Kulturkampf

[benji]

I wouldn't phrase it this way and I'm sure the rest of this article sets it up in a stupid way but I do think there's something to this in general and this guy is just noticing it about Trump.

I notice people on the internet constantly doing this, losing the sarcastic part and then seemingly enthusiastically defending the position they once were mocking. One example is how "-pilled" was a fascist dogwhistle but now everybody uses it. I've posted examples in this thread of right-wing Twitter accounts picking up progressive language policing and using it seriously now that it's to their advantage. A lot of the FOMO way people treat social media contributes to this tunnel vision usage.

And people using thought terminating clichés and slogans as an excuse not to ever think about anything is an epidemic on the internet. The number of catch phrases we have just from ResetERA.com all lockstep using them is astounding. And they're constantly grabbing onto new ones like "gooner" and "crashing out" to replace the old ones but say the same things over and over.

There's so many words and phrases that I can't help but metaphorically roll my eyes when I see somebody using them unironically. When I mock them I can't help but do the parodies as completely on-the-nose and over-the-top because that's what any usage of them sounds like to me. Zionist has seriously become this just from the last two years, it's pretty much Nazi to me now. Almost any time someone says "capitalism" it amuses me because of how often it has nothing to do with it and I try to think of how to steelman what the person thinks they're saying but clearly has no clue.

Left Twitter/Bluesky is fun to me because of how you can watch this evolve so quickly, how fast it will become "well known" that tying your shoes by starting with the right string over the left is fascist just to lead into someone screaming how anything but velcro shoes is ableist and eugenics. But it's really kind of most social media, especially when it groups. MAGA Twitter does the same "I never liked them" of someone they treated as a hero just last week. QAnon or any kind of conspiracy groupings do this constantly to where any picture of clouds has people saying that's clear evidence of something or other. Nobody can explain any of this, they're just repeating it because they saw it and it seemed pretty good to them. Somebody said it so if I repeat it I'll be seen as smart like them, never asking if that person was seen as smart in the first place.

It's all treated like this kind of memetic sorcery where the power exists within the terms and phrasings, so you can just flop out sentences or paragraphs full of these things and be "well informed" even as they are entirely contentless. But it's not my job to educate you on how what I said is actually this incredible thought that shows how stupid you are.