I was reading along in Patricia Lockwood’s overheated but enjoyable TLSLRB review (6 January 2022) of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s The Morning Star (translated by Martin Aitken) when I got to this:
It is another kind of narrative temptation, actually, to write about The Morning Star without ever mentioning that its author is one of the most endlessly disseminated writers of the age, a man whom most of us encountered staring back at us from the first volume of My Struggle like something both ancient and fresh: a stone-tablet model, a yassified Noah.
I was completely befuddled by “yassified,” but of course the internet came to my rescue, turning up Shane O’Neill’s year-old NYT Style section piece (archived) explicating it for befuddled old-timers like me:
“Girl With a Pearl Earring” in a full face of makeup. The first Queen Elizabeth contoured from her neck ruff up. Severus Snape with jet-black hair extensions. Sasquatch sporting a smoky eye. These are just a few of the altered images that have been shared by YassifyBot, a Twitter account that started popping up in people’s feeds this month.
To “yassify” something, in the account’s parlance, is to apply several beauty filters to a picture using FaceApp, an A.I. photo-editing application, until its subject — be that a celebrity, a historical figure, a fictional character or a work of fine art — becomes almost unrecognizably made up. […]
The word “yass” — which can also be spelled “yas,” “yaas” or with any number of A’s and S’s for emphasis — has been circulating in L.G.B.T.Q. vernacular for more than a decade. The word was further popularized by a 2013 video of a fan admiring Lady Gaga. The Comedy Central show “Broad City,” in which Ilana Glazer’s character frequently deploys the phrase “yas queen,” also helped to bring the word into wider use.
According to KnowYourMeme.com, the word “yassification” first appeared on Twitter in 2020. As it spread, so did memes of celebrities being digitally made over, including one that depicted the actress Toni Collette screaming in the horror film “Hereditary,” her face suddenly settling into an artificial glamorized version of itself. […]
Rusty Barrett, a professor of linguistics at the University of Kentucky who has researched language in gay subcultures, sees a link between the images disseminated by YassifyBot and the culture of drag. “It evokes drag in that drag queens sometimes look plastic and way overdone,” Prof. Barrett said in a phone interview.
“Part of it is that it looks good, but it clearly looks fake,” Prof. Barrett said. “That positive view of artifice is something that is common across gay culture.” […]
All memes have a shelf life, and yassification fatigue has already set in. On the day the YassifyBot joined Twitter, one user tweeted: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by yassification.”
It doesn’t surprise me in the least that I’m learning about it only after everyone else is totally over it.
Another term I thought was recent, sent to me by frequent commenter cuchuflete, is “whataboutery,” but it turns out that the OED already has an entry (Third Edition, June 2018) on it, and it goes back almost half a century:
The practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue. Also in later use: the practice of raising a supposedly analogous issue in response to a perceived hypocrisy or inconsistency. Cf. whataboutism n.
Originally with reference to the Troubles in Northern Ireland (see trouble n. 2b).1974 Irish Times 2 Feb. 12/8 We have a bellyfull of Whataboutery in these killing days and the one clear fact to emerge is that people, Orange and Green, are dying as a result of it.
Now that they mention it, it does have an Irish ring to it…
to apply several beauty filters to a picture using FaceApp, an A.I. photo-editing application, until its subject — be that a celebrity, a historical figure, a fictional character or a work of fine art — becomes almost unrecognizably made up. […]
More recently known as karilakery. This form was inspired by the 1950s cinematographic technique of filming Doris Day through multiple layers of gauze.
https://wordhistories.net/2018/12/24/whataboutery-origin/
I cannot find any earlier citations, but a lot of stuff in 60s and 70s was mimeographed and distributed as leaflets or pamphlets, so I would not be surprised if the term was not created by a journalist.
“whataboutery” is far superior to the US equivalent “whataboutism”. The suffix -ery can have a sneering connotation that is apropos.
(LRB, not TLS.)
Yassified.
Raja and Raven were just discussing yas! on this week’s this week’s Fashion Photo Ruview.
Whataboutery
I have heard that no go (as in no go zone), “impossible to enter, as because of barricades; to which entry is restricted or forbidden” (rather than as in it was a no-go “of no use; an impasse; etc.”) is another common English expression that came out of the Troubles. Do LH readers know of any others?
(LRB, not TLS.)
Woops, thanks! I’ve subscribed to the NYRB, LRB, and TLS so many times over the years that I tend to get them mixed up.
It was a fun meme while it lasted, and here be my humble contribution.
they yassified paradise
put up a parking lot
(Also this for the more prose-oriented.)
No doubt there is considerable orthographic variation in practice, as there often is with internet-driven slang, but my impression (admittedly at several levels of remove from the core users of the phrase) is that the canonical spelling to the extent there was one was “yass kween.”
“It evokes drag in that drag queens sometimes look plastic and way overdone,” Prof. Barrett said in a phone interview. “Part of it is that it looks good, but it clearly looks fake,” Prof. Barrett said. “That positive view of artifice is something that is common across gay culture.” […]
Hah, Susan Sontag has been forgotten, just as I expected !
Being of a geezerly persuasion like LH, I had also not heard of yassification until now. But it reminded me of “jass,” a spelling sometimes used for jazz in the early 1900. For example. And, it turns out there is a Polish genre of jazz known as “yass.” Perhaps there’s a connection, perhaps not.
Susan Sontag has been forgotten
Rusty Barrett looks as if he may be too young to be familiar with the wisdom of the ancients.
https://www.linguisticsociety.org/news/2022/10/10/rusty-barrett-named-lsa-2023-arnold-zwicky-award-recipient
But it reminded me of “jass,” a spelling sometimes used for jazz in the early 1900 […] And, it turns out there is a Polish genre of jazz known as “yass.”
See this 2004 LH post. (I’m still waiting for Howard to return from his gig.)
Positive view of artifice, negative view of ditto, does anyone seriously give a rat’s ass ? All that counts for me is whether a view is expressed in an amusing, instructive or edifying way.
There is also ‘Jass’ – Switzerland’s national card game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jass
In fact, the word comes from the Kusaal yaas “remove from a liquid” (by a natural extension of meaning.)
Yas Yas Yas is a well known blues song. The earliest recording I could find is Stump Johnson, “The Duck Yas Yas Yas” 1929 Original.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO5NJpeLg7s
Perhaps yassify is related to these songs.
I could be Captain Obvious here, but I think the reason the word was chosen there was for the resonance it has with “ossified”, in such close proximity to “stone-tablet”, but flipping the meaning on its head.