Dissonance Blog

I'm not sure what is new for me to say here as I feel I've said it all in class. That is, what I intend my research paper to be about. 4chan will be the subject of my interests, though I'm not entirely sure what claims/conclusions I will make about it.

I suppose, I would first start with a brief history of the website, the context from which it was borne and the state of the internet that allowed it to flourish the way it did. Next I would explain a few key terms and the organization of the site with a special focus on /b/—the main board on the website. Next, the layout of threads, the rules governing which threads get displayed and for how long, and limitations on text/images that naturally lend a certain shape/form to the content posted. Finally, I will attempt a kind of profile on the average user of this site. Although all users are necessarily anonymous, certain assumptions can be made about them based on the content posted. I'm not sure if it matters "what a 4chan user looks like." If not, I will instead focus on the anonymity of the website, it's implications for authorship and accountability, and why Anonymous is such a powerful force online when identity and cult of personality is valued IRL (in real life). This will make up Part I, which will be all about defining the website, though my ideas on Anonymous may ultimately make up a larger portion of the paper if I come across any research/theory I can draw more elaborate ideas from.

Part II may focus on something like the relationships between text in images, text alongside images and, to a lesser degree, images in texts. There many "forms" of images that have a general tone and are then manipulated with text or used in different situations to convey a specific emotion, feeling or attitude. One common example is the MFW (my face when...) reaction image which is usually a photo of a shocked/surprised person and is meant to signify that the reader's reaction to the thread is similar in degree to that of the person in the image. There are also certain conventions used when telling a personal narrative in a thread. For example, green text is frequently used, there are no sentences, per se, individual lines are used for a complete thought, and the sometimes begin, ungrammatically, with the word "be." Such as, "be 23 years old/filling my car up the gas station when..." Anyway, the point of all that is to show how the nature of the website itself lends to create new styles of writing that can't exist in other mediums. One final thing about this is that the content is usually very expressive in nature with no emphasis whatsoever on grammar or punctuation. The most successful posts are those that are the most emotionally charged or appeal the visual senses.

In Part III, I will use some certain set of theories/articles/research/etc to tie all this together and extract some meaning from it all. This will be the hardest part.

I am also interested in expanding what I consider my audience. Rather than simply writing for a teacher with no expectation of anyone else ever reading what I've written (except future biographers), I will also write with my classmates and Anonymous in mind. I hope my paper will be interesting and relevant for the academic and online community alike, trolls and all.