2008-08-03, 11:36 AM
Afrobean Wrote:Hivemind.
It's a very interesting concept, but I honestly haven't taken the time to do any serious research on it. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex touches on the idea. Basically, copies without an original. It's a natural aspect of the way society functions. It is seen especially in social insects, which is where the term comes from (as in a beehive).
But hivemind manifests itself heavily in the anonymous environment of the *chans. This is because in all being this one entity "anon", each person is contributing to a single goal, regardless of the individual's direct effect on the goal. In that instant, the individual can cease to be (in theory), as the person's consciousness acts to serve this anon entity's whim. The most amazing things are when multiple people respond a thread in identical fashions at roughly the same exact time (or in quick enough succession that copycatting would be impossible), EVEN when the response is not immediately obvious and not coordinated in some way. The response given might only be tangentially relevant, but due to hivemind at work, it can lead multiple individuals to post the same tangentially relevant comment. There are even instances of two different people posting two different images of the same exact thing (two different screen caps from the same scene in a porn, for example), and both asking for a source on it (this would be in /r/). Don't know if a screenshot exists of that porn example, as I stumbled upon it myself a long time ago, but encyclopedia dramatica has a few screenshots of examples in their article for "hivemind" (be forewarned, however, that site has a lot of NAUGHTY things on it and is definitely NSFW for the most part).
I have no direct experience with 4chan, but I do have extensive experience with Gaia's General Discussion, which is considered to be a 4chan filled with mods who (in vain) try to keep it from being a Chan.
I wouldn't really call it a hivemind. More like a high school filled with (mostly immature) kids jockeying for popularity. I personally think most people on 4chan are just being stupid, and their whole argument against Gaia's Extended Discussion is "ED is filled with retards pretending to be intellectuals, and 4chan is filled with intellectuals pretending to be retards." Encyclopedia Dramatica has a long section on the memes, but also a very long one on the failed memes.
My personal impression is there IS a source to each meme, kinda like a tiny snowball rolling down a mountain. If 4chan takes a liking to it, it is spammed to retarded proportions, if 4chan doesn't, it doesn't. That's why 4chan got epic butthurt when Gaia's admins started stealing Chan memes (ceiling cat, longcat, orly, etc.) and making them into items. Which is in itself retarded, because they claim to be PG-13 but they officially recognized memes which are usually replicated in the background of someone getting his head blown off or hung from a noose.