So what's the deal with this trend where random civilians get online to do unpaid damage control for powerful institutions and celebrities? Maybe you’ve seen it enough times to already know what I'm talking about. And be honest. After you got through the first four words of this paragraph, did you start reading it in Jerry Seinfeld voice? For no reason whatsoever, I hope so.
But stop messing around. About this free PR trend - it's always on behalf of something or someone that doesn't need it. For instance, does TED really need random civilians to point out how they weren't technically suppressing speech when they caveated and undersold a talk on color-blindness? Or does Neil Young need random people to explain away his contradictory logic around getting back on Spotify? I've had the distinct pleasure of witnessing both examples go down, among others. More on that in a minute.
But I'm sure that the answer is no, they don't. A better question is why do these random people feel the need to pop up and defend hypocrisy, or weakness, or sketchy ethics coming from places that don't need it under any circumstances, much less arguably indefensible ones? I guess the obvious answer here would be that they genuinely believe there is an argument to be made. Another might be that their politics match those of whomever they're arguing on behalf of, and that this fact trumps logic, or principles, or anything else worth considering. But I'm treating this second option as a deliberate blind spot, barring it being proven to me to be the definitive reason in any given case. It's too depressing a motivation to speculate much over. And also, I think there is something more trendy and social media-specific happening here that's actually worth thinking about.
Comment sections in general can turn any subject into a very binary, contentious argument. I shouldn't need to elaborate much on that. And this might be especially so on Instagram, where a single post on a specific subject is dropped and the people are left to do what they will to each other in the depths below. Personally, this has been a strange thing to realize considering I'd always thought of Instagram as the most fluffy app of the bunch, but I digress. Depending on the subject, it so often devolves into that tried and true, politically-flavored meltdown where two sides are taken and beaten into the ground until our collective ADHD draws us to something newer and shinier. And it doesn't seem to matter how bizarre the angle is that one side has to take to turn something into a debate, either. It still so often goes there. To me, these one-person PR campaigns are some of the best examples of this.
And now comes the part where things might start to seem a little petty on my end, but more context and choice paraphrasing is necessary to drive the point home. I'm going to keep names and direct quotes out of it to spare these people. Anyways, let's start with the Coleman Hughes example.
So there I was a few months back, writing something encouraging on his Instagram post about the Ted situation, when I noticed that someone was combing through the comments and replying "his talk wasn't censored, TED posted it" to any posts containing the word “censorship” that were laudatory or consoling towards Coleman. Okay, I thought. Maybe this person is just obnoxiously pedantic in general and combs all corners of the Internet to correct hyperbole as he sees it, but I sort of doubt it. And here's why the whole thing was weird from my point of view: the broader story is that you have a black man essentially giving a pro-civil rights speech, and you have the institution that sponsored it trying to limit it's potency and reach due to their own internal conflicts. And the second that Coleman posted about this, through no fault of his own, the Internet turned it into Coleman vs. TED. Pick a side.
Now, outside of TED's employees, who knows the full extent of the complicated political situation that's happening within that place. They have their liabilities, and their optics, and their white guilt, etc. I'm sure that it's a mess, and I actually can have some sympathy for individuals within it who might not be fully on board with how TED as an entity dealt with this situation. But in terms of the random outsider who pops in after the tribal terms have been set, only to side with this specific institution in this specific context, I have nothing but confusion and resentment towards them. Because what are you doing here, defending powers that would minimize the voice of a black man promoting color-blindness and equality?
The Neil Young example is definitely less egregious, but even more stupid. This one went down a few days ago when Pitchfork posted something on the 'Gram about how Joni Mitchell was following suit with Neil Young and putting her music back on Spotify after a two-year protest. If you at least read some of Neil's quotes from the article that I linked to at the top, you would know that his stance on the subject as of two years ago was "it's me or Rogan", where as his stance today is something like "if ya can't beat em, join em." So of course I felt the need to pose a question or two about this capitulation in response to the Joni post. While I was there, I noticed that someone had taken it upon themselves to defend Neil's objectively contradictory decision by saying (and again, I'm paraphrasing), "It's cute that so many people think this is about greed, when it's actually just about the fact that Rogan's Spotify deal isn't exclusive anymore. It's not rocket science."
This one was genuinely funny to me. Does this person really not understand that people are jumping to the greed conclusion precisely because Neil's given reason for returning was that Joe's deal wasn't exclusive anymore? Because based on his comments from two years prior, this may as well have been coming from a different person. Rogan now being able to spread supposed misinformation on every platform (including Spotify) with his non-exclusive deal does not even sort of satisfy the terms of Neil's original protest. It kind of goes exponentially in the opposite direction, in fact. Hence the disappointment and the assumptions. Did this rogue PR man think that everyone had misread the quotes from Neil as to why he was coming back, and felt the need to snidely remind us all of his actual motivations? Who knows. But he of course doubled down and attacked anyone who pointed out the obvious, and actually called me an "outraged infant" when I suggested that he seemed to be doing PR on behalf of an empty protest. And just to summarize what I've already said, I'll again explain exactly why this is weird from my perspective: the broader story is that you have one of the world's most renowned musicians pulling a total reversal on his own protest and rejoining a platform he had previously denounced, the reason being that the antagonist in his story now has even more of a platform than before to be able to spread his message. A message, by the way, that prompted the whole protest in the first place. It's ironic. And it's funny in a sad, resigned kinda way. But it's certainly not a noble move worth viciously defending on behalf of someone like Neil Young and in opposition to total strangers making valid points.
I could keep going with other less memorable examples here, but maybe let's conclude the pettiness for the remainder of our time together. Whatever the reasons that some individuals feel the need to jump to the shaky defense of others in higher positions than themselves is beyond me. But there does seem to be something memetic and very online about the whole thing. The closest real world behavior that comes to mind would be that of a sycophant, and our trend is only sort of similar. And also void of the best part, which would be actually getting something out of it. That’s why this is all so interesting to me; you couldn’t pay me enough money to do it, much less find me doing it for free of my own volition. But people are strange.
If you can't already relate to where I'm coming from, or you’re still skeptical, take this perspective out into the world wide web with you. I'm sure you'll start seeing it everywhere that people have aggressively claimed sides on any issue, which is to say almost everywhere. And if you’re brave enough to poke that idiot bear, you might just get yourself labeled something half as awesome as an “outraged infant”. Until next time, y'all.
This sounds like an interesting phenomenon. I'm putting a comment down here with a promise to myself to come back and reply if I ever see it in the wild. I have no idea who Coleman Hughes is, and have no recollection of ever seeing anyone defend someone famous in this way. I'm online-enough that I should have noticed this, so it's interesting that I'm drawing a blank. Maybe I ignore the kinds of accusations to which these form the counterpoint.