Volume 5, Issue 9: The Fleshy Part of the Thigh

"Whoa, I just found Jimmy Hoffa."

Here is a button where you can subscribe to this newsletter now, if you have not previously done so. I do hope that you enjoy it.

“Each day on Twitter there is one main character,” the axiom goes. “The goal is to never be it.” I have always thought, for those who still use Twitter (or really any social media channel) regularly, that both of these statements are wrong. Social media is so bifurcated and expansive that there are constant main characters on it at all times, all getting roasted in their individual channels, and, from my experience, people who post on these social media channels incessantly do so because they very much do want to be the main character, of everything, all of the time.

The first time I used Twitter was for a feature story I was writing for New York Magazine back in 2009, when I found myself in their San Francisco office at the very second their site was unwittingly breaking a story about a plane crashing in the Hudson River. I used it for a few years, first for fun, then out of a professional obligation, and ultimately I stopped scrolling through the site entirely, using it only as occasional promotion for high-profile pieces I’d written or for public pronouncements, a repository for pseudo-press releases, “Congrats to my friend Betty on her new book” or “I was sorry to hear about the death of my old college pal Harold,” that sort of thing. I am not judgmental of those who still obsessively post on social media, but it is just not my thing. It does not increase my endorphin levels the way it seems to do for others.

But I do write things for a living, and when your job is to make things that are released into the public square, eventually, inevitably, something that you create is going to get flowing in the Twitter bloodstream. I write pieces that are intended to reflect my view of the world, and because I am a different person than you, occasionally something I believe will clash with something that you believe. This is perfectly natural and is fact intrinsic to being a human being—we are mercifully not clones. But it can lead, in a culture of silos and piling on, in a culture in which if someone disagrees with you about something it’s because they’re a terrible person who must be punished, to getting caught up in it all. Every once in a while, I’m somebody’s main character.

This has happened many times in my career, and it will happen again. And it happened this week. This week, in response to what I saw as a wave of craven political opportunism in the wake of a horrible tragedy here in Athens, an attempt to score ugly, cynical cable television points to a forever aggrieved base while exploiting a community engulfed in grief, I wrote a long piece for New York. I will confess, I do not believe anything I wrote in that piece is particularly controversial, or even all that questionable, but because there is money to be made from riling people up and scaring them, the piece entered that bloodstream, helped along by a Fox News segment about a small group of very loud people (led by a guy once arrested after he assaulted his wife for making his grilled cheese wrong) who screamed at the mayor of our town (who it should be said, is also a friend of mine) at a press conference in the wake of the tragedy. It got heated.

But it is worth noting that I only discovered it got heated later, when someone told me about it. In the moment, I had no idea. Because I’ve been doing this for 25 years now. I’ve learned how to deal with this stuff.

So, if you happen to find yourself in the middle of one of these maelstroms, as my friend the mayor did this week, as I did, as it seems like happens to anyone in the public square (and even many who are not) at some point, I have some tips.

So People Are Mad At You Online: A Guide to Making It Through Just Fine

1. Don’t respond. Mute everything.

One of the biggest mistakes people make when they feel attacked online is to get defensive, to try to fight back, to Post Through It. I understand this temptation—when someone says something wrong about you, your first instinct is to correct it—but it is important to resist. The No. 1 rule of online discourse is that you’re not going to convince anyone of anything they’ve already made up their minds about. You can make the most logical, sober-minded, fact-based points, and it will not matter: Simply by engaging them, you’ve already lost. These people are jackals. They are not arguing in good faith: They are just trying to get together with everyone they already agree with so that they can shout you down. You are spitting in the ocean. Any engagement on your part will only encourage them to push harder.

So just leave them be. Stay off, entirely, the social media channel everyone’s yelling at you on. I’d even recommend muting whatever thread they’re piling on so you couldn’t see what they’re saying even if you wanted to. This gives you the extra satisfaction of knowing that they are screaming at no one, that they are shrieking into the void, heard only by themselves. Which, as it turns out, are the only people they’re listening to in the first place. If you ignore the clamor, it will be like it never happened. Because it’s not really happening, not really. It’s just online junk.

And don’t read the comments, obviously. Ever.

2. Go work on something else.

Of all the online shitstorms I’ve wandered into, the most intense, the meanest, the most unhinged, was without question the Barstool people. That is of course part of the business plan over there, how they have been able to survive as long as they have, the way they have: Attack critics so relentlessly that eventually they end up leaving Barstool alone out of pure exhaustion. (It remains a point of personal pride that I remain on The Enemies List over there.) When I wrote my long Barstool piece for New York a few years ago, seconds after it was posted, I sat down for a screening of the Paul Greengrass movie 22 July, about the 2011 Norway attacks. That movie is 146 minutes long, which meant I had a full two-and-a-half hours where I couldn’t have followed the backlash even if I had wanted to. You know what those two-and-a-half hours cost me? Nothing. I missed nothing. I was doing something else.

This is important: Find something else to do. When the lunatics came out this week, I had no idea it was happening, because I had work to do on the novel that afternoon, so I put on my headphones, revved up the Freedom app and wrote 3,000 words about something entirely different. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that once you’ve written something, and it’s out in the world, it belongs to them, not you, not any longer. The readers’ response to it is out of your hands. Thus, I move on. There’s always something else to write. I had 4,000 words due on the novel this week, and I had a book review due for The Wall Street Journal, and I had two baseball pieces I was researching, so I had plenty of things to do other than think about the response to the New York piece. This is good. This is healthy. You can’t do anything else; you already wrote the piece. Move on to the next one.

3. Be aware, generally, of who is mad at you.

We can of course get caught up in our own silos, which can lead to writing terrible things that we’re convinced are right just because we said them. Thus, it’s important to know who, exactly, you have pissed off. There is a difference between learning that Barstool is mad at you and learning that, say, the Shoah Foundation is mad at you. If you have pissed off the former, you have probably done something right. If you have pissed off the latter, you very much have not. Sometimes people are mad at you because they believe they can earn online clout by being mad at you. And sometimes people are mad at you because you’re an asshole. It is important to be able to tell the difference!

4. Remember that they will move onto something else tomorrow.

The kerfuffle in the wake of my New York piece, two days later, has already faded; no one is yelling at me this morning. This is not because I’ve done anything to placate them. It’s because they’ve already found something else to be angry about. The cycle of these things tends to run about 30 hours, tops, before a new outrage must be generated. When something like this happens, it can feel like it will never stop. But it will stop, and it will stop very soon. The realization they move on so quickly has another added benefit: It’s a reminder that all of this outrage is manufactured, that is ephemeral, that it’s always a mob of pitchforks searching for another monster to throw down the well. It’s a reminder that it’s all fake.

5. Go outside. Play catch with your kid. Nobody in your life actually cares.

The No. 1 most important lesson: None of this is real. Seriously, the next time you witness some sort of big online controversy, try to explain the narrative of it to someone in your life who is not so terminally online and has no idea what you’re talking about. You will sound like an insane person. The online world is not real life. To crib the old phrase, no one ever lies on their deathbed thinking, “I should have spent more time arguing with strangers on the Internet.” This is not what your life actually is. Just go for a walk. Hang out with your kids, or your parents, or some friends who actually know and care about you. That’s what life really is. Appreciate it.

I do not consider myself a particularly confrontational writer. I do not write to get a charge out of people. I do not do hot takes. But I will write something again in my life, surely many times, that upsets a certain group of people and ends up placing me in their crosshairs. And you know what? I’m lucky to have the opportunity. If I’ve learned anything from doing this for so long, it’s that the only goal is to get to get up and write every day, all day, about the things I care about, and then have the opportunity to get up to do it again tomorrow. That requires dedication, and care, and passion for what I’m writing. But it also requires knowing when to put a piece, and its reaction, aside. It requires knowing when to let it go, when to move on to something else. There’s always another mountain to climb tomorrow. You just have to be true to what you believe, in what you have to say and how you say it, and not sweat anything else too much. After all, the only main character that really matters is yourself. You’re the one who has to live with that person all the time, not them. Be true to that person, and honest, and aware, and you’ll be fine. Let the rest of the world deal with itself on its own time—not yours.

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.

1. The Murder on My Running Trail, New York. And here is the piece. Every once in a while, you say exactly what you want to say, in exactly the way you wanted to say it.

2. Sports Twitter Is Dead, New York. Related.

3. MLB Season Preview: Teams Who Should Win More Games in 2024, MLB.com. Good news for Royals and … A’s?

4. Questions in the Wake of the Cody Bellinger Deal, MLB.com. Are the Cubs the favorite in the NL Central? They might be.

5. The Best Promotions of 2024, MLB.com. I want a lot of these.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, we discuss “Drive-Away Dolls,” “Tenet” and “His Girl Friday.”

Seeing Red, no show this week, Bernie and I are back weekly next week throughout the season.

Waitin’ Since Last Saturday, Tony and I talked to the great Jason Kirk about his book “Hell Is A World Without You.”

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“‘Oppenheimer’ Is For Gossips and Haters,” Hunter Harris, Hung Up. I’ve read so many great things about this movie, but nothing quite like this. Hunter Harris is so, so much fun.

Also, I’ve been thinking about this considered, almost fascinated look at Aaron Bushnell, the man who set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy last week, from Damon Linker.

Oh, and I get a lot of people often asking me other great newsletters to read, and there aren’t many better than The Sunday Long Read, which curates the best longform journalism into a free newsletter that comes out every Sunday. Many, many of the pieces featured in this section come straight from there: I spend a large portion of my Sundays reading all the stories they have in there. I cannot recommend it enough.

Subscribe!

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

This is your reminder that if you write me a letter and put it in the mail, I will respond to it with a letter of my own, and send that letter right to you! It really happens! Hundreds of satisfied customers!

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“Things Have Changed,” Bob Dylan. I enjoyed The Reveal’s ranking of videos for Oscar-nominated Best Songs, which reminded me of not just how much I love this video of Bob Dylan hanging out with Robert Downey Jr. and Katie Holmes, but how much I love Wonder Boys in general.

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section.

Also, now there is an Official The Time Has Come Spotify Playlist.

It’s March. It’s Illini basketball season. And yet a terrifying old foe re-emerges.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Best,
Will