My Internet: Mitchell Jackson
The publicist for Adam Friedland and Candace Owens says AI cannot identify a viral moment.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
Every other week (or so) we quiz a “very online” person for their essential guide to what’s good on the internet.
Today we welcome Mitchell Jackson, founder of the boutique PR and management firm BCC Communications, which represents clients including Candace Owens, Adam Friedland, Grimes, and Woah Vicky, who is giving a poetry reading in New York City on June 20. Mitchell loves to watch old Ann Coulter interviews and operas on YouTube and is tired of people online mistaking his firm’s work for a “Thiel conspiracy.” —Nick
EMBEDDED: What’s a recent meme or post that made you laugh?
MITCHELL JACKSON: Our firm has worked with Woah Vicky for the past few months. She’s an Atlanta sweetheart who says the most profound statements in between sponcon for Fashion Nova. She saves her best material for close friends on Instagram, where she recently posted a screenshot of her “find my” app, where she follows her friends around like Sims. She labeled the screenshot “my favorite TV show.” It made me laugh and smile.
EMBEDDED: Do you tweet? Why?
MITCHELL JACKSON: I love PR and building management clients’ businesses, but I still have a reporter’s brain. Tweeting media criticism scratches my writer’s itch without forcing me to return to poverty wages and blogging in Bushwick.
EMBEDDED: What do you use Instagram for?
MITCHELL JACKSON: To look at Tweety bird memes, Disney vlogs, and hot guys. To post photos of my dogs, travels, and hot husband.
EMBEDDED: What types of videos do you watch on YouTube?
MITCHELL JACKSON: For work, I watch all my YouTuber clients’ videos. Even as my company scales, I make sure to watch all of the new videos from, in alphabetical order, Adam Friedland, Brett Cooper, Buck Sexton, Caleb Hammer, Candace Owens, Channel 5, Clay Travis, Harry Daniels, Joshua Weissman, Keith Edwards, Mike Nellis, the Normal Gays, Ryan Girdusky, Steven Crowder, and Woah Vicky.
For fun, I mostly listen to and watch old operas on YouTube. I escape through opera. This shocks people because they mistake opera as purely highbrow, but it’s dramatic, with songs mostly sung by hookers. It’s the high-low music of the 1800s.
I also love to watch old Ann Coulter interviews—she is the blueprint for all creators on the left and right—and old Barbara Walters interviews. Babs was a beast.
I love Jack Neel’s interviews. He is the Charlie Rose of gen alpha.
EMBEDDED: What do you like about TikTok? What do you dislike?
MITCHELL JACKSON: I hate how TikTok sees me click on one music video then serves me 8,000 videos set to that song. It mistakes one click for something I love. I do not need to see a zillion Michael Jackson videos.
EMBEDDED: Are you concerned by the claims of censorship that some users have made since TikTok was taken over by investors led by Larry Ellison, an ally of President Trump?
MITCHELL JACKSON: It doesn’t concern me. As our client Candace Owens told Harper’s, it’s a boomer solution to a 21st-century problem. Ellison can try to censor, but the Internet is going to Internet.
EMBEDDED: Do you watch Twitch, Kick, or any other livestreaming services? If so, which streamers?
MITCHELL JACKSON: I watch Kick and Twitch to find new clients to sign. We identified [former client] Clavicular on Kick before he blew up in the media. I am always trying to find the next star. I am not algorithmic, though; I run my company like an editorial operation. We follow our editorial gut and instinct for what will work.
EMBEDDED: Where do you tend to get your news?
MITCHELL JACKSON: I try to read EVERYTHING. I deal with the left and right, pop stars and indie artists. I view it all as show business. So I need to know about everyone putting on a show. Outlets I’ve recently read, in no particular order: Financial Times, Baffler, Bookforum, Jacobin, Daily Mail, Daily Caller, Daily Wire, New York Post, New York Times, Claremont Review of Books, London Review of Books, New York Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Forever, Puck, Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Wall Street Journal, Barrons, Opera News, Playbill.com, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Feed Me, Guardian Status, GQ, New York, New Yorker, Town and Country, T mag, New York Times Magazine, Interview, Cultured, Document, and then this folk art magazine I buy at the American Folk Art Museum whose name I always forget. I’m 100% forgetting some outlets, but you get the point!
EMBEDDED: How do you keep up with the online discourse? How important is it to you to do this?
MITCHELL JACKSON: It’s literally my job. I check in at least every other hour on X. I start my day, though, reading every newsletter in my inbox and the WSJ and NYT before I answer emails. I then end my day watching clients’ podcasts and YouTube shows. I begin and end my day with information.
EMBEDDED: What’s the last strong opinion you had about a story, topic, or controversy online?
MITCHELL JACKSON: I’m in combat daily for the main characters of the internet, as those are often my clients, so it’s when I’m defending my clients. I care about clients and defend them to the end.
EMBEDDED: What’s a popular misconception that you see repeated online?
MITCHELL JACKSON: That Peter Thiel secretly funds culture. The most “Thiel bucks” I’ve ever heard of is Thiel giving a few thousand to a film festival. He is not the new illuminati, running every streamer. Over and over again, I see people mistake my firm’s work for a “Thiel conspiracy.” In actuality, I’m cooking up ideas in a Starbucks in Fort Lauderdale then executive them with my team. As Kathleen on my team says, stop giving Peter Thiel credit for our work!
EMBEDDED: What are your favorite newsletters?
MITCHELL JACKSON: I love Matt Belloni even though I disagree with him. I also love Status even though I disagree with how Oliver Darcy frames some of our clients.
EMBEDDED: How do you think Substack has changed media, if at all?
MITCHELL JACKSON: As OnlyFans made people pay for porn again, Substack made people pay for media again. That’s a great thing! I believe people should pay for media. I hate when other publicists use paywall removers. Pay the outlets you pitch.
EMBEDDED: How would you describe the culture of Substack, in terms of the types of writing and thinking that it has encouraged?
MITCHELL JACKSON: I love Substack. It’s great for news roundups. It’s great for op-eds. It’s great for messy people whose messy prose is more interesting than their edited prose.
However, many other people … need editors. Reading a bad Substack reminds me of working as an editor in my early 20s, receiving gibberish from Elizabeth Wurtzel—an icon of my youth who, I learned, despised commas and periods—and having to transform her mess into something readable. I love Lizzy, and I miss her, but she needed editors to turn her messy brilliance into something legible. Substack is once again teaching that many greats need editors.
EMBEDDED: What’s one positive media trend? What’s one negative trend?
MITCHELL JACKSON: Cancel culture is over! People can be interesting and nuanced again.
A negative is that, in both left and right-wing media, many people are frozen in 2020. They suffer from 2020 brain, and they keep repeating either woke nonsense from 2020 or right-wing culture war babble from 2020. Seeing clips of Ben Shapiro repeating 2020 dribble makes me want to stab my eyes out. Nobody is even watching his clips, so I don’t get why he doesn’t change the topic? Move along with the times, please!!!
EMBEDDED: What, if anything, is there to learn from the popularity of the looksmaxxing trend and influencers like Clavicular?
MITCHELL JACKSON: Like Paris Hilton in the 2000s, Clav embodies a new type of celebrity. He will be the first of many. The question is whether he will be his generation’s Paris or Kim K. Will one of his protégés outshine him? If he’s not careful, it’s possible.
EMBEDDED: Do you have any advice for people who use sports betting apps or prediction markets?
MITCHELL JACKSON: Go on a date. Stop gambling.
EMBEDDED: Have you found Claude, ChatGPT, or any other AI tools useful? How so?
MITCHELL JACKSON: I’ve experimented with AI to write press pitches and press releases. It failed. Why? AI can write HR-corporate release babble. It cannot write in a voice that tabloids and aggregators will copy and paste. It’s useless. Even when editing streamers’ clips, it’s useless because AI cannot identify a viral moment. It lacks editorial gut. Until AI can take reporters to the opera and wine and dine them, it’s useless for me.
EMBEDDED: Do you believe that advances in AI will spawn a new “underclass,” as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has suggested might happen?
MITCHELL JACKSON: Yes, but I believe the underclass are the coders. AI will replace text-based jobs that generate mathematical-like texts. There’s a reason AI companies are hiring “narrative” employees: AI cannot deliver style and story.
EMBEDDED: Or do you believe that the AI bubble about to burst?
MITCHELL JACKSON: I believe both. It will burst, but it will still change society, just as social media emerged out of the 2000s tech bubble popping.
EMBEDDED: Are smartphones bad for us? Where do you fall on the Jonathan Haidt-Taylor Lorenz divide?
MITCHELL JACKSON: I believe smartphones have both helped and harmed society. When I’m lost and rely on GPS, I thank the lord for it. When I see a baby on a tablet, I want to take a time machine to the past and bang Steve Jobs on the head with a tablet.
EMBEDDED: Do you try to limit your phone use? If so, what methods have been helpful for this?
MITCHELL JACKSON: I can’t turn my phone off because I am here for clients during their worst moments, and from experience, I know people get sued at weird hours and addicts overdose at night. My phone stays on, but after 6 p.m., I stop picking up non-business calls.
EMBEDDED: What’s something that you have observed about the online behavior of Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and/or Boomers?
MITCHELL JACKSON: Being a boomer is a state of mind. Many millennials think like boomers. I know some boomers who think like zoomers.
Millennials suffer from millennial mind. They grew up during the empire, the age of Condé Nast and the VMAs, so they still prioritize empire media as the end-all, be-all.
Zoomers are like Gen X: edgy but cursed by their generation’s small size. They’re also nearly 30, so I am paying attention more to Gen Alpha.
EMBEDDED: How do you find recommendations for what to watch, read, and listen to?
MITCHELL JACKSON: Everything: friends, newspapers, magazines, social media, newsletters, etc.
EMBEDDED: Have you had posts go viral? What is that experience like?
MITCHELL JACKSON: Since I was 20 years old, I have repeatedly been the main character on Twitter for both good and bad reasons. At this point, I know you’re never the main character forever (unless your name is Trump). I follow Kardashian law: Never believe your bad press or your good press.
EMBEDDED: Who’s the coolest person who follows you?
MITCHELL JACKSON: Courtney Love followed my old Twitter account. That would have meant the world to teenage Mitchell.
EMBEDDED: Who’s someone more people should follow?
MITCHELL JACKSON: Woah Vicky. She’s the poet of our time.
EMBEDDED: Which big celebrity has your favorite internet presence, and why?
MITCHELL JACKSON: I still love Amanda Bynes’s old tweets. Most mainstream celebrities’ internet too is too manufactured. They’ve lost the authenticity. I prefer real, genuine posters.
EMBEDDED: Are you into any podcasts right now? How and when do you usually listen?
MITCHELL JACKSON: I mostly listen to clients’ podcasts because I need to hear all their shows to stay in the know. Otherwise, I love to podcast surf, going from show to show. I am always looking for the so-called next new thing. I love a business show, like Acquired or Pivot. I also listen to audiobooks. Right now, I’m devouring MJ: The Genius of Michael Jackson.
EMBEDDED: How would you describe Tumblr’s legacy?
MITCHELL JACKSON: Many of the best publicists on my team honed their skills blogging on Tumblr. It allowed people to write and analyze culture. People put in their 10,000 hours on Tumblr. I see it in my team daily.
EMBEDDED: Are you in any groups on Reddit, Discord, or Facebook? What’s the most useful or entertaining one?
MITCHELL JACKSON: I don’t share how my team uses Reddit unless you’re paying me!
EMBEDDED: Do you use Slack or Teams for work? What’s the best thing about Slacking with your co-workers? What’s the worst thing?
MITCHELL JACKSON: Slack is a lawsuit waiting to happen. It also leads people to waste time. I use this amazing invention called the telephone.
EMBEDDED: What is your Wordle starting word?
MITCHELL JACKSON: I do not Wordle.
EMBEDDED: What words or phrases do you have muted?
MITCHELL JACKSON: Kaitlin Phillips, Harvard, Thiel Bucks, Graham Platner, Mamdani, Ben Shapiro.
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?
MITCHELL JACKSON: All my chats are basically “Client’s name X BCC.”
EMBEDDED: What’s your go-to emoji, and what does it mean to you?
MITCHELL JACKSON: My team uses an emoji of a duck smoking. You know what it means when you see it.
EMBEDDED: Do you text people voice notes? If not, how do you feel about getting them?
MITCHELL JACKSON: I hate voice notes so much. Please call me or write a text.
EMBEDDED: Do you pay for a music streaming service, and if so, which one? What’s a playlist, song, album, or style of music you’ve listened to a lot lately?
MITCHELL JACKSON: Apple Music! According to my song history, these are my most listened-to songs in 2026:
“Vorispel,” Wagner
“Artificial Angels,” Grimes
“Bag It Up,” Geri Halliwell
“Writing on the Wall,” Role Model
“Summer Nights,” Grease
Most of these songs I listened to for work, but I love work. Grimes is a client—the new album is stellar—and “Vorispel” is my writing music. “Summer Nights” entered the playlist because I was trying to convince Clavicular and Woah Vicky to film a Grease-themed TikTok.
EMBEDDED: If you could only keep one streaming service for TV and/or movies, which would it be, and why? What’s a show that you’re really into right now?
MITCHELL JACKSON: Disney+. I love the classic Disney movies.
EMBEDDED: What’s your favorite non-social media app?
MITCHELL JACKSON: The Kindle app.
EMBEDDED: What’s the most basic internet thing that you love?
MITCHELL JACKSON: Pictures of hot guys. Pictures of dogs. Pictures of my husband, who is also a hot guy.
EMBEDDED: Is there any content you want but can’t seem to find anywhere online?
MITCHELL JACKSON: Rene Ricard’s poetry books.
EMBEDDED: Do you regularly use eBay, Depop, or other shopping platforms? What’s a recent thing you’ve bought or sold?
MITCHELL JACKSON: I love Amazon. It’s convenient. I also love the Library of America store to buy boxed sets.
EMBEDDED: Do you consume any content about fitness, diet, or other types of “wellness”? What creators or sites do you find most useful?
MITCHELL JACKSON: No.
EMBEDDED: Is there a site you like for product recommendations? How do you decide, for example, which air filter to buy?
MITCHELL JACKSON: My husband handles household purchases. My brain understands culture, media, and accounting—not household work. My husband is a genius interior designer of our home, and he can also build anything.
EMBEDDED: Have you recently read an article, book, or social media post about the internet that you’ve found particularly insightful?
MITCHELL JACKSON: I devoured a book about the history of AOL by Kara Swisher.
EMBEDDED: What’s the last thing that brought you joy online?
MITCHELL JACKSON: Writing this google doc was relaxing.
Thanks Mitchell! Follow him on Twitter.
More My Internet Samuel Hine ∙ Julia Vitale ∙ Sam Kriss ∙ Scaachi Koul ∙ Sam Adler-Bell ∙ Kat Rosenfield ∙ Chrissy Correa ∙ Yi-Ling Liu ∙ Kaitlin Phillips ∙ Emma Specter ∙ Liz Franczak ∙ Anthony Fantano ∙ Alison Roman ∙ All
This is really good; genuinely useful, believeably genuine.
EMBEDDED: Why would you take on one of the world's biggest and most insane conspiracy theorists as a client? Oh and also some asshole who punches himself in the face?
MITCHELL JACKSON: Money?
(I'm just guessing here, as it doesn't look like the question was asked)