726. Q2 Pop Culture Report with Kayleigh Donaldson

[intro]

Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to episode number 726 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and my guest today is Kayleigh Donaldson. A few months ago, Kayleigh joined me to discuss the Oscar predictions and other pop culture stories, and we decided to connect quarterly to discuss the pop culture! So this is the Quarter 2 Pop Culture Report with Kayleigh. We are going to discuss the misogyny attached to Timothée Chalamet hate, a deep dive into the public post history of Club Chalamet as indicative of larger issues in fandom behavior, Madonna’s new album, Lizzo’s new album, and the Tartan Army! The through line of our conversation is really fandoms: specifically, changing fan behavior and audience behavior, what it means, why it’s happening, and maybe how it can stop already, before somebody gets really, really hurt? When two book bloggers who have been on the internet for a really long time discuss pop culture, it’s a good time. I hope you enjoy this episode.

I have a compliment this week!

To Michelle G.: You are the human personification of finding twenty dollars and a lollipop inside the pocket of a coat you haven’t worn for a while.

If you would like a compliment of your very own, please have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Patreon support keeps me going, makes sure every episode has a handcrafted transcript from garlicknitter. Hey, garlicknitter! [Hey, Sarah! – gk] You get the full PDF scans of RT magazine; you get a wonderful Discord community filled with some of the loveliest humans, and you get to support the show! Which, if you’re listening, I hope you’re enjoying.

All right, let’s take a deep dive into the second quarter popular culture stories with Kayleigh Donaldson.

[music]

Sarah: Welcome back, Kayleigh Donaldson!

Kayleigh Donaldson: Oh, thanks for having me! It was, we were due a good, a good natter. [Laughs]

Sarah: Seriously, we have not spoken, as you pointed out when we connected, since right before the Oscar nominations. So it has been a hot minute, and it’s time for us to do the Second Quarter Popular Culture Report of things that are on your mind.

Kayleigh: Yeah! I mean, I’ve got to say, we did actually okay with our Oscar predictions. Like, I did say –

Sarah: We did!

Kayleigh: – I thought Kate Hudson would get nominated, and she did, but I also said I thought Timmy was going to win, and a lot changed between the nominations and the night. And we got Michael B. Jordan winning, which I was fine with. I was really glad, actually. I was rooting for Wagner Moura – it didn’t happen.

But, you know, I was so fascinated to see the backlash hit Timmy, because – I’m not, I think saying it’s due sounds really cruel, but every celebrity who gets to a certain level of fame, eventually comes a point where all the people who loved him claim they don’t love him anymore, and he can’t do a single thing right. Like, the opera and, like, ballet comments were dunderheaded? It made him sound like a nincompoop, but people talked about it like he was setting fire to the National Endowment of the Arts, and I thought that got a bit harsh. Him doing –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: – adverts for prediction markets? Screw that. That sucked. He shouldn’t do that. But you know, so now people have got to point where it’s like, Oh, he’s so performative. It’s like, no, I think he has just always been like that. You just, you really believed that he was basically the guy that carries around a poetry book on campus. And it turns out he also carries around a baseball and likes money! So, you know –

Sarah: Yeah! I mean –

Kayleigh: Basketball, actually; he is a Knicks fan.

Sarah: Shocking. And also, who was it that said that he looks like an Italian leather shoe?

Kayleigh: [Laughs]

Sarah: He looks like an Italian leather shoe! Like, it, it’s not that deep. I think the backlash, it, you know what it reminded me of? It, it, and it was weird because, I mean, to, to my knowledge, Timothée Chalamet identifies as, as a man, but it reminds me when a woman is getting really popular, and then one minor thing, and it’s like, Oh, yep, that’s what we’re going to attach all our hate on. Now we have a reason to hate her, as opposed to just not liking her for reasons we can’t articulate. This one little thing that he said became the, the hanger for all of this hate that, like, I was like, People have really strong feelings about Timothée Chalamet! That was really surprising! [Laughs]

Kayleigh: Yeah, and the thing is, by the time we get to Dune: Part Three, which I’m looking forward to – they’re adapting one of the weird books in the series, you know – I am excited to see Paul Atreides go full genocide, like, ‘cause that’s, that’s one of the really interesting parts in, in the series is he goes from being a hero to, oh, actually, it turns out having godlike leaders is bad. I really want to see how he does with that role.

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: By the time we get back to Dune: Part Three, I think people will be back on him. But I think also a lot of people were looking –

Sarah: I agree.

Kayleigh: – for an excuse to hate him that wasn’t as transparently misogynistic as I don’t like his girlfriend? ‘Cause none of them were doing –

Sarah: Oh, that’s so true.

Kayleigh: I mean, we talked about this last time, but, like, the way people were, like, unable to articulate, like, a legitimate reason to dislike Kylie Jenner – Kylie Jenner is now shilling the pervert glasses; that is a perfectly good reason to hate her. Screw that –

Sarah: [Sighs]

Kayleigh: – screw, like, doing advertising for Meta, trying – you know, surveillance for her, you know, for the ladies. That sucks; that is just transparently gross. But also, the guy is doing Kalshi adverts, so clearly they are birds of a feather on that front.

But I do think that, honestly, now that we’ve got over this wave of, like, the Timmy backlash, maybe he finally just gets to move on and people get to be kind of reasonably normal about him?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kayleigh: Now that his biggest stalker has abandoned him to stalk Connor Storrie transatlantically –

Sarah: [Sighs]

Kayleigh: This is another reason I emailed Sarah and was like, Yeah, like, we’ve got to talk about Simone. We really do, because –

Sarah: I just want to, I just want to tell everybody that at around ten o’clock in the morning my time, Kayleigh sent me a DM on Bluesky that was like, Hey, we need to get together; I have some things that I really need to get off my chest. And at about one o’clock, my time, I had not seen that DM, I had not logged into Bluesky yet, ‘cause I try not to log in until after three in the afternoon so I actually get something done with my day? I, I send her an email like, I’m like, Hey, you want to come back? And then I go over to Bluesky, and she’s already reached out to me? So we totally had a mind meld that this was meant to be. Do you want to start with Club Chalamet and fandom what-the-fuckery?

Kayleigh: Oh my God, we have – I, I feel like I could write a PhD thesis on this now, truly. So –

Sarah: Oh my God, me too.

Kayleigh: – it’s just – ‘cause I think we touched on it last time! So this woman is called Simone Cromer. This is publicly available information. She had a Wall Street Journal profile; her name is on her Twitter account, so, you know, just putting that out there. She was the woman formerly known as Club Chalamet, the woman who went on wild, conspiratorial, misogynistic screeds when she discovered that Chalamet was dating Kylie Jenner? She basically has transitioned into being obsessed with Connor Storrie, who is, of course, Ilya in Heated Rivalry. Connor Storrie, who has been famous for eight months? Seven months, eight months?

Sarah: Like five minutes.

Kayleigh: Like, genuinely –

Sarah: Five minutes total.

Kayleigh: – this, this time last year he was waiting tables and no one knew who he was. He is now wildly famous in a way that is frankly scary, and it must be really tough for him.

Sarah: Oh, it’s, I think it’s a traumatic level of fame, honestly. I think –

Kayleigh: I think him and Hudson Williams have got, like – if, if they’re trauma bonding over this, I would not be surprised.

Sarah: No. A, it must be so weird to know that the, that the people that truly understand what you’re going through are your coworkers who are also all going through it, which is terrible for them, and for Francois. But I really think getting that famous that fast is, is really going to fuck with your head. And I, I do not love the way that fandoms are now responding to their cultural and celebrity faves. I mean, Simone is just a symptom of a much larger issue in how we objectify and flatten people out of their humanity. It’s like Connor Storrie isn’t a person anymore. He’s partly a character – which is not the case – and partly just something you can project onto. And I’m like, He’s just a dude! What are you doing to this poor young man?

Kayleigh: The thing is, what we’ve seen him go through is not necessarily new. Unfortunately, this happens a lot with, like –

Sarah: Oh, it does.

Kayleigh: – particularly parasocial fandoms. But I think the reason that it has proven so egregious with Connor Storrie is, one, because this woman has latched onto him, and she has a cycle of doing this. But two, the way that talking about him and talking about Hudson Williams has become this strange, aggressive competition. Like, there is a weird subset of Heated Rivalry fandom where you are Team Connor or Team Hudson, and you have genuinely, like, really, like, verbally violent fights over the two, accusing them of all manner of things that have nothing to do with anything. Simone Cromer has decided she is Team Connor, and she is aggressively racist towards Hudson Williams. And I don’t see this get talked about a lot, because people were doing the whole, like, Oh yes, Miss Club, you’re so – like, we’re, we’re ironically stanning you ‘cause you’re so sort of funny. And then if you read her, like, social media – like, I’m going to just do a reading for you of the one that really made me, like, absolutely lose my mind. So this is what she said about – on a tweet. She also has a paid account, so all these tweets are like four paragraphs long.

>> I wish it were that easy, but some types of people just want to bully others to support people that they want people to support. Also, I really think that what’s at the crux of the people who hate C –

Connor Storrie.

>> – is that they look at him and see someone who has won the lottery in appearance – fair, blond, blue-green eyes, and level of talent – and they dislike how C can so easily lure people and professionals to like him.

She’s, she thinks that Hudson Williams, an Asian man, is jealous of his white co-star. Here’s another tweet, where she basically says,

>> This is why weaponizing H’s identity is their specialty. Just cry racism to every perceived slight and await the panicked responses.

Sarah: Oh my God. Ugh.

Kayleigh: This is what we in the business, to quote Pedro Pascal, call heinous loser behaviour.

Sarah: This is heinous loser behavior! Oh my God!

Kayleigh: But this is, this is her modus operandi. She has always done this with whoever she’s interested in, but it came to this –

Sarah: You told me this –

Kayleigh: – very weird – oh, I have things to read to you; I have blog posts to read to you. But – [laughs] – before we get there, I think the reason she’s come back into the forefront is she was in Paris, conveniently on a family holiday, she says, and she decided, in the middle of a heat wave in Paris, to wait outside of a hotel where Connor Storrie was going, or staying because he’s taking part in Paris Fashion Week. He got to hang out with Madonna; he was having a good time, you know. We like that he is living his best life. She’s hanging outside this –

Sarah: Protect him.

Kayleigh: Yes. She’s hanging outside.

Sarah: Protect him.

Kayleigh: Like, honestly, if Madonna could get into a fight for him, I think she would. And my money would be on Madonna. The new album’s…

Sarah: Oh, I would not fuck with Madonna, no. Nonononono! [Laughs] That’s –

Kayleigh: The new album’s so good. Oh my God, it’s amazing.

Sarah: [Gasps] Is it good? I haven’t listened yet!

Kayleigh: Oh, it’s the best thing she’s done in years. I’m a Madonna stan. Like, I love Madonna, and, you know, her last couple albums have not been great. This is, it’s Confessions II.

Sarah: No.

Kayleigh: It’s a sequel to Confessions on a Dance Floor, and it sounds amazing. [Laughs]

Sarah: Okay, so I –

Kayleigh: But yes.

Sarah: This weekend is a, is, is a very big holiday here in, in the States, and I live outside DC, and I just found out that we are going to have flyovers of all of our different military planes – and we are the United States; we have a lot of military planes – between 1 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. tomorrow, all day. The airport is, DCA airport is closed because of all of these flyovers, and they’re going to go over my house all day. So I am planning things to listen to, and I am so grateful for Madonna, because my plan tomorrow is to just put that on with noise-canceling headphones –

Kayleigh: Hell yeah.

Sarah: – and just repeat. Thank you for telling me it’s good. I’m so excited now. [Laughs]

Kayleigh: I mean, I, I love Madonna, and I, I know in her last couple of albums –

Sarah: Oh, me too.

Kayleigh: – not being great, but this is, like, amazing. But yeah, she was there. She got to hang out with Connor Storrie. There’s a great picture of him at, I think it’s the Louis Vuitton show, where he’s sitting next to her, and Austin Butler’s a couple seats down, and he looks really jealous – [laughs] – that he’s not sitting next to Madonna, which I can relate to!

But yeah, he’s at this hotel, and it’s kind of like, you know, the hotel that everyone stays at at the Met Gala, and people stand outside and wait to see their outfits? It’s sort of like that. But these people, including Simone, were waiting for hours in a heat wave, in a killer heat wave in Paris, to see him for four seconds. Also waiting there –

Sarah: Walking out a door –

Kayleigh: Yes. He’s, like –

Sarah: – and getting into a car.

Kayleigh: While security are pushing people back, you know, so you barely see him.

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: Also waiting here was another obsessive Storrie fan, who then went on Twitter and said, Club Chalamet’s here; should I jump her? And at some point –

Sarah: Ahhh!

Kayleigh: – there was an altercation of some kind. We don’t really know the full story? Simone claims that she was aggressively treated by this person. This person said they were protecting Storrie because Simone tried to lunge at him or tried to push forward to get to him. Basically, if you’re going to, like, if you’re going to hit someone, don’t leave a paper trail? Like, don’t be like, Should I hit the person? I hit the person, and then tweet it. Like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: Not, I’m not condoning it. Just, like, this is, this is loser-on-loser behavior. This is stalker-on-stalker violence. And, you know, it’s that, you know, that tweet where it’s, you know, What were you doing at the devil’s sacrament accusing me of being there? You know. It’s, you know –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kayleigh: But it, it sort of once again reminded people that, and tried to sort of cast a level of sympathy towards someone that I, I fairly disagree with. Simone has a horrendous tweeting account, not just in terms of how she treats, like, the people she’s obsessed with and the people she perceives as being in their way. She has tweeted and retweeted TERF bullshit related to J. K. Rowling –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Kayleigh: – she was retweeting support of Tommy Robinson, who’s a hard right, rabble-rousing, bigoted loser in Britain.

Sarah: Her politics are not a secret.

Kayleigh: Yes.

Sarah: They are not.

Kayleigh: Her politics are not a secret.

Sarah: No.

Kayleigh: She tweeted about how much she loved Kevin Spacey after Guy Pearce accused him of harassing him on the set of L.A. Confidential. Like, I think she is genuinely rotten. But what it reminded me of with this Connor Storrie thing is the cycle that she gets into where she latches onto someone and tries to act as the authority, like, stan on them? And, like –

Sarah: Yes!

Kayleigh: – the leader of their base. And then –

Sarah: You told me this is –

Kayleigh: Yeah.

Sarah: – the third person, right? This is the third person that she’s done this?

Kayleigh: I think it’s more! So –

Sarah: You think it’s more than that? Sweet Lord.

Kayleigh: Because apparently she used to be obsessed with Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder, which I actually can kind of relate to, but she clearly has a cycle of latching onto a specific kind of man. For a while it was Michael Fassbender; then it was Timmy. Apparently, before that, she was into Benedict Cumberbatch. She was very briefly latched on to Sam Reid from Interview with the Vampire, and I’m so glad she’s left that man alone. He’s got Anne Rice fans to deal with! Like –

Sarah: Oh, he’s, he’s, he’s –

Kayleigh: – he has enough on his plate!

Sarah: He has plenty to manage. Did I ever tell you I used to work at a hotel, and I checked Eddie Vedder into the hotel one night?

Kayleigh: [Gasps] Oh no, I didn’t know this! [Laughs]

Sarah: He’s, he, there were three famous, three famous people that I interact with, interacted with. So President Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter checked in under Mr. and Mrs. Driftwood, which will charm me until the end of my days.

Kayleigh: [Laughs]

Sarah: And Eddie Vedder checked in under Robert Robertson. He is a very short man. He was with a, a woman who I think was his partner at the time. He was so quiet and so polite, and he’s one of those people who is very present? Like, when he’s looking at you, you are, you are the focus? I was like, I’m just handing you a key, and you are just, wow! Whoo, the charisma! Oh my goodness! She was obsessed with Eddie Vedder? And –

Kayleigh: Well, I think this is sort of thing, it’s – but the thing that all that people obviously latch onto her is the fact that I believe she’s fifty-eight or fifty-nine years old, and people have this idea that –

Sarah: Yeah, she’s a little older than me; she’s a little older than me.

Kayleigh: And I think that that sort of people still have this, for some reason, people are still very wedded to this idea that the typical obsessed fan is like a sixteen-year-old girl? We know –

Sarah: No!

Kayleigh: – statistically speaking, that’s not true. People, they don’t have –

Sarah: It’s us.

Kayleigh: – they don’t have money to spend, you know?

Sarah: No!

Kayleigh: The people who have the money to –

Sarah: They’re not going to France! [Laughs]

Kayleigh: Exactly! They are not going to France. They are not going on the tour around Italy where Call Me by Your Name was filmed, which she did. They are not doing all of this particular you know, like volunteering at TIFF? Like, you have to have money to stay in Toronto. I go to Toronto every year for TIFF, and it’s not cheap to be there, you know, and if you’re there as a volunteer, like, you have, you need money.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Kayleigh: Some people have always latched onto this thing of her, but, you know, she has done this a number of times. But with Chalamet, we are now in the age of fandom being algorithmically ruled. Like, when I was a teenager –

Sarah: Yes!

Kayleigh: – in the early to mid-2000s, you were in a LiveJournal community, and you locked that shit down. You had to –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kayleigh: – have passwords to get into it. You had your corner of the internet, and you stayed there. If you wrote fanfiction, even if you wrote RPF, you didn’t share it around; the whole point was you don’t cross the streams. And now there’s money to be made in a Club Chal- – I don’t know if she still had it, but a period she did have a Substack page, and she had, had a, it was a paid Substack page, and I know how much money you can pull in on that, ‘cause I have a newsletter. I’m now on Ghost, because I left Substack. But, you know, I know how much money this stuff can generate. And she was getting attention; she got ne, she got a Wall Street Journal profile. She is constantly being written about.

Sarah: Oh God, that makes me so mad. That made me so mad.

Kayleigh: Yeah, the, the, the profile is bananas, ‘cause it’s, like, weirdly fawning and uplift- – like, all the photographs are really clearly making fun of her. It’s a really strange mix.

Sarah: Yes, it’s a really weird tension, because the photographs, she looks ridiculous. And it’s almost like they’re holding her up as a, as, like, Hey, laugh at this crazy, loony lady. But then in the article it’s like, She’s so brilliant and so interesting. And I’m like, what are you doing? Why are you doing that? Who, who made the editorial decision that this is what needed to be in the Wall Street Journal today? Why? Why? What were you doing?

Kayleigh: And I think that’s the other reason that, like, the focus has come so much on her is that she has weirdly been elevated, partly by social media. Like, she doesn’t have a massive amount of social media following. She is not PopBase. She is not, you know, like, in terms of, like, fan followings that you used to get, she’s really, in terms of the numbers, not there. But the name Club Chalamet now generates a certain level of clicks, and she has been sort of elevated in the pseudo-ironic way of, Oh my God, these bitches be crazy.

And again, she is not the only one like this. Clearly, like the way that Connor Storrie is talked about by a lot of people in the really dark corners of the Heated Rivalry fandom, that is unfortunately now kind of the norm. There is – one of the reasons I don’t do fandom anymore, other than ‘cause I’m, professionally write about it, and I don’t want to be in those, you know, those corners, is that –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kayleigh: – I hate how everything is now a numbers game. There’s a weird sort of drive for data from this sort of fans. It’s the way that they, like, the way Swifties and all these musical fans are really obsessed with Spotify numbers; the way that fans get really driven about box office for how much these films made or, you know, the Letterboxd averages or the Rotten Tomatoes scores. You, you see these, these stan accounts and it’s like, The fourth worst song on the second worst album just crossed a million streams, and I’m just like, And? What does this have to do with anything? There’s this drive to have these people be like definable winners in a way.

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: And seeing that being –

Sarah: And you have to ass-, assign some data point to them.

Kayleigh: And seeing this being, like, thrust onto Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams, and to a lesser extent Francois Arnaud, who’d been around a lot longer –

Sarah: Arnaud, thank you.

Kayleigh: – and had other roles people knew him from, like shout out to The Borgias, you know, for everyone who watched that. But, you know, these guys have been famous for less than a year. Like, less than – like seven, eight months, I think, if we’re being accurate. They were waiting tables a year ago, and now people are treating them like they’re, you know, greyhounds that you’ve bet on in a race. We are now in this age –

Sarah: Yes. They’ve lost all of their humanity.

Kayleigh: We are now in this age where everything is gambling. Like, I, you know, if you’ve ever watched any sports event, I believe I saw numbers at the Stanley Cup this year, there was a gambling ad on average every 3.7 seconds or something like that –

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: – I would need to double check. But, you know, ev-, ESPN, which is supposed to be journalism, has its own gambling app now. Prediction betting is a thing where basically you can bet on everything. And I think fandom is now being treated like that because that’s where the money is.

Sarah: I know, having watched television in the States, the two biggest advertisers that I see on a streaming app are sports betting companies and pharmaceuticals. And both of their ads are so expensive. The production value on a pharmaceutical ad is insane. The special effects, the lighting, everything about it is gorgeous, and it’s so expensive. And the same is true of the sports betting. You look at how much money is just spent on the ad itself and then how often you’ve seen it? I can recite some ads for Cymbalta for you if you would like. I’ve seen them every ad break!

Kayleigh: When I was in Toronto last year, the amount of times I heard the song, I have type 2 diabetes and I’m living it well – like, how do I know this?

Sarah: Yeah. Yes, it’s so –

Kayleigh: I have socialized medicine! Why do I know this song?

Sarah: It’s so absurd. I am fascinated by the idea that we have these data-driven fandoms, and now everything is gambling, and now it’s like you have to pick the winner of, of your fandom, and you have to pick the winning person to back, and so it’s like Connor versus Hudson. And I’m sure those two people do not interact that way, and I feel awful for how shitty that must feel to be those people. And the fact that their humanity has been completely erased from it is, I, that really bothers me.

I was a teenager in the late ‘80s and the ‘90s, so I predate the internet with all of my fandoms. Like, I had to hope that maybe Entertainment Weekly would mention Beauty and the Beast with Ron Perlman, because that was probably my first fandom?

Kayleigh: Yes! [Laughs] Can I just say I rewatched a bunch of that show like late last year, early this year, and I was like –

Sarah: Oh!

Kayleigh: – Oh! This is, like, genuinely addictive. George R. R. Martin, why didn’t you stick to doing this? [Laughs]

Sarah: Honestly! Honestly, I, I once talked to Marjorie M. Liu at a conference, and she had just met George R. R. Martin, and he was saying something like he really didn’t want to talk about Game of Thrones. She’s like, That’s great, ‘cause I want to talk to you about Beauty and the Beast. Tell me everything. And I was so jealous? He was saying that, like, the fact that they kissed, it had to be in silhouette because the, the network did not want any indication of kissing, like, not even kissing, which is probably one of the reasons why the sexual tension on that show is woo-hoo!

The other thing, I think, in terms of when you were a teenage fan and when you had internet, is I think that with the, with the Club Chalamet and the person who was tweeting about beating her up, I think for the person who is younger, the online world and the offline world are the same thing. And I think for Simone Cromer, the online world and the offline world are not the same, and she does not see them as the same place, which is why she was like – [sputters] – Somebody, somebody’s, somebody’s addressing me in public? Somebody’s coming at me in public? Like, like, what – how? She’s not a public, like, facing person. She doesn’t do a lot of to-camera. It’s not her, it’s all her words. She’s a text-based weird fan.

Kayleigh: And boy, is she a text-based person! I’m going to do…reading.

Sarah: Oh my God, yes! So many words! But for her –

Kayleigh: So –

Sarah: – the online world and the offline world are separate, and they are for me, too. I see them as very separate spaces. But for younger people, I think they’re the same. The online world and the offline world are exactly the same universe? It’s just how you’re in it. And I think that’s part of why, part of why this got so much attention, because all the other fans know who she is, and she seemed kind of surprised by that?

Kayleigh: That’s another thing! ‘Cause clearly on some level she must understand that what she is doing is now considered a branding exercise and at some…

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Kayleigh: – business. But it’s obviously not her full-time job. She clearly has a decent enough paying job. I believe she works in healthcare or something like that, where, I mean, she has enough money to go on holiday to France in peak season. Like, she is doing fine, and I think that’s, like, the disposable income to be able to go and just stand outside a hotel for – I’ve got to say, if I’m in Paris, I’m not standing outside a hotel for six hours to look for someone for four seconds. I’ve got, like, museums to go to; I’ve got ice cream to eat; I have places to be!

Sarah: I’m, I’m not going to France in June, July, or August, because they believe that air conditioning is bad for your health, and I hold an opposite viewpoint on that topic. [Laughs]

Kayleigh: So I’m going to do a reading for you. I’m not an actress…

Sarah: Oh, dramatic reading! Okay, let me get situated.

Kayleigh: – but –

Sarah: Okay, I’m ready.

Kayleigh: So this is when she brought to an end her fandom. I should see where I can find it. So this is not for Timmy. This is from Fascinating Fassbender, her Michael Fassbender blog, which she was bringing to an end. And coincidentally, around the same time that he got married to a woman named Alicia Vikander, who, with whom he now has two children.

Sarah: Yep.

Kayleigh: So this is when the news came –

Sarah: She likes them single.

Kayleigh: Yes. And this is basically around the time that they got married. And –

Sarah: …think about the Hudson hate, while you’re find-, while you’re finding it. One of the things I think that really ramped up the Hudson hate was when he revealed that he had a girlfriend, and people acted like they had been tricked, like they had been deceived. The minute that he confirmed that he had a girlfriend and was no longer accepting all of the projection that fans wanted to do onto him, then he was, like, the worst. And it’s real easy to just bring his, his being Asian into it. Oh, fuck’s sake!

Kayleigh: And it is also, like, the way people said, Oh, they’re queer-baiting because they’re very intimate together in public, and they’re very close and they hug and kiss. And it’s like, isn’t that a good – like, we do not know Connor Storrie’s sexuality; people are speculating – but isn’t it a good thing for men in general to have that comfort around one another and be friendly? Like, we’ve been fighting for that for decades!

Sarah: Right?

Kayleigh: I think it’s a good thing that they can hold hands in public and, you know, hug and just enjoy one another’s company and be close together, ‘cause frankly, they’re going through a lot together, and it’s probably good for them to have one another! Okay, so –

Sarah: And they were so naked together so long –

Kayleigh: Exactly!

Sarah: – so much time! They were probably wearing the modesty sock, but they were naked together for hours in front of whole bunches of people! Like, of course they’re close! They had to be so intimate in so many different ways as their job.

Kayleigh: Okay, so this is Simone losing her mind over a blatantly fake blind item that claimed that Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander’s wedding was, according to this very, like, the website Blind Items, which is just, like, blind gossip, which is just all, like, you know, people writing fanfiction, essentially claiming that their wedding was for publicity for a movie that he’s made. I can’t read the whole thing because I genuinely will lose all of our minds, but this is a bit where I just want you to read this and just change the names in your head from Michael and Alicia to Timothée and Kylie. I’m just, just saying.

>> For me, as a fan of Michael Fassbender, I’m very disappointed. You lose some integrity when you participate in shenanigans like this. I don’t even know how someone can look at themselves and be okay with participating in a dragged-out relationship that was arranged just to sell a film product. And the lies grow bigger, and the pretending takes a toll on a person, especially if you’re a good person like I know Michael Fassbender to be.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kayleigh: >> And as I’ve stated previously, being a part of this thing of Alicia has taken its toll on him. Now he’s married to her. Married. This is a personal life commitment that no one should take lightly. But so many people do, because you know what? You can just get a divorce.

>> As I stated previously, in Hollywood it looks better for a celebrity to have at least been married and then divorced instead of not being married at all. Marriage is a game for most in Hollywood. It’s used as a promotional tool, and I resent that. There is so much craziness going on in the world. We are inundated with massive lies that affect us personally in the real world and are designed to control how we perceive things from social economics to healthcare concerns to LGBT issues, women issues, minority issues, animal rights – [laughs] – green initiatives, democracy, voter rights, racism, natural disasters, cancer, etc. The list goes on!

>> And when I write for Fascinating Fassbender, I am in support of an actor whose work I enjoy very much and use as a source of fun for my passion for creative writing, escapism –

Sarah: No.

Kayleigh: >> – and inspiration. But not lies.

Sarah: Oh no.

Kayleigh: >> Not some fraudulent scenario they expect me to believe it and respect it. My being a fan should not be taken advantage of. I’m not gullible or stupid, and I’m not going to support fake shit any more on this blog.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kayleigh: >> From this point forward, I will update FF with just Michael-related news about his career. I will never write about his wife. I have no interest in her. With great hesitation, I admit that I hope a time never comes when a situation is introduced on top of this event which could prompt me to decide to close down the blog. I have my own life and a variety of other interests to keep me occupied and happy.

Sarah: Really?

Kayleigh: >> Therefore I will refuse to spend time hosting a blog in support of someone who may be provoked to add on to a foundation of lies. This is not the person I first became interested in ten years ago. I now have the guts to finally admit that what I’m witnessing has just gone on too far, and I won’t be a party to this. Simone.

Sarah: Okay, first of all, outstanding dramatic reading.

Kayleigh: [Laughs]

Sarah: Secondly, honestly, what the fuck?

Kayleigh: What fascinates me about this, like, and here’s the thing is: I, when I, the reason I first started getting interested in, like, the tin hat conspiracies around people who are convinced that celebrity relationships are either fake or real or spinning this fantasy was the RobSten blog that was run by –

Sarah: Yeess!

Kayleigh: – that one woman who turned out to be a grandmother, and she kept talking about how they had all these secret kids who she nicknamed Sweet Pea and Jelly Bean? She writes exactly like this woman. To the point where I was like, is it the same person? But it’s not! It’s just the rhetoric of I’m smarter than you sheeple, and I won’t be taken by a lie ‘cause I know how the industry works. You don’t know shit! And again 

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Kayleigh: – she is crashing out over a man in his thirties marrying a woman in her thirties who he has been in a relationship with, and a very private one. This was the thing that baffled me about, like – they always claim it’s PR. This was the thing about Timmy and Kylie, right?

Sarah: They’re so secretive!

Kayleigh: That’s the same thing about Timmy and Kylie: we didn’t see them in public for like eighteen months when they started dating.

Sarah: No!

Kayleigh: We barely saw paparazzi photos of them. We saw even less with Alicia and Michael, who have never been as big a star as those two people. They now, I believe they now live in Portugal and they have two kids, and we don’t even know their names ‘cause they don’t talk about it! They just have their very private life.

Sarah: Good for them.

Kayleigh: And this caused her to lose her goddamn mind. But the identical thing happened with Chalamet! Like, she talked about it –

Sarah: With Chalamet.

Kayleigh: – almost in the same way. So what really bothered me, and why I, I was, like, really gung-ho about no, we need to take seriously how dangerous this woman could be, you know –

Sarah: Yes, a hundred percent.

Kayleigh: – and, and we should also just, as a rule, not condone this kind of behaviour and not normalize it, whether it’s coming from Simone or whether it’s coming from other people, because – and I think the reason that people kept elevating: one, they found it funny that this woman pushing sixty was doing this, and keeps moving on to younger men? Have you also noticed that?

Sarah: Yeah, I have noticed that.

Kayleigh: Younger men who all, can I also point out, like, almost all of the men that she has been, like, publicly interested in have played gay roles, or they have, like, shipping around them.

Kayleigh: Yes.

Kayleigh: ‘Cause she was a Cumberbitch back when SuperWhoLock ran the internet.

Sarah: I’m sorry, Cumberbitch. Oh boy.

Kayleigh: I mean, you, that, I mean, in fairness to Cumberbatch as well, he hates that name. He has said many times he doesn’t like it; he finds it really embarrassing. But, you know –

Sarah: I can see why!

Kayleigh: – it’s, it’s no surprise. She latched on to Timmy because of Call Me by Your Name, and now she’s latched on –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: – to Connor Storrie ‘cause of Heated Rivalry.

Sarah: Yep!

Kayleigh: It’s a cycle! And, you know, I think the reason that she dropped Sam Reid is ‘cause he has a girlfriend!

Sarah: This reminds me so much of the chapter in Like, Follow, Subscribe, Fortesa Latifi’s book about the children of online influencers. She has a whole chapter on hate groups on Reddit who spend hours and hours dissecting, you know, this particular family vlogger or this mom from a family vlogger. There’s these hate groups, and the way that they talk about people – in this chapter, Fortesa talks about how they really feel like they are performing a service, that they are revealing the secrets, that they are making sure that other people know that this is all a lie. And a lot of them were former fans who have now transitioned to, Oh, well, this thing happened and I hate them forever, and I’m going to talk about it and spend thousands of words. Okay, first of all, you’re still a fan! I hate to tell you.

Like, I decided one day that I was no longer going to read Dooce because she posted something about her child that I found deeply offensive, reprehensible, and terrible. And I was like, you know what? I just, I can’t read this person. So then the thing I did was I didn’t read her anymore. I didn’t start talking about my, my, my feelings about her until after she died.

Kayleigh: Yeah, I mean you didn’t announce your exit from the fandom like you were at the airport.

Sarah: No!

Kayleigh: Which is another thing, is –

Sarah: I was not departing from gate C12, no! [Laughs]

Kayleigh: I think this is the other thing of, like, algorithmically driven fandom is, like, there is this real push –

Sarah: So true.

Kayleigh: – to have your identity of your fandom be like an identity of your ethics. The amount of people –

Sarah: Yes!

Kayleigh: – who latch onto stories involving queer people and see that as an intrinsic act of allyship, as a queer person, I find that to be very offensive. That’s really lazy. Get out on the streets and march, donate to charity. Your fanfiction is not activism, okay? I keep seeing this with the Interview with the Vampire, Vampire Lestat fandom –

Sarah: Nooo.

Kayleigh: – people fighting over, like, pairs and which character is more morally righteous. It’s like, they’re fucking vampires! The whole point is that they’re all morally sucking. [Laughs] Like, come on! Do you want me to crack out the Anne Rice fandom days? ‘Cause I was there!

Sarah: I was just about to say, we could talk about the morality of that whole fandom, but then we have to talk about the author’s role in that fandom, and you don’t want to do that. You don’t want to go there!

And this is all part of, I did a whole post about books as luxury, and I talked about the difference between reading as a hobby and being a reader as an aesthetic, where you have to decorate and perform your hobby as an expression of your public brand, and all, lot of people online are thinking in terms of having a public brand. And the idea that your fandoms have to be ethically pure to support your public brand is truly bananas to me. These are people! They’re flawed! They fuck up all the time! But the minute they become, like, the subject of a fandom, it’s like they’re like a one-dimensional, like a – what were those things that we had when we were kids? Color forms where you would color it in and then Shrinky-Dink it down? Yeah, they’re like color forms. They’re, like, barely two-dimensional, and you can put them in different scenarios. And it’s like, no, this is a person! This is a whooole person!

Kayleigh: And it’s, and it’s bad art. Like, it’s such bad art.

Sarah: Yes!

Kayleigh: I mean, why would you want to watch – to give Interview with the Vampire and the Vampire Lestat as credit, ‘cause the new season’s amazing, by the way – why would you want to watch that and be like, I need the characters to announce at all times that what they’re doing is bad and actually they thoroughly dis-, disagree with it. Like, I don’t need you to tell me Lestat having sex with his mother is bad. The show is pretty clear on that being bad, you know?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kayleigh: There’s this thing called subtlety and subtext and nuance, and also just trusting your audience that, Hey, that unreliable narrator is probably really messed up! Like – and it’s been really fun watching the Why does this show not condemn incest? conversation that you used to get with Game of Thrones, ‘cause it’s like, Do you want a PSA? [Laughs] Like, it’s quite, I think if you don’t know it’s bad, that’s, that’s a personal problem, babe!

Sarah: But, like, if they don’t acknowledge it’s bad and I like it, then people will think that I support, you know, incestuous vampire mom-banging. Like, people will think that that is something I support, so I need them to say it. It’s not enough to be like, Wow, that was a lot, and I’m certainly not ever recommending anyone become a vampire and bang their mom. But, like, you, you can separate this. It, it – ohhh.

Kayleigh: And you can also, like, let the actors have the fun with it, you know, ‘cause, like –

Sarah: Yeess!

Kayleigh: The, the thing that also baffles me ‘cause you, I see a little bit this with the fandom like you see with Heated Rivalry is like the, the urge to push the actors against one another. It’s like, they all clearly like one another.

Sarah: Yes!

Kayleigh: Like, the weird push to be like, why are you making Assad Zaman hang out with that old man? It’s like, you know who wants to have fictional sex with that old man, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated old man? Assad Zaman. He is so – if you know, if you’re not watching The Vampire Lestat, they’ve finally start hinting at Daniel and Armand, Devil’s Minion, for people who have waited for decades, and it’s great. And the fact that that character is now in his seventies rather than his twenties is a really interesting twist, but fandom be ageist. And that sucks.

Sarah: Fandom be very ageist. So ageist.

Kayleigh: So, yeah. [Laughs] I, I guess it’s going back to the Simone thing; it’s just the weird push not only to sort of establish yourself as, like, the moral righteousness of your fandom, but as, like, a leading authority on it. This is the thing that really, I think, makes Simone particularly strange is that she walks into a space and decides that she is the one in charge. Like, she’s always like, I am here for the older fans. I am here for –

Sarah: I am the authority.

Kayleigh: – the women over forty who want to be sensible and want to get away from the young riffraff. But then you look at the way she talks about – this is another reason it bothers me that she’s jumped onto Storrie, ‘cause she talks about him way more aggressively sexually than she ever did. She always claimed –

Sarah: Oh, it’s –

Kayleigh: – that she wasn’t into Chalamet. She always said, Oh, I view him as more like a nephew. She talks about, like, Storrie in a really gross way. She gets really conspiratorial about his love life and claims that he is secretly together with Francois Arnaud and how they can’t be together, and Hudson is always –

Sarah: Those poor men.

Kayleigh: – getting in the way, and all of this daft nonsense that, frankly, you know, tale as old as fandom. We’ve been hearing crap like this for years, but I think a lot of people, this is kind of their first peek at it? ‘Cause I heard people saying –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: – I’ve never seen anything like this. And it’s like, oh, I can show you fifteen years of blogs I’ve visited; I can show you forums; I can show you the same argument over and over again. The difference is –

Sarah: Over and over.

Kayleigh: – we never used to expect all the people who were being talked about this way to be forever online. Like, Hudson Williams –

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: – sent out, like, on the Instagram, like, comment saying, Stop it with the RPF-ing; I don’t like it. It hasn’t stopped.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kayleigh: It just made people madder at him because they wanted a reason to be mad at him! Like, In my comments section I don’t want you being aggressive about my fake sex life with my friends, I think is a very normal stance to have? Like, Amber Glenn, the gymnast, made a comment – not the gymnast –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kayleigh: – the ice skater! She made a comment –

Sarah: Yes! Amber Glenn from the –

Kayleigh: Yeah.

Sarah: – figure skating.

Kayleigh: She, she made a comment about how, like, someone, where people in her comments were, like, shipping her with Alyssa Liu, and she’s like, I have known her since she was ten. She is like my sister. I’d rather you did not do this. It won’t stop people from doing it in her space. Like, I think there is a level of entitlement that has become very much a part of the algorithmic fandom.

Sarah: Yeah!

Kayleigh: Like – ‘cause that’s another thing is, like, I feel like – I, I wonder if some, on some level, Chalamet’s publicist was like, This woman’s harmless. Maybe we should, like, go over and say hi to her…thing. So she, there’s another incident on her blog where she listed like the eleven times that she met Chalamet and was, like, talking about them like they had this beautiful connection. And it’s like, it sounds like he’s just being polite, to be honest.

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: And she got to interview Michael Fassbender once, and you read the interview, and he’s, again, just being polite. But, you know, I do worry that eventually some publicist is going to, not just with her, but other fans like that is, Wouldn’t it be funny? You know, the same way that talk shows love to make actors read out fanfiction written about them?

Sarah: Yes, which I hate.

Kayleigh: And it always sucks, and it’s always uncomfortable. No one wants to do it. The fans hate it –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kayleigh: – the actors hate it, audiences, it just allows them to titter at something gay, ‘cause it’s usually slash fiction. But, like, we don’t need to do that.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kayleigh: We don’t need to elevate that to the new level of, you know, influencers are the new journalists, therefore fans get to be put front and center.

Sarah: Something you said just made me think about the, the, the gender aspect of this? When you were saying that, you know, Simone Cromer interviewed Michael Fassbender, and he’s clearly just being polite. How many times have you heard about a young woman or a woman of any age working at a job who has to be polite to you, and these customers are like, Oh my God, she’s in love with me. She’s – no, she’s just being polite to you because that’s her job. And this is such a common story with men. And it’s, and only now are we starting to say, Yeah, that’s a form of entitlement and misogyny, and it’s really inappropriate, and it, it’s, it’s dangerous to women, and businesses and workplaces and managers need to take that very seriously, that, you know, you’re, you’re, the young woman or any woman who is working the customer-facing aspect is going to meet guys like this who think that basic politeness is a sign of interest. But when it’s her, it’s funny? Oh, isn’t that just silly? Like, no, it is bad on either side here! It’s bad both ways!

Kayleigh: I mean, what it reminds me of is, I mean, the very first, I think the first time I was on your podcast, or one of the first times, we talked about the Seattle Kraken BookTok drama.

Sarah: Yes, I just thought about that too! That they were like, Come over!

Kayleigh: And to tie it back into, to tie it back into Heated Rivalry. And like, you know, there’s a certain subset of people, of women who believe that if they behave the same way a man does, it’s intrinsically feminist.

Sarah: Yes!

Kayleigh: Like, I get to be aggressively sexual towards a man, and they just have to deal with it? Even if they –

Sarah: No.

Kayleigh: – and their wives tell me that it sucks. I mean, you know, we could talk about, like, the, the rise of, like, hockey fandom via hockey, like, HockeyTok and BookTok. I think it’s ultimately a good thing. I think balancing out, like, the horrendous misogyny and racism and rape culture of ice hockey by, by diversifying –

Sarah: And homophobia, yeah.

Kayleigh: – and hom-, by diversifying the fan base is a wonderful thing. I think the NHL have completely shit the bed by not taking advantage of the Heated Rivalry fandom. I think that they are –

Sarah: So dumb.

Kayleigh: – so scared of embracing money and people liking them that they did this. But you know –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: – the flip side of that is also, you know, you have to, like, instigate a level of decorum – you know what, shame. Bring back shame.

Sarah: Oh!

Kayleigh: Like, bring back the certain level of just, it’s okay for you not –

Sarah: Holding my lighter.

Kayleigh: [Laughs] It is okay for you not to yell in public and demand, like, the celebrity’s time. You are not paying for that. I think, I, I was thinking a lot about Simone and, like, all of this stuff in conjunction with, like, the rise of, like, lack of etiquette in public spaces, in concerts and theatre and stuff.

Sarah: Yes! Entitlement.

Kayleigh: ‘Cause, you know, I’d, I had a friend who went to see Mitski and said that people would not stop – Mitski’s a very quiet performer. She was trying to create an atmosphere, and people would not stop yelling, trying to get her attention and trying to get, like, meme material from her.

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: And it disrupted the whole show, and people hated it. Or the amount of artists that have had things thrown on stage and have hit them.

Sarah: Yes! And hits –

Kayleigh: Or, you know –

Sarah: – it hits them!

Kayleigh: – and it’s happened to so many people. And also, you know –

Sarah: We’re going to start, we’re going to start having venues that are like, No, you don’t get to have your cell phone at this venue. You don’t get to, you –

Kayleigh: Well, Phoebe Bridgers just announced that –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: – all of her shows are going to be phone-free. You get put in the pouch –

Sarah: Yes!

Kayleigh: – and all these people lost their mind saying, Well, I’ve paid; why can’t I film the show? It’s like, Why are you fil- – how are you getting your hand up there for that length of time? That’s exhausting. You know, when I went to see – shameless plug: I went to see David Byrne from Talking Heads in March, and it was amazing. It was so good! – But he asked people –

Sarah: Oooh!

Kayleigh: – Please film as little as possible. Don’t have your phones in the air. Please just enjoy the atmosphere. So I got a couple videos where my phone is sort of like, I couldn’t see what was being recorded ‘cause it was here. [Laughs] But it was an incre- – the thing I remember most of that show is getting up and dancing and having him, like –

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Kayleigh: – encourage people to really get together and have fun. And it was so wonderful, and I think if everyone had had their phones out constantly for the big numbers, it wouldn’t have had that experience! But –

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: – you know, going to the concerts and –

Sarah: The world is not Yelp, and we are not all journalists.

Kayleigh: – go, yeah, going to concerts, going to sports events, going to theatre, going to all of these things, it’s so expensive now. Expensive to the point where a lot of artists can now no longer withstand it and have had to cancel tours. A number of big acts have had to cancel entire tours this season ‘cause they don’t have, and people who just can’t pay for it ‘cause, you know –

Sarah: No! It’s too expensive!

Kayleigh: – unless you are the Eras, unless you’re the Eras tour or Springsteen or something, who the hell is going to pay two hundred and fifty dollars for the cheap seats? But when people do pay that and they go to the theatre and they buy their twenty-five-dollar drink, I think there is a certain level of like, you know, Dance, monkey, dance. Isa Briones, who is Santos in The Pitt, and is also a wonderful musical theatre performer, she did the, the show Just in Time, which is the Bobby Darin show.

Sarah: I heard, heard about this. It’s –

Kayleigh: And she had to keep sending out posts on Instagram being like, Can you please stop heckling me with comments from The Pitt? I am doing my job.

Sarah: And it is –

Kayleigh: Why are you doing this?

Sarah: It is, it is offensive, impolite behavior. Like, holy crap, people.

Kayleigh: And again, going to Broadway is expensive. I don’t understand spending the money and thinking, I’m going to, like, heckle this person, and everyone’s going to clap. They’re going to love it so much that I have –

Sarah: Nooo.

Kayleigh: – ruined the flow of the Bobby Darin show by referencing The Pitt.

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: I do not get it. I, I truly, that mindset baffles me. But, like, how many reports have we had over the past couple of years, especially post-COVID, of people heckling performers, of people singing along to musical performers –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Kayleigh: – louder than the people on stage. How, you know, concerts, people throwing things on stage, injuring the performers. You know, Bebe Rexha got a phone flung at her head, and the guy –

Sarah: I know! She had to leave the stage!

Kayleigh: Yeah!

Sarah: That poor, poor woman!

Kayleigh: And then the guy basically, like, he then had to walk it back ‘cause he got charged with it, and he was like, Oh, I just thought it would be funny. Like –

Sarah: You’re not the main character here!

Kayleigh: The, that’s, I mean –

Sarah: You’re not the main character.

Kayleigh: I kind of hate the phrase Main Character Syndrome because it’s, people sort of use it in the way they use performative now, where it’s like you have a personality and are trying to enjoy yourself.

Sarah: No, there’s a –

Kayleigh: It’s, you know – but there’s a difference!

Sarah: There’s a difference. They think they are always the most important person in the room because of their social media following or whatever. We saw that at BEA at the Javits, because there were a lot of people who were there, Well, I’m this, such-and-such influencer. And I’m like, Yes, and you are one of thirty-five thousand other influencers with the same follower count. You are a big deal in your space. You are not a big deal in this space. And it’s important to know the difference.

Kayleigh: And I think that’s the other thing that’s driving it and driving people like Simone and driving this sort of larger – like, the, the most incurious version of fandom that I, that I find really depressing is, it’s a hunt for a kind of centering of oneself and one’s –

Sarah: Yes!

Kayleigh: – perfection and one’s –

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: – glorious creative and moral purity. But also, like, trying to, like, further, you know, like, muddy that space between, like – that we used to have a far more sturdy space in between, like, the artist and the fan. And now the, the, like, influencer culture and now, you know, everyone being online and everyone being encouraged to be online and to monetize it –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: – means that everyone now goes to these concerts and behaves like this. Like, I had a great time at Zach Bryan, but when he did his, like, he does a big re-, number revival as his encore, there was people, like, next to me who were filming themselves the entire time and singing to it, and I was like, He’s over there! Like, this is a great gig. He’s wearing a Scotland top because he, it was the weekend of the football, and they put him –

Sarah: Hell yeah!

Kayleigh: – in a kilt, and it was great, and we chanted No Scotland, No Party so many times, ‘cause it was the one game we won. [Laughs] And you, why not enjoy that incredible atmosphere instead of filming yourself? Like, I sou-, I know I sound like a crotchety old lady, but there’s a proud incuriosity to a lot of this that I really don’t like, and I think that I’ve seen that with, you know – a lot of artists don’t know how to deal with that, and I don’t blame them! Like, I do not blame Connor and Hudson for wanting to sit all this out. I know people, like, keep saying, Well, why don’t they call out these fans that are behaving like this? ‘Cause that’s just going to make it worse! Oh my God –

Sarah: That’s going to make it much worse!

Kayleigh: – don’t, don’t do that!

Sarah: That’s going to make it much, much worse!

Kayleigh: And, you know, we have a lot of artists now who feel like the only way they can really survive is to sort of cultivate that kind of intense, zealous kind of fandom, but ultimately –

Sarah: And the corporations want it!

Kayleigh: And yeah, and corporations want it.

Sarah: Book publishers want it. Film studios want it; publicity firms want it; publishers definitely want it. They want that fandom that will do anything.

Kayleigh: I think that we are weaker for that, and, like…

Sarah: Agree.

Kayleigh: – weakened us, because ultimately I think it is a good thing to have a middle class of pop culture. Because this is another thing that has really been hit post-strikes, post-lockdown, is everything now is either a tiny, scrappy indie that the government of Canada has to fund and it gets shot in like, you know, a month, or it is Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. You know, videogames are now, it’s funded on Kickstarter or it’s Fortnite. Or it’s you know, Grand Theft Auto VI, which is going to cost, I think –

Sarah: Yes!

Kayleigh: – eighty dollars a go, and you don’t even get the disc.

Sarah: Yes! I talked about this –

Kayleigh: And –

Sarah: – with my kids. We watched a dumbass Jean Van Damme movie, and I’m like, We used to have this kind of ninety-minute, stupid-ass action thriller all of the time. I could have gone to the movies as a teenager, when it was, like, actually reasonable to go to the movies, and seen any number of the, the middle of the pack, like, rom-coms, thrillers, mysteries, whatever. They were not the biggest budget. Maybe they made back, and maybe they made a little more, and then they made more in VHS. But there was this whole group of media that we’re now completely missing.

And I have to say, one of the things that I love about talking about pop culture with you is that you and I are from similar eras of the internet, and we were both book bloggers, so we were fans in a very specific way about books and authors and a genre? And even that has changed!

Kayleigh: Yeah, and I, I think that we are sort of weaker for, like, the fact that, like, the mass market paperback is dead. You know, it’s a huge blow –

Sarah: Oh, it’s terrible.

Kayleigh: – to romance –

Sarah: Terrible.

Kayleigh: – it’s a huge blow to crime. Everything now is either hardback or special edition, limited hardback with the gilt edges for every book, you know?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kayleigh: No offense to some of the authors. Like, I see, I, I see them in Waterstones, and I sort of think, do we need to commemorate this book this way? But, you know, fans now like that, you know, latch on to everything like that because it does feel more like a life or death situation. If you watch a –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: – if you like a TV show on Netflix, you have three weeks to watch it over and over again to bump up those numbers, because otherwise Netflix does not care. And they may still cancel it if the numbers are good because of petty, you know, intra-business reasons. Like, The Boroughs was a perfectly solid, lovely show with all these really cool character actors in it, like Alfred Molina and Denis O’Hare. And it gets cancelled ‘cause the Duffer Brothers jumped ship from Netflix to Paramount, you know?

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: It had nothing to do with the numbers, ‘cause apparently it was really popular, but this is, like, the atmosphere we live in.

Sarah: The normal thing.

Kayleigh: And there’s now a dearth of, like, the middle class B-list singer in particular, I think we see this with, ‘cause we were, one of the things we were emailing one another about is the flopping of Lizzo’s new album.

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: And –

Sarah: First of all, regarding Netflix, in the name of My Lady Jane, I agree with you.

Kayleigh: I mean, this is, I think the amount of shows that it’s just, it feels like homework to have to keep up with this stuff! And I think you see a lot of people moving back to ye olde ways of let’s release an episode a week, because it did so well for The Pitt. People really built that audience up. And Widow’s Bay, which is great, and they dropped an episode a week on Apple, and people flocked to it because the, the buzz built, you know?

Sarah: Yes, it was all word of mouth.

Kayleigh: So we don’t have that much.

Sarah: And Apple also sucks! Apple sucks so hard at telling you what is on their streamer. They’re just, it’s like they’ve never heard of publicity and marketing. They don’t tell you nothing! You have to discover it on your own. If you want to be a pop culture archaeologist, Apple is where you’re going to go.

Kayleigh: I mean, that’s the other thing is, like, when they sent out screeners and, like, publicity and stuff for Widow’s Bay, it was pretty minimal, which we expect from Apple, frankly, if you’re reviewing TV. But people flocked to it from my industry because they like Katie Dippold, because –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: – they love Matthew Rhys, and because –

Sarah: I mean, why not?

Kayleigh: – there was all of these, I mean, amazing – they should have let him keep his Welsh accent in it. His Welsh accent is so amazing. But, you know – and they loved all these character actors in it, like Stephen Root, who is Bill in King of the Hill, and Dale Dickey, who’s, like, got one of the great faces of cinema. And they’re so good –

Sarah: For sure.

Kayleigh: – and I love that show, but, you know, once upon a time we would get a lot more shows like that. We would get something that it was completely okay for a subset of people to watch, and it didn’t have to be the biggest hit in the world to survive. But now, you know, music, you see this particularly with the amount of artists who have cancelled tours this year –

Sarah: Oh, it’s staggering!

Kayleigh: – is – Meghan Trainor cancelled hers, Jelly Roll and what’s his face? Post Malone were supposed to go on a big tour…and I, that’s been greatly scaled back. Zayn from One Direction has cancelled.

Sarah: I, I –

Kayleigh: The Pussycat Dolls.

Sarah: – I did think that Jelly Roll and Post Malone were the same person for a little while, so I can understand why they went on tour together.

Kayleigh: There is a great joke in The Vampire Lestat where he’s touring these tiny little, like one-thousand-seat…places and he can’t sell them out, and he’s talking about how he’s going to be the biggest star in the world, and Daniel says, Jelly Roll just sold out that arena. [Laughs] Made me laugh very hard.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kayleigh: ‘Cause, and there’s also jokes in it where, like, where Lestat is mad that Drake is outselling him, and it’s like, you shouldn’t have to know who Drake is. You’re too –

Sarah: No, buddy.

Kayleigh: – you’re too classy and French for this…

Sarah: You, you don’t need to worry about that. So do you want to talk about Lizzo?

Kayleigh: Yeah, we have to! I think this is –

Sarah: I would love to hear your thoughts on this –

Kayleigh: – so –

Sarah: – ‘cause it’s related, because she has or had a fandom! There were definitely –

Kayleigh: Yeah, I mean –

Sarah: – Lizzo fans!

Kayleigh: Well, like, Lizzo’s last album debuted at number two on the Billboards Top 100. It won her a Grammy. It had a massive number of big hits. Her new album, which is –

Sarah: It was everywhere.

Kayleigh: Yeah. Her new album is called Bitch. It prem-, it landed with very little publicity. I believe the official numbers have its first week sales – or equivalent sales, which is basically where they kind of add up streaming songs to make it seem like a full album – between about two and a half to three thousand. That’s, that’s –

Sarah: Ouch, ouch!

Kayleigh: That doesn’t even, that doesn’t even get you onto the Billboard Top 200, to put that into perspective. The next week’s sales, I believe, got down to about six hundred. And this is an unmitigated flop. And I’ve seen a lot of people –

Sarah: Oof!

Kayleigh: – surprised by this, and they’ve cited, Well, the lawsuit against her probably made an impact. The fact that she changed her physical image and lost the body positivity thing made an impact. I don’t disagree with that to an extent, but I think that it ignores that actually, while her, that, that drop is very drastic? I actually don’t think it’s all that unusual for an artist’s time to run its course. To me, Lizzo is such a fundamentally 2019 artist. [Laughs] You know, self-confidence plays in Target, plays at hen dos, makes you feel good about yourself. You get together and feel good as hell, and that’s good. Here’s the thing: that is an, ultimately a great demographic to appeal to. I don’t know –

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: – if she necessarily had the way to evolve to keep up with the times, but most artists don’t. This is the thing: we used to have –

Sarah: No!

Kayleigh: – a middle class of pop where you could have your Paula Abduls, and they’d have these, like, huge albums and then they’d go away, you know.

Sarah: Two albums, maybe three? And then we’re good.

Kayleigh: Yeah!

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: Cyndi Lauper! A huge album, second one not as big, third one not as big, she goes off and does other things. That is a perfectly normal career to have.

Sarah: Doesn’t she have an EGOT now?

Kayleigh: She has an EGOT now, I believe! She certainly has a Tony, ‘cause she did the Kinky Boots musical. But, you know, people love Cyndi Lauper. She writes musicals, she does acting, she does tours. Like, it is not a shameful thing to be Cyndi Lauper –

Sarah: She needs an Oscar.

Kayleigh: – because –

Sarah: Cyndi Lauper is short an Oscar. All right, so –

Kayleigh: Right.

Sarah: – next year I want whatever it is.

Kayleigh: [Laughs]

Sarah: She needs to go up against Diane Warren for Song of the Year, and she needs to win the Oscar.

Kayleigh: Oh, my arch nemesis Diane Warren. [Laughs]

Sarah: [Gasps] I, so I listened to this podcast called Fixing Famous People, and they did a public episode about, like, what is up with Diane Warren, and they did a behind-the-paywall episode where they looked at every song that she’d been nominated for and talked about how much they sucked, and it was so satisfying. [Laughs]

Kayleigh: Oh yeah, I, I wrote a piece for Paste where I talked about, like – yeah.

Sarah: And she DMed you!

Kayleigh: She did! I wrote a piece for Paste basically being like, Her omnipresence at the Oscars is weird because these songs are all like – the past ten years of her nominations for Best Original Song are bad. Once upon a time, she was getting nominated for “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” or “Can’t Fight the Moonlight.” Great songs. She can be a great pop song writer, but she is so desperate to win an Oscar, she will write dirge for films that no one has even heard of. And I made this point –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Kayleigh: – and I was not the first person to make this point, and I got this weird, mean DM from her where she says, You must have been a mean girl in high school, and, you know, I must have been so miserable. And then K-Pop Demon Hunters beat her this year, and I was like, Well done, “Golden”! Love that song! Just, just –

Sarah: Oh!

Kayleigh: – an incredible pop! So –

Sarah: Justice for Kayleigh!

Kayleigh: – as far as I’m concerned, I never want her to win. [Laughs] And I know it’s petty, but she’s also just like, the only thing she does online is rant about wanting an Oscar and run into people’s comments saying, ‘Do you condemn Hamas?’ if they’re in any way pro, like, Gaza? So, like, you know, and let go back, if you write –

Sarah: Honey.

Kayleigh: – “Can’t Fight the Moonlight” again, we’ll talk. But you haven’t written that in twenty-five years. So –

Sarah: No. And that song –

Kayleigh: – you know –

Sarah: – whoo! That song is –

Kayleigh: – congrat-, congratulations to K-Pop Demon Hunters, but –

Sarah: Ugh!

Kayleigh: I’m actually surprised she hasn’t written for Lizzo. Maybe that’s Lizzo’s attempted comeback. ‘Cause –

Sarah: Hm!

Kayleigh: – yeah, again, like, it, once upon a time we had these people who, you know, it was perfectly okay to like their songs and not attach your entire personality to the act. And I think that that’s –

Sarah: You’re not allowed to just like things anymore.

Kayleigh: Yeah!

Sarah: They have to embody – you have to embody them; they have to embody you. They become signifiers and signals of your morals and your ethics as part of your personal brand. It’s like you, the fandoms that you have are, like, accessories to yourself and your persona. It’s so weird to me. And it’s very, it’s very externally driven? It’s, it’s like Jibbitz for your personality. So you are a croc and you just got so many holes, and you’ve got to Jibbitz all your fandoms and make sure it looks really good.

Kayleigh: I mean, it’s the fact that fandom, like, everyone has, like, a nickname for one another, and that’s old! Like, the Dead, you know, the Grateful Dead had the, the Deadheads all the way back in like the ‘60s and ‘70s –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Kayleigh: – and those people are still going. Like, respect –

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Kayleigh: – you know.

Sarah: My in-laws are, my in-laws are real hippies. They, they were at Woodstock, the original one. Oh yeah. They, they know.

Kayleigh: So, you know, it’s not new. I mean, but again, going back to the almighty algorithm, going back to, like, this drive for the fact that there’s so much less money now, unless you’re a Taylor Swift or a Beyoncé, you know, the idea of being middle of the pack is seen as sort of a failure!

Sarah: Yeah!

Kayleigh: And yet, you know, and we don’t have really the structures in place to support that anymore. Like, Meghan Trainor cancelled this big arena tour she was going to do. Why is Meghan Trainor on an arena tour? Like, why is –

Sarah: Why was she trying to sell arenas? She is a TikTok meme artist. She is, she is one of the artists who I categorize under memes. She’s a sound clip on TikTok. She’s a sound clip on Instagram. She is a meme artist. Arenas? No. Smaller venues would have been dope. Would have been so fun.

Kayleigh: Well, that’s the thing is, once upon a time an artist like her could sell out, to give an ex-, example, there’s, we now have, like, a concert venue in Dundee called the LiveHouse, and it’s aiming for three thousand capacity. Meghan Trainor could do a three- to five-thousand capacity tour –

Sarah: Easy.

Kayleigh: – and it would sell out easily. If you did, like, affordable tickets – ‘cause her, her base is, like, mums and daughters and, like, you know –

Sarah: Yes!

Kayleigh: – like –

Sarah: And you –

Kayleigh: – and that’s a great demographic.

Sarah: – you can’t be charging all that.

Kayleigh: You know, that’s the thing is, do you how much money Pink makes appealing to mums? Like, do you know that –

Sarah: Oh my God.

Kayleigh: – that woman could do forty-eight nights in Australia and half the country goes! Like, that is a huge demographic to do. It’s a good business. But it’s not cool, and I think everyone now is desperate not only for the money of an Eras tour, of a Renaissance tour, of a Celebration tour, of, like, Coldplay’s tours are, are really big as well, but the clout of it. You know –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Kayleigh: – that has to be seen as cool. And not everyone is really cool! And I think that that’s a, that’s a good thing! I think ultimately, like, we need a bigger spread of that.

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: And I think a lot of these artists are being screwed over by Live Nation. I think a lot of them are being screwed over by management who think –

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: – not only do we not care about making some of the money, we have to make all of the money, but we have to treat your fans like fools in the process. ‘Cause again, no one should be paying two hundred and fifty dollars a seat for the, the back of the row for Meghan Trainor.

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: You know, they should not be doing that for the, not even all the Pussycat Dolls! Three of the Pussycat Dolls.

Sarah: Just three. Not, not all –

Kayleigh: Just three!

Sarah: – not all; just the three.

Kayleigh: You know. They should not be doing that for – God, who was the other one that cancelled big? – Zayn from One Direction, who never goes on tour, and frankly his star is dwindling, like, as, unless you’re Harry Styles, most of the One Direction guys are now mid tier, and that’s fine! We should have that!

Sarah: It’s weird to be telling an artist that if you don’t sell out an arena that you’re, that you’re failing. Like, we have other venues! I, we, they, I know where they are! Like, what, what is going on, that this is the expectation?

And the same is true in publishing, ‘cause we have so much sort of like fast fashion publishing, where, where a publisher will scoop up somebody who has online indie sales, put them in print in a special edition, and then if the next book doesn’t do as well, they just drop them and move on to the next one. It has to be gangbusters or it’s not okay; it’s, it’s nothing. Like, what the fuck?

Kayleigh: But, you know, with Lizzo, I was thinking about this because, the people are saying, Oh, it’s such a shock that she had this job. But you know, once upon a time you had an artist who – once the hits, you know, the, the people were there for the hits. They weren’t there for the entire cult, you know. There are different artists –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kayleigh: – like, Lady Gaga fans will be there till the end. She has cultivated this very dedicated fan base, but she’s also someone who knows how to evolve with the times, is very savvy about her career. Like, Beyoncé has this; Madonna has this.

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: Generational talents have this, but they are the exception; they are not the rule. And then there are the people who, once the hits stop coming, once the music’s not good anymore, people just move on, and I, I think ultimately that’s one of the big driving forces with Lizzo. And I don’t want to discount the horrendous misogyny and racism that has been directed towards her. You see that, that whole thing of, like, I’ve been waiting for this downfall. What, what, what on earth are you talking about? Do you treat Chris Brown this way? I wish.

Sarah: No! God –

Kayleigh: But, you know –

Sarah: – I wish people did!

Kayleigh: – the new album, it’s, it’s not very good, you know?

Sarah: Yeah!

Kayleigh: It’s okay; it’s not a disaster; I’ve, I’ve heard worse music. But I also understand that this is not for the streaming audience, it’s not for the radio audience, which is still a really big deal for a lot of artists. And rad-, radio is as rigged as pro wrestling. So I, when she made a tweet –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Kayleigh: – where she said something to the effect of, I’m being kept off radio, you know; I used, that used to be where my, my audience was and I’m not there anymore, I kind of understand that. I also think that the music is-, isn’t there. This happens. And, you know, again…

Sarah: See also Katy comma Perry.

Kayleigh: Yeah, exactly! That’s another thing! It’s like some artists just, their time comes. And –

Sarah: Yeah!

Kayleigh: – you could deal with it by downgr-, downsizing and maybe going on to being more niche audience. But I think once you’ve had that taste of superstardom, it’s hard to let it go, and I get that. It must be weird to go from playing in front of a hundred thousand people to no one will, like, even take your record for free, you know.

Sarah: What was it –

Kayleigh: And Justin Trudeau has not got payola money, as far as I know.

Sarah: No, no.

Kayleigh: So…

Sarah: Was it called blue dot syndrome when you look at the, the seating chart and it’s all blue dots of available seats? Yeah.

Kayleigh: Blue dot fever, yeah. And –

Sarah: Blue dot fever, that’s what it is.

Kayleigh: That’s, I mean, again, I, ‘cause I’ve –

Sarah: That’s a real problem.

Kayleigh: – been to gigs, and I’ve seen this happen and, you know – get yourself on a seat filler website, guys, ‘cause you can get some great deals.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Kayleigh: But I remember that that’s another thing that a lot of fans are really weird about. It’s like, Ha-ha, your tickets are cheaper now. ‘Cause I saw people ragging on Bebe Rexha when she did a gig and tickets were ten dollars, and it’s like, I would see Bebe Rexha for ten dollars. I’d get…

Sarah: I’m going to that show!

Kayleigh: I would have, I would have a good fucking time! Because once upon a time going out for a night at, on, at a concert was an affordable thing to do on a regular basis. And –

Sarah: Kayleigh, I went to the original HORDE Festival. This was in the ‘90s. I went to the original HORDE Festival. It was all day, three stages. I saw Dave Matthews Band, the Allman Brothers, G. Love & Special Sauce, all of these people who were on their way up or were already huge. It was all day. And I want to say it was sixty dollars for that ticket?

Kayleigh: You know, we used to be a society.

Sarah: Which at the time for me was a lot? But oh! So amazing!

Kayleigh: I actually, have a list of, like, I have my bucket list of concerts that I need to go to before the artist or I die, and I have put a hard limit on most of the money I’m willing to spend for that. I’m really lucky that I can jump on a plane and go to Dublin and get the EU prices, ‘cause Brexit ruined so many things for us.

Sarah: Ohhh, yeah.

Kayleigh: ‘Cause, like, when I saw Madonna, I, I went to see her in Denmark, and it was eighty-five euros. Once I went –

Sarah: What?!

Kayleigh: Yeah, it was, once I put it through the kroner to euros to pounds, it worked out about eighty-five euros. And then I saw David Byrne; my ticket in Dublin was half the price I would have paid for not great seats in Scotland.

Sarah: Of course.

Kayleigh: So, you know, I went – by the way, I went on the weekend that Scotland was playing Ireland in the rugby. The Scottish rugby team was on my flight. It was amazing. [Laughs] All these –

Sarah: Oh my gosh!

Kayleigh: – giant men in their uniforms, and they all had their initials on their backpacks like toddlers in case they got lost! And I was just, like, trying really sneakily –

Sarah: That’s so cool.

Kayleigh: – to take pictures of Sione, who’s our captain.

But no, if Patti Smith comes to Scotland, I will consider going over a hundred pound. But it’s going to need to be –

Sarah: Fair.

Kayleigh: – like, you know, really special circumstances. But now I see people talking about concert tickets, and it’s, you know, Oh, I paid a hundred and twenty pounds for this. Oh, that’s very reasonable. No! That, once upon a time, that would have got you in the front row, and you would have gotten Tom Jones’ underwear flung at you for that price.

Sarah: Oh yeah! And a lot of the venues around me in DC are open? They’re outside. I’m not going to want to sit outside in thirty-five degrees centigrade weather with humidity and bugs and drunk people. But if you gave me ten-dollar Bebe Rexha tickets where I could dance on that lawn, I am there the whole night; I don’t care how many mosquitoes I feed. It, it’s a much better experience.

Kayleigh: Yeah! And I think that that would have been a really interesting kind of spot for an artist like a Lizzo or a, you know –

Sarah: Yeah!

Kayleigh: – Bebe Rexha, an Ava Max. You know, mid-level pop, which we used to, we used to have a pop middle class. You know, we used to –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: – you know, do things like this. It used to be, once upon a time, the only artists who were willing to charge that amount of money were people like a Taylor Swift –

Sarah: Yes!

Kayleigh: – or a Beyoncé or –

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: – you know. I mean, Coldplay are a really big touring act, or, like, the, the granddaddies, like, you know, like the Rolling Stones. You know, like –

Sarah: Yep.

Kayleigh: – people who you were always like, This might be their last tour, so pay the money.

Sarah: Well, they live forever. I don’t know how, but they do.

Kayleigh: Yeah, I mean I’ve, Keith’s going to pull it off; he will.

Sarah: Oh yeah. He’ll live forever.

Kayleigh: So, you know, I do feel for Lizzo in the sense that it sucks to suddenly be labeled a flop. It sucks to have –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: – that mark against your name for trying to change up your sound a little bit. But I also think that – and, and also because of the way people reacted to it. They, they couldn’t just be normal about it and just be like, Well, you know, maybe it wasn’t for us; maybe it wasn’t for them. We just have to kind of have this, this pop middle class.

We don’t have these things anymore in the same way we don’t have it with films, we don’t have it with games, we don’t have it with books. And I think that we’re all poorer for that, because it just makes the, like, aggressive fandom stuff even worse. Like, it is –

Sarah: Agree.

Kayleigh: – exhausting to me, and frankly, like, goes against all of my beliefs to see people cheering on Taylor Swift becoming a billionaire; to see Rihanna becoming a billionaire; to see people, like –

Sarah: No.

Kayleigh: – brag about how much money they spent on an artist like this. Like, the people – like, you should not have had to buy dozens of copies of the same terrible album to support an artist. You should not have been pushed into that position. And obviously, these people have autonomy, but the artist really pushes it! You know, and yes, everyone does this now. They have all these variants ‘cause they have to game the charts; like, K-pop basically taught us how to do this.

Sarah: Yep!

Kayleigh: When one person does it much more than the other people, like, we really have to call out how creatively and environmentally disastrous that is.

Sarah: Have I told you, by the way, my unified theory of Katy Perry?

Kayleigh: No! I don’t think I’ve heard this one.

Sarah: Here is my theory about Katy Perry: she has taken a tour through her career through every camp aesthetic, and has been replaced in all of them since she was there. So we used to have this sort of sexy Candy Land, sort of Kawaii iconography. Well, we have K-pop for that now. And then she did the sort of retro ‘50s, kitschy, sort of the sex kitten, almost burlesque, but we have Sabrina Carpenter now. Messy, defiant, rebellious? Okay, we’ve got Charli XCX; we’ve got Olivia Rodrigo; we even have Kesha back!

Kesha is the perfect middle-class artist, by the way. She owns her shit; she is selling out Red Rocks venue out in, out west; she sells out concerts in Australia, but they’re not arenas; they’re just smaller venues. She’s a really good example of a middle-class artist who’s, like, doing it on her own ‘cause she’s independent now.

Katy Perry in, in drag! Well, we have Chappell Roan! Retro nostalgia camp. Well, that’s what Dua Lipa does. And then she had that sort of horror thing where she did that song with, with Kanye, “E.T.” Well, we have, Lady Gaga does that way better with much more depth and much more nuance. And also you have people like Doja Cat who go hard into fashion and cover their whole body in red and wear spikes on their head.

She has been outclassed in every niche that she has been in, and she has run out of niches?
Like, she played the coronation a couple years ago, and now everything she’s doing is flopping. Like, she, she does not have any more niches to occupy because all the ones that she was in are occupied by people who are doing it bigger and better and are, who are younger.

Kayleigh: And trying to make music to appeal to the Billboard charts, to the widest audience possible, got her back into bed with accused rapist Dr. Luke, and all the music was bad. It didn’t sound –

Sarah: Yes!

Kayleigh: – anything like someone was wanting to listen to! I mean, she got Doechii’s, you know, rap on one of those songs, and no one cared! And Doechii was like the biggest thing in the world at that time. I mean –

Sarah: I know.

Kayleigh: I think I, I’m always that thing of, if I had that sort of level of access to people, would you not want to go work with the really cool indie people in pop? Would you not have wanted to go work with –

Sarah: Oh!

Kayleigh: – like a Jesse Ware or, you know, a Troye Sivan. Would you not want to go work with all these really cool producers who – like the people that basically made Charli Charli before she blew up with Brat? You know, you have so many options. But also her aging into being like an, a politician’s wife is kind of what I expected from her. [Laughs]

Sarah: I mean, it is very –

Kayleigh: I know he’s not a politician anymore, but, like, let’s be honest: like, that, that makes sense.

Sarah: They’re, the thing about them is that they are both cringe in the exact same way from completely separate venues. They are equal levels of cheese and cringe, and that’s why they work together? I’m sure they have a great time, but they are the exact same level from completely opposite venues, from music and politics, not even the same country. It’s kind of incredible that they found each other, and I actually hope that they are very happy.

You wanted, you mentioned that you wanted to talk about the Tartan Army.

Kayleigh: Oh, my people. Yes.

Sarah: And I have a, I have a story for you; I thought about you. So right after the Knicks won, right when Scotland was showing up in New York, we were in New York for a couple of days. We, we were on the subway – and I used to work in New York, so my husband and I were both very fluent in the subway; we kind of just move around. And this was a double platform station, where one line was on one and the other was on the bottom, and there’s these four very, very large; very, very red-faced; very sweaty; not-sober men. And they’re just sort of going, All right, we need to get on. I’m like, Are you, are you lost? They’re all Scottish. They were all trying to get to Penn Station. And I’m like, Oh, that’s where we’re going. We’re going to that stop, so come with us. We just escorted them through the subway, and I’m like, Where are you from? And I’m like, If Kayleigh’s dad is in this group –

Kayleigh: [Laughs]

Sarah: – I’m going to shit my pants. But no, they were from Fife? They were super loving New York. They had the –

Kayleigh: That is just across the water from me, it must be said.

Sarah: Yeah! I was like, I was like, Is one of you, is one of you Kayleigh’s dad? Just in case. But no. They were so lovely. They were having the most glorious, wonderful time. And I read somebody on Bluesky, I wish I could remember who, say that for America, the World Cup is like having a sleepover with your cousins who you never see because your parents hate each other.

Kayleigh: Yeah! [Laughs]

Sarah: That’s the whole vibe!

Kayleigh: Honestly, like – so, to put it into perspective, the last time Scotland was at the World Cup, I was eight years old; I am now thirty-six. The last time –

Sarah: Yep! Been a minute! [Laughs]

Kayleigh: – Scotland won a game at the World Cup was the year I was born.

Sarah: Woof!

Kayleigh: So when it happened, when they qualified with this amazing game against Denmark – go watch it on YouTube; it is the best thing ever. It’s like four-two victory, and three of the goals are like the grow, greatest goals scored, scored in Scottish football history. But when it happened, we knew Scotland is going to have the best time there. We know we’re not getting far. We, we, we probably could have – we, actually, our, our manager just recently quit ‘cause we didn’t get far enough. and I, I respect him for getting us there, but you know, they were winnable games that we didn’t win. But –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: – we all knew that this is a chance for us to get the Tartan Army on the world stage. Tartan Army is the name given to the Scottish football team’s, like, support base. It’s not like an official gathering of people; you don’t have to be –

Sarah: No.

Kayleigh: – like, a member. You just have to turn up in the appropriate wear and have the alcohol stand-, standards for it. But –

Sarah: Right. Your, your liver, your liver does need to apply for membership. There is a requi- –

Kayleigh: [Laughs] You, you do need to live up to certain stereotypes, yeah.

Sarah: Yes! [Laughs]

Kayleigh: But my, my dad had gone the year before with the Tartan Army to Munich when we were in the Euros, and he’d had a good time.

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: And he kind of hemmed and hawed, Do I really want to go to America? Do I want to go to Boston or Miami? And then my mum and my sister and I said, Just do it. You’ll totally regret not going, and all of his pals would go in. So they stayed, I believe, in a town called Peabody, just outside –

Sarah: Yep!

Kayleigh: – of Boston.

Sarah: Yep!

Kayleigh: They hung out with the mayor of Peabody in a bar, because of course they did.

Sarah: Of course they did!

Kayleigh: But they had the best time. They went to the Cheers bar, which they got –

Sarah: Yep.

Kayleigh: – I got a magnet from the Cheers bar. They hung out at the, the Dubliner, which is like the big Irish pub in the, like, city centre of Boston where everyone was. They went on boat tours. They were going to go to Fenway, and they didn’t. I wish they had, ‘cause there was a day where all the Scottish fans went to watch a Red Sox game, and not one of them knew what was –

Sarah: Yes, the Red Sox took out a big ad and were like, Thank you –

Kayleigh: Yeah.

Sarah: – for making this so memorable for all of us.

Kayleigh: My favourite thing that came from that was, like, they were interviewing people outside the game going, Do you know what’s happened? Nah. I really just need a break from drinking. And it’s like, Honey, you’re in Boston at a baseball game. You’re definitely going to still be drinking. [Laughs]

Sarah: Sorry. Beer, beer, beer, baby! Beer, beer, beer.

Kayleigh: But he, he brought me back saltwater taffy, so I gave it to my yoga class. But – so we had a moment, actually: my sister and I kept browsing TikTok looking for him, and we did find him in one TikTok where he, him and his pals –

Sarah: No way!

Kayleigh: Yes. There’s a woman who had it, like, was basically going around town filming all these Scots, and there’s a big sign, a big Boston sign in the city centre, and my dad is in front of the O going like this.

Sarah: Oh, I love it!

Kayleigh: Very – in his, in his kilt and in his salmon-coloured Scotland shirt. And then he was on the, he was on Scottish news when there was a report of, like, We brought an extra boost for reinforcements! Cut to my dad and his pals drinking. [Laughs] But it was, yeah, basically my dad, every time my dad sees a camera, he does the same face, and it’s really funny. He’s, he’s, like, it’s, it was very adorable. But it was –

Sarah: That’s so cute!

Kayleigh: It was so much fun to watch, because we have always, like, the Tartan Army has a very good reputation among football fans in a way a lot of football fans don’t. Hooliganism is a real thing –

Sarah: Nooo –

Kayleigh: – and I don’t think that Scotland –

Sarah: – they’re lovely!

Kayleigh: – is exempt from that? But they really went there on their best behaviour. They did charity fundraisers for local groups; they cleaned up after themselves; they were high-fiving people. My dad says he got so many high fives from Americans who were so excited to see them. They hung out with the Morocco fans and the Haiti fans.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Kayleigh: They went, did all these cool things together. Like, I think it’s the closest my dad’s ever come to being at, like, summer camp, you know.

Sarah: Oh, I love it! I love it!

Kayleigh: So –

Sarah: You know, there’s a, there’s a billboard –

Kayleigh: – it was really beautiful to watch! [Laughs]

Sarah: There’s a billboard now in Boston over one of the highways that says, Hey, you want to go visit your new Scottish friends?

Kayleigh: [Laughs]

Sarah: Flights to Edinburgh and, and somewhere else twice a day! [Laughs]

Kayleigh: Yeah, I, I think it, it was, it was so encouraging, obviously from a Scottish perspective, to see it, because we knew we weren’t going to be winning the World Cup. We knew that we weren’t getting far, but there was –

Sarah: But you won America. We loved you guys.

Kayleigh: Yeah! I mean, we beat the English –

Sarah: You were incredible!

Kayleigh: – at that front at least! [Laughs] But you know, I, FIFA is one of the most rancid organizations on the planet. FIFA are genuinely horrendous, evil, disgusting people, right? FIFA are so corrupt –

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: – that, like, wings of the Sicilian mafia think that they take it too far. And they kept building up –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kayleigh: – Oh, the World Cup is a chance of unity, and all these things. Well, they’re taking, they’re bleeding people dry and charging thousands of dollars for tickets. Like, my dad didn’t go to a game, they just hung out in a pub, because he wasn’t paying a thousand dollars a ticket! He had more fun in the pub, as they all did.

Sarah: Oh yeah. Always.

Kayleigh: But the things that made the World Cup beautiful were, happened in spite of FIFA. It wasn’t just the Tartan Army being –

Sarah: Yes!

Kayleigh: – so fun and warm. It was Korean and Mexican supporters hanging out and sharing their food with one another. It was –

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: – I believe, in Kansas City, welcoming the Algerian team and becoming big fans of Algeria. It was, you know –

Sarah: Yes, the Kansas, Kansas marching band learned their national anthem so that they could play it –

Kayleigh: Just beautiful!

Sarah: – and the Algerians were so touched. And –

Kayleigh: You know, it’s –

Sarah: – honestly, it’s getting together with your cousins who you never see ’cause your parents hate each other.

Kayleigh: And obviously, like, there’s part of you that, like, Oh God, it’s a stereotype, but we’re all drunken losers. But then I heard how many bars we’d, like, drunk dry, and I was like, Eh, go, well done, boys! [Laughs] My favorite report was there was –

Sarah: You, y’all drank the Sam Adams bar dry.

Kayleigh: Yeah. Apparently, like, we did three times the business of St. Patrick’s Day in Boston, which, like, I didn’t think was legally possible, but hell yeah! My favorite report was there was one guy saying, the pub’s emp-, all the, they’ve nothing left. All they’ve got left is Bud Light. And I was like, I like that even we have standards; even we’re not drinking Bud Light.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kayleigh: My dad did say they went to some pubs that they drank dry, and he went, Oh, I had to move on to this, like, fancy IPA shit, and it wasnae the same. And it’s like, That’s ‘cause you have the worst taste in beer, but you were still drinking it, weren’t you? And he went, Oh, obviously. So…

Sarah: I’m so glad your dad had a good time! That makes me so happy!

Kayleigh: It was so delightful, and he came back and he, you know, they got to watch the one game that we won as well, which I think was very hip fun, that we had that good mood. But just to leave with that reputation, he said that it genuinely was the most positive experience. Everyone was so kind and was so welcoming. And they –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Kayleigh: – they did put a traffic cone on one statue, but I don’t know which one. I don’t think they remember, to be honest, which one it was, but –

Sarah: No, they, they don’t. They don’t.

Kayleigh: – it did happen. Just having people, introducing people to things like that. So for people who don’t know –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: – in Glasgow City Centre there was a statue of the Duke of Wellington on his horse, and sometime in the ‘80s, drunk students started putting a cone on his head, and the council would take it down, and people would put it back up. So for about forty years, there was a bit of a competition to see who could keep up longest. Eventually the council decided, we’re not taking it down anymore. It’s become such a, like a, such an image of, of Glasgow. It’s also expensive to keep doing this when you don’t listen to us. So it didn’t stay in Glasgow? Like, I’ve been walking around Dundee. We have, people have put the cones out, which has been really funny. [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh yeah. The guys –

Kayleigh: So –

Sarah: – who I met on the subway told me that they were staying in an Airbnb in Newark, which is where Adam used to work, so we’re giving them lots of restaurant recommendations. And they told me that they had ordered traffic cones to be delivered to the Airbnb –

Kayleigh: Yes! [Laughs]

Sarah: – so that they would be ready. And I’m like, I just, I just love you guys! You’re so great. They were so just joyful, just so joyous to be around. And I was in New York – it was the most hungover city on the globe.

Kayleigh: [Laughs]

Sarah: They just won the NBA championship. The World Cup was starting. The whole city had this whole extra sort of infrastructure to move people out to the stadium, ‘cause it’s a couple miles west in New Jersey. Everyone was so excited and happy. And it’s like, Oh! Oh, this is, this is great! Wow, I forgot we could do this! It, it brought so much to us that we needed and we didn’t know we needed. So seriously, thank you? It was glorious. I’m bummed that I didn’t meet your dad though.

Kayleigh: [Crosstalk, laughs] Next year I believe the Euros are taking place, it’s going to be Spain, Portugal, and Morocco, and my dad is hoping that it will be in Spain so he can go there. Although he would go to other places. ‘Cause I was really rooting for him to get to go to, like, Canada, ‘cause I love Toronto, and I think my dad would have loved Toronto. We knew it was going to be too hot for him in Florida, which is why they didn’t go. But I did enjoy watching the Tartan Army hang out in, like, Little Havana and drink Cuban coffee and do, like, samba dancing.

Sarah: Yes!

Kayleigh: They, they all they all went to a Marlins game. I will say, a friend of mine said, It just seems a bit cruel that you’re all Red Sox fans now, and it’s like, Okay, but we’re like a nation of underdogs. It’s not that weird for us to support an underdog…

Sarah: It’s fine! It fits.

Kayleigh: But I do love the idea of, like, that sort of adopted, like – ’cause I believe that Boston and Glasgow are now going to become twin cities. They’ve decided on that –

Sarah: Yes!

Kayleigh: – which is beautiful.

Sarah: I love it!

Kayleigh: ‘Cause frankly, how is that not always happened? Boston and Glasgow have so much in common. [Laughs]

Sarah: So much in common.

Kayleigh: They are really, like, beautiful joint cities. I will say that, like, throwing this out, idea out here for free, someone needs to write the Tartan Army/Boston romance. Like, we need the, the person who comes over, drinks the city dry, and then falls in love and then Scotland win the World Cup, because you know what, we can write the rules and they could totally make it…

Sarah: We all deserve a happy ending! That’s the whole point –

Kayleigh: Exactly!

Sarah: – of romance – and winning the World Cup.

Kayleigh: I mean, I, I think the, the thing that really beautifully summed it up for me: like, Scots are perennial underdogs. They’re tight-fisted, except for when the generosity is called upon. They’re very generous to people who need it. Like, the amount of –

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: – fundraising they did and charity stuff they did in Boston that they didn’t have to do! They just went and, like, Hey, do you guys, you guys are like a local community center. Do you need money? We’ll, we’ll raise it for you! They raised money –

Sarah: Yeah!

Kayleigh: – to teach kids how to play the bagpipes. How adorable is that? You know?

Sarah: I –

Kayleigh: They just had this –

Sarah: Thank you!

Kayleigh: – this beautiful spirit of, like, we are here for this thing that’s probably not going to end in victory, but isn’t the joy of it that we all get to hang out and be friends and have this thing in common?

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: And be completely hammered while we do it! So – [laughs]

Sarah: Absolutely shitfaced. Truly incredible amounts of drinking.

[outro]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you enormously to Kayleigh for connecting with me over many, many time zones. I will have a video of this episode at our YouTube channel, and you can find that linked in the show notes or search Smart Podcast Trashy Books on YouTube and we pop right up!

I do have some sad news to share. I learned recently that longtime friend of the podcast Sassy Outwater passed away a year ago on July 12, 2025. Sassy provided so much of the music in early episodes of the show from her work as a producer with various bands and ensembles. If you remember all of the Peatbog Faeries music, that was Sassy. I am so sad to learn that she is no longer with us, and I am very, very grateful to have known her. Our outro music that you’re listening to is Sassy on the harp in an original composition she called “Rumba for SBs.”

Next week we are time-traveling back to March 2009, and our RT Rewind episodes this month are pretty freaking awesome. I hope you will join us.

And also, thank you to a listener who said we needed better thumbnails for our YouTube videos. We did need better thumbnails, and, and now we have some, thanks to a wonderful designer named Teodor, who is brilliant.

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and we will see you back here next week! And in the words of my favorite retired podcast Friendshipping, thank you for listening. You’re welcome for talking.

[lovely harp music]