Free EPIC WIN FOR ANONYMOUS by Cole Stryker Page B

wrote, produced, and recorded a pop song for Rebecca along with an accompanying video. The result was “Friday,” a teen ode to good clean weekend fun. Within a few days, Rebecca went from suburban anonymity to YouTube oddity to global pop sensation. And it annoyed anons to no end. They launched Operation Black Friday, encouraging /b/tards to fax bestiality porn to Rebecca’s school under her name, attack Ark Music Factory’s website, flood her YouTube channel with antisocial comments, and find out where she lived. Nothing noteworthy came of these efforts.
    The minimal press coverage of 4chan that I’ve seen over the last few years focuses primarily on the idea of 4chan as a racist and homophobic hate group. The words
faggot
and
nigger
are used so frequently, and in situations so far removed from a hateful context, that at times it’s almost difficult to see them as slurs. People open conversations with “Greetings, faggots . . .” or “Have any of you niggers heard the new Metallica album?” The use is so indiscriminate that regular users might see them as terms of endearment. It’s as if they’re saying, “We’re all faggots and niggers here.”
    I’m reminded of punk poet Patti Smith’s “Rock and Roll Nigger,” which defiantly declared, “Outside of society, that’s where I want to be,” going on to declare that Jesus Christ, Jackson Pollock, and even Grandma were niggers too. Remember, most 4chan users are computer nerds. The language operates as a way for 4chan users to bond over their shared status as social misfits, friendly monikers for those who see themselves as marginalized.
    Lisa Nakamura is skeptical.
Comedians like Richard Pryor and Paul Mooney have done pretty high-profile interviews about why they’ve chosen to stop using the word
nigger
, even though they have pretty rich comedic histories of using them. People who make the argument that the words are harmless are often white people. I tend to take this argument a little more seriously when it’s coming from minorities.
     
    I refresh /b/ again and find:
Lets make a thread where you go wikipedia and select random article, whatever comes upp, that will be the new name of your dick. ill start: Château Grand-Puy-Ducasse . . .
     
    Further down the page I spot a RageToon thread. These are four-panel comics that highlight subtle things that enrage everyone. They showed up on 4chan in late 2008 and have become one of the most recognizable Internet memes, expanding to places like Tumblr and Reddit.
    The comics start with three blank panels and a fourth featuring a crudely drawn, screaming face with the caption, “FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU-” The artist fills in the first three panels with something that is typically enraging, like when you accidentally rip into a page of notebook paper while removing the perforated edge. They’re simple, catchy, and infinitely shareable because they touch on commonly held but seldom-discussed frustrations. Because they’re so easy to create, their stick-figure template has spawned dozens of variations, including:
Stoner Comics—Hilarious stories about pie-eyed misadventures.
Troll Physics—Pseudoscientific explanations for impossible physical phenomena.
Everything Went Better Than Expected—The opposite of RageToons.
Forever Alone—A guy in humorous denial of his loneliness.
    These are just a handful of examples. Today the form stars a cast of characters numbering several dozen. The important thing about these comics is their status as
exploitables,
or images that serve as semiblank canvases for the imagination of the hivemind. An exploitable could be a man’s face with a blank thought bubble overhead; everyone can fill in the bubble with their own text. It’s kind of like the
New Yorker
caption contest. It becomes a game to creatively fill in the blanks.
    And it doesn’t stop at text. Photoshop wizards augment the imagery itself, for hilarious results. Exploitables allow anyone to engage in the