How to win friends and de-influence people

“Once you have those magic glasses, you can’t unsee it,” author Jessica Elefante says.

Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.

A reminder: Embedded is switching up its paid/free ratio—interviews are now free! —Kate

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Jessica Elefante and I met, like many people these days, on the internet. After I wrote about millennial meme marketing in October, she was kind enough to send me a copy of her new book, Raising Hell, Living Well: Freedom From Influence In A World Where Everyone Wants Something From You (Including Me). This is how I learned that she and I had been writing about two sides of the same coin for the past few years, but never brought our worlds together—until now. Embedded is frequently about being a person navigating an internet that’s been corrupted by capitalism, and Elefante, for most of her life, was one of the people responsible for that. 

Millennial meme marketing must end

Elefante’s early career, after stints as a bartender and ski instructor, was in brand marketing, specifically at a time when brands started realizing they could get on social media. She helped coin the term “She-EO”—in her case, to convince working moms to buy snacks for their kids. She drank the Girl Boss Kool-Aid for  years before the effects of 24/7 connection resulted in the physical symptoms of “digital dementia”—brain fog, memory loss, and word searching. She quit her job, and has been trying to atone ever since. 

“I just kept saying, I want to apologize to the world,” Elefante tells me over Zoom about her inspiration to write this book, which she calls not a “how-to,” but a “how-come.” How come we all feel like this? Society is overly connected and motivated by all the wrong things, not just because of social media, but because of advertisers on social media who, once you start looking, are either behind or are co-opting the internet trends and behaviors we hold dear.

Elefante’s book is as much about the systems responsible for this as it is the insidious ways they unconsciously take root in our brains—like how Elefante started media brand Folk Rebellion in hopes of helping people have a better relationship with tech, only to accidentally recreate some of the same toxic systems. We touch on all of this in our chat, as well as how she finally worked to rewire her brain away from this kind of thinking, and the steps she’s taking to make sure her children don’t fall into the same digital traps. 

I have to start off with, I was so jealous while reading your book. I feel like you articulated so many things I've been struggling to articulate. And so I'm curious, how did it come about? How did you find the words for it?

Well that’s the sweetest compliment ever. Thank you. I was just talking to my husband about this. I do a lot of ruminating and thinking for what feels potentially for years. And there weren’t words for it. I couldn't explain what was happening. I just knew that there was this thing looming over me that I felt guilty about. And I kept saying that I’ve had this ability to maneuver people or manipulate people or get people to buy into certain things or persuade people, and it’s a skill set that has always been championed and applauded, if you will. And I just kept saying [to a friend], “I’m sorry. I want to apologize to the world and put this out as a gift of like, ‘This is what I did. This is why you feel this way. This is what's happening to you. And I’m sorry.’” And she goes, It's an apology letter. What's the journey you wanna take them on?” I’m like, “I want them to go from under the influences that I was under to above the influence.” And she goes, ‘That’s the word. That is the word we’re talking about. It’s not marketing, it’s not advertising, it’s not tech, it’s not politics. It’s this overarching word of influence.” It was just a total unlock and it just flowed, but it took years to get there to be able to find out what that concept was. When pitching this, nobody really understood what I was talking about because no one was in this conversation yet. Now we're seeing what I call “the great divesters,” people like Jessica DeFino who’s ripping apart beauty culture and people who are doing it in motherhood or in the internet world. So it was a really big idea and I was really proud and excited that somebody put their money behind me and said, “The world needs this.”

The thing that struck me when reading is we come from different backgrounds, but I think both arrived at the same conclusion of feeling too plugged in and overly marketed to. Why do you think that is?

It’s just the amount of time that we've had this. The iPhone, the iPad, the invention of that was when really the internet became the internet, you know? We had the internet, but not like how we think of it today. And then you had all of the companies jumping on board, which I was a part of, of getting them into the social media online universe and becoming a part of that conversation. And so today it’s mental. You have the place that you bought your holiday cards texting you like they’re your friend in this language that’s very casual and approachable. And we think of this as normal now. I just think everything is at this sort of glass ceiling moment of, our bodies are not meant to have this much stimulation and this much content and this much access to other people’s environments. Obviously with everything that goes on in the world, these are portals of bringing other people’s environments into our own and taking that on. And where I was an early adopter and over user and experienced these negative effects a long time ago, the first time was in 2012 with what’s now known as digital dementia, unfortunately the rest of the world has caught up. It was only a matter of time.

When I used to go out and talk about digital wellness with Folk Rebellion, back then I really thought the responsibility was at our feet. Like we just had to hack our way out of it with boundaries. I no longer believe that. I really believe we can't have a healthy relationship unless the companies that make [the technologies] make them the appropriate way.

What you’re saying made me think of something that I’ve been noticing, that I used to participate in: Instagramable experiences. That’s very much of an era, but it still exists. I passed, just in the past few months, first this skincare company doing a pop-up truck where you get ice cream and buy the product. And then another thing was a brand had put up Instagram backdrops on the street that they position as, “This is something fun for you, the person on the street, to do.” And I see these people getting in long lines to do it, when it’s really just free advertising. They're just getting us to take pictures and do advertising for them

Exactly. And once you have that eyesight or those magic glasses, you can’t unsee it. For example, I watched the Thanksgiving Macy’s parade with my mother, which we’ve watched forever. And my mom, she's so cute. She read my book and of course she’s my mom and she called me, she goes, “You've ruined everything for me. Everything. I can’t watch TV, I can’t listen to the radio, I can’t walk down the street. These people just wanna sell me things and make me buy things.” And so we’re watching the Thanksgiving Day parade and she goes, “Well, this isn’t about Thanksgiving at all.” And she's now listing all the brands that are sponsored. And she goes, “And I bet that song that they're singing is being paid to be on rotation on Spotify.” I go, “There we go, mom.”

I used to tell people, there was this stat, and I don't wanna butcher it, but essentially in our caveman days, when a lion was charging at us, that boost of that cortisol, of that fight or flight that happens, we have the same biological response for any text message, dinging, pinging notification. So back when I was really unwell and had a very bad relationship with all of this, I mean, I would be getting notifications by 9:00 AM, hundreds. No wonder we feel like this.

There’s this tweet that’s like, “Sorry, I'm processing a nonstop onslaught of information with a brain designed to eat berries in a cave.”

Exactly. It’s overwhelming and it’s awful. And we know that maybe this isn't normal or good for us because we do remember a time when it wasn't like this. But I think about my kids and if I don’t show them, they don't know that this isn’t normal. They don’t have a baseline of this isn't normal.

You describe yourself as a “bullshit artist” and referenced your days in marketing. Can you share a bit of what you mean by that?

So, it was an accident. Both of my parents are very well-liked, charming, smart, attractive people. And again, it’s not a flex, it’s just an insight into who I am and how I grew up. And so I took a lot of that from them. And when I went out into the world and did not want to work in corporate America and did not wanna go to a four year college and have this sort of very normal path, I wanted to be a rebel and travel the world. I accidentally ended up in these jobs that were not cubicle jobs, but taught me the mastery of studying human behavior. And so the first one was at a ski resort. They had us all taking these personality tests where I learned that I could essentially size people up and label them and then conform my communications and behaviors to make them feel more comfortable. The second one was a ballroom dance instructor, which is a job that I still love to this day. I love to dance, but really it was a sales job where I would learn how to overcome the “no” and how to disarm people by making them feel comfortable. And I’m being very honest about this, and it sounds super shady and it kind of is if people don’t realize what’s happening to them. But some of the bestselling books in history are How to Win Friends and Influence People and The Art of Persuasion. And anyone who’s ever been a leader or a salesperson or a marketer or advertiser has used these books as Bibles. It's just the everyday person doesn’t know that. And so I was able to get people to do what I wanted them to do.

And when I grew up a little bit more and started working in marketing, advertising, and branding, these skill sets that I had and this sort of mastery of the human mind really came into play with the internet. So now today they actually have scientists and neuroscientists studying the exact moment of when you are going to click out of something or leave something, to re-trigger you and pull you back in. The beauty industry has people finding insight around how you feel about your body. I think of it as weaponizing and exploitation to get you to buy things. Now when I was in it, I didn’t feel like this evil genius. I was so under the influence of capitalism and the girl boss generation. My own upbringing of not getting that fancy four year degree, of having to prove that I was worth something, I would just drink the Kool-Aid. Everyone told me it was good to be the person that could get a million dollars in sales. So why wouldn't you do it? That’s one of the good things about the internet. People are waking up from this like, because of the work that you’re doing or Jessica DeFino’s doing, just showing how not normal this sort of stuff is.

When we’re talking about how companies are popping up to sort of sneakily advertise, what I’ve noticed on TikTok is we only really create content through the structures of advertising, but we’re doing it to ourselves. You see someone like on TikTok being like, “Come with me for a day in the life as this type of person doing this thing.” And it's like, you are now making yourself a product.

You've commodified yourself.

They’ll shoehorn just wanting to share about their life, because now they need the clicks and the views, into the same format as advertisers. That is such a dissociative way to think about our own selves.

You’ve been conditioned to the environment in which you exist. Last night I was out with a friend who works with visual artists, and I asked her, “What do you think about the tools and the platforms, how they have shaped how artists create?” We obviously remember when everything went on Instagram and you had all of these artists that were going viral. They were creating art because they knew that it was something that would be photographed just like those ice cream pop-up trucks.

It's the same thing with, you know, I don't wanna sound like the old lady, but teenage girls or pre-teen girls doing the TikTok dances, dressing and operating a certain way or doing their makeup tutorials because they’ve been conditioned by the algorithm that if they do it this way, they’re gonna be rewarded one with more views and now also total commodification. You can make money off of this. And that sort of disassociation of self into a thing is terrifying.

This is like a big thing I’m struggling with in my own creativity. Throughout my entire teenage years, I loved writing fiction. My degree is in creative writing. But then I got into  writing for the internet and blogging, and now I want to write fiction, but I cannot for the life of me sit down and write it because I’m either thinking about it through the lens of, “Someone’s gonna read this and judge it” where it’s like, actually no one needs to see it. But when I comfort myself with that fact, I'm immediately like, “Well, if no one's gonna see it, then what’s the point?”

Intrinsic versus extrinsic motivations. Obviously anything that is published on the internet for other eyeballs is an extrinsic motivator. I had this a lot, and I’m gonna give a shout out to the Brooklyn Writers Collective and Molly Rosen. I wrote for brands, I wrote for the internet, and I did that for 15 to 20 years. And I also went to school to be a creative writer and studied art in Europe and just got swallowed up whole by the industry that utilized my creativity for their benefit. And I would go in and I would take these writing workshops or a class and she would call it pithy and pitchy. I was writing through the lens of marketing jargon. And she worked with me to be able to just shake that off and write whatever like came to mind, write with no end in sight, write crap. And the end result was a lot of the essays in this book that I never would’ve been able to do because I had that same mindset as you. And so you’ll do it.

Another part of your story that I resonate with is when you free yourself from something to make your own thing, you can accidentally end up recreating the same toxic systems. Why do you think that happens?

It sounds so cliche, but we’re still in the system, right? I thought the problem was corporate, so therefore I went off on my own and that would solve the problem. But I still did the same things just on a less awful scale. Or I did it in an altruistic fashion for Folk Rebellion, and I was gonna do this for good, I was gonna help people, but I still utilized the same tools and the same behaviors that I had before. There’s so many brands out there that are trying to do good, right? They say they’re trying to do good. They are polluting the environment a little less, but it’s because we're so in this culture that the idea of just not doing it, of not creating the thing that is polluting, [is impossible]. And it’s not to say that people shouldn't try and break out of these systems and do their own thing, but if you're still living by the rules of engagement that you were before, you’re just gonna recreate the same problems again, but in a different facet. So that’s exactly what happened with Folk Rebellion. I was driven by this altruistic mission to help people, but I still did all the same things I did before I was always available. I was running myself ragged. I was using tricks to get people into my lifestyle community. And it wasn't until I finally had that sort of epic breakdown again, if you will, that I saw all the influences that were at play. And now, knock on wood, I believe I’m through the fire and I'm not gonna do it again. And the example would be in the promotion of this book. I could have burnt myself out flying all over the country. I could’ve tricked people into buying a bunch of books in a slimy sort of way. I had really held firm to what it is I believe and what it is I wanna protect for this, to the point where my publisher’s a little mad at me. But like, when we talk about success or being successful, “to who and for what” is what Glennon Doyle says. I might be successful to other people, but inside I’m a mess. So what's the point? It sounds cheesy, but it comes back to values and protecting them and really knowing who you are when you’re not being manipulated by people like me.

You mentioned earlier that it affects raising your children. How has having this wake up moment influenced your parenting?

A lot. When I worked in branding in corporate America and I had the digital dementia wake up moment, and I quit and I decided to start Folk Rebellion, all I kept saying was if I felt this way—I had 20 years of no cell phone, no internet, we didn't have a computer in my house—and I became this addicted to these technologies in such a short period of time and I felt this unwell, what’s it mean for my kid who’s never known another world? So I started Folk Rebellion just to save the world, save him, trying to create this conversation that how we were using our technology wasn’t the best way. So he’s had really strict, I guess people would say strict, rules. He doesn't have an iPad. He has a cell phone now, he’s in seventh grade, but it’s a dumb phone. We don't have YouTube on TV, video games. He was allowed an old school Nintendo DS that has a singular game. Nothing in the Cloud, nothing that has a constant scroll or anything. But the most important thing is that I talk to him about it. Because if I just take it away or I ban it, then you create that allure. So the best thing that I’ve ever done is explain to him why I am doing these things. And we talk about it a lot. And so this book is partly because he looked at me one day a couple years ago and he goes, “Mom, you know, it’s really awkward when I’m at someone’s house and I know these things but their parents don’t know them. Can’t you tell them?” And he means like, he goes over for a playdate and the friend is trying to record a YouTube video to put on the internet. And he goes, “You don’t have my consent to put my picture on the internet.” So I’ve taught him that. So he knows that. And then the kid’s like, “What are you talking about?” He knows these things that other people don’t know. He knows what an advertisement is. He’ll say, “Why are they allowed to lie?” So he’s kind of wise beyond his years, which I realized was saddling him. And so I wanted to show other adults what’s happening, and it's working. Friends have given their kids iPhones for middle school and now have taken them back. And the Surgeon General came out and said, this stuff is unhealthy for them. Which was huge because now his school can say no phones, which is crazy to me because we know it’s bad for studying, it’s bad for paying attention. So the world is slowly starting to come around to how I feel and how I’ve been parenting my kids.

And now I have a two-year-old and it’s an entirely different world. It’s much more commonplace to see kids with iPads everywhere. But there are, in our community, people who realize that maybe that’s not great. And so it’s not going to be as difficult, I think, for my young child. But then we have AI, right? So I can’t opt out of that. I can’t unsubscribe him from that. I’ve set up every blocker I can for my house and my family and whatnot, and I’ve educated them. I can’t control this. So we just have to talk about it and make it taboo. And it’s working so far. He comes to me, he’s like, “Hey, this thing happened at school. Someone gave me a QR code to scan. What could be on that QR code?” And I was like, “I don’t know, why don't we talk about it? What do you think?” So yes, it affects my parenting a lot. And I’m tired. I’m tired of having to protect my kids all the time from any possible thing that is trying to make them addicted, exploit them, be a touch point for anything from like the misogyny of the internet and the violence. I let my kids roam the streets. I feel they’re much safer out there. I’m not afraid of a man in a white van. I’m much more afraid of putting them on the internet by themselves.

But it sounds like you feel like this movement is gaining momentum, at least around you.

And I think that is where the change happens, is through your community and your networks. And so the Center for Humane Technology, I met with Camille Carlton there, she's a head of policy, and they're doing great stuff with trying to catch the government up and everything like that. I was like, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to choose to opt out or push back on these things because for example, something like my son’s doctor’s office has decided to move to an entirely digital platform so I can’t order his medications or make an appointment because they don’t have a phone system anymore. And she said once they get infiltrated in, it’s really hard to let go of. You can’t opt out of it and it’s network based. So what I’m hoping for, what they’re hoping for, is regulation top-down from the government. Everybody’s feeling like this. It’s not humanly possible to keep up with everything. The answer is not techno-supremacy and bringing in tech to help us deal with all the emails and notifications. The answer is to return to real life, and the ways that we use our technology, be really intentional about it.

Absolutely. And actually my last question for you is against the thesis of everything we just talked about. Where’d you get your hat?

I won’t let this hat go ‘cause I love it so much and I am gonna tell you the name of it. Hang on. It is Hansel from Basel. And it’s cashmere and it’s so soft and I've had it for five years.

[I found the hat. — Kate]