Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - The Hatred of Women on the Internet with Taylor Lorenz

00:00:00.000 Taylor Lorenz has been called a lot of things. She's been lauded as one of the nation's

00:00:06.780 preeminent tech reporters for places like the New York Times and the Washington Post. 0.99

00:00:12.300 She's also been called the scum of the earth. Told she was ugly, told she was stupid. 1.00

00:00:19.180 She received one comment that said, I hope you cry yourself to sleep every night. 1.00

00:00:24.540 I hope you take your own life. I hope you live all your days in fear. Why are you still breathing? 1.00

00:00:34.340 The person repeated kill yourself 11 times. This kind of online harassment is not unique to Taylor.

00:00:44.160 Women are constantly, constantly subjected to it. Female influencers, female journalists, 1.00

00:00:50.720 female celebrities, pretty much any woman who dares to have an opinion about just about 1.00

00:00:57.340 anything. The International Women's Media Foundation conducted this survey, and they 0.67

00:01:04.600 found that 63% of female journalists said they'd been threatened or harassed online.

00:01:12.520 I talk to influencers all the time who are told many of the things that Taylor has been told, 0.98

00:01:19.700 who are told to kill themselves, who are told that they're a bad mother, a bad woman, an ugly woman, 1.00

00:01:26.600 a disgusting woman, a shameful woman. The internet is a nasty and toxic place to be female. 1.00

00:01:36.220 And it's even nastier if you are a person who is extremely online, which is the title of Taylor's 1.00

00:01:42.600 latest book. Yes, Extremely Online. You should all go grab it. In it, she deftly chronicles

00:01:49.760 the rise of social media's power structure and influence. And she doesn't shy away from the

00:01:55.360 dark places that it has taken all of us. I recently got to chat with Taylor about what

00:02:01.940 it is like to be a woman who is extremely online and covering all of the communities that are

00:02:06.940 extremely online. We got into all of it, from her very public feud with Fox News resident asshole 0.99

00:02:13.980 Tucker Carlson, to Gamergate, to why TikTok isn't going anywhere anytime soon. I'm very excited to

00:02:22.880 have you here today because for a long time, I feel like you were the only person, the only

00:02:29.520 reporter out there covering the influencer economy seriously. And now there's more reporters,

00:02:35.980 But you felt like a pioneer to me that you were taking influencers and digital creators as seriously as, say, other media outlets were taking CEOs and politicians.

00:02:50.240 Yes, that's been my shtick for a long time.

00:02:53.420 That's your shtick. That's your brand. That's your jam.

00:02:55.920 Um, the question I want to start out with is, do you think that influencers are the new

00:03:02.700 celebrities or are they, are they already celebrities and will they eclipse the traditional

00:03:07.820 movie and television stars?

00:03:10.460 Well, they are celebrities.

00:03:11.440 Yeah.

00:03:11.840 And I think a lot of movie and television stars are also kind of influencers.

00:03:15.040 And I think that the line, I mean, I wrote about this recently, but especially since

00:03:19.480 COVID and then with the strike, the line between traditional talent and digital talent is pretty

00:03:25.220 much obliterated for I definitely everyone under the age of 30 but um you know increasingly older

00:03:32.700 stars as well I mean obviously people like Gwyneth Paltrow um and Reese Witherspoon and stuff I would

00:03:38.120 consider them influencers as much as they are you know Hollywood stars so um yeah I think those

00:03:45.280 lines I write about it in my book but I think the whole notion of sort of like fame has really

00:03:50.160 changed where it used to be like the majority of people were not famous um and then you had this

00:03:56.660 like little like one percent people of like hollywood stars like the you know actors and

00:04:01.660 musicians um and now i think we all experience kind of like different levels of fame fame is

00:04:07.380 more of a commodity yes yes i feel like a fame is a commodity and attention yeah is a commodity

00:04:14.740 these days. And we're all just trying to trade in the attention economy, whether you're a person

00:04:21.760 who writes a book or you're a stay-at-home mom who's dressing up in peasant dresses, 0.98

00:04:28.560 just hoping to make some goddamn money off your reels. We're all fighting for attention all of 0.99

00:04:33.660 the time. Yeah, exactly. You have experienced a lot of attention, both negative and positive.

00:04:41.540 and we've talked a lot on this show about how women get attacked often very, very verbally

00:04:49.300 violently in digital media. And I want to go back to just some of the times that you have been

00:04:56.480 attacked for stories that you've written and then how you have turned that around actually to

00:05:03.440 improve your platform and improve your career. Yeah.

00:05:07.100 One of the big rifts, the big blowups that happened was with you and some of the Fox News hosts. Can you talk to me a little bit about what happened there and what you wish you knew now going back to that incident?

00:05:23.560 Oh, gosh, I wish it was just one incident.

00:05:25.660 It was a lot.

00:05:26.620 It's been many, many, many.

00:05:28.680 A slew.

00:05:29.480 It continues.

00:05:30.640 Well, it's funny. It's not funny. It's fucking terrible. We are perfectly complacent in just frying women alive.

00:05:37.100 online uh and so take take me back to 2020 to what was what was happening in the world for you then

00:05:44.400 yeah well I think you know when the pandemic hit suddenly everybody was sort of forced into

00:05:50.500 digital spaces and I think started paying attention to the world that I'd covered for

00:05:55.440 over a decade which is the sort of like internet world and this world of online influence um and

00:06:01.380 you saw a lot more kind of battles for attention and specifically like the far right trying to,

00:06:08.440 you know, weaponize the Internet in certain ways, which they've obviously did before the

00:06:12.100 pandemic. But I think it was just really exacerbated. So, yeah, I had done a series of

00:06:19.000 stories that that made Fox News angry. I mean, I write a lot about like influence and like

00:06:27.300 right wing influencers as well and sort of political influencers um as well as like

00:06:32.420 traditional influencers i guess you could say um so tucker carlson started attacking me and then

00:06:40.260 it kind of just ballooned out all across fox news where like megan kelly like all the i can't even

00:06:46.240 i don't even know half their names but just it was just countless segments um for a while it was

00:06:53.640 like at least one a week and he would go on these tirades and then it would whip up all of these

00:07:00.140 right-wing influencers who kind of like exacerbated the attacks and I was at the New York Times

00:07:05.880 which is probably the worst place to be when you're going through something like this because

00:07:11.600 they just handled it in the worst possible way and the biggest thing that the New York Times did

00:07:17.140 is basically it's like they hang people out to dry they don't the the as I explained countless

00:07:22.960 times. And I don't mean my editors. I can't express enough gratitude to my editors at the

00:07:27.600 Times because they are the only reason I didn't quit on the spot in 2020. But I think the management

00:07:35.480 there could learn a lot about how to deal with these campaigns and no fault of their own because,

00:07:40.500 well, I mean, somewhat fault of their own. They run a big media company. They should know this

00:07:43.360 by now. But I think it's a learning curve. And unless you've been through it, it's really hard

00:07:46.940 to understand these dynamics um so yeah the the big problem was that like i was getting all these

00:07:53.500 attacks and blatant lies like huge lies about me like totally misrepresenting things constantly

00:07:59.820 lying about just lies and um instead of allowing me to respond they were like you cannot say

00:08:05.460 anything you cannot respond you cannot put out your own narrative in any way and their whole

00:08:10.080 thing is like as long as no one's smearing the new york times it's basically fine if they're

00:08:14.140 attacking our reporters. And they would put out like maybe some generic statement like, oh, we

00:08:19.800 stand by Taylor Lorenz reporting or something. But they don't let you as an individual journalist

00:08:24.600 respond. And I do think that that is a misguided approach. And I have no idea if they've changed

00:08:30.260 their approach. I don't think they have. But one thing that I learned from going through that is

00:08:34.260 that you it's a battle for narratives. And as any good PR person will tell you, if you don't,

00:08:39.420 don't it's not enough to just be silent in the face of like misinformation you have to kind of

00:08:45.760 present your own narrative and facts and correct people pretty much immediately because if you

00:08:51.300 wait too long you know what is that saying like the lie the lie spreads around the world before

00:08:56.260 the truth puts on its shoes or something um that's very true on the internet it's very true on the

00:09:01.840 internet you again this is the attention economy and you have a very short period to take control

00:09:09.060 of any narrative i think yeah and i think these big legacy media organizations they freak out they

00:09:16.120 first of all they don't understand the the way that these campaigns work since gamer gate um

00:09:22.640 for for our audience explain what gamer gate is because we i think we have an audience that

00:09:27.100 is just diving down the rabbit hole of living thoughts in digital media and i think they're

00:09:32.400 gonna get a real kick out of hearing about gamer gate gamer gate was basically i mean i talk about

00:09:37.920 it in my book but it it was this um period in 2014 where um there were these basically these

00:09:45.620 networked harassment campaigns against women in video game journalism largely led by right-wing

00:09:52.280 influencers um against women in the video game industry meant to drive progressive women out of 0.95

00:09:57.600 the video game industry and what they did is sort of weaponize media organizations inability to sort 0.76

00:10:03.440 of understand digital culture and to cover things with both sides journalism, basically

00:10:08.700 where you give as equal credence to bad actors and good actors.

00:10:12.800 And it sort of provided this blueprint for online harassment.

00:10:18.060 And the whole point, what it showed is to discredit organizations.

00:10:23.520 What you do is you don't just discredit the organization itself.

00:10:26.040 You do that through picking off women, people of color, basically any kind of workers from

00:10:31.200 marginalized groups, journalists from marginalized groups. 0.96

00:10:33.440 And you target them and you sort of mirror them.

00:10:36.680 You launch this mirror campaign.

00:10:38.180 You destroy their reputation.

00:10:40.060 And then that destroys their reputations.

00:10:43.120 That destroys the employer's reputation. 1.00

00:10:44.800 Or that drives the women out of those employers often. 0.97

00:10:48.500 I mean, a lot of women lost their jobs in, like, Gamergate-related campaigns.

00:10:53.920 Obviously, that didn't happen to me.

00:10:55.460 But it definitely made my life a nightmare for, you know, a really long time.

00:11:00.200 And so, yeah, it's just that's what was happening in 2020. It's like the New York Times doesn't realize. And I think all these legacy media companies don't realize that the reason, for instance, Nicole Hannah-Jones or me or any of the other women who are often targeted at these big media organizations are branded as controversial.

00:11:22.660 That's an attempt to discredit the times or that's an attempt to discredit whatever legacy media organization we work at. And the way I think these media organizations approach it is, well, it's, you know, oh, well, we don't care if our journalists, you know, are the target of smear campaigns and their reputations are destroyed. As long as nobody's talking about us, then we're good. Like our brand is fine. Just let, you know, let our journalists names be dragged through the mud all day.

00:11:48.500 and that's just incredibly fucked up because it it drives women out of the industry and i was 0.97

00:11:55.600 basically like no i'm not gonna do that and you didn't you didn't you i think you've you've stood 0.99

00:12:01.480 up for yourself in a very beautiful way and do you feel like you learned how to do that from

00:12:09.540 some watching some influencers from seeing how some influencers do dominate the attention economy

00:12:15.880 Yeah, I mean, I think I understand the mechanics of these campaigns very well. And so I think by reporting extensively on online harassment, which I've covered for a really long time, and specifically how content creators manage these harassment campaigns, definitely, I think it's sort of taught me so much of how to deal with the attention economy and how to deal with a smear campaign.

00:12:41.860 because high profile women in all walks of life,

00:12:45.260 but especially ones on the internet 0.93

00:12:46.440 are constantly dealing with kind of scare campaigns

00:12:48.700 and things like that.

00:12:50.000 So why do you think that is? 1.00

00:12:52.200 Why do you think that women are so often

00:12:53.760 the targets of so much hate online? 0.81

00:12:56.720 And it doesn't just come from men.

00:12:58.340 It would be easy to say it just comes from men, 0.95

00:13:00.360 but it also comes from other women. 0.96

00:13:02.300 Oh yeah. 0.99

00:13:02.620 I mean, look at any snark subreddit. 1.00

00:13:04.440 It's all women. 1.00

00:13:06.280 I mean, look, there's a lot of internalized misogyny. 1.00

00:13:08.780 It's all misogyny.

00:13:10.020 It all boils down to misogyny.

00:13:11.860 Sometimes it's also misogyny and racism or misogyny.

00:13:14.920 You know, there's a lot of, I guess, intersecting like bigotry. 0.98

00:13:18.680 But the hatred of women on the Internet is pervasive.

00:13:24.840 And I think that's at the core of all of it, especially feminine presenting women.

00:13:30.760 I mean, Tucker Carlson, it's very funny because his attacks were never about my journalism. 0.86

00:13:36.360 It was always about me as a person.

00:13:38.320 He said I was too young to work at The New York Times. 0.95

00:13:40.700 I was a silly little girl and I was too young to work at the New York Times. 0.93

00:13:44.200 Meanwhile, I'm a woman in my 30s. 0.53

00:13:46.000 And, you know, once some a bunch of, you know, my followers were replying like Taylor's like literally like 35 or something.

00:13:53.620 You know, like I can't remember what year this was, but, you know, they're like she's she's in her 30s.

00:13:57.420 Like she's not young. And I, you know, I mean, I'm young in the grand scheme of things, but I'm not like some 22 year old where this is my first job and I'm not too young to work at the New York Times.

00:14:07.280 And I think Tucker thought I was in my 20s at that point. Once he realized I was in my 30s, it all flipped to she's too old. Why is this old hag covering tech? And, you know, they have all these age conspiracies. And I have to say, it's very funny because I think I am an attractive young, you know, woman.

00:14:26.700 And, um, you know, that, that enrages a specific type of man, um, because they can't, they can't

00:14:35.520 compute. And of course I don't have children, which is very offensive, certain, you know,

00:14:40.700 groups of these people. And so, yeah, it's just. You are an attractive young woman who

00:14:46.400 dares not breed. Yeah. How dare you? And who stands up for myself. And who stands up for herself. 0.66

00:14:52.680 Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, it's just so funny that women can be only one of two things. We can be a child or we can be a hag. There's no in between for these people, to be honest. And I think that you've stood up for yourself really well and moved on in your career. I've seen a lot of careers derailed by this kind of negative attention. You write about Julia Allison in your book.

00:15:21.960 Yeah. She and I came up in media at the same time because I am an old hag. And she was the subject of so much vitriol at Gawker and just in the early aughts media world. And I believe one of the first digital influencers that I can't imagine being her. 1.00

00:15:49.540 What did you find out when you talked to Julia?

00:15:53.520 Julia's story is one that I knew I wanted to tell really early on because I think what she went through was horrific and she deserves a vindication.

00:16:02.940 And she kind of never got one because she retreated off the Internet, basically.

00:16:07.100 She did. She did. And for our listeners who don't know who Julia is, who were gossip columnists in the early 2000s, who was Julia?

00:16:17.620 um yeah so um it basically julia was one of the first multi-platform content creators um she

00:16:28.180 started as a blogger in the mid-aughts um and then expanded to youtube um she was very early

00:16:35.620 on twitter she was she created content on like lots of different platforms and monetized on

00:16:40.240 multiple different platforms it's crazy but she was making a living full-time as a content creator

00:16:45.780 in the year 2008 in New York,

00:16:48.040 like enough to pay her rent in New York in 2007 and 2008

00:16:51.200 as a full-time content creator.

00:16:53.700 That's really unheard of.

00:16:55.460 And people did not understand what she was doing at the time.

00:16:58.840 She was just eviscerated. 0.98

00:17:01.280 Like she was called a fame whore repeatedly. 1.00

00:17:04.200 Like there's literally an article in Fast Company 1.00

00:17:06.480 that was titled Julia Allison colon Breasts Aren't Enough. 1.00

00:17:10.760 And I mean, her original sin against Gawker,

00:17:13.940 which was just brutal to her and wrote some of the most misogynistic stuff I've ever read

00:17:18.440 was that she was promoting the link to her blog in the in the Gawker comments section

00:17:23.920 which was you know I guess some sort of like big sin and it was it's insane and it just it you know

00:17:31.920 her and Gary Vee Gary Vaynerchuk who's a digital marketer kind of came up around the same era and

00:17:37.320 I think it's so interesting how the media coverage and the perception of their careers

00:17:43.400 has varied so much because, look, Gary's very hustle culture. And I understand why sometimes

00:17:49.540 people don't love that sort of aspect. But he's also a marketer and a sort of relentless self

00:17:54.840 promoter, as are many men. But they're never vilified for it. They're never considered a

00:18:01.860 media whore. They're not. No one would ever use that language because they're inherently 1.00

00:18:05.460 misogynistic exactly and i i feel so bad just for the world the world that i was living in at the

00:18:13.420 time i was a gossip columnist the new york daily news and everyone was going out together all the

00:18:19.380 time all of the gawker editors all of the up-and-coming bloggers and i just saw so much 0.94

00:18:27.660 shit get heaped on julia that was misogynistic and undeserved and i actually in hindsight wish 0.94

00:18:33.580 that I had spoken up more and I didn't. And I've messaged her that and told her that over the years. 0.99

00:18:39.720 And I feel like she was just constantly beaten down until these platforms tried to drive her

00:18:44.880 out of media. Yeah. And she effectively was driven out of media. And, you know, if you go back and

00:18:50.480 read what Julia Allison said and predicted about the tech and media landscape, every single thing

00:18:55.920 she predicted came true. I can't explain as a tech reporter. I've never encountered anyone else like

00:19:01.760 that ever. Like usually people make tech predictions or media predictions and they're

00:19:06.320 like 50% right. I mean, sometimes smart VCs are like 70% right, but they're always wrong about

00:19:12.240 some key things. Julia saw this future before anyone else and this media landscape before

00:19:17.660 anyone else, talked about it openly and was just like eviscerated for it. And everything came true

00:19:23.720 and nobody. And meanwhile, I'm sure you saw this in like 2021 when all the Silicon Valley VCs were

00:19:29.280 finally forced to take this industry seriously and they started calling it the creator economy

00:19:33.260 basically to distance themselves from previous comments they made about influencers um that her

00:19:39.060 name was totally not you know nobody ever mentioned her it was all about like mr beast and david

00:19:43.620 dobrik and you know it's never about the women who pioneered this industry saw the media landscape

00:19:50.260 before anyone else and were driven out of it well and i it was women who pioneered this industry

00:19:57.080 in so many ways. I and you talk about this in the book. Mom bloggers were the original digital

00:20:04.980 creators and they get shit on all of the time. Yeah. Don't get me started on that. I it's I want 0.99

00:20:13.060 to get started on it. Tell me everything. Well, my big pet peeve is, first of all, you know,

00:20:20.760 people love to vilify mothers for anything. Lately, I've, you know, I write a lot about

00:20:27.080 child influencers, kids on the internet and my big pet peeve, and I want to write a big thing

00:20:32.580 on this, but it's lately there's been this sort of media narrative of like, oh, you know, the kid,

00:20:39.180 the children of mom influencers are growing up and they're, and they hate their mothers and

00:20:43.940 mothers are who put stuff about that, you know, put posts their kids on the internet are evil

00:20:47.880 and all this stuff now i'll just disclaimer i do think that a lot of parents could parents of both

00:20:53.660 genders could you know have better privacy around the stuff that they share about their children

00:20:57.740 undeniably however as somebody that actually covers this industry that's just a lie like the

00:21:03.780 majority of kids content on the internet is not put online it's not parents it's children putting

00:21:09.320 themselves online it's teenagers that have drunk youtube kool-aid for their entire childhood

00:21:14.760 starting a YouTube channel at age 11 or an Instagram account or whatever.

00:21:19.840 And we've also, we have this big tech has created this massive surveillance ecosystem

00:21:24.900 where, you know, they harvest data on kids literally from the time they're in the womb.

00:21:29.560 And so much of that data ends up being public and exposed in various ways used against kids.

00:21:35.800 And their own social media profiles are used against them.

00:21:38.540 I mean, it's literally like, again, this like mass surveillance culture.

00:21:41.760 But nobody ever blames big tech.

00:21:43.420 Like nobody ever says, wow, the amount of information and data about our kids that are

00:21:46.880 online is horrifying.

00:21:48.360 Let's go up against Google and Facebook. 1.00

00:21:50.340 Let's yell and vilify some mom, you know, for putting pictures of too many pictures 1.00

00:21:56.220 of her kids in a birthday party on Facebook or something, which, again, I think that parents 1.00

00:22:00.500 need to be better about privacy.

00:22:01.760 But mothers are not the problem here. 1.00

00:22:04.240 It's the tech companies. 1.00

00:22:06.580 And, you know, but it's always the moms that are vilified. 1.00

00:22:10.700 Always, always.

00:22:11.900 And look, we talk about it on this podcast a lot. 0.96

00:22:15.760 I talk about whether or not moms should be putting their kids online.

00:22:20.140 But at the end of the day, yes, these tech companies are creating these platforms

00:22:24.340 and are the ones exploiting everyone, including mothers and children.

00:22:28.820 Why do you think that we never actually vilify them?

00:22:31.920 Is it because we get to use their services for free and so we all look the other way?

00:22:36.120 But also no one does the actual reporting.

00:22:37.860 If you do the actual reporting, you'll find that the children of a lot of these influencers

00:22:42.620 are not at all upset at their parents for putting them online.

00:22:46.680 Many of them have used their online fame from family channels, et cetera, to launch very

00:22:51.500 successful careers in entertainment or launch businesses, or they have really good boundaries

00:22:55.560 with their parents and they know what's put online and know what's not put online or whatever.

00:22:59.180 Again, the majority of kids' content is kids putting themselves online.

00:23:02.880 It's a lot of content from children, teenagers, you know, children on social media.

00:23:07.980 Like that's a huge age group, literally.

00:23:09.700 I mean, I have a lot of children following me on social media, you know, like kids have

00:23:14.380 access to the Internet at early ages.

00:23:16.060 And by the way, even if you ban every single parent from social media, there's a massive

00:23:20.900 amount of information about our kids on the Internet.

00:23:22.940 Kids addresses are on the Internet.

00:23:24.080 There's sports leagues.

00:23:25.360 Every single little league has like a YouTube channel.

00:23:27.360 I found tons of preschools and elementary schools and secondary schools that have open

00:23:32.040 and public instagram accounts some were live streaming kids coming into school like there's

00:23:36.900 so much information about kids online from clubs from classrooms from from groups like it's just

00:23:43.300 to focus it on mothers and not this massive ecosystem it's crazy and i you know i did this

00:23:49.400 story a few years ago sorry i can rant about this forever but i did this story a couple years ago

00:23:53.200 where i interviewed dozens of kids about the first time they googled themselves a significant amount

00:23:57.900 of those kids were upset that they couldn't find more they they were mad that there wasn't more

00:24:03.460 about them on the internet because they didn't feel like a person and this one kid was talking

00:24:07.280 about how his goal was to get more google images more results of himself on google images because

00:24:13.180 that made him feel like a grown-up basically so again it's it but again but mothers are blamed

00:24:20.300 it's just like you don't nobody because it plays in that narrative plays into these stereotypes

00:24:27.400 we have about women and shaming women and nobody wants to think about the bigger picture or do the

00:24:33.280 actual reporting on this topic they just want to like vilify mothers put a bunch of you know put a 0.97

00:24:38.740 bunch of stuff on like ascribe a lot of feelings to you know hundreds of thousands of kids that

00:24:46.040 that they've never interviewed and they sort of cherry pick like one or two people that like

00:24:50.560 yes had had way too much you know yes some parents by the way a lot of non-influencer parents right

00:24:55.860 like overshare boomers need to learn a lot about privacy on the internet but um but it's just yeah

00:25:03.540 i think i think that the reason just to answer your original question um that's never the focus 1.00

00:25:08.800 is because it's easier to blame women

00:25:13.140 and, you know, sort of everyone's favorite pastime. 1.00

00:25:17.460 It is everyone's favorite pastime.

00:25:19.240 And do you think that's also why mommy bloggers

00:25:21.480 consistently get written out of the history of the internet?

00:25:25.000 They just never get what they,

00:25:28.460 they never get the acclaim that they deserve

00:25:30.840 when it comes to the creation of the digital creator economy.

00:25:34.100 Why is that?

00:25:35.400 Yes. And by the way, I talked to a lot of,

00:25:37.580 I mean, I talked to many mommy bloggers themselves and their children who also were angry that their mother's work was never respected.

00:25:45.300 And it's it's it's horrible.

00:25:48.040 I think it's I mean, I just think it's straight up misogyny.

00:25:50.180 And like, look, I think people like, you know, there were certain people I know, Heather Armstrong has talked about this that did overshare and kind of didn't understand what the Internet would become and did sort of regret maybe the way they talked about their their husbands or their personal relationships or their kids.

00:26:04.460 we've all that's not a that's not a mommy problem that is a social media problem right we've all

00:26:09.980 had those moments online where we're like oh we probably shouldn't have shared that much right

00:26:13.260 um but i think yeah i think the reason they never get their due is because we fundamentally hate

00:26:18.500 women honestly and their work is not recognized no it's not it's not and that consistently happens

00:26:26.740 to you we talked about how it happens to you as a reporter touched on what happened with fox news

00:26:34.040 and the reporters there. But is it still continuing right now? What kinds of comments

00:26:39.180 and even threats do you get on a regular basis as a woman covering this industry? 0.96

00:26:45.480 Yeah. Also, one other thing I just forgot to say about mommy bloggers, because a lot of people 0.73

00:26:49.180 don't realize what those women did was very feminist. They were pushing back against this 1.00

00:26:53.760 patriarchal women's media ecosystem that didn't acknowledge things like postpartum depression. 0.93

00:26:58.960 And if it wasn't for mommy bloggers, we wouldn't have so much information like, you know, they normalize things like struggling to breastfeed, hating your husband, like not always loving your life as a mom, like second guessing, you know, like just they did so much to like move the conversation about motherhood forward and they deserve a lot more credit.

00:27:19.020 Anyway, I just had to say that.

00:27:20.220 They deserve all. They deserve all the credit. In fact, I mean, that was what the entire first season of Under the Influence was about, just the creation of the digital creator economy and how it was all all mom bloggers.

00:27:33.200 All right, let's say let's take a quick break. Let's take a quick break in celebration of mom bloggers.

00:27:37.760 We're all going to go. I'm going to go pour one out for the mom bloggers and we'll be back in a second with more Taylor Lawrence.

00:27:50.220 so when we left we were talking about how mom bloggers the original og mom bloggers deserve 0.90

00:28:06.440 so many accolades and how they got shit on by the rest of the internet and the rest of the world 0.98

00:28:12.120 i was asking you how you continue to be shit on by men and other women on the internet you must 0.99

00:28:20.080 have developed such a tough skin going through what you've gone through but is the hate continuing 0.99

00:28:25.000 oh of course i mean it's relentless it's but it's again it's it's so funny how it's all it

00:28:34.360 always based around my looks or my weight or my appearance or my age you know it's a lot of people

00:28:41.280 that are that are it's just they make very metagenistic attacks um and it's frustrating

00:28:46.560 as any woman that deals with it will tell you right you're like

00:28:50.080 you log on every day and you just read hundreds of messages and comments and dms and things where

00:28:58.460 people just say the most horrible stuff about you and you have to have an incredibly strong

00:29:04.000 sense of self to not let it affect you do you think that you've acquired that strong sense of

00:29:09.420 self how and how have you gotten it i am at a point where i don't read anything that people 0.58

00:29:15.040 comment um about i try not to read book reviews and i get i get a shit ton of hate i mean i've 0.94

00:29:22.080 got i've got people tell me i should be burned alive that my children should be taken away from 0.59

00:29:25.720 me do you look at it and just not care or do you not look at it yeah i definitely look at it because

00:29:32.440 um yes i definitely look at it because i i'm a reporter and so i need to kind of um basically

00:29:40.300 I have to respond to messages often there's like really important news tips or I'm trying to get

00:29:46.020 in touch with people so I do read almost every message um although there's a lot I it's hard to

00:29:51.920 keep up with everything but I read definitely like hundreds if not thousands of messages a day

00:29:56.060 um I don't know I you know again I have a very strong sense of self and I have a very strong

00:30:00.800 like offline network and you know when people say like I'm ugly or I'm you know old or whatever I'm

00:30:08.720 just like I'm you're not living in reality like I live or at least it's not affecting my reality

00:30:13.400 I live in LA like I have a great life I um I don't feel like that and that's not how I feel

00:30:20.960 about myself and so I just kind of I recognize it for what it is which is an attempt to tear

00:30:26.580 me down and an attempt to kind of do what happened to Julia right get get kick me off the internet

00:30:33.260 take away my voice take away my space and and i think that's it does work on so many women and i 0.87

00:30:39.200 don't i don't accept that because i think that's fucked up and i'm not gonna like cede ground 0.97

00:30:43.920 because all these people want to call me old and ugly even so what if i am old and ugly by the way 0.93

00:30:48.200 so what if i'm 80 and and like look not beautiful or something does that mean that my voice doesn't 0.98

00:30:53.640 matter that's so fucked up that's why i never respond with like these weird age conspiracies 0.91

00:30:57.980 where they're like, 0.99

00:30:58.540 she's secretly 47,

00:30:59.940 she's secretly 52.

00:31:01.200 It's like,

00:31:01.900 what if I was? 1.00

00:31:03.100 Shut up. 1.00

00:31:03.980 Wait, 1.00

00:31:04.200 there's age conspiracies

00:31:05.460 about you?

00:31:06.220 Are you kidding me?

00:31:06.940 That's like a huge thing.

00:31:08.260 Yeah.

00:31:08.480 No,

00:31:08.960 no,

00:31:09.260 no,

00:31:09.480 no,

00:31:09.620 no,

00:31:09.680 no.

00:31:09.900 How,

00:31:10.180 I need to know.

00:31:12.200 Oh yeah.

00:31:12.740 I need to know

00:31:13.780 the whole genesis of this.

00:31:15.200 When did this start

00:31:16.120 and what are the theories?

00:31:18.240 Well,

00:31:18.500 so originally,

00:31:19.400 again,

00:31:19.660 they thought,

00:31:20.060 they were saying

00:31:20.560 that I was in my 20s

00:31:21.580 and I was in my,

00:31:22.120 it was a girl in my 20s

00:31:23.440 and I was a young girl

00:31:24.360 in my 20s

00:31:24.980 and I was like,

00:31:25.980 no,

00:31:26.080 I'm not in my 30s and they were like actually she's secretly in her 40s or 50s and I think again

00:31:32.380 it goes back to this thing of like trying to make a woman seem older than she is because in these 0.95

00:31:36.720 people's misogynist ass minds being old is somehow like a sin you know it's not like oh I hope I live 0.97

00:31:43.860 long enough especially as somebody with health problems I'm like I hope I live to 50 or 60 or 0.99

00:31:48.220 whatever right like um but but to them it's like a way to discredit women because they can discredit

00:31:53.780 women's voices i mean i just am dying because like they're constantly saying i'm too old to

00:31:59.360 cover technology um as despite the fact that i'm the youngest um female tech column i'm the youngest

00:32:04.560 i think joanna stern are the youngest tech columnist period in the entire industry um but

00:32:10.040 you know there's most male tech columnists are in their 50s and 60s and they're never told to

00:32:15.740 see space online they're never told you know i love i don't even want to name them but there's

00:32:20.700 so many iconic journalists you know male tech journalists that write great pieces in their 0.84

00:32:24.420 60s also men are allowed to run the fucking country in their 70s and 80s 80s could you 0.92

00:32:30.720 imagine right whereas a woman is like past her prime or whatever right if she's if she's deemed 0.98

00:32:36.520 too old and it's misogyny it's it's just misogyny through and through well and look and and then as

00:32:43.060 you mentioned looks ism so so many of the influencers who i talk to it is their looks

00:32:48.680 that are constantly criticized.

00:32:51.120 I think it goes, I don't hear as much ageism.

00:32:54.780 I hear people criticized for their looks

00:32:57.400 and then people criticized for their mothering ability.

00:33:01.680 Yeah, which is also, I mean, again, I don't have children.

00:33:05.060 And I would never post them on the internet if I did.

00:33:09.000 But I, you know, yeah, it's, I mean, people love to judge mothers.

00:33:13.440 And fathers, of course, can do whatever they want.

00:33:16.320 fathers have never been judged since the beginning of fathers yeah nope nope not not a one not a one

00:33:22.160 i love wait do you know this girl clara bell um on instagram she has her instagram is hold on it's

00:33:29.680 i wrote about her before i'm obsessed with her um it's her instagram is well her name is clara brown

00:33:34.620 but her instagram is clara bell cwb okay no i don't know about her tell me you have to follow

00:33:41.520 her account i'm gonna i'm gonna follow her right now clara b cwb c-l-a-r-a-b-e-l-l-e c-w-b

00:33:48.660 she's also very funny on threads but she does these skits where she basically kind of role

00:33:53.260 reverses like you know mothers versus fathers in different situations and sort of has created 1.00

00:34:01.520 this like alternative world where like i guess it's like a matriarchy world and her tiktoks

00:34:06.800 and I just I love her content because I think it often sort of shows how how biased you know the 0.95

00:34:14.820 way we speak about parenting is oh my gosh okay I'm following she has two accounts she has Clara

00:34:20.060 Bell talks and then she has that she repost and then she has Clara Bell CWB and oh my gosh now

00:34:27.520 we're bringing everyone a new rabbit hole which usually the rabbit holes I give people are totally

00:34:32.460 shitty like the time i told everyone to follow ballerina farm and people hate me for it but this

00:34:38.220 is a good rabbit hole yeah she's great oh i'm so here for this i love it it's great um

00:34:45.980 maybe we'll even try to have her on the show oh yeah she's she would be wonderful she was an og

00:34:52.340 blogger back in the day too oh my gosh blogger yeah she's amazing she's really really amazing

00:34:58.760 person uh well who that brings me to something we like to ask ask our guests ask our guests

00:35:05.360 who are you happy to be influenced by right now like what are you enjoying what do how do you

00:35:10.860 personally curate your feeds for joy or can you even do that yeah I mean I have a great time

00:35:19.460 online every day I think like I um I mean I like to follow people that are funny like people like

00:35:26.520 clara that kind of talk about issues in a funny way i'm just open my instagram to see oh i love

00:35:33.300 this girl coco moco um i did her podcast recently she's an amazing content creator that so does this

00:35:39.620 like pop culture analysis um she's brilliant and her podcast coco coco moco see i you know the

00:35:47.180 internet is so vast how does anyone ever find anything i know we all have these like niche

00:35:53.320 little like people that we love you know um she's host of ahead of the curve with coco moco

00:35:59.920 podcast okay great it's really good okay i'm here for that i'm here for that it's coco moco

00:36:07.920 moco with an e at the end coco moco e yeah it's yeah coco m-o-c-o-e yeah um what have you learned

00:36:19.100 going on book tour for this book for extremely online which everyone should be buying right now

00:36:22.820 yes buy it um uh gosh i've just learned that like the book world is so archaic uh it's really funny

00:36:30.600 because i work in digital media obviously and like i'm used to those things happening at the

00:36:35.980 speed of the internet and the book world is very very slow slow it's slow man it is a slow burn

00:36:44.660 is what it is. My last question really is about TikTok. You have argued that TikTok is not going

00:36:53.660 anywhere, nor should it go anywhere, nor should it be banned, because it is actually a very net

00:36:59.100 positive in terms of a lot of things like activism and people being allowed to share views who

00:37:06.780 normally wouldn't have a voice. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

00:37:09.560 Actually, yeah, just to be clear, that's not why I don't think it should be banned. I don't think

00:37:12.840 it should be banned because we do not live in China and our government does not control

00:37:18.400 private enterprises or control the app store.

00:37:21.240 It would be an absolutely unprecedented thing to happen where suddenly the government can

00:37:26.820 revoke access to certain apps based on pretty arbitrary things, like basically no evidence

00:37:32.240 of wrongdoing.

00:37:33.640 The things that the government are accusing TikTok of in terms of just the data privacy

00:37:37.940 stuff, there is no evidence for what the government is alleging.

00:37:42.020 you know there's no proof I should say of what they're alleging and so I think it's yeah I think

00:37:48.300 it's a bad world where we suddenly start banning apps and also if you want to ban TikTok over these

00:37:54.440 alleged concerns about China then you would have to also ban tons of gaming companies and other

00:37:59.380 apps in the app store they're also Chinese owned so it's just it's a very sticky situation also a

00:38:05.900 lot as I reported at the time a lot of what was said about TikTok in the congressional hearings

00:38:10.460 when the CEO was called up to testify last year

00:38:13.360 was flat out misinformation. 0.93

00:38:15.520 It was like garbage news that said like, 0.99

00:38:20.560 oh, TikTok was irresponsible for children's deaths 0.98

00:38:23.480 or TikTok was doing X, Y, Z.

00:38:24.820 None of that stuff has been true.

00:38:26.080 I've reported many times how the news media

00:38:28.080 has spread complete lies about alleged TikTok challenges.

00:38:31.980 So that is why I think that there's not evidence of a ban.

00:38:37.180 There's not evidence, you know,

00:38:38.180 there's just not whatever they're alleging,

00:38:39.780 it's not there yet um regardless of that um tiktok is definitely a hub for activism and for speech

00:38:46.980 and it has become the primary communication tool for essentially a generation of americans

00:38:52.200 and um i do think that the the sort of rabid desire especially from the right to shut that down

00:39:00.500 um is terrifying i mean it's similar to what's happening with twitter where twitter was also

00:39:05.960 this space for activism and progressive politics and you had things like the black lives matter

00:39:10.760 black lives matter movement gaining so much power because of twitter or the me too i mean i don't

00:39:15.900 think me too would have been a thing without twitter um and so you see twitter playing the

00:39:20.540 key role in all these social justice movements and then you have elon musk buying it and essentially

00:39:24.740 shutting all of that down and um amplifying you know using the platform to amplify far-right

00:39:31.000 ideology so i think it's it's dark and i don't want to see that happen to another platform

00:39:37.380 i mean no and i i i totally agree even though i don't understand tiktok it's not okay to hate

00:39:43.100 the things that you don't understand something i'm telling myself um in in my old age tell

00:39:48.300 everyone how where they can find you and your book and follow you and your truly excellent

00:39:54.440 journalism yeah well you can find me on tiktok joe i'll help you understand it it's not too

00:39:59.340 complicated. Taylor, I'm trying. I'm trying. It breaks my brain and I want to understand it

00:40:07.800 better. I do because I want to I want to be a part of this attention economy. You would be you

00:40:14.040 would do really well, though, because you offer all of this really smart, like thoughtful analysis

00:40:18.020 and stuff. And that stuff does so well on TikTok. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Well, when we

00:40:22.740 get off, you have my email address. So tell me some TikTokers to follow. I will. Because that's 1.00

00:40:27.180 That's what I have the hardest time with.

00:40:28.440 I have the hardest time sourcing good videos. 0.99

00:40:32.140 I feel like I get served a lot of shit. 0.99

00:40:34.360 Yeah, don't worry. 0.99

00:40:35.460 You have to revamp your feed.

00:40:36.780 I will help you.

00:40:38.460 But I'm on, I forgot to answer your question,

00:40:40.680 but I'm on TikTok, Instagram, and now YouTube at Taylor Lorenz.

00:40:44.760 Everywhere except Twitter.

00:40:45.660 Don't follow me on there.

00:40:46.920 I mean, I don't even, I haven't tweeted since it became X 0.92

00:40:50.100 or whatever the fuck they're calling it these days.

00:40:51.820 I just, it's not even signed in on any of my devices 0.97

00:40:55.240 and I don't know the password, so it's over for me

00:40:57.440 because I'll never find that password.

00:40:59.160 It's done.

00:40:59.980 I think, and I think I signed up

00:41:01.240 with like my current TV address,

00:41:02.680 which is also a dead thing.

00:41:04.180 So there's no way to ever retrieve my Twitter account.

00:41:06.520 Sorry, Elon.

00:41:07.660 Good for you.

00:41:14.960 That's all I've got for you today, friends.

00:41:17.460 The future of the internet is not great.

00:41:22.740 I know that Taylor still believes in it,

00:41:24.660 but I just wish it would all go poof. Tomorrow, I do. That's what I would like to happen.

00:41:33.300 Thank you all for being here and listening to us. And, you know, go find a woman who is extremely

00:41:39.800 online today and say something nice to her. Because it doesn't happen enough. When people

00:41:45.860 comment, they usually say the mean, terrible shit. And, you know, I think we all just want 1.00

00:41:54.200 someone to say something nice. So that is your task. That is your task for today and this week,

00:41:59.360 and we will talk more very, very soon. Have a great day. You deserve it.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - November 27, 2023

The Hatred of Women on the Internet with Taylor Lorenz

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