The Receipts: Taylor Lorenz on Being Extremely Online for a Living
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Our editors independently select the products we recommend. We may earn a commission on items bought through our links.
In The Receipts franchise, SPY interviews influential people about how their cultural intake and background informs their consumer behavior — and what they’ve learned about themselves from the things they’ve bought.
Today's Top Deals
The internet is a diverse, complex ecosystem — on the one hand, there’s trees and lakes and squirrels (cat videos, Wikipedia); on the other, there’s toxic gasses (everything else). No one knows that better than Taylor Lorenz, a technology columnist for The Washington Post who dons a hazmat suit and braves a frequently hazardous online atmosphere on a daily basis. It means that she deals with everything from alt-right trolls to the Silicon Valley economy to a Gen Z conspiracy theory about birds. She’s an internet anthropologist, even if she’s keeping her distance from Twitter X (she’s enjoying Facebook’s Meta’s Threads, though).
Lorenz tracks her findings from over a decade of research in her upcoming book, Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet, out on October 3. Writing about influencers does have its pitfalls, she tells SPY, specifically that she’s not immune from being influenced herself. She talks about moving from New York City to Los Angeles during the pandemic, how she outfitted a larger space, and her soft spot for the occasional TikToker’s Amazon storefront. She also shares a few lessons about being professionally, extremely online — namely, the underrated virtue of being blissfully offline.
SPY: Congrats on the book! Can you give us the rundown?
Taylor Lorenz: It’s about the rise of social media and the content creator industry — about how the entire influencer industry emerged and how people started building audiences on the internet since the early 2000s, from mommy bloggers and MySpace stars to Viners, Twitch streamers, and TikTokers. [The book covers] the evolution of this industry into a half-trillion dollar one, and how we all kind of became more online ourselves as social media took over.
I interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people for this book. Most of them are content creators, but some of them were agents, managers, tech entrepreneurs, and other journalists who covered the space.
SPY: Did the content creators have any regrets about their online exposure?
TL: Yeah, definitely. One thing that people talked about is the way that when you put something on the internet, it’s out there forever. I think this is also just the nature of social media. A lot of people said they looked back at their old content and wished that they didn’t put something online, wished they could have phrased something differently, or even wished they built a different brand for themselves on the internet. Once you build a brand for yourself online, it’s really hard to pivot.
SPY: What are some lessons you’ve learned from being professionally online?
TL: “Don’t put everything out there on the internet” is the main lesson, which sounds so Boomer to say. I hated when people told me that when I was younger.
I also love the internet. I am very much a tech optimist. But I think we’re in this weird transitional period right now. One thing that my book talks about is the power that a lot of big users of these social platforms have, as well as the power that users [generally] have to shape those platforms and push tech companies to do better. I hope we can all do that more. I feel like we’re just accepting crumbs from the Silicon Valley billionaires and we’re all sort of at their whim. I think that we need more collective action against them in different ways.
SPY: Do you feel like social media platforms — such as Twitter X — are getting less worthwhile to be on?
TL: I don’t use Twitter for news anymore since it’s so overrun with spam and crypto stuff. For social media in general, there was this excitement and frenzy in the 2010s, when we were like, “Oh, my God, we can all post to the entire world. This is so exciting.” And then we all realized, “Okay, do we actually want this 24/7 feed with our thoughts going to the entire world, publicly, forever?” I think everyone’s falling out of love with broadcast-based social media in general, and moving to more niche communities.
SPY: Have you ever been seduced by products that content creators were pushing?
TL: I ordered this pink button down from a content creator literally just last week. Because she was advertising it. I hate it — it smells like formaldehyde. It’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever ordered. And I was like, Why did I fall for this again, buying something online that someone pushed? I’m not immune to it, even though I write about it all day.
SPY: So it’s usually clothes for you. Why?
TL: It’s like, you see this girl wearing something and you fall for it. I see her lifestyle and I want her lifestyle. It’s as if buying something that she’s wearing is going to get me closer to that lifestyle.
I know that’s what they’re doing, what they’re pushing. I’ve written so many stories about this. But at the same time, when I see a sweater or a pair of earrings, I still buy it. This girl Caitlin Covington has my dream hair. I literally bought a curling iron that she was selling because I wanted my hair to look like that. It’s a pretty good curling iron.
I also love watching content creators who push this sort of aspirational home life, showing off a level of space that you can only get in, say, Asheville, North Carolina — somewhere I’m not going to live because of my job. I bought these closet organizers that one of those creators had, but I really don’t have the right closet for it. I also buy a lot of stuff I see on TikTok lately. That TikTok-to-Amazon-storefront pipeline is so strong.
SPY: What’s appealing about the MTV Cribs-type creators for you?
TL: I think having a level of financial security where you can own a house is really appealing as a millennial. I don’t know if I’ll ever own a house. I certainly can’t [do that] in the cities that I’ve been living in, like New York and now Los Angeles. These women not only own homes, but they also own the most beautiful furniture. It seems like a more relaxed life. I always fantasize about that. The level of work that it takes to present that lifestyle is actually a ton, though — they’re working their asses off.
Also, a lot of times, these women have gotten deals where brands come in and decorate their homes. But I still like to scroll. I fall for it sometimes and imagine upgrading from my IKEA furniture. I do have a great IKEA couch, though, that I bought off the floor in 2020.
SPY: Bought off the floor?
TL: I was driving all over LA trying to find a couch under $1000, which is really hard. I found this one at IKEA and I got them to sell me the floor sample even though they weren’t supposed to sell it.
SPY: How did you get them to sell you the floor sample?
TL: I begged them. They were like, “We can’t sell it because we’re gonna get more in stock and the floor needs to look a certain way.” This was during the height of COVID. I said, “I just moved to LA and I have no furniture — please.” They relented. It’s big and comfy and cozy.
SPY: When would you say you first “made it” in your career?
TL: I would say in 2017, when a bunch of my work started to go viral. That was the year that I started writing full-time. And also this year, in a way, since I’m publishing a book.
SPY: What did you buy for yourself when you hit that stride?
TL: I finally bought a camera recently. I like to make videos. It’s my favorite pastime, and a nice break from writing while still being creative. It has made me so happy. It’s the best thing I’ve ever bought in my whole life — one of the Sony mirrorless cameras. It’s so compact that you can’t even tell it’s a fully functioning camera.
My pictures are better, too. I brought it to the beach and I took videos for my friend’s birthday. There’s also something about having stuff on a camera that’s different from having it on your phone. It makes the memories seem more valuable.
SPY: Have you made any upgrade purchases that you like?
TL: I inherited the lamp by my bed when I moved in. It was like the Pixar lamp. Recently, I bought a set of two mid-century looking ones on Amazon to replace it. They’re my favorite lighting.
SPY: Any wish list items?
TL: My friend Caroline Moss, who has a newsletter called, gee, thanks, just bought it, has this inflatable hot tub. It seems like one of those things that’s so unnecessary, but I’ve been thinking of buying one of my own. The water moves like a regular hot tub and everything.
This interview had been edited for clarity and concision.
More Top Deals from SPY
Best of SPY
