In the couple weeks leading up to the 2024 presidential election, my entire TikTok and YouTube pages were filled with tons of videos of conservatives debating liberals on hot topic issues that they disagreed on. At first, I was excited to watch political discourse on channels like Jubilee that were committed to objectivity and fostering an environment built on bipartisanship. I’m a debater myself and I love to watch political debates between people of opposing life experiences and see how they create solutions to real-world problems.

To my surprise, after watching about two minutes of one of these videos, I was insanely disappointed. These weren’t bipartisan conversations about policy like I was hoping. Instead, they were political rage-bait made to attract viewership and profit off of the tangible political division in this country. 

Before I go into the reasons I don’t enjoy Jubilee’s recent take on debating, let me provide some context on how these videos function. Essentially, they include a prominent figure who has a polarized perception of politics and a bunch of college students who have opposing views. The show constructs statements and the first person who runs up to a chair gets to debate the prominent figure on that statement. While the debate is happening, people around the debate stage can raise red flags. If there are enough red flags waved, the person has to leave the seat and someone else can run up and debate the person. 

I have a couple quick critiques on the structure of the debate before I dive into my big concerns with the nature of these conversations. To begin, I really dislike the whole idea of voting people out using red flags without reason. Often, a person would be trying to have a constructive conversation and get voted off in less than a minute just because they were trying to form a compromise and not fully descend into arguing with the person. 

When you allow people to vote others off for attempting a compromise, you create an environment where understanding and critical evaluation of opposing points is disregarded for the sake of a heated argument. Heated arguments may be interesting to listen to, but they pose a serious threat to constructive dialogues, especially in heated political climates like this one. It also encourages people to be rude to one another by actively disrespecting and belittling others for their opinions, which creates a sizable barrier to actionable change or agreement.

 Also, the original statements being debated were all statements that needed to be better defined using an objective framework and had too many exceptions on all sides to be proper debate resolutions. When you have people debate statements like “Kamala Harris is a DEI hire” you need to define all terms so the debate is on fair grounds but you also need to have significance included in the statement. 

Anyone can argue both sides- the same way you can argue a hot dog is a sandwich- but what matters is the impact of the debate you are having, which I think was heavily left out of the conversations. Regardless of whether Harris was a DEI hire, I don’t think anyone proved to me why that was a bad thing or a good thing. I think what would’ve made more sense is for the idea of DEI to be debated and if we should be choosing candidates based on identity politics and if that is an inherently harmful thing to do. This debate topic allows for nuance and impacts to be implicit rather than being derived through coercive methods. 

Now, I have tons of critiques on the material being debated and the debate style that is most prevalent throughout these videos. Most of the time, people cut each other off, say incredibly disrespectful things to one another and try hard to trick people using “gotcha”-style questioning. All of these strategies make videos entertaining, but none of them result in genuinely constructive conversations. Anyone can sit there and make wild statements to get reactions out of others, but this doesn’t actually help their point. It makes them look like they are incapable of defending their point and only fuels the perspective that teens are emotional and incapable of having respectful conversations. 

Also, a lot of people approached the debate trying to convince the other side but got angry when they didn’t change their perspective. 

I think that approach only leads to anger and resentment. It might’ve been better to approach with the mentality of trying to showcase their perspective and understand someone else’s rather than try to win. 

Also, there should’ve been more overall fact-checking and reduction of genuinely discriminatory rhetoric in the videos. The video gave insight into some basic facts but didn’t substantiate or refute any of the major claims that were definitely lies. At one point, conservative Charlie Kirk said doctors stabbed the backs of full-developed fetuses and they were alive but born stillborn. This is factually inaccurate on all levels and shouldn’t have been allowed in the debate. Instead, there should’ve been actual facts of abortions in America and around what stage of pregnancy they occur.

Also, some of the rhetoric Kirk used was blatantly racist and way too dismissive of systemic barriers to have been included. When talking about Black crime rates, for example, he placed  a large portion of blame on negligent fathers and single-parent Black households as the sole cause of mass Black incarceration. This rhetoric is something that viewers can choose to believe and may influence their political views despite being dismissive of the oppressive systems that single-parent households are an effect of, not a cause of. Inaccurate rhetoric like this should be minimized and not allowed to sway the opinions of impressionable peoples. 

Overall, these debates seem like hubs where people with different opinions can discuss, but they are really just rage-bait disguised in pretty graphics and misleading bipartisan branding. In a heated political climate, we should prioritize conversations with people who are willing to compromise and diplomatically understand opposing viewpoints. This will give viewers a fair impression of both sides with accurate information to form their own opinions without feeding them harmful rhetoric about either side.