Culture

This Right Wing Podcaster Is Being Torn Apart For Saying Men Shouldn’t Use Emojis

"This is quite a lot of insecurity to reveal in one tweet. Have you considered pacing yourself"

by Jared Richards  29 September 2020
Matt Walsh says emojis aren't for men, is instantly rinsed

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Daily Wire podcaster and alt-right contrarian Matt Walsh has created a Twitter firestorm by saying that men shouldn’t use emojis, asking his male followers to “have some self respect for God’s sake”.

Walsh took some time off defending Donald Trump’s tax evasion and insisting that the Black Lives Matter movement is lying about the police killing of Breonna Taylor to tweet out his latest hot take: emojis are un-manly.

“Every day I see more grown adult men use emojis,” he wrote. “There is no excuse for this. Emojis are for children and women. Do you think your great grandfather would have been caught dead using emojis if the internet existed back then? Have some self respect for God’s sake.”

He then clarified that gifs are okay, and memes are a “case-by-case” bias. Good to know. Walsh is clearly trolling here, but the comment itself feeds off a base alt-right belief in the erosion of ‘traditional’ masculinity, where micro and marco moments are all emblematic of a war on true men.

It’s the kind of thinking that leads men to reject anything seen as feminine, from mirrors to saying “hey”, wiping properly, or, as one response to Walsh’s tweet argues, using a straw.

Even as a troll, it’s a joke based off a ridiculous set of assumptions and beliefs: naturally, it’s getting torn apart on Twitter.

First, there’s people undermining the argument in the Tweet that pictures are feminine and words masculine — an obviously ahistorical notion, and one that only exists because women weren’t taught to write or read in much of western history (neither were poor men, but latching onto the way class subjugates men has never been a strength of the alt-right). Or that ’emojis’ don’t have precedent.

Then, of course, there’s the general roasting. Find some of the best responses below, while Walsh prepares his column about emojis being for women and fighting the cultural war by blogging, just as his great-grandfather would have done had he the technology. Ideological grifting — now that’s what a real man does.