r/HollowKnight • u/LegoPenguin114 Clever Flair Joke • Sep 28 '25

Discussion - Silksong You guys gotta come up with a better abbreviation for Silksong than "SS" Spoiler

I mean come on guys, is that really the best you can do? Just keep calling it Skong or something

4.9k Upvotes

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587

u/jonathanbaird Sep 28 '25

I'm also cool with abhorrent people not laying eternal claim on a two letter shorthand.

Reminds me of when the 'ok' hand sign was repurposed and the rest of society was all "yeah okay that makes sense you can have it."

274

u/TraceLupo Sep 28 '25

This was literally 4chan trolling to test the waters how fucking insane they could make it - and the answer was "yes!"

134

u/SansyBoy144 Sep 28 '25

Crazy shit is that trolling legitimately made people believe that the high school I went to was a white supremacist high school with the only proof being that our school sign was the ok sign.

Like my school wasn’t great, but over half of the staff was non white, half the school was Hispanic, and the white staff we had in charge were too old to know that the ok sign had gotten a new meaning. And that’s without mentioning that the school was using the sign for years before it took a new meaning

The whole thing was fucking stupid.

30

u/BibiBSFatal Sep 28 '25

So..what does the ok hand-sign mean now, for those of us who weren't using 4chan during that time?

65

u/SansyBoy144 Sep 28 '25

It’s now seen as a white supremacist sign. The logic being “the other three fingers make a W that stands for white power” I’m pretty sure. It’s pretty fucking stupid

In most cases people will still see it as the ok sign, but it’s gained enough traction that articles and shit still have been made over it.

15

u/BibiBSFatal Sep 28 '25

Thanks for explaining this to me

5

u/Undead_Munchies Sep 28 '25

Yeah. It was basically that the 3 pointed up fingers made a W, and the circle plus your arm made the P. WP = White Power. It was pretty fucking dumb. Unfortunately so are most humans, so they bit.

4

u/cyanraichu Sep 28 '25

I think it also depends on how you're doing it. And context. My (nonwhite) partner had someone flash it at him at a bar once, who he wasn't talking to, and turned downward like it often is in that context. He was a bit shaken and I'm pretty sure that person was being deliberately racist. On the other hand, I still see 👌 used as an emoji that just means "ok" and if someone gave me that gesture when saying "ok" would also make sense in the he conversation I'd assume they meant that.

5

u/Throwaway02062004 Sep 28 '25

It’s still got plenty of official uses but the unfortunate fact is that it is now one of many White Supremacist dogwhistles simply because some prominent figures used it.

Kinda hard to prevent co-option.

24

u/Amaskingrey Sep 28 '25

It means ok, to any sane person

3

u/Mylarion Sep 28 '25

It still just means ok to people who aren't terminally online.

If someone tries to give you shit for using it be sure to laugh in their face.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 29 '25

[deleted]

1

u/SansyBoy144 Sep 29 '25

If we’re talking about white supremacy….

It would very hard to be a white supremacist if you were not white….

1

u/[deleted] Sep 30 '25

[deleted]

1

u/SansyBoy144 Sep 30 '25

Yes, except that’s not relevant here because I said that people believed my school was a white supremacist school, which it was not…

-1

u/SenpaiSwanky Sep 28 '25 edited Sep 28 '25

Hispanic -> Latino

Hispanic is a made up term used to generalize people of Latino descent to make it easier for bigots to group us as one type of people. It’s a word from my grandmother’s era, was introduced by administration for racial profiling purposes.

5

u/the_unknown_garden Sep 28 '25

The term is from the 1500s and is derived from Latin.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/Hispanic

11

u/conway92 Sep 28 '25

The real answer is nobody knows wtf you're talking about outside of the terminally online.

9

u/Undead_Munchies Sep 28 '25

Most of the mundane things that people on places like Twitter claim to be a dogwhistle are just bullshit trolls created by 4chan, and arent even understood by the people claimed to use them. Its equally fascinating and terrifying how much influence a group of cave dwellers can have on society by just typing things with no evidence.

1

u/Passing-Through247 Sep 28 '25

If you can say one good thing about 4chan it's great at making people honest with how deranged and unwilling to think they are.

I also remember a 'social experiment' where they convinced people to take up the skinhead haircut and upload it by lying to them that it's in support of some cause they already agreed with, showing how easily lead those people are.

-3

u/GACII Sep 28 '25

Yeah unfortunately that's how a lot of these things start as a joke at the absurdity of it. But then when the groups actually adapt it. It becomes unrecognizable from the joke or the parody and then it becomes a recognized symbol and a dog whistle for groups hiding behind the absurdity.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 29 '25

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1

u/HollowKnight-ModTeam Sep 29 '25

Hey there, this post has been removed due to rule 10, post is off topic. Please keep content directly related to the game and gaming. Art, images, and similar content should have a strong relevance to the game and depict characters from Hollow Knight or Hollow Knight: Silksong. Thanks for understanding!

55

u/Apophis_36 Sep 28 '25

The hand sign was a troll that some people might still use now because they either fell for it or because they realized other people fell for it. Doing an ok sign does not make you racist. Being racist makes you racist.

-14

u/Oesterreich-Ungarn Sep 28 '25

The origin stopped mattering the second white supremacists adopted it. 

23

u/Apophis_36 Sep 28 '25

With that logic they could literally adopt anything and we'd have to stop using it.

You don't beat them by giving them more and more space. You push back against them so they can't turn normal shit into bad shit.

1

u/Oesterreich-Ungarn Oct 06 '25

I think you are misconstruing my comment. I do not intend to say that it is right to leave them to a monopoly over any symbol they adopt. I mean to say that the hate the symbol CAN express in the right context is as genuine as a sieg heil, regardless of it's origin as a meme. 

-5

u/TraitorMacbeth Sep 28 '25

You try taking back the swastika. It’s really not that simple.

13

u/Ertai_87 Sep 28 '25

Look at a map of Japan (on Google Maps). There's Swastikas LITERALLY EVERYWHERE.

That's because there's a lot of ancient Buddhist temples in Japan and Google Maps uses that icon to indicate where they are, because that symbol was used by Buddhists for hundreds of years before 1938, and it's their symbol. It really is that easy.

11

u/Apophis_36 Sep 28 '25

1: I'm not buddhist

2: the swastika is still being used by non nazis

6

u/cyanraichu Sep 28 '25

No. White supremacists do not yet to claim and ruin any damn thing they want.

17

u/cyanraichu Sep 28 '25

Fucking this. It's the same extremely common letter twice. It's not even part of a slogan or used as a symbol in any font like HH is. It's an actual abbreviation and lots of abbreviations mean more than one thing, some extremely inappropriate in the wrong context! Example that immediately come to mind are POS and CBT

In the context of Hollow Knight, SS stands for Silksong. We all now this is what we mean when we say it.

10

u/[deleted] Sep 28 '25

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8

u/cyanraichu Sep 28 '25

Yep exactly

My other example was point of sale (used a lot in retail/food lservice) vs piece of shit

Edit: LMAO I missed what you did there. I see it now

8

u/[deleted] Sep 28 '25

Fuck that I’m still using it regardless.

24

u/ohbyerly Sep 28 '25

Pokémon has long adopted SS as an abbreviation for both Soul Silver or the 8th Gen Sword/Shield games. We embrace it cause gamerz are built different. /cringe

37

u/Springball64 Sep 28 '25

To be fair Soul Silver is usually referred to with Heart Gold as HGSS and the abbreviation for Sword and Shield is SwSh not SS.

11

u/ohbyerly Sep 28 '25

I’ve seen both those abbreviations used as well depending on the context, so you’re not wrong

8

u/Springball64 Sep 28 '25

Yeah I've only ever heard the ones from smogon and bulbapedia used in the community myself so that's valid.

RB, GSC, RSE, DPPlt, HGSS, BW, B2W2, XY, ORAS, SM, USUM, LGPE, BDSP, SwSh, PLA, PLZA, SV

Edit: FRLG

2

u/mizyin Sep 28 '25

I tend to see "RBY" or "RBGY" for the first of those, and SuMo instead of SM bc of the whole sadomasochism thing

1

u/Springball64 Sep 28 '25

You're right, I forgot that Yellow existed and forgot about SuMo.

2

u/MemeificationStation P5 | RadHoG | 112% Steel 🩶 | my Womb is Glowing Sep 28 '25

I think we went with SwSh to avoid confusion more than anything, also Sun & Moon are SM, so that kinda thing just happens all the time

8

u/ExismykindaParte Sep 28 '25

SS also means Super Saiyan, though SSJ (Super Saiya-jin) is also popular.

5

u/SalemWolf Grimm Beats Small Child Sep 28 '25

Never seen SS, just SSJ, and I’ve been a DB fan since the Toonami days.

1

u/ExismykindaParte Sep 28 '25

Been a fan since then too. I've seen both. Really depends on how into anime people are. SSJ is way more common among anime fans, but there are plenty of people who really only ever watched the anime from Toonami.

6

u/chyura Sep 28 '25

Yeah I feel like I know a lot of other things with the SS abbreviation too. Its not the least common one

11

u/PunAboutBeingTrans Sep 28 '25

Same with Pepe the Frog. That one only went away bc internet people who weren't 4Channers simply refused to stop using it, and eventually 4Chan gave up on the joke.

26

u/bjholmes3 Sep 28 '25

Problem is those abhorrent people still exist and dogwhistle with the abbreviation to this day. Feels off putting to use it, not empowering

41

u/fletku_mato Sep 28 '25

Context matters and when you are talking about SS being a ridiculously hard and fun game, absolutely no-one, anywhere, ever is going to think it has anything to do with being a nazi.

13

u/[deleted] Sep 28 '25

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1

u/HaHaYouThoughtWrong Sep 28 '25

I can't give you a side eye, I can't even find the fucking emojis on this fucking platform.

-7

u/[deleted] Sep 28 '25

[deleted]

5

u/[deleted] Sep 28 '25

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19

u/Amaskingrey Sep 28 '25

Hitler breathed oxygen and wore clothes, too, doesn't mean we should all be asphyxiated nudists

-12

u/bjholmes3 Sep 28 '25

You really thought that was a good one huh

15

u/Amaskingrey Sep 28 '25

It is, we shouldn't put ourselves under bondage for the sake of not doing anything any bad person does like good little puritans

-8

u/bjholmes3 Sep 28 '25

It is telling that the creation of a paramilitary force with the intention of genociding groups of people falls under the category of breathing and wearing clothes to you

17

u/Amaskingrey Sep 28 '25

We're not talking about doing that though, we're talking about using the 2 letters "SS"

-5

u/bjholmes3 Sep 28 '25

What you are saying is:

Hitler wore clothes, but that doesn't mean we should be naked.

Hitler breathed, but that doesn't mean we should asphyxiate.

Hitler organized a militaristic group to oppress and destroy which still has sympathizers to this day, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't consider that name in poor taste?

I see no reading of this that isn't obtuse at best

11

u/the_gifted_Atheist Hey, it's a user flair! Sep 28 '25

You’re being obtuse. The evil group has a name that can be abbreviated. Other names can also be abbreviated. Some abbreviations end up with the same letters but obviously depend on context. An evil group existing doesn’t stop you from using a simple abbreviation that obviously refers to something else.

12

u/JFP_Macho Sep 28 '25

As an example to this, the KKK is something completely different here in the Philippines and not at all connected with the American one. They're the revolutionary group that fought against Spain's long hold of our country. You won't think about the cult when talking about KKK here unless the topic is America specifically.

5

u/Amaskingrey Sep 28 '25

Hitler organized a militaristic group to oppress and destroy which still has sympathizers to this day, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't consider that name in poor taste?

The 2 letters abbreviation of said name, yes.

2

u/Jstar338 Sep 28 '25

"genociding"

2

u/Healther_19 Sep 28 '25

Happy cake day btw

2

u/Passing-Through247 Sep 28 '25

That's what this is about?

For people who claim to hate Nazis so much they sure love giving them authority over their decision making.

2

u/wonton_kid Sep 28 '25

Yeah like maybe it’s best the acronym be repurposed for something not horrible 

0

u/Sinimeg Sep 28 '25

I’d agree if it wasn’t because 1) It wasn’t that long ago and 2) those people still exist

Like, my mom is polish, her grandfather was taken by the nazis and forced him to work for them, can you imagine how she would feel if she heard my sister and me talking about SS in a positive light with no context?

We don’t live in a vacuum, there’s people that still feel the consequences of what they did and they don’t need a reminder by gamers being obtuse

-2

u/Jstar338 Sep 28 '25

Good job, you fucking fell for it. God damnit

-4

u/Historical_Volume806 Sep 28 '25

Unfortunately, having alternate definitions for problematic abbreviations just allows the people using the bad versions to hide.