In Conversation with Taylor Lorenz
misogyny, power, and the history of influence online
Earlier this week I sat down- via Zoom- with Taylor Lorenz Washington Post columnist and author of Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet. Below is a transcript of our delightful conversation about women on the internet, fame, and the power of influencers.
Taylor’s book is out on Tuesday- having read an ARC- I can highly recommend it to all of you.
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Hannah
(The conversation below has been condensed and edited for clarity.)
Hannah: One thing I think that’s really interesting is about trend cycles and how they’re changing. You were talking about the ‘fuck yeah’ blogs that started on Tumblr. … I got on TikTok this morning and I wanted everyone to shut the fuck up about the Roman Empire. I feel like trend cycles have really gotten quicker. What are your thoughts on trend cycles as someone who has really studied social media?
Taylor: I feel like we’re on a content treadmill that’s just getting faster and faster. It's it's funny, I mean I think there's just so much content now and there's only going to be more content, especially with things like the rise of AI that can just go and filter through more content. Also I think our attention spans are increasingly shorter and things can travel through the whole internet with the blink of an eye. Previously in the Youtube Era, we would literally have to manually share links. Unfortunately I think the internet is not slowing down but I totally can relate because I feel exhausted by the pace of it myself.
Hannah: As a journalist, what do you think of the pace of AI? Not in an, is it stealing our jobs kind of way but from a broader internet way.
Taylor: Well I don’t think it’ll steal our jobs anytime soon. I think it can AI can be a really powerful creative tool. And I think the way just the way that the content creator industry in these social platforms like TikTok etc. have lowered the bar for content creation, I think AI is going to lower that bar even further. And so in this sense it's really good it's going to allow all of us tools to express ourselves but of course it can also end up replacing a lot of creative labor and especially like voice actors and illustrators and things like that, which I think is really dark and depressing. I mean look, I'm sure it'll be writing up articles. But I do think there's something about human connection though that people will want. I think if you're looking for what time the Super Bowl is or whatever, you probably don't mind reading an AI article. But I do think people develop sort of these close relationships with people because of their voices. Voices I think actually that might stand out more than ever at the age of AI because all AI copy at this point sounds very similar. It all sounds a bit off.
Hannah: I agree. I’m a writer as well and people ask me that a lot. I don't know as much about [AI] as you but I always just think that even with novels, people read them because they want to read human stories written by people. I think it's more of a concern in like the super genre heavy like you know if you're if you're writing like bodice rippers, maybe that’s a bit different.
Taylor: No I totally agree. Also I think it’s interesting how AI is used to like ingest people's work. Like right now I think a lot of these AI systems have been like devouring up years of books and I think it'll be interesting to see intellectual property stuff comes out.
Hannah: Oh yeah I think that's actually a really really interesting point. Just kind of going back to a different topic in your book, I hope I'm not projecting this on to you, but something that I think you've experienced a lot of and that is a big theme of your book is like a misogyny on the internet.
Taylor: Yes I mean I think we all have as women.
Hannah: I was really interested to hear the Julie Allison story [featured in Extremely Online]. I followed her closely when I first moved to New York. To an extent, I think that being a known person and pursuing a persona or being an actress or a model has always been a source of economic opportunity for women. And maybe a place where women to some extent have larger economic opportunity than men. But it also seems like we take for granted that really hateful language [will be used] towards you and horrifying things said about you. What do you think about that in terms of how the internet is evolving? Has it gotten any better or worse?
Taylor: Oh I think it’s gotten much worse. And I don't think I don't think it's just about mean language. It would be lovely if that was just it, to be honest. It's about seizing economic opportunities from and shutting women out from certain systems. I mean when people don't like women on the internet, it’s not enough to just say mean things. They want to really disrupt her life. I’ve had TV shows and podcasts cancel me as a guest because they don’t want to deal with the online backlash or hate they’ll get.
I think women generally — especially the women I spoke to my book — are constantly sort of pioneering these new businesses and you have new pathways online. A lot of women are using the internet to build their own sort of life. I mean it's just like the story of so many women on the internet and they have to do all of that in the face of insane levels of hate and online harassment. I think it’s only getting worse. Look at what happened in the Depp vs. Heard trial and Russell Brand and the conversations lately around sexual assault. Misogyny is completely normalized on the internet. There’s no social stigma for being an asshole to women.
Hannah: It’s completely true. If people are complaining about something that someone who I don't even know does on the internet — with of course rare but significant exceptions — but whenever somebody tells me something they're really upset about I’m almost like, who cares? Who cares that she did that?
Taylor: Also, would you be mad if it was a man? Women deserve to do crime too! So often that outrage boils down to “Who Do You Think You Are?” There was period a couple years ago when there were a lot of influencers, obviously Caroline Calloway was for the most prominent example of this and I think she's kind of a different case. But you know people were really mad at these influencers for selling like a tea ceremony for $500 or selling a workshop for $250 where you make collages or things like that. No one critiques the men for doing this. You have Jake Paul charging thousands of dollars for what are essentially glorified meetups, nobody blinks an eye. You have these male hustle grow influencers charging thousands of dollars for basically like AI written PDF courses. There's no criticism of that. But when women do it it's very much “Who do you think you are? What makes you think you’re worth that?” That’s sort of the subtext around that.
A perfect example of this type of thing is Julia Allison, where she built this highly engaged fan base and she was such a successful influencer in 2007/2008 through multi-platform content creation at a time when almost no one else was doing it. And she was successful to the level that she could pay her rent in New York City just from influencing. But the media narrative about her and the popular culture narrative was like always: who do you think you are? Yes you have thousands of fans buying your products, you're doing all these major brand deals and you’re so successful but the media attack [was all about] who do you think you are? We don't like you and so we're going to put you in your place and that's just incredibly toxic. It’s misogyny.
Hannah: I remember a lot of it was coming from Gawker and that was a large large very valuable new media company with a ton of venture capital funding and a ton of advertising dollars behind it. And it seemed like at the time like 20% of their content was about hating on this single operation woman who was like 25/26 years old and it was insane. But it was considered totally acceptable at the time.
Taylor: And they called her a whore, they implied she was sleeping with men all the time. They were just so vicious and there was so much misogyny underneath it. I mean I talk a lot about this article in Fast Company. Fast Company ran a whole article that was titled “Sometimes Breasts Aren’t Enough, Julia Allison.” This is a woman who had a lot of smart things to say and every single thing she predicted came true. She was so ahead of her time with media and tech and I just can't help but wonder: what if people like Julia got economic opportunities and the millions of dollars of venture capital funding instead of these vile men?
Hannah: It's literally so crazy. And it’s like, what if she was sleeping with a bunch of people? [Who cares? Why would that matter?] I’m not accusing her of that but it's insane it's that we can take people down — even now — for [sex].
Taylor: Right, but men can do it! You don't think these tech executives have been sleeping with…it’s just like, men do that all the time! There's powerful men in Silicon Valley who sleep around left and right and that's never used against them. That’s just seen as like “oh wow, he’s able to land all these hot chicks!” And it’s disgusting.
Hannah: It’s totally disgusting. And the inherent math of it is that there have to be women doing it too. It’s like 1:1 of men:women who are adults and if we’re talking heterosexual relationships, if a man is sleeping around with a bunch of people, it’s a bunch of women who are doing it too. So it’s just misogyny.
Taylor: But of course so many women perpetuate it.
Hannah: It’s almost always women, in my experience. It’s really interesting because the internet is, to me, a really democratic way for people to share thoughts, and a lot of the thoughts that take hold are very progressive sentiments. But any time a woman says or does something that makes people a little bit angry, it goes back to this very regressive narrative of like “why are you listening to her opinion on economics if she doesn’t have a husband?”
Taylor: Oh I mean it’s crazy. No it's crazy, it's absolutely insane. I mean my favorite thing is when everyone tells me I'm too old to write about technology, which I think is hilarious because somehow all throughout my twenties all of these men in tech were saying “oh she’s just a silly young girl!” And trying to make me seem younger than I am. Even when I was 28/29 they were referring to me as a recent graduate. And then I turn 30 and now I'm in my thirties and they're all like “oh she's over the hill, she's so old, she’s irrelevant, why is she writing about this stuff?” Meanwhile Walter Isaacson and every other male tech journalist on the planet is writing well into their 60s. And more power to them! But only women are held to that standard. And by the way, I happen to be along with Joanna Stern, not just the youngest women tech columnist, but also the youngest tech columnist in the entire industry. And we’re both women. So it’s just insane. I would love to see men achieve that.
Hannah: It’s really crazy. I’m not nearly as accomplished from a career perspective but I consider myself a writer, I make my income from Substack, and I'm working on a novel and talking to agents about it. That is my career as much as content creation is. But every time I say that people act like it's crazy and are like “she doesn't even write” and I'm like, I write two essays a week mostly about women and women in society. In my opinion, that’s fairly prolific.
Taylor: Of course it is. And it’s that subtext of “who do you think you are? who does she think she is calling herself a writer?” One time I went out on a date with this guy years ago in the OKCupid era, I want to say it was like the early 2010s. I'll never forget this man who was literally a decade older than me told me he was a writer. And I went to his blog and he had written two blog posts ever. He was a temp paralegal, which is totally fine, but he didn’t think twice about identifying himself as a writer. And I think about that a lot because I think women, we tend to downplay ourselves because we know how this stuff is perceived and we know the backlash that we get and the scrutiny we get. But meanwhile men are out here calling themselves entrepreneurs just because they started a drop shipping website on Shopify. This bar doesn’t exist for them.
Hannah: I was on a date this weekend and this guys has a business and is trying to self fund a film production company. And I'm happy for him, I'm happy for any creative. And he was like, “have you seen any films recently?” And I was like, “I'm not a movie watcher but I've seen the Barbie movie.” And he was like, “I have some thoughts on the Barbie movie…”
Taylor: Oh god run away!
Hannah: I was like, no actually, I want you to look me in the eye with this little velvet bow in my hair and this bright pink lip gloss and I want to hear what you have to say about the Barbie movie. But a lot of time this stuff is really discouraging and often it really does come from women.
Taylor: I will say that if these people are completely full of shit. I'll never forget when this one girl in this Facebook gossip group wrote that she called her mother crying that I got a book deal. I happened to be in this gossip group. I don't think they realized when they were talking about me that I was actually in this group. And I felt so bad! I was like, oh god maybe this girl is trying to be a writer and I can help her with this or connect her with my agent! Then I look at her profile, this girl is just a random ass MLM bumblefuck. And I’m just like, oh ok! So you have no standing. You’re just a hater. And you’re such a hater that you cried when I got a book deal. That is deranged! Why am I taking up that much space in your head?
As I’m sure you’ve noticed already, as soon as you get actual success, a lot of these people shut the fuck up. The very same people that spent the first half of the 2010s shitting on me — and I'm talking about some very prominent men in tech journalism — shitting on me saying “oh how could she ever call herself a tech journalist? She writes about cat videos.” Now, they’re eating their words. A lot of them have apologized and the ones that didn’t, it doesn’t matter, because they don’t have any bearing on my career. I’m sure you’re going to encounter the same thing. There will always be these bitter people, unfortunately it’s just a part of being a woman on the internet.
Hannah: Look at the Paris Hilton turnaround or Kim Kardashian. I know these women aren’t perfect but that’s the other thing. A women always has to be a perfect model.
Taylor: The thing with Paris and Kim is that they’re still rich. We live in an ultra-capitalist society so at the end of the day, people respect money and prestige. You always hear “I don’t care about Kim but she sure knows how to make money!” And it’s like ok, so you respect her through the lens of money, but you fundamentally don’t respect her as a person or her version of entrepreneurship. They still consider her businesses lesser because they cater to women.
Hannah: Look at somebody like Rachel Parcell, so much of that is like “oh it’s cute that she has this little business but her husband is supporting them!” And I know her husband is probably successful, but she’s the breadwinner in that family.
Taylor: Oh totally. It’s so often the case. Women’s work is never taken seriously and women are held to crazy standards. Look how many snark communities there are against women and how many there are against men. I think it says a lot.
Hannah: No, it's crazy. I think you and I have the shared honor of having our own personal Reddit snark pages.
Taylor: Oh god, I can’t even look anymore.
Hannah: I haven’t looked in over a year. I haven’t looked since about 4 weeks after I got divorced. I was just like, this is not for my consumption
Taylor: No no, it's just like it's just like people like venting saying crazy shit. And good luck to them, honestly! I don’t care. This is the nature of the internet and it’s hard for anybody that develops an audience because you have to get really used to people hating you. I think for the most thoughtful, empathetic people that's very disturbing and difficult because your natural inclination is to think: oh well but I'm a nice person, let me just explain myself! Or if I just give them a little bit more information, they’ll see who I am. But they don't care who you are, they just want to project. And that's the nature of the internet.
Hannah: It's very tempting to be like, no everybody likes me! If you met me in person, you’d like me, I’m very popular! But it does not matter. And I was laughing brushing my teeth the other day because there's this concept of like “nobody who is doing better than me is hating on me” and like that's probably true but I was like laughing so hard to myself because if someone truly is doing better than me and is like spending their time on a snark page talking shit, that’s like so much worse!
Taylor: No one that’s worth anything does that kind of shit. I mean look, people like to gossip and I don't have a problem with people gossiping. I'm a journalist, journalists live off gossip. But this fixation and stalking can get really toxic. It’s also against women and because we’re pitted against each other, too. It's a scarcity mindset. It’s crabs in a barrel. It's really hard and I think a lot of people that have this internalized misogyny, they have it because they’ve also had to operate in a really broken system so I do try to have some empathy.
Hannah: I feel that way too. And I think a lot of it is that these pages feel like a group chat and you don't realize that they're not. I certainly am not above sending something snarky via text to my best friend. I just understand that there's a difference between doing that and posting it publicly. I think it's a good point about pitting women against each other. I think there's a lot of it in the book genre. And it’s like, why are you mad that she got a book deal? People buy more than one book.
Taylor: Oh 100%. The one thing that doesn’t help anyone is the competition. Even with my own beat, there's so few women that have full-time jobs writing about internet culture in the content creator history. I can name all of them and they can fit on my hand. So I think it doesn't benefit anybody to be dragging each other down. We all need to help each other and grow the industry and grow this beat and get more women in these spaces in media. But that doesn’t happen if you’re busy being negative and bashing people. But the internet is so vast and wide. There's definitely space for all of us.
Hannah: I completely agree. I think some of it is misogyny but also it’s this kind of strange low expectation on men. There's a sense that we expect men to sort of be like stupid and lacking empathy and we don't expect that from women. So then you'll see these things where it's like oh she did this and this and said this but she didn't acknowledge every privilege, the advantages that got her there. But the lack of acknowledgement in every post does not mean that she's not acknowledging it at all.
Taylor: Also like, why do they have to acknowledge shit on their instagram page? Who cares?
Hannah: “Who cares” is my opinion on 99% of things when people ask me what I think about why someone is doing something that’s allegedly wrong or bad. Your book, I think it’s very interesting as a piece of journalism and a very fun trip down memory lane and it’s very enlightening. Any woman would enjoy it. Showing the undercurrent of misogyny can be weirdly sadly validating and I think it’s just a really fun trip, even if you weren’t there for these times. My sister who is on the end of Gen Z was still on Vine.
Taylor: I hope people love it. It’s a real history of the rise of social media from the user side. I think so much of the way that we've consumed the story about the rise of social media has been through the lens of Big Tech and these corporate narratives or like “The Social Network” and Youtube and Reddit and everyone is writing these platform-specific company books. But I wanted to write from the perspective of the users and content creators who shape these platforms.
Hannah: I think it’s really awesome, I had a lot of fun reading it. I don't want to call it an easy read in a way that trivializes it, but I think sometimes tech journalism to me it can be very very dense and not approachable and it just doesn't always have the narrative voice that I enjoy when I'm consuming nonfiction. And I think this book really does, it’s really great.
I LOVE this interview format. Bravo to you both ❤️