The magical world of Ylilauta

This week's assignment was to search asynchronous online discussion forums. We chose the Finnish image board called Ylilauta. There are differents 'boards' for each topic ranging from vehicles, art and politics to religion, literature and video games. The site's most used board is, however, called 'random' which is NSFW (=not safe for work) due to not having any spesific topic. This means people can discuss there anything they wish and post images and videos of complitely random things, including pornography and other mature content excluding only illegal material. Because of its contents, Ylilauta is officially meant for ages 18 and up.

Ylilauta's point, as well as the infamous American counterpart 4chan's, is to be complitely anonymous. Posting doesn't require any kind of registration nor name although the user has the means to do so by creating an account and thus having an option to display a user name. The account also enables the use of advanced site options. Some of the options, however, require a donation for the site in the form of a 'gold account' before the user is able to use them. Other than that the site is free of all costs.

The language of the posts ranges from perfect grammar to a wide variety of different dialects and slangs. Because the site hasn't been designed for any spesific group of people different styles mix and clash on a daily basis. Most people don't care for grammar but instead write the way they would write chat or text messages. They use internet slang as well as memes such as 'yolo' and 'kek'. There's also the level of the site's own slang words such as 'nimihomo' (refers to users who display names), 'sami' (= a fat person), 'kisse' or 'kipsu' (=a cat), 'lammas' (refers to people who ”go with the crowd” and stick to mainstreaming) or 'rotta' (refers to people living only on social security).

The good old trollface.

Babylon's sheep meme.

Kukko Pärssinen meme, originally invented after this article.

Smileys aren't used as often as in mainstream social media. Most often ':D' can be seen in very different contexts, sometimes being even sarcastic. Instead of smileys users upload pictures to show their emotions. An ever expanding collection of old and new pictures are used to indicate emotional states, expressions and other things, depending on the topic and context. Most of the pictures are memes, some of them being commonly known old ones and some created by Ylilauta's own users. The so called trademark of Ylilauta is 'Spurdo', which has inspired users to customize old memes and other pictures, as well as create comics and even Youtube videos.

An example of Spurdo.

The average writing style is very offensive and rude, which seems to be the cause of anonymity. Users aren't in any way responsible for the things they say or the content they share unless illegal. This means it is easy and even socially acceptable to be rude towards other users and saying otherwise taboo opinions publicly. Bullying famous or otherwise known people is very common and has caused a number of police reports. Despite all the rudeness and 'butt hurt' people find the place very funny and even addictive. Ylilauta advertises itself as the most popular discussion forum in Finland, and it may as well be, at least among young men.

A fine example of an average Ylilauta discussion.