Make Apartments Great Again
Last week I checked my snail mail inbox to find a package from the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles (AAGLA). Inside were a number of items including a red hat with the words, “Make Apartments Great Again.” I thought it was clever and so I took a picture of the hat and posted it to Twitter. For the next several days (and continuing) my Twitter account received a barrage of disapprobation and my “engagement” total on the Tweet now stands at 962. A post to Twitter linking to an article here entitled, “Taxes Don’t Solve Homelessness, Housing Does” received 6 engagements. The housing debate in the country has followed Twitter down the figurative “drain.”
I had a friend who journeyed to India during college. When he returned, he regaled us with stories about his trip many of which still stand out. One thing he brought home with him was a case of Giardia, a parasite that infects the intestines and can cause severe diarrhea. What my friend pointed out, though, is that the parasite doesn’t go away. “Once you get it,” he told me, “You have it forever.” As the Wikipedia article points out, one can “coexist” with the tiny organism, but the symptoms can come roaring back. Twitter is no different.
My intention with posting the MAGA hat was not to make any kind of political statement at all. The post wasn’t even ironic, that is, it wasn’t a veiled criticism of Donald Trump. But it certainly wasn’t an affirmation of Trump or Trumpism or the hat. I wanted to let the folks at AAGLA I got their gift, and that yes, we should make apartments great again. I’m an Anglophile, and it was in the same spirit that someone sent me an image of a red hat that had the words, “Make America Great Britain Again.” I loved it. A sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with.
But somehow the “Twittersphere” or whatever it’s called went berserk. The disapprobation came pouring in. Some of it was simple, “No!” some posts read. Those posts would get liked several times. Others posted GIF images of people making faces. Others implied racist intent, suggesting that I wanted to “make housing white again.” One reasonable comment seemed to express annoyance without attributing any ill intent on my part: “I am so sick of the make _____ _____ again thing. Just stop!” Got it. My absolute favorite one and the one that seemed to sum it all up was, “This is bad and you should feel bad.”
"You should feel bad"
I talked with the person in charge of social media at AAGLA and told her about this growing glut of finger wagging about their hat. She told me she understood: they had posted a picture of the hat on their website and they got flooded with dozens and then hundreds of negative messages. It became such a distraction that they had to pull the whole post and image down. Problem solved.
Twitter isn’t so easy. If one wades into the thread with an explanation, “Hey everyone, this was just a funny amusing hat. No intent behind it. Thanks,” one is sure to inspire hundreds more responses countering that one. More arguments about what it means to post the hat, what the hat really means and how it isn’t funny and on and on will ensue and proliferate. That’s how Twitter works; one person likes a “No, this sucks!” and then that sparks more likes and more disapprobation for the hat.
Let me say that again, disapprobation for posting a picture of a hat.
My argument that socialists are slowly taking over private housing through ill-advised government fiat; Who cares? How about my suggestion that we use housing subsidies to just give people cash, something similar to what Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang has proposed? Yawn. Next. Nothing to see here, folks.
Have I been living under a rock? No, and I do get that this is how Twitter “works,” a mindless bunch of likes and responses and snarky comments. These kinds of threads make news and make and end careers and even earn people, maybe, the most powerful job in the world. But I still despair at that. We all should. Should every debate about housing or any topic be conducted only by Solons in some rarified venue? Of course not. But it’s just a hat. We should be having more substantive debate about whether banning eviction is a good idea, for example.
Fortunately, I can afford to ignore the thread, let it “burn itself out,” as someone suggested. But like Giardia, I’m sure there will be flare ups in the future, perhaps even prompted by this post. But this silly episode is yet another warning that serious debate about housing isn’t happening and left leaning forces bent on taking private property are winning the day. We must shift the playing field or figure out how to go viral with a free market message. Maybe it’s hopeless, and perhaps we’d find even Solon wearing a “Make Athens Great Again” hat.
