I think 4chan is a shit hole and do not in any way approve of them mocking BLM or the movement.

The reason I share this however is to point out the generally harmful group think of people being activists right now, to the extent it is hurting the movement.

4chan consistently has success in these matters. Right now its Bald for BLM which seems to be catching on, and not that long ago they managed to trick everyone into thinking the OK hand gesture was a white supremacist hand gesture and even managed to get it on a list of hate speech.

When 4chan is this successful at manipulating people simply by making something look popular, when that is the only criteria for success, its time to reevaluate the underlying mentality driving our activism.

@freemo Side note, but the whole "👌" debacle is often represented in a way that doesn't quite reflect the reality accurately. The people who started the claim that it's a white supremacist thing were in part also white supremacists. I don't know what the exact proportions of just-for-the-lolz trolls to alt-righters were obviously, but there was enough of the latter, that I think this story can be described relatively accurately as "white supremacists adopting new symbol" rather than "trolls convincing journalists that white supremacists adopted a new symbol". I mean the trolls definitely thought they were doing that, so the truth is somewhere in between. And confusingly the white supremacists also thought they were trolling, as evidenced by the NZ mosque shooter -- he seemes to flash this symbol in some photos "ironically". But if you adopt a symbol "ironically" or "for-the-lulz" you still adopted the symbol...

@timorl @freemo I mean, if I'm not mistaken/am remembering this correctly (I pretty much watched it unfold in real time from inception), it was a prank literally brainchilded on /pol/ specifically to dupe journos—and thereafter legitimate white supremacists started doing it ironically after it got popularized by media trying to sensationalize it.

@kino

The number of cases of legitimate white supremacists using it is very very small. Wikipedia has a complete list of times it was legitimately used by white supremacists and I dont think the list even hits the dozen mark.

So not sure I'd call that valid IMO.

@timorl

@freemo @timorl Yeah, I can't really cite any times it was used by real white supremacists outside of maybe the NZ mosque shooter. I just remember *being on 4chan* when this was being shilled into existence by anons for the specific purpose of fucking with journos. And then like 3 months later it was being widely cites by journos as meaning "white power".

@kino

And now everytime someone is caught in a picture making the OK handgesture, without any other context, everyone goes "yup, look at this racist fuck"

@timorl

@freemo I actually didn't see that happen -- I know it was widely reported to be a white supremacist symbol, but I don't remember any innocent person being accused of being racist due to using it. And this makes some sense -- the contexts in which people are using this hand gesture normally are rarely ones in which you could confuse the message for "white power".
@kino

@timorl @freemo >the contexts in which people are using this hand gesture normally are rarely ones in which you could confuse the message for "white power"

You'd be right, but I've seen *many* instances were people have disingenuously called people out for "white supremacy" or "racism" simply because they made the 👌 sign—knowing full well that it wasn't used in any racist or ethnonationalist context, simply exploiting its journo-powered connotations among members of the dogmatic leftist sphere to smear someone they dislike. Now, tbf, that rarely ever goes anywhere and most people making these claims are ignored or lampooned, but it's still being weaponized against folks.

@kino Same as with @freemo I'm curious of these instances. In particular are you sure these were actual leftists, not more trolls? If they were ignored it kind of... I don't know, sounds suspicious.

@timorl @freemo They could've been trolls, but they seemed like earnest trolls. Usually someone digging through someone's social media to find them with the symbol, posting it as a response to another post or thread with some text insinuating them as being a white supremacist, followed by a deluge of people posting pictures of celebrities and politicians making the same symbol in response. Not an altogether rare occurrence to see on Twatter.

@kino This sounds like unsuccsessful trolls being immediately called out, not actual incidents.
@freemo