Anonymous imageboards were always this way, they just weren't able to articulate their particular strains of fascism outside of their own interests in anime and video games. They were always full of pedophiles and racists, I remember the type of stuff they'd discuss back in like 2005. I used to moderate one of the chan offshoot IRC channels and the users there would frequently and openly talk about their desires for genocide, largely in a edgy teenager kind of way, but in retrospect they definitely meant it in a racist way.
There is some kind of formula of very isolated people, people who need to access Tor nodes, anime fans, and some kind of sniff of libertarianism that will just coalesce into an ideological fascist over time if unchecked. Chan boards are full of those types and many had already had their brains melted on BBS's or usenet groups or somethingawful or seedy IRC channels.
Not a chan expert but my impression is the awfulness used to be more unfocused and blasted out in a bunch of horrible misanthropic directions, and they didn't have a clear program for it
As time went that stream was eventually focused into a Nazi laser
This is pretty much what happened. In the late 00’s stormfront infiltrated the mod team and used the site’s mostly invisible moderation to platform nazi shit while shutting down counterarguments and opposing viewpoints, with predictable results.
It was always horrible, but it used to be horrible in nonspecific and often intentionally contradictory ways. Now it’s horrible in a small number of very specific and coherent ways.
I remember reading about Stormfront specifically targeting the chans, sensing that their alienated, socially maladjusted audience could be receptive to their message
Yep. I feel it’s also important to recognize the role Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica played in defining the science of manipulating maladjusted young men when they astroturfed gamergate into existence. Really wrote the playbook for turning 4chan into your personal army.
Fuck, Chanology was probably an op too, a test run for everything after.
Was that the anti-Scientology thing? I kinda thought that just took off because it was easy feel good activism that made edgy nerds feel important
IIRC many 4channers thought that and the other """"good""""" Anonymous stunts were deeply cringe and damaged their reputation as tough guys that call each other slurs while bullying kids into suicide and watching snuff videos on their cartoon image board
Yeah, it was, and yeah, they did. Given everything that has transpired since I’m coming around to the idea that it was an op. 4chan, without permanent identity or user reputation, was an ideal testbed for mass social manipulation on a scale unimaginable in the 1960’s and 70’s.
Chanology as a movement wasn’t very successful, but as a proof of concept it was incredible. To get more out of the next thing, they pushed the community to become more receptive to ideological messaging, then re-ran the experiment (gamergate). Gamergate was a huge success, and now we see the same tactics repeated over and over again across the internet. Take a vitriolic and alienated community, radicalize them, use their newfound ideology to make them pick up a cause and fight for it.
It was weev and his whole crew, wasn't it? I distinctly remember a turning point on the chans where they hated everyone in a south park misanthrope kind of way to praising weev and hating everyone in a klan sort of way.
I wouldn’t be surprised, but weev was never on my radar. He was just a weird and shitty figure popping up in the periphery from time to time, which I think is how he wanted it.
I feel like it depends on the board. I used to browse /mu/ in 2010 and by 2017 the board went from being relatively chill to being filled with screeching fascists.
I remember /k/ and obviously /pol/ (or /new/ ) always being Naziified.....that stuff was always there, it just wasn't as focused or complete in it's domination. I mean people would unironically post the Communist Manifesto on /fa/
Now you can't escape it anywhere on the site, and pretty much everyone who still uses the site at this point is some flavor of right wing
I used to moderate one of the chan offshoot IRC channels and the users there would frequently and openly talk about their desires for genocide, largely in a edgy teenager kind of way, but in retrospect they definitely meant it in a racist way.
Christ, I remember people going full blown "Glass the Desert!" back in 2003. Admittedly, that was back when hating Muslims was in vogue and therefore politically acceptable.
What's become socially unacceptable today isn't so much the anti-semitism (plenty of that among Evangelicals since forever) or the fascism (plenty of that since forever in the US) but the anti-Americanism. Adoption of the German fascist flag over the Stars And Bars is relatively new. Defense of foreign-style fascism - whether it embracing Ukranian ultra-nationalists or Erdogan's Turks / Assad's Alloyettes or trying to resurrect Mussolini or Franco or trying to Stan Le Penn or whatever - is very peculiar to this political moment.
There is some kind of formula of very isolated people, people who need to access Tor nodes, anime fans, and some kind of sniff of libertarianism that will just coalesce into an ideological fascist over time if unchecked. Chan boards are full of those types and many had already had their brains melted on BBS’s or usenet groups or somethingawful or seedy IRC channels.
I get the sense that the overwhelming majority of these people are just NEETs. And what's being tapped into isn't any kind of real militarism. Its just angry young people reaching out for anything to grab onto.
Right-Wing Media is heavily financed and distributed. Right-Wing themes dominate video games and social media. This is just what's on offer, so its the slop people consume. And it influences them accordingly.
But it doesn't have to be this way. It isn't simply "the internet melts your brain" so much as it is "the folks running the internet (:cia: ) have filled it with brain worms".
No idea, because I was deep into anime and Touhou and I'm also here. A whole bunch of left Twitter has anime profile pictures too. My impression is the libertarianism might be key, because it means you're just enough into politics to ask questions but not quite coherent enough to know what you're talking about, so you'll eventually fall into being a commie or a fascist depending on other random stuff in your life. I was all that nerd stuff too except the libertarian part, so that's my bias
Yeah that's probably more likely, the whole "I just want to be left alone" thing had its appeal but I was always like "yeah but also, having to work to not-starve is the opposite of being left alone"
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Anonymous imageboards were always this way, they just weren't able to articulate their particular strains of fascism outside of their own interests in anime and video games. They were always full of pedophiles and racists, I remember the type of stuff they'd discuss back in like 2005. I used to moderate one of the chan offshoot IRC channels and the users there would frequently and openly talk about their desires for genocide, largely in a edgy teenager kind of way, but in retrospect they definitely meant it in a racist way.
There is some kind of formula of very isolated people, people who need to access Tor nodes, anime fans, and some kind of sniff of libertarianism that will just coalesce into an ideological fascist over time if unchecked. Chan boards are full of those types and many had already had their brains melted on BBS's or usenet groups or somethingawful or seedy IRC channels.
deleted by creator
Not a chan expert but my impression is the awfulness used to be more unfocused and blasted out in a bunch of horrible misanthropic directions, and they didn't have a clear program for it
As time went that stream was eventually focused into a Nazi laser
This is pretty much what happened. In the late 00’s stormfront infiltrated the mod team and used the site’s mostly invisible moderation to platform nazi shit while shutting down counterarguments and opposing viewpoints, with predictable results.
It was always horrible, but it used to be horrible in nonspecific and often intentionally contradictory ways. Now it’s horrible in a small number of very specific and coherent ways.
I remember reading about Stormfront specifically targeting the chans, sensing that their alienated, socially maladjusted audience could be receptive to their message
Yep. I feel it’s also important to recognize the role Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica played in defining the science of manipulating maladjusted young men when they astroturfed gamergate into existence. Really wrote the playbook for turning 4chan into your personal army.
Fuck, Chanology was probably an op too, a test run for everything after.
Was that the anti-Scientology thing? I kinda thought that just took off because it was easy feel good activism that made edgy nerds feel important
IIRC many 4channers thought that and the other """"good""""" Anonymous stunts were deeply cringe and damaged their reputation as tough guys that call each other slurs while bullying kids into suicide and watching snuff videos on their cartoon image board
Yeah, it was, and yeah, they did. Given everything that has transpired since I’m coming around to the idea that it was an op. 4chan, without permanent identity or user reputation, was an ideal testbed for mass social manipulation on a scale unimaginable in the 1960’s and 70’s.
Chanology as a movement wasn’t very successful, but as a proof of concept it was incredible. To get more out of the next thing, they pushed the community to become more receptive to ideological messaging, then re-ran the experiment (gamergate). Gamergate was a huge success, and now we see the same tactics repeated over and over again across the internet. Take a vitriolic and alienated community, radicalize them, use their newfound ideology to make them pick up a cause and fight for it.
It was weev and his whole crew, wasn't it? I distinctly remember a turning point on the chans where they hated everyone in a south park misanthrope kind of way to praising weev and hating everyone in a klan sort of way.
I wouldn’t be surprised, but weev was never on my radar. He was just a weird and shitty figure popping up in the periphery from time to time, which I think is how he wanted it.
I feel like it depends on the board. I used to browse /mu/ in 2010 and by 2017 the board went from being relatively chill to being filled with screeching fascists.
I remember /k/ and obviously /pol/ (or /new/ ) always being Naziified.....that stuff was always there, it just wasn't as focused or complete in it's domination. I mean people would unironically post the Communist Manifesto on /fa/
Now you can't escape it anywhere on the site, and pretty much everyone who still uses the site at this point is some flavor of right wing
Christ, I remember people going full blown "Glass the Desert!" back in 2003. Admittedly, that was back when hating Muslims was in vogue and therefore politically acceptable.
What's become socially unacceptable today isn't so much the anti-semitism (plenty of that among Evangelicals since forever) or the fascism (plenty of that since forever in the US) but the anti-Americanism. Adoption of the German fascist flag over the Stars And Bars is relatively new. Defense of foreign-style fascism - whether it embracing Ukranian ultra-nationalists or Erdogan's Turks / Assad's Alloyettes or trying to resurrect Mussolini or Franco or trying to Stan Le Penn or whatever - is very peculiar to this political moment.
I get the sense that the overwhelming majority of these people are just NEETs. And what's being tapped into isn't any kind of real militarism. Its just angry young people reaching out for anything to grab onto.
Right-Wing Media is heavily financed and distributed. Right-Wing themes dominate video games and social media. This is just what's on offer, so its the slop people consume. And it influences them accordingly.
But it doesn't have to be this way. It isn't simply "the internet melts your brain" so much as it is "the folks running the internet (:cia: ) have filled it with brain worms".
I think the "anime fan" is the key, because I was the rest of those and turned into a commie.
No idea, because I was deep into anime and Touhou and I'm also here. A whole bunch of left Twitter has anime profile pictures too. My impression is the libertarianism might be key, because it means you're just enough into politics to ask questions but not quite coherent enough to know what you're talking about, so you'll eventually fall into being a commie or a fascist depending on other random stuff in your life. I was all that nerd stuff too except the libertarian part, so that's my bias
Yeah that's probably more likely, the whole "I just want to be left alone" thing had its appeal but I was always like "yeah but also, having to work to not-starve is the opposite of being left alone"
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