Chris Hardwick Broke My Heart But We Have To Listen To Victims

Our personal relationships with celebrities cannot overshadow horrible behavior.

Courtesy AMC.

By now, you’re most likely aware of the piece Chloe Dykstra penned on a relationship with a now-ex that became a “powerhouse CEO.” It took the internet 0.1 seconds to figure out she was talking about Chris Hardwick, founder and former CEO of Nerdist Industries, a net conglomerate that began as a podcast and grew into a multi-headed multimedia beast. It has been four days since her piece was published on Medium and it tells a harrowing tale of abuse in many forms capable of shaking a reader to their core. If you haven’t read it yet and feel in any way like engaging in this greater conversation about male celebrities and their treatment of women, I encourage you to. Be warned, it is a dark read, but that’s the point.

In the days since the piece’s publication, I’ve been grappling with my conflicting feelings. I have a personal history with Hardwick that goes back to my time as a weird little middle schooler and continues up into my less weird, less little college years. After walking away from Chloe’s essay, my first thought was that it couldn’t be true. Chris Hardwick just wasn’t capable of these things. He was a good man, I figured, and there has to be more to this.

Here is a possibly unrelated statistic for your viewing pleasure: this study from 2010 looked at 136 cases of allegations like these and found only 6% of them could be classified as “false reporting.” Now, of course, the longer form of the study is a bit more complex than that, venturing into how authorities classify these sorts of cases and the idea that a person may claim to be a victim as part of an ulterior motive.

What it boils down to is, with a statistic like that, we can safely say that a false report of abuse is an exception to the rule and not a consistent problem. I say all of this only to counteract my own internal thinking and what I believe the foremost argument for Hardwick is, which is “he couldn’t have done it. He says he didn’t.”

It is true that he has claimed the allegations are false. And at this stage, we are left with a very public, very serious case of one person’s word against another. This piece is, in large part, to admit my own bias in this case. A case in which I should not and truly do not have any say. A case that should be taken to proper authorities. A case in which, it is claimed, there is hard evidence to support it. Let me make a couple of things clear before I get into the meat and potatoes here:

1. What Chloe Dykstra says happened to her is beyond abhorrent and, if true, should be seen to by actual authorities.
2. Chris Hardwick should not be tried by a court of public opinion (and no, I do not believe that him being called out by people on Twitter fits that definition).
3. The public should not be given access to this video/audio evidence, whatever it may be.

In reaction to the piece, Hardwick’s name has been removed from any mention on the Nerdist website, though it is worth noting he has not been involved with that company for some time. His talk show has been pulled from the air. His moderation gig at Comic-Con has been cancelled. These are facts and I present them here with no opinion attached.

Now let me tell you my story. It’s about how we connect with celebrities, how we feel about them from afar, and what happens when all of that is shaken up.

In seventh grade, I knew I wanted to be a stand-up comedian. This was a great time to want that because it was an obscure job full of unlikable people who made themselves wonderful for short periods of time. This was, in a time when I felt more and more like a social outcast as I slowly came into my own, the perfect job. People would like me even though I was a loser and I didn’t have to do all that much. Just tell stories. It was perfect. All I ever wanted.

Photo originally appeared in The Aspen Times.

I studied the art of stand-up closely. Taking notes as I fawned over the tiny CRT television in my bedroom. I bought George Carlin albums and listened to them on repeat. I thought long and hard about the way Mitch Hedberg spoke. And I kept watching this one episode of Comedy Central Presents over and over. A short, 20-minute special featuring a musical act called Hard ‘n Phirm. This was the first real TV spot for Chris Hardwick as a comedian. It was a great act that taught me a good number of things. Like how it was cool to reference Savage Garden. Or that you could write a whole weird song about Pi. Most importantly, though, was that a nerdy-looking loser could make it in this career and get lots of people cheering for him and it’d be great.

Junior year of high school I caught a disease called Henoch-Schonlein purpura, a type of vasculitis that in its worst forms makes the blood vessels in your legs explode from time to time. I had that form. It was a tough time, naturally. And I spent a lot of it in bed. I was homeschooled for a year as I slowly recovered. I was, for the first time in my life, quite depressed. I lived in the middle of nowhere and what little socializing I got to do was now off the table because I was sick.

I listened to a lot of podcasts back then. It got me into audio editing and storytelling, something I do in a professional capacity now. My favorite at that time was, points if you guessed it, Chris Hardwick’s Nerdist Podcast.

I also found some solace in a book called The Nerdist Way, which was heavily promoted on the podcast. It was his guide to living a better life physically, mentally, and inwardly. It featured tips on how to exercise without having to go to a public place, how to steer your mind into a better place, and how to be a generally more productive person. It was, before its release and in the book itself, pushed as a guide to self-care from a recovering alcoholic. Hardwick openly and freely admitted to the ways alcohol had destroyed his life and this book was a passing of the knowledge that recovery brought. I respected that. I needed it at that time. I was very grateful.

Just before graduating high school, my dad and I took a road trip to Nashville to see Hardwick perform live at Zanies. This was a big deal for a number of reasons. My dad and I hadn’t been on a big trip together since my younger days as a scout, which were always camping-related. Not my favorite activity, I admit. And a lot of my time in the scouts was, in hindsight, an attempt to impress my dad — who was a great outdoorsman and appreciator of nature. But this time we were going to a city and we were going to see a stand-up comic. It was my thing for once.

I’d long accepted I was never going to make a career out of stand-up, but I was still able to appreciate it as the artform it is. It takes a true craftsman to get up there and tell an entertaining story. And the amount of failure involved scares all but the most dedicated away.

I can’t remember Hardwick’s set. I do remember he took questions afterwards, which was odd I think. I remember waving my hand desperately from the balcony. I remember thinking my question was incredibly dire. I don’t remember what it was. I didn’t get picked.

I forced my way through the vaguely-drunk crowd as the closer congratulated Hardwick on his set and tried to clear the place out. I had my copy of The Nerdist Way in my hand as I made my way up to him. I handed it to him as if it were some precious artifact, only able to say “Thank you for book” as I did. Inarticulate is a good way to sum up my “Chris Hardwick years.” He signed it, laughing, and patted me on the back. Seemed to like my chutzpah. I remember that whole bit fairly vividly. I had a tough time sleeping that night. It was such a simple thing but I had an adrenaline rush. I thought my legs were going to explode again. They didn’t.

Through college and slowly coming into my own, I drifted away from Chris Hardwick and the rest of Nerdist Industries. I appreciated their network of podcasts, but found my tastes growing in a different direction. I’d download an episode at random every few months to check in, or if a particular guest caught my fancy, but I was officially out of the obsessive phase. Chris Hardwick was no longer a figure among an active pantheon of heroes to me. Instead, he’d moved into the background and become someone I had to recognize as a great influence on the direction in my life, even if I didn’t keep up to date anymore.

And here we are. A person that, even now, I have to admit had that great influence, is very possibly a horrible man. An outwardly energetic and optimistic presence, an attractive personality that felt attainable, may have been hiding something much darker all along. And it breaks my heart to think that somebody I respected so much, that I have to admit had that amount of impact on me, could be yet another Hollywood monster.

I don’t know how accurate Chloe Dykstra’s account is. But with such detail, and so much of it, I refuse to believe it is all “made up.” I feel a great and sudden hostility toward Chris Hardwick. I see myself hurling a sledgehammer through the statue of him that is housed somewhere in the back of my personal pantheon. I see a fire starting in there as this giant outing of these horrible behaviors continues to reveal some of our favorite people to be more than we’d ever thought they could be. And I am afraid of what that means for me. If I am a man who has, unintentionally or not, been idolizing men who treat women this way — what effect does that have on me? Who am I in the end? Some would probably say I’m just as bad for not psychically detecting that Hardwick had done any of these things.

So I guess I should make myself clear in case someone comes into this piece for the headline, doesn’t read it all, and angrily skims to this conclusion. I don’t know if any or all of this is true, but it is critical that we listen to people who come out and make these allegations. It is not something a person does lightly and statistically it is not done with an ulterior motive. I do not believe that we should make final judgments as a culture based on one person’s word against another, and I do not think that we as a public have the “right” to see any evidence — those materials are incredibly sensitive to all parties, especially a victim, and the hard record of their abuse should not be put on display to satisfy us. Demanding to see that evidence despite being uninvolved in the proceedings of this entire situation reveals a fetishization of this situation — you’re getting off on either the downfall of the abuser or, worse yet, the abuse itself. And even the downfall is deserved, that inner behavior is wrong. We’re better than that. We should be, anyway.

This entire situation is a mess. And we’re sitting in it so early, stewing in the filth. We just don’t know what kind of filth it is yet, or how deep it goes. Once we find out, I don’t know that it’ll be any better. But sometimes what’s right isn’t what feels best. In fact, most of the time it isn’t. But it has to be done. I hope that in the coming days, this is worked out and that the consequences of the actions made are dealt with. I hope that that is true for all of the people who are bravely coming forward with stories of their abuse. I hope that, someday, we are able to live in a world where our heroes safely remain our heroes.

I hope that someday we’ll all be better. It’s hard to say that and not feel like a kid. But maybe there’s something to it anyway. The same something that made obsessing over comedy specials on a tiny TV like the spark of a career.

And as one final postscript that is very relevant as of this writing (June 18th, 2018):
It is wrong beyond wrong to wish for the downfall/punishment of people who are somehow connected to the accused (abuser or not). Right now I’m seeing a lot of hate directed at Jonah Ray, Matt Mira, and Wil Wheaton because of their friendship with Chris Hardwick and not making some sort of public statement denouncing that relationship. People need time to process. They may know things we don’t. It is not our place to cry that these people are complicit by association.

David Cole is an independent writer and media man from Wayne County, Kentucky. He believes that games are the artform that allows for more intricate expression than any other. More of David’s work, including his breakout collection I’ve Been a Prisoner All My Life, is available at no cost on his website: davidcole.space.