Circuit of Culture: Identity
​MEET Egoraptor
A titan of early Newgrounds, Arin Hanson is a flash animator who started out on Newgrounds and is still fairly active in the community. He is mainly known and well loved for the very comedic series The Awsome Series where he spoofs and parodies various popular video games. He still uses Adobe Flash today.
​ MEET Nutcasenightmare
Nicky Case is a nonbinary game developer and animator whose most famous work were the "The Game" series which spoofed early internet culture. As Case grew older they focused on games that highlighted more mature issues such as mass surveillance which was a response to Snowden's leaks and LGBTQ issues.
​MEET OneyNG
The face of modern Newgrounds and the "Newgrounds Style" Chris O'Neil is a talented animator who is either scorned or loved depending on who you ask. He is most well known for his video game and anime parodies using humor that is quite a bit more edgy than other animators like Egoraptor. O'Neil is still very active in the Newgrounds community and still uses Adobe Flash.
Image from Stride PR
Image from Fandom
Image from Wikipedia
Newgrounds has been around a long time, and it has always been relatively diverse in content and users. Still, there is definitely is a dominant culture on Newgrounds, young edgy teenagers. Teenagers and young men with a bit of edge still rule the site, but the website has grown and become more open over time. Newgrounds had a significant advantage in attracting a large audience in the early internet because it was a flash hosting site and had a one of a kind upload system back in the day that allowed users to upload their creations to the site easily. Flash was a great way back then for users to enjoy media content because Flash does not require a high spec computer, nor does it need high-speed internet to load because of its excellent compression.
Because content on the site was mainly self-regulated by the community, the content on the website reflected the users' attitudes. The edgy content, which not as edgy as other websites(You won't find games or animations discussing The Anarchist's Cookbook or explicit racism), is sort of an escape from a relatively normal but dull life. Many users want a release from the ordinary, and Newgrounds offered that. Many wanted to learn more about the world farther than their neighborhood. Newgrounds allowed users to discover new ideas and friends. But most just wanted to play fun games and watch funny videos.
The edgy humor that dominates the site has caused many of its users to be dismissive towards progressive ideals and embrace the politically incorrect. Luckily many of its users do not follow the trend of radicalization plaguing the modern internet. Still, the offensiveness the users welcome is definitely from the boy's locker room and irks the ire of other online progressive communities. The community in Newgrounds is much more than the stereotype presents it to be.
Today there is a sizable population of Newgrounds that goes against the mold. Many people of various ethnicities and gender identities thrive on the website, and their voices are getting bigger by the day. In today's modern internet landscape, the politically correct and the politically incorrect do not mix at all and have a clear disdain for each other. But the diverse userbase of Newgrounds can coexist with each other. This fact shows that Newgrounds users are very tolerant of differing opinions, especially compared to most other online communities.