ok since people are getting confused and just saying “4chan stuff” I’ll actually explain the meaning because I think it’s a pretty good message.
I’ll explain using a transfem experience since that’s what I’m knowledge on, but the post could be referring to transmasc or something else.
background: Orange is a trans woman. She was assigned male (another color) at birth and has transitioned to orange.
explanation:
orange has been on “color gel”[1] for 3 years, but “grayscale-mode”[2] in public.
1.The color gel is a show in for estrogen/testosterone gel which is a hormone that makes you appear more feminine/masculine.
2.Trans women, particularly those who are early on in transition, will sometimes “boymode” in public if they don’t feel safe enough to be themselves. This is saying orange will pretend to be grey to not out themselves.green is confused as they see orange as nothing other than orange.
orange feels that her color is too close to whatever she was before and says some 4chan type jargon
in trans women there are a lot of negative genetic elements that will make it harder to pass which you can’t really change. Wide shoulders, being tall, deep voice, etc. Orange is dumping her trauma about this, saying everyone can tell and has accepted her fate as not passing.
Green says that they think whatever site orange is on is bad for orange.
this is because on 4chan or some other negative sites like some reddit subs people are BRUTALLY honest which can be a good thing but can also be horrible for self esteem. Another point is that people who are trans themselves notice the signs that someone is trans and can clock them easier than an average person. This brutal honestly made orange feel like she doesn’t pass, but that’s just because the people on the website have WAY more knowledge than average people, like green.
Average people see trans women as just normal women with perhaps a deep voice.TLDR:
orange was assigned another color at birth and feels like other people think they’re that color after exploring websites. Green is saying orange looks like orange and that the websites are unhealthy.edit: also it’s 4am and I just had a panic attack. I cannot think through words well rn, sorry if this is confusing. please don’t be mean to me
I can answer questions if needed once I can think better
That wasn’t poorly communicated at all no worries.
I just quit a 10 year cannabis addiction because of the panic attacks…well hopefully it was the weed lol. Good luck with your own challenges :)
thank you for writing this up. ❤ I’m also trans and spent time in that particular community because I have very intense dysphoria/bdd and found other spaces to be toxically positive. it wasn’t a healthy place, and I picked up more brainworms, but I felt like I could vent and not feel so alone.
it’s really easy for people without crippling dysphoria to sit back and judge you for going to /tttt/. it’s unhealthy, I know it’s unhealthy, but sometimes unhealthy outlets are the only way I can make the hurt get better for a while. I can’t just be all uwu skirt go spinny when my body feels like sewage.
Not devaluing this perspective, but I think this could also be applied to a lot of different experiences. Anyone who has tried to change themselves in one way or another can relate to this. Obviously transitioning is one, but it’s a very human reaction to feel that way.
It can be as minor as “I want to be an artist but I don’t want to share because people will critique” or as intense as transitioning.
People may not have gone through the exact scenario, but its a very human experience to say “I want to but I’m not “good enough” yet, so I’m going to hide it”
oh yeah for sure, it’s an allegory that can be associated in a lot of ways. I just chose being trans because I’m trans and could explain it better. Honestly its a pretty amazing meme
this discussion reminds me a lot of the movie “The Substance” since TONS of people could relate to its allegory. I’ll give a short version that explains the struggle of it: an actor got fired for being too old, so she took a black market substance that splits her in to her current self, and a perfect version of herself. She swaps bodies every week, and the movie is challenging topics of beauty standards and getting older, but a LOT of different people related to it for wildly different reasons.
the Pills That Make You Green series is about the trans experience written by a trans woman, but yeah this one can be interpreted many ways
I skimmed this, but only because my brain is huge and I already know everything you’re saying, and also I’m busy trying to locate a methane leak in my kitchen. Even so, I think you explained this fine. Don’t worry about it. Rest easy and get yourself calm. :)
thank you gas poisoned diva 🥰
Nice to see Lemmy can be a good place sometimes.
Thank you for your service
I didn’t even think this image had any deeper meaning. I saw it entirely as a shitpost on internet discourse. But with the comments here I definitely see it. That is a possible context for the image.
Appreciate the summary. You made it much easier to understand.
cis here.
Until I read the comments I thought it was about people generically going down rabbit holes and coming out weird.
Funniest thing is, it’s how I saw it too. But it’s fun to see that people have other views on what I found to be a shitpost with no real underlying message.
It’s the “Pills that make you green” comic, and it’s an intentionally thinly veiled metaphor on trans people
Well it’s nice to learn something! Not something that happens every day in Lemmy Shitpost
That twisted my melon. I liked the simple nonsense version better.
It’s vague enough that people can insert their own meaning into it. Could be Trans issues, could be gymbro stuff, could be manosphere shit.
It’s all slightly changed 4chan trans terms/sayings so it’s definitely made with that in mind, but of course you’re free to give it your own meaning
I don’t really attach myself to things with vague meanings anymore. I dropped Dilbert out of boredom long before Scott Adams really went mask off, but it’s a good example of people putting their own meanings to vague media. I’m just explaining why people here might like a comic without knowing it’s origin.
for anyone wondering: hsl(38, 79%, 51%) for orange and hsl(136, 64%, 42%) for green, that’s oklch(0.7471 0.151 74.06) for orange and oklch(0.664 0.181 147.42) for green. interestingly the normal digital color model shows orange as more saturated, while a perceptual color space shows them as a little bit less
(not trying to be the sort of person the comic is making fun of, I just like color lol)
Can confirm, green perceived as more saturated.
Damn, this actually made perfect sense to me.
Is this about trans people or what?
It looks to me like it’s making fun of the really bad brain worms that permeate the trans 4chan community. There’s a very specific type of brain wormed in-group jargon being made fun of here. The orange stick figure is saying they’ll never be orange but we can clearly see they’re just… orange. The brain worms are so bad that they believe even while being orange, they aren’t actually. The green stick figure, not being involved with the community or perspective of it, is a representation of the few people trying to break the brain worms within the community. The author knows exactly where the terms being parodied come from and wrote it for that audience
It’s the kind of thing that’s utterly incomprehensible to anyone who isn’t familiar with 4tran or tttt
Just knowing about 4chan and the kind of people that use the place, that seems like one of the most harmful places on the internet for trans people. It’s honestly shocking that there’s so much of a community there.
Consider that people before transition are not necessarily any different from any other people. You can have very racist, transphobic, alt-right people secretly harboring trans feelings themselves. Sometimes people will turn to those spaces as a coping mechanism and then they become entrenched and invested in the communities. Just because they eventually finally accept their transness doesn’t mean they’re willing to let go of it entirely or the personality archetype they’ve developed as a part of it. If they leave it entirely just because they transitioned , they may not have another community they feel enough a part of to fall back on. Everyone needs and wants some sort of feeling of community even when it isn’t good for them. It can be very hard to break out of toxic spaces when it’s the only space you know and it’s practically defined you as a person, sometimes for most people’s adult lives
Nah, it’s poking fun at incels and their 4chan jargon.
Oh, what does ‘grayscalemoding’ mean then?
it’s a replacement for boymoding
Boymoding is the act of presenting masculine, especially in the context of a transfeminine individual presenting masculine to avoid transphobic harassment.
https://lgbtqia.wiki/wiki/Boymoding
and yes this post is about being trans, more specifically how 4chan is harmful for trans people.
It does look similar to the 4tran stuff but that’s most of the terminology I’ve seen leak from there so maybe other 4chan communities use similar language
Ignore me, I was misinterpreting it and others have explained it
Presumably being less orange in some way. None of it actually means anything, all of Orange’s words are a parody of that incel terminology. Orange is naturally less orange than they would like to be and is going to some lengths to become more orange, but doesn’t think that the results are convincing to others and that they will never really be orange in the same way that Green is green
Looks like it to me based what I’ve seen of people poking fun at the toxic trans 4chan stuff.
Is this ‘I identify as an attack helicopter’ stuff?
I don’t think so. I read it as pro-trans stuff and slight critic of online slang culture.
it’s a parody on 4chan’s /lgbt/ board, which is a place no trans person should ever visit for their own good. It is the sort of mixture of “scientific” sexism, transphobia and deep self-hatred that nobody should be exposed to.
edit꧇ removed brainrot
