Will Storr
Appearances
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Why are stories so persuasive? Well, stories are persuasive because humans think in stories. Our brains remix reality and turn that reality into a narrative with ourselves at the center. So storytelling is sense-making for the human brain. We haven't evolved to think in data, algorithm. We've evolved to process reality in the form of stories. A story is always going to be
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And basically saying that all these business computer users were a bunch of lemmings. And if they, you know, implying if they knew what they were doing, they'd be buying Apple computers. And it was just, it was a massive disaster. It wasn't just, it wasn't even like a null effect. Everyone just ignored it.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
The day after it was launched on the Superbowl, Apple headquarters were inundated with phone calls from people saying they were, business people saying they were never going to buy an Apple computer again.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And, you know, and one of the things I'm arguing in the book is that, you know, one of the reasons, one of the things I didn't understand was that, you know, that 1984 ad was offering the Apple user status. It was just saying, you know, fundamentally that if you buy an Apple computer, you're on the side of progress, you know. creativity, smashing the man, which is a big thing in the 80s.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
It's not going to be 1994. So it's a very optimistic, high-status, fashionable story they were telling. But the other ad, it took status away. So it was an absolute disaster. It was basically telling people that there were these bunch of brain-dead lemmings and they were going to fall to their death due to their own stupidity.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Yeah, a little bit. So to understand, one of the reasons that 1984 was so successful, you have to really understand the story of computers that was being told in the 1980s. So when the advert was broadcast, the boarding mall stood up. This wasn't the age of Silicon Valley, you know, Facebook, Google, and all the, you know, friendly...
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
I just think that's sort of deeply naive, you know, like what you'll find, especially, you know, you see all the time in the era of social media is that, you know, even, you scientists, you know, not even scientists as much as anybody else, they start with the story and then they find the data to back up their story.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
corporate um um you know brands that we know today um computers were still feared um they were seen as these kind of machines that were going to like yeah going to introduce a future of conformity and you know totalitarianism um it was um just a year before um 1984 was broadcast there was a massive film called war games um which i just about remember from my childhood you know which which was all about this computer that was that did um
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
that did war games with the Soviet Union, kind of goes crazy and almost starts a brand new nuclear war. And a computer then was this huge kind of flashing mainframe thing operated by inscrutable men in white lab coats. So that was what people feared. People feared computers. Weirdly, that fear is reawakening at the moment in the age of AI.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
People are starting to have those fears again, but they went away. And really, largely, one of the reasons they went away is because of that ad. It was saying, no, this is not what personal computers are all about. Personal computers are about freedom. They're about individuality. They're about progress. So people loved that story. They massively identified with that story.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And it ended up being an incredibly powerful, powerfully persuasive piece of storytelling for Apple. Like all the ads I talk about in the book, it had no information in it about the actual product. It had no price, no technical details. It didn't even have a picture of the damn thing. It was pure storytelling and incredibly successful.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And then, you know, one scholar in marketing that I read and I agree, you know, argues that that 1904 didn't just tell a brand new story about Apple computers. It told a brand new story about Silicon Valley, about computers in general. That story about, yeah, computers being the tools for creativity and changing the world and freedom, that became the story of computers going on for decades.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Curation. Curation. I don't think... I don't think their ads are manipulating our identity, strictly speaking. I think they are manipulating us by appealing to our identity. So, you know, humans, you know, we live in these two worlds at once. We live in the physical world like other animals. And in that physical world, we care about our survival.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
We care about food and shelter and procreation and, importantly, the environment. safety of our children who are going to then move our genes forwards. So in that respect, we're no different from a dog or an elephant. But humans live in this other kind of crazy world, this story world, where we care about other things. And in the story world, we aren't a flesh and blood machine.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
So you can find, you know, academics who know way more than you or I, both of us put together about human biology who believe in that kind of woke idea of biology, gender biology, and why are men better than women at certain things? They could find all the data in the world to tell you that that's not true, even though we believe that it is true. So you can take something like Jordan Peterson,
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
We're an identity with this collection of ideas. That's what we are. And this identity of means more to us than our lives. You know, like to the average human being, their identity is the most precious thing they'll ever own. I mean, you know, our children's aren't our possessions, but our identity is.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
So, you know, you can see people throughout human history have chosen identity over their own lives. When we go to war, that's what we do. When we fly planes into the World Trade Center, that's what we do. When we kill ourselves, that's what we do. You know, most... cases of suicide are what I call identity failure. It's not because they can't physically live anymore.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
because they're sick or because they're poor or something. I mean, of course, people do often kill themselves because they're ill, but very often they don't. Very often they kill themselves because they feel like failures, because their identity has failed, because they're lacking in connection. No one loves me. No one likes me. Everybody hates me. They're lacking in status. I'm useless.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
I'm pathetic. And crucially, they're also trapped. They feel there's no way they can rescue their identity. And the pain of their identity failing becomes so acute that they choose death over... over the pain of having their identity fall to pieces. And so that's the power of identity. And so the most powerful ads appeal to identity.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And again, that's what Apple did with their other really famous and successful campaign, Think Different, which is a bunch of black and white pictures of people like Gandhi and Mother Teresa and John Lennon. And this is you, think different. So basically people who identify with those characters You know, changed the world, became another absolute cliche in Silicon Valley.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And it began really with Think Different when it became popularized, that idea. And that's an appeal to identity. Now, there's another really great example, which I found, which I'd never heard of. And if you're not Canadian, you won't know about it, but it's Molson Beer. So back in the year 2000, Molson Beer were in trouble. They were number one and then they were slipping.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And so the ad agency were tasked with rescuing the reputation of Molson Beer. And the guy at the ad agency was Canadian and knew that one of the things that annoys Canadians is when Americans basically say, you're just Americans. There's no difference between Canadians and Americans. Something really winds Canadians up, as you can imagine. So he came up with this ad campaign called
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
called i am canadian and all it is is this ordinary guy in a plaid shirt and jeans on a stage listing things that are canadian like it's zed not z for example we don't say a boot we say about it's just a list of things but it was massively successful it went instantly you know um viral viral at the time um you know kids began you know shouting it on the streets.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
The value of Molson Beer rocketed, I forget the exact number, but tens of millions of the value of the company through the roof. One really incredibly smart thing they did was they debuted that ad in the ad break of the Oscars just after the South Park film Blame Canada had been performed. And then they had this very patriotic I'm Canadian thing.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
What's fascinating about I'm Canadian is, and it became known as the rant in Canada. It's very famous in Canada. And what's fascinating about it, again, just like the Apple ad, there's nothing in there about the beer. about its tastiness or whatever, you know, what are the qualities of this beer? Why should we be buying it? Nothing. It's literally an appeal to identity.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
It's holding a mirror up to their market, their audience, saying, this is who you are. And we're so in love with our identity. We go, yes, that's me. And we flock to the product. And it's the same as what Apple did with Think Different. They just said, here you are. We see you. You're amazing. You're fantastic. And this is who you are. You are this person.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And so that's how it's manipulating us for our identity, like the very best, most persuasive ads. That's how they do it.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Absolutely right. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so, I mean, and this is, this is, this is, you know, this is another concept that really came home to me when I was doing my research for a story as a deal. And it really made me feel like as a, as a society, we are still at the foothills of maturity in talking about issues like race, because, uh,
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
on the one hand, and Adam Rutherford, on the other hand, two very smart men, two very opinionated men, two men who I respect, you know, equally, I would say, but two men who are very angry and very lost in the story. They're both lost in the story. So, you know, I love Adam and I love Jordan. I can never imagine being in the same room together.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
You know, we fundamentally hate this idea, but it's an inarguably true idea. And the idea is that people like people like them. You know, we collect into groups of like-minded people. So we're always looking out for people who are a bit like us to identify with. And so, you know, that's why, you know, race becomes a problem because white people naturally tend to flock towards white people.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Black people naturally tend to flock towards black people. And at its core, it isn't racism. It's human nature. And until we've sort of really grasped that, we're not going to make any progress in these sort of very difficult problems. So that's what we're kind of constantly doing.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And again, it's human nature because we're always looking for people with similar identities to us that we can cooperate with. It's that super organism nature. programming again. Nature is constantly wanting us to gather into groups of like-minded people and repel people who we think aren't like-minded. And the most persuasive storytelling understands that.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
One of the most recent examples was from the Trump election, the one just gone, which I thought was extraordinary, where there's a concept in the book I call atomic statements, which are kind of tiny little phrases that are absolutely packed with meaning. And they're atomic because they're tiny little things, but they explode on contact with the human brain. They're so packed with meaning.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And you can see lines of movie dialogue, like, we're going to need a bigger boat, is an atomic statement because it's the entire movie packed into a to a line. Houston, we have a problem. It's an atomic statement. These are the lines that we love and we repeat and become iconic because they're atomic. They're packed full of meaning. And the best advertising lines are like that. Just do it.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
It's packed full of meaning. It's a story about what Nike stands for. Just do it. It's fantastic. And politicians use these to great effect too. In the book, I write about Project Fear and Take Back Control, which are very successful for the
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
brexit leave campaign but after the book was finished there was this other incredible atomic statement that came out of the trump campaign which was kamala is for they them trump is for you which you know even the people that came up with it was staggered by how successful it was you know kamala's own um research team um figured worked out that it had created a 2.7 shift in the election race just that line alone so you know that's a story and and it's a story that that that that millions of americans immediately understood um
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
a certain kind of American who were incredibly frustrated and fed up with the kind of, you know, with the kind of era of wokeism. And so, yeah, that was another example of incredibly powerful persuasive storytelling that appeals to identity.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Yeah, exactly. So you look at the Gillette ad campaign where they were trying to appeal to men by calling men abusers and harassers. It's like lemmings all over again. You're not going to make people happy by removing their status, by telling them a story that they don't want to believe. It's the Bud Light campaign, giving a...
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
you know transgender woman i'd like to drink you know that that that's a story you know we know that this person stands for wokeism and wokeism is at its core um you know if we're honest about what wokeism is at its core one of the things it is is a movement against straight white men so you know straight white men were the were the market for for bud light so that that was a ridiculous thing to do and it exploded in their faces and also tesla you know you know that you know tesla's
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
stock prices collapsed. It's partly because of the tariffs, but their sales have dropped massively across Europe, which isn't because of the tariffs. And that's because the story that Tesla stands for has been polluted by Elon Musk's behavior in the last 18 months and his alignment with the Trump government.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
But equally, with the greatest respect to both of them, I wouldn't trust either of them to talk to me about the science of... you know, gender, talks to me certainly about what's going on in Israel-Palestine. Dispassionately. Yeah, dispassionately. Not because they're dishonest, not because there is anything wrong with them, but because they're lost in the story.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
It is more real than reality. That's exactly right. And to understand why, you've got to go back to that concept of the story world, that human beings are these two things. We're a bag of bones and blood in the survival realm. But in the story realm, we're nothing more than a collection of ideas that we collect. We are the things that we love. We are the art that we like.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
We are the podcasts that we listen to. uh, you know, we are, um, it makes me laugh when I'm watching, you know, travel podcasters who go around the world and they all do, they all copy board on bankrupts, body language, you know, it does this weird thing where he looks behind him all the time and you see him, especially at the beginning, they do it there.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
I think subconsciously aping his body language, like because they're, you know, they're, they're part of, He's part of their identity. And that's also true of the things that we own. The things that we own are part of our identity. So if you're somebody that stands against Trump and you own a Tesla, it becomes toxic to you because it's like your very self has become polluted with this
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
alien kind of element you know you want to cut it out of you it's it's it's it's a it's a radically bad thing to happen to you so you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna reject it it's like being forced as a middle-aged man to walk down the road um you know um with a i don't know with a big skintight taylor swift t-shirt on like it just makes you deeply uncomfortable you know so so because the self is nothing more than a collection of ideas in that story realm
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Well, I love the Theranos story because it really speaks to all this stuff. As we know, Elizabeth Holmes came along and said she had this incredible device that she called the Edison. And the Edison was revolutionary because you used to take – a couple of vials of blood to do all this huge battery of blood tests. And she could do it with a pinprick of blood in your finger.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Amazing, revolutionarily fantastic. And as we know now, it was fantasy. It didn't work. There was no machine. And so what's incredible about the Edison is that she managed to get –
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
huge amount of backing from uh from people on her board including henry kissinger uh you know you know that the former director of the centers of disease control you know like very very high status smart men they were all men on the board not a single not a single woman um and that's important for reasons will become apparent in a second um so so so so all these guys
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
gambled their reputation on her telling the truth. And then incredibly smart, successful guys and girls invested hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in Theranos. Rupert Murdoch, it was the most amount of money he's ever invested in any company outside of his own family of companies. And the incredible thing about this is most of these people did no due diligence.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
They're utterly lost in their particular story of the world and the data that they cite, the data that they choose to believe is subservient to the story. So even with people like Adam and Jordan, you know, two brilliant minds, the story comes first as far as I'm concerned. I think that's inarguable. Have you come across knowingness?
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
So Rupert Murdoch did no due diligence. So they didn't even bother to find out whether she was telling the truth. Like it's extraordinary. Some people did. So somebody from Google Ventures, who were interested in investing, went down to a Walmart where Theranos were doing their tests for a blood test. And they took two massive vials of blood out of his arm. It's just like, hang on a minute.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
We are not investing in this. So some people didn't fall for the story, but Rupert Murdoch did and Henry Kissinger did and the Walmart family did. And, you know, me and other commentators too, this is not just me who's come up with this. I convinced it was the story that she stood for. You know, this was, we're still in that time. We're in the girl boss era. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
People were and remain desperate for a female Steve Jobs. You know, people talk very disparagingly about tech bros. You know, the masculinity of the tech world is a problem for the, you know, for the good people of our culture today. So people were desperate for a female Steve Jobs. And she became a female Steve Jobs, even down to the turtleneck.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
You know, it was extraordinary, the kind of cosplaying that she did. And so... People like Rupert Murdoch and Henry Kissinger, by buying into Theranos, they're making it that part of their identity. So her heroic story becomes their own heroic story. Rupert Murdoch becomes somebody that has backed this female billionaire genius founder. So that is how important the story is.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And as I say in the book, the device didn't exist. The device was worth nothing. But the story was worth $9 billion. That's what Theranos was valued at at their peak, $9 billion. So that's the power of storytelling to kind of bedazzle the minds of even our greatest, smartest, wealthiest people.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Yeah, we do. There's something in the brain that tells us that we are, something very powerful that tells us that we are not under the influence of story, that we are under the influence of rationality. It's actually quite easy to figure out why that is. You have to believe in the story of your group in order for that group to function. Obviously you do.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Yeah, because you're not part of that group's mission. You're de-identified with the group. And also, you know, one of the fundamental things that you want from that group is, well, the two fundamental things that you want is connection and status. So you only really connect with the group if you believe in their story.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
So if you believe that Jesus was a real guy and that he died and resurrected on the third day, you're a Christian now. That's what you are. You know, you're a Christian. It's as simple as that, Jordan, by the way. And so now you're connected into that Christian world. But in order to earn status in that Christian world, you have to allow that belief to kind of fill you up.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
I call it, this is active belief. You have to... That belief has to act on you like a parasite controlling your behavior. So you go out in the world and you start acting out the values and the story of the Christian set of beliefs. You can't do that if you don't believe in Christianity. It won't make any sense to you. And also, you can't earn the status.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
One of the things that Muslims do, they call it the Hafiz. where some Muslims will earn the Quran by heart. So every word of the Quran takes sometimes two to three years. It's a massive thing. And if you manage to pull this stunt off, you get a huge amount of status. I think it's called Hafiz. But you get a certain title and a certain status.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Now, you have to believe in the story of Islam to go through that trial of two to three years of earning it by heart. Because otherwise, you're not going to be motivated to do it. And also, more importantly, the status will mean nothing. It doesn't mean anything. So if you don't believe in the story, To you and me, it's a waste of time learning that book word for word. Why would you bother?
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
But if you believe in the story, it has massive meaning. So yeah, we have to believe that the stories aren't just stories, that they're actual truth, they're reality. And we believe it so much. Look at through human history, people all the time fight and die on behalf of the beliefs of their groups.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Yeah, I saw that too and I was jealous. I was like, damn, I wish I'd come up with that. Not too late to add it to the book.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. That's the right way to think about it. And again, I'll just go back to poor Adam Rutherford and Jordan Peterson, who I would emphasise, they're going to be smart guys who have nothing but respect for, but they're They have their stories of the world. They believe thoroughly and nobody, no set of facts is going to change their minds on their beliefs.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
That seems pretty clear for the tenor of their conversation on social media.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Yeah, as I said, it's like, once we believe the story of the group, what we want then is to earn status within the group. So nobody wants to be at the bottom rung of a group, liked but seen as kind of useless. We kind of want to rise up
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
the group that's that that's human nature um and and you do that by um developing a reputation of somebody that's valuable to the group in some way so so um yeah so so as i said you know if you're a christian you just become a better christian you start acting like a christian if you're a anti-vaxxer you don't get vaccinated you go you might go protesting you might start doing some blogging you might have an argument with your gp about how vaccines are shit and then you'll tell all your friends like oh you're amazing
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
So that's what I call that kind of active belief. Again, we allow that story to take us over. And again, this is why stories are so incredibly persuasive. You see it all the time. Stories take over the minds of people and they start behaving in ways dictated by people. the story at its most extreme. It's a cult.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
I mean, that's the most extreme form of, you know, what I call a status game where you, where, where people have one identity, one story, one status game. And, and that's it. I mean, that's why people in cults are usually encouraged to not even contact family and friends anymore because they, they cannot be allowed to have any other source of,
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Any other story, any other identity, any other source of status. And, you know, a religion is just a slightly weaker form of a cult. A political party is a weaker form of a cult. And, you know, Karen going down and down the line, you know, all groups are kind of loose or tight and the tightest is the cult.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Yeah, so you've mentioned mimesis a couple of times. So the copying instinct and how that tends to work in human groups is that we are unconsciously constantly on the lookout for people like us. So people that we identify with who are higher status than us. And when we identify like a high status version of ourselves, we tend to automatically start copying them. That's when the mimesis kicks in.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
So we will want to get near them. So that might be by flattering them. If they're a celebrity, it might be by buying their products. joining their, you know, social media feeds, you know, going to their concerts. We might start mimicking their patterns of behavior, the way they talk, the way they dress, their artistic tastes.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
We will automatically, yeah, and unconsciously that's because our brain has gone, well, this is a person like me who's got high status. I want high status. So the more I can make myself like this person, the more likely I am to rise up that status game.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Yeah, well, there's lots of different kinds of status, but there are three main kinds of ways that we can earn status in human groups. The first way is dominance. So that's the much more animalistic way, the much more ancient way. So dominance is violence, the threat of violence, also the threat of social violence. ostracization, cancel culture, all that would come under dominance.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And then there's the other two kind of forms which are based on our reputation, our identity. And so the first one is competence. So we become good at stuff. So we become valuable to our group. by becoming an excellent hunter or an excellent honey finder or an excellent storyteller or an excellent sorcerer. And so people respond to us by rewarding us with status.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
the most persuasive, you know, technology out there. Story's also always going to be the thing that persuades people most of all.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And, you know, in all human groups, the more status you get, the better everything else becomes. You become... safer, better fed. You get greater access to choice of mates. In the modern world, you get richer. It's always worked like that. It always will work. But the other way of earning status is by virtue. We also award status to people who we perceive as virtuous.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And the role of virtue in human groups is about rules. It's about knowing the rules, knowing the stories, but it's also enforcing the rules. So again, we have this very naive view that virtue is obviously good. But virtue is 50% good, 50% evil. Because, you know, packed in with virtue is that instinct to enforce the rules and to punish people who don't share our story world. So, you know...
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Michelle Obama, you might call her a virtue superstar because she's known for her perceived moral goodness by her people. The Pope, the Dalai Lama, these are virtue superstars. These are people who are incredibly high status. Greta Thunberg, on the basis of the perception that they are high in levels of virtue.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
But also, during the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards were playing virtue-based status games. People doing cancel culture, it's dominance virtue. They're not interested in competence. They're not interested in success. They're interested in, I'm going to punish you for not following the rules and for not believing the sacred stories of my group.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Rivalry is interesting. So within a group – Rivalry can be very productive. But rivalry tends to be classified as a one-on-one thing. So if you are rivalrous with one individual, and one of the tests of rivalry, people who are rivals are usually quite similar. They're playing the same status game, and they have a history of near wins in close matches. So that's the recipe for a rivalry.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And that kind of rivalry can be amazing. It can drive people to incredible heights. feats it's the lennon mccartney thing um you know in the in the status game i told the story of you know the true origin story of the iphone which is that when steve jobs went to a barbecue his wife that his wife organized with some twat from microsoft who was sort of sort of
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
going, oh, Microsoft has solved computing. You've got this touch device with a stylus. It's going to blow you out of the water. And then Jobs came in to work on the Monday and was furious, livid, and instructed his team to figure out a way of blowing Microsoft out of the water. And it wasn't going to be a stylus. It was going to be with a finger. So, you know, that's rivalry.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
I mean, rivalry made the iPhone. It began as the iPad and then reemerged as the iPhone. So that tends to be good for us. It's obviously exhausting, but we've all been in that situation where we become obsessed with a rival. It drives you forward. What's less healthy is competition.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
So if rivalry is one-on-one, one person versus one person, one group versus one group, competition is kind of all against all. And competition in that kind of technical sense is often less productive. It's kind of exhausting. It's kind of toxic. People kind of... People in organizations high in, you know, very high in competition experience lots of burnout.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
They experience kind of a kind of a toxic culture in which everybody's kind of hoarding the status for themselves, taking all the credit, pushing all the blame away. So, yeah, you've got to be careful in organizations how you're engineering your teams. So there's not too much competition, but there is plenty of healthy rivalry.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Yay! There it is! Coalitional warfare! Exactly. That's why I remain a fan. You see that all the time amongst the women in... in Love Island. The other kind of gossip which I've detected in Love Island is you see what you call venting, which is that kind of naked status warfare. But you also see what they call it co-rumination.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And what I found, especially in recent series of Love Island, when the guys have a problem, it's so interesting, the guys get together and try and solve the problem Um, and, um, they'll often hold each other a bit accountable and that might get a bit RC, um, but they, but, but, but they often will. Um, and sometimes they'll try to build each other up and you can do it, mate. You can do it.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
You just need to do this. So, so, so, so the kind of. the kind of coalitional care amongst the men is, is, is focused around problem solving and accountability a bit, but the female, the females get together, they did the venting, but they also do this co-rumination. So rather than, so when the woman says, I've got this problem with Bob, um,
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Rather than trying to figure out and solve the problem, it's this pile of, yeah, he's an arsehole. He's a bastard. Oh, you're quite right. I feel so sorry for you. And again, it's similar to the venting thing because it feels like they're being sisterly and supportive. What they're actually doing is driving that person even further into the ground.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
They're exaggerating the problem. They're demonizing the man and turning his behavior into this horrendous thing. There's usually tears and then a big...
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
fucking argument after it you know it's a it's a it's a wholly kind of toxic and kind of devious form of in inverted commas help because it just it because it makes everything worse for that individual individual and like with fencing the the women who are doing it are made to feel superior like they're being helpful and supportive but actually they're not
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
This is not how our status game is played. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's absolutely right.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Yeah, I mean, knowing this sounds like implicit belief. It's the beliefs that are just implicit. And you believe with such kind of ferocity that you can't see that they're beliefs. They just feel like reality to you. And when I talk about the story world, that we all live in this story world, I think that speaks to the idea that we all – you know, we all live in this narrative.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Yeah, so it's interesting. Substack, they're obviously kind of a new social media player. And they've been sort of figuring out how to... kind of employ status game psychology into their platform, I think, a little bit. I've got to be careful because my wife works for Substack. But I've got none of this from her.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
What I've written in the book, I got from something that Chris Best, one of the founders, wrote. And he wrote a really interesting essay about status psychology and Substack. And it was initially, I think, that they kind of made this mistake where they were putting writers into some kind of chart that could easily be gamed.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
So what that meant was that writers were then getting bots to, you know, liken, you know, like... their essays. So they were gaming the thing. And so they changed it to, we are now going to reward writers who make the most money because that's the status game of Substack. Our purpose on this earth is to allow creators, especially writers, to make a living from their work. So that's our game.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
So from now on, we're going to reward you. We're going to reward the writers who earn the most money. And then it kind of fixed itself. They got their incentives correct and the game started to be being played correctly.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Yeah, I mean, so there are a few ways of sort of tackling that. I mean, you know, one of the ways is to kind of think, you know, go back to that idea of female aggression as we were just talking about with the venting and the co-rumination. And I feel, you know, I feel that the whole woke thing
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
thing the reputation destruction thing it just feels like a very kind of female heavy movement it kind of feels like a female style movement you know male aggression tends to be one-on-one out in the open and you could talk about toxic masculinity as being a bit, being a guy walking into the room, being very intimidating to people and pushing people around and bullying people.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Female aggression tends to be coalitional. It's the, it's the group against the one. There's a lot of behind the scenes gossip and it's about not physical, um, destruction, but reputation destruction. And so, so, so, so, so, so, you know, it, you can see the, the, the success of feminism, um,
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And, you know, one of the kind of moments in my career as a writer that always sticks with me was when I was in my twenties, I wrote my very first book was about ghosts and went around the world trying to figure out if ghosts existed. It was, it was good fun. And one of the guys that I met was called Morris Gross.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
the incredible rise in the power of women in society and culture kind of goes hand in hand with this new way that we're playing status games in the world. You know, wokeism and cancel culture being one of them. So that's one way that I kind of think about this. Kind of more technically, you know, there are a few things I write about in the stories I deal about, about how to kind of manage
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
times of reputation destruction, you know, what is a good apology? One of the things that's really interesting from evolutionary psychology is just how incredibly toxic the state of selfishness is. So because we're this tribal animal, we are this, you know, coalitional loving ape, you know, we form into these super organisms.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
What the story is always wanting us to do is to be selfless, is to put the group's interests first. before our own interests. So when you look in storytelling, generally, a hero is always somebody that puts the group before themselves, but somebody else before themselves. So selflessness is the essence of heroism universally. So courage in the face of crisis for the group.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
you know, whatever it is. So, so, so selflessness is, is, is ineffably heroic and its opposite is selfishness. So, you know, villains in stories are always selfish in some way. They want to keep all the, all the rewards for themselves. They want to keep the girl, you know, whatever it is. They want to, you know, hoard resources. So, so, so,
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
One of the things that leaders need to avoid massively doing in times of crisis is to have the appearance of selfishness. And that's one of the things that Tony Hayward did, the CEO of BP, when there was the huge Gulf oil spill. He didn't handle it very well at the beginning.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
He tried to kind of push blame away, but he eventually accepted full blame and enacted the most expensive cleanup operation in all of history, just an enormous deliberation paid for by BP. And then he did a TV interview. And at the end of the TV interview, he said, believe me, no one wants to get this over more than I do. I'd like my life back. And that moment just destroyed him.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Not only did it destroy him, it became international news. Barack Obama, who was president at the time, even started talking about it. And of course, his 25-year career at BP was kind of over in a flash. So that's really important that in times of trouble, you've got to appear selfless because selflessness is the essence of the hero in the human story world.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And he was this, you know, this old guy who lived up in Muswell Hill and he'd been a ghost hunter all his life. And he was, he was famous for investigating the Enfield poltergeist case. He's kind of a legend, Morris Gross. And so I managed to get an interview with him and I went to his house.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And there was another thing which I thought was very interesting. There's a guy called Christopher Booker who wrote an epic book called The Seven Basic Plots. And he defined the heroes having these four qualities of feeling, order, strength, and...
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
agency and and so um heroes in stories kind of tend to show those kind of four qualities and when you look at really good apology videos from people they tend to embody those four feeling order strength and agency yeah yeah they tend to embody those kind of four qualities in a really perfect way what's a what's a good apology video and what's a horrible apology video
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Well, the apology video I really like is from way back in history. And it's a guy called... It's what? Way back in history. Was that 20 years ago? No, it was 2007. It's very early days of YouTube. And it's Patrick Doyle who took over Domino's. And Patrick Doyle is an amazing CEO. He really turned Domino's around. He turned it from being, you know, from down there to up there.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
He was a kind of revolutionary guy. But he just begun... Domino's. And it was the early days of YouTube. And these two idiots in a local Domino's decided to make a video of themselves picking their noses and rubbing on a pizza and farting on a pizza and setting the pizza out. And they put the video on YouTube and nobody really knew what YouTube was at the time.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And so this thing went on YouTube on the Monday and Domino's was like, oh, nobody's going to see this. Then the next day, hundreds of thousands of people see it. And then by the Wednesday, when you typed in Domino's into Google, it was the top thing on Google. So Domino's actually opened their first Twitter account in order to put this video on there.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And Patrick Doyle did this seemingly pretty off-the-cuff apology video. You can still find it on YouTube. And he really embodies all of those. I mean, broadly speaking, it's the kind of masculine and the feminine. You've got strength and order first. Feeling and, sorry, strength, order, feeling and understanding, not feeling and agency. Strength, order, feeling and understanding.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And he does all, he hits all of those kind of four buttons in the apology video. You can tell he's furious. You know, he's angry. We've called the police. They've been arrested. We've shut down the branch of Domino's. We've completely, you know, he tells you all the things they've done, which is, you know, the tough guy stuff. But then he adds in, look, we're a franchise business.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And as I was leaving his house, he said, you know, you know, Will, he said, if you're looking for evidence of the supernatural, you're going to find it. And it's always stuck with me because I did find evidence for the supernatural, even though I don't believe in the supernatural. And it's always stuck with me because I think the brain is this amazing evidence finding machine.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
All these dominoes around the country, they're owned by moms and dads. And they're all suffering. And the people who own this dominoes franchise are suffering too. And we feel really bad for them. So you've got that feeling and understanding stuff in there too. And it worked. I mean, so when you talk about this whole dominoes scandal with the snot and the farts, no one's ever heard of it.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
It went away. you know it went away so it was a really successful apology video and i think it's because it you know he does come across as this you know he's a he's a lumpy ceo he doesn't look particularly heroic but he but he's embodying all the causes of the classic narrative hero in that video have you seen any bad ones do any uh scientific science of storytelling uh suboptimal Oh, yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
I forget the name of the platform now, but it's in the book. There's a guy, there was some website he owned, I think. And he had to lay off like two people. And when he had to lay off two people, he put a video of himself on LinkedIn with a tear, like a genuine, like a tear coming down his face.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
talking about, I wish I was the kind of CEO that could just lay people off and not care, but I care so much. And of course, it's back to the selfishness thing. He's just thinking about himself. And it was entirely self-defeating. The comments under the LinkedIn video were hilarious. It became a big Daily Mail story.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
It became this kind of massively hated figure for a few days in the media generally. So yeah, the LinkedIn tier guys is I think the worst one I've ever seen.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
What do most people get wrong about good storytelling? I think... There's so much. But what do you mean when they're trying to create kind of persuasive stories? Yeah, okay. Well, I think people still feel that the best way to sell a product is with facts about the product. I mean, there might be cases in which that's true.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Certainly, you can list lots of business-to-business cases in which that's true. If you're wanting to order a part for your car, you're rocky. You just want to know how good the part is. That's fine. But if we're not talking business-to-business, it generally is the best ways to appeal to people's identities. It's much more powerful than appealing to the qualities of your product.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And that general kind of idea of identification is just a massively important thing, not just in persuasive storytelling, but in all storytelling. In the stories that we love, we sit down and the film begins or the novel begins, and we meet a character that we identify with. You know, there's a very ridiculous kind of idea in storytelling still that people want to write characters that we like.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
If you've got a belief, The brain will find evidence to back up your belief. No matter what you believe about gender or Israel-Palestine or whatever it might be, your brain is going to find multitudinous evidence to back up what you believe. You're going to see it everywhere. And that's one of the tricks of the kind of storytelling brain. We live in this story world. We live in this narrative.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Likeability is the thing. But likeability isn't the thing. Identification is the thing. You know, if we identify with somebody, if part of our brain goes, that person on the screen, that's me, then we're going to love that story. You know, that's why the girl boss era in Hollywood has been so unbelievably toxic. The Indiana Jones, the Star Wars, and in the UK, the Doctor Who, where they've...
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
not just removed all the straight white male characters but but humiliated them they they've killed them and humiliated them and replaced them with mostly you know carpal cut out girl bosses um so so so you know so you know these these story franchises were broadly made for young men that you know like there were stories for young men but they've been you know um
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
disidentified with these stories which are a part of their identity, like a big part of their lives. And that's why they respond with such fury. It's not because they're misogynist or racist or anything stupid like that. It's because they're
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
in a very real sense, if you're humiliating and degrading Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones and Doctor Who, you're humiliating and degrading they themselves who are watching it. So that identification is just a massively important thing.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Absolutely right. So when we identify with anything, we make it a part of ourselves. We make the music, the art we love a part of ourselves. We make the cars we buy a part of ourselves. We are a collection of ideas. And one of the most important things
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
facets of our identity and the people the stories that we love and the characters that we grew up with you know luke skywalker at the beginning of the first star wars film is this um orphan he he he works on a moisture farm his solo status his nickname amongst his school friends was wormy that's what they called him wormy and he you know he overcomes his um fears and
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
and becomes this incredible hero. And people love Luke Skywalker. But in the latter period of Star Wars, they've reintroduced him just as they did with Indiana Jones. They do it time and time again. They reintroduce these amazing straight white male heroes and make them miserable, sexist, disillusioned. They had him sort of chugging this kind of weird teat milk off her. I mean, he was humiliated.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And the brain's not interested in what's the truth. The brain's not really interested in you having this kind of perfectly clear understanding of reality. The brain wants you to succeed in your life as a human. And what that means is we have to achieve connection with a group. And once we've achieved connection with a group or a tribe, we kind of earn status within it.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
um put out in a way so how yeah how important are heroes then is it is that a crucial element of most stories yeah yeah archetypal storytelling i'm talking about i'm not talking about modernist novels that kind of that exist to break the rules that's the kind of whole point of them in archetypal storytelling yeah protagonists are really important because um you know my book is called a story is a deal and what i mean by that is that a story subconsciously says if you behave like the hero does
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
you're going to be rewarded with these incredibly precious social resources of connection and status. That's what all heroes in archetypal stories win. They win connection and or status. So that's what happens with, obviously, with Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. He begins as wormy and ends up with a big medal around his chest surrounded by people who love him. You know, that's what we all want.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
That's a human universal. That's what drives us. Everyone is... Well, three things. Survival, connection, and status. Those are the three things that all humans want. And those are the three things that are the subject of all archetypal storytelling. All stories are about survival, connection, or status.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And the best stories, the stories that last through the ages that we can watch again and again and again are about all three. So if you think about... A movie like The Revenant, that's about survival. A movie like Stand By Me is about connection. A movie like Barbie or Whiplash is about status. But The Godfather, that's about survival and connection and status in about equal measure.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
So is Romeo and Juliet. So is Star Wars. You know, these epic, amazing stories. feel so rich and full and drenched in meaning because they're about all three of the things that matter most to humans. And we learn about them through the hero. How does the hero survive? How does the hero earn connection? How does the hero earn status? We absorb those you know, messages subconsciously.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
You know, they teach us who to be in the world. And that's why they're so incredibly important. And when we're a teenager and we, you know, we kind of make Luke Skywalker part of our identity and then he's, you know, humiliated and degraded and replaced in this way. It's, you know, it's painful. And the bitter irony is we've got this kind of moral panic in the UK at the moment about this
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
ridiculous show adolescence on netflix which is another kind of as far as i could see um straightforward piece of anti-straight white male propaganda and painting us as misogynist woman you know woman killers who can't even take an insult without picking up a knife and committing murder And now there's all these stories saying, oh, men just don't have any role models anymore.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Yeah, because you replaced us all. You replaced us all with girl bosses. You humiliated us, you know, and wrote us out of your scripts. And now you're worrying and panicking. Yeah, no, you're right. We don't anymore. Because... The men that we see on our screens these days, as you said, tend to be the butt of jokes. They tend to be disempowered.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Women are always writhing in rings about them, humiliating them, knocking them down with one punch. I mean, you see it again and again and again and again and again, and it's been going on for over a decade now.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And so to earn connection to that group, we've got to believe their story. Every group has a story it tells of the world, whether it's a political organization or a cult or a religion or, you know, You know, me and you are in the kind of same kind of cultural group. We believe roughly the same things. We have a shared reality.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
I mean, it's a totally fair criticism. But I think you're right. There weren't enough well-written female heroes with agency. But you did get Princess Leia. You did get... you know, Sigourney Weaver in Alien. I mean, growing up, I loved Prime Suspect, Helen Mirren's character in Prime Suspect. I mean, I loved all that stuff.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
I mean, so it's not as though these characters didn't exist, but I think we've got to a crazy place now where in order to find a kind of straight white man and hero role, you've got to watch some terrible Guy Ritchie movie. Like, largely speaking, they just don't really exist anymore. And interestingly, I think a lot of
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
a lot of people are now, like you are, thriving on the internet because the internet is a meritocracy and isn't... There's no gatekeepers anymore. There's no gatekeepers. So the internet's kind of the only place now where straight white male creators can survive and make a living.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Yeah, well, that's the thing. And I think early period Jordan Peterson, why he was so electrically exciting because all he was doing was sticking up for men. That's what he was doing. And he became this lightning rod. You either loved him or you hated him. And all he was doing was sticking up for us.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
We were so desperate for somebody to stand up and go, you know, there's actually nothing wrong with being a straight white man. And this is how you ought to do it. And you should hold your head up and clean your room and all that stuff. It was kind of a legifying. But then on the other side, you do have your Andrew Tates.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
We have a shared idea of who are the heroes, who are the villains, what are the good beliefs, what are the bad beliefs, what is status. You know, so me and you share a story and we share a story with most of your viewers and it's reassuring. You know, we see evidence for it everywhere. So that's kind of how all this is working. The brain isn't motivated to discover the truth.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
If young men, if the culture keeps on telling straight white men that they're bad and they're useless and they're the butt of every joke and they're going to be girl boss to hell in every drama they see and they're going to be in adolescence and shown stabbing them into death, then they're going to go to the people that says, no, I respect you. I've got your back.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Of course they are because they want status like we all do. I mean, you know, it's a kind of, I think people underestimate kind of how How pervasive all of this stuff is, really. And I kind of think we're at the foothills of a new era here. And I see it very starkly in my world, which is books.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, because I mean, you know, I've kind of all right in a sense because I'm in there now and I have a readership. And so that's fine. But I know I'm pretty sure if I was starting out now, I'll be finding extremely hard to get. And I've also seen the change in the way my books are received since all this happened. You know, like when Selfie was published, I think, 2017.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
It was reviewed across all the newspapers. I was on the television. I was on Newsnight. I was on Radio 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. You know, like, there was loads of publicity. It was fantastic. And then when all this started happening, I found it extremely hard now to get any publicity. Like, a story's a deal, book just published. We got one review. One review a week of reason at times. That's it.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
So paradoxically, the more successful I've become as an author, you know, my last two books have been by far and away my most successful. the harder it is to get any coverage in the mainstream media, to get support from the bookshops, and to get slots at book festivals. I used to be at the Edinburgh Festival every year. Now there's no way I get to the Edinburgh Festival anymore.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Despite the fact that you're selling more books than you ever did. Yeah, yeah. And the fact is that the only reason I'm still going is because of the podcast fit. It was the podcast guys that supported the status game. The status quo has done really well now because it was embraced by people like you. Because it was brilliant. It was a brilliant book. Thank you, Chris.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
But when it was published, again, we got one review week of release. We couldn't get anyone to talk about it. That's crazy. The day it was published, I looked on Amazon and it was at number something like 6,500 in the bestsellers list. Honestly, I was devastated. I was like, what is going on? But it's because it got no publicity. But it's ended up being successful because of the podcast.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
But you see, I don't think that's a coincidence because I think people like you and, you know, a lot of the other sort of big podcast guys in the previous generation, you'd be on television, but there's no place in mainstream media for straight white guys anymore. So they're doing podcasts. And so I think that's why.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
The brain is motivated to make us want to collect with like-minded people and then state us from those people. And that means believing their stories. So is it right to say that story is the language of the brain then? Absolutely. That's exactly right. And as I write about in The Story's a Deal, the big idea that kind of made me excited about this book was this idea that
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
one thing is that atomic nature. It's got to be, have brevity and clarity. So, so, so he's got to have his maximum meaning in minimal space. So, you know, that, that, that, so that's a tweet, that's a meme, that's a, that's a, an aphorism, you know, so, so it's got to, it's got to have maximum meaning in minimal space. It's got to appeal to somebody's identity.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
So, so, so people got to identify with what you're saying and it's got to tell them a story that they want to hear that, that reaffirms their, the story of their identity. So, you know, going back to that example of, um, Kamala is for they, them, Trump is for you. That's a perfect example of a perfect atomic statement, sticky, because it's easy to understand, easy to memorize, easy to share.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
You're going to tell it to each other. It appeals to identity and it tells a story that people really want to hear. It reaffirms their perception of the world, the story of the world.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
The most fundamental question that humans ask really is, who do I have to be in this place in order to earn connection and status? That's fundamentally what brains are always asking. When we come out of the womb, we have these... what they call experienced expectant brains. They're half-wired up. And the rest of the wiring comes up during our childhood.
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And a culture is kind of forming itself in our brains. We're figuring out our identity. Who do I have to be in order to earn connection and status? And of course, you know, we... adolescence and early twenties is a peak time for, for really thinking about this stuff and identity formation. But we never stop asking those questions. We never stop. We never stop changing who we are.
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
You know, people talk about audience capture. That's why audience capture is so dangerous. You know, even the smartest people, um, some of the, who we mentioned tonight, um, started off, you know, in my estimation is sort of rational, smart, really interesting, um, uh, people. And they've, they've, they've gone on a journey and the journey has been to
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
kind of take their identity to a place that feels like it's much more about telling their audience what they want to hear and telling a story of heroes and villains and we're great and they're terrible. So that to me, these are the most fundamental questions that everybody asks. And we turn ourselves into the answer.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
We turn ourselves into the people we have to be in order to earn connection and status from our groups.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
You know, what is story originally for? Well, story is what enables us to be these highly cooperative apes. You know, as you know, humans are an ape. We're one of five existing species of great ape. But we are a weird, obviously an unusual kind of ape. And that weirdness is that we are also a bit like ants in that we're highly collective. You know, other apes
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Well, as an author, you never remember the good reviews. You only remember the bad reviews. It's just a cliche, but it's absolutely true. Yeah, that's absolutely right, I'm sure. And there's also an evolutionary kind of angle to that because criticism is a form of gossip.
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And back in the days when our brains were evolving in the hunter-gatherer tribe, if you are the subject of negative gossip, it was life-threatening. Literally, you could be kicked out of the tribe. You could be killed.
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
killed you know and sometimes even eaten so so in the back of our minds we've always got that that you know that that program is programming is still inside us social criticism is is dangerous but potentially life-threatening so you must attend to it very carefully and adapt your behavior so i've no doubt it's a smart take from me think twice absolutely yeah i've no doubt that that criticism capture it is far more important than audience capture yeah
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Oh, yeah. This is one of the stories I really like because it really shows you how people care about identity far more than they care about their own lives. And it's just an argument that you can't understand why humans smoke without understanding our need for status and need to have this kind of higher status identity. You know, I used to smoke. You know, I started smoking in the 90s. And
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
You know, we knew back then that smoking was going to kill you. We knew it was addictive and it was going to make your, you know, your breasts stink, your clothes stink. It's going to cost you a fortune. And yet we still did it. Like, why did we do it? Well, we did it because it, you know, makes you perhaps 8%, look 8% cooler when you're at the gig. You know, like that's why we did it.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
You know, it's ridiculous. It's crazy. And, you know, that's kind of what they found. And in the book, I tell the story of, how, you know, when cigarettes kind of, um, were, became popular after the, the, the war because they packed tobacco into the, into their ration packs in the first world war and the second world war.
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
So all these veterans, these soldiers came back smoking cigarettes, smoking, took on this very masculine, um, rebellious identity. Like if you've been to war and walked out of it, you smoked, you know, that kind of thing. So it's very masculine thing to do. And then there's this brilliant, um, genius, Sigmund Freud's, um, nephew, um, was hired by, um,
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
cigarette company to try and get women smoking and this was in the 20s when you know feminism was just becoming this big massively powerful kind of cultural force and so he he said that so he paid lots of um like debutantes and vogue models to appear um uh some big sort of flashy event in new york or smoking cigarettes and and they were photographed and you know um Um, it was shown everywhere.
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
overcome the obstacles of their existence individually they live in troops but they find food individually they they pursue goals individually you know broadly speaking but we don't humans are like ants that we we form into these super organisms these problem-solving super organisms in which every kind of individual human plays their part and that's how we're amazing that's how we've you know we've taken the best of the ape and the best of the ant and we've taken over the world
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
So, you know, arguably this is a high status thing. And, and he, he ran these ad campaigns saying the cigarettes were, yes, they're rebellious, but that's why feminists should smoke because feminists, you call them torches of freedom. They're torches of freedom. And it was massively, you know, massively, um, successful, you know, and again, an appeal to identity.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And so that traveled across to the UK in cinema. So in Hollywood, heroines started smoking cigarettes, Marlon Dietrich and people like that. And so women in the UK started smoking too. So the whole story of smoking is all about status. It's all about identity. And, and, and that's how it fades out as well.
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
It faded out accidentally for generations, well, generations, I don't know, for a long time, governments in the UK, America and elsewhere was always appealed to survival to stop smoking. It's going to give you cancer. Here's a picture of a lung, all that, you know, these are the warnings. No one gave a shit, hadn't they? no impact whatsoever.
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And what made it stop was when there was a moral panic about secondhand smoke. You know, why should I be in a restaurant and breathe in somebody else's smoke? So starting in California, I think it was in 2007, they banned smoking in restaurants and then it became workplaces. And then it spread throughout America, spread to the UK.
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And then suddenly you couldn't look 80% cooler anymore if you're smoking a cigarette because the smokers weren't inside the restaurant or at the bar, at the gig. They were shuffling outside in the rain to have a quick fag by the bins and shuffling back in again. And very quickly, smoking began to kind of fall out of fashion because it became low status rather than high status.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And, you know, that reflects my own story. I desperately tried to get out of smoking because I started coughing up. Literally, I was changed to chain smoke when I was drinking and I was used to drinking. I used to be an alcoholic, basically. And I would cough up brown jelly. in the sink in the morning. It was freaking me out. But even that didn't stop me smoking. I tried twice and failed.
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
What got me to stop was I was a journalist on a magazine called Loaded. It was kind of a men's magazine. And there were lots of women in Loaded. And one time I was assigned to go. I can't remember if it was a model or it was a Hollywood actress. It was one of the two. And if you've ever been on one of these shoots, they have these false polystyrene walls behind which they do the dressing.
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
So they're doing the hair and the makeup and the styling. So I knocked on the wall and... Went in to introduce myself and said, I'm here. I'll be waiting out here. And sat behind the polystyrene wall. And then I heard the stylist say to the Hollywood actress, did you see his fingers? Are those yellow stains on them? That's disgusting. I was like, oh my God. So it was the status.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
It was the having the two pretty women call me disgusting. That was what pushed me over the edge. And what was true for me is true for people in general. I mean, I know we've got the vaping issue now is a new issue, but smoking cigarettes, it became low status and that's what stopped it.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Yeah, I suspect there is some truth in the argument that you hear a lot that it's to do with social media. I mean, God, when I was binge drinking when I was a teenager, there's no... I mean, you wake up in the morning, you want to forget everything that ever happened. The idea that it's going to be filmed on TikTok is just horrendous.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
But that poses a problem. You've got all these apes, you know, once upon a time. How do you connect all those individualistic ape brains together? How do you get all those brains firing in the form of this highly collected superorganism? Well, you do it with story. Story is a device for fusing brains together.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
But I also think there's a bigger story to that that I don't fully understand. I mean, there certainly has been this kind of lurch towards Puritanism in the Gen Z generation, the generation of my... because it's not just about binge drinking. It's about sex. It's about drug use. It's about the moral purity. Are they the first generation to be more morally pure than their parents? I mean, maybe.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
It's definitely a weird thing that's happened to Gen Zs that encompasses binge drinking as just part of it.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Yeah. I'm sure that's, I'm sure that's got a lot to do with it. I'm sure you're absolutely right. I mean, you know, because again, it goes back to what do we want? We want connection and status. And, and you know, when you're, when you are sort of binge drinking, it's,
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
My Substack, willstore.substack.com. It's called You Are a Story. We've got weekly essays on everything we've been talking about today, really, and more. So, yeah, I'd love to see you there. And you've got a book. Oh, yeah, my book, A Story is a Deal. I get in trouble. I get told off. Yeah, A Story is a Deal, my new book on storytelling and persuasion.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
So if you're interested in the science of storytelling and how it's used to persuade people and change belief and change behavior, you will find it in A Story is a Deal.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Well, I appreciate you. Thank you, mate. Thanks, Chris. That was amazing. Thank you.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Under the power of story, we're all facing in the same direction, pursuing the same goals, overcoming the same obstacles. We'll have a shared idea of who you are, who you are, what your role is, what you should be doing. So that's what story is doing. It's... It's fusing individual human brains together and getting them to experience the same reality.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And you can see that effect happening when you go to the movies, when you go to the cinema. You know, we go into the cinema as this crowd of individuals. And if the film is any good, we're transported into it. And for that 90 minutes, we forget our own reality. We forget our own consciousness. We're all sucked into that consciousness of the...
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
of the film experiencing the lives of the people up on the screen and we kind of leave that cinema connected as one having having had that you know mad experience and and you know you often have that weird kind of almost trippy experience coming out of the cinema where for a few moments you feel like the hero of the movie you know you feel like luke skywalker for a moment it's all everything goes a bit weird you're gonna you're gonna snap out of it without story doing what story's supposed to do which is entering our brains and getting us all to experience this kind of collective reality of the story
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Yeah, absolutely. And it still works like that, of course. MAGA people have a particular story of the world that they tell each other. Anti-vax people do. Pro-vax people do. Climate change people do. That's how it works. We still collect into these groups that are defined by the stories they tell of the world. And those stories infect us. They influence us.
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
They cause us to believe certain things and to behave in certain ways.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Well, I mean, the current leading theory is that language evolved in the first place to tell stories that enabled us to operate as these highly cooperative groups, these super organisms, as I call them. One early form of storytelling is gossip. Gossip is a universal human behavior. We all do it. Why do we do it? Gossip teaches us... who we ought to be in the super organism.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
It teaches, it teaches us what are the good behaviors, what are the bad behaviors. It motivates us to behave in a, in a kind of way that serves the super organism because then we're rewarded with status. Uh, and it, you know, it also incentivizes in the other way that if you're, being gossiped about and the gossip is negative, you're going to get punished. So that's one form of early storytelling.
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
The other kind of storytelling is about the future. We tell stories about the future. There's a very brilliant evolutionary biologist called Michael Tomasello that says that it's impossible to imagine
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
two chimpanzees picking up a log and carrying it together to take it somewhere else like even that basic level of coordination cooperation like even chimpanzees can't do our closest um relative and storytelling enables us to do that you know okay you know if we if we move that log over here, that can be a foundation for our next camp. All right, dude, you know, we're going to do it.
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Absolutely. And I think there's a huge naivety out there that, you know, especially in, you know, what you might call our world of, you know, we like to think of ourselves as rational people, atheistic people, people who are interested in data and science. And amongst our people, there's a very naive idea that we are the ones who are led by data. I mean,
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
So that's a form of storytelling. You know, we're telling stories about the future. And that's why stories are always about obstacles and goals. Every functional story fundamentally is about obstacles and goals, because that's what story evolved to do. Its purpose is to pull us into a group. And the purpose of that group is to overcome obstacles in pursuit of goals.
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Huge, huge roles. I mean, you know, social identity is your identity within the group. You know, who are you in the group? You know, basic concept might be a football team. You're playing in a particular position. That comes with certain expectations. You've got certain roles to perform and you're judged. Your status goes higher or lower depending on how well you perform those roles.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And that's the same in every role. Your social identity in the football team is striker, defender, goalkeeper, whatever it might be, referee even. And that's the same in every human group. With every group we join, we have what we call a social identity. And a human identity is in part a collection of these various social identities that we have. Right.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Yeah, so in A Story's a Deal, I tell the story of... Well, I sort of pose a question, really, about one of the most famous ads that was ever made was Apple's 1984 ad, which kind of played on the George Orwell's novel and showed... and showed this horrendous totalitarian hellscape, all these bald, grey, middle-aged men, God forbid, drone-like automatons, and this barking, patriarchal face.
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
And this Technicolor woman with an Apple t-shirt on runs down the middle of it, throws a hammer, smashes the face. And then it comes up saying, you know, in January 1984, you're going to find out why, you know, I forget the actual words, but because of Apple, 1984 won't be like 1984. So basically 1984 is freedom, it's power, it's creativity, it's progress.
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
Hugely successful, massively successful ad campaign. I mean, they sold... In today's money, it would be hundreds of millions of dollars worth of computers when they were launched after that ad. So enormously successful. And then the next year... People know about the 1984 ad because it is seen as one of the most successful ads in history. But the next year... They tried to repeat it.
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
They did the same thing. It was the same advertising agency, Chat Day. They used a Hollywood film director. And what this ad was, it was called Lemmings. And it was just the most horrendous, like dark,
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#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
I remember earlier in my career as a journalist interviewing a famous skeptic, Stephen Novella, who used to present a podcast called The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. And he very confidently told me that skeptics were kind of immune to irrationality because they were kind of tuned to be, you know, automatically skeptical about crazy beliefs.
Modern Wisdom
#944 - Will Storr - A Masterclass In Storytelling
dark thing where you've got all these like automaton um sad sack businessmen a bit like the pc guys in their 1990s or early 2000s as i'm a mac i'm a pc um kind of march you know with briefcases marching off um this cliff to their deaths the sound of a nightmarishly slowed down version of hey ho hey ho it's off to work we go