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[0:00] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Today on Support For This Podcast. It's not a throwback, it's not a flashback, it's not funny, it's not cute. It's a later gram. Ever post a picture on Instagram when it was less than instant? You've got Spencer Temple to thank. Today, we speak with seminal social media influencer and founder of the popular Instagram hashtag Latergram. We'll hear what started it all, and also why he'll never eat a Mexican sandwich again. It goes back to what you were just saying about this being a scary world, and I wish avocado toast was the least of our issues, you know. Join us, won't you? I'm Emily Amy Lauren Becca. And this is Support For This Podcast.

[0:53] Spencer Temple: Thank you so much for joining us.

[0:55] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: It's my pleasure to be here.

[0:57] Spencer Temple: Fantastic. Now let's just get straight to it.

[1:00] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Okay. Shall we?

[1:01] Spencer Temple: Sure. How did you first think of the hashtag Latergram?

[1:05] Spencer Temple: Well, it's funny. Um, I was sitting in a cafe, and um I had taken I had just ordered this um almond latte. Uh, and the barista had um done this incredible design in the foam. And uh I didn't even realize it when he handed it to me. You know, I had no idea. And I sat down at the table and I saw it, and whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. The foam design took my breath away. It was your typical kind of like leaf, but he seemed to do it really slowly, and uh and uh this image had quite an impact on me, and so I was sitting there and I decided to take a picture of it. And as I was sitting there, I decided also it might be great to share how beautiful the foam on the top of this latte was, and uh and uh in the middle of posting it on Instagram, I got a phone call from my friend Becky.

She was inviting me to brunch and uh completely got uh cut off track. And then after brunch later, you know, several mimosas later, it was one of those bottomless brunches. I uh went back to my phone and said, oh shit, I forgot to, you know, post this. Wow. And so I am normally a person who uh you know takes a picture and posts it immediately, like kind of immediacy of social media, something that I appreciate and try to try to live by. And um posted it but felt like I needed to come clean in terms of what time the uh picture was taken, and if I was being honest, it was earlier that afternoon. So I wrote hashtag Latergram just so that people knew knew that I wasn't having a latte at 9 p.m. by the time I got home.

[2:54] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: That is truly fascinating.

[2:56] Spencer Temple: Thank you.

[2:57] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: So I was gonna ask you about your process of discovery, but it sounds like you kind of just very quickly knew what you needed to do to address the unrest you felt.

[3:07] Spencer Temple: Yes, yes. It was all about it was all about being honest. You know, I think so much on social media people kind of create these false and fake lives, and what I try to do is be really real and true on social media. And so I uh I felt that I needed I needed people to know that that it wasn't um that it was a latte that I had enjoyed earlier that day.

[3:29] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: That's important.

[3:30] Spencer Temple: Yeah. Uh now, how did you get the public's attention about Latergram? Or did you? Was it a conscious uh effort or did it happen organically?

[3:41] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: That's great. You're asking, like, how did it catch on?

[3:44] Spencer Temple: Well, because obviously, um, you know, you were the first to employ the Latergram hashtag, but as we've all seen, it's taken off in a major way.

[3:52] Spencer Temple: Yeah, yeah. Like I said, this was an impressive looking latte. And so the picture really made the rounds. Um, and uh, you know, my friends had sent it to friends, had sent it to friends, had sent it to friends. It had gone viral on the color. This latte had gone by.

[4:08] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Exactly.

[4:09] Spencer Temple: And um, you know, and the more it got around, the more people were curious about you know the hashtag, and so I had to uh, you know, eventually explain it. And then people really kind of thought that was uh cute, um, and uh decided to uh to use it. People like me that have uh similar integrity on social media.

[4:34] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Was Instagram involved at all? And were they supportive?

[4:39] Spencer Temple: Or let me ask you this.

[4:41] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Sure.

[4:42] Spencer Temple: It seems like a Latergram almost goes against the ethos of the app.

[4:50] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Exactly. Did you hear anything from them or I did.

[4:55] Spencer Temple: I did. Uh I got an email from this guy named Phil Collins, ironically, who works at Instagram, and um he works in their uh out. Not Phil Collins.

[5:07] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Not the Phil Collins.

[5:08] Spencer Temple: Oh, okay, okay. Just important to clarify for our audience. Uh coincidence only. Um he's uh he's the lesser known Phil Collins. Um and he uh sent me this email and said, uh, you know, do you realize what you've done?

[5:22] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Wow.

[5:23] Spencer Temple: Yeah, he came down hard. It was one of the most violent emails I've ever read.

[5:30] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh my god.

[5:31] Spencer Temple: Where do you get off how dare you super super aggressive? He says this this turns the entire idea for our app on its head.

[5:41] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Wow.

[5:42] Spencer Temple: Yeah. How dare you? And I said, Hey listen, whatever happened to free expression. This is my place. This is my space.

[5:48] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yeah.

[5:49] Spencer Temple: To coin I mean, to coin a phrase. But, you know.

[5:52] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yeah.

[5:53] Spencer Temple: Uh and so so initially they weren't. Initially they weren't, and then they saw it take off, like selling like, you know, hotcakes and they they got on board.

[6:03] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Now, because the question I always wonder to myself is, you know, sometimes people post Latergram. A lot of times they do, but how how many people do you think actually post their photos instantly?

[6:15] Spencer Temple: Mm-hmm.

[6:16] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Because uh who can really know?

[6:18] Spencer Temple: Right. Listen, I wish we lived in a perfect world. Uh and unfortunately we don't. There really is no way of knowing. All I can do is is keep my side of the street clean in terms of posting instantly and coming clean and saying Latergram, hashtag Latergram, uh when it's not.

[6:35] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yeah.

[6:35] Spencer Temple: And the truth is we don't know, and that's scary.

[6:39] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: It is.

[6:40] Spencer Temple: It's honestly it keeps me up at night.

[6:43] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Terrifying, yes. You made this humongous discovery, you changed the face of Instagram. How did that affect your day-to-day life?

[6:53] Spencer Temple: Well, it's funny, at first at first, uh, it was something that I really wanted to keep quiet. It was something uh you know, I was scared. I I've I've seen I've seen things take off, and I've seen people's lives change. Uh friend of mine, you know, was the uh in the eighties came up with slap bracelets. He was that guy. And uh I saw his life change overnight. Absolutely. And so I was I was scared that hashtag Latergram might be the slap bracelets of our generation, and so I I kept I kept quiet.

[7:27] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: And when you compare it to slap bracelets, that's it's almost as if it was so hip, so cool, and then at some point almost became regarded as silly or juvenile.

[7:40] Spencer Temple: Right. And slightly dangerous as they started to slip people's wrists. I don't know if you remember that.

[7:45] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh my god.

[7:45] Spencer Temple: That the fabric that was covering the slap bracelets was peeling back, revealing the metal, and these kids, you know, were hated on their wrists. There's a lot of arteries there.

[7:55] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Wow.

[7:55] Spencer Temple: Uh I was punished with them, but it never got that intense.

[8:00] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Mm-hmm.

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[9:21] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Now let me ask you this. We know who you are. Some people do, some people don't. Do you is there is there a part of you that wishes you had more uh credit that you well this might be personal. Um are you do you have any kind of uh payback? Do they uh are you paid at all for this? Is there any kind of monetary agreement with Instagram?

[9:45] Spencer Temple: No, but I do get uh I do get uh paid in um I I have fans that have started to pop up around. And I I like to think of gifts from them as a sort of payment. Things that are not necessarily monetary, but but give me a great deal, you know. Uh uh, I had this person that sent me this card. Um, and at the end they wrote, uh, you know, thanks for all of your hard work. Catch you later, Graham. And that really you know, that's a good a good chuckle to me is as good as is as good as gold.

[10:20] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Absolutely.

[10:21] Spencer Temple: Yeah. I think we we can all get behind that message.

[10:24] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yeah. And our listeners can too. I'm really interested to know your reaction. How do you feel about other Instagram hashtags, such as Throwback Thursday, Flashback Friday, Woman Crush Wednesday, Man Crush Monday?

[10:41] Spencer Temple: Now, some of these obviously are time related, some are uh people, you know, right. What what's your take on them?

[10:47] Spencer Temple: I think anything that starts to get the community engaged is great. Um the Man Crush Monday and Woman Crush Wednesday, I think are fantastic.

[11:00] Spencer Temple: Throwback Thursday. And uh Flashback Fridays where it starts to get a little muddy for me.

[11:07] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Absolutely. Because technically, it's a Latergram.

[11:14] Spencer Temple: Wow. And so I feel in those in that instance, my my toes get stepped on a little bit where I'm like, hey, hey, hey, we're trying to get as many, you know, we're trying to to get as many later grams as possible. So my stock goes up or my relative stock or stocks and notes that I receive from people who are fans. Yes. My note stock goes up. Um I feel like my my territory is a little infringed upon because a picture of yourself from the 80s that you took when you were a kid, and you're posting it in 2017 now, is technically a later gram. That picture was taken a long time ago. And it's not, it's not a throwback. It's not a flashback. It's not funny. That's not cute. It's a later gram.

[12:02] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: I'm interested to hear you say that. I think some of our listeners, I know at least in my experience, sometimes, you know, when I really think about it, I I think it's uh there's a certain uh parameter time-wise that I give it, like if it was if it's truly what bothers me is if it's a throwback Thursday or a flashback Friday.

[12:21] Spencer Temple: Well, what bothers me is that those both exist, honestly, because I feel like we should have eventually decided on one. Right. What Thursday and or Friday? Right. And I think Friday came later. I think Throwback Thursday was the first. And those people that the day after forgotten to do their throwback Thursday were like, we'll look for something with an F. I guess flashback, you know, like it's sloppy.

[12:42] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: I agree. I think throwback also is just a cooler phrase.

[12:46] Spencer Temple: Yeah. Yeah. Flashback Friday is hard to say. It's a lot. It's a it's a it's a long walk for a small drink of water. Hmm. Now, getting back to my to my original thought here, uh, it's easy to get carried away talking about these subjects. I'm yeah, impassioned. Yes. Now, I used to think, give yourself if you're a child and you're an adult now, that's a throwback. But what I've seen more and more happen is people don't post their picture ten years ago. They posted it ten days ago. And it's a throwback.

[13:20] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yes. But is it?

[13:21] Spencer Temple: And I I have a feeling I know what your thought is.

[13:24] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Well, I think that's uh that's obviously a later gram.

[13:27] Spencer Temple: Yeah. I mean, the closer you get to the post date from from the picture date, the the smaller that window gets, the more likely it is to be a later gram. And ten days, I think is a later gram. I'm sorry. You're right. That's just what I believe.

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[14:15] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: What is your favorite hashtag?

[14:17] Spencer Temple: This one might be. Well I don't want to answer for you, but this is twofold. Obviously later gram I think is the obvious answer. Um but I'm also a fan of hashtag blessed.

[14:31] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Great. What is your least favorite hashtag?

[14:34] Spencer Temple: Hashtag grateful.

[14:34] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Wow what is your favorite cocktail?

[14:41] Spencer Temple: It's funny this is a lesser known I mean I my local bar uh my my uh bartender did create a specialty cocktail called a latergram.

[14:41] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Wow would you tell our listeners better?

[14:41] Spencer Temple: Sure it's a t it's a twist on a greyhound so there is um there is uh of course grapefruit juice and uh a pinch of salt champagne and vodka and then uh on the rim there is just uh pop rocks delicious yeah refreshing what's your favorite mock tale Shirley Temple what is your favorite social media platform I was a big fan of MySpace um is that right is that is that a correct way to answer that absolutely it's unexpected yeah and correct yeah I was I I was a big fan of MySpace what what I really liked about MySpace is I wanted my friends to know where they stood in the because you used to have your your five faves yes in that and uh I really I really liked and I would change them weekly, depending on how I felt about friends.

[15:47] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Absolutely.

[15:54] Spencer Temple: Facebook had that too for a for a little while.

[15:57] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: That's right.

[15:57] Spencer Temple: That's right. But not as successful uh as I I felt the MySpace MySpace was. I uh I never made it to anyone's top ten or five.

[16:07] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: How did that make you feel?

[16:09] Spencer Temple: Let's move on?

[16:13] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: What's your least favorite social media platform?

[16:16] Spencer Temple: Gosh, I would have to say LinkedIn.

[16:18] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Why?

[16:19] Spencer Temple: I'm tired of the emails, I'm tired of the invites. I'm not joining. If I haven't joined by now, and I don't think anyone anyone is joining, why does it exist? I would imagine too, as an entrepreneur, how does it even help you to be linked in?

[16:34] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Right.

[16:35] Spencer Temple: And who am I linking to? The you know, nine times out of ten, and I feel like this is a safe space. Nine times out of ten, I get these invites from people who are like the last people that I would ever want to be linked to.

[16:46] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: They wouldn't have made your top five.

[16:48] Spencer Temple: No. Not then and not now. Sometimes it'll ask me, do I know uh my husband or my sister-in-law? And to that I say, you don't know me at all then, do you?

[17:01] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Right.

[17:02] Spencer Temple: Right. It's this tricky world, you know, where we're we're computers are mixing with humans now, and it's it's it's it's getting scary.

[17:12] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: I've been scared since I can remember.

[17:16] Spencer Temple: And that's back when we had Prodigy as our internet provider.

[17:20] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh wow. Did you ever have that?

[17:21] Spencer Temple: I did not. Um we uh it took us a very long time in my house to even have call waiting. My my family was a little behind the uh technological curve.

[17:32] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: What is the most helpful Yelp review you've ever read?

[17:36] Spencer Temple: This is great. There is a um Mexican restaurant in my neighborhood that I used to frequent. Uh and it was it was a it was uh very easy, you know. On the way home, I'd I'd stop there, stop at uh the grocery store, get some beer, stop, you know, uh, and get uh bread for toast, and then um I I would pick up this Mexican food. It was it was very easy, uh right on the way home. And uh I would I would go there with some uh with great frequency. A couple nights a week, I would get a uh a Mexican sandwich from this place. Um and I really enjoyed it. It was this tiny kind of hole in the wall place, not a lot of people knew about it. Um also if you do check out my Instagram feed at at Spencer Temple, um, you can you can see some pictures of these Mexican sandwiches that were really delicious.

And I no longer eat them actually. Um because of this Yelp review, I remember I I was going to to write one that night, and I was curious about you know how people had reviewed this uh location. And uh someone had written this review about having a terrible uh reaction to their food and and and waking up the following morning with um their right eye swollen entirely shut.

[18:55] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh my god.

[18:56] Spencer Temple: Uh and it seemed uh that it it wasn't a food allergy, but uh something about the uh expiration date of the ingredients that they were using. Uh I think it was expired crab that they were using in one of the uh sandwiches.

[19:13] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: The question that immediately comes to mind for me is I've I would love to try a Mexican sandwich.

[19:20] Spencer Temple: Mm-hmm.

[19:21] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: I can't say I've ever had one.

[19:23] Spencer Temple: Oh, you've got to. Uh there's a there's a there are there are a lot of locations. I wouldn't recommend this one, and when we stop recording, I'll tell you where it is. Um because I don't want to uh you know I I don't want to tell tales out of school.

[19:37] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Absolutely wonderful. Uh moving on, one last question. Uh and it gets a little dark, but stay with me. We live in a changing world, climate change, um different species becoming extinct, food shortages. Uh let's just think about the future. Far into the future. Now let's say, as a fetus, your mother eats a lot of avocado toast. But by the time you're about to be born, the world has run out of avocados. Do you stay inside the womb or do you leave?

[20:17] Spencer Temple: I'm just gonna repeat this back to you to make sure I heard it right. As as if I'm inside the womb and my mother is eating a lot of avocado toast.

[20:28] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yes, it's in the future, but it's also in essence in the past.

[20:31] Spencer Temple: Yes. But also in the future.

[20:33] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yes.

[20:34] Spencer Temple: There's an avocado shortage.

[20:36] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Mm-hmm.

[20:37] Spencer Temple: I have to decide to stay or go.

[20:40] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Stay in the womb or leave the womb.

[20:42] Spencer Temple: Yes. This is a great question. I'm gonna take the second. Just because I want to be truthful.

[20:53] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Absolutely. I think that's that's been evident from all the great work you've done in your life.

[21:01] Spencer Temple: Thank you. I'm just a normal guy.

[21:03] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Um I d I wouldn't say that.

[21:10] Spencer Temple: I think I I stay in the womb.

[21:14] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Hmm.

[21:16] Spencer Temple: Uh and let me tell you why. It goes back to what you were just saying about this being a scary world, and I wish avocado toast was the least of our issues, you know.

[21:27] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Um I I consider it a pretty large one, but continue please by all means.

[21:31] Spencer Temple: Sure, sure. No, I'm in I'm huge into brunch culture too. Um. But it's scary out there all over. Um, and one of the safest places you could be is inside a woman, you know.

[21:45] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: I wish I could be inside my mother's womb right now.

[21:49] Spencer Temple: I wish I could be inside your mom, too.

[21:52] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Well, I just I can't think of a better way to end this what's been a really lovely time. Thank you so much, Spencer Temple, for joining us.

[21:59] Spencer Temple: Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure.

[22:02] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: You've been listening to Spencer Temple on support for this podcast. I'm Emily Amy Lauren Becca. Thanks for listening.