[Cog]

For those you don't know what frog memes are about. Some years ago 4chan trolls invented frog memes and the word Kek as a way to troll the left into thinking they we're racist. What started out as a joke caused the left to have a meltdown. 4chan did much the same thing with the a-ok hand sign that everyone uses which apparently is now a white power signal. Or so the left has convinced themselves.

All of which goes to show the gullibility of the left and their tendency to grab onto the idea that everything is about race.

When Kavanaugh ' clerk gave the ok sign during his testimony, the left over at democratic underground called her out for signaling white power. Those of us in the know about the history of frog memes and ok hand sign are laughing ourselves to death over it.

[Newfie]

Starting a thread about how we miss communicate through cultural memes or other measures.

Adding a post from another thread to kick it off.

[Cog]

Political memes were a powerful weapon and part of the election in 2016. The concept of using memes to both ridicule the opposition while firing up your base, is very useful. The right actually borrowed the concept of ridicule from leftist Alyinski's rules for radicals.

The point of a picture with text meme is to make a point without getting involved in long drawn out words that no one will read anyway.

[Plantagenet]

Some years ago 4chan trolls invented frog memes and the word Kek as a way to troll the left into thinking they we're racist.

Why in the world would they want to do that?

[Newfie]

The problem is that you never truly understand how the meme will be interpreted. Like the OK sign or the V for Victory (or the Peace sign) which was widely misunderstood when Nixon used it in the 60’s.

What people frequenly forget is the first two letters in COmunnication. We often municate, we infrequently COmunicate.

[Newfie]

Had to look that up.

4chan is a simple image-based bulletin board where anyone can post comments and share images. There are boards dedicated to a variety of topics, from Japanese animation and culture to videogames, music, and photography. Users do not need to register an account before participating in the community. Feel free to click on a board below that interests you and jump right in!

[Cog]

Some years ago 4chan trolls invented frog memes and the word Kek as a way to troll the left into thinking they we're racist.

Why in the world would they want to do that?

4chan did not want people to think they were racists, they wanted to see if they could make the left think frog memes were racist. It succeeded beyond all expectations. 4 chan likes to create excitement, hate political correctness , and basically mess with people's minds.

The fact that some real nazis adopted the frog memes as a symbol, just made it better from 4chan's point of view. Trump sort of represents a bit of chaos, lack of political correctness, pretty much a guy who trolls the left constantly through twitter. The chans dig that. So do the people on reddit-Trump.

They are a bit more than just a simple message board. Underneath, they are a bunch of autistic trolls who will research you and wreck your life if you somehow offend their sense of justice in the world. The red hen house who chased Sarah sanders out of their restaurant found that out real quick.

[dissident]

Collectively forgetting the a-ok hand gesture and turning it into some "white power" signal is truly Orwellian. The morons who engage in such PC revisionism are the real threat to democracy and not the "white power" fringe that has been disappearing consistently for the last few decades.

[Newfie]

a bunch of autistic trolls who will research you and wreck your life if you somehow offend their sense of justice

Somehow this deeply offends my sense of justice. But it also evokes a sense of pity for folks so completely into negativity. What a shallow and meaningless life you describe.

[Ibon]

a bunch of autistic trolls who will research you and wreck your life if you somehow offend their sense of justice

Somehow this deeply offends my sense of justice. But it also evokes a sense of pity for folks so completely into negativity. What a shallow and meaningless life you describe.

I think your sentiment Newfie is also very strong in the collective at large. After all, a big reason Clinton lost is exactly because there was this sense of injustice in how she manipulated her party and the facts while she was pretending to be an advocate for fairness. Trump initially inspired support because he tuned into that. But his very trolling and tapping into these memes is just another form of injustice that in the beginning was embraced because it satiated the need the right (and many in the middle) felt for some revenge...... but once that revenge is satiated we come back to the underlying resentment in the collective about a lack of fairness and justice. What you just posted.

This might be my own projection clouding my judgement but what I am sensing might also be accurate. You know, with these macro sentiments in the collective you never really know what's coming down. As I have said Trump is a one trick pony in his singular focus on grievances. At some point exciting peoples grievances will be perceived as just another form of manipulation, just another form of injustice. Especially when you use racism, misogyny, white nationalism, hatred of immigrants as your vehicle to deliver that manipulation.

Trump has decoupled from the trend line as I see it. You milk that revenge initially while it still has a valid shelf life. And at just the right point you dial it back and tap into the collective's deeper need for justice and unity. I think that desire for unity is slowly rising in the collective but Trump remains completely in grievance land with his base of angry white voters. He hasn't followed the trend line and this will be his doom in the end. His die hard racist supporters like some members here at po.com will hang in there but the middle, the independents, the disenfranchised in the end will throw Trump in the same basket as Clinton..... exactly because they will feel like they are being manipulated by someone with power and privilege.

The pendulum always swings and it is very important if you are a leader to move with that pendulum. If you stay fixed in a place while the pendulum moves on you end up becoming irrelevant fast.

[Cog]

By your definition Ibon, anyone who voted for Trump is a racist. Prove me wrong.

[Newfie]

Where the heck did you read that in what Ibon said?

[Newfie]

Ibon,
I think there is a lot of truth in what you just said. It’s a very hopeful stance.

Hopefully Trump will be something like a emetic, he will induce us to reject the poisons in our system, Left and Right.

Personally, and more so now than at election time, I believe Hillary to have been a very dangerous person to be President. Trump, no matter how bad forestalled that disaster. Perhaps we can, in the aftermath of this national hissy fit, find some room for decorum, discussion, compassion, and empathy.

Just maybe this is a test of your hypothesis that humanity will learn something in the bottle neck and improve thereafter.

[Cog]

Where the heck did you read that in what Ibon said?

His comment "his base of angry white voters" is pretty much a clue. The left is bereft of any coherent argument except everything is racist. It's an intellectually lazy way to argue about policy positions you don't like.

Which is why alt right memes infuriate the left. It flips the narrative on the left and leaves them nothing but the only meme they have,which is racism. But even that has lost its power once you have been red-pilled and woke.

[Newfie]

Well there is an awful lot in that post, let’s try to deal with just one thing...everyone who voted for a Trump is a racist.

At most he says his BASE consists of angry white voters. Whether or not that is true, and for sake of argument only let’s assume it is, I still don’t think your accusation holds up.

Angry white voters; two adjectives, one noun.
Angy .... about what? Most likely a lot of things. Including Hillaries various manipulations.
White .... means they share a skin tone, not that they are racist. But they voted against a White person as much as they voted for a White person. An argument can be made that the White Trump supporters share something in common that is not race based.

I think you are doing to Ibon what Dohboi tried to do to you. Yes there is a history where we have taken positions. But the point of discussion is to get folks to change positions. They will seldom come out and say “Gee I was totally wrong on xys.” Positions and attitudes morph over time. Allow that to happen and applauds it when it does. The other tactic may feel good, rubbing noses and all that, but it tends to get folks to ossify, to defend an old position that has become tenuous.

Finally, you may be right, why not ask Ibon if that is what he meant? In a way that’s what you did, just in a very confrontational manner.

[Ibon]

By your definition Ibon, anyone who voted for Trump is a racist. Prove me wrong.

Of course not. It's like you didn't read my post. There were many more who voted for Trump than just angry white voters. And that Cog is what should worry you if you are invested in Trump's future. The angry white voter is a big big part of his base and will probably be the last to abandon him but all those others who voted for him for reasons I outline in my post are perhaps getting tired of a one trick pony president who almost exclusively tweets divisiveness and exciting grievances.

Your angry white voter has a huge capacity to keep eating up this shit. The rest who voted for Trump perhaps don't and are swinging with a pendulum toward more unity.

A question to you Cog. Where are you in terms of anger toward the left? Are you still enjoying watching them squirm or are you ready to break bread with them?

[Cog]

I do not break bread with a domestic enemy, who have sworn to destroy the Republic. The issue will get settled with the left one way or the other. Perhaps peacefully by voting them down but with the left's tendency towards violence probably not.

[Plantagenet]

....angry white voters.....

Don't forget the angry black voters who always vote for the Ds.

------------------------------------------------------

IMHO this is the wrong way to think about things. This kind of identity politics is a big problem problem in the USA because it disguises the actual issues at play here.

For instance, many of the "angry white voters" who are assumed to be racists actually voted for Obama in the last two elections. They aren't racist at all----they are working class people who have seen their jobs disappear and they want change. When Obama promised change they went with Obama. When Trump promised change they went with Trump.

IMHO its utterly poisonous to reduce our complex politics to one skin color vs. another skin color because it disguises the real issues that most people actually care about---they economy, jobs, wages, wars----important things like that.

White working class voters shifted to the Rs in 2016 because the Obama and the Ds hadn't kept their promises on the economy. Perhaps they will shift back to the Ds in 2018 or perhaps they won't----but it won't be because of their skin color.

CHEERS!

[mmasters]