Hi everyone, welcome to Mini Scroll, the daily Internet
culture podcast bringing you the biggest stories from social
media, the creator economy and the digital space every Monday
through Thursday. I'm your host, Lauren Meisner,
the founder of the youth digital media brand Centennial World.
Happy Tuesday everyone. July 9th.
OK, so I have two stories that I have been asked to cover.
One of them is Tara Yummy and the other one I feel like maybe
I will leave as a little bit of like a secret surprise, but I
need a bit more time to like properly dive into like what's
going on, especially for the second one.
So I'm going to hopefully be bringing you guys those
tomorrow. So today's mini scroll will be
quite light because I just need a bit more time to like dive in.
And I was going to have two stories for you guys today.
But Crystal, I was telling her about like something that I was
going to do for mini scroll. I was talking to her about it
this morning and she was like, do not give him the
satisfaction. So basically Crystal is going to
kill me for saying this, but I was going to cover Ashton Earl
possibly dating John Summit, the DJ.
And I was like, do you know anything about John Summit?
Like he's apparently a DJ. I had never even heard of him
until this Ashton Earl stuff and Crystal was like, do not cover
this. Don't give him that
satisfaction. That's exactly what he wants
because it is true. He has an album coming out on
July 12th. So this is definitely giving
like PR vibes. She's like he's just some DJ
that college girls thinks hot like don't give him that
satisfaction of like properly reporting on him.
So this is me not not reporting on that story.
OK, but the actual story that I have for you guys today, like I
said today is a bit light, but I feel like my episodes have been
like quite long. So, you know, we're due for like
a little light one. I wanted to talk about the
discourse going on online right now about Threads and if they
have or if it has a creator problem.
So journalist Taylor Lorenz, who has also been on this podcast,
she posed this question recently in an article for The Washington
Post and also on her own Threads account, basically asking where
are all the Threads creators. So Threads doesn't seem to have
any like native creators. No one so far has seemed to have
built their entire platform off of Threads.
And that's quite different to Twitter.
I know, I don't know. I know a lot of people like
stopped using Twitter a long, long time ago, like way pre Elon
Musk. But Twitter was quite unique in
the sense that like, you could be a Twitter creator, you could
be a Twitter, you could be Twitter famous, basically like a
Twitter personality. And no one else on the rest of
the Internet would know that. And that didn't necessarily
translate to followers anywhere else.
And Threads so far doesn't really have that.
Like, people are not like a native Threads creators.
And she suggests that the reason for that primarily is because
Threads hasn't had a breakthrough viral moment.
Like there's been nothing like a meme, like nothing super viral
culturally has happened on the platform for people to have that
sense of urgency to join and to start using it consistently.
So I saw a lot of discourse on Threads about how people were
like, yeah, it has a lot of like monthly active users, but it
doesn't have a lot of daily active users, which is the
problem. I mean, Jordy and I talked about
this in our episode when Threads launched.
Like it's not just that. It's it's that like the people
who use Instagram who are like Instagram famous.
It is a completely different ball game to be growing a
platform or like growing an audience on a text based
platform than it is on like a visual platform.
Even video platform like Instagram and reels has been.
I mean, I'm sure you guys remember when when threads first
launched and like it was just filled, filled with people
posting the most embarrassing shit ever.
People being like so bored today, Ha ha.
Is this thing on ha ha, like I can't, I never go on Threads.
I just get those like recommendations on my Instagram
and that's how I'll like go into Threads.
But honestly, Threads is literally just filled with
people who are like Instagram influencers complaining about
Instagram. Like that's all that Threads is,
at least for me. And that's another part of the
problem is that Threads is incredibly siloed.
So with Twitter, you could have like a viral moment or, you
know, you could report on something and it would get gain
a lot of traction and get shown to like essentially all of
Twitter. It was like a town square,
right? Threads does not operate like
that. It is much more siloed.
So the content that you're posting is like for a specific
audience, like it's for your followers.
And there's not the same level of like amplification or
shareability. Posts exist much more in a
vacuum. So like there might be good
discourse on Threads but I don't see it.
All I see is a bunch of Instagram influencers
complaining about Instagram all the time and then obviously like
metas stance on news and politics in general like that is
going to kill any opportunity for threads to actually thrive
because that's what made Twitter popular was people being able to
share news and commentary and opinion about current affairs in
all types of industries. So I want to read Taylor's
thread on this, her threads thread.
She said the biggest creators on Twitter, for example, were never
the biggest creators on YouTube. They were primarily curators who
were incredibly good at surfacing valuable information
and news. Threads has not done much at all
to cultivate those types of creators.
However, this goes back to my original point that Threads
hasn't had its breakout moment. That's the most important part
here that is being missed. Without a breakout moment that
shows people basically how to post, you won't get a crop of
native creators with any sort of reach.
That's why those breakout early moments were so crucial to
platforms like YouTube, Twitter, IG, etcetera.
Threads has not had its breakout moment and that is the
fundamental problem. And it won't have a breakout
moment when it's stifling the types of creators slash content
that performs best on Twitter like platforms, people posting
timely information. I mean, yeah, I, I think it's,
it was a wild strategy that Twitter, sorry, that Threads,
that Meadow would launch Threads.
And then what was it maybe like six months later?
Turn off political content for everyone and you have to like
opt in to see political or like newsworthy content.
And of course there's like all this impending like Meta news
band stuff going on in Australia.
I'm Canadian. I know that happened in Canada
recently as well. They Meta basically, or
Instagram basically limits you from seeing anything that's
considered news because they won't strike deals with the
government anyways. It's like a whole mess.
And yeah, I, I thought that this was interesting discourse.
I know that Jordy and I did a full episode on why we thought
Threads would fail. I wouldn't say it's like fully
failed. And I do think it's gaining a
bit of cultural relevance just because I think so many
journalists are so exhausted with Twitter.
Like Twitter is like unusable now.
So I think the people who were like, really popular on Twitter
initially, they went to Blue Sky and Blue Sky seemed to be quite
promising, but they didn't strike fast enough because their
platform wasn't ready. Like, it just couldn't have the
influx of user base that I think it needed to at the time.
And it was like invite only. And I don't know, like people, I
mean, as far as I can tell, like Blue Sky is, I don't know what's
going on there. So I do feel like Threads has an
opportunity because I do think a lot of people are starting to
come around to the idea of posting on Threads.
And I think a lot of the journalists who were so valuable
to Twitter and made Twitter what it was have started slowly
posting more and more on Threads.
But I agree, it needs this one cultural breakout moment.
The problem is it's never going to have that if you can't post
like timely current affairs, things that are called
considered like quote, UN quote political content, because
that's also a completely vague label like what's considered
political. You know, you could consider a
lot of what we cover political 'cause I'm talking about things
like trad wives and things like that, right?
Like it, it's such a broad vague statement that doesn't have a
lot of clear parameters around it.
I wouldn't say Threads is a complete write off anymore.
I did very much feel that way a year ago.
But Meta is not doing itself any favors with the decisions that
it's making in terms of the type of content that it prioritizes
to make Threads actually a successful platform.
So that's my tea on Threads and obviously my slight tea, not tea
on Ashton Earl may be dating DJ John Summit.
Anyways, guys, thank you so much for listening to Mini Scroll.
Like I said, tomorrow's episode is going to be hopefully a
banger, so I'm excited to bring you guys that.
But as always, Please remember to rate, review and subscribe.
It helps me so much. It helps me grow.
I love you guys and I will talk to you tomorrow.
Bye.