Evan Nierman | The Dangers of Cancel Culture: Protecting Everyday Citizens from Permanent Damage

Srini Rao

Evan, welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Evan Nierman

Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Srini Rao

Yeah, so you have a book out called the cancel culture curse, all of which we will get into. And I heard about you by way of your publicist and given the subject matter of the book and your expertise, I thought I would start with one of my favorite questions. And that is what social group were you a part of in high school and what impact did that end up having on what you've ended up doing with your life, your career and the perspectives that you.

Evan Nierman

OK, interesting question. And you can't see me at the moment, but I'm scratching my head as I'm pondering because it's been quite a while since I was in high school. But, you know, it's I was in a couple of different groups in high school. So, first of all, I went to an academic oriented magnet school. And so kind of by default, everyone who went to that school was a little bit of a nerd.

So I guess you could say I was part of the nerds because we didn't have a football team, we didn't have a basketball team, it was a very academically oriented education. That being said, I was also, in addition to being a nerd, I would count as one of the jocks too because I was the captain of the soccer team and soccer was the big sport in our high school, mostly because the...

woman who started the school was from Madrid, Spain, and she was a diehard Real Madrid soccer fan. And so while she didn't see value in having any of the traditional American sports, she believed that the beautiful game should be part of high school. And so the short answer to your question is I was a nerd, but also an athlete. And I think both aspects

have certainly played a role in leading me down my career path. I think I'll start with the athlete part. You learn how to get comfortable being uncomfortable. You learn how to work as a part of a unit, especially a team sport like soccer. And I was a midfielder. So we're the connective tissue between the people who are defending your goal and the people who are scoring the goals. And it requires a lot of hustle up and down the field. And.

really coming into contact with players from all across the field, which I think is a good metaphor for leading an organization and being a team player and the experience that I've had in that regard. And also how many hours you have to devote to developing skills to play a sport. And I think the same is true in your career and your livelihood. And so soccer was a great preparation for a career.

Evan Nierman

And on the nerd front, look, learning, being excited by ideas, engaging in discussions with people, that was all part of my high school experience. And reading has always been a passion and exploration of new topics. And I think bringing intellectual curiosity to your day to day certainly makes a difference in your work life, or at least it has in mine. So.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Evan Nierman

That's my answer, but no one has ever asked me that question before.

Srini Rao

Well, one thing I wonder about is what the social dynamics of that kind of high school environment are like in contrast to a typical high school environment. The other thing, given the subject matter of your book, chances are that you and I both predate the internet and you had mentioned the importance of discussion and all this. So one thing I wonder about is how you think about the impact all this is having on the

classroom as well. But also tell me about the sort of social dynamics in terms of what that social experience of high school is like for somebody in a school like that where everybody is basically a nerd.

Evan Nierman

I think it helps because even though everyone has that one thing in common, the nerdiness factor if you will, it was still a very diverse student body and loads of different interests and clubs and passions, races, religions, backgrounds, socioeconomic classes. And it was, it's a throwback to a different time really, because despite all of the differences,

Not to say that there was never any friction or any conflict, but when compared to a lot of the other high schools that were in our area, it was a completely different feel and a different environment. And I do believe it was much more accepting and there was a greater willingness on the part of the students to find their groups, but not to begrudge other groups who didn't share their interests.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Evan Nierman

and you'd find the people who were super nerdy and on the math team and in the chess club, interacting perfectly well with athletes or with the band or the long haired guy who was in the Pearl Jam cover band that played in the school gym. It really was a melting pot and I, you know, as I look back and reflect, it's been many, many years since I was in high school, but

Srini Rao

Hehehe.

Evan Nierman

That was a unique environment in which to grow up and to spend those formative teen years.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, so walk me through the trajectory of how you end up doing the work that you do, because like almost all of my podcast, yes, I'm guessing a high school guidance counselor didn't say, you know what, Evan, your destiny is to write a book about cancel culture, which didn't even exist at that time.

Evan Nierman

No, it didn't. And I didn't really know exactly what I was gonna do in my career. I knew it would have something to do with communications and writing because that had always been a passion of mine. And actually as I'm thinking back on, I was invited to give a speech at our high school graduation and I talked about in that speech.

which was cool that I even got to speak at the graduation because the principal asked me and gave me this role. The other speakers were the valedictorian and the salutatorian. My grades were very good, but they weren't the top of the pack. She just kind of slapped a label on and called me the honor graduate and gave me the chance to speak at graduation. And in that graduation speech, I talked about what the future would hold for each of us. And I held aloft

book. And the hook to my talk was, I'm holding in my hands a book. It's the most important book. It contains all the answers that you need to know. This is what's going to guide us. This is the book that's going to influence the paths of every person in this room. And it was leading people to wonder as I was talking, a lot of people thought I was holding the Bible or they thought I was...

Srini Rao

That was my first thought too, as you said that.

Evan Nierman

They thought I was holding the Bible. You know, some of the alt kids thought I was holding the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe. You know, maybe the more business minded ones thought I was holding Machiavelli's The Prince. I don't know what was going through their minds. But the book was blank and it was completely empty. And my message was just like the pages of this book are empty, our futures are yet to be written. And we have the power to write those futures. And we.

now need to make the right decisions to go where destiny leads us and where we lead ourselves. And in my case, what that meant was I left high school to go to college and I didn't really know exactly what I was going to study. I'd been thinking about perhaps being a lawyer. I just didn't know, maybe a journalist, but I went to a school, George Washington University in D.C., in part because they had a good communications school.

And I just figured if I major in communications, it's going to apply to every single aspect of life. And there's no hardly any jobs where learning how to communicate more effectively isn't an asset. And so I spent four years getting a communications degree. And where that led me was I had a number of internships in college and. Interned at a lot of different types of.

places in and around Washington. I worked at a speakers bureau. I worked for a food kitchen. I worked for some nonprofit organizations. And ultimately, I ended up in an advocacy organization, which then became my first job. And I was there almost seven and a half years. And I had just an amazing experience there being mentored by a remarkable woman who every year at my performance review.

she would basically say, I'd like to keep you here for one more year. What do you want to learn about that you don't have background in? What's of interest to you? What do you think would be valuable to you? I want to give you that opportunity so that we can keep you here and it'll be a win-win. And that's just such a unique approach. And it changed my life. And I stayed, it worked. I stayed many, many years.

Evan Nierman

And then ultimately I left because the organization got embroiled in a crisis and they brought in some outside crisis communications experts. And because I was the in-house communications guy overseeing a team and, and working with the various departments within the organization, I was working with these outside folks who kind of came in, they parachuted in and I saw what they were doing. And I said,

this is what I want to do next. And so ultimately I left to go work at a firm that did high stakes in crisis communications, spent about a year and a half there and then went in-house to work at a startup that had raised a bunch of money and was expanding nationally and internationally, did the startup for a year and a half and then decided if these guys can start a business and maybe I can apply all the lessons that I've learned so far and

Even right when I moved into my second job where I was working at a high stakes and crisis PR agency at the time, I was thinking to myself, I love this kind of work. I just don't like the culture of this agency. And one day I'd like to do things the complete opposite and I'd like to have my own firm. And that's ultimately what I decided to do. And that was about 12 years ago. And it was the hardest, but also the best decision of my career.

Srini Rao

Well, you know, what I want to actually dissect is the evolution of crisis in our modern sort of media and political landscape, like up until we get to this point where this term cancel culture appears. Like, how has it changed and evolved over time to get us to this point? And, you know, how did we even arrive here at cancel culture?

Evan Nierman

think that there's certainly always been conflict and there have been crises, but they used to be fairly localized. So if you were like me and you were growing up in northwest Louisiana and say you were a

I don't know, pillar of the community, and you got arrested for a DUI. Well, the people might hear about it if they ran a story about it in your local newspaper, or if it showed up on TV. Short of that, people probably would have no idea. Moreover, if they didn't, if your business contacts or your family members didn't live within the confines of Shreveport, and they didn't happen to be watching TV that night,

read the Shreveport Times, they would probably never know about it. And the internet obviously changed that. It connected all people everywhere 24-7. And now there's nowhere to hide. And people can hear about your greatest victories and your most devastating missteps thanks to the internet. And the internet never forgets. Whatever runs is, for the most part, there for eternity.

And so if you get a DUI today in Shreveport, Louisiana, well, not only are the people in town gonna know about it, but anybody who goes to employ you down the road could Google you and they could find your mugshot and they could find the arrest report. And maybe if you were unfortunate, when the cops pulled you over, some nosy neighbor videotaped the whole thing on their cell phone and they posted it. So now there's actually a viral video.

about you getting arrested for being drunk. So just in that anecdote alone, it's not true. It's a fake made up story, but it shows the power of the internet and how different things are today versus how they were several decades ago. And the internet is the main sort of element there that changed the game.

Srini Rao

Hmm.

Srini Rao

Yeah

Srini Rao

Yeah, well, you know, I always think to myself, I'm like, are we going to be voting for a presidential candidate in the future where there are pictures of him on Facebook doing keg stands at a frat party? That seems entirely likely.

Evan Nierman

It does seem likely. I mean, we may be seeing a president of the United States in November, who the whole world has seen his mugshot and has actually, we've seen outrageous moments caught on camera over decades. It's entirely possible. And that's not meant to be a political attack one way or another. It's just the reality of the world in which we live. And the second part of your question, how did we get here?

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Evan Nierman

I think that that's a bigger, broader question. And I think it speaks to what we've seen in our society, which on the one hand, the internet has brought people together, which has a positive side to it, but it has also weaponized people and it's created tribalism and people are really mean oftentimes on the internet. And that veil of anonymity.

can be very powerful and people will hide under it and then they'll attack others. So the internet also is a place where you can bring people down. Now I think the loss of importance of mainstream press and the cross-pollination between the media and social media is another reason that we are where we are right now. The two bounce off one another.

Places online that have no editorial oversight, there's absolutely no process in place. You can make up things and just post them, and then they're out there in the world. That's how we end up in an era where conspiracy theories take hold and people by the millions believe them. But it's also mainstream reporters spend their days trolling around on social media, looking for story ideas and to understand what people are interested in.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Evan Nierman

And so you have this cross pollination between the two. And then you add to that the fact that there's more political stratification than ever before. There's more hostility between certainly both parties in the United States. We've seen more friction between political parties elsewhere. And there's also been a cultural shift in recent years where there's been a default to outrage and this feeling among people.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Evan Nierman

that there's a shift in the mentality and people, they see what other people have and they're either jealous or they disagree with them and they want to bring others down a peg. So it leads to increased verbal attacks, more vitriol, less understanding and also

I think a byproduct of that is people spend all their time on computers and behind screens and not out there in the world. They spend less time really knowing and understanding people who don't share their worldview or their background. And that can't help but lead to a breakdown in relationships. I mean, it used to be that policymakers, Republicans and Democrats, and even before them, people from the political parties that preceded them in the United States.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Evan Nierman

They would fight like hell on the floor of Congress, and they would have vehement arguments, and they would fundamentally disagree with each other on policy provisions, and then they would go to dinner together, or they'd have a drink together at the end of the day. They could still maintain a level of comity, and they could be friendly and professional, and they could agree to disagree about certain things, but not turn it into open warfare, ad hominem.

man against man, woman against woman. But that's really the change that I think we've seen. And so now members of Congress report when they ask them, you know, how many people do you know on the other side of the aisle? Many times they don't know or have no personal friendships with people who don't belong to the same tribe. And I think that's unfortunate. And I think that...

we see reflected on our political environment, a lot of what we see in our society, which is just people seem to be at each other's throats and spending a lot less time understanding one another and more time going after one another, trying to destroy each other. And that's where cancel culture comes in, where people think it's okay to go after someone with whom they disagree and purposefully try to ruin their life.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Srini Rao

It must be stopped lest it destroy the heart, soul and values of our nation. And so I kind of, as I was thinking about my conversation with you, I started to kind of go back through various media events that I thought were sort of things that everybody would remember and know about. And I remember I was having a conversation with my friend, Gareth, about the most useless thing that he had read on the internet that week. And he said, you know what? I'm looking at my Facebook newsfeed. And the only thing that everybody's talking about is Will Smith, punching Chris Rock at the Oscars.

And I remember telling him, the funny thing about that is that if you and I went and punched somebody at the Oscars, probably nobody would give a shit unless the person we punched was famous. But because it's Will Smith, it's so amplified. So talk to me about, I mean, I know that this isn't isolated to people who are prominent public figures, but I feel like they're much more vulnerable to it. Does it change, is the degree of vulnerability to this whole thing different by sort of your

presence in the public eye.

Evan Nierman

I think we could actually split those things apart because I think the Will Smith instance is not necessarily cancel culture. I do think it's its own unique crisis. So just to touch on the Will Smith thing first and then I'll connect it to the second part. What we saw was special treatment for a celebrity, a Hollywood A-lister. The difference, as you were mentioning, if you and I had punched someone at the Oscars,

Srini Rao

now.

Evan Nierman

No one would know if we charged the stage and we slapped Chris Rock, we would have been jumped by security. We would have been led out in handcuffs. We would have been arrested and that would have been the end of it. And Will Smith sat there and he continued to scream at Chris Rock. And then he ultimately went back up on the stage to accept an award. His, his punishment came.

and he was held to account for it, but it came much later. And he definitely got a different standard of treatment than any one of us would have gotten had we done that. So he was in a unique situation and he was treated differently for sure. Now, this question of do celebrities, are celebrities more apt or more prone to be canceled than other people? On the one hand, you could say yes, because they're in the public eye.

And so these people live with cameras going off all around them, paparazzi following them around, tracking their every move. They have millions of people following everything they say on X or Facebook or Instagram or wherever they're posting. So they have more visibility and also they have much more to lose. And many people are jealous of the lifestyle and all of the perks that they perceive coming along with being a.

famous person. Now the flip side though, and this is something that comes as a surprise to a lot of people, is the ones who are actually the most vulnerable to cancel culture and having a permanent impact from being canceled are not celebrities, but they're average everyday citizens who get embroiled in these things because they don't have the same resources that famous people have. They don't have a legion of

publicists and lawyers and agents and studios behind them and associations to which they belong and other famous powerful friends who can defend them and be surrogates and speak about their character in the wake of a controversy. Average people don't have that. And they also, they just, they're not accustomed to defending themselves publicly.

Evan Nierman

So celebrities or people who are high profile, they know how to comport themselves in front of cameras and with reporters. They've been interviewed countless times. They know the right things to say many times. They've been media trained. They have handlers around them who can jump in, who can protect them. The average citizen doesn't have that. And so if you're an everyday person and you get embroiled in one of these cancel culture attacks, you don't have people

of national import necessarily who are going to come out of the woodwork to support you or to back you up. And you're much more at risk of seeing a permanent end to your career than some of these celebrities. So I actually think in many ways it's more dangerous as a practice cancel culture, it's more dangerous to an everyday citizen, entrepreneur, business owner.

than it is to someone rich and famous.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, you know, so I might mention this to you before we hit record here, you know, I'm nowhere as near as famous as any of the people, you know, we just alluded to like Will Smith, but there are certain things I began to realize as I was more and more in the public eye that suddenly I was like, oh, everything I do is a reflection on every single person that is associated with me in any way, whether that be my speaking agents, my literary agents, my, you know, publisher. I was like, okay, if I act like a jackass in the public eye, it reflects on

And I'm just really curious to hear your take on this as it relates to the concept of cancel culture. So I mentioned to you that I was on a reality TV dating show. And I remember I sent the media release to my cousin who was a media attorney. And I said, Hey, he said, look, dude, he's like, doesn't matter what this really says. Anybody can make you look like a jackass in the editing. And he said, your job is to make sure that you don't give them any ammo to do that with. And I was really mindful of that, which I, when I watched the entire series and I was like, wow, nobody ever.

told any of these people about the implications of this. And that thing ended up being seen by millions of people. So talk to me about that. What exactly is, talk me through that from the standpoint of cancel culture. And my cousin's advice made me come out looking pretty solid for the most part.

Evan Nierman

Well, that's good. You got family who's backing you up and provided good counsel, which is great. And as you found out yourself, reality TV is anything but. It's not, you know, it's made to look like, oh, these are just things that happened, but they got to entertain and they need storylines. And just like any Hollywood scriptwriter, you got to have conflict and you got to have a hero and you got to have a villain. And so that's what...

Srini Rao

Ha ha!

Evan Nierman

Some people sign up for those shows. Many people, they haven't actually, they're not as lucky as you. They don't have a smart cousin who warns them. They just go on thinking, this is great. I'm gonna get famous and I get to show the world who I am. And then the person who is portrayed on screen is someone very, very different, either than who they are or who they ultimately would want themselves to be seen as. And I think that advice, sadly,

in this world that your cousin gave to you is pretty solid advice for everyday people who are just out there going about their day-to-day lives. We really have to be careful and we have to be cognizant that within the purse or the pocket of everyone around us, there's a cell phone with a camera and everybody is a reporter and anything we say or do could be captured and it could be amplified thanks to the power of the internet.

So you have to be really cautious about the things that you do and how you handle yourself. I was having dinner just last night with a friend of mine and he had a good friend who, she had an awful day. She'd been to her brother's funeral and was having a really tough time in life. And she went into a restaurant and ended up in an argument with the person at the cash register.

that was then recorded and it went viral and she was attacked and she was demonized and she was called a Karen. And next thing you know, she gets fired and loses her job and then millions of people are piling on and sending her hate mail and critiquing her online. No one knew the context, no one knew what happened. Did she handle the situation perfectly? Of course not.

If she had to go back in time, would she have maybe not been so emotional or lost her temper? Sure, but there were also lots of circumstances that you don't know if you see her on the video that she just attended a funeral of a loved one earlier in the day. And that same sort of mentality we all should carry with us. If we're in the grocery store or we're at the dentist's office or any of the other sort of banal things that we do.

Evan Nierman

as part of our day-to-day lives, we've got to be very, very careful about what we say and what we do because it would be super simple for someone to record us and then to have us become internet famous for all the wrong reasons. And unlike Will Smith, who or other celebs, they get to ultimately go sit down on Oprah's couch or they get to sit down for an interview with George Stephanopoulos and explain themselves and they have...

Srini Rao

Ha ha!

Evan Nierman

advisors who help craft the narrative. But to the average citizen, you don't get that chance. You are drawn and quartered publicly. You are demonized. You don't have the ability to defend yourself. And once this narrative takes hold, however false it may be, it's very, very difficult to unwind it.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Oh, well, trust me, I know I've had situations where we've had lawyers involved in issues and they're like, you know, their lawyers directive is always complete silence. So you can't you literally can't say anything while you're getting torn to shreds, because if you do, the risk is even higher that you end up looking like a dumbass. But why don't you explain this candem acronym to our listeners to give them kind of the definition and structure of cancel culture?

And then we'll talk about it in the context of sort of, you know, different social movements after that.

Evan Nierman

sure. The condemned framework is something that I developed based on research of all of these instances of cancel culture. And part of it was due to academic research that I did and reading all that I could get my hands on in terms of other contemporary authors who were writing about the subject. But then it was also firsthand experience based on the fact that, you know, I don't write books for a living.

This was a passion project because I actually believe that cancel culture is fundamentally detrimental to our society and that it is at its core un-American as you quoted earlier. And I wrote this book because I wanted people to know how deadly and dangerous this practice is. And I wanted to do my part in trying to combat it. But I saw what it was doing to my client's lives because I work in...

public relations and communications. And we do a lot of high stakes and crisis PR. And I was finding clients, some of them had made mistakes and then they weren't able to recover from them because they were being canceled and they never got the chance to redeem themselves. And in other instances, there were circumstances of mistaken identity or just complete fabrications that were leaving people with no options, that were forcing them literally to be on the phone with me telling me that

they saw no way out and they were contemplating suicide as the only option. And so the condemn framework is something that I developed which was based on things that I saw again and again of, also people were saying, calling everything cancel culture. So once cancel culture caught on as a term, people would say, oh, that guy's being canceled or that's an instance of cancel culture, even when there were clearly things that were not. So in the book, I wanted to define

what cancel culture was and the condemned framework was part of that. So it's an acronym C A N D E M. And if you look at instances of cancel culture, if they fit all of these six elements, that is a unmistakable case of cancel culture. If five of the six elements are there, yeah, you could probably call it cancel culture. If you've only got one or two. It may be a crisis for the person, but it's not necessarily cancel culture. And so the acronym stands for C is that the

Evan Nierman

collective is considered the victim of the crime. So it's never just a person, it's that person is, it was either a man or it was a person of color or it was a Hispanic or it was a Christian, you name it. It's that you have done something to offend a group, a collective. The A is that the crisis arises and accelerates very quickly. Thanks, as we discussed, to the power of the internet.

N, the nature of the offense is often trivial or minor, or it's even fabricated. For example, I gave you the case of the woman in the restaurant. Bad behavior? Yes. Screaming at someone? Yeah, not nice. Does that mean that she should be fired from her job for something that happened in a fast, casual restaurant? Come on. That leads to the next element, which is the D, which is a disproportionate response is enacted.

And with cancel culture, disproportionate response typically means fire them, erase them, don't let them have any platform publicly that they can speak to, rescind their degree. It's always a very extreme action. The E is that everyone is afraid to defend the person who's being accused in a cancel culture circumstance because they don't want the mob turning on them.

And then the last element, the M, is the moral absolutism of those doing the canceling. And that to me speaks to what's one of the worst parts about cancel culture is people who are canceling others, they think they're doing the Lord's work. They think they're doing a good thing and they deserve praise for it when really what they're doing is tearing someone else down. And if the shoe were on the other foot, I can guarantee you they wouldn't like people treating them.

the way that they're treating others.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Let's talk about this in the context of some of our more recent larger social movements, because you say that we join organized trust, support, defend, and subordinate ourselves to others who share the same needs and beliefs as us. Likewise, we're quick to oppose, attack, condemn, destroy, distrust, and seek to defeat others and groups of others whose needs and beliefs differ from our own. And then you go on to talk about two movements that I think are very like sort of everybody knows about these. Me too, you say represented real victims of sexual harassment

both male and female, unfortunately, the success of this movement also opened opportunities to abuse its power. It served as a way for victimhood seekers to instantly garner attentions and admiration. And you also make a similar comparison to Black Lives Matter. So, you know, I thought the example that this made me think of when we're talking about Me Too, I don't know if you remember the articles that were written about Aziz Ansari when all that was going on. He addressed it in one of his stand-up specials, but

It was kind of an interesting sort of narrative because somebody basically said, oh, this actually just sounded like a date that didn't go.

Evan Nierman

You know, I've got to tell you, I don't know the particulars of his allegations. So I can't really speak to his. Do you, is there another one that comes to mind or if you could just even walk me through some of the basic contours, I can then write a reaction to it.

Srini Rao

Let me yeah, I'll give you the I'll be so I'll give you the basics of these disease. I'm sorry thing. Some girl wrote about it, you know, after me to started. She basically said that he had asked her to come back to his apartment. That he was really creepy like the it was just basically he made her feel uncomfortable was the gist of it. But it translated into you know, this basically is considered me to like, where it's like

Evan Nierman

Got it.

Srini Rao

I'll give you another example. I said a dating coach named Nick Notis and he said, yeah, this is an important conversation. We need to have it. But he told me, he said one of the things that he was having a lot of trouble with was his male clients were absolutely terrified to do anything like even attempt to kiss a woman simply because of this narrative. And he said that he saw some article in The Economist that like some absurd percentage of millennials, and you'll have to fact check me on this, actually considered a compliment to somebody's physical appearance sexual assault.

Evan Nierman

Yeah, I mean, it doesn't surprise me. And so even without looking into the specifics of Aziz's case, I think what you're speaking to is definitely a phenomenon that has had a chilling effect on male-female relationships in our society now. I can tell you that there are clients with whom I've worked who were accused falsely of me too allegations.

as a way to get back at them. After they spurned a lover, the lover went public and said, oh, well, this guy assaulted me or this guy, he didn't have permission. It was non-consensual, our relationship. So the problem with cancel culture and what happened in Me Too, let me just say at the outset, I think a lot of good came from Me Too in that it exposed

a culture and systematic abuse of women that I think needed to come out and was ultimately a good thing. And I for one was shocked to hear some of these stories of how very powerful, prominent people were committing these deeds against women, in some cases outright rape, sexual assaults, you know, really.

strident sexual harassment and permitted to do so for extended periods and having their employers or their colleagues covering for them. And so in instances where someone has actually done something, I'm all for outing someone who has committed a crime. Now, the problem is, if someone hasn't, what we saw in the wake of the Me Too movement was all you have to do is make the

and the allegation is treated as, rather than an assumption of innocence, which is something that we're supposed to all enjoy under the Constitution and under our legal system, instead there's a default to guilty. And people just assume that the person, you're guilty until proven innocent. And that's not right. And we know that there have been countless examples where people have been falsely accused,

Evan Nierman

the person has had motives to attack someone else and simply saying, you know, this is wrapping themselves in the Me Too flag was enough to take people down. And there are a lot of examples of people where that's had, they've lost their jobs, they've lost opportunities, they've lost book deals, they've lost speaking engagements based on the mere accusation of impropriety as opposed to proof that they actually did something. And I don't think that's right.

Srini Rao

Well, let's talk about two final things here. First, let's talk about the role of influencers in all of this, because this quote in particular struck me. You said that prominent influencers on social media typically have millions, if not tens of millions of followers who are inclined to believe everything they say, never question it and almost never take the time to fully investigate the accuracy of the information they may be receiving. Influencer are beloved by their fans and followers who in many cases support them.

regardless of what they do or say. And the thing that comes to mind for me is where I saw this a lot was during COVID, where there would be these really prominent influencers who were anti-vaxxers and convincing people of this. Again, this is whatever people wanna believe that's fine with me, but I think you made a really important point here because of the fact that we do get so much of the media that we consume, not from mainstream

sources but from influencers. I don't remember the guy's name. There's a guy who wrote a book called the Death of Expertise where he talked about the sort of like almost antagonism that we have towards people who are established experts. This is one of those things I'm always shocked by. When people will write books, for example, with prescriptive advice, I'm like, wait a minute, this can't possibly be called science. It's based on a sample size of one.

Evan Nierman

Right. It's, yeah, I mean, look, here's the thing. Unless you're a complete narcissist, I think most of us could admit that we don't know everything. And guess what? The same holds true for influencers. And it's a really unfair expectation that an influencer or a celebrity is gonna be an expert on every topic under the sun.

And so what you've got, especially with younger people, where they're not reading a newspaper, they're not even going on the websites of places with an editorial process, they're really consuming the bulk of the information they're getting from TikTok or Instagram or other social media is they're very much impacted and influenced, there's a reason they're called influencers, influenced by...

the views and the information that's shared by people who are not necessarily well versed or even minimally educated in the arenas that they're weighing in on. And so you see this with athletes too. An athlete weighs in on a political issue and

you know, the person's job, and I'm not trying to, I'm a former athlete, although certainly not a professional and nowhere near the caliber of athlete of the people that I'm talking about, you know, professional football players or basketball players, hockey, baseball, you name it, soccer. But, you know, they're asked political questions and it's unfortunate for them because they're in a position where they're being asked about any topic under the sun. They don't necessarily have the background.

and then they weigh in on these issues. Whereas at the end of the day, if it's a basketball player, that guy's job is to throw the ball through the hoop and to make sure that his team does that a lot more than the other team. Okay? That's his job. His job is not necessarily to know the ins and outs of foreign policy or what's going on with political disputes or policy provisions related to climate change. And so it's...

Srini Rao

Ha ha.

Evan Nierman

in this world and this is a problem that businesses are facing too is increasingly everyone is expected to have an opinion and to be vocal about that opinion regardless of whether they know anything about it. And it's a damned if you do damned if you don't. If companies weigh in and they don't know what they're talking about then they look stupid and they get attacked for it. And in other instances if they don't weigh in because they go oh we're a popcorn company. Our job is to pop the pop.

corn, put it in a bag, make it taste good. Why are they asking us about abortion rights? And yet they get put on the spot. So then if they don't weigh in, they're critiqued by people who say, well, what does your company stand for? Why haven't you weighed in on this Supreme Court decision? And it really is madness. And I just think we got to get back in this country to a level of sanity, which we've been lacking for quite some time.

And we need to recognize that there is a place for everyone, but we shouldn't expect influencers to be well-versed in every topic. We shouldn't expect celebrities to have all the answers. Just because they're famous and we like the way they play sports or the way they act in front of a camera, we shouldn't entrust them with information. We should be encouraging our kids to learn how to discern between good information and bad information and how to research.

We're never gonna succeed moving forward if people aren't able to make a determination about what information they should believe and shouldn't. And that becomes a bigger challenge moving forward, especially as we see the age of AI upon us.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, let's talk about Donald Trump, not from a political angle, because I've always thought there's a lot to learn from his behavior, whether it's not to actually get jackass or... But funny enough, I actually had come to the conclusion once that of all the people you could learn a hell of a lot from about building an audience for a project on the internet, Donald Trump is a pretty good one despite the tactics. So you say love them or loathe them,

Low them former president Donald Trump is undeniably a master of the media and a genius when it comes to understanding how to insert himself into and even shape national conversations, what Trump demonstrated as a candidate and later as a communicator in chief was an uncanny ability to tap into the emotions of the American public, attract attention and create an unyielding litany of media firestorms that all but guaranteed that he would dominate the news. And

That was not at all surprising to me because I think that was the thing I distinctly remember most about the 2016 election was I remember by the time I heard of all the other Republican candidates, Trump was the front runner. And I was like, wow, this guy literally drowned out basically everybody else's messaging. And I remember, you probably remember this too, when Les Moonves, the CEO of CBS said, this may not be good for America, but it's been damn good for CBS. And I think it was Jeff Zucker, the CEO of NBC at the time.

Somebody asked him in an interview, did you keep him on air because he was good for ratings? And he kind of like, you know, avoided the question. But you're right. Like this is what I thought was the thing that he did masterfully, that he dominates the media. He's honestly the master media manipulator. He knows how to generate media attention in mass to the point where he made all these media companies fortunes during that.

Evan Nierman

He did. And I stand by everything I wrote, which I think is completely accurate. And even since, I mean, look, Trump's been out of the White House for three years. You know how much we talk about him every day at this local coffee shop and conversation? I mean, the guy lives in the homes of every American and he's been pulled up at Mar-a-Lago for three years. So...

Srini Rao

Hahaha!

Evan Nierman

You don't go from dominating the media in the way that he did in the run-up to his presidency and then during Every day of his presidency, you know for Trump. I think the only thing he hates to lose we know that I actually think the one thing that may be for Trump that would be worse than losing would be being ignored and Attention

Srini Rao

Yeah, I thought the same thing. I thought, you know what, what if we did a complete media blackout of this guy for one day? Like, you know, and he literally couldn't find anything about himself on the internet. Like, he would probably lose his mind.

Evan Nierman

questionably. And I actually think that there were a lot of media outlets that clearly loathe Trump and they didn't, you know, they did cover him because those who love him want to look at coverage of Trump. Those who hate his guts, they can't help but look at coverage of Trump.

Srini Rao

Yeah, no, I'll tell you, I never watched the news until the Trump presidency. And I remember every night I'm like, this is such a train wreck that it's entertaining.

Evan Nierman

Yeah. And I think he thought it was really entertaining too. And for him, I do believe that the presidency was like the ultimate bully pulpit and the ultimate spotlight because the president is able to command world attention unlike anybody else. And so I think that's part of why it was, I don't think Trump has missed the White House because he misses the job. He didn't seem to have a whole lot of...

Srini Rao

Ha ha ha.

Evan Nierman

of interest in the day to day. And this is not just my opinion. I mean, he spoke about it too. He wasn't really interested in the day to day block and tackle of governance, but he sure loved the sideshow. He loved it and he loved being at the center of it. And so I think that's probably what he misses the most and why he's so eager to get back out there. But, you know, the other candidates, it was so clear that his...

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Evan Nierman

ability to manipulate the media is what carried him all the way into the White House because in the early days, the other Republican candidates, they would laugh it off and they were like, oh, you know, as soon as this Trump thing, you know, he sucks up all the oxygen in the room. And then as soon as we get this little Trump publicity stunt out of the way, then we can get back to us talking about what we want to talk about. And then they never got there because

He just, he drank up every molecule of oxygen and they were, they were, they were powerless.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, so what does all this mean? I mean, you kind of alluded to the fact that the everyday person is far more vulnerable to this than, you know, public figures. But what are the implications of all this for our future? And, you know, what do you want people who are listening to this to know, to think about, you know, in terms of how it should reflect in their actions?

Evan Nierman

Well, first of all, if you're listening to this today, I hope that you'll keep in mind that these people that you see sometimes who go viral on TV or on the internet, sometimes they do behave badly in other cases. You don't actually have the full story. And I think every single one of us is fallible and we all make mistakes. And so I think we all would do well to abide by the idea.

of treating others how we would ourselves want to be treated. And this idea that we have to give people the freedom to make mistakes and not make those mistakes permanent because every single one of us makes mistakes. And I would encourage you, you know, on the one hand, not to become what I describe as a cancel vulture, which is a person who employs cancel culture to attack other people. They pick them apart. They enjoy the...

feasting on the remains of their reputation, then they fly off to find their next victim. Don't be a cancel vulture. And at the same time, try to do what you can to protect yourself. So be smart, be measured about what you do in public. And should you find yourself fighting for your reputation and at the center of a cancel culture crisis, the core thing you have to keep in mind is you must refuse to be canceled.

You have to be willing to advocate for yourself, to push back, to get your narrative out there, to get the facts out there. Because if you listen to your lawyers or you just are too afraid to put your head up, it's all gonna be over by the time you get in the fight. And the last thing I would say is, I do think this is a conversation that's worth having with our kids. Because just like we don't want our kids to be bullied, we don't want our kids to be bullies either.

And part of that is teaching them that you have to give people sometimes the benefit of the doubt, that you cannot believe everything that you hear, read, or see. And also, I think it's really, really important that we as parents invest in talking to our kids about the difference between credible information versus just hyperbole online. And we have to give them the tools to discern between what they should believe and shouldn't.

Evan Nierman

Otherwise, they're going to spend their lifetimes just kind of being at the whim of whether it's influencers or foreign misinformation or domestic or slanted. And the last thing I would say is, you know, for God's sakes, like we're we belong to the same human race. We're Americans. We actually have so many things that unite us, so many more things that unite us than divide us.

And we've got to get away from this mentality that the other political party is the enemy or that the person with whom I disagree, I hate them. I wanna tear them down and be a little bit more loving, be a little bit more understanding, except that not everyone should or will think the same way. And let's just try to get ourselves back onto track of treating one another with a little bit more.

understanding and mutual respect, which I think in the end is what's going to benefit all of us the most.

Srini Rao

Amazing. Well, I have one last question for you, which is how we finish all of our interviews at the end of stable creative. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something on mistake?

Evan Nierman

that you tell and if you tell an unmistakable story, a memorable story, and if you show the world that, you set yourself apart. If you are not authentic and you're not willing to invest in pressing the truth, pushing the information that you want out there, if you're not willing to invest in showing the world who you are, no one's gonna know who you are and they're not gonna know what you stand for and no one's gonna do it except you.

for you.

Srini Rao 
Beautiful. Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your insights, your story and your wisdom with our listeners. This has been really fascinating. Where can people find out more about you, the book, your work and everything else that you're up to?

Evan Nierman
Yeah. So you can obviously find me at my company's website, which is red Banyan B-A-N-Y-A-N like the tree. Also you can find me on all the social media platforms, LinkedIn, X it's Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube it's Evan Neerman, E-V- And the one thing I will mention is starting last night, I actually launched a new series, a hundred days to master persuasion.

where I'm trying to share tips and techniques to help people be more persuasive in their lives. And some of the same concepts that we talked about in this podcast about how do you tell your story and how do you win people over and how to be a better communicator, they're all gonna be highlighted over the coming 100 days. So it should be fun. It's brand new for me. I literally launched it last night and check it out. And if...

Hopefully you'll be able to use some of these techniques to make your own lives better.

Srini Rao 
Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that. Awesome.