July 22, 2025 • 39 mins
Remember the 2010s? Ubers were cheap, Obama was president, and you could get legitimately famous just by having a lot of Twitter followers.
Claire Parker and Ashley Hamilton, hilarious and insightful hosts of Bridget's favorite podcast Celebrity Memoir Book Club, take us back to the era when viral tweets led to real book deals — and what those memoirs reveal about Internet fame, publishing, and the culture we've created.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It really felt like the cryptocurrency era for comedy writers.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
There Are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
As a production of iHeartRadio and Unboss Creative, I'm Bridget Todd,
and this is there are No Girls on the Internet.
I spend a lot of time thinking about the Internet,
but also a lot of time thinking about celebrity, and
I don't think the two are unrelated, because today being
(00:34):
online is just part of being famous. How a celebrity
show us up online can tell us just as much
about Internet culture as it does about them. And in
the early twenty tens, the Internet rewrote the rules of fame.
A strong online voice, funny, rab relatable could turn tweets
into real book deals, viral posts into publishing contracts, and
(00:57):
Internet cloud into real cultural ca It was a moment
where being extremely online could genuinely change your life. Today,
I'm talking to Claire Parker and Ashley Hamilton, the host
of my favorite podcast, Celebrity Memoir book Club, about how
that moment shaped modern celebrity and what the memoirs left
behind can teach us about Internet culture, platform fame, and
(01:19):
the stories we choose to tell. So what is it
about celebrity memoirs that made you want to dive into
them for a living.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
I'll be honest is that we didn't have a comedic living,
as we were both at the time working day job
is trying to be stand up comedians.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
And actually it was our third.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Podcast, and we kind of figured out that in order
to like have a niche on the internet, if you
haven't done The Bachelor, you can't just be two people talking.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
And we were like, we want to talk about pop culture.
We had also done a Brittey.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Spears podcast and felt really grossed out by like what
had happened to her. It was in the beginnings of
the Free Brittany era, so nobody really knew what was
going on yet, if the rumors were true or not.
But we were like, whatever that, whatever it is, is true,
we do not want to be part of a group
of people who talk about celebrities in a way that
drives them to potentially being like fully trapped by their
(02:08):
dad in like a mental legal contract.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
So we were like, Okay, how do you make fun
of a celebrity in their own words?
Speaker 1 (02:14):
And then Maria Carrey and Jessica Simpsons were coming out
with memoirs around the same time, and we're like done.
They're literally whenever somebody goes, why is this even your business?
I go, they sold it to us in a book,
And this is actually literally my full time job. So
it's everybody's business. This is an economy of sorts.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
So I feel like it's easy to sort of discount
celebrity books as fluff meaningless. But something I really learned
from listening to the podcast is that even bad celebrity
books do tell us something about the world that we
live in. What do you think that celebrity memoirs tell
us about the time or the culture that they were
produced in.
Speaker 5 (02:48):
I think the pop culture, and like celebrity culture in
general is dismissed as like just frivolous nonsense, even though
it is like one of the more popular topics of
conversation across us, like all people. And so the way
that you can get a gauge on society from how
they talk about like moments in pop culture, like you
(03:09):
can see like the swing towards you know, child wife,
like the diminishing of women's rights like in the Amber
heard Johnny Depp case, Like there are so many things
that you can watch it happen in the way people
talk about women in pop culture and people in like
the celebrity sphere, and I think that the books are
such an interesting look at all of it, because I
(03:32):
think it's so interesting to look at the way people
present themselves in that space and like whether or not
they acknowledge the way that like they contribute to like
the way people look at the world, and I think
the way that they like don't mention certain things, or
the way they think things come up completely normal is
such a like fascinating look at our society. And then again,
(03:54):
the way that people will like let them get away
with it based on how generally likable someone is is
so fascinating.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
I also think when you read these memoirs and get
the whole story versus when you're living through it and
seeing the headlines, it helps you remember that there is
a cohesive story going on. And I mean, in this
world of clickbait hot moments, you have to constantly fight
yourself to not just like take the headline and run
(04:23):
with it, but try to understand the larger narrative at play.
I feel like the amount of times Like a.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Woman has been absolutely demolished by the public because of
a bad night out and then you look at what
was happening in her life and she's like, well, my
dad just died and my husband just divorced me, and
I was postpartum and I was being forced to work,
and you're like, oh, okay, So she was like going through it.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Women, really going through it. Memoirs are one of my
favorites of the genre. For instance, the tech book everyone
was talking about this year, Careless People, is basically a
woman going through some stuff memoir. Even if you haven't
read Careless People, the memoir by Sarah Wynn Williams, former
director of public policy at Facebook, you've probably seen the headlines,
(05:06):
and wow, were they scandalous stories about Facebook's Cheryl Samberg
buying her female staff lingerie and even sharing beds with
them on work trips. But those viral moments, as wild
as they are, overshadowed stories that were much more disturbing,
like Win William's first hand account of Facebook's complicity in
(05:26):
global harm, including the company's admitted role in the genocide
of the Rohinga people in Myanmar.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
We just read the Facebook book Careless People.
Speaker 6 (05:35):
That memoir is less celebrity but more like Facebook is
a celebrity, smart Zuckerberg is a celebrity, but it's so
interesting even the way memoirs are covered, where the headline
will be.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
I think the headline with that Careless People article is like.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Cheryl Samberg bought lingerie for her assistant and listen.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
Not great, But when you read the book, what Facebook
was doing and is doing was so much more horrific.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
She describes essentially watching over the real Hengey genocide andyen
mar ten years ago as it was being incited by
Facebook posts that she couldn't get anyone on the inside
of Facebook to take down that they kept saying, this
isn't hate speech, this isn't hate speech, while like literally
ten thousand people were being slaughtered in the street and
she was like, we need to take this down to
prevent more deaths than she couldn't get it done. And
(06:20):
the idea that like, I'm sorry, it's bad to buy
your assistant lungrite, it's worse to incite genocide.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
And the fact that.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
The media coverage of that book seems to be so sexy,
fun scandalous.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
I think that that's like how a lot of media is.
And even if.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
There are I think there are our journals is doing
good work, but what goes viral, what comes to you
have to seek out the whole story.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
And this is like a good, maybe lighter way to
remember that lesson.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
That's such a.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Good example, and I'm I'm in the middle of that
book myself. Oh my god, Sorry, no, I know about that,
but you know, I am intrigued by the fact that
it's a right, like it could have easily been a
like Kara Swisher style kind of hard hitting nonfiction book,
but the fact that it's a memoir. It really is
(07:08):
about like how it felt from her perspective, and I
think it just comes at it in such a different,
an interesting and different angle of like this is what
you remember from this experience of being at Facebook and
all the ways that fucked you up, and not necessarily
like here's the hard hitting facts of like well yeah,
and it really allows you to really, I don't know,
see her perspective and live in that experience a lot more.
Speaker 5 (07:29):
Another thing that I think is so like why I
like the memoir genre so much is because of that,
because I think there are so many things like as
a society, especially with the constant onslought of news, I
feel like we see this a lot with reality TV
and celebrity in general, the way that people like believe
in such a control.
Speaker 7 (07:47):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 5 (07:48):
But they're like everyone like, this is how I would
have reacted to this thing. Now that I'm reading the
full picture, so like, that's how you should have reacted
to it.
Speaker 7 (07:55):
And I think reading.
Speaker 5 (07:56):
Someone's thought process as it was happening instead of just
the facts like allows you to be like, oh, they're
a person reacting with humanity, not a sim reacting with
like control.
Speaker 7 (08:11):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Absolutely? Yeah, And it's easy.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
I do think that there's something about our culture where
that's easy to forget, where when someone is talking about
it experience, it's so easy to say like, well, this
is what I would have done her. That's the way
that she responded doesn't make sense because of XYZ, Like
it just gives us such a look into what they
were actually feeling and experiencing.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yeah, I think right now we're in this weird era
of everyone thinks there's this pr overlord that's like pulling
the strings. I mean, even we had a journalist at
us like, well, it's very clear that you're promoted and
sponsored by diet Coke because you have diet cokes in
the videos, do you make a lot like I was
laughing as a journalist suggested this, and we were just
like no, we just record for like three straight hours,
so sometimes we need caffeine.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
And that's as deep as that is.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
We just sincerely are drinking diet cokes like most people
on Earth.
Speaker 5 (08:57):
Very nice beverage when you're sitting at a table chatting
every people.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Really the tailor swiftification and like the conspiracy theories, I
think we're in this era right now of feeling like
everybody's tricking you and everything's advertising and everything is.
Speaker 7 (09:14):
Everything's describable too.
Speaker 5 (09:17):
I think it also falls in with the therapy speak
and the way everything can be diagnosed. Everything has like
nothing is ambiguous. Everything has a cause and effect. Like
I don't like Huda crashing out on Love Island is
because she's an abuser, and you're like, right, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
I just think she's a single mom who's tired.
Speaker 5 (09:38):
She might be like sleep deprived in a very stressful
fishbole situation, the.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Way that if I were in her shoes, I would
immediately crash out immediately, like like lose my shit, and
it's like yeah, maybe she's just in a weird situation
for the first time and she's having a big reaction
to that. It doesn't necessarily mean like there's some dark
underbelly of a thing's happening.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
Deeply manipulative language. I'm like, I don't she's not Jax Taylor.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Listen, why can't she have a crash out? But Taylor
Swift gets to write the Tortured Poet's Department.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
I mean, who's allowed in our society to crash out
over a situationship?
Speaker 4 (10:14):
I'd like to review.
Speaker 5 (10:16):
Yes, the way people can like pin it on these
like very specific trigger words, it like really strips the
humanity out of everything. And so like getting the full
story all the time is nice.
Speaker 7 (10:28):
I like knowing what happened.
Speaker 8 (10:33):
Let's take a quick break at her back.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Remember the twenty tens ubers were cheap, Barack Obama was
the president. In a lot of ways, it was a simpler,
happier time, and the internet was really different too.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Back then, twenty thousand follows that a.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Viral tweet could get you a book deal, and being
Internet funny was a viable career plan. Things feel very
different today, but I'm still so fascinated by that era
and the cultural scaffolding it left us with. So the
reason I reached out to the both of you was
I was listening to your episode on Kelly Oxford's book
Everything Is Perfect when You're a Liar, published in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
If you don't know who Kelly Oxford is, She's a
writer who.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Was one of the first people who really got famous
and blew up on the early days of Twitter for
her snarky, relatable tweets, and celebrities loved her on Twitter.
She used that attention on Twitter to parlay that into
a book deal for this book. It became a New
York Times bestseller, and she parlayed that into a real
Hollywood writing career. And I was kind of stunned by
that trajectory and how commonplace it was back on the
(11:46):
early days of social media, and how that trajectory seems
basically impossible today in twenty twenty five, and the way
that you all described this time and culture that I
had almost would have forgotten about the twenty tens. A
mustache on your finger, Yes, You're gonna mustache on your finger,
Katie Perry is like the height of culture. You know,
(12:08):
who's the girl from New Girls, Zoey Deschanel is like
what every kind of quirky girl wants to be. Tina
Fey is the funniest woman on the planet. Christy Tagan
would tweet something and then there'd be one hundred headlines
like Chrissy Tigan claps back on the haters on Twitter.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
On BuzzFeed.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
You know I have BuzzFeed got alone.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
What do you all remember about this time online?
Speaker 5 (12:29):
I guess I remember lists, obviously Chrissy Tegan's twelve best clapbacks,
Oh my god, like Lehanna's twelve best reactions.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
I wonder this, like I'm thinking about We also read
inn A Kendrick's book that came out around that era,
which was based on her successful Twitter, and it's so
funny to go back, like what took a successful Twitter
back then? Was like thirty five thousand followers? And I
was like, now that's scratching the surface. You couldn't get
a ca you couldn't get a coffee for thirty five
thousand Twitter followers. But I think we were in this
It's like era of like Obama era America, where the
(13:03):
VC companies were funding.
Speaker 7 (13:05):
All of our lives.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
I hear people talk about that a lot like the
class past uber seemless.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Everything was relatively like all these new apps made things
efficient and affordable, and we weren't really aware of the
hell that was coming. Airbnb was new. It felt like
America might be going in a good direction. O evey
where we about to be slept in the face by that.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
But I think there was this idea that it was
okay to be ironic.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
I think there was a height of irony at that
point because people felt that things were going good, so
it was okay to be like tweet and ironic and
like this kind of like toothless snarkiness where it was
very watered down.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
Larry David, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (13:42):
It was like it was like the Christian girl version
of a Jewish man comedy.
Speaker 5 (13:48):
Yes, I also feel I wonder if there is something
to be said about the way that it was like
the rise of social media crossed with still the dominance
of mainstream media. Like so as clar was saying, like
you didn't actually have to have that many followers, but
like people were on social media kind of making a
name for themselves, but those names were defined by mainstream
(14:09):
media picking who was the main ones.
Speaker 7 (14:11):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 5 (14:12):
Like absolutely, people wouldn't get Twitter followers, but if you
were looking for new people to follow on Twitter, you'd
go to BuzzFeed and be like, well, who did they
pick as like the eight funniest people on Twitter? And
like they the mainstream media was still deciding who within
social media was like the top choices and like the
funniest people in the world.
Speaker 7 (14:30):
And those accounts then became TV shows.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Yeah, like there was a real currency there because as
you all stay in that episode, you could have twenty
thousand followers and get retweeted by Lena donah or Patton Oswald,
and then you might have an editor or somebody in
your DMS and that could translate to an actual paid
writing gig or like a staff position on a late
night show.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
I really feel it the cryptocurrency era for comedy writers,
and that like the bubbles that were bursting.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
You know what I mean, Like the amount of attention and.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Overall deals that were inked for people that had quite
literally only come up with fourteen hundred characters of comedy,
Like what do.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
You think you had ten hit tweets?
Speaker 1 (15:06):
That was truly ten sentences and people were like, could
you do a full length film?
Speaker 4 (15:11):
And it's like maybe, but this would not let you
know in any direction.
Speaker 5 (15:15):
Really, I mean, I need someone who was like this
nineteen year old Twitter prodigy who was viewed as like
the next it girl of LA And I don't even
want to say her name because it fell off so hard,
Like I think she's like a wedding photographer now.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
Oh.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
And then the other thing is that it was in
an era of the Internet where like you still only
knew what people were telling you about themselves.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
One thing about that era of Twitter, it looked like
people just got randomly chosen by the algorithmic gods to
go from Internet funny to published author. Joke accounts with
one running bit became book deals with titles like shit
my dad says. Take Charlie McDowell in the twenty tens,
he was just a writer in La getting increasingly annoyed
(15:57):
by his loud upstairs neighbors. Instead of just leaving a note,
he started tweeting about it from a new account, Deer
Girls Above Me, and it blew up. Time Magazine ranked
at one of the top one hundred and forty Twitter
accounts of twenty twelve that led to a book deal,
and that success helped launch his career as a film director.
A real Twitter to Hollywood Cinderella story, right, Well not exactly,
(16:21):
because what you didn't see on Twitter was how deeply
connected Charlie already was to Hollywood. So watching on the outside,
it probably felt like anybody could have made it date online.
It definitely helps if your stepdad is Ted Danson. Naturally, Ashley,
who was also a comedian, has thoughts about that.
Speaker 5 (16:41):
There was still like a Nepo baby of it all.
There was still some shit where on, like some people
were heavily connected, like Charlie McDowell.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
Of Dear Girls above me, Like that was like a low.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Key he's you know those people that you're like, I
talk about this person way more than a lot of
people talk about that first, Like he doesn't come up
a lot, but compared to how often other people are
bringing him.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
This is Ashley's truly her Roman empire.
Speaker 5 (17:02):
This is my Roman empire, because I think at the
time I remember people finding it as like an organic account.
I remember this account and like being told about how
funny this random guy who lives underneath these two girls is.
Speaker 7 (17:13):
And now you read it and you're like, oh my god,
this is so sexist.
Speaker 5 (17:16):
And also he is like his parents are actors, but
like they're both successful and you would recognize them from things.
And now he's married to Lily Collins and you're like,
oh my god, his Twitter didn't become a.
Speaker 7 (17:28):
Book because he's funny.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Dude.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
You were living in such a liberal ideal. I like
it was just thinking about do you know what I mean?
I feel like I'm thinking about like.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Race relations in thirty Rock and the way that it was,
so there was such an idea of like, well, we
beat it, we beat racism in this country. And then
also with the beauty singiers, something about Beyonce's I woke
up like this. I remember there was like this feminist
photo shit in my college where you could show up
with makeup if you like, however you feel best, and
that would be your I woke up like this, Like
(17:58):
it was pre body positivity, but at a time where
the most beautiful, skinniest woman you've ever seen would kind of.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Tossle her hair and be, yeah, I don't even care,
and we took that. We were just like, yeah, she's
so quirky.
Speaker 7 (18:12):
She wears sweat pands.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
It reminds me of what you say in the about
the Kelly Oxford book that like the funniest thing a
woman could be is like obsessed with sandwiches and bacon,
but also thin.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yes, it was this idea of like we were opening
the confines of what it meant to be a woman
and be funny.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
But with that, but you still better play the part,
do you know what I mean? And Jennifer Lawrence the belching.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Oh God, Jennifer Lawrence, I mean I was, I would
She hasn't been a memoir, but I would love to
have for you all to do a deep dive under her,
because I mean, it was like we have a word
for it now, pick me. But I do think that
you had to be in this walk this very specific
line as like a funny, quirky woman in the public eye.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
I would argue that this entire era came crashing down
when Jennifer Lawrence fell for the second time. I think
everyone that moment, the moment she hit the ground again,
Everyone's side of this is this is enough.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Well, something that I think is very small with the
Pickney era that I think is true is because I
feel like there was this like liberal idealism of like
we're all equal and Hillary Clinton right, like she's something,
she's something to write home about. But I think there
was this idea that women could be more honest and real.
But when you think about who was picking, it was
(19:29):
still the mainstream media. And so Twitter gave us this
illusion of getting to know people in a more sincere,
honest way, but at the end of the day, you
had to be on the Stephen Colbert should like, you
had to be picked by the man that owns NBC,
Whereas today I do think there is there are fewer
gatekeepers in terms of like you can create an online community.
Obviously still a long way to go, but I do
(19:51):
think right now there are non mainstream ways to make
a living. I'd say, mean Ashley do one of them
with like Patreon and stuff, and I think with direct
like support from followers and stuff, that does allow you
to carve out a piece of the Internet, whereas back
then you the internet is a tool to launch into
the very traditional forms of media.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Yeah, and I almost wonder if some of the books
that you that you talk about kind of reveal the
fallacy of what you know. Not everybody who can make
a funny quip on Twitter in one hundred and forty
characters should be expanding upon that and on one hundred.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
And forty page memoir. And when you read some of
these memoirs.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
They just seem so dated and they just don't feel substantive.
And I wonder if that reveals the fallacy of like, oh,
if you are funny on Twitter, that needs to be
connected to a kind of mainstream success.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Which is publishing a comedy memoir.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Well, I think what happens is when you're funny for Twitter,
you learn to write a very certain style. It's like
you're being funny for King of Queens, you know what
I mean. And then what happens is everybody's fitting into
this one mold of how to be funny in these
quippy little ways, and they don't realize how dated it
is. It's like, it's funny to think of a personality type
or a comedy style as like very day, but you
(21:00):
read it back now and it's so millennial. Cringe, and
they're already Yeah, they're all like.
Speaker 7 (21:06):
I don't want to waite for in line for cop
like lotes.
Speaker 8 (21:12):
I don't know.
Speaker 7 (21:12):
I'm like another thing that I think is so interesting.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
What you were just saying about the way that like
it's still being chosen by the president of NBC is
that a lot of the people who came out of
this era are still very attractive, mostly white people, even
the ones that are strictly writers.
Speaker 7 (21:30):
Kelly Oxford never really.
Speaker 5 (21:32):
Like made a play for being in front of the camera,
but she is still a very attractive white woman.
Speaker 7 (21:37):
The girl that I know was like a very cute
white woman.
Speaker 5 (21:40):
Like most of these people were still just very exactly
what was already getting picked.
Speaker 7 (21:46):
But like maybe sometimes a girl this time, like Anna Kendrick.
Speaker 5 (21:49):
Blowing up on Twitter, You're like, yeah, I don't know's
she's already a famous actress.
Speaker 7 (21:53):
Fucking Charlie McDowell.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
Has she said on this podcast to Charlie mcdowe.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Parents are the mom is Mary Steinberg, who is she's
the woman in all the Will Ferrell movies, you know,
I hotly yes, oh my god.
Speaker 7 (22:11):
And then the dad is Malcolm McDowell.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Okay, So two very like wasn't just didn't just fall
into you know, writing a book and publishing a book
because they were good on Twitter. It would be helpful
to know how deeply connected this person is and how
that was connected.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
To their rise.
Speaker 7 (22:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
And then by the way, Mary Steinberg right now is
married to Ted Danson and they have been for like
thirty years.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Acshally, what is it.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
About this person that you that like you can't you
can't sort of can't get over, like why are you?
Speaker 2 (22:44):
How did their hooks get in you?
Speaker 5 (22:45):
I feel like, Okay, So my mom was on Twitter
a lot, and I feel like Kelly Oxford and Charlie
McDowell were two of her favorite Twitter accounts, and she like,
and this was when I was living in LA and
like starting comedy, and so I knew some people in
the Twitter, like some people who were big on Twitter,
and you'd meet them and be.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
Like, holy shit, that person's like Twitter famous.
Speaker 5 (23:03):
And I never met him, but I remember being so
specifically like whatever he's doing is working.
Speaker 7 (23:09):
And I have to figure that out.
Speaker 5 (23:11):
And then I like kind of forgot about him, but
he really like imprinted on me in like twenty fourteen.
And then when we did the Lily Collins book a
couple of years ago, and I like googled her and
she's recently married to Charlie McDowell, I was like, why
does that name ring a Bell, and when I realized
who it was and who his parents were, I feel
like I went insane.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
So I also want to say his Twitter at the
time was like deer girls upstairs?
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Right?
Speaker 4 (23:37):
Was that what it was called? Dear Girls above Me?
Deer Girls above me?
Speaker 1 (23:40):
And the promise of the Twitter account because there used
to be all these real uster accounts that have like
one shtick shit my dad says. My dad says things
white people like yeaffee MPR.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
That was like a book at urban outfitters you can buy.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
I mean, that was the book.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
But his was essentially just making fun of these two
fictional girls who quote unquote lived above him that were
obviously just like two white pre Instagram models Instagram models.
And when you look back, it was just like a
mean spirited thing, like making fun of It's very much
like you're inventing someone online to be mad about, Like
you just made up these two girls and then called
them stupid every day, and it is like when you
(24:17):
look back, like, fuck you try being funny.
Speaker 5 (24:21):
I feel like I remember it as such a like
cultural touchstone. And then when we remembered it via the
Lily Collins memoir, and I went back and I looked
at the archive of tweets, I was like, wait, these
girls never existed. You barely even exist and you were
just like the son of actors. Like this is crazy
that this was such an important like aspiration, and I.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Guess watching it unfold, you know that era on Twitter,
it kind of beas the impression that anybody could ask
twenty thousand followers and luck into this kind of real
career success publishing a book.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
But then when you actually dig into it, it's like, well,
probably not.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Anybody probably did take more than you know, the followers
and the quips or whatever.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Yeah, I yes, exactly, there's like a real I think
actually it was spot on when she says this before
people actually found out who you really were.
Speaker 8 (25:14):
More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
I listened to a lot of celebrity memoir book Club,
like almost every episode, so I've heard Ashley and Claire
break down hundreds of celebrity memoirs, and let's be real,
some of them do not age well.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
There are books that read less like life.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Stories and more like a string of casual racism dressed
up as insight, the kind of stuff that screams of
an era and not in a good way. So memoirs,
especially of this era, what do you think separates the
ones that just sound so dated from the ones that
like have staying power or like don't really seem as
data or that you can really connect with even reading
(26:03):
them years later.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
I mean, I think it has to be like a
sincere story you want to tell, because I mean, human
stories have been true since the dawn of time.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Like you've read the Odyssey and you can connect to
it because if like there've only been so many human
experiences and emotions and I can.
Speaker 7 (26:20):
Attach it to that.
Speaker 5 (26:21):
Good example is like I you saw the picture of
Dorian Gray on Broadway, so I reread it and there
was so much in it that I was like, oh
my god, this is about like influencers.
Speaker 7 (26:32):
And so I think that then you take these books.
Speaker 5 (26:36):
That came from like Twitter Virility specifically, which in the
time had a very specific like tone of snarkiness. Like
Claire said, it was just like dripping in snark, and
then you take this like pseudo vulnerability that's actually just
snarkiness and turn that into a book like there is
nothing that's going to stick.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
I also think it really to do with have vulnerable
you'll be because that Twitter verrality from twenty fourteen specifically
was very much lighthearted punching down. I wouldn't say anybody
was being out and out cruel, but there is this
is these girls above me are dumb Chrissy Tigan's calling
some poor teen mama slut. Like there is a lot
of punching down happening where you got to just be
(27:18):
like what I'm just saying it, and something that happens
is top Like that kind of humor gets dated because
who in society is allowed to be the butt of
a joke changes, And I think a good example is
Tina Fay when you look back at like how she
deals with like racial jokes and thirty rock the joke
she makes like with Tracy Morgan versus Jenni Roni being
(27:40):
like what's harder black man, white woman? Those are done,
I feel like with an awareness, whereas Asian people are
like just straight up a punchline, like whether or not
you find her jokes funny, Like you could be like, oh,
but like there's clearly the joke is racism, whereas like
the Asian jokes are racist.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Here's Tina fey on Jimmy Fallon's Late night show back
in twenty fourteen, Little one.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Tune off didn't talk for a long time and now
finally is talking a lot and big, long sentences, so
cute and great, and it's she has a very specific
way of talking. I realized she kind of sounds like
a prostitute and like.
Speaker 7 (28:17):
A Vietnam movie. She seemed like a Polish She's like, no,
you know, give me cookie.
Speaker 8 (28:22):
I'll go with you.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
You've changed my saber.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Then ten years later she's like, you know, allowed to
be racist Asian people openly anymore?
Speaker 4 (28:34):
And her book looks insane.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
In Kelly Oxford's memoir, she describes seeing someone on the
street and specifically notes that person is Chinese. And it's
clearly sort of meant to be the joke because, as
you say in the episode about the book, this is
when the funniest thing a person could be was an ethnicity.
Speaker 8 (28:52):
It really is.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Yeah, just naming races is like a really funny thing
to do, and it's it's just dated, and I think so,
And that's all because those stories aren't really vulnerable on
as stories.
Speaker 7 (29:03):
They're like naming races, Yeah, you're.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Trying to you're trying to be funny and being vulnerable
last forever and being funny.
Speaker 4 (29:13):
It's crazy how quickly that becomes outdated.
Speaker 7 (29:17):
Especially edgy humor. Like the only thing that you say
is falling down.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
Jennifer Lawrence was actually exactly right.
Speaker 7 (29:25):
She was right to fall down.
Speaker 4 (29:26):
She was wrong to far on that sacred rock.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Well, as we moved.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Away from like the twenty tens Twitter millennial culture, how
do you see that impacting the next generation or the
current generation of celebrity memoirs that are going to be
coming out.
Speaker 5 (29:42):
It'll be interesting because I think things already moved so
much faster that I wonder how much of this is
like being turned into a book before its time. Like
I wonder what's going you know what I mean? Because
like Twitter was writing and writing to a book. Deal
feels like a traject three where at like TikTok to.
Speaker 4 (30:03):
Book.
Speaker 5 (30:04):
I think some people are doing it, but like even
there they know there needs to be a very specific
angle that isn't necessarily like because even TikTok, we've seen
the exact same.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
What do you call it?
Speaker 5 (30:14):
Like life cycle of Twitter, where like first people are
just doing these like snarky little characters, and then people
actually like within months, they'll be like that TikTok trend
from a couple months ago was actually really fucked up,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 7 (30:27):
And so there's a lot more it's like faster turnaround
with what is.
Speaker 5 (30:33):
Like.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
So I think right now.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
There's anybody who has any followers online can get myired
and scandal or can get canceled, can get like you
know what I mean, Like there's so many more people
in the public eye because the public eye is all
of us now, Like there's no more gatekeeping of the tabloids.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
It's like anyone that you follow, you're interested in.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
And I think a lot more people will want to
set the record straight, Like a lot of people feel
like they have a lot more things to go back
and be like, by the way, you were all dead
wrong about me, because now it's just thirty five people
commenting something, but you're like, I have to set the
record straight on this. And so I think a lot
more people are gonna feel compelled to be like I
have to tell you what was really going on once
the dust settles.
Speaker 5 (31:11):
Yeah, but I think it's gonna be a lot more
about like explaining after the dust settles, and less about
turning the current stick into a book.
Speaker 7 (31:19):
I think that'll be interesting.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
So I have a couple of rapid buyer questions for you. First,
of all, worst celebrity.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Memoir that you've ever read, I mean in what way,
Like the most boring, the most delusional, the most fucked up.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
I would say, the one that most did not need
to be a book, the most like, why why did
you write this?
Speaker 4 (31:44):
Well, you know it's funny, I would say.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
We were talking about like the new kind of memoir,
which is no longer the twitter funny memoir.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
But let me explain myself. Memoir was Hilaria Baldwin's. We
just read and it is like eight chapters.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Directly speaking to the Daily Mail, and you're like, you
even know what you're talking about?
Speaker 7 (32:01):
Lari.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
She's like explaining herself up against situations that don't even
make sense, and you're like, none a thing is explained,
there's no overarching narrative, there's no like I was born
here and then this is how I got to where
I'm at now. It's still like and here's something someone
said about me. Any here's why you can't possibly be true?
Speaker 5 (32:16):
Like not even here's something someone said about me. She'll like,
she'll if because people say like she was faking her accent.
Instead of saying people said I was faking my accent
and that's not true. She'll go and do you know
something about accents?
Speaker 7 (32:29):
And like that's how it starts.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
And you're like, wait, what, Okay, it's so funny that
you mentioned this, because she's sort of my roman empire.
I don't think I've ever told this story in public before,
but everybody who knows me has heard.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
This and exclusive. This is an exclusive. So I have
met her. I met her before the fallout.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
I was working I don't want to give to muny
to details, but I was working on behind the scenes
on a podcast and she was one of the guests.
I this was one of those jobs I had that
felt very tenuous, so I was like, I need to
show up on my A game every single day. So
the host, understandably, was really particular about pronunciations of names.
So when we had a guest, I would listen to
audio the person saying their own name, write it out
(33:11):
phonetically to give to the host so that she felt
confident in saying this name.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
So I mean we kind of need to hire you.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Well, that's the time where I was like putting way
too much, like really over preparing for like it's just
a celebrity podcast, Like you really probably didn't need.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
To take it that far.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
So I listened to footage of her saying her own name.
Granted this footage was from several years earlier, kind of
before she blew up and got super famous, but the
way that my name is pronounced today is the way
my name is gonna be pronounced in ten years, so
I figure this is fine. She said her name Hailaria,
clearly an offshoot of.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
The name Hillary. That is how she says it.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
When I give this information to the host, the host
is like, Hilaria Baldwin, welcome, and she says, no, it's
e Laria Elaria, and the host.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Is like, she's cool about it.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
But then after the fact she's like, you know, I
felt like an asshole that I mispronounced her a person
of colors name kind of wasn't great, and I was like,
oh shit, So I kind of took.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
A little bit of a reaming out at my job
because of this. Then cut too when the whole thing
unfolds and I was just thinking this woman really lied.
She lied to me, and she lied in a way
that jeopardized my job.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
As she's European color, she's lying about being European our
friends people, she's.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
No better than a French person.
Speaker 5 (34:29):
That's like the one in the defense I always have
of her fake acclent is that I'm like, I don't know,
white people do British accents all the time.
Speaker 7 (34:35):
Being is also like a colonial.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
Empire, so like they're not like, I don't know, I
feel like it's racist the way they're not. They're always like,
like you just the people like, it's not that same thing. However,
for her to get you in trouble is psychotic, for
her to like in the way she insists upon it,
I'm like, I mean, it's just.
Speaker 7 (34:58):
Not true, Like you're just he say Hilaria.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Video footage of her saying, Hilaria, you like.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
Get to change your name based on the vibes.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
That's no, you don't.
Speaker 7 (35:07):
You don't get to just like you need to just
go with whatever people are saying. If you've made it up,
if you've made it up yourself that day.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Is there a celebrity memoir that surprised you the most?
Like you thought it was gonna be one kind of reading,
it turned out to be another.
Speaker 5 (35:24):
Minka Kelly is always I feel like one of our
go tos with that where we're always just like, I
don't know Leila Garrity from Friday Night Lights, what the
fuck is she talking about? And then you're like, Oh,
the most heartfelt story about like self discovery?
Speaker 7 (35:37):
Amazing?
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
I would say for me, it's uh tory spelling, because
I never really gave Tory spelling much thought. But then
hearing you all really dive into the minutia of how
she shows up in the world is fascinating, And now
I'm like, she's actually a very fascinating person.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
She used to be studied in a lab she does.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
It really does go to show money is and everything,
because what if your jad was Aaron Spelling and you came.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
Out like it's weird to watch them and be like,
how do you have a worse life than me?
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (36:09):
How could that much Kashmir be bad for you?
Speaker 2 (36:12):
That's a good way to put it.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Here's our two memoirs that we would like if they
live in case. Katie Holmes and Nicholas Cage are listeners
of yours.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
We should. I mean, if they are, please reach out.
We'd love to have you on the show.
Speaker 4 (36:26):
No pressure, but we'd like you guys to write memoirs.
That's startry memoir.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Oh, Katie Holmes would be so good. Do you know
is she's still in a relationship with Jamie Fox.
Speaker 4 (36:34):
No, I think they broke up.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yeah, that was before Emilio Blotto, right, she had that
she was making out with that restauranteur a couple of
years ago.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
My friend is actually can I say something please? My
friend is about to.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Start working on a film that she's like, she wrote,
directed and is starring in. So I guess that little
Surrey Cruise is off to college and Katie's making her comeback.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
Yes, maybe she'll use this as the time to write
a book. Yeah, and then you all can talk about it.
Maybe she'll be a guest on your show. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (37:03):
Maybe maybe she'll tell us how to fucking tailor a
cardigan because she knows it and I don't.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
There's an example of a woman with a lot of
cashmem who's happy.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
So I guess it either way.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Where can folks listen to the podcast? Check out the
show you all we're doing, follow you all that good stuff.
Speaker 5 (37:21):
We are on YouTube, Celebrity Memore, book Clubs, Spotify, Apple Podcasts,
Amazon First well not more practice.
Speaker 4 (37:30):
No, we are on YouTube. I just love that. We've
never been YouTube forward before and I love this new change.
Speaker 5 (37:36):
I'm changing, I'm evolving, I'm trying to expand the brand.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
I feel like YouTube is really where you got to
be these days. Oh that's what they keep telling us same.
This has been such a delight, Like you have no idea,
this like made my month. My partner came down and
was like, you're gonna talk to your favorite podcasters? Are
you excited?
Speaker 3 (37:56):
And I was like, yes, I'm very excited.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
And very nervous.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
So thank you for doing that's I really really appreciate it,
and thank you for making the show.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
It's just like has given me so much at so
many hours of delight.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
It got me through the pandemic truly, like one of
my favorite podcasts around.
Speaker 7 (38:10):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 7 (38:14):
Thank you for having us. This was so fun.
Speaker 4 (38:15):
This was so fun.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
just want to say hi. You can reach us at
Hello at Tegody dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd.
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative Jonathan Strickland
is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
(38:42):
Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
And will We have the will W
It really felt like the cryptocurrency era for comedy writers.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
There Are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
As a production of iHeartRadio and Unboss Creative, I'm Bridget Todd,
and this is there are No Girls on the Internet.
I spend a lot of time thinking about the Internet,
but also a lot of time thinking about celebrity, and
I don't think the two are unrelated, because today being
(00:34):
online is just part of being famous. How a celebrity
show us up online can tell us just as much
about Internet culture as it does about them. And in
the early twenty tens, the Internet rewrote the rules of fame.
A strong online voice, funny, rab relatable could turn tweets
into real book deals, viral posts into publishing contracts, and
(00:57):
Internet cloud into real cultural ca It was a moment
where being extremely online could genuinely change your life. Today,
I'm talking to Claire Parker and Ashley Hamilton, the host
of my favorite podcast, Celebrity Memoir book Club, about how
that moment shaped modern celebrity and what the memoirs left
behind can teach us about Internet culture, platform fame, and
(01:19):
the stories we choose to tell. So what is it
about celebrity memoirs that made you want to dive into
them for a living.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
I'll be honest is that we didn't have a comedic living,
as we were both at the time working day job
is trying to be stand up comedians.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
And actually it was our third.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Podcast, and we kind of figured out that in order
to like have a niche on the internet, if you
haven't done The Bachelor, you can't just be two people talking.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
And we were like, we want to talk about pop culture.
We had also done a Brittey.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Spears podcast and felt really grossed out by like what
had happened to her. It was in the beginnings of
the Free Brittany era, so nobody really knew what was
going on yet, if the rumors were true or not.
But we were like, whatever that, whatever it is, is true,
we do not want to be part of a group
of people who talk about celebrities in a way that
drives them to potentially being like fully trapped by their
(02:08):
dad in like a mental legal contract.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
So we were like, Okay, how do you make fun
of a celebrity in their own words?
Speaker 1 (02:14):
And then Maria Carrey and Jessica Simpsons were coming out
with memoirs around the same time, and we're like done.
They're literally whenever somebody goes, why is this even your business?
I go, they sold it to us in a book,
And this is actually literally my full time job. So
it's everybody's business. This is an economy of sorts.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
So I feel like it's easy to sort of discount
celebrity books as fluff meaningless. But something I really learned
from listening to the podcast is that even bad celebrity
books do tell us something about the world that we
live in. What do you think that celebrity memoirs tell
us about the time or the culture that they were
produced in.
Speaker 5 (02:48):
I think the pop culture, and like celebrity culture in
general is dismissed as like just frivolous nonsense, even though
it is like one of the more popular topics of
conversation across us, like all people. And so the way
that you can get a gauge on society from how
they talk about like moments in pop culture, like you
(03:09):
can see like the swing towards you know, child wife,
like the diminishing of women's rights like in the Amber
heard Johnny Depp case, Like there are so many things
that you can watch it happen in the way people
talk about women in pop culture and people in like
the celebrity sphere, and I think that the books are
such an interesting look at all of it, because I
(03:32):
think it's so interesting to look at the way people
present themselves in that space and like whether or not
they acknowledge the way that like they contribute to like
the way people look at the world, and I think
the way that they like don't mention certain things, or
the way they think things come up completely normal is
such a like fascinating look at our society. And then again,
(03:54):
the way that people will like let them get away
with it based on how generally likable someone is is
so fascinating.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
I also think when you read these memoirs and get
the whole story versus when you're living through it and
seeing the headlines, it helps you remember that there is
a cohesive story going on. And I mean, in this
world of clickbait hot moments, you have to constantly fight
yourself to not just like take the headline and run
(04:23):
with it, but try to understand the larger narrative at play.
I feel like the amount of times Like a.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Woman has been absolutely demolished by the public because of
a bad night out and then you look at what
was happening in her life and she's like, well, my
dad just died and my husband just divorced me, and
I was postpartum and I was being forced to work,
and you're like, oh, okay, So she was like going through it.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Women, really going through it. Memoirs are one of my
favorites of the genre. For instance, the tech book everyone
was talking about this year, Careless People, is basically a
woman going through some stuff memoir. Even if you haven't
read Careless People, the memoir by Sarah Wynn Williams, former
director of public policy at Facebook, you've probably seen the headlines,
(05:06):
and wow, were they scandalous stories about Facebook's Cheryl Samberg
buying her female staff lingerie and even sharing beds with
them on work trips. But those viral moments, as wild
as they are, overshadowed stories that were much more disturbing,
like Win William's first hand account of Facebook's complicity in
(05:26):
global harm, including the company's admitted role in the genocide
of the Rohinga people in Myanmar.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
We just read the Facebook book Careless People.
Speaker 6 (05:35):
That memoir is less celebrity but more like Facebook is
a celebrity, smart Zuckerberg is a celebrity, but it's so
interesting even the way memoirs are covered, where the headline
will be.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
I think the headline with that Careless People article is like.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Cheryl Samberg bought lingerie for her assistant and listen.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
Not great, But when you read the book, what Facebook
was doing and is doing was so much more horrific.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
She describes essentially watching over the real Hengey genocide andyen
mar ten years ago as it was being incited by
Facebook posts that she couldn't get anyone on the inside
of Facebook to take down that they kept saying, this
isn't hate speech, this isn't hate speech, while like literally
ten thousand people were being slaughtered in the street and
she was like, we need to take this down to
prevent more deaths than she couldn't get it done. And
(06:20):
the idea that like, I'm sorry, it's bad to buy
your assistant lungrite, it's worse to incite genocide.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
And the fact that.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
The media coverage of that book seems to be so sexy,
fun scandalous.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
I think that that's like how a lot of media is.
And even if.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
There are I think there are our journals is doing
good work, but what goes viral, what comes to you
have to seek out the whole story.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
And this is like a good, maybe lighter way to
remember that lesson.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
That's such a.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Good example, and I'm I'm in the middle of that
book myself. Oh my god, Sorry, no, I know about that,
but you know, I am intrigued by the fact that
it's a right, like it could have easily been a
like Kara Swisher style kind of hard hitting nonfiction book,
but the fact that it's a memoir. It really is
(07:08):
about like how it felt from her perspective, and I
think it just comes at it in such a different,
an interesting and different angle of like this is what
you remember from this experience of being at Facebook and
all the ways that fucked you up, and not necessarily
like here's the hard hitting facts of like well yeah,
and it really allows you to really, I don't know,
see her perspective and live in that experience a lot more.
Speaker 5 (07:29):
Another thing that I think is so like why I
like the memoir genre so much is because of that,
because I think there are so many things like as
a society, especially with the constant onslought of news, I
feel like we see this a lot with reality TV
and celebrity in general, the way that people like believe
in such a control.
Speaker 7 (07:47):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 5 (07:48):
But they're like everyone like, this is how I would
have reacted to this thing. Now that I'm reading the
full picture, so like, that's how you should have reacted
to it.
Speaker 7 (07:55):
And I think reading.
Speaker 5 (07:56):
Someone's thought process as it was happening instead of just
the facts like allows you to be like, oh, they're
a person reacting with humanity, not a sim reacting with
like control.
Speaker 7 (08:11):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Absolutely? Yeah, And it's easy.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
I do think that there's something about our culture where
that's easy to forget, where when someone is talking about
it experience, it's so easy to say like, well, this
is what I would have done her. That's the way
that she responded doesn't make sense because of XYZ, Like
it just gives us such a look into what they
were actually feeling and experiencing.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yeah, I think right now we're in this weird era
of everyone thinks there's this pr overlord that's like pulling
the strings. I mean, even we had a journalist at
us like, well, it's very clear that you're promoted and
sponsored by diet Coke because you have diet cokes in
the videos, do you make a lot like I was
laughing as a journalist suggested this, and we were just
like no, we just record for like three straight hours,
so sometimes we need caffeine.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
And that's as deep as that is.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
We just sincerely are drinking diet cokes like most people
on Earth.
Speaker 5 (08:57):
Very nice beverage when you're sitting at a table chatting
every people.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Really the tailor swiftification and like the conspiracy theories, I
think we're in this era right now of feeling like
everybody's tricking you and everything's advertising and everything is.
Speaker 7 (09:14):
Everything's describable too.
Speaker 5 (09:17):
I think it also falls in with the therapy speak
and the way everything can be diagnosed. Everything has like
nothing is ambiguous. Everything has a cause and effect. Like
I don't like Huda crashing out on Love Island is
because she's an abuser, and you're like, right, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
I just think she's a single mom who's tired.
Speaker 5 (09:38):
She might be like sleep deprived in a very stressful
fishbole situation, the.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Way that if I were in her shoes, I would
immediately crash out immediately, like like lose my shit, and
it's like yeah, maybe she's just in a weird situation
for the first time and she's having a big reaction
to that. It doesn't necessarily mean like there's some dark
underbelly of a thing's happening.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
Deeply manipulative language. I'm like, I don't she's not Jax Taylor.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Listen, why can't she have a crash out? But Taylor
Swift gets to write the Tortured Poet's Department.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
I mean, who's allowed in our society to crash out
over a situationship?
Speaker 4 (10:14):
I'd like to review.
Speaker 5 (10:16):
Yes, the way people can like pin it on these
like very specific trigger words, it like really strips the
humanity out of everything. And so like getting the full
story all the time is nice.
Speaker 7 (10:28):
I like knowing what happened.
Speaker 8 (10:33):
Let's take a quick break at her back.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Remember the twenty tens ubers were cheap, Barack Obama was
the president. In a lot of ways, it was a simpler,
happier time, and the internet was really different too.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Back then, twenty thousand follows that a.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Viral tweet could get you a book deal, and being
Internet funny was a viable career plan. Things feel very
different today, but I'm still so fascinated by that era
and the cultural scaffolding it left us with. So the
reason I reached out to the both of you was
I was listening to your episode on Kelly Oxford's book
Everything Is Perfect when You're a Liar, published in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
If you don't know who Kelly Oxford is, She's a
writer who.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Was one of the first people who really got famous
and blew up on the early days of Twitter for
her snarky, relatable tweets, and celebrities loved her on Twitter.
She used that attention on Twitter to parlay that into
a book deal for this book. It became a New
York Times bestseller, and she parlayed that into a real
Hollywood writing career. And I was kind of stunned by
that trajectory and how commonplace it was back on the
(11:46):
early days of social media, and how that trajectory seems
basically impossible today in twenty twenty five, and the way
that you all described this time and culture that I
had almost would have forgotten about the twenty tens. A
mustache on your finger, Yes, You're gonna mustache on your finger,
Katie Perry is like the height of culture. You know,
(12:08):
who's the girl from New Girls, Zoey Deschanel is like
what every kind of quirky girl wants to be. Tina
Fey is the funniest woman on the planet. Christy Tagan
would tweet something and then there'd be one hundred headlines
like Chrissy Tigan claps back on the haters on Twitter.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
On BuzzFeed.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
You know I have BuzzFeed got alone.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
What do you all remember about this time online?
Speaker 5 (12:29):
I guess I remember lists, obviously Chrissy Tegan's twelve best clapbacks,
Oh my god, like Lehanna's twelve best reactions.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
I wonder this, like I'm thinking about We also read
inn A Kendrick's book that came out around that era,
which was based on her successful Twitter, and it's so
funny to go back, like what took a successful Twitter
back then? Was like thirty five thousand followers? And I
was like, now that's scratching the surface. You couldn't get
a ca you couldn't get a coffee for thirty five
thousand Twitter followers. But I think we were in this
It's like era of like Obama era America, where the
(13:03):
VC companies were funding.
Speaker 7 (13:05):
All of our lives.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
I hear people talk about that a lot like the
class past uber seemless.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Everything was relatively like all these new apps made things
efficient and affordable, and we weren't really aware of the
hell that was coming. Airbnb was new. It felt like
America might be going in a good direction. O evey
where we about to be slept in the face by that.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
But I think there was this idea that it was
okay to be ironic.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
I think there was a height of irony at that
point because people felt that things were going good, so
it was okay to be like tweet and ironic and
like this kind of like toothless snarkiness where it was
very watered down.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
Larry David, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (13:42):
It was like it was like the Christian girl version
of a Jewish man comedy.
Speaker 5 (13:48):
Yes, I also feel I wonder if there is something
to be said about the way that it was like
the rise of social media crossed with still the dominance
of mainstream media. Like so as clar was saying, like
you didn't actually have to have that many followers, but
like people were on social media kind of making a
name for themselves, but those names were defined by mainstream
(14:09):
media picking who was the main ones.
Speaker 7 (14:11):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 5 (14:12):
Like absolutely, people wouldn't get Twitter followers, but if you
were looking for new people to follow on Twitter, you'd
go to BuzzFeed and be like, well, who did they
pick as like the eight funniest people on Twitter? And
like they the mainstream media was still deciding who within
social media was like the top choices and like the
funniest people in the world.
Speaker 7 (14:30):
And those accounts then became TV shows.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Yeah, like there was a real currency there because as
you all stay in that episode, you could have twenty
thousand followers and get retweeted by Lena donah or Patton Oswald,
and then you might have an editor or somebody in
your DMS and that could translate to an actual paid
writing gig or like a staff position on a late
night show.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
I really feel it the cryptocurrency era for comedy writers,
and that like the bubbles that were bursting.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
You know what I mean, Like the amount of attention and.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Overall deals that were inked for people that had quite
literally only come up with fourteen hundred characters of comedy,
Like what do.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
You think you had ten hit tweets?
Speaker 1 (15:06):
That was truly ten sentences and people were like, could
you do a full length film?
Speaker 4 (15:11):
And it's like maybe, but this would not let you
know in any direction.
Speaker 5 (15:15):
Really, I mean, I need someone who was like this
nineteen year old Twitter prodigy who was viewed as like
the next it girl of LA And I don't even
want to say her name because it fell off so hard,
Like I think she's like a wedding photographer now.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
Oh.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
And then the other thing is that it was in
an era of the Internet where like you still only
knew what people were telling you about themselves.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
One thing about that era of Twitter, it looked like
people just got randomly chosen by the algorithmic gods to
go from Internet funny to published author. Joke accounts with
one running bit became book deals with titles like shit
my dad says. Take Charlie McDowell in the twenty tens,
he was just a writer in La getting increasingly annoyed
(15:57):
by his loud upstairs neighbors. Instead of just leaving a note,
he started tweeting about it from a new account, Deer
Girls Above Me, and it blew up. Time Magazine ranked
at one of the top one hundred and forty Twitter
accounts of twenty twelve that led to a book deal,
and that success helped launch his career as a film director.
A real Twitter to Hollywood Cinderella story, right, Well not exactly,
(16:21):
because what you didn't see on Twitter was how deeply
connected Charlie already was to Hollywood. So watching on the outside,
it probably felt like anybody could have made it date online.
It definitely helps if your stepdad is Ted Danson. Naturally, Ashley,
who was also a comedian, has thoughts about that.
Speaker 5 (16:41):
There was still like a Nepo baby of it all.
There was still some shit where on, like some people
were heavily connected, like Charlie McDowell.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
Of Dear Girls above me, Like that was like a low.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Key he's you know those people that you're like, I
talk about this person way more than a lot of
people talk about that first, Like he doesn't come up
a lot, but compared to how often other people are
bringing him.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
This is Ashley's truly her Roman empire.
Speaker 5 (17:02):
This is my Roman empire, because I think at the
time I remember people finding it as like an organic account.
I remember this account and like being told about how
funny this random guy who lives underneath these two girls is.
Speaker 7 (17:13):
And now you read it and you're like, oh my god,
this is so sexist.
Speaker 5 (17:16):
And also he is like his parents are actors, but
like they're both successful and you would recognize them from things.
And now he's married to Lily Collins and you're like,
oh my god, his Twitter didn't become a.
Speaker 7 (17:28):
Book because he's funny.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Dude.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
You were living in such a liberal ideal. I like
it was just thinking about do you know what I mean?
I feel like I'm thinking about like.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Race relations in thirty Rock and the way that it was,
so there was such an idea of like, well, we
beat it, we beat racism in this country. And then
also with the beauty singiers, something about Beyonce's I woke
up like this. I remember there was like this feminist
photo shit in my college where you could show up
with makeup if you like, however you feel best, and
that would be your I woke up like this, Like
(17:58):
it was pre body positivity, but at a time where
the most beautiful, skinniest woman you've ever seen would kind of.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Tossle her hair and be, yeah, I don't even care,
and we took that. We were just like, yeah, she's
so quirky.
Speaker 7 (18:12):
She wears sweat pands.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
It reminds me of what you say in the about
the Kelly Oxford book that like the funniest thing a
woman could be is like obsessed with sandwiches and bacon,
but also thin.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yes, it was this idea of like we were opening
the confines of what it meant to be a woman
and be funny.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
But with that, but you still better play the part,
do you know what I mean? And Jennifer Lawrence the belching.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Oh God, Jennifer Lawrence, I mean I was, I would
She hasn't been a memoir, but I would love to
have for you all to do a deep dive under her,
because I mean, it was like we have a word
for it now, pick me. But I do think that
you had to be in this walk this very specific
line as like a funny, quirky woman in the public eye.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
I would argue that this entire era came crashing down
when Jennifer Lawrence fell for the second time. I think
everyone that moment, the moment she hit the ground again,
Everyone's side of this is this is enough.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Well, something that I think is very small with the
Pickney era that I think is true is because I
feel like there was this like liberal idealism of like
we're all equal and Hillary Clinton right, like she's something,
she's something to write home about. But I think there
was this idea that women could be more honest and real.
But when you think about who was picking, it was
(19:29):
still the mainstream media. And so Twitter gave us this
illusion of getting to know people in a more sincere,
honest way, but at the end of the day, you
had to be on the Stephen Colbert should like, you
had to be picked by the man that owns NBC,
Whereas today I do think there is there are fewer
gatekeepers in terms of like you can create an online community.
Obviously still a long way to go, but I do
(19:51):
think right now there are non mainstream ways to make
a living. I'd say, mean Ashley do one of them
with like Patreon and stuff, and I think with direct
like support from followers and stuff, that does allow you
to carve out a piece of the Internet, whereas back
then you the internet is a tool to launch into
the very traditional forms of media.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Yeah, and I almost wonder if some of the books
that you that you talk about kind of reveal the
fallacy of what you know. Not everybody who can make
a funny quip on Twitter in one hundred and forty
characters should be expanding upon that and on one hundred.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
And forty page memoir. And when you read some of
these memoirs.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
They just seem so dated and they just don't feel substantive.
And I wonder if that reveals the fallacy of like, oh,
if you are funny on Twitter, that needs to be
connected to a kind of mainstream success.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Which is publishing a comedy memoir.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Well, I think what happens is when you're funny for Twitter,
you learn to write a very certain style. It's like
you're being funny for King of Queens, you know what
I mean. And then what happens is everybody's fitting into
this one mold of how to be funny in these
quippy little ways, and they don't realize how dated it
is. It's like, it's funny to think of a personality type
or a comedy style as like very day, but you
(21:00):
read it back now and it's so millennial. Cringe, and
they're already Yeah, they're all like.
Speaker 7 (21:06):
I don't want to waite for in line for cop
like lotes.
Speaker 8 (21:12):
I don't know.
Speaker 7 (21:12):
I'm like another thing that I think is so interesting.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
What you were just saying about the way that like
it's still being chosen by the president of NBC is
that a lot of the people who came out of
this era are still very attractive, mostly white people, even
the ones that are strictly writers.
Speaker 7 (21:30):
Kelly Oxford never really.
Speaker 5 (21:32):
Like made a play for being in front of the camera,
but she is still a very attractive white woman.
Speaker 7 (21:37):
The girl that I know was like a very cute
white woman.
Speaker 5 (21:40):
Like most of these people were still just very exactly
what was already getting picked.
Speaker 7 (21:46):
But like maybe sometimes a girl this time, like Anna Kendrick.
Speaker 5 (21:49):
Blowing up on Twitter, You're like, yeah, I don't know's
she's already a famous actress.
Speaker 7 (21:53):
Fucking Charlie McDowell.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
Has she said on this podcast to Charlie mcdowe.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Parents are the mom is Mary Steinberg, who is she's
the woman in all the Will Ferrell movies, you know,
I hotly yes, oh my god.
Speaker 7 (22:11):
And then the dad is Malcolm McDowell.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Okay, So two very like wasn't just didn't just fall
into you know, writing a book and publishing a book
because they were good on Twitter. It would be helpful
to know how deeply connected this person is and how
that was connected.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
To their rise.
Speaker 7 (22:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
And then by the way, Mary Steinberg right now is
married to Ted Danson and they have been for like
thirty years.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Acshally, what is it.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
About this person that you that like you can't you
can't sort of can't get over, like why are you?
Speaker 2 (22:44):
How did their hooks get in you?
Speaker 5 (22:45):
I feel like, Okay, So my mom was on Twitter
a lot, and I feel like Kelly Oxford and Charlie
McDowell were two of her favorite Twitter accounts, and she like,
and this was when I was living in LA and
like starting comedy, and so I knew some people in
the Twitter, like some people who were big on Twitter,
and you'd meet them and be.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
Like, holy shit, that person's like Twitter famous.
Speaker 5 (23:03):
And I never met him, but I remember being so
specifically like whatever he's doing is working.
Speaker 7 (23:09):
And I have to figure that out.
Speaker 5 (23:11):
And then I like kind of forgot about him, but
he really like imprinted on me in like twenty fourteen.
And then when we did the Lily Collins book a
couple of years ago, and I like googled her and
she's recently married to Charlie McDowell, I was like, why
does that name ring a Bell, and when I realized
who it was and who his parents were, I feel
like I went insane.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
So I also want to say his Twitter at the
time was like deer girls upstairs?
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Right?
Speaker 4 (23:37):
Was that what it was called? Dear Girls above Me?
Deer Girls above me?
Speaker 1 (23:40):
And the promise of the Twitter account because there used
to be all these real uster accounts that have like
one shtick shit my dad says. My dad says things
white people like yeaffee MPR.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
That was like a book at urban outfitters you can buy.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
I mean, that was the book.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
But his was essentially just making fun of these two
fictional girls who quote unquote lived above him that were
obviously just like two white pre Instagram models Instagram models.
And when you look back, it was just like a
mean spirited thing, like making fun of It's very much
like you're inventing someone online to be mad about, Like
you just made up these two girls and then called
them stupid every day, and it is like when you
(24:17):
look back, like, fuck you try being funny.
Speaker 5 (24:21):
I feel like I remember it as such a like
cultural touchstone. And then when we remembered it via the
Lily Collins memoir, and I went back and I looked
at the archive of tweets, I was like, wait, these
girls never existed. You barely even exist and you were
just like the son of actors. Like this is crazy
that this was such an important like aspiration, and I.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Guess watching it unfold, you know that era on Twitter,
it kind of beas the impression that anybody could ask
twenty thousand followers and luck into this kind of real
career success publishing a book.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
But then when you actually dig into it, it's like, well,
probably not.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Anybody probably did take more than you know, the followers
and the quips or whatever.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Yeah, I yes, exactly, there's like a real I think
actually it was spot on when she says this before
people actually found out who you really were.
Speaker 8 (25:14):
More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
I listened to a lot of celebrity memoir book Club,
like almost every episode, so I've heard Ashley and Claire
break down hundreds of celebrity memoirs, and let's be real,
some of them do not age well.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
There are books that read less like life.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Stories and more like a string of casual racism dressed
up as insight, the kind of stuff that screams of
an era and not in a good way. So memoirs,
especially of this era, what do you think separates the
ones that just sound so dated from the ones that
like have staying power or like don't really seem as
data or that you can really connect with even reading
(26:03):
them years later.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
I mean, I think it has to be like a
sincere story you want to tell, because I mean, human
stories have been true since the dawn of time.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Like you've read the Odyssey and you can connect to
it because if like there've only been so many human
experiences and emotions and I can.
Speaker 7 (26:20):
Attach it to that.
Speaker 5 (26:21):
Good example is like I you saw the picture of
Dorian Gray on Broadway, so I reread it and there
was so much in it that I was like, oh
my god, this is about like influencers.
Speaker 7 (26:32):
And so I think that then you take these books.
Speaker 5 (26:36):
That came from like Twitter Virility specifically, which in the
time had a very specific like tone of snarkiness. Like
Claire said, it was just like dripping in snark, and
then you take this like pseudo vulnerability that's actually just
snarkiness and turn that into a book like there is
nothing that's going to stick.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
I also think it really to do with have vulnerable
you'll be because that Twitter verrality from twenty fourteen specifically
was very much lighthearted punching down. I wouldn't say anybody
was being out and out cruel, but there is this
is these girls above me are dumb Chrissy Tigan's calling
some poor teen mama slut. Like there is a lot
of punching down happening where you got to just be
(27:18):
like what I'm just saying it, and something that happens
is top Like that kind of humor gets dated because
who in society is allowed to be the butt of
a joke changes, And I think a good example is
Tina Fay when you look back at like how she
deals with like racial jokes and thirty rock the joke
she makes like with Tracy Morgan versus Jenni Roni being
(27:40):
like what's harder black man, white woman? Those are done,
I feel like with an awareness, whereas Asian people are
like just straight up a punchline, like whether or not
you find her jokes funny, Like you could be like, oh,
but like there's clearly the joke is racism, whereas like
the Asian jokes are racist.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Here's Tina fey on Jimmy Fallon's Late night show back
in twenty fourteen, Little one.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Tune off didn't talk for a long time and now
finally is talking a lot and big, long sentences, so
cute and great, and it's she has a very specific
way of talking. I realized she kind of sounds like
a prostitute and like.
Speaker 7 (28:17):
A Vietnam movie. She seemed like a Polish She's like, no,
you know, give me cookie.
Speaker 8 (28:22):
I'll go with you.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
You've changed my saber.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Then ten years later she's like, you know, allowed to
be racist Asian people openly anymore?
Speaker 4 (28:34):
And her book looks insane.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
In Kelly Oxford's memoir, she describes seeing someone on the
street and specifically notes that person is Chinese. And it's
clearly sort of meant to be the joke because, as
you say in the episode about the book, this is
when the funniest thing a person could be was an ethnicity.
Speaker 8 (28:52):
It really is.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Yeah, just naming races is like a really funny thing
to do, and it's it's just dated, and I think so,
And that's all because those stories aren't really vulnerable on
as stories.
Speaker 7 (29:03):
They're like naming races, Yeah, you're.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Trying to you're trying to be funny and being vulnerable
last forever and being funny.
Speaker 4 (29:13):
It's crazy how quickly that becomes outdated.
Speaker 7 (29:17):
Especially edgy humor. Like the only thing that you say
is falling down.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
Jennifer Lawrence was actually exactly right.
Speaker 7 (29:25):
She was right to fall down.
Speaker 4 (29:26):
She was wrong to far on that sacred rock.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Well, as we moved.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Away from like the twenty tens Twitter millennial culture, how
do you see that impacting the next generation or the
current generation of celebrity memoirs that are going to be
coming out.
Speaker 5 (29:42):
It'll be interesting because I think things already moved so
much faster that I wonder how much of this is
like being turned into a book before its time. Like
I wonder what's going you know what I mean? Because
like Twitter was writing and writing to a book. Deal
feels like a traject three where at like TikTok to.
Speaker 4 (30:03):
Book.
Speaker 5 (30:04):
I think some people are doing it, but like even
there they know there needs to be a very specific
angle that isn't necessarily like because even TikTok, we've seen
the exact same.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
What do you call it?
Speaker 5 (30:14):
Like life cycle of Twitter, where like first people are
just doing these like snarky little characters, and then people
actually like within months, they'll be like that TikTok trend
from a couple months ago was actually really fucked up,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 7 (30:27):
And so there's a lot more it's like faster turnaround
with what is.
Speaker 5 (30:33):
Like.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
So I think right now.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
There's anybody who has any followers online can get myired
and scandal or can get canceled, can get like you
know what I mean, Like there's so many more people
in the public eye because the public eye is all
of us now, Like there's no more gatekeeping of the tabloids.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
It's like anyone that you follow, you're interested in.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
And I think a lot more people will want to
set the record straight, Like a lot of people feel
like they have a lot more things to go back
and be like, by the way, you were all dead
wrong about me, because now it's just thirty five people
commenting something, but you're like, I have to set the
record straight on this. And so I think a lot
more people are gonna feel compelled to be like I
have to tell you what was really going on once
the dust settles.
Speaker 5 (31:11):
Yeah, but I think it's gonna be a lot more
about like explaining after the dust settles, and less about
turning the current stick into a book.
Speaker 7 (31:19):
I think that'll be interesting.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
So I have a couple of rapid buyer questions for you. First,
of all, worst celebrity.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Memoir that you've ever read, I mean in what way,
Like the most boring, the most delusional, the most fucked up.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
I would say, the one that most did not need
to be a book, the most like, why why did
you write this?
Speaker 4 (31:44):
Well, you know it's funny, I would say.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
We were talking about like the new kind of memoir,
which is no longer the twitter funny memoir.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
But let me explain myself. Memoir was Hilaria Baldwin's. We
just read and it is like eight chapters.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Directly speaking to the Daily Mail, and you're like, you
even know what you're talking about?
Speaker 7 (32:01):
Lari.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
She's like explaining herself up against situations that don't even
make sense, and you're like, none a thing is explained,
there's no overarching narrative, there's no like I was born
here and then this is how I got to where
I'm at now. It's still like and here's something someone
said about me. Any here's why you can't possibly be true?
Speaker 5 (32:16):
Like not even here's something someone said about me. She'll like,
she'll if because people say like she was faking her accent.
Instead of saying people said I was faking my accent
and that's not true. She'll go and do you know
something about accents?
Speaker 7 (32:29):
And like that's how it starts.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
And you're like, wait, what, Okay, it's so funny that
you mentioned this, because she's sort of my roman empire.
I don't think I've ever told this story in public before,
but everybody who knows me has heard.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
This and exclusive. This is an exclusive. So I have
met her. I met her before the fallout.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
I was working I don't want to give to muny
to details, but I was working on behind the scenes
on a podcast and she was one of the guests.
I this was one of those jobs I had that
felt very tenuous, so I was like, I need to
show up on my A game every single day. So
the host, understandably, was really particular about pronunciations of names.
So when we had a guest, I would listen to
audio the person saying their own name, write it out
(33:11):
phonetically to give to the host so that she felt
confident in saying this name.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
So I mean we kind of need to hire you.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Well, that's the time where I was like putting way
too much, like really over preparing for like it's just
a celebrity podcast, Like you really probably didn't need.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
To take it that far.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
So I listened to footage of her saying her own name.
Granted this footage was from several years earlier, kind of
before she blew up and got super famous, but the
way that my name is pronounced today is the way
my name is gonna be pronounced in ten years, so
I figure this is fine. She said her name Hailaria,
clearly an offshoot of.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
The name Hillary. That is how she says it.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
When I give this information to the host, the host
is like, Hilaria Baldwin, welcome, and she says, no, it's
e Laria Elaria, and the host.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Is like, she's cool about it.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
But then after the fact she's like, you know, I
felt like an asshole that I mispronounced her a person
of colors name kind of wasn't great, and I was like,
oh shit, So I kind of took.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
A little bit of a reaming out at my job
because of this. Then cut too when the whole thing
unfolds and I was just thinking this woman really lied.
She lied to me, and she lied in a way
that jeopardized my job.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
As she's European color, she's lying about being European our
friends people, she's.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
No better than a French person.
Speaker 5 (34:29):
That's like the one in the defense I always have
of her fake acclent is that I'm like, I don't know,
white people do British accents all the time.
Speaker 7 (34:35):
Being is also like a colonial.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
Empire, so like they're not like, I don't know, I
feel like it's racist the way they're not. They're always like,
like you just the people like, it's not that same thing. However,
for her to get you in trouble is psychotic, for
her to like in the way she insists upon it,
I'm like, I mean, it's just.
Speaker 7 (34:58):
Not true, Like you're just he say Hilaria.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Video footage of her saying, Hilaria, you like.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
Get to change your name based on the vibes.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
That's no, you don't.
Speaker 7 (35:07):
You don't get to just like you need to just
go with whatever people are saying. If you've made it up,
if you've made it up yourself that day.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Is there a celebrity memoir that surprised you the most?
Like you thought it was gonna be one kind of reading,
it turned out to be another.
Speaker 5 (35:24):
Minka Kelly is always I feel like one of our
go tos with that where we're always just like, I
don't know Leila Garrity from Friday Night Lights, what the
fuck is she talking about? And then you're like, Oh,
the most heartfelt story about like self discovery?
Speaker 7 (35:37):
Amazing?
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
I would say for me, it's uh tory spelling, because
I never really gave Tory spelling much thought. But then
hearing you all really dive into the minutia of how
she shows up in the world is fascinating, And now
I'm like, she's actually a very fascinating person.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
She used to be studied in a lab she does.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
It really does go to show money is and everything,
because what if your jad was Aaron Spelling and you came.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
Out like it's weird to watch them and be like,
how do you have a worse life than me?
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (36:09):
How could that much Kashmir be bad for you?
Speaker 2 (36:12):
That's a good way to put it.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Here's our two memoirs that we would like if they
live in case. Katie Holmes and Nicholas Cage are listeners
of yours.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
We should. I mean, if they are, please reach out.
We'd love to have you on the show.
Speaker 4 (36:26):
No pressure, but we'd like you guys to write memoirs.
That's startry memoir.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Oh, Katie Holmes would be so good. Do you know
is she's still in a relationship with Jamie Fox.
Speaker 4 (36:34):
No, I think they broke up.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yeah, that was before Emilio Blotto, right, she had that
she was making out with that restauranteur a couple of
years ago.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
My friend is actually can I say something please? My
friend is about to.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Start working on a film that she's like, she wrote,
directed and is starring in. So I guess that little
Surrey Cruise is off to college and Katie's making her comeback.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
Yes, maybe she'll use this as the time to write
a book. Yeah, and then you all can talk about it.
Maybe she'll be a guest on your show. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (37:03):
Maybe maybe she'll tell us how to fucking tailor a
cardigan because she knows it and I don't.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
There's an example of a woman with a lot of
cashmem who's happy.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
So I guess it either way.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Where can folks listen to the podcast? Check out the
show you all we're doing, follow you all that good stuff.
Speaker 5 (37:21):
We are on YouTube, Celebrity Memore, book Clubs, Spotify, Apple Podcasts,
Amazon First well not more practice.
Speaker 4 (37:30):
No, we are on YouTube. I just love that. We've
never been YouTube forward before and I love this new change.
Speaker 5 (37:36):
I'm changing, I'm evolving, I'm trying to expand the brand.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
I feel like YouTube is really where you got to
be these days. Oh that's what they keep telling us same.
This has been such a delight, Like you have no idea,
this like made my month. My partner came down and
was like, you're gonna talk to your favorite podcasters? Are
you excited?
Speaker 3 (37:56):
And I was like, yes, I'm very excited.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
And very nervous.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
So thank you for doing that's I really really appreciate it,
and thank you for making the show.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
It's just like has given me so much at so
many hours of delight.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
It got me through the pandemic truly, like one of
my favorite podcasts around.
Speaker 7 (38:10):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 7 (38:14):
Thank you for having us. This was so fun.
Speaker 4 (38:15):
This was so fun.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
just want to say hi. You can reach us at
Hello at Tegody dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd.
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative Jonathan Strickland
is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
(38:42):
Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
And will We have the will W
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