Name: Taylor Lorenz Talks Censorship
Uploaded: 2025-09-11T13:01:01.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Taylor Lorenz Talks Censorship' from TAFS Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-09-11. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Taylor Lorenz Talks Censorship' from TAFS Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-09-11. Transcript available.

would you be online if you were making zero dollars not no no no no no no i don't
know it's
scary it's like you can see people getting killed yeah and then fucking and
then the n-word i it's
too scary is that free speech or elon's making it that it's not free speech he
banned a bunch
of journalists i got banned i got back on though really yeah i got banned you
you think um just
this is as an aside but like you you uh have a autoimmune disorder from covid
not autoimmune but
an immune autoimmune is when your immune works over time my immune system
basically does not work
enough autoimmune means you have really good immune it's like overworking your
immune system my
immune so aids is good what i don't know aids is not hiv is not that auto no no
okay i don't i'm not
i don't whatever okay but like you think wearing a mat like masking up you
think that makes you a
like you you could be sneakier as a journalist interesting uh it's kind of good
for you because
like people like don't know that they're sitting next to the journalists i'm
the only one still
masking in 2025 i feel like you could be in public and they're like oh there's
some masked person but
it turns out to be uh uh lightning rod uh uh infamous journalist taylor lorenz
i will say i was at the
inauguration this year and a bunch of inauguration parties for trump and yeah i
was it was i was i was i think
the only person masked was hooked to it there she was not but uh but some
others affiliated with her
were were around who's affiliated with hook to like other random influencers oh
god it's so trashy
um okay you think that maybe i think you know what is fair you guys used to
wear like a fedora with
like a little book the reddit people no like a journalist oh journalist yes
with a little like
press badge or whatever yeah and then you know who the journalist is yeah now
now you don't know
you know you could be out in public so you might be saying something you guys
should wear those like
you think i think you guys should wear those vests from like war zones yeah
blue vests that say press
with the fedora just because i say i mess up things that i say all the time but
people don't need
to be a journalist to like now we just have this like crowdsource surveillance
state where everyone's
recording everyone at all times like everywhere you go you know really yeah not
all the time a lot of
the time i think with facial i don't know if you've ever used the website have
you heard of pym eyes
oh you got to search yourself on pym eyes i don't want to look it's like one of
those websites where
it scans internet for your face and you'll find yourself i mean i found myself
in like
parties from like williamsburg in 2011 nice animal collective yeah it's like
that i was living in
williamsburg in 2011 i thought it was like peak cool well i want to go back uh
because i'm getting
off track again but like as someone that's covered this like do you think we
can fix it i do believe
in like the i do believe in like an open web and free speech and the internet's
democratizing power
i don't i i think what's been really scary in liberal and leftist spaces over
the past 10 years
really is this regression where they're so pro censorship so pro um they want
to fucking
dismantle section 230 like they want to what's that well it's it's it's
basically the the law that
guarantees a free internet it it allows uh for you to have basically um any
platform to sort of like
host your speech for if i wanted to sue you i'm suing you and not the platform
so it it protects platform's ability to publish a wide you know wide variety of
things is it protects
google from getting sued yeah and it for sued for defamate like sued for defamation
you can make a lot
more money if you get them in the lawsuit too be sick well they would just shut
down like i mean
the point is they would stop they wouldn't shut down they would stop hosting
speech and that's the
that's the concern they sort of pre-censored things with like the kids online
safety act and this this
panic over children you know like having open access to information about like
trans people when they're
teenagers um it it's caused these platforms to pre-censor a lot of stuff and i
think a lot of these
platforms have become way too censorious we don't we don't have enough free
speech online you're saying
are but liberals aren't telling them to censor trans liberals liberals want
censorship of right-wing
ideas and right-wingers want censorship of you know trans stuff and
reproductive justice they just want
to censor each other and that's why they can come together on these really
dangerous bad bad bad
dangerous censorship laws like the kids online safety act like the take it down
act you mentioned kids
it's like i didn't i'm 38 so like we didn't have like like yeah i couldn't just
watch porn like like
like like uh like porn hub style i had to go searching for it i had to like
like people would
like hide it in the woods and stuff like that in the woods and i feel like i
don't know maybe it's
like i don't maybe it's fucked kids up like that at 11 they can just see people
fucking any you know
it's like maybe that's a little bit well not speech but i i don't here's i don't
i'm i'm open to that
yeah i'm sure it's i think i think when you frame it that way uh it feeds into
a moral panic i i think
that um i think that what what you're asking for it seems like what you're
advocating for is age
verification online i think you need to weigh the upsides and the downsides
right like could an 11
year old see porn online maybe but do you want this comprehensive age
verification system where
everything you do online is tied to your offline identity that's what they're
trying to build right
now what does that mean basically remove anonymous speech online so right now
you can
go on a website right and no the government doesn't know like what who's
browsing what website who's
consuming what content who's posting what a lot of the times right which is
really essential to
democracy it's really essential to free speech activism journalism stuff like
that right so we want
anonymity on the internet one thing i've in like looking at your stuff that's
interesting is like
you've made a point that like um you you make statements about what your like
political ideology is
right and like um obviously journalists are human beings right um uh you but we
didn't know like dan
rathers like i think we did i mean we could guess but he wasn't like he wasn't
over it about it he
wasn't like rest and piss biden did you say that rest and piss biden i did you
know what you're doing
you know what you're doing yeah you know what you're doing yeah you know what
you're doing you're
you know like these like a journo dc blue check type i hate it yeah they'll
take it every take yeah
they'll take the bait every time every time what what is the what is the line
between uh someone
that's playing the game someone that's covering the game i and where do you
exist in that in that
spectrum yeah i mean i do hate i i will say i believe i believe that shit like
i don't i hate joe biden
like i think he is sure but you're trying to piss off other fucking in other
people in your
fucking industry that are you i mean it's a you live in a world of scoundrels
and you're trying
to like piss off fucking i don't know the atlantic i like to get a rise out of
these people that i
think are sort of just fundamentally unserious like they're lying like their
whole thing of like
we don't have we don't have an agenda we don't have an opinion i think now
especially i mean
considering the context of gaza like we see that the media does have an agenda
and the media does
have a certain political stand and certain journalists at these places i mean
all journalists
journalism is not a neutral act every editorial decision is um is is made you
know to present a
certain version of events and so i just think it's a farce to not acknowledge
that and i've always and this
is why a lot of these mainstream media people hate me is like i said for a long
time sort of from the
jump that i think that that's an antiquated view of journalism and i i think it's
much better to be
open about my beliefs people can disagree but does it color like people's
interpretation because they're
gonna be like she's like fox news right yeah was like i i feel like things
changed because they were
like this is a brand of journalism and i think that like i get i guess the it's
an interesting question
journalists have always does that does that color your analysis as a liberal or
leftist or like you
know like does that like instead of like oh i'm i'm finding sources and i'm
telling a story and i have
like professional ethics but i'm not lying about it like what bothers me about
traditional media is that
they're lying like they're not and not all of them of course and there's
amazing when did i ever lie
joe biden was fine he was doing great guys i think you know just i think that
again i think
this concept of neutrality is a farce i don't think it's neutral i've worked in
these newsrooms too
sometimes they're trying to get they're actively trying to get laws changed
right like they're trying
to do certain things and i just think that we should be honest about it and i
will say that is what
i think the public what has caused the public to and i wrote so much about this
in my book but what
has caused so much of the public to lose trust in mainstream media is that farce
is that sort of
well this is just we're not like cnn being like you know well we're totally
neutral and you know but
the war in iraq is necessary and they do have whatever you know people lie
about all these different
major events and now people have the internet they can see these lies and um i
think it built i don't
think i know that it builds trust among my audience to know where i stand on
things a lot of people in my
audience don't agree with me but they know my political ideology and they know
that i'm going
to come with a certain perspective that i'm not trying to conceal if you're
performing a public spat
do you think it's it's it's it's uh building a brand for yourself and do you
think that that distracts
from like hard journalism or do you think that that like uh uh benefits your
your i think it totally
depends on the type of reporter that you are yeah like i don't love the system
that we have now where
there's so many amazing journalists that are not sort of good at manipulating
the internet and aren't
ability they don't have a good ability to get attention or make a tick tock or
whatever that are
just doing phenomenal investigative journalism right and now they feel like
they have to be a brand and
they have to do all this stuff that's a very broken system i would love to live
in a world that that is
not the case i think in the current version of the internet that we have um you
know it it is it is this
reality that attention is is necessary and that's always been the case they
sort of offloaded and
um they would offload that that i mean you used to be able to depend on a
mainstream media brand to
sort of deliver you audience deliver you attention to your stories now you can't
rely on that so you
you have to do it yourself