One gets a feeling of shuddering self-consciousness whenever one sees a person with the desire to express an honest opinion who in some respects has a fully developed personality (completely sincere in address and partially self-actualized, if not completely in character), especially on the Internet. That self-consciousness comes in tow even if you want to express an opinion on the internet yourself. Now, this person doesn't need to be necessarily "developed" in all areas of life, like manners for instance, just developed enough to be comfortable enough with himself to be able to express his opinion, even if that opinion is bad. This logic kind of falters a bit on sites like 4chan though, where you get the opportunity to be anonymous, for anyone can be sufficiently comfortable given the fact that he's anonymous! Anyway, I'm reminded of the ironic self-distance of the protagonist from the movie The Comedy, a character you can decipher in the consciousness of the post-modern millennial, even in the baby boomer who's acquainted himself with the newfound wireless landscape (although there would be a large sum of these type of people who would disavow any relation to this protagonist and would call him a "faggot"). If you sift through all the palavering as found on websites like Reddit or 4chan you will sense shallow fellow-feeling. No matter how paradoxical that sounds, bear with me. There is an enormous amount of internet-wide schadenfreude in bringing down sincerity in speech and action from the artless type of character. It's hard to stereotype such a strange psyche, but it is possible. It's not as static as Parmenides would want it to be, it's more Heraclitean.
There's a sort of Hegelian dialectic going on in the psyche of the users who bring down these individuals too. Because they also bring down themselves, that is, people they perceive as playing the game along with them for too long. There's a cultural-psychological self-awareness. One crude example would be using an internet meme longer than the arbitrary default time requirement of a de jour meme. It's an unspoken rule on some areas of the internet that using some meme or assuming some memetic attitude for too long will slowly distance you from the "ironic" and "cynical" crowd. One can see this in videos of adulation of memes far gone in the past. If you look in the comment section people will be saying things like "this is cringy" or "gay" or "awkward." Hell, maybe it is. That's beside the point. The way they perceive themselves can give us a clue into the nature of their psyche and, perhaps, even the zeitgeist and/or psychological glasses that interpret their reality; as philosophers, that's what we're interested in right? I'm of the opinion that perception structures our reality, that how we view ourselves and view the society we live in, along with the cultural norms and taboos that come along with it, will, in a sense, metaphysically evince itself into reality itself. Going into great detail about this psyche will take entire treatises to expatiate on, but I, at the least, will highlight some of the general principles I have gleaned while doing my own "personal" research by just wasting my time on the internet:
1. Displaying the caricature of that post-modern psyche itself will garner ridicule. Prima facie, this psyche is pretty edgy, cynical, apathetic, and slightly eccentric in its aggressiveness towards what it perceives to be as "faggoty." "Faggoty" is a dysphemism for realness, genuineness, polite carriage (even if feigned), cultural and social unawareness, and carriage that is also a morphed copy of the psyche itself. What I mean by "displaying" this psyche is that if you become too unawares of your edginess, then you will gather blowback from the same community in some fashion. Even writing articles like these has the possibility of attracting that same criticism: "he's just butthurt that his opinions were not listened to." To wit, the more you try to become categorically consubstantiated into some aspect of the 4chan psyche, as displayed through speech or action, the easier it will be to attack you in the long-run. Try posting that image of that L-esque anime character clicking around in ennui-blase mode on his computer with cowed head on the /tv/ board simply stating, "recommend me a movie." You will probably get responses like "kill yourself."
2. Liking something popular will immediately put you into "pleb" or "newfag" territory.
3. Everyone always knows more about you than you know about yourself, that is, you're your own deceiver. A self-deceiver. Descartes would quail. This is also known as the principle of asymmetric insight. Also known as projecting.
4. There is a movement back to conservatism, against the neo-lefts political agenda. People have called them neo-reactionaries. Anti-SJWism is rampant. Anything remotely hinting at leftist political agenda will be questioned, mocked, and immediately scouted and disclaimed as "non-objective."
5. 4chan is hyper aware of cultural, social, and psychological aspects of human nature. They are well-written when analyzing a certain facet of humanity be it in a video game, political agent, actor or actress, comedian and comedienne, public figure, and their own community members. This principle relates back to principle 3 in that their projecting can be acute and specific, and more than not, biting.
There's more to be analyzed, but so far, this is as much as I want to write and this is as much as I think I can actually pan from my thoughts. Keep in mind that these general principles are principles that underlie the central logos of the Hegelian dialectic that is 4chan's psyche. In other words, sometimes 4chan can be exactly contrary to its spirit and diametrically opposed to some of these principles here, but that's a given in any multifarious community. These principles are what you will expect to see most of the time after spending leaden hours on that site.
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