I complain a lot about the state of fandom spaces on the internet (have you read this and this?) so it surprises me that I haven’t blamed the gringos for anything yet.

Supposedly, the English-speaking side of the internet is more international/diverse. In reality it’s gringos who monopolize discourse and establish values, logics, and etiquette. The stupid culture war became real when people outside the United States started treating media in terms of “woke vs non-woke,” and when yelling “media literacy!!!” became cooler than actually applying it. A random dude will “explain” an anime in a 1-minute video on TikTok and young folks will absorb whatever he said as the truth if it sounds morally appealing.

Or a game like Stellar Blade gets mentioned because of its sexual content on a liberal website; right wingers see it later and overrepresent the opinion that made them mad about a game that actually nearly no one complained that much about. Like, who gives a fuck about a very specific sexualized character? Are you kidding me? That drama was 100% fabricated, and intentionally or not it polarized people around a false dichotomy.

But you see, both the liberal media and the conservatives are rewarded with interactions and peace of mind, so that’s all that matters, right? Something-something-capitalism, I suppose.

The smartest people I know from the internet are usually not gringos. Smart people think feminism and anti-fascism are good causes, and that they are not necessarily in contradiction with whatever specific shocking or fucked up content you might find in something fictional. Nor do they base their education on TikTok videos.