STOP POSTING ABOUT ONLINE DISCOURSE. I’M TIRED OF SEEING IT. MY FRIENDS ON TIKTOK SEND ME DISCOURSE, ON DISCORD IT’S FUCKING DISCOURSE. I WAS IN A SERVER, ROIGHT, AND ALLLLLLL THE CHANNELS WERE JUST DISCOURSE.
I’m sort of terminally online. Hate to say it but it’s true. I try not to spend a lot of my time exposed to the topic/subject of this post… but it should be said that I fucking hate discourse man. It’s tiring, it’s annoying, and its frequency makes me want to die. It’s an overexaggeration, yes, but it's how I feel. I get that discourse is important, especially in the academic world where I actually learned what the hell discourse was… but for the sake of this blogpost, I will not be referring to discourse as how language and conversation are used to communicate points and ideas, from the corridors of political power, to talking with your mates. Rather, what I mean that discourse is “stupid fucking topics everyone loses their shit over and everyone seemingly has to have an opinion on”. Which if you spend some time on social media… you probably have been exposed to. But why do I hate it?
We all know social media has been engineered in a way to show you posts that make you engage. In today’s attention economy, this often takes the form of “ragebait”, basically posts engineered to make you mad, usually entailing some form of bigotry, extremely controversial or stupid opinions, AI, or all of the above. Indeed I have seen this stuff on social media a lot… and the frequency of it on Twitter caused me to leave there. Indeed, stupid fucking opinion, or bigotry, or AI tend to cause discourse. If you say some stupid racist shit, many people will take the bait, and many grifters know that. If you say some outlandish opinion, many people will be there to dispute you. AI… well when it intersects with art in some form, many will take to the stage. Mind you, I disavow the usage of generative AI in art, but I am remembering a particular situation...
During that Xbox games showcase in June or so, there was a trailer for a new Crazy Taxi game. It was quickly found out that generative AI was used in some stages of development, namely concept art I believe (?). Many people were reasonably angry at this when they found out. I remember on Bluesky I liked a few posts about it… then my entire “For You” feed was just people shitting on this Crazy Taxi trailer and talking about how “AI bad”. Even if I agreed with the point, I’m fucking tired of seeing it so frequently, I remember just seeing everyone talking about it and wishing that I could see some Detective Conan fanart on my feed again, because I am just tired of seeing people just say the same shit, because yes I know it’s bad! Who the hell are you convincing?
The great thing about the internet is that you can choose to dip out or not engage at all with an argument… but with social media the algorithm just feeds you it. Now that is a short term thing focusing on one topical subject… but then you have topics that just rear its ugly head every few weeks. Such as that stupid fucking “you can be a fan of a game (franchise) without having played it!” My opinion: No, you are not one in my eyes, you may call yourself but I do not expect to have a vibrant conversation with you regarding the game… because you never played it! And I get exposed to it because other people I’m friends with on Discord post about it and we have the same few talking points every now and again. There is no escaping it. Except if you become a social recluse to the point you never go online… or just spend your time outside with real people.
So there’s this new indie show/game that’s come out online, which I’ve never sat down to view/play. It’s called Glupshitto! It’s making waves everywhere! Everyone’s talking about it! Tons of fanart (and porn) are being made of the characters! Wait, hang on a second… the creator did what? They’re a racist? Wait no, you’re telling me a decision they made is pissing people off because it doesn’t align with the fanon that many people collectively agree with? People are harassing the staff whenever they post? IT’s too woke and DEI? It’s Nazi propaganda? Bloody hell…
I feel a lot of recent stuff, especially indie works, have basically been subject to discourse, whether the fault of those working on it or not. It’s very easy to build up a fanbase for your new thing, but then it turns out that people start developing some sort of parasocial relationship with the creator, and like my parents’ relationship, it can get pretty fragil;e and can get fucked up, depending on what one person says. Though in a parasocial one, obviously it is heavily dependent on what the creator says. Really this problem of creator worship exists in all sorts of works, but it has become increasingly weaponised in recent years. I think you probably know a few examples… TADC and all the shit that has gone down due to the racist jokes shared and made by its creator and that one voice actor who worked on it forgot his name, alongside the final few episodes, and that shitshow regarding the whole cinema thing. And also Deltarune, because of that Spanish translation incident. Like with my parents, a lot of one-sided arguments. There isn’t really much the creator can do but suck it up really, is there? That or if it gets extreme you can do something like in that film Perfect Blue. If you’ve seen it you know what I mean. Mind you, despite my fixation here on indie works, it happens to the bigger works too, I mean every new work in some American franchise or made by some popular person has been levied by manchildren as being woke, and even if you don't watch this shit… some YouTubers who are more progressive still commentate on them.
And in regards to everything I:ve talked about… I, for the most part, haven't consumed (sorry) any of these works, but other people I know have so they do discuss within the circles I am in. If any of you are reading this.. I mean you can still talk about, I can choose not to engage with it, I’m just saying seeing discourse regarding fandoms of stuff I don’t care about is not what I want to talk about, but what can you do? Not every convo is gonna go your way, and to be honest. But I feel people spend less time actually engaging with the work they are supposedly a fan of, rather they just engage with arguments with other people who are supposedly fans. And it kind of leads to discussion just becoming worse. God I hate fandoms…
Populism is a very popular form of politics right now. And it’s been that way for a long while. Just say random shit that makes people feel mad or happy or sad or excited and you can potentially make your way to becoming one of the most powerful people in the world. No need for policies when you can just use some fancy words like “welfare queens” or “stop the boats” or “illegal immigration” or “price of eggs”. I have learned about the usage of language in order to drive home a certain point, such as waves. If a powerful wave is coming at you, you probably would feel worried and want to prepare against it, try to strengthen yourself or your area against and risks it may cause. Now imagine if that wave instead of water, is immigrants. This is the kind of rhetoric commonly used in politics. Who cares about nuance such as immigrants statistically committing less crimes as their white counterparts, or being unfairly overrepresented in this discourse? They’re still committing crimes, we gotta do something about this!
And indeed big fancy words that appeal to emotion are used in online discourse, and it is one of the worst things about online discourse. Dispute over something? Call them any phobe or ist in the book! Or a pedophile. And I’m not trying to say political correctness has gone mad or denying bigotry still exists, but I feel many people are very quick to call people that… but what I see more frequently is people calling others insults or slurs (such as the r-slur or the n-word, and like the hard R variant or in an aggressive manner). Any difference in opinion is dealt with rather aggressively online, and I mean it makes sense if it’s like fucking human rights, or about an ongoing genocide. But oftentimes, not really that.
Social media is not where you will see nuance, and I think to myself of that one tweet regarding waffles and pancakes. You know the one. One example I can think of is how people discuss Japan. People will either praise it to the heavens, calling it a sugoi land and thinking it’s a paradise where you can marry subservient women, protects its culture and is regressive (in a good way) and watch some anime bullshit, or an extremely regressive (in a bad way) hellhole where everyone is a Nazi, the men are all rapists, the culture is degenerate, everyone commits suicide, and we need to nuke the country again. You’ve probably seen it, nobody can talk normally about this country. There do exist people who can, but often times engagement does not fall in favour of these people… and I can say this for literally any Asian country. South Korea is either K-pop fantasy or misogynistic dystopia, China is either literally 1984 or the most advanced country on planet earth, and Taiwan either exists and is the only true Chinese homeland or it doesn’t and it isn’t real. While there is little nuance talking about politics, I mean that’s how politics is innit? But even outside of politics, people are entrenched in their own beliefs. MAny do not wish to hear the other side of the niche online discourse they are in. Everything is fragmented. You can think of other examples, I know you can. Fandomisation has set in. Everything is stupidly politicised. I could probably point to GamerGate as where this really became apparent, because it was a two-sided thing, though obviously the side harassing anyone who was a woman or minority was worse… You can see where everything has become fragmented, and we still haven’t recovered from that, especially in regards to the real world effects, as the same sides continue to exist.
And one form of discussion that I feel encapsulates the worst of online discourse, and one I am incredibly incredibly tired of seeing, and that I wish people would shut the hell up about… is the final boss of online discourse: proship/antiship bullshit. There is no center. If you engage with this you have to pick a side. This is a very contentious issue people will fucking get mad at you over, no matter which side you choose. You’re either a nonce enabler or someone who would rather see children/adults or queer people die. No in between. The factions are very extreme, now I’m not one to believe horseshoe theory in terms of politics, but I do agree with it, in regards to this discourse. You have one extreme, who thinks that 95% of media is problematic and all media should be sanitised and safe and never touch anything remotely bad and anyone against that is a pedophile, and the other side “oh yeah I mean all media is alright regardless of taboo? Who cares if there’s racism? Do you support censorship? You probably would have been at the Nazi book burnings!”.
Like yes, many works have problematic elements embedded or shown explicitly, or have problematic creators. There is a little bit of that in everything, I don’t think it’s worth getting pissed at something for not being perfect. But just because it’s there does not mean it shouldn’t be criticised, which is what a lot of pros seem to not realise. It’s like freedom of speech, freedom of speech does not mean freedom of consequence. Sure, the government can’t arrest you for making a statement, but you can get fired from your job for saying controversial things. Similarly, freedom from censorship does not mean freedom from criticism. You may have the right to make anything you want within reason, and I can still criticise your work without fucking being dogmatic about it, or moralising about how it’s the worst hing imaginable, and the author can self-censor themselves really. People have made the act of shipping or not shipping, or consuming problematic shit or not, a fandom. And most of the time the people who make a big deal out of it aren’t even interested in the same things I am, they’re just so common! Let me ask you a question: what kind of person invested in shipping discourse cares about game shows and 90s/2000s video games from Europe and Japan?
It’s so fucking annoying just seeing it. It’s draining. It’s depressing. I see some people talk about this more than actually enjoying anything. It’s like they want to be angry. It’s like they don’t care. Like how people make their online personalities a piece of media they like, people base their online identity based on which stupid side they support. It really is like populist politics. Two distinct sides, people using such loaded language to drum up support, and twisting situations in their favour in order to say “Hey! My side is right!”. But unlike politics, where you know the shit actually matters in the grand schemes of things, after all everything is political… THIS DOESN'T MATTER! IT’S JUST A STUPID FUCKING BUNCH OF ARGUMENTS BASED ON FLIMSY BELIEFS! With how heated people get over this, I would imagine this argument, if it was commonplace in real life, would lead to an ongoing situation analogous to the Troubles. But at least the Troubles was a conflict that actually mattered, given it stemmed from centuries of the Irish being hounded by British oppression, and Catholics being discriminated against in the Protestant-majority Ulster. This… wouldn’t.
And let me just say, I am being genuinely serious when I say this: if you’re reading this, wondering which side I’m on, letting all your oomfs know. Let me just say this: I’m on neither side in your virtual war. I ascend your stupid arguments. I wish to not engage with it because you all are the most annoying people on the World Wide Web. Anyone who actively engages with it, can fuck off from ever engaging with me. I support neither of your endeavours, and will never try to stoop down to it. Because every single time I have, my life has become a little more worse. I've touched on it before how the stigma of problematic media has made me entirely paranoid, but dunking on 14 year olds is also not an effective use of your time. Your stupid arguments have, in part, made discourse worse, made discussion on the internet worse, and has been the worst thing to happen to internet discussion since GamerGate. You may be better than people who back in 2014, who launched a harassment campaign, yes, but you make me tired. Tired of having to deal with discourse. I am burnt out from having to deal with it. Division is here to stay. Discourse has changed for the worse. Nuance is dead, and we are all the culprits.
Overall, I’m tired of discourse, sure, it’s important, but the way everyone goes about it, and the way I am exposed to it makes it so I am tired out by it all. I will never talk about this again, except if I maybe want to make a YouTube video on this topic, and I will return to talk to more comedic stuff or talk about stuff I like because honestly this is draining me the fuck out. One thing I will finish with, a solution to all this if you will: Everyone who actively engages with discourse should be banned from using any online communication website for a month, and be sent a USB drive, which includes PCSX2, a copy of Burnout 3 Takedown, every single episode of Bottom (the 90s sitcom), all of Slayers (the light novels, anime, OVAs, and films), and the first Detective Conan movie. You will have instantly more enjoyment with that package then just arguing with people you don’t like to virtue signal that you are smart or a good person. Trust me on this.