Full Transcript for Popularity is not (always) expertise

surprised you, it might not have surprised you. 00:05:35.918 --> 00:05:39.574 It might be exactly what you expected, right? 00:05:39.774 --> 00:05:52.012 So whenever I've done this, I usually do this when I train therapists and I invite people to imagine what an expert therapist might look like, right? 00:05:52.033 --> 00:05:59.718 And most people notice that who we imagine as an expert is really shaped by some innate biases, right? 00:05:59.718 --> 00:06:14.160 There are certain professions or certain skills that we associate with specific genders, for example, or people who look a particular way, whether that's close, whether that's connected. 00:06:14.160 --> 00:06:24.458 Sorry, it's a little bit later in the day than I usually do those lives So whether that's connected to a how they're racialized, how old they are, how they're dressed, and so on and so forth. 00:06:24.458 --> 00:06:34.223 So in some ways, social media has kind of helped us bypass a little bit this kind of traditional idea of what an expert looks like, right? 00:06:34.223 --> 00:06:47.613 Before, expertise was mostly conveyed through academic credentials, through academic standing, how many books or how many papers somebody might have out. 00:06:47.613 --> 00:06:56.338 But social media has really enabled us to transmit knowledge through a range of platforms. 00:06:56.338 --> 00:07:10.269 And it also enabled us to acquire knowledge through a range of platforms, such as YouTube, for example, Instagram, TikTok, or any social platforms, social media platform that we are using. 00:07:10.269 --> 00:07:32.824 This has actually been incredibly helpful for many marginalized folks, such as myself, but also for Black and Brown and Indigenous folks, disabled folks, know, and queer folks like myself, neurodivergent folks and so on and so forth, because all of a sudden, there's been kind of a lower barrier of entry to gain an audience, right? 00:07:32.824 --> 00:07:47.273 Whereas before you might have to be selected to present at a conference or a publisher might have to pick you to write a book or you might have to go through a process of peer review to publish a paper in an academic journal. 00:07:47.273 --> 00:08:00.168 Now you can literally just get your phone out and go live in front of an audience or record the video and upload it and go in front of an audience. 00:08:00.168 --> 00:08:08.930 And this in some ways has really kind of leveled the playing field in some ways, but not in every way. 00:08:08.930 --> 00:08:12.112 And we'll see why I say not in every way in a moment. 00:08:14.172 --> 00:08:22.355 Even though people might have an easier access to those platforms, that doesn't mean that the way that our brains work has changed. 00:08:22.355 --> 00:08:26.778 So all of those innate biases that I mentioned before still exist. 00:08:26.778 --> 00:08:44.046 Who we consider to be more or less credible, who do we consider to be more or less trustworthy with information is still shaped

by the sound of our voice, whether we have an accent or not in the dominant language of the country where we live, right? 00:08:44.046 --> 00:08:49.903 example, I lived in an Anglo dominant country and my accent is not an Anglo accent. 00:08:49.903 --> 00:08:53.719 This is going to have an influence on how I'm perceived, right? 00:08:53.719 --> 00:08:55.721 And we could say more about that. 00:08:55.902 --> 00:08:56.783 So. 00:08:57.587 --> 00:09:20.619 In some ways, social media has kind of enabled us to be exposed to a much broader range of uh people's expertise, but it's also making it a little bit harder, I would say, to have discernment when it comes to knowing who is an expert and who's only popular and who's both an expert and popular, because those things can also coexist. 00:09:20.619 --> 00:09:24.221 If you know me, you know I'm not one for binary thinking. 00:09:24.221 --> 00:09:26.501 It doesn't have to be an either or. 00:09:26.501 --> 00:09:27.581 It can very much. 00:09:27.581 --> 00:09:28.923 be a both-hand. 00:09:28.923 --> 00:09:44.793 So there can be expertise and popularity, but there can also be expertise without popularity and popularity without expertise, as well as both of them coexisting and every other configuration that's possible in between those three different states. 00:09:45.173 --> 00:10:00.317 So in some ways, more than ever, we need to understand how do we differentiate between things that are just information that's just popular and information that has solid foundations. 00:10:00.317 --> 00:10:11.566 And popularity, this is important because popularity doesn't just drive the algorithm and who you get exposed to, but also it creates reality to some degree. 00:10:11.566 --> 00:10:20.273 It shapes our thoughts and feelings, you know, and popularity is also inextricably connected to capitalism. 00:10:20.273 --> 00:10:24.696 The more people follow you, the more opportunities you have to monetize your content. 00:10:24.696 --> 00:10:29.239 Now, that doesn't mean that people with huge platforms have more money. 00:10:29.239 --> 00:10:35.363 I know folks with large platforms who don't actually have access to wealth at all. 00:10:35.423 --> 00:10:41.628 But more followers, larger platforms can open up doors. 00:10:41.628 --> 00:10:48.972 It can give entry to more exclusive events, for example, and networks of contacts and people. 00:10:48.972 --> 00:10:54.666 It can also lead to better book deal and more book sales and so on and so forth. 00:10:54.666 --> 00:11:03.121 So in some ways, popularity is is inextricably linked to also to the reality of living under late stage capitalism. 00:11:03.121 --> 00:11:13.950 And a lot of people really see kind of creating content as an additional way to kind of bring in revenue and maybe kind of change the way they work, right? 00:11:15.792 --> 00:11:16.477 But. 00:11:16.477 --> 00:11:31.544 As well as kind of increasing the possibilities for income, increasing the possibility for knowledge production and acquisition and transmission, I also wonder if kind of that level of popularity also gives us the illusion of expertise sometimes, right? 00:11:31.544 --> 00:11:39.599 If somebody has like a million followers, you do start wondering, well, there must be something there, right? 00:11:39.599 --> 00:11:41.789 Can a million people be wrong? 00:11:41.789 --> 00:11:44.571 A million people is a lot of people, right? 00:11:44.571 --> 00:11:48.475 If half a million people follow this person, right? 00:11:48.576 --> 00:11:56.942 They might have something valuable to say, especially if that popularity goes along with certain credentials, for example. 00:11:56.942 --> 00:11:59.065 And now credentials are tricky, right? 00:11:59.065 --> 00:12:05.690 Because somebody can be a therapist like me, but not be an expert in a specific area. 00:12:05.690 --> 00:12:32.303 For example, several months ago, somebody who is a very experienced therapist said something that was really inaccurate on social media about gender, but people who didn't know any better trusted him because he has a large uh base, very popular, and somebody said, oh, I found this guy because Esther Perel mentioned him, and so I thought that he was a trustworthy source of information. 00:12:32.303 --> 00:12:42.248 So even expertise is so complicated because it can be vast and not any one person can be an expert in everything, right? 00:12:44.094 --> 00:12:52.467 And so how can we not kind of be influenced by the number of followers somebody has, by how large their platform is? 00:12:52.467 --> 00:13:03.832 And also how can the person with that large platform not be influenced by the fact that they have hundreds of thousands or even a million or 2 million followers, right? 00:13:03.832 --> 00:13:10.196 That's also going to impact the way that we perceive ourselves when we have such a large following. 00:13:10.196 --> 00:13:15.519 This can also lead to people overestimating their own knowledge and skills. 00:13:15.519 --> 00:13:20.022 This is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, for example, in psychology. 00:13:20.121 --> 00:13:28.807 There were two uh researchers, Dunning and Kruger, that kind of looked at the relationship between confidence and competence. 00:13:28.807 --> 00:13:37.413 And so they found that sometimes when people have less skill, they overestimate their level of competence. 00:13:37.413 --> 00:13:44.071 And one of the hypotheses is that when you are less skilled, you have less knowledge, you don't know what you don't know, right? 00:13:44.071 --> 00:13:52.918 So you might overestimate how much you know and you might feel very confident even though your level of skill and knowledge doesn't match that confidence. 00:13:52.918 --> 00:13:55.239 The opposite is also true. 00:13:55.740 --> 00:14:13.774 You can be incredibly skilled and knowledgeable but feel less confident because you know how vast the field is, you know how much there is to know and how much you

don't know because the field is so vast and so you maybe underestimate your level of knowledge and skill. 00:14:13.774 --> 00:14:15.573 And so it kind of goes in both directions. 00:14:15.573 --> 00:14:19.014 People with less skill and knowledge might feel more confident. 00:14:19.014 --> 00:14:22.854 People with more skill and knowledge might feel less confident. 00:14:22.854 --> 00:14:25.754 And that's a kind of Dunning-Kruger effect. 00:14:25.754 --> 00:14:27.094 Sorry about that. 00:14:27.254 --> 00:14:34.594 So why is this relevant when we're talking about this topic of popularity and expertise? 00:14:34.933 --> 00:14:49.937 Well, you know, one of the things that I was thinking about when I was reflecting on what I wanted to cover for this episode and taking some notes and doing some research was how has social media impacted the Danne Kruger effect, for example? 00:14:49.937 --> 00:14:56.822 How does having a million followers impact our sense of confidence and competence, right? 00:14:56.822 --> 00:15:06.469 If it increases our confidence, does it also increases our sense of competence, whether the sense of competence is backed up by facts or not, right? 00:15:06.609 --> 00:15:09.480 And this is not just a fun intellectual exercise. 00:15:09.480 --> 00:15:24.280 I mean, don't get me wrong, uh I am an AuDHDer I can go on a lot of interesting side quests when it comes to intellectual exercises, but I'm particularly interested in this topic because I believe it has real life consequences. 00:15:24.280 --> 00:15:27.423 And what do I mean when I say it has real life consequences? 00:15:27.423 --> 00:15:44.033 For example, people's attitudes towards COVID-19, know, the pandemic, the vaccines as well, was really heavily influenced by what people were saying on social media, as well as in the media, of course, as well as what the government was saying. 00:15:44.307 --> 00:15:55.475 And so some kind of anti-vaccine folks, for example, also known as anti-vaxxers sometimes, were very confident and are still very confident in stating their case. 00:15:55.475 --> 00:16:06.845 And if they have large platforms, or even if they have more legitimate platforms like traditional media platform, they might be seen as trustworthy sources of information. 00:16:06.845 --> 00:16:15.971 And so when you combine this confidence with the popularity and the credibility that somebody might have because of their positionality. 00:16:15.971 --> 00:16:26.174 So for example, being cisgender, being white, being straight, being a man, know, dressing in a way that gives them status and so on and so forth. 00:16:26.174 --> 00:16:38.320 So forth, when we combine all those things, it can be dangerous because we can take things that are just opinions or just a belief as facts, for example. 00:16:40.371 --> 00:16:43.037 And this does have real life consequences. 00:16:43.037 --> 00:16:50.230 At one point, this was oh over 20 years ago, because it was when my uh oldest child... 00:16:50.865 --> 00:17:12.385 was very very young, kind of an infant, there was a paper that speculated that there was a connection between some vaccinations and autism and a lot of parents were uh stopping vaccinating their children um in fear of their children then developing autism. 00:17:12.385 --> 00:17:27.578 Now there is a lot to say about the way that we view neurodivergence, especially autism and all the stigma associated with that and we're not gonna go on that side quest because otherwise this episode is gonna be real long. 00:17:27.800 --> 00:17:32.487 But you can see how um combining... 00:17:33.151 --> 00:17:58.652 that kind of uh illusion of credibility, you know, this was a peer-reviewed paper, for example, with somebody being seen as credible because of their own positionalities, you know, as man, for example, can lead to really devastating results, like fewer parents and caregivers giving vaccinations to their infants and toddlers. 00:17:58.652 --> 00:18:01.363 And that has real-life consequences. 00:18:01.363 --> 00:18:12.286 Now, that paper was recanted and the author himself said that the research wasn't sound, that correlation doesn't mean causation. 00:18:12.286 --> 00:18:20.097 And I really wish that more people knew this correlation, things just happening at the same time doesn't mean causation. 00:18:20.097 --> 00:18:24.377 And like I said, I'm not gonna go on the side quest of kind of unpacking that paper. 00:18:24.398 --> 00:18:35.993 But this is why I wanna talk about this topic of conflating kind of popularity with expertise because of those very real life consequences. 00:18:36.096 --> 00:18:45.109 Personally, I know that how my own position, my own positionality is impact my credibility, for example, right, for a number of reasons. 00:18:45.109 --> 00:18:50.123 And we could talk about that, but I'll give you some very brief instances. 00:18:50.123 --> 00:18:58.346 You know, as a trans person, often when I talk about gender, I might be viewed as biased because that is my identity. 00:18:58.346 --> 00:19:06.029 However, I also have a whole doctorate in what used to be called women's and now would be called gender studies. 00:19:06.029 --> 00:19:11.413 So I'm not just speaking from kind of a lived experience position. 00:19:11.413 --> 00:19:17.218 I'm also speaking from kind of scholarly research and academic education. 00:19:17.218 --> 00:19:25.241 And not that my lived experience is not valuable, but it is not the only type of knowledge and expertise that I have. 00:19:25.563 --> 00:19:34.169 As a trans person, especially as a trans masculine person, I'm often infantilized or perceived as kind of having less experience than I do. 00:19:34.169 --> 00:19:42.643 For example, I have a couple of decades of clinical experience as a therapist and I have about three decades as an educator and a scholar, right? 00:19:42.643 --> 00:19:46.702 And so the way we're viewed really impacts the way we're perceived. 00:19:46.702 -->

00:20:05.806 As a disabled person who transitioned from having less visible disability to having a more visible disability for using like a cane or a Rollator or sometimes a wheelchair, I've really noticed how people treat me differently when I'm using a mobility aid. 00:20:05.806 --> 00:20:16.613 For example, healthcare providers who don't know me start speaking slower to me or louder until I disclose what my job is or what my level of education is. 00:20:16.613 --> 00:20:20.476 This is very similar in educational settings or at the ER. 00:20:20.476 --> 00:20:25.989 And there is a lot of literature, by the way, to kind of back up those experiences. 00:20:25.989 --> 00:20:28.621 Those are not just my personal experiences. 00:20:28.621 --> 00:20:40.848 I'm giving you examples because I think that real life examples can really help us make sense of what the numbers tell you in those and tell us in those peer-reviewed papers. 00:20:41.049 --> 00:21:11.730 So let's go back to this idea of what happens when we mistake popularity and positionality for expertise because popularity is also linked to positionality for example right if we have innate biases where we perceive men to be more knowledgeable than women for example I know this is very binary but often that's kind of how dominant culture works if we perceive white people to be more competent than Black and Brown people, for example, or Indigenous people, right? 00:21:11.730 --> 00:21:14.991 um That as real life consequences. 00:21:14.991 --> 00:21:41.766 If we perceive people with an Anglo accent, if we live in a dominant culture where that is kind of the language that is perceived as the official language, in air quotes, uh that people with that accent are going to have more credibility and people with an accent that indicates that they speak English as a second language, they might be seen as kind of less credible. 00:21:41.766 --> 00:21:47.412 And like I said, there is plenty of peer-reviewed research that backs up those ideas. 00:21:47.818 --> 00:21:54.872 But it also means that because of all of those factors, we can easily end up being misled, right? 00:21:54.872 --> 00:22:13.098 Because not only we might attribute less expertise to people who have earned it over a long period of time, sometimes decades, we can also attribute more expertise to people who are perceived as knowledgeable, but are actually still fairly new in a field. 00:22:13.098 --> 00:22:23.163 For example, you know, on social media platform, I've noticed that there are therapists with pretty large following. 00:22:23.163 --> 00:22:28.346 You know, we're talking 10,000, 20,000, sometimes 30,000 or more followers. 00:22:28.346 --> 00:22:31.416 That's a significant number of people, right? 00:22:31.416 --> 00:22:38.000 And some of those therapists have actually not been in independent kind of practice for very long. 00:22:38.000 --> 00:22:40.991 They've not been independently licensed for very long. 00:22:40.991 --> 00:23:02.625 You know, I was just scrolling this morning and I saw somebody with a fairly large platform was positioning themselves as having expertise in the therapy world and they had been actually practicing full-time as an independent, independently licensed clinician for less than a year. 00:23:02.625 --> 00:23:06.347 Now that is not very much expertise in my opinion. 00:23:06.347 --> 00:23:10.200 I'm sorry and if you disagree you're welcome to tell me why in the comments. 00:23:10.200 --> 00:23:12.171 I'm always open to feedback. 00:23:13.607 --> 00:23:16.798 as long as it's constructive feedback, if it's just kind of... 00:23:16.798 --> 00:23:27.406 ah kind of attacking me personally for how I look or how I sound, I usually just delete those comments, just so you know, by the way. 00:23:27.468 --> 00:23:51.893 So I'm saying all of this because again, if we think about that Dunning-Kruger effect that I mentioned earlier, you know, it can be really easy to see how this can be so not only misleading for the public, but also misleading for the people who have such large platform platforms themselves. 00:23:51.893 --> 00:23:52.282 Right? 00:23:52.282 --> 00:23:55.934 It's been a long day, sorry, but I really wanted to get this episode out. 00:23:56.016 --> 00:23:57.957 So what can we do instead? 00:23:57.957 --> 00:23:58.337 Right? 00:23:58.337 --> 00:24:08.295 I still believe that it's really important to be able to discern when somebody has the credential to speak about the things that they're speaking about. 00:24:08.295 --> 00:24:09.184 Right? 00:24:09.405 --> 00:24:26.637 So first of all, I think we really need to engage our critical thinking and that is hard because the education system, at least where I live now in this so-called United States, doesn't really prioritize or nurture critical thinking very much, in my opinion. 00:24:26.818 --> 00:24:29.009 And this is not because of teachers, by the way. 00:24:29.009 --> 00:24:39.606 This is because of systemic issues, including lack of funding and so many other issues, which again, would lead us down all different side of rabbit holes. 00:24:39.928 --> 00:24:49.894 So we might wanna kind of move back when we em notice information out there in the wild and kind of evaluate where is this information? 00:24:49.894 --> 00:24:51.015 coming from? 00:24:51.015 --> 00:24:53.685 What are the credentials that this person has? 00:24:53.685 --> 00:25:04.683 And like I said, credentials don't have to be just kind of book knowledge or academic knowledge, although in some areas it's really important to have some academic knowledge and some book knowledge. 00:25:04.683 --> 00:25:07.645 uh But it can also be lived experience. 00:25:07.645 --> 00:25:22.814 I don't want to be a colonizer when I talk about knowledge, but I also don't want to be an anti-intellectual because I do think that kind of learning a skill, learning a field does require a number of things from us. 00:25:22.894 --> 00:25:29.814 So a

lived experience is great and sometimes is enough alone and sometimes it's not, right? 00:25:29.814 --> 00:25:35.153 So we might want to move back and think about what are the credentials that this person has. 00:25:35.153 --> 00:25:38.874 We might also want to think about media literacy principles. 00:25:38.874 --> 00:25:46.554 I think the media literacy principles can really help us reflect on the information that we're taking in. 00:25:46.554 --> 00:25:58.433 But also if we are creators, it can help us think about what is it that we are doing and how are we engaging with the material that we are kind of disseminating, right? 00:25:58.433 --> 00:26:05.859 And so the first thing that media literacy principles remind us of is that media is constructive. 00:26:05.859 --> 00:26:09.511 It's not like factual and objective at all times. 00:26:09.511 --> 00:26:17.008 It's knowledge that has been selected, interpreted, mediated and communicated in specific ways. 00:26:17.008 --> 00:26:19.430 And that is true of all knowledge, by the way. 00:26:19.430 --> 00:26:22.362 It is not just true of media knowledge. 00:26:22.362 --> 00:26:41.183 As a researcher, for example, I know that even when we see numbers that come from quantitative research that often is seen as part of the golden standard of research, we have percentages, we have numbers, we have done a survey that reached maybe 20,000 people. 00:26:41.404 --> 00:26:53.413 There is still bias in that knowledge because somebody has decided what topic to study, first of all, and how to to construct the questions in the way that they're being constructed, right? 00:26:53.413 --> 00:26:59.727 And that influences the knowledge that is being produced and disseminated through those numbers. 00:26:59.727 --> 00:27:03.640 So I would say that no knowledge is truly neutral. 00:27:03.640 --> 00:27:07.402 And when it comes to media, again, kind of media is not neutral. 00:27:07.402 --> 00:27:15.086 Media is knowledge that has been selected, interpreted, mediated, communicated through particular lenses, right? 00:27:15.106 --> 00:27:25.733 And that is important because not only is media kind of constructed, but media also influences what we perceive to be real to some degree. 00:27:25.733 --> 00:27:29.037 And I think now more than ever, we're seeing this, right? 00:27:29.037 --> 00:27:43.246 Media can really shape how we view everyday reality, how we view what's happening on the global stage, as well as how we understand what's happening in kind of local communities. 00:27:43.326 --> 00:27:54.134 And again, there is so much more to say about that, but I'm trying to make those episodes shorter because not everybody loves a one hour or hour and a half of me just talking to the camera. 00:27:56.076 --> 00:28:05.497 So media, just like all knowledge, would say, contains ideological messages and is created according to values and beliefs. 00:28:05.497 --> 00:28:07.576 And so we need to remember that. 00:28:07.576 --> 00:28:20.076 And if we are content creators, we also need to ask ourselves, what are the values and ideological messages that I may or may not be disseminating through the content that I create? 00:28:20.116 --> 00:28:26.029 Media is also influenced by the platform and that also influences reality, for example. 00:28:26.029 --> 00:28:33.974 example, short for media has become increasingly popular because of platforms like Instagram and TikTok, right? 00:28:33.974 --> 00:28:35.035 Usually... 00:28:35.751 --> 00:28:43.655 videos wanna be really brief, you you have to have the hook, you have to get people's attention in those first 10 seconds, 30 seconds. 00:28:43.655 --> 00:28:46.426 That has even influenced YouTube, for example. 00:28:46.426 --> 00:28:51.239 YouTube used to be kind of more apt for longer form of videos, right? 00:28:51.239 --> 00:28:54.471 But now shorts have introduced that pace too, right? 00:28:54.471 --> 00:29:03.785 Shorts need to be less than three minutes to qualify a short, a little bit longer than some of the TikTok and Instagram videos, but not that long, right? 00:29:03.785 --> 00:29:18.173 And there is an emerging body of research that actually shows that because we are consuming uh material and media that is in shorter form, our attention span generationally is changing. 00:29:18.173 --> 00:29:20.405 This impacts kind of our attention span. 00:29:20.405 --> 00:29:23.958 I've noticed that my attention span is really different. 00:29:23.958 --> 00:29:25.608 You know, I'm in my mid fifties. 00:29:25.608 --> 00:29:32.953 I used to be able to like sit down and watch a TV episode, watch a movie without doing something else. 00:29:32.953 --> 00:29:34.806 But now I'm like, I'm watching movie. 00:29:34.806 --> 00:29:37.220 And then there's my Oh, my phone is buzzed. 00:29:37.220 --> 00:29:38.671 Who is texting me? 00:29:38.671 --> 00:29:42.364 now there's a notification and I'm distracted, right? 00:29:42.364 --> 00:29:46.116 And this is as somebody who is not kind of a digital native. 00:29:46.116 --> 00:29:54.273 Now imagine kind of newer generations who have only mainly known kind of shorter form content. 00:29:54.273 --> 00:29:56.875 Of course that is impacting our attention span. 00:29:56.875 --> 00:30:02.358 So not only kind of media is influenced by the platform, but also... 00:30:03.230 --> 00:30:11.003 the way the platform works influences the way we pay attention and the way we start thinking, right, as well. 00:30:11.003 --> 00:30:16.732 um And so, you know, part of the big message, of course, is that media is not neutral. 00:30:16.732 --> 00:30:22.729 I've already said that, but repeating is usually pretty good educationally, pedagogically. 00:30:22.729 --> 00:30:24.130 So media is not neutral. 00:30:24.130 --> 00:30:25.871 Knowledge is not neutral. 00:30:25.871 --> 00:30:28.051 And popularity is not neutral. 00:30:28.051 --> 00:30:43.300 Because remember that idea also of kind of the who we consider popular is

influenced by our positionalities, know, gender, race, socioeconomic status, attractiveness, according to dominant culture, all those good things. 00:30:43.300 --> 00:30:47.123 And that is why we need critical thinking and discernment, right? 00:30:47.123 --> 00:30:56.789 Because we want to make sure that when we are consuming kind of knowledge, and even when we're consuming entertainment, I would say, we want to engage our critical thinking. 00:30:56.789 --> 00:31:05.519 And so here are some questions we can ask ourselves to engage our critical thinking and also to engage those media literacy principles. 00:31:06.932 --> 00:31:09.212 And also I really want to give a shout out to Dr. 00:31:09.212 --> 00:31:18.436 Bianca Laureano who really introduced me to the idea of like questions that invite us into applying media literacy principles. 00:31:18.436 --> 00:31:25.420 So some of the questions you can ask yourself is who made this content and why they might've made it, right? 00:31:25.560 --> 00:31:32.743 For example, if somebody says something controversial, it kind of causes more people to look at it. 00:31:32.743 --> 00:31:36.526 More clicks, more likes, more comments, right? 00:31:36.808 --> 00:31:42.403 There is even a term uh for people who kind of use rage bait, I think is the term, right? 00:31:42.403 --> 00:31:45.055 So let's ask ourselves, who has made this content? 00:31:45.055 --> 00:31:47.166 Why have they made this content? 00:31:47.386 --> 00:31:51.309 There's a lot of content competing for our attention nowadays. 00:31:51.490 --> 00:31:59.135 And what are the values and beliefs that are kind of implied in this content that are implicit, right? 00:31:59.135 --> 00:32:03.259 They might not be said out loud, but there is an implication. 00:32:03.259 --> 00:32:11.344 There are some values and some beliefs and ideas and ideologies kind of behind everything that we say, right? 00:32:11.344 --> 00:32:21.048 For example, part of my beliefs are strongly shaped by postmodernism, you know, and social constructivism and so on and so forth. 00:32:21.048 --> 00:32:25.210 Other people are influenced by other ideologies, values and beliefs. 00:32:25.570 --> 00:32:34.719 Other questions we can ask ourselves are which audience is this material meant for and why is it meant for this audience, right? 00:32:34.719 --> 00:32:49.345 Is this a piece of media that has been produced for kids, for adults, for a specific subset of the audience, for a specific gender, for a specific kind of racialized population and so on and so forth. 00:32:49.546 --> 00:33:02.211 And also we need to ask ourselves which perspectives and voices are being included, which ones are being excluded, and why they might be included or excluded, right? 00:33:02.211 --> 00:33:07.212 Are people just using kind of arguments that support their position? 00:33:07.212 --> 00:33:19.897 I know one of my nesting partners really doesn't like documentaries because he feels that sometimes some documentarians only use evidence that support the point of view that they're trying to put across. 00:33:19.897 --> 00:33:25.700 And so they don't really give much of a balanced argument, you know, for example. 00:33:26.897 --> 00:33:40.474 And another question that we can ask ourselves is where does the knowledge that it's being transmitted through this media, the knowledge, the opinion, the idea that it's being transmitted, where does it come from? 00:33:40.474 --> 00:33:42.875 Is this an original idea? 00:33:43.276 --> 00:33:49.999 Is this kind of taking some ideas and combining them together in a new format? 00:33:49.999 --> 00:33:51.000 Is this... 00:33:51.442 --> 00:33:55.876 maybe a well-known idea that is being communicated in a new way. 00:33:55.876 --> 00:33:58.439 And none of those things are right or wrong. 00:33:58.439 --> 00:34:04.123 Critical thinking is not about figuring out is this the right knowledge or the wrong knowledge. 00:34:04.123 --> 00:34:05.064 Is this? 00:34:05.228 --> 00:34:06.567 true or false. 00:34:06.567 --> 00:34:10.427 mean, sometimes it is as simple as is this factual or not? 00:34:10.427 --> 00:34:11.768 Is this true or false? 00:34:11.768 --> 00:34:14.907 But often knowledge is a little more complicated than that. 00:34:14.907 --> 00:34:35.487 And so it's really about, like I said, engaging that critical thinking, letting ourselves not just be passive consumers of media, but also engaged critical consumers who are able to ask ourselves and each other and content creators too. 00:34:36.362 --> 00:34:49.773 So once we start asking ourselves more questions, we become more discerning, but also we become more, interestingly, can also become more compassionate. 00:34:49.773 --> 00:34:52.614 And let me break down what I mean by that. 00:34:54.494 --> 00:35:08.769 In some ways, we live in a world where we are being sold this illusion that all of us are 15 minutes away from attention and fame. 00:35:09.090 --> 00:35:19.735 In some ways, social media has made large uh platforms and large followings possible for anybody. 00:35:19.735 --> 00:35:21.157 And that is true. 00:35:21.157 --> 00:35:28.981 And that means that we might judge ourselves harshly, especially if we are experts in our field, if we don't have a large platform. 00:35:28.981 --> 00:35:35.606 But the reality is that a lot of things go into having a large platform, like we said, right up to this point. 00:35:35.606 --> 00:35:53.657 And so when we start asking ourselves more questions, when we engage with media more critically, we can also better understand why maybe us or people that we know may or may not have the same level of popularity as people who are saying similar things. 00:35:54.271 --> 00:36:03.771 Sometimes it's also very interesting because people that are maybe less popular, that have smaller followings, can start talking about something that doesn't get a lot of attention. 00:36:03.771 --> 00:36:12.590 But then somebody with a much bigger

following picks up that topic and all of a sudden that topic is all over the internet. 00:36:12.811 --> 00:36:16.471 And so the popularity drives engagement. 00:36:17.070 --> 00:36:27.574 And popularity can make, on social media, can make success look so easily within our reach if we just follow the formula, right? 00:36:27.615 --> 00:36:29.836 That is not necessarily true. 00:36:29.836 --> 00:36:31.588 I think that is a myth, right? 00:36:31.588 --> 00:36:42.623 Because we need to remember that it's not just doing the thing, it's not just entering the arena, to paraphrase another very popular therapist on the internet. 00:36:42.623 --> 00:36:46.019 uh That is not enough. 00:36:46.019 --> 00:36:48.079 Many of us have entered the arena. 00:36:48.079 --> 00:37:10.559 You know, I remember I was attending a virtual conference a few years ago and somebody was using Esther Perel and Brené Brown as examples of therapists who have managed to get very large platforms and how helpful and influential that can be to share so much information with kind of larger audiences, right? 00:37:10.559 --> 00:37:11.900 And that's great. 00:37:12.443 --> 00:37:19.030 All kudos to Brené and to Esther and to many other therapists who have very large platforms. 00:37:19.030 --> 00:37:34.543 But some of us in the chat were also saying, yes, and like, let's not pretend that this is something that's achievable for everybody, because remember epistemic injustice that I was talking about at the beginning of the video? 00:37:34.829 --> 00:37:38.449 The way that knowledge is received is not neutral. 00:37:38.449 --> 00:37:48.608 There are lots of different factors that go into who's being seen as more or less credible, who is being seen as more or less competent and so on and so forth. 00:37:48.648 --> 00:37:59.889 And a couple of people decided to be a little feisty in the comment and said, well, I would like to see you like putting yourself out there in this way. 00:37:59.889 --> 00:38:03.489 And I was like, okay, hold my cup of tea. 00:38:03.489 --> 00:38:11.056 It's like, actually, have seven books out and a podcast and here is like my public platform. 00:38:11.056 --> 00:38:13.268 And I put all of that in the chat. 00:38:13.268 --> 00:38:17.581 And the person was like, uh it's easy to criticize from the cheap seats, right? 00:38:17.581 --> 00:38:20.192 I like to see you putting yourself out there and be vulnerable. 00:38:20.192 --> 00:38:23.454 It's like, whoops, I stand corrected, right? 00:38:23.454 --> 00:38:41.985 And I wasn't trying to, like I said, know, kudos to Brené and to Esther and to all the other folks who have large platforms, but we have to stop pretending that kind of that level of popularity is immune, you know, from bias, right? 00:38:41.985 --> 00:38:53.030 And also we need to remember that just because somebody is popular potentially doesn't make them an expert in absolutely everything, for example, right? 00:38:53.070 --> 00:38:57.592 Which is also fascinating and maybe the topic for a different video. 00:38:59.036 --> 00:39:10.541 And so even if we achieve popularity, right, we need to ask ourselves, do we have the expertise to sustain the level of popularity, the platform that we might have gained? 00:39:10.541 --> 00:39:11.742 Some people do. 00:39:11.742 --> 00:39:14.402 That's why I named Brené and Esther. 00:39:14.402 --> 00:39:15.963 They have the expertise. 00:39:15.963 --> 00:39:17.644 They have the credentials. 00:39:17.644 --> 00:39:20.746 Those are solid people with solid knowledge. 00:39:20.746 --> 00:39:27.389 However, they're also people with very uh acceptable kind of positionalities, right? 00:39:27.389 --> 00:39:33.762 um light-skinned folks, folks who are cisgender, folks who are perceived as abled, right? 00:39:33.762 --> 00:39:38.795 Because it's also not just who people are, it's also how we are perceived, right? 00:39:38.916 --> 00:39:47.001 And so it can be really tempting for so many of us to court popularity and I mean, goodness knows that I'm doing that right now. 00:39:47.001 --> 00:39:57.309 I'm here live streaming on YouTube, this is gonna be recorded, it's gonna be on the platform, I'm gonna edit some shorter videos, throw them on Instagram. 00:39:57.309 --> 00:40:01.304 I sure am trying to you know, grow my following. 00:40:01.304 --> 00:40:09.311 That is absolutely true because as an author and as somebody who's self-employed, it is really important to have a platform. 00:40:09.311 --> 00:40:18.978 And even publishing houses are starting to ask how many followers on social media do you have, even if you have all the credentials necessary to write a book, for example. 00:40:18.978 --> 00:40:22.260 So I'm not saying it's wrong to court popularity. 00:40:22.260 --> 00:40:25.443 A lot of us have to survive under late stage capitalism. 00:40:25.443 --> 00:40:27.085 A lot of us are doing that. 00:40:27.085 --> 00:40:30.367 I'm not asking us to throw away the baby with the bath water. 00:40:30.367 --> 00:40:32.068 I think it's an expression. 00:40:32.068 --> 00:40:47.277 But rather what I'm asking us to do is to slow down, ask ourselves those questions that are connected with media literacy, and notice the impact that popular discourse might have on us, the way we think, and what we believe. 00:40:47.277 --> 00:40:54.342 And also to maybe pay some closer attention to who do we choose to listen to, right? 00:40:54.342 --> 00:40:58.606 Which uh voices are we constantly being exposed to? 00:40:58.606 --> 00:41:01.067 Is our social media an echo chamber? 00:41:01.067 --> 00:41:10.530 Do we only read books, watch movies or TV shows or follow content creators that look or sound like us? 00:41:10.530 --> 00:41:21.115 Or do we really vary the kind of the media that we consume, whether it's on social media, whether it's books, whether it's audio books, whether it's TVs, movies and so on. 00:41:23.005 --> 00:41:31.342 So I hope you've enjoyed this episode uh about how popularity is not always uh the same as expertise. 00:41:31.342 --> 00:41:51.655 It can be, but not always, like I said, and why we need to kind of pay attention to this issue because of the way that it can really shape reality and drive the way we make decisions, drive the way we vote, drive the way we show up for ourselves and each other in community as well. 00:41:52.467 --> 00:41:59.891 And if there is a topic that you would like me to cover in future Warm Take Wednesdays kind of episodes, please let me know. 00:41:59.891 --> 00:42:04.704 Otherwise, I'm just going to have to keep putting out there whatever is on my mind. 00:42:04.704 --> 00:42:11.137 This topic has been on my mind for, oh my God, at least I think it's been on my mind for at least a year. 00:42:11.137 --> 00:42:19.760 But then all the happenings in therapy threads of this week really kind of pushed me to get this topic out there. 00:42:19.760 --> 00:42:24.001 So if there's a topic that you would like me to talk about, please let me know. 00:42:24.302 --> 00:42:41.054 You can leave it in the comments, you can contact me through my website and until we meet again I hope that you become savvy consumers of media whether it's on social media or other platforms and until then take care of yourselves and each other. 00:42:41.054 --> 00:42:43.036 Ciao e alla prossima!