Twisted

On the off chance that anyone had forgotten that LinkedIn was also a social media site, articles popped up in my feed about the thimble thunderstorm who is Lilly Gaddis. Ms. Gaddis styles herself a "Trad Wife."

A “trad wife” is short for “traditional wife” — someone who believes in the outdated notion that a woman’s role is in the home, cooking, cleaning and caring for children.

Long story short, she made a cooking video on TikTok that was deliberately provocative, and her employer took the bait, firing her. Some of her comments:

• You are getting the opinion from some dumb whores and immigrants fresh off the boat looking for a green card. Yes, they are probably gold diggers, but that is the exception — I am the rule.
• Everyone I know that is married right now is married to broke-ass nigger, and they don’t care. We don’t give a fuck about money.

She then went to X.com and noted that her video "seems to have upset members of a certain community." While one would think that this community was her employer's Human Resources department, considering that the company describes itself as "African-American female and immigrant-owned," she had other people in mind.

• Thanks black community for helping to launch my new career in conservative media! You all played your role well like the puppets you are.

And this was really the point. Provoking an outraged response so that she could show her Trumpist, "non-Woke" bona-fides. And to a degree she's right. She provoked a response, knowing both that it would come, and roughly what it would be. But she's also banking on conservative media being puppets; people who will accept her and elevate her simply for her ability to "own the libs." People who will accept her simply for claiming that setting out to offend people is somehow standing up for some central American freedom. But that doesn't take much skill. In a nation of more than three-hundred million people, being provocative is sure to make someone made. Especially when the nation is at a point where going out of one's way to avoid provocation manages to make someone mad.

But maybe it doesn't require skill. Maybe the provocation works because American conservatism would rather be openly manipulated than appear to be sympathetic to people they perceive as the enemy.

In any event, I know people like Ms. Gaddis. I went to high school with a number of them. And they weren't genuine racists. They were people who felt empowered by their ability to weaponize the fact that they didn't care about what others thought of them; and felt that those others couldn't afford not to care what they thought. The sort of people who provoked, then escalated, and kept going until they received a response, and then cast themselves as victims, often successfully.

What makes this work is the Catch-22 that it creates. Both responding and failing to respond are poor choices, simply for very different (and often opposing) reasons. There is no winning move; not even refusing to play.