00:00:23.200the people in the publishing and film industry who anonymously send us documents like sofia
00:00:28.640Franklin's book proposal, the two years of Alex Earle TikTok videos I had to scroll through before
00:00:35.580she went viral for the first time so I could establish the timeline for her megastardom,
00:00:41.020Matt Kaplan, Vanity Fair, Matt Kaplan's lawyer threatening Vanity Fair, and the never-ending
00:00:47.280mean girl versus girl's girl dichotomy. Ooh, I'm so excited!
00:00:53.960We are talking about Alex Cooper, Alex Earl, and the business of relatability, also known as white-on-white crime.
00:01:04.160Caro, I'm so sorry. I know that you told me that you never wanted to think critically or deeply about Alex Earl's cultural influence, but unfortunately, the time has come.
00:01:15.780So I do feel like I am in a unique position to discuss this story because I have worked in a media company of a similar size to both Unwell and Barstool on a talent contract.
00:01:27.940And I think that that perspective is going to allow me to add like a little bit of personal color today.
00:01:32.780I thought you were going to say you're in a good position because you don't care.
00:01:39.000Because I am one of the last blonde white women in America who truly does not care about this feud.
00:01:43.880as a blonde white woman these are my people okay my culture is not your costume yeah
00:01:50.080okay i think the obvious and like maybe as a result least interesting framing that i could
00:01:58.280use today is that we simply just do not see this kind of coverage or interest in media companies
00:02:03.340of this size owned by men like the media brand that i worked for was about the same size had
00:02:09.260roughly the same amount of revenue and was co-founded by guys that are alex cooper's age
00:02:13.560And there was never media interest in the meta-narrative of our company. There was never coverage of employee drama or executive turnover, and there was plenty of that. I do think that the Rise and Fall of the Girlboss episode explored that theme in a lot more detail. So that's not the framing that I am looking to use today.
00:17:18.620Look, you either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain.
00:17:24.320Okay, I just texted you the next chunk.
00:17:27.660At the time, we believed it, the former employee says, not of Earl, but of Cooper's stated ethos.
00:17:33.780This staffer was one of dozens of young women drawn to Unwell because they have seen its founder as someone who would help nurture the next generation of female media moguls.
00:17:42.540Now she and several former colleagues say they see things differently, see Cooper as the very kind of mean girl she publicly rejects.
00:17:49.720And that's before they even gets the issue of Cooper's husband and business partner, Matt Kaplan.
00:17:54.920Okay, so the article goes on to detail some alleged workplace abuses.
00:17:59.880if you will please continue reading this section. Former employees describe a company where Cooper
00:18:07.220is indeed the talent, but where executive decisions are largely made by her husband,
00:18:11.380whom several described as having a leadership style that has felt like a volatile mix of
00:18:15.360unprofessional and caustic, at turns flirtatious or given to screaming. Some women characterized
00:18:20.860his behavior as, quote, just Matt being weird, while others said they were more significantly
00:18:25.820affected by it. Several women who have worked at Unwell say that Kaplan referred to employees as
00:18:31.940quote stupid or quote retarded and threatened to ruin careers. Several allege that he made
00:18:37.900employees uncomfortable with comments about physical appearances and questions about people's
00:18:42.200sex lives. Many describe the feeling that lines were crossed, though they weren't always sure
00:18:47.040where those lines were supposed to be drawn. A confusion compounded, several noted, by how new
00:18:51.580they were to the workforce. Yeah, flag that. One source says that Kaplan thinks of his young
00:18:56.900female employees as, quote, little sisters and suggests that feelings of discomfort may be
00:19:01.460misplaced. Most, even those with more experience or who no longer work at Unwell, were reluctant
00:19:07.300to speak on the record for fear of retribution. But taken together, their accounts paint a picture
00:19:12.380of a workplace marked by fear, anxiety, and paranoia. Yeah, not great. Okay, any thoughts?
00:19:18.480Yeah, I have a few thoughts just to rattle them off quickly. Number one, I mean, I think that a young employee is pretty relevant. Like the fact that these were people who were probably freshly out of college, people who haven't worked at a lot of places, and who also have a parasocial relationship with the founder. So I think going in and thinking like, oh, this is Alex Cooper, I think that there might be expectations about a certain experience that are not in line with what it's going to be like.
00:19:43.440I do think that your point at the beginning is really important to state that, like, there are so many companies where this is happenstance, and it is really interesting that it's Alex Cooper's company that's being targeted. Like, I'm sorry, do you think Joe Rogan's podcast company doesn't say the arselor? Like, even using that as, like, an antagonistic explanation for—
00:20:04.660They don't employ women, which is their—this is Unwell's first mistake.
00:20:09.760Seriously. Well, and the other thing I was going to say is you immediately see this expectation
00:26:32.040There was a lot more to this article than I had originally anticipated, not in the sense of claims or specific accusations, but just so many thematic layers to tease apart.
00:26:42.940I think it's fair to say the piece is largely about Kaplan's bad behavior and Alex not doing anything to stop him.
00:26:50.840but it ultimately asks the question what does it mean when a man appears to be in charge of it all
00:26:58.600right but that question is never really answered like we don't really get an answer in this piece
00:27:03.280we don't really know what it means yet it's it's kind of left open-ended to the reader this
00:27:07.820implication of like it's this feminist company run by this woman the subtext is she's not your
00:27:15.300big sister, she's a pick me, basically. She's kind of been, she's lying to you. It's like what
00:27:21.620the conservative media ecosystem is saying. She's been lying to you. I think the implication as well
00:27:26.220was that there is something misleading about a company that's about women being run by men.
00:27:32.820And again, as someone who worked in media, I'm like, every single one of these media companies
00:27:38.400is run by men. Every single media company is owned by men. There is a male CEO at the top of BDG,
00:27:44.580at the top of Cosmopolitan, at the top of all these different companies.
00:27:47.680And so once again, like, I understand that it seems disingenuous.
00:36:13.140As she tries to evolve and expand the brand, Cooper seems sure she can thread the needle and bring her fans along with her.
00:36:20.420I want to be the biggest podcaster in the world, she says.
00:36:23.660I've got this great big deal now. I want to prove to the world that I'm worth this.
00:36:28.060While her comments on her podcast may sound off the cuff, they're carefully thought out and scripted.
00:36:33.100When Call Her Daddy launched, Cooper says, she outlined every episode, pre-writing the intros and outros,
00:36:38.360re-recording single words she believed had been said in the wrong cadence or anything that might
00:36:42.640have been taken out of context editing the show and devising promotion strategies on social media
00:36:47.400this did not happen by mistake she says or because i fell into it oh can i just say i'm
00:36:53.440really relating to alex's desire to be like i earned this girl give up girl don't try to prove
00:37:03.980it. Just move on. How would you describe Alex Cooper's attitude and self-concept on the record?
00:37:11.780She's dogged. I think she's very dogged. And I think that she, and again, I mean, it's worth
00:37:16.680noting that this is her vibe post $60 million deal. So I don't know if she would have had this
00:37:21.460posturing when she was just doing Call Her Daddy. I think in those interviews, I would guess she
00:37:26.260would have been more humble and been like, yeah, we're just two girls. You know, it depends on
00:37:29.900what stage of your career that you're in. And so it's a very specific timeframe for her, I'm sure.
00:37:34.740Mm-hmm. She is unafraid to talk about herself as a successful businesswoman,
00:37:41.200to say, this didn't happen by accident. Yeah, no, I schemed my way here 100%.
00:37:48.280Every early episode that sounded like it was off the cuff. I was actually writing all of it. I was
00:37:56.540architecting this relatability from the jump. Who knows how true that is? I mean, we have no way to
00:38:04.460know whether that is kind of a retconning of the early days of Call Her Daddy. But regardless,
00:38:11.680it's pretty clear that she wants people to know that she didn't, quote unquote, fall into this.
00:38:22.720This really makes me think of Taylor Swift in addition to myself. I'm like, this is why I'm like Taylor Swift.
00:38:28.860Let's loop in a fifth blonde white woman.
00:38:32.920I mean, I think about Taylor Swift talking, obviously, like she now has in her discography and like in her lyricism become increasingly outspoken with saying like, no, I am in control.
00:38:44.600And being self-aware, like saying, I put narcotics into my songs. I'm a mastermind. Like I'm scheming, you know, like Machiavellian.
00:38:51.840And I really do think you see, number one, a need for women to reinvent themselves throughout their careers. So like women can't start out confident. You have to start out being like, aw shucks, thanks for having me. And then you also can't stay that way.
00:39:07.360And again, I think of the Taylor Swift where everyone got sick of her being like surprised at awards shows. And so I do think that you do see this with a lot of famous women where you go from being almost outwardly and maybe like hyperbolically modest because that is what is expected of women as they slowly achieve success. And then once you're successful, you have to transform again. It feels like a very consistent archetype.
00:39:29.360Yeah, it's interesting to draw the Taylor Swift parallel. I hadn't really thought about that. I would be terrified to be that sort of confident or that quote-unquote self-aware of how unusual it was that I had done something like that.
00:39:47.160So, I just want to point out, though, that there is a little bit of an interesting paradox that appears to be happening here.
00:39:54.540She is both the highest paid woman in podcasting and also seems unable to replicate her own success in shows that are not directly tied to her own persona.
00:40:06.780This is what enables that sort of doublespeak that often happens in these conversations where she manages to be characterized as both the most successful woman in media and, like, actively flopping.
00:40:19.580Because a lot of these unwell shows are, like, not really taking off in the same way.
00:40:25.880So I told you earlier that Caller Daddy was acquired by Barstool after its third episode, so essentially it was almost like the pilot got picked up.
00:40:33.160Barstool Sports is a frat boy-coded media company led by Dave Portnoy, who founded it in 2003.
00:41:02.400Anyway, it is now relatively well understood that Alex and Sophia's original deal with Barstool
00:41:09.420was not good. Alex and her co-host, Sophia Franklin, were given a $75,000 per year talent
00:41:16.960contract with bonuses if they beat download averages. So I believe it was tiered where
00:41:22.040it was like year one is 75, year two is 85, I think year three was 95. Now that is a completely
00:41:28.280respectable salary but it paled in comparison to what their show was reportedly bringing in
00:41:34.600which is why i say it was really known to be a bad deal one estimate i saw was that the ad revenue
00:41:40.520on call her daddy was 11 million dollars per year for barstool oh my god i know that at one point
00:41:47.020they were doing 10 million dollars just in merch so 75 85k it's like you're really not seeing any
00:41:53.760of it and it's basically all you oh my god another estimate which came from dave portnoy himself said
00:42:00.180that when the show went on hiatus during the protracted contract negotiations in 2020 that
00:42:05.600we're going to talk about they were losing a hundred thousand dollars per episode in ad revenue
00:42:09.940so if they're publishing once per week that's 5.2 million per year in top line revenue if
00:42:15.180you're at twice weekly there's your 11 million now to be fair their downloads were so high that
00:42:22.260thanks to the structure of their bonuses in the talent contracts. I believe they both actually
00:42:27.740ended up taking home closer to $500,000 each after year one, but still, like, given the amount
00:42:35.000of money that Call Her Daddy was making at the time, this was still, I don't know, 10 to 20%
00:42:39.460of the total between them. So Barstool was still by far the largest beneficiary of that podcast,
00:42:47.960of that IP at the time. Sophia actually has a memoir about all of this coming out this November,
00:42:53.900and we received a copy of the book proposal from someone who is involved in the auction process.
00:42:59.900And according to this document, which is allegedly the proposal that was shopped around,
00:43:06.000Sophia basically explains that the office environment of Barstool was really unusual.
00:43:12.200It's not like what you would expect working in an office to be like. Working there involved,
00:43:16.920signing release forms that basically said you agreed to be filmed if you were in the office
00:43:21.620and that there were essentially no rules about crass or derogatory behavior in pursuit of clickbait.
00:43:29.280So according to this source, Franklin felt out of place in this environment.
00:43:33.580That was sort of old money, New England, Americana vibes,
00:43:38.140which sort of makes sense when you consider the type of work environment
00:43:42.020that would ultimately produce and support a show like this one.
00:43:45.820This is also, I'm going to draw another comparison here, which is to Kim Kardashian. Like, as we're talking about this, I'm thinking quite a bit about how Call Her Daddy or the Call Her Daddy 1.0 that was profoundly sexual really tapped into like the billion dollar industry that is porn and allowed people to basically partake in porn in a way that was mainstream accessible and mainstream acceptable.
00:44:09.040And I think about Alex Cooper and, I mean, Sophia Franklin, but far more so Alex Cooper for now, parlaying essentially the equivalent of a sex tape into this profoundly respectable career.
00:44:20.340I think all the time about Kim Kardashian and the fact that there is currently, you can watch Kim Kardashian having sex online.
00:44:27.120It is not like she has a sex tape that will never go away. And she has managed to totally transcend that in a way that I think is so beyond impressive. It's hard to even conceive of like this is someone who has a sex tape with a guy named Ray J and now is a billionaire who is like on the cover of Forbes.
00:44:47.280And the same goes for Alex Cooper. That is, like, kind of unbelievable when you think about how misogynistic our culture is and how unwilling we are to let the stain of sexual impurity leave women.
00:44:58.740Oh, my God, that is such a good point.
00:45:00.640I had not thought about the sexuality, like, that entry point. So, Alex and Sophia do the show at Barstool from 2018 until 2020, at which point, according to the Call Her Daddy lore, Sophia begins dating an HBO executive named Peter Nelson.
00:50:36.000when he released this episode in the Call Her Daddy feed,
00:50:39.440I believe the deal had already been determined behind the scenes, and the sticky piece of the story is that I guess Cooper took the deal, the $500K plus getting the IP in a year, behind Sophia's back, or Sophia didn't know that she was taking it, and originally the deal was supposed to allow Franklin and Cooper to split-call her daddy 50-50.
00:51:05.520and Portnoy said he offered it to Franklin as well. Well, apparently she didn't get back to him
00:51:11.900for like three days. And then when she finds out that Cooper took it, she goes back to Dave and
00:51:17.020she's like, okay, I'll take it. I want to take it too. But Cooper had already told Dave, actually,
00:51:22.440I don't want to split it 50-50 with Sophia. I want to do Call Her Yachty myself.
00:51:27.040Now, in his memoir, the one that comes out this week, he alleges that there was a rift between
00:51:32.780Cooper and Franklin long before any of this happened. I think Sophia actually references
00:51:38.620this in her book. He basically says the girls really didn't like each other, but to convey
00:51:44.820that point to the reader, he tells a story about Cooper coming to him and saying essentially like
00:51:51.180she can't deal with Sophia anymore. The proposal for Sophia's memoir does not really indicate
00:51:57.180before all this went down that she like didn't like Alex Cooper, but you do get the sense
00:52:01.540from her side of the story that she didn't quite trust her, or there were some things that had
00:52:06.540gone down between them where you maybe get the impression that Sophia understood that for Alex,
00:52:13.620this was first and foremost a business. But this whole story really speaks to the model of
00:52:20.700attention capture and no limits environment of Barstool. If you will please read from a story
00:52:28.060that came out at this time in the New York Times.
00:52:32.280While most traditional publishers and media brands
00:52:34.980would balk at litigating a contract dispute in public,
00:52:38.240Mr. Portnoy and Barstool Sports have proven themselves adept
00:52:41.100at leveraging online attention in their favor.
00:52:44.420A lot of companies would try to sweep this under the rug
00:53:53.060it created so much earned media attention and shatter online it magnetized eyeballs to their
00:53:59.980brand you and i both have said this is how we found out about call her daddy was this
00:54:05.020contract dispute was it a psyop was it a false flag operation my god
00:54:09.160bush did call her daddy um yeah no matter osama bin laden's letter about call her daddy
00:54:20.680he's like you steal our download numbers you extract from our audience and you give us
00:54:27.420nothing in return yeah oh my god i get like blackout footage from alex earl's compound
00:54:35.180like jessica chastain stars in the in the film adaptation of the color daddy breakdown okay
00:54:41.200that's a zero dark 30 reference for those who were confused
00:54:44.380No matter what happened next, Dave Portnoy had already won. He was going to make sure that this benefited him in some way. And predictably, he knew that emphasizing how much money they were being paid was going to enrage people. And the response to the news that Portnoy shared that the girls were pushing back against $500,000 each was covered as well, if you will please read.
00:55:10.640Oh, God. Did they get Sheryl Sandberg'd? Which is the new word for being womaned.
00:55:15.720I feel so bad for what I did to Sheryl Sandberg that I'm actually going to do what Trump did with the Kennedy Center, and I'm going to replace womaned with Sandberg.
00:55:25.880In his tell-all, Mr. Portnoy said that Ms. Franklin and Ms. Cooper each had taken home nearly $500,000 last year, a figure far higher than many fans imagined.
01:04:44.620You think he isn't going to stress out if you guys don't go back on the air as by far their most lucrative podcast?
01:04:51.900And like, yes, it would suck to not get your IP.
01:04:54.380And that's something that you have far more understanding than I do about.
01:04:58.140But, like, you could very well parlay your audience into another podcast with, like, very similar branding, a very similar title for a shit ton more money.
01:05:08.360They probably could have gotten two or three million with another company, especially, again, since there was so much attention surrounding this fight.
01:05:15.740So it is really interesting to watch that in retrospect.
01:05:17.980And I also want to say, I mean, what was she, like, 24 or 25 when this happened?
01:05:22.480So I want to give Alex Cooper that grace as well, as well as Sophia Franklin.
01:08:11.680So, Sophia tells her side of the story in an episode of her new show, Sophia with an F, not too long after that.
01:08:17.560But by that point, the story was kind of already over.
01:08:21.580Public opinion had come down on the side of Alex Cooper.
01:08:25.640You know, Cooper had kind of aligned herself with Barstool and Portnoy again.
01:08:30.740And this is an excerpt about it from Forbes.
01:08:36.360news about four months ago franklin says at one point during the first episode of sophia with an
01:08:41.660f in true 2020 fashion i lost my best friend i lost my show and i lost my career virtually
01:08:48.440overnight and not only that but i became the subject of a very public very aggressive smear
01:08:53.920campaign where i was publicly attacked bullied and humiliated for months end quote no sooner
01:08:59.340had franklin departed call her daddy than the trolls cranked up the meme machine to 11 flooding
01:09:04.380Reddit with anti-Sophia images, threads, and the like. Sophia Franklin's ego has ruined her career,
01:09:10.360one such Reddit thread declares. You can't change my mind. Wow. At a basic level, she goes on to
01:09:15.880tell her listeners, what happened is that she and Cooper were negotiating their contract with
01:09:19.660Barstool. Franklin says that one of the problems is that they were making far below the industry
01:09:24.380standard, and everyone, from co-workers to both of their agents and lawyers, apparently knew it.
01:09:29.680Okay. So, it's fascinating that, in retrospect, the man who encouraged them to get more money, Peter Nelson, who could clearly see that they were being ripped off and, like, tried to intervene, became the villain.
01:09:42.860And by extension, so did Sophia. So, this is a perfect example of narrative control, wielding attention, and how the same set of facts can be argued to make opposite cases.
01:09:54.640Cooper tells her side in this video, Franklin writes hers in the book proposal, and frankly,
01:10:00.880the facts don't really diverge all that much. What's different is how each woman reports
01:10:06.200feeling about it in the moment and what was motivating their decisions, what they were
01:10:11.720prioritizing. Sophia was prioritizing their friendship and essentially staying together
01:10:16.900and getting as much as they could, and Cooper was making more mercenary business decisions about,
01:10:21.600like this is what I think is going to allow me to keep this show so that's what I'm going to do
01:10:25.380well and the great irony too is that something that Alex did I remember very well in her video
01:10:30.460explaining what happened is basically elevate the daddy gang you know what I mean like her
01:10:36.860whole thing was like I want to get back to you guys like we're missing weeks and weeks of shows
01:10:41.540like I'm yeah you know I'm like I want to keep the daddy gang alive like it was really it was
01:10:45.820again similar to what Taylor Swift does this idea of like elevating your fandom and being like all
01:10:51.040of this is for you when in fact you're making very shrewd business decisions. Yes. So this
01:10:57.120original sin of Call Her Daddy cements the dual-sided Alex Cooper narrative. On the one
01:11:03.940hand, she is painted as this sort of shark in business, this real operator who knows how to
01:11:09.040command and wield attention and see the whole chessboard and like kind of make good long-term
01:11:14.620plays. On the other hand, she betrayed her friend and co-host, right? So it's important to keep at
01:11:20.340the four here that this was not merely a fight between friends. This was a dispute about the
01:11:25.920ownership and value of a multi-million dollar business. But to be very clear, it is not as
01:11:33.180though Cooper publicly has always described this as a business transaction. As you heard in the
01:11:38.380Vanity Fair piece we opened with, she herself is talking in the terms of we don't tolerate mean
01:11:43.880girls. So there's a real kind of like leaning into it in some cases when it's going to kind
01:11:49.680to serve the narrative and kind of distancing yourself from it when it's not. And I think in
01:11:56.180that video, there was a real effort to make it clear that the decisions that were being made
01:12:02.100were to serve both the community, the daddy gang, and like the long-term existence of this
01:12:09.040business. Here's how she ends her video explaining what happened.
01:12:14.720God, she looks so young in this video.
01:12:17.940I mean, I know I've read all the comments and I know people are mad at certain people, but I do know that this is also a really shitty thing for the daddy gang. I lost a friend. You guys lost the duo that you were invested in, the show. And it fucking sucks.
01:12:38.780I think anyone on the internet, anyone watching this, anyone listening to the podcast has
01:17:08.880It has merch. It has merch. He is 49 years old, folks.
01:17:12.740Oh my, it's so, how does he not get, here's what I don't get. The stuff he does is so feminized. How does he not get called homophobic slurs by his homophobic fan base? Like, how is he doing this? Barstool is such a bro-y culture, and he's running a branded segment on social media as a 50-year-old man called T by the C? Like, what is this, the toast? Like, what is going on here? Oh my God, even the screen grab of this.
01:17:40.940all right am i clicking am i watching the whole thing how much am i watching you are
01:17:45.260watching the whole thing oh my god he has branded hats oh my fucking god all right t by the sea
01:17:52.060i could start over but i'm not uh i may have gotten that in my eyes t by the sea so alex
01:18:01.600earl was on uh cbs sunday uh cbs good morning or nbc today show and in the host is like so
01:18:09.500all right what's this dirt go on with you and the other the other internet person referring to
01:18:15.360Alex Cooper kind of disrespectful not to be like what's going on between you and Alex Cooper
01:18:19.080like Alex Cooper is big enough say her name there's been this this back and forth between you
01:18:23.780and another the internet personality a podcaster as well seems to be a bit of online beef there
01:18:31.060what's what's actually happening what's really going on you know well I'm trying to keep things
01:18:37.100pretty positive today you know we don't have that much time here honestly and also um you know it's
01:18:43.660like why ruin such a good day with something okay so great you know but is there legitimate is there
01:18:51.100some sort of legitimate contentiousness or has it all been exaggerated um no it's exaggerated i love
01:18:57.240everyone now listen i get all the girlies love alex earl like if you go on tiktok on the internet
01:19:03.660if you're in girly world which some of my feed is like it's 95 5 it feels like alex with an eye
01:19:10.980she's a girly girl they love her they've been following her alex cooper this ruthless business
01:19:16.080woman all these hit pieces on her i just need to pause this and say i just need to like just
01:19:20.280reorient us in reality here okay i need to take a moment because i know we can get lost with the
01:19:26.900internet and lose ourselves but this is a 50 year old man with credible allegations of sexual
01:19:34.500assault talking about the way a 24 year old girl acted on morning television okay go i've said i
01:19:43.480like both girls i think the way alex earl with an eye has handled this is fucking dog shit like
01:19:50.260she was taking shots at alex cooper relentlessly reposting retweeting just like you couldn't miss
01:19:57.980it the girl calls alex one of the one person uh calls alex cooper like an ambulance chaser and
01:20:03.520she's bad for women alex earl reposted finally cooper's like you know enough of this enough of
01:20:09.120you just being this petty little like girly and taking shots at me non-stop if you have beef with
01:20:14.380me say what it is alex earl's like i'm on it i said maybe it's hypothetical maybe it's sarcastic
01:20:19.680maybe she's not on it. But I'll tell you this, maybe I'm old school. And I'm sure Alex with an
01:20:25.300eye has like 3000 people advising her and rolls around like a team of like 40 PR people. But if
01:20:31.320you're gonna talk, whack, whack, whack, and talk the talk and take shots, and you better answer
01:20:37.640that bell ding, ding, ding when somebody calls. Like that's just me. I don't need a team. I don't
01:20:42.600need a script. If I have shit to say about you, I'm gonna say with my chest, I'm not gonna like
01:20:46.980take these veiled shots at somebody and then when the other person's like all right let's let's go
01:20:51.340let's let's hear what it is but just disappear so i i i don't i'm on alex cooper's side now at
01:20:58.680this point i still don't know what the fuck actually happened maybe alex earl is waiting
01:21:02.680for a netflix show also think that's bullshit makes me think the whole thing's pr but if you're
01:21:07.320gonna chirp chirp chirp just answer the bell like you can't don't oh we all get along and how much
01:21:13.360time do you have you've had plenty of time to say your piece and you've said zip so you shouldn't
01:21:18.560have been taking shots if you're not ready to back it up at least that's how i come from but
01:21:22.320they want everyone to be happy go lucky and in crafted image it's like platypus man uh do you
01:21:28.220know i have a book coming out there's a little tea i do it's called uh cancel me if you can it's
01:21:32.340like the barstool story out june 30th yeah june 30th it'll be in your hand june 30th it's a book
01:21:40.020read fourth of july uh the book company's in my asshole being like you better sell a lot of books
01:21:44.940we paid a lot well i spent a lot of time writing it so buy the book anyways they want me to go on
01:21:49.640a press tour and they gave me a list of all these places to go on and platypus is on i'm like dude
01:21:55.040there's no shot platypus is gonna let me on his podcast jake shane why because i am too unfiltered
01:22:01.660like i'm not happy go lucky i'm not everyone's friends i just spit it tell the truth as it is
01:22:06.700how it comes off so yeah platypus boy said no okay so he's still in the middle he's kind of
01:22:12.020he's kind of stirring the pot i will say he posts this video speculating okay he posts
01:22:18.940screenshots of dms from a third woman who is allegedly close with alex earl and basically
01:22:26.300drags her into it too that third woman is also one of his employees okay her name is brianna
01:22:33.240la paglia brianna chicken fry has entered the chat yeah this woman is a barstool employee and he
01:22:40.500essentially drags her into this drama by posting their private messages and being like like
01:22:46.480pretending to scratch out her name and being like i'm hearing from my sources that are so again what
01:22:52.420does she say in the private messages basically like that alex earl is going to destroy alex cooper
01:22:57.340she says she is going to destroy her okay so la paglia chicken fry whatever the fuck we want to
01:23:03.020she as far as we know was not actually going to comment or get involved in this at all right and
01:23:09.260then she had to but dave drags her into it okay so we are gonna watch her video from what alex
01:23:16.760earl told me alex cooper is a very very mean person or maybe when dave called me when alex
01:23:25.000signed grace to unwell and she called dave and said i don't give a fuck about grace i don't give
01:23:28.820the fuck about brianna all i care about is making money yeah maybe my fucking narrative switched on
01:23:33.380you after i found things out about you i used to be a fan clearly i'm not anymore i'm patiently
01:23:37.740sitting here and waiting for alex earl to come and say her side of the story and that video that
01:23:42.800you made that was deep that was mean girl 101 that was mean girl final boss video this is awesome
01:23:49.100this is what i want our podcast to do all the time i'm having
01:23:52.080i'm so sick of talking about terrorism and the police state and gaza and feminine whatever i
01:24:00.880want to watch dave portnoy just just burn to a crisp on a beach in like delray florida and just
01:24:08.260talk about teenage girls unbelievable all right we're gonna throw it now to uh our next guest
01:24:14.700brianna chicken fry on your favorite leftist feminist podcast you guys want us to like
01:24:21.620bring experts on fuck no absolutely not i'm pivoting i'm an expert for you i'm a hundred
01:24:28.660percent gonna do a pivot on our behalf i'm an alex cooper you you're out i'm gonna do this solo
01:24:33.580and then i'm gonna pivot and i'm gonna talk about dave fortnoy in perpetuity so again this is
01:24:41.480referencing a video Cooper posted that we have not gotten to yet. But there's the mean girl
01:24:45.780language again. And the point about how Cooper allegedly told Portnoy, all I care about is
01:24:50.880making money. You know, she doesn't care about her employees. She doesn't care about me. She
01:24:55.180doesn't care about Grace, which was another podcaster. She just wants to make money. And
01:25:00.740like, sure, that sounds pretty callous. But to be clear here, the conversation in question was about
01:25:05.460signing new talent in a business deal where Cooper was poaching one of Barstool's podcasters. So
01:25:11.020like they were discussing an actual transaction and as the accusations of mean girl fly back and
01:25:18.060forth portnoy just sits there in his fucking beach chair completely unscathed so okay she's a barstool
01:25:24.160employee but then wouldn't she be incentivized to defend alex cooper like like why is it good
01:25:29.000for dave portnoy is he just like genuinely just stirring the pot he is a chaos agent i don't think
01:25:33.980like again and this is maybe the like meta element of all of this i don't think this man is really
01:25:38.980like loyal to anybody but again there's no like wow Dave Portnoy is so mean or he's so this it's
01:25:44.880like no I don't think he cares he dragged another one of his employees into it again talk about
01:25:49.440workplace culture wait Katie are you telling me that we don't care if men are unlikable
01:25:54.000he is by far the most catty and hysterical and mean girl of this entire conversation thank you
01:25:59.760exactly oh my god you just articulated it better than I could there's all this speculation about
01:26:05.220like, is Cooper saying this about Alex Earle? Is Alex Earle going to talk about it? It's like,
01:26:09.720and then you have Dave Portnoy, who's just talking shit about everybody being like,
01:26:14.180T by the sea, capitalizing on it once more. I'm like, this man is going to capitalize on
01:26:18.800these women until he dies. Yeah, he is. He's sucking off of their content.
01:26:24.360But Portnoy is very direct. Okay. He has a very particular way of conducting business,
01:26:30.340which is kind of like intimidation, bullying, but bullying you to your face, being like,
01:26:35.540I'm going to go in your pot. I'm going to rub it in your face that I own you. I'm going to
01:26:39.360make it very clear. It kind of like flex my muscles here. I'm going to drag my other employee
01:26:44.160into it. Who cares, right? We're in the business of eyeballs. We're in the business of attention
01:26:47.780capture. That's the job, right? And Cooper quite obviously and explicitly cites him as a mentor
01:26:56.240and a friend. They operate similarly. They have similar talents. Cooper is close with Dave
01:27:02.900Portnoy and has all but stated explicitly that he is the person who taught her how to run a media
01:27:08.060company and manage talent. Okay. So in that video, or in maybe one of the other T by the C videos,
01:27:14.780Portnoy talks about a conversation he had with Alex Cooper, where Cooper, I guess, apologized
01:27:19.720to Portnoy and said, sorry, we were such dicks to you and played such hardball during our
01:27:24.360negotiation, now I see how hard it is to manage talent. And one thing that Portnoy says in this
01:27:31.240video that I found to be useful for the conversation we're having right now is that
01:27:35.720the Occam's razor is that the beef between Alex Cooper and Alex Earle, who we are about to
01:27:41.900transition and talk about, is essentially petty contractual shit and that large sums of money
01:27:48.040are involved that probably would not translate to a very sympathetic public narrative. That it's
01:27:53.920probably a financial thing that got personal.
01:30:54.300So she became famous when she was, I think, a sophomore at the University of Miami, and she would do, like, Get Ready With Me videos, basically, and was very good at her makeup, for people who liked that style of makeup.
01:31:06.680And so she would do, like, long Get Ready With Me videos, and I think it wasn't until she was a senior at University of Miami that she started to go viral.
01:31:13.600But since then, she has become beloved for this really bizarre mix of wholesome and unbelievably aspirational content.
01:31:23.240So, like, she's flying on private jets, she is very clearly partying until, like, dawn, and then somehow going to, like, a Harvard business school. Like, she has, like, an unbelievable energy and drive to just, like, get everything done in a day. And she's also posting videos of, like, when she was in a relationship, she had this whole thread with her boyfriend, and she has this, like, pit bull that she adopted who was seven years old, and she has, like, her family content.
01:31:46.640And speaking of being a girl's girl, stop smiling at me.
01:31:49.960This is interesting and we're talking about this.
01:33:04.940Last year when we were joking about like things that we didn't want to think too hard about,
01:33:08.860what is it about Alex Earl that makes you feel that way?
01:33:11.980I think a lot of it is contextual to the last few years that I've had, which is like, I am not on TikTok right now. I don't know if I ever will be again. But for about a year and a half, I was very active on TikTok. And for like things that felt very high stakes to me, like I was talking about things like the presidential election and feminism and things that just felt quite like I would feel elevated. My heart rate would feel elevated when I was posting these videos.
01:33:36.980and also i think tiktok felt scary to me in general because my following was growing and
01:33:41.640like it just felt like a very elevated place for me and so her content was growing at that exact
01:33:46.840same moment and so she was one of the only tiktok accounts that i would go to look at when i was on
01:33:52.840the app and i think that there was something about the way that she obviously does like she has all
01:33:59.500the visual cues that relax you of like oh this is like a beautiful blonde woman and she's easy to
01:34:03.940look at but she I really think that there is something about the way that she in her videos
01:34:09.600does not let anything get to her and even when like she will do a video of herself crying but
01:34:16.020even then it's like there is something about the way that she performs positivity that feels very
01:34:23.520effortless to me and so it was kind of like ambient and I wouldn't have to think hard about
01:34:27.580it and quite frankly I learned a lot about makeup from her but just generally it was just like oh
01:34:31.700this is just like a nice Republican girl who adopted a pit bull. So I guess I'm going to
01:34:37.160enjoy following her in Miami. Okay. Unflappable is a perfect word. I actually love that you use
01:34:45.940that word because I have my like comfort creators as well who kind of serve the same purpose where
01:34:51.640like their content style and niche can really only be construed as like stay at home mom
01:34:57.740consumption core and i'm like i fucking log on like when i start to hit a low point there is
01:35:04.080something ambiently comforting about watching these women where i'm like i have a parasocial
01:35:08.680relationship with influencers like this too i want to just be clear i am under no illusions that i
01:35:16.400would be friends with alex earl in real life she parties so hard i am a loser like i i don't there
01:35:21.820is no world in which i think that we would get along i just like her content yeah yeah totally
01:35:27.700fair. Okay, so Alex Earl, while physically very similar to Alex Cooper, is actually sort of her
01:35:33.380foil in a few ways. She is a 25-year-old from New Jersey who started growing on TikTok rapidly in
01:35:40.1202022 when she was a rising senior at the University of Miami. She said it was her junior year when
01:35:46.560she realized it could be a job when she started making money from linking things in her Amazon
01:35:50.980on storefront. And she attributes her virality to showing her acne in Get Ready With Me. So this
01:35:57.760would later become the foundational plot point for her skincare brand, Real Actives. And the
01:36:06.220significance of that is in the name, Real. So it is like an anagram of her last name, Earl. But
01:36:13.780it is the sense you get when you watch Alex Earl that she is your friend. That she is, in other
01:36:19.420words a girl's girl if the hottest girl you've ever seen was actually nice to you yeah that has
01:36:25.580created an enormous fucking fan base so i spent hours one day scrolling backward through her
01:36:30.900tiktok her first viral video got 126 000 likes that was in september 2021 it is a talking makeup
01:36:38.920tutorial that she shared after about 18 months of dancing in bikini videos that didn't win nowhere
01:36:48.120like had no traction whatsoever by summer 2022 she was posting four videos per day
01:36:55.940and getting a few thousand likes pretty consistently but she was to use your word
01:37:02.400dogged it was clear that she was working really hard at becoming a tiktok star sometimes at this
01:37:10.720point the videos would still dip under a thousand likes okay this is summer 2022 yeah wow oh my god
01:37:17.720i should go back to tiktok i could have like a million followers on tiktok by now if i hadn't
01:37:22.040left jesus fucking christ i god i had i do not have a nose for business i'm here i'm here in
01:37:27.780this fucking podcast with you clearly i don't have a nose for business hey fuck off we're successful
01:37:32.780people like us people like us people like us people listen to us okay yeah bear in mind by
01:37:38.780this time in 2023 she would have five million followers okay so like yeah summer 2023 five
01:37:44.960million followers summer 2022 she's like sometimes not even hitting a thousand likes right she would
01:37:49.960do talking videos occasionally but they weren't really taking off she started showing how she
01:37:54.760covers her acne in july of 2022 after that she began going viral ish a little more frequently
01:38:00.860but it's really the fall of her senior year where she really blows up getting ready for tailgates
01:38:06.100and parties at the university of miami this was i remember the first time that she came up on my
01:38:11.180for you page was like get ready with me to go to a tailgate it's 8 a.m so we're pre-aiming at 7 a.m
01:38:17.200and it like immediately transported me back to saturday 11 a.m games and i was like holy shit i
01:38:22.680cannot believe what i'm watching right now and suddenly seemingly overnight she's doing a hundred
01:38:28.600thousand likes per video so alex earl really becomes alex earl in august 2022 after two years
01:49:56.060And I think if you then attack these people for being ignorant or for being, you know, for not caring about the issues of the world, you really do sound like an annoying nag.
01:58:07.160You being a shark in business and you making all these very wise decisions and having a really good management team and essentially, like, building a gold mine on the back of your own personality, it directly undermines the likability of that personality.
01:58:22.460Well, and I think the point that you've made that is so salient here is, like, there's really no incentive for her to get into this at all.
01:58:30.460And I think she has realized that as well.
01:58:32.060Like, Dave Portnoy and Alex Cooper exist in a different sloppy universe that does obviously benefit them in some ways, but it really just, it just cannot stick on her. And, like, the more that she refuses to engage with it, I think the more powerful that becomes, where it's just like, oh, she's actually never going to talk about it.
01:58:49.920I do think that it would be at this point a mistake for her to talk about it because she
01:58:53.920just looks so good by not talking. I really think that she has come out on top with the way that she
01:58:59.780has just refused. And again, as much as a lot of people know about this, I would be willing to bet
01:59:05.680that she has a team who's saying, hey, we looked into this and only 30% of your audience base is
01:59:10.820really talking about this. Like, do you want to activate? And so there really is something to be
01:59:15.880said about just being like yeah actually just keep on keeping on yeah and sell stuff to page six or
01:59:20.780whatever the fuck is happening behind the scenes yeah truly so now we're going to talk about how
01:59:25.420it all comes to a head so after the news broke that cooper and earl had parted ways there was
01:59:31.660speculation that something had gone south but nobody would confirm it cooper and earl share
01:59:36.900both a publicist and an agent whoa which is very messy still uh it seems that way i mean i learned
02:02:33.720unless you actually have something to say i'm out this is over have a good monday everyone
02:02:43.040thoughts well first of all alex earl famously commented on this video saying okay on it
02:02:49.120in april so three months ago have not said anything i mean my first thought first and
02:02:55.460foremost this video has 1.2 million likes which is a ton of likes alex earl's comment on the video
02:03:01.260has 730,000 likes if you're Alex Cooper that's a scary ratio that's a lot of likes for a comment
02:03:08.740on a video um what do I think I mean I think it's emblematic of how Alex Cooper deals with
02:03:16.740confrontation and how she also manages the internet and I think that the way that Alex
02:03:21.860Earl has replied is also emblematic they are both it's like watching two Pokemon in a battle and
02:03:28.060you're like well they're both they're both playing their greatest skill set so i don't know if one is
02:03:32.520winning more than the other i think we have no clue at this point and in some ways i think this
02:03:38.240is really a page out of dave portnoy's playbook this is her going on to the feed and saying you're
02:03:44.880being a bitch and i'm not going to pay you what you want it's very direct she's basically calling
02:03:49.500her bluff she's saying if you're going to vaguely take shots at me people are going to wonder what's
02:03:53.640going on and if you're not going to tell them what your problem is then just stop talking about it
02:03:57.420Well, and I also think that Alex Cooper very well could be moving into the realm of a Kardashian-esque empire where, like, she is farther along in her career.
02:04:09.080I do think she has more stability in what she is doing.
02:04:12.060And I do think, like, again, the Kardashian playbook is you ride out audience sentiment.
02:04:17.000You know they're going to hate you one month.
02:07:02.200I think we're splitting hairs at this point, but I see your point. I mean, she is, there are very few people who have reached that level of fame and financial success from TikTok so far.
02:07:14.040I think, of course, it's true that algorithms are racist, and of course, she had to be white and blonde to do this. But it's worth noting, there are millions of white blonde girls who are doing exactly what she was doing. Like, it is still unprecedented to be the one who makes it, to be the pony who wins the race, so to speak.
02:07:31.960Yeah. And to do all of that, navigating the almost unachievable balance between appearing likable and relatable and like a girl's girl, despite achieving massive success as a young woman.