If anonymous forums are so great (52)

8 Name: 410 - Name Gone : 2021-03-30 22:20 ID:LoQLN4cX

It's the issue with so many people coming from 4chan.

The problem with 4chan's culture, a longstanding one, and one that is expressed through its memes and even its dialect, is the implied status of the in-group as the sole holy thing. The in-group is good, the out-group is bad. The in-group here isn't referring here to in-groups in general, but to the specific in-group of the culture of 4chan.

4chan culture, generally, sees all that is outside of its culture as worse than it. All other dialects, cultures, aesthetics, ways of thinking about things, memes, etc. are all seen as inherently worse. 4chan lacks a strict hierarchy, and isn't fond of explicit authority. Despite this, it maintains a surprising amount of consistency over a surprisingly long period of time. It accomplishes this through ridicule. Because the in-group out-group idea is the only idea by which things are generally considered bad or good on 4chan, it sort of has to be taken on faith to be accepted. Mockery, joking, ISHYGDDT, etc. and other sorts of memes are used to reinforce this belief system.

For examples, let's see how traditional ways of ascribing good and bad clash interact with 4chan. Frequently on 4chan, especially in the old days, you'll come across pedo threads. Either loli or real life CP. I'm sure its the same people in both but I digress. Often resistance is met to those, proclaiming them in a negative light from a moral perspective. Moral perspectives are common in most of the world. They're usually quite effective. A moral response is not given by the 4chan consensus however. The response is usually an accusation of being a "moralfag", i.e. one who believes that what is right and wrong determines what is good and bad. Value judgements on immoral or moral acts are considered stupid, immature, foolish. But say that someone, rather than posting cp, makes a post advocating for the consumption of soylent. Or say, someone makes a post that makes unironic use of words like "yikes" "y'all" and "ummm". The response will be, inevitably, one of two things:

  1. an immediate strongly negative reaction, phrased in mocking and ironic terms
  2. a refusal to believe one could even be sincere, that one must only be pretending to be such a foolish person as to use words like "yikes" and drink beverages like soylent. Surely anon is kidding

No one here will ever respond to these responses with accusations of making an unfair value judgment, as one would receive upon responding negatively to pedophilia or desire to rape or threats of violence.

We can see that value judgment is justified on 4chan in only one case: when the judgement is on the basis of "conformity to the norms of the in-group" (good) or "nonconformity to the norms of the in-group" (bad, perceived as conformity to the norms of the out-group, phrases such as "yes goy" or "amirite reddit" or "you will never be a woman" associate the cultural intruder with an often very vague enemy. Soyjaks serve this purpose extremely well, since the enemy is so vague and so hated)

This form of cultural control, where that which lies within the 4chan culture is seen as the sole good, is very effective, and very good at sticking to the mind. After enough time on 4chan, you'll feel embarrassed about not saying slurs. You'll feel as if you're doing something wrong or shameful when you say "trans" instead of "tranny".

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