EPISODE 21: NAUSEATING
Dylan: And again, like I'm not asking for an apology.
Iain: Don't worry, I'm not offering one.
Dylan: Okay, great. Well then, here we are.
[Instrumental of ‘These Dark Times’ by Caged Animals begins to play.]
Dylan [VOICEOVER INTRODUCTION]: Hey and welcome to Conversations with People Who Hate Me, the show where I turn negative online comments into offline conversations. I'm your host Dylan Marron. In some episodes I moderate calls between strangers who clashed online, and other times I speak with folks who said not so nice things about me personally.
Today, I'm talking to a guy named Iain who wrote that my work was nauseating. In case you're joining this podcast for the first time, here is some necessary background info. I used to make a video series called Unboxing, it satirized the real unboxing videos where YouTubers open up electronic gadgets on camera. And in my version, instead of unboxing real products, I unboxed intangible ideologies like police brutality, masculinity, and the mistreatment of Native Americans. This series became popular and, by the same token, found some detractors too. That is where Iain comes in.
At the time of this recording, he was a college senior who was writing a biweekly column for his university's daily newspaper. In one of his op-eds he wrote about the problem of increasingly partisan media, and how he thinks it negatively affects our understanding of current events. In searching for an example of the culprit, he asks his readers, “how narrow is your picture of current events if you glean all your opinions from those nauseating Unboxing videos with Dylan Marron?” The campus newspaper that published this would like to make it clear that these words do not reflect the opinions of the newspaper.
And how did I find out about this? Well, embarrassingly I saw it come up on a Google alert for my name. Yes, you can feel free to judge. So I got in touch with Iain, and he agreed to be on this show. What followed was a lovely conversation that turned into an introspective consideration of life after graduation. Let's get started.
[Phone rings. Music fades. Guest picks up.]
Iain: Hello?
Dylan: Hey, is this Iain?
Iain: Yep, this is he.
Dylan: Hey Iain, this is Dylan Marron.
Iain: Hey, nice to actually talk to you.
Dylan: I know. Nice to talk to you too. How's your day going so far?
Iain: Not too bad so far. Yeah, I've been reading a pretty dense essay for philosophy class it was talking about how two things can explain one thing, unbelievably boring to be honest.
Dylan: Okay. That's great. So Iain, to kind of just kick things off, tell me a little about you.
Iain: Yeah, okay. So I'm a senior at Stanford. I study philosophy. I'm from a very small town in South Carolina so pretty fucking glad to be in California now. Also, not an easy place to grow up gay in South Carolina, very rural, South Carolina. So that became like a bigger part of my experience, I guess, later once I started to realize that. But definitely, yeah, another compelling reason for me to get the hell out of there when I went to college. That was pretty much my strategy was like, get me somewhere that's not in the South. And I love it in it's way. And I tell people it's a great place to be from, and a great place to visit home, but it's not the place that I want to be. And I kind of knew that from early on.
Dylan: Did you experience homophobia there?
Iain: Definitely, yeah. At least I wasn't bullied per se, personally. I like to think that I put off an aura and have for a while of like don't talk to me, like don't mess with me, even though I'm not imposing-
Dylan: You're revealing right now that you're a bodybuilder, yes. You're a wrestler, a professional, WWE.
Iain: Yeah, I wish.
Dylan: Okay great. So not imposing, but people just didn't fuck with you?
Iain: Yeah. And I think that's still like sort of to my detriment now because I think people get the impression that I'm cold or not nice, but generally it's just if I don't know what to say, I don't say anything. And then I'm standing there like stone faced. And my friends have told me that I have a resting anguish face, which I think is pretty accurate.
Dylan: Resting anguish face.
Iain: [inaudible 00:04:43].
Dylan: That's wonderful.
Iain: Internal turmoil at all times.
Dylan: And so then you got into Stanford, you went to Stanford. And, just for the record, you're comfortable with that being kept in the podcast, which university you go to?
Iain: Yeah, absolutely.
Dylan: Okay, great. So you got into Stanford. And then you are an op-ed columnist for Stanford's Daily newspaper. When did that start?
Iain: I started writing for The Daily beginning of my junior year, but I've been interested in writing for a while. I have opinions that I want to air and I was like, "Okay, I can have this forum to do it." And I think that was my initial reason for wanting to do it. And the more that I've written for The Daily the more that I've found there's a specific form that you're writing when you're writing that kind of piece, and it's small, and you have to figure out what kind of idea you can work with in that space. And what kind of thing you can say. So that's, I think, what's kept me doing it because I have opinions but that's not necessarily the important part for me. Now, it's like I'm interested in, and this is an interesting and interesting forum to be writing in still.
Dylan: Well it's also the structural blessing of deadlines. I think that's how you get to be better at anything is just when you have a ton of deadlines. And your column comes out every Monday, right?
Iain: Yes. Every other Monday.
Dylan: Every other Monday. So yeah, just having that regularity is, I think, how we all grow so I totally get that. So this is a good segue because in a recent op-ed entitled Why Our News Bubbles Just Won't Burst you wrote, "How narrow is your picture of current events if you get all your news from Huff Po, if you glean all your opinions from those nauseating Unboxing videos with Dylan Marron." So, "Nauseating Unboxing videos," why did you write that?
Iain: So the broader context of the piece, I guess, is that ... or I was criticizing the fact that most news outlets kind of present one point of view. And even when they say like, "Fair and balanced," say. And I made that comment because I find those videos, in terms of their tone, smug, condescending, a bit propagandistic. But at the same time, I should say that my strategy is always kind of say something in the way that's most likely to offend someone else, or inflame someone in the column because that's how I get on a podcast, or get people writing response articles. And I'd rather be crucified by half the campus but have them paying attention to me than saying niceties and not really getting anywhere.
Dylan: But I guess that's interesting because I'm juxtaposing that with what you just said when you were describing yourself, which is that you said you were the type of person who, if you didn't have anything nice to say you just kind of stayed quiet. So is there a kind of a discrepancy between the IRL Iain and the op-ed Iain?
Iain: Yeah, I would say that the person who writes my op-eds is a persona in a certain way and, obviously, based on myself, it's still me writing it. But it's definitely I try to cultivate a certain persona in that that's not exactly who I am in real life. But it feels, to me, like an interesting way to talk about whatever issue I'm talking about. Try to inject some humor, typically, at these expensive of anyone else within arm's reach. A lot of stuff that goes into columns is like a voice in my head, or like a joke that I wouldn't necessarily make in real life, but I have this outlet for it that I feel like I can make it useful. I can make it a part of a larger argument rather than just kind of a sterile jab at someone.
Dylan: Well yeah. I mean calling my videos nauseating definitely wasn't a sterile jab. So I guess congratulations, you took a jab. I guess, why inject the negativity into it?
Iain: I'm not criticizing you per se, except insofar as you make the videos. My impression is that you have this persona that you've cultivated in these videos, and I take that as totally you're aware of that. And I would assume that's not how you are a normal life. And so what I would say, the reason that I am negative about it is because I don't like the tone of the work. And it's not meant to be a tear down of you as a person.
Dylan: Yeah. I mean, I guess what I-
Iain: But more broadly ...
Dylan: Yeah, no, you first.
Iain: Sorry.
Dylan: No, please. You first.
Iain: Just more broadly, in that piece I criticize ... and in every piece that I write, I criticize a lot of stuff.
Dylan: Oh yeah. No, I'm definitely not the only one. And I was going to get into that. And, again, I'm not asking for an apology.
Iain: Don't worry, I'm not offering one.
Dylan: Okay, great. Well then, here we are. Yeah I mean, I guess, I will tell you, and maybe I'm coming out as a narcissist, but I have a Google alert so that I see when an article comes out that mentions my name, and I got a Google alert, and I saw this. And I have to admit, Iain, it wasn't like the dreamiest way to start my day and it was like a particularly low confidence day. So to read that somewhere across the country, an op-ed columnist for The Stanford Daily newspaper called my Unboxing videos, nauseating wasn't like a boost of confidence. But that's okay. We're talking on the phone right now. And no, I didn't want to kind of give the impression that I was the only jab you took, or that you were taking a jab at me personally. But yes, I do make those videos. So you were saying that you kind of like piercing your op-ed pieces with controversy or jabs because it'll get attention, right?
Iain: Yeah, to a certain extent. I'm not saying things that I don't believe.
Dylan: Right. No, you stand by these things, yeah.
Iain: Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, like I said, writing for The Daily, the first year I worked hard to try to figure out what I wanted the column to be, how I wanted to present myself in this. And I criticize people in real life, I critique things, I've got a bad word for everyone, but a good word for most people as well.
Dylan: And then, that's an interesting distinction too, because it's like what is the difference between critiquing and, I don't know, I guess just like making fun of? I fully believe in critique. I think I've only grown because of critique. But did you mean to critique me with the word nauseating, or was it more of a put down?
Iain: I'm not like physically nauseated, when I see your videos obviously.
Dylan: But I mean that would be very impressive, if you like vomited every time I released a video.
Iain: Props to you if you made me do that.
Dylan: Yeah, wow I'd be a sorcerer.
Iain: No, it's hyperbole to a certain extent. I'm using a word that is more negative than the actual point that I'm making. And that said, I don't think that all of your videos, all the Unboxing videos ... like I've definitely watched some and been like, "Ah, that was a good line, like that was funny." And I will say too that I hadn't seen that many of them before I wrote the piece for The Stanford Daily. And after having gotten in contact with you, I watched more of them and I think I did come to appreciate the concept more, as you were saying, the satire. I stand by what I wrote to a certain extent.
Dylan: Yeah. I mean, I guess, I think the funny thing is I've done so many other things other than the Unboxing videos. I mean, and now I think a lot of people know me for this podcast, which is great, but I feel like I still stand by all of the sentiments that I shared in the Unboxing videos. Or I shouldn't say all, I'm sure there's something that I might disagree with. And I also want to kind of almost say not all as an asterisk because I want to acknowledge that I can evolve just like you can evolve. This is the most impossible question to answer, but how do you see yourself evolving as a writer? What kind of writer would you like to evolve to be?
Iain: I think what I would like to evolve to be is to write longer non-fiction, I guess. I don't want to say news per se, but more like commentary. Like you were saying, you do a specific thing with the Unboxing videos, you have a specific persona. And you've got a totally different one now for this podcast. And so the like acerbic, inflammatory thing that I do in my column now, it's already getting a bit stale to me. And what I would like to do as a writer is be able to write longer narrative non-fiction that's less focused on my opinion and less focused on my tone, less focused on making jokes. But the thing is, at this moment, I don't really have an outlet for that. I have just written a piece for The Stanford Daily Magazine, but I found it way, way harder than I expected. And that was also what kind of made me say, "This is the direction that I would like to go as a writer because this is hard." And writing a longer piece that's not just about making my point with a flourish and a [inaudible 00:15:27] that's hard. And I want to do something hard. I want to take on something that I don't know how to do and do it badly many times. And, eventually, get to the point where I feel like I can do it better. Which I'm sure you understand. I'm sure you feel the same way.
Dylan: Oh my God.
Iain: To a certain extent.
Dylan: Completely. I mean ...
[BREAK]
Iain: I want to take on something that I don't know how to do and do it badly many times and, eventually, get to the point where I feel like I can do it better. Which I'm sure you understand. I'm sure you feel the same way.
Dylan: Oh my God.
Iain: To a certain extent.
Dylan: Completely. I mean, I actually find it impressive that you're able to kind of identify yourself in the moment as evolving. And I totally hear you on feeling that what you're doing is a little stale. And I totally felt that in the middle of making the Unboxing videos. I was like, "I want to find a different way to talk about things." And the Unboxing videos just got so popular. So I was doing it, and I was doing the very thing that you just identified at the beginning of this call where you were taking jabs because they would get people talking. And a lot of the things that I would do in the Unboxing videos I saw would get shares, and likes, and comments. And I do want to be clear that I stand by what I was saying. I wasn't lying to get these shares, and likes, and comments, but when you see something that's working, you kind of cling onto it and you're like, "Great, I'll keep doing this." And you just said that you already feel that the voice that you have adopted for the op-ed is kind of getting a little stale to you, right?
Iain: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think it's partly at first it was really hard trying to learn how to write in that forum and learn what I wanted to do with it. And then I figured out a thing that I could do with it. And so it was kind of easy to sit back and say, "Okay, this is my thing now." And yeah, I understand, I saw your videos because they were getting shared on Facebook and stuff. And, again, I would say I know that you're doing this podcast now, and I recognize that you are also fluid in terms of what you do, which is why my jab was at the video series itself and not you. It's also like I'm about to graduate so a part of me feels like do I carve out something new here, or do I just go find a new space? Will that be what it takes to get me back out of my comfort zone and get me doing something really hard again? So I'm kind of caught there.
Dylan: Yeah. I don't at all want to kind of play the obnoxious card of like let me give you advice.
Iain: No, I'll take advice, please.
Dylan: Okay, great. Here's the obnoxious card, it's coming your way. So I felt similar things in college, right? I was like, I got to senior year and I freaked the fuck out. I didn't know what exactly I wanted to do and I actually took the first semester of my senior year off. And then, what I wish I knew then was that you constantly get to evolve after college, right? So it's not like at graduation from college you're hermetically sealed and cryogenically frozen, and you are who you are at the end of college. And good luck if you don't like yourself because then that's who you are. But I wish people knew that more. I wish people knew how much you could evolve after college. I feel like I've constantly evolved. I've had so many of my own little phases and changes since college. And I hope you permit yourself to be able to do that, right? So I hear you on kind of figuring out if you wanted to like experiment and find what your thing is in college, but you can continue to experiment for so long after college.
Iain: Yeah, I definitely appreciate that. The thing that I'm sure you felt too is like when you're in college and you look around at the adults that you know, for the most part, they're very stable. You don't see perhaps there are things going on with them. They're doing different things in their life, but you don't see that. And it feels like you're entering this world of stable public adult people who don't seem to be changing. And so that's just where my fear comes from. Like I know that I, as a person, can continue to change. And then also it takes like active effort every day, and you have blind spots for yourself. And you might realize, "Oh, I've been doing this wrong the whole time." Or, "Oh, I thought I was so open to change," but actually this opportunity presented right to me and I just didn't take it. I didn't know and so I want to be open to that. But it sometimes feels like you don't have the role models of people around you who are changing because they're settled, especially on a college campus where you have people who have like pretty fucking cush jobs-
Dylan: Lined up, you mean?
Iain: Professor Emeritus.
Dylan: Oh, you mean at the campus, not like your fellow-
Iain: Oh no, absolutely. Fellow people, yeah. I mean you don't know how many people I know going to work for Google or Facebook, and they're going to be making like six figures in their first year. And they're going to have a nice house, and everything's going to be good. And I don't want that because that feels like a recipe for like spiritual death.
Dylan: Right, spiritual death.
Iain: To definitely overstate it, but ...
Dylan: Yeah, no, but that's okay. I mean I feel like the theme of this is hyperbole. So spiritual death, use it. And this may be the toughest question that I've asked this entire time, and I hated when people asked me, but do you have any plans after graduation?
Iain: Not solid ones, yet. I think that in the next couple of years I want to try to teach. So in the last couple of years here at Stanford I've done some like teaching and tutoring both with like my peers at Stanford but also with high school kids, elementary school kids. I just find it to be rewarding on a day-to-day basis. And I had a certain shift in my thinking probably like six months ago where I was constantly stressing out about what I'm going to do five years from now, or what is life going to be like years from now. And I realized I have to figure out what are things I can do each day that will make each day good, and that's kind of how your life goes well. So in the next couple of years, immediately after graduation, I'm trying to teach English somewhere around the world, potentially English as a second language. I think, if I could like pick any job, right now, I would want to teach literature to high school students. My dream would be to teach at like a boys' school. I worked with 35 boys, Australian boys this summer from a boys' school. And I think boys so often are starved for different kinds of role models, and have interests that are not being met by their social circles, or by their schools and society. And that is something I would want to give to those people, those little people because people gave that to me and that's really important to me. And I want to make them have like rich internal lives and read books no matter what else they do, but care about that stuff.
Dylan: Do you want to keep writing?
Iain: Yeah, absolutely, yeah. In high school I went to an arts school and did creative writing for two years like half of my day was creative writing. And then I would get out of class and go to Starbucks and just sit there and write, write, write. And I want to do that again. And I don't know what part that's going to play in my life. I saw a reading last night by Claire Messud, who teaches I think fiction at Harvard, and she was talking about how her father wrote all these novels and he just never brought them out of his desk. He never had any intention of them being published. And so that's a little bit scary.
Dylan: The idea of working and it not being seen?
Iain: Yeah. And knowing that it's not going to be seen from the beginning. There's a certain fear of saying like, "Will it be seen?" But it's another step entirely to set out on something like that with the intention of it never being seen. So I want to continue writing, for sure. I just don't know what role it's going to play in my life.
Dylan: Yeah. What you just said about the woman who you saw do a reading about her father is so beautiful. And I also think, unknowingly, you hit onto what I think is the theme of this conversation, right? You're talking about the fear of writing and it not being read, right? And, essentially, we're on this call with each other because we so threw ourselves into writing that we wanted to be read that we kind of ignored when it was feeling stale. You know what I mean? Like I devoted myself to making those Unboxing videos because I was so honored that enough people liked them and were sharing them. Now there's, of course, a flip side to that because people didn't like them. And then, on the other hand, there's you who, and this is all by your own admission, but you kind of take part in these jabs and these kind of not so nice things to say. And you say them about a bunch of people because it was this voice you established, but it doesn't sound like it's necessarily the voice that you want to stay with, right?
Iain: Absolutely. Yeah.
Dylan: And that's why this conversation, I feel like, is related to what you're trying to get at with this specific op-ed, which is that you and I are talking about settling into these creative projects because of comfort. And that's exactly the same psychology behind the reason people stay in their news bubbles. You know what I mean?
Iain: Yeah. That's a really good point, yeah. Absolutely.
Dylan: So I just feel like we are all susceptible to the same psychological inevitabilities of being human. And it's easy to kind of like stand on a hill and critique it, or identify it, or take jabs at it, but it's just true, however we cut it, that humans seek comfort, and humans seek kind of acknowledgement that they're doing something in the way that you do with the column, and the way that I did with the Unboxing videos.
Iain: Yeah. As I said in the beginning about having a guard up when I was a kid, I'm thinking it's funny now because I definitely had a guard up to a certain extent coming into this interview. And I have been pleasantly surprised by how much I think we seem to have in common. So I would just say thank you for giving me this opportunity. It's been really cool.
Dylan: Oh my God, it's a pleasure to make this. This is literally why I make this show. I think it's nicer to connect with people rather than get a Google alert on your phone that your videos are nauseating. I would so much prefer this. When you wrote it, did you think that I would read it?
Iain: No, absolutely not. Yeah, just the fact that it was like kind of a throwaway line. It was also just really shocking to see your name in my Gmail. Like, "Oh wow, Dylan Marron."
Dylan: Yeah, there he is appearing in your Gmail. Do you regret writing it?
Iain: No, absolutely not. I'm on your podcast, now.
Dylan: Yeah, now, here we are living on a podcast together.
Iain: Yeah, and I would say I stand by the points that I made in the piece. I stand by the way I made the points. It got me on your podcast. And, more than that, I feel like we've had an interesting conversation. You've given me a lot to think about and I hope to have done the same for you.
Dylan: Oh, no, totally. I really value this conversation.
Iain: So, yeah, I don't regret it at all. Absolutely not.
Dylan: Well, Iain, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Do you have any questions, comments, concerns, to share with me?
Iain: I don't think so, no. Yeah, it's truly been a pleasure.
Dylan: Well, Iain, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me today and, I guess, I will see you on the internet.
Iain: Yeah, hopefully, yeah. Thanks again.
Dylan: Yeah, of course. Thanks for talking and I'll talk to you soon, okay?
Iain: Okay. Bye now.
Dylan: Bye Iain.
[Phone call ends with a hang up sound. The drumbeat from ‘These Dark Times’ by Caged Animals kicks in.]
Dylan [VOICEOVER CLOSING CREDITS]: If you'd like to be a guest on this show and take your own online conversation and move it offline, please visit www.conversationswithpeoplewhohateme.com for more information.
Conversations with People Who Hate Me is a production of Night Vale Presents. Vincent Cacchione is the sound engineer and mixer. Christy Gressman is the executive producer. The theme song is These Dark Times by Caged Animals. The logo was designed by Rob Wilson, and this podcast was created, produced, and hosted by me, Dylan Marron. Special thanks to Adam Cecil, Emily Moler, and our publicist, Megan Larson.
We'll be releasing episodes every other week, so I'll see you in two weeks with a brand new conversation.
Until then, remember there's a human on the other side of the screen.
[Chorus of ‘These Darks Times’ by Caged Animals plays.]