My First Corpus (4: Three Terms, One Analysis [CW])

CW: slurs in the data.

After poking and prodding at the data for a while, I saw plenty of amusing exchanges. I noticed that part of what was amusing, aside from 4chan’s characteristic vitriol, was that users were arguing about each other’s identities on an anonymous image board.

“Identity construction” is the expression I use for any phase of conversation in which a person defines themselves or another, whether by profession, gender or sexual identity, nationality, subcultural labels, etc. Identity construction serves the purpose of creating a conversational reference for a person, which is important in public forums and especially in anonymous ones like 4chan, where there is usually no sense of a person’s persistent identity outside of a given thread. “Identity negotiation” is the collaborative process of identity construction between two conversants. They engage in some verbal or physical exchange that sets up expectations for the future of their relationship. AFK, people may explicate their titles to each other on meeting (“I’ll be your manager”), or do things that are more implicit like present a gift or refuse to shake hands. Identity negotiation is essentially composed of multiple iterations of identity construction.

As part of this process in the context of 4chan, we can easily find doubt, requests for proof, and accusations of falsely presenting one’s identity — despite the value placed on anonymity by the community, users insist on performing identity construction and attempting, at least conversationally, to get to the bottom of each other’s motivations and who the other is. Identity disputes are how I refer to exchanges in which users construct their own and each other’s identities through disagreements. As I research, I have found multiple recurring forms of dispute, three of which I’ll talk about here.

Take the following exchange on /co/ which is for “Comics and Cartoons”.

The thread goes on:

co, 128125699, Anonymous, I'm not gay but...

co, 128125703, Anonymous, but you're gay.

co, 128125713, Anonymous, 
.   >>128125699
.   Not a trap, not even a femboi, seems pretty gay to me"

co, 128125726, Anonymous,
.   >>128125699
.   …you are a furfag, that’s worse.

co, 128125748, Anonymous,
.   >>128125699
.   >I'm not gay, but I want to fuck this dude
.   So you're bi then. Who cares.

co, 128125833, Anonymous,
.   I wish I was gay, it feels like I'm missing out. 
.   I cannot find men attractive no matter what.

co, 128126074, Anonymous, Yes you are

co, 128126120, Anonymous, 
.   >>128125699
.   You are nit gay you are a massive faggot and a furfag at that

co, 128126152, Anonymous, >>128125699
.   If you're not gay why are you following a fursuiting degenerate?

co, 128131678, Anonymous," 
.   >>128125699
.   You're a dogfucking, shit-licking, fur-suiting furry. Of course you're gay.

Analysis

I'm not gay but... is the OP, who opens the conversation with only this barren comment and an image — it is hard to say whether this statement is genuine, or meant to instigate a reaction based on its absurdity, but it provokes a variety of disputes:

1. The very first reply ("but you're gay.") answers the OP’s sentence with a contradiction. This is clearly a refutation because it explicitly negates the OP’s self-construction.
2. "Not a trap, not even a femboi, seems pretty gay to me" uses the evidence provided in the image attachment to assess whether the implied sexual object is feminine enough to absolve the OP of being ‘gay’, using the tropes of ‘traps’ and ‘femboys’ as a yardstick for this evaluation.¹A “trap” is a character, esp. in anime or manga, who is assumed as part of a trope to be a girl based on feminine traits, but who is revealed to have male genitalia (or the other way around), either as a prank on the reader or for humorous effect at the expense of another character, especially in sexual contexts. A ‘femboi/y’ is a person who presents femininely (in specific ways) but still identifies or is identified as male, most of the time. The reply concludes that OP’s pic-related is suited to neither category, and thus judges that OP is gay, in refutation of their identity construction.
3. "…you are a furfag, that’s worse." Sets aside the question of orientation completely, instead focusing on evaluating the OP as being a “furfag”²(=pejorative for ‘furry’: a member of the furry community, the central features of which are art (including pornographic) featuring anthropomorphic animal characters, and self-identification with, construction of, and roleplay as such characters, in which case it is called a ‘fursona’. This including wearing ‘fursuits’, which are custom-made and very expensive costumes depicting fursona. Furries are stigmatized for a number of reasons, not the least of which is a perceived association with zoophilia (despite the fact that participants don’t consider furry-ness to be a necessarily sexual interest — a matter too nuanced to go into here), as well as the connotations already associated with roleplaying in general.) and then shaming them for it — I view this as an identity accusation because it sidesteps the OP’s self-description to assign them a stigmatized identity.
4. ">I'm not gay, but I want to fuck this dude.
So you're bi then. Who cares."
   This is interesting because it contains a ventriloquated³ (according to dictionaries other than wiktionary, ‘ventriloquized’ would be the prescribed form, but for euphony I use ‘ventriloquated’ or ‘ventriloquial’ — see the next post for further explanation of this term) continuation (i.e. talking as the OP, since > sometimes indicates a quote), which converts the ellipsis (“but …”) into an explication (“but [I want to…]“). In my view the reply borders on IA, because it assigns the OP an identity, but it works collaboratively with the OP’s construction: the reply reconciles the OP’s self-description with their attraction to the pic related, by pointing to bisexuality. Rather than adversarial stance, it takes a dismissive one.
5. It is unclear whether I wish I was gay, it feels like I'm missing out. is the OP continuing to negotiate, or someone unrelated wandering into the thread to comment and prompt a different sub-conversation.
6. "Yes you are" — a straightforward refutation.
7. “You are nit[sic] gay you are a massive faggot and a furfag at that“
   This is something of a bait-and-switch, starting with an agreement with the OP and following up with an inflammatory IA — although I would say it is “furfag” and not “massive faggot” that makes it an identity statement, since “furfag” points to an identity whereas “massive faggot” is fairly vacuous as an insult, especially on 4chan. As others⁴ Fathallah, J. M. (2021) have pointed out, slurs on 4chan have a tendency to lack a specific meaning. We return to this concept later on.
8. If you're not gay why are you following a fursuiting degenerate?
   This message makes an interrogation of the situation — rather than straightforwardly refute or accuse the OP, this reply puts that on hold and invites the OP to respond justifying their statement. However, it seems highly unlikely that this is a genuine question. Instead, it may be a rhetorical accusation, or an attempt to initiate a playful debate.
9. You're a dogfucking, shit-licking, fur-suiting furry. Of course you're gay.
   This is clearly both an accusation and a refutation because it assigns unmentioned stigmatized sexual identities (‘furry’ and ‘dogfucking’=>’zoophile’) to the OP, as well as summarily refuting their ‘non-gay’ assertion.

Footnotes:

• 1
  A “trap” is a character, esp. in anime or manga, who is assumed as part of a trope to be a girl based on feminine traits, but who is revealed to have male genitalia (or the other way around), either as a prank on the reader or for humorous effect at the expense of another character, especially in sexual contexts. A ‘femboi/y’ is a person who presents femininely (in specific ways) but still identifies or is identified as male, most of the time.
• 2
  (=pejorative for ‘furry’: a member of the furry community, the central features of which are art (including pornographic) featuring anthropomorphic animal characters, and self-identification with, construction of, and roleplay as such characters, in which case it is called a ‘fursona’. This including wearing ‘fursuits’, which are custom-made and very expensive costumes depicting fursona. Furries are stigmatized for a number of reasons, not the least of which is a perceived association with zoophilia (despite the fact that participants don’t consider furry-ness to be a necessarily sexual interest — a matter too nuanced to go into here), as well as the connotations already associated with roleplaying in general.)
• 3
  (according to dictionaries other than wiktionary, ‘ventriloquized’ would be the prescribed form, but for euphony I use ‘ventriloquated’ or ‘ventriloquial’ — see the next post for further explanation of this term)
• 4
  Fathallah, J. M. (2021)