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I know this probably counts as low effort, but I suspect it's fair to say the recent controversial Sydney Sweeney interview provides a near-perfect example of Shiri's scissors, doesn't it?
I'm going to add to what @cjet79 said because starting a thread on this topic would have been fine, but what made this low-effort was not merely its shortness but that you made absolutely no effort to contextualize or explain what you were talking about.
You may have assumed, because it's all over Twitter, that everyone would know what you were talking about. But as several commenters below have demonstrated, there are people who do not actually spend any time on Twitter and had no idea what this is about. There are people who barely know who Sydney Sweeney is. There are people who don't know anything about her jeans ad that caused this controversy. There are people who do not know about the interview with GQ journalist Katherine Stoeffel that has become what you refer to as a "scissors" moment.
If you want to start a top-level thread:
(1) Provide context. Do not assume that everyone else is an Online as you. Do not assume that everyone else is going to know what events and people you are referring to. Not everyone has seen the latest Trump news. Not everyone knows what WotC announced about D&D (some people, believe or or not, even in this nerdy space, barely know what WotC or D&D is). And definitely not everyone knows who a C-list actress known for having "great genes/jeans" is or why she's controversial for fifteen minutes.
(2) Provide something of a conversation starter besides "Hey guys, what do you think of this?" The bare minimum of effort, besides providing some context, would be offering your own opinion on the subject. Or why you think it's gone viral. Or why you think it's a Shiri's scissors. Something.
Here is my contribution: the tldr, for those still ignorant, is that Sydney Sweeney is a hot blue-eyed blonde actress/model who did an American Eagle jeans ad very obviously capitalizing on her great
titslooks and making a genes/jeans pun. This triggered a lot of predictable nattering in leftist spaces that Sweeney and American Eagle were Darkly Hinting about white supremacy. Sweeney was then interviewed by GQ features director Katherine Stoeffel, in which Stoeffel asked her about the ad and the reaction to it. Her question was read by many as a passive-aggressive demand for Sweeney to essentially apologize and assure everyone she's not a racist; Sweeney responded with essentially "no comment." What made it go viral, besides the feminine-coded passive-aggressive language of Stoeffel and Sweeney's directness in response, is the contrast in their appearances and facial expressions. Stoeffel is a mid-looking woman in the presence of a woman infinitely hotter than her, and her facial expressions radiate hesitancy and lack of confidence, while Sweeney fixes her with a direct and assertive stare in return. This has been micro-analyzed to death by many, many people. Some have called Sweeney's look a "death stare" and said she is "smirking" or indicating contempt with the slightly upturned corner of her mouth, others have defended Stoeffel and argued that she was actually trying to be kind to Sweeney and let her defuse the charge. If you watch the whole interview, it's not nearly as confrontational or unfriendly as you might think from just watching those most-captured few seconds. Sweeney's obviously a professional who knew that question was going to be thrown at her, and Stoeffel probably was not trying to "gotcha" her. I am always skeptical of the sort of micro-analysis that assumes you can mind-read and infer everything someone is really thinking from their facial expressions and tone of voice. But certainly the visual effect combined with the cultural moment had all the ingredients to make this go viral and become a CW "scissors."I can't help but thinking that Stoeffel bears a passing resemblance to Denny from The Room. And earlier this year I said the same thing about Ziz.
Is everyone Denny from The Room? Are you Denny from The Room? Am I Denny from The Room?
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I think this is a good example of the rule, "Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion." It is often used to mean "write civilly," but also write as if you were trying to explain it to a reasonably intelligent random you just met at community pool.
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Thank you for the summary. As you said, I'm not on Twitter soaking up all their drama so my immediate reaction was to wonder what the heck OP was even talking about.
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I don't even know what interview you're talking about - including a quote of the controversial part would have been a start...
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Possibly. She did not say anything per se, she basically refused to answer or "take the opportunity" to apologize for perceived racism of "good jeans/genes" ad. But I guess refusing to make a statement can be considered a scissor statement in that sense, especially in the context where the whole concept is broad enough to encompass anything, including stuff like "men should sit when they pee".
For me real scissor statement should be something that is genuinely surprising, where the other side did not know that different view is even possible. So for instance "trans women are women" is not exactly a scissor in this day and age although it may have started as one, similar to "its okay to be white". Mild scissor can be something like "hotdogs are sandwiches" or "tomato is a fruit". In that sense Sweeney refusing to apologize for perceived racism in that context can be considered a surprising scissor, as it is not something people expect from Hollywood starlet.
It reminded me of another similar example of recent scissor statement, where the Dune star Timothée Chalamet called child free life as bleak. The response was of course ranging from "of course, does anybody thinks differently?" through "its easy for him to say when he is a millionaire" to "there is nothing bleak being independent childless woman".
Maybe he WAS a good pick for Paul, then. Dune's morality is bio-essentialist.
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Yes it is low effort, and intentionally breaking and flaunting your flouting of a rule does not make it better. 1 day ban.
*Edit fixed my flouting of grammar and word definitions.
flouting
Flaunting his flouting?
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You could at least provide us with what was said, rather than "go google this news story and then come back."
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What are the two messages? "It was an obvious bait and Sydney wisely refused to take it" and "Sydney was simply asked to condemn racism and clammed up instead"?
...Yes?
I got the impression that many average white liberal normies earnestly don't understand why she just didn't fall in line, bend the knee and denounce racism. The just don't get it. "All she had to do was say that she isn't racist! The interviewer just gave her a perfect opportunity to redeem herself! I mean, how hard is that?! Wtf??!!" It's incomprehensible, and the only possible explanation is that she's an evil Nazi. On the other side, dissident rightists and Trump supporters see this and earnestly don't understand how anyone can not see that the interviewer was setting up a usual, dishonest, sneaky leftist trap. Like, how can anyone pretend otherwise??!!
I've just realized that was the "Gen-Z stare" in action. "I don't find this part of the conversation valuable, so I'll just stare at you in silence until you move on."
Interviewers are not going to enjoy their jobs if that's going to become a norm.
Tismchads stay winning.
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What's funny is that she's consistently a 00's, pre-woke feminist, so her refusal to take the next step into the intersectional performative debasement is laudable for the right, but she's going to chafe at fitting in either side. She played her cards well and has achieved enough independent fame and name recognition that she doesn't need the ideologues to prop her up anymore, but she's not at JK Rowlings level of fuck you success, so she has to be careful not to alienate, well, everyone.
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No.
It's not really a very good example. Everyone's bubble varies, but I don't know of anyone who really cares about it.
The people who are trying to gin up controversy around it feel like culture war dead-enders who are trying to produce content. The media outlets reporting it are dying clickbait legacy outlets like Rolling Stone or GQ, not even dying but-still-important legacy outlets like the NYT or New Yorker.
All the natural reactions to it I've seen, even online, have been some variety of eye-rolling at the whole thing, or making fun of Sweeney for the movie flopping because she made a feminist movie, it's all meta-commentary that assumes someone else cares about it all. The film itself looks to be Sweeney's Hard to Watch, an overly serious film from a hitherto unserious actor.
So I see where you're coming from, but it ultimately just doesn't have the juice to get anywhere. People don't care. American Eagle isn't a big enough brand, Sydney Sweeney isn't a big enough actor, the whole controversy feels like going through the motions.
Now if the movie were to become a hit, then we'd get something out of it.
A few celebrities have jumped in. Interestingly, no Americans. They're all from the anglosphere. Ruby Rose has no career so her bitterness makes sense. Dan Stevens never really hit the big leagues in America after leaving Downton but he still had good movies like The Guest and Apostle and apparently Legion. Aime Lou Woods just had a good turn on the trendy White Lotus.
Nothing really seems to unite them. They seem to range from has-beens to actually successful. Maybe it's just random internet addiction/radicalization.
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I don't even know who this person is or why I should care. I googled the name and nothing about any controversy came up. Google news was all about the woman she portrayed in the movie that flopped defended her performance after someone else involved in the true story criticized it. Whatever this is, it isn't news.
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The movie is irrelevant in all of this, isn't it? I've read that it indeed flopped, then again, any movie where Sweeney is cast but plays a role where she doesn't show her tits off is bound to flop, I guess. Either way, nobody actually cares. Other than that, well, sorry to be blunt, but your comment basically comes off as another variation of the "Relax, it's just a few crazy college kids on Twitter, it'll blow over" narrative.
Ok do you have any counter examples of arguments? "One time there really was a wolf" just seems like a fully generalizable argument to panic over everything.
If anything the failure of the Sydney Sweeney thing to catch fire strikes me as evidence that we're past peak woke.
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The concept being referred to for anyone unfamiliar. The tl;dr is that a "scissor statement" is an assertion (or, more nebulously, an event) which is optimised to provoke disagreement and controversy within a particular community. It sounds obviously true/good to one half of the community, and equally obviously false/bad to the other half.
I guess you're right; at least some minimal explanation is in order, even on this forum. I included a Wikipedia link.
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