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One way to cope with the world going to shit is that to pretend that you want it, and thus you're somehow "winning" when the world goes to shit. It'd be nice i

One way to cope with the world going to shit is that to pretend that you want it, and thus you're somehow "winning" when the world goes to shit. It'd be nice if it was limited to places like 4chan. But as I always say, powerful people believe all the stupid things regular people believe, so no surprise investment funds act like that too.

icantevenhold 1mo ago
Liminal places like 4chan are upstream to mainstream culture/sentiment. Most of the incel, anime, doomed, and bro culture that was prevalent / nascent there 15-20 years ago is now super mainstream.
- api 1mo ago
  This needs to be taught in school. I’m shocked at how many people don’t get it. I’ve believed this forever which is why I follow the “strange” including weird cultural spaces, fringe para-stuff, whatever. What it really is is the interface. It’s where things go when they are on their way out, like discarded scientific ideas, but it’s also where new things first appear. If you watch the fringe you know what’s coming and going. It can be hard to tell sometimes which it is though, coming or going.
  - icantevenhold 1mo ago
    100% It’s really hard to predict what becomes relevant - I would have never guessed that the “chad/stacy/virgin” archetypes are now so common place that even my grandma knows what it means. Whereas other huge memes from back then like EFG never got popular.
    - api 1mo ago
      Along with 4chan back in the day (less today) I'd add pre-porn-ban Tumblr (non-mainstream due to having porn). That was the other huge one and was a point of origin for a lot of today's gender-fluid stuff and the overlap it has with fandom, anime, and also liminal and fringe subcultures like furries. (I am not dissing or judging, just pointing out that it's a thing. I don't care what people do in their bedrooms or if they like to LARP as animals. You do you.) Today I feel like a lot of it has retreated into closed groups, which makes it harder to keep an eye on it. Frustrating for someone who likes to watch it, but also might be a good thing since it might insulate it a little from the culture vultures. Pre-Internet it was music-drug-party culture (those three always went together), which was full of weirdos that ended up setting trends. Gay culture was big too, especially when the latter was persecuted and kept at the fringe. For example a lot of techno, house, rave, and similar electronic music came out of gay black culture, which is a minority subculture among a minority. Hip hop came out of poor urban black culture, which developed turntablism and weird ways of "creatively misusing" cheap synths because they couldn't afford expensive ones. Blues came out of the poor South, mostly among blacks, and rock came out of that. Etc. There's a very weird paradox at work here where persecution of a minority or a subculture empowers them and vice versa. I'm not saying persecution is good. Obviously it massively sucks to be on the receiving end of it. But it forces you into a liminal space that's more creative. By "persecution" I also mean just being viewed as incredibly weird or offensive and being soft-persecuted through ostracism and deplatforming. That applies to incels, oddball 4chan autists, etc., subcultures that definitely get either mocked or reviled by a lot of people for various reasons (some valid some not).
      - icantevenhold 1mo ago
        Thanks for sharing that, and I think it’s a bit more complex comment but just my thoughts from the top of my drunk head: I think most of the sub cultures you mentioned are now firmly in the mainstream culture - it might just be my bubble/bias - but gay/black/furry/genderfluid/fandom/rave/techno culture is nowadays so prevalent that it doesn’t even register as something unusual. To me that is a huge difference to 10-15 years+ ago and tumblr besides the chans is definitely one of the places that drove this change; also all the other significant social media’s of that era also had an influence of course. But the anonymity that 4chan provided was kind of unique and so the more extreme/unusual cultures gravitated there I think. Tumblr was special too for sure.
- vintermann 1mo ago
  Sure, but that's tangential, isn't it? 4chan didn't invent "accelerationism"/siding with the face-eating leopards as a means to feel in control over your life. It was just one of many places where that attitude lived (though, maybe one of the rather few where it was openly discussed). Nor did every thing 4chan invent catch on.
wseqyrku 1mo ago
You think you "cope" and are being resilient, but enough people doing that actually leads to the said bleak future, at which point it doesn't matter who's to blame.
- vintermann 1mo ago
  I didn't say I was doing this. It's just something I think I see.

icantevenhold 1mo ago

Liminal places like 4chan are upstream to mainstream culture/sentiment. Most of the incel, anime, doomed, and bro culture that was prevalent / nascent there 15-20 years ago is now super mainstream.

api 1mo ago
This needs to be taught in school. I’m shocked at how many people don’t get it. I’ve believed this forever which is why I follow the “strange” including weird cultural spaces, fringe para-stuff, whatever. What it really is is the interface. It’s where things go when they are on their way out, like discarded scientific ideas, but it’s also where new things first appear. If you watch the fringe you know what’s coming and going. It can be hard to tell sometimes which it is though, coming or going.
- icantevenhold 1mo ago
  100% It’s really hard to predict what becomes relevant - I would have never guessed that the “chad/stacy/virgin” archetypes are now so common place that even my grandma knows what it means. Whereas other huge memes from back then like EFG never got popular.
  - api 1mo ago
    Along with 4chan back in the day (less today) I'd add pre-porn-ban Tumblr (non-mainstream due to having porn). That was the other huge one and was a point of origin for a lot of today's gender-fluid stuff and the overlap it has with fandom, anime, and also liminal and fringe subcultures like furries. (I am not dissing or judging, just pointing out that it's a thing. I don't care what people do in their bedrooms or if they like to LARP as animals. You do you.) Today I feel like a lot of it has retreated into closed groups, which makes it harder to keep an eye on it. Frustrating for someone who likes to watch it, but also might be a good thing since it might insulate it a little from the culture vultures. Pre-Internet it was music-drug-party culture (those three always went together), which was full of weirdos that ended up setting trends. Gay culture was big too, especially when the latter was persecuted and kept at the fringe. For example a lot of techno, house, rave, and similar electronic music came out of gay black culture, which is a minority subculture among a minority. Hip hop came out of poor urban black culture, which developed turntablism and weird ways of "creatively misusing" cheap synths because they couldn't afford expensive ones. Blues came out of the poor South, mostly among blacks, and rock came out of that. Etc. There's a very weird paradox at work here where persecution of a minority or a subculture empowers them and vice versa. I'm not saying persecution is good. Obviously it massively sucks to be on the receiving end of it. But it forces you into a liminal space that's more creative. By "persecution" I also mean just being viewed as incredibly weird or offensive and being soft-persecuted through ostracism and deplatforming. That applies to incels, oddball 4chan autists, etc., subcultures that definitely get either mocked or reviled by a lot of people for various reasons (some valid some not).
    - icantevenhold 1mo ago
      Thanks for sharing that, and I think it’s a bit more complex comment but just my thoughts from the top of my drunk head: I think most of the sub cultures you mentioned are now firmly in the mainstream culture - it might just be my bubble/bias - but gay/black/furry/genderfluid/fandom/rave/techno culture is nowadays so prevalent that it doesn’t even register as something unusual. To me that is a huge difference to 10-15 years+ ago and tumblr besides the chans is definitely one of the places that drove this change; also all the other significant social media’s of that era also had an influence of course. But the anonymity that 4chan provided was kind of unique and so the more extreme/unusual cultures gravitated there I think. Tumblr was special too for sure.
vintermann 1mo ago
Sure, but that's tangential, isn't it? 4chan didn't invent "accelerationism"/siding with the face-eating leopards as a means to feel in control over your life. It was just one of many places where that attitude lived (though, maybe one of the rather few where it was openly discussed). Nor did every thing 4chan invent catch on.

wseqyrku 1mo ago

You think you "cope" and are being resilient, but enough people doing that actually leads to the said bleak future, at which point it doesn't matter who's to blame.

vintermann 1mo ago
I didn't say I was doing this. It's just something I think I see.