Extremely Online with Taylor Lorenz (and a post-interview chat with Carter!)
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Welcome back to Conspiracy Theories Book Club. This is the third and final, for now, episode of our series. I'm Julian Boirot, and I'm here with Chelsea Wood, another producer here at Spotify Studios. Hi, hello. If you haven't listened to our first two episodes on the JFK assassination and the cryptocurrency crash, check them out. In our book club series, the producers behind conspiracy theories interview expert authors and researchers.

Today we're getting into the rise of the social media creator. Social media isn't what it used to be. In the late 90s and early 2000s, a new form of community broke onto the scene. With the help of more widespread access to the World Wide Web, people began forging connections and expressing themselves online.

Today, it can be your full-time job to post on the internet and cultivate large swaths of dedicated followers. How did this come to be? What are the implications of putting so much of our personal lives out there for everyone to see? This episode features Taylor Lorenz, one of the most notable technology journalists working today. She's our subject because of her recent and insightful book, Extremely Online, The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet.

The audiobook is available for Spotify Premium subscribers in our audiobook catalog, where you can check it out after listening to this episode. If you're interested in purchasing the book itself, we'll share a link in the show notes.

This is also a special episode because Carter joins us for a wrap-up discussion at the end of the interview, and we have a ton of fun talking about our experiences with social media. As always, if you enjoy this episode and want to recommend experts for us to speak with or topics you'd like to learn more about, don't hesitate to reach out at conspiracystories at spotify.com or theconspiracypod on Instagram. Before we get into it, as a quick note,

This interview was recorded in late August 2023 and has been edited for clarity and length. We'll get into the episode right after the break. Stick around.

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Taylor, thanks so much for joining us. We want to kick this off by asking you to give a quick summary of your book. The book is called Extremely Online, The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet. And it's about the rise of social media, the push and pull between these platforms, and kind of

how we ended up with the tech ecosystem that we did today. And a lot of the book talks about the user's impact on social platforms. So it's not just like the Silicon Valley story, but it's really the story of the internet culture itself and how online culture emerged and how this content creator industry emerged and sort of the legacy of different content creators on platforms as well. And it's sort of how...

the users of these platforms end up shaping the platforms and building this culture and landscape that we have today. It's not just something that like comes down from above in Silicon Valley. It talks a lot about the media and sort of the changing nature of media and entertainment. And it's a business story too, you know, just the media business and how it's been transformed by the internet in the last 20 years. And it's also about the democratization of fame and how our concept of fame and notoriety and influence have changed.

What sparked your interest in internet culture and social media that prompted you to do research and write this book? Yeah. So I graduated into the Great Recession like a lot of millennials. So I was working a bunch of temp jobs and a girl at one of my temp jobs, I shared a cubicle with her, introduced me to Tumblr. And I kind of went down the Tumblr rabbit hole and that kind of got me into broader internet culture. Before that, I wasn't super...

into tech. Obviously, I had Facebook in college and stuff, but I used it mostly just personally. But once I got on Tumblr, it kind of opened this whole world for me. And I got really interested in the content creator ecosystem and online culture just generally. And tell us about your experience once you decided to actually dig into the subject of writing the book and how you compiled the research and any interesting tidbits you pulled out from that.

I decided to write this book in 2020, kind of during the height of the pandemic. I basically just wanted to write a book about the first 20 years of the social internet and how it had shaped our culture and also how this half a trillion dollar content creator industry had emerged. At that point, people...

were, you know, getting pushed online and spending more time online and finally sort of forced to take the content creators ecosystem more seriously. But a lot of them didn't really know how we got here or didn't totally understand the industry. So yeah, I thought I would write this book, a little bit of an internet history book explaining it and also telling the sides of the story that haven't been told. I think, you know, we've all read a lot of corporate narratives and books about specific companies, but I wanted to zoom out and really take a look at like

how did we all become online posters, basically? - Yeah, yeah, I really love that angle that you took. What are like some of the assumptions you came in with, with the book and were any of those assumptions challenged for you or what are some of the surprising things you uncovered?

I mean, I would just say that women had an incredibly influential role in building the platforms that we have today and creating the content creator industry and kind of shaping the Internet. And so many of them have just been completely written out of history. I talk a lot in the beginning of my book about the rise of mommy blogger culture and how these women were building revenue streams online online.

And it's these women that push technology forward and use these tech products and platforms in really innovative, interesting new ways and are often ridiculed for it, dismissed, just derided by the mainstream media. And so I guess like one thing that I definitely appreciate

felt like was a takeaway. And I always obviously know that misogyny is not some new thing, but just how pervasive misogyny was in the 2000s and also how influential so many women were in shaping the early internet that have never gotten their due. Yeah, I was really struck by that in reading the book, just like how many women were power users and really made it what it is today. That really resonated with me too.

I've been curious thinking about your book and the subject of social media. Social media platforms are largely advertising platforms. And I was wondering if you had any thoughts around if users understand why the valuations of these companies are so high, why Instagram sells for what it does, and why

generally the role of social media as advertisers today? Yeah. I mean, these are platforms that collect massive amounts of data on all of us. And then, of course, they harvest this data, sell it to data brokers, use it to target us with ads. This is incredibly valuable. We have absolutely no understanding of data privacy in this country. It's just

a public standpoint because we don't have any comprehensive data privacy protections. And so I think a lot of people are really unaware of the amount of information that gets

sucked in every day just by using these platforms and how they kind of use that to target us with their own ads and often sell it to third parties that end up targeting us with ads. And for listeners who aren't living in California, California users are prompted with a query of how your data is sold to third parties. And that is something that isn't quite federally mandated yet.

I was wondering about media literacy in the sense of when you see a celebrity on a movie screen, you do not assume that that person is representing who they are in real life.

That's not the same experience that people have when they're seeing someone who's blogging their own life, even though they may be putting forward a different kind of person than who they are in their regular lives. So I was wondering if you had any insight into that dichotomy or how...

how listeners can be more adept at understanding that even when someone is blogging from a very grounded space, that it is representative of a character and not necessarily their true selves. Yeah, I think it depends on the person too. I mean, you have acting is acting. And I think people understand acting is a very specific sort of

endeavor where you are playing a character in a narrative film or movie or play, right? That's sort of like its own craft. And with the content creator industry, some people actually are very earnest. You know, some people, their online self is exactly who they are offline. And some people are not, you know, who they are, or you're only, you only sort of see a part of who they are. And this just has to go with, you know, identity expression, right? I mean, some

public figures throughout history, right? Sometimes they really are who the public believes them to be, and sometimes they are not who the public believes them to be. And so this is just definitely true with the influencer world too. I mean, you

No one ever truly knows everything that's going on in someone else's life, no matter how much they overshare, right? You're never like truly inside that person's head. There are people that are incredibly authentic online and express themselves and are very open with their audiences and say everything. And then some people have that wall up and kind of play a character online and kind of emotionally separate themselves and sort of perform for an audience, but don't, but maybe it's not representative of

their sort of offline personality doesn't make it less authentic necessarily. It's just that's who they are in that context. And we all do this every single day.

in life, right? Like who you are at work is not who you are with your friends. Does that mean that your work self isn't your true self? No, it's just a different sort of side of you that you're choosing to show, or you're sort of choosing to represent yourself in this way in this context. And so, yeah, on the internet, it's kind of the same thing. There's, you know, people represent themselves in different contexts, even on different platforms, right? Like I was

was thinking of the launch of threads recently when people were like, oh my God, Instagram threads. Like, do I use my Twitter personality or do I use my Instagram personality? Like, I think that kind of thing speaks to just how we all tailor our identities to these different platforms. And of course, influencers have to do this on a much bigger scale. But one thing that my book kind of gets into is like this stuff that influencers are doing is also stuff that all of us are doing kind of on a smaller scale, just in daily life.

Yeah, I know I've heard you talk about this a little bit, but after writing your book, did you come out more or less pessimistic or optimistic about the internet and social media? I'm always a tech optimist, so it's really hard for me to get pessimistic about stuff. I've gotten a little more pessimistic in the past couple of years since the pandemic, but I'm still kind of an optimistic person. So I think we're in a really bad time right now, but I'm hoping that it will get better.

get better. Are there any ideas that you have about it getting better in particular? Yeah. Yeah. I do think that we're entering kind of one. I think people are exhausted with these broadcast based social platforms. I think the notion that everyone wants to like post publicly and permanently for the entire world to consume like your content at any time with a permanent feed of everything you've said, like that seems like

like a very dated notion. I think users don't want that anymore. People are starting to recognize privacy and the value of privacy. And I think they're having a sort of their desire is to spend more time in smaller, more curated niche platforms. I think that's a really good thing. It gets them away from these big broadcast-based social platforms that are so overrun with sort of toxicity and disinformation and stuff. Not to say that it's much better to spend time in like a Discord where you're

You could also be getting disinformation, but it's definitely like healthier and from a broader scale, not to have everything set to public and permanent. I still believe that the Internet is this liberating force, and I think it's valuable to connect people at scale. And I think that, you know, it can be a great there's so many.

amazing things that come out of it. We've just started to talk about the harms like recently. And so I think with the awareness of that, we haven't had much time to fix them. And I think in the next 10 years, 20 years, people will sort of start fixing these problems.

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I'm wondering if for our audience, you could define a broadcast platform versus the alternative platform that you were talking about with regards to Discord, because I think that that's an important difference. A broadcast-based social platform is any platform where you sort of broadcast yourself like publicly, right? So you're logging on and you're posting default publicly to the entire world. That was sort of the defining feature of this entire first generation of social media platforms

in the 2010s, like Vine, Instagram, YouTube, I mean, even TikTok, Twitter, every single thing you post publicly by default to the entire world. And yes, some of them allow you to set your account to private, but even then the goal is to kind of like amass this following and post to a huge amount of people or, you know,

have this permanent feed of content, right? Like on all those platforms, it's aside from Instagram stories, there's not much ephemerality online. It's like up to you to manually go back and delete your old YouTube videos, your old TikTok videos, all of that. And I just don't think any of that's healthy. I think that we need platforms that sort of allow us to evolve with us that don't have these sort of static,

you know, static content and also static friend graphs. Like, you know, this notion of getting subscribers or followers and then having to follow and friend people just puts a lot of burden on the user. I think that's why you see the rise of things like TikTok, which is really nailed discovery. Like you don't have to follow a single person on TikTok and you still get this

feed of content that's highly relevant delivered to you. And that feed of content will evolve as your interests evolve. And you manually don't have to like unfollow specific people, refollow them, you know, for that feed to grow with you over time. And what are like the platform's responsibilities? Kind of also going back to like misinformation you've written about

people using like TikTok as a search function and getting information from there. You wrote about how people would turn to influencers for information about the FTX crash. But what are like the platform's responsibilities when it comes to this misinformation and conspiracy theories that float around?

Yeah, every single news event, I feel like a broken record for 10 years. Every single news event I write, people are getting their information from influencers about this news event. And then my editor, the next news event comes and they're like, you think people are getting their information from influencers? And I'm like, yes, people are getting their information from influencers.

In terms of the platform responsibility, I mean, sure, the platforms have, I would argue, a responsibility to provide reliable information somewhat or at least make sure that, you know, there's not like dangerous misinformation. I'm just thinking of like, you know, people spreading that there is like poison in the water or something, I guess, you know, like obviously you don't want something like that spreading on the platform. I do worry about the platforms themselves policing certain types of misinformation. Of course, there's, you know, flat out,

falsehoods on there all the time. But as we've seen, the platforms are also terrible at, you know, determining what is true and what isn't true. And I don't know that that's necessarily their role. I personally believe in more media literacy just from a consumer standpoint. I think that all of us need to, you know,

I mean, ideally we would have a better public education system that would teach things like media literacy and teach people to recognize disinformation and vet different media sources. Because I think, you know, no platform labels of misinformation or controlling or deleting content is ever going to fix this problem. This is a fundamental problem that needs to get solved from like childhood, like teaching, teaching people. I mean, most adults,

can't even distinguish between an opinion article and a news reported article. So, you know, I don't have like super high hopes of the platforms fixing that problem, unfortunately. I was wondering,

The number one thing that Silicon Valley companies seem to want to protect is the engagement algorithm and what kind of content they're surfacing to you and how they're determining that. And that's the one thing that I wish that I had more access to as a consumer and understanding why am I seeing this? Is it to make me mad?

and more engaged or to make me happy and more engaged? And it seems to be a combination of both. Well, being mad is always going to generate more engagement than being happy. It's very much in their interest to show you inflammatory content because that generates engagement, which they can then monetize. It's directly in their interest. I think it makes the user unhappy if they see too much of it. So a lot of platforms, like they're not going to totally...

open the floodgates and show you only extreme content, but they will, you know, inch you towards extreme content and recommend extreme content and get you angry and get you upset because that, again, that nothing generates more engagement than anger and violence. And violence is usually breaking the terms of service, but things that make you angry, you know, you're going to be commenting, you're going to be sharing, you're going to be engaging. And that is sort of like what keeps this whole

internet system running. And I think that's a big problem. I mean, I talk about it a little bit in the book, but algorithmically ranked feeds that prioritize engagement are definitely the culprit. And I'm totally with you. I wish there was more transparency where you could see kind of understand how these feeds are ranked. But at the same time, there's so it's just it's these complex algorithms. But, you know, I think we need to be critical of these platforms and

push them not to prioritize engagement above all else. Like growing more engagement metrics, getting more users, getting people to spend more time on the platform. Like that's the goal of all these platforms. So I think we need to be more aware of how they're manipulating us. We need to, you know, push the tech companies to stop

you know, relying on algorithmic feeds that prioritize engagement. So for potentially like a parent listening to this, understanding that algorithmic discovery can be somewhat nefarious, is there an age at which like you would recommend introducing someone to social media? I remember getting my first Facebook profile freshman year of high school.

and being very, very much consumed by how many friends that I had relative to somebody else who was posting on my wall. And I'm not quite sure for my own right if that was too early or whatever, but I was interested in your opinion. Yeah, I think high school is a good age, but I mean, I definitely think earlier is not good. The later you can

A little later, you can sort of expose people to social media, I think, the better generally. But I don't know. It sort of depends on the kid, too. I mean, I always tell parents, I guess, that ask me about this stuff. You have to teach your kids to sort of operate in the world and you need to teach them the skills to operate in the world. You can't always be, you know, over their shoulder 24-7 kind of.

what they watch and kind of what they should think. Like, you need to teach them to kind of think for themselves, learn to judge information. I remember my first profile was a Zanga. Do you remember Zanga? Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, I was definitely talking to people I should not have been talking to back then. Yeah, we all were. We all were. Or there was, like, other, like, 11-year-olds that were like, yeah, I'm a 35-year-old man. I live in New York. On this show, you know, we cover very,

verifiable instances of malfeasance. We also cover things that are quite fantastical and supernatural. So have you ever had an experience in that vein with a ghost or a cryptid or extraterrestrial? I was a nanny on Nantucket one summer and I was living in a house. These rich people had this, rented this gorgeous house on Nantucket. And, um,

It was me and the cleaning woman that were home all day with the little kid. And it was the second most haunted house on Nantucket. And every night the ghost tour on Nantucket would walk by and stand in front of the house and talk about all the people that died there. And,

I didn't have anything happen crazy except my phone would go off really randomly in the middle of the night. But the woman who was the cleaning woman who was also there, she had like so many. She would have like a new story every day about like things going off or whatever. She was more superstitious than me, I think, and more plugged in. As we move towards the end of it, I always like to ask our guests if you have any pet stories.

or lesser-known conspiracies that you would recommend our audience Google? Yes. Or even if they're not lesser-known, what's something that you remember from long ago that you were always saying, what's the deal behind that? And you'd like more people to be looking into. Okay. There's this conspiracy called the Hat Man. Have you heard of it? Yes. It's like this...

figure. I only heard about it recently. I have not seen the hat man, but I did find this website like all about it. And I went down such a rabbit hole and there's so many crazy stories and they're so fun to read. So I just highly suggest reading hat man stories, whether or not they're true, who knows, but. I will also highly recommend reading hat man stories. That was such a great

Such a lovely coincidence. Co-signed by Julian. Co-signed by Julian. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Thank you, Taylor. This is amazing. Well, I'm so glad we got to chat. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Thanks for listening to the interview, everyone. We hope you enjoyed it.

Now, Carter, I'm going to pepper you with some questions about social media. Are you ready? I am ready. So we have talked at barbecues and in the office about social media. And I was wondering, do you ever think about what it does to your brain?

Do I ever, because I have watched my brain change. And in fact, I am just reading a book now called Stolen Focus that is all about the atrophying of attention in our culture. And it looks at how different apps and books affect how we use our imagination, how we empathize. And it does seem to be that it actually changes our brain when we're using social media. And I feel like I'm proof because I, when I go into an addictive rabbit hole on TikTok, I am not coming out. You've noticed.

these things that you're learning about in the book in your own behaviors? Completely. Because what I found is like when I'm on TikTok or any of them, my attention span and everything else I do gets so short. And so I'm like, I'll be making coffee every

halfway through like putting the beans in and the water bowling being like I I gotta do I gotta do something while this is going on like I need to do one other thing or I'll write an email and I can literally hear the voice in my head be like you deserve a reward why don't you look at

phone. Do you like, yeah, I did one thing. I like wrote one line, like how about a couple of videos? Yeah. I realized it was a problem for me when I was brushing my teeth and I was on TikTok and I was like, I can't put this thing down for the two minutes it takes to brush my teeth.

That's not great. I did a little bit of research about why you are addicted to your phone and why it is so hard to maintain the habit that you were talking about in terms of delaying the gratification of just sitting on your phone. In 2018, a technician at Harvard's med school posted this.

a article explaining how social media notifications can meet the base level reward centers that trigger dopamine in the brain. These reward centers historically are food, exercise, love, sex, gambling, and drugs. So maybe you can add social media to that list now. There was a psychologist from the 30s who talked about addiction.

And the addiction comes from the randomness of the reward delivery. So every time you boot up your Instagram or TikTok, it is kind of like pulling the lever on a slot machine because you don't know how many likes or notifications or messages you have. And you just constantly find yourself opening it up because there's a

a chance that someone might be paying attention to you and making you feel good. I wanted to ask, how well do you feel like your algorithm knows you? Oh my gosh. Ooh.

Crazy, right? So well. Too well. Too well. Like knows me better than I know me, right? Like I'll see stuff on my TikTok, like I didn't know I was somebody who's like could just watch an inordinate amount of cat videos. For our listeners knowledge, there are two predominant

kind of ways that you're fed content on social media one is by subscribing to individual creators and making that determination yourself and then what allowed tick tock to break through is that they created an app that would serve you content that you liked without you having to subscribe to anyone

and it's just an infinite scroll, the algorithm knows based off of how long you sign on, it starts feeding you content. And then after a few days, it'll figure you out and start driving you to places. So my follow-up question is,

Have you ever felt like you were driven to content that you considered to be highly divisive or extreme? I think it's, I don't think it, well, I guess driven to it and like, it's certainly been put in front of me. Right. And I'm so aware. I mean, this is what's crazy. Like you feel like you're doing battle with the algorithm because I'm aware. I'm like, oh, it'll catch my attention. I'm like, what? Yeah.

Like, I got to look at this. And what emotions does it typically elicit from you? I mean, it can, some of it like anger. Right. Because I'm like, oh, now I'm getting, I'm sitting here home alone getting angry and no place to put it. Like, obviously, I could pretend to redirect it at the source, but the source isn't there. The source is the algorithm going by. And having been the recipient of plenty of angry stuff, I get that it's like, it doesn't even matter if it is received. Sure. Yeah.

And so what I realize now with that kind of stuff is like, oh, I have to swipe really quickly. Yes. Because even though I'm like, I'm like, I don't want to tell it that I saw it. So there were internal Facebook documents uncovered by the Washington Post in 2021 that revealed that content that was

being reacted to with the emotion based reactions because you know online you can click the like but then there's the drop down that allows you to use kind of the emotion based reactions if someone reacted with something the sad angry or love reaction that post was given five times as much juice as the simple like

So content that was eliciting these very strong emotions that result in deeper engagement are, you know, have historically been, I don't know the state of Facebook's algorithm today, but I can say that in 2017, in my opinion, it appears as if they were basically sacrificing your positive experience on the app for the sake of stronger engagement. Right.

And for what it's worth, in response to the Washington Post report, the company's spokesperson noted that they were continuing to work to understand what content creates negative experiences so they can reduce its distribution. And that includes content that has a disproportionate amount of angry reactions. Amazing. I did not know that. And that, I mean, seems true and is like...

It seems true today. Yeah, yeah. Right? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, totally. Like you can feel it. And not limited to meta's platforms. It feels true no matter where you are that if you're on it for long enough, they're going to float something by you that's very extreme to see if you're in the mood to react strongly to something. Totally. Yeah. They're trying to hook you. Yeah, exactly. Because you're like, oh, you're already addicted just with the stuff, but like we can really get our claws in.

with these emotional energies. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, part of it is calling a spade a spade, right? Yes. Where...

the marketing value proposition of these companies is that they are platforms and open spaces for creative expression and connection. That's a lie. They are advertising companies. Yes. So when you're on any social media platform, you have to realize that you are

giving your data and your time to the largest and most valuable advertisers in history. Have you ever impulse bought something from social media? I remember this pair of shoes, you know, that popped up and you're just like, those are like the ultimate shoes. Like they're everything that like, it's like, oh my God, I'm...

I was aware like, oh, I'm, someone else is getting a different pair of shoes from this company. They know that me, like my age, where I'm from, everything I look at and like this, and they're probably awful shoes. Like they've probably just made a mock-up. Sure. And like now someone's got to go build the shoe. Yeah. Um,

And then I noticed it because I like now I get in the habit of like, OK, I'm not going to buy it, but I will like bookmark it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm really into like soundtracks on vinyl. So like from movies and television. But now my Instagram is just constantly feeding me like just the other day there was one that was like, hey, Arnold on vinyl. And I was like, OK.

How can I not get the Hey Arnold music on vinyl? That stuff is so funky and cool and I bought it. That though is, I mean, and there's, I guess the thing is like, they're not all bad. They're not. In the sense of like, that's awesome. The consensus is that you have to repeat everything

an ad to someone eight times before they're going to take an action on it. And I don't know, again, who are we holding accountable here is a huge question. Can you hold these platforms accountable? Can you hold the creators accountable?

We are walking such a fine line here. You're just trying to get sold stuff all the time. And the proof is in the pudding. There was a bank rate survey in July of 2022. Half of social media users said that they have impulse purchased a product that they saw on a platform. 64% of them said they wish they hadn't made at least one of those purchases. So the satisfaction isn't even there. It's not.

you know, they're taking advantage of everything that we've been talking about. They're taking advantage of the dopamine hits, the fact that we're addicted to this stuff. And then they're taking advantage of the fact that we're spending so much time on it that it's forget about eight

eight times, you're seeing these perfectly curated, targeted advertisements dozens of times. And I can feel it. Like I get that because it is that whatever that phenomenon is when you see it a bunch and you're like, oh, that makes it more real or normal. Well, I see an ad and like, oh, that's kind of interesting. And then start to like, you know what, without realizing it, you're just like confirmation. You're like, yeah, that's probably a pretty good thing. It seems like it's out there. And I think too, what you're saying, like

It feels like, not that this is going to be a big fundamental solution, but a shift has to be in our own consciousness, the user's consciousness, to be like, these are advertising companies and you're participating. Just like acknowledging, like, these are not designed to help you. It's okay, you can be on it, use them, but no. It's about personal accountability and understanding that

you don't have to be a part of this system. There was a study conducted where basically they made people give up

social media to see if being aware of more events and what your friends were up to versus not being aware of it resulted in more FOMO. And then the answer was that if you're not online, you're not thinking about what other people are doing as much. So you don't have the FOMO. Totally. Being online, even if you do see, oh, I'm going out to this bar or this concert is near you, it results in even more FOMO.

So, you know, just because I think what I'm going to end up advocating at the end of this episode is, yeah, use social media way less. Delete it outright from your phone and pick up some kind of hobby online.

would be my key to happiness. Bowling, maybe. That's definitely Julian's key. Bowling. Everyone get on the bowling train. Well, yeah. The book I'm reading, Still in Focus, that's what he does. He takes three months totally off phone, computer, gets a laptop that can't be hooked with the internet. And he talks about how at one point, like walking on the beach,

Where he's so used to even just stimuli of any kind, realized like, oh, not only FOMO type stuff, but I'm having deeper inner thoughts that allow my creativity to bubble up. And so then he interviews researchers who are like, yeah, like actually –

creative thinking, for problem solving, you need actually large amount of time where your mind is wandering. You're either doing a leisure activity or just kind of sitting around. And I think that's the hardest thing for me. And I'm sure a lot of people is like,

Also just not doing anything at all, particularly to be like, oh, just go take a walk for half an hour, but don't even listen to music or a podcast or like things or just sit outside and don't look at your phone because you get there and you're like, well, as long as I'm sitting here, I may as well just like scroll. YouTube and TikTok can teach you so much.

But if you're watching people who are already very good at doing something, you'll spend all of your time watching them instead of trying it yourself. And then when you attempt the hobby, you find it deeply unrewarding.

Because you haven't been through the years and hours of training and learning in practice. That's actually the source of like all the joy. The joy comes from I've improved so much at this. Yeah. And then I'm really guilty of like picking something up thinking I will be good at it instantly. And if I'm not, it's crazy.

gone. I had like a hopeful time in quarantine when I got a ukulele and I had been watching videos. I watched a masterclass and I did it a few weeks and I wasn't, you know, like the masterclass level. And I was like, why? Why not? Totally. And then I go, this is boring. On the other hand, to your point, like I like to golf and TikToks figured that out. But I got all these TikTok golf videos that are advice.

And like getting advice without immediately putting into practice is totally useless. So I'm like, I'll watch all these like, okay, chipping, putting, driving, you know, like watch 30 of those. Then I'll go to golf, be like, I'm going to be so much better. It's like, of course, it only makes it worse. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you do the thing of like, hey, I saw a TikTok that said like, you should do this. I think I should turn my hips and hands. Like, what are you doing?

What? When I started brewing beer, I had my own setup that was very simplistic. It was a giant lobster pot and all of these other little buckets that I had set up.

through watching so many videos of how to upgrade my setup, I landed with all of this tech that I didn't really know how to use, took a lot of the joy away from what I was doing. And I'm like, what, what, why did I do this? I was successfully broke like hundreds of gallons a year. Um,

And now I'm just back to my old setup and I have all this expensive equipment that I don't use. Don't use, right. You've got to sell to somebody. Yeah. Well, because that's – I feel like we lose the capacity for trial and error. Like social media tells us like there's all the answers right there. Just get to it. And you forget like you were saying like, oh, no, the kind of joy of it is actually like make mistakes, figure out your way. Figure out your way. Yeah. That is –

If there's a message to take away from this, it's figure out your way. There is no definitive. So many people on social media have success telling you, you are doing this wrong. I am doing this right. And it applies to life and relationships and hobbies and everything. And it's just not the case.

Great. This has been awesome. Thank you so much, Carter. Oh my gosh. Thank you guys. This is amazing topic. And thank you to Taylor, of course, for writing the book and knowing everything. Absolutely. It's a great book. Everyone should go read it.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Conspiracy Theories Book Club. We'd love to hear your feedback. Reach out to us at conspiracystories at spotify.com or theconspiracypod on Instagram. I'd like to thank Taylor Lorenz for taking the time to speak with us about her book. I highly recommend checking it out. The audiobook edition of Extremely Online, The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet by Taylor Lorenz is

is available for Spotify Premium subscribers in our audiobook catalog, where you can check it out after listening to this episode. If you're interested in purchasing the book itself, click the link in the show notes. We'll be back with more Conspiracy Theories Book Club soon. Let us know who you'd like to hear from. Conspiracy Theories Book Club is a Spotify podcast. This episode was produced by Chelsea Wood, Julian Boirot, Nick Johnson, and Alex Button.

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