'The ladies themselves bought into it': How 'Housewives' fans upended the franchise

LOS ANGELES — For 48 hours, the "Real Housewives" fandom was buzzing.

Maggie Kelley, the creator and operator of @BestOfBravo, was waking up from a nap at her home in Nashville earlier this month when she reached for her phone and took in the news through a flurry of group chat messages: soap star-turned-reality TV MVP Lisa Rinna was departing "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" after eight years. "I was like, 'Oh, my God,' and immediately I started composing a post," said Kelley, referring to her Instagram fan account, which pumps out memes and news bites to the glee of 226,000 followers. "That's just my first reaction — to get the news out there for my followers."

Roughly 2,000 miles away, in Southern California, the proprietor of @QueensofBravo, who requested anonymity in order to continue making "Housewives" content in peace, was working their administrative job when the news hit.

"To quote Lisa Barlow [of 'The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City'], I was shaking. I was physically shaking," they said. "I couldn't even say words because I was trying to post as quickly as possible. I peaced out of my job for a solid 15 minutes — I was like, 'I'm taking my break,' and I just started posting. The news was not a surprise to me, as I had been hearing this since October from people fairly close to production. But it was shocking that it came at that point in time."

@QueensofBravo's owner knew, like anyone who counts Housewives such as Kyle Richards and Teresa Giudice as main characters in their group chat, that the following day was already slated to be a headline-maker: "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City" cast member Jen Shah was scheduled to be sentenced for her role in a telemarketing scheme targeting senior citizens.

"We're well past 10 years of this franchise being on the air, and it's still making