NY Times: The Sydney Sweeney Story Was All the Right’s Fault

Just a couple months ago things were getting out of control in Los Angles night after night but this led a bunch of people to offer defenses of LA. The argument was that most of the city wasn’t overrun with looters and rioters only parts of downtown.

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

There was a lot of this, including on Jimmy Kimmel’s show. He did a whole segment about how everything was fine. Meanwhile, the actual mayor of LA had declared a state of emergency and an 8pm curfew for downtown. The tweets denying there was a problem and the mayor’s curfew were happening on the same day.

Anyway, I thought of that when I read this story at the NY Times today. This is the journalistic equivalent of the most of the city is fine argument. In this case, the Times has gone back and looked at the development of the Sydney Sweeney story and concluded there really weren’t any people on the left arguing the ad was racist after all. Well, they admit some were but not enough I guess.

They claimed that progressives were up in arms over the intentional double-entendre with the word “genes,” suggesting it was winking at eugenics or white supremacy.

In reality, most progressives weren’t worked up much at all.

Criticism of the ad campaign had come almost entirely from a smattering of accounts with relatively few followers, according to an analysis of social media data by The New York Times.

SO what did happen, according to the Times?

Initial reactions were largely apolitical, though some progressives criticized the ad’s sexual overtones while some on the right applauded a return to “traditional advertising” in what they viewed as a step away from more diverse representations. But on the fringes of sites including TikTok and X, some users began suggesting that the campaign had a more subtle and menacing message tied to eugenics: that blond, blue-eyed looks are somehow superior.

“She has good jeans like she has good GENES! hahahaha like in a nazi way!!” stated a July 25 post on X that drew over five million views. The next day, a video on TikTok that also made a comparison to Nazism drew 3.5 million views.

It may be true that the accounts posting the eugenics claims weren’t huge accounts, but they certainly did blow up. This tweet, which is linked above, was liked over 100,000 times. That’s a pretty huge response for an account with only 14,000 followers.

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

So the ideas may have arisen on the fringe rather than in the center of leftist discourse, but clearly a large number of people found this interesting and worth sharing. and those likes weren’t all added later on. Many of them appeared in the first day.

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

As for the TikTok video, that one has more than half a million likes. So is that still fringe or is that a lot of people who seem to agree with the premise that the ad is racist?

According to the Times, the story really got rolling when Libs of TikTok and other right wing accounts took notice of some of these reactions on the left.

The tide began to shift on July 27, when large right-wing accounts such as Libs of TikTok began reposting critiques of the American Eagle campaign, mocking them as examples of “triggered” liberals. “Keep this up Democrats,” posted the account, which is run by a woman named Chaya Raichik and has 4.3 million followers on X. “This is going to be great for you guys.”

So the basic argument here is that there were only a few hundred thousand people who agreed with the smaller accounts making these eugenics complaints and then Libs of TikTok came along with her 4 million followers and mocked them. And that means she started it…or something.

Personally, I think this is a bit of special pleading from the Times. It’s true no one really attacked the ads initially in the first few days. But once the eugenics claims started making the rounds, people on the right responded because it seemed so absurd to many of them. But the dumb ideas being mocked did originate on the left and did have some significant support from others on the left, especially on TikTok. Anyway, I think Stephen Miller has pretty neatly summarized what this article is doing.

Here’s how this went:

1. Sydney Sweeney jeans ads.

2. The right – “We are so back”

3. Will Stancil like accounts – “This is Nazi eugenics”

4. Tiktok – “This is clearly nazi eugenics.”

5. Media outlets piggybacking and needing eyeballs from Tiktok – “This is clearly nazi…

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) August 7, 2025

1. Sydney Sweeney jeans ads.

2. The right – “We are so back”

3. Will Stancil like accounts – “This is Nazi eugenics”

4. Tiktok – “This is clearly nazi eugenics.”

5. Media outlets piggybacking and needing eyeballs from Tiktok – “This is clearly nazi eugenics.”

6. “What, no, it isn’t you morons. It’s a hot Hollywood ingenue in denim. You lunatics.”

7. The Atlantic – “The backlash is a backlash discourse is broken.

8. “No one is outraged by this you MAGAts.”

9. The political right caused all of this <–THEY ARE HERE

It was a dumb, woke argument and the people who made it (and liked it) got hammered as dumb and woke. That’s what happened here. If there wasn’t concern these goofy views went beyond a few fringe people on the left the NY Times wouldn’t be trying so hard to reframe it.