The Josh Innes Show - Mean Internet People

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

Katy Perry has been ridiculed mercilessly the last few weeks. Her tour looks terrible and of course people have drubbed her for going to space. USA Today wrote a piece about how difficult it is to be Katy Perry. Here's an idea, stop doing mockable shit. The internet sucks. We know this. But, as long as you keep doing things, you will have haters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The following was recorded from inside an ice plunge Okay, all right When a core's life is cold enough the mountains on the can turn blue So the next time you want to cold loggered cold filtered cold package Core's light just wait until those glorious mountains on the can turn blue. Whoo, it's easy to say that fast when you're freezing gold. So you know that I love going to USA Today because it's really just a hotbed of shit

that I can react to because it's so fucking lame and terrible. Like when you go to sports, it's usually like, you know, race shit or like gender shit. And then you go to like the entertainment section and it's like these weird sympathetic stories for like, you know, famous people or check out the Met Gala gallery, right? Like, but this is spectacular. Katy Perry and when online mockery goes too far. That is the main page on the life section of the online edition of USA Today. Katy Perry and when online mockery goes too far. Like think about the absurdity. Honest to God, I cannot wait to read this story. I

usually read these stories when I read them with you so you can get my instant reaction. Maybe that's not the best way to do things. People say that I don't prepare. Like when I do it with co-hosts and shit. People say, well, you don't prepare your co-hosts enough for shit when you just go into it like that. Well, I want a natural reaction. Okay? And I'm going to get a natural reaction for myself. Now I guess if you guys don't know any of the backstory. So, Katy Perry is on tour right now doing a 100% knockoff of the Taylor Swift Eras Tour, which is like the biggest tour ever and she could fill up football stadiums 10 times in a row if she wanted to. It's called the Eras Tour.

And Katy Perry is currently on a tour as well, which is a knockoff. And I forgot what the hell it's called, but it's basically just a synonym for eras. What's it called? The Lifetimes Tour, maybe. I think it's called the Lifetimes Tour. And it's fucking spectacular. But the reason people are ripping her right now is because like the videos of her dances and her shit in the show is just terrible. Now Taylor Swift is also a shitty dancer for what it's worth but this is just it looks like lazy terrible shit. Now mind you

Katy Perry used to be hot as shit and used to be awesome and like her Teenage Dream album is one of my favorite albums ever and she used to have like fucking whipped cream coming out of her jumblies and she had that old like pinup look like 1940s pinup girl look going California girls video if you've never seen the California girls video it's just super sexy and amazing it's great and it's wonderful. And then somewhere along the way, Katy Perry became like the poster child for like you go woke, you go broke. Like none of her shit sold anymore.

She like cut her hair, stopped, you know, putting her tits out for everybody and shooting whipped cream at people and just decided to do really, most importantly, made really terrible music. whipped cream at people and just decided to do really, most importantly made really terrible music, particularly a song called Swish Swish Bish, which I think was like a dig at Taylor Swift, like they were having a battle. And there's nothing more riveting than when two white bread plain Jane white ladies have like a battle with each other. And this video was so bad. She's like sitting on a basketball rim and it's fucking terrible. I couldn't tell you a Katy Perry

song that has come out since like 2013. Whenever like Roar came out, like her second, whatever that Prism, was that the name of the album? So there was Teenage Dream, which is just banger after banger after banger after banger. Then there was an album called Prism I think was the follow-up to that album and then that had some decent shit and then after that I couldn't tell you one fucking song and now she's on American Idol whatever but she's also touring with this I believe it's called the Lifetimes Tour which oh Taylor Swift just went out and did the Eris Tour now I'm doing the Lifetimes tour. Like basically what she is doing is the Dr. Thunder of concert tours and that's what she's doing. But anyway, like she's

doing like Kidz Bop. Like she's just like the Kidz Bop version of this tour. It's like it's the same basic concept but with kids singing. Let's play a couple commercials and let's read when online mockery has gone too far. All right, if you're ready to win some real cash during the basketball playoffs, you got to check out Pick Six from DraftKings. When it comes to basketball payouts, DraftKings Pick Six posterizes the competition, including prize picks. It's a very simple concept. Hit all your picks and score higher minimum payouts on pick six plus even more cash if you out score the competition. Pick six is available in most states including Missouri, California,

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That's debatable. A former American Idol judge did not know she was a former American Idol judge. I don't watch American Idol. And now a space traveler. Cool. She's also the Internet's punching bag as of late. Okay. Over the past few months, Perry has received a slew of online hate as she's rolled out her 143 album and Lifetimes Tour. Online mockery of the singer reached a fever pitch last month

following her participation in the Blue Origin space flight that also included Gail King and Lauren Sanchez. All of them got ridiculed for that because it's absurd. All this shit that went into putting these chicks on a spaceship for 10 minutes so they can say, hey, we're some chicks that went to space. All of them got ridiculed for that. Not just Katy Perry. It just so happens that instead of doing like Gail King which is, hey, I did this and people ridiculed for that. Not just Katy Perry. It just so happens that instead of doing like Gale King, which is, hey I did this and people ridiculed it for us but now I'm back to doing the news, Katy Perry did that shit and then came back down to Earth after her harrowing space trip

and launched this shitty tour that people are making fun of. And by the way, I don't think it's sold well either. Like people just don't give a shit about Katy Perry. After initially keeping quiet about the ridicule, Perry broke her silence on how the mean comments have affected her in a late April Instagram post, writing, When the online world tries to make me a human pinata, I take it with grace and send them love because I know so many people are hurting in so many ways and the internet is very much a dumping ground for unhinged and unhealed." Yes, that's not wrong, but like the idea that like, listen, I know that there are a lot of people hurting so I just try to take this in stride.

Please know I'm okay. I have done a lot of work around knowing who I am, what is real and what is important to me. Ma'am, I don't give a fuck. I'm sure that like you're what do they call her fans? I forgot what Katie Katz? Is that what her fan group was known? Used to be one. I actually went to the cinema to see her documentary concert film called Part of Me. Like I was really really into Katy Perry for a while because

I liked her vibe. I thought she had the fun kind of vibe of like she doesn't give a fuck. She's not all buttoned down. She's kind of fun. Whip cream jumblies, fun weird wacky shit in the concert. I liked it. Then she lost me when she got weird and started making shitty music and became political and had a pixie haircut. You lose me and it's hard to get somebody back. Like that's the thing, man. If you're going to do political shit like you better be right and you better make such good music that like even your political shit supersedes it. Like Taylor can still fill up 10 football stadiums in a row. Like

I think her music is fucking terrible now. But like she went sort of political, soft political and people don't give a shit. Katy Perry was right there in the smack dab middle of all that shit and then worst thing she did she made horrible music and no one gave a shit anymore. But like I like the idea that she says please know that I'm okay. No I thought maybe people making fun of you for going to space for no reason and doing a shitty concert might have driven you to something harmful but no like it's not like like when you start a sentence with please know I am okay. Like usually what preceded that was somebody mugged you outside of a Benegans or something. Not hey people are making fun of me for being a shitty dancer.

Perry also wrote my therapist said something years ago that has been a game changer. No one can make you believe something about yourself that you don't know, that you don't already believe about yourself. And if I ever do have any feelings about it, then it's an opportunity to investigate the feeling underneath it. So please let me know what the internet has done to go too far in making fun of Katy Perry. Everybody on this spaceship got made fun of because the whole world thought it was asinine. Perry is far from the only celebrity who seems to receive endless backlash. Mental health and pop culture experts say that when a famous person like Perry becomes a lightning rod

of negativity, it's important to unpack why. Often the answer has more to do with us than it does the celebrity. Sure, it's called being a celebrity in the world of social media. You want to never see this shit again? Get rid of social media. As long as social media exists people are gonna continue to be dickheads. Like do I think I was the worst human ever when I was on the radio in Philadelphia or Houston or wherever? No. I got a fuck ton of hate from people when I was in those places. That's just part of it. Especially when you're doing dumb shit like wasting money to go fly to space for no reason, just so you guys could say a bunch of ladies went to space. And by the way, your concert shit looks goofy and people are going to make fun of it.

That's how people get clicks. I'm sure at some point in life you are an asshole to someone. That's the other thing that's interesting about people of this era who don't like social media backlash. A lot of these people probably talked mad shit about people in the era before social media but now that social media exists you get to see the number of people who don't like you. It sucks.

Life was exponentially better for everyone's mental health whenever you didn't have to see that. Like, dude, when I was a kid and I was doing the baseball games for the Baton Rouge Riverbats, there was no, like Facebook was in its variant. It may not have even been around. This was 2003. So it may not have been. There were message boards. And I had, but there was no way unless someone emailed you, there was no way you know what people thought of you, right? For the most part. Like I would get ridiculed on this

thing called tiger droppings all the time and they shit on me relentlessly, right? But that wasn't really until I started doing daily sports radio shit like in 04 and 05 that they just fucking shit on me all the time. But when I was doing the Riverbats games, the only way people could communicate with me was via email. And I forgot what the website was, what email I had, like bats on broadband at Yahoo.com or something like that. And that was the name. The Cincinnati Reds called their broadcasts on radio, Reds on Radio. And I'm like, well, I'm going to call this Bats on Broadband. So that's what I called it. So it was probably bats on broadband atoo.com or some shit if I had an email I don't remember that was 22 years ago but I discovered that there was a message board on the Baton Rouge River

Bats website BRriverbats.com what are the odds that there's still somehow a BRriverbats.com I have to say that it's a 0% chance, but would it be something if somehow that still exists? I doubt it, because that would cost money. brriverbats.com. Does it exist? Nope, it doesn't. So I mean, why would it? It was worth a shot. But there was a message board on there and I didn't know. So I click on it once and I'm hearing people. I'm seeing like little comments of people discussing the play-by-play that they're hearing and it was all positive comments I'm like wow this is neat the internet rules well that's not the case anymore because there's a

thousand different ways for people to do shit and people can get likes and shares and everything talking shit about people uh let's see I'm glad that she brought up talking to her therapist because that's probably going to help destigmatize mental health even more said psychotherapist Stephanie Sarkis. She actually had a good point which is you have to stay true to yourself and whatever else is around you doesn't matter. Yes and no. Because I do think like yes, there is an element of stay true to yourself and keep fighting the good fight.

There's also a point where the hate gets to be so much that maybe you are doing something wrong, right? Especially when you're in a profession of trying to get people to pay attention to what you're doing or consume your product. Like I talked about Philadelphia. Look, there were always going to be people that thought I was shit and didn't like me just because I didn't like their teams. What I had to try to learn and did a bad job of when I was doing this was you have to learn

what criticism is valid and what isn't, right? Like I probably could have been a better person when I was there about embracing things a little bit better and doing things, and those were fair criticisms. Now this guy sucks and he likes the cowboy, it's like that was dumb shit. Where I struggled was differentiating the two and being able to take what was a fair criticism and say I think that's

fair. I just looked at everything is awful and that's why I hated my time there and that's a regrettable experience, but you know, here we go continuing. Katy Perry, Duchess Meghan and when a celebrity becomes a human pinata. It's not just Perry who's been the internet's crosshairs lately. Duchess Meghan, the actress formerly known as Meghan Markle, also can't seem to catch a break. After the Netflix lifestyle show With Love Meghan tanked with critics, the royal's latest venture into the public eye, an interview on the Jamie Kern-Lema Show

podcast got dealt similar mockery for comments Megan made about her personal life that some viewers characterized as cringe-worthy. That's the problem is like people are going to hear shit you do and they're not going to like it and they are going to ridicule you. You're putting yourself out there and people are going to shit on you. It's like people have this mindset that hey, as long as I'm trying, people should respect that I'm trying. Good luck with that. That's not the way the world works.

Like LeBron does a lot of cringe-worthy shit and people rip LeBron for his cringe-worthy shit like Taco Tuesdays and acting like you're reading books that you're not reading and all that shit. But when you do that and you put yourself out there, people are going to criticize you and you're seeing it more than you ever did. We talk about this pretty frequently on the show. What would all of these dudes who are considered tough mental dudes that played sports or were

actors back in like the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s before there were social media where they could see constant criticism? Like what would these dudes have been like? Would they have been as mentally tough as we now view them as? Like we look at Michael Jordan now, he has no reason to care about anything. This dude's career was over before there was social media. He's just considered the goat. He lives on in highlights and like sound bites of him talking about missing 100% of the shots you don't take and you know all this and I've missed number of shots in my career blah blah blah and you talk shit and everybody

talks about him like he's a mythical like folk hero, right? Well, what would that have been like for Michael Jordan or Larry Bird or Dominique Wilkins or Magic Johnson? Like what would Magic Johnson's life have been like had he got the Hiv like in 2024 playing basketball? Life would have been a lot different. Now people may have, it would have been a different type of situation because like that was still early on in the AIDS world and it was a huge story on news and whatever basketball. Life would have been a lot different. Now people may have, it would have been a different type of situation because like that was still early on in the AIDS world and it was a huge story on news and whatever but he didn't have to read 1 billion comments about everything in his life on social

media. I mean if you saw yourself would be on the sports, you know on the 10 o'clock news or in the newspaper or you know Entertainment Tonight or wherever but that was it. Like you could turn it off and it would go away. Now you can't because all the hate, think about the absurdity of this. You carry every terrible thing that the world is saying about you in your pocket. Think about that. You're a celebrity. Every bad thing that someone has to say about you is in your pocket.

So anytime you're feeling good about yourself, you can make yourself instantly feel like shit by picking up your phone and just one button, scroll. Okay, I remember the whole world fucking hates me now. It's absurd when you really think about it. It is not good for your mental health, but when you do shit that people are going to make fun of, that comes with it. People view you as a doofus. It wasn't always the case.

You were hot shit. Back to the whipped cream jumblies again. Fucking hot as hell. Good music. Now you have shit music. Your tour looks lame. You went to space and people are ripping you. You make those choices. Sucks, but that's life, man. Like there

will always be critics of shit and people will always hate you. And yes, the majority of the people who sit around on the internet and mock you and shit are probably fucking losers that are going nowhere. That's where I struggle. I like I would read these comments and like it's just funny because you get worked up over the shit people say about you and then you look at their name and it's like, you know, like JohnMeat69 and you're like, why do I give a shit? But you do.

Why did I spend a whole afternoon fighting with some Houston media critic one day while my wife is like, this is fucking terrible, but you do. It's just a weird world, man. But point being in all of this is like, this is fucking terrible. But you do. It's just a weird world, man. But point being in all of this is like, do better shit that people aren't going to mock. Like I've watched the shit that people are mocking you for. You come back to the earth and kiss the ground after being in space for 10 minutes and wasting all this money and resources to do it. Now, I do enjoy that the same people who are saying that they're wasting

money and resources to take someone to space are also the same people that probably fucking like the Met Gala to raise money for a dress museum. But all that said you do lame shit and people are going to make fun of you for doing lame shit. Back to the point about like tiger droppings man. Like once they found out that I created a fake name to compliment myself there was no coming back. I deserve the ridicule for being a dipshit for going, hey, I'm going to create a name for myself and I'm just going to kind of mention the show and try to get conversation going about it. Of course I look like an asshole and of course I'm going to get ripped for that. So, like again, it's a little different than doing a shitty concert that people are mocking, but like the concert

looks lame and people are ripping it. Get over it. Life goes on. You're rich. Like, you got a shit ton of money. You have one of the biggest selling albums ever. Like, just stop doing shit. Go chill.

Go do something. Your life can't be that bad.