This is not an episode about whether or not you should delete your social media accounts — we've had that conversation, and we'll keep having that conversation. Instead, this is an episode about all the weird habits we've developed around posting: posting on vacation, posting (or not posting) when sick or on leave, posting about your everyday life to your 200 followers like you're an influencer. It's about what compelled us to start posting in the first place — all the small pleasures of knowing things about people — and how those pleasures have been wrung out of the process.
Social media taught us a different way of telling the story of our lives. But now those stories feel dystopian and uncanny. Is it the end of posting as we knew it? Kathryn Jezer-Morton, author of the fantastic new book The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything, joins the pod to work through these questions and more.
Anne Helen Petersen: Hey everyone, we need your questions for two episodes we're working on. One is on workplace communication. So have you noticed that it's devolving? Are there quirks or trends you don't understand? Why are people sending a Slack and also a text message and also calling you on the phone? What are you seeing? Let's talk about it.
And the other is on journal influencers. These are social media personalities that are also delivering news. Sometimes they have formal training, most often they do not. What are you noticing or what are you curious about there? We could talk about, like, these are people who oftentimes are reporting from outside of trials or, like, reads AP headlines. What are you noticing or what are you curious about there? If there's a specific person doing this work that you want us to, like, look at closely, you can also tell us that too. Submit all your questions at tinyurl.com/culturestudypod.
All right, thanks, and on to today's show.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Everyone has private feelings about each other's posts.
And that's something too that I found, like talking to people about their friends. Dear friends, and they pull up their phone and show me, like, "Well, this is my friend. Look what she does. Like, look at... What is this?" And I mean, it's amazing 'cause you can't talk about it with a friend.
This is one of the things that we don't talk about with our friends. You can't be like, "How come you wrote that weird poem to your husband on your anniversary?" Like, but he doesn't even use social media, so, like, who's gonna read it? Like, who was that for?
Anne Helen Petersen: This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Petersen.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: And I'm Kathryn Jezer-Morton. I'm the author of The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything, and I write the Brooding column for The Cut.
Anne Helen Petersen: In the introduction to your book, you write that social media is, quote, "A world historically essential archive of our recent history.
This is both a very obvious, uncontroversial position and an uncomfortable one." So I wanna start with that because I love that you point out that, like yeah, everyone's like, "Duh, this is where we put our stuff," but also it makes people feel weird, that that's the case. So could you talk a little bit about that discomfort?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah, I mean, you know, it's where we put all our stuff. You know, some people are making physical photo albums, that's great, but like our day-to-day is kind of being processed through it. And I don't think that people like to talk about the deliberate choices that they're making when they're creating content. I think they like it to seem like it's this kind of natural expression of self that just flows authentically from within. Everyone that I've ever spoken to about this is like, they insist that they are authentic on some level, right? But like none of us are… I mean, authenticity is a very slippery concept, but like we're all doing a version of something, and that's just what we're doing. And I think that, yeah, it just makes people uncomfortable to think that your archive is this place where you're maybe not even fully in control of like what it is that you're doing and how you're acting because you're trying to do a lot of things.
You have a lot of ulterior motives in how you're telling your story.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah. Thinking about it as an archive is so interesting, and like the more interesting thing to me really is like someone's… Like, I wanna get in their phone, right? Like, and look at the contrast between what's in the phone and what was posted on social media.
And this... You know, we'll talk more about our common work and our PhD work, but when I was doing my PhD, one of my favorite pieces that I ever wrote was looking at how star archives function and the difference between like an archive for a Hollywood star who knew that they were going to donate their archive and thus curated their archive in a very particular way to send a particular message about who they were, and then contrast that with people who weren't necessarily thinking about that. Like, they knew maybe like, "I'm a star. I'm famous." Like, someone's gonna do something. But they weren't like sorting through their papers to donate them.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Right.
Anne Helen Petersen: But even just the idea that like our archive, whatever is left behind of us, the things that we keep on purpose or that we post on purpose, like we're trying to say something about ourselves, and no one wants to admit that, right?
They're like, "It's just me."
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Exactly. Yeah. And I think that it's also supposed to be... People are like, "I do it for fun. I do it for work."
Anne Helen Petersen: Right.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: You have your different kind of reasons that you feel that you have to do it, but this does end up being the archive of all your experiences, your reactions, the things that you choose to commemorate, and that is enormously significant.
Like, I mean, photo albums are the kind of things that you grab if the house is on fire. Like, we really care so much about our archives, and so, this feels like kind of like a dirty, like a sullied archive a little bit.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yes, totally. This is how I feel when I look back at Facebook, and not only have all of my photos shrank with time, right?
Because of the quality of the photo. Like, now they all just look like absolute garbage. But also, there's a real desire for me to go back and just get rid of all of it because it is so cringe, but it is also like who I was in that moment, like who I was trying to be, who I was trying to be for others in that moment.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah, no, I have the same feeling 'cause I used to post a lot. Like I was an avid poster on, on Facebook and then Instagram. And I was tweeting a bunch, and I think for writers, like, Twitter totally counts. Like, that was the place where I was doing a lot of stuff.
Anne Helen Petersen: Same. Oh my God ...
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Where I was working, I was creating a persona and yeah. No, I know. I have so many…
Anne Helen Petersen: I was just thinking the other day that I should go to get rid of all of my posts on X because they're all still there even though I don't use the platform, haven't used it for several years, but they're like...
But also, that's a history right there. Like, that's my grad school history. Like, there's so much there.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Is there, there's probably something you could, like something you pay for and they can do it for you.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yes, they do.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: 'Cause I'm thinking about the labor is unthinkable to actually go through it and be faced with it.
Anne Helen Petersen: I actually, there's a ton that have already been nuked because I started using that during, 2017, 2018, the height of finding journalists who were in any way criticizing Trump, and trying to find something and being like, "Oh, cry for the libs," or whatever. The thing that I really love about your book, of many things that I love about it, but one of the things that I like is that you're like, "I love social media."
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: And so many people writing about social media approach it with such antipathy, even if they are also using it, that like, you lose what draws so many people to it if you don't love it.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: I know. I know, and that's why I'm here. That's like, that's what I'm interested in. And I also feel, I think this is something that I acquired, like, this little shift in perspective from academia, actually.
One of the, I don't wanna say few, but whatever. One of the few things that I really took with me that continues to be super valuable. I don't wanna slag it, 'cause honestly, I'm grateful. But you shouldn't be above it. Like... if you're gonna do ethnography, if you're gonna do sociology, you have to be with your subjects, and, and you have to acknowledge your subject position, and you really gotta just get on the level. 'Cause no one wants to talk to you if you come in there and you're like... "Well, you know, I know all about this thing, and you obviously don't know much about it at all, but let's talk anyway."
Like, uh-uh. You're not creating any kind of trust. Your dynamic is gonna be really bad. So just going in, I just had to account for myself and be like, "You wouldn't have been doing this for 20 years if you didn't love it." And I have the heart of a poster.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: I love... And I still experience glimmers of the kind of joy that I used to experience, where I'll think of something funny, and I'll just like, this happens so seldom, and I'll give myself permission to post it, and people are, like, engaging with me and commenting and, and I'm like, "Oh, this is the best. This is the stuff." Like, "This is why I'm here." And it's rarer and rarer, but like you sometimes catch that little whiff of the good stuff, and it is so good.
Anne Helen Petersen: You're one of my favorite posters. And it's because, I don't know, you have a style to it that, this is gonna seem silly since we're talking about the production of authenticity, but, like, you're kind, you're wry.
I feel like I get a sense of the place where you live, which is not the place where most people that I follow live. And also the contrast with being in Vermont and that sort of thing. And I know though the feeling that you're talking about, like I have it - when this comes out, this will have been a couple of weeks ago, but I'm doing RushTok right now, and like I wake up and my DMs are like - I have like 100 DMs.
They’re popping. And I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's talk." And for me, that's what it is. It's not like the... I don't care about the likes. Like this isn't even a post that's getting likes, it's the engagement -
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Right.
Anne Helen Petersen: - and I think that word has become evacuated of the fact that like we actually do like talking to other people about the things that we're doing.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Totally. Engagement for me is like, it's very pro-social behavior. It's people saying like, "Oh yeah, this reminds me of this other thing." My favorite thing is like people DM me stuff that they're like, "I thought you might like this," and I'm like, "This is manna from heaven." Like, thank you for thinking of me.
Yeah. On your travels through like the deepest Instagram, and you send me stuff, like oh my gosh. So.
Anne Helen Petersen: Totally. Totally. Well, and no one's like... I guess we do kind of like make fun of, I don't know, our grandparents who used to like cut out things from the newspaper and send it to us and say like, "I'm thinking of you."
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Right. But same thing
Anne Helen Petersen:. But that was also, I understood that as an act of love always.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Absolutely. No, DMing a funny reel is an act of love in the very similar way, just it doesn't take postage. Yeah. No, I'm an authentic lover of the platform, and I think that so much of the book as I wrote it, I came to kind of see it as like I was almost like mourning the past, and I was sort of, I was naming something that was over and kinda just wanting to like give it its due a little bit.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah. And we'll talk about this as we go through the episode, but I think you and I both agree that the era of posting is coming to a close.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yes. Yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: And that fewer and fewer of the people that we know are posting, especially the way that they used to.
Like it's become so much more professionalized in so many different ways. But first I wanna talk very briefly about your dissertation, which is on momfluencers. I feel like I read parts of it that you filtered for the public through, via your newsletter and just via our conversations. And it's always seemed to me like you really liked thinking about momfluencers, but you wanted to widen the aperture a little bit.
Is that how you think about this book? Like, you could have written this book just about momfluencers.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: I could. I think that basically as I was working through momfluencers, I could see that there was an audience that was really interested in this topic. And you went through the same thing, I think, like where you're like, "Oh, this is something that people wanna talk to me about. That's so fun."
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: But yeah, I think that what really happened was as I was going deeper into momfluencers, I was like, normal people are acting this way too. Like momfluencers are a convenient kind of frame because in a dissertation, you need to, in order to not make yourself crazy, you need to have like a really well-defined subject so that you're kind of talking about a specific group.
And so I couldn't do something like this book in an academic context 'cause it's too undefined. It's just like people. But so momfluencers like gave me a kind of a frame, but ultimately I was like, this is everyone or this is a lot of people and people who are not doing this for work and they're not getting paid.
So I was just kind of beginning to understand social media affect and the rules of affect that govern the momfluencer space really strictly, and then more and more I was seeing them like kind of being played with by civilians.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah, you used the phrase, I love this, a disciplinary sort of storytelling.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: And that's the sort of thing that I think, when we say it's uncomfortable to talk about social media, like that's at work. We're all doing it in some way. We all have these rules that we have internalized about what is posting too much, what shouldn't you post about, or if it's something that we are like, "Oh, that's sad to post about," how should you narrativize it?
Like we have internalized these things.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Right. And like, I think that was I started doing the research, I was like, people are so sophisticated. And this is the thing, I'm indignant about this because I'm like, ordinary people have become like quite good -
Anne Helen Petersen: Yes.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: - at creating like a very specific kind of content that is true to them. Like, this is the kind of work that people used to get paid to do.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yes.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Like, comms professionals, and it's like everyone is like a little tiny mini comms professional, and with varying degrees of skill, but like a lot of people are really operating at a high level, and no one's talking about it.
And it's also embarrassing to admit it. And I'm like, how did we get to the point where this is embarrassing? Like, these people that I talk to, like, a random woman with a non-social media, non-media facing job in like, Tampa, is telling me things about the way that she narrates her life that are so, like she's thought so hard about it.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: And she's like, "I've never told this to anyone." And I'm like, "Yeah, I know you haven't," 'cause we just, this is like this kind of unsayable zone, which of course, I'm obsessed with that.
Anne Helen Petersen: No, I know. Same. And I'm like, I think about this all the time, trying to make this visible, and some of the hardest work that I have had to do is really trying to unpack it myself because as I write it down. Like, there's a point in my book on millennial burnout where I talk about social media burnout and, like, I just force myself to really actually write down what I think when I'm scrolling through Instagram.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Anne Helen Petersen: And it was so embarrassing. 'Cause it just brought up so many vulnerabilities, right?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. It brings up vulnerabilities, but it's also like this is who you are. Like, this is a reflection of your true self.
Anne Helen Petersen: Right. Right.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah. I have a friend who is a great poster.
She's one of my few close, like, in my close circle who really posts with any sort of regularity. She is also a comms professional, and the great, the fascinating thing that I think, and this gets to the research that you did, is she is posting in a way that I think would be fitting for an influencer, a large audience influencer.
She has a following of a couple hundred people, and she has a private account.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: Right? Like, so it's not like ... 'Cause sometimes I'm like, oh, she ... my impulse, because of the work that I do and because I'm always trying to get a larger audience 'cause it's important for my work, my impulse is always like, oh, I'm posting so that this will get a larger audience.
But she is not at all interested in that. It's just broadcasting to the people that she already knows.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: I would be so curious to know what she's thinking. And it's also, I would think, it has to do with pride and maintaining certain standards, which we've always done that in different ways.
Like, people used to keep their houses that way. You know, people, we've always been interested in maintaining some standards, and I think that is one way to do it. So there's totally natural... we're operating on instincts that are not new, right? That we've always had, and we're just using this as a way to do it.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah, totally. Like, the people who now... there are people in my life who cannot ... They just, they consume Instagram voraciously but never, ever post. Like, those are also the people who maybe wouldn't do a Christmas card.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah, I know a lot of people like that.
Anne Helen Petersen: Do you know what I mean? Like they were like, it's just too much. Like you just don't wanna perform or be perceived that way, or they would do a very subtle one, and be like, "Ah, get it out there." Right?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah. 'Cause it looks like you're trying too hard. Like, I mean, as a half Canadian, like this is a very big part of this kind of old Canadian culture, which is like the tall poppy thing. Like, you can't…
Anne Helen Petersen: Right, tall poppy
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: - don't seem like you think you're the shit. And, you know, social media has really blown that open, where people are really much more allowed to do that. But there's still some that are like, "Ooh," like, "Ew. I don't want anyone to think that I care."
Anne Helen Petersen: Right. So this actually, this is a good way to talk about the people that you interviewed for the book, because I think sometimes people would think, "Oh, it's a book about social media. You're gonna interview a bunch of influencers about how they use it." But you were not really interested in that. You interviewed one person who could be considered an influencer. She has like 100,000 followers. So who did you find to interview and talk about these things?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: I really wanted to talk to people who had nothing, had, had relatively little in common with me. I didn't want them to know me. I didn't want them to know, have mutual friends with me, ideally. I didn't want them to know my work.
I really wanted to go in as a stranger. And this is like also, I think, just a reflection of the limitations of social media silos themselves. Like when I first started working on it, I was like, "I'm gonna call out to my old Substack folks and see if anybody wants to chat."
Right. And I did a bunch of Zooms with people. And 'cause people were like, "Ooh, yeah, I have so much to say." And it was really sweet. People were awesome. I was grateful for their time. But I came away being like, we all agree. Like everyone has the same thoughts as me. This is boring. This is not a book. And also, Zoom was not working because I really do think that people, when they're on Zoom now, they're like, "I'm at work."
Like, this is now, this is a work affect -
Anne Helen Petersen: Oh...
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: - and the mask didn't drop. And I mean, it makes sense because they're sitting in front of the camera.
Anne Helen Petersen: Mm.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: It wasn't like ethnographically speaking, I wasn't able to observe them to like the level and specificity that I sought to, and I wanted to understand people's environments, and I couldn't tell what I was looking at.
So I was like, this is a failed... We're gonna scrap this, and I started again. And I was like, I need to go places, I need to be with people. It has to be total strangers, and I just need to spend as much time with them as they'll let me spend. So like maximum awkwardness, maximum terrifying for me.This is not…
Anne Helen Petersen: 100%. Like you're just describing the worst parts of reporting.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah. It's the worst. And I know there are some journalists who really thrive with this kinda thing. I would say that's not me. But I really was like, this is necessary. So I would do things, and this is again, not being an academic anymore, being like a kind of a lay person now, I could do the types of sourcing that you could never do in academia.
So for example, okay, one person in the book, everyone's names are changed. She's actually the big sister of someone I grew up with, but I hadn't seen her in 25 years, and I really hadn't seen any of that family in a long time. And she lived in this area. She lived in Arizona, and I wanted to go to Arizona.
And I was like, I need one gateway source, just one. And if I have one, she can introduce me to people and they can introduce me to people, and this is how it works. And I'll get further and further away from her, and it'll just be strangers. But I was like, how do I, like, do this? Like, we don't know each other.
I follow her on Facebook since 2006. We do not communicate. I know she has kids. So I was like, "Hey, I'm gonna be in town for some stuff. Maybe we could meet up. I'd love to ask you some questions for a project I'm working on." And she was, like, so kind. Like, "Of course, please come over. I'd love to have you over."
I booked the flight to see her for one hour at her house, but I couldn't have told her that, because that would've made her very uncomfortable.
Anne Helen Petersen: 100%.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Like, so I had to lie, which you can't do. Like, that's not allowed, but I was kind of like this is a justifiable lie because I don't wanna make her uncomfortable.
And I really am only gonna ask for however much time she's - and then maybe she can put me in touch with folks, and she did, and then it just took off, and I had great chats. And I also did stuff like I went on Facebook, like Facebook is amazing. Community groups, moms groups-
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah ...
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: in a certain area.
I'd go on Google Maps. I'd find a Starbucks in their neighborhood. This was wacky, and it didn't work, but I was kinda into it. I went on there. I was like, "Hey, ladies," like, this is a moms group. "I'm a journalism researcher. I'm working on this project. I would love to talk to anybody. I'm gonna be at the Starbucks from 9:00 AM to noon on these days. If you come, I will buy you whatever you want for you and your kids if you'll just sit down and talk to me for however long you want." And I was like these are stay-at-home moms. Like, it could be an activity to do with the kids.
Like, it might just work for their day in a way that it's very a low ask, you know? 'Cause people don't have the time to give you -
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah ...
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: - it's a lot to ask, you know? So I was just trying to make it easy for people. So just stuff like that. I was just trying to come up with ways to get people to talk to me, and then maybe we would hit it off.
And this is what would often happen, is we'd hit it off, and they'd be like, "Oh, you should come to this thing at my friend's," and... I mean, people are the best, you know? And so I'd find myself at some barbecue and, ugh, then you're really like I'm in heaven. I'm having the time of my life, you know?
Anne Helen Petersen: I know it's gauche to talk about the review of your book in The New York Times in a podcast with you right now, but I just wanna bring up there's this line where the reviewer is like, "Isn't it weird that she gives these people pseudonyms since they're on social media?" And I was like you totally missed the point because the thing that they cannot control the way that you are gonna write about them, and also, your conversations with them, when you give them, when you grant them a pseudonym, it allows them to do this sort of self-analysis that maybe they would never do on social media, right?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Precisely. No, my conversations with people were all about the stuff that they don't talk about, that they do. It was essential that I make them anonymous, and I doubt that any of them would have talked to me if I was like, "And I have to use your real name." No way.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yep.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: So yeah, no, thank you for - actually, thank you for that, 'cause I was like, "Babe, you didn't understand," like when I read that. It's okay.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah, well, and I also think that most people… ugh, people, the way that they post on social media, especially if they have private accounts, they don't want... Like if someone Googled their name, they don't want them talking about the way that they use social media to come up in a Google hit.
Do you know what I mean?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Of course. Of course. No, I mean, maintaining your privacy is really hard. And yeah, I want people to feel that they can have their privacy.
Anne Helen Petersen: And that might seem at odds to posting pictures of your kids on social media, but it isn't. That's the contradiction that I think some people don't understand.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah. Exactly.
Anne Helen Petersen: Okay, we gotta get to listener questions. First one is from Rachel.
Rachel: What's weird to me about how we share on social media today is that through Instagram and Facebook, I have been able to keep up with the general ongoings of people from various seasons of my life since we friended or followed each other during the season we spent actual in-person time together, and therefore I have been able to keep general track of the life stages everyone is at.
And not only that I've been able to keep up with people's life updates, but that I really want to and feel some sort of continued connection to people, some of whom I haven't seen in person or talked to in over 10 years. The girl I went to summer camp with in 2014 is having a baby? I'm so happy for her.
The boy in my freshman year English class is getting married? Aw, congrats to him. I don't want to unfollow many people, even if it's been a very long time since we were really in each other's lives, because I want to continue to see the updates. What is it about the way social media has allowed us to keep up with people's lives that makes it so we want to continue learning about the lives of people we may genuinely never get to see in person again?
Sort of like how I'm interested in keeping up with celebrities' lives even though I'll probably never meet them. And how, if anything, does this impact the way we feel connection with others?
Anne Helen Petersen: Obsessed with this question. I wrote about it a couple weeks ago, something very similar about how I'm addicted to normal - normal person gossip is, I think, what I called it.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: You called it normal gossip slop, I think.
Anne Helen Petersen: Normal gossip slop. Just, like, people talking about their lives. I love that you're like, "This is what you called it." And a lot of it on my Facebook now is really, like, the artifacts of a much different time in my life because of the way Facebook has stratified.
Just like the type of people who are posting on it. Do you have this at all?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Mm-hmm. Yes, I do. My Facebook is very, very different from... it's a very strange algorithm.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yes.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: And it's very ordinary person. Yeah. And a lot of these were people that I don't know or yeah, they're connected to me in ways like geographical or whatever and I'll never meet them.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah. So mine is some people that I knew from my hometown or their parents. Like, 'cause a lot of older people are still using Facebook a lot more than people in my generation. And I talked about this in my post. There's also these people that, like, the way that I got in touch with them to interview them for stories, especially when I was living in Montana, was through Facebook.
Like, that was the way. Sure. And you had to friend them in order to message them, and now we're friends. So, like, there are some people.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Oh, for sure.
Anne Helen Petersen: And it's actually, it's quite useful in thinking about, like, just exposure to people that aren't in my ideological silo in a, I think, a very useful way.
And then there's people from my hometown who still post on Facebook in part because they think, it's much more of a norm than Instagram.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Uh-huh.
Anne Helen Petersen: In a smaller, more rural place, it's still used in that way. And I know so much about their lives, and I love it. But I also, it's like sometimes I'm like, what information do I not have space for because I know these things about the person that I went to camp with in 11th grade?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah, I mean, I think that I've had moments where I've been like, Facebook is gonna have a resurgence because it's still where people do relatively...
I mean, it's because of who's posting. Like, the people who are posting there are not guarding their reputations in the same way that like you or I have to do on Instagram, and our friends, and kind of this professional class of people who are interested in, in our image. I write about this in the book, we're managing impressions in a very deliberate way.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: And on Facebook, especially older people, and rural Facebook, I think, is, like, my Vermont world is very, very Facebook. My Montreal world is not Facebook at all.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: And so I use Facebook to keep up with what my neighbors in Vermont are up to. And then, somebody will go have, like, a motorcycle accident, and then he's in the hospital, and the whole community is posting about it, and then suddenly all of these people are like, I'm completely -
Anne Helen Petersen: Yes ... Digging down.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: I'm in this… Oh, yeah, I'm learning about... I've learned a lot about my community from lurking on Facebook. Which is weird, which feels weird too, because I'm an outsider there. And I know a lot more about people than they know about me 'cause I don't post on Facebook. They can't find anything out about me. Anyway, this question, I wanna just address something in it that I do think is really interesting.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: How does it change the kind of nature of the connection when you have these, many, many loose ties or almost kind of nonexistent ties, but you still are keeping up with people?
I do think that what it really changes is I think that the desire to see this gossip is just like this is natural and it's fun and we like it.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: And I don't think that we should feel bad about it. I think it's like this is pure, like this is fine. This is benign behavior.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yes.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: But we are aware that our audience is also made up of people for whom we are this for them.
So like people who are like, "I don't even know her anymore." And so I think that it really changes the boundaries of how we communicate because we are aware that there's people who don't really know us. And so I think we try to, or, or it can create the effect of influencing us towards having like a more simple way of telling our story that really kind of doesn't include like the sorts of digressions or the sorts of tone that we would use if we were just talking to our friends.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: And because it's like well then they're not gonna understand like all these guys, like the guys from camp, 15 years ago, like gotta think of them and like they won't understand, so, you kind of create this like generic like announcement type of tone that will be legible to everyone. And that's where I see like the kind of the bleaching out of storytelling is happening because we have these larger and larger audiences, and we need things to make sense to them. We don't need it to make sense. Like we can do whatever we want, but we're thinking about our visibility in this way and we're like, "Well, okay, so you know, I'm not just talking to like the 50 people that I actually see in my life"
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah, it just completely changes the way that we talk about ourselves.
Anne Helen Petersen: The one thing that this makes me think of is this is often what people cite for why they can't get off Facebook. They don't like how they feel when they're on Facebook or on Instagram, but they don't wanna lose these connections.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Mm-hmm.
Anne Helen Petersen: And it just reminds me that like we have come to believe that this is the only way that we can get in touch with people is like, if you are disconnected through social media, then you have lost that connection forever.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: It's not true.
Anne Helen Petersen: It's not true.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: No. I mean, it's easier than ever to find people.
And also you can Google someone, you can DM them, even if you're not... there's a lot of ways, a lot of workarounds if you really need to stay in touch. But I think it's because we do like the normal gossip slop. We want to just be passive recipients of it. We don't wanna cut it off, and I really understand that, 'cause that's just like neighborhood gossip.
Anne Helen Petersen: Right. So I always talk about this on the podcast, that we have a very unique situation on the island in which at some point, some critical juncture, the people here decided, "We're not gonna be on Facebook. Our communication is not gonna be on Facebook. We're gonna be on Nextdoor." So it's all.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Oh, yeah. Okay.
Anne Helen Petersen: And the way that they tried to avoid the devolution that sometimes happens on Nextdoor is that there is a rule that you can't talk about politics, so.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: It actually is a very pleasant place to be. But oh my gosh, I learned so much about people. Like, just low stakes information.
Incredible low stakes. But and no one though, I think, no one on the island consumes it with the veracity that I do, and it's kind of embarrassing, like the how much I know.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: If I were there, I would consume it with that veracity. Yeah, no, you're basically cataloging data.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yes. Well, and it's also, like I think part of my personality is that I like knowing things. And not in a nosy way. Like, I would never go up to someone that I see just like, I don't know, in far away in their garden and be like, "When did you buy this place?" Right? Like or some of the things that people say to me in person, like, "You paid too much for that house," or those sorts of things.
Like, I would never do something like that.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Right. Real busybody stuff.
Anne Helen Petersen: I like collecting information. I think that sometimes people just don't... They discount the value of that when it comes to social media. It's such a good investigatory tool.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah, and again, I'm gonna say this again, pro-socially I think it's can be so useful. When I moved back to Montreal 15, 16 years ago, I didn't really know anyone, I had a kid, I didn't have any friends.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: My husband and I were really isolated. And I would look at, and this is also back when Facebook was a lot more open, like people had public, they didn't shut it down. And I would just look at photos of people who I would see at the park, and I would learn about them. And when I tell you that I would be like, "Okay, well she seems like someone that I could talk about X, Y, Z with," I would come up with things that I could talk about with people, because I wanted to make friends.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: And I was using my little Facebook investigations to do it.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: And it was so helpful. Like, it really helped me make friends. So, listen. I mean, we find our uses for these things, like however we can.
Anne Helen Petersen: They're very useful ... I think some people listening to us will be like, "You guys are weird."
Like, just have conversations like normal people. So it is something to do with our personalities. Like, we are academics so we're very invested in like anthropological thinking -
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: I know, I know. You give, it's true, like you give Facebook to an anthropologist, I mean, what are they gonna do with it, you know?
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah, I know.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: But I don't think it's harmful ...
Anne Helen Petersen: I think like you and I both, we recognize when we are overstimulated. Like the other day I was doing RushToks until like 10:30 at night, and I literally, I put down my phone and I said, "I am overstimulated" and like turned down the lights and read a book for 30 minutes. I had to do that. So I recognize what it does to me, but I don't think... I try to combat the feeling that this is somehow stupid or wasteful
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah, I think that's right. It's not always like that.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah. Okay. This one comes from Leah, and this is something that I know you've been thinking about a lot recently.
Leah: "It's not exactly social media, but it is a form of it. My brother and his peer group, age 28 or so, share their location with each other constantly on Find My Friends, et cetera. My friend group, only two to three years older, was mortified to hear this. How do our conventions of what's safe or okay to share differ so much in such a short age difference?"
Anne Helen Petersen: So I've been thinking about it because you've been writing about basically teen freedom and agency in your column for The Cut recently. So what do you think about this? And then I wanna share my thoughts.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: I mean, I think that for a lot of people, being under surveillance is completely natural to them.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yes.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: And it's because... and all of these tools, all of these platforms are tools of surveillance, and people who grow up inside of that just think of that as utterly normal. And also, like, certain friend groups use these tools in more overtly surveillance-y ways than others.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Like, and there are things that I consider totally unacceptable that people a few years younger than me would think are normal. Like, I would never put read receipts on a text 'cause I'm like, "It's my business when I'm gonna text you back." Some people think that's really non-negotiable.
And on Instagram, if I see your DM or if I don't reply and then I'm posting, so I'm using the app and I didn't reply to you, you cannot follow up and be like, "Why didn't you reply? I see you on the app." I'm like, you can't do that to me. I know you can see me.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: We have to pretend that you can't.
Otherwise, this relationship doesn't work for me. So I... Those are boundaries that I have. But there are young people who are like, "I can always be seen. Everything I do is visible. That's just, that's on me. I have to be accountable for that. Like, I live in a bubble of total accountability, and I've accepted it."
And so, the whole location tracking thing is part of that, where I think for a lot of young people, they're like, "Why wouldn't I want people to know where I was? It's convenient." Yeah. There's just no... They don't see the downside, and, and they're like, "I'm not hiding anything. I'm not hiding from anyone."
And it's really hard to try to explain to them the value of privacy. This is something that I try to do. And it's very challenging 'cause privacy is kind of a basic human right. You're entitled to it. They're like, "Who cares?" Like, only people who are weird want to be hidden.
Anne Helen Petersen: Right. So if you wanna be hidden, then you're doing something bad.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah, and this is one of privacy studies, this is one of the key questions. Like, the nothing to hide fallacy is like…
Anne Helen Petersen: Right.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: I mean... and teaching kids that, be like, it's not about hiding stuff. It's about your kind of innate agency as a person and the kind of, the entitlements that the self has to a certain kind of self-determination that has to be able to happen without other people perceiving you and influencing your choices. You can get through to people that way, but it's a lot of talking for, like, a 17-year-old to listen to.
You know? I mean, it's tough.
Anne Helen Petersen: It does seem to interlock with conversations that I have about people being frustrated that I don't bring my phone with me everywhere.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Why are they frustrated with that?
Anne Helen Petersen: They're like, "How could you do that? What if someone needs to reach you?" And some of it is, like, it's a lot of parents, honestly, because they're like, "I could never do that.
My kids have to reach me all the time." And I understand that. But also, I just... Like, there is this incredible amnesia about our resilience, even just 20 years ago, with not being able to immediately get in contact with someone.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: And also, for me, the freedom from my phone, like, it's related in some ways to privacy.
It's not that, like, I don't wanna talk to you. It's just more that, I don't wanna have any inputs. None.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: I wanna be free from inputs for a while.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Oh, I completely relate to that. And I also think that, I would challenge parents, maybe I should write about this.
It will be not popular. People will not, not like it. But, I do think that you can, as a parent, be, I mean, obviously different situations, but like, in a great many cases, you can be unreachable by your kids for a little while. I think that's totally legitimate, and maybe it's something that people should try to do to just see what it feels like.
Anne Helen Petersen: And also, one thing, and this has to do with proximity and it can happen in a rural space, but I actually think it can happen easily in an urban space as well, is that like, "Oh, I can't get ahold of my mom, this is who I call," or I knock on the door of the next door neighbor, right?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Correct.
Anne Helen Petersen: As my best friend who lives next door has been leaving her kids alone more often 'cause they're getting to that age, like, they know if they need something, they just come over to me and ask me for it, right?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah. That's great.
Anne Helen Petersen: They don't need to have her reachable at all times. The thing about Find My, like an alternative reading to this is that I have many of my friends on Find My, and it's not because we were like, "Let's put each other on Find My."
We agreed to put all of ourselves on it for this relay race that we were running because when you're running a relay race, you need to know where you are, right?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah. Oh yeah, I know about that.
Anne Helen Petersen: And we all just checked, initially, the first year we did it, we checked 24 hours, 'cause the settings are 24 hours or indefinitely.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Mm-hmm.
Anne Helen Petersen: Because the relay race is longer than 24 hours, it meant that you had to re-up. It was super annoying 'cause people forget, whatever.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: That's very annoying .... Of course.
Anne Helen Petersen: So they just put indefinitely. And now it's just like this, I find tremendous comfort in periodically just opening it and I'm like, "There's that friend in bed. There's that friend in bed. There's that..." Like, they're just there. I love seeing them. It's like a Sims simulation or something. Do you know what I mean? I'm not tracking them.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yes, I do. No, totally, I know exactly what you mean, and I don't do that because it's just not something that's ever really come up.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: But I get it, and I know that there's a use for this that is not a tracking control technology for sure.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: But I think that, like, when it comes to younger people -
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah ...
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: - the boundary is more porous, and I think it's more passes through that boundary than a group of women who were in a race together and who love each other as friends and just wanna, like, stay connected, you know?
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah, right. Absolutely. Do you feel like it's unsafe to do this? 'Cause that seems to be coming through in the question, is that they actually think it's unsafe to always be able to know where people are.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Ummm, unsafe, like that somebody could then, like, use that information for ill?
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah, like stalking essentially, I think.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah. I mean, I personally am so... I find the idea of having people know where I am so abhorrent that I do think... It's unsafe for me, like, in my,sense of self. I would hate the idea of someone showing up where I am, even a friend who I love, and just be like, "Oh, I knew you were here. I just wanted to like..." That, for me, would send me into a deep irritation, which is weird because, like, I love my friends and I love seeing them, and it doesn't always have to be on my terms. Like, running into someone is awesome. Like, being surprised is amazing. But this isn't surprise, right?
This is I'm surprised, you're not surprised. That's different.
Anne Helen Petersen: Right. There's so much to think about here. This is one that I hope that the comments kind of go after this one. So, okay, next question is about personas in social media. This comes from a different Rachel with a different Rachel spelling because, hello, millennials.
Rachel: Why is my feed full of people I know from high school and beyond posting about their lives like they are an influencer? Does everyone think this is an attainable career path? Have influencers just influenced the way we interact with the platforms and standardize how we share content on social media?
Why do these poor quality day in the life or get ready with me videos from people I know personally bother me so much?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: I mean, this is kind of like the premise of my book. So thank you, Rachel, for this question. I think that basically because of a lot of these interlocking factors, the fact that we have these, like, unwieldy networks, the fact that we're under surveillance in this sort of ambient way that makes us self-conscious in new ways that I think we're not necessarily even aware of, we're compelled in many cases to, like, recreate these scripts that we see on social media that seem successful.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: And I don't think that your friends who are posting like influencers are necessarily trying to be influencers. Being an influencer is super hard work. Like, I think most people wouldn't wanna do it. And you don't make a lot of money. And like, yeah, it's just not a great job for almost every influencer.
I think they're just like, "This is a way of communicating that, like, works, and that is cute and that is entertaining, and I can do it. Like, I wanna try it." And I think that's all good, but the fact that it's irritating is, yes, I agree. This is like a sort of a thin and kind of empty, hollow, content-free script.
Like, this isn't real information about these people. Like, you're not getting to know them. It's also just an imitation. They're reproducing things they've already seen. So, like, why do you have to see people making copies of things?
Anne Helen Petersen: Right.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: It's just like, I don't wanna see that.
Anne Helen Petersen: You know what it reminds me of? So 'cause I think of day in the life or get ready with me, I think of it as a box, right, like a framework for trying to share. Like, you wanna share something about yourself. Like, you have this impulse like, "I want to connect with people." And this is an acceptable way to do it.
And it reminds me of the... You still see this on Instagram from time to time, and on Facebook, but the kind of questionnaires where it's like, "Favorite color?" And then you put in the color. And they're more, it's often centered around, like, how you met your husband or something like that.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Right.
Anne Helen Petersen: And it does give you some information, but it's also annoying because it's like the questions are so limited. They don't allow for much room for expansion or interesting, weird answers or anything. The box is small, and so you don't get the surprise that you want from that box.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: I think that the key is that the box is small. And you don't realize, like, so in preparing to promote this book, I thought briefly about producing video content imitating this stuff, of me, like me doing a get ready with me, me doing like a haul, whatever. And I tried to do it at home, and I found it impossible.
It was like a complete failure. I never posted anything. But the reason why was that, like, I couldn't produce the affect that is recognizable in that space. Like, I'm doing my makeup and I'm talking like my normal self, and it just isn't working. Like it's a square peg in a round hole.
Like, you're looking at it and you're like, "It's just, it's not working." And so it's like, I think what annoys me is that when people are doing that and they're making it work, like they're actually doing something hyper-specific.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yes.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: And they're talking about a hyper-specific set of things. It doesn't seem like it. It just seems like, oh, she's doing her makeup and she's talking. But believe me when I tell you that it's not that simple. There's a lane that you're in.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: So yeah, I find it very limiting.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah. The one thing I do like, and I see this on TikTok, is when people are doing get ready with mes that aren't actually get ready with mes, they're doing their makeup, but what it allows them to do is relax in front of the camera to tell a story.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Mm-hmm. True.
Anne Helen Petersen: Because you're doing, the box is I'm putting on my makeup. I don't have to make eye contact with the camera. I don't have to do any of the other hand motions or worry about what to do with my face or whatever. I'm just, I'm doing this thing that is acceptable to do on camera, and now I can tell you a story.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: That is really true. And, and I think that when people are comfortable and good in that, in that context, it can really work.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: And maybe the annoying friend who's doing this get ready with me stuff, of Rachel is like, she's trying to go for that, you know? And I think anything, any little like off-label use of the technology that we can come up with that makes it easier for us to tell a story is worthwhile, you know?
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. This reminds me of some questions I've received during RushTok of like, how do they know how to put their leg up when they're doing their little lip sync? Like, you know, they do like the cute thing where they throw up their foot. Or like, how do they know to do their hands this way? Or how do they know to say roll tide at the end? And these are the sorts of things that it's hard to explain, like, how media absorption works. Like, they never said to themselves, "And then at the end I will say Roll Tide," right?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Right. It's just how you produce it.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yes.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: They know going in, for sure.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yes. They just absorb it, and that's what like, if someone's doing this, I don't think that they are thinking out really, like extensively, like, "Oh, this is a way that I can like try to participate in social media, and like at the end I'm gonna do this," or like really disciplining themselves. It's more like they're trying to have fun.
I think they are.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: No, I think they absolutely are trying to have fun. They're trying to experience some kind of a connection -
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: - with the audience and get engagement. Right ... and it's just a format that allows for that in best case scenario.
Anne Helen Petersen: In the best case scenario. Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: Okay. Let's talk about vacations. This comes from Mikayla.
Mikayla: "You shared a link to a Marie Claire piece recently that lamented on the pressure non-influencers feel to document our joy. I have been what I consider a storyteller since I was five years old, and have somehow managed to make it a full-time career as a travel writer and editor.
My job doesn't require me to have a personal following online, so anything I share is self-motivated. Despite everything we read about the evils of social media, the conversation about going analog, and the increased feelings as I get older that maybe I don't wanna be perceived so intensely, I cannot shake my compulsion to share.
Over the last decade, I've started and stopped blogs, podcasts, Substacks, and Instagram as I grapple with both wanting and not wanting to share. As a fellow storyteller, how do you navigate this desire to document your life with the desire to hold it close to your chest? I admire how you're sparing on social media, but is that hard?"
Anne Helen Petersen: This is the first time ever when someone has ever called me a storyteller, and, like, that's so interesting to me that I've never thought of myself that way. Like, a lot of us think of ourselves as, like, personal essayists, but I don't even think of myself as that much of a personal essayist. And some of it is really rooted in the academic.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Anne Helen Petersen: But I have always been someone who wanted to share in some way, and you have, too.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Definitely. Yeah, no, I can relate very much to this question asker.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yes.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: I'm gonna share one way or the other. For sure.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yes.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: I struggle with this a lot. Like, I used to have a lot of fun, and I don't have as much fun posting anymore, like I've said earlier.
Yeah. Like I've really cut down, and it's kind of a bummer for me, and I would love to recreate that old feeling because it was a way of expressing myself that was, it felt creative. Like, actually. And it's not obvious how to... the nice thing about it is the immediate feedback from people.
Like, that's big. I mean, it's great to get people right away. It's fun. It's what makes it fun. It's why it's not the same to have a blog or to have a journal. It's just not the same.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: And I think that you shouldn't feel like it's lame to wanna do this, and I say this at the end of my book.
Like, the storyteller's instinct is extremely cool. It's not embarrassing. It's not cringe. It's awesome. And, the tools are not, they're not ennobling, but the impulse is very noble. So I think thinking about the medium that you're using as this thing that you're using it and does it work or doesn't it work, and it has its pros and its cons is one way to kind of feel a little bit maybe more agentic or whatever.
But, I can't say that I've solved this problem because I don't post as much as I used to, and I miss it.
Anne Helen Petersen: I have found that I really was disincentivized from posting anything more personal. When it became an opportunity to, like things that I was posting became an opportunity to debate much larger things about, like anything, that piece that I was wearing.
Like, I was like, "Oh, I'm worried they're gonna see where that's from and think either it's too cheap or it's too expensive," right?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah. Yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: And sometimes, some of my friends will be like, they will be interested in what I do and do not write about or do and do not share on Instagram, and I have had to explain to them in somewhat cringe ways that people are very critical, and that really is disincentivizing of telling any sort of story, because it's not actually about the heart of your story. It's about a detail about your life and about how you live your life in whatever moment.
And the one solution that I've seen a lot of people using more of, this is such a shift from, like, 2014, like spill your guts on the internet for $50, is really making some of the more private stuff less accessible to the entire internet.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah. I mean, I think when you have a relatively small audience of people who are your friends, it's a lot easier to use these tools creatively 'cause yeah, I feel very inhibited about making the wrong impression with people, or making enemies or just having people think that I'm... It's funny, a lot of it has to do with wealth.
Anne Helen Petersen: It does ...
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: I find myself, like I don't, I do not want you thinking that I'm rich, okay? But also, like…
Anne Helen Petersen: You're like, "This is a yurt. It doesn't have plumbing."
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Ugh, I hate myself for even bringing that up. But people will come, and they'll be like, "Wow, second home much?" 'Cause for those who don't know, I live in Montreal, and I have this piece of land in Vermont that I bought. And my husband built a yurt on it, but there's no septic.
There's an outhouse. So it's both incredibly beautiful and a lot... I'll post pictures of it, and I'm like, "My God, it's so beautiful here. Can you guys even handle it?" And I'm also sometimes compelled to be like, "And also, like, I shit in a hole," you know? Like, it's really, like, it's not cute Vermont, guys. It's like rough Vermont. Like, no one around me likes Bernie Sanders at all. Like, you gotta understand. And why am I doing this? This is like the most obnoxious, among the most obnoxious instincts that I have is to, guys, I'm still really good.
Anne Helen Petersen: It is an instinct that is born of posting for people who don't actually know you.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yes. But I really don't like that instinct, and I think that everyone has it a little bit now. This is one of those things that's trickled down into, like, the general population, and this kind of, this policing of the impressions around our virtue.
It's just boring, and I think that, I don't know. I guess some people are demanding it of each other.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: But, I would hate to make someone feel that I was demanding it of them.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yes. Okay. Our last question comes from another Rachel. We love it. And it's about not posting.
Rachel: "I had to go on leave from my job for cancer treatment in 2024, and it was important to me to share why I had abruptly gone on leave with my colleagues on social.
I created an Instagram and LinkedIn post about it, but then as my treatment journey took many turns and things got really scary, I stopped posting about it. I haven't posted about my seemingly unending cancer journey in over a year and don't know if I will. I post joyful moments and pics on Instagram, and sometimes post my writing on LinkedIn.
It feels like I should be performing illness while I'm on leave, even though I know that's not necessary. Is there a way to free myself of the draw to constantly explain myself and my life online? I work in PR and social media, so it feels extra important to explain personal stuff, though I don't know if I ever want to again."
Anne Helen Petersen: So the excerpt from your book that was published on The Cut is about how difficult it is to post about things that are hard like this.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Mm-hmm. And it's interesting 'cause there is this kind of subcategory of that which is people who do disclose. Like this reader is like, you know, "I had cancer and I told everyone, and so now they think of me as someone going through a struggle." And it's like this kind of personal branding conundrum where you need to maintain consistency. And I think the fact that she works in PR, it makes sense 'cause you probably have these thoughts kind of already kind of percolating. But right, there's this pressure to explain yourself, and I think that is something that we can just...
I mean, this is not helpful advice, but I'm like, you can do whatever you want, and you don't have to explain yourself to anybody. And especially when it comes to illness, like the idea that you should have to perform illness, I completely understand where that comes from. It has to do with, like, fulfilling the expectation of the audience, not confusing them, but also you don't wanna make some weird announcement where you're like, "I'm better, but I'm still on leave because of XYZ thing," right?
Like, no, it's none of their business. They can ask you if they want an explanation.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: You don't owe them anything at all. But I really understand that conundrum, and it's just the fact that we've taken on personal branding rules in our own kind of storytelling.
Anne Helen Petersen: Right. Well, and also that, like, this is intersecting with our understanding of how, ugh, if you're not working, what your life should look like, right?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah. Right. No fun.
Anne Helen Petersen: Like if she's on leave, no fun right?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Right.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah. Like, if you're on leave, if you're not working, like, you should be working as a mom.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Right.
Anne Helen Petersen: You know, in this other, the momfluencing sphere. Like, if you're not working for pay outside of the home, like, this is this other work that you must show that you are laboring to do this work.
Yeah, I totally agree with you. Like, I think we just wanna tell Rachel, like, this is not weird that you're feeling this way.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Not at all. Not at all weird.
Anne Helen Petersen: Like, totally get it. And the more that you can, like, say to yourself, like, "This is my business." Like, you are not owed that, and anything else. Like, you could completely quit the apps. If people were scared that you were dead, like, maybe they should reach out to you. Like, wouldn't that be cool?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Exactly.
Anne Helen Petersen: Right? Right. Instead of just speculating. It's been really hard, I think, as more people in my life have, especially with cancer, but also other chronic things, like, that feeling that this becomes your social, all of your social media become, like, a double for the… What's the name of the app where people give updates when someone is sick? Do you know what I'm talking about?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: It was the CaringBridge?
Anne Helen Petersen: CaringBridge. Yes.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: It's not an app so much, but it's, like, a place where information is released. It's all, like, they're like press releases. And so…
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: And I understand why those exist too, because it's really exhausting to narrativize, like, what is going on at a really hard time in your life over and over again.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: It just, yeah, strikes me as a difficult intersection.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: It's like the flip side of everyone kind of performing a little bit like as though they were a little bit famous, like kind of taking on the tone of an influencer.
The flip side of that is that the audience then feels entitled to you as if you were a celebrity. And this is how we get people, like, DM'ing you. Let's say you're on leave for an illness, but you're doing better, and you go to the beach with your family, and there's a picture of you guys having fun, and you're like, "Ooh, not sure if I should share this, but I'm going to."
And then people feeling that they can be like, "Wow, so I guess you're all better," or whatever. Like, kind of demanding accountability from you.
Anne Helen Petersen: Right... that's weird. And to be clear, no one's actual friend would ever DM that.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Well…
Anne Helen Petersen: You don't think?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: I don't know.
Anne Helen Petersen: Really?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: I feel like there's all kinds of friends out there. [Laughter] I do. I don't know. But, like, I…
Anne Helen Petersen: Like a passive aggressive frenemy that's like, "Hmm, that must be nice to be on leave."
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah, like maybe this isn't a friend that you see all the time, but I don't know. Like, I just think that people demand accountability of each other in this totally inappropriate way.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah, yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Which is part of what makes these apps not fun to use, is that we, when we're trying to, like, tell our stories, then we do have to attend to these questions, which are often, like, really, for one thing, just boring. It's like, do you really want me to explain this? Like, you want... And it's sometimes, I've had this experience, this is very uncharitable of me, where people have asked me things and I'm like, "I don't think you really care. I think you just want to make me do something. Like, you wanna pull the puppet strings and have me..." And it's satisfying to affect... And I just, and this could just be being very unkind and defensive for, you know, someone in my DMs. But I am like, I just can't imagine that you really care, that you really want me to answer this question.
You don't even know me. But I just really have…
Anne Helen Petersen: Like, what sort of question have they asked you that made you feel like that? You don't have to share if you don't want to.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Oh, gosh ... It's, no, it's been a while. Like, when my kids were younger, there was a helmet question once.
Anne Helen Petersen: Oh, yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Like, you know, like, helmets are really important.
Like, I would encourage you to always put a helmet on your kid's head because people are looking at you. And it's like, do you really wanna be like, you know what? Like, it's actually, like, it was just to our neighbor's house and it was like, uh, I'm not gonna write that answer. It's too annoying for both of us. But, and I think maybe people are well-meaning, and they're like, "This is actually important." And helmets are important, but I just… it's gone too far
Anne Helen Petersen: Well, and this is the hard thing, right? Is that all of us in the calculus of our daily lives, we make decisions like that all the time about like, is it okay to, for my kid to go 100 feet away without a helmet?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: All the time.
Anne Helen Petersen: Or like, you know what? Sometimes on this island when we're going like, I don't know, down the road, the kids ride in the back of the pickup truck.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Right.
**Anne Helen Petersen:**You know, like there are different…
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: And it's so fun.
Anne Helen Petersen: Or in New York, kids ride the subway alone by themselves. Like, you make different decisions based on your context, and you have people outside of your context forcing their context onto you. And where do you think that impulse comes from?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Well, again, I think it's to do with celebrity culture and this thing of like, you’re out there, you're public, I'm gonna demand something of you 'cause that's part of the transaction.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: But I also think the sort of weaponized who's gonna be better at being good thing is…
Anne Helen Petersen: Concern trolling.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah, I think that's a big thing, and I do think that it's trolling. I think that most people don't care. I just don't think it's coming from a place of real concern.
Anne Helen Petersen: It's almost like gotcha. It's almost like a gotcha, right? Like, oh, you think that you're like, I don't know, a good person by what you're posting on social media?
Let me point out something that actually is a flaw here.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah, and I think there's a lot of rage there about… I think about this in, in like snark communities, and I actually wrote about in the book. Like, you know, like people who really, really, really hate like Ballerina Farm or whatever.
You know, they're looking for a way in which she's endangering her kids. Even I, like she doesn't have a fence around her trampoline. She has a raw dog trampoline in her yard. And like I saw that. I was like, "Hannah, those kids are gonna all break their arms and legs. Like, I can't believe you don't have..." And that you're posting it with imp- you're letting the world see this. Like, this is like number one no-no. And I was like, you're getting so many DMs that you're ignoring about this, which I kind of respect, because she's not addressing it. And I'm like, ooh. It's just, it's a bloodbath.
Not the children, the DMs, you know?
Anne Helen Petersen: Well, and I think in cases like this, this is, we're getting more into social, like into celebrity social media, and celebrity critique, and celebrity gossip here. But these are also about norms that we're trying to solidify, right? Norms that are coming into shape, or so when someone challenges that norm, we have to call them out in order to solidify it for ourselves, right?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah, and I think in the case of Hannah Neeleman, it's not crazy to be like, "Why is there no fence around your trampoline?" Because she is massively famous, and it's about family. Like it's, you're not totally out of line to…
Anne Helen Petersen: Right. Well, and what they're trying to actually say when you say that is like, why do you think everything about your brand is about how living this way can exceptionalize you?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Mm-hmm.
Anne Helen Petersen: Right? Like your kids will never break their bones because you -
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: You're protected.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah. And so that's actually what that DM is about, but we rarely spend the time to unpack like what are we actually reacting to here?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Right. Yes. But I think this gets to the point of, like, belonging into snark cultures.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Where so much of it is, like, you are frustrated with these dynamics. They're often larger and broad social dynamics that you feel kind of boxed in by. And this is a way of channeling that frustration with a group, with sort of fellow travelers, and you all feel this together, and it feels good to have a shared sense of the world.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: And yeah, and these are the people that you kind of direct that frustration to.
Anne Helen Petersen: And the celebrity or influencer themselves is really just the receptacle for these larger feelings about the world. Like, they're just, like, a way to funnel all these things.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton 100% ... Yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: And so sometimes when someone sends me something that is a little unhinged, I'm just like, "This isn't about me in any way."
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah. That's very... I think that's the best way to think about it.
Anne Helen Petersen: It's hard. Sometimes Melody and I have to send things back and forth to be like, "This person has other things going on. Like, this is not about whatever we're doing."
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: That's always a good assumption ...
Anne Helen Petersen: And even I think with close friends, sometimes the way that they react to our social media or something, like… They also have something else going on.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Everyone has private feelings about each other's posts. And that's something too that I found, like, talking to people about their friends. Do you have friends? And they pull up their phone and show me, like, "Well, this is my friend. Look what she does. Like look at... What is this?" And I mean, it's amazing 'cause you can't talk about it with a friend. This is one of the things that we don't talk about with our friends. You can't be like, "How come you wrote that like weird poem to your husband on your anniversary?" Like, but he doesn't even use social media, so like who's gonna read it? Like, who was that for? You know?
Anne Helen Petersen: But that's the thing, 'cause it, but it, we do know who it's for. It's for us. Like it's performing... it's performing that affection for the husband. I have -
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: But forcing your friend to admit that, ooh, it's aggressive.
Anne Helen Petersen: Actually, so this is the same friend who I was talking about at the beginning who's very good at social media, but also has like a couple hundred followers and is private.
Her husband is also a very, loves to post, one of the few men, male friends my age, like dads, who just loves to post. But he's also not as good at it as her, like doesn't know how to edit his photos the same way. And like we used to, I'm close enough with them that we can actually razz them about like, we're like, "Billy, your photos aren't as good. Like, you should use Elena's photos." And now he has asked her to do the tiny little very subtle tag in the corner of her stories so that he can repost the story to his Instagram.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Oh my gosh …
Anne Helen Petersen: But then they both come up, like they have different spheres of friendship, but a lot of overlap, so anyone who follows both of them, it's like, here's one of theirs and here's the other one right after one another.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: The doubling up.
Anne Helen Petersen: It's so cute! But that's the sort of thing if you have intimacy you can talk about it, but if you don't, then you talk shit about it.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: Yeah, no, that form of intimacy is really, is really cool. It's very, very precious. When you can make fun of people about the stuff they post is like, that, you've really broken through a lot of barriers, and you're in like a really, a secret garden that many of us just dream of entering, you know?
Anne Helen Petersen: Ah. I think that's a great place for us to end. Kathryn, if people wanna find more of you on the internet, where can they find you?
Kathryn Jezer-Morton: I'm on Instagram, @ kjayzermo.
You can subscribe to my newsletter on The Cut. It's called Brooding, and my book is The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything, and please buy it.