Fox News discovers 4chan

The article writes itself:

Users write “moar” to challenge each other to post further loathsome material

It’s just brilliant. The writer believes that memes are merely internet jokes, and has an inexhaustible supply of scare quotes to prove it.

1. [annoyingmouse]

   “it’s hard to call someone a terrorist who posts photos of cats with captions in 4chan language every Saturday”

   Becuase if you don’t tick all the boxes on the FoxNews checklist of terrorist pastimes you’re probably safe! Beyond this article demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of the internet, it’s amazing that Fox still manages to find a way of fitting in something that also shows their complete lack of understanding of reality. Even in the smallest paragraph they insinuate their small minded belief that all terrorists have “shifty eyes” or carry bombs marked “bomb”.

   “Anonymous members, often wearing masks depicting the main character in the politically charged comic book and movie “V for Vendetta,” protest across the country, claiming the religion endorses Internet censorship.”

   Yes. Dressing up like the main character from a comic. Not a notorious religious extremist who in 1606 tried to murder hundreds of people. Oh wait, he was probably praying to the same god as Fox so that’s ok.

   (I honestly started this comment as a jokey response to comment #7. Porn? We’ll just have to see about that…)

2. [BCJ]

   Wonderful. I wonder if the writer knows who Guy Fawkes is?

   Also, I’m reading The Selfish Gene right now. You better not have just spoiled the ending.

3. [Anonymous]

   The article is fine. It’s all accurate as far as I can tell, and shows that the author has either done his research well or been on the internet long enough to know this stuff about 4chan already. He mentions a number of relatively obscure 4chan-related events. He knows his stuff.

   Complaining about memes is ridiculous. The article states that it’s a “pseudo-sociological term”, which is accurate. And everyone knows that on the internet the term is basically interchangable with internet joke. The protesters are dressing up as V from the comic – that’s accurate. The character is dressing up as Guy Fawkes, but the protesters are dressing up as V.

   It seems to me you’re all just desperate to attach Fox News’ usual egregiousness onto this, but it’s simply not there. Rob, I suspect you saw this and thought “OMG it’s going to be awful!” and then either just assumed it was without checking or some how read it and imagined the awfulness. The article is fine.

   Also, as a side note, considering how frequently Boing Boing has mangled 4chan memes years after they are born, I wouldn’t be so quick slag off those who’ve done their research. People in glass houses, yeah?

4. [Agies]

   @11 To be fair I doubt that most Anonymous members give two shits about the real Guy Fawkes.

5. [Agies]

   @11 To be fair I doubt that most Anonymous members give two shits about the real Guy Fawkes.

6. [Agies]

   @11 To be fair I doubt that most Anonymous members give two shits about the real Guy Fawkes.

7. [Agies]

   @11 To be fair I doubt that most Anonymous members give two shits about the real Guy Fawkes.

8. [oohShiny]

   “Moot — he insists on the lowercase “m” — is reportedly Christopher Poole…”

   Now wait — He insists on a lower-case “m” does he? Is that why you used an upper-case “m”?

   This pretty much says everything there is to say about Fixed news. Brought to you by the people who employ Hannity. If Fox News says it, you know it must be.. um.. god I don’t know. Out of touch? Hopelessly missing the point?

   You know we’re trying to remove them from Canada.

9. [Snarp]

   Fox previously discovered Anonymous. That was pretty exciting.

   One of my favorite parts are how they are “domestic terrorists” – because the internet is American! – and then there’s the stock footage of the van blowing up, with the little caption saying “demonstration.” And how the “nationwide plan” to spoil Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is apparently being implemented by the English.

10. [Shelby Davis]

    Getting to the part about it being “a new world, filled with … conventions that the average person … may not know about” I turned to my dad:

    (me)
    “Hey, you know about 4chan, right”

    (my dad, looking up from his AARP newsletter)
    “FORTRAN?”

    Oh, well.

11. [Anonymous]

    Your dad codes Fortran, he’s definitely cooler than you.

12. [airshowfan]

    Of course they don’t know what memes are. You think someone at Fox News would willingly come to within ten feet of a Richard Dawkins book?

13. [Agies]

    @11 To be fair I doubt that most Anonymous members give two shits about the real Guy Fawkes.

14. [jimkirk]

    Hmm, the article reads like a high school English report someone cribbed from Wikipedia.

15. [redthoughts]

    I hope they don’t find out there is porn on the internet.

16. [devophill]

    I think I’ll just comment on this once, ok? (BTW,@18 I’d forgotten about grunge speak! Thx.)

17. [Bottlekid]

    4Chan sounds a lot like the record shop in High Fidelity.

18. [dculberson]

    I like that it starts out all scare quotes and generic then it gradually morphs into the author seeming to like 4chan and getting more and more addicted to it.

19. [carriem]

    remember when the New York Times was looking for grunge slang and Sub Pop made up all that shit for fun?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunge_speak

20. [echolocate chocolate]

    #8 I liked that too! It reads like a hyperactive editor attacked the start of the article and exaggerated the crap out of it, then lost interest about half-way through.

21. [Anonymous]

    Fox gives you a new invisible enemy to be paranoid about, 4chan.org – an anonymous society of cyber-terrorists who seek to undermine our proud American values, and who can be conveniently feared and/or blamed for anything that happens which you don’t weally weally wike at all!

    You know, like all those ‘anonymous’ “b-tards” who voted Obama into office. It’s like they’re everywhere, and nobody can see them. Scary.

22. [fistula spume]

    This does read like a highschool report. Maybe it was “bring your kid to work and let them write your articles for you day”. I hope Fox News doesn’t discover Google Images on the intenertz. There’s evil there.

23. [Agies]

    @11 To be fair I doubt that most Anonymous members give two shits about the real Guy Fawkes.

24. [Elvis Pelt]

    /b/ stands for Boxxy. Why can’t Fox figure that out?

25. [Agies]

    @11 To be fair I doubt that most Anonymous members give two shits about the real Guy Fawkes.

26. [Elvis Pelt]

    /b/ stands for Boxxy. Why can’t Fox figure that out?

    (On a side note, what does “Publish failed: Error making path ‘/var/www/bbgadgets/2009/04/07′: mkdir /var/www/bbgadgets: Permission denied at lib/MT/FileMgr/Local.pm line 107″ mean?)

27. [Elvis Pelt]

    /b/ stands for Boxxy. Why can’t Fox figure that out?

28. [Elvis Pelt]

    /b/ stands for Boxxy. Why can’t Fox figure that out?

29. [Anonymous]

    This is worded very similar to a Newsweek article about 4 chan last year. Like if this was high school i would be getting talked to about how similar my work is to another persons work. Wish I knew what week it was. My mother in law read the article and though the kitty pictures sounded fun and I gently steered her away from 4 chan and to lol cats.

30. [crosswiredmind]

    /fox/tards

31. [crosswiredmind]

    fox-tards

32. [crosswiredmind]

    I love Fox news and its black and white, simplistic, short sighted reporting. And by love I mean detest. 4chan is nothing new. People have been doing shit like that since the very first BBS appeared dedicated to pranks. Alt.Shen when moot was in diapers.

33. [kaiza]

    In other news, moot is the most important person in 2009 (by a long way, and a long margin)!

    http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,1883644,00.html

34. [Pasketti]

    I’m just sad that they don’t allow comments on their stories, because I’m sure that 4chan would be bringing a little bit of /b/ there.

35. [Anonymous]

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