Since social media influencer Kyla Scanlon coined the term "vibecession," she has experienced all sorts of feedback from TikTok users and economists alike. I sat down with her to chat about algorithms, markets and more on Twitter Spaces. Below is an edited transcript of our discussion.
Conor Sen: I first came across your work in April of 2021 when you made your viral lumber video. The way that you produce content related to markets and the economy is really clever and I don't think anyone else does what you do. I'm curious how you came to do that and if you felt like traditional media was lacking in some way.
Kyla Scanlon: I started making TikToks around December 2020, right around when GameStop started happening. I had just left my job at Capital Group, so I was no longer under compliance.
The markets were so wacky then that it was almost impossible not to make content like that. Beyond video, I've been writing online for about six years. I started in college and had a blog called "Scanlon on Stocks."
CS: When you're doing research to come up with things to talk about, do you just look at the traditional data or are you scrolling through TikTok?
KS: I include a lot of data on my TikTok, but some of it's based on feedback. When I first started thinking about what a vibecession was, I had just published this video saying that we weren't in a recession and I was being eaten alive in the comments. I thought to myself, "oh, this is like the weirdest thing I've ever seen." So I published another piece asking whether we needed a recession.
I got more feedback from that, which shaped out this vibecession idea where, if you look at the data, it isn't great, but it's not terrible, but people feel tremendously bad.
A lot of people like to think in binary terms: Things are bad and that's it. But it would be ridiculous to say that things aren't hard for people right now. I'm not saying that it's not bad. I'm just saying that how people feel about it could make it worse.
CS: What I find interesting is that when you said we're not in a recession, you got negative pushback against that. And then when you wrote the vibecession piece, you were acknowledging the way people were feeling. And yet people seemed to hate that too. Why do you think that is?
KS: Personally, the vibecession piece was a really hard experience. I was getting death threats. I had never gone through anything like that.
I think people were looking at it from a surface level and they were like, oh my gosh, this person is not acknowledging my reality. I think that's a totally fair response if you feel like your experience is being diminished.
My theory is that people don't like being told how they're feeling. If you start telling people that their "lived experience" might not be what they thought it was, that can lead to a bit of anger.
CS: I think when I wrote my piece and cited yours, I was trying to go through the same thing — we're adding all these jobs … how can people feel so negative? Since February, we've added a ton of jobs, but the overall level of real income people are taking home is down.
I think you and I both agree that "recession" isn't the right term and maybe some people don't like the term "vibecession," but we need a generally accepted word to describe this environment.