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[SilentRob]

A few years ago I met someone who was telling me about a religious symbol he swore was actually a sign of racism. It didn't matter how much I told him that this wasn't what it means, he kept harping on it. No amount of arguments could convince him that he was wrong. He was so brainwashed by the media that he absolutely couldn't cope with the fact that this symbol actually doesn't mean what he thinks it means and that it's totally OK to use whenever or wherever you want.

What a scrub.

Spoiler

It's possible for symbols and signs to be changed and co-opted from their original meaning, how hard is that to understand? Also, this is not only the word "kek", this is specifically the logo of the Nazis using the word "kek" for their agenda.

 

[Antiwhippy]

It's more about Kekistan. Sargon of Akkad had a big role to play in the creation of this fictional nation. Their god is Kek and Pepe (i.e. Trump) is the leader. 4chan and the alt-right co-opted it.

Anthony Fantano was a big fan.

SPLC: What the Kek: Explaining the Alt-Right 'Deity' Behind Their 'Meme Magic'

Goddamn, so Anthony fantano is one of them?

 

[snail_maze]

Swastika meaning didnt really change, as much as a new meaning was added by different groups which didnt really have a meaning for it before.
To say that you wont use the ok symbol or kek (if thats sth you have been using for a while) doesnt really make sense. People in India still use the original swastika and no one in their right mind would assume a connection to other groups using the same (or very similar) symbol

 

[DoctorEkkoUK]

It really starts to annoy me when memes interfere with my game time. Was really looking forward to playing Destiny 2 last night.

 

[OriginalPoe]

God. No one ever said that here.

You guys are so damn eager to jump onto pc culture gone amok that you make so many straight up mistakes.

No I think the people who are somehow making Kekistan into an actual fucking nazi symbol are making the straight up mistake.

You give the idiots power by acknowledging this nonsense.

 

[Massive Duck. C.M.]

No I think the people who are somehow making Kekistan into an actual fucking nazi symbol are making the straight up mistake.

You give the idiots power by acknowledging this nonsense.

Do you want people to ignore symbols of white supremacy?

 

[DalikSkywing]

Orcish would translate lol into kek. Since horde players were mostly shitbag trolls it became a term outside of the game.

No, it's actually the opposite, you see "kek" as an alliance player whenever a horde types "lol", so yeah, you must mean that alliance players were mostly shitbag trolls.
Most played race in the US is also human.

 

[SilentRob]

Swastika meaning didnt really change, as much as a new meaning was added by different groups which didnt really have a meaning for it before.
To say that you wont use the ok symbol or kek (if thats sth you have been using for a while) doesnt really make sense. People in India still use the original swastika and no one in their right mind would assume a connection to other groups using the same (or very similar) symbol

No, but Europe and the US isn't India and if you happen to use the Swastika here, you sure as hell won't have a good time.

Again, with "kek", it's a special case: THis is not only someone who wrote "kek" on one of the armor pieces. He specifically used the design used by Nazis. If someone answered me with "kek" I'd think he is an asshole, but not a Nazi. If someone would actually wear something with that symbol though, that dude knows exactly what he's doing.

 

[i-Lo]

A few years ago I met someone who was telling me about a religious symbol he swore was actually a sign of racism. It didn't matter how much I told him that this wasn't what it means, he kept harping on it. No amount of arguments could convince him that he was wrong. He was so brainwashed by the media that he absolutely couldn't cope with the fact that this symbol actually doesn't mean what he thinks it means and that it's totally OK to use whenever or wherever you want.

What a scrub.

Spoiler

It's possible for symbols and signs to be changed and co-opted from their original meaning, how hard is that to understand? Also, this is not only the word "kek", this is specifically the logo of the Nazis using the word "kek" for their agenda.

Yep and it's annoying as fuck. For those who don't know- The swastika is a very old symbol which when not rotated at 45° and (sometimes) horizontally inverted are parts Hinduism & Buddhism among others.

 

[snail_maze]

No, but Europe and the US isn't India and if you happen to use the Swastika here, you sure as hell won't have a good time.

Again, with "kek", it's a special case: THis is not only someone who wrote "kek" on one of the armor pieces. He specifically used the design used by Nazis. If someone answered me with "kek" I'd think he is an asshole, but not a Nazi. If someone would actually wear something with that symbol though, that dude knows exactly what he's doing.

Yes in this case with the green and style of the KEK it is 100% a reference to an alt right symbol.
I was more referring to people who suddenly feel uncomfortable with using kek as a lol substitute or just the ok hand symbol

 

[Rellik]

Yep and it's annoying as fuck. For those who don't know- The swastika is a very old symbol which when not rotated at 45° and (sometimes) horizontally inverted are parts Hinduism & Buddhism among others.

Everyone knows that. Doesn't change the fact the meaning is now completely different in modern times and shouldn't be used.

 

[Auctopus]

Goddamn, so Anthony fantano is one of them?

No. Read his Twitter, watch his personal channel. He's critical of the Dem party but he's left leaning.

 

[i-Lo]

Everyone knows that. Doesn't change the fact the meaning is now completely different in modern times and shouldn't be used.

Disagree. One person's/some people's ignorance shouldn't denigrate and dictate a symbol (which isn't 100% identical) that has a very old history and is still used by billions people for its true meaning.

 

[Bollocks]

It is the default color.

lol, ok there goes any goodwill about it being a honest mistake/coincidence, in no universe would someone totally oblivious to that matter create THAT design.

 

[Star Orpheus]

I remember that the original swastika was used in the Naruto manga but the anime adaptaion changed it so even in countries that still use the original symbol realize it can cause trouble.

 

[Maintenance]

 

 

[michaelius]

Yup. As much as I hate the hyperbole of it, think about the early portion of the Nazi invasion in Europe. Appeasement's still a factor in society today... albeit not on a handing-over-nations-to-the-nazis scale.

Crimea was handed down to Putin without any serious repercussions
China occupying Tibet is also getting free pass - especially now when they are pro climate protection and can be used against Trump.
Saudi Arabia is also doing what they want in Yemen with only opposition being other interested group

As many others have said there is no way that is a coincidence. I didn't know about the flag and symbol but seeing them side by side like that, yeah there's no way.

Considering assets are often outsourced to companies/artists in cheap labour countries it's also possible that this was made by some poor dude who barely knows English who just copied symbols he found on the net.

 

[snail_maze]

Everyone knows that. Doesn't change the fact the meaning is now completely different in modern times and shouldn't be used.

Isnt the main factor context? Why should a swastika in a religious context be more offensive than say the Golden Dawn symbol, which is superficially different but essentially spreads the same message as the Nazi swastika?

 

[Cynn]

Well, I have to give it to them, they know what they're doing and how to succeed. I'll keep using the OK sign anyway, obviously with its original meaning.

This is where I learned it. Fuck Nazis.

 

[GLAMr]

Well, this sucks. My friends and I have been using kek/keke for like 15 years since we picked up the habit from Koreans in undergrad. I had never encountered this alt-right use of the term until this thread.

Can we take it back? Can we fight those assholes and make kek innocuous again?

 

[FingerBang]

This is where I learned it. Fuck Nazis.

Amen. Fuck nazis.

 

[BajiBoxer]

Well, this sucks. My friends and I have been using kek/keke for like 15 years since we picked up the habit from Koreans in undergrad. I had never encountered this alt-right use of the term until this thread.

Can we take it back? Can we fight those assholes and make kek innocuous again?

Personally I think you're fine as long as you don't make flags, where it, use their iconography for anything, or use it in questionable discussion about serious situations.

 

[GLAMr]

Personally I think you're fine as long as you don't make flags, where it, use their iconography for anything, or use it in questionable discussion about serious situations.

We literally just use it in place of lol/haha in texts or online chat. I.e. How Korean people use it.

 

[KaoteK]

Jesus, the older you get, the more you learn.

Had no idea about this flag before now.

Good on Bungie for doing the right thing, hope they get the fucker who thought this would be "funny"

 

[Defuser]

How long till Kappa becomes racist/nazi/white supremist word.

 

[derder]

News to me. I doubt that many people at bungie would recognize it. It's entirely possible that the designer subconsciously copied the design after seeing it online.

 

[MadMod]

Nothing subtle about it, please out the person who done this as its disgusting. They shouldn't work in this industry again. If they meant it. Unacceptable by the QA team too, how could you miss such an obvious thing?

 

[Sygma]

A few years ago I met someone who was telling me about a religious symbol he swore was actually a sign of racism. It didn't matter how much I told him that this wasn't what it means, he kept harping on it. No amount of arguments could convince him that he was wrong. He was so brainwashed by the media that he absolutely couldn't cope with the fact that this symbol actually doesn't mean what he thinks it means and that it's totally OK to use whenever or wherever you want.

What a scrub.

Spoiler

It's possible for symbols and signs to be changed and co-opted from their original meaning, how hard is that to understand? Also, this is not only the word "kek", this is specifically the logo of the Nazis using the word "kek" for their agenda.

He should never go to japan then

 

[Maintenance]

 

 

[MadMod]

Obvious to you, not everyone knows what every single random thing is.

I knew about the ok signal one but had no idea of this kekistan garbage.

I guess I can see the QA team asking the person who made it, then them lying about it. Therefore trusting a fellow employee makes sense. At least they know now and are fixing it, hope they fix it internally too.

 

[RulkezX]

Nothing subtle about it, please out the person who done this as its disgusting. They shouldn't work in this industry again. Unacceptable by the QA team too, how could you miss such an obvious thing?

I dunno. I spend too long , everyday on the internet and only learned of it when this thread popped up.

Same with the lolworthy sign language stuff.

 

[LiK]

I remember that the original swastika was used in the Naruto manga but the anime adaptaion changed it so even in countries that still use the original symbol realize it can cause trouble.

It's called a Manji and it faces left unlike the Nazi swastika.

 

[The ๖ۜBronx]

It's possible for symbols and signs to be changed and co-opted from their original meaning, how hard is that to understand? Also, this is not only the word "kek", this is specifically the logo of the Nazis using the word "kek" for their agenda.

Who isn't understanding that? People are saying to what extent do you just say "oh well, guess we can't use that anymore" for each thing they co-opt. Not so much of an issue for things like "kek" or Pepe but when people are now highlighting that the "OK" hand symbol is becoming a gesture of White Power what do you expect people to do? Roll over again or actually try and retain the original meaning by ignoring the pathetic people determined to get people to stop using things they commonly use; online and off.

 

[Yearsoflurking]

I've literally never seen this logo until now so if that had crossed my desk I would have unknowingly approved it so I could see how it snuck its way in (intentionally or not).

Which is why you should lose your job, approving things without research? Yeah you should go

 

[nicoga3000]

Legit didn't know what KEK was for outside of a joking LOL.

People saying the guy who did this was trying to sneak one by are making judgements based off of pure speculation. There are a TON of people who have almost assuredly never heard of this before. Not saying the person involved DIDN'T know what they were doing, but it's absolutely not a "for sure piece of shit" fact at the moment.

Also, I like the loud contrasting colors and would probably have been wearing those if I had them in game.

 

[Star Orpheus]

It's called a Manji and it faces left unlike the Nazi swastika.

Thank you I forgot the name.

It also appeared in Yu Yu Hakusho. I remeber that because that's were I learned the swastika wasn't the original symbol.

 

[Chexr]

What's next? Can't say "bur" anymore?

Zugzug is now a swear word? Get thrown in jail for speaking out against Elune?

 

[7DollarHagane]

I remember talking to a friend a long time ago about this and how 4chan tried the "ok" thing. We laughed a lot, saying "nah people wouldn't be so thick to fall for this". People are actually doing what 4chan wanted all along, how can't they see that.

Next up, 4chan changing the pride flag for 6(7?) generals of the Confederacy or 6(7?) generals of Hitler.

Yep time to remove the letter k from the alphabet, green removed from colors, and also they're turning the frogs gay.

Don't forget to buy your tolerance approved hand binders that will ensure you never make a racist hand gesture accidentally.

4chan does this shit to role people up. 4chan should be thrown into the sun and forgotten.

It looks to me like a vertical bar, one of these < and a vertical bar, separated by four horizontal bars, and mirrored on each side of the horizontal bars. There's even an outline on the < separating it from the vertical bar.

I think there is a resemblance but to say it's factually, without a doubt confirmed to be the KEK thing, it's just as likely to be a coincidence. Bungie did the right thing in both removing it from the game and not making a big deal about it or public shaming some employee.

 

[Hamster Plugin]

Legit didn't know what KEK was for outside of a joking LOL.

That's what kek is and will always be. It hasn't changed. Even if a group of people may be trying to change its meaning, they won't succeed, and you can loudly and proudly tell them: top kek as they fail.

It's specifically the "Kekistan" symbol that is the bad thing here. That has never had any other meaning outside the /pol/ neo-Nazi circles.

 

[MadMod]

I dunno. I spend too long , everyday on the internet and only learned of it when this thread popped up.

Same with the lolworthy sign language stuff.

Isn't that the point of QA though? On such a massive game, that appeals to everyone around the world? Surely checking each symbol and its meanings would be integral to the job? Especially a legendary item too, which is pretty much a highlighted item to check for you as there's less of them. I'm not blaming the QA specifically because obviously it was the person who made it, but still.

 

[Hesemonni]

Yep time to remove the letter k from the alphabet, green removed from colors, and also they're turning the frogs gay.

Don't forget to buy your tolerance approved hand binders that will ensure you never make a racist hand gesture accidentally.

4chan does this shit to role people up. 4chan should be thrown into the sun and forgotten.

It looks to me like a vertical bar, one of these < and a vertical bar, separated by four horizontal bars, and mirrored on each side of the horizontal bars. There's even an outline on the < separating it from the vertical bar.

I think there is a resemblance but to say it's factually, without a doubt confirmed to be the KEK thing, it's just as likely to be a coincidence. Bungie did the right thing in both removing it from the game and not making a big deal about it or public shaming some employee.

My thoughts exactly.

 

[rakkadakka]

Yep and it's annoying as fuck. For those who don't know- The swastika is a very old symbol which when not rotated at 45° and (sometimes) horizontally inverted are parts Hinduism & Buddhism among others.

This is like discussion in a History 101 class.

Guys I just learned something, so the swastika is totally cool.

How about we get a suit printed with non-turned swastikas for you to wear in public, in job interviews on dates and your wedding.

You can tell everyone about how it's a religious symbol and totally not the symbol co-opted by third reich and under which millions of people were murdered.

 

[7DollarHagane]

Isn't that the point of QA though? On such a massive game, that appeals to everyone around the world? Surely checking each symbol and its meanings would be integral to the job? Especially a legendary item too, which is pretty much a highlighted item to check for you as there's less of them. I'm not blaming the QA specifically because obviously it was the person who made it, but still.

When a single image like this gets by what surely must have been multiple people:

And the imagery of a dong and balls is much more culturally known than this stupid kek thing.

You can see how one questionable design in a game with hundreds of armor types and probably thousands of artistic designed textures can be overlooked or not recognized.

 

[RulkezX]

Isn't that the point of QA though? On such a massive game, that appeals to everyone around the world? Surely checking each symbol and its meanings would be integral to the job? Especially a legendary item too, which is pretty much a highlighted item to check for you as there's less of them. I'm not blaming the QA specifically because obviously it was the person who made it, but still.

I'm not expecting QA to scour the fringes of the internet to see what the edgelords are trying to change the meaning of, no.

Honestly fuck this idea that these people get to just co-opt whatever words / phrases / symbols they want and the left just tug their forelocks and start screaming at anyone who uses them.

 

[SeeNoWeevil]

Some git blame about to go down

 

[MUnited83]

No I think the people who are somehow making Kekistan into an actual fucking nazi symbol are making the straight up mistake.

You give the idiots power by acknowledging this nonsense.

? You might want to up your meme history, because Kekistan being a white supremacist symbol is a fact, straight up from its very inception on /pol/. It literally never meant anything else. It was never appropriated. It was straight up born as the racist symbol it is.

 

[Chindogg]

No, it's actually the opposite, you see "kek" as an alliance player whenever a horde types "lol", so yeah, you must mean that alliance players were mostly shitbag trolls.
Most played race in the US is also human.

I guess its 'kek' for either language.

But playing since beta, there weren't Alliance guilds camping outside of instances to wipe raids for hours on ends because they were shit trolls.

WoW now != WoW during vanilla.

How long till Kappa becomes racist/nazi/white supremist word.

Have you been to /r/kappa?

 

[The Albatross]

Someone pull the check ins

(do visual designers do git style check ins)?

Not always. It's much less common than development, but new design tools (sketch + zeplin) have similar behavior built in. Regardless at some point a developer got those assets from a designer and plugged them in, so it should be pretty clear. Could be some complexity if they outsource some of that work.

Isn't that the point of QA though? On such a massive game, that appeals to everyone around the world? Surely checking each symbol and its meanings would be integral to the job? Especially a legendary item too, which is pretty much a highlighted item to check for you as there's less of them. I'm not blaming the QA specifically because obviously it was the person who made it, but still.

Probably not. QA typically doesn't challenge the art direction that they see (at least not usually). No qa department would have it's role to verify symbols used in the game to check their meaning. QA is looking for bugs, performance, regression testing. Also as testing has become more automated over the last 5-10 years in software development, companies rely less on individual QA testers and more on on QEs who write automated tests alongside the developers. Or they might outsource QA to another company or more often than not country and your average QA in Hyderabad probably wouldn't recognize an American white nationalist internet memes.

I'm fairly up on internet memes but not really up on white nationalist 4chan memes, and so if I were a developer and the visual designer gave me that as an asset I probably wouldn't think twice about it.

 

[MadMod]

I'm not expecting QA to scour the fringes of the internet to see what the edgelords are trying to change the meaning of, no.

Honestly fuck this idea that these people get to just co-opt whatever words / phrases / symbols they want and the left just tug their forelocks and start screaming at anyone who uses them.

Yeah I get what you're saying, it would be far too time consuming. You just have to trust the designer of the armour to know what they're creating. I'm interested by what Bungie is going to do in response to this.

 

[Shari]

Yep time to remove the letter k from the alphabet, green removed from colors, and also they're turning the frogs gay.

Don't forget to buy your tolerance approved hand binders that will ensure you never make a racist hand gesture accidentally.

4chan does this shit to role people up. 4chan should be thrown into the sun and forgotten.

It looks to me like a vertical bar, one of these < and a vertical bar, separated by four horizontal bars, and mirrored on each side of the horizontal bars. There's even an outline on the < separating it from the vertical bar.

I think there is a resemblance but to say it's factually, without a doubt confirmed to be the KEK thing, it's just as likely to be a coincidence. Bungie did the right thing in both removing it from the game and not making a big deal about it or public shaming some employee.

Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaank you.

After going through an insufferable amount of which hunting pages some actually questions if this could be a coincidence.

I'm amazed at the amount of people that had no idea the flag existed but sustain the theory that this was totally intentional.

Me I didn't have a clue about this existing and while I see the resemblance I pity the poor fool who made this mistake, is going to be hang to calm the masses.

If indeed it was intentional and there are other "proofs" of all this being intentional then fuck him and fire him to oblivion.

But yeah I'm on the side of investigation before passing judgement.