scissor statement

English

Etymology

Coined by American psychiatrist and blogger Scott Alexander Siskind (writing as "Scott Alexander") in his 2018 short story “Sort By Controversial”, where he wrote: “In some dead language, scissor shares a root with schism. A scissor is a schism-er, a schism-creator.”

Pronunciation

  • Audio (US):(file)

Noun

scissor statement (plural scissor statements) (Internet slang)

  1. A polarising and incendiary topic, opinion or phrase.
    The Ground Zero mosque was a scissor statement that divided Americans.
    • 2021, Charles Arthur, Social Warming: How Social Media Polarises Us All‎[1], →ISBN:
      Brexit, by its nature, was a perfect scissor statement for almost everyone in the UK: the population was split into ‘Leavers’ and ‘Remainers’, and mutual outrage at the beliefs and actions of the other side became commonplace, as did personal abuse.
    • 2023 May 5, @JeremiahDJohns, Twitter‎[2], archived from the original on 15 June 2024:
      I'm not sure there's been any recent news event that's as much of a Scissor Statement as the homeless subway death. Reading different accounts on this, you'd think they were describing two completely different incidents. Like this was designed to be maximally divisive.
    • 2023 July 30, Helen Lewis, “The Weird, Fragmented World of Social Media After Twitter”, in The Atlantic‎[3]:
      The world avoids falling into perpetual low-grade warfare only because she accidentally creates a scissor statement that tears apart the company before its work is finished. The story captured the sense of social media as a rolling referendum on every subject under the sun.
    • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:scissor statement.
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