r/KotakuInAction, home of the somehow-still-active #GamerGate movement, and where video games are discussed.r/Incels, or “involuntary celibacy,” where men blame society for their romantic failings.r/Conspiracy, where conspiracy theories are traded with the utmost seriousness.Instead of having a centralized home, the movement is split between various “subreddits,” which are topic-specific Reddit forums. We looked at six of the most common alt-right subreddits for our study. This sample spans a wide range of the new conservatism, from conspiracy theorists to “men’s rights” advocates and the most fervent red-state voters. In order to begin to define alt-right-speak, how it spreads, and where it is used, we analyzed billions of Reddit comments to identify the terms that are being used across the alt-right’s online universe. Likewise, there is no term that derisively refers to people who believe in social justice, hence the demonization of “SJWs,” an acronym for “social-justice warriors.”īy dissecting the internet dialect of the alt-right, we can better understand the movement’s political motivations and views of the world. There is no readily available term in English that means “women are robotic or sub-human”-a belief held by many alt-right “manosphere” members-so they created “femoids,” a disturbingly common term that refers to women as non-human. In the case of the alt-right, people who can correctly use a term like “blackpill” belong those who can’t, don’t.īeyond creating exclusivity, jargon like this reveals concepts that a group feels are common and important enough to require a go-to word. Before they turn mainstream, words like these turn an online community into a kind of exclusive club. We are seeing the same patterns unfolding on public message boards such as Reddit and 4chan. Many of these terms were first used by small groups of insiders in internet forums before the words broke out and were appropriated by the greater public. Some people even pronounce “lol” as if it weren’t an acronym. Gaming gave us “woot” and “noob.” We now use “troll” as a verb in regular speech. The alt-right isn’t the first group to create its own online lexicon: The internet has long been a place for linguistic invention.
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