The Hodgetwins’ brand of comedy relies on punching down, not nuance or storytelling—or being based in reality in any meaningful way. They’ll take a subject, make fun of it, then sometimes moralize about why they’re right on a topic—especially when it comes to their version of masculinity.Derek looks at these twins' vitriolic humor and places it in the context of competition. Whether they're preaching transphobia, fat-shaming, or other forms of bigotry, what they're revealing is really male fragility, not the all-important masculinity they profess.Show NotesThe Racist Roots of Fighting ObesityThe Bizarre and Racist History of the BMIBreaking Down the ‘Wellness-Industrial Complex,’ an Episode at a TimeFrans de Waal: The surprising science of alpha males
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The Hodge Twins spent Christmas Eve tweeting out a 2020 Scientific American article entitled, The Racist Roots of Fighting Obesity.
These conservative comedians made the jump from YouTube stardom to, in this tweet, being boosted by Elon Musk, which actually often happens these days, and which, for some reason, appears in my algorithm with increasing frequency even though I don't follow Twitter's owner or the duo of Keith and Kevin Hodge.
For context, the Hodge twins, aka the conservative twins, cut their teeth online with their very bro-y workouts.
Both men are bodybuilders and mostly now post videos of themselves eating fast food like Popeyes and Wendy's and Krispy Kreme in their car around their new hometown of Las Vegas.
They don't seem to post many workouts these days, though they remain quite buff and they certainly posture often.
On one YouTube channel, they bill themselves as Twin Muscle, and that, alongside their enrollment in the Marine Corps, is a big part of their brand.
But the other part is conservative comedy, as I mentioned.
And it's comedy in the sense that J.P.
Sears is a comedian.
What do I mean by that?
Well, let's check in with the most recent J.P.
video.
Does anyone know what the origins of Christmas are?
Jesus is his birthday?
Ew, no.
Christmas originated in white supremacy.
That's why snow is white.
I'm pretty sure it was Jesus' birthday.
Jesus never existed, so that can't be true.
I'm pretty sure he did.
He died for our sins.
Then why am I still sinning all the time?
Yeah, I know.
It's like he listens to Fox News and says, how can I make it even less funny?
But as with JP, the Hodgetwins brand of comedy is completely reliant on punching down.
Not on nuance or storytelling, or really based in reality in any meaningful way, which makes for good comedy.
But like Sears, the Hodgetwins will take a subject, make fun of it, then sometimes moralize about why they're right on a topic.
Which is what JP does right after the clip I just played, but I'm not going to make you suffer through his most recent brand of muscular Christianity.
And as with JP, the Hodgetwins focus on one topic very often.
Masculinity, which is where I'm going with this.
So let's start with the article.
On Christmas Eve, when most people were with their family and celebrating downtime with their friends, the Hodgetwins shared a tweet from another trolling account called EndWokeness, and it features a screenshot of a Scientific American article from June 2020.
It does not include the link to the article, because then people would have the opportunity to actually read it and decide if their commentary is on point.
But of course it's not, and they know their audience won't read the actual content of the article, so none of that really matters.
Now, the original tweet from EndWokeness includes the commentary, This is a real article.
Incredible.
Now, when retweeting, the Hodgetwins added to that, writing, Trying to help Black people lose weight is RACIST, all capital, according to SCIENTIFIC, in quotes, American, lol emoji.
Well, not that it really matters, but Musk's reply was simply, from Scientific American, then tagging the publication's handle, his own form of trolling or one of them.
Now, a lot of the comments down these threads focused on Scientific American as a publication.
I'm going to refer to them as SIAM moving forward.
Now, as a former subscriber, I agree with some of the criticism that I read in the comments.
SIAM has sometimes sacrificed important science reporting for clickbait.
Now for example, on the day that I'm recording this, their homepage features articles like, Six Fascinating Things We Learned About Pet Dogs and Cats in 2022, and, Kindness Can Have Unexpectedly Positive Consequences.
This is all the sort of milquetoast science-y talk that makes a lot of people roll their eyes, including myself sometimes.
But I also understand that science publications have a very big challenge in front of them.
Most people aren't opening up their browser to JAMA articles every day.
Clickbait drives people to websites where a lot of actual credible scientific information lives, as on SIAM, so I don't fault them for it.
Of course, in the case of the Hodge twins, science isn't really the point.
