Mamamia Out Loud: A Viral Apology We Can’t Agree On

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Mamma Mia Out Loud!

Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia Out Loud.

It's what women are actually talking about on Friday, the 30th of June.

My name is Mia Friedman and I remain in the driving seat on this podcast

while Holly Wainwright is in Borneo,

even though I only have one point left on my actual licence.

I'm Claire Stevens.

I also host the podcast Cancelled, a comedy podcast,

but Are You Happy?

And just on the points thing, I also have one point left

and I'm waiting to see when it kind of refixes itself and I get some more back.

I'm Elfie Scott.

I am an executive editor at Mamma Mia

and I've never lost a point before in my life.

On the show today, some fans are paying up to $12,000 to secure tickets

to just one of Taylor Swift's Australian concerts,

while others have spent yet another day online today as more tickets go on sale.

Do we need to calm down or is the concert system irreparably broken?

Plus, is it appropriate to apologise after some pretty serious allegations

by singing a song while playing the ukulele?

A famous YouTuber's 10-minute apology video has us divided

and our best and worst of the week including a lesbian icon,

Barbenheimer and the WA coast of it all.

But first...

It's one of the biggest questions of our time.

Should tomato sauce live in the cupboard or the fridge?

Yesterday, the official Heinz UK Twitter account

settled the debate once and for all,

posting FYI, ketchup goes in the fridge.

Why did they call it ketchup and they're from the UK?

I don't know. It upset me a lot.

I think they're disqualified.

Yes. People took to the streets.

They slammed their computers against their desk.

There were tears. There were tantrums.

And I have thoughts, but me or where does tomato sauce belong?

In the pantry.

It belongs in the pantry. You're absolutely right.

Also, how dare they?

How dare they after this many years trying to assert any authority?

Like, they didn't point it out beforehand.

How long has ketchup been made for?

This is insane.

I have to say though, this is a genius social media strategy

because having a device of opinion is just great for engagement.

So they just posted it belongs in the fridge and it's got so many retweets,

comments, replies of people saying absolutely not.

Where do you keep yours?

I keep it in the fridge,

but that's because we have very limited cupboard space.

Oh, I don't know.

I'm still not going to allow it.

I do like a refrigerated tomato sauce vibe.

Why?

I like the contrast, putting it on something hot.

You love sipping a cold ketchup on a hot summer's day.

I like the contrast, but I will say my favorite tomato sauce experience

is when you're at like a canteen or something and they have the tiny,

squeezy ones that you get like a sausage roll or a sausage sizzle.

And it's like the plastic one that you squeeze on and that is room temperature.

I would say that that's my favorite.

So that's why you should keep it out of the fridge.

Something alarming has happened in my house.

My daughter, for reasons that are unclear,

has started putting Vegemite in the fridge,

and I just find that offensive personally.

OK, this is just a little PSA to all Australian Swifties.

We need to have a little chat, OK?

If you're trying to get errors for tickets, please listen to this.

If you're looking to score Taylor Swift tickets, I have the best advice.

Here's how I got four tickets to sit here for the Melbourne show,

and guys, I think I may have cracked the code.

This week, Taylor Swift made Australia's Internet explode.

The tickets went on sale for Swift's Errors Tour,

which is hitting Sydney and Melbourne in February next year.

The week started out with a bunch of pre-sales like the American Express pre-sale

that was selling VIP packages worth $900 or $1,250.

The demand for those packages caused Amex's website to temporarily crash.

And then the pre-sale tickets to Taylor's show sold through Frontier Touring

sold out in hours after four million people joined the online queue,

trying to pick up what ended up being under half a million tickets.

For people in the Mamma Mia office, everybody was screaming,

and we could hear them in the podcast studio every now and then.

Not as many screams as you would think,

given how many people in the Mamma Mia office were trying to get tickets.

Like it was actually Comic-Con.

You walked around and every single screen was trying to refresh them.

Oh, there were multiple screens per person.

And then even at lunchtime, which was several hours after the tickets went on sale,

everybody was in the kitchen with their laptops open, with their phones refreshing.

It was quite a silent ordeal.

You got little screens, but for the most part, people were saying,

this is the most stress I can ever remember.

Because there are only about two people out of, I don't know, 80 that managed to get tickets.

Yeah. Well, we will get into this and the use of office time, surely.

As we speak, there are likely going to be thousands of you,

maybe even still sitting online in queue for the general sale tickets,

which opened today at 10 a.m.

And the basic tickets can cost anywhere between 80 and $380.

On top of all the chaos of trying to get a ticket through the regulated sites,

a bunch of tickets have been resold online for wild prices,

i.e. north of $3,000 each,

which has shone a light on the lack of regulation

and substantial penalties for sites that violate scalping laws.

Meanwhile, Taylor Swift herself is rumoured to be doing incredibly bloody well out of all of this

and the Eras tour could be the first in history to rake in over $1 billion.

Mmm.

The whole story is forcing us to ask,

is the concert system just broken?

Claire, what do you make of all of this and would you shell out $900 to see Taylor?

Guys, I have an announcement.

I have Taylor Swift tickets.

Oh my God. Wait, did you get them pre-sale?

No, I don't know how I got them.

Remember last week, me, you were talking about this and I said,

I don't know, I'll go if somebody gets tickets.

We discussed this and we said you were going to stand down and make way for the true Swifties.

Yes, but that's because I knew that I have strengths and I have weaknesses

and one of my weaknesses is admin.

And so my two very, very good friends,

they just sat on their computers for hours.

Oh my God.

I don't know when, I think Wednesday or today,

and they called today and said,

by the way, I got you one more ticket.

Claire, don't say that you passively got tickets.

Everybody's coming here and tear your head off your body.

I'm really, really excited.

But I will say...

You should think of donating them back into the pool of Swifties.

Yeah, that's the decent thing that a person would do.

It's so true.

I'm going to kill you.

I do absolutely love Taylor Swift.

I'm just a lazy person.

It's more the conflict for me.

In terms of whether the concert system is broken.

So I was chatting to a few people who work in the music industry about this

and got reminded,

this is all just incredible, incredible marketing.

It's meant to be this way.

We're meant to have a scarcity mindset.

So the fact that they announced two extra Taylor Swift shows yesterday,

so after people had spent a whole day on Wednesday

trying to get tickets and a lot of people missed out,

or a lot of people bought more expensive tickets

than they had intended on because they thought it was the last chance.

That's what's meant to happen.

You are meant to believe there are so few tickets

and then they announce other shows

because that's what the music industry always does with touring.

And this hype and this chaos and this whole idea of communities,

every group chat, every Facebook group is full of people

with strategies about how to get it and your IP address

and what Wi-Fi to be connected to.

It's all part of it and it's bloody genius.

People have talked about nothing else this week.

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?

Because I don't think what happened in the US was a good thing.

I mean, it certainly made news, I agree.

So what happened in the US is that all the tickets went in the presale

and there was no general admission.

So basically the people who had access, early access,

because they had a particular credit card

or for whatever reason, all the tickets were gone.

So Taylor was not happy.

The Swifties weren't happy.

There's a different promoter in Australia.

And look, I do have tickets.

I got presale tickets as well and I might have panicked

and spent an extra $70 to do the refundable option

because they weren't expensive enough.

I don't know why, but I just was panicked

and I was just so excited to be in there.

And by me, I say my daughter because I couldn't get online,

but she spent the whole day.

I know someone who discovered that you could buy,

before the tickets even went on sale, before presale,

you could buy a box, like a whole box

and they cost anywhere between $12,000

and I think $15,000 or even up to $40,000

depending on how many people you had in the box.

And she bought this, she bought this last week

and then quickly found like 12 friends

who were prepared to pay $900 each.

And that's how much the MX presale tickets cost

and you also get dinner.

I don't know if things are any different.

I think that when I was younger,

if you were a super fan, you would camp outside, tick attack.

People would literally sleep for days.

They would take sleeping bags, there would be a line.

It's never been a fair system.

You've always been able to spend more money

and get better seats.

It's always been like that.

Because I think we also need to be realistic

about the fact that since album sales stopped,

the way artists make money from their music is by touring.

They couldn't tour for years during COVID.

And that's when things geared back up again.

Taylor Swift deserves to make a billion dollars.

She's going to be pretty much on the road for two years.

Each show is over three hours long.

I mean, it is an incredible amount of work that goes into it.

The staging, all of it is pretty extraordinary.

I think Harry Styles has been on tour

for a good couple of years now.

Beyoncé is doing a big tour.

Madonna, who was hospitalized this week

and has just postponed her tour,

she was meant to start in a couple of weeks.

I remember seeing Madonna 20 years ago, 30 years ago,

whenever she came to Australia,

the only way I could get tickets was to buy a package

that had some accommodation at a hotel.

And that's with Taylor. They've got the equivalent.

Even though it was in my own city.

And so I remember giving the hotel accommodation to friends

and going with my girlfriend.

And we were like in the nosebleed seats.

Madonna was the size of an ant on the stage.

And it cost hundreds of dollars for these tickets.

But that's what I was prepared to pay to see her.

Yeah, but you say that it's always been an unfair system

and people always used to camp out,

but has it always been this unfair to this extent,

this much money being spent on it?

$1,250 for a VIP package to go and see a concert

and get a couple of stickers and a merch bag is wild.

And I think that is so unfair,

especially when you consider that most of her fans

are going to be young people

and young people don't have access to money, right?

They don't have access to nearly as much as we do.

So ultimately, that pressure is being put on parents as well.

The price of concerts has spun out of control.

Even if you're not talking about an arena show in Australia,

the average price to go and see a band now is $100.

Really? Yes.

Like a band where? Not like in a pub?

No, not like in a pub,

but that would be like the average across all of them, right?

And like so commonly,

I would go on to like try and find a band that I want to go and see.

It's like $60, $70 to go into like an average venue.

It's just out of control.

And I hate that this much money has to be spent.

But Elphi, isn't this just first of all capitalism,

but also just the increasing cost of things?

Like the artists have to make a living, don't they?

I mean, most bands aren't Taylor Swift

and raking in a billion dollars.

Most bands are just trying to support themselves

and make a bit of coin.

Yeah, look, I completely understand that.

And I think maybe this is the symptom

of a broader issue in the music industry, right?

Because 40 years ago, people used to make like a tiny sliver

of their income from live performances.

Now it's most of their money.

So I do understand that,

and I'm not blaming them directly.

I just hate that this has to happen.

Like I wanted to go and see Blink 182 when they came here.

$400 a ticket.

I can't live like this.

Wow.

I hear what you're saying.

It kind of means that the only people

that are going to be able to go and see live music

are people who've got either a lot of money

or do they just choose to spend their money that way?

Whereas some people might spend more money on clothes

or a holiday or a car.

Is it just that that you've got to prioritize?

There are a lot of parents online.

I mean, it's hilarious seeing the kind of call to altruism online

because people are,

if you've already got tickets,

don't buy tickets for another show because I need them.

Or there's a guy who did a TikTok

and he's like, I've got tickets and I only know two songs.

And he has just been absolutely troll.

Oh my God.

That is so insensitive.

But it's all these parents saying like,

you know, I need this for my daughter.

My daughter's going to kill me.

And I'm a little bit like, sometimes you got to say no.

Yeah.

Sometimes you got to say no.

And that is not Taylor Swift's fault or Turing's fault.

But Claire,

well, you know, we don't want our children to have a bad feeling.

No, because that would,

what on earth would happen.

But with Taylor Swift,

the interesting thing to me is that she's obviously

in the top artist in terms of streams.

Oh, she's the world's top artist.

Yes.

In terms of having many, many, many revenue streams.

And so it's not the fact that she needs this money to live.

It's more the fact that I think Taylor Swift,

Harry Styles, Ed Sheeran are all in the same bag

where they're clearly going for a legacy career.

Somebody like Taylor Swift is like,

I want to break records.

And you can see that that's how she's doing it.

She is so prolific and she does so much.

I mean, you look at someone like Justin Bieber,

he's like, I'm cool.

I got my money.

I'm just hanging.

I don't need to tour.

But Taylor Swift is clearly trying to take over the world.

She didn't have to do a three hour concert.

No.

She performs, I think it's something like 43 songs

over three hours.

Now that is an enormous lift.

She didn't have to do that.

Like I went to see Harry Styles.

It was fine.

It was a great concert,

but it was like there was nothing.

There was no dance.

It was just Harry on the stage singing,

I don't know, 11 songs or something.

Felt good about it.

But that's what I mean.

Taylor has like lifted the bar for herself and over delivers

because she does want to make a legacy of her reputation.

Yeah.

See what I did there?

And I do feel like there is some criticism going around

about Taylor Swift,

how much money she's making from this,

how because she's a solo artist,

she's making so much more than somebody who travels.

She should share it.

An entourage, all of that.

And I just do think that there is something about young women

making money that we feel bloody weird about.

I don't think anyone's ever said that about the Rolling Stones.

Yeah.

They're making too much money.

Outladders,

let us know what you think about Taylor.

Leave us a voice note

or send an email to outloud at mamamia.com.au.

In recent weeks,

former fans of YouTuber Colleen Ballinger

have come forward to allege

that she used her fame to have inappropriate relationships

with her mostly underaged fans.

For those who aren't familiar,

Colleen rose to fame thanks to her internet persona Miranda Sings,

which launched on YouTube in 2008.

I am Miranda.

That's some really exciting news, you guys.

I have shows coming up

and Colleen, who is in the beginning of this video,

is in the shows with me in New York City and Utah.

That account amassed 10 million followers.

Then she developed a second channel

that was more about her own life

and that had another 10 million followers.

Can I explain for people

who might not be familiar with Miranda Sings?

She has this like persona and she says it's PG-13.

She's always been clear about that.

So it's not like she doesn't market herself as like the Wiggles.

She's not high five.

She's not high five.

And she's kind of like this weird character

in the mold of like a Mr. Bean kind of thing

in that she has like overdrawn red lipstick

and she like farts and burps

and says inappropriate things.

So it's this persona, right?

And like Miranda Sings is like,

I don't even know who to compare it to,

but it's a character.

It's not like Jimmy Giggles.

It's not unlike like a Barry Humphreys-esque kind of character.

That's exactly right.

It's like a Dame Edna kind of version,

but of a young woman.

And she was kind of parodying the fact

that there were all these people singing on YouTube

wanting to become famous.

And she kind of was putting on this character of Miranda

wearing ridiculous clothes

and Miranda is meant to be unlikable.

That's very unlikable.

That's kind of part of the character.

And it ended up being made into a Netflix show.

She then went on to have children.

She's got twins and another child

and now people sort of follow her life.

But Miranda Sings is very much a character.

Okay, thank you.

Sorry.

And so these are the allegations against her.

A 20 year old named Adam McIntyre says when he was 14

and Colleen was 29,

he established a close friendship with her

and they would communicate via tweets and direct messages

and their conversations varied between lighthearted topics

and more serious issues like Colleen's relationship

break down with her then husband.

A lot of these allegations talk about trauma dumping,

the fact that she would openly talk about her struggles

with her marriage with younger fans.

Another former fan, Johnny Silvestri,

met Colleen over Skype when he was 15

and said he spent hours talking to her and her best friend

and he said they treated him and other fans

like they were older siblings.

And when he was 16,

he was offered the opportunity to come on tour

as Colleen's assistant,

but says he was screamed at by other people in Colleen's entourage

and that was ignored by Colleen.

He also said Colleen's then husband

engaged him in free labor for his social media accounts

so essentially like an unpaid intern thing.

Sorry, but I don't see a smoking gun here so far,

but keep going.

I mean, there's nothing criminal here.

There are some other allegations,

but those are kind of the main two that have been reported enough

and in enough publications

that that's kind of what I'll put forward.

While these allegations that have been floating around the internet,

it's important to note she's not accused of any criminal behaviour.

There have been no charges against her.

This is at this point all kind of allegations about her

just acting inappropriately towards young people.

Earlier this week, she responded in a way

that I don't think we've ever seen someone respond to public backlash

and that's via song.

Hi everyone.

I've been wanting to come online and talk to you about a few things.

Even though my team has strongly advised me to not say what I want to say,

I recently realised that they never said that I could sing what I want to say.

She plays a ukulele and she stares directly at the camera

and performs a song that basically says she wanted to be besties with her fans

so formed friendships she shouldn't have

and that a lot of what is being said about her isn't true.

She has this line at the end that says

Elfie, there are some other allegations floating around online.

What do you think of those allegations

and what do you think of Colleen's approach in responding to them?

The other allegations that have been put forward largely revolve around group chats

that she had with her fans when they were very young,

say they were around 14 or 15 years old and Colleen was in her early 30s.

So she said inappropriate things like asking her fans if they were virgins

and asking them what their favourite sex positions were.

My general take on it is that the word grooming

which has been thrown around in a lot of headlines is a very strong word

and it implies that she was acting in a sexually predatory way, a criminal way,

which I don't necessarily think that there is evidence for as far as we have seen yet.

So I do think that it is a problem to rely on that word when you do see it.

As for her apology, was it, I'm going to say tone deaf but I realised that that is actually inappropriate.

It was technically it wasn't.

It was quite beautiful.

Yeah, it was tone deaf in the metaphorical sense.

To sing an apology, it was literally performative.

It was a performative apology.

I hated that she sort of purposefully looked sad at the beginning of it.

There was all this commentary that she was doing while she was playing the ukulele.

It was just awful and I think that if she wanted to make a genuine sincere apology about behaviour,

that did honestly tow the line and was inappropriate, then she could have just said it out loud.

And I just think forever in our hearts, the ukulele apology will now be a meme.

Mia.

I loved the ukulele apology.

Oh God.

I loved it with all of my heart.

Do you like the tune?

Deep in my soul.

Gosh, she's got a beautiful voice.

I obviously really empathise with her in this because,

firstly, you're accused of a bunch of things that are either wildly exaggerated, twisted, taken out of context or just made up.

This idea that you must be held accountable is thrown at you.

But what does that actually mean?

Because then when you apologise, which she did in this song, I thought it was actually really genuine.

I mean, she's a performer and she's creative and she's done it in a way that's sort of true to her and that has cut through.

But the apology police then come out and say, it's wrong.

It's a reverence.

She didn't do this.

She didn't do that.

She didn't do the other one.

And she even says in the thing, you know, if you want me to admit that I'm a thousand percent responsible for all of these names that you're calling me and all of these things that you're saying I did, I'm not going to cop that because it's not true.

And you know, this is a young mother of three little children who is being called a pedophile.

Words like grooming.

Ten years ago, she was one of the first YouTubers, like the first people who became famous on YouTube.

There was by Burnham.

There was Colleen.

There was a bunch of them.

And a lot of them had inappropriate relationships with their fans, not in a sexual way.

But as again, she explains in this 10 minute song, if you watch it, it's like she said, I was trying to be cool.

I thought that I had to engage with everyone who wanted to talk to me so that my fans would like me.

It's kind of like when you go to like a family gathering, you know, and there's a weird aunt there.

She keeps coming up to you and going like, hey, girl, what's the tea?

And you're like, that was me, letting group chats with my fans.

But Mia, if my weird auntie at a barbecue asked me what my favorite sex position was when I was an early teenager, my parents would have thrown them out.

Yeah, I do get that.

But again, there's no context.

The sex positions was one of her followers who was doing his own YouTube.

And he said, I'm doing like a Q&A on YouTube.

What questions do you want to ask me?

And it's like, you kind of think in context, maybe she's asking that to be funny.

And she said, I made mistakes.

Like I acknowledge I made mistakes.

I did the wrong thing. Absolutely.

But the problem with cancellation and the internet is that it flattens what you did with what you intended.

When you try to actually say, but I agree that I shouldn't have done that, but I didn't do it to groom a child because I'm a predator.

People go, stop making excuses.

You've got to be held accountable.

And it's like, hang on a second.

Those two things can both be true.

And also it's very relevant whether you meant to do something or not.

In a legal court, if you sneeze while you're driving and accidentally hit someone with your car and they die, that is called manslaughter.

If you see someone and accelerate towards them to run them over deliberately, that is murder.

And they had very different crimes.

And I understand that the result of both of those crimes are the same, but they are very different crimes.

And the people who do those things are very different people, right?

But on the internet, all of that is flattened.

And it's just like, no, a man is dead, therefore you're a murderer.

The thing I find about the internet constantly is that we've kind of migrated our lives.

And Miranda Sings is interesting because she was kind of creating content in the wild west days of the internet where people were still working it out.

And it's probably since then that there's that amazing quote from the social network about, we lived on farms.

We lived in cities now.

We're going to live on the internet.

And so now we've moved to essentially living online.

Yet the ethics of real life and the ethics of how we communicate and treat the people in our lives have not translated to online.

And the one thing I find fascinating about the online world is there is no room for forgiveness.

I think looking at her, we're doing a lot of anachronism, which is judging the past by the standards of the present.

So we're thinking, well, no, no, no, that's totally inappropriate now.

And I think we do that with a lot of YouTubers who made a joke that now you just cringe and you go, that's disgusting.

Like we all used to use words or say things or even have beliefs 10 years ago, 20 years ago.

Isn't that about what growing up and learning about things and changing our ideas?

Isn't that what we're meant to do?

I'm so conflicted about this, though.

I totally agree with you on the one hand and I do sympathize a bit with Colleen.

I do think to some extent she was grappling with a lot of fame that she didn't know what to do with.

There was no precedent for it. There were no rules.

But on the other hand, I'm like, if you are in your early 30s, why would you engage with anybody who is a teenager on the internet?

Like just think for a second about any of us.

Like we have some semblance of profile.

Have you spoken to a 14 year old for an extended period of time in your Instagram inbox?

I think the exact same thing.

When I think this is somebody who is approaching 30 and then 30 having these interactions, my immediate thought is, that's weird.

However, I don't work in a job where my audience is of that age.

So I think that, but also because that's what all these stories have in common is that you look at it and you go, why would you do that?

I would never do that.

But what we're missing is any kind of empathy for her and her frame of reference.

And I think that is the case with the song as well.

Because I almost think that this song could in 10, 20 years time be a historic artifact of a moment in history where this is what we kept doing to people.

And obviously in the moment, you go, you're responding to some fucked up allegations in this way.

It seems really inappropriate.

But the song as a standalone piece of art is quite profound.

What it's saying about accepting that human beings are imperfect and she knows she's done the wrong thing.

And I know that you are doing this and you're attacking me because it is fun for you.

And I think the other thing that makes me a bit uncomfortable about some of the allegations is that quite a few of them are by other YouTubers who are trying to build their own platform.

And that's a YouTube thing that like the best way to grow your audience is to attack a big person and you essentially get their audience.

It's this court of public opinion that you can never weed through and it just creates an absolute mess.

And I don't know what I meant to do about it.

Not sing a folky song, do you?

Really probably.

Alfie, what do you think accountability means?

When people say she has to be held accountable, whether it's Colin Ballinger or whoever it is, what do you think that they want?

Do they want the person to just go away?

Like what do they want?

Frankly, I don't think that anybody actually knows.

I don't know what I mean when I say it to be honest.

Maybe there is some semblance like stepping down or stepping away from a career that would feel satisfying to people.

Because you made a mistake.

That seems wild.

But that's the reason watching this song.

I thought I didn't hate it because I've never, I don't think, seen an example where someone's done an apology and people have put their hands up and said,

perfect apology, done, tick, that took accountability.

Like the only kind of people I can think of are people who have disappeared.

Like Jenna Marbles, other YouTuber, she just went, can't do it anymore.

I did some things I don't agree with.

I don't think I should have a platform.

I've always had a bit of tension in the fact that it seems to be women who make the step back and men who just lean into it.

And the Joe Rogans who go, yeah, yeah, yeah, cancel me.

I'm absolutely fine.

I worry about people stepping back when these allegations come out that may or may not be totally lacking context and could kind of ruin their career when it shouldn't necessarily.

Our loudest, if you want to see the ukulele song, we'll link to it on our Instagram and in the Mumma Mia Out Loud Facebook group.

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It's time for our best and worst moments of the week.

The peaks and the troughs.

A lot of people play this game around the dinner table.

We play it in the podcast studio.

We invite you to play along at home or on social media and share your best and worst of the week.

Elfie, do you want to go first?

What's been the worst of your week?

I had a really bad day yesterday. This is my worst.

Okay, it was my day off.

I have been feeling shitty about how I look for quite a while now.

Why?

You know when you just go through a slump and you're like, every time you see yourself in a mirror, you're like, dear God, what happened?

That makes me feel so much better because I feel exactly the same.

Every time I see one of these videos from this podcast, these are ruining my life.

Guys, don't watch them.

Okay, so I came to this conclusion where I was like, either I am going to throw in the towel and I'm going to go get some injectables.

That was on the table.

And then I was also like, well, I'm going to go get my head on and maybe see if that will make me feel really good about myself.

Turns out that was the wrong decision.

I went to somebody who gave me little orange streaks in my hair.

What I had gone in with was a reference photo of Zendaya.

And I honestly believed in my heart that I would walk out looking very much like Zendaya.

And I did not.

I walked out looking like a frickin' Pokemon trainer.

And my hair is red now and I don't like it.

It is passable for the moment.

Do I feel better about myself?

No, I do not.

And I spent $400 on mediocrity.

Wow.

Was it a new hairdresser?

It's somebody that I see for haircuts, but then I went for the hair dye and it was just a disaster.

So what's the plan from here, Alfie?

I don't currently have a plan.

I have been putting together a list of hairstylists that other people trust.

And so I am going to work my way through that and then save up a little bit of money and walk around with red hair for the next couple of weeks.

I reckon.

And this is something I would never do, but I love giving advice to other people.

I'd go back and re-show them your reference photo.

Would you actually, though?

Jesse did it once because she went to a hairdresser and came out and she looked like Draco Malfoy.

Oh, she would show me this.

It was the funniest thing I've ever seen.

And I was like, okay.

I would never say someone's hair ended up terrible, but holy crap.

It was so bad.

Yours, I think looks excellent.

Well, I did make them re-dye it while I was in the sink.

Because I literally couldn't walk out.

Are you assertive with your hairdresser?

Were you like, I hate it?

No.

Because I'm like, thanks so much.

How much money do you need to give me?

I quietly cried and then paid.

The hair did not help.

And I cried.

Sweetie, what's your best?

The best is Barbenheimer.

For those of you who do not know.

Me?

It's nodding shaking.

I want to pretend I know, but I don't know what's Barbenheimer.

Okay.

Barbie and Oppenheimer, both arguably going to be the biggest movies of 2023,

will be released on the same weekend, the 20th of July.

We're in a race against the Nazis.

And I know what it means.

If the Nazis have a bomb, we've got one hope.

All America's industrial-minded scientific innovation connected here.

A secret laboratory.

Keep everyone there until it's dark.

Let's go recruit some scientists.

I know what Barbie's about, obviously.

What's Oppenheimer about?

Oppenheimer is about the Manhattan Project and the building of the first atomic bomb.

Oh, that sounds hideous.

It's by Christopher Nolan.

You should watch the trailer.

It is captivating.

I think because I'm a Gen Xer, I grew up in the shadow of nuclear war.

I would go to sleep every night praying that there would not be a nuclear war the next day.

Wow.

I love how different those two films are tonally.

And I love that they fit under the same umbrella for you.

I like trying to figure out what part of my personality is Barbie and what is Oppenheimer.

I think I'm an Oppenheimer with a Barbie rising, but I can't totally decide.

So what's happening is people are making big pilgrimages to the cinema next weekend.

This is called Barbenheimer, and it has blown up in all of my group chats.

Everybody is trying to figure out the best way to coordinate watching both of these movies.

And my favorite thing about this is that there is a viral tweet going around that says,

people saying Barbie first are wild.

The schedule needs to be black coffee and a cigarette.

Oppenheimer around 11.

It's three hours in brackets.

Mimosa in brunch.

Barbie around six slash seven dinner drinks club.

And I think that is the weekend plan.

Yes.

Actually, I have to say Barbie is the one thing that is going off in my group chats for like,

it's not just you going to the movies.

Like this is an event.

Yes.

Like we're going to get cocktails.

We're going to see the movie.

We're going to go out.

It's really wild.

It's so exciting.

Yes.

Cinemas are fully doing like Prosecco and Barbie.

It's a full thing.

The last time this happened was with the sex in the city movie and everyone was doing cocktails.

I was heavily pregnant with a child.

I can't remember who was and I went in the middle of the day.

I treated myself to like a gold class seat.

Just lay there on my gold class seat watching it for myself at 11 o'clock.

It was a dream.

Yeah.

It was a dream.

Claire, usually, you know, I'm very strict.

I know you guys are new.

I'm very strict about worst and best.

You're the worst first because we don't want to end on a downer.

However, I believe you've asked for an exemption just for this week.

Go.

I have.

I'm doing a holly where they're like connected.

So I went at the end of last week and over the weekend to Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia.

I stayed at this incredible resort called Sal Salas and it is all these tents that kind

of camouflage with the landscape and you're right on the beach.

And the thing about that area is that there is absolutely no cell service.

So as soon as my partner and I got there, we had absolutely no way of accessing email,

social media.

I full had to tell my family, like especially with Jesse, I had to say these are the contact

details of the hotel because I can't personally be contacted.

Like in the olden days.

Exactly.

We would have had to sit in a camel to tell you.

Yeah.

I know.

It was absolutely magical.

And I've read stolen focus by Johan Hari where he talks about, he did like three months

without any kind of technology and he talks about all the emotions you go through.

But something I really found was that time slows down.

Everything feels slower and it almost felt like everyone around me was moving slower.

The wildlife was moving slower.

I observed things.

I had thoughts, I had ideas.

All these things came into my head like, oh, I want to have this conversation with this

person because I have a technology problem.

I'm on my phone.

It's really, really bad.

And I've heard from so many people how it impacts creativity because what actually breeds

creativity is boredom.

And if you're just on your phone constantly, you don't allow for that opportunity.

I read two books.

Rory and I had all these conversations.

I thought you were going to say sex.

Conversations, we played Scrabble.

Although we couldn't Google what was a real word.

And so that was quite Rory was trying to make up words.

And I was like, then I would have a chance of winning.

But my worst, so we had these idyllic days, snorkeling and paddleboarding and kayaking

and just absolutely loving life and feeling this sense of peace.

And then we're on the transfer back to the airport.

And there was a moment where everybody got Wi-Fi back and everyone's phones are being

in, you know, everyone's are going off with all sorts of messages.

And it was really sad.

It made me feel sick.

I looked at the people around me.

I looked at there was a woman in front of me.

She just went straight into her phone like a tunnel.

And I know this sounds so judgmental, but she had a little boy sitting next to her who

just stared at her for the rest of the trip and just watched how she was completely transfixed

by her phone.

We've all been that woman, my God.

Yeah.

My partner said it was scary saying you once you got service.

Did you do the same thing?

Yes.

Yes.

I tried not to.

I tried to be smug.

I tried to just be like, no, don't worry about it.

But I mean, there was gossip to catch up on.

There was so much.

It just really reminded me of how much our lives have changed in 10, 15 years and how

much we're missing out on.

Oh God.

It's really depressing.

I want to go kayaking.

Yeah.

See, this is why we do worst first.

I am going to start with my worst of the week as per the rules.

I found out this week that two of my ex-boyfriends have died in the last few weeks.

When I say boyfriend, I mean, one was a guy that I dated maybe twice when I was still

in high school.

He was a bit older than me.

The other one though was a guy that I dated for a good six months at the first half of

my gap year.

When I was in Australia, he was visiting from the UK.

We met in a restaurant that I was working in as a waitress and he was a chef.

And we ended up staying together for quite a long time and we traveled in India together.

We stayed long distance for a while when I lived in Italy during my gap year.

I haven't been in contact with him for a really long time and I say that it's my worst.

Not because I'm upset, but because I don't know how to feel about it.

I don't really feel anything.

This was 30 years ago, right?

And I feel like, I don't know how I should feel.

There's something quite strange about contemporaries passing away because it's somebody who, like

for example, there are memories of your life that only that person had.

And now they're gone.

It's quite easy to separate yourself from them because it's sort of even the information

has only come through on social media or by text or whatever.

It's not in your face.

But there's a weird, a weird gut instinct doesn't feel right to lose a contemporary.

No.

And it also feels very odd losing someone that you're not in contact with because it's like

they could still be alive.

You don't know.

You haven't even thought of them for a really long time and they're sort of frozen.

And now I'm like, I want to see photos of what he looked like in the last few years and

what his life was like.

That was my worst.

My best is Kate Blanchett, who made a surprise appearance at Glastonbury.

You may wonder why, because she can't sing.

But you know what she can do?

Oh, she probably can sing.

She can do everything.

She can dance.

She really can.

And she is in a video clip for a song called Sad Girl Crying in Her Latte, which is so great

by a band called Sparks, which I'd never heard of.

But this clip from the film clip where she's in this yellow suit and she's dancing with

headphones on, she's dancing in this really like crazy, weird way.

And it's very cool.

Anyway, at Glastonbury, he did his set and then he introduced her.

She came out wearing that same outfit and danced for the song.

The crowd went wild and I just bloody loved it.

She's just so cool.

She's in her fifties and she just knows who she is and she's not trying to be 23 like

some other famous 50 year old people, women.

I'm always looking for role models of how to be a woman in her fifties and this was it

for me.

We'll put a link in the show notes or in the socials or wherever we put links so you can

see Cape Blanchett being glorious.

My recommendation that I would just like to let the out louders know about is that you

might be aware that we are recapping and just like that just for subscribers.

Today we actually dropped the episode three recap.

So it's Mia, myself and Laura Broadnick.

I've got some breaking news on that one and my feelings about it.

This actually really intense and analytical like we had a lot, a lot to break down.

We go character by character.

I really want you guys to listen to it.

We've had some lovely feedback already.

If you want to listen to it, head to the link in our show notes and come along for the

ride.

We'll be recapping the whole season because straight away after you watch an episode,

you need to debrief about it.

You've got thoughts, you've got feelings, come and listen to us be friends in your ears.

Now another recommendation that's not related to us is a book that I read when I was away

It was recommended by out loud of Sally Hepworth.

She always has great recommendations mostly because she's a New York Times bestselling

author.

It's a book called Yellow Face.

It's written by an author called R. F. Kwong who I hadn't heard of.

I didn't know anything about when I read the book and of course afterwards I deep dived.

It's an interesting genre about a young woman living in New York writes a book.

It's about what happens in publishing and it is a horror story.

When I say horror, it's horrifying.

It's gone viral this book.

Everyone's talking about it.

The woman who wrote it is actually 26.

Makes me sick to my stomach.

Not even her first book.

But if you've ever wondered about the world of publishing and writing books and the internet

and Bookstagram and Goodreads and how all of that works, it's so amazing.

It's got such an unexpected plot.

Yellow Face, highly recommend.

Is it a little bit about social media pylons?

Yes.

Does it go into that territory?

Yes, it does.

Because I was going to say I feel like we are getting the first wave of books that touch

on that and they are so fresh.

That's what I have some questions for you which I recently read.

It was the same kind of thing and I've been recommended this off the back of that.

Mia, can I ask why it's called Yellow Face?

Because my understanding is that Yellow Face is sort of a like black face in the way that

it means that somebody is pretending to belong to a certain ethnicity, right?

Correct.

And the author in this book, she's white and she's being accused of Yellow Face.

Oh, it's still me.

Every time we get to the end of the show, I'm surprised.

Thank you for listening to Australia's number one news and pop culture show.

This episode was produced by Susanna Maykin, the executive producer is Talissa Bazarz with

Audio Production by Leah Porges.

Thanks for listening and we'll get in your ears very soon.

Bye.

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Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.