"Praxis" Girl

About

"Praxis" Girl refers to a video of writer, comedian and former Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaign staffer Simone Norman parodying a "hot mean girl who becomes a public leftist." In the video, she acts as an over-the-top obnoxious woman who justifies things she likes like "sucking dick" and doing "cocaine," by claiming it's "praxis," which is a term popular among the political left that means putting beliefs into practice. The video caused a minor drama in leftist Twitter circles for allegedly being an indirect parody of The Red Scare podcast.

Origin

On June 24th, 2019, Simone Norman, @whysimonewhy on Twitter, uploaded a parody video titled "When hot mean girls become public leftists." The video, which features her saying things like "Karl Marx? My daddy," and "If you're fat, that's capitalist," spoofs women who cloak mean behavior in leftist language. The video gained over 1.2 million views, 5,700 retweets and 36,000 likes (shown below).

Spread

The video was quickly praised by Twitter users who felt it was spot on, both of that type of person and of The Red Scare podcast, a "cultural criticism" podcast known for provocative and arguably controversial takes hosted by women. User @mattdpearce^[4] joked it was the most important piece of political visual media of the week, moreso than the first Democratic primary debates (shown below, left). User @jpbrammer^[5] joked "Who is praxis? What did he do?" (shown below, right).

The Red Scare Drama

Shortly after the video was posted, Twitter users noticed there was a similarity between the character Norman portrayed and Anna Khachiyan and Dasha Nekrasova, the hosts of The Red Scare podcast. The Daily Dot^[1] has described The Red Scare as a "nihilist cultural critique" podcast. Recently, this included Khachiyan mocking New York City comedian Kath Barbadoro for criticizing Brooklyn's recent "Skankfest" for hosting a set by comedian Louis C.K. by saying C.K. was a "chastised man" who "did nothing wrong" (shown below).

This specific point may have been parodied in Norman's video when she said in character, "I am a survivor of sexual assault and that's why I have the authority to tell you you need to get over your sexual assault." Others pointed out that her character read like Nekrasova's tweets; for example, user @zei_nabiq^[2] replied to Norman's video with a screenshot of a Nekrasova tweet that read "subtweeting is praxis," to which Norman replied with a smile emoticon (shown below).

Khachiyan tweeted, "Idk why everyone is so mad at the praxis girl she is very cute and pretty and trying something kind of risky in public," but also added she didn't think the parody "quite landed."^[3]

Search Interest

External References