#tendency to act flamboyantly

[mariacallous]

A few years ago I attended a manosphere conference in Orlando, Florida. One of the masculinity gurus was up on stage doing his macho man routine. He talked of ‘alpha males’ and ‘patriarchs’ and there was some Jungian waffle about initiation rituals. Then out of nowhere he began talking about ‘the Js’ acting ‘behind the scenes’. He had sprinkled it into the speech like herbs on a pizza.

At the time I found it quite shocking, though looking back it seems entirely unremarkable, not least because such sentiments have become depressingly common in certain parts of the internet. ��They [Israel] control the Matrix. They control narratives,’ the accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate told his livestream audience in August 2024. Following his arrest that the same month, Tate also retweeted a post by the American white supremacist Nick Fuentes. ‘Just 2 days after Andrew Tate said that “the Matrix” is really just the Jewish mafia – his house was raided and he was arrested again,’ said Fuentes in the tweet promoted by Tate. Moreover earlier that year Tate had urged his followers to question whether ‘they’ lied about the Second World War and whether the Nazis were really the ‘bad guys’.

Others in the manosphere have gone the same way. Dan Bilzerian, the Instagram playboy whose ostentatious lifestyle made him a hero to adolescent males of all ages during the 2010s, has turned into a full blown Holocaust denier. ‘6 million Jews did not die during WW2, they lied to you,’ he wrote on X in January 2025. ‘Stop calling “them” Globalists, Elitists, Frankists, Sabbateanists, Communists, Deep State, Zionists, Oligarchists, Rothschild Bankers JUST SAY JEWS...’, tweeted Myron Gaines, co-host of the popular Fresh&Fit podcast, in August 2024. Others in the masculinity huckster scene talk of being ‘Jewpilled’.

The 2000s manosphere was largely made up of pickup artists. They were misogynists to be sure and displayed a cavalier attitude toward the free will of women. They gave men scripted lines and sent them out to bars and clubs to practice on unsuspecting women. Their clients were told to ‘disregard’ what women said and to ‘push through’ what was characterised as ‘token resistance’. Yet by and large they were not political misogynists - they did not launch into jaundiced three-hour diatribes about a ‘gynocentric social order’. In fact, if women found one of their clients repulsive then it was his fault rather than hers. ‘She’s not a bitch,’ as probably the most famous pickup artist - Mystery (aka Erik von Markovik) - used to tell his students; ‘she’s just a bitch to you.’

A change in tone became evident during the 2010s when self-proclaimed ‘red pill’ gurus began to emerge. In their eyes she definitely was a bitch. Whereas Mystery had dressed flamboyantly and worn kohl eyeliner to the club as part of his ‘peacocking’ routine, the new brooms of the manosphere saw men in makeup as part of the problem: a sign that society had become irredeemably feminised and degenerate.

The basic premise of the red pill is that women run the world. It is therefore unsurprising that its devotees should be susceptible to other conspiratorial beliefs. I suspect this is partly down to what has been called ‘crank magnetism’: the tendency of delusional beliefs to attract each other and become magnetic. Each is a product of the same sloppy thinking.

But the structure of manosphere misogyny is also similar in some ways to that of antisemitism. Women, like Jews, are depicted as opposites. They are both inferior and superior; weak but powerful; governed by a fluctuating tide of emotion yet simultaneously capable of crushing men under the jackboot of feminism.

One way to resolve such tensions is to view women as doing someone else’s bidding. And so they become marionettes, controlled by dark forces pulling the strings behind the scenes. That those behind the curtain should turn out to be Jews is less surprising when one considers the increasing overlap between the manosphere and the far-right.

[my-rewrite-academia]

hi hello, there’s a scene in the MHA game Ultra Impact where Aoyama gets called a fairy (don’t think the translators are aware of the connotations with using fairy as an insult, but I guess Aoyama confirmed GAY in the English dub /not clickbait /the truth /don’t fact check me)

Which leads me to my question. Is there any scenes/moments from any of the MHA Video Games that you are planning on including in your rewrite?

Hello!

-

First and foremost, I do not plan on adding game content to the rewrite, though I may take inspiration for certain characters, as the games felt very, um, filler to be honest.

It didn't feel like they had much of an impact and were only really created because the manga/anime were so popular.

Again, I might take inspiration as there was some level of development for the world, but not enough to justify including the games in its entirely. The games were a cash-grab, basically, especially the fortnite rip-off.

Secondly, I believe they were referring to Yuuga's tendency to sparkle rather than acting flamboyantly. Although I wouldn't mind Yuuga being gay. Not even because he fits dated stereotypes, but just because he's an icon.

So, yeah. I'm not planning in using gameplay, though I may use the movesets of characters for fight scenes and such, if I ever describe them in-depth. I'm not an action-writer expert, (though most of my fics are based on action series), but I hope to do it justice!

-

Thanks for the ask!

[inspectorspacetimerevisited]

Despite (or perhaps because of) his tendency towards ham and cheese,

fans cheered Robin Hood when he appeared in ‘Android of Sherwood’.

[danielwaldorf]

☕️ steve’s beautiful character arc

god bless you for sending this ask also i am so sorry this is gonna be long as FUCK and it’s not gonna be REMOTELY coherent

TL;DR: steve’s arc is the second-best in the show behind el, largely because he maintains his crucial traits and motivations while changing his actions and beliefs to try and be a better person

okay to start off i’m obviously biased as fuck because steve is my main hoe and i love him to death. that being said i genuinely think steve has the most solid character arc in the entire show save for el, and i think the biggest factor in that is the fact that joe keery has been so involved in the shaping and direction of steve’s character ever since he was cast. obviously every actor brings a lot to their character, but what’s unique about steve is that he was initially meant to be a true villain and die in s1, and joe convinced the duffers to change that. joe’s done an excellent job of keeping steve’s most basic traits consistent as the writers developed his character so that Steve feels real.

what makes steve’s character arc so good and believable is that, at his core, he... doesn’t really change That much? throughout the show, his defining character traits never really change: he’s loyal, he pays a lot of attention to other people and what they think of him, he’s more of a doer than a thinker, he has some issues with his father, he doesn’t have a personal vision for the future so he tries to stick to the designated path of “success,” and he wants to be a good person. what changes isn’t necessarily his intrinsic motivations, but his actions and thought processes, which makes for an excellent character arc!!

to start off with: controversial opinion, but i don’t think steve was That much of an asshole in s1. he was definitely an asshole! he just wasn’t evil or a total piece of shit like b*lly. he was just a dickhead high school kid, yknow? he was short-sighted, selfish, and didn’t take anything seriously. at the same time, he clearly cared a lot about other people (and what they thought of him)- demonstrated in little things like him sharing his lunch with his friends without them even asking, and the fact that he went to apologize to nancy after he blew off her concerns about barb because he was too preoccupied with not getting in trouble. he goes along with the crowd and does whatever he thinks he Should do, like letting tommy and carol vandalize the marquee (i can’t recall the exact dialogue but i think he says like “i shouldn’t have let carol do it” or whatever anyways it wasn’t his idea but he didn’t stop his friends). the fight with jonathan is steve’s only real Asshole moment for me. obviously he was dismissive of barb being missing which was shitty but he had no real reason to think that barb was dead yknow? he was approaching the situation from the stance of a teenager in a small town where bad things don’t usually happen. he was blinded by his own petty concerns of getting in trouble, and while insensitive to nancy, i think it was an understandable offense for a teenager (and one he apologized for).

and... since i Must address the camera thing... i personally think steve 100% had the right to break jonathan’s camera. of course he said some shitty things that he didn’t need to, and a lot of people argue that since jonathan was taking pictures of nancy, steve had no right to be outraged on her behalf, but i disagree with that argument. just because nancy was willing to forgive jonathan doesn’t let him off the hook! he was in steve’s backyard, taking pictures of an intimate moment through steve’s bedroom window. steve’s privacy was violated just as much as nancy’s. so, even if you don’t think that “sticking up for nancy” and being protective of her was a valid motivation, i still think it was justified. so yeah anyways.

back to the fight!!! steve lashes out and says like the meanest shit he can think of to jonathan because he’s so deeply hurt by nancy’s perceived betrayal and he Wants to get into a fight, which goes along with his deep sense of loyalty, preoccupation with what other people (his shitty friends mostly) think of him, his tendency to do whatever he’s “supposed” to do, and his desire to act rather than sit around and ruminate. some guy sleeps with your girlfriend, you’re supposed to kick his ass, and if you don’t then you’re a pussy, and if you can’t hit him to let out the anger and heartbreak then you have to sit in it and think about it and feel it. so basically what makes steve so cool is that these traits of his fuel both his biggest mistakes and his biggest hero moments!!

what many people see as steve’s total 180 at the end of s1 is actually, in my view, very consistent with his character up until that point. he went to nancy’s house to apologize earlier in the season, and this time he does the same thing for jonathan, because he’s realized how shitty he was and he knows that he doesn’t want to be that guy. once he’s there, he’s worried about nancy (consistent with prior protective/concerned behavior), and of course he chooses to run back inside! he cared enough to look up jonathan’s address and go to his house at night just to apologize after jonathan beat the shit out of him just hours ago, which is pretty serious- as someone who clearly feels guilt pretty deeply and wants to make things right, someone confident in his athletic ability, someone who thinks he might love nancy wheeler... why the fuck would he not go back in the help them?

his development in s2-s3 is a lot more about, like, being better to himself than it is about being better to others like it was in s1. at the beginning of s2, he basically defines his future in relation to nancy and his father. after he gets his heart broken (and i’m not gonna go into why he and nancy were incompatible bc that’s a whole other post and this shit is already ungodly long) and loses his “king” reputation, dustin and the other kids give him something to believe in, fight for, and care about. something that has nothing to do with the prescribed outline for success (popularity, sports, marrying a nice girl, working in the family business) that steve’s been basing his whole life on. he still misses nancy by the end of the season, but he’s realized that their picture-perfect future was never gonna happen, and he’s content with her finding her true happiness even if it’s not with him. also when he takes dustin to the snow ball he’s super encouraging and when he notices that dustin is feeling insecure, he shuts that shit DOWN and reassures him that he looks amazing which is just... so precious...

as he finds people to care about and things that bring him real joy in life (basically the kids and robin), steve also grows more and more expressive throughout the show, dressing more stylishly/flamboyantly, allowing his hair to become more and more wild, and goofing around/laughing a lot more. he’s basically a fucking angel in s3 and he finally lets go of all the high school bullshit that he was allowing to define him! he’s still very loyal, still pays very close attention to the people around him and how they feel, but now this is less about protecting his reputation and more about being a good friend. much like how he reassured dustin in s2, he prioritizes robin’s comfort and happiness during the bathroom scene in s3. he still acts fast in a pinch and tries to do the right thing whenever possible, always taking responsibility for his mistakes, and even though he doesn’t have a vision for his future, he’s okay with living in the moment and enjoying his life even though he hasn’t attained traditional “success” of any sort. he still has all of the same core character traits as he did in s1, he’s just learned how to be kinder, less selfish, and less concerned with fitting into a certain mold.

so yeah uh this was a goddamn mess and i’m sorry and i hope it all makes sense!!! thank you again for asking lmao

[itsmyhugbear]

more anon responses re: taako and femininity. just as a little reminder, this blog isn’t active as an art blog any longer, though I’m not gonna ignore messages or anything ha ha. please check out my main or twitter if you’d like to keep following my art!

lotsa discourse ahead, I mentioned yesterday I wasn’t interested in censoring my thoughts for the sake of palatability anymore, so I’m just gettin real salty over here. apologies!

I appreciate this message but am not quite sure how to interpret your meaning, since the sentiment you’re referring to - that for men, gay isn’t synonymous with flamboyance and effeminacy - is kind of different to what I was discussing and in fact my Taako is pretty effeminate, I draw him in skirts and dresses or fashion normally seen as womanly quite often, and as a character he is quite flamboyant and effete! I wasn’t discussing the choices Taako would make in presentation but the choices I make in depicting his facial structure and physique. I’m not sure that the prevalence of soft ‘womanly’ features, wide hips, narrow shoulders etc in real life gay men is necessarily an issue people on tumblr are debating either way lol. But certainly the prevalence of those things in depictions of gay men is an issue, ergo with BL manga and stuff, where one participant seems to always require wide eyes, a heart-shaped face, narrow shoulders, small hands etc - in short, features that are generally associated with women, and with the descriptor ‘beautiful’. 

Of course I agree that many gay men do not present or behave in a flamboyantly feminine way, I’m not sure anyone is debating that. As it were Taako is a gay man who is flamboyant and feminine. I was arguing that the tendency of fandom to depict him as ‘beautiful’ in a womanly way, independently of his presentation and behaviour, can be read as pretty homophobic. Like it speaks to a deeply entrenched discomfort with a man, who looks and acts like the socially constructed image of ‘a man’, exhibiting untoward ‘girliness’. In the same way, those who are invested in his identity as an unapologetically gay man sometimes feel the need to try and defend him from allegations of femininity, as though being flamboyant or effeminate in presentation is something that detracts from his maleness or otherwise undermines his male identity. Of course not all gay men are feminine, but the fact that many do not want to be associated with that stereotype speaks to internalised homophobia in its willingness to throw men who do conform to those stereotypes under the bus, to position them as “the wrong type of gay” for not assimilating.

And obviously Taako’s written and acted by a straight man and there is all sorts of analysis and critique to be done on the choices he made for Taako. But Taako exists, is complex and funny and intelligent and flawed, is so loved and important to so many people, in many ways is the driving force of the entire narrative - it was his quick thinking that saved Magnus in Wonderland; he’s the one who restored the connection between the Material and Astral Planes; he killed John; he was the only one to see outside of Lucretia’s and Lup’s respective plans at the crucial moment! And he’s an effeminate man who expresses unapologetic attraction towards other men and wears skirts! That’s kickass! He has a shrill falsetto drawl and he wears skirts and he is “the wrong type of gay”, and he’s one of the most iconic heroes in fiction for decades! Is it that deep? Am I responding in a reasonable, measured way to a podcast man who cast fireball with his butt? No it isn’t and no I am not! But it means a lot to me that he exists and is a man and it bums me out to see him emasculated by fandom sometimes!

(also - I realise I was responding to a lot of stuff you didn’t even say anon and I apologise, I know we’re in agreement, I was just using your message as a springboard to talk more about stuff that’s been on my mind for a while!)

I’m glad you like my depiction of him! Being that I’m cis I feel like any statement I make on Lup’s design could be pretty fraught so I’m not gonna, but I do draw Lup with boobs. I kinda feel like it’s not for me to make statements on how trans women should or shouldn’t express their femaleness... I mean hopefully my drawings of her speak for themselves! I definitely do agree though that neither Taako nor Kravitz needs to be depicted as ‘the woman’ of their relationship, lol. Thank you so much for your kind words!

I NEVER THOUGHT OF THIS BUT I LOVE IT?

[recentanimenews]

Der Werwolf: the Annals of Veight, Vol. 3

By Hyougetsu and Nishi(E)da. Released in Japan by Earth Star Entertainment. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Ningen.

The author described this as being a “slow” volume, which is a bit of a stretch given that one third of the way in our heroes are fighting a kraken. The plot of this book is essentially “Veight goes around to the rest of the Southern Territories and convinces them to join forces”. One area has the aforementioned kraken that needs to be taken out. Another, a town made of labyrinths designed to trap enemies, is already being targeted by the villainous Senate, and Veight and company have to convince people that a) they’re not responsible for the assassination of the ruler, and b) stop all the assassins who are. Fortunately he has help from a number of old friends as well as a new character, Parker, who is… well, he’s Brook from One Piece. Though he can at least disguise himself as “not a skeleton”. The puns, unfortunately, are still there. That said, does Veight even need help?

Veight continues to be the best reason to read these books. We’re used to harem protagonists that are clueless about the girls who like them, but Der Werwolf has little to no romance as of yet, so with Veight it’s more “he is unaware of his nature”. It’s not clear if he’s doing this deliberately to avoid the issue or not, but Veight’s tendency to pick the most dangerous solution has been noticed by most of his subordinates, and they aren’t very happy. It’s especially funny when he chastises others for the exact same thing, and is somewhat amazed when called out on it. To be fair, Veight probably COULD take out everything that goes against him by himself. We see more of his ludicrous “I can use magic and am also a werwolf” combos here, and they’re enough to get an enemy army to run away in fear.

The rest of the characters are not as good as Veight, sadly. I’d mentioned Parker was Brook from One Piece, and am wondering if “undead skeleton + puns” is a thing in Japan. There’s also a viceroy who decides, to make himself stand out, to act flamboyantly gay, and all the little stereotypical tick boxes are checked there, but fortunately he only shows up near the end. And we also get a glimpse of the Senate, which seems evenly divided between “evil” and “stupid AND evil”. Probably the best new character was Shatina, the daughter of the murdered viceroy, who starts off as a terrified teenager but, by the end of the book, has to be talked down from turning her city into a tool to get monstrous revenge on all those who have wronged her. The author would seem to agree, as the short story after the main book has her and Firnir, the centaur girl, bonding as they explore the underground labyrinth below Shatina’s own labyrinth of a city.

Der Werwolf’s most impressive feature continues to be its readability – you never get bogged down in prose the way you do in so many other light novels. I look forward to seeing more of Veight being ridiculously overpowered and totally unaware of it.

By: Sean Gaffney

[profoundradiance-blog]

38 4 34 9 32 6

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS /// OPEN

4. What is their size and build? How does it influence how they use their body, if it does?

Joan is rather tall for a woman, standing around five foot nine. She has a slender figure though, only weighing one hundred eight pounds. Although she does have some self-image issues, she is also aware that most people find her attractive, so she uses that to her advantage when it comes to flirting or getting what she wants. She finds her height inconvenient, however, and wishes she was shorter.

6. What are they like in motion–in different environments, and in different activities? What causes the differences between these?

If an environment is not stressful for her, Joan can be playful and pleasant company. While she acts snooty, she also spoils others and takes advantage of her wealth to help if she feels it’s right. However, if an environment is stressful for her, or she is forced to do something she doesn’t like, Joan can get very temperamental and feels threatened by her lack of control.

9. How do they manifest energy, exhaustion, tension, or other strong emotions?

She works. Most people do not notice her tendency to occupy herself, but she tries to keep herself busy. Otherwise, pent up emotions can evolve negatively and cause her to lash out at others. While it still happens, she tries to avoid it, hoping to tire herself out before reaching that point.

32. Do they have any “props” that are a significant part of their life, identity, activities, or self-presentation somehow? What are they, how are they used, and why are they so significant? How would these props’ absence impact them, how would they compensate, and why?

Joan did not always wear so much makeup or dress so flamboyantly. It makes her feel secure, like the image that she creates through it is one that she is safely putting up. If she does not go out of her way to present herself to someone, then it is a symbol of vulnerability and trust from her end.

34. How do they understand the world–what kind of worldview and thought processes do they have? Why?

People are cruel and will try to shove her down. Due to being bullied so intensely during high school and having her trust betrayed, Joan thinks she always has to fight back and keep up a specific facade in order to not be taken advantage of. Letting people into her life is difficult for her because of this.

38. Is there anything they wish they could change about their worldview or thought processes? What, and why?

She wishes that everything was easier, that she could be as innocent as she was when she was still a child. Now though, Joan thinks that she sees people for who they really are, which makes it impossible for her to hold that mindset anymore. 

[stillshrine]

Gay Homophobia

“(...) Gay men’s homophobia may sound oxymoronic, but it’s increasingly apparent in a culture that prizes masculinity and derides campness. You can see it when gay men who conform to stereotypes by worshipping Beyoncé, quoting RuPaul or dressing flamboyantly are met with a wince or said to be letting the side down (...). Increasingly, it appears that the divide is no longer between heteros and homos, but gay men who separate into ‘camp’ and ‘straight-acting’, a term that implies a degree of posturing. Take Giorgio Armani’s recent comments. The designer, who was in a long-term relationship with architect Sergio Galeotti until the latter’s death from AIDS in 1985, said in an interview in April that ‘a man has to be a man’ and gay men ‘do not need to dress homo-sexual’ (...). Two weeks earlier, the gay actor Russell Tovey had caused a similar furore when he spoke of his relief at attending a tough school that allowed him to escape his destiny as a ‘really effeminate, tap-dancing freak’. (...) Comedian Alan Carr has said that ‘the most homophobia I get is from gays’. Camp-shaming isn’t reserved for celebrities [only]. I have a friend, (...) who says he’s had men approach him in bars, only to ‘tell me that I’m too camp as soon as I open my mouth’: ‘It’s depressing to see gay men attacking each other, when we should be allies.’ Queer performance artist Scottee — who hosted a variety showcase called Camp (Live!) — admits to feeling shunned by the gay scene. (...) The strapline for the gay scene is ‘no fats, no femmes’. Where (...) [c]omments such as ‘If I wanted to go out with a girl, I’d date women’ abound within gay circles and feed the notion that to be camp is to be intrinsically unsexy. What’s behind the phenomenon? (...) Matthew Todd, editor of Attitude, (...) suggests that such prejudices have a similar root when expressed by gay people as straight: ‘Gay people grow up hearing the same messages that straight people who end up being homophobic hear,’ he says. ‘There aren’t magical ear plugs that gay kids are given to stop them absorbing society’s homophobia, so naturally they internalise it.’ ‘In our society we have these fixed gender norms, which we’re expected to abide by,’ agrees Guardian columnist Owen Jones. He believes that the root of gay camp-shaming lies in a pervasive sexism resulting from gendered expectations. He draws comparisons with how feminism benefits men, by freeing them from restrictive norms, and how a decrease in homophobia would similarly benefit straight men. ‘I’d go as far as to say that most homophobia directed at young men growing up is directed at straight men. Straight men who are seen as not athletic or aggressive enough are dismissed as ‘poofs’. The biggest killer of men aged 18 to 50 is suicide, partly because men are afraid to seek help for fear of being seen as weak or effeminate.’ William, 29, a gay graphic designer, tells me he ‘can’t stand the spectacle of Pride’ because ‘all those men dancing on floats don’t speak to me about my life. Most of my friends are straight; I hate the idea of them thinking all that glitter and camp has anything to do with me. I find it all quite embarrassing.’ This embarrassment, says sex and relationship therapist Dr Joe Kort, may be rooted in gay men’s often complicated relationships with their own masculinity: ‘Gay men are taught from a young age that they are not manly enough, inferior and wrong. There’s a tendency to become hyper-masculinised and express prejudice toward other gay men who don’t ‘pass’ as straight.’ This isn’t, he says, a phenomenon unique to gay men: ‘We see this in other minorities, too — it is called lateral discrimination. Unconsciously, we do to others what was done to us.’ Todd adds that apps such as Grindr, rather than connecting the community, are contributing to its division by fostering camp-shaming. ‘If you’re looking for a relationship, you aren’t expecting perfection. When you’re just looking for sex, you want the fantasy — and that’s when people become obsessive about wanting straight-acting or masculine men. It puts unbearable pressure on everybody. On top of this, if you don’t like that you are slightly effeminate or camp, and you come across people who are even more so, that can trigger your own shame. (...) What can be done about this? Jones says he has an ‘unashamedly positive view’ when it comes to the progress made by gay people. The hope is that as homophobia in the world at large decreases, it will have a knock-on effect for young gay people, who will naturally internalise less shame and be less prejudiced towards each other. This may already be happening, says Todd: ‘I think there’s a growing awareness that bars and clubs aren’t enough and gay people need a sense of community. There’s a movement — visible in the emergence of discussion groups such as A Change of Scene at the Soho health clinic 56 Dean Street — where we confront issues that gay people don’t talk about. The more these issues are out in the open, the easier they are to resolve.’ (...) In the short-term, LGBT activist Peter Tatchell suggests becoming more conscious of how personal prejudices affect behaviour: ‘There’s nothing wrong with having a preference for masculine men. What’s wrong is the disparaging way camp men are often put down, ostracised and dismissed.’ And if more gay men can begin to recognise and confront their own homo-phobia? Well, then that’s something we can all be proud of.” — Joe Stone. “Does London have a homophobia problem within the gay community? (2015)” Standard Magazine.

[deniscollins]

How Hate Groups Forced Online Platforms to Reveal Their True Nature

If you were a Facebook executive, would you ban pages with names like ‘‘White Nationalists United’’ or does this violate freedom of speech on the Internet: (1) Yes, (2) No, (3) something else (if so, what?)? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

White supremacist marchers had not yet lit their torches when the deletions began. The ‘‘Unite the Right’’ Facebook page, which had been used to organize the rally in Charlottesville, was removed the day before the event was scheduled, forcing planners to disperse to other platforms to organize. And then, in the hours and days after a participant drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring at least 19 others, internet companies undertook a collective purge.

Facebook banned a range of pages with names like ‘‘Right Wing Death Squad’’ and ‘‘White Nationalists United.’’ Reddit banned, among others, a hard-right community called ‘‘Physical Removal,’’ an organizer of which had called the weekend’s killing ‘‘a morally justified action.’’ Twitter suspended an unknown number of users, including popular accounts associated with 4chan’s openly fascistic Politically Incorrect message board, or /pol/. Discord, a chat app for gamers that doubled as an organizing tool for the event, and where a prominent white supremacist had called for disrupting Heyer’s funeral, rushed to do cleanup.

The clampdown extended beyond the walled gardens of social platforms to a wide array of online services. The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi site that promoted the march and celebrated its fatal outcome, was banned by the domain registrar and hosting service GoDaddy, then hours later by Google’s hosting service, then lost access to SendGrid, which it had used to deliver its newsletter; PayPal cut off the white nationalist Richard Spencer’s organization, which later lost access to its web host, Squarespace; Airbnb removed the accounts of a number of Charlottesville attendees before the event, and released a statement saying that ‘‘violence, racism and hatred demonstrated by neo-­Nazis, the alt-right and white supremacists should have no place in this world’’; by Wednesday, Spotify was even expunging ‘‘white supremacist’’ music from its library.

The platforms’ sudden action in response to an outpouring of public grief and rage resembles, at first glance, a moral awakening and suggests a mounting sense of responsibility to the body politic. You could be forgiven for seeing this as a turning point for these sites, away from a hands-off approach to the communities they host and toward something with more oversight and regulation. An inside-out version of this analysis has been embraced by right-wing users, who have wasted no time declaring these bans a violation of their free speech. But this is an incomplete accounting of what happened and one that serves two parties and two parties alone: the companies themselves and the people they’ve just banned.

The recent rise of all-encompassing internet platforms promised something unprecedented and invigorating: venues that unite all manner of actors — politicians, media, lobbyists, citizens, experts, corporations — under one roof. These companies promised something that no previous vision of the public sphere could offer: real, billion-strong mass participation; a means for affinity groups to find one another and mobilize, gain visibility and influence. This felt and functioned like freedom, but it was always a commercial simulation. This contradiction is foundational to what these internet companies are. Nowhere was this tension more evident than in the case of Cloudflare, a web-infrastructure company. Under sustained pressure to drop The Daily Stormer as a client, the company’s chief executive, Matthew Prince, eventually assented. It was an arbitrary decision, and one that was out of step with the company’s stated policies. This troubled Prince. ‘‘I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the internet,’’ he wrote in an email to his staff. ‘‘No one should have that power.’’

Social platforms tend to refer to their customers in euphemistic, almost democratic terms: as ‘‘users’’ or ‘‘members of a community.’’ Their leaders are prone to statesmanlike posturing, and some, like Mark Zuckerberg, even seem to have statesmanlike ambitions. Content moderation and behavioral guidelines are likewise rendered in the terms of legal governance, as are their systems for dispute and recourse (as in the ubiquitous post-ban ‘‘appeal’’). Questions about how platforms like Twitter and Reddit deal with disruptive users and offensive content tend to be met with defensive language invoking free speech.

In the process of building private communities, these companies had put on the costumes of liberal democracies. They borrowed the language of rights to legitimize arbitrary rules, creating what the technology lawyer Kendra Albert calls ‘‘legal talismans.’’ This was first and foremost operationally convenient or even necessary: What better way to avoid liability and responsibility for how customers use your product? It was also good marketing. It’s easier to entrust increasingly large portions of your private and public life to an advertising and data-mining firm if you’re led to believe it’s something more. But as major internet platforms have grown to compose a greater share of the public sphere, playing host to consequential political organization — not to mention media — their internal contradictions have become harder to ignore. Far before Charlottesville, they had already become acute.

In a bracing Vice documentary about the rally, a man identified as a writer for The Daily Stormer told the reporter Elle Reeve, ‘‘As you can see, we’re stepping off the internet in a big way.’’ He saw the turnout as confirmation that what he’d been a part of online was real. ‘‘We have been spreading our memes, we’ve been organizing on the internet, and so now they’re coming out,’’ he said, before digressing into a rant about ‘‘anti-white, anti-American filth.’’ This sentiment was echoed in active and longstanding far-right communities on Reddit and 4chan and adjacent communities on Facebook and Twitter.

It is worth noting that the platforms most flamboyantly dedicated to a borrowed idea of free speech and assembly are the same ones that have struggled most intensely with groups of users who seek to organize and disrupt their platforms. A community of trolls on an internet platform is, in political terms, not totally unlike a fascist movement in a weak liberal democracy: It engages with and uses the rules and protections of the system it inhabits with the intent of subverting it and eventually remaking it in their image or, if that fails, merely destroying it.

But what gave these trolls power on platforms wasn’t just their willingness to act in bad faith and to break the rules and norms of their environment. It was their understanding that the rules and norms of platforms were self-serving and cynical in the first place. After all, these platforms draw arbitrary boundaries constantly and with much less controversy — against spammers, concerning profanity or in response to government demands. These fringe groups saw an opportunity in the gap between the platforms’ strained public dedication to discourse stewardship and their actual existence as profit-driven entities, free to do as they please. Despite their participatory rhetoric, social platforms are closer to authoritarian spaces than democratic ones. It makes some sense that people with authoritarian tendencies would have an intuitive understanding of how they work and how to take advantage of them.

This was also a moment these hate groups were anticipating; getting banned in an opaque, unilateral fashion was always the way out and, to some degree, it suits them. In the last year, hard-right communities on social platforms have cultivated a pre-emptive identity as platform refugees and victims of censorship. They’ve also been preparing for this moment or one like it: There are hard-right alternatives to Twitter, to Reddit and even to the still-mostly-lawless 4chan. There are alternative fund-raising sites in the mold of GoFundMe or Kickstarter; there’s an alternative to Patreon called Hatreon. Like most of these new alternatives, it has cynically borrowed a cause — it calls itself a site that ‘‘stands for free speech absolutism’’ — that the more mainstream platforms borrowed first. Their persecution narrative, which is the most useful narrative they have, and one that will help spread their cause beyond the fringes, was written for them years ago by the same companies that helped give them a voice.