Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

48 homicides in 2017. The rate has been plummeting lately, to under half what it was 30 years ago.

DailyBeast quoting shooter: "Memes have done more for the ethno-nationalist movement than any manifesto"

Just feel nauseous. I'm not on any forums where this stuff wouldn't be dogpiled, but I spent an evening 6+ years ago aghast at the casual racism on 4chan.

At a bare minimum, the Japanese owners of 8chan and 4chan should be pressured to shut the sites down. It will just force these miscreants to other venues, but anything to make their self-programming more difficult.

Just fuck

After the devastating attacks on mosques in Christchurch today, this is Queensland Senator Fraser Anning's response #auspol pic.twitter.com/eLKzIXjBcQ

— Felicity Caldwell (@fel_caldwell) March 15, 2019

Straight out of the Marine Le Pen/Geert Wilders/Tommy Robinson, etc. playbook. Fuck that guy.

if he is still senator this time tomorrow then there's no hope really, is there

Sounds like he's a loon who only got in by default:

For context for anyone outside Australia, Fraser Anning received just 19 votes. He only got a seat in the Senate after One Nation's Malcolm Roberts was disqualified. Anning was widely condemned for his "final solution" speech last year. https://t.co/O19h5bn4Es

— Felicity Caldwell (@fel_caldwell) March 15, 2019

Fuck that Queensland nazi with a rusty fork.

this nazi shitbag is merely the most cartoonish avatar of australian political culture

Also I know this goes without saying but this is almost perfectly-designed propaganda for Islamist terror organisations, especially given this took place in a country as seemingly 'safe' as New Zealand.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/zealand-mosques-attack-suspect-praised-trump-manifesto-190315100143150.html

Hardly surprising. The full quote is apparently

Were/are you a supporter of Donald Trump?

As a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose? Sure. As a policy maker and leader? Dear god no.

Media: be careful with the NZ shooter's apparent manifesto. It's thick with irony and meta-text and very easy to misinterpret if you're not steeped in this stuff all the time (and even if you are).

— Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) March 15, 2019

Seriously, this entire thing is a minefield. I am Very Online and I don't feel 100% certain about what's genuine and what's just trolling/posting/media-baiting. Please be careful.

— Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) March 15, 2019

... he also praised Brexit.

also i wonder how the maori feel about a white guy from australia declaring natural rights or whatever the fuck the 8chan types call their garbage ideology

xp

yeah the irony shitposting angle makes it tough to sort out what's trolling and what isn't, though the "invader" language seems to be pretty consistent

shame they took him alive

message from Māori leaders to Muslims in Aotearoa (via @Asians4Tino on FB) #Christchurchshooting
"We know this suffering, this extremism born of racial supremacy, this theft of identity ... Our deepest sympathy and love to your whanau and community." pic.twitter.com/C1K0RABzBo

— Jinghua Qian (@qianjinghua) March 15, 2019

The “irony shitposting” angle of this is fucking nauseating. This came out of the same trash subcultures that youtube profits enormously from.

And that you'll be pipelined straight into if you watch anything political ever.

The "irony shitposting" angle is part of the terrorism. It's designed to create political chaos.

And that you'll be pipelined straight into if you watch anything ever.

You'll be recommended Joe Rogan if you watch nothing at all - load a "clean" YouTube session and he has an entire section on the front page.

(Or he did a couple months ago)

I learned today that pewdiepie once paid Indian men to stand on the street and hold signs that said “Death to Jews” as a “stunt.” And he is the most subscribed youtuber. Wtf

Maybe it's always been this way and I've just never noticed, but it seems like I've seen a huge uptick recently in even the most innocuous seeming meme accounts on Twitter and Instagram adding notes and hashtags to "subscribe to pewd1ep1e".

Why is Rogan pushed so hard by YouTube?

I don’t consider him to be especially noxious, personally, but his show is certainly a “pipeline” to some egregious stuff given how their algorithm works.

Xps yes, my husband was just commenting on the yt pipeline to me the other day - he only watched a single joe rogan clip in order to hear an interview with a comedian he likes and suddenly his side bar recs are filled with “WATCH THIS SJW GET OWNED” -style videos

Yes, many of his guests/convos are innocuous but a single Rogan click will take you straight to JBP and onwards

Is Rogan to blame, though? I've never watched his stuff but friends of mine who systematically mock the alt right are fans, so I'm genuinely curious.

he's not not to blame

but the primary villain with respect to YouTube is YouTube itself

The frequency with which he books alt-right adjacent people makes me wonder for sure.

Jesus Christ I’m already sick of hearing about the terrorist and his lame manifesto. There’s nothing interesting or complicated there - he was an entitled piece of shit without empathy, who hated people of color. Nobody needs to know anything about his hopes and dreams.

he gives a platform to terrible people so yeah i think he’s to blame

he’s promoted because hits are a value neutral metric and they’re lauded whether or not they’re the result of awfulness

This has been discussed on other threads, but he is a weird interviewer because he seems to agree with whoever he is talking to. Also, I think the alt-right adjacent people tone it down on his show.

xp

https://jrelibrary.com/episode-list/

lotta awful white dudes in there

A lot of liberals on there too, or apolitical figures

Not convinced that public discourse should be just monads without windows. Not even convinced that it would further the causes to which most of us on ILX are committed.

What does that mean?

Inviting figures the ILX hivemind doesn't systematically endorse is not a bad thing, as long as they're not beyond the pale (whatever that means, of course).

I obviously agree with that but its weird his videos—which are often not objectionable in themselves— automatically connect viewers with an entire ecosystem of reactionary thought. It’s also weird that the top youtube is pewdiepie who seems to — at the very least — like flirting with edgy nazi content in a way actual alt righters approve of.

YT seems primarily to blame for that. But I'll refrain from further judgment until I actually watch/listen to Rogan's stuff.

Something is up with the platform. It’s not representing a range of views—it’s weighted toward these “intellectual dark web” people (to quote bari weiss) and worse

Re the irony/shitposting aspect

2. This is something Sartre noticed in 1944: Nazis rhetoric often includes absurd jokey flourishes, to better destabilize reality. From Sartre's "Anti-Semite and Jew": pic.twitter.com/K6eDj2zO5O

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) March 15, 2019

xpost What's odd is that I thought YouTube saying they were specifically addressing this just a couple of weeks ago, but I noticed last week all of a sudden all these crazy right-wing things popping up in my YouTube suggested viewing list. I just keep blocking them.

Backstory to the ‘subscribe to pewdiepie’ thing

https://mashable.com/article/t-series-pewdiepie-youtube-most-subscribed.amp

Most of the ‘subscribe’ comments you see will be from innocuous fans who want to see him remain at the top. However, because of his fairly frequent edgelord stuff, ‘subscribe to pewd1ep1e’ has also become a white nationalist dogwhistle slogan. UKIP, the most prominent far-right party in the U.K. (other than the Tories) tweeted it out the day before yesterday. The tactic of ascribing racist meaning to fair normal things, both to amplify the message and to troll, has been quite popular over the last few years. Sharing a hashtag with a big pop culture campaign means the content gets disseminated much more widely.

this isn’t a question of “hiveminds”

correct me if I'm wrong -- I don't really want to slog through 80 pages of 8chan memes -- but do we know for a fact that youtube had something to do with this? because it seems equally if not more plausible that patient zero for this dude was gaming forums/discords