Having been browsing Twitter’s tag system for a little bit, I decided to do the ideological equivalent of googling my own name and searched for the nihilism tag. What I was confronted with was a deluge of idiocy and misspellings, but also quiet a large amount of people inappropriately using nihilism.
The user (of the word) seems to have included it to enhance his threat that he made on an online platform, presumably having never bet or seen the person he is threatening. Besides the ridiculous nature of the threat in the first place, what does “#nihilism” even mean in the context of his post? Being that he simply referenced its existence and implied that it had some sort of relevance to his post, I guess he thinks that: A. The simple act of including the world will make him seem smart, or B. The societal misunderstanding of nihilism and its meaning as a sinister non-philosophy will enhance the effectiveness of the threat. Both of these are completely nonsensical unless he’s threatening someone with a more skewed idea than him, so overall it’s simply a tacky non-word that serves no purpose for his statement.
Without bringing #gamergate into this I will analyze this on its own terms. Anita (Feminist Frequency) is calling people who support #gamergate “mired in the nihilist misogynist mindset of 4chan”. Removing the nonessential parts of that phrase and we get “nihilist misogynist mindset”. By the accusatory tone of the tweet I’m going to guess that “nihilist” is used as an insult, further implied by its proximity to “misogynist”, a word that carries no positive connotation or denotation. Assuming the definition of nihilism that I stated in my first post, Anita seems to be implying that the #gg supporters have no intrinsic morals, and use that to support their misogynist mindset. First of all that is a large assumption on her part to call an entire group of people nihilist where in their collective goal and ideology has nothing to do with nihilism. Second of all, later in that tweet she claims that the #gg supporters are blinded by their beliefs, but isn’t that the exact opposite of what nihilism is? Wouldn’t a “true” nihilist (get me some sugar and a Scottsman) acknowledge their anti-women beliefs and continue on unabated rather than become blinded by their beliefs?
While this is pretty short I’m thinking of splitting this up into two parts. I just don’t want to go on for too long and turn this into a rant (he says sarcastically).
Anyway Happy Halloween and Scary Spooking!
Metaphysical Downer 