Basically just something people say that indicates a position indirectly, like how seperatists from a given region might always say they’re from [region] and not [country] or how trump supporters call AI “SI” now.
My favorite dog whistle (that went over my head, because I was not the audience for it) was the Subaru “Come out and play” commercial.
If I remember it correctly, the ad was mostly footage of Subaru SUVs driving over rocks and through streams while a voice over talks about the cars’ off-road capabilities. The ads would always end with the narrator saying "Subaru invites you to come out and play.”
As a straight man, I always assumed that the commercial was about how much fun it is to drive a Subaru up a mountain. Apparently, I was missing the point. The nature footage was all a distraction to pacify the straights. The real commercial was just the sentence fragment “Subaru invites you to come out”. It was meant to say that Subaru supports queer people. It was a resounding success in promoting the ‘Subaru driving lesbian’ stereotype.
There was a whole campaign in the 90’s. The license plates were mostly lesbian coded, they included the Wizard of Oz cast or a certain lesbian tennis player, I think another tag line was “let’s go camping”. It was fun finding out about that because I had a lot of the National Geographic magazines that they had add pages in.
That seems like a big stretch of interpretation, no?
People saying that in response to learning about a dog whistle is how you know it’s a good dog whistle.
Are you sure this whistle is even making noise?? I don’t hear anything…
It’s fully not, the head of marketing at the time actually has done multiple interviews about it.
“Subaru Lesbian” had become a meme in the queer community, and someone internal to Subaru found out that on self-reporting surveys of Subaru owners, Lesbians made up a surprising amount of the respondents
So Subaru decided to embrace it, with thinly-veiled advertising targeting lesbians
Yes and no. Subaru has a strong reputation in the queer community (or at least used to) because they were one of if not the first conpany to publically sponsor a queer sports player (female tennis player if memory serves correct but im sure somebody will correct me if im wrong). So even if not their intent, it’s easy to see how it could be interpreted as such. They didn’t earn the name “lesbaru” for nothing, they actually intentionally advertised to the queer community going back to the 90s if I’m not mistaken !
I thought this was more well-known. So much so that on the Karate Kid sequel series Cobra Kai, Johnny Lawrence is offered a Subaru and he quickly dismisses it because he’s not a lesbian.
Now hold on, I don’t care about sports or cars but I like lesbians, and the Subaru ad and the female tennis player were all part of a fiction television show, about lesbians called, “The L word.”
I don’t think these things happened in real life.
Well u made me look it up. They did a huge ad campaign with Martina Navratilova in the early 2000’s. Never heard of the L word show, but I suppose they had to be inspired by real life events seeing as how it was filmed after these ad campaigns took place!
Whoa
I’m too young, but it was real. It was such a thing within the lesbian community that shows like the L word were referencing it.
The more you know.
Still seems like a stretch but it hurts nobody to believe it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯NPR did a podcast episode on it. Subaru basically realized that their car specifically resonated with lesbians due to various usability niches and so they decided to lean heavily into it. But it was the 90s, so they needed to be sublte at times.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/10/14/497958151/episode-729-when-subaru-came-out
It does not matter what it seems like.
It is fact.
In one of them the license plate said Xena. It’s a whole campaign originating from market research saying that lesbians were disproportionately likely to buy their cars
Are you certain it’s not a reference to that one scene from the 1979 movie ‘the Warriors’?
I can hear those clacking bottles clearly
I’m a self proclaimed crazy cat lady. I also work in a field that has a lot of interaction with the police. I used to have a pin attached to my work badge that said “All Cats Are Beautiful”.
What? I just love cats ;)
Now I’m thinking about making badges that say “Assigned Child At Birth”.
This took me a while
It’s taking me longer help me out
ACAB - all cops are bad.
1312
one shibboleth i noticed is that any mention of “race” strongly indicates that the person speaking is American, especially if it’s conflated with nationalities. “I’m [number]% [nationality]”, any use of “mixed race”, and stuff like “I can drink a lot of beer because I’m German” or “this recipe offends me as an Italian” are dead giveaways (and quite racist in my humble opinion)
After the big protests in France there were a million bots posting racist stuff on Reddit. They kept referring to “liberals” but none speaks like that in France. Liberal is the word you’d use to describe corpo-centrists like Macron, never to describe leftists.
It was kind of like the 3 fingers meme from inglorious bastards.
Need to give Zelenskyy a few more drones to take out Russian datacenter troll farms.
Then go donate!
Then the gestapo would arrest me for “funding terrorism” while themselves funneling millions to both Russia and Ukraine.
Yeah. "Liberty’ and “freedom” here is also defined differently than in the USA. Probably thanks to the french revolution and Napoleon spreading it.
Here it is “liberty/freedom OF” while in the USA it is “liberty/freedom TO”
“I know pasta, my great grandmother was Italian”
Yeah, how do you know your great grand mother wasnt the worst fucking cook in the village? Maybe her food was so bad that her family had to get on a boat and move half way around the world where nobody knew about how shit her cooking was.
Hey, it’s obviously extraordinary any way, they compare it to normal american food.
I think it’s because immigrants wanted to preserve their culture when they came to the US, and that got passed down but was diluted over the generations, so you have people who have a very specific pride and identity that has deviated from the original.
In many cases the “original” deviated even more. It’s not like culture has been static in Europe for four hundred years.
? I’m talking about a scale of only a few generations and the USA hasn’t been around for four hundred years.
I’m talking about the timeline of European colonization of the Americas, which is the point of immigrant cultural divergence. And I’m actually off by over a hundred years, as the oldest continuously-settled Euro city in the West is Santo Domingo since 1496.
But even a shorter timeline an awful lot changed in Europe through the 1900s. A lot of “traditional” cuisine came after WWII.
That timeframe is a much larger cultural gap than what I was depicting, but regardless, it was not meant to imply that other countries remain stagnant.
Someone who’s family came from India two generations ago might still identify as Indian even though they never have been there, for example.
I hadn’t heard this theory before, but it does actually make a lot of sense.
I think a lot of the nationality stuff is because Americans are desperate for some identity of heritage. America is made of immigrants. Most people have no idea where their ancestors came from, unless it was relatively recently. If you’re in Germany, almost everyone around you is German and you have a shared identity. In America, no one knows where you’re from. American can be considered an identity I guess, but it doesn’t have much history. The history it does have is the lack of a homeland, and stealing it from others.
So yes, I guess it’s a dog whistle (usually those are intentional though), but I don’t see it as racist.
Seconding this. Its not racist at all, but a deep cry for some kind of uniqueness and being special because of the hyperindividualism of USA-culture. Europe is seen (and often treated) by US-americans as a theme park, an attraction.
To build on your example: inside germany, when you ask where one is from, you’ll get the culture/region. Saxony, bavarian, swabian, baden, franconian, hamburger, holsteiner, frisian. Or often even just the city lol No german, unless outside of germany and speaking to someone not german, will say they are from germany or german. And even then, though that is mostly bavarians, they might just say their region/culture.
US america doesnt have this past and sense of identity and belonging that even just your city in europe has. Except maybe NYC.
Portsmouth UK, proud harbor city and its identity is tied to everything seafairing. Has been since its inceptions by the romans. Same with Kiel, Hamburg, Lübeck (there ofc without the romans lol)
What identity does Portsmouth USA have? As faar as i know, none.
Even when i, a german, were to move to france or ireland, i still will be german/swabian at heart. No matter how long i lived somewhere else. Or where my long ago ancestors came from.
To touch on the Portsmouth VA USA (more associated with the larger Norfolk area) thing, I’ve lived near there. It actually also has a strong connection with the navy too. The largest navy base in the world is in nearby Norfolk, there’s a massive shipyard, and a ton of military. The history is obviously not nearly as old though.
The military thing actually removes some of its culture though, because it means a lot of people aren’t from there. They’re just there for a few years while stationed there and then they’re gone. I’ve never really thought about this, but could this be a deliberate attempt by the US military to destroy a sense of culture for military personnel, to ensure their only loyalty is to the government?
Ceationists calling it “intelligent design” rather than creationism
While there are definitely some non-nazi creationist, man, creationism is its own right wing agenda. Louise Agasazzi was a fucking racist piece of shit, and hated Darwinism because he thought all the “races” had a different origin. And then contemporary Creationists have their very ownMike Johnson who’s an author on the Answers in Genesis website. And Answers in Genesis itself is a Nationalist alt right political organization. Creationism is just excuse for them to hate the gays, the trans, and the abortors.
So yeah, I guess they aren’t technically Nazis…they are cut from the same cloth. They may not goose step, but they sure like carrying water for the goose steppers.
A creationist I worked with never used that word. He always described himself as “not an evolutionist” - I think he was trying to paint creationism as normal and evolution as the fringe.
People wearing the Bad Dragon Logo
You know they’re the kind of pervert that is going to be a really chill hang.
For context, the company Bad Dragon make Fantasy Dildos. And their logo looks very innocuous, just a stylised dragon.
So it is sometimes worn by folks who know that only those who are in the know will know, as a form of dog whistle for being kinky
An example of one of their products:
NSFW, giant dildo
I just realized that there’s a reason that specific part of the logo is red.
I fully didn’t notice until you said it
I always throw an occasional “streets ahead” in my conversation just to see if they’re a Community watcher. Most of the people around me are streets behind, though.
it’s like giving them an all tomato.
An all tomato on a nice fresh baggle.
exactly, hand them a sandwich
You either take all the tomato, or none of it
I used to do the same thing. Then I decided to actually look up the saying and found out they are both pretty coming British phrases. I was very disappointed.
I don’t think this is true. Or maybe it was at some time in the past. Streets ahead isnt a common British expression, at least in my experience.
I’ve never seen “Community” and I’ve never lived in Great Britain but even I know what “streets ahead” means.
That’s usually when I use my escape goat.
They may be a community watcher, or they may be British. Further investigation required.
The narwhal bacons at midnight.
I miss that. I genuinely do. Back when it felt like a community and things were fun. I know it’s never gonna happen again, it was great to see it, but I miss spontaneous community fun online.
As someone who used reddit during that time, lemmy something feels exactly like reddit back then. Small communities and mainly consisting of a bunch of nerds
I feel that Lemmy is much less fun. Maybe it’s the time period but it just feels more like people being depressed and arguing with each other than anything goofy
I agree, and I think it is all down to what is happening all around us and the state everyone is in
I actually was around a guy who said this IRL at a party one time in 2011. I recognized it, but also internally cringed so hard that I pretended I didn’t recognize it. I’m sorry, Sean.
You’re a good friend.
Friends don’t let friends Reddit.
Holds up spork
And my axe.
Something about Obama and shoelaces? I can’t remember.
Not quite related but in a lovecraft book “mountains of madness” I think…
He mentions a “war of resubjegation” which I loved. One phrase tells a story. There was a slave revolt. If the slaves won it would be called “war of freedom” or “the rebellion”
War of re-subjugation lets you know how that war ended.
(Apologies for the weird photo source. Only one I could find that includes the tribute text.)
How is that statue a “tribute to courage, patriotism, and distinguished service”?
That woman is going “These are my boobs. I am asleep.”
“Mom and dad this Casey, casey my mom and dad…Now show’em them titties” -bloodhound gang I think
I think it’s an older thing, but lace code. I guess generally on Dr. Martin boots. I’m pretty sure it died long ago, but some people still think it’s a thing.
Lace code? Have I been unintentionally sending a signal with my laces? I just kept the laces the way they were when I bought my boots…
Even in places with lace codes wearing the default black ones that comes with the boots just mean you’re not doing a lace code, but they’ve never been common and the meanings change depending on the group you ask, so just wear whatever colour laces you want.
White == White power
Red == Killed for the white power movement
Yellow == Anti-fascistI only vaguely knew of Red Laces from the movie Green Room. It’s good but holy shit it’s a bit disturbing
Nope. Still in fashon with the nazis
I love the idea and I try to send my message. I don’t know why it fell out of use.
Not so much a position as preferences and experiences, but the words people use to describe elements of music can often give away what they either enjoy or play. If you call a rhythm a beat, you’re probably into electronic or hip hop. If you refer to a song’s chord progression as “the changes,” you must like jazz. If you use Italian words (outside of Italy I guess!) to talk about tempo and dynamics, you were either in an orchestra or fondly remember that one time at band camp. If a phrase is a “strain,” you should get your lungs checked out. If the bridge is the “middle eight,” get a colonoscopy while you’re at it.
What happens if you ask for a double bass pedal at a practice room?
Neil Peart and Keith Moon come to you in a dream. Your astral body will be tested far beyond the drumming limits of your corporeal body. Upon success, you will ascend to the next level of existence. It is better that you do not know what happens when you fail.
> Go to practice studio to get some exercise and maybe improve my bad drumming skills
> Ask for double bass pedal because I want to try to play some fast metal stuff
> Get sent on spiritual journey
> Fail
> Now I have to spend eternity being tortured by the CenobitesWell shit.
That sounds like the beginning of a joke. If it is, what happens?
I was banking on _NetNomad to pick up on my “yes and” and he delivered.
Dual to the death with Mikkey Dee from Motorhead
Also less specific, but when people describe music as “tight” or similar, they’re usually a musician, or at least into music culture.
Its not so much a dog whistle but in Quebec whether you say “sovreignist” or “seperatist” indicates your camp.
Like Caesar or Kaisar in Fallout New Vegas.
It is more of a shibboleth, but that is what I meant when I made the thread, I’m also from Québec and it was an example I had in mind when creating the thread, just didn’t mention it because it seemed a bit niche.
A dog whistle is just a shibboleth for Nazis.
Not from Quebec but agreed.
Edit: as in I wasn’t expecting to see someone bring it up.
I’ve been in Quebec for a while now and that has never stuck out to me. In French or English. More people than you would think share their opinions on the subject to someone with a thick English accent.
And whether you call the holiday in May “la fête des patriotes” or “la fête de la reine” is also a good one.
Old people still call it La Fete de Dollard. lol
When israelis refer to “Arabs” instead of Palestinians, a a code for untermenschen and a form of erasure.
They explicitly asked for non Nazi examples
“I have an appointment with a gentleman” is prostitute for “I’m going to shag a dude for money”
The Handkerchief code , used in gay culture to non-verbally tell what sexual practices you like
I have a coworker who uses a handkerchief to wipe his sweat and I have to intentionally resist reading it as code every time I see it in his pocket. But I’m in my local leather community, so I have good reason to know some of it.
“Eat the rich.”
Only two kinds of people say it.
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Those disenfranchised by capitalism
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Literal cannibals that don’t understand the slogan and would also eat the poor
Bulshit. Some of us cannibals understand rich people taste far better than poor people.
Joke aside which of the two groups do you place Motörhead in?
If you are what you eat, does eating a billionaire in turn make you evil?
Only if it also makes me a billionaire
Ventrue vampires would agree with you.
In what way does this qualify as “indirect”
No, they mean people rich in vitamins and such.
What about actual cannibal Shia LaBoef?
Normal Tuesday night for Shia LaBeouf.
- Those who enjoy movies starring Lemmy Kilmister
Had an English teacher that would consistently use that phrase while explaining grammer etc.
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