07-19-2020, 07:02 PM
(07-19-2020, 11:44 AM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: I think that's how a majority of the crazy communities online start. For example, the subreddit The_Donald used to be a sub meant to mock the absurdity of Trump as a candidate. But, as it went on, Trump supporters just flocked to it and turned it into one of the most repugnant subreddits ever.
Same with the subreddit Gamers Rise Up. It started out making fun of the negative associations with gamers (like being anti social and obsessed with edgy anti-heroes like the Joker), and then eventually it just became unironically racist and anti-social.
I think /b/ on 4Chan was similar.
All of these "Let's pretend we believe something absurd because the idea that these people exist is hilarious to us" communities eventually become an unironic testament to those people's existence. It should be a law of the internet by this point, similar to Godwin's Law or Poe's Law. In fact, Poe's Law is a pretty apt description of it...
Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if Stephen Colbert had a certain sect of his fans that actually thought he was being serious on The Colbert Report.
I'm not a gamer and haven't played video games in 15 years, but from the little I see of the gaming community I gather that it's a real cesspool. My kid is all into Minecraft and Roblox, and I watch the people he sees on Youtube like a hawk. A lot of the conspiracy theory/ lite White Nationalism seems to stem from those kinds of places where shit-talking and tribalism kind of serve as an incubator for more non-virtual stupidity. I scared the shit out of me when I found out that Pewdiepie, a dude that's highly accessible to kids is basically a Neo-Nazi with less threatening approaches. Candace Owens is another fun product of this community. It's bad enough that people end up spending insane amounts of time and money on something as useless as online gaming, but now we have to watch out for conspiracy kooks and political radicals preying on our kids, too.
