My Internet: The Selleb Sisters
Chloe and Claire say gift guides are Trojan Horses for affiliate links.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
Some weeks, we quiz a “very online” person for their essential guide to what’s good on the internet.
Today we welcome the
, Chloe and Claire, founders of , a product discovery platform based on what real people actually buy. (Sign up for the newsletter to be added to the waitlist for their forthcoming app, and see some of my recent purchases here.) The sisters started selling second-hand on Poshmark while in middle school, set epic Snapchat streaks in high school, and get all their book recommendations from their mom. —Nick
EMBEDDED: What’s a recent meme or post that made you laugh?
CLAIRE: The make-your-S/O-do-an-interpretive-dance-to-do-xyz trend on Tiktok has me weak in the knees.
CHLOE: I love Harry Potter memes.
EMBEDDED: What shows up on your TikTok For You page?
CLAIRE: Bytedance ate with their byline because everything that shows up in my FYP is pure “Make Your Day” content. I’ve trained my algo to filter out anything news-related—there are other platforms for that. Ergo, my feed is straight humes. ROFL = guaranteed.
CHLOE: Ditto, we share the same TikTok account.
EMBEDDED: Do you make TikToks? What format works best for you?
CHLOE AND CLAIRE: Embarrassingly, yes. We’re known for our “What your X says about you” videos. These are essentially social commentaries on what certain things you do/wear/own say about you. We basically choose a random product category like body wash or headphones (or even date outfits lol), make a list of the most common items/iterations in that category, then wax about what those things might say about that person. Earnest or ironic? That’s for you to find out… These videos also tie directly into what we’re building at Selleb. We want to know what people are actually buying and spending their hard-earned dollars on because what you buy says a lot about who you are. By tracking your purchase history, we can map out your “taste DNA” and ultimately connect you with other users with similar preferences (your “taste doppelgängers” ) so you can get ideas from them.
EMBEDDED: Do you still tweet? Why?
CHLOE: Sometimes, but they usually end up being random photos in my camera roll. I really only use Twitter for hiring purposes. I have like 100 followers lol.
CLAIRE: Not anymore, but maybe I’ll jump back on that saddle soon…
EMBEDDED: Have you tried any alternatives to Twitter?
CHLOE: No bc I’m trying to limit screen time. Currently at 2-3 hours per day but trying to get to sub 2.
CLAIRE: I barely use Twitter, so no. Bearish on Threads.
EMBEDDED: What do you use Instagram for?
CHLOE: I mostly use my IG finsta, where I follow brands and ppl who I think possess a very distinctive vibe or are creating cool things (or both).
CLAIRE: Stress relief. Sometimes you just need a good ole voyeuristic binge to transport you to another world. I guess reading is the healthier version of that. If reading is your daily dose of vitamin, social media is your daily decadence of chocolate or a (demi)glass of wine.
EMBEDDED: What types of videos do you watch on YouTube?
CHLOE: I don’t watch Youtube.
CLAIRE: YouTube = treadmill time. I don’t allow myself to watch it unless I’m physically active. On rotation, Ali Abdaal (I consider myself his 0.001% superfan — fervent follower since high school), All-In (video > audio), more productivity/business content from Dan Martell and Alex/Leila Hormozi types, and the occasional vlog (love Sanne Vloet).
EMBEDDED: Where do you tend to get your news?
CHLOE AND CLAIRE: The physical paper (WSJ / NYT / FT Weekend) and Substacks.
EMBEDDED: How do you keep up with the online discourse? How important is it to you to do this?
CHLOE: Sometimes it feels like a chore to keep up with everything. And overwhelming because there’s just so much out there, but setting personal boundaries like being selective with what I read and dedicating a specific time in the day to go through all the content makes it more manageable.
CLAIRE: Keeping up is very important because the product we’re building is so inextricably intertwined with what’s hot in the present culture. But it’s a delicate balance because information capture and synthesis is a full-time job, and we need to set aside time for a million other things!
EMBEDDED: What’s the last strong opinion you had about a story, topic, or controversy online?
CHLOE AND CLAIRE: We are going to keep it light and current here. Gift guides are Trojan horses for affiliate revenue. The most interesting gift ideas are often so niche they can’t be linked and redeemed for affiliates… Don’t come after us.
EMBEDDED: Where do you usually discover or learn about online trends?
CHLOE AND CLAIRE: TikTok or Substack.
EMBEDDED: How do you find recommendations for what to watch, read, and listen to?
CHLOE: I watch almost all movies that come out (should get my AMC membership back at this point lol). My mom gives the best book recs (she’s the most voraciously omnivorous reader I know)—she’s basically my FYP for books that run the gamut from Polish poetry to presidential biographies to French philosophers. I’ve never once been disappointed. Is it weird that I don’t listen to music much? Some friends have told me I’m a psychopath for this haha but I genuinely can’t focus with music. My Spotify wrapped said I listened to 7,000 minutes this year and that’s a record for me. I work in silence and walk in silence. I’ll go to a concert if I need my fix.
CLAIRE: My boyfriend is my musical FYP. He’s also a drummer, so he always hits me with some banger soundtracks I never would have encountered. My mom is my book FYP. Shoutout Mama Lee. She is the OG wordsmith / literary weapon and never misses a beat. I feel like she understands our reading style and sensibilities better than we do, so she ALWAYS delivers with the perfect book recs. Chloe is my newsletter FYP and always sends me the most relevant Substacks, news articles, etc., and unsurprisingly, they are always on the nose every time. There’s my holy trinity for recs haha. Everything else is totally random—overheard haphazardly (in a café, subway, you name it), flagged by a new friend at dinner, etc… Should’ve just inverted the question to where I don’t find my recommendations, at which point I would say, the algo.
EMBEDDED: What’s something that you have observed about the online behavior of Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and/or Boomers?
CHLOE: How different every generation feels about FaceTime. Gen Z is very pro FT, but I recently learned from Millennial friends that they get stressed out by it?? Not sure what the preferred method is then. Gen X/Boomers stay picking up the phone and calling without any warning.
CLAIRE: Texting style differences. More specifically, periods, a very nuanced punctuation. Every generation uses them differently. Gen Z does not approve of them. And what is it with the Boomers/ Gen X and their penchant for Shakespearean soliloquy texts? Keep them pithy jeez.
EMBEDDED: Do you have a take on Substack?
CHLOE AND CLAIRE: As founders, writing on Substack has been a powerful distribution channel for us to meet and interact with our app users (subscribers!). As readers, it’s easy and comfortable to stay in your echo chamber with recycled/derivative content. It can be a bubble unless you really go out of your way to seek out different kinds of content and writers. We really try to go for the spectrum…
EMBEDDED: What’s one positive media trend? What’s one negative trend?
CHLOE AND CLAIRE: Positive: optionality. Negative: optionality.
EMBEDDED: Have you had posts go viral? What is that experience like?
CLAIRE: Every now and then, my “What your xyz says about you” videos will pop off and garner 1M+ views. If the video is about men (date outfits, cologne, bathroom products, etc.), I’ll get bombarded with hate comments. It can get super spicy and dicey. For the most part I’ve stopped reading comments. Interestingly, videos geared tw female products are much more civil with long commentaries about how and why one product is better than the other—often value-added and instructional. Bottom line: people behind screens can get really mean, like DAYUUUUM shots fired, knives out, but I try not to let it get under my skin and instead practice gratitude for their animated engagement.
EMBEDDED: Who’s the coolest person who follows you?
CHLOE: Claire.
CLAIRE: Chloe.
EMBEDDED: Which big celebrity has your favorite internet presence, and why?
CLAIRE: More broadly, I find it amusing when celebs get super meta and tap into cultural moments that involve the characters they play(ed). Most recently, Taylor Lautner on TikTok…
EMBEDDED: Have you ever been heavily into Snapchat? Do you miss it?
CHLOE: Yes lmao used to have a streak that was almost 900 days in high school (must have been like 2015). Legit emailed Snapchat and begged them to restore it when my flight got delayed and I had no service and couldn’t send a snap back. That’s PMF. And no, they did not restore it. I had a bunch of other streaks (500-800 day ones) that I broke the next day out of spite. I don’t miss it. It was a stressful time and Snap Maps kind of freaked me out.
CLAIRE: Yes, since Day 1 of Snapchat and into high school. Crazy how much time I spent exchanging pictures of walls (+ one eye LOL if you know) with people, most of whom I’d never interacted with more than ~2 times, all to accrue Snap points and maintain “streaks.” Product design 101 I guess. More shocking is when I see people my age still using it.
EMBEDDED: When was the last time you browsed Pinterest? What for?
CHLOE: For a friend’s wedding because she made a gas Pinterest moodboard.
CLAIRE: A few days ago for winter outfit inspo bc it’s much better there than IG imho.
EMBEDDED: How would you describe Tumblr’s legacy?
CLAIRE: I think Swifties are the 2024 equivalent of the Tumblrgrl.
EMBEDDED: Are you in any groups on Reddit, Discord, Slack, or Facebook? What’s the most useful or entertaining one?
CHLOE AND CLAIRE: Mostly Redditbrains. Love r/TheGirlSurvivalGuide.
EMBEDDED: How has using LinkedIn benefitted you, if at all?
CHLOE AND CLAIRE: Nah
EMBEDDED: Do you typically start searches on Google, Reddit, TikTok, or another source? Have you found Google’s “generative AI” summaries helpful?
CLAIRE: Lmao I don’t tweet anymore, but here’s one from the archives to answer this:
EMBEDDED: What is your Wordle starting word?
CHLOE: “Serai” because our brother told me to. He says this is what eldrow uses to guess Wordles.
EMBEDDED: Do any of your group chats have a name that you’re willing to share? What’s something that recently inspired debate in the chat?
CHLOE: “Scrolling.” Close friends who are serial secondhand scrollers. It’s legit mostly links of items we’re thinking of buying that are good deals across platforms like Poshmark, TRR, Vestiaire, etc…
CLAIRE: “Coco & Clair Clair” with our product designer Griffin (his idea). Always on debate: button copy for new features.
EMBEDDED: What’s your go-to emoji, and what does it mean to you?
CHLOE: 😎. It diffuses any situation. If I text my brother “You need a better haircut 😎” then chances are, he’ll be less offended.
CLAIRE: 👀. Something sneaky or salacious is happening but make it cute.
EMBEDDED: Do you text people voice notes? If not, how do you feel about getting them?
CLAIRE:
CHLOE: No because I overthink them and feel like I have to rehearse before. Unless I’m sending one to Claire haha and they’ll go on forever… I think that’s why she wrote that tweet 😎
EMBEDDED: If you could only keep one streaming service for TV and/or movies, which would it be, and why? In general, do you prefer to get ads or pay more for ad-free tiers?
CHLOE: Movie theaters FTW.
CLAIRE: Is it psycho that I don’t watch TV or movies?
EMBEDDED: What’s your favorite non-social media app?
CHLOE: Things 3. Life changing.
CLAIRE: Apple Notes.
EMBEDDED: What’s the most basic internet thing that you love?
CLAIRE: Rabbit holes.
CHLOE: Reverse image search.
EMBEDDED: Is there any content you want but can’t seem to find anywhere online?
CHLOE AND CLAIRE: What people are actually buying these days ;)
EMBEDDED: Do you regularly use eBay, Depop, or other shopping platforms? What’s a recent thing you’ve bought or sold?
CHLOE AND CLAIRE: We’re OG secondhand sellers. Started when we were in middle school. We share all our accounts. Starting selling on Poshmark in 2013 and used to have over 650K+ followers! Get on our app waitlist (same as signing up for our newsletter) to see everything we’re actually buying from eBay… 👀
Bought: Matching Timeless Pearly bracelets on eBay.
Sold: We don’t really sell our clothes anymore because it’s either super time-consuming OR we’ll get chips from TRR. Another big consideration is that everything that HAS sold, we’ve regretted selling, so there’s also that. Trying to build a wardrobe we want to keep around for a long time! Recently though, we finally sold a Canon EOS Rebel T5i (what a throwback/relic) from our high school blogging days on eBay. Only took us a decade!
EMBEDDED: Is there a site you like for product recommendations? How do you decide, for example, which air filter to buy?
CHLOE AND CLAIRE: Shameless self-promo but this question cuts right into the meat of what we’re building at Selleb. Online product recs in today’s age kinda blow, mostly because it’s hard to delineate fact from fiction with respect to what people actually like vs are being incentivized/paid to promote. To solve this problem, we’ve set a very important filter in place: proof of purchase. If you’ve shelled out your hard-earned dollars to purchase something that hurts your pocketbook, we’re all ears, and we want you to drop the review.
TLDR: We’re building Selleb, a product discovery platform entirely powered by purchase receipts (read: proof of purchase). Our app is in private beta rn, but if you forward enough of your own receipts to post@selleb.com (could be order confirmation emails or physical receipts), we’ll let you on! If you know someone who’s on the app already, they have 5 invites too ;)
EMBEDDED: Have you recently read an article, book, or social media post about the internet that you’ve found particularly insightful?
CLAIRE: This article about the unspoken subtext behind rich kid memes. I think it’s a great meditation/exposé on wealth-coded content within elite niches, which are really just status signifiers wrapped in a safety blanket of satire. Think this applies to groups beyond just “rich kids” à la Gstaad Guy, but that’s a conversation for another time.
CHLOE: Kieran Culkin feature in the NYT. I want to be his BFF. Never knew a NYT interview could make me so invigorated and giddy. He’s so honest and says shit like it is. No false pretenses. Just a cool human.
EMBEDDED: What’s the last thing that brought you joy online?
CLAIRE: This one cut deep.
CHLOE: Laughed out loud by myself in public.
Thanks Chloe and Claire! Follow Chloe, Claire, and Selleb on Instagram, TikTok, and Substack.
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