A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - The Complex Tragedy of Grimes

00:00:00.000 I don't typically record, like, prefaces at the front of episodes, but as you can tell by the

00:00:06.160 title, this is an episode about a one Grimes, someone who weaves a particularly and exhaustingly

00:00:14.200 complicated web, even among the people we talk about on this show. When we talk about celebrities,

00:00:19.340 we're usually also talking about bigger forces at play, which stories about these famous people

00:00:24.940 come to represent and which affect us all. Grimes is someone who, in going from beloved

00:00:30.540 Tumblr-era indie artist to abused accomplice of the world's richest man and shadow president,

00:00:37.920 tells us stories about the internet era that shaped millennials, about pipelines to political

00:00:42.880 radicalization, about domestic abuse. It's a rich and complicated text that I hope you find as

00:00:49.840 interesting and perhaps challenging as I did while recording it. So without further ado,

00:00:56.460 just kidding, I do have one more thing to say. This spring, a bit fruity, is hitting the road.

00:01:02.660 I am so excited to be doing seven live podcast shows this coming May and June in Toronto,

00:01:10.560 Chicago, Philly, New York City, Seattle, LA, and Portland. It'll be just like the podcast,

00:01:17.280 but you know live with q a's audience feedback you know we can all hang out and uh there will

00:01:24.680 be some special guests who you might recognize from this podcast i am truly so excited tickets

00:01:30.600 for those shows are now officially on sale and the link for those will be in the episode description

00:01:36.580 i can't wait to see you i'm so excited okay grimes i'm ready for you

00:01:42.360 Hello, hello, and welcome back to A Bit Fruity, the podcast where I am literally always talking

00:01:55.500 about how the primary uniting force in this country is anime. It's the only media through

00:02:00.640 line that I can reliably observe regardless of political alignment. That was a Grimes

00:02:05.500 tweet from last week thank you thank you recently the flyer for world pride 2025 which is being held

00:02:15.380 in washington dc this june was released and among the top billed performers is a one dj claire

00:02:23.560 elise boucher known to most of us normals as grimes people especially gays who you know are

00:02:31.680 the only people paying attention to the flyer release for World Pride 2025, we're not happy.

00:02:37.560 Here's some comments on Instagram. There's no reason for her to be here. She's consistently

00:02:41.940 complacent. We have a gay pop renaissance. There's plenty of people who could replace her. 1.00

00:02:46.640 Another says, I fear she may have destroyed her career by procreating with that thing.

00:02:52.860 Another says, next up, is JK Rowling doing a speech? We have more gay pop acts than ever, 0.99

00:02:58.940 and you chose someone who ignored a man's fascist ideologies for a doomed relationship

00:03:03.240 and a child. Grimes is someone whose public image and art I have been personally purposely avoiding

00:03:10.780 for years, as both have gone down the tubes in a pretty dramatic and dark way. And as a little

00:03:18.520 closeted gay boy who lived on Tumblr in 2012, I once loved Grimes. Those photo shoots of her with

00:03:25.160 the, you know, DIY pink bangs are etched into the back of my brain like a tattoo I can't get rid

00:03:32.160 of. And so I'm really not enjoying any of this. But as someone who still 13 years later feeds off

00:03:39.320 pop culture and political news like a fish needs water, it's gotten increasingly difficult to avoid

00:03:45.160 the train wreck my former mother has gotten herself wrapped up in. Every time she tweets, 0.99

00:03:49.800 it's like adding a new car to the back of the pile grimes has obviously well not obviously

00:03:55.860 obviously if you listen to this podcast a lot not obviously if you're out in the world touching

00:04:00.180 grass three children with elon musk and though they've long since split up and have also had a

00:04:06.020 grisly custody battle it still seems like they play an important role in one another's lives

00:04:10.620 and despite early signs that grimes might have been putting up a fight against elon musk's

00:04:15.680 political swerve to the far right, time has shown that she is willing to ignore and often

00:04:21.460 co-sign her ex-partner's beliefs. I think talking about Grimes will in some ways follow the script

00:04:27.640 of a conversation about a pop-cultural fall from grace, you know, those types of conversations

00:04:32.840 that everybody loves. But with the Elon of it all, and of course the techno-mechanicus of it all,

00:04:39.460 we add in some harder questions about what it means to be a victim or a victimizer and who

00:04:44.540 bears responsibility for what grimes has become was that was that good that was really good really

00:04:50.320 good scripted that shit out to do that i would like to welcome back to the podcast two of my 0.79

00:04:56.740 best friends and two people who you're intimately familiar with at this point if you listen to this 0.97

00:05:01.400 podcast often kat tenbarge and taylor lorenz yay thanks for having us you sound really thrilled to

00:05:09.800 be talking about Grimes, Kat. I am extremely excited to be talking about Grimes. I'm always

00:05:17.180 ready to talk about her. Kat and Taylor are both seasoned journalists who have each recently gone

00:05:24.580 independent. And so if you would like to support them, I want to plug both of their newsletters

00:05:29.620 right up front. Those newsletters in which they are doing some of the best work in reporting

00:05:34.420 around politics and culture and the internet will be linked in the episode description.

00:05:39.800 I thought that we could just start the spiral on something kind of unrelated, but if you

00:05:44.940 guys open the doc that I sent you with my notes for this episode, you'll see that I

00:05:48.340 put the World Pride Music Festival flyer into it.

00:05:52.080 I just wanted you guys to call out some of the names here and get your reaction.

00:05:56.360 This is like deeply unrelated to Grimes.

00:05:58.000 I just thought it was crazy.

00:06:00.940 This is insane.

00:06:04.080 Well, Troye Sivan makes sense.

00:06:06.000 Troye Sivan makes sense. 1.00

00:06:07.200 Jennifer Lopez at the top.

00:06:09.800 I just saw Trisha Paytas and my job was like.

00:06:13.880 I just like imagining like Jennifer Lopez,

00:06:17.580 Troye Sivan, Paris Hilton, RuPaul,

00:06:21.340 and Trisha Paytas like in the green room backstage.

00:06:24.700 What do they talk about? 0.93

00:06:26.480 I'm like, what is Trisha going to do on stage? 0.65

00:06:32.300 I just want to locate like the one specific gay guy 0.96

00:06:36.220 for whom all of this is perfect. 0.99

00:06:38.720 Who booked it?

00:06:39.460 the guy who booked it it's me i just think that it's funny that the there's nothing about the

00:06:47.060 poster that's lgbtq looking like it looks like a trashy rave poster i have news for you you say

00:06:54.100 it looks like a trashy rave poster have you been to a world pride have fun everyone before we really

00:07:04.120 get into today's episode kat and i want to do something that we have done on this podcast once

00:07:10.440 before and yet so many people didn't listen kat would you uh would you like to do the vocal fry

00:07:16.120 disclaimer yes so as a disclaimer we don't care if you don't like vocal fry we don't care we get

00:07:24.900 these comments every time we do an episode together which are people will say like wish i could listen

00:07:30.480 to this but this vocal fry is unlistenable we we've talked about it multiple times now and we

00:07:37.520 always usually get really helpful comments like there was one on a for a former video where

00:07:43.200 someone basically pointed out that like like famous men will have vocal fry and no one will

00:07:49.200 care but if like women or like femme coded people have vocal fry then all of a sudden everyone's

00:07:55.160 like I just can't listen to this so yeah we don't care we don't care so before you leave that comment

00:08:01.680 about how you love the content but you can't listen to the vocal fry delete that comment and go

00:08:06.980 outside I have perfect speech is that all you have to contribute to that let me do the talking

00:08:18.020 no I don't I think that's misogynistic I think the vocal fry I get that too but not as much

00:08:23.980 gotten comments when we've done episodes that have been like it's the battle of the vocal fry

00:08:28.160 and in my head I'm like twiddling my thumbs and I'm like who will win

00:08:32.980 before we get into the chronology of Grimes life and who she was who she is who perhaps she's

00:08:43.880 always been how are you guys feeling going into this because Grimes has been I would say in the

00:08:49.860 news, but really just kind of like on our social media timelines a lot lately, particularly as it

00:08:54.080 pertains to Elon Musk. I feel like I think about Grimes a lot. And it's very surreal to me because

00:09:00.240 I listened to her music a lot even before she was with Elon. And so as the relationship has

00:09:08.460 progressed, it's just gotten more and more dystopian. And she's talked about more now than

00:09:13.640 she ever has been in the past and in like such a reasonably but overwhelmingly negative way.

00:09:21.260 There's so much posted and said about Grimes, but a lot of it does not really get to the heart

00:09:26.680 of what I think is the most important about this case and this relationship. And so I'm excited to

00:09:34.640 talk about it because I mean, I just I find her fascinating and so emblematic of this bizarre

00:09:41.800 our pop culture, political era that we are in right now.

00:09:45.620 She's very of the times.

00:09:47.240 She's sort of like a representation of so much,

00:09:49.800 I think, that has gone wrong, unfortunately, in culture

00:09:52.100 and just the manifestations of how the internet has warped people.

00:09:57.720 I saw this tweet the other day from someone named George Severus

00:10:01.380 who wrote,

00:10:02.660 Small minds discuss people.

00:10:04.860 Average minds discuss events.

00:10:07.000 Great minds discuss celebs.

00:10:09.260 and that's what we're doing today but celebrities are these sort of like they're a way to talk about

00:10:18.020 culture and they're sort of manifestations of culture and especially in america where a

00:10:23.160 celebrity is so intertwined with culture like we have such a celebrity obsessed culture and the way

00:10:27.740 we process culture so much through celebrities i think it's important to talk about a hundred

00:10:32.240 100%. And Grimes is a rich text if ever there was one. So Grimes was born in Vancouver, BC to

00:10:41.680 wealthy parents. Her dad was a banker who then switched to biotech, which anyone out there who

00:10:47.980 really knows what biotech is, feel free to leave a comment. I can't wait to read them. But she and

00:10:53.460 her younger brother were raised Roman Catholic. Her parents divorced when she was 11. Obviously,

00:10:58.700 i'm like really speeding through the timeline of her early life she ended up going to mcgill

00:11:03.300 university where she was a freshman in 2006 and i put in the outline uh a few photos that were

00:11:10.560 unearthed from her time at mcgill if you guys want to look i love these photos they she looks

00:11:16.380 like claro or like a little i don't know she looks like a little amish boy it's very sweet

00:11:23.340 and i feel like this is very much so her brand she looks like a creature who lives in the woods

00:11:28.680 Yes. You can see it's always been there. Grimes says that she was expelled from McGill in 2010

00:11:36.540 for missing at that point a year of classes. But while she was still at McGill, she began releasing

00:11:43.300 music on MySpace. She formally released her first two albums both in 2010, which were generally

00:11:51.120 well received in some indie circles and really had her breakthrough with fame with her 2012 album

00:11:59.620 called Visions which is most likely when if you know who Grimes is probably the first time you

00:12:05.480 heard about her. Visions had the two songs Genesis and Oblivion on them which were both critically

00:12:10.820 claimed put on all the year-end lists. Her sort of mythology around the album Visions was that she

00:12:18.640 wrote the songs over a nine day period where she says she did not eat or sleep and took a bunch of

00:12:25.540 amphetamines and that's just like i've read enough grimes interviews to have like accepted that story

00:12:31.300 uncritically over time but as i was drafting this outline for this episode i googled like how long

00:12:36.700 you can survive without sleep or food and like i don't think she went nine days you can go nine

00:12:41.180 days without food you can't go nine days without sleep i just bring that up to say i think grimes 0.57

00:12:45.220 has always done some you know self-mythology i think so i think she's always been a troll and

00:12:51.020 i think she's always enjoyed the idea of like telling people things that aren't true about

00:12:57.260 herself to like hide who she really is and i feel like even back in the early days you can see kind

00:13:04.340 of some of the things that would have made her a good fit for someone like elon because i think he

00:13:09.180 too enjoys like making things up and being like I don't sleep at all like I just work for days

00:13:15.980 straight and it's like with Grimes I will say I think she's more talented like Elon Musk could

00:13:21.160 not make visions Grimes could pretend to run Tesla but Elon Musk could not make visions

00:13:25.780 so I do think that like she has produced more artistic work than he ever will or whatever be

00:13:32.900 capable of and I actually think that Grimes is like quite talented a lot of times people just

00:13:38.620 paint her with like a brush of like she's always been like this kind of loser figure but i do think

00:13:44.240 that back in this era like she was making really good and interesting music and i think that like 0.78

00:13:50.140 you saw hints of what would later become who she who she became um but at this point i think she

00:13:56.280 was like had a very promising career in front of her i love that we're like zero and a half

00:14:02.700 minutes in and like we already have the elon lashings thanks it would be an overstatement

00:14:10.180 to say that this album visions at all broke her into like the pantheon of mainstream pop but if

00:14:17.520 you were gay or had no friends and lived on tumblr during the early 2010s you knew grimes i was gay

00:14:26.400 and had no friends and lived on tumblr in 2012 so i knew grimes this is i feel like where she

00:14:33.140 enters all three of our lives and so i i don't know i wanted to ask each of you like where you

00:14:38.620 first encountered grimes and what you remember about her from this era of her burgeoning career

00:14:44.280 fame well i was not gay on tumblr and that i would caveat what you just said which is i think that

00:14:53.860 that is very true for probably most people. I, like Grimes, was in, although I don't know if

00:15:00.860 she was living in, but I was living in Williamsburg at that time in the early 2010s. I moved to

00:15:05.020 Williamsburg in 2009, the year that I blew up on Tumblr myself. I don't know if people know

00:15:10.780 my origin story, but I got popular on Tumblr. Congrats, queen. My millennial era. But living

00:15:19.300 in Williamsburg in 2012, I have to say it was kind of like those TikToks where you see it

00:15:25.760 romanticized, where it was like the hub of millennial culture and music culture and internet

00:15:33.280 culture at that time too. Like the internet was so burgeoning and Tumblr, because this is pre

00:15:37.720 Instagram, you don't put your photos of yourself on Instagram yet. Like Twitter was ascendant.

00:15:42.540 There was this energy to the internet that was so driven by Tumblr. And obviously to all

00:15:49.300 all the LGBTQ kids in their bedrooms and creative people, I think, around the country or the world

00:15:54.320 were following it. But I think Brooklyn was this hub of it. And I think the first time I saw Grimes

00:16:00.120 in person, I would go to these parties at this place called 285 Kent. I feel like an ancient

00:16:07.260 person. I love this cross-generational conversation. It was this music venue,

00:16:13.960 whatever and uh you know there was just a lot of like stuff happening and i knew who grimes was

00:16:19.500 because she also was popular on tumblr and was sort of in this music scene and i had friends

00:16:24.520 that worked in music in that era and so that is i just remember the first time i saw her was at

00:16:28.660 some party at 285 kent and everyone like holy shit i think this must have been the year that

00:16:33.360 that visions came out like 2012 or 2013 and just being like wow she's so you know she was like the

00:16:42.060 queen of that like hipster scene one of many queens but like from she was so emblematic of

00:16:48.940 that era of millennial culture which i think is interesting because like so many people affiliated

00:16:53.720 with that culture kind of died with that culture almost or like like once like gen z sort of

00:16:59.060 started like they kind of just they had their time in the sun yeah she's really been able to evolve

00:17:04.120 out of it yeah it's it's so fascinating i think about the people who are really famous on tumblr

00:17:09.260 who like acacia brinley like i don't i don't know if that's gonna trigger some memories from anyone

00:17:16.040 listening but like a lot of those people kind of you didn't hear about them after tumblr came and

00:17:21.140 went well because there wasn't much you could do with tumblr fame aside from leverage it into some

00:17:27.860 career like because you couldn't monetize yourself on the internet in the same way

00:17:32.400 tumblr was this channel to music right like you had people using that tumblr clout to like

00:17:37.260 get their music out there and tumblr kind of like birthed so much of like millennial music

00:17:42.160 culture or youtube like you blew up on tumblr jenna marbles was huge on tumblr tyler oakley

00:17:47.320 was huge and then you would sort of like leverage it into youtube fame or what i did which is

00:17:51.700 leverage it into a traditional media job the worst outcome probably the worst uh thing i could have

00:18:00.260 done with that fame but like i feel like tumblr was this like creative soup and it birthed so

00:18:06.980 many creative people. And I feel like so much of Grimes culture is wrapped up in that like early

00:18:11.020 2010s. Taylor, you said that you did the worst thing you could have done with Tumblr fame,

00:18:15.260 but I would argue that it's not as bad as what Grimes has ultimately done.

00:18:20.360 Low hanging fruit. I definitely listened to Grimes growing up in Ohio and being like,

00:18:29.180 wow, this music is so interesting. It's like nothing I've ever heard before. And I actually

00:18:33.620 really bonded with uh one of my ex-girlfriends who i dated growing up in ohio over grimes so i

00:18:40.160 feel like that contributes to the gay teenager bedroom narrative i also found grimes really

00:18:47.600 interesting and resonant for me within that tumblr culture like specifically like social

00:18:53.360 justice warrior culture because grimes would talk about like being a woman producer and like

00:18:59.880 not being taken seriously because she was a woman and like not being viewed as like someone who was

00:19:06.340 pioneering or popularizing like a very new style of music and also Oblivion I'm pretty sure has

00:19:14.700 like something to do like the meaning of the song with like being assaulted or like being preyed on

00:19:20.560 and so I always think about that when I think about like the trajectory that her life took

00:19:25.660 is that when she started out i think maybe a lot of what she was saying and doing that like seemed

00:19:30.640 progressive was like more pseudo-intellectualism than actual progressivism but for a while it felt

00:19:37.300 like she was a part of the like more leftist uh liberal side of the internet and famously like

00:19:44.620 jumping ahead a little bit but famously her bio when she first started dating elon

00:19:49.140 was initially like pro-communism oh it was yes it was anti-imperialist

00:19:54.980 which yeah we are we are jumping ahead a little bit but after their relationship progressed she

00:20:01.020 took anti-imperialist out of her bio which like i don't know at least she was self-aware enough to

00:20:06.040 do that i feel like throughout her whole career and especially in retrospect you can see how she

00:20:10.380 took big words and just like used them and didn't really understand what they meant but liked the

00:20:16.320 aesthetic of like using these like big words and like well that brings me actually into the next

00:20:22.020 part of my outline which I just labeled pseudo-intellectualism Grimes has for basically

00:20:28.180 I feel like as long as she's been famous how do it's hard to even describe the pseudo-intellectual

00:20:32.980 aspect without talking about again her kind of like self-mythology and her self-branding

00:20:38.380 which is all about like I'm a little nymph from the woods and I'm an alien from space and I'm

00:20:43.920 not a real human being and it's like you are a rich girl from vancouver bc but sure you can also

00:20:52.300 be like an ai alien from space i guess but grimes has from the beginning she's she's always kind of

00:20:57.960 talking about like you said kathy's like larger than life concepts that are really difficult and

00:21:03.760 unappealing i think for the normal person to try to spend too much time thinking about she's always

00:21:07.860 talking about like capital C civilization you know what I mean and honestly in ways that I don't

00:21:14.800 understand and in ways that I more often than not just find very grating it's I don't know it's like

00:21:20.120 the worst person you can be drunk next to at a party and they just start talking your ear off

00:21:24.220 about how like cryptocurrency can save the art world from I don't know it's just words on words

00:21:30.400 and words and words I think what's so interesting too of just like that era of the internet that

00:21:36.840 she came from was a very tech optimist era of the internet. Like you had really the first half of

00:21:43.200 the 2010s, there was almost no criticism of like social media. Like this was like, social media is

00:21:49.840 going to like liberate the world. It's going to, the internet's going to change everything. And

00:21:53.080 there was just this like rank tech optimism. And that I think a lot of creative people of that

00:21:58.900 era, myself included, like bought into or like believed in. And Grimes was so also intertwined

00:22:04.820 with blogging culture because she was really made by music bloggers of the time. And blogging was

00:22:11.120 also seen as this amazing thing. There's this great book called Never Be Alone Again, and it's

00:22:16.580 about the blog house era of the internet. And it talks about this, of just how this view of

00:22:21.980 technology as a positive, liberatory, amazing creative space that's going to bring amazing

00:22:28.680 things to the world is so imbued in music culture of that time. And I think it's just interesting

00:22:34.460 because when you hear her talk about her ideology i think she was one of the first people that i

00:22:39.160 heard talking about like the singularity i had a blog about the singularity like a tumblr like a

00:22:44.720 joke tumblr with my friend and i i feel like she made a comment about it that we like re-blogged

00:22:48.920 or whatever but she would talk about the singularity singularity it was called like all the singular

00:22:54.680 ladies or something wait what's but what's the singularity the singularity wait cat do you know

00:23:01.580 what that is i've heard people talk about it but i could not like explain it it to you guys

00:23:07.540 it is the sort of hypothetical moment in the future when ai surpasses human intelligence

00:23:15.260 that is like when the new world order begins and like okay when i had this vlog in like 2014 that

00:23:24.480 we were like oh that's gonna be the greatest moment that's gonna be oh it was talked about

00:23:29.760 as a good thing? Yeah. I mean, by a lot of people, again, this just goes back to pre-2015 tech brain.

00:23:36.740 You had so much boosterism from the tech press because the tech press was dominated by gadget

00:23:41.640 bloggers that were inherently fanboys. You had so much amazing creativity. I mean, this is what I

00:23:46.680 think Lena's book, Never Be Alone Again, gets into so much of the blogging culture and how that was

00:23:51.660 affecting media and creativity. And so people were like, yes, I can't wait for AI and it's

00:23:58.400 going to do all these amazing things. And like, we didn't have any concept of what that would be,

00:24:02.020 right? It was just like, there was just this like excitement about technology and excitement about

00:24:06.160 the future. And Grimes was one of the first people that I remember, like a celebrity that I would be

00:24:11.580 like, oh, she's talking about that stuff. When you look at Grimes's music, it intensified around

00:24:18.400 when she started dating Elon, but she's been talking about how amazing it would be for AI to

00:24:23.180 take over the world for a long time she thinks it'll bring communism didn't she think it would

00:24:28.280 bring communism yes and like i i totally agree with everything you said taylor and i think it's

00:24:33.480 such good context and i feel like the way that grimes makes music is wrapped up in like techno

00:24:38.960 optimism because she talks about how like she didn't have any actual skill at music she created

00:24:45.720 all of her songs through like garage band and like technology of the time it was very like i'm gonna

00:24:52.980 make a movie on my iPhone like style like making music and in her lyricism and in like her personal

00:25:00.720 brand she'll say things like I'm getting experimental surgery on my eyes like she'll

00:25:06.260 make things up and she'll troll and I think that she purposefully does this because it's convenient

00:25:12.460 for her if she says something that isn't actually smart she just creates this aura of like you'll

00:25:17.660 never know am I trolling or am I serious or do I really understand these things or is it all part

00:25:22.140 of the bit. And I think that kind of helps her construct a like reasonable doubt around whether

00:25:28.540 she's truly a pseudo intellectual or not, because sometimes she'll do really blatant trolling where

00:25:33.800 she's like, I'm putting AI in my brain today, like I'm going under the knife. And then other times

00:25:39.800 she'll say things where she's like acting as if she's serious, but there's no real substance

00:25:44.180 to what she's saying. I would like to take a quick break from the show to shout out

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00:27:29.980 to the show. Do you guys know about the 2009 riverboat incident? Yep. No. Wow. Okay. So in

00:27:40.580 2009, Grimes, then Claire, and her college friend from McGill named William wanted to set sail on a

00:27:49.920 boat that they made themselves. Here is a little snippet from a Pitchfork article that was written

00:27:56.280 about this oh my god what the boat looks like is insane oh you're looking at the photo i just

00:28:04.920 looked at the photo sorry the couple traveled 25 hours from montreal to minnesota where they spent

00:28:12.460 a month constructing a 20-foot house raft on a friend's property with the intention of sailing

00:28:18.240 it down the mississippi river to new orleans they named the boat the velvet glove cast in iron

00:28:24.120 and renamed themselves Verushka and Zelda XOX,

00:28:28.540 Boucher and Graz painted murals with fantastical creatures on the side of the vessel,

00:28:33.140 which they filled with live chickens, a sewing machine, and 20 pounds of potatoes.

00:28:39.300 But soon after setting sail, the engine failed,

00:28:42.320 and Boucher and Graz spent three weeks traveling downstream. 0.99

00:28:46.780 This is the most, like, manic pixie dream shit I've ever heard. 0.98

00:28:51.460 They spent three weeks traveling downstream, attempting to fix the boat and dealing with the police. 0.99

00:29:21.460 an enormous amount of power and money and sort of start to take what they have to say as

00:29:27.600 intellectually rigorous or something. Do you know what I mean?

00:29:30.340 Right. I guess if she had stayed on the riverboat, it would have been fine.

00:29:34.240 I think it's really funny. Like, you can see already the seeds that are being planted for

00:29:38.920 what she's going to name her future children. It reminds me, it's just so firmly rooted in

00:29:44.340 Tumblr culture to me, because it's like, there is like a little bit of a pseudo intellectualism

00:29:49.420 to it but it's really just like kind of like goofy and silly and i think the fact that she

00:29:54.460 would go on to name her kids like such outrageous names shows sort of the transition from like

00:30:00.780 a more playful immature all in good fun kind of use of this naming style to like all of a sudden

00:30:07.560 it went zero to 100 like oh no this is like the heir of the fake u.s president also so much of

00:30:16.260 tumblr was just pseudo intellectual nonsense my own blog probably included like speak on that

00:30:22.840 first of all i think people have a hard time if you've never been on it and probably didn't spend

00:30:28.560 your formative years on it to remember that like blogging and writing was the dominant form of

00:30:34.300 expression on the internet at that time because you couldn't upload photos and videos easily so

00:30:38.440 so people were just writing and like right like most people are not brilliant writers or thinkers

00:30:44.960 Right. Like, and, and this was also the era of like, yeah, it was like pseudo intellectual of

00:30:50.540 like, um, you know, it was very like book culture and like early kind of like Buzzfeed, like I'm a

00:30:57.260 reader, like fetishizing reading and being intellectual and like kind of being smart.

00:31:03.460 Because again, the best bloggers of that era, like the big time bloggers were, were smart,

00:31:08.160 right? You had to have something to say to succeed. Well, you had to be smart. You had

00:31:12.260 to be interesting. You had to be intellectual. And so I just think like so much of Tumblr was

00:31:16.300 that. And it was a lot of young people, no matter how brilliant you are at like 20,

00:31:21.600 you're not going to have the most like fully formed opinions because your brain is not

00:31:25.660 developed and because you have literally almost no life experience. And so when you give someone

00:31:29.960 like that a platform, I mean, I don't know, I've deleted most traces of what I've written

00:31:35.260 from those eras, but like it was just sort of like encouraged, right? To like pseudo-intellectualize

00:31:40.820 and like and overanalyze your life or culture or whatever and i feel like that probably fed right

00:31:47.160 into someone like her where it's like that's she's clearly that type of person already i pulled a few

00:31:51.940 tweets from like the last few weeks grimes on twitter it is so monumentally embarrassing that

00:31:57.880 i am finally getting into christianity because it's the only way i can quit vaping

00:32:02.140 i am more of a general deist slash feel like goddess physics slash math slash sees itself

00:32:11.720 through our eyes kind of vibe in terms of what i actually think in parentheses the universe is

00:32:17.020 also probably dead and empty except yeah idk prob not ngl this is the most millennial stuff

00:32:22.620 idk prob not ngl lol lmao this is also one from a few weeks ago actually this is what i opened

00:32:30.320 the episode with the primary uniting force in this country is anime and it's the only media

00:32:35.540 through line that i can reliably observe regardless of political alignment it is also i think underrated

00:32:41.020 as a later stage illustration revolution i'd argue the akira art is the cold war mona lisa 0.99

00:32:46.940 this is like you know that tweet that's like this this must hit so hard if you're dumb 0.98

00:32:51.020 that's how i feel reading these i'm like what the hell sure what the hell sure 0.96

00:33:01.740 i don't want to hate on her because i like these people like i maybe it's just i am predisposed to

00:33:08.300 like i i think because like personally like and this is why i'm a journalist like i love like

00:33:13.300 thinking of weird like alternatives or like i love listening to people like rant about their

00:33:18.360 own weird theories about something. Like if she was just doing this on Twitter and making her 0.99

00:33:23.860 music, it would be totally fine. Like who cares? Twitter is for posting dumb stuff. Twitter is

00:33:29.620 for venting your weird thoughts. Like I think what we've seen and like why it's relevant is

00:33:35.840 how this sort of like when she came into an enormous amount of money and power and influence

00:33:41.020 and like suddenly like this person's sort of pseudo intellectual nonsense thoughts are now

00:33:46.720 shaping potentially musk's policies or beliefs or whatever like she's given this this this

00:33:53.580 political platform i just feel like i have to defend her because this is these are the kind

00:33:57.060 of people i love being next to at parties yes girl like tell me your crazy theories

00:34:03.700 i want to hear everything most of what i'm complaining about like mostly i just find

00:34:10.300 pseudo intellectualism annoying it's not a crime certainly but i also think it's hard to talk about

00:34:17.860 her pseudo intellectualism without highlighting and this is kind of where i what i had going on

00:34:23.040 next in my outline is like that being the thing that also kind of brought her and elon musk

00:34:28.260 together the king of pseudo he's like the he's like the final boss of pseudo intellectualism

00:34:34.480 I remember because I was at a particular high point of listening to Grimes all the time, re-listening to like the classics from the earlier era and also listening to some of her newer stuff when she popped out at the Met Gala with Elon Musk.

00:34:50.100 And I remember that moment like so vividly and just being like, this isn't good.

00:34:55.540 like I even though Elon Musk and I think people forget that at the point when he and Grimes popped

00:35:00.380 out together he was it was like people were like power couple like people loved him they loved him

00:35:07.440 and I think I was even at the time as a Grimes fan kind of like I don't know about this but it

00:35:13.700 was really interesting to me the way that they allegedly like met is that Grimes had made a pun

00:35:21.400 involving like rococo's basilisk and then the art style or rococo's basilisk or something

00:35:27.800 basilisk and then the art style rococo so she made like a pun rococo's basilisk and used it

00:35:34.100 in a music video which is very like i think it lends itself to what we've been talking about

00:35:39.040 in terms of like there's something there that's like interesting and creative and i think if it

00:35:43.140 was disconnected from elon musk i'd be like how interesting what a night what a nice young lady

00:35:47.420 but instead but instead elon musk like also thought of this separately supposedly and googled

00:35:55.180 it to see if anyone else had come up with this pun and when he saw that grimes had he like dm'd

00:36:00.720 her on twitter and at the time it was like meet cute like the rest is history and unfortunately

00:36:06.560 the rest is literally history as are our rights exactly oh that's dark the fact that elon musk

00:36:16.740 continues to meet all of his women on twitter or they work for him dark imagine what he would act

00:36:24.000 like if he was just at like a bar he would be so awkward i don't think he can i think that's why

00:36:30.040 he has to slide into twitter dms because he cannot function irl and i think he i think he

00:36:34.940 saw grimes and spotted her and kind of immediately picked up on like ways he could maybe manipulate

00:36:40.800 her by feeding into like the weirdness and being really congratulatory of it, even if it was like

00:36:47.320 he did not ultimately respect her. And I think she was probably enthralled with him because

00:36:51.820 here's this, like you said, his reputation at that point was still very high. People thought of him

00:36:56.220 as this like Tony Stark type figure, this like brilliant tech guy, right? Like he's this like

00:37:02.740 amazing person building the future. He was an environmentalist. People were selling that back

00:37:08.480 then, right? This is somebody that values technology. Somebody invested in this new

00:37:13.040 creative future. And yeah, I'm sure she saw so much in him. And I think, like you said,

00:37:17.540 I think he probably saw a woman that's willing to flatter him and feed his pseudo intellectual BS

00:37:27.000 and his ego and ultimately sought to control her, which is what he seems to want to do to every

00:37:33.240 woman he interacts with. I think in the beginning of their relationship,

00:37:36.420 undoubtedly she did not think of him as like this bigoted fascist individual and we know this

00:37:44.760 because like early on in their relationship as he was very publicly radicalized whether or not

00:37:51.640 that's what he always believed she seemed to think that that was not who he really was because of the

00:37:56.880 famous like hate is not in your heart pick up the phone and give me a doll and that was about the

00:38:03.020 i love how you remember the typo in that tweet this is how online we are in i believe it was

00:38:13.360 2020 elon musk tweeted pronouns suck and this was kind of the first glimpse most of the world got

00:38:22.120 into like oh wait is this guy like does this guy really have like a fixation on trans people 0.87

00:38:26.940 And that was when she responded, Elon, hate is not in your heart.

00:38:31.680 Give me a doll.

00:38:32.660 Give me a call.

00:38:34.180 I love you remembering, please give me a doll.

00:38:38.740 And I do, like, I think we kind of just said this, but I just am like, there's this perception

00:38:43.960 that Grimes got with Elon Musk, like, because he's the horrible person he very publicly

00:38:49.940 is today.

00:38:50.620 And there's also a perception that, like, she knew exactly what she was getting into

00:38:54.880 you and she wanted a relationship with this man. And I think that that is like always bad rhetoric

00:39:00.660 with abuse victims because it's like at the end of the day, even if someone made really bad choices

00:39:06.320 in terms of like pursuing a relationship, I just think it's like bad to say that someone wanted

00:39:11.480 like an abusive relationship. And I also think that like in the case of Grimes, going back to

00:39:16.800 2018, I definitely don't think that she had any idea of what was going to happen because I don't

00:39:21.920 think most people did. I don't think that even Elon realized how he would be radicalized at that

00:39:27.600 point. And this is something that bothers me so much about Grimes discourse specifically on the

00:39:33.420 internet. I just think that love is complicated and different people give each other different

00:39:39.560 things. Because people will be like, well, how can you be in a relationship with somebody that

00:39:43.180 you politically disagree with? Or how can you be in a relationship with somebody that's a bigot?

00:39:47.020 As you mentioned, Kat, a lot of times these people don't start as bigots. If you knew they

00:39:50.580 were a bigot, you wouldn't have gotten to that relationship, presumably. But sometimes you are

00:39:55.740 with somebody and then you realize their beliefs have evolved. Or there are even people that I

00:40:01.300 care about deeply that were there for me during really critical parts of my life that I will

00:40:07.880 always care about and value that ultimately I realize they have crazy and terrible opinions

00:40:13.520 on things. And I think if you have a kid with someone too, the sentiments change and everything.

00:40:19.160 And I mean, this is why, and I hate too, that so many women, because so many women and more

00:40:23.600 progressive women too, are stuck with more bigoted men. I feel like we hear about that a lot, at

00:40:28.000 least rather than the other way around. And the woman is chastised and it's always like, 0.94

00:40:33.120 how could you be with this monster? How could you do this? And it's like, you don't know what

00:40:36.960 they're getting from that relationship. You don't know. And yes, it would be great to have a moral

00:40:40.740 high ground and all this stuff, but it's just like life is so much more complicated and messy than

00:40:45.500 that and human beings are more complicated. And even though you're right, he probably was never

00:40:50.460 like a leftist in any sense of the word. He's always been a union buster. Billionaires are

00:40:55.380 inherently, I would say, pretty evil. But I do think that he was a different person in 2018 than

00:41:02.100 he is now. I think it's a hallmark of abusers to showcase very intentionally show one side of

00:41:10.960 yourself at the beginning of a relationship. This is something that almost every abuser does

00:41:15.760 because most abusers are very cognizant of what they are doing. And by the time Elon had met

00:41:22.260 Grimes, he had already been with other women. And we have heard about various abusive dynamics

00:41:28.460 within those relationships, including his first wife, Justine. She wrote about this, I think,

00:41:33.840 for Marie Claire in like 2013 or like 2014. And so we know that Elon had this pattern that from

00:41:42.840 what other women have described as kind of like love bombing, where at the beginning of the

00:41:47.040 relationship, he is really doting presents himself as like, I'm going to save you like I have so many

00:41:53.360 resources, I have so much money, and I care so much about you, like, I'm going to be the best

00:41:59.620 thing that's ever happened to you and we know he did this to amber heard coming in and being like

00:42:04.280 i'm gonna save you from your abusive relationship with johnny depp we know he did this to justine

00:42:09.260 where it was like she wasn't that interested in him in college but he like persistently was like

00:42:14.540 i'm gonna really make something out of my life and i want you to be with me there seemed to be

00:42:19.440 parts of this in his relationship with tallulah riley because it happened super quickly after he

00:42:24.000 left Justine. And so I think that most likely, based on Elon's patterns with all of these women,

00:42:31.160 I think he probably presented a very different side of himself to Grimes. And then not too long

00:42:37.000 after their relationship, you know, took on a definition that she would never be able to fully

00:42:41.560 escape from, which is that she had children with him. Once you have children with someone,

00:42:46.060 you're kind of stuck with them as long as they're alive. And as soon as he kind of had her like in

00:42:51.960 this position of being stuck with him, that's when you really publicly see the unraveling of Grimes

00:42:57.620 publicly being like, I don't recognize this person. This is not who I got together with.

00:43:03.840 I don't believe this is who you are. And that is so sad to me because it is just such a common

00:43:10.160 and in fact, the most common trajectory of an abusive relationship.

00:43:14.280 Also, it's like if you're with somebody like that, who's like a narcissist or the love-loving

00:43:18.400 stuff. You always want to get back to that point. You always believe, I think, that that is the

00:43:24.340 person that they truly are. And this is just some aberrant behavior, but like, hey, just get back.

00:43:30.440 Why can't this man return to the man that I knew? And as you said, it was always a mirage.

00:43:35.620 Or maybe she was overlooking a lot of things. We're like, well, how could she have more children?

00:43:39.420 And it's like, again, maybe he is love-momming him. You believe that that initial version of

00:43:45.080 the person that you met is always going to be that person. It's also like there are two

00:43:49.000 contradictory societal narratives at once, which is that as a woman in particular in a heterosexual

00:43:55.080 relationship, you are encouraged to try to fix relationships, especially if you have children

00:44:01.440 with a man in a relationship. If you're a woman, you are actually by the court ordered to try to 0.72

00:44:08.420 repair that relationship versus cut that person off. And so through the court system, abusive

00:44:15.000 relationships that involve children are essentially mandated. We mandate that victims like remain in

00:44:21.400 close proximity with their abuser. We mandate that they like share childcare responsibilities

00:44:26.120 with them. Um, and oftentimes we mandate through our legal system that they spend like extended

00:44:32.800 periods of time immersed in their abusers life, in their homes, in their ideologies. And so I

00:44:40.480 think that like once grimes passed that point she was kind of trapped and that's not even like

00:44:47.200 taking into account the fact that contrary to popular belief grimes and elon were never married

00:44:53.380 he doesn't owe her anything first time she was pregnant with x that was a really big deal like

00:45:00.120 as a fan still at the time who was like i hate this relationship i want them to break up when 0.97

00:45:05.880 she announced she was pregnant with his baby i was like fuck like this is now forever what does 0.96

00:45:11.380 this mean what does this mean for my relationship to vision specifically i was just like i remember 0.98

00:45:18.020 kind of watching helplessly from the sidelines because i was like you know at the time when

00:45:23.380 grimes and elon's relationship was starting to develop there was also simultaneously like

00:45:28.940 the emergence of elon musk's radicalization in the public eye i was like this is so bad like

00:45:35.980 she needs to break up with this horrible man and instead they had a kid together that was a whole

00:45:41.840 public ordeal particularly around like they give the child this keyboard smash name then for the

00:45:49.260 second and the third child for whatever reason and this is like a big red flag they tried to

00:45:54.400 hide them they tried to like hide those pregnancies from the public a reporter discovered that they

00:46:00.240 had had either the second or third child they did an interview at grimes's house and they heard the

00:46:05.160 baby crying and they're like did you and elon have another baby and we now know that elon does this

00:46:11.460 with different women he like try he like encourages them as the relationship is clearly not um equitable

00:46:17.680 as there are clearly signs of like abuse or coercion or whatever in the relationship he's

00:46:22.440 also like let's have another baby so he's done that to multiple women now and he definitely did

00:46:27.120 that to grimes yeah and we've been talking about them having an abusive dynamic and i i want to

00:46:33.580 talk a little bit about the specifics of some of the things that she alleges so like you mentioned

00:46:38.300 they have these three kids um x the next one is x a dark side rail the next one is techno

00:46:43.300 mechanicus i've riffed enough about the name thing i feel like online and on this podcast i don't need

00:46:48.920 to talk more about the names. I don't like the names. I don't like the situation they create

00:46:53.500 for the children who have no agency in what they're called. I don't like names. But shortly

00:46:58.780 after their third child, Technomechanicus, is born, they split and enter into this custody battle.

00:47:04.760 And Kat, you were reading some of the legal documents as you love to do. Would you like

00:47:11.680 to shed any light on what they revealed to you? Yes. So around this time after Grimes had had

00:47:19.120 X, which is nothing to say of his full name, after Grimes had that kid, people in her fandom

00:47:25.760 in particular were starting to get really worried because this is around the time that you started

00:47:30.580 to see tweets and stuff that suggested bad things were happening behind the scenes with Elon and

00:47:35.500 Grimes. And the custody battle like kicked into effect because Grimes was trying to get a legal

00:47:43.340 sort of parental arrangement, like acknowledging that Elon is the father of these three children

00:47:49.280 so that she can have legal rights to them. And what we know from like the court documents

00:47:54.780 themselves and like the official narrative is supplemented by the fact that Grimes will often

00:48:00.360 tweet and often she'll delete them. But like Grimes frequently tweets and gives these little

00:48:05.100 bits and pieces of insight into what her portrayal of these events are. But after she starts trying

00:48:13.440 to go through the courts to establish parenthood, then they start disputing over whether the

00:48:19.340 children live in California or Texas. And the custody battle is in Texas. So Grimes wanted to

00:48:26.940 move it to California and said that the youngest two children were with her full-time in California

00:48:31.300 and that the only child who was in texas was x and x is the one who elon constantly is parading

00:48:38.220 around in public has him on his shoulders has him in the white house like from the time that

00:48:43.220 he was a little boy x has been like the very public child who elon takes around with him

00:48:49.400 and it is super bizarre and like grimes has hinged kind of her argument around this that it is like

00:48:56.060 not what she wants as his mother and it is like not consistent with the other children the way

00:49:02.240 that he parades x around specifically and it's like he has children who are x's age with other

00:49:09.180 women who he's not doing this with it's like he picked this one kid and in the custody battle

00:49:15.800 grimes is like i haven't seen x for five months i can't see my son i don't want him to have this

00:49:22.280 level of public visibility but elon won't comply with my wishes and the custody battle is really

00:49:28.160 really ugly a lot of it is sealed from public view most of it is but she reveals on twitter

00:49:34.080 um she says that like her modeling photos were used against her in the courtroom like she basically

00:49:40.280 said that elon used like probably tried to portray her as like sexually promiscuous which is just like

00:49:45.780 so gross but such a common thing used against mothers in custody battles what she like described

00:49:53.020 happening is so consistent with what women from all backgrounds and like all histories and

00:49:59.920 experiences go through in custody battles she said she was going bankrupt because of like these

00:50:05.120 custody battles she said that like elon obviously has the most resources out of everyone in the in

00:50:11.140 the world he is the richest person on the planet and she was like i have such a difficult time

00:50:15.640 fighting this against him and she also said at that point that it was like someone who she

00:50:20.940 no longer recognized as compared to the man who she had met um and she basically said that like

00:50:27.020 she was fighting to stop her kids from getting taken away from her another really interesting

00:50:31.400 thing during sort of this whole custody battle era which did wrap up finally with some sort of

00:50:37.680 settlement but as this was all going on grimes's mother actually tweeted at elon and was like

00:50:44.320 grimes is trying to take the kids to see her dying grandmother and you will not like relinquish them

00:50:50.560 to her or give her their like passport documentation so that they can do this like please don't do

00:50:56.240 something this is breaking my daughter's heart and my mother's heart and with all of this stuff

00:51:01.680 being so publicly out there i just have always found it so like surreal and ultimately unsurprising

00:51:08.360 but very disappointing that people don't like talk about how blatant all of this like mistreatment of

00:51:15.960 his kids and grimes and her family is and how like egregious it is that she has so little resources

00:51:23.440 compared to him and that he's like putting her and the children through all of this yeah yeah and

00:51:29.620 just because I can already read the comments litigating how much sympathy or scrutiny towards

00:51:35.220 Grimes is too much, I want to be clear and say that there is a reason, a very valid reason, 0.81

00:51:41.520 that so many queer people reacted so negatively towards Grimes' inclusion in the World Pride 0.91

00:51:47.960 lineup. Grimes has, you know, co-signed and espoused some really shitty political views that 0.86

00:51:53.600 we're going to get into in a bit. And at the same time, she's in this truly nightmarish situation

00:52:00.680 inside this relationship with the father of her children. I don't think those things, by the way,

00:52:05.180 are entirely separate either, which we're going to get into in a second. But I do think people can

00:52:10.420 and probably should have conflicting feelings about them. And I'm not asking anyone to reconcile

00:52:15.340 those feelings necessarily, but I think it's worth noting that they can all exist at the same time.

00:52:20.600 Yeah. And it just goes back to also, I just have to say again to what I said before, which is that

00:52:24.580 you don't know what a relationship is like until you're in it. Women especially are taught to 1.00

00:52:29.700 compartmentalize and to, as everything that Kat said earlier, it's like you're pressured, 1.00

00:52:34.260 especially once you have a child, to be together and to fix it. And if that guy keeps giving you,

00:52:39.860 which it sounds like he does, it's like he's such a manipulator. He's giving these women,

00:52:44.980 especially Grimes, these little tastes of him as they once knew him when they met.

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00:54:25.740 Now, let's get back to the episode.

00:54:28.340 while we're complicating this all let's talk about grimes's own political radicalization

00:54:36.180 and maybe speculate on what about this arena of far-right personalities was interesting to her

00:54:42.680 because while to be clear obviously i vehemently disagree with how she chooses to spend her time

00:54:49.780 nowadays i kind of always think and it's a running theme on the show that perhaps the

00:54:54.560 most productive thing we can do is ask how and why. I think what we see is as Elon starts to

00:55:01.120 get radicalized, you start to see Grimes's politics evolve as well. And you also see her

00:55:07.580 start to talk quite negatively about the media and to fight with the media. In 2021, she does

00:55:12.500 this photo shoot where she's kind of trying to troll the media, where she's dressed up in this

00:55:16.780 typical Grimes kind of crazy outfit. And then she's reading the Communist Manifesto. And this

00:55:21.720 is when she was getting a lot of media criticism for being with Elon and enabling him because

00:55:26.940 2021 is when he really kicked off the really awful transphobic stuff and just sort of started

00:55:31.980 to make his more extreme beliefs more publicly known. And so you see her kind of feeding against

00:55:36.900 that. People were like, oh my God, is she sending a message or what is this? But I think I started

00:55:43.300 to see signs of resentment of the media and resentment of her public image. And you see her

00:55:48.960 also starting to fight more with people in the replies, people will say something to her and

00:55:53.740 she's like, well, you don't understand what's going on. She's clearly frustrated. And I've

00:56:00.380 written so much about this and I've experienced it myself. When you see false information about

00:56:05.720 yourself publicly or when you feel like part of your story is not being told or you're being

00:56:10.500 chastised in the media, it is such a radicalizing force. I do think with her, she probably felt,

00:56:17.300 I don't want to say persecuted, but I do think that she felt this like resentment and that

00:56:21.580 resentment. If you start to go down that road, you are fed into the right wing pipeline. Like

00:56:26.520 the right is so good at taking that resentment and being like, you're right. You're right. And

00:56:31.740 by the way, the media is evil. And by the way, all these people canceling you are evil. Well, 0.70

00:56:36.080 see what I mean. Woke people will turn on you. This is it. And so you see her starting to

00:56:40.440 affiliate with more of these like counter culture, you know, like these right wing extremists.

00:56:45.400 That's what they are. Yeah. I don't want to excuse it. It's bad. It's lazy. She shouldn't

00:56:49.520 do this, right? You should recognize like, okay, these people are also grifting off me. They also

00:56:54.080 will throw me under the bus the minute I'm not politically expedient. But when you're feeling

00:56:58.700 lonely, which I imagine she was, you're feeling completely isolated. And then also endearing

00:57:03.860 yourself to these far right radicals also kind of endears yourself to Elon, who's increasingly

00:57:08.520 in those circles. I just see how that she started to go down that path. I think that throughout

00:57:13.440 Grimes's career and what we've talked about you see like the perfect conditions for radicalization

00:57:18.700 form because like we talked about at the very beginning when Grimes emerged as a musician I

00:57:24.700 think she was undeniably extremely talented but was often sort of not given her due and had kind

00:57:32.320 of this tense back and forth with the media like broadly speaking because I think she also dealt

00:57:38.720 with a lot of misogyny and sexism from the media and from parts of the media that are not like

00:57:43.420 the same parts of the media that are calling her out now. But I think a lot of people in that

00:57:49.260 position just sort of naturally start to associate anything that falls under the umbrella of the

00:57:54.800 media with negative, bad treatment they've gotten. And to some degree, like you said,

00:57:59.180 Taylor, I think that for a lot of women in the public eye, that is fair. Because a lot of times 0.98

00:58:04.980 as a woman in the public eye, even the best media outlets still treat you through a misogynistic 0.99

00:58:10.500 lens. So I think coming into her relationship with Elon, Grimes was already sort of in this

00:58:17.020 like standoff with the media. The way her relationship gets covered, I think really

00:58:21.680 like upset her. And then as the relationship in her personal life starts to really visibly become

00:58:29.660 abusive, I think like you see a lot of effects and consequences of that that only further open

00:58:36.720 her up to radicalization. For example, during the custody battle, she tweeted that her daily

00:58:41.660 schedule would be like sleeping, eating, crying and going to court. And I just think that someone

00:58:47.260 who is in that kind of survival mode where it feels like the world is against you. And in the

00:58:53.320 case of fighting the richest man on the planet for your children, the world kind of is stacked

00:58:57.980 against you. Like I can see why she became so vulnerable that like it was just perfect breeding

00:59:04.680 ground for radicalization and i'll also say that like that's not an excuse because a lot of people

00:59:10.520 who are in really heinous horrible situations do not become radicalized right right i think this

00:59:17.080 more has to do with like the path she went down and the path elon went down are both because of

00:59:21.980 like who they are and she's not like a violent abusive individual in the same way that he is

00:59:29.260 but she like has co-signed on this rhetoric and some of the really bad stuff that she's done over

00:59:34.900 the years has included like following white supremacist neo-nazis on twitter she also starts

00:59:41.240 to like physically hang out with these people i was gonna say it's it's not just uh twitter

00:59:46.640 following i don't want to be the follow police because like i really i've you follow everyone

00:59:51.280 drives me insane because i write about right-wing influencers of course i follow them i monitor

00:59:55.740 everything they do and I can't every day I have some new person in my dms why do you follow this

00:59:59.640 person like well I write about them what's way more concerning to me and I do think that you can

01:00:05.940 deduce a certain amount of you know information about someone from the people that they follow

01:00:10.380 because that is the information you can tell kind of their information diet but she also starts to 0.95

01:00:14.620 hang out with these people socially right that's what I was going to mention I mean she's like at

01:00:19.460 She's has there's write ups about her friendship with Curtis Yarvin, who is this avowed white supremacist.

01:00:27.840 Yeah, he's a he's a eugenicist.

01:00:29.840 On January 19th, the night before the inauguration, she was DJing sort of like MAGA hangout party.

01:00:38.580 She's she's on Twitter, you know, all the time defending Elon.

01:00:42.640 Someone just a couple weeks ago said, girl, please, you were in love with a Nazi.

01:00:46.840 and she just responded to that person quote hysteria will get you nowhere and told them to

01:00:52.180 read Confucius and study history we did study history that's the problem right I wish that

01:01:00.300 she would just admit it I wish that she would just acknowledge it but I think she's into denial

01:01:05.240 and I think she feels resentment because again when you're in love with someone and you're in

01:01:10.600 love with someone you have kids with someone and then you see yourself being hated like I don't

01:01:14.860 know, it's hard. You, we all want to defend ourselves online and we all think of ourselves

01:01:19.680 as like doing the right thing and the moral thing. And I just feel like she's gone down this path so

01:01:24.600 far that it's, you know, a tweet is not going to get her out of it. Also, I just want to say like

01:01:29.940 the MAGA stuff, like especially the inaugural, I mean, I was at a lot of these inauguration events

01:01:35.400 and stuff because I was writing about it. Again, their goal is to radicalize people and to bring

01:01:41.000 people into a movement. And so you see this a lot where somebody sort of starts to associate or

01:01:47.360 they're in this vulnerable spot and you see the right just like vultures, like seize on them, 0.98

01:01:53.140 again, because they're opportunists that don't actually give a shit, but this person is vulnerable. 0.97

01:01:57.500 And then you see the anger, like the anger from the left, rightfully so, and that kind of pushes 0.99

01:02:04.740 them. And that doesn't mean that it's the left. I hate when people say, oh, well, that's left

01:02:07.760 fault. Like, oh, you know, you should, that's why we should be nicer to people. No, whoop,

01:02:11.560 there goes Mary. No, but I think we have to be realistic and recognize these conditions that

01:02:16.580 people are radicalized under. It reminds me really significantly, like over the past few years,

01:02:22.480 like since 2018, since like the height of the Me Too movement, I have noticed multiple women who

01:02:28.560 were like high profile accusers in the Me Too movement who have been radicalized and radicalized

01:02:34.140 hard tara reed is like a really good example because she is like literally like in russia

01:02:39.360 and i think rose mcgowan also has like said some pretty concerning stuff at first when i saw these 0.99

01:02:45.640 women getting radicalized it confused me because i was like how could you be drawn to such a like 0.72

01:02:51.020 toxic and uh like patriarchal demographic but i think what i initially realized is that like

01:02:59.060 what these women experienced when they came forward is they saw that they said they saw

01:03:03.180 that same patriarchal misogyny from the left and that is why they got pushed to the right

01:03:09.180 because unfortunately the reality is there is like no justice in any sense for women who go

01:03:16.500 through these types of situations like a lot of victims understand that it is not like a left or

01:03:22.160 right thing it's like just because the left mistreats you doesn't mean the right's going to

01:03:26.380 treat you any better but a lot of victims do fall prey to this like they are sort of vulnerable to

01:03:31.440 this radicalization and I've seen examples of this where it's like I'm like well this guy who

01:03:36.980 you now love is a victim blamer and they're like but not to me like they're like but this person

01:03:43.200 showed me kindness and no one is showing me any kindness and it's like it's really sad to like see 0.93

01:03:50.020 this happen and I hate it but it's like it all comes back to the fact that I think bottom line

01:03:55.360 like these men elon musk and like his cronies are manipulators they're manipulators and it's like

01:04:02.760 that's the like most important takeaway from this is that he's now done this to so many women

01:04:09.240 grimes and others that it ceases to be about who these women are as individuals and it's more so

01:04:15.020 about just like oh it's the same pattern of abuse and elon musk is abusing all of us now in his

01:04:21.880 position. So it's like, it just is who he is to his core, and he'll do it to any woman he can.

01:04:29.780 Again, in my own head, I find myself coming back to this point of,

01:04:34.140 what is the right amount of sympathy? What is the right amount of scrutiny? How do I hold these

01:04:38.320 things at the same time? Because on one hand, right, and this is what people bring up a lot,

01:04:43.000 Grimes will somewhat regularly go out of her way, especially on Twitter, to defend Elon.

01:04:48.180 like just in january there was this tweet let me find it she was sparring with some random person

01:04:54.420 on twitter uh and continuing to claim that like elon is still this like climate change warrior

01:05:00.880 despite obviously like joining the worst presidential administration the climate has 0.99

01:05:05.640 literally ever known so she continues to do this sort of like laundering of elon's image for reasons

01:05:12.420 that don't quite make sense.

01:05:15.120 But then at the same time, like a month later,

01:05:17.600 she tweeted, let me find this one.

01:05:19.620 She tweeted directly at Elon Musk.

01:05:21.520 Here it is from the 20th of February.

01:05:24.280 At Elon Musk, please respond about our child's medical crisis.

01:05:27.920 I am so sorry to do this publicly,

01:05:29.420 but it is no longer acceptable to ignore this situation.

01:05:32.620 This requires immediate attention.

01:05:34.820 If you don't want to talk to me,

01:05:36.240 can you please designate or hire someone who can

01:05:38.480 so that we can move forward on solving this?

01:05:40.860 This is urgent, Elon.

01:05:42.420 I'm not giving any details, but he won't respond to texts, calls, or emails and has skipped every

01:05:47.920 meeting. And our child will suffer lifelong impairment if he doesn't respond ASAP. So I

01:05:52.860 need him to fucking respond. And if I have to apply public pressure, then I guess that's where 0.99

01:05:57.180 we're at. Like it goes without saying that that's pretty fucking horrifying. I would not ask anyone 0.98

01:06:03.180 to feel sympathetic for Grimes because there are a number of reasons why you may not want to be

01:06:07.900 sympathetic toward her. But I do think that like, in noting that we can also recognize that victims

01:06:14.220 don't have to be sympathetic. And that the way that Elon Musk is victimizing these women,

01:06:20.200 Grimes included, is also reflective of the way that he is victimizing the country at large

01:06:25.520 through all the other actions that he takes in his personal and his professional life.

01:06:30.780 And I think with Grimes and defending Elon specifically, it's like we can look at this

01:06:35.720 behavior sort of objectively for what it is. And it's like, this is a man who has only ever like

01:06:42.940 persistently hurt Grimes. And so for her to come out and defend him after all of that is not a

01:06:50.880 rational position for her to take. It's coming from an irrational place. And so just because

01:06:57.440 victims act, you know, in some situations irrationally or in a way that is like consequential

01:07:03.140 to others, you know, we don't have to separate those things out from each other. They can exist

01:07:08.600 at the same time. She can be coming from a place where she's reacting to an abusive relationship 0.95

01:07:13.080 and her statement on its own can have negative and harmful consequences. This is actually like

01:07:18.800 a very frequent facet of like domestic violence cases is that there are cascading consequences

01:07:25.580 that affect everybody around the relationship. And so I think that that is true of Grimes.

01:07:32.500 and I also think that like if we just end the conversation at she's an irredeemable person

01:07:39.180 and we don't feel bad for her then we're not doing anything to challenge like the rhetoric

01:07:44.660 that underlines Elon's ability to abuse all of these different women. I also think it's important

01:07:49.820 to point out because I referred to the behavior as like rational versus irrational some things

01:07:54.660 appear irrational to us because we are not privy to what is going on in that relationship. So for

01:08:01.220 example, this is just a hypothetical, like sometimes within abusive relationships behind

01:08:06.680 closed doors, the way that abusers treat their victims is they see how far they can push them

01:08:12.760 and things that they can get them to say and do sometimes publicly to sort of like, it's part of

01:08:18.840 the process of coercive control. Victims will oftentimes like privately and publicly respond

01:08:25.580 with like the fawn response, which is to like tell the abuser that they're a good person, tell them

01:08:31.040 that like, they're not being abused, like deny that the abuse is happening. Because it's a way

01:08:36.620 of like, maybe making sure that the abuser stays calm and doesn't become angry and doesn't flip

01:08:42.080 out on you. Or maybe it's a way of like bargaining to try to get things like being able to see your

01:08:47.100 children, for example, or getting your abuser to respond to you if like your child is having

01:08:52.260 a medical emergency. With like the tweeting at Elon, we don't really know what's going on in

01:08:58.220 that relationship because the parties who have knowledge of it haven't told us. All we can really

01:09:03.660 do as bystanders is like guess. And that is a really imperfect way of like handling this

01:09:09.200 situation. But I think that because it's the one we're all in together, you see how people just

01:09:15.300 repeatedly do not give victims the benefit of the doubt. They actually tend to like villainize

01:09:20.920 victims and like cast the worst possible like guess of what is going on in that situation

01:09:26.640 and project that onto the victim.

01:09:29.780 So I think like knowing what we know,

01:09:31.940 it's fair to say that there are probably elements

01:09:34.620 to Grimes' behavior that involve factors

01:09:37.540 we are not privy to

01:09:38.960 and may make her look more sympathetic

01:09:41.180 or may at least provide like context that we don't have.

01:09:45.300 Well, and speaking of behavior that seems from the outside

01:09:48.900 pretty irrational and like straight up bizarre,

01:09:51.820 did you guys see the tweet about the video games?

01:09:54.620 she like she tweeted about elon like being good at video games uh here's the tweet from january 18th

01:10:02.480 just for my personal pride i would like to state that the father of my children was the first

01:10:07.360 american druid i'm sorry i don't know video games i'm sorry if i fuck up these words

01:10:14.200 was the first american druid in diablo to clear the abattoir of zir and ended that season as the

01:10:22.780 best in the USA. He was also ranking in Polytopia and beat Felix himself at the game. I did observe

01:10:29.700 these things with my own eyes. There are other witnesses who can verify this. That is all.

01:10:35.120 She ended up with egg on her face with this because, right, because then it came out that

01:10:38.980 he did actually, I think, have someone playing for him or something. But I was like, did he make

01:10:44.980 her tweet that? When I saw that, I thought it was so incredibly bizarre. And I don't know if it came

01:10:49.620 from a place of like either i mean all of the sort of hypotheticals are equally dark where it's

01:10:54.720 like either she noticed that this is something that was really bothering him on the internet

01:10:58.860 and she's trying to curry favor by espousing this but ultimately like kind of false information

01:11:04.760 about like how great he is or he asked her to back him up because at that point he had not come

01:11:11.160 clean there was now ended up being irrefutable evidence that he cheated on the video game on

01:11:16.360 the video game yeah he had like had someone play for him or something because basically somebody

01:11:21.900 that actually knows about video games did this like youtube investigation and found out that

01:11:26.480 like there was no way that he could have played those amount of hours at these times or whatever 0.84

01:11:30.180 whatever and so then he kind of sort of admitted it and people were like grimes you're such a liar

01:11:34.860 but it's just like to me when you see that stuff it's so sad there's an audience of one for that 0.58

01:11:40.340 tweet which is elon and it's again her sort of lashing out what you know sort of like flailing

01:11:45.520 in public, trying to get him to respond to her, respect her, trying to get favor with him.

01:11:51.880 I mean, what he put her through financially, emotionally, and the way he takes, I mean,

01:11:58.180 X is obviously his favorite child. And he has latched on to X and brings X everywhere in the

01:12:05.680 public eye, which she obviously doesn't like. And it's this constant reminder of control. And

01:12:10.940 that's your child. Imagine having your child, which you have to watch publicly, be paraded

01:12:15.380 around i do think we can be like oh this woman is problematic and also be like oh it's like so

01:12:21.560 objectively horrifying that people online everyone kind of agrees that elon is carrying x around as

01:12:28.640 like a human shield imagine if that is your child and not only do you have to see everyone basically

01:12:34.660 say that like your kid is going to get assassinated which is not an impossible thing to happen but

01:12:40.700 also like his father is not letting you even see him like it is so dystopian and horrifying what

01:12:48.560 grimes is living through is a straight up horror movie and what all of like elon's baby the women

01:12:54.740 who have his children what they're all living through is like a horror movie and they don't

01:13:00.740 all have to be like good people for that to be the case the whole thing is wild it's like it feels

01:13:06.540 very like palace intriguing like you're seeing you're getting this window into the lives of

01:13:11.260 these people and i don't know what how reflective that is of what's really going on inside but it

01:13:17.880 does remind me also the last thing i wanted to say which is i don't know if you guys have seen

01:13:22.600 that thread and it's like someone on twitter was creating like a version of elon and all the women

01:13:28.460 who are mothers of his children and comparing them to like a royal dynasty like tropes and they were 0.94

01:13:35.340 like crimes is like his ultimate love but she faces the worst punishment because she refuses

01:13:40.740 to conform siobhan is like the one who plays the game the best and she like her son ultimately gets 0.98

01:13:47.340 picked to be like the next person in line and like they're doing all the different women who

01:13:52.400 elon has been with and grimes responded to this and was like lol and i was just like this is so

01:13:58.660 sad this is dystopian it's like so reminiscent of historical fiction and how like kings have

01:14:04.920 wives and concubines and all of this historical stuff and I'm like this isn't okay that this is

01:14:09.940 happening and we shouldn't be like glorifying it or like treating it as it's just like palace

01:14:15.280 intrigue about rich weird people like it's kind of like a there it's like an act of gender violence

01:14:21.880 that's like happening in front of us involving the richest and most influential people in the world

01:14:26.580 I think that ultimately the biggest story here is not really like whether or not Grimes is a person

01:14:34.280 who is redeemable but rather that elon musk is a person who is currently unaccountable and i think

01:14:41.760 that what is like so often lost is that to consistently oppose abusers and to consistently

01:14:50.540 support victims that involves cases that are morally gray and i think that like it actually

01:14:58.460 more frequently comes off morally gray than it comes off nice and easy because the victim is

01:15:04.080 like so great and easy to support and the abuser is so easy to hold accountable like I think with

01:15:10.300 these cases they're so frequently framed as like the outliers because of how rich and famous and

01:15:17.120 celebrity the people involved are and while I don't want to discount the role that like privilege

01:15:22.200 and other like all these different forms of privilege carry in this situation one consistent

01:15:27.860 theme throughout this episode has been like what Grimes is experiencing it's the same playbook it's

01:15:32.980 the same pattern as any abusive relationship love bombing like hiding who you really are

01:15:39.320 turning into a different person the way that the courts and custody system have been weaponized

01:15:44.320 against her these are things that every victim faces and so it's never about like the individual

01:15:51.180 victim and their strengths and weaknesses but rather it's about what abuse is and what we can

01:15:56.340 do about it and what we can do about it is we can like acknowledge it because you can walk away and 0.71

01:16:02.680 be like i still hate her i hate everything about her she's the worst person in the world as long

01:16:07.140 as you are still like but he is abusing her that's like that's a still positive step in the right 0.76

01:16:12.280 direction because we can't do anything about like victimhood and abuse if we can't even agree on a

01:16:17.540 common definition of what victimhood and abuse are what a ride what a ride grimes the web that

01:16:26.720 you weave. The web that you've been weaving since you sunk your alien claws in me 13 years and two

01:16:33.720 months ago when I first heard Oblivion. I certainly could not have predicted then that we'd all end up

01:16:40.020 here now. And you know, sometimes when I shut my eyes, I'm 15 again. In the closet, in my childhood

01:16:47.620 bedroom, reblogging photos of you with some good old DIY bangs. Take me back. Taylor and Kat,

01:16:56.300 thank you so so much for being here today thank you for having us i'm so glad we got to talk about

01:17:03.440 this and thank you i i don't know maybe all of my episodes are this like roller coastery but

01:17:11.040 this maybe it's because of my personal relationship to grime to be clear a parasocial one but one that

01:17:16.280 i've been fostering for over a decade maybe this just felt so heavy and you know i think

01:17:20.960 objectively it is so thank you for making it this far if you have thanks for listening to this

01:17:25.600 podcast uh once again if you would like to experience the podcast live experience our

01:17:31.540 conversations live and are in a city where we're doing a show please come through i'm so excited

01:17:37.240 take care of yourself please so we can all see each other through the other side of this

01:17:43.800 madness when it's over and it will be i love you and until next time stay fruity

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - March 07, 2025

The Complex Tragedy of Grimes

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