Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - Burning Cats

00:00:00.000 Instagram ruined women for a time.

00:00:09.940 Ugh, people did weird things.

00:00:13.400 Once you sign with an agency, you're no longer a human being on the internet.

00:00:16.680 That's the end. You are a company. You're Walmart.

00:00:19.120 So it's every man for himself in the comments.

00:00:22.180 And everything you post is product now.

00:00:24.240 Even if you're posting something personal,

00:00:26.640 everyone reads with the sense that they might be being sold something.

00:00:30.680 In 2011, Natalie Levin of the HeyNatalieJean Instagram account was making more than $70,000 a year as an Instagram influencer.

00:00:39.040 If you looked at her Instagram back then, her life looked pretty goddamn sweet. 0.80

00:00:43.960 I followed her, and I wasn't married, and I didn't have kids, and I still wanted her life.

00:00:48.540 It was a lot of pictures of her adorably squishy son, Huck, perfectly coordinated outfits with Huck,

00:00:54.420 and sweet talk of her marriage to a man she referred to as the Hobes.

00:00:59.320 Natalie went to parties for Tiffany.

00:01:01.480 She got photographed on the red carpet.

00:01:03.700 She even got a book deal for an entire book of advice for moms.

00:01:07.620 By every available metric, Natalie was living the dream.

00:01:13.000 But with that spotlight comes criticism.

00:01:16.720 A lot of hate. 1.00

00:01:18.760 In the mamasphere, that hate comes mostly from other women. 1.00

00:01:22.820 Other women who were intent on ripping Natalie apart. 1.00

00:01:27.300 There were entire comment boards on the internet dedicated to shitting all over Natalie. 0.99

00:01:32.540 Strangers bonded online over mocking her life. 0.89

00:01:35.680 I was inviting a lot of people to have opinions on what I was doing.

00:01:39.860 And it kind of felt like I had just like peeled off my skin and I didn't exist anywhere because I was everywhere.

00:01:49.720 Natalie's anxiety got crippling.

00:01:52.380 She had to go to therapy. She went on antidepressants.

00:01:55.340 all because of this hate being thrown at her on the internet.

00:01:59.820 Her relationships began to crumble.

00:02:02.420 Her marriage began to fall apart.

00:02:05.680 The things people said about Natalie Online would have broken anyone.

00:02:10.300 They would have broken me.

00:02:17.380 I'm Jo Piazza, and you, me, and everybody you know,

00:02:22.620 we are all under the influence.

00:02:25.340 Chapter 7. Burning Cats.

00:02:43.840 Last week, I took a break from the Instagram, and a lot of you have asked me how it felt.

00:02:48.920 It felt great. I felt like there was more air in the room to breathe.

00:02:54.580 Something that I didn't mention in last week's intermission is that as I've been posting influencer content to my feed, I've also been getting a lot more criticism in my feed.

00:03:06.860 Now, it's not like I'm new to online criticism.

00:03:10.200 When I was writing for the New York Daily News and talking about celebrities all the time on TV for like CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, people would actually email me and say, 0.99

00:03:20.280 I hate seeing your fucking nose on TV and it looks like it's been bashed in with a baseball bat. 0.98

00:03:26.460 Yeah, it's a real thing people said to me. 1.00

00:03:28.560 And those comments made me get a nose job.

00:03:31.500 I've never admitted that to anyone.

00:03:34.480 I'm also not new to this because it used to be what I did for work.

00:03:40.360 As a tabloid reporter and editor, I was kind of a professional celebrity mocker.

00:03:45.620 And I was very, very good at it.

00:03:47.540 the prologue of my first book celebrity inc actually made fun of britney spears at her own

00:03:53.460 birthday party yeah that it doesn't age well does it i wish i could say that i've put it all behind

00:04:01.740 me that i don't engage in bashing any women anymore online or off but as a recent conversation

00:04:09.540 with clunas reminded me i can still get wrapped up in it

00:04:13.520 where did Hilaria Baldwin get that baby Linus and I were having this conversation

00:04:22.860 on the day that Hilaria Baldwin wife of actor and rage machine Alec Baldwin

00:04:27.760 dropped the news that she had a new baby a new baby just six months after she had birthed a

00:04:34.000 completely different child what I don't understand is on the one hand like do they owe an explanation

00:04:40.980 on the other hand, I'm like, if your whole life is I'm posting photos of my children,

00:04:44.940 my guess is they had a surrogate as a backup. But why not just say that?

00:04:50.320 Why not just say that? And if you are a normal human being, you don't owe anyone any explanation.

00:04:56.080 But if you're a person who builds your life on the internet, and your brand is being a mom,

00:05:01.640 you don't just reveal baby and then say, not telling you where this baby came from. 0.96

00:05:09.360 Well, all I can think is that this woman has taken birthing to like a performance art level.

00:05:16.940 I'm kind of getting a strange joy from talking about this Hilaria Baldwin thing.

00:05:22.780 And that is one of the dark sides of Instagram, the phenomenon of women taking down other women and talking about other women, especially women that put themselves in the public eye.

00:05:35.200 I mean, the Internet is a terrible place to be a woman. 0.98

00:05:37.940 I mean, we both know that, but every woman knows that. 0.96

00:05:41.460 Every woman who's ever been in any spotlight, I think, knows that it's a terrible place to be. 0.83

00:05:47.520 Just ask Liz Taylor or Britney Spears. 1.00

00:05:50.460 Women taking down other women feels like it dates back to the beginning of time. 0.99

00:05:56.440 I imagine one of Eve's neighbors, once they left the Garden of Eden, was probably trying to take her down at some point. 0.71

00:06:04.460 she's like she definitely took more than one bite of that apple right i do think that the language

00:06:11.740 we have to discuss women is rooted in misogyny and that we have all internalized in ways that

00:06:20.920 i think we are unaware of much of the time when we talk about hate following or hate watching

00:06:26.800 but particularly hate following on instagram like have you ever met a man that hate follows

00:06:30.560 or even hate watches anything yeah it doesn't really exist for them i don't think i asked nick

00:06:37.480 if he hate follows anyone he looked at me like if i looked at him and just said hamster hamster

00:06:41.880 hamster he couldn't comprehend it at all 0.93

00:06:46.280 now it is easy for two women bitching about how hard it is to be a woman

00:06:53.640 to speculate about how things are just different for men. But it's true. Totally rooted in reality. 1.00

00:07:01.900 There is a reason that Justin Timberlake wasn't the one getting life-altering hate in the tabloids

00:07:06.840 in the early aughts. We have this researcher on our show, Jocelyn Sears. She is a genius.

00:07:13.140 And I sent her off to see what she could find on the subject of women hating on other women.

00:07:18.500 And she found a lot of stuff. Hate following and shitting on your fellow females is something that 1.00

00:07:23.240 women have been socialized to do. There's so much to say, and my narration does not do it justice. 0.99

00:07:29.520 So we're bringing Jocelyn on to talk about it. You've done so much research for all of these

00:07:34.660 episodes that I can't believe this is the first time that we're having you on. Yeah, I guess that's

00:07:38.820 sort of funny. I'm used to being behind the scenes. You dug up this great quote from the German

00:07:44.020 philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. What did he say about women hating on other women? He said that

00:07:50.800 the feeling between male strangers or acquaintances was quote mere indifference whereas for women it

00:07:57.420 was quote actual enmity which is interesting because most of the influencers like most of

00:08:02.500 the people who look at influencers who criticize influencers they are strangers they don't know

00:08:06.960 them in real life and there is actual enmity against them is there any kind of historical

00:08:13.280 or scientific basis for women being nasty to other women. 0.78

00:08:19.480 Some psychologists have suggested that we are socialized to behave this way when we 1.00

00:08:25.600 are young, and also that this is a way that girls take out their frustration against the 0.97

00:08:32.000 world on each other. 0.54

00:08:33.420 So if boys are being mean to them, or they're feeling bad about themselves because of the

00:08:39.120 way they see girls and women portrayed in the media, that they realize that other girls are

00:08:43.840 a safer outlet for that, and that they're less likely to face repercussions if they're cruel

00:08:49.120 to other girls. And that this is something that we become accustomed to as we grow up

00:08:54.160 into women. And there's places on the internet where women can do this. There's entire 1.00

00:09:02.120 internet communities for what is called hate blogging.

00:09:06.180 Yeah, so this is fascinating. And I think that the Instagram influencers who are the subject of these hate blogs, also, in many ways, are not themselves the real source of the anger. You're not really angry at these individual women, you're angry at sort of the culture that elevates this kind of perfection. But it's difficult to sort of yell at the Instagram industrial complex, if you will.

00:09:33.900 yeah of course it's not like we can show up at like the Instagram founder's house 0.98

00:09:38.420 and be like you make me feel like shit Kevin Systrom but we can tell women like Courtney 0.99

00:09:47.700 Adamo or Natalie Levin that we think they're fake ass losers and maybe feel a little bit better 1.00

00:09:55.460 about our own messy gross pee and shit stained lives and we're not making ourselves vulnerable 1.00

00:10:02.960 doing that in the same way we would be if we were like wow looking at you know your like perfect 0.99

00:10:10.980 clean angel children makes me feel terrible about my messy jam colored sticky children

00:10:17.340 but it is much easier to make it seem like it is about something that the other person

00:10:24.440 is doing wrong some way that they're lacking rather than some way that we feel like we are lacking

00:10:29.520 okay enough with the theories we know this is real we know that it is a thing that academics

00:10:39.320 and philosophers and scientists and all of these really smart people have studied women on women

00:10:46.080 hate is a thing but it is a terrible dark thing to have in the world and when we get back from

00:10:52.920 the break we are going to talk about some of the actual harm that is caused from girl on girl hate

00:10:57.520 on the internet. Alright, so as I mentioned earlier, hate does not only exist in Instagram

00:11:14.340 comments. Some people's urge to rage against internet celebrities is so strong that they

00:11:20.240 seek out entire forums for it. I've been looking at a lot of them. They're addicting. They're hard

00:11:25.880 to look away from, like real hard to look away from. Remember how I used to just scroll and

00:11:29.800 scroll Instagram? Now I just scroll and scroll hate forums. I do. They're called hate forums

00:11:35.140 or snark boards. And I've been looking at them to see how it's affected some of the influencers

00:11:39.360 I've talked to, but also because I can't look away from them. I have to know what these women

00:11:43.320 are saying. It's not pretty. Don't start. I called Glynis to talk about it and also to have someone

00:11:49.880 tell me to just stop. So do you remember back in the beginning, the beginning, the very first

00:11:57.540 episode, it feels like forever ago, when Liz Lenz, she said something super brilliant.

00:12:05.880 Do whatever you want. Like you're fucked anyway. So decide which way you want to get fucked. 0.99

00:12:11.120 Women, you're fucked either way. And I keep thinking about that. And I keep thinking 1.00

00:12:15.180 about the abuse that we heap on other women on the internet. And it's like,

00:12:19.020 you're really successful. You're making a lot of money as a mom influencer. You're a terrible mom.

00:12:23.040 You're fucking up your kids. Or look, you have this beautiful life on Instagram. It's all fake. 1.00

00:12:28.120 You're not authentic. Or, oh, congratulations, you got another baby. Where'd you get that fucking

00:12:32.900 baby? Where'd you get that baby? Where'd you get that baby? Have you ever been on the website 1.00

00:12:40.840 can get off my internet. Gomi. The abbreviation is Gomi. Well, for the past decade. 0.92

00:12:49.200 I was going to say, it sounds very much like an internet website that existed in the early

00:12:55.360 aughts. Well, it was created in 2008. So more than a decade ago. And that is where a lot of

00:13:01.960 this hatred and jealousy that gets aimed at influencers, but also mom bloggers and mom 0.99

00:13:07.500 influencers. It's like old Gawker meets a middle school slam book. Did you have slam books in

00:13:14.260 Canada? I don't think so. I'm also older than you, but we had bathroom stalls. Life was better in

00:13:22.160 Canada. Anyways, if you go on Gomi, get off my internets, you can search back 10 years about

00:13:27.640 all of the trash that got talked about these women. A thread about hating Natalie Levin got 0.99

00:13:34.000 so much traffic that it nearly broke the internet. And it was just people ripping her to fucking 0.99

00:13:40.700 shreds. Like suddenly she was the Britney Spears of mom influencers and everyone loved to weigh in 0.99

00:13:46.640 on what Natalie was doing wrong. And she said that those comments are what nearly broke her.

00:13:54.720 Of course, how do you shoulder that?

00:13:56.080 I don't know.

00:13:58.020 I asked Natalie just that. Her answer should have been obvious. It was that that kind of

00:14:03.440 criticism just really weighs on a person. You take it in and it lodges itself in your body,

00:14:10.800 in your bones. So it started to feel like I was in a hamster wheel, to be honest. It was just,

00:14:18.180 you know, Sisyphus pushing that rock up the hill and then letting it crush you and tell you that 0.99

00:14:22.680 you're ugly and a bad writer and you've bad style. You're copying another blogger. Someone else did 0.99

00:14:29.640 it first and better. It got worse and worse. She annoys the fuck out of me, but I do feel

00:14:38.260 bad when I see her trying to conceive posts. Does anyone else find these fashion posts 1.00

00:14:43.480 absolutely terrible? They're making me cringe every time I see them. I get annoyed by her

00:14:48.880 melodramatic posts about infertility. Today's post was just over the top. I know it sucks,

00:14:53.680 but I can't help but feel like she's wallowing in self-pity. Definitely annoys me too. I don't 0.97

00:14:58.400 know what it is probably your face this is worse than that time in middle school where all of the

00:15:07.780 girls called me stuffy mcstuffins because i stuffed my bra i did stuff my bra but they didn't have to

00:15:13.440 call me that the internet is essentially middle school it is middle school and everyone is judging 1.00

00:15:19.660 you your real friends in real life are doing it and then these other women who are complete 1.00

00:15:24.380 strangers are doing it. Gabby Blair of Design Mom remembers really well watching the internet

00:15:31.180 comment sections that tried to take Natalie Levin down. What she had to endure as far as

00:15:36.960 women hating her, like when we talk about like women hating other women,

00:15:41.900 and not just her, there was other people too, but it was horrific. It was so gross. And the sites 0.96

00:15:48.000 that tried to take her down and really ultimately did are still around trying to take other people

00:15:53.880 down. The same exact thing happened to Heather Armstrong. Deuce. You know, one of the very first

00:16:00.880 and most successful of the early mom bloggers. Heather had created a miniature media empire 1.00

00:16:06.960 based off of her reverent mom blogging. But around 2012, things took a nasty turn.

00:16:13.980 When she split from her husband, her fans went nuts. Often in hate-filled diatribes against her

00:16:20.200 in the comments on the website, get off my internets. 1.00

00:16:24.300 Heather needs to get the fuck over her childhood trauma. 1.00

00:16:27.280 Like, dude, you're 43 and you've spent most of your life in therapy? 1.00

00:16:31.320 You have a fucking sweet life. 0.99

00:16:34.600 No one should ever mock anyone for being depressed or going to therapy. 1.00

00:16:38.960 Like, fuck those people. 1.00

00:16:41.420 By 2017, Heather Armstrong was willing to try anything to feel better. 1.00

00:16:46.040 She actually went into a clinical trial where she was put into a chemically induced coma for 15 minutes at a time for 10 sessions so the doctors could approximate brain death to see if it would help cure her depression.

00:17:02.580 In an interview with Vox, Heather Armstrong said she felt like her life was just not meant to be lived.

00:17:08.900 And even though she'd lived with depression her entire life,

00:17:11.480 she attributed the worst parts of it to living her life so publicly

00:17:15.100 and dealing with all of this rage and hate from other women online.

00:17:19.920 She said, quote, 0.87

00:17:21.880 The hate was very, very scary and very, very hard to live through.

00:17:28.180 It gets inside your head and eats away at your brain.

00:17:31.980 It becomes untenable.

00:17:35.640 This happened to Natalie Lovin, too.

00:17:38.380 The comments on her posts and on the website, get off my internets,

00:17:42.360 GOMI, that's the abbreviation for it.

00:17:44.560 Those comments got so bad that Natalie Levin was withering away. 0.81

00:17:49.740 Quite literally.

00:17:51.300 I got really skinny and I couldn't eat.

00:17:54.440 It was just really, really terrible.

00:17:55.740 I got down to like 85 pounds, fully clothed, and was just a nervous wreck.

00:18:02.320 I no longer felt like I was my own person with skin boundaries.

00:18:08.380 You feeling all the feelings right now? Because I'm feeling all the feelings right now. I'm feeling sad for Natalie and disgusted at the people who shoved her into this spiral of depression. But where should we be directing that hate? Who is the person that drove Heather Armstrong to agree to go brain dead?

00:18:29.460 Should we really just blame evolutionary biology? Evolution that has created this woman-on-woman hate? Or is there a person we could point to? A place we could point to? If you were to personify that hate, what do you imagine?

00:18:51.200 Oh, hey. Can you hear me? Yeah, can you hear me?

00:18:56.440 That voice is Alice Wright, the creator of Gomi. Alice started the website Get Off My Internets in

00:19:03.980 2007. I was snark commenting and writing snark pieces for a website about Julia Allison. I think

00:19:14.100 it was Reblogging Donk or something. For those of you who were not in New York in 2007, Julia Allison

00:19:21.040 was this kind of faux socialite blogger. While Alice was writing snarky pieces,

00:19:26.360 she suddenly realized that there might be a bigger market for writing snarky pieces about 1.00

00:19:30.040 other women on the internet. It's really that simple. I wish there was some catalyst or

00:19:36.100 amazing idea I had to be internet famous and fabulously wealthy for talking crap about people. 0.75

00:19:45.220 But no, that was that was it. And I somehow sort of shifted into talking about fashion bloggers, which then, of course, turned into mommy bloggers.

00:19:56.580 And now they're all just lifestyle bloggers. Thank God you cannot see me doing air quotes.

00:20:02.780 Please just pretend I didn't do that. You know, just adding them opened up a whole new world of snark for me.

00:20:10.440 Because obviously, if there's one thing that people not raising children love to do, it's talking about how people with children are doing it wrong. And you know that.

00:20:21.620 From your perspective, why do you think people love to post nasty, bitchy things about these women? And did it ever affect you? How did you feel as the creator of this platform that did shit on other women like this?

00:20:38.060 So for me, it wasn't about, I hate women. It was really just more, that's what's available to 0.99

00:20:45.200 discuss. You know what I mean? But there were mom influencers who came out and said that the

00:20:51.460 comments that they saw about themselves on Gomi practically gave them a nervous breakdown. Natalie

00:20:55.900 Lovett is one of them. Gomi fucking hated Natalie Lovett. Did you read that article? 0.99

00:21:00.100 the one it put me on antidepressants yeah yeah i saw that i did see that

00:21:08.200 yeah it's going to sound a bit dismissive because it is but my feeling was why the hell are you

00:21:18.940 reading it why are you reading it then don't come read stuff about yourself that you know is going

00:21:25.920 to negatively impact your mental or emotional state. I don't read crap about me. Good Lord, 0.98

00:21:32.540 I'd never leave the house. You know, have you ever read crap about you? Is there crap about 0.99

00:21:38.240 you on the internet? Oh, yeah, there's plenty. Wait, well, can I Google you right now? Can I 0.99

00:21:43.200 see what crap is out there about you on the internet? Oh, my God, I so don't want to get 0.99

00:21:47.120 into that. I mean, you can do that if you want. But don't tell me about it. I don't. I don't want

00:21:51.340 to know. You can do whatever you want, but I don't want to hear it. All right. Yeah. That is,

00:21:59.120 look, I don't read my reviews. I don't read my comments anymore. And yeah, it may be dismissive,

00:22:05.460 but it also goes to what I tell people when they're like, the Instagram makes me feel bad.

00:22:10.680 Then I say, don't go on Instagram anymore. Exactly. Exactly. Don't follow people that

00:22:15.740 make you feel bad about yourself. It's pretty simple. Do you think that the women, and it is

00:22:22.680 mostly women, posting on Gomi, find a sense of community in being able to collectively snark 0.98

00:22:29.740 and bitch? I do. And I think there's a lot to be said for having them do it on Gomi, as opposed to 1.00

00:22:41.200 going into someone's direct messages or in their comment sections and doing it and I think because 0.95

00:22:48.500 you know women are supposed to be ladylike and you can feel better expressing negative opinions 0.82

00:22:56.920 and negative emotions whatever but if you can go somewhere and express all that negativity and sort

00:23:05.060 get it out, I do think in some cases it can make you feel better. And having other people sort of

00:23:12.760 validate that those feelings are okay, or that opinion is okay to have, and not run you out of

00:23:18.660 town, or attack you for it. I think that can be a very good feeling. I do think that sometimes

00:23:28.240 people that are commenting forget that there's a real human being with real feelings behind that

00:23:33.580 influencer. And I'm saying this as someone who has written a lot of shit about people over the 0.98

00:23:38.040 years. I think it's very easy to think that these people don't have emotions and feelings. 0.98

00:23:45.060 I agree. But on the other hand, I feel like when you turn your life into a brand,

00:23:52.680 you turn yourself into a product. And if you're going to go that way, you really do need to figure

00:24:00.780 out a way to be okay with people saying terrible, terrible things about you, because they will.

00:24:08.800 If I ended up being big on Gomi or was an actual mom influencer, there's probably a lot of people

00:24:13.060 out there that'd be like, she sucked or tell some terrible story about like my blacked out 1.00

00:24:18.180 drunk ass from college. I was such a bitch when I was 15. I was a bitch when I was 25 too. I was 1.00

00:24:26.000 not a bitch when i was 35 but 15 to 25 i'm still a bitch i don't think i'm a bitch anymore i don't 0.99

00:24:34.260 no i'm i am i'm still a bitch and it's fine it's good to know that about yourself though 0.99

00:24:40.680 i still don't know what to think after my conversation with atlas 0.95

00:24:48.360 I was playing devil's advocate with her, but I do see my old tabloid self in her. 0.96

00:24:56.560 The bitchiness, the love of gossip, the schadenfreude when you kind of take down someone that you are jealous of.

00:25:04.800 Her comment about how people who turn themselves into brands deserve all the criticism. 0.89

00:25:09.620 That's pretty much how I justified taking down Hilaria Baldwin in a story that I wrote for the New York Post.

00:25:17.040 When I showed Glynis this interview, she fell more squarely on the side of seeing Alice as a villain in this story. 0.82

00:25:26.020 I don't think I'm a bitch is an excuse for this, to be honest with you. 0.50

00:25:33.580 I feel like her rationalization that by putting yourself out there, you can expect criticism, which is true to a degree, but there's a difference between criticism and hate. 0.84

00:25:44.340 like there's one thing about critically responding to a television show and hate watching and it

00:25:50.020 feels like she's hate watching all of these women and then saying but it's fine just don't pay

00:25:57.180 attention as if that's like a reasonable thing to expect from people the end result is always

00:26:05.520 seems to be to silence women how dare you live out loud

00:26:14.340 The more I think about this, the more it seems like a helpless cycle of women going around and around and feeling the same insecurities that turn into the same rage that they then shove in the face of other women who are also insecure and don't deserve any of it.

00:26:31.820 I have a daughter. 0.97

00:26:33.360 What is your name?

00:26:34.560 B.

00:26:35.440 What?

00:26:36.080 B. 1.00

00:26:37.520 I don't want this cycle to continue for her.

00:26:40.240 I want all of us to just be better.

00:26:46.560 After the break, we are going to find a way to bust out of this cycle. 0.99

00:26:50.580 This cycle of snark and hate following and just shit. 1.00

00:26:56.340 We're just, we're going to get ourselves unstuck from all of this shit. 1.00

00:27:10.240 Okay. We're going to do a little poll here. No one can see you right now. So this is totally 0.99

00:27:19.300 anonymous. How many of you have read through hateful gossip or comments about other women

00:27:25.560 online? Influencers, reality show contestants, celebrities, specifically Angelina Jolie. 0.99

00:27:32.920 All right. I feel like a lot of hands might be waving in the air. Hi guys. Hi. Waving to you.

00:27:38.200 we need to find a way out a way out of this vicious hateful cycle of taking women down

00:27:44.080 online and then reading all of these hate-filled comments as entertainment journalist katie 0.98

00:27:48.860 has done exactly that she was addicted to reading nasty online gossip about other women

00:27:55.340 she wrote a piece about it for the guardian i wanted to write about what compelled me to look

00:28:03.840 at it, especially because I started to realize it wasn't feeling good. I tend to think of my media

00:28:09.420 diet, my entertainment diet, like a diet. And if you're comparing it to a diet, I was just chugging

00:28:16.120 Mountain Dew and then wondering why I had a stomach ache. To search within herself and figure

00:28:22.260 out why the hell she was reading this shit, Katie looked to the past and she came up with something 0.99

00:28:27.760 that was pretty unexpected. What I loved that you brought up in your Guardian piece was 0.99

00:28:35.140 relating this to the 18th century activity. And I'm going to mangle this because I,

00:28:41.500 is this French? Brûler les chats. Yeah. And that is cat burning. How is

00:28:48.840 like women on women snark on the internet related to 18th century cat burning?

00:28:53.960 Whenever I want to understand something I'm doing, I tend to turn to history to go, okay, is this new? And as I was looking this up, I found historical examples of people publicly partaking in Schadenfreude.

00:29:09.320 And there's tons of it throughout history from, you know, public executions to putting people in stocks to a bunch of people getting together in France and taking cats and throwing them in a fire, which is obviously, you know, to modern people, like just terrifying, disgusting, all those things.

00:29:30.840 But this was just a form of entertainment.

00:29:36.100 Burning cats for camaraderie.

00:29:39.320 Now, that comparison could make insulting Natalie Levin's outfit or her face feel like a pretty, tame offense. 1.00

00:29:46.320 But I think burning cats is a perfect metaphor for what we do to women on the internet. 1.00

00:29:51.620 We burn these women just to feel something. 1.00

00:29:55.400 It's dehumanizing. 0.82

00:29:57.620 Sometimes when you see somebody presenting themselves as so perfect all the time, there's a desire to be like, well, where's the humanity?

00:30:05.400 Where can I relate?

00:30:06.700 I think there's jealousy and insecurity too, but I also think that there's nothing wrong with wanting to connect and relate.

00:30:14.500 I think that turns dark when you need to see them suffer.

00:30:20.720 You know, I think there's good schadenfreude, there's bad schadenfreude, and then there's sadism. 0.88

00:30:28.980 Eventually, Katie wanted out of the cat burning.

00:30:31.380 She realized that reading all of that hate was starting to change her.

00:30:35.760 And nut.

00:30:36.700 for the better. So if you read things over and over that are talking about someone's body and

00:30:44.400 how disgusting it is or picking them apart, it starts to rewire your brain and that starts

00:30:50.780 coming out in you. I was still there participating by being a person who lurks online reading this

00:30:58.020 stuff. And it was starting to echo in my head in a way that made me feel like not the type of person

00:31:07.700 I want to be, but the kind of person that maybe I am. Maybe I am a person who enjoys

00:31:14.020 some schadenfreude, but I want to be kinder than that. And so for my own sake of trying to be

00:31:21.680 kinder, I decided I needed to really take a break from looking at any negative content like that.

00:31:28.020 And so Katie made the conscious decision to just stop. 0.71

00:31:33.460 The thing that helped her do that was changing how she interacted with the apps on her phone.

00:31:38.600 When you're on her phone, you have these things, it almost feels like muscle memory.

00:31:42.820 I put everything that I didn't really want to find myself just clicking on again and again in a little folder on my phone.

00:31:48.440 And then I have another folder that says nice things. 0.83

00:31:52.000 And this sounds so silly.

00:31:54.260 I mean, it does.

00:31:54.780 it sounds really silly, but on the home screen, I have a folder that says nice things and I'm

00:31:58.820 checking it out right now. And in my nice things folder, I have my mind body app from when I used

00:32:05.340 to go to yoga classes. I have the New York Times cooking app. That's a really nice, nice thing that

00:32:11.080 you can just go waste time on and look at recipes. I have a meditation app. I have a bird ID app from

00:32:18.060 Cornell. These are the apps that when I go on them, I learn something instead of picking up

00:32:24.020 my phone and looking at like gossip or Twitter or something that made me feel bad, I would pick up

00:32:27.960 my phone and actively think, okay, you got to go to that nice things folder. You're going to spend

00:32:33.820 time in there. This is so smart. I'm going to do this. When we get off the phone, can you send me

00:32:39.740 that bird app? Because looking at birds just seems like a really good use of my time. I'm trying to

00:32:45.260 develop certain mom skills. Like I want to know my constellations so that when my daughter asks me

00:32:50.180 about these things. I'm the one who knows, you know, not my husband, not someone else, but like

00:32:53.400 mom is the person who knows the stars and what sounds birds make and can tell you about poisonous

00:32:58.580 plants. I took Katie's advice and I did it. I made a nice things folder and it is reprogramming

00:33:16.300 my brain a little bit. I can also hoot like an owl. Hoot! Hoot! Because if I learned anything

00:33:23.680 from taking my intermission, it's that all of the time we spend on our phones, whether we're

00:33:28.540 influencing or watching influencers, all of that is messing up our brain. It's fucking with us. 0.96

00:33:34.900 It's fucking with our neurons. And I am not a scientist, so I don't know how exactly that works, 0.99

00:33:39.380 but it is. 0.75

00:33:42.520 And as a woman who puts herself out there on the internet,

00:33:45.740 as a cat who's gotten burned in the fire,

00:33:48.900 I do want this stuff to be separate from the things that I do for joy.

00:33:53.460 Natalie Levin felt the same way.

00:33:55.800 Because while all those Gomi comments were breaking her down,

00:33:59.420 her marriage was also on the verge of collapse.

00:34:02.440 So we had gotten to the point in our marriage where it was less good than bad.

00:34:08.220 It was like a 75% miserable, right?

00:34:11.860 And also our relationship had changed where he was good at taking pictures of me and he

00:34:16.340 took beautiful pictures, but that was really what it was.

00:34:19.060 It was all transactional.

00:34:20.440 Marriage totally fell apart.

00:34:21.800 And at this point, Huck was like six years old.

00:34:24.160 He was getting a little bit to the point where I didn't want to write anything about him

00:34:28.260 and I was feeling ornery.

00:34:29.180 I didn't want anybody to know anything anymore.

00:34:31.180 I wanted privacy so bad.

00:34:32.940 I wanted privacy from my readers.

00:34:34.920 I wanted privacy from the internet and I wanted privacy from my marriage.

00:34:37.740 and I just needed a minute with myself. 0.99

00:34:43.120 Natalie started to fantasize about going dark.

00:34:46.840 I thought, wouldn't it just be fun one day

00:34:48.540 if people got on the internet

00:34:49.800 and I just wasn't there anymore?

00:34:50.880 They'd go to my blog and it didn't exist.

00:34:53.580 Where's Hey Natalie Jean, where did you go?

00:34:55.320 I wanted to do that for a long time.

00:34:59.860 And then I did.

00:35:01.140 And it was great.

00:35:02.580 I just did it one day and it felt amazing.

00:35:06.280 And shutting down her Instagram

00:35:07.620 gave Natalie her life back.

00:35:10.740 I took ownership of myself and my story again.

00:35:13.240 It was mine.

00:35:14.040 It wasn't anyone else's anymore.

00:35:15.140 It was a really, really neat moment.

00:35:17.980 But shutting down, turning it all off,

00:35:21.240 turning off her job

00:35:22.620 meant that Natalie had to build

00:35:24.600 a completely new life for herself.

00:35:27.320 A completely new life that was separate

00:35:29.160 from who she'd been on Instagram.

00:35:31.880 Then immediately after I left,

00:35:33.060 I got divorced and suddenly needed to have that income.

00:35:36.140 So that was bad timing.

00:35:37.620 Well, the only job I could get right off the bat after that was showing apartments for a real estate company. And then I also had this alter ego who has been to parties with celebrities and Hillary Clinton follows me on Instagram. It was very, very strange to be those two people at once. I knew I needed to find a career for myself.

00:35:59.040 It was like the whole world was my oyster, but also none of it wanted me because I would apply to all these jobs and my resume was bizarre.

00:36:07.380 I always had that. Do I go back to blogging? When do I have to go back to blogging? How long can I put off going back to blogging?

00:36:14.140 But then this job came up with Nike, a digital design job that entailed a lot of social media.

00:36:20.480 And weirdly, being an influencer prepared Natalie for some of the work that she would do for a sneaker company.

00:36:26.680 I'm just thrilled. I'm pleased as punch.

00:36:29.160 I really love my job and I love working for Nike.

00:36:31.840 It's the strangest turn of events.

00:36:34.100 I never would have seen this coming.

00:36:36.140 Now I'm doing it for something that I actually, I'm happy to promote.

00:36:40.980 I'm happy to work for Nike. I think that they're doing fine.

00:36:43.440 It's cool. I'm so glad I'm not doing it for myself about me anymore.

00:36:48.160 And so there's life at the other end of the influencer tunnel.

00:36:51.000 There is. There is.

00:36:56.040 What's my light at the end of the tunnel?

00:37:04.520 I still don't know the answer to that.

00:37:06.860 I think about Natalie a lot.

00:37:09.140 And through these interviews that I've done with her, we've become like email friends.

00:37:14.140 I like her so much.

00:37:15.260 But I thought a lot about how being an influencer wore Natalie down and how shutting her account down was the only way that she came back to herself.

00:37:24.260 And that happened to me last week when I shut it all down.

00:37:26.840 I felt like I was living my real life again,

00:37:28.820 as opposed to an alternate Instagram life like an episode of Black Mirror.

00:37:33.000 But like Natalie, I have gained a lot of new skills.

00:37:35.760 And I think that there's probably going to be some way to use them.

00:37:39.940 Just maybe not as a mom influencer.

00:37:47.200 Before we get to my light at the end of the tunnel,

00:37:49.600 because I can see it like a little pinprick back there. 0.99

00:37:53.520 Shit's actually going to get darker. 0.98

00:37:55.740 This whole episode was originally called The Dark Side. 0.98

00:37:59.620 And it was about two hours long.

00:38:01.580 So we split it into two episodes.

00:38:03.180 This was the first half.

00:38:04.560 You didn't think that was it, did you?

00:38:06.760 Next week is the second half of The Dark Side.

00:38:11.480 Next week, we're going to unpack the systemic racism in the influencer world

00:38:15.660 and the infiltration of conspiracy theories and QAnon in mom influencer accounts.

00:38:23.520 I'm going to have to go really, really far into my nice things folder after next week.

00:38:46.260 Under the Influence is reported and hosted by me, Joe Piazza.

00:38:51.180 Our story editor is Glynis McNichol.

00:38:53.520 Emily Marinoff is our producer.

00:38:55.480 Sound design by Emily Marinoff and Jackie Huntington.

00:38:59.080 Our theme and additional music was composed by Jessica Kreinchich.

00:39:02.640 Mixing done by Jackie Huntington.

00:39:04.860 Additional research conducted by Jocelyn Sears.

00:39:07.860 Julian Weller is our consulting producer,

00:39:09.920 and Mangesh Hittikador is our executive producer.

00:39:12.480 Special thanks to Kelsey Parsons, Bailey Herday,

00:39:16.780 Lindsay Hoffman, and Lauren Vogelbaum

00:39:18.920 for voicing our chorus of internet haters.

00:39:21.640 another big special thanks to buffy mcguire and lady falcon coffee this is my favorite coffee

00:39:29.760 brand and i'm not being influenced i'm not being paid to say this buffy is an incredible female

00:39:34.700 entrepreneur and she gave us a bunch of coffee to give away to fans of this show so big thanks

00:39:39.380 to lady falcon the only coffee that i drink and put on instagram i have an update from alec baldwin

00:39:50.380 oh alec baldwin has responded to requests to find out about the provenance of the baby 0.99

00:39:59.660 and his response is shut the fuck up 0.98

00:40:03.840 of course hilaria couldn't have that response 1.00

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - March 25, 2021

Burning Cats

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