The New Digital Class War: Rich People Use The Internet Differently w/ Adam Aleksic

It's the same thing as the Facebook or the same thing as moving off of Tinder. There's a certain elite group clustering in a certain area. And when Claude becomes big enough, people are just going to hop to another thing. Social media platforms like Instagram are often framed as universal spaces where everyone can participate equally. But the ways people use and express themselves on these platforms are not equal. Differing user behavior, consumption patterns, and aesthetics often reflect deeper social and economic differences. Online trends like low-class Instagram reveal how aesthetics, posting styles, and digital habits are inextricably linked to perceptions of class. Today, I'm joined by Adam Aleksic, an etymologist and cultural commentator who has been covering these subtle internet divides. We're going to be breaking down the hallmarks of low-class Instagram and discussing how these differences are not only about taste, but also about access to technology, cultural norms, and platform design. Hi, Adam. Welcome to Power User. Hi, excited to be back. So there's this discussion that's been taking place on Instagram about low-class Instagram. And I thought of it a lot because Kyle Chayka posted something last year about kind of like billionaire Instagram behavior. And it was basically like the richest person you know has an Instagram that's private and has like 200 followers. And I think this is kind of weirdly so true. And that's what sort of woke me up to this idea of like, there seems to be this way that like rich people use the internet versus the rest of us. And I'm curious, kind of like how this discussion made its way to you and how would you define this discussion around low class Instagram? Yeah, I think it's all something we've kind of known for a while, but recently there have been these internet memes and discussions happening about high income versus low income Instagram. And there are certain posting behaviors that are associated with class that we get conditioned into acting through. Yeah. And I want to start off also by saying like, this is us kind of like describing these like trends that correlate with socioeconomic classes, maybe or different, like marginalized groups and the ways that they use it. Like these honestly transcend America. There was a lot of discussion when TikTok was banned in India because TikTok is actually seen, was seen as sort of like the working class app and Instagram was seen as this elite social media app. And so there was concern that maybe like these poor villagers would no longer have online platforms. And so there are, I just think that like economic inequality and class dynamics are so embedded in our social internet and it's worth kind of like unpacking some of them and also kind of identifying some of these things as well. Cause like, I think some of us that maybe engage in like low class Instagram behaviors, like it's, it's interesting to kind of like, I think, think about kind of like what that says and what these maybe like what these judgments that the public is making against these behaviors online, where they stem from and kind of what they reveal about our culture. Right. I think it's something very important to examine why we think something is high class or low class and to understand that our elitism actually bleeds into everything, including the online, which we tend to think of as separate, but it never really is. It's always a part of the whole. One thing that I feel like is sort of universally considered low class Instagram is the use of filters and sort of heavily filtered photos, heavily filtered videos. There was the joke about sort of like the Rio de Janeiro filter being put on everything as kind of like a meme. But I noticed this sometimes even just going into the comments and trying to sort of judge who someone is. If I click on their profile and they've got a lot of heavily filtered photos, I'm like this person. I don't know. Like they seem maybe like they are lower class or that they are not as like maybe adept at using the Internet. It feels almost kind of boomer coded as well. Yeah, elitism, which is tied to intellectualism, is conditioned sociologically into behaving certain ways. And when you are in the group of elites, whether or not you've consciously thought about it, you will replicate behaviors that other elites are doing. One of those behaviors is to have a deep understanding of the platform and the medium and signal in an aesthetic way that coheres with that medium. So some people may have thought about it explicitly and some people may have not, but nevertheless, there is this group that emerges of people who are presenting through the social media platform aesthetic in a way that kind of both is cohesive to identity and to the platform itself. And so, okay, what I mean by that is we already know we're pretending online. If you put on a filter, that's only like going beyond that to pretend. Like we are trying to look better. This is true by posting online, you are already presenting a face of yourself that you want people to like you. The filter overdoes it. So two elite scrutinizers, it comes across as you're trying too hard to get people to like you. I think it's interesting because like we are all ultimately pretending online. And I think actually the way that a lot of people experience wealth through Instagram is actually people engaging in quote unquote, like low class behavior where they're like posting their Ferraris or they're posting whatever. A lot of it feels very like American rich, like new money aesthetics versus old money aesthetics, which is also popular on Instagram, but it's very performative. I was doing a story years ago about the king of old money, Instagram and preppy Instagram. And I was interviewing actually a bunch of British people who were like, none of this is actually old money because like, it's all fundamentally still around like showing off your wealth and like real old money is not about showing off your wealth. But I think it's interesting how like low-class Instagram people are being judged for like, I guess, trying to look better online, but they're doing that more through like filters than maybe luxury purchases. There's a bias that any quiet luxury or old money aesthetic you see online is still being posted online. So it's not actually the real thing. It is somebody trying to flex at the end of the day, but there are degrees of how much you do it. So if you spread bands on a table, or if you post yourself leaning on someone else's Ferrari, that's kind of actually a lower class thing to do because of how you do conspicuous consumption versus inconspicuous consumption. And this is something, again, that's socialized into us that once you reach a certain level of class or wealth, you don't need to show it off. And so there's a meta semiotic signal sent out when you post on that Ferrari that you want people to know you're posting on the Ferrari. So really a high class Instagram behavior would be to let it be implied that you have that. You don't you don't need to prove it. Yeah, you need to kind of like, I guess, vague post a little bit more if you post at all. And I mean, I before we even just get further, I think obviously we have to talk about the fact that the ultimate luxury these days is not having to be online. I think this is what makes, you know, people like Elon Musk click so confounding because most like mega wealthy people are just not online. They don't have to engage in the attention economy and amass the currency of likes or anything, you know, online sort of clout because they are just mega rich and they can chill and they can have a private Instagram account with 200 followers and not have to be among the masses. I think this has become even more pronounced, honestly, as the world has become more and more like algorithmic. And just the internet is in general is seen as this like harm. It's constantly equated to drugs, alcohol, like bad things that frankly, you know, are seen as like poor people engage in this. And these poor people are rotting their brains. Whereas, you know, this also goes back to the narrative of it's not true that I've debunked a million times this complete lie that I don't know where it came from, where people say, oh, these tech entrepreneurs don't even let their children use their own products. That's actually not true. Kids in Silicon Valley have the highest tech adoption rates in our entire country. They're on these products from the time they can speak. But it is this I feel like there's this pervasive idea in society that like true elites are not on the Internet. There's a great creator, Eugene Healy, who does kind of brand strategy content. And he's also spoken a lot about this trend toward curation in person. It's sort of a status symbol to go to the run club, to do something that's this real thing instead of finding online communities, which is now seen as low class. Why do you think online communities are seen as low class? Is it just that people that don't have privileges are forced to rely on the internet? I mean, I think of this as somebody that reports a lot on marginalized groups, like trans people, you know, other marginalized communities, kids of immigrants and stuff, they turn to the internet and they spend a lot more time on the internet because the IRL world is so hostile to them. I guess, when did that flip happen and why do you think it exists? There's a few things going on for sure. One of them is that the idea of agency is becoming more important and people want to appear like they are in control of their tastes and their ideas. And when an algorithm serves you content or you end up in a community because you happen to find it through some internet recommendation, you are not agentic there. It is more your own volition if you seek out things in person. Of course, there's an argument to be made about whether that's actually a thing you found yourself or whether you're still falling into these buckets that are just more elite buckets. But that is one pressure for sure. Along with that, there's this curatorial intent, this taste-making power, which elites revert back to when their norms have been sort of disrupted, which they very much have been by the Internet. They now need to seek out something that—and I think also maybe the rise of slop as well. The internet had at a previous time was actually this really cool thing that if you did have the ability to get on the internet, that was incredible. Now it's everybody's on the internet and the quality of the content on the internet has worsened. So it is better to seek out the better quality to to on a organize your consumption. Yeah, I feel like the internet is just like there is so much low quality content that it's again, it goes back to this idea of like, I spend my time offline reading books. you're on your phone consuming brain rot, like you're, you know, inherently sort of lower class than I am. Aside from these like billionaires, again, that are just completely offline and have the private Instagram accounts of $200. I think there is this like upper class of Americans that does still use the internet that does need the internet that does rely on it for like sort of upward, you know, career mobility, et cetera. But to me, like the strongest distinction between high and low class Instagram is the way that these groups post. Like, I mean, you mentioned in a video that you made on Instagram that like the higher class sort of Instagram, they don't use filters as much, but they rely more on this like curated aesthetic where they just have a consistent kind of aesthetic that their content is imbued with and they're not putting like the puppy filter on their face. Another thing is if we agree we are presenting a version of ourselves, at least let that version of self be cohesive. the face I'm putting forward is one that's aligned with my behavior and myself no matter how I post it's it is integrated to the platform because of course it has to mean the platform is going to shape things but it's going to show you something consistent versus if you do a bunch of different filters now I'm trying a bunch of different versions of self I don't know who I am and I am trying to do anything I can to get you to like me that's kind of what's happening on that meta level why people see that as lower class. Yeah, I also think that they see it as low class because maybe there's like a technical illiteracy with the platform that hasn't evolved. Like when you see people using the puppy filter on Snapchat or you see people like, yeah, putting the Rio de Janeiro filter maybe on like their Instagram photos in a non-ironic way. Like it sort of signals that like you haven't evolved with the platform and perhaps you're not keeping up with technological change And even though at the same time that like being offline is seen as aspirational those people that are offline that are upper class are also it also important that they seem educated and you would expect them to still know how to navigate these platforms. And so I feel like part of this like idea of low class Instagram is like why you're using Instagram the way that somebody would have in 2014. And that signals to me that you're not very plugged in sort of culturally and maybe technologically. I think a good example of this is the photo dump. When the photo dump first emerged as a concept, it meant to get rid of the over curated Instagram aesthetic. And yet there's still a sort of narrative structure to the carousel format that if you really do an Instagram dump, you start to kind of swipe through it like it's a story and you want to build it like it's a story. So the first picture tends to be like a picture of the self or like a more curated photo. And then you'll have those shots with friends or the zoomed out landscape pictures, and then maybe you end on a meme. And that's sort of your dessert or reward for finishing a story. Once you are literate enough in the kind of semiotics of the Instagram carousel format, you begin to post more like your photo dump is a story rather than actually a mismatched accumulation of pictures. So a lower class Instagram user might actually post a different style of photo dump than a higher class Instagram user, because the higher class Instagram user, which again, this is tied to the elitism of education. And there is a pattern of I'm literate in this platform and you are not. What are other things that are considered low class Instagram behavior? Definitely the emojis in the bio and the if you have like a Bible verse, maybe that's a Christian thing, but it's still like there's some kind of what you put in the bio is also an important thing. Well, let's dig into the bio because I think you're 100% right. And we start to see these like, honestly, trends in bio, you know, the way that people write their bios emerge as well. I mean, I think just having like all my links or link tree or whatever signals something, too. That's like maybe I don't know if it's low class, but it's very influencer coded, which feels low class, I guess, because there's nothing more sort of low class and having to shill, you know, yourself on the Internet every day like we do, of course. Again, it's kind of just the same thing of how much are you saying you want to leave something up to mystery? you want to leave a joke and don't feel like you're exploiting the other person. So if anything, everything becomes about I'm redirecting you to my business, I'm trying to get you to do something, then it's you're exploiting people. And that doesn't feel good. And does I think it is tied to I want you I need you to pay attention to me versus I don't I don't care if you pay attention to me. If you're watching this video and you like my work, please support me on Patreon via the link below or by a paid subscription to my tech and online culture newsletter at usermag.co. That's usermag.co. 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Every dollar of your support makes such a difference. Yeah, I always feel like it's a lot. I mean, too many emojis in the bio, although I have emojis in my bio. But so, you know, again, I just don't want to, I don't want people to feel like I'm like, we're punching down here. But I think it's about the amount of information you share. I think when you look at the sort of high class Instagram people, and we're not even talking, you know, influencers per se, it's more just like these people that operate in more elite levels of society. I guess they don't have like everything, like their school, you know, when they've been out of school for 10 years and like all this other information. And when you look at the more like lower class Instagram, it's sometimes they'll have like their high school and college in there, even when they're like 35, it's weird. Or just like they're oversharing. There's too much information. It's like nurse, mama, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, I don't know, there's like an element to oversharing. The rule of thumb is undersharing, which is kind of sad because if anything, it's more authentic to overshare. We all want to tell people where we went to high school, but it becomes that baked in elite assemble. And that's where I think the division is between talking about these things to punch down in the lower class thing and talking about these things to raise awareness that people are having these feelings about how much you're signaling online. It's so sad that we can't just say what we want to say. I do want to say where I went to high school, but now it like seems weird to not, you know. I know, I know, I know. I don't want people feeling self-conscious because we all engage in this stuff. And like, again, I think if you make a living on the internet, you're inherently doing some low class kind of stuff. I mean, I think of even the most famous influencer, Mr. Beast, like, yes, he's rich, but I don't think anybody would sort of consider him like elite high class, although he doesn't run his own Instagram page. So maybe, you know, it is like a brand Instagram page at that point. Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, Mr. Beast is not the person, but this like content entity. I think when I think high class Instagram, Bad Bunny's Instagram account is just a blank profile picture and no posts right now. And he posts when something happens, but he's just got sitting on 50 million followers with nothing on his account. That is the super high class. And then the kind of high class where you do have photos is like this upper middle class where you know the rules, but you still want people to know about you. And then you get into different kind of spheres. But yeah, there's definitely like echelons of posting behavior. And I 100% agree on the billionaires are not even online. I think there's also a lot of differences in terms of consumption patterns and use patterns among high and low class Instagram users. You mentioned in your video, and I think this is 100% true, that lower class Instagram users are more likely to engage with quote unquote relatable content. And this is something that I know from even running a bunch of viral media companies, social media accounts back in the 2010s is like a lot of sort of lower class quote unquote people will, I think, see themselves in these like generic relatable memes. I mean, there is that whole Instagram account called middle class fancy that's just sort of like memes aimed at like mass American culture. A general pattern in class consumption that predates the internet that goes back to what kind of books versus magazines we're reading, what kind of TV are you watching, is that upper class educated elites tend to pursue things that improves their status and improves their class. So if I'm an elite educated upper class person, I will actively seek out educational content on YouTube so that I can continue growing. But if that's not a consideration, if that's not something that was socialized into you, because this is something that gets ingrained into class behaviors, then you do just like funny things at the end of the day. And we like there is something beautiful to the relatable meme that it just gets frowned upon through this idea and sociology of the habitus, which is the encircled feeling you get conditioned into that there's a certain type of behavior that's the correct one. Yeah. I mean, I think it's just like also the AI content has really played a role in this. There's this idea that people, the lower class people are just rotting their brains with AI slop and, you know, consuming brain rot all day. And it's very different from, yeah, the high class Instagram user who only uses YouTube to watch, you know, long form discussions of literary subjects or whatever people claim. And we all sort of flip flop back and forth. But I do think there's some truth to this. And, you know, I also think that as the media landscape in a general becomes more kind of like bifurcated and you see a lot more of the kind of like middle of the road, mainstream media news or go away. a lot of people like lower class people are getting their information directly from like the hood news, Instagram account clip, which posts, I don't know if you've ever seen that, like they post the most insane headlines that are like borderline falls, or I'm thinking of like, you know, pop crave, which does pop culture news, or just like these types of Instagram accounts that are aimed at like consume. Is it sort of like educating people about the world in a relatable style and conversational language. And this is true across sort of like demographics. And then the sort of higher class people, I feel like are turning more towards like newsletters, curated spaces, like products on the internet specifically like marketed towards those elite groups. There's a great paper in 2011, I think, by Dana Boyd called White Flight and Network Publix. And it talked about the early migration from MySpace to Facebook, where the first people to join Facebook were, I mean, obviously, it started in universities. But also beyond that, it's white, rich people. And after it had opened to the broader public, there's this pattern that continues happening, no matter what platforms we come up with, that once a platform gets oversaturated with normal people, the elite people want to flee to another platform. So there's a reason it doesn't even exist on Instagram itself. You'll find more upper class people on blue sky and sub stack. And at meantime, Facebook is sitting there abandoned with what I would I think of Facebook as like a lower class platform because the exact same thing that happened to MySpace then happened to Facebook. A certain kind of user got baked into it and the elites continue finding new things to differentiate themselves from other people. Yeah, and there's so much sort of like racial politics in that as well. And obviously, like obviously race and class are so intertwined, but it's really interesting to see kind of like that direct effect where people are like, why is all of this stuff being shown to me? like I am going to flee to this. Yeah. This more sort of like curated space. In addition to Instagram, I feel like, I mean, these behaviors, even though we're discussing it in the context of Instagram primarily, cause that's kind of how the discussion started to emerge online. And I do think that Instagram is at this sort of like pivotal point where it's like, it has reached saturation. It's in shitifying and people are kind of looking at it with a more critical eye. The apps that you see this class differentiation expressed, I think the most are dating apps because maybe you're so obviously trying to like market yourself on these apps. Would you say that there is like, you know, a high and low class way of using these apps? And obviously, of course, even just the apps that are used themselves. People have been making fun of the man with fish in his picture idea for a while. And there's a certain type of bio and the filter use thing bleeds over to this as well, where there is a higher class and lower class way of using dating apps. But of course, even which app you're on matters as well. Tinder is lower class than Hinge, which is lower class than Raya. At a certain point, being on Raya also comes across as trying too hard. And the real high class thing is just meeting people in person. But at the same time, it will always bleed over. These like cultural semiotics of how we're supposed to, I can tell from a dating app profile, like what your general income level in education is. And most people can as well. And it's just kind of used to reinforce these elite circles. And then you do have that same flight to other network areas idea. Well, it's so funny that Tinder is considered so low class because it truly like democratized dating in a way. It was the first major mobile dating app. And it started actually in very elite circles. It started in universities in, you know, USC. Basically Tinder marketed itself initially by Whitney Wolf actually and the co of Tinder would go to these colleges and go into elite sororities and elite frats and get them to use Tinder And so Tinder back then in the early sort of days was this like very cool and elite app that like, you know, these sort of aspirational people were on, as you mentioned, and then the masses came on and now it's seen as like low class, almost because it's too accessible. It's funny how much that parallels Facebook. there's this idea of territorialization and re-territorialization where anytime there's a great cultural shift like the enlightenment the industrial revolution the internet as a whole the emergence of a new app and the social media or dating ecosystem or whatever and then immediately things re-territorialize the elites the educated kind of groups try to find a way to continue their status and that might mean just finding another platform it might mean redefining how to use that platform in a way that aligns with their rules. And there are certain educated elite expectations that get carried over into this. And I think this pattern is how we see things like high income Instagram emerged in the first place, or high income dating apps or any of that, whatever you want to call it. It's because something gets de-territorialized and re-territorialized. It's so funny to think of Facebook too, like when it was, I'm a millennial. So like we had Facebook in college when it was still cool. And I remember at the time in the 2000s, there was this website that was like sort of a competing social media platform that arose that was European. It was called A Small World and the Wall Street Journal called it My Space for Millionaires. And I guess it was also founded in March 2004, like Harvey Weinstein invested in it. But it was supposed to be this like version of Facebook that didn't have all these like low class college kids on it. It was like only for real worldly elites. And I remember my friends and I like trying to get on it just to see like, you know, who was on there. But I think like you said, it's like this kind of tale as old as time. And I'm curious how these trends are evolving as we move into more closed spaces and private social networks. Cause it does seem like, I mean, people have talked about this, But in some sense, it feels like the era of like big mass social media is over. And as we move into these like smaller private spaces, like are those class divides going to get even worse? I mean, definitely true. We're past peak social media. We're moving back toward the in-person. It's cool to be in person again, which is a good thing, I think. But at the same time, that is where the elitism traditionally has grown the most. And you have things like that have been commented online, like the rich person laugh or studying linguistics. I see how there are certain ways that rich people speak or certain habits of standing or a certain volume of speaking, all these things that exist in person and eventually get replicated online. But you will always have elitism anywhere you go unless you get to the root of the problem. Right. Well, I think also like a lot of these issues are going to be exacerbated by AI. I mean, you mentioned kind of like the way that like rich people communicate and talk. And I don't know, there are concerns, I think, as we move into this kind of like AI dominated world, that there's kind of a lot of judgment and elitism around those AI things. Like, I mean, you've written yourself and I think you came on my show previously to talk about how like the M dash is seen as bad. Or recently as somebody that uses a lot of like you're taught actually in school, I think, to use like examples of three. So you'll be like giving examples and you'll be like, duh, duh. And now this is like seen as an AI tell. And I'm like, wait a minute, what? It's made me paranoid and made me alter my writing. So I don't know. I feel like AI could end up warping communication styles even further and exacerbating these kind of differences. I think this is really important to pay attention to. And first, I want to caveat that I'm not I don't think we should be letting AI companies off the hook and we should be scrutinizing how they affect our culture. But the fact is that that's now being turned into a class thing. And we know that, for example, AI says the word delve more than humans do. And now more humans are starting to say the word delve. Now, if you're in LEET, the thing you want to do to differentiate yourself from the lower classes is to not use the word delve, to not use the M dash, to not use it's not just X, it's Y and all these other chat GPT indicators. You want to speak like a real person in person because that's also now a class symbol. At the same time, you're being affected by all these other things. Delve is like the poster child for a much larger phenomenon and all these other words like commendable, meticulous, potential, crucial. All these are also being overrepresented and you're still saying them. So if anything, that's proof that you're not actually avoiding the AI. You're just doing it in a way that signals to other people you're avoiding AI. That becomes a class thing. We should, again, be scrutinizing how AI is affecting our speech. I just think of also even just look at the difference in marketing between Claude and ChatGPT and how people view the different LLMs. We're already seeing class stratification where like Claude is seen as elite. They're seen as like thoughtful, worldly, like, you know, the marketing campaigns that they've done have been in elite spaces. mostly in coastal cities trying to get like, you know, they've, they've repaying writers and media people to kind of participate in their marketing campaigns. And then chat GPT is kind of seen for the masses. And then Gemini, I think is seen as like bootleg, like you have a Android phone probably. And I think that that's an interesting, just like in how we use these AI products and kind of what also what these AI products like do for us and how they assist our own work. And like the, yeah, just the class dynamics sort of built into that. Just look at how Anthropic uses serif fonts. and ChatGPT uses sans serif. There's something there. The serif font alone signals tradition, expertise, old fashioned status. The sans serif signals modernity, efficiency. And now people are tying the sans serif to slop. This is one of my theories for why I think serif fonts are back, which personally I like, I think they're pretty, but I probably think that because I'm socialized into liking them. But at the same time, I think we're now associating these sans serif fonts, which is without the little hooks on the bottom, with just slop, with efficient communication. and you're starting to get a little disgusting, but Claude is doing a good job of marketing to rich people, and part of that is the return of the serif font. But absolutely, it's the same thing as the Facebook, or the same thing as moving off of Tinder. There's a certain elite group clustering in a certain area, and when Claude becomes big enough, people are just going to hop to another thing. It's interesting, even the way influencers post online, you need good lighting. Class will always be part of the hook. You need to hook people in somehow to convince you to watch their video. And if I don't seem like I know what I'm talking about, you're not going to watch my video. I think I think about this a lot as an educational influencer. But in general, you will only watch the video of someone who on an immediate subconscious assessment, you respect this person. They're talking loudly there. They have good lighting. They seem rich. All these things will get you to listen to someone. And unfortunately, that means that class symbols are replicated even in how influencers talk. Of course, there's dynamics that push in the other direction as well. Yeah. Well, I also think there's this like fetishization. I can never pronounce this word. But anyway, there is this fetishization of like low class Instagram as well, especially when Reels started. I mean, I think Reels was seen as low class initially compared to TikTok, mostly because a lot of like average Instagram users didn't realize they were posting Reels. One day, Instagram essentially just made any video that you posted under 90 seconds a Reel. And so I think a lot of people didn't realize that their content that they thought was just sort of like personal random content was being distributed to millions of people in the Reels feed. And so you would sort of stumble, Katie Natopoulos, who's a great journalist, wrote about this, but like you would sort of just stumble over these like weird videos and like peeks into sort of like people's obscure, like lower class American lives, I guess, compared to TikTok, which was always meant like seen as this place where like you were intentionally posting usually to become an influencer. There's something similar with YouTube shorts there that there's also a meta implication of who's on this platform. The people on TikTok chose to seek this out by using Instagram reels or YouTube shorts. Even by using it, you're kind of effectively admitting that I was on here for something else because we all were. And then I got sucked into this. It's a confession that you didn't mean to be on here. Yeah, it's so funny. People will talk about like YouTube shorts brain and how like YouTube shorts, It's like it is the lowest class of all of them because people are like, you fell for the algorithm. You got sucked into this slop. And I think because so much of it is AI generated or just like movie clips, it's seen as like not thoughtful content. Whereas TikTok is probably the most like thoughtful analytical content compared to like all the short form platforms. But I also think it's just like been interesting to see as people. Are you familiar with the resilient Jenkins? She was homeless and she was living in a hotel and she was like raising her kids. and she's, she's not, you know, she has no money and she's talked about like basically not having a life, but her videos were ones that initially people were like making fun of. And like, I think looking at like poverty porn basically. And then she kind of has like gotten an audience, but of course, as she's gotten an audience, she's getting a lot of haters of like, you're not working hard enough. You should be like, you're responsible for this situation that you're in, whatever, whatever. But I think it's like interesting to see people like her as these algorithmic feeds kind of just were getting started. They were putting a lot of low class, like content into high class people's feeds. those people would then watch it ironically and they kind of became influencers. Now, I think that that's sort of changed where I think the algorithm is like evolved enough where like you're not getting it. Even the platform's moving away from it. So TikTok's payment structure has changed now where they will only really pay you money if you have a stable camera with good lighting minute long videos. And what that means is you need the infrastructure to be able to afford that, to be able to know how to set that up, to be able to know how to edit it. TikTok has moved away from democratic communication. And, you know, that's not even getting into changes in ownership and potentially where the algorithm has been incentivizing, but they are trying to be more of a longer form, prestigious platform. And they have changed things to align with that business priority. I mean, YouTube itself is going in this way. In one sense, they want to see be seen as like premium and, you know, a real competitor to Netflix with this like long form elite content and, you know, YouTube originals. And then at the same time, they're just feeding slop to the masses. with like their, you know, AI generated shorts and stuff. And so it does sort of seem like this weird divide. Yeah, no, even within that, you always have a bifurcation of what you see. And it's strange how algorithms amplify maybe our innate inclinations, pushing us down certain routes because they match us with clusters of people with similar behaviors. So what you already have going into these platforms, blank slate is people with similar behaviors that are grouped by class. And then that gets compounded by what is shown. So you end up having poor people watch relatable memes and then upper class people consume intellectual content because that's what the algorithm even serves you. You don't even have it. And it comes back to the agency thing a little bit as well. Yeah. Well, it's also like these platforms know so much. It's not even just our behavior that they're gathering data. They know your purchasing history. They know how much money you make. They probably know your zip code. Like, I mean, TikTok initially, too, when it when it launched, it was so geographically sort of centered where you were getting a lot of content that was geographically in your area. I think of even Snapchat, too, where for a while Snapchat was sort of publicizing public stories and stuff that it was just trying to like. But it was, yeah, would allow you to mostly get content from and consume content from people that are like you. So I wonder if we're getting sort of more or less class mobility for these reasons. I mean, the Internet was supposed to be this democratizing force. And you saw so many people kind of leverage. I mean, the influencer economy is a lot of people just sort of like leveraging the attention economy for their own profit. But it seems like as we moving further and further into algorithms and AI and everything that like I don know we might be getting more into our own class bubbles And it might be harder and harder as the amount of data that they collect on us grows to kind of get out of that Right. And the whole thing with the algorithms that I mentioned is now only compounded where there is more people making content. Like when I started out as an etymology creator, I'm probably already the contents being served to like educated audiences. But now there's like a dozen etymology creators and there's a whole cluster of like you're only getting certain videos that otherwise you might have had a broader spread when there was less content being uploaded. Now there's such an oversaturation that it's easier to silo people than ever along lines of class and race and all this other stuff. Well, another thing that, you know, it's so funny when I was interviewing Kyle James Patrick, the guy who's the king of preppy old money Instagram. He actually comes from a working class background and he doesn't come from this world. And he built this audience through curating this public brand and like really being observant over these like class signifiers and intentionally including them in his posts and all this stuff. And I just thought of that, like you could do that. And that's not his real name. I think it's, I think he has a, he made it like his moniker. I think his real name is Kyle, something else. But I wonder as we move into this world where now, of course, as I've reported a lot on like Congress and everyone in power is trying to strip anonymity from the internet and tie absolutely everything you do to this mass AI surveillance state that has your name and your real name is sort of affiliated with everything. If it will be harder for people to kind of like experiment a little bit and get out of their bubble and like, you know, develop their own personalities, not that they have to like pretend to be rich online to make themselves rich. But like, you know, I feel bad for people that do grow up lower class, and maybe they want to kind of hide a little bit of personal information about themselves. And it's just increasingly hard to do that. That's part of the re-territorialization I was talking about. When the internet first came around, it was just this incredibly democratic opportunity for anybody to have a voice regardless. And again, with algorithmic social media, anybody initially had a voice on TikTok, and now it's moved in the other direction. But that threatens the elites. We want to maintain our kind of our cultural hegemony. We want to make sure that we are still in control and we feel, you know, concerned if that's threatened. And so we find new ways to assert our power, which is these little symbols. And it's not even on a conscious level. I don't think that most people have really thought about this or talked about this or are thinking, yeah, I want to assert myself over poor people. That's not really what's happening but it it is like in our heads we are animalistic in group out group tribalistic and we want to maintain our tribes and the the phone thing is kind of tied to the class thing as well i hate the phone thing so much i i did this interview recently for wired actually where they were asking about my screen time which was obscene it was this one week that i was working so much and i honestly think my screen time was almost 17 hours a day average because are you okay? I'm working. Trust me. I'm not. But by saying that I'm making this, this implicit judgment about screen bad, you know? Well, I was talking with the editor about it. I think she was like, are you sure you want to like put this out there or something? And I was like, I mean, and I'd sent her kind of like a average of several weeks. I'm like, you know, it's not all. And also I do Spotify and YouTube, but here I am trying to justify it because again, it's like, it's seen as like being online is really bad. And I worry about that as we move, like the internet was this democratizing force. And as being online is stigmatized, like, I think so much of the internet has been used to challenge power. So much information on the internet is used to challenge power. And now we're seeing elites kind of trying to reassert power on the internet and also stigmatize internet use and like stigmatize people that get their information from the internet as sort of like stupid and unreliable. Yeah, no, well, mixed opinions on the information thing. One, we should always mistrust mainstream news to a degree, to a degree. But in another sense, it's complicated because... The internet's also full of misinformation. I I don't want to say that like you're getting that's right. Yeah, 100%. We should be scrutinizing the old media, which was nice that the internet gave us alternate perspectives and ways of looking at things. But at the same time, now we're in a place where we're flooded with this clearly fake information online, slop political content that's meant to swear opinions from God knows where. And now maybe there is a genuine need to return to more established, trustworthy institutions. But that's what's so bad, Adam. I think that if you look at the defining political events over the past few years, like Gaza, like COVID, a lot of stuff, like it has been defined by actually the mainstream media really dropping the ball and people getting accurate information from the internet. And like, I write for mainstream media still, I've worked in it for many years. I do think that there is like something to having journalism and journalistic ethics and sort of, you know, an institution site setting, but if that's being gutted, and if you look at the way institutional media is going right now with like the Ellison's and control and stuff, like even journalists in mainstream media are like, I wouldn't trust, I work here and I don't trust the news that comes out of this place. So I just feel like we're in this like super toxic swamp where there's like less information than ever. We need something to trust, but we kind of got that offline for the online, but then that's less trustworthy. I think about this with the move from like polling to prediction markets where prediction markets are very manipulable and malleable. And that's why the poly market for, well, Jesus Christ return is sitting at 5% because there's a derivative market betting on that. And people should be aware that these markets are not actually like as good as they might be at predicting elections. There's something to a poll where somebody actually goes out and gathers information. And yes, right now they're less accurate. But what that's doing, the prediction markets are killing the polling industry, which I find really concerning because now there's less actual real world information to gather, which is will be going more on vibes in the future if less polling exists. So it's kind of this tradeoff where, yes, I agree that prediction markets literally are more accurate modeling elections right now. But what you're doing is that's coming at the expense of this institutional thing. So again, there's that balance. Yeah, I feel like we're in this like transitional time and it's really hard for people to navigate. And of course, like, I mean, all of these problems are bigger than like low class Instagram, but it's interesting to see like some of these bigger issues kind of like play out through just these subtle class divides, even within these mass platforms that sort of still exist. And you'll again have that retortualization, the echoing of with the prediction markets, For example, there was like a French whale in Polymarket during the and what he did is he just commissioned his own poll. And that's what's going to happen is that we're going to lose the ability and the funding for real public polling. And then the rich people privately fund polls anyway and then profit at the expense of everybody else. And now we think it's this great democratic thing. And it is in a way. But at the same time, that should not be coming at the expense of institutional credibility in real world. And I know with mainstream news, nobody at the mainstream news is actively trying to lie to you. They got a lot of problems going on with. I do think that there are bad actors and that people just need to sort of take a sharper sort of eye to media. Well, I think the broader thing I was trying to say is while the structures can be misaligned and there can be bad actors, I really don't believe that the average journalist really wants to harm the person that's reading their article. And this could be true with the social media ecosystem where there are like it's easier for bad actors to get distribution and get a platform, something to pay attention to. But that sort of like epistemic foundation of what we think is true and real and where we seek information from then kind of turns back into the class thing where the elites will have their own ways of gathering information, of knowing what's true and not true and perpetuating that in their circles while lower class people are just going to be left believing whatever they say. That's just, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then I think they have their sort of media consumption stigmatized, which I hate. so yeah it's really interesting to play it out i definitely like when i saw your original video was like looking at my own instagram bio like oh no i have the emojis i have the information like this is so bad maybe i should make it look more you know high class but well beyond class there's also just prestige and coolness and there's something maybe millennial coded about the emojis and maybe you brought up millennials earlier but no no offense but there is like a coolness to gen z and i'm sure we're going to be uncool and gen alpha is eventually going to be cooler. But there's a point where there's a youth momentum toward a certain type of style that you need to know the indicators of. Yes, definitely. I think of this actually with college kids a lot. I have a bunch of cousins in college and stuff and and them and their friends like have these norms around their bios that kind of can change even like from year to year. But it's definitely like this is how like a 19 year old posts and has their bio and these norms are accepted among these groups and they're honestly not even visible to like the average 30 year old well it's going to exist online it's going to exist offline it's just these will always be here i also think just as surveillance takes off and like there's more and more efforts to surveil people that it's not only just like being offline that's a luxury but it's like having data privacy is becoming a luxury and i think of this where i was looking to get a vacuum recently like one of those like automatic sort of vacuum things the cheaper ones are of course the ones that harvest all of your data And same thing with televisions now, like the cheapest smart smart TVs, they just mass harvest your data. And so I just wonder, too, like as these class divides proliferate outside of just social platforms, but through technology as a whole, like how is that going to, you know, affect people? Because it seems like like richer people are going to be able to opt out of this like surveillance advertising ecosystem and surveillance state just generally. I've been thinking a lot about AI generated menus recently. I go to Chinatown sometimes and I sit at the restaurant and they give me an AI generated menu. Like clearly the artwork is like from ChatGPT. And my initial reaction, of course, is like, this is gross. I want a real menu. And then I, you know, I think like, and I'm not saying this in defense of AI particularly, but there is a class thing here too, where there's a certain level of wealth where you can hire a graphic designer and think about what the consumer expectation is of a menu. And at the end of the day, it's just like, how good is the food here? That's all I'm really here for. And it's sad that I have this baked in idea that I want this elite menu with serif fonts or whatever, instead of a menu somebody could afford to make. But of course, now it connects to the data privacy thing. It connects to the ecological stuff. It connects to a lot of stuff. But our initial reaction to it, we have to remember, while we're at the same time scrutinizing AI, we have to remember that we are bringing in these sort of elite attitudes about how technology is actually getting implemented. Yeah, 100%. And I think we can think about that, right? Like as new tech rolls out and like, why do we want to quit Instagram? Or why do we feel uncomfortable in these spaces or making these, like you said, like sort of like looking askew at the AI generated menu. Or I went to a wedding recently where there was all the artwork was AI generated on all the invitations. Like, oh God. But you just saved thousands of dollars on like, yeah. I know. I know. I totally, I get why. Look, weddings are expensive. I think I was just like, girl, doesn't, you don't need to do that. AI art. But I think it's also like, yeah, it's like, how plugged in are you? Are you even plugged in enough to know about like, you know, these elite sort of debates about AI and art? Or are you just like, oh, this is cool. I can make like AI generated flowers on my, you know, on my wedding invitations now. Adam, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. All right. That's it for this week's episode of Power User. If you like my work, please, please support me on Patreon via the link below or buy a paid subscription to my Substack newsletter at usermag.co. That's usermag.co. You can also get my newsletter on Patreon where I do a monthly bonus Q&A live stream and more. I have zero long-term advertising partnership and because of what I cover, a lot of my content ends up demonetized or with very low CPM. So every single dollar of your support makes such a difference and ensures that I can continue to produce this show. Thank you so much. And I'll be back next week with a brand new episode of Power User. See you then.