4chan's new /soc/ board seems to be making /b/ slightly less cancerous

A couple of months ago, in a rare "moot thread," 4chan founder Christopher Poole indicated that he was open to the suggestion of creating a "social" board in order to rid its random board -- or /b/, the (very NSFW) anon hub commonly known as "the asshole of the internet" -- of some of the stupider teenybopper threads that tend to clog up the board, a phenomenon often referred to as "the cancer." If you know /b/, you know that curing the cancer is a tall order; nevertheless, Poole debuted /soc/ on Sunday -- and surprisingly, it seems to be working.

In an admin post at the top of the board, Poole (better known by his anon handle "moot") laid out the rules and reasoning thus:

this board was created to get the fifty million "HURR DURR RATE ME / FUCK SMOKE FIGHT / AM I PRETTY /b/????????" etc threads out of /b/. it isn't a camwhore/porn dump board, nor is it /r9k2/. keep the baww threads out of here.

use this board to do the rate-me threads, local meetups, report in, etc. keep it out of /b/.

Makes sense, but it's still a sudden and unlikely move for moot, for a couple of reasons. One, moot is not known for his propensity for making changes to his site; really, one of the beautiful things about 4chan is its still based on a platform virtually unchanged since 1997 -- clean, simple, easy. Plus, /b/ tends to hate change anyway, as evidenced by continued bitching about captcha. Two, /b/ is incredibly cancer-ridden, and that's pretty much unavoidable -- precisely because of the other beautiful thing about it, which is that it's heavily trafficked; the sheer amount of posts makes it impossible to keep up with.

Nevertheless, whether through an uber-rare instance of anon cooperation with anything or through increased administrative vigilance, the /soc/ board so far has done exactly what it's meant to do. Since Sunday, the board has been basically absent of rate-me threads and other such derpery. Which does make /b/ a somewhat more pleasant place to be, if you can call /b/ pleasant in any sense of that word.

Which kind of brings us to our last point, which is just that: When it comes to /b/, getting rid of "do you leik me" threads is kind of like dumping a bucket of bleach into a kiddie pool full of shit -- it's maybe somewhat more sterile, but that doesn't make it any less awful.

That said, in b4 "rulez 1 and 2," assholes.