Motherboard

Ruffling the open collars at the TED conference yesterday was none other than Mr. LOLcat himself, Christopher Poole—or, if you’re one of the 4reaky 4ollowers of the 4ree 4all message board 4chan.org —m00t.

The dude founded the site, which, if you’ve been living behind a high school firewall, is now both the largest online community in the English-speaking world and “a monument to everything sick”, twisted and occasionally inspiring about the Internet’s anonymous masses. Inspired by a Japanese site (of course), 4chan—and its epicenter board /b/— has given birth to the Rickroll and LOLcats, to millions of photoshopped and should-have-been-photoshopped photos, and to a culture of flame wars, hack attacks, and internet manhunts. So what’s the guy whose given millions of people more twisted ways to waste their time doing among the exalted ranks of Nobel-wannabes at TED (motto: “Ideas worth spreading”)? Talking about how 4chan has also rescued cats.

In the middle of his brief TED talk, m00t recounted the story of Dusty the Cat: when 4chan users found videos of cat abuse, they amassed to track him down. (Fast forward to 5.30, above.) In only 48 hours, the man was arrested. The audience cheered.

Of course there’s lots of terrible stuff on 4chan—and there’s always the disturbing potential for a cat-saving flash mob to turn into a lynch mob.. But m00t didn’t talk about that. Instead, in an un 4chanly style, he accentuated the positive. Aside from addressing cat emergencies, 4chaners have sought to expose the fraud of Scientology, tackled Australian censorship practices, rallied behind Youtube martyrs, and hacked down telecoms that have blocked their own site. But m00t wasn’t at TED to talk about how awesome or sickening 4chan could be; there was little on 4chan that wouldn’t debauch the TED community. “I asked 4chan what I should say at TED,” Poole said on stage. “And I got 12,000 responses in about 24 hrs. But I can’t read to you anything they said.”

So he spoke on behalf of the principle that underwrites it all—internet anonymity. Nevermind that anonymity allows all kinds of naughty behavior; m00t pointed to its protective qualities. Think whistleblowing sites like Wikileaks, or message boards in places like China, where the wrong kind of criticism can land you in jail. The hero of 4chan is “V” in V for Vendetta, not just because he hangs out with Natalie Portman but because he dons a sinister-looking mask.

In any case, as he mentions, the importance of anonymity is something we probably need to consider a little more carefully before we continue to give up all of ours—not to data spies or internet police but, voluntarily, to places like Facebook and Google. (Or if an idea by this Microsoft executive gets off the ground, to internet ‘drivers licenses.’)

High principles aside, an exploration of 4chan’s twisted tubes might have also made for an interesting (and surely more thrilling and hits-generating) talk about how internet anonymity is changing our standards of appropriateness and humor. In the meantime, for a thoughtful meditation on that, see this video