The Dark Influence of Influencers w/ Jo Piazza

particle on an asteroid flying through space, so exactly. Yeah, just aspect or aspects. Welcome to go, ask Allie. I'm Ali Wentworth. In this season, I'm digging into everything I can get my hands on, just peeling back the layers and getting dirty. Now listen before we jump into today's episode. It's a mail bag moment. That's right, guys, Listeners ask me this question. I thought it was such a good one. I want to answer it on the air, So here

we go. Hi, Ali, I'm stuck in a friendship that I feel as run its course, but I don't know if I should do something about it or not. We've been friends for over ten years. So it's tricky and I kind of feel bad about it. I'm not the kind of person to go someone, but having to sit down we've got to talk moment feels cringe e too. I really don't know how to handle it. And then I thought I could go ask Ali l O l

any advice would be great. Okay, So I sort of think that friendships are a lot like love relationships because I think much like love relationships, we grow and change, and you kind of need your friends to grow and change with you. Here's my advice. I think you can slowly pull away without hurting feelings, meaning you don't want to ghost you just you know, maybe answer every third call,

be busy and slowly just pull away. And by the way, if the friend eventually comes to you and says, hey, what's going on, you know I never talked to you. I'm kind of getting my feelings. Are You owe the

friendship to sit down? So as cringe e as that might be, if they request it, you should definitely go and meet and just sort of talk about some of the things that have been problematic for you and a maybe you kind of resolve those and the friendship gets deeper or be you kind of resolve those and go off on your merry ways. So that is my advice. Um, I hope that helps, And now I'm going to jump into this episode. It's all about the power of social

media on new moms. When I was a new mom, I was so vulnerable because I didn't know what I was doing. How long do I breastfeed for? What does it mean when the baby spits up? Should I put these dump socks on her or are they cutting off her blood flow? Should she sleep on her stomach or her back? Should I play music or not? If the TV is on? Is it ruining her brain? Endless, endless questions. And it doesn't matter how many books you've read or how many friends you've talked to, you always feel like

you're just not quite doing it right. And I didn't pay any attention to social media when I was a new mom. But thank god I didn't fall down that rabbit hole, because you don't need to be told that you're doing everything wrong or that this other mom who just gave birth two seconds ago suddenly has a bikini body. So the idea that social media can pounce on new moms and make you sort of circle the drain and

feel even worse about it. Is enormous and it is why my guest today is the perfect person to break down the whole structure of the mommy influencer. Joe Piazza is a bestselling author, award winning journalist, and prolific podcaster. Her critically acclaimed novels and nonfiction books include Good Morning America, Book Club Pick, We Are Not Like Them, Charlotte Walsh, Likes to Win The Knockoff, and How to Be Married. Her work has been published in ten languages in twelve countries.

Joe is a creator and executive producer of four podcasts I Have No idea how she does that with Little Kids Committed, Fierce the Pod Club, and Under the Influence, where she explores the world of Instagram influencers on New Moms and which has just started its second season. H

Hello Joe Piazza By Hello Hello. I have to say we've never met, but I feel a kinship with you because you have been down in the trenches that I have been down in as well being a mom, being a writer, and you have four podcasts I can barely do one, so I'm I bow to you because of that. But the mom influencer thing is something that I have been incredibly interested in for years, because, like I could give you a sixty minute speech on how I feel

about social media for teenage g girls. Yeah, and I all I do is lecture my children about like, you know, no bikini shots and these are girls that have holes they're trying to fill and sexual this and sexual that. But the mom thing has sort of a similar reaction, I guess you could say, especially for new moms. And tell me the whole genesis of how Joe became nished in the mommy influencer world obsessed with mom influencers, just completely unhealthily obsessed. So my my second baby be who

is now not a baby. She's two years old. She thinks she's twenty seven, sure, But when she was a baby baby, like when she was first born, she had colic. She never slept, so I didn't sleep, and all I could use while I was rocking her putting her on the boob was my thumb to scroll through my phone. I'm scrolling through my phone. I'm watching the first season of The West Wing, which for some reason I find very comforting, and I'm looking it Instagram and then Instagram

because it's listening to you all the time. Start serving me up mom influencers, who are people I had never really followed before, Like it was it was not my jam. I'm a writer. I follow other authors, I followed like news accounts. But all of a sudden, I'm getting these women. They've got like four or five babies, they live in perfectly white houses. Everything in their lives is allegedly organic.

They never wear shoes, you right, yeah, but it looks good on them, like it always just looks good on them, of course, And then and then, and there's often chickens running around. But I'm looking at these women and I'm there with an angry baby covered in pea and pooh and everything, And I was like, who the hell are these women? And also why are they all trying to

sell me something? They will all were like it was all It was all just a massive ad, And partially because I was postpartum crazy, and partially because I'm a journalist so when I want to figure out the world, I just start reporting it. I was like, all right, I gotta do a podcast about this. It's going to be an expose of mom influencers and what this means and how that hell did we get here? And that's

how the podcast Under the Influence was born. But it became so much more interesting because first off, they're creating entire magazines on Instagram like they're putting it. The work is so hard and I tried to be an influencer and I failed. So how did you fail? Just so bad? I did you have nothing to influence? I think I have nothing influence. Nothing I own is aspirational in the least, like nobody wants nobody wants to wear my like raggedy vintage sweaters, are all of the handmade outs that I

have my kids in. My house is not all white and beautiful. Like I am just not aspirational. And I'm also bad at talking about myself. And I think that's true for a lot of reporters. We love talking to other people. But I couldn't even write a caption to be like, look at me today. I took b to the zoo and we dressed up in our gorgeous little bla and I just felt weird and my kids hated it. It got to the point where they could I mean,

we couldn't speak. My two and a half year all at the time was like no more photos, no more photos, no more photos. Well, you actually hired a photographer right to capture adorable pajama moments. Yes, yes, yeah I did. I did because you have to. So another thing I learned is I thought, I'm like, oh, they just take the pictures and they ran a caption, they get paid for it. Like that seems like easy. I like easy money. But they're all hiring photographers to take like an entire

month of content in a single day. So we tried that with my family and it ended in tears after just one outfit. But there was just like, no more, And how's your husband feeling about it? Is your husband like, okay, I'll go put on the Halloween costume for this shot. Yes. Yes. In the beginning he looked at it like, you know, with detached amusement, and then he was just like, this is so dumb. We have to stop this. Like I respect your podcasting and talking about this, but I think

this is absurd. I don't think I could get my husband, George to to do that. I don't think I could. Oh you know, you guys have been married longer than us too. That's so. And we're still we're just approaching the seven year itch, and so I think he's still like, oh my gosh, I'm trying. I want to make you as happy as possible. Yeah, that'll go away after the seven years. That's what I think. That's what I think

is good. I mean, I think, I think, I think it lost its luster while I was making this podcast. So so yeah so but so. These women are putting real work in but all of it's fake. None of it's their real lives. And they admit that too on the podcast. But a lot of them are just trying to make a living with as moms and trying to have flexible hours and still contribute to the family because frankly, the job market is not conducive to being a mom

at all. When I worked in magazines, the women that had kids, and I was so in my twenties, but the women that had kids were at that office every night until eight o'clock. They never saw their kids, and so I didn't know big respect for mom influencers. I'm still very critical of the world. I think there's so many dangers inherent in social media. I think it's bad for our mental health. I think it's bad for humanity. And I mean I think it's I think it is the end of us. It's the it will be the

end of Western civilization as we know it. But you know, yes, it is the end. But that's what I believe. But we're trying to do a podcast, so we're going to keep it light and fun. It's mommy Influencers. But um so tell me walk me through how a mommy influencer begins, because I I missed that when my kids were little. I mean, I have nineteen year old and a sixteen year old, and mommy influencers were not like a thing

back when I had a colloquy daughter. But I think that mommy bloggers were just coming up then, right, So we're talking, yeah, but it was more about the mommy bloggers were more like we're all in this together kind of thing and less yes I'm perfect, so by this aloe juice. You know, it wasn't so commerce oriented, right, But I love to go back to the early mommy bloggers in the early two thousand's because women were hungry

for community. Yes, we were trying to raise these kids and figure this out, this terrible, terrible dumpster fire of the postpartum period on our own and the early mommy bloggers were raw and honest and authentic, and I think they formed a really great community. It did because when you think about it, I mean, certainly back in the day, in the olden days, you know, it was your mom and your mother in law and your sisters were all part of the village. And so in this you know,

kind of new independent world, we don't have that. So we reach, you know, we kind of put our tentacles out in other ways to get all that information. And of course now it's social media. That's how we get all our intel of it. Exactly. Yeah. Well, so I mean with our village gone, motherhood was really lonely. And then Instagram comes on the scene around and the mom

blogging starts shifting into the pictures and the captions. And once the brands got involved, and it was the brands got involved in the mom blogs too, it really did turn into a lot of like hashtag sponsored content. And then that's also when it started to get very beautiful and very clean, because the brands wanted it a certain way if they were going to pay you. And it got even worse when Instagram gets involved, and then doubly worse.

And I actually think the end of days started coming around when Instagram Stories was created, because then these women had to broadcast a perfect life around the clock twenty four hours a day in order to get brands to pay them and also sell, sell, sell, sell sell. So I think that when the advertising got introduced, we then had this perfect storm of commerce meeting this new form of media at this ridiculously addictive and bad for us.

And now we're being sold to constantly on our phones by people who feel like there are friends, but it's actually a disturbing paris social relationship. And according to Elon Musk, soon a chip in our head. Soon they'll literally be in our head exactly exactly, which I believe we live in Black Mirror and black Squad both. So do you have to have a certain amount of likes to be able to become a mom influencer? I mean I would think a brand is not going to pay anybody under

a hundred thousand followers. Oh no, that's that's actually no longer true. We're talking about at this point hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of women who are influencing on Instagram, and they can have anywhere from five thousand followers to a million followers and still make money, and the range of influencers it runs the gamut. But it's also touching every different kind of mother, which I think is fascinating. So there's a mom influencer for the bohemian hippie mom.

There's a mom influencer for the sassy I get my eyelashes put on every three weeks mom. There's a mom influencer for every type of mom out there. It has become so incredibly pervasive that I think that the majority of moms now who are just becoming parents have no

way to really escape it if they're on Instagram. What brands have found out is because brands want to infiltrate all communities, right, they've discovered that something called micro influencers and even nano influencers, which every time I hear that, I remember the iPod nano teeny tiny little iPod that

slipped in her back pocket. Um, those are influencers, but with between five thousand and ten thousand followers, their community is actually really engaged, and so they can make money, not nearly as much as a big time influencer, but there's entire platforms set up to be like okay, will you put Windex in your picture. Great, we'll pay you fifty dollars. Will you make a video about how much

you love this organic rubber pacifier? Amazing? Here's another. So it's not like big time set your former working salary money, but it's extra cash. And you also feel like you have a purpose, which I think a lot of new mothers feel really lost and they want to feel like they're contributing and they want a purpose, and influencing feels like something they can do while they have their babies

running around and what is like ballpark? What's the most you've ever heard of a mobby influencer making a year over a million? Oh my god? Yeah? Absolutely, you need to have over You need to have over a million followers to be at that point. Yeah. Are they all celebrities? They're not. So the most the ones that get paid the most, let's be honest, are all former contestants on

The Bachelor. I mean because now every former contestant on The Bachelor and Bachelorette is of mommy age because the show has been on for a gazillion years and they become really often become very successful mom influencers. They already have a large following but I kind of put them in the category of celebrity, right. I hesitate to call out anyone's salary because none of it is reportable. But I've gotten a sense by talking to some of the brands that work with these women that there are a

small handful of women making seven figures. Wow, that's incredible, you know. I interviewed one mom influencer who she only started a few years ago after she had her kids. She had three kids, and she was very, very transparent about how much money she's making. She has since quit her full time job does this. She also trains other mom influencers, and she was making I think three hundred grand a year and now like she's expected to make like half a million next year. It's her name is

Tina Makes and her instagram is her life Sparkles. But she had thousand followers, We're not talking a million followers, and she said she was making three hundred grand. Um. I loved Tina's story too, because she's a black woman, and black women haven't often have a harder time breaking into mom influencing because Instagram's algorithm, which they'll never admit, but it seems to favor a certain type of white

blonde mom. But Tina has just kicked some serious but and she's she's making insane bank And is she completely honest about all of it? Or is she like everything's perfect, you know, everything's organic. Yeah, you know, her pictures are beautiful. There's not a single picture on her account that is not beautiful, but her captions, she does keep it real. But I like to call that kind of reality Instagram reality, like, you know, cautious honesty, right, like oh I was anxious

when I woke up this morning, or I hate mondays. Yes, it's not like, oh my god, I think I want to murder my husband? Why did I have seven glasses of wine last night? Like it's never that kind of honest to be Who's going to be the first person to really do that? To be so transparent because I mean, there's aspirational and there's relatable, and there's not that many relatable mommy influencers I find. I find that they're all

aspirational or they're all lies. A lot of them are lies and aspirational, and those two things intersect so much. I found some really cool moms on TikTok, which I don't go on TikTok personally because I don't understand it. I haven't found them on Instagram yet. My kids are constantly saying, get a TikTok account, Mom, And I go, why, I'm not going to dance to music. I don't. I can't do this, but yes, and I don't even I

don't want to watch others dance to music either. It's not my ju And in fact, I have a book coming out in May and HarperCollins was like, will you get a TikTok account? And I go for a book that like that to me is ahead scratcher. But I guess you just TikTok your way through life. And it's time for a short break and we're back. So where do you stand with mom? Influencers? Are you into it? I respect it? You respect it? Okay, there is absolutely

so much work going into it. I respect what they're doing. I respect what they're trying to do. And I think a lot of women are doing this because society fails women like it fails to give us a safety net, it fails to give us flexible ways to work. And that is why I have to respect it. But my biggest issue with it is I think it's going to screw up generations and generations of kids. One of the crazy ist stories I've come across in the second season.

It's our second episode UM of a second season Under the Influence, and it's a mom influencer who would always posted pictures of her kids. She's got four kids, and someone stole those pictures because you can't screenshot it, and created a fake account that was a role playing account with all the new names for her kids and all new descriptions of their life. And like, these role playing

accounts exist. Some of them are innocent but creepy as hell and terrible, and some of them are sexual predators online. And as a mom influencer, you've got to put your kids online most of the time. It's part of your brand. And I think putting kids on Instagram is dangerous and just can lead to terrible things. So a lot of the mom influencers I've met UM and some after listening

to the podcast, took their kids off. One woman even completely got off Instagram, and I I was like, I'll do my podcast, I'll do my blog, but this is unhealthy for all of us. Well, I mean, more and more research points to the fact that having your kids on a public platform. Uh, you're just asking for predators. And I mean I was listening to your podcast and I heard the story about the babysitter who came up to your babysitter and said, oh yeah, I used to babysit

for them. And it's somebody you've never seen or met before in your life. So you're inviting too many scary things. And for me, with our kids, they have their on private accounts, but even on the private accounts that I monitor, I always say, just cupcakes and puppies, Like I don't want to see bikini shots. I don't want to see anything sexual because we are sexualizing this whole generation of girls. We just are. And I look now at some of my sixteen year old friends and I just go, oh

my god. It's like almost pornography. And of course every pedophile and their brother are out there looking at all this stuff and contacting and d m NG and you know, meet me at Starbucks, you know. So I'm glad that a lot of mom influencers understand that putting their children out there in a public arena is a really dangerous thing. Yeah, I am too. It was one of the great things about reporting the first season of under the influence. I

didn't know what the influencers would think. I mean, it wasn't top of my mind really, I wanted to report a good podcast. But they were really into it, I think because they had never seen their careers taken seriously before, and most pressed that is just like mocking. It's like a mommy influencers, whereas when dads are on any social media, you never call them daddy influencers. You're like, look at that entrepreneurs, like how hard he's working. But right there.

But also they really listened, they like really listened to the reporting to be like, oh my gosh, it is damaging what we're doing with the children. And also there's so much hate speech against all women that put themselves on social media. That was another big thing that came up. Well, I was going to ask you about that to what what happened? The hate speech is what like, you don't know what you're doing, and yeah, that kind of stuff.

You're a terrible mom. Yeah, everything, you can't do anything right, So your own worst, your own worst internal monologue come to life. Right, But that's just a nature of social media. Yeah, exactly, exactly everything you already hate about yourself as a human being and mother, someone is telling you. Um. So they took it to heart in the second season where the second season, here's our big reveal, which I haven't talked about yet. Oh my god, I know, I know. It's

a scoop. Um. We're calling on women to get the hell off at least for a day, right, just the whole day of women, especially influencers who make the content, to get off, to see how it feels for us, but also to show the men running these companies how much power women have to make the content that brings in all of their money. That's pretty great. Yeah, that's great. It's so fun. We're comparing it to the women's stay off in Iceland, which actually worked in ninety four, seventy four,

seventy five. All of the women in Iceland took the day off work. They didn't go into the bank to be tellers, they didn't work at the grocery source, they weren't working at any of the television networks. Society essentially almost collapsed in Iceland for twenty four hours. And Iceland now says that's the reason they're one of the most feminist societies in the world because the ramifications of that. It's why the first female president of Iceland says that

she ran for president. It's why people say they elected her, and it's why they have universal childcare and child support and all of these things that help women thrive. Wow,

you know, I also think. I also think you could have a whole conversation about being off social media for a day and seeing how disconnected you feel or how much of an addiction it is anyway, because you know, I live in New York City, and when you go to a lot of the playgrounds, you know, the moms and the babysitters are just on their phones, you know, and the kids are just running around doing god is what. But you know, so there are benefits I think, all

around for women. But I love the power of the mommy influences are actually bringing in so much money. But also again with no safety right, no health insurance, like no if they if they were to stop tomorrow, if Instagram were to go down tomorrow, their career is gone. But back to what you were saying about the playground. I was thinking about this the other day. Every time my husband picks up his phone when I'm like talking

or something, I feel a little bad. Like I feel a little twinge and like, oh, you're not paying attention to me, You're staring at your phone. Yeah, imagine how that's making our kids feel. My kids are so little they can't voice that, But if I feel that when my husband picks up the phone, then my kids must feel completely ignored it. This is the first generation that this is happening to, and we just we can't even

imagine what that's doing to them little brains. Well, I listen, We have to have moments where we're actually engaged in conversation because I see it with teenagers. You know, they're just they're addicted to it, like Grandma's playing the slots in Vegas. They are just they can't help it, you know. And I feel like, because I didn't grow up with social media, I'm constantly trying to figure out how to

parent children that are growing up with it. Obviously they know a hell of a lot more than I do. Their snapchatting and doing all this ship that I don't know. I have no idea what they're doing. I mean, my sixteen year old, could you know, be dating an Arab princes?

I have no idea. You want to know? And I I actually think the voice of women is the thing that's going to sort of get these blogs in place, because when there's so much money to be made, the men who are running these big tech companies, I mean Mark Zuckerberg doesn't give a ship, you know, No, no, they don't well, And I think that's that's another part of us asking women to take the day off again,

like take back your power. That story I was telling you about the mom whose photos got stolen and people were role playing with her kids. She reported to Instagram and they're like, it doesn't violate our guidelines. No, no, no, no no. There need to be regulations in place that that protects how the pictures are used. There has to be a way for them to do this. They can

do everything else. I mean, they figured out how to make so much money, they have to be able to figure out how to keep kids safe if they want to keep making content around kids. Yeah, I also think for our kids too. There's a whole mental health piece

of it too with social media. You know, I'm wondering, you know, I think about the being a mom influencer, and part of it is kind of shiny and exciting and hey, I'll curate a life people will want to be part of or buy from, and you know there's something kind of like, oh that's intriguing, especially if I'm a stay at home mom. There's an option. But on the other side of it, there are so many things about, particularly when you use your children, that I find a

little off putting. I'll say, just you know, the marketing of the kids, and again what it does to their self esteem, you know, because imagine being a kid and the likes and the comments as a child, you know what I mean, and your kids are growing up in it just like mine. I'm wondering too. There are a lot of mom influencers who are sort of in postpartum when they put their stuff out there, and so all that hate must yes, really be bad for their mental health.

Oh yeah, so many of them. A lot of them were so honest when we did our interviews, which it's it was incredible, but they said they had to go on antidepressants. I mean, there's so much hate lobbied at them. One woman became so thin she lost like forty pounds because she's like I just I couldn't eat. People were calling me a fat pig. And it's mostly other women to be honest, it's women lobbying hate at other women.

And there's an entire website Get off my Internet. But we interviewed the founder of it, and it's just a place to attack and bash influencers. It's like women bashing other women who are not famous people on this website. It's good. It's one of the grossest things that I've I've seen on the Internet. I've seen a lot of dress stuff, so it just hurt people hurting people exactly exactly yeah, but but but but I've always got to

say the butt right. There are positive things that I've gotten off the Instagram, especially because I'm so deep in it right and reporting. I've met some really awesome women and formed some interesting community bonds. Some of it was actually incredibly helpful, mostly because I just wanted to see images and read stories of other women who were doing what I was doing, which, even if they were doing it better than I was doing it, I wanted to know that I wasn't the only human being doing it

at that moment because I felt incredibly isolated. I definitely, in hindsight, had bad postpartum depression and anxiety, and there were accounts on Instagram where I could read about other women going through their anxiety, going through having a colicky baby,

and also giving advice. You know, even though a lot of it felt very aspirational and made me feel like I wasn't enough, there was also enough community there that I have to say it made me feel less lonely, and loneliness is something we just do not talk nearly enough about for new moms. So I did actually get a real benefit out of it. And it's one of the reasons that I do respect what mom influencers have created on Instagram, even if I think that it has

gone to kind of a dark place. In a lot of situations, there is so much more bad than good, right, and we'll be right back. Okay, let's get back to it. So walk me through what you're getting into with your second season. So I never thought it was gonna go be on one season. I was like, this is a contained thing. I've got this newborn, I'm so curious about this world. I'm gonna expose it and that's it with them. We're done, and you're gonna sixty minutes it exactly exactly.

I'm really all over. And so I look at the first season kind of like if you've seen the documentary The Social Dilemma right where it makes you sit back and be like, oh my god, I'm participating in this world that's so much bigger than just I'm bored. I want to pick up my phone and I need to think about the ramifications of what that means. It's about mom influencers, but it's also about how all of us

are using this platform. And the second season we're comparing a women's stay off the Internet, a women's stay off in Iceland. But then we're also looking at how we go beyond mom influencers in the second season, but we're still focusing on women primarily how influencers have popped up in every aspect of our lives to kind of take over something that society is failing to give us as women.

So for mom influencers, who was because women were seeking community, right, But the world of ment a health influencers is absolutely crazy. Pants Everyone I know follows someone as a mental health influencer on Instagram. The majority of them are not licensed. They're giving diagnoses on social media to people who are begging for mental health help. And it's mostly because it's really hard to get mental health care in our country, particularly for women. It's more than just a kitty hanging

on a branch that says hanging there. Now, these are actually like, oh, if you have these ten symptoms, you're definitely bipolar. Maybe you should take this kind of medication. It is. It runs the gamut, and both on Instagram and TikTok. Oh that's I'm fascinated by that. Yeah, especially because right now in this pandemic where I think it has a much more of an effect in US, and we even realize I think the data is in. But

everybody I've I talked to these days, everybody's depressed. Everybody, mom's non mom, kids, no one's OK my mom who's seven? And the idea that you could go on social media and somebody, an unlicensed person can say, oh, well you should do this, or you should take my herbal supplement, or you should you know, mindful vegetable growing or whatever it is that they're selling is terrifying to me. Yea

and everyone. I took a poll, like an informal poll of my own Instagram, which you know, it's like snidchet of people, but live. Everyone that I know messaged me and said, oh yeah, I followed this person, I followed this therapist, I followed this guru. Everyone had one and they were all different, And it just feels so dangerous to me because the most vulnerable people right now are

the ones that are that are impacted the most. And then also that episode gets into the dangers of these paras social relationships that you end up having with this influencer and what happens when they give you bad at as in this level of trust that you're putting in them is so intense. So and then we have teacher Instagram, which is something I never thought about. There's so many teachers on Instagram right now doing teacher influencing where they

sell school supplies and school planners. So we don't pay our teachers enough and they need to have a side hustle not just for their income, but to pay for supplies for their classrooms. And so because we're not supporting our teachers, they've turned Instagram to get extra money. It's and there's no laws protecting them of what they can and camp posts. They could be fired if one parent says I hate this Instagram post. Wow, I didn't. I don't know a lot about that. I never thought about

it before, Like literally know, I never thought about it. No, no, And then it's the same territory a ton of as mental health influencers, as fertility influencers and adoption influencers, and these women get such an intense following when women are at their most vulnerable. So yeah, second, the second season, it get it gets a little darker than the first season. But I also think it's so much more of a wake up call to all of us to be like, what are we all doing? Yeah? What what? What is

this ecosystem that we have created? And should we stay in it? And also but but also who are the women that are benefiting from it? And a lot of them need to benefit? Like these teachers got right, there are good influencers and there are bad influencers. I mean, like any you know, Like I always say, it's like the wild West. We still we're all trying to figure out, you know, what's good what's bad. Like we talked earlier, there's no regulations or rules. It's it's all happening in

real time for us. When are you going to have the Iceland day when we all get off our Instagram? So I'm thinking we're probably going to have it close to our final episode, which will be beginning of April. In my ideal like Magical Fantasy World, it happens on like Black Friday. But you know, you know, like one of the things we talked about in the second season is a lot of us say we want to get off Instagram, and a lot of us can't because I can't.

So I know I can't. I write books, and I have discovered that being engaged with an audience on Instagram definitely sold more books for me than any of the magazine articles or interviews that came out in October. I can see it. I can see what if I do something with an influencer, a story or Alive or whatever that is. I see my Amazon number go up if I post a picture of the book, and I don't see that anymore from a lot of traditional media. So

I can't get off. And a lot of women feel the same way if they want to advance their career their brand network. So I think that's what we want to call attention to that some women really can't get off the Instagram. But then how can they regulate themselves? Right? Can they take their kids off like I did? Which I feel we don't judge anyone for anything they do. I'm like, you do you being a woman in the world's sucking hard. But yeah, I want them to to

raise the questions. So I'm thinking, Acril, yeah, okay, I'll be part of that. I also think that um for me anyway. With Instagram, it's the same thing. And I'm not justifying it because I like to follow Victoria's Secret Models. It's, you know, as a writer, somebody with books with a podcast, I've noticed that Instagram helps a lot with the podcast. My feeling is there's also a way to post stuff, you know, use it as like, hey, this is happening

without living on it, you know what I mean. Like I've learned to I don't care what people are saying about it. I post and I move on, you know, and I don't aimless, you know, scroll scroll, scroll, until I'm like, looking at people's Instagrams, I don't know who they are. I don't mean they're some they are in twenty one year old girl from Croatia, I'm going like, oh that that's just that's cute skirt. So there is a way to kind of manage it where you're not

completely engulfed in it. And before we go, Joe, I've asked you so many questions. I'm going to turn around and let you ask me a question about anything. Oh my gosh, it can be anything. This is, this is yeah, this is must also must be dangerous because you have journalists on the show. Yeah, and you can't rattle me. You cannot rattle me. Well, let's keep what the under the influence theme? What was your most difficult motherhood moment? I think my most difficult was with my first child,

my daughter Elliott. She was very colloquy and I was not producing enough milk. So she's colloquy. I'm freaking out because it's taking me, you know, two television shows to pump half a bottle. So I was feeling inadequate, like why aren't I producing enough milk? And why she's screaming all the time. She can't be hungry. And it was actually resolved because my older sister said, I think she's got some kind of dairy issue. I think you should try soy formula, and we gave her soy formula and

that kind of dissipated the issue. However, I then went through I'm a I'm a terrible mom. I didn't produce enough milk. I only breastfed her for you know, six months. I wanted to be the woman that you know, she would run to the playground and gil, mom, I want some milk. So, you know, there was a lot of shame and involved with breastfeeding, especially because I had a lot of friends who were having babies around the same time I was, and they were just like gushing milk.

You know, they could have been a wet nurse for all of Washington, d C. So that was that was hard. That was a hard moment. And then I've had issues with discipline. I don't like discipline. I don't like I'm not a screamer. I'm not a and so there are times when my kids would get really sassy or obnoxious and I, you know, to say to them, like go to your room right now. I felt like I was reading a sitcom script, Like it just didn't seem authentic. And I had always had a hard time with that.

And the problem is that George is not a great disciplinarian either. So we will both be like, no, I'm the good cop. No, I'm the good cop, and we're like, well, somebody, you know, she's gonna be a raging bitch if one of us doesn't teach your boundaries. So you know that that's those are the areas that I I kind of learned to parent through humor, which that that's what works

for me. What does that mean. It means I use humor to sort of paint a different picture, so I didn't have to be that mom, you know, like if one of them was having a temper tantrum in Bloomingdale, I would say, if you don't stop, I'm going to lie on the ground and scream louder than you, like I'm going to embarrass the ship out of you. And then my daughter will be like, oh no, no, don't, don't, don't you know. So it's just a different way around getting to the same thing. But it's it has worked

for me. Read that book. Oh god, I can't write that boocket because then you don't have to be on Instagram so much more. Then I had to be on Instagram, and then I couldn't like binge watch succession, which is what I've been doing during COVID. You know, all the coping, all the coping mechanisms, all the copying, all this stuff. Well, thank you for this. I'm very excited for for a second season. I'm excited to do I'm calling it your Iceland Day. I think that's a fantastic idea. And thank

you for coming on Go ask Alli. It's gonna be good. I'm really yeah, I'm excited. We got about it. Thanks for having Thank you yea. It's so interesting, even the idea of mom influencers, and I would especially ta can buy one of the things Joe said about how so much of the hate comments are from women, and you know, and so many other cultures, women always help women, particularly around childbirth. You know, the term it takes a village

is real. So it makes me sad when I hear that women aren't supporting women or that women right hate comments on mom blogger or mom influencer sites. But you know, it's social media, which is always a slippery slope because there's a lot to be learned and gained, and then there's so much to feel bad about. So Joe's podcast is just starting its second season under the Influence. Go check it out. Thank you for listening to Go Ask Ali.

Be sure to subscribe, rate and review the podcast, and follow me on social media on Twitter at Ali you Wentworth and on Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth Now. If you'd like to ask me a question or suggest a guest or a topic to dig into, I'd love to hear from you, and there's a bunch of ways to do it. You could call or text me at three to three three six four six three five six, or you can email a voice memo right from your phone to Go Ask Gali podcast at gmail dot com.

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