Obituaries

[Mongrel]

I mean, either way, it really was an "Archduke Franz Ferdinand moment", in that it was just the particular match which happened to light the enormous pile of socio-economic ordnance which had been steadily accumulating (and continues to do so even though it's already blazing... putting out fires with gasoline, anyone?).

That fuse was gonna get lit one way or another; the internet simply let more people to play with matches who were already so inclined.

[Blossom]

I'd just like to clarify that 4chan's inception was prompted by SA banning child porn specifically, not just hentai in general.

you're thinking of 8chan, which was established as an alternative 4chan when 4chan banned child porn. 4chan did indeed happen when SA banned hentai generally after too many tentacle threads.

[Brantly B.]

This is why I am the world's foremost spokesthing for world peace.

[mharr]

Someone wrote a book about it confirmed. https://us.macmillan.com/books/97812501 ... thingawful

you're thinking of 8chan, which was established as an alternative 4chan when 4chan banned child porn. 4chan did indeed happen when SA banned hentai generally after too many tentacle threads.

I'm only going on squishy meat brain memory but I thought there were multiple stages, SA/Anime banning loli images, moot spinning up 4chan a couple of months later, then 4chan in turn having to ban explicit CP and concentrating purer garbage people into 8chan?

Inevitable, though... I guess so? It's all just one specific crystallisation of our tendency to form into echo chamber subcultures, every 'place' online is that to some degree. Internet plus capitalist education equals idiocracy.

[makesound]

This shit is the goddamn truth.

I often think about Something Awful and Portal of Evil. And David Wong's own old website. And stuff like Seanbaby and Old Man Murray. And, yes, even Sharkey and Toastyfrog. And how it reshaped the language of the internet and culture at large. It's just crazy to think that vanity websites from the early aughts could have that much influence over time, and in the case of Something Awful, almost topple a government. It freaks me out.

[mharr]

It's impossible to say without a time machine but I think the only real influence they had was what names those websites and subcultures ended up with. Something that general shape was going to form one way or another. The zeitgeist said it was internet nazi time.

I'll happily read fictionalized accounts of time travelers trying to save the world by killing Lowtax ahead of schedule though.

[Mongrel]

The best part will be history books either referring to (hilariously obliquely if we end up in Puritanland) or possibly even outright explaining hentai to the reader.

Internet plus capitalist education equals idiocracy.

This is your friendly reminder that Idiocracy was actually utopian. :)

We have something far more evil, exploitative, and above all, self-destructive. :(

I often think about Something Awful and Portal of Evil. And David Wong's own old website. And stuff like Seanbaby and Old Man Murray. And, yes, even Sharkey and Toastyfrog. And how it reshaped the language of the internet and culture at large. It's just crazy to think that vanity websites from the early aughts could have that much influence over time, and in the case of Something Awful, almost topple a government. It freaks me out.

There's tons of also-rans too.

I cut my chops on MiseTings, the MTG version of those sites. It's where Starr and I met, hilariously* If one of the mods hadn't gone nuts and deleted a third of the forum's posts, and the the owner hadn't lost his shit and closed the place down a year or two later, it might have carried on as one of these storied hellholes, instead of disintegrating into splintered, partisan bickering and a bunch of schismatic offshoot websites.

Loads of people probably have stories about similar sites.

*(for the record, I still think it's incredibly bizarre that with all the far more talented and thoughtful people on the site, and with her being basically the only significantly active woman anywhere near dating age posting there, she chose to approach me. But hey, twenty years later and we're still here, so I guess that worked out pretty well after all.)

[makesound]

Something that general shape was going to form one way or another. The zeitgeist said it was internet nazi time.

This is also something I think about. Somehow during those WILD WEST days of the internet I managed, and I think the current denizens of this board managed, not to become a nazi. I do wonder how many others went the opposite (nazi) direction. There's an ill defined pipeline.

If it had remained on the internet I'd feel better about it. But this weird nerd rage took over the real world. The nerds won! Who knew it would be so ugly?

Loads of people probably have stories about similar sites.

For sure. It's just wild to think about how what I thought was just innocuous shitposting before it even had a name turned into a legion of nutbars. It would be fascinating if it weren't terrifying.

[Thad]

It's impossible to say without a time machine but I think the only real influence they had was what names those websites and subcultures ended up with. Something that general shape was going to form one way or another. The zeitgeist said it was internet nazi time.

Can confirm; there were nazi edgelords on Prodigy's Video Games BB in the mid-'90s.

[Mongrel]

It's impossible to say without a time machine but I think the only real influence they had was what names those websites and subcultures ended up with. Something that general shape was going to form one way or another. The zeitgeist said it was internet nazi time.

Can confirm; there were nazi edgelords on Prodigy's Video Games BB in the mid-'90s.

Well, they had to; Penguin called them nazis.

[Mongrel]

Also Mharr's probably right that we should do a threadsplit? Or a splitmerge with the punching nazis thread?

Probably from Buge linking the tweet, onward?

[Friday]

This is also something I think about. Somehow during those WILD WEST days of the internet I managed, and I think the current denizens of this board managed, not to become a nazi. I do wonder how many others went the opposite (nazi) direction. There's an ill defined pipeline.

Part of it is just that the internet has been a phenomenal recruitment tool for nazis and the alt-right. They specifically target certain types of young men and distribute instructions on how to find and talk to said young men among themselves. Which is nothing new, really, since they've been doing that exact same behavior since way before the internet. But it's a lot harder to reach people with flyers or ads or whatever than it is to get to them on the net.

So yeah, it's an ill defined pipeline in a way, but in another way it's just "the internet made it a shitload easier for nazis to recruit more nazis from the ranks of maladjusted, angry young men."

[Thad]

It's impossible to say without a time machine but I think the only real influence they had was what names those websites and subcultures ended up with. Something that general shape was going to form one way or another. The zeitgeist said it was internet nazi time.

Can confirm; there were nazi edgelords on Prodigy's Video Games BB in the mid-'90s.

Well, they had to; Penguin called them nazis.

And backing up a bit to my Nintendo comparison, it's interesting to think it was tied to Console Warrior identity nonsense even back then.

Like, the guy I'm thinking of didn't just performatively throw out references to gas chambers, it was explicitly in the context of being a Sega fanboy talking shit about Nintendo fans. (Though he spared some casual bigotry for the also-ran consoles, too. Guess what letter he changed when he made fun of the Jaguar.)

We've still got that "PC master race" shit, as one example among many. There's been an overlap between toxic gamer culture and nazi shit since before people even recognized "gamer culture" was a thing.

[Thad]

This is also something I think about. Somehow during those WILD WEST days of the internet I managed, and I think the current denizens of this board managed, not to become a nazi. I do wonder how many others went the opposite (nazi) direction. There's an ill defined pipeline.

Part of it is just that the internet has been a phenomenal recruitment tool for nazis and the alt-right. They specifically target certain types of young men and distribute instructions on how to find and talk to said young men among themselves. Which is nothing new, really, since they've been doing that exact same behavior since way before the internet. But it's a lot harder to reach people with flyers or ads or whatever than it is to get to them on the net.

Kurt Busiek mentioned on Twitter the other day that after he started getting letters printed in comics (this would have been back in the '70s), he started getting mail from the KKK and other similar organizations trying to recruit him.

So, adding to my point that the nazi/gamer intersection has been a thing since long before we called it G*merg*te, C*micsg*te has been around longer still.

[Mongrel]

Guess what letter he changed when he made fun of the Jaguar.

This actually took me forever to figure out because my brain got stuck trying to think of what racial slur you meant. :B

[Büge]

I have a friend who was into Axis and Allies (he even did some freelance scenario writing for Avalon Hill), and I remember him telling me that a lot of the guys he talked to and/or played with were hardcore into gun ownership, states' rights, and so on. I have to wonder how many of them went on to join the Proud Boys or whatever.

By the way, did you know the genesis of the name "Proud Boys"? It's actually quite absurd. See, back in the early '90s, when Aladdin was in production, one of the early drafts of the story included Aladdin's mother. There was a musical number titled "Proud of Your Boy", which Aladdin sings to her as she sleeps, and is thematically about him promising to do better. Decades later, apparently some white dudes took the removal of the song from the soundtrack to mean that they shouldn't be "proud" of being white dudes, so they chose the name "Proud Boys" as a way to reclaim(?) it.

[Mongrel]

Naziism and racism were certainly not foreign to gaming circles well before video games arrived. There's a long history of that shit in wargaming, whether it's players playing Waffen SS armies so they can "better understand the history", as if chucking D6s will give you insights none of the exhaustive writing on the matter will, or English-speaking wargamers with their over-fondness for "Colonial period" wargaming.

Even today, there's still way too many of those old bristly grognards in the hobby.

[mharr]

UK tabletop is a really weird vortex of energy levels these days, with shops and clubs full of rainbow flags & diverse staff but shelves ever dominated by the enthusiastically Schutzstaffel themed flagship products of Games Workshop.

[Mongrel]

Playing generic Wehrmacht armies, sure, if you're gonna game WWII, someone's gotta play Germany, and I get wanting to play with Tiger tanks and all that. Hell, I've got cartoon Nazis to play villain for pulp games.

But I think we realize those are a bit different than the weirdly rationalized eagerness to play "armies" whose main job was massacring the unarmed and for whom soldiering of any sort was a secondary task, if at all.

As for GW, I was actually pleasantly surprised at how much lampshade hanging they've been doing recently WRT how awful and terrible the 40k Empire is. That's another classic wargaming example right there; with GW historically tilting between acknowledging the Empire of Man as an extremely bleak parody or cautionary tale, versus embracing it at face value. Kind of like a Paul Verhoeven movie, lol.

[mharr]

Oh, GW absolutely lean into everyone being the bad guys, humanity especially so if you look below the surface, but it's still uncomfortable and not so obvious to the young players that company is dedicated to monetizing. 40k is definitely home turf for the recruiters mentioned earlier.

Hey, anyone remember this embarassing bullshit?

The ethnic distribution of hackers is understood by them to be a function of which ethnic groups tend to seek and value education. Racial and ethnic prejudice is notably uncommon and tends to be met with freezing contempt.

When asked, hackers often ascribe their culture's gender- and color-blindness to a positive effect of text-only network channels, and this is doubtless a powerful influence. Also, the ties many hackers have to AI research and SF literature may have helped them to develop an idea of personhood that is inclusive rather than exclusive — after all, if one's imagination readily grants full human rights to future AI programs, robots, dolphins, and extraterrestrial aliens, mere color and gender can't seem very important any more.