The Joy, Misery, and Fame Of An Extremely Online Life — With Taylor Lorenz

Taylor Lorenz is a technology columnist at the Washington Post and author of Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet. She joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss her book, exploring the tradeoffs of life as an online influencer, and whether people have a choice to pursue power online. Stay tuned for the second half, where we discuss Lorenz's various controversies, including her view on content moderation, and then close with a discussion of why the internet is less fun than it once was. --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  A new book examines the highs and lows of being extremely online. And we're going to talk about it with its author right after this. This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put a Gentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then I sat down with Adam Mitchell, head of enterprise business solutions at Voya Financial to go inside a large scale agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions, trade offs, and lessons along the way. You can watch both conversations now on my YouTube channel today.

• 0:44Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:11Speaker 01

  LinkedIn presents.

• 1:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. We're joined today by Taylor Lorenz, a tech columnist at The Washington Post. But more importantly, she's the author of Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet. It comes out this week, so now available in stores. We're going to talk all about it. Taylor, welcome to the show.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 1:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Thanks for being here. So fun fact that our listeners probably do not know is that you and I came up in the same industry right around the same time. I remember spending time with you at the Community Manager meetups in New York, maybe 2010, 2011, when we were all trying to figure out what social media was. And we were both in marketing at the time. We knew something was going on. It's been quite a journey since then, wouldn't you say?

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's actually kind of crazy. Writing this book made me like, it was a lot of trips down memory lane and it's crazy that that was like almost 15 years ago.

• 2:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And yeah, I mean, the social web back in the day was went from being this curiosity that people gathered in these meetups were like, struggling to explain the return on investment to their management. And now it's a de facto, as you put it in your book, it is media now. Very crazy transformation.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let's start with the title of your book Extremely Online. Is it good or bad to be extremely online?

• 2:41Speaker 01

  I think it can be good or bad. I think there's a lot of bads and we tend to focus on the bads, but there's a lot of good as well. That comes along with it. It's like most technology, it's, you know, too much. You don't want to, you don't want to go too far, but I think that the world is better because of the internet.

• 3:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And why is that?

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Because I think we're in a more connected world. We have more access to information. There's been, you know, it's been a really liberatory force in a lot of ways. Obviously, again, there's a lot of downside. I think we're in a weird kind of, it like, we're in like flux right now. It's still really early in the internet world. I mean, it's hard to, like, it seems like a long time ago when you talk about this stuff 10, 15 years ago, but I think in the grand scope of things and how technology will evolve, we're still at the beginning. And yeah, I mean, I definitely look back at the 90s and that media landscape and I would never go back to that. So with all the problems that this new media landscape has, I think it's superior.

• 3:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. So then for the sake of the debate, let me make the argument that it's worse.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  A lot of people do.

• 3:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, I mean, I think that what this, what being extremely online does, it sort of sucks people in into this really strange relationship where they, they give so much of themselves and the platforms and the audience takes a lot. But they just don't get the return that you would otherwise. It sort of feels like it messes people up. The more online they are, the more messed up they get.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, but here's the thing, but right. But I think what you're doing is what a lot of people do, which is they conflate the internet with social media. And they kind of, when you talk about being extremely online, the thought is, oh, well, then that means I'm spending all day on Facebook and Twitter. That's not what I'm talking about. I think these platforms have been corrosive, manipulative, bad. I agree. If you spend too much time on certain platforms, it can be really negative, although I do think that there are positives. I don't think it's like a net negative for the world. But I think that actually, the power of the internet is to connect people. And I do think that connection at scale is valuable. And so I think, I mean, and I argue this is sort of the end of my book, but I think that we don't want to live in a less

• 4:56Speaker 01

  online or less connected world. We just don't need these specific sort of like mix of tech platforms that I think have been really kind of exploitative and predatory and yeah, prioritize, you know, shareholder value and engagement above the mental health of their own users.

• 5:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Look, I think that it's great for the audiences, right? And, you know, especially people who are like following Instagram influencers or TikTok influencers, they're entertained. I mean, we'll talk later about the value of the entertainment that's being produced. But I mean, okay, so, so, you know, on one hand, there is the platform that drives people there. But the other side of it is that the influencers decide themselves that they want to be online. I mean, it is a choice they're making. So how do you square that with like the blame that you put on the platforms? I mean, ultimately, like in some way, this, that the people who decide that they want to be extremely online, they, they end up being a product, their struggles end up being a product in some way of their decisions. And that's something that seemed like it was highlighted throughout, throughout the whole book as well.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I think these platforms are exploiting their creators, but I wouldn't blame the creators for that. I would blame the platforms. I mean, the creators are just operating in the landscape that, you know, they're operating under capitalism or whatever, like everyone else, right? Like they're operating in this, this monopolistic tech landscape where if you are not leveraging Main platforms, you don't have access to an audience at scale. Um, I think a little bit of that is changing. Actually, I think since, I mean, my book kind of ends in like the sort of beginning of the pandemic, which is like when everyone got super online, but I think like in the past year, especially like you've seen more of a fracturing, but um, yeah, I mean, you have to be on these major platforms if you want to reach audiences at scale.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  And um, I think that we, these platforms, we need to hold the platforms accountable. We can't blame the users for using platforms that spend millions of dollars, you know, lobbying and to like ensure that no other platform has a chance against them. Like, I think that's a problem with the tech landscape, that there's not more choice.

• 6:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  But isn't that sort of taking away some of the agency that these, that the people who decide to, because it ultimately is a choice, for instance, to become an influencer.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Well, sure, but um, consider the fact that the majority, not the majority, I don't actually know that, but a significant portion of the content creator ecosystem is people that have been shut out of traditional, traditional employment, whether it's mothers, um, you know, a lot of LGBTQ people, a lot of people that like want, wanted a space in the media, the traditional media and were shut out of those spaces, or they need a flexible income, or they were laid off. And so they started to, you know, make content at home and that's become a lifeline for them. So I don't know that you should blame the content creators for their own working conditions. I think we should hold these platforms responsible. Same thing, yes, is it a choice to become an Uber driver or work for Instacart? Yeah, that's a choice, but like often it's a choice that you make almost not under duress, but because

• 7:47Speaker 01

  you think it'll give, you know, it's a job like anything else. It doesn't mean that the job shouldn't guarantee you certain protections and treat you in a certain way, right? That's true for all of us. Is it a choice to work in media? Sure. Does that mean that we don't deserve strong labor protections? No. Right?

• 8:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. No, I mean, I, I think that like. There's, there's an, okay, so let's just go back to like, one of like, the first characters in your book, I mean, Julia Allison, that's, that's her name, right? Like, she decided that she wanted to be like, the Kardashian of the online world, to be someone who would be like, a Kim Kardashian, or a Paris Hilton, but just without

• 8:23Speaker 01

  She wanted to be like-

• 8:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  The fortune- Sorry, go ahead.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  She wanted to be like, Tom Wolfe, that was who she was inspired by. So she saw, she talked about seeing Tom Wolfe, the author, and how successful he was. And the insight that she got, because Kim Kardashian wasn't even famous back then. This is when Kim Kardashian was still

• 8:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  working for Paris Hilton, actually. She was definitely not a celebrity, but, um, so, and Paris Hilton was just sort of coming up as a reality star during this exact same time. So those two people were not really in the culture yet. She, I mean, they were in the culture, but like, she wasn't aware of them very much. It was Tom, so she went to see Tom Wolfe speak. She noticed he always has this very strong brand, like, he always wears this sort of like, white suit, and she just thought, wow, personal branding is really strong, and I think that the internet is going to be a vehicle to build a personal brand. So I want to be a media figure, and get my, sort of, writing out, she was a journalist and a writer, but I'm gonna build a brand through the internet. And she actually saw correctly, that that would be the way that the media would go.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  So she started blogging, she started making videos on YouTube, and Vimeo, and other things, and she became one of the first multi-platform content creators.

• 9:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think there's maybe less sympathy for folks in this world, because there's a sort of look-at-me quality, like, where, you know, you, I mean, let's be honest, like, media isn't the only job people can go into, and so-

• 9:45Speaker 01

  No, but I think it's one that's accessible to a lot of people that don't have alternative media, and I think also, it's, it's, it's been a lot of people that haven't had a voice in traditional media, that I think it's really important for them to have a voice, you know? There, a lot of them are speaking truth to power, and, you know, I talk about the beauty vloggers a little bit, but I think the beauty vloggers, I wish that I could have fit more in the book, because it's a perfect example of this massive industry, you know, there's all these women of color, women with hooded eyes, you know, Asian women, that's how Michelle Phan blew up with her, like, eye dress. Basically, like, the entire beauty industry was not meeting the needs of a lot of women, a lot of types of women, a lot of, you know- Basically, anybody that wasn't sort of like a young, beautiful white woman, right? And so you saw these beauty vloggers blow up and cultivate communities and launch beauty brands

• 10:30Speaker 01

  that ultimately serve the needs of this market that was an underserved market. That's valuable, in my opinion. Like, I don't think it's about fame. I think a lot of people misunderstand the industry and they think it's a fame industry, but it's not. It's entrepreneurialism, right? It's about like, building a brand or building like a business. And sometimes that business is focused on yourself, sometimes it's focused on... Most, most of the time, it's not focused around yourself as like a lifestyle creator. It's focused around a specific area. Like, for instance, you focusing on technology and you're a tech journalist and you have an independent company. There's a lot of other people like Marquez Brownlee, right? Like, he's essentially like, sure, could he work in tech media? Sure, but he's built his own sort of media business around technology. So you see a lot of people doing stuff like that

• 11:13Speaker 01

  and especially meeting the needs of people that have not been served by traditional media.

• 11:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, but there is, there is, you know, it can't, it can't really be unpacked from like, the, the fame end of it. Like, is it a business? Yes, but is there also?

• 11:26Speaker 01

  You could say the same thing about journalism. Well, no, I, I don't think that that is really part of it. I really don't. I think it is part of it for certain, sure, entertainment adjacent content creators, the content creators that want to eventually get into maybe more Hollywood and entertainment, sure. But that is a tiny, tiny fraction of the content creator ecosystem. And you could say the same thing for journalism. Do people get into journalism for fame? Sure, I'm sure there are, definitely. I'm sure some TV journalists especially, right? But I would say most journalists don't get into it for that.

• 11:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. I mean, I think journalism is the absolute worst form of influencing.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  You get the, all the downsides and almost none of the upsides of money or anything like that.

• 12:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  One of the things that's interesting is so many of the characters in your book fade in and out. And that's because their personal form of entertainment or their mastery of a certain format, you know, eventually gets stale or goes away. But with, with people in the news, you have the news always that keeps you relevant. So actually, like, the shelf life of a news influencer ends up lasting much longer than your typical, like, entertainment or, you know, Vine influencer.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think that's true for most content creators. Like, most content creators, it's, and people, again, it's like... People are obsessed with the fame aspect. They can't see the rest of, they don't actually understand the industry because the only lens that they can understand it through is fame, which is now a commodity. And I would say everyone has, like, the internet just makes fame more of a commodity rather than like a thing that some people have and some people don't. I mean, most people, it's like the YouTuber, for instance, that fixes mountain bikes all day and has a YouTube channel focused on mountain bikes and does a bunch of deals and maybe starts his own brand of mountain bikes, right? Like, that is most of the creator economy. It's not Vine stars with millions of followers at all. Or it's like these independent

• 13:17Speaker 01

  media businesses, a huge amount of women. I mean, the industry was built and runs on women's labor. It's a lot of, you know, I start with the mommy bloggers, but it's people building alternative media. And that's what it really is. It's media businesses that people are building, you know, using the internet basically to build and podcasts and all this stuff, you know, but it's not like, most of those people aren't famous. I think the top 1%, yes, they're legitimate celebrities in their own right. But most of the workers in the creator world are not, nor do they really care. I mean, a lot of them don't even show their faces, you know?

• 13:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  It seems like the longer folks stay in this, like, the bigger the psychological cost is to them. You want to unpack that a little bit?

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's just, it's an incredibly difficult career to maintain because it's a public facing job in the sense that you have to, you are so beholden to your audience. And that being reactive to your audience is just a hard thing. You're building a media business. Media businesses are so difficult to run and monetize. It's kind of crazy. Like, it's, it makes a lot more sense, which is what you see a lot of content creators doing now to launch a specific product. They basically build this audience and then launch a product because that's one of the main ways to monetize now. You can't rely on ad deals. And just psychologically, like you said, it's sort of, it's hard. It's hard to spend so much time on these platforms. You cannot take a week off. You have zero protections. You often don't have healthcare.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  People are deriding you as like a, you know, attention whore, whatever people like. I mean, I talked to so many women in this book that just like they, they have zero respect. And so people don't acknowledge the labor that comes along with this job because people think it's easy. You know, we all think, oh, I'll just take some selfies and put myself on the internet. I could do that. It's like, no, it's so much harder than you think.

• 15:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So let's talk about like the first word of extremely online. Like, is it possible to just be like a bit online versus extremely? Because it is interesting how it sucks people into be so extremely online versus just like a little bit. Like it can go with every one of these influencers that we're talking about. And that's kind of going back to, again, like for me, and you'll forgive me for laboring the point, but that's why I think people are like these folks seek attention is because you can decide to be a little bit online or you can decide or moderately online, or you can decide to be extremely online.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Right. And the extremely online sort of speaks to this, actually, that not so much people's personal internet use, but more like the internet mediated world that we all live in. Whether or not you personally live, use the internet very much, it doesn't matter. It's ultimately irrelevant because the internet and online attention is the primary currency in today's world. Like that is what you are living in a world that is completely reshaped and upended by the internet every day. And whether or not you want to think that you participate in that or not, you inherently do because you're in this world. And also, by the way, we all have an increasingly big online footprint, whether we're putting out content about ourselves or all of these companies are collecting massive amounts of data and we have profiles about ourselves built online. Basically, you know, without our, sort of without us putting ourselves online, I guess.

• 16:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hold on, but there's a, there's a degree to which you can choose to engage. I mean, that's like the question that I had.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Well, yeah. And I just want to say another thing. Again, it is this misconception, this completely false narrative that these people are seeking fame. What they, with a number one reason, you're talking about why kids want to be YouTubers. Do you know why that is? That's not because they're seeking fame. And that's how the media constantly frames it. When, and I did, I've done so many stories like this, where I've interviewed so many people. It is not, what they want is stability. That is the number one thing that they talk about. When you interview kids, why do you want to be a YouTuber? It's stability. They, they do not trust the economic system correctly today. They know that there's no stable career path that you can just go into and you can like work in for 40 years. That world does not exist. They view entrepreneurialism and sort of like building their own basically life raft of.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Followers, attention, whatever, that is a sense of security. For instance, they say, you know, I've talked to young kids that say, well, if my mom, you know, my mom, we're gonna lose our house. And I know that if I have to do a GoFundMe or something, or if we get in trouble, my followers will help me. My followers will keep me safe. My followers will pay my medical bills. If I get in a car accident, my followers will help me get a job. If I get laid off. That is why people want an online following, because they view it as a proxy for power and influence. And sort of, they're correct. Because you are in a better place in our economy and our world if you have a million followers first none. And we have a country that has zero social safety net. That's why I think influence or culture is so pervasive here in America and not as pervasive in these countries where people don't need to do all of that.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  They don't need to get millions of followers to make sure that they can get their basic needs met.

• 17:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I mean, I have to say the concept of stability as a driver, for me, certainly resonates. When people ask like, why I left BuzzFeed to start big technology, like, how could you leave BuzzFeed's stable job? And I'm like, no, it was actually riskier to stay in that job than it was to start my own media company. And then low and behold, the company shut down BuzzFeed News.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 18:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  But also like, but let's go back to this question of degree, because it does matter. And I think we'll never agree on the fame thing. But the question of how online people want to be.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not saying fame is not a part of it, but it's really not the core of it. And that is the only narrative through which the media seems to pay attention to this industry. And I think it's when you only see the industry through that lens, you miss the actual impact of it.

• 18:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  And they watch the fame. The media watches the fame. It watches the money for sure. And then it also looks at the entertainment value. I mean, which I don't think is, you know, as good as a lot of traditional media. Like, you can put the best Mr. Beast video up against like a mediocre HBO show, and HBO will probably win.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, to be fair, Mr. Beast is for like four-year-olds and five-year-olds.

• 19:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, but by the way, full disclosure, I'm watching Mr. Beast. Every, every video that comes out, I'm watching the full video.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, that's amazing. I mean, he's, he's such an expert. I would say that there, I mean, I do think that there is entertainment on the internet that rivals traditional television, but it's a completely different format. It's more of a like. What mindset are you in? Do you want to watch this like two hour deep dive into some crypto investigation? Sure. Do you want to watch? It's never going to rival The Sopranos, but it's its own sort of form of entertainment.

• 19:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  So yes, let's get back to this degree question because you know, we've danced around it a couple of times, but don't people have a choice about how online they actually want to be like you? It seems like everybody just goes all in, all like there's a here, there's a line from your epilogue that I found interesting. You said, "We are all pressed to commodify ourselves, our lives and our relationship in increasingly invasive ways." Well, can't we just commodify our lives and our whatever it is like and and not go all in? Like, is there a requirement?

• 20:05Speaker 01

  You suffer because of that. You suffer because of that, especially the younger you are, the more, the younger you are, the more you're operating in a heavily online mediated world, internet mediated world, right? Like, so if you want to get a job, if you want to, you exist on the internet. Again, you don't have to be posting a lot, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what you post because your entire life has been documented on the internet. It's all crowdsourced. Like, I mean, you talk about these kids growing up today, they have had their lives documented on the internet from the tiny, from the time they were babies, through their parents posting, through their schools posting, through the sports teams posting about them, through the massive amount of data about them that is constant, that is out there. You know, I'm writing this story now on on these SEO sites that just are increasingly making

• 20:48Speaker 01

  SEO articles for random people. They're doing that to fill this need because people, there's just, there's increasingly a larger and larger amount of content about all of us on the internet, and we are all one second away from going viral, from often without our own consent, increasingly without our own consent, right? Somebody else films a video of you and you're in it and now you're, you know, the subway girl or whatever, you know, like people sort of like know you. And so the and it doesn't matter, again, it doesn't matter if you personally participate or you personally post on the internet. The world is driven by the internet, politics, business, culture, pop culture especially, this is, these are all shaped by the internet. So maybe you don't personally participate in and you don't personally post,

• 21:33Speaker 01

  which I'm totally a fan of. By the way, I don't post about my personal life on the internet. It doesn't matter because. The entire system that we live in is shaped by online attention and by the internet and by this new media landscape. And so that's what I mean. There's no opting out of that.

• 21:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Or you can, you can only try to opt out so far. And the younger you are, the less able you are to opt out.

• 21:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And how about your own? I mean, you don't post your personal life, but you're definitely out there on

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  every platform. Every time I open TikTok, I see you. Do you worry about like what being so online will do to you over time? Or is doing to you currently?

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have such strong boundaries around the internet and I've I have such strong boundaries, like I'm very careful about it and I love being on the internet and sharing my opinions and talking about things and like, I'm a debater. So like, I love like, you know, engaging with ideas online, but um, I personally don't,

• 22:29Speaker 01

  you know, I don't put that sort of like that other side of it where I feel like it really affects my sense of self, you know? Like I have a very strong sort of like understanding of like, especially since 2020, when I really started to get a lot of like hate and I saw my work very politicized. And I think I like, a lot of people have sort of turned me into like a character on the internet that stands for something, whether good or bad.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  It's just made me even more disconnected where I'm like, okay, whatever. This is so, this is so like different than my actual life that it's just very easy to like emotionally separate. But of course I worry about like my attention span and you know, I, again, I think the internet isn't inherently bad and the internet can be an amazing tool for connection. I think our current platform landscape is really broken and I don't love what it does to anybody.

• 23:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, yeah, let's talk about that on the other side. Taylor Lorenz is with us. She's a tech columnist at the Washington Post, author of Extremely Online, The Untold Story of Fame, Influence and Power on the Internet. On the other side of this break, we'll talk about the ideas that Taylor has to make the internet better. And also, maybe we can talk a little bit about why the internet isn't fun anymore. At least, that's the sense that a lot of people get. We'll do that more, that and more, right after the break. This episode is brought to you by Avpoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data, and most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and prove it's under control. That's exactly what Avpoint does.

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• 25:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's ironwell.com/bigtechnology. Learn how to stop online threats before they become real-world attacks. The link's in the show notes.

• 25:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here with Taylor Lorenz, the author of Extremely Online, The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet. By the way, before the break, you you mentioned that you're you've become a character for good or in some ways good, some ways bad, that that people that is somewhat different from the person you are. Can you like, talk about what that what that is?

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think in 2020, when my work started to get very politicized, and I think it was increasingly, I mean, increasingly, the things I write about online attention. So I've always had a lot of attention on the Internet, and I've always had YouTubers making videos responding to me. And I write about people with millions of followers. And I should I should acknowledge, like, fame is literally in the title of my book. So I'm not trying to say that fame is like, not a thing.

• 26:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  I should have just read the subtitle to you as a rebuttal to all your points earlier.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  I know, I know. No, no, no, I just like, I just like, I just like, have it to my shoulder because I'm like, it's so much more than that, though, you know?

• 26:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. But it is that partially. Okay.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  It is part of it, especially, especially, Alex, when you're talking about the top 1%, which is, I think, what most people, like, when most people think of content creators, they are thinking of that top 1%. And those people are celebrities, like, full on. Anyway, I've always sort of had attention because I write about online attention and people respond to me. I would say in 2020, the the political right sort of started to latch on to my work and stories and really like, come after me and sort of paint me as this like, character online that was very, like, it led to a lot of like, really negative consequences for the people around me, and it really affected me. And ever since then, I've just been like, very careful about kind of like, how I mentally engage

• 27:21Speaker 01

  with the Internet, because I think it's so disorienting to see this, like, I mean, just people constantly ascribe viewpoints to me that I've never expressed constantly. And it I used to try to run around and correct it. And now I'm just like, whatever, people can think whatever they want to think. But it's a mindfuck to like, see yourself on the Internet and just be like, wait a minute, that's not like, this person that you've sort of built in your mind is just. Not, it's based off, often it's based off misinformation, which is obviously a huge problem these days. Like, you know, when you ask people, what's your problem? Or like, what? I mean, some people just think I'm annoying or they don't like me. And that's totally fine, by the way. But like, a lot of people out there, you know, truly believe

• 28:05Speaker 01

  that I'm like a political actor, or that I'm like, part of, you know, the CIA, or who knows what, right? And that's, yeah, it's disorienting.

• 28:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. I mean, the narrative, I think, was that you were more in favor of content moderation than a lot of folks would like.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  Which is so hilarious, which is so hilarious, because anybody that's followed me for years knows my drama with the content moderators.

• 28:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  What is your drama with the content moderators?

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Alex, I've had like 18 accounts of my, my accounts, I've had more banned accounts than probably anybody else in media. Like,

• 28:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Oh, even Elon banned you.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Oh, sure. He's the kind of, I mean, I have always said from the beginning, that I, I believe, I do not believe that these tech companies should moderate speech. It makes me very nervous. I don't think it, I'm much more in favor of sort of community moderation, like the type of things you see on Reddit, you know, where it's sort of like, here's the norms of this community, here's what we're going to agree to. I'm a big fan of things like community notes. I think it's corrosive and bad when these big tech companies come in and try to like litigate evolving stories, which is often what they're trying to do. They're trying to parse the news. And yes, there are objective facts. I just don't think that the tech companies should be the ones to determine

• 29:15Speaker 01

  it, because they often rely on like, you know, they rely on the government, which I don't think as a journalist, we should necessarily rely on. I don't think that's a scalable policy. Thankfully, in America, we have a pretty reliable government in certain ways. But like, you know, around the world, that's not a good policy to rely on. So, yeah, I mean, it's just the content moderation thing drives me crazy. And the people that say that stuff have truly never listened to me talk about it, because I talk about it frequently and constantly. And my community of followers.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Like knows about that and makes memes about it.

• 29:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, you're currently like in the middle of, I think, a bit of a war with the threads. People who won't let folks search for COVID information.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  They won't search for, not, not just COVID, Alex. Dozens of words, dozens of words you flat out cannot search. You will not be able to review the search results. And I'm fine with them putting up a warning for certain search results. I think blocking, full on blocking words from search, especially newsworthy terms, which is how they sort of defined it when I was talking to the, when I was talking to the cons people and going back and forth. They're like, well, these are newsworthy terms and da, da, da. So what? So if another war breaks out in Ukraine, we're just going to block the word Ukraine? Again, this is cutting off people from access to information. And I don't think it's up to the platforms to make those determinations of what people, what access people should have, you know, what information people should have access to. And I know the misinformation people, like I'm sympathetic to that. I cover, trust me, I don't think that's a tech problem.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  I think it's a media literacy problem. I think there's things the tech companies could do better. Fundamentally, this is a problem with media literacy in the country. It's not, let's just get, it's like that highway meme where it's like, just one more lane, just one more lane. That's how the content moderation people are. It's like, just a little bit more, just a little bit more content moderation, just a little bit more content moderation and we'll have a safe platform. No.

• 31:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. I think this perception of you, did it emerge like in the middle of the clubhouse days? I don't know, there was a story in the Times that had the word unfettered in it. Was that, was that you like that there?

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Oh, did you actually read the sentence? By the way, let me just read, let me just, let's just read that sentence back.

• 31:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  Oh my God, you're giving me, you're giving me the chance to, um, to squash all my haters here, so I really appreciate it. Okay. So here's what I, here's what I said, right? And tell me if you think this sounds like I'm advocating for content moderation. Clubhouse has generated debate about whether audio is the next wave of social media, moving digital connections beyond text and videos to old fashioned voice. In thousands of chat rooms every day, clubhouse users have had, have conducted unfettered conversations on subjects such as astrophysics, geopolitics, queer representation in Bollywood, and even cosmetic, and even cosmic poetry. Quote, "This is a major change in how the social internet works," said Dave Moran,

• 32:00Speaker 01

  who founded this social networks path. I believe it's a new chapter.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  Clubhouse's trajectory has been rapid. Where?

• 32:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, no, it doesn't seem like it's calling for

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Does that sound like, in fact, doesn't that sound like I'm talking about the liberatory nature of unfettered conversations, saying that they have astrophysics, geopolitics, queer representation in Bollywood? Does it not sound like I'm advocating for that?

• 32:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  For sure.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Huh, so wouldn't you say that, like, I mean, can you imagine being me and like then seeing how that's misrepresented online, how infuriating it is?

• 32:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Definitely. Yeah.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Drives me insane. It's like, and it's like, what? They just pick out one word, right? And then they try and act like, and it's like, you guys are literally saying you are misrepresenting my views to say the exact opposite of what I've said. And they do that to me 24/7 on the internet. It drives me insane.

• 32:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I think it might have just been the product of this long, I guess, yeah, there was an era where the New York Times wrote all these stories about all the bad content on social media, which did lead to a bigger crackdown and some of the censorship that we saw. And I think that there was, there was a target mostly on the New York Times back. And, you know, people, yeah, they probably saw that word and then just went bananas on it.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  But it's like, we should be having unfettered conversations.

• 33:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  That's my point.

• 33:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  And, I mean, again, I, I, I totally agree that misinformation is a problem. And I totally agree that the tech platform should play a role in not amplifying it. But I think the way that they're doing it now is this like heavy handed blunt approach that just ends up censoring news content and content from LGBTQ people. Like, we see time and time again that the people that suffer from these content moderation bans, it's like, I mean, look at what the YouTube stuff, right? Like, it was, it was, I think, I can't remember, I'm gonna get these details wrong, but it was like, a lot of like Arabic language channels were censored, you know, around fears of after these ISIS videos were going up. So I just think that there, we need to have a more nuanced approach to these conversations.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  And the way it's always framed is that

• 34:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Are you saying that Elon has a point?

• 34:10Speaker 01

  I don't know what you, I mean, Elon's the most anti-free speech person ever. So he has not a leg to stand on.

• 34:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  But I agree with like the sentiment. I mean, the thing is, he's lying when he says it. It's like Trump, right? They're, they're often lying when they say these things. But, but I, I mean, I'm a journalist. Of course I'm for free speech. I couldn't do my job without it.

• 34:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  What type of social web would you like to see that actually like doesn't end up?

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 34:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let me just say, let me say this. That doesn't end up driving people to feel like they need to be online all the time. They feel like they need to post everything, that they need to be,

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  you know, running after attention, or they won't have a chance to be stable in this economy. I mean, obviously it's a broader economic question. But how do the platforms need to change to get to a place where you don't have situations like you had with one of the earlier characters of the book where this stuff was so harmful to her mental health that she took her life?

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, 100%. I think that like, I mean, I think platforms generally, they need to stop prioritizing engagement and profit above all else. I know that's never going to happen with companies like Facebook and Google and things like that. But I would love to see a more sort of social platform that's less profit driven, that's more community oriented. I mean, again, I mentioned sites like Reddit. Discord is another one. Like I think this like more community model of social media where it's not everything we post is default public and default permanent. I think that's very, you know, that's not great. I think the follower based model of social media is also not great where, one thing I appreciate about TikTok is the algorithmic discovery where anybody can post. I mean, in some ways that's toxic and it's in different ways, but it doesn't make you

• 35:47Speaker 01

  feel like you have to share everything. And with Instagram, it's an other follower based social networks. It's like you have to build followers for people, you know, for yourself to have a voice. And I just think that's, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things. I think our current platforms are not, are sort of unsavable. And I would love to see more community oriented, smaller indie social platforms arise that are less focused on profit. And I, I mean, I love things like Substack too, that are connecting people and allowing people to build audiences and monetize, but they're not playing into necessarily all those like social dynamics.

• 36:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  It's newsletters.

• 36:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, let's end with this. One of the things that I saw in your book that was really interesting to me was you diagnosed the fact that BuzzFeed became less relevant once algorithms were put into place into social media news feeds, because instead of needing a website to tell you what was good online, the platforms just did it themselves, which is something I hadn't like fully thought about in depth in the way that you outlined it, which I thought was very interesting.

• 36:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  In a sense, it also seems like the internet has gotten much less fun. Like BuzzFeed used to highlight the fun internet and now everything at the top of my feed is like angry or ChatGPT influencing or some some form of content that just like is awful, unless it's like the Instagram reels or TikToks, those are good. Talk a little bit about the transformation. Why do you think has happened that's made the internet less fun? Like, to me, in some ways, there was part of the joy of it was this interplay between users on social media and sites like BuzzFeed. Like, they would create fun stuff to get featured there, but now it's sort of, there's less of that dialogue. Yeah, just go ahead and.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  I totally agree with you. Yeah, I totally agree with you. And I think we've lost something without having that intermediary, you know, because everything is so algorithmically focused now. It's just it's engagement above all else. It's not like, is this entertaining? Is this fun? Is this insightful? And I don't think that there's ever necessarily going back, because I think now that that, like, I think, I mean, I talk about the dress, that viral dress, the BuzzFeed posts and sort of like, I think today that would just be a viral TikTok, as you mentioned, people consume it like through the medium that it was posted on. But it's, yeah, it's been, it's been sad and negative. And I think this is like, again, we're in this like sort of influx of media where I think a lot of people are feeling the effects of.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  The algorithms and all of this stuff on our mental health. Actually, Kyle Chayka has a great book out. It's not out yet called Filter World that sort of talks about algorithms impact on our lives. And I was thinking of it recently, just in regards to my own book. And I wish I could have spoken maybe more to like that. I talk about the negative effects on the content creators, but I think you're right. It's sort of like bled out where we all almost feel that malaise that content creators used to feel because they were most in it and now we're all in it. So, yeah, I mean, again, I'm not, I wouldn't, I don't think the solution to like mental health happiness is necessarily logging off. I think it's using the internet in a smarter way and building communities online and spaces

• 38:55Speaker 01

  online that facilitate more authentic forms of connection and don't just get into the outrage stuff, which is so many of our platforms now, they just like solely run on outrage.

• 39:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, which is a disaster. Another thing that that I thought about was is part of this also the fact that we were searching for a format, right? And now we've kind of settled on what the format is of social media. The format is reels and TikToks, one, and then maybe tweets and threads and the other. There's not much else going on on social media, maybe YouTube videos, if you want to include that. When there was this search for like, maybe it was a square photo, maybe it was a Vine, maybe it was an Instagram video, people just got it, kind of got weird and they poured a ton of creativity into these platforms because the reward was tremendous if you were able to solve it. But now that we've narrowed on a couple of formats, it seems like that's no longer,

• 39:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  that rawness and that chase for something entertaining isn't there anymore.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I totally agree with you. And I think that actually like there were more creative formats, even just like in 2015. I mean, I remember all these like interactive live streaming things. I was a huge fan of the app Hype, which is actually by Russ, who eventually became HQ, but like it was this really amazing interactive mobile livestream experience that I've never seen another app replicate. It was just like so creative. And like you said, that sort of now we have these dominant formats where something like that can't really take off, which is, which is sad. Again, I would love to see more innovation in the tech space, but it's so hard because you have these dominant players and they will crush anybody that tries to compete with them. I think it's notable that the only App that could meaningfully compete with Facebook and Google in the past several

• 40:36Speaker 01

  years is TikTok, which is owned by a multi-billion dollar Chinese tech conglomerate and can, you know, spend a billion dollars in 2019 alone on app downloads, you know, like that's the level of resources that you have to have to compete with these platforms. And I think that's a loss for all of us.

• 40:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, last question for you. Was Tumblr the one good moment that we've had on the internet or on social media?

• 40:56Speaker 01

  I'm so biased because Tumblr gave me everything, but yes, I mean, I think Tumblr was like the perfect mix of like, social functionality, but not toxic, you know, and it was non-algorithmic. Also, the fact that they didn't have public follower counts was like, was huge. I think two of the things that have led to more misery on the internet than anything else is the public metrics, making all these metrics public. I think no metrics should be public. I think it's so toxic, not good. And two, oh my God, what was it? Oh, just the money, the profit. Like, you mentioned people making creative things on Vine. A lot of those people never intended to profit. Now, because people realize that this is a half a trillion dollar industry, and our economy is so precarious, increasingly precarious for young people, everything is about, it's all about monetize, and how can

• 41:39Speaker 01

  you monetize, and how can you profit? And everyone's going into it with that goal a lot of the time, or the goal to get online attention to do something else. And that's made it very negative. No one's there for fun as much.

• 41:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  What the hell happened to Tumblr?

• 41:54Speaker 01

  They haven't changed their product in like, 15 years. They're still around. I heard Ryan Brodick saying he uses it every day still, which really shocked me. I mean, I go on there.

• 42:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, he's probably one of, one of a million.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  One of 10, yeah.

• 42:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Of the folks that used to use it, so.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  I love it. It's just not, it never evolved as a product. I think it, it missed on a lot of things. I mean, Yahoo, Yahoo screwed it up. Honestly, I think that acquisition kind of killed it, but I miss it. Let's bring back Tumblr. Let's ditch all these other platforms and bring back Tumblr. We'd be happier.

• 42:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, I, I was working in my marketing job in 2010 and 2011 and saw people using it and was just like, This thing is amazing. It looks great. Like when you go to the website and the dashboard is fun as well. And I was just like shouting it from the mountaintops. And then the company I was at rolled out a Tumblr and didn't tell me. And I was like in a junior job. And I was like, all right, folks, I'm out of here.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 42:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  That was that.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  They grifted your idea.

• 42:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  They did. I know. It's a shame.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  You know, it's funny, Alex, I just have to say, it's funny that you came from marketing.

• 43:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  Because I think a lot of people that end up doing well in this sort of creator ecosystem or new media ecosystem fundamentally understand marketing and actually have some sort of background in the marketing or advertising world.

• 43:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, marketing, go ahead.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  I just think it's like great preparation for like running a media business. You have to understand that stuff really well.

• 43:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you think it's helped you?

• 43:18Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. Are you kidding me? Yeah. Yeah. I gotta, I gotta revamp my brand recently, though, again, because it's gotten all political and I don't love that. But.

• 43:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why are you still out of publication? I mean, why aren't you independent?

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Healthcare, healthcare.

• 43:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Healthcare is, I mean, healthcare is not like, if you do well as a creator, it's not going to set you back in the way that you could imagine.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  To get the kind of healthcare plan that I need, I think would be hard because I have been freelance before.

• 43:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  And, I mean, I have, I got very sick, you know, last year and I, I really do rely on the house. Like, I, it would make me nervous. That's the, that is the sole reason. I'm not the sole reason. I also love my editor. That's another thing. So I don't want to leave my editor.

• 44:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Bad in healthcare.

• 44:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Those are two good reasons.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  But I love, yeah.

• 44:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  The book is Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internets by Taylor Rentsch. Our guest today, go pick it up. It's available in stores as we speak. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Thank you, Nate Watney, for editing the audio. LinkedIn for having me as part of your podcast network. And all you, the listeners, we'll be back on Friday with our conversation breaking down the news with Ron John Roy. And we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 44:39Speaker 02

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