Yesterday’s Tangle explains its purpose. Thought it was worth sharing.
Summary
The whole point.
On a typical day, about 10 to 30 Tangle subscribers drop off our mailing list.
This is all part of running a newsletter. The goal is to add more subscribers than you lose, and I’ve been fortunate to see Tangle do that consistently over the last three years. But yesterday, there was some unusual action: A couple hundred readers unsubscribed from the newsletter.
When someone leaves Tangle they get a brief, automated email that says, “Did you mean to unsubscribe?” This happens because people often accidentally click the unsubscribe button at the bottom of the email. I also do this because it gently invites people to share some feedback about our product, and helps us to improve it. If you reply to that email, it goes straight to my inbox.
So I was shocked to see the responses that came in yesterday.
Among them, readers — generally on the right — were objecting to my position on the drag show controversy that we covered yesterday. The responses included things like this:
“I unsubscribed because I disagree with your take on the drag queen issue,” one reader wrote. “People don’t always realize when they need help, and if pundits become too politically correct to speak the truth to obvious issues of mental illness… then our society devolves to the lowest forms.”
“Today’s article related to drag shows specifically geared toward children was the last straw for me,” another reader said. “I cannot understand how this can be justified in any way.”
“You’re not unbiased. And your views on the drag show just show that,” another reader wrote.
One reader wrote in, in all caps, and in all Spanish, to let me know I was an “imbecile” who “lived in an ivory tower” before describing a lewd sexual act they were going to do to me — which is one way to teach me a lesson about my purported support for the sexual corrupting of children. It was one of the few times I regretted having some Spanish skills.
Cancellations are normal. Negative feedback is also normal. I see both every day. But I was surprised by these emails and the number of people canceling, for two specific reasons.
For one, I didn’t think my position was all that radical. There are times when I take a hard stance in “my take” of Tangle and I know I am about to piss a lot of people off. I usually clear my afternoon and brace myself for the anticipated blowback. I’ve written a few times before about Tangle issues that have caused waves of people to unsubscribe, like when I defended Joe Rogan (and a bunch of people on the left bailed) and more recently when I wrote about Florida and Disney (and a bunch of people on the right unsubscribed).
In both of those instances, I expected it. I felt strongly about my view; I knew the topics were sensitive; and I knew about half of my readership was really going to hate my position. I’ve promised readers I will be honest about what I think in “my take,” so when this happens all I can do is hold my breath and press send.
In this case, though, I wasn’t expecting the blowback at all. If I were to give “my take” from yesterday’s issue the Tangle treatment and try to summarize it, it would essentially be this:
Drag queens and drag shows are related, but different things. Some of the videos of drag show performances do look inappropriate for children, and those more provocative performances have no place in schools. There are well-meaning parents objecting to them. That doesn’t mean all drag queen interactions with kids are inappropriate, and it definitely doesn’t mean all drag queens are sexual perverts, as some folks seem to think. If a cheerleader performing a similar act wouldn’t bother you, then a drag queen shouldn’t either.
That’s it.
There were some well-reasoned criticisms that came in about the issue. For instance, a reader named Michael who lives in Israel (and did not unsubscribe) wrote in and said this:
You omitted, and in fact implicitly dismissed, an objection to drag shows that I believe is widely held: Many parents have “traditional” views of sexuality and want to raise their children accordingly. Leaving aside how overtly “sexual” the content of a given drag show is and whether children should be shielded from it, it’s certainly meant to normalize homosexuality.
This isn’t a “bias” that the parents need to “reflect on”, it’s a conscious belief – correct or incorrect, but one with a great deal of sociological, historical, religious and philosophical heft behind it. One can make a case that the state has an interest in promoting tolerance among the citizenry, but that can be accomplished by educating to accept everyone’s rights as citizens and human beings to not be molested; it doesn’t have to mean telling kids that what their parents and pastors and Bible say we now know to be wrong. In fact, it seems obvious that any damage caused to social harmony by the absence of Heather has Two Mommies from the reading list is speculative, whereas the damage caused by its inclusion is right before our eyes.
Your stated goal is to present the best arguments on both sides of an issue. I’m not so vain as to think the above argument is the best , but it’s at least as good as some that you included and its absence is unfortunate.
That criticism is fair and respectfully delivered, even if I think there are some huge flaws in it. But I agree this view is widely held, and I also agree it wasn’t properly represented (I think David Marcus’s piece we shared came close, but it wasn’t explicit). This person wrote in to make a point I do not agree with, and now their feedback is in the newsletter. That’s how Tangle works.
Which brings me to the second, more important thing that shocked me about the responses: It just felt like people still don’t get it .
“The whole point of Tangle is to read views you don’t agree with,” I kept thinking to myself as I read the feedback. “Why would you unsubscribe because I said something you didn’t agree with?”
Then I realized I haven’t ever written something that explicitly made this point — a piece I could point to that describes what Tangle is all about — so I figured it was time I should.
The entire point of Tangle is to get you out of your bubble.
The problem that we are solving is that most politically engaged people live in self-defined, tech-curated news bubbles where they mostly see well-articulated beliefs and ideas that reinforce the perspectives they already have. Even when they break these bubbles, they land in highly polarized news spaces. Politicians and pundits on both sides work hard to elevate the worst arguments and say they’re representative of the other side’s perspective. Since most of us don’t really know what people on the “other team” actually think, it makes this obfuscation even more effective.
A good litmus test for this is a question I often ask our readers: When was the last time you changed your mind on a major political issue?
If you struggle to think about something recent, there are two likely possibilities: One, you are right about everything. Two, you are not being exposed to good arguments that challenge your currently held beliefs (or you are, but you’re unwilling to be open-minded about them). I’ll let you decide which you think is more likely.
All of this is to say: I’m not trying to convince you of what I think. Each day, we try to find three opinions on the right and left, each spanning from the center to the most partisan, so you are getting a wide range of views from across the political spectrum on whatever debate we’re covering. That means “My take” is one of seven opinions included in every newsletter. It exists because when I started Tangle, my advisory group of friends, family and random test readers said it would be a lot more interesting if I also shared what I thought. And when I started sharing, people seemed to like hearing from someone who was trying to address the arguments presented in the newsletter in an authentic way. It made Tangle unique.
That’s why, when you get to what I believe, or what I have to say, it’s very clearly marked as my take . If you don’t like it, please don’t leave. I’d rather have you write me an angry email. I’ll probably reply, and I may even share it. If you do like what I said, great! Let me know that, too. Those emails are also nice. And if reading Tangle changed your mind on something, then I definitely want to hear from you.
But please remember why we are here.
I am not trying to moderate your views. I am not trying to hold hands, bring everyone to the center, and pretend we all agree (as I’ve said before, I think centrism is an ideology of its own — and a rather poor one). I’m trying to do something even more basic and fundamental: I’m trying to tell you that you don’t actually know the best arguments out there yet, so you couldn’t possibly have a holistic, well-informed opinion yet either.
Tangle is about exposure, not coercion. It’s about expanding the debate, not agreeing on the conclusion. You can land where you land. I’m just trying to make sure you actually get a chance to fly on the plane.
I’m also not claiming I’m “unbiased.” Of course I personally have biases. We all do. Anyone who has experienced consciousness has biases. The whole premise of the newsletter is that we are all too entrenched in these biases, and I’d have to be foolishly arrogant to somehow believe I’m exempt from that rule. What I try to do in Tangle each day is explore and challenge my biases by consuming a whole lot of content I don’t agree with (and some I do).
That’s why I regularly change my mind, admit when I’m wrong, and try to clearly articulate to readers why I believe something that I believe. It’s why my own editors often find themselves helping me better articulate a position they disagree with, and why my political views end up all over the place. It’s why I often get accused of being a “closet Republican” or another “woke liberal.” Sometimes I agree with the right, sometimes I agree with the left, and sometimes — like yesterday — I just genuinely think news coverage across the spectrum has lost the plot.
And sometimes, it’s not my biases that are the problem. It’s yours. Yesterday, for example, while a bunch of readers on the right were unsubscribing, a lot of readers on the left were writing in upset with me, too. Some said I had “rose colored glasses on” about Republican bigotry. Others questioned why I’d give credence to the idea we should keep drag shows out of schools when it’s clearly about LGBTQ hate. Some were angry I covered the topic at all, insisting I’m just “allowing Republicans to drive the narrative.”
What do I take away from that feedback? That all those people who are upset should be reading Tangle. That it’s good they are here, and good this product exists. That even if it makes them mad every now and again, there will be days when they agree with me or learn something new or see an argument they hadn’t yet heard.
And that, more than anything, is why I hope they keep reading.
