AI Is Upending the Lives of People Who Do Social Media Professionally

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1:47Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast. I'm Traci Allaway. And I'm Joe Weisenthal. So we are here in Hollywood, our first ever live Odd Thought show in LA. And when we come to LA, I feel like we have to talk about the influencer economy, right? The influencer economy, the creator economy, people who have 8 million followers on Instagram that none of us have ever heard of. There's so much I don't know about this world. There's so much I need to learn. And of course, we need to learn how like AI is upending all of it. That's right. So this is the existential question facing creators.

2:23What happens to them when creating content essentially becomes like free or extremely low cost? So we have two very special guests for you. We're going to be speaking with Taylor Lorenz. She is, of course, the founder of UserMag, as well as Rachel Carton. She is a social media consultant and author of the Substack LinkedIn bio. Since we're here in L.A. and as we've alluded to in the past, we've got to learn about influencers and people with 5 million followers on Instagram and how they're dealing with this moment. Yeah. So we do, in fact, have the perfect guest. That's right. Thrilled to welcome to the stage the one and only Taylor Lorenz, founder of UserMag, as well as Rachel Carton, social media consultant, author of the great Substack LinkedIn bio.

3:18Hello. Thank you both so much for doing this. Thanks for having us. What do you start, what do you, maybe either one of you, what are you covering these days? How would you describe your coverage here? Sure. I write a newsletter called Lincoln Bio. Oh, yay. It's really good. Everyone should subscribe. Thank you. It's about working in social media. It's the primary trade publication for social media teams. And I interview experts. So I have interviewed everyone from the social team who covered Artemis to Chanty Beluga. I forgot about that one. Is that already? Is that still? That was like a one week thing.

4:03And I am a tech journalist. I write usermag.co. That's my sub stack. I write about, I kind of do a lot of roundups about like online culture, write about tech, a lot of tech policy stuff too. A little bit of everything. So everybody subscribe to that one as well. Absolutely. What are the vibes like right now in social media? It's a loaded question perhaps. All right, go on. Backstage, Taylor showed me a video that she was impressed by. No, shut up. You guys. She was really impressed by it. Literally, we were backstage, and I haven't been on Twitter that much today. I, like, saw one frame of this video that was the most AI-generated crap I've ever...

4:46And I was like, did you guys see a Coca-Cola truck exploded? It was a Coca-Cola truck that was exploding Coke out, and somebody had a bucket. And she was like, did you see this? I said, Taylor, please. And then the next scene is there's actually a Mentos truck next door, and the guy falls in and, like, explodes through the sky. And I was like, oh, my God, I'm becoming... And the caption was like, the AI videos that your mom sends you. Oh, man. And that's what I showed Rachel. I think that younger people might not remember the fact that for like many years, the only content on the internet was Mentos and Coca-Cola.

5:21That's like all we looked at for like a few years. That's like really strange. No, but here's an important question. So the people that you cover, let's start with you, Rachel. The people that you talk to who are social media professionals, do they feel as if like AI is we're going to like, how is it about like, are they mostly of the frame like, oh, AI can do what I do? Or do they mostly see it as an augmenter? Oh, I can do much more of the job that I know how to do for years with these new tools. So I think the way that AI is showing up for a lot of marketing teams is through their boss. I wrote an article about this called Does Your Boss Have AI Brain?

6:06And I talked to like 100 marketers who are dealing with an issue where their boss is asking them to use AI and their boss is using AI themselves and they're outsourcing all of their gut instincts to AI. And so I heard stories of a social manager who worked hard on a funny meme and they'll send it to their boss and they run it through Claude and ask, is this funny? That's so grim. That's so grim. I heard another example of a marketer who their boss only buys into ideas that came from Copilot. And so they actually will mock up their ideas into the Copilot UI to send their boss to get it approved.

6:48And so the quote that sticks with me from that article is demoralizing as hell. And so that's the way that a lot of marketers are interacting with AI is their boss sort of forcing it upon them. And my takeaway from that wasn't like ban AI from marketing teams, but I felt like, you know, the way that AI is being implemented is sort of a free for all. And I was thinking back to my time when I worked at Condé Nast, you know, I think they had Asana onboarded and we spent months, right? Like learning how to use Asana, what's the right way to use this workflow? And that training isn't happening on marketing teams.

7:21And so it feels like there's no philosophies or guardrails for marketers to feel like their boss is, you know, giving to them. Devil's advocate question. I know we're talking about how grim it is to have to work for a boss with AI psychosis. And everyone at the moment hates, seems to hate AI generated content. But you could imagine a world in three to five years, maybe even sooner, where we don't, yeah, three months, where we don't actually care anymore. Like, why should we dislike AI-generated social media or marketing content? Well, I think I can speak to it from the brand side. And I do feel like consumers have an expectation that a brand is putting creative effort into things.

8:07and the effort that they put into their social media is a reflection of the effort that they are putting into their product. And I think that consumers feel that through it. And that has always been true about creative. You know, brands like Nike have, you know, built so much of their world around their, you know, investment into creative. And so it's seen as a shortcut and it might make you ask, you know, if your favorite Chipotle, whatever, your favorite fast food chain is using AI generated imagery. What other shortcuts might they be taking in their process? Yeah, I totally agree. I think from a content standpoint, too, people actually do enjoy AI generated content.

8:50It's so crazy on YouTube. I don't know if you guys have noticed, but all these YouTubers are just reading AI generated scripts now. And it's so and you look at the comments, people be like, amazing analysis, great script. Like, so I think people actually like it. Sometimes when they don't know they're consuming it, Sometimes they actively know they're consuming. I think people just don't want to feel tricked. That's when it starts to feel bad because you're like, oh. I think it was your newsletter that I first heard about the, what is it, the fruit slop or the fruit soap opera, et cetera. Yeah.

9:21And I think you made the point, you can have a bunch of people in a comment section like, oh, I'm so disappointed. Oh, you used AI for this. It's disgusting. And then they scroll to the next reel. It's like, oh, I love this story about an orange falling in love with a carrot. Fruit Love Island. Yeah, Fruit Love Island. Fruit Love Island. What do you explain this disconnect as you see it? Well, I think that consumers are confused in general over what they should like online right now. And I think that Fruit Love Island feels like a low stakes. They're like, it's a meme and they don't care about the craft of a meme, but they care about the craft of a company that they purchase from.

10:03But and so I think, yeah, they could be the same person who's yelling at the company for an AI generated menu and they're sending their friend AI fruit slop. I sort of asked Hayes this question earlier, but in our AI-generated world, I guess, how do we feel about existing content or existing incumbents when it comes to social media? Do people who already have an audience, who already have a following, who maybe have proved authenticity in some way or that they're willing to put effort into their own work, do they become more valuable in this environment? Or is it another case of like low entry costs?

10:45Anyone can come in and make content for free. And so we see a sort of further trend of, I guess, what we used to call the democratization of media. Well, I think that like if you think about that, I think it depends on the type of content you're making. Are you making deeply parasocial content about like your life and your opinions? So many creators, the value that they like the way that that media was democratized was through how to content. If you think of like even just the earliest YouTube videos, it was all makeup videos, how to do this. And I actually think AI is a better authority than people will turn to AI for how to fix your dishwasher.

11:17Like it's much easier to get that. So I think those creators are going to struggle. But then there are other creators that that are going to use the tools to make great content. and they make content that is not easily replicable. You know, maybe it's commentary that's sort of... My mom, by the way, she was very proud. She was telling me that she used ChatGPT to fix her toilet recently. Good for her. Which was, I wouldn't have expected her to be able to do that.

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15:23Taylor is a keen observer of the online discourse. You know, you're maybe more online than I am somehow. I'm just curious, like, you know, in the last month, you know, a month ago, there was like a lot of people arguing about data centers. And then in the last week, there were a bunch of people arguing about models themselves as this sort of like site of controversy. Do you feel like, let's just say we're talking about AI, that like the speed with which the public takes on a new thing is it's just like an extraordinary rapid pace. And that's like, oh, you're still arguing about data centers. Wasn't that like a sort of wasn't that a July issue?

16:02That was so July. I feel like there's I mean, the social that there is going to be outrage on social media. Yeah. Data centers is an issue of 2026. I saw, I think it was like Morris Katz, the political consultant, actually saying like people are going to make a mistake and think it's a 2028 election cycle issue. It's actually a very 2026 election cycle issue. And probably by 2028, we will have something new to get mad about. But I think, yeah, the data center discourse has been interesting because those people are against AI for a very different reason than the X-Risk people that think it's going to kill all of us.

16:33And so far, those people have not really come together to form any sort of coherent coalition. So I feel like maybe they should join up, but they have very different interests. And I don't think it's going to kill us, by the way. We're going to be fine. I was going to ask, so you wrote about the idea of when we talk about rogue AI potentially killing us, getting the discourse and the language about that possibility, right? Give us the sort of nutshell argument. Like, what is the distinction that we need to be making here? Okay, so first of all, it's not going to kill us. It's actually so hard to kill all humans on Earth, even if we wanted to.

17:10So we're probably going to be fine. I think what I think is concerning or worth interrogating is the way that we anthropomorphize AI. And that's what I wrote about is the way that people assign agency to these products. And I think in some ways it's really great to do that because we have to describe, you know, you have to sort of describe how they work. But they're not humans. And we are talking about computer programs. And I do think that when we go to these policy debates about liability and stuff, it's really important to recognize that these are not, like, truly living beings. I saw one of the former FTC commissioners.

17:48He's like, AI isn't going to kill us. We survived the Black Death and that only killed 50 % of us. So it's like, all right, great. That's a really big... But also, just because something kills us doesn't mean it's smarter than us. You know, like a virus can kill a lot of people. It's not smarter than us. Well, like, okay, on the question of intelligence. So, like, yes, this idea, like, it makes you sick to your stomach to think, like, oh, you've come up with something funny. And then they're like, well, my buddy Claude doesn't think that it's funny. And then he's just like, oh, my God. But do you see in the marketing world currently productive uses of the technology, whether it's A-B testing things or like, okay, like it's easy to make fun of it, but also AI models do often tend to like do pretty like good answers to things.

18:36Do you see positive productive applications of it in the marketing world? The interesting way that I've seen it is that a lot of agencies will be selling through ideas that they want to do in the real world and in their decks or in a way to help a boss who has maybe a lack of imagination visualize what that big idea is so I have been interested by using AI to mock something up to then be able to make it in the real world and have like a human impact on it but so that's that's something that I'm interested in but I don't I don't hear that a lot of marketers are having success having it generate captions or post ideas.

19:18And it's not really a strategy that I personally recommend either. Taylor, how are you using AI? Good question. Don't cancel me because people get so mad when you talk about it. But I use it mostly, kind of like what Rachel was saying, as like an assistive tool. I don't think it's a good writing. Also, if I'm writing, I kind of want to express my thoughts. That's the whole point. So I mostly use it for SEO captions, generating, on the Canva app, making an image bigger, things like that. I also wish it could edit. I try out all these AI editing tools. This is why I don't think it's going to kill us just yet.

19:51It cannot even edit a podcast. So there's a gap. One thing I'm curious about for both of you from the perspective of social media is we have 24 hours in the day. Let's say eight of them were sleeping roughly. They're 16. So it's like, okay, maybe you can scroll for 16 hours. But they're going to do a few other things. But now there's like a bunch of that time that once it was spent scrolling might be spend time talking to a chatbot. And I'm curious if you feel it where it's like, setting aside whether AI is useful, nah, bad in creation, whether chatbot time is taking away from scrolling time to the detriment of brands and marketers.

20:36No. I think getting off of phones and off of technology is more of a threat to you. But AI is going to get us off the phones. Like, I do think screen time is going to chat. Because a lot of people are chatting using chatbots, right? They're not. Social media is entertainment. Social media is DMing your friend something who's a real person. Yeah. And I think chatting with a chatbot is a very different function. and I'm more concerned about people wanting to log off. When I go to social media, I tweet something and a bunch of people are like, oh, this guy's an idiot. People told me that today. Or Joe.

21:11I used to like Joe, but he's lost his mind. Well, maybe you're using AI too much. I probably am, but what I'm saying is I could then go, if I use Claude, it's never going to insult me like that. Well, that's bad. That's bad. No, of course it's bad, but I have the iron to resist the temptation. but couldn't a lot of people say wow this is much more pleasant i don't get dunked on when i talk to chat gpt in the way i do in the comment section on instagram i would say that twitter as a social media platform is so significantly different than tiktok and instagram where people are scrolling and it's like tv for them yeah and they're not getting insulted on there and so i think that's a little bit more specific to a twitter but don't you think that like screen time i think it's i I write a lot about the moral panic over screen time and everybody is so concerned about it.

21:57And it is going away. Like, I do think that like this form factor of this type of phone is going to die quite soon. And we're seeing wearables. We're seeing, you know, people with the ear pods in. Like, I just think we're spending less and less time actually looking at a screen. And I think in the future, we're going to interact much more ambiently. I think a small subset of people want us to believe that personally. I don't see that out in the world. I guess I see that so much where I just see, I see like, I get what you're saying for entertainment, but in terms of just like your mom, like going to fix the dishwasher, like just all these other times where we used to have to turn to a screen to text, to message a friend.

22:33But that's a screen though. Right, but I'm saying like, if you're asking about like looking at our screens, I just think that like, we're looking at our screens less and less. And if you check it less, you're going to get sucked in less. But using chat to learn how to fix a toilet is actually, I would have called a plumber and had a real interaction with somebody. I'm just saying like, If you're arguing a screen, I think that chat versus - I just think there's less and less reasons to be on our phone as we have wearables. As I'm sure you guys saw, there was this persona band that came out this week that you can whisper to.

23:02I just feel like everyone's fridge and washing, everything in your home is smart now. I just feel like we're not going to have to do everything through our phone as much, maybe, with the glasses, too. And so I just think that that might end up altering the way that we interact with these media platforms. Totally. I just think that those are equally as antisocial in my opinion. Oh, yeah. No, totally. Yeah, totally. I'm not saying that it's more pro-social. We're all agreed on the antisocialness of technology. Don't worry. We all agree it's bad. You're going to need dual-factor authentication to open your refrigerator.

23:35You're going to open your refrigerator and it says, open up your Google Auth and put in your six-digit code, and then I'm back looking at the screen. Can I just ask, on the platforms themselves, in the age of AI slop and essentially free content generation, do they become more or less powerful? And I can kind of, I could see arguing it from both ways. So, like, on the one hand, maybe a bunch of people are going to want to migrate away from X or Instagram if it's just full of AI and they're not really into that. Maybe we see more people going to DMs and chat groups and discords and check out the Odd Lots Discord, by the way.

24:11if you aren't already on it. But on the other hand, maybe curation becomes even more important and maybe having an algorithm that can really tell what you like and your preference for AI slop or not becomes even more important. How are you thinking about that? I thought you were going to answer first, so I was like, I'm going to have time to think. I think, well, so I do think that the social media platforms are not, they're like on their back foot, right? Like they're not moving fast enough. I do think like in some ways Meta, I mean, Google's better positioned than Meta. Meta's in a really hard place right now because I think they are very like 2010s sort of like social media.

24:53But I think, I don't know, it'll depend on how people start to view entertainment and how much good content can be on that app. But it's kind of a dinosaur. I don't see Meta like having the same level of influences. I think it kind of peaked in the 2010s. I mean, I think in the short term, what AI is doing to the platforms is a little bit concerning, just in the sense that there's sort of a scale and quickness that AI accounts. I'll go to look at an AI account that can post 50 times a day. They're just pulling the slot machine of Instagram, and they're going to get a hit. And so I think that when I looked up recently what were the top 20 most viewed reels ever, and I think two to three were AI generated, like pretty recent ones.

25:42One of them was showing a set and a wave and how they're filming a wave for a movie and how it would impact houses. and so it was using the framework of like proof of reality or bts to essentially confuse people of how they film something i think that's really bad to uh essentially monetize confusion and i think that's a short-term benefit with really bad long-term results that's why i think people are going to retreat towards these more these chat interfaces that are simpler and not so overwhelming and will be more kind of interactive and make them feel less lonely even though i I agree with you.