• onoira [they/them]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 months ago

    she’s alluding to the fact that these characters — the ‘soyjack’ and ‘gigachad’ — are historically, and still actively are, alt-right charicatures. together with their friends, ‘tradwife’ and ‘doomer (girl)’: they represent misogynistic, racist, antisemitic, and white supremacist tropes.

    • AVincentInSpace@pawb.social
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      5 months ago

      Must they continue to do so? On their own they are nothing but stand-ins for people or ideologies. If we can reclaim entire slurs, surely we can reclaim these, no?

      • Chloé 🥕@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        5 months ago

        Even on their own, the shitty alt-right ideology is still present. Notice how the chad, the guy we’re meant to agree with, is very often (not always, but often) a white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed guy?

        Or how the guy with the wrong opinions we’re meant to mock is often a drooling person with a dented head?

        The ableism and white supremacy of the right is still perceptible in the meme, even when it’s used to push leftist messages.

        and on a more basic level, the idea of bad opinion = ugly, good opinion = beautiful is shitty and flirts with white supremacy (because what’s beautiful is very often dictated by eurocentric beauty standards), but that’s a problem in our societies as a whole, not just with this meme

        • AVincentInSpace@pawb.social
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          5 months ago

          None of those things necessarily need to be true, especially not

          the idea of bad opinion = ugly, good opinion = beautiful is shitty and flirts with white supremacy

          The shouting crying soyjak for depicting opinions of people who continue to hold stupid opinions despite all evidence to the contrary fits fairly well, and if you don’t like the beauty standards set by the default chad, there’s nothing stopping you from substituting your own, or just using any calm, levelheaded character in its place.