Well, That Escalated Quickly by Franchesca Ramsey

Author:Franchesca Ramsey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2018-05-22T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

STOP HATING AND START STUDYING

I’m extremely flattered/slightly embarrassed when people describe me as a “super-woke black feminist queen.”†‡§ But as often as I’m praised for the conversations my content has sparked online, I’m far from everyone’s cup of tea. A quick Google search of my name will bring up my YouTube channel, episodes of Decoded, and clips from The Nightly Show, but as you scroll farther and farther, the results get weirder and weirder. Petitions to get me fired or involuntarily committed. Supercuts of weird faces I’ve made in videos, video game walk-throughs in which players attempt to kill characters they think look like me, and shitty memes calling me some variation of a “racist cunt.” There are videos in which men—it’s usually men—rant for nearly an hour about how I don’t understand what “political correctness” means. Some of these videos have hundreds of thousands or even millions of views; since I’ve gone viral myself, I know that equals a nice paycheck. People have made entire careers out of hating me.

When friends or colleagues stumble onto this treasure trove of hateful content, the first thing they ask is how I handle it. I don’t tell them how often I cry to my husband or how I set up filters for racial slurs across my email and social media. Instead I give them the short answer: I remind myself that the types of people who invest time in hating me are largely fueled by racism and sexism, with a heaping dose of jealousy.

The racism and sexism are pretty obvious with the folks throwing “black supremacist cunt” around. But how am I so sure jealousy is to blame for the rest? Well, I used to be a hater myself. [Cue dramatic organ music.]

Now, before you go chucking this book out a window, feeling a deep sense of betrayal and disappointment: Please don’t litter, and please allow me to explain.

Long before I moved to New York, I followed a Manhattan socialite and new-media personality whose career I not-so-secretly envied and whose personal life I found not-so-secretly fascinating. Let’s call her Stephanie. Stephanie had rich parents, a cushy job at a gossip magazine, a marginally successful pop culture web series, a pilot in development, and a couples’ blog with her boyfriend that was a total disaster. She went out a lot and wrote an advice column in which she’d tell people things like “If you want to save money, stop going to the Hamptons!” She inspired in me a precise combination of aspiration and disgust, and I was nothing short of obsessed with her. While some people flock to trashy reality shows for their judgmental voyeuristic kicks, I was refreshing Tumblr during work hours, wondering what Stephanie was up to.

When I first discovered Stephanie, I was living in Miami, working as a graphic designer and only dabbling in the entertainment industry through my YouTube videos and cringeworthy stand-up sets—let’s just say my closer was a JonBenét Ramsey joke… and it brought the house down every time.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.