280 Character Witness

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast. I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.
This week, 280 character witness, Troy files suit against his friend Sarah.

Troy discovered that Sarah's not following him back on Twitter. He's especially offended that she's following John Mayer, but not him.
Troy believes he deserves a follow, but she disagrees.

Who's right, who's wrong? Only one man can decide. Please rise as Judge John Hodgman enters the courtroom and presents an obscure cultural reference.

If Elvis and Buddy Holly are the cane and Abel of rock and roll, Bruce Springsteen is Zachariah, Iggy Pop is Methuselah, and of course, Neil Young is the wise prophet Ezekiel, then what does that make Judge John Hodgman?

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, swear them in. Troy and Sarah, please rise and raise your right hands.
Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? So help you, God or whatever?

Yes, I do.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that a significant portion of his show business career is based on the fact that he was on that weird Twitter recommended follows list that you got when you first signed up for Twitter like 10 or 12 years ago?

And so he's always had like a million and a half followers?

Yes. I do, and it's more relevant now than ever.
Judge Hodgman, you may proceed.

Well, thank you for reducing my Twitter accomplishments to the fact that the the scales were definitely tilted in my favor. I only wish it were a million and a half.
It's 1.9.

I mean, 1.09.

And it's hovering there ever since they took me off that list. Can't get any more followers, Jesse.
Everyone, follow me on Twitter. I'm a good follow.
All right, Troy and Sarah, you may be seated.

For an immediate summary judgment in one of your favors, can either of you name the piece of culture that I paraphrased? I quoted all but one section of when I entered the courtroom.

Troy, what's your guess? Do you have one? I don't know. I just, I'm at a loss.
You have to make a guess. It is

that play that Steve Bannon put together with the rap and the...

Is that it? That was a screenplay, sir. That was a screenplay.

Was that it? I actually appeared with a woman in an Apple ad who appeared in... the movie with Val Kilmer that Steve Bannon produced.
Uh-oh.

In which a bunch of people get trapped in a steam room and it's a parable for global warming. So it's a pretty good guess.
And I'm going to enter that into the guess book because I could be right

insofar as the answer is also a very oblique reference to a very small piece of entertainment that I was, I was a very small part of this piece of entertainment. There's no small entertainment.

They're just small John Hodgman rolls. All right.

Sarah, what's your guess? Well, I was originally just going to go with the original Bible, but now I think I'm going to go with the Book of Mormon and just keep the religious theme going.

The original Bible has a lot of references to Iggy Pop in it.

Yep, just I don't, I've never read it. I don't actually know.
All right, so you're putting in the Book of Mormon. Yes, the Book of Mormon, not the play, the actual book.

I have to say, both, and indeed all guesses, are wrong. It was Eddie Vedder in a part of this movie that I do not recall, but he was in the movie,

the John C. Riley, Judd Apato, Jake Kazdan comedy, Walk Hard, the Dewey Cox story.
Oh my God.

I have not seen that. I did see that like three times in theaters.

Three times in the theaters. That was you? Yeah, that was me.
Those of us who are involved in that movie have been wondering who you were for a long time.

No, I kept you guys afloat for like at least a 24-hour period. For indeed, I was a very, very tiny part of that movie.
All of my scenes were kept for the DVD extras or discarded, as far as I know.

But one of the DVD extras I shot, I was supposed to be a like a Dick Cavett type journalist who was interviewing in-character characters from the movie long after they were depicted in the movie.

And I was interviewing Dewey Cox's wife, played by Jenna Fisher, in old age makeup. She was, not me.
I just naturally look withered.

And John Mayer wanted to be a part of this skit that we were doing because he likes comedy.

And John Mayer had done some bits for this movie and said, I want to do something with Jenna Fisher and the other guy. And they're like, okay.

But it was during the writer's strike. So all Jenna Fisher and I could do was say the words that had been written for us before the writer's strike.
But John Mayer came in and wanted to improv.

And for various weird legal WGA reasons, Jenna Fisher and I were not allowed to improv. So all we could do was sit there and make faces while John Mayer did improv at us.

It was one of those bizarre experiences. He was pretty funny.
I don't remember any of his jokes, but he was funny. We had a good time.
He was a nice guy. It almost sounds like a fever dream.

Yeah, but it's a real thing that happened, and I wanted to get a quote from it, but I think they threw, I think, I don't even think they ran the cameras.

They just made old film noises. No, they were just like, John Mayer's here, and he wants to do some comedy with you guys.

And we know that you're legally prohibited from doing comedy with John Mayer, but he's going to throw some comedy at you. And we're going to turn the light light on the camera so he thinks it's real.

That's the comedy feeling that I had that day. And you guys are like, do we have to? And they're like, well, he has a $700,000 watch on.

I know. Here to talk more about John Mayer.
I'm so happy that she could be here in the court today. Jesse, could you introduce our expert witness? She is a staff writer at The New Yorker.

She's also very well known on Twitter for having successfully campaigned to get John Mayer to follow her back.

Welcome to the show, Nomi Fry. Hi, Nomi.
How are you? I'm good. Hi, John.
Judge, John. It's great to be here.
That's fine.

You can call me whatever you want. I'm not like some John Mayer famous person coming in.

So, Nomi, you're a staff writer of the New Yorker. You're really funny.
You're great on Twitter.

We're Twitter friends. I follow you on Twitter as of this afternoon.
I realized I didn't and I'm sorry.

Well, we just, yeah, we just started following each other. Yeah, we did it.
We were inspired by Troy and Sarah, who were having some dumb fight that we're going to talk about in a second. That's true.

We could just

put differences behind us and just, you know, go for it. So, tell me about your internet friend, John Mayer.
You were incensed that he was not following you and you got him to follow you.

Is that correct? Well, yeah, I mean, I wasn't incensed. I mean, John Mayer does not know me.
He's never met me.

I mean, now he knows who I am, but before that, it's not like he owed me anything.

He was a famous person, and I was a writer, and I just had a sense, had like a sense that we could

enjoy it if we followed each other on Twitter you know I just had that feeling

and so I just started uh

shamelessly campaigning for him to follow me basically I mean and this was over time it wasn't like an everyday thing every once in a while how long were you was this a thing

um

like probably like a couple years um and it it wasn't a sustained campaign like it could be like months

that I wouldn't do anything, tweet anything in relation to it. But then every once in a while I would be like, oh, you know, Mayor, you know, you want to follow back.

Like with no pretext. Like there's, there really was no reason.
But I just felt like it would be a good fit because he's funny, I'm funny, you know.

What more do you need, really? Sometimes you just feel a kinship and you feel like... Exactly.
Yeah. Like I wrote a letter to Henry Thomas, the star of E.T., after I saw that movie.

I just knew that we would be pals. And what happened? He has never wrote me back.
Wow. Never wrote me back.
I bet he's sorry now. I enjoyed him in the haunting of Hill House, though.

I thought he did a good job. My best friend, Henry Thomas.

So why did he finally follow you and how did it feel? Well, I feel like I campaigned enough and I feel like we had some mutual friends. on Twitter.

Like there were some people he followed that follow me and I'm friendly with.

And so I think it must have been clear to him that I wasn't totally a lunatic. Like, I think at some point he was like, okay, she's like a writer.
You know, she knows some people that I sort of know.

I think he understood that it was like I was having fun with a bit, but I also like really meant it. Right.
So I think he just decided to go for it and humor me. And

yeah, it was like kissing God. I mean, honestly,

it was an incredible feeling. How did you know that he had followed you? Did he reach out to you or did it just ping? He tweeted at me like, I'm following you.
And then he did it a couple times.

Like on the same day, he was like, I tweeted something and he tweeted back something like, now I'll see. And it was some sort of like completely obscure, like stupid tweet.

And it was like, now I'll be able to see these tweets in real time. So he was really, I mean, he got in on the bit and I like really appreciated that about him.

And now you guys are really good friends, right? Yeah, we're very close friends.

No, but then this isn't the whole story. I know this, this might be sort of out of the bounds of the case that we're that John, you're going to be hearing today, but um I'll allow it.

I think it actually might have some bearing on the case. Uh he

actually probably about I want to say like a year and almost a year and a half ago or a year and a few months, he kind of stopped tweeting. Yeah.

I mean he does he tweets more kind of generic like probably he has I'm guessing he has someone like tweet stuff that he needs to promote or wants to promote, like he's going on a tour, you know, or like he has a new video.

But he stopped tweeting himself. Like he stopped doing the like funny tweets or whatever idiosyncratic tweets that he did before.

And now it's all on Instagram. Oh, he's migrated.

So the bulk of his content and the bulk of his like his funny stuff. His personality stuff.

His personality stuff exactly is on Instagram. So I don't know if Troy knows this or Sarah.
I think it's an important component of this whole story. Sarah had mentioned that, actually.

Oh, wait, you guys are still here?

It does have bearing because, you know, John Mayer recalls a time when Twitter was smaller and personal, and he was known for being one of these celebrities who actually were out there tweeting with their own thumbs and interacting with people in a real way.

And now his Twitter feed has gone pretty corporate, and he's migrated all of his personality quirks over to Insta.

But meanwhile, we do have a case to hear, and it is only kind of tangentially related to John Mayer. He's really taking up a lot of oxygen in this room.

Basically, it's like when John Mayer came in and did comedy, and I couldn't even say anything. He's taken over my podcast.
But Sarah and Troy, you guys are friends.

You live in Seattle, and you have a dispute. Troy, you're upset that Sarah doesn't follow you on Twitter.
Is that correct? Yeah, I am. So tell me about that.
Well, so,

you know, Sarah and I are friends. We talk nearly every time.
We do.

Well, that's my question. Yeah.
I'll decide. I'll be the judge of that.

Thank you. But yeah, so anyway, I'm realizing, you know, I share information with Sarah.

There are times where I will see she tweet something that has a, you know, might even be just a riff off of something that I had said maybe five minutes earlier.

And I then realized that she's not following me on Twitter. And I'm, it was shocking.

Shocking. Mainly being shot.
I'm shocked. Sorry.
Well, yeah. I mean, Sarah, how many people follow you on Twitter? Oh, God, 14,600 and something.
Okay. And I'm one of those people.

And when I noticed that Sarah didn't follow me, I was shocked because I was like, wait, that can't be right. And I looked through the list of people that she follows and I saw John Mayer.

And I'm like, wait a minute, that's not John Mayer. Taylor Swift is also on that list, just so you know.
I have no beef with Taylor. You're mad because...
Your friend doesn't follow you.

And why wouldn't she? You're a guy in the world who's got opinions and that must be heard. And to add insult to injury, she does follow John Mayer.
And this upsets you. Why?

Well, I just think that we have a tighter connection, a deeper friendship, and an actual relationship where you don't know John Mayer. I mean,

I want to respect that Sarah probably has had some deep emotional moments with that one song that I know that he sings. And I don't really have anything against John Mayer personally.

I don't, I'm not familiar with him. and I think that I am familiar with you enough that I would follow you on, you know, Facebook and Twitter.
And, and

I feel like, yeah, why John Mayer and not me?

I get the feeling you're hedging your bets here. You're not saying what you feel about John Mayer because you're guessing he probably listens because he and I are, you know, castmates.

Judge Hodgman, just to clarify, he listens because he and I share an interest in Japanese Americana fashion aesthetics.

Of Of course. We're both really into VizVim, so.
Yeah.

I read a Wikipedia page on John Mayer today. In fact, I think it's the Wikipedia page on him.

So, Nomi, do you know the estimate, John Mayer's own estimate of the value of his collection of fine timepieces?

I do not. I know it must be very high because I know he's a watch collector, but I do not know the estimate.
He's a watch collector and a watch columnist for fine watchery

website. Oh, wow.
I didn't know that. I thought he writes for Hotinky.
Yeah, I couldn't remember the name of the website, so I just called it Fine Watchery.

He says he's got like 10 mil worth of watches. Wow.
That's a lot of complications. That's like a step away from the watches having a marginal tax.
Wow.

Whoa, we are not getting political right now, Sarah. Oh, sorry.
But you are political, aren't you? Because it says here that you ran for Congress.

Yeah, I was a congressional candidate in Washington, the 9th District, in the the 2018 cycle. But I take, sadly, you did not win?

Sadly, we did not, but we did garner about 80,000 votes in the district. Congratulations.
Strongest challenge that's ever been brought to the 22-year incumbent in this district. Wow.

What was your platform? I am a very, I'm pretty far on the left. I'm a very progressive person.

I actually helped, so Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' New Green Deal, I was part of the group that helped first start the conversation about the Green New Deal and work on that part of our platform, our shared platform, through Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress.

Fantastic. Why on earth would I ever not find in your favor, Sarah? Troy, what are you doing with your one life here on this earth?

And quick follow-up, you can answer them together. How many generation-defining soft pop hits have you penned and performed?

Zero.

All right. Sarah, Troy seems like a nice enough guy.
He's a friend, you would say, correct? I would say that. I'd say he's a dear, dear friend of mine.
So why don't you follow him back on Twitter?

Because the first time Troy asked me to follow him on Twitter, he just came at me with outrage and said he demands I follow him on Twitter.

And I, as a powerful, strong woman in society, do not need a man to tell me what to do.

So I adamantly refuse at this point stubbornly because I will follow when I am ready, not when another dude says I'm ready.

I support that. Oh, okay, good.
Well, bye-bye, everyone. Thank you.

I don't know that that's how that played out. That's a new tank that I'm taking on this.

Before it was just because you didn't have a blue check mark and I was just being petty.

The truth comes out. He's never going to let this go.
Why don't you just follow him and mute him?

That's cruel. That's a good point.
Because his retweets, retweets are

valuable to me spiritually, but maybe not materially. You like seeing.
Wait a minute. You're not following him, so you can't see what he's writing or retweeting.
Oh, that's true.

What's going on, Sarah? I don't know what you're tweeting. That's really weird.
What are you tweeting, Droy? Awful things. No, I'm, you know, I'll retweet you often.
I'll retweet, you know.

I also work in video games, you know, in addition to supporting people I think are brilliant and trying to make a difference in the world.

But it's not bad content, I don't think. Are you sure? Because John Mayer and I bonded over a yogurt tweet.
He doesn't know it, but we bonded over his tweet saying yogurt is useless.

And he doesn't know that that was a big moment in my life, but it was a big moment. The yogurt is useless?

Yes. That was a tweet that you made? Or no, that he made? That was a tweet that John Mayer made that connected me to him spiritually.
Yogurt is not useless. It's very good for your intestinal tract.

Your gutty works, yeah. Nobody likes yogurt.
Nobody else. Does John Mayer follow you? You tell yourself it's good for your gut.
You don't need to.

I'll have order in my courtroom, please. I'll have order in my my courtroom when we're talking about gut flora.
I've already said what's true. Does John Mayer follow you, Sarah?

He does not follow me, but I have a blue check, and I'm very sad about that. I just got a blue check, like, only like a week ago.
It was very odd.

I just, I didn't have one, and I also never tried to get one. And then I just woke up one morning and I had one.

I think they did a sort of like haul of like people they decided need a blue check or something. But it was weird.
I felt like I lost my street cred.

I know. Now you're part of blue check Twitter, which is so disliked by conservative Twitter.
Yeah, I mean, I didn't even, I never even really thought about it, I guess.

But I guess, does it have any benefits? Like, what does it, what does it matter really? I guess, like, other people with blue checks can see your stuff. It's socially important.
That's about it.

You know that none of it is important, right?

You know what's important? Running for office. That's what's important.

Yep. Agreed.
That's why you get a blue check. Let's take a quick recess.
We'll be back in just a moment on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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Court is back in session. Let's return to the courtroom to hear more of the case.
Nomi, what do you think about Troy's beef? And what do you think is really going on here, Nomi?

I'm actually, I sort of fall very strongly on one side here. I think that Sarah should 100% follow Troy back.

Oh, why? No.

Well, I think if someone's a real-life friend

and

you love him and you care about him, you know, or it seems like you have a connection, right? And

you know what I'm doing? I'm putting myself in Troy's shoes right now. Empathy.
Exactly. I remember someone who's a bad person.
One of the hallmarks of Twitter.

Exactly. No, but how about we bring a little bit more compassion back to Twitter? And where we can start

is by caring for our fellow, you know, friends. So if someone

like Troy is your friend, Sarah, then I think, you know, I remember situations where I had people that I knew in real life

knew pretty well, you know, didn't follow me back.

And I was like, what gives? Like, I was like, and I tried to do this bravado thing, like, oh, you know, my content's like too good for them. They don't understand or they're missing out.

But you know what? It all came from a place of hurt. And I think that if someone's really your friend, you don't want them to feel hurt.
I think you want them to feel good.

And so I really fall on the side of like, if someone's your friend, I think, and he really wants you to follow him, I think the right thing would be to follow him and still follow John Mayer or better yet, you know, go over to instagram to get all of that sweet mayer content yeah he's you know i didn't i'm gonna follow him now on instagram so sarah you know nomi raises some very good points i'm curious about something when when troy brought this up to you was it initially an oversight like were you surprised you didn't realize you weren't following him or had you at some point made a choice like i'm not gonna follow him

Honestly, I didn't realize I wasn't following Troy until he brought it up. And And then my Twitter has been all business because it's been congressional.
So I just didn't think about it. That's true.

And so I just went and followed reporters because it felt like the thing that I should be doing. And then I didn't know.
And I, for some reason, would see your Twitter sometimes. I don't know why.

And then. Well, because friends of ours would retweet a thing.

And then I guess I thought I was following you.

And now it is just a point of contention in our beautiful friendship. So now it's just a power.

You're in a power struggle, right? Because Troy mentioned it and you don't want to get pushed into doing something just because this dude says, you got to listen to me.

That's the worst kind of Twitter. I just want it to be my choice.

But he's coming from a place of hurt.

He wants your approval.

There may be a slight mischaracterization about how I brought it up. I was certainly not aggressive.
It was via text. I said, oh, this is great news, referring to something that we were working on.

And I said,

this is almost enough to make me forgive you for not following me, but for following John Mayer. And your response to that was a shrug emoji.
And you said,

my follow list is eclectic. It was a shrug emoji, and I did say that.

Wow. Yeah, I mean, Sarah, do you just enjoy the fact that this bothers Troy? You like making him feel bad? I gained no pleasure in it.
I didn't realize.

But to be fair, there is a land called Passiva Gresiva and Troy Hugh is its king.

You're giving him a taste of his own medicine. Sarah, you guys both submitted ideal rulings.

And for Troy, obviously, it's for you to follow him back and also to apologize on Twitter for not following him. That's what he wants out of this, if I were to rule in his favor.
And Sarah,

this is your ideal ruling. If Troy has either one viral tweet or five tweets that you fave.
Oh, my God.

Then you will follow him back. That's your ideal ruling.
You're not compelled to, but he has to have one viral viral tweet or five that you heart or favorite.

And that to me, Sarah, suggests that you're not a big fan of his feed.

Is he bad on Twitter? I don't know because I don't follow him on Twitter.

Just not high profile enough. He's not being retweeted enough so that you can see his stuff and decide to follow him.
Pretty much. I can't make a decision either way.

But to be fair, viral to me is like a thousand people like it. Sarah, can I ask a question? How many many people do you follow? Oh, I only follow about a little over a thousand.

Okay.

Would you say that Troy is in your top thousand friends?

Oh, Troy's in like my top five friends and my top five favorite people. You have to follow him back.

Sorry, I'm getting emotional, but I just, I mean,

I'm not the judge. The judge will decide.
Troy, you're not out here asking for a pity follow,

right?

You want to stand behind your content. Tell me why you're a good follow.
And Jennifer Marmor, producer Jennifer Marmor, I need you to text me Troy's Twitter handle so that I can check it out.

Me too, because I don't remember what it is.

Wow.

Leave all that in. Turn to your friend, Sarah.

Can you see her? Yes, I can. All right.
And I want you to say, Sarah,

if you follow me on Twitter, I don't think you'll be disappointed because, and finish that sentence.

All right.

Sarah, if you follow me on twitter i don't think you'll be disappointed because i largely support the same things that you do and also you like video games i work in the industry and i think that i'm also funny sometimes

what do you think nomi was that convincing to you I think that's good, but I think also, as I've, you know, sort of started arguing before a little bit, there is the like intra Twitter argument, like my feet is good, whether I'm Hitler himself or

I'm Troy. And then there's the question of Sarah and Troy being friends outside of Twitter.
So I think my take is: even if Troy's Twitter isn't the best Twitter in the world,

the fact that you're friends outside of Twitter means that I think you can cut him some slack, Sarah, and just follow because you love him. Yeah, I'm going to say, I just dialed this up.

And Sarah, the most recent tweet is a retweet of you.

Well, that's this March 28th. Come join me in the campaign squad for a showing of the documentary about progressive politics in America.
He's your friend.

Oh, yeah, we were in a documentary for my campaign. Yeah.

That's you.

That's you. And also, here's another one.

Fate whispers to the warrior, you cannot withstand the storm. The warrior whispers back, I am the storm.
That's your tweet, a quote of unknown. Your Twitter is just my Twitter.

It's like following my own Twitter. Right.
So, yeah. Love yourself.

Let me see. Let me see some of your actual content here.

Okay, here we go. February 26th, until jumping on board the whatever this is, at Meta Arcade train that I just got tricked into buzz marketing.

Until jumping on board this train, I did not pay much attention to the Cthulhu mythos. Oh, no, you can't follow this guy.

Nomi, do you have access to Troy's Twitter?

I don't. I also turned off my phone so it wouldn't disrupt this.

Oh, that's very quick. That's very thoughtful.
But I can turn it on. Yeah, turn it on because I'm going to DM you his Twitter account.
Okay, I'm turning it on. It's going to take like, you know.

Yeah, take a minute while these guys make their final arguments.

And then before we go to the verdict, I just want you to take a look at this and see if there's any red flags here that make you change your mind. Okay.
And then I'll form my verdict.

All right, Sarah, Troy, you're both lovely people.

Sarah,

you know, you've heard Troy. He's not making a very good argument for his content.

He's only making an argument for his friendship.

Do you feel differently about this than before you came in here?

Troy is definitely appealing to the emotional in this one. And I do understand the points being raised by Nomi.
He's my friend.

And, you know, my counter-argument is Troy gets something that those over a thousand people I do follow don't get. He gets my love and my real-life friendship.

And Troy gets the real-time Twitter and that we sit in the car and I say things to him. So, and then I I just tweet them.
So, Troy gets the thing that no one else gets.

He gets, instead of being followed on Twitter by me, he gets followed by me in real life. Troy, why isn't that enough? In fact, why isn't that even better?

You know, the deal is I just

was surprised and I remain surprised, but I definitely,

man, in one sentence, you totally made me doubt myself, but I

feel like we are that close that Twitter shouldn't matter. I also,

you know i just john mayer i'm sure is a wonderful guy but um

what about him you know i i just felt like comparatively speaking he may not measure um and i don't doubt that we're dear friends i feel it every day but when we're you know online in the online space i just felt like that you know should be an extension sarah do you want to save this friendship what's going on here yeah dig in domi absolutely i value this friendship probably more than like most other friendships in my life.

I feel like it's probably one of the top three most important friendships in

my life.

Does this friendship predate

your run for Congress?

No. No.
It doesn't. Okay.

So it's not a situation where you guys were friends and then, Sarah, you went through this experience of running for Congress and sort of your world got bigger and he's afraid of being left behind.

No, it's not. We met on the campaign trail.
He came in and he swooped in like a beautiful event coordinating spider monkey and

helped me figure out how to wrangle human cats. Wait, he helped you on the campaign? Oh, yeah, that's how we met.
Yeah, that's how we met. Monkeys are good with cats.
Everybody knows.

I know.

The opposable thumbs.

This is some pretty poor constituent servicing here if you're not following a guy who volunteers for your campaign. Thank you.
Yeah, as a former employee of the mayor's office of Willie L. Brown Jr.

in San Francisco, specifically the Office of Neighborhood Services, as a guy who once got the 49ers to cut stadium maps out of the season schedules, pocket schedules that they were sending to a convict because he wasn't allowed to have maps and he wanted to know when the 49ers were playing.

On behalf of Mayor Willie L. Brown Jr., I'm very disappointed, very disappointed with your constituent services.

So, Nomi, have you had a chance to take a look at Troy's Twitter? I'm looking. It has a lot of video game content, which I know nothing about.

So, to me, it's very, you know, it's just hard for me to tell.

Well,

if you don't know this, let me fill you in. Twitter plus video game content equals a really joyous experience.

It's set to light, yeah. It's only a cause for good in the world.

But I do see a a picture, like Troy put a picture of that large rodent.

I don't know how to pronounce it, Capybara.

Capybara. Capybara.
The world's largest rodent.

Yeah, so there's a picture of that animal,

and

there's a caption. Hello, welcome to the Good News Network.
Let us talk about good news. Which I thought was really cute.
So I think that's kind of good content.

Yeah, that sounds dope.

There's something about youth incarceration,

an event about it at the Seattle Public Library.

Troy is here out here supporting public libraries and especially the King County libraries.

So, you know, I'm very for that. I think there's no red flags, especially not if you're friends and know his interests in real life.
Yeah, and there's a nice shout out to Hari Kundabalu here, too,

where you compliment him for his movie, the documentary, The Problem with That Pooh, which is good. And a picture of

who I imagine is Troy working on the campaign for Sarah, scooping free ice cream with Ben from Ben and Jerry.

So, you know, it's overall

very, very positive. Yeah, it's a good news feed, right? It's like,

here comes the stuff that makes you feel pretty good. Right.
Right. Not a lot of incredible gags and jokes and memes, which frankly, there's enough of that.
It's not extremely jokey.

Oh,

Troy is saying that cats are one of the only good things we have left. So I'm a cat person, so I'm totally on board with that.
Yeah, I would say I'm giving it my full support.

Well, Troy, I see on January 30th, you tweeted, this is not the best day. Sorry for whatever happened on that day.
Maybe today will be better. Or maybe today will be worse.

I am going to go down a very, very, very deep Twitter hole and pour poison in my eyes as I do every 2 a.m. with Twitter.
And I will look into that light and gain some enlightenment.

I'll be back in a moment with my verdict.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Troy, how are you feeling about your chances in the case? You know, I don't know. I mean, I feel like I'm on the side of right here,

a lot of good points were raised.

So I'm a little nervous. Sarah, how are you feeling? You know, no matter what the verdict comes out as, I feel like I have been enlightened about things I didn't consider before.

And so I feel good no matter what this verdict is. Well, we'll see what Judge John Hodgman has to say about all this when we come back in just a second.

Hello. Hello, I'm calling on behalf of the Beef and Dairy Network podcast.
No, no, I'm sorry. No sales calls.
Goodbye.

It's a multi-award-winning podcast featuring guests such as Ted Danson, Nick Offerman, Josie Long.

I don't know what a Josie Long is, and anyway, I'm about to take my mother into town to see Phantom of the Opera at last. You are wasting my time, and even worse, my mother's time.

She only has so much time left. She's 98 years old.
She's only expected to live for another 20 or 30 years. Mother, get your shoes on.
Yes, the orthopaedic ones.

I don't want to have to carry you home again, do I? Right, well, if you were looking for a podcast. Mother, you're not wearing that, are you? It's very revealing, Mother.

This is musical theatre, not a Parisian bordello. Simply go to maximum fun.org.
I'm reaching for my Samsung Galaxy 4 as we speak. Mother! Mother, not that hat!

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman re-enters the courtroom and presents his verdict. So I've been on Twitter since 2008.

And at that time, you know, early days, when Stephen Fry was just about to hit 100,000 followers, and we thought that's about as high as a building on a go.

Like, there's no way anyone's going to get more than that. It was a small town.
And at that time, there was a lot of discussion about the etiquette of following back.

Specifically, if you didn't follow back every single person who followed you, those people would yell at you and say you were a stupid monster who was doing it wrong. Because history lesson,

Twitter was kind of awful even then.

It was better, but it could still be awful. But it was not true.
This idea, this rule that you had to follow back everyone who followed you, was invented in a kind of mass delusion.

It became a rule in people's heads, but Twitter had never even suggested this to be true.

It was like a lot of things that we would come to see on social media, a lie that generated its own truth through repetition.

And just a preview of the asymmetrical emotional terrorism that would characterize all of social media to come. And the fact is none of this stuff matters.
Troy, it shouldn't matter, right?

It shouldn't matter that she follows you on Twitter or not. It's not real.
None of it is. I mean, I'm still on Twitter and I still use it.

And, you know, if you're using Twitter and you're having fun, great.

If you are pouring poison light into your eyes every night at 2 a.m.

until your heart races and you hate yourself, and it's all of a sudden it's 6.30 in the morning and you have to get up, then you're John Hodgman and you're doing it wrong. You are doing it wrong.

Don't do it. I'm trying not to.
I love Twitter, but I have no taste for social media shaming in general. But this isn't shaming, it's personal.

Does Sarah have a right to curate her own online existence, even if it hurts Troy's feelings, or does she have an IRL social obligation to follow him, as Nomi suggests, just because you're friends and you see each other, you kind of just got to do it?

Something Nomi said really struck me. You know, I don't know how John Mayer really got roped into this, but it really was a benchmark that John Mayer was one of these celebrities who was really

doing it themselves. Like it was clear.
This authenticity came through.

And it was an exciting time when people you knew from

whether they were celebrities or writers or thinkers or professors or people that you didn't know in the world but knew by reputation were authentically interacting with the world and had a channel of communication that you could join.

And that was really fun.

And it's a little bit sad where we are now.

Post a lot of stuff in 2014 and 15 and 16, words and hashtags that I dare not even say because I'm afraid that I will get, you know, mobbed and attacked by alt-right people or Gamergate people or people who don't feel the same way about things that I do or people who like the fact that Donald Trump is president.

There's just so much, there's such a cloud of hostility out there right now that it's not the same kind of place that it was. There is a symbol in John Mayer basically going bot

and taking his authentic self and playing elsewhere, apparently over at Instagram. That's where you want him.
That's where you go get him.

And that's kind of grim and sad, and all the more reason why, Troy, you shouldn't care. You shouldn't care.
It's not real life. It's not real life.

But it's not in my nature to sit here and go, Twitter was better then, because nostalgia is also a toxic impulse.

And

there is no reason to try to go backward.

But one of the nice things about Twitter is that you can go forward. You can redefine the way you use it.

You can unfollow the people who are your hate following, who just make you mad. You can mute the voices that are just there to hurt you.
You can create a community that is fun to play with.

It just requires more discipline than it used to.

And I thought that that was something that Nomi, I think, really, that you really spoke to well and kind of changed my thinking on this, which is the truly, you know,

Troy's feed is fine.

He's putting out good news in the world. It's a pretty standard, fun, progressive, virtue signal-y, in a good way kind of feed.
He's a good guy.

And he's not one of those good guys who feels that, why don't the women around me pay attention to me? I'm a good guy. Now I'm mad at them.

I was worried that you were coming into this basically saying, I don't understand why Sarah doesn't follow me on Twitter. I'm a man on the internet and I have things to say.
She has to follow me.

Yeah, no, that's not me at all. No, I think that's it.
I think that,

you know, the fact is that you are friends IRL.

And I think you are hurt that you are not followed by your friend. And Sarah, I think it's rough that this is a guy who

volunteered for your campaign and you're not following him. It's kind of a little cruel.

A little cruel. It was an oversight, right? You didn't mean to not follow him, but now you're making a conscious decision to not follow him.

I get why, but I think you ought to give this guy a pity follow. Come on.
Just mute him if it bothers you.

I'm going to tell everyone within the sound of my voice, and this includes you too, John Mayer,

if you follow Troy at capital M-E-T-A underscore capital T-R-O-Y.

Meta underscore Troy. Troy, you've even got an underscore in your Twitter handle.
That's, ugh. All right.

If you follow him, it will make him feel like a whole human being.

And you will find a lot of tweets by Sarah Smith.

And you can follow her too. Sarah, do you have like

campaign debts that you're still trying to pay off? Is there something that people can do to help support what you support?

Whether that's a new run for Congress or for another office or just paying off some of the debts you incurred? We do have a little bit of campaign debt left over. I do, yeah.

So the campaign website, votesarasmith.com/slash donate is still open. So we could use some help on that.
Yeah, wait till this episode comes out, Troy, and then I want you to tweet.

I want you to tweet 100 times in a day.

I will. Then I'll follow you on principle, I think.
You have to follow him now. And then you have to tweet 100 times in one day

as heard on Judge John Hodgman. Please go and help Sarah Smith retire her campaign debt to support independent young people joining the political process.

And then, Sarah, you report him for spam. This is the sound of the gal.

Judge John Hodgman rules that is all. Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Troy, how are you feeling?

Well, you know, I'm feeling good, but I actually feel guilty because I, you know, Sarah's not a mean person. She's not a person who, you know, this isn't a popularity contest.

Twitter is always a popularity contest. But Twitter is a popularity contest.
So yeah. So follow your friend.

So yeah, I feel good. I feel good about it.
Sarah, how are you feeling? You know, I feel pretty good about that ruling. There is a balance of justice that was done.

And I went, I'm sitting here in the studio. I just immediately, Troy watched me click the follow button.
And now I think, I think our friendship can really begin to heal.

Before we wrap it all up, Nomi, do you have anything, any amendments that you would like me to add to my verdict or any qualifications or caveats about how these two should proceed in real life and online?

I think justice has been served. I think the healing can begin.

I think everybody should go and follow Mayer on Instagram where the real magic happens.

You're an incredible writer on all elements of culture, pop, and otherwise. And I hope everyone will go and read your work in The New Yorker and follow you on Twitter, which is your handle?

It's Fry, Nomi, Fry. I spell Nomi with an A, though.
So it's F-R-Y-N-A-O-M-I-F-R-Y at Twitter.

The way it is spelled, a lot of people, I'm only saying this to aid in people finding you, the way it is spelled, a lot of people would mispronounce your name, Naomi, but it is pronounced Nomi.

Nomi Fry. It's pronounced Nomi, the Israeli way.
Yeah. Anything else you'd like to plug?

My sound clout. No, I'm kidding.

No, I just,

no, I'm just thank you for asking me to come on. It was really great.
Thanks very much. I appreciate it.
I was glad to be of service.

Troy, Sarah, Nomi, thanks for joining us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Another Judge John Hodgman case. Wow, in the books.
Before we dispense Swift Justice, we want to thank Ian McKechney for naming this week's episode.

If you'd like to name a future episode like Judge John Hodgman on Facebook, we regularly put out a call for submissions there. You can follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

Hashtag your Judge John Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJ H O and check out the Maximum Fund subreddit at maximumfund.reddit.com to discuss this week's episode. We're also on Instagram at judgejohnhodgman.

Make sure to follow us there for evidence, all the fun stuff. Don't forget, this is the beginning of the Max Fund Drive.

You can go to maximumfund.org/slash donate to become a member of Maximum Fund or upgrade your membership. We are immensely grateful to everyone who does that.

You're really the folks who keep the lights on here.

This week's episode, recorded by Rob Jacob Springer at KUOW in Seattle and Ivan Kuriev at Argo Studios in New York City, our producer is the brilliant Jennifer Marmer.

Now, Swift Justice, where we answer your small disputes with a quick judgment, Jeff says, my boss bought his wife an, and this is in quotes, expresso grinder. He did not accept my polite correction.

Could you reinforce it?

Right. Well, first of all, Jeff, you're lucky you still have a job.

Because if your boss wants to say espresso, then let your boss say espresso.

Yeah, I think pretty soon Jeff is going to be headed to the library to look up job listings.

He's going to have a lot of time on his hands to go visit New England, a region of the United States, in the fall to check out all the filiage.

I mean, Jeff, it's hard to tell your boss your boss is wrong. And I will reinforce your efforts here because you showed some courage

for

a bit of somewhat noble noble pedantry. Because here's the thing:

you don't say espresso, everyone. You say espresso, espresso, espresso.
A lot of people say espresso, and a lot of people, a lot of dictionaries say, like, oh, well, we can't avoid this.

It's sort of accepted. Because English is a living language.
Sure, English is, but this isn't English. This is Italian.

Espresso

means fast. It means you are making the coffee fast and expressly for one person.
That's where the term comes from. But guess what? Italian, they don't have X, no X.

S.

Espresso.

So, Jeff's boss, you're wrong. Give Jeff a raise or a rakes

since you like substituting S's with X's. That was a little bit awkward, but I'm going to let it stand.
That's it for this week's episode, Judge Hodgman.

If you've got a case for Judge John Hodgman, go to maximumfund.org slash JJ Ho or just email us at hodgman at maximumfun.org.

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You can do that at maximumfund.org slash donate. In fact,

I would go ahead and say that you should do that. That's what I think.
That's my personal opinion. I echo your strong suggestion.
We'll see you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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