Marc Maron & Tom Scharpling on Twitter
From the 4th episode of the Marc & Tom Show. Listen to the whole thing here:
Maron: I was talking to you right, about — with almost everything now — did you tell me Jason Woliner said that? “A movie’s like a tweet.”?
Scharpling: Yeah. He said there’s no difference between a movie and a tweet.
Maron: Right!
Scharpling: At this point.
Maron: What are we going to do about that?!
Scharpling: I don’t know! I think we gotta play by a different reality. We have to say that that’s not reality.
Maron: I can’t take it anymore. What I’ve been saying lately is “I think it was better when not everyone had a voice.”
Scharpling: Look, I don’t know if I’d go that far.
Maron: Well, I’m saying it in a specfic context. I believe in democracy and that everyone should have a voice, but maybe not a Twitter account. [laughs] Maybe I should not have to engage with every voice.
Scharpling: You don’t, though.
Maron: I know.
Scharpling: You don’t.
Maron: I think, let’s reframe it. I’m mad at the shallow, witless and sometimes cruel nature of the voices that think they deserve to be heard.
Scharpling: Sure. That makes sense. It used to be that — from the second that humans existed until twelve years ago that you would think a thought, and it would just stay in your head. And the worst thing you could think would be “Well, what if I let that go from my brain to my mouth?” in terms of the people you’re in front of.
And for all of time, people would either just let things stay in their brain, or maybe say it in front of a group of people. But then, now, it goes from your brain to your fingers and everybody is in a panic to say the things as quickly as possible. Things like — whether the thought is formed or not, or, ‘maybe this is a mean thing and maybe this might hurt somebody.”
Maron: This is why I just tweet shower.
Scharpling: I can’t do Twitter anymore. I tweet jokes once in a while …
Maron: I’ve pulled back too.
Scharpling: … and I delete them.
Maron: Why do you do delete them?
Scharpling. Because why does this company say that this thing is a permanent record of something? That’s their business model, not mine.
Maron: Yeah.
Scharpling: Sometimes you want to say something and you don’t want it to stick around for more than a day.
Maron: That’s why they have Snapchat apparently.
Scharpling: So that things can stay for a day
Maron: And then they’re gone.
Scharpling: And I understand that.
Maron: I won’t do it.
Scharpling: I can’t do Snapchat. I’ve seen it and it’s not for me. There’s a point you just have to go “I’m going to sit this one out. It’s basically —
Twitter is just some open mic night that some company set up and you go up to their stage — they just set this up, and they’re like “Hey look, who just wandered in here for free. Hey, we got Marc Maron here tonight, he’s going to be putting on a show. Tonight, Marc Maron’s going to be fighting with someone with eggs as a profile pic.”
Maron: About NOTHING
Scharpling: Yeah, “And he’s doing it on our stage!”
Maron: For free!
Scharpling: “How much did you get paid there, Mark? Oh, nothing? And you couldn’t sleep because you were still mad? But thank you contributing to our company for that.” It’s like everybody’s dancing…
Maron: And make sure to live-tweet your insomnia.
Scharpling: Yeah
Maron: That’s all anyone’s doing. Live-tweeting their insomnia.
Maron: This was funny — I guess she writes for maybe Kimmel — Molly McNearney — she tweeted “We’ve given everyone an opportunity to express themselves online for a very long time now. What’s plan B?”
Scharpling: That’s great.
Maron: That’s the best tweet I’ve read in a long time.
Scharpling: Cause think about it — thirty years from now and it’s like “Grandpa, what did you do?” “Well, I used to go on this thing and these celebrities had these accounts, and I’d just, uh, chip away at them until I’d finally reel one in. And there was one time, when I was arguing with — you should have seen it.”
Maron: “He got all worked up. He got all worked up.”
Scharpling: Yeah, “He deleted his account. It was so great.” It’s like the new hole-in-one. Getting somebody to delete their account because you just wouldn’t stop.
Maron: Annoying them.
Scharpling: Yeah, “Ah, you know, it was different then. It was fun.”
Maron: “Now we don’t know what do to with ourselves.”
Scharpling: Now they don’t let us have those thoughts.
Maron: It took me a long time to frame it like that. That no matter how insanely cruel it became, or how ridiculously hurtful, that it was just some idiot trying to get you to fucking lose your mind.
Scharpling: Yeah. It goes back to that thing where the opposite of hate is not love, it’s just distinterest. That’s the true opposite of love. No, hate and love — its just a tension, you’re making somebody’s levels spike. And it’s just like “I feel something. He’s mad”
Maron: “I got him! I got him!”
Scharpling: “Oh, you got a big one there!”
Maron: You think you have a system to deal with it, through engagement, and it just never pans out.
Scharpling: Two years go by then you hear, “Hey .. uh .. will you unblock me?”
- 30-
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