Offline with Jon Favreau - Jane Coaston on Why Internet Debates Suck

Episode Date: July 24, 2022

For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

if you've ever tried to explain i mentioned i think in my writing that if you've ever tried to explain a viral tweet to someone who's not on twitter they will stop you i believe i once attempted to explain being dead to someone and i think i got out those two words and i was like i'm gonna go outside we're just gonna pretend this didn't happen i missed being dad and i asked someone about that and then halfway through the explanation i was like i'm i'm sorry i don't follow i don't follow. I don't follow the Bean Dad problem. I don't know what's going on right now.

You're out. Totally out. I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome to Offline. Hey, everyone. My guest this week is Jane Koston, host of The Argument and columnist at The New York Times. So Jane joined us on Pod Save America the week Elon Musk announced he wanted to buy Twitter. And I could immediately tell from our conversation that she shared my love,

hate, but mostly hate relationship with Twitter. I've wanted to have her on offline ever since. Jane's written some excellent pieces in the Times, not only about why we all need to get over Twitter, but how to grapple with our extremely online existence, including a fascinating argument about the gamification of our online debates and how that's affecting everything from politics to culture to sports. Beyond Twitter, Jane and I also talked about shifting ideas of elitism in the United States, why we should pay more attention to the NFL and shows like NCIS, and why she thinks former high school debaters have destroyed our online discourse. Though I've had my fair share of conversations about Twitter on this podcast,

I have to say this is one of my favorites. Jane's enthusiasm, be it for Twitter, Michigan football, or masochistic workouts, is infectious. If you haven't already, I highly encourage you to check out her show, The Argument. As always, if you have questions, comments, or complaints about the show, feel free to email us at offline at crooked.com. Here's Jane Koston. Jane Koston, welcome to Offline. Thank you so much for having me. I've been meaning to have you on for a while because I could tell from your writing

and from our conversations that you, too, believe that our extremely online existence is probably doing us more harm than good, especially those of us who spend time on social media and especially those of us who spend time on Twitter. Is that a fair characterization? That is correct. I would also note that I joined Twitter in June 2008. I am broken inside. Realizing like, oh, I've been on here for 14 years. Like, I, you know, it's you start talking about things like remember when Twitter used to just be like, talking about what you had for lunch, and then it just became this like organ of agony ah memories what are those 14 years been like i i know that you you've written about this and you said that uh those

14 years have been meaningful but you're not sure why right no um i would say there are a couple of things here first and foremost i will never log off um i actually quite enjoy twitter but i think that that's because i am and i always try to work on this is to realize what twitter is twitter is not america or the world twitter is not like i'm aware that most of the things i talk about on twitter have no relevance even to what i discuss most which is sports on twitter. There is this real, and I used to cover college football in the NFL. And there is like this way that people, I mean, it's the same thing with politics. There's a way that people on Twitter talk about football, that then you talk to people who either play in college, coach in college, play in the NFL, coach in the NFL. And they're like, what on earth are you even talking about? I'm like, no, no, we are not okay. And so I think it's super insidery.

And I'm reminded, and especially because I think Twitter tends to lend itself to an obsession with process and the performance of process. Then in sports, you talk to people who, I know someone who, he played in the NFL, and he was like, I didn't think as much about play calling when I was an NFL player. Which, keep in mind, when you're in the NFL, you are the top 0.5 percent of people who have ever played football

like even just making it to the league for one season is amazing he was like Twitter people think about play calling and think about the processes of all of these things taking place in a way that people who do this do not and I think that that also applies to how we talk about politics on yeah I was gonna say why do you how we talk about politics on Twitter. Yeah. I was going to say, why do you think there's that focus on process? Because it's sports, it's politics, it's people who talk about the financial markets, it's people who talk about tech.

It's like across all the different areas of its entertainment. Right. And I think that it happens because Twitter is very good at being a real time platform, which is why anytime Twitter tries to do anything that makes it not chronological, everyone loses their minds. It is good at being a means by which you can observe something happening. The problem becomes that you can only see what you can see. For example, I'll use another sports example. If you go back to, say, the beginning of any season,

there will be games where you're like, wow, this team looks fantastic. They look great. And you are responding to a moment in time. You're responding to a game in which it looks like this player or this team is unbeatable um there's this joke on twitter um and other social media platforms that there are certain players in college who are like this and we you know you call them like kind of the septemberisman candidates. Like there is this era,

there's weird couple of years in which Maryland football looks spectacular every September. And then by December, it looked like hot trash. That, I mean, that's just the nature of how Maryland football is. But like, you can only see what you can see. And so you're looking at this process and you're so like, so focused on it.

And Twitter kind of encourages that. And Twitter is not good at context twitter is not good at thinking ahead or thinking back every day there's some tweet that's like i didn't know any of this happened until right now it is like it is an amazing it's like a tabula rasa but for all of humanity And it's the weirdest thing in the world. And so I think that process and the performance of process becomes this area of real obsession, specifically on Twitter. And I think that that's really bad for how we think about sports because you get into like,

we won, but we only won by four. And then you don't know until the end of the season, the team you beat by four was actually fantastic. that you know it it turned out it didn't signify the downfall of civilization but in politics that means that you get really you fetishize process doing things quote-unquote the right way that the ideal would be that not only would your favorite political team pass legislation, but they do so and look awesome doing so. And so I think that that's why you see kind of like weirdo political Twitter gambits of like, you know, this tweet went viral. I'm like, no, it doesn't actually mean anything. Like, there are lots of people. I mean, Mitch McConnell is a very effective politician,

despite the entire Twitter online right hating him. Every six months, there's like some Mark Levin tweet about how Mitch McConnell is the big problem and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And every six months, Mitch McConnell is like, I don't care. I'm in charge here. He does what he does. The process does not look the way that online right people would want it to look, but it gets done. And so I think that one of the things we have is that Twitter is now not just a means in which we are observing the performance of politics or sports or culture, but we are interacting with that performance and demanding it be performed in a way that we want it

to be even if it doesn't result in anything yeah no this this this happens in politics all the time i mean we used to call it like like the optics police when we were in the obama white house and so everything is about optics and uh very little is about substance i mean i was trying to parse this out just recently thinking about about sort of the Biden administration's reaction to Dobbs. Because I was trying to separate my criticism because I'm like, okay, there's criticism of the substantive reaction. Like what executive actions haven't they taken that they'd be able to take? Like what legislation could they try to pass that they haven't tried to pass? Well, you can't do it because you've got Manchin and Sinema, blah, blah, blah.

And then there is like, he did not sort of perform the appropriate rage, which I didn't think he did. Because like, I would have been angrier if I was president. I would have given a more fiery speech. And then I'm like, what would that have achieved? Absolutely nothing. Then you think, absolutely nothing. But then you're in politics and you're like, but you know that that's what gets you the good news cycle.

So do it. Right, exactly. The performance is necessary to get people going, but are we all just waiting for the performance? For what? For us to feel? Yes, we are waiting for the performance of outrage, the performance of something where and i i think that that gets you know i i don't like the term problematic because i think it's gotten overused

but i think it actually is concerning when you want to hear from politicians you want to hear yourself i mean it's understandable you want to hear your anger, your ire reflected. But like... And it does feel good. It does. When you hear that, it feels good, you know? Yes. When Mallory McMorrow, that Michigan State Senator, gave that speech and it went viral.

It went viral because I watched it and I was like, fuck yeah. That's why I wanted someone to say that. Yeah. And she's in a tough race. But it's more that her performance of that was very well done but it is more important of what that performance then results in like does it result in her winning her election i think that there have been um and this is another kind of twitter performance thing like there's this thing that happens in which if you have a viral ad or a viral speech or something, you just can count on all of this money coming in,

even if it is purely performative. And I mean that as all ads are performative, all like all of this is performance in some ways. But like when you so disconnect performance from like actually doing things i think that that is where you you kind of run into big trouble and that's why i think like some of the most effective politicians right now are one not on the federal level they're at the state level and two they are the ones who are like they just do things and then they do them and then no one really talks about it because the thing is done um i always use the example of a danica rome in virginia yeah who um she's a trans woman she's like you know a pretty popular politician in virginia because she recognized something that virginia really care about. The roads are trash.

Oh, my God. And so when she ran a couple of years ago, she ran on essentially like, this intersection is bad. We should fix it. Which is like, yes, that's a political problem that people can solve. That is a problem that can be solved by politics. I think that we get into trouble when we want politicians to solve problems that cannot be solved by politics. Even though those politicians love those problems because it's perfect. It's like how, like, there are a host of kind of right-wing figures who are basically running on the implication that if they were elected, nobody would be gay anymore.

Like, that they could just like stop it like oh vote for me and we'll end the implication being like people will just stop being gay or trans and i'm like you know barring um actions that pol pot would have found a little excessive that's not going to happen but like the problems of culture in general cannot be solved by politics or the problems that you see in culture more accurately. And so I think like Twitter plays into this performance culture in which what is actually happening gets a little disconnected from how it looks when it's happening. Like there's always that talk about like, oh, you know know no one wants to see how the sausage is made well part of that is because making sausage is actually incredibly boring it's both gross and boring it's boring and i'll i'll move away from the sausage metaphor for this but it's but the

the actual work of politics and legislation and governing is not just cannot just be it's not just boring at times. It's also maddeningly frustrating and slow and comes with like a whole bunch of disappointments and setbacks. And it's very unsatisfying. You're just dealing with a bunch of very complicated human beings that are all trying to like get something done together. And if you've done that with five or six people, it's tough, let alone the number of people that are involved in governing anything, right? Right. There's also sort of the disconnect, I think, and you've talked about this too. Like, you've argued that Twitter doesn't matter as much as we Twitter users think it does. And I always make the case that the reason Twitter has outsized influence relative to its very small user base is because every journalist and politician in the world is on the platform like what do you what do you think about that no i i think that that's that's true

which is interesting because then you get into the fact that it's journalists and politicians talking to other journalists and politicians and um there are a host of people who it's like on a list of things i if i could change anything it would just be like i don't want to hear about any politicians tweets ever again um the last time we had to spend a lot of time thinking about a politician's tweets for like professional reasons he has since been removed from the platform and i believe he has some truthy socially other platform that i don't need to know about or care. He may be back.

He may perform his way back into Twitter and the White House. That was what he was best at is this performance of being Donald Trump. That's right. Because it's interesting when you think back about it. And it just is like the performance of Donald Trump and and who donald trump actually was um and is are very different things but yeah i think that because you know journalists and politicians are on twitter you obviously want to believe that the thing you're using all the time is incredibly important and it kind of is because i think that i mean we've seen again and again that there are stories that you hear about on twitter and then it winds up being like a bunch of people talking about it

sometimes i think that that's based on on reality um i think that the i mean the ahmaud arbery murder is not charged it nothing happens with it if it doesn't garner social media attention. George Floyd's murder, nothing. That becomes a police-involved death if you go back to the original press release that Minneapolis police put out about that when that first happened. None of that happens without social media attention.

And I think that that's incredibly worthwhile because you have people reacting to an event that is taking place and sharing it. And that's real. That's the same reason if you were on Twitter in like 2011, you remember the Arab Spring, like, which I think, but then I think that that leads to the problem here, which is that one, events that happen on twitter are not important off twitter um if you've ever tried to explain i mentioned i think in my writing that if you've ever tried to explain a viral tweet to someone who's not on twitter they will stop you they will desperately try to stop you if you say you might stop yourself because as you try to explain that viral tweet i've done this

i've done that i've gone home and talked to my wife and been like hey so there was this thing on twitter today that's happened and she's like and then halfway through i'm like i sound like a fucking moron right oh yeah yeah um i believe i once attempted to explain being dead to someone and i think i got out those two words and i was like i'm gonna go outside we're just gonna pretend this didn't happen i missed being dad and i asked someone about that and then halfway through the explanation i was like i'm i'm sorry i don't follow i don't follow the being dad problem no i don't know what's going on right now you're out totally out but i think that um yeah i think that there is twitter can be very helpful when you were talking about events that are actually taking place in the world and you see a host of people attempting to either garner opinion or observe opinions and then those opinions will

become kind of you see those opinions move outside the platform over at in real time but then when twitter is talking about itself it is the epicenter of hell oh oh yeah like yeah the elon musk stuff has been particularly yeah and so i think that there's yeah and so you can totally understand why journalists are on there sometimes i don't quite understand why politicians are on there especially because you have politicians who's i think they're on there because the journalists are on there yeah the journalists are on there, especially because you have politicians who's... I think they're on there because the journalists are on there. Yeah, the journalists are on there and they want the attention from journalists because that's how any of this works.

But I just keep thinking, like, if you are voting in the district of many of the people who are like the loudest on Twitter, I don't know if you're not on Twitter, what do you know about that? Like, there are people who are in Congress who on Twitter have these very like specific personalities. And then you look at like their actual campaign websites and it's just like, he opened a park. He signed a bill. He appeared with this Boy Scout troop. And you're like, it's this entirely different performance of politics for the people who probably actually are more likely to vote.

Yeah, I mean, I think the benefit of a politician being on Twitter and building a Twitter profile that is broadly popular is most importantly the attention you get from journalists and then also the attention you get from activists. And now most of these donations are from like small dollar donors who are like activists as well and the people who pay most attention to politics. And so you can build you can build a national profile as a politician fairly quickly by being a good tweeter because you're going to get press from that. You're going to get donations from that. And then you're going to get the activists who pay most attention to politics really liking you. Now, what it will do in an actual district where you have to run and

win is a different story, which is also, by the way, why you get a lot of these like sort of rising star democratic politicians who are in sort of these like tougher red states or red districts, and then they can't win there. And then you're like, well, what's next? Right. And you have people who may, you know, and I'm aware that running campaigns is very, very hard, but I actually think that it's very useful to if you if I were to offer advice to campaigns, you know, at the, you know, at the state level, I would say, like, be as offline as you can possibly be. I remember during the Roy Moore camp special election in Alabama, I maintained that part of Doug Jones's effectiveness was that he did not do, he did not really meet with journalists, you had to come to Alabama and go to a fish fry. And if you did not want to go to a fish fry, you could not speak to Doug Jones. And meanwhile, Roy Moore, you know, wandered around with little pistols. And then,

you know, a lot happened with regard to that campaign. But like, there is something to say about like, keeping local campaigns local, and also being aware, and I think Democrats need to be more aware, that if your campaign garners national attention, yes, you're bringing in a ton of money. But what does that actually mean for your race? Especially when garnering the attention of the nation can actually come to bite you in the ass. Which, I mean, I'm aware that on the one hand,

you'd be like, well, I'll just take the money anyway. So I know it's hard. No, but it's a double-edged sword. I mean, you've argued in the past that one of the problems with Donald Trump's campaign in 2020, and one of the reasons he may have ultimately lost, is that he became way too online. And when he was at his rallies,

he was saying things that were so in the weeds weeds you have to be a like a not just a twitter user but like a rabid twitter user you have to be me i you have to be me and even there were times um when i wrote about that i it was right after he'd done a campaign um event i think in iowa and they started talking about nelly and bruce or yep and i remember being like i've written on like the fusion gps even talking about this i'm like what even were we talking about but i don't even know i cannot tell you the whole story about nelly and bruce or in fusion gps and i probably tweeted about it a million times i have no idea what it was about absolutely no idea it just left your brain because your brain was like, you don't need to know this. But he was talking about and he would just say things like, well, what about Nellie Orr?

Huh? And like, wait for applause. And I was like, this is the most online person who has ever lived. And I say that as being an extremely online person. When I say being extremely online, I don't mean like connected to the Internet. I mean, believing that like the events that take place on Twitter or what's important on Twitter

or social media in general are like super important to everyone. So I care a lot about Section 230, the Communications Decency Act of 1996, one of the great laws we have. And I understand why Trump cared a lot, but like I cannot imagine going to like South Carolina and starting to yell about section 230 which is you know this is stuff he did and so there I you

know as I wrote at the time there were a host of conservatives who were like in 2016 he was talking about like the working class and how they were you know no one cared about them and then in 2020 it was like the beautiful boaters suburban housewives and shit you would only know about if you were incredibly online and just like comment section at bright part just extremely deep and i've been in the comment section at bright part and there were moments where like that that idea of kind of picking out random it was like the return of special characters on a television show but characters you totally forgot about like at a certain point you know if you know who this is maybe that says more about you than it does about like everyone else in the world I mean, just to zoom out on this a little bit,

like there's this very public, constant conversation among elites on Twitter. And like you said, first of all, Twitter, I mean, one of the benefits of Twitter is it has like sort of opened the gates to a broader set of voices, a more diverse set of voices, people who don't have platforms.

And because of that, people have been able to create social and political change, right? So that's like a very good thing about Twitter. But there's also happening every day on Twitter, this constant public conversation among political and media elites that most of the public not only doesn't participate in,

but doesn't even follow. Like, what effect do you think that has on our politics in general? Oh, I think it's, it makes politics seem like a fun game for people, which is actually, I think that, I believe some people refer to it as kind of political hobbyism. And it drives me insane. The reason to care about politics is, one, it's the thing we do together. And two, it's the means by which we assume that laws are passed and you try to do something that is going to make life better or at least neutral for more people. Like, think about it. if you live in an apartment building you the politics is basically like your elevator is broken you live in an apartment building that

has like 12 floors you would like your elevator to get fixed politics is the means by which the elevator is to be fixed because you all, you know, you work with constituents who might be like, well, I also want this other thing to be fixed. And you're like, oh, okay, fine,

cool. But is it, you know, can we prioritize getting the elevator fixed? And then I promise that in another sooner time, we will work on your thing about how the grills don't work on the roof. This is also because the grills on my apartment roof do not work and it drives me nuts. Anyway, so like politics is this action, but the result

of politics should be that the elevator is fixed or the bridge is fixed or that the thing happens. Political hobbyism turns the politics into the point when it isn't like there are a host of um and i think that this contributes to having a host of politicians who are very well known on a national level right now who have never passed a goddamn thing they have co-sponsored things that purposely are like i co-sponsored this thing that I know will never pass, but I can say that I did it. That's like, that is participating in politics, but you weren't actually participating in like, it would be like if you competed in a marathon, but the objective was not to finish. And so I think that the way that Twitter encourages political hobbyism, in which you

have politicians who become very well known because of how they seem to you know you either love them on twitter or you hate them on twitter or you are something in between it has nothing to do with their actual effectiveness at getting legislation passed which is actually the point of politics like when people say that oh i went into politics to make america a better place you did not say that because you thought that like the endless grind of politics was the point you said that it was because like there's this park near my house and no one ever empties the trash so i ran for city council so that i could scream at the garbage people and demand that they take out the trash at the park near my house. You did not do so because you thought that the process of that was fun. You did it because you wanted the end result. Yep. You know, it's funny. I've been doing

these focus groups for another podcast I'm doing called The Wilderness. And in every group of voters, I ask, what issues do you think aren't getting enough attention in the media and politics? And which issues do you think are getting too much attention? And not getting enough attention is almost always cost of living issues, right? It's rent, it's inflation, it's gas, you know, like even though that they are getting attention, but like no one's doing anything about all these cost of living issues. And when I say which issues are getting too much attention, the issue that they all name is politics. Right.

Right. Because they say all that we get coverage of, all that we see is just people fighting all the time about politics and all the issues that affect our lives, whether it's inflation, whether it's abortion, whether it's anything. Nothing seems to get done about any of these things. Right. But when we see politics, it's all a discussion about politics. Right. And so politics now becomes something different than what politics actually should be, which is people coming together and figuring out a way to solve all those other problems that people are concerned about. Exactly.

Like politics is the means by which you would find a solution to inflation that exists that I don't know. It would be the means by which you would find the solution or the compromise or the something to the problem. I mean, that's why I kind of hate like there's a style of reporting that is constantly like, you know, this person's yelling at this person, but this person's yelling at this person. And I'm like, but why? Like over what? To do what? What what's the point why are we all here and so i think that that's something that really if you are not like if the political process does not get you hot and

bothered congratulations you're like 90 of americans there are 10% of Americans who liked the West Wing and didn't find it overbearing and infuriating. And for those people, well, you can watch any number of those episodes whenever you'd like. But like, if you want politics to actually do something for you, rather than just be like you know this process by which people have discussions there really is such a focus on process and such no focus on ends or means and i think that that contributes to not just people being overwhelmed by politics and the nature of it but also it contributes to poorly written legislation where you have legislation that is meant to respond to like people being upset about something on Twitter, but then at no point during the writing of this where you're like, well, what are the knockout effects of this? What does this actually mean? You know, you responded to people who were equally obsessed

with process and had not thought about ends or means. And then you have legislation that it's like, good news, you ban this thing. Bad news, the penalty for that ban means that somebody is going to get choked to death because they were selling those cigarettes. But, you know, you win some and some people die sometimes. And so I think that there really is a disconnect between the people who fetishize process and the point of politics, which is not process. Like, if we could solve disputes and

compromise faster without anyone watching us do so, or without needing to be the person who has the segment that goes viral, or needing to be the person who has the the segment that goes viral or needing to person be the person who says the craziest thing you can imagine that would be great i mean that's not the world we live in but like the end is the point trying to fix the elevator or solve inflation or deal with rising rent costs or even answer questions about like, what would it mean to deal with rising rent costs? Is there something that would happen? Would you, if you capped rent prices, would that mean that there'd be fewer buildings? How does that intersect with fights for affordable housing, which is a thing people say that they would like

to do? I think that that also, you get a real sense that there are people who support things. And then you ask them, like, well, what about this thing? And then they're like, oh, I hadn't thought about that. And I'm like, yeah, that's kind of the point here. And so I think that, yeah, it's bad. It's bad. Political hobbyism is bad. Well, I also think the internet has made all of this worse because it gives everyone a window into all these conversations and debates that are happening that seem like they are close to you, that seems like you can participate and influence them, but you really can't because they're actually further away. And there's also this elite conversation going on.

I remember last year you wrote this piece about how sort of elite circles online and in the media often ignore what's popular with most Americans, like the NFL or shows like NCIS. Yes. I was very, I'm very proud to say that I'm one of the numerous people who watches the NFL and I've seen numerous episodes of NCIS Hawaii. I will say on a side note- Wildly popular.

Wildly popular with most of the country. I know, I know. Also could contribute to why people are constantly surprised about either federal law enforcement or state law enforcement failing to do something. Because if you watch CBS cop shows, the cops are the fucking best. They are all, they're are all they're hot they're strong they're

fighting for you know they're fighting against evil like their work you know they're standing up to the man even though they themselves are the man but there's always somebody above them who's trying to tell them what to do and they're like well i'm sorry but i just can't do that like it's you know the world world of CBS cops is, if that's what you think law enforcement is, I understand why you are just- No wonder. Yeah, it makes, like, a lot of American politics

makes a lot more sense. But yet, like, you do get disconnected from how most people think about things. And I think that there's, it's not that most people are correct. I think that that's really important to get at. Like, I'm reminded there was a Vox article from a couple of months ago that essentially, I think it said something like, everyone knows that Lin-Manuel Miranda is tired and awful.

And everyone was like, wait, what? Encanto just came, like everybody loved, like people love Lin-Manuel, people who have opinions about Lin-Manuel Miranda like pretty big fans and so there's something about like taking that you know you wind up in a Pauline Kael situation Pauline Kael who famously said something akin to that like you know she didn't know anyone who voted for Nixon the actual quote is not nearly as bad as I think it was generally reported to be. But anyway, like you wind up in this situation in which you take your bubble as sacrosanct. Yeah. But I would also say that it's important to recognize that sometimes, and I notice conservatives

doing this all the time, like when they have the polling, they'll use the polling. But when they don't have the polling, they're like, the polling doesn't matter. Of course. Yeah, we're just correct. Tried and true.

And like, you know, there are multiple issues polling they're like the polling doesn't matter of course yeah we're just correct tried and like you know there are there are multiple issues on which i'm aware i'm out of step with american opinion and i'm like yeah well most americans are just wrong on this particular issue sorry that's just how it is but like that's called you know being a person and that's how well but you can at least be aware i'm aware there's some issues that you're in the majority and some issues you're not that's fine yeah no that's that's how it works and i think i think that twitter sometimes lends itself to being like no no i am in the majority rather than having the tools to talk about how like i'm not in the majority so my job is to stand strong for my viewpoints while either trying to convince the wider world of my view

or just being like, well, that's just how it is. I mean, I do wonder if constantly being exposed to media coverage and conversations about the lives of cultural, political, financial elites makes the politics of grievance and resentment an easier sell, which is clearly a problem that we are all facing right now as we are beset with right-wing populists here in the United States and all over the world. Yeah. And I think that it also, I wrote a piece a while back about the idea of elites because I actually kind of hate that

concept because I think that sometimes people both sides use the word for the other side of course right exactly in general when I'm talking about elites I try to refer to either people like overwhelming cultural power or rich people like if you are um i wrote about it in the context of um uh indiana university had a basketball coach who was bad i liked him because he was bad um but they were basically like it's you know indiana university did not have the money to fire him they could not pay his buyout that buyout was like more than 10 million dollars because this is indiana university of basketball and they still believe in that as a thing you know it's like yeah congratulations on you know your belief in the 1980s but anyway um and so you know two boosters came in one paid the 10 million

dollar buyout and the other covered the cost to find a new basketball coach and i essentially argued like if you can pay 10 million dollars to make a basketball coach you don't like go away you are an elite yeah and there was a great there was a great atlantic piece a while back about kind of this like um american gentry the people who own like multiple car dealerships they didn't go to harvard or yale they probably went to like dayton or iu or they you know they went to like University of Wisconsin, Whitewater. But they're rich. Like they don't go to Europe for vacation, but they go to Destin like three times a year and they own a house there.

And they are the people who are driving small town politics. They are the people who are like, I threw my support behind this sheriff. And that sheriff determines whether or not your town basically becomes a speed trap to collect tickets and have more contact with law enforcement. And so I think that Twitter enables us to put a window on, you know, whether financial elites or however you think of being cultural elites but it also puts up a wall because you start thinking that like a 17 year old at NYU with a big TikTok profile is more important or more elite than like you know Josh Hawley who one has a lot of political power but two also like you know he went to stanford and he taught in england like he did a lot of elite things yeah no it's it is a it is often a contest politics now between republicans trying to make the argument that democrats are

cultural elites uh academic elites um and democrats trying to make the argument at least we used to that republicans are sort of economic and financial elites but but now exactly this new populism on the right is trying to say also that because more socially liberal economically well off people are now democrats and that includes like you know the tech industry and the financial industry and stuff like that then then democrats are the real elites right that that's basically that's the basis for right-wing populism at this point and it's interesting about how you're dueling over who is more elite it's kind of like um we have this moment in which everyone wants to simultaneously be powerful and a victim and which

i'm like no like just admit that like i have. John, you and I have power in a distinct way. People, for some unholy reason, listen to us and pay attention to the things we say. That's great. We should probably not urge a junta or demand people kill each other. Probably shouldn't. That would be bad. And if we were to do so and then say, no, no, no, it doesn't matter because we don't have power. Like I would, one, that would being a member of Congress is a seat of actually quite immense power. You are supposed to be able to declare war.

Do you remember that thing where we used to, like, ask Congress to declare war? I remember. Yeah, that was back in the day. The old days. But, like, you are supposed to, you know, I think if people were better at understanding that, like, trying to foist power off on the other and then talk about how great things would be if you had power but in this weird way you can never have the power so you never have to take responsibility for it that's that's a bad state of affairs i want to ask you about another online problem that you've recently written about.

And you just alluded to this when we were talking about everyone thinking that they're always right on Twitter and that you don't need to persuade anyone. Which is what the Internet has done to the quality of our conversations. You call it debate team energy. Can you explain debate team energy? Sorry. Sorry. That was just I even I'm the person who came up with the idea of debate team energy. And even thinking about it makes me mad.

So I want to be clear that there are people who email me being like, no, no, I was on debate team. And I'm like, yeah, I can tell by the fact that you're emailing me right now to defend your debate team prowess but like it's essentially that everything is a debate and that winning that debate is like if you've ever competed or witnessed a debate competition you're you know you're well aware that like the best argument does not win like i have witnessed debate team competitions in which people have won for terrible arguments and that's totally fine you're trying to score points that's the whole yeah you're trying to score points literally it is a it is a game

and if that is how you approach politics then at a a certain point, you know, you are more focused on the on gamifying conversation than you are on the point of conversation, which is to garner information or to, you know, to get somewhere to the point of, I mean, I call it academic team energy. I competed in academic team, which is because I'm exactly the kind of person who mean, I call it academic team energy. I competed in academic team, which is because I'm exactly the kind of person who you think I am. And the point of that was, one,

having a large storehouse of generally useless knowledge, but also you're sort of like, you're answering questions. You're not trying to beat the other team into submission. You're just like, I know things that you do not know. And when I win this debate this academic team convert competition you will probably go home and google those things and then you will know those things great well it's and it's also partly saying like and i don't know certain things right like there's a vulnerability to conversation that results in knowledge in which

you admit that like you don't know everything you ask questions that might sound awkward you make mistakes um you reveal in debate you reveal your own ignorance along on certain topics and these are all things that we do in casual conversation that are okay but when you're on twitter and it's a performance like it it's about, you got to fucking win. Right. Because otherwise you're going to get dunked on. And then that's that. Yeah. And then they'll make like YouTube clips that are like how blah,

blah, blah, destroyed, blah, blah, blah. And you're like, you don't even know like what.

And so again, it's like, it goes back to our earlier conversation about performance in which debate team, it's about performance. Like people do not really care what you were winning on. Like you can win in a debate competition on any number of things but if you perform that argument correctly you can do really well and so i think that that kind of energy especially the

people who are very good at it where they talk really fast and they're really loud and they ask a lot of kind of like gotcha questions and they're but there's never an expectation that they could themselves be incorrect like the the lack of vulnerability i think that's a really good point like if you don't know something i always say like just say that you don't know because that vulnerability provides an opening hopefully for some sort of actual conversation you know you i really think that the debate team energy means that you try to paper over not knowing something, but just screaming at people. I mean, I think for a long time that I mistakenly believe that Twitter was a place where you could potentially persuade other people with an effective argument. But like, I don't know that if I, I don't know if I've ever

seen anyone on Twitter respond to any argument with, hey, that's a good point. Never thought of it that way. I don't think I've ever seen that. I think that the closest I've come is, and I am the kind of person who is willing to do this because, I don't know, I have a zen for pain. I don't get it. But I have witnessed actual changing of minds on Twitter. It has happened. I have a Zen for pain. I don't get it. But like I have had, I have witnessed actual changing of minds on Twitter. It has happened. I have seen it done.

And you also see people who are having long back and forth where they both come out of it being like, I better understand your position. I have seen that a few times. I actually had this happen in my Twitter mentions, which are, you know, that's a place maybe not to go but like people having an actual conversation about abortion and coming away with it being like i didn't understand this perspective beforehand but now i do thank you and i was like i did it i mean i didn't do anything but i did it um you witnessed it at least i i was i i witnessed it you facilitated yeah yes that's what we'll call it i'm a facilitator of conversation um but yeah i think that that's the thing is also because vulnerability like the you know twitter was not made for vulnerability it wasn't made for context

it was essentially made for real-time reactions and for the concept of dunking on each other and I think that part of why I love talking about sports on Twitter is one I have actually built up a large a community of people who I've been talking about sports with now for 14 years I've met some of them we've talked like when I when I got married i there was a twitter friend who actually sent um i'm from cincinnati and we have an ice cream called graders ice cream and i'm a huge my wife's from cincinnati so i'm very familiar with graders um i'm a huge michigan fan and this guy is like an ohio state blogger but he sent to my aunt he was like you know i've got something for you and i'm like we've talked enough that i don't think you're a serial killer and he sent to my office at the time

like this whole delivery of graders ice cream for when i got married and i was like that's great and like it's one of the twitter sports world can actually be a place of like actual friendship and joy and enjoyment um sometimes it's because like i think it's because the you know you we all kind of recognize that sports is important sports is a portal to talk about wider things while also keeping it kind of small but also like it's a game we know that like we're aware of this i have yeah i've cried like i have gotten physically ill because of sporting events but partly of that is like how could I let this make me feel like this but like there's something about one you are you know you're watching something that's taking place off Twitter but also like the world

of sports is so fun and nonsensical where you know you have somebody like Kevin Durant just randomly tweeting about how he'll never log off. And then it's like, if you can't find joy in that, I don't know what to tell you. Yeah, I was gonna say sports is a great example of like a place online where you can have sort of healthier engagement and sort of like-

Well, sometimes, then there are moments, I'm reminded of, there was this terrible year in which florida state was um a national championship contender but there had been a number of sexual assault allegations against their quarterback at the time james winston and it became to the point that there is kind of this like catchphrase called talking about the knolls where if you said anything about Florida State, you would have the meanest, worst people in the history of time invade your mentions. I think this was the first time I think a lot of people were like,

oh, you can harass people on this platform pretty effectively. And that's, for a lot of sports people, that's when we first started seeing it. And then, like, Gamergateate happened and the 2016 election happened but there were moments where you're like oh this this thing that we've been using for fun can be so quickly weaponized the second we talk about something in adjacent to sports that is hard and bad well i was gonna say i think in in 2016 sort of fueled this too but the political battlefield and i think the internet fuels this as well, the political battlefield has now expanded

and crept into every corner of our lives. Like it's into sports now and it's into entertainment and it's at the Oscar. It is very hard to talk about anything now that politics doesn't creep into. And I do think the internet has helped fuel that, which brings me back to sort of the original question

about like, there's a lot of debate team energy around politics right now, and especially conversations online about politics. Like, how do we inject more academic team energy into our political conversations? I think that by being curious and asking questions, there are so many times in which you see, there was a statement that went out yesterday

from Ohio Right to Life with regard to a case, the horrifying case of a 10-year-old who was raped and pregnant and the entire right wing decided that she did not exist and wasn't real. And the statement said something about like she deserved better than an abortion. And at no point, and granted it was a press statement, but I wanted someone to ask like, like what asking questions and being willing to be wrong in public i think are two of the bravest things that people can possibly do now i'm aware like there's kind of the whole the twitter concept of a jacking off just asking questions where it's just as we're like at a certain point you're like why are you asking a whole lot of questions about uh israel in a way that that I don't feel good about at all. But like, there are moments

for asking actual questions, and the answers can be telling in so many different ways. And so I think that what I learned from academic team is one, I'm really good at trivia. Two, I'm again, really good at trivia. If you live in DC.C. and would like, at any point, someone to go to bar trivia with, I will go. I'm finally old enough that I'm good enough at D.C. bar trivia, which is very difficult because everyone in D.C. got a Ph.D. Yeah, they are. A bunch of nerds.

But I think that asking questions and being willing to be wrong is so important. And I want to note something, though, that you said that politics is everywhere. And I think we actually just did an episode of my show, The Argument, a little bit on this idea. But I think that there are lots of people for whom politics was part of their lives anyway. You know, politics is how I got married. Politics is how my parents got married. Like there are people whose lives are relatively free of political conversations, or of politics or of politics having a real lasting impact on their lives. And, you know, that would be great. And I'm sure it's amazing. And I would totally understand why they're like, why are people talking about politics in my life. But for many

people that was never there was never any choice about that there was like for you know whether it's the right to vote or whether it's the right to marry or where you get to live and how much money you get to have while you live there there are a host of people in america for whom political decisions have been the means by which they have been able to experience america um a you know a country of which i'm extremely fond in the same way that you are fond of a relative who is weird but you know you get it you understand there's a context it's weird i think for that very reason because politics is so deeply important to so many people and has been for so long and and and affects like just the way that they live their lives and the way that they go about the world. Like it can't be about just process and performance.

And like there has to be a way to have arguments about politics and have debates about politics that aren't sort of the performative bullshit stuff that we see online. Yeah. I think if you can have arguments about the results of politics, like what do you actually want to happen? Don't make it about like, oh, I don't like the process of this. Because at a certain point, you're like, well, you know. Right. Like, are you mad about the process or are you mad about the result of the process?

And I think it's interesting how people try to split the baby on that. And so I think that, like, think about what you actually want to take place. Think about the process that that will take to get there. And yes, there are processes where, like, there are lots of ideas I support where if someone did it by fiat, I'd be kind of upset about even if the result I liked. But like, think about think about the ends. Think about how we're going to, you know, how you want to get there.

What are the what are you willing to do to get there? What are you not willing to do to get there? I think that that's really especially important on issues like climate change, where people will say like, this is so important to me. But it is also really important to me that I can pay rent and get to work and all of these things. And like, I understand that that's incredibly irritating for people who are like, no, this is something we have to deal with right now. Make the case, make the case and find means by which you can find some meat some compromise if that's possible i will also say that the fetishization of compromise is bad because there are certain things upon which you can't really just divide by two and get an answer like

you don't just get the median on a certain bunch of issues but like on a lot of things if it's fixing a bridge or building affordable housing or something like that like you're going to have different sides they are going to be very mad at each other but it either politics is the means by which no one is happy but something gets done well and yeah let's go back to we're all stuck here together yeah right there's 300 plus million of us in this country we're all stuck here together we got to figure out a way to make it work or else it's not going to work. Right now it's not working that well. But like, but like the, one of the answer isn't to like get rid of the half that doesn't, it's like, we got to figure out a way to make it work. That's it. That's the way it is.

Exactly. And especially because I think that I'm always impressed by when it does work. Like I, I'm kind of upset. Like I've become recently kind of obsessed by like successful local construction projects where, you know, DC City Council said they wanted something and then this happened and it had built and then it's here. And I'm like, hey, they did it. Like, yeah, it's wild when you get little tiny examples of government working as efficiently as it should. You're like, oh oh you did the thing like

you did the thing or you responded to the crisis with the thing and like i mean even just little things about like if you go to a new place and all the roads that got you there generally worked and things were okay like congrats like that was decades of work to get you to that point. Congratulations. So I think, like, you know, when people say all politics is local, I think more politics should be local, especially because that's where you can see that politics isn't just a fun game for weirdos. What it's supposed to be is to get you somewhere.

Yeah, that's right. Last question i ask all our guests uh what's your favorite way to unplug and how often you get to do it uh my favorite way to unplug is to work out like a crazed maniac um i work out for about like an hour and a half two hours a day um i now, now that sounds impressive, but it's also sometimes I'm like, Hmm, this is lightly concerning. Um, but I really do enjoy it. I've written before that, um, I really like workouts that are hard and terrible. And if you tell me about a workout that is hard and terrible, I'm like, Oh, I'm going to try and do it.

So please don't suggest things. Cause otherwise I'm going to, I will, it'll, it please don't suggest things because otherwise I'm going to I will it'll it'll be you heard her folks send send those workouts to Jane you can we'll pass them along no no but yeah so I work out a lot I go for walks I watch like

Ken Burns documentaries yeah I'm wow even just even just listing that and I'm like oh no I'm just I'm really leaning headlong and becoming a 62-year-old man. I like it. Jane Koston, thank you for joining Offline. This was fun.

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, John Favreau. It's produced by Austin Fisher. Andrew Chadwick is our audio editor. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis, sound engineer of the show. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music.

Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Michael Martinez, Andy Gardner-Bernstein, Ari Schwartz, Andy Taft, and Sandy Gerard for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, and Amelia Montooth, who film and share our episodes as videos every week. Make sure you check out America Dissected this week, where Dr. Abdul Al-Sayed asks, what happens when Facebook gets a hold of our medical records? Journalist Todd Feathers and engineer Simon Fondry-Tietler joined to discuss how Facebook is stealing data from period tracking apps and how that data can be weaponized in a post-Roe world. New episodes of America Dissected drop each Tuesday. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.