The Myth of Tim Walz’s Midwestern Appeal

You know you do it.

As soon as someone new follows you on a social-media platform, you start clicking on that person’s minuscule profile picture to enlarge it. At first, the person is a barely perceptible blob — maybe you can make out the sex or hair color — but as you keep clicking, facial features come into focus. Occasionally, it’s not even a real person but a picture from a movie or a Russian bot.