Greg Dunlap  0:05  
Our guest today is Shelby Lorman, a writer, comedian, and artist best known for creating the Instagram account Awards For Good Boys, as well as the book of the same name. So welcome to the show Shelby.

Shelby Lorman  0:59  
Thank you so much for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Greg Dunlap  1:03  
So why don't you tell us a little bit about sort of your journey and how you came to create Awards For Good Boys?

Shelby Lorman  1:13  
Yeah, definitely. So I started just drawing the concept of Awards For Good Boys, probably 2016 2017. And it came to me very much as a complete idea where I was just like, I want to satirize and make literal the pedestals that we put people on in our society. I specifically want to do that around gender, even though in my own mind, it's much more about power. But I was thinking about how do I start this conversation, and how do I make it funny. And so I started drawing these little kind of awards, and I would carry them around with me everywhere. And the first kind of iteration were really obvious. So it would be like, "Stood up for a female colleague." And then like smaller underneath alone in the bathroom to the mirror. So it was this very, very clear kind of equation that I was making. And for a while, I think it was like very obviously, I am making fun of society, not people, and trying to use humor to explore the ways that men mostly are put on pedestals for you know, pretty average things. But then also crucially, and it's always been a huge part of the project to me, is looking at why we as the audience, as the people looking at those elevated on pedestals, why do we keep clapping for them? Why do we keep literally and figuratively awarding people. And as it kind of grew, I realized that I was just like, very bewitched, with the idea of awarding in general and how it functions in our society. So whether that's like, you know, participation awards for gifted kids, and there's that sort of section, but then there's also the idea of like the Nobel Peace Prize being given to war criminals every year. And so it, there's just so many areas in which I think what I conceived as this very small idea, actually extends to so many places. So it became really generating and self generating in a way that I definitely had not thought of. I was like, this is gonna be a very small niche look at dating and love and double standards. And it definitely is that but I think that the project as a whole resonates more when you realize that what I'm looking at is a very small part of a huge system of elevating certain people and why. And the last few years I've been really interested in I mean, obviously, from the beginning too is like, goodness is so central to this. And like Awards For Good Boys. It's like what do we think of as goodness? And who decides that? And how are these things that are collectively seen as good, actually really arbitrary? And, you know, who makes those decisions? And as the project just sort of grown out now, now, it you know, started as this thing of like, okay, there's like this very cliche idea of  this male feminist who is saying something sort of obvious, like treat women with respect, and everyone is like, "Oh, my gosh, what a hero." And it's like, Okay, he's not wrong, but also like, why are we ready to hear that from this person? Why is this thing that is like an inherent truth of being a good human and society made to seem like such an aberration and then celebrated? And so I've also been interested in that in larger forums. Like, how does philanthropy sort of mirror that? How does investment in arts mirror that? I've been really interested in, like, how really, really rich people can use art. And donating wings to places as a sort of shield from behavior or otherwise. And so, again, it started as a very, very small let's look at how this works in interpersonal relationships. And as I've thought about it more and more, it has been this kind of giant pressing question about how we decide what has merit in society and who gets acknowledged for that, and how that functions in sort of our day to day. So that's really the long, short version of how it started. But yeah, it really, it began and still is, in a lot of ways, this look at patterns and not people. So all my work looks exactly the same. And that's partly because I have a limited artistic repertoire. But it's also very much because I was using my own experiences as a springboard, but I always knew that it like really deeply wasn't about me. Even though I have like a particular penchant for encountering really funny situations, so I use my own experiences. But I've always said from the beginning, this is about patterns and not people. If you recognize someone in this work, that's just speaking to how, you know, it's a Rorschach test for whoever you see and whatever you make of it. But I'm very rarely going to be naming people. It is about these behaviors, these sort of these patterns that we all can relate to. So yeah, it was always about interpersonal relationships. But it also more broadly, was about how those interpersonal relationships are shaped by so many forces outside of that, which is a complicated conversation to try to have through one panel, drawings on Instagram as I learned.

Greg Dunlap  6:49  
One panel two color drawings on Instagram.

Shelby Lorman  6:51  
Yes, exactly.

Greg Dunlap  6:54  
I mean, it seems like one of the central tenants is that the entire definition of goodness that we have in society changes depending on who you're talking about, what their status is, what their general profile is, be it you know, their identity, racially, or gender wise, or whatever. That this concept of goodness, it's almost like what you think is good declines, the more and more a person benefits from society thinking them good, r ight? 

Shelby Lorman  7:25  
Absolutely. That's such a good way of putting it. Yeah, I've been really interested, kind of the whole time I've been doing the project in the ways that celebrity functions, and how much that is this fascinating mirror for goodness. And I think it's especially been interesting to think about, during the last year, in the pandemic, as I think a lot of people have seen very starkly this sort of jarring dissonance between celebrity's lives and people in a way that I think previously, you could just look at a celebrity traveling and doing whatever. And there was like a little bit of aspiration to that, or just this sort of acceptance that celebrities are going to do their thing, and they're part of culture. And I think the last year has been this real turning point for people being like, why do these people exist? Why are they exempt from rules? And why do they still get, you know, positive coverage for things? Why are they celebrated for doing kind of the least? Why do we also look to celebrities for any sort of coherent political opinion? I think something I'm really fascinated by is this push the last few years that I think a lot of people really want celebrities to, quote unquote, use their platform in a specific way. And I'm fascinated by how that both plays into appearing good, and that if a celebrity can say the right thing at the right time, it doesn't even have to be that nuanced, or that novel, people are just so excited that they've done that. Like, I remember when Taylor Swift encouraged people to vote, and like, yeah, that's net good. Like, I don't have a problem with that. But, but also, I thought it was like, you know, a little bit comically, late, considering how silent she's been for years and years and pointing that out.

Shelby Lorman  8:21  
And probably comically celebrated too.

Shelby Lorman  9:26  
Absolutely. In this way that it's just like, it becomes really hard to talk to people about the limits of, you know, celebrity representation and just stan culture and this whole idea of hero worship, whether it's politicians or celebrities. I think it's just so tied into people's conceptions of self that when you say like, "Yeah, no, it was a good thing, but it also like, why are we so excited about this?" People get really personally offended and I think that's a huge reason, in my mind, why like ... celebrity culture has sort of remained uncontested in this way until maybe this year is just because people so closely identify with the strangers. A lot of people call like a parasocial relationship where criticizing people's favorites becomes an attack on their own self. And I witnessed this all the time, in just trying to kind of gently poke fun at, you know, people being celebrated for doing the least. I think that a celebrity using their giant platform is just like, I don't think that that's as effective as people want it to be. I think that a lot of people look at something like that, and they look at the world, and they look at how messed up everything is. And like, yeah, someone with 60 million followers being like, go vote, I get how that could feel like, Oh, my gosh, like, how cool. But ultimately, is that changing anything? No, not really. And I think that's a hard discussion to have when you've got the emotional factor of really supporting someone's work and how intimate that gets and how personally offended it can feel when someone criticizes your favorite, even if you also agree that pedestals shouldn't exist.

Greg Dunlap  11:23  
Yeah, I was on an earlier podcast, somebody was talking about this idea that, you know, people's political leanings, or the candidates that they identify with, they view it as very much a part of their identity. And so when you attack the entity, you're attacking them, and this seems to be very much in in sort of part and parcel with that.

Shelby Lorman  11:42  
Absolutely. Yeah, it is, I think a tentative idea, especially, completely for Americans to reconcile with the fact that politicians don't have our best interests in mind, and I experienced a lot of tension with people who I think, really just want their politicians to be the sort of West Wing fantasy that they have of them. And this sort of like, you know, this version of American politics that I think never really existed, but very much exists in our psyche. This, like, oh, we're on different sides of the aisle, but we're gonna shake hands and get things done. And they're here to protect us. And they're all smart people, and they deserve these positions. And they certainly don't. I think that it's so entrenched in our culture to kind of think of these people as the only option to protect us and to save us and to, you know, latch our hopes to. And it's been very, very surreal kind of watching that. As someone who has a big platform, and also someone who, you know, spends most of my time criticizing, not the people that are put on on pedestals, but the pedestal itself. And I think that's a really hard distinction for people to make. And to be like, why are you going after these people? We need these people, they're on our side. There was a moment last year when Nancy Pelosi ripped up the State of the Union. And I thought it was just like, the funniest thing I've ever seen. Because it was just very, I don't even want to say performative. I think that word gets thrown around in ways that, you know, render it sort of meaningless. But it was just, it's just funny. And a lot of people I think, saw in that this sort of really empowering moment of like, clapping back and taking a stand. And I was like, it's cool if that resonates with you in that way. But if you're gonna zoom out and think, what does this actually do? Let's be real, it does nothing. It's good press for Nancy. She gets another GIF made of her doing something fun. And people are really, really, really, really mad at me for that. I got a lot of like, "You're dividing the left" and I was like ... "Do you think the left is looking at a cartoon? Like what do you think they care what I think?" Really, really funny. So yeah, I think that  a weird thing that happens when you critique power is that sometimes people think that you're more powerful than you are. And I was like, do you guys get that I'm not an elected official. Like I'm just drawing cartoons. A lot of people were like "You're sabotaging the election. If Biden loses it's your fault." And I was like, that would be awesome, but I just don't have that type of power. I just don't at all.

Greg Dunlap  14:57  
If you want to hand it to me, I'll take it but....]

Shelby Lorman  15:00  
Like, no, give me the power that you think I have that sounds cool. Yes, it's been fascinating.

Greg Dunlap  15:07  
I feel like we could do a whole entire other podcast about your work and the implications in greater society, but it's kind of ancillary to what we're actually I think, going to get into here. So, you know, as you produce your work, you obviously grow an audience that today is, you know, pretty large. Like you have an Instagram account that has like 450,000 followers and whatnot. You produced a book last year. How did that growth take place? I mean, did it happen very quickly, did happen sort of over time? Like, what did that look like?

Shelby Lorman  15:42  
I would say it happened pretty slowly. But once it started, it then happened all at once. And it was really overwhelming. I was sort of making work into the void for a year, I was just kind of like putting this project out there. It was, like, mostly my friends and family following me. I never really expected that many people to see it. But it was really nice to kind of have this space to articulate the ways that I was kind of processing the world around me and always was really interested in writing and drawing about dating and technology and love and making those things resonate more deeply. So I was like, you know, here's, here's the way to do it.

Greg Dunlap  16:31  
And what year was that?

Shelby Lorman  16:33  
I think I started posting them in 2017. And then I just sort of, you know, did like, I tried a little bit to build community, like I would use hashtags. I was very engaged with people. I think for like that first year, there was maybe like a few thousand people following which was huge. And I just like, couldn't believe that. And that was more than enough. For me, I was like, this is awesome. I kind of never expected anyone to see this. And it was really cool. When there's not that many people in a digital space, you really actually get to know people, and you start to recognize their usernames, and you get to have longer conversations with people. And it just felt very communal, it actually felt like a community. And I was just like, so thankful for that. And also, it was just so surreal, because I just couldn't believe that anyone cared about what I had to say. And then a huge part of the growth was that I was sort of swept up by this niche corner of Instagram, which I usually call Feminist Instagram with a capital F capital I. And I still still think that parts of that really resonate with me, and my work is definitely feminist, I think, in different ways than that community sort of ascribed unto me. Like it, I think, to me is obviously a feminist because I'm talking about gender relations and power. And also just like, have a sense of double standards in society and what that means and so I was always definitely obviously, pro women, I don't hate women. But I think that that sort of translated in a way that I was really unprepared for, where all of a sudden, these, you know, these pages with like 20,000 people following 30,000 people who were sort of like, these bastions of Feminist Instagram, who were mostly reposting pages where they would have like a bunch of memes and screenshots of Twitter and just sort of like this roundup of everything that was relevant in a given week or given day. And I sort of got pulled into that, where all of a sudden, my work started getting reposted by one of these pages, and then another one, and they all sort of knew me, and I became, I think, a little bit like this mascot of this world, because I was saying really similar things to them, but I was drawing them. Which was, I think, new. Very shareable. Definitely, like resonates in a different way than reading a screenshot of a tweet. They all looked really simple and the same. And so I think I, you know, sort of unintentionally made a branding strategy for myself just by virtue of not having that many artistic skills in that regard. But I always was going into it as being like, Okay, I'm a writer. I'm making memes more or less, but I want people to be thinking about this stuff more deeply. And I want people to be in conversation about this. So in my mind, it was always like, this is the tip of an iceberg of a conversation and I'm going to just put a little bit out there and hopefully have the conversation continue, whether that's in the comments or in DMs, or just in people's own lives. So I never thought that I was kind of putting out a complete vision, I always felt that it was like a work in progress. But yeah, then it just took off from there. Like, I think a few kind of big quote unquote feminist pages started to share me often. And all of a sudden, I had this influx of people who were really looking to me to make feminist content. And the first kind of year of the growth of the page was really oriented around that. And very much just sort of exploring this world of Instagram that I just did not know existed at all. And I don't think it was a mistake in retrospect, but it does definitely clarify a lot about how the community evolved for me, because this project to me is a comedy project. And it always has been. And there was just an absolute flattening that happened when it started to be taken up by these pages who are looking at it as sort of this guidebook, or you know, just projecting, I think, a bit too much meaning onto these things that I had always meant as just sort of conversation starter jokes. So I think a lot of my rise after that was because I did step into this role of being like, Okay, I guess I'm the one making the rules now. And I just kind of accepted that. I couldn't believe that anyone cared about my work at all. And so now when I think about how overwhelming it is to have people watching my work, I certainly remember what it was like to have someone with 20,000 followers share a cartoon of mine. I would be thrilled. I would be like, this is the best thing that's ever happened to me, I immediately felt pretty like subservient to the person who shared it. I was like, thank you so much. Let me know if I can do anything for you. There's just this very weird dynamic that works in this space, and I was so naive about it, I just really thought that everyone was cool. Everyone was just trying to, you know, get their opinions out there. The idea that someone maybe wanted to get close to me to kind of use my platform or steer the direction of my work like never occurred to me. I was so naive. I was just like, everyone share my work, all I want is growth. I just want more people to see this. This rule is nothing to worry about. This will never come back to haunt me. And so I was just for a while, like, the only thing I felt like I was supposed to be doing was thinking about growth. And I think that is like a huge thing for anyone who's an internet creator. Even if it's not explicit, the idea is that you want people to see your stuff. Most people depend on, you know, people seeing our stuff to some degree. And I don't think there's really an alternative outlined, because, you know, in these attention economy spaces, it's like, I'm going to take every opportunity I can to get people to look at my things. And after looking at them for different reasons than I want them to, I can't really complain about that. So come on in everyone, we're just going to try to make this the biggest thing ever. And I think that's sort of how it goes. You're supposed to, quote unquote, you're supposed to you make your thing, then you you do a little social climbing, and then you just  pursue growth at all costs, even if you're talking about how dangerous and terrible growth is. You're supposed to just want to grow. Right? That's sort of just what it is. And you're never really given the space to be like, what does creating in an online space look like if growth isn't the goal. Because the actual platforms will punish you for not creating enough or not creating in the right ways. Socially and infrastructurally, you're kind of forced to just create stuff in a really specific way, all of the time. So growth is just sort of embedded into what you're doing. And if you want people to keep seeing your stuff, you have to post a lot you have to post in a certain way. And you get penalized for not. Like I would try to take breaks from Instagram and I would come back and no one would see my stuff because I had taken a few days off. So it's very hard to not just kind of pursue that at all costs if you want people to see your stuff.

Greg Dunlap  24:50  
Well, one of the interesting things that I've seen in following your account, and you alluded to this earlier, is this is this idea that you you've been really active in interacting with the people who interact with your content, right? And that a lot of people on Instagram, they kind of push the content out there and people comment on it, but it's never like a two way street. Right? And you said that that was really empowering and great at the beginning. But as you grew, like what sort of happened to that community that you had built? Like, how did that start to change over time?

Shelby Lorman  25:25  
I felt, you know, for years, just super grateful, because even though there are aspects of the community and the growth around it that felt really weird. For the most part, I felt like it was a really, really good engaged group of people who are really smart. And even if we disagree, I felt like there was room and interest in sort of just having longer, more thoughtful conversations. And I think a lot of people recognize that going into a comment section on Awards For Good Boys, was a very specific experience for good and bad. I think it really fluctuated. In the early days, it was a little bit hostile. It's pretty reactive. There's a lot of people kind of looking for catharsis. And I think that could make it hard for someone who's just coming in to be like, I don't agree with this. There is a sort of a protectiveness over some of the work because I think it's so emotionally resonant. But there was just a time where it was really easy to just talk to people and to disagree with people, and to not have that be anything more than just a conversation that we were having. And then, as more and more people started to follow, I realized that those conversations are no longer just between you and the person. But there's just all of a sudden, like, hundreds of thousands of onlookers, who are watching how you respond to someone and then chiming in. And, you know, that's how the platform works. If you respond to someone publicly, other people are gonna respond to you publicly. But it changed from feeling like this really engaging and natural conversation where lots of people could be involved, to this really weirdly ironic comments section wherein everyone's trying to one up each other and prove that they understood the work in the correct way, or criticize the work because it wasn't portrayed in the correct way. It just became this sort of meta-narrative of all of these people's ... and mine too ... like, just all of these ways that things weren't working. And it stopped being a place where I felt like everyone was sort of ...  I think in the beginning, it was really this idea that a lot of people don't agree, but we're all here in the same space. And we're all interested in sort of like navigating the places where we don't agree and why. And there was very much kind of a built in curiosity. And I think a lot of that was spearheaded by me, because I treated running the page very much as an experiment where I was like, I can't believe I have this many people listening to me and watching me, and I want it to be community-centric. So I'm going to ask so many questions about these people, which I did. And I'm going to ask them to tell me their stories. And I'm going to draw their stories. And it's going to be this kind of back and forth. Because I never wanted to be a person who was public making art, like, I just never wanted that for myself. And so I think the more people started following, the more uncomfortable I got with this ask that is made of you if you want to be known for a thing, which is just fully embrace the fact that you are solely responsible for it, and that everyone should, you know, come and pay you to talk about your stuff. And I was like, I'm just not that person. And I know that this is a collaborative work. And that became harder to discuss with people, the more and more people were in the space. Where it was like, how do I prove to 1000s of people that this has always been a collaborative work if they followed me yesterday, and don't know that, you know, for the first few years of running this,it was pretty communal. And it was very much a place where people would just like laugh and find catharsis and meet each other. And I met some really amazing people. And then I think, you know, I sort of went viral overnight. And that changed the whole dynamic of the page because suddenly there were people who were purposely coming in to be instigators and agitators, which obviously made talking about things with nuance, pretty impossible. And so as that increased, I think this the general aura became more and more combative, and I don't think that's specific just to my page. I think that's true across the internet the last few years. I think for for myself, it was this really surreal thing where I was like, I always felt like I had created this sort of, you know, outside of time space, because it genuinely felt like such a lovely community and such an interesting community where people were sharing book recommendations and music, and it was just such a unique experience. And then it just became so overwhelmed with people who, you know, had just followed or had seen one thing reshared. And I realized that there wasn't really a way to kind of reintroduce people to what I was trying to do. It was just a very clear divide of people who have seen me doing this for a while and read my work in good faith, and people who followed me yesterday, and probably don't understand that it's comedy. It was a clash between the new and old people following. It was a clash between me and trying to moderate, like, what do I pay attention to. And I found myself just being drawn to the worst comments and the worst messages. And it just created the cycle where it was, like, just very reactive. And I knew that I was good at sort of putting people in their place in a way that was funny, but also informative. But it just got to this point where I was like, why am I doing this? And who am I doing this for? And I think a lot of it is just because, and I write about this in my book, so much of the reason that I created this project is because I personally have a hard time with people having narratives about me, that I haven't written. And so suddenly, with all of these commenters here, looking at this fictional work that I was drawing, projecting their own experiences, projecting my experiences onto it. It became very personal and very heated. And I just sort of stopped being able to separate myself from the work and everything became really personal. Where people being like, "Oh, I don't like this" became "I don't like you." I mean, it also is just a really surreal experience. And I learned like, with more people following my work, receiving real time, feedback to art is not something that I was mentally equipped for, at all. And I think about this a lot, because like, my work, in theory, I would love it to be presented to people in a way where then they just had to sit and think about it. But because there's a comment space right below and because people can react immediately, it was kind of doing the opposite of what I designed it to do, where it became this really quick, reactive, reductive, little memes about how men are trash. And I was like, that's not what this is about. And I felt like when I tried to sort of zoom out on that, people got really angry because it wasn't the version of myself that they thought I was. So it was just this very eerie moment where I was like, I've been drawing about celebrities and putting men on pedestals and the way that we entangle ourselves with these people that we don't know. And all of a sudden, I'm watching this huge group of community do that to me, and I was like, holy shit. They're putting me on a pedestal as I'm satirizing pedestals, and I'll never get it right. Like, I'll just never be enough. Because, you know, I'm like, because

Greg Dunlap  33:31  
It's the pedestal that's broken, not you.

Shelby Lorman  33:33  
Yes, yes. But I think that like, that concept. When people disagreed with things, it started to not be about the, the concept, but about me. Especially because I had shared so much about my life. And I was sort of like, tentatively trying to get people to know me and like me and care about me, but I also had never, I never thought that this many people would be watching. So if I could go back and tell myself when I had 1000 followers, please don't post pictures of your face, you're going to regret people knowing that, I would be like, stop, stop doing everything, like just just chill, just post your jokes, but I couldn't. And I think especially as I got more and more people, I felt this pressure to kind of use my platform in a specific way. And for a while, I think people really celebrated me for that. And then it became this, you know, the self fulfilling irony again, where I was like, I'm every day talking about something that I find important. Watching people who never say anything, say vote and be celebrated and cheered for. And if I, you know, use a word that you don't like when I'm talking about Elizabeth Warren. You're gonna make a dozen Instagram stories about how I'm dividing the left. And it was this really fascinating moment where I was like, I cannot kind of handle this irony as a person making these things anymore. It's just too on the nose. And so I felt like I had to be so self deprecating to get people to even engage with my work, which I think is true for a lot of women in comedy anyways. I had to make men and women not feel threatened. And so it just became this pretty destructive cycle of being like, you know, this community is too big for them to actually know me and for me to actually engage earnestly. How do I get them to still care about me? And like me? What do I share about my life? And how do I do that in between being like, I have this giant platform, I'd rather tell you about things going on in the world. And then I became the sort of proxy news service, which felt really bad. And I was like, Do you guys know that I'm not the news. It was really surreal. And I found that people were kind of asking more from me than they were from a lot of their elected officials. And I was like, this is really bizarre, and I think it taught me a lot about how influence and internet power works today, where I think that some people legitimately think that having a bunch of followers makes you impactful in society in a way that I think just very often doesn't translate. And I just would tell people, I'd be like, you should spend the time that you're spending telling me you don't like my cartoons calling your local officials and telling them what you don't like in your community, like it's a better use of time. 

Greg Dunlap  36:36  
I bet that went over well.

Shelby Lorman  36:41  
It did not go over well at all. And yeah, I saw a lot of that last summer, and all through the pandemic. There's just been, I think that I foolishly thought that a lot of people following me, had similar-ish politics to me. And then I realized that I had been treading a little bit carefully, probably unconsciously, because I didn't want the heat. And then I was sort of masks off the last, you know, year and a half where I was like, I have this huge platform, what am I going to just not say what I think all the time? That's not me, I have no filter. And it made people really mad, I think. The idea of like, Hey, I'm actually not just drawing about your bad dates, I'm trying to look at how that reverberates throughout society. And part of that is looking at yourself. And that that did not go over well, at all.

Greg Dunlap  37:37  
I think that one of the interesting things there is that, you know, you talk about how you started out with this community of people who got it, and you got them and you all came together. But as you grew, you found more and more people coming in who didn't get it. And that kind of ripped things apart in a lot of ways. And it seems like as somebody who's taking very complicated and nuanced issues and turning them into something very simple as and funny, that is almost inevitable. But it's also a an example of something that I've seen in a lot of communities, which is as they grow, it's like the contract changes almost right? Like, the agreement about why we're all here becomes harder and harder to maintain. Unless you turn it into something else that's going to alienate the reason why you started things in the first place.

Shelby Lorman  38:32  
Oh, totally. Yep. It was exactly that. And it became this moment where like, there isn't a way to reintroduce everyone new to the to the things I've been talking about for a long time. So good faith readings of things just totally slipped away for people who were just coming in. And I think crucially, what started to really mess me up, is that, and maybe this, I mean, it's probably my fault. A lot of people didn't understand that it was satire. And I think some of that is just because it's nuanced. I think some of it is larger. And just like, I think that the internet has kind of killed comedy in a lot of ways. And I also think that like, the grim times we're living in, and how surreal they are, satire kind of doesn't function in the way that it used to. It's just hyper reality all the time. It's very, very surreal. And so I think comedy and satire functioned really differently today than they had been, and I think I occupied this strange role where I was saying, you know, people shouldn't be allowed to say anything that they want anymore. Like, that's bad. But I also do think that jokes that are provocative and edgy and thoughtful and make you think about things are really important, and I think comedy is really important in that way. I also think that, you know, what I thought Is not that controversial, but weirdly is. You can like and consume, quote unquote problematic media and problematize it. You don't have to be like, you know, I'm never watching this thing again, because this creator did a bad thing. You can still engage with things that are, you know, have storied histories and have creators that you disagree with. And then you just note that, and I think that it just became really, really impossible to kind of re-introduce people who were new to this space to the idea that one, I've been doing this for a long time, I promise, I care about real shit too. Like, you don't have to tell me to post about insert crisis. I know. And then secondly, it was this idea that this is comedy. And people would be like, you can't just say whatever. And it was just this very weird resistance, I think, to things that I had been saying all along. And suddenly, with this influx of people and the contract, absolutely changing. And it being like, what do I owe these people because suddenly, there's a lot of people who are asking a lot from me, and I don't actually think it's ever what I was promising. And I don't know where these people got the idea that I was just sort of, you know, drawing the world as it should be. I'm satirizing the world, as it is. And I think that I didn't have the energy to sort of explain my work to people in a way that would have maybe made it easier for new people to understand that also wasn't really a good way to do that. So I just realized that like, Oh, this can't exist in this way, at this scale, without hostility, because people don't really want to sit and have a good faith reading of this. And I experienced this phase of like, just so many people watching my stuff and engaging with things. And it was this moment where I was really reactive. And I was really reacting to the news, and just kind of saying things that I think people wanted me to say, and being very much like, yeah, this man did a bad thing. And I just feel like it was very myopic. And when I look back, I'm deeply embarrassed that I was kind of spearheading this sort of thinking online in any way. But I think when I stopped doing that, and reoriented being like, this actually isn't what I care about. People took that as apathy or as I mean, people just have, it's, it's fascinating. I think most of my audience, being women was a whole other factor of, you know, a relationship and parasocial relationship. And the contract is different, because I think women, especially women online, we're all judging each other all of the time. There's such a way to be.  And I always thought that I was sort of like, not safe. But I was like, you know, I'm making fun of men, women are all going to be on my side, I got this. And then when I started pushing back, and when I started being like, actually, my thesis isn't men are trash. My thesis is, relationships are complicated. Why do we award people for doing the least? And why do we keep clapping for them? I got a lot of people telling me that I hated women. I mean, I very openly supported Bernie. And I was not a Stan, you know, I don't stan politicians. But I was just like, here's our best option. And the amount of people who told me that I was sexist, that I was misogynistic for not believing Elizabeth Warren could be president, and that Bernie bros were mean to them. I was like, Look, I get harassed every day online. And I'm telling you, it's not the fan base. It's just being online. And that I just refuse to accept that narrative. And I realized suddenly, oh my God, my nuance believes me not sugarcoating for people is normally going to push people away, but it makes people engage with my work differently, which then started to feel really scary because I was like, I always thought that I was speaking my mind and that people would sort of stay with me. But suddenly, I'm realizing that being here's the person I'm voting for,you know, everyone says use your platform, use your platform. And okay, I'm going to use it. Here's an explainer on why we need Medicare For All. And people were not having it. So it was like, Okay, I realized that it's very hard to be thoughtful and also maintain that sort of engagement level. The things that do well are the things that are really watered down, really reductive, really dangerous, I think. And resisting that is going to come at a cost to how many people are engaging with your content, and how many people want to actually look to you as this source of things. And when I was like, Oh, I don't want to be that I'm not that person. I'm not an expert. I think people just got really upset about that, because they felt like they deserved an explanation of why I thought certain things. And I just think the relationship between audience and creators these days is really, at times quite abusive. And I think it's really toxic. Just very, very toxic.

Greg Dunlap  46:06  
Yeah, I mean, it seems like you could have changed to get into a situation where you were more of a push based medium where you were just pumping out content and not engaging with people. But it also seems like that wouldn't have been at all satisfying for you in any way, shape, or form.

Shelby Lorman  46:21  
Totally. And I think a huge part of the work for me, especially in the beginning, was being able to see how people responded to it, and being able to see how people could apply this framework to their own lives. And I really resented when more people came into this space, as much as I was proud of it, I was like, This is so cool that people are here now. But also, I really miss being able to have genuine conversations about why something I made doesn't resonate or doesn't make sense, or does make sense. And when you grow and grow and grow, you lose that ability to actually self implicate, and to actually say, "Oh, this thing I made, you're right, like that's such a good point. It doesn't really make sense in that way." Because when you're put in front of all of these people, it's very, very hard and t's a disadvantage to say "I'm wrong, I was wrong about that." I think so much of why we see so much doubling down on the internet, these people who are just really wrong refuse to do otherwise, is because you kind of can't like, unless you're going to do like a Notes app apology, it's very hard to have just casual conversations being like, "Oh, you're right, that was a bad take moving on." There isn't really room for that. There's just this emphasis on getting it right the first time. And then if you get it wrong, you have to self-flagellate in the correct ways so that everyone watching can feel, you know, properly sinful for having supported you before, and now they can atone. And when I started pointing that out, I was like, this is wild. People just got really, really mad at me. And I was like, you know, this is a weird irony. But I also don't want to perform self-flagellation and self-deprecation to make people feel okay about liking me. Like, they can unfollow, they can walk away from this at any time. I don't need to lay prostrate at the seat of white guilt for people to understand that I think about these things. And I realized that for some people that really was the thing  they needed me to articulate in a very specific way. You know, certain checklists, and I was like, this is unproductive. And it's just not about me. And so people tried to make it about me. I always just felt like this is just the wrong idea.

Greg Dunlap  48:55  
It makes me wonder if there is even a way to grow a community around something that's created. And you know, I'm really fascinated by the community that happens, either inherently or explicitly between creators and fandoms. And it's like, I wonder if it's even possible to create a community like that, that remains healthy as it grows past a specific size?

Shelby Lorman  49:21  
Yeah, that's a really interesting question. And I don't really know. And I think that the relationship between makers and creators and consumers these days, the pipeline between those things is non existent. Like you can tweet at your favorite creator any day and just be like, "Where's the new album?" And I think that access to creators and I think this immense pressure on creators to serve a community in a specific way. I think it has just totally warped art in general. And of all forms. And I think that the idea that there can be a community around that. I don't think it can be a community around an individual's work, I kind of think that when I see people who have a lot of followers, and it's their own work, like I have sort of disengaged from that as a community and look more at that as a performance. I'm like there's one person and they're performing, and there's a lot of people engaged, and they're consuming. And that's great. And that's fine. But I think that people need to recognize that what's happening is that they're consuming your performance, and they're not in direct conversation,to an artist that is accountable to them. I hink that there's this idea that because we can talk to artists, and they're so accessible to us, that they owe us a certain thing that they always are at a certain time. Also I just think that like social media, in general, has really rendered art making and art sharing, in this totally other universe, because things are so disconnected from their origin, that there's no credit and people are just sharing everything everywhere. You're scrolling past a piece of art rather than like sitting and taking it in. And I think that expectation that artists kind of make things to please their community, rather than make what they want, I think it's just totally changed and warped the way that we think about community, think about art, think about art making. I definitely found that when my community got to a certain size, I stopped making the things that I thought were actually poignant. And I started making things that I thought would just get the least amount of people mad at me.

Greg Dunlap  51:47  
Which is kind of the opposite of your entire point of when you started this in the first place.

Shelby Lorman  51:54  
Exactly. And I felt trapped. I was like, I can't really log off, I need people to buy my book, because that is where I really put the effort in articulating these things. And I really thought that when the book came out, everyone who followed me was going to go and get the book. And then they'd be like, Oh, that's what she meant by that. It did not happen that way.

Greg Dunlap  52:18  
I'm sure.

Shelby Lorman  52:19  
There is nothing more humbling than having hundreds of thousands of people love your work for free, and then none of them want to pay for your book that you've made for them specifically. So that was a really profound moment. And I also just realized how much social climbing and social maneuvering goes into getting your work seen and liked and reported on in the right way. And I was like, I have no energy, I give up. I don't want to do any of this. But yeah, I really thought that people were just gonna kind of immediately, you know, remove themselves from the page and be like, oh, there's more to this. I'll go seek out the articulated version of this. But no, it does not happen like that at all. And yeah, I just think that like, I hated what I was making. And I hated that I was popular and got popular for this iteration of the project that was like, really comically antithetical to what I'd started it as. And it just felt really cowardly. And then when I sort of returned to, you know, where I felt most comfortable being like, I'm just going to draw about what I think is important. A lot of people were really upset that it wasn't what they thought they'd signed up for. And there's this weird. I always refer to it as, like a demonic pact or satanic pact. I think some people online really deeply forget that it is a choice to follow and unfollow people. And even though everything around the space is encouraging you to stay, and to stay online for as long as possible, like literally our brains are being manipulated so that we keep scrolling. I think people forget that. You can just not consume certain things. You can just unfollow, you can block, you can delete the app from your phone. There's there's many kind of little ways to tweak that. But I would have people who the hill that they wanted to die on was fighting with me about something and I would just be like, you know, I don't know. I don't know why I make people so irate. People would send me paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs about what I'd done wrong and why my work was this way or not this way. I would get them to my personal email. I would be approached in real life on the street. It was just this all encompassing moment where I was like, What have I done? And you realize, like, you can't take it back. Once you're that big, I couldn't take it back. And I just felt so guilty and ashamed. And I was like, why have I been sharing so much, I really thought that I was, you know, allowing people into my world. But all that happened was people being really mad at me. People stealing my work, but not actually taking the depth. So I sort of, I think, spawned a little niche of illustrators who started drawing about men and dating and relationships, which obviously, I did not start. But I think that I encouraged a kind of new interpretation of that in a specific corner of the internet. And all of a sudden, people were doing my work better than I could. And in this way that I didn't want to. So there's a few people who I've watched become really genuinely popular by kind of redrawing things that I've made, but taking out the political piece, and it was just this really humbling moment for me where I was like, I could have stepped into that role at this moment where everyone really wanted me to, and I could have been this liberal feminist talking head, who, you know, talked about gender relationships, and how men suck, and how we should dump them all. And I never wanted that. And so I just, it was very eerie to watch in real time, these people who were kind of riding my weight, and doing all the things that I refused to do, and amassing a much kinder, more responsive community around them. Because if you say what your community wants to hear, they're gonna love you for it. Like if you keep shouting into the void these things that everyone is already there to hear you say they love it. And if you say to your following, liberal people are the problem, and all of my work has actually been about you guys. Surprise.

Greg Dunlap  57:02  
They don't take it well.

Shelby Lorman  57:07  
Yeah, there's this weird thing where I was like, I've always been a bit of a troll. This whole project has been a deep, deep meta-joke between me and myself the whole time. And the fact that I got sort of mainstream, I find really hilarious. The fact that my book got sold in Urban Outfitters, but is about why we put men on pedestals and talks about, you know, Jeb Bush saying, Please clap. Like, I can't believe that I made it happen. But I think that I have to be real, and that a lot of my success is because of what people think that I'm doing. Like I very much kind of snuck in. Because people thought that I was doing one thing. And then when I started to really be like, No, actually, you're wrong. It really pushed people away.

Greg Dunlap  57:59  
I mean, it really does seem like there is an issue, not just on the internet, but in general where, I don't even know how to put it like subtlety or self reflection, or nuance is just completely gone from our lives. Like, as a white liberal man, and watching your work, I instantly got a lot of the things that you were talking about. But I also, of course, have a lot of experience with a lot of people who would never in a million years think about their own place in the systems that they criticize, right? And I don't know how you fix that. Right? It seems it seems like the methods that we have to put that stuff out there right now are not conducive to fixing it either.

Shelby Lorman  58:53  
Totally, it very quickly becomes this sort of, like, how could you critique capitalism, but use an iPhone?

Greg Dunlap  59:00  
Right, right, exactly.

Shelby Lorman  59:02  
It's like, guys, we're fighting against each other. And like, none of us are Jeff Bezos. And that's the point here is that like, we need to look bigger. And I think it becomes a thing where, I mean, it really is very aligned with my original conceptions of this project, where people who kind of don't say very much, are very quiet when they decide to be self-reflective. It's seen as this huge win. And this really emotionally intimate important-headline-making insert blank actor opens up about, you know, going to therapy, and it's like, cool, great. He can afford therapy that rules. And then there's this aspect of, I think people who are always sort of in that, which is usually going to be mostly women, but not always. I think there's a real risk and penalty that comes with self implicating, and with being actively aware of your own role in things. And I found that all of the ways I just assumed people knew that I was self implicating, I then hit this point where if I wasn't saying, and this includes me, and as a white woman, people would refuse to engage. And it was like, Look, if I'm going to take up all of my time talking about the reasons why I shouldn't be the person making this work, according to you, that's going to be the work, not the work itself. Right. Like, that's not productive. But I think that there's so much ambient guilt and ambient confusion that communities then become these sort of these policing forces, which I think when it's intimate, and people know each other, that self policing, I think, can be really cool. And it can be like, Oh, we keep each other in check. That's awesome. But when it's this huge community, and you've got everyone self policing, but everyone is self policing based on a really different norms, and you've never actually agreed on what the goal is, it becomes this very hostile soup of who can articulate the thing in the best way at the right time in the right moment. And I found that people were just kind of finding weaker and weaker reasons to not engage with things that challenged them a little bit. Word choice and tone, and timing. And it was like, If me saying Elizabeth Warren, is not the person and you didn't like the tone that I set it in, and that makes you unable to support my work anymore? I don't, I don't know what to do with that. But it is this hard thing where when people are repeatedly telling you you're making it impossible for me to support your work anymore. There was this moment where I was like, oh, wow, okay, me being me, clarifying these opinions that I thought most people in here agreed on is actually detrimental to potential business. And I was just like, okay, it's more important for me to just to say what I mean. And I understand that, like, a lot of people, a lot of creators really can't do that. Like, it is a huge privilege and honor to be able to say, I don't care, I'm going to say what I think and, you know, if they don't want to engage, that's fine. But you know, a lot of people, especially people whose work is primarily online, and if you depend on a community liking you, I think that's such an eerie part of art making today. It's not just your community is there for the art, your community also has to like you enough to stay. And I think that likeability becomes this, like, really bizarre function of who is successful and who can amass a community a certain way. And for me, I was just like, I don't care about being liked. I don't really think that I'm being all that mean by not engaging with terrible people. I wasn't really sugarcoating things. I definitely was really reactive. And in retrospect, I wish that I had just engaged a little bit less with people who were clearly not trying to have a conversation with me. But I think it's really hard to tell. Like I had gone from such an intimate community where I felt like I could actually engage with people to this huge space where suddenly people were trying to trap me in being wrong and saying the wrong thing so that they could screenshot it. And I was like, How am I supposed to have nuanced conversation? And more importantly, how am I supposed to be wrong about stuff, because that's so central to how I learned things is just being super wrong. Having someone be like, that's super wrong, and then engaging about it. But when you have this giant platform, where people think that you're archiving, correctness, it suddenly became this huge liability to say I was wrong about that. And so the way to process that is like, I got a lot of people saying you're on your high horse. You think you're holier than thou all these things. Where I was like, No, I just actually don't really know how to address things at this scale.

Greg Dunlap  1:04:36  
Especially when those people are coming in and taking that sort of trust that you give in your community and using it against you to try and catch you in a trap.

Shelby Lorman  1:04:45  
Totally. And I think that the strangest part is that there'd be onlookers. Like a thing that I learned. I've learned a lot running this community, but a huge thing I learned is that people on the internet love drama. They don't need to be involved to love It and they don't really want the facts around it, they just want to insert themselves. And so I would have someone say something totally left field, like just not applicable at all. And there'd be this moment where I was like, Okay, do I just leave that there? Because I know that's not true. People who have been following me for a while, absolutely, no, that's not true. But what if someone new comes in and sees that? Do I respond and give it legitimacy? And then also, more people will see it if I respond? Or do I just leave it there? And then other people start liking it. And then there's this whole other separate conversation about you on your own work? And it was just, it was this really strange moment? I was just like, I don't know, I don't know what my job is here. Is it as a thought provoking artist? Or is it as community moderator? And I used to kind of be able to do both. And then when I tried to step away from being a community monitor, the comments would get really hostile. And people would message me being like, you have to turn comments off, it's a nightmare in there. And so then, you know, for the last few months, was just turning comments off on everything. Which is not ideal.

Greg Dunlap  1:06:15  
It's not what you wanted, at all. 

Shelby Lorman  1:06:20  
No. And I also think that I hit such a breaking point where I think I could have kind of eased the whole community into other directions, but I just got so frustrated with seeing how resistant to nuance the internet is, and how hard it is to make complicated things. And also just how punished you are, socially and also algorithmicall, for keeping things complicated. And I just felt all of these social consequences of that. And it was really frustrating. But I was also just like, I can't let people continue to use this work in the wrong way, because it's just toxic. But I also don't have the energy. Nor do I really want to explain every panel that I put up about why it is this way, or why it's not this way. It just became too much.

Greg Dunlap  1:07:29  
So I know that recently you've kind of stepped away from the social media, Twitter and Instagram, and moved into communicating with your community through Substack, through newsletters and stuff like that. How has that changed your relationship with your community and your work?

Shelby Lorman  1:07:51  
It's really, it's really nice, it's really different. I've had to do a lot of personal soul searching about why it feels empty, sometimes, to not make a thing posted immediately get 1000s of likes. Removing that sort of dopamine cycle from my life has been so important, and so healthy, and also really surreal. And I think it is a little bit confusing when you've built a relationship to your art that includes metrics, and suddenly removing that and being like, I'm going to make art again, for art's sake. I'm going to write about what I want to write about, for the people that are interested. It's going to be a whole hell of a lot less people than I had on this social media account. But that's okay. And I think there's been tension to that, because I still want people to read my work, I still want to be known, in a certain sense. I still want my work to be attributed to me. But I also really want to make it intentional and really want to speak to people in the way that I want. And I really want to do that in a way that isn't reactive. And so the newsletter, I started at the end of 2019. And it's just been really, really nice. I mean, it is definitely a completely different vibe. Aesthetically, it's not great. Like, I wish there was a platform for sharing art that looked good that wasn't metric based, but there kind of isn't. But I think that for me personally, and I think for a lot of other people watching, it has been the sort of reclamation of the ideas that I popularized with these mediums that then just sort of spiraled into non meeting because they became so not nuanced. And so, being able to actually write again and to be like, "Hey, this is what I do." I always was using cartoons as this small vessel in which to articulate bigger ideas. Unfortunately, that got lost. Let's zoom out again. And it's been really gratifying to hear back from people being like, I had no idea that you wrote about this stuff. This is so helpful. This has really been connecting a lot of ideas to me. Also, a huge part of my work when I was using the platform was just sharing other people's work, because I just truly, I never thought that more than one person would care about my work. So suddenly having like, 400,000 plus people I was like, What do I do with this. I'm not trying to be an influencer, I'm not trying to have my face in here. This is terrible. And I don't want this much attention or power. It was always very surreal to me, when people would be like, you're a clout chaser. And I was like, I spiral publicly weekly about social media visibility, and how toxic it is. I don't want this at all. I do not want it. Like, honestly, if I didn't have a book to sell, and a project that I cared about, I would just delete the entire page. But I know that it means things, it means something to people, so I want to keep it up there. But a huge part of my, day to day when I was running it was sharing things from other people. Sharing news, sharing sources, sharing places to give money. And so a good portion of the newsletter is still that in a much better format, I think, than Instagram Stories where it's like, here's all the things that I've been reading this week. And here's some places to give your money. Here's some tweets I really liked. And then every other week, I'll do a deep dive, it usually ends up being pretty tech and community related, because I'm very fascinated by that, obviously. And it's also just like, a really nice way to be able to articulate what I mean, and not have other people one-upping each other to try to put into words what I meant. None of you actually know me, you're all projecting wildly about what a thing means. I'm just going to tell you what I think, you don't have to agree. But here, I'm going to take the time to actually make this accessible and make sense and not have to explain myself and explain a joke, which is just the best thing ever. And here you go. And so it's been personally really gratifying. And I think the people who sign up and who go out of their way to ead like, I think it is re-orienting the sort of community I had at the beginning. It's a lot more private, there aren't people commenting with each other, or engaging with each other about it. And sometimes that feels like a loss. And other times, it feels like you know, I don't really need that. I'm going to trust that people are talking about this, reading this in their own life, doing their own research, etc. They don't all need access to me. And that's not because I'm better. That's not because I'm on a pedestal. That's not because I'm a creator, and they're the consumer. It's just literally they're strangers, and I am a stranger to them. And we don't need to have that intimate of a relationship. And I think that social media really erases those boundaries in a way that's really hard to see, especially because so much of being successful on social media is seeming like you could be someone's best friend. And so saying, "Hey, your ideas suck. And the politicians that you love are the worst" that's not super endearing. And I realized that pretty fast. I was like, Oh, these people aren't getting me in real life. I do say these things in real life. But I'm also a person with three dimensions and with the ability to read social context. And those things are totally erased on social media. So I know a lot of the times I just sounded like an absolute monster. And I have to own that. I mean, I wrote a few years ago, I think it was in Salon, about trying to figure out if I was the troll, or if trolls were the trolls. I sort of found myself somewhere in the middle where I was like, it's really hard to understand where people are coming from. And once you get accustomed to people coming at you, for whatever the idea that someone could come at you with, valid criticism totally slips away, because everything starts to feel like an attack. And so as much as I make fun of like, New York Times op-ed men like crying about people being mean to them online. There's a part of me that gets it a little bit. It is really hard to know what criticism is valid and what you should pay attention to when you've got thousands of people telling you some version of this thing wasn't good. Your personality sucks. And then somewhere in there is probably a really, really thoughtful critique. But how are you supposed to find that? And if you're in a reactive space of people, you know. I mean, people are horrible to me online. And if I'm sifting through things where people are calling me slurs and insulting me, and then there's one really thoughtful thing, the chance of me being able to like to distinguish that as the thoughtful thing that deserves more of my time is slim to none. I'm probably going to just block everyone, or just delete or whatever. It's very hard to actually figure out what conversations deserve that time. And I think it's a huge problem is because you get people asking these creators over and over again, to do a certain thing, to do better, to apologize for this, to take accountability for this. And it's like, how are these people supposed to know which of those actually matter. And it's also this idea that creators owe something to their communities and have to be responsible to their communities, but internet communities are not communities in the way that embodied communities are. There just isn't the same sort of allegiance to each other, even though it feels like it, and people turn on you in a second if it seems like it's going to be more advantageous to not support you. And I saw this happen with me all the time. There'd be people who would get really close to me, and share my work all the time, and I will share their work and it was cool. And then they'd asked to send me their their book, and I wouldn't post it in time, and they would unfollow me and stop talking to me. So it's like, this very bizarre set of norms that everyone is going through. And there's no agreement on what anything means or  how you're supposed to do things or, you know, I think a huge problem with online communities is that you're all in the same space, using the same tools with really different interpretations of what everything means. Like for me, when I unfollow someone, it's just not personal. I don't need that in my feed anymore. And for some people,they would see that I would unfollow someone and they would write a Reddit thread about it. Oh, Awards For Good Boys, just unfollowed blah, blah. And I'd be like, what, this is meaningless to me. But you see that for some people these things that are meaningless to you are really embedded with meaning and vice versa. And so all those things are happening all at the same time. And so I think establishing community norms, or any sort of cohesion about how to act is, so impossible. And I just don't always think that it's productive. I yeah, I don't know that it can exist.

Greg Dunlap  1:17:56  
Well it's been really great having you on and I'm a big fan. I actually really like the newsletter, because I know that you've been a writer in the past and it feels like it's a way for you to bring the that with the art together and put it out there in a way that I feel like maybe either one of them lacks a little without each other. So I've been really into that and the book as well, in the same way. So because what you obviously need is more people following you. You how can how can people find you online? And what are you working on these days?

Shelby Lorman  1:18:37  
So I'm working on some secret stuff, which I'm really excited to share at some point in the future. Yeah, no, I'm looking for ways to do follow ups to my book, and to continue the work that I was doing on Instagram, but not on Instagram. So a lot of multimedia projects that I'm working on that I can't talk about in detail yet, but hopefully we'll be able to just send around everyone soon. My whole archive is still on Instagram, if people are curious. Like it's all still up there. Along with some really, you know, great comments that I'm sure I've left. So nothing to see there. My substack is awardsforgoodboys.substack.com. Where else can people find me? My book is called Awards For Good Boys. It exists wherever books are sold. I sell some merch and stuff but you know, whatever. And yeah, I'm not on Twitter. And that is a blessing for everyone. I was terrible at Twitter. Just gotten way too many fights with everyone. So really, you know, just a gift. It's a gift to my community to not be on Twitter. And yeah, that's pretty much where I am these days.

Greg Dunlap  1:20:04  
Cool. Well, thanks for coming on. This has been really great and I really appreciate you telling your story and sharing it.

Shelby Lorman  1:20:11  
Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure and I love talking about these things. So thank you for giving me the space to do that.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai