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Speaker 1: Alsone media.

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Speaker 2: In the late nineteen fifties, the image of the docile,

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Speaker 2: white American housewife was everywhere. The Donna Reed show made

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Speaker 2: plain the expectations of the ideal womanhood of the day,

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Speaker 2: one that strayed significantly from women joining the workforce during

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Speaker 2: World War iiO just a decade earlier.

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Speaker 3: Children never raises her voice and never screams at them.

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Speaker 2: Any mother who can get through a day with children

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Speaker 2: without exploding is a saint.

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Speaker 3: Well, of course, I don't believe in screaming.

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Speaker 2: A rubber hose is just as effective and it doesn't

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Speaker 2: leave any marks. Of course, Donna Reed produced this show,

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Speaker 2: but that wasn't a part of the narrative. And with

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Speaker 2: Jim Crow laws still in effect for another decade in

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Speaker 2: the seventy year Chinese Exclusion Act just being rolled back

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Speaker 2: earlier in the fifties, you'd be hard pressed to see

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Speaker 2: anyone but a white woman in American media. The fifties

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Speaker 2: were a time of hyper consumption, of the widespread adoption

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Speaker 2: of television, of telling company your husband just has a

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Speaker 2: little headache when he retreats with a bottle of scotch,

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Speaker 2: having flashbacks to Korea. It was a very different time

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Speaker 2: from now. Well, actually you couldn't get abortions then either.

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Speaker 2: But one thing holds true in America. When faced with discomfort, uncertainty,

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Speaker 2: and oppression, there will always be someone telling you the

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Speaker 2: solution is to simply buy stuff. And it certainly doesn't

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Speaker 2: hurt if the person telling you to buy stuff is

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Speaker 2: a sexy cartoon man.

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Speaker 3: Enter Mister Klean gets red of dirt and gum and

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Speaker 3: greet and just a man.

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Speaker 4: Mister Clean will clean your whole hol Is.

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Speaker 2: It everything that dinner mister Hotty himself, the brawnie paper

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Speaker 2: towel guy wishes the mister Clean advertising has been strikingly

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Speaker 2: consistent since his debut back in the nineteen fifties. If

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Speaker 2: you live under a he's a bald guy with white eyebrows,

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Speaker 2: huge arms, a white shirt.

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Speaker 1: And a single earring. Hello, sorry to it. No one

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Speaker 1: wants to hear it. But he is daddy and he

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Speaker 1: always has been.

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Speaker 2: And from his very inception, mister Clean has been turning

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Speaker 2: on the housewives he's been consistently marketed to. In fact,

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Speaker 2: in that first jingle, a cartoon fifties housewife with a

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Speaker 2: fuck ass little bob is overwhelmed by the tall hunky

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Speaker 2: mister Clean as he makes everything in her home Sparkle.

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Speaker 2: Shout out to the YouTube channel brand Management for aggregating

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Speaker 2: all of this. As the years continued, mister Clean would

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Speaker 2: appear as either a sexy cartoon or a sexy human

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Speaker 2: man who would tower over cuck husbands and show him

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Speaker 2: what a real man was.

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Speaker 1: I am serious.

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Speaker 5: This happens in the ads, but never bragged or.

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Speaker 2: Made fun of people for not cleaning as well as

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Speaker 2: he could, and customers seemed to love the guy in

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Speaker 2: their own unique, horny little ways. For the record, do

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Speaker 2: I think that mister Clean is kind of like an idealized,

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Speaker 2: slightly queer coded fantasy of a man who simply cleans.

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Speaker 1: Up after himself.

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Speaker 5: Sort of?

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Speaker 1: Yes.

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Speaker 2: One of mister Clean's weirder moments came pretty early in

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Speaker 2: his story in nineteen sixty two, when a magazine contest

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Speaker 2: was held to give mister Clean a first name. The

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Speaker 2: ad came with suggestive images for mister Clean's new persona,

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Speaker 2: including at least one racist option if you're being generous.

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Speaker 2: Others included mister Clean's take on pirates, weightlifters nights, and

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Speaker 2: even just a mister Clean with a big lipsticky kiss

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Speaker 2: on his cheek. Check out the copy they write to

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Speaker 2: pitch these first names with the personas Waldo means powerful

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Speaker 2: and mighty, and mister Clean has the might that makes

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Speaker 2: right of the toughest clean jobs, the power to overpower

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Speaker 2: any kind of dirt. Alvin, Alvin is beloved by all

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Speaker 2: men and ladies, brides and babies, recluses, shuntooses, the.

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Speaker 1: Complete who hooses.

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Speaker 2: Everybody loves mister Clean, the world's best cleaning man. Bryce

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Speaker 2: means speedy. You can say that twice, because no one

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Speaker 2: ever cleans so much so fast as mister Clean, the

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Speaker 2: original minute man. Guys, I think mister Clean comes fast.

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Speaker 2: I think that's what they're saying. So he's always sexy,

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Speaker 2: but he is sometimes different kinds of sexy. Later in

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Speaker 2: this decade, he was rebranded as sexy mean.

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Speaker 5: Mean mister Clean.

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Speaker 1: What made mister Clean on mean lean?

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Speaker 2: He hates dirt. Eventually the character was translated to Cgi

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Speaker 2: and he got a backstory this whole weird thing.

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Speaker 1: He was found by farmers.

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Speaker 2: As a CGI baby who was washing the steps with

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Speaker 2: a magic eraser whatever. By twenty sixteen, parent company Procter

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Speaker 2: and Gamble hired former Twilight Honk kellen Lutz to promote

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Speaker 2: a mister Clean lookalike contest where buff weirdos from all

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Speaker 2: over competed for their chance to appear in ads. But baby,

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Speaker 2: there's no beating the real thing, and so the next

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Speaker 2: year they went for it. By twenty seventeen, mister Clean

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Speaker 2: had made the next logical jump, entering himself into the

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Speaker 2: annals of horny history. He had a full time social

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Speaker 2: media manager who was working with advertising agencies in Harmony

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Speaker 2: to take away the wink wink and go full fuck.

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Speaker 2: During the twenty seventeen Super Bowl in lieu of booking

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Speaker 2: Elvis Presto as musical act again like they should have,

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Speaker 2: the brand aired an ad that featured CGI mister Clean

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Speaker 2: doing a seductive cleaning dance with a woman in her home,

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Speaker 2: culminating with and its moments like these where I simply

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Speaker 2: can't stand working in an audio medium. It culminates in

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Speaker 2: this unbelievably detailed shot of mister Clean's toned ass in

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Speaker 2: those white little pants. It's wild, and the clickbait media

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Speaker 2: responded in kind, saying the next day, mister Clean's erotic

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Speaker 2: Super Bowl ad makes us uncomfortable.

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Speaker 3: The mister Clean super Bowl commercial was too damn sexy

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Speaker 3: and people loved it.

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Speaker 2: Moms everywhere are losing their minds over the Mister Clean

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Speaker 2: super Bowl commercial, and mister Clean's social media team was

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Speaker 2: fast to react to this attention. The next day, they

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Speaker 2: posted an old school meme of a shy Mister Clean

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Speaker 2: bashfully covering his.

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Speaker 3: Face with the writing that look when you realize your

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Speaker 3: mom will see your sexy super Bowl ad.

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Speaker 2: But while mister Clean was making hay of this big moment,

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Speaker 2: the brand was far from alone. By the time this

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Speaker 2: twenty seventeen burst of web activity happened, the Mister Clean

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Speaker 2: brand or the Mister Clean man the lines were getting Hazier.

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Speaker 2: Was following a carefully developed playbook in which beloved twentieth

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Speaker 2: century American brands, ones that had been developed to become

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Speaker 2: friends with their consumers, took things one step further and

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Speaker 2: they started trying to slide into their customers dms more

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Speaker 2: like mister Cream Right, sorry, sentient sometimes horny brands on

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Speaker 2: social media. Your sixteenth minute starts now going Welcome back

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Speaker 2: to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take a look

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Speaker 2: back at the internet's main characters, talk to them about

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Speaker 2: how their big moments affected them and what it says

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Speaker 2: about us and the Internet. My name is Jamie Loftus,

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Speaker 2: and I was genuinely, perhaps embarrassingly starstruck to talk to

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Speaker 2: some of the social media managers who are at the

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Speaker 2: heart of this series, because yes, this is going to

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Speaker 2: be a multi part investigation. It was really cool and

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Speaker 2: surreal to talk to the people behind the pretty controversial

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Speaker 2: practice of how we have come to interact with brands

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Speaker 2: on social media from the twenty tens into now. And

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Speaker 2: while you may be sitting over there saying, Jamie, no

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Speaker 2: need to explain this to me, it makes total sense

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Speaker 2: to me that the American experiment would lead to the

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Speaker 2: Twitter account for fake orangeroduce beverage, Sunny Delight, threatening suicide.

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Speaker 2: There is actually quite a bit of history that got

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Speaker 2: us there, and even more history since that makes me

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Speaker 2: suspect that if Sonny D made that same threat today,

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Speaker 2: probably no one would care. In this three possibly four

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Speaker 2: part series, let's see what happens.

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Speaker 1: We're going to go deep, mister clean deep.

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Speaker 2: Oh my god, on how if you dare look close enough.

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Speaker 2: The duo Lingo Owl begging pop star Dua Liba to

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Speaker 2: fill a pool with her piss so he can swim

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Speaker 2: in it. A thing that truly happened may in fact

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Speaker 2: be the logical endpoint of American marketing. And while it

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Speaker 2: takes until the early twenty tens to become a part

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Speaker 2: of the web to social media history, there are traces

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Speaker 2: of parasocial violence and sex that go back far before then.

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Speaker 2: And each week we'll be talking to someone who's work

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Speaker 2: got people horny or clench fisted with rage at products,

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Speaker 2: while taking a look at a different facet of why

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Speaker 2: we're here today. This week, we are talking to the

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Speaker 2: creator of the account that started it all, the Denny's

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Speaker 2: Tumblr account run in the early to mid twenty tens

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Speaker 2: by Serenity Disco, who and we'll get into it, still

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Speaker 2: works in tech and advertising now, but now runs an

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Speaker 2: app that encourages self care and avoidance of capitalism driven

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Speaker 2: online burnout.

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Speaker 1: Could these two things be connected?

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Speaker 3: Yes.

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Speaker 2: In futures of this mini series, I'll be speaking with

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Speaker 2: other heavy hitters in this space as it continues to

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Speaker 2: grow and contract with time. I'll be talking to the

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Speaker 2: person who ran the cyberbully Wendy's Twitter account. I'll be

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Speaker 2: talking to the person who ran the lockdown era nihilistic

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Speaker 2: dread of the stakem's account. And yes, listener, I even

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Speaker 2: have a conversation with the person currently running the Horny

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Speaker 2: and possibly canonically dead at the time of this recording,

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Speaker 2: fictional mascot.

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Speaker 1: Of the Duo Lingo app.

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Speaker 2: But to get there, you're going to need a little

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Speaker 2: setup on how American marketing has worked and changed over time.

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Speaker 2: How this industry went from a government project turned mad

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Speaker 2: men suited Scotch soaked nightmare all the way to outsourcing

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Speaker 2: the best work in the advertising industry today to underpaid

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Speaker 2: twenty sothter internet natives working check to check. So come

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Speaker 2: with me if you dare to World War One, I

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Speaker 2: am so sorry. You know World War one Archduke Franz

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Speaker 2: Ferdinandez shot trench foot. Remember that my public schooling was

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Speaker 2: such that it took me a second to remember who

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Speaker 2: fought in World War One, But I vividly remember the

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Speaker 2: pictures that my teacher showed us of trench foot. Good stuff,

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Speaker 2: Thank you, mister Kates. And in the West, advertising took

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Speaker 2: a turn for the insidious as mass advertising began its

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Speaker 2: slow encroachment into our daily lives and then into our homes,

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Speaker 2: and finally directly into our minds. So I'm going to

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Speaker 2: start with a quick and necessary shout out. The two

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Speaker 2: main sources I use for this installment are Adam Curtis's

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Speaker 2: two thousand and two BBC docuseries The Century of the Self,

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Speaker 2: which traces how Sigmund Freud's ideas went on to deeply

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Speaker 2: impact American marketing, and the twenty seventeen book Via Ten

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Speaker 2: Ti Merchants by Tim Wu, which is a look at

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Speaker 2: how the last century of American marketing tactics have led

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Speaker 2: to many of us becoming our own product to sell.

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Speaker 2: And of course there are plenty of other vital sources

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Speaker 2: on this topic, but I can't stress enough. I only

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Speaker 2: have a week or so to put these shows together,

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Speaker 2: and it's giving me a skin condition. Okay, World War

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Speaker 2: One a big inflection point in how American marketing works.

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Speaker 2: And that's certainly not to say that attention grabbing, frequently

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Speaker 2: inaccurate news reporting fueled by a need for advertising dollars

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Speaker 2: wasn't already deeply entrenched in Western media by this time.

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Speaker 2: After all, the term yellow journalism was coined all the

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Speaker 2: way back in the eighteen nineties, modeled after the battle

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Speaker 2: for attention of New Yorkers between rival newspaper publishers William

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Speaker 2: Randolph Hurst and Joseph Pulitzer. The moment that news became

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Speaker 2: readily accessible and monetized, the integrity of that news came intoes,

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Speaker 2: and in the event of that particular flame war, it's

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Speaker 2: commonly thought to have pushed the US into the Spanish

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Speaker 2: American War of eighteen ninety eight. And today, as the

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Speaker 2: country's remaining influential news outlets and the social media channels

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Speaker 2: they're disseminated on are largely owned by ugly men with

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Speaker 2: a vested interest in having certain news just not appear

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Speaker 2: or be fully misrepresented, it's much the same, but the

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Speaker 2: venues where this happens have changed significantly. But what makes

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Speaker 2: the World War One era different, according to Tim Wu,

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Speaker 2: is that this is when the American government decided that

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Speaker 2: it was okay to use these same yellow journalism tactics

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Speaker 2: to get people to enlist in the military, because at

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Speaker 2: the time there wasn't really much of a reason to

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Speaker 2: volunteer in a war on the side of England. It

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Speaker 2: was politically advantageous for the American administration of the time,

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Speaker 2: but not necessarily for a normal citizen and so to

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Speaker 2: convince people to enlist, they had to bring in admin

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Speaker 2: who could convince a bunch of teenage boys to go

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Speaker 2: get themselves skilled in order to make President Wilson look awesome, and.

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Speaker 5: They did very effectively.

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Speaker 2: In the form of the relentless George Creole, a longtime

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Speaker 2: supporter of President Wilson, who churned out ads of young,

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Speaker 2: buff patriotic men fighting against the German army alongside illustrations

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Speaker 2: of the idealized, frail white American woman. And working alongside

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Speaker 2: Creole was a man who would go on to declare

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Speaker 2: himself the father of public relations. Edward So the Century

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Speaker 2: of the self SIPs the Burneze kool aid a little

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Speaker 2: too hard for my liking, because, after all, leave it

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Speaker 2: to an ad man to say that it was just

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Speaker 2: him who invented PR, which does not appear to be true.

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Speaker 2: According to Tim Wu's research. However, Edward Burnees was scarily

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Speaker 2: good at selling Americans on things they didn't really need,

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Speaker 2: whether that be a war, a box of cigarettes, or

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Speaker 2: a household product. And his secret weapon was, as it

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Speaker 2: is for many, he was a nepo baby, the American

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Speaker 2: nephew of one Sigmund Freud, whose theories end up having

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Speaker 2: a lot of influence on American marketing as the century

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Speaker 2: wore on. Now I know you know who this guy is,

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Speaker 2: but quick crash course on Freud, Austrian inventor of psychoanalysis.

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Speaker 2: His teachings basically boil down to talk therapy and explaining

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Speaker 2: your current behaviors through repressed memories and feelings.

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Speaker 1: From the past.

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Speaker 2: He's the guy that makes it possible for you to

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Speaker 2: blame your being a piece of shit on your mom,

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Speaker 2: whether that's true or not. And his nephew, Eddie Burnez,

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Speaker 2: was a big reason that Freud's work really took off

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Speaker 2: in the US, and Uncle Siggy as he was called,

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Speaker 2: would come to regret this, but by the time he

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Speaker 2: was remorseful about handing his works over to his little

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Speaker 2: nephew in exchange for a nice cigar, it was too late.

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Speaker 2: I'm well aware that there's plenty of dispute on Freud's

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Speaker 2: actual theories. It's a whole cottage industry basically, but I'm

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Speaker 2: not here to debate whether what he said was true.

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Speaker 2: I'm here to tell you that much of the advertising

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Speaker 2: in the front half of the twentieth century proceeded as if.

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Speaker 1: It were true.

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Speaker 2: This meant that advertising, especially headed by a little nephew

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Speaker 2: Eddie Burnez, was designed to appeal to the latent violence

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Speaker 2: and horniness within every prospective consumer. Freudian psychology is centered

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Speaker 2: around repression, and Burnees took this idea and offered up

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Speaker 2: a product to solve a problem that very often consumers

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Speaker 2: were just told they had. Burne has blended Freud's theories

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Speaker 2: of unconscious desires with herd theory and crowd psychology, equally

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Speaker 2: disputable works that allowed Burns to argue that propaganda was ethical.

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Speaker 2: After all, people left to their own devices are just

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Speaker 2: animals and agents of self destruction. Being told what they

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Speaker 2: wanted could be a gift. Quoth Eddie, this was enlightened manipulation.

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Speaker 2: The public could very easily vote for the wrong man,

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Speaker 2: and after a lot of success running government propaganda, Hitler

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Speaker 2: and Company would later cite the work of Creole and

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Speaker 2: Brenees on their vision Board of Propagandistic Destruction. If you

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Speaker 2: can believe that Brenees decided to pivot to selling products,

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Speaker 2: he famously said.

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Speaker 3: I decided that if you could use propaganda for war,

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Speaker 3: you could certainly use it for peace.

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Speaker 2: So Brene's pivots to doing damage in the private sector,

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Speaker 2: publishing quite a bit in the next few decades, titles

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Speaker 2: that pulled no punches, like Crystallizing Public Opinion or Ganda

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Speaker 2: Public Relations, and, most famously nineteen fifty five's The Engineering

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Speaker 2: of Consent, one of the scariest and most prescient phrases

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Speaker 2: of the last hundred years. Among his marketing victories featured

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Speaker 2: time honored classics such as taking advantage of progressive social

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Speaker 2: movements to sell members of that movement things that would

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Speaker 2: slow their movement down. The best example of this is

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Speaker 2: Brene's selling feminist Suffragettes on cigarettes, famously rebranding lucky strikes

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Speaker 2: as torches of freedom and having feminist march in the

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Speaker 2: New York Easter Day Parade, ripping SIGs as an expression

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Speaker 2: of their liberation, not the source of the cancer that

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Speaker 2: would one day kill them, and while controversial, this was

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Speaker 2: generally supported by prominent feminists of the time.

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Speaker 1: Brenes later ran a campaign.

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Speaker 2: For disposable Dixie cups in the nineteen thirties that was

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Speaker 2: predicated on the idea that reusable glasses would give you

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Speaker 2: neural disease. He's part of the reason that we associate

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Speaker 2: eggs and bacon with breakfast. He has an award from

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Speaker 2: the NAACP question mark. The list goes on, and by

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Speaker 2: the nineteen forties, purveyors of brands had mastered the art

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Speaker 2: of print and billboards and had gotten very good at

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Speaker 2: convincing you that buying X product would mean that you

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Speaker 2: would finally fit in, whether that was smoking cigarettes to

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Speaker 2: show you're a feminist II or gargle with listerine to

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Speaker 2: make sure that you're married before thirty an actual campaign.

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Speaker 2: But this Bernesian Freud influenced marketing scheme would eventually fall

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Speaker 2: out of favor as the century wore on and gave

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Speaker 2: way to the hippie influenced, highly individualistic marketing of the

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Speaker 2: sixties and seventies. By this time, radio marketing had proved

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Speaker 2: it effective to associate certain brands with popular programs. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 2: the earliest successful example of this was a toothpaste brand

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Speaker 2: subsequent success after being the sole advertiser on the very

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Speaker 2: racist and extremely popular Amos and Andy Show. Promotions like

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Speaker 2: these and the increased popularity of specific broadcasts was what

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Speaker 2: created primetime, a concept that effortlessly crossed over to TV

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Speaker 2: and directly began to influence the content that was selling products,

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Speaker 2: because in the aim As and Andy days, you couldn't

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Speaker 2: really explain why a toothpaste brand was the right advertiser

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Speaker 2: for this show.

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Speaker 1: But on TV that changed.

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Speaker 2: Early soap operas built out theatrics surrounding their characters in

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Speaker 2: the young white upper class, or a model of exactly

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Speaker 2: who their advertisers were hoping to sell products to. And

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Speaker 2: while that sounds kind of hokey and obvious now, it

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Speaker 2: pretty cleanly reflects what social media marketing would become by

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Speaker 2: the twenty tens. The product is mimicking the audience in

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Speaker 2: order to gain their trust. So in the sixties and onward,

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Speaker 2: product marketing shifted to not selling you something in order

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Speaker 2: to fit in, but to this philosophy of consumption as

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Speaker 2: an act of self expression, buying shit as a radical act.

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Speaker 2: We still do this all the time, and to me

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Speaker 2: it is almost more dangerous than the work of Edward Brenees.

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Speaker 2: Don't worry about the labor issues or why this product

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Speaker 2: is made by children overseas for pennies. Your iPhone case

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Speaker 2: tells the world that you are a girl boss in

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Speaker 2: the century of the self. Adam Curtis credits this freelove

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Speaker 2: approach to consumption to former Freud friend eventual Freud enemy

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Speaker 2: William Reich, who claimed that any neurosis could easily be

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Speaker 2: attributed to quote a lack of good orgasm unquote, and

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Speaker 2: when his main ideological adversary was Sigmund Freud's daughter Anna,

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Speaker 2: a lifelong virgin whose two main case studies killed themselves,

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Speaker 2: people didn't have a hard time choosing which way they

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Speaker 2: wanted the wind to blow. They went with the marketing

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Speaker 2: that the coming guy was pushing, although Reich would eventually

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Speaker 2: take this too far for the public and the government's

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Speaker 2: liking when he'd go on to claim that harnessing this

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Speaker 2: organ energy could locate UFOs and cure cancer, and most

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Speaker 2: of his work was ordered destroyed, but his legacy lived

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Speaker 2: on via marketing trying to meet the liberated self, leading

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Speaker 2: to this quote from the Century of the Self.

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Speaker 1: That made me laugh so much.

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Speaker 6: Was the idea that people could be happy simply within

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Speaker 6: themselves and that changing society was irrelevant.

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Speaker 7: Socialism in one person, although that, of course is capitalism.

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Speaker 7: That's the whole joke.

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Speaker 2: I think it's funny.

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Speaker 7: I think it's.

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Speaker 2: Funny because people spend so much of their life life

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Speaker 2: being bedeviled by their past and being locked into their

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Speaker 2: past and being limited by their past, and there's an

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Speaker 2: enormous freedom from that. And while it came with its

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Speaker 2: share of hiccups, advertising benefited from promoting this individualistic, myopic worldview.

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Speaker 2: Buying things was the act of radicalism that showed the

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Speaker 2: world who you were not something like organizing giving a

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Speaker 2: shit about other people wasn't.

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Speaker 1: Cool, man.

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Speaker 2: And by participating in capitalism, maybe you were actually fighting

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Speaker 2: it too. Buying products expressed your values. And with that,

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Speaker 2: let's take an ad break. Best of luck, welcome back

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Speaker 2: to sixteenth minute. Thank you for attending my ted talk

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Speaker 2: on advertising. So we're going to jump ahead a little

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Speaker 2: bit in the timeline through the Reagan and Thatcher era

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Speaker 2: nineteen eighties marketing that only built on and solidified the

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Speaker 2: idea that aging hippies were continuing the work of their

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Speaker 2: youth by blasting a hole in the ozone layer with

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Speaker 2: hair products. Go boomers from the century of the self.

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Speaker 6: And the generation who had once rebelled against the conformity

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Speaker 6: imposed by consumers, now I embraced it because it helped

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Speaker 6: them to be themselves.

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Speaker 2: And this on a longer timeline, brings us to the Internet,

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Speaker 2: a technology originally invented for government use that early users

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Speaker 2: were horrified at the idea of advertising on. Of course,

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Speaker 2: this would change the second that people realized you could

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Speaker 2: make a single dollar off of it, and this translated

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Speaker 2: to a series of trial and error moments in early

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Speaker 2: Internet history. If you were there, you might remember America Online,

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Speaker 2: aol became so flaw with advertising that it accidentally killed

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Speaker 2: itself off, and the same could be said for early

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Speaker 2: social networking site MySpace. But one phenomenon that really stuck

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Speaker 2: was the idea of operant conditioning. Tim Wu describes this

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Speaker 2: as the reason that humans are obsessed with refreshing their emails,

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Speaker 2: their notifications, whatever it may be. We are hard wired

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00:26:23,520 --> 00:26:28,680
Speaker 2: to seek out the serotonin and positive reinforcement of acknowledgment

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Speaker 2: and a feeling of belonging. And as it turned out,

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Speaker 2: the best way to sell you something was not in

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00:26:35,520 --> 00:26:39,400
Speaker 2: fact an invasive banner ad or a too loud podcast

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Speaker 2: to add, with due respect to iHeartRadio, it was to

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Speaker 2: make you trust in the product and have yourself image

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00:26:46,600 --> 00:26:49,960
Speaker 2: become attached to that product. The two people worth singling

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Speaker 2: out in this department would go on to either build

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Speaker 2: or mistakenly sell off their respective attention economy empires for

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Speaker 2: parts our Jonah Peretti of feed fame and mister Zuki himself.

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Speaker 2: So we've talked about the legacy of BuzzFeed many times

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Speaker 2: on this show and how its model of curating the

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Speaker 2: clickiest parts of the Internet led to massive business for

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Speaker 2: its founder and a brief clickbait renaissance before collapsing into

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Speaker 2: a series of labor disputes surrounding their top personalities, the

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Speaker 2: shuddering of their Pulitzer winning journalism branch, and essentially nuked

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Speaker 2: the site with AI before then hard pivoting last month

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Speaker 2: to say he thinks AI might be bad. Really quick

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Speaker 2: sidebar here, I promised, but I am serious that Jonah

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Speaker 2: Peretti recently did this less than two years after facing

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Speaker 2: severe and warranted criticism for shutting down news and laying

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Speaker 2: off sixteen percent of his workforce. He published a somewhat

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Speaker 2: regretful post on BuzzFeed in February twenty twenty five about how,

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Speaker 2: you guys, he's realizing this AI slop is a bunch

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Speaker 2: of bullshit. He writes about this as if he has

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Speaker 2: discovered it himself, even going so far as to make

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Speaker 2: a cringey millennial shorthand for what he's talking about.

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Speaker 3: Social media has become overrun with snarf. S is for stakes,

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Speaker 3: exaggerate stakes to make content urgent and existential. N is

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Speaker 3: for novelty, manufacture novelty, and spin content as unprecedented and unique.

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Speaker 3: A is for anger. Manipulate people's anger to drive engagement

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Speaker 3: via outrage. R is for retention. Retention hacks by withholding

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Speaker 3: info and promising a payoff at the end of a video.

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Speaker 3: F is for fear. Take advantage of fear to make

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00:28:46,160 --> 00:28:48,600
Speaker 3: people focus with urgency on their content.

437
00:28:50,240 --> 00:28:54,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, why did you do that with your Pulitzer Prize

438
00:28:54,080 --> 00:28:59,040
Speaker 2: winning website? You dork handened over Back in Peretti's On

439
00:28:59,320 --> 00:29:02,440
Speaker 2: New Days, he had a pretty solid handle on the

440
00:29:02,480 --> 00:29:05,920
Speaker 2: attention economy as it existed in the two thousands and

441
00:29:05,960 --> 00:29:10,240
Speaker 2: twenty tens, and even wrote a full manifesto on how

442
00:29:10,280 --> 00:29:15,120
Speaker 2: to hold a user's attention. This included experiments like asking

443
00:29:15,280 --> 00:29:19,040
Speaker 2: contest entrants to see which unhinged clickbait ideas would get

444
00:29:19,040 --> 00:29:23,360
Speaker 2: the most engagement, and later setting strict content rules during

445
00:29:23,440 --> 00:29:27,160
Speaker 2: peak BuzzFeed to avoid having anything on the main page

446
00:29:27,440 --> 00:29:31,600
Speaker 2: that was by his description, a bummer. And this sounds

447
00:29:31,680 --> 00:29:36,160
Speaker 2: ridiculously simple, but it was very successful until one of

448
00:29:36,240 --> 00:29:40,680
Speaker 2: Peretti's big mistakes appeared to be a pretty familiar one

449
00:29:40,760 --> 00:29:45,000
Speaker 2: in the Internet space, that being capitulating to the temptation

450
00:29:45,280 --> 00:29:50,440
Speaker 2: of obvious, annoying ads and losing user trust at BuzzFeed.

451
00:29:50,640 --> 00:29:54,200
Speaker 2: This came in the form of sponsored posts, something I

452
00:29:54,320 --> 00:29:59,480
Speaker 2: still find shockingly unethical a decade later. Basically, these were

453
00:29:59,520 --> 00:30:04,680
Speaker 2: posts that looked and were formatted exactly like unsponsored BuzzFeed

454
00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:08,920
Speaker 2: pieces that related to how cool it would be to

455
00:30:09,040 --> 00:30:13,280
Speaker 2: have a certain product, or how having something would make

456
00:30:13,360 --> 00:30:16,760
Speaker 2: you feel a certain way. And these pieces would be

457
00:30:16,800 --> 00:30:21,240
Speaker 2: tagged paid for by Audi or whichever brand, in tiny,

458
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:26,160
Speaker 2: easy to miss lettering somewhere on the piece, and people

459
00:30:26,240 --> 00:30:29,320
Speaker 2: understandably hated this as the only way to engage with

460
00:30:29,360 --> 00:30:32,600
Speaker 2: these pieces were to be tricked into looking at them,

461
00:30:32,760 --> 00:30:35,280
Speaker 2: and Peretti continued to fumble the back from there.

462
00:30:35,640 --> 00:30:42,720
Speaker 1: All the way up to snarf dah yo, I cannot

463
00:30:42,760 --> 00:30:43,760
Speaker 1: believe snarf.

464
00:30:44,400 --> 00:30:47,760
Speaker 2: And then of course there's Mark Zuckerberg, who famously I

465
00:30:47,800 --> 00:30:51,200
Speaker 2: am a colleague. You can be unethical and still be legal.

466
00:30:51,320 --> 00:30:54,040
Speaker 2: That's the way I live my life haha. In two

467
00:30:54,080 --> 00:30:56,760
Speaker 2: thousand and seven, and I know that there is no

468
00:30:56,960 --> 00:31:01,920
Speaker 2: shortage of things to say about this fucking guy, but

469
00:31:02,120 --> 00:31:04,400
Speaker 2: I'm going to put the five years too late hype

470
00:31:04,400 --> 00:31:07,560
Speaker 2: beast rebrand and the pivot to fascism aside.

471
00:31:07,120 --> 00:31:07,680
Speaker 1: For the moment.

472
00:31:08,160 --> 00:31:12,200
Speaker 2: It's important, but it's for another day. Early Zuckerberg also

473
00:31:12,360 --> 00:31:19,040
Speaker 2: benefited from a commitment to prioritizing user attention over advertising dollars.

474
00:31:19,960 --> 00:31:24,120
Speaker 2: And just as Jonah Peretti did eventually nuked his own website,

475
00:31:24,160 --> 00:31:28,400
Speaker 2: Facebook with aislop, but in the beginning, back when he

476
00:31:28,520 --> 00:31:30,880
Speaker 2: was just a bad man and not a robot playing

477
00:31:30,880 --> 00:31:31,880
Speaker 2: the part of a bad.

478
00:31:31,680 --> 00:31:35,120
Speaker 1: Man, Mark Zuckerberg was extremely.

479
00:31:34,480 --> 00:31:37,360
Speaker 2: Resistant to advertising on Facebook in a way that made

480
00:31:37,400 --> 00:31:41,560
Speaker 2: the site more popular because instead of overwhelming users with

481
00:31:41,920 --> 00:31:46,720
Speaker 2: Brene's style consent engineering by controlling their site experience or

482
00:31:46,760 --> 00:31:50,360
Speaker 2: slamming users with ugly banner ads like AOL or MySpace,

483
00:31:50,840 --> 00:31:54,640
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg was adamant that the bland, white and blue Facebook

484
00:31:54,680 --> 00:31:57,280
Speaker 2: layout remain consistent and clean.

485
00:31:57,920 --> 00:31:59,040
Speaker 1: So how did he make money?

486
00:31:59,680 --> 00:32:02,880
Speaker 2: As you probably know, he just sold all of our

487
00:32:02,960 --> 00:32:07,000
Speaker 2: data to those same advertisers through the back door. Another

488
00:32:07,160 --> 00:32:10,320
Speaker 2: long step in the lurch toward us becoming our own

489
00:32:10,400 --> 00:32:14,320
Speaker 2: products to sell and our inner lives being the final

490
00:32:14,400 --> 00:32:18,520
Speaker 2: items on offer before we were subsumed by late capitalism entirely.

491
00:32:19,440 --> 00:32:23,960
Speaker 1: How are we feeling? Do we need a mister clean sting? No,

492
00:32:24,040 --> 00:32:25,280
Speaker 1: you're right, we don't need one.

493
00:32:25,920 --> 00:32:29,160
Speaker 2: Early Twitter was similar to Facebook in this respect. The

494
00:32:29,200 --> 00:32:33,080
Speaker 2: particulars were different, but layout consistency and an initial lack

495
00:32:33,120 --> 00:32:35,960
Speaker 2: of sponsor posts was one of the elements of early

496
00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:39,800
Speaker 2: Twitter that made old school journalists more inclined to adapt

497
00:32:39,840 --> 00:32:43,160
Speaker 2: to it in order to spread their work. I will

498
00:32:43,480 --> 00:32:47,400
Speaker 2: never forget miss pivot. In the two thousands, my dad

499
00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:50,760
Speaker 2: like squeezed his brick cell phone between his hands like

500
00:32:50,800 --> 00:32:53,440
Speaker 2: he was trying to pop it after the newspaper he

501
00:32:53,480 --> 00:32:56,440
Speaker 2: worked at said he had to learn how to use Twitter.

502
00:32:57,120 --> 00:33:01,640
Speaker 2: But with social media's most enduring platform displaying this initial

503
00:33:01,680 --> 00:33:05,760
Speaker 2: resistance to ads, people native to these platforms grew to

504
00:33:05,840 --> 00:33:09,239
Speaker 2: trust the ads that did eke through these algorithms a

505
00:33:09,280 --> 00:33:13,640
Speaker 2: little bit more, even if this trust, as subsequent data

506
00:33:13,640 --> 00:33:18,240
Speaker 2: brokering deals would lay bare, was extremely naive. But for

507
00:33:18,280 --> 00:33:22,600
Speaker 2: the advertisers themselves, they had to either figure out how

508
00:33:22,640 --> 00:33:25,360
Speaker 2: to turn their brands into a friend to be added,

509
00:33:25,520 --> 00:33:28,720
Speaker 2: followed and interacted with or be left in the past.

510
00:33:29,760 --> 00:33:34,800
Speaker 2: Enter the age of personified social media brands, ones where

511
00:33:34,840 --> 00:33:39,360
Speaker 2: you didn't just have in your horny fantasies, but you

512
00:33:39,400 --> 00:33:43,760
Speaker 2: could DM mister clean your horny fantasies, and someone on

513
00:33:43,800 --> 00:33:46,240
Speaker 2: the other side of that account would be tasked with

514
00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:49,560
Speaker 2: the psychic torture of reading it. So we've made it

515
00:33:49,640 --> 00:33:52,680
Speaker 2: up to the point of Web two. In marketing, the

516
00:33:52,760 --> 00:33:56,800
Speaker 2: early twenty tens, just shy of the Cambridge analytical scandal

517
00:33:56,800 --> 00:33:59,560
Speaker 2: that would lose Zuckerberg the last few fanboys he had.

518
00:33:59,600 --> 00:34:03,160
Speaker 2: After this social network the era where Tumbler and Pinterests

519
00:34:03,240 --> 00:34:06,720
Speaker 2: were considered fem fan paradises and ignited some of the

520
00:34:06,760 --> 00:34:10,680
Speaker 2: most bizarrely specific feuds of all time. The Internet was

521
00:34:10,719 --> 00:34:14,279
Speaker 2: still fun, but its days were numbered, just as in

522
00:34:14,360 --> 00:34:18,600
Speaker 2: previous eras of advertising. The next generation of advertisers, this

523
00:34:18,680 --> 00:34:22,640
Speaker 2: time young millennials, adapted to their audience and learned from

524
00:34:22,680 --> 00:34:26,560
Speaker 2: the banner ad catastrophes of time gone by. While a

525
00:34:26,560 --> 00:34:29,680
Speaker 2: lot of early social media marketing was happy to tweet out,

526
00:34:30,000 --> 00:34:31,680
Speaker 2: hey guys, here's the special this week.

527
00:34:31,760 --> 00:34:33,640
Speaker 1: Here's a link to more info, a.

528
00:34:33,600 --> 00:34:35,640
Speaker 5: Handful of creative twenty somethings.

529
00:34:35,320 --> 00:34:38,360
Speaker 2: Were already well aware that these were mediums that needed

530
00:34:38,560 --> 00:34:42,879
Speaker 2: actual personality and direct engagement to stand out on an

531
00:34:42,920 --> 00:34:46,719
Speaker 2: increasingly crowded timeline.

532
00:34:45,520 --> 00:34:48,000
Speaker 5: And so they became.

533
00:34:47,840 --> 00:34:51,279
Speaker 2: The mascots, not appearing in front of the camera like

534
00:34:51,360 --> 00:34:55,319
Speaker 2: in TV ads, but now behind the keyboard, developing a

535
00:34:55,400 --> 00:35:00,879
Speaker 2: personality that effectively modernized a decade's old brand. And I'll

536
00:35:00,880 --> 00:35:03,440
Speaker 2: be honest, so far, we have mainly talked about the

537
00:35:03,480 --> 00:35:07,480
Speaker 2: heads of these marketing empires, the highest titles, not the

538
00:35:07,520 --> 00:35:12,160
Speaker 2: folks who are tasked with actually executing the usually bizarrely

539
00:35:12,200 --> 00:35:16,200
Speaker 2: specific task of winning your loyalty as a customer. That's

540
00:35:16,239 --> 00:35:19,919
Speaker 2: because employees at this level of marketing are rarely appreciated

541
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:25,000
Speaker 2: in wider media. The expected powerful male figureheads still dominating

542
00:35:25,040 --> 00:35:29,759
Speaker 2: the history of the industry that changes during this era,

543
00:35:29,840 --> 00:35:32,560
Speaker 2: though in no small part, I think because of its

544
00:35:32,600 --> 00:35:37,239
Speaker 2: overlap with the huge popularity of innocuous clickbait led by

545
00:35:37,320 --> 00:35:41,520
Speaker 2: sites like BuzzFeed that overlapped with this time, and so

546
00:35:42,200 --> 00:35:45,800
Speaker 2: as early brand accounts begin to refine their voice, usually

547
00:35:45,880 --> 00:35:49,520
Speaker 2: into absurdist humor. I think Taco Bell was the earliest

548
00:35:49,560 --> 00:35:52,200
Speaker 2: to do this, but they were quickly followed by Denny's

549
00:35:52,280 --> 00:35:56,880
Speaker 2: and Wendy's. The grotesquely curious Internet would want to know

550
00:35:57,520 --> 00:36:00,759
Speaker 2: just who was doing this, and when they found out

551
00:36:00,840 --> 00:36:04,480
Speaker 2: it was generally someone just like them, people really liked it,

552
00:36:04,920 --> 00:36:09,400
Speaker 2: turning lower level and certainly lower paid copywriters and customer

553
00:36:09,480 --> 00:36:13,080
Speaker 2: service reps who had always been generally anonymous in years

554
00:36:13,080 --> 00:36:19,040
Speaker 2: prior into Internet micro celebrities the main character behind the

555
00:36:19,080 --> 00:36:22,920
Speaker 2: main character, if you will, and that is why I

556
00:36:23,080 --> 00:36:26,440
Speaker 2: was so excited to talk with you one and only

557
00:36:26,800 --> 00:36:31,120
Speaker 2: Serenity Disco. Serenity's work on the Dennis Tumbler and Twitter

558
00:36:31,520 --> 00:36:35,200
Speaker 2: is somewhat legend in social media marketing. It won their

559
00:36:35,280 --> 00:36:38,959
Speaker 2: team a Shorty Award and really clarified the brand voice

560
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:42,640
Speaker 2: of Denny's until this day. As I explained in our interview,

561
00:36:42,880 --> 00:36:45,640
Speaker 2: there was some precedent for the world that they dropped

562
00:36:45,640 --> 00:36:49,200
Speaker 2: into when it came to social media brand voice at Denny's,

563
00:36:49,520 --> 00:36:55,040
Speaker 2: including a gorgeous, inexplicable partnership with the Emo band Brand New,

564
00:36:55,760 --> 00:37:00,319
Speaker 2: but Serenity essentially turned Denny's the Diner in to an

565
00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:04,319
Speaker 2: extremely online Emo teenager, the same kind of customer that

566
00:37:04,440 --> 00:37:06,480
Speaker 2: might roll up to the Diners stoned at three in

567
00:37:06,520 --> 00:37:10,040
Speaker 2: the morning and debate the virtues of MCR with their friends.

568
00:37:10,160 --> 00:37:12,480
Speaker 2: I think that's what they did. They wouldn't let me

569
00:37:12,520 --> 00:37:15,840
Speaker 2: hang out with them. Unlike a lot of effective advertisers,

570
00:37:16,200 --> 00:37:20,080
Speaker 2: Serenity really throws themselves into this job whole hog.

571
00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:22,200
Speaker 5: Although on the Denny's.

572
00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:25,400
Speaker 2: Accounts they were technically acting as a character, the Tumblr

573
00:37:25,400 --> 00:37:30,040
Speaker 2: community and its absurdist, edgy but not offensive joke style

574
00:37:30,360 --> 00:37:34,640
Speaker 2: and hyperbonded mostly queer and fem communities were something that

575
00:37:34,680 --> 00:37:39,040
Speaker 2: Serenity was already familiar with. The assignment was to make

576
00:37:39,080 --> 00:37:43,040
Speaker 2: the account another weird friend to bond with and sell

577
00:37:43,080 --> 00:37:47,239
Speaker 2: witching our pancakes doing it, and Serenity was damn good

578
00:37:47,280 --> 00:37:47,600
Speaker 2: at it.

579
00:37:48,400 --> 00:37:49,799
Speaker 5: And like they and every.

580
00:37:49,520 --> 00:37:52,520
Speaker 2: Other social media manager singled up for a brand account's

581
00:37:52,520 --> 00:37:55,120
Speaker 2: success has told me in the research for this series,

582
00:37:55,840 --> 00:37:59,480
Speaker 2: this was not something that they did alone. Serenity credits

583
00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:02,600
Speaker 2: their graph designer and account manager just as much for

584
00:38:02,760 --> 00:38:07,640
Speaker 2: bringing her gently demented visions to the page. So what

585
00:38:07,719 --> 00:38:11,680
Speaker 2: do I mean when I say the Denny's Tumblr account

586
00:38:11,719 --> 00:38:16,520
Speaker 2: that Serenity curated? Okay, so buckle in because it is

587
00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:17,719
Speaker 2: very hard to describe.

588
00:38:18,239 --> 00:38:22,080
Speaker 5: Some examples an image of a contact lens full of

589
00:38:22,160 --> 00:38:26,239
Speaker 5: coffee with the caption if you're up really late, studying

590
00:38:26,239 --> 00:38:29,399
Speaker 5: for finals. Try swapping your contact solution.

591
00:38:29,200 --> 00:38:31,319
Speaker 1: With coffee for a quick pick me up.

592
00:38:32,120 --> 00:38:37,840
Speaker 2: Next, user Hella Spooky King asks are you single? The

593
00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:43,360
Speaker 2: Denny's Tumblr account answered, we are a restaurant and finally

594
00:38:43,440 --> 00:38:48,120
Speaker 2: a classic, a photoshopped stock image of a woman in

595
00:38:48,239 --> 00:38:52,560
Speaker 2: a candlelight bath, but now she's covered in Denny's waffles.

596
00:38:52,840 --> 00:38:56,960
Speaker 2: The caption reads, after a hard day, nothing is more

597
00:38:57,000 --> 00:39:01,120
Speaker 2: relaxing than the syrupy SuDS of a waffle bath. And

598
00:39:01,200 --> 00:39:06,600
Speaker 2: tumblers generally adored the Denny's account and responded in kind,

599
00:39:07,160 --> 00:39:09,480
Speaker 2: and that is a critical component.

600
00:39:09,040 --> 00:39:09,720
Speaker 1: Of this working.

601
00:39:10,080 --> 00:39:13,560
Speaker 2: When users would interact with or expand on the joke

602
00:39:13,760 --> 00:39:18,320
Speaker 2: that Serenity made on the Denny's account, Denny's would reply back,

603
00:39:18,840 --> 00:39:21,799
Speaker 2: often at random or in the middle of the night,

604
00:39:22,520 --> 00:39:26,000
Speaker 2: and this was obviously something that earlier generations of marketers

605
00:39:26,320 --> 00:39:27,439
Speaker 2: could never have done.

606
00:39:28,200 --> 00:39:30,520
Speaker 5: The commercials and billboards.

607
00:39:30,040 --> 00:39:33,600
Speaker 2: Obviously can't talk back, but the social media accounts can,

608
00:39:34,280 --> 00:39:37,839
Speaker 2: and posting challenges like tag yourself at Denny's and will

609
00:39:37,880 --> 00:39:41,160
Speaker 2: repost did seem to draw a lot of younger people

610
00:39:41,239 --> 00:39:45,440
Speaker 2: to the restaurant, predicated on a combination of wanting their

611
00:39:45,520 --> 00:39:49,759
Speaker 2: image scene on a widely followed account and kind of

612
00:39:49,800 --> 00:39:53,440
Speaker 2: the parasocial relationship they had formed with the account for

613
00:39:53,600 --> 00:39:54,120
Speaker 2: a diner.

614
00:39:54,760 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 1: And is it weird when you say it all like that?

615
00:39:57,120 --> 00:40:00,120
Speaker 2: Yes, but you'll have to trust me when I say

616
00:40:00,160 --> 00:40:03,200
Speaker 2: there was very much a time where hearing back from

617
00:40:03,239 --> 00:40:07,200
Speaker 2: Denny's on Tumblr would be like hearing back from a

618
00:40:07,239 --> 00:40:11,920
Speaker 2: celebrity on Twitter, and that celebrities and brands not for nothing.

619
00:40:12,200 --> 00:40:15,640
Speaker 2: We're using the exact same playbook to expand their name,

620
00:40:15,680 --> 00:40:19,440
Speaker 2: recognition and relevance. I mean, there is a strong argument

621
00:40:19,480 --> 00:40:22,719
Speaker 2: to be made that Ashton Kutcher would never have had

622
00:40:22,800 --> 00:40:25,720
Speaker 2: much of a career if he hadn't become a pathological

623
00:40:25,760 --> 00:40:30,000
Speaker 2: reply guy and smug Twitter joke writer, which is actually

624
00:40:30,040 --> 00:40:33,000
Speaker 2: a bad example because we would be better off without him.

625
00:40:33,280 --> 00:40:35,200
Speaker 1: Here's a clip from his Steve Jobs.

626
00:40:34,960 --> 00:40:38,080
Speaker 2: Movie I Already Fired You saw that drunk on my

627
00:40:38,120 --> 00:40:42,560
Speaker 2: twenty first birthday. Back to Pancakes, Serenity's work was routinely

628
00:40:42,560 --> 00:40:46,879
Speaker 2: written up on clickbait websites with headlines like twenty eight

629
00:40:46,920 --> 00:40:50,560
Speaker 2: weirdly wonderful images from the Denny's tumbler page. And I

630
00:40:50,640 --> 00:40:55,560
Speaker 2: really do find their professional trajectory super, super interesting and specific.

631
00:40:56,280 --> 00:40:59,120
Speaker 2: You'll hear a lot in their experience that's reflected in

632
00:40:59,200 --> 00:41:02,719
Speaker 2: the experience of other people I speak with later in

633
00:41:02,760 --> 00:41:06,680
Speaker 2: this series. Serenity was in their early twenties and starting

634
00:41:06,680 --> 00:41:09,560
Speaker 2: a life in a big city when they started at Denny's,

635
00:41:09,600 --> 00:41:12,400
Speaker 2: and they later branch out to make their own startup,

636
00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:15,400
Speaker 2: and then they pivot again and end up working in

637
00:41:15,440 --> 00:41:19,440
Speaker 2: celebrity and political social media management at a crucial point

638
00:41:19,719 --> 00:41:22,839
Speaker 2: in American history. And there is a lot to talk

639
00:41:22,840 --> 00:41:26,840
Speaker 2: about when it comes to this era of advertising. And

640
00:41:26,840 --> 00:41:28,799
Speaker 2: we're going to take a closer look and what the

641
00:41:28,800 --> 00:41:31,560
Speaker 2: ins and outs of early social media management was like

642
00:41:31,680 --> 00:41:35,480
Speaker 2: next week. But today I'm going to let our first

643
00:41:35,520 --> 00:41:38,759
Speaker 2: interviewee lay out what a brand management job was like

644
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:43,200
Speaker 2: on the ground floor of it having massive advertising influence

645
00:41:43,600 --> 00:41:48,160
Speaker 2: in the twenty tens, as in generations past, advertising two

646
00:41:48,239 --> 00:41:49,200
Speaker 2: young people was.

647
00:41:49,200 --> 00:41:52,120
Speaker 1: A job best suited to other.

648
00:41:52,000 --> 00:41:55,400
Speaker 2: Young people who could make the argument that marketing something

649
00:41:55,440 --> 00:41:58,960
Speaker 2: as innocuous as Denny's diner food was an act of

650
00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:03,920
Speaker 2: self expression, regardless of how underpaid or burnout inducing the

651
00:42:04,040 --> 00:42:08,319
Speaker 2: job may one day become. When we come back, Serenity

652
00:42:08,360 --> 00:42:27,239
Speaker 2: Disco of the Denny's Tumblr account, Welcome back to sixteenth

653
00:42:27,320 --> 00:42:32,920
Speaker 2: minute I'm so sleepy. Here's my interview with Serenity Disco and.

654
00:42:32,920 --> 00:42:36,680
Speaker 8: My name is Serenity Disco. I'm the founder of Alobud,

655
00:42:36,840 --> 00:42:39,399
Speaker 8: which is a self care app, but I also do

656
00:42:39,520 --> 00:42:41,720
Speaker 8: freelance consulting on the side.

657
00:42:41,440 --> 00:42:44,800
Speaker 2: I mean, you've had truly a storied and like wide

658
00:42:44,880 --> 00:42:47,359
Speaker 2: variety of work online over the years.

659
00:42:47,360 --> 00:42:48,879
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to talk about it.

660
00:42:48,960 --> 00:42:52,839
Speaker 2: But what brings us together today is the Denny's Tumblr account.

661
00:42:53,800 --> 00:42:55,319
Speaker 2: I would love to know just a little bit more

662
00:42:55,320 --> 00:42:57,120
Speaker 2: about you. Where did you grow up? How did you

663
00:42:57,160 --> 00:42:57,600
Speaker 2: grow up?

664
00:42:57,680 --> 00:42:59,680
Speaker 8: I love the question of like where did you grow up?

665
00:42:59,719 --> 00:43:04,759
Speaker 8: Because is I can't like pinpoint one place that because

666
00:43:05,000 --> 00:43:08,240
Speaker 8: I moved so many times. I've probably moved like twenty

667
00:43:08,280 --> 00:43:10,680
Speaker 8: times in total. I guess I could say I lived

668
00:43:10,680 --> 00:43:16,680
Speaker 8: in between Wisconsin and Connecticut. You know, parents, divorce, school,

669
00:43:16,920 --> 00:43:20,959
Speaker 8: work relationships. That's kind of what caused me to move

670
00:43:21,080 --> 00:43:24,640
Speaker 8: all over the place. I definitely was a child of

671
00:43:24,680 --> 00:43:29,520
Speaker 8: the Internet, raised by machines. I started out on aim

672
00:43:29,920 --> 00:43:34,319
Speaker 8: and you know, AOL chat rooms as a minor, like

673
00:43:34,480 --> 00:43:38,640
Speaker 8: in the adult chat rooms I discovered as a teen,

674
00:43:38,800 --> 00:43:43,840
Speaker 8: MySpace and neopets. Yeah, jeffree Star posted on my MySpace

675
00:43:43,920 --> 00:43:46,960
Speaker 8: page once and that was like an iconic moment for me.

676
00:43:49,040 --> 00:43:50,040
Speaker 5: What a sentence.

677
00:43:50,480 --> 00:43:53,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you've learned about jeffree Star in the last

678
00:43:53,640 --> 00:43:56,839
Speaker 2: five years, that may seem actually quite terrifying. Yes, ever,

679
00:43:57,040 --> 00:43:59,919
Speaker 2: yes there was a time where it was a sign

680
00:44:00,120 --> 00:44:03,200
Speaker 2: that you've made it on MySpace, specifically.

681
00:44:02,800 --> 00:44:06,640
Speaker 8: Exactly being someone who moved so many times, Like I

682
00:44:06,680 --> 00:44:09,680
Speaker 8: didn't really have much of a community in real life,

683
00:44:09,719 --> 00:44:15,680
Speaker 8: so the Internet had become my community consistent for my

684
00:44:15,800 --> 00:44:18,640
Speaker 8: childhood and my teen years. I learned how to code

685
00:44:18,719 --> 00:44:23,840
Speaker 8: on neopaths, took that to creating my own forums for people.

686
00:44:23,920 --> 00:44:27,280
Speaker 8: One was called Rebel mb message Boards.

687
00:44:27,680 --> 00:44:28,520
Speaker 5: What was the theme?

688
00:44:29,239 --> 00:44:30,799
Speaker 8: It was like, you know, if you're a rebel, if

689
00:44:30,800 --> 00:44:34,000
Speaker 8: you're an outsider, a misfit, you can join. It was

690
00:44:34,440 --> 00:44:39,080
Speaker 8: good times. I wanted to be a developer growing up,

691
00:44:39,400 --> 00:44:43,759
Speaker 8: you know, coding my attention span. I had ADHD and

692
00:44:44,239 --> 00:44:47,279
Speaker 8: struggle with like activities of daily life made it really

693
00:44:47,320 --> 00:44:51,279
Speaker 8: hard for me to focus. And we couldn't really afford

694
00:44:51,440 --> 00:44:54,959
Speaker 8: college in my family. So even though I self taught

695
00:44:54,960 --> 00:44:57,160
Speaker 8: myself a lot of it. I did get a job

696
00:44:57,239 --> 00:45:01,000
Speaker 8: doing QA engineering for a game company, but I just

697
00:45:01,120 --> 00:45:05,920
Speaker 8: wasn't passionate about it. And until the doors opened for

698
00:45:06,040 --> 00:45:07,640
Speaker 8: my work at Denny's.

699
00:45:07,760 --> 00:45:10,000
Speaker 5: When did you start working for Denny's.

700
00:45:10,360 --> 00:45:14,400
Speaker 8: I'm pretty sure it was back in twenty twelve, twenty thirteen.

701
00:45:14,880 --> 00:45:19,960
Speaker 8: I kind of like fell into this job because a

702
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:24,000
Speaker 8: friend referred me. I can't tell you which parody account,

703
00:45:24,080 --> 00:45:30,200
Speaker 8: but I had a very successful parody account on Twitter.

704
00:45:30,480 --> 00:45:33,759
Speaker 8: A lot of people, like you know, knew about it

705
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:36,840
Speaker 8: and loved it, and a friend of mine who followed

706
00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:40,120
Speaker 8: the account was like, whatever you're doing on this account,

707
00:45:40,200 --> 00:45:43,040
Speaker 8: I think we could use it at Denny's. Because she

708
00:45:43,160 --> 00:45:46,920
Speaker 8: was the current her name is Ariel, called her on,

709
00:45:47,120 --> 00:45:50,520
Speaker 8: and she was the current social media manager at Denny's.

710
00:45:50,680 --> 00:45:53,760
Speaker 8: I came into my interview and I showed them my tweets.

711
00:45:55,320 --> 00:45:57,399
Speaker 1: I would love to hear more about the interview. Well,

712
00:45:57,440 --> 00:45:58,960
Speaker 1: here's here's my little joke.

713
00:45:59,200 --> 00:46:02,880
Speaker 8: Yeah, literally printed out some of my favorite tweets into

714
00:46:02,920 --> 00:46:07,320
Speaker 8: a portfolio and I was like, you know, this sounds

715
00:46:07,400 --> 00:46:11,040
Speaker 8: like something that your brand might like. The brand strategy

716
00:46:11,040 --> 00:46:14,240
Speaker 8: for Denny's was I'm not sure if it still is

717
00:46:14,239 --> 00:46:18,120
Speaker 8: is Denny's is always open, it's twenty four to seven.

718
00:46:18,719 --> 00:46:23,839
Speaker 8: It's a community meeting space, it's a family gathering. It's

719
00:46:23,880 --> 00:46:27,200
Speaker 8: a place, you know, to go with your partner, and

720
00:46:28,320 --> 00:46:31,200
Speaker 8: being that it's twenty four to seven, it's very it

721
00:46:31,239 --> 00:46:33,760
Speaker 8: can get very silly there. It can get very silly

722
00:46:33,840 --> 00:46:37,080
Speaker 8: in the booths because you know, maybe you just went

723
00:46:37,080 --> 00:46:39,799
Speaker 8: out drinking with your friends and now you need an

724
00:46:39,840 --> 00:46:44,560
Speaker 8: evening stack of pancakes. And so we wanted to create

725
00:46:44,600 --> 00:46:49,440
Speaker 8: a personality was in their late teens, goes to Denny's

726
00:46:49,520 --> 00:46:54,200
Speaker 8: with their friends, likes punk pop. They had an initiative

727
00:46:54,200 --> 00:46:58,839
Speaker 8: with brand New the band for a long time. Really yeah,

728
00:46:58,920 --> 00:47:01,000
Speaker 8: I knew that that was before I started, so I

729
00:47:01,000 --> 00:47:03,720
Speaker 8: think that they wanted to carry that over. They thought

730
00:47:03,719 --> 00:47:05,200
Speaker 8: that I would be a good fit for the role,

731
00:47:05,239 --> 00:47:07,319
Speaker 8: and I was like, great, I don't have a job

732
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:12,360
Speaker 8: right now, and it sounds, you know, like being myself

733
00:47:12,440 --> 00:47:16,439
Speaker 8: on social media for a brand. It didn't feel as

734
00:47:17,280 --> 00:47:20,759
Speaker 8: larger than life then, you know, like look back now.

735
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:25,080
Speaker 8: I was like, oh my gosh, like look what you did. So, yeah,

736
00:47:25,120 --> 00:47:27,440
Speaker 8: they hired me and they didn't have a tumbler at

737
00:47:27,480 --> 00:47:31,240
Speaker 8: the time, so I was tasked with making a tumblr,

738
00:47:31,320 --> 00:47:33,799
Speaker 8: which I already had my own tumblr, so it was

739
00:47:34,320 --> 00:47:39,080
Speaker 8: really easy for me to set them up. We started

740
00:47:39,080 --> 00:47:43,359
Speaker 8: following people who posted, you know, at Denny's, like their

741
00:47:43,719 --> 00:47:47,160
Speaker 8: Denny's selfie, we called them. So anyone who's like at

742
00:47:47,200 --> 00:47:51,200
Speaker 8: Denny's in the booth posting photos selfies, we would share them.

743
00:47:51,520 --> 00:47:55,520
Speaker 8: It kind of spiraled into like a meme where they

744
00:47:55,600 --> 00:47:58,279
Speaker 8: people would actually take photos of themselves in front of

745
00:47:58,320 --> 00:48:01,080
Speaker 8: the Denny's sign and be like, hey Dad, I'm here

746
00:48:01,239 --> 00:48:04,160
Speaker 8: like my my friend Denny's.

747
00:48:04,600 --> 00:48:07,759
Speaker 2: And you are like a lot of power for a

748
00:48:07,800 --> 00:48:11,080
Speaker 2: twenty three year old, Yeah, like shaping the image of this.

749
00:48:11,480 --> 00:48:15,080
Speaker 8: And I got a lot of like confusion from people

750
00:48:15,120 --> 00:48:19,760
Speaker 8: in my immediate family and like you know, close friend circle.

751
00:48:19,800 --> 00:48:23,480
Speaker 8: They're like, so, what exactly do you do? Like you

752
00:48:23,960 --> 00:48:28,040
Speaker 8: sure you tweet? And I just was like, yeah, that's

753
00:48:28,080 --> 00:48:31,040
Speaker 8: my job. And now if they were to ask me,

754
00:48:31,080 --> 00:48:35,920
Speaker 8: they would immediately know. Because brands having personalities online is

755
00:48:36,040 --> 00:48:40,080
Speaker 8: just so common and everyone's using social media.

756
00:48:40,200 --> 00:48:43,560
Speaker 2: Denny's already had sort of an idea of what the

757
00:48:43,719 --> 00:48:46,880
Speaker 2: persona of this company is when you come in, and

758
00:48:46,880 --> 00:48:47,480
Speaker 2: I feel.

759
00:48:47,239 --> 00:48:49,080
Speaker 1: Like it seems like they were pretty early too.

760
00:48:49,480 --> 00:48:53,960
Speaker 8: Yes, Monday's and Denny's were like very early on in

761
00:48:54,080 --> 00:48:57,719
Speaker 8: the brand persona. You know, they let me have free

762
00:48:57,960 --> 00:49:03,160
Speaker 8: rain I could post virtual like there was a process

763
00:49:03,200 --> 00:49:07,359
Speaker 8: of content as an art being approved. But I could

764
00:49:07,360 --> 00:49:11,120
Speaker 8: just fire off tweets whenever I wanted, wherever I wanted.

765
00:49:12,080 --> 00:49:14,719
Speaker 8: Case in point. Some might see this as like bad

766
00:49:14,800 --> 00:49:18,000
Speaker 8: business practice, but I would wake up at like two

767
00:49:18,040 --> 00:49:20,840
Speaker 8: in the morning and I would tweet on the Denny's

768
00:49:20,880 --> 00:49:24,440
Speaker 8: account at two in the morning because Denny's is always

769
00:49:24,440 --> 00:49:27,759
Speaker 8: open and seeing that time stamp. This was before like

770
00:49:27,880 --> 00:49:31,400
Speaker 8: buffer exist to where you could schedule posts. Seeing Denny's

771
00:49:31,480 --> 00:49:35,479
Speaker 8: up at two am and replying to a post and

772
00:49:35,600 --> 00:49:38,800
Speaker 8: having Denny's reply back to you. Like for some people,

773
00:49:38,840 --> 00:49:43,200
Speaker 8: it was so surreal because brands, you're a brand, Like,

774
00:49:43,880 --> 00:49:47,360
Speaker 8: what are you doing because Denny's is your friend?

775
00:49:47,600 --> 00:49:49,400
Speaker 5: Were you running all of the social media?

776
00:49:49,680 --> 00:49:52,320
Speaker 8: Yeah? I was running all of the social media accounts.

777
00:49:52,520 --> 00:49:55,880
Speaker 8: Oh and I just want to mention that the fact

778
00:49:55,880 --> 00:49:59,000
Speaker 8: that I was given this free reign is because I

779
00:49:59,080 --> 00:50:04,080
Speaker 8: had an amazing that I worked with. My direct report

780
00:50:04,200 --> 00:50:09,919
Speaker 8: and our graphic designer were incredible and so smart and

781
00:50:10,560 --> 00:50:14,279
Speaker 8: really like we were like the dream team together. So

782
00:50:14,719 --> 00:50:17,320
Speaker 8: it just it fit together so perfectly.

783
00:50:17,520 --> 00:50:20,000
Speaker 2: Was there a moment where you're like, oh, this is

784
00:50:20,080 --> 00:50:21,640
Speaker 2: like really working.

785
00:50:21,920 --> 00:50:24,520
Speaker 8: I think I kind of had the wow moment when

786
00:50:25,040 --> 00:50:28,520
Speaker 8: I saw this meme going around on Tumblr this text

787
00:50:28,560 --> 00:50:34,359
Speaker 8: post saying like relationship status and then whatever, and we

788
00:50:34,440 --> 00:50:38,319
Speaker 8: took that and did relationship Status breakfast. It got like

789
00:50:38,600 --> 00:50:41,360
Speaker 8: three hundred thousand notes on it. I just loved the

790
00:50:41,400 --> 00:50:45,319
Speaker 8: community on Tumblr so much. They were so fun and

791
00:50:45,360 --> 00:50:51,239
Speaker 8: supportive and made every post into a meme and the

792
00:50:51,360 --> 00:50:56,760
Speaker 8: comments section was incredible, and that's just really rare, I think.

793
00:50:56,960 --> 00:50:58,600
Speaker 8: And then I don't know if you know, but I

794
00:50:58,640 --> 00:51:04,680
Speaker 8: actually got tired at Tumblr directly after Denny's. They they

795
00:51:04,719 --> 00:51:07,360
Speaker 8: poached me because they liked the work I did on

796
00:51:07,560 --> 00:51:10,440
Speaker 8: the Denny's tumbler, and they wanted me to help other brands,

797
00:51:10,680 --> 00:51:14,960
Speaker 8: you know, have that, you know, experience the same experience.

798
00:51:15,280 --> 00:51:17,320
Speaker 2: I don't know, I want to like explore this idea

799
00:51:17,360 --> 00:51:19,759
Speaker 2: that feels so bizarre and I would have killed for

800
00:51:19,840 --> 00:51:20,680
Speaker 2: a job like yours.

801
00:51:20,719 --> 00:51:22,359
Speaker 1: I'm sure so many people would say that.

802
00:51:22,600 --> 00:51:28,040
Speaker 2: But you're being yourself essentially, but you're also being Denny's,

803
00:51:28,080 --> 00:51:29,200
Speaker 2: the restaurant.

804
00:51:28,800 --> 00:51:29,839
Speaker 1: Chains, right, right?

805
00:51:30,760 --> 00:51:32,759
Speaker 5: How do you navigate that?

806
00:51:32,840 --> 00:51:33,160
Speaker 1: Were there?

807
00:51:33,200 --> 00:51:33,399
Speaker 7: Ever?

808
00:51:33,840 --> 00:51:36,080
Speaker 5: Like moments of this feels weird?

809
00:51:36,320 --> 00:51:37,160
Speaker 1: Like what is this?

810
00:51:38,160 --> 00:51:40,480
Speaker 8: Like you said, you know, we were being we were

811
00:51:40,719 --> 00:51:43,399
Speaker 8: we were being on the internet as the Internet's meant

812
00:51:43,440 --> 00:51:45,920
Speaker 8: to be, but at the same time, we're running a

813
00:51:46,040 --> 00:51:51,000
Speaker 8: brand account for a corporation and like we would have

814
00:51:51,120 --> 00:51:56,759
Speaker 8: to take care of customer service questions like or like

815
00:51:57,000 --> 00:51:59,640
Speaker 8: people would this is disgusting, but people would send us

816
00:51:59,680 --> 00:52:02,840
Speaker 8: like pos of themselves in the bathroom after going like

817
00:52:02,960 --> 00:52:05,960
Speaker 8: after eating. You totally don't have to include this, but.

818
00:52:06,040 --> 00:52:08,759
Speaker 1: Like, no, that's the people need to know.

819
00:52:09,360 --> 00:52:12,360
Speaker 8: Like that's that was the life of a community manager

820
00:52:12,680 --> 00:52:16,279
Speaker 8: for a quick service restaurant, you know, or just like

821
00:52:16,320 --> 00:52:19,840
Speaker 8: people complaining, which is normal. The job was fun, but

822
00:52:19,920 --> 00:52:21,200
Speaker 8: it was also work.

823
00:52:21,440 --> 00:52:23,799
Speaker 2: And let me know if you experienced any version of this,

824
00:52:24,080 --> 00:52:28,000
Speaker 2: how emotionally draining a job like that can be where

825
00:52:28,400 --> 00:52:30,799
Speaker 2: you know, you don't necessarily always have to be on,

826
00:52:31,000 --> 00:52:32,759
Speaker 2: but there's a part of you that like, like you're

827
00:52:32,760 --> 00:52:34,640
Speaker 2: saying posting it too in the morning, like I should

828
00:52:34,680 --> 00:52:35,279
Speaker 2: always be on.

829
00:52:35,600 --> 00:52:38,759
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's exactly it. Though at the time it did

830
00:52:38,800 --> 00:52:42,799
Speaker 8: not feel like I was draining, but I was definitely

831
00:52:43,480 --> 00:52:48,480
Speaker 8: pushing myself to an extent that I didn't necessarily have to.

832
00:52:49,000 --> 00:52:50,560
Speaker 8: It was so much a part of my life at

833
00:52:50,560 --> 00:52:52,880
Speaker 8: the time. Like I had just moved to New York City.

834
00:52:53,000 --> 00:52:55,880
Speaker 8: I didn't know that many people the only people I

835
00:52:55,960 --> 00:52:59,400
Speaker 8: knew were people who I met through Twitter, on social

836
00:52:59,400 --> 00:53:03,920
Speaker 8: media or other social media platforms. So I was so

837
00:53:04,160 --> 00:53:07,040
Speaker 8: used to being always on, you know, now looking back

838
00:53:07,080 --> 00:53:10,000
Speaker 8: at it, I created an entire company around self care

839
00:53:10,120 --> 00:53:13,239
Speaker 8: because I did not take care of myself back in

840
00:53:13,280 --> 00:53:16,759
Speaker 8: the day, and it all led up to, like a couple,

841
00:53:17,280 --> 00:53:20,879
Speaker 8: you know, massive burnout periods. And I feel like we're

842
00:53:20,920 --> 00:53:24,200
Speaker 8: so used to talking about burnout these days, but back then,

843
00:53:24,600 --> 00:53:28,160
Speaker 8: we didn't have the word doom scrolling. We didn't have

844
00:53:28,600 --> 00:53:33,440
Speaker 8: anything that would allow people to just remember that they

845
00:53:33,480 --> 00:53:36,960
Speaker 8: need to take you know, breaks, and that jobs, our

846
00:53:37,040 --> 00:53:39,520
Speaker 8: jobs are not our entire lives.

847
00:53:39,640 --> 00:53:43,640
Speaker 5: Right, which is so American of us to do.

848
00:53:47,320 --> 00:53:50,719
Speaker 2: First, like, are there any like standout positive memories or

849
00:53:50,760 --> 00:53:54,120
Speaker 2: like moments of recognition that you look back on fondly.

850
00:53:54,560 --> 00:53:58,000
Speaker 8: Also, we would we would do giveaways where we would

851
00:53:58,000 --> 00:54:01,960
Speaker 8: give away, you know, Denny's gift car cards for doing

852
00:54:02,000 --> 00:54:05,560
Speaker 8: fan art, for drawing fan art for Denny's. So those

853
00:54:05,560 --> 00:54:10,800
Speaker 8: were really really cool. I can't remember any of the posts,

854
00:54:10,840 --> 00:54:12,960
Speaker 8: but I remember at the time I was just like

855
00:54:13,560 --> 00:54:17,000
Speaker 8: I would collect all the posts and bring them to

856
00:54:17,040 --> 00:54:18,279
Speaker 8: my superior and be.

857
00:54:18,320 --> 00:54:20,840
Speaker 1: Like, look what they made us. Look at our fans

858
00:54:20,920 --> 00:54:21,719
Speaker 1: made us like.

859
00:54:21,719 --> 00:54:27,440
Speaker 8: Oh my gosh, and it was just so sweet. At

860
00:54:27,440 --> 00:54:29,759
Speaker 8: the time. I'm like getting teary eyed thinking about the

861
00:54:29,760 --> 00:54:34,239
Speaker 8: community there. I was the voice of Denny's at the time,

862
00:54:34,400 --> 00:54:37,959
Speaker 8: but I felt like the community had large voices within

863
00:54:38,040 --> 00:54:43,680
Speaker 8: it that I could talk to and be friendly with.

864
00:54:44,120 --> 00:54:45,359
Speaker 8: I'll never forget.

865
00:54:46,080 --> 00:54:49,919
Speaker 2: Did anyone at the time sort of figure out who

866
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:51,759
Speaker 2: you as an individual were?

867
00:54:52,000 --> 00:54:55,200
Speaker 8: Yeah, some people. Some people did, and most of them

868
00:54:55,280 --> 00:54:57,520
Speaker 8: were people who are also living in New York City

869
00:54:57,520 --> 00:55:01,399
Speaker 8: as well and were part of like New York City

870
00:55:01,520 --> 00:55:05,120
Speaker 8: Twitter Attie. I guess you could call it okay, Like

871
00:55:05,840 --> 00:55:08,080
Speaker 8: I don't know if it still exists, but like, you know,

872
00:55:08,200 --> 00:55:12,280
Speaker 8: people who worked in media or worked on social media

873
00:55:12,320 --> 00:55:15,839
Speaker 8: brand accounts, we all kind of knew each other. And

874
00:55:16,080 --> 00:55:18,800
Speaker 8: I was known as the Denny's Girl. It's really common

875
00:55:18,880 --> 00:55:23,320
Speaker 8: for social media managers who are you know, public facing,

876
00:55:23,760 --> 00:55:28,879
Speaker 8: to like have haters, and they don't just don't deserve it.

877
00:55:29,040 --> 00:55:32,040
Speaker 2: Just the idea that, oh, if you're receiving some sort

878
00:55:32,080 --> 00:55:34,920
Speaker 2: of hate or harassment online, that's actually a sign that

879
00:55:34,920 --> 00:55:37,040
Speaker 2: you're doing a good job. Yeah.

880
00:55:37,200 --> 00:55:40,680
Speaker 8: Always, I would get told that too, But I'm very like,

881
00:55:41,800 --> 00:55:45,400
Speaker 8: I'm very like Emo and so I get it, like

882
00:55:45,960 --> 00:55:48,680
Speaker 8: it really affects me. So I would like, you know,

883
00:55:48,800 --> 00:55:51,600
Speaker 8: be sad and people be like, don't don't worry, They're

884
00:55:51,640 --> 00:55:54,000
Speaker 8: just Internet trolls. I'm like, I know, but why is

885
00:55:54,000 --> 00:55:56,440
Speaker 8: my mental health like failing me? Right now?

886
00:55:58,120 --> 00:56:26,240
Speaker 4: We will be back with more Serenity.

887
00:56:15,280 --> 00:56:16,920
Speaker 1: Welcome back to sixteenth minute.

888
00:56:17,000 --> 00:56:19,080
Speaker 2: I always want Jack in the Box to be good,

889
00:56:19,239 --> 00:56:20,400
Speaker 2: but it simply.

890
00:56:20,120 --> 00:56:21,040
Speaker 1: Never is good.

891
00:56:21,440 --> 00:56:25,920
Speaker 2: I had an argument with both of my producers, Sophie

892
00:56:25,920 --> 00:56:29,399
Speaker 2: and Ian, and they're from southern California, so they think

893
00:56:29,400 --> 00:56:30,879
Speaker 2: that Jack in the Box is good.

894
00:56:30,880 --> 00:56:31,480
Speaker 1: It's not good.

895
00:56:31,920 --> 00:56:34,120
Speaker 4: Here's the rest of my interview with Serenity Disco.

896
00:56:34,680 --> 00:56:37,680
Speaker 2: What led you to decide to move on? Were you

897
00:56:37,840 --> 00:56:41,080
Speaker 2: cognizant of any degree of burnout at this time?

898
00:56:41,160 --> 00:56:46,399
Speaker 8: I think it was just the opportunity. You know, they

899
00:56:46,640 --> 00:56:50,040
Speaker 8: definitely offered me more money there, and I was just

900
00:56:50,080 --> 00:56:52,040
Speaker 8: getting started. Like you said, I was a twenty three,

901
00:56:52,120 --> 00:56:54,520
Speaker 8: twenty four year old in New York City and runt's

902
00:56:54,560 --> 00:56:57,200
Speaker 8: not cheap, so you know, you got to go where

903
00:56:57,239 --> 00:57:00,319
Speaker 8: the money gotta go where the money is. And like,

904
00:57:00,360 --> 00:57:05,400
Speaker 8: I love Tumblr as a platform, and the people I

905
00:57:05,440 --> 00:57:09,680
Speaker 8: worked with at Tumblr were really awesome as well. And

906
00:57:09,760 --> 00:57:13,400
Speaker 8: I just wanted a different experience, and they hired me

907
00:57:13,480 --> 00:57:16,560
Speaker 8: as a creative strategist. I would get to like travel

908
00:57:16,600 --> 00:57:20,160
Speaker 8: around the country and do these things called Tumblr road shows,

909
00:57:20,840 --> 00:57:24,680
Speaker 8: where I think, yeah, it's basically like a Tumblr one

910
00:57:24,720 --> 00:57:27,640
Speaker 8: oh one, like you know how to use Tumblr and

911
00:57:28,280 --> 00:57:31,040
Speaker 8: got I got to talk about all different awesome communities

912
00:57:31,040 --> 00:57:33,640
Speaker 8: on Tumblr, like back in the day. I don't know

913
00:57:33,680 --> 00:57:37,640
Speaker 8: if it still exists, but like there's a sink fandom,

914
00:57:38,000 --> 00:57:41,360
Speaker 8: like washing your hands sinc. Fandom, Like people were obsessed

915
00:57:41,400 --> 00:57:45,720
Speaker 8: with sinks, I know, And I just thought that was

916
00:57:45,760 --> 00:57:49,800
Speaker 8: so kooky and like fun. But just to show that

917
00:57:49,840 --> 00:57:51,920
Speaker 8: there's a community for everything on Tumblr.

918
00:57:52,200 --> 00:57:57,200
Speaker 2: You've worked in so many areas of the internet, because

919
00:57:57,320 --> 00:57:59,720
Speaker 2: is it from Tumblr? At what point do you switch

920
00:57:59,720 --> 00:58:02,440
Speaker 2: over to work on the Hillary Clinton campaign?

921
00:58:02,840 --> 00:58:07,640
Speaker 8: So Hillary Clinton. That was a couple years after Tumblr.

922
00:58:08,240 --> 00:58:14,320
Speaker 8: I actually launched a small median article organization called fums

923
00:58:14,400 --> 00:58:18,240
Speaker 8: plain that was for short and long form content personal

924
00:58:18,360 --> 00:58:23,040
Speaker 8: essays for women and fem identifying individuals. And I did

925
00:58:23,040 --> 00:58:25,680
Speaker 8: that for a few years before we shut it down

926
00:58:26,200 --> 00:58:29,560
Speaker 8: because of not being able to fund it. It was fun.

927
00:58:29,640 --> 00:58:32,200
Speaker 8: I knew a lot of people who worked in the

928
00:58:32,320 --> 00:58:35,440
Speaker 8: media field at the time, and I wanted to be

929
00:58:35,520 --> 00:58:41,080
Speaker 8: a part of it because it sounded so interesting and impactful,

930
00:58:41,320 --> 00:58:44,200
Speaker 8: and I wanted to do something impactful. I was like, Okay,

931
00:58:44,560 --> 00:58:49,360
Speaker 8: brands being weird on social media, check time to do

932
00:58:49,440 --> 00:58:52,560
Speaker 8: something and you know that. I know that was impactful too,

933
00:58:52,640 --> 00:58:54,680
Speaker 8: but you know, I wanted to do something in the

934
00:58:54,720 --> 00:58:55,960
Speaker 8: media space as well.

935
00:58:56,320 --> 00:59:00,120
Speaker 2: It seems like you're sort of chasing more of your powers.

936
00:59:00,480 --> 00:59:04,000
Speaker 8: And yes, like fmsplain was definitely a passion. And then

937
00:59:04,200 --> 00:59:06,120
Speaker 8: I was like, Okay, I need I need a real

938
00:59:06,240 --> 00:59:08,040
Speaker 8: I need a not a real job because that was

939
00:59:08,040 --> 00:59:10,800
Speaker 8: a real job. I needed a job that's going to

940
00:59:11,040 --> 00:59:14,760
Speaker 8: pay me money to keep living in the great state

941
00:59:15,360 --> 00:59:21,000
Speaker 8: of New York. I got hired actually at Rock Nation,

942
00:59:21,240 --> 00:59:27,200
Speaker 8: the record label, where I worked on celebrity accounts doing

943
00:59:27,280 --> 00:59:30,640
Speaker 8: their social media. I'm not under nda with them, but

944
00:59:30,720 --> 00:59:33,200
Speaker 8: I just don't like to say because I don't know

945
00:59:33,240 --> 00:59:37,160
Speaker 8: if it's appropriate. While I was working there, they were

946
00:59:37,240 --> 00:59:39,320
Speaker 8: kind enough to let me go work on the Hillary

947
00:59:39,400 --> 00:59:41,320
Speaker 8: Clinton campaign back in twenty.

948
00:59:41,040 --> 00:59:42,120
Speaker 1: Sixteen when you were there.

949
00:59:42,200 --> 00:59:46,400
Speaker 8: Yeah, I got recruited to work for her doing voter

950
00:59:46,520 --> 00:59:53,000
Speaker 8: registration and influencer management. Work with influencers to create like

951
00:59:53,200 --> 00:59:55,840
Speaker 8: help them create content that they could share in their

952
00:59:55,840 --> 00:59:58,720
Speaker 8: social media channels to get people to register to vote

953
00:59:58,800 --> 01:00:01,000
Speaker 8: using the I Will Vote website.

954
01:00:01,040 --> 01:00:03,080
Speaker 2: I think it is fascinating, and because I wasn't sure

955
01:00:03,080 --> 01:00:06,760
Speaker 2: what like a social media job at rock Nation would

956
01:00:06,760 --> 01:00:10,680
Speaker 2: even entail, But it is fascinating that, like celebrities are

957
01:00:11,040 --> 01:00:12,200
Speaker 2: brands of their own.

958
01:00:12,040 --> 01:00:15,600
Speaker 8: Basically, and they have their they have their own campaigns.

959
01:00:15,800 --> 01:00:19,600
Speaker 8: You know, like when an album comes out, there's so

960
01:00:19,840 --> 01:00:25,240
Speaker 8: many there's so many pieces to promotion of the album.

961
01:00:25,360 --> 01:00:28,560
Speaker 8: Not only are they promoting the album, they're promoting themselves

962
01:00:28,560 --> 01:00:29,280
Speaker 8: as a person.

963
01:00:30,080 --> 01:00:35,440
Speaker 2: Was it meaningfully different managing a celebrities account versus a

964
01:00:35,480 --> 01:00:36,480
Speaker 2: restaurant's account?

965
01:00:37,680 --> 01:00:41,160
Speaker 8: I will. You know, Denny's has such a special spot

966
01:00:41,200 --> 01:00:43,640
Speaker 8: in my heart. You know, it was my first job.

967
01:00:44,000 --> 01:00:48,280
Speaker 8: It was my first time interacting with a community that

968
01:00:48,400 --> 01:00:53,000
Speaker 8: was so large. I met so many wonderful people through it. Today,

969
01:00:53,160 --> 01:00:56,360
Speaker 8: like I have, we're on this podcast talking about what

970
01:00:56,440 --> 01:00:58,320
Speaker 8: I did when I was twenty three years old and

971
01:00:58,320 --> 01:00:59,640
Speaker 8: I'm now thirty five.

972
01:01:02,120 --> 01:01:05,640
Speaker 2: My last question about sort of this period of your work.

973
01:01:05,800 --> 01:01:09,959
Speaker 2: It was twenty sixteen election, Yes, quite contentious. Oh, by

974
01:01:10,640 --> 01:01:14,640
Speaker 2: the way people interact with the celebrities that they think

975
01:01:14,680 --> 01:01:18,160
Speaker 2: around the other side of the account. Quite contentious for

976
01:01:18,440 --> 01:01:23,000
Speaker 2: you working in those spaces, especially simultaneously. What kind of

977
01:01:23,120 --> 01:01:26,640
Speaker 2: like energy are you having to absorb from people who

978
01:01:26,640 --> 01:01:30,560
Speaker 2: are who think they're talking to whomever but actually aren't well.

979
01:01:30,600 --> 01:01:33,120
Speaker 8: I will say when I was doing social media for

980
01:01:33,280 --> 01:01:37,160
Speaker 8: the Hillary campaign, I had to be quite public facing,

981
01:01:37,760 --> 01:01:42,600
Speaker 8: and so I got a ton of hate and trolls

982
01:01:42,640 --> 01:01:46,880
Speaker 8: from the opposing side. I don't even know how to

983
01:01:46,920 --> 01:01:51,480
Speaker 8: describe it, like it's like these people don't believe that

984
01:01:51,680 --> 01:01:55,320
Speaker 8: someone exists on the other side of the screen. Shout.

985
01:01:55,360 --> 01:01:58,680
Speaker 8: They're just shouting, and I don't know what they think

986
01:01:58,680 --> 01:02:02,560
Speaker 8: they're shouting at because someone there and I'm doing a

987
01:02:02,680 --> 01:02:07,240
Speaker 8: job and I'm doing a job that I actually believe in.

988
01:02:07,320 --> 01:02:10,520
Speaker 8: I believed in her. It was really upsetting. I remember

989
01:02:10,760 --> 01:02:15,200
Speaker 8: the day of the election. It was heartbreaking, like people

990
01:02:15,240 --> 01:02:20,120
Speaker 8: were messaging me in my direct messages saying like, hey,

991
01:02:20,520 --> 01:02:23,560
Speaker 8: I'm looking at the results and they're not they're not

992
01:02:23,760 --> 01:02:26,040
Speaker 8: doing well, Like we're not doing well. What are we

993
01:02:26,080 --> 01:02:31,520
Speaker 8: going to do? And I just I couldn't say anything.

994
01:02:31,560 --> 01:02:34,280
Speaker 8: And it was so it was so many people reaching

995
01:02:34,320 --> 01:02:37,360
Speaker 8: out to me privately and publicly because I had to

996
01:02:37,400 --> 01:02:40,640
Speaker 8: be so public facing during the three months that I

997
01:02:40,680 --> 01:02:44,560
Speaker 8: worked there, there were some people who were very sympathetic

998
01:02:44,680 --> 01:02:50,600
Speaker 8: and supportive, who were like, you know, we're rooting for you.

999
01:02:50,600 --> 01:02:53,520
Speaker 8: You did your best. As the clock got closer to

1000
01:02:53,680 --> 01:02:58,360
Speaker 8: the announcements who won, and even the day after it

1001
01:02:58,400 --> 01:03:02,280
Speaker 8: was like a funeral. So I had so many messages,

1002
01:03:02,360 --> 01:03:07,560
Speaker 8: you know, of support, and it really shows that even

1003
01:03:07,600 --> 01:03:10,480
Speaker 8: though there are trolls on the internet, you know, the

1004
01:03:10,520 --> 01:03:16,040
Speaker 8: community that you have is much louder, can be louder

1005
01:03:16,080 --> 01:03:21,400
Speaker 8: than that, you know, focusing on that positivity and utilizing

1006
01:03:21,440 --> 01:03:22,920
Speaker 8: the mute and black button.

1007
01:03:23,960 --> 01:03:26,280
Speaker 2: Working on the Hillary campaign, was that the first time

1008
01:03:26,320 --> 01:03:30,640
Speaker 2: that you were in a big social media position as yourself. Yes.

1009
01:03:31,640 --> 01:03:34,600
Speaker 8: Because I never publicly shared who I was on Denny's,

1010
01:03:34,880 --> 01:03:38,120
Speaker 8: people just kind of found out. I don't know how,

1011
01:03:40,880 --> 01:03:44,160
Speaker 8: and I didn't really expect going into the Hillary Clinton

1012
01:03:44,240 --> 01:03:48,480
Speaker 8: campaign that I would be so public facing, but it

1013
01:03:49,280 --> 01:03:51,160
Speaker 8: just sort of happened that way, and you know, I

1014
01:03:51,160 --> 01:03:54,800
Speaker 8: don't regret any of it. It was a really great experience,

1015
01:03:54,840 --> 01:03:57,360
Speaker 8: and I again worked with some really amazing people.

1016
01:03:57,600 --> 01:04:02,160
Speaker 2: So you experienced signific I can't burn out. Oh yes,

1017
01:04:02,280 --> 01:04:03,960
Speaker 2: can you tell me more about that?

1018
01:04:04,120 --> 01:04:08,040
Speaker 8: Oh yes, it hit me like a thousand bricks. The

1019
01:04:08,120 --> 01:04:12,560
Speaker 8: day after the election, I couldn't get out of bed.

1020
01:04:13,000 --> 01:04:17,880
Speaker 8: I was supposed to go to the concession speech and

1021
01:04:18,160 --> 01:04:22,160
Speaker 8: I just could not get myself unable to move. And

1022
01:04:22,600 --> 01:04:25,000
Speaker 8: during the campaign I wasn't taking care of myself. I

1023
01:04:25,120 --> 01:04:28,200
Speaker 8: wasn't eating very well. I was eating Chipotle almost every

1024
01:04:28,280 --> 01:04:32,480
Speaker 8: night because it was there, and I wasn't drinking enough water.

1025
01:04:32,920 --> 01:04:37,120
Speaker 8: The inspiration for my current company, Alabud, came from working

1026
01:04:37,320 --> 01:04:41,200
Speaker 8: on the campaign. A coworker would post on post it

1027
01:04:41,280 --> 01:04:45,320
Speaker 8: notes like really nice reminders and then post it into

1028
01:04:45,320 --> 01:04:48,040
Speaker 8: her cubicle, and I was like, that's really sweet. I should,

1029
01:04:48,160 --> 01:04:51,720
Speaker 8: you know, do more reminders for myself. Yeah, so I

1030
01:04:51,800 --> 01:04:54,040
Speaker 8: went back to Rock Nation. I worked there for a

1031
01:04:54,080 --> 01:04:57,640
Speaker 8: couple of months before deciding to quit because I couldn't

1032
01:04:58,480 --> 01:05:00,680
Speaker 8: keep up with the work. I was so burnt out

1033
01:05:00,760 --> 01:05:04,040
Speaker 8: and I didn't feel like I was putting my best

1034
01:05:04,240 --> 01:05:07,160
Speaker 8: self out there. And then a few months later I

1035
01:05:07,240 --> 01:05:10,760
Speaker 8: started working on Alabud, and yeah.

1036
01:05:10,880 --> 01:05:12,480
Speaker 2: I'm just like, I'm happy for you that you were

1037
01:05:12,520 --> 01:05:14,919
Speaker 2: able to be like, no, we're calling it. Your next

1038
01:05:14,960 --> 01:05:19,720
Speaker 2: project was about addressing that. Yeah, when you were putting

1039
01:05:19,720 --> 01:05:23,160
Speaker 2: Alobud together, how you build something like that out.

1040
01:05:23,440 --> 01:05:23,720
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1041
01:05:23,760 --> 01:05:29,480
Speaker 8: So initially it was a worksheet that I had someone

1042
01:05:29,560 --> 01:05:35,800
Speaker 8: designed where you know, we listed out hydrate, fuel, refresh,

1043
01:05:35,840 --> 01:05:39,880
Speaker 8: things like that, and then you know, you check off

1044
01:05:40,040 --> 01:05:43,280
Speaker 8: that you did it Monday through Monday through Sunday. We

1045
01:05:43,480 --> 01:05:48,720
Speaker 8: created a digital version of the worksheet on type form.

1046
01:05:48,920 --> 01:05:52,840
Speaker 8: It got thousands of people using it, and I was like, Wow,

1047
01:05:52,880 --> 01:05:59,840
Speaker 8: there's definitely a need for a self care checklist slash reminders. Luckily,

1048
01:05:59,880 --> 01:06:05,640
Speaker 8: I had a friend who owns their own design studio

1049
01:06:06,080 --> 01:06:08,840
Speaker 8: for app development that I used to work with at Tumblr.

1050
01:06:08,960 --> 01:06:13,160
Speaker 8: They were like, if you can fundraise X amount of dollars,

1051
01:06:13,360 --> 01:06:15,760
Speaker 8: you know we can make this for you. And so

1052
01:06:15,960 --> 01:06:21,560
Speaker 8: we went to Kickstarter and fundraise fifty thousand dollars. Yeah,

1053
01:06:21,600 --> 01:06:26,440
Speaker 8: we have one point four million users now and we've

1054
01:06:26,440 --> 01:06:28,880
Speaker 8: been around for I think eight years.

1055
01:06:28,840 --> 01:06:32,480
Speaker 2: On the whole, since you were tweeting at two am

1056
01:06:32,520 --> 01:06:38,200
Speaker 2: from the Denny's account to now. How has your relationship

1057
01:06:38,200 --> 01:06:39,200
Speaker 2: with the Internet changed.

1058
01:06:40,000 --> 01:06:44,560
Speaker 8: I definitely use social media a lot less than I

1059
01:06:44,600 --> 01:06:48,240
Speaker 8: did previously. Like I was someone who is always on,

1060
01:06:48,600 --> 01:06:52,720
Speaker 8: but now I have a very healthy relationship with my

1061
01:06:52,760 --> 01:06:57,320
Speaker 8: phone and social media. I basically only check it like

1062
01:06:57,640 --> 01:07:01,240
Speaker 8: once or twice a day, and I use scheduling software

1063
01:07:01,360 --> 01:07:04,840
Speaker 8: to schedule all my content for Alobud. I hate to

1064
01:07:04,880 --> 01:07:07,920
Speaker 8: say it, but I'm I use LinkedIn now more than

1065
01:07:07,960 --> 01:07:14,240
Speaker 8: I do Twitter. I definitely have been connecting with folks

1066
01:07:14,280 --> 01:07:17,600
Speaker 8: like face to face. I've been getting virtual coffee with

1067
01:07:17,760 --> 01:07:22,160
Speaker 8: friends and just catching up because I really miss seeing

1068
01:07:22,240 --> 01:07:30,040
Speaker 8: people's faces. I feel very content with my career and

1069
01:07:30,480 --> 01:07:35,120
Speaker 8: I'm I'm happy to be focusing on something that really

1070
01:07:35,160 --> 01:07:38,440
Speaker 8: helps folks with their mental health and their well being.

1071
01:07:38,680 --> 01:07:42,680
Speaker 8: I guess I would say to my younger self, put

1072
01:07:42,760 --> 01:07:47,520
Speaker 8: the phone down and not touch grasps. I hate I

1073
01:07:47,600 --> 01:07:49,800
Speaker 8: hate that uh saying.

1074
01:07:50,560 --> 01:07:51,680
Speaker 1: It's so patronizing.

1075
01:07:51,880 --> 01:07:53,640
Speaker 8: Yeah, and you don't know what it's like to be

1076
01:07:54,840 --> 01:08:00,360
Speaker 8: to have like all of your communities and everything be all,

1077
01:08:00,920 --> 01:08:03,880
Speaker 8: but put the phone down for a little bit and

1078
01:08:04,160 --> 01:08:06,320
Speaker 8: know that it's always going to be there for you

1079
01:08:06,640 --> 01:08:07,960
Speaker 8: when you're ready for it.

1080
01:08:08,440 --> 01:08:10,920
Speaker 2: Thank you so much to Serenity, and you can follow

1081
01:08:10,960 --> 01:08:13,480
Speaker 2: their work and learn more about their app at the

1082
01:08:13,560 --> 01:08:18,280
Speaker 2: links in the description. Okay, I hope you're locked in

1083
01:08:18,720 --> 01:08:21,240
Speaker 2: because we've got a lot to cover in this series.

1084
01:08:21,640 --> 01:08:25,479
Speaker 2: Because we've made it a whole episode without circling back

1085
01:08:25,640 --> 01:08:28,960
Speaker 2: to the pool full of dua Lipa's piss. We will

1086
01:08:29,000 --> 01:08:33,280
Speaker 2: get there next week, but for your moment of fun

1087
01:08:33,920 --> 01:08:36,680
Speaker 2: seems like a stretch. In this case, here is the

1088
01:08:36,840 --> 01:08:40,639
Speaker 2: concluding thought of the century of the self. And next

1089
01:08:40,720 --> 01:08:44,360
Speaker 2: week we will talk to the person who translated online

1090
01:08:44,400 --> 01:08:49,800
Speaker 2: shit posting out of raw human rage to selling cheeseburgers,

1091
01:08:50,280 --> 01:08:53,680
Speaker 2: Amy Brown of the Wendy's Twitter account next Tuesday.

1092
01:08:54,120 --> 01:08:56,040
Speaker 7: It's not that the people are in charge, but that

1093
01:08:56,120 --> 01:08:59,519
Speaker 7: the people's desires are in charge. The people are not

1094
01:08:59,560 --> 01:09:03,280
Speaker 7: in charge. The people exercise no decision making power within

1095
01:09:03,320 --> 01:09:09,680
Speaker 7: this environment. So democracy is reduced from something which assumes

1096
01:09:09,720 --> 01:09:14,600
Speaker 7: an active citizenry to something which now increasingly is predicated

1097
01:09:14,600 --> 01:09:18,280
Speaker 7: on the idea of the public as passive consumers, the

1098
01:09:18,280 --> 01:09:21,920
Speaker 7: public as people who essentially what you're delivering them are

1099
01:09:21,960 --> 01:09:22,719
Speaker 7: doggy truths.

1100
01:09:27,120 --> 01:09:30,720
Speaker 2: Sixteenth Minute is a production of fol Zone Media and Iheartradim.

1101
01:09:31,240 --> 01:09:34,760
Speaker 1: It is written, posted, and produced by me Jamielostis.

1102
01:09:34,800 --> 01:09:38,160
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Sophie Lickterman and Robert Evans. The

1103
01:09:38,200 --> 01:09:42,200
Speaker 2: Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.

1104
01:09:42,720 --> 01:09:45,040
Speaker 1: Our theme song is by Sad thirteen.

1105
01:09:45,640 --> 01:09:49,120
Speaker 2: Voice acting is from Brant Crater and pet shout outs

1106
01:09:49,120 --> 01:09:52,040
Speaker 2: to our dog producer Anderson, my katz Flee and Casper,

1107
01:09:52,160 --> 01:09:54,559
Speaker 2: and my pet Rockbert, who will outlive us all.

1108
01:09:54,880 --> 01:09:56,320
Speaker 1: Bye.