You guys have to get off your phones

No one wants to be online anymore

I had a piece in the Nation on Monday about the youth vote, and whether the next decade of American politics could be defined by a newly empowered youth bloc. One thing that didn’t get much airtime in the piece, but that I’ve been thinking about for a while, is how people’s social lives affect their understanding of politics. We’ve heard plenty of stories about how people are socializing less, are partying less, have fewer friends and spend significantly more time alone. The annual Harvard Youth Poll asked some questions around the concept of community; it turns out, unsurprisingly, that not a lot of young people have it. Just 17 percent of Americans ages 18-29 report being "deeply connected to at least one community”, and nearly one in five "do not feel a strong sense of community anywhere”. This has downstream effects on political engagement. Just 14 percent of those who do not consider themselves to be part of any community are politically engaged, compared to 40 percent of those who are deeply connected to a community. This makes sense to me. People create a sense of political belonging primarily based on who they associate with. If you don’t interact with anybody, it’s hard to develop that independently.

I think this is slowly changing, though. I learned about a new event invitation platform yesterday, which seems like an almost weekly occurrence lately. If I were a venture capitalist I’d go long on this trend. People, at least in New York where I live, seem to want to congregate more than ever. Big Substackers are hosting in-person parties for readers and fans. Influencers are hosting book clubs. My texts are full of Instagram flyers for readings, parties, shows, raves, ticketed dinners. New venues pop up every day. The pandemic may have destabilized our social fabric, but at least in some circles it seems like there is a desire to get off our phones and really see each other.

Maybe this doesn’t mean anything! I mean, who cares what people are doing in New York other than people in New York? But at least on a personal level, I don’t like being online either anymore, even in the spaces I felt like I got something generative from. We all know Twitter is a cesspool of Nazis but what bothers me the most, personally, is that even people whose opinions I respect and like are tainted by it. It’s all bad vibes, and the vibes affect people’s brains, making them less tethered to reality and more invested in the tenuous unreality of an internet dominated by bots and trolls.

A good example of this is how heated people are getting over Zohran Mamdani talking to Obama on the phone. This is the kind of thing that people with hammer and sickles in their display names get upset about, and then people who consider themselves “pragmatic progressives” get to act all smug about how the “left isn’t serious”, but none of these arguments on either side are ever based in anything concrete. There’s just nothing to this debate—no call transcript, no polling numbers, no concrete examples of corruption or dealmaking or tradeoffs, no actual instances of money being exchanged or donors making moves, no evidence that left-wing hysteria is damaging or unpopular. Nothing but the boogeymen of the Democratic Establishment (who are both incredibly unpopular among the voting electorate and also somehow all-powerful and omniscient) and the boogeymen of the Unserious Left (who are both whiny babies who can’t do anything and also somehow capable of propelling a 33-year-old state assemblyman into Gracie Mansion). It’s all just vibes, based entirely on who annoys you the most on the internet.

And honestly, who even cares? So what if people tweet dumb things? There are obviously lots of left-wing idiots out there who should never be allowed near a political campaign, and significantly more examples of politicians making unsavory compromises that result in America becoming a worse, more violent country. I don’t even have a real opinion on whether it matters that Zohran took a call from Obama, other than that taking calls from people is part of the job of being a politician. But I think people who spend all day thinking about politics should base their opinions on more than just vibes. There isn’t any discourse on Twitter that is based in anything at all. None of it is real. You know what is real? The grass outside. Everyone wants to be outside! Get off your phone! Go there!

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Here’s a great write-up of the DSA convention. I know the tweets can be acrimonious and as a longtime member I really wish there were less of them, but I would strongly caution against forming your opinion of DSA based on what you see online. There is real momentum here that is going to catch a lot of professional Politics Knowers off-guard when it materializes into gains over the next few election cycles. Another example of how everything online is just bad vibes….

Clothing rental services are so hot right now. It’s so awesome that millennials don’t get to own anything, including their clothes, I guess. Most of you didn’t know me when I was a teen so I need you guys to know that I was ahead of the curve when I got my prom dress at Rent the Runway in 2014 :)

Californians aren’t backing Gavin Newsom’s partisan redistricting plans. I think it’s interesting how Americans are so politically polarized but they see their democracy, or what semblance of it we have, as sacred. It doesn’t seem to be working out politically for Republicans either, even though enough of them are cowardly enough to give in to Trump anyway. I’ve always been skeptical of “saving democracy” as an organizing principle because we have so little of it in our lives even when a Democrat is in office. I wonder if the ideal really does matter to people, though, even if there are more pressing concerns (affordability, housing crisis, all that).

Restaurants are offering mini meals to cater to GLP-1 users. I’m not anti GLP-1 or anything but I fear a tiny meal boom is going to fuel a lot of people’s eating disorders. Still, restaurants are so expensive that cheaper, smaller meal options might actually make them more accessible to people. Perhaps good news for me—I love going out to eat but my bank account doesn’t.

This maple syrup mogul-turned-writer is my hero. Media might be dead, and writers do need day jobs, but imagine having a DREAM day job and then moving to New York at 58 (!) to pursue yet another dream! Amazing! You can really just wake up and do anything!