I remember when the only place I saw people unironically use the phrase normie was 4chan. And now ironically the normies have adopted the phrase themselves, unknowingly appropriating 4chan culture
It's not a word I use but when I saw it first, I thought it meant neurotypical, then after a while I saw it in a more political context and thought it meant centrist. Turns out, it just means mainstream. I think.
The original meaning of the word as I first heard it back in the late 1990s was to refer to the vast majority of "normal" people who don't have an interest in or deep understanding of technology and internet culture.
I don't think it was originally meant as an insult, but more as an acknowledgement and reminder to ourselves that the things we were into and cared about were a niche thing and not exactly the norm.
Nowadays, I've heard it applied to just about any niche interest or hobby, for example: people who are not into mechanical keyboards would also be "normies", and worse it's being thrown around as a direct insult to people, in the same vein as calling someone "basic".
Actually even further than that, even back in the 80s it was apparently used in certain subcultures to distinguish (drug) "addicts" from "normal people".
The original meaning of the word as I first heard it back in the late 1990s was to refer to the vast majority of “normal” people who don’t have an interest in or deep understanding of technology and internet culture.
that’s still my understanding of normie today. a normie nowadays is the average person who uses soulless platforms like tiktok, insta, etc which are controlled by big tech companies and exist for the sole purpose of making money. they don’t know about the golden age of the internet when you cared about the content you made and not about likes. but now since the normies discovered the internet everything has to generate as much profit as possible
When I think of a normie, I think of the Cleavers, or the Simpsons. A conglomerate average of what we expect white America to look like.
I think every family has to deal with weird shit, weather mental illness, disability, fentanyl addiction, Juggalos or a Gen X discordian auntie who takes no-one’s bullshit. We all have stuff going on that kicks us out of the normie threshold.
Which kinda is the point of this meme. The usage of ‘Normie’ has gotten mainstream and everybody refers to each other as ‘Normie’ implying that they themselves differ. But you know, most people differ a bit. Mainstream is mainstream, but just because you are using a “special” website, that doesn’t make you abnormal.
I’m confident normie comes from 4chan, I’ve seen it thrown around there since long before it became mainstream, but there they were using it to refer to people living normal lives, something they (mostly) wanted to achieve. (I.E.: “I’ve got a girlfriend, I’m finally on my way to become a normie”)
Now in its current usage it is more like an insult, something like saying “you are a basic bitch”, which implies that person who said that isnt.
Get a job that requires you to spend 60+hours of your week offline and you’ll quickly realize how mind numbingly boring your coworkers are. That shit incinerates any personality you possess and makes you appreciate how much more interesting those “terminally online” people actually are. You’ll not pry anything beyond small talk out of them no matter how hard you try.
You just don't have a good job. That has nothing to do with IRL vs internet. You are around, likely, a bit very large group of people day in and day out and have now decided they represent the world because you haven't stepped outside the world that is your job.
That is the problem, though. There’s a certain amount of free time required to be spent conversing if significant ideas are to be conveyed, When I was in university I could talk about wackiest stuff with basically anyone I meet because all of us had enough free time to engage with those ideas. If work snatches that free time away from us, there’s not much we can do.
The people you can meet online also exist in the real world and probably in your area. I fail to see any argument here that is an actual rebuttal to the thread. This has nothing to do with free time or otherwise. It has to do with the concept of stereotyping the people you know offline and deciding they don't even exist online and that people who spend all their free time online are somehow advantaged by default.
Stereotyping is foolish. Especially on such a small sample set simply because of outsized exposure.
Strong disagree. We just left the place overrun with „normies“ and one of the reason they stay and go on using reddit with their vanilla apple devices while sipping a moccachino at starbucks is because they‘re basic and boring.
Edit: Okay, since we don’t all have the same humor, I‘d like to spoil that this was not a serious comment. I just don’t think calling Someone a normie is different than „nerd“.
While twitter and insta users call facebook users normies which call people who actually go outside normies. We‘re being called normies by coders and they are called normies by hackers the likes of anonymous. The never ending normieception.
I guess you missed out on the conversation a week or so ago about how ridiculous elitist folks who use the term "normies" sound and how it's inherently not aligned with the idea of the fediverse. But sure, you do you.
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