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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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For every person on 4chan who uses slurs as a tactical normie-filter there's three people who just enjoy being shocking and hateful.

No, 4channers use slurs because a combination of 'intending to piss people off because it's funny' and 'actually disliking trans/gay/black people'. ("based?") The ratio between the two probably has changed over its history. But it isn't to keep out speech policers!

4chan only hates gay tranny nigs because 4chan is self-loathing.

How would we know

Because I know a bunch of long-time 4channers personally?

As a counter point, I offer the regular posting of gore, which is usually upped whenever there is a perceived "raid" from outsiders going on

Again, in that case the point of the gore is to piss off the outsiders, not to 'prevent them from censoring us'

and I would guess that even among channers, most people do not like looking at gore.

probably, but most channers don't post gore most of the time, whereas they constantly use slurs.

Again, I'm not insulting them here, I'd prefer if everyone was totally fine with gore and slurs and even worse things. But saying it's mostly to keep out censorers is just wrong, they enjoy pissing each other off with gore too, and at least half of them genuinely do not like blacks/gays/transes.

Well, you did said it was akin to rdrama's banners, which are consciously chosen. But even if we accept that 4chan slur-users are unwitting or subconscious implementers of an anti-normie immune system, their conscious actions are obviously those of people who enjoy using slurs, so they fall into the contingent originally described in the comment above.

I don't think this is really an important difference.

Couldn't American white southerners (circa 1850) say their culture is about enslaving black people? Abolitionists wouldn't go, "huh you're right I didn't notice that. We wouldn't want to culturally genocide you, so carry on!" they just say: your culture is not worth preserving. Maybe more realistically, abolitionists would say: You can keep your southern food and your southern hospitality, but you don't need to keep slaves.

To the extent that 4chan's culture is dependent on saying mean words, why would "it's a defense mechanism!" convince anyone? Also, what exactly is "that culture" and can it be separated from saying mean words?

  • If it can be separated, then this is what a lot of people are asking for

  • It it can't be separated, then 4chan has enemies

It sounds like you're saying: it has some amazingly funny artifacts of counter-culture that moral busybodies would find OK? Could you give some examples?

If moral busybodies find these amazingly funny artifacts of counter-culture problematic (like all the mean words), then arguments about subconscious immune systems or cultural defense mechanisms wouldn't convince moral busybodies would they? Moral busybodies want to end 4chan culture, in this branch of the hypothetical.