1) The personal (vs. structural) continuity from SA to Twitter--a lot of the early media-adjacent Twitter community were (to an astounding degree) literally the same people who posted on SA and made it a worthwhile place.
2) The role that piracy/torrenting played in the initial success of SA, which is especially striking in light of the fact that the fracturing streaming landscape has re-incentivized piracy but user literacy has fallen off a cliff.
3) A different model of mod power--while most of the modern venture-funded internet has (grudgingly) accepted moderation as a necessity, it has done so with an opaque veneer of neutrality that inspires frustration and conspiratorial thinking. SA mods banned people capriciously or even vindictively, but did do with transparent authority; it was part of the social contract. In a lot of ways it functioned better than the Facebook/Twitter/reddit approach ever has.
These are all really good points. The fact of that personal continuity is why it doesn't feel at all ridiculous to say that Twitter (or big portions of it) is a direct inheritor of the tone and culture of SA (or big portions of it). I mean, Rich spent a lot of time on Twitter, too. He used to email me every time he got banned asking me to write something about it in the hopes he'd be unbanned.
The piracy component of it is a huge part; I don't think SA would ever have grown to that size if it hadn't had such an active torrent forum for so long. I actually think there's a (maybe tortured) parallel with social media in general — Twitter and IG in particular, but also Tumblr, YouTube and Facebook — and the extent to which the success and cultural production of those sites depended on the use of copyrighted material (mostly photos and some videos). It's not quite direct media piracy, but if copyright protections had been enforced more intensely, it's hard to imagine the platforms ever growing the way they had.
Finally, yeah — the forum-mod "transparent dictatorship" model is something, I can't believe I'm saying this, I desperately miss. (And I was someone frequently accused on forums of being a "board lawyer" for protesting bans and demanding accountability.) I've written before about my general belief that Twitter and Facebook should give up the "legal talismans" (Kendra Albert's useful phrase: http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/beyond-legal-talismans/) and stop pretending that there's some legal process behind moderation. It's not like Lowtax was regarded as a particularly good moderator, at all, but as you say the social contract on the site was pretty clear (as it was on most forums), and it was a lot harder to accuse mods of like "shadow banning" or whatever. The funniest thing is that this is what they eventually did to Trump — they just banned him!
Pablo Gerbaudo describes the group of people you're describing as "disconnected outsiders." I think this group is driving internet culture and now politics, as they merge (which they did more quickly in some other countries), we otherwise lack the language to describe or understand them.
Thanks a great nostalgic read! I wonder if internent 'spaces' just end up being like real world hospitality venues / house parties where they are contsantly popping up and going out of business?
Random thoughts that come to mind:
1) The personal (vs. structural) continuity from SA to Twitter--a lot of the early media-adjacent Twitter community were (to an astounding degree) literally the same people who posted on SA and made it a worthwhile place.
2) The role that piracy/torrenting played in the initial success of SA, which is especially striking in light of the fact that the fracturing streaming landscape has re-incentivized piracy but user literacy has fallen off a cliff.
3) A different model of mod power--while most of the modern venture-funded internet has (grudgingly) accepted moderation as a necessity, it has done so with an opaque veneer of neutrality that inspires frustration and conspiratorial thinking. SA mods banned people capriciously or even vindictively, but did do with transparent authority; it was part of the social contract. In a lot of ways it functioned better than the Facebook/Twitter/reddit approach ever has.
These are all really good points. The fact of that personal continuity is why it doesn't feel at all ridiculous to say that Twitter (or big portions of it) is a direct inheritor of the tone and culture of SA (or big portions of it). I mean, Rich spent a lot of time on Twitter, too. He used to email me every time he got banned asking me to write something about it in the hopes he'd be unbanned.
The piracy component of it is a huge part; I don't think SA would ever have grown to that size if it hadn't had such an active torrent forum for so long. I actually think there's a (maybe tortured) parallel with social media in general — Twitter and IG in particular, but also Tumblr, YouTube and Facebook — and the extent to which the success and cultural production of those sites depended on the use of copyrighted material (mostly photos and some videos). It's not quite direct media piracy, but if copyright protections had been enforced more intensely, it's hard to imagine the platforms ever growing the way they had.
Finally, yeah — the forum-mod "transparent dictatorship" model is something, I can't believe I'm saying this, I desperately miss. (And I was someone frequently accused on forums of being a "board lawyer" for protesting bans and demanding accountability.) I've written before about my general belief that Twitter and Facebook should give up the "legal talismans" (Kendra Albert's useful phrase: http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/beyond-legal-talismans/) and stop pretending that there's some legal process behind moderation. It's not like Lowtax was regarded as a particularly good moderator, at all, but as you say the social contract on the site was pretty clear (as it was on most forums), and it was a lot harder to accuse mods of like "shadow banning" or whatever. The funniest thing is that this is what they eventually did to Trump — they just banned him!
Excellent!
Pablo Gerbaudo describes the group of people you're describing as "disconnected outsiders." I think this group is driving internet culture and now politics, as they merge (which they did more quickly in some other countries), we otherwise lack the language to describe or understand them.
https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745335797/the-digital-party/
People in this category (in a broad sense) tend to have been behind most revolutions, too
As an insufferable and unfunny moron on Something Awful who has found their level, I
Q and the Jan 6th stuff happened mostly on 8chan, not 4chan. But the thread of cause and effect still lines up.
i learned so much! also thank you for reminding me that fark et al existed.
Thanks a great nostalgic read! I wonder if internent 'spaces' just end up being like real world hospitality venues / house parties where they are contsantly popping up and going out of business?
A different kind of social darwinism.
SA didn't spawn YTMND