The Mean Girls Are Doing It Better
Stop me if you've heard this one before: an unabashedly transparent, sex-positive dating podcast, helmed by a blonde and a brunette, catches fire at Barstool Sports. Their clips go mega-viral. Their listenership surges. Their merch flies off the shelves. Somehow, at a company that plays to a predominantly male audience, they harness an untapped army of female listeners. Framed against that success, they strut into posh New York restaurants in leather boots, armed with champagne flutes and endless giggles. They sit courtside with handsome dates by night and destigmatize botox by day. Dave and Gaz brag about them in year-end company-wide meetings. They top the charts. They soar.
Meanwhile, down below, we earth-bound colleagues cast anxious glances at their ascendance. Jealous, manicured eyebrows are raised and the whispers begin:
"It's all scripted."
"They're never in the office."
"They're playing it up. They're not that stupid."
"They gear their whole podcast towards clips."
"They're a bad look for women."
"I gave one of 'em AIDs in 2014."
Sound familiar?!
I sure hope so, for the sake of my Mean Girl pals Alex Bennett and Jordyn Woodruff. Because if the seismic event that was Barstool's Call Her Daddy reign can teach us anything, it's that those two SUPERSTARS have the following to look forward to:
1) A colossal falling out that will be covered by every media outlet from the Daily Mail to the New York Times.
2) A $20,000,000 rebrand deal (for one) that sees the brand pivot towards more thoughtful subject matter.
Seriously, why must we tear down our most successful women? Isn't there plenty of pie to go around? I've had my issues with their podcast, no doubt. But in truth, Alex and Jordyn are warm, kind people who are doing their job very fucking well. AND they don't find it necessary to step on throats to get ahead. They just go about their business and create content that somehow, someway, sparks gigantic engagement.
Look at this thing:
4,300 comments and 2.2 million views by the time of this writing. Ask Chuck, our social media guru—that's a MONSTER. If I could generate HALF the engagement their social clips do, I'd be living in the Hype House, hawking my own energy drinks and throat-fucking one of the Nelk Boys for dessert.
In her ferocious attack blog, Kelly said, "We run into a problem when your "persona" bleeds into your actual personality, and no one is in on the joke anymore." Kelly, that's the beauty of this place. The most successful people here blend and blur the lines. Who is Dave vs. El Presidente? Could anyone actually write unique bios for those two anymore? How about PFT. Commenter vs. (insert his real name)? Guy wore sunglasses for the first five years of his career and finally said nope, I'm all set. Let the people decide when the character is "on."
Personally, I love to exist in the grey. Dave once told me the best compliment he ever received was when someone said they had no idea if he was kidding or serious anymore. KB and Nick are masters at this, as was Andy Kauffman famously. There is power in ambiguity. People laugh when they're not sure. And a great joke might, like a piece of modern art, be interpreted ten different ways by ten different people.
But in this case, it's simpler: the Mean Girls know what they're doing. Alex Bennett knows dinosaurs were real. She knows more people died before Dove came around. Success on this level doesn't come by accident. They cracked the code and the rest of us haven't, simple as that.
If you can't stand their content, create something bigger.