Anyone here who used to be Alt-right/ Alt-lite/ Anti-SJW / part of any hateful site or group etc. What made you stop?

[Iloelemen]

So in the wake of PewDiePie promoting a Nazi YouTuber to his millions of young fans, I thought this would be relevant.

My story's a bit of a bore but long story short when I was 16 back in 2014, there was a period when I frequented KotakuInAction and some MRA / MGTOW sites.

Me being a Filipino, I also visited this blog by (American) expats who made lots of racists posts about the Philippines and I ate that up unironically *shudders.

So how did I end up visiting these hateful places? I don't remember how, I juat stumbled upon them. How long was I visiting these sites before realizing wht these sites really were? A year at most. I don't really remember how, but the toxicity and hatefulness of these sites really came to me.

I'm a bit lucky 'cos I wasn't radicalized with the worst stuff (never watched alt-lite /alt-right youtube nor did I visit 4chan) and there was no outside push for me to become more anti-sjw (eg. I had no real life friends that were into being edgy and anti-sjw) but in an alternate timeline, I might have become a Trumpist incel or something.

Consider how easier it is now for teens to become radicalized via YouTube.

 

[Bandage]

Honestly, parents should completely block Youtube from their kids.
Even if you watch mundane stuff, it will suggest complete off the wall farright garbage.
Awful site.

 

[Deleted member 19003]

Honestly, parents should completely block Youtube from their kids.
Even if you watch mundane stuff, it will suggest complete off the wall farright garbage.
Awful site.

Click to shrink...

This. I block my kids from YouTube, social media, and open access to the internet in general. They're allowed pre-approved website access (like Wikipedia) and a few monitored games. I've always thought unlocking it all for highschool would be fine, but Op giving me second thoughts.

 

[TaySan]

Honestly, parents should completely block Youtube from their kids.
Even if you watch mundane stuff, it will suggest complete off the wall farright garbage.
Awful site.

Click to shrink...

100% Agree often times I watch videos that have nothing to do with politics whatsoever and still get PragerU ads and other rightwing videos. Brainwashing youth.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Impressionable young people with underdeveloped political views swept up into counter culture anti intellectual kneejerk emotional based movements. I've never understood it but the internet is rife with that sort of thing. And with Prager U's prevalence on youtube, the greater right wing organization have realized that its a great way to recruit for their cause and get well paying suckers.

Why the left doesnt learn from that sort of thing i dont know. Infiltrate the airwaves with your own subliminal(and not so subliminal) messages. The amount of leftists who do it is minuscule compared to the right wing crowd. And not in just relaying the news or just pushing partisan party politics, but actual progressive leftist viewpoints in abstract terms that people can see play out in their own lives and emphasize with.

 

[Bandage]

Impressionable young people with underdeveloped political views swept up into counter culture anti intellectual kneejerk emotional based movements. I've never understood it but the internet is rife with that sort of thing. And with Prager U's prevalence on youtube, the greater right wing organization have realized that its a great way to recruit for their cause.

Why the left doesnt learn from that sort of thing i dont know.

Click to shrink...

The left will never be as appealing, is why.
The right offers easy answers to hard questions (usually that it's a PoC's fault or Jews or some other bullshit).
The truth cant compete.

 

[Inuhanyou]

The left will never be as appealing, is why.
The right offers easy answers to hard questions (usually that it's a PoC's fault or Jews or some other bullshit).
The truth cant compete.

Click to shrink...

That's well established truth, that's why the southern strategy was so successful and in many ways continues to be so. But there is still a sizable percentage of people who will have to choose and will choose wisely, if given an appropriate outlet to see things how they are.

Some of the outlets i follow have converted countless people who were either in danger of going down that path or were down that path but managed to find out it was a hollow pleasure through alternative viewpoints.

We need as many voices as we can in opposition of hatred and anti intellectual thought is what i always say

 

[jot]

The left will never be as appealing, is why.
The right offers easy answers to hard questions (usually that it's a PoC's fault or Jews or some other bullshit).
The truth cant compete.

Click to shrink...

Left wing concepts are also very difficult to grasp, in my experience. Not to mention that they often demand a lot of empathy for others - not a well developed quality for young men in their teens and 20s.

 

[louisacommie]

The worst i ever was was edgelord humour and tumblrinaction subrrddit


Luckily it wasnt a major thing and by gamegate and kitakuinaction i was off that train

Becuase of my mom i was never that big a fan of all of the sexism on the right, i also hated bush as a kid, and ultimately that was my gateway to the empathy that led me to be a leftist.

 

[D i Z]

I used to be on Gaf....

 

[Watchtower]

The left will never be as appealing, is why.
The right offers easy answers to hard questions (usually that it's a PoC's fault or Jews or some other bullshit).
The truth cant compete.

Click to shrink...

The right also offers mindless entertainment to a crowd desperate to be entertained.

The left asks you to think about the world around you, how to improve it, and how to identify those working against you. The right simply points at someone or something and says "Laugh at this, they're stupid" or "Hate this, they hate you for having fun".

 

[Atisha]

So in the wake of PewDiePie promoting a Nazi YouTuber to his millions of young fans, I thought this would be relevant.

My story's a bit of a bore but long story short when I was 16 back in 2014, there was a period when I frequented KotakuInAction and some MRA / MGTOW sites.

Me being a Filipino, I also visited this blog by (American) expats who made lots of racists posts about the Philippines and I ate that up unironically *shudders.

So how did I end up visiting these hateful places? I don't remember how, I juat stumbled upon them. How long was I visiting these sites before realizing wht these sites really were? A year at most. I don't really remember how, but the toxicity and hatefulness of these sites really came to me.

I'm a bit lucky 'cos I wasn't radicalized with the worst stuff (never watched alt-lite /alt-right youtube nor did I visit 4chan) and there was no outside push for me to become more anti-sjw (eg. I had no real life friends that were into being edgy and anti-sjw) but in an alternate timeline, I might have become a Trumpist incel or something.

Consider how easier it is now for teens to become radicalized via YouTube.

Click to shrink...

I read your post, and i know you said you don't remember how it started, but i'm researching this kind of thing for a project, and my imagination and speculations can go many places based upon the research but hearing from the eye witness is the best.

if your not looking for it, how does one get fished in? If your remember i'd sure like to hear about it.

 

[Plywood]

Honestly, parents should completely block Youtube from their kids.
Even if you watch mundane stuff, it will suggest complete off the wall farright garbage.
Awful site.

Click to shrink...

Youtube loves doing that shit and no matter how many times you block a channel or mark a video as not interested another one just crops up. Algorithm my ass.

 

[WEGGLES]

I used to love 4chan and edgy humor and all sorts of non-pc stuff. I don't think I was ever racist, but edgy humor sure was funny. I bailed on /b/ when it was constantly spammed with repetitive posts and moved on. Feels like I dodged a bullet.

I also really liked atheist YouTube stuff. But also grew out of my raging atheist phase too. That's also an area of the web that's pretty anti sjw and pretty... Racist (I'm not racist, it's MUSLIMS that are barbaric! Nothing about race! It's all about how barbaric religion is!!! ) . Loved thunderf00t and the amazing atheist dunking on stupid creationists.


I feel like I really liked multiple areas of the internet that turned people into the "free speech" "fuck your feelings" "asking me to be considerate of others feelings is violating my rights" type... But I just... Dodged a bullet. Multiple times.

 

[Dinobot]

I mean, half this forum is made up of NeoGAF members....

 

[Ushiromiya]

I used to read a lot of gender critical literature, and while I still agree with many of the core arguments, over time their rhetoric just became so despicable that it was difficult for me to see them as any more than hateful bullies. When you willingly lock arms with the alt-right and literal MRAs, who are the total antithesis of what you're supposed to stand for, just for the sole purpose of shitting on trans people, its obvious you don't care about equality and are just looking for a reason to hate. r/GenderCritical in particular is an absolute disgrace and really ought to be banned.

 

[Deleted member 4518]

i used to go on 4chan when i was a kid which looking back at it makes me feel super embarrassed.

 

[Doof]

The worst i ever was was edgelord humour and tumblrinaction subrrddit


Luckily it wasnt a major thing and by gamegate and kitakuinaction i was off that train

Becuase of my mom i was never that big a fan of all of the sexism on the right, i also hated bush as a kid, and ultimately that was my gateway to the empathy that led me to be a leftist.

Click to shrink...

My story’s basically identical. Glad I grew out of that junk.

 

[TylersProphecy]

Honestly, parents should completely block Youtube from their kids.
Even if you watch mundane stuff, it will suggest complete off the wall farright garbage.
Awful site.

Click to shrink...

You're not kidding. My girlfriends best friend always tells her how she sits her (autistic) child in front of youtube for hours and, when she comes back, like half the time it will then be on something ultraviolent, like a beheading. Sometimes, I just dont understand why she let's her kid watch youtube but hey, I'm not saying anything about it to her. Her life is hard enough but yeah, that kid...is going to have an uphill battle in this world.

 

[sph3re]

I thought Jordan Peterson was okay at one point

Then I read the first two chapters of 12 Rules For Life and realized he has no idea what the fuck he's talking about

That's probably the closest I've come to "alt-right," I guess

 

[jay]

When I was maybe 10 I was convinced that straight white men had it really hard. Too much Married with Children, probably.

 

[infinite]

Impressionable young people with underdeveloped political views swept up into counter culture anti intellectual kneejerk emotional based movements. I've never understood it but the internet is rife with that sort of thing. And with Prager U's prevalence on youtube, the greater right wing organization have realized that its a great way to recruit for their cause and get well paying suckers.

Why the left doesnt learn from that sort of thing i dont know. Infiltrate the airwaves with your own subliminal(and not so subliminal) messages. The amount of leftists who do it is minuscule compared to the right wing crowd. And not in just relaying the news or just pushing partisan party politics, but actual progressive leftist viewpoints in abstract terms that people can see play out in their own lives and emphasize with.

Click to shrink...

If I watch a feminist frequency video on YouTube right now what pops up next in my autoplay will most likely be some right winged shit calling Anita a liar sjw. I’m not trying to imply that YouTube prefers alt right shit to leftist content but their algorithms have figured out that introducing you to content that just illicits some kind of emotional response from you keeps you on the site longer to consume ads. It’s their whole incentive structure that’s the issue. Combine that with the fact that Prager U, Dave Rubin, and Peterson all collect checks from right wing oligarchs who have a vested interests in seeing right wing propaganda disseminated. Can’t think of any leftist sugar daddies or mommies trying to do the same.

 

[GayAnimeDad]

I mean, half this forum is made up of NeoGAF members....

Click to shrink...

NeoGAF wasn’t an alt right site. People like that are left there now, but before the migration they kept a lower profile because almost literally everyone here was there.

 

[GamerJM]

I used to be right wing but not really because of anything on the internet, mostly just because of my family. I was never really much of an edgelord alt-right guy, I was more similar to how you'd imagine the average Republican was in the 90s. I realized I was a really stupid idiot when some of my friends came out as queer and I when realized that right wing economics don't work when I was in college.

 

[Deleted member 3815]

I wasn't on it but there was a woman who came forward about how some loser guy who ran a forum called, ach I can't remember the name, who sexually assaulted her in a shower, the forum members were shocked by this and asked for an answers. The mods got fed up and quit and thus chaos happened and the whole thing burnt down.

 

[Inuhanyou]

I wasn't on it but there was a woman who came forward about how some loser guy who ran a forum called, ach I can't remember the name, who sexually assaulted her in a shower, the forum members were shocked by this and asked for an answers. The mods got fed up and quit and thus chaos happened and the whole thing burnt down.

Click to shrink...

And all that's left is ashes and dust

 

[VectorPrime]

No one just stops being a crypto-fascist. They need to be straight up deprogrammed.

 

[VectorPrime]

NeoGAF wasn’t an alt right site. People like that are left there now, but before the migration they kept a lower profile because almost literally everyone here was there.

Click to shrink...

At Gaf the admins also unbanned hundreds of posters because they desperately needed to make up for the lost traffic. As you can imagine unbanning hundreds of people who were banned due to racism/mysogyny was a great idea.

 

[GayAnimeDad]

At Gaf the admins also unbanned hundreds of posters because they desperately needed to make up for the lost traffic. As you can imagine unbanning hundreds of people who were banned due to racism/mysogyny was a great idea.

Click to shrink...

I mean yeah, that’s shitty and all but it doesn’t make it an alt right community. The majority of people were the same as Era.

 

[VectorPrime]

I mean yeah, that’s shitty and all but it doesn’t make it an alt right community. The majority of people were the same as Era.

Click to shrink...

They’re currently as morally repugnant as StormFront.

 

[Hey Please]

NeoGAF in large part... back in the day. Saved me from becoming a terrible and perhaps apathetic person after I joined back in Dec 2008.

 

[GayAnimeDad]

They’re currently as morally repugnant as StormFront.

Click to shrink...

Ok, but they weren’t before most people moved here.

 

[Sunster]

They’re currently as morally repugnant as StormFront.

Click to shrink...

On OT they're always praising how it's different now and they have great balanced discussions and no echo chamber or dog piling. But if you browse threads for 10 minutes you'll find everyone there basically has the same viewpoint except 3 or 4 people who are regarded as crazies and are not taken seriously.

 

[makonero]

The other site is actually why I became a better person. I used to be a typical Christian conservative but I got dog piled hard over there for being against gay marriage. It took awhile and actually reading people’s arguments and seeing people actually affected by policy linked to my views, but eventually I became a full fledged leftist liberal. Still a Christian but not one that engages with the ridiculous evangelical cult currently claiming to hold the keys to heaven.

 

[Orayn]

Left wing concepts are also very difficult to grasp, in my experience. Not to mention that they often demand a lot of empathy for others - not a well developed quality for young men in their teens and 20s.

Click to shrink...

I dunno, "The ruling class wants to enslave/kill you" is easy enough to grasp, it just needs a better marketing team.

 

[umop 3pisdn]

No, but I had an edgelord phase when I was like sixteen.

 

[HammerFace]

Ok, but they weren’t before most people moved here.

Click to shrink...

I feel like you took a joke post too seriously and now you’re too deep in. It’s okay buddy. Gaf was okay, and now it isn’t. Leave it at that

 

[Advance.Wars.Sgt.]

I think the closest I got to anything alt-right was dipping any part into the "Nice Guy" rhetoric, and that was immediately dropped when I realized they have a hatred for women I do not possess.

Otherwise - I'm black, so there was never any chance I was going to buy into self-hatred.

 

[shan780]

I was never alt right or anything, but in my early-mid teens I used to watch lots of stuff from people like sargon

i think that seeing trump in the republican primaries was what caused me to change, so when I was 15

I think it's easy for teenage boys to fall into that sort of culture with sites like YouTube and reddit

 

[Taco_Human]

I used to like 4chan and laugh at stuff back in middle school. All the edgy shit was "funny" at the time cause nothing should be off limits right?

Yeah, just an excuse for people to shit all over the oppressed. I never looked back.

 

[Dinobot]

NeoGAF wasn’t an alt right site. People like that are left there now, but before the migration they kept a lower profile because almost literally everyone here was there.

Click to shrink...

I know I'm just taking a pot shot.

 

[CallMeShaft]

I was a little shit in my teens and this community, back during the olden years, made me come around and start showing some level of empathy for others.

 

[infinite]

Left wing concepts are also very difficult to grasp, in my experience. Not to mention that they often demand a lot of empathy for others - not a well developed quality for young men in their teens and 20s.

Click to shrink...

Left Wing concepts arent hard to grasp its just that people are already socially predisposed to right wing and conservative thought. For example more people are ready to buy into arguments like personal responsibility being the reason why Black commmunties are in the state they are but you gotta really walk them through that the problem is mostly systemic. Another example, most people are ready to be convinced that women are underpaid compared to men because of differences between the sexes making women less competitive in the work place as opposed to the issue being once again systemic. My point is society already has a conservative individualist bent

 

[alexi52]

I was always a left leaning Democrat but strangely enough I was once "antiSJW" when I was younger even while being a liberal, it was all those YouTube videos painting "SJWs" in bad light, later on I started to hate the people making those videos and anyone who uses the term sjw on unironically because I saw them attacking good people, I saw that they just throw out that term on anyone who wants to be progressive and change their bigoted way of thinking

 

[Subpar Scrub]

Used to be an entitled “nice guy” and also thought racist or “edgy” jokes were funny. When I left high school I almost immediately grew out of it and fixed my main problem, which was ignorance.

 

[GayAnimeDad]

I feel like you took a joke post too seriously and now you’re too deep in. It’s okay buddy. Gaf was okay, and now it isn’t. Leave it at that

Click to shrink...

I know I'm just taking a pot shot.

Click to shrink...

THERE WILL BE NO JOKES ON MY WATCH!

 

[Mona]

never was, hard to think of how i could have become one, but maybe if i had gone down a different path i could have been

 

[Zubz]

At Gaf the admins also unbanned hundreds of posters because they desperately needed to make up for the lost traffic. As you can imagine unbanning hundreds of people who were banned due to racism/mysogyny was a great idea.

Click to shrink...

Wait, really? I just thought some alt-right groups sent cronies there to change course on the site & they stuck, like that Zangief avatar jackass who had 2 posts before posting dismissively in every thread.

This is even more pathetic than I thought!

I mean yeah, that’s shitty and all but it doesn’t make it an alt right community. The majority of people were the same as Era.

Click to shrink...

I think GAF was originally mentioned as a joke about how the site isn’t now versus when people actively used it. Era starting with an exodus of literally every active GAF member barring Malka himself isn’t a little-known secret.

 

[aGuyInaBearSuit]

I was never alt-right or anything like that but I was definitely a shitty edgelord up until 21 or 22 and definitely had some abhorrent views on women for a time. The main thing that got me to stop was getting shut the fuck down by people who knew better whenever I made an awful comment like that. Caused me to reevaluate my thoughts and beliefs and I definitely came out better for it.

Unfortunately this definitely won't work on everyone. A lot of people, guys especially, will only double down on their views when challenged. It's a problem I'm not sure how to solve.

 

[Lump]

It all comes down to empathy, and a lot of learning empathy comes from real socialization. There’s a reason incels are usually alt-right.