(whoosh) - And then this year, we're putting the programme together, and Jenn Bane, our speaker tonight, came across my radar, I thought, you know, this is the opportunity. The thing is, it couldn't just be any presentation. It had to be the right kind of presentation. And it just made perfect sense.
We're giving Jenn a bit of licence, Jenn's with Cards Against Humanity where she runs all the community there.
Now if you don't know Cards Against Humanity, I'm sure you'll know much more by the time we're finished. If you do know Cards Against Humanity you know that they engage their community in extraordinary ways. And some of them aren't, you know, safe for workplace ways.
Well certainly, borderline safe for work.
I thought it would be an amazing thing because again part of what we build when we build products is we build communities around them so I thought there's a lot to learn from that. We're giving her that licence and it's great so many of you stayed back.
I'm really looking forward to this.
I have no idea what's going to happen, but it's going to be awesome so would you please welcome from Cards Against Humanity Jenn Bane.
(audience applause) - Thank you. (audience member whistles) Thank you so much for having me, John, Rose, Mary and Fiona and everyone else who put this event together, it has been an honour to be here, it's an honour to be in this slot in particular. And I'm really grateful to be here and I'm really grateful that alcohol has already warmed you up.
(audience chuckles) My name is Jenn. I'm from Chicago.
The community lead in writer of Cards Against Humanity, a writer, not the writer.
I always like to begin my talks with a couple disclaimers. The first one is, this will be weird.
This will probably weirder talks you've ever heard and if someone out-weirds me, please introduce us because I think that person and I would make really good friends.
The other thing is, some I'm going to talk about comedy writing, pranks and friendship.
The other thing I'm going to...
I'm not going to give you advice.
I'm not going to give you business advice.
Because we do crazy thing at Cards Against Humanity that you would be insane to do yourself.
But I am going to give you some methods, some ideas, some questions that you might want to ask yourself. And my third disclaimer is that I am going to talk about the election. (laughter)
I hope to talk about it in a way that is honest and truthful and doesn't make you too depressed. But I'm going to do what I can because it's still very raw. Who here has played Cards Against Humanity, and it's okay if you haven't.
None of you, got it.
Okay. (audience laughs)
If you're not familiar, Cards Against Humanity is a very simple question-answer party game. The jokes are dark, it has some bad words, that's why we call it a party game for horrible people. It was originally created by eight friends who grew up together in a suburb of Chicago. Here they are.
They don't know I have this photo, so nobody tell them. They created Cards when they were much older than this, when they were in college, home on winter break, getting ready to attend a New Years Eve party. They were very nerdy, they are very nerdy.
So they were thinking of ways to make the party a little more enjoyable.
So they started writing Cards Against Humanity ideas down on paper.
They brought those cards to a local print shop and had them make copies for about $20.
Print shop employees were confused, they took print shop copies to a New Year's Eve party, shared it with some friends and the friends really enjoyed it.
Their friends brought their own copies back to different colleges around the country with them. From there, they put the entire game as a free PDF online that we still offer today, actually.
And it began to develop a small underground following online.
Then something interesting started happening. Emails began pouring in from people who wanted to buy the game instead print it themselves for free. It was around the same time around a service called Kickstarter was beginning to really make waves in the community.
Kickstarter is the most incredible platform for independent creators.
Perhaps I'm biassed, perhaps it's the reason I have my job. But I think it is the single most important for independent creators on the internet right now and Cards Against Humanity would not exist without it. Kickstarter was posted in December 2010 asking for $4000 to meet a print minimum to make about 500 games. Ended up getting $15,000 which was then put into making more copies of the game, more cards, better card stock. Extra copies were then put on Amazon and to make a long story short, since 2010, Cards Against Humanity has been top selling, best reviewed, most wished for torrid game on Amazon, we're in almost 200 independent game stores worldwide, all Target locations and we ship everywhere in the planet.
The question I'm most asked is how? How did I end up with Cards Against Humanity? This is going to be the Meet Cute.
A Meet Cute is an old fashioned term, I don't know if you're familiar in Australia, but it's an old fashioned term that describes how a fictional couple meets, usually in a very ridiculous or adorable way like in a romantic comedy.
I use this term because I actually am in love with my job. I am very, very fortunate that I fell in love with my job. There are a couple very good love stories in my life, and this is one of them.
The other one is sitting over there, hi honey, (laughter) - [Audience Member] Awww. - Awww.
Before the love story began, I was studying journalism.
I was studying journalism in the United States at a very terrible time to be studying journalism. Every single newspaper in the US was tanking, still studied journalism, no regrets, but I could not get a job after I graduated. There were no jobs in newspapers, no jobs in print. So I accepted the first office job I could, it was very boring, very terrible office culture, there was, it was a cubicle cube farm kind of place. To keep my sanity I began to throw myself into side projects.
The biggest side project of all was my blog. I created this really ugly blog, just on Tumblr and I committed a single, to writing a blog entry every single day for an entire year.
Just kind of a personal experiment.
365 days of blogging.
I want to be clear, this wasn't good writing, it was just writing.
I just did it every single day.
Sometimes I just wrote two words.
Sometimes I wrote paragraphs and paragraphs. Just mattered that I put some word down and hit publish before midnight.
There was no distinct theme, I would just go to my day job like a normal person and go home and write jokes about it on the Internet.
I did do a lot of one thing, which is complain. Did a lot of complaining.
A lot of complaining about my situation, did not name my employer by the way, it was some censored complaining, I did a lot of weird things to occupy my brain. Like one day I counted how many times I got up from my desk to use the restroom and I counted sometimes ridiculous like 30. (laughter)
I also want to be clear, I wasn't making any money from this blog.
I think maybe 50 people read it.
It was definitely just a personal project that I was putting energy in just for myself.
You can imagine my surprise to learn that of the maybe 50 people that read it, one of them was the co-creator of Cards Against Humanity. So after a year of blogging, I received this email out of the blue.
"Hey Jenn, "We're thinking of hiring a community manager. "Want to quit your job and come work for us?" Uh, and this... (audience laughs)
this, I was... he and I were friends but we hadn't seen each other in a couple of years we weren't particularly close.
So this email really was a bolt from the blue. And with shaking hands, and my blackberry, this is how I decided to reply, right away.
"Holy shit.
"Yes.
"Yes.
"Yes.
"Also, what's a community manager?" (audience laughs) So I did get the job somehow.
When I accepted the job, I couldn't sleep for two days. I knew something really good and really big had happened to me.
And I'm not someone your work is your identity or that your work is your life, I don't think that. But I knew something good was on the line.
And I kept asking myself, why me? I'm not a professional comedian, I'm not a professional writer, I kind of fake my way through both.
I was seeing a therapist at the time and she told me that it takes at least six months to a year to orient yourself at a new job.
And I would say it took me about a year and a half, to be honest.
I just kept asking myself, why was this opportunity given to me? It took me about a year and half to realise they weren't hiring me to be a professional writer or hiring me to be a professional comedian. They hired me as myself.
There's this quote, "Comparison is the thief of joy." And I stopped comparing myself and I started why not me? Yeah, why not? I was brought on to create the character of Cards Against Humanity.
It was already successful in selling and printing, a funny game.
Now it was time for the company to have a voice. We borrowed the same method as Stephen Colbert. He is in character when he's on a show.
Or was on a show.
He's out of a character when he's talking about his process, just like I'm talking about my process right now, I'm out of character.
But I'm in character when I'm online talking to fans or doing any kind of stunt or writing the copy writing under our new campaign.
We are very lucky that we can write like this. I think that most people think of a brand as something simple like a logo and a typeface and colours. We think of a brand as all the feelings and all the interactions that you have with a company. Oops, sorry.
I think a relationship with a brand is more complicated than we want to admit.
Think of a relationship with a brand as more of a relationship with like a friend.
Sometimes it's messy, sometimes you don't want to hang out with that person, sometimes they ask you to borrow your car too often, and in the same vein, you can have a very complicated relationship with a company. Luckily there are couple tools in place that we use to solve this.
One of them is called The Brand Deck.
We did not create this, by the way, not like self promoting here, The Brand Deck is a very cool little exercise that you can buy.
The way it works is simple, kind of like Cards Against Humanity, you get players together and they each pick, they each are given cards and you can select each card as a different characteristic on either side of it. It might say like, precise, nostalgic, subtle, or futuristic.
You get your pupil into your room and you have them decide how you wanted your company perceived by your audience. If someone from marketing says I think our brand is futuristic and someone on another team says I think our brand is nostalgic then your messaging needs some work.
You can buy it, by the way, it does ship to Australia, I checked, it's about $20.
Our character, if Cards was a person, they would be someone who was sarcastic, blunt, rebellious, liberal, self-deprecating, probably depressed, also surprising, delightful, dismissive, absurd. Kind of like April Love Geary from Parks and Rec. (audience laughs) So now I'm going to show you examples of this writing in practise.
We are very lucky that we get to use this character even when we write customer service emails. I'm going to show you some examples that have been copy and pasted straight from our inbox.
"WHEN will Cards Against Humanity be back in stock! "Get your shit together and hurry up!" And this is how we decided to reply.
"Cards Against Humanity will be back in stock at some point. "We could have been more specific, "but you could have been nicer." (audience laughter) Here's another one.
"HEY CAH! "You told me to send you an email if you messed "up my order... guess what! "You didn't mess it up" Here's how Holly on my team decided to reply. "We're as surprised as you are." (audience laughs) "Hey I have a friend who said if we email you "and donate money you will send us a card "with whatever we want on it??" Here's us, Claire on my team replied, "Your friend is full of shit." (audience laughs) This is a long one, but bear with me, there's a pay off. "HI CAH! "So, I'm getting married soon, please don't say "congratulations, if I hear that one more time "I'm going to start cracking skulls.
"I'm inquiring about fancy printed blank cards, "I want them for my wedding reception for my guests "to fill out.
"Can I special order 200 blank cards, "and 50 blank black cards?" And this is how I replied, "Congratulations!" (audience laughs) Some people just make it so easy.
(audience laughs) Alright, I think this is the last one, "Will you just send me a game for free? "I could use a laugh!" "Well we could really use $25." (audience laughs) I encourage my team to write as they speak. Use sarcasm, use their sense of humour.
Obviously the first priority is to help the customer, I didn't show you those emails, because those are boring. But the second priority is to make people laugh. Every interaction with us should be a memorable experience. You also notice our email replies are very short. That's because every single word is option until it proves otherwise.
Like I mentioned, I went to journalism school so I fell into crushing debt, but I also learned how to write concisely.
And there's a quote that I love, thank you journalism school, "Clutter is the official language of corporations "to hide their mistakes." I love that.
Emails should not be cluttered, they should be as short as possible.
Okay, so this character we've created, obviously this character loves to pull pranks. Cards Against Humanity doesn't really spend money on marketing or advertising.
Not in traditional sense, anyway.
What we do instead is create pranks and stunts that get us earned media attention.
As a company, we really like to consider our marketing as kind of an improv scene.
We do the setup, we let our fans finish the joke. As a company, and perfectly in voice, and as true, we really hate Black Friday.
I know Australia doesn't really have Black Friday, is that correct? Okay, lucky you, it's a very consumer disgusting terrible (chuckles) holiday that we really hate where people literally run up to steal computers off shelves before other people can get them. I'm sure you have seen the videos on the news that are very exaggerated, but also not that exaggerated. So one year, for Black Friday, we did something really brave and really stupid to get attention.
Because there's no way to get attention on Black Friday. Everyone's selling, everyone's having a sale, it's not really our business to have a sale. Instead we decided to take down our entire store and sell Bullshit.
And it was actual bullshit.
It was boxes of poop. (audience laughs)
Did anyone hear about this? It was a couple of years ago, yeah, okay, cool.
We came up with the idea when we were sitting in a room brainstorming what we could possibly do to make any noise in Black Friday if we wanted to participate in a way that poked fun in the entire idea.
We threw out the idea of selling poop and it made us laugh and we've learned to follow our instinct in this situation, if it makes us laugh, there's a potential to make someone else laugh too.
So we did some research, we contacted a farmer, a couple farmers (chuckles) and (audience laughs) we found that poop can be sold and distributed as an industrial product so we bought a lot of poop (audience laughs) which incidentally, our bank cut off our credit cards after we did that because they were like, this has to be fraud, (audience laughs) we had to call and be like, hi, it's us again... So we took down our entire web store to sell poop. Here's what it looked like.
Very, very nice packaging.
It actually came in the same box that Apple products are made of, like really nice package quality. (audience laughs) This is what Rancher, who we bought the poop from, had to say.
"I was surprised that somebody wanted thirty thousand "pieces of crap.
"But you know, it is what it is." (audience laughs) So shoots cool with it.
Here's a picture of the poop.
(audience laughs) Actually, it wasn't the gross.
You opened it and it just kind of looked like dirt, it didn't even smell bad.
We sprayed a little gross-ness on it to make it actually smell.
I haven't heard from anyone yet how it ages, I am curious if it disintegrates over time, but I'd like to know, if anyone has any insight, let me know.
This is what our storefront looked like.
Here's the best part.
It sold out in about six hours.
We hoped for that.
We didn't anticipate it.
We made a profit of $6000 and donated it all to an organisation called Heifer International which supplied livestock and farming supplies to (mumbles). I encourage you to check them out.
That is what I would say one of our online stunts. Now I'd like to show you something that we did in person. Took a camera and just went and kind of messed around. We attend gaming conventions every year.
A couple times a year.
And they are conferences that are basically the direct opposite of what you are attending right now. They are 80,000 people, loud booths, flashing lights, companies like Xbox go to them, PlayStation. Kind of like Black Friday in that it's impossible for any independent game company that employs 20 people to make any sort of noise.
So we go and we kind of see what kind of trouble we can get in.
I'm going to show you a video of us doing just that. This is from the archives, it's about three years ago, two years ago, - Hey guys it's Max from Cards Against Humanity I'm coming to you like from PAX, we're going to make this awesome video for our panel which is - [Man] Tonight! - The panel is tonight? Why the fuck are we making this video right now. - I have no idea what Trials Fusion by Monster Energy is but I'm going to everything possible to get inside here. Do you work here? - I don't sorry.
- Do you know how I can get into here and if I do get in what I'm allowed to do? - I don't know, I'm the wrong person to ask, I'm sorry. - What are you doing hanging out around here? - I'm just watching over this stuff down here. - Oh cool.
You probably wouldn't mind if I did...
- Don't do that...
- Okay... alright.
- Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa! (scuffling) (talking in background) - So what exactly do I do in there? Do I bring a skateboard? - Oh, you're trying to interview me? - Well, I'm just trying to figure out what exactly I do in the Trials Fusion chamber.
- You got to sign a waiver though, so that in case you get - Okay! (funky music) Oooooh! This is awesome! Ooooh! (giggling) - Okay, I'm here and there's this incredible deal! There's a three dice bag! With $25 dollars of loose dice purchases... I don't know who's giving away this free dice bag. Excuse me, are you responsible for this killer deal of the free dice bag with the $25 of loose dice purchases? - Yep, that's us.
- Where are your normal dice? - Well, we've got these dice six siders with hedgehogs on them.
- Those pretty normal for you? - Yeah, okay, I'll take those.
What the fuck am I going to do with these dice? I don't play games with dice.
Why did I just buy all these dice.
What's the plural of dice anyway? Dice? Dices? (skittering) Ugh! They're hard to carry.
Do you guys want some dice? - I love dice! - Yeah? (voices drowned out by background) - Yeah they got hedgehogs on them one of them came free because I got a really awesome amazing deal, you can take more if you want. - Other people can have some fun too.
- Thanks guys.
Fuck.
- Can I fight like the biggest person you have? - That is actually a boxing structure, so yes. - Great.
I'm going to fight everybody.
- Ready? - Go.
(funky music) (laughter) - I'm a girl! I'm a girl! I'm a girl! I'm a girl! I'm a girl! (echoing) Alright, I'm pretty sure I won.
- Cards? - Hi.
- What's up? Are you with Cards? - I am with Cards.
And I saw this beautiful pair of headphones sitting just outside of there...
I wanted to know if I could listen to them? - Yes.
- I was really jonesing for some ELO, do you guys have any of that? - Electric light orchestra? - Yeah.
- Yeah, I love that jam.
- Let's go look for it.
- Aw, this is awesome.
- Mr. Blue Sky, please tell us why, you had to hide away for so long...
So long! - Excuse me? I bought these dice 'cause there was this really amazing deal and I don't...
I don't really play games with dice, I don't want them anymore.
Would you just take them? (mumbled response) - What? You just? (audience cheering) - Can I interview you guys, while you're being interviewed? - Oh, hi? - Oh, my goodness! - [Together] Cards Against Humanity! - What are you guys doing at PAX? - Well we're filming something for 2K right now. - Oh, cool.
- This is liveless for 2K and this is Claire. - Hey.
- With Cards Against Humanity which is a great game. - Yeah, good card game.
Are you going to come by the booth at 2K? - I don't know.
- Please just take these dice.
You just take them.
Thank you.
- Who's a good little boy? (giggles) - I am! (baby gurgles) - He's a good boy! - There are toilets in this booth.
- This is my first time being on the toilet with someone sitting next to me, I'm sure.
This is actually kind of nice.
Some clown just took a huge shit in here.
- Blocking your way, I'm very in the way, I'm very in the way. (crowd chattering)
Hi, hi, hi.
- Yo! - Going... (crowd yelling)
- [Man] Oh jeez.
- Yeah, I'm very in the way.
I'm just, I'm going to go down.
I'm going down.
Oh, someone's really tripping.
- Excuse me.
Are you selling Cards Against Humanity by any chance? - We are.
- Excellent.
- As a matter of fact.
- How much are you selling them for? - I'm selling them for $40.
- Can we get...
(voice drowned out by background noise) Give me all of them.
I'll buy them all.
- I will happily...
- Excellent, let's do it.
(mumbling in background) - That's right.
- One, six, zero...
- That's right.
- So an even...
- Twenty-Four hundred, even.
Perfect, let's do it.
I will definitely want a receipt for this.
I would imagine, alright.
I did it.
- Done! - These are all mine now.
(mumbles in background) Alright! Who wants a free copy of Cards Against Humanity? Step right up folks! Who wants one? You want one? Who wants a third expansion pack? (crowd cheers) Third! There you go.
Third, I got a second right here.
- [Woman] I'll take four.
- There's a third.
Who needs a fourth? There you go.
(audience applause) - Thank you.
That's my favourite video, thank you for indulging me. Don't know why, but we don't get invited back? (laughing) Weird.
That said, we are more than just a business that likes to cause trouble and make poop jokes. This is actually my favourite project we do. It's called Science Ambassador Scholarship. Here's the backstory.
About year, over a year ago, we released an expansion pack called The Science Pack.
It's 30 science themed cards, there's a Uranus joke in there and also some really complicated science jokes that I don't understand; maybe some of you will. All the proceeds of this pack go directly towards a scholarship for women.
We knew we wanted the sales of the pack to go towards some kind of nonprofit in science but we couldn't find one that if our values exactly, and seemed like the right fit for us.
So we decided to start a scholarship.
Turns out, it's not that hard.
If we can do, if we can do it, you can do it. We've raised this amount so far, doing very well. This my favourite project and targeting the scholarship for women was a pretty obvious decision.
Look around you at any tech conference, in a classroom and it's pretty obvious that there's an under representation of women in STEM.
We call it the Ambassador Scholarship because we want to put a spotlight on women studying science. One women who are passionate about science. We're looking for ambassadors for their field. It's pretty well studied that if you ask a kid to draw a scientist, they will draw a white man in a lab coat. So we want to change the public perception of what a scientist looks like, or at least help. That's why we ask for video applications.
Applicants deliver a mini lecture about a topic in science they're passionate about, no longer than three minutes. And now this cool things is happening, where young women are putting, talking about science all over YouTube. I think its very cool.
This is is my "I don't have time for this, "but I'll make time" for this project.
Do you guys have any projects like that? I definitely, this is the big one.
Luckily, I'm not alone.
We started asking women we know who work in STEM to ask more women, they work in STEM and now we have an advisory board of 70 women who work professionally in science who judge the applications and help with the scholarship.
These women are much cooler, smarter and busier than I am and they work at Harvard Medical School, NASA, one woman is studying chimp behaviour, another is working is a marine biologist on a ship right now.
We're very lucky to have this support to giving credibility to the project.
And I'm going to show you one more video, it's a shorter one.
I had the good fortune of telling the winner last year that she'd won the scholarship, her name was Sona. We asked her to get on a Skype call, but we didn't tell her why (chuckles) we said we had some scholarship business, will you please jump on this call with us.
And she had no idea what we were about to tell her. (upbeat pop music) - Hey! I'm Maria from Cards Against Humanity.
- And I'm Jenn from Cards Against Humanity. - I know it's April Fool's Day, but this is not a joke. You are the winner of the scholarship.
- Really? - Yeah, you won! - Yay! (upbeat pop music) - Thank you! - Yeah! - Oh my god, this is really exciting! - We'll be in touch soon about getting all your college paid for.
- Yay! - Yeah, I know. This is such a big relief, oh my god! - My heart is beating so fast, I can only imagine... - I'm sweating.
I'm always a little bit sweaty.
(audience applause) - Thank you.
If you take nothing away from this talk, just tell everyone you know that applications are open. That we do accept international students.
They close in a month.
Please go to scienceambassadorscholarship.org if you want to support the scholarship the best thing you can do is 1, buy a science pack or 2, tell everyone you know.
Thank you.
For this next part, I want to talk about the fact that we don't really have a marketing strategy.
We do big stunts to get attention.
There's this quote I love that's "Nobody reads ads. "People read what interests them.
"Sometimes it's an ad." Now I want to discuss what nobody gets to see. Which is what happens in our office.
We have co working space in Chicago, we have a design, dev, operations, community events, and writer's room.
There are about 20 to 25 full time employees at Cards. But probably the very best part about our office is that we share it with people that have nothing to do with Cards Against Humanity.
We own the building, but we open up desks to freelance designers, developers, artists, illustrators, a photographer, even an urban beekeeper.
The honey... the honey that she supplies for us is amazing. We offer speaking opportunities (audience laughs) for people to come... Why are you laughing?! One time we had an astrophysicist come, another time we had my colleague Carly give a talk about the Kardashian s and feminism and it was amazing.
One day at lunch we started thinking about how long it would take someone to eat an entire head of lettuce so we tested it out.
We had a lettuce eating contest.
We had a lettuce eating contest and we filmed it and put it online.
I'm not going to make you watch that.
But it took our intern about, without dressing or any salt or pepper, olive oil, nothing, it took him about 10 minutes to eat a head of lettuce. It was really gross.
We have a push up club that meets at 4:20 every day, to do practise push ups.
We're dog friendly! That's my dog and my best pal Trin.
My favourite part about our office is our podcasting studio that we have.
We offer it up to local pod-casters come, you have to sign up for a slot, and you can record your podcast there.
I have a podcast with Trin, it's called Friendshipping. Every week we answer audience questions about making friends and mental health and that kind of thing. Some questions we get asked are, how do I make new friends as a busy adult? I'm bad at small talk.
Or, my long distance friend stopped answering my tests and messages, now what? Or, should I ask my friend why she unfollowed me on Twitter? It's a lot of internet questions.
That's was my indulgent, thank you for my indulging me in friendshippingpodcast.com.
My disclaimer is we're not therapists or doctors, we're just spent plenty of time with them.
(audience laughs) Now you know me and my company and my podcast, now it's time to talk about the election.
Sixteen million American's chose to support a campaign that leverage sexist, racist, xenophobic anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.
Campaign elected a man who has bragged about committing sexual assault, his running mate supports conversion therapy to cure gay people. Friends of mine are wary of walking down the street today knowing that so many American's think lesser of them. I'm deeply worried for my friends that are trans. They will likely lose access to hormone treatments. My dad was recently diagnosed with cancer, I'm nervous that if Obamacare is repealed, his cancer will be considered a pre-existing conditions and insurance won't cover his treatment.
I'm really sad and I'm really worried and I'm going to allow myself to feel that. I'm going to allow myself to feel sad and worried. And then I'm going to heal.
And then I'm going to get back to work.
And I'll hope you'll join me.
If you're in position of power or privilege, you have work to do too.
And it's going to be very uncomfortable.
There's no such thing as "it can't happen here." It can and it will if you don't fight it.
We cannot normalise what is happening in the U.S. right now, if it doesn't affect you, which it probably does, it affects the person sitting next to you.
Here's some ideas of where you can start.
Begin to ask yourself some difficult questions like, what are you doing to help? What are you doing to help people who are vulnerable? If you're not already, you need to seek out diverse media. Who are you reading? Who are you reading articles by? Is it the same people? Is your twitter feed all white people? (chuckles) Honestly, is it? When I interview people to work on a team, I ask them who they admire, who are their favourite comedians and writers.
And if they can't name a single woman, or person of colour, I don't hire them.
If you are a person in privilege, if you are a privileged person or position of power, you need to shut up and listen. Don't be the loudest voice in the room, don't try to win the conversation.
There's going to be some very difficult conversations coming up in the next year.
Figure out what tools you have, what do you have in your arsenal to make things better and go use them.
And as always, start small.
Think local.
Think community.
Go on Craigslist and see the ads for graphic designer, needs for graphic designs and offer to help someone for free, and I know, you're not supposed to work for free, I know, maybe if you can afford it, spend 20 minutes to design a brochure, a flyer, a business card, and maybe you could change someone's year.
I personally, once I'm done feeling sad, I can't wait to get back to work.
I think my job at Cards Against Humanity has never been more clear; we need comedy more than ever. There's truth in comedy.
I can tell you one thing, we're gonna cause some fuckin' trouble. (audience laughs)
Thank you very much. (audience laughs)
