August 31, 2023 • 21 mins
On Monday, August 28th, many news outlets reported that former Bachelorette contestant Josh Seiter had passed away. When in fact, the following day, bachelor nation learned that the reports were in error.
Ashley and guest host Jared speak directly with Josh to discuss the events of this week.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous Podcast
with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hey everyone, welcome to a special episode of the Almost
Famous Podcast. Today, as will be the case for the
next two weeks, Ben is out, So I'm having Jared
fill in todayday.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
We don't know this is moving forward.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
No, probably not today, but I like having you here.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Well, I was downstairs, so you're convenient. You're convenient. Get
They're like, oh no, we need a co host who
we can get. Well, Jared's twenty five feet away from Ashley.
Let's just bring him in. Yeah, well, so we have
it today.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Josh Cider and he made headlines on Monday because, according
to Instagram. According to his Instagram, he had died.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Yeah. It was really tragic. And is Josh here with
us right now?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
He's not here yet, Okay, everybody just wanted to, you know,
quick brief. And then the next day, about twenty four
hours later, he got on and he was like, guess what,
I'm here and alive. I've been hacked.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
He said.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
So, you were actually on Caitlin Bristow's season with Josh.
You were only there for one night with him because
he got a eliminated at night one.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Yeah, I was convinced that he was going to get
the rose before me, because there was one rose left
on the table. I was the final rose of the evening.
And I remember thinking at the time, because he was
so good looking, I did not know he was a
stripper at the time, he.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Was also stripper slash law student.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Law student, and so I was like, Oh, this guy's
a law student. He's very good looking, very nice, down
to earth. I was like, he's definitely getting the rose.
And then I luckily got the rose. And then I
haven't seen him since.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
All right, so we are going to bring him in
now to get his story.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
Hi, Josh, Hey, how are you guys?
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Good?
Speaker 3 (01:54):
How are you good? Josh? Longtime? No see, I haven't
seen you in eight years.
Speaker 5 (02:00):
I know, I still remember talking to you. I think
you're the only person I talked to when I was
on the show, because I was obviously not there very long,
so you're like the only person I remember.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I was just telling a story about how I think
I was standing next to you in the rose ceremony
and or you were next either next to me or
like one over, and at the time, you were a
law student and very good looking, down to earth, and
I remember there was one rose left and I was like,
I'm definitely going home because he's getting above me. And
then luckily I can't call my name and I was like,
(02:32):
holy shit. And then obviously miraculously met my wife on
Bacheline Partist, which is insane. But it's good to see you.
Welcome to the Almost Famous podcast. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Thanks man, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
It's been a wild forty eight hours for you. To
say the least. Before we talk about that, I kind
of wanted to just catch up with you quickly. What
is you know? You were on the show with me
eight eight years ago? My god, wow, we're old. What
has life been like for you since?
Speaker 5 (03:04):
Yeah, so obviously it took kind of a different path
than everyone else that was on the show with me.
Obviously I didn't last very long. I was on, you know,
for two minutes tops. But I was a dancer at
the time, like you mentioned, and so for the next
five years I just continued doing that and working at
my craft and dancing at the time, and then I
transitioned out of that. In about twenty seventeen, I started
(03:27):
blogging on Instagram.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
About mental health.
Speaker 5 (03:31):
If I didn't have a following at the time, maybe
like a thousand followers or something, and over time built
that up to where it's at now almost half a million.
And I think what I do is resonated with a
lot of people. A lot of people can relate to
my story, and so I've really been just focused on that.
I also do have an only fans that I started
in twenty eighteen that, for some reason I don't know why,
(03:53):
is successful and I've done very well at that. So
that helps pay the bills, but it's not fulfilling. It
doesn't give me a sense of purpose. So my mental
health work is kind of what grounds me and is
what I find a sense of meaning and purpose and
in my day to day life.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
So you said that your story resonates with a lot
of people. That's how you've garnered so many followers. So
what is your mental health story? If you could give
us a little brief background.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
Yeah, So I think it starts being homeschooled. So I
was homeschooled with my whole life up until college. I
went to a public school for one year but didn't
work out, so my mom homeschooled me and my three brothers.
I think coming it up in that strict religious upbringing
where your homeschooled, they see the world as evil. They
(04:40):
think there's the devil lurking behind every corner. That created
kind of a latent anxiety in me as a As
a five year old, my mom's telling me, I'm going
to go to Hell if I don't believe in God.
So when I was about fifteen, I think just the
isolation of being homeschooled, growing up in a strict religious family,
it all kind of manifested and I have a lot
(05:00):
of anxiety and depression, and I started seeing a counselor
for that. And then in twenty twenty one, when I
was in college, I just underwent kind of like a
dramatic experience where I ended up getting hospitalized and you know,
kind of committed for a while. And so I've been
open and honest about all of that stuff that happened
(05:21):
then and since, and then I'm still dealing with with
all of my followers on Instagram, and I think a
lot of them identify, even if not directly, with like
my story, just generally dealing with anxiety and adulting and
being a human in the world that we live in today.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
So what are those conversations like, like when you talk
to people who follow you and they're dealing with a
lot of issues that you've dealt with as well. I mean,
obviously don't say anybody's name, but that's confidential, but you know, like,
what are some of the things that can help someone
who's going through a pretty difficult time?
Speaker 5 (05:57):
Yeah, So I wish there was a magic pill or
a magic answer that I could give someone. I can't
what I can give them as tools. So what help
has been very effective for me is cognitive behavioral therapy,
which I practice with my therapist, which is basically the
premise of it is, we stress ourselves out with our
faulty thinking. We think we must be loved by everyone.
We must be liked by everyone, we must have everyone's approval,
(06:21):
we must be successful, we must do well. And that's
not true. Those aren't truths, they just exist in our head.
And the truth is we don't need to be liked
by everyone. Everyone can hate us and life goes on.
We don't need to be successful, we don't need to
be perfect. We can fall short and that's okay. And
so we stress ourselves out when we employ that faulty thinking.
(06:43):
So we need to restructure our thoughts so that we
don't mustturbate or I must be l liked, I must
be loved, I must be successful, and instead just say
I would prefer to be these things, but if I'm not,
I'll do better. But I'm not a terrible human being.
And you don't draws sweeping generalizations about yourself based on
your failure to succeed or your failure to be liked.
(07:07):
That doesn't make you a terrible person. And so I
try to just share that with people, and I point
them to literature and books and therapists that might be
able to help them restructure their thoughts with cognitive behavioral therapy.
And I'm I'm always confident that will help them as
much as it's helped me.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
So let's talk about your Instagram getting hacked. So you
say that it was hacked on Monday, and.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Why don't you just can you just tell us a
story like what happened?
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Uh?
Speaker 5 (07:38):
Yeah, So I was trying to log into my account
on Monday. I couldn't log into it, which is weird
because normally click the you know I have an iPhone,
I click the Instagram icon on my iPhone and I'm
automatically taken too my profile and it you know, I
was asking me to adit to log in manually, and
I thought that was weird. So I'm trying to do it.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
It's not working.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
I'm trying to remember my password and I'm like, dad,
I can't really remember my password, but I think this
is it. And at the same time, like a short
time later, my phone starts going off with just hundreds
of text messages and it's ringing off the hook while
I'm trying to log in, and I'm like, something's weird,
Like I have a feeling this is all connected. And
(08:19):
so anyways, you know, people started sending me screenshots of
something that had been posted.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
On my page, and I was like, oh man.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
I was like, so like someone's either playing a prank
or someone got in it. I didn't know what was
going on, so I spent it was from the time
it happened until I got back into my account, it
was eighteen hours. Obviously I slept some during that time,
so I spent about nine or ten hours frantically trying
to get back into my account. I don't have like
(08:47):
a a social media manager or a team or a
PR team, it's just you know, me and my house
on my phone. So I hit I'm not very technologically adept,
so I hit up some of my friends and was like, dude, like,
do you know any way like that something's going on,
Like someone obviously got into my account. We need to
(09:07):
get them out and like change the password. And eventually
I was able to and that's when I posted the videos.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
But I heard that you didn't even file a report
with Instagram. Why would you think not to do that?
Speaker 5 (09:19):
Uh, it's just you know, once I got back in
and reset my password put on two factor authentication, I
don't know. For me, it just didn't isn't like my
top priority, my top you know. I had family members
from Texas calling me crying. I had my mom crying.
I had you know, hundreds of text messages. I was fielding,
(09:40):
and I'm still fielding even today. I've spent all morning fielding,
and I'm doing interviews with CNN, Good Morning America, the
Today Show Extra. So filing a report after the fact
with Instagram is like, I don't know if that it's
just not hasn't been like a top priority. But I
feel like I we remedied the situation. I'm back into
(10:03):
my account. I feel like it's safe and protected now,
and so it's just not a top priority for me.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Your ex girlfriend of two weeks who you dated this month,
Monica Beverly Hills from RuPaul's Drag Race. She's kind of
come out and said that if you needed someone that
had a following to get the message out there quickly,
you could have always reached out to her. How do
you respond to that?
Speaker 5 (10:37):
I hung out with Monica three times in my entire life.
I'm thirty six years old. I've hung out with her
three times for a total of maybe six hours at
her beckoning. She'd been messaging me on Instagram since twenty
and eighteen, so I you know, we're both in Chicago.
So I ended up hanging out with her three times
(10:59):
over a week and a half period. It's not my girlfriend.
I don't know why the media is. They're just referring
to that because it's sensational to say that she's my ex.
I you know, I've had more physical contact with my
mom and my dad who's been dead for two years
than I have with Monica. But why would I talk
(11:20):
to her. I wasn't even talking to her at the time.
So I'm not going to hit up someone I hung
out with three times and say, oh, can you make
a statement? I thought it was better for me to
prioritize getting back into my platform with half a million
followers and post directly to them a video of myself
letting them know I'm here in the flesh and I'm alive.
Then hitting up some chick I hung out with, you know,
(11:42):
a few weeks earlier, and telling her to make a
written statement saying Josh is alive because he told me so. Like,
it just does it defies reality.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
It doesn't even make sense.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
I'm assuming you're working on trying to figure out who
hacked your account, but what do you think the motive
was behind this?
Speaker 5 (12:01):
You know, for me, it just kind of slaps of
anti mental health. I know a lot of people find
that concept foreign, but I've been dealing, you know, I've
been blogging about it and one of the more vocal
people on Instagram talking about it for the better part
of six years. For those six years, I'd say, every
day I get people telling me you should commit suicide.
(12:22):
You're a stupid idiot that suffers from mental illness. You
should just die too bad you weren't successful. It's so
funny you have anxiety and depression. I mean, there's a
real anti mental health ethos and pathology out there where
people like to mock it, and I think social media
(12:42):
rewards people that say things for shock value. So if
you tell someone who has mental illness, you know, go
kill yourself, you should die, they know that it's going
to rage bait people, and they know it's going to
get people upset, and they get rewarded for it because
they get clicks. So I feel like the person that
posted that thing basically mocking me and saying I'm suffering
from depression and anxiety and I decided to take my life.
(13:06):
It's very similar to the type of language that I
see in the messages that the hateful messages that come
to me. Just take your life. You should just do it.
So I can't get into that person's mind, so I'm just,
you know, guessing. I'm not clairvoyant, But to me, I
feel like it was an attack on mental health. And honestly,
(13:29):
I feel like in Donald Trump's America, science and things
that are established like mental illness are not taken as seriously.
He's in the America that we live in. Things that
should be taken seriously, like climate change, mental health transwrites
LGBTQ rights, they're not taken seriously by a large a
(13:52):
large part of the population, and so they mock it
and they make fun of it because they don't understand it.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
And so I think this just.
Speaker 5 (13:57):
Has a lot of underlying like things beneath it. So
I don't really want to like try to guess, but
that's just kind of how it comes off to me.
I feel like it was it was mocking me, and
it was basically telling me to go kill myself, and I.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
Should be dead.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Some people are speculating that possibly you were the conductor
of this whole thing, that like you were the one
that posted it just to get attention, and we certainly
have seen a lot of headlines about you over the
past couple of days. So how do you respond to
those people who are thinking that this has not been
(14:36):
a legitimate hacking.
Speaker 5 (14:38):
Yeah, I think those are all, like, you know, legitimate
things to allege and to say. I think there's legitimate
detractors out there, and it's just math. You know, it's
a fire od issue on so many levels. It's reality
TV mental health Josh Sider hacking death life, so it's
(14:59):
kind of gonna get people from from all sides of
the aisle. So I look, I think there's some people
with some legitimate concerns. I've been trying to answer all
of the questions that I can. I wasn't the hacker,
so I can't answer. I can only answer questions as
Josh Seider, I was also a victim of this. But
I've tried to do my best, but yeah, I can't.
(15:25):
All I can do is speak the truth, and the
truth is I wasn't behind it, and people can either
choose to believe it or not. Like I said earlier,
you can't please everybody. And I don't really care if
people don't believe me or and I really don't care
if people hate me. It just doesn't upset me or
my happiness. So all I can do is speak the truth,
and if they believe me and believe the truth, great,
(15:47):
And if they don't, I don't care.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
It's not going to affect my life.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
So what is your mental state been over the past
forty eight hours?
Speaker 5 (15:58):
So it's it's been definitely better now. I mean I
was having like you know, panic anytime there's a spike
in my anxiety. I kind of have panic attacks, a
little bit of depersonalization, which a lot of people.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
Know what it is.
Speaker 5 (16:12):
It's a lot to go into now, but a little
bit of dissociation. But now much better. But there's still
a lot of hate out there. On my Instagram, I
have hundreds of messages that come in daily just you
are behind this. I know it, and so that gives
me a little anxiety just reading how much some people
(16:34):
hate me. But overall I'm doing pretty well. I try
to find meaning and purpose in my day to day
life that is regardless of what's going on. So even
if I'm not experiencing success in my personal life or
things are going wrong on social media, I still try
to ground myself through diet, exercise, going for walks. So
(16:59):
even though I've been stressed out lately, I've tried to
kind of maintain structure throughout, and now that the storm
is kind of passing, I'm definitely doing a lot better.
But I think it's important that you know we're able
to just no matter what is going on in our lives,
we have some kind of a way to just kind
of level ourselves out so that we don't like lose our.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
Marbles during it.
Speaker 5 (17:20):
So but overall, I'm doing good and I appreciate you asking.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
I know that you don't want to talk about Monica
Beverly Hills anymore, but I do have one question. I
just want to go out there.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
That's fine out here.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
She says in one article, in one interview that she
did this week, that you have had multiple Instagram accounts,
so that you have planted stories on the internet about
you being a cloud chaser.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (17:48):
I saw that that was so weird. So I'm very
honest about you know, I only have one Instagram account.
There's a lot of like fan page. There's a lot
of fan pages of me, like when I first started
doing mental health. I don't know how many are still
out there. But I don't own any other or run
any other Instagram pages. I don't have time to. I
(18:09):
mean usually I only make like one post a week
on my own Instagram, And honestly, I don't go when
I'm on Instagram. I'm only posting on my Instagram. I
don't go through the explore page. Usually I'm not looking
at other people's posts. I don't interact with other people,
So I certainly wouldn't be managing other accounts where I'm
doing that. I don't even like doing it on my
(18:30):
own account. I just get on, upload my post, copy
and paste my mental health caption in occasionally post a
story and that's it. So I did see her saying
that I run multiple accounts. I'd be interested in knowing,
like what. I almost feel sorry for that she thinks
that I don't know if someone told her or what.
But it's such a weird thing to accuse me of.
(18:53):
But it's completely false and baffling to me. And then
the cloud chaser thing, I've been called the cloud chase.
I dated women from Ninety Day Fiance, Love After lock Up,
other reality I.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
Can't even think of.
Speaker 5 (19:08):
I think there's a couple other reality shows out there
of women that I've dated. So people like to accuse
me of lots of things, and that accused the Moniker
cloud Chaser doesn't bother me.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
I kind of think it's funny.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
So why do you think you're drawn to women from
reality shows?
Speaker 4 (19:27):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (19:29):
You know, during COVID there's a lot of boredom going
on because we were all locked down, so I was definitely,
you know, just bored and I think we're all on
our phones more. And I was single, so I was
chatting to people, and you know, it just the relationships
would develop after talking for a while. But I don't know,
(19:50):
like if there's a rhyme or reason behind it. It's
just kind of how it's played out, you know, just
like people find love on a reality show. It's like, well,
why do you find love on a reality show? That's
such an odd thing and an odd place to go
to search for love. What was your motivation for doing that?
It's like, I mean, I don't know, why do we.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
That's a fair I asked myself that every day. I
admit one fan of the show.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Two I do like attention three wanted to find someone.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Yeah, kind of all worked out. Yea, it worked and
it did. Knock on wood. Well, Josh, thanks so much
for joining us today. We really appreciate it, you know,
wishing you the best. Hopefully everything gets cleared up. I
can only imagine what you're you know, because obviously I'm
thinking about your family too, Like you talked about your mom.
I mean, yeah, that's a scary scenario. Just kind of
(20:44):
see that and not know what's going on. So wish
you nothing but the best. Thank you again for joining us.
Good seeing you, buddy.
Speaker 5 (20:49):
Thanks guys, I appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
Take care, Hi Josh, I see you.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Follow the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous podcast on
iHeartRadio or subscribe wherever you listen to podcast.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Yes,
This is the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous Podcast
with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hey everyone, welcome to a special episode of the Almost
Famous Podcast. Today, as will be the case for the
next two weeks, Ben is out, So I'm having Jared
fill in todayday.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
We don't know this is moving forward.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
No, probably not today, but I like having you here.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Well, I was downstairs, so you're convenient. You're convenient. Get
They're like, oh no, we need a co host who
we can get. Well, Jared's twenty five feet away from Ashley.
Let's just bring him in. Yeah, well, so we have
it today.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Josh Cider and he made headlines on Monday because, according
to Instagram. According to his Instagram, he had died.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Yeah. It was really tragic. And is Josh here with
us right now?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
He's not here yet, Okay, everybody just wanted to, you know,
quick brief. And then the next day, about twenty four
hours later, he got on and he was like, guess what,
I'm here and alive. I've been hacked.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
He said.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
So, you were actually on Caitlin Bristow's season with Josh.
You were only there for one night with him because
he got a eliminated at night one.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Yeah, I was convinced that he was going to get
the rose before me, because there was one rose left
on the table. I was the final rose of the evening.
And I remember thinking at the time, because he was
so good looking, I did not know he was a
stripper at the time, he.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Was also stripper slash law student.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Law student, and so I was like, Oh, this guy's
a law student. He's very good looking, very nice, down
to earth. I was like, he's definitely getting the rose.
And then I luckily got the rose. And then I
haven't seen him since.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
All right, so we are going to bring him in
now to get his story.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
Hi, Josh, Hey, how are you guys?
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Good?
Speaker 3 (01:54):
How are you good? Josh? Longtime? No see, I haven't
seen you in eight years.
Speaker 5 (02:00):
I know, I still remember talking to you. I think
you're the only person I talked to when I was
on the show, because I was obviously not there very long,
so you're like the only person I remember.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I was just telling a story about how I think
I was standing next to you in the rose ceremony
and or you were next either next to me or
like one over, and at the time, you were a
law student and very good looking, down to earth, and
I remember there was one rose left and I was like,
I'm definitely going home because he's getting above me. And
then luckily I can't call my name and I was like,
(02:32):
holy shit. And then obviously miraculously met my wife on
Bacheline Partist, which is insane. But it's good to see you.
Welcome to the Almost Famous podcast. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Thanks man, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
It's been a wild forty eight hours for you. To
say the least. Before we talk about that, I kind
of wanted to just catch up with you quickly. What
is you know? You were on the show with me
eight eight years ago? My god, wow, we're old. What
has life been like for you since?
Speaker 5 (03:04):
Yeah, so obviously it took kind of a different path
than everyone else that was on the show with me.
Obviously I didn't last very long. I was on, you know,
for two minutes tops. But I was a dancer at
the time, like you mentioned, and so for the next
five years I just continued doing that and working at
my craft and dancing at the time, and then I
transitioned out of that. In about twenty seventeen, I started
(03:27):
blogging on Instagram.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
About mental health.
Speaker 5 (03:31):
If I didn't have a following at the time, maybe
like a thousand followers or something, and over time built
that up to where it's at now almost half a million.
And I think what I do is resonated with a
lot of people. A lot of people can relate to
my story, and so I've really been just focused on that.
I also do have an only fans that I started
in twenty eighteen that, for some reason I don't know why,
(03:53):
is successful and I've done very well at that. So
that helps pay the bills, but it's not fulfilling. It
doesn't give me a sense of purpose. So my mental
health work is kind of what grounds me and is
what I find a sense of meaning and purpose and
in my day to day life.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
So you said that your story resonates with a lot
of people. That's how you've garnered so many followers. So
what is your mental health story? If you could give
us a little brief background.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
Yeah, So I think it starts being homeschooled. So I
was homeschooled with my whole life up until college. I
went to a public school for one year but didn't
work out, so my mom homeschooled me and my three brothers.
I think coming it up in that strict religious upbringing
where your homeschooled, they see the world as evil. They
(04:40):
think there's the devil lurking behind every corner. That created
kind of a latent anxiety in me as a As
a five year old, my mom's telling me, I'm going
to go to Hell if I don't believe in God.
So when I was about fifteen, I think just the
isolation of being homeschooled, growing up in a strict religious family,
it all kind of manifested and I have a lot
(05:00):
of anxiety and depression, and I started seeing a counselor
for that. And then in twenty twenty one, when I
was in college, I just underwent kind of like a
dramatic experience where I ended up getting hospitalized and you know,
kind of committed for a while. And so I've been
open and honest about all of that stuff that happened
(05:21):
then and since, and then I'm still dealing with with
all of my followers on Instagram, and I think a
lot of them identify, even if not directly, with like
my story, just generally dealing with anxiety and adulting and
being a human in the world that we live in today.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
So what are those conversations like, like when you talk
to people who follow you and they're dealing with a
lot of issues that you've dealt with as well. I mean,
obviously don't say anybody's name, but that's confidential, but you know, like,
what are some of the things that can help someone
who's going through a pretty difficult time?
Speaker 5 (05:57):
Yeah, So I wish there was a magic pill or
a magic answer that I could give someone. I can't
what I can give them as tools. So what help
has been very effective for me is cognitive behavioral therapy,
which I practice with my therapist, which is basically the
premise of it is, we stress ourselves out with our
faulty thinking. We think we must be loved by everyone.
We must be liked by everyone, we must have everyone's approval,
(06:21):
we must be successful, we must do well. And that's
not true. Those aren't truths, they just exist in our head.
And the truth is we don't need to be liked
by everyone. Everyone can hate us and life goes on.
We don't need to be successful, we don't need to
be perfect. We can fall short and that's okay. And
so we stress ourselves out when we employ that faulty thinking.
(06:43):
So we need to restructure our thoughts so that we
don't mustturbate or I must be l liked, I must
be loved, I must be successful, and instead just say
I would prefer to be these things, but if I'm not,
I'll do better. But I'm not a terrible human being.
And you don't draws sweeping generalizations about yourself based on
your failure to succeed or your failure to be liked.
(07:07):
That doesn't make you a terrible person. And so I
try to just share that with people, and I point
them to literature and books and therapists that might be
able to help them restructure their thoughts with cognitive behavioral therapy.
And I'm I'm always confident that will help them as
much as it's helped me.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
So let's talk about your Instagram getting hacked. So you
say that it was hacked on Monday, and.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Why don't you just can you just tell us a
story like what happened?
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Uh?
Speaker 5 (07:38):
Yeah, So I was trying to log into my account
on Monday. I couldn't log into it, which is weird
because normally click the you know I have an iPhone,
I click the Instagram icon on my iPhone and I'm
automatically taken too my profile and it you know, I
was asking me to adit to log in manually, and
I thought that was weird. So I'm trying to do it.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
It's not working.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
I'm trying to remember my password and I'm like, dad,
I can't really remember my password, but I think this
is it. And at the same time, like a short
time later, my phone starts going off with just hundreds
of text messages and it's ringing off the hook while
I'm trying to log in, and I'm like, something's weird,
Like I have a feeling this is all connected. And
(08:19):
so anyways, you know, people started sending me screenshots of
something that had been posted.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
On my page, and I was like, oh man.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
I was like, so like someone's either playing a prank
or someone got in it. I didn't know what was
going on, so I spent it was from the time
it happened until I got back into my account, it
was eighteen hours. Obviously I slept some during that time,
so I spent about nine or ten hours frantically trying
to get back into my account. I don't have like
(08:47):
a a social media manager or a team or a
PR team, it's just you know, me and my house
on my phone. So I hit I'm not very technologically adept,
so I hit up some of my friends and was like, dude, like,
do you know any way like that something's going on,
Like someone obviously got into my account. We need to
(09:07):
get them out and like change the password. And eventually
I was able to and that's when I posted the videos.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
But I heard that you didn't even file a report
with Instagram. Why would you think not to do that?
Speaker 5 (09:19):
Uh, it's just you know, once I got back in
and reset my password put on two factor authentication, I
don't know. For me, it just didn't isn't like my
top priority, my top you know. I had family members
from Texas calling me crying. I had my mom crying.
I had you know, hundreds of text messages. I was fielding,
(09:40):
and I'm still fielding even today. I've spent all morning fielding,
and I'm doing interviews with CNN, Good Morning America, the
Today Show Extra. So filing a report after the fact
with Instagram is like, I don't know if that it's
just not hasn't been like a top priority. But I
feel like I we remedied the situation. I'm back into
(10:03):
my account. I feel like it's safe and protected now,
and so it's just not a top priority for me.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Your ex girlfriend of two weeks who you dated this month,
Monica Beverly Hills from RuPaul's Drag Race. She's kind of
come out and said that if you needed someone that
had a following to get the message out there quickly,
you could have always reached out to her. How do
you respond to that?
Speaker 5 (10:37):
I hung out with Monica three times in my entire life.
I'm thirty six years old. I've hung out with her
three times for a total of maybe six hours at
her beckoning. She'd been messaging me on Instagram since twenty
and eighteen, so I you know, we're both in Chicago.
So I ended up hanging out with her three times
(10:59):
over a week and a half period. It's not my girlfriend.
I don't know why the media is. They're just referring
to that because it's sensational to say that she's my ex.
I you know, I've had more physical contact with my
mom and my dad who's been dead for two years
than I have with Monica. But why would I talk
(11:20):
to her. I wasn't even talking to her at the time.
So I'm not going to hit up someone I hung
out with three times and say, oh, can you make
a statement? I thought it was better for me to
prioritize getting back into my platform with half a million
followers and post directly to them a video of myself
letting them know I'm here in the flesh and I'm alive.
Then hitting up some chick I hung out with, you know,
(11:42):
a few weeks earlier, and telling her to make a
written statement saying Josh is alive because he told me so. Like,
it just does it defies reality.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
It doesn't even make sense.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
I'm assuming you're working on trying to figure out who
hacked your account, but what do you think the motive
was behind this?
Speaker 5 (12:01):
You know, for me, it just kind of slaps of
anti mental health. I know a lot of people find
that concept foreign, but I've been dealing, you know, I've
been blogging about it and one of the more vocal
people on Instagram talking about it for the better part
of six years. For those six years, I'd say, every
day I get people telling me you should commit suicide.
(12:22):
You're a stupid idiot that suffers from mental illness. You
should just die too bad you weren't successful. It's so
funny you have anxiety and depression. I mean, there's a
real anti mental health ethos and pathology out there where
people like to mock it, and I think social media
(12:42):
rewards people that say things for shock value. So if
you tell someone who has mental illness, you know, go
kill yourself, you should die, they know that it's going
to rage bait people, and they know it's going to
get people upset, and they get rewarded for it because
they get clicks. So I feel like the person that
posted that thing basically mocking me and saying I'm suffering
from depression and anxiety and I decided to take my life.
(13:06):
It's very similar to the type of language that I
see in the messages that the hateful messages that come
to me. Just take your life. You should just do it.
So I can't get into that person's mind, so I'm just,
you know, guessing. I'm not clairvoyant, But to me, I
feel like it was an attack on mental health. And honestly,
(13:29):
I feel like in Donald Trump's America, science and things
that are established like mental illness are not taken as seriously.
He's in the America that we live in. Things that
should be taken seriously, like climate change, mental health transwrites
LGBTQ rights, they're not taken seriously by a large a
(13:52):
large part of the population, and so they mock it
and they make fun of it because they don't understand it.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
And so I think this just.
Speaker 5 (13:57):
Has a lot of underlying like things beneath it. So
I don't really want to like try to guess, but
that's just kind of how it comes off to me.
I feel like it was it was mocking me, and
it was basically telling me to go kill myself, and I.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
Should be dead.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Some people are speculating that possibly you were the conductor
of this whole thing, that like you were the one
that posted it just to get attention, and we certainly
have seen a lot of headlines about you over the
past couple of days. So how do you respond to
those people who are thinking that this has not been
(14:36):
a legitimate hacking.
Speaker 5 (14:38):
Yeah, I think those are all, like, you know, legitimate
things to allege and to say. I think there's legitimate
detractors out there, and it's just math. You know, it's
a fire od issue on so many levels. It's reality
TV mental health Josh Sider hacking death life, so it's
(14:59):
kind of gonna get people from from all sides of
the aisle. So I look, I think there's some people
with some legitimate concerns. I've been trying to answer all
of the questions that I can. I wasn't the hacker,
so I can't answer. I can only answer questions as
Josh Seider, I was also a victim of this. But
I've tried to do my best, but yeah, I can't.
(15:25):
All I can do is speak the truth, and the
truth is I wasn't behind it, and people can either
choose to believe it or not. Like I said earlier,
you can't please everybody. And I don't really care if
people don't believe me or and I really don't care
if people hate me. It just doesn't upset me or
my happiness. So all I can do is speak the truth,
and if they believe me and believe the truth, great,
(15:47):
And if they don't, I don't care.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
It's not going to affect my life.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
So what is your mental state been over the past
forty eight hours?
Speaker 5 (15:58):
So it's it's been definitely better now. I mean I
was having like you know, panic anytime there's a spike
in my anxiety. I kind of have panic attacks, a
little bit of depersonalization, which a lot of people.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
Know what it is.
Speaker 5 (16:12):
It's a lot to go into now, but a little
bit of dissociation. But now much better. But there's still
a lot of hate out there. On my Instagram, I
have hundreds of messages that come in daily just you
are behind this. I know it, and so that gives
me a little anxiety just reading how much some people
(16:34):
hate me. But overall I'm doing pretty well. I try
to find meaning and purpose in my day to day
life that is regardless of what's going on. So even
if I'm not experiencing success in my personal life or
things are going wrong on social media, I still try
to ground myself through diet, exercise, going for walks. So
(16:59):
even though I've been stressed out lately, I've tried to
kind of maintain structure throughout, and now that the storm
is kind of passing, I'm definitely doing a lot better.
But I think it's important that you know we're able
to just no matter what is going on in our lives,
we have some kind of a way to just kind
of level ourselves out so that we don't like lose our.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
Marbles during it.
Speaker 5 (17:20):
So but overall, I'm doing good and I appreciate you asking.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
I know that you don't want to talk about Monica
Beverly Hills anymore, but I do have one question. I
just want to go out there.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
That's fine out here.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
She says in one article, in one interview that she
did this week, that you have had multiple Instagram accounts,
so that you have planted stories on the internet about
you being a cloud chaser.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (17:48):
I saw that that was so weird. So I'm very
honest about you know, I only have one Instagram account.
There's a lot of like fan page. There's a lot
of fan pages of me, like when I first started
doing mental health. I don't know how many are still
out there. But I don't own any other or run
any other Instagram pages. I don't have time to. I
(18:09):
mean usually I only make like one post a week
on my own Instagram, And honestly, I don't go when
I'm on Instagram. I'm only posting on my Instagram. I
don't go through the explore page. Usually I'm not looking
at other people's posts. I don't interact with other people,
So I certainly wouldn't be managing other accounts where I'm
doing that. I don't even like doing it on my
(18:30):
own account. I just get on, upload my post, copy
and paste my mental health caption in occasionally post a
story and that's it. So I did see her saying
that I run multiple accounts. I'd be interested in knowing,
like what. I almost feel sorry for that she thinks
that I don't know if someone told her or what.
But it's such a weird thing to accuse me of.
(18:53):
But it's completely false and baffling to me. And then
the cloud chaser thing, I've been called the cloud chase.
I dated women from Ninety Day Fiance, Love After lock Up,
other reality I.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
Can't even think of.
Speaker 5 (19:08):
I think there's a couple other reality shows out there
of women that I've dated. So people like to accuse
me of lots of things, and that accused the Moniker
cloud Chaser doesn't bother me.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
I kind of think it's funny.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
So why do you think you're drawn to women from
reality shows?
Speaker 4 (19:27):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (19:29):
You know, during COVID there's a lot of boredom going
on because we were all locked down, so I was definitely,
you know, just bored and I think we're all on
our phones more. And I was single, so I was
chatting to people, and you know, it just the relationships
would develop after talking for a while. But I don't know,
(19:50):
like if there's a rhyme or reason behind it. It's
just kind of how it's played out, you know, just
like people find love on a reality show. It's like, well,
why do you find love on a reality show? That's
such an odd thing and an odd place to go
to search for love. What was your motivation for doing that?
It's like, I mean, I don't know, why do we.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
That's a fair I asked myself that every day. I
admit one fan of the show.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Two I do like attention three wanted to find someone.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Yeah, kind of all worked out. Yea, it worked and
it did. Knock on wood. Well, Josh, thanks so much
for joining us today. We really appreciate it, you know,
wishing you the best. Hopefully everything gets cleared up. I
can only imagine what you're you know, because obviously I'm
thinking about your family too, Like you talked about your mom.
I mean, yeah, that's a scary scenario. Just kind of
(20:44):
see that and not know what's going on. So wish
you nothing but the best. Thank you again for joining us.
Good seeing you, buddy.
Speaker 5 (20:49):
Thanks guys, I appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
Take care, Hi Josh, I see you.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Follow the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous podcast on
iHeartRadio or subscribe wherever you listen to podcast.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Yes,
Hosts And Creators
Ben Higgins
Ashley Iaconetti
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.