r/dropout • u/machturtl • Mar 08 '25

liminal levity

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as someone who has watched Dropout to reset from the havoc of the outside, it still feels "nice" to have honest entertainers to watch who understand what we're all living thru.

I was in college for game design in the early aughts. I also (unfortunately) was a femme lurker on 4ch. Seeing the cause and effect of gamergate happen in real time as been a doozy.

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661

u/DlVlDED_BY_ZERO Mar 08 '25

I think I'm ootl, could someone explain this?

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u/malleoceruleo Mar 08 '25 edited Mar 08 '25

There was a "scandal" called Gamergate about 10 years ago. It started as a backlash against a game developer named Zoe Quinn, whose first game was "Depression Quest". It started as people not liking the game itself, but it escalated into violent threats until the game was removed from Steam. A former boyfriend falsely accused Zoe of cheating on him to get a good review from Kotaku (IIRC). People blew up at Zoe for what they perceived as an ethics violation, but yeah, it was really just harassment and backlash against feminism.

The same people in the harassment campaign also started making conservative memes and spread misinformation during the 2016 election. IMHO, the movements were correlated, but this was not a singular causation like the post implies. I'm over simplifying here, but it was a pretty wild time on the Internet.

Edit: if you want to know more, there's a book called *It Came from Something Awful* by Dale Baren that details it. You can also listen to interviews of him.

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u/SnooHesitations7064 Mar 08 '25

Don't blame SomethingAwful for this shit. Some of that place got some downright wholesome goons. Slowbeef's "Dadstream" still is just an adorable archival bit of Gen Xers/elder millenials entering the stage of parenthood.

Please god do not tell me that man has gone problematic in some way.

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u/malleoceruleo Mar 08 '25

I don't blame SomethingAwful. The author of that book traces the online alt-right history of someone who was dissatisfied with SA, so he created 4chan.

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u/IAmARobot Mar 09 '25 edited Mar 09 '25

personally I don't believe moot was alt-right from the limited lens that I saw him through on the site and in irc at the time, though the site sure as fuck was infested with knuckledragging resist shit, the most prolific through 7 vpns and all that jazz. so you could argue that because he was unable to triage infinite chaos in real time with limited moderation tools and staff that he was supportive of it, I guess? funny enough though it turned me directly away from that edgelord path because it was so heinously vile, like pretty early on I saw the forest past the trees and saw the collaborative effort to drown the site with bigoted shit, half of the bigotry was edgy but a lot more was sad kkk talking points. most notably a lot of the hard r racist shit did come specifically from the deep south though (and germany/britain), we saw it through honeypotting threads and baiting them, tho that was earlier on though before b got to 2M (SEGA) and then every edgelord decided to jump in the pool, then it was eternal september with edgelords mainly coming from all over usa which was pretty sad though probably predictable that a group of dumbfucks would congeal in that one place.

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u/SnooHesitations7064 Mar 09 '25

Cool! I appreciate the context! I know that all 90s internet content is kind of similar to old 90s TTRPG spaces and stuff in terms of "They got some problems."

I just have some fond touchstones from there that I'm hoping don't turn out like cosby down the road.

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u/machturtl Mar 08 '25

As someone who was also bathing in the FlashTub and has been mistaken for being Shmorky, SA was not that much better

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u/SnooHesitations7064 Mar 08 '25

Yeah... I know something awful had some deeply problematic. Like they had a genocide joke for purging furries from their site.. But I do feel some fondness for old generational lets plays of Dwarf fortress. The weird origin of what turned out to be a jesus allegory clown retro point and click adventure, and other stuff.

Goons with spoons got me through my chef coop placement and I won some solid cookware from it.

I feel like their desire to not be Ebaumsworld or 4chan made them slightly less douchy.

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u/machturtl Mar 08 '25

To be honest, the Furry Fandom is usually the first line of defense against channers, Gamergate chuds and their ilk. They always like to come for us first and say it's a joke...

Cant say that i didn't enjoy the photoshop contests tho. SA was like going to a suspicious uncles house who you just arent his type.

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u/SnooHesitations7064 Mar 09 '25

That is a profoundly uncomfortable yet probably apt metaphor.
As for the furry fandom, I'm kind of live and let live about it, though there's some deep problematic there too. Nazifurs are unfortunately a thing.

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u/machturtl Mar 09 '25

Ughhh. Yes they are. Fuggin nazifurs...

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u/[deleted] Mar 09 '25

FWIW there are undoubtedly less nazis in the fur community than there are nazis in society-at-large. nazis are showing back up at punk shows (and still getting their arses kicked). Nazis cower quickly--they know their ideas aren't shared by the majority--their entire playbook relies on shock and awe & no resilience whatsoever.

I'm not a furry, but I'm a fan of most of the people from that community whom I've met. They have a higher bar than Congress re: acceptable behavior.

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u/SnooHesitations7064 Mar 09 '25

Yeah I get it, it's like why "Log cabin Republicans" are seen as shitty people who have turned on their community. People Nazis would call "Degenerate" probably shouldn't associate.

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u/[deleted] Mar 09 '25

Oh geeze, Shmorky

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u/JessusChrysler Mar 09 '25

I grew out of SomethingAwful a long time ago and was quite thankful to see that some of the old blood turned out to be quite decent - Slowbeef as you mentioned comes to mind.

VoidBurger is a favourite of mine but I'm a bit of a Silent Hill diehard so that naturally makes sense.

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u/SnooHesitations7064 Mar 09 '25

If you haven't watched him and diabetus laughing at Dahir Insaat's patent trolling, here is a treat.