Sydney Sweeney and the Outrage Machine

Did you guys see that American Eagle is selling limited edition pairs of the Sydney Swiney jeans that have been washed in her bathwater? Wait, are they? Wait, is that real? Not. No. I made that up. Let's talk about it. Hello, hello, and welcome back to a bit fruity. I'm Matt Bernstein, and I don't care about Sydney Swiney. I don't care about Sydney Swiney, and if you click this episode thinking, I too don't care about Sydney Swiney, then this is the Sydney Swiney episode for you. I usually pick episode topics based on what I care about and want to dive deeper into. So this episode is sort of reverse engineered in that I don't care about Sydney Swiney. I have never cared about Sydney Swiney. So my job here today is to try to investigate why so many people are trying to get me to care about Sydney Swiney. Recently, the actor did a commercial for American Eagle Jeans that I did not know about, because like I might have mentioned, I don't care about Sydney Swiney. See, gay guys, we love to talk about celebrity women, but it's more like Lady Gaga or Jennifer Coolidge or Beyonce, gay men don't really get together and hang out and are like, let's talk about Sydney Swiney. She's not for us, and that's okay. That's okay. Or at least it was, until last month, when the entire right wing media apparatus coalesced around Sydney Swiney's Jeans commercial, and how allegedly angry the woke left was about it. But I'm the woke left, and I wasn't mad. I didn't even know what the hell was going on. It felt like a reverse Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light, except I wasn't shooting a gun at piles of American Eagle Jeans to protest Sydney Swiney. I didn't even know about the ad, much less give a shit. But Fox News mentioned Sydney Swiney 181 times over a four day period. So I realized that I have to care about Sydney Swiney, because they're making me care. Greg Gutfeld, you are a terrorist and you will pay for your crimes. Today, I want to do culture war anthropology. You know, when I started this podcast, I thought it was going to be a sort of culture war podcast. Those were the days of right wing meltdowns over desexualized M&Ms. And at the time, it felt fun to observe the things that these people would get mad at. But it doesn't feel fun anymore. Because I think most people across the political spectrum, honestly, have at least a vague sense that there is a darkness underneath these increasingly ridiculous culture wars. And today, I want to see if we can identify that darkness and why certain people would rather us talk about Sydney Swiney until we turn blue in the face than face it. I thought that was pretty well written, my little intro. It was great. I loved it. To help us do all of that today, welcome back to the show, two of my best friends, and two of the smartest culture and political critics I have ever known, Catten Barge and Taylor Lorenz. Thanks for having us. I wanted to start with like an icebreaker question. Before we get into anything, what about Sydney Swiney? Do you think makes everyone act crazy? Like, I can't remember the last time the public was so fixated on every inhale and exhale a celebrity takes. Like, there's a very Britney Spears quality to it almost. It's interesting because I agree with you that she is not like a gay man's celebrity. But with the lesbian gaze, I do care about Sydney Swiney. Just in the sense that I did not watch euphoria. I've seen like two episodes of euphoria. But I always found her very like attractive and very compelling in that sense. And I also think that Sydney Swiney has been part of the like algorithmic treadmill for a while because the thing about like Sydney Swiney and her like euphoria rise to prominence is that obviously the sex scenes in that show and the sex scenes in a lot of Sam Levinson productions, which I could say a lot about Sam Levinson because I hate that man. Cat texted me beforehand and she was like, I'm going to try not to rant about Sam Levinson and we are three minutes into the work. Here comes Sam Levinson. My biggest issue with him is that he takes women's work and then he creates these productions that are really fetishistic toward women. And it's not inherently wrong to like make like a really sexy show. But I think the problem I have with him is that he has repeatedly been accused of like plagiarism essentially from women creatives. So like the aesthetic of euphoria, Petra Collins alleged that like she came up with it and then he stole it from her. And that's the most popular best thing about euphoria from what I can tell. But anyways, Sydney Swiney was in these really raunchy sex scenes. And from the second that they debuted on television, they became some of the like most viral clips of sex scenes ever. Because like you go on Reddit where like these are like Reddit is a very male dominated platform. So anything to do with celebrity women on Reddit trends like sexually explicit. And these just like immediately became the most engaged with clips ever. And I think ever since then you've seen Sydney Swiney like so surly embedded in like what social media's are trained to recognize that it has had like a huge effect on how popular she is and how much posts about her get traction. Yeah, there is a there is a Megan Fox quality to it to it. It reminds me of how insane men would be about Megan Fox like 15 years ago. But there's this added like political component to it now, which we're going to talk about Taylor, I want to get your hot take on to why Sydney Swiney makes everyone unable to act normally. Every generation of celebrity, there is like one usually extremely conventionally attractive, like blonde woman that is made into sort of like the bombshell of the era. And they sort of represent like the pinnacle of female beauty of that era. Like we had Scarlett Johansson. We had like there's just endless generations of beautiful women like this. I think Sydney Swiney is that modern woman. And I think she leans into that role. Yes. And she didn't always. So I want to do a little bit of Sydney Swiney history slash background info for anyone who is truly I always say like if you're under a rock and you don't know what I'm talking about. But like this one, you got to be like really like deep underground to not know what's going on with Sydney Swiney. And I'm happy for you. And I'm about to take that away from you. So Sydney Swiney is a 27 year old actor who grew up in rural Idaho. Sorry, rural Washington in the Idaho panhandle on the Washington Idaho border. Classic mix up in a conservative religious family in a house that her family has owned for five generations, which by the way, fast forward when it was revealed that Sydney Swiney is a registered Republican in Florida. There was some like shock and awe around that. But I'm like, you know, I don't know five generations in the same house in rural Idaho conservative religious. Not to say you can't break out of that, but you know, there have been more shocking political turns in my day. Anyway, she got into acting as a teenager and moved to LA as a 13 year old to pursue acting. She briefly had a job at Universal Studios and she also briefly attended UCLA before her acting career really started to take off. I remember the first time I saw Sydney Swiney, I think it was in sharp objects where she played alongside Amy Adams in this small role as a mentally ill and disturbed teenager. And then she was in the handmaid's tale, which a lot of people forget about. I don't remember her being in that. She was in the handmaid's tale as like a young girl who was like in this like public arranged marriage. Oh yeah. Oh my god. I feel like this was before I paid attention to her. Well, and she was also like it was years ago, but I also started to know it's just kind of funny to me that like the handmaid's tale start Elizabeth Moss, who's a Scientologist, and smaller role, but co-starred Sydney Swiney, who is this like a Republican? It's like they read this script for the handmaid's tale and they were like, let's do this. Yeah. Well, one thing about Sydney Swiney is she's going to show up to work. So Sydney Swiney would really shoot into the limelight as a star in euphoria and the white lotus. Two shows which I don't feel like are in the conservative zeitgeist at all, which is also funny to me. You're right, but I do think it's also notable that her character in white lotus was based off the red scarer girls. And so they're supposed to be these sort of reactionary young girls. They had them watch or listen, subject themselves to red scarer to train for that role. But there's supposed to be this like disaffected kind of reactionary, like cool young people, even though Josh is not young, I think she's my. I totally forgot about that. And you're right. Her character on the white lotus was this, I mean, red scarer, it started as it's a podcast if you don't know red scarred. That's one that I'm actually not going to subject you to any information about because it's truly the worst brain rot you'll ever experience. But it's a podcast that started framing itself as like a post-identity politics left. podcast one by these two women named Dasha and Anna and then it very quickly just became like a right wing trad Catholic, trad wife, like, crock of shit, really. I think that's a great description of it. I wonder if Sydney Sweeney got radicalized when she had to listen to that. Well, I think this girl was radicalized. I think she was raised conservative. Sydney Sweeney is really hot, which is something that she and her team have leaned into more and more as her career has progressed. In 2024, she hosted SNL and famously did this hooter sketch where the punchline revolved around her being hotter than all of the other servers at hooters. After the SNL hosting gig, conservatives ignited like a mini culture war around Sydney Sweeney's hotness. There was an article published in the National Post by a woman, by the way, titled "Are Sydney Sweeney's breasts double-deharbingers of the death of woke?" "Wokeness is no match for Sydney Sweeney's undeniable beauty." And then there were a bunch of conservative bloggers and stuff who were online being like, "Woke is dead. Sydney Sweeney is hot and glorious and hosting SNL. So queer people and fat people don't exist anymore, I guess. I don't know." I remember talking to Moira Donigan, the host of In bed with the right about this shift, because I thought conservatives were anti-sex. I thought conservatives wanted women to be modest. But now, if you're like a hot blonde bombshell, now that's conservative coded. I mean, I remember even years ago Taylor talking about this with you with the whole "hawk-tua" thing, and how sex was conservative now or something. Moira Donigan explained this to me best. Throughout the different areas of political administrations and culture, conservative men have had varying attitudes towards modesty and sexuality. But what is consistent is that they dictate the norm. It's not really about whether women want to be modest or whether women want to show skin. It's about them having control over the situation. I also think that there's the whole virgin horror dichotomy that conservativeism pushes on women, where it's like you are either this chaste being but never puts an ounce of makeup and you're just this trad barefoot pregnant woman, or you're the Sydney-sweeney bombshell slot. Basically, is the subtext on all of it, where they put these women up as sex symbols, but they're only seen as sex symbols and their value in the eyes of these men is declines with every year they get older and all of that. I feel like what they don't allow is women to be anything but those two stereotypes. I also feel like Sydney-sweeney and I think we'll really get into this with the bath water, but it's like she takes it about as far as it's acceptable without doing like porn. Because like we talked about with the euphoria clips, it's like that is masturbatory material and it is very popular material, but she's not actually making porn nor is she a porn star nor is she a sex worker, she's able to capitalize on those aesthetics, the material of her like serves the same purpose, but she still falls within the boundaries of like traditional society and so therefore like the right still wants to claim her and they're not going to treat her like they would treat an actual sex worker. So initially it seemed like Sydney was very uncomfortable with all of this being projected onto her by men. She didn't interview after the whole SNL mini culture war fiasco where she said quote it's this weird relationship that people have with me that I have no control or say over which you know regardless of how you feel about Sydney-sweeney or her politics or anything else like yeah it is weird and I honestly can't imagine what it's like to be in her position and have to grapple with that from the time she was very young you know she started acting as a child. In the following year though she's really seemed to actively embrace this like strange psychosexual adoration from conservative men or at least she's been willing to monetize it. She keeps doing what I can only describe as like every time I see one I'm just like what is this like fuck-ass advertisement? 'cause here's the thing right Sydney-sweeney is one of the biggest actors of my generation and I've seen people say this online like she should be the face of a major fashion house she should be the face of product she should be do and instead it's like hillbilly jacks burger soda. She keeps doing these weird advertisements for brands that like I've never heard of and that are clearly aimed at men. One thing I will say about the fashion stuff and like why I think that she's considered more commercial and I saw like fashion people discussing is is her body. To fashion people she doesn't have a high fashion body basically her boobs are too big she's not seen as sort of like premium she's seen as like accessible like commercial where it's like she can do the dunkin ad. I feel like that's also like a branding on behalf of her team though they're like we want her to be this highly commercial entity and we want to lean into the sex like I don't like when people talk about celebrities as if they don't make any of their own decisions but there is definitely you know a team working together to decide who is the product of Sydney-sweeney who keeps giving her all of these products to promote these again these like fuck-ass products. She also doesn't do like high brow projects and I think that feeds into it too like she's doing like mass market Netflix like romcom and Scarlett Johansson went through this period too right where like she tried to sort of like reinvent herself and do these more like cerebral type films and be a real you know do more movies as opposed to TV and stuff and I don't think that Sydney's made that jump and you're right Matt like some of that is definitely like positioning from you know her agents or whatever somebody tweeted like she must be and like debt to like a mob boss or something she just like she will hawk anything. It's really interesting because like a period of time where I actually both liked her and would have assumed that she was more liberal back in 2022 when she was really starting to take off and like ascend to this level of superstar dumb. She did an interview she expressed frustration at nepo babies and how they don't have to work as hard as she had to work to like get to where she is and she talked about how she couldn't take six months off because she wouldn't be able to afford it and she talked about how like so much of the money she makes goes to her publicist, her agent, her manager like all of these people and this was a huge controversy. People have basically accused her of being like more privileged than she was letting on and like how dare she complain and like no one can take six months off from work. However, there was an amazing article that Kelsey McKinney wrote for defector which was basically like it's true this generation of actors is not nearly as privileged as like the Jennifer Aniston generation of actors where you could do a show like friends and then coast off of that for the rest of your life. Famously writer is guild they don't get residuals the same way they used to so they have to keep working and she has to like I think she truly does have to do a lot of advertisements but what is so interesting about that too is like I agree with you Matt like there's a little bit of like personal choice versus like responding to the market and what people want from you and you see how she has been like driven to lean into that sexualization more and more and more. It's just wild to me that she can experience all these things and still walk away and be like fiscally conservative and be a registered Republican. Yeah well I remember that whole thing too where she was like I can't afford to stop working for six months and I do think that in the last few years since she said that she's definitely ascended to a level where that's no longer the case. She did last year by a $13 million home in Florida which was when she moved there also the same time that she registered to vote as a Republican. Red flag red flag. So I mean I think it is very possible that she did attain a level of financial security that now of course she has to do all of this shit to keep up with but I want to play for you one of the ads she did recently it is for Haydude which is a men's shoe line and I have never heard of Haydude in my life but clearly a lot of people are buying them because they could afford Sidney's sweeties day rate. You can take the dude out of the country you can't take the country out of the dude. All of her ads are the same. I had to watch that like six times before I knew what she was saying. You can take the dude out of the country but you can't take the country out of the dude. I'm happy for her I just want to say like I'm happy for her if she wants to advertise Haydude shoot you don't even know what she's selling in these advertisements but but I bring this up I am particularly interested and people have drawn attention to the voice that she seems to do the intonation in her voice when she's doing these things it's there's no enunciation. Well she's talking in like a like a phone sex operator voice. And I am not making fun of her voice I am not as as people on this podcast especially Kat and I who have had our voices mocked and and thumbs down extensively I am not making fun of anyone's voice but there just seem to be a performative cadence to how she's speaking. She also kind of famously had this like micro controversy around her partnership with men's soap brand Dr. Squatch. Another company they've never heard of to sell a line of soaps allegedly made with her bathwater. Yes. As Taylor was saying, she does this like phone sex operator voice in these commercials. And with the bathwater, it really clicked for me that like she is borrowing from this culture of sex workers and porn performers, and like eagles. Bathwater very famously like selling your bathwater became a thing when Bell Delphine did it over five years ago, I think now. And it was a huge controversy and it was a huge pop culture moment because she was selling like gamer girl bathwater and people were buying it. They were drinking it. They were smelling it. It was all like gross men. And when Cindy Swini did this, it really like made me think that we are in this moment of pop culture and there are other celebrities doing this too right now where it's like the things that sex workers have brought to the cultural forefront are now being kind of appropriated by this class of celebrity who can reap the benefits of how good that is for your brand for monetizing for whatever without having to reap the like discriminatory consequences of being a sex worker because Bell Delphine when she sold the bathwater, her PayPal account got like shut down and all that money she made was actually seized from her and stolen from her because she is a sex worker. So I just think that it is particularly egregious that Cindy Swini is apparently like a Republican, Republicans want to ban porn, they want to jail all sex workers. And so like she's profiting from this trend that was started by this woman, but she does not in any way like stand for the women who made this possible for her. Ooh, well said. I would like to take a quick break from the show to give a shout out to the Freedom from Religion Foundation, which is perhaps the most fitting and easiest brand partner this podcast has ever had. Friendly reminder, if you are living in the United States, Jesus is not your guidance counselor and your tax dollars should not be paying for a sermon in algebra. And yet here we are, states are forcing religious posters in classrooms, swapping out license mental health staff for unlicensed school chaplains and shoveling public money that should be going toward public schools and making them better and giving teacher supplies and fixing the rules into private religious schools through these shady voucher schemes. Let me know if you want me to make a separate episode on that because it really is a whole thing and it is quite literally end times shit in my opinion, not in the way these people think though. Anyway, the Freedom from Religion Foundation is doing some really important work to fight the influence of religion in government and the people who are pushing it. They're suing, educating and fighting to keep religion out of the government and out of your kids classrooms. You can join their fight, which is really all of our fight, by going to ffrf.us/school or texting freedom to 511-511-511. That's ffrf.us/school or text freedom to 511-511. Because you didn't survive purity culture just to have it show up in your kids math class. Shout out to the Freedom from Religion Foundation for all the important work that they do. Go be a part of the fight. And yes, text fees may apply. I love reading legal disclaimer. Alright, now let's get back to the show. Should we talk about American Eagle? Let's do it. Yes. You can take the country out of the dude. Or you can take the dude out of the country. You can never take the country out of the dead. I love it. So even through the bathwater scandal, I was able to go about my day while getting very, very few messages from people asking me to talk about it on the podcast, like to do anything about Sydney Sweeney. And I was perplexed by the bathwater soaps scandal. But I did not want to make a podcast episode about it. But then something happened recently that I mentioned up top that got me so many messages, so many requests to do this very episode that I could not ignore it. So middle of July, Sydney Sweeney and American Eagle unveiled a series of commercial advertisements that they did together. And I wanted to start by playing a few of them for you. I'm not here to tell you to buy American Eagle jeans. And I definitely won't say that they're the most comfortable jeans I've ever worn. Or that they make your butt look amazing. Why won't I need to do that? But if you said that you want to buy the jeans, I'm not going to stop you. But just so we're clear, this is not me telling you to buy American Eagle jeans. Sydney Sweeney has very keen. You see what I did there, right? My body's composition is determined by my jeans. Hey, I was up here. Sydney Sweeney has great jeans. Okay, am I crazier? Is that giving like low budget? If you're not watching the video version of this, it's just her walking around in empty room or like next to a car in an empty room, just like wearing jeans and like caressing herself while speaking in this phone text operator voice that I know isn't natural to her. I've seen her in other things and she does not talk like this. She doesn't talk like that in her movie roles and her TV roles, rather. She enunciates. She doesn't enceate. She can. We haven't watched the main one yet. And I know you want us. If you're tapped into this controversy already, you know, you know we're going to talk about the main ad. But that's, we're not there yet. I just, I saw these ads and I didn't find them as offensive as I did just like overly like self-serious and like poorly acted and almost, almost a mockery of how easy it is to like performatively seduce heterosexual men. Like I feel like if she pushed the whole stick of like, I'm just a, do you like my body? Like it almost could be like an anacle smith like campy territory of like the like my body. But because it doesn't go full camp, to me it falls like just shy of that. You know what reminds me of this so much as Paris Hilton, who also put on an effect. And do you remember the extremely famous 2005 crawls junior commercial that's where she's like this is what you guys talk about eating a burger like washing a car like it is soft core porn basically. It's honestly a lot of Sydney's ads remind me of sort of like the worst of the mid 2000s views of women and also just like this like hyper sexualized like persona that Paris as well took on and has and talks about it now how like that entire persona was an affect and it was really just for marketing because men liked it and not because she speaks like that and she considers herself actually a tomboy and doesn't speak like that in normal life. But I think yes. And then I also think a key difference between what's happening here and what Paris was doing was like Paris. I don't think you had to be that smart to know that there was like an angle here and that this was a show like she was like. She was like dripping a burger on herself on top of a cart like it was absurd. And to me, this is like just shy of absurd. I think it is absurd like I also think that now we look at that commercial is absurd and I do think Paris was so campy and over at the top and sort of there was like a joke there almost. But I do think there's something about this like type of advertising that Sydney Sweeney is really leading into and even just like the script and the format and the voice and the shots and everything that feels very kind of regressive. It reminds me of hooters and it reminds me of like an era that conservatives are wanting to reclaim culturally, which was an era where women were more commonly understood as like decor essentially like women were more ornamental and women could be easily separated into categories of like prude or slut. It's also fascinating to me that like Paris Hilton also is like a like a voting conservative at least used to be. I believe voted for Trump and I find it interesting that these women like they have a lot of nuance about the way that they were portrayed and how they portrayed themselves. But at the end of the day, it's like I think that so much of their ultimate loyalty is to wealth and to capital. And so that is another reason why they so commonly support like the exact same types of power and authority that ultimately like subjugate them. Should we watch the the ad ad? We have to. I've watched this so many times in the last few weeks that it makes me want to die. Okay, here we go. Jeans are passed down from parents to offspring often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue. Sydney Swini has great jeans. My jeans are blue. Jeans are passed down from parents to offspring. That voice is it is really grating and I'm just kidding. She starts like speaking and like every syllable gets so slow in that one in particular that I'm like, girl, like I'm afraid you're not going to make it to the end of the sentence. Like you're going to run out of juice. Well, is ironically it's similar to the white lotus voice that she was doing? Yeah. where it's this like, disaffected type draw. That ad obviously is also like a remake of another. Yes. Very well-known ad. Yes. And that's actually where my mind went to first when I saw this. I did not immediately think eugenics. I immediately thought, why are we remaking the Brook Shields ad? Which was also very eugenics, by the way. And also pedophilic. Oh, 100%. She was a child. Yes, exactly. So decades ago, a 15-year-old Brook Shields featured in a series of very creepy Calvin Klein advertisements that had a similar kind of like bare bones. It's just me in an empty room in my jeans vibe. And in one of those commercials, Brook Shields kind of struggled to put on her jeans, like performatively posing in all of these different ridiculous ways. Again, as a 15-year-old, which is just bizarre to watch now, while she did that, she kind of just recited an encyclopedic definition of genetics, jeans, while putting on jeans. And I think the key difference between hers and Sydney's is that Sydney's is like, my jeans are good. My genetics are good. Whereas Brooks didn't quite say that. She was just making the pun of jeans and jeans. But even still, those commercials were widely derided because they were quite pedophilic. I mean, in one of the Brook Shields ads, she said, what gets between my calvins and I? Nothing. And she was, you know, a high school freshman. So my mind, when I first saw this ad, was like, why are we remaking the Brook Shields ad? Didn't that come out in the 80s? Yeah, it was the 80s. Oh, yeah, 1980. I just think what's so interesting is like we are seeing this resurgence of conservatism in a way that we haven't seen since the 80s. And we're like almost replicating, like bar for bar so much of the worst of that brand of republicanism and conservatism, whether it's rank homophobia, weird genetics ads, like, I mean, eugenics generally hyper capitalism, like obsession with, you know, market economics and wealth and greed. And obviously, none of us were like, I don't even know if you guys were born. I was barely sentient in the 80s. So like, I feel like none of us like lived through that. But a lot of culture today feels like it's like, harkening back to that era. So because I am so online and so like, deeply tuned into like, leftist online posting and like, very niche, like, leftist online posting, I could only ever see the that ad through the lens of like, I did see that people were talking about it in the sense of eugenics. So I never saw it and like got to form an opinion without already knowing that there was backlash to it. But I think that it's like so impossible to separate it from the context of the political moment that we are living in right now, even if the ad just said like something about like having blue eyes. And like, she's like a blonde hair, blue eyed hot woman who leans into these like conservative cultural roles. So I do feel like even if it wasn't fully like intentionally like eugenics based, I almost like it doesn't matter because it's like, even if every single person behind the creative direction did not have that in mind, I'm like, it just fits so neatly into the moment we are living through right now. I do think that it's impossible to separate from this moment of again, the fifth year of an ongoing pandemic where we're seeing eugenics also in regards to Palestine. We're like, the free pass published this disgusting piece that was like, actually, the people dying of famine were high risk anyway. So we're just seeing, I mean, just eugenics all over and also then you're seeing the rise of ozempec and all of these like, you know, plastic surgery procedures and stuff where it's like, there is fewer and fewer like excuses for not conforming to society standards of beauty. And you're also seeing like conservatives try to make those standards of beauty more and more rigid. And so I just think it's impossible to like separate this ad from all of that because the reality is this type of ad would not be written or remade or even performed while like five years ago. Yeah, 100%. I mean, the entire ethos of MAGA, which promises to return America to a time when people who look like Sydney Swini had total control over society. Yeah, I mean, it's not a good look to do a, you know, a thin white woman with blonde hair and blue eyes has good genetics. I mean, the idea of good genetics implies bad genetics, which in and of itself is the premise of eugenics. I mean, I will say again, the first time I saw it, I was just kind of like, this is creepy and this is corny. I didn't immediately think like eugenics. I didn't immediately think about all of this stuff that we do in fairness talk a lot about in different ways and different contexts on this podcast. I just saw it and I was kind of like, this is another Sydney Swini ad where it's like extremely sexual in an extremely like male gazey way, but with this added layer of like, but we're talking about genetics. So that's kind of weird. But for me, it became a matter of scale and the scale of this controversy, which in my opinion could have just been like discourse on a few TikToks and a Reddit forum, which is initially what happened. It was just like a few people tweeted, a few people made TikToks being like, I don't know about this American eagle. I it's kind of bizarre. That was all inflated to an unimaginable scale by specific people with very specific goals in mind. So should we talk about the backlash to the backlash? Yes. Because like I said, in response to this ad, there are some TikToks and tweets that start making the rounds where people with like tepid followings on Twitter or TikTok are criticizing the eugenicist undertones of the advertisement. In my opinion, correctly, but do I think there needs to be like national discourse around a gene's ad campaign in this current moment when so many other things are happening that are like way more consequential in my opinion, not really. And I didn't like the ad. But again, I didn't really catch wind of the whole thing until I saw prominent conservatives reacting to the online liberals saying that the wokeness has gone too far. That once again, Sidney Sweeney will be the death of woke. I don't know about you guys, but I just I started seeing so much more of this once conservatives were telling me that people were angry about it. Well, because they did what they always do. It's like the Chris Ruvho playbook, right? Or the lips of TikTok. It's like take some little thing, take a few examples of leftist sentiment, wildly mischaracterized, the very nuanced point by the way that they're making and then use that to generate outrage. And then they just sort of feed this outrage machine where it's like the left wants to cancel Sidney Sweeney for, you know, the like for being beautiful. It's like the worst sort of bad faith reading of everything and conservatives, especially Fox News, like this is what they live for. This is all they do. And once they see, like once they find one of these things, especially if it's celebrity related, they will drive it into the ground. I do think the digital media and like clickbait journalism, like plays a role in all of this too, because like they are framing backlash as like this like widespread thing. And then they're taking tweets from people with like seven followers, or it's clear if they're like on the left. And then that's like being amplified in this article to potentially millions of people as some example of discourse. And it's like, is that even real? I was reading so many of these articles as I was piecing together this outline of these like everything you missed about the Sidney Sweeney American Eagle drama. And all of them, it was like Ben Shapiro was saying this and Laura Ingram is saying this and Greg Gutfeld is saying this and Candace Owen is saying this and they're all saying it's gone too far based on criticism from some users on X formerly known as Twitter. And then it'll link maybe it'll link like a single tweet, you know, backlash to the original advertisement. And it's always someone with like 1200 followers. I'm like, that would be a lot. I feel like if it's double digit followers, like I'm not convinced that some of these Fox News assignment editors like aren't making up some of these tweets. I get a little conspiratorial later in my outline as we follow this saga. So just wait. The point about digital media is so true. And it's something that I think about a lot whenever this happens because I feel like first of all, this happens regularly. This is a whole playbook. And second of all, when I first started out in digital media and I had to write like five articles a day for some website that you've never heard of before because that's like also the Buzzfeed model. You would be assigned to find as many tweets as you possibly could about something that they're just simply the demand was not real. It was not actually there. So I have so much experience like I would be sitting there on my fourth article of the day, making like, I don't know, $20 a day. And I would be like searching on Twitter like needing to find tweets to like fit these quotas. The difference between when like an outlet like Buzzfeed does that for the most part and an outlet like Fox News, they do it with a clear agenda. They do it with like a conservative narrative in mind. And then especially right now, they have the actual institutional backing to cause like consequences. And when when conservatives do this, they are often speaking to a status quo that they will then materially benefit from. Whereas when like people on the left do this and I'm thinking about like the articles that I would write about like people are offended by something that was honestly probably actually offensive. Like when I would write an article like that, that article would have no power. And it would not reflect the biases of people who had authority. But I feel like part of the reason why American Eagle made this ad is because like, yeah, they're stock jumped because the people who like influence the stock market are like more in tune with like a pro eugenics advertising campaign. So it all works out really well. It becomes a treadmill of itself on the right because it just reinforces the power that they already hold. - This exact model of faux outrage and faux controversy is responsible for so much legislation and especially the entire anti-trans movement. - Anti-trans, 100%, anti-LGBTQ as a whole. Women's rights, porn, tech, like weird kids online safety stuff, the TikTok ban, which was driven by fake, completely made up fake TikTok challenges. - I mean, think about how much legislation and transphobic sentiment and elections were one off of the myth of litter boxes in bathrooms, in school bathrooms that right-wing media outlets were alleging were for students who were identifying as cats. - Taylor, didn't you report on that? - I did, and the litter boxes were, it was like extra, it was like litter bags basically for like, if somebody had to go to the bathroom when they were locked in for a school shooting, just crazy and bleak. But it reminds me of the TikTok stuff too, because it's just like moral panic, fake outrage. They know that it's made up, but it's just manufactured outrage. - And you have these like YouTubers and podcasters and then Fox News and then it trickles up to the politicians who are basically like creating outrage about nothing or about, you know, fractional leftist discourse that's happened in a very specific place online. I pulled a bunch of instances of this sort of being whipped up. So Brett Cooper, the very famous conservative YouTuber, made an hour long video, feminists are crashing out over Sydney Swini's good genes. Donald Trump, Jr. posted an AI-generated image of it was like from the Sydney Swini ad campaign, but with Trump's face on Sydney Swini. And then Fox News starts covering this around the clock. Like I mentioned in a four day period, they talk about this 181 times new Sydney Swini ad accused of being racist and then another segment, Sydney Swini ad sparks liberal meltdown online. - It's just like triggered SJW bait type stuff from like 2018. Like that's just what we're living in now in our entire media ecosystem. - Do you know who made an Instagram real about this among all these other people? - Who? - A mainstay on the pod, Lizzie Syvetski. - Of course. - Lizzie Syvetski who's gone from like liberal Zionist to just like mega culture warrior in like the lowest way, but she made it a real where she was like, "I don't know guys, I suddenly have the urge to shop at American Eagle now." And then she like had her husband film her going into him. (laughs) - Like this kind of stuff also reminds me of how the same kinds of campaigns will start against like in the Amber Herder like the Blake lively case. They will invent controversies out of thin air, launder them through traditional media by creating, this was literally the PR strategy that like Justin Baldoni used in part to get like hit pieces about Blake lively. That would be churned out of places like the Daily Mail and it would be based on like a handful of TikToks, a handful of tweets, no views, no engagement, but like his publicist would like send those tweets to like a reporter at one of these tablets. And then because of like the algorithmic treadmill effect, you have all these random content creators like, why are you weighing in on this? It's because at this point, if you weigh in on it, it's guaranteed engagement, it is guaranteed placement, it is recommended to people. And so it's like with something like the Sydney Swini ad campaign, it's like, we're also sick of it, but influencers will then carry that into like stage four, which is just like everyone's now trying to cash in on the outrage to the outrage to the ad. (laughs) And oh my god. And every time this stuff happens, and I didn't really talk about this on my outline, but like I was talking about it with you guys the other day and in our, we have a group chat. We have a group chat called Happy Hour by APPY. - Whoa, don't dox, are we have a group chat? But like if you go on YouTube during any of these cycles, it's just like every YouTube creator and their mother has made a video that's like, Sydney Swini, it gets worse. - I feel like I've seen a million thumbnails where it's just like someone's face and then it gets worse. (laughs) - It's over. - Mine, I realize now from doing my own YouTube channel that if you put the words it's over on thumbnail, it increases the click through like significantly. - Should I put it's over next to Sydney Swini's face on this one? - You, you should and it will help performance. (laughs) - If you guys see it's over in the thumbnail, keep your mouth shut. (laughs) - But it is this like content machine. I got the same thing on YouTube. Every Twitch streamer's got to react to it and that's gonna be clipped and like it just becomes this like commoditized outrage bait basically that everyone's got to hop onto because it's the algorithm rewards that. - If you have listened to this podcast a lot, you probably know that I make this show myself. I conceive of the ideas myself. I do all the research and outlining myself. I edit myself. I do all the production myself. And I love doing that mostly because I'm a control freak and the idea of giving up any amount of creative freedom gives me anxiety. (laughs) The downside though is that all of that takes a lot of time and sometimes there just aren't enough hours in the day to do other things that one has to do to live. And for me one of those things is cooking. So I like to pass off the responsibility. Not to a chef but to factor. The factor is a meal delivery service with chef-made gourmet meals that make eating well easy. There are so many different exciting and varied meal options and the best part is they are all ready to heat and eat in two minutes. I've always said that I go for the Protein Plus menu which if you work out a lot or generally just want a lot of protein in your diet, they have so many great options there that are way better than just meal prepping unseasoned chicken for two weeks at a time. And I know some Jim rats are going to be in the comments like hey, I make chicken better than that. I'm sure you do. I just don't have the time or patience to. I love preemptively defending myself criticism like inside of an ad. I love, I love the internet. If you want to try factor now, you can get 50% off your first box at factormeals.com/fruity50off and use the code fruity50off. That's factormeals.com/fruity50off with the code fruity50off. Now let's get back to the episode. So content creators are doing this then podcasters are doing this then the mainstream media tags along and then we have politicians and people inside the White House exploiting this non-controversy to further their own ends. So Steven Chung who is the White House communications director under Trump posted on Twitter, cancel culture run a mock. This warped, moronic and dense liberal thinking is a big reason why Americans voted the way they did in 2024. They're tired of this bullshit. Ted Cruz, what did Ted Cruz say about Sidney Sweeney? He posted a month, I mean it's this. - Of course he did. - Hold on, I gotta go this one. At Ted Cruz, wow. Now the left has come out against beautiful women. I'm sure that will pull well. And then it is revealed amidst all of this that like I said, Sidney Sweeney is a registered Republican since 2024 in the state of Florida. And upon this news, Donald Trump tweets out. - Truth, he truth it. - Oh yeah, he truth it, sorry. One of you wanna read this? - Sidney Sweeney, a registered Republican has the hottest ad out there. It's for American Eagle and the jeans are flying off the shelf. - Flying off the shelves. - Go get 'em, Sidney. And then that starts another round of coverage from Fox News. Jesse Waters does a segment about President Trump defends Sidney Sweeney from Woke Mob. And then the White House Twitter, which is by the way, so fucking unhinged. What is going on? - So evil, the most evil Twitter account. - One day the people running the White House Twitter account are gonna be tried at the Hague. They post a picture of Donald Trump kind of like calling to a bunch of people and they captioned it, quote, "Have you seen the Sidney Sweeney ad?" This just went on for so many damn days where all anybody in right-wing media, the politicians, you would have thought Sidney Sweeney's American Eagle ad was like the number one issue in this country and not wealth inequality and not the funding of genocide and not abortion and not economic catastrophe from terror. Like you would have thought it was Sidney Sweeney's advertisement. - Which is by the way, what they want, right? They don't want you talking about all of those other horrible things that are happening or the fact that ICE is snatching people off the street. Like it is this like 24/7 manufactured outrage, culture war bullshit to distract from reality. And that doesn't mean that we shouldn't acknowledge it and talk about it. And I do think there are messed up stuff around it, but like no one's mad about the fact that she's beautiful. Like and I think that's what bothers me the most. It's like this like intentional mischaracterization of like a few people that have like some pretty nuanced thoughts. - By the worst people alive who are doing the worst things imaginable as a result of that sort of like co-opting of outrage. - I also think it's interesting and sad that like these culture wars so frequently revolve around like a celebrity woman. And it's interesting to me that like the only way you can like quote unquote win. And I don't think Sidney Sweeney is necessarily like winning, but she avoided a lot of iron from like some of the most misogynistic people on the internet simply by like conforming essentially doing everything. They wanted and that sucks and it sucked to me when it came out like I was sad to hear that she was a registered Republican I wasn't surprised. I was disappointed and I was just like not pleased that they would have the ability to then Run with this and like uphold her as like the perfect woman who does everything they want up to and including Theoretically voting for Donald Trump. I will say watching all of the Servedive backlash to the backlash it really clarified to me why I didn't think a whole lot about the ad to begin with Which is that while I agree that the advertisement is gesturing towards you know celebrating Eurocentric beauty ideals and whiteness It's like we're kind of past the point of conservatives feeling like they have to dog whistle because I was watching these Segments on Fox News and in response to you know a few critical tiktoks and tweets from leftists every conservative in media And government got on the biggest platform that they had access to and proudly declared that they're tired of seeing fat people and black people and queer people on screen And they're tired of feeling like they can't as Megan Kelly said celebrate whiteness We're sick and F**king tired of the nonsense Where you are not allowed to ever celebrate someone who is white and blonde and blue-eyed We're over this woke agenda. We're over the Lizzo's we're over the deal of Mulvaney's if this was a 300-pound non-binary person They would be applauding her this ad is the final declaration that we're done doing that shit They don't need to utilize racist dog whistles because they know that they can use a racist fog horn and they won't face any consequences for it That's why when I saw the ad I was like Yeah, this is kind of bad, but also like just turn on Fox News Like no one's relying on dog whistles anymore. They just say that they hate people of color and they hate queer people And I think that one of the things they relish so much about a moment like this is that to them and perhaps rightfully so It represents how like outside the boundaries of Fox News like you're walking through Times Square You see this ad they love the ability to have any incursion of their belief system into the ultimate mainstream where it becomes unavoidable And I think that is something that like drives a lot of their attention and their obsession around this and also worth noting like at the end of the day They're claiming like they're defending Sidney Sweeney. They love her. They're praising her But this is the same group of people who just like a year prior We're smearing and bullying this woman for a bikini picture where she didn't look flawless So it's like they will also turn on her and punish her and discard her as soon as she isn't this like beautiful glamour bombshell and like any woman who the conservative party like momentarily embraces is on a very strict expiration day like they're they're not going to love her forever They're just using her to try to warm their way deeper and deeper into the mainstream They also don't even really love her because they don't even go to see her movies right the movie that she just came out with just bombed at the box office this past weekend She's just a prop for them and and she will be discarded as all of these other previous women have been discarded and You know, she's gonna turn 30 soon. They're gonna start saying she's over the hill. They're gonna actually demonize her for You know embracing her sexuality because of course, we only know that only young women are allowed to do that even 27 They're probably thinking she's like pushing it. There were all these gross AI pictures of her like marrying Baron Trump So they're already envisioning her as like her next role is to be like a conservative politicians wife And if she doesn't do that, it's over. I want to tell you my conspiracy theory Okay, so on August 4th Sydney Sweeney attended a screening for her upcoming movie Americana Actually, it was upcoming when I wrote this outline, but it did just come out and it bombed Because these people don't actually support her But as she was walking into the theater swarmed by paparazzi one person yelled at her Stop the ad that is being racist. She was heckled. Let me show you Stop the ad that is being racist Who's saying that? We don't know who's saying it And it was never revealed who's saying it And my wild conspiracy theory welcome to the conspiracy theory pod it was cat Can you imagine if I was like no mad actually that was me My conspiracy theory is that this was planted Mmm by who her team. Well, so the video was originally shared by TMZ And I'm not saying I'm not accusing TMZ of planting this person there I just think that there is a very real possibility based on the way that we know that these media cycles go And that we know how much money there is to be made off of the continuation of them It is my theory unsubstantiated that Someone was like here random person or maybe random person who works for this company or whatever Stand there and yell at her. This doesn't even first of all This doesn't even feel like a real heckle If you were genuinely invested in like the belief that this is a racist Eugenicist advertisement and this was like a hill that you were Dying on and and really advocating about she says stop the ad that is being racist It doesn't even feel like a real heckle. What does that even mean right right It's not impassioned. Okay. I'm with you Matt But I'll tell you what I think it is I've covered so many protests at this point. I think hundreds of protests certainly I covered I think something like 80 protests in 2017 alone back when it was from 1.0 like we had them multiple times a week and I was covering politics Every single one of those protests and even today you see them These conservative people they're just like clickbait basically. They're there to pretend to be woke liberals To get on the media to parody woke liberals that they can generate viral content And this is a very well-known strategy So when I see a video like that I think it's probably one of those types of people Where it's like it that person is a conservative that's trying to to keep it all going I'm with you. Thank you. Thank you. It's a deep state sure enough This one video that TMZ posted of her getting heckled heckled It is posted by lives of Tiktok Kyorecic wrote Sydney Sweeney was heckled and called racist for her American eagle ad a beautiful white woman appearing in an ad as racist according to leftists on real Richard Hennonaya who is the right-wing blogger he posted the video of her being heckled And wrote that all Democrats need to forcefully denounce the heckler. They love a condemn They all want everyone to condemn everything all the time you condemn hummus the other thing that this always brings me back to is like peak SJW tumblr culture which so much of the modern right is just an elongated response to and it's so crazy because like what he's saying There when he's like you need to condemn this person He is mocking and parodying when an actual like conservative politician will say something Abhorrently racist or misogynistic or a list or whatever and people will rightfully call out the party and and tell them They need to like condemn these viewpoints. They're mocking it. We're like is a rapist or something. Yes. Yes It is so annoying because it's like ultimately the people who were leading the SJW charges of the mid 20s like me aged 16 on like my parents desktop computer I didn't have any structural power. You have the white house. You are like Instrumental in all of these larger issues and so it is just so pathetic that to this day They are still clearly so mad and so captivated by like whatever Progressive momentum there was on the internet like 10 years ago And I think the fact that we don't know who that person is is interesting because until we know who that person is I'm 100% assuming it's some conservative or some person that was a random person that was like paid off by conservative I'm saying sky news australia the conservative cable news outlet They did a segment on this world gone mad Sydney Sweeney heckled at movie premiere following jeans out I'm like there's so many people making money off of this who's to say it was one person It was one person how easily can one person be planted. I'm just saying okay That's enough conspiracy theorizing on the a bit fruity podcast. I don't like to wait into those waters I'm about to go use that facial recognition stuff and Is She's gonna be like the top comment on this video like hey guys. So sorry. That was actually me Oh did your camera just die. Yes. No, I know that sound Can you give me two minutes? Yeah, so the New York Times put out a really interesting piece that actually Taylor brought to my attention originally which kind of quantified everything we've been talking about about this outrage cycle And by the way just I want to mention here I talk a lot of shit on the New York Times and it is a piece of shit institution But I want to clarify that there are you know individual but they did one good article Basically There are individual reporters and journalists within the institution who dude put out good work from time to time And this was one of those times. I'm gonna link this piece in the episode description But I clipped together some quotes that kind of synthesize what they're trying to say The boiling social media frenzy over the American Eagle campaign has been driven at least in part by the public seemingly insatiable interest in Missweeney, but it also shows how, on today's internet, a controversy can sometimes be described as widespread when it isn't. Instead, people pushing an agenda can cherry pick from tens of millions of posts or videos uploaded to social media every day to make their case. Nearly 3/4 of posts that were critical of Missweeney or the ad had fewer than 500 views data shows. Many pro-Trump users amplified the critical posts in reposts and reshairs, driving even more attention to posts that would normally reach only a few thousand users. The tide began to shift on July 27th, days after the ad came out, when large right-wing accounts such as Libs of TikTok began reposting critiques of the American evil campaign, mocking them as examples of triggered liberals. Libs of TikTok and another right-wing account shared a video from a left-wing TikTok user who had 70,000 followers on the platform. Other reposts were seen more than 4.4 million times on Twitter, far-clipsing the reach of the original post, then came the podcasters, perhaps prompted by the viral success of posts that defended the American evil campaign while attacking left-wing viewpoints, popular podcas hosts Charlie Kirk, Clay Travis, and Michael Knowles jumped in on the topic, devoting increasing amounts of airtime to what they described as evidence of a broken brain democratic culture, elected Republicans soon followed. Then it goes on, but I just think this is a really interesting study that they ran, identifying how these reverse funnels always work, where a few posts from relatively unknown people online about a topic that the vast majority of people wouldn't organically care much about are picked up by these right-wing influencers, then the mainstream media pundits and the politicians, and whipped up into some broad indictment of the left, even before the vast majority of the left has even heard about it. Totally agree. I'm glad the New York Times did some journalism. When this article came out, it got a decent amount of traction on Blue Sky, where everyone hates the New York Times, and there was a lot of people dunking on it in the sense that they were like, "This has been the pattern for a long time," which is true, but I'm still glad that they wrote about it, and I thought they wrote about it really well, because if you're gonna learn something from how conservatives accelerate their rhetoric, you have got to drill down over and over and over again every time they try to do this, it cannot be overstated, how much of a ruse it is, how much of it is medium manipulation, it just can't be set enough. Also, we who cover the internet and live on the internet and breathe the internet, we know how these culture wars are created. If you're listening to this podcast, there is a good chance that you understand how this process goes every single time, since Gamergate. But a lot of people who read the New York Times don't understand that. People like my parents don't understand how this stuff happens, and they see this stuff start cropping up across the media of Democrats take a stand against beautiful women, and they just think it's something that is actually happening. My outline kind of wraps up with what is the bigger picture here, which we kind of touched on earlier, but I want to rant a little bit about what I think the bigger picture is here, and I wrote this out. While the right-wing media is engaging you in a culture war about Sidney Swiney, Donald Trump is scorching the earth to make sure that nobody accesses the details of his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein. While the right-wing media is engaging you in a culture war about Sidney Swiney, your free speech and tax dollars are going out the window to support a genocide, which is broadly unpopular across the political spectrum in the United States. While the right-wing media is engaging you in a culture war about Sidney Swiney, the MAGA administration is keeping you uneducated, is keeping you poor, is keeping you sick, because materially improving your life would be in direct opposition to helping the billionaires they are bought out by. And so there's a real darkness here for me, because while it's fun to argue about celebrities or at least, I don't know, it used to be, there's a reason why all of MAGA's media proxies from Fox News to Brett Cooper are giving this so much air time, despite not a single democratic politician, by the way, or a prominent member of the left talking about this at all. And it's because culture wars are all the right has to keep you in the fold. They won't even pretend to do anything about wealth inequality or social services or anything that would make your life actually better. So they just jangle these, you know, Sidney, Swiney-shaped keys in front of your face and keep you angry enough at the woke left that you'll never wonder why you don't have free health care. Amen. But I also don't want people to do the thing that I see online too, where it's like somebody tries to have a nuanced thought or perspective, especially on something you do with women or celebrity culture, and then they reply like, oh, well, this is a distraction from what Donald Trump is really doing, like, because it's like in, yes, it is a distraction. But that doesn't mean that it's not worth like dissecting and having a nuanced thought on or as you said, like, writing about in the New York Times and revealing this strategy. If it's covered, it should be covered that way. I think the distraction is the debate, like, you know, is it a problem that she's hot or whatever? Like that's the distraction. But like, having a thoughtful nuanced take or honestly this podcast, like, this is not part of the distraction machine, like, this is like doing essential work, like, you know, dissecting the discourse, like pulling apart kind of why these campaigns happen and what they hope to achieve. And I do think that that coverage is valuable. Yes. Just to be clear, when Brett Cooper makes an hour long YouTube video about Sidney Sweeney, it is a distraction. But when we make an hour long YouTube video about Sidney Sweeney, we are doing such important work. I can be self aware, I promise. The last thing that I had here on my outline was, do you guys know RT the Russian outlet? Yes. It was paying temple. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Can you explain what RT is? RT is Russia today or it used to stand for Russia today. It's basically state media from Russia and they run a lot of propaganda campaigns. It was the Department of Justice revealed a few months ago that they were secretly paying a bunch of right-wing influencers, including Tim Pool and Benny Johnson, hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, hundreds of thousands of dollars per month. That's millions of dollars a year to make content that fed into whatever they were trying to push. RT, which I think is now just RT. Yeah. They rebranded. It did used to stand for Russia today, but I think they want to have more US involvement. So being called Russia today would stand for read this. They posted slop content about this Sidney Sweeney, great jeans controversy. And they wrote liberals freak out over Sidney Sweeney's great jeans. And you know, it's just like interviewing Trigger Lives on the Street about Sidney Sweeney. But I'm like, why do you think Russia today, the Russian state-owned propaganda network, is posting about this like fake Sidney Sweeney controversy. In fact, RT regularly weighs in on US-based fake culture wars, including the current one, where people are apparently mad on the right that there are male cheerleaders in the NFL, which is just like a wild thing to be mad about in 2025. George W. Bush was a male cheerleader. So was Ronald Reagan. No way. Yeah. Yeah, way. So many icons. We really are getting the 80s back. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Of what concern are these like American culture wars to Russia and Russia and state-owned media? Like does nobody find it weird? And I think that's an example that most people can be like, yeah, they have no business posting about Sidney Sweeney's jeans advertisement. Why do they care about this? And I would encourage everyone, especially maybe if you were a conservative, sent this podcast by a liberal family member or something, like think about how American media can do that as well. And influencers can do that as well. You know, everyone has the ability to exploit fake culture wars for nefarious purposes to get you to look away from like the fact that our president is a pedophile. And they can use these culture war topics to reinforce the bigotry that help Trump get elected. They can reinforce homophobia. They can reinforce misogyny. They can reinforce cultural conservatism. They can kill two birds with one stone, essentially. And after everything is said and done, American Eagles stock is down. So what did we learn today? Hope it was worth it. Your foot traffic is down to you don't go woke. What is it? You don't, if you don't go woke, you go broke. Wait, if go, go be woke and make money, go anti woke, go broke. That's the one silver lining out of all of this is that like this will stick with normal people as like something that was kind of like longer than it will stick with conservatives as like a good way to get engagement. Like ultimately this type of ad campaign only works very briefly and very temporarily. And ultimately it will hurt you more than it will help you. I also think it's just was so short-sighted of them to market this ad so heavily towards men when they're trying to sell women's jeans. Lizzy Syvetski bought a pair. The one and only sale made in New York. How do I wrap this up? Well, I guess I'll say I did not care about Sidney Sweeney before this and I do not care about Sidney Sweeney now, though I wish her well. I can't wait to see what deranged Alibaba product she's going to be talking about. Thank you so much for listening today's episode. If you made it this far, wow, I appreciate you so much. Thank you for allowing me into your home, your car, your. - Your Taylor and Kat, thank you so much for joining us today, as always. - Thanks for having us. - Maybe that was kind of like a robotic. - Thank you, Matt for having us. - No, he sound like Cindy Swingy doing the ad. - That's a point. (laughing) - Wait, should I do my sign off in the voice? - As always, thank you for listening. - And until next time, stay up for a day. (laughing) - It was perfect, stay up for a day. I can picture who's ain't it. (laughing) - You can take the boy out of the fruit, but you can't take the fruit out of the boy. (laughing) - Sounds sexual. (laughing) - Okay, I'm done, I'm done, I'm kind of good.