Timeline of the Online Culture War 2011-2013

The beginning of the Great Awokenining

Why I am writing this. The inspiration for this series came from this twitter exchange. The internet is ephemeral and not as much a subject of historical analysis in the way that the rest of society is. A post that is similar to what I am trying to accomplish here is Scott Alexander’s “The Rise And Fall Of Online Culture Wars.” Instead of looking at trends of movements like feminism, BLM etc, I will try to tell this story with a timeline of singular events, similar to the book Human Smoke which tells the story of the lead up to WW2 though a chronological timeline of events that happened on various days. The scope of this project is culture war issues, mainly racial issues, feminism, conspiracy theories, LGBT issues and how they interact with online subcultures. Some events will be exclusively internet based like viral videos or memes being posted for the first time, while others will be more newsworthy events that were discussed and debated on the internet. Not every event will be important in and of itself, some will be used to illustrate a broader trend. This series will be mostly based around events that occurred in the United States and the broader West since I am American, if you are not American and don’t relate, I would encourage you to create your own timeline for your country. Lets take a trip down memory lane…

1/20/11: Miss Representation released. This mostly forgotten film directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom is a good summary of the feminist complaints of the early 2010s. The film largely focused on how women were sexualized in media which doesn’t seem to be a big topic in 2025.

1/21/11: Check your privilege posted on Tumblr. Check your privilege had been used by social justice bloggers throughout the 2000s but first made an appearance on Tumblr on this day according to Know Your Meme. This phrase ended up gaining much more traction among those who were using it ironically.

4/3/11: First SlutWalk. After Toronto police officer Michael Sanguinetti suggested women should avoid dressing like sluts to avoid being raped, the first “SlutWalk” was organized where women dressed in revealing clothing to protest the officers comments. There would be many more “SlutWalks” throughout the decade.

4/4/11: Obama administration releases Dear Colleague Letter about sexual violence on college campuses. This letter would tell colleges to modify standards of evidence regarding accusations of sexual assault which many on the left celebrated, and many on the right said disregarded civil liberties. Preceded many high profile accusations of sexual assault on college campuses.

4/21/11: “Social Justice Warrior” defined as a pejorative on Urban Dictionary. “Social Justice Warrior” had been used previously but took off around this time as the main pejorative for people with leftist views on social issues until usage fizzled out in the late 2010s. SJW was eventually replaced by “woke” in the 2020s.

6/20/11: Rebecca Watson releases video which launches Elevatorgate. Feminist atheist Rebecca Watson put out a video complaining about being propositioned for coffee at 4am in an elevator at the World Atheist Conference in Dublin. This divided the atheist skeptic community with Richard Dawkins eventually putting out a satirical “Dear Muslima” letter telling Muslim women to stop complaining because Watson has it worse. If you want a whole timeline of this saga it can be found here. If the cleavage in the new atheism movement over feminism were to be represented by one event, this would probably be it.

7/22/11: The Amazing Atheist releases It's Only Sexist When Men Do It video. This video was in response to women on The Talk laughing about a man’s penis being cut off and thrown in a garbage disposal. TJ later described this video as the beginning of the anti-sjw genre that was popular on YouTube in the 2010s. Maybe a self-important view, but likely has truth to it since TJ was one of the most popular creators of this type of content.

7/22/11: Anders Breivik kills 77 in Norway. Breivik put out his manifesto 2083: A European Declaration of Independence which described his opposition to Islam, immigration and feminism. This event preceded many more mass shooters motivated by opposition to whites becoming a minority in the west.

10/20/11: Time magazine worries that Occupy Wall Street movement is too white. These complaints were seedlings of a much larger movement of black grievance that would break onto the scene in a few months.

10/22/11: “We’re a Culture Not a Costume” campaign first posted on the internet. The president of Students Against Teaching Racism in Society at Ohio university posted some images on her Tumblr decrying insensitive halloween costumes. This was one early discussion about cultural appropriation which would become much more common in American culture over the next few years. These posters eventually became a meme.

10/23/11: /pol/ board launched on 4chan. This board would grow to become a center for rightwing culture and memes throughout the 2010s.

11/21/11: “Die Cis Scum” posted on Tumblr. At a time when the terms “cis” and “trans” were mostly spoken by organic chemists, Tumblr user “Char the Butcher” posted this image stating: “Die cis scum. It is hostile. It’s aggression, on my part. It is a whisper of personal agency.” This would go on to become a meme parodying the extremism of certain social justice bloggers.

11/24/11: Blackpill term used in comment on Dalrock blog post. The blackpill is a symbol of the ultimate feeling of nihilism and pessimism generally directed towards dating and sex. This term would go on to be used by many incels throughout the decade.

1/4/12: Shit White Girls say to Black girls posted on YouTube. This video got Franchesca Ramsey interviews on BBC, NPR and Anderson Cooper which led her to becoming one of the most popular social justice content creators throughout the mid 2010s. This style of content would become increasingly prominent over the next few years.

2/26/12: Trayvon Martin Killed. The event that launched the Black Lives Matter movement. Everybody knows the details so I won’t rehash them here.

4/5/12: John Derbyshire publishes “The Talk: Nonblack Version.” Derbyshire’s article was satirizing the idea that blacks need to give their kids a special talk to avoid police brutality. Some examples of Derbyshire’s talk can be seen below. This article led him to being fired from the National Review.

4/15/12: Girls airs on HBO: I have never seen a single episode of this show, but as someone who was following the discourse at the time, it seemed to have a big presence in the cultural zeitgeist. According to Wikipedia, “The series is known for its post-feminist commentary and conversation around body politics and female sexual subjecthood.” It also seems to be responsible for launching the career of Lena Dunham who was the poster child for the cringeworthy feminist throughout the mid 2010s.

5/17/12: Anita Sarkeesian launches Tropes vs Women kickstarter. The kickstarter to create a series of videos discussing female representation in video games quickly far surpassed its goal. This series, and discussion over how she used the money was one episodes that led to the Gamergate scandal.

5/22/12: Video Showing Model Photoshopped on YouTube. This is not a huge issue now, but women in magazines being photoshopped was a huge feminist issue in the early 2010s, and this video was frequently reposted on various Tumblr blogs to show the impact of photoshopping.

7/11/12: Daniel Tosh Rape Joke Controversy. Daniel Tosh discusses rape jokes during set. Woman heckles him and he responds in kind. Controversy is posted on Tumblr as shown below, and starts a discussion about the limits of comedy. Tosh eventually apologized.

7/18/12: Macklemore releases “Same Love”. This was one of the more popular songs about social issues in the 2010s. Launched Macklemore’s career, he would go on to produce more left leaning songs throughout the 2010s.

8/2/12: Chick-fil-A confrontation goes viral. In the Summer of 2012, there was controversy because Chick-fil-A COO Dan Cathy announced his support for traditional marriage. Medical supplies CFO Adam Smith decided to stop by a local Chick-fil-A and bluntly let the employee operating the drive-through know what he felt about company management supporting anti-gay policies. Everybody across the aisle agreed he was rude and he was let go from his job and eventually had to go on food stamps. In 2012 you could still be cancelled for being uncivil, even if you were on the left, though this incident seems to be downright quaint compared to some of the harassment workers would face throughout the decade.

8/12/12: Steubenville rape case. This viral rape case was one of the first of many throughout the 2010s involving student athletes. Hacker group Anonymous got involved.

8/25/12: First known example of “Male tears” posted on Tumblr. This was posted by a feminist though it may not be the first. This represented the increasingly aggressive, bitchy style of feminism that would be seen throughout the 2010s.

10/22/12: Sheeit meme posted on MemeCenter. First known example of the infamous “Sheeit” meme that would become a staple of internet racists over the next decade.

10/25/12: Redpill subreddit created. The redpill as symbol for forbidden knowledge had been floating around for a while, by 2012 it was used mostly by the manosphere PUA sphere.

11/6/12: Obama wins reelection. This created a sense of Democrat and non-white triumphalism because Obama was able to win by a sizable amount in the electoral college and popular vote with only 39% of the white vote. A Tumblr blog “white people mourning Romney” was created, and video montages of white people crying were put together. One commenter chimed in, “Beautiful and I am hoping for a replay in 2016.”

12/14/12: Sandy Hook shooting. Not super important for most of the trends I am discussing other than the fact that it provided good deal of fuel for internet conspiracy theorists.

1/4/13: Reddit user Aalewis is enlightened by his own intelligence. The quote below was posted on r/atheism. This quote might not have killed internet atheism as some have claimed, but it did provide a good example as to why it died.

1/7/13: Oppression olympics graphic posted on r/TumblrInAction. Oppression olympics was a popular anti-sjw meme mocking the way the left tried to invert the hierarchy trying to reward the people who were the most “oppressed.”

3/17/13: Donglegate. Adria Richards puts two programmers on blast on Twitter for making jokes at the 2013 PyCon event. For what its worth, one of the men in the picture responded on Hacker News claiming that only the dongles joke was sexual, forking repos was not, and that he had three kids and lost his job. Eventually Richards lost her job as well. One of the earlier examples of “cancellation.”

3/27/13: Blurred Lines Released. This controversial song by Robin Thicke was considered to be a “rape anthem” by feminists because it included the line, “you know you want it.”

4/5/13: Big Red. Chanty Binx was uploaded arguing with men’s rights activists at the University of Toronto, and became the shrill feminist harpy of the hour. One of the more prominent examples of feminists having unnaturally colored hair which would become a meme. Feminists eventually pulled the fire alarm shutting down the event, which made Binx quite happy.

4/14/13: Selena Gomez Bindi Controversy. Gomez wore a Bindi while performing at the MTV movie awards, and was criticized for cultural appropriation. One of the first of many celebrity cultural appropriation scandals, she was followed by Katy Perry, Iggy Azalea, Avril Lavingne, and many more.

5/8/13: Manspreading controversy begins on Tumblr. The blog "Men Taking Up Too Much Space on the Train" was created to complain about men spreading their legs on the train and posted the image below. “Manspreading” would eventually find its place in the pantheon of mocked social justice concepts of the mid 2010s.

6/11/13: Russia passes infamous anti-gay law. Not super relevant to culture war in the West, but some have described it a reason why American elites grew to despise Russia.

6/19/13: Paula Deen n-word controversy goes viral. Paula Deen admitted in a deposition that she referred to a black man who had put a gun to her head as a racial slur in private decades ago. This was enough to put her in the national spotlight for a few weeks. Below you can see her quickly deleted apology video.

7/4/13: The Daily Stormer founded. Anglin’s publication, modeled after the original, would become a center for far-right memes and a boogeyman for the media throughout the rest of the decade. The earliest archive from a few days later can be found here.

7/11/13: Orange is the New Black airs on Netflix. I have never seen a single episode of this show, but Tumblr social justice types were obsessed with it back in the day. It provided support for prison reform, and featured one of the first trans characters on a mainstream TV show. It was also one of the first major shows released exclusively on streaming.

7/13/13: Zimmerman acquitted. Anecdotally, there probably wasn’t an event that was a bigger recruiter for the politics that would become the “alt-right” than this whole episode. There is some evidence that the prosectors tried to commit witness fraud to secure a conviction. This was the moment when #BlackLivesMatter first went viral on Twitter.

7/20/13: Fat acceptance blog created on Tumblr. The fat acceptance movement was the lesser know cousin of feminism, black lives matter, and lgbt acceptance movements. It was a frequent subject of ridicule among anti-sjws.

10/31/13: Tips fedora meme spreads on Reddit. This image, posted a few years earlier would become a meme representing the cringe-worthiness of the manosphere and atheists after it was posted on Reddit’s r/circlejerk.

11/13/13: Return of Kings posts about why you should date a girl with an eating disorder. This article was emblematic of the raunchy manosphere culture that existed at the time. It seems to have breached containment causing a backlash in the broader culture, leading to the slam poem below. Publisher Roosh V defended the article stating, “it contains value for men who want to date thin women in America, a country that is currently facing a devastating obesity epidemic, which we recently highlighted with Fat Shaming Week.”

12/2/13: Based posted on 4chan. The term “based” came from rapper Lil B the Based God, but this is the first known example of it being combined with redpilled. This term would go on to be used by right-wingers and Trump supporters, often when they were expressing approval of something that broader society would disapprove of as bigoted.

12/20/13: Justine Sacco goes to Africa. Sacco would tweet this before boarding her plane from London to Cape Town. She was clearly mocking someone who would hold the beliefs she posted, but that didn’t matter to online mobs. While she was still in the air, her tweet would go viral and by the time she landed, #HasJustineLandedYet was trending. It was such a big story that someone went to the airport to photograph her after she landed. She was ultimately fired from her job and became an early example of Twitter mobs and cancel culture.

That raps up the events that occurred in these three years. What did I miss? What events should I be sure not to miss in the next posts?