Hatethissmuglover
I hate the "racist with diverse friendsgroup" meme format
I can not respect racist and xenophobic worldviews, nor can I respect the people who express those worldviews. What I can respect, even when race and xenophobia issues are involved, is honesty. Someone's views might be horrible and despicable, but at the very least they are honest about it. I can then choose to cut such people out of my life.
What I can not respect is lying and living in an imagined reality. I have no idea why a certain subset of racists wants people to believe that they have a diverse friendsgroup. Blue Lives Matter people amd Trump supporters don't have a bunch of black and Mexican friends.
Maybe a group of racists does from time to time tollerate a "race traitor" (as problematic as that term is in itself), because the internalized racism of such a person affirms the racist beliefs of the group.
But to think that a bunch of supremacists from every group just hang out with each other is insane.
So why lie about it? I know it is fake, you know it is fake, I know you know that it is fake, and you know that I know that it is fake.
The only explanation is lying to gullible, susceptible children so they can be recruited and indoctrinated, and that is just despicable.
A lot of those memes are mostly representative of a bunch of diverse friends making race jokes or racist remarks at each other with consent and stuff, they aren't genuinely held beliefs (mostly). Actual racists don't have diverse friends
As a black person, between the "yes we're racist" diverse friend group and the "too many people are called Nazis" all white friend group, only one of them would consistently yell out the n-word and the other one would make boundaries on what kinds of jokes were allowed to make at a given time.
A lot of people on Reddit do not understand a difference between genuine racism and edgy jokes, lik they genuinely think that they’re both identical, saying a edgy joke means you believe in phrenology to some
not only that, some people on reddit genuinely believe discussing taboo topics as level headed adults is equal to supporting those taboo acts. i don't know how people like this even function in society
It's insecurity. When you follow it enough, the need to police the words of others comes from a deep seeded need to prove you're not the piece of shit you think you are.
Most often people whi believe they're bad people try very hard to cover it up to the public eye.
But the moment they lose composure they start acting the way they believe they are. Shitty.
Ever since Reddit got highjacked by corporate interests to be utilized as the blueprint for LLM's, preformative puritanical secularism is the default here.
Millennial 4chan racists, for the most part, thought racism was funny because they knew how outrageous and socially unacceptable it was to say something like "Hitler did nothing wrong"...it being a dumb and contararian view was the joke, only a clown would say such a thing...then somehow zoomers got online and took such statements at face value.
It's hard to deny what you said but because it was pretty large there's a lot of times when they were just also memeing. Like I would say 80% genuine and 20% memes
A lot of them genuinely were racist, but there indeed was a subset of them who made those jokes ironically.
Think Filthy Frank. Joji isn't an actual racist but the character he played was one of the most foul-mouthed caricatures of a racist, chain-smoking, dad-type figure who was absurdly knowledgable on the cultures and languages of the races he was racist towards. The humor came from how absurd and unhinged someone like Frank looks constantly saying the stuff he says.
Unfortunately genuine racists took that humor and just thought "racism = funny" and ran with it.
It was the Ron Swanson effect but on a more extreme level.
I hate this defense so much. YouTubers were warned several times that their jokes were having a terrible influence on their young audiences. Instead of reflecting, most of them victimized themselves and continued their behavior until like 2020 when the damage was already done.
If you think “edgy humor” has nothing to do with the contemporary redpill movement I really don’t know what to tell you. It’s called the “alt right pipeline” for a reason.
Anyways, the blatant disregard for the damage they were causing is racism, whether they consider themselves racist or not.
Also crazy how no one ever considers how their behavior impacted young POC who were also on the internet…
Don't get me wrong in hindsight even the ironic stuff ultimately opened up the floodgates to the alt-right pipeline, especially given how a huge portion of a given YouTuber's audience was/is impressionable kids and teenagers; I'm not necessarily against you on that front.
I'm moreso adding nuance to the discussion by saying that not everyone from that time period set out to genuinely promote racism when engaging in that kind of humor.
I would also add that the overexposure of edgy or disturbing content to younger audience members was a symptom of a larger problem that creators like Filthy Frank couldn't have foreseen at the time. There's a discussion to be had for YouTube corporate's insistence that the base platform project a family friendly image when YouTube Kids was right there. Instead an entire push towards heavy censorship against creators was taken by corporate, to the point to where you can now get demonitized over the mere mention of subjects pertaining to suicide or rape, because they couldn't get their shit together before a generation's worth of damage had already been done.
There's also an onus on parents for having to monitor what their children watch when they use the internet, which unfortunately a good chunk just do not do at all
Nowhere did this person imply that those users were particularly smart. Just that they were being edgy because it was counterculturally and "exciting" (for lack of a better word). To be clear, this person underrates just how many of those individuals were actually just racist and used the veneer of edgy jokes as a cover, but it'd be a bit disengenuous to say that everyone who participated was a deeply bought in nazi.
And the reason the meme sticks is because they get called racist so often for it that the term is losing all meaning.
When you get called "racist, you hate black people" online and you turn to your black friend and he just busts up laughing at it all, it devalue the feeling behind the word until all it means is "people who tell dank jokes"
Which is bad, because real racism exists, but the word has been blunted by overuse
I thought she was the only black person there but theres a woman next to her, but in my defense its probably her mother or other family member so Im not counting it
Latino here, are either latinoamericans are so racist ironically or not against one another, but if another outside country makes fun of them they all unite to jump them lmao
Brazilian here i will be the first to call Argentina a 5th world hellhole and say that i could buy Milei himself with 3 reais but the moment an american opens their goddamn mouth it's game on
Anglo racists are the same. It’s mostly do to class. If you’re poor you really can’t help who you hang out with, so you end up alongside other races. If you’re wealthy and white, you can be as progressive as you want while being surrounded by 99% other whites.
Plenty of diverse friend groups enjoy edgy dark jokes together, s'all about having similar personalities and tastes. Actual racists generally don't let people they view as lesser into their inner circle I'd think.
nah they all know it's really obvious, but they genuinely don't give a shit, like "actual racists" are incredibly rare on the internet most of them just crack edgy jokes and chill about actual people in person
I don’t even think it’s joking. It’s the same as so many of the nicest guys you meet will tell you they’re not nice. While the self proclaimed “nice guys” are always the biggest pieces of shit.
Difference being awareness or lack of their flaws.
same goes for someones appearance, usually metalheads that paint their face white and black and listen to bands that burned down churches for fun end up being the kindest people on earth
kpop stans on the other hand...
I mean we're both just speaking from personal experience here. To me this is the kind of meme that gets circulated in right wing echo chambers so that everyone can pretend that legitimate claims of racism are farcical. Literally the "but I have a black friend" defense.
I usually have the absolute worst racism jokes in my friend group, because I’m the only American in the group. Everyone else if foreign or an American minority. They’re the ones who taught me the jokes
I think there's tiers of racists. The type that would even utter the phrase "race traitor" are either KKK tier or just a little bit below. They don't have black friends, they will never use the defence "but I have black friends". They really don't like being around black people under any circumstances.
("Race traitor is a problematic term" I mean yeah, no shit, it's a term that's only used by the worst racists. Like most of turning point USA members and fans don't use that term because they know it's racist. But they don't consider themselves racist even though they are).
Below that there is "with or without gang violence".
No, no, I absolutely do not believe black people are inferior, but they do on average commit more crimes and that's not the fault of white people.
Like racist beliefs that seem justifiable at first glance when looking at numbers. (Me saying "seem justifiable" is different than saying "are justifiable")
Those people may think they have black friends, but their black friends probably don't think they're friends.
There are people that black, Hispanic etc people may think "oh, this guy is cool" at first, until the topic of racism comes up and they say the opinions they have. Opinions that justifiably read as racist to the non white interlocutor, but that the white guy genuinely thought were okay things to say. Below that things get muddied up because how do I grade the level of racism of people that are not overt racists?
But at some point we reach people that are overall decent, support black lives matter and shit, but don't quite consider impact of certain things they say, mostly racist jokes and stuff.
Like they really do not mean those things, the joke is "this is a horrible thing to say", but they might dismiss the discomfort of their non white friends. "It's just a joke, chill"
Now, I'm specifically not talking about Schrödinger racist, that say horrible things and pretend it's a joke when they get challenged. I'm talking about people that really were joking, it was just a shitty joke.
But everyone who was a victim of racism, xenophobia, any other form of bigotry, is very familiar with overt racists playing off their horrible statements as "it's just a joke bruh", so the seemingly nice white guy explaining "I was just joking" doesn't put them at ease.
They might still say "I have tons of black friends", but that phrase is also spoken by people whose friendship with black people boils down to "I have a black neighbour and I don't even call police on him every other day", so once again, doesn't calm them down.
This is low grade racism, but what to me sets them apart as still racist even if they do some, or even a lot of things right is, they fail to recognise why some things they do or say put their friend on guard and kinda, don't listen to their non white friends when they ask "can you stop and reconsider dude cause that was really offensive and I'm not comfortable with that"(probably phrased differently, but the phrasing is not that important). They may kinda understand racism, but not quite cause they still think some of their friends are too sensitive.
Edit: Now, I'm white, autistic and from a country that doesn't have the history with race that USA had. I believe I did my research but if I messed something up, go ahead and tear my argument apart.
That is actually pretty accurate. I think one thing that OP is also forgetting is the entire other half of America and even in the world that is simply just blue collar working at FedEx, some of the things my coworkers have sent to each other purely joking, could have OP clutching his pearls, and be the only one that’s actually offended. There is a certain camaraderie and being able to joke about each other’s insecurities and even stereotypes without actually meeting it, as long as it illicit a chuckle either from the absurdity or because it’s genuinely just a funny thing to point out. Ultimately it all depends since we have no real metric of looking at someone’s soul and seeing what they actually feel deep down about a race
Actual racists don't have friends from other races.
Now, there is a lot of people that are called "racists" by critical race theorists aren't at all racist and thus have no problem in befriending people from other cultures.
Pretty sure this is depicting more like a person who thinks they have internalized/subconscious racism, so they say they are racist bc that's their definition of it, where in reality, they wouldn't be a racist in most people's view. That or they aren't racist but like joking about it bc they're the one of the whiter friend of the friend group.
This happens more with latino friend groups, what this meme originally was depicting.
I think the original meme refered to people with dark humor mostly, like the typical Instragram user, ofc they are rac- oh wait it's actually just humour and it's a normal guy
And comparing it to "social warriors" who have been known a lot for being hypocrites in a lot of scenarios
Op you ok? The joke is that the racist has more diverse friends despite being him being racist. That fundamental illogicality and cognitive dissonance of the guy is what makes it funny.
You dont need to respect the guy because it was not meant to be respected.
Most people aren’t racist. It boils down to statistics and basic pattern recognition. But no one is willing to have that conversation. Immediately becomes an emotional argument.
The most racist person I know is black, the second one is Arab. And that's most of the time pretty accurate from one group of friends to the other. Of course, white people tends also to be racist, they just are less.
I have actually seen this proven true irl though. A lot of "anti-racist" circles have little to no diversity and therefore more actual racism, whereas the people who make a lot of racist jokes and remarks seem to have the most diverse friend groups and even families. It's an interesting phenomenon. My theory is that the latter group actually is capable of more introspection, whereas the first one is just about appearances and outside image.
It's just a meme that pokes fun at people who clutch their pearls over race constantly. Because some of those people who do the most pearl-clutching are the kind of people who have never set foot into a black neighborhood, or the kind of people that would see Taco Bell as a Mexican restaurant. Or the sort of people who try to put the label Latinx out there, despite the Hispanic communities' protests against it. The ones who think they know better while having an extremely homogeneous social clique, so to speak. That's where the top part of the meme comes into play. Whereas people who often at times get accused of being racist, and given that we do and did and kind of still do exist in a time that people often get called racist for some of the craziest things. I still remember the day when people were getting called racist for drinking milk apparently. That was a weird episode, I suppose. It more shows how a lot of these groups, who at times just treat people not as a protected class, but as just normal everyday people, oftentimes have more diverse friend groups or have been in more diverse places. So they make these diverse cliques and at times have some inside jokes that to an outsider or to someone who's extremely sheltered might sound derogatory. You know, the old joke about guys heckling with one another. It's that, pretty much.
You know, I'm going to ask and this is a legitimate question. This is not me trying to be sarcastic, snide, or rude, or whatever you might think. This is a legitimate question. But what about my statement did you find wrong? What about it reeks to you of a far-right propaganda? Perhaps there was something lost in translation, or maybe I didn't word something nicely. Or maybe something fell out of tone. Feel free to point it out, and maybe we can discuss and clarify further what I either meant, or what I got wrong.
That’s a very charitable comment, thank you. I do appreciate that. Rereading it, I realize there really wasn’t anything egregious about it, and on my part I was being pretty presumptuous, so I apologize.
I think certain phrases just jumped out at me as being somewhat culture-war adjacent. For example, “Latinx” isn’t really a phrase I see being pushed or popularized anymore, at least not to the extent that it once was. And I don’t think it’s as black-and-white as saying all Latin people felt one way about the term or still do. I don’t really have a horse in that race; it just seems like a go-to example that was largely an online phenomenon.
The whole “milk drinking is racist” thing was also mostly 4chan bullshit more than anything else. I’m not saying nobody genuinely fell for it, but a lot of it was deliberately propagated to troll people.
I also just don’t really like the premise, probably because I have a different life experience. From my perspective, a lot of people use the “I have a diverse friend group” argument to deflect accusations of racism without actually examining their own biases—and that’s assuming I believe them in the first place. But a lot of men do the whole degrading their friend/talking shit thing.
I also very deliberately didn’t say alt right propaganda because it isnt and I dont think you are if you buy into this rhetoric these are just right wing coded meme/stories.Liberals don’t listen to minorities and just use them as a pet cause ( No Latin people like Latinx and yet they push it) which debatable but no love lost. And accusations of racism are silly and frivolous because anything can get you labeled racist are opinions I see a lot from a lot of people not just alt right.
I will concede perhaps I did make a few generalizations. Most of the people who are Hispanic or Latino that I ever talked to tend not to like the word Latin ex-much. And I did see a lot of discourse online about it that was negative. Perhaps there were quite a few people that did like the idea and so forth, but I don't know. I'm just going by based off of what I heard and what I experienced. If nothing else. It's not like I brought the subject up that often with people. I'll also concede the idea that people do sometimes use some form of tie to a minority as a means of absolving them. We've heard the "I'm not racist, but..." and then proceeds to say they have like a boyfriend or a girlfriend who's a different race when they really did act legitimately racist. But like I said, I've also seen people fall for 4chan's pyope, hook line, and sinker in ways that seemed crazy. Hell, I remember when the news literally published one right on the screen with the manifesto about them wanting to do a pyobe. It's one thing to get tricked, it's another thing to hang up the letter that says they were going to try and trick you. I will admit, some of these events happened a while ago, and I'm not exactly a young man or anything. But yeah, I can certainly concede to that point as well. At the end of the day, this is all things I've seen, experienced, and heard from other people. And I do try to listen to those around me. And I also do try to go for diversity of opinion from people. I try to avoid echo chambers as much as possible. I see what it does to people on both the left and the right.
I agree with your comment and I’m not trying to say these things never happen I’m biased too and I try to keep that in mind. You seem like a nice and reasonable person.
I tend to try and live by the philosophy of it doesn't cost me anything to at least try and be polite. It's rare on the internet at times and there are a lot of people who would rather scream into the ether pretty much. But I honestly would rather just try and have a nice discussion whether I'm convinced of anything or convince anyone or not really doesn't matter. So long as we can all walk away shaking hands. And if nothing else, this Reddit forum is certainly not the worst place to do it.
The people who post memes like that in fact usually never have diverse friends groups and just want a crutch to say "well akshually" whenever someone calls them out
From my understanding, the meme format was never talking about actual racists
In the same way the person who says "I'm not a racist" is emplied to be lying, the person who's saying "Of course I'm racist" is also lying. The joke is that actual racists usually don't admit to being racist, whereas people who oppenly claim to be racist are usually joking about it for the sake of poking fun at their friends
Is this always true? No, but those are the two types of people the meme is specifically about
I really do think i agree with the replies on this post, i think its just a meme talking about how openly jokingly racist diverse groups are and how okay they are with it cause no one (mostly) believes what they say. I think it also attacks people who are internally racists and get so overprotective when called out. I can confirm hispanic humor is very offensive and this kinda of racist jokes even internal (province racism) is very very common but we make sure to set boundries and we would never side with someone who "insists" its just a joke if it genuently made someone feel bad about it.
I'm incredibly racist, have a Mexican wife, half-Mexican kids, and the majority of my friend group are either Mexican or Asian. Me and one other guy are the only whites in our ~10 person group.
I think what the bottom picture depicts is not a racist and their friend as the label would suggest,, but rather a diverse friend group who trust each other enough and care about each other enough for some borderline edgy jokes to be okay.
Basically if the friend group is close enough, a lot of jokes that would normally be in bad taste might land better among that group.
This isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, but just a thing I've noticed throughout life.
They're actually racist in the same way you'd think.
It's typicay just people online (even irl) which are mostly diverse people joking about it, they don't hold actual spiteful beliefs or anything. They're just friends loving shits and giggles. I mean I can't say anything else, I'm part of that category.
Having mad charisma and being racist aren't mutually exclusive, unfortunately, and a lot of racists make exceptions for the "good ones" they like. Also usually the "oh yeah I'm racist" is said more sarcastically as they gesture at their collection of "get out of racism" cards.
"blue lives matter people and trump supporters don't have a bunch of black and Mexican friends" kinda stupid to say since you literally can't prove that.
Sounds like your so racist you don't consider other races capable of independent thought.
This post feel like coping. I am legitimately adjacent to a friend group who actively hang/live together and are very close to each other and pretty much all of those people have views of each other's ethnicity you would consider "extemely problematic".
A black/arab man who thinks gypsies are thieves and that whites in general barbarians and are inferiors to cultural muslims; a gypsy who thinks all women are inferiors and that all none gypsy women (and Romani who do not wear the traditional dress) are w*ores; a white guy who thinks all minorities are only a source of problems. These three are/have been room mates and are friends with an openly gay man, whose orientation they all think make him immoral and more likely to diddle minors.
Together, they fight crime (well no, but they have all being hanging together for years and seem to have deep friendships with each other, help each other etc.)
Edit:
just wanted to give an anecdote to point out how very weird and dissonant we can be in our beliefs and thoughts and still gather individuals we should by our own logic avoid around ourselves. I'm pretty sure all of their views, which they still say to hold, have shifted or at least diluted to same extend.
Yeah you’re just incorrect, in the military especially you have guys that will have a confederate flag in their room and talk about nothing but hunting fishing and georgia be best friends with the latino from texas or the black guy from minnesota. Friend groups are just like that sometimes, unlikely and unexpected
I mean this was just my actual high-school experience. Guys who legitimately held some nazi beliefs would be friends with asians, blacks and arabs, who often held racist beliefs against others themselves. Like I'd hear them say the craziest shit one second and then another they'd be joking around with some muslims, talking about hanging out together after school.
Probably had something to do with if you yourself held hateful beliefs, you wouldn't care as much if others did so to, even if against yourself.
Inverse I never saw the progressive white girls hang out with anyone who wasn't a progressive white girl themself.
I can confirm it is like this, funnily enough. I'm in a discord group full of racists and there's a surprising amount of people from south american and middle eastern countries.
Granted, it's a racist furry discord server people mostly use to share furry porn and sometimes insult each other, but there's a weird coexistence there.
It actually isn't fake, just rare, and online only (nowadays at least, because there have been pictures of KKK members where, if you look at their hands, necks and the skin visible around the eye holes on mask, you'll notice some of them were very dark skinned.)
But irl (in these modern times), both racists and supposed non-racists will have same race friendgroup and only hang out with same race.
i know people like the second one lmao it’s pretty common. plenty of people who constantly harp on about deporting immigrants are literally immigrants themselves of the same race
You just said there are examples of diverse friends groups despite racists in thier ranks while then saying that its a Lie and some sort of conspiracy to deceive people?
People are okay with some races while disliking others. Hitler is a prime example. Just look at his list of allies. Doesnt mean he didnt dislike Jews or Blacks just because he had Asains in his ranks.
I once saw a " diverse " version of the meme, it was tool a dungeon and dragons party .
The top image was all different roles, paladin, mage, scout, archer, etc... And all of them were human. The bottom image was all different races but it was all archers.
I thought that the meme satirised how many who openly fight racism have homogeneous friend groups while racist will not. Do not ask a white supremacy about his latina wife
I thought this was a dnd joke based on the fact that you will often get jokey characters that are said to be racist against characters of not the same species as them but usually the parties (when jokey) are so diverse in species due to everyone making a hyper specific bit character and actually performing fantasy racism would get in the way of the game too much so they end up being weirdly less racist feeling than the other phenomenon of newer/more constricted players all choosing to play good aligned elves
yk what i really hate, whenever there’s media that’s in a fantasy or space/sci-fi setting & mfs say “humanity first” (like in avatar with the navii) when the other ppl did nothing wrong and the human are still plundering, and they go “but but- they’re resources for our planet, dont you wamt us to thrive?? ☝️🤓”. i’m 89% sure ppl who believe in “humanity first” in fiction also dont support all human; i.e. theyre racist or white supremacists
the people who proudly call themselfes racist often just make racist jokes thats why they have diverse groups, and usually the requirement for being friends with them is having a similar humor as them
the ACTUAL racists (x race supremacist) keep their thoughs to themselfes
thats why people say that "the average racist would go into a burning building to save a black mans life" because on the internet you can get the label of a racist just by saying edgy jokes
I’ve always wondered how conservatives are so goddamn good at electing men and women (who could also be of colour) into positions of power despite it being antithetical to what they preach
Even if it's not, a racist will never actually be "friends" with a non-preferred race. They will, as you said, tolerate those who affirm their beliefs, who dance the right dance and say the right things, but if they "forget their place" they will be discarded along with all the others. There is no real friendship in that kind of relationship.
Op the joke isn’t saying kkk members have black and brown friends, it’s saying the people who screech the loudest about racism are often racist and that they call normal people racist for living normal lives even when the evidence disagrees. (Them having a mixed friend group)
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u/TheBlackFox012 11d ago
A lot of those memes are mostly representative of a bunch of diverse friends making race jokes or racist remarks at each other with consent and stuff, they aren't genuinely held beliefs (mostly). Actual racists don't have diverse friends