[Singing to 'New Girl' theme]. Dear Mom, whatcha doing? Dear Mom, where you going? Who's that
girl? Who's that girl? It's a terrible impression of Zooey Deschanel. Zooey who?
It's just me, it's not actually Zooey Deschanel. Put some bangs on me and give me a ukelele,
it's basically like you're at a 'She and Him' concert. But enough of my half-rate impression
of Zooey Deschanel. I wanted to talk about her because she is on the cover of Marie Claire
magazine for September 2013, ooooo. There was a quote that caught my eye when she was
talking about people on the internet hating on her for essentially things like this. Polka
dots and frilly dresses and ukeleles, that one time she tweeted as a joke that she wished
everyone on Earth looked like a kitten. I just wanted to share what Zooey D. had to
say about that. My forehead's sweating from my sweaty bangs so give me a moment and I'll
be right back. Bangs gone. Magic. So here's what Zooey D. had to say about it. 'Even I
get slammed and overwhelmed by how negative the internet can get and I'm an adult. I don't
pay any mind to it but it's pretty shocking how when you give people anonymity, it's like
the worst of human nature.' It stuck out to me not because I'm some massive Zooey D. fan,
'The New Girl' the first season was just better, can I get an amen, but it spoke to me a lot
that, that a) even when you achieve the level of success that is far and above obviously
where I am in my career, the negative, anonymous commentary on the internet can get to you.
A lot of times the negative comments that I see on the internet specifically on this
internet and I'm talking about YouTube, hello YouTube, is very much physical based. Insulting
people's character, how they look, making assumptions about how they probably never
have sex. I don't want to get soapbox-y, all of the positive comments that I get from viewers
absolutely make YouTube and videos, being more personal--you're in my home right now--that
makes it worth it for me. So what's a person supposed to do with that kind of negativity?
Obviously you can't stop it, whether you feed the trolls or not the trolls have a way of
finding you, so what do you do? Well in Zooey's case she created a website hellogiggles.com
for girls in particular to have a happy super-positive community online that they can engage with
and she said also in this Marie Claire interview, 'I just felt it's important to teach young
girls to be strong people, not to think "I can't do this because I'm worried about what
people will say". There are worse consequences but online negativity stops people from being
creative, part of which is having bad ideas as well as good ideas. When somebody says,
"That idea is stupid," you stop your flow of ideas. We can't have the next generation
be so afraid because they've been attacked.' And I feel that's also a really good point
about not letting the negativity that is going to happen stop the creative flow of ideas.
I hope if anything that's an encouragement to creators out there and also know from people
what, what to do about this. Is this something that maybe people who are on my end of the
conversation feel more because those negative comments are directed at us? If you are an
active commenter, what guides you in terms of whether you're going to comment on something
or if it's positive or negative and do you think there's anyway to stop the kind of non-productive
creativity? Constructive criticism is something that I totally accept and embrace, even if
hesitantly. The kind of blind hatred and vitriol that is spewed out so often on the internet
to such a disturbing extent, what do we do about that? I can't solve it. Maybe Zooey
Deschanel can. [Singing]. I love the ukelele and tiny kittens too and I play in a band
called 'She and Him' and one of my favorite things in the world are polka dots and peter
pan collars. I know it's not a peter pan collar but you can sue me cause I'm super rich for
being super cute and if you want to hate me go ahead and hate.