Everything Is Content - Does everyone have a shame kink?

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

Can we add ‘rom-dram’ to the lexicon? We’re going to try to… whether you like it or not! This week on Everything Is Content, Beth explains to Oenone the concept of Celebrity Big Brother, Ruchira has been to see a brilliant play at the Garrick Theatre and we all get stuck in to discussing the book that you all voted for - Penance by Eliza Clark! Our discussion of Penance does contain some adult themes and we also discuss plot points in the book - so tread carefully. —CHANNEL 4: Alice & Jack NEW YORK TIMES: The Sunday Read - How Tom Sandoval became the most hated man in AmericaSENTIMENTAL GARBAGE: Real Housewives with Elizabeth Day THE GARRICK THEATRE: For Black Boys…ITV: Celebrity Big Brother NEW YORK TIMES: Want to feel bad? Ask TikTok how old you lookELIZA CLARK: PenanceTHE GUARDIAN: Penance by Eliza Clark - art or porn? ANOTHER MAGAZINE: Eliza Clark’s New Novel Explores the Twisted Ethics of True Crime—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.

so who's beth this week okay well i'm just wondering i'm beth i'm richara and i'm an only this is everything is content the weekly podcast where we deep dive into the pop culture discourse books films, films, TV shows, tweets, posts on X. We'll hang out with you in every cobwebby corner of the discourse. On today's episode, we'll be chatting about the book that you all voted for, Penance by Eliza Clark. But before that, we'll be chatting CBBB. CBBB's no, Celebrity Big Brother.

And also, how old am I? Not a real question from me have you followed us on instagram yet if not why not get over there it's at everything is content pod this episode contains some sensitive topics please check the episode description for a list of trigger warnings we always start the podcast with our absolute faves from the week so what have you been loving this week girlies i've been loving alice and jack which is a six part channel four love drama or romantic drama i guess is what you'd actually call it a love drama i love that that i spent the last kind of like week and a half watching so it came out on

the 14th of feb and just finished so just finished at the end of last month okay and I really I'm kind of baffled no one else seems to be talking about it even though it's got a huge cast it's a channel four so I thought everyone be talking about it who is the cast yes Donal Gleeson plays oh sorry and is Anonia here today that was my question I like, I meant to say that in my head. Like, yes. Donald Gleeson is Jack and Andrea Rysbra is Alice. So they play the leads. It's got Aisling Bea in it.

It's got Amy Lou Wood who was in Amazing in Sex Education. Oh, I love her. Oh, yes. And it's about, it's very one day-ish. It's like a kind of more dark, more adult one day.

It's about Alice and Jack who meet on a dating app, go on this kind of great date, have this immediate chemistry, spend the night together. And then she's like, just don't call me again. And it's about the meeting again as over the next 15 years, kind of in and out of love, friendship,

you know, strangers, family, all of this kind of very one day noted stuff so i really thought off the back of one day's huge success that this would be the next kind of love drama that everyone's why do i keep saying love drama i love romantic drama call it love everyone would be talking about but i have not seen you two haven't haven't seen it no i have seen some promo around it but as you were talking i was just thinking oh that is just rubbish timing for them i feel like the way brains work is that you can only have one thing that is a good version of that thing at any one given time and everything else if it is in that genre just gets tanked yeah and i will say the reviews haven't been as

shiny as the ones for one day i liked a lot of it i'm not sure how i felt about the ending i'm not sure how i felt about all of it but i quite liked it but the reviews have not been great i haven't actually seen anything about it also i just can't stop thinking about how rom-com is such a term why don't we say rom-dram rom-dram yeah because everyone kept calling one day a rom-com where it's not funny i didn't get much comedy jesus no we should bring rom dram into the lexicon dram rom it sounds like i'm dram to me and then it feels cringe now either way i cannot stop thinking about it and i need other people to watch it to tell me whether it's good okay i'll watch it is it based on a book or anything or do you think they took inspiration

from one day i don't know i think it was written by someone who worked on mad men like it has a really prestige like company and obviously the cast is amazing so i think maybe it was an original idea maybe it'll just have a slower pickup yeah maybe if netflix picks it up as well that'll give it a push i feel like they've done that for so many channel four bbc things yeah and then they go mental like uh end of the fucking world was another example yeah that was great yeah and i like this because she is andrea risborough's character alex is like quite dark and she's quite difficult and he's this sort of like earnest bumbly man and i really like that dynamic can you remind me what she's in again she was into leslie yes that was it i do remember now and she was also in never let me go with donal

gleason as well they played boyfriend girlfriend so this is not the first time they worked together so anyway yeah alice and jack i think it's i think it's out all of it's out on channel four and then in the us i think it's on pbs which no i don't know what a pbs is yeah so catch it in your mailbox later this month what about you and what have you been loving i have been loving the sunday long read in the new york times about tom sandoval i love it because it made my boyfriend sit down and watch an episode of Vanipam Bhutani because it gave it gravitas and because he read the read he then sat down he went is that him and who's she and I was like oh my god and he's not someone that would ever watch so attractive such an attractive quality such like he but he would never he normally would just put his headphones

on and just like watch football on his phone if I was watching something like that like would not engage and it was such a good and interesting and thorough long read you can listen to it on the podcast the daily as well and I just think it's it's really interesting they kind of break down why Scandival was kind of took over and it was what Ruchira and I think we're talking about at the time which I thought was a really interesting way of putting it and that it kind of turned into this murder mystery where because the affair came out before the series had aired everyone was then like finding all these clues i don't know i just i like it when people really over intellectualize reality tv yes and on that note actually there was a really good episode of sentimental garbage

with elizabeth day listened did you listen yes so good about the whole housewives franchise and there's a bit where they're talking about dickens yes yeah and she makes this whole parallel between like why andy cohen and the whole series is actually really similar to dickens and they're both both of those women are so clever and so well read and know so many classics and things that you're like oh my god i'm actually a genius for watching this tv because it's like it is the canon you know it's it's art yes so I recommend both those things because it makes you feel smart for enjoying something so dumb yeah and more generally I feel like that podcast and Caroline O'Donoghue is just she's so so so good at breaking down all the stuff that we love and we you know talk to believers trash but actually when you listen to it it really makes you feel good about it what about you atira so i went to the theater over

the weekend and i saw for black boys who have considered suicide when the hue gets too heavy have you heard about it yeah i i've read a little bit on um x but need to know more oh it's so good it's so so good um it's by r Calais Cameron and basically it got five stars across the board from all the papers and for really good reason this is its second run at the Garrick Theatre and it's it's basically a meditation on I don't know the the various experiences of young black men and the traumas and the joys and the friendships and it's just so much packed into this one play but done so beautifully and so thoughtfully and earnestly that at various points I was like choking down a sob and then within seconds was just like

literally like creased over bent over laughing it was a full standing ovation when I went. It was so, so moving. I just, if you get a chance to see it, please see it. Is it set in the UK? Yes. So it's six actors, just them on the stage with some chairs and some really light props, just kind of becoming these six boys and then the people around them

diving into their experiences and moving between each story. It's so stripped back so full of meaning so beautiful to watch okay i'm gonna have to go and see that because i i need to get some theater in me this month i was gonna say we just talked about the tv we've watched or like read about tv my year started off so well in january i was like going to plays left right center now what am i doing fuck all it's all culture baby it's all culture celebrity big brother is back and i am very very excited and i really want to talk about this not

necessarily what happened because it's only been on for like that this is the first week the celebs are in i am so excited it's back and i feel like neither of you watch it is it out it's this week is the first week so monday all the celebs went in okay do you know who's who's in this she didn't even know it was on she doesn't know i have i honestly don't think i've watched it since like nasty nick okay so this is celebrity big brother is i know what it is okay okay so when someone's very famous and only um right celebrity big brother is back so it's relaunching rather than like just carrying on we haven't had it for like six years maybe longer oh i didn't know that was the jemma collins iteration an iconic

iteration the last one no i think that was 2016 we had one 2018 which is when the controversy with Roxanne Pallett and Ryan Thomas where she said he's you know hit me like a boxer and the footage showed that that wasn't quite true and she said I must have gotten it wrong so that was the really controversial season and that was when it was on channel 5 having come from channel 4 and now it's on ITV for the first time hosted by aj doodoo and will best so no more davina no more edmund willis did it for a while yeah yeah so like a whole new i mean not new for big brother because the normal series aired last year and they had that duo and they're really good together are they really fun she's got so much energy does aj i do like her what is the point what is the whole channel four

to channel five to ITV situation and how does that even work I think channel four did not want it anymore just wasn't profitable for them so channel five I guess bought it and then what the views weren't up so I guess ITV have now bought it and it's so funny that everyone thinks they can fit it's like that jar that everyone's trying to open do you know what I mean it's like why did they think that I can fix him. Yeah, this is it. And I do think that they had, like, it started in 2001. Or like Big Brother did. And I think so did CBB.

So, you know, it is a very old jar. But it is such a great social experiment, a great idea. I think it does go sour and audiences go off it. As we've seen with Love Island, it goes away for a while. And then I think there's an appetite for it. And have you seen that the response shows that people are really ready for it i think so well with the normal big brother which came out the end of last year the viewer it was up it was like i think three million like in the big episodes which impressive for today bigger than love island not as big as something

like traitors but for like not the bbc i think it's really good i mean we don't know the figures in this one the celebrities in this one aren't huge so we've got sharon osborne who is the biggest celebrity she's not actually housemate she's a quote-unquote lodger excuse me so they said in the first episode sharon is only going to go in for like five or seven days what which is rumored to be because her fee was very high and itb just can't afford her what even is the kind of point of that though i guess star power and she's in there with louis walsh and they had great rapport on the x factor this is just reminding me did we talk about this when we went to see stamp town when they said they were going to bring on rosie jones who's a very like famous comedian and so they brought her on

everyone clapped she bowed and then walked off stage and they were like we literally can't afford that's what we could afford it looks like that so funny and it's exactly the same i think they were like get her face on the screen it's it's quite familiar for itv as well to see like her again they've got zizi mills she's a big like online personality tv personality i actually really like her but i do think a lot she does say stuff that i'm like i fundamentally disagree with this but i think she's just a contrarian and she doesn't give a shit which will make for really good tv and that's the point of cb that's the magic of it you do get they're not always massive names but they together like they interact with each other in a way that just like boggles the mind sometimes like we've

had so many big moments in like even if you don't watch it david's dead that permits everyone knows about david said even if you've not watched a minute of CBB all of like everyone's favourite memes and reaction images are from especially that 2016 series truly

or Anne Widdicombe trying to straighten her hair and missing her head completely tell me who else is on Ekansu from

Love Island oh love Fern Britton from I mean GBB I think oh yes yes or This Morning Levi Roots from Reggae Reggae Sauce

oh the rumors were true then oh my god love that for him so they've got some good I mean they've got more people which are just like I'm totally forgetting Louis Walsh did you say that Louis Walsh is Celebrity Book Brother is it ever massive celebrities I can't remember did it used to be really famous people they had like Spencer and Heidi on wasn't Gemma Collins on with um what's Kim Kardashian's fan called yeah Jonathan Jonathan but now they're like best friends because i think now it's like a there's like a context collapsing where like the the americans don't know that these aren't are like proper jonathan cheban that's it yeah so now they're like genuinely like really good friends yeah i like that because when else are you going to see these people in a

room together it's so random and like the whole david dead was because David Bowie's ex-wife was in the house with Tiffany Pollard Angie right Angie and she said David's dead and she thought he meant David Guest who was at that time asleep in the bedroom no like they don't have context for each other in the real world so she wasn't like she must mean her ex-husband David truly Shakespearean comedy about us truly yeah and also I think they do have to be slightly people that are not going to be overly media trained

or people that kind of like don't care because but I'll be interested to see if it works I do think

like we've spoken about before sometimes it has to be a new format like I don't think Love Island is going to

work much longer they'll have to change it I think no I agree they'll have

to make like an influencer games or something yeah another person who's in it is Kate Middleton's

uncle he doesn't I've not warmed him at all it's a bit disappointing because I feel like the I agree. They'll have to make like an influencer games or something. Yeah. Another person who's in it is Kate Middleton's uncle. He doesn't, I've not warmed him at all. It's a bit disappointing because I feel like the reports I saw were that they were suggesting it was going to be her brother, her cousin, someone closer. And then it becomes,

and then it turns out it was her uncle. So I feel like the reporting made it seem juicier than it would be, the connection. People are going to tune in because obviously everyone's asking, where is Kate? Everyone's critique of Megan, a lot of it was like her dad was just about to say this guy's going on on like the relaunch of a huge a very well watched tv show who do you think would be your wayward family member that would cross you i was just about to ask this my sister yeah my sister who's eight

years younger than me literally today's already pissed me off i feel like we're constantly in a position where she'll turn against me my dad would do it but like wouldn't even think that he was saying something wrong and would like say the worst thing possible about me and just be like what's true um I feel like that's same as my dad he's so well-meaning and lovely but sometimes accidentally embarrasses me once before family came over I was like who ruined my jumper as you do I didn't know where my lint roller was and he just told everyone i was like i was like 13 i was like yeah yeah okay dad's big dad's big brother is a no-go so yeah i'm just excited i think we'll talk about it again if something crazy happens it might be a dud don't know maybe i'll give it a go did you so you would recommend watching the first episode or is that

not on catch up the thing with itv i can't stand the adverts. I can't stand watching it live. I actually pay for ITVX. I don't know why. Oh, legend. What are you watching on there? Nothing. I just haven't gone around to cancelling it. I think it's from Love Island

like five years ago. Use it for this and then do away with it. Okay. If you want to watch it, it's on ITV every night. recently there's been a trend on tiktok where women are asking fellow users on the app how old they look and the new york times spoke to a tiktok user life is cherry who participated in the trend she's 34 and many gases are close but the

gases massively range all the way up to her being in her 60s or 70s we've spoken before about how gen z's relationship with skincare and anti-aging and this new trend appears to be like tied up in that discourse around gen z apparently aging faster than other generations i actually today saw a video on x which is the first time that one of these videos has actually shocked me because I think like people are sensationalist but actually if you look at someone's face you're like I kind of get how old you are this woman in question had had quite a lot of work done filler botox whatever I happily would have said she was in her late 30s to mid 40s and she was 22 and that actually did

really surprise me but why why is this a thing do you think like what is it does seem so random but i have to say i do quite like watching them i think it's an embarrassment kink genuinely like i would never put myself out in a vulnerable position on the internet the internet's awful i do think like every time i see my sister she asks me how old I think she is Really She's my sister I'm like I know But it's asking one person That you trust Even if they are

Going to be brutally honest As I'm sure you are With your sister Yeah Who is gorgeous No but she obviously Also looks 12 This is it

And it's asking one person Even if you were like You look haggard and old Because you're in the mood To say that It's fine It's your sister Asking like

The limitless internet Literally Where are you rightfully Diagnosed Whole place I have to say I do think that a lot of Gen Z do look older than us there's the filler because I think someone who does get filler

when they don't because filler and Botox it's to arrest the signs of aging and to like you're filling in volume lost if you don't have lost volume what you're doing is you're giving yourself like you're becoming like this sort of not an ageless thing but like someone who's outside of age you don't look young anymore nor do you look ancient you look like someone who's had work done it's very odd yeah i think that's such a good way of putting it people now are so used to seeing like the social media and the way that people's skin looks and like all these skincare lines and the kardashians and stuff people doesn't don't know what real skin looks like so there's all these posts people like how do i get rid of this and it's someone just like

a zoomed in picture of their perfect pores or like a young woman with i would say great skin will be like this is what a 25 year old looks like and everyone will be like uh she looks awful so it's sad i remember the video of ariana grande where she hadn't used any smoothing filters and like her skin's got texture i like had to double check i was like oh my gosh this isn't a mistake she's just uploaded this but it was really refreshing which is wild that I have to wait for like a really rich celebrity to do it yeah normal women we're not and I'm the same like I'm I'm checking for the good light I wouldn't post a picture if I could see like certain signs I think that's quite worrying yeah do you think we've also lost what we I don't know if we ever

had a semblance of what people look like at certain ages because obviously you have 30 year olds on euphoria playing 15 year olds to 17 year olds that has always been a thing obviously with gossip girls the same problem but do you think it's gotten worse because of the amount of work that everyone has normalized getting done and the age of people getting that done is just creeping lower and lower and lower i think there's something in it in like a signifier of something in the same way that younger women are wearing designer clothes which they go you look like someone's like rich stepmom because they're wearing bags and shoes that signifies of wealth they're not necessarily looking their age because they're just mimicking

a trend so it might be that someone's getting filler or kind of like a certain blowout to look like the it girl where actually you're looking like the it woman the it mom i was thinking this about how the kardashians for example like how old is kim she's 40 something now is she and she they all kind of wear outfits that maybe young 20 year old women would wear and just by virtue of wearing that they look younger and like i've noticed it on myself if i wore a dress that someone more conservative than me or whatever would wear it would age me a lot and the way to look younger is just by dressing young but like you say the trends are like Sophia Richie the kind of quiet luxury luxury they all look like the stepmom in what's that twin film with lindsay parent trap i think that is a standard

i think women look lovely but when we're all looking like that i just think we've all we've all maybe aged ourself and no you can't tell how old anyone is so the thing i find really bizarre about this is that people are asking strangers on tiktok to review their faces and tell them how old they look but then i remember this really mortifying story and it makes me actually like erupt into shame um did you ever have this where I want to say I was like 16 or something people would post on Facebook and say something like anyone who likes this will get a compliment from me yes so I did that with a girl that I didn't really know very well because I was insecure and I wanted someone to say something nice about me she she

posted on my wall she was like um really weird that you liked my post I have no idea why you like this really awkward and I saw it and I was like oh my god oh my god delete delete sorry that's embarrassing for her that's so mean I used to do all of those things like anything for time anything for validation anything that was like like this i'll give you a compliment question boxes we did that we had a like a gossip girl scandal at my school yeah we had a gossip girl scandal at our school oh did you did you do it no oh my god they called me fat oh but it was it turned out it was actually i think it was a boy that did it as well it was a boy in my school it was a boy in the room yeah that's so true maybe this is like kind of giving juvenile it's giving like a teenager girl

will do it and they get that but when you are a big 30 something I think it's degrading to ask the big internet how old you look it's demeaning maybe it's just an excuse because you think people optimistically think that everyone's going to be like oh my god you're 30 you look 25 and then compliment you have you ever seen the internet yeah I know but i guess it's like a roundabout way of it's like a not a humble yeah it's a humble brag and it's a trend so you it's not cringe in vertical comments you're not putting yourself out there and going please give me compliments yeah please write on my wall it's i mean it's interesting the first place men go when they want to be nasty to women is go you look old and like now i'm 30 i get it all the time and i'm like i think you have to kill the ageist crone in your own head and you don't do that by asking the internet you kind of

just have to not care or at least like act as if you don't care until it's real yeah also the by the virtue of the same thing when people are like oh you don't look your age you look way younger you really don't look 30 I think that I think people are well intentioned but it's still that same age yeah it's basically shaming being 30 when i told someone that but just before my birthday that was coming up to my 30th birthday it was a man and he said oh don't worry you look great i was like what i was worried i think 30 is so young it is i'm a baby it's a gorgeous age i think all my friends are 30 i look better than ever do i i think yes no i do think it's true that women get more beautiful with age i agree and also it's the beginning of a decade so you're so young yeah i just don't like crowdsourcing

self-image i already struggle to have a clue what i look like i have no idea so i don't need to see it through the lens of strangers yeah Yeah. I don't know. I do like a bit of internet validation. You won't get it on TikTok, baby. No, baby girl. Oh, hey, I'm TikTok. I'm old, girl. The time is now

at the start of February we asked you on Instagram what book we should all read together and the winner was Penance by Eliza Clark okay I'm gonna talk normally now the time is now you You. Yes, you. We recruit you. There were loads of amazing recommendations and you can check all of them out on our Instagram feed, by the way. But let's get stuck into penance. The rest of this podcast will contain discussion

of plot points in the book. So only continue if you're ready to hear about them. But if you don't mind, stick around. And if you haven't read the book and you want to win a copy, then keep an eye out on our Instagram and we'll be telling you how you can get your hands on one penance is the second novel by eliza clark who wrote boy parts which i think all of us have read yeah yeah um the book is dressed up as a true crime novel written by the fictional journalist alec zed corelli as he attempts to construct what he claims to be the definitive account of a murder

of a schoolgirl in a run-down northern seaside town. In typical true crime fashion we hear you know journalist reporting, we hear snapshots of interviews, we hear bits of podcasts, we hear articles dissecting the murder of a girl called Joan Wilson. It's on the night of the Brexit referendum and follows three girls who are found guilty of her murder, Violet, Angelica and Dolly. The whole thing is a tapestry, I'd say, of, you know, girls at school just having the mundane just hierarchies

of battling it out to be Queen Bee and who's on the outs, then mixed with this like kind of foreboding of this horrible like really violent horrendous thing you know is coming so the whole thing is honestly super dark what did you guys think i listened to it on audiobook i was really gripped by it i found the school stuff the kind of bullying and that queen bee stuff quite triggering to the point that i wasn't expecting it because you just forget how often it happens you're like ousted from the group oh it's just the worst feeling and so that I found not that I enjoyed that bit the most but that was the bit I probably found the most gripping because it surprised me how true it felt and how much I was like god when

you're ostracized and you can't get back in oh it's that teen isolation which is which is so true like and all of the the murderers the three murderers angelica violet and dolly are all in their own way like isolated like whether it's like within family structures whether it's like by like awful things that have happened to them and then from friend groups and i was like oh my god like you have to go to school every day imagine having to go to work where like everyone's nasty to you every single day you haven't got any money you can't you don't even get to choose what you wear and then all of this going on like I thought I was over like not that I had a horrible time at school but I was like oh it it's so good she's so good at writing like that very unique like

state school in like a kind of sleepy town oh brilliant it was so political and all of the school stuff was so triggering I completely agree with you but I was so political and all of the school stuff was so triggering i completely agree with you but i was so impressed by you know the backstory of crow crow on sea i believe is the name of the seaside town um i to the point where i thought it was a real place yeah yeah like the amount of you know folklore that she has about it the history the politicians the true crime history of like this one place that constantly has these people trying to ham it up to get tourists to it say you know rely on the true crime industry to blame all of these horrible incidences saying that was ghosts and in the process paint over you know the very

real reasons which is often you know economic depravity that means that housekeepers of a hotel were still working when a hotel caught on fire and were victims of this place i also thought the idea of the murder happening on the night of the brexit referendum and there being sort of like political parties that meant that you know people wouldn't want to report to that i found that so believable because i feel like there are things like that that happen again what i think was clever was you're listening to it. And a lot of the story is this journalist is kind of putting down true crime and belittling it and saying, you know, they don't have proper resources. I'm doing it properly. There's so many layers to it because then we're listening to a story about a story that's already been told.

We actually had a message from one of our listeners, Fern Baker, who sent this on Instagram,'s eye-opening to think how much true crime i absorbed might not be fully true or biased and that is kind of the idea of the book but the irony being that when you're participating listening to the book you feel like you're more worthy because you're listening to this retelling the russian doll of the book is basically that this is also another just another true crime story yeah being taught does that make sense i'm not explaining i think i know what you mean and it is because it is the false because i don't like true crime and i'm always quite vocal about how like i think a lot of it is quite damaging i mean like modern true crime because truman capote's ink on blood is one of my favorite books of all time and that is like true crime the original true

crime but i think because this is a like a false retelling it kind of gave me license to kind of really enjoy the grisly bits and then i was listening to an interview with eliza clark and tom wait for another magazine where she talks about the real life murders that it was loosely based on and she says intentionally she knew about these murders but she didn't do any more digging because she didn't want to kind of fully base them on it and I in researching this like I went and looked at them and I read their wikipedias and I kind of had to snap myself out of it when I'm reading these like really grisly cases and being like oh my god I'm doing the thing that like I didn't want to do and I think she's sort of indirectly warning people against not doing which is like going and just like reading the worst

kind of coverage of things and like I felt a bit voyeuristic and gross because I was like oh god why am I doing this I'm always really surprised I have lots of friends that are obsessed with true crime and as we know like statistics are like especially women are obsessed and it's one of the highest grossing things but I like you Beth feel voyeuristic I feel concerned about who's profiting off the stories and sometimes I've seen clips on social media where I don't know it's a group of completely unqualified random podcasters talking about some kind of crime and they're laughing and you just think like oh it's so icky but when I was listening to the book at first I didn't think of any of that because it's fiction and I was enjoying it and then I realized oh that's so clever like it's kind of calling you out as a reader or a listener

yeah because there is enjoyment to be had yeah yeah yeah yeah completely and I get what you were saying about the Russian doll kind of structure of the book because as we said before there's you know interview pieces and there's podcast um transcripts but the bit that makes you feel like you're reading an objective bit is actually the journalist writing it through and right at the beginning the journalist has gone through a massive scandal he was um part of a phone hacking situation so this is his attempt to kind of get his own reputation you know back out there and you and he he does all of these horrendous things he basically threatens harasses um and i think at

one point like bribes some of the families to get um yeah to get their testimonies so he's awful and then so the bit when it's like done in third person is the most objective we'll ever get to the story but ultimately is done through the voice of this very disgusting horrendous journalist so you know that he's just imbued it with like all of his judgments he's you know spoken for all of the characters involved and he's just written this like completely subjective story that has nothing to do with the actual murders potentially i think what's interesting what kind of allows you into false sense of security that maybe this person is telling a true story is because there is a level of empathy towards the girls that are the murderers

and so it feels like oh is this objective because initially we the victim Joni were like obviously she's the victim so you feel bad for her but then there's this whole character arc where you learn more about her and you start to think like not is there justice in this but you start to think oh okay so she's not this part and so there's something about that fullness of all what we what appears to be a really full story that makes you think it gives you a level of understanding which makes things easier to listen to because you're like oh okay well maybe we need to know this side of the story but actually like it's really self-serving because actually what he's doing is writing a book with yeah like first person when he's not actually they're not first person accounts it's it's a fictionalized retelling of like you know the facts not facts and and it is

him trying to like write a bestseller and it's so interesting that he is this kind of smarmy upper middle class like it says he went to the same school as like louis through and charles car and in these like real i think she roots in reality like with the phone hacking like the news of the world phone hacking yeah does it really well and of course it's this like kind of already rich man he says a few times it's not the finance he's worried about it's his reputation because he's been like cancelled dropped he's like clawing back and it thinks he's the arbiter of truth it's kind of reminding me of natalie portman's character in may december when she goes as this actress that's going to retell this really important story but it's actually just posturing and it's kind of just about her

experience as this vehicle with which to tell this story and actually none of it was really about that couple no and and like that story he inserts himself into the lives of these victims and by victims i mean joni's mum um you know what's her name jade's mum jade as well and even even the families of the girls who murdered joni they obviously couldn't control what their children did but he inserts himself they're trying to get on with their lives and he just makes it all about him he's not objective at all he's not he's not as a journalist should be he constantly like talks to them puts himself in the interviews like does all this stuff which is i think yeah just eliza clark just painting an even bigger picture that this is not a journalist really this is a person

who's like constantly just thinking about himself and constantly like at the end of the day driven by his own desire to rehab his image and not naming names but in the british media circuit that are those journalists there are so many of those smug privately educated men who yeah who kind of like do away with like journalistic practice because they really go to big so i think she's really taking aim at them the thing that i kept thinking when i was reading it is just how similar the vibe of incel radicalization among young men felt to the way that these girls were getting drawn and sucked into the tumblr fan fiction around yeah honestly like gruesome murderers in the us i was just thinking about this we've spoken about fan culture before we've spoken about true crime fans is there an aspect of true crime fan culture that is comparable to the incel movement he mentions the way that Dolly spoke about uh what is it she uses creepers but she uses like

a girl's name that basically was one of the people that the murderer shot, that she's obsessed with. And in the book, the journalist says, in the way that incels talk about a Stacey, Dolly used to talk about this girl's name and would be like, oh, this girl at school is such a gene. I think that was the name. It was because, so this, the girl's name

was the girl that had rejected one of these school shooters. And so she's, yeah, that's a really good point. And I guess it's you and Eliza Clark drawing these, I just completely missed me by when i was reading it i was just thinking i i know that they are two very different things but i think there are some parallels between the kinds of radicalization you can get and even the ways that you know uh viola sees herself as being an edgelord in this movement and she's just like you know ironically being part of the true crime stuff but

really she is part of the murder at the end of the day. And I think that really reminds me of the ways that young men can often just like lurk these kind of forums like 4chan and stuff like that. They think they're just like laughing at the memes. They think they're, you know, above it all. But ultimately, there is a tipping point and a slippery slope when they are actually part of this movement and they are just consuming that content and they are radicalized. You get poisoned by it. Do you know what else is the thing i think there's a bit towards the end when he's talking about his daughter and he's talking about how everyone kind of notices that angelica's not been online on the forums and then when they realize joni's died or like whatever's

happened and initially they're all egging them on and then when it goes wrong they suddenly start writing like oh my god i'm so sad you've gone but they weren't replying at the time and it was making me think of like the be kind the whole caroline flat thing which we've seen play out time and time again where someone is being ridiculed online it gets the nth degree and then all those same people that were egging them on then are like oh my god i can't believe you're saying this but will level the same amount of vitriol at the perpetrator it's kind of like a vicious cycle yeah it's just nastiness yeah we all kind of and everyone thinks okay but i'm being nasty to the

the right person and actually if there is if we are going to say be kind and like we have to behave better the 2010s especially i think was nasty for that and a lot of it happened in these like kind of internet subcultures that pass a lot of us by whereas like teen girls from like 2009 onwards are like deep in these spaces and their parents often didn't know so we had a message from becky williams on instagram he said i mostly loved it how unsettling it was the multiple perspectives the northern seaside town but i can't fully enjoy a novel so entrenched in online culture that's fair despite the fact that I've written a book about being an influencer I also agree when it's too much about social media or it's too much about your phone there's something I find quite frustrating about reading a book which is my escape from going on my phone and it being about

being on your phone what do you guys think oh I don't have that at all I think because I am just obsessed by the internet and love reporting on it and love thinking about it talking about it that didn't honestly bother me it just made me kind of rethink about certain stuff that I'm already obsessed with so I loved it I felt similarly because I did find it I found it really interesting and I was aware enough of tumblr I was never in these spaces um but I didn't know they exist until now but I understood like you know a lot of the references I was like oh I get that I know what that acronym means so I but I did wonder reading it what's the appeal for this because this is done so well but what is the appeal beyond like the sort of millennial woman reader in the UK because I I was

thinking like a lot of this is very heavily online if I was my own dad for example this is a really well written worthy book but would I get into it and enjoy it with like no real touchstones to know because like I'd find it enjoyable because I was like oh my god Tumblr I was on there if I had never used Tumblr I hadn't heard of it I don't know that I would get the same enjoyment even though I think it's quite a good true crime novel so I think it was really fun reading a book together and getting to have this chat we should definitely do it again what do you think that was a really good first book i think yeah yeah i enjoyed it it's it's so nice because there's nothing more annoying than reading a book and then relax your friend read it and then

they read it like six months later and you forgot more the worst thing when you kind of say someone okay i'll add it to the list there's no list oh my god no i have a list oh it's not real but it's added to the list i'm like mentally that's going on the list whereas this one was the law we all had to read it yeah um yes please can we do it again so keep letting us know your thoughts about the book messages dms we'd love to keep the conversation going i think on our instagram page thank you so much for listening as always please do remember to take a look at the show notes if there's anything that you want to deep dive into we put the links for it all down there we'd love it also if you would leave us a review and definitely do follow us over at everything is content pod on instagram we love

to hear from you and when you don't talk to us it makes us sad so dm us comment and we'll chat again soon thanks so much for listening bye 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 richira sharma and anoni the producer is faye lawrence and the executive producer is james norman fife