A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - The Campaign To Crush Chappell Roan

Episode Date: April 4, 2026

On March 21, 2026, as violent tensions escalated in Trump’s illegal war on Iran, the second most-discussed event in the United States was Chappell Roan’s hotel breakfast. What began as a forgettable “controversy” involving celebrities, a security guard, and a fancy hotel in Brazil soon transformed into a political proxy war that feels deeply emblematic of what the Internet has become. Today, Caroline Kwan, Kat Tenbarge and I dive deep into the episode I was sure I wouldn’t make. But here we are. In tears. Listen to bonus episodes on Patreon! Thanks to today’s sponsors! Work smarter, not harder, with Factor meals ready in two minutes at https://www.factormeals.com/fruity50off Start managing your money better and cancel unwanted expenses at https://www.rocketmoney.com/fruity.  Watch Caroline on Twitch. Follow Caroline on Twitter. Read Kat’s work at Spitfire News. Follow Kat on Bluesky. Find me on Instagram. Find A Bit Fruity on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Did you guys know that Chapel Rhone at the breakfast, she ordered truffle pancakes, which were, it was the most expensive thing on the menu. They were $54. A server from the hotel restaurant made a TikTok about it. Oh, my God, we should cancel her. I hope they tasted good. I'm just kidding. I made that up.

Wait, I believed it. Oh, I don't care that you made it up because I've already tweeted 10 versions of it. I just feel like if we're going to talk about this and, like, We're going to talk about a lot of things that aren't true. Like, I want to throw my own fake thing into the mix. I could tweet out something such as Chapel Rhone came into one of the clubs that I worked at one time. And she was a fucking bitch. 10K likes it in an hour.

Well, my friends, I said I wasn't going to make an episode about this. On the A BitFruity Instagram, I said I wasn't. And I want to own up to that. I said it was time for us to move on from Chapel Rone's malevolent breakfast in Brazil. And I said that at the exact wrong time. Because in the days following, what I thought was a stupid non-controversy that did not matter, things spiraled out of control in a way that I thought did matter. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you will soon.

And if you are familiar with what I'm talking about, I promise to not make this episode a bland recap of it. We have insights. We have thoughts. And we will get to the bottom of why Chapel Rhone broke that child's limbs. One by one. Sorry. That's not true.

I mean, you would think it was true, though. No matter what she does, an apology won't bring her back to life. Joining us on our episode today to talk about a lot. We have Kat Tenbarge, journalist, writer of the newsletter Spitfire News. Kat, welcome back to the show. So excited to be here. A true smear campaign expert, both of you, really. We also have Caroline, Kwan, pop culture, and political Twitch.

streamer. So excited to have you back. Excited to be here yet again talking about my favorite thing in the world, which is that everyone loves to hate women. Guys, I have 21 pages of notes for this episode. I have never had this many pages of notes before. And I think people on this podcast know me for long outlines. So I'm very excited to get into it. And we also have a lot to get to. So shall we get started? Yeah. I have 33 years of notes in my head. So. I'm going to try and not say everything all at once. I have organized our episode today into some sweet internet-friendly chapters. So here we go.

Chapter 1 A Breakfast from Hell. On February 13, 26, Chapel Rhone cut ties with Wasserman, the Talon agency she was assigned to. Wasserman is a massive agency, and Chapel was one of their biggest names. Her departure was in response to Wasserman's. founder, Casey Wasserman, appearing to have sexted with Gilane Maxwell in 2003 via email. I guess it's not sexting if it's emails, but, you know, Casey Wasserman is an extraordinarily powerful figure, as is made clear by his inclusion in the Epstein class. Forbes estimates Wasserman's personal net worth to be at least $750 million as of last month. He's the chairman

of the organizing committee for the LA 2028 Olympics, a position. in the Olympic Committee has not removed him from, despite public protest. After Chapel pulled out of Wasserman, so too did a string of other artists. Warville Peck, Sylvan Esso, Gigi Perez, Laofy, Odessa, and the local natives, to name a few. This led Casey Wasserman to announce within days that he was selling the company, and the following month it was announced that Wasserman agency would be renamed The Team. memorable You know there was one guy who was like

What if we call it the team And everyone went yeah it's good enough That's kind of like how Melissa Nathan's PR company is called tag Tag The agency group I mean you're an agency and you're a group So you're the agency group We're a team of managers so we're the team

I begin our episode with this story Not to imply that Casey Wasserman is necessarily behind all or any of what we'll discuss today You can't sue me now Casey but because I think it represents well the kind of threat that someone like Chapel Rhone poses to hierarchy and order and power. There's a ton of public litigation over just how real or manufactured the constant churn of controversy around Chapel Rhone is. And we'll get to that.

But what we know for certain is that Chapel is a pro-Palestine, pro-trans, boundary-setting lesbian, willing to disrupt business as usual. literally for powerful people. And that puts a target on her back and incentivizes people with their hands on the levers of power to turn public opinion against her if they wanted to. Strategically, in what one might call

a campaign. Dan, da, dun. Casey Wasserman is also one of the figures associated with the Creative Community for Peace. They are a pro-Israel group that call themselves an apolitical nonprofit. He has hosted fundraisers.

For creative community for peace? Yes. And they are the ones behind All the open letters. The open letters, the smear campaigns towards voice of Hinrajab, the Oscar nominated film from this year.

Also, we're behind the smear campaign of no other land. So, yeah, that's the creative community for peace that Casey Wasserman is tied to. Yeah, if you've ever seen a bunch of headlines that come out all at once about how it's like, Deborah Messing and 1,200 celebrities

who you just also haven't heard of sign an open letter condemning literally any other celebrity who's spoken out against Israel. Those are all organized by Creative Community for Peace. Yeah. And it should show you if they're leading with Deb Messing's name. That's about the top of the list that they got, okay? I didn't even, I didn't even plan on invoking her in this episode. I'm sorry, guys. I know. I've been good. I've been good. It's like when they release anti-climate change petitions that are signed by like 5,000 scientists, but half of them are chiropractors. Exactly.

And oil executives. Chapter 1, Section 2. Breakfast. The most important meal of the day. It's where we have to start. On March 21, Brazilian footballer Georgino posted an Instagram story to his 4 million followers regarding his 11-year-old stepdaughter, whose biological father is Jude Law, which is fun. This story has everything.

I think this might have been the first time Jude Law found out that he had this daughter. And how many other kids are out there that have yet to have these run-ins with Chapel Rhone. And then by consequence, Jude Law discovers that that is his child. It's very Elanian. Does one of you want to read Georgino's statement that started at all? He posts to Instagram. I went through a very upsetting situation with my family earlier today. My wife is in Sao Paulo for Lollapalooza, Brazil.

This morning, my daughter woke up incredibly excited. She even made a sign because she was so happy to see an artist she really admires or used to admire at Chapel Rhone. By coincidence, they're staying at the same hotel as this artist. During breakfast, the artist walked past their table. My daughter, like any child, recognized her, got excited and just wanted to make sure it was really her. And the worst part is she didn't even approach her. She simply walked past the singer's table, looked to confirm it was her, smiled,

and went back to sit with her mom. She didn't say anything, didn't ask for anything. What happened next was completely disproportionate. A large security guard came over to their table while they were still having breakfast and began speaking in an extremely aggressive manner to both my wife and my daughter, saying that she shouldn't allow my daughter to, quote,

disrespect or harass other people. He even said he would file a complaint against them with the hotel while my 11-year-old daughter was sitting there in tears. My daughter was extremely shaken and cried a lot. I've lived with football, public exposure, and well-known people for many years, and I understand very well what respect and boundaries are. What happened there was not that. It was just a child admiring someone. It's sad to see this kind of treatment coming from those who should understand the importance of fans. At the end of the day, they are the ones who build all of this.

I sincerely hope this serves as a moment of reflection. No one should have to go through this, especially not a child. At Chapel Rhone, without your fans, you would be nothing. And to the fans, she does not deserve your affection. Look, it is really hard to not like stop after every sentence and be like, but to me, it's interesting that like this is being. written so rigorously by someone who, as evidenced in his own story, wasn't there. Was not there.

But I promised that this episode would not just be litigating the breakfast itself, because I don't actually think that's the interesting thing about what happened here. But we can talk about it a little bit. We can talk about it a little bit. I will say, too, though, I think the irony in this line, what happened next was completely disproportionate actually applies to what happened next after he. posted this. It's also interesting to me that like he acknowledges from the very beginning that Chapel didn't even necessarily have a reason to know this happened because the 11 year old in question

didn't even approach her. She didn't ask Chapel for a photo. Like there was no interaction between the two of them. Yet for a lot of people responding to this, it became like Chapel furiously said she wouldn't take a picture with this child. But also it's just like throughout this whole controversy, people are trying to blame Chapel for the security guard's actions, which is literally holding a woman accountable for something every party agrees a man did. Like, you aren't responsible for someone else's conduct, especially when you are both adults. Could you guys quickly describe how quickly this blew up and took over everyone's feeds? Like, I can't remember seeing any celebrity news spread like this in recent history. It was giving by sisters. It was giving

by sister to me, honestly. I had taken the night off from streaming. I was out and I started to get texts from friends. And I looked at the initial post and I went, what? Who cares? I went, this is not a situation that I felt in the beginning that I needed to jump in and do what I have done in the past, which is to defend Chapel Rhone.

And then suddenly like that, it was a raging wildfire. It was everywhere. so much of what was online was very deranged. It was trending at number two in the U.S. on Twitter. It was also one of those things where it's like... Like, wait, I'm so sorry. I do not mean to cut a woman off on this episode in particular.

But like, we are at war. And this was trending at number two in the United States. Yeah. Yeah. It was also one of those things where there was like a whole algorithm constructed around this incident. because every time I would like refresh my FYP on X, it would be more tweets about this incident,

which means that there is like an algorithm pushing it to the top of your feed. And so that happened very, very quickly. And that was locked in for days, days of just like the algorithm specifically surfacing content about this incident and putting it at the very top of people's four you pages. I even checked my partner's Twitter because all, He follows his football to see because we have very different feeds. And even on his feed, there was so much activity around this.

Later that day, Eduardo Cavalieri, Cavalieri, Cavalieri. He said that Italian. I know, he's Brazilian. The mayor of Rio de Janeiro posted the following statement. He said, as long as I'm in charge of our city, this young lady Chapel Rhone will never perform at, Allermundo no Rio. I doubt that Shakira, at Shakira, at Shakira Brazil would do that.

By the way, at Freio Giorginio, your little one is already the guest of honor from the organization in May. And then Georgino commented heart, heart. So this was actually the first piece of content I saw about any of this. And the fact that I was seeing this from the mayor of Rio de Janeiro. This was on like hour one. Chapel had not yet responded. I thought it was so bizarre. And I actually tweeted at the time.

I was like, does anyone think that it's weird that a public official is weighing in on such private matters that haven't even been addressed by the singer in question? To which a bunch of Brazilian posters replied, you clearly don't understand Brazilian politics. Which, touch, I guess I don't. But it's also notable that this Toto Mundo No

Rio Festival that he's saying he's banning Chapel from. Chapel was never scheduled to play that festival this year. So this is like me saying that like I ban Chapel from coming to my house and hanging out with me. Like yeah, she wasn't coming. This is like Democrats saying that they won't go on Hassan Pikers broadcast and they've never been invited on. This is like the Israeli far right terrorist military organization, Betar USA, saying that Matt

Bernstein is banned from Israel. Like, okay. It's also really wild to me that he specifically pits Chapel Road against Shakira. Because I'm like, I don't even know. Maybe Shakira has been rude to an 11 year old before. Like, who's to say? Who's to say? This clearly shows that political officials and other people in power actually do have the ability

to not just hold people accountable that they have perceived to have done wrong. doing, but to do so very quickly. That was my very first thought because it's like there are so many touring musicians who are men who actually pose real danger to women and children in the places where they go on tour. And I can't think of a single like comparable incident where a mayor or any sort of government official has been like, I'm specifically banning an artist from coming to my city based on like the danger that they pose to children. It just doesn't happen.

But clearly it could if that was where the priority truly lies. Yeah. And I don't want to play follow police. I don't love to do that. But I think, you know, when you're talking about public officials, it's sort of interesting to notice that this man, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, does follow Benjamin Netanyahu. So anyway, I think her fans should stop buying tickets to her shows because she's a horrible person. and not because I want easier access to those tickets. So that night, Chapel Roan posts a video in which she explains that the security guard in question

was not her personal security, but perhaps one working for the hotel during Lollapalooza or for another artist who was staying there. She said she never saw the 11-year-old girl in question was unaware anything had ever happened, but nonetheless apologized to the family for their experience. I'm just going to tell my half of the story of what happened today with a mother and child who were involved with a security guard who was not my personal security. I didn't even see. I didn't even see a woman and a child.

Like I did not. No one came up to me. No one bothered me. Like I was just sitting at breakfast in my hotel. I think these people were saying at the hotel as well. I did not ask the security guard to go up and talk to this mother and child. I did not, they did not come up to me. They weren't doing anything.

It's unfair for security to just assume someone doesn't have good intentions. I do not hate people who are fans of my music. I do not hate children. Like, that is crazy. I'm sorry to the mother and child that someone was assuming something that, would do something and that if you felt uncomfortable that makes me really sad you did not deserve that but the dominant narrative that chapel roan hates children was already running ahead with too much steam so this response did little to stop it and everyone who was already angry just agreed that chapel

was clearly a lying psychopath people were resurfacing one clip in particular where she was talking about how her friends that had children were miserable and talking about like why she doesn't want children at least not right now. All of my friends who have kids are in hell. I don't know anyone. I actually don't know anyone who's like happy and has children at this age. I have like one year old, like three year old, four and under, five and under. I don't, I literally have not met anyone who's happy, anyone who has like light in their eyes, anyone who has, he was slept. There was just no point in any of this that didn't have political undertones to me because I had seen that clip previously float around like conservative women like pro natalist Twitter.

like, look, Chapel Roan is discouraging women from becoming mothers. I'm a mom of two kids under four, and yeah, my house is chaotic. I haven't had a full night of sleep in years. But you know what? I've never been happier in my life. There is a kind of joy that comes from motherhood that you can't explain to people who only live for the weekend or the next Instagram dopamine hit. So I thought it was interesting that that was resurfacing now in the context of Chapel Roan hates children. So many people participated in. in the outrage from that particular clip. First of all, Chapel's 26 years old.

I'm in my 30s, and I would say the same thing about my friends who have children in their 30s. I would say, yeah, they're in hell. They love their kids, but man, oh man, parenting can be real hell. But everybody is so reactionary. This is something that I see all the time

is the immediate, immediate reactionary sentiment. Oh, so are we all, what, trad conservatives over here with the, I can't believe Chapel Rhone doesn't love children. I don't care if Chapel Rhone, a 26-year-old woman, doesn't like children. There are adult men who are abusing children who work in our government, who work in finance and media and the entertainment industry, and ain't nothing happening to them. It's also such a common smear against any woman who either doesn't conform to, like, patriarchal standards and or any woman who advocates for women's equality. A perfect example of this is

like, I came across a reel a couple weeks ago where this woman was, who is a mother, was talking about like, I don't know how stay at home moms do it because like my oldest is in daycare every day and we have a new baby and it's so hard. All the comments were from like Chad Kath accounts being like you don't actually love your children. You hate your children because you're a woman who works, who has a job. So this is a very, very common. smear utilized, even against women who have kids of their own. It's like if you don't adhere to the strictest, most like white supremacist Christian ideals of motherhood, you will be smeared as hating children. And it is so insidious how this trickles even into like left leading spaces.

Because as all this was going on, I went to a reading, like an IRL reading in New York. And it was a really good reading. All the readers were amazing. And the hosts were amazing too. but somebody made a joke about Chappell hating kids during this reading. And I was like, it's just so interesting how, like, these smears work their way into real life, offline context, and just become widely accepted as narratives against, like, feminist women and non-conforming women. And it's not true. As Chappell said in her video, like, she doesn't hate children. So it's just like a completely manufactured part of her personality that people now just accept as reality. Yes. And there are.

other videos of her embracing her young children fans. Like, the whole thing is so nonsensical. Nevertheless, the narrative barreled on. So within the next couple days, finally, we hear from the girl's mother who was actually there. Catherine Harding had this child while she was dating Jude Law before they separated and she married Georgino. She posted a six-minute-long video

where she more or less ignores Chapel's explanation that Chapel wasn't personally involved with the incident, saying, this is the last thing I'm going to say about this now because it's getting a bit crazy. But lots of people are sending me messages like, is this true, is this true, is this true? And then lots of messages now about, obviously, Chappelle's message that she's put out.

So I don't know if it was her personal security guard, but he was with her. So that is all I know. Did she send him to do it? Again, I don't know. Look, I would like to hope not, but at the same time, I think that you have a responsibility when you are a celebrity to make sure, I guess, that the people that work for you and the act on your behalf are acting on your behalf.

Okay. This makes me mad. I know. The actual events of the breakfast in Brazil. debacle, which from here on out I will be calling pancake gate. Matter much less than what comes next. Like a security guard was overly stern with an 11-year-old at a fancy hotel, which isn't great, of course, but I really struggle to put it in proportion with people's reaction,

which was more akin to murder. Catherine Harding's video, however, I did have an opinion of because to me it becomes clear that this is a wealthy couple staying at a hotel with celebrities. They are celebrities themselves and probably feeling more entitled to a certain level of treatment than most. And blasting this on social media through the lens of that entitlement, right? Like Catherine Harding was also liking very disparaging comments about Chapel Rhone on her video, calling Chapel Rhone rude, etc., etc. So I truly wish this woman no ill will. Please do not, if you're listening to this, go on to any of these people's accounts and leave them in comments. It really is so far from the point. But, but I do think

it's important to establish that she's probably not a particularly reliable narrator for this whole thing. And she is the only narrator because Giorgino's original Instagram post was based on Catherine coming to him and being like, this is what happened at breakfast. Do you think that's fair? Yes, I do. I do think that's fair. And also, So it then turned, there was this weird aspect of it where it was pitting Catherine Harding against Chapel. And there was a lot of comparing the way that they look, therefore kind of the moralizing from that.

Which is why at the end of the day, I don't care about any of the actual events. I don't care if the most exaggerated version of these events, which we know is not true. But even if in this hypothetical here we were to say is true, it still does not warrant the global hate campaign against Chapel Rhone that is rooted in misogyny and homophobia. And that is why it took off so fast. That is why there were enterprising online people who recognized this was something that they could join in on the side of hitting Chapel Rhone, the bots that got involved, the misinterpreted, the misinterpreted, the misinterpreted. information and disinformation. Like that is the thing that I care about. I agree. And I also just think that so much of the rationale, again, comes back to this idea that chapel is the one who should be like responsible and accountable for the security guards behavior, which is all the more ridiculous because as we then learn, he wasn't even working for her. So it's just this like reinforcing

again of this societal standard that really only affects women, which is like you're not only responsible for yourself, but for any man in your vicinity, if any man around you is like behaving poorly, potentially on your behalf, then you need to be held more accountable than him for his behavior. I would like to take a quick break from the show to give a shout out two-factor for sponsoring this episode. In the year 2026, I have been trying to evolve on a personal level away from work in a few different ways. One of them being that I'm trying to to put together more outfits. I'm trying to dress myself more in the morning and stop relying on the gay guy uniform of a white tank top, which if you watch the video version of this podcast,

you are very well familiar with. Like, I started wearing sleeves. That's got to count for something. Cheer me on, please. Anyway, what does this have to do with Factor? Well, one of the things that I am not changing in 2026 is that I don't really love cooking. I don't really love setting aside time for cooking. I don't really love going grocery shopping. Maybe you think that's embarrassing. Fortunately, there are some ways around it, one of which is Factor. Factor is a meal delivery service with chef-made gourmet meals that make eating well easy, and everything is ready to heat and eat in two minutes.

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And now let's get back to it. Chapter 2. Who Trolled Amber Heard? I know you're all so happy that we get to take a break from Pancake Gate. Don't worry. We'll be back. If you were alive in 2022, you might remember a niche pop culture event that nobody made podcasts about called Depp v. Heard. In case you need some brushing up, the bones of the case were this. Actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard were in a relationship from 2011 when Amber was 25 and Johnny was 48, they were in a relationship until Amber filed for a divorce in 2016, claiming that

Johnny had physically abused her. In 2018, Amber wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post about how she, quote, felt the full force of our culture's wrath for women who speak out. She did not name Johnny Depp or anyone in that op-ed, but Johnny nevertheless sued for defamation. Amber counter-sued, and in 2022, they duked it out in court for two months, during which Amber turd trended daily. During those two months, one could have plausibly described Amber heard as the most hated person on the internet, if not the world. The case came and went, Amber fled to Spain, and Johnny's $20 million Dior fragrance contract was renewed. Two years later, Alexei Mosterous, an investigative journalist, released Who Trolled Amber, a six-part podcast series where he explains

his findings that the turning of public sentiment against Amber was not exactly organic. Kat, you were a part of that podcast. So can you explain some of what those findings were? Yes. So who told Amber is a really, really interesting. It was one of the only investigations that focused less on like the facts of the case and what happened between Amber Hart and Johnny Depp and more like why were all of these people, people in air quotes, talking about it. Because at the time, it felt really unprecedented to have this sort of algorithmic bias where you can't go on any social media platform and not encounter people talking about Depp v. Heard. And all of those posts were very specifically like through this lens of Johnny Depp is a victim

and Amber Heard is an abuser. They collected a bunch of data, a bunch of tweets from the time of the trial. And they sent them to researchers around the world who study bots. And part of what they found is that it's really hard to figure out like who is a bot and who is not on social media, but that there are very sophisticated places around the world where you can direct these sorts of bot campaigns. And one of those places that they found was Saudi Arabia, which is really interesting because over the past few years, Johnny Depp has cultivated a friendship within like the Saudi Arabian regime. MBS, the main guy who's like in charge of Saudi Arabia. like he and Johnny Depp party together. They take pictures together. At the exact same time that Johnny Depp is cultivating this close relationship,

the country is also trying to build out its own sort of cultural initiatives. They have like the Red Sea Film Festival that Johnny Depp has been a guest of honor at. I believe he premiered one of his films after the trial there. And also a lot of these tweets that Alexi was investigating and sending around to these data scientists could potentially be linked back to these bot farms from that country. So there's an interesting like geopolitical aspect to all of this. But of course, his ultimate takeaway is like, yes, there was inauthentic activity up to 50% based on some estimations.

But also it is concerning and reflective of the fact that there were enough real authentic people who were also willing to push these narratives. That was what ultimately made it as successful as it was. And prior to the 22 trial where Johnny Depp sued. Amber for defamation. This was already put into place with a combination of depth stands, but also these bot farms, this inorganic activity online that had already pumped out thousands of tweets that were very anti-amber heard before the trial started. Exactly. And in addition to that, not only is there the Saudi Arabian connection, but there's also a Russian connection. Duh. It's like

an American pastime at this point. Exactly. This is all like at the exact same time that the Mueller report is ongoing and finding all of this evidence that Russia had influenced American elections. At the exact same time, Depp's lawyer, Adam Waldman, has closely worked with Russian oligarchs. In his capacity, as Johnny Depp's lawyer, he was actually basically kicked off of the 2022 trial because he had leaked materials that were supposed to be like sanctioned, not supposed to to be released to the public, two YouTubers. And he later testified to this in 2022. There were like three YouTubers in particular who he had shared audio recordings with of like fights between Johnny Depp and Amber Hurd. And some of those YouTubers had created these videos that had hundreds

of millions of views across platforms before the trial even started. And they had mistranslated them. Like they had put captions on the videos, but they just made up the captions. So the audio would be, be like crackling static and like voices and you couldn't really discern what they were saying. And then these YouTubers had written out like, I'm hitting you, Johnny, like crazy stuff like that. They just made up this whole fake narrative. Depp's lawyer was involved with that. That was inauthentic. And there were already, as you said Caroline, so many tweets, the entire Justice for Johnny Depp movement, which was Astrochurfed, already existed by the time the trial even began. How do you explain why such powerful people across

countries and governments were invested in smearing amber as hard as possible even before this started. Because I feel like this is important as we continue on with this episode and then return back to Pancake Gate. I mean, interestingly enough, this really aligns with what we've seen in the Epstein files, which is that a lot of very powerful men, celebrities, people like Woody Allen, journalists like Michael Wolf, Jeffrey Epstein himself, Donald Trump as well. Like all of these men were terrified, Stephen Bannon. All of these men were terrified. of the Me Too movement and the implications it had for their power. And so all of these men behind the scenes were working together to figure out ways to undermine

the credibility of specific women who had come forward and also the movement in general. And Debt Be Heard was the perfect playbook for this. It worked like a charm. And so I don't think you don't need to take it to the conspiracy brain level of like Jeffrey Epstein orchestrated like the pushback against Amber Heard. because I don't think it's that. But rather, I think that it is in all of their best interests to destabilize these movements. And Amber Hurd ended up being the perfect target for like a confluence of factors.

So that's where I think a lot of the geopolitical stuff comes in. Yes. Is like this playbook is really perfect for all of these powerful people. 1,000%. And what we saw was the result that it was a significant setback for women's rights. Yes. It did reverse progress that had been made from the Me Too movement. And I think the other case that really shows the right-wing conservative investment is Blake Lively's.

Because so much of right-wing media, both giant companies like Fox News, but also individual online commentators such as Candace Owens and Megan Kelly, have a political interest. in smearing famous women who make accusations of abuse. In the first half of 2025, Fox News posted 80 stories alone on their website. About Blake Lively. About Blake Lively. Candice Owens made dozens of videos. Every time there was a new update that came out.

And what she said about Blake, she said a lot of things, but I think this is the thing that really stands out. She said she has proven herself to not be a kind person. and that is largely due to the fact that she is a modern feminist. So that is tying modern feminism, feminist movements, to these lying, scheming, manipulative women. Amber heard, her very name has become a weapon because any woman who steps out of line is now

referred to as Amber 2.0. And you even saw that with, is her name Cassidy Hutchinson? Is that the woman who was like part of Trump's? who then testified against him later. When she testified against Trump in between like 2020 and 2024 over the January 6th hearings, Trump supporters were calling her Amber 2.0. So it's like the idea, the rhetorical weapon of Amber Heard has now been deployed against Angelina Jolie, against Republican women who go against Trump, against any woman who is sort of smeared online.

And the reinforcing of that playbook is a very powerful tool to prevent the Me Too movement from being able to happen. again or to like carry any of the consequences it briefly did in 2017, 2018. And I just think like in the context of this larger. Oh, wow. No, they're always coming for me. Every time I try to make a salient point, I don't know, it's Johnny Depp. He's coming for me. No, he's probably in some drug stupor somewhere.

That's what's also so ironic about Johnny Depp is like he doesn't even pay people. I believe he got sued by his lawyers for not paying. them and like his insurance company like he's not known for being a good client which to me shows that there is a much deeper ideological purpose behind all of these powerful wealthy people who aligned with him they saw him as like the perfect figure for this type of ultimately ideological crusade and i think just like in the context of this larger conversation if powerful people could get involved in smearing amber herd to successfully set back feminine feminism, Me Too, what could they gain from doing the same thing to Chapel Rhone?

And another thing that I think is so interesting about who trolled Amber and the findings that there were a lot of bot farms involved in boosting anti-amber herd content during that trial is how that strategic engineering of public sentiment mixed with people's existing prejudices. I think a lot of people might say, well, I'm a human being and I don't, I don't, like Amber Heard. I'm not a bot. I tweeted, you know, we're not all bots. I think it's important to address how the organic mixes with the inorganic. Like, it's easier to wield a campaign like this against some people more than others. Existing feelings that people have of misogyny, of anti-blackness, of homophobia, a transphobia, anti-fat bias. Those can easily be exploited by bad actors.

This is the problem here. It's the way that our cultural biases are so deep. ingrained that people will say, no, I reached this opinion on my own. And so therefore, they don't believe that they have fallen for a smear campaign. They don't believe that they are contributing here to a hate train that is greased by these biases that exist in our culture. And so it is this mixture of astroturfed, inorganic, manufactured discourse online, but it is anchored by real misogyny, homophobia, racism, etc. And that's what's hard to kind of root out from people because most people don't want to do that internal self-reflection.

But that's the job here that I think people like us have is getting people to interrogate those biases and make these connections. And it's an uphill battle for the left compared to a very easy thing for the right to do, which is why Melissa Nathan in her famous text message was like, wow, it just really goes to show you how much people hate women because there were elements of the Blake Lively Smear campaign that just were like a runaway train on their own. The publicists lit the match, but the crowd of people and their misogyny is what like carried the flames as far as they eventually spread.

Chapter 3 Chapel gets trolled Back to Chapel Back to Pancake Gate As the days and weeks unfolded following hashtag pancake gate That's not a real hashtag I made that one up

Online anger Towards Chapel Rhone didn't die down It grew For example, the Daily Mail has written upwards of 30 articles about this incident A sample platter of which we will read to you now

Do you guys want to popcorn it I put them in the outline? I'll start Chapel Rhone accused of leaving Jude Law's 11-year-old daughter in tears and using security guard to threaten her. Chapel Rhone thanks her security during her Lollapalooza Brazil show. Hours after her team were accused of threatening Jude Law's daughter 11 and leaving her, quote, in tears. Chapel Rhone apologizes to Jude Law's daughter as she insists she did not ask security guard to approach her and says, I do not hate fans of my music or children. Jude Law.

I love how they keep invoking Jude Law for SEO purposes. They're like, how many celebrities can we include in one? Who's never said anything about this, by the one? Jude Law's X hits back at Chapel Rhone's denials and Hope's singer learns a lesson as she shares further details about Star's aggressive security, leaving her 11-year-old daughter. Say it with me, folks. in tears.

The super woke pop star who doesn't like people looking at her. Why Chapel Rhone risked being cancelled after diva outbursts and celebs spats? With star urge to quit fame after aggressive team left Jude Law's daughter. In tears. Iris Law makes a low-key appearance as she steps out after Chapel Rhone was accused of leaving her sister. Mr. Ada, 11. In tears. With heavy-handed security.

Oh, the next one pisses me off. I'm sorry. I also love their writing about Iris Law. Stepping outside. Because she's like tangentially related to this 11-year-old. We are all but six degrees separated from having a daily mail article written about us for our relationship to this 11-year-old. Matt Bernstein noted Chapel Rhone fan,

Stephs our singer-leaf's 11-year-old in tears. Oh, no, I'm in tears. Oh, God. My composure. Chapel Rhone is urged to be more like Taylor Swift after her many outbursts, as fans note how kind the billionaire still is, to her loyal supporters after two decades in the industry. Billionaire good.

Can we make it any clearer? Yeah. Also, Taylor Swift has previously been a victim of a smear campaign. Yeah. Yes. The Daily Mail, sure, if I were to look back, participate it in. Yes. This comparison to Taylor Swift makes me particularly irate, especially because it's like,

you don't know anything about Taylor Swift if you think that, like, she would be opposed to the way Chaffel Rhone handles fame, Taylor Swift has spent the last, like, three albums agonizing over her relationship to fame and public scrutiny and referred to, like, fans who care too much about her as, like, vipers dressed in empath's clothing, which the Daily Mail criticized as, like, terrible songwriting. So this idea that, like, she needs to be more like Taylor Swift

is so divorced from reality, Taylor Swift gets hate for all the opposite reasons. It's just like a ridiculous, like, Impossible standard. We ready for this next one with the photo that they use that looks like a mugshot. Mugshot. Chapel Rhone calls fans weird and crazy and says, I don't give a fuck if you think it's selfish of me to say no to a photo as outspoken

24 video trends after hotel drama. Rehashing a 2024 video. That's normal. Cat, next one. Hollywood turns on biggest bitch, Chapel Rone. Music insiders give their verdict, and one source close to the star explodes with worst insult imaginable amid latest scandal. Chapel Rhone is outed as hypocrite as her secretly rich family and privileged background is revealed and backlash over hotel drama. That left Jude Law's daughter.

In tears! And the last one here, opinion. It's career crisis time for Chapel Rhone. I appreciate them clarifying that this one is opinion, in contrast to all the other ones that were fact. I used to work at Business Insider, which is not daily mail level, and like there's a lot of good work that gets done there. But I am so familiar with this specific digital media type cycle.

And what it is, is like they wrote one article. about this incident and it shot to the top of their internal charts and was getting like more views than the average article. And so digital media outlets like this will oftentimes feed into these smear campaigns so perfectly because like any viral news aggregator, they are incentivized to get as many clicks as possible. That's how they make money. They get money from ads that run on these articles. And Daily Mail performs very well on Facebook. A lot of older women actually read Daily male and older women of that demographic love these types of misogynistic smear campaigns. So basically internally, they were like, let's turn out as many articles on Chapel Rhone as

possible. It was the same thing. Like I worked at Business Insider during the Gabby Petito incident. I think we wrote hundreds of articles about Gabby Petito. And a lot of those articles at the time when we just had that police footage of her in tears, there were a lot of articles that suggested Gabby Petito was like either abusive or like the problem in her relationship. Obviously, we all know how that story turned out. But like a lot of these digital media outlets that make their money this way, the standards become very close to like a pop crave because they are hinging on this misogynistic attitude that their readers already have. I have some smoke for pop crave, much more so than pop base, actually. If you're unfamiliar, Pop Crave and Pop Base are the two biggest.

news sources for pop culture and oftentimes political-related news on Twitter slash X. I will say, I do think pop base wields their power with much more responsibility. They also talk a lot about hard lefty politics. They talk about Palestine. Pop crave in particular, though, if they see, for example, a chapel rowan leaves Jude Law's daughter in tiers post is doing well, they will make 20 of those. And it's interesting how this exact same time. type of slop, quote-unquote, news content that greases the wheels of misogyny is replicated in these new formats. Absolutely.

There's definitely a lot of comparison now between Pop Crave and the tabloids. And the tabloids have been doing this for decades at this point. But I've noticed with Pop Crave and these other pop culture, big news Twitter accounts, and then also the ones that have popped up that call themselves parody accounts. There's so many more of those. But they are really fashioning themselves after a daily mail. And it's because of the financial incentives. And the other thing I want to add is, yes, I agree pop base generally better.

All of these accounts now have a partnership with Olly Market, which is a whole other element here. And they all put out the exact same post in the Timothy Shalame. Bet on Timothy Shalamee's odds of winning the Oscar. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. It's also like these types of like pop craves and daily mails feed into each other. Because when Daily Mail runs headlines like this, Pop Crabe can aggregate those. And if Pop Crave or anyone makes a TikTok or a viral post being like Chapo Roan, yada, yada, yada, that becomes content for the Daily Mail. And we saw this with the Blake Lively story too, where it's like at a lot of

these digital media outlets. And again, I've worked for them. I know they do this. I've had to do this. A story can just be here are 10 viral tweets. about something. The onus to actually be like fact-checked real information then falls onto the social media posters and the news outlet can just say it's aggregated from these tweets. So they feed into each other. They don't even necessarily have to be viral. A lot of times it's just like it's a daily mail article predicated on one person on Twitter saying something mean about, like what was this one about she needs to be more like Taylor Swift? I can confidently say that that is just referencing what one person on Twitter said. Yes. And now it's an article, but now it's getting hundreds of comments from

daily mail readers. I want to get into some of the sort of spin-off controversies, because now that the Chapel Rhone is a child-hating demon news cycle is in full speed, well, what do we do with this forward motion? We have to talk more about Chapel Rhone. And so as one daily mail article suggested, there was a resurgence of interest in Chapel Roan's family wealth, or lack thereof. The dominant narrative then became, she killed a child, and she lied about growing up in a trailer, and she's really rich. She's a rich, spoiled brat,

and no one should trust anything she has to say. And she's lying about being a lesbian. Mm-hmm. Okay, so Kylie Chung, who's amazing, just had her on the stream with Ked as well, wrote a piece, and she uses the term weaponized irrelevancy, which I really like. Because that describes this grasping at straws, this inventing any reason to justify the smears and hate train against someone like Chapel. When the original thing starts to lose steam, when there's too many holes that are poked in it, when too many people go, honestly, I don't care about this, that's when these other irrelevant points come into play that are,

weaponized and that's how we end up now on these new paths of Chapel Roan is actually rich. She's a Nepo baby. She's been lying about it. Chapel Roan queer baits. She takes advantage of drag queens. It's language that's also wrapped up in the language of feminism and progress to give it that extra justification. So it's like, oh, no, no, we're not being misogynistic or homophobic here because we're

actually being woke. We're actually being progressive. We're critiquing the Roan. family's generation for wealth. Exactly. Eat the rich, baby. And this is like bar for bar what they did to Amber Heard too, including the fact that Amber Heard is bisexual and they dug up stuff about her previous relationships with women and tried to like make it out to be very, very

malicious as well. Yeah, the narrative that Chapel isn't actually poor, a lot of this rhetoric is undermining the credibility of the person being smeared. So it's not just that she grew up with a rich family because if that were what people were upset about, then they wouldn't care about the plight of the 11-year-old who's Jude Law's daughter because she's a Nepo baby. It's not just that. It has to be dishonesty. It has to be like, oh, Chapel lied. She is performative. And so that is where they have the drive to like say that her family was rich. And that story in particular is so incorrect because there were literally news clippings. Well, should we get into the Grammy thing? Yeah. It became a big deal to people that

Chapel Rhone attended Grammy Camp, a week-long summer program that only admits a very small number of kids across the country each year to hone their artistic skills. This is affiliated with the Grammys, with the Academy. The camp is seven days long and costs $3,000, but the narrative became Chapel Rhone went to a summer camp that costs $3,000 per week, which is technically true, but it was one week. And $3,000 is certainly a lot of money, but, but I think there's a few points worth mentioning here. One, there's a local news article, like you mentioned, Kat, from the time about how, quote, Willard High School student Kaylee Rose, aka Chapel Rhone, is one of 30 students admitted to New York Grammy Camp and that she was going to be performing at a local

coffee rock house cafe to raise money for the trip, charging $5 per person. Take me back. I would do anything to pay $5.00 Sissy Chapel Rone live in a very small room. Right. Point two. Let's say realistically, she didn't raise $3,000 from performing at a cafe. Very supportive families do sometimes make sacrifices to support their kids' artistic careers with money that they don't necessarily have offhand. It's a privilege, of course, to have access to that money in any form, obviously, but like many successful artist parents make sacrifices for them. And it's not necessarily because they're filthy rich and can just throw that kind of money around.

And then point number three is what does this have to do with anything? Exactly. Who cares then? What is the point here that you're trying to make? We're only talking about this because of the momentum that pancake gate gave to a hungry public. And we were only talking about that. Well, we don't even remember why we're talking about that anymore. The other part here is that this aspect of pancake gate that then turned into Chapel Rhone is secretly.

a billionaire, whose family owns the entire world, which funny enough is a parallel between one of the smears against Hassan. Hassan grew up well to do. His parents are not billionaires. His father's not a billionaire, but that is something that his detractors bring up all the time as a way to delegitimize his socialist ideology. Anyway, so the TikTok that I remember kicking this off was some random user that made this multi-part, how Chapel Rhone has actually lied about everything in her life, brought up the Grammy camp, all that. Did you guys know that Little Miss,

I don't want to be famous? Went to Grammy's camp in 2014. It's $3,000 a week. That went viral. And then it was quote tweeted by a Twitter account that we now know to be a man masquerading as a woman whose photo he had stolen from TikTok who made a tweet that then went viral.

as well responding to this TikTok. Like, it's all fake. This is a whole other part of my outline. So I will leave that in, but listener, if your interest was just peaked, keep listening. I find it particularly interesting that people love to use this line of attack against, like, women from more, like, working class backgrounds or, like, women who are not nepo babies, people who did not come from, like, immense wealth and fame. Again, it's so ironic that the Daily Mail is pushing this at the exact same time that they're

comparing her to Taylor Swift, who famously got her start because her parents were so filthy, rich that they could pay for her to have opportunities that no child would ever have access to. The Daily Mail is also openly laudatory of the fact that Taylor Swift is a billionaire, and within days that they say Chaparroon should be more like billionaire Taylor Swift, they say Chapel Rhone is a hypocrite for growing up with money. Yeah, so which one is it? It's very funny. And, you know, it doesn't matter how much money Chapel Rone's

family has. I mean, if they were billionaires, I would have something to say about that. But alas, my dear listener, they are not. What I have gathered about the generational wealth of Chapel Roan's family is that her grandfather was a part owner. He was, I believe, one of three owners in a private insurance company that was local to Springfield, Missouri. And it seems that he made enough money from that to buy a local golf course in Missouri, which is open to the public and which you can pay, I think it's like between $40 and $60 to do 18 holes. Look, I won't tell you this man was like lower class. You have to have a certain amount of money to own a golf course.

But he didn't own Mar-a-Lago, you guys. And, well, I was going to say, and even if he did, I mean, it could have kind of be an issue if he owned Mar-a-Lago. He didn't. He didn't. He didn't. And I will say, what I can further understand about this is that one of the things people really drew anger from was that Chapel Rhone once mentioned in an interview that she had lived in a trailer at one point, which is true. I don't think it was a permanent thing for her. I think that it seems like her parents now own some local veterinary practice, but at one point they were in school, so she briefly lived in a trailer. She said she's known what it's like to be poor. And that's also true before she got famous. She just worked a bunch of odd jobs. She famously worked at a donut shop during COVID because she got famous not that long ago. None of this really matters because ultimately these people are just saying,

oh, she secretly comes from some mega wealthy family just to undermine her credibility over anything. And when you consider what she stands for fundamentally, it then makes sense that huge media institutions are pumping out and inflating content about this because they have something to gain from undermining her credibility. Yes. And what happens is that we get dragged down into the muck. And we are attempting to point out the absurdity of all these various smears and lies and disingenuous framing of parts of her life. And it's all, again, weaponized irrelevancy. But the one thing to always consider here are what are the motivations? And I saw so many viral tweets that linked Chapel's family wealth, Chapel's conservative family wealth, Chapel's Republican politician uncle to why she did not

endorse Kamala Harris. So this is a part of why Chapel has been subjected to smears over the short amount of time she has been famous because she refused, even though she publicly said she voted, refused to endorse and campaign for Kamala Harris. Which we will also get to. You have such great foresight. I look into a crystal ball and I can just see all these things. The Daily Mail tweeted out their article, Chaparone is outed as a hypocrite for her secretly rich family.

And this librarian named Joe Randazzo replied, I just read this and still don't know what she did wrong. It wasn't even her security guard. Thank you, Joe. Shout out to Joe at Yankee Librarian. But of course, in the replies to him, he was completely dogpiled by people being like, well, she's clearly a lying sociopath, and you are too, Joe the librarian. These types of criticisms and this whole idea of hypocrisy only applies to people who are

politically left-leading. There would never be an article calling out a rich, wealthy Republican or, like, a nepo baby artist for being a hypocrite about their wealth. It is only relevant when someone has left-leading politics. It's the if leftist, if socialist, then why clothes? Yes. Then why things? And actually, I think it's a mark of somebody like Greta Toonberg, who is constantly

being smeared as well for having come from a wealthy family that actually, I think, is a marker of how clear-eyed she is and of how she is a person who, easily could have just enjoyed her family's privileged position and not put herself front and center of the anti-imperialist front and has consequently been subjected to heinous, heinous smears. It's because they're viewed as a class traitor, ultimately. And that's where the anger comes from, at least from the people who own the daily mail. And to that end, chapter four, section two, verse B? I don't know. I set up the chapter thing to make this easier and I'm already confusing myself because there's just too much. But one other spin-off smear that you mentioned that became

very popular briefly in the discourse was that Chapel Rhone has a Republican uncle who is a state representative in Missouri. One popular tweet said, oh bitch, they really got me with Chapel Rone gossip this time. What do you mean her uncle is an anti-trans-conservative state rep who sponsored bills to roll back and defund abortion plus aims to remove critical race theory from schools? And she just never talks about that, LMFAO. Well, I would posit that Chapel Rhone does talk about these things. Exactly. Like she does. Maybe not specifically in the context of her uncle, whose Instagram I found that has 29 followers, but Chapel Rhone has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for causes related to trans people, left-wing causes in general, has, you know, raised hell about Palestine.

It's just, you know, having an insane family member, like a politically insane right-wing family member is kind of part of the American experience for, like, most people. Yes. Especially if you're like a white person from the south. Is there more chapel could be doing to directly combat the work of what's his name, Darren Chapel? Maybe. But like, do you want her to kill him? It's ridiculous because you're right.

So many of us have right-wing family members. Matt, you're Jewish and an anti-Zionist. I'm sure there are people in your family who are still Zionists because that's, That's the reality for a lot of young Jewish anti-Zionists is this massive split in their family, usually between the generations. Yeah, I'm chipping away at them. Don't worry. At the end of the day, like, I find this line of argumentation so frustrating because it's like,

we don't even know she has a relationship with her uncle. We just, like, we don't know and we don't need to know. And it's a ridiculous standard. And ironically, I feel like this level of, like, impeding on her privacy, digging into her background digging into her family. This is what she initially was talking about with setting boundaries with the public. So a lot of this just feels like punishment for her attempt to like assert those boundaries in the first place. I also find it interesting because like Lady Gaga's dad is a Trump supporter who went on Fox News to campaign for Donald Trump in 2024 and was introduced obviously

as Lady Gaga's dad. I've never seen anyone be like, Lady Gaga, go kill your shitty father. And other. Right. I think all of this is happening to Chapel Rhone for very specific reasons. I think one difference between Chapel and other progressive pop stars like Lady Gaga is that Chapel specifically has advocated for Palestine. And that is a big part of the story here. It's Palestine, as well as her refusing to endorse Kamala Harris. I would like to take a quick break from the show to give a shout out to Rocket Money for sponsoring today's episode. Budgeting has long been a habit of mine ever since my dad nailed it into my head as a child, that budgeting is something that you have to do constantly always.

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That is RocketMoney.com slash fruity to start saving today. Thanks so much to Rocket Money. And now, let's get back to the show. You've segued me perfectly into Chapter 4. Who Trolled Chapel? As I tracked these many unfolding non-controversies, some strange things stood out to me. The first was how when I started digging for common threats between the most strident anti-chapel posters, it started to feel like pancake gate and its many spin-offs were actually proxy wars for something else, Israel. One of the Daily Mail articles, one of the most vicious, should I add, that was published amidst all of this, was titled, Nasty Thongs, Puffy Lips, and Trans-N-O-No, not that one. Not that one. That's another one.

Okay, wait, the bitch. Say no. We're going to get to that one. Okay. All right, let's take it again. The bitch beneath the makeup, Chapel Rones' diss of that crying, 11-year-old fan

actually revealed her dark truth, says Jacqueline Powers. Daily Mail published this article. They tweeted the article out. They then deleted the tweet. And as far as I can tell, deleted the whole article from their website. Wow.

Which is a rare W for those. of us in the war against the Daily Mail. This was written by a woman named Jacqueline Powers, whose personal Instagram reveals her to be a staunch Zionist, following accounts, including but not limited to, the state of Israel, the Israel Defense Forces, Israel Tourism, Follow Team Israel, Israel, Israel War Room, and IsraelFriends.us.

Her recent work at the Daily Mail also includes, take it away, Caroline. Nasty thongs, puffy lips, and trans stunts. How Fashion Week became a traveling circus where good taste goes to die? Jacqueline Powers. It gives you a pretty good sense of this woman's worldview. And it's to me pretty fascinating that this even got deleted because the Daily Mail doesn't have a whole lot of shame. I was looking to see if the article got deleted from the Daily Mail, which I can't find it,

which is really interesting because this does not usually happen. But when I was looking at Jacqueline Powers' past work, I also found something that I find really interesting. Remember how the mayor of Rio de Janeiro was like, Shakira would never do something like this? So two years ago, Jacqueline Powers, there's an article on her muckrack from page six titled Secrets of Shakira's Miami Life, Basketball Mom parties with Giselle and drives a neon Lamborghini. And it says, welcome to Shakira's new life in Florida, where she has put disaster

years of infidelity tax evasion and a musical drought behind her to launch a stunning comeback as the queen of Latin music. So isn't it funny, too, how, like, all of these women are up for being hated? Yes. It just depends on, like, your positionality in the current moment. Exactly. Yes. We can like Shakira if it's in the context of Chapel Rhone, but if it's in the context of Shakira and Shakira's private life, we hate Shakira. All of these women are interchangeable. I mean, I have seen so many tweet saying, Brittany never was this obnoxious. Oh, do we all have amnesia with the way that we treated Brittany? Yes, we do. But you're right, Matt. It's about the positionality. It's about when people can weaponize certain women against others, even when in the past those women themselves

have been victim to vicious misogynistic smears. Also, the same year she publishes this, Jacqueline Powers writes for New York Post, why women are winning the culture right now? And it's just like, no thanks to you, Jacqueline. You just spat out your drink. I just spat out my coffee on the microphone. The Jacqueline Powers spit take, that thing people are always talking about. And the header for the why women are winning the culture right now is, of course, a picture of Taylor Swift. Jacqueline Powers wrote, as a feminist, I'm loving this moment.

But as a boy, but as a boy mom, I want my son to achieve greatness too. Oh, Jacqueline. Calls herself a boy, mom, say less. I know who this woman is. Her calling herself a feminist is what really gets me. Her entire career is bashing women. Yep. One viral tweet posted during the anti-chapel cycle said she was right about her,

which included a video of TikTok influencer Bryce Gruber, talking vaguely about how an interviews no one has published for some reason. Chapel Rhone, quote, belittle certain races and religion. I'm going to keep this one really quick, but basically, if your name rhymes with Snapple, I want to remind you that media record all of our interviews. We have little recorders. They're on our phones. We keep the interviews. So when I tell you that a lot of my colleagues pass around their interviews with you, Snapple, that should come as a little bit of a warning because you fat shame, you are unkind. You belittle certain races, certain race. certain religions. And on top of that, basically anyone who has kids instantly becomes your enemy. I'm not sure why. That's craziness. But what I will tell you is that I don't want to be in a room with any snapples at all, ever.

Caroline, who is Bryce Gruber? Oh, Bryce Gruber. Bryce is a TikTok influencer, girl boss business owner. Zionist who moved her family from New York to Israel in 2024. Wow. In 2024. In 2024. And this woman has said that Israel is the most important decolonization project. Okay. Yeah.

So Bryce Gruber is a hardcore Zionist who moved her family from New York to Israel. She clearly has a big political difference. here with Chapel Rhone on the issue of Israel and Palestine. So I think it's really important to examine someone's motivations like this TikTok influencer as to why they would put out something like this and why now people are spreading it around. In 2024, Bryce Gruber was interviewed by the New York Post before she moved to Israel when she still lived in New York. From that article, A Jewish mother was left stunned after anti-Israel protesters

shut down the road near her children's upstate New York elementary school and shouted at the kids that their parents were complicit in genocide and baby killers. We have some more shouting at children. Which, by the way, I highly doubt was happening. Yeah.

Bryce Gruber of Woodstock said she had trouble coming up with answers for her kids about the things they heard when dozens of protesters descended on their small town on Tuesday to target the Amatec Rotron Defense Manufacturing Company, which is based down the road from the Woodstock Elementary School. So without getting into every little thing,

the New York Post is writing this as if these like rabid pro-Palestine protesters went and yelled at children at their elementary school. No, they were blocking the entrance to a defense contractor that is headquartered down the street from this elementary school. And then she was so upset about it that she moved to Israel. Also, like, the TikTok she made about Snapple, who's obviously supposed to be Chapel, I find this really, really interesting for a couple of reasons. One, this is like a common rhetorical strategy that's a part of celebrity smear campaigns,

which is basically being like, I have evidence of you doing horrible, horrible things, but you're just going to have to take my word for it. Because she's basically saying there are these recordings that journalists have of chapel being racist, fatphobic, potentially anti-Semitic, I think she's implying, and all of this other stuff. But we don't have the recordings and they're not going to reach us. So it's like, this is a very common technique is like, I have this like really like good evidence, but I'm not going to let you see it. The other thing that just strikes me as weird about this is like, I'm a journalist. I know a lot of journalists. I find it hard to believe that journalists are sending recordings

of their interviews with Chapel Row. And first of all, she doesn't even do that many interviews. Second of all, like, journalists don't usually, like, send their recordings to other people to gossip. People definitely, journalists definitely talk about their interviews with other journalists, but, like, this whole story feels so fishy to me. But because a lot of people in the public don't really have that level of media literacy or, like, insider know-how about how these things work, it's also really, really convincing, as we can see with, like, the traction that this TikTok got. And we don't even, she could be making it all up. We have no, clue. And to make it a little personal, when I attempted to defend chapel on Twitter from what I

thought was getting blown way out of proportion, people of course piled on me. And one such person is named Greg, who wrote that he struggles to find me attractive, which got 1600 likes. Noted, thank you. Thanks, Greg. Thanks, Greg. But when I went to Greg's profile, it became clear to me that he has someone who in the year 2026 is still very angry with pro-Palestine people for what he views as getting in the way of Kamala Harris winning the election. That is a whole other episode, but if you are a liberal, capital L liberal, who's still angry at the left for not enthusiastically getting behind Kamala Harris's pro-genocide campaign two years ago, Chapel Rhone is definitely

on your hit list because she famously voted for but did not endorse. Kamala Harris, because of this issue, some of Greg's tweets include, it is safe to say that the Free Palestine Movement was an op. It is funny how the Free Palestine Movement simply faded after Trump was elected. That's news to me. Right. And earlier this month, fuck Palestine. So now I'm just stuck wondering, are any of us really arguing about Chapel Rhone's culpability

in leaving Jude Law's daughter in Brazil? In tears? Or are we arguing about something else? And before anyone goes, oh, come on, Matt, it's just one guy named Greg. Well, sure, that's just one guy named Greg. It is one guy, yeah. Right. Sure, literally, that is a guy named Greg.

He was a Twitter influencer. You know, he has like 50,000 Twitter followers. This is one part of the month. much bigger picture here. This aspect of smearing public figures, smearing celebrity women like Chapel Rhone because of her anti-genocide stance is something that we've seen paralleled in the smears against people who are not necessarily global pop stars like Chapel, but are public figures because they are activists, organizers involved in the pro-Palestine movement. Nardin Kiswani is one of those who just had an assassination plot stopped before it could end in

her being blown up. Yeah, in her home being blown up. She is a Palestinian woman who has been subjected to years of these smears. When I started combing through some of the tweets about, about me that were being made in the wake of my defending Chapel Rhone in a tweet, this was a theme throughout all of them. Lots of them were very pro-Israel. Some of them weren't even liberal.

They were just fully right-wing Republicans. They were anti-woke pages. There was an absolute political current throughout all of it. It hammers home that a lot of what is happening with Chapel Rhone over and over again is you now have this coalition of people who do not like her. for reasons that are totally separate from any of these controversies that they are engineering. And so this is like a pattern of behavior where you now have these ideologically motivated people who want to find reasons to go after Chapel Rhone and they are manufacturing controversy after

controversy after controversy. And one of the consequences of that is that now people who are not familiar with this background or this nuance instead are like, well, Chapel Roan has created this reputation for herself where she is repeatedly problematic, but she didn't. She did not do those things. What actually happened is people who hate her for reasons they're not even necessarily sharing are making up things to get mad about over her over and over and over again until random members of the public associate chapel with this smear campaign instead of who she actually is. This is about control. This is about controlling women. This is about maintaining rigid cultural gender standards. This is about controlling the public's

opinion on issues like trans rights and Palestine. And this is something that is not new. Chappell is neither the first nor the last. And I think this element here of power being at play in these smear campaigns of women, of celebrity women, is one that goes back decades and decades and decades and decades. In 1950, I always think about this story, the actress Ingrid Bergman had had an affair with the director Roberto Rosalini, who was an Italian director,

and from that affair, she became pregnant and gave birth to their child, and then they both divorced their spouses. And it was such a scandal, but of course nobody had any smoke for Rosalini. It was all for Ingrid Bergman. And Senator Edwin Johnson denounced Ingrid Bergman on the Senate floor and said that she was a powerful influence for evil, that she was an apostle of degradation. And she ended up having to flee to Europe and hide out for a couple years.

And Rosalini's career did not suffer at all. And then you fast forward to Janet Jackson and Nipplegate, this thing that a man, Justin Timberlake, did to her, that resulted in her being industry blacklisted, that she had her invitation to the Grammys revoked, that it killed her very platinum career, but not only did nothing to Justin's, he basically entered the heights of his solo career post and sync.

And so there's all these examples, And I think it comes down to this control and policing of women's behavior, of women's bodies, ensuring that there is this adherence still to traditionalist conservative values and cultural standards. And now we have the Palestine and the trans rights advocacy that is at play with current smear campaigns that we're seeing. I'm once again not asserting that Casey Wasserman was behind any of this, but you don't think he wasn't so thrilled to see this news cycle and this bashing of Chapel Rhone go on and on and on and on right after she had a great hand in toppling his empire. You don't think he's happy about that? Right. At the very least, it benefits these powerful people and these powerful men who have actually committed wrongdoing with impunity.

The fact that we as a culture are so obsessed with these like take down campaigns against women and we devote so much time and energy. And then we have to devote time and energy to debunking it and challenging it. And it's all such an obvious distraction from many of the very same issues that Chapel Roan cares about and is actually doing something about. Chapter 4, Section 8, part 2, verse 16, letter B. And finally, it became clear to me, throughout all of this, that a significant portion of the content being pumped into everyone's feeds about this whole thing just wasn't real. A popular post that came onto my timeline, which currently has 83,000 likes, reads, LMAO, I went to high school with her. Anyone who went to Willard from 2012 to 2015 can tell you how insufferable, homophobic, and racist she and her.

boyfriend were. The thread continues. Oh, the stories I have. I wish I could access my old phone right now. But yeah, BF was on the baseball team and said hell of racist shit to the teams competing against him. Chapel used to call Mrs. Shepard, a black female security guard, Rasputea, and other stuff in our school GC. Oof, I just logged back on. But yeah, constant bullying and harassment from them. Kaley was in the theater club and got kicked out for spreading memes and images of a disabled student through Snapchat during our sophomore year. She left Willard in 11th grade, I believe. Those three tweets got 83,000, 14,000, and 12,000 likes respectively.

The top replies to that thread were, I knew her lesbian gimmick was fake as fuck. 4,300 likes. Boyfriend, question mark, question mark. Oh, I knew she was a fake lesbian. 1,300 likes. This thread was also reposted to R-slash-L-A. Influencer Snark, a popular gossip forum on Reddit with 1.3 million members. So who posted it?

Well, it came from a Twitter user with almost zero followers. They now have about 100, but I think most of those are because of this tweet. With the handle at Laced Braz, which is part of a title of a Tate McCray song. The user had changed their username 13 times, according to publicly available. information, and they've posted a total of four tweets, and we just read three of them. And their profile picture was of a woman from TikTok named Danny Zaza, who, when notified of the tweets by her followers on TikTok, made it clear that she doesn't have a Twitter account. It's so easy.

Like, look how easy it is to get people to believe completely made up allegations with no evidence coming from, like, very obviously made up sources. It's so easy for people to run with those types of false allegations against a woman when at the exact same time, people refuse to believe credible allegations with evidence against men. Like the fact that anyone would take this seriously and run with it is just such an indictment of our culture and like this double standard. And also like with the fake lesbian thing, it is so offensive to me as a lesbian who dated boys in high school.

This idea that your past relationship history indicates like what your sexuality actually is. Any queer person knows that's not true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Shout out to my eighth grade girlfriend, Emily. I am forever straight because of you, I guess. And it's like, particularly for queer women, this is a very harmful sort of stigma because

it reinforces the idea of compulsory heterosexuality, which is basically like, you know, you think you're straight because that's like the default, especially. for like young women, that means you can never be like queer. And women, like young queer women are going to read this stuff and they're going to internalize it and it will have harmful consequences on them. So like there is a very real social cost even to other people of these smear campaigns. I think too when you examine these tweets, you can see upon just a quick read why someone would blindly believe it.

There's enough personal details, the utilizing of chapels first. name, Kaylee, a picture of her and her boyfriend, mentioning the school, mentioning names. Sorry, I just want to say, it's a picture of her and some guy whose face is blocked out. We don't know what their relationship is. We don't know who he is. Exactly. But we know that she had a boyfriend because she's talked about it. She has put into the lyrics of her songs talking about how she dated boys and then realize that she loves girls.

So anyway, but I mean by that is like, somebody sees. that and goes, oh, this is clearly someone who's telling the truth just by virtue of having these specific details. Yes. Now, it doesn't matter if they're true or not. And when you really look at this with common sense, you go, okay, hold on a second. When you examine the page that it's coming from, there's just too many things that seem fishy, that seem like red flags. But because this fulfills people's preconceived notions, their biases, and also it helps them to moralize their justification for hating chapel, they fucking run with it. And they run with it to the tune of 83,000 likes. Which by the way, it's not even clear that all of those likes are real people.

Right. It's not clear that this thread just popped up on thousands of people's timelines organically. Like we've established throughout this episode, there is a real motivation for powerful people to pump content like this into lots of people's feeds, regardless of whether or not it's true. And there's now a monetary incentive for people to do stuff like this because of how Twitter works now. Explain that, because that is huge. I mean, Elon Musk has just turned Twitter into something that is so different in the form of X, that incentive. this type of behavior. Because as most people are probably familiar with, Blue Check accounts used to symbolize that somebody conveyed authority. But basically, you can now pay to make money on Twitter

from getting engagement. People who opt into the like subscriber version of X can also join like the ad sharing program, the revenue sharing program that X now has. And you specifically derive value from getting engagement on your posts, which directly incentivizes rage bait. It directly incentivizes mis and disinformation that fits these preconceived notions that gets people angry. And it even incentivizes like bots and spam accounts. This is the reason why so many of the top replies on X now are these Blue Check AI accounts that are posting things clearly generated by chat GPT.

It's because there's a monetary incentive behind it. And over the past couple of years, we've seen this make stand culture, more toxic and deranged and reactionary than it used to be, which is saying a lot. But when you see stuff like this, I think the fact that this is seemingly a Tate McRae fan makes it even more like compelling. Because you see this all the time. And a lot of normies who are on X don't even pick up on this because I see this all the time. For example, you'll have an account pretending to be like a Taylor Swift Stan and they'll tweet

that famous video of Taylor Swift dancing where she looks kind of shy. like and bad. And they'll be like, look at mother, like she is the best answer there is. Q, like 7,000 angry quote tweets. But the person who tweeted it isn't actually a Swifty at all. They're a fan of like Tate McRae or Sabrina Carpenter or somebody else. And they're doing it as a form of like Stan warfare against someone who they view as a competitor. This is like a very like twisted anti-social byproduct of like Stan culture and pop idols where now people pit these women against each other and they try to tear the other one down through smear campaigns. So there's also an element of that happening here.

And it's just like, I just feel like this is so much of what ex-culture has unfortunately become when you put someone in charge. Like Elon Musk, he represents all of the bad things I feel like we talked about. He's the world's richest man. He's very anti-Me2. He has allegations against him. And so he benefits from this like anti-Me2 reactionary culture. but he also directly profits from all of this.

Every single anti-chapel Roan tweet is like putting more money in his pocket through like inflating the value of X.com. X has become this like echo chamber that is so good at streamlining and amplifying these smear campaigns. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And finally, after all of this starts to die down at last, we get a post on Instagram from Pascal Duvier. You know Pascal Duvier?

We've been talking about him the whole time. What do you mean you don't know Pascal Duvier? Well, there's a reason you don't know his name because he hasn't been centered in any of this. Pascal Duvier is the security guard. And he's coming to arrest me right now. And he's coming to put you in tears. Yes, you're going to be left in tears.

He posts the following. I do not normally address online rumors, but the accusations currently circulating are false and constitute defamation. Oh, he used the D word. I take full responsibility for the interaction on March 21st. I was at the hotel on behalf of another individual,

and I was not part of the personal security team of Chapel Rhone. The actions I took were not on behalf of Chapel Rhone, her personal security team, her management, or any other individuals. I made a judgment call based on information we obtained from the hotel events I had witnessed in the days prior and the heightened overall security risk of our location. My sole interaction with the mother was calm and with good intentions and the outcome of the encounter is regretful.

So, you know, you'd think, okay, well, we have all the information. We need to put this to bed. But not really, though, because the people who were the most invested in this from the beginning, Many of those people, I would imagine, felt like, well, if I'm proven wrong now, then I kind of have a lot of sunk costs to account for. And so what did they say? The security guard was paid off by Chapel Rhone, obviously. And Chapel Rhone is even more of a psychopath than we even previously realized. When I saw that response, I tweeted out just off the top of my head, what I assumed people would say in response to it.

I said, oh, quote, I'm sure she paid him off. Well, she needs to answer for lying about being gay and poor. I still believe she abused a child and nothing will change my mind. Yeah, well, she's still annoying as fuck. And every single one of those hypothetical responses is exactly what I saw in response to the security guard coming forward. This is like kind of also the danger of conspiratorial thinking that is specifically geared toward these misogynistic smear campaigns because there is nothing that any woman being

targeted in a campaign like this can do. There is no amount of evidence you can provide. There is no threshold you can meet to stop them. They will always move the goalposts. I think about how when Amber Heard actually like won in the UK when Johnny Depp sued the son for defamation for calling him a wife beater and he lost, people made flowcharts trying to show that Amber Heard had like a connection to the judge to imply that the judge was like uniquely biased toward her. And they're doing that again with the judge in the Blake lively case saying that Judge Lehman's brother was on a commercial that Ryan Reynolds for like a, like it was like they'll draw these massive flowcharts creating conspiracies that these women are always paying someone off. No one could ever defend

them authentically. And like it's just it becomes an impossible thing where it's like once you've gone down a conspiracy rabbit hole, you will never be able to be swayed from your preconceived hatred of this specific woman. And in fact, I think it only further incentivizes people to keep going. I think the more pushback, the more they're like, aha, see, ironically will say you're being paid off. Yes. Yeah, because anything Chapel does that people can identify as like mean or aggressive or any of the other things that they've accused you of, they'll be like, oh, look, this is evidence for my case. and anything she does that goes in the face of that, whether it's her being nice,

her being nice to a child on video, is evidence that she's clearly a master manipulator. And she's so good at performing for the cameras, and, you know, she's even crazier than we thought. And finally, finally, finally, the bot campaign reveal. BuzzFeed publishes a report just a few days ago where they found that, quote, 4.2% of users contributing to the Chapel Rhone conversation were non-typical,

i.e., they were very likely to be bots. As well as that being a high percentage of bots in and of itself, the 4.2% of users who were likely bots accounted for more than 23% of all of the posts. Who trolled Chapel Rhone? Wow, I'm so shocked. You're telling me that once again, bots are a part of a smear campaign against a famous woman. Chapter 5.

The last chapter. So as stupid and annoying as this whole thing was, I really wanted to make this episode today because I think that pancake gate is emblematic of just how the internet works now. There are financial incentives to make bad content. There are bot farms weaponized by real people with power to shape online public opinion with faith,

interest until the real interest kicks in. As social media has become more inshittified, that is to say, worse for the point of tech companies making more money, social media has gone from something that felt democratic and equal at one point into just another tool for the powerful to create narratives that protect themselves, just like in traditional media. And it's hard not to see the structural similarities between what happened here, what happened to Amber Hurd and Meg Nostalian, for standing up to rich and famous men, what happened to Megan Markle in the UK for challenging the monarchy? And also, for example, what's happening to Hassan Piker right now for specifically threatening the order of a liberal Zionist Democratic Party in the U.S.

I think Pancake Gate might seem silly in its origin, and it is certainly absurd and ridiculous. but I think at the root here is something that is not silly and ridiculous because of how much of an influence it has on our culture, on our political system. And people are conditioned to view to treat celebrity women in this really horrific way. And that also then trickles down into how we are conditioned to treat all women. And I think it is this encouraging to view celebrity women and view cases that involve abuse as pure entertainment slop spectacle. And so it's not just the not viewing these things as serious. It's the motivation to treat it as blood sport.

And bad actors and people with power who constantly need to reinforce that systemic power, they have been paying attention to the celebrity discourse over the past few years. And the lessons that they have learned that they are now applying, I would say, faster, bigger with more regularity, is that you can convince people on the internet to not just believe whatever you want, but also to run with it and do your bidding for you for free. Because that is the lesson that we know for a fact that PR operations that cost you six figures a month, those people have certainly figured this out. And they are certainly doing the bidding of these very, very powerful individuals. And really, people should be treating things that they come

across with on the internet with utmost skepticism. You should be treating things that you come across online with as less reliable and less trustworthy than what a lot of times I would say would be referred to as like mainstream media. Because even though mainstream media is inherently problematic for a lot of reasons. There are also like standards and elements of transparency that posts online do not have. When you read somebody's byline on the daily mail, as much as I don't like the daily mail, you can be certain that that is really that person. They are not making up fake people and having their bylines on the daily mail. On Twitter or X or whatever, it's not the same. But the unfortunate reality is that most people view what happens on social media as more

authentic than what you see in like the traditional mainstream media. And like there's a reason for that anti-establishment bias. But as a result of that, I think it's easier to propagandize people through things like these anonymous social media posts because people are like, oh, I trust that. I trust that Twitter thread more than I trust like this report about bot activity from BuzzFeed. And that is really, really problematic because bad actors at all levels can easily weaponize that to their advantage. Yeah, and look, I'm an independent culture and political commentator. Like, I am, of course, motivated to tell you to invest in new independent media, invest in creators that you see online, whose work you like. And I will continue to do that, but do so with skepticism.

My takeaway from all of this is that, unfortunately, there's very little that we can do to stop the train on its tracks insofar as powerful people weaponizing new media for control of the narrative, the same way that they've always used media to control the narrative. And also to stop the inshittification of social media with people being incentivized to make shitty slop content that just outrages people because they've signed up for their blue check and hopefully they can make that $8 a month back or whatever. There's very little we can do to stop that. Like we can't really stop how Elon Musk structures his business at X.com.

But what we can do, and this is the real uncomfortable uphill battle, is just be more thoughtful consumers of what we see online. It's the same thing I've been saying on this podcast since day one. But it is really, I feel like all we can do. One example that I want to use, too, as to how I've seen that in play is the current coordinated effort by Democratic Party officials and liberal institutions to smear Hassan Piker as an anti-Semite as a danger to democracy, a danger to the Democratic Party. A lot of people see through that because a lot of a lot more people now understand the bullshit false conflation between Zionism and Judaism. When people, public figures like Hassan are smeared as anti-Semites, they see those smears. They understand that it is because he is deeply, deeply publicly critical of Israel. And so in seeing so many people push back against

this, I go, wait, so this is possible. We can utilize critical thinking. We can go hold on pause before I blindly believe this and either pass it on or participate in whatever way. Why don't we do that when it comes to these misogynistic slop campaigns? Yeah. And I think like also in figuring out who you can trust and like who can I trust as like a creator as a journalist. It's like you can build that trust with someone over time versus a lot of what people are taking in on social media are these very ephemeral viral posts. And you will remember the sentiment in like a tweet that had like 100,000 views or like a TikTok that comes across your feed. You may remember that sentiment and not even remember who said it. So it's like in figuring out like trusted sources of

news and information and analysis, it's like you should be watching people over time so that you can figure out how to assess them. That's a big part of media literacy is like taking in information repeatedly from a source before you make your decision. One of the biggest problems with social media and how it feeds information to people is that it takes away the opportunity to build those trusted relationships. And ultimately, like the platforms have the power. I feel like one massive thing people need to do, and I think all of us can do a better job at this, is just, just applying that scrutiny more than we are just like taking things in and letting it influence us without even knowing what it is. Mm-hmm.

Kat and Caroline. What is it? It's literally Georgineo's biker gang outside my apartment. Oh my God. Run! Cat and Caroline, where can people find and support more of both of your incredible insights? Because if they don't, they will leave me. In tears.

I am mostly on Twitch. I stream just about every night. I do pop culture analysis from an obvious leftist perspective and Instagram and TikTok and all the places. I'm at SpitfireNews.com. That is my newsletter where I talk about all of this stuff. And you can also find me on Blue Sky where no one talks about Chapel Rhone, which is both a blessing and curse. If you would like to get more of this show, I always forget to promote it nowadays.

You can support the show over on Patreon. I am about to or have just released a new Patreon episode with Matt Lieb about Israel's Queen of Propaganda, Noah Tishby. We do a deep dive into her. It is as fascinating as it is miserable. God, I'm not good at advertising my own content. I love you so much. Thank you for tuning into this episode.

If you've made it this far, it means a whole lot to me. And until next time, stay fruity. I cannot talk about chapel run. Like, I can't. They're going to come after me. I do feel like there's so many more things, too,

that I'm like, did we get just the examples of how many celebrity men throughout the years have beaten the shit out of paparazzi and nobody cares.