>> Amy Draves: So today we have the most awesome speaker ever, Baratunde,
who is hiding in the audience somewhere. See if you can spot the non-Microsoft
employee. There might be some others, too, because I think [laughter] his Mac's
up here.
Anyway, thank you everyone for coming. Baratunde has an incredible
background because he knows software, he's done stand-up comedy in New
York. He's written and directed and done a ton of stuff for the Onion and he's left
that job recently and is starting his own company, really thinking about humor
and creativity and how you can sort of infuse that into software design. And he
has an awesome book.
So we are so lucky to have him here today. Who are you? I know you're out
there somewhere. [laughter]. So welcome.
>> Baratunde Thurston: Thank you.
[applause].
>> Baratunde Thurston: I know software. It's great. Good afternoon you all,
how are you doing? Good. I heard there are 150 people on the Internet version
of this talk, so they're kicking your asses. We have to get them. We have to fight
the Internet people. We have to win.
It's very good to be here. Actually I've never been to the Microsoft campus
before. So thank you for providing sun for me today. It's very lovely. I live in
Brooklyn, New York, where it's raining. I just think it's weird I had to come to
Seattle to enjoy this. You know how to roll out the red carpet quite well.
I want to talk about a whole bunch of things that are going to culminate in
blackness. So if blackness makes you uncomfortable, now would be a good time
to opt out [laughter]. And then we'll take down your name and your ID number
[laughter] send that to central processing.
Let me do a bit more of an introduction. I co-founded a political blog called Jack
and Jill politics. It's a black-oriented U.S. politics blog. Our logo, as you will
notice is a watermelon. And it's obvious. You know, watermelon signifies
intelligent political discourse [laughter] so if you saw another correlation, you
have a problem. That should be investigated again at central processing.
I've lived in the future for a brief amount of time. I hosted a television show on
discovery science called Popular Science's Future Of. It was three years ago.
We did a full season, 10 episodes, future of sex, future of play, future of pleasure,
which always troubled me that pleasure and sex were in separate episodes
[laughter] I don't like that future.
Oh, yeah that's me in the future black people wear wet suits [laughter] so I'll put
in an order for about 10 wet suits. That should cover the building [laughter]. I
love it.
So, yes, so that was a lot of fun. I did get to travel around to companies and
universities and play with their gadgetry and sometimes their software and then
opine lightly on what it might mean for the future, the horizon was 15 to 25 years,
how might we live if some of this R and D came to fruition. So that's fun.
And I worked for 4 and a half years as director of digital for America's finest news
source, also known as The Onion. Director of digital is a title I made up because
it sounded great, and it's DOD, and that has a very like intimidating sort of
defense department kind of consequence to it.
Well, what that job really meant was helping tell our story in emerging digital
platforms in meaningful ways, right, not using them merely as a means but as
part of the story-telling process.
So what I'm going to talk about today, I'll do a bit of a roundup. I'm not going to
just talk about the book, because that's not as much fun for me, but I will talk
about story telling in general, and we will get to the book. So if you want to be a
little bit blacker, you're in the right room. You just have to wait until we get to that
part.
I believe in community service and a lot of people have these give-back
programs. What I like to do is use my powers for good. And there's a series of
quite horrific novels known as Twilight. They are the end of America as we know
it [laughter] and then they've become more popular in the form of a dastardly film
franchises.
So what I do is on opening weekends for the films, I sacrifice myself. I go to the
theater Friday or Saturday at the latest, I sit in the back with my laptop and a
wireless card and I live hate tweet the film.
What live hate tweeting means is I tweet about the movie with hate. Which is to
say I tweet about the movie because the hate just comes really naturally for such
a terrible, terrible messaging campaign.
So I will ask questions that other various may be hesitant to. [laughter] things
that really get at the heart of the unexplored matter. And sometimes -- I don't
know, have any of you ever been in the position of being a teacher of any kind?
Like raise your hand if you've taught. That's -- wow. You're all teachers. There's
something weird about that. I love it, though.
>>: [inaudible].
>> Baratunde Thurston: You're cheap. Okay. So you then will really understand
that sometimes as a teacher, like you want to reach everybody, but you're not
gonna, and you know you're not gonna, so you go for the one. This is one kid
like if you could just get him to stop eating donuts constantly or like just get him
to study a little bit harder, just get her to like turn in that report like to go to
college, to graduate, to get the certificate you've made a difference. I had that
happen to me. Because I prevented one person from seeing this dumb, terrible
movie. [laughter].
And they were able to redeploy those economic resources into more productive
areas of the American economy, which is good for all of us. So boo Twilight.
I did write this book. It's called how to be black. It's got a very simple marketing
message that I just boiled everything down to [laughter]. If you don't buy it, you
are a racist. That's just a scientific fact. I'm not really trying to be judgmental. I
don't make up the rules, I just enforce them violently.
And then this work became a New York Times best-seller. So the guilt trip, very
effective. Anyone marketing anything, I know Office 15 is coming out soon.
Maybe you want to try that. If you don't download it, you're a racist.
I want to go through a few things during my tenure at this place. I played a
number of key roles [laughter] at The Onion. This is my significant contribution.
Sure, I helped develop iPad apps and digital strategies and pricing models, but
that playing Cootar Obama was just the role of a lifetime [laughter] and hell, yes
you all can, I just hope he doesn't come back and ruin things in 2012. Cootar is a
hard man to keep pinned down.
The Onion has covered media in some interesting ways. This is one of my
favorite recent stories, Huffington Post employee sucked into aggregation
turbine. Horrified workers watch as colleague torn apart by powerful
content-gathering engine.
And one of the things -- when I talk about like digital story telling, one of the
overall premises is, like, you have these new platforms emerging, you have your
social media stuff, you have your new devices and smartphones. And the boring
way to use them is merely to distribute the old media on top of it. Like I'm going
to post a joke to Twitter. That's not necessarily Twitter comedy. Funny things
happen on Twitter and there's a deeper way to do that. And part of what I was
able to learn at The Onion is to help us adapt that voice to these emerging times.
The Onion was born as a print weekly periodical at the University of Wisconsin at
Madison. Went online much earlier than most actual news sources in 1996,
involved in books and podcasting and video. And the process of creation there
has been very deliberate. It's been around for 23 years and there's kind of a
two-week cycle to produce the issue. But the high-speed realtime content world
of streams that doesn't always cut it. And so when you have for example the
death of an iconic figure like Steve Jobs, that may call for a reaction. And the
previous version The Onion's life you just wait or not do it, depending on when
the publication was. But now we have faster means of doing things. And I want
to show you a little behind the scenes of how this news room reacted through it's
satirical tone to the death of this business and technology leader.
This is a screenshot that most people in the world will never see. It's kind of the
behind the scenes of jokes that were pitched to run when Steve Jobs passed
away.
You have things like Apple shuts down as man who hand made every one of
their products dies.
Steve Jobs released.
Apple shareholders fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck [laughter].
Apple store employee acting like his fucking dad died. And what we ended up
going with was this very true, sort of poignant, still funny but it's kind of dark, last
American who new what the fuck he was doing dies. Until you pack in a
comment about the economy and American culture and you know, this very
successful, overly successful symbol and human.
We also reacted very quickly to this scenario about a year [laughter]. And that, to
me, that was a -- that touched a deep nerve because this guy is an asshole and it
bothers me that he still has purchase in this world.
When the President released his birth certificate I actually did a -- I couldn't find -personally I couldn't find any humor in it. I was pissed. I thought this was a dark
moment for the presidency, for the country. You could have someone who has
been vetted by the Secret Service and the Senate and the whole campaign
apparatus and you have significant numbers of the public saying I'm not sure if
you're one of us, that's just an insult to everything, not just to that -- to President
Obama but to the presidency. And then the fact that this man, moments later
came out and said I'm so proud of the work I did, but I need to see it for myself.
Donald Trump said he wanted to see the president's papers himself. Like you
arrogant bastard.
So I was very proud of this organization for coming up with a comedic and
accurate portrayal. I will point out for the record, Mr. Trump has not yet provided
any document to prove his humanity. So as far as I'm concerned, he is that
thing.
Life coverage is a fun thing that we help push the envelope on. And I will show
you some examples. So we have a very fragmented, you know, media world.
We went from three channels to hundreds to infinite when you get to places like
the Internet, and so our ability to gather around common cultural reference points
is much harder today than it was 30 years ago. That water cooler has become
virtualized. And, you know, online chatting spaces, your Facebooks, your
Twitter, but especially Twitter in this case become that coherent moment,
especially around events. So you get the Super Bowl, you get the Oscars, you
get the VMAs or anything like the State of the Union and I had been doing my
own live tweeting of events and using the hash tags, going to ride the wave.
And while I was watching the Oscars several years ago saw Queen Latifah on
stage. I think she was presenting an award. Now, remember The Onion had its
piece about Queen Latifah sort of. It was a paragraph like a generic looking
African prince/king, and the head line says King Latifah returns for queen
[laughter]. I was like that's hilarious. I'm going to release this right now with the
hash tag to kind of jump into the conversation. And people responded instantly
like The Onion that was really great.
So then I started whenever prominent people were on stage getting awards,
getting nominated or presenting I would search our website, find the piece, post it
out through The Onion Twitter, kind of add that hash tag. And so it was sort of
live tweeting. And people are like The Onion the live tweeting the Oscars. This
is crazy, this is going to be -- really like live archive researching and republishing
[laughter]. But that's less sexy. It's the mouthful.
So, yeah, we were life tweeting it. And then the traffic exploded. This is a
Sunday night event. We never have traffic on our website on Sunday evenings.
I went in, talked to our editors and the rest of the staff, look at this chart, look at
all this love we've gotten, look at the new followers we've done and we didn't
have to write any new shit. Like this is pretty -- this is pretty cool, like recycled
journalism, it's like journalism. So we did that and had a lot of fun with it. And
then we started planning for it.
This is a screenshot of the State of the Union. This is kind of behind the scenes
of how we started intentionally plotting to do these things. So we would write
some jokes in anticipation of sort of conditional circumstances. Well, when such
and such happens, we'll say this. If such and such happens, we'll say that. We
had our archive and evergreen material that's often super relevant because it's
written in a style to last, you know, several years. And then we had people, you
know, in their homes or gathered in a room doing realtime material about what's
-- because you have unpredictable moments, you know. You have someone
falters on the State of the Union or the National Anthem or you get a weird to the
of someone in the had crowd you're going to want to say something about that.
You so organize these in spreadsheets, kind of time them out.
This is an Oscar's one. We kind of got the whole run of show that I think Walker
had published. Had a very lovely and loyal unpaid intern kind of codify all of that
and come up with a clean enough syntax so we could break it apart. And we
have okay, here's the award, here are the nominees. The red ones are the
things that actually won. Fire a joke. Which is still can be automated. That was
just me pressing.
Publish. Very advanced system. The Super Bowl's one of the hardest ones
because it's sports. Crazy things happen. So you're writing for injuries, for
interceptions, you're checking your e-mails and your IMQ to see what else is
flowing in, and you wanted a balance of like which teams, what part of the game
are you commenting on? Is it just the game? It's also the commercials, the
endorsements, the announcers and the crowds, the fans. And so all of that
created this well rounded sense of like this is how we could cover an event
without ever being there, without being actual journalists but still having some
quality commentary on the thing, a new way of telling the story.
The previous way we would have just written an article after the event, maybe
one before Super Bowl watch guide sort of thing. This is much more engaging
for the writers as well as for the people on the receiving end. And these were the
analytics that we were looking at. In some cases this is a back-end view of
Twitter's analytics they offer people who spend a lot of money on promoted
trends.
And so we would take some of the best of those and then put those on
Facebook, which is a slower space. You can't publish 100 things to Facebook in
six hours. You will lose people because that is annoying.
And this is a story that we did last fall that I think again speaks to this theme. We
had a published an alert through our account on Twitter, witnesses reporting
screams and gunfire header inside Capitol building. We were trying to break
apart the story and kind of roll it out the way an actual news organization would
with all the intensity and suspense that that would entail. Moments later updated
Capitol building being evacuated, 12 children held hostage by group of armed
congressmen [laughter]. And then you know we started running everything with
the hash tag congress hostage. [laughter].
We got our photo journalist a great position to cover this, John Boehner, Speaker
of the House, holding a gun to a little American girl's head. And let's just linger
on that for a while. It's very troubling [laughter]. Troubling images.
And so we continue to push the story out adding commentary, adding coverage
angles. And then we actually got some footage from insight. And I just want to
warn you, these are disturbing images.
>>: Hey, Boehner, this kid's got a phone. [laughter].
>> Baratunde Thurston: Disturbing indeed. So that happened. And then we
continued to kind of push the story out. President Obama inserts himself into the
situation. This quote that he issued that day, I know this congress well. Trust
me, they will kill these kids. [laughter]. I think that's pretty incredible coming from
the President of the United States. He would know. He would know what they're
capable of.
And then we resolved this journalistically, hostage negotiation talks stall in
congress. Which is sort of a meta-narrative on the whole scenario, the inability to
get things done. I don't want to overexplain the joke. But that was clearly a point
we made.
And then there was a bit of a backlash from the media. This was run, the Capitol
Police actually investigated us. And there's a quote, I don't think it was in this
story. It was hard for me to relocate it. But it did exist of someone from the
Capitol Police commented to a reporter that we alerted the congress that this
was just a hoax. And I just -- I wanted to slow down on that concept for a minute.
The Capitol Police alerted congress to the fact that congress had not indeed
taken children hostage. That's how broken our system is [laughter] that that had
to happen.
And so we had other things, you know, The Onion tests satire limits with fake
report. Is it too far with Twitter satire? All these questions. And I think what
disturbed me about this reaction from certified journalists was that the reason
many of them were so upset is because they had been retweeting The Onion's
posts and especially that first one. And they're like you can't -- you can't -- this is
irresponsible journalism.
We're not journalists, first of all. We're making things up [laughter] like we've
been doing forever. Like we never report. It's expensive, as you are finding out.
So they were feeling a bit on their own heels. They jumped the gun and
retweeted the stuff and then the backlash was you got to clarify this isn't real. I
mean, you know, DC's had terrorist activities. It's too soon. It's like the
clarification was the fact that it came from The Onion. That's all the context you
need [laughter] like Journalism 101, know your sources, you know, and act
accordingly.
So our editor drafted up this response, which is one of the most beautiful things
I've ever seen. I was thinking that we could say something about how
irresponsible it is for the news media to report on something that the news media
is reporting on irresponsibly. And that Twitter is ultimately to blame, and should
start censoring tweets. This just goes to show how dangerous free speech is
when in the hands of reporters. [laughter]. So true. The whole scenario is quite
dysfunctional. And I think we come out looking like the heros that we were.
The other sort of fun example for me is kind of opening up the process in
different ways. And this applies not just to a place like The Onion, it applies to
any institution that has built up a level of credibility, an incumbency and
reputation, you don't want to give all that over just because it is the sort of the
way of the moment to involve your audience as co-creators. But there's a way to
do it that's kind of interesting.
And it revolves around this story, Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion
Abortionplex. So ran this story almost exactly one year ago, as you can see by
the date line. It was in response then to congress having budget fights because
they want to defund planned parenthood. It comes up every year. So we
decided let's just show what the stakes are. So this is what planned parenthood
plans to do with a ridiculous sum of money.
And that would have been the end of it. But then in the fall, you know, Susan G.
Komen Foundation had its flirtation with the disaster. And a congress person, a
man, a member of congress posted this story to his Facebook wall. He's like,
see, this is what they want to do. This is why we fight. And that was so very
dumb, you know, [laughter] and disheartening. Like the more you think about it I
guess sadder. Like at first it's like -- oh, God, he funds things and defunds things
and like approves war and can't discern a story that fits his pre-existing view of
the world with something that's pretty obviously satirical if you pause for 10
seconds to question every piece of that head line, which he just couldn't find it in
his heart to do.
So that would have been the end of it. But it wasn't. One of our readers went a
step further. This is not part of the plan. This is not part of the plan. They
created Abortionplex venue on Yelp [laughter]. And they didn't just create it like
randomly, they studied the story, they adhered to the details. It was in Topeka,
Kansas, in the date line and article, so they put it in Topeka, Kansas. They
rounded it out.
And it wasn't just like one person who thought this would be fun. Hundreds of
people, 282 reviews for Abortionplex. It's probably higher now. This screenshot
is months old. And people got really into it. This is one of the lengthier reviewers
[laughter] broken down into pros and cons. The rock climbing wall. Yes, this is
the largest rock climbing wall that I have ever seen. I opted to skip it, but my
companion climbed it and thought it was awesome.
So fully immersing themselves in a world that we only partially sketched out
they're going to keep running with it. And so the -- there were others. The Salsa
Bar is to die for. Would have been five stars if it wasn't for the 18% gratuity
[laughter]. We drove from Dallas. The shell gas station next door has
10-cent-a-gallon discounts to out-of-staters. We'll definitely be back. [laughter].
Too many stairs. [laughter]. People are just running with it.
And while it's certainly true, I think that it took the sort of considered and
deliberative process to plant the seed, the growth, you know, could come from
hundreds of different directions from a community that was unleashed without
asking permission either. And so there's something mildly terrifying but also
clearly inspired and truly hilarious about it. So it was like a growth and humbling
and sort of educational experience all at the same time.
We did a story about the return of Osama Bin Laden from the sea where he was
buried. We got this shot and, you know, kind of rolled that out in a similar way.
That was a shot of New York City. We lost five photographers trying to get that
angle. It's very, very difficult. We sort of had, again, different perspectives. And
then we asked people, 500-foot Bin Laden was the sort of mean that we were
pushing, then we asked our audience, have you seen 500-foot Bin Laden? And
they had. This was a great shot that we got.
But then someone in Boston was oh, no, he's here and kind of took the art and
did a weak but, you know, passable photo shot job showing bin Laden in their
part of the world.
So here's what I want to get to in addition to all of that. There is a lesson learned
in not just sort of copying and pasting from in design into whatever the new digital
thing is. There's a lesson learned in opening up a little bit. There's also one in
adapting is the story to the platform. And this is -- we're getting closer to the
black part. But not quite yet.
I was -- was and am a pretty big foursquare fanatic. And several years ago I was
mayor of a place in the Nolita neighborhood of Manhattan called Delicatessen.
I'd been mayor there for many months. Things were peaceful. My people were
happy. All was quiet until my mayorship was challenged by a friend who did not
respect my authority nor the success of our territory. So she challenged me to a
mayoral battle. She said I'm going to take this mayorship from you. I said you
won't. A drunk friend instigated the fight even further. And we decided we're
going to treat this mayoral campaign like a campaign. It's not going to be just
about checking in. We're going to have all the accoutrements of a political
movement around foursquare.
And we did a number of ridiculous things during this process. First of all, we
were there pretty much every day. The only odds she had of beating me was
because I travel. I'm here, for example. And so when I'm out of town, I can't be
there, so she can kind of creep up on me. And for those of you who use
foursquare that it shows you how many days away from mayorship you are.
When we did this, that was not the case. So you had no polling basically. You
didn't know where you were with respect to your opponent. You just had to
assume you're about to lose at any moment and punch it.
She ended up coming up with her own drink at this bar and named it for the
campaign. I followed suit with my own drink which is whiskey based, you can still
buy it there. It's called the whiskey Thurston.
And then I went, I made T shirts that you can see me wearing right there, a
company called Apieri [phonetic] did that pro bono for the campaign. We
declared it on our contribution forms for transparency. It's very important in
politics. And I held a rally for my campaign. And I just want to show you this
ridiculous videotape.
>>: My name is Baratunde Thurston, I'm running for reelection as mayor of
Delicatessen.
[applause].
>>: Some people say that mayorship is just about checking in on foursquare.
We know that's not true, right?
>>: Huh-uh.
>>: No.
>>: Mayorship's about cheese burgers and spring rolls. Can I get an amen?
>>: Amen.
>>: I'd like to quote from the good book. That would be the Delicatessen menu.
A book of sand witches. You got the Delicatessen Reuben on rye, and I quote
ham sliced, corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss and Russian dressing.
>>: Amen.
>>: [inaudible] dessert. This is a classic people. It's called milk and cookies.
Milk and cookies. Say it with me.
>>: Milk and cookies. Milk and cookies. Milk and cookies.
>>: When I say delica, you say tessan. Delica.
>>: Tessan.
>>: Delica.
>>: Tessan.
>>: When I say cheeseburger, you say spring rolls. Cheeseburger.
>>: Spring rolls.
>>: Cheeseburger.
>>: Spring rolls.
>>: When I say whiskey, you say Friday. Whiskey.
>>: Friday.
>>: Whiskey.
>>: Friday.
>>: [inaudible].
[applause].
>>: That's what I'm talking about.
[laughter].
>> Baratunde Thurston: So, yeah, that happened. And I didn't get this part on
video, but we walked into the bar, which is right across the street. I didn't want to
do a rally right in front, because I didn't want to be too disturbing, people might
think I'm actually protesting it, and I'm not. And so I did it in front of a business I
disrupted. It's like an Ed Hardy shop. It's like I hate you so much.
And so I walked in, and this dude was very upset with me. He had witnessed this
whole thing. He's like, who the hell are you? Why are people following? What
are you doing? I was like, I'm just trying to have some fun, trying to tell a story in
a weird way. He's like, but how much is foursquare paying you for this? I'm like
they're not paying me anything, it's just like an art project. How much is
Delicatessen paying? Foursquare owes you reparations for this. I was like, I
don't think you mean that word. I could think of a whole nother word. But thank
you for your passion.
He's like, but you're not carrying aids, you're not doing anything. You're nobody.
I'm like clearly I'm somebody. I got 15 people with signs. But the point was like
let's explore this, let's get off of the screen, let's get into the physical world. This
campaign was a lot of fun. We got our friends to come out and meet us more
often and so often these social tools are designated as isolating antisocial tech
only. But there's people behind all of that. And we sort of had a fun time
exploring that.
Also there's some backlash. Whenever you go out with a political message you
get some haters on the other side, so to speak. And that was fun. I conceded
the race. I won't show this video. It's not -- it's co-gratuitous at this point. But I
lost the race. I didn't think I could. I was very arrogant. But I left town one time
too many, and this is on a Sunday in the final print week of the campaign, and I
woke up with a choice to make because one of my friends was running for state
senate in New York, like an actual campaign that mattered, with real
consequences other than who eats cheeseburger spring rolls for too much
money.
So I decided let me go up to the Bronx and canvass for him and then I'll come
back and have like a late brunch at deli later in the way. And as I had just gone
through my training, I was headed out the campaign office to go into the
community, I got the alert that I had just been ousted as mayor of Delicatessen.
It was very sad moment for me. But it was also -- it was beautiful. It was
beautiful because I was doing real stuff. In that moment I thought it was perfect
that that was the moment that it happened. I was like okay, let's actual do the
real thing now and not just play at politics but do it. Because, man, Gustavo
Rivera who is in the lower third, he won. We -- my team out canvassed
everybody else that day. I think it was just motivated. And he ended up ousting
the most corrupt member of the New York state legislature at a time when that
legislature was dubbed the most corrupt in America.
So I had a small part in ousting the most corrupt actual senator even as I was
ousted in a sort of satirical version of that campaign. Also, I was not corrupt. I
was noble. I served my people quite well and with honor. We're not -- it's too
sad to revisit that.
So I want to talk about the book and how all that kind of informs this. I wrote this
book. As you know, it's called How to Be Black. The way the book started was
in some ways because of Twitter and because of a real world interaction. I live in
Brooklyn. I had been going to buy some wine. And I didn't know how to do it.
There's a way you're supposed to buy wine. You like pour it and you swirl it and
then almost snort it, and then you feel things. You have these emotional
reactions like [inaudible] and nutmeg and oak happens, as a verb, to you. And I
don't understand all that. I haven't read the books. It's just too much effort. I like
it or I don't like it.
And I didn't want to ask the clerk for help, because that would involve learning
something new. And I'm pretty solid with what I know. I mean, I've been alive for
a while. So I instead look for a sign from the bottles and the labels. And I saw
this brand of wine called Negroamaro. I was like that's it. That's the wine for me.
It's got the word negro in it. Clearly it's for a discerning yet ignorant and lazy
black consumer [laughter]. And so I bought this wine. It was delicious. Very pro
black wine. And then a few days later, as the bottle was emptied by my hand, I
tweeted out to my friend Elon James White, he's a fellow comedian, also from
Brooklyn, also black. And I said the following: This weekends I picked my red
wine because it was called Negroamaro. That's how black I am. How black are
you?
And so he responded pretty quickly for 7:30 in the morning: I see the subtle
racial implications of Thundercats. Panthro is black, shirt lest and Lion-O's
driver. How black are you? [laughter].
And so we were going back and forth dozens of time. And this is public, so other
people are jumping in on the hash tag and offering sometimes salient, sometimes
highly disturbing and ignorant commentary on this open theme. I ended up
talking about this at a web conference. A publish from HarperCollins was in the
audience. We ended up having a conversation. And in that meeting they said
you should do a book. What about how black are you as a book.
I was like what about no? [laughter]. That's a terrible idea. I don't trust Twitter
with that, much less like all of America, which doesn't acknowledge the
Americaism as black president.
So instead we came out with how to be black. It was more of an assertive
statement, it's more of an offering rather than a challenge to someone's
legitimacy which is not any way that I wanted to kind of label and brand myself
for all eternity or until we destroy ourselves in a nuclear holocaust.
And so the book was, you know, supposed to be these several pieces. It started
a satire, how to be the black friend, how to be the next black president, how to be
the angry negro, how do the black employee. But then it also got more
investigative to a certain degree. I asked questions and invited submissions from
people.
The book itself has chapters that are based on questions. I assembled a black
panel of experts. These were people who have been black their entire lives and
so they have a wealth of experience to draw from. And I asked things like when
did you first realize you were black? How black are you? And to continue that
theme. Have you ever wanted to not be black? Can you swim? [laughter]. Very
important question related to black identity. And I asked this of six black women,
six black men and one white man as a scientific control group [laughter]. I told
you I'm a scientist like this is not judgment, this is evidence based.
And I got the whitest guy I could get my hands on who was Christian Lander who
did stuff White People Like, both the website and the book. So he is a white
comedian in this book theoretically about blackness. Here's a trailer -- not a
trailer, here's a slice of the interviews that I cut together to then offer the public a
chance to engage.
>>: So I came home and I remember I couldn't really move past the entrance of
the house. And I need to talk about the fact that this little girl said that I was
black and that I, in fact, found myself to be beige.
I was playing doctor with a bunch of kids and when this one girl it was her turn to
kiss me and she didn't and she sort of ran away laughing, the kids ran away
laughing and the thing I realized at that point that I was black and they were all
white, because this is a small private school in Boston. And that was the first
time I remember feeling like black was somehow separate from the norm, you
know. I think I knew I was black before then because as I say I'm sure my mom
would not have let me not know I was black. There would have been no way that
she would have let that information slip. It's cold outside, take a jacket, and
you're black. [laughter].
I was born in Africa, so everybody's black [laughter] so we don't really think about
it like that. I mean, here it's like is he black, is he white, is he black? And I feel
good like you don't ask. The assumption is that you're black. Therefore what
becomes more important is other things, what your name is, where you come
from, what language do you speak, what's your culture, what's your tribe, et
cetera. So I know I was black. When I was eight I moved to the middle east. I
think the middle east is the first time I discovered I was black. Because people
[inaudible].
>>: And what does that translate to?
>>: That means this is a black guy [laughter].
>>: I grew up in east Chinatown in Toronto, so it was made very clear that I was
gwilo from a very early.
>>: Gwilo being?
>>: White ghost. So, you know, I know every derogatory person for a white
person in Chinese.
>> Baratunde Thurston: By the way, a little more ground on some of those
people. Cheryl Conte [phonetic] was the first person. She was my co-founder at
Jack and Jill Politics. She runs a firm in the Bay area called Fission Strategy,
Social Media for Social Good. Kamau Bell, a great comedian from the Bay area,
has a show coming out on FX this summer called Totally Biased produced by
Chris Rock. Christian Lander, still very white professionally, doing a great job of
it. Derrick Ashong was the host of The Stream on Al Jazeera English. Recently
left there to pursue music full-time. And Soulfege is the name of his band.
They're doing a million download campaign to get people -- to give away a million
tracks and to use that to kind of promote their career and rise on the live and the
merchandising and things.
That is so racist. [laughter]. That phone specifically. It's 2012, people. We've
got a half black president. We can't -- it's a dark day.
So we did that. You know, the book has -- that kind of embedded that
conversation as part of the piece. And then we went out into the world, you
know, and offered people a chance and asked more questions when the book
was released. We built the site on Tumbler, which is already a kind of
conversational platform, the submissions and the ask question feature.
We offer a question every day for folks to answer just like in that video.
Examples of that were how we started it. It's a whatever your race or
background is, like you probably felt and outsider some resonance to these
questions. Maybe asked to represent all your people at some point in your life in
a meeting possibly here maybe. You know provoking that response. And we
also had some great images. This was a photo shot by Neal Brennan. Neal is
half of the team that created the Chappelle's Show. He co-created that with
Dave Chappelle. I had the honor of meeting him, gave him a book because who
wouldn't. And he went into the New York City subway and was surrounded
immediately by these dudes. And their facial expressions kind of cover the range
of reaction to the book.
The guy on the left is kind of like droopy eyed, falling asleep. He looked kinds of
confused by the whole thing. The guy, you know, just to his write is really intense
like there's some good stuff in here. I'm learning. The guy to his right with the
do-rag on is like you got to be kidding me. And then the brother on the right has
just fully checked out. He doesn't need it. He's a professional. He's been black
his whole life and no book is going to tell him anything he doesn't already know.
The photos -- you know, this book is a billboard. And sometimes people catch
folks in the wild with it. This was shot at a Starbucks in DC. And this woman had
fallen asleep with the book on her head. I like to think she was using the
osmosis method of learning to see the world through different sets of eyes. So
that was -- that was lovely.
And so, you know, community doesn't have to mean crowd sourcing. I went out
-- I did a very extreme thing where I in the closing writing phase of the book,
which is last summer, I opened up the process for anyone to see. I call that live
writing. It was -- I shared my screen with a sort of software demo QA support
kind of thing. It's join.me was the service I used. And anyone can see what is
exactly on your computer screen. And so I did that because a friend suggested it
and because I'll try anything once. And it was fascinating to kind of open up this
process, writing very personal memoir type stories, writing some satirical bits and
people just jumping in wherever they could.
And the reaction -- there was a chat room that was attached to the software. I
had to mute that ultimately because it was becoming too distracting. It was also
a feature which lets people request to take control of your computer because it's
really a software demo thing and so people kept trying to take control of my
computer, like I want to write something. I was like no, you're -- I'm still the
author. Like it's still my book. You can watch. This is a witnessing sort of event.
But I did look at the logs of the chat room after. And there was some really
interesting commentary, like this one, like that gives me a connection with the
author. How self obsessed does one have to be to set something like this up?
Very. Very self obsessed. Love myself.
Just the little I've read here makes me want to buy this book.
Score. This is the opposite of my life hate tweeting of Twilight I guess generated
a sale.
I have an urge to tweet about this. Now you're on the marketing team.
Congratulations. This is great. Volunteer street teamers.
It's interesting to see his writing flow. This was unexpected because you never
really see people write. You know, you see them write but they're probably at a
distance unless you're creepy, and you just see someone at a computer. But you
don't really know what you're doing. And so to see a page go from like zero
characters to thousands was very educational for some other writers.
This person was surprised to see me use semicolons. That's like a weird form of
punctuation racism, I guess. Again we have a black president. I feel like I can
use a semicolon without criticism.
And this was the best thing that ever happened in my life. My girlfriend is
Chinese and I'm half Jamaican, half regular black. I think our kids might end up
Dominican or something [laughter]. There's a lot going on in this statement. And
let's just start with regular black, shall we [laughter]. We'll just deconstruct that
concept.
When I first saw that I'm like is there a diet black, is there black zero? Failed
experiment at black clear, ala Pepsi. And then the idea that your kids will end up
Dominican. I mean, I get it. It's sort of a racial mixing, you know, skin tone
reference. But I kind of hope their kids come out like loving baseball, Mofongo,
and speaking with a Latin accent. Like I would think that would just be a weird
outcome because you put something on the Internet.
So, yeah, so, you know, this is a world that we're building, whether it's the stuff at
The Onion, whether it's this book, which is the world of conversation about race
and identity that is ongoing that I am trying to be a part of and roll forward and
carve out windows into it through a print book or an E book, through some
tweets, through the Tumbler, through Facebook. That's kind of the point is to
open up windows into that world. And that's kind of the way that I sort of think
about creating these stories. Also in the future, we're all going to be Dominican.
And so what I'm doing now is kind of taking that premise of immersive
multi-platform story telling of using humor to deal with really awkward concepts
like race and identity and divisiveness, politics, and that's my new thing. That's
the job that I have and I'm creating this company called Cultivated Wit, which
we'll use as a sort of mission statement and operating premise this opportunity.
And so I'll take that opportunity to stop talking and open it up. We have -- how
many people are on the Internet right now? 191. Kicking your ass. [laughter].
Real people. You know what, you know what they don't get? Watch this. Boom.
[laughter]. Oh, my God, look at that. Oh, yeah take that Internet. Ah, ah, ah, ah.
[applause].
>> Baratunde Thurston: Where's the camera? Where's the camera? But, yeah,
we have some time, so let's -- you know, you have questions, feedback,
commentary, hatred, more cell phone ringing? Yes? Well, he's standing. Okay.
>>: Yeah. [laughter].
>> Baratunde Thurston: Can we get this -- just for my purpose and the judgment
of your peers, can we get your name?
>>: My name is James Mikins [phonetic], and I'm black like yourself. [laughter].
First of all, I want to say thank you for coming here.
>> Baratunde Thurston: Yeah.
>>: Seeing a black guy entails like catching a Pokemon. This is a very
[laughter]. And so I sort of want to start a dialog with you. Let's just pretend that
these other non-black people aren't here.
>> Baratunde Thurston: Okay. [laughter].
>>: Let's just talk right now. You know, I come to work every day and now I talk
to Sally, I talk to Todd. I talk to Jane. I don't talk to Demarvel. You know, I don't
talk [inaudible]. What is your strategy ->> Baratunde Thurston: Yeah.
>>: -- for dealing with the constant oppression of the white hegemonic power
structure? You know, do you shout into a pillow? How do you deal with that
constant psychological tension?
>> Baratunde Thurston: Yeah.
>>: And just speak as if we're alone right now.
>> Baratunde Thurston: Sure. [laughter].
>>: Just [inaudible].
>> Baratunde Thurston: So here's what you got to do, brother. Series. Get
yourself some nunchucks [laughter]. You'll never suspect the nunchucks coming
[laughter]. I have a chapter called how to be the black employee.
>>: Sure.
>> Baratunde Thurston: And it is sort of a simulation where you are the black
employee, whoever the reader is. And I kind of walk you through some of the
rules of what that means. So first thing you have to do, identify all the other black
people that might be at this company because you got to figure out what that
relationship is going to be.
>>: Form alliances.
>> Baratunde Thurston: Or understand that they will not be formed and act
accordingly. Because sometimes, right, they're an alliance there that people will
be looking out for you, kind of see themselves new, may want to be a mentor.
Other times they're just haters like they were the one before and now you've
ruined their monopoly [laughter] right? And you're bringing competition to the
market. Or there's people who just are like really don't have any sense of race
as a part of their identity and that's useful enough. Because if you try to
approach them on that angle, they're like, no, I'm just James. What is this black
thing you're talking about?
Have fun with your white people. Torture them. Not physically, Jesus, people.
[laughter]. They're not here, though, right? Nunchucks come in very useful at
this moment.
But I would say, you know, the scenarios do play with it, do kind of push it and try
to be comfortable. It's going to be so weird in some of these circumstances,
always being asked to represent explicitly or implicitly everybody who kind of
looks like you. You said like I'm black like you. Maybe you're not. Maybe you're
black very differently from me.
I've got hair up here [laughter]. For example you got a goatee going on.
>>: [inaudible].
>> Baratunde Thurston: We are both [inaudible] that's true. So we got that.
>>: [inaudible].
>> Baratunde Thurston: Red shoes, black shoes. So there are three differences
between us. [laughter]. And we should exploit those differences. It's a maximum
division in a set.
>>: So what I'm hearing is using my blackness as a weapon. [laughter]. Can I
quote you?
>> Baratunde Thurston: You can definitely quote me on that. I would say though
in a little bit more of a serious tone like the playfulness is kind of important
because what I -- like I worked in a corporate environment for eight years. I was
a strategy consultant in Boston. So there's trauma there.
And what I -- you know, sometimes I would assume that the oppressive white
hegemonic structure was an active thing. And it wasn't. It's like no one's really
out to like get me, get me. Maybe one person was [laughter] but I got him first
[laughter]. Nunchucks. [laughter]. But it was more like just not knowing where
to come from, not having any experience that was related to mine and so just lots
of awkwardness.
And the lack of ill will and ill intent is important to account for. Right? The
assumption that you're not out to get me, even as you sort of get me accidentally
with the weird questions you're asking. That does a lot to kind of lower the
temperature and lower your sense of like paranoia. Because people really
probably don't care that much about you.
Ultimately. And I don't mean to reduce you as a person, I'm saying like you are
different obviously. You're [laughter] you got to come with me everywhere, this is
good. I'm having a really good time with this.
>>: We can't show weakness in front of the whites.
>> Baratunde Thurston: They're not here. Remember? [laughter].
>>: [inaudible].
>> Baratunde Thurston: We didn't block out the Internet feed. [laughter]. But,
yeah, so, you know, making that assumption of not even not goodwill but not ill
will, maybe no will, will kind of help you control your own reaction, joking around
with it with those you're comfortable with, making sure they never say the N
word, those are important as well. That last one is very important. People get
too comfortable.
Internet question.
>>: Yes. Ben says you do a great job coming up with new ideas for generating
buzz. Some of these are bound not to work. What's the penalty for bombing?
How many times can you fail and have people still take you seriously?
>> Baratunde Thurston: How many times can you fail and still have people take
you seriously? What's the penalty for bombing? I've never failed [laughter]. I've
heard of this word, failure. Yeah. No. The penalty is a lesson. And obviously
not achieving that particular goal. But I don't -- I don't think it's a reason to not do
things. Like I think it's sort of -- not that it's an irrelevant question, but there is a
penalty for failing and keep trying stuff. As long as not everything -- if everything
fails, that's really depressing and maybe you should try something else.
But I think -- and in terms of maintaining not losing people or -- can you rephrase
-- can you repeat the last part of the question?
>>: He says how many times can you fail and have people still take you
seriously.
>> Baratunde Thurston: Seven. Seven times [laughter]. Yeah. The eighth time
you're done. You have to actually pack up your family and leave preferably the
country and go to like a lunar colony or something like where no one knows you.
No, there's no number, obviously. But I think the failure itself the full problem.
It's maybe how you approach it. Like if you're failing and being fake, if you're
failing and being exploitative, if you're failing and being condescending or
disrespectful and not representing the community of people you're trying to
connect with, then that's a more problematic form of failure.
If you're failing and you shot the moon on something you really believed in that
should have worked and didn't, people might still be there for you. But other than
that, seven. Lovely hair.
>>: Thank you.
>> Baratunde Thurston: Thank you.
>>: You may have covered this. I was late. That's how black I am. [laughter].
So what I was really interested in knowing sort of your career journey. You
mentioned that you did strategy in Boston.
>> Baratunde Thurston: Right.
>>: I'm and aspiring writer. I used to publish a lot, wrote for the Amsterdam
News when I was 15.
>> Baratunde Thurston: Cool.
>>: Mentored by people like Kevin Powell and had to do the corporate thing.
>> Baratunde Thurston: Yeah.
>>: Start a family. I'm trying to get back some writing now. And so I would love
to hear a little bit about your journey.
>> Baratunde Thurston: Yeah. Took a bus [laughter]. It's everywhere. Lot of
got stories on busses. I grew up in DC. Born in '77, left in '95, went to Harvard
for undergrad. My neighborhood was basically the wire set, single mom. Some
stereotypical urban blackness elements to my story. Some non stereotypical.
Like I have this African name not Nigerian at all, just the name. Parents couldn't
go back to Africa, they brought Africa to us by labeling me Baratunde. And then I
went to Sidwell Friends School for 7th and 12th grade and then Harvard with a
philosophy degree.
When I left there, I thought I was going to be a teacher, some sort of
technological entrepreneur or -- what was the other thing I was going to do, I
can't remember. Oh, journalist. Journalist. And I had a roadblock for some of
those. I developed RSI, repetitive straighten injury the summer I had an
internship lined up at a major newspaper. I had to bail on it because I couldn't
type. Can't be a journalist and not be able to type.
So I did theater that summer instead. And that clearly had an effect on some of
where I ended up. But when I graduated, I didn't go straight into the arts. I had
to go into loan repayment. So I joined this consulting company. And it wasn't
even as bad -- I mean, now it's terrible. I would hate to be graduating from
college right now. Sorry if you have kids doing that, sell them off, really [laughter]
because probably get a better return.
But I did that for a year. This firm focus on telecom and media, and they were
kind of born out of the Telecom Act of '96, all these new competitive phone
companies trying to figure that out. And these guys were in a position to do it,
and I loved infrastructure, because I was a big nerd. I was like the Internet
works, switches, yes.
And I left after a year to start a venture capital company which was dumb
because it was the summer of 2000 and the whole thing had just burst but I didn't
know, because it was bursting around me. So this is the great time to forge off
on my own with no savings. And I did that for like six or seven months. Had fun.
Made no money. Went back to the consulting. Temp'd for a while. Then went
back to the consulting with a sense of freedom.
Because I had quit once. It's kind of like dying. Like once it happens if you
remember it you're like you're not afraid of it anymore. And so with quitting a job,
which is a very empowering thing to do, I no longer feared it. And I just -- I
worked harder. I took all the lessons to heart. I knew what was BS and what
wasn't. I was fine with it.
And I basically worked in that world full-time for another few years and then
part-time. And what shifted me was I started doing comedy again in 2001. And
this was after my first year back. I took a -- my girlfriend at the time really
convinced me to get back on this creative path.
I took a writing class. Commuted to New York every week for a comedy writing
workshop. Took a standup comedy class. Boston Cinema For Adult Education.
And that was the nudge that I needed to find a new rhythm. And I still did the job
by day, but now I had a thing by night that I really cared about. Took all the
money I was making and just plowed it into that. Whenever I travel for work, I do
an open mic in the town. I started blogging again. It was -- I just needed to take
that first step. And then the walk became a little easier. So for years I was
cultivating this artistic and more political life subsidized by Verizon, Black Rock
Capital, whoever the clients were that I was working for, until I reached critical
mass of opportunity.
I moved to New York in '07, because it was too easy to make the money from the
corporate life, and I found myself making perverse decisions about what to do
with my time that weren't serving my creating side. So physically remove myself
from the situation, New York, comedians, TV, publishing, everything I wanted to
be more of was there more.
Kept the job remotely. But within three weeks of moving to New York, found this
opportunity at The Onion as politics editor. Applied, got it, many, many
interviews later. Took a massive pay cut. But it was not even -- it was no
flinching. I did do some financial modeling [laughter]. Before they made the offer
I'm like okay, here's what I'm making now. This is good. I could like subsidize
two people, live in a decent apartment way up town. This is what I think they'll
come in at, which is like significantly lower. This is the bear minimum I need to
survive. That's what they came up with.
I don't know if they hacked into my system [laughter] or something. It was really
interesting. Like to the dollar. I mean it was round figures. It wasn't like pennies
involved. So that was it.
And once I got there, then I was on the new platform. And I kind of shifted my
foundation from all strategy consultant stuff to oh, works at The Onion. And then
that presents a different face to the world. Different set of doors swing open
once you fully moved. So that's -- for me it was not a dramatic leap of faith into
the world of starving artistry. I still had loans to pay, and I wasn't trying to be so
dramatic with my life. But it was a steady discipline and a balance between okay,
how can I use this to enable this other thing. And over time just pump out
enough work that I could create my own buzz, create my own voice like find it.
And I could only find it by talking a lot. And that -- so I went from full-time
consulting to part-time and then to no time.
Yes, sir?
>>: South by southwest a couple years ago you did a rip on black tweets and
Twitter as a black social maker. Could you talk about that? I mean, it's still
available on the web.
>> Baratunde Thurston: Yes, black people are still on Twitter. That's true
[laughter] [inaudible] still available.
Yeah, I did this talk. It was -- actually it was a precursor. It was right around the
time I was signing the deal for this. So I think I called it how to be black online
was the title of the presentation. And people are really obsessed at the moment
about black people being on Twitter. Which I was not obsessed with because it's
like oh, yeah, we're also people. And we do stuff that people do like tweet and
eat. Like black people drink water. It's crazy. Let's write a story about it at a
salon.
So partially I'm dismissive of the overinvestigation and like anthropological poking
of black people just doing normal things. What I was focused on at that time and
I really lost focus on that since then because I don't find it as curious a question.
But there was the reaction to these black trending topics popping up amongst the
early Twitter community is often negative and awkward and ugly and a little racist
and certainly strange at a minimum.
And it was similar to Hunger Games. You all see the movie, Hunger Games
movie? Okay. You heard about it [laughter]. Okay. I just want -- maybe you
work really hard here and don't know there's a whole world of passable movies
being made. Actually Hunger Games was pretty good. It was pretty good.
So there's a character namely Rue in the Hunger Games and the book and the
film and she's black. She's cast as a little black girl in the film. And there were
some people on the Internet, which is to say people, who were upset by the fact
of her blackness. It's like I loved the Hunger Games and then they ruined it by
making Rue black? Uk. Why did you have to? And so someone found all these
tweets, the darkest crevices of ignorance in the Internet and said let's make a
story out of this.
And there were two problems with it, I mean, obvious ones, right? It's okay for a
little girl to be black, that should be fine, not a crime. But she's also black in the
book [laughter]. So you're wrong on like the basic facts as well as the attitude
that you're carrying around. And so but that shock of like how can this black
thing exist in this world that I see every day which conforms to what I am?
There was some parallel there between like that and some of the reactions to
faces and themes and names that we don't understand popping up on Twitter.
Twitter is much more different because it's open. And they got a lot of
conversations that have happened. You just never saw before because you
weren't physically co-located with that community. Like people are in the shop
talking this way, people in the street corner talking that way, people in the
boardroom, talking that way. Those worlds were physically closed to us before
and now everybody can just jump in. You can search for bananas. Yeah, people
talk about banana all around the world. It's fascinating.
So that -- there's some disappointment on my part in the reaction, the negative
reaction to some of that. There's also an understanding that like if you have built
a world, not even built consciously, if you just exist in a world that looks like you
all the time, which is the way most people in America mean, we're actually not
that integrated a society, then it will be a shock to your system. And a telling one
in how you react to it when you say oh, this is a problem. Like Twitter is ruined
now because black people are on it, Hunger Games is ruined now because they
put a black character in.
It's like saying gays ruin, right? It's like you still have your life. You can still be
you. They're not actually all up in your face, you know, interrupting your ability to
pursue your dreams as a member of society. There. I had thoughts.
>>: So I -- first of all, I love The Onion.
>> Baratunde Thurston: Cool.
>>: I think it's absolutely hilarious.
>> Baratunde Thurston: Yeah.
>>: Onion radio, the whole thing, podcast, whatever. But when I read it and
when I listen to it, I get the sense of a white voice behind it. And I know that
comedy funny and then it's funnier and then it's hilarious and there's this little line
and then it's painful and embarrassing.
So I'm wondering if you ever found yourself in the position of being the guy they
went to do say is this okay with black people if we do this? And how you handle
that.
>> Baratunde Thurston: Yeah. Good question. I was shocked at how little I had
to do that or was ever asked to do that or felt that I should do that. The Onion is
white, heavily.
When I arrived, I was the black guy. There was one before me. But you can
only have one at a time [laughter] so we gave dap in the hallway. As he left and I
entered, he was like it is your job now [laughter]. And he passed off the
nunchucks. His name was Brandon. He was a graphics editor. And he worked
heavily on the Our Dumb World book. Great dude.
So, yeah, I came in with, you know, some maybe lower expectations of like how
this crew of mostly men, mostly white, mostly from the Midwest could speak to or
identify with, relate to people who don't -- who aren't like them. And I was
pleasantly surprised that that wasn't really a thing. I don't think I ever got asked,
what do black people think about this? Are you going to be all right here? I may
have volunteered that perspective once or twice in four and a half years and
thousands of stories and imagery and art and things like that. Because what -first, that room is very difficult to get things through.
So just the -- what's an example? Ashton Kutcher. All right. Let's do this. Yes.
He did an ad for Popchips that some have you may have heard of. Raise your
hand if you do not know what I'm talking about. Good for you. I'm about to ruin
your day [laughter].
So Kutcher did this add for Popchips where he played an Indian Bollywood sort
of single man about town. He dressed in traditional-ish Indian garb. He worry
brown face. And he affected a shitty Indian accent and then proceeded to talk
about, you know, how Popchips make him get the ladies or -- it was also shortly
after his divorce, very public and horrible separation from Demi Moore. So lots of
reasons he shouldn't be doing stuff like this.
Mostly brown face, which should be an obvious thing. Like somebody in that
room should have been like maybe we shouldn't do the brown face thing.
There's like a billion of them. Maybe we ought to cast a brown person. That's
crazy. Why don't we employ a brown person? No. No, I'm going to do this
brown face thing. This is art.
And so he did it and looked very stupid and the ad was pulled and it's
embarrassing. That wouldn't happen at The Onion because the comedy rules
are so enforced. Like say something original, say something that matters, say
something that's funny at least two of those three things have to apply. And so a
lot of nonsense that at another type of room you might think why wasn't anyone
there to stop that just never made it out of the process because someone was
there to stop that.
So that's one. I think also the writers there just do a ton of research. You ever
read Smoothby [phonetic]? All right. So smooth bee is an editorial columnist
character. He is straight out of the early '80s. He's got like kind of a Jerry curl
parted here with three tracks in his head. It's all about the ladies with Smoothby.
Smoothby is written by a large polish man [laughter] named Chris Karwaski
[phonetic]. Whose also the one who does The Onion -- did The Onion radio
news for so many years. Chris is hilarious. Chris put himself in the character.
Chris owned it. But you would never expect -- I show you pictures of them and
this Smoothby character and you're like how did that come out of that guy?
Because I think there's a level of kind of respect for the material, an immersion
that is maybe a little bit more rare than not. I'll think a little bit more about it, but I
don't -- I don't have those types of war stories coming out of that place, despite
the fact that I was the only negroid for so long.
>>: [inaudible] some time for signing books.
>> Baratunde Thurston: Oh, right. Okay.
[applause].
>> Baratunde Thurston: Wow, way to cut me off. [laughter].
[applause]