Ross Douthat ✓

@DouthatNYT · New Haven, CT · joined 05 Apr 2012

NYT columnist, author of Believe, https://t.co/knRQn31M77, host of Interesting Times, https://t.co/lHQ9JJTzy3

227 397Followers

446Following

38 333Posts total

1MViews on collected posts

Against accounts of the same size

4 posts from the last 90 days, next to the 100K–1M follower range. shown widely, but few of those viewers react.

Median views42 356this account5 994median for 100K–1M

Reach, %18.63%this account2.51%median for 100K–1M

Engagement, %0.42%this account1.40%median for 100K–1M

Metric	This account	Median for 100K–1M	Ratio
Median views per post	42 356	5 994	7.07×
Reach (views ÷ followers)	18.63%	2.51%	7.42×
Engagement rate	0.42%	1.40%	0.30×

Others in this range → Compare with another account → How these benchmarks are built →

Growth & engagement

How the posts we collected actually performed: views and reaction rate post by post, what the audience did with them, and where the follower count goes.

Views per post

4.5K11 Feb

4.1K

4.4K

4.3K

4.3K

3.9K

4.7K

12.3K

10.8K

421

149K13 Aug

37.8K14 Aug

46.9K15 Aug

35.3K28 Aug

Last 14 collected posts, oldest on the left. The scale is logarithmic: one post can outrun the rest a hundred times over.

Engagement rate per post

0.47%11 Feb

0.87%

0.72%

0.80%

0.61%

0.54%

0.51%

0.21%

0.29%

3.33%

0.41%13 Aug

0.72%14 Aug

0.44%15 Aug

0.32%28 Aug

Reactions — likes, reposts, replies and quotes — divided by views. Median for 100K–1M accounts is 1.40%.

What the audience does

Likes71.2%1 707 in total

Reposts3.2%76 in total

Replies5.0%119 in total

Quotes1.5%36 in total

Bookmarks19.2%461 in total

Share of every reaction we collected for this account. Replies mean argument, reposts mean endorsement, bookmarks mean the post was worth keeping.

The follower curve appears once this account has two daily snapshots — we take one a day, and this one is on its first.

Latest posts

This is a productive rant; for wilder growth scenarios it also seems worth thinking about demand not just for AI services but also for physical products the hypothetical robot factory might produce and what demand for them is imagined to look like. https://t.co/5bQdpRcFjv 35.3K views · 107 likes · 3 reposts · 3 replies 28 Aug 2026 Re: the comparison to "Succession" here, the outsider characters of Tom Wambsgans and Greg were essential to selling a story about bad ppl struggling for a crown, and Tom's rise offered an effective climactic counterpoint to the collapse of the Roys. https://t.co/YbsyVsLzFo 46.9K views · 189 likes · 6 reposts · 10 replies 15 Aug 2026 "Outside of primate species and a few other social animals, natural selection tends to create species that are ruthlessly sociopathic or “hypersocial” in the sense of an ant colony. These evolutionary attractor states are now being recapitulated in AIs." https://t.co/0a4OZKeq5l 37.8K views · 225 likes · 34 reposts · 8 replies 14 Aug 2026 This is the final episode of "Interesting Times," hopefully a fitting send-off with the man who wants to live forever: https://t.co/j8tigpnKAf 149K views · 530 likes · 25 reposts · 36 replies 13 Aug 2026 @DouthatNYT It's a shame that Christopher Hitchens is not still alive; I'd love to hear his rebuttal. 421 views · 11 likes · 0 reposts · 3 replies 11 Feb 2025 And last, here’s one further reading recommendation (which I think I encountered originally via an @tylercowen recommendation, actually), as a case study in how a Christian writer with much more learning than I possess might reasonable analyze non-Christian mystical traditions 10.8K views · 17 likes · 1 reposts · 11 replies 11 Feb 2025 And as a coda here’s the Fergus McCullough post I quoted, which contains some other questions that I might try to answer at some future lull in my freneticism: https://t.co/cntQ94JCr2 12.3K views · 24 likes · 0 reposts · 1 replies 11 Feb 2025 Or at least that’s the hope. See what you think: https://t.co/OfxX1d0SmE 4.7K views · 20 likes · 0 reposts · 4 replies 11 Feb 2025 I think you’re just clearing away some impediments specific to our culture – both the sense that religious belief is irrational and the sense that a successful religious quest is impossible -- so that people can make progress toward the Truth. 3.9K views · 20 likes · 0 reposts · 1 replies 11 Feb 2025 So if you start, as “Believe” does, by trying to update St. Paul’s argument about God’s presence being evident in a general religion-encouraging way “in the things that have been made,” I don’t think you're really setting impediments in the way of someone becoming Christian. 4.3K views · 24 likes · 0 reposts · 1 replies 11 Feb 2025 … and that if Christianity is the central revelation of God’s purposes it should illumine other experiences and ideas more fully, not just prove them all false or damnable or both. 4.3K views · 30 likes · 2 reposts · 2 replies 11 Feb 2025 I think St. Paul was correct that God’s “invisible attributes” are accessible, in different ways, to people of goodwill in all cultures … that religions founded in recognition of these attributes will have real if partial relationships to Him … 4.4K views · 29 likes · 1 reposts · 1 replies 11 Feb 2025 I don’t think Jesus came into a world where God was entirely or essentially hidden, and I don’t think God is hiding from non-Christians today, even if I do think He invites them to something deeper and fuller. 4.1K views · 32 likes · 1 reposts · 3 replies 11 Feb 2025 And more, I think seeing the world this way lays a stronger foundation for my own Christian belief than trying to separate Christianity entirely from the larger religious flux. 4.5K views · 20 likes · 0 reposts · 1 replies 11 Feb 2025 I am a liberal in this sense (albeit one who does not discount demonic influences!). I think God is present in some way in many places, the diversity of supernatural experiences shows cross-cultural commonalities for a reason, and the convergences in the great religions are an 4.8K views · 34 likes · 0 reposts · 5 replies 11 Feb 2025 ... you have to be a bit of a “lib” and say that, look, even before you get to the Christian revelation, you can see intimations of God and higher realities visible and available in multiple places, multiple faiths. 4.5K views · 28 likes · 0 reposts · 3 replies 11 Feb 2025 And honestly I think only two theories really make sense of the varieties-of-religious experience data. You either have to attribute a *lot* of phenomena to demonic influence, including phenomena that seem to overlap w/the Christian mystical + philosophical traditions, or ... 3.9K views · 27 likes · 0 reposts · 3 replies 11 Feb 2025 So I think now more than ever the Christian writer needs, if not a theory that justifies *all* the “different religious experiences” in the world, at least a theory that puts religion as a general phenomenon in some kind of coherent relationship to Christian faith. 4.4K views · 28 likes · 0 reposts · 2 replies 11 Feb 2025 And likewise the more New Age claim: So many weird experiences out there, how can you submit yourself to just one church? People have ridden that doubt, or been driven by it, from conservative Catholicism into full-tilt crystals-and-UFOs spiritualism. 4.5K views · 19 likes · 0 reposts · 4 replies 11 Feb 2025 And I definitely see people, both outside Christianity looking in and those inside having difficulties, for whom the atheist’s claim – so many religions, how can one/yours be true? – is either an impediment to joining or a reason for deconstruction. 4.7K views · 21 likes · 0 reposts · 1 replies 11 Feb 2025 And this applies as much to people who are raised Christian as to those who might convert. The cradle Christian too will confront the all-options-on-the-table culture, maybe especially so when they hit a moment of crisis and doubt. 5K views · 23 likes · 0 reposts · 1 replies 11 Feb 2025 You need a clearer account of what’s actually Going On Out There, in other words, than might have been necessary in culture where the only live options were Protestant-Catholic-Jew. 5.4K views · 21 likes · 0 reposts · 1 replies 11 Feb 2025 Especially because even if you persuade that person to become a Christian or take an interest in Christianity first, that wider landscape of diversity isn’t going away; it’s the landscape in which they’re going to practice their faith, and it will either be an encouragement to 5.7K views · 24 likes · 0 reposts · 1 replies 11 Feb 2025 For some people in this position a direct appeal – don’t worry about all those other faiths, ours is unique and uniquely true – may be effective at dispelling the sense of futility and impossibility. But for others ... 6K views · 23 likes · 0 reposts · 1 replies 11 Feb 2025 This creates a situation where the persuadable nonbeliever may have no real direct experience of the category called religion. And as soon as they take an interest in that category, they will be confronted with such a wide range of options that any kind of decision seems hopeless 6.7K views · 24 likes · 0 reposts · 1 replies 11 Feb 2025 This combination also means that a de-Christianized society isn’t in the same position as a pre-Christian society, where people might not know anything about Christianity but there would be some shared (usually pagan/polytheist) religious substrate, some default religious 7.3K views · 30 likes · 2 reposts · 1 replies 11 Feb 2025 Second – because thanks to globalization/mass communication/migration/THE INTERNET, people experience a breadth of religious/spiritual options in a more immediate way than in any prior era. And not just the big-religion alternatives to Christianity but also an endless array of 7.9K views · 29 likes · 0 reposts · 1 replies 11 Feb 2025 I think that world obtained even recently (I wrote a book about Christian heresy 12 yrs ago), but I don’t think it obtains any more. First – because after the last wave of secularization, an unprecedented number of people now enter adulthood with no exposure to religion 8K views · 36 likes · 1 reposts · 1 replies 11 Feb 2025 Most modern-era writing on Christianity comes out of a landscape in which the Christian religion was what you might call a "contested default." Meaning, as a reader you might not be a Christian believer, but you almost certainly had some kind of significant and primary exposure 8.5K views · 33 likes · 0 reposts · 2 replies 11 Feb 2025 … there are a few reasons it might make sense for someone convinced of Christianity’s truth to nonetheless start at a more general level, most of them having to do with ways our cultural moment differs from other eras in which Christians have made their case. Let me explain. 8.2K views · 29 likes · 0 reposts · 6 replies 11 Feb 2025

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