Online or off, these viewers threw themselves into spirited and sometimes surprisingly profound arguments about shows the world considered irredeemably shallow. For them, reality had become a shared language, a way to talk about who they were and what they valued, what was fair and what was authentic, a debate conducted in in-jokes and memes, podcasts and charticles, through group text and office talk. Like all gossip, it was a coded way to talk about politics, large and small.
