Life Uncut - The Psychology of Pile Ons. Uncut with Clare Stephens

Episode Date: August 21, 2025

Clare Stephens is a writer, screenwriter, editor and podcaster. She’s the former editor-in-chief at Mamamia and host of the podcasts Cancelled and But, Are You Happy? Clare also worked as a writer and producer on the Binge series Strife starring Asher Keddie and is about to publish her first novel, The Worst Thing I’ve Ever Done! It tells the story of Ruby Williams, a young woman working in digital media who publishes an article that sees her at the bottom of an online pile-on. More broadly, it’s about shame - the way it never truly leaves you, and how we bury it. Clare is here to speak about the psychology of pile ons, cancel culture, what type of people handle being cancelled better than others and the media narratives surrounding public shaming!Today we speak about: Why Clare chose to go out on her own after almost a decade at Mamamia Public shame and ‘metacognition’  How the psychology of online debates and conversations is different to in person How it feels to be at the bottom of a pile on How and why some influencers cause pile ons of other people and use outrage to grow their own platforms There’s no good response to a pile on; silence is interpreted as guilt, speaking back causes more headlines and fuel on the fire What makes someone more likely to be cancelled?   You can pre-order The Worst Thing I've Ever Done (out September 30) here. Follow Clare on Instagram  Subscribe to Clare’s substack  You can watch us on Youtube Find us on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! XxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode was recorded on Camaragal land. Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. I'm Brittany. And we have a very good friend here in the studio, Claire Stevens. She is a writer, a screenwriter, an editor, and a podcaster. She's the former editor-in-chief at Mamma Mia and host of the podcast, Cancelled, and also But Are You Happy? Claire also worked as a writer and a producer on the binge series Strife, starring Asher Keddie, and is about to publish her first novel,

The Worst Thing I've Ever Done. Now, this tells the story of Ruby Williams, a young woman working in digital media who publishes an article that sees her at the bottom of an online pylon. Claire is here today to speak about the psychology of pylons, cancel culture, what type of people handle being cancelled better than others, and the media narratives surrounding public shaming. Welcome to the podcast. Hello, I'm so excited to be here, guys.

I can't wait to get to the bottom of this. I'm fascinated to hear why you decided to write about this topic and your research in it. I do know you've reached out to me in the past to ask if I'd contribute to it. You've never been cancelled, what are you talking about? Is that a fucking joke? No, I haven't been cancelled, but there have been attempted cancellations. Yeah, and this is interesting though, right, like what makes a cancellation versus an attempted cancellation? Yes, yes.

Like what is the ingredients that makes one worse than the other? Exactly. Yeah, we've seen them play out. We will unpack. But let's, before we get into that, do Accidentally Unfiltered, our most embarrassing story. I feel like you've got a goodie. I've got a really bad one.

I thought I was like, oh, I should think of a less embarrassing one, but I didn't have time so I just had to go with the absolute worst. We like it to really scrape the bottom of the barrel. They're the good ones. It's disgusting. Like it's the kind of story people will be like, oh, no, that actually is incredibly humiliating. So we all remember COVID.

During COVID, I was quite proud of this. I didn't really drink during COVID just because it was my partner and I at home. I was like actually exercising properly, living my best life for the first time ever. So I didn't drink. But then the lockdown laws lifted for the first time and there are going to be a group of girls listening to this

that know exactly where it's going. But a friend of mine was like, I'll book a boozy lunch. Like we'll do it in Bondi, group of girls, margaritas, like unlimited alcohol. Let's do it. And I was like, cannot wait. Didn't think about the fact that I hadn't drunk for several months. So I go to this lunch and we're all too excited. We're too excited. All our lives have fallen apart. It's freedom. You're back again together. Finally, shared trauma. And everyone's like, everything's terrible. But it was very, very bonding. So I'm smashing these margaritas.

Then we had rosé. I was just going, going, going. No sense of how much I've had, anything like that. I am not a particularly big drinker. So even like growing up, I didn't have that many instances of just writing myself off. You're also a very tiny person. And that's another thing that if I'm sitting next to somebody who's six foot tall and like athletic they can down twice as much as I can so I'm just keeping up with everyone I'm having all

these drinks we go to one of the girls houses we're having more drinks I'm like I'm gonna go the bathroom and then I stood up and was like I have never been this drunk in my entire life somehow I don't this is where I black out I have a tiny memory of being outside Messina on Hall street passed out absolutely passed out somehow I messaged my now husband to be like I'm fucked and he arrived I don't know how I don't know how he knew where I was like I'd gone to somebody's house I don't know how he knew anyway he gets me I'm vomiting on the street in Bondi the day that lockdowns have lifted so like I cannot tell you how many people would have been on that street I'm being like, is that that person?

Does she work at Mamma Mia? I think I know that person. Do you need an ambulance? So my partner gets me. I wake up in hospital and we've got a drip. We've got a drip because fun fact. Oh, my God, you actually did need an ambulance. Yeah, they don't pump stomachs anymore.

They just fluids and stuff. And so I wake up. I'm like, how humiliating. Anyway, Jessie's there trying to help, but Jessie's also drunk. So she, her entire job was to hold my hand straight so that the fluid could go in. She got distracted and didn't do that. And then I woke up to like this huge bubble of fluid on my arm

and the doctor's like, Jesus Christ. The emergency room is full of drunk people. Anyway, I still live with the thought that I'm like, someone I know definitely saw me that day. Definitely saw me. You're lucky that no one took video, no one took photos because that could have been the end of you. Maybe they did.

That could have been your pylon, your cancellation. I could have been, you know, when ScoMo fell into the, not ScoMo, Barby Joyce fell into the plant box. I had so much empathy when he did that. That lives rent free in my head. I'm like, you know what? I disagree with your politics, but we've all written ourselves off. That's what we said.

We felt for him. We're like, give him a break. Did we feel for him? I didn't think I did that much. I did. And then he said he was on a medication that made him more sensitive to alcohol. and I'm like I don't believe you but like it's fine he's on mushrooms he's like Claire which medication were you on absolutely none absolutely none so that was yeah no that was the most

embarrassing moment of my entire life and if you have photos of that no you don't okay I'll pay for the photos oh god you've had like a very big year and one of the things in terms of you you've left Mama Mia you have gone out to do your own work to write your own book yeah not just the reasons around like, why did you leave Mamma Mia or decide to go out on your own? But I think for anyone who has ever had a massive work transition where they have taken a punt, whether it's been that they wanted to start their own small business, but making that huge leap between what feels completely safe to the unknown. Firstly, why did you want to do that for yourself? And also what has this period been like for you? I wanted to do it because I think, I don't know if you had this

Laura but when you have a child I think sometimes it can be quite clarifying for me having Matilda I for the first time ever it's like I realized time was finite and that like it totally changed my idea of hold on if there's things I want to do I actually have to do them and I think something to do with seeing someone grow in front of you that you're like oh my god that's five months that's six months, that's seven months, and you're seeing it and you kind of can't ignore it. Puts time into perspective. Exactly, exactly.

So I think having Matilda made me realise, hold on, if there's things I want to do, if there's risks I want to take, I actually have to do it. It's not just going to happen. So I had been at Mamma Mia for almost a decade and I really wanted to work on some independent projects and challenge myself, like really step outside my comfort zone. The other thing was I'm a twin and my twin sister works

at Mamma Mia and I'd worked with her for 10 years and I think that was also a bit of a safety blanket that people probably didn't know this when we were working there but we were so like if I wrote something, I'd always get her to read it before I sent it off to be published or if I had an idea, I'd run it past her. And I think as fun as that is, I did think a psychologist would probably tell me that it's really important to like back yourself and learn who you are outside the context

of that relationship. Well, I've heard you speak a little bit about feeling as though you were in the shadows of what Jessie was doing a little bit, especially within a company when, I mean, we've had Jessie Stevens on the podcast before. Brilliant is also one of the co-hosts of Mamma Mia Out Loud. and it's like when you are the same growing up because you're twins and then you're in a company where one person potentially is getting more jobs or there's comparisons that are being made how do you deal with that when it's your sister a lot of times throughout my 20 when i did struggle

with that because i have struggled with that growing up like you can't help it you just get compared and then when you have the same interests and you go into the same type of work the comparisons even clearer. And so many people were like, why do you do that? You guys are so weird. Why don't you just follow two different career paths and then you wouldn't have to worry about the comparison. But I think the problem is that we love working creatively together and we just have the same interests. But I did think if I'm going to really challenge myself and tap into what I'm actually interested in and what my strengths are and all of that, I have to step outside that dynamic which was really hard because I absolutely love working with Jessie and I'm sure

we'll end up doing I mean we are working on a project together at the moment but I think I was I was just like I really want to have this time in my life where I give it a go on my own and see what I'm capable of and throw myself into the deep end it's also really scary to go and anyone that has started their own business or gone out on their own to go from a stable income to not knowing where your income is going to come from yeah is something that you really well I mean financially you need to be in a position that you either have support to help you or but it's a really scary jump and I imagine there was a lot of anxiety around that especially because your business that you went into is writing yes yes that doesn't happen overnight exactly you've got

of few degrees I hear in psychology and I want to unpack that first because a lot of your book that you have written is based around the psychology in the cancel culture and I think it's important to set the precedence of like you have done the due diligence what are your degrees in and where did that interest come from so I did a bachelor of psychology and then an honors in psychology and I was doing a master's of research when I left to work at Mount Maya which that like academic writing I just have so much respect people who stick with that because it is so bloody hard but I was always really interested studying psychology about how shame and they call it metacognition basically our thoughts about our thoughts can be the most toxic thing it's not even that you're

experiencing something that's the issue it's the story you tell yourself about it thoughts about our thoughts break that down so for example and there's a theme about it in the book this is what happened to me if you have a baby and you have a really traumatic birth and you come out of that experience you're feeling like wow that did not go how I thought it would that's one thing and that's actually quite easy to treat the issue is when you then start telling yourself no it's wrong to feel that I shouldn't I shouldn't be allowed to say that that wasn't a positive experience like that's where the issue comes in. So for the book, what really interested me was this idea of shame and the fact that when we stuff up, we all make mistakes. We all do terrible things and regret

them. That happens all the time. In life, we forgive each other for all sorts of things and in friendships and relationships and families. But on the internet, there isn't that grace. There isn't that forgiveness. I don't think we have a narrative for forgiveness online. and the shame that we bombard people with is actually counterproductive it stops people from seeing your perspective so I'm sure you guys would have seen it that if you stuff up and I have stuffed up I've written stories that I regret I have posted things that I regret if somebody comes to me and says hey you wrote this thing actually like it doesn't quite sit right and this is why nine times out of ten I'm like oh my gosh yes thank you for that if someone says you're an

absolute monster psychopath what is wrong with you you're instantly defensive totally but it's also because their perception of you is so far from who you are yeah that it's like I can't rationalize with the the way you think of me I'm not even going to entertain it yeah so therefore you throw it all out with the bath water the baby as well instead of being like okay I actually can to your point and you've raised some good, some good reasoning here. And you know what, that's made me think about X, Y, Z. I think the thing though, that is slightly different when we talk about like online cancer culture versus our friendships or within our own communities is that often the story and the narrative that's happening online is also not the truth.

So there's this feeling of wanting to defend yourself because people have got partial truth. So they've got the media version of the truth, or they've got one influencers version of the truth because they're screaming on the internet. And so like, I think that that's why it can be really hard for someone to take any sort of responsibility because they're like, but you want me to take responsibility for something I didn't fucking do. And so it's this really challenging space where we hold such a high moral compass for people we don't know, but also have no grace for forgiveness for the things that they potentially didn't even do anyway in the way that we think they have. Exactly. And I was thinking about this idea for years because working in media, I saw that happen over and over again. It might be that like when I was editor in chief, I made a decision or we did a campaign and it would be received in a certain way. And it might seriously be that something was just not true.

whatever the story people had run with, I would say, hey, do you want to get on the phone and have a chat about this? Because what you're saying actually is actually false. And I saw that happen to people in media, to people I know, where it would be something where I could tell all they wanted to do was scream and say, actually, no, you've got the wrong story. So with this book, what I wanted to do was I kind of considered making it nonfiction for a little bit. I thought maybe I could interview people and tell their stories. And then I thought, no, the thing I really want to elicit is that feeling. All I want is for people to know what that feeling is when you feel like you're misunderstood and your reputation's at stake. And it's incredibly

scary. And I guess the question that I wanted to engage with was how are we meant to, if we're the most self-actualized versions of ourselves, are we meant to be fine with people saying things about us that aren't true with people having with there being a narrative out there that is false or is it a really natural human instinct to want to have integrity and challenge defend yourself yeah yeah I I mean it's interesting for me that you've gotten so into this space I mean obviously you had the podcast cancelled with your sister which was kind of almost I mean it was as much as it looked at like the reasons for why people were cancelled and whether they were deserving of they're cancellations or not. It also had a real comedy base to it as well. But for the people who

are at the bottom of those cancellations, there's nothing fucking funny about it. What was it about cancel culture that made you want to go so deep on it as something to research, but also as something to write a book about? I read John Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed 10 years ago. Can't believe that was 10 years ago. Ahead of his time, really. Oh my gosh. So ahead of his time. And the fact that he wrote that and then 10 years later, if anything, I think it's just gotten worse. So I was really interested in the idea of public shaming and what it does to an individual. And I feel like there's been all these stories in the last decade about that. And also this idea that on the internet, the more time we're spending online, and I think, I hope I'm in

a forgiving company when I say, are we all ashamed of how much time we spend on our phone? Oh, yeah. I looked yesterday and it was horrifying. It's sickening. And I think that the more time we are spending on our phones and we're essentially living online as opposed to living in the real world, and AI is just going to make that even more terrifying, but the more time we are spending on our phone, the more we are dehumanizing each other and the less we are able to see the nuances of the human condition. And you see it more and more in the way people talk to each other online. There's a researcher who calls it digital hostility and it's just this thing that we do where we really paint people with two-dimensional

brushes and you might not think that it's a big deal if you're online and you're just saying you're racist you're sexist you're misogynistic you're just saying all these things and and you think well maybe there's some kind of social utility to what you're doing but to that person what you're doing is dehumanizing but it's also prejudice it's also ironically it's exactly what you're kind of saying that you don't want to do which is that you're being prejudiced because you're not giving that person the opportunity for careful considered judgment or understanding and you're just making this snap assessment of them that actually really is soul destroying and does something incredibly scary to that person's emotional state. I think that because

you've touched on it twice you've said that the impacts that it has on people but also like the toll it takes and like what is the impact of cancer culture on someone who is at the bottom of that pile on so I interviewed a lot of people in media most of them off the record for this book and interviewed both of you guys on but are you happy and we sort of touched on on record and off yeah yeah on and off record and really talked about what it feels like when basically you're being screamed at online when somebody is attacking you and in those conversations and actually by the time this episode comes out I hope my podcast the pylon will be out where I'm interviewing people about exactly this I have found that there is serious mental health consequences

to that to the point where people who are otherwise quite healthy contemplate suicide for a lot of people it is the darkest moment of their life and what's really scary is that you can't say it you're not allowed to say it because the nature of the pylon means that you are not the victim someone else is the victim so you're not allowed to say hey I'm not okay there have actually been quite a few cases and one well-known case in Australia where there was a pylon and the person at the centre of it did choose to end their life and I think we don't give a lot of consideration to that and suicide is incredibly complicated and there are always so many factors but this particular researcher who researches digital hostility says if we are choosing to live online

and we have essentially uploaded our identity online and that identity is being destroyed there is something really fundamental and terrifying about that moment and and it really does but also scare you it's not just about that specific moment people lose their actual jobs i mean you know we can touch on and talk about like how the cancer culture impacted georgia love and her career but also we interviewed sam frost on this podcast a little while ago and you guys will all remember what happened in COVID when Sam came out and spoke about her fears around the vaccine which genuinely are very valid fears and she wasn't saying that she'd never had it she wasn't saying she wasn't going to but she was like there is absolutely no grace at the moment for people

who have mental health problems or severe anxieties around what these vaccines could do and to be fair I know that everyone was angry because COVID was obviously a very very emotionally heightened time there were people who are far more immunosuppressed and who needed other you know as that sort of like mass vaccination everyone needed everyone to kind of band together as a community but that's not to say that what she said didn't have validity to it but we had absolutely no grace and the way that the internet in particular some influences went after her when she spoke to us on this podcast she talked about how she has been so close to ending her own life but she also said there is nothing that anyone could say to me in that moment that was

worse than how I already felt about myself she's like I hated myself she left home and away she like retreated from her life online it ended her career it ended her acting it's it's actually crazy how impactful some of these things can be and I do think that sometimes it is at the forefront of it is other influences doing it to each other yeah and the thing that's so scary about that is they should know better because when they are the ones who are on the receiving end of it, then they're like, why is everyone attacking me? It's like, dude, you do it to everyone else.

Like how can you not take some or have some self-reflection that what you do hurts people deeply? Because it's weaponised. We know it's weaponised. We know it's weaponised by specific people that capitalise off it in Australian media. We've all seen it. And what happened to Sam Frost isn't an isolated experience,

to be honest but it was devastating which is the sad part and I think and I speak from experience a big problem is when you are being attacked by somebody even though you know it's not true what they're saying you can't say anything I couldn't say anything like I had suicidal ideations I've spoken about that the person knows I told the person what I was going through couldn't give the fuck did not matter you can't say anything because you're so scared of the double down yeah like if I tried to defend myself if I tried to apologize if I tried to explain or tell the truth it doesn't matter because the pile on is worse I was so scared of this person making what I was already a very dangerous time for me worse that I couldn't say anything and I know that from

experience that's what multiple people feel yeah and that's exactly what happens in the book that this character learns that the more she says the more she tries to explain herself that is going to be dissected to the point where there is no out no purpose in trying to explain it the other thing that I kind of built into the book that's a little bit timely that I didn't realize would be is the idea of these gossip forums and there's a scene where she discovers that there's a gossip forum about her. I think as you were saying, Laura, about somebody like Sam Frost where it's like you say something and it's attacked. I think what we really need to do is relearn the art of debate and arguing because I am all for, if it's COVID and there's somebody who questions the vaccine,

I'm all for an argument that says, yes, but this vaccine is our way out and this is really important. Like I am all for that argument. What I am not for is the conflation of an individual with an ideology. So in that moment, Sam Frost ceased to be Sam Frost, complex human being who we love for many, many, many reasons, who we watched on TV and all adored. She ceased to be that person and instead just became this ideology

of anti-vaxxer. Do you know what it was? and I remember that so clearly because I remember watching her video and I remember how bad the cancer culture was with that and I felt so deeply for her because I knew that she'd been misunderstood. She used the word it's causing segregation and everyone latched onto that and then said you're a racist because you're comparing this to apartheid.

I actually don't think she realised that she meant separation rather than segregate. I genuinely think that that was an honest mistake. She'd literally just written and published a book called Believe about her mental health and trying to advocate to help for better mental health for people in general. And I remember seeing how hard people were going on that one word and I was like, absolutely, there is an education piece

around how maybe that word wasn't used correctly, but that doesn't make her racist because she didn't understand that she's used it in this context, maybe not in the right way. And now we're conflating racism and fucking vaccines. Like, what is going on? It was just a crazy time. And I don't want to sit on Sam because this is not about Sam and I understand she's come up but an important note

in that example is that I truly believe the people that were going after her knew that that was an honest mistake. They absolutely knew that she did not mean anything by that but they don't care. They want to be angry and they want to be loud. And I think that's what I wanted to explore as well, this idea that we are using the internet and using each other to prosecute really complex moral questions

and we're doing it a lot at the moment. We are looking at individuals and there is a justified reason for it, which is the state of the world right now is so terrifying and there are so many moral and legal and ethical atrocities going on that it is too hard to try to engage with them. So what we do is we engage with people because it's easier to just look at somebody in Australia and say, well, I'm going to hold them to account for a huge issue that's happening internationally because it's easier to yell at that person than it is to

create any actual political change. And it is. And there is also utility in that. And that is explored in the book as well, that there are many moments where these sort of conversations have led to significant change. But I do think it's important for us to know that in terms of change, in terms of advocacy, there is so much that doesn't have to be done online. And there is a lot that we do online that doesn't actually turn into change. Totally. I think that that is probably the real nail on the head moment. There's a lot of yelling online that's been dressed up as advocacy, but it actually makes no real tangible change whatsoever. It gets people angry. And I actually think that sometimes, and we saw this in the great makeup debate from a million years ago on YouTube,

it was the first time that we had seen cancel culture used as a way of growing your own engagement. And I think that there are people who use outrage as a way to grow their own following on social media. It's a formula that works. We see it work time and time again. I have a big following. You have a big following. I'm going to scream at you. More people who agree with me are going to come and join my following. Outrage culture is the easiest way to amass the biggest following in the quickest way. And I actually do think, you know, unpacking what is the real world tangible changes that's made by that, probably not a lot, to be honest. And I think if you look at it at a macro level, and this is something that in my Pylon podcast,

I hope it'll illustrate this point, that disproportionately the people we come after in terms of online outrage are women and women of colour and they are the ones who suffer the consequences the most and what scares me about that is that then we look at the media landscape and we think, oh, it's weird, we've got no diversity. And I know a lot of women of colour in media who have been attacked in such vicious ways

that they disappear because it's like, well, I don't, or women who are minorities in all sorts of ways who have put themselves out there, the vitriol has been so horrendous that they're like, oh, God, no, no sane person would do this. I'm not going to do this. So what you end up with is, you know, I love Karl Stefanovic, but you end up with the Karl Stefanovic's who are like, I am Teflon.

They don't ever experience cancer culture because no one's ever going to go after them. or the debate is online is like oh but we not carl because carl's lovely but the debate is online is like oh but we expect that of them yeah so i don't go after them because i expect that but i don't expect it of you so i'm going to hold you to a much higher moral standard yeah because you're a woman and i expect better from you and xyz but it's i mean yeah it's such a tricky one to try and like get to the bottom of like what is the reason why are we like this something we've been speaking a fair bit about lately but i hate this rhetoric of well you put yourself in the

public eye, you need to expect this. You need to expect the pylons and the cancellations and the attacks and the racism and the people that hate you. And I call bullshit on that. And I think that circles back to what you were just talking about. Gone are the days where you can agree to disagree with someone and have an educated discussion with somebody. And like, I think if you're in the public eye, you welcome that and you can welcome constructive criticism, but it doesn't open you up to a firing round of every single person's hate betrayal and, you know like they know better and there's stuff that's just unhelpful and you want to just you just want to yell about it and I had an experience recently that I thought was funny because I shared

something about my book that the cover was out and I was really excited and then I hope again I hope I'm in forgiving company I um I googled my book to work out if I could see anywhere how it was performing by the way the pre-orders have been open for like five minutes but I'm like am i a bestseller yet you're like two minutes yet new york times are you calling it so i google it and when i googled it a gossip forum came up and i was like uh don't press it don't press it don't press it pressed it and it was a screenshot of my book announcement and it was like basically holy crap she looks so old and i was like oh and i had like a moment of like and you go all hot and then i thought about it and i was like this is so fucked up because i've written a book i

never claim to look young I'm not selling you skincare you know like and I just thought yeah what does that do and I thought this is just such an interesting example of women are often yelling at each other being like don't get Botox don't get filler it's so unfair you're putting and then say you don't and then it's like you're old and that offends me Like, it's so bizarre. You're like, what do you want me to do? Like, fill one lip. Yes.

Like, meet you in the middle. Yes, like, get just enough so that I can't tell you're old because it's triggering to me. But it's undetectable because if it looks too done, then it's triggering to me also. That's why I won't click on it. I wouldn't. I just got to stop doing it.

You have more self-control. I click on everything. I love to read. No, I've got PTSD. My mental health wouldn't take it now. If I could see whole threads, I just couldn't do it. I've reached a state of nirvana where I find it funny and it's really taken a long time and I do genuinely mean this for a long time it used to severely impact me I don't know what changed I

actually think it might have been having kids and I don't take things as seriously at all like I don't take anything seriously anymore life's a show we're just trying to survive yeah so when I see people having go at me online I find it quite funny now because it's usually like you know it's usually something that's just like so ridiculously critical about something I've never thought of that I'm like wow I live rent-free in your brain like you spend time thinking about me that's you're a fan you're like cute you are a fan Claire you said something about the book specifically and about how the character is trying to defend herself and she's making the situation worse in this whole pile on catastrophe and I mean we've brought this up a couple of time over the years

but the best advice I've ever received during one of these really heated moments of like public spotlight was from Mia Friedman. She slid into our DMs and she's always been someone who's been very, very kind during any kind of exchange because she's experienced it so many times herself. And she said, do not reply, do not respond, do not put gas on the fire. Don't give it oxygen. Every time you reply, you give them some new headlines to write. You give them something else to respond to she was like never respond yeah but you know what like she group chatted us to say that but that for me I've been battling with that advice I originally thought it was the right thing

to do and now I'm not sure because I know for my pylon I didn't respond once not once and I was attacked for 18 months over and over again and it got to the point where I was like I'm gonna fucking take shit down if this happens one more time and I even remember you being Laura being like breathe through it we're not going to do it and I said why why can't I respond you know and I battled between it yeah but there is a media figure in Australia who I have spoken to a bit throughout this and I've and he's written beautifully about this and he has no social media so he's never responded to anything never read anything about himself and I was talking to him about like do you detect when there is stuff in the zeitgeist where like can you feel the

energy if you're walking down the street and he's like no yeah that no it's blissful ignorance and i have to say this particular person any storm anything it passes it passes because he is not there he's not feeling it he's not in the eye of it yeah but it is different because he's a man so it's not as furious and it's not as it doesn't come with as much vitriol and and that is what as women we do to each other online the cancellations don't stop they continue and continue the only reason why I think that the advice from Mia Friedman yes it can be conflicting because the problem is when you respond with silence it's interpreted as guilt and that you're not apologetic but the issue is is that there is no apology that is ever good enough

there is unless the apology comes on the front foot before the cancellation even started if your apology comes after that cancellation is in motion it means nothing it doesn't matter how deeply you mean it and so for me I'm like I think that it was great advice and I have definitely seen people make their situations a fuckload worse yeah by getting on the internet and yelling back and trying to defend themselves and yeah you know it's it really is just this kind of like ticking time bomb now that I think that all people who have very public media lives they are a whisper away from any sort of like controversy or cancellation but what do you think is the defining factor between people who survive them and people who don't what is someone who's an

attempted cancellation and someone who's actually defined as being cancelled I do think that in all the kind of cases I've looked at all the people I've spoken to time does solve it and that is not always a good thing there are many people who have committed crimes who have done a horrific thing mostly men yeah yeah yeah and years down the track it's all forgotten they're on our tvs so long as you're a white middle-aged man you're fine you can come back from anything exactly exactly so i do think that time actually people the one benefit of our attention spans being so disgustingly short is that we forget or it just gets a bit muddied where you're like oh i feel like that person did something once but whatever i have completely forgotten about it but i do

think that there is an element of kind of self-actualization that needs to happen for anybody who is going to put work out there so people who are podcasting people who are writing where I think it was actually uh Zara from Shameless who said to me that a kind of pivotal point for the two of them was deciding that who they show up as as the host of that podcast is not who they are as people. That is two different things. And so if people have a problem with something they've said on the podcast, that's not them. And they can't conflate the two because that's when you really, really start to struggle. But I think it is kind of important to remember that anybody in the public eye, even the people that you have kind of villainized and who might

seem ridiculous or whatever they are human beings and the thing that I touch on in the book and I wonder if you guys think this as well that I think people assume that if you're the person on a podcast writing creating anything that you must have incredibly high self-esteem and be incredibly sure of yourself I find it's the opposite that often when you're the person putting yourself out there and it's driven by creativity and it's driven by a desire to be understood it can often be because there is actually quite a deep hole in you that you want filled by other people like a validation yes yes and so when people come for you you feel like saying oh no no no no you've misunderstood I just want you to love me I hate myself what you're saying about me I've thought

it I have thought it and in the book the kind of backstory is that this particular character who's been cancelled online for something she's done it sort of unravels that there's a story from her past that is really the worst thing she's ever done that she's never been able to reconcile and so it's this thing of shame the fact that there is shame in our personal lives where you don't have to put shame on somebody else we're all ashamed we're all so ashamed of a million different things that we do and so shame is not a helpful emotion to get somebody to change their behavior. And if anything, it just drives them to a dark, dark, dark place where they are not going to change their minds. And I think in this moment in history, one of the biggest

things we're contending with is how do we get people to change their minds? How do we encourage healthy debate and actually sharing information and facts? And I think the way we're going, people are just becoming more siloed because shame pushes people more and more to the extremes. Do you think when it comes to this, these conversations online, that it's about accountability of the thing that's happened? Or do you think the reason why the people are engaging in it is because it makes them feel morally superior? Well, like, well, I would never say that. I would never do that. How could they be so racist, bigoted, misogynist, whatever it is. And it's a performance. And I think we have to remember that, that everything that happens

online is a performance and so calling somebody out for a moral transgression it is coming from a place of I'm not doing this privately I'm not doing this I'm not reaching out to somebody via text message to say hey you said this thing and it made me feel uncomfortable because that would be a very different interaction and you'd probably find that you were aligned on most things when somebody calls somebody out publicly it is a performance and it is a performance of morality and I just don't think that morality is that simple. I think it's really complex and that all of us contain multitudes and it erases all of that. I know you just mentioned I mean we've discussed the fact that women are more likely to be cancelled. What else do you think makes

someone cancellable? Like is it always their indiscretions and their actions or is it who they are. Something that has scared me a little bit working in media and looking at this kind of stuff is that, at least in my world, it is women coming after women. And I think women are triggered by other women. And it reminds me a lot of high school. It reminds me a lot of when you're at school and you found someone annoying. And so you just say really cruel things about them. And often it is somebody who seems self-assured or is putting themselves out there or taking some risks and there's something about that that makes you feel really, really uncomfortable. So I think it is that and what protects from it is often being really self-deprecating. The problem with

that is that when women walk through the world being self-deprecating, we're underestimated and we don't get what we deserve. Yeah, it's a battle. Yeah, it's this irritating thing of you feel like you always have to be squashing yourself down to not upset anyone but that's what's kept women in their place for 2 000 years how do you think tall poppy syndrome plays into it i think in australia in particular we definitely have and i say this is somebody who has this instinct too as i joke about being a communist and i i joke about how bad i am at capitalism but like you do have this instinct of you see what other people have and I grew up actually very much with a mentality that if you had money or if you had kind of tangible success that was morally bad maybe

it's like a catholic thing I don't know it was some weird modesty slash don't have more than you need thing and if you do don't talk about it yes you can't show it yeah and I really grew up with that and interestingly it was only a few years ago that I had some conversations with friends and I'm not super into all the manifesting stuff like even though I do we do it but we don't ever want to say that we do it because it sounds too woo woo you're me I manifested my husband yeah no everyone manifests the love of their life they do and like I journal I do all that stuff but I did have friends say do you think the fact that you have all these weird views about money means that you're then not like attracting it like you're

purposely kind of shunning it totally like in an unconscious way because you think that money is bad and I'm like oh yeah and I think Australians do that a little bit in our culture and I do think there are so many issues with capitalism and there are so many issues with billionaires and the planet's going to shit and all of that but I reckon in Australia we do have this bit of a mentality that we do not like people with money especially women it's an interesting conversation we had with elodie pullen and also with chloe fisher so they both and this was on podcast when we interviewed chloe fisher and she said you know i've never felt so like not not hated is not not the right word but like people really enjoyed the shared trauma and the shared grief that they were

both going through and then as they've started to find their happiness and also in that happiness success yes people have turned on them their own audience are like well you've changed in some ways and it's like why is it that when people are down and sad that we're like yes they're just two chicks giving it a go but then when it's two people who are successful and they're happy it's like hold on you've changed now we hate it it's it's this visceral thing and it's really I always find it fascinating in tabloids where they have a successful Australian woman walking down the street and they calculate how much her outfit is worth. And I'm like, you would never do that to Hamish Blake. You would never do that to Karl Stepanovic. You'd never do that to a man,

even though probably the bloody watch on the man's wrist is worth more than whatever that woman's wearing. Totally. They would do it too. It was a real feature for a while there. Every time Zoe Foster Blake stepped out of the house, they would do it to Zoe, but never once to Hamish. And it's like, why do we have this instinctive reaction towards a woman who has had success? And then we talk about wanting pay equality. We talk about the fact that bloody venture capital, like women get no funding for their businesses. Women are underrepresented in terms of extreme wealth.

With all of this and knowing how deep you've gone in cancer culture, what is the antidote to it? I think the antidote is, oh, I hate saying this because I don't practice it. But I think we need to spend less time on our phones. I really, really think that the amount of time we're spending is what is resulting in the dehumanisation and the language and the anger. I think it's really, we're just totally oblivious to the nuances of real life because we're not living it as much anymore.

So I think that. But I also think trying to engage with people in your life more than you're engaging with people online. Like I think everybody goes to their family Christmas and you see the uncle who doesn't believe in climate change and who is a Trump supporter and you sit down and you respect him and you have a conversation with him. You don't stand up and scream at him in the kitchen.

No, you don't tell him to get out. Some people probably would. I know. And those people probably don't have very long-lasting relationships because that's what life's about. And so I think we just need to interact day-to-day with people we don't agree with and I think we need to learn, relearn the art of debate.

It's also, at the end of the day, we're not going to spend less time online. It's a beautiful thought. I really can someone stop it. Someone can TikTok. But I think it's really important to just start to try to understand someone's perspective you don't have to agree with it but understand why why they might think like that what might have happened to them in their life to put them in that position why

they're doing what they're doing yeah again you can have an educated debate you can talk through it you can hate them and dislike them but you don't have to attack them for it and I think the understanding is going to bring us a long way with being more human in our interactions I remember hearing somebody say a little while ago like how would you behave if you just assumed everyone was doing their best like with what they have everyone's doing their best and I was like people aren't doing their best everyone's freaking annoying and since having a child and I think the experience of birthing a child having a newborn being that innocence and you're like oh everybody was born like this and like everybody everybody started innocent and maybe

everybody is just doing their best with what they have and that's what's so complicated about being a human being well buy buy Claire's book yes the worst thing I've ever done Claire you're amazing we love having you here we adore you congratulations on the book everyone go buy it we're gonna put all the links in the show notes as well and also the pre-sales like the waiting list and everything are really important so like if you do have an interest in buying this and you're like oh one day I'll do it go and jump online because it does show the publisher like yeah yeah that it could need this many copies and it's gonna have this much interest so it is important for our little indie publishers. You can get it for $16

from VW. Bargain! That's so cheap. That's like two or maybe two and a half copies. If you have soy milk, that's two soy milk copies. Two copies. Claire, thank you so much, honey. Thank you.