Bro

The Pixar short that tackles office 'bro' culture

Hot-button issues like workplace misogyny and a lack of diversity aren’t often explored by family-friendly Pixar. But this month, it released a nine-minute short that does just that.

Called Purl, it was released on 4 February and has already amassed six million views on YouTube. It’s the story of a walking, talking ball of yarn called Purl. She’s carnation pink, bubbly and eager to kick off her new desk job at the firm B.R.O. Capital.

But after her colleagues – all male – negatively react to her, she shapes herself (figuratively and literally) to be more like the hyper-masculine workers around her so she can fit in.

Pixar story artist Kristen Lester, who wrote and directed the short, says the film is inspired by her own experiences in the animation industry. Starting out, she was often the only woman in the room, and felt like she had to morph into “one of the guys”.

“I didn’t want to risk being rejected, and so I would change to eliminate that risk,” she says.

The film satirises “bro culture” – a term often linked to fields like tech, finance and video games which have drawn criticism for fostering macho office environments that can exclude and demean women.

Purl’s colleagues are stereotypical “bros”. They make loud, vulgar jokes, they constantly talk about hitting the gym, and rowdily leave en masse at 17:00 for all-you-can-eat wings happy hour. When Purl gleefully bounces into the office, they’re dumbstruck and speechless, with no idea how to relate to her. Almost immediately, they start ignoring her in meetings, and ditch her when it’s time for after-work hangouts.

It’s an example of tribalism, which can be damaging to both individual workers and the companies that employ them ­– when people are in an environment where everyone looks, sounds, acts and thinks the same, it can create an echo chamber and cyclical system that only includes and rewards the same kinds of people over and over. (All the photos on the “employee of the month” wall at B.R.O. are of white men sporting the same grin.) Study after study has shown that more diverse teams are more innovative, more successful and make better decisions than homogenous teams do.

Eventually, Purl reinvents herself as a two-dimensional, defeminised caricature in a suit. She copies their behaviour to the point where she becomes one of them. She swears, she’s aggressive in meetings – and she’s instantly accepted. (In a montage later with the boys, she throws up strings of green yarn-vomit after a heavy session at the pub.)

Between the cursing and the on-screen regurgitating, Purl isn’t typical Pixar fare. But that’s exactly what Pixar has aimed to do: Purl is one of six short films in an experimental series called “SparkShorts”. The company gave a handful of employees of varied backgrounds six months and limited funds to make their own films based on their personal stories, allowing for more latitude and edginess.

Why depict women as balls of yarn?

“We can change into whatever we want in order to negotiate a situation where we feel uncomfortable,” Lester says. “This idea of shape-shifting and ‘knitting new personas’ was something I thought could be a cool metaphor.” At her early jobs, Lester says she had to do little things, like self-edit her conversations around her male colleagues, to fit in. One example was avoiding referencing films that she feared were viewed as “too girly”.

“I didn’t want to be associated with those things because I felt it emphasised that I was different,” she says. “So, I would choose to reference movies that I knew my male coworkers had watched and liked. It got my point across, but it wasn’t the movie that I had personally connected to.”

Some time after Purl’s transformation, a new cheerfully earnest hire joins B.R.O. – a yellow yarn ball named Lacy. The bro contingent instantly crushes her own spirit and excludes her. But when Purl sees Lacy going through what she did, she drops the act and welcomes Lacy into the fold, setting an example for the others.

But the short isn’t just about casual gender discrimination in the workplace – it’s about general inclusion.

In the film’s happy ending, the office is filled with dozens of brightly-coloured yarn balls working joyfully alongside the now-enlightened men. But there’s a visual difference in the men, too: they’re more racially diverse. That was no coincidence, Lester says.

“I wanted to portray the world as it could be. A world where people – and yarn balls – of all different shapes and sizes could work together to make something great.”

Since the film’s release, many people have contacted Lester with their own version of Purl’s story. “Some of their stories are funny, some of them sad, but they are all stories of people relating to the struggles of [Purl].”

She hopes people keep telling their personal stories, especially through film.

“Being able to understand and empathise with a point of view not our own opens up new possibilities for us as a culture,” she says. “Movies have the power to create empathy for other points of view we may not have considered.”

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Bryan Lufkin is BBC Capital's features writer. Follow him on Twitter @bryan_lufkin.

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Are being harassed by a Bernie Bro or a Bernie bot?

Bernie Sanders’ Tuesday morning announcement that he would join the 2020 presidential race means one thing is inevitable: Online will be hell for the foreseeable future.

We have to deal with Bernie bros AGAIN?!

— Natasha Janardan (@natashajanardan) February 19, 2019

Throughout the 2016 primaries and even through the presidential election, Bernie Bros—a subset of extreme supporters—wreaked terror on Twitter, in Reddit threads and infamously on women reporters and Hillary Clinton supporters.

The Bernie Bro is a meme but also a phenomenon. It represents arguably one of the first times a die-hard mob formed around a presidential candidate and used social media so vigorously in support of them.

Most of the assault we received from Bernie Bros were Russian bots executing disinformation warfare. A lot of us, especially women, are still being attacked.

That said, Dems cannot repeat 2016.

If you support Bernie, don't be an asshole.

If you hate him, don't be an asshole.

— Ally Maynard (@missmayn) February 19, 2019

And now, everyone is bracing for their return. But what if this time, it’s just the bots?

Okay, the twitter account I just called out appears to be a bot. I have since deleted that tweet. However, his response to me is *not atypical* from what's appearing in my mentions from real accounts who support @BernieSanders

— igorvolsky (@igorvolsky) February 19, 2019

A recent report by Politico found that bot and inauthentic activity was ramping up on Twitter in advance of 2020, with Bernie Sanders one of the candidates seeing fake tweets and replies happening on their behalf, trying to widen America’s already chasm-like political divides.

Bernie Bots are swarming. pic.twitter.com/5fYfB1FR8x

— Crapsickle! (@KariMcNinch) February 19, 2019

So how do you know if it’s a bot or a bro in your mentions?

What is a Bernie Bro?

In 2016, Vox described Bernie Bros as a strain of Sanders supporters, made up of mostly younger white men. And according to the rest of the internet, they’re typically awful.

“[A Bernie Bro] typically presents as a white, male Bernie Sanders supporter who haunts Internet comment sections,” Slate reported in 2016.

Really dreading another election season of Bernie bros.

— Bridget Phetasy (@BridgetPhetasy) February 19, 2019

The term was thrown around so often during the height of the 2016 primaries that even Urban Dictionary joined in explaining the phenomenon. The slang website defined a Bernie Bro as an “insufferable, self-righteous, left-wing activist,” and a set of “volatile, unstable, angry Bernie Sanders supporters.”

“They’re a mob, and it’s not positive toward their candidate, it’s trying to tear you down from supporting Hillary,” a chief of staff for a Democratic member of Congress who’s endorsed Clinton said at the time.

However, it’s wrong to paint all of Bernie’s support at young and male. Bernie Bros only represent a group of supporters. In his past run, Sanders garnered support from minority and young voters according to a Harvard-Harris poll.

My #BernieBro familia. Proud #BernieBros. #JustAnotherBernieBro. #Bernie2020 pic.twitter.com/EnrA1NgkmP

— Elianna (@elihazeleyes) February 20, 2019

1) Bernie Bros are a real thing and they really harassed a lot of people, especially women, in 2016 and beyond.

2) Not every Bernie supporter is a Bernie Bro.

Both of things can be true at the same time.

— Louisa 🌈👭 (@LouisatheLast) February 19, 2019

But the actual Bros were one unique kind of terrible. True-to-form Bernie Bros are obsessive, narcissistic young men who grapple with feminism and are just a Facebook war away from saying all genders matter

As we saw in the race between Sanders and Clinton, Bernie Bros are typically sexist—a troubling factor considering how many women are already running in 2020. During the 2016 primaries, the bros were called out for aggressive online attacks against women reporters and female Clinton supporters, The New York Times reported.

Bill Clinton condemned those attacks, saying that Bernie Bros forced a female blogger to use a pseudonym to avoid “vicious trolling and attacks that are literally too profane often—not to mention sexist—to repeat.”

All the Bernie bros are rising from their caskets now, stirring to life, growling in their caps, ready to send female candidates a bunch of where-were-you-whens#BernieSanders #BernieSanders

— Beths Bowl of Ennuitabix (@bethwritesstuff) February 19, 2019

“Berniebros clearly do exist,” Washington Post correspondent Philip Bump wrote in 2016. “While fans of many of the candidates paint the 2016 election in remarkably stark terms of doom and transcendence, fans of Sanders are very vocal about it—and that overlaps with an internet culture that’s broadly slow to keep young, angry men in check when they act out. With a culture that often fails when it tries to do so.”

Bros were in full form back in 2016 when Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat and Clinton supporter posted a photo of her and Clinton on stage together to her Facebook page.

As documented by Mashable, comments included gems like “Their vaginas are making terrible choices,”  written by someone named Scott Lockhart, who also commented about supporting Sanders.

And when Sanders announced this week, many women who were vocal in the 2016 election, voiced their concerns, saying that the bros who @’ed them incessantly, trying to shout down support of Clinton, would be back.

But, not all Bernie Bros are Bernie Bros. In a number of 2016 autopsies, we learned that some of the Twitter accounts that were masking as extreme Bernie Bros were actually bots.

👽 perhaps 😏

— ૐ൬ҽժɨƈɨռɛ ฬටℓғ (@5thdimdreamz) May 31, 2016

Twitter users, like Guns Down America Executive Director Igor Volsky, are claiming to have already gotten into spats with bots on the very first day of Bernie’s announcement.

Okay, the twitter account I just called out appears to be a bot. I have since deleted that tweet. However, his response to me is *not atypical* from what's appearing in my mentions from real accounts who support @BernieSanders

— igorvolsky (@igorvolsky) February 19, 2019

And last month, reporter Josh Emerson tracked down a Turkish bot tweeting about Sanders.

In an effort to be fair in my bot busting adventures I have looked up #WeareMaduro Interestingly, once again turkish bots show up. Yesterday they were tweeting about Bernie Sanders.

sample bots:@RabiaSolmaz18@EvcenOzkan@ImdatSarikaya@ErkinYetis@UmutKay18634101@KutluAzmi pic.twitter.com/uxGNDuEeBz

— Josh Russell (@josh_emerson) January 27, 2019

According to The New York Times, Twitter identified more than 2,000 accounts controlled by Russian operatives and over 36,000 bots that tweeted 1.4 million times during the election.

And they’re not all telling readers just to  #feelthebern. Bots exist to influence opinions—in 2016’s case, to influence an American presidential election—to poke and to antagonize.

But seeing as Bernie Bros being vocal made for a divisive primary season in the last election, there’s no surprise they are back in bot form. They’ll want people who are anti-Bernie to hate him just as much as die-hard Bros really do love him.

To combat this, there are easy tips to ensure see if you are dealing with a Bro or a bot. Perhaps the easiest step is to use websites like botcheck.me. By typing in a user’s handle will tell you if the account is likely a political bot or tweeting out highly automated patterns.

The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRL) suggests looking out for factors like how often tweets are posted, if bios and profile photos are generic, a lack of original wording and a lot of retweets. 

A pattern you may have noticed: many bot and troll accounts have usernames that end in 8 random digits. pic.twitter.com/54Gc8Jq35L

— Conspirador Norteño (@conspirator0) August 23, 2017

Before you start complaining about "Bernie Bro" trolls, do make sure they're actually real people and not Russian bots intentionally trying to stir up hatred.

— David Atkins #11Justices (@DavidOAtkins) February 20, 2019

And if the early returns are any indications, the bots will be everywhere. As will the Bros.

But while both are likely to be harassing you, neither are worth your time.

Exclusive: A&E's "The Toe Bro" Sneak Peek

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