User Overview
Angus Johnston 
Historian of, and advocate for, American student activism. CUNY prof.
New York City
Joined
Tweets
159K
Following
2.80K
Followers
69,386
Likes
112K
Listed
1.50K
Followers and Following
Followers
Following
Tweet Stats
Analysed 41,796 tweets, tweets from the last 232 weeks.
Tweets Day of Week (UTC)
Tweets Hour of Day (UTC)
Key:
Tweets
Retweets
Quotes
Replies
Tweets Day and Hour Heatmap (UTC)
| Top Applications | Count | % |
|---|---|---|
|
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20,680 | 49.5% |
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13,663 | 32.7% |
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6,215 | 14.9% |
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1,236 | 3.0% |
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2 | 0.0% |
| Top Tweet Types | Count | % |
|---|---|---|
| Reply | 26,855 | 64.3% |
| Retweet | 8,701 | 20.8% |
| Quote | 7,115 | 17.0% |
| Tweet | 2,141 | 5.1% |
| Top Content Types | Count | % |
|---|---|---|
| URL | 7,164 | 17.1% |
| Photo | 1,111 | 2.7% |
| GIF | 855 | 2.0% |
| Video | 46 | 0.1% |
| Top Domains in URLs | Count | % |
|---|---|---|
|
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75 | 9.9% |
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51 | 6.7% |
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46 | 6.1% |
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28 | 3.7% |
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24 | 3.2% |
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15 | 2.0% |
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14 | 1.8% |
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14 | 1.8% |
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13 | 1.7% |
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11 | 1.4% |
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@grammar_girl - Happy Christmas your arse
@studentactivism - Angus Johnston
@NeolithicSheep - Comrade Shepherd🌹
@banditelli - Brett Banditelli
@Taniel - Taniel
@BigMeanInternet - Malcolm Harris
@jacremes - Jacob Remes
@Lollardfish - David M. Perry
@ScottHech - Scott Hechinger
@nothingsmonstrd - nothings monstered
@lirael_abhorsen - Lirael Lowenstein
@RonHogan - Ron Hogan
@benwikler - Ben Wikler
@chick_in_kiev - Talia B Lavin
@biblioracle - John Warner
@chronicle - The Chronicle of Higher Education
@mattbc - MedicaidMatt Cortland, Esq. 🖊️🔋
@SeanMcElwee - sean. 🎅🏽
@zunguzungu - Aaron Bady
@chrislhayes - Chris Hayes
@gerrycanavan - Gerry Canavan
@mzbitca - killer monster snow goon
@michelet - Michele Tepper
@prisonculture - Hallmark Evangelist
@Popehat - Popehat Needs A Babymamma
@KTKeith - Kevin T. Keith
@cnewf - Christopher Newfield
@jennygadget - Jenny Kristine
@LuxAlptraum - Lux 🤖🤠 Alptraum
@colorlessblue - jackie
@reclaimuc - reclaim UC
@JuliusGoat - Julius Goat 🦆
@ChloeAngyal - Chloe Angyal
@diannaeanderson - Dianna E. Anderson
@socialistdogmom - molly 🌹
@pebonilla - Peter Bonilla
@andizeisler - Andi Zeisler
@ScottJaschik - Scott Jaschik
@Nicole_Cliffe - Nicole Cliffe
@OsitaNwanevu - Osita Nwanevu
@hels - Helen Rosner
@courtneymilan - Courtney!!! Milan 🦖
@Scarleteen - Scarleteen
@jbouie - Jamelle Bouie
@NeverAgainActn - ✡️ Never Again Action ✡️
@insidehighered - Inside Higher Ed
@PatBlanchfield - Patrick Blanchfield
@mikesphar - Michael William Terwilliger Ticonderoga Feld Sphar
@zeynep - zeynep tufekci
@justaphil - Phil Ochs
@realDonaldTrump - Donald J. Trump
@joshtpm - Josh Marshall
@NateSilver538 - Nate Silver
@ddale8 - Daniel Dale
@mattyglesias - Subscribe to My Newsletter
@thehill - The Hill
@nytimes - The New York Times
@conor64 - Conor Friedersdorf
@atrupar - Aaron Rupar
@ABC - ABC News
@kylegriffin1 - Kyle Griffin
@AP - The Associated Press
@AOC - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
@NBCNews - NBC News
@maggieNYT - Maggie Haberman
@Nate_Cohn - Nate Cohn
@washingtonpost - Washington Post
@marcorubio - Marco Rubio
@chrisgeidner - Chris Geidner
@JakeSherman - Jake Sherman
@jonathanchait - Jonathan Chait
@TPM - Talking Points Memo
@daveweigel - Dave Weigel
@JuddLegum - Judd Legum
@NPR - NPR
@KevinMKruse - Kevin M. Kruse
@DouthatNYT - Ross Douthat
@igorbobic - Igor Bobic
@DavidKlion - David Klion
@ThePlumLineGS - Greg Sargent
@NYGovCuomo - Andrew Cuomo
@mattdpearce - Matt Pearce 🦅
@MikeTRose - Michael T. Rose
@BCDreyer - Benjamin Dreyer
@_ShysterB - Becca B
@ScottMadin - Scott Madin
@serenebabe - serenebabe
@Friedmanzone - Charles Peyton
@matildazq - Matilda ZombieQueen
@btrwkart - AJ
@joe_kehoskie - Joe Kehoskie
@FrKadel - Andrew Kadel
@InquisitiveUrsa - Inquisitive Ursa
@miri_iron - Miriam Heddy
@speakthelogos - Logos
@jientho - Jeff Young
@sweatingbanshee - sweatingbanshee
@bugsybanana - Christine Quinones
@nberlat - Noah Berlatsky
@thucydiplease - Sam Pritchard
@ambignostic - Cris (without an H)
@IBlame - The Duchess Of Umbrage
@brandonmcneice - Brandon McNeice
@LeavittAlone - John Leavitt 🌹
@hteasley - floon
@JxSheppard - julian sheppard
@RadicalGoats - 🐏(202) 224-3121 or @botresist🐏
@jaclynf - Jaclyn Friedman❄️| Top Hashtags | Count | % |
|---|---|---|
| #aloto | 67 | 0.2% |
| #metoo | 40 | 0.1% |
| #contactwatch | 29 | 0.1% |
| #kavanaughhearings | 29 | 0.1% |
| #princessbridereunion | 28 | 0.1% |
| #ripleywatch | 19 | 0.0% |
| #hatm | 18 | 0.0% |
| #hotsaturday | 18 | 0.0% |
| #j20 | 18 | 0.0% |
| #abductedinplainsight | 14 | 0.0% |
| #sondheim90concert | 13 | 0.0% |
| #feigfest2020 | 13 | 0.0% |
| #nygovdebate | 13 | 0.0% |
| #theamericans | 12 | 0.0% |
| #txsenatedebate | 10 | 0.0% |
| #nationalwalkoutday | 10 | 0.0% |
| #breaking | 9 | 0.0% |
| #naca19 | 9 | 0.0% |
| #familiesbelongtogether | 9 | 0.0% |
| #abolishice | 9 | 0.0% |
| #silentsam | 8 | 0.0% |
| #otd | 7 | 0.0% |
| #oh12 | 7 | 0.0% |
| #freepablo | 7 | 0.0% |
| #nationalschoolwalkout | 7 | 0.0% |
| #4profit | 6 | 0.0% |
| #notemilyxaver | 6 | 0.0% |
| #strikeagainstkavanaugh | 6 | 0.0% |
| #j20trials | 6 | 0.0% |
| #blackburntakeover | 5 | 0.0% |
| #1 | 5 | 0.0% |
| #unitetheright2 | 5 | 0.0% |
| #covid19 | 4 | 0.0% |
| #onhere | 4 | 0.0% |
| #2 | 4 | 0.0% |
| #highered | 4 | 0.0% |
| #rexmanningday | 4 | 0.0% |
| #saa2019 | 4 | 0.0% |
| #protectmueller | 4 | 0.0% |
| #texasdebate | 4 | 0.0% |
| #nyc | 4 | 0.0% |
| #ny27 | 4 | 0.0% |
| #familiesbelongtogther | 4 | 0.0% |
| #nationalstudentwalkout | 4 | 0.0% |
| #4 | 3 | 0.0% |
| #withpod | 3 | 0.0% |
| #cancelstudentdebt | 3 | 0.0% |
| #vote16 | 3 | 0.0% |
| #mayoraldebate | 3 | 0.0% |
| #realcollege | 3 | 0.0% |
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| Top Words | Count | % |
|---|---|---|
| because | 1,820 | 4.4% |
| thread | 1,216 | 2.9% |
| trump | 1,210 | 2.9% |
| any | 1,146 | 2.7% |
| being | 1,033 | 2.5% |
| students | 1,014 | 2.4% |
| before | 897 | 2.1% |
| theyre | 754 | 1.8% |
| every | 700 | 1.7% |
| doing | 690 | 1.7% |
| actually | 666 | 1.6% |
| vote | 634 | 1.5% |
| college | 596 | 1.4% |
| since | 588 | 1.4% |
| biden | 517 | 1.2% |
| anything | 498 | 1.2% |
| likely | 459 | 1.1% |
| election | 453 | 1.1% |
| talking | 435 | 1.0% |
| folks | 427 | 1.0% |
| piece | 427 | 1.0% |
| trying | 426 | 1.0% |
| gop | 420 | 1.0% |
| seems | 416 | 1.0% |
| maybe | 405 | 1.0% |
| absolutely | 400 | 1.0% |
| makes | 396 | 0.9% |
| course | 387 | 0.9% |
| anyone | 384 | 0.9% |
| believe | 382 | 0.9% |
| voting | 380 | 0.9% |
| evidence | 374 | 0.9% |
| already | 359 | 0.9% |
| states | 354 | 0.8% |
| position | 351 | 0.8% |
| means | 350 | 0.8% |
| important | 350 | 0.8% |
| history | 342 | 0.8% |
| exactly | 336 | 0.8% |
| specific | 321 | 0.8% |
| used | 320 | 0.8% |
| dems | 318 | 0.8% |
| change | 316 | 0.8% |
| sense | 314 | 0.8% |
| political | 302 | 0.7% |
| early | 302 | 0.7% |
| else | 301 | 0.7% |
| rights | 299 | 0.7% |
| policy | 299 | 0.7% |
| police | 299 | 0.7% |
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| Top Emojis | Count | % |
|---|---|---|
| ✊ Raised Fist | 17 | 0.0% |
| ❤ Heavy Black Heart | 15 | 0.0% |
| 🚨 Police Car Light | 12 | 0.0% |
| 👇 Backhand Index Pointing Down | 11 | 0.0% |
| ✅ White Heavy Check Mark | 7 | 0.0% |
| 😂 Face With Tears Of Joy | 7 | 0.0% |
| 🎶 Musical Notes | 5 | 0.0% |
| 🤣 Rolling On The Floor Laughing | 4 | 0.0% |
| 👀 Eyes | 4 | 0.0% |
| 💪 Flexed Biceps | 4 | 0.0% |
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Tweets
You missed 3 zeros there :)
May I see your methodology? Because I really can't comprehend how that's even possible.
Your math is wrong,
If my calculations are right, all the Luna coins in the world a month ago were worth a little over $40,000,000. Today, those same coins are worth a little over three bucks.
Not per coin. All of them put together.
Not per coin. All of them put together.
9 pounds, 1 ounce. Name tbd. Welcome to the world, buddy. (Mom is doing great too.) pic.twitter.com/Qac7Tft7hX
And we haven't started buying politicians yet.
The Concervancy's annual budget is a mere $74 million dollars. Musk could take that on without blinking. Shakespeare in the Park's pre-pandemic budget was $58 million, since slashed—raise it to an even hundred and take that on too.
In 1980, a bunch of rich Manhattanites, tired of watching their backyard suffer from the same budget constraints as poor people's parks, privatized Central Park's upkeep with the Central Park Conservancy.
No, I think if you were a billionaire, and you wanted to make Belvedere Castle your house, the way to do it wouldn't be to buy it outright.
I think we might still say no. $44 billion is seven months of the city's budget—a lot of money, sure, but barely half a year's operating expenses. And the pressure to preserve the park, the city's public spaces, would be immense.
But what if Elon Musk, to pick a name out of a hat, offered the same price he's offered for Twitter? $44 billion dollars, easily an order of magnitude more than the most expensive home in the world. Would we as a city say yes?
If someone offered to buy it from the city for a billion dollars so they could make it into their Wayne Manor, they'd be laughed at. Two billion, even five, would be an insult to the city.
Belvedere Castle is a beautiful Victorian structure in the heart of Central Park, overlooking a pond, the Great Lawn, and the theater where they put on Shakespeare in the Park. pic.twitter.com/x7BWj6ch0W
This is a great thread, and it reminds me of a thought I had walking through Central Park yesterday: What would it cost someone to buy Belvedere Castle and turn it into their house?
This is a great thread, and it reminds me of a thought I had walking through Central Park yesterday: What would it cost someone to buy Belvedere Castle and turn it into their house?
The reality is that we live in a society and other people aren't non-player characters or mere obstacles. Unchecked power can be used for destruction, but it creates very little, besides more destructive power. 37/
Before I know it I wake up and I’m this guy (Also, hi! Hope you’re well and happy almost-summer) pic.twitter.com/TYpgwaMVc5
For the full dad belt-and-suspenders experience, use elasticized, color-coded folders. pic.twitter.com/pyrVaPWVVo
Bringing printouts of all my flight/hotel/rental car confirmations in their own folder on my honeymoon is some real strong dad energy I’m channeling
Base voters are voters who reliably vote & vote for the party. Ours tend to be moderate Democrats, closer to the center. This is a good place to start: catalist.us/wh-national/
In your two tweets, you've used the term "activist" to mean two opposite things and the term "center" and "base" as synonyms, and insisted that "the center" is an essential electoral bloc but the concept of "centrist" is meaningless. Honestly, I don't even know where to start.
And on the flipside, "never do anything that doesn't appeal to the center" is pretty much always bad advice. You're gonna have to to SOME things that don't appeal to the center every day of your campaign, and every day you hold office. Most days, a lot of things.
so does activist disregard of any such device. So the disagreement isn’t fully captured by reference to an infallible Platonic and overriding static rule, either in adherence or disavowal.
Also: if the goal of a "protest" is to persuade or motivate voters as voters, then that's not a protest, it's a campaign rally.
"Appeal to the center" is a component of most—not all, but most—successful electoral strategies. But it's only one component, necessary most of the time but sufficient almost never.
And sixth, you need to know, for certain, what that game plan is—what set of policies and messaging will achieve what you hope to achieve.
Fifth, you need everyone—all your candidates, all your party organizers, all your electeds, all the activists on your end of the spectrum, and, ideally, your opponents—to play along with the game plan you've arrived at.
Fourth, you need to not care—and, again, as noted above, have a base that doesn't care—what your party platform is, and what policies you actually implement.
Third, you need an electorate with clear, consistent politics, ideologically sortable from right to left, so that doing something that appeals to the median voter never flips someone who voted for you last time against you in the next election.
Second, you need a political environment in which there is no need to fundraise, or staff up with volunteers, or keep paid organizers happy. Because again, otherwise you need to worry about demobilizing your base.
First, you need a static electorate—same voters every time—so you don't need to worry about depressing turnout in your base by catering to the center.
And to be fair, sometimes that's exactly the right strategy—or at least part of the right strategy. But "win over the median voter" only works as a COMPLETE strategy under certain specific conditions.
Some folks are asking why, given what I've laid out above, the right strategy for politicians isn't to pursue the support of the center of whatever electorate they happen to be trying to win, even if that center is to the right of the national electorate.
Though if you live in, say, Wisconsin, you’re kind of fucked on the state level, too—at least legislatively, and maybe in statewide races too, soon. Things are bad, folks.
…then yes, appealing to whatever the median voter in the relevant electorate wanted would be the right approach. (Assuming, to add to the list in the last tweet, that all voters are arrayed right to left, and grabbing the median voter gets all the ones nearer to you.)
If you had a static electorate—same voters every time, each, each with clear, consistent politics cycle to cycle—and there was no need to fundraise, or staff up with volunteers, AND you didn't have strong opinions about which policies you enacted after you won...
I alluded to that here, but I can answer in more detail.
Ok, but why isn’t that just more grist for the tactically cautious center-left mill? The Senate and presidency are counter-majoritarian. The latter comes down to a handful of states, then we’re left with something closer to the median voter in the median state.
And “never do anything that might piss off anyone in the center” is, I’d argue, a not particularly compelling answer.
I’m not entirely clear how you two believe that the median voter exists as somewhat powerful at the state level, but not at the level of federal elections, when federal elections that determine control of the U.S. Senate and Presidency are just the sum of statewide elections.
This is a good point, and I should have specified that I was talking about federal elections and national policy.
And “never do anything that might piss off anyone in the center” is, I’d argue, a not particularly compelling answer.
I would argue that they DO, but not at the federal level. At city/county/state level they ABSOLUTELY do, which is why I keep beating my head against the "PLEASE GOD VOTE IN YOUR LOCAL/STATE ELECTIONS. PLEASE" wall.
Wouldn't the implication of this logic be that focus should be on appealing to trumps coalition since they have the most power on a federal scale.
So the question facing the Dems is how to win when holding the support of the median voter isn’t enough. Isn’t close to enough. And that’s a tricky question.
If the median voter had her druthers, the D's would have held the White House for 26 of the last 30 years, and would have a supermajority on the Supreme Court and a big cushion in the Senate.
One more thing on all this: The median voter in the US has no power.
(My internal monologue is less misogynist and homophobic than Pacino's, but otherwise identical.)
