Endless Thread - Jamie Loftus' 'main characters'

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

Comedian, best-selling author and podcaster Jamie Loftus joins Amory and Ben to talk about her latest endeavor: a podcast called Sixteenth Minute (Of Fame) from iHeartMedia’s Cool Zone Media. Jamie talks to people "who became briefly notorious on the internet about how it affected their mental health, amongst other things," she says. Loftus explores the timing and context in which these "main characters" of the Internet, as she calls them, went viral and asks what their virality says about us, the people who helped — made? — them go viral in the first place.

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There was no reason not to. This is Brockton, Massachusetts native, comedian, podcaster, and hot dog enthusiast, Jamie Loftus. I think if there's any community I best identify with, it's not with other comedians, it's not with other podcasters. It's with people who are interested in hot dogs. I feel very comfortable in that environment. Jamie's comfiest moves in that comfortable environment? I act like a five-year-old and I do ketchup, mustard, and relish. And I don't know.

I got like booed at my own book, my own book release in Chicago because of my stance on ketchup. The release of her 2023 book on, yep, hot dogs. It's called Raw Dog, the Naked Truth About Hot Dogs. I think of it as like one of the greatest successes of like American marketing that ever existed. because it's like generally meat slush in a plastic tube, but it's like, you know, entrenched and all this meaning of like it's associated with American holidays and like old values. And there's all of these myths attached to it of like who invented it that are really connected into like almost these.

I think in the book I compare it to like Bill Gates and Elon Musk of like, you know, I'm like, I'm just some guy. and I achieved the American dream through this product, and you get that story with the hot dog as well. But despite it being peak hot dog season when we recently spoke to Jamie Loftus, we actually weren't there to hear the story of the hot dog. You can read about that in her book.

We wanted instead to talk about a new podcast, 16th Minute of Fame. Which, if you've been listening to Endless Thread for a while, feels a little like a companion to the meme series we did back in 2021. I talked to people who became briefly notorious on the internet about how it affected their mental health amongst other things. What are the like boxes that you need to check for someone to sort of like fit the bill for this beyond what you've just said? Like what is what define internet fame for us? How famous do they have or infamous do they have to be?

I keep it pretty loose. I mean, like, I think the trickiest thing with choosing topics is that, like, now there is a clear, like, generational divides on either side of me on the internet. So there's people who are, you know, like, wildly notorious to 22-year-olds that I'm like, huh? And then there's people who are, like, sort of, like, that are 10 years before me that I was like, oh, yeah, I've sort of heard of that, but I didn't realize what a big deal it was. So, can you give us the outer reaches? Like, what are the outer reaches of those? What's somebody you've heard about that like 22-year-olds love that you're like, have you guys ever seen Frog Army?

They live in my garden pond in this buggy area where all the plants and weeds grow and where all the bugs like to hang out. It becomes clear after a while that you're like, oh, oh, he doesn't have a lot of space for these frogs and the frogs are getting out. He's got to clearly, he has to build some barracks for his frog army. He needs to answer my DMs is what he needs to do. Jamie reaches out to all the subjects of her episodes of 16th Minute of Fame, but she doesn't always get to talk to them. Like Daisy Miller, the woman whose tweet about having coffee with her husband in their garden every morning and talking for hours,

went massively viral back in 2022. A misogynistic privilege-themed pile-on commenced. But the quote-unquote coffee wife, as she came to be known, stayed out of it. She didn't seem upset or bothered. She just sort of was like, this is weird. like, and then was just on the internet way less, which is, I think, the healthiest version. I was going to say, that seems like almost the most appropriate reaction. Yeah.

In some ways, is like, you know what, this is, I don't need this. Yeah. And it seems like she, you know, is just like moved on with her life and is like, okay, that was a weird day. And you have some people like that. And then you have other people who, uh, you know, try to seize the moment and figure out, like, well, how can I make this work for me? and just talking to people and trying to get an idea of why you go one way or the other is interesting. Jamie refers to the subject of each episode as its quote-unquote main character, which is a term I feel like we often shy away from when we're talking about real people.

But for Jamie, that's kind of the point. I don't think of being the main character as something that most opt into, but I feel like you become a main character when it's like way more attention than you're built for and you're not traded like a person anymore. It's just like, I have to get my joke. I mean, I have a... Bean Dad?

Is Bean Dad a... I mean, is that... Yes. I feel like Bean Dad. And then there was shrimp... Shrimp guy? Those are my top two requests. And I just, like, am dreading those episodes so much because...

But, I mean, those are great examples. An episode that I'm finishing up right now is the 30 to 50 feral hogs guy. Oh, yeah. And he, I mean, he is an interesting guy. And it was just like talking to him, first of all, about like, what did you mean by that? Jamie is referring here to a guy who tweeted this question back in 2019, quote, How do I kill the 30 to 50 feral hogs that run in my yard within three to five minutes while my small kids play?

I don't know. I think in a lot of cases, you know, It's just like, I just like talking to people. And like it always seems like there's something in that experience that like you just wouldn't expect hearing about. But also just like with people like Farrell Hogs guy where it's so silly and seems so random. But it also is like is a great case study for how like on Twitter specifically there's, you know, it's like 87% people who live in cities and 13% people who live in rural areas. And so rural people and like rural stories like just no one knows what people who live in rural areas are talking about on Twitter. And it's like really easy to just be like, Farrell Hogs shut up.

Like, you know. And when it's like, you know, if he brought that to his own community, they would be like, oh yeah, Farrow Hogs is a legitimate concern. But, you know, it was being treated like, why would you make that up? Like people treated it like he made it up. Another person not making stuff up? Chicken man. Yeah, I love it when you call me chicken man, Emily. All right, we're talking about Alex Timminsky, Ben.

This was the guy who ate 40 rotisserie chickens in 40 days back in 2022, and he documented this quest on social media. Yeah, never mind. That was definitely not me. Why did he do it? Jamie asked. I think I'm just a weird guy navigating a weird world, weird world. I loved this episode. And as I told Jamie, I listened back to this particular moment just to hear Alex, the chicken man, make this beautifully simple, highly relatable statement one more time. I think I'm just a weird guy navigating a weird world.

Because that feels like so much of not where we go wrong on the internet, but just how things get a little strange or start to really take off is like, we are weird people and we have this weird tool. that allows us to display that and have that travel at light speed. That was like one of the early kind of surprises of putting this show together, where I feel like just when I started to expect a certain kind of interview, you get a total curveball of like, here is someone who is just like a sweet, weird person who had a sweet, weird idea, and there is genuinely no ulterior motive, which feels like a rare thing.

I mean, like, in its purest form, you know, it's like you just wanted to bring people together and watch him eat something disgusting. And that's something that I mean, I love. I love that, you know. And just I feel like you're in a better position if you're willing to admit that you're a weird person because most people are,

and I was trying to, like, get at this recently, but like that it seems like so many internet conversations are like trying to prove that you are the most regular person who's ever lived. Yes. People saying like, I'm just a normal guy, you know? And it's like, no, you're a weird guy and just own it. Yeah, you're drawing attention to yourself by saying I'm the most normal guy in the world. Or you're like, if you're just like interacting with the main character, you're like, well, I'm the normal guy.

And so that's why I am making fun of you. This gets at one of Jamie's reasons for making 16th minute of fame. To interrogate what each of these main characters' virality says about us, the people who helped made them go viral, without really understanding the impact on their lives. Antoine Dodson heard his sister scream and ran to help. Well, obviously, we have a rapist in Lincoln Park. He's climbing in your windows.

He's snatching your people up, trying to rape them so y'all need to hide your kids, hides your wife, and had your husband, because they're raping anybody out here. I talked to Antoine Dodson or Kevin Dodson for the first episode and just talking with him about, you know, like becoming a main character, before there was even really language from that

in the early, like, 2010s versus now, where it's like, who knows how long that video would hold people's attention on today's internet? Like, it may not have even, because you're just like so inundated with stuff. I feel like it's markedly harder to, you know, become a main character now, which is, it's tricky. I don't, I haven't figured out how to deal with that yet. It's interesting, though, because like there's like a time machine conundrum aspect of that too, right?

Because like Antoine Dodson probably helped create the world that we live in. For sure, yeah. when it comes to internet celebrity. So removing him from it seems like almost like an impossible thing to imagine. Yeah. And then I think like as is like so common, like was is so remembered but also was discarded in terms of like his influence being like meaningfully credited or seeing that turn into any sort of like money or compensation. Like he was like one of the things I thought. That was really fascinating that I didn't really know about him was, like, how instrumental he was and being like, no, you can't just take this.

Like, you know, like it basically came out because it was a whatever, a local news clip. He went viral basically against his will, which happens a lot. But he's like, okay, if I want to seize on this opportunity, you do have to pay me. You can't just like, you know, turn me into a meme and then throw me away. And, like, he's been, you know, adamant about that for 15 years now, and I feel like it does make a difference. He's clamming in your windows. He's gnatching your people are trying to rape him so y'all need to. Had your kids.

Had your wife. Had your kids. Had your wife. Had your kids. Had your wife. Because they raping their body out here. The timing of these stories is almost always really, really relevant. So I try to, like, as I'm picking out subjects, like, make sure that.

I have an understanding of like, well, where was the internet and this platform specifically when this happened? Because I feel like that's often the way that you kind of unlock, like, what is really going on and that a person who, you know, is like blows up at what feels like a random time. If you like, you can usually figure out or get a good idea of like why it might have been Farrell. I mean, I just have Farrell Hogs guy on the brain, but he's another good example of, like it was sort of seized upon, you know, the weekend of two horrific mass shootings. And it almost became like, okay, look over here. Like, look at this weird thing because then you don't have to engage with the difficult thing.

Timing and context are important to Jamie. But so is just trying to understand the potentially weird people who do seemingly weird things on the internet as they navigate our definitely weird world. They're very often, like, really different from me because I'm just, you know, like a girl with brown hair that makes podcasts. Like there's a million of me. Okay, there are a lot of women with brown hair who make podcasts. And like no dudes with beards who make them. This never happened.

It's not a bunch of guys in a room. We'll keep looking. But let's be clear, there is only one Jamie Loftus. And there's more of our conversation with her coming up in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more. and nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics.

Country music. Hockey. Sex. Of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know.

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But as we mentioned, she's originally from Brockton, Baby, Brockton, Massachusetts, south of Boston. How is that informed your sense of humor? Probably almost entirely. Like, I love being from here. It's the best. It's the best. Yeah, I don't know. I also, like, started doing stand-up in Boston, like, my first.

first, you know, two or three years, I started doing it in college. I, like, worked at Improv Boston for years, RAP. There were, like, three women in their 20s that were doing stand-up period. So we kind of unionized. That was really nice. But it just felt like the kind of scene that was way more open to weird stuff and experimental stuff than I think I could have gotten away with as a new comic really anywhere else except maybe Chicago, but like there's not a lot of places that I feel like are just open to see kind of whatever as you're starting out because it's like, you know, even though there were not a lot of young women doing stand-up, there were a ton of young women going to stand-up shows. And, you know, it was just, it was, I just like look back

on that time so fondly. I got to develop my voice and like, you know, you know, like try a bunch of shit, a lot of which didn't work. And it just felt like, you know, the stakes were not, you can, you'll never work in this town again. You know, like it was just like, well, you know, try, you know, like eat dog food on stage for a year and see if you die. Like it was, no one was like, don't do that. You know, it was just I, I really loved it. Eating dog food on stage is a real thing that Jamie did, by the way. with other bits like selling Shrek nudes,

aka pictures of herself naked, painted green, to raise money for Planned Parenthood. There's a lot of weird Shrek memes out there. Let me just tell you, as someone who's gone down that rabbit hole, this Jamie Loftus's Shrek nudes, just the tip of the iceberg. Let me tell you.

Jamie also attempted to eat a copy of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Gest. And she's also written for TV series like Adult Swims Robot Chicken and she was about to take a one woman show called Boss, Whom Is Girl, on the road in 2020. And like, no, I wasn't. And it happened to kind of line up with me releasing this first solo podcast, my year in Mensa, which was literally just a, like, I split up a really long essay that no one wanted to publish into four parts

and released it as a podcast because you're just like, well, I don't know where this belongs. And I understand podcasting well enough that maybe it belongs here. My Year in Mensa is great, if you haven't heard it. It all starts with Jamie taking Mensa's IQ exam while hungover, scoring in the 98th percentile, and then spending a year in Mensa's problematic Facebook group, attending the organization's annual gathering, and shining a light on the group's far-right undertones, all while making playful use of the air horn.

That's my idea of tasteful sound design. The unmoderated chaotic online landscape that is cursed and fascinated me for over a year. It's called Firehouse. And I, incidentally, am the number one block member, even though I've only posted there twice in 14 months. At an average, from there, it kind of was like, all right, well, what else can I, you know, get away with. Jamie's gotten away with several other critically acclaimed podcast since then.

And her bit as of late isn't a bit at all, really. She scrutinizes a familiar piece of culture, but also really tries to understand the forces that popularized those pieces of culture. From Nabokov's Lolita in her 2021 Lolita podcast. To Jamie's deep dive into the Kathy comic strip and its creator in ACCAST, To her look at American spiritualism in the series Ghost Church and her role co-hosting the Bechdel cast, a feminist film review podcast. And now to 16th Minute of Fame, where the conversations are fruitful, the format is flexible, and the air horns are still plentiful. He did his reporter voice, hit the R's. No problem, Chuck.

But when he came home, he dropped that. I don't know. I feel like there's been such a, you know, vice. grip on the ability to make things with any level of creative freedom in the last 10 years or so. I know it's never been great, but it feels especially dire right now. And so I was doing, I mean, I was like working in a bunch of different mediums. I did, you know, I did a bunch of solo shows. I wrote, you know, on a couple of TV shows and animation and like I was trying to figure out, like, where do I fit the best? Or like, where does it make sense to, you know, put ideas, how can I get them out there? And like, where is a place that I can have the most

creative freedom? And it ended up being podcasting was the easiest way for me so far to, like, have a lot of creative freedom, talk about what I want to talk about, and have it be, you know, more accessible than 70 people in a black box theater. I'm curious if there's a through line for each of these endeavors. or kind of a mission statement that you have for yourself of what makes something feel like a like a Jamie Loftus project. Does Jamie Loftus want to do it all the time every day? You know, I just like I feel like I don't know. Yeah, I have a very obsessive, like clinically obsessive personality.

And I'm really interested in things that people are both very dismissive of, but also have a very clear opinion of and have no interest in like, interrogating why they feel so strongly about something they claim not to care about. Like that's the sort of stuff that I really love. Like whether it's like characters or just, you know, objects. Like I hope that just like a general kind of like curiosity and like willingness to take the time to see what's like silly or profound or whatever, I like big, silly things that are more complicated than they seem. And sometimes it goes more silly and sometimes it goes more complicated and it's like whatever the topic needs. Silly, complicated things like Chicken Man and Farrell Hogs Guy and Coffee Wife.

And despite everything she discusses on 16th Minute of Fame about the pitfalls of social media, Jamie admits she doesn't see herself getting off of it. People are so often told to like just like log out, go touch grass, whatever, and how that it's almost always being said to you by someone who is also constantly online. And it's like this weird deflection where you're like, you know. They literally have to be on the internet to say that to you. Right. And most people who actually feel that way don't know that shorthand because they're off somewhere else being regular.

Yes. They're actually touching grass. Exactly. And so they wouldn't know that that's a shorthand for anything. And just how, like, I think the way that, like, life is structured in most places now, it's not really realistic to say, like, I'm just going to log out. It's where, like, some of us have to be there for, like, I couldn't do my job if I logged out. Or my job would be impacted if I was, had no presence online.

whatsoever. And, you know, it's like the way that so many people find people to date, people to be friends with. Like, there are good parts of being on the internet. I think it's weird when people are like, this is all horrible. This is the worst thing ever. It's like, well, and here we are. Do you feel that way, though, sometimes? Because I do, I mean, I agree with you. And I also sometimes am like, just throw it into the volcano, I guess. Yeah. I mean, if it got thrown into the volcano, I think, you know, we'd all be better off and we'd adjust. Yeah. But I don't think we would choose to throw it into the volcano.

Yeah. We'd be pretty gallum about it. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of, yeah. I mean, I think of a, I've had a horrible. I mean, it's, I think that my relationship with the internet right now is like better than usual.

Um, because my brain is fully formed now. And, and I like got the proper diagnoses. but when that was not the case, you know, and it still sucks, you know, but like, you know, it was, especially in my early 20s, it was like, it was bad, you know, I was in like exposure therapy for being on the internet. And like, I don't know. I mean, I, I, but I'm still there. And maybe it's the same, I think it's connected to the same reason that I am still not a vegan. I'm weak and I'm a coward and you love meat sludge as do i so that's fine yeah we're all weak and a coward in our own way i assure you do you have any advice for people who are like entering their 16th minute

yeah you've talked to a number of people about it yeah i would say um if you can't and you find yourself suddenly like the center of an internet, you know, storm that you do, you do not want, especially because it's like, some people are like, oh, okay, I guess this is my inn. And, you know, I think whatever, you got like curvy wife guy, I think is a great example of that. He's like, also I rap, you know, but. Also I rap is such a, it's just such a common. That's a career path.

Yeah, like just you accidentally get a shit line of attention. and also you rap. But if you do not want it, take a day. Like if you can remove, even if you can't remove yourself from observing it, if you can prevent yourself from responding for a day, I feel like so many difficult situations are made worse by the compulsion to post through it. It's almost never a good instinct to post through it. you just like keep everything in drafts for at least a day yeah have someone you know if you can have someone with you to just keep it in drafts for a day you'll almost just based on like people i've talked to you'll have a more coherent idea of how you actually feel about what's happening to you a day later

and then you might choose to never say anything or you might choose to make merch like there's any number of things that you can choose to do but if you could just wait 24 hours i can almost guarantee that you'll, you will not regret it. Wise, wise words from Jamie Loftus. And a fun fact, which is Jamie and I both went to Emerson College in Boston. We overlapped only slightly. She's more youthful than I. But she mentioned before we started rolling on this interview that back in the day,

she'd interviewed me. We breeze past that as we were getting going, but it came back up as Ben and I were saying our goodbyes. Thank you so much for spending this time with us. Oh my gosh, it's like such a treat. I just like, Amory, I still was like, wow, like you're an eternal celeb to me. No way. Well, I was wondering, what the hell did you interview me about?

Music. Oh. It was when you were doing in studio session and they were like, at WERS. Yes. Oh, okay. Then you were probably thoroughly confused in this moment, but I was much more music focused back in the day. Yeah, back in the day before you saw. sold out to public radio podcasting.

You know it. But you know what? Now I get to talk to comedic Swiss Army knives like Jamie Loftus. I'm thrilled to get to now interview you. And I'm so glad that you make all the things that you make. And I hope you keep doing all the stuff that you want to do. Oh, thanks. And thank you guys so much for having me.

I really love your show. And I just like, I don't know. It's always, I love what a expanded universe of internet freaks there is now. like places to talk about it. Same. Yeah. Well, I'm just glad to watch you two appreciate each other. That's really nice for me to see.

15 years in the making. That's right. That's right. Jamie Loftus's newest podcast is 16th Minute of Fame from IHeart Media's Cool Zone Media. You can find it wherever pods are cast, as my husband would say. This episode was produced by me, Amory Sieverts, and co-hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and me. Mix and sound designed by Paul Vicus. The rest of our team is Dean Russell, Grace Tatter, Sumitajoshi, Emily Jankowski, and Mia Giuliani.

We'll see you next week.