Taking the temperature on memebase
Basically the only thing I do on the internet other than post here is look at memebase when I need a break. I like to read the comments when I'm curious as to whether someone noticed the same thing I did, or to see why there are 100 comments on a post. It's troll city, of course, but I've noticed that recently there's been a shift in the balance of debate, mostly around gender issues.
A year ago, it used to be that any meme that invoked stereotypes of women received many internetz and anyone who criticized the stereotype was ruthlessly flamed by some number of trolls. Stereotypes of men met with the opposite reaction - repetitious insults hurled at the supposedly female author of the comic, and anyone who dared to step in and disagree was subjected to the same treatment. But over the last few months, the frequency of pile-ons has gone down, and the critique of stereotypes has heated up. Misogynistic comments are more and more frequently directly criticized, with numerous supportive comments downthread. The "you're just a fugly bitch feminist who has no sense of humour/logic and all men hate you" response has less traction than ever - it seems as though where it used to discourage other people from questioning the hatred, it's now evoking a lot more, "well, I agree with her. grow up"-type responses. There came to be a ring of desperation about the sandwich/kitchen comments, and now they've died back almost completely. There was kind of a last flush of frustration in a rash of comments claiming that comics from women's perspective are, objectively, not funny - followed by a flood of "Why is it not funny just because you don't get it? I'm laughing my ass off", to which the only answer turned out to be "It is not funny because women have no sense of humour." Yeah, that didn't last long. As a side note, interestingly, the irony of a comic showing a woman in the kitchen pushing a man back to the computer was almost universally missed ("See? Even women think they belong in the kitchen"). Well, sexism aside, there's no accounting for stupid.
I'm not going to venture to suggest that this has anything to do with a wider cultural shift in attitudes toward gender, since it's an isolated community. But it does suggest that the community is changing, and that it's probably part of a wider trend in terms of who is participating in mainstream online discussion. (Okay, maybe memebase isn't exactly mainstream, but it's certainly very widely viewed.) I am encouraged.
A year ago, it used to be that any meme that invoked stereotypes of women received many internetz and anyone who criticized the stereotype was ruthlessly flamed by some number of trolls. Stereotypes of men met with the opposite reaction - repetitious insults hurled at the supposedly female author of the comic, and anyone who dared to step in and disagree was subjected to the same treatment. But over the last few months, the frequency of pile-ons has gone down, and the critique of stereotypes has heated up. Misogynistic comments are more and more frequently directly criticized, with numerous supportive comments downthread. The "you're just a fugly bitch feminist who has no sense of humour/logic and all men hate you" response has less traction than ever - it seems as though where it used to discourage other people from questioning the hatred, it's now evoking a lot more, "well, I agree with her. grow up"-type responses. There came to be a ring of desperation about the sandwich/kitchen comments, and now they've died back almost completely. There was kind of a last flush of frustration in a rash of comments claiming that comics from women's perspective are, objectively, not funny - followed by a flood of "Why is it not funny just because you don't get it? I'm laughing my ass off", to which the only answer turned out to be "It is not funny because women have no sense of humour." Yeah, that didn't last long. As a side note, interestingly, the irony of a comic showing a woman in the kitchen pushing a man back to the computer was almost universally missed ("See? Even women think they belong in the kitchen"). Well, sexism aside, there's no accounting for stupid.
I'm not going to venture to suggest that this has anything to do with a wider cultural shift in attitudes toward gender, since it's an isolated community. But it does suggest that the community is changing, and that it's probably part of a wider trend in terms of who is participating in mainstream online discussion. (Okay, maybe memebase isn't exactly mainstream, but it's certainly very widely viewed.) I am encouraged.