The Mass Humiliation Of Ben Shapiro

Whenever Ben Shapiro is trending on Twitter, it means that another cringe-inducing moment has gone viral. 

Recently, Shapiro took great offense to Cardi B’s song, “WAP,” to the point where he awkwardly recited a (censored) version of the song’s lyrics, live on his show. It’s an amusing clip; Shapiro repeats the sexually explicit phrases with stilted, painful apprehension, as though the words themselves could summon a succubus with a swollen rear. 

The memeable moment proved incredibly popular, not with Shapiro’s fans, of course, but his detractors. Shapiro’s audio was soon remixed, autotuned, spliced with Cardi B’s official music video, and, inevitably, made its way to Cardi B herself. 

Noticing that he was, again, the subject of mass mockery, Shapiro took the time to tweet a response, which contained an amusing implication.

Now, I’m not going to deny that it’s fun to mock Ben Shapiro – the man rose to fame by shrieking statistics at college students, and when a BBC reporter finally confronted him on his hypocrisy, responded with: “I’m popular and no one has ever heard of you,” before ending the interview. 

Memorably, Shapiro once proposed that those unfortunate enough to be displaced by the rising tides of climate change should simply “sell their homes and move.” YouTuber Hbomberguy famously responded with:

“Sell their houses to who, Ben? F**king Aquaman?” 

For many of Shapiro’s detractors, he’s almost too embarrassing to ignore. 

But the world has been making fun of Shapiro for years, and it’s starting to get stale. Yes, the man talks like a VHS tape on fast-forward, has an abundance of poorly thought-out opinions, and a puritanical attitude to fun music videos.

But being the punchline of a joke has never negatively affected Shapiro’s ability to reach millions on social media (on Facebook, Shapiro is followed by 7 million people, and almost 3 million on Twitter).

Shapiro has, seemingly, only benefited from the mass mockery sparked by his deliriously bad takes. Retweets, comments, jokes, and memes (and articles like this) only serve in Shapiro’s favor.

The recommendation algorithms on social media might be complex and somewhat mysterious, but they generally favor engagement; thus, controversy, followed by mass-mockery, is an ideal way to attract an incredible amount of attention. 

I’d be surprised if Shapiro himself didn’t understand this contradictory dynamic, and actively seek public humiliation, on a regular basis, for the sake of his career.

And in that regard, Shapiro is certainly succeeding.