Being unemployed can be a pocket full of kryptonite in today's world of cancel culture

Today, it seems free speech - and perhaps employment - is not possible without anonymity or self-employed status.

Alex Berenson - journalist, covid provocateur and coiner of the phrase “Team Reality” (used on Twitter to describe those who question the efficacy of lockdowns, school closures and vaccine mandates, as well as the vaccines themselves) - has often asserted that he has “Twitter kryptonite.” Like here:

What Berenson means by this: Twitter can’t kick him off the platform because of the undisclosed resolution of his lawsuit, which challenged the private company for kicking him off. The lawsuit claimed the government pressured the platform to censor Berenson for his views (and Twitter relented to the pressure, for a time), a clear First Amendment violation. Twitter reinstated him without admitting any wrongdoing.

Now, Twitter has suspended Berenson once again, for this:

With this suspension, it seems Berenson’s kryptonite has limitations, especially as it pertains to vaccine safety. I suppose we’ll see - if he is reinstated without deleting the tweet, his kryptonite remains strong. If not, we’ll have to assume it has been disabled.

There are other means, besides expensive lawsuits, of seeking such kryptonite. Others protect themselves by remaining anonymous on Twitter and other social media platforms, in an effort to freely express themselves without fear of backlash, such as job loss and social ostracizing. Anonymity protects their means of supporting their families (vs. their ability to remain on the platform). One such person told me:

“If my employer found out what I was doing anonymously online, I would probably find myself getting mysteriously managed out of my job soon enough . . . Bringing our whole selves to work is not an option for a number of us, even if we wanted to.”

For obvious reasons I will not “out” this person. I will simply refer to them as “L.” They’ve chosen to remain anonymous for good reason. L works in marketing and joined Twitter in February 2021 for the sole purpose of fighting for open schools in their home state of New York. Because these opinions were not popular, L feared being fired. Like Tom Goodwin was.

In January 2020, Publicis Groupe - a multi-national advertising and PR company - appointed Tom Goodwin to the role of head of “futures and insight” (ad agencies love weird, inscrutable titles like this). Goodwin and the company “parted ways” in the summer of 2020 after Goodwin tweeted things like this:

“I find the total obsession with Covid deaths over all other deaths entirely gruesome. 7500 Americans die every day but only the ones with this precise new virus matter.”

“Still finding it totally baffling that someone who dies from Covid is more preventable and thus more tragic than someone who dies of delayed cancer diagnosis or delayed surgery because of lockdown, which is just how life is. And 2019 influenza B deaths are less tragic why?” 

So L isn’t wrong. There is real risk. And anonymity, often, in fact, serves as kryptonite if your goal is to retain employment.

There are plenty of reasons why people choose to remain anonymous or use pseudonyms on social media and online. Young people have been using anonymous accounts so as not to have things like their drunken antics come back to haunt them later, when applying to college. Young people have also, for some time now, had more than one account. One, a decoy for parents, featuring fun “clean” pics with friends doing anodyne things. Another, a “burner,” under a pseudonym, featuring their “real” activities - weed smoking, those drunken antics and who knows what else. We, the parents, can’t find these accounts, after all. By design.

But others, more mature folks like L, choose anonymity for employment survival.

“P,” who works in banking and lives in South Carolina, switched to a pseudonym on Twitter after the 2020 election. P told me:

“I was worried that my company would fire me over my opinions. I would have been ostracized at work. And I would have eventually been pushed out.”

P has a family to support, a mortgage to pay.

I, perhaps out of naïveté, chose differently and have used my real name since I joined Twitter in 2011, and continued to do so, when I began to push back against school closures in the spring of 2020. I felt strongly that I shouldn’t say anything I wasn’t willing to stand by, that I wasn’t willing to say in person.

I force myself to speak as if I had to stand in front of a crowd and say what I’m saying with real people looking at me, or as if I was having a one-on-one conversation with an actual human. I want to own my words. Which is not a criticism of those who simply can’t risk it. I’m lucky enough to have a nest egg, to have been a well-paid executive, before my open schools tweets got me booted from my job.

The trolls found me by Fall 2020. They started a campaign to have me fired.

How my behavior as a business leader - not a doctor or public health official - could have negative consequences for public health is still a mystery to me. I make no rules, then, as the Levi’s Brand President, or now, as an unemployed (self-employed?) big mouth. The trolls were “successful,” due to efforts like this:

Though @90sWillysWonder is now suspended. Dangerous misinformation? Hate speech? Who knows. But perhaps not a reliable narrator?

Nevertheless, my company caved, as Goodwin’s had when they said:

“Since the beginning of this pandemic, Publicis Groupe has taken decisions and actions led by the principles of unity, empathy and humanity despite the collective hardships. These posts and exchanges by Tom Goodwin this week on social media do not meet the standard of conduct we expect of our company’s employees and were not aligned with our values. Publicis and Tom have parted ways.”

But what the trolls think was “success,” is only such, when viewed through the lens of riches. They assume they’d won this battle, because they assume they took from me what I valued most: money.

But would I give up a million dollars in severance if that was my priority? Would I give up job security and a possible CEO position, if my main goal was to just rake it in? No. But it is beyond these trolls’ imagination to even fathom that what I value more than money is free expression.

And so now, my kryptonite is being unemployed, though arguably this approach has been just as “expensive” as Berenson’s lawsuit. But for me, the loss of consistent income was worth it. And I am lucky enough to have savings to get me through it. I am in no way suggesting this approach can work for all.

But there is nothing they can take from me now. I’m unfettered and free to say what I believe. And my platform has only gotten bigger. I, in fact, have more influence and impact without the job that only served to constrain me in what I said.

So did they win? I’d argue no.

There are those who would make the case that someone like L, if they used their real name, would need to be banished because the things they say are a reflection of how they do their job. A person with such poor judgement, someone so bigoted that they would advocate for kids to be in school (gasp!), would obviously deploy those same behaviors at work, impacting job performance. These are people who think, for instance, that I was in no way qualified for my job because I held different views than they did (views, which have, of course, been proven correct).

But isn’t the fact that L and P still hold their jobs, while holding their views - albeit anonymously - proof that these opinions DO NOT impact job performance? And L and P’s likely assumptions that they would be fired are really based in the idea that the employer (and the employees who would go after them) can just a fire person they don’t like for their opinions.

So that’s where we are. For all the equality and inclusivity companies tout today, they push you out the door if they just don’t like what you think about non-work related issues. Even if what you think has no bearing on job performance.

But in the words of Hunter S. Thompson:

“I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.”

I share this theory. So get some kryptonite if you can finagle it. Whether through a Twitter lawsuit, anonymity or unemployment. Because the truth needs to be told.