trad wives, polyamory, and hot celibacy summer
After a brief assessment of President Biden’s strategy to shut down his critics, Ben and Nayeema move on to the larger culture and gender wars that will define the 2024 election, regardless of who ends up on the Democratic ticket. They look at recent upheavals of a media-fueled myth that women can “have it all” and dig into how trends of trad wives, polyamory and “hot celibacy summer” pierce that mythology, as does the conservative Project 2025.Then they connect with Lindsay Peoples, editor-in-chief of The Cut, to discuss vibe shifts, the politicization of gender roles and whether the publication is putting its thumb on the scale for Kamala Harris.
Finally, Max Tani joins to rid us of our blindspots, replete with DC spin and (national security) influencers in the wild.
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Full Episode Transcript
Ben Smith: Even men are texting each other about these articles.
Nayeema Raza: Really, even men?
Ben: Even my text groups are blown up with Cut pieces. My very boring, sad text groups.
Nayeema: When you’ve hit the men, you really hit the fringes of culture and you know shit’s about to take off.
Ben: That’s right.
[MUSIC]
Ben: I’m Ben Smith.
Nayeema: I’m Nayeema Raza.
Ben: And this is Mixed Signals from Semafor Media.
Nayeema: Today we’re going to take a little bit of a break from the DC drama and instead talk about an even more urgent if ongoing crisis, and that is the media-manufactured conspiracy that women can have it all.
Ben: Not sure which of these crises is going to be resolved first.
Nayeema: Definitely the presidency, but we’re going to talk about why this kind of can women have it all, is not actually a women’s issue, but it’s an everyone issue. It’s a societal issue. It plagues our culture and it is in some weird way shaping the backdrop from everything that we see from the Tradwife Trend, the Polyamory Bubble, Project 2025. We’re going to bring in The Cut’s editor-in-Chief Lindsay Peoples for part of that conversation. The Cut, which is part of New York Magazine, has been at the forefront of this latest vibe shift. They’re on fire right now on
Ben: On fire.
Nayeema: And they have had some key pieces on Vice President Harris of late, so we’ll ask her about that too to satisfy your political itch, Ben.
Ben: I don’t know if Kamala can survive the vibe shift though, actually. That’s what I want to ask Lindsay about.
Nayeema: What can survive the vibe shift? The memes of Kamala. I think those are historic.
Ben: Yeah, that may be all that survives.
Nayeema: So, hi Ben. We both fled the US where things are getting a little Dear Leadery.
Ben: Yeah, I think we wanted to go to sort of more stable political environments to consider it more clearly.
Nayeema: Yes, and I’ve in fact done that. I am currently in Italy. I’m in Rome on my way to Tuscany. I actually think I’m technically on Australian soil because I’m at the home of a middle school friend of mine who is now the Australian Ambassador to the Vatican, so I’m in more stable terrain. Where are you, Ben?
Ben: The Vatican actually does seem like a sort of model for American governance right. Now I’m in Riyadh.
Nayeema: Are you raising some Saudi money?
Ben: It is interesting. I mean it was a big finance guy recently told me this is literally the only place in the world that anybody’s coming to raise money anymore, but thankfully Semafor is a going concern. We’re actually here recruiting. We are launching a Gulf G-U-L-F edition soon and looking for some great journalists here and in the United Arab Emirates [inaudible 00:02:29] around the region.
Nayeema: Golf journalists, G-O-L-F, journalists need not apply, it seems.
Ben: That’s correct. They cover presidential debates now.
Nayeema: If you had asked me would I have in my bingo card six years ago the fact that Saudi women would be shedding their abayas, driving and almost doubling the rate that they’re in the workforce over five or six years while the US overturned Roe, V. Wade and women were trying to become Tradwives and churn their own butter. I wouldn’t have had that on my bingo card, but that is what’s happening.
Ben: Honestly, both incredible stories.
Nayeema: And at the heart of what we’re going to talk about today as we get into the culture and get into the gender wars. But Ben, first of all, let’s talk quickly, we don’t want to get dragged deep into it, but let’s talk quickly about what’s happening right now in Washington. Isn’t the president just doing what part of the problem we diagnosed in the last episode, which is kind of twofold. One really tight hold around the president, really impermeable White House, kind of keeping it as tight to the vest as they can, and two, waving around this narrative that has a pretty chilling effect on the public, if not the media and maybe both, saying that if you’re not for me, you’re for Trump. Which really kind of has the haunting of the Bush 43 with us or against us kind of vibes.
Ben: Or I mean a little of Donald Trump. I mean, let me just stop trying [inaudible 00:03:51] the situation, just sort of speak for myself, which is to say the media. I mean, yeah, Biden’s people have built this wall around him to try to prevent the media from knowing what the hell is going on and now I think they’re upset with the media’s coverage. But they’ve been at best totally opaque at worst dishonest with us and I think they’re reaping the rewards of that right now.
Nayeema: And I think the other thing that’s come out recently is the president has gone on a bit of a press tour, so distill what’s going on here in terms of the White House’s media strategy and responding to this.
Ben: To date, it has been the absolute worst case for Democrats, which is to say Biden has done some interviews and has done just well enough to kind of keep the crisis going. Not well enough to dispel doubts, not badly enough to have the whole thing collapse and his ability to communicate in public is right on the line of whether he can continue to run for president. And so the crisis continues.
Nayeema: I feel like if I were to write an op-ed on this right now, which I will not do...
Ben: Or if someone were to stop you in the street.
Nayeema: If someone were to stop me in the street, I’d probably say I think that President Biden’s issue right now is not his age, but it’s a question of his integrity. He is becoming the thing that he so despises and kind of the antithesis of the person he was. He’s kind of culturally in the media been seen as this good Joe, not a power clinging guy, and he is becoming this person who is u11nconvinced unmoved by, able to gaslight and say, this is just a battle between him and the media. And I am the only one that can do this. Look at what I’ve done with NATO, look at what I’ve done... It’s very chilling. It speaks to something that is very frustrating in the culture right now also, which is this gerontocracy and the desire for I think young people to feel that there’s a future. I think Semafor had a piece on this, Shelby Talcott or someone had written around this poll, how young people perceive government.
Ben: I’m looking for the headline, I can’t find it. Incredible piece, one of the great headlines: ”A Dying Empire Led by Bad People".
Nayeema: And I think this kind of idea of a dying empire led by bad people, it gets to this general culture of this political election, this election that’s going to happen in the United States. And a big part of that has been the culture wars and the gender wars in particular. And I think that was a huge backdrop to the last time Biden and Trump went head-to-head. Right? Me Too, the anger around Trump, and abortion has been a leading issue in each of the races whether it was the 2020 election, whether it was the 2022 midterms and every kind of ballot election we’ve seen on abortion. And I do think gender is the backbone of this election, which is why I’m so excited to discuss a kind of conspiracy on this today’s episode, which is a conspiracy I fallen prey to that women can have it all.
Ben: And you like President Biden blame the media.
Nayeema: I do. I mean actually, yeah. This is a place where Ben and I like to bring our grievances. Ben brings grievances around Amtrak. I bring grievances around the culture, but it is about the media.
Ben: I have very narrow interests. All right.
Nayeema: Yeah. Well, I would love to dedicate this whole episode to the trials and thrills of my dating life. But I think there’s this kind of tricky reality of how gender roles have shifted in our modern life and how this idea, I think the promise of female liberation for so long, whether it was Friedan’s book, the Feminine Mystique to second wave feminism, it all promised female liberation, but actually all it did was not liberate women but add more shit onto their plate. And then you get to this moment in 2024 where the Kansas City Chiefs’ Harrison Butker who is like, what is his? Is he a kicker? What is his role?
Ben: He’s a kicker.
Nayeema: He’s a kicker.
Ben: You’re really embodying gender roles here. Is this a shtick or is this real?
Nayeema: No, I actually don’t know, but Harrison Butker in May of 2024 decides to tackle this gender issue in his commencement address at Benedictine College, which is a Catholic college. Let’s hear a clip of that speech.
Harrison Butker: For the ladies present today, congratulations on an amazing accomplishment. You should be proud of all that you have achieved to this point in your young lives. I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you. How many of you are sitting here now about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you’re going to get in your career? Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.
Nayeema: The children you will bring into the world.
Ben: But honestly, it sounds just like you, I feel like I’ve heard you say that this is a diabolical conspiracy.
Nayeema: It does sound like me. And I think that the interesting thing is this has been pegged to the conservative movement. And in fact, if you look at the president of the Heritage Foundation’s summary of the principles that outline even Project 2025, the first of those is to restore, this is from Kevin Roberts, is to restore the family as a centerpiece of American life and protect our children. And the details of that are a little bit Handmaiden’s Taley, right?
Ben: I mean, he’s saying in this very sort of over the top literal sense, something that I do think the current conservative movement is often more subtly saying about a return to much more traditional gender roles, something Donald Trump really kind of personally embodies.
Nayeema: But I do think although this is a conservative platform, it hits a chord. The reaction to this Harrison Butker speech was amazing because you saw people wanting to cancel him all of a sudden on Instagram, you saw people trolling him for being homosexual because he dressed too nice. We just got into all these weird spaces. And you saw people like Whoopi Goldberg come to his defense on The View. But also I think he hit at some, he was the wrong messenger, but he was hitting at some principle that isn’t just a uniquely conservative principle. I think there are women who have been told careerism is the path, especially amongst millennials. I think that’s shifting and he was kind of onto something there.
Ben: Nayeema, I know this is your abiding obsession. Where does the phrase, the idea of having it all come from?
Nayeema: I wanted to blame capitalism for this, but it turns out that you can blame a journalist for this. While the ideas around having it all came from Betty Friedman’s, Feminine Mystique, Madison Avenue really tried to push this idea to sell women, newly liberated women, stuff. It really didn’t come to the fore until the 1980s when the Cosmo editor, Helen Gurley Brown had this book come out called Having it All, Love, Success, Sex, Money, Even If You’re Starting With Nothing. That was her-
Ben: …incredibly influential figure.
Nayeema: Did you know her coming up at all? You interacted with her?
Ben: No, not at all. And I think she maybe overstayed her welcome at Cosmo, but she was there for 30 years starting in the eighties. But she kind of created this what we think of as Cosmopolitan magazine, this very bold, sexualized, but also very professional woman. I am not sure she would’ve called herself a feminist, but the kind of idea of pro-sex feminism was born in her 1980s Cosmo, I didn’t know she wrote a book of that title, but that’s almost too on the nose.
Nayeema: But that is the generation I grew up in and I think a lot of millennials grew up with that, if not the kind of after effects of the Helen Gurley Brown model.
Ben: Yeah. The politics sorted themselves out a little, but just the core idea of, I mean her title of having it all and not having to choose in any way between your career, your personal life, your looks.
Nayeema: I feel like I grew up between these two cultures. Pakistan is very traditional, a more traditional patriarchy where women run stuff behind the scenes but not out front necessarily, in America where women are girl bossing all over millennial culture. But I also was sold, I was a Sex and the City generation, that came up in Anne-Marie Slaughter’s piece, Women Can’t Have It All, Sheryl Sandberg telling you to lean in at the same time, this huge kind of conflicting message. And then in 2016, Me Too happens, and then you kind of hit the zenith of the women can have it all culture with the Tatler piece in 2019, which talks about the new trophy wife. Do you remember this, Ben?
Ben: Yeah, this was the top of the market. Do you want to say who the new trophy wife is?
Nayeema: Yeah, I mean I just want to read you a quote from the top of the piece lead. It goes, “Blondes, Birkins and boob jobs are out, PhDs pencil skirts and polemics against the patriarchy are in. The old school trophy wife has been assigned to the scrap head of history and today’s discerning bachelor now pines for a power player in her own right. She’s a Meghan Markle, a Priyanka Chopra, a Lady Bamford.” Her high priestess Amal Clooney.
Ben: Oh my God. Just to bring this back to this moment, the sort of conspiracy theory this week is that the reason that George Clooney turned on Joe Biden and wrote this op-ed saying he was told old to be president was because the White House had criticized Amal Clooney over Gaza. So this comes full circle and George Clooney, in fact in this very traditional way is standing up for his wife.
Nayeema: Oh gosh, I guess everybody’s a Lady Macbeth, behind every man is a woman orchestrating it all, so to say.
Ben: I think he’s just a wife guy.
Nayeema: But after this 2019 piece, which I hate to tell you is it doesn’t last for long the peak, there’s a total vibe shift, right? This overdue vibe shift. People like Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein are now pretty much out of sight, out of mind. And I think at that point is when The Cut starts talking about, and we’re going to have Lindsay Peoples on in a moment, this vibe shift away from what was the hyper-beast woke era into a backlash.
And the evidence of that backlash is like Tradwives are on the rise, not just in ballerina farms, but across the world. There’s this TikTok trend of soft life coming out of Nigeria. You also have the girl boss take down around the same time. You have people like [inaudible 00:13:36] et cetera, they’re coming for the female bosses. Liberals like Sheryl Sandberg is coming out and apologizing saying that Lean In was a privilege for white women.
Ben: Yeah, I think you see it in politics, and you see it in media where these new spaces are opening. I mean, I don’t know, I think it is in some ways kind a conservative impulse, so I know you don’t want to politicize it.
Nayeema: I think that it’s being co-opted by conservatives, but there’s no liberal offering that I’m seeing. The right, that’s been the weird thing about American politics, is the right has really co-opted “family,” which is bizarre because everybody has families.
Ben: The right has at least spoken about this problem even if in ways that offends a lot of people. And I think the left and the media have had trouble talking about it in certain ways.
Nayeema: But at the same time I think that it’s not just conservatives, but the culture started seeing women staying home. All of a sudden pandemic, people are staying home more. They’re cooking for themselves and there’s this value to care. There’s Instagram, a place where you can put your perfectly plated food or whatever it is, and places like New Yorker and Washington Post and really The Cut start covering this new woman saying, hey, there’s these new trends out there. There are Tradwives, there are these really happy divorced women. There are these really happy celibate women, there are really happy polyamorous women and to some extent they’re all trying to solve the same equation, which is that the lie you’ve been sold doesn’t work. And so you need a new solution and you can configure one that works for you, for your own dynamics. And it’s not political, it’s just how you want to live your life.
Ben: It’s obviously political. People just don’t want to see it. We can add the, [inaudible 00:15:14] we can discuss it in the third Trump administration.
Nayeema: Ben, I don’t know if we can discuss it then because I’ll probably be put in some kind of red robe and hat and made to bear children every 18 months. But I understand why you think it’s all politics. For me, it’s not inherently political. It’s been politicized, I think, not just in the US, but globally, and it’s largely been politicized by men who feel they stand to lose something. And I don’t mean you.
Ben: Thank you for that,
Nayeema: But we can keep discussing this with Lindsay Peoples, editor of The Cut right after the break.
[MUSIC]
Nayeema: All right, we’re back. We’re going to talk more about gender and the culture wars and where we’re going with the vibes of our current cultural and political moment, and we’re going to talk to Lindsay Peoples as part of that. Ben, why don’t you tell people who Lindsay is?
Ben: Yeah, Lindsay’s the editor of The Cut at New York Magazine, and I think the envy of a lot of editors right now because they’re just producing just consistently buzzy, sometimes somewhat deranged, personal essays, commentary that have really opened the aperture I think on cultural coverage in a pretty powerful way.
Nayeema: Deranged, Ben, you’re going to get called out for supporting hysterical women ideas.
Ben: Oh, everybody knows I’m pro-deranged. I’m just concerned we’re not publishing enough deranged stuff.
Nayeema: That’s good.
Ben: That’s what I’m taking away from this.
Nayeema: It’s good to interview people you’re jealous of.
Ben: Absolutely.
Nayeema: Let’s go ahead and bring Lindsay in the room.
[MUSIC]
Nayeema: Hi Lindsay, thanks for being here.
Lindsay Peoples: Thank you for having me.
Nayeema: We know you’re so busy making the rest of media just look like grandparents, Lindsay, over there at The Cut.
Lindsay: No, it’s been a busy time, but no, I mean our team is incredible.
Ben: But honestly congratulations. The Cut is just on fire and I feel like I’m constantly sending people links and wishing that I had some excuse to do one of these stories.
Lindsay: Thank you, I appreciate it.
Nayeema: So in the first part of this episode, Ben and I kind of took a walk down memory lane to talk about the history of media, the kind of women can have it all boom bust cycles and the most recent vibe shift. But do you think this narrative still is defining for the culture or are we in kind of a new phase now that is defined with hustle culture is dead or is women have it all still the guiding narrative?
Lindsay: No, I mean I think the narrative has changed and I think that there has traditionally been a lot of pressure on women, I mean obviously since the beginning of time, but I think that there’s been a lot of pressure on women to be what others think that we should be or to fit into certain narratives. And so I do think that it’s so indicative of why I think our coverage is the way that it is because it’s not siloed as to saying just here’s some solutions for all of your problems. It’s also in conversation with women about things that we want to openly complain about that I think that people have been too shy to talk about before.
So many of the theme weeks, the ideas really come from a place of it being the things that you only talk to your therapist about or the things that you only Google because you’re too embarrassed to talk to your friends about or you don’t want to actually consult people in your life about. And so I do think that this idea of women having it all, that feels very 10 years ago, girl boss era. We’re now in this era, we can talk about all the things of wanting to quit your job or wanting to be in an age gap relationship and not having shame around a lot of these topics that I think traditionally people have felt like women’s media couldn’t talk about in an elevated way.
Ben: Yeah, I think all the time about that incredible Alison Davis piece from 2022. When we were setting up Semafor I was specifically thinking about the vibe shift, the term that I think she popularized I’d say in that piece.
Lindsay: She did.
Ben: She popularized Sean Monahan’s report on the vibe shift. And I am curious as you edit and assign these stories about these very diverse women’s lives, essentially, I mean I think she just sort of described the previous vibe as hyper-beast slash woke. And the new one is post political in some sense and I’m curious how the way you’re directing this publication fits that, the new vibe.
Lindsay: It always changes. I always think that we’re in a different position because I don’t ever come from this place of being so sure of my own rightness or from this position or pedestal in the industry of saying that we know how people feel. I think it’s our approach and our tone, honestly, what people are picking up on. So when I think about vibe shift or any pieces that we’ve done that have gone viral, it is honestly I think the vulnerability that people are responding to, not necessarily the naming of the thing. I think obviously that sometimes does help, but I think that we’re always looking to either start a conversation or finish it better than other people.
Nayeema: Yeah, one of the things is that it feels like a lot of the last generation of women’s magazines had a sense of who their reader was. Like the Cosmo woman, the Seventeen woman, and it feels like you’re kind of getting at a kaleidoscope of women in these stories. But I want to run through some of them because for people listening who may not be reading The Cut or seeing the electric Instagram posts and TikToks of Cut content.
Ben: Who aren’t yet up on the vibe shift.
Nayeema: People outside of the vibe shift. So let’s give a couple of examples and maybe Lindsay you can talk about what do you think this piece reflects in the broader culture? So one of the essays The Cut published this year, that kind of electric shock to the internet was the case for marrying, an older man by Grazie Sofia Christie, in which the author argues that young women should kind of capitalize on their youth and beauty while they have it. In her case, in her twenties when she snuck into a party I believe at HBS to pick up her man who is 10 years older. So you should use their youth and beauty when they have it to pick up a well-off partner who can be like a mentor for them in life. And she makes this case for ease. It allows her to have the access to write as she does now. What does this reflect to you or why did this story resonate?
Lindsay: It resonated with me because honestly, I think that people would initially write about that from a place of feeling judgment and shame. And I really feel like actually a lot of people identified with the fact that life is expensive, but also just being honest with your desires and not having any shame around if you want to be a writer and you don’t come from wealth, then what is the path to that?
I think it was one of those pieces that I saw so many people sharing and privately having conversations and them coming back to us and saying, because they were embarrassed to talk about their own feelings about it, but agreed with a lot of the things that she said. But I think that we’re always coming from a place of I’m pro-women living exactly the kind of life that they want to live, and I would never judge or tell another woman how to live their life, but also I’m very invested in the decisions that we make and how that affects the trajectory of your life as a woman.
Nayeema: Another essay that kind of hit a chord, or a couple of essays, were on this topic of divorce. You had Molly Rosen’s Happily Ever Divorced feature last year, and then Emily Gould’s, Should I Leave My Husband? The Lure of Divorce. Spoiler alert, she doesn’t in the end.
Ben: Poor Keith.
Nayeema: But it gave you the sense of the fantasy of separation and in the case of Molly, the joy of separation. Which I think really resonated because I think some of the happiest people I know are people who are divorced with children and then are kind of having a romantic life with a new partner. So what did that piece say to you? Why did you want to run that?
Lindsay: The relationship stuff, I mean obviously we’ve done a ton of that, so that wasn’t anything necessarily as new for assigning. But we’ve done a lot around divorce and relationships and we saw a shift in just the tone in that during the pandemic and post-pandemic of how people were actually taking the time and the space to have real conversations around the pros and cons. And I remember talking with Emily and telling her we should just do an actual list, a graphic, of you doing the pros and the cons of the things that you listed through.
But I think that there is a level of contemplation that goes into a lot of these things that most people when they write an essay about it is just very straight and it required, I think to me, just a spectrum of emotions that you go through when you are deciding such a big life decision. I think what’s also so interesting is when people give me notes on personal essays and tell me somebody else has written a divorce essay but that one wasn’t as good, is often I think that it’s just too trying to get straight to a point in deciding, whereas that’s not the reality of your life. You can say today that you feel this way, but then next year completely rebrand and decide to be a different new person.
Nayeema: And you always have the Excel sheet that you can refer back to with the pros and cons so you can decide. Poor Keith. Another one was we went from hot girl summer to a summer without sex, this year. Celibacy is all the rage right now. This has been a big topic of conversation, not just with you, but with the Bumble advertising campaign. Kelsey Osgood wrote this piece for you guys. What do you think the power of celibacy or boy sobriety movement, which seems to be in the culture right now, I see it around a lot of women in their thirties. What do you think is going on there?
Lindsay: I mean, Angelina Chapin, she just did a big piece for us last month that was everywhere, around is dating a total nightmare for you right now? And I think that for me, it’s always a lot of those conversations traditionally felt like this is just something happening that’s too low brow for us to try to report. And a big thing for me at The Cut has always been, we want to be the thing that you’re sharing with your friends. We want to be the thing [inaudible 00:24:42]. And that was immediately something that I was like, there’s a sense of despair around dating right now that is very different.
Obviously up to the election we’re leading up to a place where I think people are just sick and tired of being sick and tired, and in the opposite place of the divorce stuff, I just saw very clear pipeline of people talking about divorce and dating and celibacy in succession. And so I think a lot of that for me was us figuring out a way to elevate the conversation but also do some reporting around it so it isn’t just... A lot of these, yes, we do the personal essays, but we do a lot of service. We do a lot of reporting. So it isn’t just a one note.
Ben: Sounds tough out there.
Nayeema: Ben’s just happy because he’s been married since he was in his early [inaudible 00:25:27], he got married young.
Ben: Most of what I read in The Cut these days reaffirms that decision.
Lindsay: I think also engagement for The Cut is really important to me. So I’m constantly looking at the comments, especially on social. And so I’m always looking at what are the things that people want to really discuss, but also how can we be part of that conversation and create community around it? And I think also some fun, I think a big part of The Cut is that we have humor and energy and a little bit of attitude, and so it’s a mix of a lot of different things.
But in the midst of that, we just did our Smut and Romance week. The romance books are the number one sellers for publishers right now. And so I wanted to celebrate that because I found a common thread in all of this was like, yes, there’s a lot of single people and a lot of people complaining about dating, a lot of people talking about celibacy, but there was also this huge industry now around romance books. And I mean, Emily Henry’s books just got picked up to do five different, I think Netflix or some kind of films. And so we did a big week on that as well.
Nayeema: Isn’t that part of defining for our culture and maybe even our politics right now, which is the fantasy is better than the reality in almost everything. And that’s so much of what you’re writing. But that comes back to this idea of the political question that Ben was asking before. I mean, you defining in the kind of there is no Cut woman the way there was this Cosmo woman, but you can attract and marry rich dudes. You can live a soft life. You can be a Tradwife, you can homestead, you can be a polyamorous, you can play with celibacy or boy sobriety, you can have a lavender marriage with your gay best friend, all these different types of women. But aren’t they all responding to the same political and social problem, which is this problem of women can’t have it all, which is this problem of society has put us in this place, had these expectations.
And there’s kind of two competing worldviews right now. One is kind of crystallized in this Project 2025, conservative Harrison Butker view of the world, which is like your life will begin when you are a mother and a wife. And by the way, I don’t want to say it in a judgy way because I also come from a culture where being a wife and a mother has a value to it. Caregiving has a value to it both for your children but also for your elders. And I think that is represented in this kind of conservative viewpoint.
And then on the left you see this kind of polyamory and this kind of communal living, which is saying, hey, we want to do these things. We want to have homes, we want to have a family. We want to make rent, but one person can’t do it alone. Two people can’t figure it out, so we’re going to build a community and social infrastructure that government didn’t give us.
Lindsay: Yeah, I think both ends are really important but that’s indicative of The Cut. We’re not just one note. And I think a lot of these lanes that you’re speaking of, traditionally publications only thought these are the only topics that women want to have as far as if it’s fashion, it’s got to be shiny. If it’s relationships, it’s just a sex column. It was very checking a box where I think that we found a lot of these things on the spectrum of you may want a relationship or you may not, you may want to have a hot girl summer or you may have a voiceover summer. There’s levels to each of these things that I think we always want to play into, but it’s also, we’re not looking at it as trends. I think these are all conversations that we’re all having with our communities, but also we’re never too high up in thinking that we need to tell people how to live their life. No.
Ben: I mean, I do think of The Cut historically and where it comes from is basically kind of progressive in its politics. But actually I think a lot of your most read stuff and a lot of the things I was just talking about are really conservative and are really talking about a return to the Tradwife is the caricature of it, but to much more traditional gender roles in a way that, I don’t know, it is probably embodied by Donald Trump in certain ways. And I’m curious, it feels like there’s some cultural shift happening there that I’m myself trying to figure out how to navigate, and I’m curious how you think about it.
Lindsay: I mean, yeah, I think that obviously it’s really important for my team to be progressive, but also just inclusive in tone and voice. I think that is indicative of the kind of publication that I’ve always wanted to make. The kind of publication I always wanted to read was one that wasn’t leaving me out of the equation as a young black girl from Midwest. So I think that that’s always the goal. But I do think that honestly, the thing that I’m trying to solve with a lot of politics is we write so much of it that people just don’t want to read and then trying to figure out how to get them to be part of it. I mean, we wrote about Project 2025 today. We write about abortion stuff every single day. A lot of the politics, just straight politics things, I think people are feeling already an exhaustion around.
Ben: But do you feel like on gender roles specifically, do you feel like you’re sort of feeling or feeding a shift to the right or shift backward toward more traditional roles?
Lindsay: No, I don’t.
Nayeema: I think it’s almost a trap, Ben. I want to jump in for Lindsay a little bit and say it was a bit of a vibe shift.
Ben: It was a trap, sorry.
Nayeema: Men are always trying to be trapping us. It’s like a vibe shift that went from hype beast and woke to kind of this post-political. I think there was this expectation as a woman, and I certainly felt it growing up on Sex in the City and graduating into the Sheryl Sandberg era and all this stuff, but there was a sense that you couldn’t, when Harrison Butker said that thing, that quiet, you’re like, oh, I can’t feel like maybe he’s onto something, even if he’s the absolute worst poster child for the message. But I think that’s what The Cut is doing. But don’t you think, Lindsay, it pisses off some of your progressive readers that marry the older man piece, there were a lot of parodies and people kind of attacking the writer and her name and her excessive use of commas and the mention of Lolita.
Lindsay: Yeah, I think that there’s always going to be people that dislike some of the takes that we put out, but I am careful in curating what kinds of takes because I’m not trying to lift up a voice, because I think that people will hate it. I’m lifting up a voice because I think that she had something important to say about the world in which we live in. And I do think that her experience is no better than an opposite experience. And honestly, to me, that’s the importance of it. But I don’t think that, yeah, we’re never trying to elevate one or the other. It is always a balance game for sure.
Nayeema: Do you think you’re bringing the men along, Lindsay?
Lindsay: I think we are. It’s kind of strange because that was unexpected, but I think we are.
Nayeema: Are you getting more male subscribers to The Cut?
Lindsay: I mean, I’m not sure of the exact numbers, but I do hear a lot more men talking about the issue. We’re doing a lot more men in our upcoming September issue than we have before.
Ben: Thank you for that. It’s important to me to see myself in The Cut, so I really appreciate that.
Nayeema: I mean, Lindsay did say they were striving for an inclusive magazine, Ben, I want to make sure you are included.
Lindsay: We totally are.
Nayeema: Do you think that The Cut, part of what we talk a lot about on the show a bit is this idea, is media the invisible hand or is media just a mirror? And do you think that The Cut is reflecting the culture or do you think you’re shaping it?
Lindsay: A bit of both.
Nayeema: Give me a percentage, like 60/40, which way?
Lindsay: No, honestly, I would say-
Nayeema: Come on Lindsay...
Lindsay: No, I think...
Nayeema: Do the girl math.
Lindsay: No, it’s not girl math. I think it’s maybe 60/40. I think that a lot of it is, I’ll be reading something and I’ll just notice a sentence that I’m like, I don’t even think that they realize, but there’s a nugget in there of something that I think we should chase after. And sometimes it’s not always the most magical thing that someone said, but it’s usually in the way that they said it that I’m picking up on, that there’s something there that we need to dig further.
When we are trying to anticipate what it is it’s usually we’re anticipating it that it’s going to be bigger than what other people are thinking and so we’re kind of trying to beat that moment. But yeah, I only hesitate with that one because it really doesn’t come from a place of arrogance. It comes from a place of we know this is going to be something that you love and that you’re going to want to devour, and how can we be with you in that moment when you’re ready.
Nayeema: What you’re describing is having your finger on the pulse and seeing where things are headed. It’s kind of like in fashion, are you choosing what style of jeans we’re wearing or you’re just noticing that people are no longer going to be wearing these jeans and you’re telling us?
Lindsay: Yeah, but I think sometimes we do choose, I notice a lot of people are wearing Capris right now. I don’t want to write about Capris because I don’t think that they look good, and I don’t want people to bring them back.
Nayeema: They’re not good. Don’t bring Capris.
Ben: A thumb on the scale there.
Nayeema: Do not wear Capris, Ben. Okay?
Ben: No threat of that.
Lindsay: But we offer a lot of other things that we’re like, this is going to be the next thing. When you’re tired of these and you realize that these were a bad mistake, this is going to be the next thing.
Nayeema: On the vibe shift where do you notice it going? Because that original piece from Alison where she had spoken to Sean Monahan about the kind of vibe shifts that he had been observing, and he had these four to six year periods, the God, I’m going to forget what they were.
Ben: It was the hipster indie period, then the internet techno period followed by the hype- beast woke period. And I guess then the question just is what’s next?
Nayeema: Yeah, what’s next?
Lindsay: I mean, honestly, we’re planning a lot of this for our September issue, and I still haven’t landed on what I really want it to be. I just sense a heavy exhaustion with a lot of our readers because I think so much is happening in the world and how do we provide some relief from that? But also what are the areas of release that we can give them, whether it is a funny moment, but also then pushing them to understand that there’s some important conversations that we have to have with them or that we want them to participate in. And so yeah, I mean that’s honestly the one that I’m noticing right now.
Ben: Yeah, I mean, is it just pure escapism?
Lindsay: A little bit. But I think it’s fair because I do think that there’s so much heavy in the world right now that I understand. And I think that was a lot of the reason why the Smut and Romance books are doing so well, because it takes you to another destination, another place.
Nayeema: Yeah, smart AI. It also could be a bit of a, it fits a boom bust cycle for feminism, a bit of a boom, right?
Lindsay: Yeah, totally.
Nayeema: That’s the way the pendulum would go, maybe. Especially if Trump is back in office, I presume, because there’ll be a villain.
Lindsay: Yes.
Nayeema: You mentioned earlier not putting your thumb on the scales except for maybe Capris and some other issues, but it seems like lately The Cut has published at least a few articles about the vice president in this kind of critical moment where people are floating her name to be the heir apparent if Biden were to step off the ticket, or the heir apparent if he were to stay on and not make it for four years. But you had a few pieces. You had, Why Not Kamala? The Rebecca Traister interview with Brittney Cooper, you had conservatives are already attacking Kamala as a DEI hire, and then is it time to take the coconut pill? Which had a collection of memes links. Are you putting your thumb on the scale? Is The Cut entering the K-Hive?
Lindsay: You know I-
Nayeema: Don’t try to hide from the question Lindsay, I beg you, answer the question.
Lindsay: No, I won’t hide from the question. I’m not trying to predict too early because honestly, I don’t think any of us know what is going to happen with Biden yet. I think that that is still to be determined. Every single day there’s a new headline about his health and so I don’t think that any of us really honestly do know what is going to happen on this ticket. But I do think that it’s really important for The Cut to be at the front and center of how we talk about women in this election. I think we’ve done so much work in the past with Traister on abortion being such a big part of this election and people really ignoring it, and how it really just quite frankly, pissed us off and felt like people weren’t paying attention enough. And so the interesting thing about this job is these are all issues that we’ve been talking about, writing about, for so long, and then now people just start paying attention, obviously, because we’re nearing the election.
But I think that more often than not with this, that I want people to make a concerted effort of why we’re doing what we’re doing when we go into this election. And so when it comes to, I mean, we had a piece today that Dania Issawi wrote about how Arab-American women feel conflicted about this upcoming election. I think that it’s important for us to be the place that is having those really hard conversations because I do think that people feel really conflicted. And I think people feel really unhappy about the state of the world and where it’s going, but don’t really feel like we have any options or place to talk about that in a way that feels that we’re not shaming or judging anyone, but just feeling like this is not the way in which we want to be in this world.
Nayeema: Yeah, I think one of the things The Cut does really well is an approach I take when I make a documentary film, it’s like an honor their truth approach to the essay or to the story or to the profiles. But I don’t know that the culture does that, too. I think the culture will react. The culture will still shame.
Lindsay: Yeah.
Ben: Yeah. And I’m curious, just to come back to Kamala, maybe to bring these two threads together. In reading the coverage of Kamala, Brittney’s quote about we have to watch white men be terrible, it put us in the brink of destroying the whole democracy, and then maybe a black woman can help us. I worry, and I wonder if you think, it seems to me that logic, and some of The Cut’s coverage of Kamala feels in some ways from the previous moment and that the kind of, maybe right-left isn’t the right way to say it, but the kind of vibe shift that a lot of the other stuff on The Cut embodies is going to make it hard for Kamala Harris and this maybe is a tough moment for her. I’m curious when you sort of pull back with your galaxy brain, thoughts on that?
Lindsay: Yeah, I don’t ever want to make it tough or hard for another woman of color, and obviously, I mean, she’s in a tough spot, so that’s not ever our intention. But I do think that specifically one thing that we do really well on The Cut is provide critique in a really fair and level way. And especially as a black woman, I think that a lot of times we shy away from having these conversations because you don’t want to publicly talk about another person of color in a way that is critiquing them and not feel like you can have that critique, but also support at the same time. And so a lot of times I think somebody, even like Professor Britney Cooper, is able to have those conversations in a nuanced way and not trying to make it harder for anyone else, but as a black woman, you are allowed to.
Ben: I mean, I guess I just mean it’s more sort of like we’re in this moment of backlash, and a lot of your coverage in some ways is picking up the energy of that backlash. And I guess I do wonder how that’ll play out for Kamala.
Nayeema: I mean, for example, Lindsay, you are already seeing this narrative come out, imagine what could be unburdened by what has been, and you’re going to see those constant plays.
Ben: It’s pretty funny.
Nayeema: Can’t help, but it is very funny. So you’re going to see the attack on, and I think you’ve been covering some of the women that have been writing essays in the pages of Cut are not necessarily reflected by the progressive women. So does Kamala do well in that world? Does she do less well? I think is that’s what Ben’s kind of getting to.
Lindsay: Yeah. But I think that honestly, people don’t really know how to feel about her right now, which is why we’re covering it in this way. I think that honestly, people are a hundred percent conflicted and are concerned. I mean, I was concerned before the debate, but I felt like it woke people up in a new dimension after watching the debate and feeling a sense of dread and concern and urgency. And I mean, social media was crazy for the past couple of days because of that after the debate. And so I don’t think that we’re trying to sway people in one way or the other. I think that we’ve been having a lot of these conversations and obviously now people are just noticing that in a larger way.
Nayeema: Yeah. I do want to pick back up what you’re saying when you don’t want to make it harder for a woman of color, and I understand what you’re saying there. But I also think as a journalist, of course, you are, I imagine dedicated to pursuing... There’s not an affirmative action on how you are going to cover Kamala Harris. You are going to cover her in a dogged way, I imagine.
Lindsay: Of course. But I think that it is not a secret. I mean, a lot of the reporting investigators, journalists, et cetera, aren’t usually people of color in the industry. And so when we’re doing a story that is about someone who may be controversial or may have done accusations, allegations, et cetera, it is a different process when it is another person of color.
I think a lot of times of the Kerby Pyer-Moss story that we did a couple of years ago. He’s a really well-known black designer, he’s beloved. We knew that there were a lot of allegations, accusations. Most people didn’t want to touch it because they felt like it would have to come from the right person, and it would have to come from a person of color in the industry who knew all of these nuances and understanding of him as a designer and as a black figure who people really looked up to, and understanding that experience. You do just handle it a little bit more delicate, and you don’t handle it in a way that you’re giving someone favoritism, but you handle it in a way where you understand this is all really important to the culture, but what matters is how fair we cover this conscious of what we are doing is not just to tear somebody down at all, but ever to... I mean, I think the reporting on that was really stellar because we were incredibly fair.
Ben: I mean, I totally agree on that piece. But don’t you think that public figures sometimes use that to shut down fair coverage?
Lindsay: A hundred percent. But that’s why I did the story anyway.
Nayeema: Yeah, I mean, part of the challenge for the vice president would be that the way she was hired into the process immediately puts a target in her back. And I always hated that moment where then candidate Biden was like, well, we need a woman who’s held state office. It was so specific in terms of the criteria as opposed to, we’re going to hire the best person for the job and find out that it’s Kamala Harris. And people could speculate on the dynamics, but to make them explicit in the way that they were made, I think that media narrative will already be out there on the right and is.
Lindsay: I mean, that was a conversation we had when we did Stacey Abrams on the cover. That was a conversation we had a while ago. So yeah, it’s not a new one, but I think it’s a resurrected conversation that now I think obviously there was a sense of urgency around.
Nayeema: Yeah. All right. Thank you so much, Lindsay for being with us.
Ben: Thanks, Lindsay.
Lindsay: Thanks, you guys.
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Nayeema: Ben did that Brittney Cooper quote about having to watch white men be terrible hurt your feelings?
Ben: No, it just felt like it was from a different era. It felt like it was copy and pasted from Twitter seven years ago or something.
Nayeema: Yeah, it felt like it was from the hype-beast woke era, you mean?
Ben: Yeah, it was from the hype-beast woke era. I think it’s really interesting to watch a really, really smart, progressive editor grapple with the fact that a lot of the journalism she’s publishing is truly reactionary in the literal sense of that word and traditionalist and conservative, and there’s this deep tension there. It’s so interesting. And the work they’re publishing is so good,
Nayeema: Yeah. But I think that’s applying this dualist polarized worldview onto what is really the guts of life struggle that every woman or every person who seeks to partner or have family has.
Ben: Maybe it’s more, you’re right, maybe I’m kind of over polarizing, it’s more just a step away from this idea that the personal is political, which comes intensely in and out of fashion in America and was deeply in fashion a few years ago and maybe is a little out of fashion now.
Nayeema: Yeah. Or I think that the construct of actually seeing something as political when it’s personal is seen to be inauthentic and out of touch with the current vibe a little bit, right? That’s in the woke vibe era. And now we’re in the like you’re just living your fucking life and some of it’s on the internet and some of it’s private. And I don’t presume to know what’s going on in your life so if you want to homestead, that’s cool. If you want to be with an older man, that’s cool. It doesn’t mean that I need to do that, although I would love to homestead with an older man. I mean, what a life.
Ben: Yeah, I was going to say, you don’t have a right to judge, and yet I sometimes feel judged, so I don’t know.
Nayeema: Do you feel judged?
Ben: Maybe, once in a while,
Nayeema: Ben?
Ben: For my Tradwife lifestyle,
Nayeema: You’re hardly a Tradwife. I don’t want to make you feel ganged up on Ben so let’s take a quick break. We’re going to let you spend some time with Josh Spanier from Think with Google on this ad break, and then we’ll be back with Max.
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Ben: Women’s NCAA Championship, beat out the men’s, and I saw GroupM is planning to double the money it spends on women’s sports. A bunch of major advertisers, including Google, have signed on. Is this going to last?
Josh Spanier: I hope so. I mean, it should do, right? It’s actually super exciting. One of the things about marketing and marketers is we’re kind of herd- like, right. We want to be cool, we want to be hip. We feel like it’s our responsibility to actually represent the voice of the customer and what they’re interested in, we are interested in, so we follow the trends. So in some regard, the surge in women’s sport has actually been great because as marketers, we then follow it and we spend more money behind it, and it helps these leagues develop and grow.
I’m really proud of a bunch of work that we’ve done with our team to actually help create that. So three years ago, we signed a deal with ESPN where, as part of that partnership deal for the WNBA, we made it mandatory that ESPN actually show more games on television and try and break that cycle of, well, there’s no one watching, so you’re not showing games. So we’re not going to show games. So no one ends up watching. And actually, if you increase the coverage, you’ll increase the popularity.
Now, I’m not claiming that Caitlin Clark and the success of the Women’s Game and NCAA is anything really to do with what we’ve done as a marketing organization. But brands that are looking ahead, are looking for opportunities, are looking to separate and find differentiation, can identify and spot there is a thirst, there is a hunger, there is an interest in this topic.
So tap into it, help enable it, use your Ad and marketing dollars to help grow it. And we continue to see that success. I’m very excited for the new season of the WNBA. It’s healthy to have competition in the sense of that there’s more options than just the men’s game.
Ben: Do you have a team?
Josh Spanier: I have multiple teams. I like all of them because we are an official partner of the WNBA, so I’m not going to name a single one.
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Nayeema: We’re back and here’s Max Tani. Max, you must be super busy right now reporting.
Max Tani: I’m a little busy, yeah. The summer is usually a pretty slow time for media, in particular for media reporting because everybody in media goes on vacation in July and August, but this year is a little different.
Ben: Hey, now some of us work.
Nayeema: Ben’s hanging out in Riyadh. I’m in Italy, and Max Tani is holding down the fort in the United States.
Max: That’s right.
Nayeema: Max, thank you for joining us today. You have some blind spots, things that we’re missing in our elite vacation slash recruiting bubbles.
Max: That’s right. I don’t know if they’re talking about this in Riyadh or wherever you are in Italy, but apparently according to the Biden campaign, things aren’t actually that bad for Joe Biden.
Nayeema: Oh, phew. I’m so glad to hear that. That’s going to make my Tuscan vacation so much better just knowing.
Max: Yeah.
Ben: I would say people in Riyadh are concerned. So I’ll spread the word.
Max: No, but things aren’t actually that bad, that’s what I’m saying. It’s just not piercing your media bubble. And that’s according to a new report from Northeastern University and their data led project CHIP50, which was quickly blasted out by the Biden campaign today. The report, which surveyed the same group of people before and after last month’s presidential debate, said that Biden’s performance had little, if any, impact on people’s voting preference. The report’s author hopes, it “helps illustrate the dangers of making a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to the media interpreting data.”
Ben: Do you buy it?
Nayeema: Yes. Do you buy it? And how does it square with applied data?
Max: I was going to ask if you guys buy it?
Nayeema: Well, what’s the methodology? What is CHIP50? What is this? Sounds like Baskin-Robbins 31.
Max: I think it’s slightly different though. A little bit less exciting. I think basically the methodology, as far as I understand it, they found a random sampling of people, but they surveyed the same group of people before and after. So it’s like a focus group where you can see if things moved. So it’s not a different group of people, it’s the same, but it’s using polling methodologies apparently.
And it’s supposedly a kind of cutting edge survey technique that’s supposed to be better than other ones. But again, this was posted by Biden’s senior comms advisor, TJ Ducklo, who said that it was supposed to be a corrective to the media narrative. Personally, that’s against every other poll that we’re seeing across the country, very reliable, long-running polls. So I don’t quite buy it, but that is what we’re hearing from the Biden campaign.
Ben: Yeah, I think the grain of truth in there, because speaking as someone who sort of basically also doesn’t buy it, is that a lot of Americans already thought Joe Biden was totally out of it. Most Republicans and a lot of Democrats already thought he was too old, or basically expected him to stumble out there and mumble a lot. And so when they saw that, we were like, yeah, that’s my president, including people who were going to vote for him, by the way. And so obviously the political situation has in fact changed contra that poll. But I do think that basically the American people on a whole were better informed than the White House Press Corps on this question.
Nayeema: I feel like you are taking a lot of mea culpa for the press. I feel like-
Ben: Mea culpa, I’m just randomly attacking my colleagues.
Nayeema: Oh, okay. You knew everybody else didn’t. This is your version of the Biden letter coming out right now.
Ben: I wrote about it last year. I took a lot of flack for it. So I’m lashing out.
Nayeema: Yes. I also said it on a podcast in September of 2023. I feel like everybody, a lot of people in media knew.
Ben: We’re all going back to the time we said it.
Nayeema: We’re all...
Max: I admitted in our media newsletter that I thought I was kind of wrong about this and I underestimated Biden’s change. I mean, though, I will say I did note that when I saw him and he went on pool duty with Inn at Rehoboth that he was walking pretty slowly.
Ben: I saw it at the White House Christmas party, which was full of the media in which Biden, and I wrote about this stuff, was there to prove. All he had to say was “You idiots, I’m fine. Stop tolling me old. I’m fine.” That was it. That would’ve been the speech. And instead he just sort of randomly wandered into his stump speech, went on for a while, finally Jill said, “Joe, it’s a party.” And he said, “Ah, great. It’s a party. Enjoy.” And I was actually sort of surprised that didn’t get more coverage, in front of the whole Press Corps. He also thanked the White House Press Corps for putting our lives in danger, which seemed a bit much to me, I felt like.
Nayeema: I think he was talking about reporters in more fronts. But yeah, I don’t buy this CHIP50 thing, but I do think that it’s a bit of a rubber band in the sense that if Biden’s on the ticket in November, they’re just going to have to hope that not Trump is enough of a admit for voters and that that’s going to take people past the finish...
And you hear from a lot of voters who are like, okay, if I have to, I vote for him. This is a person who, 77% of people in polls are saying he’s too old, including 69% of Democrats, and he was still pulling 40 plus percent of the vote. This is back late last year. So that cognitive dissonance could still work in the president’s favor if he continues to be on the ticket, that seems to be the bet, but it does not seem like a positive warm vibe. And I don’t mean about the media, I mean in terms of the culture.
Ben: Kadia had that incredible line in her story of this top democratic operative saying that a dead or comatose Joe Biden was outperforming Kamala Harris in their survey research. So here we are. Thank you, Max. I had missed that one, so I appreciate you and TJ Ducklow bringing it to my attention.
Max: Absolutely. I’m here to bring the campaign spin.
Nayeema: Campaign spin that we’re not seeing because the media is so after Biden.
Ben: It’s probably the Twitter algorithm.
Nayeema: What are people on the right not seeing?
Max: So I veered a little bit in this one because I kind of thought this is something... I know, yeah, I veered a little bit from our presets...
Nayeema: You with the liberties. Yes.
Max: Yeah. I kind of wanted to get a little bit creative because I thought that the story was kind of interesting and I feel like it was something that maybe was registering on national security TikTok, the channels for hawkish Americans and people abroad.
Ben: Is that a place? Wow.
Max: Apparently it is a place. Taylor Lorenz at the Washington Post had a really interesting story this week about NATO doing PR by giving access to influencers. And so this is according to the Post, as part of its Protect the Future Initiative, which is intended to “raise awareness of and support for NATO among young audiences across the Alliance,” NATO paid for numerous influencers to attend its major summit in Washington this week, including several TikTok stars who cover current events and politics. One who is an educational content creator, another who is a former Air Force fighter pilot and motivational speaker. An influencer who Taylor described as someone who “covers legal and political commentary in African-American vernacular,” a teacher who makes comedic videos about history and a UK news content creator among others.
Ben: Can we just pause to appreciate the newspaper language here of a social media influencer who covers legal and political developments in African-American vernacular. What are the odds that Taylor Lorenz typed those words? Like zero. Right?
Max: It was an interesting one. It also does include a hyperlink. So the Post allows you to delve into that one if you want to understand more about what that means.
Ben: But I still love that it’s still somebody’s job to translate English into whatever that is.
Nayeema: Excellent. So influencers in the wild, gone global for NATO.
Max: Yeah. I thought, I did think it was interesting in the sense that for the previous generation, people in the West understood the value of NATO. But we’ve reached the point where there are a lot of younger people, people of my generation, who didn’t exist during the Cold War and really don’t understand the value of NATO as much. So I guess I understand the desire to reach out to influencers, and I understand influencers wanting an all expenses paid trip to Washington, though not necessarily in July.
Nayeema: So here’s a question for you, Ben, because you noted what a bad PR play it was for TikTok to use its own platform to get young people animated about the TikTok ban. How do you feel about NATO countries bringing in surrogates to sell something on their platform? Doesn’t that make TikTok a little more neutral?
Ben: It makes me a little despairing for the future of free societies, right? Russia is so good at this stuff. The idea that they invited a few TikTokers to speak in African-American vernacular with their policies. Great job guys. But these countries and militaries have massive propaganda operations that move the hearts and minds of millions of people in a concerted way. And I think that democracies have really, really struggled to do that.
And it’s like you sort of see the lameness of this versus the concerted efforts you have. And by the way, the Ukrainian government is incredible at this. Ukraine won the propaganda war in the opening hours of that war on TikTok. And for all the people say it’s sort of a Russian-Chinese whatever, the Ukrainian message just absolutely dominated. And the American sympathies, it just swept everything before it, I think in a way. But I just feel like these democracies and organizations like NATO are just inevitably terrible at this.
Nayeema: Yeah. This is probably not going to hit as hard as a fancy bear hack from the Russians or a kind of concerted influence operation from Eastern Europe or from China.
Ben: Yeah. An influencer operation isn’t quite the same.
Nayeema: Well, I do think democracies also have a way of doing this covertly. The United States was able to interfere in other countries’ elections pretty effectively for a period in time, not necessarily through the internet.
Max: I kind of just think they lose nothing by doing a cringe, invite a bunch of random influencers to DC to do this. I mean, look, here’s the other thing that we know about influencers is they’ll take your free money anytime you want to give them something for free. I mean, there was all those influencers who went to go to the Shein factory in China and made these videos about it, went viral.
Ben: It’s incredible.
Max: Which I always thought was really, really funny. I think that you can actually marshal a bunch of influencers to do really anything that you want if you tell them that it’s free.
Nayeema: Who even is an influencer anymore? Are you an influencer, Max? Max, I feel like you’re an influencer, but you’re bound by journalistic ethics unfortunately.
Max: I think news people are, you increasingly have these news influencers, right?
Nayeema: Yes.
Max: We used to have this with, he’s not a perfect example anymore, but Yashar was a great example of this.
Nayeema: Oh yeah, Yashar Ali.
Max: Yeah. He’s like a random guy who Tweets a bunch of stuff and has a bunch of followers, but he’s not really so much of a journalist, a kind of complicated, weird, ethical person. So there’s definitely people who exist in the news journalist space of which we’re not necessarily too far off.
Ben: Yeah, it’s a blurry space where we’re all influencers now.
Nayeema: Podcast host.
Max: That’s very close to influencer.
Ben: I know when you were describing random people who Tweet a lot, I was like, are you talking about me?
Nayeema: Yeah. All right, guys. Max, thank you for being with us and for relieving us of our international blind spots today.
Max: Thanks guys.
Nayeema: Thanks for listening to Mixed Signals from Semafor Media. Our show is produced by Max Tani, Allison Rogers, Sheena Ozaki, Alan Haburchak, and Andrea López-Cruzado. With special thanks to Britta Galanis, Chad Lewis, Rachel Oppenheim, Anna Pizzino, Garrett Wiley, and Jules Zirn. Our engineer is Rick Kwan. Our theme music is by Billy Libby.
And our public editor is Harrison Butker, who was a voice of truth at the wrong time, through the wrong vessel, at the wrong location. If you like Mixed Signals, please follow us wherever you get your podcasts. And feel free to leave us a review.
Ben: And if you’re watching on YouTube, give us a like and subscribe to Semafor’s channel.
Max: And remember to read Semafor’s Media Newsletter, subscribe, it publishes every Sunday night. Send us your tips for the Republican National Convention in good media stories.
Nayeema: Yes, I’m sure we’ll get a tip from the White House that they’re doing just fine. They’re doing just fine. Don’t worry about it.
Max: We’ll look into it.
