You know what the world needs more of?
Boxes of complementary confetti, delivered right to your doorstep!
Against the Grain
How many intersections can you cram in one feminist?
You know what the world needs more of?
Boxes of complementary confetti, delivered right to your doorstep!
Hello everybody, and welcome to March’s “Snark of the Month.” Here on AtG we try to encourage snark as a last ditch effort to retain our sanity in the post-truth era. To that end, please enjoy your complementary confetti, March snark winners!
For the sake of our collective survival, cathartic snark is prescribed by the hostess of Against the Grain in order to support your health. To that end, we hope the complementary confetti being mailed to you as we speak stimulates the reward centres of your brain so as to encourage snark.
February’s “Snark of the Month” winner: dangerousbeans
Dr. Zucker is a bit of an odd duck, because his public advocacy against the health and wellbeing of trans people is refuted by his own research. In response to this revelation, dangerousbeans says:
If transgender activists had the power we would have fired Zucker years ago.
Out of some sort of cannon, into another giant pile of shit.
AtG’s numerous anonymous sources confirm this is true.
February’s runner-up: CaitieCat, Harridan of Social Justice
On the same topic of Dr. Zucker’s firing by quote-un-quote “trans activists:”
It was me, Giliell. I used my many coerced visits to CAMH to gather naughty facts about Zucker, and got him fired.
Nah. If I’d got him fired, a kiln would have been involved.
As it turns out, the former patients of Dr. Zucker seem to generally hate his guts! I wonder why this is never mentioned in all the puff pieces mainstream media keeps pumping out on his behalf.
-Shiv
Due to technical delays in December, I never actually did a December snark of the month.
So here we go:
December Snark of the Month: Tom Foss
Answering the question, “How is Gender Studies dangerous?” Tom replies…
Well that’s obvious, anbheal. Gender Studies courses make people think there’s no such thing as facts, so they become relativists, which makes people vote for Trump. Because Trump voters all took Gender Studies courses (I think the polling bears this out), or maybe because Trump supporters are violently opposed to people who take Gender Studies courses (but not violently opposed to them in a rationalist way like Boghossian is, just violently opposed to them in a way that totally aligns with his views on gender and LGBT issues).
I think it’s clear that this consequence of Gender Studies courses makes them clearly more dangerous than Boghossian’s example of Creationism, because fundamentalist worldviews never have negative political or environmental consequences. And Moon Landing hoaxers? I mean, seriously, when’s the last time that believing crazy conspiracy theories has ever led to someone shooting up a pizza parlor, for instance? Besides, that kind of stuff has no academic support, unlike Gender Studies courses. That stuff is confined to places like Infowars, and nobody with any kind of power ever takes Alex Jones seriously.
Meta, Tom. So meta.
December runner-up: AlexanderZ
It’s no secret that snarking on Jordan Peterson will bias your chances of winning–because I just disclosed it. Remarking on Jordan Peterson’s shiny new six-figure Patreon salary earned by whining endlessly about respecting trans people, AlexanderZ says:
Well duh. This is a guy who has been interviewed by almost every media outlet in North America because of claim of supposed censorship. His speech is so unfree that you can hear on every channel.
Wurd.
January Snark of the Month: The Mellow Monkey
Remarking on the Satanic Temple’s iteration of Baphomet and the breathless Catholic moral panic it induced:
I guess if you can’t tell the difference between an image of a fictional character created to troll you and reality, it makes sense that symbolic penises are the same as the real thing.
(And how far does this symbolism go? Is anything longer than it is wide a symbolic penis now? When we put on pants, are we doing some sort of symbolic sex act with our legs???)
Inquiring minds want to know.
January runner-up: Pierce R. Butler
From the same thread:
Poor Levi got his pentagram upside-down! (See current Republican logo for 3 examples of doing it right.)
And didn’t Playboy give up the whole centerfold schtick in ’15?
Busted.
November was, of course, a very difficult month to find snark in. Nonetheless, I am proud of you for pulling through, lovely readers.
November’s Winner: chigau (ever-elliptical)
Premier Rachel Notley is accused of some pretty ridiculous shit, simply by virtue of being the woman who upset a 90+ year conservative streak in Alberta. The Beaverton made a parody scoop with faux interviews of people blaming her for all kinds of silly things to take the piss out of this. chigau said of the ridiculous accusations hurled at Premier Notley:
So this is where Rebecca Watson is these days.
I laughed in a “haha too real” kind of way.
November’s Runner-up: Dunc
I signal boosted We Hunted the Mammoth’s observation that Milo Yiannopoulos posted a glowing review of a documentary that he appeared in, with a smarmy post titled “I thought it was about ethics in amateurish documentary journalism.” Dunc replied,
I’m sure we’ll be hearing the deeply shocked ethicists of GamerGate pointing out how unacceptable this is any minute now…
Any minute.
November was kind of a serious business month for reasons that are probably obvious, but snark can be a form of self care. Sometimes it’s the only way we can let off a little steam. So that’s my excuse. Put cracks in the crushing depression through snark. It’s for your own health.
-Shiv
We can’t have nice things because of assholes. That’s why the comments are subject to such a rigorous editorial control, but the downside is that people don’t like seeing their comments constantly put in moderation. I know it’s frustrating! But otherwise the comments would derail very quickly. To incentivize your participation despite the annoyance of constant moderation, we have monthly celebrations for snarky contributions!
Snark of the Month: Johnny Vector
In a post where McCrory discusses the social impact on himself of introducing HB2, in which he compares people exercising their right of association to disassociate with an odious bigot to the disappearing act of intelligence operatives in 1984, Vector replies:
Man, I still remember physically shaking after that scene in the 1984 film of 1984 where Winston gets disinvited from a charity event.
Word, Johnny.
Runner up: Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
Giliell characterizes the fretful Dr. Peterson and his supporters perfectly:
Suggestion: Just go “lalalalalala”. Though even that will lead people to certain conclusions about you. We get it: You want to say whatever you want without anybody ever being allowed to criticise you, to point out the harm you’re causing, without anybody ever making the conclusion that you are, indeed, a bigot and an asshole and subsequently, oh the horrors, no longer invite you to their parties.
Fucking language, how does it work?
I don’t know Giliell, this is the same guy who used the singular they/their in a rant about how they/their wasn’t “grammatically correct.”
Snark on lovelies!
-Shiv
Welcome everyone! Here on AtG we want to foster some excellent, weapons-grade snark. In that endeavour, I will highlight two winners each month to praise them for their excellent snark, in the hopes that others will follow suit! Please note it is typically a difficult choice to make and many of you snark very well, and I encourage you to continue doing so. You will inevitably make it!
Ha! Joke’s on you. It’s Snark of the Mostly Arbitrary Time Limit Until I Have Enough Traffic To Do This Every Month.
In an effort to encourage engagement, I’m going to start doling out awards for good snark.
Your award is… praise! And confetti. You can’t see it, but I’m popping a confetti popper.
So, for August:
Snark of the Month: EigenSprocketUK
Over on Trump Youth: Totally not Hitler Youth, commentator fakeemailaddress shared a story about an idea they had for a joke:
To which our Snark of the Month winner, EigenSprocketUK, wrote:
#6 FakeAddress – well, it would start as a joke.
Oh, authoritarians.
Runner Up: militantagnostic
The obvious solution is to deport the economically marginalized. If any terrorist attacks occur after deporting the bottom 10%, deport the bottom 10% of the remaining population and so on. Success is guaranteed. You lefties have no common sense.
Keep snarking in September, fine readers, there were many excellent comments to choose from and I hope for many more.
-Shiv
For the past few months, I’ve been joking that if I had a bunch of spare cash and a hundred or so friends who were interested in performance art, I’d make a bunch of snazzy pseudo-military uniforms, get everyone dressed up, and march around in formation at Trump rallies. All questions would be referred to “The Don”. If Trump want to act like he’s one uniformed paramilitary short of a 1930s fascist, I’d give him his uniformed paramilitary.
Alas, I have neither the friends, the organizational skills, nor the spare cash to pull this off. It sounds like this person is trying to do something similar, except not as a joke.