Latest / Mini Scroll / MINI SCROLL: Sabrina Carpenter angers Swifties, Charli D'Amelio dating rumours & JoJo Siwa's rebrand

Transcript

MINI SCROLL: Sabrina Carpenter angers Swifties, Charli D'Amelio dating rumours & JoJo Siwa's rebrand · Mini Scroll

• 0:00
  Hi everyone, Welcome to Mini Scroll, the daily Internet
• 0:03
  culture podcast bringing you the biggest stories from social
• 0:06
  media, the creator economy and the digital space.
• 0:09
  Every Monday through Thursday. I'm your host, Lauren Meisner,
• 0:13
  the founder of the youth digital media brand Centennial World.
• 0:17
  Welcome to Mini Scroll, everyone.
• 0:19
  April 3rd, our second episode. I can't even tell you guys how
• 0:25
  much love I feel from our first episode yesterday.
• 0:28
  So thank you guys so much. If you took the time to post
• 0:31
  about it, leave me a review, comment, all of that.
• 0:35
  It means so much to me. I'm so excited to be on this
• 0:38
  journey with you guys on a daily podcast grind.
• 0:41
  It's been so exciting so far. All right, so let's jump into
• 0:45
  the Morning News. So the first story that I have
• 0:48
  for you guys is that Sabrina Carpenter is collaborating with
• 0:51
  Skims and the Swifties are mad about it.
• 0:56
  So yesterday, Sabrina Carpenter revealed that she is the latest
• 0:59
  celebrity ambassador for SKIMS, Kim Kardashian's shapewear and
• 1:02
  clothing brand. The singer took to Instagram to
• 1:05
  share the news, posting a carousel of Y2K inspired photos
• 1:09
  donning pastel lingerie in a bedroom filled with posters, CDs
• 1:13
  and floral curtains. Both Kim and Sabrina seem
• 1:15
  excited about the partnership. Kim issued a statement to
• 1:19
  mainstream media in a press release saying Sabrina is not
• 1:22
  only a very talented musician, but she also has a fashion sense
• 1:26
  and an IT factor that really resonates with the next
• 1:28
  generation. So many people are excited to
• 1:32
  see their favorite pop girlie Sabrina Carpenter, get this huge
• 1:36
  opportunity to collaborate with SKIMS. Obviously when any
• 1:39
  celebrity gets a SKIMS ambassadorship, it just like
• 1:42
  propels their career forward in a different way.
• 1:44
  It's really interesting what's happening actually with SKIMS,
• 1:46
  because it's almost like getting a partnership with them and
• 1:49
  ambassadorship with them, launching a collection with
• 1:52
  them. It's like this stamp of approval
• 1:54
  from the cultural zeitgeist, like you are relevant enough to
• 2:00
  work with this brand and it's so wild to see how Kim has built
• 2:04
  that. Because, you know, previously
• 2:06
  we've talked about this before, but previously the Kardashian
• 2:09
  brands that they worked on were so just like shitty.
• 2:13
  Like the Kardashians have had so many brands over the years that
• 2:16
  absolutely flopped and failed and were not on the pulse at
• 2:20
  all. And obviously SKIMS is, you
• 2:22
  know, Kim's like miracle baby. But it's really wild how she's
• 2:26
  turned that success into this that I feel like celebrities are
• 2:30
  vying for. Like, they really want that
• 2:31
  SKIMS partnership. So yes, people are excited to
• 2:34
  see Sabrina collaborating with SKIMS. Obviously that would have
• 2:36
  been a huge paycheck. But the Swifties are confused.
• 2:41
  Many have questioned why Sabrina would collaborate with Kim
• 2:44
  Kardashian considering she is close with Taylor Swift and she
• 2:48
  just came off a huge leg of the Arrows tour with Taylor.
• 2:51
  For those unfamiliar with the beef between Taylor and Kim, we
• 2:55
  did touch on it a few weeks ago in our episode with Crystal.
• 2:58
  I feel like I call back to that episode so often, but to cover
• 3:02
  the basics, Taylor's almost decade long rift with Kanye West
• 3:07
  escalated after Kim infamously leaked and edited phone call
• 3:11
  between Kanye and Taylor before he released famous his song in
• 3:16
  2016. The song made various jabs and
• 3:19
  references to Taylor and after this the Internet turned on
• 3:23
  Taylor sending her a barrage of hateful messages.
• 3:26
  Basically, the leaked phone call, which Taylor does claim is
• 3:29
  edited, painted her as like a quote, UN quote, liar in the
• 3:34
  public sphere. Like the message that she was
• 3:36
  telling us as fans was not the same message that was like
• 3:42
  leaked in that phone call. And that basically ended up
• 3:44
  leading to her retreating from public life and the Internet for
• 3:49
  a full year. She moved countries and you
• 3:52
  know, people were really, really upset with her.
• 3:54
  It seems like her kind of underdog persona was really
• 3:57
  challenged in that moment, and that's when people started
• 3:59
  spamming her social media with snake emojis.
• 4:02
  And so that's how we got that imagery for the reputation era.
• 4:05
  So Taylor referenced this whole situation in her Time magazine
• 4:09
  interview for a Person of the Year last year.
• 4:11
  She said, quote, You have a fully manufactured frame job in
• 4:15
  an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian
• 4:18
  edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar.
• 4:22
  That took me down psychologically to a place I've
• 4:24
  never been before. I moved to a foreign country.
• 4:27
  I didn't leave a rental house for a year.
• 4:29
  I was afraid to get on phone calls.
• 4:31
  I pushed away most people in my life because I didn't trust
• 4:34
  anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.
• 4:38
  So Swifty's have taken to the Internet to criticize Sabrina
• 4:41
  for picking, quote UN quote, Kim's side and betraying Taylor
• 4:44
  1 user tweeted. Both Lana and Sabrina doing
• 4:47
  skims. Oh my God, nobody really on
• 4:49
  Taylor's side. Someone else tweeted something
• 4:51
  about Sabrina Carpenter Doing a skims campaign while being
• 4:54
  Taylor's friend just doesn't sit right with me.
• 4:56
  And another wrote I'm so fascinated by Sabrina accepting
• 5:00
  the skims deal because I don't care if Taylor said she's fine
• 5:02
  with it, which she probably isn't.
• 5:04
  But Sabrina had to know she would get lashings for this, and
• 5:07
  yet she did it anyways. There are obviously lots of
• 5:09
  people defending Sabrina as well.
• 5:11
  The biggest defense here is that, you know, Taylor is a
• 5:14
  capitalist queen at heart and she would never get in the way
• 5:17
  of one of her friends making tons of money, money and those
• 5:20
  skims campaigns that definitely are very lucrative given the
• 5:24
  caliber of celebrities that are working with skims.
• 5:27
  So I agree with that for sure. Like, I think Taylor would never
• 5:30
  say like, don't take this. I also think it's possible that
• 5:34
  we are like maybe overestimating Taylor and Sabrina's
• 5:37
  relationship. They're obviously collaborators.
• 5:40
  I don't know if you could consider them like close
• 5:42
  friends, obviously. I'm sure they got close on the
• 5:44
  Arrows tour, but I just think they are more so like colleagues
• 5:48
  in a way, probably. That being said, I do think it's
• 5:51
  an interesting choice from Sabrina.
• 5:53
  Like optics wise, I agree with that third tweet that, like, she
• 5:57
  should have known that this was going to come or she would have
• 5:59
  known, like Sabrina would have been aware that the Swifties
• 6:01
  would have questioned this and would have, you know, not been
• 6:04
  totally on board with this. So it was an interesting
• 6:07
  strategic decision to make. OK, the next story is that
• 6:12
  Charlie D'amelio is allegedly dating hockey player Joel
• 6:15
  Hoffer. Internet users are convinced
• 6:18
  that Charlie D'amelio is seeing ice hockey player Joel Hoffer,
• 6:21
  the Saint Louis Blues goaltender.
• 6:24
  Also, I'm very sorry if it's not Saint Louis.
• 6:26
  I think it is. I'm not American, I'm Canadian,
• 6:28
  so I don't really know. This is the first time that
• 6:31
  romance rumors have swirled for Charlie since she ended her high
• 6:35
  profile relationship with Landon Barker.
• 6:38
  News broke that Charlie and Landon broke up in February this
• 6:40
  year when Landon took to his Instagram Stories writing quote.
• 6:43
  Hey everyone, I would like to let you guys know that Charlie
• 6:45
  and I are no longer together. We broke up to focus on
• 6:48
  ourselves. We are still friends and have so
• 6:51
  much love for each other. I am incredibly grateful for the
• 6:53
  time we shared and hope you can respect our decisions.
• 6:56
  Thank you. I love you all so much.
• 6:58
  The rumors that Charlie is now seeing Joel started after a
• 7:01
  TikTok T page, T Talk Talk shared that the two are quote in
• 7:05
  the beginning stages of their relationship referencing an
• 7:08
  unnamed source. Now it is important to note that
• 7:11
  T Talk Talk isn't exactly a reliable source, but Charlie was
• 7:15
  also recently photographed alongside the Saint Louis Blues
• 7:18
  mascot, which does add some legitimacy I guess to the claim.
• 7:24
  Not so much but some. But it wouldn't be so shocking
• 7:27
  if Charlie and Joel are dating because her sister Dixie has
• 7:30
  been running in that hockey circle it seems, because she is
• 7:33
  rumored to be dating hockey player Trevor Zegras.
• 7:37
  I also hope I said that right? So yes, unclear if they are
• 7:41
  together, it is just a rumor at this point.
• 7:44
  And I said this on a TikTok recently because T Talk Talk
• 7:47
  posted something about Zach Bryan cheating on Brianna
• 7:52
  Chicken Fry. And I know that he has allegedly
• 7:55
  a history of cheating on his partners.
• 7:57
  So people really took that and ran with it.
• 8:00
  And I made a tick tock reporting on that.
• 8:01
  But then also kind of explaining like these T pages, they're
• 8:05
  unverified. Whether it's dumwa or T talk
• 8:08
  talk or whatever, they're all unverified claims at the end of
• 8:11
  the day. And so yes, like, I am reporting
• 8:14
  on this and saying it's possible that Charlie and this hockey
• 8:16
  player are together. But I think it's also important
• 8:19
  to always add that caveat that like, it is not verified.
• 8:22
  This is like an unnamed source. And there is a difference
• 8:25
  between, you know, like People magazine reporting on if Charlie
• 8:28
  D'amelio is dating this hockey player and a random TikTok T
• 8:31
  page. All right.
• 8:32
  And the last story that I have for you guys is that JoJo Siwa
• 8:35
  is causing quite the uproar online with her new rebrand.
• 8:39
  So for the last few weeks, JoJo has been teasing her new era,
• 8:43
  right? She's been teasing her new music
• 8:45
  that seems a lot darker, grittier, less bubblegum pop.
• 8:49
  Essentially, she's kind of wiped that persona clean.
• 8:53
  And then this weekend, she went to the iHeartRadio Music Awards,
• 8:57
  essentially dressed as a member of KISS.
• 9:02
  She's wearing all black. I mean, they're still
• 9:03
  rhinestones, you know, It's still JoJo Siwa.
• 9:06
  She has this, like, graphic black makeup.
• 9:08
  She literally looks like Gene Simmons or something back in the
• 9:10
  day. And KISS.
• 9:12
  And I wanted to touch on her rebrand because I was talking to
• 9:17
  a friend about this yesterday. But I think people are kind of
• 9:20
  being too mean about JoJo Siwas rebrand, and I really wanted to
• 9:25
  address that. We're kind of in the space right
• 9:27
  now where we are realizing what Hollywood has done to young
• 9:32
  people in the spotlight, whether that's, you know, Jessica
• 9:35
  Simpson's book, Britney Spears book, Jeanette Mccurdy's book.
• 9:38
  And then now all this stuff about Nickelodeon, like the
• 9:41
  documentary and all this stuff coming out.
• 9:43
  We're giving child stars grace. We're realizing where we went
• 9:46
  wrong, where Hollywood went wrong.
• 9:48
  And I think it's really interesting to watch how we're
• 9:51
  treating JoJo Siwa right now, and especially around this
• 9:54
  rebrand because we're not giving her that same grace.
• 9:56
  And I think there's a few reasons for that.
• 9:58
  I think A, she has done some problematic things or said some
• 10:02
  problematic things in the past. I know people were really
• 10:04
  unhappy when she defended Colleen Ballinger last year.
• 10:07
  And I know of course, that ex, Oh my God, stuff that came out,
• 10:10
  Everything that came out in that article kind of paints JoJo or I
• 10:15
  guess the people around JoJo as just like another person that's
• 10:18
  exploiting young girls. And I think we're kind of
• 10:23
  forgetting that JoJo Siwa is literally like 20 years old.
• 10:27
  She is only, you know, two years out from wearing bows and being
• 10:32
  the JoJo Siwa that we saw on TV and on YouTube for like 10 plus
• 10:36
  years. You know, she has been in this
• 10:39
  game for so long, so I think we almost like see her as older
• 10:42
  than she is. And I think another big reason
• 10:44
  why we don't see her as like an exploited child star is because
• 10:48
  she doesn't talk about her experience like that.
• 10:51
  She very frequently defends her career, her childhood, and she
• 10:57
  kind of speaks poorly sometimes about people that like the Dance
• 11:01
  Moms cast, for example. When they share their
• 11:03
  experiences, JoJo kind of puts them down and says, like, that
• 11:06
  wasn't my experience. You should basically just be
• 11:08
  grateful that, you know, you got to be on Dance Moms and now you
• 11:11
  have this career. Like, she's very much in denial
• 11:14
  about what happened to her as a child.
• 11:16
  And so I think because she puts that narrative out and she has
• 11:20
  done some quote, UN quote problematic things here and
• 11:23
  there, we don't have as much, I don't know, like empathy or
• 11:26
  grace for her. We just kind of believe what
• 11:28
  she's telling us at face value. And JoJo is still so young.
• 11:32
  It can take decades for child stars or people that have been
• 11:36
  in this kind of situation to unpack what happened to them and
• 11:39
  process that. I do believe in, you know, maybe
• 11:43
  1020 years we will get a book or some type of expose from JoJo
• 11:48
  where she has finally worked through all of this and has
• 11:51
  realized what happened to her. And I think we need to be now
• 11:55
  currently looking at her through that lens.
• 11:57
  You know, we need to give her the grace to explore this new
• 12:00
  identity for herself, but also to make these mistakes.
• 12:02
  Because I think a lot of what we see from JoJo when she is doing
• 12:06
  quote, UN quote problematic things, it's just a symptom of
• 12:10
  her upbringing and what she's been exposed to.
• 12:12
  You know, like when she defended Colleen Ballinger, well, she
• 12:14
  became friends with Colleen Ballinger, who was in her 30s
• 12:16
  when she was like 12. So I don't really think that's
• 12:19
  like a fair assessment on their friendship.
• 12:23
  JoJo was an actual child when she started to become, quote UN
• 12:27
  quote friends with Colleen Ballinger or even when it comes
• 12:31
  to that Rolling Stone expose. You know, her mother is heavily
• 12:34
  involved in the band. There are all these adults
• 12:36
  around that band who are in my opinion, more to blame than JoJo
• 12:43
  would be in terms of how those girls were treated and
• 12:45
  exploited. Do.
• 12:46
  I think JoJo was probably complicit in a lot of it.
• 12:49
  Of course, I do believe the stories that came out of that
• 12:51
  article for sure, But I think a lot of what she would see, she
• 12:56
  would see it as quote UN quote, normal, right.
• 12:58
  Because that's how she was treated when she was 9/10/11
• 13:02
  starting her career online and in the public eye and becoming
• 13:06
  this like, you know, musical sensation, this child star.
• 13:10
  And I think it's also interesting we kind of forget
• 13:12
  that JoJo was like part of Nickelodeon.
• 13:14
  And so we are watching currently all of this stuff come out about
• 13:18
  Nickelodeon, and yet we're not tying that back to JoJo as well.
• 13:22
  So I think we need to be nicer about JoJo Siwa's rebrand.
• 13:27
  I know that a lot of the stuff that we see on TikTok and stuff,
• 13:29
  it's like in jest, right? And it's really funny.
• 13:31
  It is. A lot of it is really funny.
• 13:33
  And JoJo herself doesn't seem to take herself too seriously.
• 13:35
  So I think for the most part it's fine.
• 13:38
  But I think when we're actually analyzing like who JoJo is in
• 13:41
  this new era for herself and criticizing different things
• 13:45
  she's done here and there, I think we need to just kind of
• 13:48
  pump the brakes a little bit and remember what we're watching,
• 13:51
  which is somebody who is legitimately 2 years out from
• 13:54
  wearing bows every single day, which she still publicly claims
• 13:58
  she wanted to do, but she did not.
• 14:00
  No teenage girl wants to be wearing those bows and have a
• 14:04
  car with her face on it. And we doing all the things that
• 14:07
  JoJo was doing until she turned 18.
• 14:09
  And that's also a marker of the fact that she was not
• 14:13
  necessarily wanting to do that stuff, is that when she did turn
• 14:15
  18, everything started to change.
• 14:17
  She started to dress differently.
• 14:19
  She took the bows out. She came, came out as gay.
• 14:21
  She started to rebrand herself. I think we should stop taking so
• 14:26
  much of what JoJo says when asked about her childhood and
• 14:29
  all of this at face value. I think she has not dealt with
• 14:32
  that. She has not processed it.
• 14:34
  And I do believe in however many years we will get something from
• 14:39
  her and we'll all look back and be like, Oh my God, she was in
• 14:43
  front of our faces for over 10 years.
• 14:45
  How did we not see this? How did no one protect her?
• 14:47
  Well, here we are. We're in this moment now.
• 14:51
  All right, guys. Well, that is it for today.
• 14:52
  Thank you so much for listening to Mini Scroll.
• 14:55
  Please remember to rate, review and subscribe.
• 14:57
  It helps me so much. I love you guys and I will talk
• 15:01
  to you tomorrow. Bye.