How Social Media Makes Our Lives Smaller

Most people spend more time than you think agonizing over their social-media posts. Kathryn Jezer-Morton wanted to understand their thinking—and when she dug deeper, she learned that redemption and optimization narratives are what the algorithm rewards, and therefore what drive the stories we tell. What does that mean for how we all think about ourselves? Charlie Warzel talks to Jezer-Morton about how “authentic” has become something different from “true,” and how people’s arcs on social media tend to only point upward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Tired of rage scrolling through AI slop and clickbait just to get a handle on today's news? Meet Inpress, the algorithm-free news app that makes it fun and rewarding to stay informed. Track your media literacy and rediscover reality. Download today at inpress.app. That's I, N as in news nerd, press.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  When was the last time you indulged your desires, felt true Range Rover refinement? The last time you felt total serenity, total confidence, no matter the terrain? Limitless, effortless, peerless? How far can Range Rover take you? Range Rover, designed for distinction.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  No one's interested in like, scientific data as much as they're interested in like, a really compelling anecdote. And this is just like, attention economy stuff. This is because a really compelling anecdote is going to perform better for a number of reasons. Whereas like, a big, you know, longitudinal study is going to have like, some interesting findings, but it's also going to have some, you know, some contradictory findings. Science is often much less kind of explosive than like, this one dude who's like, I took this supplement and six months later, I am fricking jacked. You know, like, that's cool.

• 1:17Charlie Warzel?

  I'm Charlie Worsell, and this is Galaxy Brain, a show where today, we're going to answer a seemingly unanswerable question. How is social media changing the way we understand ourselves, and even humanity as a whole? By any account, I have been a somewhat prolific poster for the last two decades. Like most millennials, I was a kid and a high schooler in the pre-social media days. And I went to college just as Facebook was taking off. This is partially why, as I've long argued, millennials like myself are often uniquely tortured about social media. We've experienced it profoundly shaping our social lives, our culture, our politics, and ourselves. But we can also remember just enough of a time before it, that we can see this process as something that was emergent.

• 2:01Charlie Warzel?

  In other words, it's not a given that our lives had to be mediated this way, by these massive platforms for viral advertising. And so, a few years ago, I was talking to another writer who's roughly around my age, about what it's meant to come of age in the attention economy. We talked about how fun and experimental all of this was at first, how exciting it was to be connected to everyone all at once. It was both intimate and incredibly public. But we also talked about how quickly all the experimentation turned into something different. How we, without really even noticing it, began writing, posting, performing, all for this imagined audience. And how we started imagining how that imagined audience would respond.

• 2:42Charlie Warzel?

  How we'd see people get mocked, or shamed, or lavished with praise, and just internalize all of that in the back of our minds. How the way we spoke changed on these specific platforms, as the result of in-jokes, memes, and a shared culture that we were all building at once. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, though there are countless examples of the way that social media curdles people, or pushes us to be the most neurotic, reactive, and uncharitable versions of ourselves. All these versions once felt separate from our actual selves, but over time, they've become harder to untangle. And this is the subject of a new book by the writer Catherine Jezer-Morton. It's titled, "The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything."

• 3:27Charlie Warzel?

  Jezer Morton argues that social media's greatest influence might be how we understand ourselves as humans, and not, as many critics have argued, its impact on our attention spans or our politics. Humans are storytellers, and they always have been. And those stories help us understand the world and our place in it. And I was drawn to Jezer Morton's book in part because of her framing of social media as a place where all of us who post are telling a collective story about what it means to be a person in today's world. Now, in some sense, this is all obvious enough. But what's less clear is what these platforms and stories are doing to all of us, whether you share your life on social media, or you just lurk there. Are they making us more unique, or more the same?

• 4:10Charlie Warzel?

  What is highlighted in the culture that is mediated by algorithms? And what lived experiences are excluded? If social media is the lens through which we capture the story of our lives, is the aperture being widened, or narrowed? Jezer Morton brings a nuance to this polarizing topic, and she joins me now to talk about it all. Catherine, welcome to Galaxy Brain.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Thank you, Charlie.

• 4:40Charlie Warzel?

  So, your book is about social media, but it's really about how we make sense of ourselves and the world through personal stories. And so, I wanted to start with you telling me just a bit about your own personal story, growing up on a commune in Vermont, and specifically how you feel that shaped your understanding of personal and communal narratives, and how it's sort of a foundation for, I think, some of your work in this book, but also on social media in general.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  So, I spent a lot of my childhood on a commune that my dad was part of the founding group of, in southern Vermont. And I lived there on and off for, you know, a number of years. And I think that, for me, I was always really aware that like, it was a story, the whole place was a story. I knew that we, people lived together who weren't family, and that the place had this kind of rich history, and that also, like, we were kind of, we were hippies. And it was messy, and it was very like, you know, kind of, it was a bit of a chaotic vibe some of the time. And so, I was being told these stories from when I was very young. And I think that it gave me this really rich understanding that like, a lot of what

• 5:53Speaker 02

  life is, is storytelling. So, when I got to college, and we started using social media, I was like, this rules. Like, this is so fun. I'm like, I'm a natural. This is like, I was born to do this. And I really just, I took to it, you know, like a fish to water. And I think it was because, I was like, no, this is what we do. We narrate ourselves. We bring ourselves to life through, through pictures and stories. And, you know, it's like a fun, creative project. We're basically, you know, narrating ourselves into being, and we get to do it however we want. But I think that, as soon as I started using it, I was like, what are we all doing, though? Like, what are we actually up to?

• 6:33Speaker 02

  And from the very beginning, like, I think I joined Facebook in 2007, I was like, this feels like there's something going on here. And I think we're doing something, and we don't even really know what we're doing.

• 6:45Charlie Warzel?

  Mm-hmm. What, let's go back a little, though, to you loving social media. I mean, one thing that's very clear from, from your work is, is that, like, that genuine affection, and also that, like, I'm not trying to tell you that, like, posting is bad, or that, you know, your screens are destroying you, just because they're there all the time. But I want to go back to this, I have a very similar relationship to social media. I mean, it's tortured, but it's also, especially in the beginning, I was like, wow, you made this thing for me. Like, this is, like, all I want to do is perform for, you know, for different people and create this persona. What did you, like, what was part of your, the story you were crafting?

• 7:29Charlie Warzel?

  Like, what were you trying to do very early on in those, like, the halcyon days?

• 7:33Speaker 02

  So, I was freshly graduated from college, I was living in New Orleans, I was married, I was, I was like, living this little professional life. And I think it was an opportunity to show the world, like, check it out, guys, like, this is me and my little life, and it was very millennial. There's something deeply cringe about it, looking back, like, you know, here's my house. And like, check it out, like, we made gumbo. Like, it was so fun. And, you know, here's Mardi Gras, like, here are our costumes. And, I mean, it was also, like, I was living very far away from my family. And so, there was a practical aspect, where I was like, look at my life in New Orleans, guys. It's, and New Orleans is a cool place, and it photographs well, so I was, it was easy.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  But I think I was just honestly becoming an adult, and becoming independent, and telling everyone that I was happy about that. I was very, and you know, I think I was doing a little bit of nascent, personal branding, in that I wanted to seem fun, but also like, an adult. Like, I was, I was independent.

• 8:37Charlie Warzel?

  But you devoted, like, your academic career in part to understanding how, how these feeds shape us. And this led you to do, like, anthropological work of interviewing normal people about their social media use. And you say that you've been fascinated by how little people want to discuss what they do in their feeds. And I found that really, really interesting. Why do you think that is, that, that people kind of balk at, like, examining what it is they're doing? Because we're spending so much time on these platforms.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, to me, that was like, what got me started writing this book. I was like, no one wants to talk about it. And yet, we're doing it for a public audience. So, like, right, what's going on when you choose this picture instead of that picture and post it? I know it's not just automatic behavior, because I'm thinking about it. I mean, that's really where it started. I was like, if I'm thinking about this, if I'm being careful with my messaging, then everyone else is too. And we never talk about that. It's also very, I think, you know, in a kind of, maybe like...

• 9:40Speaker 02

  Puritanical sense or something like it's embarrassing to admit that we are really kind of working hard to project a certain image. No one really wants to admit that and everyone accuses other people of doing that and no one self implicates. So that was really the starting point of like, I want to talk, I want to sit with someone and be like, talk to me about your feed. Tell me what you're doing. It's okay, it's just you and me. Just tell me what you have going on. And what I found was like, a lot of people were like, no one's ever asked me this before. And if I could gain their trust, they were like, yeah, man, let's, let's get into it. Like, I have actually a lot, I think about this a lot.

• 10:16Charlie Warzel?

  Okay. Broadly speaking, what is it that you think we're, we're all doing when we post?

• 10:24Speaker 02

  So I just want to begin by saying that obviously if this is, it is the world, social media, so it is enormously diverse and there are going to be exceptions always. So I can't say everyone's doing the same thing. I think that what we're doing is we're maintaining a brand that we have built over time. Each of us has one. It's an identity. It's, there's a sort of consistency that we're seeking to maintain and we're just working in the service of maintaining it. And I think for some of us, it might be something that we're a bit tired of. Maybe we kind of started working with this brand at the beginning of our social media time and we're kind of stuck with it. And maybe we're not posting anymore because we're like, I just like, I don't want to keep doing that thing anymore. That shtick is old, like I'm, I can't.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  But a lot of us are just like, yeah, I'll just keep doing it basically. And it's to do with demonstrating that you, you have your life under control, that you have a certain degree of fitness in your life, whether that's like economic or physical, just like you're really with it, you understand the world, you can kind of handle the world as it's coming at you. I think it's about capacity. You're, you're basically proving your capacity to survive day after day, or however often you're posting. And yeah, I think that's what people are doing. And I, I don't think that's how it started and I think that's how it is now.

• 11:45Charlie Warzel?

  How would you describe that, that evolution? Right? Because the, the way that, that I think about it from my own perspective, I think from, you know, what you were just saying about stumbling onto these platforms and figuring out is, is it was so light, it was so experimental, right? It was, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna try on this piece of my persona. It, it all felt like it had no consequences, right? Just like very intimate stuff that's happening, very public, but also ephemeral and, and light and like, this is my Facebook persona, right? This is my, like, this is how I am on Twitter with, you know, like being a young journalist

• 12:29Charlie Warzel?

  and speaking very, you know, very personally, like on the town in New York City, doing fun stuff, working for this company BuzzFeed, right? It was all very like, low stakes, I guess I would say. And then something happened. But how would you describe the evolution of, of what happened as these platforms became more mature?

• 12:51Speaker 02

  I think that the movement away from the chronological newsfeed was really huge. I think that once, uh, you know, an algorithm was starting to feed us stuff based on its kind of performance, it changed. I think users clocked to that really quickly. And I think that we just started to learn that some stuff got seen and other stuff didn't. And we did start, I think, not everybody, but I think a lot of people started to change ever so slightly the way that they posted. People came to understand that selfies or pictures of themselves performed better.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  I think that just the, the idea of being visible in this huge population changed the dynamic. Like, remember when we started using these things at the beginning, it was just people that we knew. And I think for most people, it still is like, you know, you're a journalist, so you have people who are following you just for your work. But it's also like, over years and years, like you go through different jobs, you move. So you have these people now who are following you and seeing your stuff who you'll never see again and who you haven't seen in years. So they're effectively strangers. And I think that that changes it too, where you're like, okay, so there's my friends, but then there's all these random people that are looking at me. And I think even if you're a person who has no professional business on social media,

• 14:10Speaker 02

  you're not selling anything, you're not maintaining anything, whatever, you're still talking to strangers. And I think that forces a certain formality, a certain kind of concern for your reputation that was not present at the beginning at all.

• 14:27Charlie Warzel?

  I read this story in, in 2020 and, and about boomers on Facebook. It was all about like, these boomers are being radicalized on, on Facebook. And, and I talked to a lot of them and one of the things that they, they described to me that I, that was so fascinating is especially for boomers, you know, like for, for us who are like relatively around the age of college while we were on it or whatever, it was like we were meeting people at parties and adding them on Facebook, right? Or something like that. But for the boomers, it was like, oh my gosh, that was the kid who lived down the street from me 50 years ago. And like, I can reconnect to them. And there was a magic to that and it was great. But it used, once, once the newsfeed shifted into, you know, less away from the personal

• 15:10Charlie Warzel?

  updates into the political updates, you would see stuff like, oh God, my next door neighbor from 50 years ago was an incredible bigot and now I need to argue with them. Right? And like, and so all these people were just exposed to essentially strangers because the, the relationship was so tenuous to begin with, even though it was so exciting to uncover. And it just like, so much of this conflict had happened because really you weren't supposed to be hanging out with that person, right? Or like having that person then comment on a photo of your grandchild, right? Where you're like, what gives you the right, man? Like, you know, there's like all this conflict.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, these are not people that you have any business being in contact with. There's no utility to, to this, these points of contact. They're unprecedented socially, like, and so now we're having to deal with it. And I would say, yeah, younger people have the same thing where it's like, even really younger people, like Gen Z, they're meeting, churning through tons of new connections. You know, 15 year olds will have like a thousand people on Snapchat. And it's like, how do you know that many people at your young age? It's like, that's how it works now. And it just creates this totally like nonsensical social environment. Yeah.

• 16:30Speaker 00

  If you're trying to get news today, you'll find a lot of biased algorithms, rage bait and AI noise. Thanks, social media. That's where Inpress comes in. It's a social platform on top of factual journalism, not the other way around. Track your reading and earn points. It's like Strava for your brain. Plus, you can connect with other users in your city who share your genuine curiosity. Ditch the echo chamber for reality with Inpress. Download it today for iOS or Android at inpress.app. That's I, N as in news nerd, press.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  When was the last time you indulged your desires? Felt true Range Rover refinement? When was the last time you drove in total serenity? The outside world reduced to a hush? The last time you were confident on uncertain terrain? The last journey that made you feel at home, conveniently connected at every step? In a Range Rover, pioneering innovation meets leading edge luxury to make every drive an occasion. Limitless, effortless, pureless. How far will you let it take you? Range Rover, designed for distinction.

• 17:36Charlie Warzel?

  So you mentioned the phrase personal branding earlier, talking about, you know, what, what people are doing and how social media has pushed people into really thinking like, like a brand, right? And so, you know, I think of branding obviously as a way to sell something. What, what do you think people are selling? And, and, and why are they, why are they sort of forced into that specific behavior of posting the way that, you know, Wendy's posts on, on, you know, Facebook or whatever? Like, why, why did that, why did people sort of become more like the brands instead of, I mean, I guess the brands had become more like people too.

• 18:19Charlie Warzel?

  But why do you think that, that, that fusing has happened?

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's true that the brands have become more like people, the people have become more like brands, and now we're all kind of in this weird middle place.

• 18:31Charlie Warzel?

  It's great.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  I think that, I mean, first of all, it's just like the affordances of the platform. I think the platform, the designs, the interfaces encouraged us to do certain things. I think that just when we started to have, you know, like the likes and then, you know, tasking and comments, like you're suddenly in this kind of market research environment where people can give you feedback. And I think that just the very fact of likes and comments kind of puts a person in a position to be like, okay, well, now I'm looking for your approval. Now I want to see how, I want to do this because I want you guys to like it. So there's that, just very simply, the, the interface kind of puts us in that position.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  I think if we didn't have those, those features, we would behave differently. And I think that's true, you know, in, on interfaces where there aren't these kind of interacting features, people do behave differently. If you think about like Flickr or whatever, like these like photo sharing sites, people just put photos and it's, it's different. We have been, over the last 20 years, in this, you know, period of like precarity becoming like a larger and larger part of sort of the envi, the, the economic environment, the, the workplace environment. People are having to kind of try to promote themselves, even if they're not really trying to sell anything, they are kind of like, I need to look my best, I want to try to maintain a certain reputation, you're competing in the job market, you, you feel more and more

• 20:01Speaker 02

  that you're competing in the social environment, like in the world of dating. When I try to explain to the college students that I teach, like, you know, there's like other ways of telling a story about yourself or presenting yourself to the world and this kind of branded self, where you're trying to kind of demonstrate a certain kind of fitness and, and like you want to always look a certain way. They don't understand what I mean at all. Because to them, it's like, why wouldn't I want to have people think that I'm the best version of myself? Like, that's my purpose, is to get better and better at something, become a better version of myself, get more fit, whatever the case may be. I'm working on myself, I'm trying to get better. I want people to see that.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  I want people to see that I'm trying and that I'm succeeding. And they can't comprehend that there's a different narrative structure around selfhood that could possibly exist. And the fact is, like, there, there was before social media that everyone lived in, that you were a person, you had your hobbies, you had your goals, you had your, the things that you were up to, but yourself might have been somewhat separate from this, these sets of, you know, work concerns or, or creative concerns. And it really wasn't all this kind of, it wasn't all one thing that you were trying to kind of convince people of. I think that we accepted that there was something about each of us that was a little

• 21:30Speaker 02

  bit kind of uncontainable, or like, you know, just ourselves.

• 21:35Charlie Warzel?

  Or worth, worth protecting, yeah.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, worth protecting. And, and I think that that idea has just completely faded into like kind of obsolescence.

• 21:45Charlie Warzel?

  The precarity part is really fascinating to me, especially in the way that it is a behavior that obviously benefits the platform. If you don't post with a certain type of frequency now, it's, it's, A, it's less at bats, right, less chances for the algorithm to reward you or to be seen or to whatever, or to make money off of, you know, whatever thing, or have a brand deal. But it's also just like to, to exist, right? You disappear in these things if you don't continue to feed them. Like, there's just too much to drown you out if you're not also doing, you know, the constant connection and posting, whether that's in the, in the dating space or just on Instagram or, you know, Twitter, sharing stories and articles, whatever it is, TikTok, you name it, YouTube.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  This is what happens, I think, when people go through like a really difficult time, you'll see they'll disappear. You know, because they can't narrate the, like a divorce, illness, like tragedy. Sometimes people will, will narrate through it, you'll see that, and it's, it's very interesting. But a lot of the time, people don't, because they're like, I, I don't know how to accommodate this like complexity of feeling. I, I can't narrate it, so I'm just, I'm just out of here. And then if they want to come back, it's like, you know, then you have to make some kind of statement, like, you know, hey, I'm back. Like, it, it's very, I think that, that, this is where we like hit the limitations of, of the medium.

• 23:11Speaker 02

  It doesn't welcome us back in a way that feels like kind of full of possibility. It feels like you have to kind of engage within the constraints of this like brand environment. And to me, I think, I think it's very inhibiting for people who are going through complex, like deeply ambivalent life, life chapters. And so, and I, I say this in the book, like, we don't have that many examples of telling stories that have to do with struggle and ambivalence and pain, because people just don't know how to do it. And so the longer we don't do it, the longer we're not going to do it, because we just don't have examples to look to, like, oh, that person, you know, narrated their, like, really painful divorce in a way that really made sense to me.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  And like, so I, I can kind of like build on that. It's, you just don't see these stories. You, you see people in, having bounced back.

• 24:04Charlie Warzel?

  Well, this is what I, what I wanted to go to next, too, which is the idea of what you call like master narratives in the, in the, so that, that the sort of architecture of a lot of these platforms builds towards, right? And, and one of them being, you know, things like, like redemption, right? Redemption being a very important one of those, or, or just progress in general as, as a kind of master narrative. But what are some of the other like master narratives that, that these platforms favor?

• 24:37Speaker 02

  I mean, I think redemption is the number one, which is just, you know, I'm, I'm going, getting better and better, I'm overcoming. I think, you know, just the idea of even within suffering, battling an illness, like, you know, overcoming, like being a warrior, you know, all of this kind of, you know, like military sort of metaphors around illness and, and recovery. I think it's, I think that's the main one. I think it's to do with just being someone who is going to overcome it, gonna kill it, gonna, gonna be awesome in the end.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  And I think there are certainly exceptions to this rule, and I think especially among younger people, like, you're seeing people talk about suffering in new ways, to me, like, that I'm kind of impressed with. But I would say, like, among millennials and older people, you know, even like a GoFundMe, for example, which, you know, a GoFundMe is about suffering, people don't usually make their own GoFundMe pages, they're made on behalf of someone. And you accept the charity of your friend who kindly sets up a GoFundMe on your behalf. People don't do it for themselves. And I really do think that's just like a bit of, it's, it's like a, a value system at work, people are like, I can't, I don't want to be seen asking for help, I want someone to ask for help for me.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  Then, and I think that's part of the same master narrative, like if I'm asking for help, I'm, I'm asking for pity, like I'm asking for, it's, it feels, I think, very, it feels very wrong, very uncomfortable for most people to do that. Which is really interesting, because asking for help is like extremely human, and, you know, any therapist will tell you that it's really good to do it, and it's good to get comfortable doing it. But I think it's something that people have a very hard time with.

• 26:24Charlie Warzel?

  So with the idea of the demonstrating growth or, or progress or, or redemption, you, you also say that social media structure penalizes what, what you call flat stories. So what, what are flat stories?

• 26:41Speaker 02

  So flat story is a story that doesn't have an upward, an upward trending arc. So it's like, yeah, I got a divorce and I'm not sure if it was a good idea or not. And like, honestly, I'm very confused, but life goes on. It's like, you know, I'm having a really hard time in this job and I don't feel like I'm doing a good job, but I'm going to try to hang on for as long as possible because I need the money, right? And for me, like, the novel is the technology of the flat story. You know, my favorite novels are novels that kind of end with this feeling where you're like, dang, you know, poof, life.

• 27:19Charlie Warzel?

  Yeah.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  Ain't, ain't it just like that? You know, like, like The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, where he's like, yep, I'm just gonna be with someone who I'm not in love with. And that's, and, and you, as a reader, you're like, oh, God, devastating, but like, you know, and, and I think this is why people love novels, it's like, it puts you in someone else's subject position, it introduces a whole other reality, and then it kind of like forces you to account for like how being a human is complex and hard. And you're, and I mean, it's the best, right? So, okay, that's novels, social media, not the same thing. We just, it's the technology affords different stories. And

• 27:58Speaker 02

  For me, like, the way I started thinking about flat stories was the commune of my childhood. It's it's still around. It's been around for 50 years. There's only a couple of people living there now. But like, it keeps on somehow, but it's not like a triumphant story. Like, 100%, the golden age was in the past. But if you go up there, you're like, man, this place is kind of cool. Like, this is, this is, uh, this is different. These people are cool and getting old and and they're here. And, you know, it's like, it's hard to kind of place it within a narrative framework that I think many of us are familiar with.

• 28:36Charlie Warzel?

  What I can't stop thinking about, as you're talking about this, is the idea to, similar to the commune, that so much of, like, business, pre-social media and like, and the internet, like, the family businesses, right? Like, it's the hardware store that just kind of is around for 75 years. And like, is it going well? Yeah, we have some good months and some good years. And then there's some bad years. And oh, yeah, we had to replace the roof and, you know, took out a loan. Whatever, right? Versus the narrative around business, finance, the economy now, which is just like, it can't be a flat narrative, right? Like, in order to raise venture capital money, to do whatever, it's like, it's growth

• 29:18Charlie Warzel?

  at all costs. It's scaled. A lot of number go up, right? All these things just have to increase and increase and increase. And it's better and better. And the story has to be like, algorithmically, you know, enticing. But just the way that this all bleeds into everything, right? Like, now, now, it's a weird thing. Like, it's hard to put, you can find a way to post about, like, oh, my store endured, right? My hardware store endured for forever. But it's, it's not like an interesting cultural narrative anymore to exist and and to, you know, persist in that way. It has to be this growth. I think that's really

• 29:58Charlie Warzel?

  fascinating, like, that it seems to be bleeding in very much to the general concept of what success is and can be.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Exactly. No, it's this, this idea that you have to 10x your story, or, or you're dead, right? Like, it's, it's crazy that this has become kind of a narrative, any kind of concern that we have. But like, if you talk to a teenager, like, I have a 15 year old son, he's almost 16. And he doesn't really use social media, but like, a lot of teens, boys in particular, I don't really know that much about what girls are up to. But like, you know, they're into fitness. They, they go to the gym. That's cool. Go to the gym. Sure. What can I say? Fine. And, you know, he's not like, taking supplements. But it's just, it's an activity that allows you to think in terms of getting better and

• 30:50Speaker 02

  better and better. It just has, it has that built in. And so I don't even know how much he likes going to the gym. I really can't tell. But it, it allows him to participate in the discourse of, I was here, and now I'm here. And in a year, I'll be here. And it just, I think it's like socially, especially if you're on, it just makes sense. It's easy. You plug yourself in. You're like, and now you have something to talk about with like, tons and tons of people. And I'm convinced it's part of the same thing. Listen, we've always, human beings have, are interested in the body. It's not like this is unprecedented. But I think that wherever you can get your growth narrative is where you're going to try to get it. And, you know, the gym is one such place. I mean, there's a reason

• 31:32Speaker 02

  why, you know, optimization culture is what everyone is part of. It's not just because we're obsessed with being better. It's because it's a very convenient way of telling your story as a person in a way that other people can understand. And I really think that social media has kind of given us all kind of like, the training to participate in this.

• 31:55Charlie Warzel?

  And it's safe, too, right? Like, it's, it's very safe to be like, I'm just trying to get better, you know, like, who's gonna be like, oh, get rid of this guy, you know, like, he's trying, he's trying to be healthy. Yikes. So, okay, so we've, we've established that social media teaches us to sell story of ourselves as this product that we're locked in, these master narratives, improvement, redemption, resilience. The algorithms then also reward the sort of the most legible, the most like emotionally salient and intense versions of all of this. And then, what you were right about in the book, is how our lives start to reorganize themselves around this. And I'd love to kind of go through a couple of those examples. And the first one is vacations. So what have you, what

• 32:39Charlie Warzel?

  have you learned, studying posts about vacations from, from influencers, but also just from, from, from regular people?

• 32:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I went to Scottsdale, Arizona, and I hung out with some moms there. And this one mom, just, she said this amazing thing to me. She was like, oh, yeah, like, when I'm posting, especially like on trips, activities out and about with my family, I just want people to see that we do shit. We do shit. We are a family that does shit. We're, we're like, not boring, and we're active, and we're like, really good at like, making the best of it. Like, we're out in the world. And so I think a vacation is a great opportunity to kind of stage a really successful, kind of engaged spirit of, we know how to make the most of our time together. We're not kind of, you know, stuck inside.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  We're not ruminating. We're not grumping at each other. We're like, at the Eiffel Tower. We're grinning. We got here. We're having the time of our lives. And so it creates this kind of like affective container, almost, like travel does, vacations do, and then just creating these really legible scenes around like, big landmarks, that everyone recognizes, you know, like Positano, whatever it is, a place that everyone's like, oh, beautiful. Yes, you made it. Vacations were not always an opportunity to show people your kind of economic and sort of emotional fitness. It used to be about other things, too.

• 34:04Charlie Warzel?

  Something that, that you note, though, that I think is really interesting to this, this broader idea, is that it kind of makes us, because there's these conventions, right? And this, in this sort of way of doing something, even as, as sort of, that we've done forever, like vacations, there's this like, small c conservatism to it, right? That it, can you say a little more about how it pushes people to be more conservative, not ideologically or politically, but like, just in, in, in what they do?

• 34:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. So like, small c conservatism, meaning just like, the desire to replicate things as they have previously been done, like tradition. It's usually done like this, so I want to do it in that way. I want to replicate the photo that I've seen. And by doing it successfully, I will have succeeded. As opposed to, like, for example, in other eras, people might have been like, when I go on vacation, I want to have a transcendent experience where I feel maybe like I'm transformed, or like, the place gets under my skin, and I feel like a different version of myself altogether, that I'll like, I may take home with me, or I may not. But it's like, very kind of, you know, you could call it woo woo, you can call it whatever you want. But it's to do with this kind of the mysteries

• 35:22Speaker 02

  of the self. It has nothing to do with proving or recreating anything that you've seen other people do. You're like, no, I'm gonna do it in a completely new way, getting loose. So yeah, this, this conservatism has to do with, like, I just want it to look the way that, you know, the pictures look when the influencers do it. And I see this, like, in a lot of young people, like, for them, the enjoyment of having gotten just the right shot, making something look really aesthetic, as they say, it's like, it's a deep enjoyment for them. It's a source of real satisfaction that I can't relate to. I'm too old, but I see they're like, oh, like, this, this is fun. Like, we're having fun now, because we got just the right frame. We got everything in it just right.

• 36:08Charlie Warzel?

  Yeah. And I, I think it's important, like, what I notice in your work, and, and there, and in this conversation, is not like, belittling that, right? Like, it's not, it's not like passing judgment on that, just noting that, like, that that has actually happened. I think it's very similar with phones at concerts and things like that, right? Where it's, there are some people who see it and go like, great, so you're not even doing the thing, right? Like, you're not even engaged with this. You're just so consumed with capturing it. And you'll hear a lot of people say, like, I'm having a great time. This is like, what I'm here to do. I'm here to capture this in this way, you know?

• 36:43Speaker 02

  Totally. And I say this in the book, and I would actually like to spend more time thinking about this, because I didn't really have time to develop it. That, like, when, I think that when people feel the emotion of like, I'm having fun, like, this feels so great. Here we are at the concert. I think that taking out your phone and capturing it has now become part of expressing that emotion, right? Like, emotions are partly in our bodies, but they're also partly, like, culturally expressed, you know, like, people express emotions differently in other parts of the world. And I think that the taking out of the phone and being like, we're gonna get this capture, it's like, part and parcel of this feeling of like, this is so awesome. Like, I am loving this. And I don't think

• 37:24Speaker 02

  that it's the same thing as like, you know, erasing yourself from the moment, or like, failing to experience. And I think it's part of experiencing it for a lot of people.

• 37:33Charlie Warzel?

  Let's move into politics, specifically the way the internet is shaping political identities. How have you seen social media changing the way that we express and perform our politics in this way?

• 37:45Speaker 02

  Fundamentally, I'm like, we're, we're performing as brands. We are compelled to act this way. But in fact, being a person is a very terrible fit for branding. We're constantly in violation of our own brand guidelines. We're constantly failing to be consistent. Like, we just, that's what being a person is. Like, it's a mess. It's like square peg in a round hole, personal branding and being a person. And I think that really comes up, it shows in politics, because I think we assume that when someone is posting about politics, they're coming from a place of like, kind of cool headed, like, I'm making a statement on, on, you know, the events. When often, and I found this in my research,

• 38:25Speaker 02

  it's very emotional, and it's very irrational. And it's maybe there's like, a couple people out there in the audience that you're trying to get through to, and you really don't care what anyone else thinks, but these are the people that you're in communication with, or whatever, you're, you're working through something, you're compensating for something, you're, whatever it is, you have ulterior motives. And you're expressing them through the, through your posts, your, the things that you're sharing about politics. And I think it's very easy to misinterpret that and to think that, you know, oh, this person is, you know, just stating their political views. When in fact, there's so many other things going on.

• 39:13Speaker 00

  If you're trying to get news today, you'll find a lot of biased algorithms, rage bait and AI noise. Thanks, social media. That's where Inpress comes in. It's a social platform on top of factual journalism, not the other way around. Track your reading and earn points. It's like Strava for your brain. Plus, you can connect with other users in your city who share your genuine curiosity. Ditch the echo chamber for reality with Inpress. Download it today for iOS or Android at inpress.app. That's I, N as in news nerd, press.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  When was the last time you indulged your desires, felt true Range Rover refinement? When was the last time you drove in total serenity, the outside world reduced to a hush? The last time you were confident on uncertain terrain? The last journey that made you feel at home, conveniently connected at every step? In a Range Rover, pioneering innovation meets leading edge luxury to make every drive an occasion. Limitless, effortless, pureless. How far will you let it take you? Range Rover, designed for distinction.

• 40:19Charlie Warzel?

  A corollary to the politics part of this, I think, is how the platforms and all of our collective behaviors on the platforms change our relationships to facts and truths. And you have an observation here that I think is, it kind of, I spent a lot of time just thinking about it. So I'd love for you to explain this out even, even more for me, which is the idea that truth, in some ways, has been replaced by the idea of authenticity. Can you tease that out a little more for me and for everyone listening?

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, so like authenticity being that someone is willing to kind of put themselves out there or kind of seem really real, seem unfiltered, seem sort of, yeah, like unpracticed. And I think it is a little bit of a, maybe we have a sort of a fatigue or like a, we're getting wary of the whole personal brand polish and we want people who kind of violate the rules of personal branding. Donald Trump, perfect example, right? He's, he's not a very consistent persona. He does all kinds of stuff that, very contradictory. And for that reason, he's considered very authentic. Like he says what he means, even if it contradicts what he just said. You always know that, you know, he's coming from someplace that is real within him or whatever.

• 41:33Speaker 02

  I mean, authentic doesn't mean true anymore. That's, it has a different meaning. And I think we see this. So the example that I gave, and I see so many examples of this now all over Instagram, is, you know, no one's interested in like scientific data as much as they're interested in like a really compelling anecdote. And this is just like attention economy stuff. This is because a really compelling anecdote is going to perform better for a number of reasons. Whereas like a big, you know, a longitudinal study is going to have like some interesting findings, but it's also going to have some, you know, some contradictory findings or it's not always gonna, you know, science is often much less kind of explosive than like this one dude who's like,

• 42:16Speaker 02

  I took this supplement and six months later, I am freaking jacked, you know? Like, that's cool. I can see the results. This like, you know, these charts, like, ugh, it involved like 50,000 people, subjects. Like, there's some real conclusive evidence here, but like, it's way less fun. Like, the, the results are just much more ambiguous. It's like, yeah, we're living in like the age of the anecdote. Like, the anecdote is so much better than, than the data. And because the anecdote comes from someone's passion, it involves like this affective kind of loadedness that we get to appreciate.

• 42:53Charlie Warzel?

  I've talked about this with certain influencers before, and it's so interesting because like, in my professional career, like, we're here at The Atlantic. This is a, an institution that's been around for a long time. There's a lot of like credibility that is, you know, that is supposed to come with that and to the processes of, you know, whether it's The Atlantic or The New York Times or any, any media institution or any university or, or place that has been around and has norms and standards and has built up a trust around that. And what you see in the current attention economy, as you, as you say, is, you know, the truth being replaced by the authentic feeling anecdote. But also too, is the feeling of, with that authenticity that comes from the influencer and not the institution,

• 43:38Charlie Warzel?

  is, is like the, the forgiveness that, that comes from that, right? Like, an influencer screws up and it's like, hey, man, it's just one guy. He's, he, she's out there. They're just, you know, hustling. They're making a million videos. They're posting all the time. What do you expect? You're gonna get some stuff wrong, man. But they're trying and they're real and they're not corporate. Versus like, you know, The New York Times or The Washington Post or The Atlantic or whoever makes a mistake and it's like, no forgiveness. Like, there is none. In fact, yeah, like, like the person who feels authentic is given so much rope in these situations.

• 44:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that when someone is like, I'm gonna stream my life and I'm gonna show you my whole, my whole vibe. People are like, I honestly don't care what they say. I love that they're showing me their whole vibe. And I think that people, again, I think this is maybe a little bit of a response to a fatigue of this kind of perfect branded self. People are like, no, I want to watch someone, you know, just be in front of the camera for eight hours talking about any old thing and I'll listen to them and I'm into it because it feels really real. And I'll listen to their anecdotes. I'll just like catch their vibe and it feels satisfying in a way that, you know, when people are pretending to be kind of perfect, we're losing maybe some of the satisfaction of that.

• 44:54Charlie Warzel?

  I want to zoom out a little because you argue that stories, which is, we're humans or storytellers, historically expand our understanding of human beings, who we are, what we can do. And they invite really big, open-ended questions. But that social media and its stories are kind of shrinking. Instead of the open-ended questions, it's the, like, the aperture is narrower. Is social media and these platforms that we're telling our stories, are they shrinking like our idea of what the world can be?

• 45:28Speaker 02

  I think so. I think we're always trying to fit our experience into these very limiting narratives that social media gives us. And I think that has an effect of shrinking our capacity. And I do think that ultimately, so much of human life, it's, it's an imaginative activity. Like, everyone's talking about the Odyssey right now. Like, the Odyssey before it was written down was many, many versions of the same story that had many possible endings. And people who've heard the story of Odysseus had heard it told in a number of different ways. And they accepted the fact that this story had like, you know, infinite possible endings. And that was like cognitively normal for them. They were like, a given story. Who knows how it's gonna end?

• 46:12Speaker 02

  And I do think that that is, gives people a capacity to understand life in a, in a different way than people who are mostly hearing their narratives from social media or they're really just hearing about how people are doing awesome and they're growing and they're improving and they're overcoming. And it feels pretty unidirectional and pretty kind of, it just feels limited. And I just think that the stories that you hear help you to then tell your own story. And the stories that we hear are not as kind of capacious as they could be.

• 46:49Charlie Warzel?

  Well, and I think there's something too of the relentless growth and resilience and positivity as the, as the master narratives, as you call them, as they sandwich up against the, the reality, the precarity that we're, we're also talked about, that you're experiencing, right? When you're looking at whether it's climate change or economic insecurity or AI is coming for whatever, you know, political unrest. You see all that and it's like, no, the story has to be this way. And it, and it just kind of, it's hard to, to reckon the, the two of them. And I, I, I think that kind of makes a person feel a little, like, maybe a little insane. You wrote something I felt very, very deeply as a fellow person who's spent the last two decades on social media. And I'm gonna quote you to yourself here.

• 47:33Charlie Warzel?

  "It is humiliating to try to account for our experiences on platforms that are obviously hostile towards their users. It's degrading. We're being treated like shit and not surprisingly, it's getting to us. After enough years of this degradation, we may start to believe that we are shit. Is it any surprise that contempt and self-loathing animate much of what's left of posting culture?" And personally, I feel like less and less attached to the story of myself as a result of all this. The story I'm telling on these platforms. Like, it is work now. It's not fun. It's begun to feel like work. And you know that without a viable alternative, we're probably not gonna get off these platforms or just like have a wholesale change of our, of our behaviors.

• 48:18Charlie Warzel?

  But I do wonder if you think there's gonna be something of a wake up. Like, we'll stop posting on the platforms as terms, maybe? Or we'll begin to treat them very differently and almost in a kind of protest to what they want us to be? Do you see that happening? Or do you think that it's just so entwined with our lives and identities that we're just gonna continue to be living in this abusive relationship?

• 48:40Speaker 02

  I really see this book as my farewell to the posting era. I do think that people are posting less. I think they're gonna be posting less and less. I think more of social media is gonna be populated by AI anyway. And I think the humans are gonna have less and less of a role to play. And I do think we're gonna come up with something different. It's not gonna be like a new social media platform. I, I don't believe that that's imminent. But I, I think we do come up with creative solutions. We, we have workarounds. We do find a way to kind of escape capture in our storytelling. We manage that. Memes are one such way, I think. I don't know about a wake up. That feels a little, a little like major. I think it's gonna be slow. I think it's gonna be very gradual. But I think that people already are like,

• 49:24Speaker 02

  this, this narrative tool is no longer working for me. And I don't know what we're gonna replace it with, but I know that the desire, the need to tell our stories to each other and to ourselves is gonna find a new container somehow. I fully believe that.

• 49:40Charlie Warzel?

  I hope that it is something that is not owned by Mark Zuckerberg, whatever, whatever it is.

• 49:47Speaker 02

  Me too.

• 49:49Charlie Warzel?

  Catherine, thank you so much for coming on Galaxy Brain and talking through these perfectly galaxy-brained concepts with us.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Thanks so much for having me.

• 50:05Charlie Warzel?

  That's it for us here. Thank you again to my guest, Catherine Jezzer Morton. Just a quick show note. We are going on a little bit of a hiatus for a portion of this summer to spend some time thinking about what we're gonna do for the new episodes, but we will be back very soon. I promise you that. And if you want to support this work and the work of my fellow colleagues, you can subscribe to the publication at theatlantic.com/listener. That's theatlantic.com/listener. And as a little Easter egg for all of those of you who have made it here through the credits, you may have noticed something wispy and strange behind me. I lost a bet to a bunch of my friends on a golf trip and had to get a mullet. So if you've stuck around, this one's for you.

• 50:54Charlie Warzel?

  Thanks so much and I'll see you on the internet.

• 51:03Speaker 00

  If you're trying to get news today, you'll find a lot of biased algorithms, rage bait and AI noise. Thanks, social media. That's where Inpress comes in. It's a social platform on top of factual journalism, not the other way around. Track your reading and earn points. It's like Strava for your brain. Plus, you can connect with other users in your city who share your genuine curiosity. Ditch the echo chamber for reality with Inpress. Download it today for iOS or Android at inpress.app. That's I, N as in news nerd, press.