The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online by Fortesa Latifi

Episode Date: April 12, 2026

Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online by Fortesa Latifi ` https://www.amazon.com/Like-Follow-Subscribe-Influencer-Childhood/dp/1668080508 A searing investigation into the child influencer industry and the perils of childhood internet fame, Like, Follow, Subscribe is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the costs of internet fame, and the ethics of online content. What is it like to grow up with a camera in your face 24/7? To have your childhood moments sold as “content” to millions online? What happens when someone who works in a largely unregulated multi-billion-dollar industry sells away their childhood and has no financial safety net as an adult? What does it feel like to have your private moments—your medical diagnoses, your first period, your first break up, your tantrums, potty-training, and breastfeeding-weaning—broadcast to an audience of millions? Like, Follow, Subscribe shines a spotlight on the deeply troubling world of the child influencer industry. Journalist Fortesa Latifi dives into the lives of children whose parents mine their everyday activities for monetizable content, exposing issues like privacy violations, financial abuse, and the absence of child labor protections. Through expert interviews with psychologists, labor scientists, and even former child influencers and family vloggers, she uncovers the pressures, trauma, and consequences for children thrust into the spotlight. This timely and eye-opening book doesn’t just reveal the harm of toxic social media culture: it also provides a roadmap to better regulating influencer families, safeguarding children, and questioning the role of audiences in perpetuating these cycles of exploitation.

You wanted the best... You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times.

Because you're about to go on a monster education role. rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks, is Voss here from the Chris Voss Show.com. The LA's young and the Air Lays official, that makes official welcome to the big show. For 16 years and 2,800 episodes, we've bringing you one of the oldest podcasts, still broadcasting regularly on the Chris Voss show. Be sure for your family, friends, relatives, all those good people,

guilt and shame them into subscribing the show. Nah, I don't do that. I'm just kidding. But, you know, maybe, I don't know, take them out of the will if they don't subscribe. Anyway, go to goodreads.com, Fortresschusch, Christfoss, LinkedIn.com, Fortezch,ch,chrisfoss, Facebook. com, Facebook.com, for it says Chris Foss. Today, we have an amazing young lady on the show. We're going to be talking about her book. I'm really interested in this because this is something I've often wondered about with the rise of social media watching it, being one of the early top 1,000 people on Twitter back in the day, and often wondering what the future was going to hold, especially we'll get into her book and see if this is included in it. So it is entitled, Follow, Subscribe. No, I'm not selling you on what to do with the show. Follow, subscribe, influencer kids, and the cost of a childhood online out April 7, 2026 by Fortessa Latifah. We're going to find out what more about these details are and all the great things harm we did to our children as Jen Exters and millennials, I suppose. She is a senior writer at Yahoo and the author of the four-mentioned book. She has bylines in the New York Times.

the Washington Post, Rolling Stones, and more, and she's reached the Penneville Career on the Chris Foss Show. Welcome, Portessa, how are you? Thank you for having me. I'm really glad to be here. Thank you for coming. We certainly appreciate having you. Give us your dot-coms.

Where can people find you on the interwebs? Yeah, you can find me anywhere on social media at High Fortessa, H-I-F-O-R-T-E-S-A, and I also have a website for Tesla-T-L-V-E-V-C-com. So give us a 30,000, over you what this book is about. Yeah, I mean, if you've ever wondered what it's like, to be a kid influencer or to be the child of a family blogger or mom influencer, that's the question that I endeavored to answer with this book. Was any of it personal?

Did you go through any of that when you were being raised? No, I didn't. I definitely chose my own online footprint. I'm 32 years old. So I started on my space in middle school. But I chose that myself, you know, and I think I was very lucky to be able to do that because there are things that I wish I hadn't put online, but at least I only have myself to blame. So what turned you on to the subject?

What was the proponent that aha moment that made you go, you know, I need to write a book about this stuff. Yeah, you know, a few years ago, I wrote a story for Teen Vogue that went totally viral and it was about a family vlogging kid and what it was like to grow up in that world. And it was really the first time anyone had talked to one of these kids personally and said, what was this like? just said some really striking things. I mean, she said that her dad told her, I'm your dad, but I'm also your boss. And that, yeah, and that basically that her entire childhood and adolescence was made up of this YouTube channel, which had billions of lifetime views. But if it were up to her, none of it would exist. And she told me, if I could tell my parents anything, I would tell them nothing they do now will take back the years of work I had to put in. And so after I wrote that story, I was like, this is not the end. There's so much more. I have so many more questions. And so I kept writing, kept writing, and then I got the book deal. Congratulations on the book deal.

That's awesome. And like I say, I'm really interested in this. As we were seeing the emergence of social media, I was in Twitter early and a social media, a rock star back then pretty early. And one of the questions we started wondering, you know, because people started sharing their children's pictures online as babies and, you know, sometimes them naked in the tub and stuff. And you're like, do you understand how dark the world is out there? You know, Chris Hansen shows, you know, how dark it is sometimes. You're posting, you know, this up, you know,

and you know, you're, you know, you're, you know, you want to share for grandma and grandpa. But you're like, no, this is open on the worldwide dark web. And, and then the question started gearing back then. I think it was like 2014, 2013. We started this question of what are people doing of their children, you know, either making them influencers or publishing, you know, some of their maybe private intimate moments, you know, today, you know, so-and-so ate a frog or something, you know. And, you know, and you often wondered, and then, of course, the way men and women were behaving online, and you're like, you know, your children are going to grow up and see this. And probably what's worse is their schoolmates are going to go cringe and, you know,

you know, no one wants to have that. So do you talk about some of these subjects in the book? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think the point that you brought up about, you know, predators seeing this kind of content, I think, you know, 10 years ago, we can kind of say that people didn't really know the extent to which this was a fear that was actually real online. I think now we have reached the point that we are all aware of the realities, risks.

And so that was, those were some really difficult conversation. that I had with the family vloggers and mom influencers that I interviewed for my book where I said, we know that this is a risk and how do you handle it? And for a lot of them, it seemed like they were grappling with this risk in a way, but it wasn't really changing the way that they showed up online. And parent myself, that was really difficult for me to understand. Because if you're getting messages about your kid in this way or comments, like I can't imagine just continuing on the same path. And I think I felt a lot of sympathy for these parents in a lot of ways.

You know, it's not the decision I would make, but I could understand how they could make it. But for this kind of thing, it was like, I cannot understand that. I don't know. What do you make of that? I, I, I feel there's a bit of narcissism there. And maybe it's to make money, you know, and there's a little bit of thing there. But, and that's coming for me. A narcissist who thinks that people,

give a shit what my opinions are on a podcast and everything else, you know? Like I've heard it all over the years. But, you know, we've been 18 years on YouTube and 16 years on the podcast and then on social media. I mean, I did the MySpace thing and then that went down. Then you did the Facebook thing. But it really seemed to hit. What was it like 2009? I think 2008 is when I joined Twitter. And that's when it was really starting to turn into this whole thing. But yeah, it's one of the things I've seen, you know, we were making a lot of my YouTube. on their payment program early on before they opened it to the public. And we took very seriously what we did as a business.

And then they opened it to the public and you started seeing like those mom influencers, those families they put online. And it became real apparent really quick that something disturbing was going on, the way that they would have to ratchet the kids to jack them up, maybe cause some drama with them to, you know, get them to act on TV. And if you know how reality shows work, these are kind of like a sick extension of reality shows, you know? And reality shows aren't script, aren't real. They're scripted.

And that's something that I think about with reality TV kids, because part of my interest in this is that I grew up in the era of 16 and pregnant and team mom on MTV. And so I thought of those kids as kind of like analogous to these influencer kids. But what's interesting about reality shows is I'm not saying that they're, you know, without their faults. but those kids are being filmed a couple of days a month, you know, versus all day, every day. And they know when the film crew is coming into the house that it's, okay, it's an outside perspective coming in. Whereas this is just constant and it's your parent. And so there's not really that that divide or boundary that reality TV kids have. And again, there's issues there too, but at least they're only being filmed, you know, a few days a month or a few days even a season.

And, you know, you would see these, I'm sure you've seen the family videos. I mean, the Frankie, what was her face? Frankie, Ruby Frankie thing. That was disturbing. Even before she was arrested, I started seeing, you know, people were really starting to cry out about it. Yeah. And then I would watch it. And you would see the manipulation of, and the, you know, my brother used to play games with my sister.

He played this kind of love withdrawal game. And he'd be like, come here and give me a hug. She was like a little sister. And then she would come forward and he'd run back and go, ha, I fooled you. And she'd cry. She's so sad. And he'd keep doing it. And it was just, it was just mean.

And you would see the parents kind of operating from the same, you know, sometimes trying to make the kids cry and be, oh, you didn't clean your room and you're going to be punished. And the Ruby Frankie stuff was disturbing. Like when I heard her brag about how she took the bed away from her kid or something. Yeah, for seven months. And he also had another. And I mean, obviously that's terrible, but at least I guess, I don't know, the kid was a teenager. It doesn't make it any better.

But she also had this video where she said that her five-year-old who was in kindergarten, forgot her lunch at home. And she went to school without a lunch. And the teacher called. And Ruby said, I'm not going to bring her lunch because she needs to learn that, like, this is responsibility. And it's like, have you never forgotten anything? She's a five-year-old.

She's hungry. I'm 58 and I forget stuff. Yeah, same. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, a lot of that, there was other disturbing family things that got taken down. But the thing that made me angry is YouTube allowed them to just prosper. And it kind of became like a whole section. And we were angry because we're like, we're putting up intelligent content, like, you know, product reviews and we're putting up, you know, the podcast and stuff. And we're not making as much money because you're funding money to the abuse of children.

I mean, we're all looking at it. And, you know, I don't have children. And I can look at that and go, that's not the way anybody should be behaving. And I would look at the, you know, we've had lots of psychologists on the show, hundreds of them. You know, I'm just looking at these children going, these kids are going to be effed up for a lifetime. You know, you and I grew up with seeing, you know, the children of Hollywood and how messed up they get, you know, the home alone kid and, you know, the drugs. And, you know, once that attention had or everything, you know, falls off as they grow up, they're lost because they're like, you know, where did it all go?

Everyone used to love me and there was money and my parents took my money and, you know, all that sort of weird stuff. What was the first child Hollywood proponent they made laws about? I think it was. Jackie Coogan. Yeah, yeah. And they, you know, the parents went and I think spent all the money or, you know, that usual thing or whoever their booker was, uh, agent. And, you know, and so, yeah, they started.

seeing this, but the mental fallout of children in development, you know, and, I mean, I saw some stuff that was really dark in a couple other families that got shut down, and they got huge. You were like top of, of the YouTube's algorithm. I mean, there are tens of millions of subscribers sometimes. It's incredible. They have billions of lifetime views. It's like other YouTubers dream of that kind of, you know, viewership. And, I mean, you look at the Ruby Frankie kids, and I've been following that because I was up in Utah

during COVID at the time. And I'm watching the kids and I'm going, geez, and then all of a sudden it blew up, they got arrested and stuff. Yeah. And then, and then, you know, the stories come out. You know, this kid shows up and duct tape and he's clearly got scars on him. Can you imagine finding that kid at your front door? They have the video, I think, now that's out. And, you know, and you saw some of this other stuff, you know, the kids are evil.

They're the devil by nature. Yeah. And I'm pretty familiar with Mormons up here in Utah. And so you're just like, kids are evil? I mean, if anything, you know, kids are pretty innocent. I know. I mean, it's pretty much the worst case scenario, what came out of the Ruby Frankie story. I mean, you know, people were saying on Reddit, especially before everything came out, like this is, I bet it's darker behind the scenes.

But I don't think anyone thought that it was as dark as it was to the point where the kids were tied up and malnourished. I mean, it was it was child abuse. And she was arrested and charged with. aggravated child abuse and assault. And you know, then YouTube changed all this BS and so now I have to click all these boxes about how my abuse, my video isn't about, you know, my video from the podcast isn't about abuse or, you know, some other kind of crap, hateful crap, Nazi crap, you know, that sort of thing. And I remember yelling one time at somebody from YouTube.

I used to be able to go down to the YouTube things there in L.A. and used to use their studios. and I yelled at some executive and I said, you know what, this is, this pisses me off that I have to go through all this crap now just to upload a video because you guys let this sort of abuse get out of hand. Yeah. And you're just like, oh, you know, I don't run the place, you know. Yeah, I mean, too far.

And, and, you know, I mean, just all the stuff they'll run amok. I mean, like when DuPai Pye was doing like Nazi stuff or something or I can't remember if it was not, it was Nazi stuff or anti-Semitic stuff. the Dupai was and they would leave him in place holding all the stuff and I'm like what's going on and then eventually they they kind of burned him off for the other big guy that's a huge now and he seems I don't know nice I guess he's the guy who's making all the he makes all those videos where he gives all the money away and they got people out and do the world. Oh Mr. Beast.

Mr. Bees yeah. He seems nice but you know but it took him a while to wash out Dupai pie pie and I think Dupon Pye still has some stuff. Yeah I mean the guys I can't remember all the all the allegations against it, but he quoted some crazy stuff. And YouTube's, oh, our bad, yon. I mean, they're making tons of money off of it, right? Like, people tell me all the time, like, why doesn't YouTube have rules about the kind of content you can have with kids and da-da-da-da.

And I'm like, in what world would a massive corporation say, we want to make less money? And I think, I don't, it may be it's been too late to get in the book, because I know with the big publishers, sometimes you can have six months to a year lag between final edit and publish. But what are your thoughts on what you're seeing now? I think Facebook and YouTube just had a jury award several million dollars to some people. I think there was a young lady who claimed she was underage. I think she wasn't the 13 you're supposed to be to join.

And they've awarded some million dollars. And that may open up a dam of, I don't know, more payback for, I don't know, manipulating everyone, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, I do wonder because that was about like the addiction of social media and how she became addicted and how it changed her life. But it's like we're all addicted to social media. So do they owe us all money? You know, like I don't know what the larger fallout will be because the point of these platforms is to be addictive. I mean, they're literally built that way.

Yeah. We need to really start looking at the addiction things because it's a dopamine hit, right? people are addicted to. Yeah, it's just how can you not? You know, you get these notifications. It feels great. And I think about that as, you know, a 32-year-old adult, I get that way. And then I think about what if my entire childhood had been kind of built around that.

Like, I feel bad as an adult when I post a piece of content and it doesn't do well, let alone if you're a kid who's still kind of understanding your sense of self, like, how would that change you? Yeah. Yeah. And hence the name your book, like, follow, subscribe. You get those notifications, those pings, gives you that dopamine hit. Oh, people still like me. And, you know, then you don't get the thing. But, you know, you or I grew up, I believe, without social media in our formative years. Yeah. And so we have a perception of reality that, okay, this is different and this is this is normal and should be normal and this is this is an aberration but it's kind of like a game

you're going to play yeah you know because we we have a brand online you know and people like why are you always talking out stupid stuff chris and I'm like that's our brand that's what we do yeah you know the but you know you have to constantly service it it's a it's a monitor thing but you know but if you've grown up and social media was the first thing put into your hand on an iPad when you're like I don't know one year's old or something you know I remember watching the iPads, the iPads are really big at being handed to children. And right away, they would take a tactile connection to it and start playing with it. And I was like, geez, this is kind of really interesting. These guys are going to have a different world than the one that

you or I grew up in where their first experience and whole experience is going to be this, this kind of fake world online. And what is that going to do to them? We had a lot of discussions back then at the time and and now we've kind of seen the cost of where it's gone in this you know this monetizing thing you know you're like you know I see these I see these couples online too that do the same thing they're like totally exposed their whole relationship and they play these things and I find that cringe worthy too I do too yeah you're just you're just like and you know the thing that I've always learned over a lifetime and we saw this before many of this I think most of the husband and boyfriend stuff.

I think it did emerge out of YouTube, but it really has accelerated on TikTok, I think. But YouTube had that thing where there would be people that would be two big YouTube channels and they get together. And then they'd be doing all this weird shit together. And you're just like,

and it's always the people who brag the most about how great their relationship is. They don't have a great relationship. And there's just, there's just a tsunami coming. Yeah. Usually these YouTube couples, they'd crash out, get divorced, and then there'd be lawsuits over their channels.

And, you know, the one person's having to say, that person was a jerk and this person was a jerk. And, you know, and then they have to separate armies of audience. Yeah. You're just like, holy crap, man. People ask me, they're like, how come you never posted a girlfriend online, people you date, even, I mean, you have to get deep into a relationship with me for six months before you're going to show up my social media. Yeah. And it's because I'm not going to be some dumb ass. who has to sit there and spend, I don't know, 20 hours erasing all the pictures and videos.

You know, I've had friends that have done that. I'm like, you got a lot of pictures that you're going to have to clean up after that breakup. Yeah. I mean, it's also just inviting people into your relationship, I think, is a really a scary thing. I mean, I've been with my husband since we were 21, so over 10 years now. And, you know, there are a few pictures of him online, of us online, but I don't talk about our relationship. It's like I don't want to invite people into our world in that way. I like keeping that to myself. Yeah. And there's a lot of these people that, you know, I, I'll see this thing where they're

doing candy camera, I don't know what you call it, you know, hidden camera things. I mean, sometimes, a lot of times they're fake. So I don't want to get that confused with the other. But sometimes, you know, they'll just turn on the camera just to exploit their husband or look what my husband did today. He didn't close the dishwasher properly or something. Can you believe what a, can you believe I have to live with this man? And, you know, you've probably seen those videos too. We're just like, honey, if I was your, I was your spouse, I would, you would be divorced in a heartbeat.

But you wonder if, if they know that this does really well and so they're kind of in on it. You know what I mean? Yeah. So some people, you can't tell. They're like, you know, they're doing, because a lot of times they just, they'll repeat the kind of meme videos where it's you know like there's I don't know there's challenges they'll do like the orange challenge or some crap but then but then there are people that they try and they're clearly the the person doesn't know they're being recorded and and you know I mean the mom one the wife ones

are getting way out of hand where they're like can you believe my husband does this and I don't love my you know they'll say all this stuff and then eventually somebody goes and gets the video to the husband and finds where they're, you know, this guy's just an oblivion to what's going on. And then they're all upset that, oh, you guys out at me. And you're like, do you understand what the internet's about? Yeah. I mean, once you put things out there, you can't really control where they go. Exactly.

Yeah. And so what is your kind of summation? We want people to buy the books. We don't want to give too much away. But what do you, what stuck out to you that was like really shocking and damaging? and you were just like, this is going to change. Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that really struck me, especially as a mother myself,

was that several parent influencers went on the record and told me that the content that does best is content where their child is sick or sad or injured, where they're in distress in some way. Tell me why you're laughing. I'm laughing because I've seen it. I've seen the parents videoing the kids for YouTube, and they're just poking it. kids to get him to cry. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's all those like prank videos. There was one that I

watched for the for the book that has millions of views where it's like we told our five year old daughter that her dog ran away, but he didn't really. And I know when the kid is just like sobbing and they're like, LOLJK and she's just what are you doing? What are you talking about? But it got like millions of views. I mean, who knows how much money they made off of that. But I think it really says something not great about us as viewers generally that we want to see vulnerable people, children in distress. And that's what gets views. Yeah. And I mean, sometimes you're watching you're going, so we need to call CPS or something like that. I would watch a couple of them. But I wouldn't make them a feature my thing. And I try and control my algorithm pretty hard. But most people

don't. I don't think they know how to do it. You know, TikTok's pretty easy to control your algorithm. I mean, if I accidentally watch something, you know, I know I'm going to be stuck with it in my feed. I watched a muckbang guy. There was a guy who was really large and he was eating like, I think the other day, a 10 or 8 breakfasts, the big breakfast is McDonald's. And number one, I'm just wondering how you stay alive through that. I had a red bull and Doritos yesterday on an empty stomach and got horrible rock gut. My body was ready to kick my ass. And I'm like, how do you eat all of what you eat? And, you know, if I watch it for, I don't know, 15, 20 seconds or 30 seconds or some, damn, that that thing starts filling my. I know, you have to be careful what you look at.

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it's watching. There was one family. I don't know the name of it, but it was like the first big shutdown that YouTube did. And they were like huge. And they had four or five kids and they were making them cry like all the time. That seemed to be like the thing. And then what is that one thing?

Who's the guy on ABC? He's the talk show. host on ABC at night. I can't think of his name. But every year on Halloween, he does a thing where he wants parents to mail in their videos. Jimmy Kimmel. And I like Jimmy Kimmel, but they want him to mail in. I hate those videos.

Those videos where they tell them they ate their Halloween. Yeah. Those videos make me so sad. It's not right at all. I mean, those kids are going to be scarred for lifetime over some of that stuff. You know, I mean, come on. you're going to, and as a child, how can you trust your parent at a certain point? There has to be some sort of clarity.

I had a clarity with my father because he had a temper and he emotionally wouldn't control his emotions and would lash out at us if he had a bad day. And it eventually became a pattern consistent where I was like, okay, this man is fallible and he's not, you know, he would come and apologize. next day, do it again. You're just like, you're full of shit. Yeah. Yeah. At the same point, you start to, yeah, form your opinion. You start to form your opinion and go, my parent really isn't that good of a parent. And I don't think other kids are going through this. And then you, you know, you've got distrust.

And but these kids are getting like early on. They are. And I mean, I think not. This is something that I think about when, when I see these videos of children in distress, especially in some kind of like medical distress. Like, I think about what my daughter would do, she's almost two, if she were crying and I took my phone out and recorded her instead of comforting her. I genuinely, part of me, like, wants to test it just because I'm so curious, but I can't bring myself to do it. But I think she would knock my phone out of my hand. I think she would be like, what is wrong with you? And she's only two, you know, I don't know how it, I can't imagine how it changes the parent-child relationship where you're looking for

this attentiveness and this comfort. And instead, you're getting, you know, maybe you're getting that, but you're also getting this, you know? Yeah. And, and yeah, I mean, we, we had, there was a gal we had on like years and years ago, probably 10 plus years ago. This is still at the emergence, probably 2012, 2013, we were having these discussions. And, you know, she had figured out that I think somewhere around that time is where some guy was on parole, he was on, like, maybe he was on parole, it was on a thing where you couldn't leave an area, and he had a thing. And he was a child molester. And he, and he, He decided to go on the run and left town, and they were looking for him because he, you know, was a child molester.

And he drove up to some family, I think in Montana, saw just a cute young girl wearing a bathing suit. You know, as kids do, we're out, you know, playing in the little pools there and doing our little things. And, you know, he went and killed the family and yada, yada, yada. And so just off of seeing that one image, that's what made him go. and, you know, she came on and talked about how, you know, don't take pictures of the schools. You know, a lot of people take pictures of their kid next to their school. For reals? She would even take off the XIF data off the photos.

And the XIF data will show location, of course, other details of the photograph. And she's got to take that off. And then we had someone on after that who did research that as soon as a kid opens an Instagram account at 13 or whatever legally it is for them to open. as soon as they open that account within an hour, they are getting pummeled by pedos and child targeters. And they're getting DMs. They're getting follows. And it's just crazy how quickly it happens, especially if they're a girl.

The dopamine issue is a real issue. To me, I believe we need to probably put everybody in. I think everybody needs therapy after COVID. But I think we all need professional therapy of a dopamine addiction because that's what I see. You know, you see these people. They're just hooked on the phone. Right now, the UPS or the Highway Patrol in Utah has been doing these videos where they're catching people on their phones and like the freeways and stuff. Yeah, sure.

It's like insane to watch. Yeah, no, I feel the same way when I live in L.A. and I was on the freeway yesterday and I was just like looking around and just seeing people just literally going 90 miles an hour like looking at their phones and it's just doesn't feel good. And, you know, I'm also like I'm really pulled to my phone. but what I did a couple months ago was I got one of those brick devices. So it locks you out. And it actually has really been helpful to me. And I know it's like embarrassing that I need to like have that to lock me out of my phone.

I need that. It's so helpful because I don't want to, you can go and unlock it. But it's like kind of embarrassing to yourself to be like, oh, I'll unlock this. So like I never unlock it. So it's great.

That's good. Now is this electronic device or a manual device? It's like a magnet. It's like a magnet that you put somewhere and then you just put your phone on it and it locks you out of whatever apps that you decided until you go and unlock it. Ah, that sounds like, all right, I'll look into that then. Maybe you should start plugging that on the show and get affiliate link there. Yeah, no, totally. Yeah, I mean, you see people that are so into their phones, you know, I have this problem where I do a lot of photograph, photographing as a

photographer, and so I work with a lot of models and just trying to get them to respond on social media and see my message because they're just so slam with so much attention and DMs and probably naked photos and all that sort of stuff being sent to them. They just lose my thing. And even with phone numbers, I'll get phone numbers for them so that we can schedule events and they know how to reach us to when they come to shoot. It's just like insane just to get through. And I'm like, how many messages do you go about 400 a day, 200 a day? That's so overwhelming. You're just like, wow, man, I don't get that much attention for women.

You know, usually the only ass I get is when I'm going to open my only fans from women. And that's, and I have to keep refusing them because I'm shy. What are some other things as we round out the show? Anything else you want to tease out about some of the discovery you found your research? Yeah, I mean, we talked a little bit briefly about Utah. And I know you said you spent some time in Utah. I grew up in Arizona. So I was, I had lots of Mormons around me and I, there was actually like a temple like connected to my public high school, which is kind of crazy now that I think about it.

Yeah. Like the Mormon kids would go to, I don't know. Seminary. Yeah. Seminary like in the middle of the day. And now I'm like, it was a public high school. How is that like what? They have that all over Utah.

Every, every high school has got a seminary. Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting. But you're like, they get credit for this? I know. Can I start going? But they.

So I really had a question in my book about why so many prominent family vloggers and mom influencers are Mormon. Really? Is that a thing then? Oh, yeah. Completely. Yeah. I mean, if you think about the Frankies are Mormon, and I guess I don't know if they still are Mormon, but many of the top family vloggers and mom influencers are Mormon or Mormon adjacent or were raised Mormon. Wow.

I have an entire chapter on why that is. And I also found out some pretty juicy things that have some Mormons really, really mad at me. I've been getting a lot of hate on X and threads and Instagram because I found out that the Mormon church actually pays some of its influencers. What? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And people are so angry at me. Do you know people are telling me I'm going to hell? and I'm just like for bearing false witness, which like I'm not bearing false witness. So like I'm 100% confident in what I've reported and I know that I'm right. But people are so mad at me. I've never gotten this level of hate online and I've been online for 16 years. Yeah. Well, I mean, I've dealt with the Mormons for, we moved to Utah when I was 13 or 14.

Yeah. And so I've, and we were Mormon back in California. but there's a difference between out of state Mormons and in state Mormons. Tell me about is it just more intense in Utah? More intense might be an understatement. Yeah. Like a lot of people leave the church when they come here if they've lived out of state because they're just like, you people are way into this like too much unhealthy.

Yeah, like you've taken it too far. You've taken it too far. And I don't know if that's what it's like if you move to Vatican City and hang out there and you're not Catholic or maybe you're Catholic and then you get there. and you're just like, okay, this is a little much. Yeah. But, no, I get it because I've been, since high school, I've been called the kid of Satan and persecuted insanely because I left the church

at 16 or something. And, excuse me, the cult. And, yeah, but yeah, that's kind of wild. And, you know, on one hand, you say that and I go, wow, that's really interesting that silos that way. But on the other hand, from what I know of Utah, I'm like, yeah, that actually makes sense. I mean, also the Mormon church is the richest church on earth. There worth $239 billion.

So it does make sense. And, you know, when I asked one of the Mormon mom bloggers who had done a deal with the church, you know, why are they doing this? She was like, what's more effective to missionaries going out or them putting an ad on my blog where I have a million visitors a month? And it's like, yeah, it makes so much sense. And it's interesting because it wasn't like explicit in a lot of cases. It wasn't like, oh, come with me to an LDS service or seminary or whatever.

It was like, it was this really funny example that she gave me where they gave her a bunch of rotisserie chickens and she went and gave them to unhoused people. And so the photos were like this beautiful blonde mom with her beautiful blonde children, like giving charity to unhoused people. And then, you know, it's like, I mean, not that subtly, but it's subtly an ad for the church because it's look how beautiful she is and look how charitable she is. And she's not tagging the Mormon church, but it's, yeah, exactly. And she has these beautiful blonde kids and she's, you know, whatever.

But it's not like she's like tagging the church, but it's, it's an ad for the whole thing. Yeah, it's a wink and nod. It's a subtle thing. You know, I mean, we do that when we promote stuff and stuff. You know, even when people come on the show, I mean, obviously they're selling something. And when they come on our show and they're plugging something. Everyone's plugging something. Yeah.

And so you try and, you know, educate people like we're doing right now and, and share with them instead of just going bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, right? Yeah, I know. And it is uncomfortable, you know, like, obviously I'm out here trying to get people to buy my book and it is really uncomfortable. But I'm also like, it's so fascinating. Like, I've spent the last three years of my life, like, figuring out all of this for you, you know, for everyone. And so obviously I want people to read it. But yeah, it is difficult to be that kind of like salesperson. Yeah. I don't want to. blow the book and I need people to buy the book for us. Same. But can you elaborate a little bit on why you think it's mostly the Moes, the Mormons? Yeah. I mean, I think there are a few different reasons. So one is that obviously Mormons tend to get married young and have lots of children. And that's really good for the algorithm. There's also this in Mormon culture, I'm sure as you know, this focus on aesthetics and looking beautiful and making your family life look perfect and beautiful. And then also, Mormon women

especially are taught to journal from a very young age. So they are kind of, I mean, if you think about it, they're young women who are taught to stay at home and make their lives beautiful and make themselves beautiful and their children and they're used to recording everything they do. And so they're just kind of like perfect influencers. Let me throw you my theory and you've done the research, so I'm going to default to you, but I'm going to toss you out what my theory and experience has been. You know, I've been a realtor here. I was a mortgage, we had a mortgage company here for nearly 20 years in Utah. I'm visiting my mom up here. I've got a sister in a care center, so I have to come back and forth between Vegas. And you hit on the really one important

factor. They have children in a much younger age, but they also get debt loaded because of that. They go buy a house right away. They go by the van right away. They're, they're, they're, they're loaded to debt up to the hill. I mean, it's changed now, but 40 years ago, 20 years ago, they get married 18. They're buying all the things you need to have a family because they're having a family. Yeah. And they are, they are debted to the teeth within a few years. And so they're desperate.

They also breed on average one more child than the average national, the rest of the people in the nation do. So I think it's like 0.9 now. But even then, that's now falling off with what's going on with everything. But that's where they were. And so they're broke. They're just freaking broke at a very early age. Some of them don't get to go to college to develop a healthy career. And then so they're having, instead of what is the national average is two kids,

they're having on average three. But Mormons usually, you know, there's a lot of indoctrination that comes around. You know, you can, I think there's plenty of video of it where Mormon leaders have said, your job is to, you know, have as many rabbits as you can. And, you know, I've known families that have 17 kids and this all comes out of one woman, which is I imagine. You know, my business partner, I think they had 15, 17 kids. And as a realtor, I got to go into a lot of homes, especially in my mortgage and see how these people live.

And yeah, the presentation of, oh, everything's, great, we have 10 children. You go inside the house and you get hit with the smell of dried food into carpets and human sweat into a thousand square foot rambler home. And you're like, there's 10 people living here and there's, you know, there's bunk beds for the kids. And it's almost like a dormitory. And I've been in some of the polygamous campuses and homes too. They actually have lockers for the kids at the door for the coats and the, the stuff, it's almost going to school. Yeah.

And so they're broke. And, you know, early on in the 90s, me and my business partners, we found that if you really wanted to make money that involved consumers, you had to own two or three multimillion dollar companies because these people couldn't spend money for anything because they're broke. They're, you know, they got, if you got nine, ten kids, five kids, you're, you know, you're, you know, what was the old thing about parenthood. They always joke about having kids is like, just.

just taking all your money and throwing out the window every day. Yeah, it feels like that. I mean, you love your kids, but, you know, they're expensive. Yeah. That's why I didn't have any. I have huskies and they're half as expensive. Plus, I don't have to deal with teenagers or dating or anything like that. Yeah.

Do their thing. But that's kind of one of the things. They're really broke. And I wonder if that brokeness and that desperation leads them down to these past because, you know, we've seen so much that. We're like, I mean, influencers. Shut, that's the hell of. I know. It's like what most people want these days. And I mean, I don't think you can really blame people because you look around at the job market. You look around at, you know, the way that the dollar doesn't stretch the way it used to. And like you, who is living a really nice life in this country? Like billionaires, athletes and influencers, you know.

Yeah. And then the amount of influences you find they're complete frauds. Like even in the early days of Twitter and stuff when there was like the big social media experts that rise of all that kind of jive. you know, the gurus of social media. I would go to the LA parties in Hollywood and hang out with all these top influencers back in the day. And you would find out they were full of crap. Like the dating influencers would tell me, you know, they'd be on TV and have books on dating. And then you'd meet them. And they would be the most worst people.

You're like, no wonder you can't get a second date. You're awful to be around. You know, people that would talk your ear off and you're like, I'm going to have to murder myself just to get away from this person. Yeah. And they don't stop long enough, and they don't stop long enough to take a breath for you and interject. Yeah, I got to go.

My grandma just died, I'm sure. It just felt in force. And, you know, I remember there was one dating gal who was, like, huge. And she was insufferable to talk to. And she was, like, I think in her 50s. And she was a, I mean, she just thought she was a Jewish princess from heaven who, you know, and she would just a scurry men, oh, this guy shows up and he was balding. And I'm like, honey, I don't know if you got mirrors in your home, but you're no spring chicken either. I'm not a

spring chicken either, so I can throw wrong. Yeah. And then they would tell me stuff like, yeah, I haven't been able to get a second date in years. I have been, you know, in, you know, intimate with a man in years. And I'm like, wait, you're, you're charging women tens of thousands of dollars to tell them out of date and, you'll get a relationship. You can't even get past You can't get past the first date. Yeah. I mean, it's all that smoke and mirrors, right? Oh, yeah.

I mean, I've had guys that said they were top coaches that they, and they're making all this money off of high, what, high dollar amount executives and stuff. And I'm sitting there just going, I'm, I'm just a loser. I can't. There seem to be getting more. Turns out they'll find out two years later. I had this happen with two friends of mine. They were online friends, so I wasn't hanging out with them to find out the truth.

But they were living in their cars. One was living in the car with this. his family for two years behind 7-Eleven in LA. And he finally came out, he lied. And I think finally he broke down and got some welfare assistance or he actually made some money to my house. And you're just like, holy crap. I mean, the fraud that I've seen since I got on Twitter at 2008, yeah, the fraud

that I've seen since then is an extraordinary. And it never stops. It gets worse. Yeah. I think part of it is a broke, but there is a, naivity to Utah. Like, MLMs are huge here. And MLMs are largely a scam. You can assume, you. I don't care. My father spent most of his life in LMs, so I've seen it all. Yeah. He was in hundreds of MLMs in Utah. And there's kind of a part of it's the culture

that comes from the follow of the church. You know, don't question anything. Just blindly follow and have faith. And but then, you know, there's a lot of money wrapped into it. You know, the other thing is, too, that makes a heart for them is the Mormon church is a little different than other churches like I understand because I didn't grow up in those other churches, but they asked for a flat 10% tax on your income. And so here you are, you got five to 10 kids, and you've got a 10% outlay, and then Utah also has a state tax. This is one of the reasons I live in Vegas. And I think it's 7%. And so you're taxed up to the hill here, the services that you get, that I get in like Vegas or when I lived in California are just nil and expensive as hell.

You know, in Vegas, I can get people to come fix my car for 60 bucks in my freaking at my garage in my garage. You know, I don't even have to take it to the mechanic. You know, there's all sorts of stuff I can get. If I want movers, I can get them in a heartbeat. Here, it's a big pain in the butt. It costs expensive and people are like, I have to drive 30 minutes. And you're like, you people have never lived in L.A.

But yeah, I think, I think that, I mean, they're just, just broke. I mean, we would, my friends who own clubs would have to own multiple clubs just to survive because, man, yeah, these people come and they're just chinty as hell. They, you know, they'll buy one drink and drink it all night long and then order water. And they're like, I don't know how to keep this bar open. I'm just like, yeah, man, it's just the spending, you know, we just discovered early on in the 90s, the, the spending availability of cash for them was like nil. And even then, I mean, recently I've, in the last few years, I've been holding big events at dating events where they're meetups, where people can meet up and actually do it the old-fashioned way

at meeting people and dating. And in our meetups, the biggest complaint I always get is from the bars or the places that we go to the venues, we go to like restaurants and stuff. You people don't spend crap. We need more spend per thing. And I'm like, yeah, that upsells your problem. You're going to, that your waiter's going to do that, man. Yeah. But yeah, I think that's kind of part of it too, being broke. And you're just so desperate for money, you're willing to sell your kids out. And then, I don't know. But that's interesting that the Mormon church has funneled money into this. Last question I was going to have for you. I'm sorry, we know going long, but the long shows are the best shows.

The, this gal, the Mormons, you know the show I'm talking about with the girls? It's like the housewives of whatever. Oh, secret lives of Mormon wives. Like, holy crap. Has the Mormon church been funneling any money into that? I would highly doubt it because I don't think those are the kinds of Mormons that they want to platform. And also I feel like most of those women are like ex-Mormons or on their way out of the Mormon church. There are very few who are like, you know, I don't know, dutiful, I would say.

And then to see some of the abuse that just recently took law, I know, I was just like, what the hell? And that opened a Pandora's box on the internet where all these people were saying that it's reactive abuse. And so abusing men and hitting men is okay. Physical violence, domestic violence is okay if it's reactive. And they're like, she pushed him to that point. She's an alcoholic and you can look at her and go, you have a problem. You have lots of problems. And they just keep airing it. And evidently, what was it, ABC or CB? or whoever runs that show and The Bachelor, they knew about the video and that about the charge for domestic violence.

And I guess there's maybe more coming or something. But they knew. And they were still going to platform that crap. Yeah. And, you know, it's what you speak to in the book. You know, these social media companies, you know, they're just using us as these freak show, I don't know, morons. You know, it's kind of like the, I don't know if you ever heard about the rat experiment where the guy built.

the big rat container and he put hundreds of rats in it. He watched their social society collapse because there was plentiful food and all this stuff and you know, he monitored. It's almost kind of like we're just like rats and amazed for Mark Zuckerberg, you know? Yeah. Yeah, totally. Let's see what we can get these monkeys to do. Yeah. Meanwhile, he's just billions of dollars. billions of dollars. Yeah. For Tessa, give us a final pitch out on the book.com is where people can find out more and learn more about you. Yeah. I mean, you can buy this book wherever you buy books, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, your independent bookstore, you can find me online at High Fortessa everywhere. This is the content that I make every day. And yeah, if you've

ever wondered what it's like to be a kid influencer or what these parents have to say for themselves, that's what my book answers. And it's on my audio book, folks. I bought it and definitely going to read it. So it'll be interesting to see. Yeah. I mean, it'll be interesting. You know, at first we couldn't see how this is going to turn out because he can't ask children like, Is it going to fuck you up? Yeah. I mean, yeah,

what do they know? But now I think there, you know, there's enough time this past where you can talk to these kids. And those were really Frankie kids. I've watched their videos after. And,

you know, they've finally been able to speak their truth and stuff. They're going to be effed up for life. You know, we've had enough psychologists on the show. That sort of childhood trauma, you're not going to live down. Yeah,

it's going to stick with you. Yeah, it's going to stick with you all your life. And, and, you know, I almost wonder, if maybe YouTube or these companies should pay a price more often, just like they are doing. And maybe we need to set more laws that say, hey, man, exploiting people, you know, especially

maybe desperate people, this is the thing you do, you know, I don't know, somehow it seems to have made our society worse and not better. It's failing. I mean, social media started out as this great Pandora thing where it was like Kumbaya when it first came out and, yeah, we're going to bring the world together and you had the Arab Springs. You're like, it's going make the world a better play. And then it was like, everyone was like, oh, we can use this for evil. Yeah. We humans just love to ruin things. Yeah, we're kind of, it's our nature. We're vicious sort of animals. Yeah. It comes down to it really. So we need to work on being better, but that's why your book is there. So people should pick it up. Order the book online, folks, wherever

fine books are sold. It is entitled, follow, subscribe, influencer kids, and the cost of a childhood online and please really think about what you're posting online. God knows I don't and that's why people hate me. Thanks for being with us. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Thanks for honest for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss. Linkton.com, Fortress Chris Foss, one on the TikTok, any of all those crazy places on the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. You've been listening to the most amazing intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your Warning. Consuming too much of the Chris Walsh Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult a doctor for any resulting brain bleed.

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