TAYLOR LORENZ Talks Journalism, Internet Labor, Viral Culture

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 2:00Adam Friedland?

  Do influencers or celebs know how much the internet sucks for everyone else?

• 2:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I think it sucks for them too.

• 2:07Adam Friedland?

  No, it doesn't.

• 2:09Speaker 05

  What are you talking about? They get like, well, they get money, but, I mean, I don't-

• 2:12Adam Friedland?

  What do you mean, "well, they get money"?

• 2:13Speaker 05

  They get money. The people that don't-

• 2:15Adam Friedland?

  They get more money than fucking the Austin Butler problem.

• 2:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:18Adam Friedland?

  Would you be online if you were making zero dollars?

• 2:21Speaker 05

  Absolutely not. No. No, no, no, no, no.

• 2:24Adam Friedland?

  I don't know, it's scary. You can see people getting killed-

• 2:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:28Adam Friedland?

  And then fucking, and then the N-word.

• 2:30Speaker 05

  I d-

• 2:31Adam Friedland?

  It's too scary.

• 3:01Adam Friedland?

  Hello and welcome back to the Adam Friedland Show. Guys, it's finally here, the merch. The merch, the merch. We've been talking about it for weeks. You guys have saw me preview it last week. I said it'll be here any day now. It's finally launching. And for our members and patrons, you have access, early access, and discount codes for all merch drops moving forward, as well as early access to episodes. If you'd like to become a member or a patron, please hit the "Join" button at the top of this page, or the link in the description of this video below, for Patreon and for YouTube memberships. We got three new shirts, plus the classic Adam Friedland logo shirt, and one hat, and I think you guys are gonna look fucking sex. You guys are gonna look sex in them.

• 3:46Adam Friedland?

  You think so?

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:48Adam Friedland?

  You been wearing it?

• 3:50Adam Friedland?

  So once again, it's the TV Glow Shirt. What are the other names? Put it on the screen.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  We got the Logo Shirt.

• 3:56Adam Friedland?

  The Logo Shirt.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  We got the Doodle Shirt.

• 3:58Adam Friedland?

  The Doodle Shirt. I don't really like it. Actually, that's based on a shirt that we found Jay Leno made for The Tonight Show. Not a big deal. Pretty cool. And plus-

• 4:08Speaker 01

  The TV Glow Shirt.

• 4:09Adam Friedland?

  The TV Glow Shirt. That's kind of based on like the CRT monitor, kind of a video drone, kind of Cronenberg style. Yeah, and then we have this hat, guys. I have pictures of hot girls wearing them. I'll be posting them all week. And of course, the classic Adam Friedland Show Logo Shirt. Go to adam, theadamfriedland.show and shop there for any of these shirts. The Adam Friedland Show, theadamfriedland.show for merch. My guest this week is journalist and podcaster Taylor Lorenz. Taylor has been in the news recently for a bombshell report she published in Wired Magazine highlighting dark money funneled from the Democratic Party to political influencers across platforms.

• 4:52Adam Friedland?

  A damning piece of reporting that we failed to mention in the episode because it was recorded like how long ago?

• 4:59Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, a couple of months ago, actually, now. So, we missed the big- you probably clicked for that, so why don't- should I- I'll call her. Yeah, I'm gonna hit her up. She can catch you up, so it's like- okay. Calling Taylor. She'll catch us up. Hey, so you're- howdy. Oh, wait. Are we- am I- I'm not like recorded right now.

• 5:26Adam Friedland?

  Are you- are you where-

• 5:30Adam Friedland?

  is this off the- is this on the re- I don't know how to talk to you people. You're on the record. Well, no, you're on the rec- actually, you're on the record, okay? You bast- two could play it back again. Anyway, so we're about to drop your episode, but you know, we did like two years ago or something? So, I just wanted to catch up for our audience. Like, if you could just like tell us a little bit about your Wired piece, just so we can kind of like just mention that and, you know, like as if you were on the show and I said, "So, Taylor, tell me about the Wired piece." So, if you want to just-

• 6:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 6:05Adam Friedland?

  Does that make sense? Okay, yeah. Oh, sorry.

• 6:08Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 6:08Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, go ahead. Anyway.

• 6:13Adam Friedland?

  No, just kidding. Go ahead.

• 6:15Speaker 06

  I thought it was the story with Wired a couple of weeks ago now at this point documenting a program that is being run in secret, basically, where a bunch of Democrat influencers were receiving money.

• 6:33Adam Friedland?

  And it's like, it's gained a lot of, it's controversial or something? They're getting?

• 6:40Speaker 06

  Well, this influencer network has allegedly about ninety influencers in it, and it won't surprise you to know that they don't like being reported on very critically. So I revealed that they were secretly taking thousands of dollars a month as part of this scheme to bolster Democrat messaging, and yeah, they spent the past few weeks crashing out and slandering me.

• 7:00Adam Friedland?

  Slander you? Oh, man. I'm sorry about that.

• 7:03Speaker 06

  Slander me out?

• 7:03Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, it's terrible. It's so, that's horrible. Anyway, just for the record, did, just for our audience, I think this is like, I just to maintain the trust that our audience has in us, but like, did you ever see my name anywhere in any of those lists or whatever, reports or?

• 7:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, did your name come up in the reporting?

• 7:27Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 7:28Speaker 06

  It's a good question. I mean, yeah.

• 7:31Adam Friedland?

  What do you mean a good question? Did you see my name anywhere in it? Just?

• 7:36Speaker 06

  Yes. No, no, your name did not.

• 7:38Adam Friedland?

  All right.

• 7:39Speaker 06

  You were not, you were not on the list. You did not, you did not, you seem to be getting that Democrat money.

• 7:45Adam Friedland?

  All right. Yeah. Okay, cool. Sweet. Yeah. Okay, nice. Yeah, I hope you'll be enjoying your Tuesday. Okay. Or Monday or whatever.

• 7:53Speaker 06

  You're in the clear for now.

• 7:54Adam Friedland?

  It's coming out on Tuesday. I mean, okay. Yeah, well, you won't see it there because they, they won't work with me. Because I am, anyway. Okay, have a nice day.

• 8:04Speaker 06

  Bye, bye.

• 8:05Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, congrats about Wired or whatever, whatever that's called. Bye.

• 8:10Adam Friedland?

  So yeah, so there's that. I'm innocent. And yeah, enjoy the interview. It's really good. With her. Journalist. Lightning rod. The lightning rod. Our next guest is an independent journalist. She's also previously worked at outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post. She cut her teeth covering internet culture. Ladies and gentlemen, Taylor Lorenz.

• 8:41Adam Friedland?

  Thank you. What, is it this or this?

• 8:44Speaker 05

  Pleasure.

• 8:45Adam Friedland?

  I don't know.

• 8:45Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 8:46Adam Friedland?

  I feel so, I took a PCR for you, though.

• 8:49Speaker 05

  I know, thank you.

• 8:50Adam Friedland?

  I know.

• 8:50Speaker 05

  I have no immune system, unfortunately.

• 8:51Adam Friedland?

  Is it tough, like, just like, operating that way?

• 8:55Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 8:55Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 8:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, it sucks.

• 8:56Adam Friedland?

  And people are mean to you. They're like, you're a loser.

• 8:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, they hate it. They're like, fuck you.

• 8:59Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:00Speaker 05

  Can be cursed.

• 9:00Adam Friedland?

  It's tough.

• 9:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:01Adam Friedland?

  Everyone here is in hazmat suits right now. It's a comfort.

• 9:05Speaker 05

  No, it's annoying. But I would say, like, I mean, in a bunch of documentaries and stuff, and like, they usually still take precautions on set for stuff.

• 9:13Adam Friedland?

  In this show, I, as I was telling you before, like, I've made a living on the internet, but I haven't interacted as much with the internet as most people. I like, kind of mainly just watch movies and stuff and sports. And in these interviews, I've been kind of discovering this ecosystem, and it's been incredibly stressful. But from what I understand, this has been your focus for like, what? The last 10 years of your life?

• 9:39Speaker 05

  15 at this point.

• 9:40Adam Friedland?

  And it, and in your estimation, like, has that, has it driven you, it must have driven you insane.

• 9:47Speaker 05

  I think it probably drove me insane a long time ago, and now I'm just, you know, like, the frog in water.

• 9:51Adam Friedland?

  How do you, how do you cope with, like, the insanity of, like, your, your area of focus is the internet?

• 9:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:58Adam Friedland?

  It must take, like, a psychological toll.

• 10:00Speaker 05

  And influencers, not even just internet, it's like, online influence.

• 10:03Adam Friedland?

  Well, they're awesome. We love them.

• 10:05Speaker 05

  Great. Greatest minds of our generation.

• 10:07Adam Friedland?

  Who's the best one?

• 10:08Speaker 05

  Oh, I can't pick favorites.

• 10:11Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 10:12Speaker 05

  Maybe you.

• 10:13Adam Friedland?

  I show speed.

• 10:13Speaker 05

  Oh, I show speed. I love speed.

• 10:16Adam Friedland?

  I'm influencer?

• 10:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think podcasters are influencers at this point.

• 10:19Adam Friedland?

  I'm not, I'm a former podcaster.

• 10:20Speaker 05

  Former podcaster. Well, showman, YouTube, is this show on YouTube?

• 10:25Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, so you're a YouTuber.

• 10:27Adam Friedland?

  Am I a YouTuber now?

• 10:28Speaker 05

  You're a YouTuber now.

• 10:30Adam Friedland?

  I will say the one thought I used to have, you know that one thought you have about yourself? It's like, you're trying to fall asleep and it's like the worst, it's just like the biggest, like, like, most awful, like, thought about yourself? And then you're like, trying to fall asleep and you're like, huh! Like, that was that you're, that I'm a podcaster who lives in Brooklyn? And I feel like I've retired from that. And it feels so good. Now I'm a YouTuber.

• 10:57Speaker 05

  Now you're a YouTuber that lives in Brooklyn.

• 10:59Adam Friedland?

  Jesus Christ, I should kill myself.

• 11:01Speaker 05

  I don't know. I was like, very early to embrace the influencer journalist thing. And that made a lot of people in like mainstream media really mad at me.

• 11:11Adam Friedland?

  It was seen as trash?

• 11:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. They were like, ah.

• 11:14Adam Friedland?

  But, I mean, to some extent, you were like, the first person to recognize that as like, a force in popular culture?

• 11:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, maybe like, the first person in journalism to like, really make it a beat. I started on Tumblr.

• 11:26Adam Friedland?

  Okay.

• 11:26Speaker 05

  After college, yeah, it was the recession, I was temping. But it was just like, I don't know, I got good at making viral content.

• 11:33Adam Friedland?

  Okay.

• 11:34Speaker 05

  And this girl at Tumblr, like, I got pretty popular on there and like, media people started to follow me. And I was like, maybe I should be in like, media or something, or like, marketing, I don't know, I just didn't know what I was doing, you know? And this girl at Tumblr had me into the office and was like, yeah, like, what are you, what are you doing? Like, and I was like, I work these temp jobs and I'm working, I was working as a messenger, I was working retail. And so she helped me get into advertising. And then I was doing social media for brands and writing about...

• 12:04Adam Friedland?

  Copywriting?

• 12:05Speaker 05

  And, yeah.

• 12:06Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 12:06Speaker 05

  But, and then I ran, I wrote for the Verizon Wireless Facebook page.

• 12:10Adam Friedland?

  Oh my god.

• 12:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:12Adam Friedland?

  That was her? That was her?

• 12:15Speaker 05

  My favorite moment from that job...

• 12:16Adam Friedland?

  What?

• 12:17Speaker 05

  It was the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

• 12:19Adam Friedland?

  Thank god.

• 12:20Speaker 05

  And they wanted to put the Verizon logo in the lights. They wanted to do a Facebook post that was, it was like...

• 12:27Adam Friedland?

  I don't think that's funny.

• 12:28Speaker 05

  4G, we kept it going. Yeah.

• 12:32Adam Friedland?

  Verizon wanted to advertise...

• 12:33Speaker 05

  They wanted to do that, and I just remember being like... This was like before, like, there was even like really backlash to brands online, but I was like, I feel like we shouldn't do that.

• 12:42Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:43Speaker 05

  And then I, yeah, I was writing, I was blogging always, writing about influencers. When I was big on Tumblr, like, other people that were big on Tumblr were like Fuck Jerry, The Fat Jew, and a lot of like early YouTubers. And the mainstream media was like writing really like stupid articles about them. And I was like, I'm gonna write my own articles about how like this is labor and like this is work and like internet labor is real labor.

• 13:09Adam Friedland?

  Memes is labor.

• 13:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's hard labor to make content.

• 13:13Adam Friedland?

  Well, so you approached it as a content creator and then went into journalism.

• 13:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:16Adam Friedland?

  It's interesting.

• 13:17Speaker 05

  I was always, I always had like an audience online, even before I was in journalism. And then I went into doing, I ran the People Magazine Vine account. I was doing like social media for like media brands. I launched all the Daily Mail's social media channels.

• 13:31Adam Friedland?

  What was it like working for them bastards?

• 13:34Speaker 05

  It was, it was great. I was, I mean, it was like a crazy job because they just, I was the youngest woman in like senior management because they like, this was 2012 when like, if you knew how to like do anything on the internet and get traffic for them, they were just like, oh my god. So like, I got to go, it's like executive retreat in a castle in England and tell them about like Facebook.

• 13:52Adam Friedland?

  With Rupert?

• 13:53Speaker 05

  With, no, Rupert doesn't own the Daily Mail. It's Paul Dacre, it's like, it's the Roth, I can't remember their name, but it's a different right-wing family in, in England.

• 14:02Adam Friedland?

  But I mean, at this point, we can see that like it's had, I mean, it's just, it is culture at this point.

• 14:07Speaker 05

  Oh, well now, they lost that all.

• 14:09Adam Friedland?

  Is that still up for debate amongst legacy media?

• 14:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, the legacy media, I mean.

• 14:14Adam Friedland?

  Like, how, at this point?

• 14:15Speaker 05

  I know. It's interesting because like, I, I was at, so I covered the first, I had a Snapchat show in 2016, I covered the first Trump.

• 14:23Adam Friedland?

  Nice.

• 14:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:24Adam Friedland?

  Did you get a Quibi deal?

• 14:26Speaker 05

  Quibi, no, I wish.

• 14:27Adam Friedland?

  Oh my god.

• 14:28Speaker 05

  I wish.

• 14:28Adam Friedland?

  They were just throwing money around.

• 14:29Speaker 05

  They were throwing money out, I know.

• 14:30Adam Friedland?

  Katzenberg, where are you, dude? Give me something for this.

• 14:34Speaker 05

  He should relaunch.

• 14:35Adam Friedland?

  I would sell this to anyone. I would sell this to fucking Lockheed Martin if it.

• 14:40Speaker 05

  But I just want to say like, in 2016, I was at the Hilton in the room when Trump won, and not many media reporters have been bothered to get, yeah, credentialed for that.

• 14:52Speaker 05

  And it was all like internet people. It was like forum admins and like influencers and like content creator, internet people. That election, even though all these liberals were like, "It was Russia that put him in office" or whatever, like that election was so defined by the internet and new media. And I think it, I don't think it was until this election, the mainstream media even started to notice that like, "Oh, we're actually becoming irrelevant." I think it was like when Trump started to put these people in the press briefing room and all this stuff.

• 15:20Adam Friedland?

  What was that night? Because my impression was always like, that was one of the most insane things I've ever seen in my entire life, right? I was at the Chapo Trap House live show, right? And they wrote an entire show to be like, "Congrats Hillary," right? And as it was falling apart that night, I was like, "This is the funniest thing in the world." And then I went to a bar. You know that picture of Paris the day after the Nazis took over? And there are those pictures, there's those like, the citizens of Paris that are like, "We have lost Paris." Yeah, and like, they're like, that is what Brooklyn looked like at the time. My impression was like, those pictures of Trump in the war room was like, he didn't want to win.

• 15:59Speaker 05

  Oh, he didn't want to win? He didn't think he was going to? And no one at the party thought he was going to win either.

• 16:06Adam Friedland?

  So funny.

• 16:06Speaker 05

  And it was so funny. And then they were going insane. I stayed there, I stayed up all night that night. I stayed there until 6:30 in the morning. That party went all night. And then I went and got in line outside the New Yorker Hotel to cover Hillary's concession speech.

• 16:20Adam Friedland?

  For afters.

• 16:20Speaker 05

  Where everyone was just weeping. Yeah, everyone was like, it was raining.

• 16:24Adam Friedland?

  You went to afters at Hillary?

• 16:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, and she was like, "Oh, yeah."

• 16:26Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. You did Molly at the Deplorable?

• 16:29Speaker 05

  No, no.

• 16:30Adam Friedland?

  No, you didn't?

• 16:31Speaker 05

  I had some, I think I had some, maybe a drink or two, but...

• 16:33Adam Friedland?

  Ooh. Yeah, with, with, uh, who? Like the QAnon caveman and stuff?

• 16:41Speaker 05

  I was making, yeah, I was making...

• 16:43Adam Friedland?

  Do you remember the moment he walked out?

• 16:45Speaker 05

  Oh, absolutely. I have it on camera.

• 16:46Adam Friedland?

  It is, it is maybe one of the most, because I had just smoked weed and then I laughed. And I was like, "Donald Trump from Apprentice just got to be here for the president?" And then, and then, uh, he walked out on stage and he has a big, big old stupid, like, like shit body. And it was kind of in silhouette. And it was like, "You got..." And I was like, I was like, uh, blazed and I was like, this is the most insane thing I've ever seen in my entire life.

• 17:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:17Adam Friedland?

  The choral part of you can't always get what you want.

• 17:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:20Adam Friedland?

  And like, just, it, it was like, I think, a moment of like, this is like, uh, it's douchey to say this, but I'm like, this is, this is one of the greatest works of art I've ever seen in my entire life.

• 17:32Speaker 05

  This past election, I didn't think we were gonna get, I was like, there's no way we're gonna, he's not gonna do it twice. That election, I was like, 100% he's winning. And I have the receipts.

• 17:41Adam Friedland?

  How do you, well, you didn't know 100%.

• 17:43Speaker 05

  I, not 100%, but I, I was telling people that I thought he was gonna win. Because I was doing Facebook stuff and, and internet, like, I mean, I was working in social media and like, it, well, when Bernie was, I covered Bernie for the first three months before he dropped out.

• 17:55Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 17:55Speaker 05

  R.I.P. Obviously, it was like, that, anyway. But Bernie would do well on Facebook, but, but like, Trump was just like, the internet, there was this like, groundswell of support online that like, no liberals were taking, like liberals were in like, full, just delusion, they, they were delusional about it. And they were so delusional about the internet and delusional about like, I, I think they were just like, delusional.

• 18:20Adam Friedland?

  I've been going through like, an archive of Howard Stern, like, I grew up listening to Stern a lot.

• 18:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:25Adam Friedland?

  And he went on like, almost 100 times. And I've been like, listening back to them, cause like, as an interviewer, like, he is one of the most difficult interview subjects, right? Like, he, if you're untethered to the truth, you know, like, if you say, oh, like, do you know Roy Cohn? He's like, I've never met him. Like, what do you do, right? When you know that he knows the guy, right? But Howard, the way that he kind of like, massages his ego and then gets anything out.

• 18:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:53Adam Friedland?

  Just like, you know, does Melania, you know, do anal with you? And like, he's like, oh, Howard, I would never say, I would never say, you know, like, just, but, but like, one thing that Trump recognized was like, I think polite society saw Howard's audience as trash, right? But he realized the size of the audience, and he built The Apprentice into like, the number two rated. Like, program after the Super Bowl. And I think that that was kind of a proto, like, MAGA, like, realization he's had. Because he's not really a businessman.

• 19:23Speaker 05

  No, he's like an entertainer.

• 19:25Adam Friedland?

  He's from television.

• 19:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. And he's very good at that.

• 19:28Adam Friedland?

  I want to talk about, like, covering influencers, though, and then go back to, like, contemporary politics. Like, how, how has that ecosystem changed? Like, I, I think a lot about what the Paul Brothers were in 2015 versus what they are now. And, like, what are the conditions that you've, you've noticed that have sustained careers? And the, and what, what has killed a career, you know?

• 19:51Speaker 05

  It, it, there was, there's just so much more money in this space. There's so much more legitimacy. 2015, I mean, the Paul Brothers came Vine, and I write about this in my book, Extremely Online. That was sort of when people started to become, like, multi-platform, before they were very associated with one platform. When Vine, well, wouldn't, no, after Vine. So Vine started to decline. There was this famous meeting where 19 or 20 of the biggest Viners, I read, you know, got together and demanded money from Vine. They were like, we're making you guys so much money, like, can you pass?

• 20:19Adam Friedland?

  He was a king batch.

• 20:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 20:20Adam Friedland?

  What happened to him? He's dead?

• 20:22Speaker 05

  Oh, no, he's around.

• 20:22Adam Friedland?

  Okay.

• 20:23Speaker 05

  But, yeah, it was that era.

• 20:24Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 20:25Speaker 05

  Um, and, uh, and so they wanted money from the platform. The platform was like, the, the platform was just owned by Twitter, didn't want to give them money because they were worried that every celebrity would then want to be paid for their tweets.

• 20:36Adam Friedland?

  Uh huh.

• 20:36Speaker 05

  And they just didn't also have the money. So, um, so they sort of really started to go to YouTube and, and become these multi-platform stars. And that was also when all this money started to really pour into the space. And that was like the beginning of the prank era of YouTube. And you saw all these people take off. But I would say, like, the biggest change in the past 20 years, really since the content creator industry started, is like, just the money and the legitimacy.

• 20:57Adam Friedland?

  Do influencers or celebs know how much the internet, like, sucks for everyone else?

• 21:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I think it sucks for them, too.

• 21:05Adam Friedland?

  No, it doesn't.

• 21:06Speaker 05

  What are you talking about? They get like, well, they get money, but I mean, I don't-

• 21:10Adam Friedland?

  What do you mean, "well", they get money?

• 21:11Speaker 05

  They got, they get money. The people that don't-

• 21:12Adam Friedland?

  They get more money than fucking Austin Butler probably.

• 21:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, that's true. A lot of them are making money. But the ones that don't make money, I'm always fascinated by, because it's like-

• 21:21Adam Friedland?

  But that's everyone on the internet.

• 21:22Speaker 05

  Well, those, right, exactly. The average people that spend all day online.

• 21:25Adam Friedland?

  Would you be online if you were making zero dollars?

• 21:28Speaker 05

  Absolutely not, no, no, no, no, no, no.

• 21:31Adam Friedland?

  I don't know, it's scary. It's like you can see people getting killed-

• 21:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 21:35Adam Friedland?

  And then fucking, and then the N-word.

• 21:37Speaker 05

  I did-

• 21:38Adam Friedland?

  It's too scary.

• 21:39Speaker 05

  I know.

• 21:39Adam Friedland?

  Is that free speech, or Elon's making it that?

• 21:42Speaker 05

  It's not free speech. He banned a bunch of journalists. I got banned, I got back on, though.

• 21:46Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 21:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, I got banned.

• 21:48Adam Friedland?

  You, you think, um, just, this is as an aside, but like, you, you, uh, have a, uh, autoimmune disorder from COVID?

• 21:57Speaker 05

  Not autoimmune, but an immune. Autoimmune is when your immune works overtime. My immune system basically does not work enough.

• 22:04Adam Friedland?

  Autoimmune means you have really good immune?

• 22:06Speaker 05

  It's like overworking your immune system. My immune system-

• 22:08Adam Friedland?

  So AIDS is good? What, I don't understand-

• 22:10Speaker 05

  No, AIDS is not, HIV is not a-

• 22:12Adam Friedland?

  Is that auto-

• 22:12Speaker 05

  No.

• 22:13Adam Friedland?

  No, okay, I don't, I'm not, I don't, I don't, whatever, okay. But like, you think wearing a mat, like masking up? You think that makes you a better, like, you could be sneakier as a journalist?

• 22:22Speaker 05

  Interesting, uh-

• 22:24Adam Friedland?

  It's kind of good for you-

• 22:25Speaker 05

  I think people usually-

• 22:25Adam Friedland?

  Because like, people like, don't know that they're sitting next to a journalist.

• 22:28Speaker 05

  I'm the only one still masking in 2025, I feel like a lot of people-

• 22:30Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, but you could be in public and they're like, "Oh, there's some masked person", but it turns out to be, uh, uh, lightning rod, uh, infamous journalist Taylor Lorenz.

• 22:39Speaker 05

  I will say, I was at the inauguration this year and a bunch of inauguration parties for Trump and, yeah, I was, it was, I was, I think, the only person masked.

• 22:49Adam Friedland?

  Was Haak Tua there?

• 22:50Speaker 05

  She was not, but, uh, but some others affiliated with her were, were around.

• 22:56Adam Friedland?

  Who's affiliated with Haak Tua?

• 22:58Speaker 05

  Like, other random influencers.

• 23:00Adam Friedland?

  Oh, God. So trash now.

• 23:04Adam Friedland?

  Okay, you think that maybe, I think, you know what is fair? You guys used to wear like a fedora with like a little book.

• 23:12Speaker 05

  The Reddit people?

• 23:13Adam Friedland?

  No, like a journalist.

• 23:14Speaker 05

  Oh, journalist, yes, with the little like press badge or whatever.

• 23:16Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, and then you know who the journalist is.

• 23:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:18Adam Friedland?

  Now, now you don't know, you know, you could be out in public.

• 23:21Speaker 05

  So true.

• 23:22Adam Friedland?

  You might be saying something. You guys should wear those like, you think, I think you guys should wear those vests from like war zones.

• 23:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, the blue ones.

• 23:28Adam Friedland?

  The blue vests that say "press."

• 23:29Speaker 05

  With the fedora.

• 23:29Adam Friedland?

  Just so, because I say, I mess up things that I say all the time.

• 23:33Speaker 05

  But people don't need to be a journalist to, like, now we just have this like crowdsourced surveillance state where everyone's recording everyone at all times, like everywhere you go, you know?

• 23:42Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 23:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:43Adam Friedland?

  Not all the time.

• 23:44Speaker 05

  A lot of the time. I think with facial, I don't know if you've ever used the website, have you ever heard of Pym Eyes? Oh, you gotta search yourself on Pym Eyes.

• 23:52Adam Friedland?

  I don't wanna look.

• 23:52Speaker 05

  It's like one of those websites where it scans internet for your face and you'll find yourself. I mean, I found myself in like parties from like Williamsburg in 2011.

• 24:01Adam Friedland?

  Nice. Animal Collective?

• 24:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's like that. I was living in Williamsburg in 2011 and I thought it was like peak cool.

• 24:09Adam Friedland?

  Well, I wanna go back, uh, because I'm getting off track again, but like, as someone that's covered this, like, do you think we can fix it?

• 24:17Speaker 05

  I do believe in, like, the, I, I do believe in like an open web and free speech and the internet's democratizing power. I don't, I, I think what's been really scary in liberal and leftist spaces over the past 10 years really is this regression where they're so pro censorship, so pro, um, they wanna fucking dismantle Section 230, like, they wanna...

• 24:43Adam Friedland?

  What's that?

• 24:44Speaker 05

  It's, it's, it's basically the, the law that guarantees a free internet. It, it allows, uh, for you to have basically, um, any platform to sort of like host your speech for, if I wanted to sue you, I'm suing you and not the platform. So it, it protects platforms' ability to publish a wide, you know, wide variety of things.

• 25:03Adam Friedland?

  Is it protects Google from getting sued?

• 25:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it sued for defamation, like sued for defamation.

• 25:10Adam Friedland?

  You can make a lot more money if you get them in the lawsuit too. It'd be sick.

• 25:13Speaker 05

  Well, they would just shut down, like, I mean, the point is they would stop, they wouldn't shut down, they would stop hosting speech. And that's the, that's the concern. They sort of pre-censor things with like the Kids Online Safety Act and this, this panic over... Children, you know, like having open access to information about like trans people when they're teenagers. It's caused these platforms to pre-censor a lot of stuff. And I think a lot of these platforms have become way too censorous. We don't have enough free speech online.

• 25:41Adam Friedland?

  But liberals aren't telling them to censor trans stuff?

• 25:45Speaker 05

  Liberals want censorship of right-wing ideas and right-wingers want censorship of, you know, trans stuff and reproductive justice. They just want to censor each other and that's why they can come together on these really dangerous, bad, bad, bad, dangerous censorship laws, like the Kids Online Safety Act, like the Take It Down Act.

• 26:03Adam Friedland?

  You've mentioned kids, it's like, I'm 38, so like, we didn't have, like, I couldn't just watch porn, like Pornhub style. I had to go searching for it. I had to like, people would like hide it in the woods and stuff like that.

• 26:18Speaker 05

  In the woods?

• 26:19Adam Friedland?

  And I feel like, I don't know, maybe it's like, I don't, maybe it's fucked kids up, like the 11, they can just see people fucking, and you know, it's like, maybe that's a little bit, not speech, but I don't, I'm open to that.

• 26:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm sure. I think, I think when you frame it that way, it feeds into a moral panic. I think that, I think that what you're asking for, it seems like what you're advocating for is age verification online. I think you need to weigh the upsides and the downsides, right? Like, could an 11-year-old see porn online? Maybe. But do you want this comprehensive age verification system where everything you do online is tied to your offline identity? That's what they're trying to build right now.

• 26:58Adam Friedland?

  What does that mean?

• 26:59Speaker 05

  Basically, remove anonymous speech online. So, right now, you can go on a website, right? And no, the government doesn't know, like, what, who's browsing what website, who's consuming what content, who's posting what, a lot of the times, right? Which is really essential to democracy. It's really essential to free speech, activism, journalism, stuff like that, right? So we want anonymity on the internet.

• 27:21Adam Friedland?

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• 28:06Adam Friedland?

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• 28:20Speaker 07

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• 28:21Adam Friedland?

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• 29:02Adam Friedland?

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• 29:19Adam Friedland?

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• 31:20Adam Friedland?

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• 32:01Adam Friedland?

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• 33:17Adam Friedland?

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• 34:01Adam Friedland?

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• 34:22Adam Friedland?

  One thing I've, in like looking at your stuff that's interesting is like, you've made a point that like, you make statements about what your like political ideology is, right? And like, obviously journalists are human beings, right?

• 34:41Adam Friedland?

  But we didn't know like Dan Rather's like-

• 34:43Speaker 05

  I think we did.

• 34:45Adam Friedland?

  I mean, we could guess, but he wasn't like-

• 34:46Speaker 05

  He wasn't over it about it, sure.

• 34:47Adam Friedland?

  He wasn't like, "Fuck, rest in piss Biden." Did you say that? Rest in piss Biden?

• 34:53Speaker 05

  I did.

• 34:54Adam Friedland?

  You know what you're doing.

• 34:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 34:57Adam Friedland?

  You know what you're doing.

• 34:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 34:59Adam Friedland?

  You know what you're doing. You know like these, like journo DC blue check types.

• 35:04Speaker 05

  They fucking hate it. I like them.

• 35:06Adam Friedland?

  They'll take it every, take the bait every time.

• 35:08Speaker 05

  Every time.

• 35:08Adam Friedland?

  So what is the, what is the line between someone that's playing the game and someone that's covering the game?

• 35:14Speaker 05

  I-

• 35:15Adam Friedland?

  And where do you exist in that, in that spectrum?

• 35:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I do hate, I will say, I believe, I believe that shit. Like, I don't, I hate Joe Biden. Like, I think he is a-

• 35:24Adam Friedland?

  Sure, but you're trying to piss off other fucking, other people in your fucking industry that are- I mean, it's, you live in a world of scoundrels and you're trying to like piss off fucking, I don't know, the Atlantic.

• 35:36Speaker 05

  I like to get a rise out of these people that I think are sort of just fundamentally unserious. Like, they're lying. Like, their whole thing of like- We don't have, we don't have an agenda. We don't have an opinion. I think now, especially, I mean, considering the context of Gaza, like, we see that the media does have an agenda. And the media does have a certain political sand. And certain journalists at these places, I mean, all journalists, journalism is not a neutral act. Every editorial decision is, is made, you know, to present a certain version of events. And so I just think it's a farce to not acknowledge that. And I've always, and this is why a lot of these mainstream media people hate me, is like, I said for a long time, sort of from the jump,

• 36:21Speaker 05

  that I think that that's an antiquated view of journalism. And I, I think it's much better to be open about my beliefs. People can disagree.

• 36:29Adam Friedland?

  But does it color, like, people's interpretation? Because they're gonna be like, she's, like, Fox News, right?

• 36:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:34Adam Friedland?

  Was like, I feel like things changed because they were like, this is a brand of journalism. And I think that, like, I guess, it's an interesting question.

• 36:43Speaker 05

  Journalists have always had brands.

• 36:45Adam Friedland?

  Does that color your analysis as a liberal or leftist? Or like, you know, like, does that, like, instead of like, oh, I'm, I'm finding sources and I'm telling a story and I have, like, professional ethics?

• 36:57Speaker 05

  But I'm not lying about it. Like, what bothers me about traditional media is that they're lying. Like, they're not, and not all of them, of course, and there's amazing journalists.

• 37:05Adam Friedland?

  When did I ever lie? Joe Biden was fine. He was doing great.

• 37:10Speaker 05

  I think, you know, just, I think that, again, I think this concept of neutrality is a farce. I don't think it's neutral. I've worked in these newsrooms, too. Sometimes they're trying to get, they're actively trying to get laws changed, right? Like, they're trying to do certain things. And I just think that we should be honest about it. And I will say that is what I think the public, what has caused the public to, and I wrote so much about this in my book, but what has caused so much of the public to lose trust in mainstream media is that farce, is that sort of, well, this is just, we're not, like, CNN being like, you know, well, we're totally neutral and, you know. But the war in Iraq is necessary and they do have whatever. You know, people lie about all these different major events and now people have the Internet. They can see these lies. And I think it builds, I don't think, I know that it builds trust among my audience to

• 37:54Speaker 05

  know where I stand on things. A lot of people in my audience don't agree with me, but they know my political ideology and they know that I'm going to come with a certain perspective that I'm not trying to conceal.

• 38:05Adam Friedland?

  If you're performing a public spat, do you think it's building a brand for yourself? And do you think that that distracts from like hard journalism? Or do you think that that like benefits your?

• 38:17Speaker 05

  I think it totally depends on the type of reporter that you are. Like, I don't love the system that we have now where there's so many amazing journalists that are not sort of good at manipulating the Internet and aren't ability, like don't have a good ability to get attention or make a TikTok or whatever, that are just doing phenomenal investigative journalism, right? And now they feel like they have to be a brand and they have to do all this stuff. That's a very broken system. I would love to live in a world that that is not the case. I think in the current version of the Internet that we have, you know, it is this reality that attention is necessary. And that's always been the case. They sort of offloaded and they would offload that. I mean, you used to be able to depend on a mainstream media brand to sort of deliver you, audience, deliver you attention to your stories.

• 39:02Speaker 05

  Now you can't rely on that, so you have to do it yourself. I just, I think I've always had a very realistic view of the attention economy and always had a very realistic view of who I'm actually competing with and who I'm competing with for attention online. And I don't think I compete with other traditional media journalists as much as I compete with podcasters, with YouTubers, with these other people. And so I've always-

• 39:25Adam Friedland?

  Who's on your shit list?

• 39:26Speaker 05

  Who's on my shit list?

• 39:27Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, who are you trying to fuck with?

• 39:29Speaker 05

  Oh, God. I don't know. But I wouldn't say I intentionally like start beefs. I report critically on influencers.

• 39:35Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 39:36Speaker 05

  I mean, when I did that big Mr. Beast story in 2021 about his labor violations or whatever, I had like- Phil DeFranco making videos about me. Like, I've always had a beat that's sort of-

• 39:45Adam Friedland?

  What did he do?

• 39:45Speaker 05

  Oh, he made this video saying I was, did a hit piece in it, which he-

• 39:49Adam Friedland?

  What did, no, what did Mr. Beast do?

• 39:50Speaker 05

  What did Mr. Beast do? He did, he was-

• 39:52Adam Friedland?

  Because he's a fine individual, if you ask me.

• 39:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, he was doing some labor, he had some labor, some labor issues.

• 39:59Adam Friedland?

  Wait, like a sweatshop?

• 40:01Speaker 05

  Eh, he was, you know, debatably torturing his employees.

• 40:05Adam Friedland?

  I mean, he tortures people on his show all the time.

• 40:07Speaker 05

  Well, I think that was the thing, yeah, exactly.

• 40:08Adam Friedland?

  The show is the Stanford Prison Experiment.

• 40:10Speaker 05

  Yeah. He was also signing people to restrictive endures.

• 40:13Adam Friedland?

  Like, please, Mr. Beast.

• 40:15Speaker 05

  I went to Greenville to do a story on the economic impact that he's had on Greenville and, like, the town. And it's bizarre, because everyone-

• 40:23Adam Friedland?

  People move in there so they can get free iPhone and stuff?

• 40:26Speaker 05

  They're, they're-

• 40:27Adam Friedland?

  That's awesome.

• 40:28Speaker 05

  The whole town is like-

• 40:30Adam Friedland?

  China, please. China, please. China, we, this is, this is against Christ. Go, continue, sorry.

• 40:39Speaker 05

  The town is just like, everyone's sort of hoping that he might, you know, come into their business to give them, give them like, you know, and they'd be like, oh, I heard Jimmy's gonna do a video. So Jake Paul has said that he wants to run for president. He's eligible in 2035.

• 40:54Adam Friedland?

  Jake, uh, Mr. Beast-

• 40:55Speaker 05

  I don't think he can do it. I think Mr. Beast. And Mr. Beast said he wants to run for office.

• 40:58Adam Friedland?

  We need Speed against Beast to decide.

• 41:01Speaker 05

  Well, I'm voting Speed.

• 41:02Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, Beast, Republican, Speed, uh, China.

• 41:07Adam Friedland?

  What's the worst you ever ruined someone's life?

• 41:09Speaker 05

  I wouldn't say I ruined someone's life. I report critically on people that are doing scams.

• 41:13Adam Friedland?

  On the for-real tip. Even if they're a bad guy, what's the, what's the most eviscerated you ever did?

• 41:18Speaker 05

  The way the attention economy works, like, all press can be good press, so I don't know that I-

• 41:22Adam Friedland?

  So you're hyping.

• 41:23Speaker 05

  But, I, I mean, I've gotten people's, like, shows canceled, I guess, on, like, networks and stuff, I don't know.

• 41:28Adam Friedland?

  What shows?

• 41:29Speaker 05

  I got the girls from the more, Pamela Geller's daughters. Do you know who Pamela Geller is? Famous aunt.

• 41:37Speaker 05

  She's just a crazy right-wing influencer, yeah. She, she has these two extremist daughters who had this podcast on, like, Yahoo's network or something.

• 41:45Adam Friedland?

  You got a podcast Yahoo, Yahoo podcast?

• 41:48Speaker 05

  And now I think, like, somebody, their fandom, like, really hates me for that.

• 41:52Adam Friedland?

  I don't know who these people are at all.

• 41:53Speaker 05

  Pamela Geller, it went sort of-

• 41:54Adam Friedland?

  I know Speed, Mr. Beast, pretty much.

• 41:55Speaker 05

  That's all you need to know.

• 41:57Adam Friedland?

  LeBron, Luca.

• 41:59Speaker 05

  Well, yeah.

• 42:00Adam Friedland?

  Jalen Brunson.

• 42:02Speaker 05

  I know the sports world, you know that I did a story years ago for The Atlantic about how viral videos were making college basketball recruiters like visit high schools that they wouldn't previously because like these teenagers would go viral and like how that was affecting the recruiting process and...

• 42:16Adam Friedland?

  Well, that's been like thrown into chaos now.

• 42:19Speaker 05

  Oh, now, yeah, I followed...

• 42:20Adam Friedland?

  Because they're NIL, because they can make money now.

• 42:22Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 42:23Adam Friedland?

  So they have to like recruit four-year-olds.

• 42:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:25Adam Friedland?

  They have to like pay off a corrupt family member of a four-year-old in the middle of Iowa or something. They're like, "We saw you, boy."

• 42:32Speaker 05

  But it's like interesting to see...

• 42:33Adam Friedland?

  "We want to get him signed to CIA."

• 42:35Speaker 05

  No, literally.

• 42:36Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 42:37Speaker 05

  But also like they have, I went to see you, Boulder, and like we have Deion Sanders now.

• 42:41Adam Friedland?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:42Speaker 05

  And like...

• 42:43Adam Friedland?

  Prime.

• 42:44Speaker 05

  Coach Prime, which is, you know, but it's like interesting like...

• 42:46Adam Friedland?

  Were you chill with Stadi?

• 42:47Speaker 05

  Did I go, I didn't, I don't think we, I don't know if we overlapped, but I didn't know him in college.

• 42:53Adam Friedland?

  His nickname was Xanax at his frat.

• 42:55Speaker 05

  Really? What frat was he in? I was a sorority girl in college.

• 42:58Adam Friedland?

  What sorority were you?

• 42:59Speaker 05

  Alpha Phi.

• 43:00Adam Friedland?

  Did we just break that?

• 43:01Speaker 05

  Scoop.

• 43:02Adam Friedland?

  Did we just break that? What was Alpha Phi? Like, bitches, mean.

• 43:08Speaker 05

  No, it was, it was, it was chill.

• 43:11Adam Friedland?

  No, it wasn't.

• 43:12Speaker 05

  It was not.

• 43:13Adam Friedland?

  What did you guys do?

• 43:14Speaker 05

  They were bullying...

• 43:15Adam Friedland?

  Who were you mean to? The ugly girl sorority?

• 43:17Speaker 05

  Everyone was really mean. It was like, it was, I don't know, it was like the late 2000s, like...

• 43:22Adam Friedland?

  It's kind of interesting. It probably prepped you for like the world of journalism.

• 43:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:26Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. Greek life?

• 43:28Speaker 05

  Greek life, yeah.

• 43:29Adam Friedland?

  Why do you think that the right wing has done the internet better?

• 43:34Speaker 05

  Oh, they've always had a very personality-driven media ecosystem. I mean, even since the days of like talk radio. They've always...

• 43:43Adam Friedland?

  Rush.

• 43:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:45Adam Friedland?

  Fire.

• 43:46Speaker 05

  I mean, yeah.

• 43:47Adam Friedland?

  He did that job every day, geeked off of, he was like future. He just hopped in the booth, perfect.

• 43:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:53Adam Friedland?

  And he was on fucking perks.

• 43:54Speaker 05

  I mean, so many of them are just...

• 43:56Adam Friedland?

  March Madness.

• 43:57Speaker 05

  Phenomenal like entertainers and, and good at getting attention and good at having opinion. They also, because they felt like they never were going to get a fair shot from like the traditional media, which they feel like, which I think is probably true, it's like very, much more sympathetic to Democrats, like, they always had to build this alternative media structure. And they recognized the power of the internet really in the early 2010s. Like Bannon and you know this sort of like newer wave of people that founded these digital media companies like realized influencer, they recognized influencer culture very early.

• 44:32Adam Friedland?

  I guess like, what is your prescription for how progressives can actually like get this back? Like, or is it a lost cause?

• 44:45Speaker 05

  No, I don't think it's a lost cause.

• 44:46Adam Friedland?

  Should they start saying the N-word also?

• 44:48Speaker 05

  No.

• 44:49Adam Friedland?

  Because that's how the right, the right might be winning.

• 44:51Speaker 05

  No, that's like this girl on TikTok.

• 44:52Adam Friedland?

  I don't think that's, I don't, no, you shouldn't.

• 44:56Speaker 05

  Obviously not. There's this girl on TikTok that's like, "The Democrats need to be bullies." And she came, and she got canceled recently because she was like, "And by the way, I was popular in high school and it's not true that the popular people..." And everyone was just like, "What, you're like 34, like why are you talking about..."

• 45:09Adam Friedland?

  You know all this stuff?

• 45:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:11Adam Friedland?

  You're gonna die earlier.

• 45:12Speaker 05

  I probably will.

• 45:13Adam Friedland?

  I think you are.

• 45:14Speaker 05

  I mean, my immune system is like nonexistent.

• 45:17Adam Friedland?

  No, it's not even because of that. You're gonna die because you're, because this is, because stre- no, stress.

• 45:21Speaker 05

  Stress.

• 45:22Adam Friedland?

  I mean, stress is a killer.

• 45:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:24Adam Friedland?

  Sigs are healthier than stress.

• 45:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:26Adam Friedland?

  I think. I'm pretty sure.

• 45:29Speaker 05

  But I live, I live in LA, I have a good life. Like I don't, it's not, I don't take it...

• 45:34Adam Friedland?

  Those people are so stupid over there.

• 45:36Speaker 05

  I like LA because it's...

• 45:38Adam Friedland?

  Let's do LA versus New York, let's go. No, I'm just kidding.

• 45:41Speaker 05

  I like, what I like about LA is like, it's just a little removed from the whole, I don't know, media, DC, New York shit.

• 45:50Adam Friedland?

  It's true, they don't have any media in LA.

• 45:54Speaker 05

  It's just, it's entertainment.

• 45:55Adam Friedland?

  They've never made any movies, they've never, yeah.

• 45:59Adam Friedland?

  Are you gonna make a movie?

• 46:01Speaker 05

  About what?

• 46:02Adam Friedland?

  The most harassed woman.

• 46:03Speaker 05

  Ah! Every time they want to do, I don't know what you're gonna do for the intro of this, anytime someone does like a, like an interview with me or whatever, it's like they have to do the, the supercut in the beginning of like, "Taylor Lorenz, Taylor Lorenz," and it's just like, you know.

• 46:18Adam Friedland?

  Do you ever want to be the least harassed woman?

• 46:21Speaker 05

  I don't think, I don't take, I don't care. Like I don't, if people want to yell online, it's not affecting me. And this is what pissed me off so much about that MSNBC thing. Like I don't care if people say all day how many times I trend on Twitter, it's funny to me. What I care about is people swatting my parents, you know, like that shit's annoying. When they, they call in-

• 46:39Adam Friedland?

  They hit them?

• 46:39Speaker 05

  No, it's like SWAT, it's a federal crime, but it's, they call it-

• 46:43Adam Friedland?

  Oh, the SWAT team thing?

• 46:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, and they're like not-

• 46:45Adam Friedland?

  That's antisocial.

• 46:46Speaker 05

  Well, that type of shit, they're doing that shit to my family members, they're harassing people that just like-

• 46:50Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, that's because you're playing in the mud with all these people.

• 46:52Speaker 05

  Totally, but I'm saying like that's the annoying part.

• 46:55Adam Friedland?

  Do you feel bad a little bit? Because it's like you're engaging with the crappiest of the crap.

• 46:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:59Adam Friedland?

  Do you say sorry? You're like, "Mom, my bad."

• 47:02Speaker 05

  I don't, well, my parents thankfully like don't, they're like, go for it.

• 47:05Adam Friedland?

  They didn't realize the SWAT team was there?

• 47:07Speaker 05

  Well, it's happened a few times, but, uh-

• 47:09Adam Friedland?

  Jesus Christ.

• 47:10Speaker 05

  But yeah.

• 47:11Adam Friedland?

  So you've destroyed your family, you're dying, you now have a debilitating disease-

• 47:16Speaker 05

  My family's cool.

• 47:17Adam Friedland?

  You're also gonna, you're engaging with the scoundrels. You're disrespecting Piers Morgan, some of the finest people in our society. And Piers, if you'd ever, if you, if you want, like, I'm here. Here you go again, Piers.

• 47:30Speaker 05

  Did you see they let me on Hannity recently?

• 47:32Adam Friedland?

  How was that?

• 47:33Speaker 05

  I was, I, I want them, they gotta put me back. He kept asking me like-

• 47:37Adam Friedland?

  What's it like doing that? It must be so fun.

• 47:39Speaker 05

  I thought it was a-

• 47:40Adam Friedland?

  Can you tell them to let me?

• 47:42Speaker 05

  A hundred percent. The producer has not responded to me since. I was like, "Let me know anytime." Because they talk about me all the time on Fox News, and I'm like, "Put me on. If you're gonna talk about me, like, let me say my part." The whole time Hannity is just being like, "You know, don't you think Brian Thompson had a soul?" And I don't know, just weird shit like that.

• 47:59Adam Friedland?

  Oh yeah, you got in trouble for saying you felt happy that Luigi killed that guy?

• 48:02Speaker 05

  No, I said, I said-

• 48:03Adam Friedland?

  You were like, "I love that shit."

• 48:05Speaker 05

  I said I felt joy that people were finally acknowledging the systemic violence of our healthcare system.

• 48:12Adam Friedland?

  You felt joy in that?

• 48:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:14Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, alright.

• 48:15Speaker 05

  Which I do.

• 48:15Adam Friedland?

  And he was like, "Shocking."

• 48:16Speaker 05

  He was like, "How could you use that word?"

• 48:19Adam Friedland?

  I haven't, the fuckiest, what are you saying?

• 48:21Speaker 05

  He's got the fucking NHS, he doesn't even know how bad we have it.

• 48:24Adam Friedland?

  I love Piers, dude.

• 48:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:25Adam Friedland?

  He's the man, dude.

• 48:26Speaker 05

  I still read the Daily Mail like top to bottom every day.

• 48:29Adam Friedland?

  Oh, he was the Daily Mail?

• 48:30Speaker 05

  He, he was on Daily Mail, yeah. He had like a column. He was really good friends with the old editor.

• 48:34Adam Friedland?

  What would, if you wrote an article about someone and they killed themselves, would you feel bad?

• 48:38Speaker 05

  Of course, yeah. I mean, if, if my article was like relevant to if they killed themselves unrelatedly, but yeah, I mean, if I- Wrote something that ultimately led them to spiral, I would feel bad.

• 48:49Adam Friedland?

  This is like, I think this is perhaps one of my greatest challenges, because you're perhaps the most media-trained guest I've ever had, because you're the media, right?

• 48:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, but I do think it's weird to be on the other side of things.

• 49:01Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 49:02Speaker 05

  It's hard to interview, too.

• 49:03Adam Friedland?

  How the fuck do you... Welcome to the Thunderdome.

• 49:06Speaker 05

  I had to go to a Zoom improv class once. I like didn't get this like TV.

• 49:10Adam Friedland?

  That made me nauseous just now.

• 49:12Speaker 05

  It was so bad, Adam, it was so bad.

• 49:14Adam Friedland?

  During COVID, you did UCB Zoom improv?

• 49:16Speaker 05

  Dude, I don't know what was UCB. I didn't get this like TV contributor gig that I was up for, and the feedback was like, you're not good enough, like, on your feet. And so...

• 49:24Adam Friedland?

  Oh, to be like, with a microphone?

• 49:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was gonna do, it was like this like TV hosting thing.

• 49:29Adam Friedland?

  Cool, Mario Lopez style.

• 49:32Speaker 05

  I like, which I've done tons of like internet stuff like that. This was for broadcast. Anyway, and that was the feedback, and so they were like, oh, you should do like an improv class. This was like April 2020. So I like Googled like improv. Yeah, I did a fucking Zoom improv. And two of the people in the Zoom improv were in the same room.

• 49:48Adam Friedland?

  That's one of the most loser sentences I've ever heard in my life.

• 49:50Speaker 05

  It was terrible. Well, that was my, I was like, I'm done with this shit. I did one class and I never went back.

• 49:54Adam Friedland?

  Don't be saying that in front of Tucker, because he's gonna kill your ass on that.

• 49:59Adam Friedland?

  She did Zoom improv. What, I guess, I have one last question. What would you identify as like your project? Like, what, like, what, like, obviously you have an ambition career-wise?

• 50:17Speaker 05

  There's a few things. I think I want to help people understand the internet. I want people to recognize the dynamics of our internet, sort of help educate people about the attention economy and take it seriously. I mean, I think, I do think I've done a lot to help people understand the media landscape differently than maybe they have. Now, more recently, now that people sort of seem, I feel like I've accomplished a lot of that. Like, I don't feel, I used to feel like... If I don't write this story, like, no one will cover it. Like, no one else covers this industry. Like, there's not that many reporters. Like, I have to do it. Now, I feel like there's people covering that. Now, I'm very focused on speech, free speech, and protecting free speech online.

• 51:00Adam Friedland?

  Babies watching porn and stuff.

• 51:02Speaker 05

  No, I mean, just like, civil liberties. Like, I, I, I think, like I said before, like liberals and leftists have abandoned so much of that and pushed this, like, bullshit moral panic stuff that's not based in reality and not based in any sort of science or anything. And so, I care.

• 51:22Adam Friedland?

  I remember, like, government class, when you learn about Skokie, Illinois.

• 51:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 51:26Adam Friedland?

  I always thought it was, like, so cool that, like, there were, like, lawyers, a lot of them are Jewish, at the ACLU, that were defending Nazis.

• 51:32Speaker 05

  Nazis, yeah.

• 51:33Adam Friedland?

  That, like, their right to, like, march through a community, which I understand had a lot of Holocaust survivors. But they're having, like, a principle, like, free speech being paramount.

• 51:42Speaker 05

  But now that would...

• 51:43Adam Friedland?

  To me, sounded like, so, that's really dope. That, like, it's more important we protect this.

• 51:47Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 51:47Adam Friedland?

  And even by standing up for the Nazis. So, I, I kind of, I understand that as a progressive principle, for sure.

• 51:54Speaker 05

  But most progressives today, I would argue, don't. Like, I, I think a lot of people on the left today would argue for deplatforming, would argue for censorship. They're arguing for these age verification laws, these, these really dangerous internet bills that do want to strip speech rights.

• 52:10Adam Friedland?

  But these are corporations with, with profit incentives, right?

• 52:15Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 52:15Adam Friedland?

  And stock crisis.

• 52:16Speaker 05

  Instead of punishing the users, which is what these speech laws do, they're not punishing the companies, there's a reason why Apple and X are backing a lot of these, like, you know, backing, like, age verification and things like the Take It Down Act or whatever. Because it punishes the users. It punishes speech online. It doesn't actually fundamentally affect the business model. These profit-driven companies, they have no incentive to protect free speech.

• 52:39Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 52:39Speaker 05

  If they get this law passed in Texas that they have, it's HB, I can't remember the name, I made a video about it recently, but, you know, they want to censor all speech about abortion online, criminalize it, essentially.

• 52:49Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 52:50Speaker 05

  And... That, we don't have state by state internet laws. That will result in that sort of content getting censored across the country. And Facebook doesn't care. They're like, okay, if the government says that, sure, we'll censor it. We don't care. We're in the profit driven business.

• 53:05Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. Well, because you got muscles now in the chain.

• 53:09Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 53:09Adam Friedland?

  And he's like, now I'm free speech.

• 53:11Speaker 05

  He doesn't care. None of them actually care about defending free speech. But I don't think many people do care about protecting free speech outside of maybe FIRE and the Electronic Frontier Foundation and like a couple of organizations. But like, I'm talking about like activists, like they don't care. They're saying this bullshit about like, we gotta ban cell phones or whatever. Like, it's just, it's like, it's, I really care about speech online. And if I had to sort of think about like, I feel like if I have to pick an issue that I want people to understand, it's that one.

• 53:40Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. I just, I worry, I don't know. I don't know what the answer is.

• 53:46Speaker 05

  Maybe we have too much speech.

• 53:47Adam Friedland?

  I just worry that people like just aren't, people are being like freakazoids. People are being fucking weird. And I think that like, I mean, I think it is bizarre to be like for zero dollars yelling at the government or like the president all day, right? I think that's, I think it's like, I can't understand. But I think that everyone kind of like views things as like personal branding now and like, I like it when things are normal. And it's, it's too weird.

• 54:20Speaker 05

  You're in the wrong decade. I think like, I think a lot of the problems that people ascribe to the internet are broader problems with like capitalism. And I think we could have a less profit driven internet and that would be a better internet.

• 54:30Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, how the fuck are you gonna do that?

• 54:31Speaker 05

  We have, we have, I mean, we have systems like that. We, we did, it thinks-

• 54:35Adam Friedland?

  You have broker companies?

• 54:37Speaker 05

  No, but we have, right now we have a duopoly. I think it's interesting, by the way, that there's all this like antitrust conversation. I think that should have happened 10 years ago.

• 54:44Adam Friedland?

  Okay.

• 54:45Speaker 05

  I think the fact that so much of the internet now is defined by like a very small amount of major social platforms that have like a complete dominance of the market and can act arbitrarily to some, you know, like I think that's bad. I think we should have more competition. I think we should have more private spaces. I think users deserve more control online over their online experience. These are all things we can advocate for that would make the internet a lot less like the way that you hate, you know, it makes all of us miserable, right? Like it fucking makes all of us miserable. Like, but the answer is not to like eliminate the internet and censor speech. The answer is to- Regulate these companies in a smart and coherent way that actually targets the companies themselves and their business models.

• 55:26Adam Friedland?

  Maybe also the answer is if someone has a job, they can't be doing that all day long, right?

• 55:31Speaker 05

  I feel like more jobs require you to engage with the internet, though.

• 55:36Adam Friedland?

  Maybe it's just not enough jobs, so people are just like, "I'm gonna be on the computer."

• 55:42Speaker 05

  Too many email jobs.

• 55:43Adam Friedland?

  "I'm gonna be filming people not wearing them." Someone telling me to put a mask on at CVS, and then I'm gonna be in Congress in two years' time.

• 55:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, but I think that that's the broader issue with our attention economy.

• 56:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, I also don't think we would have a lot of these problems if we had a coherent...

• 56:06Speaker 05

  So many of our problems are... I think if we had an actual populist movement, if we had a movement that was driven around class solidarity and workers' rights and things, I just think a lot of these problems that are systemic problems that we view through the internet would not manifest in the same way. But we don't have that. We have the Democratic Party instead.

• 56:30Adam Friedland?

  They're far.

• 56:31Speaker 05

  They're not doing anything. You're trying to get that DNC money.

• 56:35Adam Friedland?

  How do you get it? You know them?

• 56:37Speaker 05

  I mean, how do you get it? You gotta, you know...

• 56:41Adam Friedland?

  Taylor Rentsch.

• 57:29Speaker 09

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• 58:00Speaker 10

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