How To Express An Unpopular Opinion

Bill Burr is one of the most popular comedians alive today, despite having said about a hundred things that would get anyone else cancelled.

No means no. That's another one. No means no. It's like, no. It doesn't. All right, look, no means no. No. That means no. All right, but no. Stop it.

What are you doing?

Oh, my God.

Today we'll go over how Bill manages to say these controversial things without hurting his relationships or popularity. Learning just a few of these habits will let you go into any conversation with confidence, knowing you can share your opinion without losing people's respect. Also, one quick note. This video is about psychology, not any particular belief. So if you strongly disagree with anything Bill says in these upcoming clips, then they've been picked. Well, the first and most obvious thing Bill does is make people laugh. If you can get someone to laugh, they're more likely to be okay with what you said. Even if one said differently, they would hate it. But how does he get you to laugh while he's saying something you might otherwise disagree with? Here's an example where Bill shares a potentially unpopular opinion. An NFL player hitting his wife would never make him stop watching football.

I was talking to my buddy the other day, like, what they would have to do to get me to stop watching. You know, like, you actually love football.

You watch football.

The commissioner could literally punt a baby across his office with his wingtips on. I'm still gonna watch on Sunday.

Bill has a lot of different ways to make people laugh, but one of the easiest is to create a ridiculous mental image. Something that catches you off guard and is specific. Here he shares another potentially controversial opinion. He thinks divorce payouts are unfair to the higher earner. Are you with your girlfriend living in London?

Yes, I am. I'm technically married, but I'm married. How? Like I want to be married. Yeah. Which is. I don't sign that behind the music contract where, you know, everything works out until it doesn't work out. That's money. Yeah. No, and I love how when you get a divorce, all of a sudden, it costs like 50. 50 grand a month to give a kid Fruit Loops.

Note that specificity. You want to drill down from breakfast to cereal to Fruit Loops, just like he did before with shoes to dress, shoes to wingtips. This is a pattern you'll see throughout the video. Here's one more quick example. You can see Conan lose it, right when Bill paints a specific over the top mental image for context, Bill is explaining why he thinks it's absurd that most people felt sympathy for Charlize Theron's serial killer and monster.

She was a serial killer. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, when you saw the Jeffrey Dahmer movie, it wasn't like, ah, somebody shoved the tuna fish sandwich up my ass. And I confused people with food. So I, like, they didn't make, like, a big excuse for them, you know, she was a psycho killing people and she should have died. Even when they're murdering people, it's somehow our fault. It's unreal. Why would having a tuna fish sandwich. Why would having a tuna fish sandwich shoved up your butt make you want to eat people?

Conan might have pushed back on genuinely presented argument about society's views of male and female serial killers. But instead, he's dying, laughing at the absurd specificity of a tuna sandwich in the ass, triggering cannibalism. You can use this trick anytime you want to make someone laugh. The second thing you'll notice Bill does when he's about to cross the PC line is begin by validating the other side. This is called pacing their reality. You partially affirm what they believe before going into your own controversial. Take, for example, here's a bit Bill does about domestic abuse. Before he says anything spicy, he makes it clear it's obviously bad for a man to hit a woman.

How do you not know not to do that shit? Do they really have to keep talking about it? Who? It's like wife beaters watching. Oh, now I get it up. So, Daisy, sweetheart, here we go. There you go.

It's only after he's made it clear that he agrees domestic abuse is bad that he goes into his potentially controversial opinion.

So at the end of the hour, they come to the logical conclusion. They're like, there is no reason to hit a woman. There is no reason to hit a woman. And I was just like, really? I could give you like, 17 right off the top of my head. Really? No reason. How about this? You marry a girl, you fall in love, you buy her a house, you go to work every day paying off the house. You come home one day, she's banging the next door neighbor, hands you divorce papers, you got to move out, sleep on a futon, and still pay for that house that she's going to stay in. No reason. I'm not saying you should do it, but there's plenty of reasons in that arc of a story.

After sharing his unpopular opinion that it doesn't justify it, but there are reasons it happened, he circles back and addresses the most likely objection to his view, then extends an olive branch to meet on Common ground.

Look, I realize I'm coming off pretty ignorant right about now. I realize that. Let me extend an olive branch then, okay? I realize that there's some animal guys out there, okay? Horrible guys, you know, have a rough day at the factory, come home, tuna casserole and just start swinging, all right? I realize they exist. They should be buried underneath the prison. Okay? So if I can admit that, ladies, can you at least admit that every ass kicking doesn't just fall out of the sky?

So to recap, validate the other side where you can voice your own unpopular opinion, address the most common objection, and then try to end on common ground. This will allow people to agree with your unpopular opinion without feeling like they need to change any of their high level values. Now, that was all done during a stand up comedy special, but in the flow of a back and forth conversation, you don't have to do all four at once. You can start with just the first two steps and let the other person raise their objections before you try to meet on common ground. For example, here's Bill discussing the me too catchphrase, Believe women. With Conan, it's like that.

Believe women. It's like all of them. How about. How about 85%? I'll give you 87%. All right.

Again, he starts by validating the other side. Yes, most women should be believed. Then he gives his non PC take that all is going too far.

But that last 13% that keys your car lights on fire and puts a family pet in a pot of stew. Who put a pen in a pot of stew? Glenn closed. Oh, that. Yo, Stan.

The fear most people have in sharing an unpopular opinion is that it will make people like them less. This is because people often interpret an opinion that's the opposite of one they hold as a direct attack on their beliefs and therefore their identity. Bill has two easy habits you can steal to help soften that feeling of being attacked. The first is acknowledge you're not an expert. Bill's a stand up comedian and so when he goes on these talk shows, it's often with a bit that he's thought through quite a lot. But he makes it clear he's not an expert and he could be wrong.

We're all going to get replaced by like robots. That's what I think. Like eventually you think we're all going.

To be replaced by robots.

Yeah. According to my YouTube and Wikipedia research, I'm not going to sit here with no medical degree listening to you with no medical degree with an American flag behind you, smoking a cigar. Acting like we know what's up better than the cdc. No, I'm just saying that I was on, you know, the Internet and I was reading that a lot of the money goes into their pockets. So I was like, all right, I want to agree with that and say that that's true and then repeat it. On a talk show.

People often mirror each other in conversation. So if you acknowledge you're not an expert, it's much easier for the people around you to do the same. The second thing you can do is verbalize. If you see the other person getting uncomfortable, it shows you're socially aware and tuned into their reaction. For example, here's a clip where Bill is describing a lesbian.

He saw anyone, like the hard hat and like that surveyor thing, you feel it now. They're getting like all, like they're backing off. Like, is he saying, is he saying there's something wrong? I'm saying, no, she was dressed ridiculous. The woman who happened to be a lesbian. It was funny the way she was dressed. Jesus, I'm gonna be washed up in six months.

Here's another. With Conan, you can see things are a little bit uncomfortable, but after he calls it out, it releases the tension and gets a big laugh.

Always working on me like, like my wife is some completed work. You know, it's just like, when's the light gonna, you know, shine on you? Uh huh. This crowd has hated me for three minutes.

You probably noticed Bill often pairs this with some type of self deprecating humor, which works well because he's a comedian and his goal is to make people laugh. In your own life, you can go that route or you can simply say something like, hey, I can tell this is starting to be uncomfortable for you. That wasn't my intent. Do you want to just move on to another topic? Whether they do or don't, it will help your relationship and help the conversation go well. If they see you prioritize the relationship over making your point, it shows your goal is to discuss an idea, not fight a person. This ties directly into a mindset Bill has. He's willing to back off an opinion. For example, watch him talk with Conan about the Joe Biden photo controversy. He gets the classic bilber anger at first, but by the end he makes it clear this isn't actually an opinion he's going to fight you over.

He just looks like he's posing and people are like, oh, what is he doing? Why is his hand there? Did he just sniffer? It's like, how bored are you? This is why Nobody of any, like any reasonable, decent human being is gonna run for president. It's the millennials. You're a bunch of rats. All you're doing is trying to get people in trouble. So it's the millennials that are making it impossible for anyone to run for president right now. I get. I don't know what it is. Like, I don't have a problem. You just said that's. Look, that was a long time ago.

This can be hard to do while talking about triggering topics, but if you can keep it in mind, it will be fantastic for your happiness and the quality of your relationships. Now, one thing we were going to touch on today was Bill's hilarious use of anger. After all, Rolling Stone did dub him the king of rage comedy. But Bill seems to think his anger is more of a curse than a blessing.

That was brutal. I don't want to be this guy, you know, I'm halfway through my life at this age, you know, when I've been an angry son of a bitch and I got to turn this around, man, I'm embarrassed with my beat. I don't be that guy. You die is the angry guy. That's the worst dude to die. You got all of this shit that you're sitting on. So you're sitting on all that and you haven't addressed it. So then it just. The only way for the steam to come out is like for you to snap or whatever. So which is really not fair to the people around you.

That last part is true of carrying around repressed anger, sadness, or anxiety. It hurts your relationships with other people and your ability to be happy and to achieve your full potential. If that resonates with you and you want to learn how to release your anger, sadness or anxiety, you might be interested in our course, Emotional Mastery. It's a five week program that is designed to help you master your emotions so that you consistently feel better than you might think is currently possible. This increased joy also naturally bleeds over into feeling more confident. So you can put an end to those moments where you feel controlled by fear of rejection, failure, or conflict. The way it works is by focusing on your relationship with yourself. This means exercises that get you in touch with feelings you may have been repressing for a long time. So you can raise the baseline level of joy that you feel on a day to day basis. If this is something that intrigues you and you're curious and want to learn more, the best way to check it out is to check out the course directly with the link below and you can do that knowing that the course comes with a 60 day money back guarantee. That is absolutely for any reason at all. There's nothing you have to do, no hoops to jump through. You just go to the billing section inside the program, hit refund and you'll get all your money back. I do hope that you check it out because it addresses how to live with more joy in your life and how to be less controlled by negative emotions. If you'd like to join now, go click the link below. Before we wrap, I want to give a special thanks to our amazing editing team of Therese, Andre and Ivan. We all hope that you enjoyed this video and we look forward to seeing you in the next one.