Go where the audience is. It sounds obvious, but many of us in the social justice space tend to think first about the story we want to tell, and how best to tell it. Then we share it, and if it gets a few views, then that’s okay. We did our best.
Populism is almost a vulgar concept, particularly if you’ve worked seriously on a cause you believe in for decades. And I do grasp that, actually. However bizarre it sounds. If you start pursuing fickle audiences like voters, for example, or…teenagers…or worse yet, politicians…then you have to accept that their whims might not be rational. And it can be frustrating. It can be hard.
Against that backdrop I want to share an incredible recent climate campaign that raised $23 million to plant 23 million trees in just 55 days. Those are Presidential campaign dollar numbers. They’re unheard of. Particularly in the climate space. Campaign Director Matt Fitzgerald is a climate-focused communications consultant in California. And he recently worked on this campaign with Mr. Beast, a Kansas-based YouTuber with more than 60 million subscribers, or, for context, around the population of the United Kingdom. My homeland. And to do it, he specializes in posting idiotic videos online.
Matt was featured on this episode of the How to Save a Planet podcast, talking about his conversion to YouTube’s power by Mr. Beast. Matt was cynical, at first, about the possibility of it working. But he was inspired, actually, by Mr. Beast and his fellow YouTubers. Even if they are essentially the modern-day version of the show, Jackass.
“Team trees was a joyful enterprise that opened new worlds to my activism, but I’m still filled with wonder that these worlds existed around me without my actually realizing they were there,” Matt tells the podcast. He’s been working on climate change for more than a decade, and has never experienced anything like what he went through with these crazy kids. Matt also gives the example of Shark Week—a week of shark-related programming on the Discovery Channel. And yet, ocean-conservationists rarely touch it. I’m asking myself: Why not?
Speaking of populism, I’m also thinking about Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who I follow on Instagram, along with half the planet. 46 percent of Americans say they’d support a Presidential bid by The Rock. And he endorsed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for President in 2020. So now I’m trying to figure out how to get The Rock to smell what you’re cooking. Before he makes it to the Oval Office.
Popularity. Audience. Things we should embrace. Not run from. Especially if the stakes are high enough.
On the other hand, I always liked to be a contrarian. I liked the niche. I like the indie band, Art Brut. There’s community on the fringes and that can be equally engaging and interesting. It appeals to my nature more often, too, I think.
Curious to hear what you think.
p.s. Here’s an amazing piece of BBC Radio about the use of the “Lyric I” in poetry. Specifically, on the difficulty of saying “I” when you haven’t seen other writers who look or sound like you, doing so, in the past. I loved listening to it this weekend. And it’s a stimulating piece of…definitely not populist…broadcast work.
