

Dylann Roof, 4chan, and the New Online Racism - cremno
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/29/dylann-roof-4chan-and-the-new-online-racism.html

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api
"A reactionary, defiantly anti-social politics has been emerging for the last
decade. It was well known under the auspices of “trolling” and well hidden by
its pretense of trickstersism. It was actually juvenile fascism and vitriolic
racism but, because it grinned and operated in cyberspace, it was a sensation
when it first appeared less than a decade ago."

For only the last decade? Only in "trolling culture?" Where has this author
been?

It's pretty common for the highly intelligent and sensitive to embrace
reactionary ideology after becoming disillusioned in turn with pop culture,
counterculture, and academic liberalism. Maybe this is it, they think, finally
a movement that's intelligent! Neo-fascists and reactionaries know how to play
to this with the whole 'red pill' nonsense. Eventually people move on when
they realize that this, too, is dumb.

You'll never find an intelligent movement because there is no such thing.

For something to become a movement, it must be reduced to communicable meme-
sized sound bites. Then a low-fidelity game of telephone is played with those,
further bleaching out any depth. That process inherently erodes any subtilely
or grace that the original may have once possessed. Then demagogues rise up
and 'ride' the movement, hoping to gain money, power, sex, or just attention.
These people tend to be sociopaths and narcissists, and they proceed to shit
copiously upon whatever scraps of intelligence and value might remain.

There are deep, interesting, and thoughtful authors of nearly every political
persuasion, from right and reactionary to libertarian to Marxist, liberal,
progressive, feminist, you name it, but none of that intelligence can or will
ever translate into the popular representation of any of those things. They
are all worth reading, but that takes time.

The Internet is new, and we're still assimilating it. One thing we're finally
(I think/hope) coming to grips with is that it's actually a great vehicle for
the rapid spread of stupid, shallow ideas. Social media is biased toward
sound-bites and click bait. Those are the things that spread. Ideas that take
too long to consider and assimilate have a low viral coefficient.

As I've grown up with the net, one of the things I've learned is the value of
being selective as to what channels I pay attention to. There's a lot of high-
quality stuff on the net but you have to be picky to find it. Popular areas of
sites like Reddit and noise-boxes like 4chan are the gutter and are to be
avoided, as is the perpetual borgsong of the Facebook feed. Smaller and
topical sub-reddits and smaller sites like Hacker News are somewhat better,
and are at least decent starting points.

~~~
sparrowmaxx
Wow. Amazing analysis -- put into words very well the reason for the change in
content, culture, and consumption of media since the rise of the internet.

I've discovered the same as you. The small places in the internet, the HN and
specific forums and newsgroups and quiet subreddits, utilizes the ease of
internet communication in the best way possible. You unite people of a common
interest, which is neccessary for any functional community, but given their
size they still have the neccessary diversity of opinions and interests to
keep things productive.

But take that ability to communicate, subject it to the tyranny of the masses
-- the whole platform goes to hell. Spend 5 minutes on a stranger's facebook,
or a pundit's twitter account, or a large subreddit and you can clearly see
demonstrated just how shallow, memetic concepts can crowd out any meaningful
discourse in a community.

~~~
api
... and tribal and racial hate ideologies, fundamentalist crusades, "fear
porn," naive optimism, and curmudgeonly pessimism are among the simplest and
thus most viral things.

The mainstream parts of the Internet as a result are an echo chamber of hate,
doom, and gloom.

