Welcome to the pre-launch contribution page for our documentary, Us vs. Them! The fall 2023 release of the mini-documentary Jesters & Fools is part of our campaign to fund the full-length documentary, Us vs. Them, in partnership with Iron Light Labs.
Inspired by the work of Duke University professor Chris Bail, PhD and the Duke Polarization Lab, and further leveraging work by researchers like Jonathan Haidt, Us vs. Them will demonstrate how social media leads to destructive political polarization and silences the moderate majority that could find consensus through healthy debate.
Your help is greatly needed and appreciated to make this a reality. Our hope is to make a film that both enlightens and entertains, and brings some sanity to our toxic national discourse.
Details on Us vs. Them
Our documentary will give contextual media history to tell the story of how we got to our current media and cyber-media environment and follow three interwoven threads:
1. We will re-run the social experiment Professor Bail detailed in his highly regarded book, “Breaking the Social Media Prism,” following the real-world lives and social media activities of a broad swath of Americans. As they receive online political content from the Polarization Lab, we will experience the growing polarization of those on the left and right, and the silencing of the moderates who come to see no advantage to participating in toxic political discussion.
2. Through the social science, psychology, and neuroscience experiments of leading academics and researchers, we will demonstrate relevant concepts like tribalism, status seeking, and identity that influence people’s behavior online.
3. With social commentary by a geographically and ideologically diverse group of popular comedians like Colin Quinn, Mo Amer, George Wallace, Lewis Black, Jim Norton, Wendy Liebman, Tim Dillon, Andrew Schulz, Judy Gold, Jay Jurden, Rosebud Baker, Yamaneika Saunders, and many others speaking on subjects like tribalism, empathy, humility, the need for open discourse in a democracy, toxic online behavior, online status-seeking, etc., we will speak to the audience’s emotions through familiar and charismatic voices. Our thread of comedians closes with exiled Venezuelan comedian Laureano Marquez, who tells the story of how his country’s authoritarian regime maintains power by keeping its population polarized and fractured.
Life—Science—Art. Us vs. Them will speak to a wide and bipartisan audience, myth-bust, and bring usable scientific evidence to our public discourse over social media polarization.
We began our journey with a grant from the Civic Health Project and have collected many supporters along the way, such as Iron Light Labs, Starts with Us (who will be putting resources into promoting Jesters & Fools) and the Listen First Project. Jesters & Fools will help bring attention to Us vs. Them and prove that an audience exists for stories that give perspective and foster unity, rather than exaggerating and stoking conflict.
Thank you for your time and interest in our efforts. We appreciate your support as we prepare for our campaign launch this fall!