Latest / Mini Scroll / MINI SCROLL: 50-day bender girl, Spencer Barbosa "brand trip wedding" + Tana Mongeau vs. Cancelled RSS feed
Transcript
- 0:00Coming up today on mini scroll, the TikTok creator documenting
- 0:03her quote 50 day Bender Spencer Barbosa's brand trip wedding and
- 0:09Tana mojo seemingly wipes the canceled podcast RSS feed.
- 0:14Hi everyone, welcome to mini scroll, the daily Internet
- 0:18culture podcast bringing you the biggest stories from social
- 0:21media, the creator economy and the digital space.
- 0:24Every Monday through Thursday and sometimes Fridays.
- 0:27I'm your host Lauren Meisner, the founder of the Australian
- 0:30youth digital media brand Centennial World.
- 0:34Welcome back to Mini Scroll, everyone.
- 0:36Reminder, help us stop the Bop rate US on Spotify.
- 0:40We're trying to get to 1000 Spotify star ratings.
- 0:42We are like 30 away from that. And if everybody who listens to
- 0:47this podcast today rates us, if you guys haven't already, then
- 0:50we will get there and then I will stop asking you to stop the
- 0:53Bop. All right, let's just get into
- 0:55the stories for today. So the first story that I have
- 0:58for you guys today is a TikTok user named Angie is going viral
- 1:03for documenting what she is calling A50 Day Bender as she
- 1:07finishes up her final semester at the University of Tennessee.
- 1:11Angie has been posting these daily updates of her drinking
- 1:13challenges, sharing everything from nights out with friends to
- 1:17hungover recovery routines. But the thread through it all is
- 1:20that she is apparently drinking every day for the 50 days
- 1:23leading up to her graduation. Initially her content was met
- 1:27with what I would say some belief that this was more like
- 1:32vibes based, if that makes sense, rather than a true
- 1:35documentation of her drinking for 50 days straight Like a lot
- 1:39of users thought OK she's having one or two drinks a day.
- 1:42Or like figuratively she's on a 50 day Bender in the lead up to
- 1:46grad. Like documenting chaotic college
- 1:49vibes but not actually drinking in excess every single day for
- 1:5450 days. However, as she approaches day
- 1:5650, she is currently on day 42. So she has been doing this now
- 1:59for a long time. Her audience has grown
- 2:02significantly, especially over the past week.
- 2:04And it's been made very clear that this is not satire or
- 2:07figurative or casual. Like she has been drinking
- 2:10excessively for nearly fifty days straight and documenting
- 2:14it. So this has sparked major
- 2:16concern from the addiction and medical communities around the
- 2:19effects of long term binge drinking.
- 2:21And then the conversation escalated even more over the
- 2:24past couple of days after influencer Samara Lee Lani
- 2:28posted a response video arguing that the situation should serve
- 2:32as a reminder about digital footprint and the long term
- 2:35consequences of posting everything online.
- 2:38She said many young people underestimate how permanent
- 2:41Internet content can become, especially when employers or
- 2:44future opportunities are involved.
- 2:46There's a very large possibility that that girl that's doing the
- 2:4950 day Bender before she graduates college is throwing
- 2:53her entire future away right now.
- 2:55I want to add a different perspective into the
- 2:57conversation because I've seen a lot of perspectives friend
- 3:00recovering Alcoholics without a great points to all of this and
- 3:04I want to leave that space for them to talk about because
- 3:07they're more equipped to speak. However, the part I want to
- 3:09speak on is the repercussion that her documenting and posting
- 3:13this is going to have on the rest of her life.
- 3:15I don't know. There's this girl that's about
- 3:17to graduate from University of Tennessee, same age as me, and
- 3:20she decided for the last 50 days leading up to her graduation she
- 3:23is going to go on a Bender and she is going to document it and
- 3:27post it publicly for the entire world to see.
- 3:29This morning while I was washed, I watched every single one of
- 3:33these videos starting from day three because the Bender started
- 3:36on day three and then up to day 40.
- 3:39Whatever we're on right now, watch them on just to see the
- 3:41progression. Like Needless to say, it's it's
- 3:44just a sad thing to watch. If you were going straight out
- 3:46of college and you have a lot of stuff posted on your TikTok or
- 3:50your Instagram of you heavily excessively drinking and
- 3:53partying and whatnot, you should take that down now before you
- 3:58start applying to jobs. There actually has been quite an
- 4:00evolution in terms of our digital footprints because as a
- 4:04millennial, I will say that our digital footprints have largely
- 4:08been wiped. You cannot find old Myspace
- 4:10content. What was it like 2014?
- 4:12I think all the Myspace content got wiped or 2016.
- 4:15So anything before that date is just gone.
- 4:18I had news articles that I had written and that I was, you
- 4:23know, mentioned in from when I was like in university, like
- 4:262011, 2012 that are just like fully disappeared from the
- 4:30Internet. You know, huge digital
- 4:31publications are just wiped clean.
- 4:34So I do think it's interesting because the digital footprint
- 4:36that millennials were like really warned about, especially
- 4:39by our parents in those years, didn't actually really come to
- 4:43fruition in the way that we thought it would.
- 4:45But I think we're seeing a new era of digital footprint,
- 4:47especially with TikTok, because Tik Tok's whole premise is re
- 4:52sharing, reposting, duetting, stitching, like repurposing
- 4:56other people's content. So the reality is like, people
- 4:59are writing news articles about this girl.
- 5:01I'm obviously talking on the podcast about her.
- 5:03Other people I'm sure are going to be talking about her.
- 5:05Even if all of our accounts get disabled, like if Centennial
- 5:08closes, knock on wood and I remove all of the content, even
- 5:11if every publication that's writing about her closes, even
- 5:14if she deletes her account on TikTok, there still is a digital
- 5:17footprint of this challenge that she has been doing because so
- 5:20many people have made commentary videos on TikTok about her and
- 5:24short form content about this, and they have stitched her
- 5:26videos and they have repurposed her content.
- 5:29The way that we create content now is off of each other's
- 5:32content in a way that it wasn't like back then.
- 5:35So I actually think in terms of like the digital footprint
- 5:38conversation we are currently living through, the time we're
- 5:41experiencing the consequences of that, the consequences that we
- 5:45as millennials were constantly warned about but didn't really
- 5:49come to fruition for us. I feel like now we are starting
- 5:52to see that another part of this conversation, even if Angie ends
- 5:56up having like no health issues, no issues with addiction, I
- 5:59still think there needs to be a level of care.
- 6:02I know she's young, like, I know she's still at university.
- 6:04I still think there should be like a level of awareness and
- 6:07care for like what you are putting out there on the
- 6:09Internet. Like there is no denying that
- 6:12the final semester of university is crazy.
- 6:15You're trying to make the most of what you know is like this
- 6:18fleeting moment of time where nothing is ever going to be like
- 6:21that again. And you're trying to relive like
- 6:24all of your university years in that final semester.
- 6:27Like my friends and I were like, we're never saying no to any
- 6:30plan. We're doing the full bar circuit
- 6:32every single week cuz it's the last time we can do it.
- 6:34You know when you're like, OK, on Thursdays we go here, Fridays
- 6:36we go here, Saturdays we go here, Sundays we go here.
- 6:38Like doing that as much as you can throughout that last
- 6:41semester. Just like really like living it
- 6:44up because you know that this moment is ending and you only
- 6:46have this like very short amount of time.
- 6:48And it's a very complicated feeling being in that final
- 6:52semester of university. It's very sad.
- 6:53It's very nostalgic. It's also exciting.
- 6:56It's confusing. Like it's a very bizarre
- 6:58experience. I'm not saying that there's not
- 7:00students who are like, yeah, I'm just going to party as much as I
- 7:03can for the entire semester. But I think the difference here
- 7:06is her posting about it, amplifying it.
- 7:08And then because she's posting about it, she feels beholden to
- 7:11this like, quote UN quote schedule where she's like, well,
- 7:14I'm doing 50 days, so I have to drink for 50 days because that's
- 7:17what I've been putting out there and that's what I'm promoting.
- 7:19And that's what people are expecting of me.
- 7:21It's like watching a train wreck.
- 7:22It's watching somebody in some ways self destruct.
- 7:26And it's really sad. Like, there are ways to go about
- 7:29like making the most of your final semester and still like
- 7:31having the best time and still partying like crazy and living
- 7:34it up without this and especially without documenting
- 7:38it so publicly, which is not a good idea.
- 7:41All right, the next story that I have for you guys today is
- 7:44Spencer Barbosa's wedding brands trip has sparked discourse over
- 7:48how far is too far to turn your wedding into content.
- 7:52So TikTok star Spencer Barbosa is facing mixed reactions online
- 7:56after revealing that her upcoming wedding will double as
- 7:59an influencer style brand trip before her friends and family.
- 8:03So in a TikTok posted this week, she explained that instead of
- 8:06having a traditional ceremony, she and her fiance Connor are
- 8:10planning to have a destination wedding inspired by lavish brand
- 8:14trips that influencers are often invited on.
- 8:16But she said the brand is us in this case, and she kind of
- 8:19compared what she wants to do to tripping with tart, which is
- 8:23insane. So what she means by this is
- 8:26they have booked a luxury beachside villa that can host
- 8:29around 20 people. She plans to have themed nights,
- 8:32dress codes, fully stocked fridges in these villas for
- 8:36people, gifts for guests in their rooms when they arrive.
- 8:39Like, you know how when the influencers get to brand trips
- 8:41and there's all this, like, apparel and merchant stuff and
- 8:44constant social media content throughout the trip?
- 8:47She's calling it the most iconic family vacation ever.
- 8:50We are not having a. Well, kind of.
- 8:54Instead we are planning the first ever influencer style
- 8:58wedding brand trip. And we'll be spam posting like
- 9:01crazy. We went back and forth on
- 9:02whether we wanted to elope, have a traditional wedding, have a
- 9:05destination wedding, and then it hit us.
- 9:07Let's just throw a brand. Trip and the brand is US.
- 9:11Think tripping with tart but we're tripping down the aisle
- 9:14and instead of influencers attending it's literally our
- 9:16parents and our siblings. We booked a huge twenty person
- 9:20villa that literally looks like it's on Love Island and we're
- 9:22going to a beach destination but we won't tell you where yet.
- 9:25We are going to have a fully planned itinerary.
- 9:28The rooms will be decorated and filled with gifting every night
- 9:31we'll have a different theme and dress code, the fridge will be
- 9:34fully stocked and the meals are going to be iconic and we're
- 9:36going to be posting the entire thing.
- 9:39This is pretty much going to be the most iconic family vacation
- 9:41ever and it's going to be so nice for our families to get
- 9:44really close. And hi, if there are any brands
- 9:46that want to get involved or if you guys have any ideas please
- 9:49let me know down below. Let's get married.
- 9:52OK, the Internet was divided almost immediately.
- 9:55Some people are accusing her of trying to score free
- 9:58sponsorships for their wedding, and others thought the concept
- 10:01sounded excessive or overly curated specifically for social
- 10:05media. One of the most critical viral
- 10:08videos in response to this was by a user named Brittany
- 10:11Elizabeth. This just feels so dystopian to
- 10:14me. As a girl who is also engaged
- 10:16right now and does social media for a living, I can understand
- 10:20how expensive weddings are and how hard it can be to make real
- 10:24money on social media. I just don't want this to start
- 10:27being normalized. The concept of us being in a
- 10:31place where weddings are so expensive that we're potentially
- 10:35having to have brands sponsor our weddings.
- 10:38I fear this might be the next stage.
- 10:41Now Spencer commented on her video, clarifying some points
- 10:44she wrote. I fear maybe we didn't explain
- 10:46enough, but we already paid for the whole thing without any
- 10:49sponsors. The brand is us.
- 10:50We just want to spoil our family and give them the influencer
- 10:53style brand trip with all expenses paid.
- 10:55We aren't looking for a wedding to be paid for, ha ha, just some
- 10:58skin care in the room to gift our families.
- 11:00Our families are so excited, trust me.
- 11:03And then Brittany responded, ha ha.
- 11:04OK, I think that framing makes a little more sense.
- 11:07I just don't want us to get to a place where we're saying our
- 11:09vows and the officiant says by the power vested in tarts, I now
- 11:12pronounce you husband and a wife.
- 11:14Honestly, I fear we actually aren't getting to that place.
- 11:18OK, so in the scheme of like what they are doing, what
- 11:21they've already paid for and stuff, I actually think that she
- 11:24is framing this in a way possibly because it's like rage
- 11:28bait, like she's trying to engagement bait.
- 11:31Or maybe it's just because she's really young.
- 11:32She's only 23, so she's really young and maybe hasn't gone to a
- 11:36lot of weddings because I would say the more weddings I go to as
- 11:40I get older, the more common it is that the bride and groom do
- 11:45something like this. Not sponsored gift bags or
- 11:50anything like that, but we'll pay for either a good portion or
- 11:54the entire portion of accommodation for the guests if
- 11:57they're asking people to travel for the wedding.
- 11:59Usually a wedding, I think across a lot of cultures, but I
- 12:03would say most weddings are typically like 3:00-ish days.
- 12:06Like there's like wedding, there's events on either side of
- 12:08the wedding, like the wedding day.
- 12:10There's like a welcome party, especially again, if there's
- 12:12travel and then there's like a recovery, right?
- 12:14And sometimes those are themes. Like sometimes a welcome party
- 12:17is like under the Tuscan sun themed or whatever.
- 12:20Like they're usually are quote UN quote themes and dress codes.
- 12:22The difference though, is that most of these weddings that I'm
- 12:25referring to, it's because the couples who are getting married
- 12:28are like in their mid to late 30s, sometimes even early 40s.
- 12:32So they can afford to do those things.
- 12:33I certainly didn't do that. My wedding was at a restaurant
- 12:36in Sydney and it cost us $6000. So I was not doing any of that
- 12:40kind of stuff. But yeah, like, I think we are
- 12:42seeing that more and more lately.
- 12:43There's so much discourse all the time about destination
- 12:45weddings. And I think it's actually
- 12:47somewhat like putting a bit of pressure on brides and grooms
- 12:49who are planning destination weddings to help contribute to
- 12:53the bill. If they are expecting.
- 12:56We're hoping that their friends and families will travel.
- 12:58I mean, especially from Australia because Australia is
- 13:01so far to go to most places. So if you're asking people to go
- 13:05so far like 24 hours on a plane to your wedding, I can see why
- 13:09some people are trying to foot some of that bill for their
- 13:12guests. So yeah, that's why I don't
- 13:13think what they're doing in principle, aside from the call
- 13:16out for like brand sponsors to have gift products for her
- 13:20friends and family, which is also not that unusual for
- 13:23influencers. But I think what they're doing
- 13:25in terms of like paying for the accommodation and trying to make
- 13:27it themed and stuff. And also even content creator is
- 13:29like a lot of my friends have started hiring content creators
- 13:33at their or weddings. It doesn't mean that the guests
- 13:36have to participate in the content creation, but it's like
- 13:38a content creator that's following the wedding around,
- 13:41right? And then like creating like
- 13:42social specific content for it as opposed to like a traditional
- 13:46photographer and a videographer. But I think the way she's
- 13:48positioning it is almost making it feel more out of touch than
- 13:52it actually is. Which is why I feel like this is
- 13:54maybe intentional, like rage bait or engagement bait for the
- 13:57virality to get the brands to send her product.
- 14:00And honestly it's working. I don't know if she's had brands
- 14:02send her products but the virality side of it.
- 14:05Now her wedding is going viral. This ask is going viral.
- 14:07I am sure she's going to get some free product for this.
- 14:10But this aside, I wanted to know because it's like kind of tied
- 14:14into this. Last week, Pinterest Australia
- 14:17hosted a real life wedding at its offices in Sydney.
- 14:21So at the Pinterest HQ in Sydney, a regular Sydney couple
- 14:25like these were not influencers. They were a couple.
- 14:28They got married literally in a board room at Pinterest.
- 14:32And it was like in celebration of Pinterest's wedding trend
- 14:36report that has been released. Now, I feel like that is giving
- 14:39dystopian. I'm sure the wedding was paid
- 14:41for by Pinterest. So, I mean, they got a free
- 14:43wedding out of it. But like, what are we doing?
- 14:45OK. And the last story that I have
- 14:47for you guys today is Tana Mojo has seemingly wiped the canceled
- 14:52RSS feed to replace it with her new show.
- 14:55So Tana Mojo came under fire from her own fandom yesterday
- 14:58when she seemingly removed all episodes of the cancelled
- 15:01podcast from its RSS feed and replaced it with her new
- 15:04podcast, Brand Safe. Obviously no episodes of Brand
- 15:08Safe are out yet, so there are no new episodes on the feed or
- 15:11there were no new episodes on the feed.
- 15:14But she wiped the feet of canceled, replaced the cover art
- 15:17to the brand safe cover art. She changed the feed name like
- 15:20she basically rebranded it Now. This is the exact thing that
- 15:22Tanner and Brooke had tension about on the podcast when they
- 15:25started talking about the ending of the podcast.
- 15:27So on an episode, Tana said that she wanted to remove all
- 15:30episodes of canceled and Brooke was shook.
- 15:33She was like, why would you do that?
- 15:35Do you hate me that much? Because obviously canceled is
- 15:37Brooke's most successful project.
- 15:39Anyways, Tana did it. She didn't do it on the YouTube
- 15:42channel. She did it on the RSS feed and
- 15:44for anyone that doesn't understand the difference, RSS
- 15:46pushes your episodes out to all the podcast players.
- 15:49So like Apple, Spotify, anywhere else you listen to podcasts
- 15:52essentially aside from YouTube. People were really angry at Tana
- 15:56for doing this so some of the top comments on Reddit someone
- 15:59wrote what the fuck? This is insane on Tana's part to
- 16:01go full scorched earth like this.
- 16:03What makes it even worse is that I doubt it's any beef she has to
- 16:06do with Brooke, just pure selfishness and wanting to
- 16:09funnel the cancelled audience into her new project another
- 16:12person wrote. Right, Because if it was really
- 16:13about not liking who she was or whatever she's always saying
- 16:16about it, then why didn't she delete 99% of the videos on her
- 16:19YouTube channel then? Yeah, like if Tana had continued
- 16:22with cancelled and Brooke left and she bought Brooke out of it,
- 16:26then OK, she can do whatever she wants with that feed.
- 16:28But like, this was a project that came to an end and they
- 16:31obviously spoke about keeping the episodes up.
- 16:34That was a topic of conversation in one of their episodes and the
- 16:37fandom was very vocal about how that would be really fucked up
- 16:40if Tana did that and then she seemingly did it.
- 16:43However, a day later the episodes were all restored and
- 16:46same with the cover art and the feed is called to cancel podcast
- 16:50again. Tanna commented about this on
- 16:51TikTok. She wrote it's back was an
- 16:53error. It is back, don't worry, love
- 16:55you honey. So the main theory is that she
- 16:57was getting so much hate and backlash which is why she
- 17:00decided to restore it and then decided not to launch her new
- 17:03podcast on that feed. However, there is one user on
- 17:07the cancelled subreddit who has another theory they wrote.
- 17:09I've worked on the back end of podcasts and this is what I
- 17:12think actually happened with the podcast getting replaced
- 17:14everywhere. For context, RSS stands for
- 17:16Really Simple Syndication. It's basically the master link
- 17:19for a podcast that holds the show title, episodes, and audio
- 17:22files. Podcasts aren't directly
- 17:24uploaded to Spotify, Apple, or other platforms.
- 17:26You upload to a hosting platform and all the streaming apps just
- 17:29pull from that one RSS feed. So if that feed changes, it's
- 17:32updated everywhere at once. What I think happened is they
- 17:35created a brand new podcast, but instead of making a new feed,
- 17:38they uploaded it into the existing RSS feed of the old
- 17:41show. So instead of two separate
- 17:43podcasts, the new one basically overwrote the old one
- 17:46everywhere. Most likely scenario in my
- 17:48opinion. One, they created a new podcast
- 17:50but we're still inside the old show in the dashboard. 2
- 17:53uploaded the new episodes and branding into the existing feed.
- 17:563 the system treated it as updating the old podcast, not
- 18:00creating a new one for all platforms instantly reflected
- 18:04the change because they mirror the RSS feed.
- 18:07That would explain why the old podcast didn't just get deleted,
- 18:09it got fully replaced. It's honestly a really easy
- 18:12mistake to make, especially if you're managing multiple shows
- 18:14or rushing through setup. One wrong click and you're
- 18:17updating the wrong feed without realizing it until it's already
- 18:19live everywhere. I mean yeah, that could be the
- 18:21case. I know it is.
- 18:22I mean, at least for I've used two different hosting platforms
- 18:25and both of them you do. It is a more manual task to
- 18:30archive episodes. You can't do it all with like
- 18:32one click of a button and you also can't then restore all
- 18:35episodes with one click of a button.
- 18:36So, so I feel like it is possible that that is what
- 18:39happened because it seems like it was instantaneous on both
- 18:42sides of, you know, the removal and then the restoration.
- 18:46There's no reports of people being like, oh, I can see a few
- 18:48episodes. Oh, I can see a few more or
- 18:50like, oh, a few episodes are taken down and now a few more
- 18:53are taken down. It was like instant, instant.
- 18:55Either way, it wouldn't be a Tana Mojo Project launch if
- 18:58there wasn't some drama, right? Anyways, guys, that's it for
- 19:02Mini Scroll today. Thank you so much for listening.
- 19:04I love you guys. Please remember to rate, review
- 19:06and subscribe. Help us stop the Bob, help us
- 19:08get to 1000 Spotify star ratings and I will talk to you guys
- 19:12tomorrow for a Friday Mini Scroll.
- 19:14Bye. Centennial World Podcast Network
- 19:16operates on Gadigal land. We would like to acknowledge the
- 19:19Gadigal of the Eora Nation, the traditional custodians of this
- 19:23land, and pay our respects to elders both past and present.