Video Creator’s Channel Chris Williamson

Allowing Ourselves To Exist In That Middle Ground

makes us look as though we’re disconnected or we don’t have an opinion and sometimes it’s all right to say I don’t know or I think I’ve got a good idea but I’m willing to listen to other people before I make my mind up people hate that people are so scared of that corridor of indecision that they quickly enter a room and so we find ourselves just picking aside dottie How are you I’m very well. How you doing Chris fantastic thank you for being here could you have realized before writing a book on outrage just how timely mid-2020 would be for it to be published you know what’s crazy for the past nine months. I’ve been like we gotta drop the book down. We’ve gotta drop the book now Oh I wish it was coming out now. Oh, we need to outrage is a constant carousel anytime.

I Would Have Released This Book.

People would have said what are the odds you’ve dropped it in a. This is the world We live in So I think people are hyper aware now but I think because I’ve written the book every couple of weeks there’s been something that has felt really timely and I’ve been like Oh They’re cancelling David Williams. We need to we need to release the book Oh no no no it’s Jk rowling the book needs to come out um it is it’s just constant and that I think that’s why the book was needed because any time would have been timely. The stock price of outrage is is constantly on the up isn’t it it’s like Tesla or something at the moment so why did you write a book about outrage a while.

Ago Lets Forget This Year Why Did You

write a book on outrage already yeah? So I started this book two years ago um well two and a half years ago. It took me two years to write it and I’m somebody who has been one of those voices online. I’ve had arguments with strangers. I’ve tried to convince people that I’ve never met that their thinking is wrong and that their belief system is flawed. I’ve written an open letter to piers Morgan.

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Ive Been That Person That I Now Cant

stand right. I’ve had pointless arguments. I’ve been outraged about trivial things and I kind of reached breaking point. I’d say and I sort of had an epiphany and I think when people read this book they’ll each have their epiphany moment for me. It was January 2018 and there was outrage about a H m hoodie which had been placed on a black boy and it said coolest monkey in the jungle.

Now Of Course, You Can Look At

that through a critical lens and say what that this is completely tone. Death it’s racist for me. Though it warranted a conversation about who the hell works at H m, and why did nobody flag that this could offend people. I don’t think the intention was to offend people. I think it was more symptomatic of their employment structure and how flawed it must be if there’s nobody from the stage of idea conception to it making it onto the H m website.

If Nobody In That Conveyor Belt Of

decision making says Oh, maybe we don’t put the monkey hoodie on the black kid if there’s nobody in that in that system. That notices that there’s a problem in the system, but that doesn’t warrant knee jerk outrage because this is clearly it’s not intentional racism by H m a a multi-million revenue company is not going to one day wake up and say should be a bit racist today, Yeah it’s hard to throw it all away. It acts of negligence or just idiocy right rather than maliciousness exactly and that was my light bulb moment as I kind of watched the world up in arms outraged H m a racist boycott H m they’ve done this deliberately In that moment. I was like outrage has gone too far because it’s stifling conversation and we’re not gonna get anywhere by having this knee-jerk reaction being quick to to anger. Doesn’t work in every situation and I felt as though we’d over inflated the outrage bubble and it had burst for me.

Moment And So I Wrote An Article

about it for the Guardian and from that article the book was born I absolutely love I’m going to read the the passage that you put in from that Guardian article because it is so good. This is the currency of outrage published in the Guardian 25th of January 2018. . everyone is offended by everything it’s exhausting keeping up with all the non-inclusive misogynistic, racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic ageist, culturally appropriating body shaming propaganda that seems to lit the social meet the social media age. Apparently in 2018.

Almost Anything Is Subject To The

scrutiny of one marginalized eye or another being outraged allows you to take the moral high ground. It reaffirms your moral righteousness it lets you say I am offended and therefore I am principled it lets you jump on the bandwagon and pledge allegiance to the latest campaign. Your timeline it gives you a vehicle to add your name to the narrative. It proves that you are following current affairs, albeit from the comfortable vantage point of your instagram feed it allows you to place yourself on the virtuous side of the conversation. It says I am woke and for that reason outrage has become currency So you should have done the bloody audio bookmaker give it to me give it to me.

Ill Tell You What Anyone Out There That

needs it doing head up to newcastle but yeah that that identifies it to me. You’re right and currency is the right word for it. It is. It is a sort of tradable commodity that oh how how many how many virtue points did you get today how many virtue points did you get today. I I washed a black person’s feet in the middle of my.

Street What Did You Do What I

painted some white lines and tried to take over the middle of a city and and it not even just in a sort of a figurative sense . Although loved your analogy there um it genuinely is currency right, you can trade off outrage for progress in a very real sense. So if you look back at the civil rights movement. There was so much currency in that outrage it prompted change you know the suffragettes used the currency in their outrage to get the the female vote You know outrage can give you a return on your investment. It’s not sort of merely ornamental it’s not just a a figment of my imagination.

This Idea Of Currency It Really Has

value you know and I think what we’re doing wrong is by aimlessly investing it because outrage is an investment on an. emotional level as well to apply yourself to something with genuine outrage. It requires impetus. It requires some real effort on your part, so it is an investment of your time, your emotion your energy. I think our issue is that we don’t really look for a return on our investment.

Were Just Kind Of Throwing Our Currency Out

there you know and that is where you devalue outrage where you no longer see the value in it you know I think every outrage exchange should have an end goal you should be seeking a return on your investment otherwise you’re just barking at strangers you know with with no ambition, so that overuse of outrage is diluting down the usefulness of outrage exactly so if you imagine just a few trivial things that people have been outraged, why because make no mistake there are times when we do need. to be outraged? But if you look at things, we’ve reacted to like Scarlett Johansson being cast to play a trans woman, Jamie Oliver’s Jerk Rice. These things are tone deaf. They are poor decisions, but do they warrant outrage on the same scale as white supremacy of proven moments of misogyny if we just react in the same way to everything how do you move the needle when it generally needs to be, but it genuinely needs to be moved. You know if we’re loud if the volume is always up how can you cut through the noise when you really need to be heard and I think that’s the issue Outrage is just our default setting so it’s lost its power.

Yeah We Need To Restore Factory Settings.

You know I mean go go back a bit so that outrage actually means something when we get there. I understand so what’s the architecture of outrage in 2020 is there like a a common narrative or a common structure that it always seems to follow. No outrage is so multifaceted and I think that’s part of the problem with it. We don’t recognize that nuance you know we we lump things all underneath.

This Umbrella Of Of Of Cancer

culture, which in itself is a myth but we will put a JK rowling next to slave owners next to some mistake that um Philip Schofield made and it all gets lumped underneath. This umbrella of cancelled and actually there’s no metric system for outrage. There’s no there’s no threshold that you pass and it’s like okay you’re a you get your badge. You are the outrage badge Yeah you get the outrage badge and it’s official you are indeed cancelled. Every situation is unique and it’s different and.

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The Issue Is Our Knee-Jerk Reaction Is The

same no matter what the transgression and I think that’s the issue you know you you could be trending number one. If you’re a mass murderer or if you’ve used somebody’s pronoun wrong. You know you’re gonna be trending in the same way and you’re going to be the topic of discussion which you never want rule number one of social media you never want to be the topic of discussion right that I think that is something we should all avoid as being the main character on on twitter on any given day. But it’s the fact that we kind of we respond to all of these transgressions in the same way and I what my book aims to do is to point out that it’s not just two opposite ends of the spectrum.

Its Not Just Warrants Outrage Doesnt Work.

It’s not if it was that simple I’d have written a pamphlet and not a book right. It’s about recognizing that there are shades in between the black and the white and we need to recognize and identify all of those different shades and respond accordingly rather than just having outrage as our go-to reaction something happens I’m outraged something else happened. I’m outraged it completely as I said devalues it why are people going to the extreme then why are they not deciding to use a more measured response First of all there’s something that I refer to as the fear of the fence right.

We Are So Scared Of Sitting

on the fence. Because we think oh the the fence is for people who are unaffected or uninformed or it’s it’s a place of apathy. I can’t sit on the fence. I’ve gotta be either on this side.

On That Side, And Therefore We Find

ourselves just often out of sheer force picking aside in the moment and having to sustain our allegiance to that side. Although it’s not particularly informed by any real process of of of creating a judgment. It’s often us just saying I’ve got to pick a side got to.

Summary

Dottie says she started the book two years ago and it took two and a half years to write . She says people are hyper aware of outrage and that any time would have been timely for the book to be released at any point in the last nine months . The book is a ‘constant carousel’ of outrage, she says . The stock price of outrage is is constantly on the up isn’t it it’s like Tesla or something at the moment so why did you write a book about outrage a while? She says that people hate that people are so scared of that corridor of indecision that they quickly enter a room and so we find ourselves just picking aside dottie. allowing ourselves to exist in that middle ground makes us look as though we’re disconnected or we don’t have an opinion and sometimes it’s all right to say I’m willing to listen to other people before I make my mind up people hate it, she adds . She also says that we need to outrage…. Click here to read more and watch the full video