Culture Study Podcast - Is the Age of Posting Over？

00:00:00.000 Hey, everyone. We need your questions for two episodes we're working on. One is on workplace communication. So have you noticed that it's devolving? Are there quirks or trends you don't understand? Why are people sending a Slack and also a text message and also calling you on the phone? What are you seeing? Let's talk about it.

00:00:20.560 And the other is on journal influencers. These are social media personalities that are also delivering news. Sometimes they have formal training. Most often they do not. What are you noticing or what are you curious about there? We could talk about like, these are people who oftentimes are like reporting from outside of trials or like reads AP headlines. What are you noticing or what are you curious about there?

00:00:45.620 If there's a specific person doing this work that you want us to, like, look at closely, you can also tell us that, too.

00:00:52.580 Submit all your questions at tinyurl.com slash culturestudypod.

00:00:57.060 All right.

00:00:57.640 Thanks.

00:00:58.040 And on to today's show.

00:01:01.600 Everyone has private feelings about each other's posts.

00:01:05.060 And that's something, too, that I found, like talking to people about their friends, dear friends.

00:01:10.540 And they pull up their phone and show me, like, well, this is, like, my friend.

00:01:14.100 Look what she does.

00:01:14.880 Like, look, what is this? And I mean, it's amazing because you can't talk about it with a friend. This is one of the things that we don't talk about with our friends. You can't be like, how come you wrote that like weird poem to your husband on your anniversary? Like, but he doesn't even use social media. So like, who's going to read it? Like, who is that for?

00:01:39.280 This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.

00:01:41.980 And I'm Katherine Jaser-Morton. I'm the author of The Story of Your Life, How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything, and I write the brooding column for The Cut.

00:01:52.380 In the introduction to your book, you write that social media is, quote, a world historically essential archive of our recent history. This is both a very obvious, uncontroversial position and an uncomfortable one.

00:02:05.380 And so I want to start with that because I love that you point out that like, yeah, everyone's like, duh, this is where we put our stuff. But also it makes people feel weird that that's the case. So could you talk a little bit about that discomfort?

00:02:20.180 Yeah, I mean, you know, it's where we put all our stuff. There's, you know, some people are making, you know, physical photo albums. That's great. But like our day to day is kind of being processed through it.

00:02:30.480 And I don't think that people like to talk about the deliberate choices that they're making when they're creating content. I think they like it to seem like it's this kind of natural expression of self that just like flows authentically from within.

00:02:46.020 everyone that i've ever spoken to about this is like they insist that they are authentic

00:02:52.520 um on some level right and also but like none of us are i mean authenticity is a very slippery

00:02:59.780 concept but like we're all doing you know a version of something and that's just what we're

00:03:05.440 doing and i think that yeah it just makes people uncomfortable to think that your archive is this

00:03:12.860 place where you're maybe not even fully in control of like what it is that you're doing and how you're

00:03:19.280 acting because you're you're trying to do a lot of things you have a lot of ulterior motives in

00:03:23.380 yeah in how you're telling your story yeah thinking about it as an archive is so interesting

00:03:29.860 and like the the more interesting thing to me really is like someone's uh like i want to get

00:03:34.960 in their phone right like and look at the contrast between what's in the phone and what was posted on

00:03:40.660 social media. And this like, you know, we'll talk more about our common work and our PhD work. But

00:03:47.540 when I was doing my PhD, one of my favorite pieces that I ever wrote was looking at how star

00:03:56.220 archives function and the difference between like an archive for a Hollywood star who knew that they

00:04:02.600 were going to donate their archive and thus curated their archive in a very particular way

00:04:08.180 to send a particular message about who they were and then contrast that with people who like

00:04:13.720 weren't necessarily thinking about that like they knew maybe like i'm a star i'm famous like

00:04:19.820 someone's going to do something but they weren't like sorting through their papers to donate them

00:04:24.580 right but even just the idea that like our archive we are whatever that is left behind of us the

00:04:31.800 things that we keep on purpose or that we post on purpose, like we're trying to say something

00:04:38.000 about ourselves. And no one wants to admit that, right? They're like, it's just me.

00:04:43.060 Exactly. Yeah. And I think that it's also supposed to be people are like, I do it for fun. I do it

00:04:50.460 for work. Right. You know, you have your different kind of reasons that you feel that you have to do

00:04:55.740 it. But this does end up being the archive of all your experiences, your reactions, the things that

00:05:01.020 you choose to commemorate and that is enormously significant like i mean photo albums are like

00:05:08.400 the kind of things that you like grab if the house is on fire like you know we really care so much

00:05:13.860 about our archives and so and this this feels like kind of like a like a dirty like a sullied

00:05:19.800 archive a little bit yes totally this is like how i feel when i look back at facebook and not only

00:05:24.560 have all of my photos shrank with time right because of the yeah the um the uh quality of

00:05:32.080 the photo like now they all just look like absolute garbage um but also like there's a

00:05:40.600 real desire for me to go back and just like get rid of all of it because it is so cringe but it

00:05:46.500 is also like who I was in that moment like who I was trying to be who I was trying to be for others

00:05:51.680 in that moment yeah no i have the same i have the same feeling because i used to post a lot

00:05:56.360 like i was an avid poster on on facebook and then instagram and i was tweeting a bunch and i think

00:06:03.960 for for writers like twitter totally counts like that was a place where i was doing a lot of stuff

00:06:08.120 i was working i was creating a persona and yeah no i know um i was just thinking the other day

00:06:16.120 that i should go to get rid of all of my posts on x because they're all still there even though i

00:06:20.920 don't use the platform haven't used it for several years but they're like but also that's that's a

00:06:26.620 history right there like that's my like grad school history like there's so much there is there there's

00:06:32.640 probably something you could like something you pay for they can do it for you because i'm thinking

00:06:35.820 about the labor is unthinkable to actually go through i actually there's a ton that have already

00:06:41.760 been nuked because i started using that during like 2017 2018 the height of like finding journalists

00:06:49.900 who were in any way criticizing Trump

00:06:52.280 and like trying to find something

00:06:53.460 and being like, oh, cry for the libs or whatever.

00:06:56.540 The thing that I really love about your book,

00:06:58.960 I have many things that I love about it,

00:07:00.500 but one of the things that I like

00:07:01.720 is that you're like, I love social media.

00:07:06.060 And so many people writing about social media

00:07:08.780 approach it with such like antipathy,

00:07:12.640 even if they are also using it,

00:07:15.240 that it, like you lose what draws

00:07:18.820 so many people to it if you don't love it. I know. And no, and that's why I'm here. That's

00:07:25.220 like, that's what I'm interested in. And I also feel, I think this is something that I acquired

00:07:30.180 like this little shift in perspective from academia. Actually, one of the, I don't want to

00:07:35.440 say few, but whatever. One of the few things that I really took with me that continues to be super

00:07:40.080 valuable. I don't want to, I don't want to slag it because honestly, I'm grateful, but you shouldn't

00:07:45.020 be above it. If you're going to do ethnography, if you're going to do sociology, you have to be

00:07:49.680 with your subjects and you have to acknowledge your subject position and you really got to just

00:07:55.020 get on the level because no one wants to talk to you if you come in there and you're like,

00:07:59.420 well, I know all about this thing and you obviously don't know much about it at all,

00:08:03.000 but let's talk anyway. You're not creating any kind of trust. Your dynamic is going to be really

00:08:08.100 bad. So just going in, I just had to account for myself and be like, you wouldn't have been doing

00:08:13.860 this for 20 years if you didn't love it and I have like the heart of a poster like yeah I love

00:08:20.000 and I still experience glimmers of the kind of joy that I used to experience where I'll think

00:08:26.140 of something funny and I'll just like this happens so seldom and I'll give myself permission to post

00:08:31.120 it and people are like engaging with me and like commenting and I'm like oh this is the best this

00:08:37.300 is the stuff like this is why I'm here and you know it's rarer and rarer but like you you sometimes

00:08:43.680 catch that little whiff of the good stuff. And it is so good.

00:08:48.200 You're one of my favorite posters. And it's because like, I don't know, like you have a

00:08:53.900 style to it that like this is going to seem silly since we're all we're talking about the

00:08:59.280 production of Authenticity. But like you're kind of you're wry. I feel like I get a sense of like

00:09:04.980 the place where you live, which is not the place where most people that I follow live.

00:09:09.640 And also like the contrast with like being in Vermont and that sort of thing.

00:09:15.560 And I know, though, the feeling that you're talking about, like I have it when this comes out, this will have been a couple of weeks ago, but I'm doing Rush Talk right now.

00:09:24.420 And like I wake up and my DMs are like I like I have like 100 DMs and I'm like, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's talk.

00:09:32.180 And for me, that's what it is. It's not like I don't care about the likes like this isn't even a post that's getting likes.

00:09:39.020 It's the engagement.

00:09:41.000 And I think that word has become evacuated of the fact that like, we actually do like

00:09:45.740 talking to other people about the things that we're doing.

00:09:48.660 Totally.

00:09:49.060 That's engagement for me is like, it's very pro-social behavior.

00:09:53.820 It's people saying like, oh yeah, this reminds me of this other thing.

00:09:57.040 My favorite thing is like people DM me stuff that they're like, I thought you might like

00:10:00.200 this.

00:10:00.420 And I'm like, this is manna from heaven.

00:10:02.480 Like, thank you for thinking of me on your travels through like the deepest Instagram

00:10:07.580 and you send me stuff like oh my gosh totally so totally well and no one's like i guess we do kind

00:10:13.420 of like make fun of i don't know our grandparents who used to like cut out things from the newspaper

00:10:18.720 and send it to us and say like i'm thinking of you right but that was also i understood that as

00:10:24.600 an act of love always absolutely no it's dming a funny reel is an act of love in the very similar

00:10:33.020 way. It just doesn't take postage. Yeah. No, I'm an authentic lover of the platform. And I think

00:10:40.140 that so much of the book, as I wrote it, I came to kind of see it as like, I was almost like

00:10:45.840 mourning the past. And I was naming something that was over and kind of just wanting to give

00:10:52.620 it its due a little bit. Yeah. And we'll talk about this as we go through the episode. But I

00:10:56.520 think you and i both agree that the era of posting is coming to a close yes and that fewer and fewer

00:11:03.540 of the people that we know are posting especially the way that they they used to like it's become

00:11:08.320 so much more professionalized in so many different ways but first i want to talk very briefly about

00:11:13.020 your dissertation which is on mom fluencers i've like feel like i like read parts of it that you

00:11:21.320 filtered for the public via your newsletter and just via our conversations. And it's always seemed

00:11:28.920 to me like you really liked thinking about momfluencers, but you wanted to widen the

00:11:33.700 aperture a little bit. Is that how you think about this book? Like you could have written this book

00:11:37.680 just about momfluencers. I could. I think that basically, as I was working through momfluencers,

00:11:44.000 I could see that there was an audience that was really interested in this topic. And you went

00:11:48.860 through the same thing, I think, like where you're like, oh, this is something that people want to

00:11:51.900 talk to me about. That's so fun. Yeah. But yeah, I think that what really happened was as I was

00:11:57.780 going deeper into momfluencers, I was like, normal people are acting this way, too. Like

00:12:03.400 momfluencers are a convenient kind of frame because in a dissertation, you know, you need to

00:12:08.180 in order to not make yourself crazy, you need to have like a really well-defined subject so that

00:12:13.620 you're kind of talking about a specific group. And so I couldn't do something like this book

00:12:18.820 in an academic context because it's too undefined. It's just like people. But so momfluencers like

00:12:23.700 gave me a kind of a frame. But ultimately, I was like, this is this is everyone or this is a lot

00:12:29.100 of people and people who are not doing this for work and they're not getting paid. So I was just

00:12:33.540 kind of beginning to understand like social media affect and the rules of affect that govern the

00:12:40.840 momfluencer space are really strictly. And then more and more, I was seeing them like kind of

00:12:45.220 being played with by civilians. Yeah, you use the phrase, I love this, a disciplinary sort of

00:12:50.840 storytelling. Yeah. And that's the sort of thing that I think, you know, when we say it's

00:12:56.280 uncomfortable to talk about social media, like that's at work. We're all doing it in some way.

00:13:01.980 We all have these like rules that we have internalized about what is posting too much,

00:13:06.640 what is like, what shouldn't you post about? Or if it's something that we are like, oh,

00:13:12.140 that's sad to post about how should you narrativize it like we have internal yeah things right and

00:13:18.500 like I think that as I started doing the research I was like we're people are so sophisticated and

00:13:24.360 this is the thing I'm indignant about this because I'm like ordinary people have become like quite

00:13:30.300 good yeah at creating like a very specific kind of content that's true to them like this is the

00:13:36.940 kind of work that people used to get paid to do yeah like you know comms professionals and it's

00:13:41.460 everyone is like a little tiny mini comms professional and with varying degrees of

00:13:46.700 skill but like a lot of people are really operating at a high level and no one's talking

00:13:52.220 about it and it's also embarrassing to admit it and i'm like how did we get to the point where

00:13:57.420 this is embarrassing like these people that i talked to you know like like a random woman with

00:14:02.060 a non-social media non-media facing job in like you know tampa is telling me things about the way

00:14:08.000 that she narrates her life that are so like she's thought so hard about it yeah and she's like I've

00:14:14.800 never told this to anyone and I'm like yeah I know you haven't because like it's we just this is like

00:14:19.900 this kind of unsayable zone which of course is I'm obsessed with that no I know same and I'm like I

00:14:26.460 think about this all the time trying to make this visible and some of the hardest work that I have

00:14:31.160 had to do is really trying to unpack it myself because as I write it down like there's a point

00:14:38.200 in my um in my book on millennial burnout where I talk about social media burnout and like I just

00:14:44.900 force myself to really actually write down what I think when I'm scrolling through Instagram

00:14:50.020 and it was it was so embarrassing um because it just brought up so many vulnerabilities right

00:14:59.420 Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. It brings up vulnerabilities, but it's also like, this is who you are. Like, this is a reflection of your true self.

00:15:07.980 Yeah. I have a friend who is a great poster. She's one of my few in my close circle who really posts with any sort of regularity. She is also a comms professional. And the fascinating thing that I think, and this gets to the research that you did, is she is posting in a way that I think would be fitting for an influencer, a large audience influencer.

00:15:33.660 she has a following of a couple hundred people and she has a private account yeah right oh yeah

00:15:39.320 like so it's not like because sometimes i'm like oh she like my impulse because of the work that i

00:15:46.420 do and because i'm always trying to get a larger audience because it's important for my work

00:15:50.040 my impulse is always like oh i'm posting so that this will get a larger audience

00:15:54.140 but she is not at all interested in that it's just broadcasting to the people that she already knows

00:16:00.120 I would be so curious to know like what she's thinking. And it's also, I think it has to do with like pride and like maintaining certain standards, which we've always done that in different ways. Like people used to keep their houses that way. You know, people, there's, there's, we've always been interested in, you know, maintaining some of the standards. And I think that is one way to do it.

00:16:21.600 So there's like totally natural. We're operating on instincts that are not new. Right. That we've always had. And we're just using this as a way to do it.

00:16:32.020 yeah totally like the people who now i there are people in my life who like cannot they just they

00:16:39.000 they consume instagram voraciously but never ever post like those are also the people those are also

00:16:46.600 the people who um like maybe wouldn't do a christmas card do you know what i mean like they

00:16:52.360 were like it's just too much like you just don't you don't want to perform or be perceived that way

00:16:56.520 or they would do a very subtle one and be like ah get it out there right um yeah because it looks

00:17:02.340 like you're trying too hard like i mean as a half canadian like this is a very big part of

00:17:07.060 this kind of old canadian culture which is like the tall poppy thing like right you can't don't

00:17:12.800 seem like you think you're the shit and you know social media has really blown that open where

00:17:17.840 people are really much more allowed to do that but there's still something like oh like ew

00:17:22.980 I don't want anyone to think that I care.

00:17:25.480 Right.

00:17:25.760 So this actually, this is a good way to talk about the people that you interviewed for the book.

00:17:29.360 Because I think sometimes people would think, oh, it's a book about social media.

00:17:33.640 You're going to interview a bunch of influencers about how they use it.

00:17:36.940 But you were not really interested in that.

00:17:38.380 You interviewed one person who could be considered an influencer.

00:17:41.760 She has like 100,000 followers.

00:17:43.700 So who did you find to interview and talk about these things?

00:17:46.820 I really wanted to talk to people who had nothing, had relatively little in common with me.

00:17:52.240 I didn't want them to know me. I didn't want them to know, have mutual friends with me, ideally. I didn't want them to know my work. I really wanted to go in as a stranger. And this is, like, also, I think, just a reflection of, like, the limitations of social media silos themselves. Like, I started out, when I first started working on it, I was like, I'm going to call out to my old Substack folks and see if anybody wants to chat.

00:18:16.940 And I did a bunch of Zooms with people. And because people were like, oh, yeah, I have so much to say. And it was really sweet. People were awesome. I was grateful for their time. But I came away being like, we all agree. Like, everyone has the same thoughts as me. This is boring. This is not a book. And also, Zoom was not working. Because I really do think that people, when they're on Zoom now, they're like, I'm at work. Like, this is now, this is a work affect. And the mask didn't drop.

00:18:44.020 And I mean, it makes sense because they're sitting in front of the camera. It wasn't like ethnographically speaking, I wasn't able to observe them to like the level and specificity that I sought to. And I wanted to understand people's environments and I couldn't tell what I was looking at.

00:19:01.080 so I was like this is a failed we're gonna scrap this and I started again and I was like I need to

00:19:06.360 go places I need to be with people they it has to be total strangers and I just need to spend as

00:19:11.080 much time with them as they'll let me spend so like maximum awkwardness maximum terrifying for

00:19:17.280 me like 100% like you're just describing like the worst parts of reporting yeah it's the worst and

00:19:24.620 I know there are some journalists who really thrive with this kind of thing I would say that's

00:19:30.200 not me. But I really was like, this is, this is necessary. So like I would do things and this is

00:19:35.500 again, not being an academic anymore, being like a kind of a lay person. Now I could do

00:19:40.320 the types of sourcing that wouldn't, you could never do in academia. So like, for example,

00:19:46.060 one person in the book, she, everyone's names are changed. She's actually the big sister of

00:19:51.380 someone I grew up with, but I hadn't seen her in 25 years. And I really hadn't seen any of that

00:19:56.940 family in a long time. And she lived in this area. She lived in Arizona. And I wanted to go to

00:20:00.920 Arizona. And I was like, I need one gateway source, just one. And if I have one, she can

00:20:07.080 introduce me to people and they can introduce me to people. And this is how it works. And I'll get

00:20:10.680 further and further away from her. And it'll just be strangers. But I was like, how do I like

00:20:16.180 do this? Like, we don't know each other. I follow her on Facebook since 2006. We do not communicate.

00:20:22.800 I know she has kids. So I was like, hey, I'm going to be in town for some stuff. Maybe we could meet up. I'd love to ask you some questions for a project I'm working on. And she was like, so kind, like, of course, please come over. I'd love to have you over. I booked the flight to see her for one hour at her house. But I couldn't have told her that because that would have made her very uncomfortable.

00:20:47.180 100% so I had to lie which you can't do like that's not a lot but but I was kind of like this

00:20:54.320 is a justifiable uh lie um because I don't want to make her uncomfortable and I really am only

00:21:00.860 going to ask for like however much time she's and then maybe she can put me in touch with folks and

00:21:05.720 she did and then it just took off and I had great chats and I also did stuff like I went on Facebook

00:21:12.440 like facebook is amazing um community groups mom's groups yeah in a certain area i'd go on google

00:21:18.960 maps i'd find a starbucks in their neighborhood this is this was like i thought this was wacky

00:21:24.220 and it didn't work but i i was kind of into it i went on there i was like hey ladies like this is

00:21:29.720 a mom's group i'm a i'm a journalism researcher i'm working on this project i'd love to talk to

00:21:34.120 anybody i'm gonna be at the starbucks from you know 9 a.m to noon on these days if you come i

00:21:41.060 will buy you whatever you want for you and your kids if you'll just sit down and talk to me for

00:21:46.060 however long you want um and i was like these are stay-at-home moms like it could be an activity to

00:21:51.600 do with the kids like it might just work for their day in a way that it's like very a low ask you

00:21:56.900 know because people don't have the time to give you yeah this is it's a lot to ask you know so i

00:22:03.280 was just trying to make it easy for people um and you know so just stuff like that i was just trying

00:22:08.380 to come up with ways to get people to talk to me. And then maybe we would hit it off. And this is

00:22:13.880 what would often happen is we'd hit it off and they'd be like, oh, you should like come to this

00:22:17.460 thing at my friends. And that's, I mean, people are the best, you know? And so I'd like find

00:22:21.480 myself at some like barbecue and like, oh, then you're really like, I'm in heaven. I'm having the

00:22:26.940 time of my life, you know? I know it's gauche to talk about the review of your book and the New

00:22:32.420 York Times in a podcast with you right now, but I just want to bring up, there's this line where

00:22:36.620 the reviewer is like isn't it weird that she gives the these people pseudonyms since like

00:22:42.680 they're on social media and i was like you totally missed the point because the thing that they cannot

00:22:49.800 control the way that you are going to write about them and also like your conversations with them

00:22:55.280 when you give them when you grant them a pseudonym it allows them to to do this sort of self-analysis

00:23:01.400 that maybe they would never do on social media. Right. Precisely. No, my conversations with

00:23:08.520 people were all about the stuff that they don't talk about that they do. It was essential that

00:23:14.340 I make them anonymous. And I doubt that any of them would have talked to me if I was like,

00:23:18.860 and I have to use your real name. No way. Yeah. So, yeah, no, thank you for actually thank you

00:23:23.900 for that. Because I was like, babe, you didn't understand like when I read that. That's OK.

00:23:27.680 Yeah, well, and I also think that most people, like people, the way that they post on social media, especially if they have like private accounts, like they don't want, like if someone Googled their name, they don't want them talking about the way that they use social media to come up in a Google hit. Do you know what I mean?

00:23:44.840 Of course. Of course. No, I mean, maintaining your privacy is really hard. And yeah, I want people to feel that they can have their privacy.

00:23:52.920 And that might seem at odds to like posting pictures of your kids on social media, but it isn't.

00:23:59.360 Like that's what that's the contradiction that I think some people don't understand.

00:24:03.620 Yeah, exactly.

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00:28:19.380 okay we got to get to listener questions first one is from rachel what's weird to me about how

00:28:29.420 we share on social media today is that through instagram and facebook i have been able to keep

00:28:33.520 up with the general ongoings of people from various seasons of my life since we friended

00:28:37.700 or followed each other during the season we spent actual in-person time together and therefore i

00:28:42.900 have been able to keep general track of the life stages everyone is at and not only that i've been

00:28:47.680 able to keep up with people's life updates, but that I really want to and feel some sort of

00:28:51.860 continued connection to people, some of whom I haven't seen in person or talked to in over 10

00:28:56.580 years. The girl I went to summer camp with in 2014 is having a baby. I'm so happy for her. The boy in

00:29:02.520 my freshman year English class is getting married. Aw, congrats to him. I don't want to unfollow many

00:29:07.700 people, even if it's been a very long time since we were really in each other's lives, because I

00:29:12.140 want to continue to see the updates. What is it about the way social media has allowed us to keep

00:29:16.720 up with people's lives that makes it so we want to continue learning about the lives of people

00:29:20.660 we may genuinely never get to see in person again. Sort of like how I'm interested in keeping up with

00:29:25.180 celebrities' lives, even though I'll probably never meet them. And how, if anything, does this

00:29:29.920 impact the way we feel connection with others? Obsessed with this question. Yeah. I wrote about

00:29:36.640 it a couple of weeks ago, something very similar about like the, how I'm addicted to normal,

00:29:42.820 normal person gossip is I think what I called it like you called it normal gossip slop I think

00:29:48.200 normal gossip slop just like people talking about their lives I love that you're like this is what

00:29:53.400 this is what you called it um but like uh and a lot of it on my Facebook now is really like the

00:30:01.680 artifacts of a much different time in my life because of the way Facebook has stratified um

00:30:07.880 just like the type of people who are posting on it. Do you have this at all?

00:30:12.040 Yes, I do. My Facebook is very, very different from it's a very strange. Yes. Algorithm. And

00:30:19.060 it's very ordinary person. And a lot of these were people that I don't know or. Yeah, they're

00:30:24.200 they're connected to me in ways like geographical or whatever, and I'll never meet them. Yeah. So

00:30:29.780 mine is some people that I knew from my hometown or their parents, like because a lot of older

00:30:34.780 people are still using Facebook a lot more than people in my generation. And I talked about this

00:30:41.000 in my post. There's also these people that like the way that I got in touch with them to interview

00:30:45.400 them for stories, especially when I was living in Montana, was through Facebook. Like that was the

00:30:50.340 way. And you had to friend them in order to message them. And now we're friends. So like

00:30:55.840 there are some people. Oh, for sure. And it's actually it's quite useful in thinking about

00:31:02.340 Just exposure to people that aren't in my ideological silo in, I think, a very useful way. And then there's people from my hometown who still post on Facebook in part because I think it's much more of a norm than Instagram.

00:31:19.020 like uh in a smaller more rural place like that it's still used in that way and i know so much

00:31:28.620 about their lives and i love it but i also it's like sometimes i'm like where what information

00:31:35.460 am i do i not have space for because i know these things about the person that i went to camp with

00:31:41.740 in 11th grade yeah i mean i think that i've had moments where i've been like facebook is going to

00:31:47.200 have a resurgence because it's still where people do relatively I mean it's because of who's posting

00:31:55.120 like the people who are posting there are not guarding their reputations in the same way that

00:31:59.360 like you or I have to do on Instagram and our friends and kind of this professional class of

00:32:03.340 people who are like interested in in our image I read about this in the book like we're we're

00:32:07.580 managing impressions in a very deliberate way yeah and on Facebook especially older people

00:32:12.320 And like rural Facebook, I think, is like my Vermont world is very, very Facebook.

00:32:18.820 My Montreal world is not Facebook at all.

00:32:21.660 And so I like use Facebook to keep up with what like my neighbors in Vermont are up to.

00:32:26.100 And then like somebody will have like a motorcycle accident and then he's in the hospital and the whole community is like, you know, posting about it.

00:32:33.160 And then suddenly I'm all of these people are like, I'm completely, you know, I'm digging down.

00:32:39.600 Yeah.

00:32:40.000 Oh, yeah.

00:32:40.660 I'm I'm learning about I've learned a lot about my community from lurking on Facebook which is

00:32:46.760 weird which feels weird too because I'm I'm an outsider there and I know a lot more about people

00:32:52.400 than they know about me because I don't post on Facebook they like can't find anything out about

00:32:56.400 me anyway I this question I want to just address something in it that I do think is really

00:33:02.380 interesting yeah it's so this like how does it change the kind of nature of the connection when

00:33:08.280 you have these like many many like loose ties or like almost kind of non-existent ties but you

00:33:13.000 still are keeping up with people i do think that what it really changes because i think that the

00:33:17.780 desire to see this gossip is just like this is natural and it's fun and we like it yeah and i

00:33:24.160 don't think that we should feel bad about it i think it's like this is pure like this is fine

00:33:28.780 this is benign behavior yes but we are aware that our audience is also made up of people

00:33:37.160 for whom we are this for them so like people who are like I don't I don't even know her anymore

00:33:41.780 and so I think that it really changes the boundaries of how we communicate because we are

00:33:47.940 aware that there's like people who don't really know us and so like I think we try or it can

00:33:55.840 create the effect of influencing us towards having like a more simple way of telling our story

00:34:03.280 that really kind of doesn't include like the sorts of digressions or the sorts of tone that

00:34:10.660 we would use if we were just talking to our friends yeah yeah yeah because it's like well

00:34:14.540 then they're not going to understand like all these guys like the guys from camp you know 15

00:34:18.640 years ago like gotta think of them and like they won't understand so so you you kind of create this

00:34:24.040 like generic like announcement type of tone right will be like legible to everyone and that's where

00:34:31.320 i see like the kind of the bleaching out of storytelling is happening because we have these

00:34:38.760 larger and larger audiences and we need things to make sense to them we don't need it to make sense

00:34:43.920 like we can do whatever we want but we're thinking about our visibility in this way and we're like

00:34:49.240 okay so you know i'm not just talking to like the 50 people that like i actually see in my life and

00:34:56.620 And yeah, it just it completely changes the way that we talk about ourselves.

00:35:02.560 I the one thing that this makes me think of is this is often what people cite for why they can't get off Facebook.

00:35:09.180 They don't like how they feel when they're on Facebook or on Instagram, but they don't want to lose these connections.

00:35:17.200 And it just reminds me that, like, we have come to believe that this is the only way that we can get in touch with people.

00:35:25.040 It's like if you are disconnected through social media, then you have lost that connection forever.

00:35:31.740 It's not true.

00:35:32.920 It's not true.

00:35:35.520 No, I mean, it's easier than ever to find people like and also you can Google someone, you can DM them like even if you're not, there's a lot of ways, a lot of workarounds if you really need to stay in touch.

00:35:47.600 But I think it's because we do like the normal gossip slop.

00:35:51.420 We want to just be passive recipients of it. We don't want to cut it off. And I really understand that because that's just like neighborhood gossip.

00:36:01.100 Right. So I always talk about this on the podcast that we have a very unique situation on the island in which at some point, some critical juncture, the people here decided we're not going to be on Facebook. Our communication is not going to be on Facebook. We're going to be on Nextdoor.

00:36:16.880 so yeah it's all next door and the way that they uh try to avoid the devolution that sometimes

00:36:26.900 happens on next story is that there is a rule that you can't talk about politics so it actually

00:36:32.800 is a very pleasant place to be but oh my gosh i learned so much about people like just low stakes

00:36:39.040 information incredible low stakes like but and no one though i think no one on the island consumes it

00:36:45.220 with the veracity that i do and it's kind of embarrassing like how much if i were there

00:36:50.400 i would consume it with that veracity yeah no you're basically cataloging data yes well and

00:36:58.280 it's also like i think part of my personality is that i like knowing things and not in like a nosy

00:37:04.480 way like i would never go up to someone that i see just like i don't know like in far away in

00:37:10.960 their garden and be like when did you buy this place right like or some of the things that people

00:37:15.440 say to me in person like you paid too much for that house or those sorts of things like i would

00:37:19.980 never do something like that right real busybody stuff i like collecting information i think that

00:37:28.400 sometimes people just like don't they discount the value of that when it comes to social media

00:37:33.520 it's such a good like investigatory tool yeah and in again i'm going to say this again pro socially

00:37:38.760 like I think it's it's can be so useful when I uh I moved back to Montreal 15 16 years ago

00:37:45.940 I didn't really know anyone I had a kid I didn't have any friends yeah my husband and I were really

00:37:50.320 isolated and I would look at and this is also back when Facebook was a lot more open like people had

00:37:56.380 public they didn't shut it down and I would just look at photos of people who I would see at the

00:38:00.420 park and I would learn about them and when I tell you that I would be like okay well she seems like

00:38:05.160 someone that I could talk about X, Y, Z with. I would come up with things that I could talk about

00:38:09.920 with people because I wanted to make friends. And I was using my little Facebook investigations to

00:38:16.940 do it. And it was so helpful. It really helped me make friends. So listen, I mean, we find our

00:38:25.560 uses for these things however we can. They're very useful. I think some people listening to

00:38:30.200 this will be like, you guys are weird. Like just have conversations like normal people. So it is

00:38:35.200 something to do with our personalities. Like we are academics who are very invested in like

00:38:39.720 anthropological thinking. I know. I know. You give it's true. Like you give Facebook to an

00:38:45.660 anthropologist. Like, I mean, what are they going to do with it? You know, like it's it's a sickness.

00:38:51.500 But I don't think that's harmful. Yeah. I think like you and I both, we recognize like when we

00:38:59.220 are overstimulated like the other day i was doing rush talks until like 10 30 at night and i literally

00:39:05.360 i put down my phone and i said i am overstimulated and like and like turned down the lights and like

00:39:13.800 read a book for 30 minutes i had to do that so i recognize like what it does to me but i don't think

00:39:18.460 i i try to combat the feeling that this is somehow like stupid or wasteful yeah i i think that's

00:39:26.760 that's right it's not always like that yeah um okay this one comes from leah and this is something

00:39:31.940 that i know you've been thinking about a lot recently it's not exactly social media but it

00:39:36.680 is a form of it my brother and his peer group age 28 or so share their location with each other

00:39:42.500 constantly on find my friends etc my friend group only two to three years older was mortified to

00:39:48.640 hear this how do our conventions of what's safe or okay to share differ so much in such a short

00:39:55.100 age difference. So I've been thinking about it because you've been writing about basically like

00:39:59.860 teen freedom and agency in your column for The Cut recently. So what do you think about this?

00:40:07.560 And then I want to share my thoughts. I mean, I think that for a lot of people,

00:40:12.900 being under surveillance is completely natural to them. And it's because all of these tools,

00:40:18.920 all of these platforms are tools of surveillance. And people who grow up inside of that,

00:40:24.460 just think of that as utterly normal and also like certain friend groups much use these tools

00:40:30.280 in like more overtly surveillance-y ways than others like and like there are things that i

00:40:36.960 consider totally unacceptable that in like people a few years younger than me would think are normal

00:40:42.640 like i would never put red receipts on a text because i'm like it's my business when i'm going

00:40:47.080 to text you back some people think that's like really non-negotiable and like on on instagram

00:40:51.720 if I see your dm or like if I you know if I don't reply and then I'm posting so I'm using the app

00:40:58.960 and I didn't reply to you you cannot follow up and be like why didn't you reply I see you're on

00:41:05.320 the app I'm like you can't do that to me I know you can see me yeah we have to pretend that you

00:41:10.660 can't otherwise this relationship doesn't work for me so like I those are like boundaries that

00:41:15.720 I have but there are young people who are like I can always be seen everything I do is visible

00:41:20.340 Well, that's just, that's on me.

00:41:22.140 I have to be accountable for that.

00:41:23.800 Like, I live in a bubble of total accountability and I've accepted it.

00:41:28.480 And so, like, the whole, like, location tracking thing is part of that, where I think for a lot of young people, they're like, why wouldn't I want people to know where I was?

00:41:34.380 It's convenient.

00:41:35.420 Yeah.

00:41:35.720 Like, there's just no, they don't see the downside.

00:41:39.640 And they're like, I'm not hiding anything.

00:41:41.200 I'm not hiding from anyone.

00:41:42.460 And it's really hard to try to explain to them the value of privacy.

00:41:46.700 This is something that I try to do.

00:41:47.900 And it's very challenging.

00:41:49.260 privacy is like kind of a basic human right you have you're entitled to it they're like who cares

00:41:53.720 like only people who are weird want to be you know hidden right like you if you want to be

00:41:59.760 hidden then you're doing something bad yeah and this is one of like privacy studies uh this is

00:42:05.980 one of the key questions like the nothing to hide fallacies like right i mean we and teaching kids

00:42:12.280 that be like it's not about hiding stuff it's about your kind of innate agency as a person and

00:42:16.960 the entitlements that the self has to a certain kind of self-determination that has to be able

00:42:22.320 to happen without other people perceiving you and influencing your choices. And you can get

00:42:29.780 through to people that way, but it's a lot of talking for a 17-year-old to listen to. It's tough.

00:42:37.120 It does seem to interlock with conversations that I have about people being frustrated that

00:42:42.520 I don't bring my phone with me everywhere. Why are they frustrated with that?

00:42:45.820 They're like, how could you do that? What if someone needs to reach you? And some of it is like, it's a lot of parents, honestly, because they're like, I could never do that. My kids have to reach me all the time. And I understand that. But also, there is this incredible amnesia about our resilience, even just 20 years ago, with not being able to immediately get in contact with someone.

00:43:11.160 okay and also the for me the freedom from my phone like it's related in some ways to privacy

00:43:19.820 it's not that like i don't want to talk to you it's just more that like i don't want to talk i

00:43:23.620 don't want to have any inputs none yeah i want to be free from inputs for a while oh i completely

00:43:29.260 i completely relate to that and i also think that you know i would challenge parents maybe i should

00:43:34.420 write about this it will be not popular people will not not like it but like i do think that

00:43:40.100 you can as a parent be, I mean, obviously different situations, but like in a great

00:43:45.460 many cases, you can be unreachable by your kids for a little while.

00:43:49.480 I think that's totally legitimate.

00:43:51.420 And maybe it's something that people should try to do to just see what it feels like.

00:43:55.620 And also one thing that, and this has to do with proximity and it can happen in a real

00:44:00.960 space, but I actually think it can happen easily in an urban space as well, is that

00:44:04.880 like, oh, I can't get ahold of my mom.

00:44:06.920 This is who I call or I knock on the door of the next door neighbor.

00:44:10.100 right like correct as my best friend who lives next door has been leaving her kids alone more

00:44:16.760 often because they're getting to that age like they know if they need something they just come

00:44:20.980 over to me and ask me for it right like yeah they don't need to have her reachable at all times

00:44:28.680 uh the thing about find my that i like an alternative reading to this is that i have

00:44:34.140 many of my friends on find my and it's not because we were like let's put each other on find my

00:44:38.460 we agreed to put all of ourselves on it for this relay race that we were running because when you're

00:44:44.260 running a relay race you need to like know where you are right yeah and we all just checked like

00:44:50.140 initially the first year we did it we checked 24 hours because the settings are 24 hours or

00:44:55.940 indefinitely because the relay race is longer than 24 hours it meant that you had to re-up it

00:45:02.260 was super annoying because people like whatever so they just put indefinitely and now it's just

00:45:08.220 I find tremendous comfort in periodically just opening it and I'm like, there's that friend in bed. There's that friend in bed. They're just there. I love seeing them. It's like a Sims simulation or something. Do you know what I mean? I'm not tracking them.

00:45:24.420 No, I totally I know exactly what you mean. And I don't do that because it's just not something that's ever really come up. Yeah. But I get it. And I know that there's a use for this that is not like a tracking control technology for sure. Yeah.

00:45:42.320 But I think that like when it comes to younger people, the boundary is more porous. And I think it's more passes through that boundary than like a group of women who like were in a race together and who love each other as friends and just want to like stay connected, you know?

00:45:59.100 Absolutely. Do you feel like it's unsafe to do this? Because that seems to be coming through in the question is that like they actually think it's unsafe to always be able to know where people are.

00:46:09.060 um unsafe like that somebody could then like use that information for ill yeah like like stalking

00:46:17.300 essentially I think yeah I mean I personally am so I I find the idea of being having people know

00:46:26.340 where I am so abhorrent that I do think it's unsafe for me like in my in my like sense of

00:46:32.840 self I would hate the idea of someone showing up where I am even a friend who I love and just be

00:46:38.240 like, oh, I knew you were here. I just wanted to, like, that for me would send me into a deep

00:46:43.640 irritation, which is weird because, like, I love my friends and I love seeing them. And it doesn't

00:46:47.320 always have to be on my terms. Like, running into someone is awesome. Right. Being surprised is

00:46:51.540 amazing. But this isn't surprise, right? This is I'm surprised. You're not surprised as different.

00:46:57.220 Right. There's so much to think about here. This is one that I hope that the comments kind of go

00:47:02.540 after this one so okay next question is about personas and social media this comes from a

00:47:08.920 different rachel with a different rachel spelling because hello millennials why is my feed full of

00:47:16.440 people i know from high school and beyond posting about their lives like they are an influencer

00:47:21.520 does everyone think this is an attainable career path have influencers just influenced the way we

00:47:28.520 interact with the platforms and standardize how we share content on social media? Why do these

00:47:34.780 poor quality day in the life or get ready with me videos from people I know personally bother me so

00:47:40.640 much? I mean, this is kind of like the premise of my book. So thank you, Rachel, for this question.

00:47:47.660 I think that basically, because of a lot of these interlocking factors, the fact that we have these

00:47:54.320 like unwieldy networks, the fact that we're under surveillance in this sort of ambient way that

00:48:00.360 makes us self-conscious in new ways that I think we're not necessarily even aware of.

00:48:04.860 We're compelled in many cases to like recreate these scripts that we see on social media that

00:48:11.120 seem successful. And I don't think that your friends who are like posting like influencers

00:48:16.900 are necessarily trying to be influencers. Being an influencer is like super hard work. Like I think

00:48:21.240 most people wouldn't want to do it and you don't make a lot of money and like yeah it's it's just

00:48:24.760 not a great job for almost every influencer i think they're just like this is a way of communicating

00:48:30.680 that like works and that is cute and that is entertaining and i can do it like i want to try

00:48:38.160 it and i think that's all good but the fact that it's irritating is yes i agree it's that like it's

00:48:47.400 this is like a sort of a thin and kind of empty, hollow, content-free script. Like,

00:48:55.300 this isn't real information about these people. Like, you're not getting to know them.

00:49:01.180 It's also just an imitation. It's just, it's, they're reproducing things they've already seen.

00:49:06.560 So, like, why do you have to see people making copies of things? It's like, I don't want to see

00:49:13.100 that you know what it reminds me of so because I think of like day in the life or get ready with

00:49:17.900 me I think of it as a box right like a framework for trying to share like you want to share

00:49:22.700 something about yourself like you have this impulse like I want to connect with people

00:49:27.040 and this is an acceptable way to do it and it reminds me of like the you still see this on

00:49:32.600 Instagram from time to time and on Facebook but like the kind of questionnaires where it's like

00:49:37.920 favorite color and then you put in the color and they're more like it's often like centered around

00:49:43.560 like how you met your husband or something like that right and it does give you some information

00:49:49.360 but it's also annoying because it's like the the questions are so limited they don't allow for a

00:49:56.000 much room for like expansion or like interesting weird answers or anything like the box is small

00:50:04.180 And so you don't get the surprise that you want from that box.

00:50:09.420 I think that the key is that the box is small and you don't realize like, so I in preparing to promote this book, I thought briefly about producing like video content, imitating this stuff of me, like me doing a get ready with me, me doing like a haul, whatever.

00:50:27.740 and I tried to do it at home and I found it impossible I it was like a complete failure

00:50:35.960 I never posted anything but the reason why was that like I couldn't produce the affect that is

00:50:42.700 recognizable in that space like I'm doing my makeup and I'm talking like my normal self and

00:50:48.380 it just isn't working like it's it's a square peg in a round hole like you're looking at it

00:50:52.600 and you're like this it's just it's not working and so it's like I think

00:50:57.740 What annoys me is that when people are doing that and they're making it work, like they're actually doing something hyper specific.

00:51:03.440 Yes.

00:51:03.960 And they're talking about a hyper specific set of things.

00:51:07.580 It doesn't seem like it.

00:51:08.740 It just seems like, oh, she's doing her makeup and she's talking.

00:51:11.400 But believe me when I tell you that, like, it's not that simple.

00:51:15.400 There's a lane that you're in.

00:51:17.420 Yeah.

00:51:17.780 So, yeah, I find it very limiting.

00:51:20.580 Yeah.

00:51:20.760 The one thing I do like, and I see this on TikTok, is when people are doing get ready with me's that aren't actually get ready with me's, they're like they're doing their makeup.

00:51:29.560 But what it allows them to do is relax in front of the camera to tell a story.

00:51:35.780 True.

00:51:36.820 Because you're doing the box is I'm putting on my makeup.

00:51:40.820 I don't have to make eye contact with the camera.

00:51:43.060 I don't have to do any of the other like hand motions or like worry about what to do with my face or whatever.

00:51:49.120 I'm just, I'm doing this thing that is acceptable to do on camera.

00:51:52.740 And now I can tell you a story.

00:51:54.920 That is really true.

00:51:55.980 And I think that when people are comfortable and good in that context, it can really work.

00:52:02.280 And maybe the annoying friend who's doing this get ready with me stuff of Rachel is like, she's trying to go for that, you know?

00:52:09.880 And I think anything, any little like off-label use of the technology that we can come up with that makes it easier for us to tell a story is like worthwhile, you know?

00:52:17.840 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:52:18.320 totally uh this reminds me of some questions i've received during rush talk of like how do they know

00:52:25.000 how to put their leg up when they're doing their like little lip sync like you know they do like

00:52:30.780 the cute thing where they like throw up their foot um or like how do they know to do their

00:52:34.820 hands this way or how do they know to say roll tight at the end and these are the sorts of things

00:52:41.280 it's hard to explain like how media absorption works like they never said to themselves and then

00:52:48.160 at the end, I will say roll tide. Right. Right. It's just how you produce it. Like they know going

00:52:55.440 in for sure. Yes. They just absorb it. And that's what like if someone's doing this, I don't think

00:53:02.160 that they are thinking out really like extensively like, oh, this is a way that I can like try to

00:53:07.620 participate in social media. And like at the end, I'm going to do this or like really disciplining

00:53:12.500 themselves. It's more like they're trying to have fun. I think they are. No, I think they absolutely

00:53:17.300 are trying to have fun. They're trying to experience some kind of a connection with the

00:53:21.340 audience and get engagement. And it's just like it's a format that allows for that in the best

00:53:26.680 case scenario. In the best case scenario. Yeah. Yeah.

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00:56:53.740 Okay, let's talk about vacations. This comes from Michaela.

00:56:56.920 you shared a link to a Marie Claire piece recently that lamented on the pressure non-influencers feel

00:57:02.720 to document our joy I have been what I consider a storyteller since I was five years old and have

00:57:08.140 somehow managed to make it a full-time career as a travel writer and editor my job doesn't require

00:57:13.220 me to have a personal following online so anything I share is self-motivated despite everything we

00:57:18.400 read about the evils of social media the conversation about going analog and the increased

00:57:22.820 feelings as I get older that maybe I don't want to be perceived so intensely, I cannot shake my

00:57:28.100 compulsion to share. Over the last decade, I've started and stopped blogs, podcasts, sub stacks,

00:57:34.740 and Instagram as I grapple with both wanting and not wanting to share. As a fellow storyteller,

00:57:40.340 how do you navigate this desire to document your life with the desire to hold it close to your

00:57:44.600 chest? I admire how you're sparing on social media, but is that hard? This is the first time

00:57:50.700 someone has ever called me a storyteller. And that's so interesting to me that I've never

00:57:55.460 thought of myself that way. A lot of us think of ourselves as personal essayists, but I don't even

00:58:01.180 think of myself as that much of a personal essayist. And some of it is really rooted in

00:58:05.640 the academic. But I have always been someone who wanted to share in some way. And you have too.

00:58:15.360 definitely yeah no i can i can relate very much to this to this question asker yes i'm gonna share

00:58:22.540 one way or the other for sure yes i struggle with this a lot like i used to have a lot of fun

00:58:30.080 and i don't have as much fun posting anymore like i've said earlier like i i've really cut down and

00:58:35.380 and it's and it's kind of a bummer for me and i'm i would love to recreate that old feeling

00:58:40.240 because it was a way of expressing myself that was I felt creative like actually um and

00:58:48.400 it's not obvious how to the nice thing about it is the immediate feedback from people like that's

00:58:57.540 big I mean it's great to get people right away it's it's fun it's what makes it fun it's why

00:59:03.260 it's not the same to have a blog or to have a journal it's just not the same yeah um and I

00:59:09.360 think that you shouldn't feel like it's lame to want to do this and i say this at the end of my

00:59:17.480 book like the storyteller's instinct is extremely cool it's not embarrassing it's not cringe it's

00:59:24.360 it's awesome and like the tools are not they're not ennobling but the impulse is very noble so i

00:59:33.240 think like thinking about the medium that you're using as this thing that like you're using it and

00:59:37.500 does it work or doesn't it work and like it has its pros and its cons is one way to kind of like

00:59:43.280 feel a little bit maybe more like agentic or whatever but like I can't say that I've solved

00:59:50.500 this problem because I don't post as much as I used to and I miss it I have found that I really

00:59:57.180 was decentivized from posting anything more personal when it became an opportunity to like

01:00:04.140 like things that I was posting became an opportunity to debate much larger things about like

01:00:10.580 like anything that piece that I was wearing like I was like oh I'm worried they're gonna like

01:00:16.360 see where that's from and think either it's too cheap or it's too expensive right yeah yeah um

01:00:22.780 and sometimes you know some of my friends will be like they will be interested in what I do and do

01:00:29.160 not write about or do and do not share on Instagram. And I have had to explain to them

01:00:35.480 in somewhat cringe ways that like people are very critical. And like that really is

01:00:41.560 discentivizing of telling any sort of story because it's not actually about like the heart

01:00:46.240 of your story. It's about a detail about your life and about how you live your life in whatever

01:00:51.420 moment. And the one solution that I've seen a lot of people using more of, and this is such a shift

01:00:59.160 from like 2014, like spill your guts on the internet for $50, is really making some of the

01:01:06.100 more private stuff less accessible to the entire internet. Yeah. I mean, I think when you have a

01:01:11.780 small, a relatively small audience of people who are your friends, like it's a lot easier to like

01:01:16.140 use these tools creatively because yeah I feel very inhibited about making the wrong impression

01:01:23.280 with people about how or making enemies or just having people think that I'm it's it's funny a

01:01:30.300 lot of it has to do with wealth like it does I find myself like I don't you can't I do not want

01:01:35.040 you thinking that I'm rich okay you're like this is a yurt it doesn't have plumbing oh I hate myself

01:01:41.740 for even bringing that up but people will come and they'll be like wow second home much because

01:01:45.920 For those who don't know, I live in Montreal and I have this piece of land in Vermont that I bought and I, my husband built a yurt on it, but there's no septic. There's an outhouse. So it's like both incredibly beautiful and like a lot, I'll post pictures of it and I'm like, my God, it's so beautiful here. Can you guys even handle it? And I'm also sometimes like compelled to like, and also like I shit in a hole, you know, like it's, it's really like, it's not cute Vermont guys. It's like rough Vermont. Like no one around me likes Bernie Sanders at all.

01:02:13.740 Like, you got to understand. And why am I why am I doing this is like the most obnoxious, the most obnoxious among the most obnoxious instincts that I have is to like, you know, guys, I'm still really good.

01:02:25.740 It is an instinct that is born of posting for people who don't actually know you.

01:02:31.540 Yes. But I don't think I really don't like that instinct. And I think that everyone has it a little bit now.

01:02:38.200 This is one of those things that's trickled down into like the general population. And this kind of this policing of our the impressions around, yeah, our virtue. It's just boring. And I think that. I don't know, I guess some people are demanding it of each other. Yeah. But I would hate to make someone feel that I was demanding it of them.

01:02:59.780 Yes. Okay. Our last question comes from another Rachel. We love it. And it's about not posting.

01:03:08.360 I had to go on leave from my job for cancer treatment in 2024. And it was important to me

01:03:13.700 to share why I had abruptly gone on leave with my colleagues on social. I created an Instagram

01:03:19.140 and LinkedIn post about it. But then as my treatment journey took many turns and things

01:03:23.540 got really scary, I stopped posting about it. I haven't posted about my seemingly unending

01:03:28.600 cancer journey in over a year and don't know if I will. I post joyful moments and pics on Instagram

01:03:34.140 and sometimes post my writing on LinkedIn. It feels like I should be performing illness while

01:03:39.400 I'm on leave, even though I know that's not necessary. Is there a way to free myself of the

01:03:44.180 draw to constantly explain myself and my life online? I work in PR and social media, so it

01:03:49.480 feels extra important to explain personal stuff, though I don't know if I ever want to again.

01:03:54.140 so the excerpt from your book that was published on the cut is about how difficult it is to post

01:04:02.760 about things that are hard like this and it's it's interesting there is this kind of sub

01:04:11.200 category of that which is people who do disclose like like this reader is like you know i had

01:04:19.300 cancer and i told everyone and so now they think of me as someone going through a struggle and

01:04:25.180 this is it's like this kind of personal branding conundrum where you need to maintain consistency

01:04:30.440 and i think the fact that she works in pr like it makes sense because you probably have these

01:04:35.920 thoughts kind of already kind of percolating but right there's this pressure to explain yourself

01:04:43.220 and i think that is something that we can just i mean this is not helpful advice but i'm like

01:04:49.020 you can do whatever you want and you don't have to explain yourself to anybody. And especially

01:04:53.660 when it comes to illness, like the idea that you should have to perform illness, I completely

01:04:59.640 understand where that comes from. It has to do with like fulfilling the expectation of the audience,

01:05:04.780 not confusing them, but also you don't want to like make some weird announcement where you're

01:05:08.840 like, I'm better, but I'm still on leave because of X, Y, Z thing, right? Like, no, it's none of

01:05:14.140 business they can ask you if they want an explanation yeah you don't owe them anything

01:05:19.200 at all but i i really understand that conundrum and it's just the fact that we've taken on personal

01:05:25.480 branding rules in our own kind of storytelling right well and also that like this is like

01:05:32.580 intersecting with our understanding of like how if you're not working like what your life should

01:05:40.360 look like right yeah like right if she's on leave no fun right like if you're only like if you're

01:05:49.020 not working like you should be working as a mom um right you know in this other the mom-fluencing

01:05:54.960 sphere like if you're not working for pay outside of the home like this is this other work that you

01:05:59.360 must show that you are laboring to do this work um yeah i think you're i totally agree with you

01:06:05.220 like that i like i think we just want to tell rachel like this is not weird that you're feeling

01:06:11.100 this way like not at all not at all weird totally get it and the more that you can like say to

01:06:18.260 yourself like this is my business like you are you are not owed that and anything else like you

01:06:24.960 could completely quit the apps if people like were scared that you were dead like maybe they

01:06:29.180 should reach out to you like wouldn't that be cool exactly right instead of just speculating

01:06:34.820 it's been really hard i think as more people in my life have have especially with cancer but also

01:06:40.880 other chronic things like that feeling that this becomes your um your social all of your social

01:06:48.460 media become like a double for the what's the name of the app where people give updates when

01:06:53.060 someone is sick do you know what i'm talking about it's the caring bridge caring bridge yes

01:06:58.800 yeah it's not an app so much but it's like a place where information is released it's like

01:07:04.380 They're like press releases. And so, and I understand why those exist too, because it's

01:07:09.880 really exhausting to narrativize like what is going on at a really hard time in your life

01:07:15.020 over and over again. Yeah. It just, yeah. Strikes me as a difficult intersection.

01:07:21.860 It's like the flip side of everyone kind of performing a little bit, like as though they

01:07:27.220 were a little bit famous, like kind of taking on the tone of an influencer. The flip side of that

01:07:32.160 is that the audience then feels entitled to you

01:07:35.920 as if you were a celebrity.

01:07:37.900 And this is how we get people like DMing you,

01:07:40.880 let's say you're on leave for an illness,

01:07:43.560 but you're doing better

01:07:44.720 and you like go to the beach with your family

01:07:47.160 and there's like a picture of you guys having fun

01:07:49.160 and you're like,

01:07:50.080 ooh, not sure if I should share this,

01:07:51.140 but I'm going to.

01:07:52.380 And then people feeling that they can be like,

01:07:54.940 wow, so I guess you're all better or whatever,

01:07:56.980 like kind of demanding accountability from you.

01:08:00.440 Right.

01:08:00.560 Right. And to be clear, no one's actual friend would ever DM that.

01:08:05.700 Well, you don't think?

01:08:06.980 I don't know. Really?

01:08:08.980 I feel like there's all kinds of friends out there.

01:08:13.440 I do.

01:08:15.900 Like a passive aggressive frenemy that's like, hmm, it must be nice to be on leave.

01:08:21.440 Yeah, like maybe this isn't a friend that you see all the time, but I don't know.

01:08:25.420 Like, I just think that we people demand accountability of each other in this totally inappropriate way, which is part of what makes these apps not fun to use, is that we when we're trying to, like, tell our stories, then we do have to attend to these questions, which are often like really like for one thing, just boring.

01:08:44.920 it's like do you really want me to explain this like you you want and it's sometimes I've had

01:08:50.280 this experience is very uncharitable of me where people have asked me things and I'm like I don't

01:08:54.980 think you really care I think you just want to make me do something like you want to you want

01:09:01.040 to like pull the puppet strings and have me and it's satisfying to like affect and and I just and

01:09:08.340 this could just be being very unkind and like defensive for you know someone in my dms but like

01:09:15.300 i am like i just can't imagine that you really care that you really want me to answer this

01:09:18.760 question you don't even know me like what sort of question have they asked you that made you feel

01:09:22.840 like that you don't have to oh gosh it's no it's been a while like when my kids were younger

01:09:28.420 like there was like a helmet question once oh yeah like you know oh uh you know like helmets

01:09:34.900 are really important like i i would encourage you to always put a helmet on your kid's head

01:09:39.620 because people are looking at you and it's like julian be like you know what like it's actually

01:09:44.220 like it was just to our neighbor's house and like it was like you know like uh i'm not gonna write

01:09:49.340 that answer it's too annoying for both of us but and i think maybe people are well-meaning and

01:09:54.340 they're like this is actually important and helmets are important but i just well and this

01:10:00.460 This is the hard thing, right? Is that like all of us in the calculus of our daily lives, we make decisions like that all the time about like, is it OK for my kid to go 100 feet away without a helmet?

01:10:15.260 Or like, you know what? Sometimes on this island, when we're going like, I don't know, down the road, the kids ride in the back of the pickup truck.

01:10:24.020 Right. And it's so fun.

01:10:26.620 Or in New York, kids ride the subway alone by themselves. Like you make different decisions based on your context and you have people outside of your context forcing their context onto you. And where do you think that impulse comes from?

01:10:43.580 Well, again, I think it's to do with celebrity culture and this thing of like, you're out there, you're public, I'm going to demand something of you because that's part of the transaction.

01:10:51.060 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:10:53.180 But I also think the sort of weaponized who's going to be better at being good thing.

01:11:00.160 Concern trolling.

01:11:01.520 Yeah, I think that's a big thing.

01:11:04.000 And I do think that it's trolling.

01:11:05.880 I think that most people don't care.

01:11:07.540 I just don't think it's coming from a place of real concern.

01:11:09.640 It's almost like gotcha.

01:11:10.280 It's almost like a gotcha, right?

01:11:11.840 Like, oh, you think that you're like, I don't know, a good person by what you're posting on social media?

01:11:17.440 let me point out something that like actually is a flaw here yeah and i think there's a lot of rage

01:11:23.420 there about like i think about this in like snark communities and i actually read about in the book

01:11:28.020 like you know like people who really really really hate like ballerina farm or whatever

01:11:33.000 you know it's just like they're looking for like a way in which she's endangering her kids even i

01:11:38.340 like she doesn't have a like a fence around her trampoline she has like a raw dog trampoline in

01:11:44.640 her yard and like i i saw i was like hannah those kids are gonna all break their arms and legs like

01:11:51.740 i can't believe you don't have and that you're posting it within you're letting the world see

01:11:55.580 this like this is like number one no no and i was like you're getting so many dms that you're

01:12:00.680 ignoring about this which i kind of respect because she's not addressing it and i'm like

01:12:04.480 it's just it's a it's a bloodbath not the children the dms you know well and i think in cases like

01:12:10.880 this this is you know we're getting more into social like into celebrity social media and

01:12:15.280 celebrity critique and celebrity gossip here but these are also about norms that we're trying to

01:12:23.400 solidify right norms that like are coming into shape or so when someone challenges that norm

01:12:29.640 we have to call them out in order to solidify it for ourselves right yeah and i think in the case

01:12:35.200 of hannah nealman it's not crazy to be like why are why is there no fence around your trampoline

01:12:40.860 because she is massively famous and it's about family like it's you're not totally out of right

01:12:46.540 well and and what they're trying to actually say when you say that is like why do you think

01:12:50.780 like everything about your brand is about like how living this way can exceptionalize you

01:12:58.600 right like your kids will never break their bones because right you're protected yeah and so that's

01:13:06.700 actually what that DM is about, but we rarely spend the time to unpack like, what are we actually

01:13:12.720 reacting to here? Right. Yes. But I think this gets to the point of like belonging into snark

01:13:19.260 cultures where so much of it is like, you are frustrated with these dynamics. They're often

01:13:25.140 like larger and like broad social dynamics that you feel kind of boxed in by. And this is like a

01:13:31.540 way of channeling that frustration with a group, with like, with sort of fellow travelers and you

01:13:35.900 all feel this together and it feels good to have like a shared sense of the world yeah and yeah

01:13:42.280 and these are the people that you kind of direct that frustration to and the celebrity or influencer

01:13:47.500 themselves is really just the receptacle for these larger feelings about the world like they're just

01:13:52.520 like a way to 100 all these things and so sometimes sometimes when someone sends me something that is

01:14:00.000 a little unhinged like i'm just like this isn't about me in any way yeah that's very i think that's

01:14:06.700 the best way to think about it it's hard sometimes melody and i have to like send things back and

01:14:12.060 forth to be like this person has other things going on like this is not about whatever we're

01:14:17.720 doing and that's always a good assumption and even i think with close friends sometimes the

01:14:23.220 way that they react to our social media or something like they also have something else

01:14:29.040 going on everyone has private feelings about each other's posts and that's something too that i found

01:14:35.420 like talking to people about their friends their friends and they they pull up their phone and show

01:14:41.660 me like well this is like my friend look what she does like look what is this and i mean it's

01:14:46.600 amazing because you can't talk about it with a friend this is one of the things that we don't

01:14:49.340 talk about with our friends you can't be like how come you know how come you wrote that like weird

01:14:54.860 poem to your husband on your anniversary like but he doesn't even use social media so like who's

01:15:00.460 gonna read it like who is that for like but that's the thing but we do know who it's for

01:15:06.420 it's for us like it's performing it's performing that affection for the husband

01:15:11.600 i have forcing your friend to admit that it's aggressive i actually so this is the same friend

01:15:17.660 who i was talking about at the beginning who's very good at social media but also has like a

01:15:21.660 couple hundred followers and is private um she her husband is also a very like loves to post

01:15:28.920 one of the few men male friends my age who like dads who just loves to post but he's also not as

01:15:35.900 good at it as her like doesn't know how to edit his photos the same way and like we used to i'm

01:15:41.820 i'm close enough with them that like we can actually razz them about like we're like billy

01:15:48.100 your photos aren't as good like you should use elena's photos and now he has asked her to like

01:15:53.420 do the tiny little very subtle tag in the corner of her stories so that he can repost the story

01:15:59.780 to his instagram but then like they both come up like they have different spheres of friendship

01:16:05.540 um but a lot of overlap so anyone who has follows both of them it's like here's one of those and

01:16:11.620 here's the other one right after one doubling up it's so cute but that's the sort of thing

01:16:16.460 If you have intimacy, you can talk about it.

01:16:19.600 But if you don't, then you talk shit about it.

01:16:23.100 Yeah, no, that form of intimacy is really is really cool.

01:16:26.080 It's very, very precious.

01:16:27.540 When you can make fun of people about the stuff they post is like that you've really broken through a lot of barriers.

01:16:33.500 And you're in like a really a secret garden that many of us just dream of entering, you know.

01:16:39.920 I think that's a great place for us to end.

01:16:42.580 Catherine, if people want to find more of you on the Internet, where can they find you?

01:16:45.580 I'm on Instagram, KJZerMo. You can subscribe to my newsletter on the cut. It's called Brooding. And my book is The Story of Your Life, How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything. And please buy it.

01:17:00.420 thanks for listening to the culture study podcast today paid subscribers got a bonus

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Culture Study Podcast - October 07, 2026

Is the Age of Posting Over？

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