Sorry if there are any errors in this, I typed it up pretty quick. Time for a little history lesson for any lovelie lurkers or newfriends to the Newgrounds tea. Sit down for a little story about the cultural workings of the Newgrounds animation community, and why this SJW shit will never stick.
First, we have to talk about Rick and Morty. Why do I mention the Reddit show you may ask? Sit and listen! Rick and Morty was based off of a stupid short parody animation of Back To The Future called
"Doc and Mharti". The first episode of that short animation had the then Rick character molesting the Morty character
(who is his grandson in the final product but let's pretend we're Adult swim, just ignore that and cancel World Peace) in its short run time. Pretty gross right? The pilot of this was promoted by this same inner circle of Newgrounds animators who are all fairly e-famous and general successful today. Ricepirate, Oney, Ukino, Psychicpeddles, etc, etc, all got on board with the sharing of a new project. Wacky shit that you could never get away with today in almost any context and would be completely dissed for being disgusting anywhere else.
Now I don't give this light to shit on them or empower others in that, they're mostly cool dudes, I mention it because they are really a relict of an ancient age (in the mostly good way). Newgrounds predated 95% of the shit you see on the Internet, it was one of the first and largest hubs for sharing your artistic creations on the early Web 2.0. Being in a rather unique position, Newgrounds developed a rather unique culture as you might expect. Along the way early Newgrounds got swept up in the tidal wave of late 90s-early 2000s angst that consumed youth culture, 9/11 happened, the world was turning to shit, but media (especially the cartoons) was semi-redeemable. All that talent Newgrounds had been building up got channeled into what I would define as first generation Internet edginess through that culture and atmosphere of the time. Almost overnight you had things like the Madness series, Stick Wars, countless animations that let you commit atrocities on caricatures of Bin Laden and Bush. It was a content goldmine at the time, and this is the environment that these guys matured their artistic talent and humor in.
A far cry from the decentralized mess of the future 4chan, Newgrounds had structure in its cultural chaos and people could work together on their projects and grow together. People could make a name for themselves, and even eke out some decent money when things like Youtube still were an easy avenue for that if you had talent. They carried this chaotic energy and non-conformist humor into nearly everything they animated or programmed, not doing so means you wouldn't stand out. You had to press some limits, move some boundaries, be truly artistic with what you were trying to create if you wanted to be noticed and succeed. Naturally this also led to people being more open with what they thought or wanted to depict and by extension peoples personalities developed along these lines into what you see today. And as long as you weren't actually hurting someone, you did fine and were generally lauded for your efforts.
When someone like Ukino starts with this, he has essentially broken the social contract of their community. He has broken the taboo of "anything goes until it actually hurts people" that exists in genuine organic artistic communities while under the guise of pretending he was hurt, in order to hurt people that feels have wronged him in some way. Basic SJW shit, but it does not hold up when you try to utilize it against the remnants of the Newgrounds community and its creators. Why? Because as stated Newgrounds actively coddled the attitude of being open, even to the point of weirdness, to such an extent that it holds up today in these individuals and their personalities. These guys will gladly get handsy even if they're not gay, because it's just how they operate after decades of stewing in this and knowing each other so well. The Newgrounds community was/is borderline ideal Libertarian in some ways because of this. I guarantee if one of these guys is actually going around sexually assaulting other male animators he'll be outed faster than a #MeToo rapist and prompted thrust into the limelight. I also guarantee it's not the guy with a wife who is also one of the least outwardly strange ones. At the end of the day these guys don't have a truly malicious bone in their bodies, they just want to make people laugh and maybe be a little transgressive in the progress,
like a good artist. And certainly better than any of their critics, if not in form, than in function.
tl;dr Newgrounds is a bastion of old internet culture and has survived the last decade of SJW shit, it'll be fine if they keep their spines.
also shoutout to Emily Youcis, miss you my friend
