So many black people!

November 8, 2009 8:20 PM

Did anyone see the new trending topics? I don't think this is a very good neighborhood. Lock the car doors kids.
posted by tumbleweedjack (31 comments total)

Never been to 4chan I see...
posted by afu at 8:24 PM on November 8

Is "Twitter is black, Facebook is white" the new "MySpace is black, Facebook is white"?
posted by qvantamon at 8:25 PM on November 8

afu: "Never been to 4chan I see..."

Ashton Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey do not make a public spectacle out of their participation on 4chan.
posted by idiopath at 8:27 PM on November 8

afu: No, I've never been to 4chan. What does that have to do with this?
posted by tumbleweedjack at 8:32 PM on November 8

What does that have to do with this?

The point was that, sadly, rampant racism exists on the internet.
posted by Burhanistan at 8:34 PM on November 8

I don't foresee good things for this post.
posted by Decimask at 8:35 PM on November 8

Well, at least they're not calling 911 about it.
posted by "Elbows" O'Donoghue at 8:36 PM on November 8

That's some surprisingly overt racism. For the most part it seems as though our society has at least reached the point where the only way to express racist sentiment publicly is with coded language, but I'm not seeing too much code here. Damn.
posted by invitapriore at 8:40 PM on November 8

*sigh*. Honestly, I noticed that a lot of trending topics had to do with African Americans. I thought that was interesting and went looking to see if it was just confirmation bias. I found that it wasn't. I was interested in a MeFi discussion on the topic. Sorry if it's old, tired, or doesn't make a good post.
posted by tumbleweedjack at 8:40 PM on November 8

afu: No, I've never been to 4chan. What does that have to do with this?

4chan is ground zero for casual racism among teenage white Americans. These comments are par for the course there except there would be more use of the word nigger.

I think part of the reason these comments are being made on twitter is because 4chan made it acceptable among young people to be bigoted online.
posted by afu at 8:41 PM on November 8 [1 favorite]

We were discussing this at length the other day at work.

It's strange that a lot of trends seem to catch fire very quickly, and a completely cursory, wholly unscientific and sweeping generalization seems to show that it's predominately black people participating in many of these trends, even as the trend itself seemed to vary wildly.

We surmised that, if we assume the general demographic of active Twitter users doesn't stray insanely far from that of the population of its home country, the trends seem to be a good deal disproportionately "black"-propagated. If that somewhat wild assumption was at all accurate, what would you imagine possible reasons might be? Are black Tweeters more likely to jump on the "trends" bandwagon? I have plenty of white friends who will pick up on active trends like the bad movie one or wordsaftersex, etc. But this is something casual observers are noticing seemingly more and more and it's interesting, at least on the surface. It could also be extreme confirmation bias, since we don't have any of the real data, and we're just making wild guesses.

I'm really hoping that we'll see Twitter start to offer hyper-localized trends, amongst other very useful features that are clearly in the offing, once they get a bit more stable.

But yeah, ask a few demographic questions of the users and grant some social scientists access to the firehose and see what starts to emerge.

Probable trends by demography and class:

Rich Black: #obama #healthcare
Poor Black: #50cent #kanye #obama #raiders #bet
Rich White: #madmen #obama #aarp #cowboys #pelosi
Poor White: #antichrist #obama #socialism #doublewidelife #endisnear #blackpeople #palin

Christ.
posted by disillusioned at 8:42 PM on November 8

So disliking the BET awards makes you racist?
posted by meadowlark lime at 8:42 PM on November 8

I'm frankly astonished at the persistence of overt racism even as we move toward a society where Caucasians are a minority. Guess it is the wave effect: as most of us move past these attitudes, there is a trailing racist minority.
posted by bearwife at 8:43 PM on November 8

I spend a lot of time on twitter. I have to say I hate trending topics. I can't think of only a few times I've ever cared about anything that trends. I am pretty oblivious to a lot of pop culture, so have no idea who a lot of these people are (especial if it's sports and double that if it's in another country).

I don't think asking, "Has Jamie Foxx done something?" is racist. One would assume he has to trend.

I found out about Ballon Boy, an Italy earthquake, and the show "Supernatural" through trending topics.

I don't have it display anymore, but I wish I didn't even have the tab down option.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:44 PM on November 8

Needs more sexting.
posted by KokuRyu at 8:46 PM on November 8 [2 favorites]

-glances at trending topics-

Nope, not seeing it. Sorry. The only trending topics related to African American popular culture Ive seen trend are also the topics that EVERYONE regardless of race but of a particular popular culture strata in America talk about: basically, if a top 40 DJ on a Clear Channel station would talk about it.
posted by strixus at 8:53 PM on November 8 [1 favorite]

-glances at trending topics-

Note, this stuff is from about a year ago.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 8:58 PM on November 8

So disliking the BET awards makes you racist?

On the contrary: Disliking racists makes you watch the BET awards.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 8:58 PM on November 8 [1 favorite]

That's funny, I thought trending topics were only useful in giving teenage girls something to do while watching reruns on the Disney Channel.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:03 PM on November 8

(sorry, I meant "tweeners")
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:04 PM on November 8

4chan is ground zero for casual racism among teenage white Americans.

A lot of the shit that goes on where Anonymous, etc. are involved isn't racism, homophobia, etc. in the normal sense. They just troll: they'll say or do anything that will offend as many people as deeply as possible, without specific interest in the substance of what they're saying. Witness the epilepsy flash attack, for instance.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 9:06 PM on November 8 [2 favorites]

Yeah this post might have been interesting had it not been just three links to context-less pages that deal with issues from six months to a year ago. There's definitely something to say about the internet and racism yadda yadda but I don't think this post says any of it.

I also can't help but wonder if the poster knew this was a lame post that didn't say anything because they posted it under a sock puppet that, as quoted from the profile page, is intended to be used for:

"...potentially embarassing posts...."
posted by PostIronyIsNotaMyth at 9:16 PM on November 8

I didn't really see the point. I flagged it.
posted by meadowlark lime at 9:18 PM on November 8

PostIronyIsNotaMyth: not cool! I was hoping this would be one of those posts where mefites pull up cool links that I wasn't able to find on my own.
posted by tumbleweedjack at 9:22 PM on November 8

Trending topics infuriate me as well. I've been trying to use Twitscoop recently, due to it's finer-grained and real-time presentation of the "Buzz" - however, I've frequently been disappointed in recent weeks to find nearly every trending word to be related to US sports. I guess a lot of people tweet while watching the game. Doesn't really provide me with interesting real-time information on things that matter in the world.
posted by Jimbob at 9:27 PM on November 8

Either way, twitter is LAME.

Er, I'm sorry @twitter is #LAME.
posted by delmoi at 9:27 PM on November 8

No one says anything useful on there about anything.

millzfunbar Don Draper reminds me so much of Ayn Rand's ideal man. Gonna miss my sunday date with amc until the next season :( #madmen 3 minutes ago from web

INCISIVE.

Twitter is for people who are too lazy to think in more then 140 characters.
posted by delmoi at 9:30 PM on November 8

Yeah, 4chan pretty much has an ethos of Chaotic Neutral. They are trolls, pure and simple. They are racist not because they actually believe what they're saying, but instead they just want to get reactions. Further, I think they also like to leave nothing sacred. As racism and other jokes that make fun of things people are born into are taboo, that makes them all the more attractive to Anonymous. Also, the site is anonymous, so it generally encourages these things by nature of the internet. The difference is that 4chan is very light on moderation.

Thus, you get some of the most offensive jokes of all time, collected into one place. However, they're not beliefs; they are just jokes.

I get the feeling you could still get some casual racism out of teens, though, if you asked the right questions. For example, try talking to a College Republican about "welfare queens" or immigration (eventually, work ethic will arise and they'll argue that Americans just work harder than people who need handouts). Or you could talk to a privileged suburbanite teen about how they feel about people who work in retail who have thick accents (chances are they'll complain about more than just difficulty in hearing the employee). In this case, these are common racist attitudes, but the teens who have them either don't recognize them as racist, or they think they're above the fray in a "I'm not a racist, but..." kind of way.
posted by mccarty.tim at 9:30 PM on November 8

Racism? In my internets?

It's more likely than you think.

...but really, is anybody surprised by this? There are stupid people all over. Some of them have web access.
posted by Target Practice at 9:44 PM on November 8 [1 favorite]

They are trolls, pure and simple.

As a friend of mine puts it, 4chan is trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls, and I think that's an important distinction.
posted by threetoed at 9:48 PM on November 8

No one says anything useful on there about anything.

INCISIVE.

Twitter is for people who are too lazy to think in more then 140 characters.

Your comment is 139 characters.
posted by bradbane at 9:55 PM on November 8 [1 favorite]