Latest / QUESTION EVERYTHING / Do We Love or Hate The Internet? with Taylor Lorenz (Washington Post + Extremely Online)

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Do We Love or Hate The Internet? with Taylor Lorenz (Washington Post + Extremely Online) · QUESTION EVERYTHING

0:04
Speaker 1: Big things happen when you're pretty, pretty bold, pretty clever,
0:08
Speaker 1: pretty strong. I'm Danielle Robe, and each week my guests
0:12
Speaker 1: and I have conversations that put a new spin on
0:15
Speaker 1: pretty This is pretty smart. Have you ever noticed just
0:21
Speaker 1: how conflicted our relationship with technology is. We are in
0:25
Speaker 1: the ultimate love hate relationship when it comes to the
0:29
Speaker 1: Internet and social media in particular. We just seem so torn.
0:34
Speaker 1: We can't seem to decide if these advances divide us
0:38
Speaker 1: or connect us. Are we getting smarter, more worldly, or
0:43
Speaker 1: are our attention spans diminishing. Wherever you look, there's studies
0:47
Speaker 1: to prove whatever theory you'd like to subscribe to. A
0:50
Speaker 1: recent article in The Atlantic takes a look at how
0:53
Speaker 1: the inability to stay logged off of social media can
0:56
Speaker 1: best be compared to alcohol addiction, and.
0:59
Speaker 2: It gives us more equal opportunity in what we do,
1:02
Speaker 2: and that it enhances the way we think about things.
1:06
Speaker 1: Were skeptics and addicts, and with all the research into
1:11
Speaker 1: social media and the impact on our mental health, we
1:14
Speaker 1: all forget that the internet can be a really fun
1:18
Speaker 1: and joyful place. Our guest today, Taylor Lorenz, has core
1:26
Speaker 1: memories of the Internet's early days. Taylor is unique in
1:29
Speaker 1: that she saw the power of the Internet and technology
1:33
Speaker 1: far ahead of some of her bosses and colleagues. She
1:36
Speaker 1: was covering internet culture early on, So it would make
1:39
Speaker 1: sense that the title of her book is extremely Online
1:43
Speaker 1: in the way that Taylor was a pioneer in wanting
1:46
Speaker 1: to cover the Internet, and she reminded me that women
1:49
Speaker 1: were pioneers when it came to creating it and harnessing
1:53
Speaker 1: its power.
1:54
Speaker 3: Some women were taught to be the earliest computer programmers. Actually,
1:57
Speaker 3: people don't know that because it was considered this easy
2:00
Speaker 3: job for women to do. You could train them up
2:01
Speaker 3: in computer programming. Then it turned into this male dominated
2:05
Speaker 3: tech industry. Really when Silicon Valley took hold in the
2:07
Speaker 3: eighties and really the nineties was like the boom of
2:10
Speaker 3: Silicon Valley.
2:12
Speaker 1: Her book and our conversation today is all about the
2:15
Speaker 1: history of the Internet, social media, and influencer culture, from
2:20
Speaker 1: its humble beginnings to ridiculous controversies. Taylor has watched it
2:25
Speaker 1: all and she's been taking notes.
2:28
Speaker 3: The concept of online influence has migrated just from fashion
2:31
Speaker 3: and beauty to politics, to business to everything.
2:35
Speaker 1: We have an expert with us, so I had to
2:37
Speaker 1: ask all the things I was curious about, from why
2:40
Speaker 1: TikTok gets a bad rap.
2:41
Speaker 3: It's not social media that's making us dumber. TikTok is
2:44
Speaker 3: informing us about the world like we are gathering information.
2:47
Speaker 3: I would say TikTok is making us smarter than you
2:50
Speaker 3: know a lot on Instagram.
2:52
Speaker 1: To why being an influencer isn't all that easy.
2:55
Speaker 3: Being a content creator is so much work and productizing
2:59
Speaker 3: yourself build I mean, you're building your own media company.
3:02
Speaker 3: They're laughed at because they're conventionally attractive, beautiful women and
3:06
Speaker 3: businessmen or whatever don't take them seriously, and tech reporters
3:09
Speaker 3: don't take them seriously.
3:11
Speaker 1: And how about Taylor's own experience online.
3:14
Speaker 3: It's a very hard industry to operate it, and so
3:16
Speaker 3: I've gotten a lot of hate. It was really hard
3:18
Speaker 3: for me. I felt very alone, and I cannot think
3:21
Speaker 3: of another female tech reporter that's sort of operating at
3:25
Speaker 3: the level that I've been operating at.
3:26
Speaker 1: I followed Taylor's work for a long time. I've always
3:30
Speaker 1: admired how creative and inventive she is. She's forged her
3:35
Speaker 1: own path within legacy institutions. That is not an easy
3:40
Speaker 1: thing to do. It was really fun for me to
3:44
Speaker 1: finally meet the person whose work I've followed for so long.
3:48
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy listening to this conversation as much
3:51
Speaker 1: as I enjoyed having it so Taylor. Your book is
3:57
Speaker 1: titled extremely Online, and I've been hearing that more and
4:00
Speaker 1: more these days. It's sort of internet slang. I guess, now,
4:03
Speaker 1: what does it mean to be extremely online?
4:05
Speaker 3: Good question. I feel like we are all sort of
4:08
Speaker 3: increasingly extremely online. It just means being more and more
4:11
Speaker 3: plugged into digital culture and also just the Internet playing
4:15
Speaker 3: a bigger and bigger role in everyone's lives. When I
4:18
Speaker 3: started out on this beat back in two thousand and nine,
4:21
Speaker 3: you know, it was very much this concept of like
4:23
Speaker 3: logging on and oh like things happening online. And now
4:27
Speaker 3: Internet culture is just culture, and you know, the Internet
4:31
Speaker 3: just plays a bigger and bigger role in every single
4:33
Speaker 3: aspect of our society, from economy, politics, you know, culture, music, fashion,
4:39
Speaker 3: it's all shaped by the Internet.
4:41
Speaker 1: I like that you mentioned your beat because I think
4:44
Speaker 1: I've probably been following you since you started reporting on
4:49
Speaker 1: digital culture and Internet trends. It's been thirteen years now. Yeah.
4:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know you're not I mean, it's weird
4:57
Speaker 2: because those of us that grew up on the Internet
4:59
Speaker 2: are not, I think, starting to feel like we're in
5:02
Speaker 2: a different age bracket.
5:04
Speaker 1: So it's interesting what being online means now. But I
5:07
Speaker 1: think it's so interesting that you report about the Internet
5:11
Speaker 1: on the Internet and when you started, this was not
5:14
Speaker 1: a beat. You really sort of invented it. How did
5:17
Speaker 1: it come about?
5:18
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well, so when I started, I started as a
5:21
Speaker 3: blogger back in sort of the heyday of blogging, and
5:25
Speaker 3: I really felt like people weren't writing about the Internet
5:28
Speaker 3: as a user. It was more like these sort of
5:31
Speaker 3: boomer type people at legacy mainstream publications that had sort
5:36
Speaker 3: of never really used social media before, but they were
5:39
Speaker 3: writing about social media as if they knew what was
5:41
Speaker 3: going on, and a lot of it was really condescending.
5:44
Speaker 3: It was really out of touch. I think the media
5:46
Speaker 3: still had this problem, and so I wanted to write
5:49
Speaker 3: about social media sort of as a user. At that
5:51
Speaker 3: time when I was coming up there, it was this
5:53
Speaker 3: like heyday of gadget blogging, and so there were all
5:56
Speaker 3: these people that were blogging who actually used the products
6:00
Speaker 3: like the new iPhone or the new Mac computer or whatever,
6:03
Speaker 3: but they would write about it from the perspective of
6:05
Speaker 3: people that had used it, and so I thought I
6:08
Speaker 3: would do that, but for social media, you know, just
6:10
Speaker 3: try and write about things happening online from the user side.
6:14
Speaker 1: I think I always gravitated towards you because of that,
6:16
Speaker 1: because there also you were really like the only woman
6:19
Speaker 1: that I saw doing it, and you were writing about
6:22
Speaker 1: the Internet that I was growing up with. You weren't
6:26
Speaker 1: writing about necessary. I mean sometimes you would, but a
6:29
Speaker 1: lot of these male tech reporters as they were called,
6:32
Speaker 1: were writing like reviews on the new iPhone, and that's
6:36
Speaker 1: not the Internet that I was interested in necessarily.
6:39
Speaker 3: I feel the exact same way. I feel like there's
6:42
Speaker 3: this thing in tech. It's such a male dominated field,
6:46
Speaker 3: and there's this obsession with like hardware and you know,
6:49
Speaker 3: tough like things, and look, you know, I went back
6:51
Speaker 3: to school, I learned how to code, I learned web development.
6:54
Speaker 3: I'm into that technical side of things. But yeah, I'm
6:58
Speaker 3: got a.
6:58
Speaker 1: Little known fact by out.
7:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I love technology and I'm interested in
7:02
Speaker 3: that side of things. But I think what makes you know,
7:06
Speaker 3: writing about it interesting to me is more like the
7:08
Speaker 3: cultural impact and how it's shaping you know, our lives,
7:11
Speaker 3: and especially the content creator industry. Like one thing that
7:14
Speaker 3: I noticed really early on covering these platforms, it's just
7:16
Speaker 3: that there were these people with massive audiences wielding a
7:20
Speaker 3: huge amount of influence and shaping the products, and these
7:23
Speaker 3: people were totally ignored by Silicon Valley. A lot of
7:26
Speaker 3: them were women. It was a lot of you know,
7:28
Speaker 3: mommy bloggers, fashion bloggers, lifestyle bloggers. I mean it started
7:32
Speaker 3: with blogging that all emerged on Pinterest, Instagram, all these platforms.
7:35
Speaker 3: But I think because it was sort of seen as
7:37
Speaker 3: this like female coded industry, the male tech reporters didn't
7:42
Speaker 3: take it seriously or touch it or cover any of it.
7:45
Speaker 3: And I thought, well, I'll do it, then I'll cover
7:48
Speaker 3: all of that. I love that stuff and it's fascinating,
7:51
Speaker 3: and again it has real tech impacts. I mean, look
7:54
Speaker 3: at the way that now Silicon Valley vcs talk about
7:56
Speaker 3: people like mister Beast, you know, like how he's a
7:59
Speaker 3: productized himself and oh he's launching products. He's not just
8:02
Speaker 3: an influencer. Beauty YouTubers were doing that, you know, twelve
8:06
Speaker 3: years ago. They were launching their own makeup lines and palettes,
8:09
Speaker 3: and people like Michelle von and Ingrid Nielsen, and so yeah,
8:13
Speaker 3: I just wanted to kind of set the record straight
8:15
Speaker 3: with my book too, of like how this whole thing
8:17
Speaker 3: came to be and the role that influential users and
8:20
Speaker 3: especially women played in it.
8:22
Speaker 1: I don't see you tweeting, because tweeting is, you know,
8:25
Speaker 1: controversial now, but I used to see you tweeting a
8:28
Speaker 1: lot about the bullying and harassment you received. A lot
8:33
Speaker 1: of it was very gendered. I don't see you talking
8:36
Speaker 1: about that as much as it still is prevalent, and
8:38
Speaker 1: you're just bored of discussing it or what's happening sort
8:42
Speaker 1: of behind the scenes for you.
8:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, it got really crazy in twenty twenty and twenty
8:47
Speaker 3: twenty one, especially at the time I was working at
8:50
Speaker 3: The New York Times, which I loved my editor. I
8:53
Speaker 3: would dive for my editor there. She was amazing, and
8:55
Speaker 3: I loved my team. But I think structurally that company
8:57
Speaker 3: was not really set up to deal with the level
9:01
Speaker 3: of harassment I got. That's not a knock on them,
9:03
Speaker 3: They just didn't They weren't prepared for it, you know.
9:05
Speaker 3: I think that now all these news organizations are sort
9:07
Speaker 3: of learning how to deal with you know, when your
9:09
Speaker 3: reporter is getting thousands and thousands of death threats a
9:12
Speaker 3: day or all of this horrible stuff. Er they're targeting
9:14
Speaker 3: her family, Like how do we respond to that? So
9:17
Speaker 3: it was really hard for me. I felt very alone,
9:19
Speaker 3: and I was on Twitter more sort of talking about it.
9:21
Speaker 3: But it's been hard. I mean, I operate in a
9:24
Speaker 3: very male world. I cannot think of another female tech
9:28
Speaker 3: reporter that's sort of operating at the level that I've
9:31
Speaker 3: been operating at other than Kara Swisher, who's a woman
9:34
Speaker 3: in her sixties, and it's sort of from a different generation.
9:37
Speaker 3: She came up in a different time when there wasn't
9:39
Speaker 3: this twenty four to seven or feedback on the Internet
9:41
Speaker 3: and scrutiny. And she's also a lesbian and doesn't present
9:44
Speaker 3: as feminine as me, and I think that there's just
9:46
Speaker 3: a sort of a difference in how we're perceived. I
9:49
Speaker 3: cannot think of a feminine presenting tech reporter that really
9:52
Speaker 3: has risen the ranks to that level. It's a very
9:56
Speaker 3: hard industry to operate it, and so I've gotten a
9:59
Speaker 3: lot of hate. When I first started reporting on influencers
10:02
Speaker 3: and I was reporting on big things, you know, it
10:04
Speaker 3: was like the way that these influencers were actually like
10:06
Speaker 3: they you know, had sold so much product for instance,
10:08
Speaker 3: that Instagram had to redo, you know, a feature or whatever.
10:12
Speaker 3: Like there was all these impacts that were having on
10:14
Speaker 3: the tech world. But when I tried to call myself
10:16
Speaker 3: a tech reporter, these men in the industry freaked out.
10:19
Speaker 3: They were like, well, you're not reviewing iPhones or you're
10:21
Speaker 3: not writing about Microsoft's latest earnings. You can't call yourself
10:24
Speaker 3: a tech reporter.
10:26
Speaker 1: You feel respected now?
10:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, now I think I got the last laugh. I
10:30
Speaker 3: mean this is we know that the influencer industry is
10:32
Speaker 3: about to be a half a trillion dollar industry. The
10:34
Speaker 3: concept of online influence has migrated just from fashion and
10:37
Speaker 3: beauty to politics, to business to everything. So I feel
10:42
Speaker 3: fine about my life now. But I used to talk
10:44
Speaker 3: about it more because I think it was really I
10:46
Speaker 3: was really sort of like fighting to take up space.
10:49
Speaker 1: I get why you were talking. I actually think it
10:51
Speaker 1: was helpful that you were talking about it because people
10:54
Speaker 1: were people that were going through similar things in different industries,
10:57
Speaker 1: probably related, and people who warrant got an inside look
11:02
Speaker 1: into what that was like. I mean it was the
11:05
Speaker 1: things you would post were horrifying.
11:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was bad. It was really bad.
11:09
Speaker 1: I don't have like the breath of understanding to speak
11:13
Speaker 1: about this that well, but I do know just from
11:16
Speaker 1: my own experience that when you are a woman on
11:20
Speaker 1: the Internet, the sort of mean tweets that you get
11:23
Speaker 1: are usually really scary because a lot of them have
11:26
Speaker 1: to do with like harming you, and so that's and
11:29
Speaker 1: maybe like you're saying, harming your loved ones. So that's
11:31
Speaker 1: what's scary.
11:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, And there's a gendered like there's this like gendered
11:35
Speaker 3: nature to it too, like yeah, I mean, one thing
11:37
Speaker 3: that I constantly get is like told now that I'm
11:40
Speaker 3: in my thirties that I'm too old to write about tech.
11:43
Speaker 3: And it's so funny because throughout my entire twenties, when
11:45
Speaker 3: I was like building this career for myself, they were
11:47
Speaker 3: like this silly little girl. I mean, Tucker Carlson was saying, like,
11:50
Speaker 3: I'm too, I'm younger than everyone else at the New
11:52
Speaker 3: York Times, And how did I even get this job.
11:54
Speaker 3: I'm such a young, unqualified girl. Then you turn thirty
11:57
Speaker 3: and now as I'm too old. Meanwhile, Walt Mosburg icond
12:00
Speaker 3: of the industry. But you know, there's all these other
12:02
Speaker 3: tech colonist men. Yeah, they're in their forties and sixties,
12:05
Speaker 3: and no one would ever say that. So it's women
12:08
Speaker 3: are subject to a very different you know, and this
12:11
Speaker 3: is true in every industry. You're held to a completely
12:13
Speaker 3: different standard.
12:15
Speaker 1: So your book sort of paints this overview of social
12:18
Speaker 1: media and the Internet in a way I hadn't heard
12:20
Speaker 1: told before. This is going to sound like probably the
12:23
Speaker 1: most ridiculous question that you will ever get in an interview,
12:26
Speaker 1: But just so we can start baseline, how did the
12:29
Speaker 1: internet start?
12:32
Speaker 3: Oh my god, good question. It started way back, you know,
12:35
Speaker 3: in like the sixties and sort of emerge in the seventies.
12:37
Speaker 3: I'm sure you guys have seen those like giant you know,
12:40
Speaker 3: computers that like took up the size of a room.
12:42
Speaker 3: And it actually started with women. I mean some women
12:44
Speaker 3: were taught to be the earliest computer programmers. Actually, people
12:47
Speaker 3: don't know that because it was considered this easy job
12:50
Speaker 3: for women to do. You could train them up in
12:51
Speaker 3: computer programming. That's yeah, that's why some of the first
12:55
Speaker 3: and most famous early computer programmers were women. Then it
12:58
Speaker 3: turned into this male dominated heech industry. Really when Silicon
13:01
Speaker 3: Valley took hold in the eighties, and really the nineties
13:04
Speaker 3: was like the boom of Silicon Valley and you saw
13:07
Speaker 3: these corporate you know, companies like behemoths submerge. My interest
13:12
Speaker 3: in the Internet sort of started in the late nineties
13:15
Speaker 3: as a millennial. I mean obviously I had like aim,
13:18
Speaker 3: I had Facebook in college, but it wasn't really until
13:20
Speaker 3: that sort of like social part of the Internet took
13:22
Speaker 3: off that I really started to fall in love with it,
13:24
Speaker 3: which was really kind of that turn. It's really when
13:26
Speaker 3: my book begins, it's like the year two thousand, I am.
13:31
Speaker 1: Isn't that when like everybody thinks Al Gore started the Internet?
13:34
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, you remember.
13:38
Speaker 1: So what is a digital reporter? And I would say
13:42
Speaker 1: digital culture reporters daily relationship with the Internet, like like
13:46
Speaker 1: paint me sort of a picture of your social media routine.
13:50
Speaker 3: Oh god, it's slightly horrifying. I don't like to look
13:52
Speaker 3: at my screen time too much because I am online
13:55
Speaker 3: kind of from start to finish.
13:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I wait, going online.
14:00
Speaker 3: Extremely online, But that's okay. I love I mean, it's
14:02
Speaker 3: such a dream job for me, and I do have
14:04
Speaker 3: a lot of hard boundaries as well. But I wake up,
14:07
Speaker 3: I immediately roll over took my phone and after checking
14:11
Speaker 3: sort of Slack and email and stuff, I just dive
14:13
Speaker 3: in and see what people are talking about online. I
14:15
Speaker 3: live in LA so by the time I get up
14:18
Speaker 3: around six or seven, you know New York has already
14:20
Speaker 3: been up for a few hours in the UK, so
14:24
Speaker 3: you know, you sort of get a sense of what's trending,
14:27
Speaker 3: what people are talking about. And my day is a
14:29
Speaker 3: mix of meeting people in person, interviewing. I do a
14:32
Speaker 3: lot of video stuff. I do TV hits, I do
14:35
Speaker 3: podcasts like this, and then I'm writing in between all
14:37
Speaker 3: of that, and I just kind of dip in and
14:40
Speaker 3: out all throughout the day. But I'm online twenty four
14:43
Speaker 3: to seven. I don't have a huge boundary of like
14:44
Speaker 3: work hours, just because the Internet, everything happens at any time,
14:48
Speaker 3: So I kind of every day is a mix of
14:52
Speaker 3: all of that stuff.
14:53
Speaker 1: I always say my days are like fire drills. It
14:55
Speaker 1: sounds like yours are the same way.
14:57
Speaker 3: Yes, that's such a good way to put it. I
14:59
Speaker 3: feel this same way.
15:00
Speaker 1: So when I first moved to LA in twenty thirteen,
15:04
Speaker 1: my first real job was at this place called Clever TV,
15:07
Speaker 1: which was under defined. Yeah, and for anybody who doesn't know.
15:11
Speaker 1: It was sort of this YouTube conglomerate. They housed like
15:14
Speaker 1: ten of the largest YouTube channels with smash games and
15:17
Speaker 1: Clever was their entertainment outlet. And that's where I first
15:21
Speaker 1: really learned the Internet. I didn't know. I had always
15:24
Speaker 1: been like a user for fun and this was a job.
15:28
Speaker 1: And I learned about SEO and strategy and content creation
15:33
Speaker 1: and the whole thing. And I learned that there was
15:36
Speaker 1: an entire vocabulary to the Internet.
15:38
Speaker 3: It is.
15:39
Speaker 1: Some people say the Internet is culture. I think it's
15:42
Speaker 1: still a subculture because there's so many subcultures that make
15:45
Speaker 1: up our culture. Do you remember the exact moment when
15:49
Speaker 1: it became abundantly clear to you that the Internet had
15:53
Speaker 1: its own culture.
15:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I guess I always thought of the
15:58
Speaker 3: Internet as a separate sort of thing, like it was
16:01
Speaker 3: really my Space era. I just remember a lot of
16:04
Speaker 3: people at my school had MySpace. It was really kind
16:06
Speaker 3: of those early two thousands when I started to really
16:08
Speaker 3: notice this like MySpace culture or that like emo culture,
16:11
Speaker 3: and although I was definitely not part of it, it
16:13
Speaker 3: kind of just it was this like thing that I
16:15
Speaker 3: became aware of that, like things were happening online and what.
16:19
Speaker 1: Were you blogging about?
16:21
Speaker 3: So I started blogging more like later after that, Like
16:25
Speaker 3: I would say, if that was sort of like two
16:26
Speaker 3: thousand and four to two thousand and six. I started
16:28
Speaker 3: blogging really seriously in two thousand and nine when I
16:30
Speaker 3: got Tumblr. But Tumblr had all this social functionality. I
16:34
Speaker 3: would just go through and like and engage with everyone
16:36
Speaker 3: that I saw on Tumblr, and I started to get followers,
16:40
Speaker 3: and I started to get people who knew who I was.
16:42
Speaker 3: But it was that social aspect that I really liked.
16:44
Speaker 1: I was going to say, what were you getting from it?
16:46
Speaker 1: Did you feel like you were making friends? Did you
16:48
Speaker 1: feel like did you have friends at school and then
16:51
Speaker 1: felt like this was a separate life or yeah.
16:54
Speaker 3: I mean I had a really hard time in school academically,
16:57
Speaker 3: and so I had transferred through many school I had
17:00
Speaker 3: really hard time. I was always really good at making friends,
17:03
Speaker 3: but school wise, I had a hard time, and I
17:05
Speaker 3: never felt like I fit in. So I think I
17:06
Speaker 3: would be sort of a chameleon and just like adjust
17:09
Speaker 3: to these expectations of myself that were sort of like
17:14
Speaker 3: very rigid. And when I got on Tumblr, I was like,
17:16
Speaker 3: oh my god, there's all these people that are just
17:18
Speaker 3: not buying into this, you know, Like I mean, I
17:21
Speaker 3: think as a girl in the mid two thousands, like
17:23
Speaker 3: there was this obsession with being thin and beautiful and
17:27
Speaker 3: sort of meeting these beauty standards. And I remember being
17:29
Speaker 3: on Tumblr and seeing that was the first time I
17:31
Speaker 3: had seen a fat person post a picture of themselves
17:36
Speaker 3: in a bikini and not like I remember seeing that
17:38
Speaker 3: and being like, oh my god, I can't believe this
17:40
Speaker 3: girl put this on the Internet. And there were so
17:43
Speaker 3: many things like that, just like not just the body
17:44
Speaker 3: positivity movement, but it exposed me to like just this
17:47
Speaker 3: wider range of viewpoints that I grew up with. I
17:50
Speaker 3: grew up in a sort of a narrow, pretty conservative
17:53
Speaker 3: town and just the suburbs, you know, like a lot
17:56
Speaker 3: of us. And so yeah, Tumblr really opened my world.
17:59
Speaker 3: And I was like, and I had moved to New
18:01
Speaker 3: York at that point, I had graduated college, and so
18:03
Speaker 3: I was like, wait a minute, there's like a whole
18:05
Speaker 3: world out here, and these people are really cool and interesting,
18:08
Speaker 3: and even people that I didn't agree with, I just
18:09
Speaker 3: kind of wanted to like meet them and talk to
18:12
Speaker 3: them and you know, experience life outside just what I
18:16
Speaker 3: had been exposed to.
18:17
Speaker 1: So I'm so interested in the photo that you just
18:22
Speaker 1: mentioned because one of my questions for you is about
18:25
Speaker 1: women online. So I go to like and MCEE a
18:29
Speaker 1: lot of female founder events, and one of the things
18:33
Speaker 1: I'm always taken by is like, it's so much harder
18:37
Speaker 1: to be a woman in business, to be a woman
18:38
Speaker 1: in any industry. But one of the things I see
18:41
Speaker 1: that benefits us is how we gather. Men don't gather
18:44
Speaker 1: the same way. And I see it happening on the internet.
18:48
Speaker 1: I think TikTok and correct me if I'm wrong. TikTok
18:52
Speaker 1: seems like a female run platform or female led at least.
18:57
Speaker 1: Is that true?
18:58
Speaker 3: I totally agree with you, and I think that's exactly
19:01
Speaker 3: why so many men refuse to take it seriously. I mean,
19:05
Speaker 3: just it's so funny. I had this bet with my
19:07
Speaker 3: friend Katy Newton, who I love and he's actually a
19:10
Speaker 3: phenomenal gay man. He took TikTok seriously, but he was
19:13
Speaker 3: still had this like silicon value mentality where I remember
19:16
Speaker 3: we made a bet like will TikTok still be relevant
19:18
Speaker 3: in a year? I was like, this was back in
19:20
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen, and I was like, this is like the
19:22
Speaker 3: single most relevant platform ever. What are you talking about?
19:24
Speaker 3: This is like where especially I'm a huge reality TV
19:27
Speaker 3: pop culture stan and like, that's just like where people
19:29
Speaker 3: were talking about stuff. And he was like, Oh, it's
19:31
Speaker 3: just a silly dance app. It's going to be gone.
19:33
Speaker 3: And I think actually a lot of Silicon Valley men
19:36
Speaker 3: they just wrote it off. It's an app for community
19:39
Speaker 3: and talking and culture and things that are considered maybe
19:43
Speaker 3: soft or like entertainment adjacent. But now you're seeing the
19:47
Speaker 3: power of social media. I think women have always dominated
19:49
Speaker 3: social media.
19:51
Speaker 1: When I watch TikTok, and for some reason, maybe it's
19:54
Speaker 1: my age, I'm thirty two, I actually enjoy Instagram more,
19:58
Speaker 1: which is not a opinion most people enjoy like they
20:02
Speaker 1: report feeling happier using TikTok. But when I see the
20:07
Speaker 1: whole trend of story time with women doing their makeup
20:11
Speaker 1: and talking to camp. I saw Gloria Steinhem speak live
20:15
Speaker 1: and she said, one of the most feminist things we
20:17
Speaker 1: can do is share our honest stories with each other.
20:20
Speaker 1: And I'm like, what an incredible way to share our stories.
20:24
Speaker 1: And it's so much, it's global, it's diverse, pretty unbelievable.
20:29
Speaker 3: I totally agree with you, and I love that and
20:31
Speaker 3: I think, like, I mean, just that concept of story
20:34
Speaker 3: time and the makeup tutorials and stuff, those are all
20:36
Speaker 3: formats that were pioneered by women that you know, I
20:40
Speaker 3: think it's so yeah, it's so interesting.
20:43
Speaker 1: Where do you see the platform going in the next year.
20:45
Speaker 1: I know, they kind of just launched TikTok shop in a.
20:47
Speaker 3: Real way, TikTok is. The growth has been astounding. They
20:51
Speaker 3: switched up leadership at the company recently, so I think
20:53
Speaker 3: that they're definitely like they're being more aggressive than they
20:56
Speaker 3: were previously. But shopping is I mean, they want to
21:00
Speaker 3: just turn that into like an e commerce powerhouse, which
21:02
Speaker 3: makes sense. I mean Instagram tried to do the same
21:04
Speaker 3: thing we have Instagram Shop.
21:06
Speaker 1: I think Instagram has become a virtual mall.
21:09
Speaker 3: It is one hundred percent, and I think TikTok is
21:12
Speaker 3: going that way. Unfortunately, I mean the problem is that
21:15
Speaker 3: these tech companies they have to monetize users somehow, and
21:18
Speaker 3: it's either ads or shopping or you know, something where
21:21
Speaker 3: they can get a cut of the profits. I don't
21:23
Speaker 3: think TikTok's ever going to be like I don't think
21:25
Speaker 3: it's going to be fully just products. But if you
21:29
Speaker 3: look at Uyin, which is the Chinese version of TikTok,
21:31
Speaker 3: it's very it's totally separate, but that has like heavy
21:34
Speaker 3: e commerce integration. People shop on there all the time.
21:37
Speaker 1: I've seen on video circulate online about how TikTok in
21:41
Speaker 1: China feeds their users smarter, more elevated content, and part
21:48
Speaker 1: of it is that they want the US to be
21:50
Speaker 1: dumbed down? Is there any truth?
21:51
Speaker 3: No, that is the dumbest thing ever. There's constantly that
21:55
Speaker 3: conspiracy and I was actually talking to a friend in
21:58
Speaker 3: China about that because that is not true whatsoever. TikTok's
22:04
Speaker 3: a very global platform, so you know each region is different,
22:07
Speaker 3: but your TikTok feed is very much a reflection of
22:11
Speaker 3: what you engage with and what the algorithm anticipates you
22:13
Speaker 3: will engage with. So it is possible to change your
22:16
Speaker 3: algorithm and stop engaging with stuff like that if you
22:18
Speaker 3: feel like it's dumbing you down, you know, seek out
22:21
Speaker 3: different content. But that is a conspiracy that people have had.
22:25
Speaker 3: And also it's not social media that's making us dumber.
22:27
Speaker 3: TikTok is informing us about the world like we are
22:30
Speaker 3: gathering information. I would say TikTok is making us smarter
22:33
Speaker 3: than you know a lot on Instagram. I love Instagram,
22:36
Speaker 3: but Instagram's a very visual in nature, and I would
22:38
Speaker 3: say YouTube is probably the closest competitor. There's a huge
22:41
Speaker 3: amount of information on there.
22:43
Speaker 1: Talk to me about the role and the evolution of
22:46
Speaker 1: the influencer.
22:48
Speaker 3: There was this whole period in the two thousands where
22:51
Speaker 3: there were these bloggers, really, most notably mommy bloggers, which
22:55
Speaker 3: is kind of a term that a lot of them
22:57
Speaker 3: don't like but sort of came to embrace because there
23:00
Speaker 3: was no better term. It was women blogging about their
23:02
Speaker 3: experiences of motherhood. They were the first people really on
23:06
Speaker 3: the Internet to monetize their personal brands at scale. So
23:09
Speaker 3: they you know, there were men writing about politics and
23:12
Speaker 3: tech and all these other things. They were monetizing their blogs,
23:14
Speaker 3: but they weren't They didn't have this cult of personality
23:16
Speaker 3: and they weren't monetizing their lives the way that mommy
23:19
Speaker 3: bloggers were. So mommy bloggers really sort of pioneered the
23:23
Speaker 3: influencer world along with MySpace celebrities, you know, Jeffree Stars,
23:26
Speaker 3: some of them are still with us, but they were
23:28
Speaker 3: sort of developing these cults of personality, and it wasn't
23:32
Speaker 3: until kind of YouTube and social media took off, really
23:37
Speaker 3: the rise of YouTube, vine and Instagram, Pinterest, like this
23:41
Speaker 3: sort of early twenty tens boom of digital media that
23:45
Speaker 3: you saw what we now consider the influencer industry to emerge.
23:47
Speaker 3: And even then the first half the twenty tens, they
23:50
Speaker 3: weren't called influencers yet, they were called these platforms. It
23:53
Speaker 3: was YouTuber, viner, instagrammer. And then once the marketing dollars
23:58
Speaker 3: really started pouring in the mid twenty fifth teens, that's
24:00
Speaker 3: when you saw the term influencer come to be and
24:03
Speaker 3: that sort of modern usage.
24:05
Speaker 1: I find it interesting that there's sort of a I
24:08
Speaker 1: don't want to say negative connotation, because it's not negative,
24:11
Speaker 1: but there's sort of like an iroll connotation associated with influencer.
24:16
Speaker 1: Living in la and being friends with some influencers and
24:20
Speaker 1: being in the digital world. They first of all, they
24:23
Speaker 1: work so hard, most of them like it's a very
24:26
Speaker 1: taxing job. So I don't feel the iroll in any way,
24:29
Speaker 1: But I do see the role of influence changing. When
24:33
Speaker 1: I look on Instagram the perfect aesthetic photo, and I
24:37
Speaker 1: think this is impart due to TikTok, But that perfect
24:39
Speaker 1: photo almost feels like twenty seventeen cosplay, Like I'm like, wait,
24:44
Speaker 1: what am I looking at?
24:45
Speaker 3: When I wrote this piece, it's called the Instagram Aesthetic
24:48
Speaker 3: is Over, and it was this piece I wrote in
24:51
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen. Yeah, with the rise of TikTok and all
24:53
Speaker 3: this stuff, and it.
24:54
Speaker 1: Was, well, you wrote this in twenty nineteen.
24:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was when it all started. Yeah, when I
24:59
Speaker 3: got that story, a bunch of those influencers that had
25:01
Speaker 3: built their careers off this really hypercurated look, they started
25:04
Speaker 3: to notice that their followers were stagnant. And twenty nineteen
25:07
Speaker 3: is also when TikTok started to really take off. It
25:09
Speaker 3: hadn't entered sort of the mainstream twenty twenty. I think
25:12
Speaker 3: the pandemic like made it go bonkers. But twenty nineteen
25:15
Speaker 3: is when the hype house launched Charlie Demilio took off.
25:17
Speaker 3: Like you just started to see more raw content, and yeah,
25:21
Speaker 3: it's totally changed. I don't think people want that hypercurated
25:25
Speaker 3: look for Miraad reasons. It's also just impossible to keep
25:27
Speaker 3: up with. It's unrelatable, and I think it burned a
25:30
Speaker 3: lot of influencers out trying to, you know, keep up
25:33
Speaker 3: with that. It's like you had to edit every picture,
25:35
Speaker 3: you had to look so perfect. And as we move
25:38
Speaker 3: towards video, it's a little bit harder. I mean, there's
25:40
Speaker 3: still so many aspirational people online. But that term influencer,
25:43
Speaker 3: I will say, I think it's very gendered. I think
25:46
Speaker 3: when you say influencer, it's just this notion of like
25:49
Speaker 3: influencers are just these vapid women, you know, out selling
25:54
Speaker 3: their bodies, and that's not what it is. It's actually
25:57
Speaker 3: extremely hard. Being a content creator is so much work
26:01
Speaker 3: and productizing yourself built. I mean you're building your own
26:03
Speaker 3: media company. Basically, you're building your own you're an entrepreneur,
26:07
Speaker 3: and but they're not thought of as entrepreneurs.
26:09
Speaker 1: The men are, Like I just interviewed Marquez Brownlee at
26:13
Speaker 1: the conference, and he's incredibly impressive. But there are also
26:19
Speaker 1: a bunch of women who have built empires just as
26:22
Speaker 1: large as his, and because they're in he's in tech,
26:27
Speaker 1: and they're in different industries and so they're not looked
26:30
Speaker 1: at as these like sort of boy wonders exactly.
26:35
Speaker 3: And the people building those massive, you know, brands were
26:40
Speaker 3: women and a lot of times it was around beauty
26:42
Speaker 3: and fashion. I mean I talked about this in my book,
26:44
Speaker 3: but I mean Ari L. Charnis like what she did
26:46
Speaker 3: at Nordstrom and the way I mean Nordstrom sort of
26:49
Speaker 3: latched onto the influencer sort of business really early and
26:52
Speaker 3: noticed very early the sales that it could drive. But
26:56
Speaker 3: there were these women that were selling out millions of
26:58
Speaker 3: dollars in product building this whole distribution networks for their
27:03
Speaker 3: you know, fashion or accessory lines and just and productizing themselves.
27:07
Speaker 3: And they have huge content studios, and they also employed
27:09
Speaker 3: dozens of people, sometimes even more than that, you know,
27:12
Speaker 3: But they're not looked at as entrepreneurs. They're laughed at
27:14
Speaker 3: because they're conventionally attractive beautiful women, and businessmen or whatever
27:20
Speaker 3: don't take them seriously, and tech reporters don't take them seriously.
27:23
Speaker 1: So I think we hear a lot about the corporate
27:26
Speaker 1: side of the story when it comes to social media,
27:29
Speaker 1: Like I immediately think about the Facebook movie right like
27:32
Speaker 1: about how it was founded. We hear less about influencers
27:36
Speaker 1: that have really shaped these platforms, who are like four
27:40
Speaker 1: standouts to you.
27:42
Speaker 3: Oh my god, such a good question. Yeah, there's so
27:45
Speaker 3: many interesting people. I mean, I think Hea theyre armstrong.
27:48
Speaker 3: Unfortunately she passed away recently. She was a blogger. I
27:52
Speaker 3: don't know that she shaped the platform, but what she
27:54
Speaker 3: did was she was one of the first to really
27:55
Speaker 3: monetize through sponsored posts on her page, and I think
28:01
Speaker 3: she changed blogging really and sort of how people thought
28:05
Speaker 3: about integrating branded content into their own feeds. I know
28:08
Speaker 3: that sounds silly, but like it was so pioneering. She
28:11
Speaker 3: really deserves credit other people. I mean, Michelle Fon, she
28:16
Speaker 3: was this massively popular like beauty blogger, and I think
28:19
Speaker 3: showed a lot of people on the YouTube side, like
28:21
Speaker 3: the level of business acumen that these people could have
28:24
Speaker 3: and kind of how big their business could become. Other women,
28:27
Speaker 3: I mean, I write about Julia Allison in my book
28:30
Speaker 3: as well. She also shaped Tumblr so much, like she
28:34
Speaker 3: had this really symbiotic relationship with Tumblr and her audience
28:37
Speaker 3: and kind of like all the time, like these tech
28:39
Speaker 3: companies sort of there was a push and pull with
28:43
Speaker 3: the way that they treated women. I mean, Charlie Dmilio
28:46
Speaker 3: is another good example, right, Like so much of TikTok's
28:49
Speaker 3: success and the way that it got into the mainstream
28:51
Speaker 3: was people being like, who is this girl that suddenly
28:54
Speaker 3: everyone's fascinated with and she's you know, sitting front row
28:58
Speaker 3: at the Louis Vuitton show or whatever. Right, and so,
29:01
Speaker 3: but I think these tech companies will almost always resent
29:03
Speaker 3: their power users and kind of have this tension with
29:05
Speaker 3: them because what's in the best interest of the power
29:07
Speaker 3: users is not always in the best interests of the platform,
29:10
Speaker 3: and so they never want to overly affiliate themselves with
29:13
Speaker 3: these people. But that at the same time, these people
29:15
Speaker 3: in these personalities, often women are the ones that are
29:17
Speaker 3: mainstreaming their platforms.
29:19
Speaker 1: And why do you think it's women?
29:22
Speaker 3: I mean, women are just the ones to build audiences.
29:24
Speaker 3: Like if you look at a lot of the like,
29:26
Speaker 3: I think it's about community. I think it's because women
29:29
Speaker 3: are shoppers, women are communicators, you know. Women. I look
29:32
Speaker 3: at someone like Amber Ven's box who transform the industry.
29:35
Speaker 3: She built reward Style. A lot of people know what
29:37
Speaker 3: it's like to know it. I don't think that Instagram
29:40
Speaker 3: would have built all those e commerce features had she
29:43
Speaker 3: not built reward Style into such a massive business. And
29:47
Speaker 3: I think that takes a woman to do a lot
29:49
Speaker 3: of this stuff. And she's another one. I guess that
29:51
Speaker 3: would be my fourth of Like, I mean, she's just
29:54
Speaker 3: like pioneered that whole dotion of monetizing Instagram when Instagram
29:58
Speaker 3: didn't want ads that that was at a time when
30:00
Speaker 3: Instagram was like, no, we hate all of that, we
30:02
Speaker 3: don't want any of that, and she recognized that the
30:04
Speaker 3: e commerce potential.
30:06
Speaker 1: You have this chapter titled Breakdown and Burnout, and it
30:11
Speaker 1: does sort of it talks about the Instagram aesthetic that
30:14
Speaker 1: is no longer as popular. When you think about gen
30:17
Speaker 1: z and what they're wanting from social media, what are
30:21
Speaker 1: they wanting? I see them use it completely differently than
30:24
Speaker 1: I do.
30:25
Speaker 3: One thing that younger users use it more is it's
30:28
Speaker 3: more integrated. They don't think of their sort of online
30:30
Speaker 3: selves as separate. They don't have that strong separation. I
30:33
Speaker 3: think because it's been integrated into their life for so long.
30:37
Speaker 3: They're very comfortable making digital connections. Do you remember, I mean,
30:41
Speaker 3: I think we're like around like both women and their authorities. Like,
30:44
Speaker 3: it used to be very weird to have like an
30:46
Speaker 3: online friend or be like, oh I met this person online,
30:49
Speaker 3: Like there was a stigma around that.
30:50
Speaker 1: Even told someone, they'd be like are you safe? Like
30:53
Speaker 1: call us yeah.
30:55
Speaker 3: One hundred percent whereas like young people, it's just it's
30:58
Speaker 3: so much more normalized. Online dating I think helped really
31:02
Speaker 3: shuffle that era in of it like meeting people, just
31:05
Speaker 3: the way it changed our social perceptions of the Internet.
31:07
Speaker 3: But they're much more likely to make online connections, to
31:09
Speaker 3: find communities online. They also do want more privacy. I
31:13
Speaker 3: think we grew up in this era of like everything
31:16
Speaker 3: you post is public, it's permanent, and it's going to
31:19
Speaker 3: the entire world.
31:21
Speaker 1: And you are drinking a beer on Facebook, not getting
31:24
Speaker 1: into college.
31:26
Speaker 3: Exactly, And I think now there's this understanding of like,
31:30
Speaker 3: we're all human in some ways, and I think, like
31:33
Speaker 3: I think just from a personal level, people don't want
31:36
Speaker 3: that right they want That's why you see young people
31:38
Speaker 3: gravitating towards more ephemeral forms of media, whether it's Snapchat,
31:42
Speaker 3: whether it's just the stories feature on Instagram that skews
31:45
Speaker 3: much younger and sort of more private spaces like discord
31:49
Speaker 3: and Facebook groups.
31:51
Speaker 1: Do you see AI revolutionizing social or just sort of
31:56
Speaker 1: being in addition to.
31:58
Speaker 3: No one hundred percent? I mean, if you think of
32:00
Speaker 3: AI already, that's what led to TikTok's success. Was there
32:04
Speaker 3: incredible algorithm built on this really sophisticated, you know AI systems,
32:10
Speaker 3: so it's already shaping our world through AI driven algorithms.
32:14
Speaker 3: I think AI creative tools are also becoming increasingly popular,
32:18
Speaker 3: things like the green screen feature. You know, like we've
32:21
Speaker 3: seen these new formats take off. People don't think of
32:23
Speaker 3: that as AI, but it really is. I mean, I
32:25
Speaker 3: use an AI editing tool that sort of strips the
32:27
Speaker 3: white space from all my videos because I pause too much.
32:31
Speaker 3: So I think as creative tools it'll be great. I
32:33
Speaker 3: think the image generation and video generation stuff is scary
32:36
Speaker 3: to people who do that sort of creative work. Same
32:38
Speaker 3: thing with writing, but it's so it's we're still really
32:41
Speaker 3: far off from when that stuff can truly replace, you know,
32:45
Speaker 3: human creatives. And I think there will always be a
32:47
Speaker 3: role for human creativity. So I don't think it's like
32:50
Speaker 3: the end of the world.
32:51
Speaker 1: I don't either. I've been interviewing a bunch of people
32:53
Speaker 1: on it, and I'm actually sort of hopeful.
32:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, me too. I'm a tech optimist though, so I
33:00
Speaker 3: you know, ultimately, I'm like, I think it'll be good.
33:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm a life optimist, so I get it. Do
33:07
Speaker 1: you think that there is anything out there that people
33:09
Speaker 1: are really craving when it comes to social that hasn't
33:12
Speaker 1: been popularized or even created yet.
33:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that there's signs that people want simultaneous
33:19
Speaker 3: experiences online, and I don't think any company has really
33:22
Speaker 3: successfully been able to productize that. I think things like
33:26
Speaker 3: Clubhouse and be Real, like Clubhouse offered these sort of
33:29
Speaker 3: simultaneous audio rooms. Be Real is all about sort of
33:32
Speaker 3: like taking this sort of simultaneous photos and experiencing these
33:35
Speaker 3: moments together and having a more closed network. I think
33:38
Speaker 3: people obviously want that, but I don't. Both Clubhouse and
33:41
Speaker 3: vi Real work up and down, you know, like it
33:42
Speaker 3: was a hype cycle and I don't see it. So
33:45
Speaker 3: I think that, like, I think people want more simultaneous
33:48
Speaker 3: connection and authentic forms of connection online, but I'm not
33:52
Speaker 3: sure any app has like truly unlocked that that sort
33:55
Speaker 3: of user desire.
33:58
Speaker 1: To me, the social interaction fuels real life interaction, Like
34:03
Speaker 1: there's still nothing that replaces your five senses. But yeah,
34:08
Speaker 1: that authentic connection online really does sort of strengthen what
34:12
Speaker 1: can be in real life totally. I've heard you say
34:16
Speaker 1: that Threads is like Disneyland. I want to know say
34:19
Speaker 1: what you mean by that, and b is that a
34:21
Speaker 1: hype cycle too, or you think Threads is here to stay?
34:24
Speaker 3: So I know, I meant Threads is like Disneyland in
34:27
Speaker 3: the sense that like it's very sterilized and very corporate,
34:31
Speaker 3: and you know, you saw every single brand on there
34:33
Speaker 3: in the first week, like interesting out there, Like it
34:37
Speaker 3: was so quickly embraced by brands, because brands have really
34:39
Speaker 3: fleed Twitter X, whatever you want to call it.
34:41
Speaker 1: There's something wholesome about it. I agree with you.
34:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's become such a cesspool. I don't generally
34:46
Speaker 3: use it anymore. I'm into Threads. We'll see. I think
34:49
Speaker 3: it's way too early. You know, Facebook does not have
34:51
Speaker 3: a good track record of building standalone products at all.
34:54
Speaker 3: But I think the initial use definitely shows a desire
34:58
Speaker 3: from people to to have some sort of tech space media.
35:02
Speaker 3: So I hope it sticks around. I'm rooting for Threads.
35:04
Speaker 3: Hate to root for Mark Zuckerberg, but I have to
35:07
Speaker 3: say in this instance, yeah, I like Threads.
35:10
Speaker 1: Well, I hate to root for Mark Zuckerberg just.
35:12
Speaker 3: Because he's already like so successful. He's already had Facebook.
35:15
Speaker 3: You know, he purchased Instagram at just the right time.
35:17
Speaker 3: Like he's fine. I would love to see a new entrepreneur,
35:21
Speaker 3: maybe not just like the usual kind of tech guys
35:24
Speaker 3: that we've already seen for the past decade. Like I
35:27
Speaker 3: would love someone new and interesting to build a Twitter
35:30
Speaker 3: replacement that really takes off and brings something new. I
35:34
Speaker 3: just don't think that'll happen.
35:35
Speaker 1: I was listening to an interview with Reid Hoffman, probably
35:39
Speaker 1: like a year and a half ago, and he was
35:40
Speaker 1: saying that there seems to be a trend that large
35:44
Speaker 1: social platforms take off every decade. So Facebook ten years later,
35:48
Speaker 1: was Instagram, ten years later was TikTok almost like today. Yeah,
35:54
Speaker 1: which is unbelievable.
35:56
Speaker 3: Interesting. It's such a good observation, And I wonder if
35:59
Speaker 3: that's just because like you need that generational turnover almost,
36:03
Speaker 3: you know, for something to really break out. And I
36:06
Speaker 3: think a lot of the core use cases of Twitter,
36:08
Speaker 3: by the way, have already been subsumed by TikTok. What
36:11
Speaker 3: do you mean by that, like just in terms of, like,
36:14
Speaker 3: you know, Twitter used to be this place where you
36:15
Speaker 3: would go and get news about the world, like that
36:17
Speaker 3: was a core use case for it. I think people
36:20
Speaker 3: a would creasingly go to TikTok, you know, for instance,
36:21
Speaker 3: when there was like the war in Ukraine or whatever,
36:24
Speaker 3: people were learning about it through TikTok videos and like
36:26
Speaker 3: when news breaks, I was a big I'm big vander
36:28
Speaker 3: Pump rules person, and when there was all this drama
36:32
Speaker 3: on that show, like I'm going on TikTok to look
36:34
Speaker 3: at analysis videos, I'm not really going on Twitter for
36:37
Speaker 3: that anymore.
36:38
Speaker 1: You're right, there was a replacement.
36:40
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
36:41
Speaker 1: The great observation. So I think a lot of us
36:44
Speaker 1: see our experience interacting with social media as something that
36:49
Speaker 1: almost happens to us. Like I hear a lot of
36:51
Speaker 1: the language around it that it's out of our control,
36:54
Speaker 1: that we're addicted and it's maybe not our faults. I
36:57
Speaker 1: don't know how I personally feel about it. I think
37:00
Speaker 1: like we have to be able to override, like these
37:04
Speaker 1: are just platforms, and that's like sort of blaming TV. Yeah,
37:09
Speaker 1: So you say the influential power users fundamentally reshaped how
37:14
Speaker 1: people use all these platforms, and you want people to
37:17
Speaker 1: keep that in mind. So can you sort of expand
37:20
Speaker 1: on that and how do you suggest that we take
37:22
Speaker 1: back control so to speak?
37:24
Speaker 3: Definitely, Yes, this is like a core theme of my
37:26
Speaker 3: book because so often power users use these platforms in
37:31
Speaker 3: ways that the founders never intended, you know, Like I
37:34
Speaker 3: mean the get ready with me format is like a
37:36
Speaker 3: good example, but like you know, there's so many ways,
37:38
Speaker 3: like just the monetization, like people sort of built this industry.
37:41
Speaker 3: I mean Vine is also a really good example, because
37:43
Speaker 3: the founders of Vine wanted it to be this like
37:45
Speaker 3: stop motion animation, artsy film ap and it was this
37:49
Speaker 3: place for pranks and jokes and you know, it told
37:52
Speaker 3: and the founders hated that and they didn't want it,
37:54
Speaker 3: and you know it was like too bad. This is
37:56
Speaker 3: how people want to use it. So I think that
37:59
Speaker 3: like we sort of collectively as users need to exert
38:02
Speaker 3: power over these platforms and call for changes that we want.
38:04
Speaker 3: I mean, harassment's a good example, right, Like we've seen
38:07
Speaker 3: a little bit of success for this. You have huge
38:09
Speaker 3: outcries from users saying we want more protections. I mean,
38:12
Speaker 3: this is why Twitter added things like the ability to
38:14
Speaker 3: limit replies or just like these small things. I mean
38:17
Speaker 3: Instagram didn't even add the ability to like filter comments
38:22
Speaker 3: for a really long time, and that was driven by
38:24
Speaker 3: users being like we need this power. Users people with
38:26
Speaker 3: huge audiences because they sort of experienced the worst of
38:28
Speaker 3: social platforms early, or like they're sort of they're so
38:31
Speaker 3: exposed to these platforms that they understand the problems of them,
38:34
Speaker 3: usually before it trickles down. But I just think we
38:37
Speaker 3: need more collective action on the part of users. There's
38:40
Speaker 3: been a lot of talk of like sort of content
38:42
Speaker 3: creators unionizing. I think that's really amazing if they can
38:46
Speaker 3: pull that off. I think even without that sort of structure,
38:50
Speaker 3: just any sort of collective bargaining you could say against
38:54
Speaker 3: these tech platforms and saying, look, we are millions of people,
38:58
Speaker 3: and a lot of us have a really strong interest
39:00
Speaker 3: in features that we want or limitations we want put
39:04
Speaker 3: on these platforms, So make it happen.
39:08
Speaker 1: So in Hillary Clinton's last book, there was a part
39:13
Speaker 1: where somebody asked in conversation, like, with all the knowledge
39:16
Speaker 1: that you have, all of the secure meetings and documents,
39:22
Speaker 1: like she has way more information than the average person has. Right,
39:25
Speaker 1: with all of that, what are you most fearful of
39:28
Speaker 1: in our country? And she said, the rules about the Internet,
39:34
Speaker 1: we are so far behind. I'm not sure how we
39:36
Speaker 1: will catch up. And she doesn't see the people that
39:40
Speaker 1: are politicians in our country really understanding the Internet.
39:44
Speaker 3: We need they all need to retire, Like I.
39:47
Speaker 1: Mean, we saw that with a lot of the hearings
39:49
Speaker 1: with Mark Zuckerberg, like the questions around Instagram and TikTok
39:53
Speaker 1: were just confounding. So yeah, I thought that was really interesting.
39:58
Speaker 1: Like she didn't say global warming, she didn't say all
40:01
Speaker 1: the things she said rules around the Internet. I've never
40:03
Speaker 1: been able to ask anybody why that is. What do
40:07
Speaker 1: you think she means by that?
40:09
Speaker 3: You know what, I think We're in the worst position
40:11
Speaker 3: that we could possibly be in right now because we
40:14
Speaker 3: desperately need thoughtful, comprehensive regulations. Data privacy reform is a
40:19
Speaker 3: really important one, and so there's this public desire for
40:23
Speaker 3: that and pressure. But we have these lawmakers in Congress
40:27
Speaker 3: who don't know how to turn their computers on, and
40:30
Speaker 3: then they're drafting legislation. A lot of this like protect
40:33
Speaker 3: the children kind of stuff that's going on right now
40:36
Speaker 3: is an example of extremely harmful and dangerous and terrible legislation.
40:41
Speaker 3: If you care about you know, a free and open
40:43
Speaker 3: internet and privacy and you know, users having power over
40:48
Speaker 3: their own online experiences, like that's it's bad. So you
40:50
Speaker 3: have this really bad legislation and bad stuff that's actually
40:54
Speaker 3: going to end up hurting us way down the rights.
40:56
Speaker 3: And it's also just going to silence speech, it's going
40:58
Speaker 3: to silence creativity. I think free speech is the most
41:01
Speaker 3: important thing that we have in this country, and there's
41:04
Speaker 3: this desire to do something about the bad stuff on
41:07
Speaker 3: the Internet, and so people want to regulate it, like
41:10
Speaker 3: regulate these platforms. But because the politicians don't understand how
41:13
Speaker 3: the platforms work, they sort of just bring down this
41:15
Speaker 3: banhammer and put things like that Utah law that they
41:17
Speaker 3: were trying to pass of like no one under eighteen
41:19
Speaker 3: can be on the Internet without the parental you know,
41:21
Speaker 3: parental oversight. It's like that's crazy and terrible for LGBTQ
41:25
Speaker 3: youth and other people. I mean, it's just that is
41:27
Speaker 3: a ridiculous piece of legislation. So I think we need
41:30
Speaker 3: people in power that are young. And I hate to
41:33
Speaker 3: say it because I'm not trying to sound ageist, but
41:36
Speaker 3: truly we need more Internet natives because you don't understand
41:39
Speaker 3: it unless you grew up truly immersed in this environment.
41:42
Speaker 3: And that's not to say that all young people understand
41:45
Speaker 3: the Internet better, but I think just people that use
41:48
Speaker 3: the Internet need to be regulating the Internet, and we
41:52
Speaker 3: need to stop scapegoating random platforms like TikTok, you know,
41:55
Speaker 3: with these fake outreach I mean, I wrote a piece
41:58
Speaker 3: about this for the Washington Post, but like that whole
42:00
Speaker 3: TikTok hearing, they were freaking out about TikTok challenges that
42:02
Speaker 3: don't even exist truly, that have never existed. And in fact,
42:07
Speaker 3: some of those challenges, as I reported, started on Facebook
42:10
Speaker 3: and YouTube. And so then we want to ban TikTok
42:12
Speaker 3: over made up challenges because they don't understand how TikTok works,
42:15
Speaker 3: And then we're not fixing the root problem, which is
42:17
Speaker 3: data privacy, which we have none of in this country.
42:20
Speaker 3: So people can exploit our data. It's like you care
42:21
Speaker 3: about China getting our data? They can buy it from
42:23
Speaker 3: a Facebook data brokers, you know, like third party, Like,
42:27
Speaker 3: we have no data protections in this country. So if
42:29
Speaker 3: they truly cared about the issues that they purport to
42:33
Speaker 3: care about, they would do something about it. But they
42:35
Speaker 3: don't because corporate power has an enormous way in Washington.
42:39
Speaker 3: So anyway, not to go on a.
42:40
Speaker 1: Political right here, I think that was fascinating. Thank you
42:43
Speaker 1: for breaking that down for me because I think partly
42:46
Speaker 1: what she meant with cybersecurity, which you mentioned right, like
42:48
Speaker 1: cyber terrorism, and I think also everything one hundred percent.
42:52
Speaker 3: I mean, but again, we need more privacy protections, we
42:55
Speaker 3: need security, and we're going the opposite We're going the
42:58
Speaker 3: opposite way. We're like children are being stripped of their
43:01
Speaker 3: privacy and so and I actually think that's something that
43:04
Speaker 3: no matter what your political beliefs say, I actually feel
43:07
Speaker 3: like we all feel this because we all use tech platforms, right,
43:09
Speaker 3: we all sort of feel this creep and we all
43:12
Speaker 3: want more safety online. And so we'll see what happens.
43:16
Speaker 3: But I'm a little bit worried. I kind of agree
43:19
Speaker 3: with her that we're in a bad position.
43:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for breaking it down. Okay, I have some
43:23
Speaker 1: rapid fire for us.
43:25
Speaker 3: Let's do it.
43:26
Speaker 1: I usually don't curse like this on the podcast, but
43:29
Speaker 1: fuck Mary, kill Instagram, TikTok Twitter.
43:32
Speaker 3: Oh my god, kill Twitter. It's already dead, so I'm
43:35
Speaker 3: putting it out of its misery. Yeah, I would say Mary,
43:40
Speaker 3: TikTok because I love it. I want to be with
43:42
Speaker 3: it forever. And fuck Instagram because I love Instagram. I'm
43:46
Speaker 3: with you. I'm like a millennial too. And the sense
43:48
Speaker 3: like Instagram is still just like I'll never give it up.
43:51
Speaker 3: I know people like to say on Instagram's over, like
43:53
Speaker 3: I'm still Instagram girl, but TikTok is so good, so
43:56
Speaker 3: I'm marrying it amazing.
43:58
Speaker 1: Who is your favorite Internet villain? Somebody that you love
44:01
Speaker 1: to hate?
44:03
Speaker 3: Oh? God? Also so many, like I mean, the thing
44:07
Speaker 3: is the worst villains on the Internet. I can't really defend.
44:10
Speaker 3: I will say Tricia Patus is such a complicated figure.
44:13
Speaker 3: I think she's a bit of a villain, but I
44:15
Speaker 3: just can't stop watching everything that she does.
44:19
Speaker 1: So this is actually in tangent with that. Who's an
44:22
Speaker 1: Internet villain? You think she'd get a second chance?
44:26
Speaker 3: Oh well, I mean, so she's not a villain, But
44:29
Speaker 3: Julia Allison was so villainized. She's in my book. This woman,
44:33
Speaker 3: what she was put through was so crazy when she
44:36
Speaker 3: was actually so ahead of the time. She was this
44:38
Speaker 3: influencer from like two thousand and eight, which like totally
44:42
Speaker 3: out of her time, one of the first people to
44:43
Speaker 3: sign deals with Next New Networks, which was YouTube's first
44:46
Speaker 3: MCN multi channel network. Just honestly, she deserves justice for
44:51
Speaker 3: Julia Allison, That's what I will say.
44:54
Speaker 1: That's Julia. Okay, what is a book you read that
44:57
Speaker 1: changed your life, something you think everybody should read.
45:00
Speaker 3: Lindy West's book Shrill changed my life. I love that book.
45:03
Speaker 3: It's about it's sort of just about like her. I mean,
45:06
Speaker 3: she's just a beautiful writer. And that book again, it
45:08
Speaker 3: like really informed my thinking about my own body and
45:11
Speaker 3: myself and my life is a woman and beauty standards
45:14
Speaker 3: and everything. And I just loved that book so much.
45:18
Speaker 1: Okay, I do a pretty smart question. So you let
45:22
Speaker 1: me know when to stop.
45:24
Speaker 3: Okay, stop.
45:26
Speaker 1: A lyric poem or mantra quote that you hold on
45:30
Speaker 1: too tightly.
45:32
Speaker 3: You know what I love. I love the Robert Frost
45:35
Speaker 3: line from the poem, but it's nothing gold can stay.
45:39
Speaker 3: And I think about that all the time because I
45:42
Speaker 3: think life is so fleeting, and the good parts of
45:44
Speaker 3: life are they'd go away so quickly. Everything, especially on
45:48
Speaker 3: the Internet, is so fleeting, and I just think every
45:50
Speaker 3: time I find something really beautiful happening online or some
45:53
Speaker 3: amazing community, I just think of nothing gold can stay,
45:57
Speaker 3: because nothing beautiful stays beautiful forever, and things fall apart
46:02
Speaker 3: or evolve or whatever, and I just try and remember
46:06
Speaker 3: that it's like live in the moment kind of.
46:07
Speaker 1: I think that's really nice. Okay, Taylor Lawrence, what is
46:11
Speaker 1: the smartest decision you've ever made.
46:14
Speaker 3: To not listen to my parents and to pursue, you know,
46:19
Speaker 3: to put a lot of myself out on the internet
46:22
Speaker 3: and start a blog. Not that my parents were anti blog,
46:25
Speaker 3: but they certainly, you know, they didn't. They didn't want
46:29
Speaker 3: me to be a full time writer. They wanted me to, like,
46:32
Speaker 3: you know, do a more corporate stable job. And I
46:36
Speaker 3: was like, yeah, I'm going to do this.
46:37
Speaker 1: Was it just like a gut instinct?
46:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just kind of thought, what's the worst that
46:42
Speaker 3: could happen? I was working retail, and so I thought,
46:46
Speaker 3: worst case, I'll go back to retail. You know, I
46:49
Speaker 3: know I'm good at that.
46:49
Speaker 1: So you I almost have chills when you say that,
46:53
Speaker 1: because you single handedly changed the industry. So the fact
46:57
Speaker 1: that you just bet on yourself and went for it
47:00
Speaker 1: is pretty remarkable.
47:02
Speaker 3: Well, that means a lot. And I'm very privileged to
47:05
Speaker 3: do that because not everyone could do that. I mean
47:06
Speaker 3: I did have debt, and I do have debt, and
47:08
Speaker 3: that was hard and it's not always been easy. But
47:11
Speaker 3: I think you just got to try things, and it
47:15
Speaker 3: doesn't work out. It doesn't work out. I don't know,
47:16
Speaker 3: but you can't live life and regret, so I've always
47:18
Speaker 3: tried to kind of live by that.
47:24
Speaker 1: Okay, you know what time it is. Today's a good day.
47:28
Speaker 1: To have a good day. I'll see you next week