Shanley Kane is everything wrong with social media. Most celebrities and “internet famous” people on Twitter rarely court drama and those who do, only do it once in awhile. The same can’t be said for Shanley, who courts controversy on a regular basis. This self-described “culture critic” (where have we heard that one before?) raises issues to complain about several times a day in an extremely vocal manner, accusing anyone who she disagrees with her of sexism and racism in strings of profanity-laden tweets.
There isn’t a day when she isn’t lashing out at journalists, developers and Silicon Valley types. And when she isn’t attacking people on Twitter, she takes to her blog ModelViewCulture to complain about every aspect of the tech industry.
Not even Linus Torvalds, the wunderkind responsible for the creation of Linux, was spared her wrath. After the developer stated that he judged people based on their capabilities and not their race or gender, Shanley took to the social media platform to call for him to be ousted. “So disgusted,” she wrote. “This shit is fucking disgusting. Again, GROW A MOTHERFUCKING SPINE LINUX. Get this asshole OUT.”
With Linux’s self-administered prolapse not forthcoming any time soon, Shanley played the victim card and claimed that any and all the criticism she received was harassment and abuse. You’re expected to excuse Shanley’s public conduct and accept her hysterics as mild “criticism,” it would seem.
For her outlandish and outspoken views, Shanley has been subject to multiple articles on websites across the political spectrum. Were Shanley a lone individual spouting outrage at every direction, no one would care. However, she’s managed to acquire something of a following—accruing 18,600 fans on Twitter, some of whom live by her every word. She’s flounced time and time again, but she always manages to find her way back into the waiting arms of her fanbase who shower her with hugs and heartspam.
Complaining about diversity, or the lack thereof, in the tech scene is part and parcel of being a performative social justice warrior. There’s usually an extent to the issues one can “call out” before others raise their eyebrows at the absurdity of it. The words “fuck me daddy,” often left behind by teenagers in response to their favorite male celebrities, are crass but they’re hardly problematic. Thinking otherwise, Shanley unloaded a barrage of (now-deleted) tweets to argue that the use of the term “Daddy” was deeply troubling in the sense that it was a sort of cultural appropriation.
“Don’t have deep psychosexual Freudian and Oedipal trauma/dysfunction? Good for you. Stop appropriating ‘Daddy,’” she wrote, before going on to explain in some length that the term “Daddy” originated in queer and BDSM culture and that it was therefore wrong for “vanilla ass bitches” to say the words “yes Daddy” to their partners during sex.
“Your man finally figured out how to use whipped cream in the bedroom, that doesn’t make it Daddy,” wrote Shanley. “You’re a long way from whippets & sodomy.”
As if having some right to dictate what others do in the bedroom, Shanley wrote: “Calm down cupcake. Enjoy heterosexual oral sex and stay away from shit you don’t understand.”
“And yes to you ladies who think it’s cute to put ‘Daddy’ as your SN. women are actually daddy too. thats [sic] dyke leather subculture you ass,” said Shanley, finding outrage in the fact that some heterosexual or bisexual women like to use the term to describe themselves.
Her unintentionally funniest tweet reads: “you are out here being disrespectful and ahistorical trash. ‘Daddy’ has deep fucking roots in places you have no fucking clue about.”
And to think that most people who do use the word just like using it because it’s provocative and invokes incest taboos. Due to its popularity, there are entire porn labels that produce material based on the sexual fetish.
With common sense being the order of the day, Shanley found herself the butt of mockery from all sides. It wasn’t long before she turned her outrage from those who say “Daddy” against those who criticize her—painting them as harassers, misogynists and any other bad-sounding noun she could think of.
One of the most popular tweets about her tirade surfaced in the Korean K-pop fan scene. The tweet making fun of her has thus far received many times more retweets and likes than her spiel, which goes to show that in the end, sanity prevails.
As for Shanley Kane and her Internet pitchfork mob of social justice warriors, they’re not leaving any time soon.