tessica brown, the gorilla glue girl

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. Hi everybody, Jamie here again reminding you
that if you're in the Los Angeles area, I am
taping my very first special called The Tiny Man Is
Trying to Kill Me on December fourth. There are two shows.
The first one is basically sold out, but there are
still tickets available to the nine point thirty. I have
the link in the description and I hope to see

(00:23):
you there. Enjoy the episode. Early twenty twenty one is
the time many of us have complete memory holes for,
and not without good reason. In the US, COVID was
still ravaging the country after the spread of the virus
had been repeatedly sabotaged by conspiracy theorists in and outside

(00:47):
of the government. Lockdown restrictions were reaching the year mark
after an extremely contentious election where COVID missed the opportunity
to do the first and only funny thing it could do,
which was killed Donald Trump. There was something that happened
on January sixth of this year, but I can't quite

(01:08):
recall what it was. It was a bad time, and
collectively I don't know that we really remember it. There's
some science behind this complicated issue, but the short story
is that your brain can protect you from a traumatic
memory or event or period of time. You know, when

(01:32):
you're listening to this set, the moment it comes out,
you probably won't remember this time very well if you
live in the US soon either because for most people
and surely to different degrees depending on what your day
to day was like during COVID and if anyone in
your life was personally affected, this was a terrifying time.

(01:54):
Add this to Black Lives Matter demonstrations being met with
violent reprisal from police forces and no vaccine in sight
until the very end of twenty twenty, with a long
line before it got to non essential workers, and by
early twenty twenty one, a lot of people were reaching
the ends of their ropes. Really think about where you

(02:16):
were at around this time. I had it comparatively easy.
Podcasting is not essential work, if you can believe it.
And even still, by the top of twenty twenty one,
I was a fucking wreck. I was terrified for my
immunocompromised parents across the country. I was trying to get
out of the house to do outreach work and I'd

(02:38):
gotten arrested at a protest in front of Eric Garcetti's house. Whoops,
and I'd do it again. The lockdown era was horrendous
for Americans' mental health. There's extensive reporting on how anxiety, PTSD,
and depression increased tremendously during that year and into today.

(03:00):
I don't think anyone could look back at their social
media at this time and think, Wow, I was hanging
in pretty well then, And if you can, you are
the fucking weirdo. It was an age where people were
knowingly or unknowingly posting their l's every single day, NonStop,
because unless you were an essential worker, what the fuck

(03:22):
else was there to do? But one L posted during
this time made Internet history, bringing people together collectively to
say oh my God in a way that was not
centered on a global catastrophe. Of course, plenty of commenters
took it too far immediately, but for a single moment
on February third, twenty twenty one, all of TikTok wasn't

(03:46):
focused on COVID disinformation or insurrection analysis or sorry, objectively
bad mental health content. No, we were all talking about
gorilla glue.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Hey, y'all, But those of y'all don't know me, know,
my hair has been like this for about a month now.
It's not much choice. No, it's not much choice.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
Tessaka Brown, the woman who used gorilla glue in her hair.
Your sixteenth Minute starts now, Joys sixt Welcome back to

(05:09):
sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take a look at
the Internet. Main characters talk to them about how their
moment affected them and what it says about us and
the Internet. My name is Jamie Loftus, and today my
phone connected to an ex boyfriend's WiFi when I was
walking by in a neighborhood I didn't know he lived in.
Guess he moved. And today we're talking about the infamous

(05:32):
early twenty twenty one gorilla glue hair incident. And look,
I've already ptsd'd you by bringing up the later days
of the pandemic, and you don't deserve it right now,
but bear with me. I really want you to dig
into your sad little brain and pull out where you
were at in early twenty twenty one. Because today's subject

(05:54):
Tessaga Brown, and yes we got the interview. Baby was
in the same position as everyone was in the world,
only she was having to run a full time daycare
called Tessica's Little Angels in the middle of COVID for
folks in her neighborhood who still had to work. Plus
she was the mother of five. We were all at

(06:15):
the end of our rope. But as you'll see, Tessica
didn't get very much grace in the moment or in
the public's memory. So let's go back to the dark place.
Come with me if you dare to. February twenty twenty one,
Donald Trump's second impeachment trial raged on in Washington, d c.

(06:39):
Fat lot of fucking good that did. Meanwhile, the US
reached a five hundred thousand person death toll to COVID,
and in Violet, Louisiana, Tessica Brown ran out of got
to be blasting freeze spray and needed a quick solution.
Was what she did. The smartest decision of anyone's life. No,

(07:00):
but hear her out. It's February second, twenty twenty one.
Tessca has a lot of stuff going on in her
personal life, which she references in our interview, and there
is a lot going on in the big disgusting world.
She is a lifelong Louisiana resident, a place where COVID
had affected about half a million reported people since twenty twenty,

(07:24):
before vaccines were made widely available. In fact, this whole
thing happens two days before vaccines were made available to
people sixty five and over in Louisiana and the States.
Relationship to vaccines is complicated regardless. Sometime in early January,
Tesska mistakenly sprayed gorilla glue into her hair out of

(07:47):
running out of got to be and the next month
was rough. Gorilla glue if you don't know, and you
really should, is no joke.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
So this guy I thought he could lick the glue off. Basically,
he took some gorilla glue and he put it on
the edges of this cup and then put it on
his face. And he thought he could lick the glue
off and get this cup off of his phase. Well,
that didn't really work out very well for him.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
It's a super glue that's been on the market since
the nineties, eventually prompting the phrase gorilla grip, which has
been a term of inspiration among Keagel's TikTok for years.
And I refused to expand on that sentence. You can
do your own research, but super glue existed in general
since the nineteen forties. Because yes, as every episode of

(08:41):
sixteenth Minute inevitably leads to super glue. Say it with
me is the product of colonialism and warmongering. We don't
need to talk about it, but hey, let's talk about
it for a second. Switch the music a little, let's
make this fun. Super glue was discovered by an inventor

(09:02):
named doctor Harry Wesley at kodak as in the Photography
Company during World War Two while pitching in to make
new gun sights for Allied forces. He didn't end up
trademarking the material until the nineteen fifties, but by that
time it had taken on any number of practical and
frankly horrifying uses over the years. The Military Times reported

(09:26):
that Wesley's invention was later used as a liquid bandage
on soldiers in the Vietnam War in order to stem
bleeding until someone with an open wound could get to
a military hospital. Really think about that gross, But it
did sort of work and was later tweaked into what's

(09:46):
now known as actual liquid bandages like derma bond and
trauma seal. And if you had a liquid bandage fanatic
like my mom, you will know that these products really
hurt on sensitive skin because while effective, these extreme adhesives
are not comfortable with that in mind. Enter Tessica, who

(10:11):
at forty had the expected social media for a person
of that demographic at that time. What I'm saying is
she was a Facebook mom, and she promoted her business
and shared family photos and live streams primarily there and
on Instagram, and she posted a lot, but her audience
was fairly limited. From what I could find. She mainly

(10:33):
stuck to the Zuckerberg products Facebook and Instagram, where she had,
as she tells me, only a few thousand followers at
the time of the gorilla clue incident. Fast forward to
the day she sprayed the glue. It did not go well,
but at first, as with any major l Tessica kept
it to herself, not even telling her mother or sister

(10:56):
at first. Days later, not only was it not coming out,
her scalp was starting to hurt and it was feeling
like it was constricting. She tried everything to try to
slow this effect, googne, rubbing alcohol, coconut oil, tea tree oil,
you name it. But it became clear that this may

(11:17):
not be a google able problem. So she swallowed her
pride and she reached out to the women in her
life her mother, her sister, her daughters, but that didn't
do much either, until, according to Tessica, one of her
daughters said, hey, maybe someone on TikTok will know what
to do. Yes, this is a TikTok story, and per Tessica,

(11:43):
she has no idea how or why this particular TikTok
went viral because prior to the gorilla glue story, Tessica
had only used TikTok twice two posts. One was of
her daughter in late twenty twenty day while wearing a
face mask, and the other was Taska herself lip syncing

(12:04):
to a cover of Countdown by Beyonce. You know the
song you Weren't Born Yesterday?

Speaker 4 (12:15):
Mom?

Speaker 1 (12:16):
Content right? And then Tessica's daughter, a true kid of
the COVID era, says, hey, Mom, maybe people on TikTok
will find you and have some ideas on how to
get the glue out. Because not only had TikTok experienced
tremendous growth during COVID lockdown, particularly with people her kid's age,

(12:36):
it had also become notorious for becoming a place of
hyper niche discussion. And so Tesska does with the self
assurance of a consistent poster, just not a TikTok poster.
So she's in her bathroom filming on her phone and
a hot pink hoodie with full makeup and a long braid,
and as in all her posts, Tesca looks great. But yeah,

(13:01):
there is something clearly going on with her hair. It's
you know, it's super glued to her head. Here's the
fifty nine seconds that made her famous.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
Hey, y'all, but those of y'all that knew me know,
my hair has been like this sub about a month now.
It's not much choice. No, it's not much choice. When
I do my hair, I like to, you know, finish
it off with the little got to be glue spree,
you know, just to keep it in face. Well, I
didn't have any more got to be blue spas, so
I used this gorilla glue spree.

Speaker 5 (13:35):
Bad, bad, bad idea. Y'all. Look my hair. It don't move.
You get what I'm telling you. It don't move.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
I've washed my hair fifteen times and it don't move.
Stiff Well, who my hair?

Speaker 5 (13:58):
So I'm gonna tell y'all like.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
This, if you ever ever run out of got to
be golose spring, don't ever ever use this so.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
That clicking noise is the sound of Tessica's nails on
her own scalp. And this post does go viral on
TikTok basically immediately. Tessica says she posted it before bed
with no hashtags. TikTok doesn't really respond to that as much.
It's just captioned stiff ware my hair, which is a

(14:31):
reference to a meme where a black mom and her
daughter are joking around in a car while the daughter
is wearing a new wig. Maybe you've seen.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
It right back on Ooh no bam, Yes, yes, ooh
ooh stiff wall stiff whia.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
If you haven't, go watch it. And Tessica has definitely
seen this because she's pretty online and for all intents
and purposes, she's just a normal person posting a weird,
kind of stressful TikTok. But when she wakes up the
morning after posting blues still in her hair, her TikTok

(15:10):
account has gone nuts. She has officially been sucked into
the algorithmic vortex. And she asked herself fucking how well.
As we've discussed on the show before, that's kind of
the whole question with TikTok. Most if not all social

(15:31):
media algorithms are completely diabolical by nature. And again, if
you want to know more about that, I will shout
out friend of the show, Max Fisher's book The Chaos Machine,
which breaks down how algorithms have increasingly informed how we
consume news and ourselves in the space of the last decade.

(15:52):
The section where he unpacks a period of time leading
up to the twenty sixteen election where the top brasset
YouTube just let the algorithm run itself lives rent free
in my mind forever. The point is the way that
algorithms function remains very opaque to this day, something that

(16:13):
seems like should maybe not be allowed, given the fact
that these algorithms have disproportionate influence on how we receive
information and often disinformation. And in case you're not aware,
there's a bit of an infinity saga with TikTok and disinformation,
with the platform itself repeatedly vowing that they are definitely

(16:36):
taking steps internally to combat disinformation as recently as this
past fall, although I will say I have some doubt
on how effective that's been. I don't really know what
this kind of announcement does to imply TikTok's accountability. It
seems more kind of like they're passing the buck to
their users. Take a listen.

Speaker 6 (16:57):
If you try to share content within unfair verified claim,
we may also ask you to reconsider before sharing, especially
during emergencies and unfolding events. This helps prevent the spread
of misinformation. You should still think critically about content that's
not labeled as unverified and report potential harmful misinformation so

(17:20):
our safety teams can assess it.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
Okay TikTok give us less. A twenty twenty two report
from NewsGuard indicated that when it came to hot button
issues like vaccines, election information, and even things as specific
as the January sixth insurrection, around one in five TikTok
posts contained disinformation of some kind. So let's hope a

(17:46):
commitment to combating disinformation is true. Because TikTok has a
very strong influence on Internet users. Right now, it is
by far the most addictive platform, with the Digital twenty
twenty four Global Review Report estimating that the average user
clocks in around thirty four hours of TikTok use a month.

(18:08):
That's followed by YouTube at twenty eight hours and Facebook
at almost twenty Its base is also young in comparison
to other platforms. Over half of TikTok users are teenagers,
and eighty percent of users say they primarily use the
platform to find something entertaining. And if you've ever used it,

(18:30):
the TikTok algorithm is good at figuring out what you
specifically will find entertaining. Here's what's in my algorithm on
TikTok right now, because making this show has destroyed all
of my algorithms, thank you so much. And the fact
that someone called me the buffalos fairy godmother because I've
been telling people where to get their sameless songs so they're.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
Not with you.

Speaker 4 (18:59):
I'm sorry.

Speaker 5 (19:00):
What did you guess?

Speaker 7 (19:01):
See that video of that girl who started crying because
she started chewing remineralizing chewing gum in her cavities.

Speaker 5 (19:07):
Lily went away.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
I heard talk. He's trying to do livestream. It's flopping.
But for the sake of this story, we're talking about
the TikTok algorithm in twenty twenty one, specifically, an algorithm
we can assume is somewhat different from the crack that
they're putting in the TikTok algorithm today. And here's what
we knew at the time, according to a report from
The New York Times Ben Smith at the end of

(19:31):
that year. The report reviewed internally leaked documents from the
China based company called TikTok Algo one oh one, which
stated the four core tenants of the app at the
time were user value, long term user value, creator value,
and platform value. And it is worth mentioning that TikTok's

(19:54):
being a non American company does affect how it's discussed
in Western media. Enough time to unpack it fully, but
suffice it to say, yes, social media and big tech
are quite evil, but they're nothing next to Senator Tom Cotton.
Here's Senator Tom Cotton talking to TikTok's CEO, Showsey Chew

(20:14):
in January twenty twenty four.

Speaker 8 (20:17):
So you said, today, as you often say, that you
live in Singapore of what nation? Are you a citizen
Singapore is? Are you a citizen of any other nation? No, Senator,
Have you ever applied for Chinese citizenship? Senator, I serve
my nation in Singapore.

Speaker 9 (20:33):
No, I did not.

Speaker 8 (20:34):
Have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party, Senata,
I'm Singaporean?

Speaker 1 (20:38):
No? Wow, So much more of this to look forward
to in the next four years. Really cool the app's
ultimate goal in twenty twenty one at the time of
the Tessica Brown post features a term we've also heard
in the story of YouTube or getting as many users

(21:00):
as possible to spend as much time as possible on TikTok,
and this almost always leads to the algorithm pushing content
that is manipulative in some way. This Times report detailed
a tendency for TikTok to focus on quote unquote sad
content to get people to keep watching, and even provides

(21:21):
a little equation that details how it ranked which posts
to boost, relating to likes, plays, comments, and time watched.
It goes on to detail the ways in which TikTok
aims to keep people engaged by recommending similar but not
too similar content in order to avoid boredom. Again, this

(21:42):
is an echo of the YouTube algorithm story that can
and has led to users getting coaxed into increasingly extreme content.
With these qualifiers in mind, it's not super surprising that
Tessica Brown's video performed well within TikTok's outcome rhythm. The
video is kind of long, you're definitely not sure how

(22:05):
it's gonna end. The subject is sad and upset and
even now. Tessica says in our interview that she understands
that in some sick way, it could be entertaining to
watch her struggle, or at very least you can't look away.
And when Tessica's TikTok went live under her.

Speaker 4 (22:25):
Username I'm underscore d underscore old Lady, pretty funny, viewers
could not look away, which prompted a very polarized comment
section hit the music, Why why why would you do that?

Speaker 1 (22:44):
Girl? You're lucky it didn't get in your eyes, ears hands?
What the fuck is wrong with you? This better blow
the fuck up?

Speaker 9 (22:51):
Because dam I'm sorry girl.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
Girl, I'm so sorry, but this is so funny.

Speaker 6 (23:00):
Baby oil, googn dawn dish, soap and nail polish remover
last resort.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
Girl, please update us.

Speaker 6 (23:10):
This is literally a plot of a Victorious episode.

Speaker 9 (23:14):
Baby, you made a helmet. You could survive an actual
disaster when in Nabrica. Never hear unstoppable.

Speaker 1 (23:23):
Okay, Hopefully I'm not the only person that wanted to
fact check that next to last comment. Was there an
episode of Nickelodeon's early twenty tens tween show Victorious. About
this subject. What is this for?

Speaker 2 (23:37):
Oh that's glue?

Speaker 1 (23:38):
Yeah, but why is it with your makeup supplies?

Speaker 2 (23:41):
What's the problem.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
This is grizzly glue. It's like an industrial cement.

Speaker 9 (23:45):
Hey, cat, tell me you didn't use this on Tory's face?

Speaker 4 (23:53):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (23:54):
Yes? Indeed, this was a Victorious episode from twenty ten
in which a character played by one Ariana Grande super
glues a monster mask to Victoria Justice's face. I love culture,
but it's here where the gorilla glue story splits in
two because Tessica has become a main character off of

(24:17):
her third TikTok. Ever, and as she hints at in
the post, she's also starting to be in a lot
of physical pain from a month's worth of ever constructing
super glue. I'll let Tesska share the more specific details
in our interview, but this Burt and what the TikTok

(24:38):
comments on this ever growing post. At present, it sits
around fifty six million views. Confirmed was that she seemed
to have tried everything that was possible to do from
home in the month the glue had been in her hair,
but still she kept trying. The next day, Tessika posted
a TikTok of her squeezing a hand full of panteen

(25:01):
into her palm, rubbed it into her hair, and showed
that where there would normally be a leather, nothing happened.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
Like this is the life that I guess I'm.

Speaker 5 (25:15):
Happy to live.

Speaker 7 (25:17):
Yeah, noo, noop No.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
This is a hard clip to watch. She's close to
tears here and you can hear the business of her
household continuing just outside of the bathroom. Later that day,
Tessca posted again, acknowledging how viral her first post had gone.
While continuing to ask for help. She writes, thanks for

(25:47):
you guys encouraging and ideas to get rid of this
forever ponytail. I will try some today when I get
off from work, and I will keep you guys posted.
By the way, if you see me walking around with
a headscarf, just mind your business. Well, so from the jump,
Tessca had a good sense of humor about the incident,
even as the pain and the mocking comments continued to

(26:10):
roll in.

Speaker 6 (26:11):
You are the reason items have instructions.

Speaker 9 (26:15):
Call Gorilla Glue customer service after they stop laughing.

Speaker 5 (26:18):
They may give you a commercial deal.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
But it's clear that as time goes on, Tessca was
becoming increasingly desperate updating her increasing online following on solutions
that hadn't worked, until finally, on February sixth, she checked
into the Saint Bernard Parish Hospital nearby to seek professional help,
and after that visit, she wasn't much better off. The

(26:45):
hospital estimated that using acetone and sterile water would make
the whole process take about twenty hours, and Tessica opted
to go home and continued to work at it with
her sister instead. Once back home, video footage shows Tesska
panicked and completely beside herself as her sister used actone

(27:06):
wipes from the hospital to try and loosen the glues hold.
But it's worth mentioning Tessica does lean into posting updates
on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram immediately. There's not really a
time where she's rejecting the attention. And this isn't a criticism.
It actually reminds me quite a bit of our Ken

(27:28):
Bone episode. He was very baffled when he became a star,
but you never really saw him resisting it. But of
course the difference between these stories is significant. Tessica was
in many cases being openly mocked instead of celebrated like Ken.
She is also a black woman and subject to all

(27:48):
of the misogynir that comes with that. But it does
feel worth mentioning that she doesn't really resist the attention
around this story. What she does resist is people and
the press misrepresenting who she is and what really happened.
So Tessica has become a TikTok main character quite literally overnight,

(28:10):
and mainstream media is pretty quick to catch on to
this story. I think in part because media was generally
faster to catch on to online stories in general during
lockdown because of the intensity of eyes on TikTok. At
the time, we're seeing headlines.

Speaker 6 (28:27):
Like woman's gorilla glue hair style on TikTok has everyone baffled.

Speaker 9 (28:32):
Tessica Brown is not just the gorilla glue girl. Her
message to.

Speaker 6 (28:36):
The internet Gorilla Glue said, it's sorry to hear about
the woman who accidentally glued her hair in place.

Speaker 9 (28:43):
The undeniable hold of the gorilla glue girl, and what
it says about the empathy of the internet.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
Meanwhile, Tessica's support system was not satisfied with the options
that the hospital was offering. We talk about that more
in our interview and on Sunday, February seventh, the family
starts a GoFundMe for Tessica in the hopes of getting
money for an actual solution. The goal for the fundraiser

(29:11):
was only fifteen hundred dollars, but because of the number
of eyes on the story, the account quickly surged to
over twenty three thousand dollars, and of course, Gorilla Glue
couldn't resist getting in on the free pr Once Tessica
had returned from the hospital. On February eighth, the company
tweeted the quote.

Speaker 6 (29:30):
We are very sorry to hear about the unfortunate incident
that Miss Brown experienced using our spray adhesive on her hair.
We are glad to see in her recent video that
Miss Brown has received medical treatment from her local medical
facility and wish her the best.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
However, Gorilla Glue stood their ground, saying in the same
post that it was not you know, intended for hair,
but I was heartened to see that the comments around
this post Moss are pretty firmly on Tesska's side. Commenters
suggested that Gorilla Glue should just donate money to Tessica
to show good faith. Some mention that the spray does not,

(30:10):
in fact explicitly say it shouldn't be used on hair,
and others warned that Tesska very well may have a
good lawsuit on her hand, even comparing it to the
McDonald's Hot Coffee lawsuit of nineteen ninety four. I'd recommend
the You're Wrong About episode on that topic if you
don't know more about that lawsuit. And there were rumors
that Tessica planned to sue gorilla glue that were mentioned

(30:31):
in a couple of news sources, but Tesska says that
this was never true or a plan of hers, and
to be fair, she was a little busy to be
organizing a lawsuit at this time to split between trying
to get this very painful problem figured out and documenting
that process and posting it online. And that appears to
be it. So checking in. It's been nearly a week

(30:53):
since Tessaka went public with her saga, and still nothing
has been figured out except that the Internet was wrapped
with attention as vaccines continued to be disseminated across the world.
And I'm not joking. Benjamin nettan Yahoo was on court
for a bribery charge. Time is a flat circle and

(31:14):
you'll notice from what we've even discussed so far, there
is a pretty wide range of reactions to Tesska's story,
and I think that this is because you can easily
trace a wide range of diversity in the race, age,
and gender of accounts that are replying to support her
or not. By the time Tessco went to the hospital,
prominent figures had begun commenting on her situation as well,

(31:37):
including Chance the Rapper, and more relevantly to what I'm
trying to talk about, Sunny Houston of The View, who
tweeted the following.

Speaker 9 (31:46):
So many are being dismissive of hashtag gorilla glue girl
given the history of how black women are targeted and
still battle the pervasive belief that our natural hair is unprofessional, unkempt,
and in some way a statement please show her some
grace and understanding.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
Tessica's story is tied into the historical relationship with Black
women and their hair, a topic that has been spoken
on extensively over the years. Some major examples are the
two thousand and nine documentary Good Hair, hosted by Chris
Rock and the Oscar winning short film and best selling
children's book Hair Love by Matthew cherry, just to name

(32:24):
a few. My name is Ziri, and I have hair
that has a mind of its own.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
It kinks, coils, and curls every which way.

Speaker 1 (32:33):
But I'll link more resources in the description as well.
And Tessica's story is one of the iconic main character
moments that revolves around black hair. So many of the
top comments come from black users on TikTok. Of course,
plenty of these users are teasing Tessica and are baffled
at the choice in using gorilla glue in the media.

(32:55):
Clap back at Tessica specifically reeks of misogynir and this
was thankfully called attention to although not with the same
frequency as the click baity you won't believe what happened,
how embarrassing style of post not by a long shot.
But these essays do exist.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
I do exist.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
This is from a February eighth, twenty twenty one piece
from Essence by Candice Benbo.

Speaker 9 (33:21):
Perhaps all this history is what joined so many of
our hearts to Tessica's plight. We may have never had
an industrial product for styling purposes, but we've done things
to our hair and to ourselves we wished we hadn't
We were endeared to her because we know what it's
like to be judged by the biggest mistake you've ever
made and not to be given the compassion and empathy
necessary to move through its implications. All across social media,

(33:43):
there are scores of people suggesting Tessica is attention seeking
and deserves whatever she gets. She should have known better.
In a world where hacks are celebrated and people become
Internet sensations overnight for discovering new uses for old products,
Tessica is villainized because her attempt resulted in failure. Why
is it so easy to dehumanize black women when we

(34:04):
make mistakes? Why must compassion for us be measured and mediated?
How different would the response to Tessica be if she
were white.

Speaker 1 (34:12):
We don't have to wonder.

Speaker 9 (34:13):
Too long about the answers to these questions. We know
them already. We know Black girls and women have to
be perfect. There is no room for error, and when
we mess up, we know it was nobody's fault but
our own. And we know we live in communities that
won't let us forget it either.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
And unfortunately, a lot of what Candice is describing here,
the quickness to demonize and shame. Tasaka Brown does bear
out a number of times in the days that followed,
and I also want to mention that, yes, many people
did accuse Tessica of spraying gorilla glue in her hair
just for attention and just to go viral, which I

(34:54):
think is pretty clearly not true, but also speaks to
the Internet brain of what we are can addition to
believe people will do for attention, including hurt themselves. Right
moving on, another piece from the King County Hazardous Waste
Management Program adds to this.

Speaker 6 (35:11):
While most would never dream of putting gorilla glue anywhere
near their body, sometimes black women need to venture outside
the hair care aisle to find products that work. Castor oil,
olive oil, mayonnaise, and superglue are all used for hair
styling purposes. Also, many products marketed exclusively for black women
include chemical based products like hair relaxers, texturizers, and bonding glues.

(35:37):
Research over the years has shown there are fewer non
toxic options in black hair products than there are in
those marketed to the general public. Although understudied, there's growing
evidence that a high number of products marketed for black
hair care contain known harmful chemicals linked to cancer, reproductive problems,
hormone disruption, asthma, and other adverse health effect.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
In the coming weeks, Tessaca Brown would be very forthcoming
about how a cultural emphasis on whiteness factored into how
she had felt about her own hair in the past.
Later in February, she reflected on her early life, telling
ABC Chicago about her experience in middle school, she said, I.

Speaker 9 (36:21):
Thought, if you have another flaw, if your hair is together,
you know you look better. If I can't do nothing else,
I'm gonna make sure my hair is on point. This
has been a problem for me for a long time.
If I wouldn't have cared so much about my hair,
I wouldn't be going through this right now.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
So again, it is really overly simplistic who characterized Tessica's
action as beyond the pale ridiculous. Even if, like Tessica
says now, she's embarrassed by making the mistake, it's a
decision that exists in a far larger context, one that
ranges from historical racism and misogyny to the fact that

(36:57):
she was working full time during a pandemic and was
likely just as burned out as anybody was. It was
a mistake, but as the days continued, people didn't seem
to get tired of making fun of her. As the
situation reached its peak, on Monday, February ninth, Pessica gave
her first interview to Kiss ninety two to five in Toronto,

(37:19):
saying that she was waiting to shave her head as
a last resort and felt quote some type of way
unquote above people making fun of her fair enough. On Tuesday,
things really kick up behind the scenes, and unbeknownst to
the public at the time, Tessica had been reached out
to by manager Gina Rodriguez. Not that one. This Gina

(37:40):
Rodriguez is a reality and viral star manager, including a
number of names. You know some of the Real Housewives,
Mama June of Here Comes Honey Booboo, Scott Dissick of
the Kardashians, Tory Spelling, the Ocean, Spray skateboard guy, Nathan
appadaka Gina Rodriguez answer my email, I want to talk
to him. The list goes on right, and when Gina

(38:03):
heard about Tessica's story, she both seemed to see a
person who needed help and a potential business opportunity. Rodriguez
got in touch with Tessica to connect her with a
plastic surgeon who she knew in La One, who claimed
that he had the ability to save her hair and
would do the procedure in Beverly Hills for free. Enter

(38:23):
doctor Michael Obang, who has over twenty years of experience
in the industry, and finally it seemed like Tessica had
a solution. She announced she was heading out to Beverly
Hills in an emotional interview with Entertainment Tonight that same day.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
I'm not that person y'all trying to meet me out today.
I'm not that person. I'm not this whole gorilla blue girl.
My name is Tessica Brown.

Speaker 5 (38:49):
Call me.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
How's old theology know exactly who I am?

Speaker 1 (38:52):
And on Wednesday, February tenth, Tessica Brown arrived in a
red hoodie in a mask to Lax where there was
and I'm not joking, literal paparazzi waiting for her as
she headed out to doctor Oban's office. This story was big.
The procedure was done that evening, and while Tesska recovered,

(39:13):
the good doctor got a little prn by giving CBS
Los Angeles an update.

Speaker 6 (39:18):
Tessica is doing well. She's awake, the haircrew is doing
her hair.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
This interview also revealed maybe one of the most impressive
things I've ever heard, which is that doctor Obeng literally
created a new chemical product to remove the gorilla glue
and it was successful. He invented a whole new thing,
and TMZ classy as ever, filmed and posted the whole procedure.

Speaker 8 (39:44):
If you feel anything, if it's too uncomfortable, let me know.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
We can get you more payments, okay, which is a
potential insight into why this twelve five hundred dollars procedure
was done for free. Look, I'll be honest, I could
not bring myself to watch the video of the procedure.
I'm too squeamish. But the final procedure is said to
have taken four hours while Tesska was under a light
anesthetic for the la times. Doctor Obank's potion was a

(40:08):
combination of medical adhesive remover, alo vera, olive oil and
actone mixed in a way to prevent harm to her scalp.
The healing process was estimated to be about two or
three months, and thank god it worked. And yes, of course,
doctor Obank mentioned he was considering selling the product in
the future put a pin in that. So finally, a

(40:31):
week after this whole TikTok Soga began, and over a
month after the glue had been put in her hair
in the first place, Tessica's head was gorilla glue free,
and now she was Internet famous, complete with an entertainment
manager and a full blown press tour that ranged from

(40:53):
network TV to more prominently forever growing social media feeds.
She was liberated from the glue with Rodriguez signed Heesseca
Brown showed no signs of slowing down. She launched an
official merch site on February twelfth, featuring her image from
the viral TikTok with the caption bonded for life. Pretty

(41:14):
good and Sure people clowned on her for printing merch
over a one social media moment, but people were watching
and buying the stuff, with an estimated million and a
half social media posts about the gorilla glue incident by
the middle of this month, and like William Hung and
Ken Bone before her, Heessecka Brown even broke through to

(41:37):
appear in a middling SNL sketch on February fourteenth.

Speaker 10 (41:41):
So it happened, So you your worst night, Miss.

Speaker 7 (41:45):
We've all been there. You ran out a half product
and you used Gorilla blue instead, and it turned.

Speaker 10 (41:54):
Your beautiful lush's made into a hard candy sheep.

Speaker 1 (41:57):
That's Keenan Thompson and Regina King. Not shabby. And throughout
this time, Pessica was adamant about who she is, and
to me, it's admirable how she continued to remind reporters
and online randos that she didn't appreciate being called the
Gorilla Glue girl, and that her plan was to forge

(42:18):
ahead with her business and the dance team that she
had coached her daughters on before this incident. In a
profile of her from Vox by Melinda Facuade on February nineteenth,
Pessica said.

Speaker 9 (42:30):
Clout is something I will never chase. I promise you.
The dance team was in a commercial, they were in newspapers,
they were in a magazine. That's enough clout for me.
I don't need all of this because this was just
lay way too much, and truly, who would want to
go through that pain I went through for clout?

Speaker 1 (42:47):
Again, this is Tessica having to stave off the accusations
that she had done the whole very painful ordeal for attention.
But the Internet couldn't let go of the gorilla glue moment.
There were, from what I could find, at least two
copycats who were ostensibly trying to like bust the idea

(43:08):
that super glue could have caused this much damage to
Tessica Brown's hair and life. And the results, drum roll.
Both of these MythBusters went to the hospital. Great job, guys, mythbusted. Look,

(43:31):
if you know anything about the Internet, this is nothing new.
Social media has always been a place where random challenges
that could possibly kill you rule the algorithm. Examples in
the early twenty tens the Cinnamon challenge, where someone puts
a spoonful of uncut ground cinnamon into their mouth with
no water. All right, so here's the cinnamon, all right,

(43:55):
all right, here'll go. Or how about the tide pod challenge,
which was a twenty seventeen eighteen social media craze where
users were mainlining laundry pods because they were colorful. I

(44:16):
don't know, I have no insight. People died eating. Those
eight deaths were associated with ingestion of the packets, two
children under one year old and six in adults with
the history of dementia. This will never stop, and as
disinformation gets worse, I think we'll see these kinds of
things get more dangerous. But the copycats going to the

(44:37):
hospital is just another way that Tessica brown saga continued
kind of much longer than your average social media main character.
For some expected reasons. Pessica was willing to engage with
the story, and it was also a rare social media
moment that continued to develop as the days passed. I
remember observing this story you would want to check in

(44:58):
on how she was doing. All of the commenters are
wanting updates, wanting to know that she's okay. But once
the procedure with doctor Obang was complete, of course, things
began to sort of die down. But by this point
Tessica had a following. It was this weird mistake that
brought her to prominence. But Tessica is funny, she's attractive,

(45:20):
and she was interested in continuing to post and see
how this fluke could potentially improve her quality of life.
And it really seems to have a few quick things.
So there has been some speculation about how the money
from Tessica's GoFundMe was dispersed after she received the hair
procedure from doctor Obang for free. This is a report

(45:40):
from the New York Post, so take it with a
heavy grade of salt, but they stated that the GoFundMe
had been put under investigation by the platform when Tesska
announced that she would be donating at twenty three thousand
dollars raised in the early days of the gorilla glue
panic to local families and other causes. And to be clear,
there's no doubt that she did give a chunk of

(46:01):
that money, in the form of one thousand dollars big
checks to local families in Louisiana in need, and she
says to have donated the rest to doctor Obing's nonprofit
Restore Worldwide, Incorporated, to support his ongoing effort to provide complimentary,
reconstructive surgery to people in need abroad. Moving into late February,

(46:23):
still less than a month after her viral fame began,
Pessica became a news item again after returning to doctor
Obing for a follow up about her hair procedure, which
it turns out was also a consultation for additional work
with the doctor, including a breast lift, implants and some
liposection per the New York Post at the time. There

(46:43):
were lumps detected in Tessica's breast in these early consultations,
which were thankfully removed and she announced were benign. And
from there she moved ahead with the procedures, also including
some complimentary dental work from another provider in the LA area.
And so accusations lingered in her comments section that these

(47:04):
procedures were where the remaining go fundme money actually went,
but there is no proof to show things went one
way or another. But now with manager Gina Rodriguez at
her side, Pasica continued to forge ahead. And can you
guess what she did next. That's right, Pessica Brown released

(47:27):
a hair care product named Forever Hair just a couple
months later in June twenty twenty one. And yes, the
comments to this are what you'd expect. Now, it might
be gorilla glue in it, lol, get the bag, sis,
et cetera, and on and on, but this product got
press and I can understand why people would be curious

(47:47):
about it. At launch, Forever Hair sold to products an
eighteen dollars growth stimulating oil and a fourteen dollars Forever
Hold spray. And while these products didn't stick around on
the market, they did sell out, another testament to Tessica
Brown's staying power and the work taking place on her
management side. And before twenty twenty one was over, she'd

(48:09):
gone viral two more times, once for trying to dye
her graze before her scalp was healed enough to handle
more chemicals.

Speaker 5 (48:16):
I decided that I was going to win my real hair.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
But when I looked at it, you know, I had
a gray hair here, a gray head there, So me
thinking that my hair is strong enough to say chemicals, dude, No.

Speaker 5 (48:28):
It wasn't.

Speaker 1 (48:30):
And another time for doing what at least two other
sixteenth minute subjects have done in the past by my math.
Hasska made a play at a music career when she
released a rap single in November twenty twenty one.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
Almost went in a panic when I ran out, I
got I had a problem. I had the US Gorilla
Glucius assaulted over with Psilka the South Shot. I watched
it with everything I could think of, but nothing was
making progress.

Speaker 1 (48:50):
I was stopping with to do It's fun whatever. And
through twenty twenty two, Pessica continued to post regularly to
her platforms while continuing her business Yes, and in early
twenty twenty three, she made it all the way to
cable TV and appeared on a season of the Food
Network competition Worse Cooks in America after auditioning, I'm Tessaca Brown.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
I'm a daycare provider from Valla, Louisiana.

Speaker 5 (49:14):
What are you famous for?

Speaker 2 (49:15):
Already at a handsbress break over loo glue my house?

Speaker 9 (49:18):
Oh your gorilla, my help?

Speaker 5 (49:23):
It don't move in these days.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
Almost four years later, Tessca Brown's life is pretty similar
to what it was when she first became a viral star.
She still runs her daycare, she's had another child's and
by her account, she's now in a much happier relationship
than she was at the time. The difference of four
years mainly is that she also has millions of eyes

(49:46):
on her lifestyle content across platforms, mostly Instagram and now
a facet of her life TikTok and when we come back,
I speak exclusively with Tessica Brown herself. Welcome back to

(50:15):
sixteenth Minute. My name's Jamie Loftus and I just started
taking EIGHTYHD medication. I feel like half of my body
is underground and the other half is forty feet above
sea level? Is that how the human experience is supposed
to feel? Please discuss on the Reddit board. And today
we are revisiting the twenty twenty one saga of Tessica

(50:37):
Brown getting gorilla glue in her hair. As you've heard,
this story was wild and continued to stretch on. Tessica
is still active on Instagram and TikTok to this day,
and she recently switched management teams to continue expanding on
what she can do with her story and her online fame.
But now that it's been nearly four years since the

(50:59):
original event, I wanted to hear Tasaka's story in her
own words, and thankfully she was generous enough to give
us some of her time. So, without further ado, here's
my talk with Tasaka Brown.

Speaker 4 (51:10):
Hi.

Speaker 5 (51:10):
My name is Tessaka Brown.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
I'm forty three years old and I'm from Saint Fanol Parish,
New Orleans, Louisiana.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
I want to start by talking about your life a
little bit. Where are you from, how did you grow up?
I want to know a little bit more about you
prior to this moment.

Speaker 2 (51:28):
Okay, I'm from Louisiana, but I'm from like a little
small town right outside of New Orleans. It's called Saintanov Parish.
If you had to raise the children anyway, this will
be the place I'll go. I have five sisters, well,
four sisters, two brothers. I have five kids. I've been
on my day camp for ten years now. I had

(51:49):
a dance team when the glue thing first happened. I
made the dance team for my girls.

Speaker 8 (51:54):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
Are you still running the daycare now?

Speaker 2 (51:56):
Yes, ma'am.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
Yes, amazing because you were in your late thirties early
forties when this happened, and I talked to people with
such a wide age range for this show. What was
your relationship with the internet, like at the time that
this happened, did you post a lot? Yeah? What was
your relationship with the internet?

Speaker 5 (52:13):
I had one video on TikTok, only one.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
I used to go live a lot on Facebook, Like
Facebook was my thing, you know, because my kids was like,
you know, this is where you belong on Facebook? I
guess because you know, Yeah, that's so I heard. I
did a lot of posts, right right. I did a
lot of posting on Instagram, and like I said, I
went live a lot on Facebook, but only had one
video on TikTok.

Speaker 5 (52:38):
I had like a little singing my intro to TikTok.
That was the one video. Then came the Girl in Glub.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
You'd been using Facebook and Instagram for a long time.
Did you have audiences sort of like outside of your
general family or circle or was it?

Speaker 5 (52:55):
Okay, yes, I had.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
I had on Instagram. I had like I want to say,
like ten thousand five. And I feel like that was
because like I have the daycare, and we do I
do prom for the daycare.

Speaker 7 (53:06):
I do.

Speaker 5 (53:07):
Uh yeah, I do. I have pictures if you want see.

Speaker 2 (53:09):
I do parades every year, and I feel like I
got a lot of followers doing that.

Speaker 1 (53:14):
Like especially when you're a small business owner figuring out
how to make social media like kind of work for you.
So you had some idea of like how to make
social media work for you?

Speaker 2 (53:23):
Okay, right, yeah, now always to the point where I
post something. Now I'm looking to see how many people
watched it, who come in. Yeah, it's totally different from before.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
That's so interesting. I'm very excited to talk about that
sort of shift. But first, of course, we got to
go through the day itself. So I've seen the original
series of videos many times, what motivated you to post
this to TikTok, specifically my little girl, my daughter. So
she suggested, like, well, maybe someone here will know what

(53:54):
to do.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
Yeah, because the thing is, I kept saying, you know,
I don't know what else do? I don't know because
I was scared even tell them Mama, because I figured
she was gonna come over here, you know, slap me
in my head. You know, you shouldn't have did that.
So that's why I didn't want call her. But when
it got to the point where the ponytail just kept
getting tighter and tighter, it felt like my skelp you
know when your ladies fall asleep. Yeah, that's what it

(54:17):
felt like inside my head, like just tingling, yeah, just
singing all the time. So I'm like, you know what,
I have to call her mama, And we like to
call mama doctor Quinn medicine woman because she know pretty
much how to do. No matter what you say, this
lady could tell you exactly what to do and how
to get rid of it. So she came and we
did a whole bunch of stuff, and it's before the
TikTok gotcha, and absolutely nothing worked. Nothing, nothing she did

(54:41):
work and I knew if my mama didn't know, I
have to go you know, social media. So my baby
was like, MA put it on TikTok. Yeah, and I'm like,
I only have like one video on TikTok. She said, MA,
put it on TikTok.

Speaker 5 (54:51):
So I put it on.

Speaker 2 (54:52):
TikTok that night, and I'm thinking, I'm guessing like nine
o'clock at night, I put it on TikTok. Got up
the next morning, you know, getting my children ready for school.
Girl jumps up because I wake them up. I go
to the doors and I start waking everybody up. So
the oldest one after she got up, you know, she
check her phone before she even get up and rushed
her teeth. Yeah, she she come running and I'm like,
what's drowm Ma? You got over a Meetian followers?

Speaker 5 (55:15):
Girl? You going viral?

Speaker 2 (55:17):
I'm like, well, wait, did somebody say you know how
I could get it off mine?

Speaker 5 (55:20):
You word but the wrong thing.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
I'm like, you know what, dude, I need somebody to
help me get this off. She was word with the numbers.
I'm trying to, you know, get this off or whatever.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (55:29):
So yeah, I started going through the comments. Oh my god, those.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
Yeah, what was this first wave of comments like listen.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
I promise you I knew it was going to be
like people around here, that's gonna be like, oh, you
know that was stupid or that was dumb. I didn't
think for one second the world was gonna you know
what I'm.

Speaker 5 (55:52):
Saying, yea.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
And it got to the point where they telling me,
you know, of course I'm dumb.

Speaker 5 (55:58):
That was stupid.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
And then letters started coming to the house. I literally
got a letter to the house. And the thing is
they had my they had my address because of course
I have the daycare.

Speaker 5 (56:09):
So everything was and I.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
Didn't think again, I didn't think that there was ann
do like it did, because I probably would have took
all that off first. But I just thought, you know,
it's gonna be people around here. They started sending me stuff.
They was called the phone. The phone was just ridiculous.
I ended up taking my phone and through my phone,
I'm not answering absolutely nobody else because again my phone
numb was on social media, so I mean, they called

(56:32):
you stupid, soon answer the phone, you dumb like it
was bad.

Speaker 5 (56:35):
And then the letter, when the letter came, it was.

Speaker 2 (56:39):
They drew me right, yeah, with my head cut off
with I'm.

Speaker 5 (56:44):
Holding it like this.

Speaker 1 (56:45):
Oh my god.

Speaker 5 (56:47):
It was some bad, bad people, it was.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
And the thing is, you know, like sometimes you think
like people think this stuff, but for you to really
say this stuff and do this stuff, I thought it
was completely a line because I can say a lot
of stuff on social media, but I don't I would
send it in a text message to my sisters.

Speaker 5 (57:04):
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (57:05):
I'm never gonna post that that was really really hurtful,
and don't say like maybe three days after it happened,
dragged me for two weeks.

Speaker 5 (57:14):
She called me a nothing girl. She didn't put this in.
I hate they kept saying I was cloud chased. So
let me tell you that. Man, if anybody that really
know me, I don't like to be embarrassed.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
I hate being embarrassed if I'm outside, and I hate
being embarrassed.

Speaker 5 (57:30):
So that me doing that.

Speaker 2 (57:33):
Trust me, I wouldn't did it if I If I
had knew, I would have just probably died in my
head like that. I would have never put it, I
promise you, which is so unfair.

Speaker 1 (57:43):
I mean, I totally hear you. And part of what
kind of confuses me about people's reactions. I mean, people
are just out of their mind and always looking for
someone to be cruel to. I mean, I feel like
that's rule number one of the Internet. I've been so
confused about how the TikTok algorithm works. I feel like
everyone is just erasing the fact that you weren't trying
to reach anyone outside of like your general area. But

(58:06):
because no one knows how the TikTok algorithm works, it
just got sucked up and like regurgitated to everybody. And
how was that your fault?

Speaker 5 (58:15):
It was bad.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
I mean I want to go back to those first
couple of days as well, because I mean, just going
back through the story, it seems like you're not only
dealing with suddenly the eyeballs and attention of millions of people,
but you're also still dealing with the physical problem. So
how do you manage those first couple of days where
there's like two really stressful things going on.

Speaker 2 (58:37):
We started looking at some of the comments and they
were saying, well, use this, use that, use this, So
now glogle be going acetone the stuff I started using Now,
of course it was pretty you know, as I'm trying
to keep getting off myself. But now I'm following what
they're telling me. So now I got cotton bowls stuck

(58:59):
to it. The inside is it's not just tingling is burning.
That first day, Judy, Judy called me and that's from
Colleida School.

Speaker 1 (59:09):
Did you just find the TikTok?

Speaker 5 (59:11):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (59:12):
Yeah, and she of course again my number was on it.
She said, oh, well, I'm about to send you a
bunch of stuff.

Speaker 5 (59:17):
Okay, thank you. You know it's something that's gonna being there,
you know, get it off.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
Yeah, oh no, this is to grow you have back. Well,
we're still trying to get it off at this point.
So my sister was like, you know what, like when
it all started, she said, you know what, You're gonna
have to have surgery, you know what I'm saying to
get this off. Like, dude, nobody gonna give me surgery,
you know, to get this off. So now she's answering
my phone. She gave me the lady Gina, a lady

(59:44):
named Jane. She said, call on him on the side.
I ended up calling Gina next.

Speaker 5 (59:47):
Morning and.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
Eventual, but I'm still wondering, like when is somebody gonna
tell me, you know, like what I can do? You
know what I'm saying, everybody's trying to tell me what
they can do for me and what they can get,
but I'm still have a headache.

Speaker 5 (01:00:00):
My head is burning now, like it's just nobody's telling
me what to do.

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
So she called me back and said, well, I talked
to a doctor and the doctor said he could take
it off, and not only can he take it off,
you're gonna take it off for free. Three days later,
I was in Los Angeles, and.

Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
So is this all happening in less than a week?

Speaker 5 (01:00:18):
Kind of less than a week?

Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
Wow?

Speaker 5 (01:00:20):
Okay, I was in Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
What he did when she first called him, he thought
it was a joke until she was like, no, I'm
really really serious. So he went and bought a can
of gorilla glue and he sprayed it on a mannequin head.
So he went to putting all kinds of stuff together
to see if you could take it out, and whatever
he put together, he was able to take it out
the mannequan head, and they flew me out there, and
I tell you, they flew me out there. It took

(01:00:43):
four hours for the surgery, and when I woke up,
I was able to Oh my god, I promise you.

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
I'm trying to wrap my head around what a crazy
week that is for you. You start, I mean because
the day, the day you posted the TikTok, it was
just a normal work day, right, you Right? And then
a week later you're in Beverly Hills getting a surgery
that was developed just for you.

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
Like even my parents that were coming to the door,
they was like, oh girl, I just thought you liked
that hairstyle, like nobody nobody knew why it was like that.

Speaker 5 (01:01:16):
But that long?

Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
How long was your hair stuck before you posted to TikTok?

Speaker 5 (01:01:22):
Over thirty days? Okay, old the thirty days.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
And it's just like it, just like I said it,
just the ponytail thing is just kept getting tighter and
it was tangling in the inside, and it got to
the point where I just couldn't do it any more.
I'm taking a vlpms like I'm eating M and m's.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
When this starts to go viral, When you start to
get this like absurd amount of attention that no one
could be prepared for it, much less with their scalp
on fire, How did your family and friends react, How
did they come together for you? I think it's very
funny like the generation gap of your daughter being like
the numbers.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
Oh no, well, listen, my sisters was like that too.
My mama was the only one that sat there and
cried with me. My little sister, she was there with
me through the whole thing. I'm talking from coming from
the hospital because you know, I ended up going to
the emergency room because after they was telling me all
the stuff they use, this is when it got beyond
I can't even take it in the moment. I went

(01:02:19):
to the emergency room and the lady was like, oh,
I just seen you.

Speaker 5 (01:02:24):
She just seen me on TikTok. Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
So she get me in and she she has this
act tone stuff and she's trying to get it out.
So it's took the point where I'm going to be
in this hospital. So it's either me being in the
hospital all this time and end up having a heart
attack because as she's taking the stuff off, it's burning
so bad to my pressure kept going up. It was
so I asked her, can she give me the stuff

(01:02:47):
and then I could go home and do it, and
then you know, my sister and Mama they could take
their time and you know, do it some at a time,
but it was just burning so much. And then like
the next day, that's when Gina told me about doctor.
So we just stopped and just waited to go out there.
Right before that, my sister started. My little baby said
she started the goal fundme because she was like, you know,

(01:03:09):
you're gonna need surgery. Then she said, once she's gonna
be bold, you're gonna need wigs. And if anybody know,
these wigs not cheap these days. So she started to
go fund me and I think she put it for
I think it was like five thousand dollars she put
for the goal fundme.

Speaker 5 (01:03:23):
The goal fund Me raised twenty six thousand dollars. Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
Then they started saying that I'm suing Gorilla Glue. Now people, oh,
they want their money back from the goal fundme. And
this is when people went crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
On Wait, can you just where did that rumor come from?

Speaker 5 (01:03:42):
I don't even know.

Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
I don't even know because listen when this happened, when
I seen the numbers and every everybody was talking about it,
I emailed girla Glue myself and I told them I'm
sorry for all of this, you know attention, I love
y'all products.

Speaker 5 (01:03:58):
I'm sorry and that was it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
Yeah, it's super any bad. Yeah you didn't know that.

Speaker 5 (01:04:04):
Yeah, because I didn't want that. I didn't want that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
I didn't want that, and I didn't want no negative stuff.
But then gorilla glue and seeing something like, you know,
just a bunch of pre publicity. Everybody was buying it
just to make these videos.

Speaker 1 (01:04:15):
So this rumor came up that you were suing gorilla
glue and then people got upset. How did that play out?

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
Uh, this is I did it on purpose, just the
super gorilla glue. And here's the thing again, I have
a daycap. I've been having this daycap for ten years. Yeah,
I'm okay, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, I didn't
need I felt like I'm gonna say this. I felt
like with the whole daycap, I was doing way better
in life before this happened.

Speaker 1 (01:04:40):
I understand why no one trusts anyone on the internet,
but it's so obvious you didn't post a lot to TikTok.
You have a whole life and you can't control what
goes viral on TikTok. Like it seems completely random. How
How does where do things land? With the with the
gofund me in the longer term.

Speaker 2 (01:04:59):
Okay, with the GoFundMe, I ended up taking it down
and because I even had to make it do a
whole appeal because they messaging the go fund me people,
so we had to do a whole appeal. And then
when he sent this to me three thousand of the dollars,
I came back home and I gave three different families

(01:05:20):
one thousand dollars. And then with the rest of it,
I gave the doctor obain because he did the surgeon
for me for free. He did the surgeon for free,
and then he goes to Africa. He goes all kind
of plaghana, He goes everywhere, and he do all of
these surgeons for you know, like the baby with the
klep lips, and he really do like all kinds of
free surgeries. So I felt like, if I give this
to him, that can help him help a lot of

(01:05:43):
more people. Then they told me, oh, that was dumb.
You should have never gave them money. Like nothing I did,
nothing I did was okay. Everything I did was wrong.
They fussed at me for doing the go fundme, they fussed.

Speaker 5 (01:05:55):
At me from giving it away. It was just nothing.
Absolutely nothing I did.

Speaker 1 (01:05:59):
It was Okay, we'll be right back with more of
my talk with TESSAA Brown. Welcome back to sixteenth minute.

(01:06:20):
I never used chat GPT because I'm ethically opposed to
it and it scared me. However, last night I was
missing my dad, and so I went on chat GPT
and I asked chat GPT who was Mike Loftis, hoping
to read something like nice about my dad and folks.
Chat GPT told me Mike Loftus was comedian and podcaster

(01:06:43):
Jamie Loftus's ex boyfriend or ex partner. So I dated
my dead dad according to the scary computer love that
that's what the historical register will show. And here's the
rest of my conversation with Tessaca Brown. So you go
go to LA. Thankfully you're able to get this resolved.

(01:07:04):
I guess before because I want to talk about how
the management stuff sort of came together originally. But I
do want to talk about there were also some copycats.
How did that come to what?

Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
Okay, the girl with the purple hair, boy, I don't
know if it was a girl, but I'm sorry, I
don't know, but that person did it. They didn't do
her as nearly as bad as they did me, and
she was trying to prove a point that oh, you
can put this on the ticket right off, and she
ended up in hospital. Then it was another man that
put gorilla glue on a cup. He had to get

(01:07:36):
the top of his lip cut off. I'm telling y'all,
don't do this, like this is serious, right, They like
I didn't. I didn't get that at all, But nobody
said nothing about them talking about me like I was
the dumb one.

Speaker 1 (01:07:49):
You have that stuff. And then there's also, I mean,
the media starts to pick up on this, How did
you manage that? How did you decide who to engage
with or who not to all, well, you're with this
medical emergency.

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
I talked with Jess hilarious, okay, I like talk with
her on the phone and his thing. I've been loving
her since long time ago, and when I seen that
she was calling me, I was scared to answer because
I know she's a comedian, so I feel like you're
going to be like, you know, But she was like test, babe,
you know what's going on. And I've told her what happened,

(01:08:22):
and she was like, I'm so sorry.

Speaker 5 (01:08:23):
That made me. The love for I had for her
win a thousand plus.

Speaker 2 (01:08:27):
It was a lot of people like saying, you know
it's gonna be okay, you know you're gonna get through this.

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):
But then it was those other ones you specifically mentioned
the Wendy Williams coverage. As those things come through, how
do you take that in stride? How does that affect you?

Speaker 2 (01:08:42):
Before Wendy would said everything, she was saying, I love Wendy,
you know me and mind watching Windy.

Speaker 5 (01:08:46):
All the time, like you know how you doing all
the time.

Speaker 2 (01:08:48):
Yeah, So what happened was as she just kept every
day this later had my picture on her screen, my
mama called the show and she played it on a show.

Speaker 5 (01:09:00):
She played it. My mama called this show and say, Wendy,
my baby made a mistake. You know, I love you.
My baby made a mistake. Can you please cut us
some slack?

Speaker 2 (01:09:07):
And then after that she bought a bunch of shirts
for everybody that was in an audience.

Speaker 5 (01:09:11):
I said, I don't like her, but you know okay.

Speaker 1 (01:09:14):
So I want to take you back to LA. You've
gotten this surgery done successfully, you can finally think a
little clear more clearly, and you've been connected with Gina.
So how does how does that relationship come together. And
how did you decide to be like I need a
manager to to sort of navigate this time.

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
Well, she called me, like I said, and I called
her the next day and she was like, you know,
this is big.

Speaker 5 (01:09:40):
I know you're trying to get it off, and but
this is big. I can do this and I can
do that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
What kind of things she.

Speaker 5 (01:09:48):
Was honey, booboos, manager, I know a lot of people.
You know, I can get it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:54):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:09:54):
She told me like she can find somebody.

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
I didn't know she really gonna find somebody, but she
was saying she could find somebody and she can and
helped me through this whole thing.

Speaker 5 (01:10:01):
And that was it. It was a lot of people
wanted to.

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
Do interviews and I didn't, you know, know what to
do or how to So she set up like she
would send me a whole like layout, you have an
interview at this time, interview at this time, interview at
this time.

Speaker 5 (01:10:16):
How do all the interviews?

Speaker 4 (01:10:16):
Call it?

Speaker 5 (01:10:17):
Lot a noise done?

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
Get ready for the next one. And like I said,
the biggest thing I didn't care about the interviews. The
biggest thing she did for me was finding doctbang because that's.

Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
Like life changing.

Speaker 5 (01:10:28):
It was.

Speaker 1 (01:10:28):
This is something I've talked with a lot of people
about in the past of you know, going from your
everyday life to all of a sudden having a spreadsheet
of like, here are my interviews for the day. What
does that change like where all of a sudden you're
like a public figure overnight.

Speaker 2 (01:10:45):
But let me tell you the thing was, I feel like,
if I can do all those interviews over now, it
would be better because every interview I was doing, I was.

Speaker 5 (01:10:53):
Crying, like ugly crying every interview.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
Yeah. Yeah, they asked me questions, and I mean, you know,
it's just it had just happened. I'm ugly crying on
it re interview.

Speaker 5 (01:11:00):
Listen. I lost twenty pounds and everything.

Speaker 8 (01:11:02):
It was bad.

Speaker 5 (01:11:04):
It was, it was really really bad.

Speaker 2 (01:11:06):
And then like two weeks after we got the glue off,
you know, he.

Speaker 5 (01:11:09):
Gave me these.

Speaker 1 (01:11:11):
Oh really, mm hmm, wait what walk me through that?

Speaker 2 (01:11:17):
He did a mommy makeover two weeks later, and you know,
since I since I've been through so much, he was saying,
i'mna do your mommy makeover. So he gave me breasting
plants and he did a he did lightful suction.

Speaker 5 (01:11:29):
On my stomach.

Speaker 1 (01:11:30):
Wait the doctor who did the same doctor. Yes, wait
hold on, so wait do you ended up? Do you
stay in LA for a little while after after after
the glue thing?

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):
I think I stayed for like two days and then
we came back home. Two weeks later we went back.

Speaker 1 (01:11:46):
You flew you flew out to UH to get implants
and what else.

Speaker 5 (01:11:51):
A tummy tuck and then they gave me the dose.

Speaker 1 (01:11:55):
Wow, So like this is okay, this is like the
craziest month every So you go back to LA, you
have these procedures done. What happens then, because now it's
like if like you like became a social media star overnight.
You go through this first wave of interviews where I think,
very understandably you're very emotional. I'm always curious about that

(01:12:17):
turning point of like, Okay, now that the immediate huge
moment is over, what am I going to do now?
How much do I want to engage with this moving forward?

Speaker 5 (01:12:29):
Well?

Speaker 2 (01:12:30):
What happened was I went to LA for something. I
don't know why I was going, but I was going
for something else. Right, I get off the plane and
my phone it's messages out of missed all kind of
so I called them I'm like, what's going on? You
need to talk to your daughters and talk to them now,
Well what is going on? The teacher came to one
of my children and say, oh, we're so sorry for

(01:12:51):
y'all lost. So they're thinking I went on this plane
and a plane crashed. The internet SAIDA died. It was,
it was listen, it was everywhere. So now it got
to the point where.

Speaker 5 (01:13:04):
I'm on Live.

Speaker 2 (01:13:05):
Oh I thought you died, And still to today, I
can get a Live and somebody's gonna say, oh, they
told me you passed.

Speaker 5 (01:13:11):
Away, like they literally killed me. So then a lot
of stuff started dying off.

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
And so how long after the original incident was this?

Speaker 5 (01:13:19):
Oh this happened maybe with a month after I died.

Speaker 1 (01:13:21):
So gorilla glue incident, surgery interviews that implants dead dead.

Speaker 2 (01:13:29):
Like I said, all right, so if you know, if
anybody that really really know me know me in this situation,
I always try to make it as a joke. I
always try to make light of any situation, just like
I tell people now right now, if I watched the video,
I understand why people thought it was funny. I understand
why people thought it was a joke because you know
what that was stupid that was done. But I understand

(01:13:53):
now why people thought it was funny. I didn't understand
then because I was so angry. Sure, but I understand now.
I already thought it was funny.

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
You had you started developing a hair product from there? Yes,
how did that come about? What was that process?

Speaker 4 (01:14:07):
Like?

Speaker 2 (01:14:08):
Like I said, doctor Bang put some stuff together and
my hair like all the little ball spots that I had,
I had like ball spots here, but I still had
some hair. But I went got it cut like shorter
than after I first had the surgery. The stuff that he,
you know, had my head growing with, we bottled it up.
Now I was scared, Don't get me wrong. I was
scared to put it up because all I'm thinking, if

(01:14:29):
I was somebody, why would I want to buy something
for my hair from up?

Speaker 5 (01:14:33):
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (01:14:34):
That first date, I made seventy thousand. I didn't make
you all, not me personally, but yeah, I had to
split it with, you know, the people that was putting
it together, the manager seventy thousand dollars in the first day.
And then we added edge control, we added some hair spray.
But what happened with that demand was too much because
the people that I was doing it was like, you know,

(01:14:55):
like a little there weren't no.

Speaker 5 (01:14:57):
Big time company.

Speaker 2 (01:14:58):
The demand couldn't keep up with what they was doing,
and we couldn't find nobody else to do it. So
that was a man. That was it. It was going
after that, and everybody keeps saying, when are you bringing
them back? Because the thing is they worked. You know
how people be like, oh, I'm using this, you know,
just so I can get people to buy it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:15:14):
It really he really grew from there.

Speaker 1 (01:15:16):
I mean because at this point we're kind of like
a few months out for me original you mentioned earlier,
like your attitude towards social media changed significantly. What does
that mean interacting with social media after this first wave
of craziness had passed.

Speaker 2 (01:15:32):
Before the craziness it was, you know, like I said,
go on live talk about a football game.

Speaker 5 (01:15:38):
I'm just at the poke with my kids. We just
you know, live whatever. Now I'm on live.

Speaker 2 (01:15:43):
Hey, y'all, tap the screen, share the live Let's get
these number.

Speaker 5 (01:15:46):
Why am I doing all this? You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 (01:15:49):
I post a video every five minutes. I go back
to see how many views I shouldn't be doing it,
Like I feel like that's crazy. I have never worried
about numbers before.

Speaker 5 (01:16:00):
It changed you.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
It changes you, It really changes you. I try to
keep my hair done now. Once upon a time, baby,
I would get on social media and just like yo,
you know whatever, whatever.

Speaker 5 (01:16:11):
But now I have to make sure my lashes is done.

Speaker 2 (01:16:13):
I got to make sure because at this point, because
I have a couple of videos after that that went viral.
So now I'm like, oh, well, I don't know what
video and go viral. So I got to try to
make myself presentable. Like even my children, they'll come show
me now it's you know, at first it was they
were just posting stuff. Now let me see this, bring
me this phone, let me see this video.

Speaker 5 (01:16:33):
I need to see what's in the background. I need
to see if anything on the floor.

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
It's draining. I'm gonna tell you that it's draining.

Speaker 1 (01:16:39):
It sounds like the kind of thing that once it
starts like, you don't you don't really go back right now.

Speaker 2 (01:16:46):
Some people, if they do, you know, God bless them.
But I would have never thought this is how I
would be when it comes.

Speaker 5 (01:16:52):
To social media at this point. Now, don't get me wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
I still post like me and my kids dancing like
you know, just you know, little cute things.

Speaker 5 (01:17:00):
Yeah, I don't post nothing. Oh well, let's do this
because it's gonna go viral. I don't do that.

Speaker 1 (01:17:04):
The answer is either like quit or you have to
totally like go with it, like get off altogether.

Speaker 5 (01:17:10):
Because you know what's another bad thing? Don't recomments?

Speaker 2 (01:17:13):
That what every ready keeps telling me, stop reading a comments,
stop reading the comments. Of course me reading the comments
crying of the crime, because God them people in those comments.
My thing is because this is a lot of stuff
that I see that I could go make a comment on,
but I wouldn't make a comment. I'll screenshot it and
make the comment and send it in my sister's group.
I'm not gonna go on social media. Another thing is
if I wasn't as strong as I feel like I am,

(01:17:36):
I would have underlived myself a long time ago. This
is how bad it was.

Speaker 5 (01:17:43):
This is how bad it was.

Speaker 2 (01:17:44):
And one boy he ended up coming in my inbox
and he was like, I'm so sorry, miss Tessaka, but
I'm in this troll.

Speaker 5 (01:17:51):
Group and we go around and we just troll people,
and I'm sorry, this happened to you this.

Speaker 2 (01:17:58):
I blocked them because you're not gonna play me, you know,
in my face over here and then try to come
in my inbox and tell me you're sorry.

Speaker 5 (01:18:04):
So I ended up bl I saw it blocking. Listen.

Speaker 2 (01:18:06):
I think I hit like a thousands of people that's blocked.
And one of my sons was like, no, you don't
block nobody. You know, any engagement is.

Speaker 5 (01:18:15):
No, no, no, no, no, I'm blocking you.

Speaker 2 (01:18:17):
It's to the point where when I look on social media,
unless I'm like, when I look on social media, the comments,
I would think everybody in the.

Speaker 5 (01:18:24):
Road just loved me, But no, I had my son.

Speaker 2 (01:18:26):
He's on it and he's just taking off all the
bad ones before before I can see him.

Speaker 1 (01:18:30):
I think it's so cool and also just like from
a like internet culture perspective, interesting that your kids are
helping you navigate this too, because they, you know, were
like born with phones in their hands. I'm assuming yeah,
just because of like the generational difference, How did they
sort of help you through this moment? Was there anything
where their feelings about what you should do or how

(01:18:51):
you should interact with social media was different?

Speaker 2 (01:18:53):
Okay, this was the week I didn't even have it
off my head yet. When this first happened, there was
a picture going around with a lady like with pieces
of hair like everywhere, and of course they say that
was me.

Speaker 5 (01:19:04):
So I let them know, Hey, you know, y'all know
that's not me. Look at my head. You know it's
still here, y'all know that's not me. Go to school.

Speaker 2 (01:19:11):
Nobody told them about that. But they started singing the
Gorilla Blue Girl's song. So my baby came home crying.
I just let her know, Hey, you know what you do,
learn the song and next time they sing it, y'all
singing with them. But then I'm trying to encourage them.
And now go in the bathroom and I'll start crying
because it's like because I put them, you know, I

(01:19:33):
would go cry because you know, I felt like I
put them in that situation and I didn't want my
children to be bullied behind something you know that I did.

Speaker 5 (01:19:40):
But those same.

Speaker 2 (01:19:41):
Friends, yea, now it's like, oh my god, it's miss Tessica.

Speaker 5 (01:19:44):
They won't take pictures.

Speaker 1 (01:19:45):
It seems like, I mean, a lot has changed, and
also not a lot has changed, right? Has your day
to day shifted that much since the whole ordeal.

Speaker 2 (01:19:54):
No, I still get up at five thirty in the
morning do my daycare. On a Saturday, I try to
put a bunch of videos together so I can have,
you know, stuff to post during the week. When it's
time for the dance team to do anything, we still
have practice. No, it's pretty much the same thing, except
for anywhere I.

Speaker 5 (01:20:09):
Go, No matter where it is.

Speaker 2 (01:20:11):
Oh my god, I went to Angola to go see
my uncle. Like, now I think all of that stuff
is cute, like when people call me a girl, little girl,
and now it's like, hey. At first, I kept saying
my name is Tessica. I cried so much, my name
is Tessca. But now it's like whatever, I'm gonna go
ahead on and run with it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:27):
What motivates you to maintain this relationship with social media?

Speaker 2 (01:20:32):
Those little girls, my little girls, and it's a lot.
Listen in between all of this, I promise you it's
so much. But next month we start shooting the movie
about what happened?

Speaker 1 (01:20:44):
Well, wait, how did that come about?

Speaker 2 (01:20:46):
It's his name is Elvin Gray. He's a director that
usually well he just posts. He makes movies about people
that went viral. This movie I'm going to.

Speaker 5 (01:20:57):
Be in it.

Speaker 2 (01:20:58):
Like the other movies that he make pretty much just
taking stuff from TikTok seeing how it went. Oh, you
takeing stuff from the headlines. But with this one he
has all the information from me.

Speaker 1 (01:21:08):
So is that going to be made like you're acting
in it or is it documentary?

Speaker 5 (01:21:11):
I will be in it. I will be in it.

Speaker 2 (01:21:13):
I will be playing myself. Yeah, they're gonna see. They're
gonna see, like what happened right before I put this
glue in my head? Well, if I was a normal
human being that bullied me, I would be like, oh
my god, this girl was really going through a lot,
and we just put more People have no clue what
I was going through, like in the house by myself

(01:21:34):
before this glue thing, Like yeah, the day this glue
thing happened, right, But they'll be able to see it
in the movie.

Speaker 1 (01:21:40):
Outside of that, what is next for you? Do you
have like bigger social media aspirations or is it just
sort of maintaining your normal life.

Speaker 2 (01:21:50):
Well, I have a new manager now, and I was
telling him that, you know, I wanted to do a
swim suit line. It's a couple of things that I
want to do because like even when this first happened,
was like, girl, you have to leave that daycare, loon.
This is what I've always wanted to do. I worked
at a daycare for seven years before Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane
Katrina came and we was, you know, displaced for like

(01:22:11):
two years. We came back and I seen that things
were happening around here. I ended up getting a job,
ended up quitting.

Speaker 5 (01:22:17):
But this is what I love.

Speaker 2 (01:22:18):
I would never I don't care what happens. I will
never ever let this daycare go.

Speaker 1 (01:22:24):
My final question is just sort of reflecting on these
like last couple of years at this point, and the
emotional and also like life changing dirty you have been
on when you reflect on it now, would you do
anything differently? And was there anything that really sort of
surprised you?

Speaker 2 (01:22:41):
Okay, so as far as would I change anything, promise
you wouldn't never used the.

Speaker 1 (01:22:47):
Girl, Well yeah, never, wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (01:22:50):
Have never, and then everything I'll just be, you know,
still normal. Yeah, but I think that's the biggest thing.

Speaker 5 (01:22:55):
Look, don't use it. If you don't have it, go
get it. If you can't get it, go without it.
That's it.

Speaker 1 (01:23:02):
Thank you so much to Tessica for her time and
her insight and keep your eyes peeled for her upcoming projects.
You can follow her on Instagram or TikTok at. I'm
underscore d underscore Old Lady, and if nothing else, I
hope this is the kind of sixteenth minute story that
reminds you that people are people first. If you had

(01:23:23):
been stressed enough to post an egregious l this could
have been you. So have some grace. And when it
comes to capitalizing on these random internet moments, again, consider
who that capitalizing is supporting. If it's an already rich
person exploiting followers to become richer, because there are Mormons
who took PPP loans to Buya Chanelle purses, get them

(01:23:46):
check the list of episodes. But if they're capitalizing on
their moment to keep getting by with joy and aren't
hurting anyone, chill out. Tessica's awesome. Thanks for listening and
for your moment of fun. Here's some more Regina King
as tessaka brown by Beat.

Speaker 10 (01:24:05):
Every day, as many as one people fall victim to
use the gorilla glue in place of a beauty product,
and they deserve compensation.

Speaker 7 (01:24:13):
We all do. You should not have to go through
life with hand like a lego man. Because one time
you use gorilla glue instead of that's way of Greece, we.

Speaker 5 (01:24:24):
Will get you moneys for gorilla glue or the next.

Speaker 7 (01:24:27):
Best Thing, a lifetime supply of gorilla glue.

Speaker 1 (01:24:35):
Sixteenth Minute as a production of fol Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
It is written, hosted, and produced by me Jamie Lostis.
Our executive producers are Sophia Lickterman and Robert Evans. Denas
and Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is
from Grant Crater and Pet. Shout outs to our dog

(01:24:58):
producer Anderson. My Kat's for you, Casper and my pet
rock Bird. You will outlive us all. Bye m

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}tessica brown, the gorilla glue girl