Le Groyper

What is the groyper? And who are the groypers?

The groyper is a meme, first and foremost. It emerged as an identify signifier in late 2017, although the first Groyper image was apparently posted to 4chan in 2016, and the first use of “groyper” was on 8chan's /r9k board back in 2015.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/groyper

I assume the name is based on the sound of a frog’s croak. The image was a fat, effeminate version of Pepe. When it was created, it was just another allele of the Pepe meme. Nothing foretold its rise to memetic glory.

I remember when the groyper meme became an identity signifier on twitter, in late 2017. Suddenly I saw “groyper” in twitter handles and groyper images in profile pics. It was a micro-fashion, embraced by a tiny fringe, but it was still a fashion. The original groypers were different from the groypers of 2019 or 2022. Early adopters of any fashion always differ from late adopters. In 2017, the alt-right was just starting to lose steam. The original groypers decided to carve out a little niche identity from the general mish-mash of the deflating alt-right. They selected a fat, effeminate frog to signal their micro-parasocial-identity.

You have to wonder why. Why would someone use a fat, effeminate frog as an identity signifier? What did it signify?

Identity movements are based on shared values, both positive and negative. Typically, an identity movement will invert a popular value. The original groypers were defined by their rejection of certain popular values. They rejected alpha-masculinity, rationality and sincerity. They were passive-aggressive, low-effort, ironic shit-posters, protected by an ironic facade.

It’s worth talking about each of these values in more detail, because they are important dimensions of internet culture.

Alpha | Beta

By using a fat, effeminate frog as an identity signifier, the groypers were signaling their rejection of traditional masculine virtues: physical strength, attractiveness and agency. They were passive-aggressive, shit-posting from their phones while cozy at home in bed, proud of their NEET lifestyle. Complaining (instead of doing) is not a masculine approach to solving problems. It is feminine. Even though the groypers were almost all male, they adopted an effeminate approach to life and politics.

That doesn’t mean they were pro-female. Like other “beta rebellion” groups (e.g. MGTOW, incels), they were somewhat misogynistic. This was mixed in with a general rejection of popular values and aesthetics.

The groyper rejection of assertive masculinity was partly a consequence of Trump's failure to deliver on his promises and boasts. Despite his alpha posing, Trump was an impotent leader. Many young people who jumped on the Trump/alt-right band-wagon were profoundly disillusioned by the result. They became more cynical about politics and culture. They also became cynical about the “alpha mindset” promoted by many in heretical right-wing circles prior to the election.

Rational | Irrational

The internet has a natural divide between rational and irrational modes of discourse. It can be a medium for rational persuasion. It can also be used to propagate memes, insult people, make jokes, virtue signal, troll, etc.

The rational | irrational divide cut through the alt-right. Those on the rational side were making careful, logical arguments based on statistics and scientific theories. Race realism and sex realism belong to that side. They tended to avoid inflammatory language, and used rhetoric that appealed to reason rather than to emotions or group identity.

The irrational side rejected rational arguments as boring and unpersuasive. “Nobody is persuaded by rational arguments”, they would say. “Feelings don't care about your facts.” The irrationalists believed (meta-rationally, you could say) in the power of emotion, group identity, aesthetics, trolling and insults. Above all, they believed in the almost supernatural power of the meme, aka “meme magic”.

The rational side was systematic. They were trying to build coherent systems of thought. They worried about logical consistency and evidence. The irrational side was rhizomatic. They were contextual and tactical. They were concerned about having an emotional impact in the moment with an effective insult or joke. They were also deconstructive rather than constructive. They were just concerned with attacking the sacred values of their perceived enemies, not with constructing a coherent alternative.

The groypers came from the irrational side of the alt-right: the shit-posters and humble meme farmers of 2015 and 2016. They were part of the more general internet Dadaism that rejects everything, but only ironically bro. But also for real.

There is a strain of post-modernism on the right, which echoes the post-modernism of the left. Post-modernism can be understood as tactical nihilism: the use of radical skepticism against opposing views, while holding one's own views off-limits to skepticism. It can also be a more general rejection of logic, coherence and systematic thinking, in favor of play, irony, rhetoric and narrative thinking. Twitter, with its rapid flow of ideas and images, lends itself to the post-modern style of discourse.

Sincerity | Irony

The groypers were on the side of irony versus sincerity. But what does that really mean?

Sincerity is semantic clarity. Irony is semantic ambiguity.

Irony can be used to deliver heresies and protect heretics. The heresy can be presented as a joke, not intended to be taken seriously, but the idea still gets across. Irony is used to get ideas past external censors and internal cognitive defenses.

The groyper meme is intrinsically ironic. It is an absurd character. Someone calling themselves a “groyper” and using a fat effeminate frog to represent themselves is not to be taken seriously. But that allows them to say serious things “ironically”. Or to say whatever they want, and not be taken seriously. The ironic pose gives you freedom to be wrong, to contradict yourself, to be offensive, to express your true feelings, to lie, etc. Trolling is often sincerity wrapped in insincerity wrapped in the pretense of sincerity, delivered by an anime girl or cartoon frog.

To some extent, the ironic pose is cowardly. It is a preemptive defense against criticism or judgment by others. It disarms most attacks, because attacks are evaluations with respect to some standard of value. In a sense, the ironic pose rejects all values. It is a type of value-nihilism. Anything can be said, because nothing is serious.

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You might notice that the groypers took the path of least resistance in every case. It is easier to reject masculine ideals than to strive toward them. It is easier to shit-post than make rational arguments. It is easier and safer to wrap everything you say in a layer of irony.

So, that was the original groyper identity, which was a small subset of the collapsing alt-right in 2018.

America First

In 2019, Nick Fuentes co-opted the groyper meme for his “America First” movement. That created the second wave of groypers.

Fuentes was part of the alt-right mish-mash back in 2018. I first noticed him during the great e-thot debate. This was part of the purity spiral and in-fighting that tore apart the alt-right. Several women had risen to prominence in the alt-right or adjacent spaces, and some men vigorously opposed their participation in political discourse, viewing it as subversive and parasitic. Fuentes was on the “no e-girls” side of the debate.

Fuentes didn’t really fit into the early alt-right. He dressed and acted like a young conservative. His views were more paleocon with a Catholic twist than alt-right. He didn’t present himself as an alpha male, but he was brave enough to go into public spaces and be heretical. He had significant skin in the game.

As a zoomer, Nick probably had a better sense of internet trends, such as the trend toward streaming and IRL content, as opposed to blogs, podcasts, and YouTube reply videos. On the other hand, he was strangely boomerish in the way he imitated TV news presenters. His streams were him sitting at a desk, wearing a suit, with a fake cityscape backdrop behind him. He had obviously grown up watching TV, not exploring the internet.

He was also religious, which set him apart from the alt-right. The alt-right wasn't anti-religious, but most of the key figures were atheist or unconcerned with religion. Nick wasn’t a Christian apologist or philosophical traditionalist. He was a Catholic whose religious beliefs were unexamined. He just asserted them as absolute truth, and saw no need to defend or debate them. Online traditionalism was a growing fashion in right-wing circles in 2018 and 2019, and Nick was part of that trend.

In 2019, Nick’s popularity was growing rapidly. His YouTube streams were getting thousands of viewers. They were entertaining. Nick was irreverent, fast-talking and occasionally funny. His cheerful, boyish attitude and supreme confidence in himself were part of his appeal. His audience consisted of people absorbed from the imploding alt-right, and also a fresh crop of young men who were developing political awareness for the first time.

Nick presented a simple message of American nationalism, which was anti-immigration, pro-family and pro-Christianity. He didn’t address anything on a deep level, and he didn’t seem to have any ideas of his own. He just adopted a mix of existing positions. He was vaguely pro-white and vaguely anti-Jewish, but not in an extreme way. He was pro-Christian but never talked about theology. He was also very pro-Trump, at a time when the alt-right had rejected Trump.

Nick was also pro “optics”, which was the alt-right term for not acting like a Nazi retard. The “optics” debate demonstrates the downward spiral of the alt-right. People were saying things like “They'll call you a Nazi anyway”, with the implicit assumption that you really are a Nazi, and any other position is dishonest and cowardly. Any reasonable or politically viable position was dismissed as simply “optics”. Nick distanced himself from the more extreme elements of the dissident right, but mostly as a matter of style. He emphasized the importance of presentation (e.g. wearing a suit) and political positions that could get broad support.

https://altcensored.com/watch?v=STmsgKpucSM

Nick loved the term “cringe”. It was a big part of his rhetoric. Why make an argument when you can just call the other side “cringe”? He was in touch with the political, moral and aesthetic views of his audience, and he presented a clarified version of those views to them. He would occasionally make rational arguments, but most of the time he simply preached his position.

If you are trying to propagate certain ideas, it is often more effective to presuppose them as the framing assumptions of your rhetoric, rather than explicitly arguing for them. By taking them for granted, you trick your audience into taking them for granted. They are absorbed subconsciously and uncritically.

Unlike the alt-right, America First coalesced around a leader. The alt-right self-organized around ideas, not a leader, although Richard Spencer later tried to play that role. It was multi-polar, with many different and often conflicting views and cliques. America First centered on Nick Fuentes, in the same way that MAGA centered on Trump. America First had an ideology, but the ideology was defined by the leader.

Nick was (and still is, to some extent) a charismatic leader. He led people by the force of his personality. But charisma is mostly just saying what people want to hear, and saying it well. The charismatic leader just echoes his audience’s views back to them, in a clarified form. He filters out their disagreements and presents the audience with a simple message that they agree with. Those who don’t agree leave the movement. This creates a unified message that the members all agree with, and this echo chamber reinforces the core beliefs of the group. So, people become very convinced in the beliefs of their group, and the genius of the leader who represents them.

At some point, Nick started ironically saying that his followers were groypers, simply because he noticed that some groyper accounts were following him on twitter. This caused many of his other followers to adopt the groyper meme.

Nick intuitively understood that his fan-base, both potential and actual, consisted of disaffected young men who were (mostly) losers in real life. They were not alpha chads. They were virgins. So, to get them on his side, he adopted a “virgin” persona. He was obsessed with The Joker when that movie came out, identifying with the main character. Today, he calls himself an incel. This is all about identifying with the low-status men who are his actual and potential base of support.

It is natural for young white men to resent the society that discriminates against them, denigrates them, and imports foreigners to replace them, while calling them privileged. There are also major problems in the modern sexual market that make it difficult for many young men to find love and sex. These problems are either denied or blamed on men. So, many young men are attracted to movements that reject the modern system, such as the alt-right, MGTOW, the incels, and America First.

In 2019, Nick launched an IRL trolling campaign against normie conservatism. This became known as “The Groyper War”. Apparently Nick Fuentes was kicked out of Politicon because he tried to get a picture with Charlie Kirk as a joke. Charlie Kirk the leader of “Turning Point USA” (“TP USA” for short). Nick was banned from attending TP USA events, so he decided to send his army of groypers to the events instead, to “ask questions”.

The opening salvo was delivered at a TP USA event on a campus somewhere. Nick told his groypers to show up at the meeting and ask “difficult questions”. This was a pretty good tactic. The normie-cons are prepared to debate naive college leftists, but they aren’t prepared to deal with groypers asking such tough questions as “How does anal sex help us win the culture war?”.

The groyper war culminated at an event where Donald Trump Jr. was booed off the stage after he and Charlie Kirk decided to cancel the Q&A session.

So, the groypers won that frog-mouse battle.

The groypers of the groyper war were not the groyper shit-posters of 2018. They were younger, more assertive, less cynical, and less ironic. They had the confidence of a growing movement.

However, ideological movements always implode eventually. America First was no exception. It expanded during the groyper war and the lead-up to the 2020 election. But after Trump lost (fairly or unfairly), Nick’s refrain “trust the plan” rang hollow. There was no plan. Trump compounded his electoral failure with impotent alpha-posturing after the election, which produced the debacle of the Jan 6 “insurrection”. Nick was there, along with some of his followers. He was not one to shy away from IRL events. But like most IRL right-wing events, it ended in disaster.

After the defeat of 2020, Nick and his groypers retreated into their online echo chamber. This was partly because Nick had been banned off every mainstream social media platform. It was also because the right was in retreat, generally. The establishment was asserting its dominance. The groypers now had to accept political failure as well as (in most cases) personal failure.

Nick created his own streaming platform, cozy.tv, so he could continue to speak to his audience. It reflects his boomerish obsession with TV. For Nick, the internet is just another form of TV. Cozy.tv also reflects his retreat from reality and politics, into a cozy space of like-minded people. Streaming is just really boring/shitty television, with some minor exceptions. But that’s what his audience wants: a cozy space where they can lament or rant about the outside world.

To be fair, cozy.tv is a pretty well-designed site and has a few big names from the dissident right. Ethan Ralph and Baked Alaska stream there regularly. Both are lolcows, essentially. Alex Jones, Milo, and Roosh all have accounts there, although when I last checked they had no replays available to watch. Ryan Faulk, aka AltHype, also streams there from time to time, and he had a few videos available when I checked, mostly to do with WW2. We should give Nick credit for platforming the deplatformed.

To hold onto his audience, Nick shifted his focus from electoral politics and nationalism to sexual issues. In particular, he started labeling himself an “incel”. This label never made sense, because Nick could get a girlfriend if he wanted one, despite his short stature and growing infamy. But Nick’s sexuality is somewhat ambiguous. He seems to be more interested in cat-boys than girls. The self-identification as an incel was a way to turn the movement into yet another beta rebellion, rather than a young paleocon political movement.

As his movement stalled and went into decline, Nick became more and more of a lolcow. He was already heading in that direction, with his IRL antics and provocative statements. Today, he is probably best known for the statement “Having sex with women is gay”. Of course, this was somewhat tongue in cheek, but it was more serious than ironic. Nick believes in traditional marriage and the family, but does not want to date girls. His statements about women have become increasingly dismissive and misogynistic over time. He also seems to be stuck in childhood. Recently, he got very excited about Minions 2, but was disappointed by it.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/tkfae1MzC8Tt/

Essentially, Nick is selling cope. Cozy parasociality is an escape from personal and political problems. Celebrating inceldom is an alpha | beta value inversion, like MGTOW. Instead of trying to succeed in the mating game, you can reject it and claim superiority. “The game is bad, so losing is actually winning.” Religion can also be a cope. If you fail in this world, you can still claim spiritual superiority. It’s all just a cope for low-status men, rather than a practical solution to any personal or political problem.

At this point, Nick has degenerated into a lolcow, and his movement into an isolated echo chamber. This is not surprising. That’s how these movements usually end. There are still groyper accounts on twitter, but most of the original ones are gone now. They were either purged by Twitter, or they deleted their accounts. The meme now just signifies affiliation with America First and/or a generic brand of online paleo-conservatism.