Factually! with Adam Conover - How Social Media Exploits Creators with Taylor Lorenz

Episode Date: December 20, 2023

Social media is just media now. It has irreversibly changed how we engage with our world, yet it is often disregarded as frivolous. The dismissal of social media can be dangerous, as it minimizes not just the benefits but the dangers of our current media landscape. This week Adam is joined by Taylor Lorenz, an internet expert and author of "Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet," to track the evolution of social media, from the birth of mommy bloggers to the current crisis of social platforms exploiting their audiences for free labor. Find Taylor's book at factuallypod.com/booksSUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me on the show again. You know, I think it's underappreciated just how much social media has transformed our world. 30 years ago, if you wanted to fix your radiator, you'd have to buy a book or even worse, call someone. Now, you just go on YouTube and watch a shaky iPhone video from some guy named Rad Robbie Radiator 420. And that's not just true for radiators, but for everything. Our entertainment and information ecosystems are increasingly dominated by social media, and that changes how we see major events in the real world. Take the devastating war that's being waged by Israel right now. The entire thing

is being streamed and shared on social media. And that is how people are taking it in. And that's a good thing and a bad thing, because even though social media allows people to criticize information and media narratives they think are wrong, that's a good thing. I do that myself all the time. It also allows people to spread false and misleading narratives. I mean, a lot of the videos that are being shared of this conflict are things that happened years ago, but are being passed off as recent events. The result of this is a certain amount of informational chaos.

And this is not a passing trend. Social media simply is media now. Companies will spend $270 billion this year to advertise on it. And that means it's an apocryphal shift in human communication. We've moved from a one to many to a many to many media paradigm. And that shift is being led by a bunch of hyper competitive and at best amoral capitalists who are willing to squeeze our perplexed, addicted brains like a sponge for that last drop of precious attention. So no wonder that a lot of people hate social media and don't want to be on it or even use it. That's fair. But social media is now one of the most powerful forces in our society.

And in my view, we ignore it at our peril. So how is social media changing our society? How is it transforming our ideas of celebrity, power, and communication? And how is social media changing our society? How is it transforming our ideas of celebrity, power and communication? And how is it affecting the lives of the people who actually create all the content that we're consuming for better and for worse? Well, to discuss all of that today, we have the most well-known social media reporter on the planet. And I'm thrilled to have her. Her name is Taylor Lorenz. on the planet, and I'm thrilled to have her. Her name is Taylor Lorenz.

She's a reporter at the Washington Post, and she's the author of a new book called Extremely Online, The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet. I know you're gonna love this conversation, but before we get to it, I just wanna remind you that if you wanna support this show, because this is on social media as well,

you could do so on Patreon. Head to patreon.com slash adamconover. Just five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show ad free, plus a bunch of other community perks as well. And if you love standup comedy, please come see me. I am on tour this year. You can see me in Portland, Maine, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Boston, Nashville, bunch of other cities. Head to adamconover.net for tickets and tour dates i would love to see you there in the real fucking world and now let's get to this interview with taylor lorenz

taylor thank you so much for being on the show thank you so much for having me i feel like it's been a long time coming i've followed your work for many years i've been a fan for a long time what i find really interesting about you is that so much journalism about social media is written by people who don't really use it, or they just use like journalist Twitter and they only see it through that lens. And so they don't actually use TikTok. Like I'm over 30. I can't use TikTok. They're those people. You are one of the few journalists I feel who actually just dives into the muck every single day and you use these services the same way that people using them do. I'm curious, why do you do that and what perspective do you think it gives

you? Why do I do it? I ask myself that regularly. But yes, I I so I started as a blogger back in the late aughts right after college. I'm a millennial. I am over 30 on TikTok. And and yeah, I kind of I wanted to write about tech from the user side. I started at the sort of golden age of gadget blogging where people were doing like, you know, it was the iPhone had just come out and all this stuff. And I thought, well, I want to do kind of that type of blogging, but about social media, because I felt like the people writing about social media, as you mentioned, it's usually journalists that just spend all day on media, Twitter, and that's their understanding of social media. And I was kind of popular on Tumblr. And so it started with Tumblr. It started with people writing about Tumblr and me being like, okay, that's not how it really is. Um, so, um, and then

here I am 15 years later, uh, still doing it, but I, I love writing about social media and I love writing about tech from the user side, because I think it's just wildly undercover. We have so many people covering like Facebook boardroom drama and not many people covering how people actually use these products. So especially when these products are such huge news, I mean, TikTok has been front page news for going on two or three years now, especially it's a fucking point of foreign policy at this point. And yet you see these articles over and over again that, you know, front page of The New York Times that like misrepresent what's happening on TikTok. A great example of this is the the thing about TikTok teens praising Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden has stands on TikTok, which was based on everything I read. The real people, people who really knew seemed to feel that this was a completely fake story. I mean, what did you think about it?

It was a fake story. We debunked it on the Washington Post. I'm lucky that my colleague, Drew Harwell, who's my one of my main reporting partners, we work together on a lot of those types of stories. But yeah, he did a great piece debunking all of it. It's just it's nonsense. And it's it goes back to all these fake viral trends, which I've written about. Drew has written about as well, like, you know, TikTok teens are throwing each other off boats and there's deaths linked to it. I mean, that's a real story that The Today Show has done multiple segments on claiming that people have died. Not a single person has died. I mean, but again, it goes back to just this like arrogance and sort of what the media does, which is create outrage to get traffic and generate attention.

And I think that's a huge problem. And I think the incentive in the traditional media industry is very messed up. And, yeah, people have not been on TikTok and they don't understand how to use it. And TikTok is so different from Twitter. And had they not spent so many years in Twitter world, I think they would have a better understanding of TikTok. Yeah. And there's this problem where this weird thing happens on Twitter, where someone on Twitter will share a TikTok and say, this is what's happening on TikTok. And then that will go viral on Twitter and it'll get like, you know, 10,000 retweets or whatever. But then you go look at the original TikTok, if you're an actual TikTok user and you go, 10,000 retweets or whatever. But then you go look at the original TikTok if you're an actual TikTok user and you go, wait, this is not actually big on TikTok. What is big is some 45 year old on Twitter. I'm sorry to be ageist about it because I think

people of all ages, me and Mandy Patinkin and you are all on there. But the Twitter users have some impression of this is what TikTok is like. And so something goes viral on Twitter because of that stereotype. Whereas on TikTok, it's like it didn't exist at all. It's this bizarre impression of virality that creates virality, but it creates a distorted impression of how people actually using these services. Exactly. Also, I think people like journalists don't understand the basic mechanics of TikTok. With the Osama bin Laden thing, when I was looking into it, too, even originally when there was only like not that many videos, most of the, even the videos on TikTok where people reacting, which people don't sort of understand the difference between like a stitch or whatever. But, um, yeah, it's the same. It would be like saying, oh, this went viral on Twitter. Everyone loves this, but people are actually, it went viral because people are dunking, dunking on it in the QTs.

Right. Exactly. Or exactly. Or like, it just drives me crazy too, because it's like, or somebody posted something on Twitter, literally just posted something on Twitter. And then it's like, look at what TikTok or, you know, Twitter teens are doing. And it's like, no, also that person's not a teen. Just because somebody shared something on a social platform, like isn't inherently, you

know. Right. It's yeah. I think it's also just like an uncuriousness. Like you should do, you should spend the time reporting and actually talk to these people. But of course, nobody does it because they want to put teen and tick tock the headline. there's also this constant thing of parents or adults being horrified by what the kids are doing. I remember this was 20 years ago, but I remember there being a panic in probably about 2002 that teens around the country, adults were saying this, the teens around the country were doing rainbow parties. Do you remember rainbow parties? Do you remember what this was?

This was a viral idea that kids were putting on different colors of lipstick and then giving each other blowjobs to create a rainbow. I don't want to get too graphic. But like when I heard this, I was like, this is clearly a joke. This is a joke sex act that adults are going, oh, have you heard about this? And they're talking about it on The View or whatever, even though no one no one was ever doing this. Right. Clearly, it's a ludicrous idea. No one was ever doing this, right? Clearly, it's a ludicrous idea.

And half the time I hear journalists writing about TikTok, that is what they are doing, is they're spreading some sort of weird rumor that sounds plausible to them, but not to anybody else. So let's talk about your actual work. What is the real story of social media and what has it been over the last 20 years? Why are you so fascinated by it? Yeah, well, the real story of social media is that these are complex communication networks that have upended media. And I think there's it's just they have a lot more nuance and a lot more interesting things happening on that people give them credit. And I think when you fundamentally dismiss platforms like TikTok or say, oh, it's just

teens and just feed outrage about these platforms, you miss what's actually going on, which is actually very interesting and I think worthy of reporting on because this is the world that we all live in today. And I think younger people, again, not to be ageist about it myself, but I do think younger people who actually grew up in these platforms sort of understand that inherently. But yeah, I mean, I am just fascinated by sort of how people communicate and connect and this shift in media consumption, because I think what's happened in the past 15 years, 20 years is we've seen this radical shift of how people get information about the world. And primarily they get information about the world from other people on the internet, which

is a big change from the past 100 or 50 years of history prior to that, when you mostly got information and entertainment through, you know, these gatekeepers, these big Hollywood or, you know, news media, like places like the New York Times and Washington Post. So, you know, I love that you revised it down from 100 years to 50 years, by the way, because I think we often know for real, because I think we often think of the previous media regime as being hundreds and hundreds of years like that's the way it was forever. But if you look at like, you know, the dominant news paradigm, like it really started, I don't know what, in the 30s or 40s with the rise of the FCC, like, you know, forcing these giant communication companies to have news departments if they want to keep their broadcast licenses, stuff like that. Before that, it was, you know, a free for all. And if you look at the early days

of newspapers, it was, you know, which was only a few hundred years ago, it was basically just idiots photocopying whatever they could to get as many people to buy shit as possible. And then before that, it was just the gossip mill like there was, you know, and so the the previous regime was very short. And, you know, maybe we should be looking at this as a constant state of flux rather than, oh, my God, something new happened and we're terrified of it. Exactly. That's what I think. I think that these, you know, media has evolved so much. And by the way, within those 50 years, right, we saw like the rise of radio replaced by television, replaced by, you know, print media and this golden age of magazines. Like I would loop all of that still under sort of traditional media. But but now with the Internet, which is, by the way, so young, like we forget when I was writing my book, which is sort of like a history of this rise of the social media and content creator industry.

You know, it really didn't meaningfully start until the turn of the millennium, which is still just only two decades ago. So we're still very early on in this sort of shift. And of course, AI is going to transform it all. But yeah, it's just, it's really upended. And yet the traditional media is still operating as if it's 1995. Like they're still kind of in this mindset

where they have a fundamental, I think, disrespect for content and entertainment created on the internet. And they, they, there's a dismissiveness towards all of it that I think is really harmful and it's like reductive. And so it ends up misinforming people and creating this big divide. Cause I think young people that actually know what's going on that are actually on Tik TOK are like, that's stupid. Like that's wrong. And the New York times is printing wrong, silly information about TikTok all the time. So I don't trust them. And so I think, and which I totally get, they shouldn't trust them on a lot of things. So, you know, it's, we have this crisis of trust, which is, which I think is a bummer

because it ends up affecting all of journalism. And I mean, the hostility towards journalists today, the misunderstanding of what journalists do, it's very high. Yeah. When journalists are still fulfill a, a completely, uh, necessary role in our, in our society and Mika media ecosystem as the people who discover the facts that we talk about for the, you know, the, the rest of us all talk about, like that's the, that's the primary role. Um, well let's, let's talk about for the, you know, the rest of us all talk about. Like that's the that's the primary role. Well, let's let's talk about the history and the rise of this new type of media personality. Who was the first influencer? That's a stupid way to put that question.

But where does the story begin for you around the turn of the millennium? Yeah, I know there's there There's no one first influencer. I know Paris Hilton loves to claim that she was the first. Kim Kardashian loves to claim that she was the first. I do think that they were correct in the sense that reality stars and socialites around the turn of the millennium were, reality stars and socialites were getting their own type of fame. Socialites have always had a level of fame in sort of local press and prestige media. And then in throughout the 2010s, when you had this explosion in reality television, I think it sort of transformed what people thought of as a TV star. And so you had these personalities emerging.

I argue that the first sort of influencers, content creators, whatever you want to call them, Um, I argue that the first sort of influencers, content creators, whatever you want to call them, were actually the mommy bloggers, um, also gained traction really between 1998 and 2004. You saw this wave of women, obviously bloggers, like, you know, blogging software really started to take off in the late nineties, early two thousands, um, which just allowed anybody to self publish. And so you had a lot of tech and political blogs, but it wasn't until these women kind of went on the internet and started to build these cults of personality around themselves and then monetize through the internet. But I think you start to see this like real, like the emergence of like content creator and what those women did is completely transform women's media. Like they, they upended them. They felt like, okay, traditional women's media

doesn't represent my Gen X view of motherhood. These were young Gen X women that were doing this. And so I'm going to go on a blog and write about all this messy stuff that the women's media doesn't talk about. Things like postpartum depression, struggling to breastfeed, eating your husband, wanting to be divorced. These were so taboo and just mainstream topics. So much about motherhood was still so taboo throughout the nineties. So when the internet came and these women were like, by the way, does anyone else like think that like they can't breastfeed and maybe formula feeding is OK? Or like maybe I fucking hate my husband and I think I'm going to leave him like these things were very radical at the time. And so these women got massive audiences. I mean, I had a blog in the year 2000 on Blogger.

A lot of my friends did as well, but it was a really, it was such a raw and interesting form of media. People were just, you know, the main, a lot of the format was just people posting public diary entries about shit that happened to them. The internet was a much smaller place. So I think it probably felt a little bit safer to do that because there was, you know, it was kind of hard

for you to be dogpiled at the time the way you can be now. But it's funny because I read a lot of the sort of blogs that you, the first type you mentioned, I read a lot of like blogs by tech people in San Francisco who were writing about going to raves in 2001, which was an interesting enough culture for me to sort of learn about as a college student at the time. Um, but you just drew a distinction between the mommy bloggers who created cults of personality around themselves and monetize that. Um, how did they do that? And why is that an important difference to you? Yeah. So they did it through, I mean, Heather Armstrong, one of the most famous mommy bloggers famously added ads to her site in 2004. And it was this seminal moment on the internet because those other blogs had ads, like the

political blogs had ads, the tech blogs had ads, all these other ones had ads, but because moms were sort of talking so deeply about their lives and their personal lives, when they added ads, it was this like huge backlash. Like people act like Heather. I mean, people tried to get a lot of these mommy bloggers, kids taken away. They were accused of monetizing motherhood. And it's so funny when you look back at what they were talking about, it's so benign. Like it's the type of thing you would read in like event posts on Instagram caption today, or like on Instagram stories. Like it's actually very, it seems very benign because we're so used to everyone sharing about their lives. Um, but I think it was, it was a seminal moment because it was like,

the subtext was kind of like, who do you think you are? Like, who do you think you are? And why do you, why do you deserve an audience and money? You know? And these women were like, well, I deserve it because like, I'm actually creating a media, like I'm creating media and I'm informing you guys and I'm entertaining you guys. And that's valuable. And my work as a month, you know, it sort of just changed people's understanding of like fame, I think. And, um, and again, it's back to that cult of personality and kind of monetizing your life that those other bloggers were not really they weren't really doing and they didn't have these revenue models like mommy bloggers were also pioneering sponsored content models really early um where

they were getting their blog posts sponsored and they started to get um i talk about procter and gamble in my book and they had this idea of connector moms and so they had these programs in the 90s and the 80s of where they would seed things with moms that were just really popular in their town, maybe like the head of the PTA or whatever. And when these mommy bloggers came, suddenly brands were like, Oh my God, these moms can reach thousands of moms at scale, sometimes millions. So it was a huge opportunity and you just saw brands. Right. And they have a personal relationship with their audience who thinks of them as a friend or someone who they, who they

at least know on a person to person level because they've been so confessional. And so then when this mom says, Hey, I really like this, uh, this baby shampoo, my baby doesn't cry. That's like a really strong recommendation. But it's so first of all, I want to take back that I said it was harder to get dogpiled back then because you just you just gave a very good example of Heather Armstrong and people like her being dogpiled. But it's interesting. It's almost as though the idea of this type of media personality being a potential business or a potential as just way to make money had to be invented right now. That's very obvious. I mean, you know, almost everybody on the internet is like, I could maybe start a Patreon. Maybe people want to pay me for what I do. That's like just in the water. Uh, but that had to be invented back then. And it had to be justified by these women

over and over again. And you're right. They're like, their fans had this deeply parasocial relationship with them that I don't think other kind of like topic based bloggers at that time, like the politics blog, like, yes, people had an affinity for the people, the bloggers that they followed, but it wasn't this like such a parasocial bond, which was very strong. And when they were defending like these revenue models are being like, Hey, by the way, Verizon, you should actually advertise with me. They had it was a huge uphill battle because people thought of the Internet. And I talked later about YouTube and actually some of the first YouTube ad deals, too, with YouTubers in the second half of the aughts. And like these brands were like, I don't know. It's crazy.

It's the Internet. You know, these are probably just people in their basement, like real like mothers. Why would mothers be on the Internet? They should be with their children. Like there's no way they're actually reading all these blogs, which is just so funny because it's like, of course we're all on the internet, you know? That's all anybody is doing all the time is being on the internet. And people really didn't believe that moms, like people were like, oh, okay. So you have these mommy bloggers on the internet, but are their fans really? There was this notion of men in their basement. And so people were like, yeah, it's just a bunch of mothers like mothers have better things to do than read things on the Internet.

Like, is this real? And, you know, right. Yeah. No, the joke about the Internet was it's it's full of male nerds who are, you know, complaining that are all like the comic book guy from the Simpsons. And they're just, you know, complaining about, and I, and certainly that was what it was to a large degree at the beginning. Totally. And it remained that way too, for a really long time. But I think there was this whole massive economy of women. And this is what I talk about in my book that actually we're building the beginning of what we now consider most of the internet, which is like the influencer creator economy, whatever you want to call it.

Like everything that the internet sort of became was women. Cause it started with mommy bloggers and then it very quickly became fashion bloggers that also had, were like very parasocial. And then it kind of just a lot of, it was a lot of like women and like kind of weirdo people. Like, I don't know what to say weirdos, but like a lot of the early YouTubers were like awkward people that were shut out of traditional media institutions. Yes. I also think an,

an underrated or an undertold story about how the internet has changed since the early two thousands is people from all walks of life and all across the country joining the internet. Like I was a very early Internet adopter. I got a cable. We got a cable modem at my house in like 1997 or something like that when I was in high school and I was using it in college. And if you think about who was who the dominant communities on the Internet were, then it was coming out of universities, the tech industry. It's a very particular type of person.

A lot of very liberal folks, of course. And so there's this sense of internet culture that was sort of dominated by those people. And it led to a lot of sort of false unanimity, especially in the sort of more utopian parts of the, oh, hey, this is a place where everyone is sort of open-minded and like, you know, it's a new form of media, we're all communicating, et cetera. And then over the next 20 years, everybody else in the country eventually shows up in waves, you know, and in a sort of invisible way, cause there was no starting pistol that said, okay, you know, guess what? Here they are. But you know, when people started looking around going like, hold on a second, there's like Nazis on the internet now. How'd that happen? Well, yeah, they got the internet too. You know what I mean? Like it was, it's a, the demographic

shift I think is a, is an undertold story. Um, but I, I, I love talking about the blogging era because I'm one of these people who is very nostalgic for it and I miss it. What killed it? And how did the internet change as a result? Oh know I'm also nostalgic because I also started as a blogger. And yeah, I mean, later, I guess the second half thoughts. But what killed it was sort of this pivot to a more visual Internet. So, well, one, a lot of popular blogs were co-opted by traditional media. So like traditional media started, I think I think because of the rise of blogs, um, in the, around the turn of the early 2010s, second half of the odds, you saw all these digital media companies getting funded because all the VCs, there was this gold rush of media

where like the VCs were like, Oh, blogs are taking off. I guess that's the future of media. We better invest in all these digital media sites like vice, Buzzfeed, Vox was founded around that. And so you saw this like a lot of like blogging culture essentially just sort of merge with the traditional media culture. And then so that was like one side of it. That's where a lot of the politics and tech people went. And then you had the mothers and the fashion bloggers and a lot of people move more into visual medium. So Instagram launches in 2010 changes things. It became much easier to upload photos to blogs. So a lot of blogs became very photo oriented. And then you had the rise of just like image sharing became really huge. You had Pinterest launch in 2011. So suddenly the internet got more visual and then very quickly

also got more video focused with, with Vine and Musical.ly and all of that in the mid 2010s Snapchat. So it kind of the blogging era went away very quickly. I think people have written medium is always like a little bit more intense for people to consume. And so a lot of those early bloggers fell away. Like they either pivoted and they became really big on visual mediums or they just kind of stopped. And also a lot of the women grew up. A lot of people aged out of blogging because it was a hard job. Yeah. But there was also another change around this time, which was the rise of these massive platforms, right? Exactly. Which is, yeah. Yeah. One of the things I miss about the blogging era was that when you went to someone's blog, you went to their blog on their site. Maybe it was on

blogspot or something, but they chose a template. They had a color scheme and you were like going to their little house on the internet. Right. And of course there was a barrier to building that house took a little bit more work, but you know, it is to me such a bummer now that we go to these massive platforms where everyone's you go to Instagram, everyone's Instagram looks the same. Everyone's in the same little box. And I find myself checking the same five websites over and over again. Uh, and, and there was a massive centralization of power into these platforms as well. Right? Exactly. And I talk about that shift in my book and also just the shift. And it was largely Facebook that did this because if you remember even MySpace, which was a mistake by the way, but they allowed you to like edit the, you know, you could have a

lot of customization on your MySpace profile. Like there was this notion of like customization and individuality. And like you said, like I'm building my own little space, whether it's a MySpace page or a blog or whatever, or GeoCities was the same way, like highly customizable. And then Facebook comes along and sterilizes everything and kind of like makes, it was a gateway platform, I think, to the tech ecosystem that we have today, where it just like made everything look, yeah, everyone has the same profile. Everyone has the same kind of standardized stuff. And also these platforms very quickly gained a lot of power. I mean, we weren't in the same kind of standardized stuff. And also these platforms very quickly gained a lot of power. I mean, we weren't in the complete kind of duopoly that we're in today where I think

Facebook and Google control almost everything except TikTok. But in the early 2010s, there was actually kind of a lot of competition. I mean, people don't remember, but like Instagram was neck and neck with this app called Hipstamatic for a while. Oh, yeah. It wasn't clear. Like what there was just, it was still, it was this kind of like apps were taking off. Like apps in general were a huge growth because, um, Apple launched the app store and all that. Um, so yeah, you just saw the rise of platforms

and suddenly everything was about platforms and everyone was joining platforms. And even then though, people weren't monetizing the platforms very much. Like people, once people went onto the platforms, it was kind of unclear how they would make money. And I talk about the early Instagram because Instagram was so against ads from the get go. Kevin's system was like extremely against it. Um, that birth sponsored content very early, like sort of that whole Instagram influencer universe, like, because there was no other ways.

very early, like sort of that whole Instagram influencer universe, like, because there was no other ways. Instagram was growing so quick from like 2010 to 2013, 2014 that, um, and brands wanted a part of it, but because Instagram wasn't offering ads, they had to go directly to these Instagram content creators. Oh, like, like the platform wasn't offering ads at that time at all at that time. Oh, wow. That's really, I had no idea. And that, and that created the incentive to go pay the people directly

to get them to hold up a tube of toothpaste in their photo or whatever. Yes. That is wild. Yeah. Which is so crazy too, because, because it's weird to us now. We think, well, of course,

the platform is going to have ads. At the time they, they weren't, they, Kevin was very against it. That's, do you think that before we go to break, to stay on the platform question for a second, I feel like we all got seduced by these platforms. Like I remember, you know, Instagram coming out and being, oh, this is a fun, oh, it's a fun little social network.

I can see my friends' posts. What a good time. Sort of felt like installing B-Real for the first time, right? Where you're like, oh, look, oh, this has some novelty. We're doing some fun stuff. Oh, you're telling your friends. No, I like it. I think it's pretty fun. And then five years later, you're like, wait, why is this the only app I open? Right. Um, and now occasionally new apps pop up like be real, but it's a year later and we're not using be real anymore. Right. It's that's dead. I'm still back on Instagram, even Tik TOK.

I'm still on Instagram most of the time, right? And so do you feel that there's going to be any opportunity for any of these giant platforms to shift for new platforms to arise? Or have things really settled after 20 years of flux? Or do you think things are more flexible than we might anticipate? Well, so the big problem, and I think this comes down to regulation, because I think the only way that's going to change this is through antitrust and also Facebook.

TikTok was such a blessing for Facebook because everyone was like about to like saying like, oh, look, TikTok or, you know, Meta has this monopoly and stuff. Suddenly when TikTok came along, they could argue, oh no, look, you know, despite the fact that we're spending millions and millions of dollars in lobbying and trying to take this app down, look at the

competition we're suddenly getting. Yeah. But it's very telling that the only platform that is remotely given TikTok or Meta and Google a run for its money in the past, I would say, 10 years is TikTok, which is also owned by a multi-billion dollar tech conglomerate that could spend a billion years in influencer marketing. In 2019 alone, they spent a billion dollars just in the US. Like that's the level of like resources that you have to have to actually go up against these tech giants. Cause look at Snapchat. Snapchat's a very good example of this, right? Like Snapchat had so much momentum, so much traction. They turned down an offer to be bought by Facebook. Meta just crushed it. They've systematically sort of like gone after Snapchat

for so many years, obviously cloning stories, but so many other things. And so that's what these companies do. And so the goal with startups now, and I talked to a lot of young founders of social apps, all their goal is to sell to Google or Meta because they don't think that they'll ever have the resources to compete. And it's very hard to look at what's happening right now with these Twitter competitors. Even when an app like Twitter is falling apart, it's so hard to recreate the social graph because, like you said, people are like, I spend so much time online. I don't want it. There's not that excitement of the early 2010s of like, let's all get on social media. I can't wait to download a new app and share my thoughts with the entire world.

Let's all get on social media. I can't wait to download a new app and share my thoughts with the entire world. Now people are like, I don't know if I need a new app that's going to default post everything publicly and permanently. Like I might just join a Discord server or something. You know, I don't know that I need to like be out there. Yeah, good point. I mean, a lot of the people who, you know, folks who really had a community on Twitter, that community left Twitter and rebuilt itself on Mastodon or something else, you know, are enjoying those services. But in terms of something that would have mass adoption, like the public is not going like, oh, boy, threads like, oh, boy, blue sky. What a cool new thing for me to have fun with.

There's no novelty. There's no. Hey, check out the app I just got. Right. Like, no, it's so they're serving their purpose. Um, and, uh, and by the way, it looks like what's happening with Twitter is just going to strengthen that duopoly. Now that, you know, Elon Musk is just crashing the plane to the side of a mountain, like, all right, the one semi competitor that had a foothold and a very important bit of cultural prominence is, is about to, about to die as well.

And what's replacing it is, is going to be basically just like a cultural footnote. Like, Oh yeah, there's, there's this other stuff happening around the edges, but all the, all the real actions on these giant platforms. It's so funny. You say that about Tik TOK because you're right. Like everyone,

like Facebook had like the five years of media coverage from hell because of all the horrible shit that they did. But now they get to go, oh, well, we're the American assholes. Who do you prefer? The American assholes or the Chinese assholes? And of course, they can get 70 percent of Congress to be angrier about, you know, xenophobia than they are about, you know, what what Zuckerberg's doing at home, which I would argue is far worse. The fact that you say I'm sorry, I'm responding to everything that you said because you made so many good points. The fact that you say that regulation is what it's going to take, like antitrust enforcement, I think answers my question, which is that there is no more flexibility. Like we are now stuck with

these giant platforms and it's going to take literally the action of the federal government to do something about it. Right. Yeah. I mean, these are like some of the most powerful platforms in the entire world and the amount that they spend on lobbying and the fact that people in Congress have stock in these companies, which is crazy to me. I just I think it's going to take something pretty major to like dethrone them and. We'll see if it happens anytime soon. I mean, I just, I think it's going to take something pretty major to like dethrone them and we'll see if it happens anytime soon. I mean, I don't think Congress seems to want to, it's like you said that now they can put a point to TikTok as the boogeyman and it's like, Oh no, it doesn't matter that we, by the way, like everything. It's so funny to me that, um, just interrupt myself for a second.

Every single thing that they've accused TikTok of there's evidence of Facebook doing it's mind boggling. They're like election disinformation. It's like, there's actually most of that's on, on YouTube or, um, uh, you know, uh, well, it's a lot on YouTube too, but also meta. And, you know, I thought of this recently because my colleague drew who I, I can't hype enough. My reporting partner, um, did a great story where he, um, looked into the, there was this narrative that, um very pro-Palestine. It's pushing the majority of the pro-Palestine stuff. In fact, it was Instagram. In fact, Instagram and Meta have, which is, by the way, totally, you know, great.

That's people expressing themselves, right? Like they can express themselves in those ways, but it's just this notion of like TikTok's brainwashing everyone. It's like, but actually there's more information about this being shared on Instagram. So. Yeah. It's like, but actually there's more I feel about a current war and what I think is happening and my own country's role in it, that then you have people saying, oh, that's just TikTok. That's just the Chinese forcing them to do it or whatever. I mean, that's such a toxic dynamic and it only exists because, again,

there's a few couple of companies that run everything. There's a little grain of truth in there that yes, these companies are way too powerful, but that's being used to denigrate the people who are using the software. Well, that's being used to dismiss genuine political frustrations. And rather than listen and say, huh, it's like that, like Simpsons memes like, am I wrong? No, it's the children.

Well, it's you are wrong. Like, yes, this is genuine political speech. And rather than grapple with the fact that their policies and outlook is wildly out of step with pretty much everyone under the age of 30. They they're like blaming the TikTok algorithm for like programming them. And it's like, again, there's no evidence of that. OK, OK. We have to go to break because we could talk for a million years when we get back. I want to ask you about the so-called creator economy and because I have a lot of opinions about it. I want to know what you think. We'll be right back with more Taylor Lawrence. OK, we're back with Taylor Lawrence.

We were talking about how, you know, the rise of mommy bloggers that leads to the monetization of this type of new type of internet personality. And then how, when it started on Instagram, you know, this again had to be invented that this was a way that people would get paid. But now when you look at all these services, they all are creator economy, creator economy, we're supporting creators. You can monetize blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's their literal business model. I have a lot of questions and qualms about that. What do you think led to that rise and what are the effects been? Well, I mean, yeah.

Well, what I think that the term creator economy, by the way, was never used by anybody until Silicon Valley VCs really started embracing it in 2021. And that was because once the pandemic hit and everyone was forced online and basically like everyone was sort of forced to consume internet entertainment. And that's when the VCs finally woke up. And after shit talking the influencers for like literally 10 years, they're like, Oh shit, wait, actually there's maybe we can make money off these people. So that's a great opportunity. And so they like pivoted and started to be like, oh, it's about emboldening creators.

It's really just about like squeezing everyone and pushing everyone to monetize, you know, and commodify themselves in sort of the most invasive ways possible so that they can get a cut of it, which is very self-interested. But I do think that like, I mean, I am a supporter of independent media

and I do think that these platforms have enabled a certain type of media that is valuable and sort of a counter to traditional media. But a lot of it's just exploitation and them selling people this sort of false lie. I mean, a friend of mine was saying, too, it's like it's the this whole creator economy stuff is really reinvigorated. friend of mine was saying too, it's like, it's the, this whole creator economy stuff has really reinvigorated this, like the same lie of the American dream where it's like, anybody can make it just move to America and anybody can make it. And we're just a big, you know, land of opportunity. And that's how these platforms sell themselves as well. It's like, anybody can make it on YouTube. Look at Mr. Beast. He was just a random guy. And so all you have to do is just work hard and keep posting, you know, that's such a lie. That's such a lie. And they're selling it to, by the way, children. And that's why I have like,

and so, and this is, this is my problem. I mean, if you go on Twitch right now, you will find millions of 14 year olds who are giving Twitch eight hours of free content a day because Twitch told them that if they do one day, they can be like, you know, Hassan or, or whatever, any of their favorite Twitch streamers. Um, and in fact, if you use the Twitch interface, it's gamified. So it tells you, Oh, good job. You stream for three hours in a row. Oh, good job. You stream for five days in a row. And these people are being paid nothing and they're doing it in the hopes that one day maybe Twitch will break off a little piece of ad revenue to give them as though it were a career, as though it were something that they could practice and get good at. And, you know, they hold up these examples of this person.

This one person is making millions of dollars. The Mr. Beasts of the world. When that is a vanishingly small portion and the average creator is like maybe making a couple grand a year if they're lucky. Like even the people who like look like they're successful. It's it's such a lie. And it's it's exploiting. It's child labor. So I literally this industry runs on child labor.

It's wild to me. And but this is the problem with America, by the way, writ large, like we hold up people like Jeff Bezos or, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, right. Or like any, these like billionaires where we're like, anybody can make it in America. These people started with nothing. First of all, they're usually very privileged and that's never true, but also they are the exception to the millions of other hardworking people that can work their life and work their asses off their whole life. And they'll never be billionaires, right? And it's the same thing.

It's like, and I think children have internalized it so much. Like we're, I mean, I just got back a couple of months ago from this camp for teaching kids to be YouTubers, ages six to 12. And I was interviewing these kids about like why they want to be YouTubers.

And they've just internalized this tech company propaganda from the beginning. And a lot of their parents have too, because they do see these examples of success and because nobody really understands how it works. Like they don't actually, because we've completely abdicated covering,

the media has done no job of basically covering this entire industry instead of they just dismissed it for like two decades. They don't have an understanding of how it works. And so they do see this like examples of virality. They're like, oh yeah, I saw that like this random kid went viral and now he's on Ellen. That must just be how it goes.

And it's like, no, it's not how it goes. It's not how it goes for 99.999% of people. It's crazy how many people have said to me in the entertainment industry, like people I work with who work in television, right? They'll be like, oh man, people are making so much money on Tik TOK. And I have to tell them, like, I have a million and a half Tik TOK followers and I can get a million views on a Tik TOK whenever I want. And you know how much money I make from Tik TOK when I do that $40, that's how much they pay you from the YouTube from the TikTok creator fund. If you get a million views for them now, it's better on YouTube. Right.

But TikTok has somehow spread this lie among the public that like everybody is getting rich on. I don't know who the fuck's getting rich on TikTok. How many people, maybe a thousand, a couple thousand are like making amazing money and like 10,000 are making, you know, half of a living. And then everybody else is making pocket change. But the company is telling people this is where you, the ads for Tik TOK are literally like, I started my business on Tik TOK and now I'm so successful. Like it's like they fucking one shark tank or something. It's, it's ridiculous. Well, it is kind of like this, like it's a lottery economy, like our whole,

Well, it is kind of like this, like it's a lottery economy, like our whole, it's just a lottery and it's, it's mostly luck. And I, yeah, it's just, I mean, it's incredibly frustrating as a journalist because you have to kind of like constantly debunk it. And what are most, most stories about content creators, again, because there's no actual, there's not very much now, of course, there's people like Kaya Yurev and Amanda Pirelli who are actually covering the industry, but there hasn't been coverage. There's been almost no journalists covering this beat. So like the stories that get written are just like, wow, this guy became a YouTube millionaire. Oh my God, Ryan's toys, you know, like he was a child and now he's rich.

And I cannot wait for that kid to grow up and write a book, by the way, like, what's going on with Ryan? So you know what? Yeah. Ryan actually, I think is Ryan is like so famous. He's kind of living in Hawaii and like, I think his parents are pretty chill. I'm worried about the kids that are not like, it's always, and same thing with like the family channels. It's the people with like 30,000 subscribers that are the desperate. Yes. And also like, they're the ones doing more extreme things and pushing. And you know, it's like when you're at the top of the top, you're kind of sitting pretty. It's like you're working hard, but mostly people know you because you've gotten all this media attention.

So you're like, you can spin it in. And like, I mean, I will say just back to Ryan, what he's done is really successful in the sense that he just created his own. He created, he's I think 11, but his team has created a toy line. So it's like he can go away tomorrow. That toy line is still going to be gone. They leveraged it into a business. And I think that's what you have to do. I mean, a lot of us like from bloggers, it's like, we leverage it into a media career, right. Or like you leverage it into like, I talked to actors a lot about this who are on TikTok because, um, you, like you said,

like, I mean, my friend was saying like, you can just do like a half day, like acting job and you're getting paid more than you would you know pay for tiktok in a month right like yes and so um i think the best thing is to sort of like use that attention to like leverage yourself into getting more auditions or more whatever you actually want to do and it it can do that sometimes i mean but but sometimes not i mean so look i'm a stand-up comic and stand- up comedians are so upset now because like, oh, you got to post on TikTok. Now you got to stand up comedy. You got to post. You got to do clips. So it's all about the clips now. And so, you know, I know some comics who do very well with the clips and it's improved their tour sales and stuff like that.

And good for them. I know other comics who post clips all the time nobody watch they're great comics the clips are good but the algorithm doesn't like them and they're posting them they're giving again free content to these services getting very little in return because again instagram still benefits if only 5 000 people watch your video that's a little bit more time a bunch of people spent on the app. It's part of the long tail, but, uh, you know, they're not benefiting that much. Um, and sometimes they're spending a lot of money to put their own, let me put my self a tape, a standup special and put it on YouTube, et cetera. Uh, but at the same time, it's not untrue that you do have to do it to a certain extent. Like if you're not visibly, you know,

on these platforms that everybody is using, then do you even exist? I know. It's a catch-22. It's horrible. And again, they have created this massive ecosystem of free labor. And it's so antithetical to like everything

that we spent like most of the sort of 20th century, like building of like, which had so many problems, traditional Hollywood has so many problems, traditional media has so many problems, but they at least have unions and pay minimums. And, you know, you are not doing, I mean, you do some amount of creative labor for free, of course, like you're auditioning and things, but it's, there's a structure and you can actually make a living. Maybe it's hard, but it's nothing like now where it's like, again, basically work for free and hope you go viral. And if you do go viral, hope that you can even profit from that virality because often you can't. Yes. You know, if you look at the beginning of these sites like YouTube, right? You, I, I was putting video content on the internet before YouTube.

Um, the promise of YouTube, it was very hard. It was hard to put your video up. It was hard to find. We, we went from server to server trying to find someone that could handle the traffic, right? YouTube comes along. They say, we'll handle all the traffic for you. You just click upload and it works. Right. And that was such a valuable service that people started using it in droves. It was a lot like Google first arising. Oh, my God, we all needed this. And so, of course, it's dominant. And so then they say, well, yeah, if you you know, if we make a little money from the ads, then we'll break off some money for you too. And no one asked you to do this. So why would you be paid just for uploading, you know, anything unless you're very

successful. But now with the rise of the creator economy, all these companies are building their businesses and, and monetizing people who are uploading stuff that they are not paying for. And that's where it's in the last couple of years, it's feel like it's tipped over into, hold on a second. I'm no longer just benefiting from getting to upload my video for free to YouTube or TikTok or whatever it is.

Now I'm providing free labor to a massive corporation or this massive corporation, more correctly, is asking millions and millions of people to give them shit for free in order to compete with Netflix. I mean, literally YouTube is trying to compete with Netflix. The difference between you

as well, you put do benefits. They don't pay for the content. TikTok literally, I was at the Cannes film festival this year where TikTok of course had their own award for the best TikTok film. Um, and they talk about themselves explicitly as an entertainment company. And we're like, yes, we are here with the other TikTok film. And they talk about themselves explicitly as an entertainment company. And we're like, yes, we are here with the other entertainment companies. And it's like, okay, but they are paying people. You're not paying anyone.

Everyone in this TikTok film competition, no one paid, they had to pay for it. So it's like- They probably had to pay to fly to whatever the conference was. It was just so crazy. Well, it was like, they were like, they were trying to say like,

look, we have like filmmaking on TikTok, which is true. But again, they're positioning themselves against the Netflix's. And by the way, the Netflix's are, you know, having problems or whatever, but like, you know, there's problems with Netflix as well. I'm not trying to say like, Oh, that's so wonderful. Right. Like, but at least they, they like operate within the realm of like these sort of norms, right. These like norms that we spent decades developing of like paying for creative labor, understanding creative labor, like, and the social media platforms, there's no pretense of that at all. Yeah. It's it's so frustrating. And now I'm just mad. I need to think of another question. I mean, is there, you know, at the same time, I really want to acknowledge here I am my last, you know, I make stuff for traditional media and for streaming.

And yet here I am with a YouTube channel and, you know, a Patreon and a podcast and all the accoutrement. And, you know, it does it does provide a living for me in between my television products and projects and my stand up touring. living for me in between my television products and projects and my standup touring. So, you know, I don't want to be a hypocrite and say that there are no benefits to the new media ecosystem we live in because, you know, 15 years ago, I would not have had this outlet. And I would have just been saying, Hey, when is NBC or comedy central going to put me on the air again so people can see me. And now I can like make my own little late night show here on, uh, here on YouTube, instead of asking someone to do it. And that is liberating to an extent until you get on the platform and you suddenly realize how much you have to do and how much at their whims you are.

Uh, but how do you think about that balance between the benefits of how many more voices we have access to how some people, not as many as advertised, but some people are able to build a business and the scam that all of these companies are perpetrating on us. Cause I see it both ways. Totally. And that's like what I think my book like grapples with is like both of those two, right? Like it's, it's given, I mean, the, the rise of social media, as I write in my book is like given more people, I think the chance to sort of directly benefit from their labor than any other time in history in the sense that like, you can, as you mentioned, you can get out there and you can do your own thing. You can write a song that you can now

upload to the internet. You don't need a record label, right. To distribute your, your creative work. Um, but it's very hard and it's very hard to monetize and all these things. I think there's good and bad. I think fundamentally, I believe that work and creative work done on the internet should be considered just as valuable as traditional creative labor. And I think about that a lot in the terms of journalism, because I started as a blogger when people were like, are bloggers even real journalists? You know, if you do journalism on the web, I'll never forget when I got my first byline interview, I used to write for the Atlantic and I wrote this big feature and I was like, I'm in The Atlantic and stuff. And somebody quote tweets me and it's like, oh, but it's it's the website.

It's not the real Atlantic, you know, and like making these weird distinctions. And it's like now you would never even make those distinctions. I don't even know. I think The Atlantic is still in print. I'm not even sure. I mean, I'm still a little, you know, I'm a media reader and I still have a little bit of that old school, you know, bias in me. Like when, you know, my girlfriend had, who's a wonderful illustrator named Lisa Hanawalt, had a piece in the New Yorker a couple of years ago or last year. And it was a big deal to me that it was in the print New Yorker, right? Because that's the magazine that's been coming to my house for 20 years. And, you know, the website's great, but I can't get away from it a little bit.

I think, okay, so I don't view it that way, I guess, because I also think working in media, you see how completely arbitrary it is, what actually makes it in print. The reason it's in print is so random. A lot of times it's just like, oh shit, we need 500 to fit on this page because we sold an ad here. So we need something this length here. It's random. And it doesn't speak to the – it's great. I'm not saying like to diminish the quality of stuff in print, but it's just very like – it's sort of a novelty product at this point.

And I do think that like – You're completely right. And this is a healthier view. But it's just funny how blunt you are about it. Please continue. I mean, trust me. I, when my book got reviewed in the economist and it was in print, I like made a whole tick tock and I'm not saying like, it's fun to see, but it's more just for the Instagram. I mean, I, um, the former editor in chief of the New York times said the same thing when I was actually interviewing for the times. And he was like, yeah, you know, people only care about getting on A1 because they want to post their Instagram of I made it on the front page. And I'm like, yes, true. Nobody actually,

I don't even know where to find the newspaper. So I, you know, I think it's like all these shifts. My feeling is just that we should take the internet seriously. Like whether, you know, yes, there's good. Yes, there's bad. But the point is, is that we need to have these conversations and start from the point of taking it seriously. And most journalism covering the Internet still in 2023, 2024 or whatever you're in now almost does not take the Internet seriously. And it's the silly, dismissive TikTok shit. Right. And that's a huge problem. Yeah, I mean, it's a healthier view that you have. And yet, and the intro to this entire podcast is me saying exactly what you're saying,

that we need to take the internet seriously. And yet inside me, there's that little cultural bias, you know, towards the prestige of traditional media. And it's everywhere. Like, look at what Netflix, when Netflix launched, what did they do? Why did they try to win those Emmys? They wanted to be TV, not YouTube.

And people used to make jokes. Oh, is House of Cards going to win a Webby? No, they, they won an Emmy, right? Sorry. Go, go for it, please. Okay. This is like my biggest thing. Like, because I decided in the beginning of my career, I don't care about it.

You have to not, you have to just make, like, think of the future and just be be like like for me, I was like, I only care about the Internet. And I that is the only thing that matters to me. So, yes, I will happily take a job at The Atlantic if it means I'm only writing for the Internet, because I know that that's fundamentally what it would actually matters. Right. And I think like for prestige, I used to work for People magazine and worked on some of the stuff about like basically we were deciding sort of which Internet celebrities would be big enough to make it into the magazine. Right. And it's the I was talking to all these content critics, just like back in 2015. The only reason they wanted to get in those magazines, one is the novelty, like, oh, look, I'm here. But it was also to, like, appeal to the boomers who have the money. One is the novelty, like, oh, look, I'm here.

But it was also to like appeal to the boomers who have the money. So there is that value, like you're saying with Netflix of like, okay, that's going to appeal to a certain level of people that still care about prestige. But I promise you, everyone younger doesn't actually care about that stuff. And those signifiers don't mean what you think they mean.

Even in sports, like ESPN used to have this really strong brand and like ESPN, like it mattered less and less. It matters, especially it doesn't have the same brand equity today. Same thing with, I was in, I got a huge profile in L magazine. Um, when my book came out, nobody can, no hate to L it's a great magazine, but it wasn't like, had I got that in 2005. Right.

So I think we all just need to like, just forget about all the prestige bullshit. Prestige stuff is such bullshit. And it's, it's going away because what, think of what was prestige to our parents and how stupid that seemed to us. Right. Like, yeah, that's just how it goes. So anyway, whatever I, I, yeah, I can say this of course, with the luxury of working for a prestige media, or like, there's a reason I work for the Washington Post. I'm not trying to say, you know, nothing, but we're in a shifting world. I mean, you, okay, I'm going to, so first of all, the way that you're speaking is so liberated

and that is the way that I wish I could feel. And yet, if you were, if you had a sub stack, all right, and you were making a healthy living, you had a great readership, you were exactly as well-known of a reporter as you are currently. Everybody knew Taylor Lorenzo's name. Everyone read your sub stack.

You had enough subscribers to make a healthy living. In the back of your mind, wouldn't you be a little bit like, but I wish I worked for the Washington Post. Not at all? Not even a fucking sliver. No, absolutely not. Okay, good. No. No no that would be the dream but I mean

independence is is it would be incredible but no no I don't I because I don't respect any of that like it's just it's bullshit and I think also like I you know I grew up you know, I grew up in a town. I grew up in this town in Connecticut right outside the city called Greenwich. It's a very nice town. And it's like a lot of money and whatever. And I just I remember this with colleges. I went to state school for most of college, but I just saw a lot of like nepotism growing up, I think, and people getting jobs they didn't deserve. And I think very young, from a very young age, I've just always considered that entire sort of legacy prestige world, a lie. It's just a lie. And it's a farce. And I, when I got, I did a, this is going to also sound like I'm such a hypocrite, but I did this felt this fellowship

at Harvard. And, um, I remember when they were sort of like, I was applying and they were asking me to do it. And I was just like, this is is such this just shows that like they they actually those institutions respect you more when you don't buy into their bullshit because then they kind of want your approval and then they're like oh what's she doing over there oh you know and they but it's like if you chase that yes they almost don't respect you as much which it it's wild. If you're like, I'm too big for you, then they want you. Then they're like, wait a minute. Hey. The problem is these dynamics do still affect us.

It reminds me a little bit of my relationship with like Hollywood award shows where like I did a whole segment on my show about Hollywood award shows, how they're bullshit. I'm a member of some of the academies that vote for these awards. I know that they are true bullshit. I'm a member of some of the academies that vote for these awards. I know that they are true bullshit. And yet a, I would love to stand on a stage and hold a trophy. That would, that would be meaningful to me, despite myself and B it would have a meaningful effect on my career because of the prestige that goes along with it because other people give a shit and you're like, fuck, I can't. And by the way, everyone else who ever, who works on one of my, like I campaigned for, you know, awards that we were never nominated for because I'm like, it would mean so much to everyone who worked on the show to get a nomination. It would improve

literally their material reality because it would help their careers. So that's what you have to focus on is the material. That's what you have to. And you just, and if look, and if you go into it like that, like a lot of these content creators do where it's like, I mean, when I, um, when I was interviewing someone for the New York times, I was profiling on a content creator and she was like, yeah, I'll talk to you because I'm trying to get, she was trying to get some deal with Walmart or something. And she was like, this is going to help me with that. It's not because I give a shit about being in the New York times. I have a much bigger audience, but like I give like, it's going to get me something. And so if you can approach it that way and not recognize that all these systems are so

biased, right. Awards are totally made up like nonsense. And it's mostly politics. Like I would argue about who wins, um, you know, you can, then you can be like, look, okay, I don't give a shit about this, but as you said, it is going to, because there are people who care. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who care, unfortunately, there are a lot of people who still care about these systems. I would argue that they're diminishing. Those people are going to retire soon. And you should, the thing you should care about most is sort of your own, your own aspirations. Like what do you actually want, you know, and what do you really want to achieve? And even if you never got any award and you never got any recognition. And I always say this myself, like I, I, I would work for the daily dots still, if I could still do the work that I work, like my goal is to just do the work

that I want to do. Um, this is such a good therapy session for me. Uh, and I, I need to hear it. Uh, but I do have, cause I'm, you know, again, here I am on doing this on YouTube. And yet I'm still like, God damn it. You know, I would love to be, you know, be doing this on a television network. So no one could watch it? So 10 people in their 60s could leave it on in the background? No, here's, this is leading me to my next question, right? Because it's true.

Less people watch those things than ever, right? Why would I want to host The Daily Show or whatever it is, right? Because it's true. Less people watch those things than ever, right? Why would I want to host the daily show or whatever it is, right? When a couple hundred thousand people are watching that a night versus, you know, how many were 20 years ago and versus how many people are on YouTube. Um, and people are now watching that type of content on YouTube. That's where people come for their late night style content to see a funny person talk about what happened yesterday. They go to YouTube. That's where they're watching the daily show, right? Their daily show gets millions of hits here. Here's the problem.

The Daily, if I was hosting The Daily Show or a comparable show, I'd have a couple hundred thousand dollars per episode that I could use to make that show. I could hire writers and researchers. I could get a great camera crew and I could actually do work that I cannot do here on YouTube

because here on YouTube, I can make enough living for myself. I can pay a couple of freelancers. We've got this wonderful studio here with HeadGum because they have a business model, but this is not, we do not have the resources of cable television. And so that is, and to me, when I look at it, I'm like, all right, that is a devaluing of the media because a comedian 20 years ago would have all those resources. A comedian today is doing it in their bedroom.

They're getting the same number of hits. Maybe they can even personally make as much money as they would have if they get the right sponsorships that they would have 20 years, 20 years ago. But the quality of the content is worse because they do not have enough money to spend on all of it. And I worry about that devaluing what we do. You know, same thing as if you look at all the great magazines are dead, obviously.

Right. And now all those people are having sub stacks. But don't some of those people on sub stack who are making a healthy living going, going, God, I wish I still worked for the the giant media company of 20 years ago could have sent me around the world. And we would have had all of these. You know, I would have had a photographer and a da da da da da. And I could have done something on the level that I can't do now when I'm just sitting in my bedroom, writing on my laptop. Do you have any thought about that? This is why I work for the Washington post a hundred percent. Like, and I totally agree with you. I think it's, and I think it's, by the way, I think it's the tech companies that have devalued this labor where now everyone, like you said, you have to be your own director.

And that's the huge problem. I don't work at the Washington Washington post because I think it's some prestigious brand that I want to be affiliated with. I work there because I have a level of resources that I would never have independently because it's very hard to build that for yourself. As you, as you said, just it's, you actually almost never can build it yourself in this, in this day and age. Like there's just not a world where you're going to have a separate person copy edit, right? Like you don't have that or a photographer follow you around for your big stories. Like, so I think that's the problem, right? Is that there's disparity in resources and that's down to the tech companies. And I wish that we could have independent media that we could build on the top of the internet that had that level, those levels of resources.

I don't know that we can. And I worry about, as you said, the devaluing and just the notion that, oh, actually, everybody can do this with a smartphone because they can't. That's a lie. That's what the tech companies want you to think. cannot produce the type of like television product or, you know, like this type of show or journalism or entertainment product or information product that you could with. Yeah. With the resources of traditional Hollywood and media, you can't. Yeah.

And, you know, I get bummed out where I did a lot of media during our strike, you know, and I would get bummed out whenever I'd talk to a reporter who would come up to me with an iPhone and a little mic that they would put on me themselves. And then they'd hold up their iPhone and ask me questions. And I'd be like, I mean, I wish you, I wish you had a crew, you know, like you, you should have more, you are doing a good job. Um, uh, how has it been for you watching, uh, as someone who has really made, you know, inhabited this space so fully and who has taken some shit in your time for, you know, talking about the notion of having

a personal brand and, and, you know, making a living on social media from the sort of older school of journalists. How has it been for you watching journalism make this shift into, uh, you know, with the rise of sub stack and all of these other platforms, where now journalists are having to also, you know, be an online social media business slash brand. Yeah, it's been a little bit vindicating, but also sad. I mean, I feel vindicated in the sense that, yes, people dragged me for like 10 years, I guess, for saying this. And it's like, guys, drag me all you want.

The future is coming. This is inevitable. And I think people conflate the stuff that I cover with some sort of endorsement of it. I'm very critical of the industry. If you read my work, I'm not, I'm not writing those, like how to be a millionaire on Tik TOK. Like some, some of the stories are positive and interesting and some of them are kind to the creators that I cover, but it's not like I'm in zero way. Am I a defender of these tech platforms? Um, so, you know, I think it's been, it's been bizarre. It's been sad as well, because I worry, I mean, I talk about this a lot, but my, my editor is 71 years old. He is one of the best editors I've ever had in my entire life. He is, I would die for this man. He is so good. And yet, um, I hope he doesn't mind me saying his age, by the way, but like, I, what is going to happen when he

leaves? Like I literally have nightmares and like panic over the thought of him retiring because he has so much institutional knowledge and judgment and, and just experience. And that when you tell everyone like, Oh, let's push these old people out. We're just all going to have our iPhones and blog on Substack. You lose something there. And I think it's a huge, it makes me very sad. And I, by the way, I also don't want to live in a world where every journalist has to have a personal brand. A friend of mine covers police violence and does these just phenomenal investigations that take like nine months to a year sometimes.

And, you know, works for a major newspaper, but it's like, he shouldn't have to be on TikTok. Like he should, there should be a world where somebody can do that and make a great living and do that really important work. And I'm lucky because I don't mind, you know, I've, I'm an internet person and I've covered the internet. And of course I'm happy to make content all over because I'm, you know, I would probably be doing it anyway, but I don't, those are very different skills that some of us have. Some of us have that want and the desire and can film ourselves and figure out CapCut.

Some of the best journalists out there don't. And I don't, I hate that they have to. I hate that I want to live in a world where they don't have to. So it's depressing. What you're talking about is the sort of death that they have to, I hate that I want to live in a world where they don't have to. So it's depressing. What you're talking about is the sort of death of a lot of infrastructure, um, in, in media. And I felt that too, again, in comedy, uh, you know, just like I was talking about standup comedians, a lot of standup comedians don't know how to film. They don't know how to edit. They shouldn't have

to their standup comedians. Their job is to do a joke in front of people and make them laugh in that room. And you know what there used to be? There used to be a company called Comedy Central that was a huge piece of important infrastructure in American comedy. They would do festivals. They would put out people's albums. They would give people their first seven minutes doing, you know, on a showcase style show, they would do a Comedy Central half hour. Then maybe you guest on the Daily Show or whatever it is. People would do their hours. It was like literally top to bottom.

It was like an infrastructure talent development for comedy. And they didn't always choose the right people, right? It wasn't always perfect. But there were people who are professionals who could work there and go, this is a great comic. Let's get them into the system. Let's help develop them. Give them some notes, da, da, da some notes. Now that whole company is essentially dead. It's a shell of what it was. And it didn't have to be that way. It wasn't necessarily going to be killed by social media. They allowed it to happen

by not keeping up as, I mean, I think the Washington Post luckily has kept up better than other newspapers. There's a lot of other 71 year old editors who lost their jobs five or 10 years ago because the paper just didn't compete and collapsed or was disemboweled by some, you know, firm that wanted to, you know, take it, sell it for parts. And I think that to me is the sad part of the transition to so many great things about social media. The platforms are bad. But one of the sad things is, is a lot of infrastructure in media has collapsed that didn't have to. Yeah, exactly. And it's a, it's a huge loss and I don't think we're gonna get that back. And I, you know, I don't know what's going to happen, but I, but I,, but I am kind of the one thing that I've seen that's given me a little hope is there is in media.

There's this great website, 404 Media. Have you heard of it? Yes, I know 404 Media, yeah. They're so good. And like, there's also Defector. There's been these like sort of collectives, like almost like content collectives, but in journalism where like,

these people have left major publications, like 404, they left Vice, Defector, they left Gawker, but it's like like these people have left major publications like 404, they left Vice, Defector, they left Gawker, but it's like they go and they sort of monetize individually. 404 is like literally doing the best journalism in all of tech media right now. It's actually insane the level that they are competing on. These are former Vice staffers from Motherboard who were doing amazing work there. And then they started after vice had a yet another round of layoffs, they started their own company and I'm a subscriber and they do incredible work. It's insane. And they're like running circles around like every other tech journalist at like every major publication. And so it's given me a

little hope. I hope that they are making millions. Like I just, I want them to survive. I'm so scared. I like, you know, because you see these things and you're like, holy shit, like somehow you're doing this. Like, I don't know how, but somehow you're doing this. And normally it takes a huge amount of resources to do the type of work that they're doing because you have to FOIA, you need lawyers,

you need, you know, a lot of infrastructure and somehow they're doing it. But yeah, I subscribe to them, I guess. I wanted to ask you about the future and what made you optimistic because sometimes it seems as though, even though we have these giant dominant platforms, there's a little bit of fragmentation happening

where someone like me can sort of put a living together with like, okay, Patreon, podcasts are still not centralized. They're not dominated by Spotify or any other company. They're still very decentralized. You know, YouTube is its own problem, but it doesn't need to be, you know, my entire world. And then you've got journalists, again, yeah, going to Substack or creating these little collectives. It does.

It feels like, I don't know, life is finding a way on the internet despite the very, very harsh circumstances. How, how, how do you look at the next five years? What do you think is going to happen? Yeah. I mean, the thing about tech is everything changes and everything can change so quickly. So I, I have a lot of, I mean, I'm a tech optimist, not in the Marc Andreessen way, because he's a pathological liar, but like, I do believe in a better world through technology. And I just think that like, we need the billionaire, like like, I do believe in a better world through technology. And I just think that like, we need the billionaire, like we, I don't want to live in a tech ecosystem controlled by these like billionaires in that sense. I like what the mastodon people have to

say, right. Where they have this sort of still like utopian distributed model of social. And like, I, I don't know. I think that we just need to sort of like educate ourselves about these problems and talk about them and, and have real conversations about these platforms instead of just dismissing them. But I'm hopeful that with enough sort of collective understanding of these problems, we can see solutions. I do think one thing that's changed in the past year, and especially since the whole like creator economy discussion is people actually understand it as labor. Whereas five years ago, Adam, I would write these stories and people would be like, it's the internet. That's just women taking selfies. It's a bunch of people taking selfies. And it's like, no, no, no, that's not what's happening. Sure. That's happening, but it's

actually work. And so I think people are starting to recognize that. And, um, and also the internet is just increasingly becoming our default reality. And so, you know, that's coming with a whole new list of implications. So, so we'll see, I don't, I don't have faith in the government at all, but I do hope that through sort of collective bargaining and actually, you know, speaking of the unions, like SAG, you know, the content creators can join SAG now through that influencer agreement. That's been really transformative. And I wrote about this, but like that's given a lot of, it's given a lot of content creators healthcare who didn't have healthcare. I mean, Sid Raskin, who's a lot of it's given a lot of content creators health care who didn't have health care. I mean, I said Raskin, who's a friend of mine, who's a big content creator, had a child recently.

That child has health care through SAG and he has a TikTok. You know, he's a content creator full time. He does life hat content on the Internet. So, wow, there's signs of that. I mean, they need to do a lot to allow more content creators and podcasters. And but I do think that like some of the work these unions are doing is, is really valuable. And one thing that I think is,

I think all the time is despite how calcified these apps have gotten and how awful they are. And despite the fact that new apps seem impossible to arise, we've seen clubhouse and be real all die. You were there for clubhouse. You were, we didn't even talk about clubhouse. You were in the fucking middle of that as the rise and collapse of this bizarre service. Um, all of those services are failing, but you can't hold

people down. Like people, all these services are still full of people, funny, weird, angry, stubborn people who are just saying, fuck you. I'm using this service however I want. And there's people all over the internet doing interesting things and you can't stop people from doing interesting things. So there's, there's always still some interesting positive story happening on the internet, no matter where I look. And one of the things I love about your work is you're always bringing us those stories. Oh, thank you. Well, the fundamental point of the internet is to connect people. And I think human connection is a basic and desire for entertainment. And like you said, it's this like basic fundamental human desire. So yeah, it's not going away.

I'm so glad that you cover it and that you have written this history of it. The book is called Extremely Online. People can pick up a copy at our special bookshop at factuallypod.com slash books as always. But Taylor, where else can people find you on the internet? I'm sure absolutely everywhere. Yeah. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram. I'm just at Taylor Lorenz everywhere. Great. Awesome. Taylor, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. Well, thank you once again to Taylor for coming on the show.

I hope you loved that conversation as much as I did. If you want to pick up a book, once again, factuallypod.com slash books. If you want to support this show, you can do so on Patreon. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of this show ad free. Now for 15 bucks a month, I will put your name in the credits of every one of my video monologues and read your name on this show. Recently, I want to thank Busy B, Josh Davies, Lois Bell, DPEJ, Amet A, and Monica Thompson.

Thank you so much for supporting the show and helping make sure it stays free for everyone else who wants to watch. I want to thank everybody here at HeadGum for making this show possible. My producers, Sam Rodman and Tony Wilson. You can find me online at adamconover.net and my tour dates there as well. Don't forget Portland, Maine, Boston, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Nashville, a bunch of other cities, adamconover.net for tickets and tour dates. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time on Factually.