“R U TRIGGERED” and all its subvariants were radioactive toxic waste and turned a valid and important psychological concept into bullying vector that for a time had nearly universal acceptance.

I still see vestiges of “le epic bacon” out there but it’s mostly confined to aging :grillman: types and some :up-yours-woke-moralists: cultists and a few contrarian carninist edgelords that want to “trigger the vegans.” Yes I know all of the above have a lot of overlap.

  • WoofWoof91 [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    it’s not dead yet, but i fucking hate the soyjak vs chad face meme
    it’s just “ugly man bad, nazi wet dream man good”
    which is entertaining if you’re 5 i guess

          • sooper_dooper_roofer [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            2 years ago

            Not really. It’s a valid point.

            There’s a difference between memes and propaganda. virgin/chad, and the “yes” guy are literally explicit propaganda. Even when they’re stuff I agree with it, they’re not funny. They can make you feel good, but they are objectively not funny.

            Prior to 2015 or so, memes were not usually this explicitly propagandistic and were made to be legitimately funny.
            If you’re used to this era of memes, then some of the “memes” of the late 2010s era will seem annoying and dumb.

            Basically, chuds have combined elements of meme culture into propaganda, and zoomers as well as undiscriminating millennials, still call these things “memes” because they resemble them on the surface.

            • FourteenEyes [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              2 years ago

              No that’s exactly what they are. Memes. They’re also propaganda.

              Don’t mistake the form of a communication with the message it carries.

              • sooper_dooper_roofer [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                2 years ago

                well at that point you can call anything a meme (which it technically would be)

                Fine, these are “propaganda memes”, and the ones before were not, or at least were much less so. Explicit propaganda isn’t that funny to me, nor to many others. The question was “what meme do you not like” and they answered it

                • FourteenEyes [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  2 years ago

                  In the Dawkins sense, yes, correct, they’re all memes, and as morally and politically neutral as an empty cup. They carry a message. It could be some racist bullshit, or it can be :wojak-nooo: CONTROLLERCELS MALDING OVER ALPHA CHAD KEYBOARD AND MOUSE USERS :gigachad:

                  Not that some messages don’t have a preferred means of delivery. Like, the empty cup can still have a swastika on it. But I don’t feel that the virgin/chad is that. It’s just so inherently silly that nobody but a fucking moron could use it completely unironically.

                  (Also just to be obnoxiously pedantic “propaganda” technically refers to anything created with the purpose of dissemination so yes memes are propaganda and propaganda is memes :very-smart: )

    • HarryLime [any]@hexbear.net
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      2 years ago

      The reddit variety maybe was bad, but considering the resurgence in religious conservatism, at least on the internet, vocal atheism may need some kind of comeback.

      • KobaCumTribute [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        2 years ago

        The problem is that brand of atheism was deeply liberal and reactionary, focusing way too hard on “factually incorrect thing is bad and dumb, stop being silly and weird by believing factually incorrect thing!” arguments and hinging too much on “religion say I can’t have my treats, how dare you tell me no for such a stupid reason!” motivations. Like it was more “theocrats are cringey because they believe silly wrong things, ew!” and “they’re telling me no, how fucking dare they!?!” than “theocrats are deranged monsters who hurt people, and that’s bad.”

        The only thing that stops me from saying it was a psyop was because those same reactionary tendencies have always been a problem with American counter-culture and the broader left, where there’s all these chauvinist libertines who are full of themselves and want their treats and end up arrayed against the American mainstream because it’s a different brand of chauvinist and doesn’t approve of all their treats, but they’re still reactionary and just as aggressively oppose the left when that threatens or is perceived as threatening their status or treats in some way. I do think the pro-religious anti-atheist backlash against it was astroturfed, though, even as the neoreactionary movement sucked up a bunch of the chauvinist libertine atheists and turned them into nazi weebs who cosplay as tradcaths while wallowing in hentai.

      • Mehrunes_Laser [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.net
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        2 years ago

        I’m the opposite. American conservatism looooves to be the martyr. If you meet them with atheism, they’ll calcify in their beliefs because you’re proving their world view correct.

        In my opinion, the only way to counter American religious conservatism is to explain to them how far divorcd their beliefs are from the actual words of Christ. There is plenty of revalutionary text in there, you just have to know where to look and how to frame it. I quote Acts to these heathens every single opportunity I get. I attribute quotes from Marx to Jesus, and I explain communism through the lens of Christ vison of his church. Just don’t say the word communism.