Renee DiResta - Part 1: Propaganda, Disinformation, and Bespoke Realities

Summary

Trust Me: Cults, Extreme Belief, and Manipulation

Episode: Renee DiResta - Part 1: Propaganda, Disinformation, and Bespoke Realities
Release Date: December 3, 2025
Hosts: Lola Blanc & Meagan Elizabeth
Guest: Renee DiResta, Professor, Researcher, Author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality

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Episode Overview

This episode of Trust Me delves deep into how propaganda, disinformation, and algorithm-driven social media dynamics are shaping what Renee DiResta calls our “bespoke realities.” DiResta, a leading researcher on information networks and manipulation, shares her personal journey into the world of anti-vaccine content, the rise of online conspiracy theories, and the systemic mechanisms by which falsehoods proliferate. Hosts Lola and Megan guide a conversation packed with clear explanations, vivid examples, and practical insights for understanding how propaganda operates in modern society—at both institutional and everyday levels.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Renee DiResta’s Path Into Disinformation Research

• Personal Entry Point: Renee’s research was sparked as a new mother in 2013, when social media platforms began algorithmically pushing her “crunchy mom” and anti-vaccine content simply because she searched for things like homemade baby food and cloth diapers.
  • “It started pushing me a lot of the stuff around, you know, make your own baby food, do cloth diapering. And then I did both of those things and so it was like, naturally you must be an anti vaxxer. It started pushing me the anti vaccine groups too. And I am not.” — Renee DiResta [13:33]
• She investigated further, joining groups with a clean account to map the pathway leading from lifestyle content to more radical conspiracy communities (e.g., Pizzagate, QAnon).
• Her background in tech and data science enabled her to analyze the structural and algorithmic factors behind these social dynamics.

The History & Nature of Propaganda

• Rumor Mill vs. Propaganda: Before the internet, information spread via informal rumor mills and top-down propaganda campaigns managed by figures of power (states, religious institutions, media owners).
• Propaganda's Origin: The term comes from the Catholic Church’s post-Reformation efforts to “propagate the faith.”
  • “Propaganda is ... information with an agenda that benefits the person who is doing that propagation… there's always some sort of agenda in persuasive communication.” — Renee DiResta [17:32]
• Modern Evolution: The ability to reach millions is no longer reserved for elites; social media lets anyone become an influential node, collapsing the distinction between top-down and grassroots communication.

“Manufacturing Consent” & Media Filters

• DiResta explains Manufacturing Consent (Chomsky & Herman) and how pre-internet media was shaped by financial and political incentives, often leading to filtered coverage that favored powerful interests.
• Today, incentives are set not just by media owners, but also by social media companies' curation algorithms and the self-interested actions of influencers.

The Two-Step Flow Model of Influence

• Classic Finding: People’s beliefs are deeply shaped by trusted peers (“opinion leaders”), not just by what’s broadcast in the media.
  • “There were a handful of women in the community who were really, really plugged into what was happening on the media. And then they would… talk with their friends about it.” — Renee DiResta [25:42]
• Charisma, relatability, and embeddedness in the community determine influence—qualities now mirrored and amplified by online influencers.
• Parasocial Dynamics: On social media, influencers simulate friendship, increasing their ability to shape followers' worldview.

Bespoke Realities & Algorithmic Amplification

• Definition: "Bespoke realities" are highly individualized information universes, shaped by our choices and algorithms. Platforms reinforce these by pushing more of what engages us, regardless of truth or extremity.
  • “You can really choose to self-select into certain media and topical universes where this is reality for you… and it's algorithmically reinforced.” — Renee DiResta [30:53]
• Often, this process is unconscious; simply hesitating on certain content or clicking out of curiosity shifts what users see in the future.
• Serendipitous-seeming coincidences (e.g., being served exactly the right content “at the right time”) are constructed by data mining and prediction, not mystical insight.

Why Misinformation Spreads—And Why “Misinformation” Is the Wrong Word

• DiResta dislikes the term “misinformation,” arguing it implies a correctable fact error, when in reality these belief clusters are rooted in deep distrust.
  • “It generally is like somebody who is wrong about something, like they get a fact wrong, but misinformation implies that if you just gave them a better fact, it would change their mind… It's a real trust issue. Right? It's very much an issue of trust.” — Renee DiResta [37:10]
• She prefers “propaganda,” which highlights the agenda and motivation behind crafted narratives.
• "Disinformation" is reserved for intentional state or organizational campaigns aimed at strategic disruption—e.g., Russia’s information warfare.

The Emotional & Identity Hooks of Viral Content

• Content that triggers intense emotion (especially anger/indignation or exclusivity of “secret knowledge”) is algorithmically favored.
• Social platforms amplify “extremophiles”—people with the most polarizing takes—leading to perceptions that extreme opinions are majority views (“majority illusion”).
  • “You start to see these interesting phenomenon where people decide what is true ... based on what surrounds them. That's what starts to seem normal.” — Renee DiResta [42:27]

The Vicious Incentives of Attention Economies

• The most polarizing or emotionally charged content receives the highest engagement, creating a feedback loop for creators: to be seen, you must provoke.
• Even those aware of the system’s pitfalls feel forced to participate (“If you don’t do it, someone else will”).
  • “If you don't do it, someone else will. And that is the issue of... the attention game.” — Renee DiResta [51:26]

The Limits of Individual Agency & Systemic Challenges

• Even with understanding, resisting the pull of these dynamics is tough. The onus should be on systemic accountability (regulation of algorithms, etc.), not just individual behavior.
• Experimentation with more user-controlled feeds (like on BlueSky) could help people reclaim control from blindly addictive engagement spirals.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Algorithmic Radicalization:
  "I called it... inadvertent algorithmic radicalization... here's why you think you're joining a crunchy mom cloth diapering group, and then, like, Bam, here's the QAnon stuff that shows up in your feed." — Renee DiResta [13:33]
• On Propaganda’s Modern Evolution:
  “In the age of the Internet, these two things happen in the same place at the same time. That power to spread messages... is something that we actually all have now.” — Renee DiResta [19:40]
• On Emotional Virality:
  “Morally righteous indignation is the tone that it keys off of. And people will respond to that, unfortunately, because they... feel like they are also in the fight.” — Renee DiResta [51:58]
• On the Cost of Self-Expression:
  “You see the moderates, the people who... don't hold extreme beliefs actually become more and more silent. They choose to self censor rather than to speak up.” — Renee DiResta [45:57]
• On “Serendipitous” Algorithms:
  “People also don't necessarily realize just how much data mining is going into what they think is serendipitous and personalized for them.” — Renee DiResta [35:31]
• On Systemic vs. Individual Responsibility:
  “While it’s important and good for us to all try to do what we can on an individual level, ultimately, like, these things are happening on a systemic level that corporations are spearheading to try to make more money ... Let's hold people accountable, lobby our politicians to actually regulate that shit.” — Host Lola Blanc [06:11]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Personal Origin Story & Algorithmic Radicalization: [13:33]–[16:54]
• History of Propaganda & Rumor Mills: [17:32]–[19:40]
• Manufacturing Consent & Media Filters: [20:49]–[22:42]
• Two-Step Flow & Influence: [25:42]–[30:34]
• Bespoke Realities & Algorithmic Reinforcement: [30:53]–[34:28]
• On “Serendipitous” Feeds & Data Mining: [35:01]–[36:27]
• Why “Misinformation” is the Wrong Term: [37:10]–[39:49]
• Majority Illusion & Extreme Content: [42:27]–[46:13]
• Incentives Driving Polarization: [51:26]–[52:44]
• Systemic Solutions & User Agency: [54:44]–[54:46]

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Episode Vibe & Tone

This episode is smart, compassionate, and darkly funny—rooted in the lived experience of two hosts who’ve escaped cultic influence and an expert who brings both personal and technical rigor. The conversation is urgent yet practical, inviting listeners to reflect on their own consumption habits and the larger systems shaping their reality.

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For Next Week (Part 2 Teaser)

• The conversation continues into pseudo-events, nonsense controversy, the challenge of discerning truth from fiction, and the rapidly degrading landscape of internet “reality.”

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For listeners who want to understand the modern information battleground—how belief, identity, algorithms, and propaganda interlace in our online lives—this episode is essential, accessible, and galvanizing.

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Transcript

[Renee Diresta]

This is exactly right.

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[Matt Rogers]

This is Matt Rogers from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

[Bowen Yang]

This is Bowen Yang from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

[Matt Rogers]

Hey Bowen, it's gift season.

[Bowen Yang]

Ugh, stressing me out. Why are the people I love so hard to shop for?

[Matt Rogers]

Probably because they only make boring gift guides that are totally uninspired. Except for the guide we made in.

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[Matt Rogers]

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[Matt Rogers]

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[Bowen Yang]

Gift the good stuff at Marshalls.

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[Matt Rogers]

Trust me.

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Do you trust me?

[Renee Diresta]

Would I ever lead you astray?

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Trust me.

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This is the truth. The only truth.

[Host Lola Blanc]

If anybody ever tells you to just trust them, don't welcome to Trust Me, the podcast about cults, extreme belief and manipulation from two visible rulers who've actually experienced it.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

I'm Lola Blanc. And I am Megan Elizabeth.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Today is part one of our very informative interview with Renee Diresta, professor, former research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory and author of Invisible the People who Turn Lies into Reality in Part one. This week she is going to talk to us about propaganda disinformation versus misinformation and how social media algorithms push us all into highly individualized bespoke realities.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

We'll discuss how she became interested in this topic when algorithms started feeding her anti vaxxer content simply because she was interested in A healthy lifestyle. How rage, bait, and other emotionally charged material spreads faster, and why social media makes it seem like other people have more extreme views than the majority of them actually do.

[Host Lola Blanc]

And next week, we will talk about pseudo events or nonsense, controversy and not newsworthy news. How much more challenging it's getting to discern truth from fiction. And lots more, lots, lots more about our depressing Internet landscape. What's real, Megan?

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, exactly.

[Host Lola Blanc]

That's the question. That is, before we ask her this question, kind of.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Renee?

[Host Lola Blanc]

Yeah, Okay. I would love to know your culties thing of the week.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Okay, sure. Well, first, I'm gonna start off with an apology. I did not realize that Spotify has comments, so I. We're not. We don't really read a lot of the comments.

[Host Lola Blanc]

No, no, can't.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

And it's not because we don't want feedback. It's. I mean, some of them are. You know, some people are very.

[Host Lola Blanc]

People can be mean in comments and.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Not just like, mean, like, you are ugly. Like, I'm. Stop exposing my cold. I'm gonna kill you. You know what I mean? Like, people can get.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Has that happened?

[Renee Diresta]

Yeah.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Why don't you text me about that? I didn't know that.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Well, I mean, it's a specific one. You know what I mean? Okay. Okay. So I didn't realize that Spotify had comments. And I was like, oh, cute. Some comments, not so cute. People are really upset at me because I talked about using AI and I was like, oh, word. Like they're right. And I really didn't realize how. How bad it was for the environment.

[Host Lola Blanc]

You didn't? I didn't. I thought you were. You specifically mentioned that.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Well, that's because I started reading the comments.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's like the whole thing. That's like.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, I didn't. I didn't know.

[Host Lola Blanc]

The data centers are sucking the water. All of our energy.

[Renee Diresta]

Yeah.

[Host Lola Blanc]

So I'm making electricity bills higher.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

I was. Yeah.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Yeah.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

So I. I was like a first, you know, chat. GPT. Er, like much, much longer ago than people would imagine. And it just really wasn't talked about then that it was like an energy source. I don't know why. So I just got kind of lulled into it just being kind of lazy, not environmentally unfriendly. So anyway, I have built my life around being friendly to the environment. I do all the things that I can to make my imprint as small as possible. Not that anyone else has to do those things. It's just what I do. Very important to me. Y'. All are correct. I deeply apologize. Please forgive me. I erased it all.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Sora.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Off. All of it. Off. Gone. Wow.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Nice. That is more than most people are doing.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, well, please forgive me. Embarrassing take.

[Host Lola Blanc]

But I also think that the. The truth is that most people are using AI in some form or, or another.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

That's. And that's how I justified it to myself, where it's like, I'm in a. I'm in a space too, of, like, animation, where I'm like, well, if I'm not using it, other people are. And then I'll just get lost and be way behind. Like, people who are just sociopathic and using it. And it's like. Right, Correct. That's exactly what will happen in every space forever. Because that's how the world works. And that doesn't mean I have to keep polluting.

[Host Lola Blanc]

I also try not to use AI unless I have to. The reality is that every corporation has integrated AI into their operations.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

And you're probably going to hear an ad for AI that we did not.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Approve because they just. That's just what happens.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, sometimes they just get. They get put on here and they. I mean, you know, it is what it is. So. Yeah, that's not really my cultiest thing, but it kind of is.

[Host Lola Blanc]

I think that that is wonderful. We should all be aspiring to use it as little as possible. Most apps have incorporated AI into their entire functionality. So, like, I also think it's important to remember that, like, while it's important and good for us to all try to do what we can on an individual level, ultimately, like, these things are happening on a systemic level that corporations are spearheading to try to make more money. And while it's good to try to amend our individual behavior when it's that large of a systemic problem, like, we should be putting the onus on them and holding the companies accountable, not like pointing fingers at each other for, like, I. I needed a little help.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Exactly. And I think that's what I mean by, like, the psychopaths will just take over. I just mean, like, the tech giants are people who are so removed from reality, not everyday users who aren't in charge of it.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Even with something like recycling, like, recycling is a scam, essentially, that was marketed to us so that corporations could make more money on plastics. Right. Like, these, like, individual behaviors. Let's all do the best we can. Absolutely. But also, like, let's hold people accountable, lobby our politicians to actually regulate that shit. You know what I mean? Agreed. So, you know, and also let's Just like, try and understand. We're all doing our best.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, moderation.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Yeah, exactly. All that said, as an artist, I'm obviously terrified about how these companies are stealing from human artists to essentially make a profit for themselves. And I don't think they should be allowed to do that. So let's try to minimize it and also let's try to regulate it. Word.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

What about you? What's your cultiest thing of the week?

[Host Lola Blanc]

Um, I watched the movie Begonia.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Okay.

[Host Lola Blanc]

And have you seen it?

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

No.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Do you know what it is?

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

No.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Oh, okay. It's Yorgos Lanthimos new movie. I love Yorgos Lanthimos. Starring Emma Stone and Chelsea Plemons. Yeah. Always has Emma Stone in it. And it is. I guess it's a remake of another film.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Did you see the Onion article that was like, saying that you might hang out with him socially if he makes enough movies?

[Host Lola Blanc]

It's a remake of a South Korean film called Save the Green Planet, which I have not seen yet. But basically, I'm not gonna spoil anything. But the premise. This is all in the trailer. The premise is that Jesse Plemons and another guy are conspiracy theorists who kidnap Emma Stone.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Cool.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Who's a CEO. She's a high powered yass queen. CEO.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

What? That's cool.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Or yassified, I should say. And it's kind of. It feels like a play. Like, it's all about Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone's characters, like, trying to outsmart each other. And like, it's so good. But also, there's just so much interesting psychology in there. Just about, like, conspiracy theorists and people protecting their belief systems.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Oh, my God.

[Host Lola Blanc]

And somebody trying to poke holes in those belief systems. But she's doing it with her own need for control, you know? Or.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Yummy.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Yeah, it's really juicy.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Is it in theaters or can I watch it?

[Host Lola Blanc]

It's in theaters right now. Well, at the time of recording this episode, it won't be by the time this episode comes out.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Oh, okay. But, like, where do I. Do I have to go to a theater to watch it? Like, this weekend?

[Host Lola Blanc]

Let's find out.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Or can I watch it in my bed? No, I'm just kidding. I love theaters and I love the.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Theater experience the movie theater. It's still in theaters.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Okay, great.

[Host Lola Blanc]

In amc.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

So I will be going to the movie theater because it's important to support theaters.

[Host Lola Blanc]

It's important to support filmmakers when they're not Marvel. Yeah. You did it. Good job. Um, anyway, yeah. Highly recommend.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Well, I'll see it this weekend and can't wait to get my thoughts on it too, because what the heck, this is great. I want to interview that guy who made it.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Would Yorgos come on our podcast?

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Yorgos.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Yorgos, I love. You know who he is, right?

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

He's the lobster Olive.

[Renee Diresta]

Yes.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The lobster. The favorite.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

The favorite is one of my favorite movies. Honestly, the favorite is your favorite Olivia Colman, Nasty Work.

[Host Lola Blanc]

My favorite of his is the Killing of a Sacred Deer. Have you seen that movie? Yeah, I have. So fucking good. And dog too. Anyway, we're just talking about Yorgos Lanthimos now. I love him.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, me too. Shall we talk about another thing that you love, which is misinformation?

[Host Lola Blanc]

I don't love misinformation.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Pardon?

[Host Lola Blanc]

I'm interested in propaganda and disinformation, which she does not call misinformation.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Correct.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Or she does not use the term misinformation. We're about to find out why.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Let's do it.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Let's do it.

[Matt Rogers]

This is Matt Rogers from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

[Bowen Yang]

This is Bowen Yang from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

[Matt Rogers]

Hey, Bowen. It's gift season.

[Bowen Yang]

Ugh, stressing me out. Why are all the people I love so hard to shop for like me?

[Renee Diresta]

Exactly, honey.

[Matt Rogers]

I'm easy. But you're right, holiday gifting is stressful.

[Bowen Yang]

And all the gift guides out there are boring and uninspired.

[Matt Rogers]

Wait, what about the guide we made.

[Bowen Yang]

In partnership with Marshalls where premium gifts mean incredible value?

[Matt Rogers]

It's Giving Gifts. A series of guides filled with premium gifts at great value for everyone on your list?

[Bowen Yang]

Yeah, because if I see one more for the dad who likes golf list, I'm out.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Right?

[Matt Rogers]

How about something for the people who.

[Bowen Yang]

Actually surprise you with categories like best gifts for the mom whose idea of a sensible walking shoe is a stiletto.

[Renee Diresta]

Psst.

[Bowen Yang]

She wants a pair of stilettos.

[Matt Rogers]

Or best gifts for me that were so thoughtful I really shouldn't have dying.

[Bowen Yang]

To see what the those are.

[Matt Rogers]

And you won't believe their prices.

[Bowen Yang]

Just wait till you see what else is in there. It's basically a one stop shop for everyone.

[Matt Rogers]

You know, I started bookmarking half the list for myself.

[Bowen Yang]

Honestly, this is the guy for the 2025 holiday gifting season.

[Matt Rogers]

Check out the guide on marshalls.com it's.

[Bowen Yang]

Giving gifts Gift the good stuff at Marshalls.

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[Host Lola Blanc]

Welcome Renee Diresta to Trust Me. Thank you for joining today.

[Renee Diresta]

Thanks for having me.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Was devouring your book. This is the like number one topic I'm interested in and so many of us are at the moment.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

I love your special interest.

[Host Lola Blanc]

It is my special interest. It is called invisible rulers, the people who turn lies into reality. So can you start off by telling us a little bit about your academic background and how you came to research the things that you research and tell us what it is?

[Renee Diresta]

Yeah, sure. Well, thanks for saying you liked it. I didn't have an academic background. I got into this kind of by accident. I was a. Well, I mean, I am a mom. I'm a mom of three. And in 2013 I had my first baby and I moved to California and I was putting him on these preschool waiting lists and I got really involved in the vaccine conversation. This is before COVID So this was like the measles conversation, not the COVID conversation. And you know, all of social media, once you have a baby starts pushing you content, it really realizes you've had a kid all of a sudden it's no longer party pictures and your friends. It's like mom stuff. And for me that turned into California crunchy mom stuff. It started pushing me a lot of the stuff around, you know, make your own baby food, do cloth diapering. And then I did both of those things and so it was like, naturally you must be an anti vaxxer. It started pushing me the anti vaccine groups too. And I am not. And so I thought that was kind of funny. You know, my background's in tech and so I Kind of understood why it was doing it. Like, I recognized it from the standpoint of, like, how those recommendations work. I mostly ignored it until all of a sudden there was actually a measles outbreak in California, the Disneyland measles outbreak in late 2014. And I got very involved in the sort of question of, what do you do about that? How do you feel like you're sending your kid to public school, which I was going to be starting that soon. And you just want to feel like this is not a thing that you should have to think about in 2015. So I started writing a lot about how effective the anti vaccine movement was at communicating on social media. I felt like people really needed to understand it because they still thought of it as, you know, Jenny McCarthy doing talk shows in the morning. And it had really evolved so far past that. And so I started actually just writing about it from the standpoint of both a mom and then a person in tech with a data science background who wanted to just kind of explain how the system worked and why this group of people was so effective as communicators and how social media was, was boosting their stuff in response to them being great communicators and the CDC and the people who were supposed to be authoritative voices being candidly abysmal communicators, actually. And I really felt like, you know, kind of like Chicken Little maybe. Like I was saying, okay guys, like the sky is falling, except maybe it really is, you know, maybe somebody should be paying attention to that. And so I got really, really involved actually in writing about that. And as I was doing it, I started getting pushed other types of content, right? So I joined some of the anti vaccine groups with a different account, clean account, that had nothing to do with my stuff. And it started pushing me other content, like Pizzagate, right? And then QAnon. And I was like, oh man, it's taking you on a whole journey. You join this one group and like, we're going down a whole rabbit hole here, aren't we? And so I started following that and just seeing, you know, how, how far, how far down does this go? Where does it take you next? And that was what I started writing about. And so it kind of became a career. I had a supply chain logistics startup. I was just in tech. But it became really something that became kind of all consuming because I felt like people really needed to understand just how these dynamics worked and how this was, I called it at the time, like inadvertent algorithmic radicalization or something like that in these articles Cause we didn't have a name for it. And I was like, here's why. You, you know, you think you're joining a crunchy mom cloth diapering group. And then, like, Bam, here's the QAnon stuff that shows up in your feed. And that was how I got into it.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Wow. A fascinating context. I did not know any of that. And it totally. Yeah, makes sense. I love that that is where you went when they tried to show you that content. Your book kind of starts with setting up how historically there was the rumor mill before the Internet existed. There was just the standard, traditional rumor mill amongst the people, the villages. Yeah. And. And then separate from the rumor mill, you had propaganda, which was when the government or influential people wanted to get out a particular narrative. Can you talk a little bit about what is propaganda? What defines propaganda?

[Renee Diresta]

So I use it in the way that it was used, maybe in its origins, which comes from, like, the Catholic Church after the Protestant Reformation, realizing that they've kind of lost control of the narrative.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Right.

[Renee Diresta]

And Pope Gregory says to the cardinals, you have to go out there and propagate the faith. And what he means by that's where the term comes from. Propaganda is this. It's this verb form that comes with an imperative. You must go out there and do this. And so it's information with an agenda that benefits the person who is doing that propagation. Right. Or who is requiring that propagation. So there is some benefit to the person who is doing it. I don't think that's necessarily a pejorative. Right. There is always some sort of agenda in persuasive communication. But I think what. Where propaganda goes, where that term evolves, is after World War II in particular, it becomes, particularly in the United States, that thing that the Nazis do. Right. That thing that bad people do to manipulate the discourse. And that's the kind of tenor that it takes on for most people who hear the term. Right. They think of it as something that is very inherently manipulative, something where it's persuasion, but it's persuasion that's done with kind of a surreptitious element, kind of a manipulative element. The audience isn't fully aware of what's happening. And that's where I think that it has traditionally been the purview of powerful people who have the ability to control mass media, who have the ability to reach large numbers of people all at once and to shape a narrative. And for most of human history, ordinary people didn't have that power. Right. It was popes. It was Leaders, it was rulers, it was people who control the media establishment who had that power. And so what I do in the book is I kind of compare this rumor mill, these unofficial narratives that pass from person to person as we share information amongst ourselves, compared to this powerful, much more top down system. And in the age of the Internet, these two things happen in the same place at the same time. And that power to spread messages to reach millions of people, including with an agenda, is something that we actually all have now. And that's what I think is so interesting about this moment in time.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Yeah, yeah. I love the way that you frame the history and how these things got smashed together is it just like makes it so. I feel like I developed such a clear understanding of how and why we have gotten to where we have gotten on the Internet, which is a terrifying place. And before the Internet, you talked a little bit about Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman and this idea of Manufacturing Consent, which is something I'm super interested in. And don't, don't worry, I will not linger on this for too long, but just set up for people like before social media, the reason why there was this idea of media being controlled was because the wealthy were the ones who were able to own the systems that produce the media, basically. Right? And then of course there's advertising incentives and disincentives, depending on who is, you know, paying the publication to exist. And you don't want to piss them off, so you avoid certain topics as well as, like if you have a source in the government, if you write an article that pisses them off, then you might lose that source. So there are all these, like, different factors that would contribute prior to social media to the media being controlled by basically like wealthy people to some extent. Right?

[Renee Diresta]

Yeah. So exactly. So Chomsky writes this book called Manufacturing Consent. The phrase refers back to Walter Lippman and this book from the 19th, late 1920s, early 1930s, which is where the title of my book comes from too, because a lot of the stuff we've known for a full century now, right, this understanding of propaganda and influence and the role that powerful top down figures can play. So what Chomsky says in that book, and Herman, his co author, is that you have these filters, he calls them, which are incentives that the media owners always have in the back of their mind, maybe in the front of their mind too, as they're thinking about how do we shape our coverage so as not to piss off powerful people. You might be thinking about this right now as you, as you look at some of the way that coverage is shaped so as not to offend particular political administrations. Right. You see this very clearly outside of the United States. Now you're starting to see it much more clearly in the United States also. But that is the dynamic that he writes this book about in the 1980s. Manufacturing consent was written in the 1980s, so prior to the Internet really becoming the thing that it is today, long prior to social media. And so what I wanted to do with the book with Invisible Rulers, which is a reference to Edward Bernays, who was a propagandist in World War I, at that same time, who was a contemporary of Lippmann, was to say, okay, now we have a different media ecosystem. It's not newspaper editors and TV broadcasters sitting there thinking, what are my incentives? And how did my incentives shape that coverage? It's actually more people who are like, how does the social media company's incentives shape what they curate for you? How does the influencer with 3 million followers decide what to say? Right. Like, what is the incentives of this media ecosystem? And are they the same as the last one?

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[Host Lola Blanc]

Another thing that I think we both found super interesting was like, you do have the companies that are, you know, curating their algorithms or moderating content in a particular way, but also there is just like an inherently human element to this. Can you talk a little bit about two step flow and influence? I thought it was really interesting. You mentioned a study, I believe, where, you know, I think traditionally we would think if something is being shown on the news that is going to shape opinions. But in reality, it's been shown that people's opinions are formed maybe more strongly or equally by their personal connections with other people. It's people that are influencing them directly. Can you speak to that a little bit?

[Renee Diresta]

Yeah. So that's a study from the 1940s and what it. It looked at some women in Decatur, Illinois.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Right.

[Renee Diresta]

And it started to notice that when people talked about how they formed political opinions, there was a presidential election that was happening around that time. As people in the community were talking about how they formed political opinions. What they were saying to the researchers is that it wasn't what was coming to them through their media consumption that was most influential to them. It was who they were talking to. And there were a handful of women in the community who were really, really plugged into what was happening on the media. And then they would sit there and they would talk with their friends about it. They would talk in their communities. So you can imagine, you know, you would sit there, maybe you're playing cards, maybe you're at a club, maybe you're you know, you're doing your. Your thing with your friends. I remember my grandmother used to come home and I would hear all the gossip about what she, you know, about President Reagan. This was in the 80s. And I would hear these things from her, right. Because she would just. She would be out at her club with her friends. She's an Italian immigrant, right. And she would be talking about these things with her community, her church club. And she would come home and she would tell me all about the things she had heard about the American president. And, you know, and she would relate them back to me in the context of what she heard, talking about her friends, talking with her friends at church. And so this was how. This is how it happens, right? It's not necessarily what you read in the newspaper or what you hear on television. It's, like, mediated through this second step. That's where the two step comes from. So the two step flow is somebody in media says it. Your influential opinion leader is the term that the researchers give to these influential women. Your opinion leader says it. And then you are forming your opinions in part based on how that opinion leader is mediating that information for you. So you're not necessarily hearing something on TV and magically changing your opinion. It's much more through this process of somebody that I trust, somebody that I like, somebody who's just like me, somebody who's in the community, is making this opinion formation process happen with me. And that's the difference between the old way of thinking about it, which was called the hypodermic needle model, which was you see this information and magically, as if you've been injected, your opinion just changes. And that's not how you actually form opinions. A lot of people think that that's how it happens to people they don't like. Right. They think like, oh, well, those people over there, you know, they watch Fox News, and then, bam, they've changed their minds. Right? But what's actually happening is much more this process of, like, acculturation. Like, they hear it, they talk about it, they're talking about it with their friends, all of their community feels this way, thinks this way, talks about it at church. And so there's much more, this cultural component. And if you think about how, you know, you hear something crazy on the news, it doesn't magically change your mind. So this idea that it would magically change somebody else's mind is sort of wrong, but we tend to think that way anyway.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Right? Right.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

I first want to say that when you were speaking, I was imagining your grandma, like, clubbing. When you were saying she was at the club, I was like.

[Renee Diresta]

I was thinking, like. Like the bridge club. She had, like, a bridge club, actually. I was like, that is so sad.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Yeah.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

What. What makes somebody more influential in their community?

[Renee Diresta]

Um, I think it's. Well, okay, so in this. In the study that they were doing, it was actually just that they had a lot of friends. They were just very much plugged in. They talked to a lot of people. They were. You know, there are just certain people in a community who I think are highly relatable, very charismatic. Um, you really go above and beyond the trigger word. Yeah, I know. I mean, this is where. This is where that. That very fine line when you guys reached out. I was. I watched a bunch of your podcasts and your experiences, and even just saying church groups sometimes for some people can be like, whoa, okay. But I think it is that question of what makes people find other people believable, and it's that resonance. Right. Are you a good storyteller? Do you have that ability to draw people in? And there are some people who have that. That combination of charisma, relatability, and they're very much out there. And you see that in the. You know, in your local community, too, I imagine. You know, I can think of certain of my neighbors who have it. Not me. But there are people who are just, you know, in the neighborhood. They know everything. They're friends with everybody. They can tell you what's going on in everybody's lives. They're the people who check in on the elderly neighbors, things like this. Right. Who are just very deeply, deeply plugged in. And so you had that in that offline model of socialization, maybe before we were all on the Internet. And then if you were to port that into the age of social media, this is where you start to see that figure of the influencer emerge. The people who have that and do it kind of at scale with an audience that feels like friends. But this is where you start to get into some of those dynamics of parasociality.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Right. We see people who seem like they're just like us. And so it's sort of simulating that neighborhood vibe, except we don't necessarily know where they're getting information or what they're getting paid, what they're getting, or who is paying them. Exactly. Can you explain the term bespoke realities and how we are all living in them now?

[Renee Diresta]

So bespoke realities. I was trying to come up with a way to describe the unique power that we all have to just decide to pick and choose. Almost like. Do you remember the choose your own adventure books? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like that's a lost art that my kids, I don't think my kids have ever seen a choose your own adventure your book. Actually. I don't know that they have them in the age of like Kindle maybe. Maybe they do, but.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Well, video games kind of have it, you know what I mean?

[Renee Diresta]

Or you can kind of fork it, I guess, like just where you're going. But I used to love those when I was a kid. But you could also kind of like, you know, dog ear the page and go and look and see if you're going to die on that one and decide to go the other route. But no, it was the. It's the phenomenon where, you know, you can really choose to self select into certain media and topical universes where this is reality for you, this is what you're going to see. And you have the power now to just say this is what. And it's algorithmically reinforced. Maybe we'll talk about that. But when I was going down my anti vaccine rabbit hole, where I was doing it very intentionally, it was a very conscious process, I wanted to see what was going to happen next. So I did go join the Flat Earth group, right. I did go join the chemtrails group and I had a sense of what was likely to happen. But that's because once you join those groups, what becomes very interesting is that the platform wants to keep you there. And so it begins to push you more and more of that kind of content, begins to recommend to you more and more of that kind of content. Like you've given it a signal. You've said I am interested in this. And it says, okay, she wants that. We're going to give her more of that and then we're going to show her this other thing that people who are kind of similar to her statistically want to see more of. Also, even if she's never typed in that term, I never typed in the term QAnon when it started to push it, to me it was entirely a push, not a, not a pull, right?

[Host Lola Blanc]

Yes.

[Renee Diresta]

And so you start to see this process though, where then I did go and I joined that group, right? And then here's more QAnon stuff and then here's more posts from the QANON groups in the feed because these are highly, highly active groups because people are in there trying to figure out reality, right? Oh, this Q drops said this thing. Let's all go through it and figure out what the hidden meaning is. These are highly active, highly engaged groups. And so the platform decides, oh, that's fantastic. Here's a highly engaged group. Once somebody's in this, they're going to spend a lot more time on our platform if they keep engaging with it. And then these become your friends, right? These become the people that you spend all of your time with. It starts to really supplant the other kinds of stuff that you might have seen. You're not seeing the baby pictures, you're not seeing the wedding pictures. You're seeing post after post after post from this group that you're now spending your time with. And gradually, over time, like you have the power to say, you know what, I don't want to see the stuff that's telling me that this is bullshit. I just want to see this. Right. And so you have the ability actually to just say, like, this is the information environment that I am now going to self select into more and more. And so you almost kind of participate in that process yourself. And I'm giving you an extreme example in light of like, where we are today on this podcast, but you can also do it in, you know, much less, much less extreme groups. You can decide, like, you know what? I'm only going to see left wing stuff. I'm only going to see right wing stuff.

[Host Lola Blanc]

I'm only going to see dog videos.

[Renee Diresta]

You like one dog video.

[Host Lola Blanc]

You see 17 on your feed the next day. Yeah, yeah.

[Renee Diresta]

And so that's the process where you have the ability to just decide, like, this is my information environment now. This is it. And like, this is where I'm going to go.

[Host Lola Blanc]

But most of the time it's not conscious. Right? Because it's just that we, we are looking at something and it notices how long we're looking at it or we click on it out of curiosity. And then the algorithms will learn that that's the kind of content that keeps us on the platform and keeps us engaged. So then it feeds us more of it. You know, I tend to have a very panicked news feed. I don't want that to be my feed. It just knows that that's what I engage with. You know, that's what will get me to spend more time on the app. And then I have to like, be like, oh, wait, wait, stop, stop, stop. But, you know, I have to force that into my. I could just go on autopilot forever.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

And another thing that I found interesting that you spoke about that I'd never really Thought about? Well, I have kind of, but not in the way that you put it. Like I'm, I'm very susceptible to serendipity and coincidences and stuff like this. And these algorithms create almost like a mind reading effect where you're like, I, I didn't even say that out loud. Or like, wow, this is so, this is such a coincidence.

[Host Lola Blanc]

This is exactly what I need this time.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

And then it feels extra true.

[Renee Diresta]

I think, I think people also don't necessarily realize just how much data mining is going into what they think is serendipitous and personalized for them. And this is where just the sheer amount of number crunching that's happening behind the scenes where you think you're very unique and then you realize that it's decided that you're really just very much, you know, like me living in San Francisco, doing these things, obviously, okay, California, these behaviors, these things naturally anti vaccine. Right. And that doesn't mean necessarily that it is true all of the time. It clearly isn't. But just the higher probability is there. It is worth it for the algorithm to push it to you. And if it doesn't feel serendipitous, you're going to ignore it. But if you do feel some resonance there, you're going to click. And that's what's going to be the thing that then makes it decide to go and do it again and again. You're not going to notice the ones that don't hit, but the ones that do generate some curiosity. It's going to start that process.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Right. So we're being influenced by all of these different factors at the same time. We have like people in our communities or people we perceive to be in our communities because we have a parasocial relationship with them. We have maybe governments or corporations or whoever is engaging a marketing team, like actively trying to sell us stuff. And then we have the algorithm trying to get us to stay on the app with whatever is going to engage us the most. Which of course makes it very difficult once you start thinking about it too much. I'm like, do I even have my own, like, how do you even think for yourself? It seems impossible in this day and age. I mean, so why are we so drawn to disinformation and misinformation? What is it about it?

[Renee Diresta]

So first of all, I think misinformation is a tough word. I generally don't love it. I know that a lot of people in my field use it. It's one that I don't like because I feel like, it misdiagnoses the problem. So it generally is like somebody who is wrong about something, like they get a fact wrong, but misinformation implies that if you just gave them a better fact, it would change their mind. Right, right, right. Like if, if you know, and that's not what's happening. Like when I was in the anti vaccine groups, the people who are in there, they're not in there because they haven't heard that vaccines don't cause autism. Right. Or that vaccines don't cause sids. It's that they don't believe it. And they don't believe it on such a foundational deep level because they don't trust the people who are giving them the accurate information. So it's not, there's no information gap there. It's not like, oh, if we just fact check this one more time, we would solve that problem. It's a real trust issue. Right? It's very much an issue of trust. It's an issue of do you believe an authority figure or. This is one of the reasons why, when you look at that progression that the algorithm sends you down, there's something that begins to emerge from that. You have some commonalities between anti vaccine and chemtrails and flat earth, and that these are all, roughly speaking, in the realm of pseudoscience. But then you might ask, what does Pizzagate have to do with it? What does QAnon have to do with it? And the answer is that there too, the sort of core component in those belief systems is an incredibly deep distrust of government, an incredibly deep distrust of authority, a belief that people are actively lying to, that they're keeping the truth from you, that they've concealed it for years. And that in order to do that, there's like a degree of depravity in the political elites that lets them do that. And that's where that intersection happens. And that's where the algorithm doesn't understand what it's keying off of. It can't articulate that that is the commonality between group A and group B there. It just knows that there's a very high degree of overlap. And so that's where it serves it up on the platter. Now it doesn't do that anymore. See how the platform changed that. But that was what was happening at that moment in time, back in the 2016 kind of timeframe, when it was doing this 2016-2018 timeframe. But that's what you're starting to see happening. You're seeing that question of what is the underlying psychology and motivation that people are looking for that makes them not only click on this content once, but become a sustained participant in the community? And that's where I feel like misinformation is completely inadequate as a frame for understanding what's happening there.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Do you have a term that you like?

[Renee Diresta]

I actually just like propaganda. I feel like it's the best word for the content because it does get at this question of what is the motivation behind the creators of the content, behind the groups that are putting it out? They may sincerely believe it. The people who are producing that content oftentimes generally do sincerely believe it. And so it's content that they're producing with a particular motivation, very often a political motivation. They want to see legislation to do the kinds of things that you're seeing being done in health and human services today or at a state level, very particular pieces of legislation that they want to see introduced. QAnon had a whole set of things that it wanted to see happen with regard to show trials and things like this. So there is a series of outcomes that they want to see as a result of the beliefs that they hold. And so that's why I feel like propaganda is a perfectly adequate word.

[Host Lola Blanc]

And.

[Renee Diresta]

And I wish that we didn't have 30 other words for it.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Right.

[Renee Diresta]

Disinformation I use, and that's where I actually spend. I've written a ton of papers on it. In the context of state actors, where the question becomes, from a geopolitical perspective, how do you see nation states actually recognizing that this dynamic happens and that they can use it to exploit and weaken the societies of their adversaries? And that's where. When you get at questions like, what does Russia do? What does China do? What does Iran do? You can name pretty much any country and stick it in that sentence there, like the US does it too. What is the process by which you can exploit this ability to create deep distrust and to divide societies from within? That's where I think disinformation campaigns are. That, I think, is where, like, the term is actually useful, where there's a real clear intentionality there.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Right, right, right. I'm so interested in what's happening for all of us, not just conspiracy theorists, emotionally, when we click on something that is clickbaity or is rage baity or, you know, like, I feel like so much of it seems tied to identity. Like, I identify as somebody who, you know, feel. Or rather I feel special when I know something that other people don't know, or I'm a Good person. And so I'm going to engage in justice campaigns whether they be rooted in reality or not. Can you talk about how more extreme content, we see more of it than other content, but it's actually coming from a smaller amount of people.

[Renee Diresta]

Yeah. So there's a term called majority illusion where, you know, when we were talking about the opinion leaders who are just very well connected and very popular a lot of times, if you, if you form an opinion based on what it seems like the majority of people around you believe and you're in a particular niche, you're going to think that most people believe, you know, whatever the opinion is based on what's around you, whether or not it's actually, you know, you're not necessarily going to go look at polling to try to figure that out. You're going to say like, well, everybody in my community thinks this. That must be what most people believe. So you start to see these interesting phenomenon where people decide what is true or what is real based on what surrounds them. That's what starts to seem normal. And what's interesting on social media is this tendency towards the extremes because social media rewards. The Atlantic had kind of a. Helen Lewis. The Atlantic had a nice name for it, like the extremophiles, right. People who, they don't just, you know, you're not just expressing a political opinion, you're taking like the most extreme version of the opinion you possibly can. And this is why everything feels like a caricature. There's no normal middle of the road liberal opinion. There's like this crazy, insane, you know, like the kinds of people that libs of TikTok goes and like I call it nut picking, right. Like grabs some random person and is like, this is the avatar for like this is what liberals actually believe.

[Host Lola Blanc]

All leftists think this. Yeah, yeah, yes.

[Renee Diresta]

And you see it on the other side too, right. And, and so there's just these, like these sort of, you know, kind of, of extreme fringe. You'd have to really kind of delve down into the belly of TikTok to find some of this stuff sometimes. But they go and they find it and they pull it up and they're like, this is what the left or the right actually believes. And it moves in this direction where you start to see that idea of this extreme belief becoming the thing that people believe that a certain political group or identity group actually like they start to think that that is the norm. And you can see this actually reflected in political science surveys where they'll go and they'll Poll people on like, what do you think the majority of conservatives or liberals believe? And they'll list a whole bunch of different opinions and they will have the actual polling. Right. What percentage of liberals believe in defunding the police? Right. It's actually a very, very small number. But conservatives will tell you that like 99% of liberals, I just made that stat up, Believe in defunding the police because that's what they think they're seeing on Twitter, for example.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Right. And it is what they're seeing on Twitter.

[Renee Diresta]

Right. You know, and, and that's because you start to like, as that becomes identified as like the liberal belief, for example, people who don't hold that belief will actually be kind of quiet. Right. They will self censor. They don't want to be seen as expressing something that is not the correct belief or the normal belief. And then on the other. And so it actually kind of reinforces that tendency. And so you see groups that will tend towards the extreme and then on social media, that process of mocking and creating this kind of intergroup warfare makes it even more costly to speak up and say, like, I don't actually think that. Right. So you see the moderates, the people who, and I don't mean moderates in like a political identity sense. I just mean people who don't hold extreme beliefs actually become more and more silent. They choose to self censor rather than to speak up. So it actually really trends toward the extremes. And then the algorithm also is rewarding that by surfacing high engagement, high emotionally resonant content. So you have that process be even more further rewarded for the influencers themselves who can actually make money by being those highly, highly divisive content producers as well. So there's a couple different incentives that intersect that move people really out into the extremes.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Yeah. With all of this stuff, it's so tempting to be like, and it's all because of the shadowy figures at the top. But there's like, like with the manufacturing consent propaganda model, there's a variety of filters working together at the same time to make this happen all at once. It's not just the one, it's not just Russia or it's not just whatever government. It's a lot of things happening, including just like human tendencies.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah. And I like you said somewhere in the book, well, you quoted Facebook where it said our algorithms exploit the human brain's attraction to divisiveness. And that just like goes to show you have the other and we are addicted to hating the other. And it'll take us. I've gotten like 12 hours on my phone before just hating other people.

[Host Lola Blanc]

You've what?

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

You racked up 12 hours on my phone?

[Host Lola Blanc]

Jesus Christ.

[Renee Diresta]

No, I think it's actually like, it's an honest admission. Right. It's very easy to do. And there's a phrase in like, you know, trust and safety and tech policy in the fields that I work in, which is like the problem with social media is people. Right? That's the, that's the, yeah, such like a great dad joke. I love it. No, because I think there's. And this is where a lot of times I'll get, you know, you'll get media inquiries that want you to talk about the algorithm. Right? Which is always like one word, the algorithm. Like the only one which is there and it's real. And you know, as we were talking about, it maybe is unreasonable to expect people to realize why the recommender system is pushing them that thing, right? Oh, it feels serendipitous, you know. You know, this is not a. I think it's actually kind of unreasonable to expect the average person to understand how it works and what it's doing. And you know, this is, this is not, you know, you shouldn't need like, like a, you know, some like operating license to use it. Yeah, but you know, I do, I do like, you know, I have, I have an 11 year old who likes YouTube a lot and I am always trying to explain to him what the autoplay function does and why it's evil, you know? You know.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

No, I'm just like, look, like this.

[Renee Diresta]

Is, you do like this is not to benefit you, this is to benefit it. You know, this is why it's showing this to you. You know, this is why like, let me explain to you how much money the streamer you are watching makes based on keeping you there for this like hour long video. Let's talk about how many ads are interspersed in this content. Let's go and look at the view counts. Like, let me do the math for you and explain how much money. And this is not to knock the streamer's ability to make money. Like God bless him, like he's out there, you know, playing video games God knows how many hours a day. But let me explain to you like the math and the incentives and the dynamics that are happening right here. And, and I think that doesn't mean that he listens to me. Right. I still fight with him and we go through all kinds of like, turns out if you paste a URL, moms listen to this one if you paste a URL from YouTube into Google Docs, you can just watch it embedded in Google Docs. So even if you're blocking YouTube, it'll autoplay in the. In the Google Doc. Yes, yes. So basically, you're trying to, like, appeal to your kid's better nature, even as they're trying to just find a way to get around the parental controls. But these are the sorts of things where, you know, it is incredibly entertaining. It really taps into. It knows exactly what you want.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

It.

[Renee Diresta]

It is very attuned to you. And I think the combination, though, is of two things. One, it's helping people understand how it works, I think is actually very important. But then on the other side, it is trying to create these circuit breakers that maybe give people a little bit more in the way of the ability to not fall down those rabbit holes quite so easily.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

That'd be nice.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Yeah. I will ask you more about that, but as somebody who's, like, trying to promote an album right now on social media, which is a fucking nightmare, I hate it more than anything I've ever done.

[Matt Rogers]

But.

[Host Lola Blanc]

But please listen to my album. It's called Proud I Did It. Oh, thank you.

[Renee Diresta]

Oh, my God.

[Host Lola Blanc]

I noticed it in myself, and I've talked about it a little bit on the podcast. Like, the posts of mine that do the best, that go viral tend to be the more polarizing ones, and they are, like, my genuine opinions. Like, I'm not posting anything that I don't believe, but I. Sometimes I'll catch myself and I'll be like, okay, why is it that I'm trying. Why is it that this is what I'm posting right now? It's because I know that, like, it might make people angry, which makes people click, and I don't want that to be my reasoning for anything that I create.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

You know what I mean?

[Host Lola Blanc]

But, like, we live in a landscape right now where, first of all, AI has taken over everything. I mean, people in all industries, like, we're in precarious financial positions, influencer or person who is reaching people with their art, like, is still a viable option on social media. So balancing trying to reach people with, like, trying not to let that incentivization like, rot your brain is immune to.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

It, even if you know what's happening.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Yeah, I mean, it's icky. But I also, like, I don't know how to escape it. Like, I feel like it's the entire aquarium and I can't. Like, someone would have to, like, dump the aquarium out, you know?

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Yes.

[Renee Diresta]

Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. And it's the feeling of, if you don't do it, someone else will. And that is the issue of. It's the attention game. And I get it. I used to be very, very active on Twitter, including as a political person with opinions in San Francisco. I lived in San Francisco. I write about this a tiny bit in the book. You see, it kind of peeked through here and there, where I'm writing about my frustrations with the school board and stuff like that. And I'm like, all right, I know how this works.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, I bet you had some banger tweets.

[Renee Diresta]

Well, it's.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

It's the.

[Renee Diresta]

Morally righteous indignation is the tone that it keys off of. And people will respond to that, unfortunately. And I say unfortunately because they then feel like they are also in the fight.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Right?

[Renee Diresta]

In the righteous fight. And it is the thing that will get people off the fence. And it's not bad. I mean, I think that that's what activism is. And this is the ecosystem that we live in now. And. And as you note, when you have something creative that you want to promote, there is that same dynamic of, like, you made something beautiful and you want people to see it, and so this is the ecosystem that you have to operate within. I mean, I had to promote a book that's even harder because there's, like, nothing visual.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Right.

[Renee Diresta]

Screenshot the COVID a couple more times. Right. But no, it is that question of, like, how do you break through? And that is that challenge of, what do you do when people are locked into a feed that they don't control? And so some of what I write about from a standpoint of if you were redesigning a system or designing a better social media, which is part of what I work on, I'm a professor at Georgetown. Part of what I study is, can you design a better system? One of the things, whatever you think of Blue Sky, I know it has a reputation as Lib Twitter, and it has its own problems with vociferous, insular nut picking, but. But it has feeds where you can just kind of like, click and change from one to the next. And I actually love that because it's a way for users to see in that immediate moment, like, what does it look like if you actually do just want to have the dog feed for a change? Like, if you just want to turn off the politics, like, what does this look like? And I think more than anything else, when you get people using it, and I do, like, interviews where I ask people, how does it make them you know, how does it make them feel? Why do they create fees? I ask a lot of feed creators this question, and they just say, like, I wanted to create a feed that highlighted art, for example, as one, and just so that I could go and use it and just see a bunch of art as opposed to a bunch of politics and other things. And I wanted other people to have that experience. And when they talk about these things, it's really interesting because they see it as a way to give people more control and create an experience that doesn't have that feeling where you come away just feeling exhausted and bad. And. And it also, to them feels like they're giving users the. You know, they're giving other users like them the ability to just have a little bit more agency and control over their own experience. And this is the sort of thing that I think most of the big platforms don't do because it doesn't keep you on site. And it does mean that, you know, the people who want to push ads at you are not having that necessarily that integral experience.

[Host Lola Blanc]

So interesting.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

It's so crazy that all of this is just for people to sell, like, plastic pieces of shit.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Yeah.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

It's so insane.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Yeah. Well, and. Or to sell ideas, I mean.

[Renee Diresta]

Yeah.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah. To make money.

[Host Lola Blanc]

It's all to make money. Yep. And that's where we will leave part one for now, come back next week for part two for even more information. And Megan, I don't know, tell me a content story.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Oh, okay. Well, this is. This is like, very. The light version of how this can go. Essentially, there was this horse, like a pony with rain boots on, that was obviously AI generated. And I wrote under it, this is my horse, Gumpy, and tagged my friend. Just. I don't know why I thought it was funny. I woke up the next day. I'm not really active on the Internet, like the social media thing. Thousands of comments. That is not your horse. Yes, it is her horse. No, it's not.

[Renee Diresta]

What does anyone. That's so stupid.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

And I was like, oh, my God. So, yeah, the back and forth. And then somebody was like, my bad. Okay, maybe it's her horse. You know? And the other person was like, no worries. Like, it happens to all. All of us. And I was just like, oh, my God. And again, like, you know, this was back before I knew.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Before you were done with AI.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Yes. So, yeah, I just thought. I. I think that's, you know, a funny little example. But people are getting more savvy.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Are they? I have been sent, like, seven sora Videos this week from people not, like, noticing.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

No.

[Host Lola Blanc]

In the past three weeks, but yeah. Yeah.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Oh, my God.

[Host Lola Blanc]

No, no, it's. I mean, when you log into TikTok, like.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

No, I know, but it says sora.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Yeah, but not immediately. It usually takes, like, five seconds. And, like, by the time we see it, like, we're looking at the video. So it's like. It's like the gorilla experiment.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Right? Right.

[Renee Diresta]

With the ball.

[Host Lola Blanc]

If y' all don't remember, Google the gorilla experiment. Basically, it's just an example of, like, you can be really focused on something and miss something else. Really blatant and in your face because your focus is directed toward the other thing.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Sure.

[Host Lola Blanc]

We've definitely talked about the gorilla experiment.

[Renee Diresta]

I just want people to watch it.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Cause I was, like, really into it and was like, damn, I missed it.

[Host Lola Blanc]

So interesting. Yeah. Just another example of bespoke real, you know, whatever we're focused on is the thing we see.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Yep, yep, yep, yep. Anyway, thank you for spending another week with us. Make sure to rate us 5 stars. We have merch now.

[Host Lola Blanc]

We have merch now.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Big deal. So do all the things. And we can't wait to see you again next week. And as, as always, remember to follow your gut. Watch out for red flags and never, ever trust me. Bye.

[Host Lola Blanc]

This has been an exactly right production.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Hosted by me, Lola Blanc, and me, Megan Elizabeth. Our senior producer is Ji Ha Lee.

[Host Lola Blanc]

This episode was mixed by John Bradley.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain, and our guest booker is Patrick Cotner.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Our theme song was composed by Holly Amber Church.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Trust Me is executive produced by Karen Kilgarith, Georgia Hartstark and Danielle Kramer.

[Host Lola Blanc]

You can find us on Instagram ustmepodcast or on TikTok@trustmecultpodcast.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

Got your own story about cults, extreme belief or manipulation? Shoot us an [e-mail] Listen to Trust.

[Host Lola Blanc]

Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[PayPal Advertiser]

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[Bowen Yang]

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[Okay Storytime Host]

So usually on okay. Story Time, our audience will send in their relationship problems. And the okay. Storytime squad gives some good advice goofily. But today, we're not giving out our usual advice. Our producer Riley says we're giving something else. So what are we doing today, Riley?

[Renee Diresta]

Today we're playing a little game.

[Okay Storytime Host]

Oh, I love game.

[Renee Diresta]

Says the man.

[Lowe's Advertiser]

I bought special gifts for you guys from ebay. Each one picked with one of you in mind. Yeah, Dakota, if you want to guess.

[Bowen Yang]

All right.

[Renee Diresta]

There is a gift at my feet.

[Okay Storytime Host]

Open that.

[Renee Diresta]

And now it is in my hands.

[Okay Storytime Host]

Oh, I feel like it's got to be our resident gamer kiosk.

[Renee Diresta]

This is the rectangle of childhood.

[Bowen Yang]

It's a portable game console. I used to have this as a kid. This game console I used to play all the time. And you know when your mom came.

[Matt Rogers]

Into the room when you're a kid.

[Bowen Yang]

And like, you're pretending to. But Riley, what a thoughtful gift.

[Okay Storytime Host]

Yeah, right. Thank you so much, Riley.

[Lowe's Advertiser]

You're crushing it.

[Bowen Yang]

But we have one more gift.

[Okay Storytime Host]

Yeah, let's open it. Oh, camera. Yeah, an old timey camera.

[Renee Diresta]

That's right. Classic.

[Okay Storytime Host]

This is awesome. Yeah, because you know how I love to take pictures of my travels.

[Lowe's Advertiser]

Yeah, you're always somewhere.

[Okay Storytime Host]

Whether it's in Kyrgyzstan with some nomads or just New York, you know, with a nice little piece of trash or a rat.

[Matt Rogers]

Little.

[Bowen Yang]

Nice picture.

[Renee Diresta]

I'm taking pictures with the birds.

[Okay Storytime Host]

So, Riley, you got all of this from eBay, dude, eBay.

[Lowe's Advertiser]

It was really fun finding it with you guys. Like, I had very specific things for each one of you.

[Renee Diresta]

Yeah, it was all there.

[Okay Storytime Host]

Thanks, Riley.

[Renee Diresta]

And thank you.

[Okay Storytime Host]

EBay.

[Lowe's Advertiser]

And guys shop ebay for millions of fines, each with a story. EBay. Things people love.

[Renee Diresta]

Running my small business was like playing basketball. Five on one and I was the one. Now QuickBooks gives me access to a team of AI agents and trusted experts. For the assists. I need nothing but net. Outdo it with Intuit.

[Host Megan Elizabeth]

QuickBooks.

[Renee Diresta]

Feature availability varies by product.