As if she wasn't terrible enough, Chrissy Teigen has dubbed herself a member of the "cancel club."
After the deserved backlash following Courtney Stodden's revelations, Chrissy Teigen has done what most celebrities do: complain about the consequences of her actions.
Does it not stand to reason, Chrissy, that if you do terrible things ... people will call you a terrible person?
Apparently not, as Chrissy has addressed the internet's reaction to her despicable bullying, saying: "It just sucks. There is no winning."
In a long Instagram caption, she lamented how terrible she feels — not for what she did, but for how she has fallen from grace ... yet she is still living the same lifestyle she was before, even if she's no longer adored by the internet.
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Chrissy Teigen posted a multi-part public apology to Courtney Stodden after The Daily Beast published an interview with the entertainer detailing Teigen's online harassment of Stodden when she was only 16 years old.
"Not a lot of people are lucky enough to be held accountable for all their past bullshit in front of the entire world," Teigen began her initial response on Twitter. "I'm mortified and sad at who I used to be. I was an insecure, attention seeking troll. I am ashamed and completely embarrassed at my behavior..."
Teigen acknowledged that she "publicly fueled all this" and made the rote commitment to "being better" that all celebrities seem to make when they apologize for past abusive behavior. In a recent post on Medium, Teigen called herself a "troll" and apologized at length, once again.
"There is simply no excuse for my past horrible tweets. My targets didn't deserve them. No one does," she wrote. "Many of them needed empathy, kindness, understanding and support, not my meanness masquerading as a kind of casual, edgy humor.I was a troll, full stop. And I am so sorry."
Twitter / @Chrissyteigen
Chrissy Teigen is a lot of things — model, chef, author, TV personality, John Legend's muse (and sometimes plate holder), etc. etc. — but most people know her as the unofficial "Mayor of Twitter."
Famed for her clapbacks and relatability, Chrissy Teigen's Twitter might as well be her full-time job. Like anyone who spends most of their time on Twitter, it's not all good all the time. Chrissy has made a name for herself by calling out and clapping back at her trolls, building a fanbase of people who find her funny and who admire her outspokenness.
However, in March 2021, Chrissy notably left the platform, saying she had suffered relentless abuse and harassment on the site for years and it was starting to get to her.
In a now-deleted Twitter thread announcing her departure from the platform, Teigen said: "For years I have taken so many small, 2-follower count punches that at this point, I am honestly deeply bruised."
However, after 23 days, Chrissy was back on the platform, saying: "turns out it feels TERRIBLE to silence yourself and also no longer enjoy belly chuckles randomly throughout the day and also lose like 2000 friends at once … I choose to take the bad with the good!!"
Most people celebrated: The queen had returned! However, it now seems that Chrissy Teigen is part of this "bad" part of Twitter she referenced.
In an explosive interview with the Daily Beast, Courtney Stodden called Chrissy Teigen a hypocrite, revealing that the social media star "would privately DM [Stodden] and tell [them] to kill [themself]."
Chrissy Teigen Tweets to Courtney
The article, titled The Crucifixion of Courtney Stodden, is a candid conversation about how "at 16, Stodden was mocked and slut-shamed for marrying 50-year-old Doug Hutchison. As Stodden says, it's taken years to free themself from his — and the media's — abuse."
In the interview, Stodden referenced a video they made weeks earlier, during Teigen's Twitter hiatus. In the now-deleted video, Stodden calls out the similarities between the people Chrissy complained about and Chrissy's own behavior. Most of all, Stodden lamented that they never had the chance to forgive Chrissy, because she never reached out or approached Stodden to apologize.
Stodden also emphasizes the importance of recognizing power dynamics. They were a child being taken advantage of, and powerful media outlets and personalities attacked them with no provocation.
Stodden said: "People came out of the woodwork to beat up on a kid because she was in a situation that she shouldn't have been in. There were a lot of celebrities acting like playground bullies. Some of the worst treatment I got was from women, and we're not going to get anywhere if we keep holding each other back."
Stodden revealed how many other celebrities and media personalities harassed her, but only Perez Hilton has since apologized. While Chrissy Teigen is at the focal point of this revelation for her hypocrisy, she is part of a culture that often applauds malicious, thoughtless "clapbacks."
The interview comes in the wake of the Framing Britney Spears documentary, which exposed the relentless abuse Britney Spears underwent at the hands of the media at the height of her fame. Stodden feels owed an apology from the same system which exploited and ridiculed them at their most vulnerable.
Each week one of Popdust's disposable clones — grown in a vault deep beneath the Mojave desert — is exposed to the outside world through a relentless feed of news, pop culture, and social media.
The arduous process accelerates their dissolution back into an amorphous clone slurry. But before they go, they leave behind a document of what they've absorbed and what they've learned — a time capsule preserving a single moment in the slow-motion collapse of civilization. We call these End Times Updates...
End Times Update SNL, the Gas Crisis, and Courtney Stoddenyoutu.be
Transcript: Oh hi! Welcome to another End Times Update, presented by Popdust. I'll be your clone-host for this week, Pelvis Wrestley.
[Elvis Presley]: You ain't nothin' but a hound dog. C-cryin' all the time.
As always, we'll be looking through the news, pop culture, and social media from the last week, for the latest forebodings of societal doom.
This week has been a real show-stopper when it comes to signs of the imminent demise of the human race. For a start, second richest man on Earth Elon Musk became the first ever second richest man on earth to host Saturday Night Live. Musk also made history with his monologue, in which he revealed that he's been diagnosed with Asperger's, an autism spectrum disorder.
[Elon Musk]: I'm actually making history tonight, as the first person with Asperger's to host SNL... Or at least the first to admit it.
The Mother's Day episode then proceeded, with lots of references to Musk's business ventures —
[Elon Musk]: I reinvented electric cars and I'm sending people to Mars in a rocket ship — I'm in charge of the whole Mars colonization project — Sure, I do like electric horses, and self-driving horses -- which are just horses -- but I've also built a machine that can dig a tunnel ten times faster than a gopher.
— and and his online presence —
[Elon Musk]: But I also write things like "69 days after 4/20 again haha." People are so mean online. — Okay, for a while I thought masks were dumb, but now I admit masks make sense.
— and also a weird amount of references to cousins being into each other.
[Mikey Day]: How many times have you found out too late that your lover is your cousin?
[Ego Nwodim]: What are you doing?
[Chris Redd]: What?
[Ego Nwodim]: You're my cousin.
[Chris Redd]: What? Oh no, I totally forgot. (Silently) Almost got away with it.
[Elon Musk]: Ooli, I think of all the good times we could have, eating fermented shark in the nude
[Chloe Fineman]: Oh my gosh. Okay, Ragnarok, stop. Cousin Check told us we were cousins.
[Elon Musk]: Exaclty, we have so much in common!
Speaking of electric cars, this was not a great week for for the other kind of cars, with the average gas price in the US topping $3 a gallon for the first time in years and hundreds of gas stations along the east coast running dry with some truly wild panic buying.
The panic was brought on by the shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline, which typically delivers hundreds of millions of gallons of fuel from refineries in Texas all the way up to New York and all along the eastern seaboard. But after being attacked by the corporate ransomware outfit known as "DarkSide," the Colonial Pipeline Company lost access to their billing software, so they just stopped delivering altogether, causing a federally declared state of emergency in 17 states.
Thankfully, service was restored on Wednesday night, though the company says it will take a few more days to get back to 100%.
It was also a big week for Ellen DeGeneres, who announced that the 19th season of her daytime talk show will be the last.
[Elen DeGeneres]: This show has been the greatest experience of my life, and I owe it all to you — The truth is, I always trust my instincts. Uh, my instinct told me it's time. As a comedian I've always understood the importance of...timing. And — recently I had a dream that a bird, a beautiful bird with bright red feathers, came to my window and whispered, "You can still do stuff on Netflix." And that was the sign I was looking for.
Beginning in 2003, the show made "Be Kind" its mantra, while — behind the scenes — the host earned a reputation as one of the meanest bosses in Hollywood.
[Hedda Muskat]: Toxic, phony, hypocrite liar, that's what she is. — We were told from the very beginning, "Don't talk to Ellen, don't do this, you can't, you know, go into her office." It was very nerve-wracking, very stressful, we all walked on eggshells all the time.
Speaking of hypocrisy —
[Courtney Stodden]: Hypo-Chrissy Teigen
— this week former child-bride Courtney Stodden came after model Chrissy Teigen for hurtful comments that the so-called "Mayor of Twitter" made about them when they was just a teenager — including wishing for the young celebrity to take a, quote, "dirt nap."
[Courtney Stodden]: It's ironic because, right, because she left, you know, social media, complaining about bullying. She has sent me so many different tweets, private DMs, um, up to a couple years ago.
Stodden, who identifies as non-binary, first came to the world's attention in 2011 when, at the age of 16, they married 51 year old Green Mile actor Doug Hutchinson. The "Don't Put it on Me" singer —
[Courtney Stodden]: Don't put it on me, girl. D-d-d-d-d-d-d-don't
— quickly became the target of ridicule and commentary, despite the fact that — as they've since recognized — they were clearly the victim of a predatory grooming relationship.
Courtney Stodden Calls Chrissy Teigen a Hypocrite Over Bullying | TMZwww.youtube.com
In response to Stodden calling her out, Teigen issued an apology on Twitter, saying, quote, "I was an insecure, attention-seeking troll. I am ashamed and completely embarrassed at my behavior."
But what else... Oh, right. Violence in Israel and Gaza reached new heights this week in the decades-long conflict between a powerful military ethnostate with nuclear weapons, and a group of displaced and disenfranchised people living under martial law.
Halsey just announced via Instagram that she's expecting her first child with her partner Alev Aydin.
The post reads, "surprise! 🍼🌈👼🏻 Photos by @samdameshek," she also tagged Aydin over her belly. Aydin soon re-shared the post on his Instagram Story, complete with a pair of red heart emojis.
In the comment section of the announcement, Aydin says, "Heart so full, I love you, sweetness," as Halsey replies, "I love you!!!!! And I love this mini human already!"
While this will be Halsey's first child, it is not her first pregnancy. She told The Guardian in an interview that her song "More" is about a previous miscarriage she went through. "It's the most inadequate I've ever felt," she explains. "Here I am achieving this out-of-control life, and I can't do the one thing I'm biologically put on this earth to do. Then I have to go onstage and be this sex symbol of femininity and empowerment? It is demoralising."
As we wait in anticipation for more news about Halsey's baby, check out these other memorable celebrity pregnancy announcements.
Nicki Minaj announced via Instagram that she was expecting her first child with husband Kenneth Petty.The rapper shared the news by posting a photo of herself in a yellow wig and high-heels sporting a significant baby bump with the caption "#Preggers."
Minaj shocked fans with the news that she'd married long time friend and boyfriend Kenneth Petty in October. She posted a video showing hats that read "Bride" and "Groom" beside mugs that read "Mr." and "Mrs." She captioned the video: 👰🏽🤵🏽😢🙏🏽🎀 Onika Tanya Maraj-Petty 10•21•19
It's clear that Minaj had a photoshoot specifically to commemorate her pregnancy.
Beyoncé
<p>Few pregnancy announcements have been as iconic as Beyoncé telling the world she was pregnant with Blue Ivy in 2011. She multi-Grammy-award-winning artist dropped the news at the Video Music Awards, earning a huge reaction from the crowd. She even ended it with a mic drop. </p>
Katy Perry
In the music video for her ballad "Never Worn White," Katy Perry showed off her growing belly. The music video was the first news fans had of the star's pregnancy with fiance, Orlando Bloom. After releasing the video, Perry tweeted that she was relieved that the secret was out and she no longer had to hide her baby bump.
Chrissy Teigen is known for being the queen of Twitter, but her Instagram is pretty great too. To announce her second pregnancy with husband John Legend, Teigen had the help of her then-Toddler Luna.
Actress and Book Smart director Olivia Wilde announced the news of her second pregnancy with daughter Daisy by sharing this adorable photo beside her son, Otis. Wilde has two children with husband, Jason Sudeikis.
Grimes and Elon Musk announced their pregnancy earlier this year with this slightly disturbing image. The original photo featured Grimes' uncensored breasts, so was quickly taken down by Instagram. This censored version is somehow even more disturbing and alien. Grimes gave birth to son X Æ A-12 Musk earlier this year.
In an adorable photoshopped picture, Fergie shared the news that she and husband Josh Duhamel were pregnant with their first child. The picture depicts Fergie and Duhamel as toddlers, photoshopped side by side.
Cardi-B
Cardi B's pregnancy announcement was less of an announcement and more of a reveal. The rapper performed on Saturday night live in 2018 in a skin tight dress that made it very obvious she was expecting a child with fiance Offset.
Khloe Kardashian announced her pregnancy with Tristan Thompson in a moving Instagram post. The post read: "My greatest dream realized! We are having a baby! I had been waiting and wondering but God had a plan all along. He knew what He was doing. I simply had to trust in Him and be patient. I still at times can't believe that our love created life! Tristan, thank you for loving me the way that you do! Thank you for treating me like a Queen! Thank you for making me feel beautiful at all stages! Tristan, most of all, Thank you for making me a MOMMY!!! You have made this experience even more magical than I could have envisioned! I will never forget how wonderful you've been to me during this time! Thank you for making me so happy my love! Thank you to everyone for the love and positive vibes! I know we've been keeping this quiet but we wanted to enjoy this between our family and close friends as long as we could privately. To enjoy our first precious moments just us ❤️ Thank you all for understanding. I am so thankful, excited, nervous, eager, overjoyed and scared all in one! But it's the best bundle of feelings I've ever felt in my life! ❤️❤️❤️"
Justin Timberlake announced that he and wife Jessica Alba were pregnant with this adorable baby bump picture. Later that year Alba gave birth to the couple's son Silas.
Rightfully, Beyoncé makes this list twice. The gorgeous maternity photoshoot she posted when announcing that she was pregnant with twins simply can't be beat.
Screenshot from: QAnon: The conspiracy theory spreading fake news / BBC Newsnight / Youtube.com
Update 1/22/2021: Following the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20th, many believers in QAnon lore have begun to question some of their convictions.
Many saw the inauguration as a final deadline for "The Storm" and the mass arrests they expected to publicly expose the cabal of deep-state Satanists. And both Jim and Ron Watkins have issued statements seeming to indicate the end of the Q era.
Ron Watkins urging his followers on Telegram to "remember the friends and happy memories we made together," and to "respect the constitution," while his father Jim Watkins posted on the reactionary micro-blogging platform Gab about the "historical value" of the Q movement and the fact that "the culture of our country changed because of it."
That much is certainly true. And in the wake of the Capitol Hill insurrection on January 6th — which saw one of Q follower shot dead, another leaving Mike Pence n ominous note, and numerous others arrested — the apparent change of heart may be inspired by concern that these cultural changes will invite unwelcome scrutiny.
Still, there is little doubt that some Q followers — as flexible as the acolytes of any other cult — will find ways to adapt their beliefs to the post-Trump era. Some are already beginning the process. Even if Q never reappears, the disturbed and unhinged worldview of Q followers is likely to remain culturally relevant for years to come.
There is a growing belief system in the US that is beginning to spread around the world.
Tied to a mystical struggle between ancient forces of good and evil that are secretly operating beneath the surface of our society, adherents believe they have been given the key to understanding the world.
QAnon Conspiracy Theory Lands On European Shores | Morning Joe | MSNBCwww.youtube.com
They believe that their mysterious prophet has awakened them to a reality that you and I will soon be forced to face: that global elites from Washington DC to Hollywood are part of a Satanic (possibly Jewish) cabal of murderous, cannibalistic pedophiles who torture children in order to harvest their adrenaline-rich blood and oxidize it into the addictive drug adrenocrhome.
They believe that our civilization must be torn down to the foundations in order to be rebuilt—or perhaps just to bring on the apocalypse. And, as it turns out, the only politician heroically selfless enough to bring the whole system crashing down is the alleged peeping tom of Miss Teen USA and well-wisher of Ghislane Maxwell, President Donald J. Trump.
From Evangelical Christians to New-Age yogis, basically anyone liable to distrust vaccines in favor of either prayer or organic vegetables is likely susceptible to Q's message of mainstream evil and corruption.
As it turned out, that April consensus would soon be undermined by Donald Trump and his ilk spouting off mixed messages, conspiracy theories, and anti-mask rhetoric. And under various states of lockdown and unemployment, increasingly disconnected, bored, and desperate people turned to weirder, darker corners of the internet for answers.
What makes the message particularly infectious is the way it's delivered. Originally posted on the /pol/ section of imageboard 4chan in mid-2017—amid a slew of similar anonymous posts from supposed political insiders —the cryptic "drops" delivered by a nameless informant claiming to have "Q clearance" (high-level access to classified government information) lend the whole thing a dire sense of secrecy.
As an added feature, the uncertain meaning and broken grammar of the posts allow individual followers to decode them communally—following the slogan "Where We Go One We Go All" (WWG1WGA), playing detective, and drawing conclusions that align with their personal assumptions about the world.
And if some of those conclusions—about Robert Mueller working with Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton being executed in secret, or JFK Jr. faking his death to live as a man named Vincent Fusca—turn out to be wrong, that's only one refutation of a particular interpretation. No amount of evidence can touch the infallible source itself.
Unlike Pizzagate, which came before it, there is no Comet Pizza for a delusional gunman to invade—looking for kidnapped children. In that instance, when he discovered that there were no abducted children locked in the basement—because there was no basement at all—he and others were forced to acknowledge that they had some fundamental details wrong.
But when it comes to the cryptic ambiguity of QAnon, followers find evidence of the worldwide pedophile conspiracy all around them.
You might think that in a world where actual elite sexual predators like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein were able to operate in the semi-open for years—using their power and influence to shield them from consequences—that there would be no need to construct elaborate fantasies.
Surely, with all their public connections to prominent cultural and political figures—some portion of whom were active participants in predatory behavior—QAnon adherents could simply extrapolate those relationships into the web of the secret pedophile network. While they certainly do that, even using phony, sloppily-made flight logs to Epstein's private island to implicate a then-teenaged Chrissy Teigen…that's not enough.
No, true devotion to Q means seeing evidence of Satanist activity everywhere. Let's say you're shopping for furniture online and stumble across an overpriced item with an odd name. Do you think, "That's weird, seems like a mistake?" No, you immediately start Googling the name to find a missing child with the same name. Boom, Wayfair child trafficking conspiracy revealed.
There's something undeniably noble about the role these people have assigned themselves in the imaginary reality they live in. They cut themselves off from friends and family, from church leaders and anyone else trying to convince them that they aren't living in a dystopian detective novel as part of the underground resistance. They give up everything to fight the deep state pedophiles.
In July, Q believers co-opted the #SaveTheChildren hashtag and organized rallies that lured in a lot of well meaning people with no idea about the conspiracy theory behind it. All that energy might have actually been useful if directed toward increasing awareness of the realities of child trafficking—and perhaps promoting some legislation to help fight it.
But the QAnon cult isn't interested in any of that. The only part of the government you can trust is the Trump administration, and anyone who tells you that child trafficking is not primarily the work of an elite Satanic cabal is probably working for the elite Satanic cabal—if Tom Hanks is one of the bad guys, anyone can be.
So how do you fight the spread of misinformation that is so resistant to refutation and authority—with a community that fiercely reinforces it? Maybe you can't.
Maybe QAnon is destined to become the full-blown cult that it is quickly trending toward—luring in confused and directionless people to trade their money and their real-world relationships for a sense of purpose and an online community of fellow believers. And maybe that cult will react very badly—violently—to a "deep state" victory in the form of Donald Trump losing reelection in November.
But if we want to avoid that outcome, perhaps the best chance we have is to expose the identity of Q.
Unlike many cults—which rely on the charismatic appeal of the leader—QAnon works because of the leader's anonymity. It allows followers to imagine Q as a perfect embodiment of their ideals, working deep inside the structures of government power.
In this framing, Q must conceal their identity and communicate through coded messages in order to continue operating in the upper echelons of the American government. If Q instead turned out to be a pig-farming smut peddler living in the Philippines…that might change things.
As it turns out, the founder of 8chan (since rebranded as 8kun)—where Q has posted those coded messages since abandoning 4chan in November of 2017—has been claiming to know the identity of Q for some time now. According to him, Q is in fact a pig farming smut peddler living in the Philippines—and also the current owner and operator of 8kun…
In 2014, 8chan's founder, Fredrick Brennan, first partnered with a man named Jim Watkins, who had recently acquired the domain for Japan's most popular message board 2channel—through questionable methods.
Brennan had founded 8chan at the age of 19 to operate as a version of the troll-haven imageboard 4chan, but without moderators to interfere with "free speech" (i.e. hate speech and worse). After partnering with Watkins—then around 50—Brennan moved to the Philippines to work with him more closely.
At the time, Brennan was a vocal proponent of the misogynist "Gamergate" movement, and while he still holds onto some of the ideas of that movement, it's clear that he has matured a great deal and abandoned notions of free speech absolutism. In tweets he has disavowed much of the toxic behavior associated with gamergate and claims to have "moved on."
No doubt seeing the community he'd created become a haven for neo-Nazis, pedophiles, and mass shooters played a part in his growth. He resigned as the head of 8chan in 2016, selling the company to Jim Watkins. In 2018 he severed ties with Watkins and 8chan entirely and in 2019—following a string of mass-shooters posting their manifestos on 8chan—began actively calling for the site to be shut down, accusing Watkins of being "senile."
That was enough for Watkins to have Brennan charged with cyberlibel under the Philippine Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012. Facing possible prison time—likely a death sentence for Brennan, who suffers from a genetic condition commonly known as brittle bone disease—Fredrick Brennan fled the Philippines back to the US earlier this year.
So perhaps he has a bit of a vendetta against Jim Watkins—who has denied being or having any close connection to Q. Nonetheless, the case Brennan makes is compelling, and Watkin's biography makes him sound like exactly the kind of person who would pretend to be a secret government informant in order to manufacture a conspiracy and prop up the presidency of Donald Trump.
A helicopter mechanic and recruiter for the U.S. Army at the time, Watkins got his computer training through the military, but he left the service during the dot-com boom to fully invest himself in "Asian Bikini Bar" and the related ventures of his company, N.T. Technology.
Is it the only place on the Internet where a secretive Government insider can be certain that coded messages won't be traced or altered? Or is Jim Watkins—who labels any criticism of his site as "a smear by the press"—driving traffic to his platform and using it to throw some smears back at the mainstream media? After all, how can the mainstream media judge 8chan's content if they are implicated in the Satanic pedophile cabal?
Evidence of Watkins' Connections to Q
This is not to say that Watkins invented QAnon. There are other likely suspects for that. But, perhaps, around the time that QAnon announced that 4chan had been "infiltrated" and switched to posting on 8chan in late 2017, Watkins may have taken over the role—which would explain how Q developed an interest in yoga and fountain pens...
At this point, QAnon is responsible for most of the traffic to the rebranded 8kun, and Watkins has not only promoted and defended the conspiracy theory and its merchandise through various venues, he even started a super PAC called Disarm the Deep State, with a stated mission to "mobilize a community of patriots in order to remove power from Deep State members."
Watkins being at the helm of the movement would also explain some of QAnon's antisemitic underpinnings and obsession with propping up a fascist leader, as Watkins previously used his news site The Goldwater to spread messages such as, "The third reich of germany corrected a crashing economy, and was brilliant in transforming Germany from a broken nation to a superpower in a rapid, methodical way."
Perhaps Watkins noticed that Donald Trump's brand of fascism (though replete with the usual trappings of nationalism, violent authoritarianism, xenophobia, aggreivement, false nostalgia, and militarism) lacked the structure of conspiratorial occultism that served the Nazi party so well. Maybe he felt he could provide that added structure from the sidelines.
If, as this seems to indicate, Watkins operates both 8kun and QMap.pub, Brennan argues that there is nothing to stop Jim—or perhaps his son Ronald Watkins—from posting as Q and faking the "tripcode" verification system.
We may never find out if this is true, and even if we do, it's likely that many QAnon adherents would never believe it—following the mantra of "do your own research" in order to confirm their biases, rather than listening to any legitimate sources of information.
But maybe, if we can spread this information about Watkins to enough prospective targets, we can prevent more people from falling prey to QAnon's cultic conspiracy movement. Maybe we can prevent more families from losing their loved ones to paranoia and delusion. Maybe we can prevent American Fascism from reaching its full, terrifying potential.
President Donald Trump—whose every move is already interpreted by QAnon followers as being secret messages directed toward them—was asked about QAnon at a recent press conference, and stated: "I don't know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate."
When the reporter followed up, noting that the movement believes him to be "secretly saving the world from this satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals," he seemed to embrace the idea without much concern for its absurdity, saying, "Well, I haven't heard that, but is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing? ... If I can help save the world from problems, I'm willing to do it."
Picture the scene: In a moment of weakness you agreed to an interview with Piers Morgan—a man who believes that wearing a baby carrier is emasculating and that "Pythagoras's theorem" has decimal points he can use to make women feel dumb. Now, a reporter is approaching you to collect on that promise. You don't want to be polite or pretend to have any respect for a man who thinks Muhammed Ali was more racist than Donald Trump and actively pursues Twitter feuds with Chrissy Teigen in which he attacks her "impudence." Of course you don't. Why would anyone want to do that? So you look around for the quickest escape route, but there's nowhere to go except…the fridge.
— (@)
Indiana Jones taught you that refrigerators can protect you from a nuclear blast. For a moment, maybe you can make yourself believe that this fridge will protect you from whatever radiation pompousness gives off. Can you honestly say that you wouldn't dive into that fridge and seal it behind you? Sure, Piers Morgan isn't the one holding the microphone, but the man holding the microphone is pushing that promised interview with Morgan, and you can't be sure that the man himself won't pop out of a corner any second with a smug grin and a question about Avogadro units or Planck's enigma or whether washing your butt makes you gay.
— (@)
What Piers Morgan forgets when he calls Boris Johnson a coward for hiding in a fridge is that Piers Morgan is a horror movie monster that feeds on disgust. The harder he can make you grimace, the more of your life-force he steals. And even monsters are allowed to be afraid of monsters. So hide, Boris! Don't come out with a milk crate and pretend everything is normal. Stay in your bunker. Hide like your life depends on it. With any luck you'll live long enough to lose the election.
Quibi, which is a mash up of "quick" and "bites"—sort of like how Seeso was a mashup of "see" and "so"—is a short form streaming service designed to cater to millennial's extremely short attention spans. The platform is gaining new buzz thanks to the faux-reality show that will follow "Kirby Jenner."
The fictional fraternal twin of Kendall Jenner, Kirby has made a name for himself by photoshopping himself into Jenner-Kardashian images on Instagram. He will now be starring in his own show as the black sheep of that famous family, with cameo appearances from Kylie, Kendall, Kris, Klarissa, Kardamom, and Kourtney. And true to his outcast persona, Kirby's show will not appear on broadcast television, but instead be relegated to a new, not-at-all doomed streaming service.
After all, who doesn't remember the momentous day when Disney launched their famous streaming video app Oh My Disney? No? But it was a short-form video service targeted toward millennials—just like Quibi. What could be more perfect than that?! Millennials have famously short attention spans, so we must all be holding our breaths for the opportunity to abandon all these 20-minute TV shows in favor of programming in the one-to-ten-minute range. What Jeffrey Katzenberg, 68, gets about us young people is that we want something new and different and surprising at least every few minutes, which is why 3-hour podcasts are so unpopular, and why no one binge-watches classic sitcoms from 25 years ago. Right?
If I'm wrong about all that—if millennials and zoomers would rather turn off their brains for extended periods than seek out the constant novelty and stimulation they can get for free by scrolling through Instagram or Reddit—then a Disney streaming service that offered classic TV and movies would make a much bigger splash than Oh My Disney did, and a service like Quibi would probably be dead in the water.
Who wouldn't want to see Chrissy Teigen run her own small-claims court, or Patton Oswalt get caught up in a comedic murder mystery? But also, who wouldn't want another monthly bill? For only five dollars a month—on top of your subscriptions to all those failed streaming services I just mentioned—you will soon be able to watch the same kind of short sketches and videos you could see for free on YouTube and a dozen other platforms, but starring the likes of Tina Fey, JB Smoove, and now Kirby Jenner. Five dollars is almost as cheap as four dollars. Hooray!
Quibi already has more than a billion dollars in investment, which couldn't possibly backfire. Also, it's really fun to say "Kirby on Quibi! Kirby on Quibi!" over and over again, so it's pretty much a guaranteed success, and we definitely won't all cancel our subscription just before the free trial expires. Keep an eye out for lots more positive signs that everything is going smoothly!
Twitter / @Chrissyteigen
Chrissy Teigen Tweets to Courtney
