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This evening a post was made in the "OH BOY HERE WE GO! yet another raid incoming" thread by Anon. It has since disappeared, either because of an action taken by one of our mods (I hope this isn't the case) or because s/he decided to delete it themselves for some reason or another.

Independent of the circumstances, I think the contents of that post were important and interesting for a few reasons, which I wont bore you with (yet). So, possibly against the wishes of Anon (accept my apologies), I'm going to reproduce the post in its entirety below:

God you people are whiners. Fine. You want to know the real reason why nobody can stand you? Why anons from across the chans have decided that you’re anathema? Here’s why, and if it’s too long and you decide to be cute by saying “lol tl;dr blah blah blah over 9000 blah blah blah FAIL LOLZ,” then you’re exactly who I’m writing this for.

To start, you dismiss with a wave of the hand Rules 1 and 2. Oldfags couldn’t give less of a shit what you do with the rules, we honestly couldn’t. But the fact remains that if we do anything, anything at all, you jot it down and spread it like wildfire, under the impression that the idea of memes is to “propagate.” That’s not the “point” of memes at all. Memes that are there specifically to propagate are forced and pathetic pleas for attention and recognition by a wider audience, ignoring the fact that memes don’t have a “point,” the only reason they’re memes in the first place is because they’re ideas that spread. Good God, “Meme” is in your site’s name for Chrissakes and you don’t even seem to know what it means.

You think it’s funny and cute and SOO HIRARIOUS to spam memes out your collective butts, treating it like a game of who can recite the most thoroughly dead jokes. You’re like an enjoyment vampire, sucking spark and originality out of even the best jokes that just casually happen to pass around. And then you turn around and cry crocodile tears because it turns out that everyone despises you for being the little annoying 8-year-old anklebiter of the internet.

Of course, it wouldn’t be so bad if you at least owned up to it, even just a little bit. Or if you at least, you know, supported any of the things you constantly run off at the mouth about. But then your denizens say stuff like this:
“On the other hand, I don’t think a lot of newfags would be able to live on 4chan without KYM. There’s information here that’s pretty hard to find otherwise. I’ve seen a lot of raid-attempt threads where people are just like, “This site isn’t that bad…” and it just kind of feels awkward after that. Don’t they have better things to do in their spare time? Rocketboom can’t possibly make that much money, anyway. No offense.”

This was never about the money, although it is about you taking without giving. Any newfag who takes a note from you guys turns into one thing, and one thing only, and that is cancer, through and through. You are the nightmare of anyone who used to enjoy /b/, and what’s more, you have no intrinsic value. Encyclopedia Dramatica and whatport80 do such a better job it isn’t even funny. Why? Because it’s not full of “researchers,” it’s full of people who contribute and yearn for original content as badly as anyone who has seen the value of what anonymous posting and decentralized systems like the chans have to offer. “Boo hoo hoo it’s not work-friendly! It’s mean, I don’t like gore, I don’t like shock images!” There’s whatport80 if you REALLY need to know all about the dead in-jokes (which, by the way, are dead because YOU killed them, and don’t ever underestimate your own ability to thoroughly ruin a good meme). This? This is cancer at its worst.

And when it finally comes time to pay the piper, when Anonymous finally rears what ugly head it has left after you’ve watered it down and passed it out to any old 12-year-old who happens to come by (literally. You’re the reason those Hot Topic t-shirts are still being sold. You literally undo the work of the people you study. Thanks a whole hell of a lot), you play dumb, as if you had no idea that the whole time you were spamming the shit out of our own culture, you were biting the hand that feeds.

“But it’s not really 4chan that is attacking KYM, that’s maybe why. Anyway, to them, we are way more hipster than Tumblr, so again, why can’t our moe character and anonymous be lovers as well?”
I hope this was a joke, but if it wasn’t, it proves exactly why we hate you. What, you think that 4chan and Tumblr decided to create a bunch of great OC of each other hopping in the sack because Tumblr is full of hipsters? That’s the reason Tumblr was raided in the first place! I shouldn’t have to explain the difference to you between a site which gives limp-dicked meme listings and a site which actually generates original content.

For my part, I could hardly care any more. I’ve stated my peace. You’ve single-handedly helped thoroughly ruin even the idea of memes, more than any other single group, in a way you no doubt don’t realize yet. Enjoy your mudkips and your “epic failures” and your shoop da woops. And enjoy the memes that you can still leech out of the internet, without giving back a single thing. You’re the kinds of people who think that Anonymous stands for something, yet you somehow have no clue what the fuck it stands for. I hope you’re raided into oblivion.

So now, seriously: what do you think? Not about friedchickeneater12. Not about the conflicting ideas about when rules 1 and 2 apply. Not the nit-picky bullshit, but about this take on the make-up of our community, the function or purpose of KYM and its relationship to the chans?

I am genuinely curious.

I do kind of want to rant back to this person…

Long story short, newfags are spreading their meme shit, no matter what you do. It's gonna happen. That's why the whole war stuff between tumblr and 4chan stated in the first place.
On that note, if Anonymous keeps vying for attention by whining about everything, they're gonna get their attention. And that's going to be their downfall at the end of the day – they don't want newfags coming in and spreading their "inside jokes," but if they call attention to themselves, then hell, it's gonna happen.

One thing need to be straightened out. KnowYourMeme isn't supposed to be exclusively about /b/, or 4chan. That's what they keep saying and implying. It's not. KnowYourMeme isn't about trying to look cool by reprinting all the memes. It's about trying to figure out what the heck's going on with the memes in the first place, because otherwise, most people won't know anything.
And Anonymous needs to chill, because quite frankly, anyone can share Encyclopedia Dramatica and be filled in on the joke too. And that's their precious little knowledge base. People know about ED already. People use that site. I personally think it's more cancerous than KYM will ever be, because it encourages newfags to get involved and try to look cool more so than KYM. Where KYM just fills people in on what's going on, ED pretty much encourages the behavior that stereotypes newfags.
(And wasn't the moneymaking a huge part of the whole raid motive?)

Yes, we think it's fun to post memes as if they're the basis on which we live, it's undeniable. But you can't deny that there's others doing it too. You can't stop cancer that easily. It's gonna spread. Like cancer. Especially with the attention Anonymous is getting.

And yes, I'm going there…
tl;dr
Chill Anon, you're screwed, whether we're around or not.

….did I answer the question? …no? Ok, I'll try to be straightforward.

KYM is basically around to figure out where the heck the memes came from, because quite frankly, I don't think anyone would know or care otherwise. If it comes from 4chan, then there's no choice but to say that it came from 4chan, and that's how things are. shrug If Anonymous has a problem, whatever.
(But we're not telling anyone straightforward to go to 4chan. I actually highly discourage doing that.)

Back to class. I am, in fact, bored enough to write a long post about this whole thing. lol

There are really some valid points in here, I'll put my response, although it won't be amazingly eloquent.

Okay, the first real argument is that memes aren't made to propagate and that memes don't have a point.

I, personally, have never really said that memes have a point. They are just something that happen on the internet which we, as a website, have decided to document, that doesn't mean we think they have a point or that they actually do have a point I agree that they are just ideas that spread.

And as far as memes that are made to propagate, those are forced, and we don't support forcing and we rarely support forced memes.

The next argument (if I'm reading it correctly) is that we just research memes and don't produce anything ourselves.

That's true, to a point, when we make articles we aren't supposed to include anything we've done or be biased about it, but probably about half of our users surf /b/ regularly and provide just as much OC as any other anon.

For why we don't like gore images, we do try to keep this site family friendly, and since that's more of a preference than anything, if you dislike that, that's just too bad.

As far as saying people should use whatport80 as opposed to KYM, it normally has a lot less information, has a lot less subjects (it really doesn't cover that much, and nothing from outside 4chan), and overall isn't any more funny than our website is.

Also, many of those memes were dead before we even touched them.

For the argument about spamming culture, I truly do see your point. As a website, we often really jump the gun in documenting, which does (minor or not) have an effect on the meme as a whole.

The problem with that in our website is that people want to have things credited to them, which is a different viewpoint than the general anon viewpoint of being unknown.

I, personally, wish that we wouldn't document things right when they come out, but often that's the best time to do it, when the information is fresh and you can keep track of any updates.

For the thing about the OC between tumblr and 4chan, the comment about our characters being lovers was a joke.

For our site creating OC, we DO in fact have in jokes in the community, just like 4chan does, and once again, many of our users go on 4chan regularly and contribute just as much as any other anon.

As a conclusion, I don't think we've ruined the idea of memes. Perhaps we've ruined the idea that memes should only belong to the oldfags that were there originally, but a lot of the information we accumulated was readily available to anyone with access to google, and as to us not contributing, we DO use 4chan and we DO create OC, whether or not you approve of it.

That's what I have to say about that, and if someone wants to refute or debate about this stuff, I'm always up for a discussion.

Oh, also. The guy's implying that we don't like gore and porn.

…Well, it's not site-appropriate, but that doesn't mean we don't like it.
gooooore

I've always had mixed feelings about KYM, and whether those are justified I'm not sure. But there are a lot of things to consider.

First of all, we can and do propagate memes, to an extent. Besides the fact that we often revive old memes to be used by new people (essentially the family guy effect, and in many ways killing OC), we also help proliferate existing phenomena that is only mildly popular. Take "Interior Semiotics," for example. Is it really a meme? Sure, a lot of people talked about it, and there were a few responses, but it passed over pretty quickly (and probably wouldn't have lasted as long if it weren't for us, imo).

And if you don't think we have an effect, look at the views on this video from embedding.

Out of 19,858 views….

A Sep 22, 2010 First embedded on – blogagradavel.blogspot.com 1,201
B Sep 04, 2010 First referral from related video – Interior Semiotics 712
C Aug 09, 2010 First referral from – encyclopediadramatica.com 268
D Aug 09, 2010 First referral from – knowyourmeme 226
E Aug 08, 2010 First embedded on – knowyourmeme.com 10,656
F Aug 08, 2010 First referral from YouTube search – interior semiotics 1,515
G Aug 08, 2010 First view from a mobile device 1,132
H Aug 08, 2010 First referral from YouTube search – interior semiotic 668
I Aug 08, 2010 First referral from related video – behind the scenes: Interior Semiotics 619
J Aug 08, 2010 First referral from Google search – interior semiotics 226

If you were an oldfag of 4chan who really loved some of the older, classic memes and internet supidity, you'd be sort of ticked off that we'd call this a meme too.

A more serious and obvious issue is being raised by our involvement in Race Guy.

Secondly, the first memes weren't created by chan-like communities. Even ED recognizes that. But the first communities to use the actual term "internet meme" (either by internet users or news outlets documenting it) were about lulz-oriented communities. So, they became the first to essentially define what a meme is. Calling "forced perspective" a meme is cool (and I support it), but nowhere close to what a chan community would call a meme. When we screw up what other people's understanding of a meme is- it gets pretty messy, since they were essentially the first ones to define what a meme was (a huge, lulzy, internet phenomena that encompasses a huge part of the internet community, acts as an in-joke, and is supposed to have no point).

I think I can give some creedence to that last part (having no point). Analyzing people's stupid jokes kind of pisses them off.

So yeah.

Personally it does bother me when we have an effect on existing phenomena.

And it also bothers me when new users use old memes, but don't "understand" (they weren't there at the time, so they could never know how amazing the meme was at the time it came out, family guy effect, etc.). But that's more of a selfish complaint on my part.

I also dislike the lack of Original content. But even before KYM, OC was dead to me. Blame newfags on the chans, not us. If we make it worse (which we probably do to an extent), I've stopped caring. But maybe I should care :/

But I really do appreciate KYM's documentation of lulzy foreign memes, and documentation of stranger internet phenomena. And of course, I love the community here that tries their best to find this kind of internet phenomena.

I don't know what to think, sorry. We have to balance ourselves on a tricky line here. I personally think we do have legitimate, important negative effects on the internet community, but I'd like to think we do more good than harm. But this is just me.

I must say I'm more than happy to see that there was some constructive post in that thread, coming from the haters.
Everytime we got to have a thread in which supposed haters came in to say why they "despise" KYM, and everytime some people tried to fight back at the "arguments", it always ended up in some kind of spam, either gore or… well… gore.

I will first give my own opinion on the purpose of KYM, because if something raiders tend to easily forget when quoting people in order to gain interest in their cause, is that some people's opinions from a token community don't necessarily represent the entire community.
Every freaking problem in existence always comes from a misunderstanding of something. While I agree on the fact that KYM may have misunderstood many things on the chans and Anonymous as the whole, I dare claim that they, as well, don't seem to truly understand what KYM is about.

KYM intentionally choose to step back as trying to be an objective source of information on memes, and a big database collecting them. The information is generated by its community so yeah, it's fairly difficult to remain objective for the hell of it, but it doesn't prevent the site from giving its darndest in trying.
And that's why, as the quote said, we may do little to no Original Content to give back to the chans (Cheetos and KYM exploitables aren't meant for the chans I think). Because that's website isn't meant for that and wants to remain as scientific and neutral as permissible.
That being said, we are meant to be a little more serious than Encyclopedia Dramatica, but not too much.
It may seem preposterous to say that yeah, but think of it for a second.

Why friedchickeneater12 would hold the basic truth on what a meme is by saying that we are wrong in thinking that it's based on a content, its popularity, its spraid and its amount of parodies/manipulation (what you call OC, and after a while "old meme that sucks" when it doesn't please you anymore) ?
Why would he be right in thinking that a meme has no point ? It may have no point to you, but subconsciously, if a meme catch on, there are things going on which can be explained in a more scientific way.
There are different degrees of appeal coming from a token content, and different ways/circumstances in which it may or may not spread to a larger audience.

I think the best analogy here is what we think of Sociology, Psychology or History. When we see, on TV for example, researchers/professors in Sociology or History talking about something that, for us, appears to be nothing of interest, then of course we tend to say "What the hell ? Why do I have to care if Abraham Lincoln was right or left-handed ?". The same thing goes for memes studies, and that's why a certain amount of people don't hold themselves in making fun of KYM's "so-called" scientists, because they think memes don't have a point and are simply silly ideas.
I don't think adding "but you're wrong" would help anyone changing their mind on the subject anyway, pretty much like the big paragraph above will not make people here change their view on what they are doing.

(2nd part below)

(2nd part)

Now, the community and its relation to the chans. What I find a little laughable is that different quotes from the forums are used to feed the raiders in their cause, like that very old quote from Karnella stating that she won't ever go to 4chan because, at that time, other users warned her about the really "random" stuff in some of the boards.
So yeah, we are criticized because we give new traffic to the chans, mainly composed of "newfags" and other "obnoxious" people that another part of the chans don't want, and on the other hand, some people think we give a bad image of 4chan and the other chans enough to prevent people from going there…

Let me get this straight. We can't filter people that are coming on KYM. A large part of the community is composed of Anons, even if it's hard to believe. We may not be Anonymous on KYM because we have usernames and such but in other parts of the web, we are. Some of us may have started threads, give some OC and even participated on ED, WhatPort80 as well as giving money to have a paid account on ED forums. But of course, those people aren't doing it in the name of KYM because they would be banned/hated by the chans/places-they-choose-to-help for that sole reason.
As I was saying, we can't filter which kinds of people are here, and which ones will then go to 4chan or the other chans.
We can't filter which ones will be obnoxious and annoy others with "old memes". It's the fucking Internet. If you can't deal with it the same way you have to deal with people playing annoying songs with their cellphones in the backseat of a bus, It's not of our fault, for we have never said that using memes was "cool", the same way we have never said that people should go to 4chan and that they should overabuse of memes ad hominem there.

The KYM episodes never stated that the memes they were studying were "cool" to use. They simply studied one type of phenomenon at a time. Then, if the people watching it liked that meme and wanted to reuse it, it was their choice only.

What I know, is that we aren't the ones that add that so-called "cancer" to the chans.
Cancer only exists in the heart of someone who wants to see it, someone who loves drama, someone who thinks he is cool despising people for reusing memes that irritate him.

Let's talk about Race Guy now, if you will.
Yes, the Race Guy article was one of many articles which helped ruining the Operation Black Rage. The article conflicted with the chans' doing, which is one of our source of study (no, the chans aren't the only ones making memes and they aren't the only existing communities on the Internet).
The problem is, the article is user-generated. It means it's neither a manager nor an entry mod who made the article, but a simple user.
KYM can't prevent people from submitting entries. It's the same thing that happened with "Operation Apocalypse".
So, many people "asked" us to deadpool or delete that entry because of that. The new problem is : the phenomenon became big enough to be documented. If we were conciliatory with the raiders and removed the entry, we would lose our part of "neutral" activity and couldn't remain the "reliable source of information" KYM wanted to be in the first place. We would then have become another copy of ED…
We can't censor people in submitting what the chans want only.
So yeah, how to work in a conflict like that ?

I thought that, maybe, some kind of a poster saying "Use memes with caution, butthurt channers may be mad at you" (of course, not that way, but a big paragraph explaining that people need to support ED, WhatPort80 and the chans in one way or another) on KYM's frontpage would be great as a starter…

@thread

All of this has been talked about before, its not really whos right, but derpa derpa ignorance wars.

Anyways any one that comes up with these raids is obviously a master troll.

I can not think of something to say, but if I had my brain I would give you a piece of it, and then maybe you'd undstand.

tl;dr haters gonna hate I think KYM is a pretty cool guy

This isn't just trolling, the stuff he brings up are valid and deserve to be answered.

tl;dr

hey guise i'm tired of a topic being discussed, so i'm gonna spam it with tl;dr comments and bump it.

now let me go talk about some pokemanz, certainly not an overdiscussed topic, teh ftw

You know that school bully you had, no matter what you'd do he would never go away??

Well thats Anon, thats it, end of subject, nothing can be done.

Beautifully said… Let's go color some coloring books now. I feel like we're in kindergarten with Anon trying to make themselves look better by beating other sites down.

MPAA and VIACOM, I understand perfectly. KYM and tumblr… eh.

Well, belatedly putting my own two cents (and perhaps it's good it was late, as I bothered to read everything above, and it changed my mind on a few things) I think there is definitely something to the claim that studying memetic content, like studying humor, has a tendency to destroy it a little.

I think that there are a number of memes that KYM has screwed up in a number of ways, two of which I can think of off the top of my head: (1) explaining a meme like raceguy or OA ruins its very reason for being, and (2) explaining an old meme that revives it for a bunch of "newfags" that then proceed to annoy the "oldfags" who are sick of it by using it OVER 9000 times (lol, I see what you did there, etc.)

That being said, I tend to think of a site like KYM in evolutionary terms. The Internet is like an environment that has numerous ecological niches to be filled, and KYM fills a niche that would have been filled by some other site if it hadn't existed. (Actually, I remember dipity made a good stab at a meme catalog.) Really, if ED were more SFW, it probably would have filled that niche, as there are a number of ways that it does things better than we do here. Essentially, the very fact that memes exist and are widespread guarantees a group of people would appear on the Internet to analyze them as a phenomenon.

That being the case, as Tomberry said, it may be unfortunate, but it's unavoidable that KYM would do some of the things that it does to piss off the chans just by its very nature. We're "in ur interwebs killin ur memes", but in a funny way, somebody had to do it.

Oh, and lastly, we do create original content, but we also by our nature can't really create original memes, so everything we do will always be somewhat derivative.

People fighting a war of epic proportions over the internet.

@Anon

You guys managed to hit on pretty much all the stuff I was thinking about – so I just want to observe some stuff for my own fun, not to change any minds or make any NEW points, just the same ones a little differently. <3 this conversation! +1 to all.

KYM's "focus" on the chans : Though Anon seems to think we're out to rain on their parade specifically, our community uses this site to describe any cultural phenomena which has its origin on the internet or depends upon it's technology to spread. Enlightening: compare # of entries on not-/b/ related memes on KYM to that # on WhatPort:80 (WP:80 has no Antoine Dodson / Bed Intruder entry, for instance). Seems clear to me they provide a difference "service", innit?

ED v KYM: So ED has many more entries than WP:80, but uses inside jokes to write about inside jokes. KYM is for "everyone". So there's the heart of that argument as I see it. But it's maybe built upon a bit of a fallacy:

Anon as a secret club: 4chan.org is the 284th most trafficked site in the US. For a point of reference, KYM is 2,485th, ED is 1,572, cnn.com is 18th and MTV.com is 264th. (source: alexa.com) We did not call the New York Times or NPR to tell them about 4chan. They called us (probably cause they're newfags who are most likely spamming b with advice dog variants right now).

How do things like Operation Black Rage, etc etc end up on KYM so quick? : Maybe some KYM members are Anons breaking rules 1 and 2. This is entirely those members' decision and as far as I know KYM and it's members have no established party line either way re: the most appropriate way to rob Peter to pay Paul. Or maybe Anon is organizing their raids openly or searchably enough that they gain a cultural significance outside of their own community either before or while they are happening? Maybe Anon needs to take a Learning Annex course on Teh Sneakiness? Either way, these behaviours are neither encouraged nor discouraged on the KYM forums as far as I know. Please, please correct me if I am wrong.

Speed vs Credit: I think this is really interesting, and had never considered it. Do you guys feel like we end up covering things quickly or prematurely for the reason that people want the credit of having started the entry? Is there any reason this is bad besides the "meddling" argument?

lulz-oriented communities "defining" Internet Meme : As Mr. Jamie "Awesomeface" Dubs managed to uncover, seems as though "meme" was actually first used by Mike Godwin (yes, that Mike Godwin) in reference to internet culture back in about '94 in Wired Magazine. So perhaps we should call some oldschool BBS guys to give Anon a hard time for "stealing" their culture. :D

And finally, this is pretty much just plain genius: "Cancer only exists in the heart of someone who wants to see it." +1 TB

I have a number of other thoughts related to why I think what we do is legitimately important, the majority of it much less of a pro-forma response (unlike these 5 pts above) to Anon. I think the criticism of "explaining jokes makes them not funny" is totally fair, but incomplete. Explaining nature makes it less magical. Taking a picture disrupts time. These are complex cultural ideas, and how surprising and awesome is it that User Generated Culture can sit alongside them? Super. That's how.

But blah blah blah; this is stuff we're in the midst of discussing a bunch and will be developing and posting soon. It's all very exciting, I promise, and we owe all of it to how awesome all you guys are.

Until then, I'd stand by my macro:

@Thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6Pbc8SQwV8&feature=player_embedded

I don't get why they don't like us for making them a recognized site. If it wasn't for us, they'd be just some geeky teens on a boring site. Anyway, now they're so self centered to think that KYM is just about them. I'd say that 90% of the memes were not 4chan. Anyway they'll just end up like File Pile- dead after the FBI go after them.

Speed vs Credit: I think this is really interesting, and had never considered it. Do you guys feel like we end up covering things quickly or prematurely for the reason that people want the credit of having started the entry? Is there any reason this is bad besides the “meddling” argument?

Mike, I think that thread has uncovered many issues appearing with the rise of KYM's popularity, and OGW neatly detailed one of them : What you summed up as Speed vs Credit.
Would some meme entries have been confirmed if KYM wasn't adding popularity, views and credit to the token phenomenon described in them ?
Interior Semiotic is definitely the best example here, as it was a phenomenon that lasted 1 or 2 months and then fell into darkness as suddenly.

That's where a big dilemma can occur : If we choose to focus on trending phenomena only, when they start, then KYM can influence its popularity without us knowing, and "corrupt" the very essence of memeness we try to study.
On the other hand, if we wait for phenomena to become "old" or "full grown meme" before writing an article about it, some people may hate us for "reviving" a meme that was considered "dead".

That's why ED doesn't have any problem with that. By being totally NSFW, satirical and by explaining memes and drama with inside jokes, they don't mind being an influence at all, and at the same time, if people really want to know about a peculiar meme, they still have to search for themselves a little.

On KYM, now, aside from people trying to create of force their own memes, we have also people battling to be the first in submitting an entry about something they've just found…
It shouldn't work like that.

Oh you, and you're balanced arguments!

You've got to say though, 4chan users are snobbish. They look down on anyone who doesn't know what fapping is.

is that why you posted 5 times?

As I recall 3 times, but most of it was pointing out the obvious.

Its just my final conclusion

Here's my 2 pence:

Think of memes as……a chocolate bar, first only a couple of people have the chocolate bar and keep it for themselves, then some scientists come along and advertise the chocolate bar. More people try it, think that it's delicious and recommend it to their friends, but then the first few people to try it strike back at the scientists and people who tasted the chocolate bar after them. They do so by throwing festering brains at them and frame the scientists' organisation for fraud. They call the scientists and people who saw the scientists' adverts cancer and organise meticulously planned attacks on them. Does that seem fair?

To start, you dismiss with a wave of the hand Rules 1 and 2. Oldfags couldn’t give less of a shit what you do with the rules, we honestly couldn’t. But the fact remains that if we do anything, anything at all, you jot it down and spread it like wildfire, under the impression that the idea of memes is to “propagate.” That’s not the “point” of memes at all.

We don't do that. We don't. We know memes aren't there to "propagate." That's propaganda, and we know that memes aren't propaganda. Viral advertising is. However, we do get our share of users who have no idea what the fuck they're doing that make their own pictures to put in the articles. We despise them with uncontrollable fury.

Memes that are there specifically to propagate are forced and pathetic pleas for attention and recognition by a wider audience, ignoring the fact that memes don’t have a “point,” the only reason they’re memes in the first place is because they’re ideas that spread. Good God, “Meme” is in your site’s name for Chrissakes and you don’t even seem to know what it means.

We know the definition of a meme. It's right there in the FAQ. We confirm things that are actually memes and we "deadpool" shit that aren't. Viral advertising is a good example of what you're talking about. We don't confirm viral advertising, because we all know that it's a corporation's desperate cry for attention.

You think it’s funny and cute and SOO HIRARIOUS to spam memes out your collective butts, treating it like a game of who can recite the most thoroughly dead jokes. You’re like an enjoyment vampire, sucking spark and originality out of even the best jokes that just casually happen to pass around. And then you turn around and cry crocodile tears because it turns out that everyone despises you for being the little annoying 8-year-old anklebiter of the internet.

We don't spam memes. We have users that are, in two words, internet dumbasses. But I'm sure that's not who Anon's talking about. Anon's talking about the videos, likely. Anyhow, the DB is far from the videos. The videos are made to entertain. The DB is meant to be just what it is, a database. You know, with data. The videos present that information in a different manner. And regarding the "annoying… anklebiter" comment, that's pretty much not true. First, we don't give two shits that some people might not like us. Second, I know that Anon was exaggerating when he said that "everyone" despises us. Some people like us, some people don't. Big fucking deal.

Of course, it wouldn’t be so bad if you at least owned up to it, even just a little bit. Or if you at least, you know, supported any of the things you constantly run off at the mouth about.

We don't need to own up to anything. We're a fucking database. Does IMDb need to own up to anything? Fuck no. And what do we run our mouths off about anyways?

This was never about the money, although it is about you taking without giving. Any newfag who takes a note from you guys turns into one thing, and one thing only, and that is cancer, through and through. You are the nightmare of anyone who used to enjoy /b/, and what’s more, you have no intrinsic value.

We're not an alternative to any of the chans. Newfags who look at an entry and think to themselves, "OMG FUNAY I MAK PICTUR AND PUT ON 4CHIN," really need to take a longer look at the site. Within an hour, what they would be thinking is something along the lines of These images are better than anything I could ever make. They would then hide in their attic and cry themselves to sleep.

Encyclopedia Dramatica and whatport80 do such a better job it isn’t even funny. Why? Because it’s not full of “researchers,” it’s full of people who contribute and yearn for original content as badly as anyone who has seen the value of what anonymous posting and decentralized systems like the chans have to offer. “Boo hoo hoo it’s not work-friendly! It’s mean, I don’t like gore, I don’t like shock images!” There’s whatport80 if you REALLY need to know all about the dead in-jokes (which, by the way, are dead because YOU killed them, and don’t ever underestimate your own ability to thoroughly ruin a good meme).

Our site's not full of "researchers". That's a title given to users based on their number of "contributions" to the site. And, in all honesty, many of these "contributions" are meaningless, such as forum posts in the worthless "Just For Fun" section. Also, we appreciate ED as much as anyone, but this concentrates more on the meme side of things, not the fully detailed guide to everything Anonymous.

The Above Post 2: Electric Boogaloo

And when it finally comes time to pay the piper, when Anonymous finally rears what ugly head it has left after you’ve watered it down and passed it out to any old 12-year-old who happens to come by (literally. You’re the reason those Hot Topic t-shirts are still being sold. You literally undo the work of the people you study. Thanks a whole hell of a lot), you play dumb, as if you had no idea that the whole time you were spamming the shit out of our own culture, you were biting the hand that feeds.

Right. We're the reason the Hot Topic shirts are being sold. Bullshit. The reason Hot Topic is selling those abominations to society is based off their own personal choice. The information has been out on the Internet for a while. We don't undo any work. We examine it. But if we are spamming, at least provide some examples. I can't recall a time when any of our articles read anything along the lines of "OVER 9000 EPIC WIN". We know that's stupid as hell, and that's why we don't do it.

“But it’s not really 4chan that is attacking KYM, that’s maybe why. Anyway, to them, we are way more hipster than Tumblr, so again, why can’t our moe character and anonymous be lovers as well?”
I hope this was a joke, but if it wasn’t, it proves exactly why we hate you.

I as well hope it was a joke. This is an objective site, and interactivity with the source would throw off the objectivity of the article.

What, you think that 4chan and Tumblr decided to create a bunch of great OC of each other hopping in the sack because Tumblr is full of hipsters? That’s the reason Tumblr was raided in the first place! I shouldn’t have to explain the difference to you between a site which gives limp-dicked meme listings and a site which actually generates original content.

You don't need to explain why Tumblr was raided. We already know those things. The point of this site is not to generate original content. We don't provide "listings", we provide factual statements and research to explain the origin behind the memes. The variations and examples of the meme are enough to show how the meme "works." If someone need to be explained how, say, "Forever Alone" comics are made, that person's a complete fool.

For my part, I could hardly care any more. I’ve stated my peace. You’ve single-handedly helped thoroughly ruin even the idea of memes, more than any other single group, in a way you no doubt don’t realize yet. Enjoy your mudkips and your “epic failures” and your shoop da woops. And enjoy the memes that you can still leech out of the internet, without giving back a single thing. You’re the kinds of people who think that Anonymous stands for something, yet you somehow have no clue what the fuck it stands for. I hope you’re raided into oblivion.

Jesus fucking Christ. Since I've stated most of what I could possibly state already, saying more of that same stuff would be quite redundant. I shall provide a final statement and an analogy.

Know Your Meme's database is meant to provide information about memes. This information is not in any way directed towards Newfags or old people or Anonymous. It's just data that's out there combined into a single site. Encyclopedia Dramatica does what they do best. We do what we do. We are not the reason for cancer on 4chan or Hot Topic selling shirts. They made their own decisions about what they wanted to do. This leads into my analogy.

Think of Know Your Meme as a gun. You can use it to kill food, or in this case understand the origins of memes and look at images and videos. Alternatively, you can murder people, which in this case would be spamming old memes or killing new ones. However, we don't provide these guns to people. They pick and choose whatever they want out of the rack. You have people that have never shot anything in their lives, and people with a large collection. They can use it at their will.

But either way, we're just the fucking gun. We did not do anything to kill any memes. I'm not saying that we take the same stance on gun control, though. This is, after all, the Internet.

@Horseeater:

@Mike

And Dinner, you're on watch for your "your/you're" violation.

Grammar Nazi out…

@Brucker
That v Which.

Grammar Axis of Justice Out.

Touché.

Anon really doesn't have all the facts, they dont know the net benefit of this site or of 4chan's. with out those they don't know if 4chan is really "struggling to stay alive" or if KYM is rolling in it. All they're doing is making assumptions that they pray to be true.

Also cancer seeps in naturally, if /b/ had not had its decrease in levels of cluster fuck, any cancer that came from KYM would have left immediately. Cancer was only able to spread because it was able to survive in the less hostile environment. The way I see it, if you really want to get rid of cancer… you have to… raid your own site repeatedly to rid it of cancer.

I'm not gonna bother reading the whole wall of text, but this image came to mind when I read the first rant.

I dunno why though, half asleep so I don't know if it applies in this instance.

If I was the Anon that posted this, and I saw this thread, I'd laugh my balls off.

I can only hope that every post Anon makes on the KYM forums results in a thoughtful and interesting conversation. If Anon's trolling causes us to be a better KYM, are we then not trolling the trolls?

If they are trolling us they are doing a shitty job, none of us have gotten really upset, we really have just given them the middle finger we laugh in their face

Grammer Nazi fail. "It's" also functions as a possessive. It [the top sentance in the example] is correct, n00b.

Nope, that's incorrect.

And I used MS word to back me up on that one as well.

Geez, sounds like someone pissed in this guy's soup and he's taking it out on us.

@Maiku:
*sentence

MS word is run by dumbasses who say "classroom" is misspelled.

Well, it's better than openoffice!

@that-one-guy-who-feels-the-need-to-change-his-name-each-week (ramses)