LadyGang - LG QUICKIE: SCENE QUEEN MEMORIES

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

Today's episode is the ultimate elder emo breakdown. From livejournal to her Myspace top 8, how did Jac Vanek become queen of the scene? And what happened to the other scene queens like Audrey Kitching and Hanna Beth? We're paying tribute to artistic selfies, manic panic and hot topic.  Check out our great sponsors!!! Origins: Check out the new Youthtopia line from Origins! Shop now at Origins.com/youthtopia  Skims: Shop the SKIMS Soft Lounge Collection at SKIMS.com (Now available in sizes XXS - 4X) AFTER YOU PLACE YOUR ORDER, select "podcast" in the survey and select “LadyGang” from the dropdown menu! Huggies: Get your baby’s butt into Huggies’ best fitting diaper! Huggies Little Movers. We got you, baby.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's time for a quickie. Podcast one presents the Lady Gang, the Hollywood girl posse with Lady Gang Quickie. Here's Kelty Knight, Becca Tobin and Jack Vanek. Let's make this quick. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Lady Gang Quickie. I am back here with Jack and Kelty. Hello.

Today is a very Jack focused episode. So a lot of times, a lot of times Becca and I will get into like New York and like we had um we had victoria from dcc and we're like talking a lot about new york and dance and how we met and then jack's just like what is dance you know and so i felt like it was time for you for you to get your flowers jack oh great so this is all about you today and actually this was requested by the members of our facebook group is that people were like jack never talks about her scene queen days in detail and we we really want to know and they gave me a list of things they want to know. But if you're a Becca, you may not know about the scene queen days. You may not

understand what they were. And so I have stolen a paragraph from Nylon magazine and I'm going to use it as the introduction to Jack. I'm putting my reading glasses on. Here we go. George W. Bush is president of the United States. Everyone is quoting Borat. A little known country singer named taylor swift has just released her first album and most of our leisure time is spent online at a website called myspace there you can upload the selfie you took on your brand new digital camera leave a flirty message in alternating caps on your crush's wall and set your favorite taking back sunday song to blast every time someone clicks your name my state myspace was the creation of a mysterious man known simply as tom but by then it was clear who really

ruled the site it was the era of the scene queens and they were at the top of the world or at least the top of your eight they controlled the blogosphere with a heavy hand of eyeliner and a searing hot flat iron mingling offline with some of the era's biggest bands effectively making them the objects of obsession on live journal and beyond and then just as quickly as ryan ross left panic at the disco they all but disappeared from the mainstream rude or did they and how exactly did a group of spiky haired cartoon loving teen girls become bonafide celebrities overnight with nothing more than a dial up modem and access to manic panic and a hot topic wow well that has nothing to do with me but no but this was just about the scene oh yeah well actually

this was the introduction and then there was the eight of you and where you ended up okay yeah so you were a part of it you were part of it okay so what was live journal okay well live journal was like that was where i started that was before myspace like a tumblr like we write yeah it was like a tumblr it was just like write your journal like reddit like a public journal no it was a public journal yeah it was an online journal i'm shocked you didn't know like truly this is where you would have thrived as well oh my god how did you not have never heard of it i didn't have a computer i think for a while myspace was my first internet thing okay okay so live journal you posted like here's what i'm doing today it's thursday yes but like a lot of my live journal

was about going to shows and like meeting band guys but i started it when i was like 15 so it's still like my parents were driving me to the show and if i was listening to your live journal i would follow your live journal and i would get the updates i don't even i think that you would follow people i think so but it was so funny back in the day like i was huge on live journal and i think i had like 2 000 followers on it like your world was so much smaller back in the day because there wasn't many people on the internet right but and I don't even know how people really found other people on live journal like it's weird having like virality in the very beginning of social media when like I don't know how it happened right it was very weird um and so

you would just talk about what mostly I mean I talk about like just my life like what I was doing very dramatically um a lot of which I stole from Ryan Ross a lot of third eye blind lyrics a lot like a lot of um like taking lyrics from multiple songs and rearranging them to like really show what you're thinking yeah um and then yeah i mean and then going to shows and that's how i think it took off because there was like you know girls falling from middle of america that weren't going to shows that were like living vicariously could you post photos you could post photos that's where all my photos were oh well all of them were on photo you go to photo bucket upload them to photo bucket put it in with html yeah it was like a whole process but yeah i mean i it sucks because they all

photo bucket expired so you can't even find all of your that's what i'm saying about this our generations it's like photos just disappear hey it's there's no way to like keep them it's so crazy but my mom did save so many of my live journal entries online printed out on paper no i have like hundreds of pages would she read it in real time yes and you knew she was reading it i mean my mom was the queen of like knowing about that every single she didn't tell you she knew it she knew everything that was going on she knew every conversation i was having but she was very good at like not getting in the middle of something unless like there was a problem which there like never was but see you have a healthy relationship with your mom

and i'm wondering like how you how she was able to navigate it because i have other girlfriends whose mom snooped and literally knew every word they ever wrote everything like all the conversations and they had they had so much resentment because they felt like their privacy had been ruined so i never really knew that she did it until like later in life and she would this is how she said that she would like approach me about it like if there was something i was talking to somebody about but i was like a really good kid so it's not like i was doing drugs or like sneaking out but she would be like she'd like i approached it in a way where i was like oh hey i was watching oprah and on this they were saying uh that you know what is this thing with weed like

she would present it in a way that she kind of heard somebody else talking about it and then sort of like lightly brought it that old trick but would you blow it off and be like come on mom no because i was like i don't know i was a good kid yeah you didn't ever pick up on it you're like that's so weird because i just wrote this on live journal there was one time that i remember her like busting into my room because i posted about smoking a clove cigarette when i was like 16. Oh my God. She's like, you need to delete that right now. Oh my God. She was looking out for me though. I mean, it was also in your, in her defense, it was a live journal that was available to the public. She wasn't like reading your journals that are locked away in your drawer.

I remember that little lock. What? The little lock on their journal. I thought it was so safe. Yeah. You're like, nobody's going to read this. Yeah. No, I'm like, yeah, college admissions, people could read it. Yeah. No, that's probably right. Okay. When, when, okay. So then you move over to my space well no i moved to friendster first did you what is friendster friendster was pre-my space um it was basically the same kind of thing but no bells and whistles like it was just like a blue and white page and that was like the original like people finder oh and again i had like 200 friends on it and i'm like i'm famous yeah so funny famous okay so then my space and what do you think like okay so did you know other scene queens in real life like who was copying who

that's the thing that i think is so interesting is i never remember looking at anybody for inspiration for what i was doing but like at the same time well you go back and you look up scene queens it was like me audrey kitching yeah hannah beth yeah we were the three and then there was a bunch of like randoms like around us yeah but i'm like i don't know what i was looking at for inspiration i was just like you know what i want a raccoon tail in my hair but like you didn't because there's no pinterest there's no no were there magazines like the way that i read like tiger beat no not for like emo kids right yeah it wasn't mainstream we kind of decided it was weird and went for it like i think that like audrey and i because audrey was the one that

did a brendan uri so we dated them at the same time like we'd like go off each other and she was very like creative and weird so and like doing i don't know we kind of like bounced off of each other but then yeah it's funny because i'm like i don't there was no nowhere to look up anything and it was such an original like emo style was such an original style but it wasn't like instagram now where there's a lot of emo people following a lot of emo people on myspace so they're just sort of being inspired by each other's pictures yeah like i think that's what it ended up turning out to be right so like you were like oh let's wear like these shirts over a lace dress with the ripped things yeah and then all of a sudden everyone would be wearing

yeah or like from music videos maybe from but that was like happening kind of after like I mean like this because the scene would kind of it was like expanding but I yeah it was just it was very bizarre because I look back and try to think about it I'm like who was I like who is my girl yeah and I'm like nobody yeah I was just like I want to sew my jean skirt like this and I want to put a patch like this and I wanted to dye my hair black and my mom wouldn't let me and then that was just like kind of did you ever have black hair i had my mom let me do a black streak right here oh my god black just one little black streak so funny okay and then where did you have the ideas for the photo shoots like you know i remember remember kim kardashian was like i invented the

selfie or parasol yeah i invented the selfie or whatever but like it was almost happening at the same time they were doing like glamorous selfies well that's how i was expressing myself i would be like i'd be like listening to this band and then i'm like okay it's like taking back sunday and like what do these lyrics mean to me always in a bathtub because it was like i was at my parents house and i had my dad's like canon camera but did you have a tripod i had a tripod like i was a master of the selfie yeah no i know we're kind of mine were cool and creative like for the time um but yeah i was always in a bathroom because i'm like i have my room in my bathroom that's the two locations more like my parents backyard and that was it yeah it was

i love doing it though it like really was i like look back on it and i'm like oh i wish i had that like no regard and no shame and i just express myself like that because it was how do you think that's why you and i are both so triggered by people who are still expressing themselves very deeply on the internet probably because we selfishly or secretly want to be able to do yes I'm like all the cells are like anything creative I don't know I I really it was such a big thing for like yeah for me yeah when was the first time that you realized like I'm like famous on the internet I mean it was it was on live journal because people would start it was when I would I think I got bullied for the first time like online bullied before it was a thing like

online bullying wasn't a thing right in the day and it was when people were spreading rumors and saying that i had stds from all the guys i slept with and all the abortions that i had when i was like 17 years old and i think that was the first thing i getting comments from people i didn't know that were just like making up shit about me that's so weird what was the first time you made money off being a scene queen other than jack vanek brand that was it i mean there was you couldn't you couldn't monetize on myspace right or people weren't no no i mean it was weird that i was doing that i feel like i was one of the first people that like tried to sell anything like as an influencer that for remember forbidden do you remember her she had like bleach blonde hair

like more of like a like a playboy kind of like a vibe but like goth anyway she had like a jean line and she went on tyra banks and stuff and that was like weird everybody's like oh why does she have a brand she's just like a myspace girl um but yeah that was like the first nobody was making any money off of it and everybody thought that like being myspace famous they're like well what are you gonna do with that that's not gonna get you a job right there's a lot of times where i'm like i gotta figure out like what my job's gonna be because like being famous on the internet it's not gonna do anything do you think you were more confident then or now in different ways yeah i think i was more shameless back in the day yeah like i didn't

really care what people thought of me but I think I was also really insecure at the same time it was like a weird dichotomy yeah um I think that's a lot of young women right like yeah like you're putting yourself out there in really weird ways yeah yeah and like not such a strange thing yeah you were like I'm more reserved now you're more delusional like just kind of like whatever this is going out there I'm going to be my freest self and not worry but then it's probably the year you're you're actually more of a whole person now oh yeah but the years of the internet bullying and people having an opinion about everything about you has broken you down that you're more cautious about what you post that's like yeah while you became a better like more full human

you're like more precious about what goes out yeah because it's like back in the day you're sharing like all of your thoughts and feelings and again i was like a privileged white kid from orange county so i'm like i wasn't going through any like uh major yeah like traumas or anything like that but i it definitely makes you more cautious for sure okay when we come back we're getting the tea on all the other scenes the lady gang this is the list from the lady gang facebook group do not get mad at me people are very interested in how you met audrey and like how you became friends and if you were really that close or if it was just the scene i mean i met her because she started dating brendan i think that they met online too i mean everybody met

online back in the day yes except for you and ryan um and then it was like a circumstantial friendship because you're both dating at the same time yeah and that's when the internet like blew up because they're like the two scene queens dating like the two main guys from panic at the disco and it was like this like but it was so short three months and then from then on she became audrey you became jack she dated brendan longer than me and ryan i think for like a few months not long yeah because she wasn't dating him when you started dating him right no no um he was dating um britney britney who a little brunette named britney oh um he brought her as a date to the vmas that's why i remember because none of the guys had dates oh um yeah it was like

circumstantial and then she like we're very different so yeah she like did her own thing and i did my own thing where did she end up where is she now i don't know i don't think it's like a weird i don't think anybody knows really yeah like showing the scavenger no like i think she thinks she lives in pennsylvania or something and kind of like not in the public she was like selling crystals for a while i think right i remember she had her post scene queen brand was very like hippie oriented i even bought some sage off of her oh yeah i'm easily influenced by the scene queens you know i guess um yeah i don't know i'm not sure so but you guys did a zillion photo shoots well that was our thing but it was all within like a thing of like three months

that's why the internet's so funny because it's something that people have held on forever and it was so it feels like you're doing this for years it was so short-lived like a few months it was three months was that like the high of the whole experience like you guys both dating the two main guys in the band i mean it's like the penny lean it's iconic it is iconic it was iconic because it was that like it really set the scene for like what the scene was yeah and i think for whatever like the wannabe scene queens are like oh i can date this guy and this guy okay do you know why they broke up no did she give you any advice when you guys broke up no okay close friendship yeah wasn't okay there was a girl named zoey suicide yeah what's her name and what's what

she where she knows she was like after audrey and i stopped being friends and they sort of did a like a thing she was more like goth not gothy but i kind of remember well suicide was her stage name right yeah so that made yeah yeah it was more black hair right black hair i think tattoos it was more of like the alt sort of more like not even emo but like alt um so then they became like besties and like tried to do the same kind of thing and i think they tried to do a reality show oh really yeah okay then there's hannah beth who i knew yeah because by the time buzz net was happening I was a buzz maker and Hannah Beth was a buzz maker and I thought Hannah Beth oh she was like fashion queen she was so cool yeah I remember at the but we did like this

photo shoot for influencers and I was like I don't belong here because like everyone was so cool she just had like the best clothes she had like weird tattoos her whole like house was like wallpapered in fur like it was just like very kitschy so kitschy um so were you friends with her yeah i was friends with her i always loved her she was always like super sweet and so like the three of us me her and audrey were friends for must have been less than three months no and but we did all these photos together that like lived on the internet again for like a long time that people like were obsessed with you're like a supermodel in the 90s like those images of cindy crawford like funny you never forget it and you're like i've lived i've eaten like feed the children

for the last 30 years that same photo yeah but i always loved hannah we like stayed close for a while, like on and off, but she's, I think she's off doing her own thing. Yeah. What is she? She like, it kind of actually made me sad. I went, I did go check out when I was researching. I was like, I want to know what Hannah Beth is doing and not sad. Cause I don't know what's going on in her life, but it's like, it's crazy to me that, and this is what happens with like hot. And I mean like sexy hot, I mean just like hot things on the internet. It's like, you're so big on the thing that you blew up on and then moving on. So it's like, when I looked at Hannah, I was like oh my god you were like the alex earl yeah of my space like couldn't have been a cooler it

girl on the planet and then to be like trying to like make inst be relevant on instagram it's like kind of hurt it kind of hurts your soul it's all it's all relative it's like the hottest girl from high school the homecoming queen like you know she goes on with her life and she does all the things and it's like not peaking because but it's true i've just been very lucky that i've been very scrappy when it comes to pivoting and doing different things because I, there are a lot of people that you like look up and you're like, Oh, got the same vibe going on. It seems like you're kind of doing the same thing. And like, yeah, it's yeah. I follow Chris Cabrera from dashboard on Tik TOK. Oh yeah. And it's like kind of depressing to be honest with you. Like I love

dashboard. Did you ever listen to dashboard confessional? Like I remember going to shows and being like, Oh my God, there's Chris. Like he was so vibey and so emotional and that like he did this mtv unplugged that not that time and it was like just like in a shiplap kitchen now no he's they're still touring no they're still touring and they're still doing things but you're watching them and you're like i can't believe you have 11 000 followers like oh you're just like they're still selling out huge tours so don't feel bad for him okay but i'm just like i don't know no he's trying really hard on the internet like me like i feel you and it's like not so he's putting a lot of effort in a lot oh wow well that's yeah it's yeah when you see somebody like you're doing

this the same thing that i remember you doing 15 years ago is like a weird look not as cool though that i don't want to see rock stars in their natural habitat i do not i mean i want the natural habitat to only be on stage yeah i do not want to see you with all your tattoos and your eyeliner in a grocery store never it actually or in your your like normal looking house like it weirds me out and it takes away all the mystique for me out well that's what i think the main does a really good job with that like they're very like there's like a mystery to them still because they and i always i'm like jared like let's do more stuff on social media he's like well he just freezes in front of a camera so that's his own thing but like they they keep it

very separate while also connecting with their fans really well like yeah but it is very it's not like let's like do a tiktok trend yeah yeah should we be more elusive that's too late yeah okay i have two more kiki cannonball who i have no idea who that is i don't really no either why didn't you have an alias yeah why don't you have a weird name i think because i was thank god i don't number one that would have been so cool i what would it have been i think the reason why i don't is because when i was in high school when i was 16 i got my first job being a photographer at absolute punk.net which was like the biggest music website and that's where i was like oh my god i'm a professional working lady you know i wasn't paid it was an unpaid internship

basis no it was an unpaid job okay um but anyways that labor i had to have like a like my username on it that's that's why i started going by jack because jacqueline vanik was too long to fit in the username so i just did jack vanik and that's the reason why i go by jack whoa but i think because of that and people knew me because of that before i went to my origin story had already begun yeah but i'm really glad because i probably would have picked something so dumb yeah and it wouldn't have transferred all these years later to this level of fame on the podcast yeah i couldn't be like jack murder vixen or something yeah yeah and you would have picked something weird like and you actually probably would have i think renamed a serial killer into like a jack so it'd

be like jackery dommer or something like that you know what i mean that was like really inappropriate and then like no brands would want to wait i know this is off topic but it's also about jack um i need to know do you think scott peterson killed lacey peterson oh my god this is a whole thing i need to know i which documentary have you watched recently i'm only doing right now netflix okay so you need to watch the peacock one after okay okay the netflix documentary were you done no but that's okay no no i'm done this is actually a great ending the last one was jeffree star who i know is like you're not really friends with that okay so that was it that was sorry sorry the children been burning question inside of me that i've been meaning to ask jack i will say

i was not there i don't know if he did it or not all that he was convicted on was circumstantial evidence yeah and like a character assassination like there was no physical evidence that tied him to that crime at all and all the media coverage all the media coverage the entire time was so biased yeah and once the police decided that he was their guy like he was their guy and then once amber fry came out they're like it was over for him yeah but there were so many things that were happening there was a um burglary across the street the same day that she went missing they did like the toxicology report and the autopsy on her unborn son and he was like three weeks older than he would have been if he was killed that day so it's like literally physically impossible for

that to have happened and there's like a lot of these like wait what do you mean like she lived another three weeks okay say so she was killed on december 24th it was that it was christmas eve so when they did the autopsy on connor like the unborn child it said that he was older than that like he was like three weeks older than being killed on that day so like the theory would be that like somebody maybe kidnapped them and she was alive for longer than that but i like even now they're not amazing at knowing exactly when you get pregnant and how old your fetus is like a due like yeah they could do measuring and back then i could see there being a three-week discrepancy discrepancy because what year was this nah 2002 i think yeah i feel like there's a good chance that

that he probably they maybe were just measuring him wrong at the doctor i mean well it wasn't at the doctor it was an autopsy no i know but at her doctor's appointments when she was alive they were like you're about six weeks right now like guessing the day of conception so they might have just had an assumption of like how her own doctor was like yeah she was 30 weeks pregnant or whatever but she could have been 33 weeks pregnant right right i mean i don't know i'm not a doctor um but i will say just with everything it's just the people it's the same thing with like the john bonnet case i think that there's been this narrative of exactly what something was and it's based on a lot of just media bias um so allegedly the peacock documentary is a more like

unbiased look and then there's also if you really want to get into it there's an episode of this podcast called robbie and ellen solve the case they did an episode on scott peterson going through like the exact timeline and there's just so much shit that the police just were like this doesn't fit our story right so we're not going to use it so we're not going to use it it's not going with our case it's not matching what our case should be this was the weirdest thing kelty so he had a mistress that came out later yeah and he told the mistress two days before it's so bad two days before lacy disappeared he told the mistress he was he had to admit to her that he had been married because another person had told her or had told him hey i know that you're married you need to

tell this girlfriend of yours that you're married so he did tell the girlfriend but the way that he said it was i was married and my wife actually passed away this was two days before she died amber fry stuff is so bad it's so bad but that's circumstantial evidence like that's still not they didn't find any no totally but like sometimes circumstantial evidence is enough to be like but you can't put somebody on death row with circumstantial evidence but that's crazy it's enough to be like okay i think we've got our guy maybe it's it's horrible but i will say do i think he did it probably do i think he got a fair trial no and do i think he deserves a neutral yes like i just yeah for sure that's that's my if there's ever a doubt you have to give it's not beyond

reasonable doubt right like and if that's just crazy you can put somebody on death row for that see on death row yes well they just took him off death row he was on death row for like 20 years they just took him off and then the la innocence project is taking on his case and they only take on cases that have like a really good probability of maybe finding something and the last thing i'll say about this there was they thought it was like a kid or no there was a theory that it could have been a kidnapping there was a burned van that they found a couple blocks away from their house that had a like a bloody rag in it and they never sent it in for testing and this was like at the exact time that she got kidnapped so the la innocence project is like kelsey wouldn't they

have known if she had been burned i think i or they don't know after they use the yeah i don't they're the truck was burned so i'm sure they're trying to burn whoever was trying to burn the truck um but yeah they don't have a murder look or a murder scene murder location uh murder weapon murder time like it's just there's it's crazy the amount of things that were kind of that it's all just circumstantial sorry on that note i'm so sorry i just needed this so excited that you were jack vanek scene queen so that you could be jack vanek podcasting queen and if you want to hear more of jack and her element which is not allegedly what's happening in social in in celebrity culture on here on the lady gang it's her actual real element the first degree podcast

is not this podcast but it is available wherever you get your podcast and it's jack doing what she just did which is actually fascinating and i will be tuning in okay we weren't here for a long time we're here for a really murderous time thank you so much for listening the lady gang is produced by steve delameter stacy para jared monaco and social support from amy ryerson it really means the world to us when you show up in our community outside the podcast so sign up for our secret facebook group just search the lady gang under groups follow us on instagram and tiktok at the lady gang and the most important thing you can do is share this episode with a friend we would love that so much thanks for listening

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