by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Jon Lovett on his podcast Lovett or Leave It really got into it when one of his producers (writers?). They rhetorically tussled over how some people on Tik-Tok thing our evil corporate overlords are fucking with us and the only way to get around their manipulation of the Tik-Tok algorithm is to use a code phrase like “buying winter boots.”

This is supposed to mean something like, “fight the power,” or “we need a revolution,” as I understand Lovett.
What got me was that Lovett was doing that thing where someone comes out swinging with a bold premise then they get cold feet and bob and weave rhetorically in an effort not to offend someone they’ve already made mad. He should have stuck to his guns and said what he wanted to say which is, “anyone who thinks the ‘buying winter boots’ thing is important is an idiot.”
He posited — at least at first — that people who think they have to work around an evil algorithm are completely oblivious to the actual media environment. Also, he thinks the “buying winter boots” thing is performative 2017-like Resistance Twitter bullshit.
But he kept tweaking what he really believed and backtracking that, in the end, he just looked weak in his willingness to backup what he really believed. Things sure did get unusually heated between Lovett and the other person though. You don’t see (or hear) that type of stuff very often.
I don’t know what my own hot take on such matters is. I do think that it’s useful to know that “buying winter books” is same same to “viva la revolution.” I can use that in my own Tik-Toks since I so often get flagged for just being declarative about the possibility that we may have political turbulence in the coming days.
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