Smarm is highly endorsed by social media platforms; a post that “looks like” insult or threat of violence might you get banned, but something truly disgusting with a “calm and neutral” demeanor almost never will. Being contrarian brings fame, but it also brings infamy. One with loud sharp opinions will be usually less well received than one with a positive demeanor, this is also a rule as old as humanity itself. Just look at the comments any time a game journalism site posts something slightly critical of the industry, or when they give less than perfect score to the new iteration of [giant franchise]. In short, as much as negativity is thriving, there is a far larger tendency to enforce artificial positivity. This might seem like a contradiction, but actually loud cynical criticism goes hand to with aggressive politeness.
Smarm is cynical, False positivity does not always appear in the form of “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything”. Just as often, it laser focuses the negativity into a single, outsider target. A particular case of cringe culture highlights this well: Sonic is notable as a popular franchise where not only hating it is safe, the ridicule is embraced as its own official PR. Being “a good Sonic fan” requires one to maintain a certain emotional distance to it, nothing new coming out of it can be ever good, all Sonic talk eventually comes to “LOL fan art”. The aesthetics are different, but the demand for civility is essentially the same. If you are openly positive about Sonic, you are being rude, you are ruining the validation people get from having a pariah, you are breaking the rules of Sonic discourse.
For all their postures of politeness, US Democrats operate quite similar to this. Their social contract says it’s good to hate on Trump. It’s a free zone, anything and everything about Trump can be said, no matter how bigoted or irrational it sounds. However the moment one makes a remark about how certain policies of Trump’s policies are continued from Obama they are violating this contract, no matter how level-headed the critic actually is, they are “lacking decorum”. Smarm is removing disputes, there is no dispute in making fun of Trump, but there is in bringing up the drone strikes Hillary had approved. Snark at the outsider is fine, this outsource the conflict. Why critique of their nation’s enemies should be a bother to a true patriot, it validates their own values after all. In smarmy web of Democrat ethics it’s OK to be deeply racist against China, but not OK to think that maybe the problems of China comes from structures which are all not that different in the US. The smarm’s goal is not always a total elimination of snark, but often, it’s to create snark-free zones, like safe rooms with precious trinkets . The children can’t play there, but it would be easy to convince them to do so if they had a playground outside. Trump is the Democrat’s playground, The illusion of a “US before Trump” is the fragile, fragile porcelain which must be guarded all costs.
Snarky Smarm
In smarm, snark is watered down to mere cynicism. It is so empty that it might as well be praise. Speaking against the king is rebellion, except for the fool. No matter how harsh the fool is, his snark won’t inspire change, so it’s harmless and remains unopposed. Cinema Sins perfectly fits the bill. The channel tackles movies in a particular fashion: It looks at movie scene by scene and either complains about minor production errors, plot holes which are hard to realize on first watch, anything that only becomes a problem when a scene is viewed out of context, the narrator not understanding plot devices, quite a few sex jokes, calling things cliche, intentionally petty complaints and or easy observations which doesn’t really add up to any critique[1]. ( This critically panned movie has bad special effects, woo!) The way videos are structured and the narration makes it very hard to actually remember what’s said in the video. If one can pay attention, it can be easily seen that jokes, criticism and petty complaints all blend to one another, added with the fact that videos are sometimes outright wrong about scenes it’s talking about; there isn’t really much to get out of here, reading the synopsis of the movies are more informative. According to comments, the channel occasionally dissuades people from watching some movies, but people often tend to dismiss even larger plot issues,and let’s all be honest here a movie does not require a coherent plot to be popular, let alone a tightly constructed one. Despite sounding brutal on paper and having high view counts, the videos do not create discussion besides riffs on the channel itself. At its heart, it’s a syllabicity pop-culture trivia.That would be alright, except for people who haven’t engaged much critical thought about media, it’s quite plausible that this sounds smart and insightful. Whenever people call them out on their mistakes or incomprehensible critiques[2], a host of fans are ready to remind “the hater” that they are all just jokes, expect when they themselves say “Wow, I didn’t realized there were so many mistakes, haha!” under the same comment section. Sometimes, fans of the certain movies start a war in the comments, seeking to restore the positivity a single video has been disrupted, but Cinema Sins fans are disciplined soldiers of true intellectual criticism; so the ultimate authority of the channel is always restored back. Only the Cinema Sins guy is entitled to snark, everyone else must cheer and laugh, just as oh-so-offensive comedians think. Didn’t you hear, they talked about 1000 genders in Tumblr? Ah that cutting humor again. Wait, is it not? So you must be one of those SJWs? Of course, their brave and scathing critique must have offended you! They are the height of comedy, you are offended and trying to censor them! One might think the comedian is merely reaching to cover up their lack of humor, but this is typical of smarm. The comedian, the intellectual, the podcaster, the debater are entitled to the snark. You are not, you are either laugh with them, or accept being laughed at; otherwise you are a horrible bully. The modern alpha man is a big ball of smarm covered with a thin layer of snark.
To contrast, let’s examine The Tropes on Women video series by Anita Sarkeesian. It’s a series examining video games, sometimes other media, from the lenses of how they represent women, later expanding to minorities. The videos are in serious tone, but they are not authoritarian or even harsh in criticism. It’s mostly a invitation to think about how video games depict certain things(Ex: “Games use Damsel in Dress trope a lot.”) and overall have an optimistic tone, an underlying hope of video games becoming better. If you have been online for the last 10 years, you know how salty gamers were at these videos. Of course, it first must be said that this wasn’t a purely spontaneous reaction, now we are fully aware that it was manufactured and fueled, with the goal of punishing being a women who says things men don’t like. Yet still, the groundwork of this anger was the thick goo of smarm around games, that’s what most of the criticism amounted to: “Games are never sexist, there is at least 1(one) video game with a women lead, when women are sexualized it’s always for their empowerment, developers never have any bias about women characters, don’t criticize my video games., except when you are talking about glitches or something.” Smarm is much more than mere tone-policing, or a selfish desire to ignore problems, it’s a question of who is allowed to say what.
Enjoying Things and Being Woke
So that’s why it’s good to be careful when one says “Let people enjoy things”. Is anyone actually restricted or shamed from enjoying something? Are people attacked over a innocent romantic pairing or a fan art? Is someone giving a sermon whenever they hear someone is liking media they hate? Or it is just the mere fact that a rant video, a harsh article, a Twitter post criticizes a beloved franchise? It it is one thing when a review casts a shade on an experimental indie project, but the most ferocious defenses are always made for cash cow franchises. Of course, the real reason for this defensiveness is much more personal. The fans feel like they themselves are under attack because their external validation for media consumption is being threatened. Humans are social beings, our emotions and thoughts being shared by others makes us feel good, thus getting closer to people who are like us. This can bring the idea that enjoyment of art is something that forms communities. Embracing a “fan” identity is about embracing a virtual communitya nd “let people enjoy things” is often a defense of assumed communities from an non-existing threat.Corporations actively work very hard to make us believe in these communities. Nintendo for example is very successful at this, maintaining the image of a creative, colorful, wholesome friend. They have managed to turn the resignation of their CEO — not someone who worked at games, mind you — into a PR event, even after a short while after they have blasted a large ROM archive into oblivion. When one said anything critical about this situation, they received the backslash from the horde of fans as expected, but that’s not what makes this notable. There was a truly impressive level of brand construction only a few can reach, resembling those of sports teams. People were heartfelt at that moment, sad but prideful, sharing memes and old clips… One could feel the warmth of a community, just as the ex-CEO himself said in the video. This magic alone could make someone feel terrible over being critical of the situation; cynical, bitter and cold against this wholesome family of people who bought the same products. How one can fight against the millions of people’s childhoods? It’s not an angry fan, not a snarky social media account, not a passive aggressive shout-out telling us “Let people enjoy things”, this is a beautiful lullaby from Saruman’s voice …
However, the sense of community alone does not fully encapsulate “Let people enjoy things” sentiment. Phrases like “Don’t like, don’t watch?”, “Why don’t you write your own novel if you know better”, “If you care about story, read a book”, “No one is forced to buy microinstructions”, “his review ruins people’s enjoyment” all expressed same defensiveness, but today there is a more insidious aspect of it: Enjoying thing, thus buying stuff to enjoy things is “woke”. If one suggests that the latest blockbuster movie perhaps isn’t the best gay representation, but they are not only harming communities, but also ruining the empowerment people have. The media debates must revolve around the very important messages of giant franchise:. There are already small media full of queer stories from queer people, but — who cares about them — the five seconds of no-homo moment in latest iteration of Avengers is clearly more important. It’s also very important that narratives of beloved franchises happen to perfectly fit into today’s political environment. Art and life imitate each other, fiction can help us to articulate world better, as this very article references LOTR; but it’s something else to use Harry Potter or Game of Thrones as the main vector to navigate real life politics. It’s not that such people cannot separate reality from fiction, but rather in the same vain of celebrating inspirational shoe ads, the consumption itself is accepted as moral good. Big media, and the corporations who own them is accepted as the moral authority. Therefore criticizing media becomes criticizing the fan’s morals. How one can fight against what people stand for?
Breaking the Magic
Commodities alone cannot create communities. Communities are built with trust and mutual support building upon shared interests, emotions and goals. Drawing Super Mario fanart, modding Zelda games, Pokémon speedrunning, Princess Peach unbirth roleplay etc. can all form communities, but not being “a Nintendo fan”. There is a always talk of “toxic fandoms” about popular media, but there is no need to feel any commitment towards groups of people who just happen to consume same media we do. (These groups are so often dysfunctional precisely because they are not a real communities) Nor there is any need to feel pressure just because something is widely disliked. The common advice given here is to not take criticism personally, but this somewhat glosses over how personal art is. No, the issue is the failure to embrace media as personal to full extent and let the specters of “the consensus”, “artistic standards” haunt us, even in the case where the criticism is about possible bigoted implications of a work. The point of “enjoying art while remaining critical” is precisely this: “Okay, I can see this controversial aspects can be problematic to some people but I can conceive a case for a positive reading” or “I find these aspects troublesome but its valuable parts still makes this media overall a good experience.” In turn, critics should be more confident (not the same as being aggressive) in their criticisms, reduce the use of phrases and sentences such as “in my opinion”, “subjectively”, “Everyone is entitled to their opinion.”, “If you enjoy it, that’s fine” . Such weasel words train people to expect permission to disagree with the critic, and makes them even more defensive if a critic sounds just ever-so-slightly-authoritative.Snark is a not always good. Certainly I am not advocating for being abrasive for mere personal satisfaction. Our rhetoric should not create collateral damage, for instance it is easy to not use well-known slurs. However, snark is important, all over-seriousness achieves is taking away an important coping mechanism against the ugly reality, a flexible tool of social critique reflecting the anger and the hope of the oppressed. And good snark can be really powerful, does not necessarily imply dark humor: Throwing milkshakes at the fash is precisely great because it destroys their air of respectability. Very serious tabloid writers, centrist pundits, conservative politicians speaking of milkshakes as if they are life-threatening weapons is profoundly beautiful. Not matter how much they claim to be subversive or edgy, reactionaries have a unrelentingly serious self image, which makes them quite fragile against any tiny dose of absurdity. Milkshake has proven to be better snark than anything websites that prided itself on being edgy ever conceived.
Against Saruman, Théoden’s voice is like a shriek, immature, ugly, alien, horrible. Yet sometimes, it is necessary to sound dirty, to be negative — strongly even — towards the positivity imposed upon us. Because smarm has evolved long past the point of a smiling authority figure telling us sweet lies, it now reproduces itself by convincing us to lie ourselves. If we can’t even refrain from watching a live music show in Israel when Palestinians explicitly asked us to do so, our critique of the wishy-washy words expressed there is rendered hollow, by indulging in power we have already chosen to take part in smarm. I am not advocating for a sacrificial mindset here — far from it, I strongly encourage to find ourselves in media — but one can’t get anything without giving anything, that’s the rule of universe: To push back against swarm, sometimes it’s better to not let ourselves enjoy things. lest the black hole of smarm sucks all genuine enjoyment dry. Sometimes this means not supporting certain media by money, sometimes “ruthlessly critiquing all that exists”, sometimes pursuing stories by us from us instead of waiting rainbow capitalism’s grace, sometimes donating to a emergency fund instead of buying the really good looking game.. And sometimes letting go of a delicious drink…
Media affects us as people and the world, but merely reading narrative does not make us make better. Only those who create narrative can change the world. The status quo, and the groups who represent them, cannot be trusted to create narratives for us. If we want to see ourselves in the narrative, we need to put ourselves in the narrative. Companies should not own our social lives nor our stories…
[1] There is a new habit on the media discourse which people deride any kind of criticism about plot as “being like Cinema Sins”. No, plot is still an ingredient of a story, the audience should not have to “shut down their brains” to enjoy something, there is a clear difference between genuine criticism and pure pedantry.
[2] A regular occurring example: Exposition in dialogue is bad, exposition in background is bad, exposition with flashback is bad, vague or no exposition is also bad, several of these complaints can be all in the same video.
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