Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

Subscribe, subscribe, subscribe to Anne Helen Petersen's Substack Culture Study. Read her piece on #tradwives here. And listen to her podcast Work Appropriate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jessica Elefante used to be part of the problem. She was a brand strategist and marketer who created fake problems for us so we would buy things and do things. Because that is what brands and influencers do. They trick us into believing we need things to make our lives better. But now Jessica is a reformed BS artist and she wants to fix the problem. She wants to help us figure out how to stop the nefarious forces of influence from making us unhappy and unhinged with her new book Raising Hell, Living Well. I love this woman and I feel so lucky that I made a new friend by reaching out to her to work on this podcast. You can buy Jessica's book here! https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/711835/raising-hell-living-well-by-jessica-elefante/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What will happen to all the kids having their lives made into content? How do they feel? Maybe they're fine, maybe they're miserable. It is so hard to know because most of them are still so young. But reporter Fortesa Latifi has done a deep dive into how influencer kids are feeling about their entire lives being broadcast online. She spoke to one young woman of an influencer who told her parents she didn't want to be in their videos any more and they told her if she didn't appear they would lose all their money. How should we think of this labor as we consume this content and how can and should the government step in to protect children from online exploitation? You can read Fortesa's story on influencer kids here: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/influencer-parents-children-social-media-impact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What line do we cross when we post pictures of sick kids to social media and why does the Instagram algorithm and content machine seem to promote these kinds of images? I am not the only one who gets creeped out when I am served pictures and videos of other people’s sick kids in the hospital. The discomfort is very real. I need to talk through all of my feelings about posting sick kids on Instagram and the money making infrastructure (branded content of sick children) around it which is why I am so excited for today’s guest, Fortesa Latifi. She is a kick ass journalist who is one of the few covering the influencer world seriously and smartly for places like the Washington Post and Teen Vogue. Her recent piece in the Washington Post examined the phenomenon of medical influencers and asked the very important question….why can’t millions of people look away from these pictures being posted of kids during their most vulnerable experiences? Fortesa is a goddamn gem of a human and you are going to love her as much as I do. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feeding kids is hard. It doesn't matter if you have a sushi-loving toddler or one who eats three beige foods. There is judgement and stigma about everything and it is easy for moms to feel like they are constantly failing. Today we talk to author, podcaster and substacker Virginia Sole-Smith (author of Fat Talk and substacker of Burnt Toast) about how kid food influencers on social media can make mothers feel shame and promote diet culture and anti-fat bias from an incredibly young age. BUY Virginia's book Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture here. https://bookshop.org/p/books/fat-talk-parenting-in-the-age-of-diet-culture-virginia-sole-smith/18525159 Subscribe to Virginia's newsletter and podcast Burnt Toast here. https://virginiasolesmith.substack.com/ Buy The Sicilian Inheritance here. https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-sicilian-inheritance-jo-piazza/20266161 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The robots are coming for all of us. Companies like Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, are using books to train their AI machines without asking for permission. Jo did a search on The Atlantic's database of books that AI is using to train its robots to steal our livelihoods and found FIVE of her titles on there. We are now clearly living in the Matrix. It begs the question of what else are these companies hiding and what else could they be stealing from us. We have to care about how Meta uses author's works because it is a reflection of how little they respect anyone's words, thoughts or images. Jo talks to fellow author and podcaster Emma Gray of Love to See It (and the author of A Girl's Guide to Joining the Resistance) about why the entire publishing world is going bananas about this today. Listen to Emma's podcast Love to See It here https://www.emmarosegray.com/podcast Buy her book A Girl's Guide to Joining the Resistance. https://www.amazon.com/Girls-Guide-Joining-Resistance-Feminist/dp/0062748084 And you can read The Atlantic story about the database here. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/09/books3-database-generative-ai-training-copyright-infringement/675363/ And you know you can always buy The Sicilian Inheritance if you feel so inclined. https://www.bluebirdbookstop.com/product-page/pre-order-the-sicilian-inheritance-by-jo-piazza Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Munchausen by Proxy has gotten a lot of attention lately with Patricia Arquette's star turn in the series The Act. MBP refers to when a caregiver abuses a child by pretending they are ill in order to get attention for themselves. With the rise and prevalence of social media there are more and more cases of Munchausen by Proxy and Munchausen syndrome happening in the digital world. There are cases of people pretending to be sick themselves to get attention and cases of caregivers pretending their children are ill to get attention, and sometimes to raise money. To talk about all of this I am joined by Andrea Dunlop, the host and executive producer of NOBODY SHOULD BELIEVE ME an investigative true crime podcast about Munchausen by proxy. Andrea is the founder of Munchausen Support, an online resource and non-profit that supports survivors and families. She is a member of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children’s Munchausen by proxy committee where she serves alongside some of the country’s foremost experts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can download all of the Infamous episodes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/its-the-future-and-everybody-is-thin/id1652941051?i=1000628712174 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well we just had too much to say about Ballerina Farm to keep it to one episode. Her brand has become a mini empire and I look at it a little like Ree Drummond meets Laura Ingalls Wilder meets the personality of Emily in Paris. Prairie life nostalgia is currently big business and that's why I had to call our very own Wilder/Prairie Life expert Glynnis MacNicol to figure out why so many people have such strong feelings about this woman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Buy Sara's book y'all. MOMFLUENCED is an incredible read. You can also subscribe to her substack here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Quick update on the Ruby Franke story wherein everyone throws everyone else under the bus. Kevin Franke says he and Ruby were separated! He has been in "a fog" for the past year. Her sisters call her a narcisscist who should be put away forever and her sister-in-law just says Ruby IS NOT her cup of tea. My takeaway? Everyone in this story is awful in their own special awful way. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you to Jessica Grose for joining me on today's adventure. BUY HER BOOK. She is a national treasure. Screaming on the Inside was just released in paperback. We used a very brief clip from ABC News. Their coverage of this story is impeccable. You can read more here. Transcripts of this episode are available to paid subscribers of my Substack, Over the Influence. I mentioned my new book, The Sicilian Inheritance. It is available for pre-order now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Laura Ingalls Wilder probably couldn’t have imagined the multi-million dollar media empire that would emerge from her books. From the television show to prairie chic dresses to dolls to tin cups bearing her name, Laura is a brand, a business and, dare we say it, an influencer. Her stories have spawned industries large and small, both directly and indirectly for nearly a century. In this very special episode from the new podcast, Wilder, Jo discovers how the fantasy of a simple prairie life got sold to millions around the world. Go deeper: Stay at the Prairie House Manor in De Smet, SD The Queen’s Treasures Melissa Gilbert’s Modern Prairie Stephanie McNeal on the Nap Dress Sara Petersen’s Momfluenced Follow us for behind the scenes content! @WilderPodcast on TikTok @Wilder_Podcast on Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

But it is coming. We decided that maybe Jo's birthday isn't the most impactful day for women to shut down the Internet and truth be told we also got cold feet since we've seen a lot of failed internet strikes this summer. But don't worry, we picked a new day for all of us to shut it the f*ck down. In the meantime Jo did a guest appearance on Bridget Todd's podcast "There Are No Girls on the Internet" talking about a strange corner of the Instagram influencer world dedicated to #tradwives, women who channel the false nostalgia of the fifties in order to promote the patriarchy and keep women in a dark and subservient place. Stay tuned at the end of the episode when we announce the actual Women's Day Off the Internet. It's a good one. And happy birthday to Jo! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The social media influencer has officially replaced the plucky girl journalist as the heroine of choice in women's fiction. The latest and most hilarious example of this is Jenny Mollen's new novel City of Likes, a wickedly funny story about a woman just like us who gets sucked into the maddening web of a mom influencer. Jo got to hop on Jenny's podcast "Third Wheel" this week to chat all about influencers, female friendship, the attention economy and Mormon momfluencers soft swinging with each others husbands. It's everything you want to listen to while you ignore your kids this weekend. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jo and Glynnis are making a new show and they need your help... See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Holly Frey, host of Stuff You Missed in History Class, sits down with Kris McDaniel and Andi Gordon, two winners of Seneca Women to Hear: Search for the Next Great Female Podcasters See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As women’s rights are eroding in the United States, our Women’s Day Off (the Internet) is becoming increasingly necessary. While we plan it, we take one more look at Iceland as a model for how to build a better society for everyone and particularly for women. Luckily we don’t have to go too far back this time. We can look at the women who are there right now–specifically Iceland’s first lady, Eliza Reid. In her book, Secrets of the Sprakkar, she tells the stories of extraordinary Icelandic women to illustrate how the country became a leader in gender equality. Jo and Eliza sat down together to talk about the book and how being a mom in Iceland is just different than in the US. With paid paternity leave, less guilt, less judgment, and a strong sense of sisterhood, there’s so much we can learn from Eliza and her country. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Prepare your flux capacitor because we’re going back to the future. In the final episode of Season 2, Jo talks to experts in social media to predict what’s to come in the influencer world. Right now, social media could be compared to the Wild West: unregulated, unpredictable, and quite frankly, unfair to a lot of people. But luckily, with the help of some incredible women, influencers and consumers are starting to fight back. This episode features Lindsey Lugrin who is working to eliminate unpaid labor in social media with F*ck You Pay Me, Jenna Sereni who is working to create a more authentic social media experience with HandsDown, Peggy McDermott who is bringing influencing to academia, and Kim Nortman who is focused on Web3.0 with Tellie. Listen to this final episode to join the movement to change the term “influencer” from a dirty word to a respected profession. Oh! And Jo finally reveals the long awaited date of The Women’s Day Off the Internet. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

These days it seems like everyone’s houses look remarkably similar. White kitchens, brushed brass accessories, exposed beams and all the shiplap. Why, you ask? Because we are all under the influence of design influencers. These people log on to Instagram every day and show you, yes you, how to take your older home and make it look newish, modern, but still cozy and old-timey. In a lot of ways this has been a revolutionary and wonderful development: free advice on how to renovate your home at your fingertips. No more subscriptions to design magazines, hiring expensive designers, or spending hours doing research. Nope, it’s right there on Instagram. But, of course, this type of influencing is not without scandal. Often the pressure to perform and establish yourself as a brand has led to overcharging and under providing. And then inevitably, the takedown is much larger than the rise. Ultimately, this episode helps us answer two questions: how does hustle culture lead to cancel culture and why is it so important for influencers to diversify their content over several platforms and maybe even go back to the basics of blogging. We get to talk to one of Jo's favorite design and renovation gurus, Emily Henderson, who takes us back to the early days of the design blog and explains how she has managed to slow down, take stock, and focus on the basics. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There truly is an influencer for everything! After spending a week in the hospital when her son got a concussion (don’t worry, everyone is ok), Jo left with a glaring realization: Rule 35 even applies to the medical industry. The nurses in the ICU revealed that they all follow nurse influencers, even post on Instagram during their breaks, and some have over a million followers. But nurse influencing isn't all scrubs sponsorships. COVID-19 and vaccine hesitation have created a social media battle between nurses who are pro-vaccine and those who are against the vaccine. Some of these nurses have lost their jobs for the things they have said on social media. Some have gotten death threats against their entire family. Some live in terror that misinformation could lead to more and more deaths. Because of the largely unregulated nature of social media, some nurse influencers can spread disinformation with few consequences for themselves and massive consequences for society at large. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Influencers pop up where women need them most. They create a space to discuss taboo topics and provide resources when social structures fail us. Fertility is one of those topics, and fertility influencers have a large community of women flocking to them for answers, advice, and support. But not all women feel the same about this content. Are fertility influencers good? They destigmatize the topic and offer free information for an otherwise pricey process. Or, are fertility influencers bad? They often are not associated with a medical professional and cannot deliver individual care, just like with mental health influencers. And ultimately, what does the increase of fertility related social media content say about the lack of resources in our society? We wouldn’t even need to turn to social media if we were able to have these discussions IRL. Listen to this week’s episode to decide if you’ll be cheering YAY or NAY for fertility influencers. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is nearly impossible to find a therapist that is covered by insurance, doesn’t have a waiting list, or even just returns your phone calls. Nowadays, we tend to rely more on people we know through social media to provide us with the alleviation of our mental struggles rather than traditional paths such as face-to-face therapy. What are the dangers of this? Being diagnosed by unlicensed advice givers? Being given recommendations for prescription medication that will mess with your brain? Developing an unhealthy parasocial relationship with your mental health provider. Parasocial! What the hell does it mean? We dig into the history of parasocial relationships from 19th Century French philosophers, to 1950s TV celebrities to today's social media influencers. The stakes of this relationship only escalate when influencers are discussing mental health. Sure, there’s some good in destigmatizing mental illness, but what are the chances they’re exacerbating the mental health crisis we’re already in? Hint: the answer is somewhere in the middle and it's up to us to strike the right balance. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last week we dove down the rabbit hole of mental health Instagram. We're all in the midst of a mental health crisis right now and frankly we could all use a little help. While social media is often a major contributing factor, if not the source, of these mental health problems, there is also the flipside: comfort creators. These are the people who use social media to post content that you turn to when you are feeling down and need a pick-me-up. They are not necessarily there to give advice like the mental health influencers we covered last week, but instead to show you a picture of their fluffy dog or read you an uplifting poem that helps to release the stress you’ve been carrying all day. For this special bonus episode, Jo is joined by her comfort creator: the poet Kate Baer, whose poems helped Jo through the insanity of her postpartum time and still lift her up today. If you want more Kate Baer in your life you can buy her books I Hope This Finds You Well and What Kind of Woman wherever you buy books. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Listen to host Jo Piazza take on the role of guest on a new podcast about the LuLaRoe scandal hosted by Buzzfeed writer Stephanie McNeal. #BecauseofLuLaRoe: The Dream Vs. Reality LuLaRoe’s rise coincided with the rise of influencers and platforms like Facebook Live which retailers used extensively to sell their products and host online events. These platforms became the perfect medium for depicting the aspirational lifestyle that LuLaRoe was selling. Top sellers were encouraged to show off a flashy and upbeat lifestyle by posting about their achievements and using the hashtag #becauseofLuLaRoe. So how did LuLaRoe retailers build their followings online, and what was the reality vs. the image they were creating? Author and Under the Influence podcast host Jo Piazza joins us this week to break down how social media and influencer culture contributed to LuLaRoe’s success. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We’re in the midst of a mental health crisis. And women, especially mothers, have been hit the hardest. But what is an entire generation of mothers to do when they live in a country where any kind of health care, especially mental health care, is largely inaccessible? A lot of moms turn to Instagram. Mental health creators have been around for a while, but should they be trusted as a source for psychological well being? Do these creators really help or just make people who are already broken more vulnerable? Maybe both can be true at once. Join Jo on a deep dive into the history of self help and mental health media to find out. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If it exists in the world, there’s an influencer for it. Teachers absolutely fit the bill as Jo learned when a listener reached out to her about her kid's teacher whose Instagram content concerned her. Should we judge how teachers present themselves outside of the classroom? And if we’re offended by what they post, is it legal to demand repercussions? These questions sent Jo down a rabbit hole into the wide world of Teachergram. Turns out Instagram is a sort of shadow support system for teachers. Influencing can be a way for wildly underpaid educators to support themselves and each other. And this isn’t unique to teachers. Ultimately, if there’s a deficiency in the world that’s ailing women, an influencer who can fill that need is just a click away. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What would it take for you to get off Instagram? The promise of better mental health? An urge to detangle yourself from the algorithm? Or maybe it would take a scare. The threat of someone stealing your photos and role playing as you and your family. Any way you spin it, the decision to get off Instagram is a hard one. But if we’re ever going to use our power to improve the platform, it might be what we have to do. This week, Jo talks to two women–one who took the leap off Instagram and one who didn’t despite a horrific experience. These stories tell show us what we risk when we stay on Instagram and why getting off is such a personal choice. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Remember the day Instagram went dark last fall? We sure do. It woke us, and so many influencers, up to how precarious making your living off social media can be. It also reminded us just how dependent and addicted so many of us are to a platform that is indifferent about us at best. In season one of Under the Influence we learned just how much content women are creating and consuming on social media platforms, for better or worse. We have a lot of power to make these places better and we don't even realize it. So what if the world had no choice but to realize it? We might just have a plan for that. With a lesson from Iceland and some major planning, we’ve figured out a way to let women take the reins and show the men in charge of the socials how much power we have over their platform. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Just when you thought it was safe to go back on Instagram, we're here to blow everything up. On season 2 of Under the Influence, we’re exploring what it means to be a woman social media. We’re going into different pockets of influencing from teacher influencers, to fertility and mental health influencers, to talk about how Instagram is a reflection of all the ways women are mistreated in our society. And how we might fix that by shutting it all down. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Momfluencers aren’t the only online creators that have to fight for fair pay. Bookstagram is full of women posting dreamy photos of books and thoughtful reviews of titles, new and old. Their content drives a ridiculous amount of book sales, but do publishers pay the women making these posts? Rarely...if ever. Mostly they just get free books, which doesn’t exactly pay the bills. Fresh off her own book launch, Jo talks to two bookstagramers who have recently started asking publishers to pay them for their work. They also discuss the power shift that happens when women are allowed to review books, diversity within the bookstagram space, and much more. Buy Jo’s new book, We Are Not Like Them! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A stranger recently approached Jo's kids and their babysitter on the playground. She acted like she knows them, like she knows Jo. But none of it is true. Are you terrified? We sure are. In this bonus episode of Under the Influence Jo commiserates over this crazy incident with top influencer Jess Kirby who completely removed her daughter from Instagram after a similar thing happened to her. Jess made the call so quickly, the way only a mother can do, to wipe her daughter's image offline. Will Jo follow her lead? Is it finally time to take her own children the hell off her Instagram? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What happens when a mom influencer broadcasts the attempted kidnapping of her children in the parking lot of a crafting store in California wine country? What happens when those claims are completely untrue? This bonus episode dives into the case of mom influencer Katie Sorensen and what happened last December when she falsely accused a Latino couple of trying to kidnap her two children. Sorensen was recently charged with giving false information to the police. Those charges could carry a sentence of six months in jail. Along with journalist Sara Petersen, Jo delves into what happened in that parking lot and also talk about why it may have happened. Nearly 4.5 million people watched that video Sorensen posted. Her followers skyrocketed. If crisis and tragedy drive more and more attention then is there an allure to post the kinds of things that will get you that attention. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Over the course of a year of reporting on mom influencers we watched the business model evolve and shift in myriad ways. There are brand new mom influencers on TikTok who weren't even doing this when we started the podcast. And they're killing it! Jo talks to some of the moms who are just crushing it on the video platform and, of course, tries to master TikTok herself. How do you think that's going to go? We also look to the future of influencing, starting with a conversation between Jo and Gabrielle Carteris, President of SAG-AFTRA, about bringing influencers into their union. There’s so much possibility for this industry and the women who are a part of it. As we wrap up the season, Jo reflects on all of this and decides where she lands in the fabric of the influencer world. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the influencer industry, women make more money than men, but, as in the real world, there's still a steep racial pay gap. There’s an Instagram account that documents this. @InfluencerPayGap brings transparency to the money influencers make from brands and also to document the pay gap between white influencers and influencers of color. Racial inequality is embedded into the influencer space and it weighs heavily on influencers of color. In this episode we talk to the women who are trying to fight against it while the industry is still young and malleable. Unfortunately, this is just one of many real world problems that finds itself being replicated in the influencer space. Politics, conspiracy theories...they creep into our online lives and make our feeds a dark, dark, place. Like QAnon dark. Is there a way out of this? Does the influencer industry really have to fall into the toxic patterns that dominate nearly every other industry on Earth? This week, Jo sets out to find an answer to that. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s no secret the internet can be a terrible place to be a woman. Any woman who ends up in the spotlight faces an intense amount of criticism and hate. For many reasons, the majority of that hate tends to come from other women and in the mom influencer industrial complex it often comes from other moms. After putting herself out there as a potential influencer Jo has gotten her fair share of online hate, but as a former gossip reporter she also has a long history of doling it out. In this episode Jo talks with a woman who built a website to hate on other women online, an original mom influencer who buckled under the hate, and reckons with how to break the cycle of woman on woman hate online. If that’s even possible. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the past six episodes, we’ve travelled far and wide across Instagram’s momosphere. We’ve gone through the history of influencing, learned how to craft the perfect Instagram post, and weighed the consequences of sharing your life and your kids’ lives online. That last one really weighed on Jo. Learning about the potential dangers of posting about your children on social media was a shock and made her question this entire influencer experiment. This week, we’re taking a mental health break away from the ‘gram to process what we know about this insane world. We’ll be back next week with a full episode, but for now Jo and Glynnis have a quick chat to digest The Sharenthood and discuss whether Jo should continue as an influencer. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The French have laws limiting parents who Instagram their children. We have no such restrictions in the United States. In fact, social media and the world of influencing are still the wild west when it comes to children, the adorable little creatures whose images are fueling this industry. This episode got darker than we expected as we try to figure out the psychological and emotional impact of sharing images of children online. There are issues of privacy, of consent, of dignity. These ethical and moral quandaries have no easy answers and the only models we have for what this will look like in twenty years are child stars. And, well, we all know how most of them turned out. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What goes into making the perfect Instagram post? After being unceremoniously rejected from the Harvard of influencing, Jo manages to convince RewardStyle to let her in anyway. In this episode she puts their lessons to use, and tries her best to turn herself into an influencer, to create a shoppable life. She quickly discovers one of the dirty little secrets of influencing: influencers are hiring professional photographers to take a week or a month of content at once. Yes! Influencer photographers are the new wedding photographers. So Jo hires one and tries to take beautiful pictures of her entire family in matching pajamas. This is a disaster. But is it a profitable one? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Authenticity might be the most over-used word in the influencer industrial complex. But what does it even mean? What the hell is an authentic woman? An authentic mother? From celebrities to politicians to Instagram moms, women are attacked for trying too hard to get it, or are ripped to shreds for not having enough. This week, Jo tries to figure out how to be a more authentic mother by going to both extremes: she speaks to the surfing Instagram mamas of Byron Bay, as well as a woman who chose to post her home birth on Instagram stories. But at the end of the day is searching for authenticity online just a trap designed to keep us on a hedonistic treadmill that makes us feel bad about ourselves? Or is it actually possible to be a real mom and still get paid for it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There is a Harvard of influencing. Yes, you read that correctly. And we're going there...or, at least we're applying. Until recently Instagram was for looking, not buying. But one very savvy tech founder helped to solve that disconnect; a woman, naturally. Amber Venz Box is a 34 year old mother of four and the founder of RewardStyle and LikeToKnowIt. In the past decade, her companies have driven $8 billion in sales for brands. This week, with Amber's help, Jo applies to become a RewardStyle influencer and tries to figure out if her life is shoppable. Shoppability is a new term, one that even academics are now using. But finding out if your life as a mother is shoppable is like asking which of your kids is more commercial. And that's where this all starts to get a little uncomfortable. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mom influencing is a multi-billion dollar industry. How the hell did we get here? How did influencing become a job? Why doesn’t Wikipedia mention mom bloggers in their history of women and what does the 19th Century economic philosopher Thorstein Veblen have to do with why we are so enchanted by people who seem wealthier than we are. Consider this your history lesson of women influencing other women to attempt to lead more perfect lives. We start in 1896 with the creation of Vogue, wonder if Lucille Ball was actually the first mom influencer, and scroll all the way to the the beautiful mess of the early Mom Internet. Moms have been commodified since the beginning of moms, the only difference now is who is making the goddamn money. And if past is prologue, will answering all these questions help Jo figure out how to become the influencer of her dreams? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s two in the morning and journalist and author Jo Piazza cannot stop scrolling and scrolling through Instagram, gazing at picture-perfect images of motherhood that look nothing like her own life mothering her baby and toddler. But she realizes that with just one click she can attempt to buy these women’s perfect lives...because every other mother on Instagram is trying to sell you something. Who are these women? Why are they so mesmerizing? Dive down the rabbit hole of the billion dollar mom influencer world with Jo as she pulls back the curtain on this under-reported and under-valued industry. Stop number one, the Mormon Church. Why are so many successful mom influencers members of the LDS community? Have they cracked the code to getting paid for the unpaid labor of motherhood? And how does this all relate to porn? At the end of the day Jo begins to wonder, as she watches her own media industry crumble around her, could this be the future of content? The future of her career? Could she get paid to be a more perfect mother? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Under the Influence is a deep dive into the Mom Internet, a place haunted by aspirational marketing where every mom is a social media influencer trying to sell you something, all while posed in white kitchens that never seem to get messy…with toddlers in cloth diapers that never ever leak; a bastion of carefully curated lives that are #blessed. Behind the airbrushed perfection is a multi-billion dollar industry that is dominated and consumed by women, yet largely ignored by the mainstream media. Journalist and mom Jo Piazza looks at how we got here, what it all means, and how the commodification of motherhood is driving women a little insane. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices