Notes on Twee

Irene Triendl
6 min readJan 25, 2025

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A seemingly harmless affectation that allows us to disengage with a clear conscience

It’s speaking in a baby voice.

It’s the tedious discussion over whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie.

It’s the Duolingo owl telling you that by not practising, you made them sad.

It’s Instagram serving you an ad for “Fuck the Tories” earrings to buy.

It’s this Weetabix ad:

A Weetabix ad, asking users to “debate” if they like their Weetabix with hot milk or cold

All of these things are variations on a theme that’s all around us right now, from Adrian Chiles’s headlines (“Dear Santa, please bring back the plastic lids on yoghurt pots”) to established journalists on podcasts answering questions with “Because reasons”, to the woman in that video on twitter who talks herself into a rage over the foil-to-paper change in Quality Street wrappers. (I don’t have twitter anymore but maybe someone can supply the link).

It’s all a bit twee, and current discourse — about anything: pop, property prices, politics — is inundated with it. Once you start noticing it, you’ll see that it’s everywhere. And you, like me, may find it increasingly grating.

That’s because I believe it’s more than an affectation or short-lived fashion. It may actually be at the heart of a contemporary mode of being that gives us permission to disengage with the world while feeling switched-on as hell. But I’ll come to that. First, let me try to define what this twee thing is:

Twee and Reverse-Twee

At the core of twee discourse is an element of acting dumber or more naïve than you are, or simplifying complex things against your better judgement. It’s always used for effect (though I believe that people often aren’t aware they’re doing it). The purest example of Twee is somebody speaking in a baby voice, either to appear more naïve than they are, or to belittle the person they’re talking to.

But there’s also the opposite — “reverse-twee”, if you like. When something simple or someone naïve is presented as complex. Think of the (frequently parodied) parents claiming their toddlers spontaneously spouted profound wisdom. Or the American influencer posting a video of her precocious 5-year old daughter rolling her eyes and delivering a jaded “I really can’t do drama today”.

A newspaper clipping (letter to the editor), explaining pseudo-scientifically that missing socks directly correlate with growing numbers of coat hangers

Twee’s effect works best when it’s juxtaposed to something that’s considered extremely serious — like war, or workers’ rights (think “crywank”). But because the speaker usually doesn’t want to come across as disrespectful to noble causes, they elevate them to an extreme level of abstraction. The most recent example of this that I saw was a man on a dating app whose profile said he was “fighting Capitalism whenever I can”. (It was, I’m not even joking, underneath a picture of him and his mates in Brewdog).

Of course, the category jump from banal to serious or vice versa is a common comic device, and it doesn’t have to be Twee. The formula just works really well as the punchline in a joke. For example, someone who’s known for their posts about psychology recently tweeted “I’m asking for privacy during this difficult time because I’ve just started rewatching the entirety of Grey’s anatomy”.

It’s also a reliable rule-of-three (or more) kicker, like in this poster, which you can find in the ladies’ loos at the Prince Charles Cinema:

A poster on a toilet stall door that reads: “PLease do not flush Tampons, Sanitary Towels, Wet Wipes, Nappies, Rubbish or Dreams. Please use the bins provided.”

While this is not necessarily Twee, it’s definitely Twee-adjacent. It might make you smile or it might make you think a little less of the PCC’s comms style (I just find it a bit cheap) — but that’s ultimately a question of personal taste, and not why I’m writing this essay at all.

Twee Discourse “gestures broadly at everything”

I’m writing it because this is also feels distinctly Twee: Elevating a simple matter of taste (often on a pop culture phenomenon) to the status of a serious debate and creating a mock controversy around it. For example: I have a good friend and fellow good-food-enthusiast who I love dearly and respect immensely; but whose earnest attempt to start a discussion over her thesis that “lemon juice is the only acceptable topping for pancakes” left me puzzled and questioning the common ground I’d always assumed we had. See also eternal tweets about “jam or cream first” on a scone. Of course we can talk about this for a bit, but I just don’t see what else there is to say after everyone has stated their preference. This is simply not the stuff of debates.

I understand if you’re reading this and thinking I’m being unnecessarily weird about something that’s really quite harmless.

But I don’t think it’s harmless. The individual occurrence, e.g my chat with my mate is harmless (though tedious), yes. But it’s everywhere. Twee is being commodified, like in the Weetabix ad above. And even in the existence of “Fuck the Tories” jewellery that I can buy off Instagram.

Still, you might argue, you don’t have to buy it, and you don’t have to talk that way, or about these things. Agreed. But the abundance of Twee in everyday, in pop culture, and even in political discourse enables a mechanism that feels dangerous: it gives us permission to dismiss difficult moral, political, social issues for the sake of effect (“gestures broadly at everything”). We end up talking about broad-stroke themes (“Capitalism”; “The patriarchy”) without specifics, making them sound overwhelming and ultimately unchangeable for us. This is not angry or subversive. It’s complacent.

a piece of embroidery thats says “This Too Shall Pass But Like Holy Fuck”

And: it deflects serious discourse in favour of a banality. By “debating” the correct order of scone toppings we feel that we’re deeply engaged in relevant discourse while discussing simple matters of taste, instead of complex matters of value.

This extends to MPs losing their shit over Easter eggs appearing in shops right after Christmas — but also to topics where I personally believe we can’t afford to do this: like when a huge amount of discourse about Luigi Mangione, the man who shot the CEO of United Healthcare, was about “how hot” he was, thereby implicitly applauding the fact that he had killed a man.

I’m not writing this to point fingers at anyone. I’m guilty of twee-posting as much as anyone. I’m just trying to understand. I wonder if the Cultural Studies programmes of the early 2000s are to blame? It was an amazing time to be a humanities student, because anything could be your subject. I wrote literature papers on Michael Almeyda’s Hamlet, discussed De La Soul’s similes in seminars on Postmodern American poetry, and quoted the Simpsons everywhere. Don’t get me wrong: l believe that it was hugely important that academia opened up to pop culture. It acknowledged that pop culture is a carrier of meaning, values and attitudes. But a side effect of this was that it made people think that literally everything was worthy of serious discussion and dedication — including sneakers and pancakes. And I really don’t think we can afford to do that right now.

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Irene Triendl
Irene Triendl

Written by Irene Triendl

Writer and strategist. @derbren.bsky.social, https://say-what.org

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