262: Unraveling Internet Culture: A Conversation with Taylor Lorenz

Taylor Lorenz discusses her new book 'Extremely Online' and delves into the untold story of fame, influence, and power on the Internet, exploring internet culture and societal impacts. Taylor unravels the complexities and trends of online communities, shares her research and experience, and explores the impact of internet culture on our society.

Highlights

• The influence of content creators: Content creators have become a driving force in shaping online culture and influencing public opinion. They have the ability to amass large audiences and create content that resonates with their followers. Whether it's through vlogs, social media posts, or podcasts, content creators have the power to shape opinions, trends, and even political discourse.
• Uncovering the darker side of internet culture: Taylor delves into the resurgence of misogyny online, tracing it back to events like Gamergate and the Amber Heard trial. Gain a deeper understanding of how manipulation, outrage, and targeted harassment have shaped the landscape of the internet.
• The changes of social media platforms: Taylor discusses her perspective on the recent changes in social media platforms. She offers her insights on what is working well and how the regulations on some platforms are keeping the users off of them completely. 

Behind the Headlines

In this episode, we peel back the curtain on internet culture and explore the untold stories of fame, influence, and power that have emerged on the internet. Taylor Lorenz takes us on a captivating journey, providing valuable insights into the ever-changing landscape of social media and the role of content creators in shaping public opinion. Prepare to be enlightened and amazed as we unravel the complexities of internet culture.

Mentioned in the Podcast

Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet  

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Transcript

Molly McPherson [00:00:00]:

Ah, the digital playground of social media filled with endless choices and endless debates. Are you more of a curated Instagram person or flexing your kids on Facebook? Are you a threads person? What number did you have? Did you even know that they removed the numbers? Mine was in the three millions, which sounds like a high number, but it was actually quite low. I jumped in early on Threads, and I haven't been there since. Or do you prefer the chaos of Twitter? Do not get me started on the name X. Perhaps you're a seasoned Tumblr aficionado. Or maybe you're someone like me who grew annoyed with clubhouse's invite. Molly Doors. And of course, there's the age old debate.

Molly McPherson [00:00:48]:

Is it blue or is it gold? Personally, I was in the blue camp. Whether you can answer these questions or not, I promise you this episode is going to be an engaging exploration into the ever evolving social media landscape. I promise you, you will learn something and you will find it fascinating. Welcome to the indestructible PR podcast. I'm Molly McPherson, your crisis communication strategist, here to turn crises, bad news, and scandal into lessons in resilient reputation building. So each week, I go beyond the buzz to find trending news stories and those fun pop culture moments. But this week, ho. If you are fascinated or terrified or curious about the Internet and social media culture, then this is your episode.

Molly McPherson [00:01:46]:

I'm speaking with acclaimed Washington Post reporter and authority on internet culture, Taylor Lorenz. And let me tell you, she is everywhere. Taylor Lorenz is a tech columnist for The Washington Post business section covering online culture and the content creator industry. She previously served as a tech reporter for The New York Times. She also worked at The Atlantic and The Daily Beast, and she spent time telling me about the back end of working at The Daily Mail. You're interested now, aren't you? So was I. Join my conversation with Taylor Lorenz, starting now. Taylor, of all the people I've talked to on this podcast, you are one of the most anticipated guests I've ever had.

Molly McPherson [00:02:33]:

I'm so excited to talk to you about your book and also about your work. So welcome to the podcast.

Taylor [00:02:40]:

Thanks for having me.

Molly McPherson [00:02:41]:

Okay. Your book Extremely Online the Untold Story of Fame, Influence and Power on the Internet. It's published. I mean, it's coming out now. Really? This week. So tell me, before we even get into your past, I do want to know, just briefly, where did the idea of this book come from?

Taylor [00:03:00]:

Yeah, I decided to write this book. I mean, basically in 2020, I wanted to write a book. I've covered the social media landscape for over a decade, since 2009. I started blogging about all this stuff, and I wanted to write a history of the rise of social media, not through the lens of these corporate tech narratives. Because I think when a lot of people think of the rise of social media. They think of the social network and they sort of like these books that are sort of like told. They tell the rise of social media through the lens of specific companies. And I wanted to zoom out and tell the user side and talk about the content creator side because social products are so unique in the tech world because the value that comes from them is not really the software, it's the users on them, it's the community.

Taylor [00:03:40]:

And so you can create a Twitter clone like Donald Trump did, for instance, with True Social. But unless you have that know, you don't have the value. So I think I wanted to write about the users of the social platforms and how that contributed to this whole world because I think we only hear the tech company side usually.

Molly McPherson [00:03:58]:

Okay, well speaking of sides that we're going to hear, we are going to come back and talk about your book more extensively. But before we get there, we have to talk about you because you are a unique byproduct almost of what you cover, which is Internet culture. So right now you consider yourself a technology columnist.

Taylor [00:04:19]:

That is my job title at the Washington.

Molly McPherson [00:04:21]:

Okay, so that's your job title. What would you call yourself then?

Taylor [00:04:25]:

Just overall I think of a lot of things. I mean, I'm obviously I started as a blogger and a content creator and I'll always be a content creator and a blogger at heart. I don't really blog as much anymore because I write for the post, but I'm also a journalist and that's definitely like my day job. But I think like a lot of people, I have my day job and my passion, but I also use the internet and I have built an know about the things that I care about online.

Molly McPherson [00:04:48]:

I think two descriptions about you, the Bob Woodward of the TikTok generation and then also you were named Tech and Media Influencer of the Year by the World Influencers and Bloggers Association. I think really that those are two descriptions that pretty much capture you, wouldn't you?

Taylor [00:05:04]:

Yeah, yeah, I'm really honored by that stuff. I always just joke that I'm the oldest person on my beat, so they have to give me the accolades.

Molly McPherson [00:05:11]:

My gosh, the oldest person on your beat? Oh my goodness, I feel old even just hearing that. Let's just go back in time for a bit. So share with me and the listeners what initially sparked your interest in internet culture. And particularly I noticed your connection to Tumblr. That was a network that you used to use.

Taylor [00:05:33]:

Yeah, Tumblr gave me literally everything in life. I mean, I graduated like a lot of millennials into the recession back in 2008, there was no jobs and so yeah, in 2009 I was working temp jobs, I was working retail, trying to figure out what to do with my life. And then I got on tumblr. And it was like night and day. Suddenly I felt like, oh my God, there's this whole wide world out there on the Internet and the blog world, and I could publish on it. And that just felt so liberating. I was like, well, I have some opinions.

Molly McPherson [00:06:04]:

So where did you go to school and what was your major?

Taylor [00:06:06]:

Oh my God, I went to a couple different schools. I went to University of Colorado for three years, and then I ended up transferring to Hobart and William Smith, which I graduated from. And then I also did a short time at American University in DC. In between.

Molly McPherson [00:06:19]:

Okay.

Taylor [00:06:19]:

I had a really hard time in school. I'm going to be real I was failing a lot.

Molly McPherson [00:06:23]:

Okay, so you're originally from is it Connecticut you're originally from?

Taylor [00:06:26]:

Yeah, I lived in Connecticut, then my.

Molly McPherson [00:06:28]:

Family moved to but okay, that was my first question. How do you go from Connecticut to University of Colorado? So I think this is important because I do have a lot of younger people, college students, people just out of college who are always asking me questions about my job. But you admitting right now a very kind of vulnerable part of your past is that you struggled in college. What was it that you struggled with?

Taylor [00:06:50]:

So I'm severely dyslexic, and I have also severe ADHD, which I don't take medication for anything. And so school was very, very hard for me. I transferred a lot. I really had a hard time in school. And growing up in the there's an understanding of a lot of these things in the like, okay, you're just an idiot, and you're going to be put in these sort of classes with sometimes developmentally disabled people. So it was a hard situation and I felt very bored all the time because I was, I think, smart enough, but I just wasn't very good at reading and the stuff that came along with school anyway, I never did well in school. So what I did is worked. And I started working at age eleven.

Taylor [00:07:32]:

I think I made a list and I have almost 50 jobs in my life. Like, I had nine internships in college. The one thing I've always done is I'm a worker and not in the school context. But yeah, that's what got me all my I mean, that's what got me. I think it helped me a lot when I started to get traction with my blogging career because I had worked a lot of places and I had interned a lot of places and I had a lot of sort of knowledge from things like that. I tried to be in PR, Molly, you would appreciate that.

Molly McPherson [00:07:58]:

Well, this is what I had to ask because sitting in front of me is a book of almost 300 pages of the most well researched articles and points in time. I mean, this book is incredible. And the fact that you're a columnist. I mean, you're writing the amount of content, you have a newsletter, and you're telling me that you're dyslexic and you have ADHD and that you struggle with that's so interesting. So are you telling me that it's really just, like, hard work and focus and passion? So what is it that got you through it?

Taylor [00:08:29]:

I think it's alternative learning, and I think a lot of kids with learning disabilities are in. I went to public school my whole life, I was in public school, and I think public school is great, but it's not set up for alternative learning methods. You're very much like especially in the 90s when I was a kid, it was like, you learn this way, and if you don't learn that way, too bad. You must be an idiot. And I'm a big believer in sort of, like, self directed learning and other sort of just all the different I mean, I'm not an expert in education by any means, but I think there's a lot more ways to teach people things that they need to know. So a lot of it was people outside of work that I interned for that mentored me or that taught me things. I've always had a really good relationship with almost every boss that I've ever worked for, and they've helped me so much.

Molly McPherson [00:09:08]:

What type of internships were you drawn to? Was it anything with content writing? Journalism?

Taylor [00:09:14]:

No, never journalism. I didn't really consider that until I started blogging, and then I met journalists. But I always wanted to be in sort of, like, culture and media. I did a bunch of fashion internships. I did a couple of internships at political consulting firms that did advertising for political candidates. I interned for an artist, a local artist in town. It was always, like, creative fields. I think I knew I would be in a creative field.

Taylor [00:09:37]:

I just didn't know what creative.

Molly McPherson [00:09:39]:

See, this makes sense to me, and I'm just like you. I mean, I've been a newsy my whole life, but I wanted to split myself into ten different pieces because I wanted to work in television programming, television advertising, television sales, journalism. I wanted to be at an ad agency. I just loved media and culture, just like you. And when you discovered Tumblr, it sounds like it's the same time that I just started adjuncting as a professor at a school, and I was using Tumblr for the students, so I was new to it myself. But one thing that I remember about it, it was just so open. I mean, there were no rules. It was just you could do whatever you could do.

Molly McPherson [00:10:20]:

So I'm not surprised to hear that that's really the starting point for your creativity and probably confidence too, correct?

Taylor [00:10:28]:

Yeah, well, also because there was no judgment, and I think it was a lot of other young women too, that were on Tumblr at that time. And I could write, and I didn't feel like there was some sort of thing. I could just be myself and have my own voice and develop my own sort of sense of humor.

Molly McPherson [00:10:43]:

Yeah. Tumblr to me will always be the is it a blue dress or a gold dress?

Taylor [00:10:49]:

That's in my book.

Molly McPherson [00:10:49]:

Oh, yes, I know. So now let's move over. Now. I'm dying to know about this. We'd say that you have a diverse career in journalism. I mean, from the outside, a broader look. That's what it is to me right now. You spent time at the Daily Mail.

Taylor [00:11:03]:

Yes, that was my first media job, yes.

Molly McPherson [00:11:05]:

So tell me how you got the job and what job did you have in particular there?

Taylor [00:11:10]:

Yeah, so because of my success on Tumblr, I had brands asking me to do things. This was before this was a real industry. Facebook had just launched Facebook pages in 2009, and people wanted branded tumblers. So I got a job at an ad agency doing branded social media for brands, mainly Verizon. But I love the Daily Mail. I'm the same as you. I love news. I've always been a huge I love just information.

Taylor [00:11:33]:

And I would sit down every day and read the Daily Mail homepage, top to bottom, every morning. And I was like, I noticed that they didn't have a Facebook page. They didn't have a Facebook page. They didn't really have social media. Yeah. I ended up this guy, Rob that I knew, knew the publisher. He connected me with the publisher, and I met the publisher, Martin Clark, and I convinced him to hire me. I was like, I made this whole PowerPoint presentation.

Taylor [00:11:56]:

And I was like, you don't understand. I found it recently. I was like, the Internet, you are missing things. Because the Daily Mail could go crazy. Just let me set up a Facebook page and promise you so he let me set up the Facebook page first. He was like, just for the US. You just do a little thing. I'll hire you in New York just for the US.

Taylor [00:12:11]:

And then within a couple of months, he was like, okay, you're taking over the global social strategy. You can hire a team of twelve all over the world. I did everything. I built that whole brand on the internet. And I love tabloid news. It was a great brand to build.

Molly McPherson [00:12:25]:

Okay, so tell me, I mean, I was just like you. There was a time I read it, it was first thing I read every morning, though I would never admit that I know I can go to a tabloid 1st. First was in New York Post, and then all of a sudden, Daily Mail shows up. Who owns the Daily Mail?

Taylor [00:12:38]:

It's owned by DMG Media Group. It's a British conglomerate. They also own a bunch of other, like, metro UK and a bunch of ones. Okay.

Molly McPherson [00:12:45]:

It's not, is it? So were you just running the social media, or were you doing any of the reporting?

Taylor [00:12:53]:

Oh, yeah, I started reporting. So, I mean, everything I learned about journalism, unfortunately, I learned at the Daily Mail, which is not necessarily a lot about the ethics of journalism, the ethics of journalism. It was more about how to tell a story and how to get people into a story. I'll never forget Martin Clark. One time, we were in this meeting not long after I started, and there was a whale that came from the Hudson River, and the headline was it said, Whale seen for the second time on the Hudson River. And he had this and he started yelling at the reporter, and he was like, It's not that. It's the whale that can't stay away. The whale that's fallen in love with New York, and it can't stay away.

Taylor [00:13:28]:

And he was so good at things like that. He would see things, and he would see the story and put characters anyway, I learned everything from Martin, and there's this editor, Catherine Thompson, there, too, who's just incredible. There were a lot of really amazing editors.

Molly McPherson [00:13:40]:

And I learned okay, so that storytelling to me. That sounds like a great anecdote for writing fiction.

Taylor [00:13:48]:

Yeah. But it's true for journalism, too, because what you want to do is it's the truth. You're telling the truth, but you're telling it in a compelling way. In that sense, obviously, you're giving, like, an animal that's clearly probably just lost twice. You're telling this narrative, but that's what you're doing with media all the time. Like, every journalist knows that you have to make a compelling narrative, otherwise people aren't going to read your story. That narrative does need to be truthful, ideally. Right.

Taylor [00:14:12]:

Although a lot of journalism is not, unfortunately, truthful, but journalists, it's storytelling at the end of the day. And so I think that's what tabloid news does very well. The problem is they sacrifice accuracy.

Molly McPherson [00:14:22]:

Yeah, okay. Yeah, exactly. But so tell me some of the secrets, though, in terms of the Daily Mail. I mean, it's incredibly popular, I will admit. I don't go to it anymore. There's so many other social media apps that kind of scratch that itch. But what was the magic formula at the Daily Mail that made it so successful back then?

Taylor [00:14:43]:

Yeah, especially back then, because it was sort of this perfect marriage of the type of news that performed really well online, and if you could format it really well online, it would just go crazy. And I got very good they're famous for these long headlines, but I only had 70 characters to write the Facebook headline, and so I got very good at distilling drama stories into these really quick Facebook headlines. I would say what they do is they're very, very this is something I've always appreciated about tabloid news. They're not, like, too highbrow to cover something. They recognize a good story, and they'll go after it. It trained me very well in the sense that there's so much elitism in media, especially even just about who we cover. And I don't love the political leanings of The Daily Mail at all. And they do a lot of really predatory coverage.

Taylor [00:15:28]:

But I always tried to share the best of it on Facebook, and the stories that I wrote were mostly about Internet stuff. It was early virality. I started writing about basically early content creator stuff.

Molly McPherson [00:15:38]:

Okay, so one more question about it, and then I'll move on. We could spend the entire interview about that. I noticed when I would read The Daily Mail, to me, it appeared that the writers or the reporters behind it, they were just mining us news. I mean, so what? Were you reading the wires, or were you going to all these different news sites?

Taylor [00:15:57]:

Yeah, the goal is basically to aggregate the Internet. And that was like the whole thing is like, you'd scroll around on local news. I used to have this thing called Feedly that I would check to see if there were viral stories popping, because when there were viral stories popping, I would always flag them to editors to cover so that I could get the link to share on Facebook, or sometimes I would cover it myself. I mean, that was back when Google Reader was around. I mean, it was really easy to kind of, like, scan publications, and then I would get a lot from the Internet, too. That was the era. And I talk about this in my book, actually about the early 2010s digital media. Was this intermediary for the Internet.

Taylor [00:16:29]:

Actually, the dress is a perfect example. You, as a digital media worker, would go on the Internet. You would take something viral from the Internet, but people weren't really online enough yet to consume it natively on the platform it was posted, so you had to post it on a website. So a lot of it was just Arbitrage content. Arbitrage, where you sort of like, OOH, that's viral. That would go really crazy. Or like, OOH, that reddit thread would be really good. I just need somebody to quickly aggregate it in 90 minutes and get it up on the website, then tell me.

Molly McPherson [00:16:57]:

About the hierarchy or really of authority and news. You went from the Daily Mail, but now you end up at The New York Times.

Taylor [00:17:03]:

Yeah, it was very senior. I had, like, very senior management companies in media. I mean, I was the youngest woman in senior management at The Daily Mail at the time. And then I went on to be director of emerging platforms for The Hill, where I launched. I helped do content strategy for this brand under People magazine, and I thought I would work in Biz Dev. I was like, I'm going to launch my own media company, because I always wanted to have my own media company. And I thought I would work in business and strategy. But then I felt like people don't take you seriously in journalism unless you've been a reporter.

Taylor [00:17:30]:

And I wanted to write the stories. It was really hard to get people even when I was senior, I would have my own little content people. It was really hard to get people to care about the Internet and see it as a meaningful place to write critically and really examine this stuff and not just write up the cheap viral Facebook stuff, but zoom out and write about this whole industry that's emerging. And so I started doing more and more of that writing. I was always writing, but I started really writing sort of critically about the Internet more. And yeah, I actually I filled in as a social media editor for The Atlantic for a week once over the holidays. This was back in the day when, I don't know, we were in these social media Facebook groups, and they were like, I need someone to run The Atlantic, and they let me in the slack. And once I got in the slack, I was like, by the way, I'm a writer.

Taylor [00:18:11]:

Can I pitch some stories? And they were like, this girl that we hired to do the Twitter account for a week wants to pitch stories about the Internet.

Molly McPherson [00:18:20]:

But I okay. They gave you one.

Taylor [00:18:21]:

I wrote a feature. They assigned me a feature. One of the editors there assigned me a feature about back in 2016 or 2017. It was about what happens when your child blows up online. And I interviewed all these parents about how they were navigating the sort of shifting power dynamics of their children having online fame. And it was a feature that did very well for The Atlantic. The Atlantic couldn't hire me full time at that time because I hadn't been a reporter. So I got The Daily Beast to hire me.

Taylor [00:18:44]:

I took a mass massive. I took a 75% pay cut, and I moved in with a bunch of friends in Crown Heights. And I was like, whatever, I'm just going to be a reporter for a year and make nothing. I'll make an entry level salary again for a year, but at least I'll have some clips under my belt. And then within six months, The Atlantic hired me. And then from The Atlantic I went to The New York Times. And then from The Times I went to The Post.

Molly McPherson [00:19:01]:

Oh, it's incredible. Okay, so now I know that we're just going to weave in and out in terms of where you were writing at the time and what happened to you. But I get sense, how do you navigate being a journalist and writing a fair and balanced account of what happened without imposing your opinion? Because you are an authority in Internet culture. So how do you balance that when you're writing stories for The Post, for instance?

Taylor [00:19:29]:

Yeah, I mean, I think the core is to tell the truth of the situation. And I do add analysis in my story. I think it's fine to add analysis or opinion as long as you're explicit that this is just your opinion. Sometimes I write stories that do include my own sort of take on things. I think what's disingenuous is just when reporters include that and don't make it clear that this is just their sort of take. So I mean, especially at The Atlantic, I was writing a lot of reported takes. That's really what The Atlantic is known for. But I was always very open with like, this is my opinion on it.

Taylor [00:19:58]:

I mean, look, I think journalism is a very subjective field and I think that even just how you cover a story, who you interview, every single little choice you make is subjective. And so I think good journalists don't mind busting their preconceived notions. The bad journalists are the ones that have the preconceived notions, do the reporting and then just use that to validate their preconceived notions. I think a good journalist I'm a very curious person, there's so many stories that I set out to do that I had one idea about the story and then you report and you talk to people and you realize it's a different story and you need to be open and willing to accept that.

Molly McPherson [00:20:29]:

What are the boundaries at the Washington Post when it comes to reporting? And are they different for reporters?

Taylor [00:20:35]:

Yeah, I mean, every media company is really different and I think they kind of have different editorial standards. I will say the Posts and the Times in The Atlantic all have very high editorial standards compared to places that I worked at earlier in my career that didn't have those restrictions of, know, you can't go on free trips to Tahiti and then write about it, or I mean, I cover internet culture. So I guess the main thing is I try to be fair about the Internet landscape.

Molly McPherson [00:21:03]:

It seems like from reading your coverage, they give you some leeway there. They know you're an authority. They know that you have to push the envelope just a little.

Taylor [00:21:10]:

Well, I usually make yeah, I mean, I usually am making a point with my story, so it's usually like, this matters. Why does this matter? Because XYZ and I would say that's based on reporting. I mean, for instance, with the Libs of TikTok story that people were so mad at me, know, because I revealed the woman behind Libs of TikTok, I will defend that story forever. I mean, is it an ideological choice to write about her? Maybe. But the point is that Ron Desantis'press secretary said that her account directly impacted the legislation that he wrote in Florida. Also, that account was basically an assignment editor for all of Fox News. This is a hugely influential account in media. And by the way, she was doing interviews anonymously so she had a role in the press.

Taylor [00:21:47]:

She was a public figure. And so, yeah, I mean, I made the decision to do that, and I totally stand by it, but I think we all make those types of sort of choices as reporters. It's just about being honest and open and clear about it.

Molly McPherson [00:22:00]:

What was the conversation like in the newsroom with your editors around that whole story?

Taylor [00:22:05]:

I was like, I'm going to find out who this woman is. People didn't have her identity public.

Molly McPherson [00:22:09]:

Could you do a backstory on it real quick for anyone not familiar with it?

Taylor [00:22:12]:

So this woman, Haya Raichek, started this account, Libs of TikTok. It's a Twitter account that was doxxing LGBTQ teachers. It has called for LGBTQ people to be run out of schools, for gay parents to be criminalized. She doesn't believe that gay parents should be able to have children. She became this hugely influential figure because she's been cited on Joe Rogan and a lot of other sort of actually, like the Fox News universe, like right wing, basically every time she would tweet something, I mean, there were bomb threats against hospitals that she's talked about that were providing gender affirming therapy. So she had become this pivotal figure in the right wing media, and they were really taking direction from her for a while. Like, she was popular. Tucker Carlson.

Taylor [00:22:53]:

She would tweet something. It would be on Tucker Carlson the next night. And then Ron DeSantis, of course, as well. And these political leaders on the right were also looking to her account while they're writing anti gay legislation. I think somebody like that, that's that level of a public figure that's shaping our media environment, that's shaping the laws in our country, we need to know who that person is. And they have millions of followers online, by the way, as well. So my feeling was I am going to report on this person's identity. I didn't DOX her.

Taylor [00:23:21]:

I didn't expose any personal information, nothing related to her address, nothing related to anything. Her name is actually quite common in the Jewish community. So there was really nothing that I reported that would allow you to expose any kind of personal information about her, which is what doxxing is. However did I report on her identity? Yes, I did. I think it's very important and I would argue in the public interest to know who this person is, because when we don't know who these people are that are shaping these things, she could have who knows what her background is if she had taken money from someone. This is in the public interest. Yes. That obviously caused a lot of controversy because people were very mad.

Taylor [00:23:58]:

And I stand by that reporting. I think I did the right thing.

Molly McPherson [00:24:02]:

So tell me about the backlash. What was that like, having almost an entire segment? I mean, we have the left and the right, and now they were all coming after you. What was that experience like for you?

Taylor [00:24:14]:

Well, so one thing people were really angry. At is that I went to her door, and I went to her door because I had tried to call her several times, and she was hanging up on me, and so I wasn't able to confirm that she didn't want to give comment. It's really important if you were writing about the subject. This was a profile piece about her and about her account. So I really wanted to make sure that I gave her every single opportunity to say that she didn't want to comment. Totally fine if you don't want to comment, but I didn't want to just try to call, and she hung up, thinking I'm a spam call. She lived a mile from me. I found her address, and I thought, I'm going to knock on her door and just triple make sure that she doesn't want to give comment.

Taylor [00:24:51]:

What did she do? She tweets a picture of me at her, says, you know, tell Lorenzo showing up at my house. I'm like yes. I politely asked for comment. She declined comment, and I left. That's all it was. But it led to, unfortunately, a lot of backlash from me because I think people don't understand the process of reporting, and they think, oh, well, you show up at her house, we'll show up at your house. And so it led to a lot of threats and scary stuff. Yeah, I can imagine.

Molly McPherson [00:25:15]:

And the weaponization of what happened to you. But really, when you just look at journalism and beat reporting, look at all the movies where they have a journalist, what do they do? They knock on the door to get the quote. They want to get the quote.

Taylor [00:25:27]:

Exactly.

Molly McPherson [00:25:28]:

You were not only doing your job, you were doing it well. You were letting her know you were going through all the paces there to make sure that she did have a chance to go on the record.

Taylor [00:25:38]:

Yes. And that she was prepared. Also, she knew everything that I would talk about, I wanted to give her a chance to really respond to.

Molly McPherson [00:25:46]:

So so I have to ask you about a question, and I didn't tell you about this in advance, and you can tell me you don't want to talk about it, but involving the controversy, if you will, with a colleague, with Dave Portnoy.

Taylor [00:25:58]:

And, you know, it's so funny, Molly, because I did a podcast with Dave Portnoy recently.

Molly McPherson [00:26:05]:

You did?

Taylor [00:26:06]:

Dave has not posted it. Dave has not posted it. So, Dave, if you're listening, where's the podcast episode with me? I think I did a very good job and held my own on that.

Molly McPherson [00:26:15]:

Okay, so it's Emily Heil. Is that who the reporter is?

Taylor [00:26:19]:

Yes. I feel very bad for her, because here's the thing I will say about all of that, and I know Emily, and I know them to be very good reporters. Not everybody covers the know. These are food reporters. And so they're reaching out, and not everybody knows the type of person that David's I cover the content creator world. I call people for comment. They're often live streaming on Twitch or just it's going to be turned into content. So I'm aware of that.

Taylor [00:26:41]:

I think a lot of other reporters, it's hard to kind of navigate that type of a thing because they aren't used to dealing with a person like that.

Molly McPherson [00:26:49]:

Okay, so here's the question. We don't want to spend too much time on this, but this really is interesting because so many people have tagged me on this story and I have opinions on Dave Portnoy. Certainly first there was how he turned the whole pizza. It's almost like he's getting a taste of his own medicine and then a reporter comes asking questions. What do you think, though? Like he's trying to expose her, showing bias in her reporting and he recorded her and just to give a little background, so he's hosting a one Bite pizza festival, or he hosted it in Brooklyn and The Washington Post. Reporter. So emily. Hila.

Molly McPherson [00:27:30]:

So are you saying that she's typically just a restaurant critic or a writer?

Taylor [00:27:34]:

I believe she's a food writer. I will just say these are phenomenal reporters. These are not just some off the street, random 22 year olds. These are really good reporters. One snippet of an email that's taken out of context is not representative of the reporting process that I know that our reporters go through. And she is a very good reporter. I think what Dave does very well is leverage things for attention.

Molly McPherson [00:27:58]:

Absolutely.

Taylor [00:27:59]:

That is his prerogative. That's what I'm saying of like reporters need to be prepared these days to deal with somebody like that because they are going to take I mean, it's happened to me all the time. Yes, they take one email, they ignore the larger context. Sometimes they only read part of the email and it's used to discredit you.

Molly McPherson [00:28:15]:

Well, and that story, when I read it and followed it, it reminded me of you. It was someone doing their job. And to me, that's a news angle. I don't know how he pronounced it. What did he say? Misogyny or something? He kept pronouncing.

Taylor [00:28:27]:

He couldn't pronounce misogyny.

Molly McPherson [00:28:29]:

But historically he's done that in the past. And so her story about asking the sponsors there, I think that's a valid story and he leveraged it. And I also think not only is it leverage, but it's also a distraction from what's really going on at Barstool.

Taylor [00:28:44]:

But that's just my opinion 100%. Also, let's be clear again, you do not know the reporting process. And journalists will often sort of say things privately, directly to a source because again, you want to get a certain response or you want to sort of get them to respond to you. And it's very misrepresentative to take one thing. That said, we all know what's going to happen. I know it's going to happen. I mean, I just feel bad for sort of the reporter. And I believe that media companies should allow their journalists to talk about these things, because the one big mistake that I've noticed when I've been through these cycles before, and trust me, I've been in this situation so many times before, you have to respond.

Taylor [00:29:19]:

You have to get on there. You have to be like, actually, here's what's really going on. Let me tell you what's, and let me tell you about my reporting process, and let me answer your concerns and sort of just be more of an open book. I think media companies tend to retreat and lock up because they don't want to make it worse. And that actually, unfortunately, usually exacerbates it.

Molly McPherson [00:29:36]:

Yes. Because they don't want to expose how they get to the source and get to the 100%. So where in the past do you feel in your coverage or where there's been blowback in the coverage? Where did the newspaper fall behind or what did they do wrong in terms of the response? It sounds like you touched on it right now that they didn't speak so many times.

Taylor [00:29:57]:

I mean, I think it's like I mean, one thing I've learned from working in legacy media and again, I don't know Emily, by the way. I don't know the other reporters of The Post. I just know people's reputations. And so I just want to say that these are really well respected reporters that everyone in the newsroom really respects and loves. These are not some fringe reporters going after. But okay, so here's what I would say. One thing I've learned is you respond early and very directly and clearly. So, for instance, I've had a lot of things happen where people, maybe they take one little thing in your story, they'll take a little who knows what.

Taylor [00:30:31]:

Sometimes they'll just fixate on a line, or they'll take an email that you sent somebody, or they'll take whatever, and then it's used to kind of discredit you. And if you don't squash that narrative soon, that becomes a dominant narrative, and then often media reporters will pick it up because media reporters, I have to say, I think are like some of the there's good ones and there's bad ones, but the bad ones are really bad. They're just little trolls that sit on Twitter looking for media drama. You have to respond early, because when you clam up, there is a presumption.

Molly McPherson [00:30:56]:

Of guilt, without a doubt. So what do you think is happening at The Washington Post? So obviously they're eliminating I have absolutely no idea.

Taylor [00:31:03]:

I have no idea. And I'm totally not involved in any of that. I am just living my life in La. I just have to say, as somebody that deals with influencers, twenty four seven, I have so much empathy for any reporter that gets caught in these type of cycles. Yes, it's a meat grinder, and unless you handle it well, it can really be exhausting, but I trust that they are.

Molly McPherson [00:31:21]:

I felt for her and what I assume is that she's not allowed to speak out. But if it were me, if I were an editor there, I would sit her down. I've been to that newsroom. They have the cameras right in the middle of the newsroom. Do an interview, talk about the journalism process, like how to build a story, what she did. I think a lot of people can read between the lines and know exactly what's going on, but there's a lot of people in this culture who's not getting it. And it gives a guy like Portnoy the leg up.

Taylor [00:31:46]:

Generally, I think, on a broad, and I definitely can't comment on sort of like the specifics because I don't know, I don't even work in the newsroom. But I will say I think generally we need to be more open and transparent about our journalistic process and answer our readers questions. That's what I try to do on social media every day because it actually builds trust. And look, I've fucked up before, for sure, like I've made a mistake here and there or something. But I'm open about it and I respond to it and I acknowledge it and answer questions because that's how you build trust. You don't build trust by sort of just retreating. And I think that's what a lot of companies do because they don't know how to operate on the Internet.

Molly McPherson [00:32:20]:

Absolutely. And that's why you and I are so busy, both of our perspectives. So then let's now on that topic, let's discuss Depp versus Heard and the trial, which I felt just kind of created a new watermark when it's the intersection of legal court cases with Internet culture opinion mixed in with technology, algorithm, and bots. So talk about your involvement in that trial, your coverage from that trial, and.

Taylor [00:32:49]:

Just your thoughts on it. Yeah, so I didn't cover the trial itself. I watched it and I sort of watched the Internet around it. And I talked to a lot of big content creators. And one thing I noticed is sort of that they kept saying is like they're incentivized to post anti Amber Heard content, that that was what was performing really well was anti Amber and pro Johnny content. I think this is really interesting because they were able to gain a huge amount of audience and a huge amount of money. And so I interviewed several content creators with millions and millions of followers that actually didn't have any real opinions on the trial at all, but they were putting out 24/7 pro Johnny Depp content because it was performing really well on their pages. And so I talked about the incentive structures at Play and how the Internet especially with misogyny, I think a lot of the stuff that they were putting out, some of these people are my longtime sources, and I respect them, but they're putting out extremely misogynistic stuff about Amber Heard.

Taylor [00:33:47]:

And those videos were just doing really well because they played into this misogynistic hate.

Molly McPherson [00:33:51]:

Absolutely.

Taylor [00:33:51]:

And by the way yeah, go ahead. I wanted to say one other thing. Adam Waldman, Depp's old lawyer, recognized this very early and actually was feeding information to content creators throughout the trial as well, which he had.

Molly McPherson [00:34:00]:

Okay, so that's where I wanted to get into. So when you talk about when there's an incentive of content, it's advertising. It's. Watch Hour. Watch time connected advertising, YouTube, whatever it is. But what about intentional? We are going to give you money to cover this or to have this perspective pro depth. What have you found about that in any of your reporting?

Taylor [00:34:23]:

Yeah, I mean, there were a lot. It wasn't necessarily, like, people it wasn't the Depth team giving people money necessarily. Although maybe they did. I don't know. I was just more interested in these sort of like, neutral creators that were like, I don't actually care. I just want my engagement to go through the roof so I can sell more ads next month. And that seemed to be the majority of people that I talked to. Yes, there's these trolls.

Taylor [00:34:45]:

Yes, there's these people affiliated with gamergate and comicsgate that are the true misogynistic trolls. And by the way, those were the ones that, of course, wanted to come after me in the article. Those are minor characters. They actually don't have very big followings. They're kind of these, like, niche troll Internet people. The real notable thing that I was concerned with in my story was these big content creators that, again, were agnostic about the trial, but just noticed that this specific type of content did well, and that really shaped the narrative, I think, the public's narrative about it.

Molly McPherson [00:35:14]:

Oh, absolutely. And in your book and I had it out, and now I've lost the part of it, but I guess I know where it is because I covered this as an adjunct in teaching one of my college classes, is the prevalence of alt right just content, but really how far it goes. It's it's actually a format, it's a framework that is designed around making money on the Internet. So it's not new to the Depp Heard trial. It goes back many, many years. So in your book, you do talk about alt right trolls and what happened around Trump's campaign. Could you touch on that for a bit?

Taylor [00:35:51]:

Yeah, I mean, I covered the 2016 election when I was at the Hill, and I think one thing that Trump did very early is leverage the Internet and specifically leverage these Internet communities to mainstream his campaign and generate grassroots support and stuff. I mean, I'll never forget, I think it was Trump's inauguration weekend even. There was this event called the Deplora Ball, and it was literally just a big party of all of the most right wing content creators I've ever seen. I was looking around the room like, wow. Every major YouTuber content creator on the altray is basically in this room. And I think those people played a key role in the rise of Trump and they've played a key role in the rise of other people like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Matt Gaetz or a lot of these sort of more extreme right political figures. The right wing media ecosystem is so different than sort of the traditional media ecosystem in that they embraced the Internet and content creator world very early. And there's always been that energy on the like, even with right wing talk radio, a lot of those people got into podcasting early.

Taylor [00:36:49]:

They've always really understood the power of the Internet and the power of this new media ecosystem. And that has not been replicated elsewhere on the political spectrum. Yeah.

Molly McPherson [00:36:58]:

And for people who have been around a while, like, like, I remembered the earlier iterations of, you know, media donald Trump, moderate Donald Trump, and it's as if he figured out that money is so tied into and connected to the alt right that that is what drove him to it's not the ideology behind it. It's just the dollar signs and the base and building profit. It is that's really what it comes down to and building that base. So I just noticed that there is someone following that Donald Trump playbook as of last week. Russell Brand. You and I didn't talk about this, or I didn't even prep you with this at all, but tell me about what Russell Brand is doing. So his first video that he dropped from these accusations, from reporting over in Know, a joint investigation about him that was coming out on a Sunday, but on Friday he drops a video. So talk about what you believe his strategy is right now, based also on your research.

Molly McPherson [00:38:01]:

Just on this type of topic.

Taylor [00:38:04]:

Yeah, I mean, Russell is doing exactly the playbook that's been sort of well, trod before. It's like declare cancel culture. First of all, he recognized that these allegations were coming. He spent years building up his audience in anticipation and kind of positioning himself as this anti media sort of person. Of course, he's backed by the same billionaires as everyone else. He's on Rumble, peter Thiel's YouTube Alternative it's so funny how all these people are just funded by right wing billionaires, but then try to act like they're the independent media. But yeah, I mean, you see him sort of railing against the media and saying that this is all a coordinated campaign to take him down because he's outside the mainstream. And it's this positioning yourself as the underdog that I think that they do a lot, despite the fact that they have so much political power, so much economic power.

Taylor [00:38:48]:

It's this route for me because I'm getting taken down. These women are coming after me when it's obviously not the case.

Molly McPherson [00:38:55]:

And also, the difference is, certainly former President Trump, he is the one that created the playbook. I'll give him Know built off of other playbooks, previous playbooks, but he has significant legal challenges ahead of him. So for Russell Brand to follow that same playbook, that's the one thing about their playbooks. There isn't a chapter in there about how to deal with the legal consequence of what they're dealing with. So what do you think is going to happen with Russell Brand?

Taylor [00:39:22]:

I don't know. I think it'll be really interesting to see how it plays out. I do think that there's this resurgence of pretty virulent misogyny on the Internet that the Amber Heard sort of trial ushered in. I mean, if you looked at the conversation around, like, Marilyn Manson and those accusations against him, there's been a lot of kind of backlash since the Me Too movement against women that come forward on the Internet. I mean, I talk in my book about Gamergate as this playbook, and it's notable that a lot of people actually involved in these campaigns to this day were burst out of that gamergate. Gamergate was this sort of harassment movement against women in gaming. But again, it's that weaponizing the media and using the Internet to drive outrage and playing into these kind of people have no media literacy in this country, and so they play into people's kind of worst instincts about the media.

Molly McPherson [00:40:05]:

Well, many people think they do have.

Taylor [00:40:07]:

It when they don't. Well, everyone believes they have media literacy. Meanwhile, they can't even tell when a TikToker is lying to them.

Molly McPherson [00:40:14]:

Exactly. Okay, so let's transition into Know. In your book, you say TikTok dominates, and I certainly believe it does as well. So tell me about TikTok right right now, fall of 2023. Where are we with the platform?

Taylor [00:40:29]:

Yeah, I think the platform has finally matured. I mean, I think 2019, 2020, it was growing. 2022. I think it came into its own. I think 2023, it's very saturated now. It's very hard to grow, obviously, for that reason, but it really is kind of the home of pop culture. It's where these narratives where I always say, it's like YouTube and Twitter combined. It's like that real time kind of news focus of Twitter with the format of YouTube, but packaged in short form content.

Taylor [00:40:53]:

I think commentary culture has become huge. There's so much analysis videos on everything under the sun on TikTok. It's really shaping a lot of people's sort of worldview and thoughts on things as they're consuming that type of stuff, rather than reading opinion columns. Yeah.

Molly McPherson [00:41:07]:

And certainly on the one hand, too, it's become a search platform just for information.

Taylor [00:41:12]:

Hugely.

Molly McPherson [00:41:12]:

Yeah. So I know we're talking about a lot of the scary parts of Internet culture and social media, but there's a lot to be said about the benefits of using it as well. I was happy to see that you touched on this. When you see the dominance of a TikTok, where does TikTok succeed? Where clubhouse failed.

Taylor [00:41:33]:

Yeah. Oh, God. So many things. The main thing, and I talk about this a lot in my book, is how you view your user base. TikTok has always been very much for the users. Like, they don't try and force feed people down their throats. I know, but there's all these conspiracies. Oh, they force fed Charlie.

Taylor [00:41:47]:

No, it's pretty engagement. It's very tailored to your own interests, your own engagement, and what people engage with to an insane degree. And based off data, based off a lot of interactions. Clubhouse made this mistake where they tried to force feed content to their users. It's the same mistake that Elon is making now. It's a doomed same with vine. They all try to do this, and it's always doomed. With Clubhouse, they made their whole suggested user list.

Taylor [00:42:11]:

Andreessen, Horowitz Partners, and people adjacent to their own investors. No one wants to hear from these people. I'm sorry. That is not a mass pop culture platform. And instead of really leaning into the content creators and building up the content creators, building protections for the content creators, which is what a lot of the biggest women content creators on that platform wanted, was just like basic safety protections, the founder, Paul, was like, Screw that. No way we're making Mark Andreessen the biggest thing on the app. Nobody cares what that man has to say. He's just some rich guy in Silicon Valley.

Taylor [00:42:39]:

He's not relevant at all to pop culture or mainstream culture. So I think that really hindered the app's growth at a critical time.

Molly McPherson [00:42:47]:

Where do you think audio came into play, just in terms of dominance?

Taylor [00:42:50]:

Yeah, well, I think another thing that TikTok did, I mean, what TikTok has nailed is discovery, too, and it's discovering new content, especially through audio tracks and music and stuff. Clubhouse was so weird because it was like, theoretically this audio platform, but didn't really allow for audio discovery very well. And it wasn't tied in with music or anything that you'd want to listen to. It was just like a lot of chatter.

Molly McPherson [00:43:09]:

Yes.

Taylor [00:43:10]:

Chatter from a lot of scammers. It ended up being like the last few rooms I was in there before I deleted that were like, basically selling MLM schemes.

Molly McPherson [00:43:18]:

Oh, no kidding. Oh, I got off before that. Oh, that's interesting.

Taylor [00:43:21]:

You got out at the right mean. TikTok is such a sophisticated product, and they optimize everything to the most insane think it's I think it's going to be dominant for the coming years, and.

Molly McPherson [00:43:33]:

It'S not going away. There will be no legislation that kills TikTok, in your opinion.

Taylor [00:43:37]:

It would be so insane for that to happen. I was telling this to one of my colleagues, and my colleagues like Taylor, they roll out bad legislation literally all the time. But it would be pretty unprecedented because we are not China and we are not India, and we're not some of these other platforms where the government controls our tech ecosystem, so I think it would be pretty worrying. Also, TikTok's not remotely the only popular Chinese app, and if you want to worry about Chinese influence in entertainment, let's talk about all the Chinese money in gaming and the data that they're harvesting from gaming platforms and all this other stuff. There's just a lot it's just so disingenuous. It's a lot of Facebook and Google lobbying.

Molly McPherson [00:44:11]:

Yes, I agree with you 100% on that. Okay, so you touched on it. We have to go here, especially with you. Let's talk about Twitter, or formerly known as now X. What are your feelings? Rip Twitter. Tell me about your thoughts on Twitter.

Taylor [00:44:23]:

I stopped using it after I got banned. Elon suspended me after I asked him for comment on a story in December. And ever since I got back on, people couldn't find my name. I couldn't find it was my app was really broken and glitchy, and I just made the decision that I'm not going to use it for news anymore. So I used it. I tried to push as many people as possible to my Instagram and TikTok, but I mostly only use it now to keep up with COVID information because I am high risk, and it's kind of this only place where you can keep up with that stuff. But honestly, if that wasn't on there, I just wouldn't even use it at all. But I kind of just use it for that because there's nothing else.

Taylor [00:44:56]:

I can't find it, but I don't use it for news or information at all.

Molly McPherson [00:44:58]:

My feed is worth us agree mine is the same. Absolutely worthless. How often do you post on Twitter at all?

Taylor [00:45:06]:

Yeah, but I mostly just share other COVID news related things like, oh, we're in a surge, or like, oh, I wrote this article related to I wrote an article last week about threads blocking the word vaccine in the middle of the booster campaign. So sometimes I'll share things like that. I share a lot of information with other kind of medically vulnerable people. But no, I talked about my book a couple times on there, but I get more engagement on threads and mastodon than I do on Twitter.

Molly McPherson [00:45:29]:

So before we go there, because that's where I wanted to go next. How did you know that you were banned by Elon Musk?

Taylor [00:45:34]:

I was at a Christmas party. I was at my friend's house, actually. She was having a few friends over because I'm high risk and I couldn't go to this bigger Christmas party. So she was having a few friends over for drinks. I was having some wine with Ryan Mack from the New York Times and Tyler Kincaid from NBC, and I think it was Ryan or Tyler looked up and said, taylor, I think you're banned from Twitter. I can't find you. I'm trying to tag you or something. And I was like, what? And I had just asked Elon for comment.

Taylor [00:45:57]:

Like, a couple hours, I asked Elon for comment, and then I left for the party, and I was like, Shit. And then I realized that I was banned. And then I just started laughing. So was I'll be honest, I had a glass of wine at that point, and I thought it was mean.

Molly McPherson [00:46:10]:

I remember when this happened, but I don't remember what did you do next? Like, where did I see you?

Taylor [00:46:15]:

I made a TikTok. Are you kidding me? I immediately made a TikTok. I immediately went on Instagram Live and did an Instagram Live. I did a live. I was like, let's talk about this. Let's talk about why I'm banned. And then I dropped my story, which exposed Elon's lies. And then Elon was forced to add me back on because he had tried to ban me under this stupid rule saying that I was promoting my Instagram account too much.

Taylor [00:46:36]:

Do you remember that weekend that he made the rule? Like, you can't promote yourself on other platforms. At the time, my Instagram account was wiped, and the only tweets that I had up were promoting my Instagram account.

Molly McPherson [00:46:45]:

Yes. Okay. Yes. Now let's talk about just Instagram into Threads. You are very active on Threads. And when I think of, like, who is the first most prominent person on Threads, I think I was pretty early adopter to it. It was just you. To me, it was like, Taylor.

Molly McPherson [00:47:01]:

Threads is Taylor's. So tell me what you think about Threads. What did they do right in the launch? What do they still need to do? I'm noticing that you're dropping a lot of tips in there. Talk to me about threads.

Taylor [00:47:10]:

Oh, yeah. I'm always like yelling about something. I want to give feedback on the product. I think what they've done well is roll out a relatively competitive product to Twitter that sort of allows people to do short, easy text posts, which I love, and share links, which is very rare these days, to have a social platform that you can share links on. And as a journalist, I value that. Now, what have they done wrong? A lot, because Adam Masari has a very contentious relationship, and I'm sympathetic. You know, Adam Masari ran Newsfeed during the height of the backlash against Facebook. He's very nervous about News, so he posted this thing right after Threads launches.

Taylor [00:47:41]:

I don't know if you remember, that was like, we don't want to be a place for news. We want to be a place for fun and entertainment. And that's such a misguided notion. And again, as I wrote this story just last week about them blocking, for instance, the word vaccine in the middle of a booster rollout, they overly moderate too heavily to the point that you can't actually talk about news. And that's a huge problem because there's this delusion that pop culture, entertainment or fashion or sports is somehow non political or not adjacent to hard news. And controversy. That is not true. There's nothing that's not shaped by politics these days, of course, more than anything.

Taylor [00:48:18]:

And so what you end up doing when you block search terms, which I think is an insane horrible precedent to set, is you cut off really important communication, and specifically people speaking truth to power, like journalists'ability to report on powerful people telling lies and things like that.

Molly McPherson [00:48:32]:

How did you know that they couldn't use vaccine on threads as a word?

Taylor [00:48:36]:

Oh, I got a tip from public health officials. Public health officials, actually, because the CDC had not updated their website or guidance and stuff. Unfortunately, the CDC lags behind. It's a government website. It is not meant to be a real time news source. It is a government website. And so linking to the CDC, blocking all searches of COVID Long, COVID, all these it was all this, like, COVID related stuff. However, when I talked to them on the phone, that's not the only words they blocked.

Taylor [00:48:59]:

They blocked a lot more words. Some of them were like, porn and things like that, that you would expect. But some of them, it's like, we need to be able to talk. You need to be able to say the word porn sometimes on the Internet. That doesn't mean that you should be allowed to share porn or that they shouldn't moderate that. But again, this goes back to news and talking about things. You should be able to talk about things. And that's what really worries me about threads, is that they're censoring conversation.

Taylor [00:49:23]:

You're never going to be a place for news. And I was bringing up the war in Ukraine sorry. With the PR person. And it's like, I have a feeling, and I haven't confirmed this because it didn't happen, but the way that they were talking, it sounded like they would have banned the word Ukraine during the when that stuff kicks, they just want to avoid, quote, unquote, controversial terms.

Molly McPherson [00:49:39]:

Interesting. So you're saying you spoke was this.

Taylor [00:49:41]:

The PR person for Meta? Yeah.

Molly McPherson [00:49:43]:

And so they see that's an interesting business plan, but I'm with you on this. And from my perspective of working in public relations, specifically issues management, crisis management, twitter, as it was, was the place to go for primary information because that was immediate. That's where it received so much clout. And that's why journalists also receive so much clout as well. I'm with you. It was born from information and threads. For me, I find it just the goofy Twitter. It's just people's opinions and thoughts.

Molly McPherson [00:50:18]:

And I don't care about half the stuff they talk about on that app. I want to love it.

Taylor [00:50:24]:

Me too. And I think they have a real opportunity, and I think they're squandering it because they're so afraid. And to be fair, I was talking to another source at Meta who saw my posts and was reaching out to me, like, you're being too hard on the company. I think from the company's perspective, they're under a huge fire from legislators. Facebook has a horrible record of misinformation. They're almost too scared now where it's like they recognize this opportunity that's created with Twitter's downfall. They're too scared to really go for it. So they sort of go through this halfway thing, but then they're banning all these terms, and it's like, guys, let us talk about what we want, moderates a little bit.

Taylor [00:50:56]:

Look, I'm not saying shouldn't have any moderation. These are newsworthy terms. You can't just block all quote unquote controversial terms that are newsworthy. What are people going to be posting about? Ice cream that they ate yesterday is boring.

Molly McPherson [00:51:08]:

Yeah, and you're absolutely right about pop culture and any type of internet culture. It is tied so tightly with current events because that's what it's news, current events. That's what popular culture is. That's exactly what it is. So every time I go to threads and honestly, I forget that it exists, it's only because when I see the squiggle and it comes up every time I go there, it's just people chatting about nonsense. I mean, you're really the only person who might come in and go bam with something, but other than that, yeah, I'm absolutely with you on that. So now, just moving forward, looking forward for your book, extremely online. What's the takeaway? What's the gist of the book?

Taylor [00:51:48]:

Well, I really want people to see this user side of social media. I want them to understand the rise of social media, not just through the lens of these tech narratives and not just through the lens of the social network and things like that. I really wanted to present this sort of alternative history of the rise of social media and the social web and also tell the story of this half a trillion dollar content creator industry that's emerged with zero oversight, zero regulation. It's kind of the wild west still, and people don't take it seriously or understand how we got here. So, yeah, I wanted to kind of set the record straight on stuff and obviously talk about a lot of stuff that I reported over the years that I think at the time people weren't paying attention to these things as much. There's a lot of lessons I think we can take from looking at the events of the past two years on the internet.

Molly McPherson [00:52:31]:

If I were teaching this semester, your book would be in the syllabus.

Taylor [00:52:35]:

Seriously, that means so much. Oh, my God. Thank you.

Molly McPherson [00:52:39]:

Yeah, absolutely. Because here's the thing that really that I loved about it, like, when I opened it up, the fact that you started well, chapter two with Mommy bloggers, because that is a lifetime ago. And so much of the social media network that we see right now is based on that start for so many people who found success so quickly, and then they were able to monetize the audience so quickly. And a lot of those people are still here, but they haven't been able to continue and optimize it because everything has changed. And I love how you kind of plot and show the change and what happened there. I thought it was fascinating.

Taylor [00:53:18]:

Oh, my God. Thank you. That means so much. And yeah, they literally mothered the whole industry, so I think it was incredible what?

Molly McPherson [00:53:24]:

They mothered the whole industry. I love that. Okay, but what's next for you? You have so much in your young years. You have done so much. Are you going to keep doing the same thing for a while, or is there any other type of new life, next life for you?

Taylor [00:53:38]:

Yeah, I love media, so I'm going to stay in media in some way or form. I don't necessarily feel like I have to be a write forever. I used to feel like I just needed this to be a beat, and if I didn't write the story, no one would write it. Now there are more reporters on my beat, which I love, and I try to keep them all. I feel very protective of all of them. But yeah, I mean, I love writing. I love other formats, too, I think, because I write all day, but I'm a very visual audio. McPherson I had a Snapchat show for a while, years ago, and I think I could do another thing like that.

Taylor [00:54:10]:

Maybe not on Snapchat, but who knows what? I don't know. I'll just keep talking on the Internet and I'll see what happens.

Molly McPherson [00:54:15]:

Yeah, I think I'm a lot like you, too. Sometimes it's just you take what you know and your knowledge and your passion, and then when it moves, I mean, there's constant turns and twists that are happening there. So that's why I love following you. I love your content. I love how you think, and I love that you're a badass, too. You're not going to just let someone get the best of you and roll over you. You have a passion.

Taylor [00:54:36]:

Oh, thank you. Thank you.

Molly McPherson [00:54:38]:

So in every episode, I always like to include an indestructible PR tip. This is usually one practical takeaway that I drop to help people build an indestructible reputation. But oh, my goodness, I can't think of a better guest. Someone listening right now. They are on the Internet. They're on social media. You've been there, done that. What do you think would be a good tip for just the average person online right now? How to navigate it in a way to keep their reputation safe, clean and solid?

Taylor [00:55:06]:

Such a good question. I'm trying to think for an average person because journalists are a little bit different.

Molly McPherson [00:55:12]:

Okay, how about this then? We'll move it from someone who's average, but let's say it's like an influencer. Okay, so someone could be verified, maybe not, but they have a following. They're in a couple of hundred thousand. What should they worry about?

Taylor [00:55:22]:

I would say be careful before you insert yourself into controversy. Be careful. Not everyone needs to weigh in on everything. I mean, you would, because that's your job, is to weigh in on crisis or whatever. I see so many people just they're somewhat notable. And I've made this mistake too, by the way. I've commented on things that I don't know about, that I'm sort of unrelated to, that I just see on the Internet, and then suddenly your name is in these news articles and suddenly people are angry at you or you've issued an opinion or whatever. And so I just think if you see drama happening, save it for the group chat.

Taylor [00:55:52]:

You don't need to say something because if you have a slightly notable name, your name is going to end up in the articles and you're going to be on Team So and So and cleaning up the mess, and it's just fine. You don't need to.

Molly McPherson [00:56:03]:

That is the best tip, because you're absolutely right. I've done the same thing, and I have made the decision to move away from opinion as much as I can and just become more of a subject matter expert to teach. And I have noticed the amount of hate that has been reduced in the comments because you're absolutely right, people will drag you in. And I mean, me, my bugaboo are the social media vigilantes out there who love to bring people down just for the sake of bringing people down. You must be a target for that, right?

Taylor [00:56:34]:

All the time. I hate that. I hate that energy.

Molly McPherson [00:56:37]:

Do you just ignore it? What do you do when people are taking you like crazy and they want to just drag you into a drama?

Taylor [00:56:42]:

Oh, people are so mad. I mean, somebody did a tweet the other day and I got so mad about it. It was like someone with not that many followers, but they're like, oh, Taylor Lorenz, is following XYZ problematic people, including one person that's a source for mine that actually has been a source for mine on some really major stories. And I'm just like, who is this, the follow police? Who gives a shit? I'm a journalist. I follow tons of people that I don't ideologically agree with often. By the way, some of those people are the best leakers ever. You don't know what these people are saying. So I was so annoyed by that.

Taylor [00:57:10]:

And anyway, I try to ignore it generally, but there's always those people that are like, nipping or oh, my God, I accidentally liked a Drew Barrymore post when she was in the midst of her chaos. I think it just came up on my feed and immediately someone's in the comment, oh, Taylor Lorenz, you support this? And I was like, no, I'm a member of a union. I don't support any strike breaking.

Molly McPherson [00:57:28]:

Yes.

Taylor [00:57:28]:

Oh, my errantly liked this post.

Molly McPherson [00:57:31]:

I'm with you. I'm with you. Okay, so, Taylor, you are everywhere, and there. Where can people first of be? By the time this comes out, your book will already be published. So I assume it's going to be.

Taylor [00:57:43]:

It's everywhere. Get the book. It's Amazon, Barnes and Noble, your local bookshop. You can request it from your library. It's extremelyonlinebook.com also follow me on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube, I guess, threads.

Molly McPherson [00:58:00]:

And you have a newsletter. You're on subseque as well.

Taylor [00:58:03]:

And I do. Taylor Lorenz. Substac.com.

Molly McPherson [00:58:05]:

Oh, Taylor, it was so great talking to you. I could talk to you forever. And honestly, I think every student should get this too. It will help them in a million classes. I think. So. I love really this is now going to be like a resource book for me. I'm always going to have it here.

Molly McPherson [00:58:19]:

Taylor, thank you so much for joining me. I loved having this conversation. It's so fun being in the same space with you here, but also on social media.

Taylor [00:58:27]:

Thank you. You too, Molly. I'm such a fan. So this is awesome.

Molly McPherson [00:58:30]:

Mutuals. Mutuals. All right. Thanks, Taylor.

Taylor [00:58:32]:

Thanks.

Molly McPherson [00:58:34]:

That's all for this week on the podcast. My thanks to Taylor. Her book, Extremely Online the untold Story of Fame, Influence and Power on the Internet is out now. And I promise you it's good. All my students out there. This is a good book, even if your teacher doesn't put it in the syllabus. I think this is going to help you in school. So be sure to chime in with your takes on this interview across my social media accounts or hop into PR Confidential five me, Molly McPherson.

Molly McPherson [00:59:04]:

I'll also post my conversation with Taylor in the group. Thanks so much for listening. Bye bye for now.