Understanding the ‘hive mind’

By Molly Flatt

Yesterday The Washington Post published a fascinating article about 4chan, the notorious online message boards. 4chan was founded by a 15-year-old seven years ago as an anonymous, uncensored forum for Japanese anime fans but has grown to become a powerful and disruptive locus of anti-establishment collective action.

These are the guys responsible for the mass popularity of memes such as lolcats and Rickrolling; for gaming Google so that swastikas topped the Trends in July 2008; for spreading the erroneous news that Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack in October 2008 and causing Apple stock prices to crash.

To many in business and beyond, 4chan exemplifies the terrifying side of word of mouth: a mob of socially savvy digital natives who are unrestrained, unedited and out to cause (sometimes very serious and expensive) mischief. As Gawker’s Nick Douglas”said of the community’s ‘random’ board, “/b/ has no rules… reading /b/ will melt your brain.” The Guardian called 4chan “lunatic, juvenile… at once brilliant, ridiculous and alarming”.

Christopher Poole aka moot, founder of 4chan, at TED (via redmaxwell @ flickr)

But it’s also, in some ways, the holy grail. As 4chan’s founder Christopher Poole says, it’s “pretty spectacular to see what they’ll do…companies would pay people for that ability.They would love to be able to have their new product show up in Google Trends.”

4chan’s breed of chaotic mass action, or hive mind, encourages participants to feel both independent, original and outspoken and part of a wider movement.

Their anonymity goes against everything that is supposed to be good in social media: openness, transparency, accountability, genuine relationships. Yet 4chan users have driven some of the strongest examples of successful on and offline spread.

They’re an extreme end of the spectrum, but the things that make them tick are worth examining.

Self-organisation rather than dictatorship. An ability to identify cultural memes before anyone else. Use of the latest platforms and tools. Humour. Daily immersion in dialogue and content sharing with like-minded others. Instant reactivity to news and events.  Wicked creativity.

I’m not saying that brands should look to 4chan to help boost their word of mouth; that’s asking for trouble. But this brilliant, unruly and disturbing subculture demonstrates some bare truths about how and why humans get behind a cause – truths which are worth thinking about for anyone interested in WOM.

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Brought into the world on Wednesday, August 11th, 2010 and filed under 1000thoughts.

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  • http://www.sytaylor.net sytaylor

    What really drives these guys is a sense of mischief. Doing the silly things you're really not allowed to & playing with boundaries. They're the internet geeks outcry for identity. They inherited the earth & they're painting it like their warhammer.

    Having indulged in my own bit of mindless trolling I understand the appeal. The key thing here is what happens when #likeminds get together & are motivated to take action. In this case the motivation was the roflcopter.

    The troll tribe are particularly motivated.