John August

Psych 101

Podcaster as cult leader

Hive Mind, Psych 101

In a post that [has since been taken down](http://www.nobullscript.net/screenwritingtips/how-to-know-if-you-are-leading-a-cult/?utm_source=Supersized%20April%20Newsletter&utm_campaign=April%20Newsletter&utm_medium=email), Danny Manus [warned](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.nobullscript.net/screenwritingtips/how-to-know-if-you-are-leading-a-cult/) that screenwriters are unwittingly being drawn into cults:

> To be honest, I’m not even sure the professionals themselves are aware of their Jim Jonesy behavior and what type of insulated, self-aggrandizing, arrogant dome of cynicism and power they are creating. So, in hopes that there is still time to save others from drinking the Kool-Aid, and as a public service to inform those unknowingly responsible, here are some ways to know if you’re leading a cult.

> …

> – You cast aspersions on outside computer programs or software your followers may use (…and then launch your own and charge for it).

> – You advise your followers that they need to move closer to you, and can only truly be part of your world if they are living nearby in the same town.

> – You create your own terminology for words and concepts that don’t require new terminology (or perhaps your own FONT because the font others use aren’t good enough for you?).

While the first bullet point could apply to [Marco Arment](http://marco.org), I have a strong hunch that Manus is mostly referring to me and Craig Mazin, and our [Scriptnotes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/scriptnotes-podcast/id462495496?mt=2) podcast.

If he’s calling me a cult leader, he’s not altogether wrong.

By these standards, most popular podcasters are cult leaders.

## Sound of My Voice

Here’s the thing: I’m fascinated by cults. I read books about Jonestown. I watch movies like Martha Marcy May Marlene. I wrote a pilot for Fox about an apocalyptic cult in the Santa Ynez Valley.

I know cults, and podcasts are inherently kind of culty.

Week after week, you’re hearing the same voices talking in your head about the same topics. You begin to learn the hosts’ quirks, opinions and predilections. They feel like friends even though they’re strangers. ((Meeting people in person, I’ve experienced both sides of this asymmetric familiarity. It’s weird both ways.))

Podcasts never abandon you. They are with you when you’re alone in the car, or riding the train, or washing dishes. They take you out of the tedium of the moment and engage you in something more interesting.

Podcasts offer secret knowledge. Anyone can watch The Daily Show, but to listen to a podcast you have to know it exists. You have to seek it out. You have a source of information almost no one else in the world does.

Some podcasts even provide a special wardrobe, say, a [t-shirt](http://atp.fm/shirt).

Yet there are some significant barriers to podcasts becoming full-on cults.

For starters, listening to a podcast is a solo experience, while cults are inherently group activities. Social media can get you part of the way — but you’d want to do some [live shows](http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/culturegabfest/2014/10/slate_s_culture_gabfest_is_live_from_l_a_the_critics_talk_to_jenny_slate.html) so your fans can interact with each other.

Second, the opt-out is way too easy. True cults have ways to punish apostasy. With podcasts, you can simply stop listening, or delete the show from your podcasting app. No one is going to know that you bailed. ((I’ve stopped listening to several of my friends’ podcasts. No, not yours. Another friend’s.))

## Cult-like isn’t the same as cult

I don’t believe podcasters are cult leaders in the sense of Jim Jones. Manus is comparing the murder of 913 men, women and children to a few mean Facebook comments.

A podcast like Scriptnotes — or The Talk Show, or Serial, or the Slate Political Gabfest — does share some characteristics with a cult. It has charismatic leaders voicing an opinion. It singles out heroes and villains. Just like Apple and Android, a podcast can attract fans and fanatics.

Should podcasters be aware of the dangers of cult-like behavior? Absolutely. So should bloggers, tweeters, Viners and YouTubers. Any time you have a crowd, you have to consider responsible crowd management.

Manus writes:

> Those who spout off about how THERE ARE NO RULES – but then continue to tell you exactly what to believe and think and how to act and who to do business with – are either wildly hypocritical, or completely oblivious.

I don’t think Craig and I are hypocritical or oblivious. We’re mindful of our responsibility to both our audience and the industry, and always aim to be inclusive rather than isolationist. If we’re cult leaders, we suck at it.

But I guess that’s what a modern cult leader would say.

Hacks, Transference and Where to Begin

Episode - 174

Go to Archive

News, Psych 101, Scriptnotes, Story and Plot, Transcribed

John and Craig talk about where to start a story — how far back should you go? The decision about whether to meet the hero as a child, in their normal rut, or mid-crisis fundamentally changes the narrative, so it’s worth exploring fully.

We also discuss the psychological phenomenon of transference, and how writers’ desire for approval can lead to strange (and strained) relationships with executives and other authority figures. Finally, the Sony hack: was it a one-off, or will this be the first of many?

There are still a few tickets left for Thursday’s live Holiday show. Tickets available through the link below.

Links:

* [Get your tickets now](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/scriptnotes-holiday-show/) for the Scriptnotes Holiday Show
* The application period for the [2015 Sundance Episodic Story Lab starts tomorrow](http://www.sundance.org/programs/episodic-storytelling)
* [re/code on the “Unprecedented” Sony hack](http://recode.net/2014/12/07/sony-describes-hack-attack-as-unprecedented/)
* [Transference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transference) on Wikipedia
* [Google ReCAPTCHA](http://www.wired.com/2014/12/google-one-click-recaptcha/) from Wired
* [Endless Alphabet](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/endless-alphabet/id591626572?mt=8) on the iTunes Store
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Kris Gotthelf ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

You can download the episode here: [AAC](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_174.m4a) | [mp3](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_174.mp3).

**UPDATE 12-15-14:** The transcript of this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2014/scriptnotes-ep-174-hacks-transference-and-where-to-begin-transcript).

On Being Somebody

Follow Up, Los Angeles, Psych 101

Reading [Notch’s letter](http://notch.net/2014/09/im-leaving-mojang/ “letter”) about how the burden of public scrutiny led him to sell Minecraft, I’ve been thinking back to an essay I wrote in 2006 entitled [Are You Somebody?](http://johnaugust.com/2006/are-you-somebody “essay”)

> As I’ve done more publicity, and talking-head interviews on various DVDs, I’ve found that random people are recognizing me and saying hello with increasing frequency. It’s once a month or so — nothing alarming — but it always comes when I least it expect it: shopping for strollers, in line at the movies, at breakfast with the woman carrying my baby.

> The hand-shakers are invariably polite, so I can always genuinely say, “It’s nice to meet you.” But what’s fascinating is how everyone around us reacts. Remember: as a screenwriter, I’m not actually famous. Yet suddenly someone is treating me like I am. I love watching that double-take as bystanders try to figure out who I could possibly be.

> Once a nearby woman actually asked me, “Are you somebody?”

> Almost apologetically, I said I was a screenwriter. Her face showed a combination of confusion and disappointment that would have been devastating at another point in my life.

That was 2006. Eight years later, I’m still not famous the way movie stars are famous.

Back then, I wrote:

> Here’s an example of someone who is actually famous: Drew Barrymore. A few years ago, paparazzi took pictures of us having lunch. In the caption, I was the “unidentified companion.”

This happened again last year in New York. This time I was [carrying Drew’s kid](http://www.popsugar.com/Drew-Barrymore-Jimmy-Fallon-Birthday-Baby-Olive-31863520 “paparazzi photo”), and I didn’t even merit an “unidentified companion.” So when I say I’m not famous, I have proof.

But over the last eight years, I’ve become more widely known within a subset of people, most of them writers and tech folks. Because of Scriptnotes, my voice is actually recognized as often as my face. Because of Twitter, I end up interacting with strangers much more often. And because of both outlets, people who recognize me know a lot more about me — at least, a version of me who hosts a popular podcast about screenwriting.

That “version of me” aspect can be challenging. Jason Kottke writes about [his experience](http://kottke.org/14/09/this-is-phil-fish “kottke article”):

> I realized fairly early on that me and the Jason Kottke who published online were actually two separate people…or to use Danskin’s formulation, they were a person and a concept. (When you try to explain this to people, BTW, they think you’re a fucking narcissistic crazy person for talking about yourself in the third person. But you’re not actually talking about yourself…you’re talking about a concept the audience has created. Those who think of you as a concept particularly hate this sort of behavior.)

Because I can’t hide behind my writing, I’m probably more “myself” on the podcast than I am in blog posts like this. I rewrote this sentence five times; on the show, I can’t ponder and perfect.

But the podcast is on some level a performance. It’s me with the dial turned up. It’s not who I am when I’m making dinner or struggling to make a scene work.

Kottke references Ian Danskin, whose video [This is Phil Fish](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PmTUW-owa2w “Phil Fish video”) deftly explores how we treat “famous” people more as concepts than as individuals. Even if notoriety hasn’t changed someone’s behavior at all, perception has:

> The dynamic between these two people is viewed completely differently as soon as one of them becomes famous.

If there’s a takeaway from this — and there needs to be, because John August is professorial — it’s that the time to think about how you’d behave if you got famous is right now.

That fuck-you tweet to @RandomCelebrity may seem like no big deal — hell, they’re rich and famous. But if that rich-and-famous celebrity tweeted the same thing, you’d think, “Wow, what an asshole.”

Here’s the mind-blowing truth: *The person who sends the fuck-you tweet is an asshole, regardless of her pre-existing level of fame.*

Tweet people — even famous people — the way you’d want to be tweeted. Yes, this is basic Golden Rule stuff, but we always forget it in the world of internet fame.

Beyond that, be careful of internet pile-ons. People do stupid stuff, and it’s often appropriate to call them out on it. But it’s almost never a good idea to take a random person who said something stupid and hoist them up as a symbol. You’re forcing fame — infamy, really — on someone who is likely no worse a person than you.

Internet fame has a multiplier effect that’s hard to anticipate. You can hurt people far more easily than you realize. And long after you’ve forgotten your outrage, the focus of the blast is left picking up the pieces.

On trust, drama and corporations

Psych 101, Words on the page

The project I’m writing centers on trust. The more I think about the word and the concept of trust, the more complicated it becomes.

Most definitions of trust contain some combination of “confidence” and “reliability,” both of which often include trust in their own entries. Circular definitions are not especially helpful, so let’s try to pull them apart.

**Confidence** is an inner conviction, a firmly-held belief often (but not always) supported by facts or prior experience. *I have confidence that it will not rain today, because it’s below zero outside.*

**Reliability** is the quality of being able to depend on something to consistently perform as expected. *They’re expensive, but the reliability of these hard drives is unmatched.*

Combining these two ideas, we can arrive at a pretty good definition of trust:

**Trust is confidence in the reliability of someone or something.**

Or, in longer form:

**Trust is the inner conviction that someone (or something) will do what you expect.**

When you look at trust this way, you see several fascinating characteristics:

1. Trust is something internal, a personally-held belief.
2. The focus of trust is something external. ((In a phrase like, “trust my own eyes,” the eyes are not the person speaking. Even in phrases like, “trust yourself,” it’s still a transitive verb. I’d argue the “you” you’re supposed to trust is a projection of an idealized person.))
3. The focus of trust is something that can take its own actions. You can trust your neighbor or your dog. But it’s weird to talk about trusting a chair or a newborn. ((Can you trust a robot or a zombie? The answer depends on the degree to which you believe it’s making its own decisions. If it’s just following its coding or brain-chomping instincts, the best you can do it predict it, not trust it.))
4. Trust is a prediction about the future. Even in the past tense, it’s referring to the then-future: “I trusted him, but then he slept with a barrista.”

Trust has many thematic cousins — faith, hope, belief, honor — all of which can be explored in fiction. But for the screenwriter, trust is better.

### Trust is dramatic.

Trust works well on screen because it’s about a relationship between two characters, and can be explored with actions rather than just words.

The rival soldiers who find themselves stranded behind enemy lines? Trust.

The husband whose wife snoops through his email? Trust.

[The scorpion and the frog](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog)? Trust. ((And overdone. Can we please stop referencing the scorpion and the frog?))

Like faith, hope, belief and honor, there’s an internal aspect to trust, but it manifests outwardly. You don’t just trust; you trust someone. And the process of one character growing to trust another character lends itself to interesting scenes and conflicts. Often, late-story actions reveal whether that trust was well-placed.

We often speak of trust when it’s broken. Or shattered. Or destroyed. Worth noting: when we lose trust in someone, it’s rarely described gently. It’s almost always smashy and violent. In fact, we often discuss trust using crystalline metaphors:

> Trust is like a mirror, you can fix it if it’s broken, but you can still see the crack in that motherfucker’s reflection. (Lady Gaga, Telephone)

Trust means drama.

### Impersonal trust, and corporate anthropomorphization

Trust is also supposedly at the heart of the [sharing economy](http://www.wired.com/2014/04/trust-in-the-share-economy/) we live in, but what does it mean to trust Facebook, or Amazon, or Uber?

In the case of Uber and Lyft, the companies have a human face: the driver who picks you up. You have a pact of unspoken trust between you. You trust the driver to deliver you to your destination; she trusts you not to vomit in the back seat. ((My last Uber had paper bags, much like you’d find in airplane seatbacks, ready for drunken Saturday night customers.)) Both of you trust the service to handle all the money details.

But with Amazon or Google, there’s no person in front of you to trust or distrust. When Stuart says he “trusts Google Maps,” what is he actually trusting?

I’d argue he’s trusting an anthropomorphized entity he’s created in his head. He’s already granting it a sort of consciousness: “Google Maps wants me to take the 10, but that’s crazy, right?”

The Supreme Court was criticized for [recent decisions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burwell_v._Hobby_Lobby) that treated corporations like individual persons, but the truth is we do it all the time. It’s a useful shorthand (“Apple fears Android growth”), and allows us to distinguish the employees of a corporation from the corporation itself. “I admire the engineers at Google, but not Google.”

And we’ve always done it with countries. (“France wants a carbon tax.”)

In personifying abstractions like countries and corporations, we’re able to talk about whether we trust them. But I’m not sure that’s a good thing overall.

Maybe if we looked at them for what they are — a collection of moving pieces, more like a swarm than a single entity — we’d be more prudent. Can you trust something that is constantly changing and reassembling itself?

That’s a good dramatic question. I call dibs.