Emma Gannon on understanding, not agreeing
How We Live Now with Katherine May:
Emma Gannon on understanding, not agreeing
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Emma Gannon is a true digital native, a storyteller who finds creative inspiration in online communities, and who has sought a more thoughtful way to be in the digital spaces that so dominate our lives.
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Listen to the Episode
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Katherine May:
Hello, from the very wet woods, where I'm out looking for mushrooms, as usual. It's really interesting. I only started to learn how to do this a couple of years ago, and I already have my favorite spots. I mean, of course, often that's just because they're near to home, but I'm beginning to realize that some get mushrooms earlier than others, and that's because some get saturated by the rain earlier than others, so this morning I went out to have a look at the spot that was full of things for me to find and there was nothing. Everything was kind of sodden, actually, and I don't know, it'd gone over. You could really tell it was too wet to find a mushroom there now, and so I've come back here, where it was too dry a month ago and it was disappointing. It felt like everything was very dead, and here, I can just see loads of mushrooms. I don't always pick to eat. Oh here's one. What's this? Hello? Nope, you're not an eater.
I do talk to them, I'm sorry, but yeah, I don't always pick to eat. I'm often just having a look to see what I know the names of and what I don't, and trying to learn the names of the ones that I don't know the name of yet, but also, I pick for medicine. I make medicine out of birch [inaudible 00:01:54], which is a very anti-inflammatory mushroom and it helps my gut no end. Ooh, that was a moldy one. I just put my finger through it. That's gross. It's not all glamour, you know. You see all these overflowing baskets on Instagram, and those people don't tell you that they've reached out and put their hand through a mushroom. I also pick Turkey tail and other varieties that I make tinctures from.
I think what I love at this time of year is a reason to go out in the rain. It's a very dull day, very forbidding. Everything feels cold and damp and gray, and this lets me come out, drink in what little sunshine there is, and believe me there is very little available today, and see how the leaves are turning. The rain's getting heavier. Can you hear?
I'm sheltering under a beautiful old chestnut tree. This is how I still get my kicks in the winter. I know everyone's baffled by it, but it beats staying inside all day. When I go home I will light some candles in the afternoon. It's one of my favorite winter things, actually. The combination of candlelight and very pale afternoon light. It always feels like an act of brave defense against the winter. I'm here today to introduce you to Emma Gannon. Sorry I paused then because I saw a mushroom. You don't have my full attention, I do apologize. I'm here to introduce you to Emma Gannon, who I've interviewed for this season where we're thinking about how we can come back together again.
Emma has written extensively about life online, actually. About the world that we, most of us anyway, swim in now. Water, we swim in, I should say. This world that is profoundly online and in many ways hyper connected, but which is always full of difficulties because of the nature of those connections. I've just put my head up. I wonder if that changes the quality of sound for you too, because I can hear my voice much more clearly.
I wanted to ask Emma about how we come back together again online, because in many ways I didn't want to interview someone who is saying that everyone should disconnect from the online world altogether. I personally have hugely benefited from being able to make connections online. It's let my niche, marginalized community find each other and learn so much from each other, and I'm not ready to walk away yet, but we need a better route through it. Emma just always seems to me, eminently balanced, and sensible, and native to the place that I'm native, and deeply thoughtful. Anyway, take a listen. I think she's got a lot to say.
I'm really excited to welcome Emma Gannon. Emma is a Sunday Times bestselling author, speaker, podcaster, and all round expert in creativity and digital culture. She's allowed us to have multi hyphenated careers, which I relate very strongly to. To silence our inner critics, and to stay human in an online world, which is what we'll be discussing today. Her first novel, Olive, was published to great acclaim in 2020. Welcome, Emma. It's so lovely to have you here.
Emma Gannon:
Hi Katherine. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you.
Katherine May:
Oh, it's just great. This season we're talking about how we can come together again and you were obviously one of the first people who sprung to mind for me, because I guess the best way to say it is I feel like I relate to your understanding of online culture so well. On the one hand, you are undoubtedly a digital native and you can see loads of positives in it, but you're also really good at unpicking the dark side of it and the problematic side of it. I wonder if we could just start by you telling us how it began for you online. What's your first memory of being online, and how's it developed since then?
Emma Gannon:
Oh, that's a good question. I think I would say, signing up for MySpace, that was my first love affair moment, I think, with the online world, because I don't know if anyone listening will remember, but the homepage was like an arcade. I remember my heart would race, and my eyes would widen, and hairs would stand up on the back of my neck. It was that feeling of when you fancy someone or you're just enamored with something, I was just like, I could not get enough of it.
At that point it didn't really feel like an addiction, it just felt exciting, and I would run home from school, I would log on, and I knew I only had half an hour, because the amount of time I was allowed to have before my mum booted me off, or she needed to use the landline. It was just this pocket of time that felt just like my world was opening up, and my life was bigger than just the school I was at. That was just the candy that I guess I spent decades later kind of wanting more of, but in different ways.
Katherine May:
Yeah, that kind of craving. I mean, you're a couple of years... Well more than a couple of years younger than me. You're a few years younger than me, so I first met the internet when I was about 19. It just didn't really exist before then, except in military settings, and so I lived my whole teenage years without it. I think it must be incredibly different to be a younger teenager online. My son is 10. I mean, he cannot imagine life not online. It's literally the olden days for him to think about even having dial-up internet, which I can still sing the song that my dial-up internet used to make. It was this really specific noise. I think there is that very addictive quality to it as adults, but as teenagers, the way that it inhabits your brain, I think must be very, very different.
Emma Gannon:
Yes, and I think that is interesting, that I came to it probably in my mid-teens, so not super early. I mean, I read a statistic the other day that, I think, 90% of 11-year-olds now have a phone, and 11 seems young, but also, I get it, if you want to know where your child is. I'm sure I would give my child a phone, because it's more for the parent than them at the beginning.
Katherine May:
Yeah, yeah.
Emma Gannon:
But yeah, I was probably 14 or 15 when I truly felt like I was getting involved with the online world. I do think by that age I had a sense of who I was. I had a sense of what's good, what's bad, my parameters. If I felt unsafe I would log off. I did feel like I had a bit of control, but it was so fascinating how at that age you're learning how to story tell, and you're learning how to edit your persona or photos of yourself. I mean, it was very old school back then and you literally had to go on Paint or something.
But I still remember projecting a version of myself that wasn't me and I was cooler on the internet. I was better looking on the internet, I was funnier on the internet. I could craft one-liners to boys that I fancied, and, I think, in person that wasn't really who I was. It's interesting that now, we could say that most people do that on Instagram every day, but being in that middle age of kind of... Yeah, being a digital native but also having had a childhood, it's quite an interesting one.
Katherine May:
It's a different perspective altogether, and certainly social media didn't come in until I was in my twenties, and so my first experiences of being on the internet were downloading information. It was web 1.0. It was very much a one way street really. I think it was before you could even comment on anything very much, and at the time that felt really exciting. It felt like an explosion of information, and the idea that you could reach out across the world. There were like the first very kind of juddery webcams, God, I'm making myself sound so old, I'm going to regret this, aren't I, completely?
I remember going to university and there suddenly being a much quicker connection, and so everybody was saying, "Hey, we've gone looking for porn, because apparently you can get porn on the internet," which just seems so naive now, when we're saturated with everything like that. But I still honestly think that it's shaped my personality and the way I think a lot, even coming across social media much later when I was, in theory, at least an adult, because it does train you. There's something about it that dictates your behavior rather than the other way around.
Emma Gannon:
Yeah, it's very true. I mean, what would you say is the one of the main things, because I think, like you say, social media feels different to just being online and knowing how to Google stuff or finding information. It does shape your personality and it does shape how you interact with others, but I think there were so many positives at the beginning. There were so many studies that came out in 2010 where using the internet had improved kids at school's concentration, and they were getting better grades, and we could see the positivity of it, and we could see that people were reconnecting with friends, and they were feeling good about the internet. The first studies around-
Katherine May:
Oh my God, Friends Reunited was such a big thing.
Emma Gannon:
Yeah, and Friendster, and all those ones, and the first study around the Arab Spring and social activism, that all came out around then. I'm interested in this kind of collective turning point that we've come to recently, where it's like we know too much, we've watched the documentaries, we know what it's doing for us, and how do we then go forward and achieve a middle ground where we still get the good bits?
Katherine May:
Yeah, because that knowing too much thing. I mean, in many ways that has been one of the really positive things that being on social media has done for me. It's thrown me in the way of other people's perspectives that I couldn't have even imagined before. I wouldn't have even understood the range of views that existed. It's done this thing to my brain that now I can't say anything without thinking, almost spontaneously, about the range of perspectives that will be held on that utterance as soon as it goes online. That's painful in a lot of ways, because it can be very stultifying, it can really inhibit you from wanting to say anything, because you can already almost predict every conversation you're going to have around it, but it's also been a real growing experience. I am undoubtedly a more compassionate and more broadly tolerant person because of it, I think. I don't think we talk about that very much.
Emma Gannon:
Yeah, that's very, very true. I mean, at the heart of the book that I wrote, in Disconnected, it's more about how do you check in with who you are, who you really are without all of these influences, because like you say, it's really positive to, before you tweet, think about how many different people will read it and how many different people might be offended, or are you being inclusive? That's super important, and we all know that people don't really think before they tweet, so it's good to pause, and it's good to think, how's this going to go down, and what do I really think? But I find that incredibly crippling, and also, the complete death of creativity. If I sit around thinking, "Will every single person that follow me agree with this, like this, understand this," I just honestly wouldn't publish another book. That makes me feel really, really sad because I don't think many of us are, at our root, ever trying to harm anyone, but it's almost like the people that already care about people aren't the problem. It's people who aren't even thinking in the first place, so-
Katherine May:
Yeah, that one's the big, really careful.
Emma Gannon:
I think we kind of need to cut each other a bit of slack, and I also feel like, for me, I like to check in. If I read something and it triggers an emotion in me, I like to sit with that for a bit and be like, "What do I think? Why do I feel this way?" Then I'll go and look at other people's behavior and their response, because we're social animals, and at the end of the day we go with the pack, we go with the herd of people who will harm us the least, and so many of us want to fit in, but by fitting in and saying the right things all the time, and ticking the box of like, "Well done, you said the right thing," sometimes you can move away from who you really are. I mean Brené Brown says it beautifully, "That fitting in is not the same as belonging," and I think if you want to feel like you belong, you do have to be yourself at the end of the day.
Katherine May:
I think it's also interesting to think about the people who do intend harm, and what a minority those people actually are, but how visible they become to us, because of the way that we can't ignore painful conversations or painful feedback, and so we have this kind of very unbalanced view of what actually goes on online most of the time, which is that we perceive it to be much more dangerous than it actually is. I think, we often end up amplifying the worst voices, because we're so offended by them. That's the stuff we so often share. "Look, this person said this to me, aren't we all horrified?" "Oh God, yes we are." There's something about the way that our retention runs that increases the hurtful bits.
Emma Gannon:
It's so true, and this is something that I learnt years and years ago. Magazines... and when everything went digital, the monetization of anger, the monetization of outrage is basically how many people earn money. Every time I get outraged about something, and that's not to say I shouldn't be, I think anger is really healthy and really important, especially for women to have a safe space to be angry, but every time I kind of want to be outraged on the internet, I just know at the end of the day someone, probably wearing a suit, probably in a corner office somewhere, is earning a lot of money, because like you say, the most opinionated, the most kind of out there stuff rises to the top, because we're sort of programmed that way. Or at least the social media platforms are programmed that way, to get more and more retweets. I think about that in terms of the news, how we see so many horrible, horrendous things on a daily basis that are on the news homepage, but when we really, really think about it, those are a handful of things that, yes are awful-
Katherine May:
Which is why they're on the news, yeah. Yeah.
Emma Gannon:
Which is why they're on the news, exactly, but actually if you look at the reality of the world... I mean that's why I've signed up to this app called, Good News, where I get good news every day, because I just want to counterbalance it. I mean, I'm not saying those news items aren't serious and real, they are, but they're not just what's going on, and I think we can feel like our brain is being reprogrammed to just be negative in that way.
Katherine May:
Definitely. Because our question is, how do we come together again, I think we probably need to reverse from that and talk about the falling apart that's happened really, because it's old hat to talk about bubbles now and how they've formed in the internet. But we really have over the last five, 10 years fallen into very, very separate camps, which feel now, unbridgeable. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, the way that... In fact you frame this really well, because you talk about the kind of natural conversations you might have in the pub and they have always been full of conflict, actually. They've always been full of disagreement, but face-to-face somehow, that disagreement feels okay and even fun, even quite stimulating, and certainly not destructive or the end of any conversation, but there's something about online disagreement that feels particularly brutal. Do you get that impression too, or is that how it feels to me?
Emma Gannon:
Oh god, yeah. I really do, and I've been fascinated by this for years, because... Especially on Twitter, it's really interesting that... and we're not really out of this, where someone would disagree with someone on something, actually quite petty, probably, and instead of just saying like, "Oh I don't agree with that, let's move on." It's basically, "I don't like you anymore, I must mute you, or block you, or remove you from my life." It's actually quite funny when you think about it, because you don't go through your real life doing that otherwise you'd end up with absolutely no friends. You can't live like that, but on social media it feels fine to kind of cut people out if you don't agree, and I find that fascinating. But I also, back to what you just said, there's research out there that says the more you disagree in a romantic relationship, the more likely you are to stay together.
Disagreement is really healthy, and it's really good for us, and it means that we're communicating, and it means we're not kind of keeping it all inside. I love a little bit of disagreement, but unfortunately the platforms aren't designed for that longer form, which is why I've moved over to Substack, this amazing newsletter platform where people are leaving really long comments with each other and disagreeing, and there's nuance, and people are saying, "Oh I agree with that bit and not that bit." I do have hope, but I think the social media platforms as they stand, they don't help and they get us into sort of fight or flight responses, and the cynical part of me thinks that they like that. These platforms want us to-
Katherine May:
Oh, I'm sure they do, yeah.
Emma Gannon:
... spend more time on there, basically.
Katherine May:
Yeah, I mean, I've noticed more and more how Twitter, in particular, is a platform that not only do I witness loads of outrage but also some kind of... It almost trains you into extreme positions, because that very short, pithy mode of expression works best when you're saying something really clear and kind of blunt and simple, and it doesn't work if you're saying, "Well, actually, this is a very complex problem which I'm now going to unpack over a thread of 500 tweets and you'll need to read each one in order to understand it." So, it becomes a kind of platform that leads to a lot of peer pressure, I think, to move towards the extremes as well, because if you say something complex and nuanced, it doesn't land well, quite often, and you'll immediately get a load of pushback. Whereas, if you say something extreme but simple, you may get the pushback still, but it'll be drowned up by many, many people retweeting you and you'll feel like you've kind of won some kind of social award for being the best at Twitter on that day.
Emma Gannon:
That's true.
Katherine May:
I've noticed that not only do I witness that more on Twitter, but it has also totally trained me to come there for that. If I'm cross about something, before I even think about it, I find myself opening Twitter to express that crossness, and I'm spending a lot of time noticing that at the moment, because that's never been stated by the platform, like, "Come to us with your anger," but it has subtly trained me into a desire for that.
Emma Gannon:
Yeah, me too, and it's interesting when you see maybe an opinion you held even a few months ago or years ago, and how much maybe they've changed, and how you can see in hindsight that that did feel pressured and it did feel like you should do it to be a "good person" when there were probably more layers to it. Actually, in hindsight your gut feeling of like, "Oh I don't know, I think I need a bit more information on this, actually, before I have this opinion," was probably correct, but as we say, we're social animals, but I find that really interesting and I think being able to say you don't know still feels like the biggest taboo. Even around politics and labeling ourselves and putting each other in boxes or putting yourself in a box. There are lots of things that I really don't know yet and I feel like that's okay, because we're in a major time of change. Lots of things are changing, we're not in a stable time in history where it's like, "Right, this is what the world looks like and this is where I stand," and obviously-
Katherine May:
Here are the certainties.
Emma Gannon:
... there are obvious things, that we don't even need to say, on ways you would stand against something or for something, but I'm talking about the kind of gray areas where we haven't figured it out yet, so to go kind of all guns blazing with your opinion feels really counterintuitive and just not helpful, because you're starting a campaign around something you don't really know much about. I think it's just the fact that, everyone feels like an expert now, feels just false, and it's like I'm very happy to put my hand up and be like, "I don't know actually, why don't we discuss all the things we don't know." But also people live in fear, and what do we do when we're scared? We try and find an answer. We saw that during COVID. That was the most unknown time, probably, most of us ever went through, and yet everyone knew exactly what other people should be doing, and so it is interesting.
Katherine May:
Yeah, and actually, one of the things that we need to learn to say again is, sometimes we all need to be doing a different thing, actually. I think COVID is such a good example of that. There is no one behavior that is correct across the whole of society for COVID. We're all going to have to respond in a slightly different way, because we're all living with different pressures and different needs, but that feels very unexpressable to me on Twitter. Let's think about Instagram as well, because Instagram, it feels like that wouldn't even be a welcome discussion. There's different problems with Instagram. It's a gentler place, for sure, although not always, but it feels a bit like fantasy land sometimes.
Emma Gannon:
Yes, it does, and it's also interesting, because even when you know all the information and research, there's so many studies that say that when we are at our lowest ebb, when we are going through a mental health crisis, we will post a really great picture of our life, because we're not really doing it for other people, we're doing it for ourselves. We're doing it for that little boost that you get when you post a lovely photo of you in a nice dress with your dog, or on holiday, or with a friend. We're doing it because we're reminding ourself that our life is not complete shit, basically. There's so much around people who take more selfies with their partner, they're more likely to split up. It's so fascinating.
Katherine May:
Oh, God. Is that true?
Emma Gannon:
Yeah, there was this really interesting Australian study that looked into that. I find that interesting, because even though I've done all this research and I've written a whole book on it, I still don't log onto Instagram and think, "Well, actually, let's unpick the fact that this person, even though they're in the Maldives, told me a few days ago that they're not great right now." You can't do that sort of nuance when the pixels are right in front of you telling you a story, and yet we know all of this to be true, that those little squares don't make up a reality. We can't blame ourselves for being sucked in.
I have a really complicated relationship with Instagram. I really do, and I think as a writer, I love words, I love communicating through words, so this idea of pictures being first, I like looking at them and I like following, normally, inanimate objects, to be honest, like rugs, and plants, and interiors, because this idea of a picture trying to paint who you are, it just doesn't... It can never happen. It's impossible, I think.
Katherine May:
Mm-hmm. It's interesting how badly we misunderstand each other and our motivations though, isn't it? Because although we know that we go onto Instagram to comfort ourselves primarily, and to... I don't think we often do try and misrepresent our lives, but to try and bring beauty back into something that can feel quite ugly. Sarah Tasker is brilliant at this, as she talks really fantastically about, "Well, why wouldn't I want to put a pretty picture on Instagram? I'm not trying to conceal anything, I'm just trying to make my life feel nice for a while."
Emma Gannon:
It's true, yeah.
Katherine May:
But it's really interesting that we don't perceive that in others, that even though we understand our own motivations really well, that we look at the next person's feed and go, "Oh, they're shop fronting, totally. What's going on with them?"
Emma Gannon:
Yeah, and it's funny, because I've got two Instagram accounts, and I write about this in the book, actually, how it might sound really weird to some people, but I did have to compartmentalize my life a little bit, and basically lean into that, and be like, "Look, my Instagram account that you'll find," the public one, that has however many thousand followers, "that is a shopfront, actually. That is how I make money."-
Katherine May:
Yeah, it is a literal shopfront.
Emma Gannon:
... "It is literally a shopfront," and it is my shiny side, and it is me wearing lipstick, and it is me on a good day with my office being tidy, but I also have a private Instagram for my friends and family, and it really is the opposite of that. Some people might say, "Well, why can't you be more authentic with the shopfront?" But what's interesting, is that is authentic, because that's authentic for what it is, which is a business account. That's the Sarah Tasker thing, I want it to look pretty, and I want it to look nice, and I'm talking about topics that really excite me, but I also have the other account which only has a hundred people on, and I do post just really kind of rough around the edges, rubbish photos, like trying to choose a paint color for my wall and see who comments underneath with the answers.
I don't know what that says about me, but I think what it says, is, actually, I want to go back to basics and I want to have a hundred people, who really know me well, seeing the real insides of my life, and it's okay to want two things at once, basically.
Katherine May:
Well, it's okay for you to go to work in effect, which is what you're doing with your kind of outward facing Instagram account. You're doing what everybody else does when they go to work, which is to put on smarter clothes than maybe you would normally and behave yourself in a slightly different way. That is what we do.
Emma Gannon:
Yeah, and it's funny with that, because people might disagree, but I feel like I like a professionalism, I like feeling professional sometimes, and one of my favorite authors, Seth Godin, who writes brilliant books about creativity, he talks a lot about being a professional and showing up, and trying to be you on a good day, and showing up for your work. Even when I write my books, I try and put on sometimes a nice outfit, and... Not always. Or I like to make myself a nice lunch, and if I want to take a picture of it, so be it, but it's kind of all about showing up for yourself. If that looks a bit shinier than the other days, then that's okay, but I'm sure my opinion will keep changing on this topic, but that's kind of where I'm at, at the moment.
Katherine May:
Yeah. I mean, I think there's a statistic that I can't remember exactly, but I think the majority of page hits, if you like, that Instagram get, is people looking at their own feed and their own stories. We're using it as a photo album quite often, and we are trying to capture the highlights rather than the gritty reality. Honestly, I've got some people in my feed who really do capture their real life, and honestly, I often end up muting them, because it's like, "I don't need to see you cutting your toenails. Are you kidding me?"
Emma Gannon:
Yeah.
Katherine May:
You realize that you want that presented image rather than something that is a little bit icky, quite often.
Emma Gannon:
It's true, and I think we forget what authentic actually means. It doesn't mean crying into a camera, it doesn't have to mean that. It could mean that, but for a lot of people, being authentic... I think it's authentic that I'm admitting that I have a business account that shows my highlights. That's authentic, because I'm admitting it. I think there's lots of different sides to us. I think being authentic just isn't really black or white. I can't remember who said it, but there was something about how for Anna Wintour, like her bob, her perfect bob is her being authentic, because that's who she is.
Katherine May:
Yeah.
Emma Gannon:
I always think about that, because I think it's an interesting example of how someone's kind of perfectionist qualities could actually be them being authentic.
Katherine May:
Mm-hmm. Despite everything, despite the effort we put into these platforms, we are feeling more separate than ever, and that's almost transferred from the online context into the real world, I think. Those very hot topics on social media are now translating, as we've come back together after the pandemic, they're translating to conversations over the dinner table, and they are beginning to affect our behavior. I'm hearing people saying that they don't want to spend time with members of their family anymore, because they find their opinions so offensive. That does strike me as a real change, because actually we've always, I think lived with the uncle who says racist things over the dinner table, but we're now unable to tolerate it, or to have a discussion, or to enter into the discussion that he clearly needs to have with someone a bit more reasonable. Am I wrong to blame that on social media? It feels to me that's come... That's almost filtered in from the sort of more sensitized mindset we've got ourselves into?
Emma Gannon:
Yeah, I mean it's an interesting one, because I think that's always been there. Well, I speak to my parents and we have really healthy discussions. I don't agree with a lot of what they say, but for some reason we're able to talk about it, which I'm really grateful for, because that could get quite bad if one of us would close down. But they were saying that with their parents, because if there's 30 or 40 years, or less, between a generation, that's a lot of time for society to change and for things that they felt they were right about when they were young, to no longer be right, is a hard pill to swallow.
They were saying that with their parents, actually, it was even worse. They would find what they were saying incredibly offensive and these arguments would always happen over the dinner table, but what I think has changed is this sort of way that we go about life now on social media, which is like we have these personal brands, of this is who I am, these are my interests, these are the bands I follow on Facebook or whatever. These are the people I follow, these are the things I like. These are the politics I believe in, and then anything that is outside of that is almost like harmful to you and your outward appearance to the world.
For example, it must be hard if someone's whole career and brand, or whatever, identity is about being one way, and then they're suddenly with their parents and they're like, "Oh God, I hope no one overhears this, because this is at odds with my beliefs." I think people are almost scared to... I guess we're in a time of cancel culture, aren't we? I think people are just scared that anyone saying the wrong thing translates badly onto you. But the way I see it is, I have my views and other people have theirs. I'll absolutely call it out and say my opinion, but fundamentally, I mean, hopefully not with the most extreme examples, but most of the time we do have to allow people to have their own opinions.
Katherine May:
Yeah. I've seen it happen online where even people having a book on their shelf behind them as they speak has been called out. It's an unacceptable book and that person must be a terrible person, is the inference if you're reading that, and of course, that's not remotely true, right? I mean, I have a lot of books on my shelf that I don't agree with and that's why I have them, because they're there to offer a different perspective, and because I need to understand them if I'm going to write about them, because otherwise I won't be covering the whole argument or the whole debate. Yeah, we feel that kind of sense of risk and it's becoming those medieval cities, like anything outside of the walls is dirty, and degraded, and untouchable, and we're maintaining these kind of inner sanctums that feel safe, and we're afraid of losing respectability if we're associated with the other stuff. The stuff that doesn't fit within that precinct.
Emma Gannon:
Yeah, that's it. It is that. It's the association that makes us feel uncomfortable, but that's really interesting about the book thing, because I had it recently where I follow someone on Twitter, because I do follow a range of people. I follow people on there who I really disagree with, but I like to know what they're up to, because otherwise it's worrying.
Katherine May:
You've got to keep an eye on them.
Emma Gannon:
Yeah, they'll come up behind you, but someone had tweeted me just being like, "I'm really, really disappointed that you follow this person, and blah blah blah. I was like, "Oh God, we're really missing the point here, because that's why I follow them." Yeah, it seems strange to kind of call people out for that.
Katherine May:
Oh, can we just, as a side alley, talk about the phrase, "I'm really disappointed in you," because that is coming up more and more in my feed and it's kind of like, "Hang on. The thing you're disappointed in is this idea you constructed of me in the first place, which was nothing to do with me, it was everything to do with you"-
Emma Gannon:
Oh my God, yeah.
Katherine May:
... "and I've fallen short of your construction and now you're disappointed in me, and you've come online to tell me." Definitely not a me problem. I really feel very clearly that it is not a me problem if you're disappointed in me.
Emma Gannon:
Yeah, that's a funny one, isn't it? Yeah, it feels like you're being policed, or at least someone wagging their finger at you like a teacher.
Katherine May:
Yeah.
Emma Gannon:
Yeah, the one that makes me laugh, actually, is with Amazon reviews, when someone comes on and reviews a book and they say, "I really wanted to like this, but it was not what I expected." I'm like, "But you then expected. You then had a construct in your head of what you thought it would be, and I've let you down, but I'm only giving you the book that exists."
Katherine May:
Again, not a you problem.
Emma Gannon:
Yeah, it's fascinating.
Katherine May:
Yeah, I mean, I think review culture is really difficult altogether, honestly, because as a reader you have to basically accept that you will like some of the books you read more than others. That's just the experience of reading, and the idea that I would... I don't know, the idea that I'd read someone's book and just not really care about it either way, but I know other people liked it and then go onto Amazon, say, "Well I've heard loads of people like raving about this book and actually I thought it was really poor." It's like, "Oh, get over yourself. You just didn't enjoy it. Why try and destroy something for someone else just because you had a average experience?" Honestly.
Emma Gannon:
Yeah. I wonder if... I hope I wouldn't do that, anyway, but I know now, having written, for example, a novel, I think even writing a terrible novel is so hard, so I would never.
Katherine May:
Yeah, it is very hard.
Emma Gannon:
I'll never, ever, now. Maybe privately, I'll be like, "Oh, I didn't enjoy that," but I'll never tear apart anything that has taken someone years and years of their life. I just love creativity and I love it when people give things a go, so I think I just could never be a critic. I could never. Yeah.
Katherine May:
No, I couldn't either. Actually, I have to say, I think that's one of the... One of my weaknesses, in a way, is that I just can't bear the idea of tearing someone apart unless they've said something deliberately offensive, which... Fine, but I've even had, being autistic, people send me books about autism, and quite often they're really offensive. I always write to the editor about the offensiveness, rather than wait and put a stinking review online, because I actually think that most of the time the person hasn't meant to offend me, because otherwise they certainly wouldn't have sent it to me, and that actually I've got a chance to inform them before they go out with it. Whether they listen to me is a whole other question, but I feel like that's the good faith thing for me to do rather than to hold back, and then try and cause that person a sort of nightmarish couple of weeks of abuse, sort of thing.
Emma Gannon:
That's really, really nice of you, but I also feel like constructive criticism in general is great, isn't it?
Katherine May:
Yeah, yeah.
Emma Gannon:
Because anytime that someone point something out to me, I'm like, it's actually a generous act for you to do that. To say, "I'm actually giving you a heads-up here, because someone needs to point this out," so that's really good.
Katherine May:
Yeah, so what can we do about it? You've actually got some really useful suggestions about how we can change the course of this kind of disconnected world that we're living in, and they're not simple, are they? There's no quick fixes for this, and they do involve us looking at our own behavior rather than expecting other people to change.
Emma Gannon:
Yes, unfortunately. Yeah.
Katherine May:
Oh, that's so hard, honestly.
Emma Gannon:
I know. I know. I wanted to make the tips really simple and they are simple, they're really back to basics, but I needed the reminder, so I assumed other people would like them too. But really it is kind of that digging deep and changing things for yourself, and turning that passive scrolling that you do when you're waiting for the microwave to ding or whatever. Turning that into a noticeable moment of like, "Oh, I'm doing that thing again where I'm just picking up my phone and scrolling for no reason." Or, "Oh, my eyes have glazed over again." Or, "Oh I'm really tetchy," and I don't know, "I'm itching myself, or I'm feeling really anxious and on edge, because I've been on my phone too much today."
I think a lot of it really is about getting back into your physical body, and that's changed everything for me. I just notice now, when I hold my breath for too long, I can feel like a panic attack coming on. I used to, when I was looking at something horrifying on my phone for too long. These things really impact us physically, so that was a huge one, which sounds basic. Checking in with your body sounds basic, but I don't know if a lot of us do.
Katherine May:
Well, exactly. I mean, it does and it doesn't, because actually we spend a lot of time out of body when we're online, and we don't realize how long we're spending just completely not feeling that feedback. We've all had the experience of suddenly realizing our back hurts, because we've been online for so long and we've stayed in one fixed position. It doesn't surprise me at all, honestly. I don't think it is basic to us anymore.
Emma Gannon:
Yeah, it's funny. I mean, I did a talk about the book the other day, and I was reeling off some tips, and then it made me think about this tweet that I saw a while ago that was like, "Basically human beings are leaves. They just need water and sunlight, and the right conditions." It was something about how we're just so... It's so basic, what we need. Have some water, go for a walk, call a friend, and I feel like I would be really annoyed if someone sat on a stage and told me that, but I felt like, as a digital native who has written about the internet for years, and years, and years, I'm kind of coming back around to this idea of like, "Oh, all of those tips that I've been told many times by people, I'm kind of starting to understand."
Katherine May:
We've got to relearn. No, honestly, as somebody who spends a lot of time saying to audiences like, "It's really important to rest when you're tired," you would not believe how many people get very angry at me for saying that. Yeah, I think maybe that message does need to be repeated, because I do think there are parts of human life where we've convinced ourselves that we've superseded the need for rest, hydration, contact with other human beings, all of the basics that your mum would've told you to do.
Emma Gannon:
Yeah, and your conversation around rest, oh, my God. Feel like it's one of the most important things ever right now, and probably always has been, but I don't know one person who knows how to rest. People might, like you say, kind of laugh that off. "Oh yeah, an obvious thing to rest," but it's like how many people actually rest? I don't think I know one person.
Katherine May:
No. Also, we are so used to commercialized pictures of rest, which are about having the right product in the most beautiful bathtub, with the scented candle that probably cost a hundred quid. That's always a woman who's resting and her face is blissful, and that is just not what rest is. That might be a tiny component of your rest if you can afford it, but it's actually not representing the stuff that we really need to do in the least. It sort of drives me a little bit crazy, honestly. Anyway, that's maybe a different conversation. You say this, I think, this lovely thing, which is, it's not about agreeing but understanding, and I think that's such a useful distinction to make. Can you unpack that a bit for us?
Emma Gannon:
Yes. It sort of comes from that quote that, "We're all equal, but we're not the same." We're not all the same, and I think this idea that everyone must think the way I think is really damaging, because we didn't grow up with the same environment, or the same teachers, or the same anything, and our experience of the world could be entirely different. I think, when it comes to actually just understanding. I mean, it sounds like a really big ask and it's scary to say these things in a time of massive kind of unrest in the world, but just extending that empathy just a tiny bit every day could change everything. I remember years ago reading something about this. I think it was a David Foster Wallace book, but I can't remember, but it was about how... It basically showed a story of someone coughing in the supermarket, and then someone cutting in line, and then someone else trying to take over in a car in front of you, and then it showed the people behind that.
It was like the guy that was coughing had cancer. The guy that jumped in the queue was late for a hospital appointment, and then the other one who was driving, his daughter had just been... Something had happened. I don't know, that's probably a really bad example, but I just try and do that as much as I can on the internet. I really do, because I just think so many people are struggling at the moment. If we can understand a little bit more why someone is being the way they are, then maybe we can communicate better.
Katherine May:
Yeah, and one of the things that I've taught myself to say to myself when I'm affronted by someone's behavior online, is this person is not okay, and often it's really self evident. Someone has come to you and they're agitated, or they're excessively offended by a throwaway remark, or they've totally misinterpreted what you said, or they're behaving in a really heightened way, and they're not okay. There have been points in my life when I haven't been okay either, and I haven't always managed to not go onto the internet on those days, to be quite frank. To judge somebody on their worst day when they happen to have landed online out of sheer agitation. I still think it's fine to block those people if they're being rude to you, but I shouldn't let it get to me, because they're not feeling all right.
Emma Gannon:
Yeah. It's true, and when you look at your own behavior, when I'm in a good place, I just don't want to have a go at anyone.
Katherine May:
Yeah, that's right.
Emma Gannon:
Like you say, when you're in not a good place, it's like that Snickers advert with like, "You're not you when you're hungry," and you turn into this agitated monster who everything annoys you. I get it, we've all felt like that, but I think it's... Unfortunately, no one's taught how to use the internet. It's like we're taught how to ride a bike and we are taught how to do other things, but we're not taught how to be a person on the internet, and I think it would really help a lot of us
Katherine May:
We're not taught how to be a person, let alone on the internet, sort of thing.
Emma Gannon:
We're not taught anything.
Katherine May:
I think we could go a step backwards on that too.
Emma Gannon:
It's true. But I guess that's sort of why I've tried to write this little book with some tips in there, because if it can help anyone just pause. There's something in there actually about pausing. If you get an email from your boss or you get a WhatsApp from your friend and it has driven you up the wall, I dare you to not reply for an hour or two, or even a day, because we're just not in our right mind sometimes when we see something that riles us up. Yeah, we just need a bit of a timeout.
Katherine May:
I've so often found that with emails, that have really rubbed me up the wrong way, and I leave them for a day, and I come back and I had not interpreted them properly. I'd had a heightened response to often something that was really innocuous, but I was tired, or I was already frustrated, or I was in a rush or my insecurity had interrupted the email before my sensible brain had.
Yeah, the last thing I really want to ask you, is how really you think we can start to, not just stop getting things wrong, but begin to build positive communities and become really useful digital citizens again?
Emma Gannon:
Yeah, that's a good question. I think it really is about taking a moment and stripping everything back, and almost don't be afraid to start again, because most of us have been on the internet now, for a long time and we've accumulated, we've gone through putting things in our ruck sack and walking along with all this stuff wearing us down. We're not the same people we were, and I don't know about you, but I'm not the same person I was pre-pandemic for example. There's so much growth and stuff that's happened, so I really would urge people to take a look at what they're doing. Don't shame yourself with your screen time or anything, we're all human, but it's about what are you looking at, and what is making you feel good? What's not making you feel good? What's some of your favorite things to look at?
How do you like to stay informed? Would you like to maybe have a subscription to one newspaper that you feel is well-rounded rather than getting everything from Twitter, for example? Or are there people you actually do want to unfollow or you want to mute, because it's okay to step away, and I know that for a lot of us, Instagram is almost like a who's who are following who. It's like a sign and a signal to who your community is, but if things have changed then it's okay to step back. It sounds really obvious, but what we see is basically what our life is.
Katherine May:
It's not, because people feel terrible about unfollowing, honestly.
Emma Gannon:
I know, I know.
Katherine May:
I think that's one of the biggest issues for people that they feel absolutely dreadful about unfollowing, even when that person is having a really deleterious effect on their mental health. Honestly...
Emma Gannon:
I know.
Katherine May:
We can just step away.
Emma Gannon:
You can hide and you can mute if you really feel like it could cause problems if you unfollow, but the minute you mute they kind of disappear. I know that sounds really mean, but if they're not a really close person to you, obviously, they kind of just fade away, because I think what we follow is everything to us, because that's so ingrained in our daily habits, but the minute you're not following it anymore, you can really notice the change. Yeah, I mean, look, I recently unfollowed 4,000 people on Twitter, so I really went completely-
Katherine May:
Wow. That was quite the afternoon.
Emma Gannon:
I mean, I literally downloaded this extension on Google Chrome that did it for me while I was in the shower, and I got out of the shower and I was a new woman basically. It was amazing. Also, no one got offended, because I kind of unfollowed everyone, but now I'm slowly building back what I want to follow, and to be honest, I really feel like we kind of need to get over the whole taking it personally thing. I know that's easier said than done, but there are plenty of people I've unfollowed recently who I love. I really do, and I probably will see them in real life. It's really not that I don't want to see what they're up to, it's just that right now, I'm trying to have less in my feed, and it's no reflection on the people themselves. I feel like that's a conversation we need to have, because maybe people are thinking, "Hmm, that sounds pretty impossible for me."
Katherine May:
It's all really about taking it back into real life, not spending time with people that you wouldn't spend time with in real life. Noticing what things you're trying to escape in real life when you bounce online, rather than blaming online kind of sucking you in. Giving yourself something of better quality, of more permanent quality, to read instead of sucking in hours and hours of iffy material, and we know it's iffy. It's all about making it real again, I think
Emma Gannon:
It is. Also, I know it's annoying, because it kind of falls onto us, but I think we're at a point now where we can't rely on the apps to help us necessarily, because they've got their own agenda, they're on a money-making scheme and all that, and trialing new things that are very annoying on Instagram where you just see reels of people you really don't ever, really want to see, ever again. You can't really depend on them, I guess is what I'm saying. Take the control back and see what you can do your end.
For example, even with how I consume articles, I have the Pocket app, which I know a lot of people use, where I just save in the little Pocket app articles I want to read. I don't read them at the time. I save them for the end of the week, and then on Friday afternoons I go through my little app and read all the articles I've saved. That's just a really small example of I don't feel at the beck and call of the app trying to get my time, in the moment. I'm like, "No, no. I'll read you later."
Katherine May:
Mm-hmm. Emma, thank you so much. It's been amazing to talk to you about this, and I could actually... there's so much more detail I'd love to unravel in your book, but I really feel like people should buy it and read it instead. I think that's the just thing to do, because as you say, none of it is rocket science. It's actually simple advice that we need to hear for living just a more sensible and balanced life, and that is the best kind of life we can live really.
Emma Gannon:
Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed talking to you.
Katherine May:
Hi again. It's raining ever harder here in the woods. I think saying that made it get even harder. I mean, if you're committed to walking in the winter, you really do have to get used to the rain and to begin to love it. I mean, I have to say, I find it truly joyful to be out in this kind of weather that I'm not supposed to be out in almost. It's an act of rebellion, an act of defiance, and the woods are so different when it's raining. Every different kind of weather gives you a different experience.
I've just found a beautiful birch polypore, a lovely young one. They're like marshmallows when they're young. It always kind of... I don't know, just makes me giggle wildly. It's muddy here for the first time in the year. I'm going to have to buy new Wellington boots, because I bought some weird ones last year. Accidentally bought ones with steel toe caps that are so heavy that my legs are in agony by the end of a short walk, so I need to think about that. But I'm here and I'm seeing these beautiful old trees turn dark in the wet, and all the bracken is deep bronze now.
The woods are so colorful in the winter, and I often get lost when I walk at this time of year, because when the leaves fall off the trees, the pathways become less obvious, and it feels like the whole place has rearranged itself like the labyrinth in that David Bowie film. It's like being in this rearranging landscape that offers you a new experience every time you come back to it. It's never familiar in the way that you think it should be. That's surely got to be a gift.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Emma, and I hope that rather than giving up on everything, it encourages you just to reflect, and to think about what your priorities are. To think about the ways that you recharge, and to be kind to yourself. To think about this place that you come to rest. This instinct in urging you to take a break that leads you into these online places that often frustrate you. There's nothing wrong with that instinct, and there's nothing wrong with the instinct towards justice either. It's just about us creating a world that feels more manageable, less overwhelming, more balanced. This is a huge part of my balancing. I have to remind myself to do it. There's always so much that seems pressing inside the house and inside my computer, and it takes a weird kind of discipline to go out and seek pleasure outdoors. It always feels guilty, a little, to be getting outside into this incredible place, but here I am today. I hope you'll get out soon too. See you soon.
Show Notes
There’s a guiding question of each mini-season of How We Live Now, and this time around it’s ‘How can we come back together again?’ I posed this question to some of the world’s most important thinkers in this field: political journalist Ece Temelkuran, radical Buddhist Lama Rod Owens, digital native Emma Gannon, gathering expert Priya Parker, spiritual teacher Simran Jeet Singh and ecological writer Jay Griffiths. Each of them offered something thoughtful and fresh, and each of them changed the way I think about this current - often divided - life.
Emma Gannon is a true digital native, a storyteller who finds creative inspiration in online communities, and who has sought a more thoughtful way to be in the digital spaces that so dominate our lives.
In this episode, Katherine and Emma discuss what it means to be a digital citizen - the pleasures and the agonies of coming together in the ether, and the ways it can both warp and welcome connection. Emma’s is a nuanced take, emphasising our own agency within social media spaces, and inviting us to be thoughtful and disciplined, rather than reactive and addicted.
Join the conversation! We’re also inviting your thoughts on each episode from now on click here to join the conversation. Answers, challenges, ideas and further questions are all welcome - there will be a further episode in a couple of months focusing on your voices.
Links from the episode:
Other episodes you might enjoy:
Season 2: Zeba Talkhani on surviving online abuse
Season 3: Sara Tasker on hyperfocus, exhaustion and finding the new normal
Please consider supporting the podcast by subscribing to my Patreon where you’ll get episodes a day early (and always ad free) along with bonus episodes and more!
To keep up to date with How We Live Now, follow Katherine on Instagram and Substack
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Enchantment - Released March 2023
“Katherine May gave so many of us language and vision for the long communal ‘wintering’ of the last years. Welcome this beautiful meditation for the time we’ve now entered. I cannot imagine a more gracious companion. This book is a gift.”
New York Times bestselling author Krista Tippett
