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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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Last I was aware, Kiwifarms is still operational, using a protocol and software created and funded by the US Government with this use-case as one of its objectives. It ain't exactly normie-compatible since the URL is some long base-64 abomination only a Linux user would think was acceptable, but you can still talk there with sufficient motivation.

The problem with subversivity is that you can't be subversive without a value-add (something that gender politics mirrors very well with respect to men). As far as I'm aware, Kiwifarms doesn't actually have a value-add; it's just a place to sneer at people. Twitter, and those who would like to be employed there, are interested in socio-regulatory capture to enforce its monopoly on being the place you go to sneer at people (with "the only acceptable sneering is leftist sneering" being the subtext).

Contrast SomethingAwful, being the place a few cornerstones of current Internet culture had their beginnings (most notably, the entire concept of the "Let's play", being a multi-billion dollar industry today), or 4chan, whose unique mode of operation enabled its users to be the leaders in meme-creation for many years, spawned a few games, and whose stream-of-consciousness format lends itself to a wide variety of topics and subtopics not properly serviceable by any other forum. They don't exist solely to sneer, whether by happy accident (4chan sucked up all the non-sneering SomethingAwful users; if they hadn't been so Mean Girls, 4chan wouldn't exist in the first place!), or they only had the sneering take over after the fact (SA and Twitter).