The Sidelines: It's going to be a sh-tshow for a while
With Emmanuel Olalere, content creator
The Sidelines is the supplementary issue to every main edition of The Starting Block. Here you will find the interview transcript and more information about the conversation of the week. The interview is transcribed by Otter.ai and edited for length and clarity. All links provided come from me, and not the guest, unless stated.
Listen to the audio version here.
TRANSCRIPT
TINA CARMILLIA: Hello, my name is Tina Carmillia and this is The Starting Block, a weekly conversation on science and society with an emphasis on disinformation, data, and democracy.
Before we start, I’d like to let you know that the transcript and credits for this conversation are available on The Sidelines, the supplement to every main edition of The Starting Block.
Now, in the next lane: returning for the second week, Emmanuel Olalere, a tech and lifestyle-focused content creator. In part one, we focused on the lifestyle side. Now here he is on being a socially conscious creator.
I want to talk about your experience as a tech reviewer or someone who plays a lot with tech products. There’s, I think, a very genuine sense of curiosity in the way that you—I mean from the videos that I watch on your channel—the way that you introduce these products and the way that you explore it, as someone who is reviewing products and, especially now in the age where there’s always new tech products that’s coming up so frequently, so fast, right, what makes a good tech product review? How do you decide what to review and what’s not worth the time?
EMMANUEL OLALERE: It’s a very personal thing, I think that was one of the main things, and the democratisation of content creation now where everybody has an access to a mobile device that has a good enough camera to shoot content and it’s very cheap. And so it really does become not just about, picking—this is I want to talk about or that’s what I want to talk about but I guess it becomes a step higher at least for myself in the sense that I create videos that I want to see, making a video for myself. That’s why the standards for myself, are so high, because if I watch a video, there’s certain things I’m looking for.
So, to give a quick throwback, in 2014 before I bought my laptop, I’ve been— you know I’m someone who’s like, I have a very obsessive personality, if you can’t tell from running every day or fasting every day, like, I get addicted to stuff. So I’ve just tried to redirect that addiction to like positive stuff but like, addiction, nonetheless, right? So when it comes to consuming content as well, like when I was like looking into buying a laptop I wanted, which was an MSI gaming laptop, I can claim to say that at that time I had watched every single video that had been made about the laptop. My model that I eventually ended up buying? There were no videos available for it. So when I got it—Malaysia was one of the first few markets where the laptop came out early, like top two countries in the world where that laptop came out—so I was like, you know what, I’m gonna make a video for this stuff that I wanted because when I watched these hundreds of videos, I wanted to ask, hey, how about this? Hey, how about that?
So in many ways when I make videos for the general public, actually, they are the secondary people to benefit from the video. The primary person is myself. For example, I’m not an audiophile, and I tell you, yeah, you know, the mids and the lows… Yeah you know it’s nonsense, right. So in many ways, I lean in to like the stuff that I know or the stuff that means something to me. And the stuff that I know I don't know or I don't really care about that much, I just don’t touch it because I realised that due to the fact that content is so readily available, there is no point in trying to be like everybody else, and there is no point in trying to have the same cookie-cutter approach, in a sense that hey, look this is the specs, this is the... It’s like, yeah, but you can watch that from like a million people, right?
So if you’re coming to watch my video I believe you’re coming because of me right like because you care that I care about something like that. So I tried to make that shine, you know, and again, it’s easy to get caught up sometimes especially when you’re creating content where it follows the same format. For example, I think, two years ago I made a video. So I’m a very sarcastic person and perhaps it’s due to the context of where I come from because the language I speak, which is Yoruba from Nigeria is a very sarcastic language like the abuden concept in Malaysia, which is like when something is very obvious, we’re like that and a million. That’s how my entire language was built, so I interact with my friends like that. So I decided to make a video that leaned into that where Asus had given me their super ultra-premium gaming phone and the entire video was sarcasm. Like, eight minutes of just pure sarcasm of why you should not buy this phone even though it was such a great phone. Obviously was the opposite, right? And I think even Asus Malaysia, did not get it. They were so mad at me like, “Hey, why would you say stuff like that?” And I was like … you know? But for me I’m happy even though it didn’t land well and especially Asian audience did not really get it, I got so many dislikes—more than likes. But the people that get it, get it, right? For me, I get it so I’m cool with that.
Again, not many creators will have that opportunity to do that because if it gets to [the] sponsorship [department] and [they tell you] you can say this you cannot say this. That’s why for me, personally, there are many sponsorships and paid opportunities I’ve turned down because it would have meant that I would have to say stuff that I did not necessarily believe in or have to be like, hey, hey this is a great thing, while I’m like yeah, I don’t like this at all. Sometimes I’ve had potential clients that tell me this is the script, here’s what you can say, this is what you cannot say and I just don’t do jobs like that because I believe that, number one, it’s unethical, and number two, there has to be disclosure if there was anything [scripted] you have to say it out, hey this is it. And in many ways, I think my content and the kind of way I create my content is a reflection of my personality. I’m just what I believe in.
So to quote my housemate—one thing that he says that I really pick up is that everybody has a place … we need people who are vocal about [issues] online. We need people who are very militant about issues like that because some of those issues are not issues that are very comfortable to have, some of those issues are not issues that we would have over tea and crumpets, spoiler alert, you have it over long, protracted, back-and-forths. You need people who are middle-grounders, people who can [say], “Okay, everybody calm down, we sort of lost it a bit, let’s all calm down here.” We need people who are able to talk to people on the other side and relate to them.
TINA CARMILLIA: And speaking of ethics, of course, nowadays, especially with emerging technologies, you know, we're seeing more and more how it amplifies discrimination, racism, sexism, and all of that. But tech, in itself, whether in the professional level or in the enthusiasts’ space—the spaces of people like you—there’s a lot more socially conscious use of technology or socially conscious discussion around technology. I’ve seen that with you in a non-direct way as well, I think. I mean we’re hearing more calls about things like diversity in the developers’ room, diversity in the upper management of tech companies; do you see that kind of diversity in the creative spaces, those creators who are working with tech products as well?
EMMANUEL OLALERE: For sure, for sure, I think, in 2021, definitely more than two or three years ago, right? So I would say if there’s one thing that technology provides, it’s that it acts as a leveller.
I listen to this podcast which is The Brilliant Idiots, with Charlamagne Tha God and Andrew Schulz, comedians in the U.S. There's one thing that they kept harping on, which is that technology in many ways, has removed gatekeeping. So, like, I remember when I was growing up, as an artist, if you wanted to release a song, you have to have a record label, right? You had to have connections with the radio station and if you did not have any of those your hits were not going anywhere. And even if you did know a DJ and you I give them your CD they’d just dump it in a bin somewhere if you don’t grease their palm, or if they don’t know you from somewhere. So it was very hard because there were lots of gates for you to try to beg for them to open it to you.
And one thing that is great about technology—and even when I came to Malaysia in 2013 and 2014 when I started my channel, or even when I started my blog, like I told you I grew up in a village— it’s so funny how something I started in middle of nowhere, I’d get people from the city travel four hours to come to meet me because they wanted something that only I could provide to them. And I learned—I think I was like, 17, 18, back then—and it blew my mind as to how the most important thing for me to acquire is not money, it’s not studies, it’s not school, it’s nothing; it’s just value, right, because it taught me that if I acquired value then it doesn’t matter where I am, it doesn’t matter what I’ve done, if the people want it, they want it and they would go any lengths to get it.
I think that’s all we’ve seen in technology. Technology has levelled the playing field and it has given so many demographics the whole world over the ability to create, the ability to share, the ability to find a home, the ability to find people that are like them, the ability to find support, the ability to topple governments, or the ability to even build governments, right? It’s basically very agnostic right— it’s not good, it’s not bad, but it’s just whatever it is you’re able to make of it, unlike before, where—like the radio analogy I used—you have to know someone. Now I don't have to know anybody, I can just get a manufacturer from China, message me and tell me, “Hey, I have something I want you to check out,” or a brand from Germany saying, “Hey, we’re sending you some stuff, what’s your address? And it’s easy for that to happen in 2021 as opposed to back then where, who knows you if you’re in some village in Nigeria. Who knows who you are, right?
So I would say technology very much has been an amplifier. And, of course, for every positive there’s a negative, right, which means that you know it has also amplified the people who perhaps want more gates right, it also amplifies the people perhaps who are pushing back against all this newfound freedom or all this newfound association and pushing back at it hard, like, hey, should not be like that, things are not supposed to be like this, things are supposed to follow this. I guess it’s just the nature of how these things will be. But when it comes to technology in its own right, isolated from the morality of it, I think it’s a great leveller and it’s a great opportunity for many people to actually reach an untold unforeseen greater part of human history, kind of demographic, right?
TINA CARMILLIA: Yeah. I don’t know if you— do you play any games? Are you a gamer?
EMMANUEL OLALERE: Yeah. I do. But my games are not the typical games, I play truck simulators, so…
TINA CARMILLIA: Oh! Because I was just wondering—speaking of, you know, ethics and morality online or with technology—you know, every now and again when there’s a new game that gets released or like a reboot of it and there’s something that’s more socially conscious that’s injected in this newer version of it, they sometimes suffer from review bombing. I don’t know whether tech products also sometimes suffer the same thing where people just, they don’t even play the game or have had a look at the product, they’re just bombarded with negative reviews because people are just upset by this new version of whatever it is being a little bit more socially conscious, I guess.
And I see that, you know, as someone who studies, misinformation or the spread of, you know, ‘fake news’ or fake information—I see that as a form of misinformation as well. I wonder whether you have any thoughts on that.
EMMANUEL OLALERE: When it comes to tech, it’s quite interesting in a sense that, while yes, there is this amplification of so many reviewers, so many people who go for these reviews, I would say, when it comes to tech though, it is still a very tiny percentage of the population, which means that the majority of the people that you and I know who don’t really care that much about gigahertz, is more than some megahertz. It’s like, does it work fine? Does it fit what I want? So when it comes to like tech products especially, while there’s a vocal minority online, they’re just that—a minority, which means that majority of people who actually go into stores or who actually want to purchase devices don't really, you know, go and obsess about oh, it does not have this tiny thing. Oh, no, this is excluded. Oh, no, they didn’t do that or they didn’t do this. They don’t care. The majority of the population, the consumer population that will actually go purchase it, are not reading a 1,500- 3,000-word Medium post stuff on the morality of the thing. They’re just going out there and ask, “Is this good for this?” or, “Is it good for that?” “Okay, how can I pay?” Okay, done.
That’s the thing, it’s still a very tiny minority especially when it comes to social angles or context or equality—it is still a very, very tiny percentage, even in gaming. When it comes to let’s say, what are the practices—you know, there’s a high-churn work culture when it comes to gaming development which is not very ethical, especially seen with Cyberpunk 2077 and how the game flopped because executives just don’t care about their workers and how they overworked so many people. And we kept hearing about this, but the average person who plays the game, they don’t care. They’re just like, okay, is it a good game? Do I like it? That’s why such things continue to propagate.
So to quote my housemate, who is a very profound person, on occasion—I don’t want to, you know, hype him up too much, otherwise his head is going to blow up, right—one thing that he says that I really pick up is that everybody has a place. And I guess in many ways it’s like we need people who are vocal about it online. We need people who are very militant about issues like that because some of those issues are not issues that are very comfortable to have, some of those issues are not issues that we would have over tea and crumpets, spoiler alert, you have it over long, protracted, back-and-forths. You need people who are middle-grounders, people who can [say], “Okay, everybody calm down, we sort of lost it a bit, let’s all calm down here.” We need people who are able to talk to people on the other side and relate to them.
So we need everybody and I’ll say when it comes to tech and gaming, as well, I think it’s a very slow thing and we keep forgetting that the internet has not existed for very long, compared to hundreds of thousands of years of Homo sapiens, right? It’s a very tiny percentage so there’s still a long way to go but I believe slowly but surely, we’re starting to have—I mean, we are having this conversation, which means that it’s a step. Maybe it’s not the fastest, and it could be faster but it’s a step nonetheless compared to when our parents, for example, where you don’t even see any of this, you know, so I very much believe that is still a tiny minority right now, but I think it’s that minority—like, going back to biology and diffusion, it goes from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration.
So perhaps right now, the diffusion is from online to offline where online is still quite concentrated, it’s like those mixed drinks, like Sunquick or whatever, where it’s very, very condensed then you dilute that. So I would say, on the Internet it is where it’s very strong but then offline is sort of where it’s still very faint and, okay, we hear noises from it here and there but it’s not that strong. But I think with time, and, you know, with more people getting into this consciousness, I think it has to diffuse into the greater population as well, I mean it has to, there’s no other way, right?
TINA CARMILLIA: Absolutely. So I suppose, let’s wrap up. Let’s wrap up with your final thoughts on social media etiquette, on improving online or digital literacy. What what would your advice be?
EMMANUEL OLALERE: On etiquette, I think… Man, I’ve tried as hard as possible to keep it PG-13 up until this stage so I get one pass. I think it’s going to be a sh*tshow for a while, in the context of just how easy it is to fire off our thoughts especially into the realm of social media or all of these platforms.
I would say in many ways it is not representative of who we are as people. Because, in person, if you’re standing in front of a group of people who are marginalised and it’s just you, and then you’re like, “Death to this, death to that,” you’d think twice, right, before you did something like that in person, which is why we tend to see also the keyboard warriors and people who are like very loud and vocal person they're like, (cowers). So, when it comes to etiquette and the use of social media online, we are at that point where everybody’s discovered that they have a voice, and boy, do you hear that voice because they would let it be known that they have the voice, right.
So I think we’re at that stage now, at this point in time, and nothing is going to change until you know—like a crying baby who’s trying to throw a tantrum. Eventually, we’re going to run out of steam, whether we’re growing older, whether our conversations are going to be evolved, whether it’s just going to get to a point where it’s just not going to be cool anymore but something will sort of affect—a different variable will enter into the equation, and we’ll move past the stage where it’s just, “I have a voice, I want to shout.” Then, it becomes, okay, you have a voice, what do you actually have to say? So it’s not just about shouting, but it’s about communicating. And so I think at this stage now we are at the stage where we are still shouting, especially when it comes to shouting out opinions that do not relate to us. And even for me, I’m guilty of that as well. I’ll shout it out when I see something that is so obvious so stupid. Of course, why would they say something like that, why would they not think like me? We are sort of all caught up in that where we’ve developed a community, we’ve seen where we belong, and boy, are we going to belong the heck out of it, right?
So, I think after a while—because it's not sustainable, we cannot all just keep shouting indefinitely. So I think just as with any kind of war, shouting or shooting or shelling does not end the war and eventually, it has to come to a roundtable where you’re like, I don’t like you, but there’s too much that has been lost already. It’s counterproductive or counterintuitive at this stage, so please, what do you have to say, say it quickly so I can say what I want to say too. And hopefully, there’s someone who can be like, “Okay, you have talked, let the other person talk.” I guess we’ve not gotten to that stage yet where we’re able to have that roundtable discussion because again, many of the roundtable topics are so hot, and so controversial and so deeply personal that we do not see a way we can have a conversation with people who are just so opposed to where we are because most of the time, them being opposed to where we are is them being opposed to who we are, right? And it’s like, how do we have a conversation with that but again, you cannot shout your opinions until someone listens. Opinions just don’t work, it takes a lot of complexity to get people to see stuff from where you’re coming from. Right now when it comes to etiquette, in general, everybody is at volume 100 at the moment.
When it comes to personal etiquette, I think we are slowly but surely starting to get to a stage where what people like or what people do in their own time is starting to become less and less of something that is detrimental to them, at least in the online sphere. In the physical, real-world sphere, it’s still not like that and of course, it will take a while for it to catch up. In the online sphere, we’re starting to realise that, huh, people are actually complex. Who would have thought? I think we are sort of on the edge of getting there where we believe that we can be multifaceted, we can like multiple things, we can simp if we want to for stuff we like because we like it. So, we’re going to that stage—at least we’re starting to get there. I think so, I can be wrong, of course—I’m but a blind man touching an elephant from a different angle, right, so definitely what I would say will be different from another person.
So when it comes to general etiquette, just how we are online, as people definitely there’s a shift towards more consciousness of privacy, where people are starting to look at, huh, for 10 years I’ve been giving my data—so what happens to that? Even, let’s say with the MySejahtera app, for example, right. When it came to registration, for the AstraZeneca shot, it does not take a tech-savvy person to know that, wait, why can I not click on this stuff even though I clicked on it? Why did it say that it is accepted, but then it is not? You don’t need to be tech-savvy because those are not tech questions, they’re just very logical questions. They’re questions where, okay, A has happened, B has happened, therefore I come to conclusion C, right.
So in many ways, I think, even when it comes to the pandemic response, we’ve seen different countries and the way they’ve been able to handle it. You don’t have to be political to be able to realise that the etiquette, or perhaps the lack of it from how people in power carry themselves. Maybe perhaps before their flamboyant flaunting of the rules—there was no spotlight on it. Right now we’re starting to see it, wait, hold on. a second. Like, I don’t have to support a political party to know that that is not right. I can go to a mall or downstairs, and I can see there used to be three roadside stalls there, and now there’s only one. Even the one that used to sell clothes before now has to sell snacks because that’s the only thing they can sell because we can’t shop for clothes anymore. That’s the impact of the lockdown, you can see it, right, and in many ways, all of this is still due to how people in power or how people that are above us are carrying themselves—or in this case, not carrying themselves.
So, I think that’s on one end, what was the second question again?
TINA CARMILLIA: Social media literacy.
EMMANUEL OLALERE: It’s quite dicey, right, because when it comes to literacy, it’s not logical, nor is it simple. Perhaps the more literate social media people tend to think you should know it, right, it’s straightforward. How would you not know this? But I can tell you as someone who has interacted with lots of people who know nothing or don’t even care to know anything about social media about how to post online about, how to carry yourself online. I can tell that it’s not so simple, it’s actually quite a very daunting thing.
[And the fact] that it’s not daunting for you or me or people that we know in our circles is actually a testament to the fact that we’re in a very vocal minority of people who are actually quite good at it. It’s not the standard experience for the everyday person, right. So I think definitely there has to be more empathy, in terms of, you know, the people that are savvy in the way they interact with people that are not quite savvy, because again, having a superior complex definitely does not help. It does not endear you to them. For as much as we—I’d love to use the real word—crap down on Facebook people, right, like, there’s a reason why people on Facebook are on Facebook. [It’s] because they’re not people that are on the other platform, laughing at them that they don’t know this or that. That’s not going to help, right?
Like my mum spreads misinformation about COVID, for example, and she’s a medical doctor of 30 years and my mum sent me some stuff and I’m like, okay, so what hat do I wear? Do I wear the (mimics obnoxious laughter) or do I wear the I’m your loving son and I’ll try as much… You know, it’s quite hard, especially for stuff that like COVID-19. It’s very much an act of where we must be more empathetic, at least for people that are more digitally literate and for people that are not, I think there has to be a more accessible entrance. How that works, I don’t know, I’m just intellectualising here, but I think it has to be better than what is there right now because what is there right now is definitely very challenging and very daunting and most people don’t really care that much. So what? It’s only us that’s frothing at the mouth, like, “How dare you, you’re cancelled,” and they’re like, “Cancel what? What is cancelled?” It only means a lot to us but to them, they don’t care, right? So obviously that doesn’t work in the long run.
What works I think is a whole lot more empathy in realising that you cannot shout that you care for someone over actually caring for that person. You actually have to show them that you care, much more than shouting at them that you care. “Look at me I care!” But that does not come through as much as actually showing that you care. I think in many ways when it comes to literacy and when it comes to actually being able to accommodate people that are not as literate, we have to definitely do a better job at showing that we actually care not in just words and love and light, right, but in actual actions because in person we realise that there are many ways why someone comes at something and we realise that there are many factors but online, it’s quite stripped down and it’s very one dimensional. Like, this person only exists in the lens of this one thing and that's it. So I think yeah, definitely we need to do a better job of seeing people for who they’re—as much as we like to say we are multifaceted and complex. You have to afford people the same privilege of being multifaceted and being complex as well and not seeing them as just caricatures of whatever it is that they hold outside.
TINA CARMILLIA: So empathy and empathetic actions—that’s the advice from content creator Emmanuel Olalere to create better, more meaningful social media conversations and interactions. That’s all we have this week.
If you would like to join me for conversations like this, get in touch here.
Don’t forget to subscribe, if you haven’t, and if you enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with someone. ‘Til the next one, goodbye for now.
CREDITS
Guest: Emmanuel Olalere (Twitter, Instagram, YouTube Tech Channel, Lifestyle Channel)
Producer/Host: Tina Carmillia
Music: Theme for Harold (var. 3) by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
