Empathy is not endorsement Dylan Marron
Hi.
I’ve received hate online.
A lot of it.
And it comes
with the territory of my work.
I’m a digital creator,
I make things specifically
for the internet.
Like, a few years ago, I made
a video series called “Every Single Word”
where I edited down popular films
to only the words
spoken by people of color,
as a way to empirically and accessibly
talk about the issue of representation
in Hollywood.
Then, later, as transphobic bathroom bill
started gaining media attention
around the United States,
I hosted and produced an interview series
called “Sitting in Bathrooms
with Trans People”
where I did exactly that.
(Laughter)
And then –
Sure, I’ll take applause.
(Applause)
Thank you.
And then, are you familiar
with those unboxing videos on YouTube
where YouTubers open up
the latest electronic gadgets?
Great, so I satirized those
in a weekly series,
where instead I unboxed
intangible ideologies
like police brutality, masculinity
and the mistreatment of Native Americans.
(Laughter)
My work –
Thanks.
One person applauding, God bless.
(Laughter)
Mom, hi.
(Laughter)
So, my work became popular.
Very popular.
I got millions of views,
a ton of great press
and a slew of new followers.
But the flip side of success
on the internet
is internet hate.
I was called everything.
From “beta” to “snowflake”
and, of course, the ever-popular “cuck.”
Don’t worry, I will break
these terms down for you.
(Laughter)
So, “beta,” for those of you unfamiliar,
is shorthand online lingo for “beta male.”
But let’s be real, I wear pearl earrings
and my fashion aesthetic
is rich-white-woman-running-errands,
so I’m not angling to be an alpha.
(Applause)
Doesn’t totally work.
(Laughter)
Now, “snowflake” is a put-down
for people who are sensitive
and believe themselves to be unique,
and I’m a millennial
and an only child, so, duh!
(Laughter)
But my favorite, favorite,
favorite is “cuck.”
It’s a slur, short for “cuckold,”
for men who have been
cheated on by their wives.
But friends, I am so gay,
that if I had a wife, I would
encourage her to cheat on me.
(Laughter)
Thank you.
Let’s take a look at some
of this negativity in action.
Sometimes it’s direct.
Like Marcos, who wrote,
“You’re everything I hate
in a human being.”
Thank you, Marcos.
Others are more concise.
Like Donovan, who wrote,
“gaywad fagggggg.”
Now, I do need to point out,
Donovan is not wrong, OK?
In fact, he’s right on both counts,
so credit where credit is due.
Thank you, Donovan.
Others write to me with questions,
like Brian, who asked,
“Were you born a bitch or did you
just learn to be one over time?”
But my favorite thing about this
is that once Brian was done typing,
his finger must have slipped
because then he sent me
the thumbs-up emoji.
(Laughter)
So, babe, thumbs up to you, too.
(Laughter)
It’s fun to talk about these messages now.
Right?
And it’s cathartic to laugh at them.
But I can tell you that it really
does not feel good to receive them.
At first, I would screenshot
their comments
and make fun of their typos,
but this soon felt elitist
and ultimately unhelpful.
So over time, I developed
an unexpected coping mechanism.
Because most of these messages I received
were through social media,
I could often click on the profile picture
of the person who sent them
and learn everything about them.
I could see pictures they were tagged in,
posts they’d written, memes they’d shared,
and somehow, seeing that it was
a human on the other side of the screen
made me feel a little better.
Not to justify what they wrote, right?
But just to provide context.
Still, that didn’t feel like enough.
So, I called some of them –
only the ones I felt safe talking to –
with a simple opening question:
“Why did you write that?”
The first person I spoke to was Josh.
He had written to tell me
that I was a moron,
I was a reason this country
was dividing itself,
and he added at the end
that being gay was a sin.
I was so nervous
for our first conversation.
This wasn’t a comments section.
So I couldn’t use tools
like muting or blocking.
Of course, I guess,
I could have hung up on him.
But I didn’t want to.
Because I liked talking to him.
Because I liked him.
Here’s a clip of one of our conversations.
(Audio) Dylan Marron: Josh, you said
you’re about to graduate
high school, right?
Josh: Mmm-hmm.
DM: How is high school for you?
Josh: Am I allowed to use
the H-E-double-hockey-stick word?
DM: Oh, yeah. You’re allowed to.
Josh: It was hell.
DM: Really?
Josh: And it’s still hell right now,
even though it’s only two weeks left.
I’m a little bit bigger –
I don’t like to use the word “fat,”
but I am a little bit bigger
than a lot of my classmates
and they seem to judge me
before they even got to know me.
DM: That’s awful.
I mean, I also just want
to let you know, Josh,
I was bullied in high school, too.
So did our common ground
of being bullied in high school
erase what he wrote me?
No.
And did our single phone conversation
radically heal a politically
divided country
and cure systemic injustice?
No, absolutely not, right?
But did our conversation
humanize us to each other
more than profile pictures
and posts ever could?
Absolutely.
I didn’t stop there.
Because some of the hate I received
was from “my side.”
So when Matthew,
a queer liberal artist like me
publicly wrote that I represented
some of the worst aspects of liberalism,
I wanted to ask him this.
DM: You tagged me in this post.
Did you want me to see it?
Matthew (Laughing): I honestly
didn’t think that you would.
DM: Have you ever been publicly dragged?
Matthew: I have been.
And I just said, “No, I don’t care.”
DM: And did you not care?
Matthew: But it was hard.
DM: Did you not care?
Matthew: Oh, I cared, yes.
DM: At the end of these conversations,
there’s often a moment of reflection.
A reconsideration.
And that’s exactly what happened
at the end of my call
with a guy named Doug
who had written that I was
a talentless propaganda hack.
(Audio) Did the conversation
we just had –
does it, like, make you feel differently
about how you write online?
Doug: Yeah! You know,
when I said this to you,
when I said you were a “talentless hack,”
I had never conversed
with you in my life, really.
I didn’t really know anything
really about you.
And I think that a lot of times,
that’s what the comment
sections really are,
it’s really a way to get
your anger at the world out
on random profiles
of strangers, pretty much.
DM (Laughing): Yeah, right.
Doug: But it definitely
has made me rethink
the way that I interact
with people online.
DM: So I’ve collected these
conversations and many others
for my podcast “Conversations
with People Who Hate Me.”
(Laughter)
Before I started this project,
I thought that the real way
to bring about change
was to shut down opposing viewpoints
through epically worded
video essays and comments and posts,
but I soon learned
those were only cheered on
by the people who already agreed with me.
Sometimes – bless you.
Sometimes, the most subversive
thing you could do –
yeah, clap for him.
(Laughter)
Sometimes, the most subversive
thing you could do
was to actually speak
with the people you disagreed with,
and not simply at them.
Now in every one of my calls,
I always ask my guests
to tell me about themselves.
And it’s their answer to this question
that allows me to empathize with them.
And empathy, it turns out,
is a key ingredient in getting
these conversations off the ground,
but it can feel very vulnerable
to be empathizing with someone
you profoundly disagree with.
So I established
a helpful mantra for myself.
Empathy is not endorsement.
Empathizing with someone
you profoundly disagree with
does not suddenly compromise
your own deeply held beliefs
and endorse theirs.
Empathizing with someone who, for example,
believes that being gay is a sin
doesn’t mean that I’m suddenly
going to drop everything,
pack my bags and grab
my one-way ticket to hell, right?
It just means that I’m acknowledging
the humanity of someone who was raised
to think very differently from me.
I also want to be super clear
about something.
This is not a prescription for activism.
I understand that
some people don’t feel safe
talking to their detractors
and others feel so marginalized
that they justifiably don’t feel
that they have any empathy to give.
I totally get that.
This is just what I feel
well-suited to do.
You know, I’ve reached out
to a lot of people for this podcast.
And some have politely declined,
others have read my message
and ignored it,
some have blocked me automatically
when I sent the invitation
and one guy actually agreed to do it
and then, five minutes into the call,
hung up on me.
I’m also aware that this talk
will appear on the internet.
And with the internet comes
comment sections,
and with comment sections
inevitably comes hate.
So as you are watching this talk,
you can feel free to call me
whatever you’d like.
You can call me a “gaywad,”
a “snowflake,” a “cuck,” a “beta,”
or “everything wrong with liberalism.”
But just know that if you do,
I may ask you to talk.
And if you refuse
or block me automatically
or agree and hang up on me,
then maybe, babe, the snowflake is you.
Thank you so much.
(Applause)
(Cheering)
(Applause)