The Many Layers Of Russell Brand

I’d never heard of Russell Brand before last week. It’s impossible not to hear of him now, with the accusations of rape and physical and emotional abuse by five women. And honestly, when I read the accusations, they seem pretty damn legit, especially when you consider how restrictive English libel law is.

So I came to the conclusion that the dude is probably a rapist, despite his defense that he simply got a lot of pussy. But there are a lot of rapists in the world, and almost none of them receive this much hoopla, even among celebrities. What makes this cringy Englishman such a big deal? To Google I went.

When you Google “Russell Brand”, you are inundated with news that his ex-wife Katy Perry (?!) nicknamed him “Rasputin”, which is Russian for “debauched one” and important because…Katy Perry? Once you get past that, you get some coverage of the allegations. Cool. The next level below that are the mini-biographies. This is where it gets interesting.

A lot of these mini-biographies focus on his political proclivities and his status as a conspiracy theorist. Particularly, his skepticism of Covid-19 vaccines. Why are his views on shots relevant right now? By all reasonable standards, they aren’t. There’s no link between Covid-19 idiocy and rape as far as I know. So what gives?

To find the answer, let’s take a look at the incentives of the biographers who went out of their way to note Brand’s love of conspiracy theories. Take one such biographer, the NYT. The NYT is not a fan of Covid “alternative opinions”. You see this with their dismay at the Feds not being able to police social media anymore. If you’re the NYT, and you wanted to root out dissension, why not make sure everyone knows the celebrity rapist is an unhinged Covid truther? While you're at it, why not take a shot at the right by linking Brand’s descent into conspiracies with “conservative talking points”?

The left-wing media may not be behind the accusations, as some looney right-wingers believe, but damn if they aren’t taking advantage of the opportunity.

Going even deeper, you start to get into the op-eds from idiots like yours truly. These commentaries overwhelmingly focus on the ever-controversial phrase “innocent until proven guilty”.

Legally, the argument is airtight. Brand is legally innocent until proven guilty. Everyone agrees on that. But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about in the court of public opinion. Basically, should we cancel this dude?

There are many who see “innocent until proven guilty” as a bunch of bullshit that rich dudes use to suppress victims, citing evidence that only 3-4% of rape accusations are false. They also correctly point out that private citizens and companies can do whatever the hell they want. Innocent until proven guilty is only true legally, after all. Thus, there’s no problem with treating him as guilty and burning him at the stake, even if he is not officially guilty yet.

In my opinion, there are multiple issues with this logic:

• The stat on false rape accusations is irrelevant. If anything, all it shows is that innocent men are sometimes accused of rape, and that we can’t make judgments based on heuristics that almost always work.

• This can very quickly degrade into groupthink. How do we decide which people to cancel and which people to spare? Won’t it just come down to whatever narrative catches on first?

• What happens if they turn out innocent? Do we all get up and apologize? Are they repaid for lost earnings and reputational damage? Or do we keep hating them in perpetuity?

• Even if you're in support of canceling Brand, you should not be praising YouTube for “demonetizing” his channel. They are still running ads on his videos, but now they are just keeping all the money for themselves. It’s comically performative.

Automatic canceling is at best unreliable and at worst tyrannical, but it’s not going away anytime soon. You’re not going to be able to keep things under wraps until the trial happens, and you’re not going to have a non-partisan media reporting facts free from narrative and a populace that doesn’t have a predisposition for demanding blood.

Because of these realities, I think the best thing we can do is cancel individually, not institutionally. What I mean by that is this: if you want to cancel Russell Brand, go for it. If you want to get all your family, friends, and followers to also cancel Russell Brand, knock yourself out. But, the executives over at YouTube shouldn’t take matters into their own hands and shut down his ability to make a living. And the government sure as hell shouldn’t lobby the platform that is giving him sanctuary to do the same.

Institutional canceling is merely the few unilaterally acting for the many. It’s no different than vigilantism. We don’t condone vigilantism because we don’t want some dumbass with a gun playing judge, jury, and executioner. Why then would we condone one-percenters sitting in a Silicon Valley penthouse doing the exact same thing with people’s livelihoods?

Answer: we shouldn’t.

Extras

• Airbnb has authorized the use of creepy ass monitoring devices.

• The UAW is striking, and it doesn’t look like it’s ending anytime soon.

• Buenos Aires is a case study of why facial recognition technology is so dangerous.

• Fire up the skilled immigration.

• Forgot feedback, we now say feedforward.

• The Biden Admin desperately wants to police social media. Good thing India is taking care of that for them.

• The world is getting concerningly old.

• Dress codes are usually pretty stupid, but it is even stupider to change the dress code of the damn Senate just to accommodate one man.

• There are some new snippets from the Snowden documents.

• China sacked their foreign minister for the grave sin of getting American bag time.

• Meanwhile, Zelenskyy fired all six of his deputy defense ministers as part of an anti-corruption push.

• Agility Robotics is about to be building a lot of humanoid robots.

• If you play Fortnite, you are probably being spied on by ShadowDragon.

• 25% of clinical trials might be partly or fully made up. That doesn’t seem good.

• ChatGPT 🤝 Cheating students.

• In news that should be much more widely covered, Saudi Arabia and Israel are nearing a peace deal.

• Tinder should be absolutely ashamed of their $500/mo subscription. They are only offering it to their “most active users”, which means the people who are struggling the most. These people don’t need a $500/mo subscription, they need a makeover and a new job. Selling this to them is pure corporate greed.

• Biden is trying to protect the deep state.

Until next time, ✌️

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