4 ms·

He is. “Okay” is now considered racist. It’s super pernicious too, but effective bludgeon. Making “Okay” racist is obscure enough that most normal people (ie

by djsbak 6y ago

He is. “Okay” is now considered racist. It’s super pernicious too, but effective bludgeon. Making “Okay” racist is obscure enough that most normal people (ie those not obsessed with wokeness) have never heard of it. Consider that you’ve never heard until now that “okay” is racist and you did the okay symbol in front of a political commissar (I mean a woke person, can’t keep up) that doesn’t like you. You’re done.

DebtDeflation 6y ago
It's particularly irksome. There was never any history of "racism" behind the okay gesture and it was a very widely used gesture for decades. It was also a very versatile one - it could mean "everything's okay" in the traditional sense, "yeah, ok, whatever" in a dismissive sense, or turned upside down became the Circle Game where if you were tricked into looking at it you had to immediately break the circle with your index finger or accept a punch to the arm. Then some neckbeards on 4Chan decided to prank people by claiming it was a "white power symbol". Unfortunately, some alt right edgelords then started actually using it as such. Now we find ourselves in the situation you just described where not everyone is aware of this history and people who grew up with it as an innocent symbol use it and find themselves on the wrong end of a Twitter mob.
- tired-dev 6y ago
  You're drawing a distinction between the "4chan neckbeards" and the "alt-right edgelords" that I don't think meaningfully exists. ("Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company", after all.) They were very much the same group; the "prank" could only lead to two outcomes, both of which were desired by the "pranksters". 1, they could successfully co-opt the symbol and permanently associate it with their ideology (symbols are arbitrary, after all, and how many mass shooters have to flash one before people connect the dots?). 2, they could troll with it enough that some would then see the symbol as an alt-right dogwhistle and decry it, only for them to turn around and say "haha! see those libtards? they're even offended by the OK symbol!".
Dirlewanger 6y ago
In a way, it's absolutely hilarious. The fact that people were so outraged by this (which was a bait attempt at a meme a rational person could see a mile away) shows they're willing to be controlled by the very people they hate.

by djsbak 6y ago

DebtDeflation 6y ago

It's particularly irksome. There was never any history of "racism" behind the okay gesture and it was a very widely used gesture for decades. It was also a very versatile one - it could mean "everything's okay" in the traditional sense, "yeah, ok, whatever" in a dismissive sense, or turned upside down became the Circle Game where if you were tricked into looking at it you had to immediately break the circle with your index finger or accept a punch to the arm. Then some neckbeards on 4Chan decided to prank people by claiming it was a "white power symbol". Unfortunately, some alt right edgelords then started actually using it as such. Now we find ourselves in the situation you just described where not everyone is aware of this history and people who grew up with it as an innocent symbol use it and find themselves on the wrong end of a Twitter mob.

tired-dev 6y ago
You're drawing a distinction between the "4chan neckbeards" and the "alt-right edgelords" that I don't think meaningfully exists. ("Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company", after all.) They were very much the same group; the "prank" could only lead to two outcomes, both of which were desired by the "pranksters". 1, they could successfully co-opt the symbol and permanently associate it with their ideology (symbols are arbitrary, after all, and how many mass shooters have to flash one before people connect the dots?). 2, they could troll with it enough that some would then see the symbol as an alt-right dogwhistle and decry it, only for them to turn around and say "haha! see those libtards? they're even offended by the OK symbol!".

Dirlewanger 6y ago

In a way, it's absolutely hilarious. The fact that people were so outraged by this (which was a bait attempt at a meme a rational person could see a mile away) shows they're willing to be controlled by the very people they hate.