Wow, forgot about bash.org but that's a good reference to pull. Definitely a microcosm of IRC culture at the time.

Wow, solid resource:

http://bash.org/?121764

><p00p> why do you crackers steal everything from us?

http://bash.org/?51331

>(@virt) cracker barrel is the most hilarious name for a place where a bunch of white people go

http://bash.org/?86009

><Gabe> It's sad when white people try to talk like black inner city people. It's doubly sad when those white people are European. :P

Incredibly virulent anti-whiteness. Thank you for posting this to open our eyes to this.

* * *

Low ranking based on what? Are you telling people what feelings they should have towards slurs directed towards them? The "top quotes" don't bother me at all, for example.

Low ranking based on the number of votes they got. That's the green (or red) number in parentheses between the plus and minus signs. The top 100 quotes range from 9,000 to 41,000. If I refresh random a few times, the most common number of votes seems to be in the mid-100s, which is exactly where these fall.

So the fact that

- you had to search to find a couple low ranking quotes that might be insulting to white people

- there are numerous top ranking quotes that might be insulting to women, gay people, black people, etc

- those top quotes don't bother you

supports OP's point and undermines your own.

Votes have no relation to how much any quote exemplifies IRC culture.

Bash.org is not IRC or IRC culture, despite being built on IRC logs.

Votes are skewed because the demographic is skewed. But the sentiments remain the same in all groups.

Just because one group speaks loudly about hate doesn't mean the quiet group doesn't hate. But it doesn't mean they do, either.

It's a complex topic that would require considerable research, rather than all parties skimming.

> the third one is definitely an example of anti-Blackness, not anti-whiteness.

Why do you capitalize the b but not the w?

None of that is good? That's the point.

You're just proving their point -- these types of communities follow "Internet chat" trends which includes toxicity to literally everyone. Minorities are affected most by this dynamic. By moving the discussions "above ground", we force the discussions to use professional etiquette, and move the conversation closer to where it can have actual impact

anything on bash.org is pretty solidly mid->late era IRC, not "early IRC" as was discussed above.

"Early IRC" ends with The Great Split (ircnet fork). Heck, most of Early IRC is extremely Euro-centric even.

ngl the implication that something happened in the world of irc that turned it from this apolitical, progressive utopia to a jew-joke, rape-joke, -ism-everywhere cesspool is fascinating and please tell me more about it, not sarcastic

IRC back in those days was more oriented towards central/northern european university students...specifically nerds. In the 90s, they mostly would have been talking about lan parties, actual parties, drinking, drugs, software/media piracy, etc.

As we did.

I don't know how much of a cesspool it would have been back then as IRCOps back in that day were famously proactive, thin-skinned and intolerant of divisive bullshit. Generally trolls were k-lined quickly. Especially because operating a server then was an individual's labour of love and not using large, corporate resources. Server operators had to keep trash off their server in order to stay in their network. Individual servers could only handle _hundreds_ of connected users.

It was neither utopian, nor progressive. It was ruthless, impersonal and dog-eat-dog.

The shift towards what it is now was that the resources to operate a network became absurdly cheap and caring about who was on your network and doing what went completely out the window.

Tbh there are communities that refuse to stop using homophobic slurs, especially the rap community with which the black community is heavily involved (see T.I. defending Dababy's homophobic rant "If Lil Nas X can kick his shit in peace… so should DaBaby" ie if people can be gay then people should be able to be homophobic). Pretty despicable considering these people likely have incredibly personal experiences with being victims of x-isms.

Realistically it shows that we (humans) still have much to learn about treating each other equally. Why can't we just be good to each other. :/