The Weekly Discourse: The Inscrutable, Mutable Take

While Twitter is obviously well-known for viral, silly hot takes, it takes a special kind of poster to make a tweet that everyone agrees is bad despite not being able to understand it. Occasionally, a tweet will be so baffling that it's practically indecipherable, but context clues will help the viewer ken that whatever the poster is saying isn't good. Perhaps it's the cumulative effect of years of online brainworms that informs the poster's logic, the madness from extended time in the Twitter echo chamber that makes one assume whatever nonsense they post will be easily understood by all. Whatever the case, the results "speak" for themselves.

Steven Crowder Tries A Funny

It's no secret that Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez makes people lose their damn minds whenever she pops up in the news. There was the time her critics tried to ruin her by publishing a video of her having fun in college, the time her Democratic critics tried to cancel her for having an average-looking boyfriend, and of course, Ben Shapiro's odd obsession with her. When she took to Instagram Live Monday evening to discuss her harrowing experience at the Capitol during the January 6th riot, it was inevitable that there would be some stinker hot takes in the aftermath.

However, no hot take was as weirdly inscrutable as Steven Crowder's.

For some context, AOC mentioned she is a sexual assault survivor while recounting the riots, and said Republican calls to "move on" from the riots is similar to language used by abusers.

Crowder's tweet clearly seems to attempt to mock AOC's sexual abuse, which is something no human being should ever do, but what's less clear is exactly how he's trying to make fun of it. It looks like he's implying the congresswoman was sexually abused by Karl Marx, but if that's the case, the joke, horrible as it is, doesn't even make sense.

Crowder's tweet was heavily ratioed as people tried to figure out just what he was saying, even as they knew that whatever it was was in poor taste.

Perhaps someone can change Crowder's mind about posting jokes like this in the future.

The Return Of "Don't Lean In" Guy

On a lighter note, the Don't Lean In guy returned to the timeline last week with another scorcher of textual analysis. For those who don't remember, last May, Twitter was left bewildered by the theories of user @alpharivelino, a man who theorized that some of the strongest men in the world were in fact "less-than" because they leaned towards their partners in pictures. This, in his eyes, implied sexual neediness. This was a bold claim to make against literally The Mountain from Game of Thrones, but that's what made it such a memorable hot take.

In late January, AlphaRivelino returned to bring his earth-shattering take on some new photos, this time demonstrating how a man is sexually "less-than" if his partner faces the camera in pictures.

Fellas, is it gay to point your penis towards a woman?

The tweet, as with all of AlphaRivelino's analyses, is bewilderingly silly, and was mocked across Twitter.

Remarkably, AlphaRivelino is not doing a bit, or if he is, he's kept it up with remarkable vigor for years. For a good laugh, you can get his takes on UFC Fighter Christmas Photos, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the movie poster for Sixteen Candles and more.

The Democratic Primary Never Ends

Though the Democratic primary ended almost a full year ago, there's a certain subset of Twitter users who it seems will argue about it, and by extension the 2016 primary, for the rest of time. This time, we're looking at journalist Amanda Marcotte.

Marcotte is an infamous journalist in Twitter circles for multiple hot takes, including hoping Trump won the 2016 primary because he'd be "easy" to beat. She has also been vocally pro-Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren during the recent Democratic primaries. In her post, she argues with a man who is saying he preferred Sanders over Warren because Sanders posted a direct statement about how the recent Gamestop Stock Extravaganza showed how "the business model of Wall Street is a fraud" while Warren put forth a statement asking the SEC what it's going to do to prevent "market manipulation." While the man said he preferred Sanders' take on the matter, Marcotte said he only preferred Sanders because Bernie is a man and Warren is a woman.

However, what helps Marcotte's tweet ascend to truly miserable is the ensuing thread where she doubles down on the snake emoji discourse, says Bernie supporters are "dudes who still are arguing in their heads with their ex-girlfriend about why an 80/20 split in chores isn't sexist, years after she dumped him," and wraps up by saying "aha, I see this tweet has triggered some males!"

Marcotte's thread is emblematic of the most tiresome Twitter community that's been fighting the same battle for years. It's like watching two grumpy old people meeting every day to argue about a dispute from 40 years ago, only to come back and do the same thing the next day because they're all the other has. One would think a Biden presidency might put the entire fracas to bed, but unfortunately for everyone, the Democratic primary never ends.

The Weekly Discourse is a look at some of the spiciest hot takes on Twitter from the past week that may not have generated memes but were definitely bonkers.