Bored Ape Yacht Club Is Racist and Started by Neo-Nazis
gordongoner.com
gordongoner.com
See https://www.adl.org/blog/how-the-ok-symbol-became-a-popular-...
The “OK” hand gesture originated as one of these hoaxes in February 2017 when an anonymous 4channer announced “Operation O-KKK,” telling other members that “we must flood Twitter and other social media websites…claiming that the OK hand sign is a symbol of white supremacy.” The user even provided a helpful graphic showing how the letters WP (for “white power”) could be traced within an “OK” gesture. The originator and others also suggested useful hashtags to help spread the hoax, such as #PowerHandPrivilege and #NotOkay.
Correct. https://np.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/rwpli5/anon_has_an_id...
I've wondered about that, but don't personally know anyone who's used it in any way. Are you on good enough terms with an actual white supremist who has used it unironically to confirm the intent is racist?
I know the point is to fly under the radar and gaslight people into second guessing things (They couldn't possibly be using the OK sign as an in-group signal.... right?) but how do you do these things and still think you're the cool kids fighting a big bad evil instead of the obviously pathetic cowards you are?
It's like why hare krishna have to have funny haircuts.
Plus people don't tend to get into radical politics if their life is going great, so a lot of the people predisposed to neo-nazi stuff are also predisposed to be love-bombed by a proselytizing group.
They are not alone in that. Ayn Rand tapped the same well, as did every monarchy-restorationist clique.
https://np.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/rwpli5/anon_has_an_id...
See also the OK hand symbol hoax:
The “OK” hand gesture originated as one of these hoaxes in February 2017 when an anonymous 4channer announced “Operation O-KKK,” telling other members that “we must flood Twitter and other social media websites…claiming that the OK hand sign is a symbol of white supremacy.” The user even provided a helpful graphic showing how the letters WP (for “white power”) could be traced within an “OK” gesture. The originator and others also suggested useful hashtags to help spread the hoax, such as #PowerHandPrivilege and #NotOkay.
https://www.adl.org/blog/how-the-ok-symbol-became-a-popular-...
or conspirators.
..can you?
It kind of scares me to think about how vulnerable culture is to this kind of thing. A small number of people say this is true, not enough people question it, so now it's true. It's inane
The origin story of a thing tells us very little about the thing as it actually exists today.
"It's dumb that people pay real money for Dogecoin because it started as a joke."
It may or may not be worth anything, but its origin story doesn't help figure out if it is or not.
"Look at the woke mob freaking out about the OK hand sign, its origin was a chan/kun hoax."
Meanwhile, racists and actual Nazis routinely use the symbol with each other.
Or the windmills are actually windmills.
> I know the point is to fly under the radar and gaslight people into second guessing things
I think you're right, but in precisely the opposite direction. The point is to convince people that there are secret, evil nazis out there, working to subvert our society. To convince you that they are subtle and sneaky, that their symbolism is complex and their references oblique, so that even though things might look perfectly innocent, like an NFT of a monkey, you never know if it might actually be dangerous--even evil! Luckily, there are people who are willing to tell you when seemingly normal things are dangerous and evil! And when one of these people point and shout "Nazi!", be sure just do the right thing. Don't think. (You've been gaslighted. Your eyes deceive you!) Just shut up and grab your pitchfork!
The fact that this so closely resembles literal witch hunting should be telling.
Still, to declare the OK sign a racist symbol was very stupid. Don't give them anything. Imaging people would have used it even more when they tried to create their symbolism. It would be useless to them.
The best way to deal with them is ignoring them. If you constantly look at them you will become reactionary as well.
half of the argument proposed is that monkeys are involved, because monkeys have also been used in offensive stereotypes- so wouldn't nazis be offended at the monkey skull in the ss logo?
joking about taboos has always been a part of any type of underground humor, and idiots freaking out about 'secret nazis' is just playing into the joke
I think that is just a bad faith assertion. What evidence do you have for that?
Is this satire? Something about the whole article seemed off, but this final paragraph takes it over the top.
...the BAYC/Totenkopf logo comparison is a dead ringer. That one is a bit hard to ignore.
but i feel like: "The probability of picking a name that is also a racist anagram is about 1 in 750 billion"
needs some kind of explanation as to how this figure was arrived at. this seems to be quite a difficult value to calculate and seems to require a lot of assumptions that are not necessarily shared.
* what is racist anagram?
* what is a name?
* are names picked uniformly?
We've all heard the WallStreetBets crowd call themselves "apes". First thing I thought of when I saw a bunch of NFT apes and heard the name of the project was a bunch of apes holding GameStop.
That being said I can actually kind of buy the other arguments. When you put the logo next to the Totenkopf it's pretty hard to deny that they look alike. Add some crossed bones behind the skull and it's almost a spitting image.
It's also the name of a kind of primate, which (although they're not apes) fits the theme. Some things aren't a huge stretch, but this feels like one.
Oh god I thought they found out who it actually was. Right now it just seems like they are seeing patterns where there are none.
I realize it's a Poe's Law distinction without a difference, I'm just curious if there was any evidence of that hypothesis.
Nazi NFTs make it even easier.
Kind of reminds me of that raw meat crypto bro cult I remember existing a few years back!
This isn't the own that you think it is; even if a lot of the people talking about CRT are the ones buying Bored Apes (which I am not conceding), this would just be evidence on how easy it is for racism to sneak into the common culture. It proves their point, not negate it.