LONG THREAD WARNING.
I never tweeted a snake emoji, but I did share this tweet with no regrets, which included a hilarious cartoon drawn by a young woman with almost no followers. It's worth examining how the memes about Pete had a different character.
I never tweeted a snake emoji, but I did share this tweet with no regrets, which included a hilarious cartoon drawn by a young woman with almost no followers. It's worth examining how the memes about Pete had a different character.
Terminally online Sanders fans had zero affection for Pete. In the words of the Hunter S. Thompson, they kicked him like a mad dog with mange every chance they could get. There was a visceral dislike for Pete's whole ethos, and there was a delight in ridiculing him.
The snake emoji was very different. It was used by a lot of people, men and women, but the major common theme is these were people who previously held a great deal of affection for Warren. These were people who felt -- right or wrong -- like they had been personally betrayed.
There was no delight in posting the snake emoji for the vast majority who did it. The experience of seeing the progressive non-aggression pact disintegrate was painful for a lot of people. Some lashed out. There was frustration, and anger, and right or wrong, it was genuine.
And the Left is also guilty of personality politics, treating their favored politicians like extensions of the family. And that included how many Sanders fans felt about Warren. But this is politics, which can turn into a street fight even among family.
Another proposition I truly believe is that if Pete had been a woman, those same online Sanders fans would not have gone at him quite so hard. It's hard to know this because if Pete had been a woman, he'd be a different person. But I still feel this nonetheless.
I also look at Klobuchar, and how her aggressive nature and her "the progressives must stopped" energy earned her a grudging respect among aggressive online leftist rabble-rousers.
Klobuchar wasn't explicitly profane like the extremely online crowd, but she had a certain desperate "fuck you, I'm right, you're wrong, and this is important" approach to politics that many desperate dogmatics on the Left could relate to.
But for Sanders supporters there was no personal connection with Klobuchar. Unlike Warren. So when a lot of people felt betrayed and lashed out, it was because of personal investment. Because of passion. Real frustration. Even heartache.
For a lot of men and women, it was like something you send to a partner who cheated on you. Which isn't healthy. But nothing about online political fandom is.
Another thing to note is there is absolutely no shortage of supporters of virtually every candidate tweeting horrifying stuff at Sanders throughout the campaign. But it all lacks a certain sense of solidarity that arises through symbols, so the media doesn't bite.
Honestly, the attacks on Sanders, his surrogates, and his female and minority supporters is a criminally unreported story, but in a way it almost makes sense because memes, symbols, and online in-culture of the Left increases its visibility and perception as a singular entity.
No other candidate had anything approaching such a cohesive online fan club, where their online life was about supporting the candidate. The only one close in my mind was Kamala's "K-Hive," which interestingly also gained a reputation for harassment and rude interactions.
But again, I think culture and class comes into it. Some of the harassment was real, but a lot of the perceived "aggressive" people in the K-Hive were working class black supporters, and I can't help feel that a clash of backgrounds played into the strife, much like Sanders fans.
But there was something different going on when the media conversation became about the memes, and more specifically, about symbols.
The emoji in particular created a single statement shared by many, and that unity created the illusion of unanimity. In other words, the number of people who posted the snake emoji can be measured in the thousands or perhaps hundreds, but it gets projected as something universal.
And since it's a symbol, it's by definition vague. So it can be projected both as universal and as representing something it does not. The battle over these kind of symbols will consume much of our political future for years to come, but it has little to do with real harassment.
There is so much malicious online harassment across every part of twitter (very much including the 99% of it which is non-political). And I don't just mean strangers calling each other stupid for differing political beliefs. It's everywhere.
And so much of this harassment is never examined, nor are the strange intersections of class and culture that lead to online strife given much consideration. We ignore the clash of sensibilities, and we forget online's insulated nature, where it's ideas fighting, not people.
Online provided physical safety for the outraged to vent, but most of us learned years ago in the YouTube comments section or some weird forum that it will never be polite and sober, even under the best of circumstances. Social media is slowly introducing everyone to that idea.
I guess the point is that I can't help feel like there's about to be an effort to demonize a wide swath of people based on symbols and anecdata, where nothing rigorous has been done to quantify and understand what is actually going in the weird world of Online from each side.
