Does anyone else notice how a lot of younger guys online talk about "communities", "fandoms", "cultures", etc.?

[Pluto]

I'm thinking about the latest crop of internet/media addicts, so mostly the under-21.
I noticed that for many of them, you're never just a fan of something, no, you're member of the fandom. The social aspect seems even more important than the subject matter, which itself becomes mostly a social signal. You get into X not (only) because you actually find X very compelling for some reason, but because you want to "join the X community". People talk about "getting into retro games" like they're about to join a cult whose initiation ceremony consists of beating Super Mario 64.

My gut reaction is finding it disturbing, but thinking about it for some time, I can't really pinpoint why. It's natural for teenagers whose identity hasn't fulled formed yet to 'try on' different taste sets; kids have been doing it since the advent of mass consumerism (think punk/goth/scene/skater/whatever).
I think the reason why I find it weird is that the kids who were socially-attuned enough to get into this sort of thing tended to be fairly social back when I was in highschool, so they tended to stay offline. Online you found a whole lot of outcasts who sought a community that shares their preexisting and rigidly unpopular tastes. But now even the agreeable 'social butterfly' types who mold themselves by the people around them do it all through screens.

 

[LiraTirsoCaduceo]

To be honest it just sounds like urban tribes(I forgot what you call them in English, like punks, metalheads, emo, etc). The difference is indeed the lack of a physical hanging spot. You don't go to the skate park, the mall the local game shop, etc. You just go to the subreddit or follow a specific instagram sphere.
I don't find it disturbing other than the lack of physical connection, which is an issue that goes beyond subcultures, it permeates everything really. I think things like sports at least kept being more social outside the online space.

 

[Dead Star]

That's not a young people thing. The internet has had fandoms and communities built around niche interests for many years. We're all sitting here on a forum dedicated to Vaporwave, even if we don't always write posts about music. What you say about unpopular opinions rings true in the early internet when there were websites dedicated to niche topics and fringe views.

Fandoms have always existed. In the era before internet, they had their own 'zines' that were dedicated to following whatever interest it was, and many of them even had written fanfic in them. The internet just makes it easier for them to grow and connect with people who likely wouldn't have had the chance in decades past.

Go back decades, and you'll find the same fan based arguments in some major franchise that had a big fan base in the 80s or 90s. Star Wars fans were debating the whole changes in the special edition releases before Phantom Menace hit theaters and disappointed everyone. Now they have big internet communities where they can discuss with each other how much they hate Disney. Star Trek is much the same. You had to live around a bunch of other Trek nerds in the pre-internet days to even discuss the series, but now you can just go online and find places of discussion for it.

Bands with big fan followings usually had dedicated fan groups who would follow them city to city while on tour. These fans usually made 'zines' too, and were recording bootleg audio of the shows and trading them with their friends. The internet has made all of this much easier.

 

[Waninem]

As someone who used to go to a Pokemon forum as a kid, I can understand why a lot of folks find this appealing. You find something, either online or in real life, and you really like it and want to talk about it. Bonus points if that thing you found encourages collaboration, like filling up your Pokedex. It's fun to speculate on the lore or what might come next, and to share fan art or fan fiction about your favorite franchises with others. And you have the posers, of course. There are always posers.

I think maybe part of your problem might be the fact that the internet is so monolithic that there's very few places you can go to actually collaborate or discuss something, so it all congeals into one big mass. Back in the day you didn't have just one Pokemon forum; you had several of them, and if you didn't like the vibe of one you could just go to another. Now you have subreddits and Discord chats, and and there will be a ton of overlap between the two in terms of userbase. Thus it... all kind of has the same vibe, that of teenagers who engross themselves in greater internet culture a bit too much. Unless the franchise in question is very big there will be very few alternatives to this, so you just end up with this giant "community" who are linked solely by liking one thing and molded by the platform they're on.

 

[JuvenilePrinceps]

I'm thinking about the latest crop of internet/media addicts, so mostly the under-21.

Im 18 and i can tell you a bit about that i also noticed it, in fact you almost hit the nail on the head diagnosis on point. Getting into a franchise or "joining a community" is actually quite beneficial for corpos, think disney adults they will have a group of people defending them and buying their products regardless of quality.

I noticed that for many of them, you're never just a fan of something, no, you're member of the fandom. The social aspect seems even more important than the subject matter, which itself becomes mostly a social signal. You get into X not (only) because you actually find X very compelling for some reason, but because you want to "join the X community". People talk about "getting into retro games" like they're about to join a cult whose initiation ceremony consists of beating Super Mario 64.

Nail on the head again, Dead star mentioned that its always been a thing and hes right about that but what hes wrong about and your right on is idk what to call maybe "fanaticism" but thats a harsh word, he just shruggs it off while you say "hold on smths wrong here". And if any normal human saw a shelf of marvel figurines on someones wall hed go hold on smths wrong here. Another thing is that i dont consider myself an "agora roader" thats an unhealthy way of thinking its problematic because You the indvidual attach yourself to that thing and if that thing is attacked and or critized you cant accept that because its an attack on you. For example apple and iphones, when i critize apple my friends are downright cultish, their self worth is attached to their iphones and thats really really bad.

 

[Pluto]

That's not a young people thing. The internet has had fandoms and communities built around niche interests for many years. We're all sitting here on a forum dedicated to Vaporwave, even if we don't always write posts about music. What you say about unpopular opinions rings true in the early internet when there were websites dedicated to niche topics and fringe views.

Fandoms have always existed. In the era before internet, they had their own 'zines' that were dedicated to following whatever interest it was, and many of them even had written fanfic in them. The internet just makes it easier for them to grow and connect with people who likely wouldn't have had the chance in decades past.

Go back decades, and you'll find the same fan based arguments in some major franchise that had a big fan base in the 80s or 90s. Star Wars fans were debating the whole changes in the special edition releases before Phantom Menace hit theaters and disappointed everyone. Now they have big internet communities where they can discuss with each other how much they hate Disney. Star Trek is much the same. You had to live around a bunch of other Trek nerds in the pre-internet days to even discuss the series, but now you can just go online and find places of discussion for it.

Bands with big fan followings usually had dedicated fan groups who would follow them city to city while on tour. These fans usually made 'zines' too, and were recording bootleg audio of the shows and trading them with their friends. The internet has made all of this much easier.

As someone who used to go to a Pokemon forum as a kid, I can understand why a lot of folks find this appealing. You find something, either online or in real life, and you really like it and want to talk about it. Bonus points if that thing you found encourages collaboration, like filling up your Pokedex. It's fun to speculate on the lore or what might come next, and to share fan art or fan fiction about your favorite franchises with others. And you have the posers, of course. There are always posers.

I think maybe part of your problem might be the fact that the internet is so monolithic that there's very few places you can go to actually collaborate or discuss something, so it all congeals into one big mass. Back in the day you didn't have just one Pokemon forum; you had several of them, and if you didn't like the vibe of one you could just go to another. Now you have subreddits and Discord chats, and and there will be a ton of overlap between the two in terms of userbase. Thus it... all kind of has the same vibe, that of teenagers who engross themselves in greater internet culture a bit too much. Unless the franchise in question is very big there will be very few alternatives to this, so you just end up with this giant "community" who are linked solely by liking one thing and molded by the platform they're on.

I'm not talking about fandoms in general... I'm talking specifically about the way the cart is put before the horse, and kids talk about "joining a fandom" like it's a cult.

Im 18 and i can tell you a bit about that i also noticed it, in fact you almost hit the nail on the head diagnosis on point. Getting into a franchise or "joining a community" is actually quite beneficial for corpos, think disney adults they will have a group of people defending them and buying their products regardless of quality.

Nail on the head again, Dead star mentioned that its always been a thing and hes right about that but what hes wrong about and your right on is idk what to call maybe "fanaticism" but thats a harsh word, he just shruggs it off while you say "hold on smths wrong here". And if any normal human saw a shelf of marvel figurines on someones wall hed go hold on smths wrong here. Another thing is that i dont consider myself an "agora roader" thats an unhealthy way of thinking its problematic because You the indvidual attach yourself to that thing and if that thing is attacked and or critized you cant accept that because its an attack on you. For example apple and iphones, when i critize apple my friends are downright cultish, their self worth is attached to their iphones and thats really really bad.

Rock on, dude

 

[jojo]

Yeah, you can say I'm from the Agora fandom

 

[灰の男性]

This is just the emergence of a tribal based on interests as a result of advancements in communication technology (You no longer primary identify as a member of your family/nation/city due to it being easier to find a common identity based on interest).
You could also describe as a new wave of propaganda (products as an identity base-> irrational-excessive consumption of product) (seek https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/3-tips-to-turn-your-brand-into-a-religion/305594).

 

[cyphernoir42]

I mean, fandoms and fan culture has been around for decades. I like reading archived old fanzines on this website (https://fanac.org/fanzines/Classic_Fanzines.html) and there are literally zines dating back from the 1930s, 40s, 50s. They also had their own slang in fandom cultures (I find these old fanspeak quite fascinating & charming, wish they could be brought back, but that's for another thread) and it's not *that* different from the current day, and it's certainly not a new phenomenon...

BUT, I really do think that fandom culture & nerd culture in general has declined significantly in terms of quality. People talk about "gatekeeping" all the time and I really feel like the hostility towards gatekeeping and social media (as opposed to physical media like fanzines or conventions, or "slower" paced forms of media/communication such as forums, message boards, bbs-es, et al) has caused this "decline" in quality.

Joining a fandom in the past was like visiting a completely different country. When you found something that interested you and say, visited a forum for said interest, everything was foreign to you: language, their discussions about said thing because you're still new to the hobby, et al) and you had to slowly "lurk" and learn their language, read extensively about said thing, in order to be accepted andbecome a "citizen" not a visitor.

There is an interesting page here on fancyclopedia (which has a lot of interesting old fandom culture related information if you're in to that sort of stuff like me) describing the "disillusion" (https://fancyclopedia.org/Disillusion)

> Disillusion, a character in The Enchanted Duplicator, represents the touchy, obnoxious fan, usually but not always a neofan, who wants fandom to conform to his ideas rather than to learn his way around and try to fit in.

It's perfectly described in this piece of old fanfiction from the 1950s:

> "What's wrong with it?" repeated Disillusion incredulously. "Why, everything's wrong with it! They're either stupid or mad, every one of them. Why, they didn't even come out to greet me when I arrived -- me, mind you! At first they even pretended not to see me until I got down off my horse, and when they did speak to me I couldn't understand a word they were saying. And their customs! I've never seen anything like them."

"Well, after all," said Jophan, "it is a different country. Maybe if you had tried to learn their language ..."

"Nonsense!" snapped Disillusion. "They were just trying to keep things from me and laughing behind my back. Well, they can have their secrets. I don't want to have anything to do with them. They were all against me, I tell you. Imagine, not even thanking me for entering Fandom after all I tried to teach them ..."

---

Which, I think, perfectly captures what's wrong with current "fandom" and nerd culture.
It has been run over by these "disillusions" who scream of "gatekeeping" and this causes an influx of these "disillusion" types who just want a cool label to slap onto their bios and grifters/influencer types who, upon seeing this rise in "popularity", try to profit off this, thus watering down the "culture" of the original fandom into something soulless, a shadow of its original self.

It's already happened to so many things I love such as Star Trek (absolutely tragic) and D&D.

Sorry for going rather off topic, I just think about this stuff a lot and wondered if anyone thought the same.

 

[Andy Kaufman]

To be honest it just sounds like urban tribes(I forgot what you call them in English, like punks, metalheads, emo, etc). The difference is indeed the lack of a physical hanging spot. You don't go to the skate park, the mall the local game shop, etc. You just go to the subreddit or follow a specific instagram sphere.
I don't find it disturbing other than the lack of physical connection, which is an issue that goes beyond subcultures, it permeates everything really. I think things like sports at least kept being more social outside the online space.

Spot on. This development isn't even surprising but more of a logical consequence of kids staying inside more and more.

 

[Andy Kaufman]

and D&D.

D&D becoming an online fandom in the first place is really weird. I get fandoms of TV shows, books, video games. Every fan has more or less the same experiences. But TTRPG are so personalised. I've been playing since 2015 or 16 and never felt connected to the broader D&D fandom in any shape or form. Because I just sit down at the table with my friends and play the game with mostly homebrew settings/campaigns and obviously people make their very own characters. Sometimes you look online for rule clarifications and news but that's about it. Random online strangers have no idea what my games look like and I don't know what theirs look like. Yet I know that somehow the fandom constructed some type of archetypical D&D game with certain tropes (the most common one probably being the Bard being hyper-horny and wanting to fuck everything) but I refuse to believe anyone actually plays like that. At least I hope so.

I get that there needs to be a place where people from different playgroups get to talk about how they run their games repsectively and this is what happened in those old zines you mentioned already but nowadays I get the feeling that most people online who claim to be into D&D only watch critical role and consume >reddit memes about D&D and never set at a physical play table.

 

[GENOSAD]

I've seen it since, like, 2014. Even before then, people would self-segregate onto different forums and such. As annoying as the current fixation is on communities, it's not something we can just blame on the current generation.

 

[The Chibi One]

The distinction between what we used to call "scenes" and this newfangled phenomenon of cult-like "fandoms" is that the latter feels wholly artificial, which I suspect is the main reason behind your finding it creepy. It used to be that someone would organically come across a particular interest via their lived experience, and then meet with like-minded people into that specific thing, creating a network that could, in the past, even support businesses. The zines Dead Star mentioned were a thing that was extremely niche but the people who were into it were willing to shell out bucks to engage with their hobby. I have known distros and niche extreme music stores operating out of a ten-square-feet room that generated profit simply because the people who were into industrial black metal or dark ambient were really into it. The internet had no shaping in this phenomenon, at least not in any significant sense; it was all through word-of-mouth. Nowadays everyone can claim to be into "those shocking and gory 80s horror films" because some Youtuber was paid to shill for some new Bloody Disgusting-lite streaming service.

Fast forward to post-internet world, where one can easily just download the entire Touhou catalog of games, music, fan projects, and start sperging on one of the many forums dedicated to it over the course of a day. Same with everything else, really. There is an air of superficiality that permeates most of these online communities, which I suspect is mostly borne out of our natural tribalism, and the inherent need to communicate with others. Man is a social animal, after all. I would like to ping @LostintheCycle because his take on fandoms is the most interesting one I have come across, and one that I haphazardly suspected but couldn't articulate as well as he did. Feel free to elaborate here if so inclined, Cycle. The main gist is that for many people, the interest itself is an afterthought, and the sense of being in a fandom takes precedence. I believe the initial stirrings of this phenomenon were to be found in the early Tumblr days, where users would have "Mexican/poly/BPD/Trekkie" on their bios, as if signifying traits are Pokemon badges you present to others, nullifying your entire persona into five or six signifiers in acronyms. For a person wanting to present a personality, being into k-pop works just as well as claiming to be bisexual. The Tumblr exodus phenomenon was a massive catastrophe for online discourse, since the spillover infected practically all social media, and "fandoms" degenerated into abject lunacy. I like Danganronpa, for example. But I never want to read the words of some terminally online faggot claiming every character is secretly trans because they want to project their own personal misgivings on a Japanese franchise because they have no friends in real life. You won't believe the amount of whining that Nightreign's announcement caused.

You will notice that many discussions, especially of stuff currently in vogue, will run circles around the 3-5 same generic points the "fandom is obsessed with," simply for folks to engage with others. This is, for the most part, a side-effect of our increasingly globalised and mass-communication-systems-based societies, which disinhibits any local community forming. I get someone living in bumfuck nowhere and learning of figure modelling through the Internet in its infancy and joining a forum, but claiming to be "in the ASOIAF fandom" is cringe.

Like Jojo, I too am a certified and proud member of the Agora fandom, simply by virtue of being one of the retards playing around in Pirate's soft-padded sandbox for kids who can't do things well.

 

[LostintheCycle]

Feel free to elaborate here if so inclined, Cycle.

Thank you Chibi, I may quote what I said because I don't think it's useful to rephrase it:

But generally, it doesn't matter if it's Doctor Who, or Harry Potter, or Supernatural: they are practically interchangeable, because a fandom generally consists of people who are into other fandoms already they impose familiar structures wherever they go, no matter how poorly it fits. Ships, fanfics, lingo, discussions, perversions, archetypal simplification of existing characters, and that sort of thing ensue. If you want to see the essence of the fandom, look at the Onceler fandom. No, seriously! With almost nothing at their disposal they created a whole fandom by imposing their known structures upon a single point, which goes to show how little the source material actually matters.

To expand a little; I see the fandom as a collection of familiar structures of how fandom is supposed to look, probably an amalgamation of common fan activity in the prior century though a bit more hyperactive because of the lifting of material and communication challenges with ubiquitous Internet access. Another thing I suppose is that people now would be more likely to watch a video essay than read a fanfiction, but that is more about the tastes of young people now being different.
I think a point I missed before, is that young people have extremely strong attachment to media, which we don't realize is kind of abnormal compared to what people did throughout history. Even 'fandom' of the twentieth century was just the domain of nerds. With the Internet now, there's always so much new media now that it would be inconvenient for different fandoms to have unique cultures because of how people are in and out of them very quickly. This must be part of why people use common structures and behaviors across fandoms.

 

[Midwest]

What seems very bizarre to me is the mass conformist attitude that is so pervasive in fandom culture. I don't know how it is globally, so I'm generally talking about this as a Western phenomenon. Parroting off what @The Chibi One just talked about with the Tumblr exodus, it seems like you can't express individuality within your own fandom unless it adheres to the "groupthink" of the fandom. Just as an example, I've never been a fan of shipping and never understood why (besides the inclusion of women) it was so pervasive in fandom, but I have zero tolerance for pairings like GonxKillua in the HunterXHunter fandom. I shouldn't have to go into the obvious reasons why I find it disgusting, but if I start to vocalize my frustration with that side of the fandom, then I'm not being a "good fan." I've had to voluntarily leave some fandoms because I just felt grossed out by the behavior of these types.

The social aspect seems even more important than the subject matter, which itself becomes mostly a social signal. You get into X not (only) because you actually find X very compelling for some reason, but because you want to "join the X community". People talk about "getting into retro games" like they're about to join a cult whose initiation ceremony consists of beating Super Mario 64.

I'll link you to a Medium article about Hiroki Azuma and his idea of "database consumption." Basically, otaku (as well as fandom in the West) don't want grand narratives or compelling stories anymore. They see stories, characters, settings as "tropes" which are all part of a larger "database." X character should behave in X way because they're written to be a bakadere. A character is remixed, reused, and repackaged so many times and is then only remembered for one trope - then the original character is forgotten to even have a backstory or interesting personality (i.e. Rei Ayanami). So if this is happening with how the fans engage in product, then it's safe to say that their behavior in terms of their social life would reflect that. Ever been to an anime convention? Or see how people/nerds talk about others online? They (including me at times) have no shame in boxing people into categories or stereotypes because it's easy and convenient. It's what we've known and what feels safe to us, so of course an otaku will feel safe around other otaku, a nerd with other nerds, etc. But again, that goes back to the conformist mindset, the tumblr exodus and how fandom very well could just be another "community" or "cult."

 

[punisheddead]

To be honest it just sounds like urban tribes(I forgot what you call them in English, like punks, metalheads, emo, etc). The difference is indeed the lack of a physical hanging spot. You don't go to the skate park, the mall the local game shop, etc. You just go to the subreddit or follow a specific instagram sphere.
I don't find it disturbing other than the lack of physical connection, which is an issue that goes beyond subcultures, it permeates everything really. I think things like sports at least kept being more social outside the online space.

While there is this, and I tend to agree, modern fandom does not feel like a traditional hangout spot and traditional fans.

A lot of it in my opinion comes down to the social element and while this just seems like a "duh" thing, it's different to how it was before where the love or appreciation of a thing brought a fandom together. Sure there are still people that are in a fandom for the love of the thing that the fandom was built around but a surprising chunk is there just for the social element. Being a (very old) zoomer and having zoomer friends I see this thing a lot.

cyphernoir42 mentioned dnd and I have a friend who absolutely adores dnd but hates what happened to it with critical role and all that jazz to the point where he has considered quitting it all together but he doesnt. Why? The social aspect. He stomachs the butchering of one of his favorite things just for that social aspect, and this isn't even a guy who often plays at physical tables. He'll rant to me about how much he hated a game, and then he'll play another one. Another friend of mine loves movies, his dream was to be a film director, but he's a younger zoomer that's pretty lonely and that loneliness has grown into an unhealthy thing where he just can't do anything alone (not literally but might as well be). So he'll get ready to watch a movie he enjoys and then he'll invite his friends who don't give a damn about the movie completely ruining the experience and he's okay with that because he's with friends. It's driven me mad that he can let himself be disrespected like that but it's his funeral, it's so bad that he won't even know what the movie is about. These are rarely IRL hangouts too, mostly discord hangouts.

But by now you've gotten my point. Everything is a fandom because people are lonely. The experience of enjoying something with a friend and then being able to loosely discuss it later often overwrites the actual enjoyment of a media. Now I don't think that these people don't like the media they're a fandom of but most of them like it on a very superficial level, marvel movies are a great example of this and I hark back to my "fun movie" rant. Because who cares, the movie is good enough, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and I'm with my friends in the movies we're all having a happy old time. That's why when you ask a person why they like a thing you get empty descriptors as "fun". It's why "fun with friends" games are so popular because they're just virtual chat rooms. That's a piece of the conformist puzzle.

People are lonely and socially retarded. Calling my friends to hang out and telling them I love them (as friends) is cringe and gay so we need media stand-ins to get the ball rolling.

Of course there are other more corporate aspects to it too, how people are being sold life styles instead of products now. It's where the "cult like" element comes into play and you have modern travesties such as a "disney adult" and the ever wonderful "church of nintendo". Try saying anything bad about one of those and you won't have a fun time. Yet another piece of why fandoms are so conformist now.

 

[Pluto]

I'll link you to a Medium article about Hiroki Azuma and his idea of "database consumption." Basically, otaku (as well as fandom in the West) don't want grand narratives or compelling stories anymore. They see stories, characters, settings as "tropes" which are all part of a larger "database." X character should behave in X way because they're written to be a bakadere. A character is remixed, reused, and repackaged so many times and is then only remembered for one trope - then the original character is forgotten to even have a backstory or interesting personality (i.e. Rei Ayanami). So if this is happening with how the fans engage in product, then it's safe to say that their behavior in terms of their social life would reflect that. Ever been to an anime convention? Or see how people/nerds talk about others online? They (including me at times) have no shame in boxing people into categories or stereotypes because it's easy and convenient. It's what we've known and what feels safe to us, so of course an otaku will feel safe around other otaku, a nerd with other nerds, etc. But again, that goes back to the conformist mindset, the tumblr exodus and how fandom very well could just be another "community" or "cult."

Yeah food for thought. I'm gonna read that article when in the mood (put it in my OneTab).
I'll just say I always found 'TV Tropes Mindset' really bizarre. I always just assumed it's a specific form of autism I don't share, but there might be more to it.

 

[The Chibi One]

Adding here that reading the TVTropes pages of the posters themselves is pure autistic fantasmagoria. It was sad when they removed their 'Troper Moments.'

Behold:

This Troper gave a very nasty one that was merged with a Hannibal Lecture to a bully Jerk Jock type. It can be summed up as, "I really do pity you. . .or at least I try to. . . . You are just an empty fool who tries to erase his fear that he might not get a football scholarship by bullying those lesser than him. I continue these "geeky" behaviors because they let me form at least a core of my personality. You. . .you have nothing any more other than to try to fill your empty core up with the fear of others while watching that perfect six pack decay from one too many beers." He cried and ran away, having been emotionally dissected.

It's shit that never happened, but this obsession with media and stylistic conventions forces certain strains of autistic personalities to codify their lives in Always Capitalised Terms. I suspect there is an overlap with what Cycle has mentioned regarding people bringing their preconceived familiar structures to media that has little or nothing to do with it, and then forcing it upon the medium anyway, and by extension codifying their own experiences (or their wishful thinking of what experiences they should have) in a similar fashion.

This Agora poster will personally shove any Shrinking Violet TVTropes forum member in a Bully Locker.

 

[RisingThumb]

My gut reaction is finding it disturbing, but thinking about it for some time, I can't really pinpoint why. It's natural for teenagers whose identity hasn't fulled formed yet to 'try on' different taste sets; kids have been doing it since the advent of mass consumerism (think punk/goth/scene/skater/whatever).

It is disturbing. Look up the term fictosexual. The subreddit, the fandom page and the wikipedia page show how this is.

It's advanced beyond daydreams, dreams, fantasy or interest... It would make sense to me if it was a tulpa that embodies the characteristics of some fictional character, but it isn't. Tulpas are definitely rather queer and peculiar but at least makes a bit of sense as something parallel to an internal monologue.

I equally can't put into words why it's disturbing...

 

[Ian Moone]

Several trends have contributed to this situation; memetic culture being better understood, a manufactured reversion to tribalism and refinement of Marketing/Influence techniques developed by associated parties.

Since normalfags began understanding the process of memetics, they seem to at least sort of have the hang of creating an egregore and ushering individuals into their "group" to service its function. Different parties caught on to this and the process is now being mimicked but only with shallow understanding. This is how we got to the all of the parrots showing up stage and why tribalism is now being exploited.

Tribalism has been furthered for several reasons, but a primary reason is as some kind of reaction to the egregore subgroup problem mentioned before. The anchor hinges upon pre-built, easily exploitable in-group preferences. The regime really enjoys its fair share of tension, so this is opportunistic as well as practical. Further, an assortment of entities also enjoy this situation because it makes for better consumers and more easily influenced sports teams of all other varieties, not just entertainment kind, but also religious, racial or ideological. This is why Influence is pertinent.

We already touched briefly on the marketing and consumerism implications before, but it's important to understand that they don't just want you to buy certain things. They also want you to vote certain ways, to eat certain shit and to tune into certain people or ideological centers. So that's why many of these people end up being or caring about "Influencers" - you know, shills. Did you know many of your favorite shills (Influencers) are actually sponsored by federal agents? Did you know these federal agents frequently exploit your voiced ideas within these groups in an effort to influence you? It's not just federal agents who are exploiting your tax dollars to harass you either, so don't misunderstand.

I bring good news, though! There are ways to steer this situation in the proper direction. Instead of harassing the citizens they were sworn to protect, federal agents can easily, moving forward, properly influence them instead. Likewise, you can properly influence each other by joining your favorite groups. If you'd like to play along, you can remind them about what it would look like if things were different, if we focused on how we could effect the world through positive change if we stay focused on positive, forward thinking instead of droning on incessantly about how "the jews control everything and we should totally talk about Hitler instead of whatever you guys are talking about lol". Even better, you can mentor people who seem fertile for progress, you can join your favorite groups and talk about how much better our lives would be if we contributed well-constructed ideas to the public, if we didn't persistently distract each other with loathsome banalities.

Based on what I can tell, these sort of ideological watering holes will becoming important in the future. But we can't let them be constantly infiltrated by people who don't want us to make any concerted effort to build agency in each other, to help each other prosper and to release tension instead of persistently fomenting it. The current regime is desperate right now to keep you fighting about pointless, unhelpful bullshit. They want you to yell in public about how much you hate everyone, how demoralized you are and how we'll never get through this. Just the opposite is the case, though. The reason all of these distractions are unfolding, the reason you feel like you can't stay concentrated on anything and the reason you can't seem to get along with anyone is because that's benefiting someone, somewhere out there. They're desperate for you to not realize who they are, how you've been lied to or what you're able to do to fix those problems and/or enact the necessary framework for revenge that you so desperately need satiated.

Do not be confused. You will not be permitted to go on some killing spree. But you will be permitted to see them fall, mock them all the way down and laugh in their faces when it turns out they did it to themselves all along, all to your supreme, glorious benefit.

Congratulations. All of you deserve this. Much love.