From Denim to Der Führer: The internet cancels Sydney Sweeney's genes - and takes Godwin's Law offline

Time of India

5 days ago

Godwin's Law states that any internet discussion, if it goes on long enough, will eventually involve a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis. That used to be a punchline—a cautionary meme from the early days of forums and comment sections, a wink at how all roads lead to Auschwitz if you argue long enough about anything online.
But in 2025, Godwin's Law isn't just a terminal condition. It's the operating system.
It's what turned a denim ad into a digital Nuremberg trial. A cheeky American Eagle campaign featuring
Sydney Sweeney
in jeans—yes, jeans—has somehow sparked accusations of Nazi propaganda, eugenics glorification, and white supremacist signalling. Because of a pun. Because the ad said she had 'great genes.' And in our current epistemic climate, that's apparently a dog whistle for 'racial hygiene.'
Welcome to the United States of Interpretation, where puns are violence and billboards are Mein Kampf in Helvetica Bold.
From great jeans to great panic
Let's be clear: the ad in question was banal. Sydney Sweeney stands in denim, smiling vaguely. The copy says, 'Sydney Sweeney has great genes,' with the word 'genes' crossed out and 'jeans' scrawled over it in red. There's a voiceover that jokes about inherited traits like 'blue eyes' and 'good taste in jeans.'
In the Before Times, this would've been seen as textbook American kitsch—a play on words that marries fashion and genetics with all the depth of a fortune cookie. But today? Today it's fascism. Or so claims the outrage chorus.
Within hours of the campaign launch, social media users accused it of promoting eugenics, celebrating genetic purity, and normalising white beauty standards. The words 'Nazi,' 'fascist,' and 'propaganda' trended alongside 'Sweeney.'
Posts dissected the lighting, the framing, the use of blue-eyed blondes as a symbol of Aryan ideals. One user called it 'visual white supremacy.' Another said, 'How did this pass a single brand meeting?' As if a cabal of fashion executives gathered to revive the Third Reich through retail.
Godwin's Law wasn't a slow burn this time—it was instant combustion.
Irony is dead. Long live moral panic.
We're in an era where every symbol must be decoded, and where even accidental visual rhymes with history's darkest moments are taken as proof of malice.
There's no room for irony, no patience for ambiguity, and no mercy for cheekiness. A pun is no longer a joke—it's a Rorschach test for fascism.
To be clear, this isn't about defending ads or brands or even Sweeney herself, who has a history of being caught in the culture war crossfire. This is about what we're doing to ourselves when every piece of culture is run through the Nazi detector. When we react to a denim campaign as if it's Triumph of the Will with better lighting, we don't just lose the plot—we burn the script.
This wasn't a manifesto. It was a mall ad.
But nuance has left the chat.
Eugenics of exaggeration
It's telling that the phrase 'great genes' could be reframed as a slur. We are so high-strung, so conditioned to see ideology in everything, that genetic wordplay becomes synonymous with racial violence. Never mind that the ad didn't say anything about race. Never mind that 'great genes' has been used to describe Olympic athletes, star kids, and Bollywood dynasties for decades.
The sin was symbolic. And in 2025, symbols are everything.
In a world where identity is currency and interpretation is warfare, the only safe branding is no branding at all. Because even the safest visual—say, a woman in jeans—can be reimagined as a fascist dog whistle if it lands on the wrong feed.
That's what Godwin's Law now represents: not the end of argument, but the beginning of every single one.
What this really says about us
The Sydney Sweeney backlash isn't about her.
Or American Eagle. Or even the unfortunate genetics pun. It's about a culture trapped in its own hall of mirrors, where outrage is the default setting and every utterance is mined for historical trauma. The great irony, of course, is that this behaviour mirrors the exact thing it claims to resist: totalitarian thinking. The reduction of art, language, and marketing to rigid ideological binaries.
You're either fighting fascism or enabling it.
There's no room for fashion faux pas or dumb wordplay.
We've taken Godwin's Law and made it a religion. And like all fundamentalist faiths, it leaves no room for comedy, curiosity, or context. Only guilt by pun.
So yes, Sydney Sweeney has great genes.
And a billboard that proves we've lost the ability to tell a joke from genocide.