4Chaneration, or the Proof for Postmodernism

At the height of postmodern hubris, the idea that anything is inherently sacred or beautiful was traded in for the idea that anything can be made sacred and beautiful. Derrida coined a key phrase of postmodernism that reflects this idea: "The center cannot hold." He is saying, essentially, that the idea of a stability, the idea of a  constant is really a human construct. Whenever we think we find a center, we are constantly confronted with the fact that it is really not the center. This has been happening throughout time. One only has to look at human history's ideas about the earth's relationship to the sun and the universe to understand what Derrida means, but it extends to all areas of life. Derrida's ideas challenged the literary cannon, or center of literature, among other artistic cannons. If we are constantly finding that there are no centers, how could we say that people like Hemingway and Shakespeare are the "centers" of good literature? Derrida said that we can't. Everything has the potential to be art, even things that seem to depart completely from the "center."

A lot of people were seriously disturbed by this because if there is no center, then there is no standard by which to judge anything. Other people embraced the idea wholeheartedly, and one only needs to look at the hive mind known as 4chan to understand what I mean. 4chan, especially their random board /b/, is an image board filled with racists, drug addicts, pedophiles, sexists... basically every horrible human being you can think of has a home at 4chan. At the same time, they are most likely responsible for the picture that made you LOL before finding this page. For all the gore and pornography and hate, 4chan's collective hive mind is a genius. When nothing is sacred, everything has the potential to become a laugh, and that's exactly what we need in a world as fucked as ours. As a result of essentially saying "not a single fuck  was given" with regards to the "center," 4chan has been able to transform the most unlikely stories and pictures into pure win, filling my brain  and teh internets with billions and billions of fuck.