ARC provided by NetGalley, thank you.

I have so much love for this book that I feel compelled to include a heart emoji. ❤️ There. Conversations with People Who Hate Me looks at hate, particularly online, and finds an antidote to it in conversation. Simple, but powerful.

The author, Dylan Marron, received (probably still receives?) a fair amount of negative messages and hate in response to the videos, podcasts and other content he creates. Out of that came a social experiment, one in which the author has conversations with some of the people who left those messages. At a fundamental level, we probably understand that conversation is humanizing, that it’s easy to say a mean thing on the internet and harder to say it to a person’s face and even harder to say it to a person you feel some connection with. Understanding something and doing it and doing it well are three different things. That’s why this book is important.

Toward the end of the book, the author writes about the potential shame or hate he might receive in response to this book. “What will I say to the teenager who replies with a 'this ain’t it chief' on an Instagram post about my book’s release date? How will I handle being the main character when someone finds a sentence that I should have written differently? How long will it take to get over an ideologically-aligned stranger responding to my book’s presale link with the meme 'you decided to write this book, here’s why you shouldn’t have'”

So I’ll say: This IS it. Your sentences are delightful. You decided to write this book, and here’s why I’m so glad you did.

In twelve easy-to-binge-read chapters, this book illustrates how a single, hateful message can turn into a healthy, productive, moving conversation. It demonstrates the power conversation has to change a person’s heart. We see that conversation has a critical ingredient—empathy—and can turn into something else—the everything storm, debate, interrogation—if we aren’t careful. The author writes, “Conversation, I have come to believe, is activism.”

Not that everything is magically fixed after a single conversation. “Radical change does not happen in the course of a single phone call. It does not happen because a conversation ends on a happy note. It happens because someone is willing to listen, someone is able to reach them, and a bridge was created for them to meet.”

Near the beginning, this touches on the topic of earnestness and sincerity on the internet. As in, it tends to attract swarms of negativity. For me, this is one of the most awful things about how people have come to use the internet. It hasn’t always been this way. The internet was created to connect people—not to divide them.

The author frequently poses the question, “What are you going to do about it?” The question assumes action. I know what the author did: social experiment, conversations, podcasts, wrote a book. But me? Uh, hate on the internet tends to produce one result: FLIGHT FLIGHT FLIGHT. There is nothing doing in that. The best I’ve been able to come up with is, at the very least, to try not to make somebody else’s life worse. It’s not particularly active, but it’s something?

There’s also a good discussion around empathy here. “Hurt people do, in fact, hurt people. Or, more accurately, hurt people hurt the people that they can get away with hurting.” Anyone who’s ever worked a job in the service industry or one involving talking to people who need help with something will understand this well. It’s a crucial ingredient in a good conversation. The book goes into another side of empathy I had never considered. “Empathy across the divide is a luxury item that not everyone can afford.”

We look too at the well-intentioned, hate-spreaders dubbed shame armies who gather and attack in the name of [insert cause here]. “In their righteous quest to tear down problematic systems it seemed as if these infantries were only interested in taking down individual people instead. They went after the transgressor as if they were the system itself.” We know how effective this is at changing a person’s mind, right?

Finally, can I say there is some major Quaker resonance in this? The author briefly mentions having attended a Quaker school and touches lightly on particular elements that have influenced the way he approaches conversation, but he doesn’t explicitly make any statements of faith, so I’m not assuming anything about his influence or belief system. That being said, this book is incredibly well-aligned with Quaker belief and practice and I think Quakers and similarly minded individuals would enjoy it. The very premise of seeing something valuable in another person and having a respectful conversation and sometimes feeling united in spirit at the end can easily be translated into Quaker terminology.

This book gave me a lot to consider, and I’m glad I’ve read it. Highly recommend.

Synopsis: A nonfiction book about a guy tracking down the real people behind online hate comments and having a conversation with them about what made them write those words to him. This book hit some old wounds for me and left me very emotional. Its divided into chapters based on different lessons the author learned from this project. As the book goes on, the tone shifts from light and humorous into a deeper conversation about empathy, shame culture, and human connection. Aside from hateful comments the author also brings to light how these feelings and conversations brought to his attention problematic behavior on his end and how he also learned from them. Very enjoyable read. Highly recommend.

I was pleasantly surprised at how much enjoyed this book.
Its so easy to be a hater when you are behind a computer screen. It was fully of honesty and of humor

I'm a huge fan of the podcast and was excited to dive in! Immediately the book had me sucked in with Dylan's question: What are you going to do about it?

I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. The mark of a great book!

This was a really well done book, with a fascinating premise: reaching out to the people who troll you online for genuine conversations. Dylan Marron's writing reminds me a lot of Hank Green's. It's a fun and easy read.

Thank you to Netgalley for an ARC of Dylan Marron's "Conversations with People Who Hate Me" in exchange for an honest review!

In his podcast of the same name, Dylan Marron reaches out to people who have sent him hateful messages online, inviting them to engage in conversation. The end result is something insightful and humanizing, a refreshing contrast from the endless aggression on all platforms. In writing, Marron is able to elaborate further on his decisions to begin and sustain the podcast, analyzes his conversational strategies, and presents tactics to encourage civil, wholesome conversations on and off the 'net.

I have been wondering for ages how to regain human relationships in an online world that rewards people for increasing levels of harshness. This book is the balm to that fear, a handbook on how to encourage difficult conversations in a way that builds relationships, not destroying them. Since finishing this book, I can't stop thinking about it. Marron has entirely changed the way I see accounts online—for the people behind them.

tl;dr, this is a total 5/5, because I know I'll be thinking about this book for a long, long time. Everyone should read this.

Conversations with People Who Hate Me
12 Things I Learned from Talking to Internet Strangers
by Dylan Marron

Dylan made sense of the internet hate. Odd, but...but he did. I must admit I am a fan of his. My Libtard and snowflake being. Now, I can look at those Facebook haters and trolls in a new way. They still get me angry, but wow Dylan broke it down. Dylan Marron is the page as he has ever been recorded on video, audio, or live and in person. He has wit, humor and yes, now I see compassion for even the meanest troll. Loved his book.

This was a fun read. I was somewhat aware of Marron's work before reading this, and really found him to be very funny and eloquent. His voice is honest and sincere, and I really enjoyed the writing style as well.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atriabooks for the opportunity to read and review an advance copy of this.

This book was a breath of fresh air in a time where all ideas are polarizing, friends and family are being torn apart over politics, and someone new is "cancelled" each week. Dylan Marron takes what everyone wistfully says ("If only we could sit down and actually have a conversation about this"), and really does it. In some cases, it's a useful learning experience. In others, a cause of more frustration. But at the end of the day, he boils each encounter down to the importance of empathy—something rare in our world today.

In a chapter towards the end of the book, he gets vulnerable about his writing experience and how he was paralyzed with fear over the possibility of becoming "the Internet's" next victim. This fear may seem like something only celebrities need to worry about, but I think a lot of people will resonate with it. How can we ever have real conversations with each other if we're so on guard about saying the wrong thing?

While he is quick to engage with his critics, I also appreciate his emphasis on the difference between people that are worth engaging with and those that are just not. There may be times when our mental and emotional energy will be wasted, or where a person is just flat out unsafe to talk to, and he sets those boundaries extremely well.

I'm excited for more people to read this book, I can't wait to discuss it with others! I hope it opens the door for more empathy and better conversations.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

I didnt really know what to expect from this book. but it was really enjoyable and the comparison to Mr. Rogers isnt an exaggeration.

People who say they "hate you" online usually have f*cking problems. They don't know you, so you can deduce that their problems run deeper than you know.

Dylan Marron is the bravest of us all, interfacing with those who “regular people” would deem the scourage of the internet: the “trolls”.

Flipping the camera around in these interactions, he shares some extremely profound moments that he's experienced in conversation with these people and it's an interesting read.

Opening up his platform for civilian and public figures alike to talk to their combatants, there were some moments that I felt like... Dylan, how can you not see how bad this is for XYZperson!?? However, just as I was thinking about how crazy some of these situations became, he’d come through with some heavy reflections, which I appreciated. Even if, at times, the damage had already been done.

This book is worth the read, I'm sure that it has immense impact for those who have been involved in these scenarios. I have definitely been misinterpreted in the message boards, and elsewhere, so some of these rang personal, but there's something here for everyone to learn from in some small way.

Thanks to Netgalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review. Check out Conversations with People Who Hate Me when it drops on March 29, 2022!

I picked up this book because I thought the premise sounded entertaining. A nonfiction book about a guy tracking down the real people behind online hate comments and having a conversation with them about what made them write those words? Seemed funny.
What I didn't expect was how deeply touching and emotional this book would be. It's divided into chapters based on different lessons the author learned from this project. As the book goes on, the tone shifts from light and humorous into a deeper conversation about empathy, shame culture, and human connection. I found myself tearing up a bit reading the transcripts of some of the conversations.
I was worried that the book would go in the direction of "there are good people on all sides" and diminishing the real harm caused by online bullying, but it didn't come across like that at all. There is discussion about the difference between empathy and endorsement and also a breakdown of the best ways to bring about meaningful change through conversation.
I was also impressed by the author's own self-reflection throughout the book. Rather than simply bringing up hateful comments that came from The Bad Guys, he also mentions comments that he has received that called him out for problematic behavior and how he has learned from them.
This is a book I'll be thinking about for a good while and I'm excited to recommend it to everyone I know when it comes out later this year. Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC to review honestly.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Marron's is the first book I've read that directly faces the new and novel challenge of being the recipient of hate and death threats en masse in comments sections across the internet. He sets out to humanize his detractors through direct conversation using compassion and empathy. His numerous missteps along the way allow him to introspect and attempt to remedy his own potentially inflammatory behavior.

Through this experiment, Marron came to some thought-provoking conclusions about the nature of the internet and how it can breed disagreement in its current form as an algorithmic echochamber that distorts scale and import. He noticed that he contributed to the echochamber himself through his initial attempt at advocacy by taking on an aggressive persona and reacting to trending topics in an effort to score 'internet points'.

Marron himself is not a sociologist, psychologist, or scholar, but he does spend his life on the internet and is a potentially polarizing personality at baseline. I am very impressed by his willingness to see err in himself and openness to try to really understand his detractors by speaking to them directly. He concludes that in debate there are winners and losers, but in conversation there is vulnerability and empathy that allows for all parties to grow and understand one another.

I really enjoyed this book a lot! I was inspired to read it since I really liked the podcast in the past, and the book was a perfect pairing! I am constantly thinking about a lot of the ideas that Marron also plays around with in this book. there aren't definitive answers about how we can possibly solve the problems of polarization and vitriol that's in many ways augmented by social media, but I feel a lot of kinship when thinking about ways to try to enter into conversation with those who seemingly differ with us. At the same time, Marron doesn't just tie this up with a neat bow like all we need to do is just get to know each other. He approaches this idea with a lot of nuance that I appreciate, like how empathy is not just endorsement unless maybe it is, how empathy may also be a privilege and how can we expect people to extend it when they may have experienced so much greater hatred and discrimination than ourselves, and more. I think that this is good food for thought for anyone who is also struggling with finding ways to heal our current society while realizing that there are no simple answers. As a librarian, I also appreciate the ways that this challenges how we think about tech and society, the way that we relate socially online, etc. since I think that these are ideas that are crucial to information literacy. So much good content and delivered in a very heartfelt and easy-to-read and connect with way that is similar to how I find Marron's podcast similarly inviting.

Disclaimer: I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I couldn’t possibly fit everything I need to say into this review. Check out casperintherye.wordpress.com for the full discussion.

WOOOW. This book really challenged me.

For those who don’t know, Conversations with People Who Hate Me started as a podcast by Dylan Marron. In his book, he discusses the journey behind the making of this podcast, which connects people who have essentially had hateful discourse with each other on the internet. Marron connects someone who received a hateful comment with the person who sent the hateful comment and they each explain things from their perspective.

If you haven’t listened to the podcast, fear not! I had never heard of it before reading this book. Each chapter in this book explores a new lesson to be learned about how to have productive conversations around divisive issues. The book is set along the backdrop of Trump’s presidency, leading up to the 2016 election and ending in 2020 with the writing of this book.

While Marron clearly leans a certain way politically, he’s nothing short of respectful and diligent in his empathy for those who have opposing viewpoints. He balances a very delicate line between showing empathy and not endorsing the ideas that some of the guests are bringing to the table like homophobia, racism, sexism, xenophobia, etc.

I think everyone can benefit from reading this book. It covers so many of the important communication tools that we all need right now in order to have those difficult conversations with people during a time when we’re so divided. There were times while reading this that I felt angry, frustrated, and disappointed. What’s the point of trying to have a reasonable conversation with someone who is so knee deep in a hateful belief system?

But my takeaway from this was completely different. A lot of Marron’s guests do begin to second guess the way they were raised, the way they think about certain situations or groups of people. It’s more than a worthy venture if you can have good faith discussion between people who have opposing views. It gives them a chance to humanize each other and hopefully they carry that forward in their future interactions.

Wow. Wow wow wow. This book is incredible. I finished this book last night, and I already can't wait to re-read it when it's published.

I was a regular listener of Dylan Marron's podcast, and as soon as I saw this book was excited to scoop it up. Dylan provides the readers an inside look at his thoughts as a citizen of the Neighborhood of the Internet. While writing this book he is open, vulnerable, and best of all, incredibly self-aware. He lays bare the struggles and questions he's had through his entire process. He asks himself the same kind of questions I think many of us have struggled with during this increasingly divisive era of the internet. Then, Dylan does something even more incredible and turns these questions and struggles into lessons. Lessons we all need. He explores what it means to have empathy, what makes a great conversation, and best practices for engaging with our detractors.

Anyone who spends time on the internet should read this book. This book will provide guideposts for how to be a better citizen of the Neighborhood of the Internet, and how to be a better person offline.

Thanks to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book!!

Wow. Absolutely fantastic read! The wit, humor, and perspective this piece brings is refreshing. It is a riveting, page turning commentary on society, the internet, and their effect on human nature. Hands down a MUST READ!

My phone's photo album is currently dominated by screenshots of pages from this book: there was so much here I wanted to save to re-engage with later! As I read, I itched to have a hard copy and a pencil in my hand - there was so much it was sparking for me, so many questions and reactions and !!!!s.

Given the above, it should go without saying that this book is a powerful thought-starter. I was fascinated by Marron's evolution - from conceiving of online debate as a game you win or lose, to starting to cope with virtual hate slung his way by imagining touchingly human narratives about his 'trolls', to questioning whether 'trolls' is maybe not the right term at all, to wondering whether he's been going about things the wrong way. I particularly loved this summation: "My videos alone were never going to sufficiently evangelize progressive ideas ... Was I simply enjoying the reverberations of virality in my own little echo chamber, thinking that. was slaying Goliath when I was simply cosplaying battle reenactments with my fellow self-identified Davids?" (Yes, this book is also, at times, laugh-out-loud funny.)

From there, the real excitement begins: he starts to engage - civilly, curiously, sans any persuasive agenda - with individuals he plucks from his 'HATE FOLDER' (which, spoiler alert, he rethinks the name of down the line) and invites to connect. These stories - wow - I was on the edge of my seat. And this isn't Chicken Soup for the Soul; not all of them go well - in fact, some of them go really badly, and not just for him but for other folks he invites into the conversations once he decides to take more of a mediator role. (One, in particular, was a punch to the gut.) Through it all, Marron keeps questioning his own assumptions, acknowledging his mistakes, and trying to do better.

For me, the most valuable part was his careful consideration about whether engaging and empathizing with people who believe things that are deeply harmful is implicitly validating or endorsing those beliefs. I've been wrestling with this myself, and it's often prevented me from engaging in conversations that, maybe, could have been worthwhile. I loved his analogy: people are the trees, ideologies are the forest, and it's crucial to not lose sight of either.

I would recommend this book to anyone who senses that polarization is a race to the bottom, but isn't quite sure what to do about it (and who kind of wants to laugh and cry at the same time). I'll be thinking about this book for a very long time.

As a listener of the podcast Conversations with People Who Hate Me, I was super excited for this book, and it did not disappoint. It was fascinating to see the process Dylan Marron went through as he conceived and recorded the podcast. People unfamiliar with the podcast will, I think, find this book equally valuable, as Marron explores the power of conversation and connection in our increasingly divided world.

This book was a page turner from beginning to end. Difficult conversations and how to have them. So captivating literally couldn’t put this down loved every single second on it. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.