Aside from my nervous rambling, the following is basically the full text of my presentation in class, yesterday. If you have questions, comments, suggestions, criticisms...feel free to post them! Thanks!
1. /b/ seems a realm almost entirely devoted to the playful; very little here should ever be taken seriously, even when it seems venemous in nature (i.e. "die in a fire"). Aside from merely sharing images that are pornographic, disturbing, or both, they play games with each other as well (such as Boxxy, or instances where a picture of a young woman is posted, and other posters are challenged, "If you fall in love, you lose"). The rare instances of harmful intent come when someone becomes angry (or bored) enough to hack someone's identity, a process they call being "doxed." The person who gets doxed is then subject to harassment or worse by those who come across the posted personal information. Sometimes, it's a form of vigilante justice (as with the teenager Kenny Glenn, who tortured his cat); sometimes, they get the wrong person (such as John Lawson).
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/anonymous-hac-1.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIsKqhn6TVs
2. WWP, while devoted to the very serious task of protesting the Church of Scientology, has a playful side, and its roots in /b/ are evident in the way they converse; this place has playful elements as well.
3. Either site is subject to constant change; what is funny one day is old news the next. As one person in WWP told me, if I'm going to study them, I need to be on the ball - things change a lot, sometimes daily.
4. Despite being playful, even in its venom, there are those within /b/ who do occasionally reach out to others, and receive seemingly serious replies with helpful intent. We see this in cases such as the one I posted, where the young man was seeking help with his relationship, and threatening suicide. There were many who seemed to genuinely want to help him pull himself together, even though there were a few who expressed their disinterest in a seemingly venomous way; I would speculate that there was no actual ill-will intended, but rather, these posts expressed the notion, "I'm unwilling to take this or anything else seriously."
5. Despite being the "friendlier" of the two places, WWP is often subject to flaming when a difference of opinion occurs; I have seen on several occasions rather heated discussions, and yet, ultimately, I believe very little of it was taken seriously, even when one or more participant in the "argument" was kicked from the channel.
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