Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - Drake & Kendrick's AI Rap Beef + TikTokkers Against Biden

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

AI is causing chaos and confusion in pop music. Drake and Kendrick Lamar are feuding through diss tracks, but people can’t seem to tell if these songs are real or artificially generated. Taylor Lorenz brings in New York Times pop music critic Jon Caramanica to get to the bottom of it all. Plus, how Chappell Roan broke through the algorithm and Taylor Swift's return to TikTok. Later, Taylor Lorenz weighs in on an upcoming AI-generated beauty pageant, Elon’s plan to rid X of bots by forcing new users to pay, an open letter from TikTok creators to President Biden, and Marques Brownlee’s scathing review of the Humane AI Pin. Full video of this episode will be available on Taylor's YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, the absurd premise behind a beauty pageant for AI-generated women, Elon wants people to pay to tweet. And our main topic, how AI is supercharging a feud between some of the world's biggest rappers. I'm Taylor Lorenz, and that's all coming up right now on Power User. A lot of big-name rappers are feuding right now, and AI is making all of it worse. Artists like Kendrick Lamar, Metro Booman, and Rick Ross have all recently released music bashing Drake. Then, Drake responded with his own disc track this weekend. But here's the thing.

For the first few hours after Drake published his song, a lot of people online were convinced that it was AI generated. Eventually, it was confirmed that Drake did in fact release the music and the beef carried on. Then, on Monday morning, there was a Kendrick response. Drop moot, surprise moves, hide on respect. They promised me my death. Now they deleted threats. But this time, it seems like Kendrick's response might have actually been AI generated.

At least that's what we think. So what does it mean for podcast? music when we can't even tell if our biggest stars songs are real or AI generated. Here to discuss the state of pop music and technology with me is pop critic for the New York Times, John Caramonica. Hi, John. Welcome to Power User. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to see you, Taylor. Okay, so, John, what does it say about the state of AI music that you, even as a pop music critic, can't necessarily immediately tell what is AI and what is it? I mean, I hope it doesn't mean I'm bad at my job. I hope that's not what it means. I think what it means on a fundamental level is the

conditions in which music is being released increasingly is snippets, leaks, small pieces. And so as someone who encounters unsteady data all the time, it's not surprised. I think it's probably the right thing if the first question you're asking is like, where's this coming from? Is it authentic? Is it true? Is it finished? Did it come from the artist?

Did it come from somewhere else? Did it come from someone with the artist's best interest in mind or someone looking to do damage to the artist. I think those are probably the first questions that a smart listener should be asking in virtual spaces. What you saw with the rollout of the Drake song, which turned out to not be AI, although people were speculating. Well, everyone thought it was AI. No, the Drake thing was not AI, but people thought it was. But what it turned out is that he released an unfinished version and a finished version, sort of almost playing with the what is truth, like what is the final thing. and also the things that I left on the cutting room floor, like, did I mean those things?

Did I not mean those things? Like even playing with the idea of how truthful the information coming out of my mouth is. That's Drake toying with it. And then the Kendrick response, truthfully, we still don't know. People are now saying it's AI. So you think about disinformation, that being a thing that musicians, especially musicians, who are trying to make points, will start to weaponize. And more so the musicians, think of how, when they're,

this technology gets widely adopted by Stan Armies. Imagine the Swifties weaponizing this against someone maybe who had said something untoward about Taylor Swift or maybe whose album is coming out the same day as Taylor Swift's album. Imagine the Navy or the Beehive. Imagine once this technology becomes widely accessible and can be used at a very, very low level of technological savvy. That's one thing. The other thing that it brings up for me, which is a little bit more nebulous, but I think is worth talking about.

When you think about how you consume culture these days, you're thinking multiple screens at the same time, I'm thinking an audio thing while I'm on my phone, while I'm scrolling TikTok. There's three or four things. What that tells me is I'm paying less attention to any given thing than I was five or ten years ago, which we all understand is normal. And certainly, I think, for younger audiences, is extremely normal. The meaning of anything doesn't quite hold in the same way. I mean, I'm old enough to remember the Jay-Z and Nasbe, and you're hanging on every single word and, like, clearing out your calendar so you can listen to the radio

at the exact moment that the disc response is being released and played for the first time in an uncuttered, totally one-to-one relationship, your ears to this particular piece of music. Now you can get away with a lot more, or rather you can get away with doing a lot less, because people don't pay quite the same amount of attention. And I was struck by the uncertainty to me makes me wonder if that same uncertainty fundamentally applies to real things

that we're consuming all the time. But we're not paying as close attention to. Yeah, I feel like there's just so much content out there in the world that it's hard to even keep track of kind of what is what. What did you think when you first heard these songs? Did you suspect AI? And like, how do you as a music critic sort of listen to this stuff? So obviously last year there was the ghostwriter song, Drake and the weekend, quote unquote, Drake, quote unquote, the weekend.

I came in with my ex like Celine or the flex. And what that song told me is you can relatively convincingly take a vocal filter that sounds pretty plausibly like contemporary Drake or contemporary weekend. and smear it atop something and make it sound passable for someone who's paying. And that was a fully AI. That was a fully AI. Well, it was an AI vocal filter on top of a human being, much like what is it, the Amazon self-serve grocery stores where there's actually just people checking you out. It's like that's what that was. It's just a guy.

Just a guy with like some technology. So I knew that songs could exist that sounded like Drake, but weren't Drake or sounded like Kanye. or 50 or whoever. What's actually really fascinating about Drake as a performer, he's incredibly nimble. He'll change flow patterns. He'll change rhythms within the space of a song. Like he'll just stop mid-song and take on an entirely different character because he's an incredibly versatile rapper.

This song had those things or had parts of those things. Those things, I think, are not able to be replicated by AI. Not yet. Maybe you could train an AI. on like the thousand Drake songs and leaks that exist, and it could get smart enough to do that. But I don't think that it's ready to do that. Now, there's also, you know, Drake has multiple vocal tones.

I think he sounded particularly exasperated on this one. Now, does that mean that you couldn't go to a setting in your AI program and dial the exasperation meter up to 11? I mean, probably you could. But to me, that felt real. I think to me, the reason that people with the Kendrick thing are so uncertain is Kendrick, obviously, he's like a very dynamic rapper, but he has like a pretty, like, he wraps in like one lot, like the affect is pretty similar, even in his best stuff.

And so it's maybe a little bit more copyable. So when you listen to the Kendrick response or the alleged Kendrick response, it's plausible. It's plausible. So, and I think it was more plausible for Kendrick than that one was for Drake. And, of course, Drake one turned out to be real. I'm wondering how you think the artists should approach this shift. to AI. I mean, we see people like Grimes. I think she, like, licensed her voice to be or, you know, she's gone so pro. What role do they play? And do you think those artists that do, do sort of

adopt AI are jeopardizing themselves ultimately, because people might not know sort of like what music they release is real or not. I think there are certain artists who are going to benefit from it. I think, I think it really depends what kind of artist you are. I mean, someone like Drake, right, Drake is still viable. He's creative. He's making contemporary. hit records. He's not going to want to be in competition with a fan version of himself. But someone who is not in the mix in the same way may very well see AI enhanced fan bolstered music making as an opportunity to extend their career. Something I was thinking about a lot last year was, you know, the Luke Combs cover of Tracy Chapman's fast car.

A lovely song, you know, real big hit, beautiful performance on the Grammys, an incredibly boring vocal performance. I'm sort of alone in thinking this, but a very boring vocal performance. And I remember saying on pop cast on my show, like, that sounds like an AI cover. It sounds like a Luke Combs vocal filter singing, because it's not even in harmony with the song. It's literally just the song, flat, straight. And I was like, if I was Luke Combs, or if I was Luke Combs label, or if I was any major country arts label, I'd be putting the technology to work covering the 30 biggest song of the 80s sitting in a conference room and being like, which of these should we release, which is going to be our future. Think about A&R, right? A&R, as it's currently done, is largely like a match to matchmaking process.

It's like, we have this singer assigned to the label. They sound kind of like this. I bet they'd sound good with this songwriter and then with this producer and then this other producer who's known for a slightly different style. And what if we just stitch them all together? With AI, you can basically do that at the press of a button and see how it sounds. And then if you like it, you don't have to waste money. It costs a lot of money to be in the studio. You're not going to have to waste any money on trial and error.

You're going to do all the trial and error on your computer. So if I was an A&R working now, that's absolutely what I'd be doing. Those people are going to be getting promotions. I mean, I think it was a year or two ago that Capitol Records released FN Mecca, I think. I mean, was it the AI rapper or something? I mean, I cover the influencer world and this is constantly kind of a thing as well there. What do you think the appetite is, you know, from consumers for AI artists, just complete sort of ritual? Total fabrications.

I mean, obviously you look at, you know, Hatsune Amiko is not exactly the same thing, but it's, you know, I think in other. music industries and other cultures and other countries, it's not without precedent, right? Hatsunemiko is essentially a virtual, an invented virtual pop star who has been popular in Japan and elsewhere for many years, a decade at this point, a really long time. And there are people who just are fans of Hatsunei Miko the way that they're fans of Rihanna or fans of Taylor Swift, but that feels like a phenomenon that that hasn't fully arrived in America yet. People are still hung up on like notions of authenticity as if that's a real thing, but people are still very hung up on that here. I think that's going to go away. I think especially if you're

under 18 and you get your music through Roblox or something, it's like you're not like attaching music to like a human form. I think in a generation from now or even a half generation from now, a question like that's going to seem strange. Like, we can ask that question because we're still living kind of in the long tale of how things used to be. But I think moving forward, I just don't see, I don't think people are going to be attached in that exact way. I think young people are being absolutely fine with like a character that makes music. Yeah. Speaking of maybe one of the biggest people that's sort of making music of Taylor Swift, I mean, I think Taylor Swift is arguably the biggest pop star of our time right now.

Her music was recently put back on TikTok after. pulled off or the sort of dispute between Universal and TikTok. What does this mean for Taylor? And how do you see Taylor Swift evolving? Like she's so on top right now. How much longer can she stay there? And does this TikTok thing make much of a difference? So just take one step back with the TikTok thing. Like I've always kind of been on the mindset and definitely in the last year leading up to what happened with Universal pulling their music. I don't know if TikTok is good for music. I totally agree. Yeah, I don't know if it's good for music.

Like, it's, it uses music in service of something. And obviously certain artists, especially young, unknown artists, can find themselves with a really, really big platform very, very quickly. But I don't know if TikTok as a broad entity is good for music as a business, or at least as the business that's currently structured as. So when Universal and TikTok are like playing chicken with each other, I think they were both right. I think Universal was like, we don't need you as much as you're saying we need you. And I think TikTok was like, low-key, you're right. Like, we don't need you either. So I wasn't surprised when they came to loggerheads and Universal basically blinked and said we're taking the music off.

As far as Taylor, the thing about Taylor is there is literally no space that Taylor will leave unmonetized. It is just very simple. I mean, this is a person who has. She is her own marketplace. What happens with Taylor Swift is not reflective of the music business. It is purely reflective of the Taylor Swift business. And so Taylor saying, I still want my fans to be able to make whatever videos they want to make using my music. I don't think that changes Taylor Swift's business that radically.

I don't think it changes TikTok's business that radically. But I think what it is is very much in keeping with how Taylor has historically treated her fans. which is giving a tremendous amount of access, whether it's to her songwriting notebooks, or whether it's to merch that's connected to the Easter eggs on the album. She's trying to anticipate how the fans are going to want to interact with her music and is simply providing the thing that, unfortunately, the businesses couldn't come to an agreement on. But Taylor's our own market, so she can fix that. Yeah, I agree with the whole sort of like UMG TikTok thing.

I think that TikTok is so crucial for our. artist trying to get discovered, of course, we all know that people can blow up that way. But I think fundamentally for the music business, as you mentioned, as it's structured today, I don't think it's as big a deal, especially as they're pivoting to long form content. And people need these like 10 minute long audios. Like, they're just not using the sort of like up music that it was. They were in 2020. I think 2020 it had a very different role in the music industry than it does today. And it's much more akin to YouTube today where there's like background music. But I was watching a lot of college acceptance TikToks recently, and they all use that one song from like 2019 as the sort of

soundtrack song. And it's like, I'm sure that whoever is the songwriter on that song is grateful for the notional bump in streaming income that comes from that. But it doesn't really make that song incredibly popular in the sort of big world. It's just, it's like a trigger. It's like, it's almost like a scent memory. It's like when you hear that, you immediately think, ah, college acceptance, TikToks. But you're not necessarily to be like, this is the name of the song, this is the name in the musician, I followed them on Spotify, I bought a concert ticket, I went and bought T-shirts. It's not that. It's literally just, ah, this is the scent that's associated with I got waitlisted at University of Illinois or Bana Champlain.

Yeah, I think so too. I mean, I think of also even just like how you think of different like audios. I think that there's a lot of audios that are not even necessarily music driven. Yeah. I mean, speaking of Taylor Swift and like disinformation, somebody recently was saying that Taylor Swift is sort of like the originator of a lot of conspiratorial mindset on the internet because of the way that she'd sort of constantly giving these secret messages and it's led everybody to kind of now distrust. Or, you know, look for secret. It is. How do you think that that's rippled off, you know, through the music industry? I mean, what effects do you think that that is having?

So two things on that. One, my colleague Joe Coscarelli talks about the Q&Nonification of fan culture. And I think Taylor is absolutely the entry point for a lot of that by putting in Easter eggs in the lyric booklets in different songs and telling a story in one song that refers back to another song. It is really the strings on the whiteboard of connecting. And I think what you see now are a lot of artists trying to replicate that without. the lore. Like, I'm sorry, I regret to inform you that the Duolipa lore is not as thorough as the Taylor Swift lore, right? But we are in a moment where Duolipa, if she is to play the role of an A-List pop star, that's actually part of A-List pop fandom right now, is you need to create

this, like, maze and puzzle for people to get through in order to access something about you. It's a little bit preposterous, especially if you're inventing it or if someone at your record label is inventing it. That said, when you think about what it takes to become a true A-list pop star these days, something else I've been thinking about are touchpoints. And I was saying on a show recently, no matter how famous, whether it's Taylor Swift or fly on a boss, you need a thousand touch points for every single thing that you wish to get heard. Because you can't guarantee that radio is going to play. There is no MTV, monocultural distribution. is almost a thing of the past,

you just need to hit this a thousand times and pray that a fan might catch one, two, or three of those times. Those are the only options left. And so I think given that this is what the distribution system is now, if you tell stories that force people to come back over and over and over again, that's your best hope. Like, you have to end up essentially becoming,

like, the TikTok content creator who, like, tells a story and then comes back the next day and then comes back the following day and then comes back the following day. You have to do that, but it's with your music. Yeah. And I mean, lore is a good sort of way to put it. You have to construct this like whole kind of world. I think it's, I mean, I recently wrote this piece about the concept of viral flation and just how it's, it's so hard to know what is actually viral these days because of the lack of monoculture and the numbers on everything are so big.

I'm curious, and I hope you can answer this to me because I saw this tweet a couple of days ago that was like, do you just surround yourself, I think, with a lot of bisexual women or is Chappelle Rhone, like, actually famous? Yeah, yeah. I need to know, like, because in my world, she's so famous. Everyone is talking about her. And other friends of mine are like, what are you going to say? The answer is sort of, right?

So first of all, Chapel Rhone's been around for a couple of years. Is it Chapel Rone? Chapel. Oh, I've been saying Chappelle. Like Dave Chappelle? No, no, it's Chapel Rone. Yeah. Pretty short it's Chapel Rone.

Last year, sort of the breakout for the songs. Chaparro works also with Dan Nigro, who produces Olivia Rodriguez. And there was a big song last year called Casual, which was like a legitimate, like, it's not like a top 10 billboard hit, but it's like a hit of cool people who are like, hmm, pop singer makes interesting song. Then there were one or two more songs that were kind of on the back of that, that were moderately successful in that space. Olivia took her on tour. And so that's really where you start to see, I think, more and more people talking about her. And then, obviously, the tiny desk that happened, I forget if that was a week or two ago, that becomes a thing. She'd be right there out on the deck.

Put her canine teeth in the side of my neck. Like, I don't watch every tiny desk, but I think people watch tiny desks if they're like, I've notionally heard of that person, but I kind of like don't know a lot about them. I'll check in on the tiny desk. And I feel like that to me was the point of saturation. But yes, I definitely did see the meme of like, do you just follow a lot of like bisexual white women, which I think if if your Twitter feed is like leaning that direction, you probably felt this way about Chapel Rhone.

Honestly, like last August or something. Now I think it's like breaking out of that into like wider, wider acclaim. But also Chapel Rhone just like legitimately good. I saw her on the Olivia tour. But yes. It is real. It is real. It is real.

But it was real last fall, too. Like, that's the thing. Like, to me, it was real last fall. But again, maybe that's just because of my Twitter feed. You know, as somebody that covers the music industry, make some future predictions for us. Kind of, where do you see this all going? I mean, we talked a little bit about AI,

but is there anything else that, you know, people should be paying attention to and looking out, you know, pop music dance? I mean, I think in the big picture, the AI conversation, underscores something that I've been feeling broadly speaking, which is it's going to be incredibly hard for a performer, a new performer who we have never heard of,

who hasn't arrived yet, to sell out MetLife Stadium 10 years or 20 years from now. Because I think aggregating the amount of attention around one individual is going to be harder and harder and harder to do. Like, you see the same. success that Zach Bryant's had in the last couple years, this to me feels like almost the last of a dying breed or near the last of a dying breed. It's very much old-fashioned. It's hand-to-hand. It's interior. It's emotional. It's people like singing their way into the songs.

That small town bar scene with small vices can be green. Zach Bryan is not like a huge TikTok thing, but I think increasingly as people receive music, in ways that are not connected to like an authentic author and that are disaggregated into pieces, the notion of like a four-quadrant pop star who can sell out stadiums across the country or across the world, we're going to look back on that and say,

that was really weird when people could do that, when Madonna can do that, when Beyonce could do that. That was strange because I don't think that's what's going to be happening 20 to 30 years from now. That's so interesting. Well, John, thank you so much. much for chatting with us. This was so fun. I hope that she'll come back on. My pleasure.

When we come back, we'll be discussing this week's biggest news stories. Hi, welcome back. Zach and I are now going to run through some news stories for the week. All right, let's do it. This week, the first beauty pageant for AI generated women was announced. The Miss AI pageant pits computer-generated women against each other competing on tests of beauty, technology, and social media clout. This whole thing is kind of a stunt by a company called FanView, which is basically a subscription platform for content creators, almost like an only fan's competitor. Also, the pageant itself will be judged by certain AI influencers. I need to hear what you think of this, Zach, because to me, the whole premise sounds just

absolutely ridiculous. I mean, what do they need us for anymore, you know? Like, they're just, they got their own AIs, AIs judging AIs, we don't even need to be involved. So the co-founder of Fanbue said that he wants this to become the Oscars of the creator economy. And to that, I say that we have that already. It's the streaming awards. I don't think we need this fake AI contest. It's kind of ridiculous. At the same time, they are giving out real money, so I'm eager to see who wins. Do you think it's less misogynistic or more misogynistic to

judge AI women as opposed to real women? Well, it's judging them off pretty misogynistic criteria. I mean, these women don't have personalities, so a lot of it's just judged on who can make the hottest AI women. And I guess it's real human judges are doing part of it and then they have the AI judges. I don't know. It's all obviously just for PR, but it is kind of ridiculous and it is interesting to think about what this could be in the future. Are we going to see something like this eventually? I don't know. People already pay to subscribe to AI hot influencers on OnlyFans and stuff. People are dating AIs. They have AI bots that they date. It's it's her. We're here. I think we'll see where this goes. But beauty pageants in general,

have been kind of falling out of favor in recent years. I don't even think that AI could save that whole industry. Can I tell you the last time I've even thought about a beauty pageant or been aware of one? It seems like a relic from another time. Every once in a while there's a clip that goes viral. You know when that woman was like, friends! She just yelled and that went viral. But that's it.

Yeah, I think they're flopping hard. And I don't know. We'll see. We'll see who they deem the hottest AI women alive. You know what they need. They need Trump to get back into it. Oh, God. Trump judges the AI beauty pageant. You think he could save the AI? I think he could save it. If he pivots to AI, we're really doomed. We don't need him judging

the AI women. She's a dog. I'm sorry. He should be worrying about the share price of truth social, which has been plummeting since it went public recently. Yeah, it's pretty bad for him. And his trial started this week. Yeah, yeah, he has bigger fish to fry. Speaking of presidential drama, 18 big TikTok TikTok content creators issued an open letter to Biden today, basically condemning him for saying that he would sign a TikTok ban into law. They urged him to stop the ban on the app saying, quote, many of us rely on TikTok for incomes, supporting ourselves and our families, while also inspiring others to do the same. This aligns with your focus on job creation, economic prosperity

for Americans, particularly with the younger generation. I think it's interesting that they're going this economic route. I reported a couple months ago back when the ban was making its way through the house that TikTok has partnered with a research company, to issue a report on TikTok's impact on the GDP, which is quite substantial. We know that banning TikTok could result in hundreds of thousands of American jobs being lost. So I think they seem to think that this line of reasoning, I guess, will sway the president more than just, you know, don't ban the app that we're communicating about, you know, politics on. Yeah. It just seems like if Biden bans it, it's a really bad move for him. I think it really pisses a lot of people off. He is all. He is

already struggling with Gen Z. But at the same time, from what I've heard from my sources, he hates that it's a hub for progressive activism. And I think that's why we see these lawmakers coming out against it. I think the moral panic, as we talked about last week, around technology is like affected everyone. But most importantly, TikTok has given the young people in this country a political voice and banning it would be devastating for a lot of progressive activists in in terms of Gaza, climate change, like all of these different areas of activism that young people sort of coalesce around on TikTok. I also think it will be devastating for Biden if he bates it.

We'll see what happens. Anyway, speaking of social media disasters, Elon Musk is experimenting with a new idea that would require new users of X to pay to post. Basically, they'd have to pay a small fee in order to join the platform. Elon Musk says that this will cut down on bots. I'm extremely skeptical because I doubt that the nominal fee that they'd have to pay to create accounts is that is going to support, you know, bot networks, some of which are very heavily and well funded.

That's the logic is if we make something cost a little bit of money, people won't pay for the bots. You can't spin up a million fake accounts if you have to pay a dollar for each one, right? Right. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. Theoretically. It's sort of wild to me that they just, that this is how they have to fix the bot problem. Like, they can't just figure out which ones are bots. Like, Twitter doesn't just know that. Let's not forget that Elon laid off a lot of the team that was in charge of policing in authentic activity. And it's not in Elon's interest to police the bots. He keeps touting these user numbers that are just completely inflated by bots.

If he was to actually crack down on bots and those user numbers dropped, I think it would be a negative signal. And so he doesn't actually want to crack down on it. I think I would be surprised if this changed less. It's also just so antithetical. I mean, this is the person that's like free speech. free expression at all costs. And time and time again, it's been like, actually, free speech, only if you pay for it. Only if you pay for Twitter Blue. Remember when Twitter Blue was supposed to crack down on bots? Yeah. And Twitter also just has way less users than all the other major

social media. I think it's around like 300 million. That's like who knows because we don't know how many of those people are bots. We don't actually know how many. Well, we also don't know like, I mean, that's allegedly the amount of monthly active users from the last time that it was reported. But you can't I trust Elon, obviously, on self-reporting any numbers. The engagement is way down, undeniably, on Twitter, and there's clearly a bot problem. I just don't think that Elon seems that interested in fixing it. Marquez Brownlee, who's arguably the most powerful and influential technology content creator of our time, finally released his review of the Humane AI Pin, and he savaged it.

Unfortunately, it's also the new worst product I think I've ever reviewed. in its current state, there's just so many things bad about it. Marquez is usually quite fair to tech companies. I think he really earnestly is a technology lover like myself, you know, that wants to believe that this tech is good and can do good things in the world or make some changes and really shake things up. And he just did not like the AI pin. And people were freaking out at him for this.

People were literally calling him a traitor and saying that he's anti-tech. And I just think it shows how thin-skinned a lot of people in Silicon Valley are when it comes to criticism of these products. Yeah, this was wild to me. And this, I think, really just says where we are as a society. I feel like just the role of the critic is like almost obsolete, right? Critics in film and music have just less and less influence. Marquez is like, yeah, one of the few critics who still really matters. And then people are upset when he's critical of something that isn't a good product. Like, I've seen enough reviews of the Humane AI pin from other people who all just say, this thing doesn't work very well. This thing isn't doing what it's supposed to do. And so when the most powerful one says the same thing, basically, people are like really upset about it. So many of the reviews that we see online today are essentially just sponsored content.

And I think so many people are used to sponsored content that when they see an actual earnest review, it's like, why is this person being so negative? Are they a hater? And it's like, no, it's just an honest review. It makes me sad that tech people are so angry about it because as somebody that loves tech products myself and having worked on tech products in the past years ago, you want feedback. You want good user feedback.

You want someone like Marquez to like really tear your product apart and tell you how to do better. But it seems like actually that's not what Silicon Valley wants anymore. They just want this sort of like blind boosterism. And that's a huge shame. Exactly. Exactly. They all just want enthusiastic SponCon. That's all they want. They don't want criticism. And that's why, like, people are going to creators over journalists. The Silicon Valley people are getting the creators. It's not people. Like, consumers, I think, like, consumers actually do, I mean, look at the verge, right? Like, consumers want, like, thoughtful breakdowns of products. It's just increasingly hard to find that because you're so overrun with SponCon. That's why you see companies increasingly giving review devices and stuff to content creators because they know that they're just going to essentially produce.

puff pieces on the tech. And I think huge kudos to Marquez because it just speaks to his integrity as a technologist and product reviewer that he didn't do that. He really gave his honest review. I hope this has a ripple effect and that we see more content creators taking a critical stance around the technology that they cover. Because I think actually the reaction from users has been quite positive. Like people have been like, thank you, Marquez. I was really curious. Thank you for actually breaking this down. So stop listening to those. Loud Mouse in Silicon Valley and be honest with your audience about what you like about a product and what you don't. Couldn't have said it better myself. That's the show. You can watch full episodes

on my YouTube channel at Taylor Lorenz. Power User is produced by Travis Larchuk and Jolani Carter. It's mixed and mastered by Brandon McFarland. Our video producer is Brandon Kiefer. Our executive producers are Zach Mack and Ashok Kerwa. Power User is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you like the show, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. We'll be back next week with another episode of Power User. See you then.