4chan-favorite Enclopedia Dramatica has cleaned up the website and been reborn as Oh Internet. Gone are the porn GIFs and sex chat pop-ups, replaced with banner ads for Big Kahuna Reef from Amazon.com, as well as a frequently updated blog. 4chan founder Christopher Poole, also known as M00t, has recently come out with a safe-for-work meme-generating website called Canvas.
Have they grown up? Is this the equivalent of a fancy pullover and Chinos with no socks?
Encyclopedia Dramatica has been regarded as one of the few resources which effectively chronicles the dark side of internet subculture, and of course 4chan has provided the impetus for many of the internet’s memes. Encylopedia Dramatica wasn’t a site that was typically comfortable for most to surf and featured all flavors of bigotry and anarchism — making them the frequent subject of attack.
ED founder Sherrod DeGrippo recently told Geekosystem, “ Shock for shock’s sake is old at this point and we’re looking to the future and how things are evolving…when you put user experience first the language becomes highly important and that’s what we’ve done.” She cites the change to Oh Internet as spurred by the implementation of Semantic mediawiki, the stagnant seven years with no change, the length of the domain name and how frustrating it is to work on a NSFW site.
Fans fear that ED may be selling out, just like Know Your Meme which was purchased by Cheezburger Networks. The anonymous blob of hate expressed their disappointment by bombing the Oh Internet facebook with a pure stream of everything that made Dramatica special. If you belong to the anti-evolutionary group, there are already many mirrors of the old site because, as you know, the internet will never forgive or forget.
