zoë roth the disaster girl: a lifetime of virality

When Zoë Roth was four years old, her dad snapped a photo of her in front of a neighborhood home being burned with its owners permission to clear the land -- and the rest is internet history. This week, Jamie goes in depth with Zoë twenty years later about becoming a meme just as she started to form memories, how she's chosen to interact (or not interact) with it over the years, and why she chose to forge her own path. Also, a deep dive into meme managers, and why there are so many dead cats with representation.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. Hello sixteenth minute listeners. Jamie here just
reminding you that if you're in the LA area, or
even if you're not, we're doing a big Bechdel Cast
celebration show that is my movie podcast that I co
host with Caitlin Dorante at Dynasty Typewriter right after the
Oscars on March second, at seven point thirty. It's going

(00:22):
to be a big show with all of our favorite
guests from the show and attendance. We're going to be
cosplaying as Oscar winners, We're going to be talking about
the ceremony, and we're just going to be doing stand
up and celebrating women in film. How about it? So
you can get tickets irl still if you are interested,
and if you're not in the area, we are also

(00:43):
selling streaming tickets that you can get at the link
in the description. See you there. Enjoy the episode. Name
a story about becoming famous as a kid that is normal.
You kind of can't like it's an abnormal state of affairs.
But we only really see a couple different kinds of

(01:05):
narratives that are centered around this kind of fame. The
first is this big breakout moment where a kid who
enjoys performing does so on a larger scale than most
kids could dream of. In a lot of cases, were
led to marvel at their media training. Wow, they're a
little adult. Macaulay Culkin comes to mind.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Did you want to go into the business or did
your mom and dad think it would be a good
thing for you?

Speaker 3 (01:30):
How'd it happened?

Speaker 4 (01:31):
Well, just kind of popped up, like my friend, well
she was a stage manager, so like.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
At a Broadway show though, right or Broadway.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yeah, or as the case may be. Wow, they're a
little sex object. Here is Natalie Portman reflecting on her
career as a kid.

Speaker 5 (01:52):
Being sexualized as a child. I think took away from
my own sexuality because it made me afraid and it
made me feel like the way that I could be
safe was to be like, I'm conservative and I'm like
serious and you should respect me, and I'm smart and like,
don't look.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
At me that way.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
And then we get a variation on a few adult
narratives for former child stars. There's the where did they go? Narrative,
which is almost always answered by they're a person. They
have a normal life in their normal There's the kid
that moves seamlessly into stardom as an adult, occasionally referencing
the more uncomfortable parts of child stardom in interviews. There's

(02:36):
the most troubling outcome where a child star grows into
a very troubled adult for myriad reasons, whether it's the
lingering effects of financial or parental exploitation, abuse at the
hands of exploitative Hollywood types, or any mix of mental
health and substance abuse, issues that could happen to anybody
and can be exacerbated by the pressure of living so

(02:59):
publicly so young. Because while there are plenty of redemption
narratives on a longer timeline for stars like this, most
young celebrities who either struggle or are just normally rebellious
like kids are, are shamed in the moment, which is
never in the history of the world helped anybody. But
as time goes on, the nature of child stardom has

(03:21):
changed with entertainment mediums. A lot of the narratives that
I grew up with focused on kids that got their
start in film or TV, or may have been discovered
online and then made the transition to film and TV
and never looked back. So how did it happen?

Speaker 5 (03:36):
Did someone call you and say hey, I saw your
song on YouTube.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
Well, first basically.

Speaker 6 (03:43):
I got this email from was it.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
I think it was like Mari Povich.

Speaker 7 (03:50):
Oh yeah, he wanted me on his show to do
this conversation, and my mom.

Speaker 8 (03:54):
Was like no.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
There was a whole generation of millennial and Gen Z
musicians who were discovered either on YouTube or SoundCloud, and
slowly you'd stop hearing stories about kids being discovered at
the mall and started hearing about them being found online.
And the ethics there are just as murky, if not
further complicated by that. But the pursuits here are pretty

(04:19):
consistent music, acting, occasionally dance. The exploitation has been terrifyingly consistent,
launching kids into a world that they and often their
families have no understanding of, and into a pretty exploitative
industry while they're really vulnerable. But when the Internet took over,
there was this new, separate group of kids who became

(04:41):
famous just because they did. Sure, some had posted something
online themselves, but in the internet is a void sense,
not in the sense that it was attempting to be
noticed or famous in any meaningful way. And in the

(05:04):
last few years we've started to hear from the now
adult former children. Surely there's an easier way to say
that who were turned into lifestyle content before they could
possibly consent to it. These young adults are the results
of family vlogs and reality TV, kids that don't have
performance aspirations, but who are conditioned to view their life

(05:26):
as a performance for others, even if things are remarkably
different for them when the cameras turn off.

Speaker 9 (05:32):
Now, we're going to go to our GMA exclusive with
the eldest daughter of mom influencer Ruby Frankie, who pleaded
guilty to child abuse last year. Sherry Frankie is now
sharing her story in a new book, including allegations about
her mom's relationship with her former mentor.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
But in the not too distant past, for some kids,
their fame online was out of the control of them,
their parents, and basically everybody. These are people whose old
home videos were up floated before a lot of people
understood what happened when viral fame came their way. A
prominent example is the parents of the Charlie Bitme kids

(06:09):
were not expecting or trying for their video to become
a global household topic, and in the case of some
early meme stars, the moment or image that goes viral
wasn't even uploaded by them, and in some cases was
a photo or video clip that was from years ago.

(06:29):
I jump right to the uh irma gird girl if
you were on the internet in twenty twelve. Here she
is telling BuzzFeed about how she learned this old image
had been posted of her. Years later.

Speaker 8 (06:41):
I started getting messages from my mom wondering why my
photo was all over the internet and that there was
some kind of German writing on my photo and it
was all over and I was like, okay, Mom, I
know she does not know.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
How the internet worked, so I just ignore.

Speaker 3 (06:55):
But then I get a message.

Speaker 8 (06:56):
From a friend from high school and she says, Hey,
just so you know that this other guy who went
to high school with is sharing that photo of you
all over Facebook.

Speaker 10 (07:05):
And I did end up messaging him like.

Speaker 8 (07:07):
Hey, I wouldn't mind if you just ask, but it's
a really stranger just doing this without my consent, Like
what's going on.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
But no matter how one becomes famous, whether they're at
the Oscars or assigning booms to snack foods on TikTok,
there is this underlying expectation that no matter how fame
comes your way, you should probably want it right at
this point. To suggest you wouldn't want it can be
regarded as kind of weird or anomaly. I mean, we've

(07:36):
even talked about it on this show with Matt Pacerro
the Wicked Witch of the Eastborough. But there's something especially
bizarre to me when this logic is applied to kids
who have grown up online. It's such a cultural assumption
that everyone would want this, that it's treated as superhumanly
humble to not be Internet famous, and as bleak as

(07:58):
that can sound, it's not based on nothing. Tech understandably
has shifted kids' aspirations. Just think of all those beermongering
clickbait articles that say kids used to want to be teachers,
kids today want to be YouTubers. Should we kill them?
What I think does hold true is that a desire

(08:20):
to be prominent is assumed, especially somewhere like the US.
So what happens if you're a kid who becomes Internet
famous and you're kind of not into it. It was
a normal day in Mebane, North Carolina, in two thousand
and five when the Roth family smelled smoke. They walked

(08:41):
outside and saw a few blocks down there was a
house on fire. They panicked at first, but were soon
put at ease. The burn was a controlled one planned
by the local fire department, and the home had actually
been donated by a family that was hoping to clear
that plot of land. So Dave took his kids, Tristan

(09:02):
and Zoe over to watch the burn, along with a
few others in the neighborhood. And Dave was an amateur photographer,
so he brought his camera. There's actually a few photos
from this day that are memorable. Tristan was a huge
Harry Potter kid. It was two thousand and five, many
such cases, and he was dressed up as Harry basically
all the time. So a kid in a wizard costume

(09:25):
in front of a burning house pretty good, pretty weird.
But Zoe, who was only four at the time, was
operating on another level. She wasn't wearing a costume with
a pink T shirt and a sandy brown bob that
only a four year old girl could pull off, and
she was transfixed by the fire. Her dad told her

(09:48):
that no one was inside the house and it was okay,
But that's kind of a weird concept for a four
year old to wrap their head around, but after a while,
she seems to get it and cannot stop staring at
this fire. So when Dave tells her to turn around
so he can take a picture, Zoe just turns over
her shoulder and smiles in what she'll later describe as

(10:10):
my smile at the time, a close lipped smile with
her head felted slightly down. It's adorable, but as Zoe's
dad noticed at the time, it's also a little menacing.
And a few years later this image would inspire the
Internet because if you look at this picture, a four
year old girl smirking in front of a house on fire,

(10:34):
it kind of looks like she did it. But did
she want the fame that comes with being a viral star?
Well that's another story completely. Zoe Roth aka disaster Girl.
Your sixteenth minute starts now.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
I'm not story.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
Stay get to the moment.

Speaker 3 (11:10):
Six six six.

Speaker 1 (11:41):
Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take
a look at the Internet's main characters, see how their
viral moment affected them and what that moment says about
us and the Internet. I'm your host, Jamie Loftus, and
this week I am delivering a long requested episode of
this show and O g meme Girley Zoe Roth aka

(12:01):
Disaster Girl, And yes I did get the chance to
speak with Zoe and she is just so lovely. I
feel like a proud auntie talking to her. That interview
will be in a bit And she's a super unique
subject for this show because while she didn't have much
of an interest in parleying her virality into a career,

(12:21):
as we'll talk about, she was never really bumped by
everyone around her assuming that she would want to turn
the viral moment into a career. And that's probably because
she's the first guest I've spoken to on this show
that's a true died in the wool. Internet native expectations
that have baffled older guests who grew up with analog

(12:43):
technology are not bizarre or unfamiliar to her. Zoe went
viral at a very particular moment in Internet history before
she was fully forming memories and brings one of the
most interesting stories around fame and consent that I think
we've ever got, So return with me if you dare to.

(13:04):
January two thousand and seven, Irish becomes the twenty first
language officially recognized by the EU, not that they give
a shite what the EU thinks. President Bush. The Little
One says that the NSA has definitely stopped wiretapping American citizens,
which is kind of just like a funny little joke

(13:25):
he made. And nearly two years after Dave Roth took
a photo of his little girl watching a neighbor's house
burn down, the Internet discovered it too. Dave Roth had
always been interested in photography, and so like any dad
with a specific gadget based hobby, his kids quickly became
a part of it. And he wasn't an idiot. The

(13:47):
picture of Zoe, which he titled Firestarter, is a really
good one, but his ambitions for it at first were
fairly conventional. So bear with me and get ready to
hear some very very extinct website titles. Dave first uploads
Firestarter to something called Zoomer, which was a stock image

(14:08):
hosting service whose website now redirects to a scammy seeming
Gemstone site.

Speaker 11 (14:14):
But today's going to be killed a day because we're
going to start to finally release Mark three. Zoomer Mark
three six months in the making, a work two winner
from Tenue features the ability to sell your photos of
stock and keep ninety percent of the sale, but.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
The Firestarter photo doesn't get much traction there. Around the
time Zoe was heading into elementary school, her dad tried
submitting Firestarter to a second publication, this time a photo
publication called Jpeg Magazine.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
Basically, these are really high quality magazines that feature one
subject matter per an issue, and they're pretty affordable too.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
And Jpeg sees the potential in Dave's now two year
old image and they publish it in their February March
print issue in two thousand eight, the theme of which
was Emotion Captured. And I'll talk to Zoe about how
she felt seeing her photo in a magazine this young,
because yes, by this time she was sentient enough to
understand what was happening. But this is an Internet show,

(15:15):
and so of course it is online where fire Starter
starts to get a ton of attention. It was shared
on the jpeg blog in November two thousand and seven,
and before the time the image really took off quickly,
racking up over ninety five thousand views and in time
ran its way up to the outer reaches of the Internet.

(15:37):
And you know this old chestnut, the site that really
helped Firestarter, which would soon be rebranded as Disaster Girl,
Get Really Big was none other than BuzzFeed. On October
twenty seventh, two thousand and eight, over three years after
the original picture was taken, BuzzFeed writer Scott Lamb wrote

(15:58):
the following.

Speaker 12 (16:00):
Is aster Girl. She loves starting fires, but this devilish
girl is responsible for other disasters too. Upload yours below.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
This text was a tool that helped you meme the image,
so you could put Zoe's image over any background you
wanted and then add the primitive look that most memes
had in the two thousands, that static, customizable white text
where you could add your own caption and upload it
to the community. Hilarious examples include she asked me to

(16:32):
watch the oven. I asked her to watch her attitude.
My mother told others we had a happy, warm home.
Now she's not lying. Dark humor is like food. Not
everyone gets it. This kind of viral spread seems so
like Hallmark sassy magnet coded to me. Now, So to

(16:56):
put you in this time, let's take a step back
to Rember exactly what the internet was like in two
thousand and eight. The Internet of my unrequited horny youth.
Around the time this all happened. I was in high
school and desperately in love with a saxophone player who
had gone to college for the saxophone and eventually broke

(17:18):
up with me so he could have more time to
play the saxophone. This was the year of that really
bad shil above Indiana Jones movie of the first Obama election.
The year of low By flow Rider, the year the
app store launched, The year Netflix and Hulu started streaming online.
A world where the Jersey Shore was still a place

(17:38):
and not the most fascinating sociological study ever put on television,
but for our purposes. Two thousand and eight was a
time where social media was becoming more important, but it
still wasn't quite all important. My Space had recently capitulated
to Facebook as a social network of choice for young
people at the time. It's hyperstyleed HTML induced seizure backgrounds

(18:03):
replaced by the smooth land interface of Mark Zuckerberg, where
teenagers could send each other something called bumper stickers. Everyone
under twenty five is like, okay, Grandma, go to bed,
and we were obsessively checking each other's hyperlinked relationship statuses
like a sixteen year old with the gall to list

(18:24):
their status as it's complicated with someone else's hyperlinked government
name beside it. It was a nasty time, and social
media was one of the venues that the disaster girl
memes spread, but there were still plenty of places that
curated this viral content curated by humans. If you can

(18:45):
imagine before Zoe Roth's four year old face would make
it to your friend's Facebook page. BuzzFeed was a huge
viral aggregator in two thousand and seven, having just been
launched by Jonah Peretti two years before, and our having
gained the reputation for being a site of aggregated memes,
viral stories, and these gnarly personality quizzes which were inexplicably

(19:10):
meth to earnest millennial teenagers. I looked back at some
here my favorites.

Speaker 12 (19:17):
Create a sampler platter, and we'll guess your age and height?
What percent nerdy are you? Can you spot the fuck boy?
We know the name of your next lover based on
the food you order from McDonald's. How stereotypically white are you?

Speaker 1 (19:37):
No accounting for this? We should be embarrassed. There was
also cracked dot com, founded in two thousand and five.
By a guy I've never met before and who certainly
doesn't hold my livelihood in his very hands. Jack O'Brien,
who went on to hire some of the world's greatest writers, comedians,
and journalists who shall not be named no idea who
they are cracked was an edgier, funnier, more researched version

(20:01):
of the BuzzFeed model, and they did similar short form,
written and eventually video pieces. A Disaster Girl thrived on
both of these websites, and after Zoe's image first popped
up on BuzzFeed, she or I guess, disaster Girl became
an overnight sensation. The next day, BuzzFeed posted some of

(20:23):
the hits of the meme generator from the day before,
in which Zoe was photoshopped smirking in front of other
ostensible tragedies, so Zoe's smirking at the dinosaur's extinction, Zoe's
smirking in front of Jesus on the Cross, Zoe at
Lincoln's assassination, the Grassy Knoll, and some really in poor taste,
bone chilling Holocaust images. Today. This really to me, reeks,

(20:47):
of all of the tragedies that will happen in the world,
have already happened in this extremely naive and dare say
neo liberal way, Let's keep moving Jpeg magazine knew this
was the time to jump on the publicity train for
Disaster Girl and had an interview with Dave and Zoe
the next day, October twenty eighth. Here's that piece.

Speaker 12 (21:10):
Disaster Girl is coming for you. Roth's photo has popped
up on a few bookmarking sites where you can upload
a Firestarter template to enter in your own background silly fun.
We recently spoke with Dave about his fifteen minutes. He
and Zoe the fire Starter herself are digging the photoshop
versions as well as the captions and our jazz that

(21:32):
the attention to the photo has gotten. Perhaps the lives of
a disaster Girl and her father are a bit more
fun and maybe even more mischievous than one would expect.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
And off of this, Disaster Girl's lore spread across the
world wide Web to all the must click, pop up,
nightmare aggregate sites of the day, dig make your own
Disaster Girl background.

Speaker 12 (21:58):
Ebom's World, Disaster Girl strikes again.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
Best week ever Disaster Girl, thenew fail, Cracked dot Com.

Speaker 12 (22:09):
Six images of kids two insane to be real that
really are.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
Man, those headline formats really trigger my fighter flight response.
But people were just not getting sick of using the
disaster Girl meme. According to the All Knowing Know Your Meme,
Google search peaks for disaster Girl wouldn't hit until nearly
three years later, in May twenty eleven. And if this

(22:36):
image went viral today, there would be a terrifying, albeit
relatively clear pipeline for the roths to take license the image,
maybe get her on late night, start a branded social
media career, participate in I don't know a crypto scam.
All the waves of things that we'd see on the
Internet in the years to come from the Ellen pipeline.

Speaker 4 (23:00):
If you haven't been hearing the words damn Daniel in
the last twenty four hours, you've not been on the internet.
Our first guests are two friends who posted a video
showing off some stylish clothes. In a matter of days,
it's been viewed over forty five million times.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
Take a look to Hey, we wel just doing damage
control about the hawk coin scam to no avail just
a couple weeks ago.

Speaker 7 (23:19):
I'm gonna start by saying thank you to all my
true fans and all the people that actually watch my
stuff and they keep up with me. We're trying to
sort out all the pieces and stuff to like get
all this figured out and make everything right. Oh my god,
I'm gonna cry.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
But this was two thousand and seven and two thousand
and eight. It wasn't just the Roths that weren't sure
how to approach this moment with their now second grade daughter.
It was that no one would know how to approach
this moment. I'm not going to give you a full

(24:01):
history here, but the term meme was coined all the
way back in nineteen seventy six by Richard Dawkins, and
became associated with the Internet in nineteen ninety three. In
a piece by Mike Godwin in Wired, Internet memes were
revised to mean a pre existing image quote deliberately altered
by human creativity unquote in twenty thirteen, half a decade

(24:24):
after Disaster Girl became a popular image. So Zoe Ross
is unintentionally very early to the meme game. I'm not
saying she's the first. There were plenty of videos and
images like the Dancing Baby, Gary Brolsma's Newman Numa video, Lolcats, Rickrolling,
and my personal favorite will it blend videos that had

(24:45):
gone viral before her, but the two thousands still have
this reputation of being the wild West era of memes.
I want to focus on two thousand and seven here
because it was arguably the first year that some of
the most potent means to date entered our lives.

Speaker 6 (25:03):
A brief preview, Lity, Some Stay Dry and the Pain
chok LITZI Gotta Cry the Best can.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
Lay Ready Alone?

Speaker 10 (25:32):
Please?

Speaker 1 (25:33):
These all came out in two thousand and seven. It's
pretty wild, But I don't think that this was because
it was a particularly potent year for creativity. For context,
this is also the year that b Movie came out,
but it was a big year for increased success on
aggregate websites like BuzzFeed and cracked at a time when

(25:54):
social media and YouTube were becoming increasingly popular and easier
for people to add access, and some of the subjects
of these memes were able to parlay their fame into
sustained popularity through a combination of luck and early meme managers.
And the most successful meme manager maybe of all time,

(26:16):
is this guy named Ben Lashes. He didn't represent the
roths or the disaster Girl meme during its heyday because
the family didn't seek out management, as we'll get into,
but Ben Lashes does become a weirdly important player in
this story. So how do you become a prominent meme manager? Well,

(26:37):
he started as a musician in the two thousands.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
Is so long.

Speaker 13 (26:42):
Inside say success inside of mind.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
I was seeing in the comments that this track came
for free on the Sony Ericsson brick phone in the
mid two thousands. Pretty sick. But after he left music behind,
Lashes pivoted to media in the late two thousands and
interviewed musicians for Spin dot com.

Speaker 13 (27:03):
All right, folks, it's the biggest night in Hollywood. It's
being again Ben Lashes. You're ace reporter, stuck in traffic
at its rush hour the Hollywood Freeway one oh one North,
going to see Slash at Guitar Center in north Ridge.

Speaker 1 (27:16):
And in two thousand and nine, he pivoted again and
made his first prominent meme discovery. You know him, you
love him Keyboard Cat And I'm not gonna harp on
this because it really should be its own episode. But
not for nothing. The Keyboard Cat video, you've seen it.
It's a tabby cat and a Little Blue Shirt playing

(27:38):
the ones and twos. This video was shot in nineteen
eighty four by a family friend of the Lashes, which
is how he knew about it in the first place.
But the meme doesn't happen until two thousand and seven,
So think about that math. With regards to how long
cats live, Keyboard Cat had, in fact died twenty years

(27:59):
before he became famous. Rip de Fatso the cat, which
begs the question how does a dead cat have a
manager and create new content? They recast Keyboard Cat after
two thousand and seven. They hired a similar looking cat
named Bento, who debuted in a video called Keyboard Cat

(28:21):
Reincarnated being a cat. Bento also died. Rip Bento, here's
his owner.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
He had a big start and and it stayed big
all the way.

Speaker 14 (28:35):
He had quite a run and.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
Well, he says there's a chance of a third Keyboard
Cat if he finds one with the right personality at
a shelter.

Speaker 1 (28:44):
And we will get to that another day, but for context,
Ben Lashes describes his pivot from music to management like
this in an interview with Digital Trends in twenty thirteen.

Speaker 12 (28:56):
I was the singer in a band called The lashes.
We started in age, got signed to an indie label,
then a major label. We rode the roller coaster of
success and failure in the music industry and all that
kind of stuff. I've always been really into the business
side of things, of marketing and hype and pop culture,
the way it works together. I'm really kind of a nerd.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
And he had a knack for plucking out and effectively
promoting meme successes like Scumbag, Steve, the success Kid, the
ridiculously photogenic guy, Neon Cat, and Grumpy Cat very successful
in the cat market I've noticed, and Grumpy Cat has
in fact become his most successful client to date, in

(29:38):
spite of the fact that Grumpy Cat has been dead
for six years. Rip Tartar sauce the cat. But if
you remember the Grumpy Cat heyday, it genuinely was huge.
There was even this TV movie starring Aubrey Plaza as
Christmas Grumpy Cat. Don't get sappy on me it I forgot.

Speaker 3 (29:56):
It's a lifetime movie.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
All pets are off Cat.

Speaker 6 (30:02):
Cat.

Speaker 1 (30:03):
They don't even make paintball guns.

Speaker 7 (30:05):
For the cats.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
Fodrey Plaza brings the Internet sensation to life.

Speaker 10 (30:10):
This is the best Christmas ever, go ahead ignore the
title of my movie Pluffie Cat's Worst Christmas.

Speaker 15 (30:15):
Ever.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
So, while it's not clear if Ben Lashes reached out
to the Roth family in the moment, he tends to
work with clients or I guess grieving pet owners to
make their memes their whole livelihood, hopefully to the tune
of millions of dollars. But the Robs don't really seem
to want to do that in part, as we'll discuss,

(30:37):
because Zoe was a normal kid who wasn't into the
idea of being hyper exposed. From that same interview, here
is Ben Lash's philosophy of promotion.

Speaker 12 (30:48):
Once it got to a point where there was a
foundation of stuff that we'd done, I'd become so immersed
in the meme world and thinking it was kind of
a wild West where certain companies would take images and
sell them and make t shirts, and everyone kind of
had this idea that once it hits the Internet, it's free.
I'm a huge fan of pop art, and the digital

(31:11):
memes that go around now are a social form that's
going to be studied four years to come, and it's
totally a new way of communicating with people. So I
love the art side of it, the sharing and the
mashing up. But I hate when the snakes get in
there and start making products and squatting on sites. It
just steals the fun out of it.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
And again, I cannot overstate his success in this world.
While Tartar Sauce the Grumpy Cat passed away and to
my knowledge, had no use for human money, Ben Lashes
and the cat's owner, Tabitha Bundsen, made her the wealthiest
pet on earth, valued at an approximate ninety nine million dollars.

(31:58):
What labor episode forthcoming, probably so we'll come back to
Ben Lashes in a bit. But in the moment, Zoe
recalls in the late two thousands that her family didn't
really know how to and weren't particularly motivated to engage
with it, so life went on. Zoe grew up in

(32:18):
relative anonymity. There were some local people who knew, but luckily,
people rarely look like their four year old selves. For
long as she got older, she had an Internet presence
like any kid who came of age in the early
to mid twenty tens, but these profiles were just for
her friends and family, outside of occasional family photos that
her dad would post on the Flicker photo platform, the

(32:41):
public kind of lost track of Zoe, even though throughout
these years, the disaster Girl meme remained extremely popular, so
while she was still a kid, there was only one
time that the family engaged with monetizing Zoe's fame. In
twenty sixteen, when Zoe was in high school, they were
asked by a company called Fuck Jerry to have the

(33:04):
meme featured in a card game they were kickstarting, called,
and I hate to tell you this, what do you meme?

Speaker 3 (33:12):
Do you like spicy memes?

Speaker 10 (33:14):
Of course you do, That's why I Fucked Jared created.

Speaker 3 (33:19):
What do you mean? What the cards? Chrisby?

Speaker 10 (33:22):
The rules are simple, just like the memes that you
see on Instagram. There are photos and there are captions.

Speaker 12 (33:27):
Your job is to match the best caption with the photo.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
For what it's worth, Zoe's image is featured twice in
this trailer, and the game is what It sounds like
a ripoff of Cards against Humanity or Apples to Apples,
but with memes. The game quickly raised its ten thousand
dollars goal on Kickstarter and then some, and went on
to haunt the impulse by area of urban outfitter stores

(33:52):
for years to come now if it sounds familiar, Fuck
Jerry is an Instagram account that was started by one
guy not named Jerry and then turned into a bunch
of guys not named Jerry. And those there aren't hard
numbers on the sales of what do You Mean? It
did very well. The games still exist today, and they

(34:13):
later partnered with big brands like SpongeBob, Friends, Seinfeld's, and
Tricia Patus to make other versions of the game, and
Zoe's image is featured prominently in the first run of
the game, including an appearance on the back of the box,
and as we'll talk about in the interview, she says

(34:34):
that her family didn't really know what to ask for
in terms of money here, so they were compensated, but
not to the degree that it seems like the game
was successful, And in part that's because the Roths brokeer
this agreement with fuck Jerry without representation, and so they
seem to get ripped off because Fuck Jerry, if their

(34:54):
name and demeanor weren't a tip already are notorious rifters,
though to the family's credit, that wasn't well known at
this time. If you've heard the name FuG Jerry, before.
It's probably because of the Fire Festival.

Speaker 16 (35:11):
We're going to turn now of that trouble for the
Fire Music Festival, hit with a class action lawsuit from
concert goers who spent thousands of dollars for what was
supposed to be a luxury weekend of food, art, and
music in the Bahamas, didn't turn out quite that way.
ABC's Gio Benitez in Miami with the details.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
Good morning, Geo, Hey George, Good morning to you those
concertgoers coming here to Miami all week and long. The
event's co founder, Joe Rule says it's not his fault,
but that he's deeply sorry.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
Ah.

Speaker 6 (35:36):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (35:37):
Fire Festival the notorious twenty seventeen shit show where influencers
paid thousands of dollars to attend a luxury concert on
an island that resulted in a Lord of the Fly
situation and leaving the founder in jail for fraud, and
this inspired two documentaries, one which was suspiciously produced by

(35:57):
Fuck Jerry to.

Speaker 10 (35:59):
Hudoc actually draws attention to this, not only bringing up
the competing Netflix documentary, but also calling them out for
being co produced by none other than Jerry Media, the
company that did the advertising for Fire festival in the
first place. Remember how I said that the Netflix documentary
tended to have better looking footage. That's largely because it

(36:20):
looks like its old, unused advertising footage, which naturally Jerry
Media had access to.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
As you just heard, there were two competing documentaries that
streamed about this nightmare situation around the same time, on
Netflix and Hulu respectively, one of which was produced by
Fuck Jerry, who claimed to have been involved in the
early promotion of the festival but left when things got sketchy.
But on the Hulu doc they are directly implicated in

(36:50):
promoting and being aware of the scheme throughout, along with
the agreed upon villains of the story Billy McFarland and
jah Ruhle or maybe you for of them from the
hashtag fuck fuck Jerry campaign of twenty nineteen, where prominent
comedians accused the company of stealing their jokes without credit
or compensation, either to use on the fuck Jerry Instagram

(37:13):
or wait for it, in prompt cards for what do
you mean? These guys famously fucking suck, and they suck
even worse for screwing Zoe and her family over. But
whatever frustration that caused was short lived because outside of this,
particularly as Zoe came into her own and enrolled at

(37:34):
UNC Chapel Hill for college, she didn't seem to want
much to do with the meme. She popped up a
few years later at a BuzzFeed event called Internet Live
in twenty nineteen, which was sort of a best of
of the Internet of the twenty tens. There were performances
from Lil nas X and Jojo Siua, The Damn Daniel
Guys were there, the Jersey Shore Girls, there was some

(37:55):
nine year old I've never heard of, and one of
the Internet's most noxious senior citizen, Jason Nash, and Zoe
the Disaster Girl. She pops up again in late twenty twenties,
in the throes of the pandemic lockdown, in a very
successful BuzzFeed video series called I Accidentally Became a Meme.
It's currently hovering around eight million views because for most

(38:18):
people this was their first time seeing Zoe speak, much
less speak as a full grown adult.

Speaker 17 (38:24):
I Accidentally Became a meme, and this is that story.
My name is Zoe Roth, but you may know me
as Disaster Girl. This all started in two thousand.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
And five, but even though she dipped her toe in
engaging with Disaster Girl. In her young adulthood, she said
she viewed it as more of a fun fact about
her than a defining quality in her life. This is
from April twenty twenty one, during her senior year of college.

Speaker 15 (38:49):
Yeah, honestly, I've thought about this so much, like why
it's so viral, why it comes back up every year,
because most of the memes that came out when mine
did two thousand and four, two thousand and five are
like dead memes, people don't use them anymore. But I
see mind recycled more often, and I think especially with
twenty twenty, because twenty twenty was just such a horrible
year for a lot of people. It was like the
perfect meme for that because everything was on fire, nothing

(39:11):
was going right, like everybody was struggling with so many
different things, it was like, and that meme is just chaos,
so perfect for twenty twenty eight.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
So by early twenty twenty one, Zoe is talking about
the meme more than she ever has publicly, and later
this month it becomes clear maybe why that was re
enter Ben Lash's late April twenty twenty one. Only since
we last encountered him. He's gotten really into Is it

(39:40):
a heypop? Is it b Instagram infographics on tolerance or
is it c an all but inevitable footnote in every
story we talk about here crypto and NFTs, it is,
of course c. He was into crypto now and wanted
to mint an fts and was very successful at this,

(40:03):
I might add. So he combined this new passion with
his past experience and meme representation of the twenty tens
and ends up teaming up with a number of meme
subjects like Zoe Like past guest of the show Lena
Morris aka Overly Attacked Girlfriend, as well as others like Padlock,
Brian success Kid, and Irma gard Girl, who all teamed

(40:25):
up with Lashes to sell their iconic memes as NFTs.
He told The New York Times that his clients had
cumulatively made over two million dollars in late April twenty
twenty one, and Zoe Rot's NFT was the top earner.
It sold for one hundred and eighty ether, which around
the time was half a million dollars. And if you're

(40:48):
a regular listener, you'll know we also talked about this
in our Lena Morris episode. I am not a fan
of NFTs, but the way that most have characterized this
decision to sell their meme as an NFT during this
big pandemic era boom was because they had been previously
unable to control the Internet proliferation of their image, and

(41:12):
so this seemed like a chance to get compensated in
some way for years of being out of control of
their own image. And that's a tricky thing to argue
with because how do you quantify that. Really there's no
direct answer, But I do understand the appeal of finally
getting something out of this weird element that has haunted

(41:35):
you your entire life, after growing up with people photoshopping
your image over Hitler rallies and getting screwed over by
the likes of Fuck Jerry. At the time, Zoe Roth
told The New York Times this people who are in
memes didn't really have a choice in it. The Internet
is big. Whether you're having a good experience or a
bad experience, you kind of just have to make the

(41:57):
most of it. Zoe and I talk more about that
in the interview, including the heavy speculation of how she
used that money, But after the NFT sale, Zoe graduates
from school, and in a poetic turn, I think she
stumbles into a career in tech research analysis. So the
kid who became a child meme is now the same

(42:19):
person advising tech companies on how to grow their businesses. Honestly,
I'm not exactly clear on what Zobe does, but I
know she's really smart. Sorry I can't get more specific.
I just write MP three's that will soon be considered
thought crimes our talk when we come back. Welcome back

(42:52):
to sixteenth minute. Here's a thought I have never quite
mastered the late capitalism email initiation that something like, hey, guys,
hope everything's well except the world is ending, but otherwise
hope everything's well. Like I don't know, I just like
don't want that kind of email coming from my dentist.

(43:13):
I don't know. If you're listening to this and there's
a protest for trans writes in your area, you should
fucking go. And here's my interview with the one the
Only disaster girl, Zoe Roth.

Speaker 3 (43:23):
Yeah, I'm Zoe Roth.

Speaker 17 (43:25):
I'm most well known for a viral photo of me
that was taken of me standing in front of a
burning house and smiling.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
I want to go through the beats of the story
very quickly to get the stuff out of the way
that everyone has questions about and then get into the
meat of this interview. Do you remember this day with
any clarity?

Speaker 3 (43:45):
Yeah, I do remember the day.

Speaker 17 (43:47):
All I remember of it was looking in the windows
of the house and looking at things that were burning
and thinking.

Speaker 3 (43:53):
Like, oh my god, this sucks, Like I wish I'm
so glad this isn't my house.

Speaker 17 (43:57):
We were two blocks down the road, and at the
time we didn't know it was like a test fire,
so it was planned and organized and it was totally safe,
they say.

Speaker 3 (44:06):
But all I remember was looking in the windows of
the house and being like, wow, that sucks.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
I feel like the added context of it being a
planned burn, which I don't even think I realized was
a thing, completely changes the image.

Speaker 3 (44:19):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 17 (44:21):
I had a friend reach out and she was like,
I'm so sorry if that was traumatizing to you, to
like watch a house burn down, and now this meme is.

Speaker 3 (44:27):
All over the place.

Speaker 17 (44:27):
I was like, Oh, it's really fine, Like it wasn't
traumatizing at the time, even though I didn't know that
it was a planned burn.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
Tell me a little bit more about how you grew
up where you grew up.

Speaker 17 (44:37):
Yeah, so I grew up in mepin North Carolina, which
is right in the middle of the state. I have
an older brother.

Speaker 3 (44:44):
I feel like I grew up.

Speaker 17 (44:46):
I had a pretty average childhood, like I did sports,
I did running, I traveled a bit as a kid.

Speaker 3 (44:52):
But yeah, I feel like pretty average as far as
it comes.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
And you're four years old at the time this picture
was taken.

Speaker 3 (44:58):
Yes, I was four, about to turn five.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
Your dad enters the picture into a contest.

Speaker 3 (45:04):
Yeah, So my dad posted it.

Speaker 17 (45:06):
It was either on Zoomer or flicker like all of
these old old like photo sharing early Instagram type apps,
and he submitted it to JPEG magazine, which was a
physical and I guess they had an online magazine as well,
and that's as far as we know probably where it
got picked up. So there was they had a submission
of like Emotion. It was the Emotion series of the magazine.

(45:29):
So he submitted it and it got printed. And I
was in second grade at the time, and they've emailed
us or they gave us the physical magazine.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
I brought it to school. I was like, oh my god,
I'm so famous, Like to.

Speaker 17 (45:39):
This day, that is the most famous I've ever felt
in second grade, like with this magazine of myself. But
they posted on the website as well, so we figure
that's probably where it got the traction.

Speaker 3 (45:49):
And then from there, like my dad saw.

Speaker 17 (45:51):
His coworkers like had it in their Cubic goals, and
like my aunts and uncles would be like, oh, somebody
I know just posted this on Facebook.

Speaker 3 (45:57):
Or I funny, and we're like what, like, I don't
know how that got there, Like wait, isn't this zoey?
Like why why do wait? Why is this photo on
my Facebook feed? And we're like, we have no idea.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
That's really wild. I also just the very two thousands
nis of a physical magazine called Jpeg Magazine. Yes, it's beautiful.
So you're not totally sure how the image went viral online.

Speaker 3 (46:22):
I know we've always wondered. I'm like, maybe when I'm old,
I'll try to like track the provenance down.

Speaker 17 (46:26):
I'm like, it's probably just one person sent it somewhere
else from there and it's like blown up, but we've
never known exactly where it took off from.

Speaker 3 (46:33):
That's just my theory, the jpeg theory.

Speaker 1 (46:35):
The sounds menacing, so you're in second grade when this
comes out, the feeling of like, oh my god, I'm famous,
I'm cool, I'm in a magazine. Do you remember that feeling?
Do you remember talking to other kids about it, like
how do people react to it?

Speaker 7 (46:50):
Yeah?

Speaker 17 (46:51):
At the time, I mean jpeg was the coolest thing,
and then I think, no, your meme made a video
about it that same year, which is two thousand and eight.
So both of those was just like awesome. You know,
they were awesome for a few days, and then I
kind of forgot about it. It was mostly more interesting
when people would like send it to me on Instagram
or I Funny, or send me texts like oh my god,
I saw this and it has a million hits on
I Funny or like Twitter. And as a kid, it

(47:13):
was just like these sporadic interactions. I would have people
who already knew me and saying like, oh look, I
saw this. This is crazy, and I'd be like, yeah,
that is crazy, and they're like, oh, so, what's the story.
I'm like, oh my gosh, I need a video record.
I needed like an audio thing I just send.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
Out very early. And do you forming memories a part
of your life? What was your relationship with the Internet,
like as I feel like I was.

Speaker 17 (47:36):
Very early on the Internet, like I got on Facebook
and like elementary school, which looking back, I was like,
that's probably not a great idea.

Speaker 3 (47:44):
Like Instagram, as early as you could have it.

Speaker 17 (47:46):
I was always kind of like looking to be on
these new platforms, and then anytime I was on a
new platform, I would end up seeing the meme and
I was like, that's kind of funny.

Speaker 3 (47:54):
It's like following me wherever I'm going on the Internet.

Speaker 17 (47:57):
But it definitely I feel like I was on the
It kind of grew up with me on the Internet.

Speaker 3 (48:01):
As long as I've been on the Internet, it was
there as well, like living.

Speaker 17 (48:05):
Its own life. So that's always kind of an interesting thing.
When there's new platforms, it shows up there as well,
and I.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
Just kind of let it be What personalities were you
drawn to? What areas of the Internet.

Speaker 17 (48:15):
I feel like I was a big I mean initially
I loved I funny, and I've always been like on Instagram.
There's a lot of times growing up, like in high
school and in college, I was like, should I like
make this my bit, Like should I make a YouTube channel?
Like should I like figure out how to monetize this.
But I was just like, I don't really want to
be I never wanted it to be my whole thing,

(48:35):
Like I didn't want to build my life around it,
and so I kind of actively made that choice, like
when I was pretty young, like I'm going to go
to college, I'm going to get a career, Like this
is going to live on its own and I'm going
to do my own thing. But I've kind of, yeah,
I kind of try to like decenter it in my life,
and when it comes up, it comes up, and it's
like a fun little party conversation.

Speaker 3 (48:54):
But that's kind of what I try to keep it up.

Speaker 1 (48:56):
I want to sort of get into the idea of
you know, your becoming this famous symbol. Did you experience
any internal or external pressure, like walk me through that decision?
And what were people around you sort of recommending or
saying at the time.

Speaker 17 (49:13):
Yeah, I think I always had friends that would be like, oh,
it would be so cool if you do a YouTube channel,
And there would be occasional times where I would go
to a meme event and people would be like, oh,
what's your handle, what's your.

Speaker 3 (49:23):
Channel, and like I don't, I'm not I don't really
have that. Me and some of the other memes.

Speaker 17 (49:28):
We all get in touch like every once in a while,
like when there's something going on, like when the NFT
thing happened and we're all like, what are you guys doing,
Like we hadn't really talked before that. But I've never
felt like an internal pressure to do anything with it
or really externally like to me, this is like satisfying
enough to do an occasional interview and like see it
every once in a while, and I've never felt like

(49:49):
I needed to do something more with.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
It for purposes of like satisfying or like you know,
me or others.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
And as you're getting older, you're realizing, like I don't
want to be a full time YouTuber just because technically
that is on offer. What were your interests? What was
sort of developing as you were becoming a person growing up?

Speaker 17 (50:10):
I spent my summers like working in Tahoe. I have
an uncle that has a restaurant there, so I'd go
to work in Tahoe. I was always working, like I
always had a job in high school. A big part
of my life growing up was speaking and learning Chinese.
So the school I went to in Chapel Hill was
an immersion Chinese school, so it was always like a
big part of my identity, like trying to figure out

(50:31):
how I could go to China, Like I ended up
studying abroad in China and high school, and that was
kind of like my focus, Like how can I like
go to college for this, How can I like set
up my professional career around like Chinese and international relations?
Like that was really my focus as long as I
can remember, figuring out what did I wanted to do professionally, and.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
This just was never a part of that.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
Yeah, I mean that seems really farfield. That's so fascinating.
Did you become interested in Chinese culture because of the
immersion school? Yeah? How did that come about? That's really cool?

Speaker 17 (51:04):
Yeah, I think it was just the immersion school, Like
it was kind of a pilot project that the school
I went to in Chuckle Hill was working on. So
I was the first or second class, so we spent
half the day in Chinese and the other half in English,
and I did it all the way through college.

Speaker 3 (51:18):
So it's always just been something like.

Speaker 17 (51:19):
I've always been like that's kind of cooler, Like everyone's like, oh,
the meme, Like that's your fun fact.

Speaker 3 (51:23):
I'm like, oh, okay, well there's other things too.

Speaker 1 (51:25):
You're also yeah, like these nets that is cooler objectively,
what did you go to school for?

Speaker 17 (51:31):
So I ended up going to school for international relations
and Chinese boats, so I kind of stuck with that.
And then my first job out of college I was
doing something similar, and then I pivoted over to doing
technology research. So that's what I do now, basically a
technology journalist. So again like nothing related to what I've
done in the past, and nothing related to the meme.
Everything is so like jumping around between different different things.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
You're becoming like this very interesting person with a wide
variety of interest, and there is just always this thing.
Was there any point growing up with this and then
being an adult with this and it's just it's going
to be there forever. Were there ever moments where it
was like frustrating or uncomfortable or like enough?

Speaker 17 (52:15):
It's definitely there's times where it gets frustrating. I think
like a lot of people use it in ways that
I don't like condone.

Speaker 3 (52:21):
Or agree with.

Speaker 17 (52:22):
But pretty from an early age, I've kind of had
the mindset that I can't control, like how people are
going to use it or.

Speaker 3 (52:28):
How it's going to like travel across the internet.

Speaker 17 (52:31):
So being like frustrated or irritated about it isn't going
to change the fact that I'm going to see it.
I'm going to see like old interviews that I've done,
like it's going to be there, and like that's kind
of how it's been. What frustrates me most now is like,
as I'm trying to build like a professional career and
like obviously an identity out of this if you.

Speaker 3 (52:48):
Look me up, like that is the first thing that's
going to show up.

Speaker 17 (52:51):
Like if I wanted to get a new job, or
if I'm interviewing somebody and they want to see like,
oh what does she write about? First, They're going to
see all this meme shit. Instead I'm like, oh mind there.
Wait then it's like, oh, well tell me the story,
like wait, how old are you?

Speaker 3 (53:03):
Like how is this?

Speaker 17 (53:04):
And it kind of like overshadows, So it's more like
the digital privacy thing, like I'm like, oh my god,
I can't wait to get a new last name.

Speaker 3 (53:11):
Like I can't wait till.

Speaker 17 (53:11):
Because right now you can look up, you can find
out anything that you want to do vertty much about me,
which I think that is the thing that kind of
scares me the most, and it's like the biggest externality
about it.

Speaker 1 (53:22):
Again, I think it's like an interesting conversation generationally that
because you grew up online, what's the point of getting
mad about it? It's an inevitability. When I talk to
people who are you know, like gen X or even older,
they're like, what the fuck? Why can't I get this
to go away?

Speaker 12 (53:39):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (53:39):
Yeah, exactly because their relationship with the Internet is so different.
But just bizarre to have this thing that happened when
you were four years old come up at a job interview.

Speaker 17 (53:51):
Yes, it came up in this interview. The first time
I did like a webinar for my job, I was
so nervous. I didn't sleep the night before, so nervous.
The first piece of feedback that comes in, wait are
you Zoe Roth? That's the meme, I'm like, oh my god,
I prepared all this stuff, like no questions about the
topics of like the webinar, just like wait are you her?

Speaker 3 (54:08):
I'm like, look it up, like do I look like her? Like,
let's not. I'm not engaging with this conversation right now.

Speaker 1 (54:14):
Good for you, Like I think you are well within
your rights to be like.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
Fuck off, yeah, look it up, Like I can't. I'm
always just like look up, tell me the story. I'm like,
look it up. I'm not telling you this story.

Speaker 17 (54:25):
And it's like, honestly, when I meet people, like when
I make new friends, like I recently moved to Utah,
I never tell anybody because they end up finding out,
like they will find out on their own and they're like.

Speaker 3 (54:34):
Wait, what you didn't tell me about this? Like I
can't believe.

Speaker 17 (54:36):
Recently, it was like the twenty year anniversary, so I
posted all these stories and a bunch of my friends
in new chart are like wait what, like that's you? Like,
why didn't you tell me? I'm like, well, I'll tell
you now, Like now you know I like that.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
It's like, how dare you keep this?

Speaker 3 (54:50):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (54:50):
Exactly, answering secret I want to. Yeah, I mean talk
about first these like meme conventions and stuff like that,
which now feel kind of like this weird bygone era.
How did appearances like that come together? And then what
was that experience?

Speaker 8 (55:05):
Like?

Speaker 17 (55:05):
So, I honestly didn't have any like opportunities to travel
or anything for this until I was in high school.
So I never ended up even going to like the convent,
like the Comic cons or whatever. The first like big
event I did was actually hilarious. I was in Shanghai
for the summer as a summer camp counselor, like with kindergarteners,
like literally just like in the weeds with these like

(55:27):
kindergarteners who didn't speak English, being a camp counselor, and
BuzzFeed like emails me and they're like, hey, we're doing
this event next week in New.

Speaker 3 (55:34):
York, like do you want to come?

Speaker 17 (55:35):
And I was like, well, that would be great, but
I'm in Shanghai, like and I have a job like
at the summer camp, so I need to get off
the summer camp and then you guys have to fly
me back to New York and then back to Shanghai.

Speaker 3 (55:44):
And they're like, okay, yeah, we can do that.

Speaker 17 (55:46):
So I need to explain to my boss like another
camp counselor, like, hey, so someone's offering to fly me
to New York.

Speaker 3 (55:51):
For the weekend, Like can I have Friday off so
I can go and do that? Like with that be okay.

Speaker 17 (55:56):
And so it was like the BuzzFeed Internet Awards or something,
and Jojo c like gave me and the Dan Daniels
kids like this like a meme trophy, which now I'm like,
where is my meme trophy?

Speaker 3 (56:06):
Like I do wonder where that is. But that is
definitely That's probably the only event, like I think I've
ever been to I.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
Have seen that picture and you're just like, Wow, what
a time, what a moment?

Speaker 17 (56:16):
Oh my god, I hate it. It was so uncomfortable.
It was like walking out in front of all these people.
I was like, I'm never going to do something.

Speaker 3 (56:21):
Like this again.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
By that point, what it's been at least ten years, Yeah,
it's happened. If you're not interested in like performing, it
sounds uncomfortable.

Speaker 3 (56:31):
Yeah, it was definitely uncomfortable and like and everyone's like cheering.

Speaker 17 (56:35):
I'm like, I know, I could never be like an actual,
like famous person, Like I do not like this level
of like recognition.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
Because I want to talk a little bit about the NFTs,
because I talked to Lena about that as well, this
idea of not having control over your own likeness, because
this took off during a time where I feel like
that discussion basically didn't happen and no one was thinking
about like what is this gonna feel like in twenty years?

Speaker 3 (57:02):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (57:02):
Is there a way to get control of this? Like
what are your options?

Speaker 3 (57:08):
We never like, we never like sat down as a family.
We're like, what do we do?

Speaker 17 (57:10):
How can we get this back? We've always known like
you know, once it's out, the cats out of the bag.
There was like like for a while we had a
relationship with fuck Jerry who made that game?

Speaker 3 (57:20):
What do you mean? And it was on the back
of the box.

Speaker 17 (57:22):
And that's probably like the biggest thing that happened, like
for the most part, besides the NFT because on the box,
like on every box, you can spin it around in
my photo, so anytime you're shopping in an urban or
like at the airport, like, oh my god, where's me, Like,
let's go find Zoe. I'm in the I'm in the box.
And we're like, this is just going to be probably
the biggest thing. And that was the first time we
ever got paid for us, so we're like, wow, we're
so rich. Looking back, it was, Yeah, it was not

(57:44):
a great deal. They were not great to work with.
That is kind of like something that looking back on
we're like, oh, we were not well informed on this negotiation.
I think it was like twenty sixteen, so a full
like ten to twelve years later, and we're like.

Speaker 3 (57:57):
Wow, this is so cool, Like finally we can get
paid for this.

Speaker 17 (58:00):
Like before that, it was like, oh, my dad had
a red bubble shop, but so did all these other
people that were just like stealing the photo and posting
their own.

Speaker 3 (58:07):
Like we're like, what are we going to do? Like
hey take this down? Like we didn't have lawyers, we
didn't have a team. It was just like me and
my dad.

Speaker 17 (58:13):
So we're just like, well, every once in a while,
like somebody would be like, oh, can I get an autograph?
Like somehow they would find us on the internet, like, hey,
can I have an autograph?

Speaker 1 (58:20):
How did your like family feel about this as time
went on, because it seems like the kind of thing
where it's really cool at first, but then it keeps
going and going and going.

Speaker 3 (58:29):
I feel like it's mostly been me and my dad
like managing all of it. Like he took the photo,
I'm in it.

Speaker 17 (58:33):
My brother was there and there's pictures of him too,
and we're always like, oh, it should have been him,
Like what are the odds? Like they were all posted
in the same places, but like Tristan didn't get famous.
I'm so sorry, Tristan. But me and my dad are
always the ones kind of like managing those conversations and
figuring out the opportunities when they're bigger, like we'll involve
everybody and be like, oh, what do you guys think?
But for the most part that I was like, oh,
this is so cool, Like what a fun, cool little

(58:55):
side gig for y'all.

Speaker 1 (58:56):
So you are able to capitalize it a little bit
with the sport game is the next time that comes up.
For the NFTs.

Speaker 3 (59:05):
It was very sporadic like it was.

Speaker 17 (59:06):
I would get a lot of like random interview requests
from people. Sometimes I would do them, sometimes I wouldn't,
But like big opportunity wise, it was it was like
the fuck Jerry game and then the.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
NFT because I talked about it with Lene as well.
I don't know if you were in conversation with her directly,
but she also mentioned She's like, yeah, we were all
talking to each other trying to figure out, first of all,
what this is, what we can accomplish by doing it?

Speaker 17 (59:27):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, So I'll paint the picture. It was
my last semester of college, so I'm like senior year,
like I'm just gonna chill out.

Speaker 3 (59:34):
It's gonna be so.

Speaker 17 (59:35):
Fun, Like I've taken barely any classes. And I start
getting all these emails, which I'm also.

Speaker 3 (59:39):
Like, how do these people?

Speaker 17 (59:40):
I guess my email is like pretty easy to guess,
but anyway, all these people start emailing me like you
should make this token. It was all about this token,
this fungible token, and I was like, what is this
and I'm looking it up. It's all these like web
three discourse.

Speaker 3 (59:53):
I don't know what this is.

Speaker 17 (59:54):
And at this point it was just still me and
my dad. So I think I like DMed Lena and
bad Luck Brian and maybe like the Success Kid. I
was like, are you guys like doing this? We had
a few people reach out and like we'll sell it
for you and we'll give you ten percent. I was like,
I'm not that's not really like giving Like I don't
think we're going to let that happen, right, And so
I talked to Baut like Brian, and he was like, yeah,

(01:00:14):
you can like pretty much do it yourself, like you
can if you want to. And then I reached out
to the Success Kid his mom laany manages that, and
she's like, yeah, we have like a manager, like a
me manager and lawyer like combo that will like do
this for you. And so I was like, oh, put
me in contact with him. And so now that at
that point, I was like, Okay, well we'll have this
me manager and lawyer like set this all up. And

(01:00:37):
then we're like, yeah, let's do it, like let's set
up the NFT and see what happens.

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
I mean, and then it was it seemed like it
was really successful.

Speaker 17 (01:00:44):
Yeah, that day of my life was like, oh my god,
I wish i'd like live streamed it for my own
personal because it was like a like an eBay bid,
so people are just like bidding on it every few hours,
and me and my dad were like, I'm only going
to look every two hours. I'm only going to look
every three hours, like I don't want and then we
go to bed and we go wake up, and I
went to work that day, like I worked at a
restaurant inside of a hotel, so all my coworkers knew

(01:01:06):
that I was like doing that, didn't know what it was. Like, Yeah,
Zoe's selling like a something and like the bid keeps
going up and I was like seating tables and taking
people back and it would go up in ethereum.

Speaker 3 (01:01:17):
I'm like, wait, do the math how much ethereum is? Like,
so that day was just yeah crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
I was wondering if this was your like introduction to
web three in blockchain, and what a weird introduction that
must be. So when who works in tech now? Were
you happy with sort of the management situation that ended
up coming together, because it sounds like there were some
scammy or people reaching out to you earlier.

Speaker 17 (01:01:37):
Yeah, in the end, it is really nice to have
we still have the same like management team and they
handle everything and then when we get a contract, Like
if we had this team when we got that contract
ten years ago for the game, like, it would not
have happened like it did. So they can definitely like
do the negotiation and cut through the bullshit better than
me and my dad that are just like, yep, this
looks good enough to us, like I'm not reading the
fine print, like, so we really like working with them.

Speaker 1 (01:01:59):
Once the kind of tea happens, the auction closes, are
you still at work?

Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
How does the rest of that day?

Speaker 6 (01:02:06):
Though?

Speaker 17 (01:02:06):
So I did get to leave work early because everyone's like, oh,
so you're quitting, like this is gonna shame.

Speaker 3 (01:02:10):
I'm like, no, I will.

Speaker 17 (01:02:11):
And I came back to work and I say the
right pump, like I thought you like left the country
or something. I'm like no, like I'm still here. At first,
I was like, oh, I'm gonna buy a new car
with my money. I have like not touched that money,
like it's still like sitting in like a crypto wallet.
Like I'm not going to like go crazy and like
change my life about this. Like if I need this
for like a house, like that's kind of my plan,
Like oh okay.

Speaker 3 (01:02:30):
I'll use it then.

Speaker 17 (01:02:31):
But all in all, like there was a lot of
like media outreach like oh, like Good Morning America like
New York Times, and I was like, I do not
I'm not going to be on Good Running America. Like
I would rather die like emailing somebody from work like hey, no,
thank you, like thank you for the offer, But I
don't want to go do that. And so I was
like after that same deal, I was like, I'm going
to do one interview about this because I don't need

(01:02:52):
to talk to ten people and say the same thing.

Speaker 3 (01:02:54):
And I decided to do my one interview, and that
was that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
That moment is so fascinating because even outside of like
the nft of it all, it is so interesting to
me that it's like this is some sort of exchange
or like compensation for your likeness being outside of your
control for twenty years. It feels like you should get
something for that having happened to you. But qualifying what

(01:03:19):
it is is so hard to do.

Speaker 17 (01:03:22):
Yeah, it is challenging, and I feel like a lot
of people, like afterwards, people would ask me, like, oh,
do you feel like you finally have control over it?
Like not really, like it's still going to do what
it does, Like it didn't change the fact that anybody
could use it however they wanted to, and people can
still print shirts and people can make like horrifying text
on top of it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:39):
Like, we still don't have control over it, but at
least we finally got paid.

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
Is that enough? Like what would be ideal? I guess
in that situation.

Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
Yeah, I don't know, like what's enough? Like who owes
me what?

Speaker 17 (01:03:51):
Like everybody uses it and that's always been how it's been,
Like I've never thought that I deserved anything out of it,
And that's kind of like you know, this could have
happened to anybody. The fact that that memes viral and
it's still viral now like poof speed to this day.
Like I didn't do anything unique for that to happen,
So I don't feel like I deserved anything out of it,
which is why I've kind of like tried to build
my life, you know, as it is around it, like

(01:04:12):
I'll keep that on the side, and as it comes
up and there's opportunities, I'll engage with that, but I
will keep doing my own like thing, getting a job,
like having my life, because it's just kind of something.

Speaker 3 (01:04:23):
That happened to me.

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
Yeah. I mean, I'm like weirdly like proud of you
for doing that, because if everyone around you is like whoa,
you could like totally change your life.

Speaker 3 (01:04:34):
And yeah, yeah exactly.

Speaker 17 (01:04:36):
There was like a few times when I was super
broken college, like Okay, how am I going to figure
this out? And then of course, right before I graduate,
we get the NFT money. I'm like, if I knew
I wasn't going to be broke this whole time, Like, oh,
come on the fact that I happened right before my graduation,
I was like, that's just the cherry on top of
the cake. After being like working all these horrible jobs
in college, I'm like, oh, so the mean money was
coming in the end.

Speaker 7 (01:04:56):
What are you.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
Excited about right now we're in and how are we
going to move this to page two of your Google results?

Speaker 3 (01:05:04):
Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's kind of like the burden
of my life.

Speaker 17 (01:05:08):
I'm like, I need to figure out what I can
do that could pretend that could be bigger than this,
Like could I ever do anything that would displace like
when you look me up that it's like auto fills
like meme smiling disaster girl. Like I don't know if
that's and I don't know if that's like fair to
myself to be like thinking I need to do something
bigger than something that I didn't really like having control over.

Speaker 3 (01:05:28):
In the first place.

Speaker 17 (01:05:29):
I think it's just generally like yeah, growing in my career,
like I might go back to school, Like I just
want people to know me, like for what I do
at work, and like I like these you know this
niche I'm in, like these companies know me, and like
these people know me. But I think just growing that
and kind of keeping that trajectory on my career and
you know, keeping this in the backseat.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
Right, and also like, like you're saying, is such a
bizarrely specific burden to have put on you because who
else has this problem?

Speaker 17 (01:05:59):
Yeah, exactly, Like we need like a meme support group
or something like we just need to get together for
like a twenty four hour period, Like they're the only
people that get it, Like there's like ten of us
that will like truly understand.

Speaker 3 (01:06:10):
And even like the way.

Speaker 17 (01:06:11):
We've all navigated it has been so different, like it's
not anything like you know, some people have leaned more
into it, some have kept it more private. It's very
different when it happens. She was a kid and like, Okay,
I can go to the grocery store, no one's going
to recognize me. Like only once in my life have
I ever been recognized in person.

Speaker 3 (01:06:26):
And it was like shocking.

Speaker 17 (01:06:27):
I was like I can't do this right now, Like
I don't know how you know who I am, but
this is not like my vibe.

Speaker 7 (01:06:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:06:33):
I was like at a bar in Salt Lake City
where I live, Someone's like, are you the girl? Are
you the disaster girl? And I was like no, and
I just walked away like I don't know what you're
talking about. I've never heard of that before.

Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
Thank you so much to Zoe Roth. You can follow
her at the link in the description, but I'm going
to request that you don't bug her with the same
three jokes She's been hearing for her entire sentient life,
and I'm very, very grateful she took the time to talk.
Something that really stuck with me about this interview is
how regardless of someone's generation, there are still a million

(01:07:07):
ways to relate to the Internet, and that that can
be a good thing. Recently, I've seen discussions around gen
Z slip into some disdain after this same generation was
being hailed as the kids who will save the world
just a couple years ago, but with time the reputations
of most generations sour, and gen Z has been more

(01:07:29):
recently typecast as excessively nihilistic and addicted to their phones.
I wonder why two recent subjects on this show, Zoe Roth,
the Disaster Girl and Haley Welch be talked to a
girl because we just love to call a main character girl.
Lady and wife are very close in age. Zoe was

(01:07:49):
born around two thousand and Haley was born around two
thousand and two. And they both became very famous online
at times that they couldn't really consent to it. Zo
he was just a kid, and Haley was drunk and
never formally agreed to her clip being aired. But their
reactions to this virality couldn't be more different, with Zoe

(01:08:10):
actively choosing to cash out once and otherwise stay the
course and explore her other passions, while Haley tried to
reclaim her image through a series of sketchy cations and
sketchy management. Everyone has a different relationship to the Internet,
and while it has something to do with generational trends,
not to mention that these stories happened seventeen years apart,

(01:08:32):
I think it has just as much to do with
the issues that always affect people, the level of familial
stability and educational access people have, race, class ability, mental health,
whether you think TikTok is really addictive or you're like
me and think it's too loud. The list goes on,
and the Internet is programmed to respond to these factors

(01:08:54):
about us. But there is a commonality to Internet natives
that I've noticed, Like we talked about last week on
The Backroom's episode, there has been this distinct change in
how someone who doesn't remember a world before the Internet
approaches the phenomenon of becoming a main character. To younger people,
this is just a fact of life, and whether you

(01:09:16):
have any interest in becoming the main character, there's always
a chance that one day you'll just be that. And
how will you handle it? Because it seems increasingly expected
that if you don't want it, that doesn't really matter.
It doesn't seem easy. But I find a lot of
comfort in seeing someone like Zoe who says fuck you,

(01:09:38):
no thanks, Zoe Roth the disaster Girl. Your sixteenth minute
ends now enjoy and for your moment of fun, question Mark,
here's a clip of the most recent disaster girl trend.
I was able to find some disgusting AI slop that

(01:09:58):
envisioned Zoe as a real child murderer. Sweet Dreams sixteenth
Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeart Radio.
It is written, posted, and produced by me Jamie Lostus.

(01:10:20):
Our executive producers are Sophie Elekterman and Robert Evans Limas.

Speaker 14 (01:10:24):
Me Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is
from a grant creator and pet.

Speaker 1 (01:10:34):
Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my kat's flea Casper,
and my pet Rockberd, who will outlive us all. Bye.