Today is the day of the Twitter tantrum known as #TheTriggering, a contrived hashtag in which the Internet’s biggest jerks have decided to post crap that is slightly more jerky than the crap they usually post.
I’ve been poking around in the hashtag for a couple of hours and I have to say it’s pretty underwhelming. There’s a great deal of highly predictable racism, transphobia, and misogyny. There are anime-avatarred fat shamers, Anita Sarkeesian haters pitching fits, Trump fans joking about the Holocaust, and even a few Men’s Rights activists. The hashtag reeks of undeserved self-satisfaction.
The only genuinely funny or original Tweets in the hashtag come from the feminists and other so-called Social Justice Warriors who’ve crashed the party with Tweets intended to trigger the triggerers.
And yet I have somehow managed to find a few lessons in all of this. And so, without further ado, here are The Top Ten Things I’ve Learned from the Twitter Tantrum that is #TheTriggering (So Far).
1) Fat haters don’t proofread their tweets very carefully:
https://twitter.com/FMLItSux/status/707548031994957824
https://twitter.com/DidymusTam/status/707546927395692544
2) And neither do racists:
https://twitter.com/goysheckles/status/707580339028369409
3) Blah blah blah blah blah blah vaginas
https://twitter.com/LeifLJones/status/707529181576364032
https://twitter.com/FuckTwatter001/status/707464746640007170
https://twitter.com/defunked/status/707579493955846144
4) Blah blah blah blah blah blah cucks
https://twitter.com/HuemanGarbage/status/707621864865042432
Feminism is trying to turn all straight white males into faggots, trans and cucks #TheTriggering
— MR MARMITE (@Mr_Marmite247) March 9, 2016
https://twitter.com/henrybrrtt/status/707424084833882112
Hitler was misunderstood, Trump is misunderstood, all you liberal cucks are latinophobes, nver talk about moving to Mexico #thetriggering
— Vali-Norse God of Revenge (@footbrawler) March 9, 2016
5) There’s a weird overlap between #TheTriggering participants and dudes who almost certainly did very poorly on the analogies questions on the SAT
https://twitter.com/CreggehBroon/status/707580834627362817
6) There’s also a weird overlap between Trump supporters, castration advocates, revenge porn lovers, and haters of Marilyn Monroe. That overlap calls himself “Riv.”
https://twitter.com/StopRiv2016/status/707445270091571202
https://twitter.com/StopRiv2016/status/707610635513761794
https://twitter.com/StopRiv2016/status/707607734406017026?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/StopRiv2016/status/707548913000128513
7) Words can’t hurt you …
#thetriggering if you are hurt by words you should not be not the Internet.
— Mordred Pendragon (@M0rdredPendrag0) March 9, 2016
https://twitter.com/HEWHiGHROLLER/status/707527496674189312
8) Except when they can
https://twitter.com/willieromeburns/status/707580935693213696
9) Bernie Sanders may be a slackjawed grocery-store farter
https://twitter.com/jesslutty/status/707442394699079680
10) It’s somehow unfair for the media to point out offensive tweets in a hashtag devoted to posting offensive tweets
The media will ignore the 99.99% of smart #TheTriggering tweets and write about the tiny fraction of ones that are actually racist.
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) March 9, 2016
I imagine I will learn more lessons from #TheTriggering before the day is done.
I’d like to see the raw data used to come up with that percentage of smart tweets.
What’s funniest is that it doesn’t matter what reaction they get, they claim victory. Oh wait, it’s not funny at all, really, it’s standard.
@brooked will the media even notice?
“People who are triggered by words are too sensitive!”
“I have to see a trigger warning occasionally? Help! Help! I’m being oppressed!!!”
Reactionaries are the most easily offended and outraged group there is. It never fails to amuse me that they always whine about easily offended SJWs.
I can’t decide how I want to handle this situation, the way I see it I have three options:
1. Block and ignore them all
2. Take someone’s suggestion from last night and start tweeting them spoilers with no warning on them.
3. Fill the hashtag with cat photos and pictures of that fun ‘galaxy’ inspired hair dye trend that’s been going around.
Weren’t Aztecs the guys who skinned people alive to wear their hides and led wars exclusively to catch human sacrifices who were cannibalized raw?
I don’t think the Aztecs can serve as a moral guideline for anything.
@GravyTrain
Erm… I’m all for countertrolling their dumbass hashtag, but some of your Tweets were kind of ableist and grossly homophobic. If you can’t mock the most mockable person on Earth without making man-on-man rape jokes or dropping the f-slur, please don’t bother, you’re not helping.
(No, trolls, I’m not “Triggered,” I’m just sticking up for – gasp – men.)
Re: The Aztecs
The Aztecs had a pretty interesting religious system. Basically, their version of the afterlife came in three flavors: good, mediocre and oh-so-very-very-very-bad. Which one you ended up in depended entirely on how you died. And there were only three ways to die that resulted in you getting into the good afterlife. You could die in combat (only available for men), you could get sacrificed to the gods (available for both genders), although you had to be a voluntary sacrificial offering to qualify. And the third group? Why, they were those women who died in childbirth. That’s right, the Aztecs, a culture that had multiple week-long festivals of sacrificing living humans to their gods, were more egalitarian than most, or maybe even all, MRAs.
@Herbert West
They did have a festival roughly at this very time of the year during which they had prisoners of war fight to the death. Then the winners of the fights would fight each other until only one survived. The survivor was then put into a symbolical fight, armed with a warclub, except that the club had bird feathers in place of the obsidian blades. He then “fought” against the best eagle and jaguar warriors of the Aztecs, who had proper weapons. If the prisoner tagged each of his four armed opponents, he got to the “main event” of the games. He fought an “avatar” of the war god Huichitlopocatl, a warrior who fought left handed. If he made it through that bout too, then he was skinned alive and his skin was given to the “avatar” warrior.
Fascinating stuff, isn’t it? 😉
What exactly are these supposed to trigger? Boredom?
Because I’m just not feeling the flashbacks and outrage. I haz the beginnings of a sad though, because I must be a lousy excuse for a SJW if I can’t even get my butthurt on over all this edgy wit.
Paul Joseph Watson is exactly the kind of dummy who would think that 99.9 per cent of these tweets are “smart”, and also that “the media’ cares about this nonevent.
@ monzach
That Aztec thing is interesting. It seems similar to the Spartans in that, in Sparta, you only qualified for a gravestone if you died in combat or childbirth.
TW for another Alan fact: Spartan women carried daggers with which to slash the faces of abusive husbands. The facial scar was so people would know why he’d been kicked out of the house.
@Alan Robertshaw
Another Monzach fact: The Chickasaw people were actually called “The Spartans of the Lower Mississippi”. 🙂
And yeah, the Spartans had some pretty badass women in their ranks. Olympias, the wife of king Leonidas (of Thermopylae fame) was asked once, if it wasn’t hard on the women of Sparta to have their sons taken away at age seven to be raised as warriors. To which Olympias answered that the Spartan women took comfort in the knowledge that they were the only women in the world who gave birth to men. 😉
Paul Cavanaugh wrote:
Original tweet said:
“Ash sharp” replied:
Curious: Why is “white” capitalized? Nevermind, I’m pretty sure I know why. Also, um, what percent of U.S. legislators are women, again?
“Raijjn” replied:
Wow, much scathing. Yeah, you’re right, the fact that Max helped her totally changes the over-arching plot and theme of the movie. /s
Raijjn’s Twitter has this, erm, “amusing” 4Chan fantasy: (Warning: gets a bit graphic)
Yeah, I’m pretty sure I know why “white” was capitalized. A Neo-Nazi shitlord can dream, right?
Not that her appearance has anything to do with why I think she’s a completely awesome person and First Lady, but I’ve always found Michelle attractive. More so than Melania, although I admit my judgment could be affected by the latter’s personality and choice of partner.
But mostly unsure why anyone would think an important duty of the First Lady is to inspire boners.
@ monzach
I love that fact! (I’ll be stealing it)
Yeah, I’m quite a fan of Spartan culture (I can see though why some people may find some aspects problematic). Spartan women were amazing though. They seem to be the first example of slut shaming. You probably know they were pejoratively called “Thigh flashers” by other Greek women because of their fondness for short skirts. I also love Laconic humour. Amongst my fave examples is when a visiting physician asked a Spartan why he was so healthy; “Because you’re not my doctor”.
ETA: Someone was foolish enough to try to take a captured Spartan woman as a slave. On getting her home he asked “So what can you do?”. She replied “Die well” and cut her throat in front of him.
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
Yes I completely agree. I apologise for the offensive content and what I tweet certainly doesn’t reflect my actual views, so will cut it out in future. I took quite a fight fire-with-fire approach but I recognise it just means I sink to their level, but I do enjoy the reaction I get out of some of them.
@Alan Robertshaw
My favorite Laconic statement is the famous Spartan reply to a letter sent during the Peloponnesian War from Athens to Sparta. In it the Athenian leaders urged Sparta to surrender, adding: “If you do not surrender now and we conquer your city, we will show no mercy. All the men will be killed and your city will be razed to the ground. Your women and children will be slaves for all eternity and no-one will remember Sparta.” To which the Spartans sent the reply: “If.”
Now that’s truly Laconic! 😀
(N. B. Laconic comes from the Laconic Plains on which Sparta stood.)
@ monzach
That is one of my favourites. I also like the one where a Spartan soldier decorated his shield with a life size drawing of a fly (his personal symbol). One of his enemies laughed and made a disparaging comment about the Spartan and the fact his emblem was so tiny.
“It’ll look big enough when I’m smashing you in the face with it”
First time reader, cring factor and Social Justice Whacko vibe too high, last time reader as well. 🙁
@Alan Robertshaw
Or how about the fact that before the battle of Thermopylae the Persians sent scouts ahead to see how the Spartans were preparing for the fight. The scouts saw that all the soldiers were cutting each other’s hair and making sure they looked great. Naturally they took this as a sign of femininity and told their great king Xerxes that the Spartans would be no match for the armies of Persia. Little did they know, or course, that when a Spartan soldier got his hair cut on the eve of battle it was a sign that he was going to fight to the death. Because if you’re going to die in battle and go to the Elysian fields, you’d want to look your best. L’Oreal, because you’re worth it! 😉 (With apologies to QI and Stephen Fry)
Also, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, the Spartan Queen in the time of Leonidas was called Gorgo. I confused her with Alexander the Great’s mum.
@ monzach
And of course the Spartan woman who was asked what her husband got as a dowry.
“My brains”
Though, none of this stopped the sacred band of Thebes from crushing the Spartans at the battle of Leuctra.
@ josh
Well, to use a modern Laconic phrase “You don’t have to be straight to be a good soldier; you just have to shoot straight”
@Alan Robertshaw and @josh
And let’s face it, Sparta has its share of awesomeness and then some. So it was only fair that they let the other Greek citystates get some of it as well. And what with Thebes’ other claim to fame being good old Oedipus, I think getting a military victory in there was the least they could get. 🙂
@ Alan
I suppose technically it was stab straight back then. 🙂
Personally, people like Frank Miller totally ruined Sparta for me. They got SOOOOOOOO over hyped by frat bros after 300 hundred I’m inclined to try to make them look as bad as possible when discussing them with other people out of spite.
@MD:
Is that medical advice?
Oh, well, given how easy it is these days to get that honorific, I’m not surprised. I don’t know about shit, but your kind certainly put plenty of food on my table. Which is sad, really.
I fell asleep while reading the triggering of dumb MRAs.
No imagination, no creativity there.
Boring and pathetic people wasting their lives while trolling online.
At least (they) expose themselves for what they really are. So this “triggering” isn’t even a bad thing…