Imperfect Paradise: People vs. Karen Part 4

Antonia Cereijido  00:00

[music in] You're listening to Imperfect Paradise from LAist Studios. I'm your host, Antonia Cereijido. This is the final part of our four part series, People Versus Karen. In the last episode, Katie Sorensen's criminal case headed to trial.

Sadie Martinez  00:17

Somebody's gonna learn from this. If it's not her, it'll be somebody else. Somebody will see this and say, Hey, you know, think twice before you post some crazy lies on online.

Antonia Cereijido  00:28

And Katie was found guilty. As part of his legal strategy, the prosecutor had argued that Katie was a "momfluencer" gone wrong. In this episode, we explore what exactly is a momfluencer? And how do some women go from using their social media following to make money, to then spreading lies?

Sara Petersen  00:49

I think it's really easy for mothers to disseminate these messages in ways that like, screaming men on 4chan cannot.

Antonia Cereijido  01:01

That's coming up on Imperfect Paradise from LAist Studios. [music out]

Antonia Cereijido  01:04

The idea of what a good mother is, is really central to this story. When Katie Sorensen calls the police to report an attempted kidnapping, she believes she's being a good mother. When Sadie Martinez is falsely accused of attempted kidnapping, part of why she's so offended is that being a mom is so core to her identity. When Katie is sentenced to a month in jail, Eddie Martinez has mixed feelings because as a father, he knows how difficult it will be for her children to be without their mom for a month. But he also feels like mothers of color are imprisoned all the time. I wanted to talk to LAist correspondent Emily Guerin about this because it was her curiosity about the idea of the "good mother" that actually brought her to the story in the first place.

Antonia Cereijido  01:55

Hi, Emily.

Emily Guerin  01:56

Hi, Antonia.

Antonia Cereijido  01:57

So yeah, Emily, tell me a little bit more about what got you into this story.

Emily Guerin  02:01

Yeah, I think my interest in momfluencers started after my son was born in February 2021. And I was spending a lot of time on Instagram. I don't love [Antonia: Mm hm.] that, but it was true because basically, when you're breastfeeding a child, you kind of like, only have one hand, and so like, all I could do was scroll. And I was getting sent all these targeted ads, and then also just like, accounts for new influencers I'd never really seen before. And a lot of them were women, and they had all this advice about parenting and being a mom.

Antonia Cereijido  02:17

So what were, more specifically, can, can you tell me more about these momfluencers? What were they like? [Emily: Yeah.] What sorts of information were they sharing?

Emily Guerin  02:39

Well, they were all like regular women. But they also had like a lot of, it seemed like they had a lot of expertise to share, despite not really having like, obvious credentials. And they would talk about all these like, very specific things like sleep training, or introducing solid food, or breastfeeding or like, potty training, like, these very specific elements of raising a child.

Antonia Cereijido  03:01

Do you, did you have a favorite?

Emily Guerin  03:02

I found the most useful to be this one called Solid Starts, which is like, they're all about teaching you how to give your kid solid food for the first time because it's actually like, a huge deal when your kid goes from just like, breastfeeding or having bottles to eating food. It's like, kind of scary, and you're like, Oh my God, are they gonna choke on this blueberry? And so they like, tell you in this, this account, like, how to cut apples for when your kid is six months old or what to do about like, watermelon seeds or like, how to give them meat and things like that. And they had pictures, so that one was actually super helpful.

Antonia Cereijido  03:33

It sounds like, um, [Emily: It's niche.] it's actually very useful.

Emily Guerin  03:38

Yeah. I think though, the thing I noticed that they all had in common was that all these women were like, portraying themselves as good mothers and they were sort of telling me like, Oh, you can be one too. And like, I can teach you. That was just interesting to me and I wanted to learn more about how this sort of class of like, mom expert momfluencers came about. So I tracked down a writer named Sara Petersen. She wrote a book about mom influencers called Mom Influenced: Inside the Maddening Picture Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture.

Sara Petersen  04:08

Mom influencers stem from mommy bloggers, another you know, both "mom influencer" and "mommy blogger" are pretty gross terms. Yeah, so mommy bloggers sort of proliferated in the early-to-mid aughts. Some of them were really breaking down barriers in terms of writing about postpartum depression and the decidedly un-sunny sides of motherhood that up until then were not really mainstream sources of conversation. I would say the early mommy bloggers were really, their bread and butter was writing and personal essaying, and mom influencers were really just imagery, like imagery is everything. So I think that's also interesting to see how what started as a sort of vulnerable speaking truth to motherhood sort of thing has turned into a shiny picture perfect version of motherhood.

Antonia Cereijido  05:07

It's so interesting that it started as this more like, unvarnished look at like the tough [Emily: I know!] parts of parenting. Yeah.

Emily Guerin  05:15

Yeah, because I feel like, I don't know, I mean, now it's like so many of the influencers project this sort of like image of themselves as experts and like knowing everything and sort of being like "good moms." And yeah, Sara Petersen told me that that whole idea like, what even is a good mom, is like a really loaded term.

Sara Petersen  05:33

When you trace back the roots of how we view a quote unquote, "good mother," it's intrinsically connected to various levels of privilege. And how we look at a quote unquote "bad mother" or an unfit mother is intrinsically connected to various levels of marginalization. In America, for example, the quote unquote "good mom" has historically been white, cis het, non-disabled, thin, adheres to Western beauty standards, is married, has, you know, a certain amount of wealth. And those all come from really toxic fraught places in history. You know, you can go all the way back to the cult of domesticity where the rich white lady was at home arranging flowers while mothers of color were maybe taking care of her children and mothers from lower socioeconomic classes were cleaning her house or buying her food.

Antonia Cereijido  06:29

[music in] After the break, what does it take to be a successful momfluencer?

Sara Petersen  06:34

The numbers show that, you know, each subsequent pregnancy, they'll see an uptick in followers and- [Emily: Really?] Yes, and an uptick in engagement.

Antonia Cereijido  06:45

That's coming up on Imperfect Paradise. [music out]

Antonia Cereijido  06:58

You're listening to Imperfect Paradise. This is part four of our series People Versus Karen. Let's get back to my conversation with LAist reporter Emily Guerin about momfluencers. Emily interviewed writer Sara Petersen, who wrote the book Momfluenced: Inside the Maddening Picture Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture. And she asked her what it took to be a successful momfluencer.

Sara Petersen  07:23

If you think about the typical monetized momfluencer, you know, with like, nearly a million followers, she is less likely to be talking about the grittier sides of motherhood and much more likely to be adhering to really femme ideals of motherhood. And you know, she's getting sponsorship deals and affiliate link opportunities. She's hawking promotional content based on adhering to those ideals.

Antonia Cereijido  07:51

Can you break that part down what Sara's talking about of like, how do these sponsorship deals look like? You know, what's an affiliate link? Like what is, what is she referring to there?

Emily Guerin  07:59

Yeah, so there's a lot of different ways to make money on Instagram. And one of the ways is through sponsored content. That's where a company pays you to make a post. Sara gave me an example of a request for a post from the soap company, Dawn.

Sara Petersen  08:12

Dawn will come to them and say like, We want one Instagram story, one post, and your kid needs to be in either the story or the post, and we want it to be pegged to Mother's Day. Like that's all they'll give them and then the mom influencer has to write the copy. She sometimes hires a videographer, sometimes hires a makeup artist, a lighting person, a hair person. And then, you know, she'll edit the videos. She'll edit the images. She'll go back and forth with Dawn.

Emily Guerin  08:42

Another way to make money is through affiliate marketing. So you promote your product on Instagram or wherever. And then you include a link in your post to a website and the link tracks whether people who click through actually buy something. And if they do, then the influencer can earn a commission from the sale. Obviously, if you have more followers, you have a better chance of earning that commission. I was curious, like how many followers the average mom influencer has, because I feel like most of them probably don't have a million followers. And Sara told me you actually don't need to have that many to be successful, and you can still be really influential and make money with far fewer followers.

Sara Petersen  09:18

I've talked to a lot of industry experts who say that micro-influencers are really great in terms of converting people to sales because sort of, you know, when you're talking about like a million followers are in that ballpark. None of those consumers are going to feel like oh, I know this person, like I have a really strong parasocial bond with this person.

Emily Guerin  09:39

By the way, that term "parasocial bond"- That's like when you feel like you have a relationship with someone that you only know from the internet and like you actually don't know who they are. It's like a one way relationship.

Sara Petersen  09:50

Whereas if somebody has 17,000 followers, and you've been following that person, you know, since she met her partner and since she was pregnant with her first kid, before she had any sponsorship deals, and she was just recommending things she loved, you're much more likely to trust her recommendations once she is promoting sponsored content and getting paid for the sponsored content since you've trusted her the whole length of time you've been following her. The numbers show that, you know, each subsequent pregnancy, they'll see an uptick in followers and- [Emily: Really?] Yes, and an uptick in engagement. [Emily: Wow.] Like right around when somebody's due, right around when she's about to post the new baby photo, like, numbers consistently stay high in those times.

Antonia Cereijido  10:35

That just feels kind of dark to me. I don't know. There's something about the like, monetizing of your babies that feels very dark capitalist to me.

Emily Guerin  10:44

It's pretty weird. And I don't know. When Sara was talking, this example came to mind of this influencer I came across who had this, you know, like, horrible thing happen. Like her- She had a kid with a very rare disease and her baby died. And the post, the post she posted when her child died had like, tens of thousands of views. And yeah, I mean, I think that just underscores the point that like, when you post something really dramatic, it gets a lot of engagement.

Antonia Cereijido  11:13

And it reminds me, obviously, of Katie Sorensen and why a post about something as horrible as an attempted kidnapping, you know, goes viral. And like, those are the moments where, you know, people pay attention. And so in a lot of ways, it's like Katie was being rewarded by the internet virality for posting something like that.

Emily Guerin  11:30

And actually, Sara talked about that.

Sara Petersen  11:33

Vulnerability and quote, unquote, "authenticity," especially now will get more engagement than a perfectly manicured photo will, with like a benign caption. So anytime you're sharing something really upsetting or really traumatic, you will get more engagement.

Emily Guerin  11:49

That's interesting. I mean, how does that go along though, with the like, wanting to present a sort of perfect, like shoppable life? The like, presenting vulnerability or like trauma?

Sara Petersen  11:59

Because it provides an entry point for the consumer or the follower to make that parasocial connection. So like, if you're looking at Real Simple magazine 10 years ago, and there's a beautiful model who has kids, and you know, she's presenting as a mother in a photoshoot of a beautiful home, you might aspire to have her couch, for example. But you know nothing about that person's humanity. And thus, you're not going to be sucked into her lifestyle narrative. You're not gonna want to, you're not gonna want the couch because this particular person owns the couch and you know that they've gone through a really heartbreaking divorce or you know that they experienced, you know, the death of a parent or the death of a child and it was really traumatic and you felt like you experienced that with them. So the instinct to buy and to click is so much higher when there's that parasocial bond than if it's just a faceless, perfect person in a perfect environment.

Antonia Cereijido  13:00

[music in] Coming up after the break, the connection between momfluencers and conspiracy theories.

Sara Petersen  13:09

I think it's really easy for mothers to disseminate these messages in ways that like screaming men on 4chan cannot.

Antonia Cereijido  13:21

That's coming up on Imperfect Paradise. [music out]

Antonia Cereijido  13:31

[music in] This is Imperfect Paradise. I'm Antonia Cereijido. This is part four of our series, People Versus Karen, the story of a Latino couple who was falsely accused of attempted kidnapping by a white woman who was also a momfluencer. [music out] According to court documents, the accuser, Katie Sorensen, was consuming online content about conspiracy theories related to child sex trafficking. Reporter Emily Guerin and I were discussing her conversation with writer Sara Petersen, who wrote a book about momfluencers, and in particular about the relationship between mom influencers and conspiracy theories.

Antonia Cereijido  14:16

And I just like want to understand the connection between momfluencing and conspiracy theories.

Emily Guerin  14:20

Yeah, I think it's a really interesting question. And I think for Katie, and for other moms that were kind of susceptible to this sort of #savethechildren child sex trafficking conspiracy. Like I think part of the reason that conspiracy was so popular is because it was itself like, a viral moment, like Save the Children is like, a very sensational story of this thing that rarely happens. And so it got a lot of engagement for the same reason that a vulnerable Instagram post would. And so I think by Katie like, combining her vulnerable post plus this already sort of sensational like, conspiracy idea, it allowed the two to combine and go viral in like, a really new way. And Sara Petersen told me that she actually watched a lot of women on Instagram over the course of COVID get deeper and deeper into conspiracies and have their engagement increase at the same time.

Sara Petersen  15:09

When I first started researching my book, I had follower accounts for many of the moms that I featured that you know, follow either QAnon, or espoused white supremacy or other conspiracy theories. And by the time I was on my final edit of the book, every single one of those momfluencers' follower accounts had risen pretty dramatically in those few years. They leaned into the assumed morality of motherhood, specifically white motherhood, as being this thing that they could sort of fall on to support whatever, you know, misinformation or conspiracy theory they wanted to, and often they did so under the guise of, I'm a mother, I want what's best for children, so therefore, you must listen to me because I'm a mother, and I'm good because I'm a mother.

Antonia Cereijido  16:02

So wait, how are these momfluencers like, using like, what messaging are they using to spread the conspiracy theories? Like, are like, are they wiping down a table and if you like, listen to the video backwards it's like believe QAnon or like, the, the darker side of people in Hollywood? Yeah- [laughs] I don't know. How are they spreading their message?

Emily Guerin  16:20

They are subtle. That is definitely one thing Sara Petersen told me is that whether the moms are knowingly spreading false information or not, it's often really subtle and hard to notice. And that, you know, maybe that's by design.

Sara Petersen  16:31

So there was this one that I was following, who you'd look at her feed, and you would just think she was a run of the mill like, style momfluencer. Like all, it was all outfit posts, and you could, you know, click whatever. But then once in a while, in the midst of those fairly innocuous shoppable posts, she'll have like a pastel infographic #savethechildren. And so I think it's really easy for mothers to disseminate these messages in ways that like screaming men on 4chan cannot. I mean, I trust this woman to recommend child-friendly dinner recipes. Like maybe there's something to it.

Antonia Cereijido  17:14

You know, Emily, you got into this story because you yourself have become a mother and you were looking at momfluencer content online. Like now that you've done all this reporting, like, how do you feel about that content now?

Emily Guerin  17:24

It's funny, I find myself going back to this one moment during Katie Sorensen's trial when she was on the witness stand and she said her name, and she introduced herself to the jury as a mother. And that was so interesting to me, because I felt like what she was trying to do is she was trying to, like, use their preconceived notions of like, her as like, a young, pretty white woman, like a good mother, kind of like Sara was saying at the top, like someone who would do what's right for her children, not someone who would ever falsely accuse someone or knowingly cause harm to anyone. And I think for a long time, women like Katie did get away with that, because we do often think of like, the sort of young white mother as like, the victim or as, or as innocent in some ways. And I think the fact that Katie was found guilty was actually really surprising. And, you know, just not something that I think we've seen a lot of historically. And I wonder if it's gonna set a precedent going forward in terms of how we think of moms, and, and what's a good mother and what mothers can be capable of.

Antonia Cereijido  18:23

Yeah, and the idea of like, presumed innocence. [Emily: Exactly, yeah.] Emily, thank you so much for joining me and thank you so much for all your amazing reporting on this series.

Emily Guerin  18:31

Thanks, Antonia. It was fun to talk to you.

Antonia Cereijido  18:34

That was LAist correspondent, Emily Guerin. [music in] Next week on Imperfect Paradise, we're introducing you to something new, the first of many to come special episodes dedicated to one of our newsroom investigations. First, we bring you Elly Yu's investigative report into nursing homes in California and the alarming trend she uncovered- thousands of people with serious mental illness living in facilities not intended to care for mentally ill patients.

Travell Jackson  19:07

I've had a patient as young as 19 years old, 22. They ran faster and moved better than I did. They were able to climb fences. They were able to fashion weapons out of things. They were able to do a lot of things.

Antonia Cereijido  19:24

That's coming up on Imperfect Paradise. Listen to new episodes of the podcast every Wednesday, or tune in on Sunday nights at 7pm on LAist 89.3 or LAist.com.

Antonia Cereijido  19:38

This episode of Imperfect Paradise was reported by Emily Guerin. I'm the show's host, Antonia Cereijido. Catherine Mailhouse is the Executive Producer of the show and Shana Naomi Krochmal is our Vice President of Podcasts. James Chow produced this episode. Rebecca Katz is our intern. Jens Campbell is our Production Coordinator. The editor is Sarah Kate Kramer. Fact checking by Caitlin Antonios. Mixing and theme music by E. Scott Kelly. Additional engineering by Donald Paz. Imperfect Paradise is a production of LAist Studios. This podcast is powered by listeners like you. Support the show by donating now at LAist.com/join. This podcast is supported by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believed quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live. [music out]