Hacker News Reader

Comment by rexpop | Hacker News Reader

> 8chan are absolutely a hated minority

They're almost ubiquitously unknown.

> they have lax moderation

I refer to the boards ideological content, not its own governance, although there are arguments to be made that informal, social governance employs Patriarchal tropes to keep users in line.

> so long as we are discussing American politics

We're not. We're discussing an international propagandist forum.

> I don't think those alternate conceptions are relevant. Clinton is clearly further left than Trump.

The USA has never had a "Leftist" administration in any meaningful sense.

Edit: your attitude strikes me as suspiciously apologetic on behalf of an atrocious, violent reactionary movement. If this is due to naivete, I hope the previous ly cited texts can alleviate it. If this is due to your own Patriarchal reactionary bent, we're done; I've no reason to spar with a dishonest partner.

View on HN

So many unexamined assumptions here. I sort of understand the appeal of channers just calling folks like yourself a nasty name and checking out rather than spending every discussion parsing out "the patriarchy" and what true leftism is. It gets exhausting.

> calling folks like yourself a nasty name and checking out

You forget; they also murder indiscriminately. You're acting callous and self-righteous; it's not hard for me to imagine you "understand" Fascism's appeal, a la Matt Bors' reluctant Nazi.

https://images.dailykos.com/images/574802/large/1350.png?153...

That's a goofy thing to say. There are millions of 4chan users, and at least hundreds of thousands of 8chan users and visitors. They don't "murder indiscriminately" any more than Twitter users do.

And gee, wow, you posted a comic where the author's self-insert tries to talk to a totally crazy and unreasonable Drumpf Nazi, who is a blatant hypocrite and makes a fool of himself, confirming your political biases and allowing you to impute terrible motives to millions! How will we ever recover?

In the context of the US, it doesn't matter what the 'left' in terms of the rest of the world is. If you're gonna argue and accuse someone of having a 'patriarchal reactionary bent' and being dishonest, perhaps be honest and genuine yourself.

A summary of my earlier response is that 8chan is mostly hated or unknown, they are more anarchic than authoritarian, and Silicon Valley is largely left wing. I don't see how any of that could be fairly perceived as 8chan apologetics unless you had a favorable of anarchism (which I do not).

Calling 8chan authoritarian, when they have little to no authority and little to no rules feels like a bad judgment. Surely Nazis and authoritarians abound there, but they aren't organized in any way, they don't control the site, they are just there posting their positions because anyone can go there and post whatever they like.

You suggest that patriarchal tropes are used to keep users in line. I'd like to know more about that. To my knowledge, the users of 8chan are not kept in line - that's kind of the problem. Moderators there delete illegal content as they become aware of it, but beyond that don't do much - per my understanding.

Regarding your point about politics - it seems facile. In the US, which is where Silicon Valley is located, "The Left" refers to a superset which includes the Democrat party. Silicon Valley is overwhelmingly Left in this sense. While it is true you could use a different definition of "Left", doing so only confuses the issue and for little purpose. The people of 8chan who accuse Silicon Valley of being Left leaning are not making the accusation in the cosmopolitan sense which you are apparently interpreting it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com