AI Is Upending the Lives of People Who Do Social Media Professionally

Social media is really strange these days: Increasingly, our feeds are starting to look uncanny, as AI slop proliferates all over the Internet. And for the professionals who are tasked with making content, whether it is social media managers or creators, it has been a head-spinning time of change. In this conversation, recorded at the Vermont in Hollywood, we get a primer on social media's AI era with two veteran Internet commentators, Rachel Karten (social media consultant and the author of the Link in Bio newsletter) and Taylor Lorenz (founder of User Mag). We discuss why people are afraid to admit that they love some genres of slop, why the AI discourse is evolving so rapidly, and whether our time online is moving away from scrolling feeds to engaging with chatbots. Read more: US Rebukes Australia for Plan to Target Social Media Algorithms https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-23/us-rebukes-australia-for-plan-to-target-social-media-algorithms?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=odd_lots&utm_content=article Meta’s New Muse AI App Tops Charts, Draws Strong Reviews https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-21/meta-s-new-muse-ai-app-tops-charts-draws-strong-early-reviews?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=odd_lots&utm_content=article Only http://Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots https://www.bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots?in_source=oddlotspodcast Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter http://bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots https://discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Tracy Alloway?

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• 0:25Speaker 01

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• 1:46Speaker 03

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• 2:02Tracy Alloway?

  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alockway.

• 2:06Joe Weisenthal?

  And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

• 2:08Tracy Alloway?

  So we are here in Hollywood, our first ever live Odd Lots show in LA. And when we come to LA, I feel like we have to talk about the influencer economy, right?

• 2:17Joe Weisenthal?

  The influencer economy, the creator economy, people who have 8 million followers on Instagram that none of us have ever heard of. There's so much I don't know about this world. There's so much I need to learn. And of course, we need to learn how AI is upending all of it.

• 2:34Tracy Alloway?

  That's right. So this is the existential question facing creators. What happens to them when creating content essentially becomes like free or extremely low cost? So we have two very special guests for you. We are going to be speaking with Taylor Lorenz. She is, of course, the founder of UserMag. As well as Rachel Carton. She is a social media consultant and author of the Substack Link in Bio.

• 2:58Joe Weisenthal?

  Since we're here in LA and as we've alluded to in the past, we got to learn about influencers and people with 5 million followers on Instagram and how they're dealing with this moment.

• 3:08Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, so we do in fact have the perfect guests.

• 3:11Joe Weisenthal?

  That's right. I'm thrilled to welcome to the stage the one and only Taylor Lorenz, founder of UserMag, as well as Rachel Carton, social media consultant, author of the great Substack Link in Bio.

• 3:33Tracy Alloway?

  Hello.

• 3:36Joe Weisenthal?

  Thank you both so much for doing this.

• 3:39Speaker 05

  Thanks for having us.

• 3:41Joe Weisenthal?

  What do you start? What do you, maybe either one of you, what are you covering these days? How would you describe your coverage here?

• 3:47Speaker 05

  Sure. I write a newsletter called Link in Bio. Oh, yay.

• 3:52Joe Weisenthal?

  That's really good. Everyone should subscribe.

• 3:54Speaker 05

  Thank you. It's about working in social media. It's the primary trade publication for social media teams. And I interview experts. So I have interviewed everyone from the social team who covered Artemis to Chanty Beluga.

• 4:13Joe Weisenthal?

  I forgot about that one. Is that already, is that still?

• 4:16Speaker 05

  Chanty Beluga's forever.

• 4:19Tracy Alloway?

  And I am a tech journalist. I write usermag.co. That's my Substack. I write about, I kind of do a lot of roundups about like online culture, write about tech, a lot of tech policy stuff, too. A little bit of everything. So everybody subscribe to that one as well.

• 4:35Joe Weisenthal?

  Absolutely.

• 4:36Tracy Alloway?

  What are the vibes like right now in social media? It's a loaded question, perhaps.

• 4:42Tracy Alloway?

  Terrible.

• 4:43Tracy Alloway?

  All right, go on.

• 4:44Speaker 05

  Backstage, Taylor showed me a video that she was impressed by.

• 4:47Tracy Alloway?

  No, shut up. You guys.

• 4:51Speaker 05

  She was really impressed by it.

• 4:52Tracy Alloway?

  Literally, we were backstage, and I haven't been on Twitter that much today. I like saw one frame of this video that was the most AI-generated crap I've ever, that. And I was like, did you guys see a Coca-Cola truck exploded?

• 5:05Speaker 05

  It was of a Coca-Cola truck that was exploding Coke out and somebody in a bucket. And she was like, did you see this? I said, Taylor, please.

• 5:13Tracy Alloway?

  And then, and then, and then the next scene is there's actually a Mentos truck next door and the guy falls in and like explodes through the sky. And I was like, oh, my God, I'm becoming. And the caption was like, the AI videos that your mom sends you.

• 5:25Speaker 05

  Oh, man.

• 5:26Tracy Alloway?

  And that's what I showed Rachel.

• 5:27Joe Weisenthal?

  Younger people might not remember the fact that for like many years, the only content on the internet was Mentos and Coca-Cola. That's like all we looked at for like a few years. That's like really strange. No, but here's an important question. So the people that you cover, let's start with you, Rachel. The people that you talk to,

• 5:46Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 5:47Joe Weisenthal?

  who are social media professionals, do they feel as if like AI is, we're going to, like, how is it about, like, are they mostly of the frame like, oh, AI can do what I do? Or do they mostly see it as an augmenter? Oh, I can do much more of the job that I know how to do for years with these new tools?

• 6:10Speaker 05

  So I think the way that AI is showing up for a lot of marketing teams is through their boss. I wrote an article about this called Does Your Boss Have AI Brain? And I talked to like 100 marketers who are dealing with an issue where their boss is asking them to use AI and their boss is using AI themselves and they're outsourcing all of their gut instincts to AI. And so I heard stories of a social manager who worked hard on a funny meme and they'll send it to their boss and they run it through Claude and ask, is this funny?

• 6:46Joe Weisenthal?

  That's so grim. That's so grim.

• 6:47Speaker 05

  I heard another example of a marketer who their boss only buys into ideas that came from Copilot. And so they actually will mock up their ideas into the Copilot UI to send their boss to get it approved. And so the quote that sticks with me from that article is demoralizing as hell. And so that's the way that a lot of marketers are interacting with AI, is their boss sort of forcing it upon them. And my takeaway from that wasn't like ban AI from marketing teams, but I felt like, you know, the way that AI is being implemented is sort of a free for all. And I was thinking back to my time when I worked at Conde Nast. You know, I think they had Asana on boarded. And we spent months, right?

• 7:30Speaker 05

  Like, learning how to use Asana, what's the right way to use this workflow? And that training isn't happening on marketing teams. And so it feels like there's no philosophies or guardrails for marketers to feel like their boss is, you know, giving to them.

• 7:44Tracy Alloway?

  Devil's advocate question. I know we're talking about how grim it is to have, to work for a boss with AI psychosis. And everyone at the moment hates, seems to hate AI-generated content. But you could imagine a world in three to five years, maybe even sooner.

• 8:01Joe Weisenthal?

  Three months.

• 8:01Tracy Alloway?

  Where we don't, yeah, three months, where we don't actually care anymore. Like, why should we dislike AI-generated social media or marketing content?

• 8:12Speaker 05

  Well, I think I can speak to it from the brand side. And I do feel like consumers have an expectation that a brand is putting creative effort into things. And the effort that they put into their social media is a reflection of the effort that they are putting into their product. And I think that consumers feel that through it. And that has always been true about creative. You know, brands like Nike have, you know, built so much of their world around their, you know, investment into creative. And so it's seen as a shortcut. And it might make you ask, you know, if your favorite Chipotle, whatever, your favorite fast food chain is using AI-generated imagery, what other shortcuts might they be taking in their process?

• 8:57Joe Weisenthal?

  Taylor?

• 8:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:59Tracy Alloway?

  I totally agree. I think from a content standpoint, too, people actually do enjoy AI-generated content. It's so crazy on YouTube. I don't know if you guys have noticed, but all these YouTubers are just reading AI-generated scripts now. And it's so, and you look at the comments, people be like, amazing analysis, great script. Like, so I think people actually like it sometimes when they don't know they're consuming it. Sometimes they actively know they're consuming. I think people just don't want to feel tricked. That's when it starts to feel bad because you're like, oh.

• 9:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:27Joe Weisenthal?

  I think it was your newsletter that I first heard about the, what is it? The fruit slop or the fruit soap operas, et cetera?

• 9:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:36Joe Weisenthal?

  And I think you made the point, you can have a bunch of people in a comment section. It's like, oh, I'm so disappointed. Oh, you used AI for this. It's disgusting. And then they scroll to the next real. It's like, oh, I love this story about an orange falling in love with a carrot.

• 9:52Tracy Alloway?

  Fruit Love Island.

• 9:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, Fruit Love Island.

• 9:54Joe Weisenthal?

  Fruit Love Island. What do you explain this disconnect as you see it?

• 9:58Speaker 05

  Well, I think that consumers are confused in general over what they should like online right now. And I think that Fruit Love Island feels like a low stakes. They're like, it's a meme and they don't care about the craft of a meme, but they care about the craft of a company that they purchase from. But, and so I think, yeah, they could be the same person who's yelling at the company for an AI-generated menu and they're sending their friend AI fruit slop.

• 10:29Tracy Alloway?

  Um, I sort of asked Hayes this question earlier, but in our AI-generated world, I guess, how do we feel about existing content or existing incumbents when it comes to social media? Do people who already have an audience, who already have a following, who maybe have proved authenticity in some way or that they are willing to put effort into their own work, do they become more valuable in this environment? Or is it another case of like, low entry costs? Anyone can come in and make content for free. And so we see a sort of further trend of, I guess, what we used to call the democratization of media.

• 11:08Tracy Alloway?

  Well, I think that like, if you think about the, I think it depends on the type of content you're making. Are you making deeply parasocial content about like your life and your opinions? So many creators, the value that they, like the way that that media was democratized was through how to content. If you think of like even just the earliest YouTube videos, it was all makeup videos, how to do this. And I actually think AI is a better authority. Then people will turn to AI for how to fix your dishwasher. Like, it's much easier to get that. So I think those creators are going to struggle. But then there are other creators that that are going to use the tools to make great content and they make content that is not easily replicable. You know, maybe it's commentary that's sort of deeply personal.

• 11:47Tracy Alloway?

  My mom, by the way, she was very proud. She was telling me that she used ChatGPT to fix her toilet recently.

• 11:52Tracy Alloway?

  Good for her.

• 11:53Tracy Alloway?

  Which was, I wouldn't have expected her to be able to do that.

• 12:11Joe Weisenthal?

  There are some market stories where you want every detail. Tracy and I have made quite a few podcasts on that basis, but sometimes you've only got 10 minutes and need to know what's moving markets and why. That's the Barclays Brief Podcast. Every week, experts from Barclays Markets and Research get you up to speed on what matters and what to watch next. About the time it takes to grab a coffee. So search Barclays Brief wherever you get your podcasts.

• 12:36Speaker 01

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• 14:41Joe Weisenthal?

  Taylor is a keen observer of the online discourse. One of the, you know, he's online, maybe more online than I am somehow. I'm just curious, like, you know, in the last month, you know, a month ago, there was like a lot of people arguing about data centers. And then in the last week, there are a bunch of people arguing about models themselves as this sort of like site of controversy. Do you feel like, let's just say we're talking about AI, that like the speed with which the public takes on a new thing is it's just like at extraordinary rapid pace? And that's like, oh, you're still arguing about data centers? Wasn't that like a sort of, wasn't that a July issue?

• 15:21Tracy Alloway?

  That was so July. I feel like there's, I mean, the social, that there was going to be outrage on social media. Data centers is an issue of 2026. I saw, I think it was like Morris Katz, the political consultant, actually saying like, people are going to make a mistake and think it's a 2028 election cycle issue. It's actually a very 2026 election cycle issue. And probably by 2028, we will have something new to get mad about.

• 15:42Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 15:43Tracy Alloway?

  But I think, yeah, the data center discourse has been interesting because those people are against AI for a very different reason than the X-risk people that think it's going to kill all of us. And so far, those people have not really like come together to form any sort of coherent coalition.

• 15:57Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 15:57Tracy Alloway?

  So I feel like maybe they should join up, but there's, they have very different interests. And I don't think it's going to kill us, by the way. We're going to be fine.

• 16:05Tracy Alloway?

  I was going to ask, so you wrote about the idea of when we talk about rogue AI potentially killing us, getting the discourse and the language about that possibility right. Give us the sort of nutshell argument. Like, why, like, what is the distinction that we need to be making here?

• 16:21Tracy Alloway?

  Okay, so first of all, it's not going to kill us. I mean, it's just like, it's actually so hard to kill all humans on earth, like even if we wanted to. So, so we're probably going to be fine. I think like what, what I think is concerning or worth interrogating is the way that we anthropomorphize AI. And that's what I wrote about, is the way that people assign agency to these products. And I think in some ways, it's really great to do that because we have to describe, you know, you have to sort of describe how they work. But they're not humans. And this, we are talking about computer programs. And I do think that when we go to these policy debates about liability and stuff, it's really important to recognize that these are not like truly living beings.

• 17:02Joe Weisenthal?

  I saw one of the former FTC commissioners. He's like, AI isn't going to kill us. We survived the Black Death and that only killed 50% of us. So it's like, all right, great. That's a really big.

• 17:14Tracy Alloway?

  But also, just because something kills us doesn't mean it's smarter than us. You know, like a virus can kill a lot of people. It's not smarter than us.

• 17:21Joe Weisenthal?

  Okay, on the question of intelligence. So like, yes, this idea, like it makes you sick to your stomach to think like, oh, you've come up with something funny. And then they're like, well, my buddy Claude doesn't think that it's funny. And then you're just like, oh my God. But do you see in the marketing world currently productive uses of the technology? Whether it's A/B testing things or like, okay, like it's easy to make fun of it, but also AI models do often tend to like do pretty like good answers to things. Do you see positive productive applications of it in the marketing world?

• 17:58Speaker 05

  The, the interesting way that I've seen it is that a lot of agencies will be selling through ideas that they want to do in the real world and in their decks or in a way to help a boss who has maybe a lack of imagination visualize what that big idea is. So I have been interested by using AI to mock something up to then be able to make it in the real world and have like a human impact on it. But so that's, that's something that I'm interested in. But I don't, I don't hear that a lot of marketers are having success having it generate captions or post ideas. And it's not really a strategy that I personally recommend either.

• 18:40Tracy Alloway?

  Taylor, how are you using AI?

• 18:42Tracy Alloway?

  Good question. Don't cancel me because people get so mad when you talk about it. But I use it mostly, I kind of like was Rachel saying, as like an assistive tool. I don't think it's a good writing. Also, if I'm writing, I kind of want to express my thoughts. Like, that's the whole point. So I mostly use it for like SEO captions, generating like, you know, making on the Canva, you know, app, making an image bigger, things like that. I also, I wish it could edit. I try out all these AI editing tools. This is why I don't think it's going to kill us just yet. It cannot even edit a podcast. So we're, you know, there's, there's a gap.

• 19:15Joe Weisenthal?

  One thing I'm curious about for both of you, from the perspective of social media, is we have 24 hours in the day. I'd say eight of them, we're sleeping roughly, there's 16. So it's like, okay, maybe you can scroll for 16 hours. But they gotta do a few other things. But now there's like a bunch of that time that once it was spent scrolling, might be spend time talking to a chatbot. And I'm curious if you feel it where it's like, say, I guess I wonder AI is useful, nah, bad in creation, whether chatbot time is taking away from scrolling time to the detriment of brands and marketers.

• 19:55Speaker 05

  No.

• 19:55Joe Weisenthal?

  Really?

• 19:56Speaker 05

  I think getting off of phones and off of technology is more of a threat.

• 19:59Tracy Alloway?

  But AI is gonna get us off the phones. Like, I do think screen time is gonna drown.

• 20:03Joe Weisenthal?

  Why not? Because a lot of people are chatting using chatbots, right?

• 20:05Speaker 05

  They're not, they're not. Social media is entertainment.

• 20:09Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 20:09Speaker 05

  Social media is DMing your friend something who's a real person.

• 20:13Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 20:13Speaker 05

  And I think chatting with a chatbot is a very different function. And I'm more concerned about people wanting to log off.

• 20:24Joe Weisenthal?

  But when I go to social media, I tweet something and a bunch of people are like, oh, this guy's an idiot. People told me that today. Or Joe, I used to like Joe, but he's lost his mind.

• 20:32Speaker 05

  Well, maybe you're using AI too much.

• 20:34Joe Weisenthal?

  I probably am. But what I'm saying is I could then go, if I use Claude, it's never gonna insult me like that. So it's like, maybe I'll just.

• 20:40Speaker 05

  That's bad. That's bad.

• 20:42Joe Weisenthal?

  Of course, it's bad, but I have the iron to resist the temptation. But couldn't a lot of people say, wow, this is much more pleasant? I don't get dunked on when I talk to ChatGPT in the way I do in the comment section on Instagram.

• 20:55Speaker 05

  I would say that Twitter as a social media platform is so significantly different than TikTok and Instagram, where people are scrolling and it's like TV for them.

• 21:03Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 21:03Speaker 05

  And they're not getting insulted on there. And so I think that's a little bit more specific to a Twitter stroller.

• 21:08Tracy Alloway?

  But I do think, but don't you think that like screen time? I think it's, I write a lot about the moral panic over screen time and everybody is so concerned about it. And it is going away. Like, I do think that like this form factor of this type of phone is gonna die quite soon. And we're seeing wearables, we're seeing, you know, people with the ear pods in. Like, I just think we're spending less and less time actually looking at a screen. And I think in the future, we're gonna interact much more ambiently.

• 21:32Speaker 05

  I think a small subset of people want us to believe that personally. I don't see that out in the world.

• 21:37Tracy Alloway?

  I guess I see that so much where I just see, I see like, I get what you're saying for entertainment. But in terms of just like, like your mom, like going to fix the dishwasher, like just all these other times where we used to have to turn to a screen to text, to message a friend back.

• 21:52Speaker 05

  But that's a screen, though.

• 21:53Tracy Alloway?

  Right, but I'm saying like, if you're asking about like screen, like looking at our screens, I just think that like, we're looking at our screens less and less. And if you check it less, you're gonna get sucked in less.

• 22:01Speaker 05

  But using chat to learn how to fix a toilet is actually, I would have called a plumber and had a real interaction with somebody. I'm just saying, like, if you're arguing a screen, I think that.

• 22:11Tracy Alloway?

  I just think there's less and less reasons to be on our phone as we have wearables. As I'm sure you guys saw, like, there was this Persona band that came out this week that you can like whisper to.

• 22:20Joe Weisenthal?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:21Tracy Alloway?

  I feel, I just feel like, and everyone's fridge and washing, everything in your home is smart now. Like, I just feel like we're not gonna have to do everything through our phone as much, maybe, with the glasses, too. And so I just think that that might end up altering the way that we interact with these media platforms.

• 22:38Speaker 05

  Totally. I just think that those are equally as antisocial, in my opinion.

• 22:42Tracy Alloway?

  Oh, yeah, no, totally. Yeah, totally. I'm not saying that it's more pro-social.

• 22:45Tracy Alloway?

  We're all agreed on the antisocialness of technology.

• 22:48Tracy Alloway?

  Don't worry, we all agree, it's bad.

• 22:50Joe Weisenthal?

  You're gonna need dual-factor authentication to open your refrigerator. You're gonna like open your refrigerator, just open up your Google off and put in your six-digit code, and then I'm back looking at the screen.

• 22:59Tracy Alloway?

  Wait, can I just ask? On the platforms themselves, in the age of AI slop and essentially free content generation, do they become more or less powerful? And I can kind of, I could see arguing it from both ways. So like, on the one hand, maybe a bunch of people are gonna wanna migrate away from X or Instagram if it's just full of AI and they're not really into that. Maybe we see more people going to DMs and chat groups and Discords.

• 23:26Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 23:27Tracy Alloway?

  Check out the Odd Lots Discord, by the way, if you aren't already on it. But on the other hand, maybe curation becomes even more important. And maybe having an algorithm that like can really tell what you like and your preference for AI slop or not becomes even more important. How are you thinking about that?

• 23:46Tracy Alloway?

  Um, I thought you were gonna answer first, so I was like, I'm gonna have time to think. I think, well, so I do think that the social media platforms are not, they're like on their back foot, right? Like, they're not, they're not, they're not moving fast enough. I do think like, in some ways, Meta, I mean, Google's better positioned than Meta. Meta's in a really hard place right now because I think they are very like 2010s, sort of like social media. But I think, I don't know, it'll be, it'll depend on how people start to view entertainment and how, like, how much good content can be on that app. But it's kind of a dinosaur. I don't see Meta like having the same level of influence as. I think it kind of peaked in the 2010s.

• 24:27Speaker 05

  I mean, I think in the, in the short term, what AI is doing to the platforms is a little bit concerning, just in the sense that they can, there's like sort of a scale and quickness that AI accounts, I'll go to look at an AI account that can post, you know, 50 times a day. They're just like pulling the slot machine of Instagram, and they're gonna get a hit. And so I think that, when I looked up recently, what were the top 20 most viewed reels ever? And I think two to three were AI-generated, like pretty recent ones.

• 25:00Tracy Alloway?

  Wow.

• 25:01Speaker 05

  One of them was showing a set and a wave and how it, they're filming a wave for a movie and how it would impact our houses. And so it was using the framework of like proof of reality or BTS to essentially confuse people of how they filmed something. I think that's really bad to essentially monetize confusion. And I think that's a short-term benefit with really bad long-term results.

• 25:31Tracy Alloway?

  That's why I think people are gonna retreat towards these more, these chat interfaces that are simpler and not so overwhelming and will be more kind of interactive and make them feel less lonely, even though I agree with you, it's not good.

• 25:44Joe Weisenthal?

  Wait, I have a question. Speaking of Meta, and I may have asked you this before, but I can never remember, who uses Threads?

• 25:54Tracy Alloway?

  Oh, my God, we were just talking about this.

• 25:56Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, like, no, I'm like, where sometimes, like, what is the deal with Threads?

• 26:00Tracy Alloway?

  I still get thread notifications every once in a while, and I'm like, oh, what is this thing? And then I remember.

• 26:05Joe Weisenthal?

  And why are they, like, do you have a grand theory of Threads?

• 26:08Speaker 05

  My mom.

• 26:09Joe Weisenthal?

  And why does that appeal to her?

• 26:10Speaker 05

  And I recently published a hot takes newsletter, and I said that Threads is the most toxic social media platform.

• 26:17Joe Weisenthal?

  Really? Oh, this is.

• 26:18Speaker 05

  It is by far.

• 26:19Joe Weisenthal?

  Say why, say why.

• 26:20Speaker 05

  Well, the way that the algorithm works, it really prioritizes replies. And so you'll get sort of dropped off into somebody's really angry reply to something. And that's what fuels it, essentially. And it turns into a very quick sort of group think pile on in a way that is surprising.

• 26:40Joe Weisenthal?

  Even worse than Twitter, because that's why people.

• 26:41Tracy Alloway?

  Joe, it's not, Twitter is like a wonderful fairyland compared to Threads.

• 26:46Joe Weisenthal?

  Are you serious?

• 26:47Tracy Alloway?

  It's insane. It also does the AI-generated, we were literally just saying about this, but like, it makes, Threads does the AI-generated news summaries, but it's, it's just lying. It just makes things, like, she was showing me a crazy brand drama on there, but like, it's a crazy place.

• 27:03Tracy Alloway?

  We only have a few minutes left, so I'm gonna ask a question that we sort of alluded to at the beginning. But I'm sure there are a lot of people out in the audience who would like to grow their social media accounts and their presence. But like, what are your top tips in the age of AI for getting to, as Joe says, an account that mysteriously has 5 million followers? What are yours?

• 27:25Speaker 05

  I would say the accounts that I see that are growing right now, all their content has a real like through line of familiarity. It's like they're creating their own TV show. There's a cook at a restaurant who wears Meta glasses and just records what he's cooking. I believe he's grown to like 500,000 followers in maybe two or three months. It's like Gil Holy Cooks. And so that's all that they post is just like, my show is on. They are making an episode every day.

• 27:53Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, it seems to be a lot of like serialized content. It's all becoming shows. You have to really think about entertaining. I think the era of like sharing your life is like very declining. Nobody cares.

• 28:02Joe Weisenthal?

  Oh, good.

• 28:03Tracy Alloway?

  And I think like, so don't try to be a lifestyle influencer in 2026. It's not, there's a lot of anger towards those people.

• 28:09Joe Weisenthal?

  I'm curious, though, speaking of the lifestyle influencers, are people signing deals with like, yes, you can use my voice, you can create a digital clone of me, you can have 10 versions of me? Like, is that happening?

• 28:22Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, I wrote a piece for Vanity Fair recently about this, and CIA has like really leaned into this. They have what's called the CIA Vault, where like all of their big stars, like, you know, they use AI to like basically cut down on people. Right now, it's mostly like the influencer will, or the star celebrity will show up for like one day, but then they'll use it to like tweak the takes or, or, you know, tailor it for different audiences and different. And I do think that that is probably the way that, that it's gonna go.

• 28:47Tracy Alloway?

  I guess Bloomberg owns the rights to our voice.

• 28:49Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, who owns the rights?

• 28:50Tracy Alloway?

  We can't really license them, but.

• 28:53Tracy Alloway?

  They're gonna start generating just endless Odd Lots.

• 28:56Tracy Alloway?

  They might do.

• 28:58Joe Weisenthal?

  What, you know, one thing I like reading about Rachel and your Substack, it's like, you talk about like the various tactics, right? Like, carousels, or what are some of the other ones that are, what's hot these days?

• 29:09Speaker 05

  What's hot these days?

• 29:10Joe Weisenthal?

  In terms of like, presentation approaches?

• 29:12Speaker 05

  Well, so Instagram shared with my audience a really helpful chart that showed what each sort of format is for. And so carousels and reels are for reaching a new audience.

• 29:23Joe Weisenthal?

  Okay.

• 29:24Speaker 05

  Those will go out to non-followers. And what fuels the algorithm right now is non-follower views. If it's something that only your audience understands, they're like, that's not entertaining enough, we're not gonna put it on the, the main channel. And then single image posts just are for your audience.

• 29:39Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 29:40Speaker 05

  And then stories and DMs, they see as where community happens. And there was a conversation, I think at Bloomberg Screen Time, actually, where Adam Oseri said that the social and social media is not through sharing, you know, an image of your family anymore necessarily. It is through DMing your friends, something that reminds you of them. And I thought that was very unfortunate, but clarifying in terms of what it means to be social on social media anymore. And it's really connecting through DMs and sending them a meme that reminds them of them more than an important update in their life.

• 30:12Joe Weisenthal?

  Taylor and Rachel, thank you so much for joining us at Odd Lots Live. Closing out the show, it's such a fascinating area. Really appreciate talking to both.

• 30:34Speaker 09

  That was our conversation with Taylor Lorenz and Rachel Carton, recorded live at our show in LA. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.

• 30:42Joe Weisenthal?

  And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at TheStalwart. Follow our guests, Taylor Lorenz, she's at Taylor Lorenz, and Rachel Carton, at MilkCarton. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez, at Carmen Armit, Dash O'Bennett, at DashBot, Kale Brooks, at KaleBrooks, and Kevin Lozano, at KevinLloydLozano.

• 31:00Speaker 09

  And for more Odd Lots content, you should check out our daily newsletter. You can find that at Bloomberg.com/oddlots.

• 31:06Joe Weisenthal?

  And you can chat about all of these topics 24/7 in our Discord, discord.gg/oddlots.

• 31:12Speaker 09

  And if you enjoyed this conversation, then please leave a comment, or like the video, or better yet, subscribe.

• 31:17Joe Weisenthal?

  Thanks for watching and listening.

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