Apple Deadnamed the Gulf of America and Conservatives Are Triggered

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) is upset that Apple Maps still calls the Gulf of America the Gulf of Mexico. So upset that he tagged Apple CEO Tim Cook on X and said he’d filed a complaint. “Hey @tim_cook, just noticed Apple Maps still calls it the Gulf of Mexico. Sent a report through the app, but thought you’d want to know!” said the former Navy Seal.

It seems that Crenshaw is upset, triggered if you will, that Big Tech isn’t changing as fast as he’d like it to. He’s so upset that he did a cringe post in the style of a suburbanite upset at Target. Crenshaw’s whining typifies a behavior I’ve seen in right-wing pundits and politicians in the last few years, the rise of a kind of post and style once attributed to the left in online spaces.

Crenshaw is posting cringe and doubling down on the culture war. They’re obsessed with identity politics, attempting to cancel their enemies, policing gender norms, and demanding that the culture bend to their whims despite the culture not being interested. This is all the stuff they’ve long accused the left of doing.

Hey @tim_cook, just noticed Apple Maps still calls it the Gulf of Mexico. Sent a report through the app, but thought you’d want to know! pic.twitter.com/fA7cWtOGY1

— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) January 21, 2025

Less than 24 hours ago, as of this writing, Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness.” Along with a host of other changes, the order said that the U.S. would henceforth call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Google and Apple haven’t updated the name.

These things take time. But just because Trump says the name is different doesn’t make it so. It’s a body of water that’s not exclusively used by the U.S. and Mexico, and the rest of the world will still call it the Gulf of Mexico. A lot of people who don’t live in the U.S. use Google and Apple Maps and it’s a good bet that the name won’t change for them.

Wikipedia also hasn’t changed the name on its entry for the Gulf. “Even if it was official, America does not get to own Wikipedia entries. [It] stays the Gulf of Mexico as the rest of the world calls it,” said an unnamed Wikipedia editor in the editing history of the page.

“This is a modern version of the Freedom fries jingoism, having nothing to do with geography and everything to do with politics,” another Wikipedia editor said, referring to a post-9/11 attempt by conservatives to rename french fries. “We have the same sort of thing as a perennial complaint with British Isles from a series of Irish editors. This nothing new or special, and can be documented on its own and with simple passing mention in the article if and when it becomes more than a sound bite at a news conference.”

But Conservatives like Crenshaw will publicly make the demand, posting cringe and embarrassing themselves. Ignoble in victory, they now exhibit the traits they’ve long accused their opponents of having.

The American right has control over the Supreme Court, the presidency, and the legislature. That kind of total political victory isn’t enough. They want you to like them too. They want you to laugh at their jokes, take their memes seriously, and call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

The pinned post on Crenshaw’s X account is a “Conservative Guide to the Culture Wars” from 2021. The second item on the list is the claim that a “victor mentality is better than a victim mentality.”

Over the next four years, I suspect we’ll see a lot more cringe posts from Crenshaw and others as the victors twist themselves into victims when every little thing doesn’t go their way. Or when it doesn’t go their way quite as fast as they’d want.