Tech Bros Laid the Foundation, But Women Built Social Media

Into It: A Vulture Podcast with Sam Sanders

Vulture & New York Magazine

Entertainment News, Tv & Film, News, Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2023

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The story of social media has usually been told from the perspective of tech bros, set to a soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz argues in her new book, Extremely Online, that the real protagonists of the story are actually the users, who figured out what these platforms were best at before the people who invented them did. “Venture capitalists act like Mr. Beast invented it all,” Taylor says. “It was mothers, women, marginalized people, LGBTQ people.” Taylor guides Sam through the under-reported history of social media, from mommy bloggers who pioneered content monetization to brands tweeting about Scandal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, you're listening to Into It from Vulture in New York magazine.
0:04.3	This episode, The History of Social Media.
0:08.1	So as soon as someone says a phrase like The History of Social Media, I bet you start
0:12.5	thinking about a certain type of dude, don't you?
0:15.7	A young privileged tech bro who dropped out of an elite university to create Facebook
0:21.5	or Snapchat or any other number of social apps.
0:25.4	If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook.
0:30.0	You might start thinking about all these young great men having ideas that changed the world.
0:35.8	But what if someone told you it wasn't those men who made social media as we know it?
0:41.2	That is what Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz is doing in her new book.
0:45.3	It's called Extremely Online, The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet.
0:52.5	It has a very simple premise, basically every social media app we know and love.
0:57.4	Or even hate, the creators didn't make it great.
1:01.2	The users did.
1:03.2	Taylor will explain this theory in detail and also answer a question I ask a lot these days.
1:09.5	Did social media as we know it make us better as a culture or worse?
1:15.1	All that after the break.
1:22.0	For the show comes from Into the Mix, a Ben and Jerry's podcast about joy and justice
1:27.4	produced with Vox Creative.
1:29.9	Thousands of Afghans were forced to flee their homes and fear for their lives when the Taliban
1:34.8	took control of Afghanistan in 2021.
1:38.4	The UK government pled to take in 20,000 of them as refugees.
	...

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