Taylor Lorenz’s Power User

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz        Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co    After Charlie Kirk was killed in front of a crowd of students in Utah, right wing influencers and pundits claimed that his killing would result in millions of Charlie Kirks. Almost immediately, mini me Charlie Kirk clones began cropping up, and far right Gen Z influencers began attempting to mimic Charlie's viral debate formats. But pretty soon, things went off the rails. Hardly a month after Charlie died, his widow Erika Kirk was pictured giving an awkwardly close embrace to JD Vance in skin tight pleather pants. Donld Trump all but forgot Charlie existed, and very quickly, Charlie became a meme.  Ryan Broderick is an online culture journalist and he's been covering The Great Kirkification. He joined me to talk about the rise of Charlie Kirk slop and what it's morphing into. Because as fun as it is to laugh at absurd memes featuring Charlie Kirk's face plastered into some mpreg emoji, the whole thing has taken a sharp turn lately and is now funneling a lot of people right back into the far right.  We dig into this new hyper online esoteric form of Naziism, explain the lore behind the mythical city of Agartha, and explain what all of this says about the current state of the internet, politics, and culture. Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz               https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0               https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz 

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz       Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 IT'S FREE SPEECH FRIDAY!!!!!For years, the United States villainized China for its restrictive internet landscape and mass censorship of online speech. But lately, things are changing. The U.S. and other western countries are careening towards authoritarianism and seeking to pass laws that mandate invasive surveillance and extreme censorship of online speech. The pattern is very similar to what we saw in China and have seen in other authoritarian countries. Mass censorship and surveillance is ushered in with justifications about "child online safety," governments seeking to ban VPNs, removing anonymity from the web, constructing walled gardens, and so on. James Griffiths is a Hong Kong based journalist who has covered China for over a decade. He is the author of the book The Great Firewall of China: How to build and control an alternative version of the internet. He joined me to talk about what China's internet is really like, the mass erosion of free speech on the western internet, and why the situation we're in right now is so dangerous. Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz              https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0              https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz 

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz      Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co  Recently, journalist Olivia Nuzzi has been at the center of the biggest political media scandal in years. A star journalist for New York Magazine, it was revealed that Nuzzi had secretly had a torrid love affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after profiling him for the magazine.  She came out of hiding this month to announce a new job at Vanity Fair and release her book, American Canto, about the whole experience. But within days of re-emerging she was once again at the center of a full blown firestorm after her ex fiance, political journalist Ryan Lizza, began to release Nuzzi's intimate text messages on his Substack.  Now, she's been fired by Vanity Fair and all of the media has been excoriating her for her blatant violations of journalistic ethics. But what about the men in this story? Journalist Kat Tenbarge joins me to break down Olivia Nuzzi's journey from teenage pop star to top political reporter to her relationship with RFK Jr, the Ryan Lizza saga, what's actually going on, and why we both think MSM news reporters are missing the real story underneath the whole saga. Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz             https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0             https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz

>>> FREE SPEECH FRIDAY <<<SUPPORT ME ON PATREON. Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 On Tuesday, members of the House of Representatives gathered for a big hearing called Legislative Solutions to Protect Children and Teens Online. The hearing was the latest attempt by lawmakers to force through a slate of horrifying surveillance laws that would censor the internet, strip the ability to freely access information, and cause great harm to children, especially marginalized youth. The mainstream media has been covering none of this. Kate Ruane is a director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, and she testified this Tuesday in front of congress about these evil laws. Today, she joins me to break down what's going on in congress, what these proposed laws would do, and why we're at such a crucial moment when it comes to preserving privacy and free expression on the internet. Read up via the links below and call your representatives today and tell them to stop The SCREEN Act, kill The App Store Accountability Act, and kill the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA).KOSA Won’t Just Silence LGBTQ Voices; It Will Also Be Used To Hide Abortion Info From The InternetHeritage Foundation Says That Of Course GOP Will Use KOSA To Censor LGBTQ ContentWhy The Fuck Are Democrats Helping Build MAGA’s Censorship Machine With KOSA?Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz            https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0            https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz     Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co Lately, growing swaths of the online left have embraced a messaging strategy known broadly as Dark Woke. While traditional Democrats still try to reach across the aisle and find common ground with conservatives, more on the left are becoming comfortable embracing outright bigotry, slurs, hateful rhetoric, dunking on conservatives, and going full "dark woke."   Twitch streamer SeanDaBlack has been covering the rise of this culture, and he joined me to talk about the rise of "woke" culture in America, how social justice movements have been warped by the internet, what Dark Woke really means and whether it's a winning strategy to counter Trump's online dominance. Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz           https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0           https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz