To Be Unpleasant About the Influence of Others
Written by Miranda Vidak
11/14/20223 min read
There is a phrase I heard two years ago I can’t seem to shake. Every single issue, situation, crisis, a phenomenon I read about, that phrase explains it. It seems to be the universal explanation for why almost everything unpleasant occurs in public discourse.
To be unpleasant about the influence of others.
Read that again.
I’ve read it in a piece by Van Badham for The Guardian, where she took on a very thankless job of breaking down the right-wingers’ hysteria about Harry Styles showing up on the cover of Vogue in a dress. “Bring back manly men!” - roared Candace Owens, so distraught with the sight of a beautiful straight man in a dress.
In the world of pandemics, wars, human rights violations, and assaults that go unpunished, a man in a dress is simply just a drop over the glass. Too much!
In her article, Van Badham explains it:
“Their adherents chimed in at full social media volume, echoing claims that a gorgeous young man playing designer dress-ups was an obvious Marxist plot to destroy norms and shred tradition. “It is an outright attack,” claimed the book-promoter (Candace Owens), who really should be shown some photographs of the Soviet march on Berlin. When Marxists attack, they tend to use tanks and plant flags on the Reichstag, not muck around with Vogue photoshoots.”
And she continues:
“The culture wars that so many of them fought for a Thousand-Year Trump have certainly polarized discussions of gender, race and sexuality around the west, but they haven’t brought them victory. The Trump project they championed now lies in smoky ruins, overrun by an extraordinary democratic coalition of liberals, leftists and also those conservatives who’d just plum had enough of this gestural nonsense. In this context, the strange outcry against Styles reads like a band of ousted imperialists spray-painting “Democracy sux!” on a smashed wall.”
Gestural nonsense. Phony outrage.
A lot of the right-wing theatricals are simply - phony outrage.
Many people I’ve met who saw something in Donald Trump's brand of theatrics and have supported him wholeheartedly or just flirted with the idea of a Donald; made me realize it’s not necessarily his politics why they like him; it’s the way he makes his supporters feel.
Influence. They crave it. They never had it. The survey says influence is higher on the list of people’s want list than beauty, youth, or wealth.
The worst thing you can be in the 21st Century is without influence.
When Harry Styles jokingly posted his Vogue edit on Instagram and wrote - “Bring Back Manly Men”, Candace Owens, the woman who wrote it, tweeted:
"When people try to tell me I don’t have influence, and then @Harry_Styles dedicates an entire post to my tweet. I inspire global conversation.”
Influence.
It’s all about the influence.
Again, Van Badham responds to this brilliantly:
“Attack on Harry Styles is no tactical strike. The actor/singer/model/dreamboat has been photographed in all manner of tutus, kilts, heels, and fancy manicures before this. He’s hardly likely to renounce his famous passion for a costume because of some Trumpist mean tweets. If there’s a “POINT” to the outrage, it’s not really to exert influence in debates about performing social gender. It’s just to be publicly unpleasant about the influence of others, like Styles, and to affirm some tribal costume markers to keep grinding their grift among those who remain uninfluential and aggrieved.”
It's to be publicly unpleasant about the influence of others.
The beginnings of a Trump Project fiasco were also about being unpleasant about the influence of others - Obama’s birth certificate. I don’t have enough paper here to list all the other examples in his short but memorable mandate.
People hating on Harry and Meghan? Her brother sending a letter to Buckingham Palace begging Harry not to marry her? Her sister being responsible for 20 + hate profiles on Twitter targeting her sister and spreading monstrous lies? Their little mixed race half-sister they shunned as less worthy all her life, now all of a sudden has this enormous world influence? Being unpleasant about the influence of others.
Royal Family being salty about Harry and Meghan being more popular than all of them put together on the Sussexes first ever Royal engagement in Australia? Being unpleasant about the influence of others.
One thing is to see something in the public discourse you don’t agree with, realize you don’t agree with it, and don’t do anything, but go your merry way.
But to spread hate, that is being unpleasant about the influence of others. You actually took some action. You are publicly unpleasant about someone else’s influence.
It applies to everything.
Hate comments on your social media posts.
Gossiping about people.
Spreading lies about people.
All is just being unpleasant about the influence of others.