Red Scare Canon — Cultural References from the Subreddit

Sexual Revolution (concept) 3 — The cultural and social movement of the 1960s cited as having overcorrected toward sexual liberalism and commodification...

Madison (place) 3 — Midwest city identified as having powerful energy shifts between urban and suburban areas

David Harbour (person) 3 — Actor who plays Hopper in Stranger Things, used as an unflattering comparison for a 22-year-old poster

Toyota (concept) 3 — Factory mentioned as a significant upward mobility milestone for a working-class family when the poster's father got a $...

Jussie Smollett (person) 3 — Singer/actor who staged a fake hate crime in Chicago during a polar vortex, discussed as an example of extreme human stu...

Doreen (person) 3 — Referenced as an example of the kind of person filling communist parties, likely referring to a notable Reddit moderator...

Pinocchio (film) 3 — Guillermo del Toro film where Cate Blanchett made monkey noises in a performance considered her second best of the year.

Blue Mountains (place) 3 — Location where a woman set up camp and grieved for 147 days after her husband's mental decline.

US Steel (place) 3 — Historic American steel company acquired by Nippon Steel, once the most valuable corporation on the planet and deeply ti...

Queer Theory (concept) 3 — Academic framework for LGBT studies that a user seeks critical perspectives on, analogous to Red Scare's relationship wi...

Vatican II (concept) 3 — Catholic Church council criticized in the book 'Ares Le Mandat' which was written as apologetics against its reforms.

Khan Academy (place) 3 — Educational video platform used as primary classroom instruction method in modern high schools where teachers have stude...

Tyra Banks (person) 3 — Supermodel and TV personality described in satirical gossip as kind and bullied by other models in Paris

Gigi Hadid (person) 3 — Model and member of the Hadid sisters, discussed as being more attractive than her sister because she retained facial fa...

Condé Nast (place) 3 — Publishing company that allegedly used a cultural knowledge quiz to screen job applicants, weeding out those deemed uncu...

Martin Luther King (person) 3 — Civil rights leader who believed in peaceful resistance and is invoked as an example of how Black people were met with v...

WikiFeet (place) 3 — Website that compiles photos of people's feet, where someone catalogued photos of the poster's girlfriend who did acting...

Zyzz (person) 3 — A bodybuilder and internet personality remembered as striking a good balance between gymming up and having fun without t...

Colin Powell (person) 3 — U.S. Secretary of State who famously covered up the UN's Guernica reproduction while making the case for the Iraq War du...

Nickelback (person) 3 — Canadian post-grunge band discussed as part of the 'butt rock' genre that was hugely popular in 2004 but is now universa...

r/oldschoolcool (place) 3 — Reddit subreddit criticized for being a place where people post vintage photos of attractive relatives for strangers to ...

New Hampshire (place) 3 — State where people who make less than six figures live while working in Boston due to high housing costs.

Diogenes (person) 3 — Ancient Greek philosopher invoked as a comparison for Slavoj Žižek's supposedly ascetic lifestyle, which turned out to r...

Paul Rudd (person) 3 — Actor whose aging well is discussed in relation to online discourse conflating beauty with moral goodness.

Chris McCandless (person) 3 — Young man who walked into the Alaskan wilderness and died, defended in the subreddit as someone who lived life on his ow...

Eraserhead (film) 3 — David Lynch film referenced as inspiration for a lifestyle of reduced technology use and urban wandering

Arab Spring (concept) 3 — A political movement cited as an example of failed rhizomatic organization via social networks

György Ligeti (person) 3 — Composer whose 100th birthday was commemorated with recommendations of recent recordings of his choral and other works.

Manhattan Project (concept) 3 — The American nuclear weapons program during WWII, where scientists debated how the atomic bomb should be used, with most...

Kama Sutra (book) 3 — Ancient Sanskrit text on sexuality and eroticism, referenced as representing excessive position variation in sex

Post-modernism (concept) 3 — Ideology blamed for creating an immaterial concept of womanhood divorced from material reality, leading to extreme beaut...

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (film) 3 — Horror film cited as a response to the Vietnam War in a discussion about how pop culture trends react to actual incident...

Slate (place) 3 — Online magazine criticized for publishing hackneyed Democratic talking points and predictable opinions in a bland, hecto...

George Lucas (person) 3 — Filmmaker whose sci-fi formulas are criticized as being endlessly replicated in conventional fantasy genres.

Forever 21 (place) 3 — Fast fashion retailer referenced as F21, where aging millennials allegedly bought clothes ten years ago that they still ...

Ready Player One (book) 3 — Novel depicting a dystopian world replaced entirely by VR, cited as showing plausible future of disconnected human relat...

Donald Rumsfeld (person) 3 — Former U.S. Secretary of Defense whose death was announced in a post making a joke about Samsung Galaxy Note 7 explosion...

Juche (concept) 3 — North Korean political ideology referenced in connection with the Hammer family being treated as 'royalty in internal ex...

Affirmative action (concept) 3 — Policy discussed in context of Supreme Court decision and Reddit discourse, with criticism of comparisons to legacy admi...

Athens (place) 3 — Ancient Greek city-state credited with founding democracy and the republic, cited by Colombia's president as part of Col...

World War 2 (concept) 3 — Historical event reinterpreted by conspiracy theorists in a fraternity as a holy war with America fighting on the side o...

Rapeman (film) 3 — Japanese movie franchise from the early 1990s featuring a superhero comedy where the protagonist rapes women who disresp...

Kneecap (album) 3 — Irish hip-hop group who performed at Coachella and expressed support for Palestine, prompting biased American media cove...

EEAAO (film) 3 — Everything Everywhere All At Once, a film that was a cultural moment despite receiving criticism, with uncertain aging p...

Therapy Speak (concept) 3 — A modern conversational style characterized by psychological terminology that is criticized as shutting down genuine emo...

Buster Keaton (person) 3 — Physical comedian cited as an example of the highest form of art combining dance and masculine humor through unpretentio...

The Terminator (film) 3 — 1984 sci-fi film praised by Andrei Tarkovsky for pushing cinema's frontiers despite its brutality and low acting skills.

Southeast Asia (place) 3 — Region where a mountain was climbed that had Israeli 'Free the Hostages' stickers at the summit.

D-Day (concept) 3 — The Allied invasion of Normandy in WWII, referenced to argue that young people in past generations were capable of far g...

Banksy (person) 3 — Street artist cited as example of endemic European corniness that contradicts some of Europe's more respectable aestheti...