The Court of Public Opinion Always Says "Off With Their Heads"
How social media has ruined art and business
Listen, art and business used to be fucking cool. Plain and simple. I remember growing up in the ‘90s and early ‘00s dreaming of being a badass Vice journalist, following a cocaine mule through the Peruvian jungle or a high-powered CEO using said cocaine to fuel my nonstop pendulum swing of making money and buying gold-plated Lamborghinis. I saw artists pushing limits in comedy, movies, books, and I thought - hell yeah. This is what life is about.
But then it happened. The social media explosion.
Suddenly everything had to be “empathetic”, risk-free, and a safe space. Outrage needed to be avoided at all costs. Artists stopped taking risks, comedians started self-censoring, and businesses became obsessed with optics over innovation.
Because before social media you see, the mob didn’t have much of a way to hold 24/7 bitchfests. It was too labor-intensive. They would have to track down the contact information for a company, write them a letter, mail it in. They’d have to look up the customer service number, call, wait on hold, try to make their way to a manager or someone deemed important enough to even remotely have a chance at having their opinion heard by anyone who mattered. So, at the end of the day most people just didn’t. They took their cuntiness, threw it in a sack, and moved on. If they saw a comedy special they didn’t like, they switched the channel. If they saw art that offended them they bitched to their best friend Nancy. If they saw an advertisement that was too “lewd” they clutched their pearls and once again, bitched to their best friend Nancy. Do you see what I mean?
And with that, the feedback most predominantly received by companies and artists was from that of their peers. Sure, they would run focus groups and try to garner the opinion of the public, but they were willing to take risks and make creative leaps for the potential of success because the negative ramifications didn’t include a Twitter lynch mob.
Even worse, as soon as the artists and companies started to give an inch, the mob took a mile. They got a blood lust, and any time they remotely smelt it in the water, they struck. We watched the rise of the cancellation movement and saw it take down creator, artist, comedian, provocateur, and company alike. Some of them never to return to the public sphere again. The mob went after their reputations, jobs, homes, families. It knew no bounds. With every passing year, month, and eventually day a new justification of attack was added to the mob’s list. And now, if you’re a creative or a business you know for a fact that there is nothing you can post that won’t evoke an irate reaction from SOMEONE.
This is the reality we find ourselves in currently. The one we have seemingly just accepted. But when a society allows itself to be led in a direction dictated by people who don’t build, don’t create, and don’t view things through the lens of productivity, it is doomed to fail. They will lead us not off a cliff, but into a disgustingly stagnant swamp that reeks of sulfur and mediocrity.
The amount of truly great artists and creatives I have watched get attacked by the mob so viciously or so frequently that the spark of creativity has left them or even worse, they’ve stopped creating entirely is too damn high. Artists are supposed to be weird, take risks, have some creations land and some flop. We used to understand this and be lenient and forgiving. Now, it’s “OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!”.
So, in this writer’s humble opinion, I think it’s time we say “fuck the mob.” It’s time to create again without the fear of what some loser with a shitty job, loveless marriage, and pile of unachieved dreams has to say about it. Because what the hell do they even know?! Why did we ever lend credence to their opinion for a moment? It’s time to build big business without needing to hide behind a lie that, “Here at XYZ Incorporated, we don’t care about profit, we care about you.” BULLSHIT. With no profit there is no business to help anyone in the first place. It’s time to be unapologetically focused on creation, production, and real, true forward movement again. Because at the end of the day, the Court of Public Opinion doesn’t reward greatness—it punishes it. If you want to win, you have to stop playing by their rules.
Elizabeth Duffy