Appreciate how 4chan is like a think tank of ‘90s culture, proffering their own approaches to the sexual issues of the zeitgeist

Like before “trans girls” got big in the 2010s they had “traps”. Who fulfilled the female criteria of being hot and consumable. “Traps aren’t gay” (to be attracted to as a man) was, after all, a claim that these chicks-with-dicks were not, in fact, men.

And what is all the femdom (incl. monster girls) but a response to the complaint that men are personally predatory to women and use them for sex in the workplace not by attempting to suppress this but by spinning up cultural valences, idioms, and norms for women to be too?

morgannoli:

“Some friendships are so strong, they can even transcend lifetimes.”

thoughts on seeing this on the radar:

holy shit, is that Yotsuba?

…huh, now that I think of it I can’t remember the last time I saw her used as a personification of 4chan

…or honestly the last time I saw Vivian James

Is “loves to personify things” even a recognized trait of 4chan still?

This is the best mainstreamish article I’ve seen on what I’ve been talking about for a while, the internet-based development of a white male consciousness.

I will say it’s a little myopic in its American focus. I put it as

the construction of a modern, international, English-speaking Australian-American-Polish-British-Scandanavian-Serbian-etc. white volk around a core of internet-native right-masculo-populism on the chans’ “waifus, warhammer, and white nationalism” model

and the internationalism counts for something. Like I’ve said, because my sleep cycles leave me up on the internet late[/early] enough for the Strayans to show up, I now know the correct derogatory stereotypes about Aboriginal Australians, though I doubt one has ever even crossed into my physical field of vision.

And I guarantee you there are a lot of guys out there, around the world, who on hearing that Russia (or even a Danish/Finnish coalition) had invaded Sweden, would at least give a good “attaboy”, with hopes towards shifting Swedish domestic policy and culture, despite not being able to name two Swedish cities or politicians.

But really, an international bunch of alienated young male yahoos doing identitarian chest-thumping on social media, what could they really do anyway?

Well, why don’t you go ask ISIS?

Anyway, what brought me to that was thinking about something. I’m very much a text guy so I kind of categorize 4chan and stuff like that as a primarily text medium with occasional illustrations, but there’s a reason they’re called imageboards.

And one really interesting thing about imageboard culture is how big it is on the concept of personification. I’ve talked about polandball and the other countryballs, which come from Krautchan, and Pepe (”sad frog”) and Feelsguy, but also things like the suit/greenface Anon, Fawkes mask Anonymous, /v/irgins, Le Happy Merchant, Captain Sweden, Iron Pill, and Big Red. Always been fond of the Japanese-style moe anthropomorphization, too - ebola-chan and all that.

Like, it’s telling that the very first thing GamerGate did, on coming to self-awareness and realizing they were a thing, was to create Vivian James and start investing charisma in her.

The thing I love about 4chan is how not only is it utterly ridiculous, but it’s completely self-aware about its utter ridiculousness in a manner that in no way precludes it from being 110% dedicated, mind body and soul, to being utterly ridiculous