This year, Dylan Marron (best known as the voice of Carlos the Scientist on Welcome to Night Vale) used his unique presence on the internet to sculpt something new out of the miasma of hatred spewed at him. Mr. Marron is a very outspoken voice on the internet for those left of center, and often receives hateful backlash via Facebook comments, messaging, or through his email. Some messages are disturbing, others could be merely written off as someone having a bad day. He reacts and interacts with humor, self-critique, understanding, and poise. In the season of “New Year, New Me”, I thought it was important to give this podcast a listen, and was surprised by how engaging and thoughtful it was.
About Conversations With People Who Hate Me
Dylan Marron receives a lot of hate messages on Facebook. He also receives more than his fair share of hateful emails. Instead of just wallowing in the idea that the internet hated his guts, he decided to be proactive, and engage certain people about their messages. The hate messages are read on air, and then the sender is contacted to defend their statements. However, Mr. Marron also tries to get to the root of why people were expressing these views at him. He artfully humanizes the faceless internet poster, and makes them real.
Review of Conversations With People Who Hate Me
Mr. Marron is very skilled at redirecting conversations when he feels they might become cyclical, or when he feels that neither participant is an expert on the subject discussed. In several episodes, he diverts conversation away from topics like Black Lives Matter, because he recognizes that neither of the people discussing the subject are Black Americans, and might provide false or harmful information.
Although I tried not to binge all the episodes at once, I found it hard to stop listening. Even when guests made me (personally) uncomfortable with some of the views expressed, I trusted Mr. Marron to bring the conversation back to a place of understanding. When guests would stray too far on subjects where Mr. Marron himself was familiar (i.e, LGBTQIA+ rights) Dylan would artfully ask guests what their connection to the subject was, and remind them of his connection, as a gay man.
Something that Mr. Marron found important to point out in several episodes, he did not enter into these discussions blindly. He received prior consent to record the phone conversations had on the show, and previously vetted each message sender as safe to contact.
It would have been easy for this podcast to become a toxic waste dump of self congratulations and other-bashing. But instead, Mr. Marron found it important to make sure that whatever his guest wanted to express was heard out fairly. And, he often had guests with which he fundamentally agreed (see episode 3: “The Call is Coming from Inside the House”), but who found his approach in his various other internet engagements to be too heavy handed (via his “Unboxing” videos, where Mr. Marron unboxes intangible concepts like “White Privilege”, and “Police Brutality”).
Ultimately, anyone who gives this podcast a listen can learn something, either about themselves, or about engagement with people.
What You Need To Know
In the month of New Year, New Me, I think its important to reexamine our civility, and how we see the supposed other.
At the publishing of this review, Conversations With People Who Hate Me has finished its first season with nine episodes out so far. Each episode is about an hour long. Serious subjects are discussed openly. Anything from politics, to religion, to mental health and suicide, to LGBTQIA+ issues are fair game. Episodes come equipped with content warnings.
A five minute episode that is worth a listen as a kind of preview into the podcast, is the episode titled “Charlottesville”.
Even merchandise from the show offer uplifting messages, such as “Hurt People Hurt People”, and “Remember the Human on the Other Side of the Screen”.
Conversations with People Who Hate Me is created, hosted, and produced by Dylan Marron. It is a production of NightVale Presents. You can listen to episodes of Conversations with People Who Hate Me on iTunes, Googleplay, Spotify, YouTube, Libsyn, RadioPublic, and at IHeartRadio. You can learn more about the podcast at DylanMarron.Com/Podcast
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