In internet / social media commenting culture there’s the sort of assumption that’s so subtly and almost ubiquitously present that I can only really put a finger on it in its absence. This almost-universally expected element for comments and statuses in an online context could be labeled wit I suppose, which is vague but I can’t quite think of any other single word or brief phrase that captures it. The expectation is present both in social media statuses and in comments under statuses or in many types of online forums.
The expectation is that whatever you’re writing, whatever point you’re making, is either very heavily serious/sentimental (e.g. announcing the death of someone close to you or deploring a tragedy in the news) or a commentary, either as part of the discourse or a relating of someone happening in one’s own life, which must have a sharp (and preferably somewhat original and non-cliche-sounding) point to it. There has to be some subtle degree of humor behind the point being made, at least if it isn’t a purely argumentative response to someone else’s view. There is typically some very minor inference left for the audience as to whatever broader point (political, personal, or whatever) the commenter/status-writer is gesturing towards. Things are never spelled out 100% bluntly and baldly somehow.
And the reason I’m having trouble describing what I mean in the above two paragraphs is that I believe this is ingrained in our social media and discourse culture as such a low-key undercurrent that I don’t consciously notice it the vast majority of the time – again, it’s more that I notice its absence at once on the rare occasion when it’s absent. Recently it’s been on my mind because I’ve been perusing a small online space where it’s conspicuously absent by (of all random things) gradually going through the archive of old For Better or For Worse comics on the website GoComics: occasionally there are commenters who post under these comics and there’s somehow a complete lack of attempt to be incisive or make a new point or do anything but straight-up explain the joke a lot of the time (hereandhere are typical examples). I’m oversimplifying over thousands of examples obviously but there overall seems to be a complete lack of “wittiness culture” in that space, and I honestly can’t think of any other online space I frequent where this is the norm – the closest I can come to it is the way boomer-age people often seem to act on Facebook (but the regular commenters under the FBoFW comics come across as quite young). I notice something similar on the Peanuts archives at GoComics, except that there are more commenters such that every day there’s exactly one featured comment available which on average is of only marginally higher intellectual quality.
I feel like I’m still not quite getting at what I mean very well, but maybe someone else knows what I’m talking about and can describe it better than I can?
Noticeable by the reaction to its violations, generally viewed as somewhere between “irritatingly pedantic” and “mansplaining”.
That connection hadn’t occurred to me and wasn’t part of the counterexamples I’ve been thinking of, but I think you’re right. It reminds me of an exchange I saw on Facebook a few years back (between millennials).
Unfortunately I don’t remember all the details of this, but one of my Facebook friends (a woman, although I think since that time they have announced a preference for they/them pronouns) made a status saying it was a mystery to her why she felt a certain type of body odor smell in a certain context pleasant even when rationally speaking she “shouldn’t” (the main detail I’m forgetting here is what precisely the context was, I think it had something to do with clothes?). A guy commented under her post with a decent-sized paragraph putting forth a scientific (biological) explanation for my friend’s preferences. He then wrote another parent comment of just one sentence essentially summarizing what he had said in the first comment (reading something like “Yeah, so I think the reason you have that preference is pretty much X”). Underneath those two parent comments, my friend wrote, “Thanks, I love being mansplained to.”
And I remember my main reaction being (1) how is it “mansplaining” to offer a scientific explanation in response to a post that was more or less explicitly requesting an explanation for something the poster thought was weird about herself – is a man automatically a mansplainer just by attempting to explain a felt experience from an objectively psychological level? And (2) it did come across as obnoxious somehow for the guy to write two separate comments, even if the second one was just one sentence reiterating the first one. Like, I couldn’t quite nail down something objectively obnoxious about that, but it came across as kind of gauche because… on Facebook we’re supposed to follow some broad baseline of incisiveness and wittiness and that’s obviously violated by the unusual lack of succinctness in writing two separate comments saying the same thing?
Well, I suppose that (2) has a lot to do with the answer to (1).
[EDIT: because I had a little time to kill (yay end-of-semester work suddenly being over!) and curiosity was getting the better of me, I actually went back through that Facebook friend’s wall and found the status/discussion I was struggling to remember, from three years ago. It’s an interesting lesson in how my memory distorts things over time: my above description of the exchange wasn’t mild or nuanced enough. First of all, the status was an assertion that my friend found male soap scents pleasanter than female soap scents. The proposed explanation was “men’s soap is designed to attract women and women’s soap is designed to attract men”. The status was less implying a request for an explanation than I remembered, though it had a subtly implied tone of “this is strange” (though in retrospect it seems my friend likely had some gender dysphoria). Also, it was in fact a second guy who wrote the second parent comment, affirming in one sentence that he agreed with the first guy who wrote a very modest paragraph. Still I thought that the second guy was a little gauche somehow to make a new parent comment rather than just liking the first guy’s comment or replying directly under it with something like, “Yeah makes sense” or “This ^”. It still felt like he was violating the unwritten rules of Facebook somehow and contributed to my friend’s feeling of being mansplained to. At the same time, I still say that it’s a bit of a stretch to be offended on principle simply by someone putting your psychological preference in an objective context like that.]
Thank goodness he’s here to explain how feminism works. How would us silly little ladies know what to do, otherwise? Now I know that not sending tit pics is anti-feminist.
I am so done with smart men, besides of course Spencer Reid. The intelligence is attractive but them being low key misogynistic and trying to mansplain and ruin everything you like is a real turn off. Himbos only for now on
In Spanish it’s machoplantear which is a combination of macho “male” and plantear(se) “to lay out (an idea) / to consider”
We could have had hombrexplicar [hombre “man” + explicar “to explain”] and I’m not sure why we didn’t? Some peopple disagree over which is better.
The noun form is el machoplanteamiento “mansplaining”
My guess is“hombrexplicar” doesn’t capture the critique of “machismo” in quite as pointed a way; that is, “machoplantear” points directly at the problem/the term already generally used to discuss problems of masculinity.
Anyway, I’m delighted by all of this.
You make a very good point
in hebrew it’s הסגברה / hasgvara - basically a mashup of hasbara (explaining, but also carries the implication of ‘propaganda’) and gever = man
this is the best thing I have seen all week :D
This needs more languages.
It’s the spectacular herrklären in German.
The Icelandic for it is “hrútskýra” (v.) - “hrútur” is a ram and “útskýra” is to explain. Rams are lovely and all but the image of a silly ram as well as how the word sounds make it super excellent imo!
I’m currently doing a PhD in linguistics. I have a BA and MA degree in linguistics. I am being funded by one of only seven research councils in the UK and was offered funding by another too.
Yesterday at a party I had to listen to a guy, who has never studied linguistics, tell me how women talk far more than men and “dominate” conversations.
Even when I tried to present him with studies that show that men typically hold 75% of conversations, will view a woman as dominating if she takes up more than 25% of the conversation, and interrupt far more frequently than women, he would just talk over me to tell me all about how women talk too much.
He actually said at one point “women just talk loads and say nothing. Men don’t have to say much because we can just get our point across without the chat”.
All while he was giving me his opinion and refusing to listen to anything I had to say based on my 5 years of linguistic knowledge and 24 years of experience as a woman.
98% of heterosexuals are just stupid assholes. All they do is masturbate all day and make gays feel unwelcome. I’m sure me, and anyone else who has a brain agree that if you all just became gay, the world would be a better place.
The patriarchy doesn’t want you to be gay. The more people that convert to homosexuality, the weaker white males will be
Lets talk about one of my favorite anime characters in existence. Astolfo.
She is a non-binary, transexual women, who has in the spotlight of many cis gendered males. She is also my motivation to become trans!!
But if there is one thing I CANNOT stand is how she is treated in Apocrypha, and in the anime community. She takes constant oppression from white weaboo males that want to mansplain their way into a romance with her. She is also oppressed in a scene where she is found naked infront of ruler by accident after taking a shower, and she screams after realizing she has a penis.
I WILL NOT tolerate this behavior. This is oppression on a whole different level. She shouldn’t have even reacted that way, or any way. I wish Type-Moon to rewrite every episode containing any form of mansplaining, or oppression towards Astolfo. Shame on you, Type-Moon!
