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