The case for anonymity online | Christopher "moot" Poole

483,864 views ・ 2010-06-02

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:17
Tom Green: That's a 4chan thing.
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These kids on the Internet, they have this group of kids
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and they like to say funny words
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like "barrel roll."
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It's a video game move from "Star Fox."
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"Star Fox 20"? (Assistant: "Star Fox 64.")
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Tom Green: Yeah. And they've been dogging me for a year.
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I got to tell you, it's driving me nuts, actually.
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Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I scream,
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"4chan!"
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Christopher Poole: When I was 15,
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I found this website called Futaba Channel.
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And it was a Japanese forum and imageboard.
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That format of forum, at that time,
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was not well-known outside of Japan.
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And so what I did is I took it, I translated it into English,
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and I stuck it up for my friends to use.
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Now, six and a half years later,
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over seven million people are using it,
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contributing over 700,000 posts per day.
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And we've gone from one board
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to 48 boards.
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This is what it looks like.
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So, what's unique about the site
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is that it's anonymous,
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and it has no memory.
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There's no archive, there are no barriers, there's no registration.
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These things that we're used to with forums
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don't exist on 4chan.
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And that's led to this
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discussion that's completely raw, completely unfiltered.
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What the site's known for,
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because it has this environment,
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is it's fostered the creation of a lot of
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Internet phenomena, viral videos and whatnot, known as "memes."
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Two of the largest memes that have come out of this site
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some of you might be familiar with are these LOLcats --
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just silly pictures of cats with text.
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And this resonates with millions of people, apparently,
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because there are tens of thousands of these,
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and there is a whole blogging empire now
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dedicated to pictures like these.
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And Rick Astley's kind of rebirth
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these past two years ...
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Rickroll was this bait and switch,
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really simple, classic bait and switch.
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Somebody says they're linking to something interesting,
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and you get an '80s pop song. That's all it was.
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And it got big enough to the point where
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there was a float last year at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade,
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and Rick Astley pops out, and rickrolls
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millions of people on television.
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02:27
(Laughter)
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There are thousands of memes that come out of the site.
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There are a handful that have escaped into the mainstream,
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the ones I've just shown you,
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but every day, every month,
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people are producing thousands of these.
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02:43
So does a site like this have rules?
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We do; they're the codified rules that I've come up with,
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which are more-or-less ignored by the community.
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And so they've come up with their own set of rules,
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the "Rules of the Internet."
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And so there are three that I want to show you specifically.
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Rule one is you don't talk about /b/.
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Two is you do not talk about /b/.
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And this one's kind of interesting:
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"If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions."
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(Laughter)
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And I will spare you that slide.
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I assure you, it is very true.
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/b/ is the first board we started with,
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and it is, in many ways,
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the beating heart of the website.
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It is where a third of all the traffic is going.
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And /b/ is known for,
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more than anything,
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not just the memes they've created, but the exploits.
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And Chris just touched on one of those a second ago,
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and that was the Time 100 poll.
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So somebody at Time, at the magazine,
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thought it would be fun to nominate me
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for this thing they did last year.
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And so they placed me on it,
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and the Internet got wind of it. My community
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decided they wanted me to win it.
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I didn't instruct them to do it; they just decided that that's what they wanted.
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And so, you know, 390 percent approval rating ain't so bad.
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(Laughter)
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So they broke that poll.
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And I ended up on top.
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I ended up at this really fancy party.
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But that's not what's interesting about this.
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It's that they weren't putting me at the top of this list;
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they were actually --
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it got so sophisticated to the point where they gamed
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all of the top 21 places
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to spell "mARBLECAKE. ALSO, THE GAME."
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(Laughter)
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The amount of time and effort that went into that
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is absolutely incredible.
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And "marble cake" is significant because
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it is the channel that this group called Anonymous organized.
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Anonymous is this group of people
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that protested, very famously,
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Scientology.
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The story is,
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Scientology had this embarrassing video of Tom Cruise. It went up online.
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They got it taken offline and managed to piss off part of the Internet.
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And so these people, over 7,000 people,
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less than one month later,
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organized in a hundred cities around the globe and --
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this is L.A. --
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protested the Church of Scientology,
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and they have continued to do so,
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now, two full years after the fact.
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They are still protesting.
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(Laughter)
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So we've got this activist group that's this grassroots group
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that's come out of the site.
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And last, I'm going to show you the example,
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the story of Dusty the cat.
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Dusty is the name that we've given to this cat.
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This young man
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posted a video
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of him abusing his cat on YouTube.
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And, you know, this didn't sit well with people,
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and so there was this outpouring of support
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for people to do something about this.
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So what they did is they -- I mean, they put CSI to shame here --
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the Internet detectives came out.
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They matched, they found his MySpace.
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They took the YouTube video and they mashed everything in the video.
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Within 24 hours,
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they had his name,
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and within 48 hours, he was arrested.
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06:09
(Applause)
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And so, what I think is really intriguing
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about a community like 4chan
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is just that it's this open place.
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As I said, it's raw, it's unfiltered.
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And sites like it are kind of
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going the way of the dinosaur right now.
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They're endangered because we're moving
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towards social networking.
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We're moving towards persistent identity.
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We're moving towards,
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you know, a lack of privacy, really.
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We're sacrificing a lot of that, and I think in doing so,
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moving towards those things, we're losing something valuable.
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Thank you.
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06:47
(Applause)
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Chris Anderson: Thank you.
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Got a couple questions for you.
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But if I ask them, is the TED website going to go down?
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CP: You're lucky that this is not
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being streamed to them live right now.
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CA: Well, you never know. Some of them --
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we've got people in 75 countries out there watching.
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Don't tell.
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But seriously,
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this issue on anonymity is --
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I mean, you made the case there.
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But anonymity basically allows people to say anything,
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all the rules gone.
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You've had to wrestle with issues like child pornography.
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And I'm just curious whether you
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sometimes lie awake in the night
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worrying that you've opened Pandora's box.
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CP: Yes and no.
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I mean, for as much good
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that kind of comes out of this environment,
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there is plenty of bad.
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There are plenty of downsides.
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But I think that the greater good
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is being served here by just allowing people --
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there are very few places, now, where you can go
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and not have identity, to be completely anonymous
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and say whatever you'd like.
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And saying whatever you like, I think, is powerful.
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Doing whatever you like is now crossing a line.
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But I think it's important to have these places.
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When I get emails, people say, "Thank you for giving me this place,
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this outlet, where I can come after work
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and be myself."
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CA: But words, saying things,
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you know, can be constructive; it can be really damaging.
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And if you cut the link between what is said
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and any attribution back to you,
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I mean, surely there are huge risks with that.
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CP: There are, certainly.
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But --
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CA: Tell me about what -- I mean, I think you asked the board
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what you might say at TED, right?
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CP: Yeah, I posted a thread
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on Sunday.
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And within 24 hours,
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it had over 12,000 responses.
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And the thing is,
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I didn't make it into that presentation
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because I can't read to you anything that they said, more or less.
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(Laughter)
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99 percent of it is just,
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would have been, you know, bleeped out.
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But there were some good things that came out of that too.
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(Laughter)
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Love and peace were mentioned.
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CA: Love and peace were mentioned,
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kind of with quote marks around them, right?
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CP: Cats and dogs were mentioned too.
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CA: And that content is all off the board now.
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Right, it's gone? Or is it still up there?
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CP: I stuck that thread so it lasted a few days.
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It went up to about 16,000 posts,
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and now it has been taken off.
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CA: Okay, well.
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Now, I'm not sure I would have necessarily recommended
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everyone at TED to go and check it out anyway.
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Chris, you yourself? I mean, you're a figure of some intrigue.
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You've got this surprising
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semi-underground influence,
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but it's not making you a lot of money, yet.
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What's the commercial picture here?
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CP: The commercial picture is that there really isn't
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much of one, I guess.
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The site has adult content on it.
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I mean, obviously, it's got some very offensive, obscene content on it,
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just in terms of language alone.
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And when you've got that, you've pretty much sacrificed
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any hope of making lots of money.
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CA: But you still live at home, right?
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CP: I actually moved out recently.
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CA: That's very cool.
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(Applause)
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CP: I got out of Mom's, and I'm back in school right now.
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10:17
CA: But what conversations did you or do you
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have with your mother about 4chan?
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CP: At first, very kind of pained,
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awkward conversations.
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The content is not dinner table conversation in the least.
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But my parents -- I think part of why
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they kind of are able to appreciate it
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is because they don't understand it.
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(Laughter)
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CA: And they were probably pleased to see you
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on top of the Time poll.
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CP: Yeah. They still didn't know what to think of that though.
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(Laughter)
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CA: And so, in 10 years' time,
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what do you picture yourself doing?
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CP: That's a good question.
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As I said, I just went back to school,
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and I am considering
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majoring in urban studies
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and then going on to urban planning,
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kind of taking whatever I've learned from online communities
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and trying to adapt that
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to a physical community.
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CA: Chris, thank you. Absolutely fascinating. Thank you for coming to TED.
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