TAYLOR LORENZ Talks Journalism, Internet Labor, Viral Culture

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Do influencers or celebs know how much the internet like sucks for everyone else?

Yeah, I mean I think it sucks for them too. No, it doesn't.
What are you talking about? They get like well they get money, but I mean I don't well they get money. They got they get money.

The people they get. They get more money than f ⁇ ing the Austin Butler problem.
Yeah. Would you be online if you were making zero dollars? Actually not.
No, no, no, no, no, no. I don't know.

It's scary.

It's like you can see people getting killed and then finging and then the N-word.

It's too scary.

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The Adam Friedland Show, the AdamFriedland.show for merch. My guest this week is journalist and podcaster Taylor Lorenz.

Taylor has been in the news recently for a bombshell report she published in Wired magazine highlighting dark money funneled from the Democratic Party to political influencers across platforms.

A damning piece of reporting that we failed to mention in the episode because it was recorded like how long ago?

Yeah, a couple months ago, actually, now. So we missed the big, you probably clicked for that.
So why don't

should I

call her? Yeah, I'm gonna hit her up. She can catch you up.
So it's like,

okay.

Calling Taylor.

She'll catch us up.

Hey, so you're uh, howdy. Oh, wait.
Uh,

are we, am I? I'm not like recorded right now.

Are you

are you?

Is this off the is this on the rec? I don't know how to talk to you people. You're on the record.

Well, no, you're on the record. Actually, you're on the record.
Okay? You bastard. Two could play at that game.
Anyway, so we're about to drop your episode, but you know, we did like

two years ago or something. So

I just wanted to catch up for our audience, like if you could just like tell us a little bit about your wired piece, piece, just so we can kind of like just mention that and you know have like as if you were on the show and I said so Taylor tell me about the wired piece.

So if you want to

Yeah, does that make sense? Okay, yeah, oh sorry, absolutely yeah, go ahead

Anyway,

no, just kidding. Go ahead

I published the story with Wired a couple weeks ago. Now at this point,

documenting a program that is being run

in secret basically uh where a bunch of democrat influencers um were receiving money uh

and and uh it's like uh like uh it's gained a lot of it's controversial or something they're getting

well this influencer network has allegedly about ninety influencers in it and um it won't surprise you to know that they don't like being reported on very critically so i revealed that they were secretly taking thousands of dollars a month as part of the scheme to through Democratic messaging.

And yeah, they spent the past few weeks crashing out and slandering me.

Slandering you. Oh, man.
I'm sorry about that.

Yeah, that's terrible.

That's horrible. Oh, yeah.
Anyway, just for the record,

just for our audience, I think this is like,

just to maintain the trust that our audience has in us, but like, did you ever see my name anywhere in any of those lists or whatever reports?

yeah did your name come up in the reporting yeah

it's a good question i mean yeah

what do you mean a good question did you see my name anywhere in it just

it yes uh no no your name did not all right you were not you were not on the list you did not get that you did not seem to be getting that democratic money all right yeah okay cool sweet uh yeah uh okay nice uh yeah i hope uh you hope you're enjoying your uh your tuesday okay or monday or whatever whatever i mean it's coming out out on two.

Okay, yeah. Well, you won't see it there because they won't work with me because I am

anyway. Okay.
Have a nice day.

Yeah, congrats about Wired or whatever that's called. Bye.

So, yeah, so there's that. I'm innocent.
And,

yeah, enjoy the interview. It's really good.

With her.

Journalist. Lightning Rod.

The Lightning Rod.

Our next guest is an independent journalist. She's also previously worked at outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post.
She cut her teeth covering internet culture.

Ladies and gentlemen, Taylor Lorenz.

Thank you.

Is it this or this?

Pleasure. I don't know.
I don't know. I feel so.
I took a PCR for you, though. I know, thank you.
I know. I have no immune system, unfortunately.

Is it tough, like, just operating that way?

Yeah. Yeah, it's tough.
And people are mean to you. They're like, you're already hated.
They're like, fuck you. Yeah, yeah.
Could be cursed. It's tough.

Everyone here is in hazmat suits right now.

No, it's annoying. But I would say, like, I mean, I'm in a bunch of documentaries and stuff, and like they usually still take precautions on set for stuff.

In this show, I... as I was telling you before, like I've made a living on the internet, but I haven't interacted as much with the internet as most people.

I like kind of mainly just watch movies and stuff and sports. And in these interviews, I've been kind of discovering this ecosystem and it's been incredibly stressful.

But from what I understand, this has been your focus for like what, the last 10 years of your life? 15 at this point.

And

in your estimation,

it must have driven you insane. I think it probably drove me insane a long time ago and now I'm just like the frog in water.

How do you cope with like the insanity of

your area of focus is the internet? Yeah. You must take a psychological term.
And influencers. Not even just the internet.
It's like online influencers. Well, they're awesome.
We love them. Great.

Greatest minds of our generation. Who's the best one? Oh,

I can't pick favorites. I don't know.
Really? Maybe you. I show Speed.
Oh, I shall Speed. I'm influencer.
I love Speed.

I'm influencer.

I think podcasters are influencers at this point.

I'm a former podcaster. Former podcaster.

Well, Showman, YouTube. Is this show on YouTube? yeah yeah yeah yeah so

you're a youtuber now oh yvet

i will say the one thought i used to have you know that one thought you have about your yourself it's like you're trying to fall asleep and it's like the worst it's just like the biggest like like most awful like thought about yourself and then you're like trying to file fall asleep and you're like, like that was that

I'm a podcaster who lives in Brooklyn. And I feel like I've retired from that.

And it feels so good. Now I'm a YouTuber.
Now you're a YouTuber that lives in Brooklyn. Jesus Christ.
I should kill myself. I don't know.

I was like very early to embrace the like influencer journalist thing. And that made a lot of people in mainstream media really mad at me.
It was seen as trash? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. They were like, ah.

But I mean, to some extent, you were like the first person to recognize that as like a force in popular culture. Yeah.
I mean, maybe like the first person in journalism to like really make it a beat.

I started on Tumblr after college. Yeah, it was the recession.
I was temping.

But it was just like, I don't know, I got good at making viral content. Okay.
And this girl at Tumblr, like I got pretty popular on there and like media people started to follow me. And

I was like, maybe I should be in like media or something or like marketing. I don't know.
I just didn't know what I was doing.

This girl at Tumblr had me into the office and was like, yeah, like, what are you doing?

Like, and I was like, I work these temp jobs and I'm working I was working as a messenger I was working retail and

So she helped me get into advertising and then I was doing social media for brands and writing about copywriting and yeah, yeah, but um and then I ran I wrote for the Verizon Wireless Facebook page.

Oh my god. Yeah.
That was her

That was her

My favorite moment from that job

It was the 10th anniversary of 9-11. Thank God.
And they wanted to put the Verizon logo in the lights. They wanted to to do a Facebook post that was like

4G. We kept it going.

Verizon wanted to. They wanted to do that.
And I just remember being like, this was like before there was even really backlash to brands online. But I was like, I feel like we shouldn't do that.

Yeah, yeah. And then I was writing, I was blogging always, writing about influencer.
When I was big on Tumblr, like other people that were big on Tumblr were like fuck Jerry, the fat Jew,

and a lot of like early YouTubers. And the mainstream media was like writing really like stupid articles about them.

And I was like, I'm going to write my own articles about how this is labor and this is work. And internet labor is real labor.
Memes is labor. Yeah,

it's hard labor to make content. Well, so you approached it as a content creator and then went into journalism.
Yeah. It's interesting.

I was always, I always had like an audience online even before I was in journalism. And then I went into doing, I ran the People Magazine Vine account.

I was doing like social media for like media brands. I launched all the Daily Mail's social media channels.

What was it like working for them bastards? It was, it was great.

It was, I mean, it was like a crazy job because they just, I was the youngest woman in like senior management because they like, this was 2012 when like, if you knew how to like do anything on the internet and get traffic for them, they were just like, oh my God.

So like I got to go. this like executive retreat in a castle in England and tell them about like Facebook.
With Rupert? With, no, Rupert doesn't own the Daily Mail. It's Paul Dacre.

It's like it's the Roth, I can't remember their name, but it's a different right-wing family in England.

But I mean, at this point, we can see that it's had, I mean, it's just, it is culture at this point. Oh, well, now.

Is that still up for debate amongst legacy media? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the legacy media.
I mean,

I know.

It's interesting because

I was at, so I covered the first, I had a Snapchat show in 2016. I covered the first Trump.

Did you get a Quibi deal? Quibi. No, I wish.
Oh, my God. I wish.
They were just throwing money out. They were throwing money out.
I know. Kasenberg, where are you, dude? Give me something for this.

He should have relaunched. I would sell this to anyone.
I would sell this to fucking Lockheed Martin if it. But I just want to say, like,

in 2016, I was at the Hilton in the room when Trump won, and not many media reporters even bothered to get credentialed for that.

And it was all like internet people it was like forum admins and like influencers and like content creator internet people that election even though all these liberals were like it was Russia that put him in office or whatever like that election was so defined by the internet and new media and I think it I don't think it was until this election the mainstream media even started to notice that like oh we're actually becoming irrelevant I think it was like when Trump started to put these people in the press briefing room and all this stuff.

What was that night? Because my impression was always like, that was one of the most insane insane things I've ever seen in my entire life, right? Yeah. I was at the Chapo Trap House live show, right?

And they wrote an entire show to be like, congrats, Hillary, right? And as it was falling apart that night, I was like, this is the funniest thing in the world. And then I went to a bar.

You know that picture of Paris the day after the Nazis took over? Yeah. And they're those pictures, there's those like the citizens of Paris that are like, we have the most Paris.
Yeah.

And like they're like,

that is what Brooklyn looked like at the time. My impression was like those pictures of Trump in the war room was like he didn't want to win.
Oh, he didn't want to win.

He didn't think he was going to win. And no one at the party thought he was going to win either.
So funny. And it was so funny.
And then they were going insane. I stayed there.

I stayed up all night that night. I stayed there until 6.30 in the morning.
That party went all night.

And then I went and got in line outside the New Yorker hotel to cover Hillary's concession speech where everyone was just weeping. Yeah, everyone was like, you went to ask

her to see Hillary. yeah and she was like oh yeah you did Molly at the deplorable no no no you didn't I had some I think I had some maybe a drink or two but

yeah with with uh who like the

the the QAnon came

on

I was making yeah I was making do you remember the moment he walked out oh absolutely I have it on camera it is

It is maybe one of the most because I had just smoked weed and then I laughed and I was like Donald Trump for apprentice just just gonna pick up the president and then and then he walked out on stage and he's a big big old stupid like

like shit body and it was kind of in silhouette and it was like you got always

get what you wanted and I was like I was like blazed and I was like this is the most insane thing I've ever seen in my entire life the choral part of you can't always get what you want yeah and like just it it was like I think a moment of like this is is like a,

it's douchey to say this, but I'm like, this is, this is one of the greatest works of art I've ever seen in my entire life.

This past election, I didn't think we were going to get, I was like, there's no way we're going to, he's not going to do it twice. That election, I was like, 100% he's winning.

And I have the receipts. How did people know 100%?

Not 100%, but I was telling people that I thought he was going to win. Because I was doing Facebook stuff and internet.
Like, I mean, I was working social media. And, like,

well, when Bernie was, I covered Bernie for the first three months before he dropped out. Yeah.
R.I.P. Obviously was like that.

Anyway,

but Bernie would do well on Facebook.

But like Trump was just like the internet, there was this like groundswell of support online that like no liberals were taking, like liberals were in like full just delusion.

They were delusional about it. And they were so delusional about the internet and delusional about like...

I think they were just like delusional. I've been going through like an archive of Howard Stern.
Like I grew up listening to Stern a lot. Yeah.
And he went on like almost 100 times.

And I've been like listening back to them because like as an interviewer, like he is one of the most difficult interview subjects, right?

Like he, if you're untethered to the truth, you know, like if you say, oh, like, do you know Roy Cohen? He's like, I never met him. Like, what do you do, right?

When you know that he knows the guy, right?

But Howard, the way that he kind of like

massages his ego and then gets anything out. Yeah.
Just like, you know, does Melania, you know, duenal with you? And like, he's like, oh, Howard, I would never say it. I would never say it.

You know, like, just, but, but, like, one thing that Trump recognized was, like, I think polite society saw Howard's audience as trash, right?

But he realized the size of the audience and he built the apprentice into like the number two rated like program after the Super Bowl.

And I think that that was kind of a proto, like, MAGA, like, realization he's had. Because he's not really a businessman.
He's a, he's a, he's like an energy. He's from television.
Yeah, yeah.

And he's very good at that. I want to talk about like covering influencers though and then go back to like contemporary politics.

Like how has that ecosystem changed?

I think a lot about what the Paul brothers were in 2015 versus what they are now. And like what are the conditions that you've noticed that have sustained careers and

what has killed a career?

There's just so much more money in this space. There's so much much more legitimacy.
2015, I mean, the Paul brothers came of Vine, and I write about this in my book, Extremely Online.

That was sort of when people started to become like multi-platform, before they were very associated with one platform. When Vine, well, no, after Vine.
So Vine started to decline.

There was this famous meeting where 19 or 20 of the biggest Viners I've written

you know, got together and demanded money from Vine. They were like, we're making you guys so much money.
He was a king batch. Yeah, exactly.
What happened to him? He's dead? Oh no, he's around. Okay.

But yeah, it was that era. Yeah.

And

so they wanted money from the platform.

The platform was, which was owned by Twitter, didn't want to give them money because they were worried that every celebrity would then want to be paid for their tweets.

And they just didn't also have the money.

So they sort of really started to go to YouTube and become these multi-platform stars. And that was also when all this money started to really pour into the space.

And that was like the beginning of the prank era of YouTube. And you saw all these people take off.

But I would say like the biggest change of the past 20 years, really, since the content creator industry industry started is like just the money and the legitimacy.

Do influencers or celebs know how much the internet like sucks for everyone else? Yeah, I mean I think it sucks for them too. No, it doesn't.
What are you talking about? They get like...

Well, they get money, but I mean, I...

Well, they get money.

They get money. The people they make money.
They have more money than fucking the Austin Butler problem. Yeah, that's true.
A lot of them are making money.

But the ones that don't make money, I'm always fascinated by because it's like... But that's everyone on the internet.
Well, those, right, exactly.

The average people that spend spend all day online would you be online if you were making zero dollars actually not no no no no no no I don't know it's scary it's like you can see people getting killed and then fucking and then the n-word I d it's too scary is that free speech or Elon's making it that it's not free speech he banned a bunch of journalists I got banned I got back on though really yeah I got banned you you think um just this is as an aside

but like you you

a autoimmune disorder from COVID? Not autoimmune, but an immune. Autoimmune is when your immune works overtime.
My immune system basically does not work enough.

Autoimmune means you have really good immune system. It's like overworking your immune system.
My immune system. So AIDS is good? What I don't know.
No, AIDS is not. HIV is not a good idea.

Is that autoimmune? No. No.
Okay. I don't, I'm not, I don't, I don't, whatever.

Okay, but like you think wearing a mask, like masking up, you think that makes you a better, like you, you could be sneakier as a journalist? Interesting.

It's kind of good for you you because

people don't know that they're sitting next to a journalist. There's only one still masking in 2025, I feel like.

You could be in public and they're like, oh, there's some masked person, but it turns out to be

lightning rod,

infamous journalist Taylor Lorenz. I will say, I was at the inauguration this year and a bunch of inauguration parties for Trump.
And yeah,

I was, I think, the only person masked. Was Huktua there?

She was not,

but some others affiliated with her were were around who's affiliated with hookatua like other random influencers oh god so trash

um okay what

you think that maybe i think you know what is fair you guys used to wear like a fedora with like a little book the reddit people no like journalists oh journalists yes with a little like press badge or whatever yeah and then you know who the journalist is yeah now now you don't know you know you could be out in public so you might be saying something you guys should wear those like you think i I think you guys should wear those vests from like war zones yeah

press with the fedora just so because I say I mess up things that I say all the time but people don't need to be a journalist to like now we just have this like crowdsourced surveillance state where everyone's recording everyone at all times like everywhere you go you know really yeah not all the time a lot of the time I think with facial I don't know if you've ever used the website have you ever heard of PymEyes

oh you got to search yourself on PimEyes I don't want to look it's like one of those websites where it scans the internet internet for your face, and you'll find yourself.

I mean, I found myself in like parties from like Williamsburg in 2011. Nice.
Yeah. Animal Collective?

Yeah, it's like that.

I was living in Williamsburg in 2011. I thought it was like peak cool.

I want to go back because I'm getting off track again. But like,

as someone that's covered this, do you think we could fix it?

I do believe in, like, the, I do believe in like an open web and free speech and the the internet's democratizing power. I don't

I think what's been really scary in liberal and leftist spaces over the past 10 years really is this regression where they're so pro-censorship so pro

They want to fucking dismantle section 230 like they want to

it's it's it's basically the the law that guarantees a free internet it it allows uh for you to have basically um any platform to sort of like host your speech for if I I wanted to sue you I'm suing you and not the platform.

So it it protects platforms ability to publish a

wide variety of things. Is it protects Google from getting sued?

Yeah, and it

sued for defamation. You can make a lot more money if you get them in the lawsuit too.
Be sick. Well, they would just shut down.
Like, I mean, the point is they would stop. They wouldn't shut down.

They would stop hosting speech. And that's the concern.

They sort of pre-censored things with the Kids Online Safety Act and this panic over children, you know, like having open access to information about like trans people when they're teenagers.

It's caused these platforms to pre-censor a lot of stuff and I think a lot of these platforms have become way too censorous.

We don't have enough free speech online.

But liberals aren't telling them to censor trans people.

Liberals want censorship of right-wing ideas and right-wingers want censorship of trans stuff and reproductive justice.

They just want to censor each other and that's why they can come together on these really dangerous bad bad bad dangerous censorship laws like the kids online safety act like the take it down act you've mentioned kids it's like i didn't i'm i'm 38 so like we didn't have the like like i couldn't just watch porn like like like uh like porn hub style i had to go searching for it i had to like like people would like hide it in the woods and stuff like that in the woods and i feel like i don't know maybe it's like i don't maybe it's fucked kids up like that at 11 they can just see people fucking any, you know, it's like, maybe that's a little bit

not speech, but

here's the thing.

I'm open to that. Yeah, I'm sure.

I think when you frame it that way,

it feeds into a moral panic.

I think that what you're asking for, it seems like what you're advocating for is age verification online. I think you need to weigh the upsides and the downsides, right?

Like, could an 11-year-old see porn online? Maybe. But do you want this comprehensive age verification system where everything you do online is tied to your offline identity?

That's what they're trying to build right now. What does that mean? Basically, remove anonymous speech online.
So, right now, you can go on a website, right?

And the government doesn't know who's browsing what website, who's consuming what content, who's posting what a lot of the times, right? Just really essential to democracy.

It's really essential to free speech, activism, journalism, stuff like that, right? So, we want anonymity on the internet.

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Nice.

One thing I've

in like looking at your stuff that's interesting is like you've made a point that like

you you make statements about what your like political ideology is, right? And like

obviously journalists are human beings, right?

But we didn't know like Dan Rathers, like political. I think we did.
I mean we could guess, but he wasn't like wasn't overt about it. He wasn't like fuck rest and piss Biden.
You say that?

Rest in Piss Biden? I did.

You know what you're doing. You know what you're doing.
Yeah. You know what you're doing.

You know what you're doing.

You know like these like

Jerno DC blue check types. I fucking hate it.

They'll take it every time.

Every time. So

what is the line between someone that's playing the game and someone that's covering the game?

And where do you exist in that spectrum? Yeah, I mean, I do hate, I will say, I believe, I believe that shit. Like, I don't, I hate Joe Biden.
Like, I think he is a...

Sure, but you're trying to piss off other fucking

other people in your fucking industry that are... I mean, you live in a world of scoundrels.
And you're trying to, like, piss off fucking, I don't know, the Atlantic.

I like to get a rise out of these people that I think are

sort of just fundamentally unserious. Like, they're lying.
Like, their whole thing of like,

we don't have an agenda, we don't have an opinion.

I think now, especially, I mean, considering the context of Gaza, like we see that the media does have an agenda, and the media does have a certain political stand.

And certain journalists at these places, I mean, all journalists, journalism is not a neutral act. Every editorial decision

is made to present a certain version of events. And so I just think it's a farce to not acknowledge that.

And I have always, and this is why a lot of these mainstream media people hate me, is like, I said for a long time, sort of from the jump, that I think that that's an antiquated view of journalism.

And I think it's much better to be open about my beliefs. People can disagree.

But does it color people's interpretation? Because they're going to be like, she's... Like Fox News, right? Yeah.

Was like, I feel like things changed because they were like, this is a brand of journalism. And I think that, like,

I guess it's an interesting question. Journalists have always had brands.

Does that color your analysis as a liberal or leftist or like, you know, like, does that, like, instead of like, oh, I'm, I'm finding sources and I'm telling a story and I have like professional ethics.

But I'm not lying about it. Like, what bothers me about traditional media is that they're lying.
Like, they're not, and not all of them, of course, and there's amazing. They're not ever lied.

Joe Biden was fine.

He was doing great.

I think, you know, just, I think that, again, I think this concept of neutrality is a farce. I don't think it's neutral.
I've worked in these newsrooms too.

Sometimes they're trying to get, they're actively trying to get laws changed, right? Like they're trying to do certain things. And I just think that we should be honest about it.

And I will say that is what I think the public, what has caused the public to, and I wrote so much about this in my book, but what has caused so much of the public to lose trust in mainstream media is that farce is that sort of, well, this is just, we're not like CNN being like, you know, well, we're totally neutral.

And, you know,

but the war in Iraq is necessary and they do have what or whatever, you know, people lie about all these different major events. And now people have the internet, they can see these lies and

I think it builds I don't think I know that it builds trust among my audience to know where I stand on things.

A lot of people in my audience don't agree with me, but they know my political ideology and they know that I'm gonna come with a certain perspective that I'm not trying to conceal.

If you're performing a public spat, do you think it's it's it's it's uh building a brand for yourself? And do you think that that distracts from like hard journalism?

Or do you think that that like uh uh benefits your

I think it totally depends on the type of reporter that you are yeah like I don't love the system that we have now where there's so many amazing journalists that are not sort of good at manipulating the internet and aren't ability like don't have a good ability to get attention or make a TikTok or whatever that are just doing phenomenal investigative journalism right and now they feel like they have to be a brand and they have to do all this stuff that's a very broken system i would love to live in a world that that is not the case i think in the current version of the internet that we have um

you know,

it is this reality that attention is necessary. And that's always been the case.
They sort of offloaded an

they would offload that. I mean, you used to be able to depend on a mainstream media brand to sort of deliver you audience, deliver you attention to your stories.

Now you can't rely on that, so you have to do it yourself.

I just, I think I've always had a very realistic view of the attention economy and always had a very realistic view of who I'm actually competing with and who I'm competing with for attention online.

And I don't don't think I compete with other traditional media journalists as much as I compete with podcasters, with YouTubers, with these other people. And so I've always...
Who's on your shit list?

Who's on my shit list? Yeah, who are you trying to fuck with? Oh, God. I don't know.
But I wouldn't say I intentionally start beefs. I report critically on influencers.

I mean, when I did that big Mr. Beast story in 2021 about his labor violations or whatever, I had like Phil DeFranco making videos about me.
Like, I've always had a beat that's... What did he do?

Oh, he made this video saying I did a hit piece.

No, what did Mr. Beast do? What did Mr.
Beast do? He did, he was. Because he's a fine individual,

yeah. Well, he was doing some labor.
He had some labor, some labor issues. Was he like a sweat?

Hey, he was

debatably torturing his employees. I mean, he tortures people on his show all the time.
Well, I think that was the thing. Yeah, exactly.
That was the Stanford prison experiment. Yeah.

He was also signing people to restoration. Desperate people, like

please, Mr. Beast.
I went to Greenville to do a story on the economic impact that he's had on Greenville and like the town. And it's bizarre because everyone needs to.

People move in there so they can get free iPhone and stuff.

That's awesome. The whole town is like...

China, please. China, please.

China,

this is against Christ.

Go continue, sorry. The town is just like, everyone's sort of hoping that he might, you know, come into their business,

give them, give them like a piece, you know, and they'd be like, oh, I heard Jimmy Speaker do a video.

So Jake Paul has said that he wants to run for president. He's eligible in 2035.

I don't think he can do it. I think Mr.
Beast, Mr. Beast said he wants to run for office.
We need speed against Beast. Decide.
Well, I'm voting speed. Yeah, Beast, Republican, speed,

China.

What's the worst you ever ruined someone's life? I wouldn't say I ruined someone's life. I report critically on people that are doing

on the for real tip. Even if they're a bad guy, what's the most eviscerated you ever did? The way the attention economy works, like all press can be good press.
So I don't know that I'm hyping.

But I mean I've gotten people's like shows canceled, I guess, on like networks and stuff. I don't know.
What shows? I got the girls from the more Pamela Geller's daughters.

Do you know who Pamela Geller is? Famous.

She's just a crazy right-wing influencer, yeah. She has these two extremist daughters who had this podcast on like Yahoo's network or something.
You got a podcast, Yahoo. Yahoo's podcast.

And now I think like somebody, their fandom like really hates me for that.

I don't know who these people are. Camel and Gallery went to speed, Mr.
Beast, pretty much. That's all you need to know.
LeBron, Luca. Oh, yeah.

John President.

I know the sports world. You know that I did a story years ago for The Atlantic about how viral videos were making

college basketball recruiters like visit high schools that they wouldn't previously because like these teenagers would go viral and like how that was affecting the recruiting process.

Well, that's been like thrown into chaos now. Oh, now, yeah, I followed

an IL because they can make money now. So they have to like recruit four-year-olds.
Yeah. And like

pay off a corrupt family member of a four-year-old in the middle of Iowa or something.

We saw your boy.

But it's like interesting to see. Do you want to get him signed at CAA? No, literally.
Yeah. But also like they have, I went to see Boulder and like we have Deion Sanders now.

And like

Prime, Coach Prime, which is, you know, but it's like interesting. Did you you show with Steiny?

Did I go?

I don't think we, I don't know if we overlapped, but I didn't know him in college. His nickname was Xanax at his frat.
Really? What frat was he in? I was a sorority girl in college.

What sorority were you? Alpha Phi.

Did we just break that? Scoop. Did we just break that? What was Alpha Phi?

Like, it was. Bitches.
Mean. No, it was, it was, it was chill.
No, it wasn't. It was not.
I was, it was, they were bullying. Who were you mean to? The ugly girl sorority?

Everyone was really mean. It was like, it was, I don't know, it was like the late 2000s.

It's kind of interesting. It probably prepped you for the world of journalism.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Greek life.

Greek life, yeah.

Why do you think that the right wing has done the internet better?

Oh, they've always had a very personality-driven media ecosystem. I mean, even since the days of like talk radio.
They've always

fire. I mean, yeah.

He did that job every day, geeked off of, he was like future. He just hopped in the booth perfect.
Yeah. And he was on fucking perks.
I mean, so many of them are just

phenomenal entertainers and good at getting attention and good at having opinion.

They also, because they felt like they never were going to get a fair shot from the traditional media, which they feel like, which I think is probably true, it's like very, much more sympathetic to Democrats.

Like they always had to build this alternative media structure. And they recognized the power power of the internet really in the early 2010s

with like Bannon and you know this sort of like newer wave of people that that founded these digital media companies like realized influencer they recognized influencer culture very early.

I guess like what is your prescription for

how progressives can actually like get this back?

Like

or is it a lost cause? No, I don't think it's a lost cause. Did they start saying the n-word also

no because that's how the right the right might be. You look like this girl on TikTok.

I don't think that's

no you shouldn't obviously not. There's this girl on TikTok that's like the Democrats need to beat bullies.

And she came and she got canceled recently because she was like, and by the way, I was popular in high school and it's not true that the popular people and everyone was just like what? You're like 34.

Like, why are you talking about you know all this stuff? Yeah. You're going to die earlier.
I probably will. I think you are.
I mean, my immune system is like non-existent.

No, it's not even because of that. You're going to die because you're because these are too much.
Because stress, no, stress. Stress.
I mean, stress is a killer. Yeah.
Sigs are healthier than stress.

Yeah. I think.

I'm pretty sure.

I don't. I live in LA.
I have a good life. Like, I don't, it's not, I don't take it.
Those people are so stupid over there. I like LA because it, it's.
Let's do L.A. versus New York.
Let's go.

No, I'm just kidding.

I like, what I like about L.A. is like, it's just a little removed from the whole,

I don't know, media, DC, New York shit. It's true.
They don't have any media in LA. It's just seriously.
They never made any movies.

Are you going to make a movie? About what? The most harassed woman.

Every time they want to do, I don't know what you're going to do for the intro of this. Anytime someone does like a...

like an interview with me or whatever, it's like they have to do the supercut in the beginning of like, Taylor Lorenz, Taylor Lorenz. And it's just like.

Do you ever want to be the least harassed woman? I don't think, I don't take, I don't care. Like, I don't, if people want to yell online, it's not affecting me.

And this is what pissed me off so much about that MSNBC thing. Like, I don't care if people say all day how many times I trend on Twitter.
It's funny to me.

What I care about is people swatting my parents. You know, like that shit's annoying.

When they call in. Did you hit them? No, it's like SWAT.
It's a federal crime, but they call the SWAT team thing. Yeah, and they're like, not.
That's anti-social.

Well, that type of shit, they're doing that shit to my family members. They're harassing people that just like the person that took the-laying in the mud with all these people.

Totally, but I'm saying, like, that type of thing. Do you feel bad a little bit?

Because it's like you're engaging with the crappiest of the crap. Yeah.
Do you say sorry? You're like, mom, my bad. I don't.
Well, my parents, thankfully, like, don't, they're, like, goddamn.

They didn't realize the SWAT team was there?

Well, it's happened a few times, but.

But yeah. So you've destroyed your family.
You're dying. You now have a debilitating disease.
My family. You're also

You're engaging with the scoundrels.

You're disrespecting Piers Morgan, some of the finest people in our society. And Piers, if you'd ever,

if you want, like, I'm here. Here you go again, Piers.
Did you see they let me on Hannity recently? How was that? I was, I want them, they got to put me back. He kept asking me.

What does he like doing that? It must be so fun. I thought it was.
Can you tell them to let me?

100%.

The producer has not responded to me since. I was like, let me know anytime.
Because they talk about me all the time on Fox News, and I'm like, put me on.

If you're going to talk about me, like, let me say my part. The whole time, Hannity is just being like, you know, don't you think Brian Thompson had a soul?

And I don't know, just weird shit like that. Oh, yeah, you got in trouble for saying you felt happy that Luigi killed that person.
No, I said, I said. You were like, I love that shit.

I said I felt joy that people were finally acknowledging the systemic violence of our healthcare system.

You felt joy in that. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Which

shocking. He was like, how could you use that word? I haven't the fuckiest word.
What are you saying? He's not the fucking NHS. He doesn't even know how bad we have it.
I love Pierce, dude. Yeah.

He's the man.

I still read the Daily Mail like top to bottom every day. Oh, he was the Daily Mail.
He was on Daily Mail, yeah. He had like a column.
He was really good friends with the old editor.

If you wrote an article about someone and they killed themselves, would you feel bad? Of course, yeah.

I mean, if my article was like relevant to, if they killed themselves unrelatedly, but yeah, I mean, if I wrote something that ultimately led them to spiral, I would feel bad.

This is like, I think this is perhaps one of my greatest challenges because

you're perhaps the most media trained guests I've ever had because you're the media.

Right? I don't know. Yeah, but I do think it's weird to be on the other side of things.
Yeah. It's hard to interview too.
How the fuck do you...

Welcome to the Thunderdome. I had to go to a Zoom improv class once.
I didn't get this TV. That made me nauseous just now.
It was so bad, Adam. It was.
During COVID, you did UCB Zoom improv?

Dude, I don't know if if it was UCB. I didn't get this TV contributor gig that I was up for.
And the feedback was like, you're not good enough, like, on your feet. And so.

Oh, to be like with a microphone? Yeah, I was going to do it. It was like this TV hosting thing.
Cool. Mario Lopez style.

Which I've done tons of internet stuff like that. This was for broadcasts.
Anyway, and that was the feedback. And so they were like, oh, you should do like an improv class.
This was like April 2020.

So I like googled like improv. Yeah, I did a fucking Zoom improv.

And two of the people in the Zoom improv were in the same room that's one of the most loser sentences it was terrible well that was my that was like I'm done with this shit I did one class and I never went back don't be saying that in front of Tucker because he's gonna kill your ass on that

she did zoom improv

what um

I guess I have one last question what would you identify as like

your

project like what like what what like obviously you have an ambition career-wise? There's a few things. I think I want to help people understand the internet.
I want people to recognize

the dynamics of our internet, sort of help educate people about the attention economy and take it seriously.

I mean, I think, I do think I've done a lot to help people understand the media landscape differently than maybe they have.

Now, more recently, now that people sort of seem, I feel like I've accomplished a lot of that. Like, I don't feel, I used to feel like if I don't write this story, like, no one will cover it.

Like, no one else covers this industry. Like, there's not that many reporters.
Like, I have to do it. Now I feel like there's people covering that.

Now, I'm very focused on speech, free speech, and protecting free speech online. Babies watching porn and stuff.
No, I mean, just like civil liberties. Like,

I think, like I said before, like liberals and leftists have abandoned so much of that and pushed this like bullshit moral panic stuff that's not based in reality and not based in any sort of science or anything and so I care.

I remember like government class when you learned about Skokie, Illinois. Yeah, yeah.

I always thought it was like so cool that like there were like lawyers, a lot of them were Jewish at the ACLU that were defending Nazis.

Yeah. That like their right to like march through a community, which I understand had a lot of Holocaust survivors, but having like a principle like free speech being paramount

to me sounded like so that's really dope that like it's more important we protect protect this

and even by standing up for the Nazis. So I kind of understand that as a progressive principle for sure.
But most progressives today I would argue don't.

Like I think a lot of people on the left today would argue for deplatforming, would argue for censorship.

They're arguing for these age verification law, these really dangerous internet bills that do want to strip speech rights. But these are corporations with profit incentives, right?

Exactly, and we should

instead of punishing the users, which is what these speech laws do, they're not punishing the companies.

There's a reason why Apple and X are backing a lot of these, like, you know, backing like age verification and things like the Take It Down Act or whatever,

because it punishes the users. It punishes speech online.
It doesn't actually fundamentally affect the business model. These profit-driven companies, they have no incentive to protect free speech.

If they get this law passed in Texas that they have, it's HB, I can't remember the name, I made a video about it recently, but they want to censor all speech about abortion online, criminalize it essentially.

And

we don't have state-by-state internet laws that will result in that sort of content getting censored across the country. And

Facebook doesn't care. They're like, okay, if the government says that, sure, we'll censor it.
We don't care. We're in the profit-driven business.

Because you got muscles now and a chain. Exactly.
And he's like, no, he doesn't care about free speech.

None of them actually care about defending free speech.

But I don't think many people do care about protecting free speech outside of maybe FHIR and the Electronic Frontier Foundation and like a couple organizations.

But like I'm talking about like activists, like they don't care. They're saying this bullshit about like, we gotta ban cell phones or whatever.
Like it's just, it's like,

it's, I really care about speech online. And if I had to sort of think about, like, I feel like if I have to pick an issue that I want people to understand, it's it's that one.
Yeah.

I just, I worry,

I don't know. I don't worry about it.
I don't give too much

speech. I just worry that people like just aren't

people are being like

freaked out.

People are being fucking weird. And I think that, like, I mean, I think it is bizarre to be like for zero dollars yelling at the government or like the president all day, right?

I think that's, yeah. I think it's like, I can't understand, but I think that everyone kind of like views things as like personal branding now.

But like, I like it when things are normal and it's it's too sweet you're in the wrong decade i think like i think a lot of the problems that people ascribe to the internet are broader problems with like capitalism and i think we could have a less profit-driven internet and that would be a better internet how the fuck are you gonna do that we have we have i mean we have systems like that we have we did it things you have broker companies no but we we have right now we have a duopoly i think it's interesting by the way that there's all this like antitrust conversation i think that should have happened 10 years ago okay um i think the fact that so much of the internet now is defined by like a very small amount of major social platforms that have like a complete dominance of the market and can act arbitrarily to some, you know, like I think that's bad.

I think we should have more competition. I think we should have more private spaces.

I think users deserve more control online over their online experience.

These are all things we can advocate for that would make the internet a lot less like the way that you hate, you know, it makes all of us miserable, right? Like it fucking makes all of us miserable.

Like, but the answer is not to like eliminate the internet and censor speech. The answer is to

regulate these companies in a smart and coherent way that actually targets the companies themselves.

And then, maybe also the answer is like if someone has a job, they can't be doing that all day long. Right? I feel like more jobs

require you to engage with the internet, though. Maybe it's just

not enough jobs, so people are just like, I'm going to be on the computer.

Too many email jobs. I'm going to be filming people

not wearing, you know, wearing a m

someone telling me to put a mask on and CVS, and then I'm going to be in Congress in two years' time.

Yeah, that, I mean, that, but I think that that's the broader issue with like our attention economy.

And

yeah, I also don't think we would have a lot of these problems if we had a coherent, like

so many of our problems are

I think if we had an actual populist movement, if we had a a movement for that was driven around class solidarity and workers' rights and and things, I just think a lot of these problems that are sort of systemic problems that we view through the internet

would not manifest in the same way.

But we don't have that. We have the Democratic Party instead.

They're not doing anything.

They're trying to get that DNC money.

How do you get it? You know them?

I mean, how do you get it? You got to, you know.

Taylor Reds, bro.

successful.

You're listening to the Right Now podcast with John Gobblecon. Johannes, good news.
What? I finally found a home. Oh, you moved out of the Waymo? No, I never leave it that big.

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Wait a minute, does that make Bill Burrs my boss? Yep. Oh my god.

I have a feeling I'm going to get yelled at a lot.