Everyone is Lying To You: influencer culture with Jo Piazza

Influencers are the people (women!) that people (women!) love to hate. But they also have a huge cultural and economic impact. It’s tangly, and Author and Podcaster Jo Piazza has been reporting on influencer culture for over 5 years. Her new book, Everyone is Lying To You, is a thriller set in the world of trad-wife influencers, and I loved it so much I had to sit down and talk to her about what we love (and loathe) about this industry. 

Jo’s book, Everyone Is Lying To You is out July 15, 2025 and worth a pre-order!

Jo’s Recs:

The sneaker

The sweatpant jeans

The mascara

Nora’s Recs:

The Brick (code NORA = 15% off)

Merit Beauty

Recess (code NORA = 15% off)

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

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Depending on who you ask, I’m an influencer. It’s not my primary job.

It’s not a title that I am excited to say. I resisted it. I resisted all aspects of it.

I resisted the word. I resisted the brand deals. I resisted all that comes with that word, with the word influencer.

And I think I resisted it because I knew that it came with judgment, and because honestly, I had and still have some judgment around it.

Influencing, like any industry that is dominated by women is devalued, it is belittled, it is vapid, it is shallow, it is insincere, it is promoting hyper consumption. And yet, yes, in many cases, yes, yes.

But these are also women who have significant cultural and economic impact. Even if you don’t like them, even if you think they’re silly, you can’t deny that. These are women who make a big impact.

They make a big impact on us. They are also just monetizing what women have done forever, recommending things that they like to people that they care about.

But instead of the sphere of influence being limited to your friends, your family, the women in your neighborhood, it could be anyone, anywhere around the world.

It is parasocial, it is sales, it’s marketing, it’s running a business, it’s entrepreneurship. There are problems with it, sure, but it is not evil like Jeff Bezos, right? Just ruining everything.

I’m not even meaning that as hyperbole, right? Like gobbling up, making bookshops, intentionally going after bookstores, busting unions, ruining our planet.

They are not on par with like the Koch brothers, but anything that women do, especially anything that women do for money is going to be scrutinized, and it is going to be minimized, is going to be dismissed, it is going to be overly examined.

So I didn’t want that, right? I didn’t want that, and I don’t exist simply to sell people things, right?

That was never like a goal of mine, but if you build any kind of following at all on the internet, even one based on making space for people’s traumatic stories or difficult conversations, people are going to want to know where you got your genes.

I can, and I have posted photos about my deepest grief and gotten comments that are like, oh, so sorry for you, lipstick? Where did you get that lipstick? Dress?

Hey, where did you get your glasses? I’m not mad about that, right?

What I’m saying is that if I’m going to be asked that anyways, I might as well make 10 cents per tube of lipstick if people are going to buy it because they like the way that it looks on me. Our guest today is Jo Piazza. Jo Piazza is a podcaster.

She is an author. She has been reporting on influencer culture for years.

On her podcast and her substack Over the Influence, she is also set to release a brand new novel called Everyone is Lying To You, which she described as Gone Girl, but make it Tradwives.

It takes place at an influencer conference where a Down on Her Luck journalist is invited to profile her old college bestie who she has lost touch with, who is now a prominent Tradwife influencer.

And on the first day of this conference, that influencer’s husband turns up dead and she is the number one suspect. So this is my conversation with Jo.

We are talking about what we love about influencer culture, what we hate about influencer culture, and what it is like to critique something that you are also a part of. Here we go. Okay, Jo Piazza, I read your book.

This is the highest compliment that I can give any book. I read your book on an airplane ride.

One airplane ride, book start to finish, didn’t crack it open until seatbelt sign was on and we were departing, finished it with minutes to go until landing and was so satisfied.

It’s such a perfect, it’s simultaneously I think a good summer book, but also cozy, there’s a coziness to it. I love that.

This is the highest compliment. A plane read for me, especially someone that is flying with children, this is the highest compliment.

I did fly seated separately from my children.

As well you should. I saw the pictures.

Because here’s the thing, and I see all the discourse online where people are like, if you want to sit with your kids, book a ticket with them. You can’t always book a seat next to them.

No, you can’t. You can’t always. Not the way the airlines work these days.

No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. Because they’re maximizing profit in all these new ways.

I’ve been separated from my whole family through no fault of my own many times. And then I’m begging people to switch seats with me and they don’t want to. And then I’m like, you don’t want to sit next to this kid, trust me.

And they don’t trust me. And then they’re always wrong.

Yeah, they’re always wrong. They’re always wrong. Now, I think it kind of made, because Q’s ate now, so I think it kind of made him feel cool.

Totally. To sit with like strangers. And, you know, he’s like, and if I need to use the bathroom, I just tap them and I say, excuse me, sir, I need to use the rest room.

I was like, that’s exactly what you do. That’s exactly what you do. You don’t have to be afraid.

You’re the only one of mine who can sit independently.

100%.

You can’t, you do not want, you don’t want to sit next to someone else’s toddler.

No, you don’t. Ew, it’s so gross.

I would book our tickets all together, but the difference in those tickets was $500 a ticket or $700 a ticket.

It’s insane.

For the privilege of picking your seat, like you’re not mad at me, a mother, you were mad at the airline companies. That’s who you were mad at.

We should all be mad at the airline companies.

We should all be mad at the airline companies, but instead we’re mad at each other for reclining seats when like they made the rows smaller. They did that. That was a conscious choice.

We are frustrated with each other. We got to just remember, get a little angrier at the top.

But back to your book, I think why it’s cozy, but a perfect plane ride, but a perfect submarine is because at the core of it is female friendship and female friendship is coziness to me.

Female friendship is coziness to me. We were just talking about how you were in Philadelphia for like a hot 36 hours. And I was like, cool, just come to my house whenever my messy house.

And you did. And we just sat and we had coffee, and you helped me put a decal for the book on the back of the car. And my daughter’s rummaged around in your purse.

And that’s my perfect hang. My perfect hang is just like come live in my messy life.

Your baby handed me an empty sippy cup and said, fill it toots, slap me on the butt. She said, hey, to me, you’re just a set of knees. I don’t know you from anyone else.

So you just, you fill this water. And they did. And then when she was done drinking, she just handed it to me.

I was like, now I’m a cup holder. I forgot about this. This is great.

This is great. This is great. But I do think that the world of influencers is fascinating to everybody.

I think it’s particularly fascinating to the two of us because we are what I would call like reluctant influencers.

Totally. Totally. Absolutely.

I wake up reluctant every day, actually.

We’re simply reluctant in every sense of the word, but it’s like influencing went from, you know, from something that was almost like an intentional, and I think it is still like for some people, like a very intentional choice.

Like this is something that I want to do. I want to be like a personality on the internet, and I want to monetize it in a specific way. But there were people of our era who happened to just be people on the internet who had a following.

And what happens is if you get a following of any kind, people are going to ask you for recommendations. I’ve said this before, Jo, I could post a picture, and I have of like me at my husband’s funeral. And someone would be like, so sad, dress?

Where’d you get that dress?

Lipstick?

Yeah.

I mean, to be fair, you looked hot at your husband’s funeral.

I looked so good. And that was truly what Erin wanted was for me to look good at his funeral. And babe, I did it.

I wore white, his request. He was very into Michelle Obama and Jenna Lyons at the time. And he was like, white, J.Crew shift dress, something like that.

I had a white, off-white wool shift.

Gorgeous.

And like bright red lipstick. My hair was lavender. I did look very good.

But, you know, it’s kind of something that you and I fell into.

Totally. Because we were people who wrote things. And if you’re a person who writes things or puts things into the world, we had to be on the Internet.

We had to be on social media. And then you become a reluctant influencer because you are recommending things. I told you that you influenced me this week.

I got the brick.

Oh, you did? I did. And guess what?

You can use it for your kids’ devices, too. You can use it for, like, any iPad or phone that is in your house. If you have, like, an old iPod Touch that you give, like, you know, Charlie to play games on, tap it on that.

Sorry.

Sorry, you can’t do anything else.

Sorry, it’s bricked. It’s bricked.

It’s bricked. I know. No, I’m so psyched.

So, I mean, you influence me on a regular basis. But yeah, we are like these reluctant influencers.

And yet, and yet, and yet, it is a multi-billion-dollar business ignored by, like, most mainstream press because it was largely created by women, for women.

Influencing has given women the ability to be entrepreneurs, to launch their own businesses, and to be free from all of the corporate bullshit that doesn’t let you live a life or be a mom or be a human in the world. And so I think it’s awesome.

And then I also think there’s so many grifters out there trying to just like make us feel shamed and guilty. And I talk about the tension of this all the time. I talk about it and everyone is lying to you.

I worked in PR and then advertising.

And then I was one of the first people to be a social media marketer when the companies were scrambling, right, scrambling. Me giving presentations to creative directors and designers being like, okay, so this is how it works.

And then being like, no, I want to make a commercial, right? And I have rants about the advertising industry and every male creative pretty much that I ever worked with. And that is a rant for another time.

But what I found so cool about influencing, before we called it influencing, right? Like I worked in Beauty PR when beauty bloggers were like starting to pick up and starting to become like not as influential as magazines, but really, really close.

But we still wouldn’t invite them on press trips. We wouldn’t. We would not do that.

But we would send them product, but we wouldn’t advertise with them. And that bothered them. And it bothered me even back then because I just I could just I was like, that’s what I’m reading, right?

Like, yes, I’m waiting for Elle magazine to come out every month. Yes, I love Allure. But I am also every single day reading like six to ten different beauty blogs and taking their recommendations.

And because they felt really authentic.

I mean, as someone because I worked in magazines for a long time, right? I’ve worked with almost every woman’s magazine that did exist and probably doesn’t exist anymore. And so much of that was also advertorial and pay to play.

And at the time, the beauty bloggers felt like I’m like, no, this is the real shit. Like you’re telling me the truth here.

Yeah, yeah. And then working in advertising and seeing like we are spending millions of dollars of our clients’ money, right?

We are recommending that people spend millions of dollars on commercials, on photo shoots, on all of these things to advertise in traditional ways.

And there are mostly women out there who are doing production and design and marketing, all these things that you could pay a traditional agency to do for quite a bit of money. And they are doing it all on their own.

They are basically like a one stop production and marketing shop. And I think because they’re women, it gets dismissed as something that is like vain, something that is vapid, something that is silly or stupid, right?

Every day, I feel like there’s something online that’s like, this high school is teaching kids like a class on influencers. And it’s like, well, why not?

As the job market seems to be contracting smaller and smaller, and now everybody has to be their own employer, like why not teach them about the thing that they use every day that they generate income for, right?

Like the CEO of Instagram has been quoted as saying like, well, I mean, we could pay you, right, to make Instagram reels, but like we were going to make that money anyways, because people are going to be on Instagram anyways, right?

Like if these platforms, certain platforms are not going to pay you, but are getting a lot of value out of you, why not know how you can get your, you know, relatively small piece of the pie?

So relatively small piece of the pie.

All of that. And yet you pointed something out. There are people in this industry who just suck.

Like, look, the world is hard and weird, and jobs are hard and weird right now. We talk about this all the time. So I want people to get their money, OK?

I just want people making money. I don’t want the head of Instagram making money. I want the average person making bank.

But what we do know is that the Instagram algorithm, our phones are listening to us. I mean, that’s been proven at this point.

And so we’re often being served a lot of things they think might solve all of our problems that only make our problems worse.

I mean, my best example, I started reporting on influencers when I started doing Under the Influence five years ago when Bea was a baby, Bea who you’re just hanging out with this weekend, who was literally climbing lampposts in the park.

In jelly shoes.

In jelly shoes, in sparkling jelly shoes. And a skort. Yeah, and a skort.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because she’s classy. She’s freaking classy.

And she was a baby who didn’t sleep. And so I was scrolling Instagram all the time. My thumb was my only appendage that was free because I just had her on dangling off one boob rocking back and forth all the time.

And I was being served the early days of mom influencers. These women who are trying to sell me their sleep training courses, and their organic baby food recipes, and they all have these clean ass houses. None of them are covered in puke and pee.

And they’re running barefoot through a field. Everything is gray. Everything is gray and like, I was like, oh my god, this is not my life.

And I felt so much shame and guilt. And I also spent so much money on their stupid training courses and just crap. Crap that did not make my life as a mom better.

And that’s when I started reporting on this. And it’s when I created the Under The Influence podcast because I was like, all right, I just want to do a deep dive into this world. Who are these people and what is all of this stuff they’re selling me?

And I realized there’s an influencer for everything. I mean, much like porn, there’s porn for everything, for every possible kink. There is an influencer for every possible kink.

And you can go deep down the rabbit hole, but those early mom influencers were the ones that really sucked me in and made me feel bad.

But now that I’m over that stage of life and my phone knows it, I am being served mostly weightlifting and protein grifters who have no nutritional training, but want to tell me what they eat in a day, and then sell me their supplements.

One thing about influencing, I think, you learned while you were making Under the Influence and while you were attempting, right? Like, what is this world like? The early seasons of Under the Influence were like, what is this world?

What is this world?

What is this world?

How does it work? It’s actually very hard.

It’s so freaking hard. That’s the thing. Like, I did not come into this to shit on this world.

Like I said, I think it’s amazing that people can make money and be their own bosses. So I decided, okay, if I’m going to make a podcast about influencers, I’m going to try to be a mom influencer. I’m going to crack this code.

I’m going to figure it out. And I failed early on. I failed within the first week for many, many reasons.

One because it is so fucking hard. It is like you, one of the things I don’t think a lot of people realized back then that we know a little bit better now is that influencers aren’t just shooting content in real time.

They’re hiring photographers and videographers to come to their house and shoot like a whole week or a whole month of content in a single day. So I did that.

And I found like this pair of matching jammies that someone had given us for Christmas because there was, I mean, we weren’t buying those much in jammies. And we did a photo shoot.

And within an hour, everyone in my house was crying, including me and my husband and my two kids, at the time two kids. And everyone hated it. They just hated being photographed like this and being forced to work.

And I was like, this is such labor. And then we got the pictures, the few pictures we had. And I had to make them look make them look even better.

Right. And then find ways to make money off those pictures. I’m like, I have to come up with a with a link to to give people so they can buy this.

And then I can get paid for this. And it was too much. I mean, my influencing experiment just failed right there.

Because like you said, if you are an influencer these days, if you are a successful influencer, you are a creative director and a CEO of a media brand. And that’s so much work.

And even as a person who makes podcasts and writes books for a living, I was like, that’s too much work for me. I don’t have those hours in the day.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, neither do I.

And I think there has to be some like another sort of title of like, you know, semi-influencer. I used to say I was an un-fluencer because like most of the stuff, I’m like, nobody actually wants my real lifestyle. I will tell you that much.

But like, there’s like four or five things that I just consistently like share because these are the things that I consistently use or own or you know, actually like and I have like almost like unwritten code of ethics that I don’t think should be

wild, but I’ve noticed do not apply to many influencers out there, which is like one, I prefer not to take a deal. I prefer not to take a deal.

I prefer not to like have somebody pay me a flat fee so I can repeat their talking points and have them edit what I’m saying. I prefer not to do that. I just let a brand white label my content for the first time.

I did not charge them enough. They’re running thousands of ads. Oh, wow.

Thousands of ads with my face on my account. It’s hell. It’s hell.

Every day I get like a million comments all from men who are like, you’re so ugly. I’m like, literally, if you think my dad didn’t tell me that when I was nine years old, like you’re going to have to get a little more clever, trust me.

But I prefer not to take brand deals, but I’m definitely not going to take one for a brand I have not used.

No, never. Never, ever. I don’t do it on the podcast either.

Everything that advertises on my podcast.

Like you have to send it to me early. I can’t commit to it. You have to send it to me.

You have to send it to me. I just, I simply cannot. I’m going to do like, you know, you’re not going to see me promote headphones that aren’t the Beats Flex or the Bose Quiet Comfort.

Those are the two that I use. They have very different purposes.

Oh, I know. You also influenced me to get those.

Those are the two. Those are the two. Okay, that’s it.

That’s it. So it does not matter if one of those, and you already know, like, you know, because everybody advertises that, we’re like, the Raymark or something, the Waymark, Raygon, something like that. I don’t know.

The Raygon, the Raygon.

It’s something like that.

And people are like, these are the best. I’m like, it’s an off brand. No, they’re not.

I’m like, no, you would have never bought those. You would have never bought those. It’s like, stop, stop.

And yeah, I’m not like hunting down new things all the time. It’s like the same few brands, same few items, like that’s it. And that’s like what feels good to me.

And there was a time doing the podcast, and I’m sure you experienced this too, where it’s like, if you are not in control of your show, you are also not in control of the ads.

Oh my God, it was terrible. When I was at iHeart for years with Under The Influence, I couldn’t, like I didn’t know the ads that I wasn’t reading, right? So the ones that they would just insert in, and it was different for every region.

And I would get people being like, oh my gosh, I just heard an ad for guns.com on your show. And I’m like, what the fu- like, I, seriously, and even when you put like guardrails up, like you don’t, you can’t control that.

So yeah, it was, or like really intense, like stomach stapling surgery after, you know, I’m like doing an episode on like, we love our bodies. And yeah, it was just real, real rough out there.

And there, but the thing is there’s also the problem with me. And this is what I realized when I attempted to be an influencer is that I didn’t really have anything people would want to buy. Like I get a lot of my kids stuff secondhand.

We have, I’m an oldish mom. So all of my friends have already had kids and they’ve given me all of their clothes up to age 10, all of which are organized in my basement in trash bags that sit with the number on them.

So I’m like, all right, you turned five. Let’s open your trash bag now. And so none of that stuff is new.

I can’t tag any of that. Among the things that I love, I will promote the rag and bone sweatpants jeans until the day I die because I wear them on every flight and people always tell me I look so good.

Damn.

Okay.

I know. I saw those and I haven’t seen them on you, but I did see just the idea of them. And I said, that is the silliest thing I’ve ever seen.

Now I’ve seen it all. I’m from the Midwest though, Jo. There’s certain things you just can’t convince me to do.

You know, I just, I think I could if you come to the house.

I say, I say, Hanes are $12.

Okay? Yeah.

Okay.

Hanes. Hanes. When I bought those $30 on sale gap sweatsuits, I was like, $30 for a pair of sweatpants.

It’s so much.

I know it’s so much. It’s so much. It is.

Hanes is right there.

Hanes is right there. And I do have the body of a medium-sized man. So I’m, I’m, it’s tough for me.

It’s tough for me. But yeah, so this is, we are two reluctant influencers, semi-influencers. We will need to come up with a quipier name and that’s on you.

I’m going to need you to come up with that. But I- Yeah, I’m on it.

I’m on it.

A semi-influencer.

So there’s, like, okay, so the setting for your book is the world of trad wife influencers. What about that world specifically pulled you in and said like, this is the setting, this is the setting for a thriller.

Someone’s got to die and we got to figure out who.

Someone is going to die. Yeah. So I started writing Everyone is Lying To You last summer.

This book has come out real quick because I was so fascinated by trad wife influencers and trad wife influencers are a hyper-specific breed.

They are the kinds of influencers who are kind of cosplaying a mix between Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Prairie Life and 1950s TV foe nostalgia.

They’re promoting the idea that women should drop out of the workforce, women belong in the home, women belong raising their children, and that men should be the primary breadwinners, and wouldn’t you just be happier if you could just garden and make

sourdough all day? Very different from a stay-at-home mom who is the CEO and the freaking boss of their kids’ lives. This is like, oh my gosh, women don’t belong working or getting an education. They belong in the home and not making money.

What drove me nuts about this is I start looking at their accounts and I’m like, all of you are selling me all of your gardening and faux farming homesteading crap, or you’re selling me a course on how to homeschool my kids.

So you are making money and the ones of you with hundreds of thousands and millions of followers are a massive media brand and your husbands probably quit their jobs to work for you.

So then that’s where the title of the book, Everyone is Lying To You came from. Because I’m like, everyone is lying to you.

Then I started to think about the kinds of tension that can arise in a marriage when a woman starts a business and suddenly she probably is making more than her husband in the cases of these women and what happens then?

Then I was like, all right, well, I think we’re going to have a dead body.

I think a dead body is going to show up and we’re going to have to figure out who did it and peel back the curtain on this perfect life of this mom influencer who everyone loves.

Then their husband shows up brutally murdered, and everyone turns against her and everyone becomes an internet detective, which is a thing that really happens now.

When something bad happens in an influencer life, people become these citizen detectives and these citizen investigators and try to figure it all out.

It all takes place at a mom conference called Mom Bomb, which I’ve been to about a dozen mom influencing conferences at this point in my life. And I will tell you, first off, like billions of dollars in business is getting done at these conferences.

Like brands are making big freaking deals, and they’re also a little bit like mom’s spring break, and they’re a little ridiculous.

And as much as I wanted Mom Bomb to be a satire, almost all of it is just real stuff that I’ve seen at mom conferences in real life. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

It’s I have not been to any of those conferences, but reading that I was like, I really want to go to one of these conferences, honestly.

I mean, they’re actually a lot of fun. You learn a lot. I learned a shit ton about influencing.

I mean, each of the breakout sessions was such a serious lesson in entrepreneurship and business. I was just like, damn, like this is, it was wild. And so this world was just ripe for conflict.

And pulling back the curtain, one of my favorite things that I learned at one of the influencing conferences that I worked into the book, is that a lot of the houses you’re looking at in influencer content are not their actual houses.

There’s now AirBnBs kind of where that you can rent just to shoot your influencer content. So then you can have the perfect, beautiful, very clean kitchen, or the perfect bedroom to wake up in and do your morning routine videos in.

They’re not their real houses. And I thought that was so crazy when I first discovered that. And so I created a whole like mysterious shadow house for one of our influencers in there.

And people keep asking me like the early readers are like, this is so crazy that you made this up. And I’m like, no, this is real, actually.

Okay, I want to be clear, I could never because I am something that I’m choosing to see as a virtue of mine and not a failing is, Jo, I can’t plan.

Look, I mean, planning, I got three kids.

I texted you on Wednesday, I said, do you want to talk on Friday?

Yeah, and I was like, actually, yes, I can. Yes, I can. Yeah, no, I know.

But that’s the thing about so much the influencer content. I mean, it is intense, hardcore, intentional planning every single day. We’re peeling back the curtain on Bex, our mom, influencer, and she goes through her day.

She’s like Thursday is media day and someone comes to make videos and take photographs of my kids, and I put them in a bunch of different outfits, all of which are monochromatic and linen, and we also sell them in my shop, and that is what it takes

to make this kind of content. It is a production level akin to making an actual magazine.

Yeah, it’s wild, and I mean, it deserves more respect, and it does deserve some scrutiny as well.

It does, because it’s a business, right? It’s a business, and also these people have so much influence, and I think that’s why it deserves the scrutiny. I used to be a celebrity journalist, okay?

I was a gossip columnist, and then I ran the news departments for celebrity magazines.

I always said celebrities should be scrutinized by the press because they have so much power over us, and these influencers have just as much, if not more, power now, because we see them on these screens glued to the palms of our hands while we’re in

Yeah, that’s true.

It’s true. It’s also strange to see it be so ignored by mainstream media, and saying mainstream media, by the way, does make us both sound like right-wing nutjobs.

We sound like right-wing nutjobs. We do.

As soon as I hear mainstream media, a little bell rings that says, nutter butter, but it’s true, which is some of these people, when you look at the views these people have, more people are watching these women clean their kitchens than are watching

the number five show on Netflix. The numbers, the numbers, they’re incredible. Okay, so this is where we transition into.

If it’s an industry that deserves scrutiny and also some respect, we are going to do both, and we are going to start with scrutinizing. We are going to share our least favorite types of influencers. We are talking genre, not specific people.

No, that’s unfair.

I mean, in the same way that I as a person who writes books, I will never call out a book I don’t like publicly because I think that books are so subjective. I think influencing is so subjective, and I would never want to personally shit on anyone.

The influencers in this book are 100 percent, quote unquote, influenced by people on the actual internet, but they’re also all made up, and all different parts of lots of different people. Yeah.

I mean, there are people I want to shit on. Jo, I’ll be so serious with you.

There are names that I am dying to say out loud, but I’m not going to because I do know that they are people, and also because what I find Icky, someone else finds deeply helpful, or inspirational, or something like that, which is why we’re going to

Thank you.

Self-help influencers.

Make no mistake, okay? Make no mistake. When you see somebody talking to a microphone, they’re saying something just vague enough to be semi-inspirational, but they’re also kind of not saying anything.

And then you start to look a little closer, because Jo, I feel like I’ve texted you a graveyard of all my ideas, but several years ago, I started subscribing to five different self-help influencers who I know are all friends with each other, right?

They’re all in a mastermind together. And I made up a new email address, got all of their emails, and was like, I’m going to analyze these, you know, did I?

Yes, I didn’t have to really, because you can see the patterns and the way that one of them has a book come out that is garbage. Yes, I’m jealous. And all of them start sending out the emails about the book.

They’re all on each other’s podcast to promote that. They cycle out who they’re promoting, but they all do it.

And I feel like if people who were not grifters did that, authors, podcasters, whatever, did like a really concerted effort or whatever, it would help them. But you know why they’re doing it?

Because their money’s tied together, Jo, because they have affiliate links to their friend’s book. They have affiliate links to their friend’s course. It is all wrapped up in money.

So like, yes, they are helping a friend, but really, like, they are all making money off each other by making money off of you.

Off of you.

Least favorite.

Off of your pain, actually. Off of your pain. With self-health influencers that I can’t stand.

I also can’t stand the fact that none of them are actually certified in anything.

They’ve all just like taken an online course, probably from their friends, and they’re giving you advice on some of like the most intimate aspects of your life with no qualifications.

Yeah. Yeah. And like making up histories for themselves too that like don’t check out, you know?

They never check out.

They never check out. No.

They never check out. And I want to say that mostly this version, this version of influencer is a man. Is a man.

And they’ve anointed maybe four women total in that sphere.

That they’ve allowed in the club.

That they’ve allowed in the club. This is mostly men. This is mostly men.

And they are making so much money, so much money on the promise that you could fix your life because your life is your problem and it’s your fault.

And there’s nothing about the way that you were raised or the culture that we live in that could impact your life whatsoever. You’re like, this is a choice. You’re choosing to be depressed.

You’re choosing to be a loser. You’re choosing to be poor. So make a different choice and spend $5,000 on this course.

On this course.

On this course. And we will fix you. Because we are the only people that can.

Absolutely.

Only people.

We’re the only people.

My, one of my least favorite brands genre of influencer is similar to that.

But it’s the version of that for parenting, and it’s the parenting help influencers, particularly the gentle parenting influencers who want to shame you for whatever way you choose to parent, which is probably not gentle parenting, at least not in my

case. What I say is that I would gentle parent if I had gentle children, but my children be not gentle.

I’d love to see you try to gentle parent be.

I have, I have. Oh my gosh, tell me why you’re acting this way. What are you feeling?

Let’s stop and examine our body. And she would just scream right in my face, take off all of her clothes and run out of the house. So I’m just like, okay, this is not a thing that’s going to work in my family.

But the gentle parenting influencers are selling you so much crap, so much. They’re selling you their course, they’re selling you their book, and sometimes they’re selling you like in-home Zoom consultations with your kids.

And they’re so filled with shame. They’re like, essentially, if your kid’s not behaving, it’s completely your fault. And not the fact that kids are just intrinsically difficult.

Yeah, it’s like they’re here for the first time.

I actually believe in reincarnation. But it’s also like you don’t bring a lot with you mentally. It’s always tabula rasa.

And I feel like they’re just figuring it out. We’re figuring out we’ve never done this life together either. I tell my kids that all the time.

Like, look, first time doing this with you, OK? We’re all first timers. I know that I’m in charge, but I’m also very stupid.

I apologize. I am making a lot of mistakes, especially as the kids get older. It’s like, I’m like, that was bad.

Sorry. Yep. Missed that while I was looking over here.

Apologies, apologies. What gentle parenting influencers don’t know about Jo Piazza’s daughter is like, I believe that she is like three weeks away from just like flicking a cigarette in your face.

100%. I say that all the time, all the time. I’m like, where is her pack of parliament lights?

And she’s five, OK? But I just see it. I can see it in her eyes.

Very cool.

I, when I met her, I was like I want you to like me.

That’s the thing. That’s how everyone feels when they meet.

Yeah. Yeah.

She’s like, sorry, she’s cool. Yeah, she’s cool. She’s cool as shit.

She’s cool.

And she did like, she held my hand briefly and I was like, OK.

Yeah, you’re like, well, because you showed her everything in your purse. But I did like that she scrutinized every thing that you had in your purse.

She was like, huh? OK.

OK. It’s OK. It’s OK.

Not perfect, but it’s OK.

Yeah.

And the little one is getting there. The thing with Charlie, my eight-year-old boy, is that I do think that he is an old soul, genuinely. And I once thought he was psychic about this that I had on the podcast.

And when he was very little and she was like, he’s an old soul and he’s also been with you many times. Like he’s been on this journey. Specifically, she told me when we were once Vikings.

And I was like, that feels right. Yeah, I agree. But and he’s so chill.

He’s so chill and like we are just like totally simpatico. I think Bea is brand freaking new. I think this is her first go round around the sun.

And there’s nothing I can do about that. That is just like she is a brand new soul.

Yeah, she is. She is. And God bless her.

God bless her.

God bless her. Okay.

So hopefully we should have moved our phones into another room because now my phone will start serving me that kind of content. And I really have, I’ve been avoiding. I’ve been like good at like just not seeing that kind of stuff.

I know something that I learned talking to you.

I talked to Meta this week. One of the like people that works at Meta doing Meta things. You can reset your algorithm.

There’s a way to reset your algorithm in settings. You can just go in and completely reset it from all of the stuff that has been serving you. And it’s like you have a new soul on your phone.

But yeah, it’s within settings in your phone. And it essentially gives you, because I told her, I was like, I am so sick of getting these like weightlifting, protein huffing ladies.

All I want on my feed is French women over 60 and otters putting rocks in their skin pockets is what I want.

Otters holding hands.

Otters holding hands. That’s what I want. And she was like, oh, didn’t you, she said this as if like everyone knows this.

Like, didn’t you know, you just go into your settings and clear the algorithm. And I’m like, no one knows that, okay. Literally, you’ve never told anyone that publicly.

No, no, no, no.

No, no, no. Don’t say all you have to do. Like, you haven’t told us this.

Like, we don’t know this.

You’ve never told us this. And like, this is the way you serve us ads, and this is the way you keep us addicted. And you know this.

So don’t act like this is just normal knowledge.

Okay. One of my other least favorite ones is, one of my least favorite genres of influencer is people who, like, they’re just sort of like, they’re women who just like do general like sort of like fashion content. But they do Amazon hauls.

Amazon hauls. I don’t want to see in Amazon haul. Yes, we have all used Amazon.

Yes, we, they’re, they’re so interesting. You can’t not use Amazon, because guess what? Every website is hosted on Amazon.

Like Amazon’s a monopoly. Where’s our government? Oh, all of our, you know, congresspeople and senators are one million years old and don’t know how the internet works.

Like they are a monopoly and like the truest. Sense of the word, but you don’t need to buy garbage clothing, just because it’s cheap. They’re not keeping it.

They’re not keeping it. They’re buying 10 dresses to try on shoot. And then they’re sending them back because trust me, they are, there’s not a natural fiber to be found.

No, there’s not.

They will disintegrate when you watch, wash them.

Yes, they will go up in flames.

They will go up in flames. If they’re anywhere near a candle.

Anywhere near a candle. You will smell so badly because they are pure plastic clothing. They will pill.

They will not wear well. They photograph well. That is what they do.

They photograph well. They do not wear well. And when I see this, when I see this, I’m filled with rage.

I’m filled with rage because I know that these women are making probably tens of thousands of dollars a month selling you garbage that they would not wear. Guess what? They don’t wear that.

They don’t wear that. They have a closet of expensive clothing, expensive bags, and they are tricking you into overconsuming. It’s like overconsumption core to the max.

You do not need a new spring wardrobe. You don’t need a new fall wardrobe. You don’t need a winter wardrobe.

You just don’t. You just don’t. And that’s my lease.

I just, oh, when I see it, I’m like, not interested, not interested, not interested. Not interested, not interested.

No, don’t, don’t, don’t like it. I came across something this morning on Bustle about having a frazzled English woman summer, which is where you just go in your closet and pile on layers of your old clothes. And I’m like, that’s me.

That’s the summer. That’s the summer that I want. That’s the content that I’m here for.

Yeah, that’s great.

I, yeah, I love that. That’s, yeah, that’s perfect. That’s perfect.

But especially when they’re doing like videos that are like, cut it, cuts of them like wearing, you know, like, I’m like, you’re not doing it. You’re not wearing that. That’s not how you dress.

You’re not actually wearing that in real life.

And we know that we know that they’re returning all of it. And when you return things to Amazon, they just immediately go in the landfill. It’s not like those are getting reused.

OK, like this is just massive, massive over consumption and destroying the earth. And again, I am also a person that’s like, I’m not totally breaking up with Amazon.

There’s things I have to order because I live in a city and like I there’s a lot of things I can’t get. But at the same point, Amazon over consumption core is so, so gross.

I don’t get them as much anymore because I started blocking them because they were driving me so crazy.

And I don’t like to put nasty comments on anything online either because I’m very reserved and reserved those for bitching with my friends on my couch. But I wanted to, I really wanted to on those guys. So yeah, no, I had to stop.

OK, OK, what’s your, now you give me a category?

Henfluencers.

Wait, no, we’re doing least favorite.

You don’t like henfluencers?

I don’t like henfluencers. I don’t like henfluencers because despite the fact that I like looking at chickens, and there are a couple chicken accounts that I like because they’re pretty.

But my issue with henfluencers is that I think they’re, first off, they’re also grifting you because they’re all trying to sell you their worksheets for dealing with hens. They’re very, very, very expensive chicken coops.

And they’re making it seem like raising chickens and hens is very easy when it’s impossible because chickens are nasty bees, okay? They are very, they’re like, they’re kind of dumb, they’re just like kind of bitchy, they’re filthy, they’re stinky.

And the henfluencers make it seem like you can just like live with like five dozen chickens in your urban backyard or in your house, and you’re just getting all of these free eggs and it’s just so beautiful and no one shows the shit, like the literal

We’re still cleaning chicken shit off out of our yard and the chickens are IP’d.

Yeah, exactly.

A year ago maybe.

All of this, like they just, they show the beautiful coop, but they don’t show the massive electrical fence you have to put around the coop, so that the raccoons and the foxes, and in my case, in the Catskills, the bears don’t come and rip those

Coyote bloodbath in our backyard.

Bloodbath.

Bloodbath.

My issue is that they’re- Six in one night.

No, I know. Six in one night.

Selfish.

Selfish.

Come back for more. And also the cost per egg. The first egg, I was like, this is a thousand dollar egg.

Yeah, it was.

Yeah, it was.

Thousand dollar egg. Were those eggs great? Yes.

My chickens were fun. They were sweet. I liked them.

A lot of poop. It’s a lot of poop. It’s a lot of poop.

My least favorite influencers are the ones that are legit hiding labor or actual shit.

That goes back to the Everyone is Lying To You concept. So I don’t like mom influencers who make momming look really easy and I don’t like influencers who make having chickens look just beautiful and easy. I don’t like labor being hidden from anyone.

I like that.

That’s a good one. Okay. I’m updating my list.

Okay. This is related to my first category, but boss babe influencers, they’re still there.

Still there.

They still exist. There’s one that I’m thinking about in particular, drives me absolutely mental. Everything is an affiliate link to courses, courses that kind of don’t, by the way, I was brought in to this siren song.

Okay. Courses that don’t, they’re not teaching you anything. You know why they can’t teach you anything?

Because the internet that they rose to prominence on doesn’t exist anymore. Doesn’t exist. You can’t replicate their success.

You can’t do it. If you could, everybody would. If you could, they would be showing you people who did it.

But they never show you people who did it, because there’s nobody who did it. Not everybody can make money online. Not everybody can be an influencer.

Not everybody can run a digital business. What are you talking about digital products? What are you talking about master resale rights?

Like, oh, you have the rights to resale these PDFs? It’s like, what are you talking about? What are you talking about?

Somebody is trying to tell you that you can make money quickly online. They are lying to you.

They are lying to you. They are lying to you. Yep, yep, yep.

They are lying to you.

It’s actually very hard. It’s actually very hard. And you know why they’re not doing?

Because I try to make money through content online all the time.

And yeah, not easy, not easy.

Not easy, not easy, not easy. Even with like a, with a, not with a platform, not with, you know, kind of everything in the world. No, it is not easy.

And there’s a reason why they’re not even really, why their business is now helping, helping you start a business instead of just like running their business. There’s a reason they don’t do the business anymore.

It’s because their business is convincing you to start a business. It’s basically an MLM.

Well, I think it is an MLM. Like I think it is like the new version of the pyramid scheme, MLM. Like let me sell you my course on how to make money online.

And that course includes convincing other people to sell courses on how to make money online.

True. True, true, true. I just can’t stand it.

I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it. People are like, okay, so here’s the thing.

You’re going to buy a Pinterest course. You don’t need to buy a course on how to use Pinterest.

No, you sure don’t.

pinterest.com has resources to show you how to use Pinterest.

They do. Actually, good ones. Good ones.

I just did a book club with Pinterest. Actually, they read Sicilian Inheritance, and they gave me so many good links for Pinterest tips, and they’re like, no, we’re really user-friendly. Really user-friendly.

Yes, they are.

They are. You don’t need to buy that. You don’t need to buy some of these business course.

Trust me, they are lying to you.

They’re lying to you. They sure are. They sure as shit are.

Well, and I would lump in the influencers in this too that tell you they’re going to teach you how to make money doing Amazon reviews.

It’s one big, all the same grift. It’s all the same grift.

All the same grift. All the same grift. Yeah.

My next least favorite, and I’ve mentioned them nine times in this, so it’s not surprising.

It’s the women who are telling me how much protein I need to eat in a day, which they’re all trying to sell me a protein shake of some kind or a protein bar, and they’re always lifting weights with cut abs.

It’s a very hyper-specific thing, and it’s like, if I knew this one thing, I’d drop weight so fast, or nine ways to get 100 grams of protein in a day, which I don’t think is actually that healthy. I don’t know. That seems like a lot of protein.

Am I supposed to be eating all day?

I know.

Exactly.

And never a treat?

Yeah. Never, no, never a treat, never a treat. I went down the rabbit hole of these women, and again, like a lot of the people who claim to be experts on things online, none of them are nutritionists.

They’re just people that once ate a filet of salmon, but they all have hundreds of thousands of followers. I think they’re definitely making money. Their engagement is really high.

It drives me crazy again because it does introduce this level of body shaming of being like, is this what I’m supposed to be looking like? Is this how I’m supposed to be eating? They’re the main reason that I’m resetting the phone.

Yeah.

I don’t get a lot of that, and I’m glad for it because I’m fine with the amount of protein I’m eating. I already know that the two things that we have to do as women to not disappear into dust, three things.

I’ve got Sophie on calcium supplements, because she’s also lactose intolerant. I’m like, girl, you’ve got to keep these bones. You’ve got to keep these bones.

Protein, we do have to lift weights. We know it. We know we have deep protein, lift weights, and probably also still be taking a calcium supplement even though I think our bones are already done.

Who knows? I don’t want that. I don’t want that in my feed, so I renounce that, and I hope my phone didn’t hear you mention that.

Apparently, you can reset it.

I’m going to get all the instructions because, as usual, my ADD wasn’t totally paying attention, but I’m like, this is important. Try to file this away, Piazza. Try to file this away.

That’s what I do.

I say, now, I know I want to be listening to this, but am I?

But am I? But am I? No, not really.

It’s now gone from, it’s clearly gone from my brain.

Okay. Similar category to ones that we’ve talked about is just family vloggers, people who share their children’s entire lives on the Internet. Yeah.

Okay.

And this always ruffles some feathers.

I mean, I used to do this, right?

You had a whole reffining with this. You’ve written about this. Yeah.

I was like, oh yeah, I share my kids online, like big deal.

Like who’s looking? Like, I mean, the point is not like, you know, is not necessarily like who’s looking, ooh, there could be a pervert, but yes, there could be. And like, trust me, like deep fake technology, you do not want that around your kids.

Even if there’s one creep looking, and guess what? That creep is most likely to be somebody that you know already. So like, let’s get that out of the way.

The point is, this is their lives. Their lives. This is a whole human being.

Whole human being. This is their life. Their life.

My entire life, my entire childhood is in a box underneath this desk that my mom gave me. It is labeled Nora’s life. It is not out on the internet.

If I want to share my second grade report card with you, I can do that. If I want to share my awkward middle school photo with you, I can do that.

If I want to tell you about, you know, what happened to me on a specific day in fourth grade, I can do that. But like kids truly cannot conceptualize what it means to share themselves online. Like they can’t.

They can’t. And I literally don’t care. And people are like, well, I’m putting money away from them.

I don’t care. I don’t care. I think when your kid is 20 or when your kid is like even 12 or in my case, maybe it was in second grade when they learned how to Google themselves.

Like second graders are embarrassed of baby photos of themselves. Like they don’t think like that’s a cute baby. They think like, oh God, like that’s like self-consciousness, like, you know, creeps in.

It’s like, I don’t know. I just, I hate it. I like scroll, I block.

I’m like, get a grip. If you are not interesting on your own without sharing your kids, getting your kids to do a dance, getting your kids to like be on camera, you’re not interesting.

Then you’re not interesting. Then you’re just not interesting. I know, I know.

Yeah, no, I mean, I think about it so much. I purged probably 95% of the content on Instagram that had my kids, mostly because I started to freak out about perverts.

You know, my new rule of thumb is if you wouldn’t show this picture, the rare pictures I posted them, to the creepiest person in Starbucks, the creepy, creepiest person you see in Starbucks. You know which one I’m talking about.

They’re drooling a little bit. Then don’t post it, because the creepiest person on Starbucks, there’s a thousand of them and they can look at them.

And also, I don’t want AI to be able to replicate 90,000 photos of my child doing anything, which is now a very real possibility. And I do look at so many of these.

There’s just, there’s family vloggers now, because this has been happening for a long enough time, whose kids started out as like toddler stars in their videos. And now those kids are tweens.

And I did a whole episode of Under The Influence of This, where a bunch of these tween girls were now banding together in a quote unquote content house, like in a collective, to do their videos together.

And I mean, they seem like they’re 25, these girls, right? I’m just like, wow, okay. And they’re still young enough that I’m like, I don’t think they’re making a conscious choice, and their parents are making so much money off of these children.

And I mean, sure, maybe they’re putting some of that money away. I think legally, in a couple of states, you have to at this point. But it does give me hardcore, in some of the cases, Jean-Béné Ramsey vibes.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, totally, totally, totally, totally. And I think that the next currency is going to be anonymity.

Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

You know, like, there’s people that you simply don’t see their children, like people who are truly, like the 1%, you don’t know who their goods are. You don’t know who their goods are.

And they want it that way. I say this all the time, or I used to say this all the time, as a celebrity journalist, you know, thinking about the kinds of celeb…

What I knew is that there are the kinds of celebrities out there who completely exploit their kids, right?

Who were selling their baby pictures for millions of dollars during the baby picture boom, who were calling the paparazzi to take pictures of them with the kids at the farmer’s market.

And then I would just, you know, like anyone to name Matt Damon’s children for me. How many does he even have? Like, there’s certain stories out there.

I’m like, I don’t know how many kids you have. I don’t know their names. Like, y’all just did a good job.

Y’all just did a good job of pretending that kids don’t exist. He’s got four, by the way, spoiler, still couldn’t tell you their names or gender.

What a guy.

What a guy. What a guy. And compare that to the Affleck, okay?

Compare that to the Affleck.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep, yep, yep.

Yeah.

All right. What else do you hate?

So much. So. Well, you know, there’s one that I can’t decide.

This might be a good bridge between love and hate, because I can’t decide how I feel about it. And it’s so niche, but pelvic floor influencers. I can’t decide if I love or hate it.

Sometimes I’m like, you know what? The fact that women’s pelvic floors are just allowed to collapse into a trampoline of bounciness and misery after we have children and no one’s paying any attention is unfair and cruel.

And at the same time, I just don’t really need a diagram of my vagina to be one of the first things that pops up on a screen in the morning.

Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know if I need that either.

But and also, I mean, it’s the both and baby, which is no one mentioned my pelvic floor to me at all. I ran a half marathon. Run is an exaggeration.

I shuffled my way through a half marathon.

I shuffle through things. I shuffle. And I feel I’m very proud of it.

He was born November 5th.

I did this like March 11th.

That’s insane. That’s dumb, actually.

I felt like I was like, I feel like I’m about to have a baby. I feel like my baby is coming out of me again. There might be a secret baby in there.

Yeah.

Because no one has taught us about our pelvic floor, which is why I’m so on the fence about this. I’m like, I feel like you’re bringing awareness to something. And also, sometimes it’s a lot of TMI in there.

Yeah.

Okay, so one of my favorite genres, we’re going to go into the celebration aspect. That was a perfect bridge.

Because there are some things that bring me so much joy, I mean, in addition to Otters holding hands. Yeah.

I love cleaning influencers.

Same, hard same. Yeah, yep.

I love it. I love it. I love it.

I’ve gotten great product recommendations, the O Cedar mop with the different attachments. That mop is life-changing. I was like, yeah, bring back mopping.

Why am I not mopping all the time? I’m mopping regularly because of cleaning influencers. Oh, no.

No.

Okay.

You’ve got to follow Tidy Dad.

Tyler Moore, he is just a gem of a human. He’s a New York City school teacher, a dad of three girls.

He’s actually going to do my New York City book launch with me at The Strand in New York on July 15th because I’m only doing book events with influencers because I think that’ll make it way more fun.

And he has just inspired me to tidy up my whole home. He’s incredible. He’s just, everything he does is fantastic.

I love that.

I’m trying to find the cleaning influencer that I like the most. Oh, okay. It’s LaterKatez on Instagram.

Three easy cleaning tips. Clean my shower with me. The best shower cleaning hack.

Like, I just…

Yes. Yes, yes, and yes.

I love it. I love it. I love it.

And there’s just something so soothing about, like, watching someone else clean a bathroom. And I honestly, cleaning a bathroom is one of my, like, meditative practices. I love to clean a bathroom.

Like, I have somebody who cleans our house every other week, but every week I’m cleaning my own bathroom. I’m cleaning all the bathrooms. Like, I love, love, love, love cleaning a bathroom and…

I love organizing a drawer.

So, I really like an organizing influencer.

Oh, yes.

Or organizing a closet. The ones where they take everything out and they choose what to keep and what not to keep. And yeah, I mean, well, because I find them inspiring, too.

Like, I find them very, very calming. And then I’m like, all right, I can do this. I can, like, I can definitely organize my closet right now.

Yes.

Yeah. I love an organizing. This is kind of similar, but there’s this influencer I follow called Downsize Upgrade.

And she’s a minimalist and I will never be her, right? Like, I love my things. I love my things.

And I’ve done some of her practices. Like, she’ll, on Wednesday, she like spins a wheel and she’s like, follow, follow, follow, pause. And then it’s like one thing that you have to declutter.

So it’s more like, I like the decluttering stuff. I will never be a person who has like, you know, three shirts and like two pairs of pants. But I also know that it is true.

Like when you have, when your space is like too chaotic and there’s a certain level of chaos that I need for my brain, but when your space is too chaotic, when you have too many things, they start to like have you.

And I know that feeling and I’ve really like, I’ve really loved following her and it’s like decluttering our kitchen things and being like, girl, be so for real right now. You are never going to make donuts. You don’t need a donut pan.

No, you’re not.

No, you’re not. Or if you do, you can borrow.

You’re never going to do it.

You can borrow a donut pan. There will be something.

Borrow one.

Someone down the street will have a donut pan. You know what I just discovered? Through one of these minimalist influencers, actually, I discovered that you can usually take out baking supplies and stuff from your local library.

Many local libraries will have. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. This is a service of libraries.

They have different kinds of baking pans, so different muffin things. I discovered my library has the little Dutch pancake molds, mixers, things like that. You can check these kinds of things out of your library.

That’s genius.

Yeah. We got to get back to a sharing culture. It’s bananas to me.

We don’t have a lawnmower because we don’t need one. But when we lived in the Midwest, I’m like, why do we all own our own lawnmower? We live right next door to each other.

Totally.

I think about this all the time in the Catskills. I’m like, why doesn’t everyone share one riding mower here? Yeah.

Go rent that.

Park it, build one little shed. Everyone just checks it out. Just check out the riding mower.

You just split that. We got to get back to that. I love that.

We have a tool library in our neighborhood too.

You can be a member of and then you can borrow tools from. Because my husband does build things. He’s handy.

He built our whole kitchen table. So nice. But he’s going to use that circular saw maybe once a year.

We don’t need to have our own.

Yes. And doesn’t need to be just sitting in your own shed, not being used while someone goes and buys one that they will also use once a year. Like once a year.

Why, why, why, why, why?

These are the kinds of influencers who have actually changed my life, who have influenced me in such a positive way. I also like a lot of minimalist influencers because I’m kind of a maximalist in a lot of ways. Me too.

But at the same time, I appreciate it. I appreciate the aesthetic. So, but like they’re tricks.

I use them. These are hacks that I actually use in my life that bring me great joy.

Yeah, I find it soothing to accomplish something. And when somebody gives me something simple that I can accomplish, that feeling will really last me. That feeling will last me.

I will ride that feeling as long as I can. I feel the same way about home design as an influencer category with an asterisk.

Yeah.

Okay? Which is home design that is not trend-based because fast home design is the new fast fashion, right?

Oh, it’s the worst. Yes.

It’s so bizarre. It’s like, again, you don’t need pillows for every season, right?

Even though the 90s suburban moms, who I was like, you’re rich, were women who had seasonal hand towels in the bathroom, seasonal throw pillows, seasonal decor, and also all these micro trends, right? Where it’s like, you’re going to need these.

You’re like, get your tchotchkes secondhand. I’m telling you, you’re never going to find something like this at TJMX, you’re just not. They don’t make sad puppy planters anymore.

They don’t make sad puppy planters anymore.

That was a gift from my kids. Well, I follow a lot of vintage stores, actually, specifically to find some more sad puppy core. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. I love, there’s this account called Design Addict Mom, and her house is so colorful, so colorful and like so joyful and like approachable and just feels like her and doesn’t feel like she’s chasing trends.

She’s just showing people how she put her space together. And every time she’s on my feed, I’m so excited to see her.

Yeah. I love a bright space. That’s the thing.

I mean, I love like, I love color. I love, I also love stuff that feels lived in. So I’ve been following an OG influencer forever and ever, Gabby Blair at Design Mom.

You know, she was an OG blogger.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

On her blog, she also features people’s houses with kids that are very lived in, right? But the beautiful, but lived in and useful spaces. And I interviewed Gabby five years ago when Under The Influence started.

And we were in the midst of renovating the first floor of our house and I was all caught up in it. I felt guilty about the money I was spending. And she’s like, no.

She’s like, your home is where your family is going to be a family. And so you figure out how to make it work for you. And I think about that all the time.

And I just, I love all of her content. She has also wrote the book Ejaculate Responsibly. So it’s just a nice mix of design with feminism, which that I love.

That’s just like a really, that’s a Jo Piazza, Ven intersection that I love. And so, yeah, yeah.

Just like true point of view.

Accessible design, I’m very into.

I’m very into that. I’m not into, I’m just not into, I just don’t think that gray is taste. I’m sorry, I just don’t.

I don’t think having an all gray, all beige house is interesting. As I am soothing to me, it actually makes me kind of, it feels like mental health facility.

It does give a little mental health facility vibes. I love color. I want so much color on my body and in my house, and gray and black.

Again, yeah. Do not give me your HGTV, we graced everything vibes.

I don’t want it. I don’t want it. HG or like, you know, all home design shows too used to be like interesting and used to be about like how people really live it.

No, but now everything looks exactly the same.

Yeah.

Everything looks exactly the same. I don’t like that. I don’t like that.

I like unique people. I also really like, I love financial influencers. I love female financial influencers.

I like people who are realistic about money. I obviously love the financial diet. Also because, you know why?

She’s the one with a point of view and not just about money. And she’s also a novelist, which I love. I love people who contain multitudes.

I do not want you to be a brand. I do not want you to be, you know, just a flat, you know, presence. I want to know like who you are.

I love all of that. And I also love people who share about their debt and how they’re paying it off. I love that.

I love messy money stuff. I don’t like financial people who are mean.

No, or no, or who are shaming you or guilting you or making you feel like you’re making all of the wrong decisions in your life. But I do love anyone that dissects debt and is honest about debt.

And I hate hearing the same financial stuff over and over again of the, if you’re not putting stuff in your 401k, you’re a failure. I’m like, I don’t want to hear that. I don’t want to hear your budget hacks.

I want to hear more like how are real people piecing together a life. I also love people that are honest about their salaries because I just don’t think that we talk enough about money and what real people make and what real people live on.

And how hard it is these days to cobble together a salary in the world because no one is staying staying at jobs the way that they used to. So, yeah, I like I am very into those people, too. I’m very into but I’m not into.

This is a subset. The the crazy fire bros, the retire early.

That’s what I’m talking about.

Yeah, those guys. No, no. And they make those influencers.

Nick gets served those. Nick, my husband gets served very particular things on the Instagram on the rare occasions he goes on.

He gets served the fire bros, the retire early guys and survival, survival bros, who are trying to get him to buy like home generators and stuff. They’re like, protect your family at all costs. Here’s a chest freezer.

Shoot a deer. Yeah.

He’s like, I’m probably not gonna do that, but thank you.

He’s like, unlikely, unlikely. Unlikely. He’s like, but this is what the internet thinks that I want.

That I want to retire early with my generator in the middle of the woods.

I’m like, actually retire early, shoot a deer, and just, I gotta retire early, I gotta protect you guys.

I gotta protect you guys. And I was like, actually, I do think you wanna, you know, go off and live in the woods and just make shit, but okay, whatever. Yeah, sure, that’s not you, that’s not you.

I do, I do wanna do that, I do wanna do that.

But okay, we’re gonna do some influencing right now. I want you to influence me. What are some things that you have bought that you would recommend recently to me, to us?

To us, to the world.

Okay, so I was influenced by this thing and I was influenced for good reason because it really works.

It’s the Thrive Mascara that is for women over the age of like 35 when our eyelashes just start to disappear and it makes my eyelashes, it makes me look like I’m wearing falsies and it’s not, it’s expensive but not crazy expensive like when it comes

to like, you know, most makeup brand, good makeup brands are like, are pricey. And so yeah, the Thrive Mascara, it’s like the tubes that goes on eyelashes, it’s perfection, it’s absolute perfection.

You’re the second person who mentioned that to me this week.

Because it’s great, it’s really great. Yeah.

Okay, what about the cute shoes you were wearing the other day?

Oh, the Frida Salvador’s? Okay, yeah. These are my friends in Sausalito, because when I lived in San Francisco, I was a sad sack and I had like two friends.

And one of these women was one of my friends. And so they make, Frida Salvador, they make gorgeous, gorgeous shoes for women that are actually comfortable.

And these are, they’re just slides, they’re slide-on sneakers, they’re green and white checked. They kind of look like old school vans, but sexier.

And I wear them to conferences, like I wear them on stage when I’m doing events, and I constantly, constantly get compliments.

Yeah, I compliment you immediately.

I know, because they’re great. They’re so comfortable. I’ve walked miles and miles and miles.

And I’ve had the same pair now, I think, for six years, and they don’t look beat up. They’re great.

Yeah?

Yeah.

You’ve had that for those for six years?

That specific pair for six years.

Shut up.

Yeah. No, I have. And I have their fancier shoes too.

I wear their fancier shoes. I have their combat boot kind of shoes, Frida Salvador, they’re just, they’re magical, wonderful people and they’re great. And I will also say, look, they’re expensive, but I do love the Rag and Bone sweatpants jeans.

I look put together even when I’m not, and they’re so comfortable and I adore them, but they are stupid expensive and there are dupes, but I will not buy dupes from Amazon, obviously. Gap has some dupes that are, I think, in the $30 range. Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. I’ll send me those affiliate links. I’ll put those in the description.

I’ll send you those links.

I’m on it.

Okay. So here are my three. One is I had a subscription to this a while ago.

I think I paused it because we were going to be gone for a while, and then I just remembered, reinstated it, and it’s recess drinks. Have you ever had these?

Oh, I love these. I love these.

I love these. There’s like magnesium.

There’s magnesium. I only ever get them. My friend has a sauna company where you go there and you get to sit in her sauna, and it’s called Reset.

It’s amazing. It’s down in Crozet, Virginia, and she has them. So I have them every time I go visit, and then I tell myself, I’m like, you love these recess drinks.

Go get them for yourself, and then I forget. So that is thank you for reminding me.

You love these. I love these so much. I have anxious children, go figure, and at the end of the night, crack one of those, sit on the couch, unwind, and it’s like, like, and they mock tails to you.

I don’t really drink. I’ve like, drink them maybe like once a year. It just does not agree with me anymore.

I think I’m having a reckoning, because the thing is I love drinking.

Like I actually love it. Like, you know, and I’m a social drinker. I’m not like a, come home.

Oh my gosh, it’s five o’clock. I have to have my glass of wine now. But it’s a, oh, I’m out with friends.

Let’s tie it on, like once a week or once every other week.

I had a glass of champagne at that wedding I was at in Philly. I was up literally all night.

Well, that’s the thing. Like it’s like, I have to choose sleep or I have to choose booze. And I think the recess is a really, because I just like the ritual of the drinking too.

So the recess is a nice alternative to…

Not a sparkling water, not a soda.

Yeah, exactly.

It could be a placebo effect, which I love. I love a placebo effect. I can get placebo effected by anything.

If you told me you were hypnotizing me this whole time, I would instantly fall asleep if you snapped your fingers. I, but I, it’s just, it does help.

Like I just feel like, like I can relax and maybe the placebo effect is what like gets my kid to sleep. But it’s nice to know in case that I love the blood orange. Oh, the blood orange is really good.

Okay, my second is one I’ve talked about a million times. It already worked on you. The brick, it’s like I can get around.

Yeah. Yeah, I can get around any, you know, like the screen time codes, any app, anything like this. I think the difference with the brick, which is a screen time control device is it’s a physical item.

I put it in the other room. There’s one, I have two one here, is that the studio one’s at home.

So for me to access Instagram or TikTok, or when I’m in home mode, even my email, I lock myself out of email when I’m at home, so I don’t work when I’m around my kids. I have to take my phone to a second location. There’s something about that.

Where I’m like, don’t want it that bad, do I? I don’t want it that bad.

No, no. And that’s why the brick seemed like the natural thing for me to get, because I’ve been trying to dock my phone in the same way, I try to treat it like a landline when I’m in the house.

And I’m like, oh, yeah, if it’s in the other room, that’s far. Like I’m not putting in that level of effort. It’s when it’s like attached to my body all the time.

And so the brick felt like another level of that. And so I’m really psyched to try the brick.

Yeah, it’s really worked to the point where even if I forget to brick my phone, I just assume it is.

Right? Because that’s what happens to our brains. So I don’t have that same habit.

So it’s like, it’s brick when I go to bed, it’s brick when I wake up.

And I just like, I’m not scrolling before bed, I’m not scrolling when I wake up. And like that has made a huge, huge difference. Yes.

Like a huge difference. And my third, I was influenced by Martha Stewart, one of the hottest women alive.

She’s so hot. She’s so cool.

She’s so hot.

She’s so hot.

She’s so hot. I think about her all the time.

I think about her all the time.

We owe, I feel like we have to round up women we owe apologies to.

Sure. Yep. 100%.

Okay.

Women we, and she’s right at the top of the list. You watch that documentary, you’re going to think a little bit differently. Okay.

It wasn’t insider trading. It was not insider trading. Sorry.

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

You think she cares about $30,000, $80,000? No, she doesn’t give a shit. She doesn’t.

She wouldn’t even notice if that went missing. She would not notice. But she posted on Instagram about Merit Beauty.

And I’ve already seen everybody else post about this, but there’s something about seeing her do it.

So that matters. That’s different.

Got a full set. Got a full set. I love having just five little things to put on.

Oh.

Five little things.

Okay. It’s not going to ever be my stage makeup, right? It’s not going to be like when I do a full face, like if I did a full face for video, which I sometimes do, it’s going to still be tart, right?

It’s still going to be everything spackled, but like out and about, and it travels so well, like a blush that’s like a little dome that you just go boop, boop.

Okay.

Like a foundation that’s in a stick form, a tinted sunscreen that really, really matches that really well.

Yeah.

A cream to powder eye shadow, it just all feels really good.

You’re influencing me right now. You’re influencing me, because I have not been influenced for that yet. Yeah.

And I just started using that mascara.

I think it’s also tubing. It does kind of like the same thing as like the Thrive, but Thrive would not come off me, which was the problem for me.

Oh, that’s interesting.

I mean, it just felt too crumbly or something, like I don’t know. But everybody else loves it. So again, go figure.

But yeah, I just like, it just feels so like, and I loved, I traveled with it this week. And like just seeing those five things lined up, I was like, oh.

That’s nice. Because that feels like an organization influencer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it does.

It does.

So yeah, those are my three things.

Those are my three things.

I love all these things.

Jo Piazza, thank you for giving me nine hours of your time. I’m just gonna do nine more. I do wanna live with you in Philadelphia.

And I love your book. I love all of your books. Yeah, Jo’s book is linked in the description and it’s so good.

It is so good. You’re gonna wanna read it by the pool. You’re gonna wanna like talk about it with your friends.

Everyone is Lying To You is the name of the book. It’s linked in the description. It’s linked everywhere.

And Jo Piazza, we will have to have you back. Thank you for coming in.

I loved everything about it.

Thanks for being here, that was our conversation with Jo Piazza. We have a link to her new book, Everyone is Lying To You, it’s out July 15th, 2025.

We have links to everything that Jo and I discussed in this episode, us doing a little bit of light influencing while discussing influencers. You just, you just, you know, such is the world. Such is the world.

We always wanna hear what you think. If you want to leave a comment, you should go over and join the Substack, which is also linked. It is noraborialis.substack.com.

There are a lot of ways to support this show and one is listening to it, so thank you. Sharing it with a friend, thank you. Rating it, reviewing it, and, or, if you want to join the Substack, you will get all the ad-free episodes.

You will get bonus content. You will get the archives of when the podcast was called Terrible Thanks For Asking. It’s all over there.

We have a nice little group of listeners, too. I really like getting all of your comments and the conversations that happen around episodes. I love having it there.

So, this is an independent podcast. We like it that way. We like to do it this way.

Our team is Marcel Malekibu, myself and Grace Berry. Marcel is our producer extraordinaire. He’s fantastic.

Grace does literally everything else. She’s so talented. She’s so wonderful.

Thank you, Grace. And thank you also to our supporting producers. Supporting producers are people who have joined the Substack and supported this podcast at a level a little bit higher than the annual fee.

You can pay monthly. You can pay annually. Or you can kick in a few extra dollars and be a supporting producer and get your name in the credits.

And that is really the only benefit. So it is quite, quite wonderful to be able to read all of these names every month. So here we go.

Ben and Jess and Michelle Toms and Tom Stockburger and Jen and Beth Derry and Stacey Tomorrow and Emily Ferriso. I don’t have a tune for this. And Stephanie Johnson and Faber Rins and Amanda and Sarah Garifo and Jennifer McDagle, all caps.

Elia Feliz, Milan, Lindsey Lund, Renee Kepke, Chelsea Cernick, Car Pan, LGS, Never Know Your Name, It’s Just Your Initials and That’s Okay, Stacey Wilson, Courtney McCown, Kaylee Sakai, Mary Beth Berry, That’s My Old Gym Teacher, Jothia Disopolis,

Mad, Abbiah Rose, Elizabeth Berkley, Kim F, Melody Swinford, Val, Lauren Hanna, Katie, Jessica LaTexier, Crystal Mann, Lisa Piven, Kate Lyon, Christina, Sarah David, Kate Byers-Jean, Erin John, Joy Pollock, Crystal, Jennifer Bavalka, Jess Blackwell,

Micah, Jessica Reed, Beth Lippem, Kiara, Jill MacDonald, Jen, Gremlin, Alexis Lane, David Binkley, Kathy Hamm, Virginia Labossi, I’m Going Nuts, Lisa DeVries, Jeremy Essin, Andrew Brzezinski, Robin Ruhlard, Nicole Petey, Monica, Caroline Moss, that’s

my best friend. We both pay for each other’s substacks, which might be weird. We could just, it cancels each other out, but I think that’s friendship. Rachel Walton, Inga, Bonnie Robinson. I love the name Bonnie. I love the name Bonnie.

If you are pregnant right now or think you might be pregnant in the future, consider the name Bonnie. You don’t hear it very often and you should. It’s so cute.

It’s so sweet. Perfect name, Bonnie. Bonnie Robinson, even better.

Shannon Dominguez-Stevens, Penny Pesta. I’m going to say it every time. It’s a great name.

Kaylee, Dave Gilmore, that’s my best friend from college. And Jacqueline Ryder, that’s the end of this song. Thank you so much for being here.

We are, by the time you’re hearing this, we are still on vacation. We worked super hard to get all these episodes done before we went on vacation. I want everybody here at Feelings & Co to take some time off or regroup.

We’ve had quite a year as a small group of people. So thanks for being here. We will see you here again next week.