Nontroversy

Submission 5,892

About

Nontroversy, also known as a Manufactroversy, is a slang term for an alleged controversy amplified for political gain. Generally in a nonstroversy, one side of a political spectrum will hear of a story which makes the other side look foolish, then amplify it such that the backlash to the story will far outweigh the impact of the actual story itself.

Origin

The earliest appearance of the word "nontroversy" on the internet was posted to Urban Dictionary on December 9th, 2006.^[1] In the definition, user Quartermain used the political right's reaction to "flag burning" as an example of a nontroversy (shown below).

Spread

The term began to see more use in blogs over the following years, appearing in articles on Good.is^[2] and KFMX.^[3] "Manufactroversy" has a page on Rational Wiki.^[4] In 2019, "Nontroversy" was written about in Merriam-Webster^[5] in a "Words We're Watching" post. Rational Wiki and KFMX have both called The War on Christmas a nontroversy. Rational Wiki also cited #Benghazi, GamerGate, and Pizzagate as examples of nontroversies.

Star Wars Backlash

Two major nontroversies centered around the Star Wars sequel films: #DumpStarWars and #BoycottStarWarsVII. In both instances, the hashtags were started by right-wing Twitter users attempting to counter what they saw as the political agenda in Rogue One and The Force Awakens. In both cases, however, tweets using the hashtag mostly saw people complaining about the hashtags' existence. Mashable^[7] discovered "94% were merely expressing outrage over its existence, according to a statistically relevant sample examined by social media social listening and analytics firm Fizziology."

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Breakfast Club Dance Video

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Breakfast Club Dance Video refers to a video of Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dancing to the 2009 indie rock song "Lisztomania" by Phoenix while she was attending Boston University. In early January 2019, an edited clip of the video meant to shame Cortez began circulating on Twitter, which was subsequently widely mocked by those who found her dancing endearing.

On January 2nd, 2019, Twitter user and apparent QAnon member @AnonymousQ1776 tweeted the edited video, writing "Here is America’s favorite commie know-it-all acting like the clueless nitwit she is……High School video of “Sandy” Ocasio-Cortez." The tweet gained over 2,000 retweets and 9,000 likes before it was deleted.^[1]

Most were quick to take the attempted smear and mock it for inadvertently making Ocasio-Cortez look charming, including conservative news outlets like The American Conservative^[2] and Washington Examiner.^[3] Twitter users posted screenshots exchanges between @AnonymousQ1776 and commenters telling him he had simply made Ocasio-Cortez look cool. A post by @SonOfGodAndMan gained 70 retweets and 1,300 likes (shown below, left). The Breakfast Club actress Molly Ringwald tweeted her support of Ocasio-Cortez and the video, gaining over 1,800 retweets and 13,000 likes (shown below, right).

PJ Media described it as a "Nontroversy."^[6]

Malia Obama Clickbait

Malia Obama Clickbait Controversy refers to two February 2019 stories which were used in an attempt to smear former first daughter Malia Obama. The first showed pictures of her holding a bottle of wine while vacationing with friends. The second was the discovery of her Malia Obama's private Facebook page which featured pictures of anti-Trump messages. While some conservatives attempted to use this information to smear the former first daughter, many others were quick to mock the smear attempts and claim the attempted smears only served to make Malia look cool.

Some online users attempted to use this information to attack Malia's character. User @WilkowMajority attempted to say that because Obama, 20, was drinking underage and apparently having a lavish time, it was hypocritical she would not be attacked by democrats (shown below, left). User @zoevaldes also made it a point to note that Malia was underage drinking (shown below, right).

The vast majority of posts regarding the incident, however, featured backlash against the idea that people were using the information to smear Malia's character. This led to complaints from conservatives who stated that the amplification of the supposed controversy was a ploy to make conservatives look bad.^[8]