Inside Amazon's Empire & How Social Media Is Rewriting Your Life

Have you ever caught yourself saying, "It smells like rain"? It turns out that distinctive scent is very real—and it's not your imagination. Scientists know exactly where it comes from, why some people notice it more than others, and why it can signal that rain is on the way. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-causes-the-smell-after-rain-180974692/ Love Amazon or hate it, there's no denying it has changed the way we shop—and perhaps the way business itself is done. But how did Amazon become so dominant? What really happened behind the scenes as Jeff Bezos built one of the world's most powerful companies? The story is far more complicated—and far more surprising—than most people realize. Joining me to pull back the curtain is Dana Mattioli, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal who has been reporting on Amazon for years. She is author of The Everything War: Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power (https://amzn.to/4qdwEin). We like to think social media simply documents our lives. But what if it's quietly changing the way we experience them in the first place? Are vacations, birthdays, dinners, and even everyday moments becoming less about living them and more about making them look good on Instagram? Kathryn Jezer-Morton says social media isn't just influencing what we post—it is reshaping our memories, our identities, and the stories we tell about ourselves. Kathryn is a journalist, New York magazine columnist, and author of The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything (https://amzn.to/3Skz16s). There's something about hotel towels that just feels better. They're softer, fluffier, and more luxurious than the ones hanging in most bathrooms at home. Is it the towels themselves, or is there a simple trick hotels know that most of us don't? The answer may surprise you—and it could make every shower a little more enjoyable. https://www.consumerreports.org/appliances/laundry/how-to-make-your-towels-soft-and-fluffy-again/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS AIR DOCTOR: Head to ⁠⁠https://AirDoctorPro.com⁠⁠ and use promo code SYSK to get $250 off select AirDoctor air purifiers, including the 3500, 4000, and 5500 models. Plus, you’ll receive a free 3year warranty, an $84 value, and AirDoctor’s 30-day money back guarantee WAYFAIR: Ready to upgrade your home for way less? Head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Wayfair.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now to shop all things home and get your space ready for less. QUINCE: Elevate your everyday. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! DELL: Built for those who want better. The Dell XPS, built for you! HEALTH MATTERS: If you enjoy learning new ways to live a healthier life, check out NewYork-Presbyterian's Health Matters. Listen now and follow NewYork-Presbyterian's Health Matters wherever you get podcasts. SHOPIFY: It's time to turn those "what ifs" into CHA CHING with Shopify Today! Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at ⁠⁠https://Shopify.com/realm⁠⁠ INDEED: Get a $75 Sponsored Job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/PODCAST⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 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.

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 0:44Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:22Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know. You know when you can smell when it's going to rain? What is it you're smelling? Then a critical look at Amazon. Jeff Bezos started it as a bookstore, but look at it now.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  He never wanted this to just be a bookstore. He never wanted this to just be a retailer. He had this vision of Amazon becoming what he called a daily habit. He didn't want you to just buy a book or a paper towel on Amazon once a week. He wanted you to interact with it daily.

• 1:51Mike Carruthers?

  Also, why are hotel towels thicker and fluffier than yours? And social media. It's not only changed the way we tell stories, it's changed how we live our lives to look good on social media.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  This is where we get weddings and celebrations that are visually over the top because people want to create content that really catches the eye on social media, that are really optimized for the image.

• 2:17Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know. There's probably no better endorsement for a company than this. I keep buying their stuff. That's exactly what's happening with me and Quince. It started with their clothes. I've bought sweaters, polos, pants, jeans, shoes, a belt. And Quince has become one of the first places I look when I need something new to wear. And my wife and son buy from Quince too, all the time. What keeps bringing us back is the quality and the price. Quince uses premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, merino wool.

• 3:00Mike Carruthers?

  Their cashmere sweaters start at just $60. And with colder weather coming, they have down jackets and classic wool outerwear as well. Quince prices everything 50 to 80% less than similar brands by working directly with ethical factories and cutting out the middlemen. And it's not just clothes. They have bedding, bath, kitchen essentials, and furniture. We even have Quince pillows. So this isn't one of those endorsements where I try something once because they sent it to me. We shop at Quince, and I absolutely recommend you try it. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com.

• 3:42Mike Carruthers?

  Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, please let them know it was Something You Should Know. It's the best way to support our show.

• 3:58Speaker 03

  Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

• 4:11Mike Carruthers?

  So I bet this has happened to you. You've been outside on a cloudy day and you thought to yourself, it smells like rain, even though there is no rain. Well, what is that? What is it you're smelling? Well, that's what we're going to start with today. I'm Mike Carruthers, and this is Something You Should Know. So it's pretty common to be outside and think, hmm, smells like rain, only to have a storm roll in a little later. It turns out that many people really can smell a change in the weather. As humidity rises ahead of a storm, it helps carry these earthy scents from plants and soil through the air. And then strong winds can also bring a faint smell of ozone,

• 4:54Mike Carruthers?

  which is a sharp, clean scent created by electrical activity in thunderstorms. Our noses are surprisingly sensitive to these changes, often detecting them long before the first raindrops fall. Then, once the rain finally begins, something else happens. Raindrops striking dry ground release a distinctive, earthy aroma called petricor, created when compounds from plants and soil are launched into the air. So that wonderful rain smell is actually two different smells, one that can arrive before the rain and another that appears after the storm begins. And that is something you should know.

• 5:39Mike Carruthers?

  There was a time when shopping meant getting in the car and going to the store. Today, for millions of us, it means pulling out your phone, tapping a button, and then a day or two later, a box magically appears on your front porch. Amazon has become so much a part of everyday life that we barely think about it. In fact, if an Amazon truck doesn't come down your street for a day or two, it almost seems unusual. But how did one company become so dominant? And what did it take to get there? To some people, Amazon is one of the greatest business success stories ever. To others, it's a company that has crushed competitors, transformed Main Street, and built its empire through relentless ambition.

• 6:23Mike Carruthers?

  Whatever your opinion, it's hard not to be fascinated by Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos. Here to take us inside that story is Dana Mattioli, the Pulitzer Prize winning veteran Amazon reporter for The Wall Street Journal. And she's author of a book called The Everything War: Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power. Hi Dana, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 6:50Mike Carruthers?

  Can you give me, through maybe some statistics, the scope of how big Amazon is in terms of the number of employees or sales or however you want to describe it, that would give us a sense?

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Amazon is one of the biggest and most powerful companies in the world. It employs more than a million people, making it one of the biggest employers in the US. It has a nearly $3 trillion market value. Beyond the size of its profits and sales, it's one of the biggest companies across many sectors. When you go to online shopping in the US, 40% of everything sold online is through amazon.com. It's the world's biggest cloud computing company. It's the third largest digital advertiser in the US. It delivers more packages than FedEx or UPS. And it goes on and on and on. It's number one or two biggest player across a range of industries. And it's pretty staggering when you look at it comprehensively.

• 7:50Mike Carruthers?

  And it makes you wonder, how did they do that? How did a company that basically started with one guy? And I remember years ago, being on the radio and running commercials for Amazon, and it was America's biggest bookstore. It was just selling books. And look at it now. How did that happen? I know that's books and books to take to explain it, but in short, how did that happen?

• 8:18Speaker 01

  You're right, it started with books in 1995. And I think to understand how far it's come, you really have to understand Jeff Bezos's mindset. So I'll take you to a scene in 2006. Amazon was just a retailer at that point. It had a market cap of $19 billion. And at that period of time, no one really thinks that this company could take over the world. And the heads of apparel companies that made clothing never thought that shoppers would buy their clothing on Amazon. They thought that was kind of gross. And there's this giant retail gala in Manhattan, and everyone is there who's big CEOs of Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, and in walks Jeff Bezos. And he does not look like everyone else.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  And everyone's sort of wondering, why is the CEO of this bookseller there? And one of my sources bumps into Bezos at the bar, and he says, why are you here? And Bezos tells him, your margin is my opportunity. And I think that really explains Bezos's worldview. He never wanted this to just be a bookstore. He never wanted this to just be a retailer. He had this vision of Amazon becoming what he called a daily habit. He didn't want you to just buy a book or a paper towel on Amazon once a week. He wanted you to interact with it daily. So that meant music and videos and cloud computing. And he really created this massive conglomerate to execute on that plan. And today, that is the company.

• 9:41Mike Carruthers?

  What did he mean by your margin is my opportunity?

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Well, at that period in time, Amazon was not selling clothes. And Bezos thought, if someone anywhere was making money selling something, it better be us. We could sell it just as easily. So if you're making money selling pants and dresses and t-shirts, why not us? So he was there, and he was studying what they were all doing and talking about. And very shortly later, Amazon launched a clothing business. And now they're one of the top clothing sellers in the entire US. And when I go back to that 2006 guest list and read the names of the big prestigious retail companies that were there, it reads like a bankruptcy docket now. So many of them are not in business anymore. And they underestimated him.

• 10:27Mike Carruthers?

  Everybody wonders, I think, why him? Why Amazon? Why didn't somebody else who was already had a footprint somewhere like Sears or Walmart or some do this first? And maybe it's because they are embedded in their brick and mortar stores and that's their model, so they didn't really see the opportunity. But you wonder why him?

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Amazon and Bezos had two unprecedented advantages that no one else in corporate America had. That I think if not for these two things, Amazon would not exist today. For one, Amazon through Bezos was able to convince Wall Street that they did not have to show profits to go public and stay public and to keep growing. And Wall Street kept rewarding it quarter after quarter for no profits. For years this went on, and that allowed Bezos to reinvest all of the company's revenues in expansion. And they were able to undercut the market on price and steal share from rivals.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  The other advantage was that they were able to exploit this giant sales tax loophole that meant that they did not have to collect sales taxes in most states in the US, even though they had these giant warehouses there. They convinced regulators that those warehouses were a separate entity, that they weren't Amazon's, part of Amazon corporate. And until 2017, Amazon wasn't collecting sales taxes in some states. And in an environment where people are really savvy about getting the lowest prices and comparison shopping, that really stole share from a lot of rivals.

• 12:04Mike Carruthers?

  And they fought that when states pushed back, right? I mean, they really lobbied to not have to charge sales tax.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  They fought that tooth and nail for years. And someone who was involved in the team fighting states about collecting sales taxes told me this was one of Amazon's secret sauces. Not having to collect sales taxes brought so many new shoppers into the fold, got them to sign up for Prime memberships, which made them shop with them even more, attracted more sellers to the site. So this really gave them a leg up on the competition.

• 12:37Mike Carruthers?

  And so the Prime membership, which is you pay a fee every year and then you get free shipping on all your Amazon, is that a moneymaker?

• 12:45Speaker 01

  It's a huge moneymaker, and it's like sort of a gateway drug for Amazon shoppers. It gets you into the ecosystem so that you do interact with Amazon as this daily habit. There's 200 million people that pay for Prime, and that gives you fast and free shipping. But it also gives you access to Amazon's content on Amazon Prime video. And Amazon sells ads against that content, so it's another way that they could make money. It might get you started on their pharmacy benefit, right? So you can start ordering your different prescriptions through there instead of your local pharmacy. And there's so many different parts of Amazon Prime that keep you within Amazon's walled

• 13:27Speaker 01

  garden, where Amazon collects more data, is able to sell you more things, and is able to charge for advertising because your eyeballs are increasingly within their system. And so it's this comprehensive marketplace for them where they really just stand to benefit. And they have internal data that if someone signs up for Prime, they spend exponentially more a year on Amazon than if they're just shopping casually without a Prime membership.

• 13:52Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, well, I do that. I mean, how do you not? When you know you have free shipping and you're paying for it whether you use it or not, guess what you're going to do?

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Utilize it.

• 14:01Mike Carruthers?

  Correct, yeah. You're going to utilize it. And is it your sense that the growth and the success of Amazon, from what you've researched, is just a great success story? Or is it a great ruthless story?

• 14:18Speaker 01

  I think having spent so many years studying this company and speaking to hundreds of people, getting hundreds of pages of internal documents, it shows that this company was very much customer-obsessed when it started. But Amazon has a very toxic workplace environment. It's one of the most ruthless ones I've covered in 20 years of covering corporate America for The Wall Street Journal. And the way that it works is that every year, the bottom 6% of employees are cut. And these are brilliant people coming from Stanford and MIT and the Ivy Leagues, right? Because the bottom 6% of employees are cut every year, it creates this environment where employees sort of compete against each other to survive another day and get their restricted

• 15:02Speaker 01

  stock units, which are worth a lot of money. And what I learned covering this company is that created a workplace where employees that maybe wouldn't do things that were unethical or potentially illegal, sometimes would do that to get ahead and keep their jobs. And that meant copying and spying on rivals. That meant snooping on their own third-party sellers on their website to create rival products for Amazon's private-label business so that they could post good numbers. And it meant doing other things that Congress and Federal Trade Commission later went on to investigate.

• 15:41Mike Carruthers?

  And do people know who work for Amazon what's required and what's not required to stay out of that bottom 6%? Or is it very random?

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Well, I think that when you speak to people at Amazon, it's a pressure-driven environment. They feel like they have to hit their numbers or their goals. But at the end of the day, when the stack ranking happens, some of them feel like it's pretty arbitrary. There is a scene in the book where an engineer who got a great review, all of a sudden is put on, it's called a PIP, a Performance Improvement Plan, and it's the way that you're ushered out of the company. And I was able to retain his suicide letter. He jumped off the top of the building that day because he was so distraught over this. And him being put on this management, him being managed out of the company did not match the great reviews he was getting. So there is an element of, managers are under pressure to do this.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Sometimes they have to cut people that by all intents and purposes are doing a good job or being told that they're doing a good job. I'm sure other times, the writing is on the wall and someone isn't performing to the highest levels and they are managed out. But sometimes it could feel arbitrary for the people involved.

• 16:55Mike Carruthers?

  That policy of eliminating 6% of your workforce every year seems very contrary to what I've heard, and I want to explore that a little more when we come back. A big thank you to today's sponsor, Vinted. I think most of us have what I call "someday clothes." "I'll wear that someday. That'll fit better someday. Someday, I'll have a place to wear that." Meanwhile, it's been hanging in the closet for three years. Vinted offers another possibility: Sell it. Every day, people can sell clothes they're no longer wearing and make some extra money. And they've made the process pretty painless. Take what you don't wear, list it on Vinted.

• 17:40Mike Carruthers?

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• 18:21Speaker 04

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• 18:52Mike Carruthers?

  I'm speaking with Dana Mattioli. She is the Pulitzer Prize-winning Amazon reporter for The Wall Street Journal and author of the book, "The Everything War: Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power." Now Dana, there's a conventional wisdom in employment that it is cheaper and better to keep an employee than to fire and hire a new one because of the training, because of the money involved in getting rid of somebody and all of that. How does that not apply to Amazon?

• 19:25Speaker 01

  That's a great question, and I've heard that management theory as well. What I learned from speaking to so many people at the company, including people who reported to Jeff Bezos, is that Bezos wanted everyone at the company to feel that they were dispensable because he thought that would drive the best output. Even some of the people that reported directly to Jeff Bezos, these are people that at other companies would be CEOs, they're super, super senior, okay? They told me that they felt they were only as good as their last at-bat because they could be offed at any time. And I think that's by design. I think Bezos truly believed, when he implemented this, that this would drive the best output, the best productivity.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  And you see that in some of the mechanisms and places at Amazon's warehouses, right? Where the metrics really drive who gets to go and who stays, and people really push themselves.

• 20:17Mike Carruthers?

  So let's talk about, because it's so interesting, that you can buy a product on Amazon, from Amazon, but you can also buy that same product on Amazon from somebody else who is not Amazon. And how does that coexistence work or not work?

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think one of the things that most shoppers on Amazon don't realize is that 60% of the items sold on Amazon are by these third-party sellers from all around the world, not from Amazon. And that has benefits and it also has some drawbacks. For one, it means there's massive selection on Amazon, and that's how it became the everything store. But it also is this massive supply chain of millions and millions and millions of items, and that means that Amazon cannot check the quality of every item sold on there. So, you know, I learned in reporting that Amazon has things like carbon monoxide detectors that don't detect carbon monoxide, or children's toys that are made with lead that would not

• 21:19Speaker 01

  be sold at a normal retailer because there's different policies in place, right? It also means that there's this uncomfortable position where these third-party sellers rely on Amazon to sell their goods, because that's where most of the clicks are, that's where most of the eyeballs are, they want to get in front of those 200 million Prime members, right? But they also know that Amazon makes its own products and could compete with them very easily and could look at their data to reverse engineer their bestselling products and pick off their own shoppers. So there is this push and pull tension as it relates to the third-party marketplace.

• 21:55Mike Carruthers?

  Well, as you say, they could look at that data and figure out what products they're selling from third parties and basically steal that idea or rip them off. But do they? Are there cases that you know of that that's happened, or that's just a theory that it could happen?

• 22:11Speaker 01

  No, they do. I was able to retain internal documents from people on the team that makes Amazon's private-label brands, where they were taking data from these small sellers on Amazon, making items like car trunk organizers that were some of the leading sellers in that space, so that Amazon could make their Amazon Basics version of that. And, you know, the employees involved in doing stuff like that would often tell me, you know, they felt bad doing this, but they had to meet their numbers. They really were under pressure to introduce new items quickly, to introduce bestsellers, and this was the easiest way to go about this, even though Amazon had a policy in place telling them not to.

• 22:53Mike Carruthers?

  So can you talk about Amazon Web Services? Because here's this big retailer, and they're also selling web services to businesses. How did that happen? How big a part of it of Amazon is it? A little bit about AWS.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  When Amazon launched Amazon.com selling retail products, it needed all of this backend server space to just keep the site up and running. And it needed data centers, and it needed, you know, the capacity to run their website. And at a certain point, Bezos and his deputies realized, hey, we're pretty good at this whole data center thing. Maybe we could productize this and sell this as a service to other companies. And they were really one of the first movers in that capacity. So they productized the cloud, and they started managing data centers and cloud storage for other companies.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  And what's pretty interesting is they're the biggest one in the world, and even some of their major competitors, like Netflix and Apple and you name it, use Amazon as their cloud storage provider.

• 24:05Mike Carruthers?

  So this image that many of us have of Amazon, you know, I think of the website and the retailing, they're in a lot of other businesses.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  I sort of view it as this giant octopus, where each tentacle strengthens the entire company, and it's able to use those tentacles to force terms with partners and competitors and to strengthen the whole thing. They do. There was a secretive team within Amazon called Project Curiosity. And the idea of this team was to sell on other companies' websites to better gain info about how the Amazon's competition was doing. So this Amazon Skunk Works project called Project Curiosity was selling beach chairs on Walmart.com and on other online retailers throughout the country.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  They were trying to get into FedEx, FedEx's distribution centers, to understand what, you know, what things FedEx was offering that maybe Amazon Logistics wasn't offering. And none of those companies knew that Project Curiosity was Amazon, but Amazon was laser-focused on understanding what their competitors were doing better than them so that they could improve their own business. And this was a highly unusual thing for a company to do. I also had another anecdote that I thought was really interesting. Jeff Bezos wanted Amazon to better compete with Trader Joe's in the snacks space, and he wanted them to launch a brand that would make Trader Joe's like snacks. The problem is that Trader Joe's is a very secretive company, and they don't have online shopping.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  And he told this team to make something similar to the top 200 bestselling items at Trader Joe's, but they had to figure out what those were. So Amazon hires this senior executive from Trader Joe's, and they don't really tell her the full scope of her job. And at her first week at Amazon's Seattle headquarters, she stumbles across a conference room that has brown paper covering the windows. It was very secretive. And she walks inside, and it's filled to the brim with Trader Joe's snacks. And she gets worried, like, is that why they hired me? And soon, her boss starts pressuring her, saying, do you have any documents from your time at Trader Joe's? I want to see all of their sales data, which is legal. And she, you know, she delays and says she doesn't have them, and he keeps hounding her.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Eventually, she does hand over all of that data, and they're able to figure out what the top-selling items at Trader Joe's are. And then he pressures her for the profits from Trader Joe's. So they're very focused on the competition, even though, you know, their credo is customer obsession. But I learned in reporting everything out, they are also very much competitor-obsessed.

• 26:43Mike Carruthers?

  Well, certainly you, with your reporting and your book, and other people have written books about Amazon and have been critical of a lot of the things that you've talked about, but Amazon can't be all evil. I mean, there must be some good things about Amazon.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  No, of course there is. I mean, I think, if you think back to COVID, when the world shut down and people were afraid to go shopping in person and leave their houses for fear of infection before there's a vaccine, Amazon was a lot of people's savior, right? It was great to be able to order things like toilet paper or cleaning products or things that you needed for your family and get it safely delivered to your door without risking infection. I think that was a really big bright spot for Amazon. I think they've revolutionized the way people shop, right? You know, and that serves people in rural areas that don't have the benefit of being able to get in the car and be at a store within 10 minutes. You know, their initial goal, when I spoke to the people that started Amazon, it was

• 27:43Speaker 01

  to democratize reading, to make it so that people could read any book anywhere and expand their knowledge base. I think they've been great at doing that. I mean, what they've done for book sales, right? But I think all of those things also come with trade-offs, and that's, you know, something that I've also spent time on.

• 28:01Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I don't think anybody's dug deeper into the inner workings of Amazon the way you have, and I really appreciate you telling the story. Dana Mattioli has been my guest. She is a Pulitzer Prize-winning Amazon reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and the name of her book is The Everything War: Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Dana, great. Thank you.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. Thanks, Mike.

• 28:35Speaker 04

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• 29:03Speaker 05

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• 29:38Mike Carruthers?

  Long before social media came along, the way we communicated always influenced what we communicated. Think about it. A telegram made you choose your words very carefully because every word costs money. The telephone made conversations more personal. Television rewarded whoever looked and sounded best. And now, social media may be doing something even more profound. It doesn't just change how we tell the story of our lives. It may actually change the lives we choose to live. Are we experiencing moments for what they are or for how they will look in a post?

• 30:20Mike Carruthers?

  Are we remembering our lives or curating them? Here with some fascinating insight into how platforms like Instagram, Facebook and TikTok shape not only our memories but our identities is Catherine Jezer Morton. She is a journalist, New York Magazine columnist and author of the book, "The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything." Hey Catherine, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me, Mike.

• 30:51Mike Carruthers?

  Sure. So, explain a little more what I just started to say about how the medium we use to tell the story of our lives is part of the story of our lives. Whether it's the telegram, or the telephone, or television, or now, social media is a big part of the story of our lives.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I belong to a tradition of people that think about the influence that mediums have on culture. So, you know, this goes back to as far as the telegram. Whatever medium is being used to convey culture has an effect on the culture itself. I am looking at how social media has as a medium that's distinct and has, you know, certain features designed into it and allows us to do certain things and prevents us from doing other things. How it has shaped the way that we know how to tell stories at all. You know, for example, when television became very widespread in the mid 20th century, suddenly, the way that people looked became enormously important.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  So like, if you were a politician running for office before the age of TV, it didn't matter what you looked like because most people would never see you. All of a sudden, you know, your appearance became important and a lot of people wrote about how this brought about a more superficial society because suddenly, you know, our looks mattered. I think that social media, you know, people have talked about the influence that social media has had on a kind of a superficiality as well, the way that we share pictures. But I'm also interested in the way that our stories themselves have come to change because of this medium. You know, we've been using social media for the last 20 years and most people use it now. And it's really been enormously influential in terms of teaching us

• 32:40Speaker 02

  how people talk about themselves. You know, people are coming of age with this technology. And it's giving people examples of, oh, you know, this is what fun looks like, this is what success looks like. And the accompanying language to describe, you know, what those feelings, how we express them. And I think that social media has had a limiting influence in terms of our repertoires of how we can talk about our experience. And I think that's really ultimately very consequential in terms of just how people feel about their lives.

• 33:15Mike Carruthers?

  So, give me an example of that. Give me an example of how somebody might tell a story in social media that they would tell differently if that wasn't there.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Sure. So, an example might be illness. People get sick. I think that a lot of the time when people talk about their illness on social media or the illness of a loved one, they are compelled to make it seem like a difficult process, but also maybe a challenge to be overcome. And often, people won't even write about an illness or, you know, another type of obstacle, like maybe getting laid off, until they've reached a point where things are kind of okay and they're kind of in the clear. And so, they might say, "We were really scared about this diagnosis. It was, it was a really hard time, but we're so thrilled to be on the other side of it. You know, this experience has made us stronger.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  It's made us appreciate the important things." And, you know, maybe, or even better for having gone through it. And that's kind of a classic narrative that a lot of people are used to reading and therefore, kind of repeating on social media. This turning an obstacle into an opportunity for growth or an opportunity for like self-improvement.

• 34:32Mike Carruthers?

  But without social media, it seems a lot of those stories would go untold because there would be no way to tell them.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's a really interesting point. I do think that social media, and, you know, I am a confessed lover of this medium. Like, I love social media. I, I use it, you know, I would say, kind of too much. It does bring us together. It keeps us in touch with people that we would otherwise never hear from. But I do think that we always did tell our stories within our communities. You know, we always were talking to our friends and neighbors and family about how we felt. And I think that when we were communicating with smaller groups, groups of people whose reactions we could see in real time, we told different kinds of stories.

• 35:19Mike Carruthers?

  But then, there are people though, and I think I'm one of them, where, you know, I don't talk about personal things like illness and I don't talk a whole lot on social media. I like to read other people's stuff, but I'm not a big poster. But I've never really understood that, why you would air the laundry of real personal illnesses and things. I just, that's just, I don't get it.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  I think many people share that feeling with you. And it's really not for everyone, but it is for a surprisingly large number of people. You know, I mean, it's enormously popular. I, I do wonder if, you know, back in the early 2000s when these platforms really got going, if the people who founded them, if Mark Zuckerberg ever expected it to be adopted by kind of like almost everyone. I think that the people who are compelled to share, you know, they're, they get something out of the feedback. I think they, they feel a kind of affirmation or it's just nice to hear from people. And I think people get a little bit attached. I'm not going to say addicted. I feel like that's a little bit of a different conversation.

• 36:29Speaker 02

  But people become really dependent on the feedback from their communities and they might shape their stories so as to get the kind of feedback that they're seeking.

• 36:41Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  And that's another thing, you know, when we talk about that illness narrative, people don't want to feel as though people feel sorry for them. And so, they'll often shape their narrative so that it doesn't incite that kind of response. I think that that instinct to, to shape your narrative with this audience in mind and trying to kind of generate a certain kind of response also has the influence of changing the stories themselves.

• 37:08Mike Carruthers?

  Well, talk about the, the whole problem of, when you see people posting stuff on social media, things are pretty well whitewashed in a lot of cases. Everything's great, we're doing this, we're doing that, everything's happy. There, there's more that than there is, oh God, Jesus, life sucks. You know, that, everybody, and so, everybody envies that. Oh, look at Bob, he's, he's so successful, he's so happy, he's just... And that, that skews everything.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  There's this thing that people talk about, the comparison trap, where we have these experiences of feeling badly about ourselves because we see other people who are projecting these like lives of, you know, success and happiness. And of course, that's not realistic. And everyone has their bad days and their, and their difficulties. But I also think that when we're only reading this whitewashed, like you say, account of existence. And for a lot of people, like, social media is what they read. Like, they're not reading that much other stuff. So, this is like their novel, this is their, this is everything, their medium. You lose the capacity to even know how to tell other kinds of stories. So, it's like we have this kind of like, everything's great

• 38:26Speaker 02

  master narrative. And I think that the longer we go where that's the main narrative that we're seeing every day when we pick up our phone and just take a little break and, and have a look at what's happening on Facebook or whatever, we lose our own ability to kind of like complicate or tell versions of our own stories that might contain more nuance and like more truthfulness to what we might actually be feeling.

• 38:51Mike Carruthers?

  And so, how do the algorithms play into this? Because I, I think there's always been this sense, maybe it was true back a while ago, that if you posted something, it went to all your followers and, you know, it went to people you knew. But it turns out, it doesn't always go to that because, because the algorithm does things based on what's in it. And I, I don't really understand that, but can you explain it?

• 39:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the algorithms broadly speaking are interested in high engagement content. So if a post contains, gets a lot of comments, or gets a lot of likes, or whatever, it's going to be shown to more people because it seems like, oh, everyone's talking about this, so everyone must want to talk about it. And if a post gets very little engagement, it might just be shown to, you know, a very few people and kind of disappear from the feed altogether. So what that does is it creates an incentive. And I think many people who use social media regularly, they know this even like on an intuitive level. They know what kind of content ends up getting more eyes on it. So if you want people to see your content, you do have to kind of optimize it for what

• 40:05Speaker 02

  the algorithm likes. And that's high emotion, maybe provocation. This is where we get into like political polarization, making extreme statements about, you know, your perceived enemies, really moving away from the whole territory of communication that has to do with the fact that multiple things are always true at the same time. The fact that like we exist within this like massive spectrum of emotional nuance, right? Like all of that shading is erased. People just get into this place of kind of spectacle and, you know, showing off in a way for, for bad or for good. So this is where we get that kind of effect of the extremes of social media is because

• 40:50Speaker 02

  people are responding to what the algorithm prefers.

• 40:53Mike Carruthers?

  And if you ask the people that run social media, the way the algorithms do what they do, the reason for that is simply to drive engage, it's self-interest on their part.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So the goal is to have people using the platforms the most, as the most time possible. So to, to maximize, you know, user engagement, to have them be looking at it for a long time, to have them return to check again and again, to see like what's happening in that big conversation that I'm a part of. So yeah, if, if the goal is to maximize time spent, you're going to do what, you know, fulfills that goal. And that is engaging people through, yeah, I mean, provocation, insults, also just like exaggeration. This is where we get like, you know, weddings and celebrations that are like visually over the top because people want to create content that really catches the eye on social media.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  That creates a whole set of imperatives in the material world of like wedding decorations and like birthday party decorations that are really optimized for, for the image and for that engagement.

• 42:02Mike Carruthers?

  But there are certainly problems with that. I mean, when you're a, a social media company trying to drive engagement by basically polarizing people and getting them all worked up so they engage in this and getting them to be more hateful, how do, how do you defend that? I mean, it's our business so we can do whatever we want?

• 42:23Speaker 02

  That's about the size of it. Yeah, I, I think that, you know, it's, this is a business. We have shareholders. We're trying to make money. This is a, you know, we're working with growth models. You know, I think that social media companies have been under enormous pressure to mitigate the harms that they do as far as young people, as far as like people that are engaging in, you know, harmful behaviors. And they'll kind of apply a Band-Aid here and there to do that. But none of that so far has, has affected the way these algorithms are designed.

• 42:53Mike Carruthers?

  One of the interesting effects I've noticed that social media has had on lots and lots of people is you go to an event and, you know, it used to be that you would go to an event and you would watch the event. But now you see a, a huge portion of people go to an event and they're taking videos of the event to post on social media, which has to detract from their enjoyment of being there and enjoying the event because they're more concerned about the video they're taking. And I imagine sociologists or someone is studying all these various influences that social media is having on people's behavior.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  I think the effects are so, so myriad. There are so many on so many different levels. I, I mean, it, it would take an army of sociologists to really paint the full picture. To me, there's like the material level where it's like, okay, what are people buying? What are they, you know, what are they trying to look like? How are they trying to kind of decorate their homes and what are they consuming? That's a whole thing, which has to do with spectacle and kind of creating these, these tableaus, these scenes that look good. And then, yeah, you have the kind of social, which is, you know, people at events, like you said, are, will be recording the event and sort of looking at their phone and, and

• 44:20Speaker 02

  in that way, sort of not really being in the moment, as we say, like they're sort of art directing, they're trying to get it to look right. Often, you know, people take a lot of content, they don't necessarily even post it, they just want to have it for posterity, which of course people have always done. But when you're taking a snapshot with, uh, you know, an analog camera, you can't see the result right away. So you're just kind of clicking away and hoping for the best, right? You won't know what it looks like until you have the film developed. So it doesn't take you away from the moment in quite the same way as having your phone where you can kind of look through immediately and kind of choose the best one. And I think that also events and gatherings themselves are kind of having to compete with the appeal of one's own phone.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  I mean, if you've ever been to, you know, a family reunion or something where there's like a bunch of teenagers, there's always going to be like a cadre of people that are just on their phones at the event. Sometimes there's a lot of people on their phones at the event and it does kind of create a bit of, to me, like a sad atmosphere. So a lot of times people are trying to create environments and events that are exciting enough and kind of, you know, vivid and spectacular enough to compete with the urge to be on your own phone, which is a very new and difficult challenge to undertake.

• 45:40Mike Carruthers?

  Like what? Like, can you give me an example of that?

• 45:43Speaker 02

  Sure. Um, one of the examples that I like to talk about is the gender reveal party. Yeah, it's common, you know, a, a couple is expecting, they will have, you know, an OB find out what the baby's gender is and they won't tell the couple and they'll kind of, you know, sneak the information either to like a baker to bake a cake or increasingly like more and more elaborate planning, which, you know, someone will plan the party for them, so they'll know the gender. And there'll be like an explosion or like a massive reveal of, you know, blue or pink. And it is a spectacle and it is designed for social media because social media loves a big reveal moment where the audience can be watching and they're waiting to see what happens.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  And then boom, it's, you know, it's blue, it's a boy. So the gender reveal is a party that is the product of the medium of social media. And it is designed to be extra exciting in a way that I think, you know, 30 years ago, people weren't demanding that their parties necessarily have this element of surprise in them.

• 46:46Mike Carruthers?

  Well, you said at the beginning that you look at, at how different technologies have affected. And I imagine there was a lot of this kind of talk around television too, that, that it's going to, you know, rot the brains of the youth of America and that it's, you know, it's, it's evil and it's going to do horrible things and make us lazy. And, and maybe it did, but I mean, but it, it, it isn't controversial anymore.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  No, you're right. There's, with every new communication technology, there has been an outrage that's accompanied it. Even radio, I mean, as hard as it is to believe, when radio became really widespread, I think in the kind of early 1920s, and there were these radio plays that would be broadcast in the evenings and families would gather around the radio and listen to these plays that, you know, were serialized and, you know, they were enormously popular. There was a panic that like young people were going to be neglecting their chores, that, you know, they weren't going to be getting anything done because everyone's glued to the radio. So this has always been a conversation. I think the difference here is that the commodification of one's personal life and

• 47:53Speaker 02

  even one's cognition is happening through the medium of social media in a way that wasn't happening in the same way in radio and television because we were just watching, we weren't making content. So the phenomenon of, of the consumer who also produces, which is known as the prosumer in academia, I think does change the dynamic a little bit because now we're, we're on both sides of it, right? In a way that before we weren't.

• 48:17Mike Carruthers?

  Can you think of another part of contemporary life that has been heavily influenced by social media?

• 48:25Speaker 02

  Weddings are one area that have been really influenced by social media. I just think it's cool to look at the history of weddings and how much they've changed and how social media has kind of supercharged the spectacle of a wedding. And I learned that back in the early 20th century, 19th century, in rural parts of North America, couples, there were no wedding receptions. A wedding was often very, very private and a couple wouldn't be able to afford a reception. So they would be, they would go home and they would then often be surprised, taken unawares by their friends, by their community, often in the middle of the night after their wedding. So couples would sleep in their clothes for like many nights after getting married

• 49:07Speaker 02

  because they were worried that at any moment they could be taken unawares. And all of the local, you know, buddies from town would take them out and they would just kind of go carousing for a night and they would drink whatever they had on hand and share some cigars or whatever. And this tradition was called a chivalry and it was very widespread and it was just a way for young people to get together after a wedding. But the point of the chivalry I find so interesting because it's really about just like a group enjoying themselves together and feeling like a sense of belonging. That was the first wedding reception in North America. And now wedding reception is like a site of sort of consumer spectacle and like showing people what you're into and how much money you have.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  And, you know, it's just changed in this incredible way and social media has been a really big part of that transformation. So I, I think that's a sort of a seasonally relevant little detail.

• 50:01Mike Carruthers?

  Well, this is something that we don't give a lot of thought to, and yet it's, it's so impactful that social media, because of its existence, shapes our lives and dictates what we do and what we don't do because of how it will look on social media. I've been speaking with Catherine Jezer Morton. She is a New York Magazine columnist and author of the book, The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything. And there's a link to her book in the show notes. Catherine, thanks for opening up this topic and, and explaining it.

• 50:36Speaker 02

  Thank you so much, Mike.

• 50:41Mike Carruthers?

  You ever go to a nice hotel and notice that their towels feel really thick and fluffy compared to the towels you have at home? Why is that? Well, it's not necessarily because hotels buy magical towels. According to Consumer Reports, laundry experts say one of the biggest differences is what isn't used. Fabric softener and dryer sheets leave a waxy coating on cotton fibers that will make towels feel slick at first but actually reduce their absorbency and can make them feel stiff over time. Hotels typically avoid those products and instead wash towels with carefully controlled

• 51:23Mike Carruthers?

  detergent amounts and high-temperature drying. If you want your towels to feel more like hotel towels, the trick may be to use less, not more, in the laundry. And that is something you should know. We have great people on our team here who help us produce these episodes. Jennifer Brennan and Jeffrey Havison are our producers. The executive producer is Ken Williams. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 51:53Speaker 04

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• 52:24Speaker 06

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