Although some of the jokes are inevitably tasteless, and Zorrilla is used to set up punchlines, I enjoyed it and it will surely increase concerns and donations for shrimp. I'm not sure what impression the audience will have of EA in general.
Last week The Daily Show interviewed Rutger Bregman about his new book Moral Ambition (which includes a profile of Zorrilla and SWP).
I quite liked this! I thought the part where the environmental advocate was like "well actually I do think animal suffering is important" was kind of hilarious + wholesome, and also I admire them for being willing to agree here despite their other reservations about EA. <3
Nice job @Andres Jimenez Zorrilla 🔸 and all! Proud to be a part of the "we look at numbers + care about shrimp" club :)
Thanks for sharing, Andres! I guess the post from @Bentham's Bulldog was The Best Charity Isn't What You Think.
But I feel also sad that the ideas have largely not slipped into the public consciousness over the last 14 years.
Props to @Andres Jimenez Zorrilla 🔸 for dealing with the razzing. Enduring people’s incredulous reactions is an important part of the work and you did a fantastic job being patient and earnest.
I asked a friend for his opinion — he’s very supportive of EA ideas and familiar with them, but not directly involved in the community. He said:
It’s funny and well done enough to go viral, and people are influenced by what others think — something funny and cool makes everything behind it seem cooler too. It also goes against the potentially boring / patronizing / nerdy vibe that’s probably the first impression someone gets if they don’t know anything about the topic (especially if they’re not into science). So I’d say it’s psychologically much more impactful than trying to “raise awareness” in a classic way.
Shrimp aren’t seen as sentient enough in people’s minds for a quick two-minute marketing stunt to make them reconsider their views.
I think this is a really good way to market it.
Nice job, @Andres Jimenez Zorrilla 🔸! Just curious if you've seen an increase in donations after this video was posted?
Unfortunately, we don’t know yet as the funds are disbursed to us at regular intervals and we are not there yet.
Having said that, our main goal was not to fundraise (although it never hurts ☺️) but rather to increase awareness in the US and create an opening to reach out to american retailers as most of our progress has been through European/UK retailers.
Maybe this is good publicity for EA, but I doubt that it will increase donations for shrimp much. It portrayed the issue as "not totally crazy" but definitely not "really important", which is what most (more rational) people care about in their donations. I'd expect that only those who are already very EA-minded and care a lot about neglectedness would jump directly from this to donating.
The video has 418K youtube views – and I'd guess it will stagnate somewhere between 500k and 1 million views. In a 5-minute search I couldn’t find any other video seriously considering shrimp welfare with over 5k views, and I'd guess there are only 15–40 such videos with more than 1k views. So this video might have increased exposure to shrimp welfare concerns through youtube something like 3–15x. Seems plausible that it will lead to substantially more donations.
I can see it's getting a lot of views - my point was that it's not framing the issue in a way which is likely to get many people to donate. For someone to donate, they'd have to be both non-speciesist and enthusiastic about neglected issues, since the video didn't argue for either of those. Maybe that's a few people, but I imagine it's a very small sliver of the population.
I don't think that people need to be non-speciecist and enthusiastic about neglected issues to want to donate to shrimp welfare. People might donate because they are opportunistic donors and this seems like a worthy cause, because they found Andrés trustworthy and want to donate to trustworthy projects, or because of memes (the internet is into shrimp), etc.
The best-case scenario for increasing donation volume is probably thoughtful, high-net-worth individuals getting interested in whether this is a thing, deciding that it is, and partially adjusting their donation decisions. I don't think they need to fully buy into effective altruism to do this.
I'd certainly be interested in whether this video leads to a notable uptick in donations (both the number and volume) :)
I think that a huge chunk of charity is pretty thoughtless, and that many viewers in absolute terms would have felt some sympathy for shrimps, even though they're speciesist. Most donors also like splitting across different problems out of some sense of fairness. Putting these together, I can easily see many non-EA viewers donating to SWP soon out of guilt, at least as a once-off. The segment ended on the website link in huge font, and I think that was a significant prompt.
Looks like there might be more funding coming SWP's way thanks to Glenn / United States of Exception (here)
I think the framing of the first half was perfect, incredulous and funny, but I think the second half missed a chance at turning that initial reaction into reflection while still avoiding being preachy. With very small tweaks, like removing the visual of Ronny eating them at the end (but still saying "we can eat them"), I think it could have toed that line better. Or, there could have been a foil to Ronny (beyond the journalist), so that Ronny could have acted even more dismissive.
From a broader view, I wonder how we can answer effect size questions about other tweaks, because it some sense it's just speculation. Regardless, big win.
Yeah, I also found the visuals involving eating shrimp uncomfortable :( but I understand it's meant to be a relatable hook (although I'm not sure if that's the Daily Show playing it up or if that reflects their actual view -- not sure how much that matters, though).
I guess you have to start somewhere to shift the Overton window? I think for a prominent piece in mainstream media, this seems like a great start.
Forgive me if you've written about this elsewhere, but how did the collaboration come to pass? Did the Daily Show just reach out to you? Was SWP pitched to them by someone?