Forums / Discussion / Serious Debate

A while back I decided to listen to Chocolate Rain because, you know, it's a pretty good song. I realized, though, how incredible dense in social commentary the song was. Out of curiosity, I went back to the KYM page on the topic and found that there were zero comments at all on its message (in fact, most of the comments referenced My Little Pony or other in-jokes). If it went viral in 2015, and not 2007, the reaction to the song would most certainly be very different. There would be cries of racial politics, 'SJW'-ism and all of that good stuff. At least, that's what I think would happen. Does anybody disagree, or has the climate surrounding meme culture changed significantly over the past number of years?

Chocolate rain wasn't politicized because people didn't recognize the social commentary, most were too fixated on Tay Zonday's smooth chocolate voice. Even then, I struggle to see how it would be politicized. Younger kids and adults will mainly fixate on Tay Zonday's surprisingly deep voice, and the song is well-written enough that it's perspective on racism feels palpable, not preachy or whiny. The appeal is pretty universal.

I wouldn't say memes are any more political then they were 8-10 years ago, perhaps changed their format maybe. I remember college liberal macros were super abundant back then along with conservative equivalents, along with discussion of "this is too stereotyped", "there's more college x rather than y, clear bias" and so on. I'd say it has moved away from image macros and more towards webcomics and video format (mainly reaction/commentary videos) since they became more popular than image macros.

I think it's more KYM itself that's become more politicized, rather than memes as a whole. The site has been covering more events and politics in general, and the commenters have shifted as well. Two years ago, people would bitch about bronies on irrelevant articles. Nowadays, they do the same thing, but they bitch about SJWs instead.

Politics really haven't changed this place much, to be totally honest – the whiners just whine about different things.

Well, the site certainly has, in my opinion. It feels like one can't go two feet without bumping into an argument over SGWs or feminism or safe spaces or whatever.
I'm not saying that the majority of the arguments are sensible or not-- I'm just referring to the sheer quantity of them.
And I'm not making any statements as to who's to blame for this phenomena or if it's a good or bad thing or if it actually exists outside of my subjective experience.
(It's becoming annoying having to constantly include sentences like the last one so that I don't have to worry about accidentally starting any flamewars with "my statements" which are just often totally different from my actual opinions-that-aren't-actually-statements. It's like a tinderbox in here.)

I've noticed that starting around mid 2014 or so, the front page started featuring more and more items that seemed geared towards discrediting social justice advocacy. I think the site's catering to people who will net a lot of clicks. Or is it my imagination?

Well, given how the ads have become more aggressive (and likely more profitable) over roughly the same time period, I wouldn't be surprised.
Not saying the site's evil or anything-- everyone's got bills to pay. But that doesn't mean I'm exactly thrilled with everything. Still, beggars can't be choosers, I suppose.

KYM is becoming more political.

Though I suppose it was inevitable what with the site's close association with "chan" culture, which I've noticed is extremely hostile to certain strains of progressivism.

I know that Don isn't particularly sympathetic to social justice, so he gets the credit for those frontpages. On the other hand, the recent flood of memes making fun of Trump on the front page have been by Ari Spool, our resident commie admin.

I definitely picked up on Don and Ari's slants; been strongly suspecting it for a long time. Based on his latest upload of ReasonTV, I'm guessing he's right-libertarian?

Hmmm. I would hesitate to label him as right-wing in any broad sense. He's expressed disapproval of several notable conservative pundits in the past, including Glenn Beck and Milo Yiannopoulos. He also recommended a book about reconciling relations between the Left and Right when we talked in the IRC a while ago. From what I've gleaned, I'd say he's most likely a moderate.

We really ought to just ask him one of these days, though.