"The early Internet was shaped by the attitudes and mindsets of straight white men": Joe Scott and the un-making of Ain't It Cool News
A conversation with the creator of "Downlow'd: The Rise and Fall of Harry Knowles", the deep dive audio documentary I loved.
Some time ago I went to a tropical island for a film festival 1. In a landscape dominated by American film journalists clamouring for more swag bags, more guided tours, more drinks on the house, Harry Knowles managed to stand out.
He held court in the lobby with a gaggle of foreign correspondents, all of them men, on the young side, eager to manoeuvre their way into the good graces of a guy who was still very much The Guy when it came to online movie reviews - or so it seemed. He also liked to bitch at the festival staff about a certain location not being accessible to wheelchair users, since he had not, in fact, mentioned he was using a wheelchair over months of torrential email communications.
Later on, Knowles got in trouble for a bit of everything from sexual harassment to workplace bullying to poorly handled Kickstarter campaigns, and I snorted a little, yeah, I can see it. I could see a certain disregard for norms baked in the behaviour of a small-time operator made good who became accustomed to having his needs anticipated anywhere he went.
Then last year came Downlow’d, “a deep dive audio documentary series that explores the morally complicated, occasionally inspiring, and often forgotten oral histories of the internet”. Of course the show’s first season is about “The Rise and Fall of Harry Knowles” - and his website Ain’t It Cool News. After listening to it, and realising just how hard that particular empire came crashing down, I came to admire the show’s creator Joe Scott a great deal. Now I get the chance to speak with him.
TOPICS INCLUDE: being a character in someone else’s story, the many ways the Internet shapes us, the early Internet being shaped by the attitudes and mindsets of straight white men, disgruntled employees leaking trade secrets to a website, “how people set out to accomplish something on a grand cultural level, only to realize far too late that this success came at a great cost”, the Alamo Drafthouse, attending the Butt-Numb-a-Thon festival as a young movie fan, #MeToo , cancelling powerful people as soon as they’re not powerful anymore, the line between influencers and journalists, how to report on "geek stories” with nuance, the perils of fandom, the monetisation of SPITE and general nastiness, Film Twitter and the Movie Internet at large, nerd culture gone awry, Joel Schumacher, and the lessons one learns writing and producing their first podcast series.
Enjoy.
Your dive into this long stretch of popular history follows a familiar template: a former teenage fan investigates What Went Wrong within the world of a guy who now is very much a fallen idol. On one hand, this makes for a smooth listening experience; on the other, in your case, it adds a clear edge to the investigation. When did you decide this was going to be your own narrative thread? Did you start out with this frame in mind, or was it something that became unavoidable as you were researching the story, talking with your interview subjects ?
The choice to tell the story the way that I did came about in two parts :
First, I just wanted to be transparent. I was a fan of Ain't It Cool News, and I wanted to acknowledge this fact, knowing full well that doing so would automatically invite criticisms from many people -- some of whom now pretend they were never fans of AICN, even though their obvious knowledge of the site and its lore quickly proves otherwise. A major theme throughout the project is taking stock of how the internet shapes us mentally and in terms of our behavior. In my adolescence and young adulthood, I absorbed a lot of attitudes and behaviors from AICN -- and that wasn't always a bad thing. There were a lot of great writers who worked for the site like Drew McWeeny and Alexandra DuPont that I continue to appreciate to this day. Part of the reason so many of these contributors spoke to me is because they knew I wasn't there just to make fun of them. I admired their work and wanted to talk about the sometimes less than ideal ways in which they made it.
There were also parts of that subculture that I needed to confront on a personal level and as a storyteller -- something I could never do if I didn't acknowledge the truth.
One of the best responses I got from the podcast was from a former AICN fan who felt nostalgic when I recounted the early parts of the site's history. But as the show continues and veers into the darker parts of that story, he also realized there were parts about himself that he needed to confront. That he had been a party to a culture that at times sought to harm and/or silence women, queer folks, and people of color.
Second, I wanted to tell a story about how people set out to accomplish something on a grand cultural level, only to realize far too late that this success came at a great cost. When talking about the show, a wonderful critic and film historian named Farran Smith Nehme said this was a story about the people who 'won.' Who transformed a global fan community from being largely mocked and ignored, to revered and in many ways entitled. I wanted to show what it was like to be a former cheerleader of this cultural movement only to realize I was part of a plague that has totally infected the way movies are greenlit, produced, and marketed today. The Hollywood that existed prior to the Geek Industrial Complex had its issues. But if you look at the top grossing films in the pre-Knowles era of 1996 and earlier, there was more diversity in the kinds of stories that were made. There were big budget films about people who fall in love, have adult relationships, and deal with complex personal issues. We don't have that any longer, which makes me feel both sad and on some levels, kind of guilty for cheering it on.
One thing a casual audience might overlook is the level and the *intensity* of Ain’t It Cool News' influence on language itself. The AICN style codified how people would talk about movies online for years, because of how successful the website was, how many copycats it spawned, how fortuitous the timing of its rise - it coincided with round after round of layoffs in traditional media, with movie critics being often the firsts in line: it's hard to overstate its impact, although it's been mocked. What did you do to make sure you had a distinct voice in your reporting? This hyperbolic style can override our own so easily, I would imagine it took a deliberate effort on your part to keep some distance.
Oddly enough, there's a whole segment in the first part of my story where I recall my experience at Harry Knowles and Alamo Drafthouse's Butt-Numb-A-Thon film festival, explicitly saying this is how I would have described the event during the time that it happened --launching into an AICN styled, hyperbole-filled rant about how it was 'the most amazing experience ever.' But a lot of people ignored that disclaimer and thought that was just how I wrote now -- which is funny, and an example of me learning the limitations of audio narrative storytelling.
Unlike written prose, where you can go back and reread something you might not have understood, with audio, the audience takes a more passive role. They can zone out. Ignore important parts of the message. And then build entire assumptions about the story and its teller based on the pieces they internalized.
Before The Rise and Fall of Harry Knowles and Ain't It Cool News, I had never created a narrative podcast series. All of my lessons came from trial and error. In terms of writing, I made some mistakes. Especially early on. I had to face the music, which as fate would have it was the sound of my own voice. I hope I got better as the show progressed.
The one deliberate thing I tried to do with my writing, which almost no one at AICN ever did, was draw attention to the ways in which the early internet was shaped by the attitudes and mindsets of straight white men. I did that in part by just saying those words often -- “straight white men”. This was a stylistic choice that, ironically enough, pissed off a lot of straight white men.
I wanted to tell this story with a sensitivity and a level of care for the perspectives and types of voices who were often silenced by this movement I was writing about. That's something no one on Ain't It Cool News did, especially when they were bashing filmmakers like Joel Schumacher for being gay. I also tried to include the voices of as many women as I could, which is hard to accomplish when telling a 'very male' story like this. That's why almost all of the scholars, historians, and commentators I brought in to give context and analysis to the story as a whole were women.
AICN used to be read widely and internationally. For a good long while, Harry was *the guy* and he certainly helped usher in what would become the expected "fan type": avid collector of popular media, binge consumer, perpetually Angry Nerd who wants his own taste to be validated by faceless evil suits. Are we anywhere near close to leaving this type in the rearview mirror ?
Harry Knowles is the archetype for much of the 'nerd culture' commentators we have today. And while it does seem the comic book obsessed film culture Harry Knowles worked to champion is hitting its 'exhaustion' point, the enthusiast or brand cheerleader style of film and culture commentary he pioneered will just shift in new directions. There's always going to be a guy in a graphic t-shirt who will try to build clout and access for themselves via unpaid PR disguised as populism. But I do suspect the graphic on their t-shirts might shift from comic book superheroes to video game characters.
The most ironic thing about Harry Knowles is that the internet is full of people who think they are better than him, but they are just like him sans the massive success and influence that he had. If my work on this story helped any of these people have just a shred of self awareness they didn't have beforehand, that's a net positive for our culture. At least I hope so.
I noticed a certain hostility towards any creator who revisits this kind of "geek story" in a nuanced way, like you did. A journalist friend suggested, since Knowles was dumped by the Movie Internet at large once the magnitude of his bad behaviour came to light, there's been a general "ahh forget that guy ever happened" mindset at play. That, and the fact Knowles fell from grace when he had outlived his usefulness - much like other, more powerful players in film circles. Do you think this mindset impacted the way your own podcast has been received in the first weeks it was available to stream? Although, things definitely evened out later.
When I released the initial episodes, there was a film critic I like a great deal who described what I was doing with this series -- without having listened to it -- as 'dangerous.' And I guess if I made a show that was an open celebration of Knowles that also defended him against the multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, that would be true.
That said, anyone who actually bothered to listen to what we were doing knows that wasn't our intention.
I did get the sense that people just wanted to put Harry Knowles in a box and never think about him again, but that's a far more dangerous choice. Harry Knowles pioneered the culture as well as many of the prevalent engines of discourse that we have today. Case in point, this same journalist who described my work as being dangerous has used Twitter on at least two occasions to openly beg for swag boxes from movie studios. It's no different than when Harry Knowles would openly request screenings or 'Pweasants' from studios.
Influencers are not journalists. And when film critics cross that line, their work is no better than PR. Some of the people who were critical of the show without having listened to it didn't want to be reminded of Knowles. And I think the reason for that is because with any amount of introspection, they would see parts of themselves in Harry Knowles.
What Harry Knowles was accused of doing by multiple women in 2017 was terrible, and he should apologize. At the same time, of all the people who were 'cancelled,' he was probably the easiest. He was no longer useful to the local or national film scene. His days of big scoops or exclusive premiere screening events were in the rearview. You see this especially when many of the people who turned on Harry Knowles never wavered in their support of the Alamo Drafthouse, the movie theater that enabled many of Knowles' worst behaviors and buried at least two accusations for years. Even after the incidents involving Harry Knowles and Devin Faraci, the Alamo was accused of similar abuses in Kansas City three years later. Many of the people who bash Harry Knowles and want his story to be buried forever will readily take selfies inside an Alamo Drafthouse location, and you really don't have one without the other.
This speaks to our brand obsessed culture, where we afford more nuance to companies than we do human beings.
An element you cover very well in the first two episodes is the sheer amount of folks who were happy to leak to Ain’t It Cool, from regular (but disgruntled) production company employees to the test screening audience members who dished about the movies they'd just seen. So many pop operations are powered by SPITE, or they have SPITE as the secret ingredient. (I've just witnessed “Scream” fans beg their audience not to spoil the new movie for them, only to have it spoiled in private messages, random comments and so on.)
To me, this has been a nasty shadow side of mass culture as we experience it now --- the desire to ruin someone else's work out of a sense you're being cheated out of opportunities, a collective "haha take that". What would a better world look like to you ?
Harry Knowles monetized spite and general nastiness on the internet. This made his site popular and kept it afloat long after his interest in writing, journalism, or 'film enthusiasm' had waned. The same hateful rhetoric has become a financial engine for social media companies worth billions of dollars, and while it's poetic to see Knowles being punished by a version of the internet he helped create and profit from for years, there's a coarsening of our film culture I wish would improve.
Culturally and financially, movies are in a terrible place right now, and rather than shit on specific films for sport, I would like to see more people devote their energy to defining themselves by the movies and filmmakers they love. New creative voices need people to champion them. Even veteran creators need people to rediscover and celebrate their work. I could devote months of my life to talking about how much I hated the latest Star Wars or comic book movie, or devote the same time and energy to watching smaller, older, or foreign films I've never seen before -- and the latter will always be the better choice.
I started this project once I fully appreciated my overall frame was (still is) "expectations, reality and the inevitable crash". Looking at your own work with the podcast, and considering you're far from done as a storyteller, is there one moment that stands out to you as a case of "expectations crashing into reality" ? And is there any lesson you learnt in the aftermath ?
To be blunt, I never expected that much to happen with this show. There was a very modest goal I set in terms of listeners and we quadrupled it. The show attracted shitposters on social media, especially in the beginning. That wasn't always fun. One guy made some sexually charged comments about me and my producer while also tagging me in multiple posts, which wasn't great. But that also made sense, because most of those people are the children of the AICN talkbacks and the culture that emerged from there in mainstream film discourse.
But as far as a derailment or crash in terms of expectations, this one particular shitposter made me realize I needed to be more cautious, even a little wary as I approached what would have been my next story -- which was initially going to be very dark, but could have also attracted a lot of heat. I have a family and a very young kid, so I think often about them and their privacy and safety as I consider whatever story it is that I will tell next. If they were harmed -- or even mildly inconvenienced -- by what is truly a personal creative pursuit, I would have a very hard time forgiving myself.
Joe has been as gracious and generous with his time as few others. Can’t wait to see what he works on next.
You can listen to Downlow’d on the show’s website - you’ll find your platform of choice there.
If you appreciate the work, or if you want to reach out for any future project, let him know.
Feel free to check out the previous interviews in this series:
Do you know how Alfred would drop war stories in the most roundabout way imaginable, like the time he said he was “in Burma with some friends” because he couldn’t come out and say he was in the Secret Service and he had been tasked with chasing down a warlord? Good times.