
Tradfluencers, Subway Gripes, and the Gen Z Gender Divide
Eli
Anyway, anyway Day One FM I'm realizing I've made a terrible mistake as we've started the pod. I don't have a beverage in front of me you guys both have ice cold glass of water Jacques has a what looks like a lukewarm Diet Coke. I have nothing.
Trey
So I'm trying to cut down my caffeine.
Eli
Really?
Trey
Yeah, I'm strictly water while my dad my dietician was like you need to drink 64 ounces a day of water, which doesn't sound like that much sounds like a lot. It's only glasses of water but like I started logging my water intake and when I tell you it's really hard to.
Eli
Yeah, I'm sure I mean, famously, I'm a I'm really a non water drinker, but we should get you one of those giant water bottles that has like markers as you go like almost there? Yeah.
Trey
Do you really not drink like any water?
Eli
I not really. My Water adjacent intake is seltzer. I'm a big seltzer drinker. But usually I'm like one of those terrible signs that you can see like Bed Bath and Beyond or Target. It's like, first there's only coffee hour and there's wine hour. My day really goes from kind of coffee to beer, but it was maybe like a Diet Coke and then a seltzers sprinkled in no cavities, though. And my figure is still I'm still looking good.
Trey
Internal doctor to look inside.
Eli
Yeah, but before we kick things off, because I think we will be talking about wellness kind of wellness adjacent things. I just want to start with a quick gripe 20 minutes later. Because as some listeners or listener know, my Twitter feed is really kind of a random stream of gripes about my experience on the subway. And as a lifelong New Yorker, this is kind of a more recent occurrence, but I've thought about making my Twitter handle just at @subwaygripes or @hugeL because most of them are on the L train.
Clara
Soft sounding the rebrand.
Eli
What is this podcast for if not for a soft sounding awful ideas. But today, so I get on the train like pretty deep into Brooklyn. And so Bedford Avenue the last stop in Brooklyn on the L train before you get into Manhattan is usually the most crowded on the platform and the most crowded on the train. And I also happen to think that people are getting on a Bedford if you're listening I'm sorry are the most selfish of the train goers because there's never any, wait for the next train. You know what I mean? Everyone's trying to angle their way on this guy comes in with a dog now I'm gonna I'm gonna go straight Chloë Sevigny right now— like you can't be a dog on subway plus crowded subway of like, this isn't a lap dog. This is a dog on leash.
Trey
Like a Great Dane?
Eli
Yeah, like a Bulldog. Yeah, like a big Bulldog. And I was just the whole time I was upset. I don't hate dogs. So I'm a dog lover. I guess.
Trey
Nothing worse than when they're like snout is in your crotch because you're like.
Eli
Yeah, I don't know. I was just like, it was kind of multiplicity of factors all in that one moment of crowded train. Everyone's hot and sweaty for some reason, even though it's February in the winter-ish. And then dog on train and so now I've really think I am going to activate subway gripes I have many Yeah, I won't bore you all with them.
Clara
I thought you were gonna come out with your Showtime lack.
Eli
That's actually a Alexis' idea of a lack of show time as recession indicates.
Trey
Right? Showtime has kind of gone.
Clara
It's been waning but I saw my first in a long time on Sunday and I will say it was a great show.
Eli
Okay, that's good because the talent also kind of fell off.
Clara
Yeah, the talent fell off.
Trey
People aren't working as hard.
Clara
Seems like nobody wants to work anymore.
Trey
No, I had a really inventive panhandler the other day on my on my car.
Eli
Oh man.
Trey
Who was like, everyone I need your money, but I don't need it for myself. I needed to catch a killer dollars to catch a killer. I don't know. No. He just like it was very entertaining. But like, some woman gave him a banana and you're like, well, this catch a killer. He's like, killers will be caught. I'm the CIA and stuff. Yeah, I don't know. He was in need of more than money but...
Eli
He's in need of more than money. Christ. Well, yeah, we are gonna. Yeah, God. We are going to talk about other things besides grapes and whatever else that guy was on. On the pod today. I want to kick it over to both of you because we have been sharing links memes, tweets, threads back and forth. All geared around like Trad, Trad influencers. So I'd love for either of you Trey or Clara to kind of give the TLDR on what the Trad-wifery is who we're going to be talking about specifically. And if we have time, I would like to talk about that raw meat girl that you sent yesterday.
Clara
Why don't you start Trey and then I'll get the raw meat corollaries.
Trey
Yeah there's lots of entry points into the story. It has a lot of intrigue and juice for mommy bloggers, for Mormons for the wellness community. For our fashion adjacent model fans. There's the story kind of has everything and I have to give kind of a lot of background and context to fully be brought along on this journey.
Eli
And it is always Utah.
Trey
It is always Utah. Anyway, so to backup there was this male model named Lucky Blue Smith. Okay. He was discovered in 2015. He had a very tight knit family who were Mormon all with very weird names. Lucky Blue, Piper America. I forget what the other ones name is, but I don't think she went on to like fame or fortune. Anyway.
Eli
Name wasn't weird enough. Addison Rae?
Trey
So Lucky Blue, kind of just like really young guy was discovered and became a huge sensation. As a male model his first campaign was for Calvin Klein, I believe. He was shot by the photographer Hedi Slimane, who, you know, was designing Saint Laurent and other brands. But essentially, he became this like overnight sensation in the fashion industry, at least in the same way that I feel like a lot of TikTokers. Like you could point to, like Noah Beck, I'm not sure who is you know, kind of on the front row of Fashion Week's these days, but... Yeah, like very much overnight celebrity where he, you know, this was kind of been like the, you know, tweeting, Hey, meet me at this place, and, you know, flocks of teen girls would be chasing him down and, you know, public parks in Paris and stuff. So anyway, this guy, you know, became famous model kind of young, very successful, lots of money from different campaigns and stuff. Probably modeled for like, six years maybe, and didn't really, you know, kind of just that is like he aged out a bit, I guess you could say so, but he married some woman named Stormi Bree, which we won't really get into this is like an adjacent thing, but had a child with her. So now forgotten about nobody cares really about like, where Lucky Smith is that until this past weekend, especially on my Twitter, this girl, Nqra Smith is trending. So her twitter name or TikTok name or whatever is Nara Aziza and she's a German model, who is now married to Lucky Blue Smith. Okay, so are you following?
Eli
I'm tracking.
Trey
Are you tracking tracking? Okay, so, Nara Aziza has also recently blown up on TikTok on Instagram for her very elaborate cooking displays. Like she has two children one from Lucky Blues previous relationship and one with Lucky blue and she's pregnant with their third child.
Eli
What's the what are their kids name like Honeycomb
Clara
Oh, the toddlers are named Flynn Easy Smith and Rumble Honey.
Trey
Sorry, not honey rumble. That'd be a good cereal name honey rumble.
Eli
Yeah. I'm hungry.
Trey
So yeah, in this Lucky Blue Piper America, Honey Rumble world. You can kind of see this is going but essentially, Lucky Blue is a very devout Mormon and to marry Nara Aziza who is this german beautiful biracial model. She trapped she, what do you call it converted to Mormonism. Yes. So she now believes in whatever. But the reason the reason this girl has popped up in so many feeds and there's like a lot of people talking about her is because her videos are almost like a parody of what a Trad wife role would be. So for one example is like she's like, Oh, I woke up. It's all very soft toned. I woke up at 630 because my my child asked me for cereal for breakfast. So I started making cereal from scratch. First I added the butter which I churned myself and made the curds and like literally she she makes bagels from scratch. She makes like Oreo little cereals from scratch. So it's all like these healthy twists like the Oreos are made of like almond butter flakes and like sprinkles.
Eli
She grinds the coffee beans with her teeth.
Trey
That's probably in a video to come but that's that usually like, they are just wealthy. She's very young. I think she's 20 or 21.
Clara
Between yeah, well, there's, there's mixed reporting, but between 22 and 28, but I think on the other end, yeah, like, according to The Cut, they're like, pretty deep profile of her. It's kind of like along the lines of like, what's that girl? Alexa?
Trey
My search tells me she was born a week after 9-11 So that would put her at 27.
Clara
Well, there's a 10 poll.
Trey
Yeah, yeah. So, so basically, people are in the comments, basically arguing like, I think, you know, you could say this stems from jealousy, whatever, but this girl, like people cannot get them out of their mouths get her out of their mouths, because she, I think, you know, her videos are a little bit ridiculous.
Eli
It's like a hate watch situation.
Trey
It's kind of a like, she does nothing wrong, though. You know what I mean? Like, it's just a wealthy, beautiful family, like she wears in her videos to cook these like, gorgeous gowns you know, things that are not really appropriate kitchenware, I would say. But yeah, so people are really mad about it. There have been like all these kind of stitches on her videos for people to kind of expose her as, you know, trying to act out this role someone brought up like Thorstein Veblen's conspicuous consumption theory to like try and say that she's making a statement about being a housewife and stuff or conspicuous consumption by like, showing that because she doesn't work and she is just like a full time mom. She is using this elaborate like cooking show intel to kind of prove that she's better than you. I'm not sure if people have a lot to say about it but...
Eli
They are like the latest and most high profile Trad family in a, what feels like a genre that has grown or just become a bit more prominent in the past couple years. And that genre that I'm talking about is like, the crunchy like, alt-right, to kind of like I did my own research and that's not that's why I'm not getting vaccinated, pipeline.
Trey
Well, yeah.
Eli
The alt-whites, white pipeline.
Trey
Aomething we were kind of talking about previously.
Eli
Even though they're not crunchy. Sorry. Yeah. But like their ideas.
Clara
Well, I guess that's the interesting because like, I think and we've talked maybe about Trad wife before on the podcast, but like just to give a little bit of context on the overall trend, because I think part of the reason Nara has popped off is that she's a little bit of an outlier in this sense, but I think historically Trad wife has tended to be sort of like cottage core adjacent girlies like with like the homesteading like "come with me to like collect fresh eggs from the chicken coop and then make fresh sourdough bread," but it's kind of like this sort of pastoral but to your point kind of has some elements of like, are you vaccinated and misogyny.
Trey
I see a lot of videos where it's like, if your fresh baked bread isn't ready by the time your man comes home at 5pm then what are you doing kind of thing and like people are like, this is awful, but all of the comments drive it up the algorithm.
Clara
I think what's interesting with Nora is that she isn't necessarily in that same lane of like cottage core like let me get back to like nature that I think a lot of the Trad wife influencers tend to be but instead is kind of both in like a Trad wife lane but also in this sort of like highly aspirational sort of like wealth porn lane and the fact that her and Lucky Blue are not like I don't know too crunchy hippies living in the woods but are instead like too hot people living in a nice house. I think like for whatever reason has made her much more of not that people hadn't sort of criticisms of exactly what's more of a target not that they haven't written criticisms have like tried wife before but I think something in the combination of like to your point like maybe it's jealousy, maybe it's these other things because I think which her videos don't have is like a lot of the actual misogyny out loud. Some of the other Trad wife videos have and like, you could argue that the whole sort of setup of the video of her like constantly making food for Lucky Smith and him just like wandering and and giving her a hug from behind. Like, there's an element of misogyny to that. Sure, but I don't think that there's as much of an agenda with her videos.
Trey
Yeah, but people call them propaganda, though.
Clara
Which exactly, but there's so much worse propaganda.
Trey
Like the big gripes people have seem to be that she's converted to Mormonism and seemingly against her will because she married Lucky Blue and Mormonism has historically been not the kindest to black people, or welcoming to black people. I also see like, you know, she's like, oh, the victim of misogynoir, whatever. And I just don't yeah, like I see people are also like she's lost agency becuase she's having her second child at this like really young age and she's being forced into it because Mormonism one of their beliefs is you're at like a higher place in heaven, the more children you have. So that is like a, you know, a big goal for a lot of Mormon families or Mormon practicing families. So off the say, like she, you know, is probably making all these choices herself. But people have like this kind of savior syndrome in the comments a lot of times with like any kind of parasocial relationship they experience on social media, where they're like, this is not how you should be living your life. Like regardless of your Disney-bounding, or like the how you display your children on social media or whatever, like, everyone has their own hot take, and they think you're doing it wrong. And if somebody is just living their life, and like maybe doing it really well, I mean, I would love homemade cereal in the morning from my like...
Eli
Yeah, this is all just big cereal and big cookie, trying to talk down and people trying to do it themselves. I agree. Well, this is one maybe smaller observation. I don't think it's necessarily like tied to it per se, but I don't see this at all on my TikTok feed. But what happens and I feel like why a lot of TikTok videos end up going viral is there's like a network effect. It's like you see it on Twitter. Three weeks later, you'll see it on like the New York Times Style section and that like adds to the virality. But I haven't seen a lot more of this content on Twitter. And I don't know whether it's because the platform is like, admittedly more explicitly, like right wing and espousing like platforming accounts and like blue checks that are not necessarily they're like bought blue checks that espouse like the Trad views or like more conservative views. So I don't know, it's not to say that like this type of content wouldn't be popular beforehand, because this is kind of like Twitter bait. But that is something I am noticing. And this is not like a deep we need to like de-platform these people whatsoever. But I do think there has been a concerted shift, at least in my feed. And from like, anecdotally, what I've spoken about with friends of like, these more Trad like mask accounts, I guess? Yeah. I don't know if you guys have noticed that at all? Well, yeah.
Clara
I don't know we're worried about you?
Trey
This is actually an intervention.
Clara
Well, I do think I mean, at least and I'm not on Twitter, like that consistently, or like really engaging enough. I feel like sometimes to sway my algorithm really one way or the other. But I think even for me, I'm definitely seeing a lot more kind of like, both like right wing and then outrightly, misogynist kind of insell type of thing both on my for you. And then also somewhat like, in my sort of feed of following, which is kind of confusing to me, but like sort of more as like a sponsored tweet, saying, but I think I agree with you, I think that this video or like this creator, Nara probably would have taken off regardless. But I think the fact that the discourse, at least the Twitter discourse around it has such a bent towards like, the political and the sort of like, I don't know, traditional gender role bent versus just being like, wow, this girl is like really out here making CocoaPuffs like...
Eli
The personal, political.
Clara
I don't know, it is. And I think like, Trey, you bring up lots of good points around, like, how much agency does or doesn't she have, and I feel like...
Trey
But that's what's worrisome. It's like, that's the debate going on in these comment sections, where it's so strange, because none of that is something that she is introducing by posting her content, it is all projection onto her, which is the same with like, I don't know, you could argue in some ways, like Taylor Swift or whatever, where people like project onto these celebrities, entire narratives that aren't even true. And they don't, they just like find, I don't know evidence for these theories. Like, oh, she blinked twice, so she doesn't have agency.
Clara
Even like the stuff that happens now with like, Britney Spears is Instagram like, now that that is which no, like, it is crazy. And like, I think a lot of positive like I'm bringing it up only to say that like, because we are and it started there. I think that even now that she's sort of out of her conservatorship, there's all types of theories of like, she still can't leave the house. She's still being controlled. Like, look, these videos seem like they were all filmed on like the same day, but she hasn't posted anything from a new location, you know, like the sort of conspiratorial bent to that and then also to like Taylor Swift and like galer in particular, like different rumors about like, her orientation and stuff like and I think it happens to men and women equally in terms of like, I don't know if having wild conspiracy theories get generated around you. But I think especially with like women, it tends to be about like, Oh, your agency or lack thereof to be acting the way that You are on social media and like what it may or may not mean.
Eli
The Zapruder film ification of social media commentary.
Clara
Or just like the tea leaf reading of it all, like every video is a bread crumb somehow and it's like maybe it's maybe it is that serious and it's all a cry for help and each CocoaPuff is meant to spell out a letter or something like that. But I don't think so.
Trey
I have a question for both of you, which is, I think we are seeing this rise of the Trad wife and these kind of heteronormative gender roles being played as well as on the other side this like Trad masculinity kind of being, you know, played out.
Eli
Andy Eliott the car salesman king.
Trey
But I guess and this is sort of a loaded question. So forgive me, but like, in our current era of Gen Z, you know, label ification if you will have different ways of being or presenting yourself? Or is there some kind of like, why are we going back to these more traditional, I guess roles of how we present ourselves when there's maybe now more options than ever?
Clara
Well, I was only going to say like, I really don't know, specifically but I was thinking about like, there was that Wall Street Journal piece a while ago about like the stay at home girlfriend and that sort of becoming a trend of these girls on TikTok, kind of not Trad wife necessarily, but talking about like, my boyfriend works so that I can go to the gym every day and like, look really hot, and like make sure that there's dinner and all of that stuff. And I think there's an element to it, maybe from the side of like, the way to I don't know, like look like Hailey Bieber, like the way to sort of have this more sort of affluent lifestyle like getting with a rich boyfriend and sort of like being his stay at home Trad wife for being his stay at home like sidepiece maybe seems like somewhat alluring in the same way that it's like, I don't know the path of least resistance. And I think like the parallel sort of rise of like, traditional masculine roles, I think probably comes from a different wellspring, if that makes sense. Like, I don't think the reason we're seeing Trad wife become a thing is the same reason why we're seeing men turn to like, kind of alt-right, Andrew Tate stuff, I think that there's sort of two parallel currents that are driving it. But I don't have like one sort of core reason.
Eli
Yeah, I mean, I don't think there is one one reason at all, I think it's a multitude of factors.
Clara
I think another piece of this, too, that maybe kind of cuts across both, is like this sort of sense of loneliness and isolation aspect, and who is seen as being sort of like connected or like worthy of romantic love or like partnership, or whatever you see, because I think like, you have kind of like underneath the rise of this sort of traditional masculine thing like the Insel community to some extent, and this feeling that like, I'm not deserving, or like no girl would ever look at me this sort of very negative isolation-natory type of self thinking. And then you have these guys that come up, like Andrew Tate, kind of like through the algorithm that prioritizes on like YouTube, or Twitter, this kind of more extreme leaning content, it's kind of giving you this magic pill of like, no, here's the way to like break out of this feeling of like loneliness or isolation that you have, which is in large part been created by whatever dating app algorithms or like social media algorithms are making you feel that you're not enough, I think in a same way, that as a woman, you know, you get fed, like, whatever, like a lot of you know, sort of vaguely body shaming content on like, a fairly consistent basis. And then you see the videos of like the TRad wife, or it's like, no, like the way to like have some guy like fall in love with you and not not leave you is via sort of like embracing this more traditional role. Like that's where things went wrong. But I think it's again, it's kind of like the magic pill effect of like, there is something very real in terms of the loneliness and the isolation that I think underlies this, and it's kind of been, you know, it's like reverting back to status quo almost as a way to kind of try to figure out what went wrong, essentially, but it's not totally obviously the right solution. Do you go back to this.
Eli
I mean, it's also like, so there's data that came out, like maybe a month ago in the FT that spoke about how among Gen Z years in particularly, there's a widening gender gap among political viewpoints. So like women, Gen Z, women are skewing very more towards like liberal ideologies and younger men skewing more towards conservative ideologies. And I do think a lot of that does have to do with like more of the algorithmic segregation that you're talking about, if like, teens and got like younger guys who are more isolated due to the pandemic who don't necessarily have like the social infrastructure at play, less sports less church less like romantic relationships, etc. are just watching what the algorithm prioritizes, which is the most brash the most. I don't know, terrible, misogynistic content that comes in the form of like Andrew Tate, Aiden, Ross, etc. Not to mention just I think the further backlash against what they perceive as like the weakening of the guy's like, status role in society, which is why you have people like Scott Galloway, who are talking about like, what is kind of like a more healthier masculinity that you could have or like, Tony P like, vibrant masculinity. Now we're getting into like, a different territory. But I think it's like, the lack of a role model, someone who doesn't sit with like, the Andrew Tate, but like, and there's not on the other side of the spectrum, like where's the middle ground for like, a guy, I guess, to feel welcome. And part of part of that's like, alright, it's not really a real issue at all. But when you pair like very problematic behavior, loneliness, status, anxiety, I think, like young men do need a role model who doesn't, who isn't espousing like heinous views. Or is like Lucky Blue Smith. Because that's just like, not a realist. I mean, maybe you live in Utah, but yeah, I don't know.
Trey
Yeah, I think it's true. Like, if we don't have people to look up to or idolize, who kind of reflect our viewpoints, then we kind of will shift our thinking to kind of glob on to the next best thing, which is, in most cases, a heinous person, who's not got our best interests at heart, but the loneliness piece of it, I think, is like an underlying cause of a lot of these issues. And I was reading this great essay in a substack that it's called Kyla's newsletter. I don't know.
Eli
Kyla Scanlon.
Trey
Kyla Scanlon, who is she?
Eli
She's, I think, technically she's an economist, and she coined the phrase vibe session, which we've talked about, on an older podcast, that basically that thesis and I'm hoping I'm not gonna butcher it. Kyla big fans, big fans on the pod was that economic indicates. It's very much of the data dissonance of it all. It's like the data that points to the fact that like, the economy is doing well, lower and lower inflation, strong job market, mortgage rates coming down. This was at the time now mortgage rates are asinine, whatever is like, we can't just point to that and be like, see, the economy is good, because the way people actually feel like consumer sentiment tells a very different story. So there's a gap between like the data and the actual vibes of what people are feeling. And I think you can extrapolate that to everything now in culture. What sorry, go ahead.
Trey
Well, yeah, I think that in this newest newsletter, she's talking a lot about how things are kind of better than ever, but there's like, and this was also written about, I think, in the Atlantic, like a Chicken Little kind of stance that people take of like, oh, the mortgage rates are high, the sky is falling, everyone's a sellout. But like, in fact, a lot of things are going better than we think they are. However, their loneliness crisis that we are currently going through. I just thought this was really interesting. In the real world. 94% of our communication occurs non verbally. So 6% is like talking to someone face to face or over the phone. That isn't that crazy? I feel like that's crazy.
Eli
Yeah. I mean, bleak.
Trey
But she talks about like this, she talks about in this really well written. Well, it's, well argued, written, but...
Eli
I think it's well written, there's also a video if you don't want to read it, but yeah, go on.
Trey
She was talking about how the more we experience, a frictionless world where things are, like prompted to you via AI or chosen for you via algorithm or, you know, even like Apple Vision Pro, like there's benefits to it because, you know, if you have disabilities or mobility issues, it can really help out. But on the other sides of things, like the more that we distance ourselves from face to face, verbal communication, the more we like, get into this problem zone, essentially. Yeah, so I think it's like all of these opportunities previously, where people had these more friction, heavy, you know, experiences where you're talking to a real person or working something out relationships, whatever, that allowed us to grow and like progress. And at this moment in time, we are kind of not doing that.
Eli
Yeah, I mean, it's the same thing. We talk I feel like a lot about friction in the predictionary with double clique, and putting yourselves into situations where you have to work whether mentally or physically SEAL Team Six times and ball style can carry By JoJo see wha to earn things or earn taste, or earn connection? Where was I going with this? Oh, but I feel like this is why there's still a lot of pushback around, like therapy speak and anxiety content because we have removed ourselves from situations that might make us even the slightest bit uncomfortable. We've conflated feeling like a little awkward with having like crippling anxiety and like, anything that your friend says that makes you slightly uncomfortable, needs to be followed up with like, you made me feel really awful in this situation, I just don't think I have like the mental capacity to be your friend anymore.
Trey
Right.
Eli
And that also made me think about the article that came out in Curbed a while back about like the kids who have subway anxiety. And growing up in New York is like not an easy thing. But I feel like part of what makes it good is kind of the exposure therapy to these to friction to like, I don't know. Yeah, to the dog on the subway exactly. Take it back to my subway gripes to putting yourselves in uncomfortable circumstances. And I just feel like we put ourselves in cocoons and to her point, she talks about like zero sum how there's like winners and losers. And there's no in between. We can't like talk with each other. We talk at or beyond each other. We really need to come to like compromises and be able to put ourselves in situations that are shittier awkward, because otherwise we're not going to learn or grow from them. Nobody wants to. Yeah, I don't know.
Clara
The last sort of corollary, I had to the Kyla piece is a piece that Trung Phan had written in SAT post, which Jordan shout out Jordan had dropped in what's rising yesterday. But there I'm not sure I think Trung is man?
Eli
Yeah he's kind of like he's kind of ubiquitous on Twitter, on tech thread guy Twitter.
Clara
But it's an interesting kind of take that I think does sort of tie in with the data dissonance and the status anxiety piece of this, talking about value capture and how metrics on social media are a way of basically, you know, creating value out of something that essentially has no value. So when you think about like, how on Twitter or on TikTok or on Instagram, like you get likes people engage with you, if you post a certain type of thing, you get a certain type of engagement. Like, if you post something that's like more extreme or like more likely to divide opinion, you get sort of more feedback than you would if you posted maybe like your real opinion, which is slightly more moderate. Or if you post something that's like, more risky than you would typically post or like, share with people, you know that you'll get more engagement but that basically, having like, so many years worth of this value built into things that essentially don't have value has created kind of this like bubble of fulfillment, but it isn't true. You know what I mean? Which I think in some ways does sort of feed in with the loneliness aspect of this of like, we've kind of been in like an emperor wears no clothes in terms of, can social media provide connection and connect sort of at least be the jumping off point towards connecting with people? I think that and obviously not the first person to say that, I think within the last few years, like kind of starting to see the end to the limits of that, like with all these articles coming out about like, is TikTok over how we sort of reached the end of the promise of the internet. And I think a lot of it is because, you know, we've been told that it's kind of there is some way to feel like truly invested or feel like truly listened to or like you found real community and like, in fact, there isn't, and it's kind of just one big, like bubble of nothing, and you've exposed so much of yourself or like basically then gotten this audience off of something that is in no way authentic to you.
Trey
It's really, I think, a hard thing that this generation this next generation will have to reckon with, which is like, you put so much of yourself out there, and you're only going to be like chasing that reward or that high that the algorithm can give you based on some whims of like, I don't know, machine learning or whatever you want to call it. But like, yeah, there's a true end game where people thought they were connecting, like, there was that whole, and I I've been kind of getting more into YouTube lately, but like there's this whole YouTube era where people were like, famous YouTubers that were coming together like that. I don't know what that thing in Miami, like conference or whatever. Like there was like people actually connecting offline via the social platforms. And now that's not happening and the more people are creating and like just rewarded for the same content, you see where it's like, a two second video that you're like, pulled into you and it's like, oh, answering caption, you know, and it's like this weird gotcha moment. Like we're in this like gotcha era of social media where nothing is like given to you it's all gamified to kind of keep your attention. And there was this actually a really interesting quote in Kyla's newsletter that I'm going to read for a sec, because it kind of talks about this.
Eli
Go off.
Trey
Then there's this third part, the other part of the economic reality, the attention economy, in which our eyeballs are very expensive commodities, we've commoditized ourselves to the point where we are sort of what we consume. We've asatized our feelings to give them value on a sociological marketplace, of course, we don't trust. And I think that's so true, because like, no matter how much of a parasocial relationship you've created with Nara Smith, and her cereal, or your friend Joe Blow on the block, it's like, becomes really hard to trust. What content is being put out there is actually genuine is actually reflective of your genuine self and feelings in that moment. Or if you're just like, playing to the algorithm or making a joke about like something you saw or whatever it there's just this complete loss of like, a baseline level of trust we have with each other and that scares me.
Clara
Yeah, it reminds me too of the Gawker rip Gawker piece from forever ago about being sort of in this irony collapse, or like sort of post irony where, from a taste standpoint, sort of a similar thing happening where it's hard to tell, like, what of someone's interests or what of like, a more famous person's interests are real and genuine and like, what of them are sort of like for the bit, and that that distinguishing line has become tougher and tougher to trace?
Trey
And that also, yeah, I think there's this other theory I have to where it's like, I think yesterday, it was revealed that I think, some percent, like some huge percentage of TikTok videos are produced by Millennials like older millennials.
Eli
Yeah, it was it was also hold up, pull it up real quick.
Trey
But my point there is like, I feel like either Millennials have aged out of caring how they come across, or they're just like, completely earnest and cringe still that they're, like post, like they're posting things genuinely hoping to connect to people still. Whereas I feel and this is sorry, sweeping generalization alert, but like, Gen Z is either still too young, where they like really care about what other people think of them. And I don't want to be seen as like the cringe person. Or I don't know something else is kind of blocking them from being their genuine selves online. Whereas like, the Internet was supposed to give us this freedom. And instead, it's kind of crippled us. Where we're now just watching like, 40 plus year olds making these kind of cringy videos that were...
Eli
How do I look?
Trey
Yeah. How old do I like guys? Tell me honestly, it's like, you look your age. What? No, no, I did red mask like therapy.
Eli
Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, that's the type of hard hitting analysis and commentary that you can only find on Day One. FM. So thank you for tuning in. At least we'll have our homemade CocoaPuffs and Oreos along the way. Like, subscribe, follow everywhere you can get your podcasts. Kyla Scanlon come on the pod to if you're listening. Thanks for tuning in and see you next time. Yo, thanks for tuning in. Stay up to date with all things Day One FM by subscribing to our page on Spotify, following us on Instagram @d1a, and staying up to date with the latest trends and insights on d1a.com/perspective.