The Amy Explains graveyard
I'm clearing out my drafts
I have 16 unfinished drafts of Amy Explains that will probably never see the light of day so I figured that maybe I could knock out a handful of them before they’re abandoned for good. Apologies in advance if you leave this newsletter even more confused than before.
Subject line: Evergreen
Abandoned date 8/27/2021
Ok this one is cracking me up because this draft had literally nothing in it except for the above screenshot. For the life of me, I cannot remember what I planned to write about this, other than, maybe that Blake Lively is the most embarrassing “Gossip Girl” alum by a long shot. I’m fairly certain that there was absolutely no reason for her to post this (it wasn’t like one of the actors had died recently or some sort of Harry Potter anniversary), other than just like, her natural demeanor as the Final Boss of Cringey Millenials. She and Ryan Reynolds were made for each other (derogatory).
“This Potterhead is sh❤️❤️k”
Subject line: A farewell to 9/21 videos
Abandoned date: 9/22/2021
Demi Adejuyigbe, TV writer, comedian, king of the internet, used to make these incredible videos every year on September 21, to commemorate Earth, Wind & Fire’s masterpiece hit, “September.” Each year his videos got progressively more unhinged and elaborate, until he officially retired the series in 2021. I linked the first and last videos that he made below, but I’d recommend watching all six videos in order.
Subject line: The smol beanification of male celebrities
Abandoned date: 8/22/2022
The explosion of social media and fandom culture in the 2000s-2010s led to an increase in intense parasocial relationships between fans and celebrities. And part of those parasocial relationships lead to a certain style of language and development of terms of endearment. During that time, mostly from female fans describing male celebrities, you’d hear these phrases like, “my precious son,” “my baby boy,” “my smol bean,” somewhat infantilizing ways to express a sort of love and ownership.
The phrase “smol bean” was popularized by fans who would use it to describe members of the band Twenty-One Pilots, but it ultimately became a mainstay in the online millenial lexicon.
Again, I apologize… this was written so long ago, I don’t fully remember what was happening at the time that caused me to write about this. I imagine that it was likely an extension of the pseudo-cancellation of John Mulaney following his breakup with Anna Marie Tendler/new baby with Olivia Munn, plus another male celebrity doing something bad because I wrote this:
What we’re left with is an infinitely long list of male celebrities — ones we grew up with, ones that created media we loved, ones that we felt like we knew — that are ultimately complicit in a system of harming women and other marginalized groups.So here’s my galaxy brain take: Women have become so traumatized by being let down over and over and over again, that they resort to infantilizing the male celebrities that they like. They have to treat them like literal babies in the hopes of absolving them of their sins. Damn I wish I remember what I was talking about, because I was cooking with GAS!
Subject line: Every question I have regarding Jake from State Farm
Abandoned date: 2/20/2023
You know Jake, from State Farm? No, not that Jake from State Farm. I’m talking about yassified 2020s Jake from State Farm.
When State Farm first rolled out the new character in January 2020, I was intrigued, not because they were extremely late to the humanoid manifestation of insurance marketing trend, but because he was everywhere. Like, literally everywhere. Jake from State Farm was showing up at NFL games, featured as a character in NBA 2k22, hanging out with celebrities.
But Jake from State Farm is not a real person? He’s an actor, named Kevin Miles. Where does Kevin Miles end and Jake from State Farm begin? When he’s hanging out with Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce’s mom, is he still in character as Jake, or is he just Kevin?
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
I abandoned this Amy Explains because this Hollywood Reporter profile did a wonderful job at answering all my questions. I’d highly recommend the read, in addition to this profile on the actress that plays Flo from Progressive. Since when did we start letting brands turn in to people?
I need to talk about the 2017 Tom Hiddleston GQ profile
Abandoned date: 9/23/2023
I’m more or less riding the coattails of my most successful Amy Explains to date — I need to talk about the 2011 Chris Evans GQ profile — which randomly has insane SEO HAHA (if you google “Chris Evans GQ” it shows up very high in the results lol). But, BUT this Tom Hiddleston profile from Taffy Brodesser-Akner is just like so unbelievably delicious that I needed to share it somewhere.
In the wake of Taylor Swift’s current high profile relationship with Travis Kelce, this profile is especially interesting because it examines a past era when Taylor was still trying to find the right balance of public vs. private with her romantic entanglements.
This profile also offers an extremely rare occurence, which is that it gives one of Taylor’s exes the space to give his side of the story.
I love Tom Hiddleston’s deeply earnest, unabashed honesty about what actually went down between them. Especially nowadays when it’s so rare to get a real, unfiltered interview out of a celebrity, reading this is like, “Damn!! You’re gonna tell us all that?? For free?”
There’s also one moment partway through the story in which Taffy Brodesser-Akner absolutely eviscerates Tom and his unfortunately too earnest, theater kid kind of energy:
Here Hiddleston does a brief impression of Tom Hanks (he does very good impressions of everyone, including me after a day) that is hard to describe, except to say that it summons Tom Hanks in a very profound way. Its only flaw is also part of its charm: While he does the impression, he’s also looking at you to see how much you’re enjoying it, and then he can’t stop smiling when he sees that you are, so ultimately what you get is an impression of Tom Hiddleston enjoying himself doing a Tom Hanks impression.And you know, if somebody wrote that about me in GQ, I could never show my face, let alone my Tom Hanks impression for that matter, in public ever again.
Bonus, absolutely iconic, chef’s kiss moment from this article though is that, while Taffy is describing Tom Hiddleston’s mega stardom, and the intense media speculation about his romantic affairs, she herself is briefly roped into the narrative when paparazzi catches her out on a walk with Tom (which she’s doing as she’s interviewing him for the profile) and gets a Daily Mail article written up about her, describing her as a “mystery brunette.” I truly have never read anything better.
Subject: The official rage bait power rankings
Abandonded date: 2/26/2024
Ok, actually, I really would like to finish this draft at some point, so I’m not going to get too into it, but there’s one tidbit from this post that I want to highlight:
Rage bait is a form of internet content, in which creators produce media with the intentions of angering people online, in hopes that that anger fuels an influx of comments and views. Because any attention is good attention when it comes to the internet, right?
I have a whole philosophy and matrix ranking rage bait based on it’s rage inducingness and nefarious intentions, but for now I’ll just throw out one rage bait creator who I find to be particularly interesting.
Winta Zesu is your run of the mill YouTube lifestyle/beauty influencer, except that she’s found a pretty successful side hustle of posting TikTok rage bait.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
She’ll post these “skits” often with someone off-camera (likely a friend, or someone she’s written a script for) that portray either her or the character off-screen as arrogant or self-absorbed or just wrong in some way. After several years of consistently posting videos like this, a good chunk of her followers are in on the bit, but somehow she does still attract a lot of angry commenters who believe that what she posts is real. Which is especially funny to me because, what do you mean you think that a waiter actually came up to Winta to tell her that there’s a new law in New York that requires the diner sitting to the left of you to pay for your meal if you can’t afford it. You believed that?? You fell for that?? Begging for an ounce of media literacy from you people.
Anyways, that’s it for now, bye all! Talk soon!