Today, Explained - Delete your account

Episode Date: July 27, 2018

Dan Harmon quit Twitter. James Gunn was fired by Disney. Sarah Silverman defended a nine-year-old joke about molestation. Vox’s Aja Romano explains why internet mobs are digging up celebrities’ old social media posts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You know how sometimes you download an app, but then you never update the app? Well, sometimes when you update the app, you realize, hey, this app has new features. That can be the experience you have when you update your Uber app. Uber has new features. You can learn more at uber.com slash moving forward. Hello there. This episode of Today Explained contains more saucy language than usual, as well as some things you might not want your kids to hear. Thanks.

A funny thing has been happening to funny people on the internet this week. They've been getting called out for jokes they made, in most cases, like 10 years ago. The comedian Sarah Silverman was one of them. Back in 2009, she tweeted, Hey, is it considered molestation if the child makes the first move? I'm going to need a quick answer on this. Then yesterday, nine years and a few weeks later, she explained her joke.

Some very odd people are saying I'm a pedo, re-a joke from a time not that long ago, when hard, absurd jokes by comedians were acknowledged for what they were. Jokes. Not a disingenuous national threat to people fake-clutching their pearls whilst ranting the country's 2PC. It doesn't look like Sarah Silverman is going to face any serious professional consequences because a joke she tweeted in July 2009 that some people found offensive resurfaced, but the director James Gunn wasn't so lucky.

Some jokes he cracked years ago got him kicked out of the most profitable cinematic universe in the world late last week. Who are you? Star-Lord. Who? Well, Star-Lord, man. Legendary outlaw. Forget it. James Gunn made Disney a ton of money with the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, like over a billion dollars.

Asia Romano, you write about Culture for Vox. Yes. How did Disney end up firing him? An alt-right brigade originating from 4chan, which you may or may not be aware is sort of the ground zero for alt-right organization on the internet these days, essentially dug up a bunch of old tweets that James Gunn had made. So these 4chan forum dudes, I'm going to say dudes. Am I assuming dudes or are they all dudes? Yeah, you can assume dudes. Okay, so they go after James Gunn had made. So these 4chan forum dudes, I'm going to say dudes. Am I assuming dudes or are they all dudes? Yeah, you can assume dudes.

Okay, so they go after James Gunn. Yes, they go after James Gunn and they do this by digging up tweets that he had made. And to be fair, there are many of these tweets. There are like 15 of them ranging from around the year 2008 to around the year 2012. And they all are essentially jokes about kids being abused. They're crass and

they're not very funny. They were obviously made before his career really took off. How did James Gunn respond? He basically said on Twitter, many people who followed my career know that when I started, I viewed myself as a provocateur, making movies and telling jokes that were outrageous and taboo. As I've discussed publicly many times, as I've developed as a person, so has my work and my humor. And he said, it's not to say I'm better, but I am very, very different than I was a few years ago. Today, I try to root my work in love and connection and less in anger. My days saying something just because it's shocking and trying to get a reaction are over.

So why did they go after James Gunn specifically? The reason that James Gunn came under fire is a bit complicated, but it was because he had taken a side in another online debate where another director, Mark Duplass, had attempted to say conciliatory, kind things about conservative editor Ben Shapiro. Ben Shapiro, editor-in-chief of DailyWire.com. Ben, good to see you tonight. Thanks for being here. I think that Mark's a nice guy, from what I could tell. He came into our offices a couple of months ago because he was doing a project about guns and gun control, and he wanted kind of the right-wing Second Amendment views.

I told him at the time that any association with people on the right is not going to work out well. Okay, so Mark Duplass is like an indie filmmaker. Yes. In with the HBO. And he said something like... Ben Shapiro was kind to me in a moment when I needed kindness or something like that. That started a really big debate on Twitter that got pretty ugly here now. And Gunn sort of weighed in on this debate to basically be like, please don't hate Mark Duplass. He's trying to do the right thing. I think he said something like, Ben Shapiro's own mother should unfriend him.

So James Gunn makes a joke supporting his friend Mark Duplass, who's another filmmaker, who was saying something sort of supportive about Ben Shapiro, who's a conservative commentator. And then this mob hits James Gunn. Yes.

The alt-right then, led by a man named Mike Cernovich. If we had an honest media in America, here is the kind of story they would write. James Gunn said things that nobody who's ever around children should ever say or even think. The person who found it was Mike Cernovich. Oh, and we don't think he's a good person either. They basically began a performative outrage cycle over these tweets. And Gunn apologized, but Disney essentially stepped in and fired him.

And so they removed him from the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise that he's held for two films now. So to be clear here, Disney fires James Gunn, director, writer of a billion dollar franchise they have, the Gardens of Galaxy, over bad jokes he made on Twitter like a decade ago.

Yes, but also this is Disney. This is the Walt Disney Company. This is the most family friendly brand on the entire planet. It probably has an ingrained zero-tolerance policy when it comes to any type of jokes made about child abuse. Yeah. I mean, their statement on it was pretty clear. They said the offensive attitudes and statements discovered on James's Twitter feed are indefensible and inconsistent with our studio's values, and we have severed our business relationship with him. Okay, so James Gunn is no longer in the Disney universe.

Who's targeted next? The next one is a comedian, Michael Ian Black. Let's talk about Michael Ian Black real quick and we can do it again the next break. But things don't necessarily go as well for the alt-right when they target him because he's a comedian, he's sort of independent, and there's nobody to fire him. So he just sort of was like, there, you're all hypocrites. Bye. And did he punch back? He wrote a thread, actually, in response and pointed out in this thread that Mike

Stanovich himself had been charged with rape in 2003 and had supported Roy Moore when Roy Moore was being accused of abusing underage girls. So he basically was like, you are a hypocrite and this attack is all just show. So it was a pretty compelling comeback, honestly. No doubt. So then we get to Dan Harmon. Then we get to Dan Harmon, probably most well known as the creator and showrunner of Community, NBC's Community. And more recently, he is the co-creator of Rick and Morty, which is an Adult Swim cartoon that's very popular. And what do they find of his? So basically in 2009, Dan Harmon was a part of this long-running sort of semi-underground Los Angeles-based comedy sketch and short film festival called Channel 101. And he had created a short film called Daryl, which was meant to be a parody

of Dexter. Dexter was a Showtime show about a serial killer who was also a cop. He was a serial killer, but he had a moral code, which meant that he appeased his bloodlust by killing only other serial killers. Right. Dan Hartman's sketch, Daryl, was basically trying to highlight the moral absurdity of this concept by applying it to something else. So he basically attempted to do this sketch in which Daryl was a pedophile, so he was going to fight pedophilia by acting out pedophilia. Did he stand by this work since making it? No. At some point after it was released, he took it off of Channel 101.

Okay. He was like, nope, this is bad. It's done. But it resurfaced this week? It did resurface this week. It was basically aired on 4chan. And then it was picked up by the alt-right and made much of.

Did Dan Harmon lose his job? Dan Harmon did not lose his job. Adult Swim basically said that while they felt the content was inappropriate and unfunny, they understood that Harmon had deleted it years ago and apologized, and they basically weren't going to feed the trolls by firing him or disciplining him beyond that. So Adult Swim doesn't fire him. How does Dan Harmon respond to this cartoon he made back in 2009 resurfacing in this context? Well, he apologized generally.

He said something about, oh, you shouldn't have had to see that, basically. And he also completely deleted his Twitter account, which is interesting. Do you have any idea why he might have done that? It's 2018, man. You know, if you wanted a good excuse to leave Twitter, there you go. What is he facing? Harassment, you know, just constant onslaught of people, you know, just being being assholes in his mentions. And also threat that they're going to get him fired from his job, that they're going to find something else on him. The usual. I mean, things that women have to endure every day of their lives

that now men who are prominent and, you know, seen as progressive or at least seen as non-racist are now putting up with. Who was coming after Dan Harmon? Was it the same people who went after Michael Ian Black and James Gunn? Yes. Basically, Mike Cernovich again and his supporters and Yes. Basically, Mike Cernovich again and his supporters and followers. Now, Mike Cernovich is a name people have heard before.

What do we know him from? The Southern Poverty Law Center says that he rose to power as a male supremacist. Fuck these bitches. You know, if they fucking say something stupid, I'm just going to blow the bitch out and fucking hurt her feelings. Some girl was shit-talking me.

So I found out her age and I said, look at you, you're 32 and you probably came out to L. to la with big dreams and you were excited about life and now you're single and you got damn yeah because fuck you so he was known for being really really really really misogynist and then he joined with the alt-rights white supremacist rhetoric and became a superstar and is known for propagating conspiracies, specifically Pizzagate. So there is a torture chamber. There is some kind of torture dungeon. This insane incident where a guy walked into a restaurant in D.C.

with a gun looking for like Hillary Clinton's sex abuse lair. Yes. They do have sex cult meetings that Podesta invites his family to. That's Cernovich. Is he tied to any sort of organization or does he just do this stuff as a hobby or what?

He does host a show on InfoWars with Alex Jones, but in general, he's just known for essentially being tied to alt-right conspiracies. Does Mike Cernovich have the kind of following that like a Dan Harmon or a James Gunn or a Michael Ian Black has? He doesn't have a following the size of James Gunn or Dan Harmon, but he does reach a lot of people. Like Michael Ian Black, for example, has like 2 million followers on Twitter and Cernovich has like 450,000.

Which is still a lot of people, though, if those people are individuals with very loud voices and a tendency to harass people on the internet. Right. They're on the fringes, but they're very loud. And as we know, the fringe is more mainstream than ever these days. Up next on Today, explain the age-old question. Do you avoid ever saying anything on the internet and thus avoid the trolls completely? Or do you walk right into the garbage fire? Noam, you know how to beatbox, right?

Yeah. Well, this is like the mid-show break. Let's go for it. Uber is moving forward. They've got new features designed to take the stress out of your pickup. One of them is called Pickup Notes. You can leave a note for your driver so they can know where to look for you when they come for you or how to spot you. You can write stuff like, I'm the lady who speaks seven languages if you count pig Latin. Or

I'm the magician you keep seeing on all your dating apps. Or I'm the person who invented the sticky stuff that goes on the back of post-it notes. Or I'm the guy holding a 24-pack of Mike's Hard Lemonade. It's for my friends. I only drink unfiltered IPAs. Or I am the little spoon. Or I am the Batman. Anyway, you get the point. You can learn more at uber.com slash moving forward.

Did you practice this? No. Yeah, you do. You practice. Today. Today explained. Today explained. Asia, a lot of people were making the argument that, you know, Disney owns ABC,

which immediately fired Roseanne after her racist tweets back in May. James Gunn makes movies for Disney, therefore he should be fired. What's the difference between waking up in the morning and being racist on Twitter in 2018 and cracking some jokes about child abuse on Twitter in 2008? You know, the world has changed so much

in the last decade. It has changed so much. Our conception of identity issues and our conception of what humor is even has changed so much in the last decade. When you choose to go back and dig up those old tweets and take them out of context, you're doing it for a political reason and a political agenda. And obviously, it probably wouldn't have mattered who the person was, whether it was James Gunn or whether they'd found some other individual to go after. Like I said, it didn't really matter that it's Dan Harmon. What matters is that he gave them the material. He gave them the ammo to stage this performative strike back.

There is a vast difference, obviously, between jokes that you made 10 years ago and an actual racist statement that you made that morning, you know, especially in this current era. And with all of the awareness that we've gained over the years about what is and isn't problematic comedy and how to basically be decent people to each other. It sounds like a real work in progress. You can say that, but also it's complicated because you have these bad actors, essentially, who are looking mainly to disrupt the status quo and to have these fights play out in public and to inflict collateral damage where they can, like James Gunn getting fired by Disney, all in order to ultimately advance white supremacy

and advance a deeply misogynistic worldview. There's a comedian I love named Howard Kramer. You heard of him? I have not heard of him. He's an alt comedian from L.A. He's got a real dry sense of humor. He's got this great bit about summer. He calls it summer.

And part of the bit goes, You gotta have a summer secret. Summer secret. Something you do in the summer you don't tell anybody about murder a neighbor kidnap a hobo frame an innocent child. That's your summer secret. Like, it's funny to joke about the terrible things you would never do. And I hope no one ever comes after

Howard Kramer for making a murder joke because it was absurdism. But I guess my question is, is there an alternate universe where Disney could have said, hey, James Gunn, he comes from comedy. In comedy, you laugh about terrible things you would never do. He made a dumb joke. He also made this great movie that millions of people loved, that revitalized a comic book series that no one even cared about. And we're going to stand by him.

The thing about Disney is that it needs to be in control of the narrative. It's not that I don't think that that alternate universe exists, but I'm pretty sure Disney probably doesn't like being blindsided with a narrative outside of its control. They're not in control when the alt-right comes to them and points out that they're guardians of the galaxy. Director made these tweets from 10 years ago. And I think that that makes a difference. Is there some sort of statute of limitations on things you've said if you were underage, if you were in your 20s and an asshole?

Or can people now just dig up anything and shame you online? Of course they can. They can do whatever they want. It's digital and the internet is forever. How you deal with that is up to you. I mean, and I would assume that as these things become more prominent, more sane reactions to them also become more common. For example, Gamergate. Violent depictions of women being beaten, raped, and run over by cars. It's not the movies, it's video games. And now the women calling for change in this multi-billion dollar virtual industry are facing a very real backlash, including death threats.

Gamergate initially was rather successful in getting advertisers of media outlets that Gamergate didn't like to basically stop advertising on those media outlets. But as Gamergate became more well known and people began to be aware of what it was doing and how disingenuous it was, that campaign to target advertisers stopped working as well as it did. So if James Gunn gets fired and it's all over the national media, then that actually draws attention to the artifice behind what Sernovich and company are doing. And that actually hopefully will make more people able to see through it more rapidly and actually cause them to be less effective.

Are the outlets, are the platforms doing anything to police, say? No. A verified entertainer versus a bunch of white supremacist trolls. What can the platforms themselves, be they Instagram or Twitter or Facebook, do that they aren't doing? Well, I think one thing that could be effective and useful is allowing people to mass delete or archive, private archive, their older tweets and their older posts on platforms

like Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, et cetera. You could also argue that companies, not necessarily the social media outlets themselves, but corporations and so forth, could have ongoing working policies about how to deal with old social media that says we will not consider any type of social media content older than five years to impact your current career. That type of thing. The people Cernovich is targeting largely this week are comedians. Is there a risk that the threat of being attacked by the alt-right affects the kind of comedy that people make, the kind of art that people create,

the kind of entertainment that we see? I don't think so. And I think that's just because pissing off the alt-right is just going to galvanize you to be even more outspoken and to do your thing even harder. But I also know that it's hard. I mean, you look at the number, the untold numbers of women who have been silenced and whose voices have been quashed by systemic harassment in their industry. And it's obviously not that easy. How about you, Asia? I mean, you brave the elements every day and go online and write about trolls and 4chan, dark corners of the internet. Are you ever afraid they'll come after

you on social media? Sean, I have been in fandom since 1998. I have been doxxed, harassed. I was once fired from my job because of fans reported me to my editor for writing fan fiction. I have been there and done it and I'm just going to write it. It doesn't matter what they say about me. It doesn't matter what they do to me. I mean, your moral position in a moment of deep and troubling political and social upheaval is not going to change just because you are or aren't harassed on the internet on a daily basis. So I'm just going to do what I do. This is Today Explained. The show's executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Bridget McCarthy is our editor, but she produced this here episode. Noam Hassenfeld is our producer, but he engineered this here episode.

Afim Shapiro is our engineer, but he's on vacation. And so is Luke Vanderplug, who usually produces too. Yesterday was National Intern Day. Big ups to our national interns, Bree Seeley and Catherine Wheeler. And thanks to Paige Flager for helping out this week. Good luck in Ohio, Paige. The celebrated Breakmaster Cylinder makes music for us. And Today Explained is produced in association with Stitcher.

We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Hi, my name is Anna Sheffield. I live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. My favorite episode of Today Explained is Golden State Killer Opens Pandora's Box. And don't forget to follow Today Explained on Twitter at today underscore explained. Thanks to Uber for supporting our show this week. Uber is one of the many ways you can travel around this weekend when you need to move from place to place. They have an app, and it's got new features, and you can learn more about those features at uber.com slash moving forward. Good luck.