EPISODE 41: BALLOON GUY
[Instrumental of ‘These Dark Times’ by Caged Animals begins to play.]
Dylan [VOICEOVER INTRODUCTION]: Hey I’m Dylan Marron and welcome back to Conversations with People Who Hate Me, the show where I take conflict and turn it into a conversation.
If you’re into this podcast, may I tell you about Conversations with People Who Hate Me, the book? It’s out on March 29, 2022 and in it I distill the twelve things I’ve learned from making this show as a sort of guide for you to use in difficult conversations of your own. Oh, and I wrote it to be read by listeners and non-listeners of this podcast alike so it’s for you, and also that person in your life who’s never heard of me or this show. The presale link is in the description of this episode. But you know how to use Google, and I’m proud of you for that.
So, like I said, this show takes people in conflict, typically (but not always) digital conflict, and connects them in conversation. That is, in fact, the basis of every single episode. Until today. Because today’s episode took… an unexpected turn.
You’ll see why as you listen.
I first became aware of Michael James Schneider’s work in the modern way most of us become familiar with anyone’s work: by scrolling on social media.
And chances are, you’re familiar with his work, too: Michael is best known for his balloon art, in which he takes a modern cultural sentiment or expression— like “Stop trying to make the wrong people love you the right way” or “straight men understand consent when they go to a gay bar” or “I know everything happens for a reason… but what the fuck”—and then spells those catchy phrases out with shiny mylar balloons, assembles them on a cool-colored wall and then snaps a picture of himself in front of this phrase.
I find his images fun to look at. To me, they are a welcome respite from the endless scroll of social media. But I can totally understand why it wouldn’t be someone else’s thing, and that they would come across it and move on, as is their right. And yet… his work—this work, the quotes-spelled-in-balloon motif I just described–incites an avalanche of hate online.
And I’m not just talking about quote-unquote hate that I sometimes identify on this show— that negativity that only seems like hate because we’re reading it online and when you look closer it’s just mild negativity—I’m talking like… hate hate.
Like, people actively talk about hating this dude and his balloons. One such post currently has over 140 thousand likes.
But that’s one tweet, and doesn’t even scratch the surface.
Now it is worth noting that this negativity seems to be centralized on Twitter. On Instagram, Michael and his balloon phrases are widely loved. But still, when it gets nasty on twitter… it gets… nasty.
There’s a concept, and maybe you’re familiar with it, But it’s the idea of Twitter’s Main Character.
As far as I can tell it originated in January of 2019 when a twitter user with the handle @maplecocaine tweeted “Each day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it.”
If you are a very online person, or even a sort of online person, I’m sure a lot of main characters are coming to mind right now. You also know that The Main Character could be someone who did something egregiously offensive or someone who simply did something that was deemed “cringe.” It’s a very big, and wide-ranging scale of things you have to do to become the main character.
And Michael James Schenider, or as he’s more dismissively known online, Balloon Guy, has become one such main character.
And this, as you can imagine, piqued my interest as a potential episode for this show.
I go about producing it as I do most episodes: I start with Michael. I follow him, he follows me back, and a couple months later, we have a chat.
[Music fades. Conversation begins.]
Mike: I think I'm recording.
Dylan: Okay, perfect. So we can start here. How are you?
Mike: (laughing) I'm really well! I'm thawed out now.
Dylan: Okay, perfect.
Mike: I was in a very, very cold shoot earlier today, and so it's nice to be inside.
Dylan: Amazing. Welcome back in from the cold. We're thrilled to have you here in the warmth. (Mike laughs) And now, do you prefer Mike or Michael? Just so I know.
Mike: I have no preference.
Dylan: Okay.
Mike: I have no preference. Either.
Dylan: Your heart doesn't say anything right now?
Mike: No, no, there's nothing in there. There's nothing in my heart.
Dylan: Okay. So I'm going to say Mike, I'm making the decision, Mike. (Mike jokingly inhales, Dylan laughs) Okay, that was a trap!
Mike: No, that's great. No, I love that.
Dylan: You trapped me.
Mike: I love that
Dylan: You hang up the call, this is it. (Mike laughs) This is amazing. So, Mike. Wow, I feel like we've been friends for decades. (Mike laughs) When I get to use someone's nickname, I'm just like, "All right, we're best friends..."
Mike: We're there.
Dylan: ... "You got to deal with it".
Mike: Yeah, we're besties now.
Dylan: Yeah, we're there.
Mike: Yeah.
Dylan: It's happening. Okay. So Mike, my old friend from third grade, (Mike laughs) I would love, in only as many details as you're comfortable sharing, for you to tell me about you.
Mike: I'm pretty transparent. I'm a artist on the side, who has a day job that he loves in retail. I moved to Portland eight years ago. That was the beginning of my artistic sabbatical. And only in the past few years has it really, really taken off. And I was just as surprised as anyone else that there's actually an audience.
Dylan: So, when did you start making these balloon quotes?
Mike: I want to say it was 2017, but it was really rudimentary. And I had the idea of doing balloons, these balloons, cheesy balloons that you see in every wedding announcements, (Dylan giggles) and engagement photos, and baby announcements, and birthdays, and just... You see these everywhere and I love the idea of turning those on and just doing something dumb with them. So I did one with my friend, Matt, and the caption was "Doo what scares you the most", D-O-O what scares you the most, and the balloons spelled out "I just pooped at work". (Dylan laughs) So, obviously it was a far cry from my eventual mental health or sassy quotes that eventually it morphed into. And the balloons, it's interesting, they're kind of like the graphic design version of all caps. It is just putting these quotes in bright, psychedelic colors in stark relief, and just shouting them to the world. And so, I also played with the idea of, "Oh, what if it was a serious message in balloons?" What does that say about the balloons, what kind of statement is that saying? So one of the earlier ones was "Abolish ICE now", and when the pandemic hit and we were all at home, I had so much time on my hands. You can't really do a retail job from home. So my output increased and it just blew up and took off. And I'm very, very grateful for everything, and for the audience. I will say that it grew so big and so quickly that I made stupid attribution mistakes, and I didn't treat it like a serious business. And then after I would make those mistakes, I would hire someone and be like, "Can you please research the origin of this quote, this person is crediting it to Abraham Lincoln. And I'm sure that's not right". (Dylan laughs) Like...
Dylan: Abraham Lincoln said, "Back that ass up". And you said, "Yes".
Mike: (Laughs) He 100% did! Little known fact. He did say that.
Dylan: He did, and it's credited. That's fact-checked, fact-checked.
Mike: Yeah. But he was paraphrasing Gandhi. (Dylan laughs) Yeah.
Dylan: He was, he was, it was a stolen quote.
Mike: Yeah.
Dylan: So, okay. You're making this work, your images are starting to go viral, people are really attaching themselves to what you do, they're sharing what you do. It's going really well, right? It's all going well. But of course, this is a podcast about why we write particularly mean things. And were you at all paying attention to the, kind of, like, eye roll hate that was coming, from what I saw, primarily on Twitter, did that hit you at all?
Mike: It doesn't anymore. And Twitter is the epicenter of all people committed to misunderstanding me. (Dylan laughs). But I also am very good at compartmentalizing. And I think my thick skin started growing with my following, and thank God it did. I think I am, this is going to embolden my haters, but I think I'm the perfect person to bully in that way, because I'm so divorced from the emotions. I do remember what it felt like years ago when I did Box Wine Boyfriend, and...
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Just popping in here on voiceover to tell you that Mike is referring to his 2018 project where he made a figure out of boxes of wine, and photographed himself with this figure in various romantic poses and settings. I think you get the idea from the title, but just in case you were confused, there you have it. So now he's talking about the response he got to Boxed Wine Boyfriend.
Mike: ... Content warning, self-harm, but when I did Box Wine Boyfriend and people were like, "Kill yourself". And I was like, "Oh. Oh". Like...
Dylan: Yeah.
Mike: That... I didn't expect that! And that was startling and felt like a hand gripping my chest, and I was just like, "Holy shit, that's fucking awful. How is this legal? How can that happen online and there's no consequences to that?" And so that happened every time something of mine would hit big, and they still, to this day, will say like, "You should self-harm". And I've very much learned to divorce myself from the emotion of it. And I almost feel sorry for people like that, a little bit. And as somebody who tries to put myself in other people's shoes, I can't imagine what it takes to type those words, directed at somebody online. And it's gotten to the point where it really is an online phenomenon. Save for one time where somebody drove by a shoot and was like, "Oh, everybody on Twitter thinks you're a dumb nerd", which was like a cute, soft... It was the softest anyone has ever been roasted. But aside from that, I've literally never run into a human being in real life, that I know of, that has said anything critical of my art, or taken responsibility for saying one of those things. We hire all these young kids at work sometimes, and I'm always wondering like, "Are we going to get a new hire, and I'm going to look them up on Instagram and I'll be like, I blocked that person! I blocked that person! That's one of my trolls!" So there's that too, but it's something that's never affected me in real life, and so maybe that also helps me compartmentalize it a bit? But it is this weird, roiling, toxic boogieman out there. And I think I just don't give it space, because if I did, I don't think I could do what I do.
Dylan [VOICEOVER - INTERLUDE 1]: After first speaking to Mike, I get right to work: I pull over a dozen options of potential guests—which include a whole variety of anti-Mike twitter users, one of whom has posted that how they’d delete their account if they were him; others illustrate the violent actions that they wanted to take against him with a meme or a grainy screenshot from an old piece of media, others reveled in the communal bond of hating Mike, and one person even said that the right place for him is the bottom of a body of water… I mean some really cruel stuff.
Now, I’ve spoken before on this show about how I draw a line at threats of physical violence. As a rule, I’m not gonna reach out to anyone who has threatened either me or the person I’m trying to connect them with on a call… but these people all feel safe because, for one thing, they seem to all be joking. I mean, very mean joking, but joking nonetheless… and for another thing: I know a lot of these people.
If I don’t follow them personally then Twitter shows me that I know many users who do. So this group feels familiar. Which is why I begin to reach out to them, one by one.
Another thing to point out is that, um, Mike is gay, but strangely, most of the people I see who aimed negativity at Mike appear to be queer themselves–at least according to identifieers and emojis in their bio. Now it’s totally likely that this is just because of the mysterious algorithm that has sorted me into a digital box where I only see people similar to me, but it’s still curious enough that I make a note of it.
So, looking at this list, I rank my first, second, and third choice of guests in my head. It’s usually people who give me a good vibe that a really fruitful conversation might come out of this.
And so, I begin: I reach out to my first choice on the list.
I compose a DM in which I tell them about this show, the episode I’m interested in producing, and then—to convince them that I’m self-aware—I acknowledge that, yes, this is a truly wild invitation and I make sure to tell them that they can do this as anonymously as they want, and then I typically wrap up what always ends up being a way-too-long message with the offer to hop on the phone with them and answer the many questions I’m sure they have.
I press send. And I wait.
A few days later… I finally get a response: It’s a no!
Alright. It happens.
I reach out to my second choice. It is also a no.
This isn’t weird. I’m used to it. So I keep reaching out to people.
Now, I learned the hard way that I have to go slowly. It’s best to reach out to one person at a time so that you can give them your full attention rather than DM-blasting a whole bunch of people and then having to deal with a bunch of interested parties who you can’t juggle and then they get offended that you got their hopes up and now you’re no longer interested. So, yes, I have to go one at a time, which makes the “no’s” particularly frustrating.
So I keep reaching out to people, one at a time.
But eventually I stop getting “no’s” and instead I just get silence. No responses at all.
And yes, this is the point in the production process of every episode where I shake my fist at the sky for starting a show that feels nearly impossible to produce. And while I’m shaking my fist at the sky, I regard my other podcasting friends—the ones who brilliantly and wisely created and host shows that people actually want to be on—and I seethe with envy that they do not have to face this problem.
But I get over this feeling quickly because it happens in almost every single pre-production process.
I give Mike a call to update him.
A phone rings. Mike picks up.
Mike (on the phone): Hey, Dylan.
Dylan (on the phone): Mike?
Mike (on the phone): Hello, how are you?
Dylan (on the phone): I'm good! How are you?
Mike (on the phone): I'm really good. I'm in the studio right now, puttering around.
Dylan (on the phone): I'm proud of you. So I just wanted to give you the quickest update. No luck yet. No responses. Tried following some. I really feel like the biggest fan of these people. (Mike laughs) But here's what I want to do. I want to wait for some people to get back to me, meaning like, give them some more time, I'll follow up and then, can I update you in four days and see if I have any luck?
Mike (on the phone): That's absolutely fine.
Dylan (on the phone): Great, great, great. I have faith. I have total faith.
Mike (on the phone): No, me too. Me too, I think it's going to turn out great.
Dylan (on the phone): Okay, perfect. Well, I will talk to you really soon.
Mike (on the phone): All right, have a lovely night. Thank you, Dylan.
Dylan (on the phone): You too. Bye Mike.
Mike (on the phone): All right, will talk to you soon. Bye.
The call ends.
Dylan [VOICEOVER - INTERLUDE 2]: I really do want to make this work, so, after no luck with my first list of potential guests, I pull together a new crop of internet users who have posted about how bad Mike is for all sorts of reasons.
While I’m assembling this new list, I see that Gawker has published a piece titled “Deplatform Balloon Guy” and the subtitle reads “he’s a threat to national security.” The author then embeds a variety of Mike’s popular posts, chiming in with one-liners about why they’re annoying, all leading to a grave warning: “For a safer internet,” the writer concludes, “Balloon Guy must be deplatformed immediately. Our sanity is at stake.”
This is, of course, meant to be satire. The hyperbole is just for the laughs. But satire punches up. It punches up at politicians, the rich, the powerful… and I can’t totally tell which direction this is punching. It’s a writer at a known online publication, taking a jab at an internet artist. They’re definitely punching somewhere, but I don’t know that the direction is up.
Reading this makes me realize this is a much bigger problem than I first thought. Mike’s identity as twitter’s Main Character isn’t just specific to twitter anymore… it’s now permeating other spaces, too.
But the only way I know to combat this default to negativity that the internet is so good at, is to make this podcast. And that’s what I do: I keep reaching out to people. And with this new crop of invitations not a single person even responds to me.
Mike (on the phone): How's it going?
Dylan (on the phone): So my update is pretty much the same. I haven't heard back from anyone, so I'm just waiting. I just wanted to keep you updated. I really want to make this episode and I want you to know that I'm not giving up hope on what I think could be a truly beautiful episode.
Mike (on the phone): I'm fascinated, especially since there's recency to it too. Heck, I can pretty much count on getting dragged once a month on Twitter, so.
Dylan (on the phone): (laughing) Right, right, right, right.
Mike (on the phone): I'm fascinated, but I'm not discouraged either, but that's... Yeah. Yeah, I'm just fascinated.
Dylan (on the phone): Yeah. How about, let's wait maybe four more days, and then if we haven't heard from anyone, we'll figure something out?
Mike (on the phone): Yeah. No, that sounds perfect.
Dylan (on the phone): Okay, great.
Dylan [VOICEOVER - INTERLUDE 3]: It’s happened before where someone simply hasn’t seen my invitation and then they get back to me a little later and it turns out to be a truly amazing episode.
So I wait.
And I wait.
And nothing.
As I’m looking at my list, I realize something: I’ve now reached out to ten people. Thirteen if I’m counting the ones who don’t have open DMs and I had to follow in the hopes that they would follow me back, but ten in the sense of people I actually messaged directly.
Now, I understand that “ten people” - even thirteen people - sounds like a very small number. “You DM’d only ten people?! And you call yourself a podcast producer!? Put some back into it come on!” That’s you, thinking that in your head.
And to that hypothetical thought I say: yeah, because for this show, ten people is a lot.
As I mentioned before, I have to move slowly, reaching out to one person at a time so that I can be available to drop anything throughout the week and jump on the phone with them should they be interested. And if they stop being interested, that’s when I move on to the next person.
I get a lot of “no’s” for this show, but these No’s usually happen later in the process, after I’ve spoken with them on the phone, or after a few DMs back and forth. You’d be shocked at how many people who were meant to record episodes for this show suddenly have a family emergency.
Is this time consuming? Yes. But is it worth it? Absolutely. So, this is all to say, to get no initial interest at all, ten is actually a big number.
But ten is also a significant number for another reason: I have never, in the five years of producing this show, never reached out to ten potential guests without even getting a sliver of curiosity in response. And so I think, yeah, I could spend another few months reaching out to more people, one at a time, but something tells me that I’ll have the same success rate. But instead of abandoning this episode, I see it as an opportunity.
Dylan (on the phone): How are you doing?
Mike (on the phone): I'm really good. I spent the whole day in the studio doing shoots, getting ready for a big merch shoot on Saturday, which is exciting.
Dylan (on the phone): Well that's exciting. Congratulations on that.
Mike: Thanks! How are you doing?
Dylan (on the phone): I'm good. I'm good. So...
Mike (on the phone): Good. Good.
Dylan (on the phone): Okay. The news I have for you today is that, officially, no one has gotten back to me. We have no takers.
Mike (on the phone): Fascinating.
Dylan (on the phone): It's really fascinating. But, I don't think that means there can't be an episode. I have an idea.
Mike (on the phone): Yeah. Tell me.
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Stay right there, we will be right back.
[BREAK]
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: And we are back… okay: here is the unexpected second half of my episode with Mike. It’s the space where the third act would have been when I connected him to a detractor.
Dylan: So Mike, here we are. It's just you and me. Not exactly how we envisioned...
Mike: No.
Dylan: ... the third act of this episode. Obviously, I have dug myself into a hole by creating a podcast that people don't want to do. (they both laugh) So yeah, it's a challenging podcast to produce, but it's never been quite like this. So I have a theory about why so few people said yes, which is to say zero people said yes, (they both laugh) or were interested at all. And I really don't think it has a lot to do with you. And I think it has a lot to do more with the structure of social media and the reward system of social media. But I want to hear if you have a theory.
Mike: Yeah, yeah. This feels like very familiar territory.
Dylan: How so?
Mike: Well, in a similar way, where I used to write about my dating experiences on dating apps, it's all this chasing these endorphin rushes, because it's all gamified. It's all chasing the most likes, or chasing the most swipe rights, or chasing the most hearts or retweets on your shitty comment. And Twitter, which is where I've gotten the most negative reaction to my art, definitely created this Quote Tweet feature where it's so easy to dunk on someone. And it's so easy to persuade other people to dunk on that as well. And it's gamified, it's all gamified, there is a reward system and there is a certain part of internet culture that loves to dunk on people. Now, I'm all for a pile-on of some conservative, tone-deaf take. But it's fascinating when I see like-minded people dunking on something that I do. And it's that, "I'm on your side", but no, they've been rewarded, they've seen that there is a reward system for being the meanest person.
Dylan: Yeah, I think my theory is essentially that. And the gamification is what has attracted viewers and it's what's attracted users and it's what's attracted me. And I don't want to speak for you, but maybe what's attracted you, too. There's an intoxicating feeling of succeeding at the game of the internet.
Mike: Oh sure. I'm not going to pretend like validation online doesn't feel good.
Dylan: Oh my God, completely.
Mike: I would be full of shit if I said that didn't feel somewhat validating.
Dylan: But I think that's the same psychology that's undergirding the hate against you. Because I think, on many days, you become the internet's main character, right?
Mike: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dylan: The central punching bag that everyone is invited to take swipes at, and I think not only can they score points on you by having a funny take on why you're bad, but there's also a sense of belonging to it too, that you get to belong by not liking you.
Mike: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dylan: And I've told you this, but there's something about this episode, your story, this story, that has crawled into my head and doesn't let go. (laughs) And then I also... Maybe it's unfair of me to even express that to you because you're a real human being (Mike laughs) and you are not simply a story, but you're a person who is central to this story. So I hope you know I don't mean that in a disrespectful way, it's just, it's...
Mike: Not at all!
Dylan: ... in my head, it's in my heart for some reason.
Mike: When I can step outside of it, and it does feel very abstract, it's just fascinating to me. Because part of it is like, "Aren't they tired yet? Isn't the joke old by now?" And clearly they're not. But for me, if I was just making the same joke, which it really is, the same three or four jokes go viral every time something of mine hits big or touches a nerve, I would get bored with that joke.
Dylan: Yeah. I also think I need to add the heavy asterisk to say that, to call you the main character does a huge disservice to actually how popular and beloved you are. And this is the strange thing, which is that it's not the biggest percent of people who make you the main character, the punching bag. And it's far more people who like, and engage with your stuff, and then go about their days. But we're talking about a minority here. And I think that always needs to be said to keep scale in check.
Mike: Yeah, and it's something I remind myself as well, to not let my mental health suffer because of it either.
Dylan: Yeah.
Mike: But it aligns to the fact that whenever I do these shoots, I get dozens of people, either curious about them, stopping by, recognizing me, more likely recognizing the balloons. And only once has one person trolled me during a shoot. And so, I keep that in mind, where I know that my art helps far more people than it makes angry. I do hope that, at some point, people have the self-awareness to look at why something that, I don't necessarily consider my art that challenging or controversial or world-changing, but why something like this makes them react the way they do. It's not my problem, it's their problem. But I do hope it gives people a moment of reflection at some point about internet culture in general.
Dylan: Now I want to ask something and this is the kind of answer that I would love as much emotional honesty as possible. So much so, that you have full right to strike this question from the episode. But you speak about this in such a removed way, and you feel so calm, cool, and collected, and it's also apparent in your outward-facing persona online. For example, I just saw that you put out some merch with a negative tweet on a canvas bag.
Mike: That's one of my best-selling merch pieces, too. (laughs)
Dylan: No, listen, I love it! (Mike laughs) But I think you feel removed from it, the way I see you engage with it, and the way I hear you talk about it, and that is great and healthy. And this is where I ask for the emotional honesty, so emotionally honest that we can cut this if we want, but... Does it ever get to you? You have such this strong facade, do you ever feel like, "Fuck, this just feels so bad"?
Mike: Yes. And I think I feel it the most when friends will send me shitty things that people have said about me that otherwise my very insulated filter would not see. And it's literally like, "Why would you think this was okay to send to me?" This has 200,000 Likes, and this person is clearly dunking on me. Who is this for? Why are you sending this to me? And I think maybe they also see that happy-go-lucky like, "I'm going to turn your shitty Tweet into merch" so much on social media, that they assume, "Oh yeah, he's going to laugh at this". Or, "He'll make merch from this", or something like that. And I'm like, "No. No, you're my friend. Why would I like this? I think if you asked me this two years ago, I might have even cried. I think if you asked me this one year ago, I probably would've been really, really mad or defiant? But I'm a 48-year-old queer man. I was a teenager in the eighties, and I was out at the end of my high school years in fucking Albuquerque, New Mexico. I've been spit on for being gay, I've been bullied and harassed and beat up when I was younger for being queer. What's the goal of the trolling and bullying? Is it to make me stop? If internet randos think that their dunk of quote tweeting me is going to stop me from living my truth and making my art? Try harder. It's not going to make me stop. And so, I feel like the part of it that would let it get to me, is the part that was bullied as a kid and got stronger. (Mike exhales, sniffles)
Dylan: Yeah. I think... I know you and I have discussed this offline, but it seems to mostly be gay men.
Mike: And it's privilege. It's privilege.
Dylan: What do you mean by that?
Mike: It screams privilege to not know what it's like to have to band together. I think coming from an era where you met another gay or queer person and that person was a treasure in your life. You come out in college, or at the end of high school, and you are just this unicorn and you are a target. And so when you find other like-minded people, other gay and queer people, all of you have each other's backs, you are all back-to-back, facing the world. You circle the wagons around each other. I don't think that that type of adversity should be necessary for us to find kinship in each other as gay or queer people? But I do think it is something... Again, broad generalization, really sweeping, but as an older gay man, I don't know how to convince people to band together and to care about other people who are like-minded.
Dylan: The other thing I'm thinking is that, and this is heartbreaking, but I think there's also an element of, it's actually not that important to them. And I say that that's heartbreaking because it's not like that political rage, that sociopolitical rage, that's like, "I so disagree with what you are doing to this world, and my soul is on fire because of it". It's not that their soul is on fire, or if it is, it's only because of the hyperbole mandate of the digital sphere, it's that they actually don't care that much. And I wonder if maybe, they actually don't hate you that much at all. It's just simply the task of the day (Mike laughs) to pile onto Balloon Guy. And that they actually, in other moments, maybe they forget that you exist, because they're like... Yeah, I don't know. And again, I want to keep driving home the fact that I don't think any one person is the villain here. I think it is the platforms that enable this kind of behavior that can so easily turn one person into a punching bag for the semi-pleasure of thousands.
Mike: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dylan: Yeah. So, some final questions here, but... When I was getting the hate comments that launched this podcast, that started this podcast, the strange coping mechanism I developed, or the unexpected coping mechanism I developed, was that I would receive these hate messages or comments, or see these hate comments, and I would, because most of the hate I was receiving was on Facebook, I would click on the person's profile picture, scroll through their photos and try to imagine the most loving backstory possible for them. And that was my way of proving to myself that they weren't some distant monster, but instead they were full, three-dimensional human beings who I might one day be able to reach. So... What is the most loving backstory that you can imagine for some of the people who take swipes at you in Twitter's public square?
Mike: I mean, It's a bumper sticker. It's totally the biggest cliche in the book. And I'm sure it's attributable back to one person, but it's that "hurt people hurt people." I truly feel like the people who are the angriest or lash out the most have some deep, unhappy kernel in them. Again, this is without them being here, able to personify this.
Dylan: To be like, "I'm not hurt at all, I've been in therapy for 10 years and I'm doing fucking amazing!"
Mike: "I just legitimately hate your art so much!"
Dylan: Yeah.
Mike: But I really think it's that. I think it's just that knee-jerk reaction, and people grow up to become the love they've known. That's another bumper sticker for you. But they really do. And I think that helps me process it as well, to know that these people have some, maybe, deep unhappiness, or something where they get satisfaction from the antagonization of an internet stranger. And that's okay. Because I'm getting to a place where I'm really zen about it. And I've found ways to manipulate it into helping me, and supporting me in the long run.
Dylan: Can I actually share something with you that I've learned from doing this for almost five years now?
Mike: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dylan: "Hurt people hurt people" was also a maxim that I used to paint these loving backstories that I was telling you about. But, I think the more complicated truth is that hurt people hurt people is sometimes true. It is definitely sometimes true. And I've had a lot of amazing people very bravely own up to that and be like, "Yeah, sometimes I just log on and I'm trying to get my anger out at the world. And you take it out on people who you don't think will ever see these comments." So I think "hurt people, hurt people" is sometimes a good bet. And I think the more complicated thing is that... Sometimes they're not hurt, which is what brings me back to the really treacherous design of these platforms, which is you actually don't have to be enduring existential pain or historic trauma to hurt someone online, because I don't think we know our impact. And I'm literally, I'm a monster, because I asked you a question, you answered it beautifully, and here I am being an asshole and correcting you...
Mike: No!
Dylan: And I'm not correcting you. I'm just...
Mike: You're not at all. No. I'm listening.
Dylan: I hope you know I'm just sharing, which is that, that was a hard lesson for me to learn, that hurt people hurt people was almost this phrase that was so handy when I needed it, and then it didn't work so much anymore. Or, not that it didn't work anymore, is that it's just not a one-size-fits-all phrase. So anyway, this is all to say, I don't know. And all of this is hypothetical because we are not talking to a guest, it's just you and me opining about what we think these lovely, wonderful people might be. What would you have wanted out of this conversation had it worked out?
Mike: I think I got what I wanted.
Dylan: Wow.
Mike: I really do. I think it's that kernel of understanding, knowing that I was going to be in a conversation with someone? Made that part of my soul that was going to have to be open to hearing somebody possibly saying some really uncomfortable things about me, to humanizing someone else who had been unspeakably, or maybe hilariously, (Dylan laughs) cruel to me online.
Dylan: Or maybe both!
Mike: Some of them are actually funny. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Dylan: Unspeakably and hilariously. Yeah.
Mike: But I think the very process that it took to get to that point to be like, "Okay, Dylan. Yes, yes, yes. Let's do it. Just stop asking me. Let's do it."
Dylan: Yeah. Okay, now I know.
Mike: Not like you harangued me or anything.
Dylan: No? Okay, okay.
Mike: You didn't, you did not.
Dylan: Secret's out.
Mike: No, no, no. But even just that process was so helpful in opening my heart to all of the potentials that somebody might have said on this.
Dylan: How are you feeling? Was this okay for you? Are you feeling okay? Yeah?
Mike: Oh, yeah. No, this was fantastic.
Dylan: Okay.
Mike: I'm so happy.
Dylan: Great.
Mike: Yeah.
Dylan: Great. I wasn't sure if this was maybe hard to talk about or we were exploring some hard things.
Mike: Oh yeah. I definitely got emotional. And was... Dim light, you couldn't see me crying.
Dylan: I could sense it. I could sense it, but in a good way.
Mike: Choked up a little bit. But yeah, no, it was challenging and good, in really good ways. And it just, again, it just fascinates me that we could not find someone, but I'm definitely, definitely open to possibilities.
Dylan [VOICEOVER - EPILOGUE]: This episode did not work out. But a lot of episodes haven’t worked out—in fact, more episodes haven’t worked out than those that have—and those recordings are just gathering digital dust on my hard drive. So why am I telling you about this one?
Well, for one thing, I kind of want you to see how hard this show is to produce. That, oftentimes, months go into making an episode that you consume in less than an hour. And to give you a sense, from the time I first followed Mike to today, as I record this, that’s over six months.
But I also think there’s a bigger takeaway here.
The gamification of the internet that I was talking about with Mike, is what i believe, contributed to not finding a guest but I don’t think I fully explained why I think it contributed.
Games allow us to escape accountability. When we play a game, we don’t owe anything to the people we encounter on the field. They’re just moving obstacles, walking jackpots if we know how to hit them just right.
When we play dodgeball, for example, we don’t then have long emotional talks about why we threw a ball at someone. No! Everyone knew what they were getting into when the game began. It’s a game. If you hurt your opponent, that’s just how it goes.
Maybe the people I contacted for this episode didn’t understand why I was taking a game so seriously.
But games also give us a sense of belonging. Specifically to the people we play that game with. Our side. Our team.
Maybe the people who said “no” to doing this episode felt that engaging in a project like this —where they would be talking and empathizing with Mike—would break those bonds of belonging that they have with their team.
I don’t know. These are all “maybes.”
You know I once loved the game of the internet when I felt I was winning at it. But more and more it scares me. Are we implicitly accepting the rules of the game every time we log on? And do we just need to be okay with the points that people want to score off of us because that’s just how it goes?
I hope the answer is no, but I’m afraid that we’ve defaulted to the answer being a weary and resigned “yeah.”
I don’t know exactly why a revolving door of Twitter users routinely post about how much they hate Mike and his work. I don’t know why so many people have found hating Mike to be such a fun sport. I don’t know why expressing hatred of such a harmless piece of internet art has become a badge of honor in some online spaces. But if this show has taught me anything it’s that the people who comment these things about Mike cannot be summarized by just one thing. I bet they are all different people with unique backstories and beliefs and experiences of the world.
But we didn’t get to hear any of those backstories and beliefs and experiences of the world and reasons for hating Mike… because none of them wanted to talk. And, hey, to be fair, it takes a lot of guts to come onto this show and own up to something you’ve written online. But because no one wanted to talk, all I can do, all we can do, is guess. Just like Mike’s detractors seem to guess who Mike is. And without conversation it just becomes a whole bunch of strangers, not seeing each other up close as human beings, telling themselves stories about the other and trusting that these stories are true. Or true enough.
At the end of every episode of this show I always say: remember, there’s a human on the other side of the screen. Today, we’re seeing the unspoken caveat of that mantra: you only get to see the human on the other side of the screen when they allow you to see them. Otherwise, you’re just stuck in the game that you may or may not have agreed to play.
[Conversation ends. The drumbeat from ‘These Dark Times’ by Caged Animals kicks in.]
Dylan [VOICEOVER CLOSING CREDITS]: If you have an idea for a conversation for this show, head on over to www dot conversationswithpeoplewhohateme dot com and fill out the brief submission form.
Conversations with People Who Hate Me is part of the TED Audio Collective.
This episode was mixed by Vincent Cacchione, 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 show is made by me, Dylan Marron.
You can preorder Conversations with People Who Hate Me the book by following the link in the description of this episode, or you can buy it wherever you buy books.
Thanks so much for listening. And guess what? We are weekly now! So stay tuned next week for a brand new conversation and until then, remember: there’s a human on the other side of the screen.
[Chorus of ‘These Dark Times’ by Caged Animals plays.]