Skip to main content

Home/ TOK Friends/ Group items tagged males

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Javier E

Opinion | Gen Z slang terms are influenced by incels - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...gen-z-slang-terms-incels

slang language social media intel diffusion

shared by Javier E on 12 Apr 24 - No Cached
  • Incels (as they’re known) are infamous for sharing misogynistic attitudes and bitter hostility toward the romantically successful
  • somehow, incels’ hateful rhetoric has bizarrely become popularized via Gen Z slang.
  • it’s common to hear the suffix “pilled” as a funny way to say “convinced into a lifestyle.” Instead of “I now love eating burritos,” for instance, one might say, “I’m so burritopilled.” “Pilled” as a suffix comes from a scene in 1999’s “The Matrix” where Neo (Keanu Reeves) had to choose between the red pill and the blue pill, but the modern sense is formed through analogy with “blackpilled,” an online slang term meaning “accepting incel ideology.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • the popular suffix “maxxing” for “maximizing” (e.g., “I’m burritomaxxing” instead of “I’m eating a lot of burritos”) is drawn from the incel idea of “looksmaxxing,” or “maximizing attractiveness” through surgical or cosmetic techniques.
  • Then there’s the word “cucked” for “weakened” or “emasculated.” If the taqueria is out of burritos, you might be “tacocucked,” drawing on the incel idea of being sexually emasculated by more attractive “chads.
  • These slang terms developed on 4chan precisely because of the site’s anonymity. Since users don’t have identifiable aliases, they signal their in-group status through performative fluency in shared slang
  • there’s a dark side to the site as well — certain boards, like /r9k/, are known breeding grounds for incel discussion, and the source of the incel words being used today.
  • finally, we have the word “sigma” for “assertive male,” which comes from an incel’s desired position outside the social hierarchy.
  • Memes and niche vocabulary become a form of cultural currency, fueling their proliferation.
  • From there, those words filter out to more mainstream websites such as Reddit and eventually become popularized by viral memes and TikTok trends. Social media algorithms do the rest of the work by curating recommended content for viewers.
  • Because these terms often spread in ironic contexts, people find them funny, engage with them and are eventually rewarded with more memes featuring incel vocabulary.
  • Creators are not just aware of this process — they are directly incentivized to abet it. We know that using trending audio helps our videos perform better and that incorporating popular metadata with hashtags or captions will help us reach wider audiences
  • kids aren’t actually saying “cucked” because they’re “blackpilled”; they’re using it for the same reason all kids use slang: It helps them bond as a group. And what are they bonding over? A shared mockery of incel ideas.
  • These words capture an important piece of the Gen Z zeitgeist. We should therefore be aware of them, keeping in mind that they’re being used ironically.
Javier E

A Marketplace of Girl Influencers Managed by Moms and Stalked by Men - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...stagram-child-influencers.html

marketplace girl pedophile influencer social media psychology technology

shared by Javier E on 23 Feb 24 - No Cached
  • Thousands of accounts examined by The Times offer disturbing insights into how social media is reshaping childhood, especially for girls, with direct parental encouragement and involvement.
  • Some parents are the driving force behind the sale of photos, exclusive chat sessions and even the girls’ worn leotards and cheer outfits to mostly unknown followers. The most devoted customers spend thousands of dollars nurturing the underage relationships.
  • The large audiences boosted by men can benefit the families, The Times found. The bigger followings look impressive to brands and bolster chances of getting discounts, products and other financial incentives, and the accounts themselves are rewarded by Instagram’s algorithm with greater visibility on the platform, which in turn attracts more followers.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • One calculation performed by an audience demographics firm found 32 million connections to male followers among the 5,000 accounts examined by The Times.
  • Interacting with the men opens the door to abuse. Some flatter, bully and blackmail girls and their parents to get racier and racier images. The Times monitored separate exchanges on Telegram, the messaging app, where men openly fantasize about sexually abusing the children they follow on Instagram and extol the platform for making the images so readily available.
  • The so-called creator economy surpasses $250 billion worldwide, according to Goldman Sachs, with U.S. brands spending more than $5 billion a year on influencers.
  • The troubling interactions on Instagram come as social media companies increasingly dominate the cultural landscape and the internet is seen as a career path of its own.
  • Nearly one in three preteens lists influencing as a career goal, and 11 percent of those born in Generation Z, between 1997 and 2012, describe themselves as influencers.
  • “It’s like a candy store
  • Health and technology experts have recently cautioned that social media presents a “profound risk of harm” for girls. Constant comparisons to their peers and face-altering filters are driving negative feelings of self-worth and promoting objectification of their bodies, researchers found.
  • he pursuit of online fame, particularly through Instagram, has supercharged the often toxic phenomenon, The Times found, encouraging parents to commodify their children’s images. Some of the child influencers earn six-figure incomes, according to interviews.
« First ‹ Previous 121 - 122 of 122
Showing 20▼ items per page