A Whole Thing About Being Triggered…
Fallout, Ben Shapiro, offence and politics (it’s about snowflakes)
Hi, I’m George Westcott. I’ve been going through an old-YouTube rabbit hole recently. My video essay addiction has gotten the best of me and I’ve given up to my vices. What I was shocked to find, however, was the amount of snowflakes being thrown around in the older YouTube space. Now, snowflake is a word that has been overused. Being popularized in the anti-sjw phase of a lot of social media content, the word snowflake specifically was used to describe the weakness in leftist stances. The typical snowflake in the eyes of the typical 12-year-old boy was the blue-haired feminist who was also queer or some other deviant, mad on Tumblr about something or other. Now this is widely known to be the popularization of the term into larger consciousness even though the direct origins of the term to refer to weak liberals are still debated. The origins of the term are not what I am here to discuss, however. What I would like to delve into specifically is the way that it, much like when you say a word over and over again, has lost a lot of its meaning and it currently has little relevance in the discussion of politics and culture. In addition to this I would like to discuss the leftover ideas that it has had in our current debates and understandings of media. Finally, I would like to focus on a specific project and how it has shown a deep hypocrisy as of recently. So, how does a word go from being the go-to term to something of an ancient relic? It, much like a lot of the issues we face in our current culture, is due to conservatives. Oh yeah, baby. It’s being a snowflake time <3
Old YouTube was a weird space
YouTube culture during the early 2010s was quite liminal. Maybe it comes from my own experience of being a child and a teenager during that specific time, but all of the things that happened throughout that time, especially on YouTube seem strange and vague. Going back into this current YouTube rabbit hole has made me realize specifically how strange and liminal it still feels today even having all of the context that I do right now. YouTube was pretty much overrun with a lot of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc without much backlash. Especially now that I am surrounded by more like-minded people in terms of positions towards those issues, it’s very strange to see the lack of backlash that these creators faced within this time. Now, as stated earlier, the word “snowflake” stood out as much as I thought it would originally. This was THE term. This was how people performed their admission into the ingroup. It is almost too stereotypical that you can essentially make anything into a 2010 script very easily. Now this is where I bring my specific understanding of the snowflake culture. In my own opinion, the development of the term snowflake as a central element in political discussion developed an understanding of politics with the central objective being to offend.
Now I’m not the first one to mention this. Martin Montgomery, Michael Higgins & Angela Smith all write about their chapter in Media and the Politics of offense. They specifically describe how offense has played a role in the development of political issues in the shifting digital age (something I will touch on later). What I specifically would like to add is that the snowflake term is a central component of this propagation. The goal of politics within this ideology is not to create tangible changes but through said changes create a reaction within their political opponent. Even more, in most cases the end goal of creating offense is done without any changes. The political takedown effect. The battlefield of ideas. The role of the snowflake in this case is to be destroyed as your opponent. What is interesting about this is how the creation of content specifically interacts within this space. The takedown in this context has a productive nature in the sense of creating a product, or content. Snowflake, utilizing this understanding, is an opponent but also someone to exploit for content within this case. The “gamer takes down snowflake” forms a symbiosis in both hate and active need.
Now that culture, insular to most of YouTube, was then expanded. This form of understanding the ways that politics interacted with the rest of the world once we began formulating traditional media more in the style of social media. I think what we saw was a rapid rise in the understanding of the snowflake in the vast majority of conservative media spaces. This goes double for the older circles, desperate to approach the new and rising wave of conservative groups that were coming out of the post-gamergate era of the internet. Even today we still see a large majority of conservative groups still use this framework in their discussion of politics. Whenever I see a project or a conservative discuss a liberal or leftist figure, it still carries the stereotype of said leftist being a crybaby or easily offended. While this analysis might serve the purpose of infantilizing their “political opponent” it still forms a requirement. A lot of the motivation for a lot of peddlers in the conservative sphere where their product relies on owning the libs as a marketing strategy.
Oh no, they fucked their shit up
So, going back to the original question posed, why has it become such a null point culturally? Why does a word that was circulated so much during the peak of the Gamergate era seem so out of place? If you’re yelling “It’s because racist old men overused it too” through your screen then you might be onto something. During this time a lot of the people watching Gamergate unfold in front of them saw mobilization of thousands in favor of the right. In response, a lot of the forms of populism that have been on the rise have relied on similar structures or at least through the use of social media to defuse their politics. Now for a moment of self-intertextuality, what occurred was very much in the same vein as my writing with millennials. We saw these quickly aging figures from the early YouTube era, being slowly but surely fazed out in the cultural landscape. This went double for the even older generation which attempted to emulate this specific culture for their political diffusion.
Now where are we now? It feels old. That’s where we are. It feels old to call leftists and adjacent people “snowflakes”. I don't think this is a wild and out-of-left-field statement. Overall, I feel like a large portion of people would agree with me on this fact. What I have noticed, however, is that people are dissatisfied with the framework that this concept prescribes to politics. I think the wave of “politics of offense” is dying out and we are seeing the last remaining specs of a bygone age.
I think the best example of this has been the promotion of “Laby Ballers”, a movie produced by the Daily Wire (Ben Shapiro and co). In summary and because I don't want to talk too much about this movie, Lady Ballers follows a group of men acting like trans women to win at sports. The point is that this movie’s entire marketing strategy hinged on the fact that the film was offensive. The tagline of the trailer was literally “the most triggering comedy this year”. If you look at a large portion of reviews and analyses of the movie, they all feel like this movie feels outdated and of a different time. This might be added by the fact that Lady Ballers was very much ripping off the plot of Juwanna Mann. I think that Calebthehairy on Letterboxd puts it best, “The idea that these dumb assholes think they’re breaking new ground by essentially remaking Juwanna Mann but with more overt transphobia speaks to how tired and dead in the water their entire approach is.” Another good example was The Sound Of Freedom which also attempted to utilize left-wing outrage to market its movie. Even if there was a conservative reaction to the film from its most schizophrenic fans, the vast majority of the reaction from the general populace was apathetic chagrin. The movie essentially tries to discuss the human trafficking crisis through a savior complex lens with the vast majority of the promotion of the movie surrounding the fact that the liberal media and leftist outrage was making this the movie “they” don't want you to watch. Lisan Alex Gaib on Letterboxd puts it best, “Seriously though, this movie cares more about promoting itself (or rather, asking you to promote it for them lmao) and making the questionable Tim Ballard into a Christ-like hero than the actual issue at hand.”
Regardless though, I think that this demonstrates the way that people are very much wary and tired of this specific approach to media especially when it comes to older forms of media trying to appropriate an already outdated form of interacting with the political. Of course take it with a grain of salt, especially when I am writing as a leftist myself. However, what I found most interesting is that this isn’t just a way that a lot of right-wing media is conceptualized around itself but even an ideology larger in its framing scope.
Fallout from Fallout?
Now, I can’t say I have been fully honest throughout this article (I’m being cheeky hee hee). This writing isn’t fully due to just having gone down a YouTube rabbit hole. What started said rabbit hole search that ended up in me writing this article was the fallout over fallout being “woke”. The new Amazon series was pretty good overall, even though I thought it could have done some things differently (maybe I am just jaded towards the series in general). What I didn’t expect was the series being called “woke” a word I dread entirely. On the site Checkifitswoke, they list the show as 54% agreeing that the series is “very woke”, their critique latching onto the fact that there is diverse representation in the cast and characters with a female main character and a black supporting one.
Now, what struck me was how these people calling Fallout woke were interacting with the media. I think that the framework described earlier of the understanding of the snowflake and politics to offend is a concept that people have largely applied to their understanding of the world. In my opinion, in the eyes of those who understand the media as woke, they believe that the end goal of said media is to offend them. The media that they create has an end goal to offend and hence the opposite is true. Now I do think that there might be people on the left who are guilty of this as well but this is just a strange way of doing politics and creating media. A piece of media’s goal is to create an emotional reaction while having them grapple with what it is trying to convey. Media with the explicit intent to offend creates an emotional reaction without grappling with what you have to say. It’s an anti-intellectual approach to understanding media, a way of understanding media without having to create any meaning. When people react to the series being woke, they are imposing a snowflake understanding of the media in general, posing media as something that can only have value if it conforms to your view of the world. This overmoralistic form of viewing media, evocative of the left which led to the wave of gamergate, has now become evocative of conservatives. My interpretation of this cultural phenomenon is that the concept of the snowflake is a full ideology and a whole form of interacting with politics at large.
Conclusion and My Thoughts…
Now, this is a lot to unpack and you might be asking “Hey George, what the fuck?”. Don’t worry, I hear you. I get visions of your questions when I sleep at night. I think media with the express intent to offend kinda misses the point. They miss in the sense that they are not really saying anything and are just trying to create a reaction, creating anti-intellectual forms of media understanding. It is hilarious that we are so critical of 12-year-olds saying slurs to get a rise out of people when we have full adults with studio budgets taking the same approach to making things. Now, you can feel offended over things, but that’s not my point. I also don’t conform to the notion that a lot of edgy comedians promote with their stuff, their goal is to offend and get annoyed when people do (I don't like Ricky Gervais). What I am saying is that we should call out the media which is purely bent on offending and calling out people who use offense to peddle their terrible movies. I also find the fixation on ethics I’m not asking to shut down discussion around art purely on the offense that it has caused. What I am asking is that people make things of substance, even if that substance is shit. I’m glad that people are catching onto the fact that these movies promote themselves as being triggering and the stuff the left doesn't want you to see.
Now to play devil's advocate on the left, I am also annoyed at people who believe that just their existence is offensive to conservatives, it’s a silly way of interacting with the personal which relies on the reaction of others to justify what you are doing is right. I think a good example is those TikTok gays saying “The sexists are gonna get so mad that I have blue hair hehe”. My issue isn’t the fact that you have blue hair (slay), but the fact that you are making media with the sole purpose of offense, making your personal choices reliant on the negative reaction of others. It’s a rebellious teen approach to politics which doesn't do much. I do believe that creating offense can be politically important but it has to be internally justified in a sense. This can be done by creating representation or normalizing practices that have been considered deviant through systems of oppression. I would also recommend OliSUNvia’s video on the topic of offense as it serves as a good analysis of the role that offense can play in politics. But when your end goal is just to offend without creating tangible political shifts, you lose me. This can be said with Lady Ballers and Sound of Freedom. My issue, regardless of my politics, is that they utilize outrage and “offensiveness” as a marketing tool for their movie, not to create any political change even if the films are overtly political. The offense is a marketing tool first and possibly part of the politics of the movie second.
Back to the conservatives, I am glad that this specific approach to understanding media through the larger system of “offensiveness” is being taken less seriously as it just claims that media that conforms to your moral standing is good and media that doesn't is negative especially when it comes to its quality at large. I think what is considered woke has become quite washed and doesn't have to do with anything that the media discusses in depth. Furthermore, the larger ideology of the snowflake is silly in the silliest form. Calling people snowflakes doesn't mean anything anymore and I am glad. I think the moral outrage over the media being “woke” is dying out slowly and media where the only goal is to be offensive is dying out even quicker. Will this be the end of “conservatives who used to call everyone a snowflake a couple of years ago being offended at media”? No, not. What I am doing is noticing the issue and I hope reading this you can recontextualize how we think about offense at large.
Finally, to wrap up, why has it become a moot point to call people snowflakes? Now, aside from the fact that language changes throughout time, it was heavily overused and eventually shifted into a cultural practice that we are still seeing today. Snowflake as a concept was then expanded onto a larger ideology which then has slowly been collapsing into itself. I think that people who used to call people snowflakes have become aware of the irony of calling people snowflakes, especially when so much of their political activity has just been creating outrage about media, something they used to criticize ‘snowflakes” for. To reiterate, in the evolving landscape of “discourse”, I really hope to live to see us moving away from a focus on offense and more onto substance even if the substance is shit.
Sources:
Montgomery, M., Higgins, M., Smith, A. (2019). Political Offensiveness in the Mediated Public Sphere: The Performative Play of Alignments. In: Graefer, A. (eds) Media and the Politics of Offence. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17574-0_2
Calebthehairy’s review: https://boxd.it/5fPJlb
Lisan Alex Gaib’s review: https://boxd.it/4tftnL
Checkifitswoke’s page on fallout: https://checkifitswoke.com/fallout/
OliSUNvia. Video: