The New Man of 4chan
thebaffler.com
thebaffler.com
There are some baffling omissions. The MRA movement/MGTOW? Gamergate? It just reads as though the writer hasn't much familiarity with the subculture.
Anyone a journalist or media figure or opposer doesn't like/thinks is being a jerk on the internet.
Those who oppose corruption in gaming journalism.
Those who don't like 'SJW' types trying to censor things or complaining about privilege.
Certain groups of trolls who want to dox people they find stupid or strange, and need a justification for it.
People who oppose various changes made to localised video games.
Conservatives who think gaming and the media has become too liberal.
People who want to become internet celebrities off the controversy.
Many, many gaming websites and Youtube channels that support some parts but not others.
Basically, it's more divided and semi diverse than the rebel groups in Monty Python's Life of Brian.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHHitXxH-us
Either way, it's split across so many websites and seemingly encompasses so many radom groups that it's really all that associated with chan culture any more.
Really?
It's an extremely common topic across boards
I purely visit those two places for entertainment. Sure it's a bit repetitive, but the sheer absurdity makes me laugh and that's good enough for me.
Your gut based fear response is uneducated. If you educate yourself your fear will diminish. I promise.
I was thinking that at first, too, until I noticed that the author completely missed the fact that calling someone a "beta" male is not a positive thing. I mean, she alludes to it, but then takes it all literally. Referring to one's self as beta is generally a self-deprecating statement or a mark of self-resignation. Betas just take whatever they're given. Calling someone "beta" is actually a common insult to many of the sub-cultures that she sweeps together. It's the recognition that someone else is in control.
You have to actually look at it from their perspective to get it. These are outcasts. They want to be at the top, but they don't want to be like the people who mistreat them because they despise them and their behavior. Instead, many of them idolize the sigma and omega types - the types who stand outside (or hide within) the hierarchy and still remain confident and powerful. The chans idolize the rebels and the masterminds, not the jocks and the bootlickers.
The fact that she can't catch the mockery in all the beta commentary speaks to the fact that she really doesn't understand this culture at all. She may have done some research, but apparently the black humor that pervades the dark corners of the internet escapes her.
I thought this article did a better job of discussing these weird net subcultures from an outsider perspective, and capturing the ironic/serious tone of all the atrocious crap they say:
https://newrepublic.com/article/132039/tay-exposes-fairy-tal...
Except she says exactly that:
The term “beta” ... is an ironic inversion of the fabled swagger of the alpha male.
“beta male” is a common term of identification, one of both belonging and self-mockery.
> These are outcasts. They want to be at the top, but they don't want to be like the people who mistreat them because they despise them and their behavior. Instead, many of them idolize the sigma and omega types - the types who stand outside (or hide within) the hierarchy and still remain confident and powerful. The chans idolize the rebels and the masterminds, not the jocks and the bootlickers.
She says exactly that, too:
Whereas alphas tend to be macho, sporty, and mainstream in their tastes, betas see themselves as less dominant males, withdrawn, obsessional, and curatorial in their cultural habits.
But how, exactly, does “hegemonic masculinity” accurately sum up a scene explicitly identifying as beta male? And can “traditional ideas about gender” really be bursting forth from an Internet culture that also features gender-bending pornography, discussions about bisexual curiosity, and a male My Little Pony fandom?
In fact, a great deal about the beta-male rebellion runs counter to theories of masculinity advanced by scholars like R. W. Connell and Michael Kimmel. In her 2005 book Masculinities, Connell lists the words “nerd” and “geek” among the terms that stigmatize marginal masculinities. The beta style draws from a countercultural genealogy and identifies itself against feminism but also against social conservatism, political correctness, mainstream consumer culture, and most important, against hegemonic masculinity itself.
As one patiently surveys the varieties of online expression favored by beta males, it becomes apparent that, in addition to their all too palpable sense of self-loathing, they’re further actuated by a pronounced sort of class contempt. One key source of their rage—against both the sexual pecking order and society at large—is that their own sense of superiority over the masses, the unspecial “normies,” is not reflected back to them by others in real life.
> The fact that she can't catch the mockery in all the beta commentary speaks to the fact that she really doesn't understand this culture at all. She may have done some research, but apparently the black humor that pervades the dark corners of the internet escapes her.
Except that it does not escape her, as she says:
The casual racism embedded in this geeky beta world comes wrapped in several layers of self-protective irony
Commentators like Coleman have lent a certain credibility to the beta uprising’s contention that its motives are misinterpreted by a public that fails to grasp its unique brand of postmodern wit. Some people, they say, simply “don’t get” that the betas are in it strictly “for the lulz.”
> But how, exactly, does “hegemonic masculinity” accurately sum up a scene explicitly identifying as beta male
Here she says that they're explicitly identifying as beta males, when nearly every culture she referenced rejects and mocks it.
Also
> this geeky beta world
> The beta style draws from
> Among the stale memes, repeat posts, true-life confessions, pre-rampage tip-offs, and cock-and-bull stories that make beta forums so impenetrable
The phrase "beta rebellion" is in the article eight times. She is literally basing this entire article on betas, when the groups mentioned inside don't think very much of betas at all. If you're not seeing that, you're projecting an awful lot onto this article. Not only that, her understanding of betas is faulty.
> Whereas alphas tend to be macho, sporty, and mainstream in their tastes, betas see themselves as less dominant males, withdrawn, obsessional, and curatorial in their cultural habits.
She's conflating introversion with beta, when they're both orthogonal attributes. And she's claiming this is where the internet misogyny comes from. Betas are perceived as being afraid to speak controversial opinions or in other ways step out of line (they're followers, remember?), and also as people that will say the most pleasing things in order to get attention. _None_ of which lines up with the forums and sub-cultures she's describing. Betas may pop on the internet and try to be tough, but it's usually just them RPing some sort of fantasy. They might talk down on people who reject them, but there's nothing they resent more than their inability to change things.
> the betas are in it strictly “for the lulz.”
Here she's claiming that the burn the world down for fun behavior of the chans is beta behavior. She started this whole article with mass shootings, transitions into betas, makes a link with online forums as if the internet is breeding them. In reality, the problems behind people who make IRL attacks don't start in internet forums. The callous spite for anything and everything certainly doesn't help fix them. But the chans talk about these people as beta to mock their weakness. In their minds, they literally didn't have enough guts to do anything about their problems in real life until they snapped.
In summary, no, she doesn't understand the people or the ideas at all. She just cherry-picked words and did some meme research for authenticity. And then she grabbed the biggest brush she could buy to paint everyone the same color.
Broad strokes and catchphrases necessitated by the medium aside[2], I think this is the best article on internet culture I've read in quite some time.
[1]: I think that she (correctly) applies the label as they (or some of them) self-deprecatingly call themselves (in opposition to the jock alphas), rather than as an objective description of "weak(er) followers". She stresses over and over that they don't view themselves as followers regardless of their self-applied label.
[2]: And those limitations are very clear to readers of a high-end magazine like the Baffler.
1. "4chan" is not a person, a club, a worldview, or even a reputation-based comment aggregator. 4chan is website with a constant, ephemeral stream of anonymous comments, and the "culture" between different boards varies quite significantly. This system makes it especially prone to misrepresentation by a media that does not understand it. One could easily write an article entitled "The New Man of Reddit" about disturbing subreddits that exist with deep misogynistic hatred, but people understand that one subreddit does not represent the views of everyone that visits the site as a whole. It is even easier to portray 20-30 4chan users as representative of hundreds of thousands because they all post under the same name, "Anonymous". I know several friends who frequent /g/ (the technology board on 4chan), and the discussion is on technical topics virtually all of the time.
2. There are obviously pockets on certain boards (e.g. /r9k/) with groups of anonymous users that have disturbing thoughts and views. That being said, I think it is a mistake to frame the problem as a website being "like Uber, but for violent misogyny", or making a broad analysis that includes references to decades-long gender dynamics theories. I am NOT defending or endorsing the actions whatsoever of these users.
However, if the author were to engage in conversation with some of the more extreme users, she might realize that what many of these people need is help. If she were to read personal stories threads on /r9k/ she might find that a large portion of those people are there because they are not "doing well" in life, at all, and have not "fit in" to society for a very long time. They are often clinically depressed, or have any number of debilitating mental illnesses. There are people there that are in poverty, have crippling anxiety disorders that prevent them from leaving the house, who are addicted to substances and cannot hold a job, and who have never done so much as held hands with a romantic interest even decades into adulthood. There are a disturbing number of people on /r9k/ that were physically and sexually abused as children, and those stories are excruciatingly sad. I don't exaggerate about the prevalence or severity of these problems, I have seen regular popular threads about child abuse and significant social impairment on boards. Misogyny is often not a calculated tactical hatred on the part of these people, but an unhealthy and abhorrent outlet for their desperation.
Again, I am not defending their actions and I don't think that those 4chan boards are positive places for people to seek refuge. But I think it is important to recognize why many of them are there, and proceed from a point of compassion for another human being, no matter hard that may be. It is easy and tempting to demonize a group of individuals that engage in repulsive misogynistic commentary all day, but that won't solve any of their problems or those of society.
I noticed there was a trend, where half of the users just wanted a better world in general, and the other half were extremely violent and hateful... but that hateful half also had the worst personal stories.
One that I thought was particularly interesting, was of a guy that frequently parroted that women are evil, that noone should trust women, and so on, one day in a thread about rape he comments that he was raped, and couldn't get help at all, and that some years later he got a girlfriend, that ended raping him too, and this time when he sought help his treatment was even worse.
I think for a person that was mistreated that way, it is easy to conclude that women are just evil liars and rapists.
The thing is the guy obviously wants help, but he still fails to find it (from comments in several threads I could pick up that he sought help from police, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers... everyone treated him with hostility, or when they actually belived him, thought it was hilarious/entertaining what happened to him).
I was on /b/ for easy fun most of the time and went to /r9k/ for a few months, because I liked the idea for original content, but /r9k/ got boring really fast. Didn't know it became a cesspool for MRAs, but in hindsight it was meant to be, the people who made it boring were the guys crying about their problems with girls all the time...
After a long long time I started visiting the other boards. When I first went on /fit/ (after 8 years 4chan, haha) I was baffled. They have their own culture, own memes and everything. It was like a whole own community, which had nothing to do with the rest of 4chan.
But not all boards are "their own". /b/, /rk9/, /k/ and /pol/ for example, have a huge overlap.
Movies, music and reading as hobbies? Yup, that's a killer alright. /s
Man, the media hasn't really progressed since 1991 has it...
Reddit has /r/theredpill, there's numerous mens activists, and dating groups that all use the model of male gender roles and distinctions that the author has described here.
To me this article is just another subtly disguised insincere 4chan hit piece. I knew by the opening paragraph when the article implied that 4chan aids and abets school shooters.
Also, the joke is kind of on people who actually take 4chan seriously.