Taylor Lorenz: The Disruptive Force of Online Creators

27:08What it is, is this very small and very vocal minority of group of people online that want to create outreach. And I think you need to say, look, we recognize this for what it is, which is a politically charged outrage campaign. We're here to sell beer. We would love LGBTQ people to drink our beer. We're here for everyone. And we don't like this hate that's being directed over one Instagram post. That's how I would have handled it. And I think it would have gone better than it did where they backtracked and left her out to dry. Well, in a sense, if people take the marketing lesson from this as you should not support LGBTQ +, it's actually not true.

27:51The message is the opposite, that you should support and stick with it. And so now you got the right wings who are protesting for one reason. You got the LGBTQ community who feels betrayed. So nobody's buying beer. That's the problem, right? Yeah, exactly. I think you should develop your values as a brand and stick to those values because ultimately that's your company. You know, like a company like Patagonia or some of these other companies that are really mission-based, they've cultivated these brands and they have their values and they stick with them. And I think that if you are going to, for instance, engage in a Pride Month campaign and say, look, these are part of our corporate values, you better stick to those values and not cave at the first sign of anger on the internet.

28:35Okay. Okay. Okay, next group, politicians using the internet. I would say it's a very powerful tool for reaching people. And I would say don't underestimate the internet. And I think that's what a lot of politicians have done is they dismiss the internet or they say, oh, it's secondary to the rest of the sort of campaigning that they do. But we've seen time and time again that politicians that leverage the internet get further than those who don't. So I think don't be afraid of it. Be out there. Be on there. Be transparent. Engage with your voter base. Use it to listen to your community and your constituents.

29:08And don't just shy away and hand it off to the comms person. But don't you think for many politicians, because of their stupidity, or maybe they handed the password to interns, there's greater risk of downside than upside using social media? I guess I should say I use it to listen. not necessarily that they have to post on there all the time or that they need to post everything that they're thinking i think that's probably a message for i'm sure there's campaign people and pr people but i think that a lot of politicians just hand off their accounts and they never go on there and they never really listen to the feedback from their constituents or read these stories or say hey who's following my page and am i reaching the right people use it as a listening tool it's a way to sort of hear from so many people at scale in a way that's very hard to do offline.

29:56So not to take it as gospel, these platforms are also all very skewed by algorithms and conversations are not always representative, but I think it's a good tool to get the temperature check on certain things. We're leaving that section. Next section. In a sense, aren't you a journalist, influencer, socialite yourself? Well, I don't think I'm rich enough to be a socialite yet, unfortunately. But yeah, I started as a blogger. I started as a content creator. That's how I got my start. I never went to journalism school or had any professional background. And I built my audience up all by myself until I got into sort of traditional media.

30:37I've always really believed in the power of the internet to circumvent these barriers that have been up. And so I definitely think, yeah, in a lot of ways I am. But I don't make a living selling SponCon. I do make a living at my job. So I don't engage in that part, but I do have a big audience. So when you show up for your interview at the Post or the Times, do you tell them, listen, I got this much following, this much behind me. That's part of the package you get when you hire me as a journalist. Is that part of the interview now? When the Times recruited me very aggressively, I was beating the New York Times on stories.

31:12And they actually put this in my job announcement. I had beaten them on so many stories and such quick succession that they just decided to hire me. And I didn't have that conversation. I actually don't think they were at all aware of my following. And it was really hard to navigate because I think then they were suddenly like, wait a minute, you have like half a million on TikTok and my content often I write about viral things. So things spread a lot. And I think they were like, whoa, how do we manage this? And when the posts started recruiting me, I had a lot of those conversations up front.

31:41I was like, by the way, I have a really big internet presence. And I write about people that have millions of followers. So a lot of the stories that I do inherently get a lot of viral attention for good and bad. And they were like, no, we love that. We are happy with it and we want that. But it could be to your advantage. Do you think a journalist can just write or you have to be active on social media as part of the job? I think it depends. I mean, there's so many jobs in journalism that actually don't require you to be out there, right? You could be an editor. I used to be a social media director.

32:15There's a lot of behind the scenes jobs in news organizations if you don't want to be in the public eye. I think if you do want to be the reporter and you don't mind being a public figure, which all reporters inevitably end up as, you do have to kind of engage with the public because that's your job is to be out there talking to people and listening to people. And our national security reporters are not out on TikTok necessarily, but they do engage with the public to a certain extent and certainly their sources and stuff. I think it's helpful if you don't build your own audience, you rely on a media company for your audience.

32:47So if that media company lays you off, you suddenly don't have access to an audience anymore and you're in a really tough position. I don't trust any company. I am a child of the recession. I'm a millennial. I grew up watching people put an enormous amount of effort and loyalty into companies and then they just lay them off immediately after 40 years with nothing. I don't trust any company and I really have always again I started building my own audience for myself on the internet and I never want to be in a position where I have to rely on a company to reach the people that I want to reach because I don't trust them they will lay me off I love the Washington Post and they're really great to me but I know that if they got in crazy financial straits and they had to lay off half the newsroom I could be vulnerable the Pulitzer Prize winners have been laid off very recently.

33:34So you could be the best journalist in the world and it doesn't matter. These are the economic realities of the media business. So I try to hedge against that and I recommend other reporters try to hedge in different ways. Even maybe it's just starting an email newsletter list that if something happens, you can still reach people. Wow. You are old school journalism, worst nightmare. Right now the tail is wagging the dog. Truly, right? I write about this new media ecosystem and I think I didn't create this ecosystem. I would love to work in a world where I could just go to work from nine to a five at a company, have healthcare forever, put in my eight hours of work and go home.

34:14That would be really great. I would love to not have to be on social media building up a following and worrying about these things but unfortunately, this is a reality and so I just want people to not get lost in it because again, I've just seen so many phenomenal journalists get laid off and it's terrible. Okay. If somebody's on the outside looking in at you and thinking, oh my God, what a great job. You worked for the post. Everybody answers your phone call. Everybody kisses up to you. You write this bestseller, blah, blah, blah. But now let's just talk about the side they don't see, which is to the extent you want to.

34:53Tell me about how you're attacked online. What happens there? Yeah, I would say the downside of writing especially politically relevant stories is you get a lot of big and powerful people to come after you. Tucker Carlson famously did many segments. Fox News in general covers me very frequently. And you become a target because there's this entire sort of political ideology in this country that's very anti-media and anti-journalism. And they don't like people that are basically like speaking truth to power and calling them on their lies. I've had to deal with an enormous amount of harassment. And just to be clear, I mute all of my mentions on Twitter.

35:31I don't care about people yelling at me. It's more the in-person stuff. Like I've had people physically threaten me. I've had people terrorize my family members and my friends. And that's just very isolating and terrifying. I'm dealing with stalker right now. And it's just very scary and invasive. And there's a lot of downsides that come with it. And as a reporter too, these right-wing billionaires will often back lawsuits just meant to smear you. I've had people pay bots to message every single person that follows me in the Washington Post spreading lies about me. There's tons of weird websites online that spread conspiracies about me.

36:06And this is what comes with being a journalist these days. And I think it's a real problem, unfortunately. So yeah, people don't see that side. And how do you deal with all that bullshit? I would say 2020 was the worst year because it was the early days of the pandemic and it was so isolating and Tucker was being so aggressive. And it wasn't just Tucker. It was all these big right wing figures. It just got really hard. And I felt really bad, especially for the people around me. I felt like I couldn't protect them. And that was the hardest. But then I think everything bad, all the worst things that they could do sort of happened.

36:38And I was like, you know what? I'm still around. I'm actually fine. And forget it. And screw these people. I'm just going to keep doing my job. I'm definitely better at dealing with it now. But you need to have a really good strong sense of self. That's what I'll say. And I think actually anybody, I've talked to somebody else about this just in terms of attention generally. If you get a lot of attention for anything, whether it's fame or online attention or whatever, and you don't have a strong sense of self, you can quickly spiral and you can start to believe what people that hate you say about you.

37:06And I could barely ask for blurbs on my book still because I definitely have a lot of self-doubt, but I have enough to know. I've done enough stories. I know I'm a good journalist. I know I'm a good journalist and I know I'm right on a lot of my stories and I do a good job. And so I just don't listen to any of it. I just think it's silly and they have an agenda usually. Well, I just think it's absolutely ridiculous that it comes to this, that you have to give me an answer like that. Like, why should that be necessary in 2023? It's utterly ridiculous. 100%. 100%. And also, I'll just say, I hate how journalists' personal lives are so torn apart.

37:46I'm very private about my life, and I really stick to my work. And it makes me so nervous when people come after friends or family or anybody associated with me just because they're associated with me. It's just disturbing, and I don't like that part of it. But my family's amazing, and they're very cool with it. So it's been fine. They can laugh it off, and they are so proud of me, thankfully. More power to do. Up next on Remarkable People. Marketing it is much harder than I realized. I will say that. Developing a marketing plan, it's given me a huge respect for people that are able to do it well because I think I thought, well, I wrote the book.

38:21How hard can it be? You know, that's how I post it. People talk about it. I'm like, oh no, it's actually extremely hard. Become a little more remarkable with each episode of Remarkable People. It's found on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Welcome back to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki.

39:06I do think followers can be a proxy of a certain type of influence, but some of the biggest CEOs in the world don't even have social media or they have 200 followers on Instagram. And that doesn't mean that they're any less powerful. So I don't think it's like I don't think it's a I don't think it should be a measure of anyone's self-worth. And I don't think that it's a measure for a true power. How influential do you think influencers are anymore? Oh, God. Okay, wait. So Taylor Swift says, go register to vote. Tens of thousands of people registered to vote. I understand that. I have, I don't know, six, seven, eight million followers.

39:43If I told them to all go listen to a podcast, it wouldn't move the needle. Maybe I'm just a loser. But how powerful are influencers? Can they sell lipstick? Can they get people to register to vote? Oh, they can absolutely. I mean, they can sway elections. Look at what things like Gen Z for Change have done in terms of leveraging the sort of the collective power of content creators. I think it totally depends on the relationship that people have with the influencer and what they expect, right? If you follow somebody because they're this amazing, they recommend products to you, and that's why you follow them, because you like to shop the clothing that they wear, and then they're talking about politics and registering to vote, I don't know that people would listen as much as if maybe somebody else that was more politically active said something like that, where you rely on them for political related information, that's much more powerful.

40:34But look, everything in our world is mediated by online influence. Online influence is this really powerful, modern form of currency. And if you amass a lot of it, you can do a lot. Influencers are able to sell tens of millions of dollars of products and build these massive businesses because they're able to get people to buy or do what they want. And you know this for fact, or you just from the outside looking in? Okay, I grant you Kim Kardashian can do that. Paris Hilton can do that. But what about Trixie and Tiffany who are pushing lipstick? Yes, I write about these people all day long. And I see the financials of a lot of these people.

41:15This is a half a trillion dollar industry and growing. This is a huge, huge industry. And it's not just shaping sort of entertainment and lifestyle, right? It's also shaping, look at sports and look at the way, I mean, I'm writing a story right now on the University of Colorado's football team and the amount of money and attention that these young college athletes are able to get now with sponsorships because they're influencers, because they've grown massive online followings, because they've generated hype on the internet. It's affecting everything. And same with politics, too. I think we see people generating attention and these fringe candidates are able to get themselves on the ballot because they are able to build an online audience.

41:51Okay. In a sense, you are the CMO of your book, right? How are you allocating your marketing and budget and attention for your book? Yes. In terms of how am I promoting it? I've been trying to get the word out any way that I can. Most of the way that I've been doing it is through podcasts because I think podcasts are just a really good way to have a discussion about the book and reach people that are interested in ideas and tend to read. I've heard that TV doesn't really do anything. I haven't gotten booked on any TV, so I'll let you know if I do. But I've mostly been doing podcasts and newsletters.

42:28And of course, using my own social media following, I've been documenting my book process and updating my own followers. I started a meme account to promote my book on Instagram. I've just been doing a lot of digital marketing, you could say, which is really the only kind of marketing I know how to do. I don't really know how to do the traditional media very well. As you look back, do you think it's harder to write a book or market it? Oh, that's a really good question. Marketing it is much harder than I realized. I will say that. Developing a marketing plan, it's given me a huge respect for people that are able to do it well because I think I thought, well, I wrote the book.

43:02How hard can it be? I post it and people talk about it. I'm like, oh no, it's actually extremely hard. I would say they're equally as difficult because writing the book was really difficult. But marketing it has been really difficult. And I've learned a lot about marketing as somebody that's not a marketer, really. I've just learned so much about these different tactics. and strategies. Like what? One thing I learned is how to successfully tease pre-orders. I started promoting this book two months ago, basically as soon as I got the link up and everything. And I realized actually I probably should have saved a lot closer to my publication date.

43:35And I've also learned to talk about the book differently. The way that I first was positioning the book and talking about the book was like, oh, it's just about the internet. I wasn't doing a very good job explaining it. And so I think people were like, okay, but what about the internet? What do you mean it's just an internet history book? What about it? And so now I've been sort of honing my messaging, you could say, I guess, and trying to more clearly communicate the ideas and themes. And isn't Simon & Schuster helping you in all this stuff? Publishers can only do so much. I think they do a good job of getting your book in the hands of book reviewers.

44:05And that's great. I'm so grateful to them for doing that. But no, they rely on the author for almost everything. I ask them, hey, guys, can I get a list of like book talkers? Book TikTok is huge. you guys must have this huge database because of course you're a publisher that those are people that you want to market to and they said oh no we don't keep anything like that that's all we rely on the authors i'm like if i was in marketing at a publisher that's the first thing i would do it's just interesting but publishing is a really tough business and they're focused on actually getting the book out too like that's their main focus is like getting the book printed getting the cover out so they've done a lot of work i'm grateful are you going on an actual physical book tour?

44:43I'm trying to. I've been calling up places and trying to schedule that and trying to schedule events. That also falls on the author. So Simon & Schuster did schedule two things. One in New York, I'll be at The Strand. Yes. And I'll be at Politics and Pros. Yeah. But other than that, it's on me. So I've been trying to like call people up and be like, hey, it's Taylor Lorenz. I mean, I saw you trying to find a restaurant in Manhattan yesterday. to yeah i'm still trying to find a venue for my book event in new york i have to do that after i get off this call i'll call some places are you coming to san francisco i really want to i've also been trying to find somebody to host something in san francisco for me if you have any ideas so i have ideas i would love to hear them because i love you know san francisco is the center of all this technology you know actually i would make the case that it's not san francisco it's san jose say that's true that's true yeah but general area i will think about how we resolve that problem for you one really tactical question if you had a choice let's say god said taylor i'm going to grant you this wish you can either have the new york times review your book or marquez brownlee Who would you pick?

46:07Marquez Brownlee, undeniably. If Marquez talked about my book, I think I would lose my mind. I think that would be huge. Yeah, but... I should send him a copy. You should. He's great. Now, on the other hand, there are probably people out there who are thinking, if Taylor Lawrence would mention my book, I would lose my mind. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. I'm one of them. Yeah, I'm always really flattered when people do reach out to Marquez. I knew Marquez when he was just a college student looking at old iPhones. He is so incredible. I once convinced the CEO of Motorola to do a one-on-one conference with Marquez.

46:53Wow. This one, not that many people knew who he was, but I thought he was just fantastic from the first time I saw him. We have another brief section here. This is called Taylor's Tips. So, where do you, Taylor, get your news? Oh, I read a lot of newsletters. I love the newsletter Garbage Day by Ryan Broderick. It's just Garbage Day on Substack. They do a lot of great roundups. There's also one called Lincoln Bio and Embedded. It's embedded.substack.com. These are just like great digital culture newsletters that I really enjoy reading and I get a lot of news from. I do still go to the Washington Post homepage every day to see what's going on.

47:33So I have a sense of what my colleagues are working on and just kind of breaking news. I'm a big Apple News person now. Ever since I stopped using Twitter really for news, I've been using Apple News more. But I mostly rely on aggregators. And then, of course, I listen to a ton of news podcasts. I listen to the Wall Street Journal daily podcast. What aggregator do you use? I used to use Nuzzle, which would scrape all the links from your Twitter feed and rank them. And I go on TechMeme a lot, which is an aggregator. There's Tech Meme and Media Gazer, which sort of are these old school, they aggregate the most shared relevant news in tech and media.

48:05And those are the ones that I read the most. Who are the people you consider important to follow? Oh, also a really good question. Let's see. I love this girl, Coco Moco. She's a TikToker and she's a cultural commentator. And she's just really smart about pop culture. So I really love following her. I'm trying to think of other people. I follow mostly other journalists. I've got to recommend other journalists. There is Kat Tenbarge at NBC, phenomenal reporter on women's rights and the internet. And Rebecca Jennings at Vox is just a phenomenal cultural critic. Kelsey Weekman, one of the best internet culture reporters today, she's primarily freelance, is so good.

48:44NBC Digital is really good. Morgan Sung at TechCrunch is really good. There's so many. I'm trying to think. I don't want to miss anybody. And everyone that's in the dedication of my book. I talk about these other reporters on my beat that are so phenomenal and I don't think I could do my job without their reporting. If you could only use one service, which one would it be? Oh God, one platform? I want to say TikTok. Really? I want to say TikTok because I'm just thinking it's either TikTok or Instagram, but if I could only use one, it would be TikTok because TikTok is how I know a lot of what's going on in the world.

49:24For instance, when the Maui fires happened, there were people showing that were on the ground that were talking about what was happening to them. And I remember when the war in Ukraine broke out, we could see these real videos from Ukraine. And I just think it really gives me a window into the world in a way that Instagram doesn't. I think Instagram is definitely where I have a lot more friends and can find my connections. And you're not worried about the communist Chinese spying on you on TikTok? If China wants my data, they could buy it from a third-party Facebook vendor. So we have absolutely no data privacy in this country.

49:58This is the last section. So what if Mark Zuckerberg asked you to redesign the Facebook algorithm? What would you do? Wow, I would be so thrilled. Do you mean the Facebook, the blue app, the original Facebook? Or threads or any part of it, any algorithm there. Oh, okay. Number one, I would make it a place for reliable news. I know this is very self-serving as a journalist, but I think Facebook has completely shied away from news because of all of the controversy and misinformation that they platform. They basically just cut off access to news. And I think these platforms can be a really powerful way to inform people about the world.

50:38I just think that they need to stop rewarding outrage and the most aggressive, loud disinformation purveyors. So I would redesign an algorithm to reward reliable news and information. And I would do that by whitelisting certain accounts that I know are reliable. I would do that by boosting journalists, working to verify journalists, working to verify information. And I would try and make it more of a resource for people to learn reliable information about the world. Okay. So let's say you do that. Does Fox and Breitbart make the cut? No, because they're not publishing reliable news and information.

51:11Okay. I know where you stand. This is probably why I'm not CEO of Facebook. Okay, next one. Do you have nieces? I do, yes. How old? One is almost a year and one is four. This is a little premature, but let's say you had teenage nieces and they say, Auntie Taylor, I want to be an influencer. What should I do? What do you say to that niece? I would ask them why they want to be an influencer. I think it's really revealing. A lot of people want to be content creators just for the fame. A lot of them actually want to use it for other reasons. Like maybe they have a real interest or passion for video editing and filmmaking or script writing.

51:58And so I would want to make sure it's for the right reasons. If they say just to be famous and rich, I would be like, okay, don't do, no, stay away. Stay away. Don't go towards the internet to be famous and rich. It's going to make you miserable. But if they have a real passion for storytelling and filmmaking and they see it as a way to express themselves, I would say that's amazing. Learn these skills because video editing, filmmaking, script writing, learning to use tools like ChatGPT, these are all really valuable skills no matter what you end up doing. Even if you fail as an influencer, you can probably get a great job elsewhere with those skills.

52:30I would steer them to that. And the last what if, and let's assume that you accept the position. Okay. Joe Biden calls you up and says, run my campaign social media. What do you do? Oh, boy. I would start by engaging with people, not just approved content creators. I think one thing that specific political parties, especially like liberal sort of politicians, have really shied away from is engaging. with more progressive activists because they want to stick to these sort of neutral party lines. And I get that. But I think to perform well on the internet, you've got to engage with everyone. And so I'd be dealing with Twitch streamers and content creators.

53:15And I would really go out and use social media to try and engage with people and especially these progressive influencers on the internet. And I wouldn't say we're just not dealing with those people because they're too radical or they're too progressive. I would try to bring them into the fold and use them to my advantage. Would this include Olivia Juliana? Yeah, I think people like her are exactly who we're talking about, are these young Gen Z active activists and commentators and people with followings that they have just so much to offer. And that's the future of politics in our country. I think we have this class of politicians on all political sides, right?

53:54That's just very old and very out of touch. And we really, really need young people to seize control of this country in so many ways. And so I love people like Olivia and others who really stand up for what they believe in and use the internet to make their voices heard. Thank you, Taylor Lorenz, for such an interesting episode. I learned so much about the history of the internet by interviewing you and reading your new book. My thanks to the Remarkable People team. That would be Madison Nismer, producer, Tessa Nismer, Alexis Nishimura, Luis Magana, and Fallon Yates. And of course, the Remarkable Sound Design team.

54:40That's Jeff C. and Shannon Hernandez. Don't forget, Remarkable People is sponsored by Merge 4. Use the promo code FRIENDOFGUY and you'll get a 30 % discount. Until next time, mahalo and aloha.

55:03This is Remarkable People.