Thread by @N7IRL

For all the constant repetition that Warren used to be a Republican, there's basically zero discussion of how many Bernie stans were...basically yesterday.

Maybe someday we'll get a clearer view of how much this election and 2016 have been shaped by 4chan and the culture it bred

If you want to understand the dynamics of why parts of the campaign and so many supporters have so much resistance to actual meaningful outreach while remaining devoted to the beset revolutionaries narrative, it helps to get where "normies" came from.

The loudest and worst of Bernie's supporters, including some of his campaign staff, are often people shaped by imageboard setups like 4chan where discussion boards invariably became insular and guided by an understanding that what they had was mostly impenetrable to outsiders.

And those sites still exist and were a large part of the dynamics of GG and successive culture war efforts.

It would not be shocking to find pro-Sanders people still on those boards, even as right as they've swung, because it's familiar.

Where they're relevant to Bernie is that his particular brand of social democracy is palatable to the portion of users of those boards who, rather than getting subsumed by right-wing movements (or in some cases, post-subsuming), see the gater types and "SJWs" as the same problem.

Some are actually disillusioned gaters.

But they share a general disdain for anything "woke" and for concepts like intersectionality while not being opposed to policies like M4A and debt forgiveness...since they can benefit from those.

It's individuals who bridle at being told they're racist or sexist or in any way biased seeing what Bernie's offering as a revolution that does not require a change on their part and offers them others to blame for whatever they lack.

And decades of being hyped against socialism and seeing capitalism fuck them over has many willing to embrace what Sanders is offering, because if THAT is socialism what's so bad about it?

No cost healthcare is a thing they can get behind.

But where this shapes Bernie's support in unfortunate ways is that in not being pushed to be better, a lot of these types are dragging others down.

The entire concept of normies is an inherently conservative, in-group/out-group dynamic.

So you have a lot of loud, obnoxious supporters who still have conservative social views, who see themselves as part of a revolution where the enemy includes the same people telling them not to use slurs and to be accepting of others' identities.

They don't see themselves as biased against any group but they're also entirely willing to have conversations about which groups are inherently more criminal or creep them out and ableist slurs are background noise.

This all contributes to self-styled leftists who fundamentally do not have a community-based motivation for what they support, but rather are driven by self-interest and being part of the in-group.

Which makes it easy to find enemies.

If you're not among those being targeted by these types, it's easy to miss that the intensity and volume of how they go after someone plays a huge part in shaping people's impressions.

It feels more organized than just a bunch of individual haters.

Most comparisons to GG aren't really fair, but there's a lot of overlap in dymamics, in what tactics are fair and who is a fair target and how "evidence" against targets gets built up and shared to continue justifying going against them.

And a lot of people feeling unfairly maligned for supporting Bernie might do well to understand that while some of it is media narrative, a lot of what conplaints you see from individuals is coming from dynamics you don't see.

Which is actually made worse for those targeted when you turn around and seem to be mocking them for it, which is part of why "sorry for your mentions" was kind of shitty.

You see people upset about being yelled at, they see full inboxes and mentions filled with hate.

Not everyone is responding to actual serious abuse, but for those targeted, the dismissal feels worse.

It never quite lets up, because some portion of the attackers need to continue feeling they were justified and continue putting targets in their place.

Obviously there's a lot more shaping the election and there's the more complex dynamics of what shaped sites like 4chan in the first place, but I think the online culture that gave us things like Racefail and GG and a few thousand sea lions is specifically relevant to now.