Smol bean’s one of the internet’s few saving graces. Most recently it popped up because J.D. Vance tweeted his defense of Marko Elez, “a kid” who proclaimed his allegiance to racism a few months before being tapped to pussygrab federal budgeting as part of the DOGE dipshit team. The Vice President appears to think that somebody too young to be held accountable for his opinions is still the right age to stick a finger up the government’s privates. Or, as the liberal journalist Jesse Singal tweeted, “he’s just a smol bean who had a widdle access to sensitive govunment infoz.”
At least I get to see my favorite phrase again. People on left-wing Twitter made up smol bean a few years back, using it to describe someone who figures that only a meanie would apply standards to the poor thing’s behavior. The little creature’s too humble and insignificant, or too sensitive and put-upon, to be held responsible for what they do. Smol bean’s a great thing to throw when somebody’s going “Oh, it’s just little me” because they’ve been caught lying, scamming, smearing, or the like.
The phrase’s killing feature is phonetics. Say small and your tongue settles comfortably along the mouth’s floor. Say smol and the dynamic’s quite different. Your tongue has to pull down into your throat; the roof of your mouth is activated at the same time, drawing back and up into a tight, uncomfortable dome located directly above your uncomfortably retracted tongue. Then they both have to lunge forward to get bean properly vocalized. To finish off that word’s long vowel and firm final consonant, the mouth must purse outward; the lips may even pucker. This is after smol invited the soft palate, the eyes, and the eyebrows to arch upward. The combined effect of the two words is to bring on a wincing moue like the sort Sniffles the Mouse used to pull, only minus the charm. Whoever came up with this had their ear working overtime and we must all be grateful.
I think I came across the phrase during the Ana Mardoll affair. This person was revealed to be a part-time employee of Lockheed Martin; not designing or building weapons systems, some ancillary role. Mardoll had fundraised online for living expenses; xie had also taken various strong lines regarding identity politics, the most notorious being that it was “ableist” to expect writers to spend a lot of time reading. Further, xie described herself as a trans “boy” when xie’d been working at Lockheed Martin for 15 years and therefore was no kid. Perhaps worst of all, though this is a personal view, xie described xer significant other as a “kiss partner.” At any rate the news of xer employment brought a ton of pent-up outrage down on xer head, and xer response was to plead ill health, tight finances, and so on. A smol bean, people said.
In a perfect world, Ana, J.D., Marko, and a thousand other regrettable characters would find a desert island and pull each others’ hair until the sun burnt their bones. A perfect world would have no need for smol bean. But that’s not our world. Our world needs it bad.