[my own comments marked by square brackets]

Informant: “I was just thinking about this the other day where, you know, I was just surfing the internet and I came across some like forum talking about just really grotesque porn, and I was like completely unfazed. Cause I feel like I’ve always grown up knowing about 4chan, and 4chan has become this like weird underbelly of like not only the internet but everybody’s imagination, it’s like–well the internet is basically the distilled version of people’s thoughts because like, you don’t have to interface with anybody, there’s no body language, you can create images from whatever you think–it’s like 4chan is kind of this cesspool for everyone’s imagination and then influencing everyone else’s cesspool, um, so I’ve always known about 4chan.”

[Can you describe what it is, in a little more detail?]

“4chan is, uh, it’s a message board that is more or less unregulated–I think they do have moderators that are silent, you just never know who they are. And moderators are mostly there for one reason, and that’s to make sure there’s no child pornography, and that’s it. That’s the only thing that’s off-limits on the internet–child pornography. So it’s just a message board that’s mostly unregulated but there is a particular board, like within them, called the b-board. And that’s just where everything goes, it’s the random board where people just say really foul shit, post really foul images, like just things that you would never think of. And you’re like, okay, I didn’t need to see that, that’s enough internet for the day, I’m done *laughs* I need to like walk away right now–and so I’ve always grown up with that and like, I’ve never really ventured over there, cause the few times that I have, I’m like, pfff, I really don’t need to see this right now. But knowing that it exists, I think, I’m like what am I going to tell my kids–like when my kids get on the internet, like, what am I going to tell them? Like, they’re gonna grow up with that shit everywhere, and how do I protect my kids from the internet? I like how I’m already thinking about this *hah* but like, it’s terrifying! I feel like because I wasn’t introduced to it until I was like 12, and very gently kind of like got into–the internet didn’t become this like massive machine that it is now.”

[I’ve heard it be described in terms of “internet natives,” which is like the generation that grew up with it already there, and we’re like the ‘immigrants,’ but we’re like the first-generation immigrants whose parents didn’t have it until we did–like you have people who ‘immigrated’ when they were really really young, and then you have the much older internet immigrants who have a harder time adjusting. In a lot of ways, like culture.]

“Yeah, that’s interesting, I like that immigration analogy.”

[I remember you saying to Seth that time on our hike, he mentioned something from 4chan and you were like, ‘That says so much about you.’ What did you mean by that? What does it say?]

“It’s like, um, it’s the same as you can infer when someone’s like, ‘I like Coldplay.’ And I feel like, wow, you must be a 30-something year old soft-rock loving, working in an office or you’re a graphic designer, and you think–well like, it has so many implications that may not even be true, but they do have a kernel–a lot of stereotypes have a kernel of truth. And the thing about 4chan, when people say ‘I saw it on 4chan,’ I’m like ohhhkay, if you frequent it enough, to where you say ‘I saw it on 4chan’–like none of my friends even if they do go on 4chan ever say that they go on 4chan. Because it is something that is like, it’s foul, and it’s like, why?”

[But everyone secretly has a 4chan in their minds.]

“Yeah, I mean the internet is kind of the–less so now than it was when I had dial-up, or I wanna say 2005/2006 is when things started cleaning up, so to speak–before that I feel like it was the wild wild West, where it’s like anything goes. [Lemon party. Meatspin.] Yeah, like Blue Waffles–what? All this random shit just happened and most of the internet to me was like forums. Run basically like, people wanted to interact in chat rooms and forums. Forums still do exist, like mostly in the comment sections of publications that have all moved online now. Um so basically with the movement of like the material world onto the internet, there’s becoming a framework for how the internet is working, but before that it was all forums and chat rooms which is like very free-form–it’s not Facebook, where you’re limited to messages, chats, and wall posts, there’s poking. [And every option has a very specific function that frames what you’re saying.] Yeah, it all has its own implications. [Everything is interfaced for us and the interface governs the experience of using it. Almost like passive consumption of the internet.] Yeah it’s a lot more interfaced than it used to be, and I just think that the way 4chan is, is it still kind of hearkens back to that old wild wild West theme–like if you go to 4chan, it’s the most simple looking HTML website. It’s just like the logo and the letters for each of the boards. It goes like A through Y or something like that, and none of the letters have anything to do with–I think it’s like M is the video game board and it has nothing to do with the actual content–B is random, B is random, and I don’t know why instead of R for random.

[And that’s something you just figure out by navigating the website?]

“Yeah, I still don’t know why it is that way or how it works, um, but I know the founder of 4chan was like, yeah, the internet shouldn’t be regulated. And that’s just what 4chan is. It just exists. And that’s like the only thing that’s impressive about 4chan is that it exists and it’s a forum. You never log in, and everyone is anonymous. You’re all anonymous, and the post is assigned like a number, and every reply to that post has a number. And the B-board generates so quickly because everyone’s on it and everyone’s moving that content through so quickly. But it’s like, because people can post whatever they want and expect to be unregulated, you’re hiding behind a mask of anonymity, and also because of that you just end up finding the sickest shit. Like I said, the only thing that’s off-limits is child pornography. You can put whatever you want on there. 4chan made up ‘Rules of the Internet’–the most memorable one being like Rule #34 which is, ‘If you can think of it, there’s porn of it.’ And then Rule #35 which is kind of a corollary of Rule #34, but shouldn’t really exist if Rule #34 is true, but Rule #35 is, um, ‘If there is no porn of it, you have to make it.’ Like it’s your duty to make it and put it on the internet. So like that’s the 4chan rule, is just like anything goes, really, and then there’s gonna be porn of it. It’s really sexualized and fetishized. It’s like the dark side of the internet. You can put the gross shit on there and you don’t have to pretend to be kind to anybody.”

The internet operates according to similar divisions of official/unofficial culture that we see in the world. Even though almost anyone can publish on it, there are online “institutions” that set the standard for the way we interface, or, in terms of content, are recognized as more credible than others. The lines are much blurrier on the web, however, and boundaries much more fluid.

Thinking about the web in terms of folklore presents several challenges. First off, everything on the internet is “published” as text and image, so new lines have to be drawn about the defining role of performance in folklore and its resistance to authored literature. A key difference is that literature on the web is not held to the same obsession with authorship that books and movies are–something can get out there on the internet without a designated author–so there have to be different ways of determining “official” content, and this is no simple task. And it is also difficult to identify traditionalized forms on the internet because there is such a diverse and ever-increasing pool of content. I would argue, however, that an online message board is a traditionalized form at this point. Its use sees great multiplicity and variation, but the general purpose is always the same. There’s no standard way a message board can be structured, and it develops according to the people who are posting on it. It’s like a log cabin.

On it, people share and pick up ideas from each other, generating phrases and visual motifs that are widely repeated for a while (memes) and then replaced with new ones. 4chan, in particular, is a message board that represents marginalized sensibilities–“the sick shit”–in an unregulated and anonymous space. It enables the strangest and filthiest recesses of the imagination to be indulged in a rather direct way, which is something even the most clever joke, which has the capacity to express sinister sentiments in a masked way, can’t provide.