Bodybuilding.com misc & 4chan are super toxic communities.
I look back at my teenage years and realised how hazardous they are to mental health. My curiousity & engagement on those communities was limited to infrequent lurking.
I now understand why alt-right/q anon movement popped up so quickly.
A big issue with these boards is that the ownership can't overmod because these communities are a big drawcard, even if they're financial negatives.
It's always fun to see someone use the word "chit" for shit, and think "Oh hey that copypasta leaked out of bodybuilding".
These forums seem to collect the most problematic people from every political group and subculture, put them all together, and then teach them their own unique manosphere philosophy that is currently one of my least favorite things about all of mankind.
It's some kind of primitivist thought combined with a screenshot of a Nietzsche quote about strength and power, some pretentious militant atheism, a bit of eugenics, a lot of intelligence-worshipping, and a heavy dose of still believing in cringe culture.
Way bigger than just alt right, there seems to be a variant for every affiliation. It's almost mainstream.
>Bodybuilding.com misc & 4chan are super toxic communities.
They're places that provide access to actual human beings though. So many other online communities - especially ones with wide readership - are astroturfed into oblivion.
My take on it is that having to deal mentally with lunatics howling at the moon and screaming about the upcoming Great Replacement is the price you pay for access to actual opinions. That screaming horde is what keeps the astroturfers and consent manufacturers out.
But you only see opinions of people who are willing to tolerate the torrent of abusive posts. You won't see the opinions of the silent majority who see the stupid flamewars and decide they'll spend their time elsewhere.
Some 4chan forums are completely hopeless (/pol for example) but on others you can find a lot of interesting stuff. As a general rule: as long as it's not politics the discussion is often interesting but then again, it's the case about everywhere.
> There's value to be gleaned from /pol/ if you can stand the lunatics.
While I don’t particularly deny this
> 4chan is currently the best place for realtime ukraine war footage and analysis
Is most definitely a no.
Oddly enough, Reddit seems to be the best for footage, with Telegram likely coming second.
As for analysis, Twitter without a doubt. Is there a load of absolute horse shit? Of course. If you don’t know how to detour that, you shouldn’t care much in the first place.
The only good thing that has come out of 4chan regarding this war is the cope cage. That is indeed hilarious.
There's a certain amount of irony that leaks from a thread talking about how depraved 4chan is that devolves to someone rating the best place to find war footage. I served in a war and I don't think I've watched a minute of footage outside of two documentaries.
I'm not saying that I enjoy watching war footage, I'm saying that there's a severe dearth of it in conventional media, to the extent that for the first three days of the war I was saying to myself 'is this war really happening, apparently the tanks are rolling in, where's the footage?'
You're acting like the opinions on these forums are strongly held and like there aren't a significant minority of people 'trying on' personas or personality traits in order to see how others respond to them. I don't see how that's a meaningful distinction from people who have made the color beige their sole personality trait and strongly believe in manufacturing consent at the cost of all other goals.
>I don't see how that's a meaningful distinction from people who have made the color beige their sole personality trait
I'm not really sure how to respond to that. It's intrinsically different. It's getting responses from people who don't care what their neighbour thinks about them vs getting responses from people who care in the utmost what their neighbour thinks of them. One is intrinsically likely to be more unfiltered than the other.
If you want to know what sentiment a community actually holds you have to seek out all types of opinions.
> Bodybuilding.com misc & 4chan are super toxic communities.
There’s that word. The world is super “toxic”. The aforementioned sites allow people to speak freely, which can result in negativity, but they’re also bastions of freedom and creativity and everyone’s thoughts being equally visible.
One can easily argue that that’s far less toxic than Reddit’s style of everyone being the church mom that silences and admonishes everyone that says something “problematic” or what the congregation considers unacceptable. Where’s the fun in that?
There’s definitely a certain group of people who hate not being able to silence others, since if they can’t silence and censor their opponents, their arguments don’t really hold up.
4chan is a bastion of free speech in the same way that Somalia is a bastion of the free market. Being the only place in the world to do something "freely" means you mostly attract people that want to "freely" do all the things that other places have rules against.
"The only freedom which counts is the freedom to do what some other people think to be wrong. There is no point in demanding freedom to do that which all will applaud. All the so-called liberties or rights are things which have to be asserted against others; who claim that if such things are to be allowed, their own rights are infringed or their own liberties threatened. This is always true, even when we speak of the freedom to worship, of the right of free speech or association, or of public assembly. If we are to allow freedoms at all there will constantly be complaints that either the liberty itself or the way in which it is exercised is being abused, and, if it is a genuine freedom, these complaints will often be justified. There is no way of having a free society in which there is not abuse. Abuse is the very hallmark of liberty."
The previous comment was using the word "free" as if it had a clear and self-evident meaning. But of course it does not - theres a huge grey area where individual liberty conflicts with the rights of others. Where is appropriate to draw the line in this area is culturally dependent. But most cultures agree that there is a line somewhere - for example even the US has certain laws regulating hate speech, and prevents individuals from having the "freedom" to enslave other humans. In this sense, everyone except an extreme few is in favour of censorship. It's just a matter of degree.
You freedom ends where my nose begins, or something like that. The freedom to voice your opinions, even unpopular ones, is good. It stops being good once it turns to online harassment, IMHO even before that.
And by the way, just because there is no active moderation doesn't mean that every voice is equally heard. Or did any one on running.com listen what Dr. Meza had to say?
Man, Dr. Meza was an obvious chatear who refused to stop.
He could have silenced it all by running with a GPS way before it snowballed to what you call harassment.
He deserved to have his reputation ruined. You're just blaming victims (the ones cheated) for doing something about it. You can't have a world where the cheater keeps his profits from cheating and his victims are not hurt by it. It's not a positive sum game, something gotta give. Don't blame the victims.
They did that! One marathon banned him, many ordered him to run with an observer, he was told to cut the shit over and over, and he violated those rules. He was banned, don't say he wasn't.
So, he wasn't competing anymore. What ever times he "ran" didn't matter anymore. People could have left it there, why didn't they? And why would any of that justify the online bullying campaign against him?
If he wasn't competing he could have just raced without a bib, or just run around town on his own at 5am, nobody would have cared about his teleporting. He called that attention to himself and kept cheating until the absolute second he got called out and demanded to run with an observer to put up or shut up.
> FB/Twitter are not one community, they are a million different communities
You can apply the same arbitrary granularity to bodybuilding.com (different subforums) and 4chan (different boards) too, and say 'such and such subforum isn't as toxic as these other ones...'.
The point is that all four platforms spread and foster toxicity. And given that Twitter and Facebook are magnitudes bigger, they also do so much more than 4chan or bodybuiding.com.
One person can click to see different subforums on those sites, and often does.
One FB/Twitter, you can only see stuff posted by your friends, friends of friends, specific people whose names/usernames you know and have searched for, groups you have chosen to join, and ads they show you. The other 99.99% of content is invisible to you.
I dunno, I just had a weird incident happen last week where a family member of mine received a ton of cyber bullying on Twitter because she’s an actress and has an unusual surname. When I reported stuff Twitter said it wasn’t against their policies.
I had a collegue who would literary tap me on the shoulder. It was a loud open office so I had noise cancelling headphones.
It was insanely annoying. And when I told him to please stop, he started to wave his hand in my peripheral vision.
I pretty much gave up trying to make him behave. I mean those headphones are not that good you can just speak ...
Just the risk of such things makes it hard for me to concentrate. They need not have to happen, just that they could is enough.
I think it is the walking up behind me on row desks that is the problem. I have a private office now with my side to the door and in no way I feel the same.
A useful tactic in this situation is to not reward the colleague for interrupting you like that.
e.g. you could answer, but state you are in the middle of something, can't focus now, and please send you an email. If you are politely obstinate enough they will soon learn they are wasting their time with the interruptions and will be trained to send an email straight away instead.
Interestingly, I recently read an article regarding the gaming in China.
Most video games were accessed pirated, with hacks built into the install. Not saying this is the case with PUBG, but it can explain why there is a higher distribution of hackers in some video games (namely CS Source).
- Grand Theft Auto V had the 2nd highest amount of total reviews
- There 927 total negative reviews gathered (from clusters containing 193+173+164+130+124+31+113 negative reviews)
- There were 243 positive reviews (from clusters containing 54+43+27+22+15+58+24 positive reviews.)
- This gives it a rough ratio of 3.8 negative reviews for every 1 positive review. This was the largest amount in the dataset.
- A large number of complaints revolved around banning. Whether it was a general complaint on bans, unfair banning or the ban appeal.
- A large number of reviews were orientated around general mods references or specific mods. Words that came up were related around “mods” “modding” “openiv”
- Certain missions, vehicles, or purchases were mentioned such as “Royale” & “Alpha”
- There was a less quantity of negative reviews regarding hackers.
- There were a less quantity of negative reviews relating to microtransactions with specific mentions of “rockstar”, “greedy”, “gtx”, “currency”, “pay”, “paying” “overpriced”
Rocket League
- Rocket League had a total of 517 recommended reviews (in clusters of 49+351+117 ) to 10 not-recommended reviews (in clusters of 3+6+1).
- The largest cluster of reviews made specific references to “addictive” “addiction” “fun” as qualities of the gameplay.
- Many positive mentions of the game being “entertaining”, “fun” & “enjoyable”
Rust
- Rust had a distribution of 569 recommended reviews (from clusters of 64+323+182)
- It had a not recommended reviews of 103 not recommend reviews (from clusters of 34+52+17)
- Many references were made mentioning “cancer” with regards to the game itself or the community.
- Other references included “gaming” “gameplay” “ammo” “community” “Gamers” “ultimate” “simulator”
- This game received many mentions of other games including “skyrim”, “fortnight”, “battlefield”, “minecraft”
- Specific items or gameplay mechanics were mentioned like “Death” “health” “dying” “war” “toxic” “survival” “pain” “fire” “build” “nake” “run” “kills” “looting” “gunplay” “spawns”
Overall positive recommended reviews
- 378 recommended reviews skewed towards co-operative video games.
- The most positive and popular recommendations (within two clusters of 351 & 323 reviews) specifically referenced the video games gameplay.
- 129 positive reviews were made making general mentions of the video game as being fun to play (a large portion of these making specific reference to Rocket League)
The negative sentiment reviews gave much meatier insights though.
Overall negative sentiment reviews
- 204 negative reviews that were made in relation to bad game play or poor game play quality.
- In 193 reviews, users complained about being banned by Steam.
- 173 negative reviews were made with reference to “mods”. These reviews were related to mods causing bugs that made their game crash or become unstable.
- 159 users complained about experiencing lag and latency issues within multiplayer video games.
- 153 negative reviews blamed games for crashing and glitching that rendered them unplayable or disruptive.
- In two different clusters that contained 147 & 142 each, negative reviews were posted, voicing complaints regarding hackers, which is common in online multiplayer games.
If I had my time again, I would...
- Like to spend more time mining for insights
- Work on updating or scraping my own dataset with a larger and more updated dataset.
- Track which game developers as well as video games had the highest amount of negative reviews, positive reviews and positive to negative review ratios.
- Begin to visualise each genre of video game, their review totals, and negative to positive review ratios.
- Map out repeatable criticisms or issues with larger marquee games, over a wider & more up to date dataset. (i.e Specific mentions of Fortnite Skins being too expensive, or negative sentiment with reference to GTA V Shark Cards)
My earliest memories of the internet were back in 2005. I still remember the long bus ride and walk to the nearest shopping centre to purchase a phone line cable from Dick Smith Electronics in Northland as my modem didn't have the right connector for our units old phone lines.
My mum saved every dollar from my early birthdays and when she explained this to 14 year old, I hounded her to purchase a computer for me.
Thankfully she did, and I remember going through the arduous process of getting the internet credentials, loading the modems driver, the ISP connector and needing to manually connect to the net, then pulling up my first website playboy.com haha
From here, I returned back from the library with a bundle of HTML and web development books (mostly the dummies series) and drafted my first tests into notepad, then opened the saved files into the early Mozilla versions to see it in all its glory.
From here, the first mention of World of Warcraft was amongst my high school friends, who were big Warcraft 3 players. We all made a pact to purchase the game and begin playing it together.
I played on the Gilneas realm with my school friends, and whilst they rolled Alliance, I somehow decided to go with horde and rolled a Hunter called Rover.
Over the months, I leveled up super slowly and fell in with a guild of RL friends who graciously allowed an Aussie teen to come on board. They were my first community I ever fell into and took me into instances, enchanted my armor and weapons, helped me tame rare and exotic pets.
My real end game raiding happened on the WoW forums where I was an infamous troll on there and interacted with a lot of server personalities. A lot of people knew me, and it was a love hate relationship most players had with me. I was targeted a ton in PVP and god knows I probably deserved a lot of the griefing thrown my way. Never trust young testosterone fueled teenagers with anonymity.
I famously skipped two weeks of school just to play it. Such was my love and addiction for it.
All in all, WoW was my first taste of interacting with adults in a serious and meaningful way. I learned to:
- Code in XML
- Use Windows in a much more advanced manner by trying to hack
- Understanding how to make strategic choices with gear
- Learning teamwork in instances and raids
- Got my first dollar online by farming gold and selling it
- Got my first job online freelancing as a video game reviewer just to pay for my WoW subscription (which led me to a lucrative career in Digital Marketing. 14 years later, I'm Head of Marketing at startup).
I owe so much to this video game. It had given a young child from a poor, single parent household a lot of hours of escapism, plus developed crucial tools and skills that I translated into a professional career which aided in my ability to rise out of my social predicament.
I'll never forget the magic of opening up the discs, the smell of the packaging and waiting hours for it to download & patch to play.
You can never talk about World of Warcraft to me without bringing up the bittersweet pangings of nostalgia for a time that will never be re-created.
I have forgotten the names and usernames of so many online friends who I spent an incredible amount of time with, but I will never forget how they made me feel and the overall memories of the game.
I doubt I'll ever feel the wonder I felt from those first months of classic WOW. I started as a NElf, and those environments still feel kind of homey to me, even all these years later.
I played off and on for about 9 or 10 years, and then stopped. The game evolved past what I enjoyed, which was mostly in-world advancement with friends. I was never much of an endgame player.
Nothing that I would attribute to the dream itself. I usually have very vivid dreams with internal consistency and story lines (which I’ve learned over the years is very unusual). So that kind of dream is very unusual for me. I turn my dreams into short stories under a pen name. I’ve published a couple on my blog.
I look back at my teenage years and realised how hazardous they are to mental health. My curiousity & engagement on those communities was limited to infrequent lurking.
I now understand why alt-right/q anon movement popped up so quickly.
A big issue with these boards is that the ownership can't overmod because these communities are a big drawcard, even if they're financial negatives.