“I’m not sure whether I should approve this because you’re obviously making an honest attempt to learn English or remove it to hide your shame from the entire internet.”
– Smug whiner on Reddit
Right now I’m working on a project that involves Twitter. It’s a business thing, and is pretty boring. While posting some stuff, I noticed that #CancelColbert is trending. As someone who occasionally watches The Colbert Report and read his book
Apparently, in mockery of actual racism, Colbert had made some joke about Asians. The jest was aimed at the Washington Redskin’s owner and his alleged racism, and had nothing to do with mocking actual Asians. Since everyone on the internet has the mental capacity of a child, a boycott erupted.
This didn’t really surprise me. At this point being a victim and becoming outraged is “cool.” Growing up I remember when the only people who protested and wrote angry letters were prudes and old ladies. Letters to the editor were always something I enjoyed reading as a kid because they were always penned by some weirdo who spouted off histrionic arguments that boiled down to “think of the children!”
Now it’s fashionable for people in their 20’s to pull the same trick. Anything they don’t agree with has to be destroyed. The entire planet has regressed into becoming old church ladies.
Anatomy of a smug whiner
- Faux intellect.
For a bunch of independent thinkers who are persecuted by the neanderthals that are whoever they disagree with, very few whiners ever seem to have an original thought. Despite this, they’re somehow superior to everyone else thanks to all the Malcolm Gladwell books they’ve skimmed and episodes of Dr. Who that they’ve watched. Aside from snark, none of them ever seem to produce anything either. They simply regurgitate whatever someone else said or did, and provide commentary on it.
- No regard for personal damages.
With #CancelColbert and a million other social justice campaigns, whiners want the “offender” punished no matter the cost. When someone hurts their feelings they rally to get that person fired. Donglegate, Pax Dickinson, and a million other incidents have all resulted in people losing their jobs and having their reputations tarnished over a random dork’s inability to shrug something off. As I’ve mentioned before, I was running a successful series of subreddits which contained affiliate links. I wasn’t hurting anyone and I even disclosed that I got a commission off the links. Almost no one had a problem with this and all my sites had a pretty good sense of community. Despite this, one dork, who’s entire post history consisted of arguing with people and posting “that feels when she doesn’t text back” memes, was outraged that I was “spamming the internet.” My links were all contained to my own area, and anything I posted on other subreddits had nothing to do with my ventures. I still ended up getting banned from Reddit and losing out on something that was going to earn me about $500 a month. All because some crybaby couldn’t stand the idea that someone was doing something he didn’t agree with.
- Hypercritical.
For people who get offended by racism, whiners tend to make a lot of racial jokes themselves. Most of their humor comes from stereotyping and mocking people. The “we’re Asians, not B-sians” meme is equally as “offensive” as what Colbert said. The only difference is that everyone likes the meme. Other jokes, like the “Successful Black Man” meme, also rely on stereotypes to provide humor. If people want to cry racial insensitivity, they shouldn’t be allowed to use the exact same jokes.
- Inability to articulate.
years of making snarky comments and looking at BuzzFeed articles have eroded the minds of most whiners and force them to use childish taunts. back in high school I was on a speech team. If anyone tried to use an argument like “wow just wow,” or “you went there” they’d have been thrown out. The arguments and attacks that most of these people make sound like something that you’d expect some 1900’s turnip farmer to use while protesting outside the Scopes Trial. H.L. Mencken was almost lynched by an angry mob for calling them yokels. Now some guy on will get persecuted online and fired from work because he used “hate speech.” We haven’t evolved at all over the past hundred years.
I hope the people behind #CancelColbert have fun being outraged. I hope it infuriates them and ruins their weekend. I hope they lose sleep over the very idea that someone somewhere could be saying things that they don’t like. If some smug whiner was mollycoddled and sheltered enough that a comedian’s television joke upset him, he deserves to suffer.