Why Everyone Is Outraged | Ashley 'Dotty' Charles | Modern Wisdom Podcast 204

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 0:00 Allowing ourselves to exist in that middle ground makes us look as though we're disconnected or we, we don't have an opinion. And sometimes it's all right to say, "I don't know," or, "I think I've got a good idea, but I'm willing to listen to other people before I make my mind up." People hate that. People are so scared of that corridor of indecision that they quickly enter a room, and so we find ourselves just picking a side.

Chris Williamson 0:26 (wind blows) Dodie, how are you?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 0:28 I'm very well. How are you doing, Chris?

Chris Williamson 0:29 Fantastic. Thank you for being here. Could you have realized before writing a book on outrage just how timely mid-2020 would be for it to be published?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 0:39 You know what's crazy? For the past nine months, I've been like, "We gotta drop the book now. We've gotta drop the book now. Oh, I wish it was coming out now. Oh, we need to come..." Outrage is a constant carousel. Any time I would have released this book, people would have said, "What are the odds you've dropped it in a..." This is the world we live in. So I think people are hyperaware now, but I think because I've written the book, every couple of weeks, there's been something that has felt really timely. And I've been like, "Oh, they're canceling David Walliams. We need to-

Chris Williamson 1:13 (laughs)

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 1:13 ... we need to release the book. Oh, oh, no, no, now it's J.K. Rowling, the book needs to come out." Um, it is, it's just constant. And that, I think that's why the book was needed, because any time would have been timely.

Chris Williamson 1:25 The stock price of outrage is, uh, is constantly on the up, isn't it? It's like

Chris Williamson 1:30 Tesla or something at the moment. Why, why did you write a book about outrage a while ago? Like, let's forget this year. Why did you write a book on outrage already?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 1:38 Yeah, so I started this book two years ago, um, well, two and a half years ago. It took me two years to write it. And I'm somebody who has been one of those voices online. I've had arguments with strangers. I've tried to convince people that I've never met that their thinking is wrong and that their belief system is flawed. I've written an open letter to Piers Morgan. I've been that person that I now can't stand, right? I've had pointless arguments. I've been outraged about trivial things. And I kind of reached breaking point, I'd say, and I sort of had an epiphany, and I think when people read this book, they'll each have their epiphany moment. Uh, for me, it was January 2018, and there was outrage about a H&M hoodie, uh, which had been placed on a Black boy, and it said, "Coolest monkey in the jungle." Now, of course, you can look at that through a, a critical lens and say, "What the... This is completely tone-deaf. It's racist." For me, though, it warranted a conversation about who the hell works at H&M and why did nobody flag that this could offend people? I don't think the intention was to offend people. I think it was more symptomatic of their employment structure and how flawed it must be if there's nobody from the stage of idea conception to it making it onto the H&M website, if nobody in that (laughs) conveyor belt of decision-making says, "Oh, maybe we don't put the monkey hoodie on the Black kid."

Chris Williamson 3:18 (laughs)

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 3:18 If, if there's nobody in that, in that system that notices that, there's a problem in the system. But that doesn't warrant knee-jerk outrage, because this is clear, it's not intentional racism by H&M. A, a multi-million revenue company is not gonna one day wake up and say, "Should we be a bit racist today?"

Chris Williamson 3:41 (laughs) Yeah, it harks of-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 3:43 "We throw it all away."

Chris Williamson 3:44 It harks of negligence

Chris Williamson 3:45 or just idiocy-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 3:46 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 3:46 ... right? Rather than, uh, maliciousness.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 3:49 Exactly. And that was my light bulb moment, as I kind of watched the world up in arms, outraged. "H&M are racist. Boycott H&M. They've done this deliberately." In that moment, I was like, "Outrage has gone too far, because it's stifling conversation, and we're not gonna get anywhere by having this knee-jerk reaction." Being quick to, to, to anger doesn't work in every situation. And I felt as though we'd overinflated the outrage bubble, and it had burst for me in that moment. Um, and so I wrote an article about it for The Guardian, and from that article, the book was born.

Chris Williamson 4:28 I absolutely love... I'm gonna read a, the, the passage that you put in from that Guardian article, because it is so good. So this is The Currency of Outrage, published in The Guardian, 25th of January, 2018. "Everyone is offended by everything. It's exhausting. Keeping up with all the non-inclusive, misogynistic, racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, ageist, culturally appropriating, body-shaming propaganda that seems to litter social med- the social media age. Apparently in 2018, almost anything is subject to the scrutiny of one marginalized eye or another. Being outraged allows you to take the moral high ground. It reaffirms your moral righteousness. It lets you say, 'I am offended, and therefore I am principled.' It lets you jump on the bandwagon and pledge allegiance to the latest campaign on your timeline. It gives you a vehicle to add your name to the narrative. It proves that you are following current affairs, albeit from the comfortable vantage point of your Instagram (laughs) feed. It allows you to place yourself on the virtuous side of the conversation. It says, 'I am woke.' And for that reason, outrage has become currency." So much sense making that.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 5:32 Oh, mate, you should have done the bloody audiobook, mate.

Chris Williamson 5:34 Give it to me. Give it to me. I tell you what.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 5:35 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 5:35 Anyone out there that needs it doing, head up to Newcastle. But yeah, that, that, that identifies

Chris Williamson 5:40 it to me. You're right, and currency is the right word for it. It is, it, it's-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 5:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 5:44 ... a sort of tradable commodity that, "Oh, how, so how many, how many virtue points did you get today? How many virtue points did you get today?"

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 5:50 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 5:50 "I, I, I washed, uh, a Black person's feet in the middle of my street. What did you do? Well, I painted some white lines and tried to take over the middle of a c- of a city." Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 6:00 And, and it, not even just in a, sort of a figurative sense, um, although loved your analogy there. Um, it genuinely is currency, right? You can trade off outrage for progress in a very real sense. So, if you look back at the civil rights movement, there was so much currency in that outrage it prompted change. You know? The suffragettes used the currency in their outrage to get the- the- the female vote. You know, outrage can give you a return on your investment. It's not sort of merely ornamental. It's not just a- a- a- a figment of my imagination, this idea of currency. It really has value, you know? And I think what we're doing wrong is by aimlessly investing it, because outrage is an investment on- on an emotional level as well, to apply yourself to something with genuine outrage, it requires impetus, it requires some real effort on your part, so it is an investment of your time, your emotion, your energy. I think our issue is that we don't really look for a return on our investment. We're just kind of throwing our currency out there, you know? And that is where you devalue outrage, where you no longer see the value in it, you know? I think every outrage exchanged should have an end goal. You should be seeking a return on your investment, otherwise you're just barking at strangers, you know, with- with no ambition.

Chris Williamson 7:26 So that overuse of outrage is diluting down the usefulness of outrage?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 7:32 Exactly. So if you imagine just a few trivial things that people have been outraged, why? Because make no mistake, there are times when we do need to be outraged, but if you look at things we've reacted to like Scarlett Johansson being cast, uh, to play, uh, a- a trans woman, Jamie Oliver's jerk rice, these things are tone-deaf, they are poor decisions, but do they warrant outrage on the same scale as white supremacy, of proven moments of misogyny? If we just react in the same way to everything, how do you move the needle when it generally needs to be, when it genuinely needs to be moved, you know? If we- if we're loud, if the volume is always up, how can you cut through the noise when you really need to be heard? And I think that's the issue. Outrage is just our default setting, so it's lost its power.

Chris Williamson 8:30 (laughs) Yeah. Ian.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 8:32 We need to restore factory settings, do you know what I mean? Go- go back a bit so that outrage actually means something when we get there.

Chris Williamson 8:38 I understand. So,

Chris Williamson 8:40 what's the architecture of outrage in 2020? Is there like a- a common narrative or a common structure that it always seems to follow?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 8:48 No, outrage is so multifaceted, and I think that's part of the problem with it. We don't recognize that nuance, you know? We- we lump things all underneath, uh, this umbrella of- of- of cancel culture, which in itself is a myth, but we- we will put a- a... J.K. Rowling next to slave owners, uh, next to some mis- mistake that, um, Phillip Schofield made, and it all gets lumped underneath this umbrella of canceled, and actually there's no metric system for outrage. There's no... there's no threshold that you pass and it's like, "Okay, you're a... you get your badge. You are..."

Chris Williamson 9:31 (laughs) The outrage badge, yeah.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 9:32 You get the outrage badge and it's official, you are indeed canceled. Every situation is unique and it's different, and the issue is our knee-jerk reaction is the same, no matter what the transgression. And I think that's the issue, you know? You- you could be trending number one if you're a mass murderer or- or if you've used somebody's pronoun wrong, you know? You're- you're gonna be trending-

Chris Williamson 9:59 (laughs)

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 10:00 ... in the same way and you're going to be the topic of discussion, which you never want. Rule nu- rule number one of social media, you never wanna be the topic of discussion, right? That, I think that is something we should all avoid is being the main character on- on Twitter on any given day. But it's the fact that we kind of, we respond to all of these transgressions in the same way, and I... What my book aims to do is to point out that it's not just two opposite ends of the spectrum. It's not just warrants outrage, doesn't warrant outrage. It's not... If it was that simple, I'd have written a pamphlet and not a book, right?

Chris Williamson 10:36 (laughs)

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 10:37 It's about recognizing that there are shades in between the black and the white and we need to recognize and identify all of those different shades and respond accordingly rather than just having outrage as our go-to reaction. Something happens, I'm outraged. Something else happens, I'm outraged. It completely, as I said, devalues it.

Chris Williamson 11:00 Why are people going to the extreme then? Why are they not deciding to use a more measured response?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 11:08 First of all, there's something that I refer to as the fear of the fence, right? We are s- so scared of sitting on the fence 'cause we think, oh, the- the fence is for people who are unaffected or uninformed or it's- it's a place of apathy. I can't sit on the fence. I've gotta be either on this side or on that side, and therefore we find ourselves just often, out of sheer force, picking a side in the moment and having to sustain our allegiance to that side, although it's not particularly informed by any real, uh, process of- of- of creating a judgment. It's often us just saying, "I've gotta pick a side. Gotta go with the moral majority here, I think. Uh, that is bad. That is wrong. Cancel them." Because we fear that allowing ourselves to exist in that middle ground...... makes us look as though we're disconnected or we d- we don't have an opinion. And sometimes it's all right to say, "I don't know," or, "I think I've got a n- good idea, but I'm willing to listen to other people before I make my mind up." People hate that. People are so scared of that, that corridor of indecision, that they quickly enter a room. They're like, "Can't, can't be in the fucking corridor. Do you know what I mean? Be- better get in a room." And so we find ourselves just picking a side, and we allow the tide of that decision to take us, you know. You find yourself tethered to this, uh, idea that you made, um, just as a knee-jerk reaction. You find yourself now pigheadedly defending that idea because, again, you, you can't look wishy-washy-

Chris Williamson 12:50 Even if it was-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 12:51 ... so like, "Now I've got-"

Chris Williamson 12:51 ... something you maybe didn't necessarily-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 12:53 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:53 ... agree with or understand-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 12:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:54 ... in the first place. And then-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 12:55 Yeah, you were like, "Shit, I was just retweeting Charlotte, uh, uh, and now I've got to backup my idea. Why the hell do I feel this way?" And, and that is often why you, we get these heated debates, because people are just defending a point of view that, an arbitrary point of view, that they feel they need to remain shackled to. And of course, the internet is so noisy, it's so loud, that in order to cut through, we feel we need to be as loud. And, you know, being mildly disgruntled is not loud enough-

Chris Williamson 13:25 (laughs)

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 13:26 ... on the internet. You've got, you've got to be outraged or I can't hear you, you know?

Chris Williamson 13:30 Some ambient displeasure. Low, tepid-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 13:33 (laughs) Yeah.

Chris Williamson 13:33 Some tepid unhappiness isn't going to make it onto the Truth Social page.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 13:37 It's not gonna, it's not gonna cut it if you want some retweets, mate.

Chris Williamson 13:40 Yeah. I, I think that's definitely part of it. I wonder how much of it's virtue signaling, how much of it I'm-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 13:45 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 13:45 I, I care more than you because I can use more capital letters or clap hand emojis. Um, like, you know, it, it, it does feel a little bit performative.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 13:54 Of course. There is-

Chris Williamson 13:56 So somehow-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 13:56 It is.

Chris Williamson 13:57 Sam, Sam Harris has this thing, uh, in his most recent podcast,

Chris Williamson 14:00 which I thought was ph- phenomenal. He calls it performative communication, and I think that absolutely is what a whole bunch of this is, is occurring. Because a lot of the time if you see one person's point of view on one topic, you can probably extrapolate out their point of view on a whole bunch of other topics as well, both real and imagined.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 14:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:21 If that's the case, you're not a real human. Like, you shouldn't-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 14:24 (laughs) Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:25 ... have, you shouldn't have cookie cutter beliefs at all, ever.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 14:28 Absolutely, absolutely. But our, our social media feeds are ... they're kind of a, a PR release. Everything you post and everything you say, every image you share is you saying, "This is who I am. It's my latest PR release. This is what I stand for." So, we find ourselves constantly trying to project this image of our best bits, you know. "This is how I feel. This is what, this is what I do on the weekends. This is how I bake." It's, it's, it's your highlight reel, right? And, and people find that being outraged is a great moral highlight reel. It's like, "Look what I stand for, man. I'm for the refugees, I'm for the women, I'm for the Muslims, I'm for it all. Lo- uh, lo- look how good I am." And people become more concerned with seeming progressive than being progressive. It's more important that I, that I'm seen to be like this as opposed to actually being like this. And in the book, I, um, I explore the neuroscience behind it as well. So there's, there's like loads of science (laughs) -

Chris Williamson 15:39 Hit us, hit us. We wanna know. Tell us.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 15:41 ... behind, behind why we act like this, right? There's, there's an endorphin. Anybody who has ever posted a view that they thought was kind of specific to them, "This is how I feel on the matter," and then they've started to see the likes and the retweets rack up, that is a rush. That is a biological rush. It's endorphin fueled to be agreed with, right? If I go out in the street and I say, "Hey man, pick up your litter. That is bad," there's no rush there because nobody saw me do it, all right? If I record a video of the, of, uh, uh, petrol company pumping their petrol into this (laughs) picturesque lake, and I shame this company and everybody rallies behind me and says, "Oh my gosh, this is an abomination," that's gonna give me an endorphin rush. And therefore, we like to perform our goodness in front of a crowd. It's, it becomes more important, as I said, to be seen to be doing the thing as opposed to just doing it. And that is our innate need, to be celebrated.

Chris Williamson 16:57 And that's been weaponized by having always-on communication, social media, which is accessible anywhere in the world.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 17:04 Yeah, absolutely.

Chris Williamson 17:07 What are some of your favorite examples of outrage that you looked at from the book? There's quite a few different ones that you go through. Have you got any, have you got any-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 17:13 Um-

Chris Williamson 17:13 ... fa- your favorite hits?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 17:15 So, the, obviously the book explores the weird and the wonderful and the warranted at times, right? Let's not mistake this for a book that says, "Everybody calm down." This book isn't saying, you know, life should be a free-for-all without consequences. You know, it's, it's more me saying, "People and circumstances are intricate, and they deserve that level of care when we, you know, unpack and dissect them." But with that comes the absolutely ridiculous stuff, um, like austerity day, which fascinated me when I, (laughs) I wrote the book. Because you do, you get your usual suspects that kind of float around anything contentious, like flies on shit, right? And you get your Jameela Jamils and then your Jack Monroses.... um, and your David Lammy's and people that are like, "Oh, there's something here that I think I need to be a bit angry about." And those, those moments are the ones that fascinate me, when they're ridiculous. So austerity day was, uh, uh, a private school, (coughs) um, decided that to teach their well-to-do students that not everybody has a larder and a pantry at home and a garage that can fit three cars. They decided to have austerity day to teach them about the other side of life. Um, so they scrapped their duck a l'orange on the s- lunch menu and gave them, like, jacket potatoes, just root veg, and a real, what they thought was a bog standard, uh, lunch. You know, to teach these private school kids that there's a life out there unlike your own. You're gonna learn about austerity via a cheap lunch. Um, (smacks lips) and there was uproar. There was genuine uproar, um, saying that this was ... i- it fetishized, uh, work- the working class, um, that it was a, it was an insult to people who genuinely live this way. And for me, that is one of those absurd moments, right? Because yes, there are children that survive on food banks. There are children whose only hot meal is the meal they go to, they go to school and get. That's their, that's their only hot meal of the day. Austerity is a real major issue. You're not going to dismantle that by slagging off a private school in Southwest London. Do you know what I mean? And I think our issue with matters like this and why it's so important to highlight in the book the, the ridiculous is because we need to take down power structures, right? There are power structures that need to be dismantled. There are entire systems that are flawed. And you don't, you don't take down the tree by sort of jumping up at leaves, and that's what so much of our outrage is. It's us like, "Oh, I got, I, I got a leaf. I got, I got a leaf. I slagged off H&M."

Chris Williamson 20:17 (laughs)

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 20:18 Do you know what I mean? And, and those, those are what, what I call leaves. The sort of, the ridiculous moments.

Chris Williamson 20:26 What do you mean leaves?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 20:26 Because they're ... Yes, they are. They're symptomatic of bigger issues, but they themselves are not the bigger issue.

Chris Williamson 20:31 Yeah. It's

Chris Williamson 20:34 ... I, I really do wonder how many people that involve themselves in this performative communication and decide to go for it full, full chat on Twitter, I wonder how many of them actually believe the things that they're saying. Because it's quite effortful. Like for me to go and take time out of my day to get into big, big Twitter wars, I, I na- I need to, I need to be really compelled to do it. You know?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 20:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:59 Like, I don't want to just do it because I'm, because I'm bored. But I wonder how w- what this spread of these people are that do create this outrage online.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 21:10 Truth be told, as mu- look, as much as I joke about it, and I do. In the book, I, I joke about this issue, um, quite a lot, if I'm being honest. But I joke (laughs) as, as a, as a vehicle to make, uh, quite an important point, which I think is, it's not a laughing matter, outrage, right? And it's not just them over there. It's not those crazy people over there virtue signaling or those crazy people over there that are just quick to, uh, to anger. It's, it's all of us. And at times we don't realize we're doing it because we're not doing this consciously. We're not saying, "Today, I think I'm gonna pretend to be really pissed off about antisemitism." You're ... It's not, it's not an intentional act, right? We go on social media or on blogs or even in our everyday conversations and we tackle the problems we feel are within our reach, right? So much out there is completely insurmountable, or at least it seems insurmountable, right? So you may have some real concerns about government policy and it just feels it's insurmountable. How, how, how do I begin to topple that? It feels as though something that's out of your reach. But what's within reach is Judith_87 talking shit. So we tackle that not because we're bad people that are pretending to be angry, but because we feel as though that is some sort of progress. It's progress within my reach. It's something I can do that is within my means, you know? And it's important with this book to realize that it's not finger pointing, actually. It's actually about saying we need to analyze and assess ourselves and figure out how to be more effective in our communications. Because as I say, it's not just us going out there with, uh, this intent to be fauxraged. We, we're quite convinced that we're doing something. You know? We're, we're, we're actually convincing ourselves that mob justice is social justice. Quite often we conflate the two. We're like, "Oh, brilliant. We're all piling on this thing. Look at us go." You know? "We, we are part of a movement." And it's like, hmm, it's mob justice, it's not actually social justice, but cool. Get your rocks off. You probably feel quite good in that moment. And it's about, it's about channeling, it's about channeling that same sentiment, but into things that matter.

Chris Williamson 23:59 So how

Chris Williamson 24:00 do we decipher between true outrage and fauxrage? 'Cause I'm a fairly ... I like to think I'm a fairly sensitive, reasonable person. I don't want people to feel uncomfortable with.... s- the, the things that are on TV, the David Walliams from 10 years ago, the Bo Selecta, the, uh ... But I also don't want them to feel uncomfortable about gender pay gap. Uh, all of these different things, but as you've said before, there's a line somewhere. There has to be a line that's drawn. So, how do we decipher between the two?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 24:30 Uh, there's so much in what you just said that I would love to unpack. Um, part of it is in our needs to be heroes, right? And we feel as though ... And, and do you know who, who, who q- quite often feel that way? It's kind of white allies who almost go to the extreme where they're like, "I'm gonna be offended by everything on your behalf-"

Chris Williamson 24:55 (laughs)

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 24:55 ... "because I don't-"

Chris Williamson 24:58 Please, don't.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 24:58 ... "I don't, I don't want to be ... I don't wanna be the image of privilege. I don't wanna be the image of supremacy, so I'm gonna go the other way, and I'm gonna bend over backwards, and actually that's offensive, and that's offensive, and that's offensive." And then you get this sort of performative, "I'm on my gap year, um, helping out all the orphanages," and it's actually self-serving. It's to kind of ... It's to negate a privilege that you feel you have. And that's a big part of, of the issue with outrage where we're doing it not for, for the progress of a cause but for the positioning of ourselves, to appease ourselves and make ourselves feel better and feel like I'm, oh, I'm contributing in some way, you know? And if it's, if it's not rooted in a genuine desire for change, it's s- uh, it's not sustainable, and that's where you get these people that they seem really progressive and they seem like great people, but what they care about this week isn't what they cared about three weeks ago, and then there was something totally different they cared about a few weeks before that because you're trying to care about everything. And I say it in the book (laughs) and I say to people all the time, if you stand for everything, you're going to knacker yourself, you'll never sit down, and you'll con- y- you'll not really make any contribution to everything. You'll be giving a little bit of yourself to so many causes, and as you say, you'll sign a petition here, and you'll retweet something over here, and then you'll forward something else to eight friends, but are you committed to changing every- anything? I think, I think that's part of the issue in that we feel obliged to care about everything. There are enough people for us to each play our position and create progress in so many avenues, right? The Civil Rights movement, I, again, I use it as an example, okay? There are incredible creatives, for example, James Baldwin, uh, Maya Angelou, Angela Davis who had to kind of park their creativity and be like, "Okay, I've got to figure out the Civil Rights movement first." It's like you, you can't just be a poet. You can't just be a, a, a writer. We've got to, we've got to tackle this issue first. And you see that progress when people kind of ball themselves into a fist, right? We're kind of busy off being fingers (laughs) these days. We're like, "Well, I'm, uh, I'm over here doing that. I'm over here doing this," and we don't pack the punch of a fist because we're not concerted in sustained efforts, and I think that's a, uh, a real big issue, i- that we need to care about things, but we need to be unwavering. We need to be sustained and dedicated in those things, which the internet doesn't always give you room to do, you know? If you, if you look at what's trending, if you refresh it in 30 seconds, it's gonna be a jumble of new things in a, in a different order, and we feel like, uh, oh, shit. We're talking about this now? And we feel an obligation to move with the conversation. The conversation moves so fast online. We're not caring about anything long enough to actually create change 'cause we see what happens when, when we do. You get moments like Black Lives Matter, which wasn't a, uh, trending for a day. It wasn't trending for a week. It, it forced people to have self-reckoning. It, it created conversations. It, it felt like a bit of a social shift because it wasn't something that just you refreshed and it disappeared, and that's where there's so much power in outrage. It's, it's not in, in what you say there where you're like, "I, I, I want people to be happy here, and I want people to be happy here, and I want ..." It's about saying, "Okay. I can't be all things to all people right, right now. Where can I effect change? Where c- where can I be a strong ally? Where can I be committed to a cause as opposed to trying to stand for everything?" Which is bloody exhausting.

Chris Williamson 29:06 Whose

Chris Williamson 29:07 job is it to police people being fauxraged? Is it-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 29:13 Nobody's job.

Chris Williamson 29:14 Right. Okay, so, so-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 29:15 It's, it is nobody's job, oka- and this is, this is an important point I make in the book. This book isn't me saying, you know, "This is a manual. This is a m- this is a manual that you must follow to be correctly outraged." It's, it's a roadmap, right? It's like an old school A to Z. Where it takes you is up to you. All right? If you want it to take you east, it will take you east. If you want it to take you west, it will take you west. It's me taking a deep dive and kind of serving up everything that I found, and one thing that I found is, look, outrage is subjective, you know? It's like this ... again, this idea of, of cancel culture. There's no universal way to establish if something deserves to be canceled. Something that offends you may not offend me. There may be something that truly offends me, but it doesn't reflect your lived experience, so you can have empathy, but you can't be outraged on the scale that, that, that I am. Right? So h-You can't police what I'm outraged by, just as I can't police what you're outraged by. All right? And often you get these people that are like, "Oh, I don't get it. Why is, why is everyone overreacting to this thing that's allegedly transphobic?" You're not, you're not trans, so you cannot measure the offense, right? It's again with, with antisemitism, it's, it's been, um, on the agenda recently because of Nick Cannon, and people are like, there's people like, "Oh, gosh, but did he mean to be antisemitic?" If you, if you are not the target of a topic, or if you're not the person that is directly affected, it is not your place to determine whether or not the outrage is warranted. What I urge people to do in this book is to ensure that when they are outraged, they have gone through that process of, of, of checking with themselves whether there's a purpose, whether there's, whether there's meaning, whether there's reasoning behind this avenue, you know? And I, and I think that's the most important thing, not, not us dictating how other people respond, but in us being responsible for how we respond, you know?

Chris Williamson 31:34 That's hard

Chris Williamson 31:35 though. It's much easier for me-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 31:36 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 31:36 ... to just be outraged and, and do a retweet and say, "Fuck J.K. Rowling."

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 31:41 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 31:41 "I never liked, I never liked Harry Potter anyway. Hermione's a bitch."

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 31:46 (laughs) bloody Ron Weasley.

Chris Williamson 31:49 I know. (laughs)

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 31:49 Never liked him. Um, look, we, we don't give ourselves enough credit, man, for how much we can steer and curate our own experience. So, we often go onto the internet, and as I said, we, we just respond to what's already there. Yeah? So, okay, everybody's angry about this thing. Quite often the people that are responding to it didn't consume it firsthand. They, you know, quite often we react to things we didn't watch live or to things written in newspapers that we don't read, you know? Or something that was said on a TV network in a country that we don't live in, but we've consumed this transgression online, and now we feel obliged to respond to it. Again, absolutely exhausting. There is enough in your realm firsthand that you can respond to. We have this thing where we seek out offense, which really frustrates me. We kind of, we look for the hot topic of the day. We say, "Okay, what's everybody talking about? Okay, this is trending. There are a lot of tweets about that. I better put my two pence in." And as I, I describe it in the book as the outrage conga line, right? We don't know where it's going, we don't know where it's, where it's, where it started-

Chris Williamson 33:09 But fuck it, let's all join. (laughs)

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 33:11 ... but we're like, "We're doing a fucking conga, mate. Fine." And that's, that's what these mass moments of outrage often are. People were, with the David Walliams book, um, with the, with the kids books, right, which was, um, kind of topic of discussion recently on social media. I read it and I was like, I, I, sort of, I read the threads started by Jack, uh, Monroe. Um, I, I read the threads and I was like, "Fuck, this book sounds absolutely awful." Like, his books sound horrendous, this is ... But then I was like, "There's, I've got enough shit in my day today. I don't need to join the David Walliams pile-on," if I'm being completely honest. We don't give ourselves the credit that we, we should be giving ourselves. We don't, we don't harness that power to create, to curate, sorry, what we consume. You can say, "Not having that. Zoning out. Blocking that. Muting that. Unfollowing you. Not joining this conversation. Oh, I've got a view on that. What, is my perspective adding anything unique that hasn't been said? Probably not. Bob just said it 10 minutes ago, I'd just be saying it in a different way." And if we, if we do that more, more effectively, more, more consciously, we'll not only, uh, sort of rediscover the power in our outrage, but we'll have a better experience online. So many people kind of tap out of, of Twitter and Facebook because they're like, "I can't take it. I ca- I, I hate it. It's negative." It's like, you could actually, you actually have the power to curate who you follow and to control what you consume.

Chris Williamson 34:56 Absolutely. That's why I only follow, I think, 98 people now, and taking that down-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 35:00 Ooh, good number.

Chris Williamson 35:01 ... taking that down from, like, 2,000 or something has just cleaned it up, 'cause I just see the things that are interesting, not necessarily stuff that I agree with. I wonder how much of this, especially to do with social media-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 35:12 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 35:12 ... is to do with the frictionlessness and the lack of consequence from thought to projection of the things that appear in our consciousness. So, 100 years ago, in order for me to go and tell a large number of people anything would have actually been quite effortful. I've had to have-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 35:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 35:33 ... got my boots on, told the wife that I was leaving, you know, jumped on my horse, on my cow, or whatever. Do you ride cows?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 35:38 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 35:38 Anyway, um, (laughs) do you want me to... I can tell that I'm such a farm hand.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 35:40 If you're a, if, if you're riding a cow in this story, mate, commit.

Chris Williamson 35:43 Thank you. Thank you. That's not-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 35:45 You're-

Chris Williamson 35:45 Not prejudice against cows, not prejudice against horses either.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 35:48 You're on your cow.

Chris Williamson 35:48 Yes, I am. And I'm, I'm just, like, shouting it, you know? Like, "Ho! It is, there is a, a huge problem over here," and I'm, like, alerting people. It's so effortful. That time in between me having a thought arise in consciousness and then going, "Right, I'm off to get the cow," like, all of that different, (laughs) that process would have given me chance to reflect, "Actually, is this worth me getting the cow out? Is this worth me going and shouting at all of my neighbors?" And then...... because there's no anonymity, because people actually have to see you, you see their reactions, you're very, uh, you're, you're, you're not detached from the act of the saying or the receiving of the words either.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 36:32 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 36:33 And I wonder how much this always on communication, constant dopamine hits, we're not built to consume, human brain is not built to consume the entire globe's news in real time. Like-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 36:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:43 ... by definition, obviously, we're not. And then when, again, you have this frictionless sort of m- brain to mouth or, uh, keypad system that we've got going on at the moment, I think that might lend people to say a lot of things that they maybe don't agree with and obviously, that pushes them out into these extremes.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 37:03 A- absolutely. Like, you've hit the nail on the head. That is a huge part of the issue. It's, it's the speed of the internet, right? And people often find themselves n- wanting to be fast rather than factual, right? It's like, "Oh, I, I better, I better sum up how I feel about this very quickly," as opposed to, "Okay, let me read this and let me take this in and let me, you know, have a beat." We don't give ourselves that beat. And again, as you said, a great point, we're not built to consume the world's news, right, in, in real time, which is why you find clickbait is the, is the source of so much outrage, be- we haven't got time to consume the whole article, so I'm going to base my judgment on that headline, right? So if that headline says, "Chrissy Teigen Aboard Jeffrey Epstein's Private Jet," fuck s- Chrissy Teigen's a pedophile. Do you know what I mean? That, like, I, I, I, I, that's how I have to consume the news. So now, Chrissy Teigen's a baddie in my eyes. I haven't got time to read the article, and that's how so much of our news is consumed, and that's why we often get ourselves in, in a pickle with our outrage, because we haven't done the due diligence. We haven't actually researched what it is we're angry about, or we've, we've got angry about a, a 25-second clip of an interview. "Oh, I haven't got time to go and read the, the whole thing," or, "I haven't got time to go and watch the whole interview. I'm gonna base my judgment on this bit that was taken entirely out of context and that is how I'm gonna form my judgment." It's this issue of speed which seems to have rid us of all our critical thinking, and it's another, it's another reason why our outrage is in a state of disrepair.

Chris Williamson 39:00 The

Chris Williamson 39:02 thinly spread outrage which we're giving back might actually be a reflection of this thinly consumed information coming in. It seems like that, that would make quite a bit of sense, that no one has the time to genuinely connect with a social cause that they thoroughly care about because there's three a day-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 39:24 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 39:24 ... that they need to try and keep up with. (laughs)

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 39:26 Exactly. Exactly. We are, we are the, sort of the cure and the cause of, of, of this thing. We, we are putting out what we're consuming, and then we're consuming what was being put out, and we're just in this sort of horrible dystopian echo chamber.

Chris Williamson 39:45 We are. (laughs)

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 39:45 Um, and, and it's this, it's a carousel that I wanna get off, mate.

Chris Williamson 39:49 So I've had this. This is one of the proofs, which is actually really cool. Um-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 39:53 Ooh.

Chris Williamson 39:54 I know, this is early. Did you ever get one of those?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 39:56 I did. That's a, that is, that's gonna be nice for me one day.

Chris Williamson 39:59 I've had this for a- I've had it, exactly. I'm gonna have to get you to sign this for me. But this has been, this has been with me since February?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 40:06 Begin- beginning of the year, yeah.

Chris Williamson 40:07 Yeah. S- so what would you, if you were to do, uh, an appendix to this based on from when, when you finished writing it until now, would there have been anything else that you would've thrown in? Was there some stuff that appeared and obviously you were like, "We need to get the book out now," but also stuff that was like, "Fuck. Like, I wish, I wish I could've put that situation in or that situation in"? Is there anything that appeared in 2020 that you, you would've liked to have had?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 40:33 I think the, the great thing about this book is that, as I said, it, it could've come out at any time, because it's just, it's symptomatic of the world we're living in. And if I had written it next year or the year after, there would've just been a different set of case studies, right? Making the same points, but a different set of case studies. J.K. Rowling, for example, is... As much as I've tried to disconnect from these instances of cancel culture, which as I'll, I'll always give the caveat that cancel culture is a myth, but J.K. Rowling, it, it, it fascinates me, because everyone is like, "J- J.K. Rowling has been canceled." This is, this is the problem with this idea of cancel culture, right? It doesn't exist, okay? J.K. Rowling has not been canceled, all right? Peo- people are not burning their Hogwarts merch, right? People are not, they're not shutting down Harry Potter Land. They're not. H- h- her books are still performing well. The, the, the issue with, with J.K. Rowling speaking out against cancel culture is what fascinates me more than this idea of cancel culture itself, because we've created a climate where people can evade accountability by hiding behind this idea of cancel culture. So rather than saying, "Maybe I've messed up here and I need to have conversations and I need to go for a bit of self-reckoning," you could say, "The world's gone mad. Look, they're bullying me. I'm, um, and, and you can hide behind this, this veil," which almost-... inverts the entire thing and makes, and makes you a victim. And I write about this in, in the book, just with a different reference. In the book, it's Danny Baker who has said, um, you know, he put that picture out of a sort of newborn royal baby, a monkey. I don't know, monkeys as a motif returns in this book. Um, but yes, he put, he put a picture out of a monkey in reference to the royal baby, got fired from his BBC Radio job. And rather than saying, "Shit, that was tone-deaf and I completely get why it appears offensive for me to post a picture of a monkey, uh, in reference to a biracial baby. The first glimpse of melanin in the royal family. There's some unconscious bias maybe on my part that I'm- my mind's even posting a monkey picture." His reaction was, "Cancel culture, man. Th- these snowflakes, man. It, like ... the world's gone crazy." And that's part of the issue with cancel culture, is that it's, it's created a, a, a curtain behind which you can, you can actually hide from your transgressions and divert the conversation, and make it about free speech, and make it about censorship, rather than actually accepting that you may have made a bad decision, you may have had a, a, a poor choice of words, you may have expressed yourself wrongly. Rather than accepting that, there's now something to hide behind.

Chris Williamson 43:54 There has to be a time when that's not the case, though. For instance, I don't know whether you looked at ... (clears throat) You know, remember Mario Lopez from Saved by the Bell?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 44:01 From Saved by the Bell, yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:03 D- did you see, uh-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 44:03 AC Slater.

Chris Williamson 44:05 A- AC Slater, yeah. He just hasn't aged at all.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 44:08 At all.

Chris Williamson 44:08 No.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 44:08 At all.

Chris Williamson 44:09 Um, did you see what he said about, uh, children undergoing gender reassignment under the age of three?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 44:19 What did he say? Bloody hell.

Chris Williamson 44:21 So this is, like, maybe

Chris Williamson 44:23 a year and a bit ago now, I spoke to Andrew Doyle on the show about this and, um, basically it was the most measured, pedestrian statement I've ever seen from someone. No one reasonable would have taken offense at this, and he essentially said this long-winded, loads of hyperbole, loads of caveats, and then he eventually-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 44:41 All went away.

Chris Williamson 44:41 ... eventually says, "I don't know if children under the age of three should be being told that they're perhaps the wrong gender." Like, you know, my business partner's kid is like a fireman one minute, then a postman the next, then a, a, a, an astronaut the next, and blah, blah, blah. I don't think that any of those ... And he said this real gentle sentence, put it out there, and just got annihilated. There were people calling for his head at MTV. Three days later, he gives the, the most groveling, "I have educated myself. I am- I've always been an ardent supporter of the LGBTQ+ community. I believe in this. I, I w- have further..." Blah, blah, blah. And I just think that there was nothing wrong with what you said. You're talking about people who were too young to have sex, but are young enough to have their gender reassigned. Like, uh, I don't know. The- that, that, to me, seems like one of the times where cancel culture does come for someone.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 45:44 The, the ... Cancel culture in situations like this, which is, which is one, one of many, it's difficult when people are clumsy in their messaging, right? And often we mean well. We, we, we're trying to say something. We've inadvertently offended somebody, right? We s- we see this happening a lot. The weight of public opinion is such that we are now just stifling conversation, where even ... Like, I was about to call him AC Slater.

Chris Williamson 46:18 (laughs)

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 46:18 Ma- Mario Lopez may have had a conversation with a, a, a parent of a, a, a, a trans boy later on down the line, and actually been like, "Do you know what? Bloody hell, I actually never been in that situation. I've now had some conversations. As much as I think I, my idea was rooted in, in, in sense, I can kind of see why there may be exceptions to that." Right? What, what we've done, though, is we've stifled it, and you force someone into a corner, you force them to renounce their feeling, and you've just kind of hustled an apology out of somebody, which again, I write about in the book, these kind of hustled apologies which actually mean nothing at all. And my fear around that is that we're just kind of creating this sort of dystopian future, man, where everyone is scared to speak, everyone's scared to drive an SUV because they're gonna look like they don't care about the environment, you know? And, uh, everybody just wears gray because anything else might be-

Chris Williamson 47:25 Just in case you culturally appropriate something.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 47:27 Exactly, so can't, can't wear anything that might be a material that is in some way indigenous to some other place. Everybody's just ... Their, their hair's ... We're just gonna have to just not have our hair in any style. Um, I, I fear that where we're kind of just listening to elevator music and driving our hybrid cars to just be as inoffensive as possible. And as, as black mirror as it sounds, I feel as if, if there's not an outrage intervention, that that is actually where, where we're headed, where there'll be no more Mario Lopezes, 'cause nobody's speaking.

Chris Williamson 48:04 Exactly. Well, I mean, I feel that as well on this show. Like, I try and just have as little filter as possible from brain to mouth so that the audience has faith that what they hear is what I think. Thankfully, I have quite, uh, usually have quite reasonable views, as opposed to if I was (laughs) someone who was having to self-censor all the time, I'd just immediately being bother.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 48:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:22 But I feel that. I, like, ugh, God, li- i- is this wrong? 'Cause last year it maybe wasn't so wrong, but this year I'm seeing people getting in real bother for t- t- talking about things around these. So when the rules are always changing-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 48:35 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:35 ... it can be really, really worrying. And if that's someone like myself and, and you who talk a lot, w- w- professionally, what about the person on the street? They're not supposed to be a professional. They're not supposed to spend their time-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 48:47 Ugh.

Chris Williamson 48:47 ... really finding the nuance of where their position sits.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 48:51 Exactly. And that is ... I, I, I start one of the chapters in the book saying, "I have written this book out of sheer terror," right? I'm writing this book because I think if somebody doesn't write it, it's just, who's gonna be left? Just the Pope, you know? And then the Pope will fuck up.

Chris Williamson 49:07 (laughs) He's too white. Yeah.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 49:09 The- then th- then there'll be some skeletons in the closet there. It's li- it's if we're, we're creating a, a framework of perfection, um, and sort of moral high ground. Uh, w- we're raising the bar to levels that we ourselves will at some point fall short of, right? So, we're cr- we're kind of placing this parameter around acceptable behavior which is getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller until, until none of us are in it. And it's that, th- that's what terrifies me, and that's part of why I, I wrote the book. As you say, in a vocation where you're a broadcaster or you're, you're a podcaster where you're literally ... you're documenting your views. Right now we're saying, "This is how I feel in 2020. Dig this up in 2040." We've literally wh- we've put it out there now, right? And on social media you're documenting your views in a landscape that is ever-changing, and y- you are putting something there in perpetuity that we can now dig up in six, seven years and say, "Oh, God. You s- you said woman?"

Chris Williamson 50:15 You used to think that. Used to think that.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 50:16 "We don't say woman anymore."

Chris Williamson 50:19 (laughs) h- h- how long-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 50:21 How, how archaic, you know?

Chris Williamson 50:22 I know, yeah. How long

Chris Williamson 50:25 should someone be held accountable for a thing that happened in the past? Because we're seeing a lot of sort of past experiences get dredged up.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 50:34 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:35 Where's the, where's the line for that?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 50:38 Again, th- these things are, are, are subjective, right? So there are ... For example, there are people who have just been on Twitter for 12 years and, look, it was the wild, wild west back then, all right? So you've got somebody who joined Twitter when they were 14 and said some absolutely ridiculous shit, uh, but now they're, they're 26 and, shit, their potential employer has found out that, who they were s- that they were, they were body-shaming, um, some TV presenter, uh, when they were 14, all right? There need, there needs to be a certain level of, of common sense, right? If you were saying something 12 years ago but you're a 60-year-old man and you were, you were still in your 40s and your f- your f- your opinions were well-formed, I think these things need to be, need to be handled o- on a case-by-case basis. But it's like with, it's like with cultural moments like, like Little Britain and Fawlty Towers where it's so difficult because, again, tones change, attitudes change. That, that is the nature of, of the world we're, we're living in, right? And what, what frustrates me with the mob is this idea that you have to be tethered to your attitudes, right? If you f- if you felt that way then or you made that show then, that must be reflective of how you feel now, right? If everything we are doing is for the purposes of progress, so if we are getting outraged because we want gender pay gaps to disappear, if we're being outraged because we want policies to change or we want attitudes to change and we are out there, we are protesting in the streets because we want things to change, then we see that there's a capacity for change. You can't have both. You can't say, "Look at who you used to be. You'll never change," while saying, "But I'm gonna go and, out here and protest and, um, hope for change."

Chris Williamson 52:49 (laughs)

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 52:50 You, you, you cannot have it both ways. If you're going to contribute to the fight for change, you have to also accept that people have the capacity to change. And I feel like there's a real lack of compassion, uh, on, on the internet, uh, at, at the moment, especially when it comes to sort of retrospective rage, things that you said then, things that you felt then. As I said, th- there's going to be nuance in, in, in these different cases. But for the most part if somebody has been held accountable and they've said, "I, I said that eight years ago and I'm ashamed and I'm embarrassed and I do not stand by that person I was eight years ago," there needs to be the space to allow for that, you know. You can't say, "Nope, not having that. You, you are canceled for who you were-"

Chris Williamson 53:46 See you.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 53:46 "... in 2012." Because you, you genuinely ... You cannot, you cannot have it both ways.

Chris Williamson 53:53 It's dangerous to

Chris Williamson 53:55 judge the actions of today by the, uh, judge the actions of yesterday by the rules of today. Like, really, really dangerous.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 54:01 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:01 Um, and it's ... The John Cleese thing, the Fawlty Towers thing's such a good example. You're talking decade ... Was it, like, 1970s? Something like that. Like-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 54:09 I'm not, I'm not sure of the date. But th- look, there is s- blackface, Fawlty Towers, slavery. Th- there is so much which in its time was accepted, right? And-... yet we, we cannot turn a, a blind eye to the world we once lived in. And, and that, that's where sometimes I'm like, "Should these things be coming down? Should you just delete Fawlty Towers? Should you just delete Little Britain?" Or, do these things need to come with a disclaimer up front that says, "This is the world we used to live in." You know? Or, or, or, or are, are we going to completely erase the, the, the, the history, and, uh, the history that is littered with bigotry. It is. It's littered with, with, with prejudice. I think it's actually a cop-out for the people that perpetuated those views. I think it's easy for you to just pretend you didn't, didn't have those views. I think it's easy to yank Little Britain down and, um, allow Matt Lucas and David Williams to escape that. That's, that's too much of a cop-out. Not, that, that should exist, continue to exist as a representation of the tone of the day. I, and th- and that's my honest opinion. I, I actually don't think we should be pulling things off streaming services and pretending they didn't happen, because that allows you to escape what was the tone of the day, you know?

Chris Williamson 55:46 That's, that's how we make lessons, right?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 55:49 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 55:49 The lessons are created by us being able to reflect on history, and uh, one of the, the greatest ever losses was the burning of the Library of Alexandria.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 55:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:58 Like, if all of that compiled wisdom hadn't been lost, like, it genuinely, I think we believe we're sort of these technocratic gods that are always just gonna be omnipotent and all of our future generations are gonna remember shit. It's like, no, there is no cultural cannon that will remember Little Britain in 100 years time if you decide to... Or if you decide to delete anything. If you get rid of all of the memories of all of this stuff and it's only available on fucking VHS, like, to be put into a (laughs) a machine that no one has anymore, that very, very much will disappear from the, uh, the artifact, the architecture of cultural history. And then, then what happens? Are you, do you just have to relearn that lesson again? Is it like, "Oh, okay, well, we don't have that, we don't have the proof that that lesson went wrong, so, like, might just stumble upon it again"?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 56:48 Yeah, and look, it's all a, it's a, bloody, it's a tapestry, isn't it? Like, our, our experience, um, as humanity's experience, existence is a tapestry of everything that has happened. You can't just be like, "Don't like, don't like how that patch looks anymore." It's par- it's part of it, I'm afraid. Like, part of this quilt is gonna be fucking ugly and it's, it's what we've built and as we progress, we will like the look of it more, right? You can't just start un-stitching all the other shit, right?

Chris Williamson 57:20 (laughs)

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 57:20 And I was having this conversation the other day about Gwen Stefani, right? Because-

Chris Williamson 57:25 What's she done now? What's she done?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 57:27 She hasn't done anything now.

Chris Williamson 57:29 Oh.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 57:29 But if, if you look at (laughs) if you look at old Gwen Stefani videos, right? Where she had a bindi-

Chris Williamson 57:35 Mm-hmm.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 57:36 ... she had dreadlocks and she had three Japanese girls on leashes. This was her look.

Chris Williamson 57:43 (laughs)

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 57:43 Gwen Stefani would never get away with that now.

Chris Williamson 57:45 (laughs)

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 57:46 You, you just couldn't. It, it's, you're offending everybody.

Chris Williamson 57:49 (laughs) It's almost like Gwen's gone out of her way-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 57:52 That, it won't, y- yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:53 ... to find how many different cultures she can appropriate (laughs)

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 57:56 Yeah, "H- how many birds can I kill with one stone?" Right?

Chris Williamson 58:00 Yeah. (laughs)

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 58:00 And you'd, you'd never get away with it now. But I was a Gwen Stefani fan when Gwen Stefani was, was out, and I didn't recognize how actually under the lens of, of woke 2020 how awful this is gonna look. I can't just erase my experience as a teen that quite enjoyed a bit of Hey Baby by G- Gwen Stefani, right? And it, it's about, as you say, just taking these as, as lessons, as, as things to learn from, and accepting that, look, we, we will, we will like the look of our, of our tapestry the, the more we progress.

Chris Williamson 58:43 It's good to reflect on the fact that you were present when that sort of stuff came up as well, right? Because it reminds us that we were also either, um, ignorant or willfully blind or, um, a part of whatever society and structure allowed anything in the past. Like, uh, Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark was put on Variety's 10 films which should come with a warning label because it showed stereotypical depictions of Hindu people as the people that'll try and take your heart out.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 59:15 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:15 Um, as the, as the evil villains. And Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is also a part of that list, um, a, a whole bunch of other, other movies. When those movies came out, I, I, I haven't been seeing this huge campaign for Raiders of the Lost Ark to come down over the last 30 years, like people outside of Harrison Ford's house with pickets, which means that you were there then, but your opinions have changed to now. And it harks back to what you said about growth. Like, if your opinions-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 59:45 Well, I-

Chris Williamson 59:45 ... are different...

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 59:46 ... mm. I would, I would give that the caveat though that quite often people who are the, the butt of the joke, right? And qui- quite often you have movies and you have TV programs that punch down, right? "Let's take the piss out of Indian people. Let's take the piss out of, of Black people. Let's take the piss out of women." Right? Th- the nature of so much dated media punched down, and you don't get that as much now. But the people who were the target or, or, or the butt of the joke weren't necessarily empowered or in a position to say, "Not really enjoying this." Right? So-It does always need to come with a- with a caveat, 'cause there's no blanket rule that says, "That was the past and we can't dwell on the past." Ag- uh, this is k- kind of what my book is about. Every situation is nuanced, right? There's no paint-by-numbers response that is gonna fit every single instance of- of outrage. And there will be, there will be people that- that watch Little Britain and were offended, right, that- that- that w- w- were offended by its depiction of- of- of- of chav culture and felt that it was classist, but there was no outlet. Or they didn't feel like, "W- what am I gonna say?" You know, everyone's enjoying the show. Or there'll be people that were uncomfortable with the blackface that now feel as though the- the tide has- has- has- has changed and- and actually I- I- I can say that I felt this way, you know? So there- there is always gonna be- be that side and it's- and it's important, which is why I say it's- you can't be scared of that gray area, man. Like, so- so much of our- our- our online arguments are because we refuse to accept that there's a gray area, and there almost always is.

Chris Williamson 1:01:42 Any non-typical view that someone holds, if you say, "I am a," this person, "conservative, a person of Jewish heritage, Chinese," whatever it might be. If you have, let's say you're a conservative, but you're also pro-life, that is seen as a- a chink in your armor, as, like, a weakness-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 1:01:59 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:01:59 ... in your viewpoint.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 1:02:01 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:01 And I think that that is one of the reasons why people seem to be taking their views wholesale rather than piecemeal, that it's like, "I am a" this person.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 1:02:10 Love that. I love that, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02:12 "Therefore I'm gonna go through the rest of it." That's not an original thought. That is me taking it from someone else, but I don't know who it is so we're gonna... I'm the closest person that we're gonna reference.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 1:02:19 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:02:20 Um, but yeah, that during a debate if you have a nuanced view, the other side sees that as a weakness. "Ah, you see? You see? I knew he wasn't really pro-Trump-"

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 1:02:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02:33 "... Democrat," whatever it might be-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 1:02:34 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:34 "... because he doesn't agree on this." And it's like-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 1:02:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02:37 ... yeah, obviously I don't, because I don't happen to be Donald Trump, I don't happen to be Joe Biden, I don't happen to be, like, the- the- this particular person. And with that in mind, I'm going to have these little nuances and these gray areas.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 1:02:51 Yeah. And I- I- I write in the book about tribalism which is something that really, it- it- we just career down these cul-de-sacs of opinion because we feel railroaded by our tribes, right? So, you might feel as though, "Shit, I'm a- I'm a vegan from the, uh, three counties and I've gotta stand for everything that is an affront to my community and my veganism and I- I can't fall outside of the parameters of what it means to be in that tribe." So often, we find people speaking up because it's an affront to their tribe, not necessarily because they personally are offended but because they feel they're supposed to be offended, right? "Shit, this person has said something about women. Fuck, I'm not that offended but I have got a feminism podcast, I'd better say something."

Chris Williamson 1:03:48 (laughs)

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 1:03:48 Do you know what I mean? Or, and you get- you get so much of that, people feeling as though because of the groups to which they subscribe that they have to respond to everything or they're letting their tribe down. And that- that is when you get people shouting about a H&M hoodie because, "I'm Black and I've gotta be angry about the monkey hoodie," right? You know? And it's- it's that which doesn't allow for nuance quite often.

Chris Williamson 1:04:14 It's like vicinity offense. It's like this isn't something I'm offended by but it's kind of, it's k- there's someone near me that might have done, so-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 1:04:24 It's in my realm. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:04:25 Yeah, ex- it is, it's in-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 1:04:26 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:04:26 ... it's in the vicinity. Um, so, what can people do? How can the listeners move forward and- and- and that sort of act a little bit better? If you were to leave people with some tips of how to be better outragers, how can we make outrage great again?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 1:04:40 Oh, again, this is, there are so many... This is like a three-step guide, right? It's- it's about you figuring out for yourself what you care about. Again, the- the worst thing, the biggest disservice I could've done in this book is tell people what to care about. I don't, like, I just... It- it- it- it doesn't work, uh, to try and, as I say, fit- fit a framework around somebody else's ideas and- and belief systems. That's the beauty of humanity. There are going to be little differences i- i- in all of us. What I will always say is you- you owe it to yourself to only be outraged by that which truly outrages you. And that seems like a really sensible concept, like, "Yeah, of course I'm only outraged by things that out- outrage me, duh." But no. You- you may think you are genuinely outraged but if you were genuinely outraged then you want to get something out of it, right? The purpose of outrage is progress. It's- it's the only reason outrage should exist is because you feel something needs to change, right? "I am outraged by this because these- these policies are- are archaic. I'm against this because I feel as though it is racist, it's offensive, it's sexist and- and that needs to change. I want this to happen," right? Which is why I continue to use the analogy of outrage as currency. Treat your outrage as you would a real investment, right? You wouldn't blindly be like, "Oh, I'll put 5K in that."Oh, put 10K in that. These are your life savings, right? Your outrage is your emotional life savings, right? It, it is, it is yours to invest as you see fit. Every single time you are outraged, you are spending your currency, you are investing it. Stop doing it blindly. Stop doing it where you are not seeking a, a return on your investment because you are pouring your outrage down the drain, because you want to see a return on your investment and, and you owe that to yourself.

Chris Williamson 1:06:59 I, I really, really hope that the internet takes heed of this. It sounds like a much nicer place to live. Whatever's inside Outraged-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 1:07:08 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:07:08 ... seems like a much more wonderful place to be than we are right now.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 1:07:12 Yeah. I just, I just think we need an intervention, which is what this book was. It's for all the outrage junkies or friends of junkies, you know? Sometimes your crackhead friend is not gonna read the book and you've gotta read it for them, right? So this is for anybody in need of an intervention or, or who knows somebody that might.

Chris Williamson 1:07:33 I love it. Uh, it will be linked in the show notes below, of course. If you wanna go and check this out, it will be available on Amazon. You said that you'd done, you've done an audio version as well, so you've done the ki-

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 1:07:42 There's a-

Chris Williamson 1:07:42 ... the audible?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 1:07:43 There's an audiobook.

Chris Williamson 1:07:44 Yeah.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 1:07:44 If, I mean, if you're not sick of my voice an hour into this podcast, there's some more in the audiobook. If you, if you don't like this tone, go for the hardback.

Chris Williamson 1:07:55 (laughs) Get something else. It's a fairly easy read as well, right? You know, you could probably crack this out in a few days, but it's really dense and there's some, there's some great laughs in. So yeah, linked in the show notes below. Anything else you want to plug, Dori? Anywhere, other places that people should go?

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 1:08:08 No. Read the book, share it, uh, spread the word. I think this is one of those books I'm not so much fussed with people going out and buying it. I would love you to read this book and just give it to somebody else and then tell them to give it to somebody else. It's not about shifting the units on this one. I think (laughs) it's about continuing the conversation. So please, um, yeah, recycle your Outraged! book once you've read it.

Chris Williamson 1:08:35 I love that. That's a really good sentiment. Thank you so much for your time. That is awesome. And, uh, as I say, link's in the show notes below. If anyone wants to go and get this, go and check it out.

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles 1:08:43 Thanks so much, mate.

Narrator 1:08:48 (outro music)