Why yes, I was born in 1988 but luckily when I first started making usernames in middle school, I decided to use the random number 45 in them instead. Yup, good old 45, nothing awful or related to white supremacists associated with that number… Sigh.
I mean at least its when they lost.
I stole this name from the b3ta front page, and honestly I’m incredibly lucky it gained an association with kittens and pornography.
I’ve long use “2015” appended to my initials for screen names. It has no particular significance. I started using it over a decade before 2015. I was signing up for an account, and I added my age then to the current year. Thus, I ended up with 2015 as “my” number.
Early on, it was no problem. It was still well in the future. Around 2015, it became impossible to use the number. Inevitably someone would claim the number for a username before I did. Now, 2015 is easy again to claim appended to my initials. Unfortunately, now when I use it, I get accused of being 10 years old.
Hey, what’s this 10 year old “scientist” doing on Lemmy? Get outta here kid
Chinese never cared, 88 is “double prosperity” to us chinese and it will never change. Western gatekeeping is annoying as heck.
Right, everything is somehow going to offend someone. Honestly. I had no idea of 88 being offensive until a few years ago, and it was on Reddit/Lemmy echo chambers; I have never heard or seen 88 being used intentionally offensively IRL; I have never been made aware of it, anyway.
Yes, I’ve used 88. I was born in 88.
I think in Greek culture it’s offensive to “show your palms”/an open hand, they treat it like a middle finger. Americans accidentally do that all the time.
I want to say maybe 8 years ago now they tried to sound the alarm about the OK symbol (👌) being a dogwhistle for “White Power”, and they listed off a number of weak examples. And I think everyone collectively said shut the fuck up, nobody cares, the OK symbol is used everywhere & the great majority of people don’t use it to express “White Power”. How ridiculous.
Don’t ask for permission to do painfully basic things. They’ll take everything from you, they’ll take your 88s, your OK symbols, and idk anything else they feel like being offended about. I hear Nazis breathe oxygen & drink water. Damn, guess we need to stop that, too. Or maybe, just maybe…just don’t be a Nazi & live your life. ¯\(°_o)/¯
88 is not offensive. It’s a nazi dogwhistle. There’s a big difference.
I also assure you that Americans don’t do the Greek “mountza” all the time.
Even if I were born in 1988, I surely wouldn’t use the number in a username. Same if my initials would AH or HH.
Unfortunately most people are completely clueless about dogwhistles.
Which is exactly why they’re called dog whistles. It’s so only certain people (the ones in the know) are able to find the true message. The entire point is to signal solidarity and find like-minded bigots, without exposing yourself. Because they know that if they just come out and blatantly say it, they’ll face a lot of backlash. So instead, they hide behind dog whistles.
Ngl I had no idea about 88 until now.
True. I was born in 1988, I used to have 88 in a username until someone pointed it out to me.
Seconded, if I wasn’t married, interfaith I wouldn’t know even half the dog whistles.
People with 88 in their usernames are probably people who’ve been rocking the same username for 20+ years at this point. I think my username naming scheme hasn’t changed since I was single digits in age logging intk AIM and MSN Messenger
I dunno, if I had a username (I don’t care how old) and found out it had a racist dogwhistle, I’d change accounts.
Like how my fiance came home onr day and threw out his Punisher shirt because “asshole cops are co-opting the Punisher, even though they’re exactly whose asses the Punisher would be beating on!”
That’s how appropriation works though, by forcing out the people who used it in its original context.
However, I think Marvel redesigned the Punisher’s skull logo thing purely because of that. Those who use the old one are guaranteed to be asshole cop and trump supporters who completely missed the memo.
That’s how appropriation works though, by forcing out the people who used it in its original context.
I’d argue that by making it so only the people who use dogwhistles use it, it now becomes a fog horn. No one in 1910 cared about a Hindu symbol for peace. People cared a lot by the end of 1945.
Very good point.
