Over the course of the summer, we saw trends come and go, as they are wont to do. Somewhere between the fashion fads, viral recipes, and throwaway memes lay something trend-adjacent: talking points.
From Sydney Sweeney’s jeans as a eugenics dog whistle to tradwife aesthetics permuted into “princess treatment,” media discourses have felt inescapable, a beast of their own. They model a new format of engagement that has become increasingly common online, and spell a clear trend towards conservative cultural dominance.
This “discourse” is not a conversation en masse or a mesh of individual interactions. Rather, it consists of two clashing self-contained dialogues — and conservatives are setting the terms.
These media blackouts — instances where it seems the whole of the internet is shouting about the same thing to no avail — have become a strategic tool of the right to dismiss and delegitimize liberal critique. This successfully spews further division and paints liberals as fragile and perpetually outraged, lessening the credibility of the “woke left” that can no longer unite around a cohesive political agenda, whereas the right can and does.
The result? Conservatives are winning the media discourse.
Take the response to the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle ad. The infamous ad features the white, blonde, blue-eyed actress posing in a pair of AE jeans and slowly drawling that “genes [“jeans”] are passed down from offspring to offspring…my genes are blue” as the camera zooms in to her blue eyes. Tagline “Sydney Sweeney has great genes” feels loaded when the wordplay hinges on Sweeney’s presentation of “desirable” white, blonde, blue- eyed genes.
Mass amounts of backlash circulated following its release, deeming it creepy at best and endorsing eugenics at worst. Then came the subsequent wave of reactions: a mass of comments, tweets, and posts saying people were reading too much into it, that American Eagle had just happened to pick a blonde, blue-eyed actress, that — the dreaded phrase — ”it’s not that deep.” That wave of dismissal fueled the discourse itself, and by insisting critics were overly sensitive, conservatives set the terms of debate and ensured the ad was replayed, argued over, and circulated even more widely.
Exploiting humankind’s instinct towards the extreme is no novelty for social media creators. As actions once considered progressive are increasingly normalized, the countercultural alternative is radical conservatism in order to amass likes and views. Cue the rise of tradwife content: TikTok user Courtney Joelle’s video, in which she describes refusing to even speak to a waiter before her husband arrives at the restaurant as “princess treatment,” has a whopping 8.2 million views at the time of writing.
The “moment” here is not the video itself, but the reactions that have caused videos such as these to rack up millions of views and countless comments. Viewers either condemn or praise the creator’s commitment to traditional values and femininity. Extreme conservatism paired with a spectacle driven algorithm is a recipe for engagement from hate-watchers and sympathizers alike. These seemingly random viral flare-ups are engineered to spark backlash, and the resulting liberal outrage becomes the fuel to boost conservative visibility and reach.
Amidst an atmosphere of outrage and radical extremes, conservative-coded imagery settles comfortably into the mainstream.
Audience engagement with each of the summer’s spectacles indicate a pendulum swing away from the 2020 cancel culture era of “woke censorship,” which pushed political correctness and positioned everyday people at the mercy of an internet mob. This was a time when it felt like the entire internet was against the same things, regardless of private, personal beliefs. Backlash was quickly quieted, and TikTok Trump supporters were no match for the crashing wave of the PC police. Framed as accountability, cancel culture instead stunted personal growth, pushing people into silence out of fear of misstepping and setting the stage for today’s post–cancel culture era.
Now, we’re seeing the opposite: no one is afraid to say anything. Emboldened by Trump’s unconventional approach to public speaking, a tone shift has taken place in American media that has been quickly exported worldwide. We are now in what some might describe as the post-cancel culture era.
Neither extreme is preferable, but it’s important to notice how the tide has turned. Outrage- driven discourse online has shifted from a cultural tool for progressives to being strategically weaponized by the right. “Ragebait” content and its subsequent “it’s not that deep” dismissals serve to delegitimize liberal voices and normalize conservative values in mainstream culture. If the summer’s talking points can teach us anything, it is to recognize the patterns that keep us trapped in outrage cycles and note who really benefits from them.