How to Be a Better Human - How to handle the ups and downs of social media (with Aparna Nancherla)

Episode Date: May 10, 2021

After scrolling through your social media feeds, how do you feel? Empowered and connected -- anxious, or exhausted? When stand up, actor, and writer Aparna Nancherla was just starting out, her jokes on Twitter got her recognition in a way that traditional comedy clubs probably could never have. But having built a comedy career for herself, in large part, by being on the internet, she recognizes that social media is not always fun and laughs. Now, for the sake of her mental health, she limits her time online. On today’s show, longtime friends Chris and Aparna talk about the good and bad of social media, and explore some advice on how best to use it-- or even if we should use it at all. To learn more about "How to Be a Better Human," host Chris Duffy, or find footnotes and additional resources, please visit: go.ted.com/betterhuman Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Chris Duffy, and this is How to Be a Better Human. On today's show, we're going to be talking about social media with someone who has built a career by being great at it. Aparna Nancherla is a stand-up, she's an actor, she's a writer, and so much more. And she's built that career for herself in large part by being funny online. When Aparna was just starting out, her jokes on Twitter got her recognition in a way that traditional stand-up comedy clubs probably never could have. But as someone who's been friends with her for years, something that's been really interesting to me watching Aparna is that while the advantages to her being on social media have been really clear, so have the disadvantages, so have the downsides, the ways

in which it has made her unhappy or exacerbated her anxiety and depression. And Aparna would be the first to tell you that. And then on a bigger scale, there's obviously something that we've all as a society seen over the past 15 plus years of social media. Social media has upsides and it also has very, very steep downsides. And while there is a lot of advice floating around, the question is, is it possible to just quit social media altogether? Let's actually listen to a clip

that I think talks about this very directly. This is what author and computer science professor Cal Newport has to say. I've never had a social media account. You don't have to worry. It turns out I still have friends. I still know what's going on in the world. As a computer scientist, I still collaborate with people all around the world. I'm still regularly exposed serendipitously to interesting ideas, and I rarely describe myself as lacking in entertainment options. So I've been okay, but I'd go even farther. I'd go even farther and say, not only am I okay without social media, but I think I'm actually better off. Not only am I okay without social media,

but I think I'm actually better off. Okay, we're gonna have more on that in just a moment. Today on the show, Aparna Nancherla and I are gonna do our best to share what we have learned from our work as comedians using these platforms. How do you get the most out of social media while avoiding the pitfalls? Or is that even possible?

Is Cal Newport right? You just need to get rid of it entirely. I feel certain that whatever we say, someone out there is going to disagree. And chances are that person is going to tell us on social media. So while that person is getting their Twitter fingers ready, we are going to take a quick ad break and then we'll be back with Aparna Nancherla and we are talking about social media. Let's get into it. Hi, I'm Aparna Nancherla, a comedian based in New York. So Aparna, I think one of the things that we really wanted to talk about on the show in general is how to be a better human and how to take big ideas and kind of apply them in our lives. And I think one of the things that's interesting is about many of the episodes is that

we've talked to people who where there's these kind of contradictory things, right? Like we want to talk to people across the political divide, but it's really hard to do it and it's really important to do it. And one of the reasons why I thought you'd be such an interesting guest to have on the show is I think and I know from having talked to you that you think a lot about social media and about mental health. Those are sometimes contradictory. Right. Right. So I just wonder, right now, how do you balance the good and the bad of social media for yourself? I mean, I have honestly had to take a big step back from social media since essentially quarantine life has started. I found like probably a lot of people I've been living a lot more in my head.

to people. I've been living a lot more in my head and, you know, the walls of your apartment become more like the boundaries of your entire world than maybe at any previous point in your life. So I think the ability for social media and like the internet kind of overly permeate that world got very tricky. So I have maybe, maybe I'm in the minority on that, but I have definitely found my social media use the lowest it's ever been. Yeah, I feel like I've had to do a similar thing just for my own mental health is to pull back a lot. Partly because the outside world is so intense that it's like you have to limit how much you take in. At the same time, I wonder if you can maybe tell us a little bit about how social media has been important in your professional life and not just this year, but over the history.

Yeah, I think that's where the tricky part is, because I definitely have garnered a lot of career success from Twitter and using Twitter as a medium to both promote my work, but also just put my writing and my point of view out there. And maybe right after the 2016 election, I felt like that immediate first year, maybe into 2017, I was using it more than ever and just pushing both political stances, but also just, yeah, trying to participate and be part of the conversation. And I'm not sure what changed. I don't know if it was both a combination of the environment on there or just my own mental health feeling like it was suffering more from using it all the time. But for whatever reason, the confluence of both really made me have to reevaluate my relationship both to it and

just how much space it was taking up in my life. But that being said, I still do use it for career reasons. And I think I oftentimes feel conflicted about really feeling, you know, some resistance to these mediums that I feel like can create a lot of harm, but then also still using them and still essentially, you know, buying into the models. Can you also take me back to the very beginning? I still think maybe the whole first year I used it, I was just doing what a lot of people are doing, which is like I just ate a sandwich or whatever, you know, just like that was revolutionary. People were like, oh, my gosh, he's live blogging sandwiches. But yeah. And then I found pretty quickly, maybe even the end of that year or the beginning of the next year, I found people were using it to just write short jokes. I think the good thing about the internet sometimes is you find someone whose work

you enjoy and then you can immediately just binge every single thing they have immediately versus, you know, seeing a late night set and then kind of having to look that person up and maybe, wait night set and then kind of having to look that person up and, and maybe like it takes that one extra step. And I think social media oftentimes removes that step where everything is kind of just given to you as is. So in that sense, I think I just reached more people that way. I just found from people's feedback of, oh, I love your Twitter, you know, versus like, oh, I saw you on Conan. Yeah. Well, it's also interesting because having seen you perform and performed with you many times, you are so funny and audiences love you and connect with you. But you're also a very different style of comedy than people would maybe experience if they went to like a traditional

stand up club. Oh, sure. Yeah. I wonder if that would have been possible for you to have the career you've had without the internet. Yeah, I don't know. Because I think that's a good point because I also think the internet has made my work more available than when I first became interested in comedy, it was before YouTube. So I, the only way I could check out other standup was either recording it off of comedy central or, you know, just happening to catch some kind of thing on TV, but it just felt a lot less accessible and art form then, then now. feel like that sense of like putting work out there and then seeing like maybe someone will like this joke maybe someone will respond maybe this is going to do well that really feels like the equivalent of that pulling the of the slot machine to me oh right yeah it's an immediate high i think or just like an immediate way to be like i exist and then have other people be like, I see you, you exist. And I think that can often be a

real bomb compared to just the everyday existential slog of life where you're like, okay, I got to vacuum my apartment or whatever it is. It's nice to just be like, other people can validate me right now. And also in this next moment. Yeah. You definitely don't get the same high from vacuuming your apartment as you do from putting a joke out and having people like it. It's more of a slow burn, I would say. And another weird layer that has been added for me for whatever specific reason it ended up that way. I, you know, I started talking more about mental health in my stand up act. And that's specifically like how I deal with anxiety and depression. And then that veered into social media as well, where I would write a lot of jokes on Twitter about anxiety

or depression. And I think people also found that resonant and that they were like, I also deal with this. And I like that you put it in kind of a funny way, you know, to take the edge off this way that I also see the world. I was like, well, this is also why people know me so I can write about it. But then the fact that the medium itself was causing these things to become more prominent in my brain started to become a like, am I just like feeding into a cycle of creating a thing? Then, you know, tweeting about it and then getting attention for it and then getting more of that bad feeling. Yeah, it's kind of like if that makes sense. It totally does. It feels like that's actually the that's the conundrum in a nutshell, right? It's like social media at its best is a way for you to not feel alone when you're dealing with these feelings that you think no one else has. But it also amplifies and exaggerates those in some ways and makes it so that it's harder for you to deal with them on your own. Yeah. So in that sense, the way that mental health was becoming almost commodified

as just another like trend on Twitter really started to disturb me because I don't think that was my point when I started talking about it. And it felt like it was sort of had snowballed into its own thing. Can we talk about that for a second? What like you said, that wasn't my point when I started talking about it. What was your point when you started talking about mental health? I think it's what you were alluding to before, which is just to be like, oh, I deal with these hard feelings or, you know, struggles a lot of the time. And I'm not sure if anyone else does,

but I feel like I should be honest about like, what's going on in my head. And then I was, you know, pretty humbled to learn that a lot of people also see the world that way. And so I think it was a way to connect people. But then I, I think the fact that I'm like, let's connect on the internet where you can also end up feeling really alone started to feel a little bit hypocritical. Yeah, it's such a weird thing. It's like, hey, come and discuss poison with me in the poison factory. Yeah, there are these people, these like experts who talk about how we should all get off social media completely and we should just like live a life

without that. What do you think about that? I have thoughts, obviously, but I'm curious what you think. Yeah, I think I've gone back and forth because I think there is a part of me that revels in the idea of just, you know, leaving it all behind and just starting over fresh. That seems like a human impulse in some ways to kind of just have a fresh start. But I also am someone who operates a lot in black and white thinking or like all or nothing mentalities, which is more a part of my brain that I don't really like. So then I get kind of caught in that thing of like, oh, well, is that the easy way out? Just like dropping it completely versus trying to find a healthy balance. So I can also see how it is a thing where,

I don't know if this is the perfect analogy or the right analogy, but it is like, oh, can I find a way to use my heroin in a healthy way? Yeah, I think that there's something really interesting to that. And it feels like it goes right back to what Cal Newport was talking about in his talk and also what he's written about in his book and a lot of his thinking. So let's actually listen to another clip from him. Not only am I OK without social media, but I think I'm actually better off. OK, so that's a big clamp here. When I suggest that people quit social media, better off. Okay, so that's a big clamp here when I suggest that people quit social media. The objection goes as follows. Cal, I can't quit social media because it is vital to my success

in the 21st century economy. So I recently published this book that draws on multiple strands of evidence to make the point that in a competitive 21st century economy, what the market values is the ability to produce things that are rare and are valuable. You can produce something that's rare and is valuable, the market will value that. What the market dismisses, for the most part, are activities that are easy to replicate

and produce a small amount of value. To put it another way, if you can write an elegant algorithm, if you can write a legal brief that can change a case, if you can write 1,000 words of prose that's going to fixate a reader right to the end, if you can do these type of activities, which require deep work, that produce outcomes that

are rare and valuable, people will find you. You will be able to write your own ticket. You will be able to build the foundation of a very meaningful and successful professional life, regardless of how many Instagram followers you have. Cal, maybe I agree with you. Maybe you're right. It's not a fundamental technology. Maybe using social media is not at the core of my professional success. But you know what? It's harmless. So again, I look back and I say, this objection also is nonsense. In this case, what it misses is what I think is a very important reality that we need to talk about more frankly, which is that social media tools are designed to be addictive.

So there's real cost to social media use, which means when you're trying to decide, should I use this or not, saying it's harmless is not enough. You actually have to identify a significantly positive, clear benefit that can outweigh these potential harms. Okay, so what do you think about that? Is Cal Newport onto something or is he completely missing the mark? While you chew on the merits of ditching social media entirely, we're going to do a quick ad break and then Aparna and I will discuss more in just a minute. Okay, we are back with Aparna Nancherla. And Aparna, we were just talking about this idea of Cal Newports that maybe we should all quit social media, that it's just fundamentally unhealthy.

And I'll tell you my personal bias, which is that that's a really challenging idea to have. And it's a lot easier to have when you are a tenured, famous professor. It's a little more challenging when you're someone who's just starting out and trying to build a name for yourself or when you're someone like either of us, where you're in a field where you're kind of expected to constantly be on social media. And it's professionally a real risk to not do it in a way that I think I'm guessing is not the same if you're a tenured professor. Yeah. And I think our industry, you know, the entertainment industry specifically is still one where social media is cachet is still very much translates into interest in you as like something to invest in. So it's really hard for a struggling comedian or like young comedy writer to be like,

oh, well, I'm just not going to use this medium, but I have no other way to really get my work out there. It also feels like it's particularly been useful for people from historically underrepresented groups, right? Like people who kind of are able to then prove like there's a real market for an interest in the things that I'm saying, even if the people who would typically say no to them are like, well, no one's interested. That's a very niche thing. And then you can be like, no, it's not at all. Look at how popular this is. Yeah, I think that first happened in a big way also with web series, just like someone like having. Yeah, yeah. Having an audience and then, you know, executives after the fact being like, oh, perhaps this person could have their

own show on old school television. On old school television, the network everyone wants their show on. There's still definitely, I think, an incentive to gain an audience on the Internet, and that will translate into success in other mediums. success in other mediums. So there isn't really a disincentive from that I see right now, other than, oh, your brain might be a little bit more, you know, sustainable. I'm sure you have some, even if you maybe don't think about them consciously. But what are some of the habits and tactics you've developed to kind of manage your social media and your online life? Well, I found for myself, like I just limit checking it now. And this feels like I still feel kind of torn about this,

but I don't really check it now. I'll like post, but I don't scroll. So I don't know. It does feel a little bit like, well, that's not fair because you're making other people scroll. But I think for my own mental health, again, I'm like, yeah, but you can't handle the scrolling and other people seem to be able to handle it better than you do. out, but I'm not going to scroll. I also feel like developing those limits for yourself and then building those around are really important, but they're really hard to be like mindful of what works. So I wonder, have you just, have you learned those by trial and error or are you coming up with

those ideas by, you know, a therapist helping you kind of come to with some suggestions? Like where, where are those ideas coming from for you? I think for me, it was a lot of trial and error, because I think I was trying to enforce more, maybe weaker boundaries before where it'd be like, I can scroll on Twitter for 15 minutes at most, you know, twice a day or three times a day and I found that no other measure really was as effective as just not scrolling at all because it just it felt like even if you're only on there for 15 minutes it's like hard to fully explain unless you're on those mediums, but it's just like kind of makes your brain shifts your perspective a certain way versus I found being off of them. I sort of don't even think in the same terms that I did when I was using it more heavily. terms that I did when I was using it more heavily. You know, one thing that I really value about you as a friend and a person is I think that you are, you're just as funny and witty in real life,

but you're also much more of a listener and more thoughtful than someone might think of someone who is constantly, you know, used to giving an hour long performance where they're the only one talking. You're not like that at all in real life yeah i mean i think that that goes hand in hand with how i even thought about doing comedy in general which was like very much from observing and listening and then and then you know kind of making a list of thoughts of what i noticed And so like a very much more methodical way of going about stand up versus someone who's just like, I think something funny, I'm going to say it. And I'm just going to like keep people's eyes on me. Yeah, I also think that it took me a long time at when I first started performing. It took me a really long time before I found other comedians who I felt

like, oh, they are like me in that like they want to be nice and kind and treat people well. I feel like there's definitely a comedy that has like a real edge and is almost like bullying sometimes. And there's that whole world of it. And then there's a lot of comedy where people are just like goofy and funny and kind. And it took me a long time to find that community of people. That's not what you think of when you think of stand-up comedy. I don't know why that one specific style kind of became the forward face of stand-up. Maybe just,

I guess it sometimes ends up being that think of like the most aggressive or the loudest voice is the one that gets heard the most. And that is like a particularly more aggressive way of performing or like positioning yourself at the world. So I think maybe it drowns out the other kinds. But I guess in that regard and kind of referencing what we were talking about before, it does feel like the internet has opened up room for so many more styles and ways of of being a stand up, which I think is great. There's also this very common public idea that in order to be a good comedian or a good performer, a good artist, you have to have mental illness. I wonder if you could talk about that, because obviously you have struggled with mental illness and you are a great performer. But I think you

and I have discussed before how in some ways that's the opposite of the truth, right? That like it hurts your ability to perform, not helps. Or maybe you don't feel like that. I'm curious what you think. I think I agree with that because I've found that when I'm struggling most with mental health is when I feel the least creative and least able to kind of create or put myself out there

versus when I'm in a better place. And I do think there's this thread of a narrative where if you don't have these demons, you will lose the ability to be funny or gifted. And I don't think they go hand in hand, but I do think there is this attraction to somehow justifying or romanticizing your mental illness by saying that it, you know, makes you a better artist or makes you a better performer.

I think they can, they oftentimes coexist in creative people. And sometimes I think maybe that is because when you have, in my case, like an anxious, depressive brain, I do tend to overanalyze things, you know, live a lot in my head, obsess over things. And I think some of those just natural inclinations do also lend themselves to comedy in that you, as a, you know, comedian, you are forever questioning things, turning them around, never taking anything at face value. So I think there are attributes that kind of translate across both things, but I don't, I wouldn't say there's like causality there. Yeah. It sometimes feels like, you know, a great comedian or a great artist of any kind makes people feel less alone. And so being able to talk about these things that are hard to talk about that other people maybe wouldn't talk about. I think that is true. But then the flip side is you're only able to perform and to be effective if you are

dealing with them in yourself. Yes. In that sense, it is like managing your mental health is not going to make you a worse artist by any means. Yeah. And I mean, I hope I'm not saying more than than I should, but I feel like the times in our friendship where you have been struggling the most have definitely been the times where you've produced the least and performed the least. Yeah, I would say that's fair. And I think it's only been recently that I've kind of made more peace with that fact, because I do think we are still in a culture and especially, I think, on the internet, there is this idea that you can just turn out content nonstop forever. my own mental health has forced me to say, no, you actually need to set boundaries on when you can produce and who you're kind of responsible to. Because I think for a long time, I thought I was more in debt to an audience versus just my own ability to exist. How do you set boundaries like that?

I think it is, again, like the trial and error we were talking about before, where it's like I tried setting some less stringent boundaries around social media. And then when I found that still wasn't working, I kind of went more extreme with it. And at least for now, it does feel like the right decision. I totally think so. I mean, putting our friendship aside, but thinking about you as a public figure, it's really interesting to think that here's someone who has a big social media following who has gotten a lot of success out of this and still finds it really personally challenging so much so that you're really having to experiment with like, how can you set these boundaries to make it healthy for you? Because you'd think that when it's given you so much,

it wouldn't also take away. But that's the case for everyone. Yeah. And I think even there is a trade-off because I know there are people who, you know, who have gained a following from Twitter or Instagram and they don't seem to have, at least to my eyes, the same struggles that I do with it. And they kind of, you know, their audience just keeps growing. And I think I also have to just contend with the fact that I'm not them and I can't, I can't maybe use it as in the same way that they can. Will you describe the range of emotions that you experience after you post on social media? Like walk us through what's happening inside your head after you post a joke on on Twitter, and then maybe on Instagram if it's different. Well, it's so different now, because now I don't even read the I don't even see, you know,

how it performed. Like I literally just post it and then it's out there and I can kind of daydream about how I think it's doing, but I don't actually have any hard data versus before where I would kind of just keep checking it to see if it was doing well or not. And you kind of develop a whole relationship around like, oh, this one's not performing as well, or like, maybe I should take this one down. It doesn't seem to be going over the way I thought it would. But I would say, I mean, there is definitely just an excitement with first posting it. And then I think that quickly pivots into either further excitement if it happens to, you know, do really well, but then it can just as easily, if it doesn't do as well, pivot into kind of like self-loathing yeah

it's incredible how like 10 minutes after an idea that you thought was good you're like i guess no idea i've ever had has ever been good yeah yeah it's the same feeling with stand-up where i don't know if this is a thing a lot of people say but there's that idea of you're only as good as your last good set. And so then it's like on social media, you're only as good as your last popular post. And that's just it's a game you can't really win. Oh, yeah. Whenever people said that to me about standup, I was like, I guess I should quit standup because my last set is not good. Can it be like you're only as good as the best set you've done in the last three years? Because then I'll maybe continue doing this.

Right, right. But that's like the catch, right? Because then the incentive of that whole mentality is to keep posting. And the whole fact of the matter is that even when one thing does really well in there, you're so caught in the cycle, you can't even really stop to appreciate it. Okay, so I imagine that, you know, we're talking a lot about this big picture, like the mental health part of social media and the big picture of how to set boundaries around it. But I imagine that a lot of people out here do have social media, and you are really good at it. You've

done a bunch of amazing tweets, and you've, you know've built a career that has used social media. Do you have any practical tips for people? I'm like, here's how to write a good tweet or here's what makes a good tweet. The main rule I think I've always followed is like, do I find this funny? Like, does this make me laugh above all else? And then there are certain structures I think that are fun to play with like on the internet I think there's just certain either wordings or like you know for lack of a better term just memeable wording or phrasing that you can kind of just pivot off of but yeah at the

end of the day I think I'm just like, does this make me laugh? Like, does the idea of this make me laugh? I think if I amuse myself half the time, even if the tweet doesn't do well, I'm just like, yeah, but I still think it's funny. I don't know. At the end of the day, I'm like, my sense of humor is still something

that just was primarily there to make me see the world in a lighter way. So I think at the sum of it all, I'm just mostly just trying to keep that going for myself is like to be able to keep seeing the world in that way versus making sure other people are also on board with it exactly that way. What's one thing that you have seen or heard or read that you think helped you to be a better human? I think, I mean, I think it was the work of Jocelyn Gly to just re-evaluate our relationship as both beings in society, but also just work,

like having this mentality of constantly working and producing and forgetting that we're also like allowed to just exist and enjoy life on its own terms rather than as like products, creating more products. Everyone can just exist,

except Jocelyn Glyde. Keep producing. We need what you're producing. I'm going to keep needing those podcasts. We should also send her an email being like, thank you. Also, don't have to respond to this email. And what's one way that you are personally trying to be a better human? I think I've been just trying to be more aware of my own immediate community. I feel like with the internet, sometimes you get, and this again, like we discussed, can be a good thing where you feel more connected to people around the globe and everywhere. But then I think in some ways that's made me more disconnected from my immediate community. So I think I've just been trying

to do things like, you know, not just support local businesses, but just like volunteer in my community and just be more aware of what's going on in my like immediate surroundings than I was before, which seems like an intuitive thing. But yeah, for some reason I've had to relearn it. Well, thank you so much, Aparna. Thanks so much for being on the show. This has been a great conversation. Thank you for having me, Chris. Okay, that is it for today's episode. This has been How to Be a Better Human.

I'm your host, Chris Duffy. Thank you so much to Aparna for being on the show today. You can find her on Twitter at AparNapkin. That is A-P-A-R, napkin. On the TED side, this show is produced by Abimanyu Das, who is currently writing a thoughtful comment on your Facebook. Daniela Balarezo, who watches every one of your Instagram stories. Frederica Elizabeth Yosefov, who is posting from a burner account.

And Cara Newman, who has a Pinterest board that is only facts. And from PRX Productions, How to Be a Better Human is brought to you by audio influencer Jocelyn Gonzalez and Sandra Lopez-Monsalve, who not only deleted her own account, she deleted your account, too. We will have a new episode for you next week. Thank you for listening. And please share this show with all of your networks. Like it, heart it, give it a thumbs up. Make sure that it spreads on social media. Have a great week. programs. It's for true changemakers who want to think differently and solve the world's most pressing challenges. From healthcare and the environment to energy, government, and technology, it's your path to meaningful leadership in all sectors. For details, visit uvic.ca slash future MBA. That's uvic.ca slash future MBA.