Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd
Speaker 1: and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 1: So some of y'all might know that I live in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C, the capital city of the United States, and
Speaker 1: when I'm not making podcasts about technology and the Internet
Speaker 1: and what it all means here on there are No
Speaker 1: Girls on the Internet. I'm also a co host for
Speaker 1: a podcast called The City Cast DC alongside my friend
Speaker 1: Mike Shaper, a columnist for Politico, where we dig into
Speaker 1: the everyday life of living in Washington, d C. To
Speaker 1: help folks feel even more connected to this city that
Speaker 1: we love so much. And if you don't live in
Speaker 1: d C, but you're thinking, wow, that sounds very cool.
Speaker 1: I wish they had a podcast like that in my city.
Speaker 1: They might, because there are city Casts podcasts all over
Speaker 1: the country. And I wanted to share this episode with
Speaker 1: you because even though it's about Washington, d C, it
Speaker 1: hits a lot of the conversations that we have here
Speaker 1: on There Are No Girls on the Internet, Questions about
Speaker 1: what it means to be a visible woman of color
Speaker 1: on the Internet, the good and the bad, and the
Speaker 1: everything that comes with it. In this episode, we talked
Speaker 1: to Jade, the human behind the super popular DC Instagram
Speaker 1: account clock Out d C, where Jade gives real nobs,
Speaker 1: never bought takes about what kind of events, restaurants, and
Speaker 1: bars are worth your time or not worth your time
Speaker 1: in the DC area. Working entirely by herself, Jade has
Speaker 1: built up a huge following and influence in d C,
Speaker 1: but along with it comes challenges that as a fellow
Speaker 1: Woman of Color creator trying to bootstrap by way in media,
Speaker 1: I know far too well. So I hope you'll enjoy
Speaker 1: my conversation with Jade for city Cast DC and be
Speaker 1: sure to subscribe. You can go to city cast dot
Speaker 1: fm to find a city cast podcast for your city,
Speaker 1: and as always, thanks for listening today on city Cast DC.
Speaker 1: I'm not really an influencer, cool celebrity. I am Jade,
Speaker 1: your neighbor. Jade will Mack never expected her clock Out
Speaker 1: d C page to grow as quickly as it did,
Speaker 1: but here we are. She's got seventy followers and her
Speaker 1: Instagram stories get thousands of views per day. Sounds pretty great,
Speaker 1: right well, as it often is on the Internet. With
Speaker 1: that success, came backlash, and Jade's here to tell us
Speaker 1: about how she navigates all of it. It's Wednesday, October.
Speaker 1: I'm Bridget Dad and this is City Cast DC. When
Speaker 1: we were talking about doing this interview, was like, boy,
Speaker 1: do I know a little something about the things that
Speaker 1: Jade is saying? Um, so really decided to be connecting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what does it feel like to be just one single
Speaker 1: person who runs this project that you just started out
Speaker 1: to be like a fun thing that is now blown
Speaker 1: up in d C and kind of taken over your life?
Speaker 1: What does that experience feel like for you? Well, the
Speaker 1: word cloud of this entire experience, we're probably like wild, grateful, surprising,
Speaker 1: and scared, like all the time scared, I guess. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been really fun though, I would say you always
Speaker 1: are learning stuff. You meet so many people. But yeah,
Speaker 1: who knew? Who knew that this would be my pandemic
Speaker 1: hobby that just somehow like blew up And I started
Speaker 1: it before the pandemic and it just kind of just
Speaker 1: gained this momentum and steam and here we are now
Speaker 1: seventy thousand followers later. Wow, Yeah, I mean it's gotta
Speaker 1: be Does it ever feel like a double edged sword
Speaker 1: where it's something that you're so grateful to have built
Speaker 1: and something so happy to have in your life, but
Speaker 1: also comes with this baggage that can be a real
Speaker 1: particular experience to unpack. Oh, for sure, I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of like the stink that eats itself because you know,
Speaker 1: it's fun that you have to share this stuff to
Speaker 1: people about things to do in events, but that means
Speaker 1: that as you grow, more people see the stuff that
Speaker 1: you share. That means that if somebody doesn't like it,
Speaker 1: the more chances of they will let you know, and
Speaker 1: the more chances of you getting bullied or quote canceled
Speaker 1: or whatever that is. So the stakes get higher as
Speaker 1: things build. I guess that being said, the impact you
Speaker 1: can have also gets greater too, So it's hard. I've
Speaker 1: had some really great instances where there is this woman,
Speaker 1: she was a recent Afghan vacuee and she messaged me
Speaker 1: and she was like, I never saw my culture until
Speaker 1: I moved to d C and I saw you shared
Speaker 1: an Afghan film festival. Thank you for letting these find
Speaker 1: like a home in d C. Powerful amazing. The Armed
Speaker 1: Forces Retirement Home emailed me for etically because they had
Speaker 1: this volunteer group pull out, and I posted something asking,
Speaker 1: you know, my community, like hey, like we send Christmas
Speaker 1: cards to this group, does anybody want to help, like
Speaker 1: volunteer at this retirement home And twenty people from Instagram
Speaker 1: spontaneously helped this retirement home and they sent me a photo.
Speaker 1: So the impact is like wild that, like people are
Speaker 1: willing to show up, do stuff, find their own a
Speaker 1: community and things. But that being said, if you share
Speaker 1: the wrong thing or people just have bad days, you
Speaker 1: can get cyber bullied and attacked very quickly and it
Speaker 1: can go very south. I am just sort of in
Speaker 1: my mind internally vigorously nodding and something I noticed about
Speaker 1: clock out d C. You have been so successful at
Speaker 1: effectively building this platform and growing this audience that one
Speaker 1: might get the impression that you're working with a team,
Speaker 1: that you've got, you know, an assistant, a social media person,
Speaker 1: a PR person, but really it's mostly just a one
Speaker 1: woman show yourself, right, It is solely a one woman show.
Speaker 1: For example, I sold these t shirts uh call of
Speaker 1: views on of my employer because it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a joke because I have a full time job, right
Speaker 1: and I have to shipped them, and like two nights ago,
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, great, So how to exactly do
Speaker 1: we print shipping labels? And how exactly do I put
Speaker 1: them in bubblers? And how am I going to drop
Speaker 1: fifty envelopes to the mailbox? And I have to get
Speaker 1: a new supplier because my first supplier won't be able
Speaker 1: to make all a hundred shirts and cool, right, So
Speaker 1: I'm not only a content creator now, I'm also like
Speaker 1: a little like Amazon warehouse employee. Great, and so it's
Speaker 1: like one in the morning and my dogs looking at
Speaker 1: me and playing Celine diond like with packaging shape. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a one woman show completely. And so being a
Speaker 1: one woman show, I think it creates this attitude where
Speaker 1: people feel more entitled to message because you're so good
Speaker 1: at what you do. It gives the impression that, oh,
Speaker 1: she has a team, like they should be on this,
Speaker 1: and so they don't realize said in fact, that they're
Speaker 1: messaging one person with a full time job, you know,
Speaker 1: and so they might be like, oh, you didn't talk
Speaker 1: about this, or you talked about that in the wrong way,
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, I'm one person. So I often
Speaker 1: feel like when you're a woman particularly a woman of
Speaker 1: color who creates something online, people feel a lot more
Speaker 1: comfortable kind of calling you out, and they don't realize
Speaker 1: that like you are one person who's a human. Right,
Speaker 1: You're gonna make mistakes, You're gonna miss things. I think
Speaker 1: it goes both ways. Right, as a person of color,
Speaker 1: as a soul entreneur, preneure, people are harp on because
Speaker 1: you're an oppressed person. You should know better about how
Speaker 1: this affects us, and we would expect better of you
Speaker 1: to be able to learn quicker and to do better.
Speaker 1: I think that is the onus. Like white girl Jessica
Speaker 1: or whatever, we can just call this person, right, she
Speaker 1: should learn better because she should have read like some
Speaker 1: anti racist book. But you know, like you should know
Speaker 1: better because inherently, like you've been oppressed before and we
Speaker 1: expect this from you. I think that's where the burden
Speaker 1: is more on. I agree, I agree, And I also
Speaker 1: think there's just something about being a solo woman of
Speaker 1: color creative entrepreneur based in d C that I definitely
Speaker 1: feel because like I rep DC, my Instagram handles, etcetera, etcetera,
Speaker 1: all like in d C, d C, d C, I
Speaker 1: think that DC is such a particular kind of city
Speaker 1: because we are really plugged in for the most part
Speaker 1: to like political and social conversations, and so even if
Speaker 1: you just started this project to be fun things to
Speaker 1: do around the city, there is an expectation that you
Speaker 1: will be so plugged into what's going on in so
Speaker 1: many different socio political communities. I almost feel like it
Speaker 1: creates an impossible expectation because no one person can be
Speaker 1: plugged into, you know, every cultural and political and social
Speaker 1: community and happening citywide. Yeah, no, completely agree. I think
Speaker 1: the nail on the head like there are so many
Speaker 1: causes to support and everything is also so nuanced to
Speaker 1: and so many events and things to do also share
Speaker 1: different purposes as well and spaces for them. Two, I
Speaker 1: personally won't share spaces where I wouldn't feel comfortable going
Speaker 1: to that event or I don't like those people. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to share that event. That's different than me
Speaker 1: being like I don't believe in this cause or whatever
Speaker 1: or something like that. I think that's a little bit different.
Speaker 1: And I personally not comfortable with certain things and making
Speaker 1: the trudgment call on and I hope people aren't looking
Speaker 1: towards me to make that call for them. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's an important line to keep of. Like I
Speaker 1: am not your conscious, Like I'm telling you fun things
Speaker 1: to do in the city. Don't look to me to
Speaker 1: be your like moral arbiter of what causes you should
Speaker 1: or should not support or champion. That's not what I'm
Speaker 1: doing here. I'm doing something different. I think maybe it's
Speaker 1: partially because like the algorithm, and I know everyone says
Speaker 1: this word in the sky, like the algorithm, but because
Speaker 1: we're so used to seeing things that we like all
Speaker 1: the time. I we see something we don't like, they
Speaker 1: just go full fledge into attack mode on their net.
Speaker 1: That's I think this is a common thing. And then
Speaker 1: the second thing too is that like on the Internet,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like black and white, and people
Speaker 1: don't really have a lot of patients for nuance on
Speaker 1: the internet. Yeah, that it's definitely. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: something I know far too much about, but that's definitely
Speaker 1: a true thing. That algorithms and platforms are biased towards
Speaker 1: polarized ways of seeing things and compartmentalized ways of seeing things,
Speaker 1: and so social media platforms are not set up to
Speaker 1: honor nuance or humor or you know, context and things
Speaker 1: like that. It's better at flattening those things out and
Speaker 1: taking those conversations out of context. I guess I'll say, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, I will say just going back the more
Speaker 1: generally speaking, I was kind of surprised at how far
Speaker 1: I've grown for somebody who decided not to do ads.
Speaker 1: Why what? What drove this decision? What drove this decision?
Speaker 1: So I actually started the tire page because I was
Speaker 1: I don't know how much you know about my back
Speaker 1: story about this entire page. It was never like I'm
Speaker 1: going to one day wake up and be the anti influencer.
Speaker 1: I was bartending Fridays and Saturdays and Sundays, and I
Speaker 1: found that, like the Tuesday Night section of the Washington
Speaker 1: Post with Washington and stuff, I didn't really have a
Speaker 1: lot that I was interested in. So I would start
Speaker 1: looking for my own events list. So I would just
Speaker 1: kind of start coming up with lists of things to do,
Speaker 1: and then I would send out this email to my friends,
Speaker 1: which and I eventually made into an Instagram and that's
Speaker 1: what started this entire endeavor. But because I came from
Speaker 1: this as like I'm looking for things to do now,
Speaker 1: I want to give people like an authentic review because
Speaker 1: they probably only have limited time and money like I do,
Speaker 1: and they should have a real, real expectation going in.
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful that's where you landed, because I have
Speaker 1: been burned on exactly what you were just talking about,
Speaker 1: this sort of cottage industry of influencer marketing, where I
Speaker 1: have been burned on sponsored social media ads that make
Speaker 1: certain immersive, artistic experiences in the city look dope, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my god, like this looks amazing, I
Speaker 1: gotta go. And so then you buy the ticket and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, there's a little pricing, but all right.
Speaker 1: Then you get there and you're like, oh, it's just
Speaker 1: an Instagram photo opportunity. It wasn't really a really good event.
Speaker 1: And so your page is just so different because it
Speaker 1: allows for a little honesty to be injected into the conversation.
Speaker 1: No exactly, And like I think at this point, all
Speaker 1: the PR people and all the restaurant owners, we have
Speaker 1: a good repertoire where they know that if they invite
Speaker 1: me to an event. Sometimes before there used to be
Speaker 1: kind of this disclaimer, like if we give you free tickets,
Speaker 1: there is an expectation that you have an Instagram post
Speaker 1: and three videos or something in exchange for these comp tickets,
Speaker 1: and I will always reply back sorry, I don't do
Speaker 1: exchanges like this. I will go as a media preview
Speaker 1: and I will give my fear honest opinion, but I
Speaker 1: will not do some exchange for tickets or I would
Speaker 1: rather just go and pay the full price with my
Speaker 1: friends at a later date, so I think. And but
Speaker 1: I kind of just started the page in that premise,
Speaker 1: or I didn't realize that that people would really support
Speaker 1: that kind of a model and that it would grow
Speaker 1: so big under that premise, and it has. So that's
Speaker 1: I think that's really nice to note that that's what
Speaker 1: people want in d C. Yeah, because as you said,
Speaker 1: in d C, we work a lot. We might be
Speaker 1: working up side job or side hustle or passion. We
Speaker 1: don't really have a lot of time for whack events.
Speaker 1: We don't really have a lot of time to show
Speaker 1: up and be like, oh, I kind of got snookered
Speaker 1: into this event. That wasn't good because somebody online got
Speaker 1: free tickets somewhere and convinced me to spend my money
Speaker 1: which is limited to show up and go. That's always
Speaker 1: been kind of the biggest premises the pay to play,
Speaker 1: no pay to play and no no sponsor content. Let's
Speaker 1: get a quick break at her back. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: know that you took a break from the project this summer.
Speaker 1: What prompted that break? I was just getting very burnt out.
Speaker 1: I don't think people realized. For a period of time,
Speaker 1: I was probably I was responding to about I want
Speaker 1: to say, between two hundred or three d d ms
Speaker 1: a day because I don't know. I was like people fanger,
Speaker 1: like your famous I'm like no, Like I'm your neighbor,
Speaker 1: and like we go grocery shopping at the same store.
Speaker 1: So I just would started just dm ng a lot
Speaker 1: of people back, and then it just realized the point.
Speaker 1: I was like, you know what, as this page grows,
Speaker 1: Like when it was a page of a thousand people
Speaker 1: and I had fifty d m s, that's a lot
Speaker 1: different now when you're a page of seventy thousand people
Speaker 1: and you have three hundred d ms. I think one
Speaker 1: day when I COVID in December, I responded to about
Speaker 1: eight hundred d m s in a day. That was
Speaker 1: the most dms I responded. So if we think about
Speaker 1: one DM takes about one one minute to respond to
Speaker 1: you can imagine the amount of screen time I would have,
Speaker 1: And it just started to become very unsustainable, both to
Speaker 1: d M all these people back to both go to events,
Speaker 1: to reply, to find stuff, to the newsletter, to work
Speaker 1: at washingtony In on top of Rob Wade was happening,
Speaker 1: Ukraine was happening. You know, there's just so many things right,
Speaker 1: and so every time there's an event, every time there's
Speaker 1: something terrible that happens, you share something, people get mad.
Speaker 1: You don't share something else, they get mad at you.
Speaker 1: They emotionally dump on you, they yell at you. So
Speaker 1: it was just reaching a poor where I was just
Speaker 1: getting very burnt out and never still just get awful
Speaker 1: DM sometimes in the middle of the night, you know,
Speaker 1: you're terrible, You're ugly, you should go die, like you know,
Speaker 1: it was just like I wanted to leave my Instagram
Speaker 1: and then I just took the time to like really
Speaker 1: refocus on my friends and my family and my work
Speaker 1: life and all these other aspects. And in June I
Speaker 1: think I also gained like twenty thou followers, and so
Speaker 1: I think that was also part of it. Where you
Speaker 1: go everybody dreams about going viral, but it's actually awful.
Speaker 1: It's just like literally it's just thinking like a tidal way,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, ah, like all these people like and
Speaker 1: like crazy chaos, like too much, too much. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: always say, we're not meant to have access to stranger's
Speaker 1: opinions about us in that way, like a wave of
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of people at one time sharing their
Speaker 1: opinion about you. Humans are not Our brains are not
Speaker 1: designed to absorb that experience in a healthy way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I so Natz Park has forty one thousand people, that's
Speaker 1: the capacity. And I remember I was there for like
Speaker 1: Lady Gaga and Bad Bunny and I looked around. I
Speaker 1: was like, there are more people that follow my Instagram
Speaker 1: than are currently at this concert, And like the conceptualize
Speaker 1: that is wild. And like I remember one day there
Speaker 1: were like fifteen thousand people that looked at my Instagram
Speaker 1: story and one week when I talked about the hip
Speaker 1: hop party that the African American Museum was hosting, my
Speaker 1: reach was one million on Instagram analytics. That is wild.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it really goes to show the sort
Speaker 1: of what you were saying, that double edged sort of
Speaker 1: this platform. How it's the impact of that and the
Speaker 1: fact that you were able to curate that yourself and
Speaker 1: build that yourself is amazing. But also that's a lot
Speaker 1: of people. That's a lot of people who are all
Speaker 1: have their expectations and their versions of you in their
Speaker 1: head that they feel that you need to be accountable
Speaker 1: to you. So, now that you're back in action after
Speaker 1: your break, what are you doing differently this time around
Speaker 1: to make sure that you feel like that you can
Speaker 1: approach this work from a good place. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: kind of made this large statement about I'm not your enemy,
Speaker 1: like I don't want to be your enemy. If you
Speaker 1: have a problem, email me and we will get coffee.
Speaker 1: That's kind of this has always been my house rules.
Speaker 1: Like with anyone, the second thing is emailing me. I
Speaker 1: think that email allows for more breathing room. I think
Speaker 1: dms have more of this, like automatically you need to
Speaker 1: respond to And also I think that kind of creates
Speaker 1: kind of like what things are DM worthy versus email worthy.
Speaker 1: Less people have been deming. I think only like ten
Speaker 1: people have DM to me in a week. So just
Speaker 1: trying to limit some of those those ways of public
Speaker 1: facing interacting and also doing more events. So if people
Speaker 1: really want to hang out, like, there are places we
Speaker 1: can go and do that in real life. Yeah, here's too,
Speaker 1: creating the conditions for savoring your real life while also
Speaker 1: being intentional about your online life. Yeah for sure, Jade.
Speaker 1: Where can folks I mean, at this point, who's not
Speaker 1: following clock DC? But just in case you're the one
Speaker 1: person listening, who who's not following? How can folks follow
Speaker 1: clock f DC? It's at clock out DC on Instagram.
Speaker 1: Five and one people in Washington, d C follow clock
Speaker 1: out d C. The Steads every time you say one
Speaker 1: of these nuts are like, oh my god, that's so
Speaker 1: many people. Wow. Well it's a testament to what you've
Speaker 1: been able to build. Thank you so much for being here, Jade.
Speaker 1: It has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: That's all for today here on city Cast DC. Be
Speaker 1: sure to subscribe to clock out DC on Instagram, and
Speaker 1: while you're there, check out our page two. We're at
Speaker 1: city cast Underscore DC and that's also our handle on Twitter.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. We'll be back tomorrow
Speaker 1: morning with even more news from around the city. Talk
Speaker 1: to you then. But yeah, being on the internet, man,
Speaker 1: I never knew what read it was until like two
Speaker 1: years ago, and I'm like, has it improved my life?
Speaker 1: I don't know, like