#733 - Rikki Schlott - Is Cancel Culture Actually Getting Worse?
01:04:26 Share

Hello, friends, welcome back to the show. My yesterday is Ricky lot. She's a journalist, column free speech activist and an author. Saying you can't say anything anymore is the internet tag line. Council culture has been the hot topic over the last few years, but why has IT taken over the disco so much? And just how much truth is there that is getting worse than ever before?

Expect to learn what Ricky uncovered from a mass analysis of twitter bans, whether the rates of people being cancelled are increasing if councillors actually enjoy the cancellation of others, what drove the increase and cancellations, if free speech is really dead in america, whether apologizing works and much more. There is a very formative book a couple of years ago called the codling of the american mind by JoNathan height and greg rookie enough, and Ricky and greg have worked on this, which is the counselling of the american mind, which is that new book. And it's interesting to see kind of how the two are related and how a victim hood culture, and in over an over degree of coddling the children, results in a society into culture which is hyper concerned about dangerous speech and dangerous actions.

Uh, is very interesting, especially when they've dug into the data and actually looked at this from a statistical standpoint too. Don't forget, if you are listening, you should have also got a copy of the modern wisdom reading list, which is one hundred books you should read before you die, that the one hundred most interesting and impacts for box that i've ever read. And that list is completely free on the internet, waiting for you to go to Chris will x dot com slash books to get your copy for free right now that Chris will x dot com slash box .

empower your business or digital agency. With blue host trusted by over five million wordpress users globally, blue host features top to bottom hosting optimizations designed specifically for wordpress, giving you twenty four, seven access to a team of experts for support, plus thousands of word press health articles. So if you want to stream line wordpress website creation with intuitive controls and premium support, choose blue host powering over two million websites worldwide.

This is the sound of your ride home with dad after he caught you vapp.

Awkward isn't IT most babes contains seriously addictive levels of nickey and disappointment .

know the .

real cost of vagues brought to by the fda.

Hey, chicago, say hello to small business hell for map. That's right. We're here to make starting and running your business simpler.

From helping you choose the right devices to setting them up hassle free, we can help you build your business in no time. Speak to a business expert and get the help you need. And no cost whatsoever at apple were open for your small business. Go to apple that comes like small bests, or visit an apple store to learn more. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Ricky slot.

I feel like if there was ever a conspiracy to try to launch a book, a turn of free speech feels at some of america's highest education institutions might very well be IT. So i'm not saying that you and greg started all of this, but I am saying that IT seems to be conveniently timed.

Yeah um I we convinced all of the eve legal ally institution digito self detonate exactly as we were dropped this book about how terrible and dial the city of free speeches on their campus and the state of disco so an interesting time for sure also often an an ideal time to be a vocal free speech absolutely IT requires that you defend speech that is often very hainous even in the depth of an unfolding crisis um but certainly I think we're seeing the the consequences of decades of just these major elite institutions in amErica just advocating the value of free speech, completely throwing IT to the way I side and then allowing radical ism and and some really frightened ing a liberal tendencies to faster in its place.

What has happened to the rates of calls for cancellation over the last few years?

It's been absolutely staggering. And since two thousand fourteen fire, which is Michael thor good looky on off as the president of the foundation for individual rates and expression, and they they ve talked more than a thousand attempts to get professors fired, two hundred of which have been successful and getting them sanctions. And that actually is twice the rate of the uh, ten years that roughly constitute what mercury ism was.

And so if we're looking back in historical context, we look at that as a horrendous played on our record as a country in terms of you firing people for ideological reasons. And we are now outstripping that at roughly twist the piece. So I think in the future, historians will be looking back at this moment in time and studying IT much as we did, and rightly so, the one thousand and fifty years.

What is driving this increase? Why is IT ramping up so much of the the undercurrent that causing this thing to happen?

yeah. So I think that the major catalyst here and why we define council culture as starting in two thousand and fourteen and its modern induration is because social media allows IT to just take off like wild fire. And we we kind of refer to richer docking's idea of the meme because cancer culture is very uh it's very effective.

You know you don't have to actually engage with somebody's argument. You just attack them at harmony, you make an example of them, you make sure that no one else wants to tread the same ideological path as them. And in the end, people see that and watch that and replicate that. And I think that social media has allowed for an unprecedented amount of scrutiny on institutions, ideas and people, which, of course, is a good thing. However, we're in one of those like post printing press moments of social unrest where we haven't yet figured out how to navigate this world, in which now billions of people are in the cultural conversation and and anyone could be torn down at any moment unceremoniously, fairly unfairly and so I think you know this is our book is a an attempt to call attention to the issue and also um hopefully get more people on board to figuring out how we get out of this mess because I think that they're actually is a lot of um just general desire and a general understanding that that things have gone too far, that people are walking on egg ells and that that's not a healthy way to live.

right? So if you're saying that the distribution mechanism of social media, frictionless, free communication, ubiquitous, instantly, globally accessible, that is that almost like the delivery mechanism driving the virus in some way, is there anything deeper than that? Or is the main driver of this just the fact humans have perverse incentives, the a bunch of strange things are going in our psychology, and when the opportunity arises to be able to do this IT activate something inside of us? Or is there been a deeper cultural change to the striven, the cancellation increase?

Yeah I mean, I think that the the seeds have been zone for decades here where we've just seen a general um institutional creep away from free speech values, a generational creep as well. Um and we we definitely believe that cancer culture started in its kind of pledges form on a american campuses in the idioms and nineties when the first way of a political correctness ss was coming around like bill marr was doing the politically incorrect show before I was even born and I was kind of laughed at that point in time. But then all of of a sudden as soon social media came onto the forefront and Jenny, unfortunately, my generation came to college campuses and began unceremoniously shouting down and tearing down their professors, um IT exploded out into the open in a way that IT hadn't really at historically. However, um the the creep away from classically liberal values has been consistent.

Um and you know one thing that was really frightening reading this book is realizing how different greg MC author is nearing fifty and i'm twenty three so we have totally different generational span and the the old idiom and kind of a kind of foundational principles of american society that he grew up with like to each own and sticks and stones I was a raised with any of them um I was I was raised with words can wounds you and um oppressed people need to be protected and as you need to be the the warrior to step in on their behalf lest they be offended. And it's just a fundamental flip. And I think that as a culture, we've just moved more towards protectionism and in a feeling that we're all feedback rather than this resilient sort of anti fragile framework that used to be kind of cord to the american spirit.

I think the british IT is the british spirit too. You know, like stiff up a lip, that's what we were known for, the stiff up a lip. And you know, mustn't grumble much and grumble things are going badly, but mustn't grumble.

Yeah, this a increase ed in fragile ity, right? A rampant fragile ity. But it's not it's holo because it's not like this an actual change.

People are living longer than ever before. People have got Better health care than ever before. You're more able to deal with anything from the car accident to the bad weather to the heat to the cold to whatever is.

So it's odd that you have real world situations going in one direction whilst perceptions of how bad IT is going in another. But just how bad is IT now? Like what what start have you found to back up just how many people are being cancelled? Or or what the the sense the cultural theron etr is saying, yeah.

I mean, fire. Does these tremendous service of student sentiment around the country? And we know that roughly two thirds of students on college campuses say that there are self centering. We also know that roughly ninety percent of professors say the same, and that one in ten have been investigated for what there what should be protected speech.

Um and so I think that one of the things that's interesting is there there tensity consistently be ebs and flows of cancer culture where people say no, it's behind us and like it's it's no longer and issued twenty sixteen was a rough moment but like now we're back to Normal and then the pandemic happens and it's even worse than the wake of twenty and then oh no maybe we're back to Normal and then the israel palestine and conflict IT rubs and it's just any time there is a moment of social unrest. A culture that is not actually deeply rooted in its free speech values will tend towards a liberalism, censorship, um attacking, disagrees or decently from the pro nome N T viewpoint. And I think that we see that time again and every single time has been getting more severe.

So if you look at the case loads, that fire um gets from students and faculty across the country. Twenty twenty was a record breaking year despite the fact that kids weren't even on campuses. So they had an unprecedented case slowed.

And you know, if you also look at that, the rose statistics of the surveys of of americans, consistently, roughly four and five americans will agree that political correctness has gone too far, that cancel culture is a problem, that they feel that they have to solve sensor. And I think it's genuinely iteration of the minority, is just the problem is that, that remaining twenty percent quickly, wheels who actually do tear people down have such an outsize impact on society where we're all self answering. And I felt that myself being A N Y U student in the the recent past, for sure.

what was your experience on campus like when you got them?

I had gone to a um a boarding school that was almost like a mini college before. So I feel like I was kind of prime ed by the time I arrived. And you my freshman year of high school was the first time that I realized I just did not agree with the the prevAiling viewpoint.

Um when they on Martin luther king day is put all the kids in different buildings based on their race to talk about their racial experience and they remember being like this is kind of the opposite of how I ve been taught to uh internalize the the lessons of Martiny the king junior and yes so that was I knew by the time I arrived at and you that I was, uh kind of going against the Green and when I did get there I was understandably, I think in retrospect, CT and for my social standing and so I was hiding Thomas soil books and Jordan Peterson books under my bed which is really embarrassing in retrospect and like now even a Jordan's podcasting um to super cancelled you know booted from every group chat that I was then basically I don't like you but um IT was generally a an ideologically oppressive environment I would say I I really reheard dissenting viewpoints um I took I edited two years of a humanity as degree before I dropping out despite having a four pro GPA because a photo itin resume school was not going to happen um but I would say that generally IT was one way or the highway kids would even try occasionally need to pop into philosophical conversations and say you know to play devils advocate and then present some unpopular opinion and they would literally be Scott in his dad consistently so um I would just IT made myself sensor and I realized once I started writing for the new york post and being outspoken finally in the pandemic. That so many people around me reached out to me privately and sad you know I I completely agree with you and i've been in a class room with them and I would never have known because, you know, cancer culture and liberalism thrives by making everyone feel alone. But even at the school again, when you there, there were a considerable number of kids who actually did feel similarly impressed. But am are ideologically opposed, but. Didn't feel that they could speak out and and didn't have any examples around them.

It's strange to think if that's the case, sixty six percent of students are self censoring in some former another on campus, but that there will be a good chunk of those students that will hss and and mock if you try to even steal man, let alone actually have a different opinion. I know IT seems like it's it's i'm wondering what is motivating those people to be so veered in their enforcement of a particular ideology that sixty six percent of them don't agree with or at least have criticisms of like what's the i'm trying to work out what's the incentive, what what's in IT for .

the chancellor. But I think that the the the there's a get can a cluster b personality type that's really been um empowered on campuses. I think in the people who are, I think, genuine beliefs that a place like and why you like, there are a considerable practice of people who who generally believe that if they step in on behalf of you know a pressed theoretical group that might be offended by something that you say, which by the way, there are almost never the demographic of people at their defending.

But I think that there's a moral high ground to IT and um and and incentive righteousness and I would even go as far as to say like a bit of like A A religious kind of attitude towards IT like I think of johnnic oris book worke racism and any idea that um this is kind of the planting this like this ideology in a in a post faith world is often times occupying that seem part of the the human psyche I would say um but also it's so institutionalize ed at these colleges as well. I think that even even if not every professor agrees with that, certainly the administrators are extremely disproportionate to the left wing or left leaning. And when I was that and for you, for example, we on the back of variety cards, IT says, here's nine one one.

Here's the phone number for the campus police, which you probably could theoretically need a in new york city at any point in time. And here's the the student health center. And all these emergency number is and also the biased response hotline where you could call if you felt aggrieved or offended by something that someone said.

And it's a literally and institutionalize ed nature culture on these campuses. And I was literally on the back of the bathroom stalls too. They would have like posters of like has something happens to you called the biased response hot line and you're, you know immediately on the form with an administrator.

So a you're walking on egg shells. And even if IT is just a small percentage of kids, who will his or who will call you any sort of ister ism um or a fob at any any opportunity, just one kid doing that is enough to shut an entire class down. I believe when I I saw at first hand.

yeah it's A A very effective leverage. One person that has that, what's that um panopticon it's kind of like a panopticon, right that you have one person, the table to be in the middle, manipulate an all a lot of people around the opinions and the fear is a race to the bottom in that regard, like whoever has the most the highest purity level is the one whose opinion is is gone to continue to be pushed forward. What was that analysis of mass twitter bands that you guys looked?

Yeah, they found this. This is doubt that we got from the national contagion research institute and they followed the growth of the platform gab as twitter did mass bans and purchase of accounts that were um at various times associated with like info wars or um there were I think post Shirleys felt there were groups of that they identified as weight of premises and proud and they would do these mass bands and purges of account starting around two thousand sixteen and then literally a lockstep there would be a mass exist to gab every single time and the percentage of uh of gaps that included the word ban would go up by like a factor of ten and so we we analyzed that data basically to demonstrate that when we do fight ideas that could be very offensive and unsafe.

And and I I understand why people are offended by wait premises views and probably of views are not defending them. However, when you remove them from from the the common square, in places where they might interact without their viewpoints, or where they might get quote, quoted and publicly shamed, you end up creating even deeper and more entrenched echo chAmbers. And so we were very fortunate to get this data from N.

C. R I because we now can probably say that censorship does not make these ideas go away IT just puts them into more obscure crevices of the internet. People are more likely to agree and have a positive feedback loop.

So um we we were extremely fortunate that, that we had not been published before um we had done this book. And and and I think it's A A demonstration of the importance of a platform actually tacking towards free speech because those views are not gone. They're just somewhere else and none of us hear about them, but they very much exist in in another travels of the internet.

What do you think cancellation is trying to achieve? Like you've just explain that IT doesn't seem to work. IT pushes these ideas underground. In sum regard, IT can throw them into echo chAmbers, whether or presumably no dissenting voices. What what is IT trying to achieve?

I mean, I think it's just predicated on a think, a fundamental misunderstanding of how how dialogue works and how minds are change and hearts and and minds are one over. I think I think there's been such a an alienation from the classical liberal values post enlightenment that that need society free and me dialogue robust and need to be healthy and um in the ramm of ideas and that at harmony and you know for for example, I i've never learned john Stewart miles on liberty.

I never learned the importance of free speech at growing up, even going to great schools and doing a philosophy degree, and where you I didn't understand the importance and and just help her found those post and late in my ideals are and how much they need to be bought into by the entire culturing community in order to thrive. And I think that those, those, some people who engage in council culture genuinely need spirit. But other people, I think, do believe that if they shut down, and I don't know, castigate anybody who has a bad belief that that somehow actually does expand IT from society, which is provably untrue. I think it's it's polar ized as even further um but I I do think that it's just because people are are no longer taught the the importance of he who knows only his sight of the argument knows little of that and and the importance of being able to exist in the RAM of ideas and then Frankly, it's just an easy cheap tactic to win arguments without winning arguments because if I can attack you for being a this hat weight mail, I don't actually have to deal with the fact that you might have an ideological argument that that corners me or makes me uncomfortable in my own pretty ous positions.

What are some of the mechanisms for enforcing cancellation that people might not realize are part of the cancellation machine?

I would say one thing that people seem not to talk enough about is how early it's starting and especially in in the social media age. I grew up at an iphone when I was ten, or me the eleven I was on instagram by the time I was eleven earlier. And I am now, like the human receptacle for every parents. Hard stories about what happening to their middle school is getting cancelled. Very good two second snaps chat video where someone screen shot something and now everyone seen IT.

And I think that one of the enforcement mechanisms going forward, in the age of everybody having this in the excessive digital ftr int and all of their adolescent glendore being forever a mortalities in a way that I think any older person should shut at the thought of um that's one way that it's being enforced as that there is an entire generation of Young people who were coming up just surrounded by tripwires, even in their teenage years, that they are arriving on campus in college already prime for the fact that they have to solve them sure that they could caught out at any point in time. And I think that that's self perpetuating because that's making less and less people even want to stick their neck out in the first place. But then I also think that cancer culture is is so dangerous and so powerful, not just for the people whose lives are torn down and completely ruined, but also for all the people around them that see that and see them having been made an example of, and then will refuse and understandably so, to tread that same territory.

What's that what is called like a some kind of ideological bias test that people get asked. And it's almost like the culpably deniable shit test of of becoming of working out with your politics sides not part of some uh, induction. It's not even part of a code of conduct.

But people are just sometimes throw a little question and like, what do you think about Jordan Peterson? Listen to we didn't do this thing and that's one of the more sort of soft introduction ways to this that slowly over time results in you being denigrated or or dispirited or made to feel other. And yeah, it's not just people calling for removal of accounts and bans and protests is there seems to be sort of a softer kind of alienation of people that have different views, which importantly is culpably deniable, right?

There's no point of which you've done the thing because I think that people who are seduced by the prospect of being a White night or who like the idea of performative empathy because IT makes them look moral, whishaw to do nothing moral, or people who just want to enact power and enforce this over all the people. The game is beginning to evolve in the way that means often do where if you is now load status to be seen as someone that calls for cancellation because cancellation itself has become a mean. So now the methods of cancellation need to become increasingly subtlety. They need to develop as the defense mechanisms develop as well. Yeah.

I mean, I think it's it's I think we've seen less coordinated sort of twitter mob terror, wes, although I would say that twenty was kind of a uh, an exception to that. But cheer, cheer example or to your point, an example of that would be in twenty twenty and after the death, George, fate, if you didn't post the black square, then that was A A moral.

the ideological more shock test.

Yeah exactly. I mean, there are people who I have friends who were completely castigated and and unfollowed and blocked for not having done so. I I mean, I didn't do IT and that wasn't. Didn't go over to well anyway you but that would be of the perfect example of like A A soft like do you buy in to the prevAiling ideology at that point in time?

Um and I would also say to that point, there is definitely like a slow and subtle cortines that I saw of when I was in um in classes that and where you and in my more the oriented courses where you would kind of become clear that maybe wonder two people are a little more heterodox and I was just like a slow people are gonna start kind of sitting on the other side of the classroom when they come in of that persons over there um to the point where I was like this kind of bubble that we were ill or there was something wrong with us and I i've also watched how growing up that way has, I think, polar ized Young people even more because if you grow up, if you're being racially segregated on your fourteen Martin junior day and you're having political idea ologies shut down your throat from pretty much day one, it's understandable way some people, especially Young people, become the reactionary opposite or can go down some rabbit hole on the internet um and like I am fascinated to see i'm sure you saw that statistics that um girls and boys are like forking politic right now. I think um I you know I think it's I think part of IT is a little bit of reactionary thing for boys and understandably so. I think that I I talked right when I saw how weird the left was around me when I was in school.

But I also feel like politics are like there's almost a feminization of the left a little bit and a lot of um I think a lot of even cancel culture or or attitudes about free speech in needing to protect other people from harmful speech, almost hijack the female proclivity to be more empathetic or or to um you know emotionally reason more than rationally reason which is obviously you know you do the whole like on average and of course there are exceptions to that role but mean, even if you look at students attitude on free speech and the percentages of students at various schools who will say that is sometimes acceptable to respond to speech with violence, consistently, like the top five schools are all all women schools with the high est percent people saying that they would respond with violence to speech. And so I do think that our political binary is taking on a little bit of a gendered tone. And then you also just have the the reality of growing up on the internet and ending up down rabbit holes, which happened to me politically. And I was like all the way on the right one year and then all the way and will have to one year. And it's it's understandable how how that could cause a polarization, I think for sure.

Have you looked at corry? Clocks work. You know who he is?

Name is familiar. Evolutionary .

psychologist phenomenal and SHE sent an email to every psychology lecture in america. SHE contacted them all to ask about trends around selves and ship, specifically looking at what sorts of topics this put IT in the second bucket. So she's so great.

SHE was on the show couple months ago. And consistently, female teachers skill towards. There are certain things that shouldn't be spoken about. There are harsher judgments that should be for the lectures that do talk about the sort of stuff and shock harder. The two areas that were the most interrogated, the one that you shouldn't talk about, behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology. why? Well, because there are immutable fact or IT posit that there are immutable able fact and sex denialism or sex difference, Denny's ism has no place to spot in in either of those worlds.

Es hm the ha, that's interesting. And I also to that um a fact fireable ask students what issues are like the togie on campus that they feel that they can't speak about inconsistently. They're the most important political issues of the day which is super disturbing like in twenty twenty all because of you as racial issues.

And then this year a formative action was like all the way at the top, and the israeli palestine conflict is always up there. And it's like the things that you would most want a college campus to be the forum of different ideas colliding in an intellectual and robust and and healthy way. It's the ideas that are the the most touch of transgender issues or are is at the very top or post row was a the issue of abortion. And it's it's it's super disturbing to see that the things that you would most want to have kids hash out, or at least here and understand competing viewpoints on, are consistently the ones at the bottom of the barrel. L in terms what they're actually willing to touch as well.

But forget the fact this is important to the development of a brain that's trying to work out what's true in the world, that the most interesting things, the ones that that are actually interesting to talk about, decide to hamad ally, see off a bunch of different things, and you're left with stuff that no one has a really strong opinion on, or that no one can become offended by. You go.

Well, by definition, those things aren't very passionate producing. They're not exciting to talk about. So I think back to and I went to uni two thousand and six and I was a newcastle uh, for five years.

I did two degrees while I was that there wasn't a single point while I was there where politics even came in was doing a business degree. I was regularly in lecture theatres with two hundred and fifty or three hundred students. And there wasn't a single time when I came in what I was premium.

So I guess you there was some reckonings kind of around social justice and male behavior and male female sex dynamics and politics as well. You know it's it's pretty p it's preload ly pre social media. Facebook was available the year that I went.

If you only had a uh university email address that was when I was still gate cap by having a university email address that was only for people that attended like credit institutions or whatever, but that my experience university, despite mostly boring, was a completely bereft of any a control that we would to generate the promoters and and like gingerous. So I guess we may have disregarded them. Have they have been there in any case? But I didn't notice any of this.

And IT makes me IT makes me sad. IT makes me sad to think that I I still have faith, and I still believe that university is a very good formative experience. Because I look at the transformation that I went through, absolutely one hundred percent of IT outside of the election theatre.

But I look at all of the changes that I went through. And I think if I hadn't had that, I would I would have taken me significantly longer to have got to the stage where I was socially in terms, in terms of my life experience, in terms of my networking ability, in terms of how much business experience I got. All of those things I was like, you know, a crash course, a navy seal hel week of just learning to be around of the people and losing your keys and getting drunk and having an argument with a end at three in the morning.

All of the experiences outside of the university thing are important. But if everything one of them is coloured with this, like sort of dominica, is the hanging over your head in case you say the wrong thing. And now the fact that you do have global surveilLance state collected by volunteers that don't realize they're doing IT like someone has C, C, T, V.

Footage all time. We had this a, this is like the least academic insight into the proliferation of smart phones. Back in the day, we used to do A T shirt barkal called carnage.

And this was two thousand seven, two thousand and two thousand nine. IT was a license to print money. You put one of these things out and IT just sold out immediately. And there was tasks on the back, things like pulled a pig, got off with three randoms shop, swap shoes with somebody. People would write the first half of the alphabet down the the right side of the ARM and the second half down the left side of the rearm, and they're trying kiss one person from each letter of the alphabet. Like, this is classic mid d naw american pie style like university behavior.

But one of the questions asked a friend was like, where did that sort of Larry british sort of student culture ago? And he said, as soon as the smart phone came around, no one could make mistakes on a night out without fearing that I would define them for the rest of their life that you have. No, you kissed some person that, like uncle or embarrassing or whatever you do IT in two thousand, six people laugh about IT and then it's either forgotten about or you can deny IT out right and do whatever you. But in the age of the internet, it's you know cemented online for the rest of time and IT defines .

you absolutely. I mean, and I think that the impacts on Young people are so much more profound than we've even believe started to talk about. I mean, i'm twenty three and i'm just at like be the beginning of just burgeoning into adult hood in being the first cohort of people who are able to reflect back on what IT needs to have in a smartphone when you're ten and to have the threat of anything popping up at any point in time.

And any anyone born post two thousand who tells you that they don't have something on savery somewhere that they would rather not have come back to hat them is absolutely lying to you. I think we're ultimately going to have a ceasefire on this front because it's going to get so bad. We're never gonna a politician who um can survive apple research for the rest of time now that we've been so overly online.

And I think the the sad thing to me is that Young people demonstrably know this like I the amount of i've concerned that i've heard from my peers and and from from people reaching out to me about their own children um and also the the polling. If you ask generations what their views of council culture positive or negative, the most positive as millennial and then he gets more negative as as you get older if a gensec completely reverses that trend. So even though millennial have the most positive view of cancer culture, jane has the most negative view, even more negative than blum ers because we grew up with IT like we grew up looking behind our shouders.

But the problem is it's a very small, quickly movie minority of our generation that is at the home of these council campaign s and we like twitter, shame their boss, but the rest of us have not been given the the restoration kind of free speech oriented, classical liberal set of values to the plants council culture. We just know we don't like this, but. We're not quite sure how to fix IT or put your finger on IT or stop attacking people at homey and living in the realm of ideas.

So I think there's A A tremendous amount of anxiety and unrest in being a Young person who goes up unable to make social po pause as everyone does when they're an adolescent or you know have their marxist fees and then realize a couple months later that that wasn't for them. But that's part of growing up and expLoring. And you know I think um Young people just really have not been taught that the values required to um interact in the intellectual world with the the epistemic humility of realizing that be wrong at any point in time.

And anyone that you talk to knows something that you don't know um and that your opinions aren't part of your personhood and extending that seem um generosity Grace to somebody who you might be disagreeing with. Um I think that's really profound. And I also um just to go back to put you were saying on the on the university front, like I I dropped out of anywhere you with the four I know G P, I.

Not because I have some sort of destined for education and learning but the really sad reality at that point in time in such an ideologically homogeneous environment was that I had to drop out for my love of learning and defensive IT. And it's not because I don't believe in the importance of education, but I think in its current form, IT is so distorted. And these institutions of higher education have just appointed themselves the sole gatekeepers to success in plate society and have had absolutely no market pressure plays upon them. And it's going to require more Young people proving that it's not the only pathway to success, to actually, I think, shake society from its complacency and chAllenge these institutions to actually be Better and to serve people who are their patrons.

Talk to me about the relationship between free speech laws and free speech .

culture yeah I think that this is one of um the most interesting insights from the book where you know there are three countries with extremely robust free speech laws on the books which aside from the U S, almost too if you were to read them you might think that is the first amendment and they are turkey, north korea and russia so having a free speech law on the books means absolutely nothing if you're culture in practice is signified by them.

Where's on the flip side, one of the most viBrant points in intellectual history was the french lightening at a pointman time where there was absolutely no legal protection for free speech on the books at all, but soever. But because there is A A song culture and A A culture in which elites were interested in the free exchange of ideas and meaning into a intellectual society, free speech was able to flourish. And I think that it's really important to realize that merely having the first amendment on the books, or merely having its equivalent on the books in another country, is not adequate to actually Fostering a culture that Operates in a free speech way.

Um and there's a great quote by a judge named to learn at hand, which does not really sound like a real name to me. But and i'll bangle IT but roughly, roughly the quote is that you know, liberty lives in the hearts and minds of of every men and women. And if IT lies there, IT doesn't need a court or a law to protect IT.

But if he dies there, no court or law can save IT. And I think that we're seeing this slow and subtle cultural shift away from free speech norms that all of a sudden, like throw social media in the mix. You can burn any herit at the steak and it'll happen like that because it's it's really hard to grow in the west today and realize just how crazy that is that we don't burn our heritage at the stake in the scheme of human history.

We live in like the tiny, tiny st little sliver of time where we actually don't do that. But all of us that, and now we're doing IT in the digital sphere, because that is mankinds instinct. And so just having a warm the books doesn't really matter unless everyone buys and and actually abide by the the cultural code that that is really required.

There was a really interesting insight I saw from the new york post article that you guys did where IT was talking about how free speech culture and ideological diversity can make the world more chaotic. And because most humans don't like this, a good contingent of those people will happily trade their freedom for increased predictability, that if you're exposed to new opinions and ideas that don't form with you, you have to confront the fact that maybe you're wrong and accepting that you are wrong to the ego is tanami t to destruction. It's almost a an invalidation of you entirely.

Oh my god, if i'm wrong about this, what s might I be wrong about? And this denial of ever having to admit that we're wrong, especially in a world where everything that we do and say is permanently cemented on the internet for all of time to scrutinize. I thought that was very interesting. And I I think from my perspective, that seems to be right. A more chaotic world with a multiplicity of ideological viewpoints and diversity of opinion is unsettling in many ways to people and they will happily trade the accuracy y and the truths fulness uh and the freedom that they have in order to increase the reliability and predictability that they have about the world going fold.

Yeah absolutely. I think that that's made even worse by the fact that polarization has, I think, made politics so much more tired to individual identity than IT has been in the past as well. So an assault on your ideas feels assault on you as a person, I think also to the the pain of chaos.

I mean, if we if we look back historically where in the very beginning edges of what that means to now have billions of people in the cultural conversation, thanks to social media, it's been roughly a decade since it's been masked, adopt or masses adopted. And if we look back historically the that, I think the best analogy is the invention of the printing press. And when the printing press was invented, Henry the eighth was trying to license who can print a pen fit.

And there were hundreds of years of religious wars as a result. And that was a really chaotic and uncomfortable time where I think it's actually pretty understandable by the powers that beer and the people that were beholding to them wanted to squash out all the new voices that entered the cultural conversation and chAllenge ed the norms. And we looked back, and we think, well, that was a great thing, and literacy rates rose, and that created the enlightenment and the world as we know IT. But we're still in that early kind of chaos days of social media and I think the fact that things haven't gotten worse than they are at the moment is actually kind of amazing um and in a testable to the fact that there are still some people who do believe in in free speech in and the wisdom of the populous. But um I I think like the twitter files, just go to demonstrate how how threatening new voices in a cultural conversation can be to the social fabric and to um the kind of levers of society.

What do you say to the people who acclaim this isn't cancellation culture. This is consequence culture. This is just people being brought to account for having heinous, reprehensible views.

I mean, I think that the the swath of views that have become cancelled offences has grown so considerably.

I mean, we just have a case of your case another book of um there's there's one woman, Carol hovan who was a harvard professor who got for bed one on fox news and SHE and she's lovely and she's talkers and she's careful with her words and he went on fox news um to discuss some issue of gender SHE wrote the book to you um about testosterone and SHE extremely tactfully sad now we can respect people's gender identity and use their pronounce however we have to also acknowledged the fact that biological sexes real and on a on a fundamental level and for that he was effectively squeezed out of her job to the point where and I know you know this story but to the point where SHE SHE told us in an interview for the book that he was actually um suicide for the first time in her life and so if the the group of cancer offences is now including acknowledging biological reality as a professor in your own field um or you know going all the way down to now middle scholars that whose parents call me constantly and reach out to me your email me um to say that their seventh greeter has now been cancelled for something which I mean it's in seven grade that just shouldn't even you should not even be politically aware. You're worried about boys and aconites not politics at that point in time. Um and just the sheer number as well.

But if you really were about accountability culture, I think the truth that a lot of people who witnesses council mobs form um can attest to use the fact that apologies do not make IT Better. It's not about saying, oh, I did tweet that ten years ago, but I completely disagree with that now and I apologized for offending you because that doesn't fix IT. It's not actually about making people account for the any error that they might have made or any misstep. It's about making example of them in shaming them.

Yeah, it's having your morality stand on the shoulders of someone that you can easily accuse. I mean, the Carol thing, we went for breakfast to me, her William costolo, a couple of months ago, and that woman cries more easily than anyone i've ever met. She's like the most empathetic. I think he cried six times on rogan, like four times on measure. She's just such a touchy feeling, lovely person that really delicately trying to move through this.

She's a really perfect example of whatever we want to call IT like um soft mechanisms of cancellation because at no point did anyone come to and say say you can't teach anymore but every teaching assistant that he was supposed to be working with refused to help in her class. So if you don't have teaching assistance like how you're gona, you can't do your class. And I think you had one of the most popular this like quite a well attended class at harvard.

So it's okay. Well, I guess i'm kind of like on the bench for now. And then when you on the bench for that so long, you just end up kind of falling away.

So and it's so interesting to think that the the apology doesn't make any difference because if that was what you are after, then the apology would fix the problem. I interesting how interesting. I didn't know about this particular statistic about this thing, because no one from an ideologically purity spiral driven world can believe that someone would be sufficiently epidemics humble.

To actually ever be able to say that it's like, no, no, no, this is you. Your identity and your opinions and your ideology are one in the same. We saw this with rogan, the variety of cancellations that you went through a couple of years ago.

And what people do are those reformative people trying to say here is in the individual instance, or a collection of instances, that may seem small here, but we know that they are representative of this big iceberg that lies below the surface. This is the the smoking gun that tells you that this person is the bigoted, racist, transformed c homophobic, whatever thing that we always knew that they were. And this is, this is finally the crack the Fisher has shown through this facade that we've created.

So all right, well, what you had with joe and what you know increasingly, I would like to think people will see with other online contact creators or writers anybody? All right? Well, that might be true. But I also have five thousand hours of him talking to people on podcasts. And IT didn't come up then. So he's either the best liar and and deflector of his bigelow racist views in history all that's unrepresented tive overall and I don't know IT seems to me like I would like to think people give what used to be called the benefit of the doubt. But I don't know that that seems to be increasingly right now.

Yeah I mean, I think that also to that point the benefit of the doubt is often given to anybodies like ideological friends but then it's precisely the opposite of they just don't like someone instinctively um and I I think you know it's been instructive to see like rogan survive cancellation attempts and and Better ways to make a career out of IT basically with the free press, the awesome stuff that she's doing there um or ship power in and seeing netflix finally actually toughen up and and um say no to their employees that we're trying to recap c over a single joke.

I mean, I do you think that there there have been examples of of cancellation going so far that there is a banded of people who are willing to come around and actually support you in champion you was a result and that that you gans a perfect example of that um but I know I worry that those are only people who are in a powerful enough position when IT first happens to them that people know um and there's so many just like unheard stories or even I think that one of the problems is on a college campus is much easier to quantify how often this is happening because people often have legal request in in the private space. It's impossible for us. Italian, many people have been cancelled, not only because some people will just shut down and ever say anything, but also because there are so many examples of people who will talk to you off the record about IT. But they would ve signed an N D A because that was their their severance agreement with whatever company they were freezed out of um and you know um Jennifer say who left levis SHE refused to sign in and and turned away a million dollars of payout to um because he had criticized covered policies in school octobers what apparently means that you can no longer be an executive device um but you know SHE SHE refused to sign in N D A we only know that that even happened because SHE SHE had the spine to actually say no I want main my intellectual autonomy but um yeah I mean I think that there there's so many high profile tydomin that thankfully people are starting to lend on their feet and support one another but um you know I fear that the twenty twenty four election will be another way of the all of the same stuff and I not feeling great about the future of cancer culture in the near future.

So oh yeah, what are your projections? Give me give me the weather report moving forward for the storm front of cancellation?

Yeah I think I am hugely concerned about twenty twenty four as as Michael author, I I especially considering that we have such polar ized options on both sides of the I le. I'm I am very concerned that twenty, twenty and twenty sixteen were just like little trial runs for how how policed and how ad harmony were about to get at least in the U. S.

And I think that you know the ripple effects of american politics that really felt across at least the english speaking world and often just the cultural western general. So I am not feeling fabulous about the near future and extremely nervous as we seem to be a kind of just powering ahead towards in election between two historically unpopular in combat. So i'm not feeling great. But what what are your predictions on on that front? Do you think that the social unrest is going to continue?

It's a difficult one, I would guess, yes, because the means of production for creating trends online in going completely super viral have become more sophisticated. Like this is one of the things that interesting people look at the algorithms on social media as if they are the things that give us the content, but they also trained the content creators.

So if you think that the means that came out in twenty sixteen was Sophia caper and built to olympics hydra, you if you thought that the things that happened in twenty twenty, oh my god, like, look at all of this. Wait until twenty twenty four. Each time that IT comes back around, there is a new iteration of people, and sometimes A I now creating stuff that is even more compelling, that even more outrage and producing.

So I don't know. I mean, texas. So I feel a little bit like i'm insulated from anything sort of too crazy, even being in awesome people call IT a blue dot in a red ocean.

I've never seen any of the blue dots here. IT just seems to be like you just read up. But yeah, it's it's going to be it's going to be very interesting and I don't know.

It's so right to say that most of the people that survived their cancellation to the people who already had tons of momentum you know chapelle rogan J K rolling eua um and there is definitely a part of. Some sides of the council are picking fights with people that they know can't fully defend themselves. Like carob in again is a good example of that.

Like she's so kind IT was obviously going to emotionally impact if you're someone that even knows as even seen five minutes of her on the podcast, you know that this isn't someone that's gonna come out of the gate swinging like dave partner, right? It's someone who's going to be very impacted by this and also doesn't have a million person twitter where they can ranger le a huge audience of people, the camera. And also like what's the lesson to take away from that? Everybody should have a huge mAiling list of email. Everyone should build up a massive subject as like a great glassing case of cancellation thing that's not realistic.

Yeah no, absolutely. I mean and I think that um I think that we're only seeing just the beginning of of how profound that's going to get. I I worry about twenty four.

I worry about every single moment of cultural unrest that we have going or word unless we actually return to the values that make a diver a diverse democracy possible, I think that um that's pretty much impossible and we will end up going towards a marker sort of dividing conquer situation which makes enemies of everyone unless we actually can start looking at viewpoints and and living in the RAM of ideas and the RAM of personhood in two separate planes. Um and so I think til until we really have a cultural reckoning and IT gets really ugly, which I think it's coming in the near future. Um I don't think that that things will get much Better, but i'm curious you so Austin is not as blue as as they say IT as I don't .

know if it's me just spending time with lots of bigoted, reprehensible people uh like neuro divergent degenerates but they seem to be they all seem to be like, you know relatively free speech, relatively open to new ideas. Um um yeah I I I see I mean, it's like some stuff stop having kids got ogg does like this goth parade every year down broadway. There was some stuff to do with like prolly things but that's not that's not because it's to play.

That's just A A variety of opinions being shown via street. Um what else have i've seen? There was a pro atalay m conference here a two weeks ago. You know there's A A lot of different stuff.

Guard IT doesn't seem to be very heavily controlled thinking about that though, the complete unlikely ss of people building up some huge online platforms so that they can then deploy IT to protect themselves in case of being cancelled. What are the potential solutions to this beyond make IT worse so everyone hates IT more and then IT gets Better. Are there any more fluffy solutions than that? Any less apocalyptic ones.

of course? Um yeah so we the the final section of our book solutions oriented. And I think um a lot of IT is just throwing everything at the wall and hoping that something sticks. But we think that parenting is a large portion of IT, especially with Young people, that a lot of the um the the sense that words can be violence and wounds you are of the result of helicopter parenting and and a um just completely abandonment of the sort of ideas of anti fragile ity that prior generations were raised with. Jenny was very coddled and protected and made to be interesting and feel as though their feedback and um endangered by the world around them and microwave or um his previous book is the codling of the american mind which concentrated quite a lot of parents ting in its impact on politics and genee um and so we think that there's a lot about leading by examples apparent and raising kids who will not be councillors and understand their own vulnerability as well as the vulnerability of their friends.

Um and I do find a tremendous amount of hope in the fact that Young people are so put off by council culture that if they were just given the positive restoration framework to fight back against IT and um kind of a social packed that would be mutual protective that there's there's some hope they are going forward um we also think that divesting away from the the elite university system being the only way that people end up in in positions of power in society is that a healthy thing um and that people who are hiring and should consider kids coming from large state schools and kids from different backgrounds are people who didn't finish college or people who went down a different path in that we shouldn't just have the function of kids coming from consistently the most delete schools or the schools but the worst attitudes towards free speech, which I think it's no surprise that we're seeing absolute chaos on erupting on campuses like harvard right now because if you abducent free speech, you suppress students and send bad ideas underground for decades on end all of the second in a moment of cultural unrest. They're going to explode and that's precisely what we're seeing right now. Um and so we believe that opening our minds to alternative education systems and not allowing these schools that seem to breed cancel culture and councillors to take the reins of society consistently with every graduating class, that's a positive um and also even people who are running corporations are ten I think take one no out of netflix's book after the jab do shaped controversy where they said, if you can tolerate the fact that we are going to publish viewpoints that you disagree with as as a platform for ideas and expression then you can leave um I think that that was a remarkably unique and brave stance to take and actually coin beast at that a while ago their CEO, brian armstrong, was like, we're just not going to make any institutional statements and if that's a problem for you, you can go.

And like ten percent of their employee base did actually go, but like that's not the ten percent of people that you want to work for you. So I think um on the the level of corporations, we can um I think there are a lot of we hear frequently and I both from corporate leaders who are terrified of their like twenty three year old tires and that's just such a bizarre power imbaLance and it's very fixie if you just create a free speech culture from the get go. But I also think word um after october seven, there's a lot of people rediscovering the importance of institutional neutrality and of free speech and free expression and you know it's I think it's a really revealing moment for schools suddenly say, oh no, we'd had a statement about kyle written houses, equitable and B L M and all use completely irrelevant things to the interaction is of a university but we can't make a statement on this. Of course I think gets it's shocking that this is the moment that they finally discovered that institutions are full of people with viewpoints and do not have viewpoints themselves. But maybe there's a silver lining that this moment of just absolute chaos and and institutions for free speech was not valued for so long where they're suddenly hiding behind the baLance of free speech like maybe this is where we actually buy in and we realized that we're all vulnerable in a world where a liberalism is allowed to bring supreme.

What would you say as a piece of advice to someone who is threatened with cancellation or is going through IT? Have you got a to do and not to do checklist for those people?

Yeah I think obviously it's it's so dependent on the level of supporting people around you. But I think the most important thing for everyone who is concerned about council culture to say now as as an individual before anything happens to them or anyone that they know, is that if someone that you know and care about and like is attacked, you commit that you will stand up for them.

It's not that I I agree with their viewpoint, but there are a good person and tearing them down is not the right thing to do. And I think that if we afford that to other people that um and hopeful ly expect that in return from them the the mob comes for us. That's one way to fight back. I think the power of someone else standing up for you is really profound.

And unfortunately, cancel culture thrives because everyone else is scared to stick your neck out there and like when I was writing about free speech and where you for the new york post, which is not really the most popular thing to do surprisingly um you know I have so many people messaging me and saying, no, I completely support you and I completely agree with you but just don't tell you that we have this conversation and that's got to stop and we have to short circuit at this but on the front of if you actually are targeted with a cancer culture attempt, it's funny. This is actually a point where my co author and I have have a little bit of disagreement where he says never apologize under any circumstances, period. And I don't fully agree with that.

I think if it's something that you would apologize to a friend for or something that you genuinely didn't mean, I don't think you apologize and try to placate the individual who's treating you unfairly. But if you genuinely don't agree with the tweet that you sent when you were fourteen because who does, then I think you say that's not me, but I don't think that you ever try to placate them up. That's the number one thing as if someone is attacking you unfairly, you don't try to respond to that with with undue rationality when or ever compromise and apologized resume that you don't actually feel any remorse for for sure .

bRicky shot. Ladies and gentlemen. Why should people go to only keep up today with the things that you're doing? Where should they go on the internet?

Um my twitter is just my name Ricky slot and Ricky slap that come and um I think probably by the time this comes out, i'll be launching a new podcast under a bill mars umbrella at club randa m so um that will be forthcoming in twenty twenty four.

Very cool. I enjoy the prospect of you you joining me in the muck in the mayor of the podcasting world.

I am super excited to. I've been learning from you, doing all my homework, waking up to modern wisdom. So thank you.

My pleasure. I really appreciate you. Thank you for the day.

Thank you so much.