Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - Is the celebrity 'blockout' working? + TikTok creators sue the U.S.

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

This week, TikTok creators sue the US government over free speech, Bumble tells women to get busy, YouTube’s CEO wants creators to win Emmys, and Google’s new AI gives some bad advice. Later, Taylor Lorenz chats with Kate Lindsay, co-founder of the Embedded newsletter, about a new social media movement called “Blockout 2024.” The campaign encourages users to block celebrities who haven’t publicly condemned the attacks in Gaza. But is it working?  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, TikTok creators sue the U.S. government. YouTube CEO wants to give influencers Emmys. Bumble tells women to get busy and our main topic. Why hundreds of celebrities are getting blocked online and is it working? I'm Taylor Lorenz and that's all coming up right now on Power User. Hi, I'm here with my showrunner Zach Mack and we're going to be talking about some of the stories that broke this week. Let's do it. Okay, so this week, my colleague Drew Harwell and I broke the story that eight TikTok creators are suing the U.S. government claiming

that the law banning TikTok violates their First Amendment rights. These content creators kind of hail from all over. It's a mix. Their legal fees are being covered by TikTok, the company itself. We've got a cookie baker in Memphis, a cattle rancher in Texas, a kind of conservative rapper Air Force veteran, a college football coach in North Dakota. These creators really run the gamut. But this is the second big legal challenge to this law. And I think it'll be really interesting to see where this legislation lands. Yeah, it looks like there's very different creators who do very different things. They're all in this lawsuit. And then

what's happening next? So unlike past legal actions involving TikTok creators, this lawsuit was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which basically means that the appeals court's ruling can only be overturned by the Supreme Court. Gotcha. So yeah, guess we'll see how it goes. I'm just kind of interested whether they chose the right creators. I think that this case really depends on whether you can make these arguments about speech. I think they chose this kind of like wide cast of characters specifically to speak to different issues. I know that there was this vetting process. Davis Wright-Termain, the really reputable free speech law firm that sourced these creators. I know that they went through quite a long list to find these people.

A bunch of these creators were people that had actually previously spoken out on TikTok or elsewhere about the ban or shown up to protests on Capitol Hill. But we'll see if they chose the right mix and how compelling these creators, you know, stories are. the court. Did you know these creators before the story? You knew about them. Okay. Yeah. Because I'm like looking over the names and I didn't, I didn't know them. Some of them are big. Some of them are small. I mean, there's also kind of like a wide range of creators. This is right the same week that a lot of people have been pointing out online that right as this TikTok ban passed, by the way, meta has now rolling out all these paid options. You have to pay over $300 a month now if you're a business owner for

the top tier of this new verified program. Basically, they're doing what they do. on Facebook where they're completely eliminating, you know, ostensibly organic reach for people. So it's just, it's crazy. I really do think there's this big chilling happening on social media where there's just not a place to post and express yourself and reach people. TikTok has been the one app that has allowed people to reach others en masse. Yeah, I've also noticed this on Twitter now, because I'm not a blue check. I feel like my tweets just no one sees them because it's really, it's given preferential treatment to the people who pay. We're in this era where you have to pay to be heard and that is inherently, you know, undemocratic and it makes it really hard to reach

people. Not to mention, there's no discovery mechanism even remotely like TikToks. And so it's just impossible. You're basically posting to the void on these other platforms. Yeah. You know, I have not seen a lot of celebrities or really big creators talking about this TikTok band. Have you seen anybody that's like Charlie DeMilio level like speaking out against this band like someone who blew up on TikTok? Yeah, plenty of creators have spoken out against the band. I think a lot of creators feel, you know, they don't pay attention to politics and they don't know what's happening. And it feels to them like the boy who cried wolf. And so they don't, when you talk to these creators, they're in delusion land. Like they're like, oh, I heard that that passed, but it'll never happen.

You know, and it's like, no, it literally is law and it will happen in. Under 270 days, you know, if this legal challenges don't bear out. So we'll see. Do you think it'll go through? Depends a lot on who our president is. The feminist dating app Bumble, and I'm using heavy air quotes here, feminist dating app Bumble is apologizing for this new ad campaign that they rolled out, making fun of celibacy, and encouraging women to hook up.

Bumble made billboards that said things like, you know full well celibacy is not the answer. and thou shall not give up on dating and become a nun. People were completely outraged about this. These ads are so desperate. They're giving major pick-me energy. It's grossly condescending and patronizing, as if they know better than ourselves,

what's best for us in our bodies. Something to keep in mind is that women are the product when it comes to dating apps. Dating apps are here to make money. They are not non-profit organizations. And in a climate where our bodily autonomy is being stripped away from us, more and more each day. It just doesn't make sense. I think it was a super toned up ad campaign,

especially in the midst of all of these conversations around women's bodily autonomy and just losing rights to that. It's been super rocky for Bumble lately. They announced these layoffs. Their stock is significantly down 45% since last July. I think it makes them seem even less relevant than they were. And they were already becoming pretty irrelevant. This was a really rocky ad campaign. and I'm surprised that they even rolled it out. I think people are increasingly just dismayed with the dating app experience, right? Every other day I see a think piece about how everyone hates dating apps. And if you look at stock prices and just people's general feelings towards dating apps,

it's just like people want less and less to do with it. So why not a splashy ad campaign? Do you know what would happen to Bumble if suddenly every woman on the app was like way more down to hook up than they were yesterday. It would be Tinder. It would be tender, but it would immediately become the most popular dating app, right? If you knew that that was the place where women were like down to hook up, it would immediately become popular.

Now, I do think it is a little cringe when a corporation is encouraging its users to hook up more, specifically the women to hook up more just because it's going to affect quarterly earnings. They're looking at these layoffs. they're looking at their stock price and they're looking at the culture of dating apps and they're like, man, we got to get these women hooking up again.

You know? Yeah. And it's just a little cringe. I think Bumble's problem is just that it pushes this completely outdated idea of gender and feminism. And we've talked about this before, but it's just a very like 2017 version of gender and the girls and the boys, you know.

And I just, the ad campaign feels kind of, of dated for that reason as well. It's a very heteronormative, you know, kind of dating app. Well, yeah, that's the whole, the whole app is very like the wing, pink hat, rah-rah feminism. Like, it's very like that era of feminism. Yeah. It makes sense that their ad campaign is a little tone deaf.

At least people are talking about Bumble again. And I guess that could lead to some app downloads for them. Sure. So YouTube CEO, Neil Moan, posted a big op-ed in the Hollywood Reporter this week, arguing that YouTubers should be. considered for categories in the Emmys. I think this is really interesting because the way he phrased it was, you might not expect Mr. Beast to stand on the same stage as Jeremy Allen White, but if you think creators are just recording videos from their bedrooms, then I have some big news.

Creators have writers rooms, production teams, business strategies, they're developing programming. And that's not just popular and relevant, it's breaking boundaries. And he's totally correct. I think YouTubers should be eligible for Emmys. The funniest part about all of this is that not only can YouTubers actually already win Emmys. Hank Green won an Emmy quite famously a decade ago. And he quote tweeted this announcement and was like, is anybody going to tell him? Yeah. I mean, when I was at the ringer, Jason Concepcion won an Emmy for his web series. So it's already happening. It's already happening. I think that this is really just a way for YouTube to kind of plant a flag and say, like, take this industry seriously. Look at how professionalized it's become, especially in the past

couple years. And hey, Hollywood executives, yeah, this might be happening on these sort of like one-off basis, but you should really look at this whole industry and take it more seriously. I just don't ever want to see an episode of like Mr. Beast up against like succession. You know, I will throw things. Well, one is scripted and one is unscripted. But I don't know. I think, I mean, I just think there's like increasingly really high quality, fascinating entertainment online that rivals quote-unquote traditional television and also these lines between what is traditional TV anymore. We got the news this week as well that there's going to be this bundle of streaming services now. It's all beginning to look a lot more like cable. And then you have big people like

Mr. Beetz and others signing streaming deals. So I think that these lines between what is and isn't sort of like entertainment or Hollywood style entertainment are going to be gone just the way that they were obliterated in media where now if you say I wrote for the New Yorker, right, you're not going to distinguish between like the New Yorker online or, you know, the print magazine. And it just everything blends together. So this week was Google I.O., which is their big annual conference. And when the company was showing off its new Gemini search product during the demo, the AI made a factual error. And it's kind of in the weeds, but basically the AI produced terrible advice for how to fix a shutter camera in a way that would really ruin your film. Everyone was obviously

laughing at this. And it's kind of a niche error. But I do think it shows that AI is simply not ready for prime time when it comes to factual information quite yet. Yeah, this is just a perfect metaphor for the tech industry. The like move fast and break things, but move so fast that it doesn't even matter if you're right. And it's just like they immediately put it in the hands of consumers when it's like 75%, 80% done. And then it's just going to make errors. Yeah. And there's errors all over the internet already. By the way, that's the whole problem. right, is that it's taking information from probably amalgamation of websites and other sources that might have errors as well. I think it's just important to fact check things and,

you know, double check your sources. I wouldn't just do a single Gemini search and go off of that. I think it's harmless for things like recipes maybe or other stuff where maybe the stakes are low, but I just think it's very funny that it happened on stage. So I've been using chat GPT to do a little bit of planning for my upcoming vacation in Europe. And I was like trying to look for restaurants in Paris. And it told me to go to Le Pen Quotidian, which is like, that's hilarious. That's like if I'm going to New York and it's like,

oh, you got to hit the M&M store. You know, like make sure you hit the M&M store and McDonald's. Yeah, exactly. It's like that Nathan for you sketch where he goes to Sabaro, I think, for his New York slice of pizza. Yeah, I mean, the chat GPT news was interesting as well this week. Obviously, there was also that super viral video of the chat GPT announcement this week where they had the live translation.

Basically, this guy was speaking into his phone and live translating what he was saying into Italian. Hey, chat chagipit, how are you? I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for asking. How about you? How's your day going? I'm doing great. So I would like you to function as a translator. I have a friend here who only speaks Italian, and I only speak English. And every time you hear English, I want you to translate it to Italian.

And if you hear Italian, I want you to translate it back to English. Is that good? Perfect. though. I thought that was really cool. And I think translation is something where AI is going to be incredibly useful. I was just in Berlin last week. And I was actually going on Google Translate already and pressing the speakerphone for certain things that I was trying to communicate. And it was super helpful. So I think if we can integrate that into like the meta glasses and, you know, we'll be all good to go. Look, that kind of stuff is amazing. Like when again, when I was in Japan, you could just hold up Google Translate to any sign, any menu. It immediately

tells you what it is. You can, you know, you can say stuff and like hold it up for the cab driver. It's pretty helpful, yeah. All right, thanks so much, Zach. When we come back, we're going to be talking about blocking celebrities on social media and does it lead to social change? A new social media movement has emerged to protest Israel's continued attacks on Gaza. It's called Blockout 2024.

And it encourages users to unfollow celebrities and influencers who haven't publicly condemned the attacks. Here to talk about this social media campaign is. is Kate Lindsay, who writes the newsletter Embedded. Kate, welcome to Power User. Thank you for having me. Okay, so the only thing that I've seen for the past week on social media has basically been this block campaign.

After the MetGala, people started passing around these lists of celebrities to block. There's a huge backlash to some videos posted online around the MetGala and the event. And people basically started to encourage everyone to block these long lists of hundreds of celebrities. Can you tell me a little bit about how this social media phenomenon emerged? Where did this campaign come from? Yeah, so it began, yeah, you're right, night of the mech gala. There was videos going on on TikTok that were kind of juxtaposing the mechgala red carpet with the news that was coming out of Palestine, particularly rafa as I think it's like a hundred thousand people were evacuating. And the dystopian juxtaposition, I think, really was the tipping point for a lot of people.

And how I came across the block list and the person who seems to be kind of championing it is someone who now just goes by blockless 24 on TikTok. He used to be a comedy account and then he made this video sort of as people were processing the Met Gala saying that his way of coping with this dystopian

reality is he stopped paying celebrities and what he means by that is he stopped following them. We have full control over celebrities money and lives. When we hate on them, they make money. When we praise them, they make money. But when we block their social media accounts and completely,

forget their names, they lose it all. The amount of attention we give them and the amount of engagement we give them is their direct currency. Take it from them. And it really inspired a lot of people to do the same because it really feels like this thing that like finally, after months of feeling very helpless watching this situation, now here is something you can do, you can go, you can block Kim Kardashian, you can block Beyonce or Taylor Swift.

And the idea in theory is that if we all do that on mass, the celebrities will listen and start using their platforms for quote-unquote good. Right. And ultimately what they want from these celebrities, right, is not just using their platforms for good. They want them to speak out on what's happening in Gaza, right? Well, so that's where it gets confusing because the Blockow has kind of surpassed the original creator.

The original creator actually never really said anything about Palestine. He kept it very, very vague and just said for good that these celebrities need to be using their platforms better. And I think obviously what's happening between Italy and Palestine is kind of top of the top of mind issue right now. So that's how a lot of people are using it. But I think one of the flaws of this blockout is that there doesn't seem to be any coherent specific demand that we're making of these celebrities when we block them. Yeah. I saw a lot of sort of confusion.

But it does seem tied to Gaza. Is it not? I would say that sort of it has been the masses have taken it on as something that is to do with Gaza. Yeah. Because I feel like now a lot of celebrities and content creators have been hit with falling follower accounts. You had Chris Olson, a big content creator, suddenly sort of frantically posting this GoFund Me for, I believe, a family in Gaza or some Gaza residents, although not getting into too much detail about the actual nature of the conflict. No matter what, I think that's something we can all be supporting. Including donating myself, I'll also be putting the link in my bio for you to donate if you're able.

How much of a material difference has this campaign made? Are these celebrities suffering? Because I feel like there's been all these videos online of people being like, oh, you know, it's ruining them. They're losing millions. Keep going. Like, is that true? Like, are they losing money really from this? Or is it more about sending a public kind of message? I would say that the sort of blockout movement is a lot more about the shifting attitudes towards celebrity than it is about really achieving anything. Because yes, Kim Kardashian has lost followers. And there are some cases where celebrities are seeing a dent. But I think this movement misunderstands how traditional celebrities make most of their money. And I would not say that it is from having followers on Instagram. And I think the other issue is that while there is this account, Blockout 2024, kind of coming online every day and saying this is who we're blocking, that's not how everyone is participating in this movement. Like you said, they're passing around lists that are hundreds of people. And I think, you know, there's a reason when workers go on strike, they all do it on the same day because then you feel it. but what's kind of happening now is just people are being blocked all over the place intermittently

and it's not packing the same punch because as far as, if you look at it holistically, celebrities are just losing followers at random, but there's not like one, you know, if you pick one person, say we are blocking this person and that person feels the effects, I think that achieves more than this free-for-all we're kind of seeing right now. Yeah, it seems very chaotic. I think there's also just been a lot of really bad, unformed digital marketing takes. Like I saw this woman being like, you know, and this is how the ads managers worked and now you're messing with their targeting. And it's like, guys, they hoover up so much data on all of us. You blocking one random celebrity that you never even followed is not going to do anything in meaningful in terms of their ability to target you with advertising. Yeah. Yeah, I think this is an example of how because influencers and creators are going to the Met Gala and becoming traditional celebrities, we've stopped kind of distinguishing between them, at least in this circumstance. But, you know, yeah, how traditional celebrities operate. It's like if you've really want to hit them. Stop watching their movies. Stop watching their TV shows. It's not as simple as

just block them on Instagram. I've seen some critiques of this movement saying, you know, why are we focusing on these celebrities when we should be focusing on politicians? Why do you think celebrities became the focus of this campaign? It's optics because, well, obviously, politicians may be living with multiple houses and in wealth. It's not their job the way it is for celebrities to show it off. You know, politicians are thankfully not walking the red carpet or, you know, doing architecture. architectural digest videos, but with celebrities, part of their job is putting their wealth and their privileged lifestyle in front of you. And so I think that is a more satisfying target than these people who in many cases probably have more privilege and wealth that celebrities,

but their job is, you know, we only see them through the lens of doing their work. We don't see the thing that would make it feel satisfying to really be like, hey, do something or, you know, I'm blocking you. Can you kind of talk about this movement? in the context of other social media-driven sort of activist movements, I'm kind of reminded of the Black Square, although I think it's fundamentally quite different than that, which people were encouraging people to post in the summer of 2020. I thought that was actually didn't accomplish much of anything and was sort of a way for people to get out of saying anything meaningful or doing anything meaningful about racial justice. Talk to me about this blocking campaign in relation

to other social media movements. Yeah. So I would say the Black Square comparison, you're right. There are differences. I think the similarity that people are drawing on with that is that it's a way to feel like you are doing something, but that doesn't really materially accomplish that much. One thing that is happening at the same time, and is actually the reason that Chris Olson posted his GoFundMe is a campaign happening by a creator called Aaron Hadamer. It's called hashtag pass the the hat. And she's working with Operation Olive Branch, which is this organization that Vets GoFundMe is to make sure, you know, they're legit and the people of Palestine to help them evacuate when the borders open. And what Erin was doing, she was a pretty big creator just as a comedian.

My philosophy was that not one person, me or anybody else, should carry the burden of speaking out. And I could see a lot of people agree with me, but they didn't know how to go about it. So what we did is we made a form. Whether you're a creator with 50 followers or 50 million followers, You can fill out that form and we will assign you a family. There's no wrong way to go about it. And I did an interview with her today, which will be out soon, where she said that she thinks like all these creators who have been silent, you know, like Chris or like John and Hank Green were a big one, it's not that they don't want to help.

But I think with a crisis like this, it is so broad and so lair, they just need to be given something to do. Is it that broad? I mean, to me, it doesn't seem that difficult for celebrities to weigh in on, right? because these celebrities, especially like Hank Green and stuff, and, you know, I do love the Green brothers, not trying to single them or Chris out necessarily. But, you know, a lot of these people are people that built fan bases based around their progressive values. They've spoken up about other social justice movements. Maybe they spoke out even in some cases about the war in Ukraine, right? Yeah. So is it that much of a leap to talk about this issue? No, I agree. And I was especially like surprised to really not see anything from John and Hank Green. And I'm not sure where everyone's specific reasons for staying silent. for this long were, but I do know that for some reason when Aaron appealed to them directly and gave them a very specific thing they could do, it was adopt a family from this list. So many more creators got on board. And it's also worth noting that Aaron is a white creator and that she, you know,

is the first to point out that there have been activists of color doing this work appealing to these creators or being on the ground. They've been doing it long before her. But it's an instance of, I think sometimes though you need that almost like lateral activism though, where it's like you need that person of privilege to kind of advocate and kind of say, like, guys, this is something to take seriously. Because I think, unfortunately, the creators of color or the Palestinian activists continue to be sort of dismissed or ignored or they don't have the same social network, right? There's not that peer pressure. Right. And that's a little bit kind of Aaron's thinking, too, because I asked her, you know, what do you think about the fact that these creators could have said something these past,

you know, six, seven months and didn't? And it's like you can kind of quibble about that all you want, but she's like, ultimately these families need money. And if they're stepping up to give them money, that's all those families care about. She was like, they do not care about TikTok politics and drama. They just need money to get out of Gaza. And so that is kind of her thinking with it. And so that's an example of these are two sort of parallel movements that are happening.

Both come from a great place. The block list comes from a great place, but is a little less specified, a little less cohesive. But, you know, social media can be used for these movements. I think she said that so far they've gotten, 13 families fully funded through her campaign. There's like I think a creator called Yuval just raised $200,000 for a GoFundMe. So I think the difference is like what is the specific goal? And for Erin and Operation Olive Branch, it is these families and these GoFundMe's that have

been bedded and they have a concrete number they need to reach. The block list, the specific goal is not clear. Right. But these are not the only campaigns that are happening by the way, right? There's been all these other movements. I mean, some of the biggest Twitch and YouTube creators and names on the internet have joined together to fundraise for Palestine. I think they're trying to get to a million dollars of fundraising to get families out. So, you know, in that sense, it seems like there's a lot of sort of direct action happening. What do you think changed? Like, what made the flip change?

Because I agree that, you know, the block list is chaotic. It's probably not achieving a lot of what it's, you know, maybe wanted to achieve in terms of monetary results. But I do think that it's changed the conversation. It's gotten Palestine and celebrity and sort of like push the needle. I think it's made a lot of these celebrities. think about the issue or actually force them to look into the issue, the ones saying like, oh, I'm not educated. It's like, now is the time to educate yourself. So why do you think this is all

happening now? And why do you think just in the past real of week there's been this sort of shift online again and we're seeing such a surge? Is it just the escalation and violence over there? Is it something on the internet? What led to this? So yeah, it's definitely the escalation, but I would say sort of more cynically, I think the reason that no one has spoken out for the past six months or seven months is because of fear of how their audience is going to react and perhaps not quite knowing where their audience stands on this issue. And I think it's been slow but exponential this whole time of someone being an example for another person that they spoke out and it was actually good and necessary. And I think the block list for all of its flaws,

it showed that public sentiment is maybe not how celebrities thought it was. It's maybe not quite as divided as they thought. And that actually there's a huge number of people out there who would respond very positively to them putting out a statement. Now, that's obviously not what it's about, but I think in terms of a celebrity or an influencer wary of what this will do to their following, that is a huge part of it. And I think basically it's becoming a little bit safer because these movements are kind of data for them to see, like, oh, maybe this isn't actually as divisive or detrimental as I thought it would be to say something. Right. Well, everything, I mean, every social movement relies on numbers, right? And there's safety in numbers. And, I mean,

especially when you look at the entertainment industry and the media industry, there is this like sort of party line and there's the establishment line. And then there is what young people are feeling in this country. I've been covering the student protests. I was covering them at multiple colleges a couple weeks ago. And I wrote about actually Twitch streamers covering these protests and the audiences that these Twitch streamers are getting by going to these encampments and covering them in a honest and journalistic way in ways that sometimes the media has actually. failed to cover them. And so I do think that there's this public desire. It's just that a lot of those students and a lot of those young people, they don't have institutional power. And I think that's what

scares celebrities just as much as losing followers, is they don't want to lose, you know, they don't want to anger some executive somewhere or, you know, weighed into a political issue that could then be used against them and lose them out on opportunity. I would say that's cowardly because then you're not really having an ethical career. But I guess that seems to be a factor as well in all of this. Yeah, I feel like right at the beginning, sort of back in October, there is some sort of higher profile punishments for people who spoke out in support of Palestine in terms of celebrities. And I think that may be resulted. Yeah, I would say probably the first high profile example is the actress Melissa Barrera from the Scream franchise. She was fully dropped for posting a supportive statement,

I believe, on Instagram stories. I think that was effective in shutting up people who maybe would have come out with support for Palestine sooner. But right at the very beginning, they could see the consequence could be losing their job in a lucrative franchise. And so I think that caused a lot of them to stay quiet. And they got away with staying quiet because for the most part, the status quo has continued for them over here. And I think so much of what brought people to the lockout and what kind of causes shift is the MetGala being kind of the starkest example we have yet of how things are kind of going on, not just as normal in here, but like in decadence as truly the most like horrific scenes you've ever seen are happening. And in an internet world, especially that can't be ignored. And in fact,

operating in the status quo doesn't work in a world where all that information can be interspersed one after another. One other consideration that a lot of these content creators seem to have, at least the ones that I've spoken to about why they haven't spoken out, even ones that have funded some of the student protests or been donating a lot of money and are quite involved, is because of the way that these social media platforms treat political content. A lot of these kinds of these content creators don't post political content. They know that posting a single video about politics on Instagram, right, will get your account down ranked. So I think there's these incentives at play from the platforms themselves as well, even for people that want to speak out on the Palestine-Israel

conflict, that they don't want to get shadow banned. They don't want to hurt their reach. They don't want that to ultimately get a strike on their account that could hurt them down the line. Again, sure, they're acting in their self-interest and you can critique them for that. But I think the pressure is not just coming from maybe the institutional entertainment industry, PR people that are like, hey, stay out of it. It's also coming from these platforms that don't want political content, certainly not from big celebrities. So I've also seen some great creators finding ways to go around this by being like, I'm going to incorporate this into my lifestyle content. It won't be like the main focus of the video, but I'll mention it. Or I've seen some people being like, this is a TikTok shop video and I'm selling this thing, but not really.

I'm just using this to sort of talk to you about this issue. And so platforms like Instagram can do this, but we're all very literate in these platforms now, which means we can also try to outsmart them. So, Kate, you know, when we're looking ahead, where do you think this will all go? Yeah. So when I think about the block list specifically, I'd like to think it could kind of get its act together and really mobilize and be really coherent and strategic. I don't really think that'll be the case. But I do think it'll serve as this marker of when public opinion and public expectations, really shifted. And I'd like to think that moving forward, celebrities will feel, you know, we saw Ariana Grande, I believe, signed the ceasefire letter sort of in the midst of all this. I don't think that's a coincidence. And so even just those little incremental changes where celebrities can realize

they can't hide from their public anymore if they also want to have a career. And so I'd like to think maybe rather than one big mass blocking movement, I'd like to think that moving forward, at least in small ways celebrities are more thoughtful about this. Kate Lindsay writes the excellent newsletter embedded. Thank you so much for joining me, Kate. Thank you so much for having me. That's the show. You can watch full episodes of Power User on my YouTube channel at Taylor Lorenz. Power User is produced by Travis Larichuk and Jalani Carter. It's mixed and mastered by Brandon McFarland. Our video producer is Brandon Kiefer. Our executive producers are Zach Mack and Nashak Kerwa. If you like the show, give us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. We'll be back next week

with another episode of Power User.