This article may be considered controversial and contains harsh language, be advised.
A while ago, I saw a post on Reddit. It showed this thread from 4chan(an image board where people post about a variety of topics, sometimes funny, but most of the time completely crazy). 4chan is known for using the word “faggot” a lot. But 4chan is not as anti-gay as it might appear. They use the word so much that it doesn’t even represent gay people anymore. This post started a flame war about the word "faggot". At first, I found this flame war to be completely useless, but then, it made me realise something very important. I’ll tell you all about it.
Some people on 4chan don’t seem to get it. They think that because 4chan uses the word faggot a lot, 4chan is anti-gay. The creator of that thread in particular, seemed to think 4chan had something against gays. That’s why he took a photo of a gay kid from his class and asked 4chan to photoshop the image. He didn’t get the response he was hoping for, instead he was told by his fellow 4channers that “there’s nothing wrong with being gay” and in addition, he got called a faggot. When I saw this post, it made me happy, and I’ll explain why. I see posts from 4chan pretty often, and sometimes I find them pretty funny. On the other hand, they often get very offensive. Whenever they used the word faggot I would feel sad. When I saw this post, I realised that they don’t really mean it.
You see, 4chan makes fun of everything and everyone. They make fun of every religion, every skin colour and every sexuality. In my opinion, when everyone is made fun of equally, you could argue that everyone is equal. To me, this thread proved that 4chan doesn’t actually mean any harm. They may have very dark humour, joking about discrimination and racism, but they are not necessarily racists.
Some people who commented on the Reddit post, had the same opinion as me, saying that 4chan was actually not anti-gay at all, and that using the word faggot didn’t actually matter anymore. They argued that the context the word was used in, made the word lose it’s offensive meaning. They said that 4chan actually helped us by doing this.
As I scrolled down through the comments, I suddenly saw loads of people who got offended by the thread. They argued that being called a faggot would always be as offensive as ever. This started a flame war, with on one side, the people who got offended by the thread, and on the other side, the people who claimed that the word faggot has lost it’s meaning.
At first, I agreed that the word faggot had lost it’s meaning, and I thought the people who got offended had to man up a little. Although I did perfectly understand why being called faggot in real life was offensive, I didn’t agree that being called faggot on the Internet was offensive. You see, you have to be able to laugh about yourself a little. If someone from 4chan would call me a faggot, I wouldn’t feel offended, I would know it was just a joke.
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| Part of the flame war on Reddit |
I just sat there staring at my screen. I felt really bad about myself. This comment made me realise that I had been wrong all along. Calling someone a faggot, whether it is on the Internet or not, is simply wrong. Unless you know the person yourself, and know that this particular person can handle it, you simply can not call someone a faggot. You can not know what that person has been through, you can not know whether or not that person has lived through a traumatic experience. That’s why you can’t call someone whatever you want. The fact that it took a comment on Reddit for me to realise all of this, made me feel bad. “Why couldn’t I have figured that out myself?” is what I asked myself. But I realised that I am only human, and that making a mistake like this wasn’t the end of the world. The fact that I learned this valuable lesson at all, made me happy.
I think should make clear, that I am not a 4channer myself, and that I never said faggot to anyone in my entire life. I do see threads from 4chan from time to time, and I occasionally laugh about the jokes. I still don’t feel offended when someone uses the word faggot on 4chan, it’s 4chan after all, and people who are offended by things like these shouldn’t be on 4chan to begin with, it’s for their own good.
I hope that one day the world will be so open that everyone will be equal. Because on the day that racism and discrimination cease to exist, everyone will be able to make jokes about one another.
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