A few months back, when Los Angeles was seeing night-after-night unrest, there was a curious split-screen moment: the mayor declaring a state of emergency and imposing an 8 p.m. curfew while TV hosts and online voices insisted that everything was “mostly fine.” Jimmy Kimmel even devoted a segment to reassuring viewers that the chaos was limited to small pockets of downtown. The contradiction was glaring — official emergency orders on one hand, casual dismissal on the other.
That memory comes to mind now because the New York Times has just done something similar with the Sydney Sweeney “genes/jeans” flap. The paper revisited the controversy and decided, in essence, that there really weren’t many people on the left calling the ad racist. Well — not enough to count, anyway. They acknowledge some did, but the framing is that the reaction was mostly a right-wing invention.
Offline, in real-world Los Angeles, most Angelenos are having a perfectly normal day.
But online, the fires and riots are still raging.
Seeking clicks, clout and chaos, unvetted social media accounts are preying on fears about where last weekend’s clashes will lead…
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 10, 2025
According to the Times, only a few small accounts pushed the “eugenics” angle — claiming the ad was winking at white supremacy via the “genes” pun — and that these were fringe voices. In their telling, the outrage ballooned once big conservative accounts, especially Libs of TikTok, began reposting the accusations to mock them.
But here’s the problem: “fringe” isn’t the same as “insignificant.” One of those supposedly marginal posts got over 100,000 likes and five million views — from an account with just 14,000 followers. A TikTok video pushing the same “Nazi eugenics” read on the ad has racked up more than half a million likes. That’s not just background noise; that’s reach and resonance.
ohhhh haha like GENES!! i get it! she has good jeans like she has good GENES! hahahaha like in a nazi way!! totally!!!!! https://t.co/kFsRGL1ilv
— (((Ella Yurman))) (@EllaYurman) July 26, 2025
The sequence isn’t complicated. First, a few progressives — online and very loud — said the ad was racially problematic. Those takes took off on TikTok and X, generating hundreds of thousands of engagements. Then the right saw the claims, found them absurd, and amplified them with ridicule. The right didn’t invent the premise; it responded to a genuine, if small, slice of left-wing discourse that happened to get traction.
The Times’ reframing — downplaying the initial left-wing reactions while implying the right “started” the uproar — is a familiar bit of cleanup. It’s the same instinct that insists an 8 p.m. curfew is compatible with “everything’s fine.”
The fact that 40k people liked a tweet suggesting a 3rd grade Pun is equivalent to Nazi’s is a problem i think its too late to solve https://t.co/4DXff6nzl6
— JeffDaMfLandShark (@CallMeIsBe) July 26, 2025
