One of the perks of the end of history was that, since history had ended, words had lost all real power, and were just toys to play with.
This relies principally on the notion that the internet is just imagination land.
The language "real life" is the real problem here as it implies what happens online is not real life and should not be taken seriously.
The internet is real life, offline is offline and online is online but both are as real as one another, have real effects an real outcomes on those interacting and sharing information through it. The people on the internet are real, the relationships we form through it are real, the hate the love and the struggle are real. Different but still very much real.
When you make it pretend you dismiss the consequences of everything that happens on it and allow fascists to do as they please.
The theory provided cover to point to in order to defer attempts to address the problem.
Godwin's law provided a similar cover to a lesser degree. I can point to this theory that says you're wrong and ridiculous and that's that, dismissed.
Greater internet fuckwad theory made it much harder to address that period of the internet where everyone said f**got endlessly and "tits or gtfo" and other things. When we successfully started to affect this behaviour we saw the rise of red pill communities, MRAs and later gamergate. Rather than address this behaviour in people what occurred was that all the people that wouldn't change found places where they could behave in the radically awful ways they wanted to behave.
Oh wow, the white flight comparison is a good one, their "decline" from the mainstream internet since around 2016-2018 is because they fucked off to their own safe spaces. Hell, the righties in a forum I frequent, when they felt threatened by lefties in the site who are starting to stand up against them, straight up made an alternative forum named "Safe Space".
Good thing that unlike the historical white flight, cryptofash and g*mers are generally uninteresting uncreative shitheads who's contribution to their community mostly consisted of their toxicity, so the non-fascist internet didn't lose much when they self-segregates.
The latter part about MRA/redpill/gamergate cryptofascist pipelines is reminiscent of the “white flight” to the suburbs that happened because were that enraged and terrified of desegregated public schools and received a fortune in bigotry-driven subsidies to create the worst possible civic planning means to keep “safe” from you-know-who.
Right. And it highlights the fact you need to actually do something with these people to change their behaviour. Bullying them off into other spaces feels like progress but also creates entirely new problems because we just moved the problem somewhere else. If we don't physically change the people things can in fact get worse when that happens.
I know this is criticising a success we had but part of the wider movements it has contributed its own small part to where we are now.
If the same happens again and again it won't be real change, not in our lifetimes anyway.
Godwin’s law provided a similar cover to a lesser degree
Exactly what I came here to say :I-was-saying:
Called out someone for being fash? You must be losing the debate :expert-shapiro:
How dare you compare the guy who said all immigrants should be sterilized to a nazi?
The internet is real life, offline is offline and online is online but both are as real as one another, have real effects an real outcomes on those interacting and sharing information through it. The people on the internet are real, the relationships we form through it are real, the hate the love and the struggle are real. Different but still very much real.
Let's put it this way: if we considers written word; letters, journals, articles, essays, notes, research; to be truthful representation of their author's real life intentions of their writer, then why don't the internet? What makes the internet special that posting horrible things there shouldn't be taken seriously, but if you writes it down in a diary it can be used as evidence in court?
The court told me this too. Court doesn't give a fuck writing is writing whether it's published online or in print, the legal system considers it all "publishing" here.
Yeah, but not only internet speech is considered not real, people seems to also think that they have an expiration date. Reactionaries are still bringing up Marx's more uninformed opinions on race and his certain choices of word nearly two centuries later, but bringing up something racist a someone tweeted just two years ago is considered bad taste.
Facebook should've proved this wrong, because people would still say the same shit with their real name, location, workplace, school, and family members listed.
Yep and this is why mods are underappreciated.
I was a leader of a real big internet famous WoW guild for a long time and good god was it hard to keep a lid on all the (in hindsight) crypto-fascist bullshit.
I love this place because as much as we get wreckers and reactionaries it's not the same and yall are mostly cool.
:gamer-gulag: will absolutely be a thing after the revolution.
4chan proved the whole "give a person a mask and they'll tell you the truth" thing is wrong. People lie even when they have no reason to. They lie to themselves when nobody is around. Anonymity doesn't make people better.
It’s wild that making a mildly critical observation of bad behavior by gamers ended up giving cover to fascism. :shrek-pixel-despair:
I wouldn't doubt if internet cultural norms were amplified intentionally to enable cybernetics. Cybernetics itself being the proof that there is a connection between online behavior and reality.
