The trouble with 4chan...

As strange as it sounds, I'm feeling like I'm betraying 4chan a little bit.

The place where all these stupid internet injokes start, the home of so much pron and depravity and VERY rude business...how could I feel that way? Yet, it is true. There is a sense of community, however immature and more than slightly perverse the inhabitants are.

So it makes me feel as if I'm somehow doing something sneaky and underhanded by posting things with the aim of getting a reaction, with the aim of making something evolve. I am forcing a meme. We're looking for a reaction. We're pretty much trolls. And you know what? The fact that we're doing this for a uni assignment just highlights that in my mind.

Oh, forgive us, /b/!

There we go. Why not break rules 1 & 2 while we're at it?

Anyway. It appears that we've been having a few problems with our endeavours to analyse the behaviour of 4chan. Call it stage fright, call it what you will, we just can't seem to get a thread going.
What's most likely to become an epic thread? Believe me, there's a reason newbies (newfags) are told to "LURK MOAR!"

A post that posts pron (as it is known), or asks for it, or a post that asks for something absurd, or posts something completely absurd. For instance, "you rage, you lose" threads. Post up something that is likely to make the /b/tards extremely angry. Watch the epicness ensue. In those cases, it's pretty much luck (and the awesomeness of what is posted) that results in the epicness of a thread...like we've been saying, it's your content, not your screen name or amount of friends that matters. At the same time, it's harder than it seems when that's what you WANT. It's easy as pie to post on an existing thread, but a bit more difficult to start something big, and to guess what people will be into on a particular night. You'd be surprised at the subtle differences on different nights. For instance, the night that 4chan started working after a week of being down, there was SO much porn, it was ridiculous. Actually ridiculous. As in, even more ridiculous than usual. And then, some nights there'll be more actual conversational threads (as opposed to JUST naughty bits).

If you hadn't gathered, we've pretty much given up on the idea of ever making a new meme grow. It's just impossible to force something like that...and besides, if we were to rely on luck, it'd be a small miracle for it to succeed. So, what instead?

The new(ish) game plan is to post an existing image macro, see if we get much in the way of a response, and especially some variations. Cause if you remember, the theme of this whole thing is "evolution", and seeing something evolve on 4chan would be an epic win of a most high degree.

It's just a matter of choosing something that's not only free of pr0n, but is also funny, and that hasn't been done to death. So many things to take into consideration...