Latest / Mini Scroll / MINI SCROLL: TaraYummy addresses appearance criticism, Substack taps Club Chalamet + Ariana Grande scalping drama

Transcript

MINI SCROLL: TaraYummy addresses appearance criticism, Substack taps Club Chalamet + Ariana Grande scalping drama · Mini Scroll

• 0:00
  Hi everyone, welcome to Mini Scroll, the daily Internet
• 0:04
  culture podcast bringing you the biggest stories from social
• 0:07
  media, the creator economy and the digital space every Monday
• 0:11
  through Thursday and sometimes Fridays.
• 0:14
  I'm your host, Lauren Meissner, the founder of the youth digital
• 0:17
  media brand Centennial World. Welcome back to Mini Scroll,
• 0:22
  everyone. OK, before we get in to the
• 0:25
  stories for today, I have two housekeeping things.
• 0:29
  First, I'm going to talk about our close friends.
• 0:31
  So our close Friends newsletter is going up this week and in it
• 0:35
  we'll be discussing a topic that's been kind of like
• 0:37
  floating around TikTok, the concept that the pop star is
• 0:41
  dead. And this was actually introduced
• 0:44
  by Lizzo on TikTok and then it was covered by popular Ozzy
• 0:48
  music reporter Sam Murphy. So I will play this video at the
• 0:51
  end of the episode. Stay tuned to listen.
• 0:54
  And as always with close friends, if you guys share your
• 0:57
  opinions in the comments on Spotify or YouTube, then you
• 1:01
  might get a chance to be featured, your opinion to be
• 1:03
  featured in our close Friends newsletter on Friday.
• 1:06
  The second thing that I wanted to talk about before I get into
• 1:09
  the stories is we have been going back and forth here at
• 1:11
  Centennial about how to cover Charlie Kirk's death in a way
• 1:17
  that makes sense to the brand. The reality is that like we are
• 1:20
  not American reporters, we are Internet culture reporters and
• 1:23
  obviously this is a big and important story for Internet
• 1:26
  culture, but we are not American.
• 1:28
  So we also understand there are like cultural nuances that we
• 1:33
  are just not going to ever understand as, I mean, I'm
• 1:37
  Canadian, Annabelle's Australian.
• 1:39
  We are based in Australia. And even though we are an
• 1:42
  Internet culture publication, obviously you cannot be an
• 1:45
  expert on every area of the Internet.
• 1:48
  And we are not experts on the very niche corners, the very
• 1:53
  deep, dark niche corners of the Internet that have kind of
• 1:57
  helped, I guess, propel a certain movement that led to his
• 2:00
  assassination. So the way that we have decided
• 2:03
  to cover it is Annabelle's going to talk about it tomorrow and
• 2:06
  she's going to talk about it from the perspective of a
• 2:08
  conversation that's been emerging around the discourse of
• 2:12
  this story, around information sharing, media's contribution
• 2:17
  areas of the story that we are experts on.
• 2:20
  This is the way that we believe we can report on it ethically
• 2:23
  from the angle that Annabelle is going to take tomorrow.
• 2:25
  So that is just like a preface. I wanted you guys to know we
• 2:28
  have been thinking about this, agonizing over it, how we're
• 2:30
  going to cover it, what this means because there is so much
• 2:33
  I'm sure you guys have seen. There's so much going on right
• 2:36
  now since the shooter's identity has been revealed and, you know,
• 2:41
  the corners of the Internet that be frequented.
• 2:43
  So with that being said, let's get into the stories for today.
• 2:46
  The first way that I have for you guys today is that Tara
• 2:48
  Yummy has addressed criticism that she's been receiving online
• 2:52
  where people are making comments about her body and specifically
• 2:55
  as well making comments about her VM as dress.
• 2:57
  In a new vlog posted just a few hours ago, Tara talked about two
• 3:01
  recent instances where Internet users came for her over her
• 3:04
  appearance. First, she said there was a
• 3:07
  video of her deejaying that got a lot of traction, where people
• 3:10
  were speculating that she had gained weight, and the second
• 3:13
  was her VMA's look. So about the video of her
• 3:16
  deejaying, she said she hadn't gained weight.
• 3:18
  And even if she had basically, So what?
• 3:21
  She said she looked puffier than usual in that video because
• 3:24
  she'd been on several rounds of steroids for her asthma.
• 3:27
  On her VMA's look, people really hated her dress.
• 3:31
  She wore vintage Betsy Johnson, and it was very like 2000s prom
• 3:36
  dress vibe. I mean, it was very Betsy
• 3:38
  Johnson, OK. It was like, you can picture it.
• 3:40
  If you were there, you were there.
• 3:41
  But, you know, she said that was the point.
• 3:42
  Like, she wanted to be in this, like, campy Y2K vibe.
• 3:46
  She's like, it's MTV Music Awards.
• 3:48
  Like, that's kind of the whole aesthetic.
• 3:50
  Someone on TikTok commented that I look very different in a video
• 3:55
  of me DJing and it got a lot of attention and they were like oh
• 3:58
  she's gained weight, looks bigger.
• 4:00
  Firstly if I did so be it. You should never comment on
• 4:04
  someone's either weight gain or weight loss.
• 4:05
  People are comfortable in their own skin, it's none of your
• 4:08
  business. That goes without being said.
• 4:10
  I mean people can comment on whatever they want whatever but
• 4:12
  that's just like a crazy thing to comment on a person's weight.
• 4:16
  That being said, even if I did gain weight, who cares?
• 4:19
  Also that being said, I didn't I look very different in that
• 4:23
  video because I look very puffy. Now the reason I look puffy is
• 4:27
  because not that it's anyone's business, but I had to go on 2
• 4:30
  rounds of Medrol dose pack steroids because I have
• 4:33
  extremely bad asthma. And as you guys know, I've been
• 4:35
  dealing with like lung and sinus problems for the past month and
• 4:38
  that retains a lot of water. So I looked very puffy and
• 4:41
  bloated for like the weeks that I was on it in order to perform
• 4:45
  on stage and not literally die of an asthma attack, not
• 4:49
  literally die but like you know feel like I'm dying for my
• 4:51
  asthma. I had to be on 2 rounds of
• 4:54
  steroids. That aside, it's been about a
• 4:56
  day since my VMA's picture and holy fuck, I don't know why
• 5:00
  people hated my dress so much. I knew it wasn't going to be
• 5:02
  everyone's favorite, right? People were like, oh, what the
• 5:04
  what in the Hannah Montana is this?
• 5:05
  Well, that was the point I wanted it to kind of give like
• 5:08
  Hampi Y2K. It's the MTV Music Awards, like
• 5:10
  it was popular in the 2000s. Now, I saw some discussion on
• 5:14
  Reddit about how she kind of missed the mark with combining
• 5:18
  these tags, you know, because the first one is obviously and
• 5:21
  she mentioned this actually in the vlog.
• 5:22
  She was like, I know that these compares, these are not
• 5:25
  comparable, but you know, mentioning the weight
• 5:28
  conversation and how nobody should ever be talking about
• 5:31
  anyone's weight 100% and talking about it in the same vein as,
• 5:35
  you know, people critiquing what she wore to a red carpet, which
• 5:39
  has obviously been part of pop culture and entertainment
• 5:41
  commentary for like decades. How those things are not
• 5:45
  comparable and it kind of cheapens the initial argument.
• 5:48
  I do think it rubbed people the wrong way how she combined these
• 5:53
  two things saying like I'm getting backlash over these two
• 5:56
  things. Well like people not liking your
• 5:57
  dress is really not the same as people coming for your weight.
• 6:01
  Which 100% is absolutely fucked up.
• 6:03
  And I sadly feel like we will probably never see a world where
• 6:07
  like we are all still alive where women in the public eye
• 6:11
  are not being berated for their weight.
• 6:14
  Their weight is not a topic of discussion like any of that.
• 6:16
  I honestly don't think we will ever see that time
• 6:19
  unfortunately, in our lifetimes. Okay, the next story that I have
• 6:22
  for you guys, I'm dying. Club Chalamet is moving to Sub
• 6:27
  Stack. This is a big day for the
• 6:29
  unemployed you guys. Club Chalamet is moving her
• 6:33
  niche. Fan coverage of Timothy Chalamet
• 6:36
  to Sub stack. OK so we all know Club Chalamet
• 6:38
  but if somehow you don't, somehow you listen to this
• 6:42
  podcast everyday and you don't know who Club Chalamet is.
• 6:45
  Not that like you know, we talk about her a lot, but I feel like
• 6:47
  she's so important in like the fandom zeitgeist, OK.
• 6:51
  She is a 57 year old woman named Simone who has built an online
• 6:56
  platform being a super fan of Timothy Chalamet.
• 6:59
  This is what her Instagram bio says.
• 7:01
  This is a Gen. X LA based superfan account in
• 7:04
  support of two time Oscar nominated SAG after
• 7:07
  award-winning actor Timothy Chalamet.
• 7:10
  High Stakes actually did a big deep dive into Club Chalamete
• 7:14
  beef with Kylie Jenner. As we know, Kylie and Timothy
• 7:17
  are dating and she hates Kylie Jenner.
• 7:20
  She actually calls her Slurpee because she says that Kylie is
• 7:24
  like cheap and tacky like a Slurpee.
• 7:27
  It's so mean. Okay, so yes, she like, full
• 7:32
  bullies. Kylie Jenner.
• 7:34
  I'm not laughing at the bullying, I'm just laughing
• 7:35
  'cause this is like, so absurd considering she is so unhinged.
• 7:40
  She has, I mean, I guess unsurprisingly, been battling
• 7:45
  being shadow banned on X lately apparently, or so she thinks.
• 7:48
  I don't know, like, can you ever really know if you're shadow
• 7:51
  banned? I don't know.
• 7:52
  So she says since she posted about being shadow banned, she
• 7:55
  was contacted by someone at Sub Stack who convinced her to join
• 7:58
  the platform and try to move her audience of basically 50,000
• 8:02
  followers on X over to Sub Stack because she does like to publish
• 8:06
  more Like a long form essays is maybe not the right word
• 8:11
  tributes to Timothy essays of bullying Kylie Jenner.
• 8:15
  I don't know. So she said she will still post
• 8:17
  on X and Instagram but it will be more limited.
• 8:20
  This is like an excerpt of what she said announcing her move to
• 8:24
  Sub Stack. The past several weeks gave me
• 8:26
  pause to consider how Club Chalamet can move forward and
• 8:29
  continue doing what I truly love for my fan community.
• 8:32
  In support of Timothy Chalamet, upon my public post about the
• 8:35
  shadow ban at XI was contacted by a representative at Sub Stack
• 8:39
  and she told me that Club Chalamet and my long form
• 8:42
  writing style would be perfect for Sub Stack.
• 8:44
  She set up a zoom meeting with me and she convinced me that Sub
• 8:47
  Stack subscription based platform notifies subscribers of
• 8:50
  new posts via the app notification settings and or by
• 8:53
  direct e-mail to the subscriber. Thus there will never ever be
• 8:57
  any interference from the powers that be who can manipulate
• 9:00
  algorithms to suppress my account.
• 9:02
  She talks about how she pays to be verified at Twitter and it's
• 9:05
  like offensive that they've shadow banned her again.
• 9:07
  I don't know if you know if you're not a banned or not.
• 9:10
  I like, I haven't been on Twitter in so long.
• 9:12
  Used to be my fave and then Elon Musk ruined it.
• 9:16
  But yeah, I have no idea if there's any way to know if
• 9:18
  you've actually been shadow banned.
• 9:20
  As far as I know on other platforms you are not like
• 9:22
  informed of that. You just kind of suspect.
• 9:25
  The Rep at Sub Stack informed me that a lot of prolific writers
• 9:28
  and high profile journalists who left X went to Sub Stack and
• 9:31
  found creative freedom and they were paid for their work from
• 9:34
  loyal subscribers. Since 2018, Club Chalamet and
• 9:38
  all its platforms has been free. I'm a fan just like you, and for
• 9:41
  the most part I've thoroughly enjoyed sharing my passion for
• 9:44
  supporting Timothy's career on these open platforms.
• 9:47
  But the recent media attacks, the shadow ban, and the constant
• 9:51
  trolling have made Sub Stack the obvious solution for my
• 9:54
  continued work for Club Chalamet.
• 9:56
  OK one thing I wanted to note is she is truly the example of the
• 10:00
  social media rule that followers don't equal influence because OK
• 10:05
  like do I think she's influencing anyone?
• 10:07
  No but the fact that she only has 50,000 followers on her
• 10:11
  biggest platform is wild given how relevant and famous she is
• 10:18
  in like the fandom community. Moral of the story I guess is be
• 10:22
  unhinged and you'll become so relevant that when you complain
• 10:26
  that your 50,000 follower X account has been shadow banned,
• 10:30
  a sub stack Rep might reach out to you and offer you a more in
• 10:33
  depth platform to hyper bully Kylie Jenner.
• 10:37
  Anyways, the final story that I have for you guys today is I
• 10:41
  wanted to talk about the Ariana Grande scalper ticket situation
• 10:47
  that she has now been forced to address.
• 10:49
  So earlier this week, tickets for the North American leg of
• 10:52
  Ariana Grande's Eternal Sunshine Tour went on sale.
• 10:55
  Unsurprisingly, the show's sold out almost instantly.
• 10:58
  Ticketmaster's official face value exchange hasn't opened
• 11:01
  yet, at least at the time of recording, but resale tickets
• 11:04
  have already surfaced on 3rd party platforms like SeatGeek
• 11:07
  and StubHub, and the markups are insane.
• 11:11
  One screenshot that is circulating on X, this is
• 11:14
  unverified. Like the screenshot's
• 11:15
  unverified. I saw it.
• 11:16
  But like, who knows if this is true, OK, But it was a
• 11:20
  screenshot of, you know, one of the shows and it showed that
• 11:24
  somebody was reselling a ticket for $1.3 million.
• 11:29
  And I mean, that's insane. But I have no reason to doubt
• 11:31
  the screenshot. I don't know.
• 11:32
  It was from like an RE fan account.
• 11:34
  OK. So I wanted to talk about like,
• 11:35
  how this is happening before I get into Ariana's response.
• 11:40
  There are a few reasons why concerts have become so
• 11:42
  expensive, like venues holding tickets for presale.
• 11:46
  The fact that Ticketmaster is, you know, the biggest music
• 11:48
  promoting service and ticketing service together, they're like a
• 11:52
  company combined together. So they have a lot of control
• 11:55
  over how tickets are sold. But when it comes to scalping
• 11:59
  specifically. Jason Colbert, who is the
• 12:01
  founder of Four O 4 Media, has done extensive reporting on this
• 12:05
  topic. He spoke to Vox last year and
• 12:07
  here's what they reported. Quote.
• 12:08
  The amateur reseller might not have the money to buy a heaps of
• 12:11
  Ticketmaster accounts, but what Kobler calls industrial scale
• 12:15
  resellers certainly do. This same unevenness of
• 12:18
  resources and dedication is true of pretty much any method of
• 12:21
  buying hot concert tickets. A presale offered as part of a
• 12:24
  credit cards reward program. Serious brokers won't just have
• 12:27
  one card with such entertainment perks as a fan might, but all of
• 12:31
  them a presale intended for an artist official fan club,
• 12:34
  Trivial for scalpers to pay the membership fee and also join.
• 12:38
  There are also places online where scalpers can buy presale
• 12:40
  access codes, skipping credit card signups.
• 12:44
  Ticketmaster has made attempts to tamp down on bots, but the
• 12:47
  software that sophisticated resellers use continues to
• 12:50
  evolve. Scalpers invest a pretty penny
• 12:52
  into buying professional grade tools that make them faster and
• 12:56
  allow them to buy more tickets than one sluggish human could.
• 12:59
  Like subscription based web browsers, Breech Tab acts like a
• 13:02
  brand new user waiting in a virtual line.
• 13:05
  They have troves of burner phones and credit cards on hand.
• 13:08
  Stopping these resellers is a constant cat and mouse game.
• 13:11
  While ticket resale isn't illegal, using Thoughts is, but
• 13:15
  enforcement against the resellers who use them has been
• 13:18
  LAX. All right, so Ariana Grande has
• 13:20
  responded to the whole issue with her concert directly on
• 13:24
  Instagram. She wrote.
• 13:26
  Hi my angels. I have been on set all week, but
• 13:28
  I wanted to let you know that what's been happening with
• 13:30
  secondary ticket resellers has been brought to my attention.
• 13:33
  And of course, I am incredibly bothered by it.
• 13:35
  I've been on the phone every second of my free time fighting
• 13:38
  for a solution. I hear you.
• 13:39
  And hopefully we will be able to get more of these tickets into
• 13:42
  your hands instead of theirs. It's not right.
• 13:45
  I just wanted you to know that my team and I see it and that I
• 13:48
  care very much and we will do and are doing everything we can.
• 13:52
  I love you all so much and thank you for your patience and
• 13:54
  understanding. Yeah, it's so crazy.
• 13:57
  I mean, there's all this new research that's come out about
• 14:00
  how concert tickets have gone up, like the price of going to a
• 14:03
  concert has gone up so much just in the last like 5 years.
• 14:07
  I do imagine COVID played a role in that for sure.
• 14:11
  But regardless, the tickets, like Annabelle and I were
• 14:13
  looking, we couldn't find the $1.3 million ticket, but the
• 14:16
  tickets are insane. Some of them are like $8000 like
• 14:19
  it's and they're like in the bleachers, bleachers,
• 14:22
  nosebleeds, the bleachers, you know what I mean?
• 14:25
  They're like at the very back, OK?
• 14:27
  It's so unethical. It's so horrible.
• 14:31
  Anyways guys that's it for mini scroll today.
• 14:33
  Thank you so much for listening. I love you guys.
• 14:35
  Please remember to rate, review and subscribe.
• 14:38
  Please Spotify star rate US. Oh my God, I forgot to ask you
• 14:40
  guys to do that at the beginning.
• 14:41
  Spotify star rate US. Please buy us a coffee if you
• 14:44
  feel so inclined. Annabelle will talk to you
• 14:46
  tomorrow and I will talk to you on Thursday.
• 14:48
  Bye. I think that mega stars are a
• 14:50
  thing of the past, honestly, like our Beyoncé's, Michael
• 14:54
  Jackson, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga's, like, I really think
• 14:58
  it's going to be hard for another one of those to
• 15:00
  breakthrough. And, and the reason that sparked
• 15:02
  this conversation, I think, is because of a video that Lizzo
• 15:05
  put out where she talks about how the algorithm has meant that
• 15:08
  the ubiquitous superstar is kind of gone.
• 15:11
  The way that the algorithm is set up, no one can serve the
• 15:15
  masses anymore. It's interesting to hear this
• 15:18
  conversation from an artist who has had such ubiquitous pop hits
• 15:21
  because it is true. When we're talking about this
• 15:24
  conversation about there is no song of the summer, that's
• 15:27
  because people experience and they digest culture so
• 15:30
  differently right now because of the algorithm.
• 15:33
  I mean, I put up a video saying that the Song of the Summer as
• 15:37
  declared by Billboard was pretty unanimously Alex Warren's
• 15:40
  Ordinary, which has spent several weeks at #1 It's one of
• 15:44
  the longest running, if not the longest running number one of
• 15:47
  the year so far and has been absolutely huge, a massive hit
• 15:51
  on radio. And yet so many people commented
• 15:53
  and said that they've never heard this song before.
• 15:55
  And that's because we live in our own bubbles where the
• 15:58
  algorithm has become so good and so tied to what you are
• 16:02
  interested in that everything else that exists outside does
• 16:06
  not enter it. And that's good in one way,
• 16:08
  because it means that you get all your taste.
• 16:10
  It means that what you're getting on your timeline is
• 16:13
  probably the music that you're interested in.
• 16:15
  But it means that those kind of stars that define big ubiquitous
• 16:20
  cultural moments at a large scale I just gone.
• 16:24
  I think there's an argument to say that this is a good thing,
• 16:27
  but I also kind of miss experiencing and celebrating
• 16:30
  these large kind of cultural moments as a whole.
• 16:33
  You know, those like summers where Gaga songs will be
• 16:37
  blasting out of every radio or like last summer, I think was a
• 16:41
  rare moment where the culture did all kind of meet at the same
• 16:45
  moment to celebrate the breakthrough of a number of
• 16:48
  artists. But and then this summer, we've
• 16:49
  seen that absolutely collapse once again.
• 16:52
  I think there was this moment where you could kind of sit down
• 16:54
  with three generations of your family and as long as they
• 16:57
  switched on the TV or the radio, they probably knew who the big
• 17:01
  artists were, who the big songs were.
• 17:03
  But now there's just such a disconnect where you might
• 17:06
  actually not know a song that has been number one on Billboard
• 17:09
  for 24 weeks. And that is wild to me.
• 17:12
  And I'm very interested to see what it's going to do to music.
• 17:15
  And I think the advice for artists and how to navigate this
• 17:18
  right now is that your core fan base is the most important part
• 17:22
  now. I don't think chasing hits or
• 17:24
  chasing a certain sound is going to service anybody.
• 17:28
  You're going to end up in purgatory basically.
• 17:31
  I think if we've learnt anything from what an artist like Charlie
• 17:34
  XCX has done and constantly serviced her main fans and not
• 17:38
  looked outside that at all, is that that's exactly how to
• 17:42
  become as big a superstar as you kind of can right now.
• 17:46
  Because outside of your fan base, it's the Wild West and
• 17:49
  your stuff might land with people, but there's a high
• 17:52
  chance that nobody else is going to see it.