What are the go-to subjects for revealing the true, regressive beliefs of reactionaries who don’t consider themselves reactionary? Off the top of my head:
-Trans people in sports: Major gateway to transphobia and misogyny. Complaints about trans athletes inevitably lead to sexism towards literally any woman with muscles. Pretty sure this is how Joe Rogan and a ton of his supporters became so unhinged.
-Affirmative action: So, so many liberals and “leftists” will complain about how they would’ve totally gotten into Harvard and Yale if not for The Blackstm. Love to bring up SAT scores even though they’ve been proven to be racist and classist and a shit metric for intellectual value.
-Shakespeare authorship question: A bit niche. Basically, Curtis Yarvin and other Dark Enlightenment dweebs don’t think that Shakespeare was capable of penning such timeless plays because he wasn’t rich, and according to them, not rich=dumb and uncreative mental husk.
If someone hates furries, that’s a sure sign that they’re reactionary
That’s a good pick, and I’d like to add that anything involving “Chris-Chan” is another massive red flag that it’s not just a chud, but one of the especially lowly super-internet-poisoned chuds. Like the chuds that other chuds are like “get the fuck away from me.”
Omg, yes! It boggles my mind how casually people on the internet will bring the fact that a big part of their childhoods was stalking and bullying a severely mentally ill person. So weird. The saga’s more mainstream than other chan-related things. There’re hours-long documentaries this person’s life and a subreddit with thousands of members—and everyone just acts like it’s completely normal even now.
My hot take: the level of hatred for just that one individual did more damage to the public’s perception of autistic people than Autism Speaks.
That’s something I find especially insufferable about the people who love “lolcows”, is that actually e-stalking people for more than a decade makes you the freak if you do it, you aren’t so above your subject when you act like a fucking chanlet.
Full disclosure, I was into the whole picking on Christine Chandler thing for a while during my edgier years. I eventually grew out of it as I actually came around to being an empathetic person and my foray into leftism. The recent news about her and what she did to her mom and subsequent jailing is so sad, this is a person who was so failed by society and absolutely preyed upon by horrible people. Really hate how self-righteous a lot of these stalkers are, they hold her up as an example of why it’s okay actually to stalk and harass mentally ill people. Mind you, I don’t condone what she did, but I wasn’t surprised in the least.
i watched a long youtube video about her a years ago (pre-transition, i believe) and seeing the way people treated her… like, how could that not destroy someone? the Internet tortured her and made her declining mental state a spectator sport
i don’t remember the full context/details, but there was one event described where someone (a woman i think?) pretended to be her friend/fan, and then destroyed her yellow sonic necklace (which she was always wearing and clearly meant a lot to her). it genuinely made me cry
Bring up homeless people, transgender people, immigrants, any of the people they regard as subhuman, and look for cracks.
IME transphobia really outs them. I’m not trans or anything but basically any new troll showing up to ruin a community just can’t keep resist parroting one of the far right talking points or has truckloads of them in their history. Another I’ve noticed is a user whose kind of sus but their post history is almost 100% sports subreddits.
The sports thing is real. If somebody makes supporting a football team the most prominent part of their identity they’re almost always aggressive chuds.
or porn. if they’ve commented on porn even once 100% chance they’re reactionary.
not “porn debate” subs, but subs of porn content. I forgot to mention this in addition to sports, but less common I’ve noticed people using their horny account to troll. Their entire post history is comments on pics of naked ladies or naked Japanese cartoon characters.
-Shakespeare authorship question: A bit niche. Basically, Curtis Yarvin and other Dark Enlightenment dweebs don’t think that Shakespeare was capable of penning such timeless plays because he wasn’t rich, and according to them, not rich=dumb and uncreative mental husk.
It’s proved by science that if you’re rich your brain is bigger because you’re blessed by god but you loony leftists hate science.
Somehow I think they won’t like the logical conclusion that the smartest man in history was Mansa Musa.
Homeless people. Even demsocs/socdems ostensibly progressive pretty much everywhere else will sometimes with almost no prompting (other than being with you when they see a homeless person) just make disparaging comments about homeless people without a second thought. Their reactionariness usually extends well beyond that too, but they keep it better camouflaged and them being anti-homeless will often be a first sign
really good observation tbh, i think this is one of the most sure-fire ways to do it unless you can build a real
a lot of people are willing to “tolerate” shit that they don’t have to see but homelessness is omnipresent throughout capitalist society; it’s basically impossible to have never had an interaction with a homeless person. people who feel that homeless people (rather than the existence of homelessness itself) are repulsive are almost inevitably just waiting to be scratched on a variety of subjects before they go full
100%. Liberals’ hatred for homeless people is pretty much genocidal. They just lack the spine to say what they want to be done to them, but are more than happy to complain about how they smell like piss or how homeless camps are vectors for disease, comparing homeless people to vermin that must be exterminated.
