quote:

So take Something Awful.

I know little about the Something Awful forums and I’m sure many people will chime in to correct me. But it seems to me that a certain type of disaffected, heavily ironized jokey engagement with the world developed there, led to tropes and vocabulary that became the shared touchstones of a small subculture, which in turn became popular, got exaggerated and distorted, and now are unavoidable, and thus exhausting. Something Awful spawned Weird Twitter, the presidential primary and elections of 2015–2016 caused Weird Twitter and Left Twitter to merge, today the default form of engagement in online left spaces is that weird, aggressive descendant of Something Awful style, and as online life drives membership increases in real-world left organizations, that style of engagement threatens to colonize those spaces as well.

I find it all unhealthy, for many reasons. One of which is that Corbyn-style sincerity is much healthier for left discourse than nth-degree irony.

Crucially, none of this implies blame for the people who used to frequent Something Awful. Nobody planned any of this. Jeb Lund wasn’t rubbing his hands together, laughing about how they would soon colonize broader internet culture. He and they were just having fun online. And it’s essential to say that these subcultures initially become popular because key voices within them are actually funny and talented and perceptive. If there’s no core of accurate critique of the dominant culture, if it’s not funny and smart and necessary, nobody will get attracted in the first place. And again, within those little discursive spaces, what’s the harm if there’s some communicative unhealthiness, a little too much jokiness, disaffection, and insincerity? It’s just a place where people were working out some poo poo, I’m guessing in the shadow of 9/11, “the death of irony,” and the insipid seriousness that had become the default tenor of The Way Things Were.

But now you can’t make a point online that differs from the Weird Left Twitter consensus without getting sent a dozen dril tweets. Adherence to the linguistic rules — how you signal and don’t, the way you make your arguments instead of what you’re arguing, the ways you show you are cool and not Mad Online — have overwhelmed anything resembling political substance. Not being owned seems to be the preeminent goal of a lot of people who, for reasons I can’t fathom, nonetheless are insistent on branding themselves as leftists. The basic idea of the dialectic, literally the central theoretical practice of the left for 150 years, has disappeared. It’s all exhausting and stupid and people are not nearly as clever as they think they are. They’re just regurgitating a set of tropes that someone much funnier and better read made up in entirely different discursive conditions 10 years ago. Yes, you know how to use Frinkiac.com. Congratulations. That makes you a true leftist.

What people say to me — boy, they love to say it — is that none of this matters because it’s all online. (I am perpetually confused by people who spend a ton of time on social media, as I do, and yet constantly insist that nothing their matters. If so… why do you tweet so much?) But the narrative about the ongoing growth of Democratic Socialists of America suggests this is untrue. I am asked to simultaneously believe that the memes and jokes that DSA became well known for are driving unprecedented recruitment efforts but also that this recruiting tactic will do nothing to affect the constitution of the organization, and I can’t square that. A DSA chapter’s online presence constantly shitposting actually has a material impact on the messaging, recruitment, and organizing strategy of the group. I just think that’s true.

The organization seems to have an entirely different character than it did just a couple years ago. As someone who never had any love for the Harringtonite DSA, I’m happy about that, and the degree to which the organization’s rank and file have radicalized compared to then is great. I am excited by their growth and I’m eager to see where they go next. Am I also concerned that their recruiting and messaging seems so caught up in a particular narrowcasted social discourse? Yes. Are there longer-tenured members of the group that will tell you there are growing tensions within the group over differences in messaging and culture? Yes.

There are some other obvious candidates for filling the role that Something Awful once played. And just as with the Something Awful crowd, the blame won’t reside on the people who are actually creating these initial subcultures. Rather, the creation of a new set of social and linguistic practices associated with these subcultures will become something ugly and exaggerated and enforced by tribes of angry dudes. The initial creators will be naturally defensive and understandably unlikely to take a close look at what they’ve spawned, particularly if they begin to enjoy monetary success, never an easy thing for left-branded cultural spaces to navigate. Meanwhile, because these cultures are social first, political second, skepticism towards them will inevitably be personalized and pathologized by their fans, rather than taken in the political spirit in which they are intended. “Who are you subtweeting?” will be asked about any critique, no matter how constructive its aims, suggesting that all forms of engagement are ultimately about petty personal poo poo. People will get “dragged” or “dunked on” and no one will learn anything. You will be part of this culture or part of the enemy culture. You’re with us or you’re against us because it’s us against the world.

The internet is a machine which takes human creative endeavors that are authentic, novel, and interesting and replicates them until they are toxic, trite, and stale. Only dril himself alone stands incorruptible.

https://medium.com/@freddiedeboer/subculture-to-counterculture-to-culture-9a402075b290

SKULL.GIF posted:

https://twitter.com/davidsirota/status/876985621998391296

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

GalacticAcid posted:

https://twitter.com/Integrity_Guy/status/831507995540516865

FactsAreUseless posted:

Something Awful dot com, single-minded bastion of cool-guy Twitter leftism hahahahhaha

Shear Modulus posted:

yeah this is classic freddie on hitting on something real and correct about people confusing posting online for real political work and then he goes off the rails by placing himself in the center of the universe and extrapolating the fact that people enjoy trolling him in particular as the death of the movement

Serf posted:

dude's real hit and miss. his piece on the gig economy was good, but this is p bad

link how do u miss the point of ironic detachment

Concerned Citizen posted:

new england has the worst people in the nation, and consequently also the worst democrats

SKULL.GIF posted:

Who wants to become a lanyard ................................................ for Bernie?!

https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/877179960594747393

Main Paineframe posted:

cool, a lot of congressmen don't pay their interns

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

GalacticAcid posted:

Bernie Panders would capitulate to neoliberalism just like Mitterand and Syriza before him fyi

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

quote:

 how you signal and don’t, the way you make your arguments instead of what you’re arguing, the ways you show you are cool and not Mad Online — have overwhelmed anything resembling political substance.

Shear Modulus posted:

also lol that a guy with a literal english phd thinks something awful invented ironic detachment and absurdism on the left

Concerned Citizen posted:

new england has the worst people in the nation, and consequently also the worst democrats

docbeard posted:

Ironic detachment is dumb and whining about it is also dumb.

Serf posted:

dude's real hit and miss. his piece on the gig economy was good, but this is p bad

link how do u miss the point of ironic detachment

Tight Booty Shorts posted:

lol