Hey, I'm Kate Lindsay, and you're listening to I-CYMIMI or in case you missed it, Slate's podcast about internet culture. And today I am joined by Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick. Hello, Kyle. Hello, Kate. Thank you for having me. It's a rare, elegant three name. I'm jealous. Hey, it's a long one. I was just like, why not embrace it? My last name's 11 letters. Like, let's go on. How long can we make this? In fact, I think there should be more names in it.

Great. We'll see. Stay tuned.

Kyle is a writer and also the founder of the newsletter, The Trend Report.

We are here to talk today about what happens when an influencer stops posting for good.

So before we get into that, I must ask you, Kyle, is there a retired or missing influencer

who you wish would come back or who you just miss?

I mean, yes, I think there's a lot of viner's who like, sadly, once the vine moments sort of

like ended, like they sort of went with it, like the people who didn't quite rise, like the people who weren't the Lele Ponds.

Like, I think about them a lot.

Like, there will be a few times a year I will go and look them up.

Like, there were these really cute twins.

And they did the like the Welcome to Chili's videos.

Like, I'll look them up.

Hi, welcome to Chili's videos like I'll look them up. Hi, welcome to Chili's.

Like I love them. Sadly, like one of them did die and like I will look.

I was I was hoping I wasn't going to have to break the news too on it.

No, no, no, the Perkins twins.

That's right. But I think it was Adam who died. But like I will sometimes I'll go and I look at his profile and be like, damn, he was so great. He was so talented. But Vine, Viner's, those are my people. Yeah. I feel like, obviously, I was a casual watcher of Jenna Marbles, who of course we'll talk about later. But for the most part, the people who I like watched and missed are like kind of similar.

Like they weren't huge accounts. It's like they were kind of my weird little niche follows.

Yeah. Because they didn't become like mainstream big time YouTubers and and creators just kind of like one girl I know who I followed when I was high school, she just like went to college.

And I'm like, she's just living her normal life. And she doesn't know that like, that I miss her videos. And I think about her sometimes. I'm like, I wonder where she is now because she's just not, it was just like her YouTube platform during high school. And then she moved on. Absolutely. I mean, that's real. That is obviously technically that's a paris social relationship. like we all have them. But like those are, I mean, that's real. That that is obviously technically, that's a parasycial relationship.

Like we all have them. But like those are, I think, where parasyciality gets so real. Because

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