Welcome to Never Before. I'm your host, Janet Mock.

The true genius of the internet is its creators.

I get my entire life from the non-stop stream of content created by folk of color,

the memes, the ideas, the throwbacks, the characters.

Today's guests created one of my all-time fave internet characters ever. Brandon Miller is a man behind Joanne the Scammer,

my favorite Caucasian, if there ever was one. With her fur coat, her black slipped dress,

her heavily rooted blonde wig, her five o'clock shadow, and

killer wit in reeds. Joanne the scammer is a messy bitch who lives for drama.

But who's the person behind Joanne? That's the goal of today's conversation. Brandon Miller

is a performance artist who plays with gender and race in an effort to challenge constructs and ultimately knock them down. Brandon is a performance artist who plays with gender and race in an effort to challenge constructs

and ultimately knock them down. Brendan is a black and Latino man from the South who didn't

know he was a person of color or adopted until he was 17. This revelation led Brandon to experiment

with his identity as a teen. His gender and race play eventually became a pathway

for internet notoriety. Joanne the scammer calls herself Caucasian and her main activity

is scamming men. She puts the con in iconic and enjoys being problematic, hypercritical,

and superficial. Being petty is her playground and has attracted 3 million followers.

And if that sounds like it could get a little problematic, it does.

And we go there in our conversation in which Brandon discusses how he deals with the criticism,

including being called transphobic and racist.

Brandon showed up to our interview wearing Joanne's famous fur coat.

So we began by dipping a little into the Joanne character.

But then we go way back, digging much deeper into his journey.

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