111123 The Algorithms that Divide Us ft. Theo E. J. Wilson (Part 1)

We really think it's important to introduce this man to you because we are fans of his work. We've had a chance to talk to him before on the Black Information Network, and we have the honor of having him joined us today. He goes by the name of THEO. E. J. Wilson. You may know him from the viral ted talk that he did where he went undercover as a white supremacist even though in the real world, in real life he's

a black man. But what he learned a lot. What he learned about was how algorithms work and how we can find ourselves in these sort of digital echo chambers. And he has some really interesting and compelling thoughts about that. Now that's just one thing you may know about him. Of course, he does a whole lot of other things, and I want to talk to him about all those

things and so much more. Also, we have a really really special Biba today for becoming a better Ally there's a person that we subscribe to who really needs our help. So we want you to stick around for that as well, so that we can give you some game on how you can help us and help this individual make the world a little bit better of the place. So all

that and more to stick around for. But first and foremost, like we always do at this time, I think we should start things off on a high note some Ebony excellence. How does that sound cute? Shall we? We shall? And so today Ebony Excellence, as always is sponsored by Major Threads for Innovative Fashionable Sports where check majorthreads dot com.

And we're going to highlight two individuals that really need no introduction, rock Him and Scarface, and how we're highlighting them is by bringing some attention to a new initiative that is taking place to honor hip hop legends just like these too. So this comes from Black enterprise honoring Rock Him and Scarface. Hip hop has created a lot of millionaires and even billionaires in its fifty year history, but some early pioneers never got their just due, and NAS,

Steve Stout, and others are looking to change that. NAS and Stout have joined forces with Andresen Horwitz, co founder Ben Horwitz and his wife Felicia Horwitz to pay homage to hip hop pioneers through financial support. The inaugural hip Hop Grandmaster Awards will take place November seventeenth and honor hip hop legends Rock Him and Scarface, and a celebration where one hundred percent of proceeds will go to support

hip hop greats and other creatives. Many pioneers, like Scarface and Rock Him were ahead of their time in shaping hip hop culture before the art form received the financial backing and success that came in the late nineties and early two thousands. Because of this, the Paid in Full Foundation intends to right the wrongs by securing a financial

future for many of those early trailblazers. The Paid in Full Foundation aims to rectify that through its grant making program by both honoring the people who built hip hop and enabling them to pursue their creative and intellectual pursuits for the benefit of society. And again, honoring rock Him and Scarface feels entirely appropriate because those two are examples of excellence. Those two are people that fought fights that

are unimaginable. For us to bring hip hop to where it is, to where we are able to enjoy this culture and share this culture with other people, and you know, globally with a global audience, and for them getting their just due and the credit, I think that's entirely appropriate. So now onto the man of the hour, mister THEO. E. J. Wilson.

So I told the listeners a little bit about you know, your your TED talk, but I know that there's so much more that you're working on, not the least of which is I know you were working with the UH, there was a TV show that you were working on, and a whole lot of other things. And you can give yourself the proper introduction. I know full well your capabilities, but again, say hi to our listeners and give them a little bit of background about yourself.

tried a poet. Actually, I began my career thinking that I was a rapper, you know, and rap evolved into spoken word, and spoken word got paved into activists, and these things combined led to being a Slam poetry champion, which opened the doors to the ted X mile high stage and doing the talk about my experiment going under cover in the al right, which I thought was the most useless part of any bit of my time that I could even indulge in. But it went viral because

they released at the weekend that Charlottesville happened. That opened a whole lot of doors, got me on the national scene. I am the host of a TV show on the History Channel. You can check out if you go to History dot com right now, check out. I was there and.

the situation with Ferguson going down. Around this time, Tana Hasey Coats had just written the Case for Reparations, which was the first video that I ever made that went viral because you know, it's a great article, but as long win as a I figured out a condensing talking in a way that the brothers from the hood can understand. So when that went viral, it opened me up for a lot of praise and a whole lot of hate because we weren't talking about echo chambers at that time.

There was a whole lot of talk around black lives matter versus all lives matter. So I got trolled and I started wondering what world are they living in? Man? Because they kept sending me the same missing formed alt fact memes, and it was coming at me from all different angles. I figured that there was probably some information I was missing. And at that time, I had a buddy named Quincy who worked at a marketing firm. He's the one who first uttered the words target marketing algorithm

to me. I never heard that word before. Before I knew it, I started realizing that there was black people, that there was white supremacists making fake profiles on black Twitter. I said, the author city of y'all to do something like that, So I said, I guess two can play that game. So when I made the profile, I don't think it took me more than ten minutes to make this profile. This was twenty fifteen, so remember Obama was

still president. We didn't know if Trump could win. Hillary Clinton seemed inevitable, at least those who are left leading, and the experiment, as I got bounced down the echo chamber, little by little, I saw how big this was. I saw that for a black man, the recurrence of open face fascist white supremacy was an existential threat. I had no choice, in my opinion, but to figure out how big this threat was. And after about eight months, I had to shut it down do the mental health concerns.

But I didn't talk about that in the Ted talk. But I knew that Trump had a good chance of winning because of that experiment, and sure enough he did.

and on those websites and in those YouTube spaces. That's how I began to realize that what was more prescient was the need need for validation from black voices. This was huge, right, because what these black voices were doing was putting the stamp of approval on the white supremacist narrative that says, see, yeah, it's not just me who things like that, I'm not racist. These are just the

quote facts. And the authority of blackness that or the authority of anybody who suffered oppression, is what the oppressor can wait to put on the narrati because it's the final nail in the coffin as they dehumanize the oppressed. So they were used as a currency, if you will, to absolve their consciousness.

it comes to standing up for us. Did you get any type of strange resistance or pushback from black people when you first started saying things like black lives matter and started getting those all lives matter responses?

up in your face all the time. Those turning Point USA college groups will pay triple to quadruple which you will get paid in a college environment, speaking on behalf of what we know is the right side of history, which is the black voice in academia.

I think that's the nature of social media. Some of it is well intentioned, some of it is, you know, people trying to debate, but I think the nature of the communication doesn't really lend itself to people understanding and it really just allows people to get a bar off and feel better about it or two bars off, but it doesn't really lend itself to people understanding each other

and believe it or not. As long as I have been a broadcaster, and qu's been a broadcaster, this is something that, at least for me, I'm just now learning. I thought that for a long time, I thought that you could really convince people by using an objective truth and really an appeal to humanity. And it doesn't matter the forum. People will see that and will understand your perspective. And the fact of the matter is that I've had

to learn that. Un Fortunately, your ted talk really helped us when we were making the foundation for this show. I mentioned this to you before the last time that we spoke, but one of the things that we do here is we subscribe to some far right content on like Reddit and on like Quora and all these places where these groups tend to find a framework to exchange their ideas and so kind of leaning into those conversations that those people are having. We don't contribute or anything

like that. But seeing how echo chambers do the same thing as the comments section, it's just people getting a bar off here and there. Nobody's really talking, nobody's challenging in each other's views, and the people that really try to change something or add or contribute something, they're just it's spent energy. I realize it's an important part of any sort of brand offering. But that was a hard lesson for me because I got a chance to see

head on exactly what we're up against. And I feel like that's very consistent with what it was that you were saying, at least in that Ted talk.

is in its final days. But it's had many days, and the days of its finality will be long, because what's going on is that it's losing the narrative war and it's losing the demographic war. So it is striving to recruit new voices and new faces to be avatars for its mission. However, the overwhelming tide of history is against it, and it's going to take longer than I thought too. But ultimately reality asserts itself and the facts speak for themselves, and in time, it's a historical bend.

The way that it don't want to look at it and shut down critical race theory quote unquote don't want to talk about black history means that it is hiding from itself who it truly is and how it will eventually fall. And so you just got to trust the tide of time to do a lot of the work for you and plant a seed with what you got in the time that you've been allotted.

heard about that, brother, I was blown away. And then Ramses was like, yo, you gotta check this out. And you know, us driving through the Deep South and listening to far right radio kind of was like, Okay, we get why he did that, We get why that was necessary. So take us on that journey with you.

American Renaissance at the time was one of them. But they all had YouTube channels, and so I literally just went in and I'm telling you, it didn't it didn't take long. When I tell you, I thought this was useless.

at work. Maybe a little on my phone, but the fact was is that at work was where a lot of this was done. And also at work, it was twenty fifteen. I remember when the shooting in the church happened, right, it was twenty fifteen, where a lot of talking about Dylan Ruth. Yeah, Dylan Ruth. Right, I just joined that job. That incident specifically had me triggered as hell. And I'll call it trigger because I it hit a trigger. I am a police brutality survivor, so here I am. I

have this account. I see what's being said. I'm triggered as hell with the nicest white folks in the world working around. I'm telling you, the nicest white folks who ever want to meet why? And so I'm navigating some mental health things at this time, But I'm also just out going viral. So I'm getting things from both sides. And as I am going viral on my Facebook page because that that video I made about dinner roof got about one hundred thousand views on Facebook, I'm taking literal

cutting paste from what's being said to me. About the Confederacy, about you know, on white supremacy, and I'm saying it as my avatar Lucia's twenty five, and I'm just watching it get applauded. I'm watching it get lauded and hand clapped and all that stuff. My profile picture was John Carter, who was a Confederate soldier in the old John Carter of Mars novels right, and Marvel picked it up, and

the image that I got was from Marvel. But the bottom line was that was one of the most inciting incidents. And I remember not realizing that I was slipping into darkness and I lost two relationships because of the head trauma that I got out of that. I didn't mention that, and I did end up in therapy over that. But it was all about me figuring out an existential threat. The talk was about compassion. I was there for reconnaissance.

I need you to stick around because obviously we have a lot more in store.