Taylor Lorenz on How Ordinary People Made the Internet Great

TL: You’re 100 percent right, I think it’s a double-edged sword. These groups and collaboration houses can be a very supportive community for content creators looking for support and easy collaboration. It is easier to grow together in a group, but it can also be very toxic, it can be a very high pressure environment. Sometimes management companies get involved in an effort to profit from these groups as early as possible. They often don’t own much of their own content and don’t see much benefit. Additionally, even interpersonal dynamics can be very complex because, of course, there are usually one or two standout stars in each of these groups. For everyone else, this might be a little difficult. At Hype House, for example, Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae broke out, while the rest of us may have taken a minute to find their way. You don’t want to be defined only by the group you’re in.

ES: Why do you think stories like this are so often left out of extensive historical research?

TL: I think a lot of the narrative is the kind of thinking that we’re fed that glorifies entrepreneurship and startup founders and mostly the men in Silicon Valley who built these companies. And that’s because of the way our culture is structured. We have an obsession with the “great men” who invent these technologies, and in reality the story is a little more complicated, as you can read from my reporting. The users themselves shape who they are today.