The Wild and Banal Future of Celebrity Gossip

Culture Study Podcast

Anne Helen Petersen

Fashion & Beauty, Society & Culture, Arts

4.6 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 15 January 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Let me start with this: this is a dream interview. If, like me, you spent a lot of time in the 2000s and 2010s reading about celebrity online, Go Fug Yourself was an essential part of your online diet. Heather and Jessica were simply unrivaled when it came to celebrity fashion in general and red carpet fashion in particular. I idolized them the same way I idolized Lainey Gossip — both of whom I read alongside all of my graduate texts in star studies. The problem with those star studies is that they were always rooted in the past. But The Fug Girls and Lainey, they were doing the analysis now, on celebs who were desperately (and often unsuccessfully) attempting to navigate the new, digital gossip landscape — and that’s how they became part of my dissertation, on the history of celebrity gossip, themselves.

That’s why it’s such an absolute f-ing treat to talk to Heather and Jessica about the present and future of celebrity gossip: they have the context. They know the history. We talk about Deuxmoi, sourcing, blinds, accounting for past shittiness, so much. Melody had to jump in like 17 times to make us explain various peak 2000s gossip terms here, so if you were part of that universe (HELLO, TOOTHY TILE) you will love this episode — but if you weren’t, and you just appreciate an introspective look at how celebrity discourse works, you’ll love this, too (in part because Melody made us explain stuff, she’s the best).

Note: This episode was recorded just before the Blake Lively/New York Times bombshell so don’t get mad that we don’t mention it!!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone. Once a month or so, we pick an episode to be free for everyone so that if you're not a paid subscriber, you can get a little taste of what life is like on the other side. A major part of that life is getting to hear the Ask An Anything segment. Today's is really juicy. It's a practical guide to spotting the difference between a PR move and something genuine when it comes to celebrity gossip. If you like what you hear, head over to culturesteadepod.substack.com
0:26.5	and become a paid subscriber. It's just five bucks a month or $50 a year. And if you already
0:31.8	subscribe to the Culture Study newsletter, you get a really big discount. If you don't subscribe to either,
0:37.0	but you want both, sign up for the newsletter first and you'll get a follow big discount. If you don't subscribe to either, but you want both,
0:37.9	sign up for the newsletter first, and you'll get a follow-up email with the discount for the
0:41.4	podcast. Okay, thanks, everyone. On to the show. So we've been running GoFug Yourself
0:47.5	since 2004. So that predates Twitter. It predates Instagram. It definitely predates TikTok. It
0:53.6	predates YouTube. So I would say when we
0:56.3	started covering the site, celebrities were basically models, actors, musicians. That's basically it.
1:05.0	And then like, you know, you'd have sort of like what Heather and I would call like New York famous,
1:09.5	which would be like Tinsley Mortimer,
1:11.2	like some socialite stuff like that, people that, you know, like maybe don't really break
1:14.8	through to like the masses, for lack of a better word. Yeah, who weren't necessarily in people,
1:19.2	but they might have been in like the New York post. Yeah, like you go to fashion week and they're in
1:22.6	the front row and everyone's making a big deal and you're like they're just a DJ. I've never heard of them, but everyone's going nuts.
1:29.0	And now I think with the advent of YouTube and like TikTok and Instagram, social media in general,
1:35.9	I do think we have like a whole other section of celebrities. We had to draw a line because
1:41.9	I'm 49. My brain cannot hold everything.
1:46.0	I need to keep gossip from the 80s in here.
1:48.4	And I can't pick up TikTok stars.
1:50.9	I just can't.
1:51.9	But there are whole groups of other people who like the TikTok stars are their celebrities.
	...

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