Deplatformed: Whooooo killed Hooters? 

Deplatformed is a weekly column that looks into the nether reaches of the internet—outside the big few that everyone already covers—to tell you the political discourse online. It runs on Thursdays in the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter. If you want to get this column a day before we publish it, subscribe to web_crawlr, where you’ll get the daily scoop of internet culture delivered straight to your inbox.

The right wing, in recent months, has been obsessed with chain restaurant closures. True or false (the Fuddrucker’s one never happened), they treat the recent string of announcements as symbolic of American decline, be it from unabated inflation or President Joe Biden’s secret plot to destroy the soul of the nation.

But this week, one chain’s announcement hit different. 

Hooters, the wing franchise beloved by a subset of men for its scantily clad waitresses, pitchers of beer, and better-than-average wings (they are not as bad as people say), is closing at least 40 franchises.

Where will young men get their boobs and birds now?

As you might imagine, the news hit conservative forums hard. On Patriots. win the mood was downright funereal.   

And the blame was, at first, placed squarely on Biden.

“When you can’t sell tits, you know we are in trouble,” wrote one user, echoing the sentiment that Bidenomics, the branding given to the president’s dubious track record on the economy, was making things so bad that even sex can’t sell.

“Damn you Biden damn you to hell !!!!,” wrote one user, including a link to a meme riffing off Planet of the Apes a giant owl arising from a desolate beach.

But in some circles, the blame didn’t fall squarely on their least favorite president.

Instead, it’s the rise of OnlyFans. The popular platform that lets women sell adult content directly to mostly male consumers certainly has its issues. But one of the medium’s allure is that it keeps creators at a distance from rafts of horny young men.

Women having less of a need to work for tips in a chain restaurant where drunken bros harassed them meant men saw the restaurant, once a bastion of 1990s sexuality, as diminished.

“All the attractive hooters girls are on OnlyFans now.”

Others agreed.

“Honestly the issue is probably more that half the waitresses are selling full nudes on the side, lol. There’s zero reason for a place like hooters in the modern age.”

And won’t someone pour something out for the time when women were forced to demean themselves for tips?

“A reflection of the sexual deviancy plaguing society. Hooters used to be a way for girls to dip their toe in the water … Now they can just run an OF and get paid a lot more.”

Women making more money and being abused slightly less. What hell hath modernity brought.

Regardless, even if OnlyFans is to blame, the site pitched a 2024 rallying cry to save it.

“Biden likes groomers, Trump likes hooters.”

2) Supreme Court social media defiance

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court dismissed a case that argued the Biden White House overstepped its authority in communicating with social media networks about what kind of content should be allowed during the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election.

In May 2023, Missouri’s attorney general filed suit against the Biden administration, part of a spate of lawsuits around government and big tech collusion, alleging that “misinformation efforts” were actually secretly free speech suppression efforts.

A Trump-appointed judge initially issued an injunction that barred Biden officials from speaking with social media executives, but the Supreme Court ruled that Missouri did not have standing to bring the case, overturning the rulings on it.

The court found that Missouri and Louisiana, which joined the suit, could not prove they were harmed by federal government officials’ communications with big tech.

Gab founder Andrew Torba, a free speech absolutist, immediately botched his response, criticizing the decision.

“Gab will not comply with censorship requests of legal 1st amendment-protected speech from the Biden Regime or any other regime,” he wrote.

But Torba, in reality, should be praising the Supreme Court.

The court didn’t really rule that the Biden administration could coerce social media platforms into stripping away content it didn’t like. Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted that the initial complaint over-attributed moderation decisions to the government, when in reality the platforms were often acting of their own volition.

Something, the decision reaffirmed, they were free to do.

You know, just like Gab’s founder is defiantly boasting he’s going to do.

Still, his post drew praise from people who didn’t realize he wasn’t bravely bucking the Supreme Court.

“Thank you Andrew. I can’t believe I just had to thank you for upholding my God Given right to Free Speech.. Look how far this nation has fallen.!” wrote one

“Thanks for your principled stance, Andrew. There are increasingly fewer and fewer businesses–and churches, sadly–that are willing to push back against the tyranny being foisted on us, so we appreciate you sticking your neck out, and we stand with you.”

A brave, bold, meaningless stance. 

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