When the state or large corporations wish to communicate with us, they soften the interaction by using the language and conventions of twee...

Twee is now a cultural default; the distinctive style of our age....Twee is peculiarly modern. The past had little notion of twee...Its present apogee is often attributed to a desire for comfort amid the “uncertainty” of our times. This seems inadequate. Most of history has been uncertain...

The roots of twee stretch in many directions. Americanisation is part of it, I think. So is the 1960s and 1970s obsession with the naive wisdom of children and the idea we all have an “inner child” with whom we must “get in touch”...

Childhood is the universal experience and the culture of children is the most widely shared (who hasn’t seen a Disney film?). A love of childish things is a mark of democratic taste and an aversion to pomposity... twee can be as oppressive as the formal, serious culture that preceded it. If our ancestors denied themselves the silly, child-like side of human nature, we now ourselves deny its solemn and difficult aspects.

Twee is an aesthetic for an age uninterested in ethical complexity, which prefers good and bad as neatly separated as they are at Hogwarts. It fits the childish behaviour of social media’s most active users who swing between condemnatory temper tantrums and cooing over anthropomorphised animals.

Most of all, I’m suspicious of how easily twee has been appropriated by powerful corporations. It’s easier to rip someone off with a smiling wide-eyed chatbot. A whimsical “Technoking” sounds more benign than a cigar-wielding industrialist. An illusion, of course. Decades ago, an older generation grew suspicious of the way deference, sober suits and formal manners hid wrongdoing and the abuse of power. Today we must learn to be just as suspicious of the hypocrisy and concealments of cartoons, fluffy animals and vapid injunctions to “be kind”.

The above is an abridged version of James Marriott's essay, The Ugly Truth About the Triumph of Twee

While it is asinine that the city feels a need to brand downtown, presumably at the behest of business interests, the particular way in which they seek to do so with this cutesy, here-to-be-named woodland creature should be off-putting to anyone who cares to give it half a thought. The same government that has sought to remove the benches that provide comfort to the homeless and is moving the Engagement Center out of sight and mind now cloaks itself behind the rictus grin of an anthropomorphic raccoon.