I found this gem the other day. Notice, if you will, that this amusing little clip hits everything in all the right places. If I were a cultural anthropologist that had to explain to you the difference between the increasingly popular camps of the dissident Right and the failing, cracking foundations of Liberal Progressivism, I'd use this as my prime example.
Now, you might look a this and say, yes, well it is reasonably well constructed, and the anon who made it certainly put a lot of work into it. The doppler effect on "Sandstorm" is a particularly nice touch. But what makes this, of all things, stand out?
Well I'll tell you, anon.
It's the small details. The small details are self-referential, which in and of itself can be either good, or bad, depending on who you ask. For example, I've heard a few people say that they thought Borderlands was hilarious, and I've heard a few people say they hated the self referential humor. Anyways, what's interesting about the self-referential humor here is that it bridges quite a bit of 4chan's noble history. 4chan is interesting because it is essentially a massive engine of content generation. Others have mused at length about how this came to be, and the consensus appears to be something like this: 4chan's anonymous nature, removing the "I" from the equation, forces content into a weird crucible where merit is weighed without factoring identity. Everyone, aside from the universally reviled tripfags, is an anon, and therefore what exists beyond the words on the screen is irrelevant. Over the span of time and the progression of posts and threads, content sinks or swims based off of whether it gets a reaction. This has created a long string of in-jokes, and beyond that a nigh imperceptible string of failed jokes. What is even more interesting about 4chan is that /pol/ is a sort of breeding ground for disaffected right-wing types. Some of it is tongue in cheek, some of it is serious, and the degree to which an idea belongs in either category is... dubious, at times. The constant shitposting, even if some happens to come from CTR or ShareBlue, only seems to make /pol/ stronger. Prolonged exposure to 4chan generally, but particularly /pol/, increases the likelihood that the user will end up getting red pilled.
The other thing that is humorous about the .webm above is that it uses Star Wars as a medium. Anyone who is aware of the college-tier Leftist obsession with mass media will appreciate taking something precious from the enemy and ruining it.
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| College Republicans, like broken clocks, have their uses. |
I had someone send me a text image making fun of fat people. The text was styled exactly like the "it was my privilege" greentext stories that floated around about the time Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin. I didn't bother to explain where that came from or why it was popular - this person does not browse 4chan - but I was a little amused, and a little hopeful. What is good, what is really good that comes out of 4chan may have more of an effect on the gen-pop than anyone yet realizes. Like I said, this stuff is flowing downstream, and it'll be interesting to see where that takes us. 4chan's incivility ultimately provides the ammo a newer, younger old-style Right needs to emerge as the undisputed champion of the whole Right wing (Nationalist wing?) of the political spectrum. Its worth going into more detail on other thoughts about memetic warefare, but that's for another day.
In the mean time, to scratch the surface of weird territory I'm still not quite ready to descend into: Within the past couple of years, Russia stopped allowing the adoption of Russian orphans by American couples. Food for thought.
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