46

5.3 Stylistic elements of the forum ......................................................................................... 47

5.3.1 Reddit-spacing ..................................................................................................................... 48

5.3.2 Greentext ............................................................................................................................... 50

5.3.3 MFW ........................................................................................................................................ 52

6 Political implications of the forum’s contents 53

7 Conclusion 57

7 Discussion 59

8.1 Study limitations .................................................................................................................... 59

8.2 Further research .................................................................................................................... 60

Bibliography 61

Summary 66

Resumé 67

LIST OF FIGURES

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List of Figures

Figure 1 - Post 222222222 (Anonymous, 2019)............................................................... 33

Figure 2 - GET Post 88869 (Anonymous, 2010)................................................................ 34

Figure 3 - Check’em, Post 193798577 (Anonymous, 2010) ......................................... 38

Figure 4 - 9384163 – Anon is gay (Anonymous, 2020) ................................................. 51

Figure 5 - 1223025 – Anon is Korean” (Anonymous, 2017) ....................................... 54

https://ucnmuni-my.sharepoint.com/personal/476766_muni_cz/Documents/BA%20Thesis%20-%202020/BA%20thesis%20-%20Chmela%20Oldřich.docx#_Toc72090686

LIST OF TABLES

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List of Tables

Table 1 - most frequent nouns, verb and adjectives in the corpus ............................ 22

Table 2 - chances of obtaining a rare post ID (The Digit Advisory Page, n.d) ........ 36

Table 3 – most frequent nouns containing the -fag suffix ............................................. 44

Table 4 – random concordance of the lemma faggot ....................................................... 45

Table 5 – most frequent collocations of lemma faggot ................................................... 46

Table 6 - a random sample of sentences and utterances ............................................... 48

GLOSSARY

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Glossary

thread – a self-contained discussion which may or may not have a title

catalog – an overview of all of the currently active threads on a specific board

board – a sub-forum, generally dedicated to a singular topic, for example

/pol/ for politics or /fit/ for fitness

OP – OP is a short version of opening / original post. In the context of

4chan’s discourse, OP refers to the user who created the thread by

submitting their post. It is universally understood that OP is a fag.

bump – an act of replying to someone else’s post in order to push the thread closer to the beginning of the catalog

selfbump – same as bump, only this time it is the OP doing the bumping

sage – from Japanese sageru, when put into the respective field, it will push the thread further back in the catalog, effectively giving the users a way to rid the board of an unwanted thread

fag, faggot – an user of 4chan. used also a suffix to express affiliation with a certain group or character qualities, i.e. christfag, animefag and

so on

tard – similarly to fag, tard may also be used to create a portmanteau of sorts, such as /b/tard – in this case an user hailing from the /b/ board, dedicated to random topics.

imageboard – a forum, primarily used for sharing pictures

chan – channel, alternative word for an imageboard

(to) lurk – to only browse the boards without participating

lurker – users who lurk, see above

moar – a spelling variant of the word more, frequently used by 4chan’s

members

post ID – string of numerals, assigned randomly to every post

GET – marks a milestone post with a rare post ID combination, or signifies

the user’s attempt to obtain one

roll – similar to get, users could be rolling for a post with a rare com-bination of numbers

GLOSSARY

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tripcode – a way to establish an identity on 4chan, a unique sort of password

which serves as a form of identification for the website

tripfag – user of 4chan who decides to use a tripcode, which will be dis-played next to their posts. Usually faced with hostile behaviour towards them, most users simply remain anonymous. Only a few tripfags were tolerated on 4chan, some of which retain a celeb-rity status

moot – nickname of the creator of 4chan, Christopher Poole

vidya – a spelling variation of the word videogames

anime – Japanese animated cartoons

manga – Japanese comics

blueboard – a board where no NSWF content is allowed

NSFW – not safe for work, opposite of above – [Definice]

SWF – safe for work, permissible content

INTRODUCTION

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1 Introduction

The subject of this thesis is 4chan.org, one of the internet’s most well-known

discussion forums. Contrary to its ever-rising popularity, it is considered quite

controversial. There are multiple reasons behind this claim. Certain aspects of the

forum are politically incorrect and could be even described as outright extremist. It is

also thought to be mostly used by male users of with little to no diversity, and as such

it is prone to becoming an echo-chamber. But while controversial, is still a unique

platform, something that no traditional form of media could ever match. And as such,

it contents provide an intriguing source material for a study.

This thesis therefore aims to provide a general analysis of its linguistic

atmosphere, lexicon, and sociological aspects contained within the forum. By

describing the unique communicative methods and styles employed by its users,

provides the reader with the tools necessary for understanding the somewhat cryptic

information the forum contains. Special attention is given to all the phenomena that

are crucial to understand in order to navigate and participate in the discourse, with

extra focus on the meaning of post IDs, the temporary nature of all its content and the

technical vocabulary used within its boards. In order to achieve that, a special passage

dedicated to various blends and portmanteaus related to the omnipresent lemma

faggot shall provide the reader with a brief overview of the lexical system of the forum.

4chan does also have an active community of volunteer moderators, who

complement the self-policing methods enforced by the inherent rules of every board,

these mechanisms shall be analysed in a separate part of the thesis.

INTRODUCTION

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Finally, the thesis takes advantage of both author’s empirical findings, gathered

by both actively participating in the discussions while gathering posts relevant to the

research and a sample corpus, counting roughly 10 million words and created using

data provided by Bibliotheca Anonoma, an online archive of internet folklore, which

was subsequently analysed using the Sketch Engine tool. Data obtained by this analysis

shall be used to further support the claims presented in the thesis.

1.1 Computer-mediated discourse

In order to communicate on 4chan, and the internet in general, the users have to work

within a specific mode of communication. With the style of discourse being dictated by

the methods and technology employed in order to transmit their messages, and the

inherent impossibility to employ gestures, auditory cues or facial expression, it may

seem heavily restricted.

Prominent linguists working in this field, such as Susan Herring, recognise it

under the term computer-mediated discourse. In the 2000 journal article of the same

name, Herring describes it as “a specialization within the broader interdisciplinary

study of computer-mediated communication”. While acknowledging the inadequacies

stemming from the inability to fully employ all the devices offered by face-to-face

communication, Herring still argues that “CMD can be richly expressive” (Herring,

2000). Crystal’s Internet linguistics: a student guide then notes that there may be more

similarities between the computer-mediated way of communication and actual speech,

claiming that some aspects of CMD “…display much of the urgency and energetic force

INTRODUCTION

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which is characteristic of face-to-face conversation” (Crystal, 2011). The phenomena

further described in this thesis support these conclusions. For the sake of brevity,

Herring uses the acronym CMD when referring to computer-mediated discourse, and

for the purposes of this thesis, the same acronym shall be henceforth used as well.

However, familiarity with the concept of CMD is insufficient on its own, as it only

describes a general framework. In order to understand the origins of the distinctive

style of CMD employed by 4chan’s users, a deeper understanding of internet history

and 4chan’s background is needed.

METHODOLOGY

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2 Methodology

2.1 General overview of the topic, choice of material

The corpus was created by utilising the data offered on Archive.org, created over the

course of August 2019 and uploaded to the interned by the members of Bibliotheca

Anonoma, a “research task force archiving, documenting, and safeguarding Internet

Folklife” (Bibliotheca Anonoma, n.d.).

Out of the 167 separate archives, each representing a different part of the forum,

a 6-gigabyte file named b.csv.bz2 was chosen. My reasoning behind choosing this

particular file was the fact that it represents the /b/ Random board – the term board

being the official term for each particular part of the forum unified by a certain topic.

As hinted in its name, the Random board does not have a pre-set topic, and as such it

serves as a suitable and representative basis for the subsequent creation of the corpus.

2.2 Technical aspects of corpus creation

Upon the extraction of the b.csv.bz2 file, I was presented with 30 gigabytes of raw data.

Using Microsoft Excel’s Import data function, I have loaded the file into the program.

The contents of the archive did not only consist of text, and therefore I had to limit

Excel’s output to only load one column containing the actual user-submitted posts. I

capped the output to 500000 entries due to the technical constrains of both Excel and

Sketch Engine, my concordancer of choice. The raw data was unfortunately

METHODOLOGY

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contaminated by a great number of illegible symbols, a problem probably caused by

the computer script used by the coders of Bibliotheca Anonoma in order to scrape the

contents of the website. Therefore, I have decided to filter the output even more,

exporting the file out of Excel and moving it to Notepad ++, an advanced text editor.

There, I was finally able to remove unwanted entries. Using the expression ^\d{7,12},

I managed to delete all the numbers greater than 8 decimal places, which would

logically be the post numbers. Since they seemed to be embedded together with the

text posts, they had to be removed in order to obtain a clean and legible corpus. This

way, some of the posts directly referencing post numbers would be removed, but I was

able to find relevant information regarding the mechanics of numerals in the 4chan

GET Encyclopedia hosted on the LURKMORE Wiki. After exporting a clean .txt file out of

Notepad ++, I was finally able to load it into the Sketch Engine concordancer.

2.3 Overview of the corpus contents

The corpus consists roughly of 10000000 (ten million) words, or 1200000 tokens.

There are only 475000 recognised sentences, pointing at the somewhat reduced

grammatical system of 4chan’s users who tend to use short, concise replies, sometimes

only one-word long.

Using the wordlist function, I have gathered a table consisting of the most

frequently used nouns, verbs and adjectives, listing the first 20 of each category with

absolute frequency, representing the actual number of their occurrences within the

METHODOLOGY

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corpus. For some reason, the concordancer includes the pronoun I as the top entry, no

matter the settings, and I ascribe that to a software error.

Nr. Nouns Frequency Verbs Frequency Adjectives Frequency

1 I 59635 be 459413 good 32259 2 pol 30822 do 122223 more 15575 3 shit 27530 have 73546 other 11792 4 op 26003 get 62565 bad 10067 5 fuck 24884 fuck 41094 nice 9148 6 thread 23908 go 29536 same 8867 7 faggot 22398 know 29485 old 7771 8 time 22195 make 25220 new 7327 9 people 19361 think 25089 first 7189 10 [url] 19361 see 24451 big 7006 11 girl 17563 say 21953 little 6926 12 roll 17519 look 19853 [number] 6825 13 guy 17216 take 18001 real 6648 14 man 14693 try 15068 last 6095 15 thing 14582 post 14323 white 5828 16 nigger 13366 give 13840 only 5473 17 year 12875 come 13810 hot 5455 18 dick 12044 use 13262 hard 5340 19 life 11626 need 13047 few 5303 20 day 11517 like 12330 much 5113

Table 1 - most frequent nouns, verb and adjectives in the corpus

2.4 Preliminary analysis of the corpus

Without any previous knowledge of the contents and nature of the forum, the reader

may immediately take notice of the fact that especially the category of most-frequently

used nouns is quite offensive and 25% of the top nouns are expletives or derogatory

terms. Then there are slang terms, such as pol or op, which are not understandable

without deeper knowledge of 4chan’s lexicon. The word fuck takes the fifth place both

METHODOLOGY

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as a verb and as a noun, which may indicate that this forum is frequented by more men

than women, at least when we take in account some of the linguistic research claiming

that as “a whole, male speakers use fuck more than twice as frequently as female

speakers, a difference that is statistically significant” (McEnery & Xiao, 2004). Same

results were found by Baker, who states that “male speakers used the strong swear

word fuck / fucking more”, some 10 years after McEnery and Xiao’s journal article

publication date, proving that this trend continues to be true (Baker, 2014). The

frequent use of the noun dick could also point to this conclusion.

Signs of homophobia are also present, as exemplified by the word faggot taking the 7th

place. In addition to that, the fact that an extremely derogatory term nigger happens to

be the 16th most used noun, as well as white being the 15th most used adjective

uncovers the racist and xenophobic tendencies of 4chan’s users, at least when it comes

to their choice of words.

HISTORICAL, TECHNICAL AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND

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3 Historical, technical and cultural background

Founded by Christopher Poole, also known by “moot, a member of the Something

Awful forums” in 2003 (Bibliotheca Anonoma, n.d.), originally meant as place to share

anime and manga, 4chan is not the only internet forum of its kind, it is simply one of

the most well-known, ranking at position 882 among all websites and at position 56 in

the United Kingdom at the time of writing (4chan.Org Competitive Analysis, Marketing

Mix and Traffic - Alexa, 2021).

3.1 Historical background

The proper term for this kind of text-based forum with the possibility to upload images

is an imageboard or simply a board. Imageboards, or chans, which is an abbreviation

of the word channel, originate in Japan. Forums of this kind started to appear in the

very beginnings of the World Wide Web. The first one of its kind is considered to be

Ayashii’s World, created in the mid-90s, and the collective of Bibliotheca Anonoma

claims that it was “…the first anonymous textboard ever made on the internet. 4chan

(…) is actually a direct descendant, at least when it comes to the code” (History -

Bibliotheca Anonoma, n.d.). Kaigo and Watanabe describe its content as “…mainly

“underground” and “subculture” related, and the contributors usually did not indicate

their names in the name field, so that the community became an anonymous forum”

(Kaigo & Watanabe, 2007).

In Japan, these forums served as safe space for the users to anonymously express

their opinions, allowing them to momentarily escape their designated societal roles


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that were inseparably tied to their identity. Eric Cattelain, author of an article

discussing the concept of this social duality, named uchi-soto, notes that is further

divided into two parts: honne-tatemae, the distinction between what you truly feel and

what you show to others, and omote-ura, loosely translated as front and back. It is

further described as an “intricate sense of who you are and who you are expected to

be, or what you are and are not supposed to say or show others” (Cattelain, 2014). In

the very professional and competitive society, which Japan undoubtedly was and still

is, it is quite difficult to detach oneself from those rigid roles and expectations laid upon

an average individual, especially since they are now an integral part of Japanese

society. It is only logical that the Japanese users flocked to these imageboards, as they

provided a discussion platform where everyone is anonymous and therefore equal.

Consequently, the sense of anonymity so characteristic of Japanese chans would also

become an inherent part of 4chan, as a Western adaptation of this Japanese internet

phenomenon.

In the Western context, the principles of uchi-soto, hone-tatemae and omote-ura

appear to be closely related to the politeness theory, a concept invented by Stephen

Levinson and Penelope Brown in their 1987 book Politeness: some universals in

language usage. Similarly to uchi-soto, it operates with the idea of face, characterised

as “something that is emotionally invested (…) and must be constantly attended to in

interaction” (Jaworski & Coupland, 1999). Contrasting negative face as “the desire to

be unimpeded in one’s actions”, and positive face as “the desire (in some respects) to

be approved of”, Levinson and Brown consider this concept a global phenomenon.


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However, it is also claimed that further explanation is needed in order to apply the

notion of face to different cultures or groups, stating that it is something which in

“…any particular society we would expect to be the subject of much cultural

elaboration” (Brown & Levinson, 1987).

Therefore, it can be claimed that while imageboards have developed in Japan, a

society radically different in from the Western one in many aspects, they have already

shared a significant part the common concept of face, albeit under a different name and

setting. This concept is also relevant in the way the users interact with each other, and

especially the newcomers, who are not members of the in-group and as such

unacquainted with 4chan’s rules. This other implementation of the theory of politeness

shall be discussed further in the text. However, this is not the only occurrence of a

direct link to the Japanese culture.

3.2 User demographics

According to 4chan.org’s official data, its users, whose ages typically range from 18 to

34, are 70% male and 30% female. The vast majority (up to 70%) is from the United

States of America and other anglophone countries; however, their interests are

frequently linked to “Japanese culture, anime and manga” (Advertise - 4chan, 2020).

These close ties to Japan and its culture are still clearly visible, not only by the

adoption of the conventions of those early imageboards such as Ayashii’s World, but

also by its contents. Many parts of 4chan deal exclusively with aforementioned

Japanese phenomena. In addition, some of the vocabulary and slang terms used on the


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website are inspired or directly taken from the Japanese language. The results

generated by the keyword analysis of the corpus shows that the fifth most prevalent

one is desu, a Japanese linking verb. Others are directly used as loan words, such as

sage, suffix -san, and more. These lexical aspects of the forum are mentioned further in

the text.

But the integral and predominant traits, shared by all of the users, irrespective of their

nationality, can be seen everywhere on the forum no matter the topic or sub-board.

The omnipresent anonymity, and temporariness.

4CHAN’S CHARACTERISTIC PHENOMENA AND MECHANISMS

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4 4chan’s characteristic phenomena and

mechanisms

4.1 Temporariness

Perhaps the most integral quality of 4chan is the fact that the discussions, or in 4chan’s

lingo, threads, exist only for a certain amount of time. This is one of the aspects that

compensate for the lack of functions inherent to the CMD utilised on the forum.

Crystal characterizes this temporariness by utilizing Herring’s facet framework,

which is described as “parameters of contrast in relation to which outputs can be

defined and are similar in conception to the notion of design-features”. Using the term

persistence, he explains it as “the period of time that messages remain on the system

after they are received.” (Crystal, 2011).

For 4chan, this period of time is not very long (minutes or hours, depending on

the board), and it is mandated by the design of the code behind the forum itself. It

guarantees that no matter how popular or how discussed one’s post is, it will

eventually be deleted. The catalog, which serves as an overview of every board,

contains a limited number of currently active threads. They are automatically sorted

by the newest and most popular towards the beginning of the list. Correspondingly,

new posts, posts with little to no replies or very old posts without new activity are

pushed back to the end of the list and eventually replaced by the new ones.


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4.2 Bumping

The users can push new posts towards the top of the page, which is the default position

for new or most discussed topics, by either posting in or bumping the thread. The

difference between simply replying and bumping is that a bump post is always posted

only for the sake of moving the thread upwards in the hierarchy, and increases its

visibility, or rather “spatial centrality” (Davis & Graham, 2021). It is often nonsensical,

has no new information. Sometimes it can be just a picture not necessarily relevant to

the topic.

Likewise, the users can sage the thread, in case it contains something they dislike.

That can be done simply by entering the word sage into a corresponding field in the

reply window. This act is doing the exact opposite of bumping, pushing the thread

further back, eventually leading to its deletion.

From a linguistic point of view, bumping would be an equivalent of Jakobson’s

phatic function, only translated to the field of CMD. The OP, 4chan’s abbreviation of the

collocation original poster or opening post, signals an interest to communicate to the

other potential discourse participants. Unable to utilise non-verbal cues, “all the work

of signalling attention and interest during the conversation has to be done by the

textual messages” (Kulkarni, 2014). By moving the thread upwards with his messages,

they keep the communication channel open. This again proves that CMD utilises many

of the same mechanics as the traditional forms of communication, only adopting and

altering them to accommodate for the technological limitations of this online form

conversation.


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Similarly, temporariness is a characteristic also found in other forms of human

communication. In her book Because Internet, linguist Gretchen McCulloch

appropriately states that “…conversations throughout history have naturally not left

records”. Computer-mediated forms of communication only re-introduce this

temporariness in a contemporary way, with “private messages that vanish after they’re

seen, live video streaming, manual deletion of old posts, and storystyle posts that only

stay visible for twenty-four hours”. These characteristics of CMD “reduce the likelihood

that messages will be encountered outside their intended context” and this is very true

for 4chan as well (McCulloch, 2019). It may therefore not be the first internet forum or

a communication channel to introduce temporariness, but it is one of the few social

networks that utilise it in such a fundamental way.

4.3 Archiving efforts

While the contents of 4chan are deleted regularly, both for the sake of anonymity and

server capacity, some chosen boards or threads are archived for a certain amount of

time. However, they mostly serve as a source of general information and rules for each

board, and do not usually contain user’s discussions.

There are several websites that scrap the contents of 4chan and save it, but there

is no complete mirror archive of everything ever posted on the site, not even on the

provider’s servers. Therefore, only some of its contents are being preserved by

enthusiasts and volunteer internet historians. One example of such activity would be

the efforts of a group named Bibliotheca Anonoma, who gather and publicly offer their


31

findings on their website or “semantic wiki” (Bibliotheca Anonoma, n.d.), or the

LURKMORE Wiki, which considers itself to be “the encyclopedia of Anonymous”

(LURKMORE Wiki, n.d.).

4.4 User moderation, janitors

While seemingly chaotic, 4chan has its own set of rules and standards. These are

enforced either by so called janitors, an alternative to censors or moderators who keep

the forums in order by making sure the users adhere to those rules, or the users

themselves, who shun or outright attack those who refuse to follow them or are not

aware of such rules at all. The rules are different for each board, but it is universally

acknowledged that the users are forbidden from posting illegal content. Pornographic

content is tolerated, however only on certain designated boards.

The distinction is based on the colour of the board itself, an attribute coded

directly into the website. By default, the so-called safe for work or sfw boards are blue,

and may not contain anything that would be deemed overly offensive of unacceptable.

Equally, red or nswf / not safe for work boards may contain all the other things that

would not be tolerated on blue boards, as long as it is not “anything that violates local

or United States law” (Rules - 4chan, 2021). The range of topics discussed is incredibly

broad and does include extreme, violent, racist and generally provocative matters. The

moderators, who are not financially compensated for their work, manually browse

through the forums and delete posts that do not adhere to the rules.


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Their motivation is generally unknown, as they are also anonymous and there is

no way to contact them. Arguably, they are driven only by the gratification stemming

from doing a service for their community.

4.5 User identity, post IDs

As referenced in the general introduction of the thesis, every post is assigned a post ID,

a combination of numbers based on multiple factors, with the crucial one being its

position in the moment when the reply or post is submitted. Starting from number 1,

post digits are increasing incrementally with each new post. For example, around the

time of writing this thesis, the /b/ board was reaching post number nearing

830000000.

This is one of the mechanisms that introduce order into the seemingly

disorganised nature of the forum. However, the numbers play a major role in 4chan’s

CMD, having the power to turn a completely meaningless post into a treasured source

of 4chan’s own folklore. For the purposes of this thesis, I propose to name them

discourse-altering numerals.

4.6 Discourse-altering numerals

The actual content of a post is oftentimes not the most important part. Depending on

luck, timing or technical knowledge, an otherwise ordinary post may be considered

unquestionably true or outright prophetic just by being assigned an unusual post

number, or post ID, which would be the actual technical term for it.


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As an example, in Figure 1, the post number 222222222 on the /pol/(politics) board is

being reacted to, confirmed or simply acknowledged by many other users not only for

its—arguably questionable—comic value, but mainly for its unique post number that

consists of 9 2s in a row. This is an event on its own, and the users of 4chan would

always react to these discourse-altering numerals and increase the frequency of their

posting when the discussion is nearing another milestone number.

This behaviour could be linked to the attention reward theory proposed by Davis

and Graham, who argue that most mainstream social media platforms utilise a form of

binary rating system, claiming that it acts as an “indicator of value” (Davis & Graham,

2021). This is also true for 4chan, even though the binary value is assigned by the

Figure 1 - Post 222222222 (Ano-

nymous, 2019)


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programming algorithm of the website, not the users themselves. The only way for OP

to acknowledge the user feedback is to observe the direct textual reactions to their

post, with the website notifying the user when someone replies to their post by

attaching a (You) to each direct reply.

Thanks to users’ fascination with discourse-altering numerals, an actual

terminology was established to complement them. Starting from doubles or dubs,

which would signify a post number ending in two identical numbers, they span all the

way to nons, a sequence of nine identical numbers in a row. The odds that a user

receives such a combination are exponentially smaller, and on busier boards, such as

/pol/ or /b/ it is almost impossible to obtain any combination without a great deal of

effort or just sheer luck.

Figure 2„GET Post 88869” (Anonymous, 2010)


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4.6.1 GETs

Some users only post for the sake of obtaining a post with a desirable number

combination. The act of doing so is called a GET. It usually takes the form of posting a

relevant picture, any kind of text string containing the words GET or simply GET on its

own, as seen in Figure 2, which can serve as a way to explain its mechanics. Sometimes,

the users refer to this act as roll.

Posts with such high number combinations are sometimes archived, and always

considered important. The GETs once again reference to the “function as both value

markers and mechanisms of curation within a competitive attention economy”. (Davis

& Graham, 2021) Their message, if it contains any information at all, is—based on the

rarity of the post ID—considered increasingly more truthful and important.

4.7 Dubs, trips and other discourse-altering numerals

Since the number of rare posts containing more than 5 numbers in a row is quite low,

as described by Table 2, people are more likely to focus on more realistic goals, such as

obtaining simple dubs.


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Sequence Number of Digits Pattern Chance

Quints 5 XXXXXXXAAAAA 1 in 10,000

Sexts 6 XXXXXXAAAAAA 1 in 100,000

Septs 7 XXXXXAAAAAAA 1 in 1,000,000

Octs 8 XXXXAAAAAAAA 1 in 10,000,000

Nons 9 XXXAAAAAAAAA 1 in 100,000,000

Table 2 - chances of obtaining a rare post ID (The Digit Advisory Page, n.d)

4.8 Check’em, Mr. Bateman

The link between the expression check’em and the GET mechanism has been

spontaneously established by the users who started following a certain practice. In

order to get dubs or a higher number string – in this case a form of validation of one’s

post or a reply – the user combines a GET post, an utterance to draw users’ attention

to the post ID, such as check’em, and a customarily a depiction of Christian Bale, who

played the protagonist of Mary Harron’s 2000 film American Psycho, based on the

eponymous novel written by Bret Easton Ellis, and who became an internet meme.

The choice of Patrick Bateman, a highly controversial literary and movie character

conveys numerous implications relevant for the purposes of this thesis. A study

conducted by Christopher Burlingame sums up Bateman as a collection of “the worst

aspects of the male id”. Considering the fact that 4chan was and still is a place full of

pornographic and extremely offensive content, its demographics are predominantly


37

male and is also characteristic for its animosity towards women as well as the fact that

online anonymity facilitates sharing radical views (Neo et al., 2016), they could identify

with Bateman on many levels. Burlingame claims that “for both the fictional Bateman

and real-world men (…) the influence of pornography appears to shape their attitudes,

language, and behaviour in terms of how they conceptualize and treat women”. The

fans of Bateman are also willingly ignoring this fact, considering the movie a cult

classic, even though the “critics condemned the portrayal of sexual violence as

pornographic for the way it reduced women to objects and suggested Ellis's novel

normalized patriarchal oppression of women in the way it represented rape and

murder” (Burlingame, 2019).

Just like the controversial contents of 4chan, “Bateman's actions extend to the

most extreme bounds of human behaviour, foregoing all decency; however, at the end

of the novel, it is not perfectly clear how much is real versus how much is a product of

Bateman's fantasies” (Burlingame, 2019). This interpretation implies that Bateman

fulfilled his true desires in his mind only. Same prediction could apply to 4chan’s users,

who would most likely not display their misogyny and racism outside of 4chan, since

it is a controversial topic that could potentially damage their public face, and similarly

to Bateman, they vent by anonymously posting on 4chan, with minimal consequences.

In other words, “the online self becomes a compartmentalized self. In the case of

expressed hostilities or other deviant actions, the person can avert responsibility for

those behaviors” (Suler, 2004). This explains why the picture of Patrick Bateman

pointing at the sound system, explaining the nuances of the latest Huey Lewis and the


38

News album to one of his victims seconds before slaughtering him with a fire axe—as

seen in Figure 3—is such an apt fit for this specific 4chan’s posting mechanism.

Figure 3„Check’em, post 193798577” (Anonymous, 2010)

4.9 Links to the incel movement

The major characteristics of Patrick Bateman are almost identical as those of a

prototypical incel, a shortened term signifying an involuntary celibate person, coined

“in the late 1990s by a Canadian woman named Alana” (Zimmer, 2018). One

characteristic trait of every incel would be their deeply ingrained animosity towards

women. They tend to blame women for their problems in life, while completely

overlooking their own repulsive and sexist behaviour and other flaws, ranging from

social ineptitude to narcissism and racism.


39

Regarding their online presence, “incel discussion threads often focus on the belief

that men are entitled to sex and disparage ideologies related to women's rights and

feminism” (Caffrey, 2020).

4chan became a meeting point for some of the members of this group, especially after

other, more prominent websites such as Reddit banned their discussions completely

“due to the extremity of incel messages” (Dynel, 2020). Part of the reason why they

resort to using 4chan as their medium of choice is the fact that there are checks and

mechanisms in place that do not outright filter out female visitors, but rather level the

imaginary playing field.

As stated, on 4chan, everyone is anonymous unless they choose to identify

themselves. They are simply anons (a short version for Anonymous, the default

username that is pre-entered when submitting a new post), one homogenous group

with no conception of sex, nationality or ethnicity. Unless they reveal themselves to be

different, either voluntarily or by accident, they will be regarded as every other user,

with no inherent prejudice. That, however, does not mean that the interlocutors

respect each other, or that the quality of discourse is high, but that all these social

factors and variables that heavily influence real-life communication are simply non-

existent on 4chan.

This status quo is enforced by certain identity checks that serve as a filter,

discouraging the users from attempting to differentiate themselves. The most

prevalent one would be the tits or GTFO rule.


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4.10 Tits or GTFO and 4chan’s misogyny

Every time a female user enters 4chan, or any similar male-dominated “confederacy of

interest groups, broadly known as the manosphere” (Ging, 2019) and attempts to

participate, it is only a matter of time before they will be met with negative feedback.

In the case of 4chan, this negative feedback takes a form of an identity check. Users

regard it as tits or GTFO rule. This check is utilised anytime a female poster enters the

discussion by either sharing their picture, replying in a manner that gives away their

sex or outright states it. Invariably, one of the responses will simply state “tits or GTFO

(get the fuck out)”. The user in question is now faced with an ultimatum. Either they

post their naked body and be allowed to speak, or they do not, and their posts will be

disregarded and saged.

The male users require the female user to undergo a virtual form of sexual abuse.

In order to communicate, they must submit to those demands and accept their place

as something lesser, reducing themselves to a sexual object. The chances that an actual

woman goes through with such a bizarre and degrading request are slim, but if they

do, a strong reaction is always guaranteed. The thread then usually revolves around

the female, with people either praising their body and trying to gain their attention or

condemning her behaviour.

Arguably, this is the reason why this check even exists, to eliminate these kinds of

unwanted disruption. A woman in a male-dominated virtual space of this kind is bound

to cause an uproar, and as noted by Filipovic, “these kinds of sexualized insults reflect

attempts to put women in their place, just as rape threats attempt to keep women


41

fearful in an effort to relegate them to the domestic sphere” (Filipovic, 2007).

Furthermore, Phillips points at the root of this problem, claiming that “aggressive

speech directed at women is sexist, but it’s symptomatic of something much deeper

and much older than the contemporary attitudes of contemporary men toward

contemporary women”, arguing that this behaviour is rooted in the very foundations

of the Western civilisation, stressing “the significance of classical era” (Phillips, 2015).

To sum up this phenomenon within the context of 4chan, the tits or GTFO check

serves to eliminate any attempt to either change the status quo of 4chan being a male

space and to translate any of the real-world power structures into the virtual discourse

on the webpage. This way, the woman is usually discouraged to participate in the

discussion, or should she comply with the request, serves as a form of entertainment

for the male users. The last option is for her to not disclose her gender at all, therefore

adhering to the unwritten rules of 4chan and simply participating as any other

anonymous user, anon. The other option would be not to participate at all.

This would confirm the claims made by Herring, who states that “when women's

attempts at equal participation are the cause of (male) dissatisfaction—even if voiced

publicly by only a few —and disruption of list functioning, a message is communicated

to the effect that it is more appropriate for women to participate less” (Herring, 1995).

The reasons behind the hostility displayed towards the users who do not respect or

adhere to those rules, causing disagreements and negative reactions, is also supported

by the claim presented by Weber, who argues that such “disputes can be an effective

way for online communities and their members to communicate their boundaries,


42

identities, and relationships”, which is something that the users of 4chan tend to do

constantly. (Weber, 2011).

4.11 Other forms of user identification

While most of the users of 4chan simply remain under the handle Anonymous, and refer

to each other utilising its abbreviation anon, there are still some are aware of the rules,

yet choose to differentiate themselves from the crowd. Choosing to do so will in most

cases result in a hostile reaction, even if they are not female.

For these reasons, only a small fraction of users chooses to post on 4chan in a

manner that would make it possible for them to be identified, be it an online handle or

even their real name. Curiously, the tools are there – when posting, user may choose to

use a personal, randomly generated code, which will allow them to post under a unique

handle, while simultaneously preventing anyone else from using it. This is called a

tripcode.

4.12 Tripcodes and tripfags

Tripcodes are a form of identification generally used by users who want to make

their presence permanent. This goes against the whole philosophy of 4chan, and as

such, they must face the unpleasant consequences of using them. As a vehicle to display

user’s hostility towards such user, a special derogatory term is reserved for those who

use a tripcode to identify themselves. They are known as tripfags.

MORPHOLOGICAL AND STYLISTIC ASPECTS OF THE FORUM

43

5 Morphological and stylistic aspects of the forum

5.8 The curious case of the word fag

Tripfag, this portmanteau of words tripcode and faggot is a term very important

to understand in order to gain an overall understanding of 4chan’s morphological

dynamics. The very term describing a 4chan user is, for reasons unknown, fag or

faggot. This word was originally borrowed from French, meaning “a bundle of sticks,

twigs, or brushwood tied together for use as fuel” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2020).

However, in the North American context, defined in the American Heritage Dictionary

of the English Language it signifies “a term used to refer to a male homosexual”. In the

context of 4chan’s discourse, it serves as a primary unit for further development of

other terminology. The origins of the idea that every member of the forum is a faggot

trace back to the very beginnings of 4chan and the term has been an integral part of its

lexicon ever since.

From a linguistic point of view, fag serves as a specific form of morpheme.

Carrying a certain meaning on its own, in this case referring to member of 4chan, it can

at the same time be devoid of any deeper meaning unless combined with another

morpheme, which then serves as a stem word. It may even be used as a reflexive

pronoun, with users referring to themselves as poorfags, sharing their unsatisfying

financial status, or eurofags, indicating their nationality. There are many other

variations, as seen in Table 3.


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Word Absolute Frequency

1 newfag 1800

2 samefag 482 3 oldfag 288 4 poorfag 260 5 drawfag 123 6 9fag 93

7 furfag 75

8 richfag 71 9 amerifag 61 10 eurofag 58

Table 3 – most frequent nouns containing the -fag suffix

Depending on the context, the word fag usually does not carry any kind of negative

or positive connotation, as it does outside of 4chan. It is only meant as an offensive

word if the addresser wants it to be, and this can usually be deduced by the context or

the choice of collocation.

This is a phenomenon frequently found in in-group word usage analyses, with

researchers claiming that “such in- group usage will incrementally “defang” words of

their negative connotations, ultimately reshaping the lexical content of the word itself”.

As a result of this process, it then becomes a form of humorous self-reference. It is

possible to observe it in “the in- group usage of terms such as nigger, chink, and fob

(“fresh-off-the-boat” Asian immigrants), which are sometimes used endearingly by

African Americans and Asian Americans, respectively” (H. Samy Alim et al., 2016). In

other words, when the members of an online ingroup “…use words like “addiction,”

“sex,” and “fuck,” the meanings of these will be in part determined by their context of

use; these meanings may not reflect the force of these words to individuals outside the


45

community” (LeBlanc, 2005). This would in turn explain the reason why users do not

view it as a derogatory term.

op is a faggot op is a faggot op is a faggot op is a faggot op is a faggot op is a faggot

Fuck off and kill yourself you ginger faggot .</s><s>Thank you.</s><s>

</s><s>Sure you did faggot Fuckin rekt enjoy diddling grandma nigga

OP IS A SHITTY CUMSWALLOWING FAGGOT CUNT Calligula role gg go 518

>go ew I can't believe you faggots couldn't get noods from this hoe

THE FUCK OUT OF /b/ FUCKING FAGGOT GET THE FUCK OUT OF /b/

!!! FAIL!!!!!</s><s>LOL nice bait, faggot Ass ass ass Thats some sort of pocket

from them. you neckbeard faggots bitch about them like a bunch of chicks

>.45acp is for dumb faggots she's my favorite amateur since Vicky

NEDERDRAAD sletten editie zijn jullie faggot nog wakker?</s><s>Sletteneditie

Table 4 – random concordance of the lemma faggot

The word fag, when combined with a root word, is given a certain meaning,

effectively creating a neologism. The root word can be any relevant noun, or

combination of nouns. This results in a great number of possible permutations, with

new ones being coined every day, adapting to new contexts that emerge in 4chan’s

discourse. Looking at the corpus frequency analysis, “fag” is being utilised 23,488

times, taking the 5th place in the most-used nouns in the corpus. This random sample


46

is also very representative, in that it shows some of the most commonly used

collocations, as seen in Table 5 below. Also note an interesting entry by a Dutch user,

who seems to use it as a loan word. The presence of other nationalities is clearly visible,

but no matter the language, they evidently still employ 4chan’s slang lexicon.

Position Word Cooccurrences

1 soc 1056

2 fucking 777 3 fuck 740 4 get 700 5 the 730 6 op 1050

7 you 5120

8 a 5410 9 b 569 10 is 824

Table 5 – most frequent collocations of lemma faggot

5.9 Newfags and oldfags

For the sake of brevity, out of the countless combinations created by the suffix -fag only

several most relevant occurrences shall be discussed in detail. A good example of these

word combinations in use would be the neologisms newfag and oldfag. These are also

antonyms, used to represent the two main types of users, and are based on their

seniority. Since there are no set or traceable cut-offs, such as the date of registration or

number of posts submitted in the forum, the newfags and oldfags tend to argue over

their rights to call themselves or others using one term one or another.

Perhaps the only way to differentiate between these two groups is their attestable

knowledge of 4chan’s rules, lingo, and history. But even someone familiar with all of


47

these can be still considered a newfag, simply for not being on the forum long enough.

The newfag may then be ordered to lurk moar, term signifying a suggestion to spend

more time reading as a lurker. This term has been officially used by other researchers

and is defined as “anyone who for prolonged periods receives communications without

publicly posting” (Nonnecke & Preece, 2000).

This is a typical form of gatekeeping, prevalent not only in online forums such as

4chan but for example also in the field of journalism, where the newcomers’

“inexperience or lack of shared background knowledge sometimes makes them the

butt of the (…) teasing comments” (Chovanec, 2018). This once again proves that 4chan

follows the patterns of other forms of discourse, only adapting them for the purposes

of making them applicable in its form of CMD.

5.3 Stylistic elements of the forum

Another layer in 4chan’s characteristic computer-mediated communication style is

implied in the choice of grammar, punctuation, and the overall style of writing of an

average user.

Choosing any ten random sentences, or rather posts, as sentences are not always

properly started and terminated, from the corpus, it is visible that 4chan’s users do not

adhere to the standards of English spelling and writing, instead using a reduced system

that is quite basic compared to Standard English, as seen in Table 3:


48

BTFO There is absolutely nothing wrong with being jewish I want to help see, you scared her off, good going m8 CHECKMATE LIBERTARDS! right>? Rate/10 #9/11 #InsideJob #WarInIraq kill them in there sleep first Nigger how do you sharpen a hot dog?

Table 6 - a random sample of sentences and utterances

One of the reasons for the grammatical inconsistency may be the multicultural variety

of its users, based on the data provided by the site itself. However, it is more likely an

actual code of choice, developed organically by the users. The experienced posters are

fully aware of the standards enforced by the online community, and “consciously or

unconsciously, use the nonstandard form in order to accommodate to the usage of their

peers” (Crystal, 2011).

This predominance of 4chan specific language variety is especially easy to observe

when an outsider enters the discussion thread. Adhering to the proper grammar and

attempts to format the message properly, using the Enter key to segment one’s post

into paragraphs will be quickly called out and reacted to by the users who employ and

try to enforce the official code.

5.3.1 Reddit-spacing

In 4chan’s lingo, this is called reddit spacing, and suggests that the users who are

accused of using it are in thought to be coming from Reddit, another discussion-

oriented website. This stylistic tribalism is further propagated by the belief held by


49

many users of 4chan, which claims that people who use Reddit are all left-leaning,

effeminate, liberal anarcho-communists, and basically an antithesis to the average user

of 4chan.

This demonstrates the importance of adhering to the established register used on

4chan and its boards and showing that the failure of doing so makes it harder for the

accused discussion participant to partake in the discourse, forcing them to either learn

their lesson and adhere to the rules, or to be forever on the side of the opposition,

ousted from the main discussion group. However, for the purposes of the current

thread, the ill-informed user’s reputation is forever stained, making it impossible to

establish any constructive dialogue with other posters. Until the thread is archived, the

thread-unique poster ID will be recorded and assigned to their name.

There is, however, another layer of meaning to be found. In order to provoke a

response from the users aware of those language standards, the original poster may

choose to use the proper or non-standard spelling variety on purpose. In 4chan’s

terminology, this would be called baiting, which is successful if the users fail to

recognise the irony behind the post. Successfully calling out such posters therefore

means they have taken the bait.

Their favourite choices would be to emulate some of the responses frequently

used by users of Reddit, who, just like the users of 4chan, seem to have their own

catchphrases and utterances one may find in every popular thread.


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5.3.2 Greentext

On every social media platform, users tend to develop their own style of writing, often

because of the limitations of the platform itself. Examples of such could be Twitter with

its 250-character limit, or any mobile text-messaging application, where the users tend

to prefer shorter messages due to the cramped screen space of mobile phones.

With no space for traditional paragraph and formatting found in written texts and

articles, CMD users have to utilise different ways to organise the text. McCulloch

compares the speech modes of several demographic groups, whose members are

defined by their first introduction to the Internet, and consequently computer-

mediated forms of communication. She founds that “…the dash or ellipsis as generic

separation character seems to be found throughout, at least, the English-speaking

world” (McCulloch, 2019). Usage of such tools is also applicable to 4chan, as

demonstrated on the following phenomenon:

Occasionally, a special kind of post appears, distinguishing itself by its formatting

and a green text colour. This storytelling mode is known as greentext and is employed

when a user is trying to tell a story. Users of 4chan seem to have modified and adapted

the usage of ellipsis, putting it in the front of the sentence, replacing the usual three

dots with the greater-than sign. An example of a greentext can be seen in Figure 4:


51

Figure 4– „49384163 – Anon is gay” (Anonymous, 2020)

Utilising the > symbol on every new line of their story, the OP indicates that “each

text or chat message in a conversation automatically indicates a separate utterance”

(McCulloch, 2019). This way, there is no need for traditional interpunction, as the

subdivision into separate lines marked by the > sign clearly marks the exact point in

the story, turning the symbol into something comparable to a time-indicating

discourse marker.

By recognizing the >be me as such marker, the reader can identify with the

storyteller, and empathise with their story. Generally, greentexts tend to be quite

humorous, with the best ones being saved and circulated around the board, effectively

creating a sort of 4chan folklore. Organised archiving efforts also exist even outside of

4chan, such as the /r/greentext community on Reddit, making greentext a universal

internet phenomenon.


52

5.3.3 MFW

The usage of greentext is so prevalent, it has developed its own sub-concept. Seen in

use in Figure 4, is communicated by the abbreviation mfw, abbreviated form of my face

when. It is a device characteristic of 4chan’s CMD variation, which attempts to convey

the author’s emotional state and their exact feelings at the time of writing by attaching

an expressive meme or a photograph to the otherwise purely text-based greentext. The

reasoning behind this is characterised by Hancock:

“Because of the lack of actual face-to-face contact calls for the use of

such devices to illustrate the emotions the narrator is going through

CMC speakers are at a disadvantage relative to FtF speakers in each

category of the cues that signal ironic intent. First, because CMC par-

ticipants do not share the same physical space, the category of cues

that depend upon situational disparity should be undermined. Simi-

larly, the text-based nature of CMC interactions eliminates the array

of paralinguistic cues (i.e., visual and vocal) that typically mark the

ironic intent of a statement in FtF interactions (Hancock, 2004).

Hancock’s journal article may deal with the ironic aspects of CMD and the difficulties

of transmitting irony using CMD – however, the same points stand for the concept of

mfw. Anonymous users are unable to see each other’s faces, but since they can

compensate this downside of CMD by developing their own concepts such as greentext,

the disadvantages of CMD are minimised.

6 POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE FORUM’S CONTENTS

53

6 Political implications of the forum’s contents

Much of 4chan’s discussion is related to politics. There even exists a board

dedicated to it, named /pol/. This board has another defining trait. Every post, based

on its author’s IP address, is assigned a country flag. This twist on the otherwise almost

exclusively anonymous nature of the forum provides additional factors to its discourse.

When interacting with other people, the user can now see the probable nationality

of the poster, which may affect their response in a significant manner. While the

majority of the users is American, according to a data analysis study named Kek, Cucks,

and God Emperor Trump: A Measurement Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum

and Its Effects on the Web are citizens of the United States of America, “…the US

dominates in total thread creation, the top 5 countries in terms of threads per capita

are New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, Finland, and Australia. 4chan is primarily an

English-speaking board, and indeed nearly every post on /pol/ is in English, but we

still find that many non-English speaking countries – e.g., France, Germany, Spain,

Portugal, and several Eastern European countries – are represented”. As with any

multicultural platform, this fact alone provides plenty of material for debate, especially

when the users resort to adhere to racial stereotypes, and this is something that the

/pol/’s users are notorious for.

The users are allowed to express almost anything, to an extent that would most

likely shock an average user of the sites such as Reddit. But for the people who frequent

/pol/, those stereotypes serve a certain tribalistic function. Knowing that one is dealing

with an American or a European already makes the poster aware of the demographic


54

background of the person they are replying to. This can lead to racially based hostility,

something that the high number of derogatory terms contained in the corpus seems to

point at, or to humorous exchanges as seen in the figure 4:

Figure 5„1223025 – Anon is Korean” (Anonymous, 2017)

However, there are many ways to disguise the actual location of a user using tools

such as web proxies or VPN. This can be used for amusement and is demonstrated for

example by the presence of humorous posts sent from North Korea, which is highly

unlikely. Amusement is however not the only reason to alter one’s geolocation. This

backdoor has demonstrably been used by foreign agents and trolls during the period

of 2016 presidential elections in the United States of America. As noted by Travis Wall

and Teodor Mitew in their work Swarm Networks and the Design Process of a

Distributed Meme Warfare Campaign:


55

“The 2016 U.S. presidential elections were surrounded by a vast so-

cial media campaign involving the phenomenon of political propa-

ganda deployed across social media on a scale unseen before. Octo-

ber, the final month of the elections, witnessed the #DraftOur-

Daughters viral campaign, organised and produced by anonymous

members of the Internet board 4chan. Initially, ideas for the cam-

paign began appearing on Twitter and 4chan’s politically incorrect

themed forum ‘/pol/’” (Wall & Mitew, 2018).

While the extent of these subversive tactics carried out by either foreign parties

or some other political organisation is still a matter of heated discussion, the very

existence of such development was already proven. This caught many of the traditional

mainstream media outlets by surprise, because before these accusations, 4chan was

either completely disregarded or considered to be an outlandish refuge of the

Internet’s most socially awkward, criminal and antisocial denizens, mostly known for

their hacking escapades, such as leaks of sensitive photos of famous celebrities.

The fact that the development on this site was able to affect the outcome of the

election, as little as it may have been, put it on an equal footing with the likes of Twitter

or Reddit, and proves that while it may seem as a refuge for isolated, hateful and

antisocial people, is has in fact an immense influence and potential to shape the global

discourse, at least when it comes to certain demographics groups who frequent it the

most.

7 CONCLUSION

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7 Conclusion

To conclude the findings of this thesis, it is suitable to contrast them with the aims and

assumptions proposed in the introductory paragraph. The idea that 4chan’s means of

communication are completely unique has been rendered mostly untrue.

When consulted with the early research into the area of computer-mediated

communication, concluded in the 1990s by Susan Herring and David Crystal and the

more general linguistic works, such as Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory, it was

observed that the users of 4chan follow the exact same patterns as the groups analysed

in aforementioned works written almost 30 years ago. However, it also shows that

some of the aspects and mechanics of 4chan’s user-to-user communication are indeed

completely unique and serve as a tool to compensate for the limitations of CMD.

The idea of discourse-altering numerals, a definition proposed by me due to the

lack of any immediately relevant research into this phenomenon has shown to be an

intriguing concept, which has the potential to radically alter the course of conversation,

while being based solely on randomness. I argue that this thesis proves to be a solid

basis for further research, and I consider my findings to be a valid expansion to

Herring’s computer-mediated discourse theory.

The other major goal, a general linguistic analysis of the forum, was expanded

with a chapter dedicated to socio-political implications of the various mechanics and

7 CONCLUSION

58

rules enforced within the forum, because simply analysing them without

understanding the underlying sentiments and motives of the users would not provide

a complete picture to the reader. For this reason, I created a link within the major

concepts of 4chan’s discourse and its demographics, using the data obtained through

the creation of the corpus. An explanation of the role of incel movement has been also

successfully linked with 4chan’s concepts. This allows the reader to connect the

linguistic parts of the thesis with the already well-known areas of popular Internet

phenomena, as well as the American political topics in which 4chan has demonstrably

already played a significant role.

To summarise, this thesis has delivered not only a linguistic data analysis, but also a

general overview of the related areas of study, expanding the original scope of the work

by utilising the corpus in order to provide a completer and more comprehensible

information on 4chan’s dynamics for the reader. This, paired with an intention to serve

as a framework for further researchers concerned with the inner workings of 4chan

and similar internet discussion websites that has been created, means that the thesis

managed to fulfil its original goals.

DISCUSSION

59

6 Discussion

8.1 Study limitations

The primary limitation is the fact that there is a very limited number of papers and

theses focusing directly on 4chan. This resulted in having to resort to more general

sources related to computer-mediated discourse as such, not within the context of

4chan. However, this fact has also helped uncover some of the universals applicable to

every online discussion platform.

The study does not go into much detail in the areas regarding user moderation. I was

not able to find or contact a forum moderator, who would give me answers as to why

users choose to become janitors without any form of financial compensation.

Another limitation was the fact that the more advanced features of Sketch Engine

are still inaccessible to me, mostly because of my limited knowledge of the program.

The last limitation was the fact that over the course of past year, I have been

exposed to so many hateful comments, pictures of gore, and general stupidity of

4chan’s users, I could not possibly carry out any more empirical research due to the

fact that this is a very mentally taxing effort, and together with the events happening

during the writing of the thesis, I preferred to resort to curated sources of information

on 4chan such as the Bibliotheca Anonoma, instead of using my own findings.

DISCUSSION

60

8.2 Further research

I was not able to find any appearances of Czech language on 4chan, perhaps an analysis

of an even bigger corpus would show its presence and help expand the context and find

out how many Czech or Slovaks frequent the forum.

To further support the claims about the demographics of 4chan, I propose that a

survey be created to measure and evaluate how well-known it is in the Czech Republic,

and which age and gender groups are aware of its existence or even participate in the

discussion.

The idea of discourse-altering numerals can also be expanded, as my analysis only

managed to describe the concept itself and to find its links to the attention reward

theory. I am still convinced that there is more to this concept that can be uncovered by

further research.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

61

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SUMMARY

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Summary

This purpose of this thesis is to provide a general overview of the internet forum

4chan.org. First, It familiarises the reader with the concept of computer-mediated

discourse. The methodology is also explained in detail, providing an analysis of the

contents of the corpus created from 10 million user posts.

Next, it discusses the historical background and points out the link between

Japanese and Western society, utilising the concept of face.

It then moves onto the actual mechanisms and dynamics of 4chan, mentioning the

temporary nature of the posts, user identity, anonymity, user policing, post IDs and the

idea of discourse-altering numerals, coined by the author due to the shortage of

research into this phenomenon.

Special attention is given to the word faggot and its usage within the forum,

showing it as an important tool in word-formation and explaining the reasons why the

members of 4chan do not considered to be an offensive term.

Subsequently, it points out the links between the incel movement and the nature

of 4chan’s discourse, using the GET mechanism as well as a tool to do so. Further

political implications based on the findings are discussed in a separate chapter.

Finally, the thesis sums up the research, establishes links between the theories

presented by other researchers in this field and 4chan’s CMD variation and contrasts

them with author’s empirical findings.

RESUMÉ

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Resumé

Cílem této práce je poskytnout obecný přehled o internetovém fóru 4chan.org.

Práce nejprve seznamuje čtenáře s konceptem počítačem zprostředkovaného diskurzu

neboli CMD. Taktéž podrobně vysvětluje autorovu metodologii, a prezentuje analýzu

korpusu vytvořeného z cca 10 milionů uživatelských příspěvků.

Dále práce prezentuje historické pozadí a poukazuje na pojítka mezi japonskou a

západní společností, za pomoci konceptu tváře (face).

Poté se přesouvá k vlastním mechanismům a dynamikám fóra, zmiňuje pomíjivou

povahu příspěvku, identitu uživatelů, anonymitu, ID příspěvků a teorii tzv. discourse-

altering numerals, termínu vytvořeném autorem kvůli nedostatku výzkumu

provedeného na toto téma.

Zvláštní pozornost je věnována slovu faggot a jeho užívání na fóru, poukazujíc na to, že

se jedná o důležitý nástroj ve slovotvorbě. Taktéž osvětluje důvody, proč ho uživatelé

4chanu nepovažují za urážlivý termín.

Následně práce pokazuje na pojítka mezi hnutím incels a charakterem diskurzu na

4chanu, využívajíce k tomu mechanismu GET jako nástroje pro demonstraci tohoto

tvrzení.

Nakonec práce shrnuje všechen dosavadní výzkum, ustavuje pojítka mezi teoriemi

prezentovanými ostatními výzkumníky v oboru a variací počítačem

zprostředkovaného diskurzu na 4chanu. Vše poté kontrastuje s empirickými zjištěními

samotného autora.

Check'em: An Analysis of Online Group Identity on 4Chan

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