The Occupy Wall Street Movement is further confirmation that rules 1 and 2 has been buried when it came to /b/tarded armchair oldfags who hate seeing people with Guy Fawkes masks. These rules are merely a culturally imposed illusion on the fact that imageboards are usually underground zones where normal people are not allowed unless they like being flamed, or seeing gory pictures. Rules 1 and 2 originally started as both a in joke when raids from 4chan’s /b/ gotten popular, instead some people as usual took it too seriously.
Anonymous, the stand-alone complex group, not the ordinary channers, announced its support for the movement in a video and through its website (http://anonops.blogspot.com). The announcement already brought screams of “RULES 1 and 2” from armchair oldfags that they are violating their own interpretations of rules one and two.
Unlike Japan’s Futaba Channel, where they usually keep such stuff to themselves due to its anime oriented niche, the nature of 4chan’s /b/ from anime to an off-topic NSFW board created gave a rise to a notion of a secret club. A secret club that is similar to a certain movie, or in this case a book…
Fight Club is a 1996 novel (which was adapted to a cult classic movie) written by Chuck Palahniuk. It follows the experience of a product recall specialist for an unnamed automobile company, who is struggling with insomnia. Despite the actual medical condition of insomnia, his doctor doesn’t consider it suffering*. More specifically from the movie “If you want to see suffering, go see a relief group for testicular cancer”.
The actual fight club comes about when the main character meets Tyler Durden and they both beat each other in a brawl. The rules of fight club are as follows:
- You don’t talk about fight club.
- You don’t talk about fight club.
- When someone says stop, or goes limp, the fight is over.
- Only two guys to a fight.
- One fight at a time.
- They fight without shirts or shoes.
- The fights go on as long as they have to.
- If this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight.
Rules one is simple, don’t talk about it at all. The second rule of rules one and two are repeated for emphasis (Because the more you repeat a rule saying, the more serious it is.). The intention of these rules is for the club to be secret as possible without gaining mainstream attention, or more specifically police attention. Keep it small and tidy, and there will be no mess and attention. This is not related to rules one and two of another article.
But there is a paradox to rules one and two. The 8th rule: This implies that new members are allowed so that in order to make fight club lively and fresh, you need fresh blood and flesh. However, you can’t talk about fight club in public, but there are two other ways fight club can live. Either by people accidently stumbling upon the club or someone trusted enough not to talk about it in public gets invited to the club.
This is what 4chan and Futaba is designed to in the early years, they don’t want mainstream attention to change the culture. They rather have people finding out about 4chan or more specifically /b/ for themselves. With a slow steady growth of new channers, they’ll merely assimilate into the culture and grow naturally. What rules one and two is supposed to be a joke to the fact of this.
There is some cultural truth to rules 1 and 2. They simply don’t want an Eternal September to happen. Instead they got an Eternal Summer, where every year new channers come and act like forum users. As a joke, it was sadly to taken seriously, and since some people take it seriously, they were merely delaying the evitable. That’s when the illusion begun.
This illusion has been help up and enforced by armchair oldfags who think it’s a real rule: If anyone, at minimum, wear a Guy Fawkes mask anywhere in public or at a anime convention, if or not you’re a channer they will scream rules one and two. Mention 4chan in a conversation, even though you’re talking about the anime or video game part of 4chan, they scream rules one and two (or at least try to cut you off). And the irony of rules one and two that it originally did applied to raids. When /b/tards were raiding other websites, people kept announcing who they really are. So they kept saying rules one and two to prevent people from finding out where those raiders are.
Eternal Summer was that inevitability. But it merely provided the wood and the cutting tools to put the nails in the coffin of the illusion of rules one and two. 4chan have already gotten mainstream attention in several instances. We consider these major events nails in the coffin.
Nail One: When some twat though it would be a good idea to post on 4chan’s /b/ on a bomb threat during a football game. Nail Two: The various raids with memes and catchphrases that any Chan literate person knows. Since many channers do go to forums as well. Nail Three: When Fox News used its usual hyperbole of regular channers on overwhelming focus on /b/ calling Anonymous as Hacker’s as Steroids. Nail Four: When Anonymous started Project Chanology movement against Scientology.
The Final Nail: The Tumblr and 4chan invasion wars, which backfired and turned into a drawing fest of Anonymous and Tumblr-chan OTP fan art. And /b/’s buttrage when Gawker exposed their plans before the invasions started.
Occupation Wall Street is really the actual burial of the illusion of rules one and two. The nails were already in place, it just needed a person or in this case and event to finally bury it.
*But seriously, you can actually suffer from insomnia if you actually don’t have the energy do your damn job.
Related reading: http://www.yotsubasociety.org/originsofanon_ptiii - Origins of Anonymous Part. III http://www.lurkmore.com/wiki/Rules - Rules by Lurkmore.com
Ndee “Jkid” Okeh (YSJkid@gmail.com)