EVE Corporation - Page 1576

The Goon crown is made of superiority that stems from... a sense of superiority. It menaces with spikes of superiority.

Goons come pretty much exclusively from the Something Awful community. SA is in some ways the progenitor of the "modern" internet community. If internet communities could hold patents, SA would have the patent on being shitlords of every realm of human interaction on the internet. This community prides itself on such things. 4chan is a terrible trash-filled pit of cringe? SA did it first. People doing Let's Plays of videogames? SA did it first/best. Funny images and memes? SA did it first. Forums for video games? SA clearly did it first/best. Being the ultimate community of privileged white racist, misogynistic, and otherwise just downright hateful manchildren? SA did it first/best.

But that is only one side of the coin. The other side is a phenomenon known to Goons as the Cultural Revolution (debatable whether the name is ironic or really confusing black humor). This is where SA reinvented themselves as a beacon of light and hope and all that is good on the internet. This LGBT/feminist-inspired rebirth does two things for them as a community. It allows them to hold their heads up high and wave their SA banner around proudly, and it allows them to simultaneously wear the badge of moral superiority alongside all their other badges of honor (see the previous paragraph).

Just as there is a duality in the face of SA, so there are heads and tails in its community.

A mental inventory of a random group of Goons might look something like this:

-People pay 10 dollars to read my website's forums - it must be great.
or alternately
-I paid 10 dollars to read my forums whereas other forums are free - thus my forums are of finer quality.
-Nigger nigger nigger nigger homo slut cunt lololol raped.
-Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? The smallest of the minorities is the individual.
-I'm so bad at this game and still win. In the end, that means I'm really good.

The TEST crown is made of the solidified spirit of the everyman. They essentially reject all forms of elitism - including those stemming from originality and innovation (things in SA ideology which are held in highest regard). This rejection leads them to paradoxically abhor hierarchical structure and the rulesets which go along with it.

TEST comes from the Reddit community, which isn't a real community but something like the result of a mechanical aggregation of the lesser neuroses of the human mind. It acts in every way like we would expect an emergent hivemind to act - it follows the principles of least common denominators like a politician pandering to as many as possible, unable to commit to or embrace concepts with the slightest hint of controversy.

Reddit as a mechanism for information delivery spurns so-called original content (things like thoughtful discussion, new ideas, debate etc.) in favor of being effectively a giant link farm. The hordes of fickle individuals surrender their identity to the tyranny of the masses. What results is "content" wholly without substance. I mean, even people that hate cats like cute cat pictures. If oxygen was original, thought-provoking content, Redditors would downvote it until they suffocated. It is here we can see the real price of democracy. Tabloids and ad-infested blogs get pushed straight to the top. Witch hunts are assembled and carried out. Fads and other "viral" effects spread like plague - and die off the same. "Bread and circuses" doesn't even begin to describe the blackness and bleakness of the intellectual void created by Reddit.

These in mind, TEST members are not at all like Goons in temperament and attitude. Where Goons tend to have a community simultaneously held together and pushed apart by duality, Redditors have no real connection whatsoever. They think and feel that they are connected with others - that their... diverse... opinions are shared by the masses. In reality, though, their commonality is a self-built fiction. A Redditor constantly trains their minds to believe that because thousands of people upvoted their cat pictures that they have found kindred souls - when really all they've done is appealed to the neuroses of the average human being. Just for the record, your taste in music is terrible.

TEST has a moral superiority of its own that is defined by its fictitious notion that all mankind is made of the same stuff, that we all share a deep mutual bond that transcends our individual differences and in the end would come together in a time of crisis. This alternate-reality everyman is the defining figure in the ideology which TEST holds dear - a rejection of complexity and ego in order to embrace the magical commonality which we all apparently share.