Taylor Lorenz’s Power User

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz          Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co Why has everyone become so obsessed with game shows where the losers die!? Over the past decade, “The Hunger Games” became a multibillion-dollar media franchise. Netflix’s “Squid Game” took off, and MrBeast's challenges are growing increasingly deadly. Teddy Brown is a freelance writer for the New Yorker. He wrote a fantastic review of The Running Man, a movie starring Glen Powell where game show contestants must survive 30 days while being hunted down by professional assassins.  He has been studying our obsession with deadly game shows. He joined me to chart the rise of deadly entertainment and discuss what the shifting stakes of game shows reveals about the current state of culture, the national mood, and where entertainment is heading. Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz                 https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0                 https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz      

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz         Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co      >>> Free Speech Friday <<< Across the U.S. parents and lawmakers are calling for tech companies to verify users' ages online. They frame these efforts as a smart, reasonable, and harmless way to keep kids safe. But that's not what age verification does!!!Age verification efforts are a massive threat to privacy, freedom, and the very idea of an open web. No one knows this better than Eric Goldman. He is the associate dean for research at Santa Clara University School of Law and co-Director of the High Tech Law Institute.He recently wrote a fantastic paper on age verification, soon to be published in the Stanford Technology Law Review. Today he's joining me for Free Speech Friday to talk about how age verification works online and how it's all ultimately a trojan horse for government control, surveillance, and censorship.(This episode originally ran in June)***** Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co  *****FOLLOW ME:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0 https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz https://bsky.app/profile/taylorlorenz.bsky.social

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz         Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co   As Elon Musk's influence has grown, so too has a darker, more troubling side of his persona: his rampant egomania.Faiz Siddiqui is a former colleague of mine at The Washington Post and he's the author of the new book Hubris Maximus: The Shattering of Elon Musk.In this episode of Power User we break down exactly how Musk's narcissism has evolved throughout his career, and the key moments that reveal just how deeply Elon's self-obsession has shaped his life and the future he claims to build. (This episode originally ran in June)***** Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co  *****FOLLOW ME:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0 https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz https://bsky.app/profile/taylorlorenz.bsky.social 

[PATREON EXCLUSIVE] Subscribe on Patreon to listen to this and other bonus episodes of Power User!! SUPPORT ME ON PATREON.    Buy a subscription to my tech and online culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 Over the past few years, Silicon Valley startups have been becoming more and more dystopian. Crypto, gambling, AI friends, and other products that sound like they've been ripped from Black Mirror. But lately, there's been a little bit of backlash. Marc Andreessen tried to dunk on the Pope asking for safety in AI development and got dragged, and more founders are talking about building things with purpose. Is Silicon Valley having a vibe shift?John Coogan is the host of TBPN, a daily live show that's like sports center for the tech world. He is the go-to guy for what's going on in Silicon Valley. He joined me to discuss current Silicon Valley founder mindsets, what current trends are coming out of the tech world that you probably haven't heard of yet, and what the rightward shift in Silicon Valley really reveals.Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz                 https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0                 https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz      

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz         Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co     <<< FREE SPEECH FRIDAY>>>People cannot stop claiming they are "addicted" to social media. Lawmakers continue to compare social media use to drug or alcohol addictions, while the media pushes an addiction framework for quitting social media. But last week, a big new research paper dropped that debunks all of these narratives. The studies found that not only are a lot of our perceptions around social media and addiction completely wrong, just framing social media use as addiction *itself*is actually extremely harmful and makes it even HARDER to moderate your use of tech products.  Ian Anderson is one of the researchers at the California Institute of Technology who conducted the study. He's joined me today to break down what the research on social media and addiction actually says, how the media's framing of technology use as addiction is causing enormous harm, and what we can all do to actually fight back against big tech. He also gives tips on how to cut down on your own social media use.Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz                https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0                https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz 

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz        Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co    After Charlie Kirk was killed in front of a crowd of students in Utah, right wing influencers and pundits claimed that his killing would result in millions of Charlie Kirks. Almost immediately, mini me Charlie Kirk clones began cropping up, and far right Gen Z influencers began attempting to mimic Charlie's viral debate formats. But pretty soon, things went off the rails. Hardly a month after Charlie died, his widow Erika Kirk was pictured giving an awkwardly close embrace to JD Vance in skin tight pleather pants. Donld Trump all but forgot Charlie existed, and very quickly, Charlie became a meme.  Ryan Broderick is an online culture journalist and he's been covering The Great Kirkification. He joined me to talk about the rise of Charlie Kirk slop and what it's morphing into. Because as fun as it is to laugh at absurd memes featuring Charlie Kirk's face plastered into some mpreg emoji, the whole thing has taken a sharp turn lately and is now funneling a lot of people right back into the far right.  We dig into this new hyper online esoteric form of Naziism, explain the lore behind the mythical city of Agartha, and explain what all of this says about the current state of the internet, politics, and culture. Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz               https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0               https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz 

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz       Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 IT'S FREE SPEECH FRIDAY!!!!!For years, the United States villainized China for its restrictive internet landscape and mass censorship of online speech. But lately, things are changing. The U.S. and other western countries are careening towards authoritarianism and seeking to pass laws that mandate invasive surveillance and extreme censorship of online speech. The pattern is very similar to what we saw in China and have seen in other authoritarian countries. Mass censorship and surveillance is ushered in with justifications about "child online safety," governments seeking to ban VPNs, removing anonymity from the web, constructing walled gardens, and so on. James Griffiths is a Hong Kong based journalist who has covered China for over a decade. He is the author of the book The Great Firewall of China: How to build and control an alternative version of the internet. He joined me to talk about what China's internet is really like, the mass erosion of free speech on the western internet, and why the situation we're in right now is so dangerous. Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz              https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0              https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz 

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz      Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co  Recently, journalist Olivia Nuzzi has been at the center of the biggest political media scandal in years. A star journalist for New York Magazine, it was revealed that Nuzzi had secretly had a torrid love affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after profiling him for the magazine.  She came out of hiding this month to announce a new job at Vanity Fair and release her book, American Canto, about the whole experience. But within days of re-emerging she was once again at the center of a full blown firestorm after her ex fiance, political journalist Ryan Lizza, began to release Nuzzi's intimate text messages on his Substack.  Now, she's been fired by Vanity Fair and all of the media has been excoriating her for her blatant violations of journalistic ethics. But what about the men in this story? Journalist Kat Tenbarge joins me to break down Olivia Nuzzi's journey from teenage pop star to top political reporter to her relationship with RFK Jr, the Ryan Lizza saga, what's actually going on, and why we both think MSM news reporters are missing the real story underneath the whole saga. Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz             https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0             https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz

>>> FREE SPEECH FRIDAY <<<SUPPORT ME ON PATREON. Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 On Tuesday, members of the House of Representatives gathered for a big hearing called Legislative Solutions to Protect Children and Teens Online. The hearing was the latest attempt by lawmakers to force through a slate of horrifying surveillance laws that would censor the internet, strip the ability to freely access information, and cause great harm to children, especially marginalized youth. The mainstream media has been covering none of this. Kate Ruane is a director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, and she testified this Tuesday in front of congress about these evil laws. Today, she joins me to break down what's going on in congress, what these proposed laws would do, and why we're at such a crucial moment when it comes to preserving privacy and free expression on the internet. Read up via the links below and call your representatives today and tell them to stop The SCREEN Act, kill The App Store Accountability Act, and kill the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA).KOSA Won’t Just Silence LGBTQ Voices; It Will Also Be Used To Hide Abortion Info From The InternetHeritage Foundation Says That Of Course GOP Will Use KOSA To Censor LGBTQ ContentWhy The Fuck Are Democrats Helping Build MAGA’s Censorship Machine With KOSA?Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz            https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0            https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz     Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co Lately, growing swaths of the online left have embraced a messaging strategy known broadly as Dark Woke. While traditional Democrats still try to reach across the aisle and find common ground with conservatives, more on the left are becoming comfortable embracing outright bigotry, slurs, hateful rhetoric, dunking on conservatives, and going full "dark woke."   Twitch streamer SeanDaBlack has been covering the rise of this culture, and he joined me to talk about the rise of "woke" culture in America, how social justice movements have been warped by the internet, what Dark Woke really means and whether it's a winning strategy to counter Trump's online dominance. Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz           https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0           https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz  

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz    Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co    For decades, the Eelam Tamil ethnic group in Sri Lanka has been persecuted. They are dealing with ongoing occupation by the Sri Lankan government, which has also incited violence against Muslims in the country.As tensions have escalated, the government has cracked down on speech, leaning hard into online censorship to censor anyone who questions the authority of the Sri Lankan government. The government has banned social media, passed a restrictive "online safety act" and sought to enact strict controls over what can be said online, all under the guise of "online safety" and curbing "misinformation."ArunAnnow has been covering the persecution of the Eelam Tamil people and the atrocities of the Sri Lankan government. He's an independent journalist and content creator. Today he's joining me to talk about the situation in Sri Lanka and how their "online safety" crusade is serving as a blueprint for authoritarian U.S. laws.Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz          https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0          https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz Grief-Stricken Winds Documentary Website:https://grief-stricken-winds.com/News Sources/Orgs:https://x.com/TamilGuardianhttps://x.com/JDSLankahttps://x.com/lankafileshttps://x.com/PEARL_ActionPeople to Follow:https://x.com/kumanan93https://x.com/ambikasathttps://x.com/JeraThampiOther Resources:https://ptsrilanka.org

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz   Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co   Over the weekend, Twitter descended into complete and utter chaos. Elon Musk rolled out a feature called “About This Account” that allowed people to click on the profile of an X user and see exactly what country the account was created in, where its user is currently based, and how many times the username has been changed. Dozens of major accounts masquerading as “America First” or “MAGA” were identified as originating in places like India, Pakistan, Russia, or Nigeria, engagement farming to earn money through X's creator revenue program, available to those who purchase a blue check. Charlie Warzel is a longtime technology writer at The Atlantic who has been covering this rollout. Today he's joining me to discuss whether the "about this account" feature is truly 9/11 for pro MAGA accounts, how our internet is being warped by inauthentic activity, whether this truly signifies the end of the social web, and what comes next. Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz         https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0         https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz

SUBSCRIBE TO MY PATREON to listen to the full episode and more bonus content and to ensure that this podcast remains alive. Since Kamala Harris lost the election, there's been an endless debate among the Democrats on how to best reach young people online. Many centrists have claimed liberals need a "Joe Rogan of the left" and by left they usually mean center right. Others have leaned into memes and shitposting like Gavin Newsom. Zohran Mamdani didn't do any of that and he won young voters, and especially young men, in a landslide. His digital strategy leaned into creator-style content and leveraged a ton of influencers, but in a way that felt natural, organic and centered his policies, which were the real engine behind his success. Part of his success was due to Creators For Zohran, an influencer-led coalition aimed at boosting Zohran's messaging online, and Emilia Rowland, Zohran's new media and creator partnerships advisor, who led creator partnerships for Mamdani's campaign. Emilia, along with Aiden Kohn Murphy and Alexis Williams, co-founders of Creators for Zohran, joined me to pull back the curtain on the work they did with Zohran, talk about what made his creator strategy so effective, and discuss how to build relevance and mobilize people in an increasingly fractured online world.Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co   Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz         https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0        https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz 

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz  Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co  Right now, there's a clip going viral from former Obama White House aide and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz  that is so appalling and depraved it's hard to believe it's real. But many people are missing the most dangerous part of her commentary. Her comments reveal exactly what the ruling class in America wants to do to online speech, and why we need to fight back so hard to protect our online freedoms. Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0 https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co      Jeffrey Epstein is back in the news after a massive new cache of emails and text messages was released last week. Now, Congress is set to send to Trump legislation to compel the Justice Department to release even more records. The whole saga has become a messy political fight that’s causing chaos in the MAGA movement and warping the right wing internet. No one knows the Epstein saga more than my friend Brace Belden, co-host of the Trueanon podcast and one of the internet's foremost experts on Epstein and MAGA influencers. He joins me to break down what this latest Epstein cache reveals, the real tea on Donald Trump and Bill Clinton's relationship, and how off this Epstein stuff might impact Trump and the influencers in his movement going forward.Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz        https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0       https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz

FREE SPEECH FRIDAYSUPPORT ME ON PATREON!!!! Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co      The Department of Homeland Security has deployed a powerful surveillance tool at college football games, and that's not the only place where they're using it. If you were one of the thousands of people who attended the Old Miss vs Georgia game a few weeks ago, a DHS system could have been monitoring you. At that game and others schools have been using a little-known Department of Homeland Security platform called the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN). FOIAball, a newsletter reporting on college football and public records, got a hold of documents related to this surveillance effort.  All of this information and monitoring is now being fed into facial recognition systems, as those systems of surveillance expand. And, HSIN isn't just being used at concerts and game days, it's not being deployed against protesters, activists, and peaceful crowds. Story on FOIAball: https://www.foiaball.com/p/dhs-college-football-hsin-surveillance-ole-miss-ohio-stateFollow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz       https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0      https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz 

​​SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz   Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co     Sydney Sweeney just had one of the worst box office weekends of all time. Her new movie Christy, about a female boxer, made barely over $1 million, making it one of the worst-performing films of all time, This disastrous flop comes on the heels of yet another culture war controversy that she was at the center of, stemming from a viral GQ interview, and now she's locked in a bitter feud with Zendaya, her co-star on Euphoria, the HBO show that arguably skyrocketed her to stardom.So all of this begs the question: can Sydney Sweeny survive becoming an avatar for the culture war? Why does every viral moment now become a referendum on politics? Kat Tenbarge joins me to discuss! Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz      https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0     https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz

FREE SPEECH FRIDAY SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz  Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co    Tommy Marcus, better known online as Quentin Quarantino online, first became famous during the early days of the pandemic. He posted timely memes and news roundups, but what started as a funny Instagram account quickly turned into a massive fundraising machine. Tommy got more involved in activism and political causes and began using his platform to raise money for humanitarian issues and injustice around the world. A few months ago, he joined an aid boat headed to Gaza, hoping to deliver supplies to people caught in the ongoing crisis. His ship was intercepted just miles off the coast and the IDF abducted him and fellow activists before holding them in a notorious Israeli super prison. Tommy, one of the few Jewish activists on the boat, was tortured and abused by the IDF. He finally made it out and is speaking about the experience for the first time. He opens up about how the experience affected him and changed his beliefs about power, justice, and the United States sanction of the slaughter in Palestine.Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz     https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0    https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 Did you know that hit songs in the late 1950s were regularly about gruesome death? Or that a US vice president wrote a number one hit? Chris Dalla Riva is one of my favorite music journalists out there. He writes the substack Can't Get Much Higher where he publishes pieces on the intersection of music and data.  A couple years ago he embarked on a quest to listen to every single number 2 hit from the last six decades, and wrote about what he learned in his new book Uncharted Territory. The book is part celebration, part takedown of popular music, and also provides new ways to think about your favorite songs, genres, and artists. This book is genuinely so good and changed the way I think about so many songs and just how different periods in history were reflected in the music from their time. Chris joined me this week to discuss the past half a century of number 1 hits and what they say about our culture, political system and world at large. Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz    https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0   https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz

FREE SPEECH FRIDAY SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz   Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co     For the first time in fifteen years, there’s a real shot at ending billionaire control of American politics. A groundbreaking legal effort spearheaded by Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, backed by an unlikely coalition of billionaires like Mark Cuban and Reid Hoffman, is taking direct aim at the legal foundation that created Super PACs. I'm going to be covering this legal fight closely. Larry Lessig joined me on this week's Free Speech Friday to break down his legal fight, where things stand, and what needs to happen next in order to win this fight. If you like this video, please support me on Patreon!! https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz  Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz      https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0     https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz