There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is there Are No Girls on the Internet.
We need to.
Talk about Candace Owens because and I can't believe I'm saying this is she kind of making a little bit.
Of sense now.
So last week on her podcast, Candace called out President Donald Trump. She criticized Trump's attacks on Harvard University, saying I never thought I'd see the day where I'd be rooting for our university over Donald J. Trump and his administration. But I don't recognize this administration right now. I don't recognize what's happening. So at face value, it sounds like she's kind of defending free speech. And yeah, you might be wondering, am I actually agreeing with Candace Owens a
little bit? But hold up, don't get too comfortable, because this is not a change of heart for Candace Owens. It's a strategy Candace Owens, I think, is rebranding, and like always, she's using things like outrage and celebrity scandal to do it. In this episode, I dive into how Candace Owens is leveraging lawsuits like the one involving Blake Lively and Justin Buldani In the fallout of the film, it starts with us to package her politics for a softer,
maybe less familiar audience. It's the same noxious content, just with a new code of paint. I broke down her playbook to my friends Samantha and Andy over at the podcast stuff Mom never.
Told you.
We are talking about the one the only Candace Owens speaking of villains, have my kidding, We'll see so like I should say, upcot like I am weirdly fascinated with her. What do you all have thoughts? She's somebody who who's on your radar? What is your experience, what are your experiences with Candace Owens?
Or do you have any.
Uh minor negative? Negative?
But I most of most stuff I know is more recent, and I didn't know a lot of what I know we're going.
To talk about in here.
But I will say generally she's someone I'm very aware of and that have a lot of negative associations with.
I will say, yes, I do know of her.
Of course.
One of the things that I immediately put me on high alert is that she is one person that my racist Trump supporting backwards brother has used as a token in saying, see, we love black people.
Oh that is like that that has probably been the experience of so many folks listening. And I guess what I want to talk about today might actually answer why. That is because she is someone that people in my life have like cited or mentioned or like, oh I saw I saw Candace Owens talking about this, and I'm like, what, Like why are you watching Candace own where listening to her podcast? So like I am like weirdly fascinated by her.
She is somebody who has a legitimately fascinating story and like where like from where she started to where she wound up, I just find deeply interesting. I don't want to focus too much on her like personal background, but there are some pieces of her early story that I do think are important context for like understanding who she is and sort of the role she has gone on.
To occupy in the world.
So, Owen's grew up in Stanford, Connecticut, and while she was a high school student there, she was like racially harassed in a pretty gnarly way. A classmate left her a racist death threat on her voicemail that ended up turning into like a pretty serious local scandal because it turned out the person her classmate that left that voicemail did so in a group of students that included the son of the then mayor and future Democratic governor of Connecticut,
Daniel Maloy. So it got it was really really up into like a little bit of a scandal. Kendace got lots of support from the local chapter of Racial Justice Organizations at the NAACP, and our family ended up suing the Stanford Board of Education in federal court for failing to protect her rights, which resulted in a thirty seven, five hundred dollars settlement. After that, she goes on to study journalism at University of Rhode Island before dropping out.
So this is really the part of her story where I have to be honest. I see some parallels between me and her. You know, we're both black women who were sort of early adopters of the Internet to talk about things like race and culture and politics like me.
For her, that seems to have.
Manifested in a lot of like low hanging fruit posts about you know, politics, like dumb jokes, like you know, the early days of blogging about politics online, it really was dumb jokes was like and like stupid memes were the lifeblood of that. And so in twenty fifteen she was writing blogs making fun of Trump's penis size to give you a sense of the kind of thing that she was writing about, which honestly is something I would I.
Wasn't doing that, but I could see myself.
Doing it great.
I would definitely chuckle yeah if I saw it.
So some people might be surprised to know that Candice actually started her career as like a public intellectual or republic opinion have or commentator or whatever you want to call it, as a leftist, like a progressive. In twenty fifteen, she was writing this blog called Degree one point eighty where she wrote pieces criticizing conservative Republicans, writing about quote
the back crazy antics of the Republican tea Party. Something that she wrote in her blog was quote the good news is they will eventually die off peacefully in their sleep, we hope, and then we can get right on with the obvious social change that needs to happen immediately. So you really get a sense of her as someone who was just like young Obama era progressive using the early Internet, blogging and things like that to really put her voice, in her perspective into the world again.
Something that I, frankly I can really see myself in.
Is it surprising? It is, I guess her origins just I just knew as you came out swinging on the opposite end.
Yeah, well, what's interesting about that, and I can definitely speak from my own experience here, is that I connected with a lot of her early writing when she was still sort of like writing about the tea party and blah blah blah, but certainly nobody knew who, Like she wasn't like a known voice or a no name right And I do think it speaks to the fact that, like when she switched up her ideology and her perspective and what she was talking about, she got so much
more attention. Like I like, as a black woman leftist who talks about you know, lefty stuff on the internet, where are a diamad dozen, nobody is really paying that much attention. But when you when you do the switch up, you really become a much bigger name, and you get a lot more attention and a lot more engagement. And I think it's a lot more lucrative to be a black woman right winger than it is to be a black woman leftist.
I was actually reading about this recently.
Is the shadow of gamer Gate when it comes to the Internet, and how it looks today and how it's still like the impacts, just the fallout of it is still here.
And that was a part of candice own story.
Oh yes, so I am like you Annie, gamer Gate and everything surrounding it is my Roman empire. It is the thing that keeps me up. And I did a whole series with cool Zone Media about how gamer Gate and just general harassment against women and women of color
and minoritize people. You could draw a direct line from that to like our political and social climate today, Like this is the stuff that I am like making a stringboard abad and being like and then this happened, and then that happened, and then ten years later this happened, Like this is my white whale. And Candace Owens was really like, this was a gamer Gate was really sort of like, well mean, she describes it as like a
radicalizing moment for her. So in twenty sixteen, when Gamergate was in full swing, Owens launched a Kickstarter for a project she called Social Autopsy, which she described as a way to catalog the abuses of trolls and cyberbullies online. The Kickstarter for this project is still up today. Here's a little taste of Owen's describing it in her own words.
It takes a nanosecond, a mere push of a button, to share our ideas, opinions, and emotions across the world instantly. But for every cat meme, your best friend tweets at you, every I miss you comment, your grandma leaves on your Facebook wall, there are literally thousands of instances of hate speech being circulated online because when communication happens through a screen, and when moments are experienced through relents, a terrifying extraction takes place.
The age of.
Technology and social media has slowly disintegrated individual accountability, the consequences of which are devastating.
So that should give you a little bit of an idea of what I mean.
It's interesting because it really feels like a time capsule from a different time, you know, Like hearing Candice Owens talk about how bad things like hate speech are and how it's dividing us is like just very interesting.
Yeah, throw off, Like like wait what same persons?
Okay, No, So the plan for Social Autopsy was basically it was a project meant to like de anonymize online common and then connect them with their real life names and then real life employers. And it's funny because this is still an argument that people make when they want to restrict the Internet today, that like all the problems that happen on the Internet, from harassment to child exploitation material, all of that could all be solved if you needed,
like your government ID to access the Internet. And so it's funny how these ideas, there are people pushing that concept today and even I mean, like some people who are well meaning but in my opinion, incorrect, are still pushing that idea. And so it's funny how some of these ideas never really die. They're just recycled. Like Cannonce Owen's was talking about this in twenty sixteen, and here we are in twenty twenty five, still talking about it.
Yes, yes we are.
But oh my goodness, speaking of things, we're still talking about Another thing we've talked about a lot on this show. Another thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is the radicalization that can happened online. And Candace Owens kind of talks about this. This is sort of her experience with Gagate.
So when she exactly that, So when she came out with Social Autopsy, pretty much everybody hated it right, like it was like a universal digital boo or like thumbs down. And one of the people who was like really not into this idea was Zoe Quinn, whose name you might know if you know about Gamergate, because she was someone
who was pretty viciously attacked in Gamergate. So after all of the backlash from this project that Candace tried to put out into the world via Kickstarter, she herself was doxed and harassed, and Candace actually blamed Zoe Quinn and other feminists for this harassment and started saying so publicly, you can probably guess who.
Loved this and like seized on it.
That's right, people like Miloianapolis, people who were promoters of Gamergate and like doing the harassment of Gamergate really hyped up Owens's that, Yeah, it's the feminists who are the ones who were doing the actual online harassment, not you know, these gamer bros and like right wingers. It's actually feminists who are the bad guys here. And this event Owen's credits with her turn from progressive to being what she calls a red pilled radical. She says, quote, I became
a conservative overnight. I realized that liberals were actually the racists. Liberals were actually the trolls, and so Annie, you're exactly right that. Like, she describes this as like an overnight turning point of her going from being a progressive who was collaborating with the NAACP and writing about how awful Republicans and Trump and the Tea Party Republicans were to like overnight waking up and being like, no, it is liberals who are the real enemy.
I have so many thoughts because I don't I was not a part of the gamergate world. Like I did not understand what was happening out there in the internets because I was case managing and like groveling in my
own like everything's worse. But like her being dogs and all this, because I'm sure just as many like people who were feminists and who were victims of gamer gait and such, there were more probably jerks out there who were like, no, we were definitely against this idea and harassing her because they don't want their name out there, which is what she was trying to do, right, So, but she just picked a group, Like, no, it's definitely after she got so much support totally.
So my understanding is that, like and if folks listening are like I was there. Remember, as far as I know, this was like feminists having good faith disagreement with Candace's project, and then Candace probably pumped up by some of these like right wing bro gamer guys who were behind a lot of this harassment and like we have all the receipts for that, probably pumped up by some of them just like just like assumed that these feminists were the ones behind it. So like, as far as I know,
she this was not a documented thing. But you know, certainly, like like I was, I was like pretty in.
The mix on the internet in these days.
Certainly this feud between Candace Owens and feminists like Zoquinn about Gamergate was something that like got her name into the conversation in a way that I don't think it had been before.
And for a lot of attention seekers. Not that she is I don't know this person. I don't know Candas Owens in real life. But if this is what we're seeing, negative tension is just as good as Yeah.
So it's so interesting that you say this because She's not someone that I would take at her word. I guess I'll put it that way, Like, I don't know
how reliable of a narrator she is. However, when she says like, oh, overnight, I realized that feminists were the real enemy, and the people that I should be allying myself were people like mylo Ayanapolis, I don't think that she's outright lying, but I I think that what she's saying is probably a lot closer to what you've just said, Sam, that like what she realized was like, when I was just a feminist online, I didn't get a lot of attention.
But when I started publicly beefing with these other feminists, I was getting a lot of attention. These these right wing extremist types like Miloganopolis, who had huge platforms, started paying me more attention and giving me more support, giving me more engagement. And like, I think, I think there's something to this idea that Like, I wouldn't necessarily say that she.
Changed her ideological ideas.
I think that what she realized was like, oh, if I align myself with people on the right, that comes with attention. Again, this is just my opinion. I don't know her, but that's my sense. I like, I don't think that she's outright misrepresenting this shift, but I think it's not necessarily about an ideology so much as it is like, oh, like public spats and rage bait and like spectacle gets me engagement and attention, and that can
translate to dollars outright, I can play this game. That's that's my sense of what's going on here.
I mean, it sounds like she was finding a brand, and we like, she is a brand, whether or not we want to admit that's the case, but she is a brand, and she's starting to hone in on this brand, and she's going to go for what gives her the most uh success.
Yeah, and this was successful.
Like once she starts doing this, you know, and she starts promoting right wing viewpoints on YouTube. She had a YouTube channel called red Pill Black, which, like I gotta say, is actually like a pretty good name. I credit where credit is due. It's like, I get I like that branding. She catches the attention of Charlie Kirk, who founded Turning Points USA, just like big right wing media entity.
And he hires her.
So at this point, Candice goes from like a little no name blogger blogging about lefty politics that nobody's ever heard of, to like making huge viral videos that are getting so much attention, where she's doing things like dismissing the twenty seventeen White Supremacists Unite the Right rally in
Charlottesville that left Heather Higher dead. Alex Jones invites her to co host some of his Info Wars shows, and again like, keep in mind these I know they seem like fringe media entities, and in some ways they are, but they get so many viewers, like Alex Jones at his height was getting tons and tons and tons of eyeballs.
She starts doing stints on Fox News, so like that's a little more mainstream than Info Wars, right, And in twenty twenty one she joined The Daily Wire with a ton of fanfare, like this was a huge deal.
She ends up moving to Nashville, and when she.
Does that, the state even introduces House Joint Resolution three fifty, a resolution in the Tennessee government to congratulate Candae Owens, a relocate hating to Tennessee for work at the Daily Wire. That reads quote whereas miss Owens has earned the admiration and respect of millions of Americans through her activism and support of President Trump as a black woman, and her perceptive criticism of creeping socialism and leftist political tyranny.
Imagine moving to Nashville, and.
It's such a big deal that, like the government of Nashville makes it an official like proclamation in Tennessee government.
And if she steps outside of downtown Nashville, she's gonna get threatened for sure. Oh I feel threatened outside. I feel threatened in a lot of places. But like, yeah, so, and as a person who was the only Asian person in the crowd, the tokenism is so loud.
Yeah, I mean that proclamation, like, oh, like we're proclaiming that she's great because she's a black woman who likes Trump.
I mean, add to things like this is one of the reasons.
Why I think a lot about Candace Owens is like a kind of seductive quality that can come with being a person of color who is being uplifted as like
some special thing, right, some special one. And it's it's such a trap because I don't want to be anybody's token, right, I don't want to be anybody's like, oh, like, this is a black woman who's doing x y Z, but I understand the seductive lure of that, and so like, I don't know, I guess I almost sort of see Candace Owens as like a fun house mirror version of myself, Like if I, like, if I were someone who was really moved or swayed by being uplifted because of these
things that make me tokenizable. I can sort of see liking this, and so I sort of see a lot of like of my shadow self and Candice Owens.
I guess I should say, does that make sense?
No? Yes, No, I think I understand that because like my younger self, my younger self seeking desperately to be white, seeming to be accepted by white people. So when I in high school not understanding the depth and depravity of white supremacy and how dark it is, like sitting there arguing, no, not arguing, but agreeing with my and racist brother about this fact. Yes, affirmative action is so awful. I want to earn it. I don't want to be, you know,
given special treatment because of my race. And that's not the case at all, that's not the conversation at all, But because of what I've been fed, and the minute I said that he's like, see, she knows she's Asian, Like he literally said that out loud, and being so proud of me for understanding white supremacy, like in like in that way, but wanting to like liking that moment. Now look back with Shane, But at that moment, I was like, yes, I'm one of you, Yes, exactly as you.
It's so seductive and if you like, I was the exact same when I was younger, Like, and it's like nobody likes feeling excluded or like the other, or like they don't belong.
And so in those glimmers where you where you do feel like.
Someone is saying like, see, it feels good, And I think it's it's like doing the work of training yourself to really see those moments for what they are and not like being pulled into the good feelings of like well this I'm getting feedback from my brother that's making me feel accepted and that he sees me and whatever whatever. But like, you know, you really have to do the work to be like, well, is this actually what I want to be seen for?
Like you know, right, I don't want to agree with you, now I understand what I'm agree with and this is completely wrong. I'm against humanity. What if Candice Owens is pulling the best grift of all time and just taking all the Conservative money, Like if that was the end story to this, I'm like, if anybody deserves the Republican Conservative money as a black woman, So I can't really I hear that right, like this is smart. I mean it's not smart. It's like it feels like a betrayal.
But for her on her individual level coming in and being token to being all these multi million dollar shows. Because you know, we know that Alex Jones made a lot of money from his hatred. We know that, we've seen it, he talks about it, we know Charlie Kirk as well. Her coming in and taking their money is kind of like, you know, I don't hate it for you, like I hate what you're saying.
Yeah, So I used to think, and again, this is my opinion. I don't know her like that or anything, but like I used to think, like, certainly she's playing these people.
She doesn't believe this. Now I don't know.
Now I think she's like a true believer. But like maybe I go back and forth and again it's one of those things that one of those reasons why I find her so deeply fascinating, right because like, like as a black woman, I am tempted to like project like, well, certainly this is some sort of a I mean, it is a.
Grift, don't get me wrong.
And it's like for sure a grift like she grifted, can't confirm, but like I it really made it really prompts me to look back at myself to be like, well, why am I like why like am I low key rooting for her?
Like what is this?
Right?
Right?
Like you're the like you're not my favorite, but you're not the worst worst exactly to get out where you
are in this in the spectrum. But you know, on top of all of that, as we were talking about in Nashville, being like if you go outside of the city, escape and no people don't know you, you're not going to get this love that you think you're getting from this very uh again white supremacist patriarch that you are representing and are trying to play for like all these things, eventually they're gonna turn on you.
Well that actually happened in her story. So you know, when she's working at Daily Wire, you're thinking, like, you know, she's got this huge gig probably making a ton of money, should be smooth sailing, but there is a huge, messy public fallout just a few years later. So she's working at Daily Wire. Last year there was this public friction between Candace and Ben Shapiro, one of the founders of Daily Wire, the network that Candace had used to be on.
Now it's not one hundred percent clear exactly what caused attention between the two, but at least publicly there it seemed to be some kind of a reaction to the situation in Gaza. Ben Shapiro is Jewish, and Owens has said a lot of anti Semitic stuff, Like even before October seventh, she was going hard, doing things like defending Kanye West, but things really seemed to kick into high
gear with her anti semitism on October seventh. Now it is important to make a distinction here that she's not like criticizing the actions of the Israeli state.
She is getting into stuff like blood libel.
Conspira theories, which is this anti Semitic conspiracy theory that Jewish people drink blood for power, and like other deep deep conspiracy theories. Right, like she said that Judaism was a quote pedophile centric religion that believes in demons and child sacrifice, and that people are waking up to the fact that pedophiles are in power. So she is saying some like truly out of pocket, wild stuff, and then things start taking kind of a bent toward her employer.
She wrote on Twitter quote, no one can serve two masters.
You cannot serve both God.
And money, to which Ben Shapiro Comma her boss, replies, Candace, if you feel that taking money from the Daily Wire somehow comes between you and God, by all means quit Now.
I gotta say, like, I don't find myself.
Agreeing with Candace Owens or Ben Shapiro much, but I kind of thought Ben Shapiro kind of has a point here, Like this is her boss and she's publicly getting into sebbats with him on Twitter.
Not a good book.
Could have maybe done that a little bit more privately, Yeah, like.
Sit an email.
But like that's the thing about Canvas is like Canus wouldn't be Candace if she didn't if she did if she did this privately, Cannus wouldn't be Candace if she avoided this. Like her career got a jumpstart from spectacle on Twitter, So like she that is something that is like her bread and butter is like spectacle on social media. So it gets absolutely messy as hell, and it's all public.
Owens claimed that Ben Shapiro had quote been acting unprofessional and emotionally unhinged for weeks now and said that Shapiro crossed a certain line. When you come for scripture and read yourself into it, I will not tolerate it.
She goes on Tucker.
Carlson Show, saying that Ben Shapiro was attacking her using ad hominem attacks. She then tweets that she wants her and Ben Shapiro to sit down and have a discussion moderated by this podcaster, Patrick Bett Davide. Ben Shapiro was having none of this, and again I can't say that I blame him. Like challenging your boss to a debate, a public debate on Twitter, it's just like not a
good look. So when she was like debate me, bro, Ben Shapiro tweeted, Candice, I can see why you'd want to hide behind a moderator, particularly one who said we should rename our company. Quote the Daily Jewish Wire just yesterday, no one on one Monday at five pm. We can sit down and have a healthy debate like adults and will live stream it on x and YouTube.
Take it or leave it.
So they're really going back and forth, and I gotta give a little side note here for what it's worth. This is just like my personal opinion as somebody who has been around the block and worked in the media for a really long time. The reason I am not saying that the actual root of their disagreement was Israel or Judaism like one hundred percent, is because I just
smell some kind of a contractual dispute here. Something about the way that they are going back and forth reads to me like Owens maybe had like an inflexible, ironclad contract that maybe she felt like she could make more money on her own and that she had to get out of this contract or vice versa.
Maybe Daily Wire wanted her out.
Something about the intensity of the public escalation with her boss just suggests to me that something else might have been going on. Again, this is just my sense. I don't have any inside information. It just seems like a lot to be doing. It just seems like a lot to be doing. But again, this is Cannice Owens we're talking about the very definition of doing the most on social media.
But that's just my sense.
I feel like it's one again once like the fact that they work so hard on like the conservative right wing side that knowing that one person being Jewish and the other person being a black woman. I'm like, they're not on your side, Like no, they just are just like wanting you to find it out. This is what they want so that they can obtain more power. But you two, I mean, it's just it's just is it ironic, I don't know or is it just Sam?
I was like watching this like you know, like like I was like let him fight, like I was my love, and every minute was like faving every tweet reading like you know how it used to be on Twitter you could like go to like show show more to see, like like to start from the beginning.
I was eating it up.
And again like obviously Kennis has hit on something because like these this public spectacle, these public spats, even with her employer.
They do generate engagement.
Like she's she's she's not new to this, She's true to this, Like she's been using this kind of thing to get negative attention to boost herself for a very long time, and she's very good at it.
So the seems to be like.
The red line here was when Rabbi Schmooley Botice criticized Owen's for her defenses of kind a west. Owens then like to tweet, asking the rabbi if he was quote drunk on Jewish blood again. A few days later, Daily Wire and Candace Owens officially ended her their relationship, with Owen's tweeting, the rumors are true. I am finally free.
Just there's so many things that I like, there's so many things to this level of conversation that yes, it is. It's just like the song of Francesco Ramsey did with like that lepers or do you know like they didn't think that, you know? And I'm like yeah. But at the same time, with the way she ended, it does sound like it was a whole play to get out.
I just I mean, like I don't know, but like.
She had to, Like there is no way that Candace did not think that, like she was putting her job at risk, right, So I just do not buy that. She was like I'm gonna be I just these are my convictions and I can just say what I want and it's free speech and it'll be fine. There is no way, like I just if anybody listening has the real tea. I just can sense there's something else here and it just it just it gives contract dispute to me,
That's all I'll say. So this is where the story gets interesting to me, because she kind of fell off of my radar after this.
I was like, Oh, I guess she's out at Bailey Wire.
Hadn't really heard much from her. I guess she's like doing her thing. And it wasn't until I was trying to make sense of the dispute between these two Hollywood A listers, Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, that she popped up on my radar again. So I gotta give a big PSA. This is not meant to be a definitive breakdown of what is happening with Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively,
which probably could be like its own episode. It is not a situation that I have followed super closely, so I am like not the right person to dig in on all of that.
I don't have any kind of like take or anything like.
Like like it's just it's not it's not a situation that I am super read in on because it's a little bit like complicated and I can't quite follow it. But that dynamic where I'm like, oh, I don't really know what's going on, but I'm sort of like casually trying to find out. That is actually how Candice Owens got back on my radar. So do you do you all know what's happening between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni's is something that's like bet On Yell's radar.
It's been against my will.
YEA.
Literally today I was like, thank god, I haven't heard anything about Blake Lively and Justin Baldonia.
And then you see the outline, So.
Here we go. Everything I've learned about it has been against my will.
I'm like, why, it's like what, like it's just like not something I don't know, It's just like not.
I mean in the end, like because you were trying to compare it to the Johnny dipp amber Herd case, which I'm like, yo, back off. There's so many things that the implication of that alone makes me think I don't want to take this seriously because it's not to
that level. We have this conversation because like we spoke very quickly before it blew up to this, like the very beginning of the conflict, mainly talking about how domestic violence victims and survivors really were offended by the way that the movie, which is the center of this controversy was portrayed, and then the how the ad marketing went for and like made it all girly, these good times, all these things that they were, like this is really
kind of offensive, Like this language of this entire language of sometimes it's very serious that people have taken very personally and have like a lot of familiarity with and trauma with. And then it felt like flat, especially like with how it is now, especially because it's no longer about the movie, no, but like's it was. We took a small take on that and why romanticizing domestic violence is such a such a problem in Hollywood and just
in our environment in general. But like this was way before everything happened, and the back and forth and back and forth. I will say, there's a lot of disdain for Blake's lively on Ye yes again, I did not choose this.
Okay, so it's so funny that you say this. I have experienced the exact same thing.
So so if.
Folks don't know what we're talking about, if you aren't like Annie blissfully unaware of like what is going on, It's it's a situation. It's like a little bit complicated, and it's ongoing, but it's actually like a pretty interesting story, and it does include a lot of things that I am interested in, like how celebrities use.
Social media, how easily social media.
Platforms can be like weaponized for or against a specific person. Email correspondence where people make themselves look terrible in writing because they currently do not expect these emails to be like in a deposition or in the New York Times.
That is my personal favorite.
Thing nothing when whenever it's like, oh we have the emails, I'm like, I'm gonna read every single one of them, Like, please continue to put your wrongdoings in emails and in writing so that I can read them later in a deposition. So I do think that folks should like if that seems like the kind of a situation that you are interested in, Like it is, it is a meaty situation, so like definitely listen to podcasts about it or whatever.
But for our purposes, a quick and dirty. Summary of what's going on is that Blake Lively and Justin Buldoni were in a movie adaptation of the popular Colleen Hoover novel called It Starts with Us. In December, Lively filed a legal complaint against Bouldannie, accusing him of sexual harassment and starting a sneer campaign against her. Now he strongly denies that and has sued. In response, both camps are releasing information like text messages and emails and like videos
and voicemails to make each other look bad. So the case has turned, I mean kind of similar to the Johnny Depp Amber Herd thing. It's one of those situations that has turned into like an ink block test that changes depending on what version of the story that you buy. Inion one, Blake Lively was being sexually harassed on set by this like fake feminist male ally.
Who was actually an abuser.
In version two, Blake Lively is like this egomaniac who is using her star power and like a list celebrity network like her husband Ryan Reynolds from those Deadpool movies, to control the narrative around her being a nightmare on set and steamrolling everybody.
Else on this project.
So Sam like you kind of similar to the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard thing.
In some ways, I think, depending on.
What silos of the Internet you are in, you might be be algorithmically being given the idea that the public sentiment leans one way or another, like on TikTok.
For whatever reason, my.
TikTok algorithm thinks I hate Blake Lively and that I want to see like lots of videos like pouring over every nuance in the ways in which she is.
A fraud, which is not true.
She's not someone who like I spend really any time at all thinking about. But it's interest that like the algorithm thinks, like, oh, this is somebody who hates Blake Lively.
Right, I agree. For some reason, I am getting all of the tea on all the awful things that Blake Lively is and all the people who hate her and why they hate her, and I'm like, I have never once. I don't know if I've ever seen a Blake Lively movie. I don't think I have.
If I one of the Traveling Pants, no, okay, that's usually the one people know like that or I will say say whatever you want to about like Lively the movie A simple favor slaps.
She's great in that.
Did you get the tea on how much they hate each other?
On that? Why?
That's what on my fee do.
I did say? I did see an interview where who is the hair coastar in that inn? A Kendrick right and A Kendrick were they asking her about Blake Lively.
She does have a very weird response.
They hate each other, and that's that's what I've understood. That's what they're telling me because they don't ever show up together on the red carpet. So when I say, my feed really feeds to the fact that I must hate Blake Lively when I don't know this person, And I'm like, I like, not that I know any celebrity like that, but I'm like, but I never at one point have I looked her up or like, she's not on my feet. I don't look around on my like searchus. I guess the one time it was for the It
ends with us. Damn it. Every time I research something for the show, it messes me up. But anyway, yeah, but yeah, no, that is I'm I'm like, I guess we really don't trust Blake Lively. We being a TikTok yeah, my TikTok the.
Same as you.
Like, I was trying to get to the bottom of like what was going on with this this Justin and Blake thing. And one of my cousins, who I would like lovingly describe as a normy and that she's not like super online, She's not you know, deep in the depths of like extremism or anything like that, Like the way that I am my cousin is like, Oh, there's this black girl journalist who has really been following the story and breaking it down.
We will tag you so you can figure out what's going on. And that journalist was Candace Owens.
And I was like, what, like what, Like I could not believe that my cousins who were like not at all in like, they are not people who are like pouring over the minutia of what's happening on the Internet and extremism the way that I am, like, they're pretty offline whatever.
Like I was like, how did.
You even get Candace Owens on your radar to be like listening to her podcast or watching her YouTube?
And the reason is because she has introduced herself to a.
Brand new subset of listeners and audience by covering this Blake Lively thing, so her coverage very clearly takes an anti Blake stance, as The Cut put it in a piece called Candace Owens has gone mainstream quote. The right wing commentator's coverage of the Blake Lively Justin Boldoney case has reached millions of viewers. Owen's podcast was hours and hours of analysis of the case, deep dives into court, finally tabloid news stories, even Ryan Reynolds's recent appearance on
Saturday Night Lives fiftieth anniversary special. She's really been able to go in and pinpoint discrepancies in some of the things Blake Lively I said, rather than having.
Us go through it on our own.
When listener says, though she recognizes that Owens seems to have a pro Bowl Donni bias, she doesn't care. Candace is urging us to look past the fact that this is not a feminist issue at all, that it's about getting justice for whoever is being wrong.
She's uniting the left and the right. So, I mean, it's just like it is.
I mean, on the one hand, it seems surprising that this like celebrity story would be the thing that would galvanize an audience of mostly women and introduce Candace Owen's and who she is and her ideologies and all of that to a new audience. But on the other hand, like that's pretty much exactly what they do. That what they did at the Daily Wire, Like nobody was more obsessed with celebrity than people like Ben Shapiro.
They loved like.
Taking down woke Disney, Woke Star Wars, like you had had a big few with Meg thee Stallion Beyonce. Like just because it's negative doesn't mean it's not sandom. It's just like going in the other direction.
Right, Actually, we knew we need to say he had a one sided being with him because they did not. Like it just makes me laugh, you know, the other part of this was as much as my algorithm wants to show me all the anti Lively stuff as well as all of the controversy, because yes, I would get updates about the SNL thing about how everybody snubbed Brian Reynolds.
It's like did they okay? But like, interestingly I did get content not from Candis Owans but other creators reminding me and everybody listening that Candis Owans is a right winged fanatic and that they need to be wary of the information she's giving about this specific case.
Yes, so I think that's like why I wanted to make this episode, just as a general reminder of who Candice Owens is, and like we all love celebrity gossip. I know I do, but like, let's just remember who she is and the source, and like she might want to rebrand herself, but let's just keep it at the front, forefront of our minds who she is and what she's about, And like, she really has exploded in popularity from this coverage. You know, it's been attracting a lot more viewers beyond
her normal right wing extremist space. Like you were saying, Sam, it's like normans like my cousins, my cousins, who might not have any idea who she is. They just think she's an entertainment journalist. All of this has meant explosive growth and engagement for Owen's Here's how The Cut put
it in that piece. Since Owen started covering the Lively Baldoni case, her YouTube channel has exploded in popularity, allowing her to attract a much larger fan base than the audience of hardcore conservatives, she is a mass over the years, each episode about Lively and Baldani racks up at least
one point five million views. In the past month alone, Owens has a mass more than four hundred and fifty thousand new subscribers on YouTube, and her total video views have quadrupled since this time last year, according to data from the analytics platform social Blade. Over the past three months, her audience on YouTube has also started skewing sixty five percent female, according to data provided by a spokesperson, a
market shift from her past fan base. So this has all been great news for Owens and where her audience used to be like men, you know, like probably like your brother right, like like right wing men. By covering this story, she's really interacting a lot of women.
Oh my stomach kind of hurts. It is really interesting that this came in with gamer Gate as well, because, like we were saying, Gamergate was such a mess, and there were so many men who would be like, see this woman agrees with me, and I hate it because sometimes I'm like why, I just want to have a conversation about why I don't like this game, and now you've made it into this woman agrees with me, and now you're using it to attract more women to be like, see,
if we're on the we are correct and you are wrong.
And so when you see things like this.
Where she started out with mostly men and then she's attracting like all of these women, I feel like it's worth asking why do you think this took off for her?
This story so one, I will say that like Camus actually is pretty interesting to listen to, Like I don't agree with what she's saying, but she does, Like even when she was a progressive blogger, she does have like a point of view and a clear voice, and I think that really comes through in her coverage.
Of Blake Lively.
You know, she has this way of speaking that signals to you like, oh, this person is really breaking it down. It's the same reason why things on TikTok, things like story time or like I'm spilling the tea really holds people's attention.
I think that Candice really does know how to do that. One.
I think the second kind of gets at what you were saying Annie, that we just love misogyny, and I think if that massogyny can be laced with a threat of conspiracy, it's even better, Right, like social media platforms are always going to amplify things like misogyny or massogynore racism or transphobia. I think all of that is just baked into what it means to show up on social media.
And I think Owen's really, in.
A savvy way, takes that a step further by breaking all of this down, like she's explaining a conspiracy, right, So it's not so she's not just saying like, here's my take on Blake Lively, or here's what's going on with the Blake Lively case, or you know, here's why even like here's why I don't like Blake Lively. She has this tinge of like she uncovering this dark truth about this successful woman to take her down.
Like, of course that's going to take off. People love that.
So the fact that she's not just giving information about Blake Lively, she's doing it in this way that's like, let's go back through fifteen years of footage of her speaking and dive through the minutia of everything that she's said on camera to highlight the discrepancies, to show what a dark, twisted person she is.
Like, of course people are gonna love that.
And I think that One of the reasons why people like conspiracy theories is that it really does allow for like fantasy and world building to become part of this coverage, right Like Canvas's coverage of Blake Lively is wild because she is a truly wild person. And so if you're someone who was just like wants to get the brain rush of like going down a deep rabbit hole, whether or not it's true or whether or not it's like made up, that's.
Gonna be enticing for you.
You know, as Owens herself puts it, she does not follow a quote traditional style of reporting.
That's putting it pretty light lightly.
She will amplify rumors, right like she once even read a letter that she said was from Ryan Reynolds' acting coach from when he was twelve years old, and that acting coach allegedly said Ryan Reynolds was obnoxious as a twelve year old. Like there are side characters and stuff like she really fleshes out this world of what she's saying.
Is it real, is it accurate? Who cares?
Of course people are coming to hear that tea on a story they're invested in, right.
I feel like though, like this is definitely in her alley in her Willhouse, in that this fees into the Hollywood demon's kind of trope as well as like her response to the Me Too movement, I know, like she was definitely anti feminist in that movement as well, Like this kind of all fees into that perfectly for her.
Yes, So I think that's another reason why this has taken off, because I think that, like, there is something inherently inviting about the power of like taking a contrarian stance on something like after Me Too, lots of women got engagement by taking a contrarian stance. Ironically, Blake Lively praised both Woody Island and Harvey Weinstein. That last one is going to be interesting to note for later. So I think there is this attitude where like going against convention.
You know, if if there's a convention that says we automatically got to support the woman in any situation, it probably makes people who are turning to Owen's as coverage and her breakdowns feel like the free thinkers who are going against the grain and like willing to take an unpopular opinion which feels good, Like it feels good to think of yourself in that way, which then obviously connects to some of her more like odious stances about trans people and women and Jewish people, like if you can
get people introduced to the idea that it's like good to take an unpopular opinion when you're talking about a celebrity that people don't like, imagine how then you can walk them down to be like it isn't And also don't you not like trans people? And also don't you think women should not have jobs? And also don't you not like Jewish people? Like it's like kind of all coming from the same place.
Yeah, okay, so she's very engaging and she it's sort of like, you know, here's some celebrity gossip. Let me give you this conspiracy theory, and also kind of this hate on the side. Right, But it's been very successful. But has has the new audience changed her stances at all?
That's a great question.
According to Owen's she has not really changed her views despite her rebrand. She says, in terms of my perspective, I haven't changed anything. I've been anti me too since long before it was cool. When it comes to the which like, oh, what as like feminist media makers? Do you think like I just I'm so curious about that take of like, first of all, just the assumption that like it's cool to be anti me too right now.
I mean, I don't know.
I just have a lot of questions.
This is definitely the whole like red pill level of women trying to be the I hate this storter, but like the pick me like you were, like I it's now cool because the boys like me like it. It doesn't want it sounds like most women who have been through these processes or her survivors would never say like the level people. I'm not even just like survivors people with conscious like like that in general, that's not a that's not a statement you want. That's not a winning statement.
It's not that's a good way to put it. It's not a winning statement. And when it comes to the success of the content that she's made around Blake Lively, Canda says that she thinks her new fans, especially the ones coming from the left, have quote just kind of gotten wise to the fact that maybe women lie just like men, and you can do you want to know what her next big shoe is going to be like after she moves on from Blake Lively, She's already signaled to what it is?
Oh really, because we're still in the middle of this. The lawsuit hasn't been settled, but okay, what is.
But she's already looking, I mean like it's not gonna last forever. She's already had a sense of like where she's going next, her next bigo. She was going to be championing Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced filmmaker that really did kickstart the Me Too movement. She's been interviewing him by phone since twenty twenty two. Here's how the Hollywood Reporter explains it. Candas's takeaway is that while Harvey Weinstein is an a moral man, he's also a victim of the
justice system. Owens, a long time and persistent critic of the Me Too movement, of which Harvey, of which the Harvey Weinstein saga served as the watershed, noted that quote, I've always had faith in our court system, and now that's beginning to change. Now I'm wondering if our courtrooms have been politicized. I love that it's Harvey Weinstein being convicted. That She's like, are the it's not on the money.
I no, I'm sure there's some of them serial killers that she should represent as much like this is okay to be fair, she has has she has her fingers on the pulse in that knowing this is gonna drive up attention, like she is gonna get the publicity that she wants with that, Like how bigger could you go outside of being like I'm gonna go dig up Hitler and interview him and tell him I miss him like that.
That's yeah, No, I mean she she agrees with you.
She said that she's putting out a series called Harvey Speaks, and when asked about it, she said, quote.
It will explode the world. That's a direct quote.
Oh my gosh, she's a businesswoman for sure.
Yeah, we all have that to look forward to. I mean again, like.
He's sad, like I cannot deny that this is smart, Like I don't.
I don't agree with it.
I don't think it's good. I don't think it's good for the world. But like, I think she has her finger on the pulse of what is actually going to be projects to put out that will capture people's attention for better or for worse.
And I think she's really got something. She's like cracked into something.
Yeah, for better or worse. Indeed, she has.
And you know, every time we talk to you, Bridget, we always talk about how the algorithms and so many of our social media pushes this content up and how we engage in it.
So she's figured it out. She's figured that out.
I think you're exactly right, And I think, like that's the So what of this story is that? You know, Candice has so many other things going on, Like she's pivoting into other kinds of pro she's branding out into doing a book club for paying subscribers and a fitness program, and I think that I do I believe her when she says that she's not like rebranding. I think rather she is trying to rebrand her followers. These new followers, many of whom are just like women who are interested
in this scandal. I believe that the point is for them to be walked down a pipeline that includes her other extremist attitudes, really using this Blake Lively celebrity scandal as the hook. And I think because celebrity stories, especially ones that involve women, are so often just like considered fluff.
So a lot of people who care.
About like extremist content or ideology might not be paying that much attention to hell, these stories that you might see on US Weekly are tapping into those ideologies and
un leading those ideologies on a brand new audience. And so I think that's especially concerning when you're talking about things like celebrity, because you know, when I'm reading celebrity scandals or like reading US Weekly, I might not be primed to have my like BS detector on and up because it just is, like you think of it as a less charge space.
And so I think that it really can be.
More dangerous because it lends itself to people being more susceptible to ideological content they might not be expecting without even realizing it.
And like, I think it's very easy for Candace Owens to.
Go from like saying Blake Lively is lying to like women lie to women can't be trusted to, like women should not have jobs, which I'm not just like pulling that out of nowhere. That is a stance that Candace Owens has explicitly advocated for that women should not have employment, they cannot be trusted with work, despite herself obviously being a working woman. So like, basically you just can't trust her she's not someone that you can trust. Don't let
her rebrand as a celebrity journalist. Fool you if somebody tags you in a video of hers, to.
Be like, oh, she's really breaking it down.
Just remember that she is trying to soften what it is that she advocates for and believes in, and like.
We shouldn't let her do that.
We should really remember who who she is and what she's about, because she's made it very clear, right.
I mean, she's definitely on the same lines of what we've seen as a new generation talking about young men on podcasts and how they've been able to influence young men, like this is coming in as influencing young women. I mean, just today, I'm seeing a lot of content about how young the younger generations are talking are being red pilled, as they would say, which is fitting here, and things like the soft life content being a beginning for a lot of young women not realizing that getting that kind
of brand. We've talked about that with like self care, we've talked about that with yoga and the clean, clean lifestyle type of thing. How that easily becomes a pipeline for the conservative right wing community. And this is kind of that big stoy, except that we see her branding
and we know who she is. But if you don't know from the jump her stance, this is definitely a worrisome tactic because we know things like true crime and celebrity gossip, like it's geared towards young women, it's geared towards women in general, and they also spend a lot of money and they spend a lot of time in it, investigating and taking part of it. So it's really worriesomeing
like it is comical. As we were talking at the beginning, like what is this to very concerning and understanding that when we let this stuff go, like you were saying, like this is fluff content, but in actuality is feeding into a conservative ideal that becomes mainstream and it's usually really dangerous.
Yeah.
So when people are like, oh, I just want to listen to my true crime podcast, I don't want to get political, or I just want to read about celebrities, I don't want to get political, I hate to break it to you. All of that stuff is political. All that is all political, and like it is, it can be harnessed to shift attitudes of people who are being like, oh, this is not political into more extremest ways of thinking.
And so if you are a savvy consumer of media, or a savvy consumer of anything, whether it's true crime content or celebrity content, or yoga or wellness content or any of that, we've really got to be primed and thinking about the ways as content can be so easily weaponized to spread a.
Certain ideology that we might not want to get mixed up in.
Absolutely.
Oh every time you come here, Bridget, I'm like, we have fifteen million other.
Topics we need to talk about.
But thank you, thank you as always for coming on and taking the time.
We love to have you. Where can the good listeners find you?
Well, you can listen to my podcast on iHeartRadio called their Artal Girls.
On the internet.
You can check me out on Instagram at Bridget Marie in DC and uh yeah, we'd love to hang out there.
Yes, and go do that listeners. If you haven't already you can find us. You can email us at Hello Stuff iever told you dot com. You can find us on Blue Sky at momsuff podcast, or in Instagram and TikTok at stuff we Never told you for Also on YouTube, we have a tea public store, and we have a book you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks as always to our super producer Costini or Executiveducer and a contributor Joey.
Thank you.
Thanks to you for listening. Stuff one never told me his production by heart Radio.
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