00:00:00.000Hey, y'all, Joe here, and you are listening to Under the Influence.
00:00:10.360Today we're talking about politics. If that is something you do not feel like listening to,
00:00:14.360we have plenty of other episodes for you to listen to. Or go listen to Amy Poehler's podcast.
00:00:19.340It is a GD delight, okay? It truly is. It truly is. And I get it, okay? So many of my friends1.00
00:00:27.400are like, I just, just can't with the politics right now because it is truly exhausting. I
00:00:36.340personally have curated my own social media feeds so that I do not follow news organizations
00:00:43.900on my social media anymore because I'm just going there for videos of otters holding hands0.57
00:00:50.280and hot gay Norwegians dancing around fjords and steak salad bowls, really. Like, I just want0.99
00:00:58.840recipes, hot gay men, and cute otters. That's it. That's it. And I want to go to my news. Like,1.00
00:01:06.880I want to read news when I want it instead of having it pushed in my face. That is just me.
00:01:13.620That's where I'm at right now. And today's episode has to do with the social media of it all.
00:01:20.520We're talking about something that Emily Emek and I have been screaming about from the rooftops
00:01:25.080since the day that we met and something that is more true than ever, which is so, so annoying.
00:01:30.800It is the fact that the right understands the influencer economy and the attention economy
00:01:35.760in a way that the left just doesn't, in a way that the left is ignoring.
00:01:40.080and if things keep going the way they're going, there's just no way that we can possibly fight
00:01:47.360back against them. And it isn't because conservatives got lucky with the algorithm.
00:01:52.700It's because they built their machine from the ground up with the algorithm in mind.
00:01:59.600While Democrats have been dabbling in influencer marketing during election cycles,
00:02:03.820the right has been spending decades building an entire ecosystem.
00:02:10.080They've been creating podcasts, wellness influencers, mommy bloggers, pop culture accounts,
00:02:16.140TikTok personalities, all of it, all of it.
00:02:18.960And all of it works together to move culture and move people politically.
00:02:23.980Emily writes about this all the time on her sub stack, Emily in Your Phone.
00:02:27.480And just this past week, she published two pieces that honestly made my brain hurt a
00:02:33.100little. Because once you see all of this laid out in front of you, you just you can't unsee it.
00:02:40.700You can't not talk about it. And that's why I texted her and was like, I know that we have
00:02:46.140these private conversations about this all the time. But like, just come on the podcast,
00:02:50.540come on the podcast and talk to me about this. Because we have to be saying this out loud. We
00:02:56.000have to know the reality of what we are dealing with. Because the midterms are going to be here
00:03:01.620before we know it. And there is still a chance, still a chance for the Dems to win both the Senate
00:03:08.340and the House. So we have to go into this armed with as much knowledge as we can about how people
00:03:15.280are getting their information and how people are being influenced. This is about power. It is about
00:03:20.700culture. And it's about how people ultimately change their minds. Here's my conversation with
00:03:25.780Emily. Hello, Emily. The show has missed you. Oh, I'm excited to be here. Oh, you look so good.
00:03:39.680I love your cunty bob so much. It's just it's as if you've always had a cunty bob.
00:03:44.820I feel I've had a cunty bob personality. You have had a cunty bob personality. This is
00:03:50.640This is very true. And it just suits you so much. And just, yeah, seeing it in person is bringing me such joy.
00:03:58.400Yeah. Thank you so much. So happy for me and my Bob to be here.
00:04:02.260Yes. Yes, exactly. Well, today we are talking about something that you and I can't stop talking about that we've been talking about for since we met.
00:04:10.380Because we met online. We became friends in real life. And we've been saying over and over again
00:04:17.580that the right is doing so well at capturing the attention economy, capturing the influencer
00:04:25.300economy. They just get it in a way that the left does not. And I want to talk about where we're at
00:04:33.220now and then where we go from here, because we don't have a lot of time before the midterms.
00:04:37.820It is the left needs to look more seriously at this. And I want to start by just getting a general lay of the influencer landscape. You've put out two pieces in the past 24 hours, both of which are fantastic.
00:04:55.380The influencer economy is political infrastructure.
00:04:59.580And you say, once I'd figured that out first, but what's next?
00:05:03.500What do you mean when you say the influencer economy is political infrastructure?
00:05:08.880So one of the things that Democrats have been doing over the last couple of years is trying to figure out how to use influencers to engage in political persuasion, narrative building, message, distribution, et cetera.
00:05:21.380And largely what they have done is created a sort of flat, two-dimensional structure whereby pre-existing organizations that do advocacy or campaigns and things like that come up with messaging.
00:05:36.720And then they pay influencers to promote that content and put out that messaging.
00:05:41.240Influencers who have their own businesses, their own brands, and sort of exist in their own echo chambers.
00:05:46.160In contrast, what the right has been doing for the last 10 years, but we can really talk about the last 40 years, is building an infrastructure.
00:05:55.860They have been focusing not just on merely the pay to play of influencers, but raising up an entire influencer ecosystem that can support culture wars, community building, message distribution, and reaches out tentacles into a lot of different areas that is not merely just the MAGA activist base, but in fact reaches out and touches people who are outside of that base.
00:06:52.620They've been building up the influencers from the very beginning. Right. Right.
00:06:57.220Even the Leadership Institute, which is an organization that has existed on the right since the 70s, that was really part of the candidate recruitment and grooming program.
00:07:07.380One of the things that has been so effective in putting up Republicans who look and sound like the people who should be getting elected, but in fact are loyal soldiers to the cause.
00:07:17.600the Leadership Institute even has a podcast training program where they are pulling people
00:07:24.560into their pipeline and gaining new people. And they are like the oldest, most curmudgeonly
00:07:31.200side of the right. Of course, we have Turning Point USA, which has been building
00:07:36.900an influencer pipeline for a very long time. But, you know, this is all historically we can go back
00:07:42.900before Instagram influencers, before podcasts, before YouTube, there was Fox News. Before that,
00:07:50.220there was talk radio. They have been looking at the media environment and thinking not merely
00:07:56.840how do we inject ourselves, as you say, but how do we create a structure, a media structure that
00:08:03.020we could control, that will be loyal and persuasive and build audiences that only listen to us.
00:08:09.880and they're there they have done this it exists and the left is lagging so far behind we're going
00:08:18.420to in the second half of this conversation we'll talk about how we can even possibly catch up but
00:08:22.720first i want to talk about something you posted today that i caught a secret right-wing influence
00:08:27.920operation running in my feed you say once we know what they're building towards you won't be able to
00:08:33.860stop thinking about it i haven't been able to stop thinking about it so talk to me a little bit about
00:08:38.760what you've discovered what what is the algorithm serving you right now so my algorithm thinks i'm0.79
00:08:44.760a conservative girly uh they feed me it's because of your cunty bob well it's something uh something0.70
00:08:52.900about me says uh i just want jesus and sourdough and to give up my financial autonomy to a man0.58
00:08:59.580but um you know it's i started last week seeing these posts saying just asking questions isn't it0.72
00:09:08.580interesting that all of the all of the women who isn't it a coincidence that all the women who are
00:09:13.360on birth control now suddenly need IVF? Hmm. Question mark, question mark, question mark.0.99
00:09:19.340And I started seeing the same language posted by Maha influencers over and over and over again.0.51
00:09:25.780And I also saw Evie magazine, conservative Cosmo, funded by people, including Peter Thiel,0.72
00:09:32.240post content about this. Collabed with a very prominent anti-choice influencer. I saw Katie
00:09:39.400Miller, Stephen Miller's wife, prominent girly pop podcaster, bureaucratic aparchic,
00:09:46.560posting about this on Twitter. There is clearly some organized campaign that is happening that
00:09:53.460is connecting birth control to negative consequences that women don't want. The fact
00:09:58.860that they have to seek out IVF because they're having fertility struggles. And you and I have
00:10:03.820talked long for a long time about the conservative war on birth control, which is a very, very real
00:10:09.060thing that we are at the beginning stages of. We are watching them move the Overton window.
00:10:14.480And the purpose of shifting the Overton window is to make policy changes possible, because what
00:10:19.860they want to do is they want to overturn Griswold v. Connecticut. Griswold v. Connecticut is a
00:10:25.560Supreme Court case that established the right to contraception. It is the legal domino at the top
00:10:32.140from which when you knock it down, suddenly all the other things they want go. That was
00:10:37.640the legal precedent under which Roe was decided, which we saw knocked down in Dobbs. And more
00:10:42.820saliently, it is the legal precedent with which marriage equality has been decided. So by taking0.64
00:10:49.200down contraception, you take down marriage equality, which is one of the top two, probably
00:10:54.180top three goals of the culture warrior conservative Christian right, abortion, guns, and gay marriage.
00:11:02.860Those are their three topics. And this would hit the second one in one fell swoop. And what the
00:11:09.840goal is with all of this content is to build a tip of the spear, to build a group of women who0.77
00:11:14.880will say, yeah, banning contraception, you're doing that for women. You are helping us because0.84
00:11:21.220birth control is harmful and we need to protect women. Exactly. Exactly. And that's why this0.94
00:11:27.500messaging is so powerful. It's what I say over and over at my book events. I literally just said it
00:11:33.580at the one that I did in Utah because people ask me for examples. They're like, why do influencers
00:11:40.880matter? How are they actually influencing things that matter in people's lives, not just if you're
00:11:47.760baking sourdough or, you know, what kind of dress you're wearing. And I use the birth control
00:11:53.460example a lot because that is the one that I talk to young women about the most. Young women are
00:11:58.840being served this content that says you will be infertile. Birth control will make you more1.00
00:12:04.700attracted to your cousin. Birth control will make you more attracted to more feminine men is one of1.00
00:12:10.620my favorite ones. And they believe it. They believe it because it feels sciencey and it's something1.00
00:12:17.240that strikes at a very visceral fear that they will not be able to have children. And it works.
00:12:25.380I know so many women who have gone off birth control because of this messaging. And that is
00:12:33.180absolutely terrifying to me. But it's just getting stronger now. The fact that this is infiltrating
00:12:39.780your algorithm shows me that it's moving also out of a, you know, I was seeing it a lot in the
00:12:47.920late teens, early 20s algorithms for younger women. Like I heard about it a lot from our
00:12:54.000babysitters. But I think that they are pushing this much more mainstream now. I mean, is that
00:12:58.960possible? I mean, a lot of money was spent to bring Maha into the fold, right, for the conservative
00:13:06.300right. And it has proved an extremely effective political tactic. Bringing on RFK and his RFK
00:13:13.620Jr. and his entire coalition was, I think, one of the driving forces behind Donald Trump winning
00:13:19.100in 2024. And now they have those people. And how are they going to use them to achieve their
00:13:25.680ultimate goals, which is not about making America healthy, right? Like it is about achieving the
00:13:32.400very obvious deregulatory corporate governance, oligarchy empowering goals that they have,
00:13:39.380which require also the maintenance of the conservative Christian coalition.
00:13:43.960So they need to give those people the red meat that they want.
00:13:47.480And that is what they are doing with this influencer campaign.
00:13:51.580The influencers that I'm seeing posting this are holistic influencers.
00:13:57.660They are the exact perfect messengers for this type of content. People are already following them for health advice, and now they're just giving more health advice. And people are primed at the pump to believe the misinformation and disinformation that they're selling already.0.93
00:14:14.920And so it's very powerful. And, you know, we have seen really significant moves in young people's understandings and beliefs about birth control. And that is, I think, one of them that has been a very powerful and effective lesson for the right.
00:14:37.060They're learned it's working. If you expose people to high amounts of social media misinformation, you do change their minds. And a study was published in Nature recently, which said if you are exposed to the X algorithmic feed for an extended period of time, you become more conservative.
00:14:55.700It actually shifts your political persuasion to be exposed to political social media content.
00:15:01.960And they know this. And so it's now about moving in to older generations and, you know, millennial women, older Gen Z's who are trying to get pregnant, but also still young women.
00:15:13.620Right. Who want to get pregnant in the future. And it's exposing us to that type of content over and over and over again, which eventually, according to the science, will turn people more conservative.
00:15:23.920Absolutely. It will change your mind. It 100 percent will. Fun fact, I just got back from Utah and the flags that I kept seeing were not Trump flags. I was seeing Maha flags out there. You know, they actually say Maha over the American flag. I probably saw about 30 of them driving away, driving around Midway, Kamas and even in Park City.
00:15:49.680Yeah. I mean, it is a cultural identity. And this is one of the things the right has done really well. And I make a distinction in one of the articles I published between organizing and mobilizing. And one of the things Democrats have done a lot of is mobilizing, getting people to do a thing, to go to a march, to sign a petition.
00:16:11.580But what the right has been focused on is organizing, getting people to join a faith and freedom coalition, building, you know, full year round relationships in gun clubs and churches and homeschooling associations and as part of Maha and all of these things, which allows you to persuade people, allows you to bring them in and then allows you to turn them out when it comes to both persuasion and narrative campaigns, as well as elections and school boards.
00:16:40.480You know, whatever it is that you need, it's a much more time and money intensive project, but one that releases a lot of fruit.
00:17:36.080the other protein it's it's a lot of it's you have to have a lot of it to to make it work and
00:17:42.380it's kind of grainy but i yeah i mean fundamentally i didn't like the flavor and i felt that i could0.92
00:17:47.020taste its its proximity to um cow shit you know the raw milk of it all really just infiltrated0.67
00:17:55.740my brain i couldn't get past it i said chocolate not for me not for you not for you no exactly0.99
00:18:02.800Exactly. But I'm bringing up the protein because it's so easy for us to be influenced these days without any proof, without any real facts to back it up. And this is happening every single day. You give a really great example of the political infrastructure. I want to take a quick break. And when we get back, I want to talk about Maria Comstock for a little bit.
00:18:32.800Okay, we are back. In your piece on your sub stack, Emily in your phone with Emily Amick,
00:18:42.240one of my favorite sub stacks. I, you know, it's the one of the few that I read every single post
00:18:48.340that comes out. You say the influencer economy is political infrastructure and we tell and you tell
00:18:54.920the story of Maria Comstock. Who is she? Because I think a lot of my audience hasn't even heard of
00:18:59.620So Maria is a TikTok influencer. She has 1.7 million followers on TikTok. Like she's a big deal. And most of her content, her dad was a spy. And so it started with her interviewing her dad. And now she interviews former spies and intelligence officials, ask them questions about the news.0.94
00:19:14.840And she also makes content like making fun of D.C. people and dating and general lifestyle stuff.
00:19:21.960And before the 2024 election, it was not readily apparent what her political persuasion was by consuming her content.
00:19:31.480And she she posts a lot of sort of Republican coded content, which is tongue in cheek.
00:19:39.800And so she started getting incoming requests from both the left and the right to post paid for political content.
00:19:47.780And she posted on LinkedIn that the difference in the amount that they would pay was astronomical.
00:19:54.200On the left, people would be willing to pay like $2,000 a pop.
00:19:57.340And on the right, it would be $36,000 a pop.
00:20:00.660And the scale differential of those two things is so significant.
00:20:05.540I think it's a really good anecdote that leads into this sort of broader conversation about why the right has been able to build this massively robust ecosystem.
00:20:15.000And of course, it's money. People work for money.
00:20:17.700And on the left, it is extremely difficult to have a career, to have a paid job being an influencer.
00:20:26.000There's very, very little money going around.
00:20:27.620People are mostly not working. You're working pay to play, $2,000 pop at a time, mostly during election cycles, not as a year round job. And there isn't an advertising infrastructure. There isn't a fellowship infrastructure at any scale. There's maybe a little bit that has started in the past nine months to the year, but nothing at scale that can support the amount of people that is necessary to have a functioning ecosystem.
00:20:53.240right and the money matters we not everyone is going to in fact the vast majority of people are
00:21:01.180not going to hold tight to their values if they happen to even have those values at all they're
00:21:07.180going to go where the money is we live in a very precarious economy right now the influencer
00:21:12.180economy isn't the only one the gig economy pretty much every economy that we're working in is
00:21:16.900precarious right now people are going to follow the money especially a lot of these larger
00:21:21.800influencers. And when the right is paying that much more for a post, it almost feels like there's
00:21:28.720no way we can compete. Like, how can the left up up our game? Yeah. And I mean, it's and it's only
00:21:35.240going to get worse. And I talk about this in my post, you know, looking forward, the financial
00:21:40.680asymmetry between Republicans and Democrats going into midterms is significant. Republicans have
00:21:47.240literally 550 million more in the bank than Democrats in the main PACs that we have. And
00:21:54.200and they have also these massive AI and tech funded PACs that are forming with hundreds of
00:22:01.600millions of dollars. And how are they going to be spending that money? Are they going to use it for
00:22:06.180Democrats who are largely uncontrollable and always want the good of the people or Republicans
00:22:10.960who will do what it takes to get the job done, especially if there's a paycheck at the end of
00:22:15.520the line. You know what I mean? I think that we all know where that's headed. And and so if you
00:22:21.180look at that asymmetry, it's a very, very daunting task. And fundamentally, right, what Democrats have
00:22:27.000on their side is that we are right, that we want what is good for people, what is kind for people.
00:22:36.040We want to fight back against the Trump regime, which is totalitarian, authoritarian fashion,
00:22:41.560whatever you want to say it is, you know what I mean? In a world in which rage is the main
00:22:46.060commodity of influencing, Trump is providing us with an infinite amount of rage bait to create.
00:22:52.080And the question is, is to me, a lot of it is what type of content are we fomenting on the left?
00:22:59.060Because one of the problems that we've seen is that a lot of the influencers who rise up on the
00:23:04.700left, who are not part of some broader mission, spend a lot of time yelling at other people on
00:23:09.220about what the left should be doing and that is a huge amount of the content because a huge amount
00:23:14.320of the content is made for the progressive activist base it's not made for anyone outside
00:23:19.180of that eight percent group because those are the group of people who want to consume political
00:23:24.540content so if you're an influencer you create that content for people who want to consume it
00:23:29.740that's how you get views and engagement and followers and people to pay you right like it
00:23:34.840all makes logical sense. But for part of the broader mission of influencing people and changing
00:23:41.300policies and building a politics that that cares and hopes and dreams, it's perhaps not the best
00:23:48.660use of time and resources. Not at all. Absolutely not the best use of time and resources. And one
00:23:56.200of the things I keep coming back to that you keep coming back to is I feel like the left is just
00:24:01.320constantly talking to the activist-based over and over again and not breaking out into new audiences
00:24:09.300as well as the right is. They're very good at infiltrating people who have not been listening
00:24:17.120to them, who have not been paying attention to them with messaging, even if it's completely
00:24:22.320outside their wheelhouse. I mean, what you said about the left saying, well, what we've got is
00:24:26.340We're the good guys. Right. But like that, that is hard to make sexy, especially when the right
00:24:32.800is willing to lie and also claim to be the good guys here. Yeah. Moral superiority is like not a
00:24:39.140very good organizing tactic. No, it just isn't. And, you know, this is something I've been talking
00:24:44.860a lot about for a lot of years. I, in fact, wrote an entire book, a whole book, a whole book,
00:24:50.020which is coming out in paperback soon. Coming out in paperback at the end of April, Democracy
00:24:53.660in retrograde. Get your paper copy. That's how you want it has worksheets. But it's all about
00:24:57.940the exhausted majority, the 60 percent of Americans who are not represented in our current political
00:25:02.140climate. And, you know, Democrats. The problem is the way that you get numbers, right? Like if I
00:25:14.640wanted to make posts that got millions of views, the way I would do it is to ship post about Donald
00:25:20.340Trump or Marjorie Taylor Greene, right? Like to create very inside baseball content that the
00:25:24.820people who are already agreeing with me feel validated by consuming. It makes them angry
00:25:30.520and validated. And so they want to consume it. And if I just do that over and over and over again,
00:25:36.000my content will do really well. The problem is that that gets me deep into that algorithmic
00:25:41.340echo chamber. And I'm not talking to anyone new or about anyone interesting. I'm certainly not
00:25:45.660persuading anyone who isn't already fully persuaded. And one of the influencers on the
00:25:53.220right that I've talked about for years is Alex Clark, who is now the Maha Queen. And she has been
00:25:59.360a W2 employee of Turning Point USA for a number of years. She's worked there since 2019. And for
00:26:05.980many years, she and I had the same amount of followers. And she had a staff of like, I don't
00:26:12.800know, seven, ten people like she had a signal. I've seen different videos of her staff over the
00:26:17.360years, but she was fully supported. And the fact that she only had one hundred thousand,
00:26:22.800two hundred thousand followers didn't mean she got dropped for someone younger and hotter who0.94
00:26:27.140had a million. Right. Because she had a very, very powerful role, which was to serve as a gateway.0.94
00:26:33.020She her original politics, her original show was poplitics. It was using pop culture to bring1.00
00:26:37.720people in. And then she pivoted to health and wellness and Maha. And it has proved to be a very,
00:26:44.540very effective weapon that they've built. But they spent seven years building it.
00:26:50.220Exactly. It did not just appear out of nowhere. This was a concerted effort to build up Alex's
00:26:59.080media brand and also to keep pivoting that brand. Celebrity mixed with politics worked for her for0.97
00:27:07.200a while, but then they realized that health and wellness was going to appeal to a much broader
00:27:12.640swath of the population than even the celebrity content, which is a grand unifier. I mean, we do
00:27:19.940as a former celebrity journalist, I know that very, very well. So yes, Alex is able to speak
00:27:25.580to people outside of her base with her content, with her headlines of things like, you know,
00:27:31.840is your cell phone causing brain cancer? And then all of a sudden you are also sliding down
00:27:36.980the slippery Maha to conservative pipeline. Now we have Evie magazine, right, which is doing all
00:27:43.240of the above. It posted Catherine Hahn yesterday, who is decidedly not MAGA, right? Like they they
00:27:49.100are reaching into the liberal liberal cultural universe and pulling people in because she's
00:27:55.480mother. And in the parlance of Evie, right, mother means something different than the parlance of
00:28:01.720the liberal, uh, cultural left. So it's, it's very fascinating to see how, how, so maybe Alex
00:28:08.680isn't doing pop culture, but now Evie is right. And there's, and Rhett Cooper does lots of pop
00:28:13.580culture, um, and other, lots of other assets that are owned by the right are able to do these types
00:28:20.900of things. And again, this is because they've invested so much in this infrastructure. They
00:28:24.280have so many influencers at their disposal. There was a great story in the New Yorker by
00:28:29.480Charles Duhigg, who I like a lot, who's been on this podcast, love his books. And I liked this
00:28:35.900story a lot, but I think I liked it because it's validating everything that you've been saying
00:28:40.940for the past two years. I mean, none of this, but I have a lot of friends who read this,
00:28:47.140who are like, oh my gosh, did you know this? And I'm like, okay, I've got a sub stack for you,
00:28:51.900my friends, because yes, yes, and yes, we have been talking about this forever. But I do feel
00:28:58.160like this story kind of laid out what started in the 70s, 80s and 90s and what the left could stand
00:29:06.520to learn from the right. What did you think about this piece? Yeah, I mean, I thought it was really
00:29:11.680great. I thought that it was very New Yorker and able to lay out this sort of inside baseball
00:29:18.500argument in a way that made sense to a lot of people and this historical context. I think the
00:29:24.280one of the problems with the sort of moralistic and bureaucratic left, it has it it has become
00:29:33.940incredibly set in its own ways and navel gazing. And we do need to learn from MAGA. I mean, MAGA,
00:29:42.640you know, when I was growing up, Republicans had a cultural identity that was so cringe and lame.
00:29:47.620They were a homogenous group of people. They had problems, right? Like, how were they going to
00:29:52.560expand their political base if they couldn't expand the amount of voters who wanted to
00:29:57.100be with them. And they sat down and they figured out a strategy. And I always say they spent 50
00:30:03.120years working to overturn Roe. Right. And the problem with Democrats is you get in a room with
00:30:06.800someone and if they can't accomplish their goal in this six months, they're like, peace, I'm done.
00:30:11.320The system is broken. I give up hope. I'm not participating. And so you can't do that. You
00:30:15.840know what I mean? If you truly believe in your cause, you're going to work and you're going to
00:30:19.040work and you're going to work and you're going to work until you accomplish it. And then you're
00:30:21.920going to work to defend it because someone's always working to try to overturn it. And that's
00:30:26.520what they've done with the media ecosystem. And they are playing a hard game. And the reality is
00:30:32.060Democrats have really relied on the fact that we are right and we are good and we are moralistic.
00:30:37.280And that is not enough to win in a modern media ecosystem.
00:30:41.140I just keep thinking about Dark Helmet in Spaceballs, where he says,0.98
00:30:47.760and good is dumb. I mean, it's not enough to win. It's just it's just not in that. And the stats0.94
00:30:55.920speak for themselves. One in five. I actually do not think that this is accurate. It says one in
00:31:01.860five American adults regularly get their news from social media influencers. I think it's at least
00:31:06.600two or three in five at this point. Yeah. I mean, that's from Pew. You know, and I think that like
00:31:10.900things move quickly. I would also say like how many how many people are getting news? What is
00:31:17.280news you know what I mean like what is news versus political being influenced politically I'll say
00:31:22.220like you know I have family members who consume no news and they'll call me and they'll have been
00:31:27.240influenced politically right like it gets through to people in some ways and and I have long talked
00:31:33.360about social media as the modern public square right like it is where we are metting out all
00:31:38.420of these conversations about who we are as a community what our values are what we care about
00:31:42.660It is, there is no Walter Cronkite deciding what public conversation must be had. It is all of us online being influenced by algorithms and organizations who know how to manipulate those conversations. And it's extremely important.
00:31:57.680all right let's take one more break and when we get back i just want a little bit of hope
00:32:03.920i don't need i don't need to you know have hope dumped over my head like an ice bath but i need
00:32:08.880something okay i i need a little bit like where can we go we'll give you we'll give you a little
00:32:12.880little hit just a little hit just a little hit okay we are back what can we be doing right now
00:32:27.120as individuals, as the entire left, as progressive humans who want the world to be better and are
00:32:34.080willing to do what it takes to fix this. So, you know, for regular people, I would say there's a
00:32:39.840couple of different things. Number one is you need to start supporting liberal influencers.
00:32:44.420One of the problems is like the left base is very fickle. If you do one thing that upsets people,
00:32:49.720people will unsubscribe, they'll be unfollowing, unfollowing. Oh, you posted, you posted a link to
00:32:56.080a pair of jeans I don't like because there's something, something, something about the
00:33:21.040and you know these liberal influencers are not getting support elsewhere maybe a little bit here
00:33:28.240and there some of the um big big influencers of course right like if you're looking at someone
00:33:32.720who has seven million followers they're fine they're doing fine if they got a million on
00:33:37.020youtube they're doing great um but it's you know the smaller influencers who are putting out
00:33:41.560especially culture war content that you care about those are the people who need your support
00:33:45.920And by that, I mean, maybe subscribe to their sub stack, but also maybe just follow them and engage with their content and like their content.
00:33:53.340That is a big thing to do. We share their content, help them gain followers.
00:33:57.100That is genuinely helpful. You know, secondarily, help the messaging movement overall.
00:34:04.280In my book, Democracy in Retrograde, the whole thing is all about trying to help you find your place in the movement and what is important to you and what can be meaningful to you.
00:34:12.580but like get involved on a local campaign, get volunteer for Swing Left, whatever it might be
00:34:19.620that you want to do, especially coming up to midterms, find something to do. And then, you
00:34:25.900know, thirdly, if you're part of the democratic ecosystem, right, like start really thinking
00:34:30.620critically about this. It is March 2026. I have been having these conversations for eight years
00:34:36.280with people and people have finally started changing their tunes, but it is not happening
00:34:42.400quick enough and it is not happening at the scale that is necessary to compete in the impending
00:34:48.480environment. And I think people really need to be stepping up to the plate and demanding that we
00:34:55.920act aggressively. Yes, yes, yes. And yes. I mean, who are some of the political influencers on the
00:35:08.000left and i keep i actually i genuinely ask this because people ask me all the time they're like
00:35:13.680who should i be following who do you follow who do you follow i'm not gonna answer that question
00:35:18.080joe stuff do you share no no i follow me i follow you just you i mean i follow and share everything
00:35:27.960you do. But I will say, I just don't see as many breakout influencers on the left as I would like
00:35:39.240to be seeing as I think I should be being served as the progressive mother that I am. But is the
00:35:45.860algorithm just not getting them to me? So I think that there's two things. One, most progressive
00:35:52.480content is for the progressive activist base. And that is not you. And you are not consuming
00:35:58.040that content. I am also I also don't like consuming that content. Like I do not need
00:36:03.160to have every piece of information about Trump regurgitated in a rage bait format and given to
00:36:11.560me as a viral video. And I don't need CNN headlines read to me. Right. Like I read the newspaper.
00:36:18.360But millions of people like that content.
00:36:20.800They are very, they want that content, right?
00:37:07.000And like I have a lot of friends who have thought they could do it and they started making content and then people were awful to them.
00:37:12.940And they said, Julie, I want to be happy.
00:37:15.860I want to be happy. I'm going to take an HVAC course, actually, because, you know, no one I'm just I want to fix some air conditioners and heaters and then no one's going to yell at me and tell me how terrible I am at this.
00:37:27.460Yeah. So it is, you know, I think that it is a it's a complicated mire. You know, my good friend Brian Derrick, I love his content. He runs an organization called Oath that helps people give it's solving a really important issue that we have on the Democratic left, which is how do we give money to campaigns where that money will actually make a difference and not just campaigns where we hate the Republican candidate, but we'll never win.
00:37:51.820How do we donate money without having our personal information sold so that we'll get 7000 texts like Oath is great?
00:37:59.220I love their content. And he's doing a really good job.
00:38:02.920But I think the reality is there's lots of people at the state level, lots of people doing this.
00:38:08.720There's lots of mommy bloggers that have started up that have 30, 40, 100000 followers.
00:38:14.000They're not they're not people with millions of followers.
00:38:16.220I myself don't have millions of followers, but there are lots and lots of smaller people and we need to start supporting those people who really speak to you and building those people up.
00:38:27.040Right. Exactly. Exactly. And in terms of mainstream news, I mean, I think it is getting harder and harder.
00:38:35.120my instagram feed is a mix of the new york times the wall street journal i mean they're all all
00:38:41.720the reporters are acting like influencers now reading headlines to me on my phone um i think
00:38:48.640the line is getting further and further blurred between journalist and influencer and i think
00:38:56.360it's only going to get more confusing going into the midterms and also we're about to see the rise
00:39:01.820of ai influencers like i think that we're entering really dangerous territory here
00:39:07.000yeah i thought we were ending on a hopeful note0.79
00:39:10.100oh god damn oh i forgot about hope i forgot about the hope okay yes yes yes yes yes because i have0.92
00:39:17.660nothing hopeful to say here the matter is the only thing hopeful to say about the impending0.96
00:39:23.320ai apocalypse is that in there is a world in which it creates a um a desire for authenticity right
00:39:30.740Like there's a point there, there could be a point at which AI slop overwhelms the environment to such a degree that you no longer want to consume that content. And in fact, like you seek out validated real people with whom you have authentic relationships. Like there is a world in which that is such an outcome.
00:39:45.320I think it's going to take a bit to get to that world. And the AI slot machine slot machine is probably going to be politically worse than what we experienced in like the Facebook 2016 era where people were totally unprepared for like Facebook curdling the brains of boomers and pointing them politically towards Trump.
00:40:05.960Well, because AI slop can curdle the brains of almost anybody. It's not going to just be boomers. It can be produced so quickly and have such a reach that it can impact huge, huge amounts of people all at once.
00:40:25.780If it's the 2026 cycle, it will be the 2028 cycle. I think that is my prediction. 2028 is the AI cycle. And just, you know, I keep your Lexica Pro prescription up to date, you know?
00:40:39.440totally totally yeah yeah i mean i just i just upped my zoloft actually um so but and i'm also
00:40:47.560on the the the hormone replacement therapy and the glp so i mean i've got hrt glp zoloft it's
00:40:55.620a cocktail alphabet soup it's alphabet soup but you know we do what it takes and you do what it
00:41:01.340takes i'm really excited for democracy and retrograde to come out and paperback because
00:41:05.120i like a paperback better than i do a hardcover because you can throw it in your beach bag you
00:41:08.040can put in your back pocket. And yeah, this is this is very exciting. I am hopeful. Like as for
00:41:14.700like bitchy as I am, I'm hopeful that we can do something if we recognize what is happening. Like
00:41:21.040we just can't turn a blind eye. We can't just and I hear so many people constantly say, but we're
00:41:25.280right, but we're good. We're the good guys. And again, like it doesn't matter. I mean, we don't
00:41:30.400we don't have a choice. We have to try. We have to try. Like there is no other option. You want
00:41:37.080to give up and just give them America? That's crazy. That seems crazy. But in some ways,0.94
00:41:43.220that seems to be what has been happening in the past few years. So many people. I know so many
00:41:48.220smart, engaged people that have given up. Yeah. And we got to we got to turn the tides. People
00:41:51.820got to get engaged. Midterms are make or break. Dems have to take back at minimum the House,
00:41:58.320which is very, very viable. All signs point to Dems will be able to take the House. The question
00:42:02.940is, can we take back the Senate and prevent Trump from further stacking the Supreme Court?
00:42:07.080um and prevent him from being able to appoint any executive noms right like there's a lot of stuff
00:42:12.740that can happen we have this huge opportunity with midterms and the question is will we take it
00:42:18.400will we take it to be continued my friend to be continued thank you for being here everyone sign
00:42:25.880up for the emily in your phone sub stack follow her on instagram and buy a copy of democracy in
00:42:31.420retrograde for someone in your life today just order it get the get the paperback pre-order in
00:42:36.900we need to get this book on the paperback bestseller list because it will actually help
00:42:43.520you and someone else that you love make a difference. You will. You will enjoy it. I
00:42:48.520promise as well. Your bestie. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Joe. I really appreciate you. I appreciate