How to Be Extremely Online and Influence People

Gideon: I do have the sense that Taylor is caught between a bit of a rock and a hard place, I guess. Being extremely online as part of her brand, but it’s also really stressful.

Lauren: It is though, isn’t it? Being online is extremely stressful, and yet we all work in the information trade, and the internet is the quote-unquote information superhighway, and we can’t get off of it.

Gideon: I haven’t heard that phrase in a few years.

Lauren: That’s right. Information superhighway. So I guess if we can’t find an off-ramp, we have to find better ways to navigate it.

Gideon: And there are not going to be any self-driving cars for the information superhighway.

Lauren: Now we’re really extending this metaphor.

[Laughter]

Gideon: Anyway, hopefully this conversation can help chart a path for anyone else who is wondering about how to be extremely online.

Lauren: And that conversation with Taylor Lorenz is coming up right after the break.

[Music]

Lauren: Taylor Lorenz, thank you so much for joining me on Have a Nice Future.

Taylor: Thanks for having me.

Lauren: Are you having a nice future?

Taylor: Yeah, I’m having a pretty good one.

Lauren: That’s nice to hear.

Taylor: I mean, I think it’s going to be a dark and bad future, but I’m thriving throughout it.

[Laughter]

Lauren: Alright, fair enough. So, you’ve been covering the internet since 2009, and really from a user perspective, the people, these are human beings. What drew you to that focus?

Taylor: Back in 2009, gadget blogging was a really big thing, and I really—I liked reading a lot of that, but I felt like there was a lot of focus more on the business side and the corporate side of these internet platforms, and I was just really interested from the user side, because I saw people gaining audiences and building businesses and I felt like it wasn’t really being talked about.

Lauren: You are also an incredibly visible tech reporter. You are unfortunately the target of a lot of online harassment. You’ve been suspended from Twitter in the past, which feels kind of like a badge of honor in some ways. You yourself are sometimes described as an influencer, which is what you ultimately write about in the book. I’m wondering how that has shaped or supported your reporting. Like, do you feel that when it comes to topics like the, you know, the crazy world of the internet, it helps to actually be on the inside of that a little bit?

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