Taylor Lorenz: Memes, Masks and Dark Money | Doomscroll

They went on this like three-week tirade saying a bunch of right-wing conspiracy theories about me. >> What's your favorite? >> Oh my god. Well, just basically that I like I control the internet.

I'm secretly taking dark money. They said I'm a secret MAGA, you know, Republican and they found when I >> of all people >> they found when I like >> That's good. >> Yeah, it was it was like it was really funny. Somebody was sharing some screenshots.

She's a secret Republican and and I'm sure people will be in the comments. Those aren't conspiracies. Some of them very much are you guys. Okay, >> we're long since demonetized, so go ahead.

>> Yeah. Okay. [Music] >> Welcome to Doomscroll. I'm your host Joshua Cinderella.

My guest is Taylor Loren, a journalist, author, and content creator. So 90 influencers, what was your sense given the because there's a range, right? Some of them are very big, some of them are proportionately small. >> What percentage of their income would you say that that funding allots?

So what percentage of their income does that funding make up? So for example, if someone is 10% dependent on funding they're getting from a dark money group, if they take it or leave it or they say, "I don't like these guidelines. I'm going to do whatever," they're not suffering that much. If they are 80% of their income dependent on dark money, then they really can't deviate from the script.

So what was your sense of like up and down this scale, how much of people's income is this money making up? It's so funny because you had people like Brian Tyler Cohen, David Pacman, these people with millions of followers that are subscribers that are in this program, but then a lot of the other people, if you look at people who are noted in the article and look at, oh, well, who only has a couple hundred thousand followers, >> those are the people where they're like it, I would imagine >> they really need it. Yeah. >> I would imagine that they really need this money and those are the people, especially one really wacko woman that has been the most vocal.

And so and they have been sort of the most and this one woman who was going totally ballistic and I was like oh ...