As Twitter implodes, I’m wondering where and how I’ll be promoting my podcast next. I already have an Instagram, but Instagram has never felt as reflexive as Twitter, and I doubt my content nudges their algorithm very much. Earlier this year, I returned to Tumblr, making a quasi-podcast-website out of the iconic noughties blogging platform.
Even as Twitter implodes, I still like Twitter. Although I’m not sure how much traffic I generate there, so perhaps Twitter’s turmoil offers me an opportunity to market my work elsewhere.
Founded in 2020, my podcast is very much a labour of love. I do everything myself; from booking, researching and interviewing guests, to editing and marketing. I make no money from it. My audience is small. “There are dozens of us,” you might say.
Let’s change that, shall we?
On Teen People, I track down people who were in TEEN PEOPLE magazine as young adults.
A subsidiary of PEOPLE, TEEN PEOPLE featured celebrity interviews, fashion and beauty editorials, and true stories from real teens. Published between 1998 and 2006, the magazine printed their young contributors' full names, ages, and locations; making many of them easy to find online today.
Presciently, TEEN PEOPLE's publisher, Anne Zehren said, in 2000, "We make celebrities real, and real teens, celebrities." It’s not a stretch to say that TEEN PEOPLE anticipated the rise of influencer culture—albeit, through the medium of print.
A few years ago, I found a stack of TEEN PEOPLE magazines left over from my teenage subscription. As I flipped through these old issues, I realized that TEEN PEOPLE’s "real teens" were now in their 30s and 40s, like me. As a librarian, I knew most of these kids would have a digital footprint, so I wondered how many I could find. Were they buying their first homes? Were they married? Were they happy?
In other words: where are they now?
For fans of You're Wrong About and Storytime with Seth Rogen, my podcast, Teen People, reveals a unique portrait of the Millennial and Gen X experience today.
Sounds fluffy? It’s not! Search Teen People on your favourite podcast app, or tap the link below.
For fun, I asked Stable Diffusion to replicate the teen magazine aesthetic. I wrote about Britney Spears last time, so she makes a cameo here, as do Beyoncé and Lauryn Hill. I added the words “prom” and “boy band” to my prompts, as well as “street style”. While Stable Diffusion renders text and faces fairly incomprehensibly, the overall vibe comes through—bright, youthful, and…pink.
Check out the latest episode of Teen People (an interview with art curator Jenny Mushkin Goldman on protest, radicalization and the long undoing of Roe v Wade) and subscribe to Teen People on your favourite podcast app.