Slashdot Mirror
2ch: Japanese Web Forum As Social Vent
News for nerds writes "This NY times article (reg blah blah) sheds the light on Japan's largest Internet bulletin board - 2ch. About 5.4 million people come to this "Channel 2" each month, many of them several times a day (just like you nerds making beowulf cluster of alphabets all the day!). Founded in 1999, "ni-channeru," as it is called there, has become part of Japan's everyday culture as no other Web site has. While you can also find useful info such as dinner recipes there, it's almost like Battle Royale came into life as a web site, filled with verbal and physical violence backed by pseudo anonymity."
A nerd-less version of Slashdot.
"as if nothing were solid...and that would be the end of the world, not fire and brimstone, but goo."--Rand
As 2ch-er....
It's called USENET
http://groups.google.com for you kids out there.
On a serious note, media properties like this, I suppose, do their bit in maintaining social balance. Japan already has a disturbingly high suicide rate...
But buggered if I know how they communicate in a language made almost entirely of rectangles.
Except 4chan is geared toward porn...
(I only know because I visit!)
Sig!
First I asked myself, "How could a web site be filled with physical violence?". Then I RTFA and became more confused, as there was no mention of any physical violence.
Then I realised it was just an attempt by the poster to get more hype for the post by inserting illogical statements in the desciption.
There is no sig.
It seems generally true that as a website becomes popular, a certain group of dickheads (usually males in the 12-16 age group) turn up with the goal of ruining it for everyone.
Slashdot deals with this in a unique way by allowing the users to do the police work. This is (imo) vastly superior to having overzealous super-moderators cruising around laying down the law.
2ch sounds like it's an order of magnitude larger than slashdot. Can any japanese users of 2ch shed light on how they deal with the "fuckwit factor"?
Most importantly, it's the best place in the world for a constant stream of pics of cute japanese girls :D
Here's an article to accompany this story. Plus no need to register with NYT. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/ 2001923719_japannet09.html
I can't wait for a few hours from now when enough /.ers visit, then the people will have the question marks when nothing loads.
Sig!
Venting their frustrations anonymously on a Web-based bulletin-board system? Who would'a thunk it?
What will they think of, next?!
Maybe I should have done the NYT registration thing, and read the article, but the board is in japanese!
I work with japanese, and I understand a few words, but I just can't see what the hubbub about this article on a japanese board that I can't even read is.
Here is a very active forum of trolls and flames in english if anyone is interested.
You don't seem to understand when they link to slashdot, slashdot goes down!
Why not get the real ultimate power?
Reg Free Link here .
They are making this harder to do...
"Although about 20 Web sites attract more users than Channel 2, based on March ratings from NetRatings Japan, most of the others are portal or retail sites; and while Yahoo Japan also runs a bulletin board, it is not considered as influential as Channel 2"
I should think Slashdot would be pretty influential, especially in such a tech heavy society.
I know theres a joke about Soviet Russia in there somewhere.....
nerd-full boards at 2ch.
I found an answer about some question about Debian system.
I've lived in Japan since 1999, in the technology community (such as it is...), and I have never heard of this site until now, never even heard it referenced on TV or in print.
And I have seen Slashdot referenced on newshows and in print.
2ch
For those of us that are on a continent that ends with "America" or lives in Europe, this idea may not seem new or even novel. For us, dealing with Trolls and Frames are just annoying necessary evils for communicating in a broad, public forum. We deal with it ( Ignore, Moderate, Meta-moderate, etc ), and keep moving forward.
/. with more experience in Japan than I can pick up where I leave off. ), this bulletin board is a very big deal.
Now, to say that Japan, and its society, resembles nothing like Western cultures is a massive understatement. In that culture, being able to speak your mind, in a raw form, can be dangerous to your reputation which affects your career, finances, and relationships, and the last thing a Japanese person wants is to be alienated from the Group. The issues of Tatemae and Honne cover this social restraint of tactful to the group and honest in private, among other aspects of Japanese life.
Basically, this public, anonymous forum gives Japanese people the ability ( It is still a novelty to most of them, I would imagine ) to act "normal": Polite, Helpful, Insight, Confrontational, Insulting, Argumentative, etc. These free-flowing interactions are just not acceptable in a Japanese public setting. In the end, if you know the context of the culture ( I have a little insight into it, but I am sure other
That's good. Google is a partner.
Unfortunately for all the American slashdotters, it has never been released in the US (not even on VHS or DVD), and probably will never be. There have been many debates on why exactly this is. I know only one thing, if I were the distributor, I would want to keep it out of the US. The profits will not be worth the moral outrage it will cause.
Bottom line is that it is a great movie, and if you have the chance, you should watch it.
siener's youtube channel
Didn't the NYT just do a article about the wild west, irc which turned out to be utter sensationalist crap. Why should we believe this, or even read a word of it? Not to mention that none of us can actually read EITHER article without a little/lot of effort respectively (finding google link/learning nihongo).
NNTP servers for all us old farts...
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
The big deal about this board is that Japanese people very rarely vent angrily in public life. In fact, IMHO they generally don't say a heck of a lot at all.
Anyway, considering I work in pretty much an all Japanese office, *occasionally* there will be personal misunderstandings. Back home we'd probably have an argument to clear the air to find out where people stand, so something can be done about it. Over here, for the sake of personal feelings, you can't tell incompetant workers outright that they are doing a shitty job, or somesuch.
Over here, personal disagreements just get sat on and when people have disputes, rather than talk about it to fix it, they just never end up talking to that person again. Or if they do talk, it's under the cover of being insincerely "nice". This is just so the peace is not disturbed.
I guess this is what happens when you adhere to the "If you haven't got anything nice to say, say nothing" approach. You never get to the bottom of anything, and you never find out what other people are really thinking.
It means that Japan is a very safe society (nobody really verbally or physically attacks anyone here).... but all these negative emotions get pent up.
Anyway, one day I noticed that some Japanese co-workers were ignoring me for some reason (which was completely out of character). I tried to ask what the matter was, but they said nothing.
Later on I googlesearched my name and found a messageboard post with my name mentioned. It turned out that one of those workers was venting about something I said at work, under a nickname on some private message-board.
Needless to say, this pissed me off... but that's the Japanese for you. They'll never tell you anything to your face, even each other, but 2ch can tell you everything.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
So much for the supposed anti-microsoft bias of Slashdot! This story appears to be taken straight from a Microsoft website.
/. has sold out to the Evil Empire...
So I guess all the folks who think Slashdot is nothing but a bunch of M$ hating Linux fan-boys can go back in the closet now. Sadly, only to be replaced by a new crew crowing about how
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
In Soviet Russian, Slashdot goes down on you?
Mental images bad, very, very bad...
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
About 10 years ago or so, this would have been called FidoNet" FidoNet is now still alive, but is mostly just one large Flame War. It's a shame that they're using the web for this, as Zone 6 (Asia) is down to about 20 some members.
It's true that there haven't been many successful "web communities" in Japan until now (unless, of course, you count the sex sites), and most internet usage here has been business oriented or mapquest-style information searches (and of course email). However, I would suggest that was not due to any fundamental difference in Japanese society, but rather to the fact that until the recent expansion of Japanese broadband options, almost all Japanese internet access was dial-up. And in Japan, dial-up access means an expensive per-minute charge. So it's only natural that until recently most Japanese internet users would limit their use to fairly non-timeconsuming activities. After all, we all know what a waste of time Slashdot can be.
But man, that sites a mess. It makes this site seem like a super-organized fountain of relevant comentary. Somebody should point him to slash.
that while the article waxes hyperbole about how revolutionary and transformative this is, the site's founder is quoted as saying he's gotten bored of it?
Why is it that whenever I go to a Japanese website, it looks like it was made in 1993? Really - frames, rectangular pixellated graphics slapped around, garish/nutty backgrounds. Urgh.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
It's been a great source of material for Japanese assignments over the years, a place where youth vent about society over there.
Slashdot is big, but it's not on the scale of 2ch. It's a pity it's so poorly organised. Trying to find information without using a search engine is practically useless at 2ch.
But as long as they keep creating things like Kikkoman, 2ch will keep popping up here in the west!
they made me do it
that's a hilarious and refeshing attitude
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i love that this is modded "flamebait"...
anyway, AC is right- you've got a mile-long multi-hundred element narrow text scroll on the left, with pseudonav and some banner ads on the right
f'ing brilliant
i've seen better html at the tinfoil hat sites
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
and she's also basically the same character in both movies
tarantino is on record saying he loves Kinji Fukasaku, and both kill bill movies were really nothing more than tarantino's tribute to the film makers and films he's always loved (and well done, i might add)
here's more:
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There are other similar image boards, like 4chan.net (not direct linking because they're already losing the bandwidth cost war and saturating their 10mbit link) and the new 5chan.net. Both of these are in English, and there are lots of different categories of imageboards (these two are more image-based). I won't go into detail here, but stay away from 'Random' and 'Guro' (and 'Yaoi', if you're straight), since those two can sometimes have things worse than goatse and tubgirl there.
Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans
So I got to any random topic and what's the first comment I see? Yes, a first post declaration. However, they don't call it fp... The stories themselves are considered the first posts, so everyone clamors for second.
They say "2 get" or "ni getto" It's kind of appropriate I guess.
Here are a couple of 2ch fan-made flash animations based on comedy sketches by the "Ramens". Both are from the "Japanese School" series of sketches, depicting a demented instructor trying to teach foreign students "useful" Japanese: First one is teaching a class of Italians the prefectures in Japan: http://redioart.hp.infoseek.co.jp/matutake/a.swf In this one the instructor is teaching his students the Yamanote line station names: http://redioart.hp.infoseek.co.jp/matutake/shinbas hi.swf
Both are hilarious if you know even a little Japanese... (LÍM)
It is spelt "Flames"
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
Looks like the police follow this web site closely.
Neomugicha Incident
But I see 2ch and I don't think "channel 2" I think of a dot.
2ch is the ascii code for a '.'
Slashdot should now be known as 2f2ch
...it's almost like Battle Royale came into life as a web site, filled with verbal and physical violence backed by pseudo anonymity.
./ without the dinner recipes.
So it's exactly like
freedom of speech is freedom of speech, period
you are anyone else's judgment as to its quality or lack thereof notwithstanding
in fact, it is GOOD that usenet, slashdot, this japanese site, kuro5hin, etc. is full of so much trolling and garbage and negativity: it's catharsis
catharsis: negative emotions that would otherwise find expression in real life, find expression harmlessly in cyberspace
that's the goodness of free speech in action
just because everyone isn't delivering abraham lincoln-quality speeches online doesn't mean it isn't important in another way, in a way that you just don't understand
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Actually no. It means "2 leaf" - hence the US counterpart, 4chan, using a picture of four leaves for its logo (just look at the icon in the address bar if you've got Mozilla/Firefox).
--- Bwah?
"Later on I googlesearched my name and found a messageboard post with my name mentioned. It turned out that one of those workers was venting about something I said at work, under a nickname on some private message-board."
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
I agree though, the connection between Battle Royale and 2ch seems tenuous at best.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Erm...2 chan and 2ch are not the same place you know...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2chan
"Very active"? I went there and it said "Currently active visitors: 11".
2ch has somewhere between 3 and 5 million visitors a day.
Not hardly. 2ch regularly saturates a 100Mbps connection, and has 3-5 million visits a day. /. probably gets less than a tenth of that.
Excellent comment.
To a lesser degree, American women feel compelled to pretend to agree with the group. So, the same problems occur in the United States. The learn this habit because they want what the U.S. culture supposedly will give them.
Also, it is good to mention that Japanese who live with the openness of the U.S. culture often learn to like it a lot, and sometimes have difficulty being accepted when they go home.
The social pressure in Japan is HUGE.
Er... no.
Japanese is laid out in browsers in the same way English is - left to right, top to bottom.
2ch's layout may look like crap, but nobody uses the top page anyway - anybody serious about it would have installed a specialised 2ch browser that permits easy switching between threads and boards.
No, 2ch has no image boards.
There are many areas that link to image boards or images, but the boards not part of 2ch as such.
About 5.4 million people come to this "Channel 2" each month
Make that 5.4 million minus one.
Got to avantgo.com and set up an account for your pda. you get NYT wired, usa today, bbc, reuters etc. plus you see all the stories that are gonna be on /. the next day.
"And more importantly, it's called Freedom of Speech"
Oh, flippin' please... For a while it was even funny to hear about how I _have_ to let fuckwits ruin forums, newsgroups, online games, etc, in the name of "freedom of speech." Then even that got old.
It was also funny for a while to notice how those making the biggest fuss about "fredom of speech", were the ones who had no fscking clue what it means. Or how it's usually the exact same fuckwit group which thrives on ruining everyone else's fun. Then even that got old.
Dig this: First, and most important, your beloved freedom of speech does not say anyone has to listen to your speech. Second, it only applies to the relationship between you and your government. Nothing more. It also doesn't mean that the owners of a medium, be it a newspaper or TV station or forum, have to publish your speech.
E.g., if I dropped by and started swearing a storm at your daughter's birthday party, you'd have all the right in the world to tell me to leave. And "Freedom of Speech" would have exactly _nothing_ to do with it.
E.g., if I don't like what you've said on my private web-site, MUD or IRC channel, I have all the right in the world to delete the message, or ban your IP range, delete your user, or whatever. Even if it's for some utterly stupid reason, such as me not liking name or your choice of online games. Tough luck. It's stupid, but it's got _nothing_ to do with freedom of speech.
Again: no law or ammendment says that anyone must publish your speech.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
http://www.karajishi.org/flash/unix.swf
;)
That was interesting. Always the *nix guys come to save the day
It used to be available right here.
Okay, so it's now "out of stock" -- kinda wishing I had purchased my own copy instead of renting it.
1000kita-------!
...channel2 is not available when you are channel surfing. This is reason behind the name for the site.