I'm really not sure how I feel about this. Moot created the biggest, most toxic garbage fire of an internet community, refused to take management of it, and walked away when it became too toxic for anyone to deal with. In a way, he's a perfect new hire for Google, but Google usually doesn't leave quite so much devastation in its wake.
While it might be incredibly toxic at times, it's also the source of quite a lot of interesting Internet culture and movements, many positive works, and a ton of creativity. It's a microcosm of the worst and the best of what the Internet can pull off.
Don't dismiss it out of hand as exclusively negative.
Time and time again, the hands-off moderation of anything on 4chan beyond child pornography has had knock on effects in the real world. GamerGate began life on 4chan, and is still making women's lives miserable. All you have to do is ask Allison Rapp, their latest victim. <http://kotaku.com/the-ugly-new-front-in-the-neverending-vide...
While moot did, eventually, push GamerGate discussion off 4chan, he took forever to do so, and walked away from the site not long after. By not taking a stance on harassment and abuse earlier on, however, he created conditions for such a culture to flourish on 4chan.
Is there interesting and positive stuff on 4chan? Almost certainly. Would it still exist had moot taken a stronger stance on dealing with toxic posters? I'll go out on a limb and say yes.
Just FYI, reading the wikipedia article is a really bad idea. A variety of fanatics, political obsessives and involved administrators have been squatting on it for months; it's a dumpster fire.
How is this assessment any better than judging a physical community based on their loudest/most controversial members? The "4chan garbage fire" is a rude stereotype.
If I'm in a physical community where the loudest, and most controversial members are making it a terrible experience for people inside and outside that community, and the leaders refuse to deal with it, I think a fair assessment is that the community is toxic.
Your statement seems to imply that the loudest, and most controversial, members make it terrible for EVERYONE inside the community.
That is not the case in 4chan. There are a large number, if not a majority, of boards which have healthy, constructive cultures and are extremely helpful for hobbyists and enthusiasts.
So, if it's not terrible for everyone, then it's not a problem---as long as it's not terrible for you. Maybe, perhaps, this would work if the terrible people kept to themselves, but this is rarely the case. I was a regular poster on /mu/ for several years, but once the /pol/ users started trashing the board up, it's been a shell of its former self. And, again, that's just within 4chan. The worst things are what 4chan's community have done outside of the site. See also: GamerGate.
> If I'm in a physical community where the loudest, and most controversial members are making it a terrible experience for people inside and outside that community, and the leaders refuse to deal with it, I think a fair assessment is that the community is toxic.
While I disagree that 4chan is "toxic" in many ways it is representative of society in the way that twitter represents a fleeting incomplete thought.
What you have said maps near perfectly to the state of America. While politicians have totally fucked up the country, it is somewhat bleeakly obvious that these same dynamics are at play here.
So if you are American consider that you are in a physical community where the loudest, and most controversial members are making it a terrible experience for people and that they have chosen leaders that mirror their own desire to * refuse to deal with it, which unfortunately leaves us with the unpleasant assessment is that the community is toxic
What devastation? 4chan is absolutely not a "toxic garbage fire of an internet community", and it's not even his concept or idea. He didn't "create" anything in that sense.
He also didn't, "walk away when it became too toxic for anyone to deal with." That sentence is literally too hard to parse, given what's publicly available information about Moot and 4chan.
