EPISODE 32: TRASH
Dylan: So, I'm doxxed.
Katie: And I'm trash.
Dylan: Maybe that's the answer to cancel culture is that we're all trash.
Robyn: Yeah, I mean we're all going to be canceled soon. So don't worry about it.
Katie: Yeah.
[Instrumental of ‘These Dark Times’ by Caged Animals begins to play.]
Dylan [VOICEOVER INTRODUCTION]: Hey, and welcome back to "Conversations with People Who Hate Me." The show that takes negative online interactions and turns them into offline conversations. I'm your host, Dylan Marron. Before we get into it, I want to let you know about two quick things.
First, transcripts of every episode now live on our website so you can go check them out at www.conversationswithpeoplewhohateme.com.
And second, a few conversations this season came from the submission form. Have you gotten into an online fight with someone? Maybe someone said something mean to you or maybe you said something kind of nasty to someone else, or maybe you just know of a really good story that could be fascinating for this show. If any of these apply, head on over to that same website, www.conversationswithpeoplewhohateme.com and fill out a submission form. Who knows? We may give you a call and start working on an episode.
Okay, business done. Now, let's get started. When I say cancel culture, what does that make you feel? Do you see it as the product of everyone being way too sensitive these days? Inarguable proof that there is a woke mob out to take away people's jobs for perceived mess-ups, jokes, and non-issues. Or do you think that it doesn't exist? That it's really just a shield some people use to avoid criticism, choosing to blame the imaginary boogeyman of cancel culture instead of just looking inward? Or maybe you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about and you're so confused right now and that's okay.
Cancel culture is really challenging to talk about because it's incredibly hard to agree on one definition, if we can agree that it even exists at all. Paraphrasing from Merriam Webster, cancel culture is a collective withdrawal of support of a public figure based on their objectionable actions, but what counts as an objectionable action and who gets to decide that? Does that withdrawal of support actually stick? And what I mean is, do people who are canceled actually lose anything? And sometimes, yeah they do, especially private citizens with less power whose misdeeds or perceived misdeeds suddenly brought them into the public eye. Sometimes it's just words, it's just people saying that someone has canceled and that's that.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this and here is my take. I think cancel culture is an imprecise term that groups together three very real but different things. Mob mentality, constructive criticism, and unnecessary pile-ons.
Can items on that list intersect? Totally. Do all three sometimes happen at the same time? Yeah, I think they do. So isn't that cancel culture? Well, in my opinion, emphasis on my and emphasis on opinion, no. I think it's a combination of a lot of very, very complicated human dynamics all happening at the same time in the funhouse mirror of social media. Sometimes social media pile-ons, yes, even those that begin with noble and valid criticism, can get so vicious that we lose sight of the humanity and feelings of the people we're piling onto. And I also think the construction criticism can be really hard to hear, especially online. So, we too quickly dismiss it because we don't want to consider that maybe we did, in fact, mess up. And I've made that mistake myself.
If you're familiar with this show at all, you know that I find it worthwhile to approach this on a human level, to get to know the full three dimensional people involved in a moment of so-called cancellation. That means both the canceled and the canceler, not to absolve or condemn either of them, but simply to get to know their backstories, to see them as human. And that is exactly what I'm attempting to do today.
Katie Herzog is a writer for The Stranger and in the summer of 2017 she wrote a piece called "The Detransitioners," which discussed the very rare occurrence of folks who come out as trans and then, choose to de-transition. Soon after it's release Katie received a lot of criticism and some argued that her piece was harmful to the trans community and perpetuated transphobic ideas.
The online response was swift. You might say she was canceled, or not. She does after all still have her job, but some on social media really made their thoughts known.
One Twitter user wrote, "Don't know why I thought it was a good idea to read Katie Herzog's piece of shit transphobic article when I was having a great day?????" Another called her a "dirty TERF," which is an acronym for trans exclusionary radical feminist. Someone ended their tweet with "what a trash can." And nearly 3,000 miles east of Katie, late one night a woman in Brooklyn joined this pile-on tweeting, "I'm just trying to imagine a world where a de-transition story is the journalistic hill to die on, but I can't. Ur just trash." The woman who wrote that tweet, her name is Robyn Kanner and you'll get to know her very soon.
Katie and Robyn had never met face-to-face until I introduced them to each other on stage in front of a live audience at a public taping of this podcast that you are about to listen to right now.
[Audio of audience waiting for show to begin fades up]
Dylan: I want you to accept them, to welcome them with open arms, with a lot of love. This takes a lot. So, without further ado, meeting on stage for the very first time, please welcome Katie and Robyn.
[Audience applauds]
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Katie and Robyn enter the stage from different sides. First gesturing hello to the audience, and then, they hug.
[Audience applause continues]
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: After their sweet little hug they sit down in their onstage seats.
Robyn: Oh, this is a very gay wardrobe.
Dylan: It's a very gay wardrobe. Do we notice that Katie and I are matching?
Katie: We are. Entirely on purpose.
Dylan: Yeah, entirely on purpose.
Katie: Yeah, that's because I have a camera in your house.
Dylan: Yes! Yeah! Doxx me! Me. [Audience laughs] Ummm, so I'm doxxed.
Katie: And I'm trash.
Dylan: And trash, and trash. And, yeah?
Robyn: Yeah, I'm trash.
Dylan: Okay, great. So, great that is it. We're done. We're all trash. Maybe that's the answer to cancel culture is that we're all trash?
Robyn: Yeah, I mean, we're all going to be canceled soon. So, don't worry about it.
Katie: Yeah, your time is coming.
Robyn: Your day will come.
Dylan: That's dark. That black mirror episode is coming. [Audience laughs] There's a lot to get into, but what I want to start with first is, as you know, on the podcast I ask each of my guests to tell me about themselves one-on-one when I speak to them before we launch right into the conversation. And so, I wanted to figure out how to adapt this into a visual format. So, rather than just sitting here and me asking Robyn about Robyn, Katie about Katie. I instead went to go and visit them in each of their homes so you can get a sense of what they look like off stage on a weekend, when they are not in front of an audience.
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Okay, I understand that this might be a little confusing. I can explain. At this moment in the live show we are going to watch pre-recorded videos that show me visiting Katie and Robyn in each of their homes, but clearly I understand that you, listener right now, cannot see those videos. So, instead you are going to be hearing the audio of those videos, a live room of people watching those videos, and--to make absolutely sure that you don't miss anything--my voiceover commentary, to describe any of the visual elements that you can't hear. Does that make sense? If it doesn't, stay with me, I promise it will very, very soon. So, Katie's video is up first and it opens with me parking my car on her street.
Dylan: You're going to see how bad I am at parallel parking. Okay, not bad. Are you proud? [Car door slams]
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Having successfully parallel parked, not to brag, I get out and I walk down this really cute tree-lined street in suburban Seattle. And I arrive at Katie's apartment, which is on the second floor of a large two story mid-century house that's painted dark beige with yellow trim. She doesn't have a buzzer, so I call her to let me in.
Dylan: We are here. Hi!
[Footsteps descend a staircase quickly]
Katie: Hi Dylan!
Dylan: Look at you! How are you?
Katie: Good. Thanks for coming.
Dylan: I love your denim.
Katie: Oh, why thank you.
Dylan: Okay, fancy plastic on your stairs.
Katie: Oh, thank you. I rolled out the red carpet for you.
Dylan: Thank you. The plastic carpet. [Audience laughs] Yay. Fancy home.
Katie: Yeah, welcome to my home.
Dylan: Oh my god.
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Katie shows me into a spacious sunlit apartment, which opens onto a truly enormous kitchen. My New York brain does not know how to process this.
Dylan: Look at your- [laughs] this is the biggest kitchen I've ever seen.
[Audience laughs]
Katie: This is a Seattle mansion.
Dylan: So, can you give us a tour?
Katie: Sure, so this is where the magic happens.
Dylan: [Laughing] This is MTV Cribs, yeah.
Katie: Yeah, this is where my girlfriend does the cooking. She made us some muffins today. I arranged the fruit bowl. That's not plastic.
Dylan: Wow!
Katie: Looks like it might be but yeah, help yourself to a grape.
Dylan: Oh, this is confirmed not plastic.
Katie: Yeah. Standard kitchen stuff.
Dylan: Yes.
Katie: I don't know what most of it is, but apparently it's required-
Dylan: So you're not the cook here?
Katie: I'm not the cook. I'm the beneficiary of the cooking. I do the dishes.
Dylan: Like any good liberal, you have Kombucha.
Katie: Yeah. [Audience laughs. Katie's voice fades for Dylan's narration V.O.]
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Okay, just so you know, it is a pretty enormous and terrific looking vat of Kombucha. Katie and I make our way to a bookshelf in the corner of the room.
Katie: Right.
Dylan: Okay, so is this the library?
Katie: This is part of the library. Most of the books are now stacked up in our bedroom because I was trying to make this place look cleaner.
Dylan: Okay, so this is an apartment performing for the camera.
Katie: Yeah, it is normally--the level of cleanliness here is like 10 out of 10 right now. Everything has been shoved in to the bedroom. This is my contribution for the home, a stack of New Yorkers.
Dylan: Yeah.
Katie: And some weed.
Dylan: Yes, love!
Katie: So, I contribute too.
Dylan: Very hip and cool, and legal here.
Katie: And legal here. Perfectly legal.
Dylan: In the state of Seattle.
Katie: In the state of Washington. [Audience laughs] Seattle would like itself to be its own state.
Dylan: In the state of Washington. I'll keep that in so everyone can know that I'm a dumb dumb. Okay, that sounds great. Do you want to take a seat?
Katie: Sure.
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: We settle into the couch in her living room to chat.
Dylan: Here's the first question I always start with, but in only as many details as you're comfortable sharing on camera, tell me about you.
Katie: All right, I guess I'll get the basics out of the way first. I'm 35 years old. My pronouns are she, her. I've never actually said that before. It's my first time.
Dylan: Congratulations.
Katie: Thank you. I'm from North Carolina. I live in Seattle. I rollerblade, which is the dorkiest thing that I do, probably, maybe not. Or maybe the coolest, depending on what year you ask. After work in the afternoon I like to walk up to a park with my girlfriend and play catch. And there's oftentimes like a dad and a son out playing catch with us, two mid-30s women doing our birthright of playing softball.
Dylan: Yeah. You got to fulfill that edict.
Katie: Yeah. I take a lot of weekend trips. I spend too much time on Twitter. I would love nothing more than to live in a valley somewhere between a couple of mountains with no phone reception and I could only listen to NPR and watch PBS. And I think I would be really happy for like 24 hours. And then, I'd probably go crazy. But after I got over the detox period, that would be my ideal life, would be to be offline. But it's impossible for my job.
Dylan: And you're a writer for The Stranger?
Katie: I am the second most hated staff writer at The Stranger, Seattle's alt biweekly.
Dylan: So, that's a verbatim line from your Twitter bio. Why did you say that?
Katie: Well, for one I think it's true and also, because I think it's funny. It just sort of makes me laugh, and it's a way of... There's probably something deep, more a deeper psychological reason, like being self-deprecating to shield myself from, I don't know, the truth of not being liked. Something like that. If I were a psychologist, maybe I would say that. Or maybe it has something to do with my childhood, but I get lots of mean tweets about that thing.
Dylan: Well, I feel like this kind of leads into what we're here to talk about. In the summer of 2017, you wrote an article on detransitioning. Why did you write it?
Katie: So, it's pretty simple. I thought it was just a really interesting story about human experiences. I've been in the queer community for all of my adult life and I have a lot of trans friends, and I've never met anybody who had detransitioned before. I mean, I wrote it mostly because I thought it was an interesting story and I thought it was a story that needed to be told.
Dylan: And did you think that it would get this response that it did?
Katie: I knew there was going to be a response. I didn't know how sort of heated it would get, but I did think that my sort of own identity would insulate me a little bit, because I'm not trans-phobic. I'm not a conservative. I do believe in trans rights and I believe in that trans people should be able to use the bathroom they want, and serve in the military. But I thought that that would insulate me, but it didn't.
Dylan: So, I ask this like feelings only, specifically feelings, but how did it feel to start getting the negative response?
Katie: Stressful. It felt terrible. It was incredibly stressful. I couldn't sleep. I felt every time my phone would beep I felt like I was going to throw up. Eventually, I just turned everything off and left town and sort of shut it off for a couple of days.
Dylan: How has it affected your life now?
Katie: Some ways that are concrete, like some friendships for sure ended, long-term friendships. That was difficult. It was the first time I had pissed off my own people. I'd pissed off conservatives plenty, and that didn't have any effect. And when it comes from your own allies, the experience is totally different. You feel attacked in this way that just feels much worse. It has an effect. And I knew all of the precautions I had taken to write this piece. I talked to the experts, I talked to trans people, I talked to de-trans people. I worked on it for months. It was... Every "t" was crossed, and "i" I was dotted. It had gone through multiple sensitivity reads. I knew that the story was one that deserved to have been written. And for the first time I saw, if my side can be wrong about me, what else are they wrong about?
Dylan: And this was all born out of this article?
Katie: Yes. I think the response to this article, I think it changed me in a very deep way and it also... Now, I know that when something like this happens, when there's some sort of social media pile-on, I also know not to believe the first story, the first reactions. I learned to wait and to do my own research and to read the thing that everybody is mad about or whatever, and not to assume that because there's a dog-pile the person at the bottom of it has done something to deserve it.
Dylan: You got a lot of tweets and a lot of feedback, comments, everything. Do you remember specifically getting Robyn's tweet?
Katie: No, not at all. But I did... When I looked Robyn up on twitter I had muted her, so there had been some interaction at some point that I didn't want to hear. I think she tweeted something about me being trash. So, there are a lot of those tweets. I have a little pin that my girlfriend gave me. It's a little trash bag. I wear it around when I'm feeling saucy.
Dylan: So, you are about to meet Robyn, IRL, for the first time. In fact, as I say these words right now, you're probably watching this, having already met, but how do you feel?
Katie: I feel great about it. I think that Robyn and I probably have a lot in common. I'm nervous about one thing-- when we're on stage meeting for the first time, are we going to shake hands or are we going to hug? That's the thing that I keep wondering. Should we work it out first? So, I'm nervous about that. I'm not nervous about... I don't think she's going to be a scary monster. I'm more nervous about the audience, frankly, than I am about Robyn.
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: And Katie's video ends.
Dylan: So, that's Katie. Rather than launching again into the conversation, let's get to know Robyn.
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: And now, Robyn's video begins to play, which opens on me arriving to her Brooklyn apartment building, which is a pretty standard New York multi-occupant building, and I buzz upstairs. Robyn opens her door.
Robyn: Hi!
Dylan: How are you?
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: And we hug.
Robyn: Good to see you.
Dylan: We're a shoes off home. Hi, this is a camera. Very exciting. Okay, shoes off. Thank you for having us.
Robyn: Of course.
Dylan: This is great.
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Her apartment begins in this deceptively narrow hallway, but then it opens up to this big, hybrid, living room/kitchen area.
Dylan: Can you give us a fancy tour?
Robyn: Sure.
Dylan: Okay, yeah. Should we start in the kitchen?
Robyn: Yeah. The kitchen, well it's weird. I have like a kitchen/living room/work area.
Dylan: In New York, this-
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: In this moment, the camera cuts to the floor and we see that the kitchen tile abruptly stops and meets the wood flooring that covers the rest of her apartment, which New Yorkers will absolutely agree, counts as two different rooms.
Robyn: That's the line.
Dylan: It's a good delineation. This legally counts as a different room.
Robyn: Totally, yes.
Dylan: Yeah.
Robyn: Well, here's the coffee machine.
Dylan: Heard of coffee, love it. You have Alexa.
Robyn: I have Alexa.
Dylan: Oh my god, there are sentient robots in this home listening to us.
Robyn: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Alexa: Sorry about that.
Dylan: Can I just see what's in your fridge?
Robyn: Yeah, there's nothing in my fridge. Literally-
Dylan: Robyn!
Robyn: Eggs, a tomato.
Dylan: You don't even have a light that goes on.
Robyn: No, it broke. So, my light broke like a year ago, but I've been too embarrassed to tell my landlord to fix it.
Dylan: I'm embarrassed for you.
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: As the tour continues, Robyn and I take an exaggerated step from the tile of the kitchen to the wood floor of the living room because, you know, you got to preserve that multi-room fantasy.
Dylan: Now, let's officially exit the kitchen. Shall we? Great. We have an art experience happening over here.
Dylan: Yeah. I play guitar, I watch TV.
Dylan: Wow. And now, we're stepping into the room with the office?
Robyn: Once you hit the rug, you're basically working.
Dylan: This is a different room?
Robyn: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dylan: Okay. Bike.
Robyn: Love a bike.
Dylan: Love a bike. Love this pink touch.
Robyn: Cute. It's like gothic with a hint of high fem.
Dylan: Would you consider that the aesthetic--
Robyn: Yeah.
Dylan: --of Robyn?
Robyn: That's my aesthetic.
Dylan: Fancy.
Robyn: Yeah and then this is my bedroom.
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: The first thing you see when you enter her bedroom is a sprawling fur blanket draped across her bed.
Dylan: Did you kill an animal for that?
Robyn: No, it's not an animal.
Dylan: Okay. It's fake.
Robyn: It's a fake animal.
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: I get to the doors of her closet, but I figure I should ask for permission first.
Dylan: Can we look?
Robyn: It's messy. It's gross. You don't want to see it.
Dylan: Okay, great. Now, this is suddenly where we realize this isn't Queer Eye where it's like, no you don't want to look.
Robyn: No, it's messy and gross and you don't want to see it.
Dylan: And you accept that as an answer and you say, "Well we're not gonna do that."
Robyn: I'm queer and great. That's what you got to know, Tan.
Dylan: Queer and great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tan France. All right, shall we move into the chat?
Robyn: Yes.
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Just as I did with Katie, Robyn and I settle down on her sofa.
Robyn: About me? That's such a difficult question. Well, I'm from Maine, I now live in Brooklyn.
Dylan: Love.
Robyn: I love books. I love music. I am a writer and designer. I did primarily design for a decade and then, I hit 25 and started reading books. I realized that writing was the greatest thing ever.
Dylan: And in the past, you've done a lot of trans activism?
Robyn: Yeah. When I... So I transitioned the first time in 2008. And I was in it, like when the world wasn't in it I was totally in it. And that's sort of the best way to describe it. In 2008 nobody was talking about being trans. And it was sort of this taboo thing. And I was fucking in it. Yeah, I was in it until, I would say, like 2012/13 was when I sort of questioned what we were really doing.
Dylan: What do you mean by that?
Robyn: I didn't know really where my voice stood in the conversation. That sounds super ego driven, but that's kind of how I fit in that moment.
Dylan: So, this is a good segue for what we're here to talk about because on July 7th of 2017-
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Okay, so right when I bring up this date, Robyn buries her head in her hood sheepishly.
Dylan: You tweeted “@kittypurrzog.” Katie's handle, "I'm trying to imagine a world where a detransition story is the journalistic hill to die on, but I can't." And then you added the kicker, "You're just trash."
Robyn: Oh.
Dylan: How does that feel to hear?
Robyn: It's just embarrassing. When I think about my life at that time, I was in a sad, angry state. And I remember tweeting that. I was in my bed, it was midnight and I was just kind of drunk and alone. And I saw this piece on Twitter and then, somebody else was yelling about it. So, I decided, I'll just yell at it. So, I opened up the article, literally read maybe three sentences of the thing. I didn't really read it, and I closed the thing. I went back to Twitter, I was like, "You're trash!" The best thing about that tweet though is I misspelled "journalistic." I didn't even get it right. So, it sort of says where I was at at the time as a human being. My life was messy then, and I was angry about the way people were talking about being trans online.
Dylan: You just said messy. What do you mean by messy?
Robyn: I'm an addict and alcoholic, and at the time, I was deep in it. I was trying my best to be alive and the most part removed from myself at the time. It was just sort of a really sad state, and for me, there was this anxiety of yelling on the internet. You just get it. If you yell at somebody, your heart rate will pump up. If you're yelling online all the time, like I was at that time, I couldn't sleep without drinking. I was just mad at people all the fucking time. And when I stopped doing that, and I got help, went to AA and stuff, I was able to sleep at night. I just thought it was so much nicer. I went dry, like with no help for two weeks. I basically stayed in this apartment with my shades down, playing a bunch of video games because honestly, if I was playing video games, my hands would stop shaking and I couldn't think about anything else. So I did that for the first two weeks, and that had no longevity to it. And I went to an AA meeting and the people were great. I immediately, not immediately, probably two weeks into AA got a sponsor. And she gave me the best sentence of my entire life. Literally the one sentence that has saved my entire life, and that is "I have resentment at, (insert whatever you want) because I fear that something will happen," right? So, I have resentment at the internet because I fear that if I stop yelling they won't like me. I have resentment at myself because I fear that yelling at people online is the only way I get people to notice me. That sentence has straight up saved my life.
Dylan: What does your sober life look like now?
Robyn: It's given me the ability to listen when somebody actually says something as opposed to waiting for the thing that I want to say next. It's given me the ability to smile. I never smiled. I'd watch comedy and be like, "Oh, I could do that better." I don't fucking know shit about it. I don't know anything about that world. And it gave me the joy of life. Gave me mornings back without a hangover. It gave me the ability to... If I disagree with somebody, just understand that they're a human being and obviously, I'll disagree with somebody. It just gave me my life back.
Dylan: So, you're going to meet Katie live and talk to her in person for the first time. How do you feel?
Robyn: Great. I don't know her. I'm sure she's rad. My guess is while this is playing I'm sitting right next to her, so it's going to be cool. Sorry, Katie!
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: And with that, Robyn's video ends, apologizing to Katie.
[Audience applauds]
Katie: I forgive you.
[BREAK]
Dylan: How do you guys feel?
Katie: I feel good and also, I want to say mornings, aren't they incredible?
Robyn: They're so good. They're so lovely.
Katie: It's crazy. It's crazy. So, welcome to mornings.
Robyn: Thank you.
Katie: I'm glad that you went through this process and came out the other side.
Dylan: Yeah, so how are you feeling?
Robyn: I feel really good.
Dylan: I want to dig a little more into it. I don't know that I've necessarily written a tweet like that, but I've certainly liked them. I've certainly plus one-d them, and I think it's this dangerous thing where you really want to just be on the right side of history and you definitely want to feel like if I'm seeing a person as transphobic, then fuck that person. I don't know what they did, but fuck transphobia.
Katie: Yeah, and I think that's a noble impulse. The problem is, as Robyn mentioned, she read three, the first three sentences of the piece.
Robyn: Great three sentences.
Katie: So, it becomes---often times when the pile-ons happen, it becomes everybody resorts to ad hominem attacks. It doesn't become about the piece itself, or the content at all. It becomes about the writer or the artist, or whoever it is, the actor.
Dylan: But just so kind of people can know, what does that feel like? What's the effects?
Katie: It fucking sucks.
Dylan: Yeah.
Katie: So, Seattle's a really small town. And the queer community there is obviously smaller than the rest of it. And I got very quickly pushed out of the community that I lived in. And that hasn't changed actually. There hasn't been a springing back. I don't go to queer spaces anymore. People that I know ignore me on a regular basis. There was, after the piece came out, people were actually burning stacks of the paper and sending me videos. So, I've actually been... My book has been burned. I don't think many people can say that. So, I'm proud. There were flyers up in my neighborhood calling me and my bosses transphobic. So, it was online but it was also offline in this way that affected me in terms of where I got coffee and shit like that. It was very real.
Dylan: So, Robyn, you were talking about sobriety and talking about how you were in this pattern of kind of jumping online to kind of... I don't want to put words in your mouth. Was it shouting into the void?
Robyn: Yeah, sure. That works.
Dylan: Okay, great. Was this a regular thing for you?
Robyn: For sure. It kind of depends how far we go back and let's say we'll go far back for a second.
Dylan: Let's go.
Robyn: The way that I was sort of raised on the internet was if you are marginalized--I'm going to put that in quotes--then, you're insignificant. Your voice will be less than, right? And I took that to heart and basically used my voice to be as loud as humanly possible. There was no conversation, there was no in-depth anything. It was just me sort of frustrated and without any healthy coping mechanisms, without conversations with people in real life, without just sort of friends to really bounce things of off, I ended up yelling. And on the internet, everything sort of has an economy. Yelling is an economy and if you yell the loudest, it's like you get the most money. You're the capitalist of yelling and I wanted to be that fucking capitalist. I wanted to be so high on yelling because I was so used to being sort of invisible throughout my life. And I saw it kind of work, like yelling on the internet. I saw it work. I saw people build brands off it. I saw those people become brands, have HBO shows. I just saw this whole world blow up. And it was interesting because I was a part of this culture of yell to get the clicks, yell to get the engagement, yell to be affirmed in your identity. So, there's no checks and balances with that. You're just yelling and that's sort of what I was doing. So, it was almost like the drunker I got, success rate in that metric was very high.
Dylan: Well, let's kind of dig into the gamification of it, right? Because I think there is something fucking intoxicating-
Robyn: Totally.
Dylan: ... when you see a tweet go viral. But there's something about when you craft a tweet that is just the right amount of snarky and the right amount of funny, and you just see a take off. There is a fucking dopamine rush. And you equate that with being correct?
Robyn: Of course, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's entirely how it goes. Dude, I would yell if the Chicago Bulls lost a game. I'm a really big Bulls fan.
Dylan: A big sports audience here, as you can you tell.
Robyn: Yeah, if anybody wants to stay after talking about the Chicago Bulls, I'm super down.
Dylan: That tracked well here.
Robyn: Yeah, but I mean, I can't even remember the amount of times I shit on LeBron James. Right? That's a human being who's done very good work in this life, and I mean, I dragged him.
Dylan: Do you have any questions for each other?
Katie: So, the sobriety came first, I assume. So, I'm curious about-
Robyn: To not being a dick?
Katie: Yes, to not being a dick.
Robyn: Yeah, yeah.
Katie: That's the 13th step? Is it? So, I'm curious though, how did that play out for you? So, did you have a realization like I've been an asshole on the internet or was it more gradual?
Robyn: It wasn't the internet, it was my entire life. For me personally, I slowly picked things up. We're talking, I got sober in July of last year, which is nine months next week. Please clap.
Dylan: Yeah, that's amazing.
Robyn: It totally wasn't one day I was like, "Oh, I'm a dick. Now, I'm a better person." That didn't happen. It was, I subtly watched and read and consumed a bunch of different things from my childhood and my teen years and everything--about when I stopped being a human, right? So, I watched Hook with Robin Williams, Julia Roberts-
Katie: Rufio.
Robyn: It was incredible. I mean, Dustin Hoffman, he's unreal. And the film plot of this is really this guy, sort of caught up in work, didn't really know what he was doing, was kind of a jerk to his child. Gets taken away by Tinker Bell because he's just sort of lost himself. And you just see Tinker Bell and sort of the Lost Boys be like, "You have to have a happy thought. Just one and you can fly." Like that's all you've got to do, right? And I was thinking about it, I was like, "What's my happy thought?" And I couldn't come up with anything. I was like, well that's sad. And a big part of my drinking came from my father passing away at a very early age. And dude, I just sort of looked at that film and I was like, I just had this you idiot moment. Your higher power, your happy thoughts, your father, just enjoy that. And then, once I settled with that, I had a total change of thought. I really had the moment where I was like, "Would my dad like what I'm doing right now?"
Katie: I get that all the time, but it's when I go home and I tell my girlfriend about what I've been doing on Twitter throughout the day. It never, ever goes well. Never, ever. I think I'll tweet something that I think is really hilarious and I'll show her and she's just like, "You are a fucking asshole." I'm like, "You don't get it! It's funny! Snark is funny, right?"
Robyn: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Katie: Yeah, try not to call people "trash." I prefer the term "garbage."
Dylan: Garbage! Okay, elitist!
Robyn: We're politically correct at this house.
Katie: I'm kidding!
Robyn: What's the difference?
Katie: Three letters.
Robyn: Okay.
Dylan: Okay.
Robyn: Semantics, got it.
Katie: Yeah.
Dylan: Friends, there's a big twist in this story. You feeling okay?
Robyn: I feel great.
Dylan: You feeling okay?
Katie: I took beta blockers, I'm fine.
Dylan: Yes honey!
Robyn: Love that healthy person.
Dylan: Yes beta blockers. So, as we know, Robyn logged onto twitter dot com to call Katie trash in the summer of 2017. And then, in February, Esquire put out this cover for "An American Boy."
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: All right, it is voiceover Dylan coming back in to synthesize this a little more clearly. So, yes, Esquire indeed did run a cover story article for their March issue published on February 12th, 2019 entitled "The Life of an American Boy at 17," which profiles a young, straight white man from the American Midwest who is on the precipice of adulthood. Now, at the time, this young man leaned conservative. Maybe he still does, I don't know, but many critiqued Esquire for electing to use a white conservative-leaning 17 year old to represent the American boy. Now for context, the magazine did announce that this was the first in a series of many profiles of many different types of young men. But regardless, the backlash was loud, aimed both at Esquire and the teenager himself. And I'll hand it back to Live Show Dylan to take it from here.
Dylan: This was met with a ton of animosity online because this was right during Black History month, and I don't know that there was a huge "reading the room" moment that happened. So, then Robyn wrote a piece for The New York Times called "Esquire's Cover Boy and Our Culture of Shame." The subheading, "I'm a trans woman living in Brooklyn. And I have tremendous empathy for the conservative teen in Wisconsin." Could you give just a kind of brief description of why you wrote this and why you empathize with him?
Robyn: Sure. So, there's three parts to this piece. The first is how growing up in Maine--I grew up in a town called Fairfield--I campaigned for George W. Bush. And I wrote about the experience to talk about this person. He's 17 years old, he is in Wisconsin, conservative household. And for me, I saw that and thought to myself, "Well, I grew up in a conservative town and it could have easily been me." And when I looked at myself in 2019 versus 2005 when I campaigned, 2004, whatever, I realized that that kind of just sucks for him. He should really have a moment to grow up and change. And if his name is sort of attached to the controversy that conspired on Twitter, he never really gets the change to grow up. And I thought that was kind of sad.
Dylan: And then, this was the response: lots memes…
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: What you can't see is that at this point a flurry of tweets appear on the screen behind us with the names of the authors blurred of course. And these tweets represent just a small portion of the pushback that Robyn received for writing that op-ed that empathized with the 17 year old in the Esquire cover story. Here I am reading some of those tweets aloud.
Dylan: "Your opinions are shit. They're fucking shit." "This piece is awful, this is so embarrassing." "The caucasity." "The audacity of this caucasity." "Ugh, turns out trans women can be mouthpieces for white supremacy too." "Why do you keep publishing this shit every time?" And "Shut up idiot, LMAO." So, just what I asked Katie earlier, how did it feel?
Robyn: I knew it was coming. I did not know the amount it was going to happen. And there was this really funny moment on the evening it published where I just kind of thought like, "Wow, I guess I'm getting my medicine now. I almost kind of deserve it in a little way."
Dylan: Katie, how does it feel to see that the person who called you trash and jumped on the pile-on is now at the bottom of a pile-on themselves?
Katie: I say this with absolutely love--it feels fucking great. And I say this... I'm actually not kidding. I say this because I actually think that being at the bottom of a pile-on is really good for people. Like for me now, because this happened to me, I no longer look at arguments based on the person making them. So, I judge arguments for themselves. I don't say like, "This person is good and this person is bad. And therefore I side with this person." Now, I look at the argument themselves, the argument itself, which is completely... I've never done that before. I've always been a sort of knee-jerk progressive and this hasn't changed my politics at all, but it's made me engage much more deeply with arguments. It's made me much more open. It's changed the media that I consume. I'm friends with conservatives now, not like real friends, but Twitter friends. This never would have happened, never would have happened if I hadn't been piled on. And actually, I feel wiser, I feel smarter. I'm invited to way fewer weddings, but I don't like weddings anyway. So, I think that it can be a real opportunity for growth, and I see Robyn going through that. And so, I think it's a great thing. I mean, it sucks to be in pain, but good things can come from pain. And so I want it to happen to every fucking person in this room.
Dylan: I also want to kind of confess something as someone who watched this happen. When you log on, this fully changes your perception of someone. And I've started thinking about pile-ons as bedbugs of the mind because it's that kind of thing where you... They can be gone and you still feel that it's there. You can be walking in the street and you're afraid like that person fucking hates me, that person think I'm trash. And they're like, "I don't know who the fuck you are." You know? And the reason I say is that it's bedbugs of the mind--and I want to be super clear I don't mean the people, I mean the ideas, the kind of this thing that seeps into us. I read the Times op-ed piece right when it hit. I messaged you right away and I was like, "I love this article. I love this piece." And then, I started seeing the responses. I started seeing people who I follow, who I respect, who don't even know you, who don't even follow you. And I was like, "Oh, fuck. Maybe this article is really bad?" And I had read it, and I had formed an opinion on it. And it changed my perception of the article and I hate that. I hate that. I hate that I log on to Twitter to see what I think.
Robyn: But I think that's okay though. Because there are many times I've read things wrong. And there is an information that passes-
Dylan: No.
Robyn: ... and I think that's okay.
Dylan: I don't think so because you were speaking to the exact themes I tackle in this podcast. So, I'm just saying-
Robyn: Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dylan: ... this is something I knew what I was saying when I messaged you, I knew that I liked it. But that I was like, "Oh maybe I hated it, and maybe Robyn is bad." Right? I was able to scale that thought down--
Robyn: Certified asshole, it's okay.
Dylan: Certified asshole. I just mean I was like, "Oh yeah, maybe this is white supremacy." And I feel like a somewhat free thinking person and that's happening to me.
Robyn: My favorite moment of this entire experience was a close friend sent me a very long text hoping that I was okay because they had seen everything. It was very sweet, we had a nice little conversation. And I went to bed and I woke up the next morning and they had just unfollowed me. And I was like, "Word? It's like that? New York media is really going to be that cold to me?"
Katie: Yes.
Robyn: And I let it go. But the funny thing is I just offered them a job. So, who cares?
Dylan: And did that happen to you?
Katie: Oh my god, yes. It still happens to me. So, I had written, for years, I wrote about climate change. And I pissed off the right all the time. And that never affected me in any sort of emotional way. It didn't bother me. It was no big deal because I would get emails from people calling me a “libtard fuckstick,” or whatever. But when this pile-on comes from your ideological allies, when it comes from your friends, it's a very different experience when it comes from people you don't like, or people you don't agree with. And I still get that. I get probably, I would say, that 60% of my hate mail comes from conservatives and which, I think is a pretty good balance. I think I'm the center. So, in that hate mail, I don't even... It doesn't bother me. It's funny. And it's mostly spelled wrong, which is also funny.
Robyn: Sorry.
Katie: Yeah. So, that hate mail, it's just it's funny but if I get something from somebody who I know is my ideological ally, it makes you think for sure, but it also hurts in a different way.
Dylan: I think one thing that's tough for me in this, and I think the real loss on the internet, is constructive criticism, which is that we don't get constructive criticism on the internet anymore because we have no way of knowing how to parse through it. You know? So, were you able to engage with constructive criticism on either of your pieces?
Katie: I wasn't in the moment. In the moment, it was like I had to get away. Later, yeah. And there were. There definitely are good faith criticisms of my piece and some people made those and I appreciated them. But in the moment, a tide of shit is coming for you. And I just couldn't handle... All of that got lost in the sort of tsunami of shit.
Robyn: Yeah, I got a lot of hate for my piece. I got no messages on Facebook. I got no Instagram messages. I got no emails. I got no phone calls. What I got is very specific, very circular hate on Twitter. And if you're a person receiving that, yeah, I can engage in the constructive criticism because I can deconstruct what those tweets mean, and I can pick out the points that I think are important or relevant to pick up on. But whether that medium can help us be more human is something that is still up to debate for me.
Dylan: So, as we close out this conversation, what is your fantasy remodel? Doesn't have to be the whole internet. It's just like what is one element that you want to bring to it that you think could change it a little?
Robyn: I think about how words can be walls very quickly. And if there's one thing I can change about the internet, it wouldn't be to change the design of it. It would be to change the language of it.
Katie: I think there should be a rule that you have to read the article before you comment on it. Number one. I also think that there's... What the internet has done, it's made us more tribal and we're in a tribal moment right now because of politics all over the world anyway, and there are these things that we do to sort of display our identities. You might put a rainbow flag in your Twitter bio, or you might put a red rose or a red X which says something.
Robyn: I'm canceled.
Katie: Yeah. I think those are bad because I want people to stop judging each other based on their particular identity and actually engage with each other based on who they are and their ideas. Twitter is not going to hire me and then, make them take away the emojis in the bio. But I think-
Robyn: I can send an email.
Katie: Thank you. But I think that if we related to each other as human beings, as individuals, as opposed to representatives of a group, that we sort of have stereotypes in our heads that this person is this because they are this. It's toxic and it's not actually how real life works. We are individuals and our various identities don't actually define who we are entirely. And I want people to engage with each other as human beings.
Dylan: Yeah.
Katie: And also read the fucking article.
Dylan: All right, well, final thing is closing thoughts. How do you feel? Anything you want to share?
Katie: Those beta blockers are going to run off any minute. So, I've got to get off stage.
Dylan: Okay.
Katie: I feel great. This has been really fun.
Dylan: Okay, great.
Robyn: I feel good.
Dylan: I want to say a huge thank you to both of you for being willing to do this. I think this takes... Yeah. [Audience applauds] Thank you guys.
Dylan [VOICEOVER CLOSING CREDITS]: This episode of Conversations With People Who Hate Me was recorded live on April 10th, 2019 at Littlefield in Brooklyn, New York.
The home visits were filmed and recorded by Dustin Flannery-McCoy. The recording of the live show itself was produced by Ben Altarescu and audio recorded by Allan Kudan.
Very special thanks to the entire Littlefield staff, Jana Cryn, Shalewa Sharpe, Michael Grinspan, and the whole team at ICM, Seth Horowitz, Jason Sudeikis, Scott Landesman and Lindsay Ryan at MLM. My dad who came with me to rent the chairs so that Katie and Robyn and I could have something comfy to sit on for the recording. And he returned them for me the next day. Thank you dad. I love you. And finally, you know how I said that Katie and Robyn were meeting live on stage for the very first time? Well, I was able to pull off that stunt because of the crucial help of my friend, Eden Wall, who carefully managed the considerably small backstage area to make sure that they never met before the show began. Eden, thank you. It went off without a hitch.
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. Thrilled to say this for the very first time, Emily Newman and Mark Stoll are the Associate Producers. The theme song is "These Dark Times" by Caged Animals. The logo was designed by Philip Blackowl with a photo by Mindy Tucker, and this podcast was created, produced and hosted by me, Dylan Marron.
Thank you, as always, to the Night Vale Presents director of marketing, Adam Cecil and our publicist, Megan Larson. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode.
Until then, remember there is a human on the other side of the screen.
[Chorus of ‘These Darks Times’ by Caged Animals plays.]