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stay woke (quokk.au)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/peoplemastodon
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[–] 11 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (21 children)

Source? Like, I would love for this to be true. But how do we know it's true? Surely if it's so obvious it should be easy to provide one specific piece of evidence, rather than just gesturing broadly at the world and saying "it should be obvious".

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  • [–] 14 points 9 months ago

    Epstein had a conversation with m00t, and the same day, 4chan put out /pol, the board that infected the rest of the site with the right-wing sentiment it's currently known for, in addition to being ground zero for basically all conservative neo-nazi culture today.

    This among many other things.

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  • [–] 10 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    In this thread, I found the Epsteinfta.com link to search the epstein files for text. I know Steve Bannon is one of the main architects behind right wing media strategy. I know people who are black are a common distraction in the USA, so I searched "Bannon" "blacks", using "blacks" here because that's how racists refer to people who are black.

    The very first hit is Steve Bannon discussing with someone how to improve Trump's image in 2018 by comparing him to Obama.

    The second result is a conversation on how to gain support by "wearing the name calling as a badge of honor". The name calling here being labeled "racist".

    This took 5 minutes and some brainpower.

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago* (1 child)

    Thanks for actually giving evidence, but to your point, if it only took five minutes and some brain power, then I would expect that the people making the claim in the first place should have been the ones to do it, since the burden of proof was on them. It's pretty annoying to act like it should be my responsibility to put the right search terms into that huge library of files, especially since there are plenty of other reasonable things that I might have searched while trying to find something to justify this anti-woke claim that maybe wouldn't have led to the same results as the one that you put in.

    I don't think that it's not much to ask that if people want to make a claim that they should at least provide the actual source for it, rather than just gesturing to a million files and saying "it's in there, find it, and if you don't want to find it, you're a piece of shit".

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    You know what, that's a fair take. I suppose I've been keeping up with this stuff more than the average bear, so connections that may seem obvious to me may not be to people who don't have that same knowledge base.

    I suppose the annoyed feeling comes from folks who have been keeping up with this stuff who feel like they have to keep proving that grifters like Steve Bannon are using words as weapons to gain power instead of standing by anything. Proof of right wing grifters being fascists keeps popping up, so it feels like playing whack a mole whenever someone asks for proof.

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago (15 children)

    I believe this post, like many others are correlating the creation of the /pol/ board on 4chan after moot had a conversation with Epstein or something.

    Acting like /pol/ and 4chan is solely responsible for the entire situation is just a vapid braindead take, much less the idea that a political board on a popular forum hangout is some meniacal master plan...

    Obviously all this Epstein shit is heinous af, but acting like he's the origin of all evil just fucking hilarious "this is your brain on religion" logic. That being said, Epstein would definitely make a good "Satan's avatar" in a story...

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago* (14 children)

    Firstly, what do you mean solely responsible, secondly, groypers, pepe the frog, wojaks, incels, the proud boys, whoever was running Ron Desantis' media accounts and throwing sonnenrads behind his head in promotional videos, and many people currently working for Trump right now have roots in 4chan.

    Frankly, I think you're getting a bit defensive.

    [edit] Oh, I always forget about QAnon. That's like the first one I should say. The capital riot was QAnon. That's 4chan, man.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (7 children)

    Incels didn't originate with 4chan, 4chan just gave them a more visible home than they had previously.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (6 children)

    Culturally? They absolutely did.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (5 children)

    By that logic nearly everything on the internet came from 4chan. Like, substantial parts of internet culture actually started on 4chan and bled outwards from there when the channers interacted with normies.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (4 children)

    I don't understand what you're saying. "Substantial parts of internet culture started on 4chan and bled outwards," yes, this is what I'm suggesting.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (3 children)

    Any definition in which incels originate from 4chan is so broad as to be meaningless. Basically every single part of Internet culture that didn't exist prior to 2003 or became more prevalent after 2003 would also originate from 4chan. All of it.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (2 children)

    I have no idea what you're talking about, man.

    4chan is (or was; relevancy) a place that fosters extremely negative and nihilistic views about the world and the self because it makes people much easier fruit to pluck for conservative aims. This includes incels. I have no idea what you're upset with me about.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

    If something that had already existed for 6 years when 4chan first opened can be said to originate from 4chan, then what can't? Hell, large portions of internet culture as you know it for good or for ill were actually born out of the chaos of /b/, but your metric for "originating from 4chan" seems to be "do I think of it as negative and/or nihilistic, if yes then it must have originated from 4chan" rather than anything about where something actually started from.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    Do you have a personal attachment to this issue or something?

    First of all, you could have just told me about Alana. Whatever, now I know about her, that's cool.

    Secondly, let's look at the terminology associated with incels for a second: chad, stacy, roastie, blue/red/black pill, foid, sexual market value, The Wall, mogging, lookism, looksmaxxing, bone smash theory, high T, soyboy, soyciety, beta-bux, beta orbiter, MGTOW, AWALT, branch-swinger, cock carousel, hypergamy, just-be-white, lay down and rot, ropefuel, hERo

    Now, I recognize that if we're going back to 1997, these will seem a bit anacronistic, but do you mean to tell me that Alana's website, a romantic struggle support group that she built "welcoming all genders," really has cultural ties to any of those terms above? That her website was the incubator for extremely pedophilic ideas such as "roastie" and "The Wall" are? I find that very hard to believe. But please, inform me.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    And? 4chan was a shithole. I don't know why I'd be defensive over it.

    I just thinking blaming edgelord neckbeards with terminal online syndrome for the current political landscape is a cop-out and naive at BEST.

    If that's a defensive position to take of 4chan your bar is extremely low.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 child)

    There is a lot of blame to go around but 4ch was the face of it and the place to foment, it's not a cop-out to suggest that in the same capacity GamerGate was the direct project of Steve Bannon there is a degree of "culture-bending" by people who see the culture's stress points. The scars go back to the foundation of the country sure, but people actively work to keep the wounds open and weeping. How do they do that? Were they supposed to take power through one-off wing nuts like Timothy McVeigh, Randy Weaver, William Luther Pierce? Those guys could be incendiary but they couldn't penetrate the culture itself, the right had to come up with a way to sell their shit in the 21st century. 4chan brought them all onto the information superhighway, merging the culture of Something Awful, Stormfront, and every contrian-filled anime BBS board. It doesn't all trace back to Epstein but it does all trace back to class war, white supremacy, sex trafficking, and patriarchal chauvanism, and these were the tools available to them.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    I think I agree with everything you said except that 4chan was the face of it. Even in the digital realm alone, there are far larger and far more toxic avenues, and one of the largest is staring at most everyone in the face every day. Facebook has been far worse imo than 4chan could ever dream to be, for the very same reasons 4chan is condemned.

    I'll concede that could be my subjective viewpoint tho based on my interactions with both of them.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (2 children)

    A cop-out from what?

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Appropriately attributing blame to those who perpetuate it. It is possible that 4chan was a useful tool, but 4chan itself is hardly invested it keeping everyone divided to pull people away from actual issues.

    They also pale in comparison to the influence political leaders, mass media, and billionaires have.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    But the internet is mass media.

    Billionaires that want to influence people find them in places like Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and yes, 4chan.

    The fact that 4chan is a wild west, rules-less zone is why nazis congregate there the most (or used to, Twitter is basically rules-less now), and that's why it was able to operate as a cultural think-tank.

    I take it back, I don't think you're defensive, I think you just find the idea of funny green frogs unraveling democracy too embarassing to consider.

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