JoCat & The Neutrality Politics of Cringe
If you haven’t seen this thirty-six second long animation, you’re behind on a certain twitter discourse this week. I understand how this can be a poor jumping off point for some, but this has fascinated me beyond belief. And reader, if you can believe it, my initial purpose of this piece was very different before I began writing it as the situation unfolded.
For context, this is JoCat, a YouTuber and artist who is labeled as both a Final Fantasy XIV and D&D creator. Now, this video was shared on twitter by a user who goes by the name Claire Penis, one of the best online names I’ve ever heard. JoCat, and Claire Penis by extension, became the main characters of the past couple of days. Faster than I could keep up, JoCat announced he was taking a break from creation, Claire deactivated her account, and the Mary Sue reported on it. Now, disclaimer, do not fucking follow either of these people just because I brought them up in an article with an admittedly scandalous title. Don’t bring negative attention their way, and especially don’t tell them I sent you.
This discourse gave me a lot of thoughts about the politics of cringe (a phrase I’m lifting from this video from Ro Ramdin), and how a seemingly politically neutral Twitter main character sparked a unique dynamic between users and text. In a way, I want to analyze the rhetoric of Twitter, and how we got to this place. But first, a review of the events as they occurred.
The Video
JoCat’s video was inspired by a song he improvised on the spot on a livestream, a parody of Lizzo’s “Boys” where he discussed the types of girls he likes. This animation shows off a redone version of the improvised song with tighter lyrics and staying on beat. JoCat tells us he likes the big girls, pretty kitty girls, really witty girls, singing ditty girls. Leggy girls, with the nice thighs, and a good chest, no matter what size. Belly folds, six packs, tall queens and short stacks. Mild girls, and wild girls. The thing that people took notice of (read: cringed at) were how JoCat chose to show off examples of the types of girls he likes, by drawing a bunch of fictional characters that fit in each category. Now to an observer this serves as a good art reel in a thirty second package, look at all the types of girls he can draw from all my favorite intellectual properties!
But let’s be real. If we don’t know this type of guy in real life, we’ve seen him online. We’ve seen the type of guy who posts about liking so many type of women, while none of them are real. We all know the dude who bemoans he can’t get laid but is too busy playing Gacha games and trying to bed different Fire Emblem characters. Dan Olson put it best. “Cringe. There’s no other word for it. This makes me cringe.” It’s cringe but not in a way anybody can really get at without making a bunch of assumptions about the poster, which I’m not going to do. But that rhetorical move, connecting assumptions based on learned experience, is what allowed this to spin into the firestorm it become.
Enter Claire Penis
Claire Penis has near 100k followers on Twitter, and posted the video with the caption “Just made this video. Let me know what you think!" Classic shitposting. But the video went viral and JoCat himself appeared in the replies to defend his authorship of the video, which is fair. Once it caught wind that Claire was ‘stealing JoCat’s work’ to mock it, angry replies quickly came her way. But then a bunch of Gamergate people came in and went after JoCat, digging up his previous endorsements of trans rights to make fun of him. And then, a bunch of JoCat fans blamed Claire for the unwanted attention, as if her calling him cringe had anything to do with the Gamergate guys. Claire digging up some old cringe material led to JoCat announcing his break and Claire deactivating her account (she’s back as of 12/19, and the original tweet has been deleted, so it’s difficult to survey close responses). Associates of Claire were tweeting in her defense last night, using her real name in a tone suggesting she had died, which I thought was morbidly funny. I’m not going to say that it’s either Claire or JoCat’s fault that they received the harassment they did, because that’s victim blaming bullshit. But why did this start a flamewar that one post compared to ‘world war 1 [popping] off over some dumbass shit in the Balkans?”
Political Neutrality and Flamewars
Users correctly pointed out a fun paradigm that Twitter has, where a post that is deemed ‘cringe’ can get a lot more hate than anything with real political conviction worthy of being posted about. But I have some sympathy for dunking on general cringey shit, this is supposed to be fun! Two days ago I was sighing with relief that the main character of the day wasn’t advocating for abuse, genocide or spreading misinformation! Calling something cringe shouldn’t get you run off of the platform, but when existing on the internet puts you at risk of being attacked by right wingers who are happy to doxx, swat and harass until they cave? So the risk of posting cringe, or even calling something cringe, increases. Now Claire has taken the blame for what’s apparently been a years long harassment campaign against JoCat that just had a major spike because of her post.
We would like to believe that the internet is a politically neutral zone, but it isn’t. X is for Nazis now, Musk made that clear already. As advertisers ditch the platform, people who bought blue checks for better access are ones who want to collect as much scrap from the heap after the restaurant was burned down for the insurance money. I don’t have a solution for this. This is more of a lamentation than anything. I’m not gonna give you some message about being good to one another or whatever, because that’s not what twitter is for. I’ve indulged myself enough thinking I have something to say about this. Just keep your friends closer than your enemies as things go forward into the uncertain future, yeah?