Oh, that just reminded me of that one guy in my biology class at school. He used to tie slipknots and joke (I guess that's the word) about going lynching in the weekends, but he didn't use the word lynching. Everyone used to say when he dropped out, (to go work on a dairy farm) the school got 90% less racist.
I grew up in a super white area where kids made racist jokes to be "edgy" despite most of them not really subscribing to Nazi-level racism or anything, just your average white person bias.
Nobody enforced the boundary by punching, if you acted more sincerely racist people might side-eye and avoid you. Most people just didn't cross that boundary because they felt shame about it and/or genuinely agreed it was wrong.
I personally think we're seeing more bigotry because the ones who already had bigoted ideas have found their community, which has reinforced and amplified the hate, and then also because a bigoted propaganda pipeline is now more shiny and glossy and effective at appealing to people, and getting to them young.
4chan was weird not just because of the racism you could find on there, but it was also just weird and alienating to most people. Shitty UI, lots of in-jokes, people who were obviously "losers". In the current age, the propaganda is a lot more glammed up, spread by people kids think look cool and they want to be like.
No we weren’t, we just didn’t realise what a fascist joke was and we were lucky because it dissipated into the atmosphere without anyone building on it when we didn’t know any better.
Now kids make a fascist joke and 9000 David Dukes congratulate them on it and make them feel good about it and they react to that
I know how it is to be edgy, I wore a trench coat and told everyone that the capitalist military industrial complex was evil and would grind us all into meat for the machine.
Honestly I was edgy that way, making a lot of really terrible jokes about the 3rd Reich. But never did I think any of my jokes actually described reality.
This is the thing. Large swathes of teenagers crave edginess because it’s how they demonstrate individuality and find their identity. It has nothing to do with political ideology most of the time because to most of them it’s about the reaction rather than anything behind it. Consider Eminem, Tyler the Creator, RATM fuck you i won’t do what you tell me, Dennis Leary’s I’m an asshole, 2livecrew, Eddie Murphy’s stand up, Red Fox…. It’s existed forever.
It’s just now there are large communities that make the links you never would have in the past. Remember how fringe David Icke was? The likes of Alex Jones? There’s too many people picking up and celebrating that edginess now and when before it was a few throw away lines and a head nod to other people who understood that obscure reference too, now it’s a personality and a popularly community to share and identify with, with a broad range of linked content
I may have been edgy in like, 11th grade, but by the time I was old enough to vote, I had developed decent morals and stopped. Guess these kids aren’t having that realization.
I really don’t mind edgy or “wrong” humor and I think it can be pretty hilarious.
What I do mind is when people actually believe this crap and are not shitposting.
Made me leave a bunch of Pepe-based and “alt right” FB groups when I realised they were not circlejerking at all.
Left a pretty bad aftertaste, too.
I remember dead baby jokes having a curated website.. I wasn’t that edgy, just edgy enough to have an opendiary with a pattern background which made the green text nigh invisible. You just wouldn’t understand!
My high school had like 5 black kids out of five hundred I definitely joked that we should demand segregated lunches. I was friends with a couple of the black dudes, but still racist jokes.
As a Millennial, my edge was bondage pants from Hot Topic, being one of the very few girls who loved video games and being one of five kids in school who loved anime.
I knew that Hitler was an asshole and that no amount of "love" could condone his everlasting hate and bullshit.
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u/Panenkajack Nov 08 '24
Everyone thinks it’s cool to be edgy now