Potential U.S. Sen.–elect Jon Ossoff is only 33 years old. For comparison, the youngest sitting senator is Republican Josh Hawley, at 41; the body’s youngest Democrat is Kyrsten Sinema, at 44. That means Ossoff may soon be the first millennial senator. Those of us around his age might have seen his possibly imminent ascent to the upper house of Congress as a condemnation of our own lives and accomplishments. For instance, I am a year older than Ossoff, and in recent days, I have been feeling pretty good about my streak on Duolingo. (As of this writing, I’m at 10 days. No es gran cosa.)
Suffice to say, Ossoff has risen extremely high, extremely fast. But what a precocious little credential-humping dweeb he must be, right? He probably never drank a can of Sparks, and never really posted anything dumb on social media, all in meticulous, ladder-climbing preparation for this moment. Some millennial.
Well.
While there remains no evidence yet that he ever drank or refused to drink Sparks or Four Loko, on late Tuesday night, as Ossoff inched closer to victory in Georgia, tweets from his mid-20s began to go viral. And it turns out that not only is Ossoff a red-blooded millennial, he’s a world-class dweeb, too. The tweets reveal some objectively dorky generational fandoms (“Anime Les Mis” and Imagine Dragons) and sources of pride (inbox zero), and they prove that once upon a time, there was nothing this young man wouldn’t post on social media.
I can’t prove it, but I think John Jay argued this kind of thing should be disqualifying in the Federalist Papers. Behold:
(Journalist Josie Duffy Rice later explained that Ossoff went to high school with Imagine Dragons’ drummer.)
Like so many of his fellow youths, Ossoff’s professed love of anime, interest in the declension of crunk, and respectable deployment of “n00b” betray a carefree attitude toward his public online communications—and a worrying lack of discipline for someone who must now live up to America’s institutions, history, and founding fathers. Perhaps the Republican attack ad that revealed Ossoff’s college video in which he played Han Solo in some kind of Star Wars parody was onto something. If we are to be a nation of laws and of honor, his political career will ultimately not survive this disgrace, win or lose in Georgia.
This post has been updated since it was first published.
