Hello, hello and welcome back to a bit fruity. I'm Matt Bernstein and I'm so happy that you're here.

Today we are going to be talking about someone and something

that I have not been able to look away from in like three years and I feel like if I don't get it out in podcast form

then it's just going to keep rotting through the insides of my brain and we

can't have that. To help us explain the phenomenon of Ali London, we are joined today by the one

and only Taylor Lorenz. Taylor is a tech reporter for the Washington Post. She is the host of a new podcast called

Power User. She is exceptionally smart. She's a historian of the internet and I couldn't

think of a better person to spend today with Taylor welcome to a bit

fruity. Thanks for having me. Just to kick this off what is a grift how would you

define a grift a grifter because I feel like this is a grift, grifter, because I feel like this is a word that not everyone is

super familiar with. I totally agree and I actually use it all the time. Yeah.

I think because there's so much grifting happening on the internet.

I would say a grifter is somebody that essentially exploits something, usually the attention economy

online, to push a message or to sell something or to make themselves famous.

It's sort of like a disingenuous person who they're running an operation,

you know, like there's always something at play they're kind

of dubious you shouldn't trust them the way that I sometimes explain what a grifter is to people

who are unfamiliar with it is like I think there's this idea that when you have a microphone

you are expressing your opinion to an audience who can then choose to agree or

disagree and you're attracting an audience based on you know people who are interested in what you have to say.

What I think Grifter does is they take kind of the temperature of the room of what do people want me to say or where is the most money in what I can say and then they say that thing.

Exactly.

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