Who Gets to be Annoying?
Why can't we tell people when they're being obnoxious online?
Online, the popular thought is that the young men have turned against us. Due to the rising influence of the manosphere (the collection of right-wing content scattered across Reddit, YouTube, and podcasts helmed by Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate, Theo Von, and Logan Paul), rising conservatism online, the “male loneliness epidemic”, and a failure of sociological messaging creating oppositional identity formation among young straight white men, the internet has spent the last few weeks growing increasingly worried.
A sentiment that popped up immediately after the election was that the left needed their own Joe Rogan. Creators on TikTok pointed out one fairly obvious problem: most online leftists are deeply annoying.
Interestingly, acknowledging this has become a sort of third rail among Democrats/liberals/the overall left. Creator GowanusCanal points out that the toxic infighting among the left and the perception of the party as that of scolds and HR reps doesn’t necessarily sell it to an increasingly disaffected middle class. A (straight?) man on the street interviewee agreed, stating that “politics have to be about coalition building and hope and you’re doing something, it can’t be sort of this identity politicking, holier than thou, more educated than thou, shut up and accept it kind of energy I’ve been seeing out of the Democratic party for as long as I’ve been a voter.” It also doesn’t help that, as pointed out by maligned pollster Nate Silver, Democrats are often willing to eat their own due to their refusal to accept any intellectual heterodoxy: you adhere to the talking points or you’re out.
Two years ago, I posted about how Tumblr and Your Fave is Problematic created a class of online posters whose entire raison d'etre was to “call out” celebrities and other creators for problematic behavior. A decade later, the creator of the blog came forward to express deep regret for creating an ecosystem of toxic behavior: if you’re a Tumblr veteran, you know exactly what hell this blog unleashed on the platform. Between 2012-2016, Tumblr was positively riddled with cancellations: we got “stealing bones from graves is appropriating witch culture”, trans Thomas Jefferson (met God- she’s Black!), and hundreds of community implosions due to accusations of racism/homophobia/transphobia/ableism.
The issue isn’t that the accusations weren’t valid—they often were— it was that call out culture created a generation of people who believed that activism = posting. For many Millennials and almost all of Gen Z, the concepts of activism, coalition building, and organizing are directly tied to tweets/posts/TikToks stating “this thing is offensive”. Unfortunately, (as I’ve stated on TikTok a dozen times over the last three years) “raising awareness” doesn’t actually translate into material change. Even more frustrating is the complete lack of actual organizing. Several tweets from the last few weeks that have made me howl in frustration: recent discourse includes “it’s ableist to say that leftists should work out in order to be ready for the revolution”, and “reading is a privilege”. I want to hear more from people on the front lines and less from people behind a screen.
I saw a Twitter tussle recently where someone lashed out at an organizer about wearing masks, and when the user responded that they’re actually outside, masked and doing the work, the person retreated to their corner and continued to call them ableist—despite proof that the OP wore masks. I’ve posted the tweet above, but the message bears repeating: these are not serious people. You cannot clamor for a revolution and crumble to pieces when anything is asked of you.
Some excellent posters have also connected the obsession with moral purity in fiction to Evangelicalism, stating that many have simply replaced the religious dogma of their birth with ambiguous leftism, but the main impulse remains: burn the witch, or, call out anything impure or morally repugnant. I wish I could speak more deeply to this dynamic, but I’m a born and raised Catholic: Evangelicalism is alien to me outside of Ethel Cain and Southern Gothic fiction/edits on Tumblr.
I am a lifelong Democrat and will always be. I am not a political strategist nor do I claim to be. I’m simply someone with a master’s in sociology who has been online since I was 12 years old. I have seen these people proclaim themselves to be activists while echoing many of the antisocial behaviors I wrote about in Antisocial Goods: I don’t understand how the Democratic party is beholden to the whims of people who are at best, really annoying, and at worst, actively off-putting.
What’s interesting to me is the hesitation to call a spade a spade. Wouldn’t it be more helpful for everyone involved to let people who engage in openly hostile and unproductive behavior (especially when it comes to organizing and coalition building) know that they’re becoming hindrances to the movement?
A few months ago on Twitter, there was discourse about whether a parent should tell their child they’re being annoying. People argued both sides, but the common consensus seemed to be that if you didn’t tell your kid, someone else inevitably would. (Of course, there was also a contingent of people who said that telling a kid they were annoying would leave them with lasting psychological wounds that would devastate their self esteem forever. Your mileage may vary!)
Growing up in the aughts had consequences (a love of celebrity gossip and a very thick skin) but I’ve always said that polite judgment of someone’s life choices is not a crime. I’m a gay man living in New York City: I’m surrounded by annoying gay men every day of my life. I myself am annoying at times! It’s fine. But at some point, someone needs to just say it to let the air out of the tires, so to speak.
In September, the poly community on TikTok imploded when a trans user uploaded a seven second long video repeating: “I hate polyamorous people” a dozen times in a row. Half of the community resorted to transphobia, leading to a swift retraction from the OP, but the other half of QueerTok descended into long explanations of why exactly poly users on social media tend to be so annoying. I wrote about this in September a few days before all of this kicked off: polyamory has always existed in queer communities. The need to be venerated, celebrated, and idolized for an “unconventional” relationship style is new. Sociologically, it’s unsurprising that poly discourse entered the mainstream as soon as straight white people started doing it to fanfare—we now have one book and dozens of articles written about various configurations undertaken by journalists in coastal cities. It’s also unsurprising that, like any community, the poly community would suffer under a few bad actors giving everyone else a bad name.
That said, polyamory is not defined as an identity under the LGBTQIA umbrella. The cries of “polyphobia” and bullying on TikTok are especially eyebrow raising to me as it seems that the majority of poly people are indeed queer, but the loudest voices—the ones who drape themselves in the cloak of victimhood when someone teases them online—are straight people with multiple partners. If we can’t call straight people proclaiming themselves to be queer because they have two boyfriends/girlfriends/partners annoying, then what are we doing here?
The annoying exist outside of chronically online bubbles as well. Whenever YA discourse comes up, the same few arguments percolate across platforms. People who regularly engage with media created for children—Young Adult readers, MCU fans, Disney Adults— demand respect from their peers for engaging with said media. The “let people enjoy things” and “don’t yuck anyone’s yum” brigade have proliferated every crevice and not only want to be exempt from all criticism, but celebrated for making these choices. This is annoying behavior! These people have won entertainment— YA fiction is worth $11.34 billion as of 2022, Disney made $88.9 billion U.S. dollars in 2023 (up from $82.7 billion dollars in 2022, a seven percent increase) but still continue to complain whenever anyone makes fun of them for engaging with said content.
The infamous Sore Winners article outlines this perfectly. Where once they would have been called nerds for making this type of content a dominant facet of their personalities, they have since become the establishment. They’ve taken over every facet of media and still want to act downtrodden and victimized when someone points out their favorite media was created with seven year olds in mind (fourteen year olds for YA readers).
Sociologically, I will say that the annoying are everywhere for those with eyes to see. The argument that pointing out the bad behavior of online leftists is silencing queer or POC voices barely holds up: I have been to DSA meetings. I’ve been the only brown face at a c*mmunist bookstore. While years ago it might have been that “annoying” was a silencer for anyone who wasn’t white or straight, I think the sheer proliferation of bad actors online has ensured that the word has lost some of its weight. And again: most of America gladly engages with superhero content and the IP-ification of entertainment. The consumption isn’t the issue, the annoying part is the need to be patted on the head for consuming media created with the lowest common denominator in mind.
I am asking all of us to be brave. Existing on the internet is going to be difficult enough for the next four years. We cannot continue to suffer under the tyranny of people weaponizing the fact no one in their lives loves them enough to tell them to stop posting when they’re acting up online. I’ve had enough. Have you?
It goes without saying that incels are annoying, as are the “leave books out of Booktok” people who have cropped up since the election.
More evidence of the cultural slide into conservatism: the rise and dominance of the straight white bro in popular culture. There is no reason I should know who Brianna Chickenfry is, and yet, I do. (Vox)
I didn’t realize this was the worst Democratic loss in 20 years? (CBS News)
Heteropessimism made it into the New York Times! The article was well written IMO. Covers 4B, celibacy, “boysober”, the divorce memoirs I talked about in February, and Andrea Dworkin. (NYT)
On the flip side, this person is advocating for more love, more relationships, and letting young people fall into delirious, passionate love. The heteropessimists are scaring the young people! (The Free Press)
Finally, Slate connected the dots between the Gen Z aversion to uncomfortable emotions and difficult conversations is actually directly leading to Situationship culture. I always assumed the situationships arose from loneliness directly— an interesting read. (Slate)
So many gems in here. But I find it especially distressing that people seem to think they can have a 'revolution" without any offline friends. Or without really doing anything towards it. I think we can go ahead and call this think delulu now.
as someone who is 41 and grew up online since she was 13 your blog has been a HAVEN of sanity. I cannot tell you how much i appreciate your common sense thoughts.