The streaming site Twitch, in an attempt to reduce harassment on its platform, announced earlier this week that it would be banning the abusive use of the terms “incel,” “virgin,” and “simp,” three favorite epithets amongst the asshole set. So far at least one streamer has been temporarily banned for using “simp” as an insult.
Naturally, the incels have some thoughts on the matter. On Incels.co, the regulars took some solace in the bans on “incel” and “virgin,” despite the fact that they call themselves incels and frequent a site with Incel in its name.
“At least twitch thots can’t bully and virgin shame men anymore,” wrote blackpillforever, using a derogatory term that stands for “that hoe over there.”
“I see this as lifefuel,” agreed, er, JosefMengelecel. “No more virgin shaming on twitch. But simp should still be used since it doesn’t directly mean virgin.”
Incels generally love the insult “simp,” by which they basically mean any man who’s not a complete asshole to women; they regularly insult fans who donate to female streamers on Twitch as “simps” trying to curry favor from women they’ll never even meet. So they see the ban on “simp” as a sop to these men to keep them donating to women on the platform. As a commenter called LightningCel put it,
It’s because they want beta simps to feel comfortable on the site, so they can keep donating $$$ to female streamers. They want to normalize simping.
They don’t want simps to feel bad for being fucking simps. And since beta simps are usually virgins/incels, they banned those words too.
Added dirtykombatcel:
[T]hose rules are just a red herring. They don’t want the people putting in their live savings in twitch to be shunned off the website. Twitch at least partially lives off of thots and their simp audiences.
Others saw any censorship as bad.
“Banning words is gay and only a simp incel virgin n*gger k*ke g**k would do it” wrote Mainlander.
Someone called Strasser, meanwhile, urged his fellow incels to look at the bigger picture — at least as he sees it.
Twitch banning the word incel isn’t going to get you a girlfriend. They’re moving towards normalizing polygamy, where Chads get harems of prime pussy while bluepilled incels have to resort to OnlyFans and the like for female intimacy, this is far more dystopian than merely getting called a name.
Nah, what’s dystopian is an entire movement based on guys convincing themselves and each other that they have no chance with women and that because of this the world should burn.
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Re: Twitch. About damn time. I find it super exasperating how broadly “simp” has been adopted by the left, for all the wrong reasons.
I find Twitch bans of those terms to be absurd considering the quantity of softcore porn they allow on their streaming services despite it being against their own rules. It’s just more corporate window dressing to appeal to moronic SJW who think that saying X is bad loudly equates making actual steps toward social justice. I put them in the same category than Gillette, Pepsi or Dove. Nobody gives a shit about corporate adds and “pretend support”.
I can understand banning the term “simp” but “virgin” I find a bit odd. Are they only banning it when used in a certain manner or always? There are plenty of non insulting contexts it could be used, and there are plenty of other words more worth policing (like racial slurs).
As far as I can tell “simp” is the new “virtue signaling” in that it tells a lot more about the accuser than the person being accused. Both are projecting and rely on the assumption that others only do things to attract women or to improve optics, which is telling about the person who accuses.
A word of advice to Mr. JosefMengelecel and Strasser: if you want to get a date, drop the Nazi shit. Women (or at least me) find it to be a huge turnoff.
@Cyborgette
I agree, lately I see a lot of leftists (mostly of the cishet white male variety) using it. I really don’t like how that subset has decided to use alt right slang, regardless of the reason.
@epronovost
First, drop the ableism. Second, read my previous point about leftists sounding like alt rightists and how it’s bad.
“Simp” is one of those insults that actually has the power to piss me off, albeit for the opposite reason that the people who use it think. The gist of the insult is that the insulter is mocking the insultee for not being a violent misogynist… which means that the insulter is proudly proclaiming themselves to be exactly that: a violent misogynist.
To my mind, there is precious little difference between someone using the word “simp,” and someone wearing a swastika armband. That someone would loudly proclaim to the world that they’re a Nazi or a violent misogynist genuinely offends me. There aren’t really a huge number of things that do that. The things that piss me off could fill several universes, but it takes this kind of weaponized, evangelistic bigotry to really get under my skin.
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think it’s a mistake to let Nazis feel safe to fly their flags (real or rhetorical) in public, so I think this is a good move. This shit is a cancer- it kills if you let it grow.
well the OP says
Clearly not all masculinity is toxic masculinity and not all uses of “virgin” are “abusive uses”, so I’m not worried about the policy as written.
The policy as actually enforced? I’ll wait & see.
The definition of “simp” has been stretched to the point that any male who isn’t nasty to females is a simp, and that’s considered the worst thing a guy can be. I’m sure that won’t lead any impressionable kids trying to fit in down the wrong road.
@epronovost
Sure it’s a given that the corporate world is not in this for anything but profits, but acting like stuff like this doesn’t matter really is letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Incremental change and revolutionary change aren’t mutually exclusionary, anything that makes communities safer is a win, etc. And honestly as far as accusing people of being performatively woke, trashing good developments because “LOL corporations are still evil anyway” is, like, one of the biggest flags for performative wokeness I know of.
And acting like language is a nonissue flies in the face of reality. Hell, just… *waves to this entire blog and every comment thread here ever* Pretty much every post here provides more evidence of the feedback cycle between language, ideology, and behavior. And how deplatforming bigots breaks that cycle. And how shutting out abusive behaviors quickly and comprehensively, including abusive language, is a necessary part of deplatforming.
As far as softcore porn, umm, I take it you mean gratuitously sexual games? Like yeah that stuff should be behind paywalls or ID verification, and IMO they should just ban games that center on rape and abuse… but like… again… these things are not mutually exclusive, and a start is a start?
@cyborgette
Getting more of a “titty streamers are bad” vibe rather than gratuitously sexual games from that comment
@Bakunin
Yeah its definitely a ‘titty streamers are bad’ thing. If it was guys playing some Japanese hentei game they would be all for it. A female streamer who may or may not wear sexy and/or revealing clothing and get lots of viewers and subscribers,well that’s bad in there opinion.
@Fabe, @bakunin
TBH I’m giving epronovost the benefit of the doubt because I vaguely remember them having posted here for a while, including sensible stuff. But yeah opening up with a slur and “SJW” is already pushing it.
Worth noting is that the word ‘simp’ is semantically identical to the word ‘r*tard’; simp is a contraction of ‘simpleton’, literally meaning a person with Down’s syndrome.
@epronovost
What the entire fuck, mate?
@bakunin
Actually its both. You could even add R level of violence and gore which is also technically fobbiden on Twitch. To make a famous example GTA 5, due to its sexual content would technically be forbbiden by their own rules. Did they ban the streaming of the game on their platform? Absolutely not. The game is far too popular for that. Did some indi developper producing games with similar content faced bans or threats of bans? Yep they did. I don’t personnaly mind sexual or even (legal) pornographic content. I’m perfectly fine with it, but don’t tell me I can’t do X and then allow it/tolerate on a regular basis or vice versa else I’ll begin to think you are saying those things only to avoid getting into trouble with a certain crowd.
The same goes fo bullying. Several popular streamers got into fairly vicious arguments over the years and have had very questionable behaviors that remained largelly unpunished as they were shielded by their popularity. Twitch’s position on its own rule is basically that they are mostly guidelines. A company that doesn’t even apply it’s rules consistently and fairly accross the board shouldn’t be applauded for creating new rules, until they actually have the skills, the personnel and the will to actually enforce them. We should applaud Twitch if and when they manage to reduce the amount of bullying and sexism on their platform not when they make a small modification/precision to their rules. Bullying and insulting people was already forbbiden on their platform. It’s not like “incel”, “virgin”, “simp”, “thot” or “titty streamer” are new insults that nobody could parse as an insult by simple reading of the text. Will they enforce their rule fairly and consistently? Now that’s the real question and considering the company didn’t announce any changes to the resources allocated to moderate bullying and harrasment on their platform and their prior history, I seriously doubt it.
@epronovost
Content hosters being inconsistent with their policies certainly is a problem. Youtube is also pretty blatant about looking the other way when big channels skirt policy
I’m not really giving epronovost the benefit of the doubt at this point. Coming in with an ableist slur and calling people “SJWs” is a bad look, and I seem to recall them making some rather antisemitic (or at least ignorant) comments a while back.
And yeah, I’m pretty certain the “softcore porn” comment was supposed to be about so-called “titty streamers.”
I also think it’s possible to both think a rule is poorly enforced but still a good rule to have. To give a more extreme example, many murder cases go unsolved but we should still have murder be illegal.
@Dalillama
I keep forgetting that, maybe because my brain auto-associates it with “simpering”. Ew.
@Dallilama
Actually there are other possibilities there. Yes, it could be derived from the term simpleton, but could also be derived from the word simper (which means smilling in a coy way to cury favors). I would consider this one more likely-ish in the sense that the behavior and usage of the word simp is mostly related to men who are overly “submissive” toward women or who desperately run after women who are either not interested, already commited or simply playing them for fools for money/favors, but at that point it’s completely speculative and opinion based. There’s a pretty good article on it on “know your meme” if you are interested.
@Crip Dyke:
Clearly not all masculinity is toxic masculinity and not all uses of “virgin” are “abusive uses”, so I’m not worried about the policy as written.
The policy as actually enforced? I’ll wait & see.
I somehow have this horrible premonition of some indie tree-hugging olive oil manufacturer getting banhammered; I base this on Strikeout ‘07 on Livejournal, when an unthinking keyword hunt by self-appointed Guardians of Public Morals wound up doing a crap ton of collateral damage: support groups for survivors of things like rape and pedophilia got shut down; “Lolita” affected Vladimir Nabokov discussion groups and people who enjoy dressing like Wednesday Addams or Alice in Wonderland.
@Full Metal Ox
That’s sort of what I was thinking about. Or maybe someone telling their own story and mentioning that they were a virgin. A lot of these things seem to be based on how much a certain item is reported, for instance on Twitter a mass reported tweet can get someone banned even if they weren’t violating the terms of use. I know someone who was banned for calling themself a slur they had reclaimed.
If it’s automatic, there’s also a risk of missing context. For instance, the US embassy in Iran used to use a web proxy to allow people around government censorship, but its filtering system that was intended to block pornography also inadvertently blocked sex education material and LGBTQ+ content.
There was a story earlier this year about an online academic conference discovering the net-nanny software on the site they were using was set so tightly it even banned words like “bone.” Which was hilariously awkward, because it was a palaeontology conference.
They also had to refer to one well-known fossil bed as “the Heck Creek Formation.”
@epronovost
There are not multiple possibilities. There is historical fact, and there’s a bunch of bullshit you made up. The etymology of the word is not in dispute, it is a matter of record.
@Dalillama
Then cite your source that states that, without any possible competing explanation, that the slang simp is derived from simpleton and not from other root words like simper for example. My source isn’t professionnal since I don’t think there is much actual etymological and historcal research on a slang that became more less mainstream a year ago and saw it’s first notable uses in the modern lexicon 20 years ago in rap lyrics, but you seem to possess knowledge of some much more credible and serious academic research on it so I’m rather curious to read further about it.
@Moon Custafer
I’ve seen Sonicwall and suchlike blocking sites containing Latin (because “cum”), and even sites containing the word “Latin” itself (maybe because porn fetishizing Latine people? IDK). Fun times.
@epronovost
Know Your Meme is, uh, maybe not a source you want to lean on for anything political. And also your definition reads to me like a bunch of PUA dogwhistles. In the cases where it’s actually malicious/self-centered I’d just go ahead and call it “creepy”, or maybe “stalking” depending on how bad it got, instead of you know… using MRA/PUA lingo that emphasizes the wrong of “trying to be nice to a woman” as opposed to “being a controlling victim-playing little shit who tries to guilt her into pity sex”.
Because, seriously: MRA/PUA rhetoric conflating meekness with inceldom and decency with Nice Guyism is deliberate. The flip side of “I can’t get any because chicks dig jerks” is “Men should be jerks because women are creeped out by decency”. The reason us SJW types are so caught up on language is that it’s easy to weaponize, and most of all in environments where people deny that and/or lack awareness of it.
@Vucodlak
Yes. This.
@epronovost
Tadah.
Another possible etymology for “simp”:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Manosphere_glossary#Simp
So uh yeah, super hecking misogynist if nothing else. 😐
Edit isn’t working.
@epronovost, cont.
For future reference, if you type [word] etymology into any search engine, you will find that several etymology dictionaries are high in the results list. You would so well to consult these, rather than what some rando said on a meme site.