/lit/ - Literature

In a previous essay about contemporary counter-culture, I mentioned Barbara Ehrenreich’s The Hearts of Men, a feminist critique that discusses how gender roles bind and control men. Ehrenreich writes about how, in post-war hyper-capitalist 1950s America (the baseline America to which both Trump and Hillary harken back) a new role was invented for men. A man’s wage and his Playboy “bachelor pad” linked his earning potential to his role as a ladies man. This replaced a previous, more conservative ideology in which your earning potential meant you were able to support a wife and children. These two schemes, Ehrenreich maintained, are still the dominant ideas that control men’s behavior in the U.S.
As she pointed out, only “hipsters” managed to break and destroy this schema—the first and most famous ones being the wife-leaving beats, whose sexual adventures both gay and straight were totally disconnected from their earning potential and all societal expectations. They were dead broke (“Dharma”) bums, who much to the frustration of the pro-capitalist Hefner-style playboys, got laid all the time despite being stone broke and sometimes gay to boot. In other words, their enjoyment of life and sex was decoupled from the ideological demands of capitalism.
Recall the central themes of Gamergate: women represent Anon’s “beta” failure in capitalism. Anons have achieved neither of these ideological ideals; they are not playboys with bachelor pads or wage earners with families. If the U.S. were in fact what it pretended to be, that is to say, the best way to become either the playboy or the family man, Anon would not exist. But it is this gap between ideological expectation and cruel reality which created him. Instead, Anon resides in the very opposite of bachelor pads: his mother’s basement.

>>9171206
Video games were Anons’ way to retreat from this painful reminder of his failure, a failure which was literally embodied by women—whose physical attainment is the end goal of both ideologies. Gamergate was a pained cry, that here too, even unto their escapist fantasies, empowered women, like the mythological furies, were hounding them.
We can see now why several weeks ago 4chan went to “war” with artists and their “safe spaces”, trying to shut down music and arts venues across the country. What’s striking is how close the populations of 4chan and those who wanted to shut down the “safe spaces” are. The artists themselves are young people on the fringes of the economy who are also immersed in romantic fantasy. The main difference is that the artists have learned different ways to cope with the same problem. Instead of residing in their mother’s basements, they created ways to live together cheaply in warehouse spaces.
By contrasting 4chan with their self-proclaimed enemy, their counter-culture counterparts, we can see that, though demographically they are so similar, the real difference is introduced here—at the thorny of issue of the girlfriend. 4chan’s self-described “beta” males are trapped in this ideology, hating their counterparts whose key difference is a willingness, like the beatniks of old, to slough off the “gender binary” and live how they please.
But rather than take this as reason to be ever more contemptuous of Anons and their misogyny, the left should regard Anon/the deplorables as a failure on its part, a terrific mangling of the left’s own arguments that has resulted in alienating the very group of people who could be the most helped by their ideas, if not the most convinced.
To the deplorables, whose central complaint is one of masculine frailty, pride, and failure—to deny their identities as men is to deny their complaint. They are a group who define themselves by their powerlessness, by being trapped into defeat. But if they are to accept the left’s viewpoint, they must accept that the problem at core of their being is all in their heads. That is to say, the left’s viewpoint of sexual-difference-as-illusion is exactly what they don’t want to hear—that they have cornered themselves into their mother’s basements.

Is SA totally dead these days?

HD was funny but I think it was the start of the end, when the population's self-hatred went from memetic to vicious.

They should have just fyad lited every form on there instead of closing down lf and ycs. The twitter exodus of fyad was probs the final nail in the coffin.

What's good on there any more? yospos? entertainment weekly?

>>9171192
Should probably go to /int/ if you want to discuss essays. Mods there are much less delete-happy

the lefty self-admitted cuckold OP that outed himself as a "published journalist" (likely at a fake news publication) probably deleted the thread because he was so severely btfo'd

No reason that thread should have been deleted. Essays are certainly covered under the banner of /lit/, or do you want to tell me we can't discuss Montaigne?

>>9171740
haha, no, I didn't delete my own thread. And I wish I wrote fake news. I write art criticism and art journalism. No need to really fake anything there, since it's mostly opinion anyway.

I'm amazed that you would project all of this on to me though. Seriously, being a published journalist isn't a hyper exclusive club or anything. Any of you could probably get a book review published in your local daily newspaper or alt-weekly.

>>9171533
sorry, I don't know what most of these acronyms mean, beyond SA being Something Awful.

>>9171739
Nah, let's let them have their own board. No need to abuse such a lightly trafficked board.

-------------
Anyway, in the previous thread, we were starting to talk about resentment and entitlement. I think the whole notion of "cuck" is based off some idea that the person tossing around the term "cuck" is entitled to something and they're not receiving it. Maybe it's sex, maybe its a job, maybe its money. But I think where 4chan really diverges, where /pol/ separates from the rest of 4chan, is a sense of entitlement.

I don't think we deserve anything. Its an extraordinary stroke of luck that we're humans and not rabbits fleeing from snakes. How could we deserve anything? By what power, god or man-made right do we deserve love, or sex or wealth, or happiness, or even safety?

>>9171781
How does it feel to know that you not only lost the culture war and most of the battles leading up to it, but you lost it so badly that the left wing worldwide is now eating itself and we will never have another "progressive" government in a country that matters?

And it all started with gamergate on /v/.

Shouldn't have fuck with the boys and their toys, dum dum.

Kill yourself.

>>9171797
How does it feel knowing that the world has always been speeding towards annihilation and no amount trump posting will stop the coming cataclysm?

>>9171808
The coming cataclysm being, at most, a few small skirmishes between strong, masculine right wingers who know how to fight and weak, starbucks-addled left wingers who get beaten so badly they commit mass suicide and the world becomes- nay, remains a center-right utopia?

lol!

please just off yourself asap, we don't want your degeneracy on our soil any more.

>>9171192
It belongs on /pol/ as does all other cancerous internet activism and other meta interactions with faggots using 4chan as a platform to interact with mainstream society

If this was old 4chan you'd be talking about 'scientology' and I'd be telling you to go back to /b/ but nowadays all the newcancer comes to /pol/ and /b/ is dead, so there go go.

>>>/pol/

this feels like shilling for clicks. screencap the article and yes do go to /pol/ or /news/.

just because someone mentions Arendt does not make it worth /lit/'s time.

tl;dr- it sounds like you wrote it and want free advertising.

>>9171797
>but you lost it so badly that the left wing worldwide is now eating itself and we will never have another "progressive" government in a country that matters?

Wrap it up boys, it's been a good couple centuries but leftism has finally been stumped. REAL MEN have put us in our place :(

>>9171847
Your sarcasm is very sweet, with just the right tinge of salty.

Delicious catharsis.

Frankly the author gets into
>le deep analysis
that often ends up conflating a portion with the whole and then presenting that opinion as objective. Trying to present anything from this site as an objective fact outside of the prevalence of ironic/new sincerity shitposting is nearly impossible.

>>9171826
not a terrible article by any means but dont give it a click desu senpai

>>9171192
Probably because these threads seem to attract these people >>9171797 who try to make out everybody to be on opposing sides of some epic internet conflict, and all the retards who feed them replies.
I saw a pretty good few threads about 4chan's socio-political influence here not too long ago, but maybe they were good because the americans were asleep at the time and it wasnt a mainstream article. Nighttime 4chan is always better, but you basically need to have a death wish to want to discuss trump anywhere but /pol/ and expect intelligible replies.

Trump's media coverage is greater than the next 1000 most famous americans put together right now (according to mediaQuant) so I have no reason to complain if mods are actually cracking down on that. you can go literally anywhere else to talk about Trump if you feel like you need to.

>>9171826
medium doesn't have advertising. If you want to use it to make money, the idea is to post links to your medium content on something like Twitter or Facebook where you can monetize the clicks.

I assure you, I am not Dale Beran. If I was, this would be the dumbest way to advertise my writing.

>>9171856
Perhaps you should try reading this faggot OP's posts from the thread he deleted

He's probably the fucking author lmfao. If there's a level below pity, I feel it for this individual.

>>9171857
>still no print screen of article
doesn't seem like you're terribly interested in people reading it who don't click through.