I am now going to try and describe why /b/ on 4chan is kind of like my vision of what magic is in general fantasy.
In specific fantasy there are tons of rules and systems and lessons and morals that shape how the magic works, and there are specific ways that people have discovered how to work the magics.
However it is my belief that in general fantasy(or perhaps my personal fantasy universe) magic is a primeval existence and how it operates it completely unknown, and it follows with no loyalty any morals or ethics or patterns except weird obscure counterintuitive ones that are most often transient and fickle.
I think in general fantasy anybody could work magic, but in specific fantasy there are limits and rules and shit.
And a magic worker in this general fantasy is just some guy who has been playing around with magic for a while, has got some experience, and has only a little better of an idea about doing what to the magic will cause what to happen.
Which means that sometimes he will do something and cause what he wants to happen, and other times it may cause something totally unexpected, or he could get cursed or a whole slew of weird ass other shit that happens to people who mess around with a force of unlimited possiblity.
The most powerful magic workers would just be those people who have learned very well the mood and personality of magic in general, and also learned how the peculuraties of various situation might influence the proclivities of the magic in any given situation. These would probably be really weird people because essentially they have been learning the chaotic personality of the strange creature(s) that is magic itself.
But back to the analogy.
./b/ on 4chan is an image board. They post images and text messages, there are 10 pages, i'm not sure how many threads can be on a page or how long it can be. On /b/ there are no rules except not child porn. So people post whatever they want. And because of this /b/ kind of has ADD. People will post pictures of cats with cute captions, porn, weird pictures, funny pictures, anything you can think of. But something that has developed on /b/, entirely on its own, is this kind of life of its own. In a sense /b/ lives. There are bored wacko's and sicko's and random people who make up /b/, and what makes them want to post images and do what they do, I am not entirely sure, but they do, and various behaviors on /b/ have developed as a consequence.
For one thing, /b/ is a natural environment for the production of internet culture. The culture is produced through natural selection of small cultural ideas called memes. Because of the social dynamics of /b/ itself, people are compelled to post what they consider amusing snippits of cultural items, including but not limited to images, sounds, phrases, situations, themes, and motifs. Based on peoples appreciation of these snippits, they get repeated. Thus interesting snippits live on, and uninteresting snippits die off. So /b/ is a breeding ground for memes. But this is not all that happens on /b/. /b/ has an illustrious history. The memes have created their own running jokes and themes over time. And the rules of these jokes and themes are known officially to no one. The social rules themselves develop on their own just from basic social interactions. The rules are implied to the newcomers and due to the nature of information and history of /b/, it is impossible to know more than just that implication.
And at this point /b/ is so developed with history and running jokes and the fast paced dynamics of it, and such that newcomers have no way of knowing what the history is, what the rules are, or when or how new rules and history get made leaving them only with the power to observe and guess. So /b/ has no rules, they make up new rules that don't have any official power all the time and no single mind controls the development of the rules, and the only thing that causes sensical reaction to whatever you post is whatever the people browsing feel like at the time.
So I kind of see /b/, composed of all the people who know all the history, and have learned to behave in this way, as chaotic and strange and whimsical and kind of like how I imagine magic behaves. And to post on /b/ or interact with /b/ is as an unknowable venture as a magic worker poking around at magic itself.
What is the point? There is none, i just think it is an interesting parallel.
