What is a Groyper?
To understand modernity, you must understand the subcultures that exist today.
Groypers more defined by what they are not than by what they are. They identify with being against things rather than for them. To try to evaluate what the subculture is and its goals are is to mistake them for an ideology like fascism or anarchism. They believe nothing. What drives them is the feeling of alienation born of a loss of privilege. To Groypers, equality feels like oppression.
Their culture is intentionally obscure and ridiculous to outsiders: a green frog and trolling furries, what? Those symbols and in-jokes, which allow them to hide being plausible deniability and promote insider status, are simply their methodology. To focus on memes is to miss the point: they do not explain who Groypers are or what they want (or, as it is, what they don’t want).
In general, Groypers tend to be white, affluent, young, male. Those attributes, I think, are the key to understanding the group.
Whiteness:
Groypers feel that they have not inherited the default social status that their fathers and grandfathers had. The status of being the default. They must navigate a multicultural world that they believe strips them of their birthright of being the unmarked American. They feel scolded by a society that considers them to be privileged. Yet, from their view, minorities and marginalized people of all stripes are the ones with privilege. They see “Black History Month”, race-based scholarships, diversity training, etc. as proof of the privilege of others. This inversion of privilege is a form of racial ressentiment. It externalizes failure: if they feel inferior, it is not their fault but the fault of “others.” Here, equality is re-framed as dispossession.
Affluence:
Affluence matters in two ways. First, it allows a person the leisure time to be “chronically online”, which is key to their identity. It takes time and effort to stay abreast of the latest in-jokes, memes, etc. Subsistence labor does not afford that quantity of leisure. Second, their disaffection is not material deprivation but status anxiety. They have their basic physical needs met. It is the loss of the social capital that once came with their material comfort which causes them to feel displaced. Losing social status can be more devastating to the ego than losing economic status, and that is a wound that festers.
Young:
These are a group of men from early adolescence to early adulthood. They exist in a liminal phase between dependence and independence. It mirrors the unsettle feeling and unease of liminal space in general. Additionally, they have never known a world without fast internet and relatively inexpensive computers. They, in every way, are online. The internet excels at radicalizing, often invisibly. Their youth and digital nativity make them susceptible.
Male:
Groypers alienation is also gendered. They bemoan the loss of traditional masculine roles. Society has moved on from the hetero-normative male exemplars of the recent past. Losing that racial and sexual privilege is devastating. As much as they believe anything, Groypers want a restoration of the racial and sexual hierarchies of the past. Egalitarian ideas of equality of the sexes feel like oppression.
Together, these factors have created a cohort of insular, comfortable men who feel deep resentment at their perceived loss of their racial and sexual primacy. Their alienation is not material but cultural. This is the Groyper condition: alienation without deprivation.
The group has no coherent ideology. A Groyper could not coherently answer the question, “What is it that you want?” He might talk about not getting a job he wanted or not having access to sex from women. However, the “solutions” to those perceived problems are not something that can be articulated in a way that could inspire a policy to tackle them. Legally mandating white men get jobs ahead of others or they must have access to women’s bodies is fantastical. They know only how to negate, not create. Groypers are nihilistic accelerationists in the sense that are accelerating society not towards Utopian rebirth, but toward the destruction as an end. They do not seek a new order; they only seek collapse of the present one.
Which leads us to one of the more paradoxical behaviors of the group. One might their targets would be the Left, minorities, and egalitarians. And yes, those groups are targeted by Groypers and their cultural cousins. Kiwi Farms and 4Chan, for example, are notorious for trolling the Left, sometimes with actual real-world consequences for the targets. But their greatest hatred is saved for the Right itself.
First, the mainstream and even far right are considered traitors. “Conservative, Inc.” are sellouts who have monetized conservatism and compromised its principles. To Groypers, they are not sufficiently reactionary. The enemy is not just Leftism, but the Right’s refusal to explicitly demand the restoration of white, male dominance.
Second, and more importantly, “Conservative, Inc.” possesses what Groypers crave: social status. Their enemies on the Right have access to prestige. Thus, resentment and envy of others on the Right. Leftists are expected to be cultural power. “Conservative, Inc.” is stealing what is rightfully theirs. Their fury towards other conservatives is not just ideological but existential. “Conservative, Inc, is both treasonous and a rival with the recognition that Groypers most desire.
What, then, is a Groyper? Groypers are not defined by ideology but by resentment. They hate equality because it feels like oppression. They hate a multicultural society that has stripped them of their defaultness. Most of all, they hate other conservatives, who possess the status and recognition they believe has been stolen by them. To be a Groyper is not to believe, but to resent.
Groypers more defined by what they are not than by what they are. They identify with being against things rather than for them. To try to evaluate what the subculture is and its goals are is to mistake them for an ideology like fascism or anarchism. They believe nothing. What drives them is the feeling of alienation born of a loss of privilege. To Groypers, equality feels like oppression.
Their culture is intentionally obscure and ridiculous to outsiders: a green frog and trolling furries, what? Those symbols and in-jokes, which allow them to hide being plausible deniability and promote insider status, are simply their methodology. To focus on memes is to miss the point: they do not explain who Groypers are or what they want (or, as it is, what they don’t want).
In general, Groypers tend to be white, affluent, young, male. Those attributes, I think, are the key to understanding the group.
Whiteness:
Groypers feel that they have not inherited the default social status that their fathers and grandfathers had. The status of being the default. They must navigate a multicultural world that they believe strips them of their birthright of being the unmarked American. They feel scolded by a society that considers them to be privileged. Yet, from their view, minorities and marginalized people of all stripes are the ones with privilege. They see “Black History Month”, race-based scholarships, diversity training, etc. as proof of the privilege of others. This inversion of privilege is a form of racial ressentiment. It externalizes failure: if they feel inferior, it is not their fault but the fault of “others.” Here, equality is re-framed as dispossession.
Affluence:
Affluence matters in two ways. First, it allows a person the leisure time to be “chronically online”, which is key to their identity. It takes time and effort to stay abreast of the latest in-jokes, memes, etc. Subsistence labor does not afford that quantity of leisure. Second, their disaffection is not material deprivation but status anxiety. They have their basic physical needs met. It is the loss of the social capital that once came with their material comfort which causes them to feel displaced. Losing social status can be more devastating to the ego than losing economic status, and that is a wound that festers.
Young:
These are a group of men from early adolescence to early adulthood. They exist in a liminal phase between dependence and independence. It mirrors the unsettle feeling and unease of liminal space in general. Additionally, they have never known a world without fast internet and relatively inexpensive computers. They, in every way, are online. The internet excels at radicalizing, often invisibly. Their youth and digital nativity make them susceptible.
Male:
Groypers alienation is also gendered. They bemoan the loss of traditional masculine roles. Society has moved on from the hetero-normative male exemplars of the recent past. Losing that racial and sexual privilege is devastating. As much as they believe anything, Groypers want a restoration of the racial and sexual hierarchies of the past. Egalitarian ideas of equality of the sexes feel like oppression.
Together, these factors have created a cohort of insular, comfortable men who feel deep resentment at their perceived loss of their racial and sexual primacy. Their alienation is not material but cultural. This is the Groyper condition: alienation without deprivation.
The group has no coherent ideology. A Groyper could not coherently answer the question, “What is it that you want?” He might talk about not getting a job he wanted or not having access to sex from women. However, the “solutions” to those perceived problems are not something that can be articulated in a way that could inspire a policy to tackle them. Legally mandating white men get jobs ahead of others or they must have access to women’s bodies is fantastical. They know only how to negate, not create. Groypers are nihilistic accelerationists in the sense that are accelerating society not towards Utopian rebirth, but toward the destruction as an end. They do not seek a new order; they only seek collapse of the present one.
Which leads us to one of the more paradoxical behaviors of the group. One might their targets would be the Left, minorities, and egalitarians. And yes, those groups are targeted by Groypers and their cultural cousins. Kiwi Farms and 4Chan, for example, are notorious for trolling the Left, sometimes with actual real-world consequences for the targets. But their greatest hatred is saved for the Right itself.
First, the mainstream and even far right are considered traitors. “Conservative, Inc.” are sellouts who have monetized conservatism and compromised its principles. To Groypers, they are not sufficiently reactionary. The enemy is not just Leftism, but the Right’s refusal to explicitly demand the restoration of white, male dominance.
Second, and more importantly, “Conservative, Inc.” possesses what Groypers crave: social status. Their enemies on the Right have access to prestige. Thus, resentment and envy of others on the Right. Leftists are expected to be cultural power. “Conservative, Inc.” is stealing what is rightfully theirs. Their fury towards other conservatives is not just ideological but existential. “Conservative, Inc, is both treasonous and a rival with the recognition that Groypers most desire.
What, then, is a Groyper? Groypers are not defined by ideology but by resentment. They hate equality because it feels like oppression. They hate a multicultural society that has stripped them of their defaultness. Most of all, they hate other conservatives, who possess the status and recognition they believe has been stolen by them. To be a Groyper is not to believe, but to resent.
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