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Yo,

I wanted to open this thread (and write this rant) because I believe we are at a turning point in the history of the Web and it's high time to discuss why it went this way. It goes without saying that I am referring to how the evolution of online culture eventually led to the storming of the Capitol.

Before going any further, let me say that I don't actually blame the Web for this entirely. I only speak from my viewpoint of an old time memer who witnessed how online culture evolved for the past decade and wants to reflect on that. There are certainly many other reasons (political, social, generational, etc.) why the US society is as divided as it is now to the point of leading a bunch of people to storm a gouvernment building to overturn an election, and there will be perhaps tons of articles and books on the topic in the coming years (perhaps decades) that will explore in depth the roots of this event. As far as I'm concerned, I will only discuss online culture in this thread.

I'll also be straight about what I want to discuss here: I'm here to talk about the complacency with the far right that prevails today in online culture, and why it's already shaping the online reaction to the recent events (and not in a good way). Before going any further, let me be more specific about what I call complacency. Unlike what another thread suggested a few months ago, I don't think there are that many KYM users who are right-wing in the strict sense. In fact, I tend to agree that the KYM community is quite neutral overall, though we see trends shifting the apparent reaction to left or right from time to time. However, I do think that the attitude of online users is helping a lot the far right in spreading its ideas online, to the point where some subcultures are now viewed by outsiders as inherently right-wing.

While KYM is a small community overall, I take it a sample of the online community as a whole: many users around here regularly browse 4chan, reddit and the likes, and I will therefore regularly use posts from this very website to discuss specific points.

In this post, I will detail the following topics which led online culture, in my opinion, to be complacent with the far right and let it dominate today's memes and discussions.

• First is the denial of the influence of the far right, i.e., the refusal to admit that an event, a subculture or a community has been used by the far right to spread its ideas.
• Second is the feelings vs. facts which led people to acknowledge conspiracy theories or stances that eventually turned out to be untrue or irrelevant, but helped the far right anyway.
• Third, and last point I will discuss today, its the paradox of tolerance (which you can already read about the great lines here) and the problem of the so-called "containment boards".

Let's first talk about the denial of the influence of the far right.

Perhaps this is the topic that will speak the most to people around here, and also the most controversial, because I see basically every week or so a blatant sign of this denial, whether it's on this website or another board. And you all know what I'm talking about, because some years ago, this communauty was all about an event which is a prime example of an online event being used by the far right. I am of course talking about GamerGate.

First of all, what belongs to Caesar must be returned to Caesar: initially, GamerGate wasn't political. It initally was about denouncing the collusion that exists between gaming journalists and the industry (still to this day), starting with the Quinnspiracy. Rather than doing its mea culpa and admitting its lack of neutrality or that there was definitely shady stuff with Zoey Quinn, the gaming press reacted by calling out gamers for being misogynistic, stating that "gamers are dead" and so on and so forth. You know the story. But that's when things started to derail.

Back in 2014, a characteristic of GamerGate which almost everyone could agree on was that it was a faceless crowd. While the anti- side had well known figures coming from the Twitter community, the pro- side could only be defined as roughly a (large) group of 4chan users completed with other communities, which you could hardly associate to any political movement or figure at the time. At best, you had some famous Youtubers being labelled as being pro- or anti-GG, but their stance wasn't even that clear (remember for instance how people mistakingly labelled JonTron as pro-, something he cleared himself in his own way). This situation could only last for so long, until Milo Yiannopoulos became somewhat the face of GamerGate. From that point, GG was less about ethics in gaming journalism than about an online backlash against feminism and progressism as a whole. GamerGate drifted so far from its initial topic of "ethics in gaming journalism" that there was barely a reaction when Konami controlled the review process of Metal Gear Solid V.

In fact, the motivation for Milo's involvement was always about bringing people to co-opt far right (and more broadly reactionary) ideas. Milo wasn't exactly anyone, as he was working at the time for Breitbart News, a right-wing-biased news network directed by no one else than Steve Bannon, who later became the chief strategist at the start of the Trump presidency. I won't comment too long on what Bannon did during the past decade, because it's a well documented topic you can learn about either online either with books, and I will rather focus on his involvement in GamerGate. Let's have a quick look at this article.

Even though the business plan was a flop, Bannon became intrigued by the game's online community dynamics. In describing gamers, Bannon said, "These guys, these rootless white males, had monster power. … It was the pre-reddit. It's the same guys on (one of a trio of online message boards owned by IGE) Thottbot who were [later] on reddit" and other online message boards where the alt-right flourished, Bannon said.

After taking over in 2012 at the Breitbart News Network -- it was founded five years earlier by Andrew Breitbart, who died in 2012 -- Bannon recruited Milo Yiannopoulos to handle technology coverage.

Like Andrew Breitbart, Yiannopoulos "just had that 'it' factor," Bannon says in the book. "The difference was, Andrew had a very strong moral universe, and Milo is an amoral nihilist."

Yiannopoulos devoted much of Breitbart's tech coverage to cultural issues, particularly Gamergate, a long-running online argument over gaming culture that peaked in 2014. And that helped fuel an online alt-right movement sparked by Breitbart News.

"I realized Milo could connect with these kids right away," Bannon told Green. "You can activate that army. They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump."

It's pretty clear from these statements coming from the man himself that Milo's involvement in GamerGate was about bringing people to the far right from the start. In fact, Milo went as far as crediting himself with helping Trump win the 2016 presidency, as this Facebook post shows:

I was a significant factor in Donald Trump getting elected, for which I have received zero credit.

He couldn't put it in a better way. Still today, the idea that GamerGate was used to poison the well is controversial.

(next part in next post)

The title of the cited article in the previous link is yet clear:

What we still haven't learned from GamerGate

The article is not even attributing the Capitol debacle to GamerGate, but is more about how GamerGate set a precedent in the far right gaining influence online. This extract is pretty self-explaining:

5) Politicians and the media must take online “ironic” racism and misogyny seriously

Gamergate masked its misogyny in a coating of shrill yelling that had most journalists in 2014 writing off the whole incident as “satirical” and immature “trolling,” and very few correctly predicting that Gamergate’s trolling was the future of politics -- the political wave that would essentially morph into the broader alt-right movement.

Regardless of your opinion on the anti- side (people who I don't have a much better opinion of than most people here), it's undeniable that GamerGate was used by the far right to spread its ideas and turn online communities into being at the very least complacent with its discourse. You may not be far right yourself even though you took part in GamerGate at some point, but that's no proof that the mouvement wasn't used by far right figures to bluepill a bunch of people on the topics of sexism and racism as well as to make reactionary memes a common occurrence.

Indeed, while it's very hard to quantify how many people did get attracted to the far right because of GamerGate, its fallout in online culture is difficult to rebuke. Look for its instance at the popular belief that diversity is inherently a bad thing for the video games industry, people often quoting Mass Effect Andromeda as an example of that, while this game suffered much, much more from how it was produced (long story short: developpers had no idea what kind of experience they wanted to offer for a good 4~5 years of development). See for instance the appearance then deletion of r/gamersriseup (sorry, didn't get any other source), or its polar opposite r/gamingcirclejerk. See how the expression "gamer moment" is now associated with racist slurs. See also the countless contreversies surrounding the representation of women in video games. In fact, you don't need to go very far back in time: not matter how you look at it, the The Last of Us Part II review bombing is impossible to separate from the usual crowd of people who can't stand that a game introduces a diverse cast (not to mention the amount of fakes news surrounding the game and its production, but that's another topic). In fact, the reception of Part II is a prime demonstration of how the online community evolved. Back in 2013, The Last of Us got a DLC called Left Behind which already featured Ellie as the main playable character and which already revealed her homosexuality. Do you recall any backlash at the time ? As far as I'm concerned, I don't. I barely remember a few threads I saw on /v/ some years ago where people criticized the western reception of Japanese games featuring lesbians, but that was it. Yet, during the wonderful year that was 2020, we got this.

Despite all these examples, a good part of the online community is still in denial that GamerGate became a vast operation of publicity for the far right. GamerGate is one example, but there are other instances of events during which people reacted in disbelief. The shooter of the Christchurch 2019 terrorist attack is notorious for having been an active user of /pol/, who notably left a manifesto filled with obscure memes (I say obscure because any person who wasn't familiar with online culture could hardly understand this gibberish) after the attack in the hope of increasing the divide between left and right online. Not only I saw many people online praising his "evil genius" for writing that manifesto, but I also saw many of them minimizing the influence /pol/ could have had. I'd go as far as stating that users of /pol/ and other edgy boards reacted to the Christchurch shooting the same way a part of the muslim community reacted to ISIS attacks. Instead of recognizing there's a problem within their community (N.B.: I don't consider Islam to be bad, but some currents of it are dangerous, just like any other religion), most reacted with something along the lines of "well, this guy was a nutjob who took it too litteraly, we are not violent haha".

Sadly, a good amount of reactions to the Capitol storming are not that different. The Trump supporters who appeared in the various photos are labelled either as antifa LARPers (pure disbelief), either as just nutjobs. There's still a strong denial that this kind of activists are gathered in large communities and keep gaining new members mostly through humour, many examples being found in the image gallery of KYM (though there's, of course, the problem of making an exhaustive documentation of online history).

Which brings me to the second topic: the feelings vs. facts issue which the far right thrives on.

At this point, some skeptics might point out that I keep talking about the far right without explaining why its influence is detrimental to online culture or society. Obviously, the main issue with the far right (or specifically the American alt right) is that it actively downplays serious or societal issues that are affecting western societies (not just the US) by relying on humor and antagonization. Don't get me wrong: by no means I believe the American left is without its faults, because it definitely has problems if it's unable to reach GOP voters through its discourse. But if we pick any serious issue, it's easy to realize that the left at the very least acknowledges it, why the alt right denies it. The left acknowledges problems with racism or gender equality, while the alt right states they're overblown. The left wants to tackle seriously the COVID-19 pandemic, while Trump (championed by the alt right) has spent the last year of its mandate downplaying it. The left wants to do something about climate change, the alt right wants you to believe it's made up. The left wants to implement a better healthcare, the alt right wants you to believe it amounts to converting the USA to socialism (good ol' red scare) and having your daughters being raped by immigrants in the streets.

Note how, for every issue I mentioned, the alt right is feelings-based. Even though the left has also its "feelings over facts" moments (hardcore SJWs have provided numerous examples of that), the alt right is entirely based on that, and they used (pretty well, I must recognize) various events to attract people to it or at the very least to control the narrative. How Seth Rich's death was used is a good example.

For reminders, Seth Rich was a DNC Staffer who was fatally shot during the course of July 2016. As the KYM article explains it, the timing of its death was deemed suspicious and led many people to believe he was actually assassinated because he wanted to "change the DNC from within". Nowadays, nothing proves he was shot for this reason. In fact, even Fox News retracted the story they published on the matter in 2017 (IIRC, this timing was chosen because

Think about how you would feel losing a son or brother. And while dealing with this, you had baseless accusations of your lost family member being part of a vast conspiracy. As the family, we would hope to be the first people to learn about any such evidence and reasons for Seth's death. It is a travesty that you would prompt false conspiracy theories and other people's agendas rather than work with the family to learn the truth.

The rest is anecdotal, though the timing murder is indeed shady (I'll give that to conspiracy theorists). One guy ended up butthurt around 2018, but there hasn't been any significant development since then. The Mueller report from 2019 even suggests that the conspiracy theory was a complete fabrication (see the report p. 48: "[…] the statements about Rich implied falsely that he had been the source of the stolen DNC emails. […]").

(next part in next post)

Yet, this story was definitely used to convince people that the DNC was killing dissidents, even though there was no real evidence of that. At first, some KYM commentators were even pretty adamant on the matter:

And the alt right exploited this feeling. The idea that the DNC is killing people who don't go along the party lines is still pretty popular in modern memes or jokes, even though there is little evidence of that.

Seth Rich's death is one story, Pizzagate is another. Again, we have a conspiracy theory with little to no evidence (and which also ended in a cringy manner) which relies on resentment for the left to gain followers, but with a twist: if you believe it's bullshit, you will get replied with "so you don't care about child pedo rings ?" (which, unfortunately, exist). In a sense, it's the prototype of QAnon which entirely revolves around Trump being at war with some satanistic deep society that rapes children (I didn't think I would write something like that one day). If you are against it, it's because you're a monster who doesn't care about your country/the children/whatever. Again, no evidence, all feelings. Hopefully, QAnon barely managed to be as overwhelming present online as alt right memes, as it's only popular in dedicated boards. One cannot say the same for Pizzagate, which was all over the place (including here) when it was first coined.

Again, you don't have to go far back in time to find another occurrence of the current topic, i.e., where feelings were exploited for political controversy. Just look at how the alt right reacted to the sanitary measures after the COVID-19 reached the USA. Heck, Bannon even went as far as saying that Dr. Fauci should be beheaded. Regardless of how effective the measures actually are, the idea that these measures only exist for political gain (some people stretching it as far as implying the DNC is working with China) is very, very questionable. Yet, you can find instances of this contreversy online (and not just in meme culture, also in the MSM). I will perhaps stop here with this topic because this specific problem is too broad to connect any skepticism with political alignment: you cannot entirely attribute skepticism to the online presence of the far right rhetoric, even though the "mechanisms" are often similar.

However, looking again at how the Web reacts to the Capitol event and prior events that led to it, it seems this "feelings over facts" isn't going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, I find it very worrying that an event of historical proportion, where supporters of a politican tried to overturn an election on the basis of a false premise, is again reviewed under the perspective of "left vs. right" and the resentment each side has for the other. I mean, the gallery for the entry litteraly has these two pictures quasi side by side in Most commented:

(comments here and here, respectively)

Even though one picture is more upvoted than the latter, there's definitely controversy and bothsidism in both instances. Regardless of the consequences of both protests, one exists because of dramatic events that actually took place, the other exists because of a shady conspiracy theory. One is about fixing US society (even though the way it tries to achieve this is debatable), one is a collective temper tantrum by a part of the electorate who's been nurtured with alternative facts for the past 4 or 5 years (this pasta is spot on). From what I saw, it's only in the US-based online communities that people are still trying to make the events look similar in order to justify what just happened, and the worst part is that it still works. Hopefully, this is still mostly an US-exclusive behaviour, but I've saw other countries start following this trend. As I said in the very beginning, you can of course find plenty of other reasons why the storming happened, and I only try to discuss its online aspect. Nevetherless, the "it's them against us" attitude fueled by feelings-based politics and pushed online by the far right (but I'll give you that radical left groups also do that) over the years is definitely a considerable contributor to the current divide… and is still working.

Last but not least: the paradox of tolerance.

For reminders, the paradox of tolerance goes as follows: "if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant" (thanks Wikipedia). It's hard to not think about the recent events when you read that last part (I'll come back to this later).

Before going further, let me say that I am by no means against free speech nor for censorship. I enjoy very much the idea of having a diversity of opinions or forms of art online, even those which I personally don't like. In fact, I agree with the idea that condemning speech is inproductive at the end of the day, that what you need is more speech, with the underlying idea that ludicrous ideas will eventually get defeated in the process. Rowan Atkinson put it perfectly in this video:

However, the free speech debate online has taken a rocky part. It seems every time something divisive is censored or removed, the online community fierely argues that this same divisive content should get a platform, but at the same time, this content is never challenged and, if anything, is rewarded with free publicity. I think for instance about what happened with count Dankula. The story is pretty insignificant in itself: it's just one edgy guy who taught his dog to do a nazi salute. I agree that putting him on trial is ridiculous. But is it really what we should promote as free speech ? Coming back to Rowan Atkinson, there are actually a handful of British humorists who champion free speech because some of their works play with controversial topics (or topics which used to be controversial; something like Life of Brian would not scandalize as much today). Blackadder regularly ridicules the Church, for instance. And let's not forget the Irish Father Ted (which is now freely available on Youtube) which is even more ballsy considering it makes fun of priests while taking place (and being broadcasted at the time) in Ireland, a country where the Church is still a pillar of society. In both instances, these works did not intend any harm and were made for entertainment value (sometimes with witty social commentary, but that's another subject).

I sincerely doubt that promoting nazi imagery in a country that suffered from fighting the Third Reich can be considered as light-spirited. In an ideal setting were free speech "works", this would at least get some criticism and be quickly forgotten. Instead of that, this whole stunt has been given free publicly and championed as a prime example of free speech. Hopefully, there was no actual harm in the matter. But what about Alex Jones ? When he was deplatformed by Youtube, Facebook and the likes, the main online reaction was again that this was an attack on free speech and that this was setting a precedent for further censorship. The problem here is that Alex Jones' stunts are actually harmful.

Lenny Pozner lives in hiding. His six-year-old son Noah was one of the 20 elementary school children killed in the Sandy Hook shooting almost eight years ago.

Do I need to add anything there ? When are we going to see a consensus that this guy is actually dangerous, instead of labelling him as based ? This is the key problem with free speech in today's Web. The dominating idea in online boards (including here) is that nothing should be censored, but the way the Web works today, i.e. in separate communities which can act as echo chambers, nothing is actually challenged anymore. To be more specific, the popular idea that the Web should maintain "containment boards" for crazies and nutjobs is harming the cause of free speech, just like the paradox of tolerance states that intolerance will eventually destroy everything.

(next part in next post)

The problem with the so-called "containment boards" is that there's no way for a user of such boards to be confronted to opposite views, or to put in another way, to be put out of his/her conformt zone. I doubt things can eventually get better when one states on one hand "we should have absolute free speech, bad ideas will be challenged", and on the other hand states "we should let /pol/ the way it is, it's a containment board". The go-to solution to the paradox of tolerance would be "to be intolerant of intolerance", but in today's Web, intolerance self-reinforces itself in isolation and never gets to meet people that are intolerant of it. Of course, this doesn't just hold true for far right boards, as you can apply the same reasoning to ResetEra (which the nickname ReichEra is not that far-fetched).

With the recent events in Washington D.C., we are seeing the limits of all this. People with extreme views who went unchallenged for years went out to storm the capital hoping to overturn a democratic election. As a consequence, social media platforms are now banning accounts or services that are stimulating these people. But what else could they do, really ? Since no one is going to challenge the views of these people, how can free speech work properly ? How can we complain that they are stripped of it, while we are waiting for them to actually cause harm to think about it ?

Time to (finally) conclude…

In this (long) rant, I tried to highlight what causes today's Web to be so divisive. It goes without saying that this is tied to the political groups with extreme views, but I believe this is in particular because of how the far right managed to become a part of online culture. More precisely, how the online community learned to live with it, how it became complacent with it. More than 10 years ago, online culture was pretty neutral. As someone said in this thread in particular, even the 2012 election barely made waves online.

But not only the left became more aggressive on its own, but the far right also insidiously influenced online culture (in a way, "the left can't meme" is pretty much true). First, it used events such as GamerGate to attract new people to its ideas, or at the very least to popularize some of its views (anti-feminism being one example), which a large part of the online community still doesn't (want to) realize. Second, it used a rhetoric based on feelings to give credibility to divisive conspiracy theories which echoed through both social media and online boards, to the point where the "it's them against us" rhetoric has become the standard in US-based communities. Finally, the debate on free speech never takes into account the fact that the modern Web is made to shield you from opposite viewpoints, ending up in supporting platforms that are echo chambers for intolerant or dangerous people, who never get to see their own views challenged.

Every problem I tried to identify somehow appears in the online reaction to the Capitol storming. There's no consensus on the nature of the event, and there's still a lot of heated discussions on the matter as if it was a sports event. There is still a lof of disbelief regarding how far the corruption of online culture by far right ideas went. And the concept of "containment board", which is contradictory with a healthy version of free speech, is barely talked about, leading eventually to harm and actual censorship.

Of course, I merely tried to diagnose this whole mess, and I haven't thought about a practical solution (if there's any). But I don't think the problem will be solved anytime soon if there's no consensus on the symptoms first. Hence why I wrote all this: I wanted to get to the bottom(s) of the problem, based on what I witnessed during the past decade, hoping this would bring food for thought to the fellow memers around here. Feel free to comment and discuss any point I tried to make.

In memory of lighter times:

Everytime I tried to point out what you said about Gamergate, I get downvoted to hell and back. I'm proud of you for standing up.

Would like to point out that the dnc is very blatently corrupt (ie rigging the primaries) and that’s why people are quick to beleive anythign bad about them,
and pizzagate was an attempt to smear one part of the corporate party with complacency with the epstein shit when both are

Because you say it was far right, op stated that the far right used it

Yeah, OP pretty much stated that the Far Right used it such as Race Bannon wanting to use Milo to sway people to the right wing. I won't deny Milo being used by Bannon to sway people to the right but it wasn't far right at the get go and at most I imagine what we get from Milo is just some people screeching in the culture war and not many being swayed to Trump unlike boomers and other people that bought into Trump's rhetoric. Though one thing to note with GamerGate in the people it attracted, you wouldn't just have Bannon wanting to sway people, you'd also get the far right loons in it like One Angry Gamer, the guy who screeched about Arthur being bad because of a gay wedding between a rat teacher and some other animal guy.

This was an excellent post, thank you very much for making it.
I get concerned how virulently left-wing stuff is vilified on here, while right-wing stuff is brushed off. You do a very good job of illustrating how far-right influences make themselves appear benign, and how it's influenced the meme culture at large. This is something I think everyone on here should read, and I wish people here attacked the alt-right with as much vigor as they attack SJWs

Alright might as well toss in my two cents and respond to the ones I care

First of all, what belongs to Caesar must be returned to Caesar: initially, GamerGate wasn't political. It initially was about denouncing the collusion that exists between gaming journalists and the industry (still to this day), starting with the Quinnspiracy. Rather than doing its mea culpa and admitting its lack of neutrality or that there was definitely shady stuff with Zoe Quinn, the gaming press reacted by calling out gamers for being misogynistic, stating that "gamers are dead" and so on and so forth. You know the story. But that's when things started to derail.

Which is exactly what i remember years ago, it was initially just a bunch of shitposters banding up because of the media being bullshit. It was very less politics until Milo decided to hop in the trend, my guess he took it as an opportunity for anti-feminism narrative and , before Gamergate Milo was just a 'literally who' guy, and i feel pity to those that don't know him before.

The article is not even attributing the Capitol debacle to GamerGate, but is more about how GamerGate set a precedent in the far right gaining influence online. This extract is pretty self-explaining:

That is because it is from a year ago, Vox manage to bring this up again with added info regarding the Capitol Hill. This is the same Vox article year ago. And note that it's written by Aja Romano who has a very 'abnormal view' let alone Vox having over 200 entries merely mentioning Gamergate. So i wouldn't be surprised if Aja Romano wrote more articles having opinions change once again. Who knows, i've seen these people change their words constantly as time moves on.

Regardless of your opinion on the anti- side (people who I don't have a much better opinion of than most people here), it's undeniable that GamerGate was used by the far right to spread its ideas and turn online communities into being at the very least complacent with its discourse. You may not be far right yourself even though you took part in GamerGate at some point, but that's no proof that the movement wasn't used by far right figures to bluepill a bunch of people on the topics of sexism and racism as well as to make reactionary memes a common occurrence.

Which is why r/kotakuinaction2 was made in response to r/KotakuInAction's rule change. Since that the mods of r/KIA change the rules to restrict politics heavily, a portion of users migrate to r/KIA2 Whenever I visit r/KIA2 it's just filled with right wing politics while r/KIA isn't knee deep Alex Jones levels of politics.

TL;DR: GG do really is about standing up against media bs, ended up as a stepping stone with far-right people ever since Milo took the opportunity to join. Other places such as /pol/ have amplified it worse.

If you're talking about the alt right trolls, I've seen people dunking alt-right trolls by downvoting, to the point of ban, which has been like that for over a year or two. I mean already you can see a mass amount of images dunking on Trump and his supporters after the 2020 election.

Idk whatever happened to the people back in 2016, all i know is that KYM was once raided by /pol/ or whatever like that.

I'll admit, I haven't paid a whole lot of attention to the userbase of Know Your Meme even before I joined and only in a few recent months I kinda paid a bit more attention but as far alt-right trolls and the likes go, the site may as well be mixed on it. On one hand we can have right leaning users that are still around. On the other hand, we had right-wing trolls and the like that have gotten banned because they proven to be nothing more than annoying douchebags and the like. Granted, some may comeback with an alt to shit things up. And then we got ones that can be like the former or latter but they end up just not coming back at all.

Outside of the users and their comments, there will no doubt be right leaning memes but in that regards, I can't see much problem with those beyond the quality when considering this site is pretty much suppose to be a gallery showing off variations of a meme, even if its something as bland and uncreative as another unfunny wojak that came straight from the hole of a \pol\yp.

Just wondering what meme is it? I haven't really paid much attention to all the memes that go on here.

MP is talking about this particular entry right here which already have comments disabled 7 hours ago by Jill which also got one or more users banned for being actual transphobes recently

For my take, I'm literally not even downplaying it, the mods got this handled already and it was reported , if its transphobic then its transphobic, if they go to far then its a ban, easy shit.

Ah that one, I did see it early on the trending once but I didn't even take one look at it. That said it does look like a low quality meme that's bound to be shit. The comments from some people like Princeso Bubblegum and Mistress Fortune were funnier.

Ive always been right leaning and even noticed before the mid 2010s no one online really cared beyond usually minor jokes that rib at each political party (at least anywhere online I went personally). Since then though it feels like its devolved into a "If youre not my wing/lean far enough into my wing you are the enemy and everything wrong with humanity!" and pretty much the biggest reason I rarely engage in political topics or threads online much though I do still post some stuff that amused me some once in awhile.

Now why would you be rude to OP like that?

I completely agree. The trend of spouting far right talking points as some kind of "meme" was a bad trend in the internet.

Right now, we're all reaping what was sowed. Here's hoping things go back to normal with 2021.

"how the evolution of online culture eventually led to the storming of the Capitol."

Well, you lost me immediately here. People being shitty online was not the reason why Trump goaded his cult followers onto raiding the Capitol, and he would have accomplished that with or without internet to communicate with or through. He has the means – and still does even now after all the bans he got. Hell, over half of his followers are technologically-impaired boomers and baby boomers who do not even know what "online culture" means. They struggle with basic concepts such as "land deosn't vote, people do", in case anyone forgot already – not exactly the shapest tools in the shed, those ones.

At most, online culture just gave it more attention, not more traction. Populists do not need "online culture" to rally their followers onto action. All they need is the ability to talk, and boy, does Trump have that in droves.

The rest of what you wrote are arguable opinions at best about several topics big enough on their own to discuss separatedly in detail instead of trying to mash them all together under a single reductionist conclusion about another topic that, as I explained, is not even relevant to them all, but I will address this one point you made:

"the denial of the influence of the far right."

Literally nobody but the far-right themselves does this, and it was in fact the first culprit that people pointed towards as soon as it happened (the second being Antifa, for some reason). People simply deny the premise that people posting a racist Pepe on an online imageboard led to a guy on a Viking get-up to raid the Capitol while cops took selfies with them. There are more relevant and important historical points to point towards than that, such as the 4 years of unabated manipulation of the narrative around Trump that he himself started and finished (and very successfully at that), and he did that without having to resort to using online culture – the dude does not even understand it himself.

You give way too much credit to edgy memes on the internet, you know. If anything, these people actually WISHED they had this much influence online.

I get that you are trying to give an answer to a premise without a clear answer here, but the thing is, if it was easy enough to identify through an improvised essay pointing at random far-right-themed events online hoping to connect the dots hard enough, the confusion and overall division online (and just in general) would not exist in the first place. There is way too much nuance – the economy, the real cultural aspects, the US-specific aspects, all current events in the world, the evolution of social interactions in the last years (real ones, not text on a screen), the human aspect, power dynamics and interests, country relations and image, you name it – being left out of the conversation here that we simply cannot leave out when talking about complex politics of international bearance. Biased political comments with 2-digit upvotes on a meme site with less views than modern Game Grumps will not magically give you the be-all-end-all answer to decades of boiling partisan politcs in the most politically charged country in the world – and this goes to anyone else trying to shift blame to any past political events for this one too (besides the directly pertinent ones such as the US elections themselves, obviously).

Well, you lost me immediately here. People being shitty online was not the reason why Trump goaded his cult followers onto raiding the Capitol, and he would have accomplished that with or without internet to communicate with or through.

As I said in the very beginning, I only talked about this aspect in particular, and there are many other reasons why the divide exists. Yet you can't prove that the online aspect never played anything in this whole mess. It's easy to say

People simply deny the premise that people posting a racist Pepe on an online imageboard led to a guy on a Viking get-up to raid the Capitol

because you're deliberately omitting what happened in between. The former arguably happened (or rather, started happening) something around 2015, the latter happened days ago. In between, we got the "meme magic" insanity, the various attempts at turning something harmless into a hate symbol to "play the media", we got all the far right terrorist attacks (with Christchurch clearly standing out, and being directly connected to /pol/), we got QAnon that is in practice a worse version of Pizzagate, and so on and so forth. All these events were playing with either with the far right rhetoric "it's just a joke, I'm ironic", either conspiracy theory bullshit which played with an existing resentment for the left – just like how the alt right used Seth Rich's death for political gain despite having no actual fact to back up the conclusion that he was the source of Wikileaks.

You say,

Hell, over half of his followers are technologically-impaired boomers and baby boomers who do not even know what "online culture" means.

and in fact, you're completely right. These people do lack critical thinking and are very gullible… hence why they are an excellent vector for conspiracy theories which were pushed by the alt right. QAnon is not that well documented on this website, but if I recall correctly, it started from 8chan's version of /pol/ and later propagated to other communities/bubbles through Youtube, Reddit and Facebook. It is clearly rooted in online culture and took advantage of the feelings of non-memers (let's call them that way) to gain traction among them.

If we go all the way back to Pizzagate, the same phenomenon happened. The premise of Pizzagate is some dude on 4chan suggesting that "cheeze pizza" was a code word for child abuse (without evidence) and people started shitposting with that. Then it was co-opted on social media (by the same public who's know backing QAnon), and even co-opted by "non-boomers" on this very website. I am not making this up.

The main problem I see with your attitude (but not just yours, I blame the denial of how GamerGate was used by the far right for the same reason) is that you're using the excuse of humor or catharsis ("it was just an edgy joke", "I'm not far right, I just want to hit back SJWs") for the content you share while completely omitting its consequences on other people.

You say I give too much credit to online culture, and I will reply that you underestimate its effect because you're in a bubble. To give an example, everyone here will automatically recognize the NAVY Seals copypasta from miles away. Everyone is, in a sense, trained to tell from a 4chan post whether it's just irony of whether it's a first degree thing. But outside this bubble, many people can't tell what's ironic and what isn't. Someone who doesn't know online culture coming across the NAVY Seals copypasta is usually unable to tell where it's from and especially unable to tell why it's popular; at best (s)he will think "this guy's mad" and move on. Let's not forget that communities like Know Your Meme are a tiny part of the Internet; the common (wo)man might use if from time to time when they feel out of the loop (if they didn't go right away to the dedicated sub-reddit), but aside from that, only a tiny fraction of the Internet is actually able to recognize or provide background for any meme.

Therefore, when the common (wo)man comes across a racist Pepe meme, (s)he doesn't first identify it's an edgy joke and quickly labels it as a racist meme, and usually won't take the time to check where it came from. The problem here is that there will be two main kinds of reaction: either straightforward reject, either "well, it does make a valid point". And this is precisely how the far right managed to convince people for the past decade. They use humor as a cover, inserted themselves in online communities, and used this same humor to inject their ideas progressively. This is what happened with Milo Yiannopolous during GamerGate (even if a good share GGers are not far right themselves), this is what happened with /pol/. The typical /pol/ users always rely on the excuse "we're only doing it for the lulz", not realizing that some people do browse /pol/ unironically. There's a reason why people often quoted "a group of intelligent men who pretend to be idiots will soon find the company of fools who think they have found home" when commenting the recent IRL events you can link to /pol/. This is what led to white supremacism terrorism (what inspired the Christchurch shooter), even though most online users hate political violence.

I'll give you another example of what I am trying to say by getting out of the original topic. Think of Wojak/Soyjak memes. Most people here hate them. I don't like them as well, and I doubt you like them either. So, why are these specific memes so hated within a representative sample (or at least, what I consider as such) of the online community, but still thrive ? It's not just because people spam them or keep making variants, it's because they always manage to hit that "well it's making a good point" string among a subset of online users who will share them in turn. Sooner in this thread, I used an example of that:

(link here)

How do you expect this kind of meme to go away, if people keep sharing it everytime it validates their opinions ?

I could have picked worse, as the Black Wojaks are definitely playing with the thin boundary that exists between "it's ironic, really" and "it's racist (and I like it)". Even if you're not an actual racist yourself and that your intent is just to shitpost, sharing these kind of memes can still pick up with non-ironical racists, which can sometimes lead to them joining communities that can be harmful because they are comforted that they found people like them.

Years ago, a popular saying online was that "it's shitposting even if you're being ironic". In this day and age, we should start saying "it's racist/toxic even if you're being ironic".

What most people fail to see when people are connecting GamerGate to the recent events is that it's not about GGers being part of the crowd that stormed the Capitol. It's about how GamerGate was one of the first events to put the wolf in the sheepfold and helped to normalize far right ideas, eventually gaining traction both among a subset of online users and among the clueless people who are now sharing QAnon-tier stuff on Youtube and Facebook.

As far as what OP and Nedhitis have said, I may as well add to the following:
as far as online far right presence goes, even if most boomers didn't bother with giving a damn on things like GamerGate we still got rightoids with an online presence that managed to build up followings such as Nick Fuentes, Baked Alaska, and other rightoids who managed to build up a presence, granted some of them no doubt got deplatformed on Youtube and started to bring their BS to DLive though from what I heard as hearsay on Twitter, some of them have gotten the ban. And much as boomers won't bother with anything beyond facebook and comments sections on right leaning news sites, we did have some join a chanboard to talk about Q-Anon and how the dems must all be some satanic pedo cult while thinking the GOP republicans are totally spotless and clean. Regardless of how one can go by the number of people that make up, the far right culture has made a substantial impact on the internet itself in whatever ways there are, from the platforms of right wingers like Nick Fuentes to the appropriation of memes like Pepe the frog. They and by extension whatever response they received has left a sort of mark on the internet itself. As for GamerGate itself, there was something OP brought up we can't forget and its that Bannon pretty much wanted to use Milo to sway people to the right. How many did we don't know but Bannon wanted to use the Gay Ann Coulter to try and make people in the pro-GamerGate side open to the right. Granted I can't remember much on GamerGate that is akin to wolf in sheeps clothing outside of Bannon using Milo along with angry emails and some rando Chan post that are likely still out there but even if these were jokes, one can't forget that this is the internet, somewhere out there someone did want violence, someone out there did get swayed to the right, how ever far it was, because they liked how edgy Milo was.

If I wanted to be rude I wouldn't have used the cat pic, I was hoping someone would respond with a shorter version than the original posts (maybe as short as one or two posts.) What was taken as an attempt to be flippant was actually terse and misplaced levity.

Perhaps the best way I can summarize what I've been talking about so far is that today's online culture is in a kind of vicious cycle. Memes that are racist, misogynistic or such for comedic purposes are sometimes mistaken for being unironical by people who are not as familiar with online culture as us. The same goes for conspiracy theories. Problem is, some of these people who take these memes seriously can go as far as thinking "well, this made a good point".

QAnon, which you cannot dissociate from the Capitol debacle (the Viking guy is actually a "Q-Shaman" or something like that), started with people shitposting on Infinitychan. Then it spread to Youtube, Facebook and the likes, and people who were unable to tell whether it was irony or not fell for it, and started taking it seriously. The problem is made even worse by the fact that the same people were stuck in echo chambers as far as their social circles go. These theories were also effective because they catch on how people feel about political parties (in particular, about the American left) and on fallacies such as "why won't you help fight pedo child rings ?".

On top of that, the free speech debate doesn't take enough account of how today's Web works, i.e., in separate communities which rarely offer the conditions for hearing opposite viewpoints. We often read that "containment boards" should be maintained at all costs because they prevent toxic online users from plaguing other boards while keeping free speech intact, but as a result, these problematic users never get the chance to see their views challenged, while one of the key advantages of free speech is that anything can (and should) be challenged. Yet, whenever free speech is defended, it often results in providing free publicity to content which would otherwise be judged questionable. Therefore, the intolerant people who promote eventually harmful conspiracy theories or viewpoints kind of self-reinforce themselves within their circles while being kind of protected by the rest of the online community who wants to protect free speech (at least, that's how I view it).

The rest of my rant amounts to a compilation of various events which can be seen as the precursors of this trend, as well as the prominent figures that triggered them (no pun intended). Besides, SicklyVivian above you summarized well what I tried to say regarding GamerGate.

Nick Fuentes? That guy is a pussy.

Yeah, whether one is for GamerGate or not, your point was pretty much how it was precursor in that you had edgelords and the like excuse their schtick as edgy jokes and the like. I don't remember much with GamerGate back then due to being more active on other sites and having real life to deal with but Milo was a presence and Bannon admitted to wanting to use him. Plus there was the FBI doc that tried to look over GamerGate. The most worst the doc had were emails but that was about it. Angry emails with threats have existed before GG was a thing but that can be used as an example in terms of internet phenomena.

Funnily enough as far threats and the like trying to be passed off as jokes goes, it does remind me of an internet persona, one that looked serious but was a complete joke and a ruse in the end called ParkourDude91 aka Jace Connors (not even a real name but another name for the character). To give a tl;dr, people thought the guy was serious in being some gamer who thought he was a marine and parkour expert that was fighting muslim terrorist when in reality he was just dealing with trolls that liked to screw with him for being a spergy gamer idiot. One of the things Jace Connors managed to do as GamerGate was emerging was jump on the bandwagon of basically saying "Brianna Wu is a t****y, I will kick her Assassin's Creed style." The actor got into a car accident driving on a slippery road with ice and decided to go into character again saying "Brianna Wu will not assassinate me in street racing." Obviously, people like me would just laugh at this guy seeing as how he's just an idiot who'll do nothing more than play video games and screams when someone flashes a dick at him and sounding like a whining child when it came to fighting with his friend, another actor who posed as a racist stoner teenager with a skeleton fetish but with how he was, real or not, it did have a consequence in Brianna Wu being weary of this individual that it managed to make its way as an episode for a show on Syfy about the internet. Whether one thinks she was legit or just banking on empty threats, there was a consequence in that the joke ain't a joke to everyone and in some cases, it's like shouting "bomb" for shits and giggles at an airport. Not everyone's gonna be amused. Compare that then to whatever tries to pass itself as a joke which I won't know since as I may of already said, I haven't paid attention to all the jokes and "jokes" beyond seeing something like Pepe the frog being appropriated for Kekistan or yet more crappy Wojaks used to mock someone.

Originally I was going to make a post saying that I have personally noticed some of this as well. While I hesitate to ascribe as much of the weight to the recent political climate to specific events such as GamerGate, they are related. Several users on discord and the IRC have mentioned that they self identified as part of GamerGate, and have since come to regret it. It's self proclaimed goals became lost and targets changed from what most would consider unethical business practices to seeming to be against anything that could be viewed as culturally progressive. In addition, Kenetic Kups is pushing whataboutisim. He himself is well aware that the inherent nature of the US voting system leads to two parties. As you can only vote for one candidate (non-ranked voting) any new group that tries to arise is only able to get votes by taking away votes from one of the two existing parties which leads to decay, and has advocated for actions to address this. I agree with not forcing people into a dichotomy where you have to support the worst of your party or else you enable the other party to win. However that is not what the topic is about. The way Kinetic is forcing this narrative into the conversation makes it feel like he is advocating for a 'if you don't support X, then you support all the bad things in Y'. I know this isn't what he actually believes but in either situation, this isn't on topic.

However, then I saw something where I felt I had to respond. I'm spoiling part of it as it is not directly related to the topic at hand (though the second post I will tie the purpose of the OP to KYM itself. This should be seen as an example.)

Sanakan_ht wrote

MP is talking about [Transphobic Bathroom Guardian entry] which already have comments disabled 7 hours ago by Jill which also got one or more users banned for being actual transphobes recently

For my take, I'm literally not even downplaying it, the mods got this handled already and it was reported , if its transphobic then its transphobic, if they go to far then its a ban, easy shit.

I had to remind myself for a general user, it really isn't that unreasonable to make characterization like this of based solely on what was posted publicly. However there is more to know about this specific situation.

First, several comments on the entry were going after posts that were purported to be calling for deadpooling because the meme was offensive, some mocking them for essentially being 'trigged'. I say 'purported' because when I saw it, there was only one comment saying "Shit meme. +1 Deadpool" and that was is. Despite the pun, yes these type of comments are unproductive, but aren't uncommon elsewhere on the site. It is more than possible that there were in fact more comments that were since deleted that actually did what these other posts claimed. However, the most visible callout posts to those comments (that at least by the time I saw the entry no longer existed) did not use the reply feature, and indeed the one post that I saw calling for deadpooling did not have a reply response. To me that came off as looking like trying to make a mountain out of a non-existent molehill, especially as comments calling for deadpooling without any justification as to why the entry should be merged or is not noteworthy has exactly zero impact on the entry being deadpooled.

However, dogpiling on a phantom 'SJW threat' that would achieve nothing even it was still up, other than the stay on topic rule, is not explicitly against rules. And as most of these callout posts actually did talk about the entry itself to some degree, even that wouldn't really be something that could be warned over. This was part of the reason I was going to lock, and then make a comment at the top of the entry saying (among other things) 'The people who made those comments moved on, please do the same'

The second, more relevant part is the claim "users banned for being actual transphobes." While the user in question was transphobic, and this was what lead them to being reported… have a look at their activity on the site

It's linked, but if it's too small some choice quotes:

I know you have room temperature IQ but there's a reason these insane controversies weren't a thing a decade ago; we didn't have roaches like you on the internet whinging about the existence of things that you weren't into.
Lastly the only celibate here is you simp, now go send your next paycheck on some mediocre thot's Onlyfans in the hope she'll give you a crumb of attention, you estrogenic subhuman :D

Do I have to explain numerology to woketards now? I guess all their soy intake has rotted their brains. Keep looking for more things to be triggered by though, loser :D

Capitatim showed it's rules here when the Top Hat decided to stand behind its fanbase instead of pandering to dickless trannies like you. Try not to kill yourself now okay kid? :D

When you finally kill yourself out of self-loathing, make sure to stream it for us so we can have a laugh :D

While the user is transphobic (and indeed many of those lines were in comments that were explicitly this) them being transphobic was not why they were banned. The comments should highlight that this is unacceptable behavior in general, and all else being identical without any "-phobic/-ist" phrases or attitudes of any kind, their disposition would lead to a ban.

So how does that tangent tie in?

In going to Cheeky Mountain Parrot's last two original posts under the paradox of tolerance bit. I won't go too much into specifics on what is actually said, other than to say that most mods and admins on KYM on paper definitely ascribe to the idea of not wanting to remove people for their ideas unless those ideas are explicitly openly promoting violence or harm to others. Yes, people who we disagree with with behavior that violates the site's rules to get banned frequently, but users with no clear political beliefs get banned for that too.

As discussed below the spoiler, that user would have been banned with that content independent of making transphobic comments. Political users are generally not banned, even if they openly any "-phobic/-ist" until they either openly start advocating for violence or have other behavior that would lead to a ban even if their site activity was apolitical. We have banned both extreme right wing and left wing users due to this, though in my experience (while there are notable exceptions such as Hotsky) far right wing users are both more common and more likely to commit to this behavior.

Not banning because of political ideas has generally come down from Don. However, this has lead to… issues… In addition to not being able to punish users who openly unironically flout names, ideologies, and images that are obviously inspired by Nazis, Stalinists, and other groups well known for genocide, there is the image upload problem. Don explicitly said he doesn't want mods to attribute ideologies within images to the uploader. On paper, this sounds fine. After all, a lot of mods and admins themselves upload images that are deemed needed for articles that have content they disagree with. The problem comes when it is clear that users have a motivation for posting. There are a lot of examples, but as of late there was Lover of Truth (anti-vaxxer) Jalford (who in addition to making images that promoted/mocked sexual harassments of cosplayers, latter uploaded poorly made OC that attacked the CDC) and the endless waves of soyjack spammers. There are several other users that have made what many would clearly describe as either 'user generated propaganda' or clearly uploaded with the purpose to spread hateful ideologies. Again, while it may be obvious that they are only uploading to the site to spread their ideologies and/or make others upset, if they are just posting -phobic/-ist content but not literally going to the frequently implied next step of 'and they should be stopped by any means necessary including violent ones' mods can't really do too much. Even in the comments 41%, YWNBARW, trooner/tranny, >she, LGBTBBQ, Attack helicopter jokes etc. are often pretty obvious signs that a user is openly transphobic… that alone doesn't result in action… If action is taken, it is usually because it is coupled with other clearly warnable offenses (going off topic or, if aimed at a specific user, then remaining civil) of which THAT is the justification. Additionally, many of these ideas have become normalized. I know that there are definitely some that use some of these (especially attack helicopter) who are not using it with deliberate attempt to dehumanize others, even if they are using it unironically. Many comments on the site make extremely broad generalizations about groups of people be it on race, gender, sexuality, religion or whatever else. Not all of these are dehumanizing, but they frequently end up encouraging negative attitudes to those groups, even if there is no clear evidence that a majority of people of that group have any sort of support said views.

Similarly, lots of users on the site use the comment section of memes that have ties to political and social issues as an excuse to post carte blanche about that issue and not about the subject of the actual entry, even when on topic places to discuss the issue readily exist. 'This is not feminism' entry's comments section (a meme whose original comic itself was in fact a callout against the idea that feminism should make females superior to males) quickly devolved to have nothing to do with the comic itself, but instead an anti-feminism circle jerk with attempts to move this discussion to the actual feminism entry due to it being off topic being downvoted.

And… what do you do?

Most mods are pretty Lazzie-Farrie, and generally avoid taking action until I feel it is required, and even then only when I feel that the rationale can be very well backed up. This is in part due to my personal feelings, but also due to Eypc situation as explained earlier. We want to make sure if we feel an action is merited, the user can't weasel out of it. This is good, because we don't have bad users crying to Don about mod abuse and they stay banned.

However, it also means that users that clearly have openly hostile attitude to certain groups of people can stay on the site for a while and make others feel very unwelcome. In below the spoiler, I had mentioned that many people were making a mountain of a (at least now) non-existent molehill, with the cause being it "hurts my fee fees" or (quoting the user in question) "seething troons". This behavior itself isn't something that most mods want to spend time arguing with users over on if it 'really' breaks the rules (though they may make the unspoken 'user watch list' in case putative action is called into question later). So it stays up. As a consequence, this has in part lead many people who used to join KYM to look at memes and have fun to leave. A large number of mods have left or become almost entirely inactive in part due to years of seeing stuff like this. Many of the older users and mods that are left feel more like they have either some form of responsibility or habit that compels them to remain, and if they came across the site now, they would not even consider making an account.

And… well, despite beliefs from some users that believe that mods just want to silence opinions they disagree with… at least in my personal experience that's not the case. I still have a desire that all reasonable and respectful ideas should be brought to the table and concerns that I may disagree with need to be discussed. I am also aware that forcefully preventing people from being a part of this often just leads to the doubling down on their beliefs and gives credence to victimhood complex. Ideally, I'd love to talk with people and the conversation alone would help deradicalize them. However, when people are adamant that the other side (regardless of what that other side is) is full of radicals who should not be reasoned with and have no interest in actually having a civil discussion… What is the purpose of leaving them to scare off people who want to come to a meme site to have fun? Especially when those are the users that only contribute divisions and OC propaganda, and the users here for fun are more likely to actually meaningfully contribute?

Even before 2020 was over I had suggested changing some rules to specifically address issues that were problems in the past, but that we could pre-emptively nip in the bud now when they aren't huge issues now (things like OC propaganda like Jalford and Lover of Truth spammed in particular) but then comes the basic test of "how will we make sure to enforce it so that it doesn't look like mods are playing favorites." And… I don't have a good answer to it. Occasionally I do make callout (DEBOONKER) posts pointing out that the basic facts in something are incorrect, but I have real word things to worry about now. I offer advice and criticism to mods more than do things myself, largely because I believed that if you want radical change, you should be at the forefront to help make it happen. In the early teens I did this with image tagging and that helped lead me to become a mod. Now… I've spend more than 5 hours trying to type forum posts that no one will really care to read instead of doing real work and I feel like I've thrown the day away…

It is difficult to know what the right answer is. Mods are trying to amend rules with their goal of helping the site (again, the ball on this was rolling before 2020 ended) but there is always the fear that the claimed goals and objectives of any change will only worse the problems they hope to address. I just know, I can't do what I used to anymore. I have real word things I work on, I actually try to stay healthy, and trying to be patient with people who would want to see me dead just isn't why I joined the site or what I want to be doing with my increasingly limited free time.

That was the problem with GamerGate when one pushes aside all the articles and the like that keep digging it up. Whole thing did start off for "ethics in gaming journalism" in the sense of wanting transparency and the like but it devolves into autistic screeching and it doesn't help their optics when you have people who wanted in not for any ethical integrity for gaming journalism to exist but because they this should mean it should all be about screaming at feminist or SJWs. Reddit had one proof of that with Kotaku in Action, Twitter has that with One Angry Gamer and anyone else that could still cling to the hashtag. I don't have regrets with self-identifying but I can say that in the end, the notable places for it would devolve into "autistic screeching" and "owning the SJWs" as I mentioned with KiA and various Twitter places.

Earliest form of changing goals as far as I remember was hearing of Mister Metokur who went by the name of Internet Aristocrat back then. He was more for GamerGate to fight SJW's rather than deal with shady, unethical practices. At that point I can get the feeling that if one had some sort of criticism or didn't like an art style or how a game looks, I can imagine that now with the screeching between the pro and anti sides followed by whatever the culture war brought with, one's opinion can end up being labelled with things like "soyboy" because they weren't really a fan of an anime looking game but breast weren't the reason why or "incel" because they just think the 3D models of a lady in a game look "uncanny valley" compared to other games with 3D models that have a realistic aesthetic and weren't aiming for any stylized or anime aesthetic.

@Jill Don't worry, there's now at least one person who read it all. What you said is very interesting overall, and in particular, I absolutely identify with the bit about

As a consequence, this has in part lead many people who used to join KYM to look at memes and have fun to leave.

While I merely lurked this website and rather participated in other online boards, there are periods where I would definitely tell myself "yup, time to stop browsing this website" and avoid KYM for weeks because the atmosphere would be so overwhelmingly hostile towards certain categories of persons or subcultures, to the point it impacted my mood (more in the sense of "losing faith in humanity", obviously). Of course that highly depended on the time and the ongoing events. Some periods were quiet and consisted of harmless memes. For instance, I enjoyed the times were the trending bar would consist of non-political entries, whether it was Steamed Hams, some funny anime exploitable, Ironic Doge memes (and of course, r/dogelore), etc. But sometimes the comments I've read on entries like the Charlottesville incident or the Christchurch shooting were just going too far. Reading for instance that the incidents that occurred in Charlottesville were caused solely because the left incited violence (N.B. this wasn't the most popular opinion, but I did read that a few times), and not because the right we saw during this event was genuinely ready to fight, was infuriating. Not to forget the people who genuinely praised the Christchurch shooter for his manifesto. It's not just that the content itself was insulting (there are plenty places in the Web where people will act like shitheads, hence the famous Fuckwad theory), but the fact that this was slowly becoming the new normal on a website which the community used to be pretty neutral and seemingly diverse, and not just this website (even /v/ no longer has the same atmosphere as before). The worst thing you could see in here in the early 2010s was meme elitism, such as being called out for uploading an image with the 9GAG watermark.

Despite all this, I have some hope for the future because there's a noticeable trend of online users going back to old school memes. The Cover yourself in oil is good ol' troll science, people are getting horny for Derpina again, and r/dogelore reconnects, in my opinion, with the spirit of the early 2010s: no politics, no attempt at taking the piss out of anyone (or barely), only dumb jokes for the sake of making dumb jokes, with an additional layer of wit, for instance when people start making fun of historical events (believe it or not, I learned quite a few things because of this sub). In a way this is also why I chose to open this discussion now (in addition to the IRL events), because I feel that online users in general are progressively realizing how far we've come and how this trend of sharing politically-charged and toxic content is only making things worse (in addition to leading to some really shitty memes). However, I think this will take years before the Web becomes comparable to what it once was.

Anyway, hearing your viewpoint as a moderator was very interesting. That is something I barely knew about and which is definitely on topic.

That's fine, I mostly wanted a quick summery of the concepts at play and you're longer version can co-exist as something to point to for specific details.

Prime example of downplaying far-right influence. Someone writes a long and detailed point about how far-right influences online can affect RL, and you just respond to it with "Oh that one guy is no big deal"
Nick Fuentes has 128,000 twitter followers. It doesn't matter what you think of him, he has influence

@Jill
Thank you for typing up this response, it sheds light on a lot of feelings I similarly have about this site. I'll parrot (heh) what Parrot said about this line
"As a consequence, this has in part lead many people who used to join KYM to look at memes and have fun to leave."
I used to browse the trending gallery everyday as a fun little stop to see memes/fanart. But around the time of George Floyd being killed, the gallery would have a new political meme every day that would just ruin my mood, and even after the event died down there would be other political shit that would go into the mix. So I stopped visiting the gallery, and would just visit articles and forums. But then that too would have a large amount of right-wing influence on it, and I just got disheartened by constantly seeing the site lean right and then deny that it had any bias.

So… I rarely visit now, and it's usually just to try and make an impact against this site's right-wing bias. But I went through the bathroom guardian gallery and it's like… sure, I could downvote all these images, but they'll all still have 20 upvotes afterwards, so what's the fucking point? And I think there's been plenty of others in my same situation who just decided it wasn't worth it and left. Which just entrenches the site's bias even more. But as long as what you say is a """"humorous"""" meme you can get away with whatever shit you want

From how I read his post, it sounds less of downplaying and more of just insulting a rightoid that has some sort of following. I don't think he'll deny influence Fuentes has, he's just saying "yeah that guy is a shit head."

It only paints Nick as non-threatening if the guy that posted it downplayed everything else Nick does. However, all he said was something that amounts to an insult and nothing more, not even downplay.

I had a similar feeling to what OP has described, i just couldn’t think of a good way to say it

Games journalists started a culture war against their own consumers, and they were desperate for allies. This provided an opportunity to right-wing grifters like Milo of Breitbart news; who were already waging a larger cultural war. All these people had to do was amplify and exaggerate until people signed onto bigger conflicts (People went from "I'm not a sexist" to "muh SJW's hate video games" and diversity=bad ). This also had largely the same effect on liberals and gaming media as well, as they hate anyone with an anime avatar, and gamers are never taken seriously, and an entire new chan board was created to contain it. This continued to snowball, with most moderates abandoning ship after a couple of months; but extremists were already being given a platform, most people not gone by now are going to start listening to other things these people say and that's how these people were introduced to extremism. People like Wu and Milo were able to normalize priorly extremist positions when they introduced into greater internet culture. The thing is after these people were recruited into their culture wars; they abandon gamergate, its not even a passing memory for most people and wingnuts just attribute it to part of a greater problem. There are a few crazy people who still give it attention, like our AlarkozTheAncient who has linked blog
Where he complains about the age of consent, LGBTQ and feminists; and Briana Wu, who tried to use gamergate to get into a political career

IMO, Gamergate caused the internet to split into two distinct spheres based on left or right political alignment. All communities from around these two political cultures first and segregate on any further differences. The thing is that it was just an exploited moment of weakness, and its been assigned more cultural impact than it really had

one thing I wanna add is that we also moved onto be outraged centered.
Social media has evolved to make you as mad as possible because outrage is the most likely to get you to interact with content.
Society just wants you to be pissed at all times, doesn't matter at who

I never thought about it before, but wouldn't content that exists to make anger for anger's sake basically be a kind of porn? Do we live in an age of outrage porn?

Pretty much it. Over time, people lost interest, jumped ship, or had other things to do than just be for GamerGate. Adding to grifters being there, you also had social media like Reddi and chan boards in places like 8Chan create the likes of hugboxes and echo chambers. Even with moderates and the like, they too could and would end up being drowned/jump ship/lose interest while some people clung on to it, either out because of a grifter like Milo or one still going on. Dunno if places like KiA would still have a userbase focused on GG but at the very least we can get people making some response when they see GamerGate in a headline or an article. As for crazy people, the most one could probably expect from someone like say Brianna Wu nowadays may as well be a passing mention or trying to tie it to the Capitol Hill raid, albeit not in a clear way compared to how OP did.

We may of lived through or could still be living through some sort of age or instance where there is outrage. Most outrage I even paid attention to back then around 6-7 to just a couple years ago was just seeing something in pop-culture like a people getting outraged at first person historical Medieval game having a pro-GG dev or not having black people in it, something about Rey from Star Wars that I'll never really understand since Star Wars doesn't appeal to me (and in a fallacious manner, I just think both sides will sound annoying over what's essentially space wizards. Do feel Finn could of had better considering what I heard how he was initially), and outrage from OAG (and by extension those following him because he has his own following) getting angry over a transflag in a couple games. There's likely more outside of the realms of pop-culture but I can't remember much over the years. No doubt the anger and what not can be something one could manipulate. Whatever initial outrage there is, someone could try to grift something out of it and shape it into something else.

Even this site is full of people too willing to accept far-right BS.

When anti-fascists are accused of something: "SEE THIS IS WHY ANTIFA ARE FUCKING EVIL!"

When right-wingers do something: "Well, it's a complicated issue. The issue is we've become too partisan. Both the left and right have problems."

https://twitter.com/JamesFourM/status/1350506600952434688?s=20
Apparently, milo was at the raid

yes actually

I remember Milo had a book he tried to sell that called him the "World's most dangerous homosexual." Now in a way it may as well fit him in regards to being at the raid for whatever reason, whether he unironically believes in what Trump spews out, to keep on grifting the right wing, or as an attempt to be relevant outside of whatever platform he even has like Gab. He may as well end up on some list even if he was just there and didn't actually step foot into the building and charged past police lines like all the other raiders of the Capitol.

*Changing the title a bit so as to not use any language that's deeply inappropriate and can get me in trouble with the mods and the like and because the name was obviously something edgy from him.