I noticed increased frequency of posts in places like r/rpghorrorstories, that describe a situation where the player brings a tiny veiled or just a shameless copy of a popular fictional character - Sokka, Scanlan, John Snow, Walter White - except “more based” or “less of a cuck”. What follows is a story of the player doing some horrible manosphere shit.
I know that a lot of posts on places like these are fake, but in this case I kinda hope they are. Or that it’s all the same guys at different tables. Either is more comforting that an idea of an army of incels trying to rp their extremely toxic fanfiction on the table.
As far as I can tell, the original meaning of based came from the alt-right, meaning something is praiseworthy because of how unwoke it is. So yes, being chauvinistic would be considered “based” by the original users of the term.
But thankfully the term has more recently been claimed by less misogynistic/racist/homo-/transphobic groups, to mean praiseworthy because of something’s opposition to hate. Unfortunately, both usages now coexist and it can be hard to see which one someone means, without adequate context.