You might want to chillax and not alert police No. Will post again in am, 10 min countdown. In reality, however, Rodger is as much scorned and derided on 4chan as he is lauded.
The meme iterations become increasingly absurd see Figure 1. Misogyny and threats of violence against women are absolutely commonplace across the site. But we can also see at once that this is not the end of the story. As the acerbic deconstructions of the valorization of male violence suggest, this antifeminist space also demonstrates a whole range of negotiations and strategies used by female-presenting posters to participate in the site.
I use female-presenting here to mean posters who refer to themselves as female, regardless of their actual gender. Given the discursive influence on social reality in which 4chan so obviously partakes, it matters less what the physical bodies of posters signify than how they present themselves on the site. To be clear: I am not suggesting there is no connection between online text and physical bodies. The actions of killers like Rodger and Harper-Mercer make it patently clear that there is , and that the relationship needs interrogation.
In studying the routine harassment of female Wikipedia editors, Menking, et al. This article, then is concerned with the self-presentation of womanhood and girlhood on 4chan, investigating the strategies by which female-presenting posters claim a space for themselves on 4chan.
For whilst one might imagine that women would avoid the site completely, this is far from reality. Almost all 4chan users are anonymous almost all the time. It is therefore difficult to ascertain the identity of any given poster, but some are certainly women, as confirmed by uploaded photographs with timestamps. Both persuasively argue that postfeminist culture operates within the context of neoliberalism, based on an underlying assumption that the struggles of women as a class are ended, and that each person is free to make her own way in neoliberal late capitalism by performing individualist agency.
This practice involves strategies of negotiation such as sexual self-subjectification; emotional management and engagement with the norms of masculinism which may be more or less politically aware, but I agree with Dobson that rushing to accuse girls and women of false consciousness, and to assume that they are exploited, is a patronising; and b risks actually perpetuating and reinforcing those very harms by insisting they must necessarily be damaged by their negotiation of masculinist norms [ 4 ].
However, I take her work one step further. Dobson primarily investigates spaces and contexts she calls postfeminist; I move into a space, frequented by female posters, whose norms support outright misogyny. Firstly, I will recap the key work on 4chan in general. This work falls into three overlapping areas. First, academics have looked at the qualities of anonymity and ephemerality that distinguish 4chan from most social networking platforms; secondly, they have looked at the deliberately offensive and taboo use of language; and thirdly, they have considered aspects of community and identity building.
Then, I will discuss the methodology and data collection for this investigation. I gathered 4, relevant postings from 60 threads across the boards, using both real time screen-capture on 4chan directly and accessing off-site archives. Finally, I will discuss the implications of the findings, the limitations of the study and indications for future research.
It was modelled on similar Japanese forums, and initially devoted to discussing anime. Its purpose expanded to include discussion boards for everything from politics to fitness to social meetups and webcamming. Usage statistics for the 10 most popular boards on 14 October were as shown in Table 1. The layout is basic and accessible: users start a thread within a board by posting an image accompanied by text, to which other users reply.
Most users, however, do not even use this, and post with a new anonymous identity each time. It is possible to enter a username in the posting field, but there is nothing to stop the next poster from entering the same name. Registration is not possible except for administrators. Academics who have thus far looked at the site have given varying accounts of the controversial or taboo side of its content. Indeed, despite the widespread use of homophobic slurs, 4chan hosts a dedicated and busy LGBTQ board.
Nagle comments that:. As previous researchers have demonstrated, no slur can be taken at face value on 4chan Manivannan, ; Bernstein, et al. Nor can insults:. At first glance, this might seem like an illustration of the dominance of masculinism on 4chan, and it often may be — but there is more to it. In other words, users may not have a distinct or stable identity, but the group certainly does. The identity of the group itself is both more distinct and more important than the identity of individual users.
This is why mastery of in-group profane discourse is so important, and allows female-presenting users to assimilate. Ephemerality is another important factor of A-culture. As noted, 4chan does not save or archive threads automatically and the turnover of posts is very rapid.
Bernstein, et al. Though the study is dated, some of their figures provide important comparative context for my own findings below:.
This gives us a good impression of how most 4chan threads fail to make much impact on the general discourse of the site. As we will see below, most of the threads concerning feminine identity contradict this rule, implying the topic is important to 4chan users. Finally, several academics have considered the workings of cultural capital in these discourse-only, relatively anonymous communities.
Cultural capital was initially described by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and traditionally might include knowledge of art and literature, manners, ways of speaking, styles of dress and codes of behavior which serve to elevate a person in class-stratified societies, granting them opportunities, access and indirectly enabling wealth acquisition, or financial capital. Whilst these may be non-traditional and appear oppositional to outsiders, individuals within subcultures amass and utilize subcultural capital to elevate their position within their own social sphere.
Whilst Knuttila thought that cultural capital ought to be irrelevant in contexts where users very rarely maintain stable identities across the site, I find this does not seem to be a deterrent from attempts to accumulate sub cultural capital within or occasionally across threads. Trammell likewise found that:. It appears that permanent registration and a stable identity are not necessary elements in capital-building practice. This accords with the idea that slurs have an altered meaning on 4chan and do not convey the same prejudices they would elsewhere.
What is being punished, Manivannan argues, is not being a woman, but being self-promoting and attention-seeking, violating strong communal values of anonymity and the privileging of the group over the individual. There are several other boards on the site dedicated to adult pictures and videos.
But people also visit to engage in the kind of humour that might get them in trouble elsewhere. Mr Nishimura posted a message on 4chan's question-and-answer board on Sunday, headlined: "winter is coming" - a reference to Game of Thrones.
He said the site could no longer afford its computer servers and other infrastructure costs. But many of 4chan's users have ad-blockers - so they never see the promotions - and the controversial nature of the posts means many businesses do not want to have anything to do with it anyway.
Mr Nishimura's post suggested several potential solutions, including:. He has already started pursuing the last of these options. Mr Nishimura told the BBC other steps were also under way. Then, we'll try tough ways. Markus "Notch" Persson - the creator of Minecraft - tweeted that he was interested in helping, before deleting the post. The former chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, Martin Shkreli, has also said that he would be interested in helping run the site.
I don't know much about his personality, though. Any help is welcome. I too am having this problem, and I think your cool-down settings are off for certain boards. But your cool-down is a universal 60 seconds. I'm not sure what other boards are supposed to be, but mayhems' last version of x had all the cooldowns right,I was using it up till ten minutes ago when I switched to yours, so you could probably just pull the code from that.
Again thank you so much for continuing this project, I'm really enjoying using it so far. Disregard, apparently I had an older version installed, because I seem to have the correct cool-downs and the ability to pin threads with the update on the main page, unless the built in 4chan settings are overriding the extension Otherwise it's 60 seconds.
Again thank you. Despite its conceptual murkiness, the image of the New Man or his variations in other fascisms proved to be a powerful symbol for fascism and its aspirations. The fascists turned their model of masculinity into a visual symbol by appropriating and channelling the aesthetics of ancient Greek and Roman statuary, which as Mosse explains, was a complex metaphor for the state that the viewer could understand intuitively:.
Here, order and progress, often in conflict, were reconciled through the symbolism of the male body modelled on the harmonious form of Greek sculpture. The bodies of the Italian and German people, then, as fascist New Men and Women, could be seen as sites and sights of fascist action, no longer private or solely their own, but expressions of the collective health of their race.
The significance of the New Man or its versions in other fascisms is perhaps best illustrated by the political cartoon shown in Fig.
The cartoon Hitler reforms this clay Germany using masculine force, first using a violent attack to break it down and then using strong hands which are rendered in particular detail to re-sculpt it, and the final figure clearly equates the idea of a perfect Germany with the strength of an ideal male form. The attack scares away a modern, academic, and Jewish-looking caricature, who is presumably the artist of the original disorganised and imperfect sculpture, and who is conspicuously absent in the final two panels.
The cartoon demonstrates a vision of the ideal society where the people are reshaped using the twin tools of violence and deliberate sculpting or genocide and state-directed personal improvement from a discordant mass into a singular and harmonious whole.
In order to strengthen its collective body, the Third Reich vigorously encouraged physical fitness among its people through state-controlled organisations such as the National Socialist League of the Reich for Physical Exercise, which promoted sports and physical exercise among the German people, and the Hitler Youth, who encouraged youth toward physical development through sports and outdoorsmanship.
Taking this commitment to its logical extreme, the Third Reich also sought to purify the collective body by removing weakness. As well as acts of genocide against unwanted racial groups, their eugenics campaign targeted those that it deemed to be physically unsatisfactory such as those with disabilities , mentally unsound such as those with schizophrenia, epilepsy, or low intelligence , or morally impure including criminals and homosexuals for sterilisation or death Weale, , pp.
In its early years the Third Reich also introduced strong prohibitions on recreational drugs and social taboos against vices such as smoking and drinking alcohol Ohler, , pp. Instead of the state working to the benefit of individuals, under this system, the individuals of Nazi Germany were turned to the creation of an idealised Aryan state and tasked with reshaping themselves around its imaginary form.
The accepted majority were honed, propagandised, and chemically encouraged into a productive, efficient, and militarised whole, while those who were not accepted contributed to the collective by being excised from it.
By creating a nation comprised only of New Men and Women, the Nazis sought to leave no place for alternatives to their vision. This collectivisation folded every individual into a heroic narrative of constant improvement, where the struggle of the state played out through the individual bodies and minds of its people, and therefore was to become undeniable. Only when the human cogs in the Nazi war machine started to wear out and the long-term consequences of Pervitin abuse began to manifest did it become clear that there was no tipping point at which total commitment to an ideal narrative could make that fiction a reality.
Following in the footsteps of the original fascists, the far-right on 4chan use politics to motivate self-improvement, and in so doing transform that self-improvement into a form of political action. Posters in Self-Improvement General threads are quick to emphasise the connection between self-improvement and political action:. Self-improvement and taking care of oneself is incredibly important in order to make any sort of positive change in the world.
Before we can know right from wrong, we must enrich ourselves spiritually. Before we can argue and criticise we must improve our mental knowledge of philosophy and history. Before we can take back our communities and countries, we must be in top physical condition.
As the post above shows, the iron pill views self-improvement and political action as fundamentally intertwined, with each supporting the other.
Instead of motivating individuals to make change for their own benefit, it positions their self-improvement as part of a wider political struggle, giving it a greater significance and providing the individual with the promise of a greater reward.
With this in mind, it is common to see far-right groups of all types engaging heavily in physical training and developing fighting skills among their members: the skinhead groups that emerged in New Zealand in the s, for example, often made efforts to keep their members fit for battle, with some even going as far as banning drugs and alcohol, although in practice this latter element often proved to be a bridge too far for youth-oriented groups who were more interested in partying than ideological purity Gilbert and Elley, The importance of fitness and presentation has been strongly impressed upon the alt-right: during and , the alt-right undertook a short-lived campaign of violent physical action in the USA that helped to establish them as a real-world political force.
Through a series of staged events designed to create protests and counter-protests, alt-right groups including members of the community on 4chan became regularly involved in violent public confrontations with antifascist groups. As these battles became more common, both sides began to fight in costume, with many antifascists dressed in black and the alt-right appearing in outfits of goggles, gas masks, and wooden shields designed to resemble makeshift knights or gladiators.
Although the fights themselves were often awkward and unimpressive, those who were able to hold their own or look the part were essentially given positive coverage by a horrified news media, while fighters who could not were very publicly mocked. Following that event, the online far right quickly and near unanimously pivoted away from demonstrating and street fighting, but nevertheless that brief window of violence provided the movement with first-hand evidence of the value of training and exercise, and the significance of being able to appear presentable and put-together in front of their opponents and the media.
Although these physical confrontations have largely ceased, the far right maintain a worldview that is steeped in conflict, and which provides ongoing motivation for the iron pill. To create this struggle, the far right draws heavily on conspiracy theories, the most significant of which is the narrative known as Cultural Marxism. Versions of this conspiracy theory have been popular among American conservatives for some time see for example, Buchanan, , but it has become increasingly popular among the younger online right because it provides a narrative of climactic cultural battle that justifies and incorporates Nazi-style antisemitism and general xenophobia into a contemporary setting.
Echoing the anti-modern concerns that motivated early fascists to create the New Man, Cultural Marxism claims that this cabal of elites has created a world where modern conveniences and instant-gratification pleasures make people and men in particular dependent, weak, and childish:. Most people in the West used to harden as they grow on their own, like anywhere else. Now without effort you can remain indefinitely infantile due to our decadence. There were always outliers that became like this throughout history, but now the general masses have succumbed to this condition.
There is no longer a rite of passage into adulthood, you can be sheltered and live comfortably. This is de-evolution. Everyone has a dandy-ol time being a degenerate well into their 50s. Constant entertainment, pre-cooked meals and pornography have robbed us of our man-hood. Under these circumstances, becoming more capable and self-sufficient is conceptualised not only as being desirable for personal satisfaction, but also actually necessary to avoid enslavement.
In this way, actions taken by an individual to improve themselves become political acts:. No, [self-improvement] absolutely is political. Reject all false gods and take the iron pill. Your folk are all that you have in this life and they are the only ones you can depend on.
We are the masters of our own destiny. Our enemies are physically weak. They depend on deceit and trickery to move their agenda along. Forge your soul into an incorruptible mountain of steel. Help yourself so you can help your brothers. When the day comes where the alien and the traitor are forced to throw themselves onto our swords, we will tear them apart with the ferocity of a billion dead men screaming from the void for vengeance.
By placing the reader within this adversarial world, their self-improvement is reconceptualised as an act of rebellion against the enemy that they are led to believe has caused all of the problems in their life. Acts of self-improvement that would ordinarily be self-centred and done for their own reward, such as going to the gym or learning to hunt, become part of a righteous Manichean battle, greatly distorting the balance of input and reward that might normally be expected.
By turning the body into a battleground, self-improvement can become part of the wider cultural battle being fought by the far right. This creates a way for the alt-right on 4chan to actively participate in the movement without having to resort to the danger of exposing themselves by fighting or marching in the streets, and provides a way to advance themselves down the path to radicalisation without undertaking genuine radical activity.
By suffering and doing work on behalf of the far right cause, and expending time and resources, their commitment to the cause can deepen, regardless of whether the outcome of their labour actually provides any real benefit to the movement itself. Bring it to the brim. Then, just get up and go to the gym and burn out the rage by lifting.
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