Editor’s note: This article was initially published in The Daily Gazette, Swarthmore’s online, daily newspaper founded in Fall 1996. As of Fall 2018, the DG has merged with The Phoenix. See the about page to read more about the DG.
In a remarkable turn of events, the journalistic community has broken from its storied tradition of making fun of millennials’ passion for social media in order to make fun of millennials’ passion for social justice. Many large media outlets, such as The Guardian, The Economist, and, most recently, The Daily Gazette have produced groundbreaking work in demonstrating the relative ease of making fun of the most vulnerable members of society.
“People often forget how enjoyable and useful positing disparaging opinions that no one asked for can be,” remarked The Daily Gazette staff writer Spriha Gupta ‘17, who reached out to us without prompting.
From The Guardian’s recent piece on how female speech is annoying, to The Daily Gazette’s monumentally verbose dissection of the sheer burden of being a nice person, the printed press has long been ablaze with articles that would make TheBlaze proud.
This recent focus on heroically dissing the disenfranchised has come to a head in today’s issue of The Daily Gazette, whose takedown of the completely un-American and toxic practice of providing subtle support to one’s peers is sure to win a Pulitzer. The fearless journalists at The Daily Gazette bring the light the dark and toxic origins of snapplause, which originates from ‘‘[the] aspiration to appear different and quirky, while not coming across as weird.”
We reached out to the sociology/anthropology editor of The Daily Gazette, Lauren Crooney ‘20, to ask about her motivation for pointing out this societal ill. She responded to our email via semaphore.
“Everyone agrees that snapplause threatens our dominant modes of communication, and if it is allowed to proliferate, we risk people supporting each other efficiently, which will lead directly to rioting and governmental instability. We cannot allow those without a voice to gain one,” Crooney said, reflecting a deep journalistic integrity that will stop at nothing to uphold the status quo.
Above all, that illustrious online multimedia empire, The Daily Gazette, has once and for all proven that progress can only be made when those in power are the most comfortable. As Marcus Chairson ‘16, the Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Gazette said recently, “the only way that we as a country can move forward is to relentlessly make fun of those trying to make progress. As a part of the media, The Daily Gazette strives to remain a lighthouse for the general public, and shield our readers from any opinions that may be slightly uncomfortable.”
Indeed, in these trying times, as the wave of social progress grows stronger, we must look towards these media beacons.