The Art of the Take: Takes in Modern Culture
“Here’s my take.”
Anyone who’s spent time on the internet has seen this phrase before. Usually, it precedes a very strong opinion in conversation on sports, politics, entertainment, or culture of any kind.
“Here’s my take: I do not trust anyone who is definitive in preferring the book to the movie. You cannot compare apples to oranges.”
“Here’s my take: The Star Wars prequels are misunderstood masterpieces. Anyone who disagrees is a lemming incapable of independent critical thought.”
“Here’s my take: Weezer’s best work comes after Pinkerton. Those who cannot appreciate that fact likely haven’t healed the angst that endeared Pinkerton to them in the first place.”
Framing an idea as a take is a deft conversational move because it detaches your identity from your argument. It is the most ephemeral form of an idea, because if the crowd rejects it, it disappears. It has no lasting effect on your reputation or credibility. It was a bad take. A rough draft. You are a credible, intelligent person, I am sure your next take will make a little bit more sense.
A take that is accepted by the crowd, and fits the narrative and world-view of that crowd, doesn’t disappear as quickly, however. In fact, it likely will spread amongst your tribe, a term coined in this context by marketing guru Seth Godin as “a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea”, and becomes their new truth. All of a sudden, your take, or idea as defined by Seth, that Bobby Hoying is the greatest QB in Eagles franchise history is truth amongst your buddies from high school.
The internet has allowed takes to scale to the point of commodification. Twitter, the main distributor of takes, has even gotten close to quantifying their value through likes, retweets, and replies. As takes spread through the network and expose themselves to a larger tribe, a good take can alter the narrative of what more and more people consider truth. Is Donald Trump actually an accidental genius, one that was capable of taking those principles and spreading a take, or an idea, virally through the first modern “take” network? Did doing this build up his tribe, all of which subscribe to a different narrative view of reality, formed by the sum of all takes by our “Takesman in Chief”?
The commoditization of takes on Twitter is one of the key tenants of a great new podcast, The Art of the Take. Created by Philadelphia sports radio epicenter SportsRadio 94.1WIP, with hosts Jack Fritz, Joe Giglio, and Spike Eskin. All three began to form their view on takes operating in creative roles at the station. Joe and Jack host and produce the WIP Evening Show, respectively, a drive-time sports talk program that lives and dies by its ability to produce conversation through takes. Spike is the Program Director oversees the network’s full slate of sports talk programming and is also known as one of the co-hosts of the Rights to Ricky Sanchez podcast, a show that successfully built its own tribe around it, guiding Philadelphia 76ers fans through an era known as “The Process”.
The group defines a take an idea that successfully divides opinion by having a kernel of truth that supporters will emphatically agree with wrapped inside an incendiary jab that will elicit emotional replies and counter-arguments. In the context of Twitter, the more potent the take, the greater the ratio between “likes” and “replies” a take should have, and the more “likes” or “replies” a take has, the more others see the take on their own feeds, increasing its exposure and spread through the network. As a take gains exposure, this creates value for the author as their platform grows bigger with each additional eyeball that views their take. The concept of a take spreading through a network like Twitter has its roots in mimetic theory, or the idea that human nature and interaction itself is based on imitation, representation, and mimicry. As a take spreads to an individual person, or node, on the network, it is mimicked by that person to their own network, and so on.
Using this definition, the three hosts then discuss how effective takes and their authors are at dividing opinion in such a way that then spreads the take to different communities on Twitter. While their exploration into takes begins with Philadelphia sports talk and culture, they extend the concept to nation sports culture, citing luminaries of sports take-dom, Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless, who have built careers off of their ability to send Twitter into a day’s worth of conversation by simply stating “LeBron James is the worst great-player free-throw shooter ever under 7 feet tall”. Their recent coronation of Donald Trump as “Takesman of the Year 2018” further extends the concept to American culture at large and opens the topic up to how we think about national conversation on platforms like Twitter.
The idea that the efficacy of a good take can be measured quantitatively through “likes” and “replies”, and that that quantity equates to value for the author of the take, effectively makes takes a commodity or currency on the network. The value of a Twitter account essentially becomes the sum of its effective takes in creating a platform for itself. A group of dedicated fans even created a grading system for takes known as TTT+, which weights the amount of “likes” and “replies” a tweet gets and categorizes the take and measures its strength. You can even evaluate your own takes using a fan-created Take Calculator.
If one of the benefits to the authors of a take get by framing incendiary remarks as takes is that it detaches their identity from their argument, it should call into question whether the size of one’s platform on Twitter should directly correlate to the sum of the value of its takes. Without attaching your identity and your reputation to a thought, it immediately strips you of the accountability you should be due for the effect it has on the narrative of your tribe. It may be funny that a take about Bobby Hoying being the greatest QB in Eagles franchise history becomes the truth amongst your buddies from high school, but consider the President’s hot take that “we should build a wall and make Mexico pay for it”. This was one of his most noted takes from the beginning of his campaign. It divided opinion by having a kernel of truth that resonated with those who felt threatened by legal and illegal immigrants, individuals who accepted this idea as truth and began to build his tribe, and elicited years of emotional replies and counter-arguments from those who empathized with legal and illegal immigrants. Should a take have that much power an influence on our dialogue when its originator can choose to own or disown the take whenever it is most convenient for him?
Beneath the fun of sports talk and the take calculator, perhaps the most important work done by the hosts of The Art of the Take is in labeling takes as the attention commodity they are. This can make you, the consumer, more mindful of a take and make them more easy to spot. If we can all detach ourselves from the same level of identity when consuming takes and judge them for what they are, perhaps that is the path for one man’s hot takes to avoid becoming a tribe’s reality.
If you are looking for the fun weekly podcast that inspired this post, look no further than The Art of the Take.
