Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) - zoë roth the disaster girl: a lifetime of virality

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

When Zoë Roth was four years old, her dad snapped a photo of her in front of a neighborhood home being burned with its owners permission to clear the land -- and the rest is internet history. This week, Jamie goes in depth with Zoë twenty years later about becoming a meme just as she started to form memories, how she's chosen to interact (or not interact) with it over the years, and why she chose to forge her own path. Also, a deep dive into meme managers, and why there are so many dead cats with representation. Get tickets to the Bechdel Cast show at Dynasty Typewriter here: https://www.dynastytypewriter.com/calendar-squad-upSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This technology is already solving so many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's Black Business Month, and Money and Wealth Podcast with John Hope Bryant is tapping in. I'm breaking down how to build wealth, create opportunities, and move from surviving to thriving. It's time to talk about ownership, equity, and everything in between. Black and brown communities have historically been last in life. Let me just say this.

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Listen to The Unwanted Sorority, new episodes every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? Answer, a new podcast called Wisecrack, where a comedian finds himself at the center of a chilling true crime story. Does anyone know what show they've come to see? It's a story. It's about the scariest night of my life. This is Wisecrack, available now.

Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. CallZone Media. Hello, 16th minute listeners, Jamie here. Just reminding you that if you're in the L.A. area, or even if you're not, we're doing a big Bechtelcast celebration show. That is my movie podcast that I co-host with Caitlin Durante, at Dynasty Typewriter, right after the Oscars on March. second at 730. It's going to be a big show with all of our favorite guests from the show in attendance. We are going to be cosplaying as Oscar winners. We're going to be talking about the ceremony. And we're just going to be doing stand-up and celebrating women in film.

How about it? So you can get tickets IRL still if you are interested. And if you're not in the area, we are also selling streaming tickets that you can get at the link in the description. See you there. Enjoy the episode. Name a story about becoming famous as a kid that is normal. You kind of can't, like it's an abnormal state of affairs. But we only really see a couple different kinds of narratives that are centered around this kind of fame. The first is this big breakout moment where a kid who enjoys performing does so on a larger scale than most kids could dream of. In a lot of cases, we're led to Marvel at their media training.

Wow, they're a little adult. McCulley Culkin comes to mind. Did you want to go into the business, or did your mom and dad think it would be a good thing for you? How did it happen? Well, it just kind of popped up. Like, my friend, well, she was the stage manager. So, like, um... At a Broadway show, though, right?

Off Broadway. Yeah. Or, as the case may be, wow, they're a little sex object. Here is Natalie Portman reflecting on her career as a kid. Being sexualized as a child, I think, took away from my own sexuality because it made me afraid. And it made me feel like the way that I could be safe was to be like, I'm conservative and I'm, you know, like, serious and you should respect me and I'm smart. And like, don't look at me that way. And then we get a variation on a few adult narratives for former child stars.

There's the where did they go narrative, which is almost always answered by they're a person, they have a normal life in their normal. There's the kid that moves seamlessly into stardom as an adult, occasionally referencing the more uncomfortable parts of child stardom in interviews. There is the most troubling outcome where a child star grows into a very troubled adult for myriad reasons, whether it's the lingering effects of financial or parental exploitation, abuse. at the hands of exploitative Hollywood types or any mix of mental health and substance abuse issues that could happen to anybody and can be exacerbated by the pressure of living so publicly so young. Because while there are plenty of redemption narratives on a longer timeline for stars like this, most young celebrities who either struggle or are just normally rebellious like kids are, are shamed in the moment, which is never in the history of the world helped anybody.

But as time goes on, the nature of child stardom has changed with entertainment mediums. A lot of the narratives that I grew up with focused on kids that got their start in film or TV, or may have been discovered online and then made the transition to film and TV and never looked back. So how did it happen? Did someone call you and say, hey, I saw your song on YouTube? Well, first, basically, I got this email from, was it? I think it was like Mori Popovich. Oh, yeah. He wanted me on his show to do this competition.

And my mom was like, no. There was a whole generation of millennial and Gen Z musicians who were discovered either on YouTube or SoundCloud. And slowly, you'd stop hearing stories about kids being discovered at the mall and started hearing about them being found online. And the ethics there are just as murky, if not further complicated by that.

But the pursuits here are pretty consistent. Music, acting, occasionally dance. The exploitation has been terrifyingly consistent, launching kids into a world that they and often their families have no understanding of and into a pretty exploitative industry while they're really vulnerable. But when the internet took over, there was this new separate group of kids who became famous just because they did. Sure, some had posted something online themselves, but in the internet as a void sense, not in the sense that it was attempting to be noticed or famous in any meaningful way. And in the last few years, we've started to hear from the now adult former children, surely there's an easier way to say that, who were turned into lifestyle content before they could possibly. consent to it. These young adults are the result of family vlogs and reality TV, kids that don't have performance aspirations, but who are conditioned to view their life as a performance for others, even if things are remarkably different for them when the cameras turn off.

Now we're going to go to our GMA exclusive with the eldest daughter of mom influencer Ruby Frankie, who pleaded guilty to child abuse last year. Sherry Frankie is now sharing her story in a new book, including allegations about her mom's relationship with her former mentor. But in the not too distant past, for some kids, their fame online was out of the control of them, their parents, and basically everybody. These are people whose old home videos were uploaded before a lot of people understood what happened when viral fame came their way. A prominent example is, the parents of the Charlie Bit Me kids were not expecting or trying for their video.

to become a global household topic. And in the case of some early meme stars, the moment or image that goes viral wasn't even uploaded by them. And in some cases, was a photo or video clip that was from years ago. I jump right to the Irma Gerd Girl, if you were on the internet in 2012.

Here she is telling BuzzFeed about how she learned this old image had been posted of her years later. I started getting messages. from my mom wondering why my photo was all over the internet and that there was some kind of German writing on my photo and it was all over and I was like okay mom I know she does not know how the internet works so I just ignore her but then I get a message from a friend from high school and she says hey just so you know this other guy who went to high school with is sharing that

photo of you all over Facebook and I did end up messaging him like hey I wouldn't mind if you just ask but it's really strange you just doing this without my consent like what's going But no matter how one becomes famous, whether they're at the Oscars or assigning booms to snack foods on TikTok, there is this underlying expectation that no matter how fame comes your way, you should probably want it, right? At this point, to suggest you wouldn't want it can be regarded as kind of weird or an anomaly. I mean, we've even talked about it on this show with Matt Pissero, the Wicked Witch of the East Bro. But there's something especially bizarre to me when this logic is applied to kids who have grown up online. It's such a cultural

assumption that everyone would want this, that it's treated as superhumanly humble to not be internet famous. And as bleak as that can sound, it's not based on nothing. Tech understandably has shifted kids' aspirations. Just think of all those fear-mongering clickbait articles that say kids used to want to be teachers. Kids today want to be YouTubers. Should we kill them? What I think does hold true is that a desire to be prominent is assumed, especially somewhere like the U.S. So what happens if you're a kid who becomes internet famous and you're kind of not into it? It was a normal day in Mebay, North Carolina, in 2005, when the first of the world. Roth family smelled smoke. They walked outside and saw a few blocks down. There was a house on fire.

They panicked at first, but were soon put at ease. The burn was a controlled one planned by the local fire department, and the home had actually been donated by a family that was hoping to clear that plot of land. So Father Dave took his kids Tristan and Zoe over to watch the burn along with a few others in the neighborhood. And Dave was an amateur photographer, so he brought his camera. There's actually a few photos from this day that are memorable. Tristan was a huge Harry Potter kid. It was 2005, many such cases, and he was dressed up as Harry basically all the time. So a kid in a wizard costume in front of a burning house, pretty good, pretty weird. But Zoe, who was only four at the time, was operating on another level.

She wasn't wearing a costume, but a pink t-shirt and a sandy brown bob that only a four-year-old girl could pull off. And she was transfixed by the fire. Her dad told her that no one was inside the house and it was okay, but that's kind of a weird concept for a four-year-old to wrap their head around. But after a while, she seems to get it and cannot stop staring at this fire. So when Dave tells her to turn around so he can take a picture, Zoe, just turns over her shoulder and smiles in what she'll later describe as, my smile at the time, a closed-lipped smile with her head tilted slightly down. It's adorable, but as Zoe's dad noticed at the time, it's also a little menacing.

And a few years later, this image would inspire the internet. Because if you look at this picture, a four-year-old girl smirking in front of a house on fire, it kind of looks like she did it. But did she want the fame that comes with being a viral star? Well, that's another story completely. Zoe Roth, aka Disaster Girl, your 16th minute starts now. I'm not so bad when you turn up the lights, but I can't be perfect all in the time. So let me a star.

Take it too far Then give me one more More Let's see Yeah Let's 60 minute of fame Sixteen minute of fame

Sixteen Sixteen minute of faith Sixteen Sixteen minute of phase One more minute of me I'm not so bad

I'm not so bad when you're saying Welcome back to 16th minute, the podcast where we take a look at the Internet's main characters, see how their viral moment affected them, and what that moment says about us and the Internet. I'm your host, Jamie Loftus, and this week I am delivering a long-requested episode of this show, an OG meme-girlie, Zoe Roth, aka Disaster Girl. And yes, I did get the chance to speak with Zoe, and she is just so lovely, I feel like a proud auntie talking to her. That interview will be in a bit.

And she's a super unique subject for this show because, while she didn't have much of an interest in parlaying her virality into a career, as we'll talk about, she was never really bumped by everyone around her assuming that she would want to turn the viral moment into a career. And that's probably because she's the first guest I've spoken to on this show. That's a true dyed-in-the-wall internet native. Expectations that have baffled older guests who grew up with analog technology are not bizarre or unfamiliar to her. Zoe went viral at a very particular moment in internet history before she was fully forming memories

and brings one of the most interesting stories around fame and consent that I think we've ever covered. So return with me, if you dare, to January 2007. Irish becomes the 21st language officially recognized by the EU. Not that they give a shite what the EU thinks. President Bush, the little one, says that the NSA has definitely stopped wiretapping American citizens, which is kind of just like a funny little joke he made. And nearly two years after Dave Roth took a photo of his little girl watching a neighbor's house burned down, the internet discovered it too.

Dave Roth had always been interested in photography, and so like any dad with a specific gadget-based hobby, his kids quickly became a part of it. And he wasn't an idiot. The picture of Zoe, which he titled Firestarter, is a really good one. But his ambitions for it at first were fairly conventional. So bear with me and get ready to hear some very, very extinct website titles. Dave first uploads Firestarter to something called Zumer, which was a stock image hosting service whose website now redirects to a scammy-seeming gemstone site. But today is going to be a killer day because we're going to start to finally release

Mark 3, Zuma Mark 3. Six months in the making, over 250 new features, the ability to sell your photos and stock, and keep 90% of the sale. But the Fire Starter photo doesn't get much traction there. Around the time Zoe was heading into elementary school, her dad tried submitting Fire Starter to a second publication. This time, a photo publication called JPEG magazine. Basically, these are really high-quality magazines

that feature one subject matter per an issue, and they're pretty affordable too. And JPEG sees the potential in Dave's now two-year-old. old image, and they publish it in their February March print issue in 2008, the theme of which was emotion capture. And I'll talk to Zoe about how she felt seeing her photo in a magazine this young, because, yes, by this time, she was sentient enough to understand what was happening. But this is an internet show. And so, of course, it is online where Firestarter starts to get a ton of attention. It was shared on the JPEG blog in November, 2000.

And before the time, the image really took off, quickly racking up over 95,000 views and in time ran its way up to the outer reaches of the internet. And you know this old chestnut. The site that really helped Firestarter, which would soon be rebranded as Disaster Girl, get really big, was none other than BuzzFeed. On October 27th, 2008, over three years after the original picture was taken, BuzzFeed writer Scott Lamb wrote the following. Disaster girl! She loves starting fires, but this devilish girl is responsible for other disasters too. Upload yours.

Below this text was a tool that helped you meme the image, so you could put Zoe's image over any background you wanted, and then add the primitive look that most memes had in the 2000s. That static, customizable white text where you could add your own caption and upload it to the community. Hilarious examples include. She asked me to watch the oven. I asked her to watch her attitude.

My mother told others we had a happy, warm home. Now she's not lying. Dark humor is like food. Not everyone gets that. That's it. This kind of viral spread seems so like hallmark, sassy, magnet coded to me now. So to put you in this time, let's take a step back to remember exactly what the internet was like in 2008. The internet of my unrequited, horny youth. Around the time this all happened, I was in high school and desperately in love with a saxophone player who had gone to college for the saxophone. and eventually broke up with me so he could have more time to play the saxophone. This was the year of that really bad Shial Abuff Indiana Jones movie. Of the first Obama election, the year of Lowe by Flowrida, the year the app store launched,

the year Netflix and Hulu started streaming online, a world where the Jersey Shore was still a place and not the most fascinating sociological study ever put on television. But for our purposes, 2008 was a time where social media was become, more important, but it still wasn't quite all important. Myspace had recently capitulated to Facebook as a social network of choice for young people at the time. It's hyper-styled HTML-induced seizure backgrounds replaced by the smooth, bland interface of Mark Zuckerberg, where teenagers could send each other something called bumper stickers.

Everyone under 25 is like, okay, grandma, go to bed. and we were obsessively checking each other's hyperlinked relationship statuses. Like a 16-year-old with the gall to list their status as it's complicated with someone else's hyperlinked government name beside it. It was a nasty time. And social media was one of the venues that the Disaster Girl memes spread. But there were still plenty of places that curated this viral content. curated by humans, if you can imagine.

Before Zoe Roth's four-year-old's face would make it to your friend's Facebook page. BuzzFeed was a huge viral aggregator in 2007, having just been launched by Jonah Peretti two years before and already having gained the reputation for being a site of aggregated memes, viral stories, and these gnarly personality quizzes, which were inexplicably meth to Ernest Maloney. millennial teenagers. I looked back at some. Here are my favorites. Create a sampler platter and we'll guess your age and height.

What percent nerdy are you? Can you spot the fuck boy? We know the name of your next lover based on the food you order from McDonald's. How stereotypically white are you? No accounting for this. We should be embarrassed. There was also cracked.com, founded in 2005 by a guy I've never met before and who certainly doesn't hold my livelihood in his very hands,

Jack O'Brien, who went on to hire some of the world's greatest writers, comedians, and journalists, who shall not be named no idea who they are. Cracked was an edgier, funnier, more researched version of the BuzzFeed model, and they did similar short form written and eventually video pieces. And Disaster Girl thrived on both of these websites. And after Zoe's image first popped up on BuzzFeed, she, or I guess, disaster girl, became an overnight sensation. The next day, BuzzFeed posted some of the hits of the meme generator from the day before, in which Zoe was photoshopped smirking in front of other ostensible tragedies.

So Zoe smirking at the dinosaur's extinction. Zoe smirking in front of Jesus on the cross. Zoe at Lincoln's assassination, the grassy knoll. and some really in poor taste, bone-chilling Holocaust images. Today, this really, to me, reeks of all of the tragedies that will happen in the world have already happened in this extremely naive and, dare I say, neoliberal way. Let's keep moving. JPEG magazine knew this was the time to jump on the publicity train for Disaster Girl

and had an interview with Dave and Zoe the next day, October 28th. Here's that piece. Disaster Girl is coming for you. Roth's photo has popped up on a few bookmarking sites where you can upload a Fire Starter template to enter in your own background. Silly fun. We recently spoke with Dave about his 15 minutes.

He and Zoe, the Firestarter herself, are digging the Photoshoped versions as well as the captions and are jazzed at the attention the photo has gotten. Perhaps the lives of a disaster girl and her father are a bit more fun and maybe even more. more mischievous than one would expect. And off of this, Disaster Girl's lore spread across the worldwide web to all the must-click pop-up nightmare aggregate sites of the day.

Dig, make your own Disaster Girl background. E-bombs World, Disaster Girl Strikes Again. Best week ever. Disaster Girl. The new fail? Cracked.com. images of kids too insane to be real. That really are.

Man, those headline formats really trigger my fight or flight response. But people were just not getting sick of using the Disaster Girl meme. According to the all-knowing Know Your meme, Google search peaks for Disaster Girl wouldn't hit until nearly three years later in May 2011. And if this image went viral today, there would be a... a terrifying, albeit relatively clear pipeline for the Roths to take. License the image, maybe, get her on late night, start a branded social media career, participate in, I don't know, a crypto scam, all the waves of things that we'd see on the Internet in the years to come.

From the Ellen Pipeline. Well, if you haven't been hearing the words Damn Daniel in the last 24 hours, you've not been on the Internet. Our first guests are two friends who posted a video showing off some stylish clothes. In a matter of days, it's been viewed over 45 million times. Take a look. To Hayley Welch doing damage control about the Hock Coin scam, to no avail, just a couple weeks ago. I want to start by saying, thank you to all my true fans and all the people that actually watch my stuff and they keep up with me. We're trying to sort out all the pieces and stuff to get all this figured out and make everything right. Oh my God, I'm going to cry. But this was 2007 and 2008. It wasn't just the wrong.

that weren't sure how to approach this moment with their now second grade daughter. It was that no one would know how to approach this moment. Sometimes it's hard to remember, but... Going through something like that is a traumatic experience, but it's also not the end of their life. That was my dad, reminding me and so many others who need to hear it, that our trauma is not our shame to carry, and that we have big, bold, and beautiful lives to live.

after what happened to us. I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Leitra Tate. On my new podcast, The Unwanted Sorority, we weighed through transformation to peel back healing and reveal what it actually looks like, and sounds like, in real time. Each week, I sit down with people who live through harm, carried silence, and are now reshaping the systems that failed us.

We're going to talk about the adultification of black girls, mothering as resistance, and the tools we use for healing. The unwanted sorority is a safe space, not a quiet space. So let's walk in. We're moving towards liberation together. Listen to the unwanted sorority, new episodes every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable.

These are the coldest of cold cases. But everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's crime lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston lab that takes on the most hopeless

cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most

brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, are a number, a New York State number, and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had

one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was so overwhelming, and you don't know who's next to you. And we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. Listen to shock incarceration on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check out Behind the Flow, a podcast documentary series following the launch of San Diego Football Club. We go behind the scenes and explore the stories of those involved.

San Diego coming to MLS is going to be a game changer because this region has been hungry for a men's professional soccer team. We need veteran players and we need young players. Like you're building a team from scratch and so the succession plan of long-term success needs to be defined. We need to embrace this community. When I was 13, my uncle took me to a qualifier and we watched Ottawa against Chile, pouring rain,

just watching the fans jumping up and down. I think that was definitely a watershed moment for me. Not only was that going to be my game, but it was going to be my life. Listen to San Diego FC Behind the Flow. Now on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm not going to give you a full history here, but the term meme was coined all the way back in 1976 by Richard Dawkins and became associated with the internet in 1993

in a piece by Mike Godwin in Wired. Internet memes were revised to mean a pre-existing image quote, deliberately altered by human creativity, unquote, in 2013, half a decade after Disaster Girl became a popular image. So Zoe Ross is unintentionally very early to the meme, game. I'm not saying she's the first. There were plenty of videos and images like The Dancing Baby, Gary Rolzma's Numa Numa video, lull cats, Rick Rowling, and my personal favorite, Will It Blend videos that had gone viral before her. But the 2000s still have

this reputation of being the Wild West era of memes. I want to focus on 2007 here, because it was arguably the first year that some of the most potent memes to date entered our lives. A brief preview. These all came out in 2007. It's pretty wild. But I don't think that this was because it was a particularly potent year for creativity. For context, this is also the year that B-movie came out. But it was a big year for increased success on aggregate websites like BuzzFeed and Cracked, at a time when social media and YouTube were becoming increasingly popular and easier for people to access. And some of the subjects. that these memes were able to parlay their fame into sustained popularity through a combination of luck and early meme managers. And the most successful meme manager, maybe of all time, is this guy named Ben Lashes.

He didn't represent the Roths or the Disaster Girl meme during his heyday because the family didn't seek out management, as we'll get into. But Ben Lashes does become a weirdly important player in this story. So how do you become a prominent meme manager? Well, he started as a musician in the 2000s. It's been so long since I've seen your face except inside of my head. I was seeing in the comments that this track came for free on the Sony Erickson brick phone in the mid-2000s, pretty sick.

But after he left music behind, lashes pivoted to media in the late 2000s and interviewed musicians for Spin.com. All right, folks, it's the biggest night in Hollywood. It's being again, Ben Lashes, your ace reporter. Stuck in traffic, it's rush hour, the Hollywood Freeway 101 North. I'm going to see Slash at Guitar Center in Northridge. And in 2009, he pivoted again

and made his first prominent meme discovery. You know him, you love him, keyboard cat. And I'm not going to harp on this because it really should be its own episode, but not for nothing. The keyboard cat video. You've seen it. It's a tabby cat and a little blue shirt playing the ones and twos. This video was shot in 1984 by a family friend of the lashes,

which is how he knew about it in the first place. But the meme doesn't happen until 2007. So think about that math with regards to how long cats live. Keyboard cat had, in fact, died 20 years before he became famous. RAP to Faso the cat. Which begs the question, how does a dead cat have a manager and create new content? They recast keyboard cat. After 2007, they hired a similar-looking cat named Bento, who debuted in a video called

Keyboard Cat reincarnated. Being a cat, Bento also died. R-I-Bento. Here's his owner. He had a big start, and it stayed big all the way. He had quite a run. Well, he says there's a chance of a third keyboard cat if he finds one with the right personality at a shelter. And we will get to that another day.

But for context, Ben Lashes describes his pivot from music to management like this in an interview with digital trends in 2013. I was the singer in a band called The Lashes. We started in a garage, got signed to an indie label, then a major label. We rode the roller coaster of success and failure in the music industry and all that kind of stuff. I've always been really into the business side of things, of marketing and hype and pop culture, the way it works together. I'm really kind of a nerd. And he had a knack for plucking out and effectively promoting meme successes, like Scumbag Steve, the success, The ridiculously photogenic guy, neon cat and grumpy cat.

Very successful in the cat market, I've noticed. And Grumpy Cat has in fact become his most successful client to date, in spite of the fact that Grumpy Cat has been dead for six years, RIP Tartarsauce the Cat. But if you remember the Grumpy Cat heyday, it genuinely was huge. There was even this TV movie starring Aubrey Plaza as Christmas Grumpy Cat. Don't get sappy on me. Wait, I forgot. It's a lifetime movie. All pets are off. Do you, grab that cat.

But we know! Guys, bad guys. They don't even make paintball guns for cats. Get out of here, British grumpy cat. Aubrey Plaza brings the internet sensation to life. This is the best Christmas ever. Go ahead, ignore the title of my movie. Crumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever.

So while it's not clear if Ben Lashes reached out to the Roth family in the moment, he tends to work with clients or, I guess, grieving pet owners to make their memes their whole livelihood, hopefully to the tune of millions of dollars. But the Roths don't really seem to want to do that. In part, as we'll discuss, because Zoe was a normal kid who wasn't into the idea of being hyper-exposed. From that same interview, here is Ben Lash's philosophy of promotion. Once it got to a point where there was a foundation, of stuff that we'd done, I'd become so immersed in the meme world and thinking it was kind of

a wild west where certain companies would take images and sell them and make t-shirts. And everyone kind of had this idea that once it hits the internet, it's free. I'm a huge fan of pop art and the digital memes that go around now are a social form that's going to be studied for years to come. And it's totally a new way of communicating with people. So I love the art side of it, the sharing and the mashing up. But I hate when the snakes get in there and start making products and squatting on sites. It just steals the fun out of it.

And again, I cannot overstate his success in this world. While tartar sauce the grumpy cat passed away and, to my knowledge, had no use for human money, Ben Lashes and the cat's owner, Tabitha Bundyson, made her the wealthiest pet on earth, valued at an approximate $99 million. What? Animal labor episode forthcoming probably. So we'll come back to Ben Lashes in a bit. But in the moment, Zoe recalls in the late 2000s that her family didn't really know how to

and weren't particularly motivated to engage with it. So life went on. Zoe grew up in relative anonymity. There were some local people who knew, but luckily, people rarely look like their four-year-old selves for long. As she got older, she had an internet presence, like any kid who came of age in the early to mid-2010s, but these profiles were just for her friends and family.

Outside of occasional family photos that her dad would post on the Flickr photo platform, the public kind of lost track of Zoe, even though throughout these years, the Disaster Girl meme remained extremely popular. So while she was still a kid, there was only one time that the family engaged with monetizing Zoe's fame. In 2016, when Zoe was in high school,

they were asked by a company called Fuck Jerry to have the meme featured in a card game they were kick-starting called, and I hate to tell you this, what do you meme? Do you like spicy memes? Of course you do. That's why I fuck Jared created. What do you mean?

What is the cards, Krispy? The rules are simple. Just like the memes that you see on Instagram, there are photos and there are captions. Your job is to match the best caption with the photo. For what it's worth, Zoe's image is featured twice in this trailer, and the game is what it sounds like, a rip-off of cards against humanity or apples-to-apples, but with memes. The game quickly raised its $10,000. goal on Kickstarter and then some, and went on to haunt the impulse buy area of urban

outfitter stores for years to come. Now, if it sounds familiar, fuck Jerry is an Instagram account that was started by one guy not named Jerry and then turned into a bunch of guys not named Jerry. And though there aren't hard numbers on the sales of what do you mean, it did very well. The games still exist today and they later partnered with big brands like SpongeBob, Friends, Seinfelds, and Tricia Paitis, to make other versions of the game. And Zoe's image is featured prominently in the first run of the game, including an appearance on the back of the box. And as we'll talk about in the interview, she says that her family didn't really know what to

ask for in terms of money here. So they were compensated, but not to the degree that it seems like the game was successful. And in part, that's because the Roths brokered this agreement with Fuck Jerry without representation. And so they seem to get ripped off. Because Fuck Jerry, if their name and demeanor, weren't a tip already, are notorious rifters. Though, to the family's credit, that wasn't well known at this time. If you've heard the name Fuck Jerry before, it's probably because of the Fire Festival. We're going to turn now to that trouble for the Fire Music Festival.

lawsuit from concert goers who spent thousands of dollars for what was supposed to be a luxury weekend of food, art and music in the Bahamas. Didn't turn out quite that way. ABC's Gio Benitez in Miami with the details. Good morning, Gio. Hey, George, good morning to you. Those concert goers coming here to Miami all weekend long. The events co-founder Jha Rule says it's not his fault, but that he's deeply sorry. Ah, yes, Fire Festival. The notorious 2017 shit show where influencers paid thousands of dollars to attend a luxury concert. on an island that resulted in a Lord of the Flies situation and leaving the founder in jail for fraud. And this inspired two documentaries, one which was suspiciously produced by Buck Jerry. The Hulu Doc actually draws attention to this. Not only bringing up the competing Netflix documentary, but also calling them out for being co-produced by none other than Jerry Media,

the company that did the advertising for Fire Festival in the first place. how I said that the Netflix documentary tended to have better looking footage, that's largely because it looks like it's old unused advertising footage, which naturally Jerry Media had access to. As you just heard, there were two competing documentaries that streamed about this nightmare situation around the same time on Netflix and Hulu, respectively, one of which was produced by Fuck Jerry, who claimed to have been involved in the early promotion of the festival, but left when things got sketchy. But on the Hulu dock, they are directly implicated in promoting and being aware of the scheme

throughout, along with the agreed-upon villains of the story, Billy McFarland and Jarl rule. Or maybe you've heard of them from the hashtag fuck-fuck Jerry campaign of 2019, where prominent comedians accuse the company of stealing their jokes without credit or compensation, either to use on the Fuck Jerry Instagram or wait for a show. in prompt cards for what do you mean? These guys famously fucking suck, and they suck even worse for screwing Zoe and her family over. But whatever frustration that caused was short-lived,

because outside of this, particularly as Zoe came into her own and enrolled at UNC Chapel Hill for college, she didn't seem to want much to do with the meme. She popped up a few years later at a BuzzFeed event called Internet Live in 2019, which was sort of a best-of of the internet of the 2010s. There were performances from Lil Nas X and Jojo Siwa,

the damn Daniel guys were there, the Jersey Shore girls. There was some nine-year-old I've never heard of, and one of the internet's most noxious senior citizens, Jason Nash, and Zoe the Disaster Girl. She pops up again in late 2020s in the throes of the pandemic lockdown in a very successful BuzzFeed video series called I Accidentally Became a Meme. It's currently hovering around 8 million views, because for most people, this was their first time seeing Zoe speak, much less speak as a full-grown adult.

I accidentally became a meme, and this is that story. My name is Zoe Roth, but you may know me as disaster girl. This all started in 2005. But even though she dipped her toe in engaging with Disaster Girl and her young adulthood, she said she viewed it as more of a fun fact about her than a defining quality. in her life. This is from April 2021, during her senior year of college. Yeah, honestly, I've thought about this so much, like why it's so viral, why it comes back up every year, because most of the memes that came out when mine did 2004, 2005 are, like, dead memes. People don't use them anymore, but I see mine recycled more often. And I think, especially with 2020, because 2020 was just such a horrible year for a lot of people, it was, like, the perfect meme for that, because everything was on fire, nothing was going right,

Like, everybody was struggling with so many different things. It was like, and that meme is just chaos. So perfect for 2020. So by early 2021, Zoe is talking about the meme more than she ever has publicly. And later this month, it becomes clear maybe why that was. Reenter Ben Lashes late April 2021. Only since we last encountered him, he's gotten really into, is it a K-pop?

Is it B, Instagram infographics on tolerance? Or is it C, in all but inevitable footnote in every story we talk about here, crypto and NFTs? It is, of course C, he was into crypto now and wanted to mint NFTs, and was very successful at this, I might add. So he combines this new passion with his past experience in meme representation of the 2010s, and ends up teaming up with a number of meme subjects like Zoe,

like past guest of the show Lena Morris, aka overly attacked girlfriend, as well as others like Bad Luck Brian, Success Kid, and Irma Guard Girl, who all teamed up with lashes to sell their iconic memes as NFTs. He told the New York Times that his clients had cumulatively made over $2 million in late April 2021, and Zoe Roth's NFT was the top earner, It sold for 180 ether, which around the time was half a million dollars.

And if you're a regular listener, you'll know we also talked about this in our Lena Morris episode. I am not a fan of NFTs, but the way that most have characterized this decision to sell their meme as an NFT during this big pandemic era boom was because they had been previously unable to control the internet proliferation. of their image. And so this seemed like a chance to get compensated in some way for years of being out of control of their own image. And that's a tricky thing to argue with, because how do you quantify that, really? There's no direct answer, but I do understand the appeal of finally getting something out of this weird element that has haunted you your entire life. After growing up with people photoshopping your image over Hitler rallies and getting screwed over by the likes of fuck Jerry.

At the time, Zoe Roth told the New York Times this. People who are in memes didn't really have a choice in it. The internet is big. Whether you're having a good experience or a bad experience, you kind of just have to make the most of it. Zoe and I talk more about this in the interview, including the heavy speculation of how she used that money. But after the NFT sale,

Zoe graduates from school, and in a poetic turn, I think, she stumbles into a career in tech research analysis. So the kid who became a child meme is now the same person advising tech companies on how to grow their businesses. Honestly, I'm not exactly clear on what Zoe does, but I know she's really smart. Sorry I can't get more specific. I just write MP3s that will soon be considered thought crimes.

Our talk when we come back. Sometimes it's hard to remember, but Going through something like that is a traumatic experience, but it's also not the end of their life. That was my dad, reminding me and so many others who need to hear it, that our trauma is not our shame to carry, and that we have big, bold, and beautiful lives to live after what happened to us. I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Leahy Tate. On my new podcast, The Unwanted Sorority, we weighed through transformation to peel back healing and reveal what it actually looks like, and sounds like in real time. Each week, I sit down with people who live through harm, carried silence, and are now reshaping the systems that failed us. We're going to talk about the adultification of black girls, mothering as resistance, and the tools we use for healing.

The Unwanted Sorority is a safe space, not a quiet space, so let's walk in. We're moving towards liberation together. Listen to the unwanted sorority, new episodes every Thursday, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be. identified in our lifetime.

A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum,

the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolved. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York state number, and we own you. Shock incarceration. also known as boot camps are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training.

These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was so overwhelming, and you don't know who's next to you. And we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. Listen to shock incarceration on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check out Behind the Flow, a podcast documentary series following the launch of San Diego Football Club. We go behind the scenes and explore the stories of those involved.

San Diego coming to MLS is going to be a game changer because this region has been hungry. three four, men's professional soccer team. We need veteran players and we need young players. Like you're building a team from scratch. And so the succession plan of long-term success needs to be defined. We need to embrace this community. When I was 13, my uncle took me to a qualifier. And we watched Ottawa against Chile pouring rain.

Just watching the fans jumping up and down. I think that was definitely a watershed moment for me. Not only was that going to be my game, but it was going to be my life. Listen to San Diego FC behind the flow. Now on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, hope everything's well, except the world is ending. But otherwise, hope everything's well. Like, I don't know.

I just, like, don't want that kind of email coming from my dentist. I don't know. If you're listening to this and there's a protest for trans rights in your area, you should fucking go. And here is my interview with the one, the only, disaster girl, Zoe Roth. Yeah, I'm Zoe Roth. I'm most well known for a viral photo of me that was taken, of me standing in front of a burning house and smiling.

I want to go through the beats of the story very quickly to get the stuff out of the way that everyone has questions about and then get into the meat of this interview. Do you remember this day with any clarity? Yeah, I do remember the day. All I remember of it was looking in the windows of the house and looking at things that were burning and thinking, like, oh, my God, this sucks. I wish I'm so glad this isn't my house. So we were two blocks down the road.

And at the time, we didn't know it was like a test fire. So it was planned and organized and it was totally safe, they say. But all I remember was looking in the windows of the house and being like, wow, that sucks. I feel like the added context of it being a planned burn, which I don't even think I realized was a thing, completely changes the image. Yeah, exactly. I had a friend reach out and she was like, I'm so sorry if that was traumatizing to you to watch a house burn down. and now this meme is all over the place. I was like, oh, it's really fine.

Like, it wasn't traumatizing at the time, even though I didn't know that it was a planned burn. Tell me a little bit more about how you grew up, where you grew up. Yeah, so I grew up in Mabin, North Carolina, which is right in the middle of the state. I have an older brother. I feel like I grew up, had a pretty average childhood. Like, I did sports.

I did running. I traveled a bit as a kid, but, yeah, I feel like pretty average as far as it comes. And you were four years old at the time this picture was taken? Yes, I was four just about to turn five. Your dad enters the picture into a contest. Yes, so my dad posted it. It was either on Zoomer or Flickr, like all of these old, old like photo sharing, early Instagram type apps.

And he submitted it to JPEG magazine, which was a physical. And I guess they had an online magazine as well. And that's as far as we know, probably where it got picked up. So there was, they had a submission. of like emotion it was the emotion series of the magazine so he submitted it and it got printed and i was in second grade at the time and i they emailed us or they gave us the physical magazine i brought it to school i was like oh my god i'm so famous like to this day that is the most famous i've ever felt in second grade like with this magazine of myself but they posted it on

the website as well so we figure that's probably where it got the traction and then from there like my dad saw his co-workers like had it in their cubicles and like my aunts and uncles would be like oh, somebody I know just posted this on Facebook or iFunny, and we're like, what? Like, I don't know how that got there. They're like, wait, isn't this Zoe? Like, why does, wait, why is this photo on my Facebook feed? And we're like, we have no idea. That's really wild. I also just the very 2000sness of a physical magazine called JPEG magazine. Yes. It's beautiful. So you're not totally sure how the image went viral online. I know. We've always wondered. I'm like, maybe when I'm old, I'll try to like track.

the provenance down. I'm like, it's probably just one person sent it somewhere else from there, and it's like blown up, but we've never known exactly where it took off from. That's just my theory, the JPEG theory. Sounds menacing. So you're in second grade when this comes out. The feeling of like, oh my God, I'm famous. I'm cool. I'm in a magazine. Do you remember that feeling? Do you remember talking to other kids about it? Like, how do people react to it? Yeah. At the time, I mean, JPEG was the coolest thing. And then I think, No, your meme made it. video about it that same year, which is 2008. So both of those was just like awesome. You know, they were awesome for a few days and then I kind of forgot about it. It was mostly more interesting

when people would like send it to me on Instagram or IFunny or send me text. Like, oh my God, I saw this and it has a million hits on Ifunny or like Twitter. And as a kid, it was just like these sporadic interactions. I would have people who already knew me and saying like, oh, look, I saw this. This is crazy. And I'd be like, yeah, that is crazy. And they're like, oh, so what's the story? I'm like, oh my gosh, I need a video record. I need like an audio thing. I just send out. Very early into you forming memories a part of your life.

What was your relationship with the internet like as a kid? I feel like I was very early on the internet. Like I got on Facebook in like elementary school, which looking back, I was like, that was probably not a great idea. Like Instagram as early as you could have it, I was always kind of like looking to be on these new platforms. And then anytime I was on a new platform, I would end up seeing the meme. And I was like, oh, that's kind of funny.

It's like following me wherever I'm going on the internet. But it definitely, I feel like I was on the, it kind of grew up with me on the internet. As long as I've been on the internet, it was there as well, like living its own life. So that's always kind of an interesting thing. When there's new platforms, it shows up there as well. And I just kind of let it be. What personalities were you drawn to? What areas of the internet?

I feel like I was a big. I mean, initially I loved Eye Funny. and I've always been like on Instagram there's a lot of times growing up like in high school and in college I was like should I like make this my bit like should I make a YouTube channel like should I like figure out how to monetize this but I was just like I don't really want to be I never wanted it to be my whole thing like I didn't want to build my life around it and so I kind of actively made that choice like when I was pretty young like I'm going to go to college I'm going to get a career like this is going to live on its own and I'm going to do my own thing but

I've kind of, yeah, I've kind of tried to, like, de-center it in my life. And when it comes up, it comes up, and it's like a fun little party conversation. But that's kind of what I try to keep it up. I want to sort of get into the idea of, you know, you're becoming this famous symbol. Did you experience any internal or external pressure? Like, walk me through that decision and what were people around you sort of recommending or saying at the time? Yeah, I think I always had friends that would be like oh it would be so cool of you to YouTube channel and there would be occasional times where I would go to a meme event and people would be like oh what's your handle what's your channel and like I don't I'm not I don't really have that me and some of the other memes

we all get in touch like every once in a while like when there's something going on like when the nfti thing happened and we're all like what are you guys doing like we hadn't really talked before that but I've never felt like an internal pressure to do anything with it or really externally, like, to me, this is, like, satisfying enough to do an occasional interview and, like, see it every once in a while. And I've never felt like I needed to do something more with it for purposes of, like, satisfying or, like, you know, me or others. As you're getting older, you're realizing, like, I don't want to be a full-time YouTuber just because technically that is on offer. What were your interests? What was sort of developing as you were becoming a person?

growing up I spent my summers like working in Tahoe I have an uncle that has a restaurant there so I'd go to work in Tahoe I was always working like I always had a job in high school a big part of my life growing up was speaking and learning Chinese so the school I went to in Chapel Hill was an immersion Chinese school so it was always like a big part of my identity like trying to figure out how I could go to China like I ended up studying abroad in China in high school and that was kind of like my focus like how can I like go to college for this? How can I, like, set up my professional career around, like, Chinese and international relations? Like, that was really my focus, as long as I can remember figuring out what I wanted to do professionally. And this just was never a part of that. Yeah, I mean, that seems really far afield. That's so fascinating. Did you become interested in Chinese culture because of the immersion school? Yeah, how did that come about? That's really cool. Yeah, I think it was just the immersion school. Like, it was kind of a pilot project that the school I went to in Chapel Hill was working on. So I was the first or second class. So we spent half the day in

Chinese and the other half in English. And I did it all the way through college. So it's always just been something. Like, I've always been like, that's kind of cooler. Like, everyone's like, oh, the meme. Like, that's your fun fact. I'm like, oh, okay, well, there's other things too. You're also, yeah, like, that's, that is cooler objectively. What did you go to school for? So I ended up going to school for international relations and Chinese both. So I kind of stuck with that. And then my first job out of college, I was doing something similar. And then I pivoted over to doing technology research. So that's what I do now. Basically a technology journalist. So again, like nothing related to what I've done in the past and nothing related to the meme. Everything is so like jumping around between different things. You're becoming like this very interesting person with a wide variety of interest. And there is. is just always this thing. Was there any point growing up with this and then being an adult with this and it's just, it's going to be there forever?

Were there ever moments where it was, like, frustrating or uncomfortable or, like, enough? It's definitely, there's times where it gets frustrating. I think, like, a lot of people use it in ways that I don't, like, condone or agree with. But pretty, from an early age, I've kind of had the mindset that I can't control, like, how people are going to use it or how it's going to, like, travel across the internet so being like frustrated or irritated about it isn't going to change the fact that I'm going to see it I'm going to see like old interviews that I've done like it's going to be there and like that's kind of how it's been what frustrates me most now is like as I'm trying to

build like a professional career and like obviously an identity out of this if you look me up like that is the first thing that's going to show up like if I wanted to get a new job or if I'm interviewing somebody and they want to see like oh what does she write about first they're going to see all this meme shit instead. I'm like, oh my. And they're like, wait, then then it's like, oh, tell me the story. Like, wait, how old are you? Like, how is this? And it kind of like overshadow. So it's more like the digital privacy thing. Like, I'm like, oh my God, I can't wait to get a new last name. Like, I can't wait till like, because right now you could look up. You could find out like anything that you want to do pretty much about me, which I think that is the thing that kind

of scares me the most. And it's like the biggest externality about it. Again, I think it's like an interesting conversation generationally that because you grew up, online, what's the point of getting mad about it? It's an inevitability. When I talk to people who are, you know, like, Gen X or even older, they're like, what the fuck? Why can't I get this to go away? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because their relationship with the internet is so different. But just bizarre to have this thing that happened when you were four years old come up at a job interview. Yes, it came up in this interview. The first time I did like a webinar for my job, I was so nervous. I didn't sleep the night before, so nervous.

The first piece of feedback that comes in, wait, are you the Zoe Roth? That's the meme. I'm like, oh, my God. I prepared all this stuff. Like, no questions about the topics of, like, the webinar. Just like, wait, are you her? I'm like, look it up.

Like, do I look like her? Like, let's not, I'm not engaging with this conversation right now. Good for you. Like, I think you are well within your rights to be like, fuck off. Yeah, look it up. I'm always just like, look up. Tell me the story. I'm like, look it up.

I'm not telling you the story. And it's like, honestly, when I meet people, like when I make new friends, like I recently moved to Utah, I never tell anybody because they end up finding out. Like, they will find out on their own and they're like, wait, what? You didn't tell me about this? Like, I can't believe recently. It was like the 20 year anniversary. So I posted all these stories and a bunch of my friends in Utah, like, wait, what? Like, that's you? Like, why didn't you tell me? I'm like, well, I'll tell you now. Like, now you know. I like that it's like, how dare you keep this life-altering secret? I want to, yeah,

I mean, talk about first these like meme conventions and stuff like that, which now feel kind of like this weird bygone era. How did appearances like that come together and then what was that experience like? So I honestly didn't have any like opportunities to travel or anything for this until I was in high school. So I never ended up even going to like the convent like the comic cons or whatever. The first like big event I did was actually hilarious. I was in Shanghai for the summer as a summer camp counselor like with kindergartners. like literally just like in the weeds with these like kindergartners who didn't speak English being a camp counselor. And BuzzFeed like emails me and they're like, hey, we're doing this event next week in New York.

Like, do you want to come? And I was like, well, that would be great. But I'm in Shanghai. Like, and I have a job like at the summer camp. So I need to get off the summer camp and then you guys would have to fly me back to New York and then back to Shanghai. And they're like, okay, yeah, we can do that. So I need to explain to my boss like another camp counselor like, hey, so someone's offering to fly me to New York for the weekend. Like can I have Friday off so I can go?

and do that, like would that be okay? And so it was like the BuzzFeed Internet Awards or something. And JoJo Siwa like gave me and the damn Daniels kids like this like a meme trophy, which now I'm like, where is my meme trophy? Like I do wonder where that is. But that is definitely, that's probably the only event like I think I've ever been to. I have seen that picture and you're just like, wow, what a time. What a moment. Oh my God. I hate it. It was so uncomfortable. It was like walking out in front of all those people. I was like, I'm never going to do something like this again. By that point, what it's been at least 10 years since it's happened, if you're not interested in, like, performing, it sounds uncomfortable.

Yeah, it was definitely uncomfortable. I'm like, and everyone's like cheering. I can never be like an actual, like, famous person. Like, I do not like this level of like recognition. Because I want to talk a little bit about the NFTs because I talked to Laina about that as well. This idea of not having control over your own likeness because. this took off during a time where I feel like that discussion basically didn't happen. And no one was thinking about like, what is this going to feel like in 20 years?

Yeah. Is there a way to get control of this? Like, what are your options? We never, like, we never, like, sat down as a family. We're like, what do we do? How can we get this back? We've always known, like, you know, once it's out, the cat's out of the bag. There was, like, for a while, we had a relationship with fuck Jerry who made that game.

What do you meme? And it was on the back of the box. And that's probably, like, the biggest thing that happened, like, for the most part, besides the NFT, because on the box, like, on every box, you can spin it around and it's my photo. So anytime you're shopping in an urban or, like, at the airport, I'm like, oh, my God, where's me? Like, let's go find Zoe. I'm in the, I'm in the box. And we're like, this is just going to be probably the biggest thing. And that was the first time we ever got paid for us.

We're like, wow, we're so rich. Looking back, it was, yeah, it was not a great deal. They were not great to work with. That is kind of, like, something that looking back on, we're like, oh, we were not well informed on the, this negate. negotiation. I think it was like 2016, so a full like 10 to 12 years later. And we're like, wow, this is so cool. Like finally we can like get paid for this. Like before that it was like, oh my dad had a red bubble shop. But so did all these other people that were just like stealing the photo and posting their own. Like we're like, what are we going to do? Like, hey, take this down.

Like we didn't have lawyers. We didn't have a team. It was just like me and my dad. So we're just like, well, every once in a while like somebody would be like, oh, can I get an autograph? Like somehow they would find us on the internet. Like, hey, can I have an autograph? Yeah. How did your family feel about this as time went on? Because it seems like the kind of thing where it's really cool at first, but then it keeps going and going and going. I feel like it's mostly been me and my dad, like, managing all of it. Like, he took the photo. I'm in it. My brother was there, and there's pictures of him too. And we're always like, oh, it should have been him.

Like, what are the odds? Like, they were all posted in the same places. But, like, Tristan didn't get famous. I'm so sorry, Tristan. But me and my dad are always the ones kind of, like, managing those conversations and figuring out the opportunities when they're bigger. Like, we'll involve everybody and be like, oh, what do you guys think? But for the most part, they're just like, oh, this is so cool.

Like, what a fun, cool little side gig for y'all. So you are able to capitalize on it a little bit with this board game. Is the next time that comes up for the NFTs? It was very sporadic. Like it was, I would get a lot of like random interview requests from people. Sometimes I would do them. Sometimes I wouldn't. But like big opportunity wise, it was like the fuck Jerry game and then the NFT.

Because I talked about it with Lane as well. I don't know if you were in conversation with her directly. But she also mentioned she's like, yeah, we were all talking to each other trying to figure out. First of all, what this is, what we can. accomplished by doing it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I'll paint the picture. It was my last semester of college. So I'm like senior year. Like I'm just going to chill out. This can be so fun. Like I've taking barely any classes. And I start getting all these emails, which I'm also like, how do these people, I guess my email is like pretty easy to guess. But anyway, all these people start emailing me like,

you should make this token. It was all about this token, this fungible token. And I was like, what is this? And I was like, what is this. And I was like, what is this point, it was just still me and my dad so i think i like damed lena and bad luck brian and maybe like the success kid i was like are you guys like doing this we'd a few people reach out and like we'll sell it for you and we'll give you 10% i was like i'm not that's not really like giving like i don't think we're gonna let that happen right and so i talked to bad luck brian and he was like yeah you can like pretty much do it yourself like you can if you want to and then i reached out to the success kid his bomb um laney manages that and she's like yeah we have like a manager like a meme

manager and lawyer like combo that will like do this for you. And so I was like, oh, put me in contact with him. And so now that at that point, I was like, okay, well, we'll have this me manager and lawyer like set this all up. And then we're like, yeah, let's do it. Like let's set up the NFT and see what happens. I mean, and then it was, it seems like it was really successful. Yeah. That day of my life was like, oh my God. I wish I'd like live streamed it for my own personal because it was like an eBay bid. So people are just like bidding on it every few hours. And me and my dad were like, I'm only going to look every two hours. I'm only going to look every three hours.

Like, I don't want to. And then we go to bed and we go wake up. And I went to work that day. Like, I worked at a, at a restaurant inside of a hotel. So all my coworkers knew that I was like doing, they didn't know what it was. Like, yeah, Zoe's selling like a something. And like the bid keeps going up. And I was like seating tables and taking people back.

And it would go up in Ethereum. I'm like, wait, do the math. How much Ethereum is like. So that day was just, yeah, crazy. I was wondering if this was your like introduction to Web3. in blockchain and what a weird introduction that must be for someone who works in tech now. Were you happy with sort of the management situation that ended up coming together? Because it sounds like there were some scammy or people reaching out to you earlier.

Yeah. In the end, it is really nice to have, we still have the same like management team and they handle everything. And then when we get a contract, like if we had this team when we got that contract 10 years ago for the game, like it would not have happened like it did. So they can definitely like do the negotiation and cut through the bullshit better than me and my dad that are just like, yep, this looks good. enough to us. Like, I'm not reading the fine print. Like, so we really like working with them.

Once the NFT happens, the auction closes. Are you still at work? Like, how does the rest of that day go? So I did get to leave work early because everyone's like, oh, so you're quitting. Like, this is going to change. I'm like, no, I will. And I came back to work and I stayed in like, huh? Like, I thought you like left the country or something. I'm like, no. Like, I'm still here. At first, I was like, oh, I'm going to buy a new car with my money. I have like not touched that money. Like, I, it's still like sitting in like a crypto wallet. I'm like, I'm not going to like go crazy and like change my life about this like if I need this for like a house like that's kind of my plan like okay I'll use it then but all in all like there was a lot of like media outreach like

oh like good morning America like New York Times and I was like I do not I'm not going to be on good morning America like I would rather like emailing somebody from work like hey no thank you like thank you for the offer but I don't want to go do that and so I was like after that same deal I was like I'm going to do one interview about this because I don't need to talk to 10 people and say the same thing and I decided to do my one interview and that was that. That moment is so fascinating because even outside of like the NFT of it all, it is so interesting to me that it's like this is some sort of exchange or like compensation for your likeness being outside of your control for 20 years. It feels like you should get something for that having happened to you, but qualifying

what it is is so hard to do. Yeah, it is challenging. And I feel like, a lot of people like afterwards people would ask me like oh do you feel like you finally have control over it like not really like it's still going to do what it does like it didn't change the fact that anybody could use it however they wanted to and people can still print shirts and people can make like horrifying text on top of it like we still don't have control over it but at least we finally got paid is that enough what like what would be ideal I guess in that situation yeah I don't know like what's enough like who owes me what like everybody uses it and that's always been how it's been.

Like, I've never thought that I deserved anything out of it. And that's kind of like, you know, this could have happened to anybody. The fact that that meme went viral and it's still viral now, like, pohooves me to this day. Like, I didn't do anything unique for that to happen. So I don't feel like I deserved anything out of it, which is why I've kind of like tried to build my life, you know, as it is around it. Like, I'll keep that on the side. And as it comes up and there's opportunities, I'll engage with that. But I will keep doing my own, like, thing, getting a job, like having my life because,

It's just kind of something that happened to me. Yeah. I mean, I'm, like, weirdly, like, proud of you for doing that because if everyone around you is, like, whoa, you could, like, totally change your life. Yeah, yeah, exactly. There was, like, a few times when I was super broke in college, like, okay, how am I going to figure this out? And then, of course, right before I graduate, we get the NFT money, I'm like, if I knew

I wasn't going to be broke this whole time, like, oh, come on. The fact that I happened right before my graduation, I was like, that's just the cherry on top of the cake after being, like, working. all these horrible jobs in college. I'm like, oh, so the mean money was coming in the end. What are you excited about right now? And how are we going to move this to page two of your Google results? Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's kind of like the burden of my life. I'm like, I need to figure out what I can do that could be bigger than this. Like could I ever do anything that would displace like when you look me up that it's like auto fills, like memes, smiling, disaster girl.

Like, I don't know if that's, and I don't know if that's, like, fair to myself to be, like, thinking I need to do something bigger than something that I didn't really, like, have control over in the first place. I think it's just generally, like, yeah, growing in my career. Like, I might go back to school. Like, I just want people to know me, like, for what I do at work. And, like, I, like, these, you know, this niche I'm in, like, these companies know me and, like, these people know me. But I think just growing that and kind of keeping that trajectory on my career and, you know, keeping this in the. backseat. Right. And also, like, like you're saying, is such a bizarrely specific burden to have put on you because who else has this problem? Yeah, exactly. Like, we need, like, a meme support group

or something. Like, we just need to get together for, like, a 24-hour period. Like, they're the only people that get it. Like, there's, like, 10 of us that will, like, truly understand. And even, like, the way we've all navigated it has been so different. Like, it's not anything. Like, you know, some people have leaned more into it. Some have kept it more private. It's very different when it happens to you as a kid and like, okay, I can go to the grocery store and no one's going to recognize me. Like, only once in my life have I ever been recognized in person and it was like shocking. I was like, I can't do this right now. Like, I don't know how you know who I am, but this is not like my vibe. Yeah, I was like at a bar in Salt Lake City where I live. Someone's like,

are you the girl? Are you the disaster girl? And I was like, no. And I just walked away. Like, I don't know what you're talking about. I've never heard of that before. Thank you so much to Zoe Roth. You can follow her at the link in the description. But I'm going to request that you don't bug her with the same three jokes she's been hearing for her entire sentient life. And I'm very, very grateful she took the time to talk. Something that really stuck with me about this interview is how, regardless of someone's generation, there are still a million ways to relate to the internet, and that that can be a good thing. Recently, I've seen discussions around Gen Z slip into some disdain.

after this same generation was being hailed as the kids who will save the world just a couple years ago. But with time, the reputations of most generations sour, and Gen Z has been more recently typecast as excessively nihilistic and addicted to their phones. I wonder why! Two recent subjects on this show, Zoe Roth the Disaster Girl and Haley Welch Bhock to a Girl, because we just love to call a main character Girl Lady and Wife, are very close in age. Zoe was born around 2000, and Haley was born around 2002. And they both became very famous online at times that they couldn't really consent to it.

Zoe was just a kid, and Haley was drunk and never formally agreed to her clip being aired. But their reactions to this virality couldn't be more different. With Zoe actively choosing to cash out once and otherwise stay the course and explore her other passions, while Haley tried to reclaim her image through a series of sketchy cash-ins and sketchy management. Everyone has a different relationship to the Internet. And while it has something to do with generational trends, not to mention that these stories happened 17 years apart, I think it has just as much to do with the issues that always affect people.

The level of familial stability and educational access people have, race, class, ability, mental health, whether you think TikTok is really addictive. or you're like me and think it's too loud. The list goes on, and the internet is programmed to respond to these factors about us. But there is a commonality to Internet natives that I've noticed. Like we talked about last week on the Backroom's episode, there has been this distinct change in how someone who doesn't remember a world before the internet

approaches the phenomenon of becoming a main character. To younger people, this is just a fact of life. And whether you have any interest in becoming the main character, there's always a chance that one day you'll just be that. And how will you handle it? Because it seems increasingly expected that if you don't want it, that doesn't really matter. It doesn't seem easy, but I find a lot of comfort in seeing someone like Zoe who says, fuck you, no thanks.

Zoe Roth, the disaster girl, your 16th minute ends now. Enjoy. And for your moment of fun, question mark, here's a clip of the most recent Disaster Girl trend I was able to find, some disgusting AI slop that envision Zoe as a real child murderer. Sweet dreams! 16th Minute is a production. of Cool Zone Media and IHeart Radio.

It is written, hosted, and produced by me, Jamie Lostis. Our executive producers are Sophie Liechtenman and Robert Evans. The Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad 13. Voice acting is from Grant Crater. And pet shoutouts to our dog producer Anderson, my cats flea and Casper, and my pet rock bird who will outlive us all. Bye.

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