The Internet has been a fun place this week. Well, fun is relative. It was probably fun if you, like me, avoided the scores of CalSERVE, Student Action and SQUELCH! Facebook posts and messages that accumulated in the week before election day. If you lingered on Facebook with “Thrift Shop” or that Bon Iver playlist playing on loop and continued to ignore the piling problem sets and take-home essays on your desk, then yes, your week probably sucked.
What has made the Internet such a fun place for me in the last week or two? I discovered BroBible.com – the only website that will satisfy your Greek fix (not the Athenian kind) with its shamelessly misogynistic and unsophisticated worldview.
With headline gems like “The Smartest Party Schools in the Country,” “10 Ways to Write the Perfect Fraternity Email” and a penchant for slut-shaming (in their “Facebook Follies” section – because alliteration? – the article “Um, I Don’t Think This Ex-Girlfriend Knows What ‘Breaking Up’ Means” sticks out), BroBible.com has given me every reason I ever needed to hate Greek life conveniently located in one URL.
And BroBible is hardly the only place we see peddling this middlebrow humor as a way to “brocially network” or understand how to develop a meaningful, long-lasting “bromance.” With the advent of the “funny-yet-burning-my-eyeballs-ouch” genre of films like “I Love You, Man” or “40 Year-Old Virgin,” the idea of unseen and comically unsophisticated (read: fart jokes galore) relationships between heterosexual (and usually white) males has taken on a new life.
BroBible is a crude excess of this hype, capitalizing on the “bro” craze while getting as campus-centric as possible because the business end of the website realized early on that only manchildren living in decrepit fraternity houses could ever derive serious enjoyment from it. As Gawker noted upon the site’s launch in late 2008, the “bro” trend “is sort of endearing for a bit, but the minute it becomes so hyper-commodified … like so many other trends” it ends up being “epically embarrassing.”
And this “epically embarrassing” trend has manifested itself all over, my favorite iteration being the “I’m Shmacked” YouTube phenomenon.
“I’m Shmacked” is a YouTube channel devoted to documenting and stylishly editing every second of every college campus’ moments of deepest debauchery. Whether it is Deltopia at UC Santa Barbara or the Florida State-Miami football game, I’m Shmacked is there to film in 720p nearly-naked girls and guys chugging $10 per handle vodka as they race on a beer-soaked slip n’ slide while Avicii plays at full blast in the background. A gross caricature of the American college experience rivaled only by the KY wrestling match scene from the movie Old School, “I’m Shmacked” is the id of white men on college campuses come to life.
And what makes all this feel even more bizarre is that the “bro” craze does not have to be this way.
For example, imagine if every February 14, a day of action meant to rally against violence toward women, Berkeley’s own Greek bros descended on Sproul Plaza and demanded action from themselves to be better. Or if they were on campus staffing consent workshops and developing serious dialogues around misogyny and rape culture at Berkeley. Instead, however, we get BroBible and I’m Shmacked.
What really drew me to BroBible this week was not just ASUC escapism, but an email it released of a University of Maryland frat boy explaining to his fraternity’s listserv how to hook up with a Jewish girl. BroBible characterized the email as “phenomenal” and called it “the ultimate guide to conversing with Jewish sorority girls.” It appeared on my Facebook as something to be proud of amongst a large number of my Jewish Facebook friends who are in greek life at campuses across the country.
This sentiment of how to “converse” with a “Jewish sorority” stereotype is repulsive. These fratboys are not lonely introverts looking to develop a deeper meaning with Jewish women; they are looking for tips on how to score in a way that commodifies the very people with whom they are looking to hook up. And as a friend neatly described to me, it is this act of commodification “that entrenches these communities in these stereotypes.”
In another Brobible post detailing one UMD Jewish sorority member’s sarcastic response to the initial email with her own guide on how to hook up with Gentiles (non-Jews), BroBible’s Lance Pauker quips that the woman’s letter “shows that when it really comes down to it, girls are interested in guys and guys are interested in girls. Time and time again, both sides do a really good job of making it as hard as possible to mutually recognize this. But that’s the truth.”
I disagree. It is not irate feminists bent on killing your vibe who are “making it as hard as possible to mutually recognize this,” it is a culture that plays Chris Brown at parties and does not see why it is offensive. It is a culture that is okay with party themes like “Pedophiles and Pigtails” and presumes that because “sororities are cool with it” everything is okay.
In case you have not noticed, everything is not okay.
Contact Noah Kulwin at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter: @noahkulwin.