Cool Zone Media. Hi everybody, Jamie here again reminding you that if you're in the Los Angeles area, I am taping my very first special called The Tiny Man Is Trying to Kill Me on December fourth. There are two shows. The first one is basically sold out, but there are still tickets available to the nine point thirty. I have the link in the description and I hope to see you there. Enjoy the episode. Early twenty twenty one is the time many of us have complete memory holes for,
and not without good reason. In the US, COVID was still ravaging the country after the spread of the virus had been repeatedly sabotaged by conspiracy theorists in and outside of the government. Lockdown restrictions were reaching the year mark after an extremely contentious election where COVID missed the opportunity to do the first and only funny thing it could do, which was killed Donald Trump. There was something that happened on January sixth of this year, but I can't quite
recall what it was. It was a bad time, and collectively I don't know that we really remember it. There's some science behind this complicated issue, but the short story is that your brain can protect you from a traumatic
memory or event or period of time. You know, when you're listening to this set, the moment it comes out, you probably won't remember this time very well if you live in the US soon either because for most people and surely to different degrees depending on what your day to day was like during COVID and if anyone in your life was personally affected, this was a terrifying time.
Add this to Black Lives Matter demonstrations being met with violent reprisal from police forces and no vaccine in sight until the very end of twenty twenty, with a long line before it got to non essential workers, and by early twenty twenty one, a lot of people were reaching the ends of their ropes. Really think about where you were at around this time. I had it comparatively easy. Podcasting is not essential work, if you can believe it. And even still, by the top of twenty twenty one,
I was a fucking wreck. I was terrified for my immunocompromised parents across the country. I was trying to get out of the house to do outreach work and I'd gotten arrested at a protest in front of Eric Garcetti's house. Whoops, and I'd do it again. The lockdown era was horrendous for Americans' mental health. There's extensive reporting on how anxiety, PTSD, and depression increased tremendously during that year and into today.
I don't think anyone could look back at their social media at this time and think, Wow, I was hanging in pretty well then, And if you can, you are the fucking weirdo. It was an age where people were knowingly or unknowingly posting their l's every single day, NonStop, because unless you were an essential worker, what the fuck else was there to do? But one L posted during this time made Internet history, bringing people together collectively to say oh my God in a way that was not
centered on a global catastrophe. Of course, plenty of commenters took it too far immediately, but for a single moment on February third, twenty twenty one, all of TikTok wasn't focused on COVID disinformation or insurrection analysis or sorry, objectively bad mental health content. No, we were all talking about gorilla glue.
Hey, y'all, But those of y'all don't know me, know, my hair has been like this for about a month now. It's not much choice. No, it's not much choice.
Tessaka Brown, the woman who used gorilla glue in her hair. Your sixteenth Minute starts now, Joys sixt Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take a look at the Internet. Main characters talk to them about how their moment affected them and what it says about us and the Internet. My name is Jamie Loftus, and today my phone connected to an ex boyfriend's WiFi when I was walking by in a neighborhood I didn't know he lived in.
Guess he moved. And today we're talking about the infamous early twenty twenty one gorilla glue hair incident. And look, I've already ptsd'd you by bringing up the later days of the pandemic, and you don't deserve it right now, but bear with me. I really want you to dig into your sad little brain and pull out where you were at in early twenty twenty one. Because today's subject
Tessaga Brown, and yes we got the interview. Baby was in the same position as everyone was in the world, only she was having to run a full time daycare called Tessica's Little Angels in the middle of COVID for folks in her neighborhood who still had to work. Plus she was the mother of five. We were all at the end of our rope. But as you'll see, Tessica didn't get very much grace in the moment or in the public's memory. So let's go back to the dark place.
Come with me if you dare to. February twenty twenty one, Donald Trump's second impeachment trial raged on in Washington, d c. Fat lot of fucking good that did. Meanwhile, the US reached a five hundred thousand person death toll to COVID, and in Violet, Louisiana, Tessica Brown ran out of got to be blasting freeze spray and needed a quick solution. Was what she did. The smartest decision of anyone's life. No, but hear her out. It's February second, twenty twenty one.
Tessca has a lot of stuff going on in her personal life, which she references in our interview, and there is a lot going on in the big disgusting world. She is a lifelong Louisiana resident, a place where COVID had affected about half a million reported people since twenty twenty, before vaccines were made widely available. In fact, this whole thing happens two days before vaccines were made available to people sixty five and over in Louisiana and the States.
Relationship to vaccines is complicated regardless. Sometime in early January, Tesska mistakenly sprayed gorilla glue into her hair out of running out of got to be and the next month was rough. Gorilla glue if you don't know, and you really should, is no joke.
So this guy I thought he could lick the glue off. Basically, he took some gorilla glue and he put it on the edges of this cup and then put it on his face. And he thought he could lick the glue off and get this cup off of his phase. Well, that didn't really work out very well for him.
It's a super glue that's been on the market since the nineties, eventually prompting the phrase gorilla grip, which has been a term of inspiration among Keagel's TikTok for years. And I refused to expand on that sentence. You can do your own research, but super glue existed in general since the nineteen forties. Because yes, as every episode of sixteenth Minute inevitably leads to super glue. Say it with
me is the product of colonialism and warmongering. We don't need to talk about it, but hey, let's talk about it for a second. Switch the music a little, let's make this fun. Super glue was discovered by an inventor named doctor Harry Wesley at kodak as in the Photography Company during World War Two while pitching in to make new gun sights for Allied forces. He didn't end up trademarking the material until the nineteen fifties, but by that time it had taken on any number of practical and
frankly horrifying uses over the years. The Military Times reported that Wesley's invention was later used as a liquid bandage on soldiers in the Vietnam War in order to stem bleeding until someone with an open wound could get to a military hospital. Really think about that gross, But it did sort of work and was later tweaked into what's now known as actual liquid bandages like derma bond and
trauma seal. And if you had a liquid bandage fanatic like my mom, you will know that these products really hurt on sensitive skin because while effective, these extreme adhesives are not comfortable with that in mind. Enter Tessica, who at forty had the expected social media for a person
of that demographic at that time. What I'm saying is she was a Facebook mom, and she promoted her business and shared family photos and live streams primarily there and on Instagram, and she posted a lot, but her audience was fairly limited. From what I could find. She mainly stuck to the Zuckerberg products Facebook and Instagram, where she had, as she tells me, only a few thousand followers at the time of the gorilla clue incident. Fast forward to
the day she sprayed the glue. It did not go well, but at first, as with any major l Tessica kept it to herself, not even telling her mother or sister at first. Days later, not only was it not coming out, her scalp was starting to hurt and it was feeling like it was constricting. She tried everything to try to slow this effect, googne, rubbing alcohol, coconut oil, tea tree oil, you name it. But it became clear that this may
not be a google able problem. So she swallowed her pride and she reached out to the women in her life her mother, her sister, her daughters, but that didn't do much either, until, according to Tessica, one of her daughters said, hey, maybe someone on TikTok will know what to do. Yes, this is a TikTok story, and per Tessica, she has no idea how or why this particular TikTok went viral because prior to the gorilla glue story, Tessica
had only used TikTok twice two posts. One was of her daughter in late twenty twenty day while wearing a face mask, and the other was Taska herself lip syncing to a cover of Countdown by Beyonce. You know the song you Weren't Born Yesterday?
Mom?
Content right? And then Tessica's daughter, a true kid of the COVID era, says, hey, Mom, maybe people on TikTok will find you and have some ideas on how to get the glue out. Because not only had TikTok experienced tremendous growth during COVID lockdown, particularly with people her kid's age, it had also become notorious for becoming a place of hyper niche discussion. And so Tesska does with the self assurance of a consistent poster, just not a TikTok poster.
So she's in her bathroom filming on her phone and a hot pink hoodie with full makeup and a long braid, and as in all her posts, Tesca looks great. But yeah, there is something clearly going on with her hair. It's you know, it's super glued to her head. Here's the fifty nine seconds that made her famous.
Hey, y'all, but those of y'all that knew me know, my hair has been like this sub about a month now. It's not much choice. No, it's not much choice. When I do my hair, I like to, you know, finish it off with the little got to be glue spree, you know, just to keep it in face. Well, I didn't have any more got to be blue spas, so I used this gorilla glue spree.
Bad, bad, bad idea. Y'all. Look my hair. It don't move. You get what I'm telling you. It don't move.
I've washed my hair fifteen times and it don't move. Stiff Well, who my hair?
So I'm gonna tell y'all like.
This, if you ever ever run out of got to be golose spring, don't ever ever use this so.
That clicking noise is the sound of Tessica's nails on her own scalp. And this post does go viral on TikTok basically immediately. Tessica says she posted it before bed with no hashtags. TikTok doesn't really respond to that as much. It's just captioned stiff ware my hair, which is a reference to a meme where a black mom and her daughter are joking around in a car while the daughter is wearing a new wig. Maybe you've seen.
It right back on Ooh no bam, Yes, yes, ooh ooh stiff wall stiff whia.
If you haven't, go watch it. And Tessica has definitely seen this because she's pretty online and for all intents and purposes, she's just a normal person posting a weird, kind of stressful TikTok. But when she wakes up the morning after posting blues still in her hair, her TikTok account has gone nuts. She has officially been sucked into the algorithmic vortex. And she asked herself fucking how well. As we've discussed on the show before, that's kind of
the whole question with TikTok. Most if not all social media algorithms are completely diabolical by nature. And again, if you want to know more about that, I will shout out friend of the show, Max Fisher's book The Chaos Machine, which breaks down how algorithms have increasingly informed how we consume news and ourselves in the space of the last decade.
The section where he unpacks a period of time leading up to the twenty sixteen election where the top brasset YouTube just let the algorithm run itself lives rent free in my mind forever. The point is the way that algorithms function remains very opaque to this day, something that seems like should maybe not be allowed, given the fact that these algorithms have disproportionate influence on how we receive
information and often disinformation. And in case you're not aware, there's a bit of an infinity saga with TikTok and disinformation, with the platform itself repeatedly vowing that they are definitely taking steps internally to combat disinformation as recently as this past fall, although I will say I have some doubt on how effective that's been. I don't really know what this kind of announcement does to imply TikTok's accountability. It seems more kind of like they're passing the buck to
their users. Take a listen.
If you try to share content within unfair verified claim, we may also ask you to reconsider before sharing, especially during emergencies and unfolding events. This helps prevent the spread of misinformation. You should still think critically about content that's not labeled as unverified and report potential harmful misinformation so our safety teams can assess it.
Okay TikTok give us less. A twenty twenty two report from NewsGuard indicated that when it came to hot button issues like vaccines, election information, and even things as specific as the January sixth insurrection, around one in five TikTok posts contained disinformation of some kind. So let's hope a commitment to combating disinformation is true. Because TikTok has a
very strong influence on Internet users. Right now, it is by far the most addictive platform, with the Digital twenty twenty four Global Review Report estimating that the average user clocks in around thirty four hours of TikTok use a month. That's followed by YouTube at twenty eight hours and Facebook at almost twenty Its base is also young in comparison to other platforms. Over half of TikTok users are teenagers, and eighty percent of users say they primarily use the
platform to find something entertaining. And if you've ever used it, the TikTok algorithm is good at figuring out what you specifically will find entertaining. Here's what's in my algorithm on TikTok right now, because making this show has destroyed all of my algorithms, thank you so much. And the fact that someone called me the buffalos fairy godmother because I've been telling people where to get their sameless songs so they're.
Not with you.
I'm sorry.
What did you guess?
See that video of that girl who started crying because she started chewing remineralizing chewing gum in her cavities.
Lily went away.
I heard talk. He's trying to do livestream. It's flopping. But for the sake of this story, we're talking about the TikTok algorithm in twenty twenty one, specifically, an algorithm we can assume is somewhat different from the crack that they're putting in the TikTok algorithm today. And here's what we knew at the time, according to a report from The New York Times Ben Smith at the end of
that year. The report reviewed internally leaked documents from the China based company called TikTok Algo one oh one, which stated the four core tenants of the app at the time were user value, long term user value, creator value, and platform value. And it is worth mentioning that TikTok's being a non American company does affect how it's discussed
in Western media. Enough time to unpack it fully, but suffice it to say, yes, social media and big tech are quite evil, but they're nothing next to Senator Tom Cotton. Here's Senator Tom Cotton talking to TikTok's CEO, Showsey Chew in January twenty twenty four.
So you said, today, as you often say, that you live in Singapore of what nation? Are you a citizen Singapore is? Are you a citizen of any other nation? No, Senator, Have you ever applied for Chinese citizenship? Senator, I serve my nation in Singapore.
No, I did not.
Have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party, Senata, I'm Singaporean?
No? Wow, So much more of this to look forward to in the next four years. Really cool the app's ultimate goal in twenty twenty one at the time of the Tessica Brown post features a term we've also heard in the story of YouTube or getting as many users as possible to spend as much time as possible on TikTok, and this almost always leads to the algorithm pushing content
that is manipulative in some way. This Times report detailed a tendency for TikTok to focus on quote unquote sad content to get people to keep watching, and even provides a little equation that details how it ranked which posts to boost, relating to likes, plays, comments, and time watched. It goes on to detail the ways in which TikTok aims to keep people engaged by recommending similar but not
too similar content in order to avoid boredom. Again, this is an echo of the YouTube algorithm story that can and has led to users getting coaxed into increasingly extreme content. With these qualifiers in mind, it's not super surprising that Tessica Brown's video performed well within TikTok's outcome rhythm. The video is kind of long, you're definitely not sure how it's gonna end. The subject is sad and upset and
even now. Tessica says in our interview that she understands that in some sick way, it could be entertaining to watch her struggle, or at very least you can't look away. And when Tessica's TikTok went live under her.
Username I'm underscore d underscore old Lady, pretty funny, viewers could not look away, which prompted a very polarized comment section hit the music, Why why why would you do that?
Girl? You're lucky it didn't get in your eyes, ears hands? What the fuck is wrong with you? This better blow the fuck up?
Because dam I'm sorry girl.
Girl, I'm so sorry, but this is so funny.
Baby oil, googn dawn dish, soap and nail polish remover last resort.
Girl, please update us.
This is literally a plot of a Victorious episode.
Baby, you made a helmet. You could survive an actual disaster when in Nabrica. Never hear unstoppable.
Okay, Hopefully I'm not the only person that wanted to fact check that next to last comment. Was there an episode of Nickelodeon's early twenty tens tween show Victorious. About this subject. What is this for?
Oh that's glue?
Yeah, but why is it with your makeup supplies?
What's the problem.
This is grizzly glue. It's like an industrial cement.
Hey, cat, tell me you didn't use this on Tory's face?
Uh?
Yes? Indeed, this was a Victorious episode from twenty ten in which a character played by one Ariana Grande super glues a monster mask to Victoria Justice's face. I love culture, but it's here where the gorilla glue story splits in two because Tessica has become a main character off of her third TikTok. Ever, and as she hints at in the post, she's also starting to be in a lot of physical pain from a month's worth of ever constructing
super glue. I'll let Tesska share the more specific details in our interview, but this Burt and what the TikTok comments on this ever growing post. At present, it sits around fifty six million views. Confirmed was that she seemed to have tried everything that was possible to do from home in the month the glue had been in her hair,
but still she kept trying. The next day, Tessika posted a TikTok of her squeezing a hand full of panteen into her palm, rubbed it into her hair, and showed that where there would normally be a leather, nothing happened.
Like this is the life that I guess I'm.
Happy to live.
Yeah, noo, noop No.
This is a hard clip to watch. She's close to tears here and you can hear the business of her household continuing just outside of the bathroom. Later that day, Tessca posted again, acknowledging how viral her first post had gone. While continuing to ask for help. She writes, thanks for you guys encouraging and ideas to get rid of this forever ponytail. I will try some today when I get off from work, and I will keep you guys posted. By the way, if you see me walking around with
a headscarf, just mind your business. Well, so from the jump, Tessca had a good sense of humor about the incident, even as the pain and the mocking comments continued to roll in.
You are the reason items have instructions.
Call Gorilla Glue customer service after they stop laughing.
They may give you a commercial deal.
But it's clear that as time goes on, Tessca was becoming increasingly desperate updating her increasing online following on solutions that hadn't worked, until finally, on February sixth, she checked into the Saint Bernard Parish Hospital nearby to seek professional help, and after that visit, she wasn't much better off. The hospital estimated that using acetone and sterile water would make the whole process take about twenty hours, and Tessica opted to go home and continued to work at it with
her sister instead. Once back home, video footage shows Tesska panicked and completely beside herself as her sister used actone wipes from the hospital to try and loosen the glues hold. But it's worth mentioning Tessica does lean into posting updates on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram immediately. There's not really a time where she's rejecting the attention. And this isn't a criticism. It actually reminds me quite a bit of our Ken Bone episode. He was very baffled when he became a star,
but you never really saw him resisting it. But of course the difference between these stories is significant. Tessica was in many cases being openly mocked instead of celebrated like Ken. She is also a black woman and subject to all of the misogynir that comes with that. But it does feel worth mentioning that she doesn't really resist the attention around this story. What she does resist is people and the press misrepresenting who she is and what really happened.
So Tessica has become a TikTok main character quite literally overnight, and mainstream media is pretty quick to catch on to this story. I think in part because media was generally faster to catch on to online stories in general during lockdown because of the intensity of eyes on TikTok. At the time, we're seeing headlines.
Like woman's gorilla glue hair style on TikTok has everyone baffled.
Tessica Brown is not just the gorilla glue girl. Her message to.
The internet Gorilla Glue said, it's sorry to hear about the woman who accidentally glued her hair in place.
The undeniable hold of the gorilla glue girl, and what it says about the empathy of the internet.
Meanwhile, Tessica's support system was not satisfied with the options that the hospital was offering. We talk about that more in our interview and on Sunday, February seventh, the family starts a GoFundMe for Tessica in the hopes of getting
money for an actual solution. The goal for the fundraiser was only fifteen hundred dollars, but because of the number of eyes on the story, the account quickly surged to over twenty three thousand dollars, and of course, Gorilla Glue couldn't resist getting in on the free pr Once Tessica had returned from the hospital. On February eighth, the company tweeted the quote.
We are very sorry to hear about the unfortunate incident that Miss Brown experienced using our spray adhesive on her hair. We are glad to see in her recent video that Miss Brown has received medical treatment from her local medical facility and wish her the best.
However, Gorilla Glue stood their ground, saying in the same post that it was not you know, intended for hair, but I was heartened to see that the comments around this post Moss are pretty firmly on Tesska's side. Commenters suggested that Gorilla Glue should just donate money to Tessica
to show good faith. Some mention that the spray does not, in fact explicitly say it shouldn't be used on hair, and others warned that Tesska very well may have a good lawsuit on her hand, even comparing it to the McDonald's Hot Coffee lawsuit of nineteen ninety four. I'd recommend the You're Wrong About episode on that topic if you
don't know more about that lawsuit. And there were rumors that Tessica planned to sue gorilla glue that were mentioned in a couple of news sources, but Tesska says that this was never true or a plan of hers, and to be fair, she was a little busy to be organizing a lawsuit at this time to split between trying to get this very painful problem figured out and documenting that process and posting it online. And that appears to
be it. So checking in. It's been nearly a week since Tessaka went public with her saga, and still nothing has been figured out except that the Internet was wrapped with attention as vaccines continued to be disseminated across the world. And I'm not joking. Benjamin nettan Yahoo was on court
for a bribery charge. Time is a flat circle and you'll notice from what we've even discussed so far, there is a pretty wide range of reactions to Tesska's story, and I think that this is because you can easily trace a wide range of diversity in the race, age, and gender of accounts that are replying to support her
or not. By the time Tessco went to the hospital, prominent figures had begun commenting on her situation as well, including Chance the Rapper, and more relevantly to what I'm trying to talk about, Sunny Houston of The View, who tweeted the following.
So many are being dismissive of hashtag gorilla glue girl given the history of how black women are targeted and still battle the pervasive belief that our natural hair is unprofessional, unkempt, and in some way a statement please show her some grace and understanding.
Tessica's story is tied into the historical relationship with Black women and their hair, a topic that has been spoken on extensively over the years. Some major examples are the two thousand and nine documentary Good Hair, hosted by Chris Rock and the Oscar winning short film and best selling children's book Hair Love by Matthew cherry, just to name a few. My name is Ziri, and I have hair that has a mind of its own.
It kinks, coils, and curls every which way.
But I'll link more resources in the description as well. And Tessica's story is one of the iconic main character moments that revolves around black hair. So many of the top comments come from black users on TikTok. Of course, plenty of these users are teasing Tessica and are baffled at the choice in using gorilla glue in the media.
Clap back at Tessica specifically reeks of misogynir and this was thankfully called attention to although not with the same frequency as the click baity you won't believe what happened, how embarrassing style of post not by a long shot. But these essays do exist.
I do exist.
This is from a February eighth, twenty twenty one piece from Essence by Candice Benbo.
Perhaps all this history is what joined so many of our hearts to Tessica's plight. We may have never had an industrial product for styling purposes, but we've done things to our hair and to ourselves we wished we hadn't We were endeared to her because we know what it's like to be judged by the biggest mistake you've ever made and not to be given the compassion and empathy
necessary to move through its implications. All across social media, there are scores of people suggesting Tessica is attention seeking and deserves whatever she gets. She should have known better. In a world where hacks are celebrated and people become Internet sensations overnight for discovering new uses for old products, Tessica is villainized because her attempt resulted in failure. Why is it so easy to dehumanize black women when we
make mistakes? Why must compassion for us be measured and mediated? How different would the response to Tessica be if she were white.
We don't have to wonder.
Too long about the answers to these questions. We know them already. We know Black girls and women have to be perfect. There is no room for error, and when we mess up, we know it was nobody's fault but our own. And we know we live in communities that won't let us forget it either.
And unfortunately, a lot of what Candice is describing here, the quickness to demonize and shame. Tasaka Brown does bear out a number of times in the days that followed, and I also want to mention that, yes, many people did accuse Tessica of spraying gorilla glue in her hair just for attention and just to go viral, which I think is pretty clearly not true, but also speaks to the Internet brain of what we are can addition to
believe people will do for attention, including hurt themselves. Right moving on, another piece from the King County Hazardous Waste Management Program adds to this.
While most would never dream of putting gorilla glue anywhere near their body, sometimes black women need to venture outside the hair care aisle to find products that work. Castor oil, olive oil, mayonnaise, and superglue are all used for hair styling purposes. Also, many products marketed exclusively for black women include chemical based products like hair relaxers, texturizers, and bonding glues.
Research over the years has shown there are fewer non toxic options in black hair products than there are in those marketed to the general public. Although understudied, there's growing evidence that a high number of products marketed for black hair care contain known harmful chemicals linked to cancer, reproductive problems, hormone disruption, asthma, and other adverse health effect.
In the coming weeks, Tessaca Brown would be very forthcoming about how a cultural emphasis on whiteness factored into how she had felt about her own hair in the past. Later in February, she reflected on her early life, telling ABC Chicago about her experience in middle school, she said, I.
Thought, if you have another flaw, if your hair is together, you know you look better. If I can't do nothing else, I'm gonna make sure my hair is on point. This has been a problem for me for a long time. If I wouldn't have cared so much about my hair, I wouldn't be going through this right now.
So again, it is really overly simplistic who characterized Tessica's action as beyond the pale ridiculous. Even if, like Tessica says now, she's embarrassed by making the mistake, it's a decision that exists in a far larger context, one that ranges from historical racism and misogyny to the fact that she was working full time during a pandemic and was likely just as burned out as anybody was. It was a mistake, but as the days continued, people didn't seem
to get tired of making fun of her. As the situation reached its peak, on Monday, February ninth, Pessica gave her first interview to Kiss ninety two to five in Toronto, saying that she was waiting to shave her head as a last resort and felt quote some type of way unquote above people making fun of her fair enough. On Tuesday, things really kick up behind the scenes, and unbeknownst to the public at the time, Tessica had been reached out
to by manager Gina Rodriguez. Not that one. This Gina Rodriguez is a reality and viral star manager, including a number of names. You know some of the Real Housewives, Mama June of Here Comes Honey Booboo, Scott Dissick of the Kardashians, Tory Spelling, the Ocean, Spray skateboard guy, Nathan appadaka Gina Rodriguez answer my email, I want to talk to him. The list goes on right, and when Gina heard about Tessica's story, she both seemed to see a
person who needed help and a potential business opportunity. Rodriguez got in touch with Tessica to connect her with a plastic surgeon who she knew in La One, who claimed that he had the ability to save her hair and would do the procedure in Beverly Hills for free. Enter doctor Michael Obang, who has over twenty years of experience in the industry, and finally it seemed like Tessica had
a solution. She announced she was heading out to Beverly Hills in an emotional interview with Entertainment Tonight that same day.
I'm not that person y'all trying to meet me out today. I'm not that person. I'm not this whole gorilla blue girl. My name is Tessica Brown.
Call me.
How's old theology know exactly who I am?
And on Wednesday, February tenth, Tessica Brown arrived in a red hoodie in a mask to Lax where there was and I'm not joking, literal paparazzi waiting for her as she headed out to doctor Oban's office. This story was big. The procedure was done that evening, and while Tesska recovered, the good doctor got a little prn by giving CBS Los Angeles an update.
Tessica is doing well. She's awake, the haircrew is doing her hair.
This interview also revealed maybe one of the most impressive things I've ever heard, which is that doctor Obeng literally created a new chemical product to remove the gorilla glue and it was successful. He invented a whole new thing, and TMZ classy as ever, filmed and posted the whole procedure.
If you feel anything, if it's too uncomfortable, let me know.
We can get you more payments, okay, which is a potential insight into why this twelve five hundred dollars procedure was done for free. Look, I'll be honest, I could not bring myself to watch the video of the procedure. I'm too squeamish. But the final procedure is said to have taken four hours while Tesska was under a light anesthetic for the la times. Doctor Obank's potion was a combination of medical adhesive remover, alo vera, olive oil and actone mixed in a way to prevent harm to her scalp.
The healing process was estimated to be about two or three months, and thank god it worked. And yes, of course, doctor Obank mentioned he was considering selling the product in
the future put a pin in that. So finally, a week after this whole TikTok Soga began, and over a month after the glue had been put in her hair in the first place, Tessica's head was gorilla glue free, and now she was Internet famous, complete with an entertainment manager and a full blown press tour that ranged from network TV to more prominently forever growing social media feeds. She was liberated from the glue with Rodriguez signed Heesseca
Brown showed no signs of slowing down. She launched an official merch site on February twelfth, featuring her image from
the viral TikTok with the caption bonded for life. Pretty good and Sure people clowned on her for printing merch over a one social media moment, but people were watching and buying the stuff, with an estimated million and a half social media posts about the gorilla glue incident by the middle of this month, and like William Hung and Ken Bone before her, Heessecka Brown even broke through to appear in a middling SNL sketch on February fourteenth.
So it happened, So you your worst night, Miss.
We've all been there. You ran out a half product and you used Gorilla blue instead, and it turned.
Your beautiful lush's made into a hard candy sheep.
That's Keenan Thompson and Regina King. Not shabby. And throughout this time, Pessica was adamant about who she is, and to me, it's admirable how she continued to remind reporters and online randos that she didn't appreciate being called the Gorilla Glue girl, and that her plan was to forge ahead with her business and the dance team that she had coached her daughters on before this incident. In a profile of her from Vox by Melinda Facuade on February nineteenth, Pessica said.
Clout is something I will never chase. I promise you. The dance team was in a commercial, they were in newspapers, they were in a magazine. That's enough clout for me. I don't need all of this because this was just lay way too much, and truly, who would want to go through that pain I went through for clout?
Again, this is Tessica having to stave off the accusations that she had done the whole very painful ordeal for attention. But the Internet couldn't let go of the gorilla glue moment. There were, from what I could find, at least two copycats who were ostensibly trying to like bust the idea that super glue could have caused this much damage to Tessica Brown's hair and life. And the results, drum roll.
Both of these MythBusters went to the hospital. Great job, guys, mythbusted. Look, if you know anything about the Internet, this is nothing new. Social media has always been a place where random challenges that could possibly kill you rule the algorithm. Examples in the early twenty tens the Cinnamon challenge, where someone puts a spoonful of uncut ground cinnamon into their mouth with no water. All right, so here's the cinnamon, all right,
all right, here'll go. Or how about the tide pod challenge, which was a twenty seventeen eighteen social media craze where users were mainlining laundry pods because they were colorful. I don't know, I have no insight. People died eating. Those eight deaths were associated with ingestion of the packets, two children under one year old and six in adults with the history of dementia. This will never stop, and as disinformation gets worse, I think we'll see these kinds of
things get more dangerous. But the copycats going to the hospital is just another way that Tessica brown saga continued kind of much longer than your average social media main character. For some expected reasons. Pessica was willing to engage with the story, and it was also a rare social media moment that continued to develop as the days passed. I remember observing this story you would want to check in on how she was doing. All of the commenters are
wanting updates, wanting to know that she's okay. But once the procedure with doctor Obang was complete, of course, things began to sort of die down. But by this point Tessica had a following. It was this weird mistake that brought her to prominence. But Tessica is funny, she's attractive, and she was interested in continuing to post and see how this fluke could potentially improve her quality of life. And it really seems to have a few quick things.
So there has been some speculation about how the money from Tessica's GoFundMe was dispersed after she received the hair procedure from doctor Obang for free. This is a report from the New York Post, so take it with a heavy grade of salt, but they stated that the GoFundMe had been put under investigation by the platform when Tesska announced that she would be donating at twenty three thousand dollars raised in the early days of the gorilla glue
panic to local families and other causes. And to be clear, there's no doubt that she did give a chunk of that money, in the form of one thousand dollars big checks to local families in Louisiana in need, and she says to have donated the rest to doctor Obing's nonprofit Restore Worldwide, Incorporated, to support his ongoing effort to provide complimentary,
reconstructive surgery to people in need abroad. Moving into late February, still less than a month after her viral fame began, Pessica became a news item again after returning to doctor Obing for a follow up about her hair procedure, which it turns out was also a consultation for additional work with the doctor, including a breast lift, implants and some liposection per the New York Post at the time. There were lumps detected in Tessica's breast in these early consultations,
which were thankfully removed and she announced were benign. And from there she moved ahead with the procedures, also including some complimentary dental work from another provider in the LA area. And so accusations lingered in her comments section that these procedures were where the remaining go fundme money actually went, but there is no proof to show things went one way or another. But now with manager Gina Rodriguez at her side, Pasica continued to forge ahead. And can you
guess what she did next. That's right, Pessica Brown released a hair care product named Forever Hair just a couple months later in June twenty twenty one. And yes, the comments to this are what you'd expect. Now, it might be gorilla glue in it, lol, get the bag, sis, et cetera, and on and on, but this product got press and I can understand why people would be curious about it. At launch, Forever Hair sold to products an eighteen dollars growth stimulating oil and a fourteen dollars Forever
Hold spray. And while these products didn't stick around on the market, they did sell out, another testament to Tessica Brown's staying power and the work taking place on her management side. And before twenty twenty one was over, she'd gone viral two more times, once for trying to dye her graze before her scalp was healed enough to handle more chemicals.
I decided that I was going to win my real hair.
But when I looked at it, you know, I had a gray hair here, a gray head there, So me thinking that my hair is strong enough to say chemicals, dude, No.
It wasn't.
And another time for doing what at least two other sixteenth minute subjects have done in the past by my math. Hasska made a play at a music career when she released a rap single in November twenty twenty one.
Almost went in a panic when I ran out, I got I had a problem. I had the US Gorilla Glucius assaulted over with Psilka the South Shot. I watched it with everything I could think of, but nothing was making progress.
I was stopping with to do It's fun whatever. And through twenty twenty two, Pessica continued to post regularly to her platforms while continuing her business Yes, and in early twenty twenty three, she made it all the way to cable TV and appeared on a season of the Food Network competition Worse Cooks in America after auditioning, I'm Tessaca Brown.
I'm a daycare provider from Valla, Louisiana.
What are you famous for?
Already at a handsbress break over loo glue my house?
Oh your gorilla, my help?
It don't move in these days.
Almost four years later, Tessca Brown's life is pretty similar to what it was when she first became a viral star. She still runs her daycare, she's had another child's and by her account, she's now in a much happier relationship than she was at the time. The difference of four years mainly is that she also has millions of eyes on her lifestyle content across platforms, mostly Instagram and now a facet of her life TikTok and when we come back,
I speak exclusively with Tessica Brown herself. Welcome back to sixteenth Minute. My name's Jamie Loftus and I just started taking EIGHTYHD medication. I feel like half of my body is underground and the other half is forty feet above sea level? Is that how the human experience is supposed to feel? Please discuss on the Reddit board. And today we are revisiting the twenty twenty one saga of Tessica Brown getting gorilla glue in her hair. As you've heard,
this story was wild and continued to stretch on. Tessica is still active on Instagram and TikTok to this day, and she recently switched management teams to continue expanding on what she can do with her story and her online fame. But now that it's been nearly four years since the original event, I wanted to hear Tasaka's story in her own words, and thankfully she was generous enough to give us some of her time. So, without further ado, here's my talk with Tasaka Brown.
Hi.
My name is Tessaka Brown.
I'm forty three years old and I'm from Saint Fanol Parish, New Orleans, Louisiana.
I want to start by talking about your life a little bit. Where are you from, how did you grow up? I want to know a little bit more about you prior to this moment.
Okay, I'm from Louisiana, but I'm from like a little small town right outside of New Orleans. It's called Saintanov Parish. If you had to raise the children anyway, this will be the place I'll go. I have five sisters, well, four sisters, two brothers. I have five kids. I've been on my day camp for ten years now. I had a dance team when the glue thing first happened. I made the dance team for my girls.
Cool.
Are you still running the daycare now?
Yes, ma'am.
Yes, amazing because you were in your late thirties early forties when this happened, and I talked to people with such a wide age range for this show. What was your relationship with the internet, like at the time that this happened, did you post a lot? Yeah? What was your relationship with the internet?
I had one video on TikTok, only one.
I used to go live a lot on Facebook, Like Facebook was my thing, you know, because my kids was like, you know, this is where you belong on Facebook? I guess because you know, Yeah, that's so I heard. I did a lot of posts, right right. I did a lot of posting on Instagram, and like I said, I went live a lot on Facebook, but only had one video on TikTok.
I had like a little singing my intro to TikTok. That was the one video. Then came the Girl in Glub.
You'd been using Facebook and Instagram for a long time. Did you have audiences sort of like outside of your general family or circle or was it?
Okay, yes, I had.
I had on Instagram. I had like I want to say, like ten thousand five. And I feel like that was because like I have the daycare, and we do I do prom for the daycare.
I do.
Uh yeah, I do. I have pictures if you want see.
I do parades every year, and I feel like I got a lot of followers doing that.
Like especially when you're a small business owner figuring out how to make social media like kind of work for you. So you had some idea of like how to make social media work for you?
Okay, right, yeah, now always to the point where I post something. Now I'm looking to see how many people watched it, who come in. Yeah, it's totally different from before.
That's so interesting. I'm very excited to talk about that sort of shift. But first, of course, we got to go through the day itself. So I've seen the original series of videos many times, what motivated you to post this to TikTok, specifically my little girl, my daughter. So she suggested, like, well, maybe someone here will know what to do.
Yeah, because the thing is, I kept saying, you know, I don't know what else do? I don't know because I was scared even tell them Mama, because I figured she was gonna come over here, you know, slap me in my head. You know, you shouldn't have did that. So that's why I didn't want call her. But when it got to the point where the ponytail just kept getting tighter and tighter, it felt like my skelp you
know when your ladies fall asleep. Yeah, that's what it felt like inside my head, like just tingling, yeah, just singing all the time. So I'm like, you know what, I have to call her mama, And we like to call mama doctor Quinn medicine woman because she know pretty much how to do. No matter what you say, this lady could tell you exactly what to do and how to get rid of it. So she came and we did a whole bunch of stuff, and it's before the
TikTok gotcha, and absolutely nothing worked. Nothing, nothing she did work and I knew if my mama didn't know, I have to go you know, social media. So my baby was like, MA put it on TikTok. Yeah, and I'm like, I only have like one video on TikTok. She said, MA, put it on TikTok.
So I put it on.
TikTok that night, and I'm thinking, I'm guessing like nine o'clock at night, I put it on TikTok. Got up the next morning, you know, getting my children ready for school. Girl jumps up because I wake them up. I go to the doors and I start waking everybody up. So the oldest one after she got up, you know, she check her phone before she even get up and rushed her teeth. Yeah, she she come running and I'm like, what's drowm Ma? You got over a Meetian followers?
Girl? You going viral?
I'm like, well, wait, did somebody say you know how I could get it off mine?
You word but the wrong thing.
I'm like, you know what, dude, I need somebody to help me get this off. She was word with the numbers. I'm trying to, you know, get this off or whatever.
Yeah.
So yeah, I started going through the comments. Oh my god, those.
Yeah, what was this first wave of comments like listen.
I promise you I knew it was going to be like people around here, that's gonna be like, oh, you know that was stupid or that was dumb. I didn't think for one second the world was gonna you know what I'm.
Saying, yea.
And it got to the point where they telling me, you know, of course I'm dumb.
That was stupid.
And then letters started coming to the house. I literally got a letter to the house. And the thing is they had my they had my address because of course I have the daycare.
So everything was and I.
Didn't think again, I didn't think that there was ann do like it did, because I probably would have took all that off first. But I just thought, you know, it's gonna be people around here. They started sending me stuff. They was called the phone. The phone was just ridiculous. I ended up taking my phone and through my phone, I'm not answering absolutely nobody else because again my phone numb was on social media, so I mean, they called you stupid, soon answer the phone, you dumb like it was bad.
And then the letter, when the letter came, it was.
They drew me right, yeah, with my head cut off with I'm.
Holding it like this.
Oh my god.
It was some bad, bad people, it was.
And the thing is, you know, like sometimes you think like people think this stuff, but for you to really say this stuff and do this stuff, I thought it was completely a line because I can say a lot of stuff on social media, but I don't I would send it in a text message to my sisters.
You know what I'm saying.
I'm never gonna post that that was really really hurtful, and don't say like maybe three days after it happened, dragged me for two weeks.
She called me a nothing girl. She didn't put this in. I hate they kept saying I was cloud chased. So let me tell you that. Man, if anybody that really know me, I don't like to be embarrassed.
I hate being embarrassed if I'm outside, and I hate being embarrassed.
So that me doing that.
Trust me, I wouldn't did it if I If I had knew, I would have just probably died in my head like that. I would have never put it, I promise you, which is so unfair.
I mean, I totally hear you. And part of what kind of confuses me about people's reactions. I mean, people are just out of their mind and always looking for someone to be cruel to. I mean, I feel like that's rule number one of the Internet. I've been so confused about how the TikTok algorithm works. I feel like everyone is just erasing the fact that you weren't trying to reach anyone outside of like your general area. But because no one knows how the TikTok algorithm works, it
just got sucked up and like regurgitated to everybody. And how was that your fault?
It was bad.
I mean I want to go back to those first couple of days as well, because I mean, just going back through the story, it seems like you're not only dealing with suddenly the eyeballs and attention of millions of people, but you're also still dealing with the physical problem. So how do you manage those first couple of days where there's like two really stressful things going on.
We started looking at some of the comments and they were saying, well, use this, use that, use this, So now glogle be going acetone the stuff I started using Now, of course it was pretty you know, as I'm trying to keep getting off myself. But now I'm following what they're telling me. So now I got cotton bowls stuck to it. The inside is it's not just tingling is burning. That first day, Judy, Judy called me and that's from Colleida School.
Did you just find the TikTok?
Yeah?
Yeah, and she of course again my number was on it. She said, oh, well, I'm about to send you a bunch of stuff.
Okay, thank you. You know it's something that's gonna being there, you know, get it off.
Yeah, oh no, this is to grow you have back. Well, we're still trying to get it off at this point. So my sister was like, you know what, like when it all started, she said, you know what, You're gonna have to have surgery, you know what I'm saying to get this off. Like, dude, nobody gonna give me surgery, you know, to get this off. So now she's answering my phone. She gave me the lady Gina, a lady named Jane. She said, call on him on the side. I ended up calling Gina next.
Morning and.
Eventual, but I'm still wondering, like when is somebody gonna tell me, you know, like what I can do? You know what I'm saying, everybody's trying to tell me what they can do for me and what they can get, but I'm still have a headache.
My head is burning now, like it's just nobody's telling me what to do.
So she called me back and said, well, I talked to a doctor and the doctor said he could take it off, and not only can he take it off, you're gonna take it off for free. Three days later, I was in Los Angeles, and.
So is this all happening in less than a week?
Kind of less than a week?
Wow?
Okay, I was in Los Angeles.
What he did when she first called him, he thought it was a joke until she was like, no, I'm really really serious. So he went and bought a can of gorilla glue and he sprayed it on a mannequin head. So he went to putting all kinds of stuff together to see if you could take it out, and whatever he put together, he was able to take it out the mannequan head, and they flew me out there, and
I tell you, they flew me out there. It took four hours for the surgery, and when I woke up, I was able to Oh my god, I promise you.
I'm trying to wrap my head around what a crazy week that is for you. You start, I mean because the day, the day you posted the TikTok, it was just a normal work day, right, you Right? And then a week later you're in Beverly Hills getting a surgery that was developed just for you.
Like even my parents that were coming to the door, they was like, oh girl, I just thought you liked that hairstyle, like nobody nobody knew why it was like that.
But that long?
How long was your hair stuck before you posted to TikTok?
Over thirty days? Okay, old the thirty days.
And it's just like it, just like I said it, just the ponytail thing is just kept getting tighter and it was tangling in the inside, and it got to the point where I just couldn't do it any more. I'm taking a vlpms like I'm eating M and m's.
When this starts to go viral, When you start to get this like absurd amount of attention that no one could be prepared for it, much less with their scalp on fire, How did your family and friends react, How did they come together for you? I think it's very funny like the generation gap of your daughter being like the numbers.
Oh no, well, listen, my sisters was like that too. My mama was the only one that sat there and cried with me. My little sister, she was there with me through the whole thing. I'm talking from coming from the hospital because you know, I ended up going to the emergency room because after they was telling me all the stuff they use, this is when it got beyond I can't even take it in the moment. I went to the emergency room and the lady was like, oh, I just seen you.
She just seen me on TikTok. Oh my god.
So she get me in and she she has this act tone stuff and she's trying to get it out. So it's took the point where I'm going to be in this hospital. So it's either me being in the hospital all this time and end up having a heart attack because as she's taking the stuff off, it's burning
so bad to my pressure kept going up. It was so I asked her, can she give me the stuff and then I could go home and do it, and then you know, my sister and Mama they could take their time and you know, do it some at a time, but it was just burning so much. And then like the next day, that's when Gina told me about doctor. So we just stopped and just waited to go out there. Right before that, my sister started. My little baby said she started the goal fundme because she was like, you know,
you're gonna need surgery. Then she said, once she's gonna be bold, you're gonna need wigs. And if anybody know, these wigs not cheap these days. So she started to go fund me and I think she put it for I think it was like five thousand dollars she put for the goal fundme.
The goal fund Me raised twenty six thousand dollars. Wow.
Then they started saying that I'm suing Gorilla Glue. Now people, oh, they want their money back from the goal fundme. And this is when people went crazy.
On Wait, can you just where did that rumor come from?
I don't even know.
I don't even know because listen when this happened, when I seen the numbers and every everybody was talking about it, I emailed girla Glue myself and I told them I'm sorry for all of this, you know attention, I love y'all products.
I'm sorry and that was it.
Yeah, it's super any bad. Yeah you didn't know that.
Yeah, because I didn't want that. I didn't want that.
I didn't want that, and I didn't want no negative stuff. But then gorilla glue and seeing something like, you know, just a bunch of pre publicity. Everybody was buying it just to make these videos.
So this rumor came up that you were suing gorilla glue and then people got upset. How did that play out?
Uh, this is I did it on purpose, just the super gorilla glue. And here's the thing again, I have a daycap. I've been having this daycap for ten years. Yeah, I'm okay, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, I didn't need I felt like I'm gonna say this. I felt like with the whole daycap, I was doing way better in life before this happened.
I understand why no one trusts anyone on the internet, but it's so obvious you didn't post a lot to TikTok. You have a whole life and you can't control what goes viral on TikTok. Like it seems completely random. How How does where do things land? With the with the gofund me in the longer term.
Okay, with the GoFundMe, I ended up taking it down and because I even had to make it do a whole appeal because they messaging the go fund me people, so we had to do a whole appeal. And then when he sent this to me three thousand of the dollars, I came back home and I gave three different families one thousand dollars. And then with the rest of it, I gave the doctor obain because he did the surgeon for me for free. He did the surgeon for free,
and then he goes to Africa. He goes all kind of plaghana, He goes everywhere, and he do all of these surgeons for you know, like the baby with the klep lips, and he really do like all kinds of free surgeries. So I felt like, if I give this to him, that can help him help a lot of more people. Then they told me, oh, that was dumb. You should have never gave them money. Like nothing I did, nothing I did was okay. Everything I did was wrong. They fussed at me for doing the go fundme, they fussed.
At me from giving it away. It was just nothing. Absolutely nothing I did.
It was Okay, we'll be right back with more of my talk with TESSAA Brown. Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I never used chat GPT because I'm ethically opposed to it and it scared me. However, last night I was missing my dad, and so I went on chat GPT and I asked chat GPT who was Mike Loftis, hoping to read something like nice about my dad and folks. Chat GPT told me Mike Loftus was comedian and podcaster
Jamie Loftus's ex boyfriend or ex partner. So I dated my dead dad according to the scary computer love that that's what the historical register will show. And here's the rest of my conversation with Tessaca Brown. So you go go to LA. Thankfully you're able to get this resolved. I guess before because I want to talk about how the management stuff sort of came together originally. But I do want to talk about there were also some copycats. How did that come to what?
Okay, the girl with the purple hair, boy, I don't know if it was a girl, but I'm sorry, I don't know, but that person did it. They didn't do her as nearly as bad as they did me, and she was trying to prove a point that oh, you can put this on the ticket right off, and she ended up in hospital. Then it was another man that put gorilla glue on a cup. He had to get the top of his lip cut off. I'm telling y'all, don't do this, like this is serious, right, They like
I didn't. I didn't get that at all, But nobody said nothing about them talking about me like I was the dumb one.
You have that stuff. And then there's also, I mean, the media starts to pick up on this, How did you manage that? How did you decide who to engage with or who not to all, well, you're with this medical emergency.
I talked with Jess hilarious, okay, I like talk with her on the phone and his thing. I've been loving her since long time ago, and when I seen that she was calling me, I was scared to answer because I know she's a comedian, so I feel like you're going to be like, you know, But she was like test, babe, you know what's going on. And I've told her what happened, and she was like, I'm so sorry.
That made me. The love for I had for her win a thousand plus.
It was a lot of people like saying, you know it's gonna be okay, you know you're gonna get through this.
But then it was those other ones you specifically mentioned the Wendy Williams coverage. As those things come through, how do you take that in stride? How does that affect you?
Before Wendy would said everything, she was saying, I love Wendy, you know me and mind watching Windy.
All the time, like you know how you doing all the time.
Yeah, So what happened was as she just kept every day this later had my picture on her screen, my mama called the show and she played it on a show.
She played it. My mama called this show and say, Wendy, my baby made a mistake. You know, I love you. My baby made a mistake. Can you please cut us some slack?
And then after that she bought a bunch of shirts for everybody that was in an audience.
I said, I don't like her, but you know okay.
So I want to take you back to LA. You've gotten this surgery done successfully, you can finally think a little clear more clearly, and you've been connected with Gina. So how does how does that relationship come together. And how did you decide to be like I need a manager to to sort of navigate this time.
Well, she called me, like I said, and I called her the next day and she was like, you know, this is big.
I know you're trying to get it off, and but this is big. I can do this and I can do that.
What kind of things she.
Was honey, booboos, manager, I know a lot of people. You know, I can get it.
You know.
She told me like she can find somebody.
I didn't know she really gonna find somebody, but she was saying she could find somebody and she can and helped me through this whole thing.
And that was it. It was a lot of people wanted to.
Do interviews and I didn't, you know, know what to do or how to So she set up like she would send me a whole like layout, you have an interview at this time, interview at this time, interview at this time.
How do all the interviews?
Call it?
Lot a noise done?
Get ready for the next one. And like I said, the biggest thing I didn't care about the interviews. The biggest thing she did for me was finding doctbang because that's.
Like life changing.
It was.
This is something I've talked with a lot of people about in the past of you know, going from your everyday life to all of a sudden having a spreadsheet of like, here are my interviews for the day. What does that change like where all of a sudden you're like a public figure overnight.
But let me tell you the thing was, I feel like, if I can do all those interviews over now, it would be better because every interview I was doing, I was.
Crying, like ugly crying every interview.
Yeah. Yeah, they asked me questions, and I mean, you know, it's just it had just happened. I'm ugly crying on it re interview.
Listen. I lost twenty pounds and everything.
It was bad.
It was, it was really really bad.
And then like two weeks after we got the glue off, you know, he.
Gave me these.
Oh really, mm hmm, wait what walk me through that?
He did a mommy makeover two weeks later, and you know, since I since I've been through so much, he was saying, i'mna do your mommy makeover. So he gave me breasting plants and he did a he did lightful suction.
On my stomach.
Wait the doctor who did the same doctor. Yes, wait hold on, so wait do you ended up? Do you stay in LA for a little while after after after the glue thing?
I think I stayed for like two days and then we came back home. Two weeks later we went back.
You flew you flew out to UH to get implants and what else.
A tummy tuck and then they gave me the dose.
Wow, So like this is okay, this is like the craziest month every So you go back to LA, you have these procedures done. What happens then, because now it's like if like you like became a social media star overnight. You go through this first wave of interviews where I think, very understandably you're very emotional. I'm always curious about that turning point of like, Okay, now that the immediate huge moment is over, what am I going to do now?
How much do I want to engage with this moving forward?
Well?
What happened was I went to LA for something. I don't know why I was going, but I was going for something else. Right, I get off the plane and my phone it's messages out of missed all kind of so I called them I'm like, what's going on? You need to talk to your daughters and talk to them now, Well what is going on? The teacher came to one of my children and say, oh, we're so sorry for y'all lost. So they're thinking I went on this plane and a plane crashed. The internet SAIDA died. It was,
it was listen, it was everywhere. So now it got to the point where.
I'm on Live.
Oh I thought you died, And still to today, I can get a Live and somebody's gonna say, oh, they told me you passed.
Away, like they literally killed me. So then a lot of stuff started dying off.
And so how long after the original incident was this?
Oh this happened maybe with a month after I died.
So gorilla glue incident, surgery interviews that implants dead dead.
Like I said, all right, so if you know, if anybody that really really know me know me in this situation, I always try to make it as a joke. I always try to make light of any situation, just like I tell people now right now, if I watched the video, I understand why people thought it was funny. I understand why people thought it was a joke because you know what that was stupid that was done. But I understand now why people thought it was funny. I didn't understand
then because I was so angry. Sure, but I understand now. I already thought it was funny.
You had you started developing a hair product from there? Yes, how did that come about? What was that process?
Like?
Like I said, doctor Bang put some stuff together and my hair like all the little ball spots that I had, I had like ball spots here, but I still had some hair. But I went got it cut like shorter than after I first had the surgery. The stuff that he, you know, had my head growing with, we bottled it up. Now I was scared, Don't get me wrong. I was scared to put it up because all I'm thinking, if I was somebody, why would I want to buy something for my hair from up?
You know what I'm saying.
That first date, I made seventy thousand. I didn't make you all, not me personally, but yeah, I had to split it with, you know, the people that was putting it together, the manager seventy thousand dollars in the first day. And then we added edge control, we added some hair spray. But what happened with that demand was too much because the people that I was doing it was like, you know, like a little there weren't no.
Big time company.
The demand couldn't keep up with what they was doing, and we couldn't find nobody else to do it. So that was a man. That was it. It was going after that, and everybody keeps saying, when are you bringing them back? Because the thing is they worked. You know how people be like, oh, I'm using this, you know, just so I can get people to buy it.
Yeah.
It really he really grew from there.
I mean because at this point we're kind of like a few months out for me original you mentioned earlier, like your attitude towards social media changed significantly. What does that mean interacting with social media after this first wave of craziness had passed.
Before the craziness it was, you know, like I said, go on live talk about a football game.
I'm just at the poke with my kids. We just you know, live whatever. Now I'm on live.
Hey, y'all, tap the screen, share the live Let's get these number.
Why am I doing all this? You know what I'm saying?
I post a video every five minutes. I go back to see how many views I shouldn't be doing it, Like I feel like that's crazy. I have never worried about numbers before.
It changed you.
It changes you, It really changes you. I try to keep my hair done now. Once upon a time, baby, I would get on social media and just like yo, you know whatever, whatever.
But now I have to make sure my lashes is done.
I got to make sure because at this point, because I have a couple of videos after that that went viral. So now I'm like, oh, well, I don't know what video and go viral. So I got to try to make myself presentable. Like even my children, they'll come show me now it's you know, at first it was they were just posting stuff. Now let me see this, bring me this phone, let me see this video.
I need to see what's in the background. I need to see if anything on the floor.
It's draining. I'm gonna tell you that it's draining.
It sounds like the kind of thing that once it starts like, you don't you don't really go back right now.
Some people, if they do, you know, God bless them. But I would have never thought this is how I would be when it comes.
To social media at this point. Now, don't get me wrong.
I still post like me and my kids dancing like you know, just you know, little cute things.
Yeah, I don't post nothing. Oh well, let's do this because it's gonna go viral. I don't do that.
The answer is either like quit or you have to totally like go with it, like get off altogether.
Because you know what's another bad thing? Don't recomments?
That what every ready keeps telling me, stop reading a comments, stop reading the comments. Of course me reading the comments crying of the crime, because God them people in those comments. My thing is because this is a lot of stuff that I see that I could go make a comment on, but I wouldn't make a comment. I'll screenshot it and make the comment and send it in my sister's group. I'm not gonna go on social media. Another thing is if I wasn't as strong as I feel like I am,
I would have underlived myself a long time ago. This is how bad it was.
This is how bad it was.
And one boy he ended up coming in my inbox and he was like, I'm so sorry, miss Tessaka, but I'm in this troll.
Group and we go around and we just troll people, and I'm sorry, this happened to you this.
I blocked them because you're not gonna play me, you know, in my face over here and then try to come in my inbox and tell me you're sorry.
So I ended up bl I saw it blocking. Listen.
I think I hit like a thousands of people that's blocked. And one of my sons was like, no, you don't block nobody. You know, any engagement is.
No, no, no, no, no, I'm blocking you.
It's to the point where when I look on social media, unless I'm like, when I look on social media, the comments, I would think everybody in the.
Road just loved me, But no, I had my son.
He's on it and he's just taking off all the bad ones before before I can see him.
I think it's so cool and also just like from a like internet culture perspective, interesting that your kids are helping you navigate this too, because they, you know, were like born with phones in their hands. I'm assuming yeah, just because of like the generational difference, How did they sort of help you through this moment? Was there anything where their feelings about what you should do or how you should interact with social media was different?
Okay, this was the week I didn't even have it off my head yet. When this first happened, there was a picture going around with a lady like with pieces of hair like everywhere, and of course they say that was me.
So I let them know, Hey, you know, y'all know that's not me. Look at my head. You know it's still here, y'all know that's not me. Go to school.
Nobody told them about that. But they started singing the Gorilla Blue Girl's song. So my baby came home crying. I just let her know, Hey, you know what you do, learn the song and next time they sing it, y'all singing with them. But then I'm trying to encourage them.
And now go in the bathroom and I'll start crying because it's like because I put them, you know, I would go cry because you know, I felt like I put them in that situation and I didn't want my children to be bullied behind something you know that I did.
But those same.
Friends, yea, now it's like, oh my god, it's miss Tessica.
They won't take pictures.
It seems like, I mean, a lot has changed, and also not a lot has changed, right? Has your day to day shifted that much since the whole ordeal.
No, I still get up at five thirty in the morning do my daycare. On a Saturday, I try to put a bunch of videos together so I can have, you know, stuff to post during the week. When it's time for the dance team to do anything, we still have practice. No, it's pretty much the same thing, except for anywhere I.
Go, No matter where it is.
Oh my god, I went to Angola to go see my uncle. Like, now I think all of that stuff is cute, like when people call me a girl, little girl, and now it's like, hey. At first, I kept saying my name is Tessica. I cried so much, my name is Tessca. But now it's like whatever, I'm gonna go ahead on and run with it.
What motivates you to maintain this relationship with social media?
Those little girls, my little girls, and it's a lot. Listen in between all of this, I promise you it's so much. But next month we start shooting the movie about what happened?
Well, wait, how did that come about?
It's his name is Elvin Gray. He's a director that usually well he just posts. He makes movies about people that went viral. This movie I'm going to.
Be in it.
Like the other movies that he make pretty much just taking stuff from TikTok seeing how it went. Oh, you takeing stuff from the headlines. But with this one he has all the information from me.
So is that going to be made like you're acting in it or is it documentary?
I will be in it. I will be in it.
I will be playing myself. Yeah, they're gonna see. They're gonna see, like what happened right before I put this glue in my head? Well, if I was a normal human being that bullied me, I would be like, oh my god, this girl was really going through a lot, and we just put more People have no clue what I was going through, like in the house by myself before this glue thing, Like yeah, the day this glue thing happened, right, But they'll be able to see it in the movie.
Outside of that, what is next for you? Do you have like bigger social media aspirations or is it just sort of maintaining your normal life.
Well, I have a new manager now, and I was telling him that, you know, I wanted to do a swim suit line. It's a couple of things that I want to do because like even when this first happened, was like, girl, you have to leave that daycare, loon. This is what I've always wanted to do. I worked at a daycare for seven years before Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina came and we was, you know, displaced for like two years. We came back and I seen that things
were happening around here. I ended up getting a job, ended up quitting.
But this is what I love.
I would never I don't care what happens. I will never ever let this daycare go.
My final question is just sort of reflecting on these like last couple of years at this point, and the emotional and also like life changing dirty you have been on when you reflect on it now, would you do anything differently? And was there anything that really sort of surprised you?
Okay, so as far as would I change anything, promise you wouldn't never used the.
Girl, Well yeah, never, wouldn't.
Have never, and then everything I'll just be, you know, still normal. Yeah, but I think that's the biggest thing.
Look, don't use it. If you don't have it, go get it. If you can't get it, go without it. That's it.
Thank you so much to Tessica for her time and her insight and keep your eyes peeled for her upcoming projects. You can follow her on Instagram or TikTok at. I'm underscore d underscore Old Lady, and if nothing else, I hope this is the kind of sixteenth minute story that reminds you that people are people first. If you had been stressed enough to post an egregious l this could have been you. So have some grace. And when it comes to capitalizing on these random internet moments, again, consider
who that capitalizing is supporting. If it's an already rich person exploiting followers to become richer, because there are Mormons who took PPP loans to Buya Chanelle purses, get them check the list of episodes. But if they're capitalizing on their moment to keep getting by with joy and aren't hurting anyone, chill out. Tessica's awesome. Thanks for listening and for your moment of fun. Here's some more Regina King as tessaka brown by Beat.
Every day, as many as one people fall victim to use the gorilla glue in place of a beauty product, and they deserve compensation.
We all do. You should not have to go through life with hand like a lego man. Because one time you use gorilla glue instead of that's way of Greece, we.
Will get you moneys for gorilla glue or the next.
Best Thing, a lifetime supply of gorilla glue.
Sixteenth Minute as a production of fol Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It is written, hosted, and produced by me Jamie Lostis. Our executive producers are Sophia Lickterman and Robert Evans. Denas and Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is from Grant Crater and Pet. Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson. My Kat's for you, Casper and my pet rock Bird. You will outlive us all. Bye m