Were These The Best of Times?
Thursday Thoughts
I said this last week in the Saturday Post, but it must be said again:
No evils against Britney Jean Spears shall prosper.
That means Wemby’s ankles.
That means Perez Hilton.
A few days ago Perez Hilton stole one of my videos. It’s basically what he does on the internet now: A creator with perspective makes a video that goes viral and he re-uses it without credit.
He’ll move into position to block the original creator and sit there with a finger propped on the corner his mouth as either a cartoonish display of curiosity, or to plug drool. During the more climactic moments of perspective, he’ll peel back his brow to show off two of the deadest eyes known to man. He’ll then smirk, which for most people brings a little flush of life to the face, but here, as expected, that too is unsuccessful.
When confronted with accountability, Perez, whose been sued multiple times for content theft and unauthorized distribution, responds as a desperate damsel groveling for his 10th, 11th, 200th chance to make things right. Luckily, that doesn’t really work for middle aged men.
It’s weird, as someone who grew up with free reign internet access during his blog era, to be sharing a digital space with him. Mostly because I expected him to be gone by now. The internet, pop culture, and celebrity reporting have evolved so much in the last 10 years, primarily due to mergers, consolidation, and being sued into submission, that it's surprising that he (of all people) is still here.
This is less of a Cher story, and more of a cockroach story.
He’s been banned from TiKTok, twice. First, for initiating a one-sided feud against a 15 year old. Unsurprisingly, his Achilles' heel is his need to rush and find yet another famous young girl to torment. It backfired after Charli D’Amelio’s fans mass-reported him. Afterward, he cried to The New York Times that he came to TikTok “because it created joy” and offered “an escape.”
We don’t really need to dive into what his definition of “joy” is, especially in relation to famous young girls. A topline snapshot is:
Him admitting to running a hate campaign after 18-year old Ariana Grande declined to let him be her talent manager.
A years-long fat-shaming campaign against Mischa Barton, who was literally as skinny as needle. Content is still live on his site.
A disgustingly abusive pre- and postnatal campaign against Britney Jean where he even made merch wishing she was dead. This, after Heath Ledger died in 2008:
…..and thousands more.
In nearly all of his targeted posts, he was years (and even decades) older than the women he subjected his abuse to. And, yes, it’s abuse. It’s not snark, it’s not wit, or “unfiltered opinion.” Snark and wit require original thoughts. They require perspective. It’s just not something that people who steal content for a living have in them.
Anyway, he returned to TikTok after about a year and was banned a second time for violating the community guidelines. But like a roach, he re-appears after each ban with a new burner account. I had already proactively blocked the two I knew about, which is why I was absolutely devastaaaatttttted to find a third existed (and had posted my content).
Creator @jordycrayy has been righteously leading this currently wave accountability. I was initially resistant to giving Perez airtime with my own video, but it DID lead to some amazing reminders:
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Note that despite playing ogre-damsel in his video statement, Perez would later admit that he called the singer a homophobic slur before he rightfully got popped in the eye.
On TikTok, he’s finding out his “celebrity” and “infamy,” which honestly never really existed to begin with, holds no weight on an app whose audience is sensitive to his genre of harm, adamant about credit (when it wants to be), and frankly doesn’t even know who he is.
Still though, there is a an acidic community of Perez Hilton legacy fans who (I assume have been taught by him to hate themselves) stand ready to campaign in his defense and laugh at his stolen jokes.
Within the cult of 2000’s celebrity gossip blogs, there were very clear tribes.
I was a D-Listed and Pink Is The New Blog kind of girl, which is where all the true elite girls were obviously. We understood talent and wit and skill, and also had ADHD brains that could handle neon text on black backgrounds and process scattered thoughts on Phoebe Price.
Michael K. was the hyper-critical observer of even the most mundane things (because pop culture isn’t actually limited to just celebrity). Depending on his mood, a couch (an actual couch) could have as much above-the-fold real estate as Madonna. His only crime really was that the site’s ad experience during the last five years made it practically unreadable. But, that’s beside the point because we’re here to celebrate the heyday. Dlisted.com finally came to a wrap at the end of June after eighteen years.
PITNB’s Trent was a soft spoken #scene boy who seamlessly reported on the temporary stars of Young Hollywood (let’s face it, we knew there were never going to be any Oscars or Grammys in anyone’s future here) and his love for Tori Amos. Per his public Instagram, he’s now a producer and seems to be having the best summer ever.
Also, if you don’t want to be sad, do not type www.pinkisthenewblog.com into your browser.
Beyond those two, there are well-deserved honorable mentions for Oh No They Didn’t, Towleroad, Ted Casablanca’s The Awful Truth, and John Henson’s *elite* era on The Soup:
I’m waxing heavily nostalgic over here. …She longs for the old times. For the over-niched pop culture trenches where any auxillary celebrity moment could become lore. Brooke Hogan recording her first single during that one episode of Hogan Knows Best should not still be sitting so deeply within my soul.
(I tried to find some gifs to pair this post with, but I forgot that so much of this era of pop culture commentary preceded memes. Not because some of these moments commanded real commentary and depth of explanation, but because the larger, running joke they were a part of couldn’t be contained in five words over a gif).
What a time.
It’s impossible to write this without mentioning that most of this era’s absolutely insane TV was the byproduct of a writers’ strike.
I don’t think we’lI get anything remotely close to this if the current negotiations do fail. The magic of 2000s TV and pop culture commentary was that most people participating had never broadcast before. Without social media existing, a local news spotlight or a home video was the most exposure a “regular” person could receive. Even for an actor, the cult of celebrity was mostly reserved for a chosen few — the Michael Jackson’s, the Princess Diana’s, the NSYNC’s.
Well established actors who spent hundreds of hours on a film set could walk into reality TV without a clue how it worked. Most didn’t even know they had to bring strategy and agenda with them. Unbeknownst to them, watching their naivety thaw into chaos was part of our entertainment.
Anyway, we don’t give enough credit to the producers and casting directors of this time. Whoever was casting True Life during that era. Whoever decided to sign off on Rich Girls, or Gastineau Girls, or Til Death Do Us Part: Carmen and Dave. Whoever chess-mastered the first season cast of The Surreal Life deserves a star on the walk of fame.
There is something culturally cruel in that the Kardashian’s, the least interesting show and cast of the era, are still on our TV’s 734983273 years later.
It’s just not fair.
Lastly, if you are under 30, please watch this clip from The Best Week Ever clip below. This was normal TV. Like, VH1. Like, they didn’t bleep words.
Me, an adult, currently watching that clip in 2023:
OK, LASTLY (for real): I need to shoutout Rich Juzwiak who wrote Four Four (or “four-four-dot-typepad-dot-com” as I used to say as I typed it into my browser). Did browsers even have ‘history’ then? Auto-population? Why do I suddenly remember having to manually type all of these site addresses in?
Anyway, he is the grandfather of TV binge watching and may be the first real obsessive to introduce episode recaps into our cultural appetite. Before Buzzfeed and before “lists.” Before Twitter, you had Four Four. You couldn’t just click a hashtag and see 10,000 different reactions to, like, Roman Roy ordering a Martini. You had to wait until Rich posted in the morning and take your thoughts into comment sections and message boards. I can’t imagine the Succession fandom, or RHOBH (or Bravo-holics in general), or Love Island existing without him.
His America’s Next Top Model recaps raise me. Read his archives here.
Not Ted Casablanca! Those *were* the days.
It was an incredible time to be alive.