December 8, 2022 • 52 mins
In the age of femcels, proud boys, groypers, and C.H.U.D.s, one reporter is striving to make sense of it all. Her name is Taylor Lorenz, and her beat is literally the entire internet and all of the strange people who inhabit it. When she’s not discovering the next new thing in influencer culture or shining a light on the dark patterns of misinformation, Taylor is fending off attacks by Tucker Carlson, terrible trolls who aren’t Tucker Carlson, and other assorted villains who are just rude online. Taylor and Josh go deep on the modern state of existing on social media, fighting for the future, and straying further from god’s light every day. Discussed: Chili, doxxing, context collapse, chili.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Hey, and welcome to What Future. I'm your host, Joshua
to Pulsky and today very special guests, very a very
special guest who has experienced a lot of intense online
harassment and which it does sound like something to tout,
but that is the reality. I'm Lyrah. As you know,
(00:37):
I've been thinking a lot about being online. It is
sort of one of my main things. It's possible to
my only thing. I'm starting to think maybe I don't
have any other things except being online. Who would I
be if I were not online? Happy? I'd be a
happy person. That's what I would be if I were
not online. Anyhow, I am a little bit fixated on
social media as of late because it's been such a
disgusting mass out there. And after talking to Kaye see
(01:01):
our guest today retweeted it and liked the post I
did about the Casey Show, and it's Taylor Lorenz, who
I don't know if do you know Taylor Lorenz? Are
you familiar with her writing at all? Yeah? I'm familiar
with her as being like a very sought after guests,
very sought after guests, very hot guests, but also like
an incredible journalist and who's responsible for like some really
really crazy stories, and and often when she writes something,
(01:26):
it is one it is like some huge deal like expose,
or like you've discovered some horrible thing about some person.
You're like, oh, this like famous troll, like now we
know who it is, or Nuke Gingrich actually has a
burner account that he's used to harass women or whatever.
It's like things like that, and people lose their minds
on the Internet and they go after Taylor, and from
(01:49):
what I can tell, seem to be making her life
a living hell. But like I thought, let's talk about
like this state of things on the Internet, because it
feels to me like it's so intense and overwhelming, particularly
for her. And as we're at this kind of inflection
point of this sort of change over in how I
feel like we're all living with and dealing with social media,
I think she's like a perfect investigator of this moment
(02:13):
in time and sort of like interrogator of the culture
of being online. And so not to build it up
too much, but our guest today is Washington Post writer
and brilliant journalist Taylor Lorenz. Taylor, I'm very excited to
(02:46):
be talking to you because there's a lot happening right
now in your world, which is the Internet. Actually, we
talked a little bit. There was a Twitter space. Sure
you recall this like a few weeks ago and you
were on it for a little bit. Do you recall
what I'm talking out or do I just sound crazy? Right?
Of course? I remember you came on and we started
talking about Twitter and other social networks. We talked about mastadon,
(03:07):
which is one of my favorite topics as of like
because I'm a huge nerd, and you said something to
me that I thought was so surprising and interesting considering
who you are and what you do. I don't want
to put words in your mouth back. You were basically like,
there's not enough trolls on Mastodon. Was like kind of
my uh takeaway? Would you say, would you say that's true?
(03:29):
You don't feel like there are enough like nasty elements
on like some of these new social networks. Uh No,
I wouldn't say nasty elements. But I do think that
it's overly sanitized. I don't think that there's enough sort
of creativity and free form discussion. I say that as
I'm like literally being canceled on Twitter. But I know
(03:51):
are you really, Oh my god, I'm joking. I like
fucked up and I like defended this like terrible person
because I didn't realize there are terrible now I did.
I competed my tweet, but of course someone screenshot at
it and it's like gotten thousands of likes on some
sweet calling me a monster, And you're like, that's what
you like? You're missing that when you're on Masodon, is
(04:12):
that there people aren't like mobbing you. No, I don't
like any of that. I don't like any of that.
But I guess what I do appreciate about Twitter is
like the serendipity of it and the kind of like
being exposed to new things and being challenged on things
like I do like that, Like I do you know
like how kind of big and messy it is and
(04:34):
Mastodon just feels too controlled. Yeah, it's definitely smaller. Right.
It reminds me of like not to get into a
masked on conversation because it was more like about your
perspective on this, which I find so interesting. And I'm reading, now,
what did you like retweet something about some chili story? Yeah,
well so like well, no, let me just explain in
(04:55):
like a few times it's lovely, kind woman made chili
her neighbors, and this like other person comes in and
basically accuses her of being a horrible person and being
racist or something because she made assumptions about her. That's crazy. Okay,
So so thousands of people pile on that deranged reply,
(05:18):
and I was like, do we really need to pile
on this like deranged person, Like clearly they're having a
bad day or there's some ship going on with them. Like,
I don't think that these dynamics are productive. I mean
the person who just sorry, just to be clear, the
person who was like this story about this woman making
chili is like racist or whatever. Right, You're like, don't
(05:38):
pick on that person. Well, my opinion of all of
that is just like block that person and like move on.
Like people say a lot of dumb shit on the website,
and not to say that they don't deserve pushback. In
this case, they did, but like, I don't know if
it's productive weeks later to be like, you know, harassing
them on off the internet. And what I didn't realize
(06:00):
is that person has actually harassed the chili woman. Um
and I say chili woman because I don't actually know
her full name, and I don't want to say her
Twitter handle, but she'd actually been been really cruel to
her for a while, So that was my bad. I
didn't know any of that. She had been cruel to
the Chili woman for a while. Yeah, she had been
harassing her for a while. Okay, So I feel like
some of this is a little bit like an extension
(06:22):
of there was a conversation that started maybe a day
or two ago on Twitter about the craziest thread that
you've seen on Twitter, like of how how illustrative it
is of how unwell everybody is, because these threads are
so like there's it's like there was a thread a
few months ago where somebody was like reading books as ablest,
Like it's not what they said, that's not what they said.
(06:44):
So this is a good example of exactly, Josh, they
didn't though, this is like this is the point is
that like, they didn't say that, And these really nuanced
discussions that people try and have, especially around disability in
their small in group of followers, often get taken out
of context, simplified and kind of made into a mockery.
(07:06):
And look, you know, and a lot of these people
that get piled on are like, you know, they're neurodivergent,
they're not you know, they're not necessarily communicating very well.
My feeling of that is, if they're not being problematic,
if they're not being bullies themselves, just let them have
their discussions and we don't need to dogpile people, especially
(07:27):
if they have like under a thousand followers, which you
know in some cases is the case. Like but this
this tweet was just to be clear, Sorry, the tweet
I'm talking about is this is the tweet and I
and if I misunderstand it, then it's again's Anna Mardal.
It's Anna Mardal. There's a threat going around mocking writers
who quote don't read very much, and I'm trying not
to haul out my soapbox, but this is able list.
Not everyone can read for pleasure or indeed at all,
(07:49):
and some of those people are writers. I think, yeah,
let me let me just like you know, let me try.
And there's actually a whole thread that I believe that
person who's also turned out to work for Lockeed Martin.
So I'm certainly not defending them. This is a person
who got then canceled because they're like, I'm a contractor
for Lockey Parker. And so again I really really trust me.
(08:10):
This is not me like defending this person or any
of these people. I'm just saying, like, you know, a
lot of these discussions, like somebody that is very dyslexic
as a writer has always struggled with reading, Like they're
not saying that reading is ablest, but I think they're
trying to open a discussion, albeit poorly, about you know,
(08:30):
writing and reading and the accessibility sort of nature of that. Right, Like, fine,
you know, obviously they're not communicating it. Well, obviously it's
easy to dunk on. Does that mean that that person
is to be subject to weeks of pylon? And like, no, no,
that's just crazy, definitely not right. And so first of all,
(08:52):
I was always team make chili for your neighbors always.
I always think that that is that woman is an
angel and lovely and a person attacking them was clearly
not you know, being very kind and whatever. But my
feeling is just as somebody that deals with a lot
of harassment is like, Okay, we don't need to like
necessarily destroy that other person's life. In this case, I
(09:14):
realized that person is actually a notorious stroll so I'm
not really going to go out of my way to
defend them, but right, but when they're not, sometimes people
don't word things correctly or word things perfectly, and I
don't know it gets picked up by some account, but
it is that that is like part of the problem
with Twitter, I mean social media kind of largely, but
it's really easy on Twitter. I mean Twitter is sort
(09:37):
of custom made for this sort of like one I
said something super dumb, maybe not even dumb, but like
I said something that was a poorly formed thought, or
I worded it badly, or I was having a bad day,
and so I kind of said it in a way
that was a little bit more aggressive or something. And
then immediately all of the tools of Twitter are like
not the people, but like the tools they provide are
(09:58):
like you could amplify it, and you can dunk on it,
and you can like screenshot it, and you can quote
tweet and you can do all these things that are
like make it very easy to generate that kind of
context free commentary about the thing. In fact, you and
I talked about this on Twitter a little bit. Um
you were talking about the quote tweet function and how
it's like not it's not automatically like a harassment function,
(10:21):
but it can be used that way. I mean you
were sort of like saying like it's not really that
big of a deal, and I agree, but people do
use it in a way that's like it feels like
it's sort of custom design sometimes for harassment. But a
part of that sort of sequence of events that we're
talking about, which the chili thing, and I don't know
the whole details of the chili thing. The poor the
(10:42):
poor woman that made the chili and has it into
even talk about her because she doesn't want any more attention.
This woman deactivated her account like she's been through such
a nightmare experience herself. She just made the chili for
her neighbors. She doesn't deserve any of this. This woman
literally like went out of her way to do a
nice thing and is being harassed by terrible people that
(11:03):
I think I inadvertently defended by just being like no harassment.
Like I just I'm always very wary when I see pylons,
you know, But so I'm actually looking the first thing
that came up, and now it's like a little bit older.
There's new tweets at replace that like Glenn Greenwalt is
tweeting about you or something because he's obsessed with you.
Oh never searched Taylor Lorenz on Twitter. Here's a tweet
(11:25):
about you. It is screenshotting a tweet. I believe it's
about the chili. I mean, you say, I said from
the start, the woman who made the chili, blah blah blah.
Then there's a person who says, well, chinche and I
don't know who that is, but is that maybe the
person who made the chili? I'm not sure. Had to
deactivate again as a direct result of Taylor her heads
talking out of her fucking ass about chili discourse. But
(11:46):
I guess that's fine because she has quote always been
on her side for real. Go fund yourself, Taylor, this
is a tweet. I know you don't even My whole
d M have been horrible. I'm getting hate mail. People
have tweeted me screenshots of personal details already. I mean,
(12:06):
this is just I'm getting another wave of harassment. So yes,
I wish I could deactivate. I mean I can't do that.
You could. If you can't, what would happen if you
were just like I'm deactivating, Then they win. They did
that and then Fox News called and know then then
it becomes a story. You are a huge target, like
Tucker Carlson constantly talks about you, right, he's obsessed with you.
(12:30):
I think we can say, um, you're a big target
for obviously right wing people because well you're a journalist
first off, and they hate that. Actually it's interesting, but
there's a whole genre of internet journalism which is like
applying basically the real journalistic sort of tactics that anybody
in media would use for any kind of story to
(12:51):
like a space that where they kind of don't know
that journalism exists a lot of the time. This is
what I see happening. It's like you'll write a story
and you'll, you know, name him the person who runs
some account, right, like I think, maybe did you do
a lips of TikTok thing it was something like this.
Of course, I I've found the woman behind it and
wrote about it. Lips of TikTok is an account that
(13:11):
harasses people basically like on Twitter and maybe also TikTok
I don't know, and you like, name to the person
is and people who don't know how journalism works and
don't know that like when you put yourself in the
public eye. You have absolutely there's really zero chance that
you should expect to not have your name out there.
Like if you're an actor and you're using a fake name,
(13:33):
someone's going to figure out what your real name is eventually,
because that's just how it works. And and they get
they're really mad because they're like, this is wrong. You're
like docks saying this person. But but you're just doing
like normal journalism, and people lose their ship and so
so like right when people get really upset about that,
Tucker Carlson gets really upset about it, and you're now
like a character, right like, and I don't know how
(13:54):
what this is like for you, but you're like a
character the people. Yes, oh my god, Now you made
me search myself often. I never searched myself because it's terrifying.
Like the top tweet is like Taylor Lawrenz is an irresponsible,
spoiled little ship that will defend libs of TikTok what
and then only someone I mean, these people, these like
you said, I'm just a character to them. I don't
(14:15):
have humanity. I mean, this is a problem with the internet.
And this is exactly what I was trying to say
with my original tweet, like although obviously it was defending
the wrong people, but it's like people just don't they
don't have any empathy for anyone, and they just they
flatten people down into characters in their little online world.
And it's well, I mean, this is so, this is
the thing that I find like unbelievable. I've had a
(14:36):
couple of moments on the Internet when people have piled
on me for a variety of reasons, some warranted, mostly
not warranted. But you're like, I mean, people are like
seriously badly harassing you online all day, like all day
every day, Like they're like, oh, okay, we can need
to pull somebody off the shell for harassment, Like there's
Taylor Lorenz. I have no idea what it's like. It
(14:57):
must be completely insane most of the time. But to
your point about empathy, don't you feel like we've just
designed a lot of systems that are like essentially big
comment threads, like the old school comment threads from the
original Internet that we you know, know and love and
that really like discourse on Twitter essentially amounts to this
(15:18):
sort of anonymous one notmanship of a comment thread, which
feels like generally unhealthy discourse. Right, you don't have to
agree with that, but I totally agree. And so do
you believe there's a type of social network that can
exist that doesn't end up like this? I mean, because
you've seen the worst of it? Is there a version
(15:39):
of this? Do you think that where it isn't like this? Yes? No,
God no, TikTok is ten times worse. Okay, I'm gonna
get into that in a second, But let me hear
your thoughts. You mean, I guess I'm such a optimist
about technology. I just I mean, yes, it's horrible, and
I think I've experienced the worst of it, which is
(16:01):
why I feel so badly for inadvertently defending some terrible
person that's harassing this lady that made Julie. I think
you're right that the tools that we have now are broken.
Twitter is fundamentally, you know, not a great tool set
to communicate. But I do think that there's value in
sort of connecting people at scale in certain ways and
(16:22):
allowing people to build community. And I don't think that
like these platforms are irredeemable. I think they're run by
sociopaths that don't care about these things. But like, you know,
it's it's not that we couldn't take this and build
a better system, and I guess that's what the goal
is of MASSED and on. It's just it's I think
it's not consumer friendly enough, right, Well, I agree with that.
(16:44):
I mean, the problem with this stuff is like the
balance between making it easy for everybody and making it
not unhealthy is like they're sometimes kind of at odds, right, Like,
it's kind of the easier you make things, the less
barrier to entry there is, the more quickly you ramp
up on people sort of abusing it. But it's amazing
to me that you can go through this stuff and
(17:08):
you know, and not just be totally demoralized and go
like I'm going to quit this right Like, I mean, look,
it's bad online for women generally, it's bad online for
reporters generally. But I feel like you experienced harassment at
a completely different level. I mean, I've definitely experienced the
worst of the worst of the worst and literally like
living it like you said, I mean every day and
(17:29):
today my bad because I really defended a really shitty person,
but never normally, you know whatever. I mean, the Glenn
Greenwald stuff today I don't even know what charge he made.
I just saw that Glenn Greenwald made like a crazy
board or whatever, like I don't know what you call it.
It's like the thing in a show when somebody's got
like the always sunny and they always funny in Philadelphia board.
It's weird because Glenn Greenwald used to be a kind
(17:50):
of amazing journalist. It's funny. It's like, you know, I've
seen the greatest minds of my generation where it's like
Matt Taibi, who is like now working for Elon Mosk
doing you know, the Twitter file or whatever, used to
be like a guy I see on like Bill Mahtin,
Bill Maher used to be kind of cool and like
looks like I'd see him go on the show and
I'd be like, woll, I'm not tas an awesome journalist.
And now it's just like weird and embarrassing. But anyhow,
(18:12):
Glenn Greenwall was obsessed with you. Yeah, I mean, I
just think Tucker and Glenn and all these people just
like you're mentioning. They take people, they make them into
avatars for everything that they want to rant against, and
then they you know, attack people for it. And I
just I think having been through that and living in it,
I just like when I see pylons on viral tweets,
(18:33):
like it just it makes my skin crawl and I'm like, no,
like wait a minute, everyone, like just relax, right, I mean,
you have a seat where you're kind of like, having
experience it, You're probably a little bit more sympathetic to
the person who's at the end of the pylon, right,
I mean, because you've been there. But sometimes those are
terrible people. I guess, which is like talks all the
(18:54):
way down. I think, yeah, yeah, Okay. Now, TikTok is
a social media platform that I have, you know, some
experience with. I am not a TikTok user. I actually
(19:16):
I kind of like try to avoid it, to be honest,
because I find what it does to be um, you know,
it's like candy. There's something about it that feels unhealthy
when I'm using it, like particularly unhealthy. You're seeing TikTok
is way worse than Twitter. You just said something to
that effect. Can you talk about like what is going
on with TikTok because I don't have a lot of awareness,
(19:36):
but it is not the stepping stone to a better
future for social media. Is that what you're saying. No,
TikTok is not the stepping stone. I mean I always
describe it as like you basically just took Twitter and
you combined it with YouTube drama and commentary channel culture,
and you meshed it together, and that's what we have.
So if you think quote tweets are bad, wait until
(19:57):
you get stitched. You know, explain for the novice TikTok user,
what is stitching. Yeah, it's basically like the TikTok version
of a quote tweet, where you kind of grab a
clip from someone's video and then you can make a
reaction to that. Right. I've seen people doing this where
they're sort of like responding to the things that the
person says in the video. Yeah, it's a lot more effort, though,
(20:17):
don't you think like it's like you have to like
think of production value. Oh god no, I mean trolls
on there don't care. They just get on and start
ranting about you, and they'll quote tweet anything. They'll take
a sentence that you set out of context. And and
the thing is to like, as you know, there's no
mercy for anyone online. There's no forgiveness, there's no damn
I fucked up. Sorry about that. It's like you must
(20:40):
pay and we will not be happy until you run
yourself off the internet, which is very Keywie Farms. You know,
like there's group think, right, and the crowds of people
will often follow, you know, whoever is the loudest voice
or whatever, and you end up with a mob. You know,
the feeling of wanting to participate in that and like
to grab a pitchfork and like whatever. March up the
hill does not do anything for me, but for a
(21:02):
lot of people, it's really satisfying, right to like have
that moment of I don't know, I actually don't know
what it is like as a person who has been
on the receiving end of it, Like is it is
it hate? Is it envy? Like it's pure, it's it's hate,
it's envy, it's anger, it's everything. I mean, I'm just
literally just looked at my Twitter applies in this person
(21:23):
with you know, almost thirty followers is yelling at me,
and you know, I think it's, like you said, it
is based human nature. I guess it's like it's like
this this like mob justice mentality, um, and I just
think it's toxic to feed into that in any form,
and yet you have to keep dipping back into these
(21:46):
waters because you do it for like a living, Like
you cover this for a living, right, I mean there
is this weird thing that's happening where you're reporting on
the thing and then you're in the thing, right yeah,
which which seems almost like, I don't know, you don't
ever just think about quitting, like they couldn't even talk
to you if you weren't there. Well, sure, but no,
(22:07):
because I guess, I mean, I just think about what
my life was like before the Internet, and I never ever, ever,
ever would want to go back to that. I mean,
that's worse than anything that I deal with today, in
my opinion. Yes, I mean I can't imagine it so bad?
Was your life before the internet was bad? Yeah? I
was miserable. I mean I was deeply, deeply, deeply depressed.
(22:29):
Like I can't I that would be the worst thing
to go back to no Internet. I just I don't know.
I mean, it's bad now, but I think what what's
better is there's also all of this positive that comes
with it. Right, You're not only getting the bad every day,
You're getting a lot of good. And I think It's
like I don't want to give up that good no
(22:50):
matter how much bad comes with it. For now. I mean,
to hear that from you is like kind of amazing.
I think about Elon Musk as such a strange like
I can't understand it because he's like the richest man
in the world or used to be before he bought Twitter.
And if I were the richest man in the world
and I was like, I'm going to go to Mars
and I'm gonna make electric cars or whatever, I would
(23:11):
never tweet, like I would not go online. Well, like,
why would you go online? You know it was a billionaire, Josh,
I wouldn't be online. To be clear, I'd be okay,
right right. I'm not saying that you have the luxury,
but I do find it interesting. Like I mean, is
there no version of this where you don't ever look
at Twitter? And you're not looking This is exactly what
(23:32):
got me into trouble today, Josh, is that I didn't
pay attention. I I honestly, I didn't go that deep
into the chili discourse, and had I gone that deep,
I wouldn't be getting all this bad lash. It's like,
if I don't know every single niche drama niche nuanced
that I get crucified for not knowing and and it
is on me to know. But the chili discourse, which
(23:52):
incredible that we're even talking about the chili dis We
need to stop because I don't want people bothering this woman. Well,
you've already like stepped in it, so I think it's okay.
You know, this is like maybe if people listen to this,
they'll be like, Okay, she really did feel bad about
that tweet that she did because she wasn't like hadn't
read all of the discourse, but like the chili discourse
does not matter right, like in the world and the
grand scheme of our lives. Well, yeah, can I just
(24:14):
push back on that? Is I think that these things
are actually indicative of important ideas. I mean, that's what
I liked about Rebecca Jennings piece, which is what made
me weigh into all of this to begin with. I
do think that to write about technology from the user side,
which is what I do, you have to be a
user yourself. Like I mean so much, so much of
what I've been through has really deeply informed my reporting.
(24:38):
And also people know that they can trust me because
I understand things um in that way. Yeah, But I mean,
do you do you think the chili discourse is important?
I think that we're reaching a point where these dog
piles are getting pretty frequent, and I think that we
should have a conversation about whether they're productive or I
(25:00):
personally think they're not productive. I don't think that this
woman should be dog piled right for making chili. Well,
like Rebecca Jenens, who's an amazing reporter reporting on like
the culture of the Internet, she actually references another one
of these sort of dog piles, which is about this
woman who tweeted that her and her husband like sit
out in their garden and have coffee and talk and
(25:21):
she loves it, and then people were like, fuck you,
how dare you say you enjoy having coffee with your husband.
What Rebecca very aptly points out, which is exactly mean.
Rebecca makes the point I like linked her Be's a
hundred times because I'm like Rebecca me at this point
better than me. But what she points out is that
like that there was only a couple of those replies,
(25:42):
but people go searching for those replies to get outraged
about and then make content about, like can you believe right.
I mean, I don't know if you remember the SNL character,
the Debbie Downer character, but we live in a kind
of like sea of Debbie Downers. Like it is kind
of like I mean, but like Josh, like those people
(26:03):
are often getting bullied. Those people are clearly miserable, like
clearly sure, yes, people who are mean to other people
are often bullied. They're not necessarily mean to people. They're
not even being mean. A lot of times they're just like, hey,
can you consider X Y Z? Is that inappropriate? Sure?
Kind of it's it is crazy now, it is crazy.
You're like, I enjoyed this movie. And then someone's like,
(26:23):
you're a fucking idiot for like in that movie, I
hate you. I hope you die. Not with these people
are saying no, they're not okay, but they are saying
stuff like someone's like, okay, I love to sit with
my husband drink coffee, which is totally innocuous, Like that's
great if you like to do that. I think that's wonderful.
And people's responses are like, oh, that's nice for you.
While I have to work like three shifts at my
job and do X, Y and Z, and like I'm
(26:45):
glad you're enjoying your life, and it's like sure, like
everybody's life is different, and like you definitely can feel
shitty that you don't get to like sit in the
garden with your husband, which honestly the whole thing sense.
You know, it's really fucked up, Josh. But you know
what's really started RUP is that people then screenshot that
reply from that random, miserable, you know, person that's clearly
(27:05):
a sad place, and then tens of thousands of people
will docs and harass that person for weeks. That's what
It's all very unhealthy. What the whole the whole system
is very unhealthy. Like I actually feel like we have
discovered areas of the Internet that are not great in
areas of humanity, that make no sense for us, Like like,
(27:29):
here's the deal the woman who loves to sit outside
with her husband and drink coffee or whatever, Like I
don't know who the message was for. I mean, did
I need to ever hear it? I'm not sure that
that's the case. Did you need to hear it? I
don't know if that's the case. The people who are
agitated by it because they don't have the same kind
of luxury in life. Did they need to hear it?
I'm not sure that's the case. And then on the
flip side of it is like, did we need to
(27:50):
hear their agitation? With the first thing, It's like we're
not supposed to think out loud all the time, right
to large groups of people. And so I think there's
this like fundamental damage that's been done to us as
as human beings that we think a natural order of
things is that when you think something anything, you say
(28:11):
it to this larger group of people as possible, and
then you wait for the replies to roll it. Like
there's no historical precedent for anything like that for humans, right,
Like I think we're emotionally and mentally falling apart because
of it. And I say this, by the way, as
I could not be a bigger fan of the Internet,
you will have met no person who was more of
(28:31):
a proponent of the internet would be like in the
earliest days or even in the later stages of it,
even like I mean, I wrote this thing about the
Internet at the beginning of the pandemic, like about how
great the Internet is because think about all of the
ways it was like useful to us Honestly, the pandemic
would have been fucking crazy if the Internet didn't exist, Like,
there are so many things that would have been Obviously
it was crazy for all sorts of reasons. But I mean,
(28:53):
the pandemic, the the ongoing pandemic. It's so there are
still good things. But I guess my point here is, like,
I think it's interesting that you have a ton of
empathy for the person who is like the shitty person
in the exchange or like the other shitty person, for
both sides of it, because I think because I've been
(29:14):
through it so many times and I just know how
these pylons go, that I just again, it's just and
I'm probably maybe I'm too brain poisoned in in that
way now where I have empathy for the trolls. Clearly,
I'm clearly I'm like empathizing with some monster this morning.
And but I agree with you, Josh. I mean, I
think context collapse is a huge problem on Twitter. And
(29:34):
one thing that I've always said, although these people love
to claim that I want, you know, censorship and stuff,
no that's not true. I mean what I want, and
I've always said, is like the ability to segment our
audiences more. I mean, so much of this is that
context collapse, like who are you posting that? More? Probably
just your little following, right or maybe you know you
(29:54):
don't need it or mean for it to even be
sucked into that. But the way the networks are designed
is you want maximum audiens, right, like like wait, listen
you're on? I said, I was talking to Casey last
week on masteredon, which you're like, I don't even like masteredon.
You have like sixty thousand or maybe more now, like followers,
which is a ton. I haven't seen very many people
(30:15):
on mastadon with and like hardly any followers, and it
clearly is it works in a different way, like getting
followers is different than on Twitter, but like you have
a big following there, you wouldn't want to just be
followed by like ten people that you're close friends, right,
Like that doesn't make any sense almost now, I just like,
oh my god, what the funk? Who are these people?
How are you getting eighty thou followers? Oh my god, no,
(30:38):
you do. It's incredible. There's things that I really like
about masteredon. I think the norms are different on there,
and people have more space to express themselves like Twitter
is bad. And also now we have a CEO of
setting a terrible example himself, So I don't think it's
gonna necessarily get better. I have to get I've got
to get rid of my Tesla that I at least
because embarrassed to drive it. You have a Tesla, Well,
(31:00):
this is the funny thing, is like, when I've got
the Tesla, I was like, Elon Musk is like, you know,
he's kind of got a little rough round the edge,
but it seems like a pretty interesting guy in this
car seems pretty great, Like there weren't a lot of
options for electric cars, and I didn't want to get
another gas car. And now when I drive it, I
feel like, I mean, my car has been spit on
by people while I'm driving for the record, Like my
car got spit on by a guy randomly the other day. Uh,
(31:24):
I'm assuming because it's a Tesla. I mean, I don't
think I was driving in any way that was particularly
erratic or something. So now I'm like, how do I
get rid of this? But like you know, Elon Musk,
I would love for him to concentrate on the Teslast.
I don't know why he's interested in Twitter it doesn't
make any sense to me, Like I am, I am
so perplexed as to again, this is what I'm saying
(31:45):
about the billionaire, Like you could do anything. Why are
you down here with us in this like garbage pile?
You know, Like I had to use Twitter because I
was like, I'm a journalist, and we were all on
Twitter because that's where all the journalists were. And then
like you've auntually you can find like stories and talk
to people and do whatever. But it's like he doesn't
have to be there. He didn't have to buy it.
(32:05):
I mean, I guess eventually he did have to buy it,
But I mean, but it's all ego and culture war.
Stephanie's clearly been red tiled. Literally, by the way, as
I'm talking to you here, I just saw you just
(32:27):
retweeted something you retweet live while we're talking. We're just now, Yeah, well,
I just gotten alert that somebody tagged me, so I retweeted,
you're so online you can't even take forty minutes for
a podcast. Okay, I think I know It's fine. I
don't care. Believe me. I literally you can see both
my hands now. I just I wanted to support the
podcast that my friend at me. I like the fact
(32:50):
that you are authentically being yourself. You're online, You're on
Twitter right now. Here's the thing, Okay, I want to
have a couple of questions for you. I want to
know if you to rank the harassment you've experienced, Like,
what was the thing that triggered the worst harassment you've
experienced in your career? Do you have like a top pick?
Oh god, um, I don't know. I mean, Pautie Pie
(33:13):
made a video about me like years and years and
years and really and yeah, he was mad because I
said something about Mr Beast. I just remembered that because
that was one of the few times that people really
started targeting my family and and that that was like
memorable to me as like a turning point where I
was like, oh my god, because people would harass me
(33:34):
before that. And then ever since then, it's just been
NonStop stuff with my family and friends, really anyone I've
ever had with on Instagram. Yeah, I mean Pautie Pie is.
And what's interesting to a put Pie is that I
think a huge segment of his audience is like young,
very young people, Like it's pretty popular with teens. I
have no beef with Pautie Pie. I actually think he's
(33:57):
he can be very funny his audiences children, as you mentioned,
And I think that these YouTubers, you know, the Jake
Paula's also have you know, done a lot of crazy stuff.
It's like, I don't that kind of harassment doesn't bother
me because it's children and I can read it and
just be like, Okay, an eleven year old wrote this message, right,
Oh god, it makes me feel bad for the eleven
(34:17):
year old though, Like I get depressed, I mean hearing
about that. Like I understand, like you know, there's there's
always some element of this in the world, but it
does feel like we've just created this system where like
what is that? I mean, when I started blogging back
the old taste, when there were no cars and I
had to walk through several miles of snow to get
to the blogs. Uh, But when I started blogging, like
(34:42):
it was very clear to me that there was some
element on the Internet that, like fanboys is what we
would have called them, like an end gadget or whatever,
where they were so into something, they were so driven
by this love of this thing that it that it
made them do unusual things, right like unhealthy thing. I
think I got like something like I made a death
(35:03):
threat to me because I reviewed a Windows phone or
something that like I gave it a bad review. This
is like two thousand eight or something, you know, like
someone was like, I'm going to come to your house
and kill you because you don't like this phone or something.
And I'm like, it's such an extreme and unusual behavior.
And I don't think they were kidding. I mean, they
were not serious, but I don't think that their emotion
(35:23):
was like I'm making a joke. I think they were like,
I'm really mad at this person. And you cover this
stuff so much so you see it firsthand. We've created
it this unhealthy environment. And I guess, like, do you
ever think about just getting a different job, like as
it has effort? Like you're very talented, you're very smart,
you're very accomplished, You've done amazing work in the world
(35:44):
of journalism. Do you ever think like, I'm just gonna
fucking get a PR job or something, or like, uh,
I don't know what would you do? What would the
next job be if it wasn't journalism. I think about
that a lot. I Mean, the thing is is I
feel like the reason I have this job is because
I want to affect the media, and I care about
media a lot, and I I feel like when people
(36:04):
don't understand the Internet, really bad things happen, right, And
I think we need to understand the world around us.
My whole goal for a long time was just getting
people to do to take this beat seriously. I think
there's so many amazing reporters like you mentioned Rebecca, and
you know there's others on my beat as well that
are just like phenomenal reporters. So it's not like I
quit and the beat dies. But I do think that
(36:26):
I care a lot about my work. I mean, yeah,
sometimes I think maybe I'll just go back to doing
social media strategy. I could definitely make more money, and
it would be great to pay off some debt. I
think of all you've learned. I think of all you've
learned of the last decade or whatever, of of of
like writing the insane waves, of of of what you've experienced.
(36:46):
But whatever, we only have one life, you know what
I mean, You might as well just like do what
you want and try to affect the world in some
way or change the world in some way, like I
want to change the media industry, so I met as
well work at it. You know, do you have a
lot of distressing techniques that you because like there have
been a couple, like I said, a couple of times
when I've experienced like really directed harassment. But this is
(37:10):
like it's so overwhelming, Like do you ever disconnect from this?
Like how do you disconnect from it? I mean, I
think in was like a bad year for everyone. Um,
you know, I lost several friends to suicide and it
was really hard, and like the pandemic you know, kicked off.
I'm severely immunocompromised, so that's been a nightmare. Like all
(37:31):
this stuff has been bad. And definitely if you ask
me in like, I did try to quit my job actually,
and my editor talked me out of it. But but
now I'm just like whatever, the worst that's going to
happen has happened a million times over to me, and
that is very freeing. So you know why I quit now,
(37:52):
I mean, I've already been through all that. But to
answer your question, distress, I mean, yeah, I'm very, very
very strict about keeping my personal life off the internet.
So I have a personal life like with friends, and
I do things in l A and like I it's
never online and never will be online, and I have
friends that respect that. You're right, Like your Instagram is
(38:15):
not like pictures of you and your friends doing stuff, right,
It's like it's still like just kind of online stuff.
I mean, maybe you have a secret Instagram. I don't know,
but it's like I have like thirty Instagrams. People can
find every one of my instagrams. You won't find any
of those photos because it's not something that I participate in.
I don't I don't like the pair of social stuff.
I don't want people who follow me to develop a
(38:35):
par of social bond because I think it's unhealthy and
I just I think having that strict boundary even and
having a strong sense of self Like ironically, I think
the people who really helped me deal with managing all
of this and being in the public eye are people
that are sort of way more famous and regularly see
themselves kind of reflected through this like bizarrow world version
(38:58):
of yourself, like on the Internet or in the media.
Like that used to be really disorienting and it uster
really funk with my head and I'd want to get
online and defend myself and be like, no, that's you
have it all wrong. And now I kind of, you know,
I'm at peace with it, and you're just like whatever,
they're going to think what they're gonna think, and it
doesn't matter what I say. Yeah, I mean I think
there you have to take some steps to like manage
(39:20):
your reputation. But like it doesn't affect me the way
that it affected me two years ago. Right, Okay, we're
pretty much at time, but I mean, god, we could
talk for so much longer, but talking about this stuff,
I do have one question, Well maybe it's like one
ish question, Like I feel like one of the things
you're really really good at, like if we can just
talk about things that aren't like super unpleasant, like people
who are asking, you're really good at like seeing trends,
(39:43):
like trend lines of things that are happening, like and
I think actually one of your greatest assets as a
reporter and as a journalist is to look at all
of this sort of insanity and all of this chaos
and go, this thing here is important and we need
to pay attention to it. Or this is a thing
that's how being good and bad. But it's like influencer culture,
for instance, like the boom and I say it's the last.
(40:06):
I mean, I'm gonna we call it five ish years, right,
I mean, obviously there's YouTube and stuff, but like the
rise of TikTok and Instagram and this whole sort of
like economy and culture around influencers which has so many
ways of being expressed, and you were I feel very
very early in observing that or in talking about it,
this is my long window way of getting to an
(40:26):
actual question what is the next thing? Because influencer culture
is kind of like weirdly waning or I don't know,
it's like feels like it's weakened. I think it's I
think it's just more distributed now, it's more distributed, but
but undeniably we're moving towards the more fractured and fragmented
media environment in a lot of ways. Do you see
(40:48):
anything forming? You know, is it is it some other
mutation of influencer culture? Yeah? You know, like what is it? Like?
What is the next thing? What I think is that
we're at an inflection point. And maybe you feel like
this too, Like I feel like we obviously, like the
(41:10):
early were the rise of digital media, and we were
all so excited about the Internet, and we all had
these positive feelings and then it all kind of came
crashing down, you know, and everyone's like, oh, no, disinformation,
da da da da um. But I also think we're
all just getting more and more online, and I don't
think that's gonna change at all. Like I think that
the Internet. No, you think we're getting more online. You
(41:33):
feel like that's the trend line. Yeah, I think we're
gonna have like computers in our brains in like thirty years.
That's definitely possible. I mean sure, I mean obviously the
logical progression is like brain implants or something, though I
think we're pretty far away from that. I if you
had asked me that, I would say, I feel like
the trend line is like people are backing away from
(41:53):
being online and like starting to go like maybe I
don't actually need this. No, well not to say like no,
um my prediction. Let me quote tweet you false. Um.
You're right that people are backing away from these open,
broadcast based social platforms. I think that the era of
(42:13):
us posting that we're a brunch to the entire world
is definitely going away. I mean, I think people are
retreating into private communities. That's been a trend that's been
documented for years. Um so I do. I do think
that's happening. But I don't think that our world is
getting less networked or you know, things are becoming less online,
especially post well not we're not post pandemic, but since
(42:35):
the pandemic started. I think that accelerated so many of
those shifts. And yeah, there's like a slight retraction with
some of it, but not really like it pushed us
forward so many years that even if it's two steps
forward one step back, like we're still moving that way. Yeah.
I mean, even like delivery culture, the way it's changed
in the past three years or four years or whatever
(42:57):
has been not like just been. I mean, you don't
even think twice now about like having your groceries delivered,
where like I think if you go back four years ago,
most people weren't even thinking about it right, Like they
would never even consider it. But what's so interesting about
that is it's like utilities in a way that are
very online, that are connected to like our phones and
are you know, laptops or whatever, but are not It's
(43:20):
not the same thing. I mean to your point about
people going into these like smaller communities. I think that's
really interesting, or more personalized communities, and that not again
not to talk about mascodon, but that is one of
the things I think is interesting about this idea of
a decentralized social network. I thought, for sure I wouldn't
want to get joined another social network, but I do
think there's something interesting about like downsizing the social sphere.
(43:43):
And I've talked about this a bunch of this podcast
because it's on my mind all the time. Where you've
got like people talking about Twitter being this like town square,
like Global town Square. It's like, I think people are
realizing that, like they don't want that, and but there
is some social connection they want and how do you
get at it? And I don't know that anybody's figured
out like the killer app for that yet. You know,
(44:04):
it's like it is it my message? No, I think,
I mean, I do think it's things sometimes it's things
like TikTok that allow for more segmentation, and it's not
on the there's no burden on the user to define
their own you know, it's kind of self selecting, like, hey,
this is content you're interested in, These are people you're
interested It puts you inherently into these niches and then yeah,
I mean, and then of course group chats and discord
(44:26):
and things like that. For sure, I loved Ian Bogos,
who I used to work with it The Atlantic, wrote
a great piece about the end of social media. I
don't know if you read it, but I haven't. But
I'm a big fan of anybody where that starts with
the end of blank. I'm always having written some of
those myself. It's a good it's a good history. He's
very smart about it all. I agreed with him. I
wrote a similar piece and I killed my piece because
I thought he wrote it better than me. Yeah, Like,
(44:48):
it'd be cool if social media ended. I think that'd
be great. I agree with you. I think, like these
big broadcast social platforms are really bad um in a
lot of ways, and I think they should not function
the way that they function now for sure, But they're
valuable for other reasons. And I don't think that we
should lose spaces to connect with people in mass if
that's what we're trying to do. But imagine we found
(45:11):
a better way to do it. Like, imagine there was
something else that came after this, and people are like,
oh wait, I've been screaming to people online for no reason,
Like I spent all this time yelling and I didn't
have to. I think that would be really lovely. I
just can't wait to see what happened. I was just
gonna say, like, the reason I love my job and
I love covering all this stuff is I'm sure you
(45:31):
do to Josh. It's like you get such a front
row seat to all of these shifts, and it's so
fun to get to talk to people, and it's it's interesting.
I mean, I do still love the Internet, but I
feel such a sadness now so often that like we
haven't done more. It feels like, you know, we have
spent so much time and energy and and it's like
(45:53):
it's so much of it has gone so gone bad.
But but I will say, talking to you, a person
who has received an enormous amount of harassment and hatred
and and just frankly rudeness all over the Internet, the
fact that you can continue to have what I would
describe as an optimistic viewpoint about the very things where
like your harassment has taken place is honestly, like it's
(46:16):
very inspiring. I have been feeling lately, you know, am
I just a little bit too JOm and gloom about everything,
But I don't know you're giving me. You're giving me
a potentially a feeling of hope, because if you haven't
been beaten down, and maybe there's hope for us all.
It's like that meme, you know that meme of the
kid on the school bus and he's like there's a
one guy looking out the at the dark side, and
(46:38):
I like the one where it's like they both say
like everything is terrible or something, and it's like the
one guy's like everything is terrible to the other person's
like everything is terrible. That's how I feel. Wow, that's
you're the everything is terrible with exclamation marks, is what
you're saying. Taylor, thank you so much for taking time
to do this. I really have enjoyed this conversation. I
really appreciate you taking time out of your I mean,
(46:59):
you probably were there about to file a story that
will lead to harassment, or you may have missed out
on some harassment during this conversation. Um, but I really
appreciate you taking the time and I hope that you'll
come back and we can figure out if like the
next thing happens and then you can tell us all
about why it's why it's either good or very bad.
So thank you, yeah, thank you so much for having me.
(47:29):
Uh well, that was fascinating. I'm I'm so surprised at
Taylor's attitude towards some being online. I mean, if I
were her now, I've again, I've received only a small
amount of harassment by comparison, but I would crumple like
a wet newspaper and that would be it for me.
I mean, if you've, if you've looked at at the
(47:50):
kinds of stuff that people are saying to Taylor on
a daily basis, Like literally Tucker Carlson makes her like
the point of his monologue. Sometimes it's so unhealthy. I
mean not not I'm not saying she's being unhealthy, but
like there's so much unhealthy stuff that's like thrown at her.
It's hard to believe and imagine being able to like
(48:11):
face that then go yeah, I'm gonna keep going, so
like what backbone? What resolved? Resilient, resilience, unbelievable, I mean
never the last she persisted, I think is really what
I wanted to say. There, Um, you coined that, right,
that was my original phrase, Um, that's my thing about
all the ladies fighting the good fight. You don't see
(48:34):
those shirts a lot anymore. You don't see that. Nevertheless,
she persisted, No, it was pretty trendy. Yeah, but anyhow,
that was It's super interesting. I mean, I know we've
talked a lot about social media lately because it's just frankly, look,
since the world didn't blow up, there was no red wave,
you know, in fact, there's like an extra democratic senator
as of last night or whatever. You know, news has
(48:56):
been kind of quiet, and Twitter has been a disaster,
and there's all times of nasty social media stuff going on.
But Taylor is so she's such a unique character in
the mix because she is one of these reporters who
and there aren't that many of them who they report
on this stuff. They're very i mean, her reporting is
(49:17):
very very good and smart and get stuff that people
never see in a million years until like she illustrates it.
But then she's also in it. She's like in the
stuff that she's talking about, Like she is there online
with the people she's reporting on, and like she's not
flying in and there's like ten thousand foot view like
the way like a traditional journalist would might go to,
you know, cover the strike at the coal mine or whatever,
(49:39):
but like, you're not working in the coal mine. You're
not like you don't live in West Virginia or whatever.
You go and do the story and then you leave
and then you don't encounter any of that. But this
is like she's literally like, well, I went to report
on the strike in the coal mine, and then I
went down to the coal mine and started like hammering
away at the coal or whatever it is they do
in the coal mine. I assume there's some kind of
mining that goes on, and Uh, that takes it. I mean,
(50:02):
it just takes a kind of I don't know resolve
that I don't feel like like if somebody was like,
you're gonna break the biggest story about the worst trolls
on the Internet and you're gonna get super famous for it,
and someone's gonna want to give you a book deal
and you're gonna like make a movie out of it,
I think I would definitely pause and maybe say I
(50:23):
don't want to do that, because you would become a
lightning rod for some of the worst like hate that
you can possibly imagine. And so yeah, it takes a
special kind of fearlessness to do it. And Taylor's got it.
Taylor's got it in spades. I can't get in touch
with that. If anything, I I mean, my dream is
to retreat to the woods, as you know, to get
(50:45):
my axe and to just start chopping away at the
at the wood, all of the wood that I can
get my hands on. This is a classic like New
York media guy fantasy. It's like cutting wood building fires.
I love doing that. Um, I've been having this like
thing with my trash. Have I told you about my
trash problem? No. I moved my trash cans outdoors because
(51:08):
I didn't want them in because they were in my
garage originally, and I wanted to put them outside. And
so I have this thing that I built where it's
got a lid, and I put the trash cans in it,
and I'm like, that'll be fine. The raccoons will never
get in there. And they did get in there, and
they like chewed like I had plastic trash cans. They
basically chewed the lids of the trash cans to the
point where they looked like a cookie that like somebody
(51:30):
had taken like a chunk out of like plastic, you know,
did they eat the plastic? I don't know, because like
there's no plastic scraps anywhere. And so they like found
a way to get into my trash cans. And then
they were eating, they were pulling the trash cans out.
Then I put a barrier into they can pull them.
And they were going into the trash cans and they
were eating inside and drawn and it's like and then
Hey, and welcome to What Future. I'm your host, Joshua
to Pulsky and today very special guests, very a very
special guest who has experienced a lot of intense online
harassment and which it does sound like something to tout,
but that is the reality. I'm Lyrah. As you know,
(00:37):
I've been thinking a lot about being online. It is
sort of one of my main things. It's possible to
my only thing. I'm starting to think maybe I don't
have any other things except being online. Who would I
be if I were not online? Happy? I'd be a
happy person. That's what I would be if I were
not online. Anyhow, I am a little bit fixated on
social media as of late because it's been such a
disgusting mass out there. And after talking to Kaye see
(01:01):
our guest today retweeted it and liked the post I
did about the Casey Show, and it's Taylor Lorenz, who
I don't know if do you know Taylor Lorenz? Are
you familiar with her writing at all? Yeah? I'm familiar
with her as being like a very sought after guests,
very sought after guests, very hot guests, but also like
an incredible journalist and who's responsible for like some really
really crazy stories, and and often when she writes something,
(01:26):
it is one it is like some huge deal like expose,
or like you've discovered some horrible thing about some person.
You're like, oh, this like famous troll, like now we
know who it is, or Nuke Gingrich actually has a
burner account that he's used to harass women or whatever.
It's like things like that, and people lose their minds
on the Internet and they go after Taylor, and from
(01:49):
what I can tell, seem to be making her life
a living hell. But like I thought, let's talk about
like this state of things on the Internet, because it
feels to me like it's so intense and overwhelming, particularly
for her. And as we're at this kind of inflection
point of this sort of change over in how I
feel like we're all living with and dealing with social media,
I think she's like a perfect investigator of this moment
(02:13):
in time and sort of like interrogator of the culture
of being online. And so not to build it up
too much, but our guest today is Washington Post writer
and brilliant journalist Taylor Lorenz. Taylor, I'm very excited to
(02:46):
be talking to you because there's a lot happening right
now in your world, which is the Internet. Actually, we
talked a little bit. There was a Twitter space. Sure
you recall this like a few weeks ago and you
were on it for a little bit. Do you recall
what I'm talking out or do I just sound crazy? Right?
Of course? I remember you came on and we started
talking about Twitter and other social networks. We talked about mastadon,
(03:07):
which is one of my favorite topics as of like
because I'm a huge nerd, and you said something to
me that I thought was so surprising and interesting considering
who you are and what you do. I don't want
to put words in your mouth back. You were basically like,
there's not enough trolls on Mastodon. Was like kind of
my uh takeaway? Would you say, would you say that's true?
(03:29):
You don't feel like there are enough like nasty elements
on like some of these new social networks. Uh No,
I wouldn't say nasty elements. But I do think that
it's overly sanitized. I don't think that there's enough sort
of creativity and free form discussion. I say that as
I'm like literally being canceled on Twitter. But I know
(03:51):
are you really, Oh my god, I'm joking. I like
fucked up and I like defended this like terrible person
because I didn't realize there are terrible now I did.
I competed my tweet, but of course someone screenshot at
it and it's like gotten thousands of likes on some
sweet calling me a monster, And you're like, that's what
you like? You're missing that when you're on Masodon, is
(04:12):
that there people aren't like mobbing you. No, I don't
like any of that. I don't like any of that.
But I guess what I do appreciate about Twitter is
like the serendipity of it and the kind of like
being exposed to new things and being challenged on things
like I do like that, Like I do you know
like how kind of big and messy it is and
(04:34):
Mastodon just feels too controlled. Yeah, it's definitely smaller. Right.
It reminds me of like not to get into a
masked on conversation because it was more like about your
perspective on this, which I find so interesting. And I'm reading, now,
what did you like retweet something about some chili story? Yeah,
well so like well, no, let me just explain in
(04:55):
like a few times it's lovely, kind woman made chili
her neighbors, and this like other person comes in and
basically accuses her of being a horrible person and being
racist or something because she made assumptions about her. That's crazy. Okay,
So so thousands of people pile on that deranged reply,
(05:18):
and I was like, do we really need to pile
on this like deranged person, Like clearly they're having a
bad day or there's some ship going on with them. Like,
I don't think that these dynamics are productive. I mean
the person who just sorry, just to be clear, the
person who was like this story about this woman making
chili is like racist or whatever. Right, You're like, don't
(05:38):
pick on that person. Well, my opinion of all of
that is just like block that person and like move on.
Like people say a lot of dumb shit on the website,
and not to say that they don't deserve pushback. In
this case, they did, but like, I don't know if
it's productive weeks later to be like, you know, harassing
them on off the internet. And what I didn't realize
(06:00):
is that person has actually harassed the chili woman. Um
and I say chili woman because I don't actually know
her full name, and I don't want to say her
Twitter handle, but she'd actually been been really cruel to
her for a while, So that was my bad. I
didn't know any of that. She had been cruel to
the Chili woman for a while. Yeah, she had been
harassing her for a while. Okay, So I feel like
some of this is a little bit like an extension
(06:22):
of there was a conversation that started maybe a day
or two ago on Twitter about the craziest thread that
you've seen on Twitter, like of how how illustrative it
is of how unwell everybody is, because these threads are
so like there's it's like there was a thread a
few months ago where somebody was like reading books as ablest,
Like it's not what they said, that's not what they said.
(06:44):
So this is a good example of exactly, Josh, they
didn't though, this is like this is the point is
that like, they didn't say that, And these really nuanced
discussions that people try and have, especially around disability in
their small in group of followers, often get taken out
of context, simplified and kind of made into a mockery.
(07:06):
And look, you know, and a lot of these people
that get piled on are like, you know, they're neurodivergent,
they're not you know, they're not necessarily communicating very well.
My feeling of that is, if they're not being problematic,
if they're not being bullies themselves, just let them have
their discussions and we don't need to dogpile people, especially
(07:27):
if they have like under a thousand followers, which you
know in some cases is the case. Like but this
this tweet was just to be clear, Sorry, the tweet
I'm talking about is this is the tweet and I
and if I misunderstand it, then it's again's Anna Mardal.
It's Anna Mardal. There's a threat going around mocking writers
who quote don't read very much, and I'm trying not
to haul out my soapbox, but this is able list.
Not everyone can read for pleasure or indeed at all,
(07:49):
and some of those people are writers. I think, yeah,
let me let me just like you know, let me try.
And there's actually a whole thread that I believe that
person who's also turned out to work for Lockeed Martin.
So I'm certainly not defending them. This is a person
who got then canceled because they're like, I'm a contractor
for Lockey Parker. And so again I really really trust me.
(08:10):
This is not me like defending this person or any
of these people. I'm just saying, like, you know, a
lot of these discussions, like somebody that is very dyslexic
as a writer has always struggled with reading, Like they're
not saying that reading is ablest, but I think they're
trying to open a discussion, albeit poorly, about you know,
(08:30):
writing and reading and the accessibility sort of nature of that. Right, Like, fine,
you know, obviously they're not communicating it. Well, obviously it's
easy to dunk on. Does that mean that that person
is to be subject to weeks of pylon? And like, no, no,
that's just crazy, definitely not right. And so first of all,
(08:52):
I was always team make chili for your neighbors always.
I always think that that is that woman is an
angel and lovely and a person attacking them was clearly
not you know, being very kind and whatever. But my
feeling is just as somebody that deals with a lot
of harassment is like, Okay, we don't need to like
necessarily destroy that other person's life. In this case, I
(09:14):
realized that person is actually a notorious stroll so I'm
not really going to go out of my way to
defend them, but right, but when they're not, sometimes people
don't word things correctly or word things perfectly, and I
don't know it gets picked up by some account, but
it is that that is like part of the problem
with Twitter, I mean social media kind of largely, but
it's really easy on Twitter. I mean Twitter is sort
(09:37):
of custom made for this sort of like one I
said something super dumb, maybe not even dumb, but like
I said something that was a poorly formed thought, or
I worded it badly, or I was having a bad day,
and so I kind of said it in a way
that was a little bit more aggressive or something. And
then immediately all of the tools of Twitter are like
not the people, but like the tools they provide are
(09:58):
like you could amplify it, and you can dunk on it,
and you can like screenshot it, and you can quote
tweet and you can do all these things that are
like make it very easy to generate that kind of
context free commentary about the thing. In fact, you and
I talked about this on Twitter a little bit. Um
you were talking about the quote tweet function and how
it's like not it's not automatically like a harassment function,
(10:21):
but it can be used that way. I mean you
were sort of like saying like it's not really that
big of a deal, and I agree, but people do
use it in a way that's like it feels like
it's sort of custom design sometimes for harassment. But a
part of that sort of sequence of events that we're
talking about, which the chili thing, and I don't know
the whole details of the chili thing. The poor the
(10:42):
poor woman that made the chili and has it into
even talk about her because she doesn't want any more attention.
This woman deactivated her account like she's been through such
a nightmare experience herself. She just made the chili for
her neighbors. She doesn't deserve any of this. This woman
literally like went out of her way to do a
nice thing and is being harassed by terrible people that
(11:03):
I think I inadvertently defended by just being like no harassment.
Like I just I'm always very wary when I see pylons,
you know, But so I'm actually looking the first thing
that came up, and now it's like a little bit older.
There's new tweets at replace that like Glenn Greenwalt is
tweeting about you or something because he's obsessed with you.
Oh never searched Taylor Lorenz on Twitter. Here's a tweet
(11:25):
about you. It is screenshotting a tweet. I believe it's
about the chili. I mean, you say, I said from
the start, the woman who made the chili, blah blah blah.
Then there's a person who says, well, chinche and I
don't know who that is, but is that maybe the
person who made the chili? I'm not sure. Had to
deactivate again as a direct result of Taylor her heads
talking out of her fucking ass about chili discourse. But
(11:46):
I guess that's fine because she has quote always been
on her side for real. Go fund yourself, Taylor, this
is a tweet. I know you don't even My whole
d M have been horrible. I'm getting hate mail. People
have tweeted me screenshots of personal details already. I mean,
(12:06):
this is just I'm getting another wave of harassment. So yes,
I wish I could deactivate. I mean I can't do that.
You could. If you can't, what would happen if you
were just like I'm deactivating, Then they win. They did
that and then Fox News called and know then then
it becomes a story. You are a huge target, like
Tucker Carlson constantly talks about you, right, he's obsessed with you.
(12:30):
I think we can say, um, you're a big target
for obviously right wing people because well you're a journalist
first off, and they hate that. Actually it's interesting, but
there's a whole genre of internet journalism which is like
applying basically the real journalistic sort of tactics that anybody
in media would use for any kind of story to
(12:51):
like a space that where they kind of don't know
that journalism exists a lot of the time. This is
what I see happening. It's like you'll write a story
and you'll, you know, name him the person who runs
some account, right, like I think, maybe did you do
a lips of TikTok thing it was something like this.
Of course, I I've found the woman behind it and
wrote about it. Lips of TikTok is an account that
(13:11):
harasses people basically like on Twitter and maybe also TikTok
I don't know, and you like, name to the person
is and people who don't know how journalism works and
don't know that like when you put yourself in the
public eye. You have absolutely there's really zero chance that
you should expect to not have your name out there.
Like if you're an actor and you're using a fake name,
(13:33):
someone's going to figure out what your real name is eventually,
because that's just how it works. And and they get
they're really mad because they're like, this is wrong. You're
like docks saying this person. But but you're just doing
like normal journalism, and people lose their ship and so
so like right when people get really upset about that,
Tucker Carlson gets really upset about it, and you're now
like a character, right like, and I don't know how
(13:54):
what this is like for you, but you're like a
character the people. Yes, oh my god, Now you made
me search myself often. I never searched myself because it's terrifying.
Like the top tweet is like Taylor Lawrenz is an irresponsible,
spoiled little ship that will defend libs of TikTok what
and then only someone I mean, these people, these like
you said, I'm just a character to them. I don't
(14:15):
have humanity. I mean, this is a problem with the internet.
And this is exactly what I was trying to say
with my original tweet, like although obviously it was defending
the wrong people, but it's like people just don't they
don't have any empathy for anyone, and they just they
flatten people down into characters in their little online world.
And it's well, I mean, this is so, this is
the thing that I find like unbelievable. I've had a
(14:36):
couple of moments on the Internet when people have piled
on me for a variety of reasons, some warranted, mostly
not warranted. But you're like, I mean, people are like
seriously badly harassing you online all day, like all day
every day, Like they're like, oh, okay, we can need
to pull somebody off the shell for harassment, Like there's
Taylor Lorenz. I have no idea what it's like. It
(14:57):
must be completely insane most of the time. But to
your point about empathy, don't you feel like we've just
designed a lot of systems that are like essentially big
comment threads, like the old school comment threads from the
original Internet that we you know, know and love and
that really like discourse on Twitter essentially amounts to this
(15:18):
sort of anonymous one notmanship of a comment thread, which
feels like generally unhealthy discourse. Right, you don't have to
agree with that, but I totally agree. And so do
you believe there's a type of social network that can
exist that doesn't end up like this? I mean, because
you've seen the worst of it? Is there a version
(15:39):
of this? Do you think that where it isn't like this? Yes? No,
God no, TikTok is ten times worse. Okay, I'm gonna
get into that in a second, But let me hear
your thoughts. You mean, I guess I'm such a optimist
about technology. I just I mean, yes, it's horrible, and
I think I've experienced the worst of it, which is
(16:01):
why I feel so badly for inadvertently defending some terrible
person that's harassing this lady that made Julie. I think
you're right that the tools that we have now are broken.
Twitter is fundamentally, you know, not a great tool set
to communicate. But I do think that there's value in
sort of connecting people at scale in certain ways and
(16:22):
allowing people to build community. And I don't think that
like these platforms are irredeemable. I think they're run by
sociopaths that don't care about these things. But like, you know,
it's it's not that we couldn't take this and build
a better system, and I guess that's what the goal
is of MASSED and on. It's just it's I think
it's not consumer friendly enough, right, Well, I agree with that.
(16:44):
I mean, the problem with this stuff is like the
balance between making it easy for everybody and making it
not unhealthy is like they're sometimes kind of at odds, right, Like,
it's kind of the easier you make things, the less
barrier to entry there is, the more quickly you ramp
up on people sort of abusing it. But it's amazing
to me that you can go through this stuff and
(17:08):
you know, and not just be totally demoralized and go
like I'm going to quit this right Like, I mean, look,
it's bad online for women generally, it's bad online for
reporters generally. But I feel like you experienced harassment at
a completely different level. I mean, I've definitely experienced the
worst of the worst of the worst and literally like
living it like you said, I mean every day and
(17:29):
today my bad because I really defended a really shitty person,
but never normally, you know whatever. I mean, the Glenn
Greenwald stuff today I don't even know what charge he made.
I just saw that Glenn Greenwald made like a crazy
board or whatever, like I don't know what you call it.
It's like the thing in a show when somebody's got
like the always sunny and they always funny in Philadelphia board.
It's weird because Glenn Greenwald used to be a kind
(17:50):
of amazing journalist. It's funny. It's like, you know, I've
seen the greatest minds of my generation where it's like
Matt Taibi, who is like now working for Elon Mosk
doing you know, the Twitter file or whatever, used to
be like a guy I see on like Bill Mahtin,
Bill Maher used to be kind of cool and like
looks like I'd see him go on the show and
I'd be like, woll, I'm not tas an awesome journalist.
And now it's just like weird and embarrassing. But anyhow,
(18:12):
Glenn Greenwall was obsessed with you. Yeah, I mean, I
just think Tucker and Glenn and all these people just
like you're mentioning. They take people, they make them into
avatars for everything that they want to rant against, and
then they you know, attack people for it. And I
just I think having been through that and living in it,
I just like when I see pylons on viral tweets,
(18:33):
like it just it makes my skin crawl and I'm like, no,
like wait a minute, everyone, like just relax, right, I mean,
you have a seat where you're kind of like, having
experience it, You're probably a little bit more sympathetic to
the person who's at the end of the pylon, right,
I mean, because you've been there. But sometimes those are
terrible people. I guess, which is like talks all the
(18:54):
way down. I think, yeah, yeah, Okay. Now, TikTok is
a social media platform that I have, you know, some
experience with. I am not a TikTok user. I actually
(19:16):
I kind of like try to avoid it, to be honest,
because I find what it does to be um, you know,
it's like candy. There's something about it that feels unhealthy
when I'm using it, like particularly unhealthy. You're seeing TikTok
is way worse than Twitter. You just said something to
that effect. Can you talk about like what is going
on with TikTok because I don't have a lot of awareness,
(19:36):
but it is not the stepping stone to a better
future for social media. Is that what you're saying. No,
TikTok is not the stepping stone. I mean I always
describe it as like you basically just took Twitter and
you combined it with YouTube drama and commentary channel culture,
and you meshed it together, and that's what we have.
So if you think quote tweets are bad, wait until
(19:57):
you get stitched. You know, explain for the novice TikTok user,
what is stitching. Yeah, it's basically like the TikTok version
of a quote tweet, where you kind of grab a
clip from someone's video and then you can make a
reaction to that. Right. I've seen people doing this where
they're sort of like responding to the things that the
person says in the video. Yeah, it's a lot more effort, though,
(20:17):
don't you think like it's like you have to like
think of production value. Oh god no, I mean trolls
on there don't care. They just get on and start
ranting about you, and they'll quote tweet anything. They'll take
a sentence that you set out of context. And and
the thing is to like, as you know, there's no
mercy for anyone online. There's no forgiveness, there's no damn
I fucked up. Sorry about that. It's like you must
(20:40):
pay and we will not be happy until you run
yourself off the internet, which is very Keywie Farms. You know,
like there's group think, right, and the crowds of people
will often follow, you know, whoever is the loudest voice
or whatever, and you end up with a mob. You know,
the feeling of wanting to participate in that and like
to grab a pitchfork and like whatever. March up the
hill does not do anything for me, but for a
(21:02):
lot of people, it's really satisfying, right to like have
that moment of I don't know, I actually don't know
what it is like as a person who has been
on the receiving end of it, Like is it is
it hate? Is it envy? Like it's pure, it's it's hate,
it's envy, it's anger, it's everything. I mean, I'm just
literally just looked at my Twitter applies in this person
(21:23):
with you know, almost thirty followers is yelling at me,
and you know, I think it's, like you said, it
is based human nature. I guess it's like it's like
this this like mob justice mentality, um, and I just
think it's toxic to feed into that in any form,
and yet you have to keep dipping back into these
(21:46):
waters because you do it for like a living, Like
you cover this for a living, right, I mean there
is this weird thing that's happening where you're reporting on
the thing and then you're in the thing, right yeah,
which which seems almost like, I don't know, you don't
ever just think about quitting, like they couldn't even talk
to you if you weren't there. Well, sure, but no,
(22:07):
because I guess, I mean, I just think about what
my life was like before the Internet, and I never ever, ever,
ever would want to go back to that. I mean,
that's worse than anything that I deal with today, in
my opinion. Yes, I mean I can't imagine it so bad?
Was your life before the internet was bad? Yeah? I
was miserable. I mean I was deeply, deeply, deeply depressed.
(22:29):
Like I can't I that would be the worst thing
to go back to no Internet. I just I don't know.
I mean, it's bad now, but I think what what's
better is there's also all of this positive that comes
with it. Right, You're not only getting the bad every day,
You're getting a lot of good. And I think It's
like I don't want to give up that good no
(22:50):
matter how much bad comes with it. For now. I mean,
to hear that from you is like kind of amazing.
I think about Elon Musk as such a strange like
I can't understand it because he's like the richest man
in the world or used to be before he bought Twitter.
And if I were the richest man in the world
and I was like, I'm going to go to Mars
and I'm gonna make electric cars or whatever, I would
(23:11):
never tweet, like I would not go online. Well, like,
why would you go online? You know it was a billionaire, Josh,
I wouldn't be online. To be clear, I'd be okay,
right right. I'm not saying that you have the luxury,
but I do find it interesting. Like I mean, is
there no version of this where you don't ever look
at Twitter? And you're not looking This is exactly what
(23:32):
got me into trouble today, Josh, is that I didn't
pay attention. I I honestly, I didn't go that deep
into the chili discourse, and had I gone that deep,
I wouldn't be getting all this bad lash. It's like,
if I don't know every single niche drama niche nuanced
that I get crucified for not knowing and and it
is on me to know. But the chili discourse, which
(23:52):
incredible that we're even talking about the chili dis We
need to stop because I don't want people bothering this woman. Well,
you've already like stepped in it, so I think it's okay.
You know, this is like maybe if people listen to this,
they'll be like, Okay, she really did feel bad about
that tweet that she did because she wasn't like hadn't
read all of the discourse, but like the chili discourse
does not matter right, like in the world and the
grand scheme of our lives. Well, yeah, can I just
(24:14):
push back on that? Is I think that these things
are actually indicative of important ideas. I mean, that's what
I liked about Rebecca Jennings piece, which is what made
me weigh into all of this to begin with. I
do think that to write about technology from the user side,
which is what I do, you have to be a
user yourself. Like I mean so much, so much of
what I've been through has really deeply informed my reporting.
(24:38):
And also people know that they can trust me because
I understand things um in that way. Yeah, But I mean,
do you do you think the chili discourse is important?
I think that we're reaching a point where these dog
piles are getting pretty frequent, and I think that we
should have a conversation about whether they're productive or I
(25:00):
personally think they're not productive. I don't think that this
woman should be dog piled right for making chili. Well,
like Rebecca Jenens, who's an amazing reporter reporting on like
the culture of the Internet, she actually references another one
of these sort of dog piles, which is about this
woman who tweeted that her and her husband like sit
out in their garden and have coffee and talk and
(25:21):
she loves it, and then people were like, fuck you,
how dare you say you enjoy having coffee with your husband.
What Rebecca very aptly points out, which is exactly mean.
Rebecca makes the point I like linked her Be's a
hundred times because I'm like Rebecca me at this point
better than me. But what she points out is that
like that there was only a couple of those replies,
(25:42):
but people go searching for those replies to get outraged
about and then make content about, like can you believe right.
I mean, I don't know if you remember the SNL character,
the Debbie Downer character, but we live in a kind
of like sea of Debbie Downers. Like it is kind
of like I mean, but like Josh, like those people
(26:03):
are often getting bullied. Those people are clearly miserable, like
clearly sure, yes, people who are mean to other people
are often bullied. They're not necessarily mean to people. They're
not even being mean. A lot of times they're just like, hey,
can you consider X Y Z? Is that inappropriate? Sure?
Kind of it's it is crazy now, it is crazy.
You're like, I enjoyed this movie. And then someone's like,
(26:23):
you're a fucking idiot for like in that movie, I
hate you. I hope you die. Not with these people
are saying no, they're not okay, but they are saying
stuff like someone's like, okay, I love to sit with
my husband drink coffee, which is totally innocuous, Like that's
great if you like to do that. I think that's wonderful.
And people's responses are like, oh, that's nice for you.
While I have to work like three shifts at my
job and do X, Y and Z, and like I'm
(26:45):
glad you're enjoying your life, and it's like sure, like
everybody's life is different, and like you definitely can feel
shitty that you don't get to like sit in the
garden with your husband, which honestly the whole thing sense.
You know, it's really fucked up, Josh. But you know
what's really started RUP is that people then screenshot that
reply from that random, miserable, you know, person that's clearly
(27:05):
a sad place, and then tens of thousands of people
will docs and harass that person for weeks. That's what
It's all very unhealthy. What the whole the whole system
is very unhealthy. Like I actually feel like we have
discovered areas of the Internet that are not great in
areas of humanity, that make no sense for us, Like like,
(27:29):
here's the deal the woman who loves to sit outside
with her husband and drink coffee or whatever, Like I
don't know who the message was for. I mean, did
I need to ever hear it? I'm not sure that
that's the case. Did you need to hear it? I
don't know if that's the case. The people who are
agitated by it because they don't have the same kind
of luxury in life. Did they need to hear it?
I'm not sure that's the case. And then on the
flip side of it is like, did we need to
(27:50):
hear their agitation? With the first thing, It's like we're
not supposed to think out loud all the time, right
to large groups of people. And so I think there's
this like fundamental damage that's been done to us as
as human beings that we think a natural order of
things is that when you think something anything, you say
(28:11):
it to this larger group of people as possible, and
then you wait for the replies to roll it. Like
there's no historical precedent for anything like that for humans, right,
Like I think we're emotionally and mentally falling apart because
of it. And I say this, by the way, as
I could not be a bigger fan of the Internet,
you will have met no person who was more of
(28:31):
a proponent of the internet would be like in the
earliest days or even in the later stages of it,
even like I mean, I wrote this thing about the
Internet at the beginning of the pandemic, like about how
great the Internet is because think about all of the
ways it was like useful to us Honestly, the pandemic
would have been fucking crazy if the Internet didn't exist, Like,
there are so many things that would have been Obviously
it was crazy for all sorts of reasons. But I mean,
(28:53):
the pandemic, the the ongoing pandemic. It's so there are
still good things. But I guess my point here is, like,
I think it's interesting that you have a ton of
empathy for the person who is like the shitty person
in the exchange or like the other shitty person, for
both sides of it, because I think because I've been
(29:14):
through it so many times and I just know how
these pylons go, that I just again, it's just and
I'm probably maybe I'm too brain poisoned in in that
way now where I have empathy for the trolls. Clearly,
I'm clearly I'm like empathizing with some monster this morning.
And but I agree with you, Josh. I mean, I
think context collapse is a huge problem on Twitter. And
(29:34):
one thing that I've always said, although these people love
to claim that I want, you know, censorship and stuff,
no that's not true. I mean what I want, and
I've always said, is like the ability to segment our
audiences more. I mean, so much of this is that
context collapse, like who are you posting that? More? Probably
just your little following, right or maybe you know you
(29:54):
don't need it or mean for it to even be
sucked into that. But the way the networks are designed
is you want maximum audiens, right, like like wait, listen
you're on? I said, I was talking to Casey last
week on masteredon, which you're like, I don't even like masteredon.
You have like sixty thousand or maybe more now, like followers,
which is a ton. I haven't seen very many people
(30:15):
on mastadon with and like hardly any followers, and it
clearly is it works in a different way, like getting
followers is different than on Twitter, but like you have
a big following there, you wouldn't want to just be
followed by like ten people that you're close friends, right,
Like that doesn't make any sense almost now, I just like,
oh my god, what the funk? Who are these people?
How are you getting eighty thou followers? Oh my god, no,
(30:38):
you do. It's incredible. There's things that I really like
about masteredon. I think the norms are different on there,
and people have more space to express themselves like Twitter
is bad. And also now we have a CEO of
setting a terrible example himself, So I don't think it's
gonna necessarily get better. I have to get I've got
to get rid of my Tesla that I at least
because embarrassed to drive it. You have a Tesla, Well,
(31:00):
this is the funny thing, is like, when I've got
the Tesla, I was like, Elon Musk is like, you know,
he's kind of got a little rough round the edge,
but it seems like a pretty interesting guy in this
car seems pretty great, Like there weren't a lot of
options for electric cars, and I didn't want to get
another gas car. And now when I drive it, I
feel like, I mean, my car has been spit on
by people while I'm driving for the record, Like my
car got spit on by a guy randomly the other day. Uh,
(31:24):
I'm assuming because it's a Tesla. I mean, I don't
think I was driving in any way that was particularly
erratic or something. So now I'm like, how do I
get rid of this? But like you know, Elon Musk,
I would love for him to concentrate on the Teslast.
I don't know why he's interested in Twitter it doesn't
make any sense to me, Like I am, I am
so perplexed as to again, this is what I'm saying
(31:45):
about the billionaire, Like you could do anything. Why are
you down here with us in this like garbage pile?
You know, Like I had to use Twitter because I
was like, I'm a journalist, and we were all on
Twitter because that's where all the journalists were. And then
like you've auntually you can find like stories and talk
to people and do whatever. But it's like he doesn't
have to be there. He didn't have to buy it.
(32:05):
I mean, I guess eventually he did have to buy it,
But I mean, but it's all ego and culture war.
Stephanie's clearly been red tiled. Literally, by the way, as
I'm talking to you here, I just saw you just
(32:27):
retweeted something you retweet live while we're talking. We're just now, Yeah, well,
I just gotten alert that somebody tagged me, so I retweeted,
you're so online you can't even take forty minutes for
a podcast. Okay, I think I know It's fine. I
don't care. Believe me. I literally you can see both
my hands now. I just I wanted to support the
podcast that my friend at me. I like the fact
(32:50):
that you are authentically being yourself. You're online, You're on
Twitter right now. Here's the thing, Okay, I want to
have a couple of questions for you. I want to
know if you to rank the harassment you've experienced, Like,
what was the thing that triggered the worst harassment you've
experienced in your career? Do you have like a top pick?
Oh god, um, I don't know. I mean, Pautie Pie
(33:13):
made a video about me like years and years and
years and really and yeah, he was mad because I
said something about Mr Beast. I just remembered that because
that was one of the few times that people really
started targeting my family and and that that was like
memorable to me as like a turning point where I
was like, oh my god, because people would harass me
(33:34):
before that. And then ever since then, it's just been
NonStop stuff with my family and friends, really anyone I've
ever had with on Instagram. Yeah, I mean Pautie Pie is.
And what's interesting to a put Pie is that I
think a huge segment of his audience is like young,
very young people, Like it's pretty popular with teens. I
have no beef with Pautie Pie. I actually think he's
(33:57):
he can be very funny his audiences children, as you mentioned,
And I think that these YouTubers, you know, the Jake
Paula's also have you know, done a lot of crazy stuff.
It's like, I don't that kind of harassment doesn't bother
me because it's children and I can read it and
just be like, Okay, an eleven year old wrote this message, right,
Oh god, it makes me feel bad for the eleven
(34:17):
year old though, Like I get depressed, I mean hearing
about that. Like I understand, like you know, there's there's
always some element of this in the world, but it
does feel like we've just created this system where like
what is that? I mean, when I started blogging back
the old taste, when there were no cars and I
had to walk through several miles of snow to get
to the blogs. Uh, But when I started blogging, like
(34:42):
it was very clear to me that there was some
element on the Internet that, like fanboys is what we
would have called them, like an end gadget or whatever,
where they were so into something, they were so driven
by this love of this thing that it that it
made them do unusual things, right like unhealthy thing. I
think I got like something like I made a death
(35:03):
threat to me because I reviewed a Windows phone or
something that like I gave it a bad review. This
is like two thousand eight or something, you know, like
someone was like, I'm going to come to your house
and kill you because you don't like this phone or something.
And I'm like, it's such an extreme and unusual behavior.
And I don't think they were kidding. I mean, they
were not serious, but I don't think that their emotion
(35:23):
was like I'm making a joke. I think they were like,
I'm really mad at this person. And you cover this
stuff so much so you see it firsthand. We've created
it this unhealthy environment. And I guess, like, do you
ever think about just getting a different job, like as
it has effort? Like you're very talented, you're very smart,
you're very accomplished, You've done amazing work in the world
(35:44):
of journalism. Do you ever think like, I'm just gonna
fucking get a PR job or something, or like, uh,
I don't know what would you do? What would the
next job be if it wasn't journalism. I think about
that a lot. I Mean, the thing is is I
feel like the reason I have this job is because
I want to affect the media, and I care about
media a lot, and I I feel like when people
(36:04):
don't understand the Internet, really bad things happen, right, And
I think we need to understand the world around us.
My whole goal for a long time was just getting
people to do to take this beat seriously. I think
there's so many amazing reporters like you mentioned Rebecca, and
you know there's others on my beat as well that
are just like phenomenal reporters. So it's not like I
quit and the beat dies. But I do think that
(36:26):
I care a lot about my work. I mean, yeah,
sometimes I think maybe I'll just go back to doing
social media strategy. I could definitely make more money, and
it would be great to pay off some debt. I
think of all you've learned. I think of all you've
learned of the last decade or whatever, of of of
like writing the insane waves, of of of what you've experienced.
(36:46):
But whatever, we only have one life, you know what
I mean, You might as well just like do what
you want and try to affect the world in some
way or change the world in some way, like I
want to change the media industry, so I met as
well work at it. You know, do you have a
lot of distressing techniques that you because like there have
been a couple, like I said, a couple of times
when I've experienced like really directed harassment. But this is
(37:10):
like it's so overwhelming, Like do you ever disconnect from this?
Like how do you disconnect from it? I mean, I
think in was like a bad year for everyone. Um,
you know, I lost several friends to suicide and it
was really hard, and like the pandemic you know, kicked off.
I'm severely immunocompromised, so that's been a nightmare. Like all
(37:31):
this stuff has been bad. And definitely if you ask
me in like, I did try to quit my job actually,
and my editor talked me out of it. But but
now I'm just like whatever, the worst that's going to
happen has happened a million times over to me, and
that is very freeing. So you know why I quit now,
(37:52):
I mean, I've already been through all that. But to
answer your question, distress, I mean, yeah, I'm very, very
very strict about keeping my personal life off the internet.
So I have a personal life like with friends, and
I do things in l A and like I it's
never online and never will be online, and I have
friends that respect that. You're right, Like your Instagram is
(38:15):
not like pictures of you and your friends doing stuff, right,
It's like it's still like just kind of online stuff.
I mean, maybe you have a secret Instagram. I don't know,
but it's like I have like thirty Instagrams. People can
find every one of my instagrams. You won't find any
of those photos because it's not something that I participate in.
I don't I don't like the pair of social stuff.
I don't want people who follow me to develop a
(38:35):
par of social bond because I think it's unhealthy and
I just I think having that strict boundary even and
having a strong sense of self Like ironically, I think
the people who really helped me deal with managing all
of this and being in the public eye are people
that are sort of way more famous and regularly see
themselves kind of reflected through this like bizarrow world version
(38:58):
of yourself, like on the Internet or in the media.
Like that used to be really disorienting and it uster
really funk with my head and I'd want to get
online and defend myself and be like, no, that's you
have it all wrong. And now I kind of, you know,
I'm at peace with it, and you're just like whatever,
they're going to think what they're gonna think, and it
doesn't matter what I say. Yeah, I mean I think
there you have to take some steps to like manage
(39:20):
your reputation. But like it doesn't affect me the way
that it affected me two years ago. Right, Okay, we're
pretty much at time, but I mean, god, we could
talk for so much longer, but talking about this stuff,
I do have one question, Well maybe it's like one
ish question, Like I feel like one of the things
you're really really good at, like if we can just
talk about things that aren't like super unpleasant, like people
who are asking, you're really good at like seeing trends,
(39:43):
like trend lines of things that are happening, like and
I think actually one of your greatest assets as a
reporter and as a journalist is to look at all
of this sort of insanity and all of this chaos
and go, this thing here is important and we need
to pay attention to it. Or this is a thing
that's how being good and bad. But it's like influencer culture,
for instance, like the boom and I say it's the last.
(40:06):
I mean, I'm gonna we call it five ish years, right,
I mean, obviously there's YouTube and stuff, but like the
rise of TikTok and Instagram and this whole sort of
like economy and culture around influencers which has so many
ways of being expressed, and you were I feel very
very early in observing that or in talking about it,
this is my long window way of getting to an
(40:26):
actual question what is the next thing? Because influencer culture
is kind of like weirdly waning or I don't know,
it's like feels like it's weakened. I think it's I
think it's just more distributed now, it's more distributed, but
but undeniably we're moving towards the more fractured and fragmented
media environment in a lot of ways. Do you see
(40:48):
anything forming? You know, is it is it some other
mutation of influencer culture? Yeah? You know, like what is it? Like?
What is the next thing? What I think is that
we're at an inflection point. And maybe you feel like
this too, Like I feel like we obviously, like the
(41:10):
early were the rise of digital media, and we were
all so excited about the Internet, and we all had
these positive feelings and then it all kind of came
crashing down, you know, and everyone's like, oh, no, disinformation,
da da da da um. But I also think we're
all just getting more and more online, and I don't
think that's gonna change at all. Like I think that
the Internet. No, you think we're getting more online. You
(41:33):
feel like that's the trend line. Yeah, I think we're
gonna have like computers in our brains in like thirty years.
That's definitely possible. I mean sure, I mean obviously the
logical progression is like brain implants or something, though I
think we're pretty far away from that. I if you
had asked me that, I would say, I feel like
the trend line is like people are backing away from
(41:53):
being online and like starting to go like maybe I
don't actually need this. No, well not to say like no,
um my prediction. Let me quote tweet you false. Um.
You're right that people are backing away from these open,
broadcast based social platforms. I think that the era of
(42:13):
us posting that we're a brunch to the entire world
is definitely going away. I mean, I think people are
retreating into private communities. That's been a trend that's been
documented for years. Um so I do. I do think
that's happening. But I don't think that our world is
getting less networked or you know, things are becoming less online,
especially post well not we're not post pandemic, but since
(42:35):
the pandemic started. I think that accelerated so many of
those shifts. And yeah, there's like a slight retraction with
some of it, but not really like it pushed us
forward so many years that even if it's two steps
forward one step back, like we're still moving that way. Yeah.
I mean, even like delivery culture, the way it's changed
in the past three years or four years or whatever
(42:57):
has been not like just been. I mean, you don't
even think twice now about like having your groceries delivered,
where like I think if you go back four years ago,
most people weren't even thinking about it right, Like they
would never even consider it. But what's so interesting about
that is it's like utilities in a way that are
very online, that are connected to like our phones and
are you know, laptops or whatever, but are not It's
(43:20):
not the same thing. I mean to your point about
people going into these like smaller communities. I think that's
really interesting, or more personalized communities, and that not again
not to talk about mascodon, but that is one of
the things I think is interesting about this idea of
a decentralized social network. I thought, for sure I wouldn't
want to get joined another social network, but I do
think there's something interesting about like downsizing the social sphere.
(43:43):
And I've talked about this a bunch of this podcast
because it's on my mind all the time. Where you've
got like people talking about Twitter being this like town square,
like Global town Square. It's like, I think people are
realizing that, like they don't want that, and but there
is some social connection they want and how do you
get at it? And I don't know that anybody's figured
out like the killer app for that yet. You know,
(44:04):
it's like it is it my message? No, I think,
I mean, I do think it's things sometimes it's things
like TikTok that allow for more segmentation, and it's not
on the there's no burden on the user to define
their own you know, it's kind of self selecting, like, hey,
this is content you're interested in, These are people you're
interested It puts you inherently into these niches and then yeah,
I mean, and then of course group chats and discord
(44:26):
and things like that. For sure, I loved Ian Bogos,
who I used to work with it The Atlantic, wrote
a great piece about the end of social media. I
don't know if you read it, but I haven't. But
I'm a big fan of anybody where that starts with
the end of blank. I'm always having written some of
those myself. It's a good it's a good history. He's
very smart about it all. I agreed with him. I
wrote a similar piece and I killed my piece because
I thought he wrote it better than me. Yeah, Like,
(44:48):
it'd be cool if social media ended. I think that'd
be great. I agree with you. I think, like these
big broadcast social platforms are really bad um in a
lot of ways, and I think they should not function
the way that they function now for sure, But they're
valuable for other reasons. And I don't think that we
should lose spaces to connect with people in mass if
that's what we're trying to do. But imagine we found
(45:11):
a better way to do it. Like, imagine there was
something else that came after this, and people are like,
oh wait, I've been screaming to people online for no reason,
Like I spent all this time yelling and I didn't
have to. I think that would be really lovely. I
just can't wait to see what happened. I was just
gonna say, like, the reason I love my job and
I love covering all this stuff is I'm sure you
(45:31):
do to Josh. It's like you get such a front
row seat to all of these shifts, and it's so
fun to get to talk to people, and it's it's interesting.
I mean, I do still love the Internet, but I
feel such a sadness now so often that like we
haven't done more. It feels like, you know, we have
spent so much time and energy and and it's like
(45:53):
it's so much of it has gone so gone bad.
But but I will say, talking to you, a person
who has received an enormous amount of harassment and hatred
and and just frankly rudeness all over the Internet, the
fact that you can continue to have what I would
describe as an optimistic viewpoint about the very things where
like your harassment has taken place is honestly, like it's
(46:16):
very inspiring. I have been feeling lately, you know, am
I just a little bit too JOm and gloom about everything,
But I don't know you're giving me. You're giving me
a potentially a feeling of hope, because if you haven't
been beaten down, and maybe there's hope for us all.
It's like that meme, you know that meme of the
kid on the school bus and he's like there's a
one guy looking out the at the dark side, and
(46:38):
I like the one where it's like they both say
like everything is terrible or something, and it's like the
one guy's like everything is terrible to the other person's
like everything is terrible. That's how I feel. Wow, that's
you're the everything is terrible with exclamation marks, is what
you're saying. Taylor, thank you so much for taking time
to do this. I really have enjoyed this conversation. I
really appreciate you taking time out of your I mean,
(46:59):
you probably were there about to file a story that
will lead to harassment, or you may have missed out
on some harassment during this conversation. Um, but I really
appreciate you taking the time and I hope that you'll
come back and we can figure out if like the
next thing happens and then you can tell us all
about why it's why it's either good or very bad.
So thank you, yeah, thank you so much for having me.
(47:29):
Uh well, that was fascinating. I'm I'm so surprised at
Taylor's attitude towards some being online. I mean, if I
were her now, I've again, I've received only a small
amount of harassment by comparison, but I would crumple like
a wet newspaper and that would be it for me.
I mean, if you've, if you've looked at at the
(47:50):
kinds of stuff that people are saying to Taylor on
a daily basis, Like literally Tucker Carlson makes her like
the point of his monologue. Sometimes it's so unhealthy. I
mean not not I'm not saying she's being unhealthy, but
like there's so much unhealthy stuff that's like thrown at her.
It's hard to believe and imagine being able to like
(48:11):
face that then go yeah, I'm gonna keep going, so
like what backbone? What resolved? Resilient, resilience, unbelievable, I mean
never the last she persisted, I think is really what
I wanted to say. There, Um, you coined that, right,
that was my original phrase, Um, that's my thing about
all the ladies fighting the good fight. You don't see
(48:34):
those shirts a lot anymore. You don't see that. Nevertheless,
she persisted, No, it was pretty trendy. Yeah, but anyhow,
that was It's super interesting. I mean, I know we've
talked a lot about social media lately because it's just frankly, look,
since the world didn't blow up, there was no red wave,
you know, in fact, there's like an extra democratic senator
as of last night or whatever. You know, news has
(48:56):
been kind of quiet, and Twitter has been a disaster,
and there's all times of nasty social media stuff going on.
But Taylor is so she's such a unique character in
the mix because she is one of these reporters who
and there aren't that many of them who they report
on this stuff. They're very i mean, her reporting is
(49:17):
very very good and smart and get stuff that people
never see in a million years until like she illustrates it.
But then she's also in it. She's like in the
stuff that she's talking about, Like she is there online
with the people she's reporting on, and like she's not
flying in and there's like ten thousand foot view like
the way like a traditional journalist would might go to,
you know, cover the strike at the coal mine or whatever,
(49:39):
but like, you're not working in the coal mine. You're
not like you don't live in West Virginia or whatever.
You go and do the story and then you leave
and then you don't encounter any of that. But this
is like she's literally like, well, I went to report
on the strike in the coal mine, and then I
went down to the coal mine and started like hammering
away at the coal or whatever it is they do
in the coal mine. I assume there's some kind of
mining that goes on, and Uh, that takes it. I mean,
(50:02):
it just takes a kind of I don't know resolve
that I don't feel like like if somebody was like,
you're gonna break the biggest story about the worst trolls
on the Internet and you're gonna get super famous for it,
and someone's gonna want to give you a book deal
and you're gonna like make a movie out of it,
I think I would definitely pause and maybe say I
(50:23):
don't want to do that, because you would become a
lightning rod for some of the worst like hate that
you can possibly imagine. And so yeah, it takes a
special kind of fearlessness to do it. And Taylor's got it.
Taylor's got it in spades. I can't get in touch
with that. If anything, I I mean, my dream is
to retreat to the woods, as you know, to get
(50:45):
my axe and to just start chopping away at the
at the wood, all of the wood that I can
get my hands on. This is a classic like New
York media guy fantasy. It's like cutting wood building fires.
I love doing that. Um, I've been having this like
thing with my trash. Have I told you about my
trash problem? No. I moved my trash cans outdoors because
(51:08):
I didn't want them in because they were in my
garage originally, and I wanted to put them outside. And
so I have this thing that I built where it's
got a lid, and I put the trash cans in it,
and I'm like, that'll be fine. The raccoons will never
get in there. And they did get in there, and
they like chewed like I had plastic trash cans. They
basically chewed the lids of the trash cans to the
point where they looked like a cookie that like somebody
(51:30):
had taken like a chunk out of like plastic, you know,
did they eat the plastic? I don't know, because like
there's no plastic scraps anywhere. And so they like found
a way to get into my trash cans. And then
they were eating, they were pulling the trash cans out.
Then I put a barrier into they can pull them.
And they were going into the trash cans and they
were eating inside and drawn and it's like and then
Host
Joshua Topolsky
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.