"Building the skills to pierce through the noise is the key to hearing our own voices"
A conversation with Jessica Elefante, author of Raising Hell, Living Well
I hope this reaches you at the end of a long scroll or preparing to log off for a few days to eat, reflect, gather, or not celebrate this week’s weird holiday at all. The internet and the world are terribly hard right now, and while holidays bring all sorts of cultural, political, religious, familial, etc etc feelings for all of us, for many they also bring some time to touch grass, as the kids say— to go off the grid for a bit and think about cycles and seasons, what we might invest in as the year turns, and what we might want to divest from.
So I’m delighted to share with you today my conversation with Jessica Elefante, author of Raising Hell, Living Well: Freedom from Influence in a World Where Everyone Wants Something from You (including me). The book offers a refreshing and practical analysis of the world of influence from someone who knows how corporations, algorithms, online gurus, and media all seek to capture not just our attention, but our time, our understanding of the world, and our deepest sense of self. In the process, she answers some of the most pervasive questions that follow us as we navigate contemporary life: How does one draw a line between feeling, experience, and our social worlds, digital or otherwise? What about a line between what we want, or think we want, and the culture in which we grow up and age, filled as it is with so much ideological coercion?
In her new book, Elefante admits she hasn’t always had these answers and, indeed, still does not. As she shares in our conversation below, hers is very much not a “how-to” book. Instead, she invites readers to do the hard, complex, and lifelong work of trying to locate their own answers to these questions by parsing out the many spheres of influence we move through on a daily basis, and by exposing herself, her own missteps, and the lessons she’s learned after years of operating as “a bullshit artist.” It’s the perfect read for anyone longing not only to log off and divest from the many voices telling us who and how and what to be, but also for those trying to figure out how to use their own influence in more meaningful ways.
For readers who don’t know your background, can you share a bit about what brought you to this subject matter?
I have, for most of my life, been a bullshit artist. A charlatan, a huckster, a trickster, a scoundrel, a cheat. Or better put: a brand strategist, a salesperson, a marketing executive, a bartender, a communications director, a thought leader. For a long time, at the expense of not only our society's well-being, but also of my own values, physical and mental health, I influenced people to buy into whatever I was hawking. It took a few game changing kick-in-the-gut moments to see my reality for what it was. I had started out as someone who bucked the norm. I flushed a fancy liberal arts scholarship down the drain and studied art in Europe instead. But years later I ended up very far from the rebellious person I thought I was. I had to come to terms with the forces I was under myself. I realized it all seemed to come down to one thing: influence—using it and abusing it. I wrote this book for anyone who has felt that there must be a better way than letting giant corporations, pandering brands, self anointed thought leaders or internet gurus, power hungry politicians, persuasive egomaniacs, outdated systems, mind altering algorithms, and manipulative media rule the world and the way we operate within it.
When we think about living in a culture of influence, it can feel really overwhelming to divest from that, because it appears to come from all directions. It’s in the water! In the book, however, you do a wonderful job breaking down how influence functions in a schematic way and providing some ways to rebel. Can you talk about your process for breaking apart the pervasive bubble of influence?
I very purposefully used influence to capture everything. I wanted one big simple term to label all the ways in which we are maneuvered, manipulated, persuaded, tricked, affected, shaped, molded, guided, regulated, altered, controlled, you get the idea…. If I could create a catch-all then readers would be able to (hopefully) see it in action, whether it be their government, their upbringing, the culture war of the moment, the well meaning barista, or an algorithm.
In the same way it’s simple, it's also really overwhelming, so I knew I had to create devices for ease and clarity. I’m a big fan of the physical realm for creativity and research. If you could see my writer’s nook in my home you’d find hundreds of tiny Post-it notes. I’d been writing down everything that influenced me for the better part of two years. When I laid them out across the floor trying to interpret my code I started to see a pattern. There was very clearly the stuff of ME. Internal shit like biology, feelings, and experiences. Then there was this THEM stuff. People and entities in my world that I engage with often on a day-to-day basis like colleagues, neighbors, local businesses, social media, my physical environment.
What remained was the omnipresent stuff like the water, or as I say, the air. The OTHER. It’s culture, the decade, the media, economics, climate, systems, structures, etc. In the end I labeled them Inner World, Surface World, and Outer World influences. Once I unlocked that, it all became so much clearer. And therefore, more simple to opt out of.
How does social media up the game here? There are so many incredible insights in the book, from the history of Facebook to your take on Marshall McLuhan’s famous assertion that “the medium is the message.” How realistic is it to rebel against a culture that invades our privacy and targets us based on algorithms? Like, do we need to go off the grid to find a self in this landscape?
When I left my career as a corporate brand strategist I started Folk Rebellion, a digital wellness focused mission based lifestyle media brand (LOL. A leopard doesn’t change its spots!), it was born out of my own need. As an early adopter and over-user of our technological tools I became the canary in the coalmine. Now, ten years later everyone is feeling like I was—exhausted, confused, forgetful, overwhelmed, foggy, lost. Today it’s called digital dementia, but back then there wasn’t a term yet coined for my ailments. I decided to “wake people up” to how the ways we were using our digital devices maybe wasn’t the best way. I beat the drum that we could mindfully hack our way out of addiction, burnout, and disconnection. I’d offer tips and tricks, tools and apps, mantras and mindsets for striking a healthy balance with our online world. I really had to eat crow on this one.
Today, I can finally admit that there is no way we can have a healthy relationship to all this innovation because it’s not designed that way. I feel guilty about telling people that we could fix this in our own homes, schools, communities. I really wish that were true. But tech is upgrading faster than we can study it and it’s trying to swallow us, our data, our lives whole. When we might’ve correctly put up a blocker or set a privacy boundary, it shapeshifts and skirts around our attempt. It’s like trying to pin down a shadow. And when there is no accountability, regulation, or laws to protect us, the creators are wielding the most dangerous influence. They’re studying us and using data and insights to trigger our most innate human instincts.
Since the book came out I’ve finally started to say this out loud and people have actually teared up when I tell them it’s not their fault, or their kids’ fault, or their partners’ fault. It's designed to be addictive, it’s designed to prioritize the outrageous and hateful, and the algorithms push people further and further into these dark places until the people we love are unrecognizable. I know. I’m not a lot of fun at a party.
But there is hope. I think it lies in consumer protection and getting the everyday humans (users as they call us) informed enough, mad enough, to make some trouble. We are seeing it now with parents and educators, those on the frontlines of the mental health crisis of the iGen crowd. I also feel hopeful about change with groups like the Center for Humane Technology, Fairplay: Childhood Beyond Brands, Mothers Against Media Addiction, All Tech is Human, and people like badass Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. We are seeing positive changes in the EU and other countries. It’s just not happening here because our political system is so fucked. Like, there is absolutely no reason that the Kids Online Safety Act shouldn’t be unanimously supported, but like everything it’s been warped by misinformation and used as a political bargaining point. When I see that friend from a long time ago espousing on FB that the Kids Online Safety Act will infringe on their rights and civil liberties on the Internet it makes my head want to explode.
In the meantime, I’d love to create a low tech off the grid commune for anyone who wants to join me. I’m kidding. Kind of.
This book is part memoir, part analysis, and there is very useful guidance. You told me previously, however, that this book is not a “how-to” divest, but a “how-come.” Can you share the difference between these two genres and explain how your feelings about how-to books connect to your larger critique of cultural influence?
It was really important to me that I did not tell people how to do anything, especially how to live. There’s so much messaging and information overload coming from everywhere getting us to attempt to improve ourselves in some way. Hell, the place we bought our pants is texting us to do something to spark joy like they’re our friend. I don’t know about you but even with all the wellness focused self care and self help I don’t think we are very well. It’s just become another thing that’s commoditized.
From my first meeting with my agent and then editor I was adamant that this was not another how-to because I didn’t want to make the same mistake I made with Folk Rebellion—laying the issues and attempts at solving them at the feet of the individual. I wanted the individual to understand why we are unwell, unhappy, and unhinged in the first place. It’s only in understanding the bigger systems at play, and our part in it, that freedom might be possible. So while there are takeaways or simplified devices, you’ll see that most of them are questions. I was careful not to instruct but rather encourage critical thinking and personal reflection.
And so I coined it a How-Come. (Yes, I made it up.) I know it’s not grammatically correct but people get it and dig it! Also, when a lot of the more academic and researched stuff stays in its own lane, there’s loads of readers who are never going to pick up a deep dive into some of these concepts. I wanted this to be fun, inviting, and down to earth. I wanted to make you angry, make you laugh, and make you think about how you’re really living. I don’t know, I thought maybe this information should be accessible to all if I was hoping for more positive change in the world. Can you read this and learn how-to divest? Yes. But it’s so much more than that. It’s how-come we are the way we are. That’s where the power is. Understanding.
I read your book while on my tour for Touched Out—which is also about how our identities, selves, desires, pleasures, even bodily perceptions are influenced from a young age. Both of our books are, I think, in very different ways, about the somewhat impossible but necessary work of forging a path through the shitty water we swim in and swallow (have I gone too far with the water metaphor?). Do you think there’s a broader cultural reckoning underway with respect to influence?
I’ll take your water metaphor a step further. While you and I might feel like we are swimming upstream ;) in a current that feels too powerful, I see schools of fish behind us. I’m sure you’re experiencing this now with your book… there’s scores of people making these connections or having these feelings but just didn’t have the words. So after a really long winded bad metaphor gone too far, simply, yes. I think a cultural reckoning is happening, many in fact. In part we can thank the Internet for that. Things once hidden, shrouded, spoken in secret corners are now out there for all to see and decide what to do with. We are in the squeeze. I talk about the juice being worth the squeeze to my kids, and in the book, a lot. I can’t wait to see what comes after this hellish part.
Relatedly, I wonder if you can speak to what’s happening now online in terms of how political speech is circulating—acknowledging this remains a touchy subject because so many are living in fear and so many lives have already been lost. What can we glean so far about this moment with regard to how influence is shaping our ability to connect and advocate for those who are suffering?
Online has always been a hot mess with hot takes. But this, it’s a fucking nightmare, a shit show. I’m horrified by the quick bite content. We aren’t meant as humans to be able to consume this amount of pain, violence, hate speech, and atrocities as we sit on a toilet or ignore our child at the park. Add to that, that what we are consuming online has been chopped up and created to get our engagement, and in some cases, been doctored and invented. We are circling the drain of more extreme actions, reactions, and opinions. Our connections in the virtual world cross boundaries of religion and viewpoints. And like all things online, there is no room for nuance, gray, or actual conversation. It shows everything that needs fixing, if that’s even possible, for a web 3.0.
In the book I share a few stories of how the mediums trigger us and rewire us. Outrage is a big one. We all have a right to be outraged right now. If you’re not then there’s likely something wrong with you. But outrage doesn’t get you very far online. Where it takes you is a dark place. A modern day Colosseum that is fueled by the very things this shit show is made up of—pain, violence, hate speech, and atrocities.
A long time ago I used to make art in the hopes it would go viral for Folk Rebellion. One of them was “Actions speak louder than memes” and the other was “Don’t Forget to Pretend to Have Your Shit Together for Strangers on the Internet Today”. I think both are fitting right now.
On that note, this book is about much more than turning away— it’s also about how to be a good influence in the world. One of the ways you push readers to do so is by creating new narratives around damaging old stories. I love the little list you offer of phrases you’re known to repeat in your home— phrases you wouldn’t necessarily find on a quote sign at Hobby Lobby or a list of parenting scripts. Can you talk the particular cultural, political, and individual challenges women and mothers face in locating their old values in a world of bullshit, and why some of the practices you offer in the book might be especially useful for them?
I’ve been really touched by the unexpected outreach from mothers. I know I share stories around my kids in a few spots but I didn’t think parenting or motherhood was such a central focus and yet the response has been pretty incredible. I think it’s the lens of modern times and the untenability of contemporary life through the eyes of being a woman that is what readers have grasped on to.
As you know and have so eloquently shared in Touched Out, we’ve been conditioned to adhere to our cultural norms. So much so that we accidentally become cogs in the machine ourselves. We parrot things from our Inner World influences, stuff our parents said, shows we watched and osmosed in the background of our lives, and build lives and families on top of those foundations. It might look like talks of certain universities from a young age, not because our kid wants it, but because deep down we hung our value on such an institution and mindlessly pass that on to our kids without weighing the ROI of hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and the current job market upon graduation.
does a lot of great work in how we pass on our own unconscious biases around bodies, health, fitness—things we were manipulated into believing as fact, likely based on a food company or marketing campaign—and reading this work might help break our cycles. is brilliantly and hilariously doing this with beauty culture. Eve Rodsky of FairPlay with gender roles in partnerships. and around age. Ruby Warrington around women without kids and around alcohol and dating. So many great divesters and I’m honored to be included alongside these writers and thinkers.What they do (you included), and I hope I did, is make the norm seem not so normal. A lot of the best way out to the other side of the challenges is just identifying them, bringing them to light. At the end of the book I’ve got a weird practical approach to give people some agency when they’re done. Now more than ever, in a world overwhelmed by in-your-face everything, building the skills to pierce through the noise is the key to hearing our own voices. It helps them come home to themselves, decide what they actually value (not what they’ve been sold or told), and then learn how to protect those values against the modern day bullshit. We can re-look at our world and ourselves through the lens of influence.
Talk about a dream collab! Wonderful interview and thanks for the kind shout out!
Loved how this came out Amanda! Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy your time offline!