Milo Yiannopoulos rose ‘on the shoulders of young, often jobless, often sexually frustrated men, who sought refuge in a world of their own making’. A loser who miraculously wins, a great spiteful prank on the world’s people, he brings its fantasy world to life. Beran explains that Trump perfectly encapsulates the 4chan ethic. Until they collided with anti-fascist demonstrators, their far-right politics were just more lulz.

“Very brave behind a computer screen”, these people are “absolutely unequipped to deal with any suggestion of real-world consequences”, she wrote. When they make the mistake of stepping into the real world as Laurie Penny’s description last week of the young men accompanying Yiannopoulos on his roadshow reveals, they find it a hard and terrifying place. None of it, in the airless, affectless world in which they spend almost all their time, seems to matter. Whatever they do or say – posting swastikas, racist memes, incitements to bully and abuse – is just “for the lulz” (4chan’s word for laugh out loud). They disguise this sensitivity with extreme insensitivity to other people’s suffering – of the kind that “only people who have never really suffered” can display. Like adolescent boys and man-boys everywhere, 4chan’s users, Beran explains, are “deeply sensitive and guarded”. So was the rise, on their shoulders, of Milo Yiannopoulos. Depicting their mascot Pepe the frog in a Nazi costume, giving the finger to liberals and people of colour, is just a joke.

As their online world of ironic self-reflection expanded, their contact with the real world shrank, until nothing was serious – except their hatred of women. It evolved organically among young, often jobless, often sexually frustrated men, who sought refuge in a world of their own making, and live there through almost every waking hour. Is 4chan a clever invention from a group of fascist conspirators? No. Its millions of members helped to put Donald Trump on the throne. This is the forum in which many of the far-right’s toxic memes grew, and whose vicious pursuit, through Gamergate, of women who have dared to develop videogames rose into a new wave of misogyny. The first is a fascinating and disturbing explanation of the bulletin board by one of its former inhabitants, Dale Beran. Tournament champions, on the other hand, are permanently retired and will be banned for future editions.I’m prompted to write this for two reasons. Characters who reached the Elite Eight of the previous tournament are temporarily ineligible this year they will be eligible for nomination next contest.

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