Stop the bullshit TEDxBasel
Tags: Bullshit, Tedxbasel, Tedtalks, Communication

TEDxBasel refuses to publish my friend Peter Sandbach’s talk. I am outraged and seeking your support to overturn their decision.

There are few things in life that make me angry. Even fewer make me furious to the point that I feel compelled to start a petition to overturn them. Coming to think of it, this is the first time!

I participated as a speaker in TEDxBasel last year. It was a fantastic experience. I got to know brilliant people with inspiring ideas. All of us invested 6 months of hard work and intense preparation to create our talks. It was worth it though: TEDxBasel 2015 was an amazing and mind-altering experience for me.

When Peter asked me whether he should participate in TEDxBasel 2016 I encouraged him immediately. He too put a lot of work into preparing his talk for months. I went to see him perform at TEDx this past May and his talk was brilliant!

As you can see here, Peter’s talk was about corporate jargon… or bullshit, if you prefer. Unfortunately, Peter got into hot water with two of the organizers, because he used the word “bullshit” in his talk, even though, they had requested him not to.

The organizers just announced that they won’t publish his talk on the official TEDxBasel Youtube channel, because

1. Peter broke the rules by using the word “bullshit”

2. Peter was not “loyal to TEDxBasel” (ie. them) because he contacted the other TEDx speakers to ask for support when he found out about their decision.

Now arguably it is tempting to say bullshit, when the topic of your talk is precisely about it. Also, TED speakers by definition are “movers and shakers”; their ideas are selected by TEDx for challenging the status quo. TEDx speakers are supposed to break or bend some rules to make change happen…especially, if the rules make no sense! Thus expecting Peter to follow rules of polite English and then reprimanding him like a teenager for “breaking” them is completely against the spirit of TED.

What is even more interesting is that Peter asked the opinion of the official TEDx organizers in the US. They said the word with a bleep would be acceptable and they advised TEDxBasel accordingly. Peter had already agreed to bleep over the word in the edited online version, if necessary. Indeed, “bullshit” and many far stronger words have been used in other popular TED talks around the world.

So apparently, the word “bullshit” is not the true driver behind the decision to ban Peter’s talk, which brings us to the second point: Peter’s supposed disloyalty.

The logic that Peter is disloyal to the TEDx community and spirit simply, because he disagrees with the organizers’ decision is very dangerous. It is the real reason why I am stepping in today:

I want to know under which circumstances the TEDx organizers think it is disloyal, even punishable by a publishing ban, to disagree with something they decide or to reach out to fellow TEDx speakers and volunteers in support? Are we NOT part of TEDxBasel? Without our hard work and commitment, there would not have been a TEDxBasel. Should we not be part of the decision to ban a talk or not?

Before writing this post, I stopped to ask myself whether speaking up for Peter will put my TEDx talk at risk of getting taken down as well. Paradoxically, it is exactly this fear that forced me to start the petition.

Being loyal to a cause cannot mean to agree with everything or everyone that is part of that cause. If some of the TEDxBasel organizers are trying to use a false concept of loyalty to bully us into silence, we should not let them. Because if we do, any future speaker with a brilliant idea will be molded into silence with this threat — “if you do not follow our rules we will kill your talk”. And this will be the end of sharing ideas worth spreading that is the soul of TED.

Please have a look at Peter’s TEDx talk here and decide, if you agree with me that his talk is worth being published. If you do, please sign my petition to have his talk posted on the official TEDxBasel YouTube channel where it belongs.

If signing petitions isn’t your thing, watch his talk one more time. Every view counts. Thank you for your support.