bars</tle><g id="el_oZ84Hna1GC_65hRV2Qwn" class="css-1fxvzwo" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="0"><g id="el_oZ84Hna1GC_ILVvi2tqx" class="css-1wnday1" ata-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="2"><g id="el_oZ84Hna1GC"><rect x="34" width="6" height="36" id="el_qw_T_tngXw"></rect></g></g></g><g id="el_mYVjkduhMU_p_9Pm85Ac" class="css-fwki7z" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="0"><g id="el_mYVjkduhMU_WxG3R40yd" class="css-t3i5e6" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="2"><g id="el_mYVjkduhMU"><rect x="22.67" width="6" height="36" id="el_lf9GrROk6j"></rect></g></g></g><g id="el_o-EuxhgoAw_kYNRGDfcw" class="css-t9te0w" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="0"><g id="el_o-EuxhgoAw_3c3bzSjOJ" class="css-1r5375t" ata-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="2"><g id="el_o-EuxhgoAw"><rect x="11.33" width="6" height="36" id="el_-iueO8klO0"></rect></g></g></g><g id="el_F7mSMPhqpC_y_fKcpSxn" class="css-qknaag" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="0"><g id="el_F7mSMPhqpC_R6bNB6_Ys" class="css-1vd04" ata-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="2"><g id="el_F7mSMPhqpC"><rect width="6" height="36" id="el_dS5TKNZZ5w"></rect></g></g></g></svg></div><div><div class="css-1t7yl1y">0:00<!-- -->/<!-- -->1:02:35</div><div class="css-og85jy">-<!-- -->1:02:35</div></div></div></div></hear><div class="css-uzyn7p"><div class="css-1vxyw"><p class="css-1nng8z9">transcript</p><h2 class="css-9wqu2x">Shame, Safety and Movg Beyond Cancel Culture</h2><h4 class="css-qsd3hm">When is ncellatn eful? And what other tools are available when isn’t?</h4><time dateTime="2021-04-27T09:00:05.000Z" class="css-1e605">2021-04-27T05:00:05-04:00</time></div><dl class="css-p98d0w"><dt class="css-xx7kwh"></dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">[MUSIC PLAYING]</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I’m Ezra Kle, and this is “The Ezra Kle Show.” [MUSIC PLAYING]</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">I always found myself an unfortable place the ncel culture bate. I thk fights over the boundari of acceptable speech aren’t jt legimate, but they’re actually need and overdue, and I thk the way they play out onle leads to excs, disproportnate punishments, oftentim the wrong people beg targeted for the wrong thgs, and then, over time, a crappy speech environment and a lot of polil backlash for everyone. So here I want to get beyond the ncel culture is real or fake, is good or bad bate. There’s somethg real that people are referrg to when they talk about ncel culture, and ’s both good and bad. There are good parts, and there are bad parts. And so the eper qutn is, what do we actually want to achieve here, and how do we go about achievg ? For me, and I’m the only person I n answer for, ’s a world which we speak about each other more rpectfully, which we listen to each other more openly, and that be a foundatn, and this part is important. It be a foundatn for a fairer and more clive polics where more people get to shape how they are spoken about, and social shame livered through social media, is gog to be part of that. It will be, and should be. Too few people have cid the boundari of unacceptable speech for too long, and part of what we’re gog through now is an important renegotiatn of that. That renegotiatn will jt have to take place through social means, cludg shame. There’s no other way to do . It is not somethg you n jt do wh a piece of legislatn, but I do worry that onle disurse is so tuned to shamg that we’ve lost sight of some of s drawbacks. Shamg people, mak them fensive. It mak them to enemi rather than helpg them bee alli, and then we thk too ltle about other virtu and skills which velop to be good polil or even jt human munitors. And then what’s worse is a lot of this is centivized or shaped by the self-terted enomics of technology platforms and how they’re shaped and what go viral, of employers who are tryg to protect their own bs or their own reputatn. We’ve often turned what is systemic and social and enomic to jt a qutn of dividuals or iology. So there’s a lot to talk about here, but I’m joed for by, I thk, the perfect two guts, Will Wilkson and Natalie Wynn. Will is the former vice print for rearch at the Niskanen Center. He actually got nceled. He was fired om his job bee a right-wg onle mob grabbed a clearly satiril tweet of his and phed Niskanen to fire him. If you thk, by the way, that ncel culture or onle ncellatn is somehow a left-wg phenomenon, yeah, Will Wilkson is proof that that is not te. He wr regularly for for Tim Opn and now has a great newsletter, Mol Cizen, and a podst of the same name. Natalie Wynn is my favore YouTuber where she mak the remarkable vios. It b social theory and polics unr the moniker ContraPots. You’ll hear reference a vio she ma on ncellatn and J.K. Rowlg here, and I really do remend lookg them up. Both of them have had experience on both sis of this issue, and they’ve e out of on the other end wh, my view, unually plex, nuanced views of how this plays out and what all means. So this is a great nversatn, one I wanted to have for a long time, and I’m glad we did. As always, my email, Here’s Will Wilkson and Natalie Wynn. [MUSIC PLAYING]</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">I want to start a b the experienc both of you have had wh the thg that gets lled ncel culture. And Will, I’ll wh you. Dcribe what beg ncelled was like for you, not necsarily exactly what happened, but how did feel.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">It was a shock. There was an immediacy to what happened. I had tweeted. The tweet created ntroversy. I tweeted my bad tweet a mute before I went to bed. And then first thg the morng, I wake up too jt like a world of sh. I’m jt gettg piled on by all sorts of opportunistic right-wgers who were takg my very funny joke out of ntext and claimg that I was really llg for the hangg the vice print of the Uned Stat, jt the most ridiculo bad fah, but was g such a kerfuffle that I was immediately lled to a meetg at work, and then my job was over. It had a guillote kd of qualy to that ial aspect bee I jt woke up, experienced this terror, and then got my head chopped off, and then the rt of the day was jt shock. I was lerally, I thk, shock bee I was jt like, what the hell jt happened?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I know the folks well who work at Niskanen, which was the thk tank you were at. I don’t believe they misunrstood that your tweet was a joke. So what happened there? Why do you thk you got fired?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I thk generalizg om my dividual se, and I thk this is ditive of one of the issu that has bee prevalent, is that anybody that works at your stutn, if they say somethg that’s a ltle b ntroversial or that is taken out of ntext, n e a huge, very temporary storm of ntroversy onle that draws attentn to the stutn. Your boss might start gettg hundreds of emails. They might start gettg phone lls om people they don’t know, and jt lat to this pot where they feel like they have this really urgent PR crisis on their hands, and they have to do somethg quickly to manage . And I thk that that’s often a misperceptn and that managers panic bee this is somethg that hasn’t happened before. It wasn’t the se that your employee would go to a rtrant and tell a racy joke, and then all of a sudn the phone at your office is undated wh 250 voicemails, right? That didn’t ed to happen. So people, I don’t thk, are acclimated to this climate where anybody who’s associated wh your anizatn n create this ltle crisis suatn, but I thk the are actually like tempts teacups, and they do jt blow over. And one way, social media has the memory of a goldfish. In another way, never fets anythg and n dredge thgs om many years ago, but the thgs jt pass, and they don’t really actually have that much of a, I don’t thk, effect on the reputatn of the stutns for long. It’s jt that the technology that we’ve had is enough to create an experience that managers don’t know how to handle, and they flip out.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">So your experience wh this, Natalie, has been ls enomic but still pretty big terms of the sle of . So what was , and how did feel for you?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. I thk we e the word ncelg for a bunch of related suatns, but n really happen a lot of different ways. It sounds like, wh Will’s example, was kd of the classic like Jte Sac moment. One bad tweet an stant mob that leads to profsnal nsequenc. For me, I would say was more of a build up over a few years. And I gus the distctive thg about me beg nceled is that was largely sort of ternal to one muny, specifilly the trans muny. So for me, this began almost the moment that I me out as trans onle. I was already a YouTuber, and I thk that people wh that muny immediately swched to seeg me not jt as a person wh opns onle but as a kd of mast for trans people, a symbolic reprentatn of them. And as time went on and my channel grew and I got more succsful, ’s like if you go to a very lower class high school and then you go to Harvard law. There’s a sort of sense om the other people your former muny or your muny that you mt have soldiers sold to the vil some way. Anythg that I did that was perceived or uld be terpreted as heterodox or offensive or jt not a good reprentatn of the muny was seen as this kd of betrayal, and the cints were happeng. It was ually the rult of a tweet. Twter is pecially bad, but this kd of happened every uple of months for a few years until really reached this kd of cril mass where I gus September 2019, I tweeted a uple of ntroversial tak about how I didn’t like people askg what my pronouns are, and then I ma a vio where I had Buck Angel, a very ntroversial person on the trans muny do a voiceover le one of my vios. And that, I mean, I was effectively exiled om any kd of onle trans space. There were mands that all of my lleagu publicly disown me, threats were beg sent to iends of iends bee of their associatn wh me. It was really out of ntrol and put me to a month of prsn where I felt the way that an exile is supposed to feel, and I end up g that energy to create a vio about the experience. But if your qutn is, how do feel to be nceled, I mean, feels credibly isolatg, alienatg, you feel credibly angry bee you feel that you’ve been liberately misunrstood. There’s a reason that public huiatn and exile have been ed as punishment. In most societi, really sort of triggers a lot of the worst social emotns that we’re pable of feelg.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I want to hold on that pot for a mute bee somethg else sometim hear on the left is oh, well, this person who got a reputatnally attacked or even fired, they’re rich, or they’re important, or they haven’t lost all of the money they’ve ma over the years. So why feel bad for them? Who r about this punishment? They’re fe, but somethg you’re gettg at here is we’re pretty well tuned to feel social shame. And so, I mean, you didn’t lose your livelihood, but sounds like ’s still had que an effect on your life.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">It did, and I thk pecially so bee, as a trans person, you sort of pend on the muny like that. It’s not like beg exiled om your, I don’t know, after school club or somethg. This is your social world to some extent. It’s the only people who are sort of pable of fully unrstandg you. I mean, ’s like beg kicked out of Athens. It’s a pretty ser punishment, and the alarmg thg about is this is not a jtice system. Twter is not a jtice system. This is mob le. In my vio, I n pare to the Reign of Terror terms of how functns, possibly worse than that bee wh the Reign of Terror, at least you had, what was , the mtee on public safety to have kangaroo trials, whereas ncelg, I mean, ’s much more simple and primive than that. It’s jt the voice of the mob.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Have eher of you had offle or at least off social media teractns wh the people who were g at you those perds?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. I thk one my first ncellgs, I did have another YouTube who had sort of cricized me. We did a live stream to talk thgs over, and she was still very angry at me the live stream. But the months that followed our nversatn, she kd of began to rent and sort of felt bad about , I thk. I don’t know. I gus the fact that I’m jt a person kd of sunk over time, and she uldn’t go back to see me as a brand that she’s mad at.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. That gets to somethg I always wonr about here, Will, which is, how much do you thk the thg that gets lled ncel culture is actually a culture or an iology vers jt an emergent phenomenon of how particular social platforms and media centiv are stctured and stcture our behavrs?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. I thk that is mostly what is. I don’t thk anythg about our culture has signifintly changed. People have always said thgs that are stupid. People have always gotten fired for dog dumb thgs at work for a billn different reasons. People get fired bee their boss thks that they drs sloppy. It’s jt that people didn’t get fired before bee they said somethg on a social media platform bee social media platforms didn’t exist, but the technology really do enable new kds of behavr. Twter particular, if one person jumps to your mentns and says, hey, buddy, e the revolutn, you’re first agast the wall, which I get om Tmpist typ every time I wre about gun ntrol or immigratn, you’re like, OK. Yeah. OK, big shot. Super sred, right? But if you get this torrent of many thoands of people attackg you onle but also tattlg on you to your profsnal ntacts, tryg to make your life miserable, right, any one person dog any of those thgs has no effect, but the technology enabl this kd of llective actn. I mean, I ll spible spontaneo orr. It allows this upswell of malic llective actn to torment people. Nobody thought through the dynamics before they signed the platforms, and nobody tried to set this kd of mob psychology to motn, but ’s jt implic the stcture of the platforms and the centiv that the creators of the platforms have to maximize engagement. So ’s jt somethg that has jt bubbled up, but now ’s a realy, but our norms still haven’t ught up. They haven’t adjted, so we don’t know what to do about .</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah I do thk one of the strange thgs about this kd of polil actn is people don’t realize what they’re dog. I thk you had quoted, Natalie, the le om Jon Ronson that the snowflake don’t take rponsibily for the avalanche. I’m paraphrasg that om memory, but there’s somethg that where you’re on Twter, somethg’s trendg or everybody’s talkg about somethg, and you’re jt jumpg wh a joke. You’re jt participatg the day’s onle nversatn, and don’t mean a lot to you. And Will, to what you were sayg, and the dividual might not even mean a lot to the person you’re makg fun of or you’re attackg or you’re cricizg, but is the emergent sle helped along by algorhms that ends up makg meangful.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">It’s fely te what you say that a lot of tim people jt want to pipe up and have their say. This thg starts trendg, or they see other people that they follow plag about a particular article or about the particular horrible thg that somebody did, and they jt chip their two cents jt to feel like they’re volved, and sometim that sl up to somethg that’s really trmatic for the person who’s on the receivg end of . But I thk, over time, the way thgs have evolved is that people actually do unrstand this dynamic pretty well, and I only get this om people on the right. I my own se, I uld feel the dynamic. I uld feel that there are people on Twter who are lookg for opengs that they n strike through. Somebody saw the openg my tweet, threw the harpoon to , the horn went off, [HORN SOUND],, lled all the troops, and then people started swarmg, but then there’s another layer. There’s the reporters for Brebart and the Feralist and Fox News who are lookg for the ntroversi bee the fact that be a ntroversy onle is what mak a story. So the people who are creatg the ntroversy know that they’re makg a story. So there’s a kd of symbsis there, and then my own se got picked up as a story The Washgton Examer and the Feralist and Fox News, and then the top level of is if mak all the way up to ble news broadst on Fox.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. I had a le my recent piece on this that Fox News isn’t anti-ncel culture. They jt want to ntrol the ncel culture, which I thk is very much the right way to unrstand their prime time, but I want to start zoomg out on this bee I thk a lot of what we end up talkg about here is the purpose and utily of social shame. So Natalie, I ask this of you, what’s the se for and agast your view g social shame as a tool for social change?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Well, the for, the reason that people ially sort of were attracted to this, like the #MeToo movement, for example, I would say that ed social shamg often as a last rort agast someone like Harvey Weste, who has ed his posn of power to abe women for s. In suatns like that, n be very good. It n attract a problem to an jtice or to someone who is abg power. The word acuntabily has kd of lost all meang, but I thk acuntabily is really jt the left-wg word for punishment, but n be ed to punish people who seem immune to every other means of punishg and who, I suppose by most timatns, serve , but the negative is that, aga, this is punishment admistered whout any kd of legal system. It’s pure mob jtice. And I thk if you look at the history of mob jtice, ’s pretty clear that that often n lead to wch trials and thgs like that where you basilly have social rentments. People are beg spegoated. You have anger sort of directed almost arbrarily at objects on whom all this kd of built up rage is unleashed. And oftentim, the choice of target don’t make any sense.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">But takg serly the qutn of mob jtice, on the other si, ’s very hard to know what the lever is through which you might change speech norms, right? Nobody que has ntrol of that. You n’t really pass an act through Congrs. It’s not a state legislature qutn, but ’s really important to people how we’re referred to, what is reasonable to speak about. I mean, that was ntrolled an choate way, maybe not by the mob but by a pretty hegemonic polil nsens for a long time Ameri that begs to break down, and people are sort of grabbg the power they have to change . So I thk one unterargument one might make here is, well, isn’t that better than the alternative? Isn’t better than the stat quo rollg on?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I jt don’t thk ’s nstctive to talk about the overall phenomenon. In every se, you jt want to know how important is the norm that’s beg fend here, and is this person beg jtly acced of vlatg ? And maybe they have vlated this norm. Is the rponse proportnal and fair to the level of this actn? And those are the qutns we ought to be askg every sgle time, not sweepg every sgle stance of llective norm enforcement unr the umbrella of somethg malic bee ’s not. It’s really important, as you were sayg, for lots and lots of groups who are vulnerable who’ve been tradnally margalized to be able to assert their right to be talked about a certa way bee that has real material nsequenc. And so I don’t ever want to say that people shouldn’t be able to e the power that they have, and I thk this has been a good thg about some of social media. It creat leverage. The way n sort of spontaneoly summon a mob that n exert real prsure creat the kd of leverage that smaller groups didn’t ever have before or ls powerful groups didn’t have before. And so sudnly they have a mechanism that they n e that actually has a certa kd of efficy the real world, and I thk part of the plat about ncel culture is that people who are on the bs end of that jt don’t like . They don’t like the vulnerable and margalized groups havg accs to a technology that amplifi their llective force, and so they pla about , and they create a moral panic about . The overall dynamic that’s implic the technology and the way that nnects wh our kd of tribal psychology and the moral sensibily that leads to ntribute our ltle two cents to the llective actn problem, we all thk we’re always ntributg to the provisn of some sort of public good, but they uld be public bad. I thk a lot of people who are tryg to enforce important norms that are valuable, they overreact. They don’t thk about how the llective rponse is gog to lead to somethg that is way out of proportn wh the serns of the transgrsn that they’re addrsg. People don’t necsarily tend that. Most people thk that to get what they serve, and a lot of tim people agree about what people serve, but they end up over liverg bee of the nature of the technology. And so we have to renceive the norms volved whether is good to participate.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">What do you thk of that, Natalie?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I thk ’s not jt about liverg too much vigilante acuntabily. I feel like ’s also often a bad choice of target for who to foc on. There’s a se that to md of a YouTuber who a uple months ago I gus accintally liked an Instagram post om a Tmp supporter at the Capol stormg, and this is a person who is gay, has always been a leftist, has obvly no sympathy for Tmpism. She immediately, oh my gosh, I have no ia how I liked that. I wasn’t tryg to like this post. I’m so sorry, but the anger at her didn’t stop after this explanatn me out. It beme sort of this relentls drive until she had to make this like grovelg apology vio basilly apologizg for her whole history of credibly mor microaggrsn culmatg this horrible attack on margalized people that was her accintal like of an Instagram post. And I thk ’s often well-meang alli of a e, like you’re sayg, Will, is te that is motivated by some kd of benevolent or altistic sire. They want to do the work. They want to say somethg. They don’t want to be one of the whe people who is enablg vlence by remag silent the face of jtice. I thk sort of om this sire that people have where they want to distance themselv om whe supremacy, for example. And so one way to do that is to be a very loud pchfork waver when a mob emerg targetg some racist person. But oftentim, that mob targets someone who, you know, ’s somethg relatively arbrary, and you n e more damage to a person wh ls power than a person wh more power. So n feel more productive to attack ls powerful people. Although, fact, I would argue that’s not really productive.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I thk that’s a great pot, but so here’s now where I want to lay my rds on the table more this nversatn, but what you were sayg a mute ago, Will, I agree that havg bat about ncel culture as one amorpho thg is pretty els, but I also don’t thk we need to only go to the dividual stance. What I sort of want to set up here is this ia of social shame as a polil tool, and I thk ’s a eful polil tool, eful when ed ntext I like that I nsir proportnate and not one I don’t. But what I do believe is that we are ovesg as a polil tool, that we are unr-velopg other kds of polil virtu, and I thk that mak stmentally ls eful than we thk is. And so I want to ask you somethg about this your se. What I have seen happen over and over aga wh people who are on the receivg end of this is maybe they’re wed, maybe they’re not. What they are is angry. My sense of is that you are a lot angrier. I mean, you didn’t like Tmpist folks before exactly on an iologil level, but there’s, I thk, a rrect level of fury there your work now, and don’t seem to me that we have a good theory of actually persuasn around this. What happens after you shame? What happens after you attack, how to turn people to your si? Now, I don’t thk those people are tryg to turn you to their si. I thk they were jt tryg to get your slp, but I do thk this is one of the lims of , that social shame n be good for redrawg boundari the sense that n w people, but ’s pretty bad for turng them to alli, and kd of puts them to folks who are layg wa till you make a mistake. And so one of my qutns this is, how do we put more thgs the toolk? How do we not leave folks who don’t feel like they have a lot of power over the social stcture so reliant on shamg dynamics that they end up creatg more enemi than they create terms of iends? Do that feel fair to you?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. I mean, you’re gog to get somethg which I thk about a lot a more general ntext. It’s about kd of the a possible nature of a severely polarized public. It seems like persuasn is jt impossible. It don’t really matter what I say to somebody who’s a dyed the wool advote of the January 6th surrectn, right? There’s not a lot you n say. So the fact that people are so ristant to any kd of feedback om people who aren’t a member of their tribe kd of shifts people to focg on their own group like those are the only people you n talk to, and sometim that leads to weird dynamics where then you end up wh posnal arms rac to see who’s the most virtuo member of your own group, but I thk that’s partly a nsequence of the fact that ’s jt pletely futile to talk to the other si.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. You’re right on that. I chose my example about that. Let me try to sharpen this once. A lot of the bat around how we talk about each other onle, people talk about terms of nyg or seeg other’s humany. I don’t thk we n persua people, but I do thk that there are better and worse ways to get people to be sympathetic to the ia that you are a person wh stggl and that your stggl are meangful. One of my ncerns is that we somehow have to balance those agast each other, the utily of shamg wh also the utily not of persuasn but of the sense that I am a person who should be allowed to live and let live. And I worry that we are worse at that other piece of now and that while that would not lead to like an end to polil nflict, ’s an important part of tryg to move people around. A lot of the thgs people want to get done polil life are not that you need to give somethg up, but you jt need to unrstand that I am here enough to let my claims be heard, too and that the are bad tactics for that.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I thk that’s part a product of polarizatn, that people have gotten worse at g any kd of method beyond shamg bee if you get ed to a suatn where not only is persuasn kd of futile but liberatn and argumentatn self sentially be futile, then you sort of get the ia that every polil argument is a battle a total war, right, which is, I thk, when you have liberals or leftists vers Tmp supporters, more or ls is a total war. But then that kd of technique, that approach to polil disagreement gets applied to the ternal nflicts as well until that you’re sayg — lerally, you basilly have people sayg someone who disagre wh a very mor pot of whatever polil movement you’re a part of, that person is the enemy, and that person needs to be shamed and exiled and held acuntable bee people have sort of lost the pacy or the sense that ’s ever worth to engage a way that’s not jt bative.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I agree wh that pletely. When I thk about myself, I’ve been wrg a lot lately on my Substack about my own changg views about thgs like racism and sexism. I’m a whe guy who grew up Iowa, the son of a p a very nservative place, and I grew up wh pretty standard nservative views, and I had all of the psychologil equipment that you need to filter out all of the evince that the are problems that I ought to be takg serly. And I’m actually a ltle b ashamed of how long took for that rmatn to perate, but what you need for to perate isn’t people shamg you exactly. You need people who you already tst to actually jt expla thgs to you. So when I’m talkg about the thgs, I see myself as very specifilly not tryg to talk to liberals or nservativ but basilly tryg to talk to younger whe guys who me om siar plac who I know I get credibily om jt bee of my superficial inty. So that’s why persuasn is hard bee people won’t tst you if you’re not enough like them, but I know that there are lots of people the same posn that I am, and I know that jt beg like, don’t be a racist, Bobby, isn’t gog to work. You have to very refully expla some facts about history like why may not be clear to you how the experience that somebody else is havg is so much different om yours and that they’re not makg a mistake when they’re tellg you that is. And so I thk that do take a certa kd of generosy and tolerance, and you have to let people, pecially younger people, or not even pecially younger people, might be the se that your dad is a ltle b benighted about some of the issu, and you want to be able to talk about , right? You won’t be able to make any progrs if you n’t talk about , but he’s not gog to want to talk about if the send he slips up and screws up the right way to talk about trans people or somethg like that that you’re jt like, dad. You’re bad. No. You jt have to very gently expla why that’s not the way people talk about thgs. You have to jt want to help, and a lot of tim I jt don’t thk that we want to help enough, that we want to posture, we want to get cred for beg virtuo members of our tribe. And I mean, I feel that all the time. I mean, I do want to be seen as a virtuo member of my tribe. I totally do, but that’s not the bt motivatn most of the time.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I like that pot about wantg to help, and one of the thgs that gets at, and I thk that whole answer gets at, is we have a weak language for the thgs that are beneath persuasn on the sle of polil nversatn out. And particular, I thk a lot of change happens first through what I would ll humanisatn which leads, Will, as you were sayg, to tolerance, to generosy. I still thk the most remarkable turnaround polil opn of my lifetime was around gay marriage which went om, ‘04, Republins are puttg gay marriage ballot iativ to the stat to try to w the ‘04 by turng up Christian nservativ. And not that long after, the entire valence of that issue flips, right? I remember verg the bat Congrs about whether or not there’d be a nstutnal amendment agast gay marriage jt a uple of years later. That is unthkable. And don’t happen, as I unrstand — I mean, happens partially through nontatn and partially through persuasn, but first happens through humanisatn, right? And like there’s a lot of work done the culture around that. It out of Hollywood and other plac, a lot of work done ep nvassg around that. And aga, that’s not to take away om more aggrsive polil tactics, too, but that there is a polil value jt gettg people to see you as a person wh a valid experience and real pots. And Natalie, there’s somethg I thk you do wonrfully your vios which often — I thk about the one on J.K. Rowlg particular here — often jt tryg to expla people to each other. Don’t seem to be so much tryg to nvce them to move to one si or the other but jt expla them to each other so that they seem valid to each other. What do you thk the value is of that? Why did you velop that style?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Well, I thk YouTube as a platform is extremely valuable as a rource for humanizg people. There’s this dynamic that people have scribed now as a para-social relatnship where you have this kd of one-sid, almost like an illn of a iendship wh a person whose ntent you nsume. I thk ’s pecially strong on YouTube bee there’s somethg so timate about watchg someone’s vios for hours. It’s like they’re talkg directly to you. You kd of have the illn that you’re havg a nversatn wh someone. And sce I am trans myself, I’m this posn where if people the dience kd of get to know me, ’s kd of the equivalent of them havg a trans iend terms of the humanizg effect of that. Gay marriage is often the back of my head as an example where was like, that really worked. That really happened. It n be done. So when feels like really — we’re a kd of hopels state right now wh trans issu where you have Republins troducg anti-trans legislatn jt bee ’s so popular. I’m hopg that that’s startg to change, and YouTube is eful for that. I thk that people tend to believe thgs for emotnal reasons a lot of the time, and I thk that if you n sort of show a person that you are a human beg, that has a bigger effect that any logil argument you n make. [MUSIC PLAYING]</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">[MUSIC PLAYING]</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Somethg that I e back to aga and aga this bate is the sendary bate over safe spac where the right is superficially agast safe spac but is nstantly askg for them, and the left is superficially for safe spac but is nstantly stroyg them, and safety strik me as both one of the most important and mised words here bee I do thk a certa amount of safety is necsary for the nversatns, for attu change, for humanisatn. And also, ’s very hard to fd, and has self bee a polarized ncept. Do we jt need to rcue to some gree or re-image the ia of safe spac?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. I mean, safe spac are good, but I thk part of what we need to rcue is an ia of ntext. Unlike Natalie, I n’t be anybody’s iend. I n’t be anybody’s Black iend. I’m a middle-aged whe guy, which is the most over-reprented person and most privileged set of people our culture, but that giv me a kd of thory. That’s the nature of the privilege, and pecially wh somewhat younger whe guys. And so that’s what I see my role as is those are the people who are gog to listen to me. I see Jordan Peterson, some ways, as the exemplar here. Why is this like dorky psychology profsor om Ontar a substute dad for lns of whe guys? It’s bee they need somebody to help expla thgs to them, and I thk that that is a pletely — I mean, ’s jt a human need. It’s jt a basic thg, and people are gog to listen to people that they tst, and who we tst is based on our inty. But that means if I’m gog to talk to slightly benighted younger whe guys or olr whe guys, I’m gog to have to talk to them terms that they unrstand, but that means that I’m gog to have to say thgs to them a way that a progrsive room I’d get trouble for. If I’m gog to actually be able to make progrs wh other whe dus, that space has to be safe for , and part of that means is that progrsive people unrstand what’s gog on there and don’t tervene to cricize how you’re talkg to the people that you’re actually tryg to pull their directn bee won’t help, the same way ’s not gog to help if I go tell Black Liv Matter activists, you know, your tactics are backfirg. Here’s how you really ought to talk about race. That’s not nstctive, but ’s not nstctive the other way, eher. And so you have to kd of unrstand how persuasn, how tst is based inty this a-ratnal way that is jt a basic human thg, give people some slack when they’re talkg to their own mographic their own space. Otherwise, jt mak those nversatns impossible.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">The young whe men you want to nvce, do you have to listen to them, too?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Of urse.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I’m askg is for a reason. I feel like there’s often this nversatn about how to persua, but part of persuadg people is they need to feel like they’re beg given the chance the nversatn, too, which is often a virtue we’re not that good at.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. There’s kd of two sis to humanisatn. One is that if you’re tryg to persua someone, helps if you n get them to see you as a human beg, but another is that helps if you n talk to the person you’re tryg to persua, regnizg their humany. So that’s somethg that I try to do, for example, wh the vio on J.K. Rowlg. I’m not lerally tryg to persua her, but I’m tryg to persua people who agree wh her or people who read what she said and found somethg pellg about. It was very, very clear wh the J.K. Rowlg’s wrgs about trans people that this is all kd of g om a place of pa for her, and her negative reactn om trans people is almost a cry for help. The say that she published lled “TERF Wars,” she talked about her past wh beg sexually abed by men, and she talked about all the difficult experienc that she had never sort of gotten out before. And ’s like, is this even about trans people, or is this about J.K. Rowlg never really havg had a chance to exprs , and then people have bee this spegoat? I uld have jt mocked her, right, ma fun of this say and how stupid was, but that to me is the height of unter productivy bee ’s not regnizg that the person that you’re talkg to is, their own kd of way, a sufferg human beg, and people are more cled to listen if they feel that they’re beg heard. So I ma a vio a few years ago lled “Are Traps Gay,” which is like an old 4chan meme that referenc attractn to trans and their attractn to cross-drsers, and ’s a kd of a jokey-soundg topic, but ’s a ser issue. Safety for trans women is that when, specifilly straight men, view trans women as a kd of like lure to homosexualy. It triggers this tense fensivens about their masculy, about their sexualy, and then trans women end up beg the victims of that fensivens, but simply lecturg people, oh, ’s transphobic to say the word trap. It’s transphobic to not be attracted to trans — That lerally is exactly the most unterproductive possible way you uld approach that nversatn. So a lot of trans people got super mad at me for llg the vio “Are Traps Gay,” but I’m like, look, this vios is not for you. It’s for the people who are scerely askg that qutn and jokg about . The fact that they’re jokg about to me tells me that they’re thkg about . People joke about thgs they have anxieti about.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">This is one of the thgs I fd very difficult wh jt onle disurse generally. I see wh the metaphor of takg somebody asi. One thg you want to do around somebody who has done somethg wrong, and maybe there’s a really bad reactn, but then you want somebody to take them asi a quieter place and be like, hey, look, let’s talk through what jt happened here and what there is to learn about . That’s will happen, ially, to a kid a school, or that’s what happens when your iend do somethg stupid, but ’s very hard to take people asi onle bee we’re always — even when we’re dog , right, that J.K. Rowlg vio, which is some ways specifilly addrsed, is also there for everyone else. And so there’s this really difficult tensn between performative and persuasive munitn where ’s like, when you’re performg for a very, very wi dience, you need to make sure ’s fallg wh all the different dienc’ OK or at least well enough for at least well enough wh on who n hurt you. But when you’re tryg to persua somebody who’s maybe not your normal dience, you need to adopt very different tonaly. You need to approach a different way, and then that n get people mad at you. I’m not sure there’s an answer to this. It might jt speak to some of the difficulti of the platforms the ter, but seems like a problem, and maybe one of the virtu we need to velop a ltle b more onle is simply regnizg that this is a mo of disurse we want to enurage not disurage.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. I like that metaphor of takg someone asi, and that’s exactly what you’re sort of tryg to do. I thk my vios, they are kd of a sort of public performance of the act of takg someone asi which, of urse, is gog to e some tensn among the progrsive base who feels like, why are you dog this? Why are you makg the jok? Why are you not immediately g out of the gate wh the anger and shamg and rage? Why are you seemg to view people’s opns as acceptable for a moment. And ’s like, well, bee I’m meetg people where they’re at. If I e out of the gate wh anger and shame and jt rtrictivens, who’s that for? Maybe ’ll exce the base like a stump speech do, but that’s not really the pot of makg a vio, my opn. So I like YouTube, if you uldn’t tell. I thk ’s a good platform for that. I thk that Twter is the worst platform for all of the kds of thgs, and so I thk that the way the platforms are signed mak a big difference when to what kds of nversatn you’re even able to have.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I want to pick up on that ia about Twter, Will, bee you and I both spend some time there. And I thk is simply te that Twter is the most fluential polil platform, certaly among polil el, and is the worst for havg a nversatn. And I go back and forth on what to do about this. Sometim I stop tweetg. Sometim I feel like that’s ridiculo. You have to be where the fluence is, but jt seems like a bad thg for a disurse. It’s almost a pretty wily acknowledged fact that the central, polil munitn platform like the one that prints e most aggrsively and journalists e most tensely is the one that has the most toxic and dysfunctnal nversatnal dynamics.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Part of the problem wh Twter is that, for the most part, jt puts the entire world to a sgle room that has no walls. So you n’t take somebody asi on Twter. Whatever you’re sayg to them, you’re sayg ont of lns and lns of people. A few tim when I’ve been mobbed on Twter, I have locked my acunt so that only people who follow me n read my tweets. And my experience changed fundamentally. It was lightful bee I follow jt tons of amics that I’m terted, polil scientists, other journalists, and I had wonrful exchang when I had blocked the rt of the world, right? It’s like I put up a wall, and my follows are people wh whom I have some kd of affy. They’re not all the same kd of person, but they’re people that I don’t fd obnox and learn thgs om, and jt even that ltle change fundamentally chang the experience. And I thk that’s part of the fear about ncellatn, pecially on Twter, is that everybody is watchg everybody. And so that jt mak you feel surveilled. It’s like this real world stantiatn of the super ego, and you jt feel kd of opprsed by . And the prence of that loomg social nscns over you that is divid and acrimon generat a certa kd of performative behavr, and do — when you start puttg those terms, jt rais the qutn, why are you there at all? But if you are a journalist, really is the bt way to keep up wh everythg that everybody else is dog. It’s dispensable at one level, but at another level, ’s jt totally dystopian, and I thk one of the reasons why people have this sense of paranoia and panic is that this thg is signed almost — if you were tryg to sign somethg to generate nstant social anxiety, would look a lot like that.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I watch Jack Dorsey sometim when he giv his speech and ttimoni. One of the thgs about him to me is that I thk he is sort of agony over this a way the others aren’t. The CEO of YouTube, Mark Zuckerberg, when I watch them, they do not seem very upset about their platforms. There are problems. They’re gettg flak. They’re tryg to al wh , and Jack Dorsey always seems to me like he’s really upset about the cricisms, and he knows they’re partially right, and he don’t really know what to do wh them bee they’re baked to the fundamental stcture of the thg he created. But your scriptn that, Will, I thk is pretty important, people want to say, well, ’s dystopic. It n’t be dispensable, but is. It’s both, certaly the polil realm. You’re jt missg a lot of what is actually drivg polics if you’re not there, but then we’re drivg polics to a ltle b of a different or worse place. Has gog through what you’ve gone through that space changed how you try to operate , changed how you look at , or led you to try to velop virtu or approach to you didn’t have before?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">It has fely ma me more keenly gnizant of the danger that is herent , that you n tell a cuttg joke and your life for a ltle while. That’s jt a bizarre thg about this piece of technology. So I’m much more aware of that. At the same time, when I was the vice print for rearch at the Niskanen Center, I was much more rtraed bee I was reprentg my stutn. And so I’ve had a sense of liberatn where now that I don’t answer to anybody but myself, I’m immune to that set of nsequenc. Nobody n get me fired if I n’t be fired. It’s actually created a sort of boldns and a sense of liberatn that I’m sure isn’t nstctive, but I’ve dulged bee feels good to be ee. We all feel domated by employment bee we have to do thgs on other people’s terms, and so ’s jt an credible relief at one level to jt not have to answer to anybody, but is nice to make money om havg a job. So there are fely tra-offs.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">How about you, Natalie?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Well, ’s changed the way I e Twter. That’s for sure. I mean, I’ve tried to give up but found that is, as you say, somewhat dispensable. You’re so out of the loop if you’re not on that’s ’s difficult to qu. If this is your job, particular, if you need to know what people are sayg and you need to keep tabs on polics, you kd of need to be lookg at Twter, but I try not to tweet opns. I try to keep fairly light bee I know that, like Will said, ’s sry. Once you realize that you are one tweet away om g your life for a while at any given moment, that’s sry. You’re always holdg the nuclear s. It’s kd of terrifyg. So yeah, fely has changed the way I e Twter, and ’s also maybe changed the way I thk about some of the ncepts volved like acuntabily, mob jtice, what means to hold someone acuntable. The are kd of qutns that I feel like have been raised for me by watchg shame mobs do thgs that I thk are not good.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I wanted to add that one of the thgs that ’s fely affected my own behavr is I am much more wary of dog anythg that is like participatg one of the surg of angry energy bee I feel the urge, what I was talkg about before, of jt wantg to be a reliable partner the provisn of a llective good, right? I want to pch . But one, I know that my ntributn has no perceptible effect on anythg. And two, I know that if everybody is thkg I have to pch my two cents, that somebody is gog to get like screwed over. And so I’ve basilly stopped pilg on that kd of way unls I thk ’s really, really, really mered. I’ve jt much more judic about whether or not to participate those thgs. About dispensabily of the platform, right, I haven’t been able to really get off of bee the first thg I did once I lost my job is palize on the sympathy by startg a Substack, which worked. I mean, I got a bunch of subscriptns, like enough to be kd of a job, but Substack is jt pletely parasic on Twter. Like, the reason I was able to get several hundred subscribers right away is bee I have a pretty good Twter followg. And the only way I get people to my Substack and then to subscribe is by promotg thgs on Twter. I wouldn’t have had this optn whout the platform that got me fired. There’s somethg tratg about that bee, at one level, I was like, I should get the hell off of this thg. It’s st me nothg but grief, but ’s been the only way that I was able to jt get back on my feet almost immediately.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I’ve also experienced that kd of — there’s a kd of weird benef that wh beg the target of one of the mobs which is that I gus every actn has an oppose reactn, and also will generate a lot of sympathy for you once people see what’s happened. I had the biggt jump Patreon support ever after I upload the vio about ncellg bee people felt bad for me. So there’s a kd of advantage that that I see a lot of. I mean, some people make entire reers of beg nceled. That’s their thg. I gus that’s probably an creasg number of people, and I sort of have to keep an eye on myself bee this be one of the ma thgs that I end up talkg about, and ’s like, well, I don’t want to jt be a ncelled person, but there’s such an appete for talkg about self bee s own topic.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Y, and here we are. [MUSIC PLAYING]</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">[MUSIC PLAYING]</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">One of my worri all this is that if you’re a young activist, young polil person g up and you primarily spend your time followg polics on social media, you jt really see a lot of this one play n over and over and over and over aga, but do have a real effect I jt worry ’s over-velopg one kd of polil actn, and we’re unr-velopg others. So if you were talkg to someone who’s 19 or 20 and wants to be effective polics and wants to be persuasive or eful , what would you tell them to do? I don’t mean here terms of lecturg. I mean here terms of beg a polil munitor, and I’ll start wh you, Natalie.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Well, I thk you have to create some kd of muny that’s not on Twter and where ’s possible to engage actual liberatn about topics bee, obvly, that nnot happen on Twter bee if you misspeak slightly, that gets quote tweeted. It be a sndal. So we need to create a kd of safe space, basilly, for liberatn bee I thk that — we were talkg earlier about people wantg to believe certa thgs bee they want to check every box the progrsive package, for example. I thk that’s a very superficial reason to support any kd of claim, and the superficialy seems a ltle b dangero to me bee people who only sort of superficially unrstand their own polil beliefs are gog to be more sceptible to abandong those beliefs at the first sign of ntradictn or the first opposn qutng, right? It worri me, for example, if people believe trans women are women bee that’s the slogan on Twter that the smart and nice people say. If you’re jt sayg for that reason, that’s very superficial. It’s very weak, and ’s not the rult of havg gone through a procs of actually havg thought through this. So that worri me a ltle b. I feel like produc superficial alli. It produc a lot of people who sort of performative say one thg and then behd closed doors they’re like, do we really believe this? You know what I mean? A lot of whisperg around. I mean, I thk anyone I know who’s volved mentary and journalism and polics will behd the scen DMs or whatever, private nversatn, adm like, oh, yeah. There’s a lot of stuff that I don’t agree wh, but I’m too aaid to say so. Well, that’s bad for a uple of reasons. One is that ’s bad that people are sort of feelg the need to sort of lie about their beliefs. And the other bad thg is that if people have the bad beliefs, whatever we ci those are, there’s kd of no real mechanism effect for to rrect them bee if they feel too aaid to exprs their bad take the first place, then there’s no nversatn that’s ever had about . So I gus, to me, that that’s what I would tell young people is that this is not the kd of ratnal liberatn that, supposedly, the history of liberalism has said is necsary to mocracy, and that if we’re gog to sort of be functnal polil cizens, we need to have alternative spac where a different kd of disurse n go on.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">You like YouTube, but I thk, obvly, YouTube ments aren’t a place for this. Is there a place where you thk the liberatn happens well onle?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I thk the platforms is that work as a kd of fom tend to be better, so Redd beg the biggt example. I’ve noticed that when some is beg ncelled on Twter, there’s no way to h the brak on that bee ’s jt quote tweetg and quote tweetg and mors beg quote tweeted, and there’s no way to kd of stop that momentum. Whereas on a fom se like Redd, someone will post to a subredd claimg, oh, person X did terrible bad thg Y. And then beneath that, though, people n say, well, hold on a mute, n you show the evince for this? They brg that up, and ’s like, well, that don’t exactly look like what you were sayg. There’s a way to pump the brak, right? There’s a way to kd of slow down the snowballg of the rage the mob bee there’s an opportuny to have a very visible discsn a way that on Twter, that tends to get lost.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">And Will, how about you? What would your advice be?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">The first thg I would tell somebody is to thk hard about what your parative advantage is. If you want to persua, pick your targets. Who your life is open to , and talk to them a sympathetic way that’s gog to brg them your directn. But mostly, I would tell people not to foc on persuasn, per se. I mean, I thk this is part of the problem of the platforms is giv people the illn of every man a pund, but I don’t thk that’s actually very nstctive. So you should thk about where your effort is bt spent, and I thk, for most people, that’s not tryg to persua other people. It’s actually volunteerg. It’s gettg out to the world and dog work that jt materially helps other people’s prospects, and that might be helpg wh polil mpaigns, maybe workg for a chary that helps a group of people that you re about, but you’re more likely to actually make a posive difference as an agent the world who is havg an effect on the world. You’re gog to do more by jt steppg away om your laptop and puttg some time at the soup kchen.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I’ll add one thg to that, which go back to our earlier nversatn about polarizatn and persuasn. One reason I always tell people to get volved lolly is that bee of natnal polarizatn, if you’re volved primarily natnal polics, the gigantic differenc you have wh the other si will always be the most salient to you, and will really, really overwhelm the differenc you have wh your own si. Get volved lol polics where people are more likely, given the geographic polarizatn that you’ve wrten about a ton, Will, where people are more likely to share a lot more wh you iologilly and other ntexts. And all of a sudn, the differenc you have wh people not like you are gog to bee a lot more salient, and you learn a lot about the mute ways which you may disagree wh other liberals or nservativ or see thgs a ltle b differently. It’s plitg, or how people who you thk see thgs like you don’t. People brg a lot of very particularistic experience to lol polics, and I always tell people to try to do more lol polics. All right. Let’s wrap this up. We always end wh book remendatns. So I’ll ask you both jt for one so you don’t have to do for too long, but ’s related to this topic, topics of disurse of liberatn, of shamg, whatever might be. And Will, why don’t I start wh you?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Well, one of the books that’s been really helpful to me is a book by a logician, Raymond Smullyan It’s not a new book. It’s lled “The Tao Is Silent,” and ’s this really clever Jewish New York logician, who was a big al the 1970s, dog his explanatn of Taoism, and ’s a lightful book bee ’s an credibly logil person scribg how somethg that n’t be ptured logic, how that n help you. And ’s circuo and tratg, and somehow he gets to somethg that I really have taken a lot of nsolatn .</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I’m not sure I’ve ever been more sold by a book remendatn on the show than that one. I’m gog to download that immediately. Natalie, how about you?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I would remend a book lled “Conflict Is Not Abe,” and the subtle is overstatg harm, muny rponsibily, and the duty of repair by Sarah Schulman. I got the d book of when I was at the height of beg nceled over the Buck Angel cint, and I remember jt walkg around Baltimore listeng earbuds wh a hoodie over my face so I uldn’t be regnized, and my blood prsure jt lowered as I listened to this book bee ’s basilly about the way that all kds of suatns, rangg om ternatnal polics to romantic relatnships, this sort of exaggeratn of harm and wrongdog is ed as a pretext for bullyg, for celty, for abivens, and really helps me kd of put to perspective all the rage that was g at me. Why the people so mad at me? Where is this g om? To thk about that sort of helps me not feel so angry about , to unrstand that people are sort of g om this posn of hurt. They’re lashg out for reasons that are sort of not entirely my flt, and enabl me to kd of have a ltle more emotnal sympathy for the people who were g me so much anguish, and that lsens the anguish bee I was able to sort of I gus — I don’t know, even the people dog the unselg also are humans. So humanize everyone, cludg most people, and that this book kd of helped me do that.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">In a way, that’s a nice follow up to Will’s bee that’s actually a very Taoist approach to take on and a very non-dualistic way of absorbg . Will Wilkson, Natalie Wynn. Thank you very much.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Thank you.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Thanks, Ezra. [MUSIC PLAYING]</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">“The Ezra Kle Show” is a productn of New York Tim Opn. It is produced by Roge Karma and Jeff Geld, fact-checked by Michelle Harris, origal mic by Isaac Jon, and mixg by Jeff Geld. [MUSIC PLAYING]</p></dd></dl></div></div></div></div><div style="posn:absolute;width:0;height:0;visibily:hidn;display:none"></div><hear class="css-1vwfk9f" data-breakpot=""><div style="width:100%" data-ttid="flt-layout"><div style="background-image:url()" class="css-197zlhc e1llfg0"><div class="css-1hmsypo e1llfg2"><div class="css-131hid3 e1llfg3"><div class="css-1uhi299 e1llfg1"></div><div class="css-1tloyb6"><div class="css-ah35qo ehra6vc0"><a href=" class="css-2ne0py"><span class="css-1f76qa2"><img alt="The Ezra Kle Show logo" src="><span>The Ezra Kle Show</span></span></a></div></div><div class="css-1r0dpua e1llfg4"><div class="css-wfiq9c edye5kn0"><div><h1 class="css-15oz550 edye5kn2">Shame, Safety and Movg Beyond Cancel Culture</h1><h2 class="css-syyj5g edye5kn3">When is ncellatn eful? 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