The Main Event

The final day of the tournament started slowly, with @will_mccants occupied with media appearances and @dandrezner wrapped up in the ISA conference. The competition picked up a bit of steam as the day wore on with some more noteworthy work by Drezner proxy @stephaniecarvin, and by the end of the day AQ and zombies were in full play as befits a contest between experts in those respective fields.

In an unexpected twist, however, one third of today’s judging panel staged an insurgency and cast their ballots for another candidate entirely. We were unwilling to wage a resource-intensive counterinsurgency campaign against these judges, and felt secure in our ability to secure a free and fair vote for the TFC public, so we let these insurgents have their say, even publishing their ballots in the interests of free speech.

In the end, their uprising was not enough to overshadow @will_mccants, who rode a wave of public support to victory! Congratulations, Will! You will make an awesome bobblehead a worthy champion!

Let’s see how the scoring played out:

@dandrezner vs. @will_mccants
Judges: 2-2(-2)
Popular vote:
@will_mccants: 190 (72%)
@dandrezner: 74 (28%)

Now to the judges’ ballots, in which @abumuqawama tries to bring some rigor to the task of judging, @jeremyscahill gives ups to @ggreenwald, @ClosetIdealist plays it straight, @attackerman keeps it short and sweet, and @astridhka and @charlie_simpson judge a whole other match.

@jeremyscahill

Before delving into the main event that brings us all here, let’s pause to pour some booze out for those who didn’t make it past the Final Four. Well, at least for @jeffemanuel. For @stcolumbia, sparkling cider will have to do. I have to say that had these two guys made it to the Finals, they would have been just as worthy as those who did. Without a doubt, @stcolumbia wins the Twitter NatSec “Rookie of the Year” title hands down and, quite frankly, may even make the All-Star Team in a sort of Spud Webb-type way. When was the last time you can recall that a former senior State Department official had to respond to a blog post by a 14 year old sporting a flannel shirt who, right after he hit “publish,” was playing Halo in his parents’ basement?

As for @jeffemanuel, he is one of the reasons why I love Twitter so much. In a world without Twitter, he and the rest of the Knights Templar, challenge coin possessing, Hezbollah-fearing, Iran wants to rule the world conspiracy holding, Mitt Romney lov-OK, actually Jeff is pretty funny about little Mittens. But, my point is that he is from way, way, way over on the other side of the worldview tracks from me, yet I often learn from reading Jeff and I respect him as a no-bullshit dude (even when I think he is full of shit). When I meet Jeff in person, the drinks are on me (hopefully not the M4 rounds). I already met @stcolumbia in person and had to convince 3 different bouncers to let him into their fine establishments. Props to both of these noble Twitter warriors. I assure you we have not heard the last of them.

One final note here before I cast my vote in the championship, if we were judging this purely based on the spirit of the old fashioned Twitter FIGHTS that gave birth to this noble tournament, then I believe, as I did last year, that @ggreenwald would be the undisputed champion, no matter how many of y’all think whatever you think about him. The dude can fight and, like the proud Twitter Troll of Texas™, @jstrevino (whom I have sometimes had the awful misfortune of agreeing with), he is not afraid to mix it up with an account with an egg shell as its Avatar and 3 followers, one of whom is porn, another a free iPad-bot and the third @BarackObama. That, my friends, is the true spirit of a Twitter fighter. The trophy really should be a gold bobblehead of Glenn, perhaps surrounded by the skulls of his defeated or pummeled Twitter avatars. But those were the Gladiator days of past. Today we have rules and civility and something called “vegan cheese.” Part of me believes that this “Twitter Fight Club” is, in reality, some COIN-inspired Red Cell op that we are all unwittingly being used in. I assume it is all being run by @abumuqawama or @robertcaruso.

All of which leads me to the Finals between @dandrezner and @will_mccants. In order to judge this, I had to check the final language of the NDAA law. Now, lest you think I am going to wax poetic about the coming Halliburton concentration camps, I will make myself clear: I believe that, according to the law, Will McCants may-I said may-be an al Qaeda facilitator. Much of my intel on this remains classified and I plan to offer an ultra slim CliffsNotes defense of this allegation in a major address at the Univerity of Chicago Law School, but this little nugget should give you a good window into what Dr. McCants is really about. And it ain’t pretty. Just look at who it is that made this al Qaeda manifesto available to the English-speaking world: “The Management of Savagery.” Now, because we are a nation of laws, I believe McCants should be presented with the evidence against him and, if proper, charged. That’s the American way, right? So until that happens-JSOC and CIA drones permitting-I will put these facts aside and treat McCants as a legitimate Twitter Fight Club combatant with full protection under all international and US conventions and laws of war. (Wink. Wink.)

As for Dan Drezner, I am not aware of his involvement with managing any actual savagery. However, he has cut to the center of some of the most burning foreign policy questions facing those of us who live in the real world (meaning those of us who watch AMC and know who Max Brooks is) with his latest book, Theories of International Politics and Zombies, which “explores the myriad predictions of different theories of world politics and foreign policy in case the dead should rise from the grave and feast upon the living.” Let’s be honest, it is quite possible that Zombies pose a far greater existential threat to peace and stability than the merry band of loonies whose message McCants loves to translate and promote to the English-speaking world.

But, I digress.

In the end, we are not permitted to judge these fine men on such merits. It boils down to what they do with those bursts of 140 characters that God and the prophet Joseph Smith give them on a daily basis.

I have to say that, despite the prestige of both of these renowned scholars, the Finals proved to be a low scoring match. For several hours on Tuesday, Drezner didn’t tweet and-perhaps in a brilliant swipe at McCants-left a +1 RT of @ggreenwald at the top of his feed. For his part, McCants attempted to prove his commitment to victory by disowning his Ivy league Alma Mater, Princeton, sparking the ire of Princeton’s own @gregorydjohnsen, and praising other Ivy League schools, such as UPenn. McCants tried to hold this up as evidence of his willingness to “rupture my deep friend[ship] with Greg in order to speak the truth.” While such principled disavowing of an Ivy League academic institution that gave him so so much may have swayed some judges, another tweet undermined his “average Joe” shtick: “Hard to type in back of limo on my way to CNN for interview.” Oh, Will. Will. Will. Was Seamus strapped to the roof as you drove?

In keeping with the recent US trend, Drezner did deploy a proxy to fight his wars yesterday: one @StephanieCarvin. And while she put up a great effort-with such scurrilous attacks as “Breaking News: John Mearsheimer confirms ‘The Tragedy of Great Power Politics’ actually about @will_mccants”-in the end, a proxy is a proxy. They may achieve short-term objectives, but you cannot control the mess (extrajudicial executions anyone?) to come. After basically outsourcing his war-@StephanieCarvin=Blackwater=new Scahill book-in an 11th hour bid to seal the deal, Drezner did tweet from some boring conference he has been speaking at for like 48 hours straight: “OK, MUST tweet this. At my #ISA2012 panel, Nicholas Cull references “kitlers” — a community of people with cats that look like Hitler.” Well played, sir.

I have been a long-time follower of both of these guys. Dan Drezner is funny and smart and often tweets and retweets great stuff. He also understands that using an underscore in a Twitter name is lame. Wasn’t @TheRealWillMcCants available, dude? Despite his proclivity towards the underscore, McCants, along with that young jedi, @azelin, provide a great service to those of us who report on al Qaeda, al Shabaab, Ansar al Shariah, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, AQAP and a host of other militant groups. In the end, that is what decided this match for me. I give it to @will_mccants with one caveat: if a White House death panel thinks I am wrong and Gen. Votel and the boys need to show him what’s what, then I will retract it all and dance in the streets celebrating his demise and claim that I had always known there was something strange about that guy.

@abumuqawama

Gang, I am not going to lie: I have been disappointed by the lack of any apparent rigor to the way in which Twitter Fight Club has thus far been judged. For many judges, the vote seems to come down to “I like the way he has a picture of a small child in his profile” or “that picture of the breakfast taco she tweeted looks yummy!”

Goodness gracious.

Some judges rewarded people for nothing more than high output the day of the match, which is to Twitter what “saves” is to baseball – statistically devoid of worth. But that was positively Bill Jamesian compared to some clowns. One judge rewarded a competitor for where he went to university. Another judge rewarded a competitor for owning the same breed of dog. Another reflected that a competitor might be on her review board for tenure and then voted accordingly.

Are you people serious?

(Finally, judges, an aside. This is a pet peeve of mine: if a competitor is not following you prior to the competition, don’t whine about it. Instead, take a look into the mirror and ask yourself why your Twitter feed stinks.)

Needless to say, little of what has passed for “judging” this year adds up to an accurate reflection of how valuable a person’s Twitter account is. And while I hate to go all Sabermetrics on this competition, I’m going to advance a simple way to better determine the worth of an account. This is a) a crude measurement that is b) nonetheless about a million times more scientific than 90% of what other people have written.

RT + M
———- = T-score
F

Okay, the number of followers [F] one has says little about the value of a person’s Twitter account. Any vapid reality television celebrity can have a lot of followers on Twitter. A more accurate reflection of an account’s value is the degree to which a post is re-tweeted [RT] or an account is mentioned (to include responses) [M]. But those figures can be skewed by an account’s amplification. So we have to control for that by dividing the sum by F. I call the figure we get at the end a T-score. (Because RTMF is a crappy acronym.)

Again, more idiots will re-tweet the musings of @JessicaSimpson than smart people will re-tweet @stcolumbia. But what happens when we divide their RT + M by F (4.9 million for @JessicaSimpson and 1,100 for @stcolumbia)? @stcolumbia is left with a monster T-score of 5.18, while @JessicaSimpson scores just .009. Relatively speaking, people really care about what @stcolumbia writes on Twitter, whereas very few people honestly care about what @JessicaSimpson writes on Twitter.

In order to control for last-minute flurries of competition-related tweets, I used Klout to harvest data on the accounts of @dandrezner and @will_mccants going back 90 days.

Here are the results, with RT, M and F all measured in the thousands. These two competitors were incredible well-paired, even if @stcolumbia would have smoked either of them. First, @dandrezner:

(5.8) + (3.4)
————— = .989
9.3

Now, @will_mccants:

(1.3) + (2.3)
————— = .947
3.8

So my vote goes to @dandrezner, while @will_mccants gets traded to Oakland for Yoenis Cespedes.

By the way, in case anyone is wondering, my T-score is 1.454. Last year’s champion, Jeremy Scahill, has an anemic T-score of .333. Not that I am still bitter about last year. Or @naheedmustafa’s petulant final ballot. Not at all.

@astridhka

As I was judging this morning, I immediately noticed both @dandrezner and @will_mccants had a truly unfortunate level of commitment to doing things today that were not Twitter Fight Club. @dandrezner was at ISA and @will_mccants was off being a “terrorism” “expert” for the media.

Still, @will_mccants made some time to pander a bit to me by acknowledging that my (and @abumuqawama’s) university is superior to his university. He was so engaged on Twitter while @dandrezner was lengthily absent that the poor guy had to resort to trading barbs with his own @ZombieDrezner. For his part, @dandrezner’s continued use of the @stephaniecarvin proxy and later effort to come back with the revealing @AQ_Loves_Will was valiant, but ultimately both men’s efforts on this important day lacked a certain je na sais quoi one expects from Twitter Fight Club.

And so, it’s come to this.

With the decidedly lackluster Twitter performance of the two final contestants, an enthusiastic insurgent candidate emerged sometime this afternoon. The sharp, smart, and engaging @texasinafrica has earned herself the darkhorse vote among the judges. The last woman standing in the TFC boys club and the final Africa (watcher) contestant, there was no way I couldn’t vote for her steady, informative tweets and shameless offer to send cupcakes.

Team @texasinafrica!

@attackerman

A tough competition: I hate all academics equally. But @will_mccants is the Anthony Davis of this year’s TFC. You can learn something valuable about terrorism from his feed. And “only Tom Friedman has more insight, zingers & amazing analogies” is a cold-as-ice mot juste, the kind of thing uttered by Twitter champions. @will_mccants is like the U. Chicago tenure board: @dandrezner can’t get past him.

@charlie_simpson

In her judging guidance, @caidid encouraged we the judges to ”look at metrics such as: knowledge base; quality of argumentation; innovative thinking; humor, snark, facility with quips, and charisma; and responsiveness to followers.”

Taking all those factors into consideration, I cast my final round vote for @texasinafrica.

@will_mccants gets an A-for-Effort in sheer pandering (even if he did get my graduate school wrong). There were not, however, any Jayhawk condolences forthcoming from either party. Which, given that I haven’t tweeted about anything else in a month, is rather disappointing. My pain is no less real for being live tweeted!

Now @dandrezer is handicapped by attending ISA. I feel his pain: it’s difficult to maintain consciousness after three-days of theory laden IR panels. (I attended ISA Honolulu. By which I mean, I attended 1.5 panels and shared a condo with @mchorowitz, @jbusby2, and @thomaswright08 in Waikiki. It was much better than ISA Montreal.) But that’s no excuse for him to ignore @will_mccants’ Christian Science Monitor humblebrag. CSM, really? They don’t even do print anymore.

And finally, they failed to respond in any meaningful way to the sly insurgency of @texasinafrica. The women of the warkid loop demand to be taken seriously! They also demand cupcakes. Seriously, I named my price like 5 times. This is not f*cking rocket science, gentlemen. Jayhawks, cupcakes, and servicey snark.

It’s @texasinafrica in a landslide.

@ClosetIdealist

Well, this certainly wasn’t an easy decision. @will_mccants buttered me up early with a follower recommendation and signalled the start of a promising career as emir of AQ’s newest affiliate, the Pink Hotpants Battalion. If AQAP produced the ‘undie-bomber’, I’m not looking forward to @will_mccants first plot against the decadent West. Thankfully no self-respecting terrorist knows where Australia is, so I’m safe. Good luck to the rest of you, though.

@dandrezner took the high road, not pandering to the judges (much). It wasn’t particularly easy to figure out who fired the first shot in the 2012 Zombies vs AQ war, but it seemed to end with the destruction of Tom Friedman’s moustache (which is more than can be said about most wars in recent memory). But @dandrezner had some great substantive tweets on Wikileaks, the Republican nomination process, and Iraq War intelligence - all worth a read. Also, it can’t have been easy participating in both #TFC12 and #ISA2012.

It was a hard decision - both participants had some great tweets and the interaction was excellent, but I have to select @dandrezner as the winner by a narrow margin.

The Bracket Pool

By virtue of being the only one to correctly pick the winner of the tournament, @azelin has made #TFC12 a sweep for the CT, Friends of the AQ Fora crew. Congratulations, @azelin!

Prizes will make their way to the winners in the coming weeks, but aside from that, this wraps up TwitterFightClub 2012. Thank you to our dedicated judges, @noahchestnut for the great recaps and previews, @MarkfromArk for the wonderful visualizations, and everyone for reading. Congratulations again to our 2012 champ @will_mccants!