Marrying the Shrimp: How Performance Art Became Peer-Reviewed Science
In what is best described as a surrealist love letter to brine shrimp, this peer-reviewed paper sets a new standard for academic ridiculousness.
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About the Author
Dr. Colin Wright is the CEO/Editor-in-Chief of Reality’s Last Stand, an evolutionary biology PhD, and Manhattan Institute Fellow. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Times, the New York Post, Newsweek, City Journal, Quillette, Queer Majority, and other major news outlets and peer-reviewed journals.
In the annals of academic absurdity, there are moments that make even seasoned critics pause in awe. “Loving the Brine Shrimp: Exploring Queer Feminist Blue Posthumanities to Reimagine the ‘America’s Dead Sea’” is one such moment. This is not a parody—though it reads like one—but a “serious” paper, or so the author insists. In what is best described as a surrealist love letter to brine shrimp, the author, Ewelina Jarosz (she/they), wades through a soup of critical theory, environmental activism, and performance art, asking the reader to reconsider their relationship with brine shrimp—not as mere crustaceans but as symbols of queer resilience, ecological ethics, and, somehow, hydrosexual love.
This paper is part of a growing tradition of postmodern scholarship that prioritizes ideological signaling over intellectual rigor. Following in the footsteps of infamous works like the 2016 “Feminist Glaciology” paper—which posited that glaciers are gendered—“Loving the Brine Shrimp” sets a new standard for academic ridiculousness. Its culmination in a cyber wedding to augmented reality brine shrimp makes feminist glaciers seem like a grounded scientific pursuit by comparison. But before we arrive at the nuptial climax, let’s examine how this spectacle unfolds.
Love at First Shrimp
The article begins innocuously enough, discussing the ecological crisis facing Utah’s Great Salt Lake. However, it doesn’t take long before it veers into woke lunacy with concepts like “hydrosexuality,” which refers to a “more-than-human sensuality and sexuality emphasizing fluidity and relationality” that “offers a cultural understanding of water as a non-binary substance connecting all bodies of water on the planetary scale.” Hydrosexuality, she argues, challenges the “hegemonic notion of the autonomous and bounded human subject” by embracing “watery thinking.”
If you’re struggling to imagine what any of this means, join the club. The author’s language is a masterclass in obfuscation, using terms like “hydrophilic logic” and “multispecies ethics” to mask the fact that she’s anthropomorphizing liquid.
The absurdity intensifies when she links hydrosexuality to the brine shrimp, praising these creatures for their “swirly sexuality” and reproductive versatility. Apparently, the shrimp’s ability to reproduce via live birth or parthenogenesis (which the author incorrectly calls “pathogenesis” throughout the paper) is a triumph over binary thinking, making them paragons of queer resilience that subvert the oppressive structures of settler-colonial science. Yes, really.
Settler Science and Capitalist Cysts
The paper is rife with accusations against “settler science,” a term the author uses to describe any scientific practice associated with Western colonialism. She argues that early studies of the Great Salt Lake objectified its ecosystem, reducing the brine shrimp to mere commodities. Even the shrimp’s Latin name, Artemia franciscana, is critiqued as a tool of imperial domination. Naming a species, she asserts, reflects a “biology of empire” that erases Indigenous ways of knowing. By this logic, taxonomy itself is a colonial plot.
The author also condemns the commercialization of brine shrimp, particularly their use as fish food and their reinvention as the whimsical “Sea-Monkeys” pet marketed to children. This, they say, constitutes “environmental violence,” a term that appears to mean anything they dislike about human interaction with water-based ecosystems.
Drawing from perspectives offered by queer death studies (Radomska et al. 2021, p. 2), the brine shrimp’s ambiguous status and reproductive agentiality, hovering between the “living” and “non-living” in a state scientifically referred to as cryptobiosis, were reinvented for entertainment, concealing environmental violence.
To support their critique, the author invokes “low-trophic theory,” a concept they describe as prioritizing the ethical interdependence of organisms in an ecosystem. While the principle itself might have some use, the author’s application of it veers into parody. She laments the capitalist exploitation of the shrimp’s reproductive system, framing the harvesting of brine shrimp cycts as a form of ecological oppression. This is all delivered in the impenetrable prose of critical theory, with phrases like “queer ethical field studies” and “feminist blue posthumanities” sprinkled heavily throughout.
The Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp
The paper reached peak woke in a section titled “Loving the Brine Shrimp,” which recounts a performance art piece called Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp. This event, staged on the receding shores of the Great Salt Lake, involved artists, scientists, and augmented reality brine shrimp. Participants made vows to the crustaceans, marched in a procession, and capped it off with a communal bath in the lake. The author describes this as “making love to the lake,” a phrase that may haunt frequent swimmers of the Great Salt Lake for the rest of their lives.
The wedding was not merely symbolic; it was, according to the author, an act of environmental advocacy. By expressing love and commitment to the brine shrimp, the participants hoped to challenge capitalist commodification and foster “multispecies solidarity.” The participants even asked the brine shrimp for their consent to marry, which the shrimp apparently gave telepathically to some participants, while the author seemed content in problematically assuming their consent after proclaiming, “I didn’t hear a no.”
The use of augmented reality (AR) technology added another layer of surrealism. Instead of interacting with real brine shrimp, participants directed their vows toward a giant AR projection of the creatures.
The author describes the procession and bath as transformative, blurring the boundaries between human and non-human bodies. For most readers, however, this spectacle is less an example of profound ecological insight and more a testament to the unchecked excesses of woke performance art masquerading as legitimate scholarship.
I am not sure if you’re sufficiently prepared for this, but below I present to you Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp in its entirety, which has been appropriately overlaid with Mystery Science Theater 3000 silhouettes by my good friend Dr. Rollergator.
A Crisis of Peer Review
While the paper’s content is laughable, its publication raises serious questions about the state of academic peer review. How did this article, brimming with jargon and palpably absurd, make it through the editorial process? Are journals so desperate to appear progressive that they’ll publish anything cloaked in the language of decolonization and queerness? The answer appears to be “yes.”
However, one thing is certain: the academic community must reckon with the consequences of allowing such work to proliferate. At a time when public trust in science is already dismal, papers like this undermine the credibility of legitimate scholarship. When even the most basic standards of coherence and relevance are abandoned in favor of ideological grandstanding, the credibility of academia itself is at stake.
As we reflect on the surreal spectacle of Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp and its academic context, one thing becomes clear: we need a term to capture the moment when scholarly work crosses the line from odd to outright ludicrous. I propose “marrying the shrimp” as the academic world’s answer to “jumping the shark.” From now on, this phrase will signify a project so absurd, so detached from reality, that it becomes a parody of itself.
Let’s explore how this term might find its place in academic vernacular:
“Oh Steve? Yeah, he really married the shrimp with his last research project.”
“Yeah Sally, your thesis wasn’t groundbreaking, but at least you didn’t marry the shrimp.”
“That journal used to have standards, but now they’re marrying the shrimp left and right.”
The phrase could also be used preemptively, as a warning to those teetering on the edge: “Careful, Karen. Your proposal on the patriarchal dynamics of Tupperware parties is dangerously close to marrying the shrimp.” Or, as a compliment when someone narrowly avoids absurdity: “I thought your case study on the history of medieval cheese wheels was going to marry the shrimp, but you really pulled it together!”
In an era where intellectual rigor often takes a backseat to performative absurdity, it’s important to keep a sense of humor about the bizarre trajectory of academic publishing. After all, what else can we do when purportedly serious scholars convene weddings for brine shrimp or ascribe nonbinary identities to water?
Alas, these are the times we live in.
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Colin, I hope you're not becoming crustacean-phobic. Even Darwin had a long-standing relationship with barnacles, as you know. And frankly, I, too, have had the occasional amorous thought about malacostracans... but that was after seeing the movie, "The Lobster." Thanks for an interesting read... I have to go wake up my oyster... or she'll be late for school.
I am utterly and completely speechless.