Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

Saviolo

(3,270 posts)
Mon May 1, 2017, 10:59 AM May 2017

An interested Twitter thread about the deplorables:

This tread crossed my Twitter feed recently, and I thought it was very interesting and somewhat chilling.

Please note, this is not my work, I've linked the original tweeter here. Also, I'll copy/paste the thread below the link to the lead tweet:




the entire chan phenomenon is one of the most terrifying things in history bc we bred a generation that doesn't understand "real"
it's all a great big Enders Game to them and none of them understand that they're piloting the actual space fighters
and it's like making a joke about making a joke, and you keep going "ok but seriously......NOT!!"
and it just never ends, every layer of potential sincerity is just another joke about human betrayal
and that's really a big part of this. A ton of young people got exposed to a really terrifying fact: everything only works bc of honesty
People trust you, they have to, we have nothing but the words of others to describe 99% of our world
So if you start lying you suddenly have tremendous power and realizing that just sends you reeling
And the earlier internet in particular was masturbatory in nature - forums tended to exist for their own sake
Being an isolated "community" 4ch [4chan] ended up the same - posting for the sake of posting, no real world goal
So of course everyone focused on the most remarkable toy they'd found, insincerity, and had no reason to ever let go
And it's such a devastating toy, it crept out of bounds of its own accord and they don't even realize it
Nothing's real to these people. They're just like us all in one respect: many of us can't accept that we're the grownups now
Like we all expected there to be a big difference between being kids and being adults and there isn't
So when I go to work I still feel a little bit like it's not a "real" job, as in, I feel like it's all just playing at a real job
But no, I'm in exactly the same position as anyone else. I am a Person and a Citizen and a Worker, this is real, not theoretical
But none of them feel that. They're all trapped in that school-days mindset where everything is still just practice for the real world
But their weapons are real and they have no idea they're killing actual people with them. I haven't the faintest idea how to fix it.
They're cultists. Indoctrinated to an incredibly perverted view of reality and all attempts at communication are slotted into the fantasy
Any description of life outside the cult gets a "oh, Father told me about you, he said God would send Tricksters"
And that circular reasoning feeds back into itself, impenetrable, perfectly smooth and unbroken. What the fuck do we do?


And this dovetails amazingly with this article from Medium:
Link to article

Around 2005 or so a strange link started showing up in my old webcomic’s referral logs. This new site I didn’t understand. It was a bulletin board, but its system of navigation was opaque. Counter intuitively, you had to hit “reply” to read a thread. Moreover, the content was bizarre nonsense.

The site, if you hadn’t guessed, was 4chan.org. It was an offshoot of a different message board which I also knew from my referral logs, “Something Awful”, at the time, an online community of a few hundred nerds who liked comics, video games, and well, nerds things. But unlike boards with similar content, Something Awful skewed toward dark jokes. I had an account at Something Awful, which I used sometimes to post in threads about my comic.

4chan had been created by a 15 year old Something Awful user named Christopher Poole (whose 4chan mod name was “m00t”). Poole had adapted a type of Japanese bulletin board software which was difficult to understand at first, but once learned, was far more fun to post in than the traditional American format used by S.A., as a result the site became popular very quickly.

These days, 4chan appears in the news almost weekly. This past week, there were riots at Berkeley in the wake of the scheduled lecture by their most prominent supporter, Milo Yiannopoulos. The week before that neo-Nazi Richard Spencer pointed to his 4chan inspired Pepe the Frog pin, about to explain the significance when an anti-fascist protester punched him in the face. The week before that, 4chan claimed (falsely) it had fabricated the so called Trump “Kompromat”. And the week before that, in the wake of the fire at Ghost Ship, 4chan decided to make war on “liberal safe spaces” and DIY venues across the country.

2 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
An interested Twitter thread about the deplorables: (Original Post) Saviolo May 2017 OP
i think yes and no. mopinko May 2017 #1
That poll might be missing the forest for the trees Saviolo May 2017 #2

mopinko

(69,806 posts)
1. i think yes and no.
Mon May 1, 2017, 11:16 AM
May 2017

re 4chan, yes. a bigger hive of scum and villainy you will never find. and they are emboldened in a big way.

the rest, tho, is somewhat belied by the polling numbers. yesterday msnbc had a poll about cheeto's chances of passing any significant legislation. perhaps this is not the best poll to point to, but among younger people it was a big fat no.
perhaps what they were expressing was just cynicism at the system.
but i think the wave of young people for bernie means that they see through a lot of bullshit. maybe what they got was a better understanding of how complex things are, and how much can be unseen.

or maybe i am just too old to get it.

Saviolo

(3,270 posts)
2. That poll might be missing the forest for the trees
Mon May 1, 2017, 11:49 AM
May 2017

What does "significant legislation" mean?

It's a mystery. Also, Trump's not likely to get any of his pet projects through the Congress or the Senate, but already irreparable damage has been done. The GOP have been waiting for a candidate like Trump for a long time. An empty suit that they can lead wherever they want just by flattering him. They've put an EPA hater in charge of the EPA, a young extremely right-wing judge on SCOTUS, and are already well on their way to dismantling HUD and Dept. of Education. All of that without any legislation being passed.

There was a wave of racism and white nationalism that Trump rode to success. Of course there were (countless!!) other factors involved, but these young people on the chan boards decided to come out and support their High Kek! because he embodies the lack of substance and truth by which they define their whole aesthetic. They openly use racist and nazi symbols and iconography, but "Oh, I'm not actually racist, I'm just acting super super racist to make you THINK I'm racist, I fooled you! Also, isn't this, like SUPER racist?!? HAHA!! Fooled you again!"

As that Twitter thread said, these young adults are working with live ammo, and they don't even realize it. Their LULZ are leading to people dying, and they think it's all a great big game.

Latest Discussions»General Discussion»An interested Twitter thr...