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Old 05-19-2009, 10:24 AM   #1
Vran
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omgwtfbbqsauceplz - ChanSpeek

What is "ChanSpeek"?
"ChanSpeek" refers to the manner in which patrons of the English imageboard 4chan (and its derivatives) talk amongst themselves. It is a semi-stylized variant of the English language in which dyslexic typing, phonemic typing, word extension, and word omission are common. Much of ChanSpeek's unique vocabulary has its origins in inside jokes or in memes.

What are some common examples of ChanSpeek?
English: Can somebody please tell me the source for this?
ChanSpeek: sauce | sauce plz |

English: idiot, dummy, moron, fool
ChanSpeek: faggot

English: You're not very good at [something].
ChanSpeek: You fail at [something].

Sociolinguistically, what is ChanSpeek?
From a sociolinguistic point of view, ChanSpeek shares much in common with contemporary ebonics, or MEb for short. Like MEb, ChanSpeek is not a proper dialect of English. Rather, it is code speak. Older forms of ebonics (going back to as recently as the 1990s) were largely dialectic, involving unique morphs of grammar or vocabulary while not quite crossing over into deliberately coded speak. For example, the frequent use of "ain't" or "nuttin'" would be hallmarks of classic ebonics, while the coded terms "sick," "freaky," "bad," "chillin'", and "blingbling" are classic examples of MEb and are merely substitutions for English words which otherwise continue to exist within the speaker's dialect ("amazing," "extreme in bed," "good," "relaxing [usu. w/ company]," and "jewelry," respectively). ChanSpeek differs from a proper contemporary dialect of the English language such as American English or Australian English in that the latter languages have terms which have wholly replaced their original British English forms. For example, "cookie" vs. "biscuit," or "chips" vs. "crisps." While the ChanSpeek speaker fully understands such words as "loser," "lame," or "origin," he doesn't use them himself and instead uses words such as "faggot," "fail," or "sauce." In this sense, ChanSpeek is code speak, and not a dialect of the English language.

What is code speak?
Code speak is the substitution of one word in the speaker's language for another word. Usually the substituted-in word had its own original meaning but this meaning is minimized as the word takes on the meaning of the substituted-out word. For example, "Alpha," "Bravo," and "Charlie" have meanings in the English language but were used to replace the letters A, B, an C respectively in 20th century American military code speak. As another example, "the eagle has landed" is a famous example of code speak in American culture, associated with both the President of the United States and, in some circles, with Elvis Presley. The phrase "the eagle has landed" has intelligible meaning in English but speakers of American English who hear this phrase understand it to mean something completely different given the precise word choice. This is the nature of code speak.

I still don't get it. How is ChanSpeek an example code speak? And how is code speak not a proper dialect?
One robust test of a dialect vs. code speak is to see if the term in question can be used in other contexts and revert to its original meaning. If it can, then the speaking style is closer to code speak. If it cannot, then it is closer to being a proper dialect. For example:

chips: in American English, this can never mean what is meant in AE by the term "french fries." It can mean small bits of wood ("woodchips"), gambling accessories ("poker chips"), crisps ("potato chips"), or small morsels of chocolate ("chocolate chips"). It can even be taken to mean multiple people ("Chips," where Chip is the name of a boy or man), but it does not mean "french fries." It only is understood as "french fries" by those speakers of AE who have come into contact with British English in one way or another. This is a good example of why AE and BE are separate dialects of the same language.

faggot: in ChanSpeek, this can be understood to mean either "a loser" (in ChanSpeek) or "(derog.) a homosexual" (in AE). Indeed, the word use on 4chan has its origins in the American English use of the term "faggot" as a derogatory insult. Nonetheless, this is poor evidence of a dialect and better evidence of coded talk. That is to say, context decides whether the term "faggot" means its ChanSpeek meaning or its original meaning. But in a proper dialect, the word in question can not be understood by other speakers of the same language no matter the context. (See "chips" above, in which an American would not understand "fish and chips" to mean "fish and french fries" were he not previously introduced to BE.)

sauce: this is a classic example of ChanSpeek and an even more classic example of code speak. "Sauce" only has one meaning in proper English: a sauce, a liquid or colloidal substance used to enhance the flavor of foods. The term has been deliberately misapplied (through repeated memetic usage) to mean "source," with which the term "sauce" shares some degree of homophony. That is to say, in the equation x = y, x is "sauce" and y is "source." Every time a ChanSpeek speaker sees or hears the word "sauce" used in ChanSpeek conversations, he unequivocally assumes the word means "source" unless there is immediately tangible evidence to the contrary. This concept is identical to the MEb speaker using the term "bad" to mean "good." Like the ChanSpeek speaker, the MEb speaker will assume "bad" means "good" when he is talking with his peers in MEb unless there is great reason to think otherwise. For example, if he sees his mother spanking his little brother and shouting at him, "Don't be a bad boy!", the MEb speaker understands the word "bad" to be used in its original English meaning. But if he hears a friend say "He so bad!", he will assume it to mean "That guy is so good!" unless there is reason to think otherwise.

Okay, you've convinced me that ChanSpeek is code speak. But so what? What's the big deal?
I wanted to establish before we proceed that ChanSpeek does not satisfy the robust tests of proper dialects. Therefore, in response to any of the claims I make below, I would ask that the reader do not defend ChanSpeek as "culturally significant" or "a dialect just like any other." It is code speak, pure and simple, and code speak rarely withstands the test of time.

I'm only going to ask you one more time: what's the big deal?
The big deal is, code speak is bad.

lul wat?
No, you "lul wat."

Philosophically?
Code speak is bad because it establishes an In group and an Out group. If you believe that there are significant merits to the act of ostracizing others, then this argument will hold no sway with you. But if you think that ostracizing others is one of the principle reasons for why humanity has suffered so greatly over the course of the last 10,000 years, then this should give you some pause for thought. I implore you: be a uniter, not a divider. Don't alienate your brethren. Welcome them into the conversation. Code speak truly can be described as nothing more than the #1 choice of antisocial individuals.

Professionally?
Code speak is perceived, for better or for worse, as tacky. Your employer will not be impressed by code speak nor will a good many of your coworkers. And if you have to interact directly with your employer's clientele, code speak can displease many of them and result in loss of business for your employer -- which can result in your termination at the company should he find out why his former customers started disappearing.

Linguistically?
Code speak is bad because it compresses language; and the less compressed a language is, the better its speakers are at being able to express themselves with precision and clarity. The English language is admired by linguists the world over for its infuriating complexity and massive vocabulary. The reason for this paradoxical admiration is that the highly-complex, highly-wordy English language permits its speakers a great deal of expressive diversity and precision. They can label something as "large," or they can call it "massive," "enormous," "gargantuan," "colossal," or simply "big." They can even call it "neither small nor average." The words have different sounds and different degrees of bigness to them. Similarly, something minuscule could also be called "small," but you would not assume that something small is always "minuscule" because to be minuscule is to be very, very small indeed.

Unfortunately, code speak takes this away. By its nature, it sacrifices a good many words for the sake of the usurping words; and sacrifices the usurpers' meanings for the usurped's. For example, when one uses the word "bad" to mean both "good" and "bad," it unnecessarily removes clarity from conversation and dumbs down artistic expression. Where before an artist could choose from four picks -- good, not good, bad, not bad -- now he has only two -- bad or not bad. And what does "not bad" even mean when bad means both good and bad? So really, he has only one pick -- "bad" -- where before he had four.

Okay, fine. Maybe code speak is bad. But why single out ChanSpeek?
Unlike healthier code speaks such as military code or ebonic code speak, ChanSpeek promotes enmity.

lol wut?
Not again!

Fine, failtard. Prove it.
There is nothing hateful about calling jewelry "blingbling" or substituting in "delta" for the letter D. But if you take a closer look at ChanSpeek's unique terminology, you'll soon find that a great deal of it is derogatory and hateful:
- faggot?
- fail?
- gtfo? (inherited from 1337speek)
- ban?
- get off my internets?
- sage? (inherited-but-perverted from 2ch & 2chan)

Perhaps the only non-hateful terms that stand out in my mind are "lul" (which is inherited from 1337speek's lol) and "bump" (which has been used since the original bulletin board systems first came out decades ago). Otherwise, ChanSpeek is essentially English. But where do we go from there?

Yeah, Captain Smartypants. Where do we go from there?
If we compare ChanSpeek's regular English with the conversations you'd hold with your friends, family, coworkers, or children, what stands out? Just more hatred. Tons and tons of hatred:
- nigger, and other racial slurs (particularly on /b/ )
- cunt, and other gender slurs (particularly on /b/ )
- anti-foreign sentiments (American 4channers hating on France, UK 4channers hating on America, etc)
- profuse miscellaneous profanity (shit, fuck, damn, ho, bitch, and all the other ones you can think of)

And what of the ChanSpeek speaker's mentality?
Typically classified as two ideas:
1. hatred, and
2. greed

Every ChanSpeek speaker is associated with these two ideas because of the standard behavior of most 4chan members. Most of them are hateful and greedy. "MOAR! MOAR! MOAR!" and "SAUCE! SAUCE! SAUCE!" they say. All the time. Incessantly. And if they do pause to catch their breath? They breathe it right back out again with "SHIT!", "FUCK!", or "CUNTFLAPS!" 4chan is a hive of enmity and frustration, of pent-up rage expressed in the most pitiful of fashions. When it isn't, 4chan reverts to its role as a P2P filesharing source -- and a rather pathetic one at that. ("Protip:" if you're still getting your SFW artwork, NSFW artwork, SFW files, or NSFW files from 4chan, "you're doing it wrong.")

So what? Who gives a shit?
If this is your answer, apparently you don't give a shit. But a lot of people do. I do. My coworkers do. My society cares. And I hope you care as well. If you enjoy being associated with hate groups like the KKK and the Black Panthers, then hey, rock right on! March to the beat of your own drummer and piss, fuck, cunt, shit all you want with your typing. But if you want people to see the real you and not the superficial you they see on the outside -- because like it or not, folks, people are judgmental creatures and first impressions do matter! -- then I'd suggest dropping the 4chan cloak and finding your own voice. Which reminds me ...

What's my #1 reason for disliking ChanSpeek?
It's the language of sheep. People who can't talk for themselves let others do the talking for them and then adopt those manners of talking. If you want to convince people you're not a sheep, then quit talking like the other sheep and find your own voice!

Thanks for reading this. I'm sure a lot of you will say I'm being hypocritical by hating on ChanSpeek and then preaching about fraternal love, but I can't say much to that except shrug so you needn't bother with a reply if that's all you've got. Otherwise, I welcome compliments, criticisms, and questions of this impromptu essay.
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Last edited by Vran; 05-19-2009 at 10:31 AM.
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Old 05-19-2009, 12:26 PM   #2
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Old 05-19-2009, 12:33 PM   #3
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Vran is such a tldrfag
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Old 05-19-2009, 12:42 PM   #4
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Somebody as cool as His Holiness couldn't possibly be destroyed by the Arc of the Covenant. You, sir, are an impostor!

And ZoraJolteon is just his usual Poop Loopsey self, even if today is his 20th birthday. Happy birthday, weird little man with chip on shoulder!
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Old 05-19-2009, 02:04 PM   #5
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I'm just going to say that I don't think most people who use codespeak in informal situations (hanging out with friends, etc) are going to be stupid enough to use it in a formal situation like a job interview.

....I hope most people aren't stupid enough, anyhow.

(Possibly irrelevant aside: I had classmates in a multimedia class that yelled out "lulz!" a lot.)
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Old 05-19-2009, 02:38 PM   #6
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That's just it though! If you insist on speaking in ChanSpeek, then you limit your potential audience to those who can both understand and who enjoy speaking in ChanSpeek. Whether this is good or not is a side-debate about ostracism, but my view on that is that it's bad when it's being done just for the sake of feeling bigger than others. If you place a "No Girls Allowed" sign in front of your office because you're a male sex therapist who is working with male sex offenders, that's one thing. The troll could say I'm being selective, but that's because that's all he can do: troll. He knows as well as we do that I'm being pretty level-headed and logical about this: there are some times and places for which such rules are necessary, but when you say "No Girls Allowed" simply on the basis that you want to feel superior to women or that you don't want women mucking up your club's affairs, that to me is when it crosses the line.

And that's what most code speak is. Military code speak is a famous exception: you need to talk in code else the enemy will pick up on what you're saying. But the existence of a war between two nations in the first place brings us back to the bigger question of ostracism. And I have nothing against proper ebonics, which is a genuine dialect of American English not because I say it is (lol) but because it's how urban black people talk! But contemporary ebonics (MEb) with terms like "dope" or "cash" being used as coded terms for other real words which the speakers can still understand ... that to me is just dumb. In the case of MEb, it's an embarrassing reflection in the mirror of the urban black community's reverse exclusion of non-blacks from their inner circles.

But in the case of 4chan's ChanSpeek, it's not even about keeping certain groups out. ChanSpeek is characterized by what can at its politest be labeled only as the deliberate misspelling of words so as to resemble uneducated or unintelligent persons who first used these precise spellings years ago and inadvertently gave birth to memes. In effect, ChanSpeek is the language of domestic sheep baaing in the fashion of a semi-retarded lone wolf. If the ebonics of rap can be said to showily glorify life in urban gangs, then ChanSpeek certainly glorifies the life of the young adult with Down syndrome and internet access. It is simultaneously a stupefying choice of words for anyone even semi-intelligent who is reading them while also being an insult to truly retarded men and women who surf the Internet.

"Like father, like son" goes the old saying. And so it is for ChanSpeek: because it's just like its "father," 4chan, in that it lives to ridicule others. The language itself is a living monument to the mockery the antisocial but brilliant patrons of the board, i.e. the nerdy elite, have for the mentally handicapped. From "lul wat" to "sauce plz," it's a slap in the face of every single mental retard in the world.

Sort of like ebonics' adoption of the term "nigger." Except they used that to get back at white supremacists, making the members of the black community who used the term victims acting in self-defensive retaliation. 4chan, on the other hand, is clearly not the victim when it comes to "sauce faggot." That is why this particular code speak is so dislikable. It is the language of sheep filled with hatred and contempt. Contempt for those who are dumber. Hatred for those who are prettier. Envy of those who are luckier. Sexual slurs, gender slurs, racial slurs, and so many other profanities would be fairly typical talk amongst well-to-do young American teens. But when your patrons are mostly 18+? When a good deal of them are 21+? Then what else can we call ChanSpeek but the coded talk of a hate group?

One quick edit: please do not reply telling me how many underage visitors 4chan gets. I know. You know. I also know that never minding the official ban on underage visitors that 4chan still manages to attract a majority of adults and a minority of minors. I'm sure many of the members here are 14, 15, 16, or 17 years old and have been to 4chan at least once. That's fine. But they represent grains of sand on a beach full of 20-year old, 30-year old, 40-year old, and 50-year old grains of every sort.

Oh: and if you caught yourself thinking "Internet Hate Machine" at the end of the last proper paragraph before the edit, then add one Sheep token to your side of the field.
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Old 05-19-2009, 03:13 PM   #7
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I think it all really boils down to people wanting to shout their Anonymous status from every rooftop like some kind of badge of honour.

I don't mind too much when people use "chan" humour in situations where it would be truly funny. On the other hand, I cringe when perfectly intelligent members of our respectable community end a well-written post with something like "picx coming soon hurf durf".
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Old 05-19-2009, 04:21 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Vran View Post
While the ChanSpeek speaker fully understands such words as "loser," "lame," or "origin," he doesn't use them himself and instead uses words such as "faggot," "fail," or "sauce." In this sense, ChanSpeek is code speak, and not a dialect of the English language.
Those words still exist and have original meaning, nobody uses them because of reduced emotional response.

Everything online is delivered in a sensational manner. Over time, the impact of buzz words or metaphors in sensational speech diminish from prolonged use. So, people move onto different phrase to try and evoke the original level of emotion.

Just because a phrase like "win and god" has been replaced by "fudging epic" doesn't mean people wouldn't look at "win and god" and not understand what it meant. It would just seem like an archaic form of speaking.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Vran View Post
One robust test of a dialect vs. code speak is to see if the term in question can be used in other contexts and revert to its original meaning. If it can, then the speaking style is closer to code speak. If it cannot, then it is closer to being a proper dialect.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vran View Post
faggot: in ChanSpeek, this can be understood to mean either "a loser" (in ChanSpeek) or "(derog.) a homosexual" (in AE). Indeed, the word use on 4chan has its origins in the American English use of the term "faggot" as a derogatory insult. Nonetheless, this is poor evidence of a dialect and better evidence of coded talk. That is to say, context decides whether the term "faggot" means its ChanSpeek meaning or its original meaning. But in a proper dialect, the word in question can not be understood by other speakers of the same language no matter the context. (See "chips" above, in which an American would not understand "fish and chips" to mean "fish and french fries" were he not previously introduced to BE.)
"faggot" is not contextually defined, it is always a negative modifier to a sentence or compound word ("-fag") when applied. Addressing a homosexual as a faggot on an imageboard isn't specifically targeting the homosexuality, but that something about the target (in this case, the homosexuality) that is undesirable.

The word for "homosexual" on the imageboard networks is simply "gay". Another word commonly associated with gay but doesn't mean it is FABULOUS, which is a substitute for flamboyant. FABULOUS has distinct meanings in either general America/British English and on imageboards, but those meanings are very specific. Therefore, it would be more akin to a dialectic word than "codespeak".

Quote:
Originally Posted by Vran View Post
sauce:
Context changing word meaning isn't unique to language circles. Think of anxious and anxious, a homologue scenario to your "bad/good" example but for all of American English. Most languages rely heavily on context for homophones or the same words with diferent meaning, so requiring context isn't a litmus test for codespeak v. dialects.

What you're effectively arguing is it's not a dialect if there's no linguistic speciation. Well, sauce means paste in AE/BE and either paste or source in Chan, contextually defined. Since context is important even in what you define as proper dialects the distinction still exists because unless there's context, sauce is source de facto in Chan and paste de facto in AE/BE.

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It is code speak, pure and simple, and code speak rarely withstands the test of time.
Anonymous does not forget, so even old tongues of Chan are recognized even if deemed archaic. That's more than most languages these days, Old English is so far removed from our modern tongue it sounds like a different language.

Even in the six years since Yotsuba came about, all of the original memes/words still hold their original meaning...except "Gar", which means different things to everyone it seems.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Vran View Post
lul wat?
No, you "lul wat."
Say what?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Vran View Post
Philosophically?
Code speak is bad because it establishes an In group and an Out group. If you believe that there are significant merits to the act of ostracizing others, then this argument will hold no sway with you. But if you think that ostracizing others is one of the principle reasons for why humanity has suffered so greatly over the course of the last 10,000 years, then this should give you some pause for thought. I implore you: be a uniter, not a divider. Don't alienate your brethren. Welcome them into the conversation. Code speak truly can be described as nothing more than the #1 choice of antisocial individuals.
Ostracism occurs because there's a critical threshold of membership any community can maintain over a defined period of time before the membership begins to alter the nature of the community itself. When the community has many desirable traits, swelling the size of the membership to the point of the community ceases to recognize itself because of the dilution of those defining traits and qualities, often leading to collapse or a community with no sense of community.

This is a problem when there's no de jure means of enforcing behaviour in accordance with de facto norms and culture. This means everyone has to rely on de facto tools of enforcement like sage, trolling, insulting, etc. Tools readily available to any new person who joins the community. These individuals are quick to learn how to use the tools for these abrasive purposes, but don't know anything beyond that.

Hence the paradox. Those tools are required for the community to preserve its current identity, i.e. pushing bad posts to page 10 and keeping the good posts bumped, but using those tools leads to losing that identity in the long run.

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Professionally?
Code speak is perceived, for better or for worse, as tacky. Your employer will not be impressed by code speak nor will a good many of your coworkers. And if you have to interact directly with your employer's clientele, code speak can displease many of them and result in loss of business for your employer -- which can result in your termination at the company should he find out why his former customers started disappearing.
Agreed...except this might change as more people become aware of "Chan".

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Linguistically?
That kind of diversity isn't desirable at all. It just reinforces your whole "clique" theory because it is a large impediment to people attempting to learn English. At the same time, not everyone knows of all the meaning of words so there's no charged emotional response, one might as well be speaking Latin because the only people who would know are people in the "in" group anyway.

Adjectives make synonyms reduntant.

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But if you take a closer look at ChanSpeek's unique terminology, you'll soon find that a great deal of it is derogatory and hateful:
Those words are only hurtful to a naiive internet surfer; someone who's been there a while has built up tolerance. They've lost enough of their bite to not be as shockingly brusque as they may have once been.

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Yeah, Captain Smartypants. Where do we go from there?
If we compare ChanSpeek's regular English with the conversations you'd hold with your friends, family, coworkers, or children, what stands out? Just more hatred. Tons and tons of hatred:
- nigger, and other racial slurs (particularly on /b/ )
- cunt, and other gender slurs (particularly on /b/ )
- anti-foreign sentiments (American 4channers hating on France, UK 4channers hating on America, etc)
- profuse miscellaneous profanity (shit, fuck, damn, ho, bitch, and all the other ones you can think of)
"nigger" came from the mainstream. Don't blame the Chans for that. So did "cunt" and the other swearing as well.

Anti-foreign sentiments are usually toward countries that have socially backward customs when guaged against first world standards. Those standards trickled down, too.

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And what of the ChanSpeek speaker's mentality?
Typically classified as two ideas:
1. hatred, and
2. greed
No.

The purpose of the board is entertainment. It's called "lulz" by /b/tards but entertainment has always been the focus. Greed and hatred, or the devil's advocacy thereof, has always been means for this entertainment. I can act like a greedy/hateful bastard and it's awesome because people are getting upset! Entertainment has many different masks and many of them aren't acceptable by mainstream society.

But then again, neither was the whorehouse.

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When it isn't, 4chan reverts to its role as a P2P filesharing source -- and a rather pathetic one at that. ("Protip:" if you're still getting your SFW artwork, NSFW artwork, SFW files, or NSFW files from 4chan, "you're doing it wrong.")
That's because of the cancer, a byproduct of moot's glasnost and designs for Yotsuba being an international free speech quoroum.

There's been a recent flight from the boards up to IRC, an ironic turn of events because several years ago the apes came down from the trees, and now that they've been vacated they are an open niche to resume community building.

#mahjong has an excellent community, and when a bunch of newcomers came to our channel after hearing about it on /a/ they remarked (or so Morg tells me) that it was "as good as old /a/". But when the number of these people started to get outrageous we ended up banning a lot and restricting entry to the channel. Heck, ##mahjong was created just so we could divert leechers away from distrupting the talk in the main channel.

Hobbes was right.

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then I'd suggest dropping the 4chan cloak and finding your own voice.
It too annoys me when people don't have the control to keep their private activities seperate from their public ones. Speech peppered with memes is painfully obvious, and people seem blissfully unaware others are "supressing their power levels" and ridiculing them in silence for having so little tact.
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Old 05-19-2009, 05:07 PM   #9
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As an amateur linguist, I can appreciate this post. However, I have some major gripes with it.

For one, no one has ever said that any sort of Internet speak was any sort of dialect, and if they have, they need to go take a class in linguistics. "ChanSpeek", as you have dubbed it, in no way has a wide enough oral, written, or published usage to even be considered as a dialect. Secondly, while there is a clear proliferation of some of the terms outside of the Internet (particularly terms like "lulz", though most things like this are simply mutations of earlier "chatspeak" abbreviations), it's not prominent to find its use outside small circles or communities. Therefore, the use of such language in formal contexts is going to be equally, if not significantly more rare. It would frankly be stupid to use it as such, and I, like Hana, hope that most of these people will have enough common sense not to speak to their superiors in this fashion.

One major difference between "ChanSpeek" and ebonics (or MEb; I'm not that familiar with the debate or terminology surrounding it) that you didn't highlight is the fact that "ChanSpeek" is significantly more auxiliary than ebonics. Many speakers of ebonics have had lifelong exposure to it or have come to a point where they speak it exclusively, living in an environment where it is prominently spoken. However, most if not all users of "ChanSpeek" speak a proper language (probably English) in other contexts and generally will not refuse to use proper English (or at least as proper as they can form) when the situation requires or is more inclined towards it.

From what I gather, you seem to be treating "ChanSpeek" as the real world equivalent of Newspeak, just much less systematic. I don't particularly hold the belief that the use of memetic phrases and "code speak" is limiting to language. In fact, I would argue the point that the introduction of these memetic phrases can, in a sense, add to the richness of a language. After all, what are they but idioms?

I can concur that the intentional misuse of English is detrimental, which is another problem I have with chatspeak (though that's a slightly different debate), and maybe I'm too intellectual, but I always perceived the humor in the misuse deriving from the fact that the misuse was intentional, not that it was mocking the mentally challenged. I'm sure that it's used as such, but I don't know enough about the origins of their syntax.

>Every ChanSpeek speaker is associated with these two ideas because of the standard behavior of most 4chan members. Most of them are hateful and greedy.

I resent this stereotype. While stereotypes do have their roots in truth (and I completely concur that there are definitely members that fit it), this general label is just not universally applicable.

Let me continue your ebonics metaphor to prove my point.

A friend of mine once told me of an acquaintance of his who lives in a "ghetto" neighborhood, attending a high school where a large percentage of the students speak a variation of ebonics. Now, from my friend's description, he did not seem like the "ghetto" type, but in order to communicate (and, more importantly, not to get beaten to a pulp), he used ebonics. These kinds of "code speaks" were never intended for wide usage, and are simply used in community or defined area for communication. Aside from that, he spoke English normally without overreaching influence from ebonics. Of course, this was a secondary source, so take my account with a grain of salt.

Now, just because he uses ebonics does not automatically make him part of this "in group". It's simply means of survival and interaction, which people like me often employ in these situations. Personally, while I find some of their humor distasteful and unbecoming, I do find the idea of memetics extremely interesting and some of their humor and the use of memes to be funny. You could say I'm desensitized to this, and I won't deny it, but I personally think that the culture of 4chan has been blown out of proportion by the people who, as Morg put it, "shout their Anonymous status from every rooftop like some kind of badge of honour."

I'd go further into this topic but I don't exactly want to deviate to a discussion on memetics right this minute.

These kinds of things, especially in a day and age when communication is instantaneous and widespread, develop. Sometimes, it comes down to Social Darwinism, do or die, and while I'm not particularly fond of some of the things associated with 4chan, their manner of speaking has spread to some level, and lack of adaptation will leave you excluded. I'm not sure if I can put it in much nicer terms, but candy coating it seems like an ineffective means of making my point.

Do I like this?

No.

Do I recognize and have I adapted to it?

Yes.

>But when your patrons are mostly 18+? When a good deal of them are 21+?

Side note: Expecting college-age people to be mature is a bit unrealistic. Most of them still haven't gotten over their youth enough to be properly mature, especially the nerds who send torrents of their pent-up rage over the Internet due to their discovery of some form of "power".

>It is code speak, pure and simple, and code speak rarely withstands the test of time.

You know one thing about the Internet that makes it so beautiful and elegant?

It's ability to effortlessly archive and preserve things such as language and variations of such.

>The English language is admired by linguists the world over for its infuriating complexity and massive vocabulary.

To go completely off-topic...

I'm in the (frankly limited) school of thought that frowns upon the complexity of the English language. While I can appreciate the beauty and diversity of the English lexicons, extraneous irregularities and inconsistent mutations of sounds makes English awkward at best phonetically in comparison to other languages. My biggest problem with English is that it lacks the elegance that some others have (though I'm a fan of Romance languages so my analysis isn't entirely objective).

>On the other hand, I cringe when perfectly intelligent members of our respectable community end a well-written post with something like "picx coming soon hurf durf".

I don't particularly see a problem with this in the context of UPN (though the particular example given is probably a bit unrealistic outside of Reed, who talks in a mutated and more formal form of "ChanSpeek" to begin). I suppose it's because the majority of our community is familiar with "chan" humor and most of our threads are fairly informal anyways.

>"faggot" is not contextually defined, it is always a negative modifier to a sentence or compound word ("-fag") when applied. Addressing a homosexual as a faggot on an imageboard isn't specifically targeting the homosexuality, but that something about the target (in this case, the homosexuality) that is undesirable.

Woah, woah, woah, no it's not.

The use of "-fag" has completely lost the original negative connotation on 4chan and related communities. Now it just denotes that they are someone who is from, participates in, or enjoys a place, subject or activity.

A good example of this are "[insert state here]fags report in!" threads. This implies no negative connotation, and is more likely neutral or even positive than negative.


I know I'm totally killing my point with this, but for lack of better words, you really need to "lurk moar". You seem to have misconstrued a lot of the culture of 4chan and have been biased by the extreme side of 4chan that is prominently viewed by the media. You've essentially fallen into their trap. They want you to believe they're the radicals who are instigating a "cultural coup". In some sense, 4chan can be compared to Islam. The radicals make abrasive claims and attack their "enemies" to show that their culture is superior, creating negative stereotypes, while in reality, their culture as a whole is much less discriminating and offensive, but our perception leads us to believe otherwise.
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Old 05-19-2009, 08:02 PM   #10
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Believe me when I say that I don't need to "lurk moar." I've visited different chans longer than you've posted on this forum. Unless I'm much mistaken, you weren't even registered here by late 2004 when I was already a regular on certain imageboards. (I heard from one of the nice members who wrote me a letter recently that the Mar 2007 registration date is all wrong.)

Believe me also when I say that I can relate to what Doppleganger talked about with his #mahjong buddies. I, too, found places to hang out with friends that were Chan-like without all the negative trappings of the chans. But the problem is, those places have been disappearing over the course of time. More correctly, they've been perversely transformed by 4chan's culture. Places where people were once upon a time reliable for a well-thought out and kind reply are no longer: they have been long since replaced by dens of misery and contempt.

To take the specific example of 4chan's history, since Doppleganger mentioned it, the community generally agrees that there exist three major cultural groups on 4chan: the newest, the second newest, and the oldest. The oldest generation is the genuinely oldest, and little else need be said about them for now. The second newest generation is the one you can rely upon to talk as though they have seniority on 4chan. They're the ones who have been posting on 4chan regularly for at least the last three years, but this is a gray line which encompasses the 4-year mark as well as the 2-year mark. They're the ones who won't shut up about the good old days "before the cancer." From the look of it, our very own Doppleganger belongs to this middle generation. He wasn't around when 4chan was first created, but he was there not too long after. He was there to witness the original generation of regulars write some pretty witty comments, generate some of the Internet's most well-loved and long-lasting memes, and even go on a raid or two not because raids were awesome but because what they were doing the raid for was a just cause in their eyes. But he's probably part of the generation which executed their own clumsy raids, including many a raid which was done purely for the sake of malice, and he was also there to see the so-called "cancer" arrive.

The newest generation stretches anywhere from fresh off the boat to, in my honest opinion, the three year mark. I know that some will insist the demarcation be placed at 1 or even 2 years at most, and if you feel that way, fine, do so: the numbers are completely made up anyway. The history of any imageboard, even 4chan, is hardly well-documented. (Encyclopedia Dramatica is to Wikipedia what Wikipedia is to the Library of Congress in terms of professionalism.) These "newfags," as they continue to be called, are themselves split into two subgroups. The first subgroup is the genuinely green member who just showed up in the last 2 weeks and is still learning the ropes. The much larger second subgroup is the group of members for whom the novelties of 4chan culture have not yet died down, i.e. these are the people who the middle generation perceive as "cancerous."

I'll stop here. I think I've proven my point that I hardly need to lurk more than I've already done. 4chan was called "the asshole of the Internet" or, more commonly by its patrons, "the armpit of the Internet" over four years ago. Not much has changed in four years, Jeri, despite what Mr. Doppleganger may tell you. 4chan was a dump back in the day, and it's an even worse dump now. It's the result you get when a bunch of young libertarians and neo-cons get together to pirate porn and anime: people constantly "baw"ing about their civil rights while authority-types lord over them with their secretive moderator status. A 4chan moderator, I imagine, must have a similar mentality to a prison warden: and the typical 4channer is little different from the whiny, conniving prisoners you see in line for soup at the prison cafeteria.

You resent the stereotype, Mr. Jerichi? Don't. I'm not saying that everyone there is like that. Obviously I was there. Clearly you were there. We both seem to have turned out fine. But I think you're in denial or else you, perhaps, may be the one in need of "lurking moar" if you think that we constitute the majority at communities like 4chan. No, no! That is hardly the case, my savvy linguistic friend. I wish it were true, but then again I wish 4chan wasn't 4chan.
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Old 05-19-2009, 08:14 PM   #11
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Silly Vran. In 2004 Jeri was only 7. Why would he concern himself with computers when he could be rolling down a hill like he was a sausage?
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Old 05-19-2009, 08:18 PM   #12
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Why would he concern himself with computers when he could be rolling down a hill like he was a sausage?
You'd be surprised. Apparently I was the only kid in my class who didn't have a computer by the time he was 10 years old. My roommate in college had one when he was only 4. In the 1980s.

Besides ... a sausage? Really? You are a strange one.
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Old 05-19-2009, 08:32 PM   #13
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I was under the assumption that you weren't propagating the stereotype; I probably shouldn't have used your argument as a soapbox to broadcast my general message for those of us who lurk but aren't necessarily "infected" by the cancer.

I understand that those whom you described are definitely a minority in communities like 4chan. While I don't frequent /b/, 4chan, 7chan or any similar community, I have versed myself well enough on the culture before using the memes. I do understand the population and have read/seen enough of their productions to understand what the community is like. Don't get me wrong; I don't have some fantastical view of a happy little community who dances around with fun jokes and playful racism. I can see the risk and don't lower myself to their level, even if I find some of their more inappropriate and otherwise socially unacceptable humor somewhat amusing.

I can see your point a little more clearly, but I think that in this case correlation and causation are still two separate entities. Just because a community is inclined towards "ChanSpeek" doesn't automatically set them on the path to Internet Hell, and while I'm sure some of this does derive straight from the vaguely-defined source, 4chan's slimy tentacles extend farther than most Bacon Numbers, and a lot of these memes get diffused along the community pipelines.

To derail the topic train even further, I find it interesting that when such a fantastic tool for communication grew into prominence, this little niche on the Internet where the socially rejected and deviant gathered managed to influence the general culture surrounding the Internet itself, and even find its way into "IRL", mainstream pop culture.

Just a note: My registration date reflects the registration for the most recent incarnation of UPN when the board was taken off vBulliten for phpbb before being replaced as vB. I actually joined around 2004 through Fizzy Bubbles. I didn't really start exploring the culture of 4chan until mid-2006, however, but I am relatively familiar with 4chan's history and such.
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Old 05-19-2009, 10:50 PM   #14
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I think what makes #mahjong and other budding IRC channels different is everyone is more or less past their Yotsuba stage. It's to the point that it's more troublesome to associate with the site than to be a part of it.

I am very much a part of the middle generation on Yotsuba but also among the first "true" 4channers, rather than a SomethingAwful Goon displaced from ADTRW posting on an imageboard. People like that dominated the boards in its early days, very few Yotsuba regulars who could legitimately call themselves old were non-Goon.

Complaining about cancer is a good thing - topics like that usually lead to the most constructive and interesting argumentation around. People were/are genuinely concerned about the board's quality, but most of them are helpless to stop it.

The real brawn is in the moderation staff, but they're so toothless and overworked their impact is almost minimal.

As far as documentation goes, Lurkmore is the website that is most comprehensive for the sister boards, whereas Dramatica is made by /b/ for /b/, although it's more of its own community now.

I've put in a lot of work over the past few years to ensure the 2006 and 2007 entries for lurk, not to mention the 2004/2005 stuff that lurk inherited from the migrating "4chan Wiki" were of at least verifiable quality.

After the great schism that lead to the formation of /a/ and /jp/, however, the entries stopped. This is because 2008, and so it seems 2009, have proven to be horrible years with little to no new content. The boards have been abysmal.

Call it an eternal dump if you will, but Yotsuba *was* good at one point. moot pretty much feels the same and his slow opening up to the world is a sign he wants to get over this, it's not a fun community anymore. I think he's too much of a softie.

It's uncertain if Yotsuba will ever come back.

I think the best thing that could happen is it dies again for a few years. The problem is...in my view, I think moot feels he'll lose ownership if he lets it die.
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Old 05-20-2009, 12:42 PM   #15
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I don't really think it's so much code speak as it is just memes and inside jokes to those who understand it, and to the channers themselves. Someone who says to another "you're made of fail" probably says it most of the time because they think it's funny, as opposed to saying "you're horrible", "you're a loser", or "you're a failure".


If that is considered code speak to you, does this also mean you consider "noob" and "p/owned" to be code speak, even though both of these examples are used by gamers everywhere on a regular basis (owned moreso than noob)? Or do you simply view them as something else? If not, keep in mind these words have simply become part of their vernacular. In fact, I just read that "noob" is one of a few words up for being officially inducted into the english language as the one millionth word. That aside, I know darn well nearly everyone on UPN including myself used these at some point or another, but weren't using them as code speak. Oh and, I used gamers as an example, as they're the primary one to use, so keep in mind thse words aren't just restricted to just gamers. You'll find many non-gamers who have picked up on the new slang as well and also use it on a regular basis.

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Old 05-20-2009, 12:52 PM   #16
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Old 05-20-2009, 02:23 PM   #17
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^ a "How to make long posts looking interesting"-topic would be good stuff
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