Normies

_{This piece was adapted from a series of effort posts written by Punished Magnus on the Amerikaner Telegram Channel (t.me/amerikaner) in response to a different effort post made by John Fassbinder of the American Freedom Party. I have included both Mr. Fassbinder’s original post, for clarity, and Magnus’ essay.}

From John Fassbinder:

“If there is one thing I despise within our circles, it is the glorification of being considered abnormal, and the encouragement to take pride in this perception. The term “normie” exemplifies this, often used derogatorily. Historically, “normie” was a term used by the disabled to describe those healthy individuals without disabilities. Personally when I hear it, I envision a goblin-like creature using this term to describe the functioning members of society from which it feels excluded.”

“This issue reflects a broader concern of normalizing our ideology and moving away from an insular mindset and a culture of social exclusion. Unfortunately, our ideology is sometimes co-opted by egotists, narcissists, and hyper-individualists within the so-called “movement” to fuel their own grandiose visions, rather than as a means to serve our community and Our People. These often dysgenic and anti-social losers hold no place in our circles, and I refuse any association with them. They act as an embarrassment for all of us public facing individuals who put our faces and names out there as representatives of our ideology. We aim to embody true adherence to our beliefs and represent the respectable members of our nationalist community.”

“Objectively, our ideology reflects a close alignment with the natural order, making it the epitome of not only normalcy, but superiority. Instead of using derogatory terms towards the average member of society who may not understand our views, we should engage them with a show of kindness and honor, traits exemplified by our ideology’s adherents. Live your life so that when others speak poorly of you, nobody will believe them; be a role model our people can look up to, and strive to maintain the highest standards of the society we aim to foster. Above all, commit to continual self-improvement.”

“Let us reject the glorification of autism, woman-hating incel culture, isolationism, and mindless consumerism. Embrace self-determination, personal achievement, and the spirit of sacrifice.”

The response from Magnus:

Let me preface my comment by saying I have enormous respect for Mr. Fassbender and the whole of the AFP, and while I respectfully disagree on one point I think his broader point about the Luciferian fetishization of abnormality is 100% on point.

On the topic of the word “normies”: the original term, “Normalfags” gained popularity on imageboard -chans as a semi-ironic pejorative of non-imageboard (and broadly, non-internet) users. Longtime internet users, seasoned in BBS/IRC/”walled garden” forums, noted an increasing prevelance of non-technical (“geek”/loser/autist/etc.) users, especially as web services rapidly became tailored to a mainstream consumer audience, instead of the existing small, technical-minded hobbiests.

On the -chans especially, a distinction was made between hobbiests, generally understood to be subject matter experts in their given field and interested in productive and entertaining discussion, and non-technical consumers, who had an irritating habit of showing up to derail discussion with irrelevant blog posting, social signalling, and generally low-quality discussion.

These two groups became known as “outcasts” and “normalfags”, with each group similarly subdivided between good and bad users (see below chart for reference, circa 2016).

Especially on what would become the 4chan “Incel” board, /r9k/, “normalfags” began to be associated not just with irritating, gormless, and generally uninteresting newfags, but with anyone successful, straight-laced, and “on the right path”. A “Normalfag” wasn’t someone who derailed discussion on Transformers The Animated Series™ by bringing up their girlfriend or talking about how they prefer the Michael Bay movie, it was anyone seeking the American Dream: stable job, wife, kids, dog, white picket fence, golf on Sunday.

From the early 2000s /r9k/ and some /news/ (later /pol/) users were already seeing the vacuous and hollow suburban dream as propagandized by The System for what it was: a comfortable lie. They felt, legitimately or not, that they could not or would not conform to the “good citizen” model and looked down upon those that did so. They felt (I think with some justification) that the Normalfags sleep-walked through their lives, grasping and seething and chasing, lemming-like, after anything society or popular fashion dictated in the moment. Seeing how even a small number of the uncreative, conformist, and dull-witted normalfags could and did upset many niche interests in the 90s and 2000s (comic books, heavy metal music, and forum culture on sites like Reddit being only a few examples), 4channers in general began to view all normalfags, and indeed all normal people, as the lemming like “normies”.

The runup to the 2016 presidential election changed virtually everything about the internet. The last few years of the 2nd Obama term were a rapid transition of consolidation, media control, and censorship, as well as a mass purging of hundreds or thousands of smaller communities as many millions of new internet users were shephardes onto a few sanitized, corporate play-pens.

Between 2007 and 2012 the Internet was absolutely flooded with brand-new users. Where once the Internet was mostly White (or Asian), mostly Male, and mostly a mix of older hobbiests and younger technical people, the average Internet user was now more likely a suburban soccer mom, a college athlete, or even an elderly retiree. A great many non-White users were also introduced through the rapid proliferation of smartphones and wireless data plans worldwide.

By 2016, most internet communities had done away with anonymous usernames (the absolute standard since the earliest days of social groups on the internet). Censorship of slurs, explicit images (violence, not sex) and increasingly, polarizing political content, was commonplace. Underhanded manipulation of discussion including shadow banning, rigged up vote/down vote scores, and out of control moderation was endemic, as was a disturbing trend of corporate marketing teams and political campaigns engaging in “astroturfing” on major communities”. Older users, having grown up in anarchic, authentic, and high-quality communities, were horrified to see the regression to the mean taking place across major and minor platforms. As 4chan became known as a hotbed for political dissent in the lead up to the Trump presidency, the effects of normalfag influence (real and manufactured) became inescapable. So-called “Election Tourists” flooded every board and sub-community, spamming their retarded talking points and rendering the site almost unusable, even (especially?) on /pol/. Genuine discussion became impossible. And even after Trump won and the balloons and bunting was taken down, the normalfags, and their obsession with the basest form of Yankee Doodle Red-Blue Political Football, stayed behind to plague the site for the next decade.

This experience refined and popularized the term “normies” outside 4chan. For the first time, non-“outcasts” were using the term, and rather than using it to describe the “in crowd” of middle-class consumers, it was being used specifically to identify those elements of society characterized by extreme political and social conformity. “Normies” were less and less the churchgoing, finger-wagging, suburban Mom or Dad (“Normalfags”) and more and more the blue-haired, Tumblr-using, Trump-deranged Leftist morality police behind Gamergate, YouTube Censorship, and calls for banning of sites like 4chan.

As it stands, “Normalfag” has all but ceased circulation either as a pejorative or a descriptor. As the “mainstream, mainline, cultural Christian” bourgeois morality of the late 90s/2000s no longer exists, there is nothing for the Faustian, anarchistic, and anti-social “Outcast” of 4chan’s yore to rebel against. Moreover, those of that inclination (the “Chud” of today) have discovered the irritating gremlins seeking to ban violent videogames and censor their anime were not, as they assumed, White middle-aged soccer moms or red-faced Holy Rollers, but were in fact gay Leftists, many of them Jewish, who had suddenly switched from vociferous calls for artistic freedom and personal expression (under Nixon and Reagan) to sharp curtailment of anything remotely heterosexual, masculine, or political incorrect (under Clinton, when they attained final and complete control of US political and cultural capital).

Nowadays, you’ll find Trump voting grannies, jaded technocrats, and even blue-collar technicians referring to “normies” to mean anyone who lacks knowledge on a given subject but has a loud mouth and strong opinions nevertheless.

It’s a good word to use, because unfortunately as social media has proliferated through the Millenials, Gen Z, and now Gen Alpha, this archetype of the extremely opinionated moral crusader invading a community they have no stake in to force change (often aided by nefarious corporate and State actors) is commonplace. It’s shocking the degree to which these people, with no interest in, say, Bouldering or 9-pin bowling or Oragami, have the chutzpah to brigade these hobbies and demand they confirm to their extreme and niche political/racial/sexual demands. These people are a swarm of locusts, descending en masse upon unsuspecting fandoms, flooding out authentic participation, forcing companies serving them to change how they market and produce content, and even forcing legal or policy changes in how the community is organized. They ruin these communities forever by burying them in an avalanche of insufferable libtards, and even though none of them have the slightest interest in the actual topic, they feel perfectly entitled push their agendas on those who do.

In closing, the idea of rebelling against a wholesome, pro-social, but conformist identity, itself an artefact of 2000s culture, is not something we should celebrate or emulate. We are after all rebelling against that identity (false as it may have been) being taken away. We want a cohesive, pro-social life path for as many of our people as possible, and to mitigate the incidence of “Outcasts”.

That said, “Normie” has come to mean something both more and less than “Normalfag”, and something much more relevant to our culture today. The homogenized, debased, consumerist, cattle-like hive mind of Acceptable Discourse™ Enjoyers as personified by Twitter Libtards is an intellectual menace not merely for niche internet boards focused on anime tiddies, but for all social organization. Even Birdwatching and Cycling are under attack by non-hobbiests screeching about “inclusion” and “diversity”. They will come for your hobby too, sooner or later. Your church, school, fraternity, volunteer organization, professional group, and neighborhood book club WILL come under attack at some point, and it is the duty of every person to learn to identify these people and fight effectively to gatekeep and expell them. It is imperative all hobbiests, and anyone who enjoys social organization, to stand as one. Hoist the banner high!

[REDACTED] ALL NORMIES.