I'd really like a Japanese American or someone of similar dissent, who can parse and understand 2ch and 4chan equally well, to write something worthwhile about the content of both of them. I know both sides carry their content of shit posts and trolls, but they're each genuinely funny/productive once in a while. While most internet people see the Japanese boards through rose tinted goggles, I have a feeling that they're pretty much the exact same thing, minus the language. What do you think?
i can't respond for the question, but would like to note for posterity that 2ch is a textboard, the major Japanese imageboard from which 4chan was derived and which is the most analogous site is Futaba Channel.
Thank you for commenting, >>2. I know that they are separate technologies, however (and this may be a grave assumption on my part, but I doubt it) they are established on the same <i>ideas</i>, and attract similar members of society from their respective languages. As a result, the technical differences inherent in a 'textboard/imageboard' comparison shouldn't skew the numbers too much, should they?
Or perhaps someone more fluent in this topic could guide me; maybe I should simply be comparing 2ch to 4-ch, even with the userbase differences.
2ch is fucking massive both the sense of having a board for everything you can imagine and that of having a huge number of users. Some boards (otaku stuff and other more fringe kind of things) can have more of a 4chan-ish feel and some boards hardly do at all. Admittedly I only go to a couple of boards regularly, but I think I can still say it's not much like 4chan overall.The size of it makes it really different, it's more like every big Western website rolled into one plus stuff we don't have much of (AA, etc).
Futaba on the other hand is pretty much old 4chan in Japanese.
I guess you could say current 4chan is in a position somewhere between the two. It's closer to Futaba but it's become a lot less weeaboo oriented whereas Futaba is still prefers the 2D world to the real one and is unlikely to change.
I was thinking about it for a little and from what I've seen of 2ch, the closest English equivalent might be Usenet.
Usenet in its heyday, maybe, but even Usenet isn't as popular these days.
Another difference is demographics. I found a poll showing the average ages of 2ch posters (can't remember where) and it skewed pretty heavily towards late 20s-early 30s. 4chan, on the other hand, is hovering somewhere around the underage b& range.
>>6
Yeah, of course, it's not possible to talk about Usenet in the present tense.
for instance, in 4chan /a/, subtitles are preferred over dubs. as such, screencaps from interesting or emotional moments in anime include the words underneath (the subs), usually with several sequential pictures to finish up the interesting parts of the scene.
japanese anime doesn't prefer subs i take it. so how do they compensate? i have tons of screencap'd scenes, great value in those things. japs just don't have that? maybe they link to the specific time or something as you can with youtube.com/video#t=1m4s? or maybe they just post pictures with written words to the side? i d k.
What customs and habits of posting do they have? e t c
>>5
IMHO a crucial difference between Usenet and 2ch is the presence of moderator system; Usenet has while 2ch NOT.
So when your fav 2ch thread is totally disturbed by malicious trolls, you have to borrowing some other BBS outside of 2ch and establish a 避難所(safe shelter) site to resume the thread there.
The number of 避難所 increases nowadays as 2ch trolls are getting more offensive and more frantic.
Links to 2ch 避難所s: http://kisekiwo.com/hinan/index.htm