I’ve been saying this for at least 12 years now. 4chan has always been an interesting case study. There was (I haven’t been back to look in years) also the curious war on /d/ over eastern/western art with Dimitry’s works being accepted as eastern due to being Russian. Which fair enough, yea Russia is in Asia, but that’s not really the point. The point was creating positive association between dopamine mining (porn) and Russia for people who felt marginalized for their interests. That Bannon specifically pointed to 4chan as a vector for radicalization, well… It’s very interesting that so many interests that almost exclusively thrived on 4chan rose into mainstream acknowledgement around 2016.
This was all furthered on Reddit in the more offbeat porn-focused subs with blatant intrusions of racially charged ideas into any and all genres they could find but with a special attention paid to anything that repeatedly fetishized a loss of control/personal responsibility/agency (removedoldry, hypnotism, coercion, etc)
Getting those messages tangled into things people have fetishized and generally felt shameful about is a hell of a way to hijack dopamine to create a false positive association between the ideas and the act.
In a way, we might have to feel gratitude toward OnlyFans models, Tumblr users, and maybe just gen-Z as a whole, for reframing a lot of those same interests in a more sex positive and silly manner - to the degree that it is not uncommon to see a blue collar working class man making light of himself wearing panties as daily wear on Instagram. Not exactly niche and shameful now is it?
I’ve been saying this for at least 12 years now. 4chan has always been an interesting case study. There was (I haven’t been back to look in years) also the curious war on /d/ over eastern/western art with Dimitry’s works being accepted as eastern due to being Russian. Which fair enough, yea Russia is in Asia, but that’s not really the point. The point was creating positive association between dopamine mining (porn) and Russia for people who felt marginalized for their interests. That Bannon specifically pointed to 4chan as a vector for radicalization, well… It’s very interesting that so many interests that almost exclusively thrived on 4chan rose into mainstream acknowledgement around 2016.
This was all furthered on Reddit in the more offbeat porn-focused subs with blatant intrusions of racially charged ideas into any and all genres they could find but with a special attention paid to anything that repeatedly fetishized a loss of control/personal responsibility/agency (removedoldry, hypnotism, coercion, etc)
Getting those messages tangled into things people have fetishized and generally felt shameful about is a hell of a way to hijack dopamine to create a false positive association between the ideas and the act.
In a way, we might have to feel gratitude toward OnlyFans models, Tumblr users, and maybe just gen-Z as a whole, for reframing a lot of those same interests in a more sex positive and silly manner - to the degree that it is not uncommon to see a blue collar working class man making light of himself wearing panties as daily wear on Instagram. Not exactly niche and shameful now is it?