Earlier this week, Reddit announced a perplexing new plan to “contain” the worst bigots on the site. Instead of simply banning the bigots, their subreddits would simply be “reclassified.” Redditors would have to sign into them much as they now sign into the site’s NSFW subreddits, and, presumably to avoid angering advertisers, Reddit would remove all ads from them.
In other words, as I noted the other day, Reddit has decided to fight the bigots … by funding ad-free forums for them.
Well, the folks in the 4/chan subreddit (not 4chan itself; the Reddit incarnation of it) want to get into that sweet, sweet ad-free action. So one enterprising channer suggested that they spam a thread with the n-word to prove they’re as hateful as the hateful assholes of r/coontown:
![NIGGER POSTAs many of you have heard, reddit admins are now providing ad-free bandwith to racist hate subs... (self.4chan) submitted 21 hours ago by reese_ridley/he does it for free/[M] - stickied post ...and apparently the admins think we aren't racist enough to receive these great benefits. What the fuck? ITT we spam "nigger" to remove ads from /r/4chan forever](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/4chann.png?resize=433%2C249&ssl=1)
And spam they did. Here’s a portion of the top comment in the thread:
The comment continues on for a time in this fashion.
Other commenters had similar ideas; this one was so relentless I made a half-hearted attempt at censoring it.
![TasselHat [score hidden] 14 hours ago If you smell something funny when you walk down the street, you're in Coon Town. You look and see garbage all over the street, you're in Coon Town. Up and down the street there ain't nothing but trash, nigger girls trying to get a nigger boy's cash. Then you even see a spook with a big moustache, in Coon Town. On the corner there's a nigger with a drink in his hand, that's Coon Town. Trying to bum a nickel from whoever he can, in Coon Town. Don't be surprised, you can make a bet, if you go back tomorrow he'll be there yet. He's trying to get drunk and drunk he's gonna get, in Coon Town. Niggers never bother about going to work, in Coon Town. They seem to think that work is for jerks, outta Coon Town. They don't do nothing but sleep and doze, he don't wake until his eyes are tired of being closed. It's half a day's work for him to scratch his toes, in Coon Town. It amazes me to see the way they live, in Coon Town. They do all the taking while we have to give, to Coon Town. The White man worries, the nigger don't care, cause at the end of the month his check will be there. Every nigger earns his living off the old welfare, in Coon Town. Every nigger earns his living off the old welfare, in Coon Town. I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO I HATE NIGGERS YES I DO I HATE NIGGERS AND YOU SHOULD TOO](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/f4channcens.png?resize=580%2C486&ssl=1)
You get the idea.
Brilliant move, Reddit admins! You surrendered to the bigots and now they’re walking all over you.
H/T — r/GamerGhazi
The amount of traffic a website receives from a blog representing the ideological opposition is trivial. AVFM gets its traffic from repeat visits by MRAs. Mammoth gets its traffic from repeat visits by anti-MRAs. The occasional drive-by from the opposition is just a trickle, especially because most readers at, say, Mammoth will not actually click on a link in the post but will instead rely on the blogger’s description of what the enemy said. Nobody here is putting food on Paul Elam’s table.
A delusion about one’s own power is a common feature of ideological sects. Making a big show of “I’m not linking to the enemy” is a manifestation of that delusion. It is also a signal to fellow sectarians that “I am one of the good people.”
Bonnie, I am not saying that you should “feel dumb” for doing this. I am saying that your belief in the power of your one click represents a delusion of grandeur.
http://i.imgur.com/u5d9Wov.jpg
Had to be whined: Then why the fuck do you consider it to be ‘shady’ to use such options in the first place? Either we’re not interrupting their revenue stream, in which case, it’s no big deal if we use them, or we are, in which case it’s effective.
The only reason to drone on about it over several posts is if you:
A> Believe it might impact a site owner’s revenue stream AND
B> Believe that to be a bad thing.
If that’s the case, then you’re a fellow-traveler of sites like AVfM, the subreddits under discussion here, and RooshV, among others. In which case, feel free to fuck off with all the fucks, a side order of fucks with fuck sauce, and a big heaping mound of fuck with fuck sprinkles for dessert.
This is true. However…
…this is not.
Nobody here is under the impression that we are responsible for keeping Elam in business. We are not cringing under the realisation that we bear the blame for AVFM continuing to pump out poisonous ideas. The reason we don’t want to give even $0.01’s worth of traffic to him isn’t to do with any feeling of power or grandeur. It’s simply that even $0.01 is still too much. The only acceptable amount of money to give Elam (or Valizadeh, or anyone else) is $0.
I have no delusions of my own grandeur. However, I am also aware that gestures count too. The gesture I choose to make is that I will drive up their web hosting costs very slightly but will not give them the accompanying web traffic bump that pays for that web hosting. Like a raised middle finger, it is not innately powerful but carries a meaning in human terms; and even if Elam does not care about my raised middle finger, I do.
M wins the thread, as always.
Let’s play a game. Drink a shot if Had To Be Said ever says something that indeed had to be said.
No fair, I actually like alcohol.
Safest. Drinking. Game. Ever.
@Bonnie Blue
“nofollow” doesn’t do anything to ad revenue either. In fact, “nofollow” is part of what donotlink already does – see the FAQ: http://www.donotlink.com/dnl/faq
If you want to share the content with lots of people without each one counting as another page view, you need something that will visit the site once and then show everyone the saved copy of it, such as https://archive.is .
There used to be a site that archived Daily Fail articles for this purpose, but it got cease-and-desisted. I don’t know how archive.is reacts to copyright-related takedown notices.
Regarding advertising revenue, it’s my understanding that most banner ads pay the hosting site per click, not per visitor. I just tried to find some concrete info on that and failed, so it might be less common than I thought, but there are definitely advertisers that work that way. Point is that you aren’t necessarily financially supporting AVfM or RoK by merely visiting the sites, although there’s really no way to know for sure without knowing who their ad providers are, and inquiring about how their payments work.
It’s the drinking game where everyone can drive themselves home.
Well, yeah, like I said, it’s for you. It doesn’t make a difference beyond your own feelz, and any belief that it does is just a comforting illusion.
@katz, I suppose because the opposite would have us all dying of alcohol poisoning with the first comment, huh?
Much like your reasons for commenting here.
I did think maybe that’s what it was supposed to be, seeing as it’s upright while the Nazi swastika is canted over. But that was only after I clicked “Post Comment.”
I haz many feelz. What do my feelz tell me? They tell me that I am out of patience. They tell me that you are under the impression that the internet exists as a place for you to heroically leap from site to site, fearlessly pointing out to people the savage truths that lurk beneath the surface of people’s reasoning of which they were unaware, and leaving them sadder but wiser. Nobody was saying the things you’re saying, after all.
What you’re actually doing, at least from my vantage point, is much closer to going up to a conversation about the artistry of Michelangelo’s depiction of David’s ass, and saying “You know, poop comes out of butts.” It’s true that poop comes out of butts, and it’s also true that nobody else was saying it, but that’s not because we didn’t know it. In fact, the reason we didn’t say it is because we assume that everyone knows it already and is speaking of more sublime matters.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I am not on this site to be told things I know already or that I can discover from a simple web search. I’m here to learn things.
If you want me to treat you like a five year old – that is, tolerated until you start shouting, at which point you get ejected – please carry on.
Alternatively, if you want to be respected as a fellow adult, please either share with the group a personal experience you’ve had which is germane to the issue; or else tell us something which is interesting and which can’t be learned from simple web searches and wikipedia browsing; or else make us laugh. Any of these things will do.
Had to be said seems a big believer in the “Go big, or sit on your ass and annoy people” school of “activism”. Gee, I wonder which movement we’ve seen that crop up in.
Also re: bigotry, have you guys seen this: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/nearly-40000-demand-south-carolina-remove-slave-memorial-because-it-shames-whites/? I want to pinch their cheeks, they’re so adorable in their stupidity.
Is this related to the topic at hand? As you know social media stuff is voodoo to me* but you peeps are good at it; and I think SFHC mentioned Gawker once.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jul/20/gawker-editors-quit-removed-post
[* Some social media marketing people are flying down to meet me on Thursday so hopefully I’ll have more of a clue after that; or we’ll just pay them to do it all for us, whichever’s easiest 🙂 ]
Why are people who claim to be advocates of free speech so often completely ignorant about freedom of association?
Two things to add:
1. We are also very much aware that asshats like Paul Elam or Janet Buttface put out deliberately offensive content with the hopes of getting traffic (Janet literally admitted that this was her ‘strategy’ on twitter) because the whole “negative attention is still attention” thing. Donotlink allows us to expose their misogyny without giving them the attention they so desperately crave.
2. Have you seen what MRAs talk about this blog? It drives them livid that we use donotlink, they feel personally offended that David takes the trouble to link their vile crap through DoNotLink. And that, as they say, is fucking hilarious. XD
Case in point: “had to be said”, the most obvious concern-troll ever, is trying to convince us not to use donotlink. It’s pretty easy to see why.
Had to be wanked is still here? Yawn.
Alan,
I’m a regular at Gawker and holy shit is it ever a clusterfuck right now. I’m kind of glad this mess coincided with work + a power outage for a couple of days that is keeping me from internetting too much. It’ll be curious to see what happens when the dust settles.
Moocow:
Oooo, I didn’t know that, but it explains a lot!
DoNotLink of course gives you the option to vote pages as “Nonsense” or “Harmful” or whatever, and also to see what the most-voted option was. Lately I’ve starting seeing pages where the most-voted option was “Great!”. (I forget which ones. It might have been to Vox Day’s website but I couldn’t swear to that.)
I’d been asking myself, “Why would anyone bother to manipulate a DoNotLink vote?”, and couldn’t think of an answer. But if the MRAs are that worked up about DoNotLink, then I can see why they’d think doing this is a productive use of their time.
The swastika (or a similar symbol rotated in the opposite direction, I can’t recall at the moment) is used in Japan as the symbol for a Shinto shrine on maps.
The swastika had a lot of traditional uses, and some people are angry that the Nazis stole it and want to take it back for traditional things. That is probably a lost cause.
Although their are a number of symbols identical to the Nazi swastika (certain Hindu icons, etc.) it is in fact an original design. Specifically it is a reverse Sigil. The sigil was the runic sunwheel and was a good luck symbol; it rotated clockwise to attract the powers of the light. The Nazis swapped that to attract the powers of darkness.
It’s quite interesting to read up on the Ahnenerbe and the British counter measures (especially Denis Wheatley’s work for SOE)