Patti Harrison Grew Up With Tech As Her North Star. Not Anymore.
Uncanny Valley | WIRED
Comedian Patti Harrison joins Katie Drummond to discuss her profound disillusionment with modern technology and social media. She reflects o
Key takeaways
- Patti Harrison describes social media platforms as being designed to induce addiction through clinically tested features.
- The comedian references Jaron Lanier's book '10 Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now' as a framework for her views.
- Harrison expresses concern over the use of robotics and AI in combat situations, specifically mentioning Gaza.
- She notes that algorithms often take comedic content out of context, leading to targeted harassment from progressive audiences.
- The discussion highlights how the conflation of news intake with social media incentivizes inflammatory political takes.
Main topics
- Social Media Toxicity
- AI and Robotics in Combat
- Comedy and Political Identity
Notable quotes
Social media as we have it is hell. I think it is a, it's like truly the most literal panopticon.
Conclusion
The episode serves as a poignant critique of how algorithmic engagemen
Transcript preview
Speaker 3 (0:00) I recently chatted with McKinsey's Dan Swan about how businesses successfully transitioned to AI, the coming agentic wave, and even the sad loss of tennis line judges. Here's a sneak peek. Speaker 1 (0:11) Some people are buying software and calling it a transformation. The people that are really getting the most value from it... are fundamentally doing something very different, which is they're taking that technology and they're incorporating it with changing the capabilities of their people, fundamentally redesigning their processes, and tracking the impact through the bottom line. Speaker 3 (0:31) There's much more in the full interview with Dan Swan, which can be found in its entirety on Wired.com. Also, check out McKinsey's playbook, Rewired, available at your favorite bookseller. Speaker 3 (0:50) From Wired, this is The Big Interview. I'm Katie Drummond, Wired's Global Editorial Director. My guest today is the sensational comedy writer and performer, Patti Harrison. You may know her from her scene-stealing work on Tim Robinson's I Think You Should Leave. Speaker 4 (1:05) I sued the city because I was accidentally sewed into the pants of the big Charlie Brown at the Thanksgiving Day Parade. I made all my money off the big Charlie Brown, so don't even come and try and tell me any crap. I don't want that! Speaker 3 (1:21) Sorry, sorry, I will get it together. But if you have not seen Patty on that show, it's it's very, very funny. You may also know Patty as Ruthie on Hulu's Shrill or from her various appearances on The Tonight Show and Jimmy Kimmel. But what you probably don't know, which I didn't know until recently, is that Patty Harrison is a Wired subscriber. Good for us. Good for her. This month, we are putting out a concept issue of Wired called Wired Women. And when we decided on that for September, we obviously knew we needed a woman to put on the cover. Patti immediately came to mind. She's hilarious, a great actor, and I can't stress enough how much she nailed the assignment. So much so that in the end, we didn't just put her on one cover. We put her on four of them. I'm a little bit biased, but if you have not seen these covers, I highly suggest you check them out. They're incredible. And I am here talking to Patti remotely today. She's been in London for a sold-out run of her new one-woman show called Just Ironing Some Things Out, which by the time you hear this interview, she'll have also performed at Edinburgh's Fringe Fest. Welcome, Patti. Hey, thank you. You are so funny. And you are often very, and I mean this as a compliment, just like conventionally funny. You've talked before about feeling that sort of pressure to incorporate politics into your work and how you don't necessarily want to, right? And it doesn't necessarily have to be about being a trans woman. Maybe it's about organizing for democratic socialism. Maybe it's about the genocide in Gaza. Just because those things are part of you or part of what you value or important to you, it doesn't mean that your comedy has to be about those things. You've also talked, though, about how those things can't really be separated. How do you think about drawing that line or knowing where that line is? Speaker 4 (3:14) Yeah, I think there's a balance. Personally, when I started doing comedy in New York, I was working at a restaurant and I was not that long out of coming out as transgender. And it was my first time living alone in the city. And I was dealing with a lot of agoraphobia, essentially, and just like had a really hard time commuting and being out in public. And adjusting to society, trying to like have a sense of normalcy, trying not to feel afraid, sort of entering or exiting any room that I'm going into. And I think when I was working at this restaurant and dealing with that stuff, I started doing comedy bits that were about anything but that because I think. doing comedy at that time for me was an escape. And it was a place for me to just explore any other sort of ideas outside of my daily strife and sort of my identity prison of that society has kind of like pushed upon me. And I don't think that's exclusive to transgender people. I think a lot of people are like that. But I think, you know, I think I felt a bit resentful after. The first kind of big moment comedic for my comedy career was a bit that I did on The Tonight Show that I was brought on to do by two of my very good friends, Joe Firestone and Mike DeCenzo, who are like brilliant comedy writers. They're both cis for the record, for the fucking record. Am I allowed to cuss? Cis men. You cuss all you want. Well, Joe is actually female. Cis men and women. Yeah. But she's taken that that male ass name back. Watch out. Sorry. The Joe community. But they brought me on to address the Trump military ban that was happening at that time where he was banning trans people in the military, et cetera, et cetera. I think after that moment, a lot of the opportunities that I was approached for was to speak on politics and like be sort of like a representative in a way for transgender people. That said, I have never felt that I was the right person to kind of be speaking explicitly about those things. But I think when you live a Speaker 4 (6:07) an intrinsically politicized life, you're... Speaker 4 (6:14) Your life experience is political. Everyone's life experience is political. Like, I don't think people can separate morals from politics. It's the same thing. And I think comedy is sat in your understanding of the truth of the world and how you either speak on that or you subvert that. And so even by making the choice to make a bunch of comedy that's about anything other than what's happening in the world. in and of itself, is political because it's a reaction to wanting to escape from a reality that is like giving you existential dread. Yeah, it's Speaker 3 (6:54) a Speaker 4 (6:54) choice. Speaker 3 (6:55) It's a choice. I mean, there is so much right now that just isn't funny. How do you gesture to those sort of more horrific realities of the news when there's no punchline? Speaker 4 (7:10) I yeah, I think a large part of that is to do with the fact that we have conflated our news intake with social media, which I think is horrific. Like, I think those two should be separate. I remember when Twitter was like comedy. It was just people tweeting. And then when they integrated the like the news like ticker or whatever, like. Being a part of it, I think it created this really toxic sort of dynamic of incentivizing people to have really inflammatory political takes to get shares or retweets or whatever to get shares. Grandma's entered the chat. But yeah, I think like people want to be shocking in their humor. And I think I'm one of those people. Like I've always been drawn to shock humor. And I think it's just because of like the way I was brought up and the way that my childhood played out. But and you can read all about that in my book that I'm also pushing today. That is sponsored by DARPA, which is so awesome that they gave me the money to self-publish this book. I guess it's not self-published if DARPA is. It's Speaker 1 (8:34) published Speaker 4 (8:34) by the Speaker 3 (8:35) Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, which I actually used to cover as a reporter. I didn't know that you were deeply connected to DARPA. Speaker 4 (8:47) Yeah, and APAC. I take money from both, but I use it in fun, creative ways. I had no idea Speaker 3 (8:53) they were publishing books over there. Speaker 4 (8:55) It's a residency. Yeah. I just have I'm allowed to write about sort of my transgender journey, finding my womanhood