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Notes -
Of the Based and the Cringe
, or a song of Soy and Cope
a deep dive into the linguistic history of internet slang and its political implications.
My first foray into the linguistics of politics since Alex Jones Wordsmith
I haven't read the entire article yet, but as a stylistic choice I find your extensive use of ellipses quite annoying and disruptive to the flow of the prose.
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My interpretation of the etymology, or at least the popular usage, differs from yours:
"Based" rather quickly lost any association with the act of smoking crack--the phrase "[Thank You] Based God" became such a meme in itself that it erased any prior meaning and generated a new one, not unlike how Bugs Bunny single-handedly changed "Nimrod" from the name of a great hunter in the Old Testament into a term meaning "idiot." I think at that point, it simply became a thing you say to denote something being "cool". And that's really what the term is about: "based" is just a modern synonym for "cool," the newer generations' equivalent to the 90's kids' "extreme," "wicked," "tubular," etc., just with an extra connotation of contrarianism, of picking the harder or less-popular option.
Indeed, to examine the contrast between "based" and "cringe," I think it's more productive to touch upon the concept of Weirdness Points: in a way, based vs. cringe is about what your Weirdness Points can buy you in a social setting. To some, an odd pizza topping could be either based (because it's a surprising flavor once you get past the initial strangeness of it), or cringe (because it's genuinely revolting and no sane human would even think to try it), same with sexual fetishes/preferences or types of anime character and so on. A 1911 in a less-common caliber like 10mm Auto or the old .38 Super is worthy of respect; a "poor" choice of character or vehicle in a game (from fighting games to tabletop wargames) is either stupidity, arrogance, or a mark of sheer skill (or at least surprisingly viable upon a charitable examination); even a car as boxy and ugly as the Fox-Body Mustang could be rehabilitated and loved with the passage of time.
"Cringe," then, is when your Weirdness Points only cost you socially. I think "cringe" is actually as partisan as "based" can be; after all, what's more cringe than seeing someone nominally well-respected drop a slur or reveal themselves to have reactionary politics? Cringe is, in less culture-war-y terms, a reaction to a transgression against social norms, or some Overton Window of Sane Human Behavior; the cringe teenager isn't necessarily smoking literal oregano and faking a high, instead they're filming a TikTok of themselves either dancing sloppily to a Nightcore remix of a Top 40 song, or doing something inexplicable and risky for no real benefit (either activity destined to be a brief, confusing clip in some sort of Try Not To Laugh/Cringe Challenge video on YouTube later on). "Being cringe" is whenever you open or expand your social attack surface to being roasted online by strangers because you were acting weird.
As to online influencers fighting to be based instead of cringe: in my experience, this is maybe true in more...I guess high-stakes settings? Particularly within the commentary/drama communities and the like, where social stigma is as plentiful as guns and bullets in the middle of the Bosnian War. But there are communities focused around different personalities (particularly on Twitch) where said personality regularly embarasses themselves or makes a fool of themselves, and rather than being castigated for being cringy, they're instead embraced and praised, even if only because you can mine funny clips from them.
Some other thoughts:
-Overall, I thought this post was a little too kabbalistic. As the above writings suggest, I think it's not necessarily that deep and that the associations and conclusions you've teased out are probably coincidental.
-I thought the point of the Tao, of Yin and Yang, was that each contains a piece of the other? You can't have one without the other.
-The theory of the Soy Face you posit in a caption may have something to it, but I think the main reason is more to do with YouTube, its algorithm, and the psychology of what people will click on. As per the discussion on photos of protests from last week's CW roundup, people positively gravitate towards positivity, and the open mouth of the PogChamp face easily conveys excitement and joy. It also works as a form of Branding(tm), which is part of the YouTube Thumbnail Metagame. Now, why exactly there are so many examples of bearded white guys pogging, I can't exactly tell you, other than to gesture at Airport's Law.
My theory on why the "soy face" is common and arouses anger at some is that it's the sort of a face parents make at little kids to make them smile and laugh. Once you detach it from the context, it just becomes a part of general perceived societal childishness - the accusation of which stereotypically has affected the nerd scene ("You read comics? Those are for kids!") - which causes a counter-reaction.
Causing a counter-reaction from who, though? The nerds?
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Please use fewer ellipses…
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I had no idea that this was the origin until now, and I still don't know what that means. Since I'm one of the "very online" people, I think this makes it quite likely that the spread of the "based" slang had nothing to do with that etymology; instead, it registers as a catchy version of something along the lines of "grounded" or "down-to-earth", with the implication that someone "based" is the opposite of a duplicitous person who will tangle you and more importantly themselves up in a web of lies, rationalisations and false narratives.
Yeah the roots are still visible, the crackhead having no status is free to express whatever opinions they may have with little concern about how others view them as a result of expressing their opinions, because nothing can lower their status. Quite the opposite of the #selfie monument to cringe lyric:
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You'd think, but no.
Indeed there was even a joke in 2014 and series of memes "Based in What!?" that had some clueless character insistently asking the question, with the joke being the audience should know its freebased crack. Though you're right most people don't know it and its obscure enough (freebasing) that The crack reference is rediscovered and reinterpreted into the culture of the term fairly regularly.
But because its always being rediscovered, the term is never able to memetically diverge from that meaning
I think the scripted "based on what?" comeback works well enough with the down-to-earth interpretation too, though.
How could we resolve this? Poll about awareness of that origin? For what it's worth, the knowyourmeme article has no mention of freebasing or cocaine, and I would've expected something that is inextricably linked with the public perception of the meme to wind up on there.
It does mention the term basehead, though they soft sell it pretty hard with, "that he perceived as an insult."
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Based God (rapper Lil B) (who also has a KnowYourMeme page lol) is an example that predates the wider popularization of "based" and was definitely a reference to freebasing. I think this origin was quickly obscured as the term began to spread though.
Here I was thinking it was "bass head" as someone who listens to loud music with the bass turned up.
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