Cool Zone Media. Hello sixteenth minute listeners. Jamie here just reminding you that if you're in the LA area, or even if you're not, we're doing a big Bechdel Cast celebration show that is my movie podcast that I co host with Caitlin Dorante at Dynasty Typewriter right after the Oscars on March second, at seven point thirty. It's going to be a big show with all of our favorite
guests from the show and attendance. We're going to be cosplaying as Oscar winners, We're going to be talking about the ceremony, and we're just going to be doing stand up and celebrating women in film. How about it? So you can get tickets irl still if you are interested, and if you're not in the area, we are also selling streaming tickets that you can get at the link in the description. See you there. Enjoy the episode. Name a story about becoming famous as a kid that is normal.
You kind of can't like it's an abnormal state of affairs. But we only really see a couple different kinds of narratives that are centered around this kind of fame. The first is this big breakout moment where a kid who enjoys performing does so on a larger scale than most kids could dream of. In a lot of cases, were led to marvel at their media training. Wow, they're a little adult. Macaulay Culkin comes to mind.
Did you want to go into the business or did your mom and dad think it would be a good thing for you?
How'd it happened?
Well, just kind of popped up, like my friend, well she was a stage manager, so like.
At a Broadway show though, right or Broadway.
Yeah, or as the case may be. Wow, they're a little sex object. Here is Natalie Portman reflecting on her career as a kid.
Being sexualized as a child. I think took away from my own sexuality because it made me afraid and it made me feel like the way that I could be safe was to be like, I'm conservative and I'm like serious and you should respect me, and I'm smart and like, don't look.
At me that way.
And then we get a variation on a few adult narratives for former child stars. There's the where did they go? Narrative, which is almost always answered by they're a person. They have a normal life in their normal There's the kid that moves seamlessly into stardom as an adult, occasionally referencing
the more uncomfortable parts of child stardom in interviews. There's the most troubling outcome where a child star grows into a very troubled adult for myriad reasons, whether it's the lingering effects of financial or parental exploitation, abuse at the hands of exploitative Hollywood types, or any mix of mental health and substance abuse, issues that could happen to anybody and can be exacerbated by the pressure of living so
publicly so young. Because while there are plenty of redemption narratives on a longer timeline for stars like this, most young celebrities who either struggle or are just normally rebellious like kids are, are shamed in the moment, which is never in the history of the world helped anybody. But as time goes on, the nature of child stardom has
changed with entertainment mediums. A lot of the narratives that I grew up with focused on kids that got their start in film or TV, or may have been discovered online and then made the transition to film and TV and never looked back. So how did it happen?
Did someone call you and say hey, I saw your song on YouTube.
Well, first basically.
I got this email from was it.
I think it was like Mari Povich.
Oh yeah, he wanted me on his show to do this conversation, and my mom.
Was like no.
There was a whole generation of millennial and Gen Z musicians who were discovered either on YouTube or SoundCloud, and slowly you'd stop hearing stories about kids being discovered at the mall and started hearing about them being found online. And the ethics there are just as murky, if not further complicated by that. But the pursuits here are pretty
consistent music, acting, occasionally dance. The exploitation has been terrifyingly consistent, launching kids into a world that they and often their families have no understanding of, and into a pretty exploitative industry while they're really vulnerable. But when the Internet took over, there was this new, separate group of kids who became
famous just because they did. Sure, some had posted something online themselves, but in the internet is a void sense, not in the sense that it was attempting to be noticed or famous in any meaningful way. And in the last few years we've started to hear from the now adult former children. Surely there's an easier way to say that who were turned into lifestyle content before they could
possibly consent to it. These young adults are the results of family vlogs and reality TV, kids that don't have performance aspirations, but who are conditioned to view their life as a performance for others, even if things are remarkably different for them when the cameras turn off.
Now, we're going to go to our GMA exclusive with the eldest daughter of mom influencer Ruby Frankie, who pleaded guilty to child abuse last year. Sherry Frankie is now sharing her story in a new book, including allegations about her mom's relationship with her former mentor.
But in the not too distant past, for some kids, their fame online was out of the control of them, their parents, and basically everybody. These are people whose old home videos were up floated before a lot of people
understood what happened when viral fame came their way. A prominent example is the parents of the Charlie Bitme kids were not expecting or trying for their video to become a global household topic, and in the case of some early meme stars, the moment or image that goes viral wasn't even uploaded by them, and in some cases was a photo or video clip that was from years ago. I jump right to the uh irma gird girl if
you were on the internet in twenty twelve. Here she is telling BuzzFeed about how she learned this old image had been posted of her. Years later.
I started getting messages from my mom wondering why my photo was all over the internet and that there was some kind of German writing on my photo and it was all over and I was like, okay, Mom, I know she does not know.
How the internet worked, so I just ignore.
But then I get a message.
From a friend from high school and she says, Hey, just so you know that this other guy who went to high school with is sharing that photo of you all over Facebook.
And I did end up messaging him like.
Hey, I wouldn't mind if you just ask, but it's a really stranger just doing this without my consent, Like what's going on.
But no matter how one becomes famous, whether they're at the Oscars or assigning booms to snack foods on TikTok, there is this underlying expectation that no matter how fame comes your way, you should probably want it right at this point. To suggest you wouldn't want it can be regarded as kind of weird or anomaly. I mean, we've even talked about it on this show with Matt Pacerro the Wicked Witch of the Eastborough. But there's something especially bizarre to me when this logic is applied to kids
who have grown up online. It's such a cultural assumption that everyone would want this, that it's treated as superhumanly humble to not be Internet famous, and as bleak as that can sound, it's not based on nothing. Tech understandably has shifted kids' aspirations. Just think of all those beermongering clickbait articles that say kids used to want to be teachers, kids today want to be YouTubers. Should we kill them?
What I think does hold true is that a desire to be prominent is assumed, especially somewhere like the US. So what happens if you're a kid who becomes Internet famous and you're kind of not into it. It was a normal day in Mebane, North Carolina, in two thousand and five when the Roth family smelled smoke. They walked outside and saw a few blocks down there was a house on fire. They panicked at first, but were soon
put at ease. The burn was a controlled one planned by the local fire department, and the home had actually been donated by a family that was hoping to clear that plot of land. So Dave took his kids, Tristan and Zoe over to watch the burn, along with a few others in the neighborhood. And Dave was an amateur photographer, so he brought his camera. There's actually a few photos from this day that are memorable. Tristan was a huge
Harry Potter kid. It was two thousand and five, many such cases, and he was dressed up as Harry basically all the time. So a kid in a wizard costume in front of a burning house pretty good, pretty weird. But Zoe, who was only four at the time, was operating on another level. She wasn't wearing a costume with a pink T shirt and a sandy brown bob that only a four year old girl could pull off, and
she was transfixed by the fire. Her dad told her that no one was inside the house and it was okay, But that's kind of a weird concept for a four year old to wrap their head around, but after a while, she seems to get it and cannot stop staring at this fire. So when Dave tells her to turn around so he can take a picture, Zoe just turns over her shoulder and smiles in what she'll later describe as my smile at the time, a close lipped smile with
her head felted slightly down. It's adorable, but as Zoe's dad noticed at the time, it's also a little menacing. And a few years later this image would inspire the Internet because if you look at this picture, a four year old girl smirking in front of a house on fire, it kind of looks like she did it. But did she want the fame that comes with being a viral star? Well that's another story completely. Zoe Roth aka disaster Girl. Your sixteenth minute starts now.
I'm not story.
Stay get to the moment.
Six six six.
Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take a look at the Internet's main characters, see how their viral moment affected them and what that moment says about us and the Internet. I'm your host, Jamie Loftus, and this week I am delivering a long requested episode of this show and O g meme Girley Zoe Roth aka Disaster Girl, And yes I did get the chance to speak with Zoe and she is just so lovely. I
feel like a proud auntie talking to her. That interview will be in a bit And she's a super unique subject for this show because while she didn't have much of an interest in parleying her virality into a career, as we'll talk about, she was never really bumped by everyone around her assuming that she would want to turn the viral moment into a career. And that's probably because she's the first guest I've spoken to on this show
that's a true died in the wool. Internet native expectations that have baffled older guests who grew up with analog technology are not bizarre or unfamiliar to her. Zoe went viral at a very particular moment in Internet history before she was fully forming memories and brings one of the most interesting stories around fame and consent that I think we've ever got, So return with me if you dare to.
January two thousand and seven, Irish becomes the twenty first language officially recognized by the EU, not that they give a shite what the EU thinks. President Bush. The Little One says that the NSA has definitely stopped wiretapping American citizens, which is kind of just like a funny little joke he made. And nearly two years after Dave Roth took a photo of his little girl watching a neighbor's house
burn down, the Internet discovered it too. Dave Roth had always been interested in photography, and so like any dad with a specific gadget based hobby, his kids quickly became a part of it. And he wasn't an idiot. The picture of Zoe, which he titled Firestarter, is a really good one, but his ambitions for it at first were fairly conventional. So bear with me and get ready to
hear some very very extinct website titles. Dave first uploads Firestarter to something called Zoomer, which was a stock image hosting service whose website now redirects to a scammy seeming Gemstone site.
But today's going to be killed a day because we're going to start to finally release Mark three. Zoomer Mark three six months in the making, a work two winner from Tenue features the ability to sell your photos of stock and keep ninety percent of the sale, but.
The Firestarter photo doesn't get much traction there. Around the time Zoe was heading into elementary school, her dad tried submitting Firestarter to a second publication, this time a photo publication called Jpeg Magazine.
Basically, these are really high quality magazines that feature one subject matter per an issue, and they're pretty affordable too.
And Jpeg sees the potential in Dave's now two year old image and they publish it in their February March print issue in two thousand eight, the theme of which was Emotion Captured. And I'll talk to Zoe about how she felt seeing her photo in a magazine this young, because yes, by this time she was sentient enough to understand what was happening. But this is an Internet show, and so of course it is online where fire Starter
starts to get a ton of attention. It was shared on the jpeg blog in November two thousand and seven, and before the time the image really took off quickly, racking up over ninety five thousand views and in time ran its way up to the outer reaches of the Internet. And you know this old chestnut, the site that really helped Firestarter, which would soon be rebranded as Disaster Girl,
Get Really Big was none other than BuzzFeed. On October twenty seventh, two thousand and eight, over three years after the original picture was taken, BuzzFeed writer Scott Lamb wrote the following.
Is aster Girl. She loves starting fires, but this devilish girl is responsible for other disasters too. Upload yours below.
This text was a tool that helped you meme the image, so you could put Zoe's image over any background you wanted and then add the primitive look that most memes had in the two thousands, that static, customizable white text where you could add your own caption and upload it to the community. Hilarious examples include she asked me to watch the oven. I asked her to watch her attitude. My mother told others we had a happy, warm home. Now she's not lying. Dark humor is like food. Not
everyone gets it. This kind of viral spread seems so like Hallmark sassy magnet coded to me. Now, So to put you in this time, let's take a step back to Rember exactly what the internet was like in two thousand and eight. The Internet of my unrequited horny youth. Around the time this all happened. I was in high school and desperately in love with a saxophone player who had gone to college for the saxophone and eventually broke up with me so he could have more time to
play the saxophone. This was the year of that really bad shil above Indiana Jones movie of the first Obama election. The year of low By flow Rider, the year the app store launched, The year Netflix and Hulu started streaming online. A world where the Jersey Shore was still a place and not the most fascinating sociological study ever put on television, but for our purposes. Two thousand and eight was a time where social media was becoming more important, but it
still wasn't quite all important. My Space had recently capitulated to Facebook as a social network of choice for young people at the time. It's hyperstyleed HTML induced seizure backgrounds replaced by the smooth land interface of Mark Zuckerberg, where
teenagers could send each other something called bumper stickers. Everyone under twenty five is like, okay, Grandma, go to bed, and we were obsessively checking each other's hyperlinked relationship statuses like a sixteen year old with the gall to list their status as it's complicated with someone else's hyperlinked government name beside it. It was a nasty time, and social media was one of the venues that the disaster girl memes spread, but there were still plenty of places that
curated this viral content curated by humans. If you can imagine before Zoe Roth's four year old face would make it to your friend's Facebook page. BuzzFeed was a huge viral aggregator in two thousand and seven, having just been launched by Jonah Peretti two years before, and our having gained the reputation for being a site of aggregated memes, viral stories, and these gnarly personality quizzes which were inexplicably
meth to earnest millennial teenagers. I looked back at some here my favorites.
Create a sampler platter, and we'll guess your age and height? What percent nerdy are you? Can you spot the fuck boy? We know the name of your next lover based on the food you order from McDonald's. How stereotypically white are you?
No accounting for this? We should be embarrassed. There was also cracked dot com, founded in two thousand and five. By a guy I've never met before and who certainly doesn't hold my livelihood in his very hands. Jack O'Brien, who went on to hire some of the world's greatest writers, comedians, and journalists who shall not be named no idea who they are cracked was an edgier, funnier, more researched version of the BuzzFeed model, and they did similar short form,
written and eventually video pieces. A Disaster Girl thrived on both of these websites, and after Zoe's image first popped up on BuzzFeed, she or I guess, disaster Girl became
an overnight sensation. The next day, BuzzFeed posted some of the hits of the meme generator from the day before, in which Zoe was photoshopped smirking in front of other ostensible tragedies, so Zoe's smirking at the dinosaur's extinction, Zoe's smirking in front of Jesus on the Cross, Zoe at Lincoln's assassination, the Grassy Knoll, and some really in poor taste,
bone chilling Holocaust images. Today. This really to me, reeks, of all of the tragedies that will happen in the world, have already happened in this extremely naive and dare say neo liberal way, Let's keep moving Jpeg magazine knew this was the time to jump on the publicity train for Disaster Girl and had an interview with Dave and Zoe the next day, October twenty eighth. Here's that piece.
Disaster Girl is coming for you. Roth's photo has popped up on a few bookmarking sites where you can upload a Firestarter template to enter in your own background silly fun. We recently spoke with Dave about his fifteen minutes. He and Zoe the fire Starter herself are digging the photoshop versions as well as the captions and our jazz that
the attention to the photo has gotten. Perhaps the lives of a disaster Girl and her father are a bit more fun and maybe even more mischievous than one would expect.
And off of this, Disaster Girl's lore spread across the world wide Web to all the must click, pop up, nightmare aggregate sites of the day, dig make your own Disaster Girl background.
Ebom's World, Disaster Girl strikes again.
Best week ever Disaster Girl, thenew fail, Cracked dot Com.
Six images of kids two insane to be real that really are.
Man, those headline formats really trigger my fighter flight response. But people were just not getting sick of using the disaster Girl meme. According to the All Knowing Know Your Meme, Google search peaks for disaster Girl wouldn't hit until nearly
three years later, in May twenty eleven. And if this image went viral today, there would be a terrifying, albeit relatively clear pipeline for the roths to take license the image, maybe get her on late night, start a branded social media career, participate in I don't know a crypto scam. All the waves of things that we'd see on the Internet in the years to come from the Ellen pipeline.
If you haven't been hearing the words damn Daniel in the last twenty four hours, you've not been on the internet. Our first guests are two friends who posted a video showing off some stylish clothes. In a matter of days, it's been viewed over forty five million times.
Take a look to Hey, we wel just doing damage control about the hawk coin scam to no avail just a couple weeks ago.
I'm gonna start by saying thank you to all my true fans and all the people that actually watch my stuff and they keep up with me. We're trying to sort out all the pieces and stuff to like get all this figured out and make everything right. Oh my god, I'm gonna cry.
But this was two thousand and seven and two thousand and eight. It wasn't just the Roths that weren't sure how to approach this moment with their now second grade daughter. It was that no one would know how to approach this moment. I'm not going to give you a full history here, but the term meme was coined all the way back in nineteen seventy six by Richard Dawkins, and
became associated with the Internet in nineteen ninety three. In a piece by Mike Godwin in Wired, Internet memes were revised to mean a pre existing image quote deliberately altered by human creativity unquote in twenty thirteen, half a decade after Disaster Girl became a popular image. So Zoe Ross is unintentionally very early to the meme game. I'm not
saying she's the first. There were plenty of videos and images like the Dancing Baby, Gary Brolsma's Newman Numa video, Lolcats, Rickrolling, and my personal favorite will it blend videos that had gone viral before her, but the two thousands still have this reputation of being the wild West era of memes. I want to focus on two thousand and seven here because it was arguably the first year that some of the most potent means to date entered our lives.
A brief preview, Lity, Some Stay Dry and the Pain chok LITZI Gotta Cry the Best can.
Lay Ready Alone?
Please?
These all came out in two thousand and seven. It's pretty wild, But I don't think that this was because
it was a particularly potent year for creativity. For context, this is also the year that b Movie came out, but it was a big year for increased success on aggregate websites like BuzzFeed and cracked at a time when social media and YouTube were becoming increasingly popular and easier for people to add access, and some of the subjects of these memes were able to parlay their fame into sustained popularity through a combination of luck and early meme managers.
And the most successful meme manager maybe of all time, is this guy named Ben Lashes. He didn't represent the roths or the disaster Girl meme during its heyday because the family didn't seek out management, as we'll get into, but Ben Lashes does become a weirdly important player in this story. So how do you become a prominent meme manager? Well, he started as a musician in the two thousands.
Is so long.
Inside say success inside of mind.
I was seeing in the comments that this track came for free on the Sony Ericsson brick phone in the mid two thousands. Pretty sick. But after he left music behind, Lashes pivoted to media in the late two thousands and interviewed musicians for Spin dot com.
All right, folks, it's the biggest night in Hollywood. It's being again Ben Lashes. You're ace reporter, stuck in traffic at its rush hour the Hollywood Freeway one oh one North, going to see Slash at Guitar Center in north Ridge.
And in two thousand and nine, he pivoted again and made his first prominent meme discovery. You know him, you love him Keyboard Cat And I'm not gonna harp on this because it really should be its own episode. But not for nothing. The Keyboard Cat video, you've seen it. It's a tabby cat and a Little Blue Shirt playing the ones and twos. This video was shot in nineteen eighty four by a family friend of the Lashes, which is how he knew about it in the first place.
But the meme doesn't happen until two thousand and seven, So think about that math. With regards to how long cats live, Keyboard Cat had, in fact died twenty years before he became famous. Rip de Fatso the cat, which begs the question how does a dead cat have a manager and create new content? They recast Keyboard Cat after two thousand and seven. They hired a similar looking cat named Bento, who debuted in a video called Keyboard Cat
Reincarnated being a cat. Bento also died. Rip Bento, here's his owner.
He had a big start and and it stayed big all the way.
He had quite a run and.
Well, he says there's a chance of a third Keyboard Cat if he finds one with the right personality at a shelter.
And we will get to that another day, but for context, Ben Lashes describes his pivot from music to management like this in an interview with Digital Trends in twenty thirteen.
I was the singer in a band called The lashes. We started in age, got signed to an indie label, then a major label. We rode the roller coaster of success and failure in the music industry and all that kind of stuff. I've always been really into the business side of things, of marketing and hype and pop culture, the way it works together. I'm really kind of a nerd.
And he had a knack for plucking out and effectively promoting meme successes like Scumbag, Steve, the success Kid, the ridiculously photogenic guy, Neon Cat, and Grumpy Cat very successful in the cat market I've noticed, and Grumpy Cat has in fact become his most successful client to date, in spite of the fact that Grumpy Cat has been dead for six years. Rip Tartar sauce the cat. But if you remember the Grumpy Cat heyday, it genuinely was huge.
There was even this TV movie starring Aubrey Plaza as Christmas Grumpy Cat. Don't get sappy on me it I forgot.
It's a lifetime movie.
All pets are off Cat.
Cat.
They don't even make paintball guns.
For the cats.
Fodrey Plaza brings the Internet sensation to life.
This is the best Christmas ever, go ahead ignore the title of my movie Pluffie Cat's Worst Christmas.
Ever.
So, while it's not clear if Ben Lashes reached out to the Roth family in the moment, he tends to work with clients or I guess grieving pet owners to make their memes their whole livelihood, hopefully to the tune of millions of dollars. But the Robs don't really seem to want to do that in part, as we'll discuss, because Zoe was a normal kid who wasn't into the idea of being hyper exposed. From that same interview, here is Ben Lash's philosophy of promotion.
Once it got to a point where there was a foundation of stuff that we'd done, I'd become so immersed in the meme world and thinking it was kind of a wild West where certain companies would take images and sell them and make t shirts, and everyone kind of had this idea that once it hits the Internet, it's free. I'm a huge fan of pop art, and the digital memes that go around now are a social form that's going to be studied four years to come, and it's
totally a new way of communicating with people. So I love the art side of it, the sharing and the mashing up. But I hate when the snakes get in there and start making products and squatting on sites. It just steals the fun out of it.
And again, I cannot overstate his success in this world. While Tartar Sauce the Grumpy Cat passed away and to my knowledge, had no use for human money, Ben Lashes and the cat's owner, Tabitha Bundsen, made her the wealthiest pet on earth, valued at an approximate ninety nine million dollars. What labor episode forthcoming, probably so we'll come back to
Ben Lashes in a bit. But in the moment, Zoe recalls in the late two thousands that her family didn't really know how to and weren't particularly motivated to engage with it, so life went on. Zoe grew up in relative anonymity. There were some local people who knew, but luckily,
people rarely look like their four year old selves. For long as she got older, she had an Internet presence like any kid who came of age in the early to mid twenty tens, but these profiles were just for her friends and family, outside of occasional family photos that her dad would post on the Flicker photo platform, the public kind of lost track of Zoe, even though throughout these years, the disaster Girl meme remained extremely popular, so while she was still a kid, there was only one
time that the family engaged with monetizing Zoe's fame. In twenty sixteen, when Zoe was in high school, they were asked by a company called Fuck Jerry to have the meme featured in a card game they were kickstarting, called, and I hate to tell you this, what do you meme?
Do you like spicy memes?
Of course you do, That's why I Fucked Jared created.
What do you mean? What the cards? Chrisby?
The rules are simple, just like the memes that you see on Instagram. There are photos and there are captions.
Your job is to match the best caption with the photo.
For what it's worth, Zoe's image is featured twice in this trailer, and the game is what It sounds like a ripoff of Cards against Humanity or Apples to Apples, but with memes. The game quickly raised its ten thousand dollars goal on Kickstarter and then some, and went on to haunt the impulse by area of urban outfitter stores for years to come now if it sounds familiar, Fuck Jerry is an Instagram account that was started by one guy not named Jerry and then turned into a bunch
of guys not named Jerry. And those there aren't hard numbers on the sales of what do You Mean? It
did very well. The games still exist today, and they later partnered with big brands like SpongeBob, Friends, Seinfeld's, and Tricia Patus to make other versions of the game, and Zoe's image is featured prominently in the first run of the game, including an appearance on the back of the box, and as we'll talk about in the interview, she says that her family didn't really know what to ask for in terms of money here, so they were compensated, but not to the degree that it seems like the game
was successful, And in part that's because the Roths brokeer this agreement with fuck Jerry without representation, and so they seem to get ripped off because Fuck Jerry, if their name and demeanor weren't a tip already are notorious rifters, though to the family's credit, that wasn't well known at this time. If you've heard the name FuG Jerry, before. It's probably because of the Fire Festival.
We're going to turn now of that trouble for the Fire Music Festival, hit with a class action lawsuit from concert goers who spent thousands of dollars for what was supposed to be a luxury weekend of food, art, and music in the Bahamas, didn't turn out quite that way. ABC's Gio Benitez in Miami with the details.
Good morning, Geo, Hey George, Good morning to you those concertgoers coming here to Miami all week and long. The event's co founder, Joe Rule says it's not his fault, but that he's deeply sorry.
Ah.
Yes.
Fire Festival the notorious twenty seventeen shit show where influencers paid thousands of dollars to attend a luxury concert on an island that resulted in a Lord of the Fly situation and leaving the founder in jail for fraud, and this inspired two documentaries, one which was suspiciously produced by Fuck Jerry to.
Hudoc actually draws attention to this, not only bringing up the competing Netflix documentary, but also calling them out for being co produced by none other than Jerry Media, the company that did the advertising for Fire festival in the first place. Remember how I said that the Netflix documentary tended to have better looking footage. That's largely because it looks like its old, unused advertising footage, which naturally Jerry Media had access to.
As you just heard, there were two competing documentaries that streamed about this nightmare situation around the same time, on Netflix and Hulu respectively, one of which was produced by Fuck Jerry, who claimed to have been involved in the early promotion of the festival but left when things got sketchy.
But on the Hulu doc they are directly implicated in promoting and being aware of the scheme throughout, along with the agreed upon villains of the story Billy McFarland and jah Ruhle or maybe you for of them from the hashtag fuck fuck Jerry campaign of twenty nineteen, where prominent comedians accused the company of stealing their jokes without credit or compensation, either to use on the fuck Jerry Instagram or wait for it, in prompt cards for what do
you mean? These guys famously fucking suck, and they suck even worse for screwing Zoe and her family over. But whatever frustration that caused was short lived because outside of this, particularly as Zoe came into her own and enrolled at UNC Chapel Hill for college, she didn't seem to want much to do with the meme. She popped up a few years later at a BuzzFeed event called Internet Live in twenty nineteen, which was sort of a best of
of the Internet of the twenty tens. There were performances from Lil nas X and Jojo Siua, The Damn Daniel Guys were there, the Jersey Shore Girls, there was some nine year old I've never heard of, and one of the Internet's most noxious senior citizen, Jason Nash, and Zoe the Disaster Girl. She pops up again in late twenty twenties, in the throes of the pandemic lockdown, in a very successful BuzzFeed video series called I Accidentally Became a Meme.
It's currently hovering around eight million views because for most people this was their first time seeing Zoe speak, much less speak as a full grown adult.
I Accidentally Became a meme, and this is that story. My name is Zoe Roth, but you may know me as Disaster Girl. This all started in two thousand.
And five, but even though she dipped her toe in engaging with Disaster Girl. In her young adulthood, she said she viewed it as more of a fun fact about her than a defining quality in her life. This is from April twenty twenty one, during her senior year of college.
Yeah, honestly, I've thought about this so much, like why it's so viral, why it comes back up every year, because most of the memes that came out when mine did two thousand and four, two thousand and five are like dead memes, people don't use them anymore. But I see mind recycled more often, and I think especially with twenty twenty, because twenty twenty was just such a horrible
year for a lot of people. It was like the perfect meme for that because everything was on fire, nothing was going right, like everybody was struggling with so many different things, it was like, and that meme is just chaos, so perfect for twenty twenty eight.
So by early twenty twenty one, Zoe is talking about the meme more than she ever has publicly, and later this month it becomes clear maybe why that was re enter Ben Lash's late April twenty twenty one. Only since we last encountered him. He's gotten really into Is it
a heypop? Is it b Instagram infographics on tolerance or is it c an all but inevitable footnote in every story we talk about here crypto and NFTs, it is, of course c. He was into crypto now and wanted to mint an fts and was very successful at this,
I might add. So he combined this new passion with his past experience and meme representation of the twenty tens and ends up teaming up with a number of meme subjects like Zoe Like past guest of the show Lena Morris aka Overly Attacked Girlfriend, as well as others like Padlock, Brian success Kid, and Irma gard Girl, who all teamed up with Lashes to sell their iconic memes as NFTs.
He told The New York Times that his clients had cumulatively made over two million dollars in late April twenty twenty one, and Zoe Rot's NFT was the top earner. It sold for one hundred and eighty ether, which around the time was half a million dollars. And if you're a regular listener, you'll know we also talked about this
in our Lena Morris episode. I am not a fan of NFTs, but the way that most have characterized this decision to sell their meme as an NFT during this big pandemic era boom was because they had been previously unable to control the Internet proliferation of their image, and so this seemed like a chance to get compensated in some way for years of being out of control of their own image. And that's a tricky thing to argue
with because how do you quantify that. Really there's no direct answer, But I do understand the appeal of finally getting something out of this weird element that has haunted you your entire life, after growing up with people photoshopping your image over Hitler rallies and getting screwed over by the likes of Fuck Jerry. At the time, Zoe Roth told The New York Times this people who are in memes didn't really have a choice in it. The Internet
is big. Whether you're having a good experience or a bad experience, you kind of just have to make the most of it. Zoe and I talk more about that in the interview, including the heavy speculation of how she used that money, But after the NFT sale, Zoe graduates from school, and in a poetic turn, I think she stumbles into a career in tech research analysis. So the kid who became a child meme is now the same
person advising tech companies on how to grow their businesses. Honestly, I'm not exactly clear on what Zobe does, but I know she's really smart. Sorry I can't get more specific. I just write MP three's that will soon be considered thought crimes our talk when we come back. Welcome back to sixteenth minute. Here's a thought I have never quite mastered the late capitalism email initiation that something like, hey, guys, hope everything's well except the world is ending, but otherwise
hope everything's well. Like I don't know, I just like don't want that kind of email coming from my dentist. I don't know. If you're listening to this and there's a protest for trans writes in your area, you should fucking go. And here's my interview with the one the Only disaster girl, Zoe Roth.
Yeah, I'm Zoe Roth.
I'm most well known for a viral photo of me that was taken of me standing in front of a burning house and smiling.
I want to go through the beats of the story very quickly to get the stuff out of the way that everyone has questions about and then get into the meat of this interview. Do you remember this day with any clarity?
Yeah, I do remember the day.
All I remember of it was looking in the windows of the house and looking at things that were burning and thinking.
Like, oh my god, this sucks, Like I wish I'm so glad this isn't my house.
We were two blocks down the road, and at the time we didn't know it was like a test fire, so it was planned and organized and it was totally safe, they say.
But all I remember was looking in the windows of the house and being like, wow, that sucks.
I feel like the added context of it being a planned burn, which I don't even think I realized was a thing, completely changes the image.
Yeah, exactly.
I had a friend reach out and she was like, I'm so sorry if that was traumatizing to you, to like watch a house burn down, and now this meme is.
All over the place.
I was like, Oh, it's really fine, Like it wasn't traumatizing at the time, even though I didn't know that it was a planned burn.
Tell me a little bit more about how you grew up where you grew up.
Yeah, so I grew up in mepin North Carolina, which is right in the middle of the state. I have an older brother.
I feel like I grew up.
I had a pretty average childhood, like I did sports, I did running, I traveled a bit as a kid.
But yeah, I feel like pretty average as far as it comes.
And you're four years old at the time this picture was taken.
Yes, I was four, about to turn five.
Your dad enters the picture into a contest.
Yeah, So my dad posted it.
It was either on Zoomer or flicker like all of these old old like photo sharing early Instagram type apps, and he submitted it to JPEG magazine, which was a physical and I guess they had an online magazine as well, and that's as far as we know probably where it got picked up. So there was they had a submission of like Emotion. It was the Emotion series of the magazine.
So he submitted it and it got printed. And I was in second grade at the time, and they've emailed us or they gave us the physical magazine.
I brought it to school. I was like, oh my god, I'm so famous, Like to.
This day, that is the most famous I've ever felt in second grade, like with this magazine of myself. But they posted on the website as well, so we figure that's probably where it got the traction.
And then from there, like my dad saw.
His coworkers like had it in their Cubic goals, and like my aunts and uncles would be like, oh, somebody I know just posted this on Facebook.
Or I funny, and we're like what, like, I don't know how that got there, Like wait, isn't this zoey? Like why why do wait? Why is this photo on my Facebook feed? And we're like, we have no idea.
That's really wild. I also just the very two thousands nis of a physical magazine called Jpeg Magazine. Yes, it's beautiful. So you're not totally sure how the image went viral online.
I know we've always wondered. I'm like, maybe when I'm old, I'll try to like track the provenance down.
I'm like, it's probably just one person sent it somewhere else from there and it's like blown up, but we've never known exactly where it took off from.
That's just my theory, the jpeg theory.
The sounds menacing, so you're in second grade when this comes out, the feeling of like, oh my god, I'm famous, I'm cool, I'm in a magazine. Do you remember that feeling? Do you remember talking to other kids about it, like how do people react to it?
Yeah?
At the time, I mean jpeg was the coolest thing, and then I think, no, your meme made a video about it that same year, which is two thousand and eight. So both of those was just like awesome. You know, they were awesome for a few days, and then I kind of forgot about it. It was mostly more interesting when people would like send it to me on Instagram or I Funny, or send me texts like oh my god, I saw this and it has a million hits on I Funny or like Twitter. And as a kid, it
was just like these sporadic interactions. I would have people who already knew me and saying like, oh look, I saw this. This is crazy, and I'd be like, yeah, that is crazy, and they're like, oh, so, what's the story. I'm like, oh my gosh, I need a video record. I needed like an audio thing I just send.
Out very early. And do you forming memories a part of your life? What was your relationship with the Internet, like as I feel like I was.
Very early on the Internet, like I got on Facebook and like elementary school, which looking back, I was like, that's probably not a great idea.
Like Instagram, as early as you could have it.
I was always kind of like looking to be on these new platforms, and then anytime I was on a new platform, I would end up seeing the meme and I was like, that's kind of funny.
It's like following me wherever I'm going on the Internet.
But it definitely I feel like I was on the It kind of grew up with me on the Internet.
As long as I've been on the Internet, it was there as well, like living.
Its own life. So that's always kind of an interesting thing. When there's new platforms, it shows up there as well, and I.
Just kind of let it be What personalities were you drawn to? What areas of the Internet.
I feel like I was a big I mean initially I loved I funny, and I've always been like on Instagram. There's a lot of times growing up, like in high school and in college, I was like, should I like make this my bit, Like should I make a YouTube channel? Like should I like figure out how to monetize this.
But I was just like, I don't really want to be I never wanted it to be my whole thing, Like I didn't want to build my life around it, and so I kind of actively made that choice, like when I was pretty young, like I'm going to go to college, I'm going to get a career, Like this is going to live on its own and I'm going to do my own thing. But I've kind of, yeah, I kind of try to like decenter it in my life, and when it comes up, it comes up, and it's like a fun little party conversation.
But that's kind of what I try to keep it up.
I want to sort of get into the idea of you know, your becoming this famous symbol. Did you experience any internal or external pressure, like walk me through that decision? And what were people around you sort of recommending or saying at the time.
Yeah, I think I always had friends that would be like, oh, it would be so cool if you do a YouTube channel, And there would be occasional times where I would go to a meme event and people would be like, oh, what's your handle, what's your.
Channel, and like I don't, I'm not I don't really have that. Me and some of the other memes.
We all get in touch like every once in a while, like when there's something going on, like when the NFT thing happened and we're all like, what are you guys doing, Like we hadn't really talked before that. But I've never felt like an internal pressure to do anything with it or really externally like to me, this is like satisfying enough to do an occasional interview and like see it every once in a while, and I've never felt like I needed to do something more with.
It for purposes of like satisfying or like you know, me or others.
And as you're getting older, you're realizing, like I don't want to be a full time YouTuber just because technically that is on offer. What were your interests? What was sort of developing as you were becoming a person growing up?
I spent my summers like working in Tahoe. I have an uncle that has a restaurant there, so I'd go to work in Tahoe. I was always working, like I always had a job in high school. A big part of my life growing up was speaking and learning Chinese.
So the school I went to in Chapel Hill was an immersion Chinese school, so it was always like a big part of my identity, like trying to figure out how I could go to China, Like I ended up studying abroad in China and high school, and that was kind of like my focus, Like how can I like go to college for this, How can I like set up my professional career around like Chinese and international relations?
Like that was really my focus as long as I can remember, figuring out what did I wanted to do professionally, and.
This just was never a part of that.
Yeah, I mean that seems really farfield. That's so fascinating. Did you become interested in Chinese culture because of the immersion school? Yeah? How did that come about? That's really cool?
Yeah, I think it was just the immersion school, Like it was kind of a pilot project that the school I went to in Chuckle Hill was working on. So I was the first or second class, so we spent half the day in Chinese and the other half in English, and I did it all the way through college.
So it's always just been something like.
I've always been like that's kind of cooler, Like everyone's like, oh, the meme, Like that's your fun fact.
I'm like, oh, okay, well there's other things too.
You're also yeah, like these nets that is cooler objectively, what did you go to school for?
So I ended up going to school for international relations and Chinese boats, so I kind of stuck with that. And then my first job out of college I was doing something similar, and then I pivoted over to doing technology research. So that's what I do now, basically a technology journalist. So again like nothing related to what I've done in the past, and nothing related to the meme. Everything is so like jumping around between different different things.
You're becoming like this very interesting person with a wide variety of interest, and there is just always this thing. Was there any point growing up with this and then being an adult with this and it's just it's going to be there forever. Were there ever moments where it was like frustrating or uncomfortable or like enough?
It's definitely there's times where it gets frustrating. I think like a lot of people use it in ways that I don't like condone.
Or agree with.
But pretty from an early age, I've kind of had the mindset that I can't control, like how people are going to use it or.
How it's going to like travel across the internet.
So being like frustrated or irritated about it isn't going to change the fact that I'm going to see it. I'm going to see like old interviews that I've done, like it's going to be there, and like that's kind of how it's been. What frustrates me most now is like, as I'm trying to build like a professional career and like obviously an identity out of this if you.
Look me up, like that is the first thing that's going to show up.
Like if I wanted to get a new job, or if I'm interviewing somebody and they want to see like, oh what does she write about? First, They're going to see all this meme shit. Instead I'm like, oh mind there. Wait then it's like, oh, well tell me the story, like wait, how old are you?
Like how is this?
And it kind of like overshadows, So it's more like the digital privacy thing, like I'm like, oh my god, I can't wait to get a new last name.
Like I can't wait till.
Because right now you can look up, you can find out anything that you want to do vertty much about me, which I think that is the thing that kind of scares me the most, and it's like the biggest externality about it.
Again, I think it's like an interesting conversation generationally that because you grew up online, what's the point of getting mad about it? It's an inevitability. When I talk to people who are you know, like gen X or even older, they're like, what the fuck? Why can't I get this to go away?
Yeah?
Yeah, exactly because their relationship with the Internet is so different. But just bizarre to have this thing that happened when you were four years old come up at a job interview.
Yes, it came up in this interview. The first time I did like a webinar for my job, I was so nervous. I didn't sleep the night before, so nervous. The first piece of feedback that comes in, wait are you Zoe Roth? That's the meme, I'm like, oh my god, I prepared all this stuff, like no questions about the topics of like the webinar, just like wait are you her?
I'm like, look it up, like do I look like her? Like, let's not. I'm not engaging with this conversation right now.
Good for you, Like I think you are well within your rights to be like.
Fuck off, yeah, look it up, Like I can't. I'm always just like look up, tell me the story. I'm like, look it up. I'm not telling you this story.
And it's like, honestly, when I meet people, like when I make new friends, like I recently moved to Utah, I never tell anybody because they end up finding out, like they will find out on their own and they're like.
Wait, what you didn't tell me about this? Like I can't believe.
Recently, it was like the twenty year anniversary, so I posted all these stories and a bunch of my friends in new chart are like wait what, like that's you? Like, why didn't you tell me? I'm like, well, I'll tell you now, Like now you know I like that.
It's like, how dare you keep this?
Yeah?
Exactly, answering secret I want to. Yeah, I mean talk about first these like meme conventions and stuff like that, which now feel kind of like this weird bygone era. How did appearances like that come together? And then what was that experience?
Like?
So, I honestly didn't have any like opportunities to travel or anything for this until I was in high school. So I never ended up even going to like the convent, like the Comic cons or whatever. The first like big
event I did was actually hilarious. I was in Shanghai for the summer as a summer camp counselor, like with kindergarteners, like literally just like in the weeds with these like kindergarteners who didn't speak English, being a camp counselor, and BuzzFeed like emails me and they're like, hey, we're doing this event next week in New.
York, like do you want to come?
And I was like, well, that would be great, but I'm in Shanghai, like and I have a job like at the summer camp, so I need to get off the summer camp and then you guys have to fly me back to New York and then back to Shanghai.
And they're like, okay, yeah, we can do that.
So I need to explain to my boss like another camp counselor, like, hey, so someone's offering to fly me to New York.
For the weekend, Like can I have Friday off so I can go and do that? Like with that be okay.
And so it was like the BuzzFeed Internet Awards or something, and Jojo c like gave me and the Dan Daniels kids like this like a meme trophy, which now I'm like, where is my meme trophy?
Like I do wonder where that is. But that is definitely That's probably the only event, like I think I've ever been to I.
Have seen that picture and you're just like, Wow, what a time, what a moment?
Oh my god, I hate it. It was so uncomfortable. It was like walking out in front of all these people. I was like, I'm never going to do something.
Like this again.
By that point, what it's been at least ten years, Yeah, it's happened. If you're not interested in like performing, it sounds uncomfortable.
Yeah, it was definitely uncomfortable and like and everyone's like cheering.
I'm like, I know, I could never be like an actual, like famous person, Like I do not like this level of like recognition.
Because I want to talk a little bit about the NFTs, because I talked to Lena about that as well, this idea of not having control over your own likeness, because this took off during a time where I feel like that discussion basically didn't happen and no one was thinking about like what is this gonna feel like in twenty years?
Yeah?
Is there a way to get control of this? Like what are your options?
We never like, we never like sat down as a family. We're like, what do we do?
How can we get this back? We've always known like you know, once it's out, the cats out of the bag. There was like like for a while we had a relationship with fuck Jerry who made that game?
What do you mean? And it was on the back of the box.
And that's probably like the biggest thing that happened, like for the most part, besides the NFT because on the box, like on every box, you can spin it around in my photo, so anytime you're shopping in an urban or like at the airport, like, oh my god, where's me, Like, let's go find Zoe. I'm in the I'm in the box. And we're like, this is just going to be probably the biggest thing. And that was the first time we ever got paid for us, so we're like, wow, we're
so rich. Looking back, it was, Yeah, it was not a great deal. They were not great to work with. That is kind of like something that looking back on we're like, oh, we were not well informed on this negotiation. I think it was like twenty sixteen, so a full like ten to twelve years later, and we're like.
Wow, this is so cool, Like finally we can get paid for this.
Like before that, it was like, oh, my dad had a red bubble shop, but so did all these other people that were just like stealing the photo and posting their own.
Like we're like, what are we going to do? Like hey take this down? Like we didn't have lawyers, we didn't have a team. It was just like me and my dad.
So we're just like, well, every once in a while, like somebody would be like, oh, can I get an autograph? Like somehow they would find us on the internet, like, hey, can I have an autograph?
How did your like family feel about this as time went on, because it seems like the kind of thing where it's really cool at first, but then it keeps going and going and going.
I feel like it's mostly been me and my dad like managing all of it. Like he took the photo, I'm in it.
My brother was there and there's pictures of him too, and we're always like, oh, it should have been him, Like what are the odds? Like they were all posted in the same places, but like Tristan didn't get famous. I'm so sorry, Tristan. But me and my dad are always the ones kind of like managing those conversations and figuring out the opportunities when they're bigger, like we'll involve everybody and be like, oh, what do you guys think?
But for the most part that I was like, oh, this is so cool, Like what a fun, cool little side gig for y'all.
So you are able to capitalize it a little bit with the sport game is the next time that comes up. For the NFTs.
It was very sporadic like it was.
I would get a lot of like random interview requests from people. Sometimes I would do them, sometimes I wouldn't, But like big opportunity wise, it was it was like the fuck Jerry game and then the.
NFT because I talked about it with Lene as well. I don't know if you were in conversation with her directly, but she also mentioned She's like, yeah, we were all talking to each other trying to figure out, first of all, what this is, what we can accomplish by doing it?
Yeah, yeah, exactly, So I'll paint the picture. It was my last semester of college, so I'm like senior year, like I'm just gonna chill out.
It's gonna be so.
Fun, Like I've taken barely any classes. And I start getting all these emails, which I'm also.
Like, how do these people?
I guess my email is like pretty easy to guess, but anyway, all these people start emailing me like you should make this token. It was all about this token, this fungible token, and I was like, what is this and I'm looking it up. It's all these like web three discourse.
I don't know what this is.
And at this point it was just still me and my dad. So I think I like DMed Lena and bad Luck Brian and maybe like the Success Kid. I was like, are you guys like doing this? We had a few people reach out and like we'll sell it for you and we'll give you ten percent. I was like, I'm not that's not really like giving Like I don't think we're going to let that happen, right, And so I talked to Baut like Brian, and he was like, yeah, you can like pretty much do it yourself, like you
can if you want to. And then I reached out to the Success Kid his mom laany manages that, and she's like, yeah, we have like a manager, like a me manager and lawyer like combo that will like do this for you. And so I was like, oh, put me in contact with him. And so now that at that point, I was like, Okay, well we'll have this me manager and lawyer like set this all up. And then we're like, yeah, let's do it, like let's set up the NFT and see what happens.
I mean, and then it was it seemed like it was really successful.
Yeah, that day of my life was like, oh my god, I wish i'd like live streamed it for my own personal because it was like a like an eBay bid, so people are just like bidding on it every few hours, and me and my dad were like, I'm only going to look every two hours. I'm only going to look every three hours, like I don't want and then we go to bed and we go wake up, and I went to work that day, like I worked at a restaurant inside of a hotel, so all my coworkers knew
that I was like doing that, didn't know what it was. Like, Yeah, Zoe's selling like a something and like the bid keeps going up and I was like seating tables and taking people back and it would go up in ethereum.
I'm like, wait, do the math how much ethereum is? Like, so that day was just yeah crazy.
I was wondering if this was your like introduction to web three in blockchain, and what a weird introduction that must be. So when who works in tech now? Were you happy with sort of the management situation that ended up coming together, because it sounds like there were some scammy or people reaching out to you earlier.
Yeah, in the end, it is really nice to have we still have the same like management team and they handle everything and then when we get a contract, Like if we had this team when we got that contract ten years ago for the game, like, it would not
have happened like it did. So they can definitely like do the negotiation and cut through the bullshit better than me and my dad that are just like, yep, this looks good enough to us, like I'm not reading the fine print, like, so we really like working with them.
Once the kind of tea happens, the auction closes, are you still at work?
Like?
How does the rest of that day?
Though?
So I did get to leave work early because everyone's like, oh, so you're quitting, like this is gonna shame.
I'm like, no, I will.
And I came back to work and I say the right pump, like I thought you like left the country or something. I'm like no, like I'm still here. At first, I was like, oh, I'm gonna buy a new car with my money. I have like not touched that money, like it's still like sitting in like a crypto wallet. Like I'm not going to like go crazy and like change my life about this. Like if I need this for like a house, like that's kind of my plan, Like oh okay.
I'll use it then.
But all in all, like there was a lot of like media outreach like oh, like Good Morning America like New York Times, and I was like, I do not I'm not going to be on Good Running America. Like I would rather die like emailing somebody from work like hey, no, thank you, like thank you for the offer, But I don't want to go do that. And so I was like after that same deal, I was like, I'm going to do one interview about this because I don't need to talk to ten people and say the same thing.
And I decided to do my one interview, and that was that.
That moment is so fascinating because even outside of like the nft of it all, it is so interesting to me that it's like this is some sort of exchange or like compensation for your likeness being outside of your control for twenty years. It feels like you should get something for that having happened to you. But qualifying what it is is so hard to do.
Yeah, it is challenging, and I feel like a lot of people, like afterwards, people would ask me, like, oh, do you feel like you finally have control over it? Like not really, like it's still going to do what it does, Like it didn't change the fact that anybody could use it however they wanted to, and people can still print shirts and people can make like horrifying text on top of it.
Like, we still don't have control over it, but at least we finally got paid.
Is that enough? Like what would be ideal? I guess in that situation.
Yeah, I don't know, like what's enough? Like who owes me what?
Like everybody uses it and that's always been how it's been, Like I've never thought that I deserved anything out of it, And that's kind of like you know, this could have happened to anybody. The fact that that memes viral and it's still viral now like poof speed to this day.
Like I didn't do anything unique for that to happen, So I don't feel like I deserved anything out of it, which is why I've kind of like tried to build my life, you know, as it is around it, like I'll keep that on the side, and as it comes up and there's opportunities, I'll engage with that, but I will keep doing my own like thing, getting a job, like having my life, because it's just kind of something.
That happened to me.
Yeah. I mean, I'm like weirdly like proud of you for doing that, because if everyone around you is like whoa, you could like totally change your life.
And yeah, yeah exactly.
There was like a few times when I was super broken college, like Okay, how am I going to figure this out? And then of course, right before I graduate, we get the NFT money. I'm like, if I knew I wasn't going to be broke this whole time, Like, oh, come on the fact that I happened right before my graduation, I was like, that's just the cherry on top of the cake. After being like working all these horrible jobs in college, I'm like, oh, so the mean money was coming in the end.
What are you.
Excited about right now we're in and how are we going to move this to page two of your Google results?
Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's kind of like the burden of my life.
I'm like, I need to figure out what I can do that could pretend that could be bigger than this, Like could I ever do anything that would displace like when you look me up that it's like auto fills like meme smiling disaster girl. Like I don't know if that's and I don't know if that's like fair to myself to be like thinking I need to do something bigger than something that I didn't really like having control over.
In the first place.
I think it's just generally like yeah, growing in my career, like I might go back to school, Like I just want people to know me, like for what I do at work, and like I like these you know this niche I'm in, like these companies know me, and like these people know me. But I think just growing that and kind of keeping that trajectory on my career and you know, keeping this in the backseat.
Right, and also like, like you're saying, is such a bizarrely specific burden to have put on you because who else has this problem?
Yeah, exactly, Like we need like a meme support group or something like we just need to get together for like a twenty four hour period, Like they're the only people that get it, Like there's like ten of us that will like truly understand.
And even like the way.
We've all navigated it has been so different, like it's not anything like you know, some people have leaned more into it, some have kept it more private. It's very different when it happens. She was a kid and like, Okay, I can go to the grocery store, no one's going to recognize me. Like only once in my life have I ever been recognized in person.
And it was like shocking.
I was like I can't do this right now, Like I don't know how you know who I am, but this is not like my vibe.
Yeah.
I was like at a bar in Salt Lake City where I live, Someone's like, are you the girl? Are you the disaster girl? And I was like no, and I just walked away like I don't know what you're talking about. I've never heard of that before.
Thank you so much to Zoe Roth. You can follow her at the link in the description, but I'm going to request that you don't bug her with the same three jokes She's been hearing for her entire sentient life, and I'm very, very grateful she took the time to talk. Something that really stuck with me about this interview is how regardless of someone's generation, there are still a million ways to relate to the Internet, and that that can
be a good thing. Recently, I've seen discussions around gen Z slip into some disdain after this same generation was being hailed as the kids who will save the world just a couple years ago, but with time the reputations of most generations sour, and gen Z has been more recently typecast as excessively nihilistic and addicted to their phones.
I wonder why two recent subjects on this show, Zoe Roth, the Disaster Girl and Haley Welch be talked to a girl because we just love to call a main character girl. Lady and wife are very close in age. Zoe was born around two thousand and Haley was born around two thousand and two. And they both became very famous online at times that they couldn't really consent to it. Zo he was just a kid, and Haley was drunk and
never formally agreed to her clip being aired. But their reactions to this virality couldn't be more different, with Zoe actively choosing to cash out once and otherwise stay the course and explore her other passions, while Haley tried to reclaim her image through a series of sketchy cations and
sketchy management. Everyone has a different relationship to the Internet, and while it has something to do with generational trends, not to mention that these stories happened seventeen years apart, I think it has just as much to do with the issues that always affect people, the level of familial stability and educational access people have, race, class ability, mental health, whether you think TikTok is really addictive or you're like
me and think it's too loud. The list goes on, and the Internet is programmed to respond to these factors about us. But there is a commonality to Internet natives that I've noticed, Like we talked about last week on The Backroom's episode, there has been this distinct change in how someone who doesn't remember a world before the Internet
approaches the phenomenon of becoming a main character. To younger people, this is just a fact of life, and whether you have any interest in becoming the main character, there's always a chance that one day you'll just be that. And how will you handle it? Because it seems increasingly expected that if you don't want it, that doesn't really matter. It doesn't seem easy. But I find a lot of comfort in seeing someone like Zoe who says fuck you,
no thanks, Zoe Roth the disaster Girl. Your sixteenth minute ends now enjoy and for your moment of fun, question Mark, here's a clip of the most recent disaster girl trend. I was able to find some disgusting AI slop that envisioned Zoe as a real child murderer. Sweet Dreams sixteenth Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeart Radio. It is written, posted, and produced by me Jamie Lostus. Our executive producers are Sophie Elekterman and Robert Evans Limas.
Me Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is from a grant creator and pet.
Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my kat's flea Casper, and my pet Rockberd, who will outlive us all. Bye.