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Be There in Five

Swipe Up For More (feat. Steph McNeal)

Be There in Five

Kate Kennedy

Personal Journals, Entertainment News, News, Society & Culture

4.87.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 June 2023

⏱️ 114 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week, Stephanie McNeal (former culture reporter for BuzzFeed, currently a senior editor at Glamour Magazine, and the recent nemesis of Tom Sandoval’s nail beds) returns to the podcast to discuss her new book about the lives of influencers called Swipe Up For More. First, Kate reminisces about their first convo in 2020, does a brief snorkel about Caroline Calloway’s upcoming $65 book made from Italian paper (?), and then Kate and Stephanie dive into topics from her book, e.g. what it was like to shadow Shannon Bird IRL, her pilgrimage to the Utah suburbs, how/why she chose which influencers to feature, virality versus consistency in audience building, the difference between bloggers, influencers and content creators, which platforms prioritize the success of their creators, and other insights behind the curtain and into the 'secretive real world of influencers,' per her subtitle. Enjoy!

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hi everybody, welcome back to the Be There In 5 podcast. I'm Kate Kennedy, your host. I'm

0:13.4

so excited today because we have a guest that was on in 2020 that I know you all loved

0:20.7

and at the time it was like a, it was like a three part series. Like am I okay? Of influencers

0:27.4

in the time of COVID? It feels like April, May 2020 when we realized like we were in the

0:34.1

thick of it regarding the pandemic. It wasn't a two week lockdown. Things got really serious.

0:42.1

It was important that rules were followed for the sake of public health and safety. And

0:49.2

there was a real microscope on what influencers were doing specifically in regards to, you

0:54.7

know, upholding protocol. And I remember feeling very stressed at the time being like, I want

1:00.8

to talk about this, but I don't know how I think by and large people are like doing their

1:04.9

best and people are a little bit hard on them. But at the same time, like there was just an

1:10.3

egregious ignoring of rules by people like Taza and Ariel Charnes and whatever. And I wanted

1:17.4

like a third party to talk to who had some like expertise in the space who could speak to this

1:22.5

like journalistically. So we weren't just snarking. And I was looking back at my notes. And I

1:27.6

remember being very nervous like pitch and try to get Stephanie McNeil who at the time worked

1:32.7

for Buzzfeed on the podcast. Anyway, point being we're going to talk to her today about her book

1:38.3

that came out this past week called Swipe Up for More. It's a really interesting book where she

1:43.0

follows like three influencers over the course of two years and also kind of uses about what she's

1:50.0

learned about how the industry has evolved, how she feels about different platforms. Now they support

1:54.3

their creators as a whole chapter about how things shifted in like 2020. And she just follows the

1:59.7

stories of three very different women who've had very different experiences online. And it's just

2:02.9

it's a really fun read. And I knew like it's something you guys would pick up anyway. And I know

2:08.3

I've been going hard for Beth's book, club lately. But there was a handful of books that came out

...

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