Rules of the Internet
The unofficial rules governing internet behavior and culture according to 4chan
Status Indicator
The status indicator reflects the current state of the work: - Abandoned: Work that has been discontinued - Notes: Initial collections of thoughts and references - Draft: Early structured version with a central thesis - In Progress: Well-developed work actively being refined - Finished: Completed work with no planned major changes This helps readers understand the maturity and completeness of the content.
Confidence Rating
The confidence tag expresses how well-supported the content is, or how likely its overall ideas are right. This uses a scale from "impossible" to "certain", based on the Kesselman List of Estimative Words: 1. "certain" 2. "highly likely" 3. "likely" 4. "possible" 5. "unlikely" 6. "highly unlikely" 7. "remote" 8. "impossible" Even ideas that seem unlikely may be worth exploring if their potential impact is significant enough.
Importance Rating
The importance rating distinguishes between trivial topics and those which might change your life. Using a scale from 0-10, content is ranked based on its potential impact on: - the reader - the intended audience - the world at large For example, topics about fundamental research or transformative technologies would rank 9-10, while personal reflections or minor experiments might rank 0-1.
| Rule # | Rule | Info |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Don't fuck with cats. | |
| 1 | You don't talk about /b/. | |
| 2 | You DON'T talk about /b/. | |
| 3 | We are Anonymous. | |
| 4 | We are legion. | |
| 5 | We do not forgive, we do not forget. | |
| 6 | Anonymous can be a horrible, senseless, uncaring monster. | |
| 7 | Anonymous is still able to deliver. | |
| 8 | There are no real rules about posting. | |
| 9 | There are no real rules about moderation either — enjoy your ban. | |
| 10 | /b/ is not your personal army. | |
| 11 | No matter how much you love debating, keep in mind that no one on the internet debates. Instead they mock your intelligence as well as your parents. | |
| 12 | Anything you say can and will be used against you. | |
| 13 | Anything you say can and will be turned into something else. | |
| 14 | Do not argue with trolls—it means they win. | |
| 15 | The harder you try, the harder you will fail. | |
| 16 | If you fail in epic proportions, it may just become a winning failure. | |
| 17 | Every win fails eventually. | |
| 18 | Everything that can be labelled can be hated. | |
| 19 | The more you hate it, the stronger it gets. | |
| 20 | Nothing is to be taken seriously. | |
| 21 | Original content is original only for a few seconds before it's no longer original. | |
| 22 | Copypasta is made to ruin every last bit of originality. | |
| 23 | Copypasta is made to ruin every last bit of originality. | |
| 24 | Every post is always a repost of a repost. | |
| 25 | Relation to the original topic decreases with every single post. | |
| 26 | Any topic can be easily turned into something totally unrelated. | |
| 27 | Always question a person's sexual preferences without any real reason. | |
| 28 | Always question a person's gender - just in case it's really a man. | |
| 29 | On the internet men are men, women are also men, and kids are undercover FBI agents. | |
| 30 | Girls do not exist on the internet. | |
| 31 | Tits or GTFO—the choice is yours. | |
| 32 | You must have pictures to prove your statements/Anything can be explained with a picture. | |
| 33 | Lurk more—it's never enough. | |
| 34 | If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions. | |
| 35 | If there is no porn of it, porn will be made of it. | |
| 36 | No matter how fucked up it is, there is always worse than what you just saw. | |
| 37 | You cannot divide by zero (just because the calculator says so). | |
| 38 | No real limits of any kind apply here—not even the sky. | |
| 39 | CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL. | |
| 40 | EVEN WITH CRUISE CONTROL YOU STILL HAVE TO STEER | |
| 41 | Desu isn't funny. Seriously guys. It's worse than Chuck Norris jokes. | |
| 42 | Nothing Is Sacred. | |
| 43 | The more beautiful and pure a thing is—the more satisfying it is to corrupt it. | |
| 44 | If it exists, there is a version of it for your fandom... and it has a wiki and possibly a tabletop version with a theme song performed by a Vocaloid. | |
| 45 | When one sees a lion, one must get in the car. | |
| 46 | The internet is SERIOUS FUCKING BUSINESS. | |
| 47 | The pool is always closed. | |
| 48 | The only good hentai is Yuri, that's how the internet works. Only exception may be Vanilla. | |
| 49 | No matter what it is, it is somebody's fetish. |