4chan is Down… again

First off I would like to state that this has nothing to do with druids, I’m just way to lazy to manage two blogs in one! >.>

Point is that the “Severely Unrelated Category” is all about my thoughts behind the screen rather than anything having to do with WoW

Really, what interest me is that 4chan is down again, now if you have any knowledge of the site, than you know that its goes up and down as the years go by. Fractions within its userbase for whatever reason feel the need to bring the site down via a DDoS attack. After several years this is really just part of the ebb and flow of things and really isn’t all that out of the ordinary. But something that does occur to me, is that after 5 years+ of running 4chan.org, what would happen to its userbase if it were to shut down or be permanently taken offline. Though I doubt very much that this point is coming any time soon, M00t has stated over and over again that he can’t really deal with the soaring cost associated with keeping the site up in comparison with the rather weak add revenue due in part to the sites reputation on the web and because most of its users are web savvy to some degree.

So I pose the question, where would its userbase migrate if 4chan were to shut down and disappear off the face of the web.  With any other site this is really a non issue as it doesn’t have either a large enough presence to be felt, or it simply doesn’t have that close a community. And while 4chan by nature has no real bonds between its members, they do act in a very swarm mentality when they take actions. This consistent feature of group think is the interesting part of this. For instance, where do they go to gather when the site they use for primary communication is taken down. While there are other chans that serve as bases of operation for this swarm logic, not one truly represents a centralized point.

So what you have is essentially 3 million + drones [more if Alexa is anywhere close to correct] without a hive. Given that 4chan was created out of the depths of somethingawful one would assume they would just move to a new site. But that central communication point is rather key, and if its operator [in this case moot] were to suddenly give up on the venture project, than how would the swarm communicate with each other. The first thing of course is members of the swarm who act as an online grape vine, [those other smaller “Outpost” if you will serving to let members know of what the plans are]. But this generally fails to address the Swarm as a whole. The only real key point that they have between them is Google, and thus they will search for either information on when 4chan itself is coming back up or use it to find a replacement. This makes google an interesting choice for the initial establishment of a new site. Unlike 4chan itself which has grown through word of mouth, with the Anonymous disbanded and lacking in central communication they will generally [a good 80% of the population] go looking for a replacement to fill the gap in their web browsing habit. I also wonder if the DD0S attack N. Korea launched against key government sites over the week has ANYTHING at all to do with this, and what possible fall out that could cause [if any at all]

Like I said, its rather off topic, and has little if nothing at all to do with WoW. Its just my main site [phaser.mewvision.com] has been taken offline for security concerns, and so I am left to ponder things of trivial value on this blog here.

On an even more unrelated note, its my 21st Birthday Yesterday! Go me [oh god my head ;_;]