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Seriously, what did this site ever do to you people that you hate it so much? everywher i go "oh it's 9fags. GTFO" kind of stuff. what's wrong with this site?

At first i just thought it's /b/tards doing their regular job of being intolorant and obnoxious but now apearnrtly EVERYONE on the internet hates this site.

And the worst thing about it is that from some ungodly reson people compare it to 4chan. how!? Well the difference bein' is that one's a forum and the other is picture viewing site. Saying that 4chan is better than 9gag is like saying Starcraft is better Halo.

i am not saying the site is great, but there is certinly no reson to hate it.
Sure, it's annoying that they put their nametag in every picture, but the site is not trying to be original, many times they just bring stuff to people's attention.

And yeah, 9gaggers can be annoying that they are always using memes in real life. but again. there is no reson to hate it the why it despised now.

So what's wrong with it then?

ohboyherewego

Let's try to keep this as a gentleman debate. There is really no point in starting an ironic flamewar about 4chan v. 9fag blah blah forcing memes etc etc.

To be honest here, I personally don't really see anything hugely wrong with them. (hear me out)
From the looks of a lot of images in our gallery here, a fair majority has the 9gag watermark on the bottom. From what I can see (I haven't really been on their site) they have a fairly nice compilation of images on their site. You can't really deny some of the stuff put here is actually funny.

I would assume all of the hate came from the meme forcing. I guess that's when it becomes a problem. And then some kind of incident where they told /b/ that 9gag made a meme that /b/ clearly made? Dunno much about that, but attacking 4chan is probably not a good idea. I guess they have just become some site that other sites think is annoying.

Again, I don't really know much about the site as a whole, so I'm not using any significantly objective logic here. Just the logic of someone observing it all.
I'm sure there will be a few tl;dr 's in the posts that follow that give a much better explanation.
Plus, I'd also like to see why this is a big deal.

Why not.

There are 3 huge reasons.

1. 9gag relies largely on Rage Face face comics and reaction images for most of it's humour. Ragefaces were unpopular months ago when Reddit started overloading on them, and are pretty much considered to be the opposite of comedy by a big portion of internet users. This is probably 4chan's biggest reason for hating it.

2. The banner. The banner somehow manages to suck the fun out of great images, just by being there. And this isn't even in a "oh, 9gag sucks blurgh" way, the same can be said of every single site that sticks its shitty banners onto images (yes that includes most of Cheezburger as well". I think it's the branding of it. An ever present advertisement for the site, stuck on interrupting the humour. Which brings us to the biggest reason of all.

3. Stealing content. By far the most annoying thing of all, is 9gags complete inability to add sources for anything – ANYTHING – they post. It's basically the modern day equivalent of eBaums world. A bunch of assholes taking other peoples work and content and reposting it themselves, complete with their watermark, so any semblance of crediting the creator is gone. And it sure as hell is pissing off a lot of webcomic creators and other online people.

And yes, I know that KYM does a similar thing, often taking other peoples macros and images and posting them without credit (although you guys should seriously try to provide a link to the original post in the notes, especially if it's a drawing or art piece), but, and here's the big difference: we don't pretend we made them. We don't add a banner so that everyone thinks that 9gag is where it came from. And that's a big difference.

Those are the main reasons. Pretty sound reasons for hating a site, but hey. At least it isn't FunnyJunk.

because 4chan and reddit are butthurt that 9gag is stealing its content from them and 4chan/reddit rule the internet.

I have no problem with 9gag. Nor do I really understand all the hate it gets. I don't view it on my laptop, but the mobile version is great to check out in the train to school.

Nonetheless, I'd like to counter your arguments.

1. They rely heavily on Rage Comics, I agree with that. But there's also enough other stuff. Plus the Rage Comics you find aren't dumb ones constantly, they are actually funny (as far as Rage Comics go).
2. The banner. Wow, seriously? Banners? We can receive porn ads on sites and never complain, yet a banner kills the internet. Sorry to say, but I find this argument very weak. Then there's also the watermarks all the Cheezburger sites have. KYM is part of Cheezburger.
3. You're repeating your argument from point 2. Nonetheless, name 1 site that doesn't steal content. Your avatar is already stolen content as you haven't created it yourself. This argument is good, but it doesn't focus well enough on 9gag.

It's good to see you're aware of the flaws in your arguments.

I'm aware of the flaws 9gag has as well. But I'm just not a fan of the reason why some people hate certain stuff. A lot of times the arguments are very lacking. And I constantly get the feeling people just hate stuff like 9gag because other people hate it.

For myself, it really is what drpepperfan says.

It's a combination of the meme forms that are in my opinion very unfunny, rage comics a la reddit, or advice animals, with the rabidly fanatic fanbase who defend the site like little monkeys even though their content is either stolen or bad, not to say that the stolen content often isn't bad as well.

It's just another stupid image and link aggregate that 12 year olds gather around shouting '9gag army XD' that both doesn't create much good original content, adds watermarks to everything, or doesn't credit their source AND adds a watermark to someone else's content.

They really ARE the ebaums' world of today.

>Implying 4chan and Reddit only post original content.

Very weak argument.

@Chris

"12 year olds"

That argument is very old. If it's filled with them, how come I have multiple friends viewing the site?

Plus I remember you posting Rage Comics from 9gag multiple times on the IRC, like that rock fan one (which compared rock fans with /mu/) you loved so much.

Damn, mods arguing about a website?

Dis gon' be good.

Your point against 2 is rather illogical. The two things you compare aren't the same at all. A porn ad is a porn ad. Tacky, but meh. What do porn ads have to do with watermarks? And pointing out that cheezburger uses banners is pointless, cause I already said i hate Cheezburger banners. Know your Meme (and the daily what) however, don't use banners. So your argument there is irrelevant.

And this is a different argument to 3. 2 is talking about how the act of sticking a big watermark on a image removes it of much of it's fun. You know how when you watch TV, and all of a sudden a small advert will pop up on the bottom of the screen during the ending of a show, telling you what comes up next? It's the equivalent of that really. An unneeded addition that does nothing but advertist the site and lower the entertainment.

And in regards to 3. But when I use this as my avatar, I don't stick a watermark on it going DPF'S PAGE ON KNOW YOUR MEME COME HERE PLEASE PLEASE. And that's the difference. Tons of sites repost stuff without permission, sure. But at least they don't pretend like they made it, like 9gag and most of Cheezburger does.

I do that to mock them, that's the entire point of the /mu/ part of it.

Everyone on the internet is 12, thus my point is proven.

Well done. You have proven me incorrect. It seems I read your points incorrect, making my response complete nonesense. I have slept very minimal yesterday (I only have myself to blame) and can't really think clearly yet. My apologies for this.

Nonetheless, I have to point out that your arguments do not focus on 9gag only. But you said you hate any site that places watermarks or banners on images and claims it theirs, so that is currently irrelevant.

@Chris

I'm gonna tell my mommy someone's being mean to me on the internet.

Why can't we all be like this?

>see this thread
Ohboyherewegoagain.jpg
>thread contains mostly well chosen and explained arguments

Da fuck KYM?

Back to topic: I pretty much agree with Chris, even though I'd like to point out that it angered 4chan very much that 9gag claimed to have invited memes which actually came from 4chan, and the fact that 9gag got credit for this lie angered them even more.

im not sure the are stealing. they might not give credit but they do not say that HEY WE MADE THIS GIVE US RESPECT.

it gets a watermark because it apears there, that is all. they always bring matrial from other places… so that's not a valid reson to hate them if you ask me

@Connor

I totally agree with you.

Well, if they didn't take credit for it, they wouldn't be hated as much as for now. There are plenty of sites out there that steal stuff from other sites without giving credit, yet they are not hated as much.

The problem is that 9gag users have their own pride in themselves. And when this pride is added on to the fact that they steal stuff, people get angry. The watermark only makes it worse.

I don't like 9gag either, but I dislike them for another issue. 9gag isn't that different from other image sharing sites like lolsnaps or imgfave, both which a lot of my classmates use. The issue I have with 9gag is their users. 9gag has the tendency of marking where they went. 9gag users claim the memes--and now everywhere, when a meme is mentioned, a 9gag comment is inevitable. This video? "9gag brought me here" This? "These people must go to 9gag" Even this had fallen under 9gag.

My issue with them is that they see everything as a part of their own site. Do you see "thumbs up if 4chan brought you here" or "hahaha reddit" or "TUMBLR ARMY" anywhere? No. A pride in a site is fine, but shoving that pride in other people's faces, that's my issue.

I personally believe it is because 9gag claims to be a meme community without producing any original content.
9gag seems to have deliberately set themselves up to be in direct competition with 4chan and Reddit, but for the most part hasn't managed to come up with any content other then reposts. I'm sure they have some, but not many, and none with the spread to count as a meme.
Still, they actively try to spread, to push their influence into other sites, to subvert. The "9gag Army" thing is evidence of this. Feeling discriminated against only inflames their desire to do this further.

Do you see “thumbs up if 4chan brought you here” or “hahaha reddit” or “TUMBLR ARMY” anywhere?

Yeah, actually, you see this just as often with Reddit as you do with 9gag.

But that's because both of them have really retarded userbases.

4chan doesn't say 'hurr 4chan' but they do reference their memes on videos that are linked on their site, so it's basically the same thing.

Unlike the other two, I don't know if tumblr does this or not, but I'm sure some users do, it just isn't has prevalent as either Reddit or 4chan.

Also, as far as claiming memes, Reddit and tumblr are almost as bad as 9gag, although usually they get told off for saying that memes come from Reddit or tumblr or whatever when it didn't.

4chan doesn't usually claim memes to be their own, at least not on /v/ as they usually know where things like That Feel or Costanza come from, but again some of the less informed users DO think that.

tl;dr All of the websites we're discussing steal and re-purpose memes, 9gag just usually doesn't have anyone correcting them as they tend to be made up of people relatively new to the internet that don't know any better.

Putting a watermark on an image in itself is basically saying that one has control of the image even if in reality one was not the creator of the original image.

It's as if someone were to walk up to your property and say "Hey, this is mine now."

Let's just all be happy together!

Edit: Wow… that watermark… oh the irony.

Imagine if we did that.
Operation Stop Their Scheme might have had more then 20 participants.

I'll be honest, if KYM ever does that? I'd leave the site. In an instant.

And in regards to 9gag not specifically claiming to create the images, I pretty much agree with what PimpAbra said. They may not literally say "this is ours, we made it", but that's pretty much the specific points of a watermark: to claim ownership.

But Random reminded me of one other thing: why specifically 9gag? Why is 9gag above all other examples of these sites so hated? The answer is simple.

Popularity.

This is a thing that I can't agree on hating something for, but I think it's safe to say this is where much of the scorn comes from. Much like Twilight and Bieber, this is a case of something which would usually have little hate towards it being despised due to it's success.

I just checked with Alexa. 9gag is currently 240. It's the 240th most popular site in the world. For comparison, 4chan is 939, IGN is 334 and XKCD is 1755. It's huge and popular and people keep looking at it. And the rest of the internet is angry that such a thing could be popular.

It's the Ctrl+Alt+Del of sites.

It's a simple linear graph.

This can also be seen back in other stuff.

For example we'll take Nickelback. It's a very hated band on the internet, you can't disagree with that. But I wouldn't call their music so bad that they deserve all that hate. It's not great either, but they have decent songs. But that's where the problem lies. Their popularity is of a level far beyond what should be possible with that quality. People don't get it, so they hate it.

The reason for this? I dunno. Let it be jealousy, hatred, confusion. There's probably something.

I'm quite the bandwagon jumper myself, no idea why, but here's my train of thought (and I hope someone else can confirm they have somewhat of a similar experience)

- I enjoy browsing through KYM ritually and mindlessly
- I see some photos with the 9gag watermark and some articles that have the reference "9gag", and really not really care at first
- see several other people talk about how much they hate the watermark and articles that reference 9gag
e.g. in the comments section: "references = 9gag = deadpool"

- somehow I get this notion that, before even visiting the 9gag website, I should hate on 9gag
- I myself start disliking seeing "9gag" plastered on pictures and meme articles and strongly agree with other people who do so as well

and I haven't even been to that website yet…

I agree with all the agreeing that's being agreed upon in this agreement.

What are we talking about?

Maybe because it sucks?

Mainly the fact that they steal shit, then slap their own watermark on it.

If you're gonna take something from another website, don't claim it as your own. That's just rude. I've seen a picture with a 9gag watermark on it literally a few hours after I saw it on Reddit. Not only should they not put a watermark on it, they should give sauces. But they do neither, essentially saying "We made this" even though they didn't.

Also, it's horribly unfunny.

Inb4 "But Cheezburger does that too!" I realize that and it's just as bad. Cheezburger shouldn't do it either. I don't think KYM should be affiliated with them, they're just as bad. But at least they're closer to the front than 9gag on the Internet Human Centipede of Original Content. In fact, 9gag is dead last.

Oh and the biggest thing? 9gaggers have claimed they created rage faces and other memes. They have even copied Anonymous by calling themselves a "legion" and using the "We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us." catchphrase.

I must say, this has been one of the most well orchestrated threads I've ever seen on this site. Of course, the argument has mostly been done by the Mods, so that's understandable. Nevertheless, well done.

As for the debate, I take a view against 9gag. The internet may be built on a foundation of theft and regurgitation of content, but 9gag blatantly capitalizes on other people's work, and that most certainly makes me a sad panda, so to speak. Perhaps we do something similar, but it's usually not intentional.

I always thought everybody hated 9gag because they thought "they were better than their humor," you know, like their above it.

But, you know, humor is… Subjective. People can laugh at the same things that people hate.

That's why I'm expecting at least 5 Jack and Jill sequels.

Here are my reasons why I hate 9gag

1. The "9gag Army"

They swarm anything which was posted on their site with one huge surge of their immature and stupid comments.

2. Their memes are stupid.
Sure we get our share of stupid memes but we can at least sweep them under the rug and forget about them. Also, 99% of the images are just plain unfunny, the one percent was at least decent enough to make me grin slightly.


(Not these images, these are just plain terrible)

Finally, I did not know they did not give credit to the creators of the original image, and just piggy backed off the success of others. So now I have more reason to hate 9gag now.

So…many…words…

You ride a train?

Wait, if 9gag is mainstream like Bieber or Nickelback, won't that mean by hating something for being mainstream, the internet is full of hipsters?

But internet has a sworn duty to destroy all hipsters but if the internet is a hipster then that means……

OH SH-

Irony is huge on the internet.

The internet hates hipsters, yet we complain each time the internet is leaking again. Not aware of it, the internet is the biggest hipster of them all.

I am currently toasting in an awesome bread.

For my own opinion: I don't personally hate it, but I can understand people hating it, for many reasons. 9gag does a lot of shit, without having very many good things to make up for it.

Here are some reasons.
•Retarded 9gag army (Trying to post gore on /b/ but failed at all attempt,/b/tard deal already with gore & Nsfw stuff everyday).
•Pretending to be Anonymous but use facebook.Also,9gag army has stolen anonymous catchphrase.
•9gag has claimed to be where the rage face and some other meme started.
•Obviously a rip off of memebase.
•Funny as Family Guy (boring & stupid).

Nothing more to explain.

That is precisely accurate. We are ponies.

Well, this image will never have a more relevant thread to post it in.

Damn, someone was faster than me.

THIS is one of the reasons why /b/tards hate 9gag. Sometimes i see sarcastic Rage comic-Threads with "LE" everywhere and stupid jokes, but its so random that it is funny again.

Except that last face, I'm pretty sure, is a forced meme. So the sides cancel out.

That is not really how people tell jokes in real life, this is more like it:

They should subdivide into two separate parts. The first can be for real OCs and should get watermarked. The second will be the rest of 9gag, and will be infinitely larger if the rules are actually enforced

Why would any of us dislike 9gag? Without 9gag we wouldn't have all those memes like rage guy, troll face, poker face, me gusta, or any of the other memes they created. We sure do owe them a lot since we document the memes that originated from there, dont you agree?

Since I don't use 9gag, nor do I really care about it, I was not going to comment on this thread. I don't know why people hate it so I had no commentary on the OP

But reading this made the think once more about the Law of Popularity Backlash

Randomman already addressed that to some degree with that diagram he posted here:

It really is this simple. Just like Beiber, Twilight and Nickelback; Anything that has lots of visibility and attracts a lot of popularity will always attract an equal amount of loathing because our culture always feels the need to counterbalance popularity.

And adding onto this is the amount of 9gag-hate that is actually directed at the 9gag users rather than 9gag itself.

People hate labels before the individual so much of the 9gag hate might actually belong to their userbase. Why hate the userbase? Again there is a simple rule for that which is related to the Law of Popularity Backlash: Userbases grow in annoyance and stupidity parallel to their size through sheer mathematics (larger pools of anything will have a larger percentage of stupid)

Even without knowing much about 9gag I find myself in agreement with both Jolly and Connor. I agree with Jolly that the main reasons expressed for hating 9gag seem weak. The comments on banners and poor jokes sound like nitpicking. I agree with Connor that there is a stronger reason to just not give a fuck.

What I can understand is that when kids go around giving 9gag credit for the things they find on the internet, that can get very, very annoying for the people who know better.

If someone found Nyan Cat and said "this was on 9gag! LOLOLOL", I'd probably backhand that person too.

I see a lot of members like this…

Also, 9gaggers have the attitude to be attention whores. Why? It's simple.

When you create some OC, normally you don't use a "Watermark" or something that says "hey i made it". And it kills OC. If you post something on Reddit, and someone posts this from Reddit on 9gag, it gets a Watermark. When now someone sees the Watermark, he thinks it was made there, even if it is from Reddit.

This is something i made. Do you see a watermark? No. Why? Thats a good question. I don't see a reason to "watermark" something.

And, 9gaggers have now thier own Watermark with the ID of the Post AND they use thier "own watermark" like 9gag.com/loliloveattention in the middle of the post.

But that just the beginning. Have you ever read the Comments? EVERYBODY is just commenting for Likes, and almost nothing else. And if you are Female and you make a comment with something meme related you get tons of friendrequests and comments like "MARRY MEH". This is one of the reasons why i am avoiding 9gag now. When i was the first time on 9gag, it was funny. Nothing special, like only 100k likes on FB. But, the more popular it got the more cancerous it got.

Nobody loves attention whores.

All sites go through their ups and downs. Right now 9gag is on a roller coaster that is about to go 100mph into a huge pile of shit.

This can also be said of the forums on KYM right now. We're waiting at the top.

Plus it's more personal preference. Some people hate it, some people like it. Yeah, they're dumb for putting watermarks, but that's their business. Not ours.

And my biggest point of all?

So you shouldn't either.

This is pretty much also a reason combined with what Dante Che said:

"I myself start disliking seeing “9gag” plastered on pictures and meme articles and strongly agree with other people who do so as well

and I haven’t even been to that website yet…"

People talk shit about 9gag everywhere. You are expected to hate 9gag without even knowing anything about the site. When I see an article on KYM that reads "9gag" in the origin, whether this is true or not, one of the first comments is sure to say "Deadpool" for the simple fact that the article reads "9gag". That's not an argument, that's an excuse.

This then leads to the above image that some also just spout hate for attention whoring. They might be completely neutral about it, but they just say they hate it to go with the group.

Disliking something is ok, but at least bring some good arguments and don't do it for the attention.

But in the end, it's what Kalmo said. 9gag excists and you're not going to change it. Their problems aren't yours.