Isn’t Los Angeles outgrowing its role as America’s punch line?

L.A. has gotten a lot cooler and a lot more interesting. You have all the tech companies here now. It’s a lot more international, with better food, art and fashion. But the stereotypes are real for a reason. It still remains a wonderfully superficial fantasy land. A lot of my close friends from New York have moved out here in the last five years, and they are always saying, “I’m taking New York with me.” But even the hard-core New Yorkers end up getting overly attached to their yoga teacher or getting acupuncture for their dog. The culture of L.A. inevitably converts you.

In cities as big and crazy as those two, do you get bombarded with material?

We get close to 100 submissions a day, by D.M. or email. I do my best to curate it. I like one-sentence pearls of wisdom about what younger people are going through on topics such as dating, fitness, work, partying, ennui. I like each post to feel like a six-second sitcom.

Are the New York “overheards” different from those in Los Angeles?

There is definitely a lot more harshness in New York, and the conversations are about the relatable struggle, like the struggles of where you’re going to live. The intimate moments come from forced situations between strangers: on the street, in a park, on the subway. In Los Angeles, the material tends to be from another planet: fantasy stuff about your “social media brand,” or about longevity fads or your dog’s zodiac sign. One quote we recently posted was an effusive dog owner telling her friend, “I was reading my dog his horoscope the other day and I was like ‘Oh, my God, Bronson, this is so you.’”

Are the two cities still polar opposites?

The cities are a lot closer than they ever were before. There are a lot more New Yorkers in L.A., and L.A. has a lot more to offer, the way New York always has. And also, New York is more scattered than it was. The New York where I grew up, everything existed in Manhattan. Now there are seven different “cool” parts of Brooklyn, there are cool parts of Queens. Now you can have a long-distance relationship in New York the way people joke about having one in L.A. Even so, in New York, you’re searching to get a tiny bit of space to yourself, and in Los Angeles you’re lonely and searching to be around people.

How do you weed out potential fakes?

Honestly, we do our best. I will always ask someone once or twice: Is this real? Is this a friend or a stranger? I’m sure there are people who are drunk or goofing around and just want to get on there to get a laugh from their friends, and we certainly try to vet that out. But at the end of the day, comedy is more important. If it’s a genuine piece of gold that represents something funny about the city, I think that is more important than trying to be overly serious or journalistic. It’s an Instagram account, not a news source.

Is there any topic you won’t touch?

We’ve got tons of submissions about things that celebrities have said, but we just don’t post them. It’s not a gossip page. It’s really about comedy, and hopefully, a little bit of community self-reflection: “This may be extreme, but I’m 10 percent like this.”