VICE - 'Thug Kitchen' is the latest iteration of digital blackface

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Waaaaaait. People thought Thug Kitchen was written by black people? I always assumed it was written by white people. C'mon, all that talk about chick peas and lettuce and tofu? You really think a black person would write about veggies without showing their face?


smh

I hadn't even heard of it until today. Are you suggesting if it's obvious, it's okay?

I mean, blackface was/is pretty obvious. Blind people can spot a blackface act. Doesn't make it okay.
 

Hagi

Member
That site is some poorly done satire holy fuck. Also,its funny to see so many people in this thread who are ignorant of the way thug is used, when you can find several examples on neogaf alone.

Link us to these examples that everyone should already know about.

I fully except that thug has different connotations for people in different countries but gaf is not a solely American forum so it should not be surprising to people all the time when one doesn't know about things surrounding something outside their own culture.
 
Growing up a "thug" to me was someone that was hard, then to someone not really having their shit together criminal wise. It was a lifetime ago, then I started coming on neogaf and saw that it was applied to someone black except that I thought it was used to say, "see, they're just criminals! They're no good theives from the bad side of town". NOW reading this thread I see it's that "thug" is a code word for some.

We're not all from the same area this is really a new one to me, same as how juggalo use "ninja" to say "nigga" (which I found out about on gaf haha.
 

JDSN

Banned
To the people acting as if thug is not only a code world and in this case it surely means something else, do you feel after seeing the website's fonts, visuals, vernacular and slang used do you feel that its evoking Tony Soprano/Cops/Leprechaun/Maddox/Futbol fans?

I mean:

If you’ve gone all summer without drinking a single slushie, take the rest of the day off and whip up this refreshing motherfucker right here. The watermelon and cucumber in this shit help soothe inflammation and the mint will keep your breath on point. FUCK IT. Splash some vodka in there if you want to take tomorrow off too.
1013160_520161274716043_1783493145_n.jpg
 
D

Deleted member 325805

Unconfirmed Member
I have never thought of thug as code for black, this seems really stupid to me.
 

Kinyou

Member
You don’t have to look very hard to find white and non-black people profiting off of what could traditionally be deemed black culture. Urban Outfitters sells a book called Understand Rap, written by William Buckholz, a white freelance writer from Seattle, who “demystifies” rap by explaining “confusing rap lyrics” so that “you and your grandma can understand.”
Is there really a problem with that? He had an idea that other people didn't have and turned it into profit.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
To the people acting as if thug is not only a code world and in this case it surely means something else, do you feel after seeing the website's fonts, visuals, vernacular and slang used do you feel that its evoking Tony Soprano/Cops/Leprechaun/Maddox/Futbol fans?

I mean:

To be fair, while I agree that thug is very often coded the way everyone is discussing in this thread, the recipes don't honestly come across as "stereotypically black/gangsta/whatever." I'm reading all of the actual content in the voice of the Powerthirst guy, like some roided up, Hulk Hogan style bodybuilding dude on a local access channel.
 
I know.

This isn't an either/or thing. It can mean that. It can ALSO have it's coded meaning. The problem is that you are rejecting that the second meaning even exists. There's absolutely no reason to do so. You can say "I don't mean it that way" without having to go so far as to say other people are somehow mistaken when they mention the second meaning. Because they're not. It's absolutely true that the word "Thug" is racially coded now. That's not even really a question.

Again - the fact that YOU don't use it that way doesn't mean NOBODY does. That doesn't even follow, logically.

Quoting for new page, since it seems like people haven't read it.
 

Hagi

Member
To the people acting as if thug is not only a code world and in this case it surely means something else, do you feel after seeing the website's fonts, visuals, vernacular and slang used do you feel that its evoking Tony Soprano/Cops/Leprechaun/Maddox/Futbol fans?

I mean:

Reads like something that guy who makes everything with bacon would say.
 

MormaPope

Banned
To be fair, while I agree that thug is very often coded the way everyone is discussing in this thread, the recipes don't honestly come across as "stereotypically black/gangsta/whatever." I'm reading all of the actual content in the voice of the Powerthirst guy

Yeah, I created up a Jersey Shore dude in my head while reading that.
 

Appleman

Member
To be fair, while I agree that thug is very often coded the way everyone is discussing in this thread, the recipes don't honestly come across as "stereotypically black/gangsta/whatever." I'm reading all of the actual content in the voice of the Powerthirst guy, like some roided up, Hulk Hogan style bodybuilding dude on a local access channel.

Yup, the Powerthirst guy is the first thing that came to mind for me too
 
People trying so hard to make a neutral word into a racial one. If you hear 'Thug' and think black man, you're the part of the fucking problem, not the guy who said thug.
 

Omega

Banned
It might be a regional thing, because in my world a thug can absolutely be a white person, or any race of person. These guys are most certainly thugs where I come from:

Bebopandrocksteady.jpg

You should probably leave the 80s then. I'm sure they were an awesome time period but we're in the 2010s now

Also I'm kind of disappointed. I was hoping it was like Thug Notes
 

Hagi

Member
People trying so hard to make a neutral word into a racial one. If you hear 'Thug' and think black man, you're the part of the fucking problem, not the guy who said thug.

What if the person was saying thug but meant nigger? Are you still part of the problem for catching on to what they are doing?
 

akira28

Member
It might be a regional thing, because in my world a thug can absolutely be a white person, or any race of person. These guys are most certainly thugs where I come from:

I don't even care. People call black and brown minorities from urban areas all kinds of shit. But thug means more than it did back in the 1950s where you're from. Just like gangster no longer immediately conjures up a mental image of Al Capone.
 
What if the person was saying thug but meant nigger? Are you still part of the problem for catching on to what they are doing?

What if you're trying to smear people by making awful insinuations about what they meant to say, when they literally said something else.
 
People trying so hard to make a neutral word into a racial one. If you hear 'Thug' and think black man, you're the part of the fucking problem, not the guy who said thug.
Even when there's a site that's clearly trying to evoke that imagery using the word because they know it's what most people associate it with?

I don't really see how it's a problem when people are rightly called out for using codewords, unless we want to believe it's better to let people get away with it.
 

riotous

Banned
To be fair, while I agree that thug is very often coded the way everyone is discussing in this thread, the recipes don't honestly come across as "stereotypically black/gangsta/whatever." I'm reading all of the actual content in the voice of the Powerthirst guy, like some roided up, Hulk Hogan style bodybuilding dude on a local access channel.

This is from "one page" early on in the life of the site:

the fuck is Godzilla’s tail freaking out about? King Kong just trying to make sure his homie gets some broccoli in his fucking diet.

Anonymous asked: test

what’s up homie? you checking the mic?

Random picture of a black kid:

X2xuitM.jpg


healthy pet that loves me like cray.

my dog is so fucking healthy that when we go to the vet, the vet pays me. real talk.

stay home and make yo’self a healthy burrito and stop supporting those punk bitches at Chipotle.

ALL of the reader letters look like this, it's possible they wrote the "letters" as well:

ASKwrl6.jpg


that’s all pig lips and assholes, homie.

seriously though, mayo is fuckin nasty. ain’t nothing in there for nobody. ugh.

And "mayo is nasty" probably an attempt to pretend to be black as well.. a common sterotype espoused by black comedians.
 
Needs to be quoted, so more people pay attention to it:

If you want to see how bad they used to be, use the internet wayback machine.

Not sure if this link works:

https://web.archive.org/web/20121023080117/http://thugkitchen.com/

They mixed in way more ebonics.

If that doesn't work, just go to http://web.archive.org and type thugkitchen.com in, and use the calendar to go back to one of the October 2012 cache dates.

"Yo", "Yo,self", "Kid", "Son".. it's endless..

There is no ambiguity here. The site is white people trying to act black.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
This is from "one page" early on in the life of the site:


And "mayo is nasty" probably an attempt to pretend to be black as well.. a common sterotype espoused by black comedians.

I stand corrected. Those examples are definitely going for the "ghetto vernacular"
 
Even when there's a site that's clearly trying to evoke that imagery using the word because they know it's what most people associate it with?

I don't really see how I'm a problem when I rightly call out a white person for using codewords, unless we want to believe it's better to let people get away with it.

How the fuck do you know that they're trying to evoke a specific race. Thugs can be any race. But what you saw 'Thug' and profanity and thought 'oh, it's black people, they're talking about black people', and they're the racists? Get real.
 

Hagi

Member
What if you're trying to smear people by making awful insinuations about what they meant to say, when they literally said something else.

Then you're in a different and much smaller line adjacent to the one where all the racist assholes are standing who are too cowardly to say what they really mean but cover it up with neutral words.
 

riotous

Banned
I stand corrected. Those examples are definitely going for the "ghetto vernacular"

Yeah I have the luxury of remembering the site when it was first around. It was REALLY obvious then.. web archives help verify it lol.

Seems really likely they realized how bad it was once they got popular enough to make money on it; and they toned it down to the more benign "just say fuck and badass" a lot stuff.
 
It's a melange of black, white, latino street dialect, and everyone's like 'oh they're talking about black people, that's black people'. What. The. Fuck.
 

Omega

Banned
It's a melange of black, white, latino street dialect, and everyone's like 'oh they're talking about black people, that's black people'. What. The. Fuck.

because thug is a synonym for nigger in modern times.

Richard Sherman was called a thug. Dude probably has a cleaner sheet than everyone that judged him, went to a better school and did better in said school.

But he yelled at the end of a 60 minute football game which makes him a thug.

Sorry but you're a fucking idiot if you can't see what the term thug means after that incident.
 

MormaPope

Banned
It's a melange of black, white, latino street dialect, and everyone's like 'oh they're talking about black people, that's black people'. What. The. Fuck.

Is this really about the word thug or is it about something else?

because thug is a synonym for nigger in modern times.

Richard Sherman was called a thug. Dude probably has a cleaner sheet than everyone that judged him, went to a better school and did better in said school.

But he yelled at the end of a 60 minute football game which makes him a thug.

Sorry but you're a fucking idiot if you can't see what the term thug means after that incident.

Even funnier a mob of white people were the ones on twitter calling him a thug.
 
I knew thug was a code word but for some reason never thought of it that way regarding thug kitchen. I always thought it was one of those angry meme things, where people describe mundane things while swearing and stuff. Like a bunch of kids on reddit suddenly hitting it big with a book deal and shit.
 

G.ZZZ

Member
hmmm...I've actually followed thug kitchen for awhile now.

I guess I never assumed the recipes were written using racial speech...I just thought they were unique recipes and funny because they were vulgar and swore a lot (which is obviously very different than any other recipes you read.

But I never really thought about it or looked at it closely...so maybe the language is more race-based than I thought? I dunno. I never got that impression myself...

EDIT - I think this is the first recipe I saw which made me start watching them:

Image seems a joke on fratbro-gymfanatics kind of shit.
 

sqwarlock

Member
hmmm...I've actually followed thug kitchen for awhile now.

I guess I never assumed the recipes were written using racial speech...I just thought they were unique recipes and funny because they were vulgar and swore a lot (which is obviously very different than any other recipes you read.

But I never really thought about it or looked at it closely...so maybe the language is more race-based than I thought? I dunno. I never got that impression myself...

EDIT - I think this is the first recipe I saw which made me start watching them:

Racist or not, I find this kind of shit irritating. Maybe it's just me being all "no fun allowed", but just write out the fucking recipe, guys. Yes, it's a hook, and yes, it helps their brand out. Still annoys me to no end.
 

ItAintEasyBeinCheesy

it's 4th of July in my asshole
because thug is a synonym for nigger in modern times.

Richard Sherman was called a thug. Dude probably has a cleaner sheet than everyone that judged him, went to a better school and did better in said school.

But he yelled at the end of a 60 minute football game which makes him a thug.

Sorry but you're a fucking idiot if you can't see what the term thug means after that incident.

So people are fucking idiots for not knowing who the fuck Richard Sherman is or whatever the fuck it is you are talking about?.... sure...
 
So people are fucking idiots for not know who the fuck Richard Sherman is or whatever the fuck it is you are talking about?.... sure...

I don't agree with that notion, but I will say that people who are ignoring all of the posts attempting to explain the baggage which comes with the word in US popular discourse are not really interested in having a genuine discussion about the article posted in the OP.
 

MormaPope

Banned
So people are fucking idiots for not know who the fuck Richard Sherman is or whatever the fuck it is you are talking about?.... sure...

Football is a sport where behemoth men run full speed into each other, brain disease, injuries galore, and Richard Sherman does a little bit of trash talk at the end of a heated game. Completely PG, no profanity.

Flash forward minutes later and tons of Americans went to the internet to bitch about how wild and crazy he was, how thuggish he is.
 
Thug is code for black? Because someone called a black NFL player a thug whose record was completely clean? So that word has to be crossed off the vocabulary now because one dumbass made a dumbass statement?

Wow, Americans should watch out that they don't run out of words soon.

Don't see it any way. It's just recipes with a bunch of curses. If some think that automatically makes it "black", some apparently have some issues of their own.
 
I wonder, what is the pejorative colloquialism for violent offender of any race if it isn't thug, because thug is only black people now? Seems a lot like thug is that generic word.
 
As far as I can tell, the book itself isn't even remotely racial, as its just recipes spiced up with slang, but the title is an incredibly bad choice of words. So much so that it's hard to not paint the rest with the same light, as the article does.
 
I know.

This isn't an either/or thing. It can mean that. It can ALSO have it's coded meaning. The problem is that you are rejecting that the second meaning even exists. There's absolutely no reason to do so. You can say "I don't mean it that way" without having to go so far as to say other people are somehow mistaken when they mention the second meaning. Because they're not. It's absolutely true that the word "Thug" is racially coded now. That's not even really a question.

Again - the fact that YOU don't use it that way doesn't mean NOBODY does. That doesn't even follow, logically.

Apparently this needs to be quoted every other post or something.
 
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