H
ave you been following the Rules of the Internet? Providing pictoral evidence for every claim you make? Lurking more than posting? Not sure what this is all about? I’m referencing a famous collection of observations about internet society that emerged in 2006 from the dark recesses of /b/, the notoriously twisted randomtopic messaging board of 4chan. net. The rules, like everything else that comes from 4chan, are a hilarious joke. But nonetheless, they offer us an interesting glimpse into how jaded, narcissistic millennials who are more familiar with Shibe Doge than Dickens view themselves. You may be familiar with the too-true Rule 34: if it exists, there is porn of it. I encourage you to test this by Googling “Rule 34 Transformers” and turning off SafeSearch, or looking for Jesus/
understand the true nature of the digital world. Not only does this mean that we still live in Judith Butler’s “culture in which the false universal of “man” is “coextensive with humanness itself,” but also that women are valued by their breasts . If we’re to believe that if she doesn’t have breasts, she isn’t a woman, we erase the existence trans* women, non-binary genders, and survivors of breast cancer. More dangerously, placing the burden of proof on the woman creates a digital space where she is only allowed to exist as the kind of approval-hungry, intensely shamed slut that would show her breasts on a public messaging board. There’s no better example of this type of girl than Scumbag Stacy. According to Know Your Meme, the popular image originated on January 26th, 2011, from a HottestGirlsOnCampus blog post titled “North Carolina Hat Girl”. The woman pictured is Amber Stratton, winner of CollegeHumor’s 2007 “Hottest Girls on Campus” contest. Stratton
every male character there exists a female version of that character, and vice versa – also brings up some interesting results. It’s rules 30 and 31, however, that are particularly deep:
so we won’t publish the legions of “fap fodder” photos and disrespectful discussions about them that have accrued across the internet. Rest assured, however,
Rule 30: There are no girls on the internet Rule 31: Tits or GTFO
that they exist, and even though the original reddit thread is aware of how misogynist the meme can get, the rest are a heartbreaking, stomach-churning read. As a netizen and dedicated explorer of the great ol’ blag’o’blag, I encounter Stacy and her family of advice animals more often than I do some of my friends afk (that’s away from keyboard for the unenlightened). The particular image that threw me into a writing frenzy was posted to the highly popular and equally highly disdained website 9Gag. com, where users contribute images of fun. Users consist mostly of selfdescribed “nerdy” or “geeky” “nice guys” who are primarily interested in video games and girls. Since girls don’t just appear like trophies in the course of gameplay, can’t be won by completing missions or unlocked like achievements, humorous rage comics about the friendzone, masturbation, and the unfairness of being “forever alone”. Desensitized as I am to the internet’s many frightening faces, I was shocked when this particular iteration of the Scumbag Stacy meme upset me. After all, if this is Scumbag behavior, then I am Stacy through and through. Stacy is the broke mother of three dirty
Sources of the “rules”.
These rules reads awfully like a “boys only” note pinned to the outside of a treehouse. Certainly the democratic internet just can’t be a boys’ club like all the other boys’ clubs before it! Technology frontier of freedom. How can sexism even exist in the realm of the anonymous user? And yet the lurking /b/tards, self-aware originators of internet culture,
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