Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - The Dislike Club (finale/ABC version)

Episode Date: May 12, 2015

In this program (which originally aired on the ABC last December) your host makes his final attempt to build the ultimate anti-social-media-social-platform. Things continue to decline: the phone in the hand becomes the phone on a stick in the hand. And we meet a controversial blogger who overnight becomes one of the internet’s most disliked people. Plus, of course the real dislike club. Thanks to our sponsor http://www.parachutehome.com/theory **** the DISLIKE CLUB Finale was commissioned by RADIOTONIC from the ABC’s Creative Audio Unit. For best enjoyment listen to the whole six part series, but this installment stands on its own  

You are listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. At Radiotopia, we now have a select group of amazing supporters that help us make all our shows possible. If you would like to have your company or product sponsor this podcast, then get in touch. Drop a line to sponsor at radiotopia.fm. Thanks. episode. Why is there something called influencer voice? What's the deal with the TikTok shop? What is posting disease and do you have it? Why can it be so scary and yet feel so great to block someone on social media? The Neverpost team wonders why the internet and the world because of the internet is the way it is. They talk to artists, lawyers, linguists, content creators, sociologists, historians, and more about our current tech and media moment. From PRX's Radiotopia, Never Post, a podcast for and about the Internet.

Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. During the Ming Dynasty, every winter solstice, the emperor would travel to the temple of heaven and make a sacrifice. It was believed that the smoke from the burning calf would reach the heavens. Ceremonial scrolls were also burned on the altar, but only after they were read by an orator. The orator would stand on the heaven heart stone at the center of the temple. The marble walls surrounding the heaven heart stone would amplify the orator's voice so that it too would reach the heavens. This past summer, I traveled to the temple of heaven. But just as I was about to mount the heaven heart stone and send my voice to the heavens, I was rudely shoved aside by what I

thought was a blind tourist with a cane, but there was a cell phone attached to his stick. Then this man jumped onto the Heaven Heart Stone, ripped off his sunglasses, brandished his stick at the sky, and took a selfie. I could hear the shutter clicking away as he marched off with his stick outstretched in front of him. I wonder if I'm in any of his photos. I wonder if his camera was able to pick up the expression on my face. The horror. The contempt. The revulsion. The wonder. My name is Jacqueline Verdier. I'm the co-founder of Selfie on a Stick and with my partner Dominic Susansky. We were in Hong Kong together and I saw these people with this long pole and a cell phone

on the end of it taking pictures of themselves. And I was like, oh, that's really funny. Where do I get one? I need to have that. So I just went from laughing at them to just immediately needing to have this thing. And we see a lot of that happen, you know, as we're out here selling them. People will walk by and they'll smirk or they'll laugh. And then two seconds later, they're back asking, how does it work? And we're asking, what color would they like? So it's funny. It's a really funny transition, a fast transition from laughing at it to needing it.

Before I carried a selfie stick, I used to walk around, looking at the sky. Actually, I would look at everything. The sky, the earth, the cracks in the sidewalk, the plastic bags hanging from the trees, parked cars, birds, and homemade advertisements stapled or taped to telephone poles. Back then, it was easy to get distracted, whereas today, today I walk around with an intensity of focus that I never knew I was capable of. I walk around focused solely on the screen attached to the stick in my hand.

This morning, I crashed into a man who was also holding a selfie stick. As we disentangled ourselves and our sticks, he didn't apologize. He didn't even look up. But I did. His t-shirt read, Disrupt, bro I cherish my old memories Because I can almost remember what it felt like What it felt like to wander Both in body and in spirit

Today, I find it impossible to get lost My path is preordained, pre-programmed And pre-installed Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Gmail, Instagram is preordained, pre-programmed, and pre-installed. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Gmail, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Gmail, Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook. I'm Sarah. It didn't seem like that big of a deal not to join Facebook when it came around.

I hadn't joined Friendster. I didn't join MySpace or whatever. And by definition, it seemed like something that you opted into. What was strange about Facebook was that everyone opted into it. But a friend of mine from high school who I actually really like, but she lives far away, and for a while she started a campaign that she wanted me to join and she would send me an email and she would just say in all caps Facebook My name is Seth and the reason I never joined Facebook was because I'm probably the generation

where I didn't have the cell phone or email in college and all this and I didn't really feel the need to join it and I'm a bit conservative and old-fashioned, and privacy and sharing is not for everybody, willy-nilly, simultaneously all the time. I'm Deb. I'm a college professor. I'm never a particular early adopter for new social things, and so I was not on Facebook,

and right around the time when I was thinking about I might get on Facebook, all the news about Facebook changing its privacy settings broke. And at that point, it was like, okay, you know what? I don't want to have anything to do with this. My name is Gordon. One reads those early statements, sort of ideological statements from Mark Zuckerberg about how privacy should be a thing of the past and information should be completely transparent. And I don't agree with that in the slightest degree.

And so, yeah, no, it's the enemy. Ideologically, I think Facebook is absolutely my enemy. I'm Sydney. I've never had a Facebook. I don't have Instagram. I still have a flip phone. I have really only made maybe a dozen online purchases in my whole life. I don't really know how to download music. I don't know. It's just, yeah, you're talking about how Facebook is your enemy. I guess maybe just all of it is kind of mine.

Being on the computer, it kind of hurts my body. I'm Pike. I was never on Facebook because I didn't want to look at ex-girlfriends' babies. So this whole thing started as a really retro joke, but as more and more people showed up, I started to feel them and internalize them as kind of, they're kind of like knocking on the door and I started to feel guilty. And so I've been in this position where I have to say, okay, there's no hurry to join. There's no business model. There is no relevance for brands. There's nothing to optimize. It doesn't compete with anything. There's no need to get in on the ground floor. The ground floor has just been there for decades. When Paul Ford launched his retro internet community, Tilda.club, after a night of whiskey and Twitter, he was immediately inundated with requests from people who wanted in.

Some guy even snuck into his building and slipped an envelope filled with money underneath his door. Within days, Tilda.club had a waiting list with over a thousand names on it. This is not what happened when I announced that I'd be starting my own community, Dislike.club. I still haven't received a single email or text or message or tweet. Well, I haven't checked my spam folder in a while, so perhaps someone out there reached out to me. The lackluster response. I have to say, it really hurts. But you know what's worse? I couldn't even compete with Ello! The first invites I got to the new social network, Ello, all came from people I

know who are part of the Digirotti. Perhaps invites too strong of a word, though. What I received from the cyber elite were more like communications, informing me that Ello invites were available to those who were willing to beg, grovel, and plead for one. I had a hard time understanding why the Uber Connected were so excited about Ello. Was it innovation? Disruption? Innovative disruption? Disruptive innovation? They all talked about Ello like it was the social media promised land. Next, I started getting invites from writers, filmmakers, cartoonists, and fellow podcasters. These invites were more pragmatic. They read more like the call of duty.

If your fans are willing to gather on Ello, then by God, you must be there to greet them, because they must never, ever miss out on an opportunity to follow, comment, share, and like you. Then finally, I started getting Ello invites from everyone, including my high school ex-girlfriend's neighbor's mother. Hers came with a note. She wanted to know how I was doing. Did I like New York?

Did I still wear a black cape? Or was that, as she thought back then, just a phase? This is when the LO backlash began. My elite tech friends all started complaining about the platform, the terms of service, and the design. My fellow podcasters complained about the Ello algorithms that were burying their sound files. Overnight, Ello went from being the Garden of Eden

to a really bad neighborhood. This is why I'm so confused about the reaction to Dislike.club. This should have been my moment when everyone realized that the alternative to Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook is not another Facebook, but rather something radically different. How you doing, Mark? I'm Eric Zerora. I'm a second year law student at UC Davis. Awesome. And judging by the success of the like button, has there been any conversations about adding a dislike button?

So it's an interesting question, right? Because there's something that's just so simple about the like button. You know, if you're commenting, a lot of the time you feel like you have to have something witty to say or add to the conversation. But, I mean, everyone feels like they can just press the like button. And that is an important way to sympathize or empathize with someone in an important moment that they put themselves out there to share. And I think giving people the power to do that in more ways with more emotions would be powerful. But we need to figure out the right way to do it so that it ends up being a force for good and not a force for bad. You know, some people have asked for a dislike button because they want to be able to say that thing isn't good. And that's not something that we think is good for the world.

So we're not going to build that. I mean, I don't think that there needs to be a voting mechanism on Facebook about whether posts are good or bad. I don't think that's socially very valuable or good for the community to help people share the important moments in their lives. The last Ello invite I received came from this guy, Ed Champion. Ed is a podcaster and a book blogger.

I would often run into him and his now ex-girlfriend at various literary events around New York City. But over the past few years, Ed developed a serious internet problem. And it wasn't that he was just constantly blogging and Facebooking and tweeting. Ed was always attacking people, berating someone for a typo or a supposed slight. To tell you the truth, he kind of terrified me. Last summer, he published a 30,000-word screed about female millennial writers, declaring one of them, Emily Gould, should have her head shoved up her slimy passage. It was around this time that I tried to unfollow Ed on Twitter.

But within an hour, I got an email asking for an explanation as to why I had unfollowed him. And when I didn't respond, I got another, and then another. So I quickly re-followed him before things could escalate. Ed's Ello invite came via direct message on Twitter. This is what it said. Need an Ello invite? It's the latest thing. Vials of status anxiety laced with retro addiction. Let me know. I can hook you up. I replied with a curt, no thanks. But then, recalling our last exchange, I sent another message. A smiley face.

I wanted to make sure that I didn't come across as ungrateful. A bold position, he wrote back, for someone supposedly interested in technology. About an hour later, Ed melted down on Twitter. He threatened and harassed a female writer. This bizarre attack made him internet famous. And the following morning, he tried to commit suicide on the Manhattan Bridge. I can't help but wonder if things would have turned out differently if I had accepted his Ello invite, or if I had invited him to join the Dislike Club. So If I'm on the computer for too long, something kind of changes in me.

It's like when you go out and you're like, I'm only going to have two drinks. And then after two drinks, you're like, actually, I guess I'll just have another because I'm here. I'm having so much fun. It's kind of like that. I feel like with the Internet, too, it's like if you're on for a certain point it's just like harder to stop because you know maybe you just learned about something that you didn't know about and it's like oh what can I learn about like what else what do you want to say uh no I just I'm not on Facebook but I still suffer from that I'm a total addict to my computer and to being online

and to checking the news and to checking my email. And I write like 30, 40 emails every day. Maybe if I was on Facebook, I would write fewer emails. Because I hear it's easier there somehow. I think professionally, it doesn't make sense for me not to be on Facebook. I should have been on Facebook. And I know that I'm missing a lot of things, a lot of just events that people don't

bother to write me an email about anymore. They've sort of forgotten me because I'm not on Facebook. I probably should be on Facebook, but I don't know like, I don't know how you would do that. I don't know how to talk about myself in the third person. I don't know how I, I don't know how I come across, and I don't know how I'm supposed to come across. And so to actually have to engage in that kind of thought seems really repellent. So I, so I actually feel like I'm a little bit privileged because I'm not in a position where I need to promote my work. And so now I'm actually curious as to what other people here do and how what they do would interact with their sort of public profile.

Yeah, no, I remember once going to a writing colony and being besieged by everybody else around the table as people were talking about what they were doing and, like, promotion came up of like oh you have a book coming out oh you have a piece and everyone was like oh well obviously you're using Facebook that's how this entirely happens and my god if you rely on an actual PR person at a press you're doomed and it's not like they're wrong you are doomed but but I can't I can't I still haven't been able to do it so when when people are like, well, how are you going to promote your work?

You're not on Facebook. How do you respond? Usually with this totally bereft expression of doom and failure. I don't know. I don't really want to think about myself by way of through the optics of the Internet, where I start feeling weird about myself and vice versa. I don't want to overly influence people's impression or experience in getting to know me. I'd like to leave a lot of gaps and blanks and kind of let it happen like life is sort of supposed to without the aid of the internet or Facebook.

I think I'm the only person who's pretty extensively on social media here. I follow a few hundred people on Twitter, and I have little homunculi in my head, right, about who they are. And Twitter makes it clear to me that I can and enjoy doing that. But the main reason why I'm on Twitter and not Facebook, or rather that I continue to be on Twitter and have never been on Facebook, is because I know that Twitter is public. So I started on Twitter because I went on sabbatical and I wanted a way to have, say, a lightweight touch with my colleagues and friends back in Boston when I was in Seattle. And the interesting thing about being public is that nobody notices what you don't put up when you're public. Nobody notices what the lacunae are in it. So I'm perfectly comfortable saying this is a facet of myself that is publicly facing, but nobody's under any delusions that it's anything besides that. I don't know if anyone has read that. There's an essay that the writer

Tim Kreider wrote. He's a cartoonist as well. And he has this really amazing conceit that he called the soul toupee, which is that it's the thing that you're most ashamed of and the thing that you would be most horrified that any of your friends know, but it's actually the most evident thing about you. It's right on your head. Everyone can see it, but you won't admit it. And I was like, I don't want to spend all this quality time with my soul toupee. This is maybe naive because I'm about to describe Facebook and I've never been on Facebook,

but I write plays and everyone in theater is on Facebook, but the conversation about theater on Facebook is a really different conversation and it's a conversation where everyone is listening. So it's incredibly polite. It's a policed conversation. It's a self-policed conversation as well,

which isn't that it's a it's a policed conversation it's a self-policed conversation as well which isn't that it's not useful but it doesn't feel entirely real no i feel like i mean when i was young i was i was searching for for to figure out you know who i was going to be and and i remember reading this biography of bob dylan and uh and realizing he was taking all these different identities and molding them into something of his own you know and I was like when I was 15 I thought this is what I'll do I will just model myself on this model of molding and and and in a way all this social media today makes that very, very possible. And at the same time, I feel like the real way to try out new things and be extreme is to go totally away from those online communities. And to not have anybody follow you.

And to not care about who's looking at you or to not look at what other people are looking at or yeah and the people that I really admire the the writers and musicians and thinkers they're not on Facebook I just wanted to ask something I don't I don't think I'm better than anyone who's on Facebook but you know you meet someone glancingly at a party and that you actually have a nice conversation. And they're like, oh, are you on Facebook? Because then they can find you and you're like, sorry, no. And that's the last conversation you have. But I think that's okay.

If I am that socially marginal that the only way for me to have a connection to that person is to be on Facebook I think it's better for me to be alone you know Facebook and like Zuckerberg in this movie about the Facebook the social contract or whatever it was called to me it all seems like Illuminati kind of pulling strings like raw rats in a box and meanwhile it's hocus pocus you know conversely you become like a Ted Kaczynski or something in a cave with a foil on your head and scrambling so I don't know so if I meet somebody at a party and they ask me if I'm on Facebook and and I say no then then it sucks because then they're like, well, can I have your number then? And you're like, oh, shoot. But, yeah, I also, I don't think that, you know, I'm better than anybody else.

I think I'm just different. But when I meet somebody and they say that they're not on Facebook, I get a little excited. And it's, you know, and it feels very faded that you're together, you know, like you're against all the odds. And, yeah, it seems like you really have some things that you could talk about and relate on. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think, I feel like we're all very connected.

But, yeah, it's actually been nice to have to think about it. I feel like we're all very connected. Yeah, it's actually been nice to have to think about it, to think about why I'm not on Facebook and why I'm not on any social media. But, you know, we met the once, and now I don't know what's going to happen because none of us are on Facebook. Yeah, what will happen to all of us? Will we keep this up?

How? Smoke signal? Right now, we're on the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge. God damn it. Yeah, I remember looking at the Brooklyn Bridge, and I said to myself, OK, Brooklyn Bridge, normally you kill the suicides, but Manhattan gets one today. That's Ed Champion, the book blogger and podcaster who became internet famous when he threatened a female writer on Twitter. It's actually one of the most insane, bizarre threats that I've ever heard of.

He threatened to tweet the name of the man who had taken nude photos of the woman. But as bizarre as this threat might sound to you and me, the woman was beside herself, and she started begging Twitter for help. It was heartbreaking, but Ed went ahead and did it anyways. He carried out his threat. That's when the internet erupted. Twitter was flooded with abuse reports, and Ed's account was suspended. His exasperated girlfriend then threw him out of their apartment. And the following morning, he posted a suicide note on Facebook. All right, this is the Facebook post that I wrote shortly before going to the Manhattan Bridge. I've been informed that my Twitter account is suspended.

The woman I loved has left me after nearly nine years. And between that and the relentless howls from my blood I loved has left me after nearly nine years. And between that and the relentless howls from my blood, I really have no reason to live anymore. If I have any advice to young people, I urge you to never write or become part of the publishing industry. It is too occupied with bloodthirsty jackals who willfully miscomprehend idiosyncratic voices and go well out of their way to stifle interesting thought.

This world is a horrid cancer that no decent soul should ever partake from. Get out of it while you still can. Goodbye. Which, that's... That's just fucking sad, man. I don't know how Facebook works, because I don't use it,

but the thing at the bottom really struck me, where it says, no likes yet. I thought you had written that. No, no, nobody had liked, nobody had plus-wanted. Ed didn't kill himself. After a standoff with the cops, he was pulled off the bridge and taken to a hospital. So he missed all of the think pieces and editorials

that were written about him and his vile behavior. When he got out, I asked him to take me back to the bridge. I wanted to hear what it felt like to be one of the Internet's most disliked persons. And I was curious if he had learned anything. I think we are pretty close to where I climbed the chain link fence here. Yeah. And, and it was actually very easy to do. I dropped, what I did was this. I put down my coat onto the cement. I put down my wallet. I put down my glasses, and I just climbed the chain link fence, and it was so easy for me to do.

I just like just heaved myself over, one leg, then followed by another, and then my shoes were standing on this rail right here, one after the other, and I had my arms back like this, and I was, I mean, you know, one like this, one like this, almost a sort of a crucifix kind of thing. I hate to get in a persecution complex. And then all of a sudden I hear a voice from above, from the deck above up there. And then it's, hey guy, what's up? And then suddenly like like, there are police up there on the top deck, and then there

are police on this deck, okay? And then right around here, there are more police. They are all over the place. There's like perhaps 20 of them. I mean, obviously, if the police are standing on the tracks, that means that the trains have stopped, but it just did not occur to me in my sort of state that um that maybe um you know they'd stop the subway i found out later that uh people were upset for being late for work and i i was i felt really bad about that so you know yeah i i brought some of the the tweets that i found found online that people had made some comments. Yeah, well. Do you want to read some of them?

All right. It starts with this guy here, Ryan. Yeah. No train service over the Manhattan Bridge this a.m. due to, quote, police activity, which meant no B and a ride on the queue from hell. Evelyn, train conductor said somebody tried to commit suicide on the Manhattan Bridge. TV news says terrorist threats? What is it, NYC?

Tara DaVinci, someone tried to commit suicide on the Manhattan Bridge, so now I'm late to work. Hashtag, really? Oh. Werewolf fuckface. Was going to attempt to hit up Nintendo World before work, but then the Manhattan Bridge was shut down due to police activity. Hashtag troll hard. We troll hard. Susie, some jerk tried to kill himself on the Manhattan Bridge, so all the train lines are super delayed.

Hashtag great. Hashtag late to work. Hashtag fuck this nonsense. Well, Benjamin, you really know how to go there. Jesus Christ. Eventually what the cops did is they would tie themselves to the chain link so that when they could actually go ahead and systematically grab a potential suicide, they could actually be tied so that they actually don't fall into the water. That's the way it works. Out of nowhere, they just pulled me over. And then like, you know, I had like a bunch of like scratches, like little little pox

here and there afterwards because of this. And then, you know, they basically manacled me and then they walked me all the way to the end of the Manhattan Bridge, and I just was sobbing completely. It was just this complete pouring out of all the grief and the heartbreak and the stupidity and just the sheer just, you know, why did I do something like this? I never should have had a third of a bottle of whiskey and gone on Twitter. Even after everything that's happened,

Ed still refuses to admit that he has a problem with social media. When I suggested that he should take a long internet vacation, he got angry with me. I don't think I'm defined by the internet as much as you think I am, he said. I don't think he qualifies for membership in the Dislike Club. much as you think I am," he said. I don't think he qualifies for membership in the Dislike Club. Ed got Twitter to reinstate his account, and now he's posting regularly on Facebook and on Ella. You have been listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything.

This installment is called The Dislike Club. This program was produced by myself with help from Bill Bowen. Special thanks to all the Dislike Club members, Sydney, Deb, Seth, Gordon, Sarah, and Pike. And special thanks and goodwill goes out to Ed Champion. As I said at the top of the program, this was originally produced for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radiotonic program in December of 2014. Definitely add them to your listening queue.