• enkers@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      Pepe is a beloved internet meme, not a symbol of hate. Rightoid asshats need to leave pepe and doge the fuck alone. >:(

        • petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 month ago

          They did, but I don’t think they still have them.

          Pepe is now (or again) a beloved element of Twitch chat, and the OK symbol… I dunno, that was eight years ago. I just don’t hear anybody talking about it, unless it’s to half remember that it’s bad now or something.

          • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 month ago

            The whole OK symbol thing was literally a false flag by 4chan to clown on the news media’s fervor at the time to label things as racist dog whistles, specifically the whole Pepe shit that was going on.

            The fucking thread that started it was (paraphrasing): “Hey guys, do you think the news media would be stupid enough to believe the OK hand sign is a white power dog whistle? [Image of WP poorly traced over the OK hand symbol]”

            Obviously, if you get your kicks out of pretending to be a fool, you shouldn’t be surprised when you find yourself in the presence of actual fools. That also very much applies to the type of edgelords on 4chan that thought it would be funny to “pretend to be” racists, or at least to have discovered a racist hate symbol. Eventually enough people will take it seriously that the original “joke” (if you can even call it that) will be lost.

            • petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              1 month ago

              I don’t know if it was really a false flag. Nazis did start using the OK symbol for a time, and I think that was the point. It was built to be smoke and mirrors.

              I do believe a lot of channers thought that it was just a joke. I mean, that ambiguity is what makes the dog whistle what it is.

              But yeah, it’s a pretty lame magic show when all your tricks are, like, doing a Charlottesville but saying you’re not.

              • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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                30 days ago

                It was a joke, and still is. It’s just that there were enough extremist imbeciles out there who didn’t realize it was a joke, and took it seriously.

                That doesn’t change anything about its origin as a joke.

    • Darohan@lemmy.zip
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      1 month ago

      Wait, is just using a Valknut considered a hate symbol? I was under the impression that it was a pretty common “I like Vikings/Odin/Paganism” type symbol… Same with Tyr tbh.

      • Virkkunen@fedia.io
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        1 month ago

        The issue is that the Venn diagram of people interested in vikings/odinism and racists bigots is almost just a circle

        • Paranomaly@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          This is hyperbole. A large amount of racists and bigots are into norse stuff? Maybe. Almost all people in the norse stuff are racists and bigots? High doubt, and shouldn’t be allowed to be coopted anyway. Loki is one of the few ancient figures with some gender fluid markings as it is.

          • Default_Defect@midwest.social
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            1 month ago

            You’re right, but 100% of the people I’ve encountered that were REALLY into Norse stuff specifically, rather than a general interest in history, were white supremacist.

            • Paranomaly@sh.itjust.works
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              1 month ago

              This is fair. I am usually not in spaces where I’d see it much but have heard tell. Part of why I say it is to not have people feel shamed if they just generally like the culture/pop aesthetic involved without any baggage and to encourage people to do what they can to counter co-opt attempts

          • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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            30 days ago

            A large amount of racists and bigots are into norse stuff? Maybe. Almost all people in the norse stuff are racists and bigots? High doubt

            In my experience, people are, on average, extremely susceptible to this very basic logical fallacy, and truly believe the two sentiments above are equivalent. In other words, believing that “most X are Y” implies “most Y are X”.

            It’s fucking everywhere, pervasive all over the political spectrum too, it’s universal. Radical feminists use the fact that most physical assailants are male to malign half of the human population. Racists use statistics about what percentage of violent crime is committed by a race, to draw conclusions about what percentage of that race commits violent crime. Hell, Reefer Madness, a propaganda piece with a well-deserved reputation of being completely full of shit, rests its premise on the exact same fallacy: “practically everyone dying from hard drug use is/was also a weed smoker, so we’ve concluded weed use leads to hard drug use”.

            I see it over, and over, and over again, online and in real life. It makes you want to grab someone by the shoulders and shake them while yelling “all oranges are fruits, does that mean all fruits are oranges?!”, lol.

            That’s enough venting for tonight, though, haha.

        • Darohan@lemmy.zip
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          1 month ago

          Not sure I believe that for a minute. There’s definitely a group there, nobody can deny that, but Norse mythology is incredibly popular among leftists too - I say this as somewhat of a Norse mythology leftist, whose favorite viking/odinist/pagan band preaches unity and kindness among all people and is fronted by a polyamorous bisexual - there’s a lot to love in the mythos and the factual history, and it appeals to a wide variety of people for a wide variety of reasons.

        • tootoughtoremember@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          I enjoyed the Vikings tv series, particularly the early seasons with Ragnar. I especially liked when they wove in religion and mysticism into the episodes. A lot of people enjoyed the series at the time, it was objectively popular. Having an interest in something well represented in popular culture does not make you a de facto racist bigot.

          There’s a more likely argument to make, that within the population of white nationalist racist bigots, there’s an overrepresentation of interest/obsession with Vikings/Odinism.

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      They even admit that pepe can be used in perfectly normal ways, yet they show it’s the number one most used one. That’s crazy to me lmao

    • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Google says Steam has 132 million monthly active users. Even if you count Pepe (which is absurd, the vast majority of use of it has nothing to do with anything hateful), that’s still far under 1% of users.

      • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 month ago

        He got reused in the mid 2010s as a very racist meme where people would make him sing some truly heinous shit, actually

        Defunctland (I think) did a video on Mac Tonight that mentions it in passing, if you’re curious open a private browsing window and look it up, you can likely find the memes still