This post has been long in the making, cooking in the back burner. It's not quite done yet, but a little taste is in order, so as to begin elucidating what went into it's making.
The title should be descriptive enough, so I'll allow myself to begin with a bit of an anecdote, though there's hardly any story here.
Yesterday I learned that 4chan went down. What a momentous event, I always wondered when this day would arrive. Of course, I haven't been much to imageboards in a good while, certainly not 4chan. But I went to the most famous imageboard I know of, and where I used to spend so much time: lainchan. Now, lainchan was good at first, but then I was put off by some opinions that I saw there: that "there is no inherent value in nature", or a call to "only western thinkers are worth reading", to the exclusion of anyone outside of a certain ill-defined cultural sphere that is labelled "western". Yesterday I went back in there out of curiosity, and I stopped at a thread that reflected my own thinking about it: why is there so much racism in this place? The OP candidly argued against letting racism infiltrate imageboards, where they are a persistent nuisance. There are a few that have successfully managed to keep it out. But on this particular thread, in this specific site, most replies were quite hostile, as expected.
Why is this? The reasons may be many, but I have realized that there is a primary reason this kind of discourse dominates these kinds of sites, and it is not necessarily about "anonymity" (as I said, other anonymous boards have managed to exist entirely without this mode of discourse). Well, in fact, one of my first motivations to learn other languages was precisely to move away from the English-speaking internet, which, as expected, is plagued with anglo-centric hot topics: Donald Trump, woke politics, bitter arguments on gender and pronouns, and, most of all, Donald Trump.
I realize that this is to be expected: despite the multinational character of these sites, their larger demographics are native English speakers, and native English speakers live in countries where Donald Trump is the larger looming figure. Of course, this applies to the whole world, in a way, except that it doesn't.
The anglo empire is in a clear decline, there's no questioning it. But our media keep reflecting much of this rapidly fading world order where it was still *the* dominant force. And the most obvious aspect of this lingering dominance is the spread of the English language.
but you're speaking English right now!
I know, right?
Anyway, it's not just English, of course. More anecdotal evidence: I've visited a few language schools these days, and I always see the same: they only feature "western" European languages: English, French, German, sometimes Italian.... and that's it. Despite Chinese being the major economic power in the world today, there is hardly anyone teaching it. Even Russian -the major military power as of 2025- is absent, though I can understand why that would be the case.
I was surprised that one of these schools featured nahuatl and sign language. That's a start. Of course, nahuatl is the local language, but not a lot of people, in our market-driven economy and society, are likely to be interested in nahuatl, which is the reason these schools exclude any language that is not western-European.
My point? I have already dwelled too much on this, I wouldn't blame my reader for thinking I'm not getting anywhere with this... but since I've written so much already, I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader. As I said, this is a post (now a series of posts, it seems) that is still cooking in the background, and it's not done yet!
However, I've been meaning to start making these thoughts public, and now is a time as good as any, for me to set the process in motion by starting with a few tentative steps in that direction, so that I may bring this to completion.
That said, I would like to close with the conclusion I drew of my little "anecdote" here. Interestingly, I'll cite a reductivist, materialist, positivist, atheist, English-speaking thinker. Richard Dawkins talked about "memetic viruses" (or viri, both are valid); an idea which came to mind while reading that thread: "why is there so much racism in lainchan?". Racism, this european supremacist idea that comes with such absurd and awful terms like "the west", seems to me exactly like the mind-viruses of which Dawkins talks. Again, I don't need to elaborate, as I know any of my readers will know exactly what I mean. I just want to mention how replies to this thread kind of reflect some of the mechanisms at work: they rely on a call for "freedom of speech", for an idea of a space where different ideas are put forward for consideration, a place to talk about matters of importance. That would all be good and nice if it weren't for the fact that most of those who proclaim this "melting pot" of ideas act in the most immature, hostile, and unapologetically simplistic forms of discourse and argument, often sinking the quality of discussion with insults, with the justification that "it's not about your feelings".
I gotta stop here, because the entire mechanics by which these 'agents' push forward the 'memetic virus' of 'westernism' are quite elaborate and very worth examining, but that itself would be enough for a very lengthy post.
I will just add this for consideration of the reader: that the primary vector for this virus to spread in the present (though not necessarily the only one, nor one that is fundamental to it) is the English language, and the systemic structure of meaning that revolve around the vocabulary of this language.
I bet this is a bit of a bold claim, and I will be sure to elaborate more on this on future posts. Right now, I'll just put this out hoping that I can take this as a starting point, an outline for all the ideas that I want to present.
I wish I had a better post to offer right now, but if I keep waiting for the perfect wording, I may never get to write anything at all! Recently I've been reading drmollytov and degrowther here on the smol.pub and I thought I could contribute to the discussion, given that this little space on the internet, despite being english speaking -and often featuring Donald Trump in it's posts, for example, this one-, is relatively free of this memetic virus that has plagued most imageboards.
Hopefully, this first post of a series will be followed by others. Hopefully, too, I'll rewrite it in a way that is more amenable to reading, rather than some silly "anecdote" (which it isn't even that) and a few scattered thoughts on it.
Until next time.