Everything Is Content - Cowboy Carter, Flag Culture Wars and Twitter’s Main Characters

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

The trio is finally trio-ing again! Join Beth, Ruchira and Oenone for this week’s Everything Is Content, which goes everywhere from Bean Dad to Beyoncé. As we celebrate the birth Bisexual Land, er, sorry - I mean *England* football kit, we also have some juicy long read recommendations for you and we weigh in on beefs of the internet variety. —JEFFREY EUGENIDES: The Virgin Suicides NOWTV: Mary and GeorgeNEW YORK MAGAZINE: Andrew Huberman’s Mechanisms of ControlTEXAS MONTHLY: How Jesse Plemons Came to Star in, Well, Pretty Much EverythingVANITY FAIR: Anne Hathaway on Tuning Out the Haters and Embracing Her True SelfBBC: FA defends new England kit over flag designNEW YORKER: What Have Fourteen Years of Conservative Rule Done to Britain?ALISTAIR GREEN: Voxpop - New England ShirtINDEPENDENT: Pregnant woman says fiancé’s family rocking chair doesn’t fit nursery room ‘theme’SLATE: We Suddenly Have My Stepson Every Weekend. Please, No!REFINERY29: Here’s Why Everyone Is Talking About Bean DadBILLBOARD: Azealia Banks Takes Aim at Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ Album Cover & TitleBILLBOARD:  Azealia Banks vs. The WorldGUARDIAN: Jason Aldean’s Try That in a Small Town sums up the delusions of the right wing—Follow us on Instagram:@everythingiscontentpod @beth_mccoll @ruchira_sharma@oenone ---Everything Is Content is produced by Faye Lawrence for We Are GrapeExec Producer: James Norman-FyfeMusic: James RichardsonPhotography: Rebecca Need-Meenar Artwork: Joe Gardner  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

sorry i can't find it in my documents in your documents dockies all right sorry briefcase i'm beth i'm richira and i'm anoni and this is everything is content the trio is finally reunited welcome back Richira we have missed you oh I've missed you more okay um I have missed you more if it's your first time here hi this is the weekly podcast where we give you a dose of intellectual and sometimes less than intellectual discussion of the week's discourse. We're the sugary goo in the centre of your content cream egg. Make sure you are subscribed and please tell a pal if you love the podcast. On today's episode, we're going to talk about the flag and one of our favourite things to talk about, internet beef.

Let's start with what we've been loving this week. Ruchira, what have you been loving? So whilst I was away, I got to do a bit of reading. I read The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. I kind of felt like I had a Sofia Coppola vibe to the holiday because she also did a film of The Virgin Suicides. But I really enjoyed the book. I thought it was such a good take of sad girl lit and especially because it was from the point of view of like a chorus of men on a neighborhood obsessed with these like daughters of a family the lisbon family have you guys read it firstly i've only seen and i love the film with

kirsten dunst and i love that i actually think i've read the book I haven't read the book or seen the film but I'm so aware of it as a empire yeah a kind of movement like my tumblr day I'm surprised I've not read it I feel kind of disappointed myself yeah I need to maybe I'll read it next I'll bring the book in what did you think you you quite liked it I have a feeling I'll like the book more than the film because the film feels quite tumblr and like quite beautiful but I feel like I got quite a lot from the book in terms of the male gaze on you know aestheticized pain and like quite beautiful but I feel like I got quite a lot from the book in terms of the male gaze on you know aestheticized pain and like the way he describes the girls he describes them as like kind of gross and there's like homogenous mass of like limbs and like anyone who has a sister I feel like that that rings so true and like also even with friendships I feel

like all of my school friends when we're together and it's like having a sleepover whatever even now we are just this mass of limbs and we are a bit gross we have like I don't know like Dorito dust down our chest and all this kind of stuff and it I don't know I was really surprised that like a male author got that kind of girlhood stuff yeah because when you're away we were talking about Jonathan Jonathan Franzen and I was saying I really just don't love men writing about women because so often it's like she bounced boobly down the stairs um it's actually really exciting when they do get it do it well can I just do one cheeky second recommendation I won't talk about it much but um a friend of the podcast we wish Julianne Moore her new show Mary and George have you have

you seen I haven't even no oh I've seen videos of it and it looks saucy so horny so horny um please just watch it what's it about it's about queen mary i can't remember what her second name is but um she essentially teaches her son who is very very gorgeous to seduce king james and basically become his concubine is that the right word concubine concubine that's it well they don't trust me on this yeah well sometimes i correct you and i'm wrong i'll take that i'll take that i was gonna say porcupine um it is just like the horniest show i've seen in a long time and it's julianne moore just being like almost like a momager to her son but like in a period drama it's great oh stunning what have you been loving and only so i really enjoyed this week a piece in the new york mag called andrew humerman's mechanisms of control the private

and public seductions of the world's biggest pop neuroscientists and i am aware of this guy if you don't know him he's kind of like a massive wellness guru who is lauded and loved because not only is he like very attractive and very enigmatic and charismatic he's also got a PhD he literally works at Stanford University so he's like very credible and for years because I used to be in the fitness space I follow loads of fitness influencers and I've always seen them praising him and citing him and saying like how much they look up to him blah blah the first time I've ever actually engaged with anything to do with him is when I properly read this piece but it's basically just about how he um maybe his personal character is not the same as this

professional character he puts out and I think it's quite an interesting story which is going to develop like that story came out this week and since then there's been multiple multiple articles afterwards I think it's going to start an interesting conversation about the way that the therapy speak and wellness language is being co-opted especially by men in romantic relationships I really enjoyed that piece and I think there's a lot that might come off the back of it in the coming weeks I loved it as well I'd never heard of him before I'm hoping that sounds stupid but I don't know that man no I think the only reason I did is because I've got that one foot in the fitness industry so actually I was very conscious

of him but I was surprised by the amount of people that clearly do know who he is and even in the article the woman who writes it is like i was someone that really engaged in his videos and it's really clear that it still is really everything he said is still really helping her there's people online are basically saying like this doesn't feel heavy enough for this like investigative journalism piece but actually i thought it was amazing investigative journalism and um like women are responding in one way and men are like what this just isn't like this is he's a legend yeah oh it's really interesting we'll link the piece in the show notes for you to read Beth what have you been loving I've been loving uh celebrity profiles I've read two celebrity profiles of um actors this week but i thought were excellent one we have spoken about

as a group which i will bring up in a sec the other is a piece for texas monthly which i don't know if you rutier has lit up like a candle i'm not a regular reader of texas monthly but surprises me yeah um but they had an amazing um kind of cover feature about jesse plemmons i've been meaning to read this so i'm so excited to hear your thoughts. Brilliant because Mr. Kirsten Dunst himself who I actually think side note is really handsome and I've always thought this. Do you? Yeah. You know what

kills me? What is his name? The guy the famous guy who really tragically passed away and I think he's his double. He looks like his doppelganger. Oh um Philip Seymour Hoffman maybe? They're really similar looking. I think he kind of reminds me of Taylor Swift's sex. Joee alwyn he's got a similar sort of and i'm not really normally into like story blonde man you find him really handsome yeah he's not for you no um so anyway i've read this piece which is proper long reads and it feels like good old

fashioned profiling the writer sean o'neill gets like he goes to his house they spend like full days together it's like written across months um I think it was interrupted by the strike so obviously they couldn't do anything kind of to promote any films and then they meet again either Christmas Eve of last year or like really around that time to finish the piece it was like kind of now and ever they're like Christmas Eve that's quite the commitment from him bonkers and he kind of goes into the family he has dinner with Plemons' parents and I just thought

this piece was really interesting it felt really well researched and he's in a relationship Jesse Plemons in a relationship where he's not

the most famous one and it feels very respectful of kissed and danced like it mentions her as like mother she's their peripheral she's you know greets this writer

as he comes in but it doesn't focus too much on their relationship and I just thought it was really good um and i would recommend it i really want to read that but it's also made me realize how amazing kirsten dunst is she's so famous she's been around all of our lives and she's got an interesting type of fame i do feel like she was maybe taken um under like certain directors wings she's always said she's tried to work with a lot of women yeah and she had that she's famous since yeah she was a young teen yeah um and I do think she made some good decisions unproblematic fave love her so the other piece I loved was the Anne

Hathaway Vanity Fair cover yes yes which I loved and I thought she she looks amazing in in the photos and she just comes across like as she seems very happy she comes across like as fully herself she's like this earnest intense person and it feels like she's not at all apologetic for it so many amazing sound bites the one where she's like they're in a plant-based restaurant and she says I'm you know I'm not a vegan but I think we can all agree I've got the personality of a vegan or like something like that which is just gold and I find it really entertaining because as a famous person, I'm never, oh, like, sorry, I'm not a famous person.

As a famous person myself. Famous people, I'm never sure how aware they are of like the stuff that's being said about them online. It feels like she was very aware of that time that the internet hated her and like it could have tanked her career and like luckily it didn't and I just really loved how earnest she was about that yeah I mean I listened to a podcast where they dived into the hatha hate movement and I think it was so bad that there was no way that she couldn't have known about it so I really do feel for her and I just want to say that

sorry but fuck the hatha haters I'm so happy to see her thrive good for her and i love the bit when she was talking about princess diaries and she starts welling up and she's like really proud of it she's like i'm just so glad to have been a part of that film oh she's so earnest yeah and people were just saying like what how nice to respect the way you came up because also that film means so much to a generation of so many women and boys i'm sure i think she's so kind about her co-stars like she always bigs them up without fail and her the way she talks about emily blunt just is so sweet like they showed a clip of um the devil wears prada and emily blunt obviously iconic in that and she's

she's just like literally like breaking into laughter just watching it and she's like really just like obviously like emily's funny. She's so fucking funny. So yeah, that's what I've been loving this week. The celebs. So this week I want to talk about something which is maybe not that on brand for me as it pertains to football. I want to talk about the flag. what flag would you like to talk about well last week the FA released a new home kit for the England football team and the kit which sorry it costs such 124.99 for adults and 119.99 for kids that doesn't feel like that's a big enough discount between child and adult first of all it's a six five pound difference when I read the prices because I didn't really understand this was for

the fans to buy I thought it was the pair so I was like well they can afford it why people they've probably got the money well so on the back they've got St George's cross on the back of the collar but they've stylized it differently by making it like purple and blue stripes and well everyone's just lost their minds yeah I mean we use the word ferrari quite a lot on this podcast and in real life this actually feels like a bit of a ferrari yeah everyone is angry furious betrayed cannot believe the flag has been changed from one color to some other colors and when you say everyone it is politicians it's on news night it's it's articles i just simply cannot fathom especially because we've seen redesigns of union jacks and i'm sorry i actually i know it's georgia's cross i actually

personally don't like that no to me says racism it's often is co-opted by certain demographic people to mean that so nike said the trim on the cuffs takes its cues from the training gear worn by england's 1966 heroes with a gradient of blues and reds topped with purple it's kind of self-congratulatory yeah literally all right almost but what struggle that this shows i think is just emblematic for what is wrong with this country like the way that you can get people on side talking about a flag these are the issues that really incite passion amongst a certain demographic of people so if this is the issues that really incite passion amongst a certain demographic of people so if this is the thing that's like really bothering them they're like this nike nike kit has got a different color and this really makes me feel like everyone's against me

how the fuck are we going to talk about i don't know structural racism or the patriarchy or things which are more nuanced and you know put people in a position of feeling like uncomfortable they're going to feel uncomfortable especially when you've got rishi sunak saying when it comes to our national flags we shouldn't mess with them because they're a source of pride identity and who we are and they're perfect as they are and then ks tamer said the flag is used by everybody it's a unifier it doesn't need to be changed and it's so it's like you know they're just attaching themselves these issues because it's a unifier it doesn't need to be changed and it's so it's like you know they're just attaching themselves these issues because it's really low hanging fruit yeah it gets certain

demographics of people that maybe do feel at this point in time like they are being what's the word like ostracized or kind of like not included in the conversation especially white working-class men who are the most like disenfranchised group i would say like because of this liberal conversation kia starmer whose flag would be a wet wipe he he said this and then joey barton um tweeted in response agreeing with him and he said so disappointed to have your national flag altered for capital w woke purposes this is england not bisexual land i mean one it will be bisexual and if we've got anything to do with that absolutely and like I think if you're Keir Starmer and you've got

Joey Barton who has been charged three times for violent conduct by the FA um you have to stop wondering like really what am I what's my output as leader of the opposition this is the moment where Keir Starmer could have some kind of backbone and just like not even a backbone at this point just like maybe one vertebrae or something just to like have a stance that's not pathetic just a single like toothpick yeah so rage baiting though and the fact that people feel seen by i mean like what does a flag mean to you guys if anything like i've said actually the saint george's cross makes me feel quite uncomfortable i would never want to wear anything that had it on unless it was like I don't know obvious why because it denotes you know like borders and different like

nations and yeah we've you know my opinions on that are probably really like lefty yeah loony but like no no problem with it like uh in terms of some national pride but I do think like you said earlier it has been altered by brands has it has been altered by the Conservative Party. It isn't so sacred, especially at a time when I don't think I have much national pride. Especially this week when the Child Poverty Action Group revealed that 300,000 more children are living in poverty due to the cost of living crisis. There was also a long read that went viral, a New York piece by Sam Knight called What Have 14 Years of conservative rule done to britain um that really just explores the impact the kind of living impact of um austerity

of of these policies that kind of go some way in explaining like why we are all so miserable that piece has really gripped everyone and everyone's been sharing and i think it's so depressing but it's such a good breakdown of I think because it's like achingly long that we've been in this situation it's like in our bones it's kind of like it's hard to imagine a way out and now it's just getting bleaker and bleaker yeah there is so much to be angry about in this country and the flack is not anywhere on that list it is like people keying around the block to see a dentist people like on waitlists and dying on waitlists it's all of these things I do think yeah like i said i think it's displaced anger a good quote from the piece

says if you live in an old country it can be easy to succumb to a narrative of decline the state withers the charlatans take over you give up on progress to some extent and simply pray that this particular chapter of british nonsense will come to an end it will richie sunak the fifth and presumably final conservative prime minister of the era faces an election later this year which he will almost certainly lose but britain cannot move on from the tories without properly facing up to the harm that they have caused oh my god so well put so molly good fellow tweeted which really made me laugh she put sorry it's actually wokeness gone mad that you can't put the england flag in different colors without some stofit getting upset about it my granddad didn't die at the

butt of hasting for jack realish's little kit to be held back by colored palettes imagine us being called snowflakes for having like genuine i don't know social commentary about massive issues and then they're up in arms because colors colors yeah she's so good at just like highlighting the hypocrisy of the arguments of like free speech like it's always just the same thing where people are like you can't say anything these days and then when you say something back like what you've said is stupid they're like oh you can't say anything these days your fragility do you guys see the alistair green video on this where he plays different like it's like a fake box pop and he plays like different kind of

commentators you'd meet on the street one of them's like classic like middle-aged like boomer who never fought in the war being like this is why my dad's generation fought in the war for the flag and like there's a woman at the end who's obviously meant to be a kind of like softly spoken like white woman who's like you know I try and see both sides and I think the most reasonable thing is well to just bring back the crusades and you go like it is so funny because it is we have all sort of lost the plot and it is and it's a non-issue that is now the issue and you know what I think with a general election just like looming around the corner this stuff does distract from like the very real shit that is going on and the very real shit should be you know like making us you know scream and cry every day because it is that bad but instead people are just arguing about flags and i wonder who whipped up because like like you said there's been i think there's been olympic uniforms or they've had like the the union jack

in different colors and stuff i think this could have so easily just gone on the radar no one pointed out but there must be some sort of collective need for like group think and like people wanting to feel um in some way held or like like people want to feel cross and you want something to get angry about and like a flag for obviously quite a lot of people it's something they feel they can so there's like some deeper reason as to why because surely in a stable logical society you wouldn't know two people would they would just be like this is not the issue at hand here like people are choosing between eating and heating you're like you know so there's something fundamentally it's a symptom i think of a broader problem yeah and the flag is a stand-in for kind of national pride the flag discourse is a stand-in

for not having like a proper vehicle for the rage that people are feeling the like disposition and displacement that people are feeling yeah um politically and otherwise and economically and i think it's all just a veneer over the real thing yeah the flags are flying but no one's home that doesn't make any sense i'm so sorry this week a tweet about a rocking chair sparked days of discourse um and i'm gonna have to read it to you because we'll see if it sparks discourse here my pregnant fiance just told me we can't put the rocking chair my father bought for my mother that my sister and i were both nursed on in the baby's nursery because it won't match her theme both my parents have passed this is a big fucking issue for me end tweet um this is

a man who's about to have a baby whose fiance has put her vote down and said we're not having that i'm not going to use that piece of furniture that you love and he's taken this to the internet what have the replies been it's quite divided between people saying well just put it in there you know it's up to you this is important to you she's being so out of line just put it in put it in there she'll sit on it and he was like well i was going to do that actually. Which is horrifying. The top comment

at the minute is going, as sentimental as the chair may be, it's not as important as your fiance. Sometimes you've got to let a nesting woman do her nesting. So reasonable, right? And the guy who wrote in the tweet

replied going, she dismissed the idea as soon as I said it. My input doesn't matter apparently. So he's just completely ignored. Do men not have friends? If my partner said to me, I'm desperate to have this thing, I would be like, oh, it's so fucking ugly, but I'll just put it in the corner. I do have men not have friends if my partner said to me like I'm desperate to have this thing

I would be like oh it's so fucking ugly but I'll just put it in the corner I do have to say imagine if your partner tweeted a relationship problem and then you found it

going viral online like what would you do generally that could be a chat to like potentially lead to a breakup because it's fucking weird but that's what I'm saying he's not like

quite clearly he's not that great of a partner because yeah someone said tell her it wasn't a suggestion and then do as you please clearly he's not that great of a partner because yeah someone said tell her it wasn't a suggestion and then do as you please and he was like that was my plan it is I do feel like this happens more and more it's either on Reddit or here that a man will bring and it is often a man will bring a sort of what I think of as quite an unreasonable request

and he's looking for people to uphold that and validate that and often that does happen but as often as not it goes viral like this with people mocking it making fun of it and i just yeah it's where are the communities for men what has gone on i i feel like men used to be men they used to just put the rocking chair in their man cave and like see about it quietly this is so undignified yeah another user tweeted i think a bigger issue is bringing private problems between you and the mother of your child onto twitter i can understand why you're frustrated but this ain't it imagine waking up one day borrowing your partner's laptop and seeing that they've posted on like r slash like relationships yes something that happened between you like i think she's heavily

pregnant imagine her like waddling in with the laptop being like what the fuck is this i do think people need to handle this shit between themselves but then so some of the responses like one of them quite like taking it in really good faith kind of going it sounds like you're still deeply grieving the loss of your parents and it has little to do with the chair we want to hold on to things from our loved ones and that's not meaningless but your baby being in a different chair does not disconnect them from your parents that is a really nice which is such a nice good faith kind of take of it i like that it's just when people do bring these problems to the internet the internet gets hold of them

there was also that agony aunt piece in slate this is a parenting column um and michelle herman wrote back to a woman who'd written in asking or saying we suddenly have my stepson every weekend please know he's so clingy um and this woman who has a five-year-old son by her now husband he also has a five-year-old son by his ex-wife so i'll let you guys do the maths there um and she now they have this other son over the weekend and he had he has trouble transitioning he's you know he has different things he needs to be driven to and this stepmom is like this is so much my husband won't like outsource more of his care to his aunt she won't do all of this help basically like what do i do and the response to this is it's really fair really balanced but it does in no uncertain terms tell her she's in the

wrong which i really rarely see in advice columns and i really it was really validating because like you just want to like reach through the phone and hug this poor lost five-year-old boy. Yeah, I agree with you. It's so nice to read something so refreshingly, genuinely good advice because you'd hope the person that wrote that email, obviously they definitely read as someone a bit self-righteous. They probably weren't assuming,

I get the impression they thought that Agni Art was going to come back and be like on their side yeah and I really genuinely hope this is a case of I think a problem shared might actually have really positive results you said clingy like you can't describe a child taken away from like his mother to his father's like other family as clingy horrifying and it is sometimes there's a batshit problem it's brought to the internet and it's validated in horrible ways and other times someone sets the record straight and it feels like sometimes people have the head screws on and like it's really nice to read that do you ever go through reddit relationships and get really frustrated at some of the replies i'm never a commenter but like it really frustrates me some of the outsourced relationship advice is

completely unhinged i do read them and i'm hoping i always hope that they're fake because they're so it like it really frustrates me some of the outsourced relationship advice is completely unhinged i do read them and i'm hoping i always hope that they're fake because they're so outlandish i only ever see them when they make it to x i never i can't really work reddit i don't have the app so then when i try and do it on chrome it doesn't really work but i always see the like am i the arsehole relationship yeah ones actually sadly they're often not the arsehole and they're just in like quiet their partners like terrible and it's the problem when we have this like commentator class and like everyone's got access everyone can give you the most terrible advice in like 500 to a thousand characters 500 to a thousand words like we're

just all leading each other astray no do not bring up problems to the internet no no no would you ever ask advice i mean the most i would ask is sort of like where's the best nail place in this area i mean sometimes it's quite heartening and people like i've written like an advice column for days and then on my patreon and like i do think of it as a really sacred thing um one it's important to never like answer a question you don't have any like real stake in like i just think that's that's common knowledge i do think it's quite a nice thing but i just think as when it's on the internet it can go into the weirdest places like the woman giving advice about how to burn a candle properly this yes and it just ends up having like thousands of but I agree I think it's different so I have that

sometimes with my audience last week's advice or if it's like an agony column I feel there is like a sacredness to that it's like anonymous it's the person is hopefully doing it in good faith taking care over it I love Dolly Alderton's Sunday Times advice yeah really nice I think what's different on Twitter what I find unusual confusing as to why someone would do that is that you're soliciting advice from anyone it's not like you've gone oh I like how this person thinks actually and I've read their advice column I've got this problem no one's gonna know it's me I'll ask them it's literally just going out and just I mean exposing exposing I was about to say that problem as it's happening and no distance between it and like yeah I find that really shocking I wouldn't do that when there's

real people involved if I was having a relationship problem even if I did need help I just I wouldn't be able to do it with my face attached with this thing with the rocking chair I'm so cynical now that I'm just like because it's gone so big I'm like what if this isn't even real what if he's just said this

because he knows it's so or whoever's behind the account and he is a blue tick like I do just sometimes I see stuff and I'm like I'm really almost shocked when it is

when you find out it's credible so this guy has been the main character of the internet this week and there's been so many before him can I ask you guys if you've got any favorites come to mind main characters you're gonna beth you'll know what i'm talking about because i can't fully remember it and tell me this is one but what was the day when everyone was talking about if someone asked you to watch their laptop in a coffee shop oh my god do you remember this i think the tweet

essentially said if someone or if some it was it hypothetical someone had just asked them to watch their laptop and they were like i would never do that because then you're basically responsible for like yes and it just became this massive it was saying it was like a douchey move to ask someone to watch your laptop because then they're responsible for it really but it's like that's so funny because like everywhere i'm on a train i'm like can you watch my stuff like it's just such a normal human interaction I think just like and also it's kind of just a gesture you're just kind of like you feel better about going to pee seven three seconds away if you've gone like oh can you watch my stuff you know they're not actually normally within a minute if someone you're asking you that

you completely forget and they come back and then you kind of like pretend that you've been watching the whole time it's just a nice thing just it gives you that bit of security while you're having a wee yeah um that was a great main character I think mine will be the first one i was aware of i think was bean dad do you know who bean dad is i can't remember what it is it was i think it was early 2021 so like everyone was at the home at the houses at the home at losing their minds in in lockdown and this guy tweeted that his nine-year-old daughter wanted some baked beans um and instead of being like well of course darling would you like them on toast he was like okay open the can he was like this is a teaching moment for my daughter to learn how to open the can everyone had opinion they like ran

him off twitter called him like you know every name under the sun was like this is your horrible person this is just reminding me that today i saw a tweet that was about off the back of the rocking chair and it was like a combination of all these different times that people have been main characters at the end they were like I'm in the background my nine-year-old's just trying to open a can of beans and I just remember that's where it's from there's some really valid dating moments on twitter and you realize like god I've been on this website for too long and god I am on it 24 hours a day you know and someone's like you're wrong over my husband and it's like sorry mom that's kiki palmer I'm so so online that I normally know all of these, which is humiliating.

You must know the ma'am that's Kiki Palmer. Do you not know that? So basically someone tweeted being like, excuse me, ma'am, not to be disrespectful or rude, but could you please take this post down? That's my sister who was killed by a metro train. And this post is very disrespectful. Disrespectful. I don't know who you are or if you even know her, but I need you to take this down, please.

And everyone was like, excuse me, ma'amam but that's Kiki Palmer okay I do remember this yeah and then so people just reply to loads of stuff excuse me Kiki Palmer or they're like please can you take that post down that my sister was hit by a train and if you're very in line you know this if not you're like oh my god what on earth yeah do you know what's going on I have no idea what you're talking about no I thought that was normal that one Richie have you got any main characters or are you healthily not that online? The only one that I was just looking up whilst you were talking is do you remember when Sofia Coppola's daughter was

going viral for chartering a helicopter she was like make fuckapass with me while I tell you about why I'm grounded she was a legend to go and see her friend from camp wasn't it she's like that's so good. Have you ever been the main character? Have I? No I don't think so. Surely loads of times you must have been.

No, thank God. I think I've come close. Most recently, I was, I got loads of retweets. And for the first time, I never, I didn't get any hate. Because I said, I was sick of seeing veneers on famous people. And I want to see more human teeth. It was the first time I'd ever gone viral. And people hadn't been furious. I did go viral when I said, I didn't understand a scene in Barbie.

And I've never been called a stupid bitch more what what was the scene it was a scene where there's a speech it says mothers stand still so their daughters can see how far and i wouldn't just understand that means am i being thick and everyone said yes and loads of other people said they they weren't but i got so many people going, obviously means this. And they all had different meanings. And I've never been so annoyed. I did think I knew what it meant until I remember.

I really remember this now. I remember when I heard that line, it made so much sense to me that it was interesting that to you, it wasn't just interesting. We do all live the same lives, but some bits of them are a bit different. They are. And also you can say something online that seems quite harmless at at the time bean dad obviously thought this would be funny i thought this would be fine two people reply and explain it to me and then you go back to your phone after a few hours you're like shit but bean dad's also so funny because that's so like what our general i

can imagine my dad just being like i'll just watch her try and open beans especially a boomer dad they're just like let's see you know yeah no i do agree well we'll see about a chair guy i would like to hear from chair girl i would like to hear the other side of this story but i also hope that she never becomes aware of this i personally just need to see the chair agreed actually what if it's gorgeous i'll have it so one thing i saw this week was the always outspoken many times offensive musician azelia banks although can we call her a musician when she hasn't released music in a hot minute well musician slash former musician slash current musician Azealia Banks took to social media to share criticisms around the new Beyonce album that

drops today actually. So the album for anyone unaware is called Cowboy Carter and is reportedly influenced by country music. Amongst many other things Azealia criticized the title she wrote wow we didn't even try to put even a little effort into a more artistic title kind of rude um Azealia also goes into more detail about the project sharing her thoughts around practically everything this isn't the first time she's come for Beyonce by the way and it's some of it has seemed to land somewhere close to potentially a critique of her. Others have just been completely wild. I don't want to say rants, but something close to just random stray shots coming for Beyonce, I would say.

But before we go into it, I just want to say, obviously, none of us are black women here. We are going to talk about this, but we are going to be sensitive to the fact that we aren't especially well placed to get into the intricacies of black female identity but we are going to talk about it because it is important and we want to talk about does she have a right to come for Beyonce and make criticisms about her launching a country album I read the whole thing now I know Azealia Banks I'm I'm personally I'm well acquainted with her wikipedia list of people that she's had fights with so like i i see it sometimes but this i read and i sat and read it and i didn't read it like her some takedowns which like oh i read it and i thought god this is pretty well thought out

quite smart actually and and a really good cultural criticism and if a well-renowned journalist had written this a piece like this in the new york times about beyonce's album i would be like yeah yeah maybe it's platform specific that we are like oh she's she's off on one again whereas actually she she says her opinion she thinks what she thinks but she does sort of back it up and she does she knows a lot she is such a unique cultural critic i do believe that I do want to talk about like just Azealia Banks is like how she writes I think it is such like obviously she's a rapper and songwriter um so like it's no it should be no surprise that she's just so good with words but like just the way that

she writes this it's so unflinching and I think this has been the same whoever she's coming at whether I agree with her or not her like verbiage is just like second to none I don't know anyone else who writes like her oh every word is like a dagger to the heart i would not want to be with her no if if anyone were to come for me in this life i i pray to any god that is not a celia protected um it's interesting though because the album as time recording and like at the time that she posted this story the album wasn't out so she's basing it on 16 carriages and texas hold'em and the um imagery of the artwork the album's not out so i don'ting it on 16 carriages and texas hold'em and the um imagery of the artwork the album's not out so i don't know it felt a bit premature to be saying all that i think billboard

did a really good kind of here are all the beefs that azalea banks has done and there were there were so many it went from 2012 to now so there was so many and with the beyonce one that was the thickest chapter and there were three instances over the last 10 years and one of the things that she said at some point was um you should swallow your pride and do a collab with Rihanna which to be honest agree but she she has forever just like constantly just been like Beyonce why are you doing this Beyonce why do you remember when Lemonade came out and she did sort of say about Beyonce you haven't been socially um involved until now and now this trauma you're using it to kind of like um sell albums there's a bit in the Azealia Banks Instagram story which I thought

was really interesting and where like I think what she does says carries weight because she says you're reinforcing the false rhetoric that country music is a post-civil war white art form and subsequently reinforcing the idea that there is no racism, segregation, slavery, violence, theft, massacres, plagues, manifest destiny craziness that form the bedrock of the epithets like Inverticom is proud to be American or God bless the USA, especially because Beyonce is so mainstream.

It would be interesting if she spoke about the history of country, the reasons why she wanted to get into making this music in a way that instead of almost depoliticizing it by going this isn't a country album this is a Beyonce album do you know what I mean there is room for her to educate her audience and fans of people that wouldn't know about yeah the great history of black musicians in the past that's so true I mean that's already like a difficult space to break into the country music scene and like Beyonce's never been fully

welcomed into that scene when she's like with the daddy issues daddy issues with the when she performed with the chicks at the CMAs um and like despite having like the biggest maybe like viewership that it was like scrubbed from their social media which at the time they were like oh it was her team it was this I am yeah quite quite curious if she's if it is going to be like a country album that does celebrate their history and that does with its visuals if we get any or with its lyrics kind of goes there it's interesting because you're so right and it's actually so wrong of me or or anyone to like kind of criticize Beyonce not leaning into that country kind of thing because I remember last year there was a guy called Jason Aldean who did a song that was called try that in a small town um there's an opinion piece in the guardian from last year that

says jason aldean's tried that in a small town sums up the delusions of the right wing so from the article if you come to his imaginary small town and disrespect a cop or engage in any sort of protest you'll regret it so it's it's kind of like anti-work kind of thing yeah and so he'll be saying that like cuss out a cop spit in his face we'll try that in a small town see how far you make it down the road around here we take care of our own and it was quite shocking and I remember seeing a lot about at the time it became number one people loved it he became like a superstar I don't know how famous he was before but he people then flocked to him the song was charting it was used on so many TikTok videos like in the and it just there's one argument to say that like it's important for women like Beyonce to do all

the things that Azealia is saying at the same time in what climate yeah what idealist world would she actually be able to do that in because it is a conservative space and they just do not take kindly to um activism whether it is faux activism or whether it is... Or even just people of different races. Yeah, that's it. I totally agree with that. And I think I've worked out where I stand on this, just like listening to all of this.

I think I don't have a problem with her depoliticizing it for that reason because that's probably just a smart move, if we're being honest. By labeling it country, she knows that there are going to be certain radio stations because this has happened before with her songs that they won't play them with daddy issues.

She had a lot of problems with that. But I think saying that she's opening the door by releasing this album, that's the problem because I don't think you are changing anything by depoliticizing it and not talking about the stuff that we've just mentioned and the ongoing problems in country music. Yeah, and also then Azealia Banks

probably kind of on the money on a lot of things um i don't know that that that disproves what she said that this is kind of toothless this is not that she is just sort of um she's not going deeper she's not turning on his head she is just making an album a country album in the same vein as they've always been made cowboy cutter is out today let's all have a listen and see if we've got anything else to say after that and please do let us know on instagram at everything is content pod what you think thanks for joining us this week please leave us a review if you haven't already it really helps us out and follow us on instagram at everything is content pod let us know what you've been loving this week and have a general natter with us we love hearing from you we'll see you next week

everything is content is a great original podcast and we are part of the Acast creator network this podcast was created devised and presented by us Beth McCall, Ruchira Sharma and Anoni the producer is Faye Lawrence and the executive producer is James Norman Fyfe was created, devised and presented by us, Beth McCall, Ruchira Sharma and Anoni. The producer is Faye Lawrence and the executive producer is James Norman Fyfe.