Taylor Lorenz’s Power User
Episodes
How The Government Tracks Your Life
20 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
VISIT https://joindeleteme.com/taylor20 AND PROTECT YOURSELF TODAY!! Use my code Taylor20 at checkout Every single moment that you're online, you're f...
The Death of Rainbow Capitalism w/ Matt Bernstein
18 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
DONATE TO POINT OF PRIDE: https://secure.givelively.org/donate/point-of-pride/taylor-lorenz-s-pride-2025-fundraiser-for-point-of-prideFor years, Pride...
The Truth About Burning Waymos
13 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past week tech people, right wing figures and the media have been freaking out about Waymos being set on fire in downtown Los Angeles. The Wa...
Elon vs Trump Explained w/ Brace Belden
11 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Visit https://joindeleteme.com/taylor20 and protect yourself today! Use my code TAYLOR20 at checkout.Last week we witnessed the public blowout between...
Is this the end of the open web?
06 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome back to Free Speech Friday! All across the internet, parents and lawmakers are calling for tech companies to verify users' ages online. Th...
Elon Musk's God complex
04 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As Elon Musk's influence has grown, so too has a darker, more troubling side of his persona: his rampant egomania.Faiz Siddiqui is a former colleague ...
The Government Is Lying About Online Safety
30 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome back to my new series Free Speech Friday! :) Right now, lawmakers in congress are trying to pass the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a dangerou...
The case against logging off
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Every week, there’s a new warning: TikTok is poisoning the youth, Facebook is radicalizing your uncle, and the only way to save ourselves is to log ...
The Take It Down Act Is a Free Speech Killer
23 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
WATCH ALL FREE SPEECH FRIDAY EPISODES ON MY YOUTUBE CHANNELThe stated goal of the Take it Down Act is to combat non consensual intimate images (NCII),...
Why Students Can't Stop Using ChatGPT
22 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Students are using ChatGPT for everything. Parents are freaking out and the media is calling it the end of education as we know it. But are students r...
They're trying to ban posting about abortion online
15 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine messaging a friend on Snapchat about how to get abortion pills, or tweeting about reproductive rights and getting fined hundreds of thousands ...
How the Media Tricks You Into Loving the Police
08 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If you’ve ever wondered why news media obsesses over shoplifting but ignores wage theft, or why media outlets report a "shortage" of priso...
Undercover AI ‘College Protester’ Bots for Cops
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
American police departments are using secretive AI technology to create lifelike AI personas designed to interact with real people online —like prot...
Tween Podcasters Are Taking Over the Internet
24 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From middle schoolers riffing on school lunch to kids interviewing political figures, podcasting is no longer just for adults. With high-end mics, mas...
Fake Newspapers Are Flooding America
17 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From Ohio to North Dakota, thousands of people have suddenly gotten brand new newspapers delivered to their doorsteps out of the blue. These newspaper...
The White House's social media is deranged
10 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Since Trump took office, the official White House social media accounts have been posting a bit… differently. Drew Harwell, my former colleague at T...
The Dark Truth Behind Ashton Hall’s Morning Routine w/ Matt Bernstein
03 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ever since Ashton Hall's morning routine went viral last week, I've been dying to chat about it with my friend Matt Bernstein of the podcast A Bit Fru...
Musk’s DOGE Antics Could Be the Downfall of Tesla
27 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past few weeks, Tesla has been crumbling. The company's stock, which was once considered invincible, has now plunged to around $250 a share, ...
Trump Official Brendan Carr's War on Free Speech
20 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Chair of the Federal Communications Commission Brendan Carr has quietly positioned himself as one of the most dangerous figures in the Trump administr...
The Right-Wing Plot to ‘Murder’ a Free Press
13 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1964, the Supreme Court passed a landmark case called The New York Times v Sullivan, that established the right to a free press by protecting the m...
How Pop Culture News is Radicalizing You
06 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Have you been bombarded with non stop content about Blake Lively vs Justin Baldoni? The Misogyny Slop Ecosystem is a sprawling network of online creat...
How the 00s changed the tech world forever
27 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The 2000s were a formative decade for tech. From the dot com bubble to the rise of social media, to the chaotic days of early blogging, the iMac, and ...
Elon Musk and the Billionaire Baby Boom
20 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, it was revealed that Elon Musk had welcomed his 13th child into the world several months ago with a conservative influencer. But he’s not...
How Spotify is Ruining Music: ‘It’s About How Power Works’
13 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
No platform has had more of impact on what we listen to over the past decade than Spotify. This week, Taylor is joined by journalist Liz Pelly, to dis...
Meet the zoomers aiding Musk’s government takeover
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past week, Elon Musk has been engaged in a near wholesale takeover of key areas of the U.S. federal government. Working under the newly min...
Why a MAGA influencer turned on Trump
30 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Clarkson Lawson was a prominent MAGA influencer on TikTok who amassed over 31 million likes on his videos. He built a platform as an outspoken Gen Z c...
The Truth About Child Influencing
23 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Family vlogs are a huge category of online content. At their best, they show real parenting and the entertaining and relatable moments of family li...
Doxxed, harassed and silenced: the fallout of Gamergate 2.0
16 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Remember Gamergate? Well… it's happening again. After writing an exposé about how a video game consultancy was attacked, journalist Alyssa Mercante...
Patreon’s CEO on the existential threat to creators no one is talking about
09 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Social media as we know it is in chaos. The landscape is becoming more centralized and creators are facing more challenges than ever. On top of all th...
What defined the internet in 2024?
19 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
2024 was wild! "Brain rot" was the Oxford word of the year. TikTok's days away from being banned. The CostCo Guys and the Hawk Tuah girl were everywhe...
Is TikTok really dead?
12 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, TikTok lost its challenge to stop a ban or forced sale in the United States. WIRED senior business editor Louise Matsakis joins Taylor to d...
The case against cell phone bans in school
05 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A moral panic about kids' social media and smartphone use in schools has been sweeping the country. But are cell phones really the problem? And is rem...
Could the 4B movement ever happen in America?
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Are women abstaining from sex to protest Donald Trump’s re-election? That’s the impression you’d get if you spent time reading the media over th...
Why Democrats won't create a left-wing Joe Rogan
14 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since the election, Democrats and the media have been in panic mode, trying to figure out “the manosphere.” It’s a vast network of influencers, ...
AI’s destroying seasonal content
07 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This year, pumpkin spice lattes are being served with a side of AI slop. Autumn vistas generated by artificial intelligence tools are clogging up Pint...
The mastermind behind the Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest
31 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Anthony Po is a creative genius who has a knack for organizing viral events in New York. This past weekend, he was responsible for a Timothée Chalame...
Into the Costcoverse with AJ Befumo
24 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past few months, a father-son duo known as the Costco guys has become inescapable online. Their family-friendly videos about the grocery chai...
Are Jubilee videos healing or polarizing?
17 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week Taylor Lorenz dives into the charged content world of Jubilee Media with its founder Jason Y Lee. Jubilee is quickly becoming a YouTube behe...
Inside the strange world of corporate influencers
10 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Taylor explores the inner workings of modern office life through the world of corporate influencers. She’s joined by Ross Pomerantz aka ‘Corporate...
How nostalgia accounts are destroying pop culture history
03 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week Taylor Lorenz talks about going independent and launching her new online culture newsletter, User Mag! Later, Taylor is joined by entertainm...
Why online retailers all sell the same crappy products
26 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If you do a lot of online shopping, you may be experiencing deja vu. Amazon, AliExpress, WalMart, Temu, eBay, the TikTok shop, even Etsy all seem to b...
The Problem with Age Verification Online
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Description: Age verification technology is becoming increasingly commonplace as lawmakers seek to enact deeply concerning restrictions in the name of...
Why is Instagram Reels so unhinged?
12 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
You can spend hours carefully curating your algorithms on TikTok and YouTube, But there’s one place where the algorithm doesn’t seem to care about...
Brazil's X ban upends stan accounts + political debates take over TikTok
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Elon Musk’s social media network X has been officially banned in Brazil. Taylor and internet culture reporter Ryan Broderick (Garbage Day) discuss S...
The ultimate summer trend recap + a Chick-fil-A streaming service
29 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We've all long been familiar with the concept of a "song of the summer," but lately there's been a rush to declare "the summer" everything. Drink of t...
Inside the DNC’s influencer extravaganza, from yacht partying to meme lounge
22 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Taylor is in Chicago along with hundreds of content creators for the Democratic National Convention. YouTube star Keith Edwards gives the s...
Can Elon and Twitter save Trump? + Kamala plays with fire online
14 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Trump returned to X/Twitter/whatever you want to call it. Editor-in-Chief at the Verge, Nilay Patel, joins Taylor to discuss the long and r...
Can MrBeast be canceled? + Tim Walz mania and minions on a cross
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For years now, MrBeast has been the king of the internet. The 26-year-old creator has the most subscribed to channel on YouTube, millions of young fan...
Is Skibidi Toilet the Next Hollywood Blockbuster?
01 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The internet lost its mind last week when Taylor broke the news that Michael Bay might be turning Skibidi Toilet -- the bizarre animated YouTube short...
Is Kamala Harris a political meme stock?
25 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Politics and social media were inextricable this week. Joe Biden announced his dropout via X and other social platforms — and after he endorsed Kama...
The rise of ‘BlueAnon' + Trump shooting merch + RNC influencers
18 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Minutes after a gunman attacked Donald Trump at a rally, conspiracy theories flourished on social media. Did Trump fake it? Was it a false flag? These...
Inside the most toxic live-streaming platform + NATO influencers
11 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kick, a is home to some of the most reprehensible behavior on the internet. Creators have live-streamed themselves accosting people on the street, sex...
An influencer’s battle against her snark subreddit
27 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For the past several years, influencer Lily Chapman has been plagued by a relentless community of women online. They congregated in a snark subreddit ...
Why do so many people think a top Stanford researcher is a CIA agent?
20 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
An online smear campaign painted a top Stanford researcher as a censorship supervillain, whose goal was to silence free speech and delete 22 million t...
Do you speak Brain Rot? How the internet is changing language
13 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past few months, the term “brain rot” has gone from essentially meaning chronically online, to a fully fledged meme and ironic slang lang...
Is it ever okay to film strangers in public? + Trump’s new TikTok + MrBeast hits #1
06 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The record-breaking Instagram account @world_record_egg has returned to publicly express its support for Palestine. Trump joins TikTok and immediately...
Is a Tech Utopia a Dystopia for Everyone Else?
30 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Meet the powerful centimillionaire who dreams of a sovereign San Francisco where tech millionaires wear gray T-shirts to signal their allegiance and p...
'Zombie Facebook' takes over + ScarJo vs OpenAI
23 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Have you been on Facebook lately? It’s weird and overrun with bizarre, AI-generated, spammy clickbait. Jason Koebler, co-founder of 404 Media and ho...
Is the celebrity 'blockout' working? + TikTok creators sue the U.S.
16 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week, TikTok creators sue the US government over free speech, Bumble tells women to get busy, YouTube’s CEO wants creators to win Emmys, and Go...
What's up with Fake Podcast Ads, AI Audiobooks and the Audio Creator Economy?
09 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman joins Taylor Lorenz to discuss the current state of audio and its creator economy. They discuss Spotify's impact and h...
Are "Industry Plants" Real? + 'The Social Network' Sequel
02 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kanye West accused one of the most popular Twitch streamers, Kai Cenat, of being an “industry plant.” It perpetuated the idea that some internet c...
Sell or Die. TikTok’s Sophie’s Choice + MKBHD on his viral ‘takedowns’
24 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today, President Biden signed a law banning TikTok, assuming it can't work out some long-shot deal to sell to a U.S. owner. TikTok of course is going ...
Drake & Kendrick's AI Rap Beef + TikTokkers Against Biden
18 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
AI is causing chaos and confusion in pop music. Drake and Kendrick Lamar are feuding through diss tracks, but people can’t seem to tell if these son...
Is Social Media Destroying Kids’ Lives? + Elon’s Secret X Account
11 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A moral panic has been emerging lately. People in the media, government, and across the internet are declaring that children are suffering an unpreced...
The Real Estate Content Boom + The Worst Day on the Internet
04 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Real estate content is living rent-free in Millennials' heads. Taylor Lorenz talks to the CEO of a media company responsible for a ton of it. Plus, Ta...
Kindness Influencers and Poverty Porn + Is Huberman Cancelled?
28 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Taylor Lorenz breaks down the latest tech news including Truth Social going public, New York Magazine's much-discussed Andrew Huberman expose, Spotify...
Should we ban TikTok? + MrBeast’s Amazon deal, and what's up with Shrimp Jesus?
21 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Taylor Lorenz kicks off her first episode with a breakdown of the proposed TikTok forced sale, AKA, ban. She’s joined by Evan Greer, director of the...
Introducing Power User with Taylor Lorenz
28 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Power User explores how technology and the internet are upending our lives and the world around us. Each week, host Taylor Lorenz explores the most in...