00:00:00.000Hey y'all, Jo here, and you are listening to Under the Influence.
00:00:09.560A lot of things in this episode today truly gave me chills.
00:00:14.120They also made me think about what a moral and ethical gray area we are currently living
00:00:18.780in right now when it comes to influencing social media and children.
00:00:23.560See, one of my friends is a reporter and author who has covered influencers very seriously
00:00:28.720and rigorously, since the very beginning. When Fertessa Latifi was reporting her book
00:00:34.420Like, Follow, Subscribe, Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online,
00:00:40.200she asked influencer parents what kind of content performed best for them. And many of them said,
00:00:45.520on the record, that its content with her child is sick, sad, or injured. And that should freak
00:00:52.600you out about the things that get made and put on the internet, the things that go viral,
00:00:56.560and the things that a lot of us are consuming. But it also brings up a much bigger question.
00:01:02.140What happens when childhood itself becomes content? So today we are talking to Fortessa.
00:01:07.580We're really digging into this new book, like, follow, subscribe. It's available for pre-order
00:01:12.400now. And we're getting into the entire ecosystem of kids and influencing. Not just these medical
00:01:18.640mamas, but family vloggers, kid YouTubers, teen TikTok stars, content houses, influencer
00:01:26.120legislation and the pipeline from child stardom online to platforms like OnlyFans. There are no0.74
00:01:35.060easy answers here. Because on one side of this, you have exploitation. And on the other, you have
00:01:41.000branding opportunities that could possibly help a kid get into college. And hovering over all of
00:01:46.340this is a digital economy that tells kids these days that their future depends on building a
00:01:51.800platform before they're old enough to drive. I don't even know what to do with all of that,
00:01:57.400but hopefully Fortessa can help me figure it out.
00:02:06.500Hey Fortessa. Hi. Hi. Oh my God. You got a book coming out soon. I know I'm scared.0.79
00:02:14.560No, don't be scared. It's great. You are an amazing reporter. And I've told you this before
00:02:19.160when you've been on. You are one of the few journalists who has been covering influencers
00:02:24.600seriously from the very beginning. There is no one better to write or talk about this topic,
00:02:30.420and you are truly an expert in this field. Thank you. I really appreciate that.
00:02:36.340Well, I mean it. I mean it. And I don't lie anymore because, frankly, you know, I just don't
00:02:42.200care about being canceled anymore. So I wouldn't tell you that I liked it if I liked it if I didn't.
00:02:46.900So there's so many things that I want to talk to you about with regards to this book and your intense research in the influencers. I mean, you have lived in the influencer bubble so much for so long. But one of the things that struck me in your recent writing was the influencers that told you what content often does best for them, what content often goes viral for them.
00:03:14.940And when I read this, I got the chills.
00:03:41.600so sick sad or injured we can we can you know divide all of those up we know we've talked about
00:03:50.920this before that there is a huge category of social media of sick kids right can you talk to
00:03:59.080me a little bit about this yeah i mean there's this entire subset of mom influencers called
00:04:04.620medical mamas i wrote about it a few years ago for the washington post where basically
00:04:09.020They are mothers of severely disabled or chronically ill or even terminally ill children, and their content centers around making videos and taking photos about their kids' medical journeys.
00:04:24.580And sometimes they get millions of followers and millions of views.
00:04:30.520Your story from the Washington Post was great.
00:04:38.320Why are they so captivating? Why do we want to watch them?
00:04:42.200Yeah, I've thought about this a lot and I asked some experts in my book and it seems like part of it is just that, you know, it's the same way that we can't look away from car crashes.
00:04:51.160Like we just we want to see I mean, we want to see people when they're in very vulnerable positions and there's no one more vulnerable than a child and a sick child.
00:05:01.740there's nothing more vulnerable than that but it's it's definitely it gives me the creeps how
00:05:07.100popular this content is and it's interesting because when you talk to the vloggers they'll
00:05:13.080say well we're raising awareness we're helping people realize that like this is what this disease
00:05:18.300is like or whatever and like I can kind of understand that but I'm also like at what cost
00:05:23.200you know to me it always feels like such a huge invasion of the kids privacy especially when we're
00:05:32.180looking at these very small children who are who have all these tubes attached them to them and
00:05:37.740they're in hospital beds and they're completely unable to give their consent for any of this
00:05:44.280yeah yeah and in some cases because of the level of disability we'll never be able to consent
00:05:50.440And it is something that I think about because I've been very sick in my life. I had cancer. I had a traumatic brain injury. And I think about what it would have been like for my mom to be filming everything and updating the Internet on every detail of my medical journey.
00:06:06.660And for me, there's been nothing more vulnerable and private to me than the times that I've been sick in my life. And I was an adult. I was a young adult, but still I was an adult. And so being a child in that position is very tricky.
00:06:24.340But I think it's also when it comes to these medical bills, you do have to kind of face the facts, especially in the United States, that like a lot of people are drowning in medical debt, especially if they have chronic conditions.
00:06:37.760And so if this is a way for them to get their kids the best care possible, like I can understand how that could be a motivating factor.
00:06:47.500Like, I don't look at these moms, and I would say dads too, but it is mostly moms. I don't look at them and think you're evil and you're doing this to exploit your child. I think, wow, what a system that we're in that this is the choice that you're left with.
00:07:03.480in a lot of cases i think that that is a really interesting thing to bring up
00:07:08.400i have to say the one time that i was recently in the emergency room i had to wait for nine hours
00:07:15.620they didn't see me i left i went to urgent care urgent care sent me back to the emergency room
00:07:20.180i had to wait another eight hours i couldn't breathe i was in so much pain and yet i was
00:07:26.980told i couldn't lie down it was it was awful it was just terrible but the second the second that
00:07:32.780I started posting about it on social media, not only did they see me, but then I was also given
00:07:39.460much better attention. Shut up. Did you like tag them? Yes. Yes, I did. Whoa. Yes, I did.0.99
00:07:48.080That's a really fascinating aspect that I had never considered.
00:07:52.360It's, you know, I've been I've been watching a lot of The Pit lately. Same. Yeah. We're on we're
00:07:57.760on season two i just love me some some noah wiley i really do and he's such a cutie he's such a
00:08:05.960cutie cuter now cuter now as an older gentleman i think totally yeah but you know a big part of
00:08:13.840the show is the complaints of the patients in in the waiting room and or the complaints by the
00:08:20.940patients about like you know don't overcharge me tell me what you're doing before you do this and
00:08:25.520you can kind of see both sides of it but yeah I was that patient in the waiting room just just
00:08:31.280you know I felt like I was dying and being ignored uh and also being yelled at when I
00:08:36.180tried to lay on the floor they're like you can't do that I'm like well I can't sit up
00:08:38.840uh but it was fascinating to me that as someone with a platform when I posted something and I
00:08:45.540tagged them I then got better care wow I mean that shouldn't surprise me and I guess it doesn't when
00:08:52.240i really think about it and there is that question of like with these moms obviously they love their
00:08:57.880children so much and they're in these terrible situations that i can't even like knock on wood
00:09:02.380understand as a mother and like i can understand the the reason for sharing that because maybe they
00:09:08.880do get better care maybe they do get you know special considerations and every second counts
00:09:14.880especially when it's a sick child. Absolutely. I mean, again, I do not personally love
00:09:21.880sick child content. I do think there are a lot of influencer parents out there,
00:09:26.940especially if they've been influencers before, often doing this for attention. But I have to say,
00:09:33.360I think the other interesting side of it is just to kind of put our broken medical,
00:09:39.160our broken medical system on notice to be like hey hey we're all paying attention here and if
00:09:46.200you want the best care for your child is that something worth doing i it's something interesting
00:09:52.800to talk about just to like go through the different ethics and the different moralities of it
00:09:57.520and then like you said trying to raise money for medical bills which are completely outrageous
00:10:05.060and insane and can cripple someone. There's just a lot to think about here. But then we do get to
00:10:11.340go back to the gross aspect of, wow, it's really gross that this is the content that does best for
00:10:16.960some people. It is. It is. And I mean, in the writing of my book, there are videos that I've
00:10:22.100seen of like sick children that I'll just never be able to get out of my head. Like this one,
00:10:27.280there's this mom influencer who has a million followers on Instagram and she has two pinned
00:10:32.820posts on her profile and one is like a pregnancy announcement and one is this video in which her
00:10:39.220son like genuinely looks like he's on death's door like he's like flushed and his his eyes are like
00:10:46.160almost closed and his mouth is just barely open and he like looks like he's like really struggling
00:10:50.840to breathe and the mom is yelling at the dad who seems to be taping that like we need to call 9-1-1
00:10:57.640we need to do something something's wrong and in the background the kids siblings are crying because
00:11:02.680obviously they're seeing their brother look like like really I watched it and I was like this kid
00:11:07.200looks like he's about to die and I just real like a lot of things I can have sympathy for and
00:11:13.700understand and I watched that video obviously several times to be able to describe it in the
00:11:18.760book and to really like get my mind around it and I was like I just don't understand seeing your
00:11:23.960child this sick and thinking we should not only record it instead of like using that phone to
00:11:31.240call 911. Like, I don't get that. And then not only record it, but post it to social media and
00:11:37.380not only post it to social media, but years later, have it pinned to your profile.
00:11:42.640There's so much going on there, right? Yeah. So much. And I'm always curious, too,
00:11:50.920who who is behind the camera in these instances? Is it the mom? Is it the dad? And are there
00:11:59.000doctors in the room are there nurses in the room when this is happening you know who who is present
00:12:06.380for what is essentially being turned into a reality television show moment yeah yeah I know
00:12:13.780it's very strange to think about like in that video there was no like there was no there were
00:12:18.420no medical personnel but then this same mom has other videos where they are in the hospital and
00:12:23.080she is like filming the doctors too and I wonder like where does that conversation start like
00:12:28.980i i can't imagine just like taking out my phone and like filming a medical procedure without kind
00:12:34.440of like explaining and like what is that explanation and like it's just it's just so
00:12:39.760strange and i i think i guess i can accept the premise of like raising awareness but also like
00:12:46.720at what cost are you raising awareness and also raising awareness is so nebulous like
00:12:52.000what does it mean to raise awareness like what does that actually do
00:12:55.700Exactly. Exactly. And I think it's different for every situation. I have actually talked to a lot of doctors about the rise of people posting about their medical procedures, about the rise of phones and recording in hospitals, in doctor's offices.
00:13:14.780And there's no really good policies. A lot of doctors feel like they're operating in no man's land because most hospitals don't really have a rule that says, don't film us.
00:13:26.880And in fact, so many hospitals and trauma centers are teaching hospitals. So they're bringing in witnesses and students and, you know, people that are interacting all the time.
00:13:36.960they don't know how to tell patients hey you can't be broadcasting this or taping us right now some
00:13:44.620have come up with policies but it's really hard it's really tricky right and so we really are
00:13:49.580living in the wild west in this gray area but doctors have told me that it makes it a lot more
00:13:55.780difficult for them to offer care in some situations because yeah they do feel like they're in like the
00:14:03.680panopticon right and they're they're they're just being they're they're about to be viewed and then
00:14:09.640judged by millions of people who don't understand the full breadth of a situation no absolutely not
00:14:17.520i'm i'm just like laughing to myself thinking about my dad's a trauma surgeon and like what
00:14:21.920he would do if a if a patient our patient's family was recording i don't think he would be thrilled
00:14:27.120but also because he's a trauma surgeon like the the family is not usually involved because it's
00:14:31.820an emergency situation. But I just can't imagine it. I can't imagine it. And I don't I just don't
00:14:38.900understand the instinct. Like as a person who has been a patient many times in my life, that is not
00:14:44.140something that I want to look back on. No, I totally I totally agree. But you and I are also
00:14:49.280not people who want to broadcast our entire lives. Right. Who who who want to be who necessarily want
00:14:58.480to be social media or internet famous so i think we often have different motivations there totally
00:15:05.980totally and especially with the knowledge that this content does so well like there is there is
00:15:12.520a reason for filming it well exactly exactly if this is your livelihood
00:15:17.700essentially it's kind of like the old nora efron every everything literally everything
00:15:26.020in your life is content yep yeah no totally it's just I think it's just like obviously it's one
00:15:34.280thing to like film yourself going through like a medical emergency or or film yourself crying or
00:15:39.600whatever and then it's just another thing to film your child and I wonder like what it does
00:15:44.420to the parent-child relationship because like I look at my daughter who's not yet two and when
00:15:50.380she's upset or has a cold or is teething or whatever, like all she wants is for me to like
00:15:55.720hold her and like tell her it's OK. And I just wonder like what she would do if I like took my
00:16:01.240phone out. Like I feel like she would swat it away. Oh, yeah. No, my kids would hit that out
00:16:06.020of my hand so quick. Or then they'd grab it like I'm watching Bluey. They're like, well, we're at
00:16:12.240it. Well, you got it. I'm watching Bluey. Yeah, exactly. All right. Let's take a quick break.
00:16:18.480And when we get back, I want to talk a little bit about what that can do to a parent-child relationship, because you have also interviewed a lot of kids of influencers who have grown up.
00:16:29.720okay we are back we were just talking about what what does it do to the parent-child relationship
00:16:43.860when you are constantly filming your child when there is constantly a phone between you and them
00:16:52.260kind of mediating all of your experiences you've talked to a lot of the kids of influencers what
00:16:58.040have you learned about that there is a breakdown of the inherent intimacy between parents and
00:17:04.240children when there is a phone between you and I think in my book I talked to one young woman who
00:17:10.500said I stopped going to my mom for things because I knew it would be turned into content and even
00:17:16.540when she would ask her mom like you know don't post this her mom would say okay I'm just gonna
00:17:21.440film it to send to your aunt or whatever and then it would end up on social media and so like
00:17:26.580there's just this distrust between the parent and the child and yeah I don't know I don't know how
00:17:34.420you move past that and maybe you never move past that and in in your talks with the kids of
00:17:43.340influencers and how we before I before I ask that how old are they now how old are the the kids that
00:17:50.280you've talked to they're not they're not even really kids anymore right yeah well the youngest
00:17:54.660person that I talked to for my book was probably around like 10 or 12, but mostly I would say
00:18:00.440they're in their late teens or early 20s. Okay. Okay. Interesting. And so for the younger one,
00:18:07.840did you have to have permission from her parent to talk to her? Yes. Yeah, I did.
00:18:13.720Interesting. And what were her observations about living in this world?
00:18:17.700Well, you know, it's interesting because there was that study that was like 86% of young people
00:18:24.280want to be YouTubers as their career you know and so some of the young people that I've talked to
00:18:29.300including a few of the really young ones like 10 or 12 they're like I love YouTube like I hope when
00:18:34.680I grow up I get to make family content and they don't they don't really it's difficult I think
00:18:39.180for them to look beyond what they've been raised in which is the way it is for any child like
00:18:44.120it's difficult to conceive of a life that you've never had right right I will also flip that around
00:18:51.180a little bit because i've talked to you know a lot of children of influencers but then also
00:18:56.980younger influencers as well i think it is also difficult for reporters my age your age you're
00:19:06.080younger than i am but you know we we didn't grow up exactly like this where essentially everyone
00:19:13.380has to be a brand and i think it's difficult difficult to conceive of a childhood where you
00:19:19.120already think that your livelihood as an adult will depend on this medium yeah yeah and i think
00:19:28.240especially in this precarious like economic situation that the country is in like you do
00:19:33.360look around and you're like what are my options you know like youtube sounds pretty good
00:19:37.380well exactly or even if i want to have some other kind of job where i'm not an influencer
00:19:44.480a platform will help me get there will get me what I want to do will help me succeed in anything
00:19:52.240so I do think that there is a lot of negative a lot of negatives of having kids featured in social
00:20:01.000media but then with my interviews with them I'm also starting to see the other side of a lot of
00:20:07.620these kids do actually feel very prepared to enter the digital marketplace at some point
00:20:14.980Yeah, I mean, I think about that myself.
00:20:16.780Like, obviously, I have to, like, have a brand on mine as a journalist.
00:20:20.120And it's like, well, I guess if I already had one built up, like, that would have been really useful, you know?
00:20:33.960but they see things like Mark Rober, who I talk about all the time, or some of the guests Mark
00:20:41.300Rober has on his YouTube channel, which are kids who are domino influencers. This is a thing.
00:20:47.300Kids who build. Oh, my God. It's such a big thing on YouTube. Kids who build the most insane things
00:20:53.640out of dominoes. Also Lego influencers. Huge. And so my kids ask me all the time,
00:21:00.860oh well can we make videos and put them on youtube my son yeah got very into doing lego
00:21:08.620stop motion animation videos oh that's cool it's actually super cool right uh and then we find out
00:21:17.440because we were watching this lego documentary that a lego influencer was then hired by lego
00:21:23.220To Lego. And so, yeah, again, another thing that is not black and white anymore, we're wading through this gray area constantly of having kids in content seems bad, seems toxic, but, but, but what are these upsides that definitely do exist?
00:21:45.680No, they do exist. And that's something that I really try to stress in the book that I don't think that if you put your kids online, you're evil and immoral and a terrible parent. I just don't think it's black and white. And some of these kids do love it and some of them hate it. And like we owe it to them to have a nuanced conversation because if we're just saying this is terrible, this is terrible, like that's not the full story and it's not going to enact any change if you think that change is needed.
00:22:13.920well exactly exactly and and that leads us to a lot of the proposed legislation around social
00:22:22.760media regarding children which you have become an unwitting expert in yeah unwitting is the exact
00:22:29.160word for it right yeah there are five states now that have laws regarding the profits of influencer
00:22:37.800children but it's really fascinating because i get into this in the book like the laws are so
00:22:42.980convoluted and so complicated and just like very obviously written by people who don't understand
00:22:49.180youtube and instagram and tiktok and content that is monetized that like i feel like even a parent
00:22:54.980with the best intentions would have a really difficult time like abiding by the letter of the
00:23:00.080law exactly exactly and then we're seeing some full-on bans in other country and a lot of young
00:23:11.860influencers, because there is a difference between a toddler being on an Instagram account and a 10
00:23:19.780year old and then a 16 year old. A lot of young influencers and users are very upset about this
00:23:26.560because they see this as the building blocks for their future. Yeah. And I can't blame them. Like
00:23:33.280I did a story a few years ago about like high school influencers and they're making like
00:23:37.240tens of thousands of dollars a year. And like to take that from them, like I don't know that
00:23:41.360that's fair, especially when they're the ones making the choice to put themselves online.
00:23:46.760Yeah, exactly. I think it is all so complicated. It's all only getting more complicated. My biggest
00:23:53.640concerns around social media these days, and I want to hear what you think about them, are mostly
00:23:59.600to do with AI and do with, you know, AI created influencers, deep fakes, and the ability to
00:24:11.380manipulate so much content so far from reality. Yeah, no, that's something I'm definitely
00:24:19.100concerned about, too. And I think a lot of the parents that I've talked to, both influencer and
00:24:24.100kind of more regular parents are really worried about that. And I think it's a huge factor as to
00:24:28.900why more and more people are taking their kids offline is because they're worried about what
00:24:33.100AI can do with even the most innocent of photos. And that's something that I think about because
00:24:37.980I have a toddler daughter. I've never shown her online and that's for a few reasons. But
00:24:42.560the AI issue has really become at the forefront of my decision making where I'm just like,
00:24:48.520I don't know, as a like public person on the internet, like I like get trolls and I get mean
00:24:53.260messages and whatever. And I'm like, what would they do with like a photo of this person who is
00:24:57.160the most precious thing in the world to me like I just I don't want to find out yeah I really
00:25:04.720there's a lot of things about the internet in the future that I don't really want to find out
00:25:10.760honestly we re-watched Terminator the other day and Nick and I were just like wow this this is
00:25:18.600quaint yeah no this is like a cute thing to think about this is a cute thing that we think might
00:25:24.260happen oh my god i know it's it's really scary honestly like i think yeah i don't know how we
00:25:30.840like protect kids against ai like but then again sometimes i just try to convince myself like this
00:25:36.160is like the nft thing this is like it'll just blow over it's just this huge whatever but i don't i
00:25:42.320think that's just me hoping against hope i mean we can all hope right it's a lot of things in
00:25:48.560praying and getting a bunker ready yeah i don't know i will tell you though that i i recently got
00:25:57.360the brick me too how do you like it i love it i love it so much i mean i for those of you that
00:26:06.400don't know and they are not a sponsor of the show they should be brick y'all should reach out to me
00:26:10.420because i talk about you all the time all the time but um it is it's just like this little square
00:26:17.500like a physical thing and you tap your phone on it and then you can't use your social media
00:26:21.980and in order to get it back you have to go tap your phone on it again and you're usually not
00:26:26.900next to it it just it's so simple and it takes me offline for like a whole day for a whole weekend
00:26:32.960yeah no I mean you're better than me I don't do a whole weekend because I feel like I'm just like
00:26:37.780in the thick of like trying to do book promotion which I know that you know like how intense that
00:26:43.420is but I do have it set so that any hour that I'm not working where I don't have child care my phone
00:26:50.520is bricked so that when I'm with my daughter I'm fully with my daughter and it's not like I was
00:26:54.900like sitting there scrolling Instagram in front of her but I would like quickly check and be like oh
00:26:59.120did so-and-so get back to me oh I need to send this to my publicist oh I need to repost this
00:27:03.280thing that someone posted about my book but like it was taking my attention from her so I have it
00:27:07.000like scheduled every single day for any time that I don't have child care and I'm not working like
00:27:11.960it's locked yeah yeah it's it's really great i'm trying to get the makers of brick on the show
00:27:17.380actually and then i'll convince them to sponsor my life they're gen z did you know that no i know
00:27:23.140they are and and it's just great so yeah i have been offline a lot more although actually for
00:27:29.280the last week i've been bricking less because most of my online life involves the olympics
00:27:33.600right now which i think is totally i mean i will tell you that schemo is my entire personality this
00:27:41.120is going to air a little bit after the Olympics are over. But I think Schemo is going to stay
00:27:45.280with me for the rest of my life. Oh, my God. I'm dead. My husband, who's Norwegian, is really into
00:27:49.920the Olympics. And just every day just like updates me. I'm like, guess how well Norway is doing?
00:27:54.960We're doing so well. Yeah. So does your husband have a Norwegian passport?
00:28:00.680He does. Yes. And we can get my daughter one. I can't get one unless we live there for a few
00:28:07.920years. But I'm like, well, it's not out of the question. It's not out of the question. You get
00:28:12.140those passports, girl. Yeah, I know. I know. At least get the baby one, you know, probably get
00:28:17.020the baby one. And you just have to live there for a couple of years. It seems very nice. Yeah. I
00:28:21.700mean, there's worse places for sure. Places to be, to be honest. And you could raise a schemo
00:28:29.600Olympic medalist. OK, see, that's the goal. That's that's really the goal. Yeah. The schemo
00:28:36.160for those of you who don't know it's the mountaineering it's the most ridiculous olympic
00:28:41.080sport there is you run up a mountain in skis then you take off the skis and put them on your back
00:28:45.680and then you run upstairs and then you put the skis back on and then you then you ski down the
00:28:49.540mountain it's bananas and it just it inspired me to lift a couple weeks today wow well there you go
00:28:56.780oh i know good for me all right i want to take one more quick quick break when we get back i'm
00:29:02.160We're going to stay with the theme of child teen influencers.
00:29:06.540And I want to talk about your interview with Piper Raquel.
00:29:19.640For our audience members who don't know, who is Piper Raquel?
00:29:24.280Yes, so Piper was one of the foremost kid influencers of the 2010s.
00:29:29.820She had millions of YouTube subscribers, millions of followers across social media.
00:29:35.920She was the head like kind of star of this content house that was named Piper Rockhell and the squad.
00:29:42.900And she was really just like living large, like making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month until a few years ago when this lawsuit was launched against Piper Rockhell, Inc., her mother, Tiffany Smith, and her and Tiffany Smith's boyfriend, Hunter Hill.
00:29:59.280and it was alleging all kinds of mistreatment from Tiffany towards the kids in the squad
00:30:05.700and the lawsuit settled without um without any what is that word that I'm trying to think of
00:30:12.960I'm trying to say without them and oh the lawsuit settled without admission of wrongdoing but it
00:30:18.800really kind of just like smeared Piper's name and then there was that huge Netflix documentary that
00:30:24.120i'm sure all you guys saw that was bad influence the dark side of kid fluencing and um since then
00:30:30.220piper has really had a hard time like having her traditional path in media because i think if none0.99
00:30:37.280of that had happened like she would still be on top of the world as like a youtube star and probably0.97
00:30:41.760be in like some actual hollywood shows and i don't know be singing which was a dream of hers but um
00:30:48.100She was really kind of blacklisted in this way, and now she has joined OnlyFans.
00:30:55.440I paused just because, you know, you couldn't write a more cinematic twist, men, and now she has joined OnlyFans.
00:31:06.140No. No. It's, yeah, it's interesting because I talked to Piper right before her 18th birthday,
00:31:12.520and there were tons of rumors swirling around, rumors that she would often fan, kind of for engagement.
00:31:18.100about her joining OnlyFans, and she turned 18, she took a few months,
00:31:23.020and then on January 1st at midnight, she launched her OnlyFans,
00:31:28.600and she says that she made $2.9 million in the first few days.
00:31:33.960I mean, how accurate do we think that is?
00:31:37.160You know, it's hard to say because I think, like,
00:31:42.720part of me is like maybe OnlyFans would have said if it wasn't accurate,
00:31:45.640But then again, it's really good for them if young people think they can make that amount of money, although I would hope that anyone realizes that like Piper made that amount of money if she did because she has such a huge platform and such massive name recognition.
00:31:58.680But I think even if it wasn't two point nine million, literally, I think it was an astounding eye watering amount.
00:32:06.060An astounding amount of money. I mean, she was making a lot of money on YouTube, right?
00:32:10.920She was. But after the lawsuit was filed against her mother, her YouTube was demonetized. So she0.91
00:32:18.320wasn't able to make money on YouTube anymore. Right. Right. So you asked Piper the question0.99
00:32:23.800that I would ask her, which is, do you consider yourself a sex worker since you're on OnlyFans?0.59
00:32:29.920Yeah, she kind of danced around it. She was like, you know, you can call me a sex worker if you0.96
00:32:34.480want. And basically where she landed was that it doesn't really matter what you call her because1.00
00:32:39.720she's making more money than you which is probably accurate well again i feel like i'm playing devil's
00:32:47.040advocate too much in in this this episode but i'm feeling a little surly today what what this
00:32:54.120reminds me of is when we would see child stars kind of lose their lose their child star shine
00:33:02.740or go through something bad, go through a scandal,
00:33:08.780and then they'd pose for Playboy and get a million dollars.
00:38:51.940And that was like really old for high school.
00:38:54.900like I was like the last one of my friends to get a phone and I was like pissed about it. But now
00:38:59.940I'm like, I'm so glad. And also phones were so much less addictive back then anyway. So I think
00:39:05.720that the best thing that I can do for my daughter is like push it as far as I can. And like maybe
00:39:11.160that means like getting her like a dumb phone that she can just like call me or, you know, whatever.
00:39:16.800But I know that there's also going to be a tremendous amount of social pressure for her.
00:39:21.360And, you know, you don't want your child to feel left behind. And a lot of socializing these days does happen online. So you just kind of have to hope that you're in a community with other parents who feel the same way, because that's also something that I've read is that, like, it's very difficult to make these decisions in a silo of your own family.
00:39:38.180but if you're in a community of people who are saying we're all going to wait until the child
00:39:42.620turns 13 or 14 or 15, then it's much easier to do that. So I don't know. It makes my stomach hurt
00:39:50.240to think about. I know so much of this makes my stomach hurt to think about. All right. Well,
00:39:55.600tell everyone where they can find you and how they can get in touch with you if they have any
00:40:00.500questions. Yeah, totally. So I am everywhere online at High Fortessa, H-I-F-O-R-T-E-S-A.
00:40:07.940You can pre-order my book anywhere that you buy books. The links are also all over my social
00:40:14.220media. Obviously, as much as I wish that I weren't, I'm online all the time. So you can
00:40:20.380find me basically everywhere. I love that. I love you. And I love this book. Thank you so
00:40:26.800much for coming on. Thank you. Thank you for having me.