Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) - the horny duolingo bird lives: zaria parvez

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

Where do you go from pivoting your brand to nihilism? Horny, my friends. WILDLY horny. In our final installment of the Sentient Horny Brand series, Jamie speaks to the mind behind Duolingo’s chaotic, wildly horny social media presence Zaria Parvez. Remember when you couldn’t get the owl giving birth to sponges off your feed? Remember when you didn’t even WANT to? That was her, and getting there was a wild ride.We talk about her journey from nearly taking down a Christian school to changing the way that Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumes advertising, one shitpost at a time.  Follow Zaria here: https://www.instagram.com/zariaparvez Join us on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/SixteenthMinute/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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QuarZone Media I'm not so bad when you turn up the lights, but I'm going to be perfect, all over the time. To make me a start, let's take it too far, then give me one moment. Sixteen minutes of fame Sixteen minutes of fame Sixteen minutes of face One more minute of fame I'm not so bad

when you take me on my mind When I can't just say you're going to die Welcome back to 16th Minute, the podcast where we take a look at the Internet's main characters, see how their moment affected them, and what that says about us and the Internet. I'm your host, Jamie Loftus, and today, after a saga that took us all the way back to the turn of the 20th century in American marketing and up to literally last week, this is the fourth and final installment in our. are sentient brands that sometimes get too violent or horny series. So just to start, if you haven't listened to our first several parts, please go do that. And if you're joining us again, congratulations. You have made it to the Duolingo Piss Owl episode.

Hopefully that's thrilling for you. Now, when we left off in our last episode, we spoke with Nathan Alibach of the Nihilist Stakem's account. and we began to inch ever closer toward the present. But while Nathan still works in marketing, as does Amy Brown of Wendy's Twitter Rosemaster fame, neither are still posting on the accounts that they initially made famous. Today, that changes.

My interview for the final part of this series is with someone who I've received potentially a weird amount of requests for. Her name is Zarya Parvez, but you probably know her as the duolingo owl on TikTok. It is not Zaria in the owl suit, at least not usually. Usually it's some guy named Mark. I got the exclusive. Keep listening.

But before we can explore how Zaria Parvez, a recent college graduate, went from suggesting that the inoffensive green owl mascot of a free language learning app become extremely horny and virtually grow the company single-handedly, let's return to the two marketing roads diverging and a wood we were talking about in our last episode. Ian, get the music going. Okay, here we are in the wood. We've explored nihilism as a marketing tactic now through Nathan Alibach's time running social

media for Stakeham, and we discussed his feelings on running the account now all these years later. So today, we're taking a turn into what was until five or so years ago, the final frontier of selling product to a logged in internet person. Being weirdly horny. I won't explain being horny to you. You know it when you see it, when you feel it, you little pervert. But as far as social media marketing goes, being horny as a brand really came alive in the late 2010s and experienced a somewhat unsettling uptick in the early 2020s. And wouldn't you know it? Nathan Olabock carefully tracked and published a short history that marked this turn from anxiety and nihilism in social media advertising being the flavor of the month to the owl that fucks.

He published this in Vulture in 2022. It's a piece called When Brands Got Horny, and I've linked it in the description. So to give you an idea of what I mean by horny brands, consider where we're coming from here. Where Amy Brown at Wendy's Twitter tapped into a propensity for violence, Nathan and Stakeham subsequently appealed to anxiety and depression on social media at the time. Although, because it hasn't come up yet, I will say that no one took advantage of depression more directly, although I do believe it was taken out of context mid-thread, then the fake orange juice brand Sunny D in February 2019, saying,

I can't do this anymore. This still makes me laugh. I'm sorry. But at this point, a tweet like this, would prompt a reaction from other brands that was well-received, but kind of expected at this point. Moon Pies replies to Sunny D. asking if they're okay. Pop-Tart offers Sunny D a hug. You get the idea. Even the official account of Satan, Blue Check and Everything, replied, I feel you, Sunny D, my friend. We have to keep moving. And while there were some horny accounts earlier in the decade, it was mostly because being horny was what actually made sense

for that company. Think the Pornhub Twitter account. But in the back half of the 2010s, it seems like the success of the 50 Shades of Grey franchise sort of emboldened some social media managers to get a little kinkier. From the same week that Sunny Dee threatened suicide, the gigantic multi-billion dollar company Verizon tweeted the following. Yes, T-Mobile, we're into BDSM, bigger coverage map, devastating speed, and massive capacity. Verizon is a terrible company, and yet I am laughing at that. Other examples Nathan Alabuck uses in his piece are Photoshop's or quote-tweeted replies to horny contents from brands like Jimmy Johns and the mixed tape dropping grocery store brand itself hamburger helper in 2017.

But it's the next year. that Nathan identifies that being horny on Maine, and yes, I do feel quite old saying that, but being horny on mean is now culturally acceptable, which means that more brand accounts are willing to do it. And this is a very long way of saying that 2018 was the year that it became popular for brands to participate in No Nut November.

I quit. I quit my job. Just getting, here's a tweet from Burger King on November 1st, 2018. Him, it's only a month. Wifu. Crying emoji. And Burger King follows us up with, Welcome to King Burger, where we can do it your way, but don't get crazy. Okay.

This month is so unpleasant. Next, Corn Nuts spells out the word nut in nut emojis. Mr. Peanut's social media says that you can eat. eat him in November because he's technically a legume. You can see how this fanned out. Nutter Butter obviously got in on this. Really name a nut-based product with a Twitter account, and they were engaging with No Nut November 2018.

But I will say that Corn Nuts did take the cake because they just at one point posted, What is the craziest place you've nutted? Enough! Another successful account posting horny stuff was Netflix. in the late 2010s. And keep in mind, this was when Netflix was much better thought of in the public sphere than it is today and was still sort of considered to be a place to find generally good TV and wasn't yet bleeding

subscribers. But what's interesting here is that Netflix social media accounts from multiple countries were posting horny tweets to the point where it's safe to assume that this was a globally mandated media strategy. We're seeing posts like One time Bay Duna stepped on me And it was awesome What's something you can say during sex But also when you manage a brand Twitter account

And in most detail To line up with the release of that Zach Efron Ted Bundy movie I've seen a lot of talk about Ted Bundy's alleged hotness And would like to gently remind everyone That there are literally thousands of hot men on the service Almost all of whom are not convicted serial murderers.

You get the idea. By early 2020, Arbys had created their own wifu character. And by the time the pandemic lockdown happened, Nathan Alabak traces accounts like this, moving into a more blue ball's horny style of content. So by this logic, we were to believe as social media consumers

that the brands were sitting at home along with millions of other people not having sex. By 2021, horny brands have been fully normalized. I'm talking weird posts of buildabairs

in silk robes called build a bear after dark. I'm talking KFC's Twitter posting Jacked Colonel Sanders fan art without any comment.

And even Denny's harkening back to our first episode in this series comes full circle and pulls from the iHob playbook briefly rebranding itself as, wait for it, Daddy's.

And it's here, we arrive at the Duo Lingo Owl, Horny Saga, that has since evolved into multiple story arcs, and most recently, a pivot back to violence, when the Green Owl Duo mascot, named Duo, was, quote unquote, hit by a cyber truck and killed. And all of this happened just as I started working on this series in early February 2025. And yes, because it is 2025, Duolingo immediately had merch to launch their dead mascot with.

2025 has got us all knocked down, but not to worry, we're monetizing grief because we are a corporation. For the low price of $29.99, you can prove you really love duo and friends with a custom coffin. I mean, you got to hand it to them. Monetizing grief? Who do they think they are? me and every comedian I've ever met? But none of this would be possible without the Duolingo head of social media, Zaria Parvez, who moved from Portland, Oregon to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

shortly after graduating college to start working at Duolingo, and whose energy and enthusiasm, and frankly, just being a long-time poster, brought the company to new heights and escalated all the way to showing Duo the Owl's little ass cheeks during a Super Bowl commercial. And because we did an ethics check

in our last episode to see how closely the business practices of Stakeham aligned with Nathan's progressive social media campaign, I'm going to take this chance to do a quick look at the product that the unhinged energy of Zaria's interpretation of Duo the Owl. So let's take a look.

look at Duolingo. Honestly, after looking at this for a while, I think Zarya Parvez has it a little bit easier than anyone else I've talked to during this series, really just because she's not hawking processed meat. Instead, it's her job to try and engage younger audiences online into learning a second language on their phone. It is a comparatively wholesome mission, and the company itself has been mostly without scandal. And I say mostly because like many long-time successful apps, there has been an

increased reliance on AI from Duolingo that's given them the excuse to lay off much of its workforce and we can assume using AI has had a tremendously negative impact on the environment. No company without sin. But Duolingo was founded in 2011 by two 20-somethings as these businesses tend to be founded by, a guy named Louis von Anne, and the bone-chillingly named Severin Hacker. Imagine knowing a guy with that name. So while the AI controversy is entirely bullshit, and from what I can tell, the founders have been very evasive about it. As far as an app that inevitably collects user data goes, NordVPN recently said that Duolingo is a relatively safe app to use. Sure, they've had data breaches before, but not more than your average app.

I actually used Duolingo myself for a while during the summer of 2019 after I saw the movie Midsummer and decided, Hey, Jamie, what if you learned Swedish so you can midsumar? I'm not sure what the thinking was there, and it was really vulnerable of me to tell you that. Because since the 2020 lockdown, Duolingo membership, with both paid and free account, options has continued to increase. It's a very successful app. And Zaria Parvez explains in our interview that she chose to go to Duolingo over other marketing jobs because of its mission. She wanted to work for a company whose mission she believed in and a workplace that was likely

to be more diverse. Because being Pakistani American, she very often found herself being the only non-white person in the room and hoped that a company with a multicultural mission stood to be a little bit different. So Zaria comes aboard to Duolingo in 2020. A terrible time to be a person, much less a recent college graduate, but as we just revisited, a sort of darkly advantageous time to be a social media marketer. Speaking in the most cynical terms possible, you weren't likely to find a more captive audience than 2020. And learning a language mostly for free seemed to many like a less nihilistic way to spend one's time. But even with that considered, prior to early 2021, Duolingo wasn't really known for its social media presence. Even though, as we

just talked about, horny brand strategy on social media had already reached its peak at this time, at least over on Twitter. So while Zarya didn't invent this style, she has essentially perfected it. Because as any convincing social media marketer does, I've gleaned at this point, she's made her own playbook and posted what she actually thought was funny.

Authenticity. It's the thing that all advertisers are going for and so few actually accomplish. Okay, early 2021. Zaria Parvez has, yet to take the lead on Duo Lingo's social media, but has been at the company for about a year at this point. And Duolingo at this time is running a pretty dry social strategy. And for the purposes of this episode, I'm going to focus on TikTok where they've had the most success. At this time,

the plan was ostensibly to pay existing TikTok influencers to collaborate with the brand and talk about the languages that they were learning in order to get their fans to sign. up for the app. You've seen stuff like this before. It's nothing particularly edgy, but the posts are cute. Did you know that in Dutch there is the saying new comp to app out the mouth, which means now the monkey comes out the sleeve. Newcompta out of the mouth is used when something is revealed that was previously secret. However, the posts were also underperforming. And per Zaria in our interview, the company didn't think it was worth the fees of the influencers to continue it. and instead of thinking of a new strategy, Duolingo very nearly deprioritized TikTok marketing entirely.

And Zaria, an avid TikTok fan herself, disagreed with this and asked for the chance to just chase a few trends on the app. And almost immediately, this approach blew up. In no small part, thanks to a mascot suit of Duo the Green Owl that Zaria found hanging around. around the office, luring at everybody. The first video that blows up is one of Zaria herself, because in the beginning, she appeared in these videos pretty regularly. She's sitting at a desk in the Duolingo offices with the creepy, empty owl mascot suit sitting behind her,

with trending audio playing, how am I supposed to live, laugh, love in these conditions? And in part because of the weirdness of it, and in part because of using that trending audio, this TikTok blows up. And before you know it, Zaria is on a role. She asks a coworker to jump into the Duo Owl suit. That's Mark.

And within a couple of weeks, the TikTok account had fully pivoted to using Duo as a sometimes menacing, sometimes vaguely horny tool to remind people on TikTok to do their daily Duolingo or to sign up and start learning a language if they hadn't already. Now, if you haven't used Duolingo before, this probably sounds weird and circuitous. But if you have, it's no surprise that Zarya's strategy, which was both very intentional and really fun for her to do, worked really well. Because the way that she was anthropomorphizing Duo the Owl was very similar.

to the way that fans of Duolingo had been making popular memes about that same character for years. The difference was that prior to Zaria taking on this role at the front of social media, the company had never interacted with these very popular memes. So while it might sound out of nowhere that Zaria having a static image of the duo mascot suit in the office with her eyes, mouth, and voice lip-syncing to audio like this. Oh, oh, oh, oh, I know it ain't, I know it ain't the consequences of my actions. You know it's your boy. And I just want to apologize here because I know how painful it is for people to explain TikToks to you.

Just ask your most annoying friend. But the comments that Duo, or Zaria, was replying to here, all had to do with Duo lingo streaks? Or basically, did you use Duolingo today to preserve your however many day long streak of learning whichever language? It's a big incentive of using the app and always had been. So users had made a ton of memes of the reminder push notifications that Duolingo would often send its users to remind them to do their daily lessons or lose their streak. And these notifications, and these notifications, were presented, somewhat menacingly, by the supposedly friendly duo the owl. And this led to the user-generated meme, evil duolingo owl,

a Photoshop version of duo holding a gun and saying something like the duolingo owl when you haven't practiced in two days. It was pretty funny, and it became a meme format for other stuff, but this meme became popular among Duolingo users all the way back in 2017, I can confirm this because it definitely existed the summer that I failed to learn how to introduce myself in Swedish. But it took four full years until 2021 for the Duolingo company via Zaria to embrace this ethos as their mascot's actual personality. So again, Zaria is using raw material that was already there. Where social media managers like Amy Brown or Nathan Alibach had to create a personality for a legacy company,

Zaria Parvez is taking existing memes and using her own creativity to amplify it for a relatively young company. And she gets a lot of support internally to do this. Zaria was in her early 20s when this began and was basically given free reign to turn Duo the Owl into a mascot-suited TikTok sitcom agent of chaos. And as she explains in our interview, the accounts ever-climbing presence seemed to boost user retention and daily use on the app itself, particularly among young people. Because keep in mind that in the early 2020s, the vast majority of TikTok users were still teenagers and people in their early to mid-20s. And so particularly in 2021, to do well on TikTok was to uniquely corner a market of young people.

And these young people on TikTok, from what at least initial conventional studies have reflected, were more willing to interact with a brand account on social media than the millennials and particularly Gen Z Internet users. of your were. And we've traced this throughout this series, because even when a brand was attempting to act authentically, even 10 years earlier, you would very frequently see the comments flooded with silence brand memes. But by the time Zarya Parvez is acting as Duo the Owl, if a brand was coming off as authentically

online seeming, there were very few calls of this nature. Because Duo was playing knowingly into a then four-year-old, originally fan-made meme and represented an ostensibly wholesome company, most young users didn't seem to really have a problem with it. And another big difference was that these young users seemed well aware that the account was being run by one of them, making it easier to play into the fun. Going back to the character of Duo the Owl, When Duo was characterized as violent, it was a brand-focused kind of violent. He was willing to kill in order to keep Duolingo users' streaks going. And so in the early days of the account's virality, the shorthand for this was Spanish or vanish. And the followers of the duo account loved this and interacted with it very, very frequently,

which only boosted its engagement in the algorithm. When the Duolingo account posted a vague threat to keep its members on their streaks, commenters would jokingly beg for their lives. Here are a few examples. Duo, it's the FBI. Release the families. Don't feel like it thinks, though. Duo watches over my lessons more than the FBI watches over the most wanted criminals.

Duo. It's hard being a single mom who works two jobs. I'm a survivor But Zarya also switches things up every so often so that no one approach lasts long enough to burn out fans of the account and that was hard on an internet trend cycle that kept moving faster and faster.

But I know why you're here. You're here to hear about the horny posts. So for your purposes, two things stand out. Not because Duo the Owl was the first to be a horny anthropomorphized character far from it. But Duo certainly went the furthest that a prominent brand had gone to this point. One will discuss in more detail in our interview, which was a collaboration between Duolingo and fellow down-for-whatever-style social media brand, Scrub Daddy, which is a sponge company that genders sponges. I have a scrub mommy in my sink right now.

No time. We talk about it in the interview. But the two social media teams met up, and long story short, Duolingo and Scrub Daddy decided to make it seem as if their two mascots had a baby together. I promise this will be the last very scary thing I describe in this episode. So as this music is playing, it's accompanied by a slideshow of pictures of the Scrub Daddy anthropomorphic sponge character holding duo of the owl's shoulders as the owl literally gives birth to owl-shaped sponges. At what cost?

At what cost? And keep in mind, this is fairly recent in social media history. So after the fall of the clickbait marketing zenith years of BuzzFeed, Mashable, you name it. So if you want to go viral as a brand now, it's up to employees to capture the interests of users directly, not a random underpaid writer beholden to posting 20 clickbait pieces a day. And in order to do that, you need to do more. You can't just be horny. You have to be the horniest brand that's ever existed.

The other example in Duolingo's case, which sort of served as a story arc, was Duo the Owls' crush on Duolipa. Don't overthink it. The name sounds similar. And because TikTok is run by an opaque, uncannily people-pleasing algorithm, a TikTok using trending audio that features the photo of a current celebrity like Duolipa was bound to have a good start in the algorithm in terms of gaining some traction. But it wasn't enough, and the Duolingo account escalated. Most memorably, when they posted Duo Photoshopped with Zaria's eyes and mouth,

on to Duo in a public pool asking, Ew, who peed in the pool? Cut 2. A photo of Duolipa on the red carpet, captioned, Sorry, it was me. Cut 2, Duo the Owl, photoshopped as a mermaid swimming underwater, swimming in hot girl piss. Yay, we did it.

You listened to this series for three hours. Just so you could get to Duolipa's piss. You could just watch porn. The wild thing here is that even when the approach seems deeply unhinged on Duolingo's behalf, Zaria is one of the few social media managers that can prove her approach leads to user retention. Data bears this out, but there is also proof from the comments in these same horny posts. from Reddit after the piss TikTok. Honestly, every time Duo shows up on my 4U page,

I logins do my owl homework for the day, so it seems like they're doing something right. Dual Lipa P jokes be damned. The Duolingo TikTok account hits a million followers in late 2021, and now boasts nearly 17 million followers. And none of this would have happened with the old vagaries of the influencer overlap attempt that existed when Zaria began working there.

Not only did other young TikTokers loved the way that Duo interacted with trends, but they also clearly understood that behind this account was a social media manager working hard and hopefully having fun. A comment from 2022 bears this out. If they fire you, I will never duo another lingo,

and I literally have a 159-day streak because of this account. And this also indicates a pretty significant generational shift from the time that we began covering this series. Our first interview was with Serenity Disco, who, when acting as Denny's on Twitter and Tumblr, had some internet users recognized that they were a middle-class person operating the account, but it wasn't assumed that they were the way it is now, where Zaria was and is catering to me. multiple generations of online users.

And what seems indisputable based on available research is that millennials were more willing to engage with targeted ads than Gen X, Gen Z was more willing to engage with targeted ads than millennials, and now Gen Alpha is more willing to engage with targeted ads than Gen Z. Terrifying? Yeah. I'm still constantly parsing out how young people are both uniquely attuned to the ways in which capitalism is dismantling their lives and are willing to engage with it when it's fun.

But I'm no better. Gen X is the same. Gen Alpha is the same. And while I do believe that the children are our future, blah, blah, blah. The children are being raised by algorithms our generation made. And we don't know what we're doing. So it's a cycle that is bound to continue repeating. I digress.

Okay, we're talking about the horny owl. By 2024, Duolingo was horny posting during Super Bowl ads, playing the following commercial. And just try to guess what's happening based on the sound. Okay, you win $100 if you knew that was duo the owls but inflating until it popped into a second duo the owl. And then just the words, do your duolingo. While Zarya did not conceive this commercial directly, she made this possible. And as time passed, Zaria was given the funding to build out her own team and work with other ad agencies to build her vision for Duo to factor directly into the app itself. More recently, when a social media campaign with Duo is rolled out, it's reflected in the logo of the app.

So if Duo is sick on TikTok, Duo is. sick on the Duolingo app. And you can't really lose if you're the company here. Because even if a user does not engage with the brand online, seeing an icon that's normally a smiling owl, suddenly being a vomiting owl, might make you stop in your tracks and remember to practice Spanish again. Most recently, as I mentioned earlier, this resulted in a stunt that had Duo the Owl and all the other expanded universe duolingo characters murdered by a cybertruck. Which got mainstream attention that's genuinely hard to pull off these days, when so many clickbait aggregators have fallen or pivoted to Naziism.

I mean, Dua Lipa herself mourned Duo the Owl just a couple weeks ago. Duo the Owl is dead, and pop star Duolipa is responding. On February 11th, the language learning app Duolingo announced their mascot, Duo the owl, was fatally hit by a Tesla cyber truck. In a statement, the app wrote, TBH, he probably died waiting for you to do your lesson. But what do we know? Duolingo also encouraged users to share their credit card numbers in the comments.

Adding at the end, we appreciate you respecting Duolipa's privacy at this time. And now Duolipa is responding on X with her own words of mourning, writing till death duo part, adding a broken heart emoji. And if killing the mascot sounds familiar, it's because this kind of mirrors the nut alert Mr. Peanut Death Stunt of 2020. There was also a Super Bowl commercial for this, complete with the Kool-Aid man's tears, fertilizing the ground and growing a baby Mr. Peanut.

Mr. Peanut, he spent his life bringing people. Together. I know he'd be happy that we are all together now. Yeah. Thankfully, Duolingo changes course quickly after killing off Duo the Owl, and instead of doing a weird commercial, instead, cross-promoted between marketing and the Duolingo app itself to, quote, bring Duo back to life.

This meant having users engage with the app in order to do so. And two weeks and a shitload of press later, Duo the Owl was back to normal. And that amount of cooperation across departments and a company is pretty unique by today's standards. So enough horny setup. Change your underwear. Let's hear it from the Green Owls proxy herself. Up next, my conversation with Zaria Parvess. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison

or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aimed to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months.

The first night was so overwhelming, and you don't know who's next to you. And we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. Listen to shock incarceration on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get to. a foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code

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I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer and my mom is a cousin, so it's not like... What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that... No one expected to hear. The 22nd of July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family.

And then he came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage. Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our IHeart Radio Music Festival, presented by Capital One, is coming back to Las Vegas. September 19th and 20th.

On your feet. Streaming live only on Hulu. Ladies and gentlemen, Brian Adams, Ed Sheeran, Fade, Chlorilla, Jelly Roll, John Fogarty, Lil Wayne, L.L. Cool Jay, Mariah Carey, Maroon 5, Sammy Hagar, Tate McCray, The Offspring, Tim McGraw, tickets are on sale now, at AXS.com. Get your tickets today. AXS.com. Welcome back to 16th minute.

I just wanted to take a moment to say I really appreciated the thread on the 16th minute Reddit board from last week asking politely if I farted during the interview. you last week. And sorry to disappoint, but I am pretty sure that was a glitch on Apple podcasts. A likely story, I know. Anyways, here's my interview with Duolingo's own, Zarya Parvez. This interview has been edited for time and clarity. Yeah. Hi, my name is Zaria. I'm the Global Senior Social Media Manager at Duolingo, and I've been here for about five years. I handle all of our content with my amazing content team that you see on our TikTok, our Instagram, or YouTube. So really just in it and the weeds with social at Duolingo. What a lot of people don't know is

actually Duolingo was my first job out of college. Yeah. So I did not have a job before this, which is kind of crazy. But I grew up in Portland, Oregon. And I attended University of Oregon. I studied marketing there. And my focus was actually brand strategy. Then the pandemic came around and I graduated. So I was like a 2020 grad. And I knew I wanted a job in marketing, but I was seeing what was out there. And I think like for me, like my biggest thing is I really wanted to be, like, I always say I work best in the shadows and in the periphery. So like I wanted to be at a company that was kind of like still starting up with like their marketing. They weren't like number one in the game at the time, but also like a company that had a good ethos. So like that's kind of how I stumbled into like going

to Pittsburgh, I guess from Portland and like finding duolingo and all of this was I just wanted to be at a company that was like inherently diverse. And I thought, hey, like a place that teaches languages, sounds like a pretty diverse place to be. And they had a social media coordinator role open. When I was starting, like, I was interested in marketing, but I didn't know it was social and I was just more chasing the company versus the job. And I was like, I'm new. I'll figure it out. And if it's for me, great. If not, we can always pivot. But yeah, that's a little bit about me. I hope this sounds like the compliment is intended to be. It makes so much sense that you're from Portland. It just really clarifies a lot. That makes me feel good because I miss Oregon every day.

In my experience in college, they weren't teaching the internet correctly or well. I'm curious, how did you get drawn to marketing and how is it taught to you versus what the industry ended up being like? That's such a cool question. I don't think I've ever been asked that before. I actually was in pre-med. I like every other Pakistani kid that I was going to become a doctor and quickly learned one quarter in that I am not going to chemistry and it wasn't for me. But what I did really love about chemistry in general was like writing the lab reports. Like that for me was like, oh, this is fun. And like, especially the last part that just also like, explain why this batters in the world. And I think for me, like that was kind of a moment where I was like, okay, I'm a good writer.

And like, I'm failing my chem test, but I'm doing well on lab reports. So maybe there's something here. And as people do in college, started exploring other things and just seeing what was out there. And advertising at University of Oregon is huge because like White and Kennedy, Nike, it like all comes from Oregon. So I knew of it. And I just like took one class, one quarter and absolutely was like, yeah, this is what I want to do. I can be creative and I can write and I can create things and get paid fairly well for it. So like, yeah, why would I not do this?

And at my heart and at my core, even now, I still think I'm a writer. Like writing is my true joy, whether that's like comedy writing or like little captions or like the punchy lines that you see on duo's TikToks are like long form. Marketing just kind of became like my whole personality, which is kind of cringe. But in college, I was like part of like our ad team and like went to nationals and like created campaigns for like Wiener Schnitzel and like Adobe, which is so random. Very class president energy. But I just really fell in love with it. I loved the fact that it mixed art and science. And I love the fact that it was just like, it was just cool. Like you could do cool things and create cool stuff and see it out in the world. But they did not teach social.

media. Like going back and looking at these campaigns I made, they were like, yeah, we'll activate maybe on TikTok, but social was like not there. I think what helped me stand out as I was just, I loved it as a consumer. Like I was just on social. I always cared about my my grids and how things looked. And that also I think is kind of what set us up for success here at Duo in the sense where like I was kind of entering this job as like someone who just loves social media and like looking deeper into it versus like an advertiser who specializes in social. media. Like, it allowed me to not work as an advertiser and generally they just work as like a creator, which I think ultimately helped the brand because it allowed us to not be so caught up on

like advertising things. I do think it's interesting how little you were taught about social media in your marketing class. And now you are quite literally at the top of social media marketing. Because it wasn't necessarily what you learned at school. What was your relationship with the internet like growing up? What was your sort of flavor of being online growing up? Yeah. So, I mean, I don't remember a life without an internet. Like, I feel like that's always been around me. And then I think the funniest thing is I actually wasn't allowed to have social media until I was a junior in high school. Did you secretly have it anyways? Absolutely. Okay. So my favorite story is actually when I was in third grade,

YouTube was like the big thing, right? And so I actually got suspended for making a YouTube video that accidentally went viral and it was yeah and it was about why students shouldn't be attending my strict Catholic school and like I was like it was like so like don't come here because of a little about but for some reason it like blew up and I got called to the principal's office and I remember this so well and she's like and my dad was there and my dad my mom and dad both works and like I always went to like after school things like if my dad's there in the middle of the day I'm like I'm fucked there's a problem yeah so I saw him and I was like oh But he wasn't, like, Matt, like, he was just sitting there neutral.

So, like, okay, what's going on? And our principal's like, so we know you have a YouTube channel. And I was like, oh, God. Like, I was more worried about her saying that. My dad getting mad. And she's like, you had this one video. And I was like, what are you taught? And I was like, and it was like such a nothing video to me.

And she was like. Was it under your name? Yeah, it was under the mega freakable. That was my, like, user name. I was like, what was the username? Yeah, exactly. And she was like, we have like, we're trying to fundraise for like this new school. And like, this has blown up.

up and it's inappropriate because you're, like, bashing the school and the program, whatever. And she's like, because of this, like, we'll be giving you, like, a one day suspension. And my dad was like, we were just like, okay, like, it was really neutral. And I was like, he's going to, like, give it to me after we leave this meeting. We walk out. And he's like, well, at least you get a Monday off. And I was like, what is going on? Literally.

And he was like, he's like, I saw it. He's like, never make a YouTube video ever again and delete your account, which happened. But he was like, I don't see any problem with that. He's like, I'm glad for you. I'm glad that you used your voice. And I'm like, great. Thank you. Wow.

Okay. That's great. And that was in third grade. So I think like for me, like duo's personality of like being unhinged, being out of pocket. Like it's just kind of my personality in a way of like I've always probably said the wrong thing or did the wrong thing. And like working for a brand that has that persona made it really easy.

But yeah, that was just kind of my relationship with social has just been like I've always just been on it and used it and loved it. How does your relationship with social? social media kind of evolve as you're growing up. I loved it. Like, I was always on it. I cared about my, like, getting my Instagram. My junior year was, like, the biggest thing ever.

Like, I was like, oh, my God. I finally have an account. Loved Twitter. Had the classic, like, mean girl Twitter moment with, like, you know, your middle school enemies and, like, all of that stuff going on. Social was, like, every part. Like, that was what I did in my free time. And it's like, I mean, obviously other activities, too.

But, like, social was just always part of my life. Like, it was never, that's why, like, it was like, never a nothing. So, like, when I saw this, I was like, yeah, I could do social for a brand. I'm like, how hard can it be? Like, I know, like, content basics. I know marketing basics. Like, how hard can it be to bring the expertise that I know personally with professional work, which is a little naive, but maybe I needed that to have that confidence.

So, okay, so you get this job right out of college? Yeah. So I was in Portland, but then I moved on my own because I just wanted to move to Pittsburgh in August of 2020. But our office didn't open until September of 2021 when, like, we had people coming in. And that's actually when our, like, TikTok really took off. So, like, I was doing, like, so, like, quote-and-co boring social work for duo, too, for a year. Like, I was just figuring out, like, what it even means to be working a nine to five in what corporate life is.

How did people talk about duo online? Because I feel like I've been seeing duo with the gun for years. Yes. When we started, the memes existed. We did not acknowledge them. Like, it was very, like, brand safety. We can't say that. We can't do that.

We're a language learning app. That means we have to have proper punctuation because people are going to look to us. blah, blah, blah. Like, it was very much that way. And I mean, I was, Neil was like, yeah, you're right. Like, who am I to, like, change that? Like, I'm just here to clock and clock out, create the content. So that's kind of how it started. So that was, that was like the policy at the time. Yeah, like, that's just what it was. I also wasn't like, we need to be doing this. Like, I didn't see it at that time because I was still learning, like, just how to navigate it. I think the switch kind of happened when that original, like, learn Italian on TikTok and all that

stuff started coming out and it wasn't doing that well and that was like the first time we actually put like investment into like a social platform so like money and budget were being put behind that and they were like yeah we need to cut this like this is not worth our spend and it got to the point where i see i was like tictox on a company priority like we don't need to be doing this and i remember at that point kind of feeling like no like TikTok still like works we're just doing it wrong and I think even that was like a year into my career where i was like able to build more of a voice and build more of an understanding of our brand and like just kind of absorb what it is to like work in social. And so then to my boss, she stopped that. We're like, okay, that's fine. Maybe that's

just not the way to go about it. My boss, we got back into the office. And this was my first day actually in the office during the pandemic. Like after the pandemic. So I walk in and this suit is like in this back corner. And this suit is actually was first made just for like HR like recruiting events, like, just kind of internal things. It was never posted ever on any of our platforms. I was like, that's weird. Like, why is there just, like, an owl suit sitting by the market? Like, it looked weird. So we see it. And I, like, at the time, like, I was just on social. And I was like, oh, like, there's like this trend that's like, how am I supposed to, like, live, laugh, love, love in these conditions? And I'm like, I literally feel like that right now.

Like, this is, like, staring at me. I'm in marketing in, like, a corporate office. And it's just like, whatever. And I was telling my boss about it. I was like, it'd be funny if we, like, filmed a TikTok of like me sitting here working and like this owl looking at me and being like how am I supposed to live, laugh, love in these conditions? And she's like, yeah, that's funny. And I was like, oh, yeah, that's funny. Can you actually film me? And I think I have an idea here. And so she's like, sure. So she grabbed her phone. And we just put like the duo suit behind me and we filmed it with that audio. And we posted it and it went stupid viral. And that was like, wait a minute. Like there is something here with this suit and the comedy. And like since that day,

like four years ago, like it's just been iterating and iterating on that core insight that that suit is just ridiculous. And it's almost like a form of satire. Because marketing was so fresh at Duolingo at that point. Like we didn't have these systems even in place to like get marketing checks or like social checks. And like we're an engineering first org. Like respectfully, they didn't care about marketing at that point. Like we were not a priority team, like, which is fine. Like that's just how it was. That's how it was. But because there was, it was, it was, it was a such a startup-y vibe and no one really cared. We had free reign to kind of just do whatever. Seeing like the other sort of weird approaches to two brands, had you seen like the Wendy's

Twitter back in the day, was the stuff you were familiar with? Was there any inspiration you were taking from past approaches? Yeah. I think, I mean, I think everyone knew about Wendy's Twitter, like obviously. I think for me, though, it was never, as an internet person, I didn't care about brand Twitter or like brand talk, I guess now is what up. Like, like, and like, like, when I grew, like, that was not who I was following. Like, yeah, I would hear the couple of clapbacks from Wendy's and like that went super viral. But it was never like, oh, this is my source of inspiration. I think more of what was my source of inspiration for social and how I wanted to build duo on

TikTok particularly was the success the character has had on the app and like the funny sentences or like the things people are already sharing. And I actually think a lot of brands do have memes already made about them. They're just scared to lean in like we were. But like my whole thing was like, okay, like we've had a. couple of Twitter moments that community has made it do it with a gun. Like how do I bring that to life on TikTok? Like that was my job. I was translating that. So I think my inspiration was actually more of like how our designers and product team and content team built our app to be like naturally

gamified and interesting and getting people like make fan art about it or like getting people to like talk about the different dynamics of the characters. Like there's something there if like people are organically talking about a brand because no one really does that on social. Like at least I still don't. I mean, I'd do a little bit for my job outside of that. Like, I feel like if I didn't work in marketing, I probably would not care about brands on social. So that was really cool to me that people were, they cared about this brand for some reason. When you start getting kind of like a longer leash to try weirder stuff, it seems like the whole office is on board and is like regularly cast and stuff. Yeah. So I always say that like the number one person that believe me was obviously

my boss who filmed the first video and then Mark Pavik who wore the duo suit um for me okay um so yeah so is it the is it the same guy in the suit every change is now now that our team's grown and evolved we like hire dancers and stuff because mark does have a full-time job at duelingo that's not doing that before everything blew up girls like i had these ideas but like no one wants to film with me like can you because i just know you like just working together and he was like yeah of course i don't know i feel like i literally owe my career to him and like michaela who was my first boss because they believed in me

and they did it and then the video started popping off and doing well and the other person that really believed in me was our legal Steve was like

I love what you're doing on TikTok like here's some trends I see or here's some things we can do or like how do we make this like streamlined so it wasn't like

I think that's what's special about duo because it was so small and startupy it never had these like social versus legal or social versus like it was never that energy

and because we started off so viral early on we've kind of just kept that energy to never exist because we never knew a world where that existed. Does the staff there skew younger generally? Yeah. I mean, yeah, we definitely do have some like more seasoned marketing people, but they're very like, we hired a so, like, because I was the only social coordinator at the time.

They're like, we hired you because we know we're bad at this and we need to be better at it. So please do it. Like that was the mentality. And then as I hired my team out, I think, I'm the eldest. And I'm like, it's crazy because I'm so used to being the youngest, but like, I was youngest on a team, but now I'm 27 and like our team spans from like 21 to 24. So like it's a very young team. But we also have like like millennials as well on our team that like help us with like other things. So it's like we kind of just all use our assets as like across age ranges. I actually really

need like my role manager's like expertise and like how do you navigate a strategy and sell it? Like how do you show that like the impact I have actually matters? So like that's important. Right. Then I also need like the 20 year old on my team of like what does what is Jen Alpha? into now because like I'm not gen alpha and like to help bring that to life. So I think everyone just plays their part in a really different way. So as you know, I love writing. Um, so I always believe that like, yes, humans were natural storytellers and like that is what brands want to do, but we're so obsessed with telling our own story that we're not listening, I guess, to the stories that like other people are saying, which sounds like so like, but like other stories like people

are putting duo with a gun. Like that's a story too. All right. So like for me, it's like, greatest story ever told. Yeah, exactly. And I think that for me was like, how do I build almost a sitcom around this character and show these different storylines? And like, we all have the tropes, right? Like, there's the lover. There's the enemy. There's the, like, hero's journey. There's the struggle. There's the things they love, the things they hate. And like, why can't brands have that? Especially when you have a character involved. Like, yeah, like, I'm going to do it. And the only way to do it is to just keep exposing the audience to it. So, like, that was like where Duolipa came from. And the insight is just like duolingo just sounds like duolipa. So we're like, duh. People are saying that anyways. Yeah. And she's hot. So we're like perfect. That's who like duo is going to be upset. Like that's his love interest or like just kind of integrating the way that we know how to tell stories as humans or the stories that we enjoy and just finding the pieces that need to be filled and figuring out who those are was like, I think kind of how we built our strategy around it. Has there been any sort of pitch that you've experienced pushback on? Oh, all the time.

Actually, like, the scrubbed daddy video, our CEO message me to take it down. But it already, I was like it already made this around Sturking. I'll take it down. Is the original not up? Yeah, it's not. Yeah, it's a different one. So the story around this was something I was trying to do at that stage in my career was like, how do I find more like mighted, like brands and social teams to like kind of amplify

our presence, like as just being content creators? And the Scrub Daddy team was a team that I really looked up to. They made really funny content. And it literally was just like, hey guys, do you guys? You guys went to do like a free content club? Like, we'll bring the duo suit. You bring the scrub daddy suit. Come to the office.

We'll create stuff. We're like, all right. This is like what we want to do. And then they were like, oh, we created these cute little duo sponges. And I was like, oh, that's your cute babies. And that was kind of it. And we were creating content. And I was like, guys, what if?

Like, I've been seeing this like pregnancy like TikTok going off. I don't know. Like it was so crazy. Very tradwife kind of stuff. And I was like, what if we use this? Glad you came with this video. And they were like, yeah, yeah, why not? So we like filmed it.

We put it up. We posted it, and it blew up. And I think, like, for us, and this is actually also, in a sense, happen to the dead duo. We kind of forget, like, how attached people are to duo that, like, we're so lost in the sauce sometimes that we're like, yeah, we'll post it and it'll go viral, I guess. Like, maybe it won't even go that viral. Maybe a million views. And then people are like, no, no, no, we like this. And now it's like, Lord.

When we posted that, I stayed up for like four hours. And our CEO's like, guys, we cannot be doing this. And I was like, okay, great, I'll take it down. However, what do you not like about it? He's like, the visual's weird. But, like, more than that, the glad you came makes it, like, really weird. So I was like, okay, what if I repost it, but just don't add that part to the top. Like, the glad you came and change the audio.

And he's like, okay, fine. Like, it's always a negotiation for, like, these high risk moments. And it's never a, like, take it down. You're in trouble. How dare you do this to our brand? Like, it's not punishment. it's like we're iterating and learning in the only way, you know, where the line is is until you cross it on social because social changes every day. Honestly, like the people that are most upset about

duo things are marketers. Like usually are, and that's where we are like, well, who are we prioritizing? Like, if we see this negative sentiment going up, like, who's driving this? And 90% of the time it's someone who works in marketing, that's just like upset about us not having the clear brand guidelines and strategy and things that we've all learned to do while our audience is like, we love it and we're getting new users. So I'm like, our priority is always going to be our new users and new business. Well, like, obviously, like, we love marketers and want them to enjoy what we're doing. But, like, when we prioritize, like, how we assess risk, it's always going to have, like,

our users first. I think what was cool is, like, we have a how did you hear about a survey, which before just existed as an onboarding survey when you joined. And it would say, like, did you learn about us from friends, from family, from Google, whatever. And as our TikTok started blowing up, we were like, what if we just add TikTok to that and see? Like, who knows?

Because at the time we were like, impressions, great, brand awareness, done. And then it was like, maybe there is a tie. And then we just added TikTok. And every time we had a viral video, like a video over a million views, bam, a spike in new users, bam, it would keep, like, we would keep seeing it. And then that's also when SLT and senior leadership was like, let them cook. And that's literally what it's been like, which is so awesome. And I think the origin stories of how we almost worked backwards, like, has worked out well.

And now it's funny because you'll see like SLT pitch ideas to us. And they're like, will they accept it? Like, will they green light it? Which is like different than like a lot of social teams where they're hoping that like their senior leadership like allows them to post what they want to post. Right. You have the power. Yeah. Exactly.

And we'll be right back with more Zaria Parvez and horny little owl. Our IHeart Radio music festival presented by Capital One is Kempel. Coming back to Las Vegas. September 19th and 20th. On your feet. Streaming live only on Hulu. Ladies and gentlemen. Brian Adams.

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Going through something like that is a traumatic experience, but it's also not the end of their life. That was my dad, reminding me and so many others who need to hear it, that our trauma is not our shame to carry, and that we have big, bold, and beautiful lives to live after what happened to us. I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Lyotra Tate. On my new podcast, The Unwanted Sorority, we wade through transformation to peel back healing and reveal what it actually looks like, and sounds like, in real time. Each week, I sit down with people who live through harm, carried silence, and are now reshaping the systems that failed us. We're going to talk about the adultification of black girls, mothering as resistance,

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the way it has echoed and reverberated throughout your life, impacting your very legacy. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the profound and powerful stories I'll be mining on our 12th season of Family Secrets. With over 37 million downloads, we continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told stories. I can't wait to share 10 powerful new episodes with you, stories of tangled up identities, concealed truths, and the way in which family secrets almost

always need to be told. I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests for this new season of Family Secrets. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to 16th minute. I'm in the middle of reading that new tell-all memoir about working high up at Facebook. And guys, I think this Mark Zuckerberg guy might be kind of a bad fella. Mark! He's wired in.

Sorry, he's wired in. Is he? Yes. How about now? You still wired in? Here's the rest of my interview with Zarya Parvaz. A big part of my, like,

what I've been working on, honestly, like this past half and, like, this year is evolving our brand and what does that look like? So we actually started, like, a writer's room where I brought in people

who were like, I've always enjoyed their work, love them, think they're smart, and they have no care about dual and go. Like, come in and, like, just tell me, like, how you would, like, how would you advertise du lingo music and like i gave pretty much gave them no context barely any brief just to see what they would come out with i mean i like never want unhinged to just be

our crutch so i like for me it's like we should be unhinged to be funny like it shouldn't just be like showing duos but just to get engagement like it needs to have like a reason why we're being unhinged because that makes it that just makes a joke smarter and funnier whoa like you guys just put duos but on national tv like as brands we try to strategize everything so much and like humans don't think in strategy. Like some of these things are serendipitous and good moments. And like, I always say it was like 75% luck, honestly, that it took off. And then like, what 75 was 25? Yeah, 25. I'm like, what I got 200? And then 25% of like us. I thought you went into marketing. I know, right? Oh, well. I was like, I need to do. Lingo math. But like 25% of just like us optimizing

it and like leaning in and like taking advantage of the moment because it's so sad when I see like something viral that a brand can lean into and they don't. And I'm like, just take advantage of it. But yeah, I think that that's the cool part about it is we were allowed to take advantage of that moment. So how did Dead Duo? But that sounded like a sort of a full company collaboration. Yeah. So essentially what happened was as I mentioned a little bit earlier, every maybe like four months, the product team does an app icon change where the normal duo green owl on your phone changes to a different emotion or something, just something different. And the whole point is for you to be on your phone and you're so used to seeing that green bird and all

of a sudden, like, it's sick. And there's like a big booger coming out and you're like, what is that? And that resurrects new users. Something we realized though is like when it's an emotion, like we did it with sick duo. We did it with like a wrinkly face, like old looking duo that when it has a user emotion or something, people talk a lot about it on social. Then we were like, okay, this works well when social works with product. Next time around, let's build another campaign. And again, maybe it'll do well. Like, whatever. And what happened is product A-B tests two things. So they had a dead duo. And I think they had like a crying duo. They both kind of came out the same like marketing. Like since you already kind of did a campaign before, what do you want to do? Like for us, it's kind of

the same. And I was like, I think we should do debt duo because it's an emotion. Like people can react and relate to it. And then they'll probably post about it. And we can. can actually build a storyline around it. And originally, it was just supposed to be four posts. He died. We announced his death. Show the funeral, cause of death. Then we resurrect him. And the whole brand messaging behind that was to be like, duo would fake his own death just for you to do your lesson. Like there's nothing this bird won't do for you to just open your damn phone. So we posted this fake PR statement and it blew up. Like, yeah, virality beyond I've ever seen. And I think being in Pittsburgh, you're kind of in your own little, like, bubble, because you're not in New York,

you're not in these big cities when we're like, oh, we were going to post just like the funeral video tomorrow, but we should post it now. Like, people want answers. And so then we post the funeral video. And then we're like, wait, what if we like also kill the other characters and like, say they're also dead? And like, that's like how it kind of kept building, like the narrative, like these posts started entering that weren't part of our original social plan. And we're like, oh, dang, we really did build an icon. And we killed him and people cared. And I think for us, that was a realization moment too of like, what did we just do? And so like that was, that was really fun. And we've just, we got to work with different team members to just bring it to life in different ways. And it was,

it was such a joy. I, it was like one of my highlights of my career for sure. Part of the reason you went to do a lingo is because it was a company that aligned with your values, which I know when we're talking about marketing and advertising in general, that is a mind field to find a place that you feel good about. Yeah. And now just having been in advertising your entire professional life, what are your feelings on that? How have you seen that sort of manifest in other areas of this industry? So I was able to enter the advertising agency my junior year summer. I think the first reaction I had was like, oh, it's like really white. And like I grew up like very proudly Pakistani, very proudly Muslim. Like it was just such a different lifestyle, I think.

And it was really weird to like walk into a space where like New York cities are the most diverse cities right ever in the world. And then you just walk in and you're like there's literally no one that looks like me. And I think that's also like candidly a lot of Muslims also don't enter communications fields because naturally most of us tend to be kids of immigrants. And immigrants care about sciences and arts and not art, sorry, not arts, but like sciences and math. And so, like, a lot of people come engineers and doctors and, like, we don't enter communications fields. And then we ask, hey, like, why are Muslims being, like, badly represented in media? And I'm like, because it's, none of us are there. Like, we're not prioritizing, like, being in these spaces and that's going to have ramifications.

And so for me, like, that was kind of a big wake up call during, like, this experience. And, like, nothing, like, happened. It just felt weird. And my entire thesis in college that I was writing for graduation was actually, about like a playbook of how to advertise to Muslims and communicate with Muslims and like what does that look like. Um, so part of that playbook was like all about like diversity marketing in a sense and like what's the right and appropriate way to go about it. But also like part of was exploring like who are like the five Muslims in marketing because I can barely find any and

interviewing them being like how did you end up here and like what is a situation? And like now in my five years I've seen it grow and expand and I'm so glad to see that there's more diversity there. but like it was just a really interesting wake-up call for me where I was like I feel happy and most creative in places that I feel safe. And so like that's where kind of how duolingo fit into the narrative where I was like, this seems like a company that has to be inherently diverse because you need people to speak different languages. And usually people who speak different languages come from different parts of the world

and have to be part of this mission. And then the co-founders themselves are both immigrants. So it was just like so many levels of, oh, this makes sense. And, like, I remember when I accepted the job, Doolingo marketing was not anything. And I remember, like, I was a top performer at University of Oregon. It was like, you're going to go to Nike and Wedding Kennedy and do all this stuff. And I remember accepting it and somebody, like, straight up being like, that was the biggest mistake you ever done. Like, you should not.

Like, why are you doing that? Like, why did you give up an agency? Like, because I had an agency offer at the time. And it was like a whole thing. And I was like, stressed. Like, I was like, did I just like throw away my career? Like, I don't even know what I'm doing. but I just, something in my gut just felt safe there, like talking to the people in the interview

process. I was like, this is just what I want to do. And I'm just going to try it and do it. And it worked out. That safety feeling also working in a place where you just feel comfortable, like I was allowed to be myself, which means I was allowed to be unhinged and weird, which means I was allowed to post these things. Like, it creates an environment of like safety and creativity and like bringing in different ways of thinking. And like, I always say like being an immigrant kid, like I was a third culture kid. I knew how to like be white enough for my white friends at school and be brown enough for my parents at home and like navigate literally jumping between different audiences

and different groups and different people. And that's what you have to do in marketing. You have to know how to talk to different people in their own language. So like third culture kids are like set up for this. They just need the space and the opportunity to do it. So like that's also why I think Duelingo is so successful. It's because we focused on that third culture energy in that space. and like sometimes you'll still see like TikToks in Urdu that are reaching a new audience and still go viral because it's like stuff that I know or like I'm really intentional about our team like I want our team to be as diverse as possible and like we have people from all walks of life all backgrounds no one on my content team actually has a traditional marketing background or if they do it's like very lightly touched our production assistant for example saw her volunteering somewhere and I was like I just like the way you work with like the systems of the people here I think you could be a great PA would you like to like

join. So, like, she does that, which is, like, crazy. Even, like, our content designer, she got rejected from Doolingo, from Doolingo's illustration and design team. And I was like, cool, I'll take you. And, like, it's, like, it's, like, I love the underdogs because I think those stories are, like, the people who try the hardest, who want to do the best and just never got the opportunity to do it. For me, like, even brands are, like, because I'm so part of Gen Zian, like, brands that I feel, like, I'm actually not a brand talk person in general. Like, I'm like, I work on this. I don't want to see it outside of it. But, like, any brands that I do follow or like either I really care about their founders ethos or like,

you know, it's just more like there's some responsibility or accountability there that feels like they care. And yeah, and people can see right through it when it's not. The last thing I wanted to talk about burnout and protecting yourself. Yes. How do you manage that? And I know that no one has the answer, but I'm curious how you've had to sort of manage that throughout your career. Yeah, so for me, I am so grateful that I was able to skyrocket to so much success so early on. Like, I remember when I got Forbes 30 to 30 at like 22 years old, I was like, whoa. I'm not just saying that to be like, eh, like, you know what I mean. But like, it was just, it felt really surreal.

But the drawback of that was like, I don't think I got the opportunity to make mistakes because every mistake I made was in public. I don't think it's anyone's fault. Like I, like, it's not like, oh, do overworked me or, like, I did this. Like, it was just the reality of this situation. And, like, I'm glad I took ownership of the work. I'm glad I stood up and said, hey, that was me that created it. But at the same time, like, that created this mental load on myself to the point where I actually took a medical leave last year for, like, five months of just like, sorry, not five months. I wish it was five months.

And I remember telling my boss, I was like, I'm, like, not well. Like, I feel anxious coming into the office. I'm scared of something flopping. I'm scared of, like, what people will say about me. Like, I don't want my face being seen anywhere. I get anxiety. Like, and that's not me. Like, I feel very fortunate my entire life.

I've never actually had, like, crazy any, like, mental health issues. And I was happy with, like, who I was and what I wanted to do. And I was like, I'm just burnt out and I just need time away from the spotlight. Like, I just need a break to reset and recharge. And I'm lucky I'm at a place that, like, allowed that and supported that. And, like, everyone knew. I wrote about it, too. like I said I loved writing. I wrote about it on my LinkedIn and I shared it. And it was

it was one of those things where like as social managers like we're always expected to wear so many hats that like at some point the hats get heavy and it's like I can't I can't do this. I came back and I remember my biggest thing was like I just never I never want to feel burnout and I never want to make other people feel burnout around me, especially my team after going through what I went through. And I think what I really hang on to is like creativity ebbs and flows and like we need to be mindful of that if if you want impact you have to have those moments of like ebbs you have to be okay with like not posting stuff for a couple weeks you have to be okay with like people saying i need time off or hey i need to work leave work early or hey i need to

work from home today like this is overwhelming like that needs to be okay and like accepted and part of your strategy and part of your like team structure so no i don't have a cure to burn out but I think for me that's what I really try to do of like I am very aware of it and I just try to find moments of like I never want you to feel like all you are to me is like an impression generator like feel creative when you feel creative and let's figure out how you can work at it that's kind of how I've been approaching it I don't know if it's the right way or the wrong way but it's working relatively so some quarters are going to be great and some aren't and like not everyone is meant to go viral and if they were then like viral

wouldn't exist. That's just part of the cycle of the internet and life. So as more Gen Z become role managers who have been through the ringer, like how they act and behave and hopefully prevent burnout. Thank you so much again to Zaria for her time and her work. I want her to be a comedy writer so bad. Follow her at the links in the description. And with that, dear listener, we emerge from the sacred wood of sentient brand marketing on social media. And where does this leave us? I don't know, honestly. While I'm very grateful to the marketing professionals

and just kind people who lent their time and experience to make this series possible, it still does give me some uneasiness about the future of what marketing is going to look like on the internet. And as some listeners were right to point out, representing a company online that is very often clout-chasing, on internet trends can lead and often does lead to something called digital blackface, which is defined by CNN's John Blake as, quote, a practice where white people co-opt online

expressions of black imagery, slang, catchphrases, or culture to convey comic relief or express emotions, unquote. Although I would say in the case of this discussion, as there are obviously non-white people in corporate marketing, although, as Zarya pointed out, this itself is still a very white-dominated space, that digital blackface has been used as a way for companies to seem as if they're a part of the mainstream internet culture that, like so many creative worlds, has been innovated by black artists and creators before having that work co-opted by white people or just capitalism in general. Gen Alpha is the first generation to truly have no memory of what it's like.

like to build a sense of self free from the internet. And it remains to be seen what that's going to mean down the line. Because I don't mean to fearmonger. I genuinely don't know. These will be my kids, my nieces, my nephews. And the only thing I think you can do that's more unproductive and self-sabotaging than assume your children's generation is going to ruin the world is that your children's generation is solely responsible for saving.

the world. It does freak me out that kids are more vulnerable than ever to this kind of advertising. And it's a relief when that advertising is for something as innocuous as learning a second language. But in the big picture, it's hard to say. I have plenty of young parents in my family and friend groups who are trying to shield their kids from pernicious marketing. But let's be honest, we're not going to be any more successful than our parents were. Think of virtually every social media manager you've heard from in this series. Serenity Disco found themselves on live journaling sites before becoming the Denny's Tumblr. Amy Brown was Amy from MySpace before becoming the Wendy's Twitter.

Nathan Alabach was an anti-capitalist musician before translating that ethos to the Stakem Twitter. Zaria Parvez was the kid that was scolded out of taking down a Catholic school in the third grade. before becoming the horny duolingo bird. As long as there are creative kids, they're going to get around what their parents don't want them to access. And all of these social media managers and writers are talented, funny, creative people who have had to make a living. I think it's a little bit too easy to criticize this class of writer

before considering how lucky or more often financially privileged you need to be, just to be able to write without worrying where your next rent check is coming from, your health care, whatever it may be. Most of us are serving a machine, and to be able to extract yourself from that is a tremendous privilege. But that also doesn't mean that it's the only way to make ends meet. And I feel to some extent like I'm blowing hot air here. I probably am because I'm broadcasting this on IHeartRadio. And while I've been really lucky to have basically full creative control of my work here, it's because it's monetized to serve something larger than myself.

So I'm certainly not about this. And any criticism of this environment is a criticism of myself, too. The only conclusion I can ever come to is that what would resolve this kind of creativity having to be used to sell something is a public reinvest. into arts and affirming it as something that's important, which under the current American administration, best of luck. But we should keep talking about it. This weirdly tapers into what we're going to be talking about next week. And so, with a little luck and a little bit of revolutionary action, sentient two horny brands, your 16th minute ends now.

16th Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and IHard Radio. It is written, hosted, and produced by me, Jamie Lossis. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichten and Robert Evans. The Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad 13. Voice acting is from Grant Crater. And pet shoutouts to our dog producer Anderson, My Cats Flea and Casper, and my pet rock bird who will outlive us all.

Bye. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever. you listen to your favorite shows. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace.

You discover the depths of your mother's illness. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the powerful stories I'll be mining on our upcoming 12th season of Family Secrets. We continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told stories. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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