Taylor Swift, Astroworld Conspiracy Theories, and Hilary Duff’s Weird Shoulder Dancing

Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello, Dick Mabutt, and the Toxicity of Hinge Voice Prompts: On TikTok, Francis Bourgeois — a gleeful young man who is introducing a new generation to the old-school art of trainspotting — has amassed 1.5 million followers with his highly enthusiastic posts sharing his love of trains. With his trusty GoPro-style camera in tow, he celebrates the glory of "marvelous locos" across Great Britain (including one named Dick Mabbutt) taking followers behind the scenes of railway stations and depots. Other topics discussed on this episode include lesbian Canadian ceramicists, Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello's breakup, the chaotic energy of Hinge's new audio feature (also, which celebrities Brittany has spotted on Raya), and the relative hygiene of deepthroating a 12-foot gummy snake. by Don’t Let This Flop

37 min listen

Olivia Rodrigo, “abcdefu,” and Black Creators on Strike: This Year on TikTok: From sea shanties to “Drivers License” to a lovable elderly pug to Swifties roasting the shit out of Jake Gyllenhaal, 2021 was a whirlwind on our favorite clock app. In honor of the close of this (honestly incredibly hectic) year, DLTF cohosts Brittany Spanos and Ej Dickson did a special end-of-year interview with RS Twitch host Charlie Cooper talking about what we loved this year (and what we could have done without). by Don’t Let This Flop

44 min listen

Selena Gomez and Chris Evans, Maneskin, and the DuoLingo Owl vs. Mr. Peanut: TikTok is a platform populated primarily by teenagers, a demographic that can smell inauthenticity a mile away. So as it becomes more mainstream, how can brands gain traction on it? This week on Don't Let This Flop, cohosts Brittany Spanos and Ej Dickson spoke to the TikTok voice behind the DuoLingo owl itself, Zaria Parvez, the social media coordinator for DuoLingo, asking such burning questions as how brands can thrive on TikTok, whether she's ever gotten in trouble for making the owl too horny, and if the DuoLingo owl has ever taken a human life (she claims it has not.) Other subjects discussed this week are the Italian band Mäneskin, which went viral after winning the Eurovision competition earlier this year; conspiracy theories about Selena Gomez and Chris Evans boinking based on his Instagram stories; hot movers, and Mr. Peanut's butt. by Don’t Let This Flop

42 min listen

The VIP List, Megan Fox, and Ben Platt's Wig: This week, we talk with the women behind the most agro restaurant reviews on TikTok: Meg Radice and Audrey Jongens, longtime friends who started posting old nightlife reviews during the pandemic, when all restaurants and clubs were closed. We also discuss whether Megan Fox has replaced Addison Rae as Khloe Kardashian's BFF, what's on Shawn Mendes's For You page, and what the deal is with Dear Evan Hansen star Ben Platt's wig. by Don’t Let This Flop

43 min listen

Anna Marie Tendler, a 38-Step Skincare Routine, and Cancelling Noodle the Pug: On this week's episode of Don't Let This Flop, cohosts Spanos and Ej Dickson take on Noodle the Pug — namely, how his oversaturation has effectively canceled him. (Thanks, Today Show.) They also discuss a viral 38-step (!!!) skincare routine that's infuriating thousands of millennial women across the internet, Anna Marie Tendler's triumphant debut on TikTok (teaching us how to put on a duvet cover, no less!), and a Himbo of the Week who believes the correct way to eat guacamole and chips is with a knife. by Don’t Let This Flop

39 min listen

Twilight, berries and cream, and Animal Crossing porn: This week, we're talking about the resurgence of Twilight on TikTok, discussing "Bella, where have you been loca?" and whether Taylor Lautner is more culturally relevant than Jar-Jar Binks (answer: no). We also parse the universal appeal of the Little Lad and the "berries and cream" meme and explain once and for all why everyone is seeing a sexy version of the cat from Animal Crossing on their For You pages. With special guest, actor and content creator Yasmine Sahid (@ladyyasmina1 on TikTok). by Don’t Let This Flop

55 min listen

The Himbo Holiday Spectacular: For DLTF's very special holiday episode, cohosts Brittany Spanos and Ej Dickson are doing an expanded version of their weekly Himbo of the Week segment, in which they celebrate the hot men of TikTok. From mustachioed wilderness explorers and ASMRtists to sweatpants-wearing shirtless Irish-Nigerian models to tattoo artists to axe-wielding, muscle-bound fitness influencers who spout motivational bullshit on Twitter, we're giving thanks to the sexy lugs of social media who make our For You pages what they are. by Don’t Let This Flop

36 min listen

The Emotional Destruction Caused by Red (Taylor’s Version), Hillary Duff’s Dance Challenge, and the New Satanic Panic: One of the biggest trends on TikTok over the past few weeks is a 2007 video of Hilary Duff dancing poorly to a perfume ad on the Today Show. The actor and singer recently made a resurgence in a viral clip of the morning show performance to promote her perfume With Love...by Hilary Duff, as well as the eponymous single she released with the fragrance. Another video, a performance of the single with the same choreography on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, has also gone wildly viral, spawning the Hilary Duff Challenge. On this week in Don't Let This Flop, co-hosts Brittany Spanos and Ej Dickson discuss Duff, "With Love" and the resurgence of early-aughts culture in general (including the return of celeb perfume lines!), as well as Astroworld Satanic Panic conspiracy theories, the ubiquity of Erika the Money Lawyer and her consumerist hacks, and of course, the emotional d by Don’t Let This Flop

43 min listen

Anthony Ramos, Bing-Bong, and Megan Thee Stallion Bodies Adele: On this week's episode of Don't Let This Flop, cohosts Brittany Spanos and Ej Dickson discuss the breakup of Anthony Ramos and Jasmine Cephas Jones in their segment What Are Straight People Doing?, as well as TikTok's obsession with Hamilton and how NYU Tisch kids get over heartache (spoiler: obnoxiously). They also discuss Spotify Unwrapped (a.k.a. the worst day of the year on the internet), a Megan Thee Stallion mashup with Adele's "Water on the Bridge," and the roots of Bing-Bong, the meme taking over everyone's For You pages. by Don’t Let This Flop

45 min listen

Emily Mariko’s Aspirational Salmon, Vegan Cooking Videos, and Couch Guy’s Body Language: What was really going on when Lauren visited her boyfriend Robbie at college, surprising him as he sat on a couch with three girls? It turned into TikTok’s hottest clip, of course, with millions of fans picking apart whether the 20-second clip was definitive proof of Robbie cheating. After watching roughly 6,000 response videos breaking down theories, we talked to actual body language expert Traci Brown, who reveals which people in the TikTok you should be paying attention to — and it’s not Lauren or Robbie. “Something is going on more than what we know,” Brown tells Rolling Stone. This week we also bring you a look at what makes Emily Mariko’s leftover salmon videos so appealing, and a special double-Himbo of the Week. by Don’t Let This Flop

41 min listen

Kardashian Kid Drama, Caroline Polachek, and the Return of the Tumblr Girlies: This week on Don't Let This Flop, we dissect the latest drama unfolding within the Adult Disney subculture, as well as "So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings" chanteuse Caroline Polachek, Kardashian kiddie Photoshop drama gone awry, the resurgence of 2014 Tumblr girlie style (and our fears about a subsequent renaissance of ballet flats), and a geriatric Himbo of the Week whose content is so horny it's restricted only to adults 21 and over. by Don’t Let This Flop

45 min listen

The Will Smith Oscars Slap Made the Entire Internet Stupid: When Will Smith slapped Chris Rock over a bad joke he made about his wife at the Oscars, we probably could've predicted that the Takes would be bad. But few could have predicted that it would have spawned an entire cottage industry of pundits comparing Smith to Putin, or clutching their pearls over what would have happened had Chris Rock been Betty White (spoiler alert: nothing, because she is dead). This week, we talk Bad Slap Takes as well as Summer Sex Ed camp, Harry Styles' Easter egg filled album rollout, and ponder why Shake from Love Is Blind simply won't shut the f**k up. We also crown Family Feud host Steve Harvey as our Himbo of the Week, and debate whether he is responsible for making face-sitting mainstream. by Don’t Let This Flop

53 min listen

Julia Fox, ‘Euphoria’ High, and the Return of the Trainspotting Himbo: On this week’s Don’t Let This Flop, we dissect Julia Fox’s PR-ready whirlwind relationship with Kanye West (and what, if any, involvement Pete Davidson may have; confront the reality that Lin Manuel Miranda is Cringe, and celebrate the return of both HBO’s “Euphoria” and multiple Himbo of the Week winner Francis Bourgeois, who debuted a highly erotic collab with the most online Jonas Brother (excepting Frankie, of course). by Don’t Let This Flop

44 min listen

'Euphoria' Drama, 'Straight People: Gay Edition,' and What Is Jeremy O Harris Doing?: Why is this season of Euphoria going completely off the rails? What happens to TikTok-famous gay influencer couples when they break up? And why can't playwright and Emily In Paris star Jeremy O. Harris stay off of TikTok? On this week's Don't Let This Flop, we address these burning questions and far more, such as Sydney Sweeney's classic car restoration TikTok account, whether the pop band Future X would survive in a Sims house, and we pledge our love to freegan TikTok himbos who got rejected from Juilliard. by Don’t Let This Flop

48 min listen

Kim and Kanye, the Tinder Swindler, and Swiffergate: For the past two weeks, Kanye West has constantly been posting on his previously dormant Instagram, aggressively campaigning to get his ex-wife Kim Kardashian back. Some of this behavior, such as referring to her current boyfriend Pete Davidson as "Skete" or posting Marvel Civil War memes, has been absurdly comical — but much of it has arguably crossed the line into public harassment, with Kanye most recently ranting about their daughter North's TikTok and posting Kim's messages pleading with him to stop. To help explain what's been going on with Kim and Kanye, we enlisted resident TikTok Kardashians expert @Kardashian.Kolloquium to shed some light on the situation. We also talk about the Tinder Swindler (and whether or not we'd swipe right), a New York magazine piece about fraudster Danielle Miller, and crown a special Valentine's Day-themed Himbo of the Week. by Don’t Let This Flop

49 min listen

One Direction and 5SOS, Sugar Baby TikTok, and the Return of Couch Guy by Don’t Let This Flop

62 min listen

Pete Davidson’s D**k, the Ed Sheeranaissance, and John Travolta and Tommy Lee's BFFship: It's no secret that Ed Sheeran has historically been considered, for lack of a better term, uncool. The Brit's musical output skews on the schmaltzier side, and tracks like "Perfect" and "Thinking Out Loud" have traditionally been considered wedding dance songs or the soundtrack for freshman high schoolers' first experience with digital penetration. Yet a new wave of fans on TikTok are begging the question: is Ed Sheeran actually awesome? On this week's Don't Let This Flop, co-hosts Spanos and Dickson discuss the impending "Ed Sheeranaissance," as well as Tommy Lee and John Travolta's shocking cookies-and-lemonade bromance, and talk to Himbo of the Week Sampson Gaglione (best known as the Shirtless Guy who Reacts to Thirsty Comments About Him) about how he accidentally built a feminist community on TikTok. Inspired by TikTokers' obsession with Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian's fledging, highly pu by Don’t Let This Flop

36 min listen

Che Diaz, the Tings Tings, and the Cancellation of Meena the Elephant: We promised we weren’t going to talk about And Just Like That on the pod…..and yet, the first 18 minutes of this episode are devoted to And Just Like That. We bid farewell to the first season of the endlessly divisive Sex and the City reboot, revisiting its best moments from the cringe (every scene with Che and Miranda, basically) to the unnecessarily horny (every scene with Che and Miranda, basically) to the sob-inducing (Steve won’t take off his wedding ring!!!! d’awwwwwwww). We also discuss the That’s Not My Name trend, the yassification of Pinocchio, and why the cartoon elephant from Sing is cancelled (spoiler: she deserves it). by Don’t Let This Flop

39 min listen

The Jonas Bros Vax Up With Biden, Miss America's 100th Anniversary, and Gorgeous Girls Love Soup: On TikTok, there perhaps is no insult more devastating than to be told by a teenager that your content is cringe. If this is the case, then the Jonas Brothers and the White House had quite a rough week. The pop trio teamed up with the Biden administration for a quick TikTok promoting the importance of vaccines by using the Bing Bong audio from a viral video by the YouTube channel SideTalk. On this week’s episode, we discuss the Biden/JoBros collab, as well as PageantTok in honor of the 100th anniversary of Miss America (you can read Dickson's dispatch from the event here), secret fuckboy train enthusiasts, the "Gorgeous Gorgeous Girls Love Soup" meme, TikTok moral panics, and Nancy Reagan as the original Throat GOAT. by Don’t Let This Flop

52 min listen

Grimes's Secret Baby, the Womblands, and Would You Join a Cult If Hot People Were In It?: How did Grimes hide a newborn baby in an Airbnb? Are Robert Pattinson and Zoe Kravitz pretending to be in love with each other on The Batman press tour? Why does Denver appear to such a magnet for TikTokers having condom-free sex? And finally: would you join Scientology if John Travolta were still hot? For our 25th (!) (!) episode, Brittany and Ej discuss such pressing questions of our time, as well as an alleged Pentecostal Christian dance cult, a massively compelling (but weirdly depressing) TikTok sex scandal unfolding in real time, and our new extremely Italian-American Himbo of the Week. by Don’t Let This Flop

49 min listen

Euphoria’s Angus Cloud, AnnaLynne McCord’s Poem to Putin, and the Queen’s Fake Death: It’s been a long week — somehow longer than usual. Queen Elizabeth II’s death was falsely reported by a celebrity blogger who may or may not have confused her with a musician from Queens of the Stone Age. Russia invaded Ukraine, and celebrities posted their reactions in the most cringy ways possible. (Except Cher, of course, who is perfect.) Then there was the Euphoria finale, so we had to break down our love for Angus Cloud. by Don’t Let This Flop

41 min listen

Julia Fox, Flat Earth Conspiracy Theories, and the Cringe Polyamorists of TikTok: No sound has captured our For You Page — and, dare we say it, the soul of an entire generation — quite like Julia Fox saying "Uncut Jahhhhhhmz." Fox has gone viral not for her relationship with her now-ex paramour Kanye West, but for her role as Josh Safdie's self-described muse in Uncut Gems (or is it Uncah Jahhhms?), and the interview has got our FYPs in a chokehold. Also discussed on this ep: why poly couples make such cringe TikTok content, a Himbo of the Week who claims to spend $2000 a month on Voss alone, and a definitive ranking of bottled water. Special guest: Daily Beast journalist and author of the recent book Off the Edge Kelly Weill on the spread of Flat Earth conspiracy theories. by Don’t Let This Flop

52 min listen

West Elm Caleb, the Emo Festival, and the Eroticism of @mrbigchops69: How did a 6'4" West Elm furniture designer get our FYPs in a chokehold for a solid week? This week on Don't Let This Flop, we unpack the ethical morass of the West Elm Caleb saga, in which the women of NYC TikTok banded together to put a 25-year-old tall guy named Caleb on blast for allegedly lovebombing, then ghosting, them. Brands got involved, and then West Elm's Instagram got involved — and then things turned ugly. We talked to Leah, aka @jewishbrat, one of the TikTok creators who had matched with Caleb and hopped on the trend, to get her thoughts on what it's like to go viral for accidentally ruining someone's life — and how she feels about taking part in the saga afterwards. We also discuss When We Were Young, aka the upcoming Vegas festival that seems destined to fail; bring you an update on a former Himbo of the Week, aka the Gummy Deep Throat Guy; and pay homage to thirst trap satirist extraordinaire @mrbigc by Don’t Let This Flop

51 min listen

Are Hilary and Haylie Duff Secretly Feuding?: This week the internet has been stuck in a nostalgia loop. "Gangnam Style" is making a comeback on TikTok (albeit as a backdrop for people to share their trauma about cheating boyfriends and being almost-murdered). Pete Davidson is getting branded with his girlfriend's name, again. And TikTok is replete with rumors of Hilary and Haylie Duff, your favorite early-aughts Disney tween sibling stars, being enmeshed in a feud, for possible reasons that Brittany and Ej rehash this week at an exhausting length. Is it politics? In-law drama? Related to the 2006 classic Material Girls? We simply don't know, but we're sure gonna speculate at length to try to find out! Plus, we once crown a pair of hot dumb twins as Himbos of the Week (who thankfully, unlike other TikTok twins, do not pretend to kiss for clout). by Don’t Let This Flop

40 min listen

The World's Worst Heterosexuals Are Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani: This week has been hell, but fortunately for us, it's been a banner week for Straight People — which is why we decided to do a very special Straight People-themed edition of DLTF, exploring the heteros and their shenanigans. First up on the docket are Silicon Valley's favorite hetero lying liars, Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani, an embarrassment to Straights Everywhere, whose weird and disgusting relationship is documented in skin-crawling detail the recent season finale of The Dropout. We also talk about Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker's recent Vegas "wedding" (actually just a promo for their Hulu show); Avril Lavigne getting engaged to a guy who was in a throuple with Bella Thorne; and an extremely confusing Instagram post by Andrew Garfield's ex. Featuring a special edition of "Did a Himbo Tweet This, or President Trump?," featuring two-time Himbo of the Week Thoren Bradley. by Don’t Let This Flop

46 min listen

Pamela Anderson, the 32-Bar-Chef, and Zelensky Thirst: When will liberals learn their lesson about sexualizing political figures? From Michael Avenatti to Andrew Cuomo, it never ends well. That hasn’t stopped a new batch of thirsty tweets that’s emerged about Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky after Russia’s invasion of his country. (Spoiler alert: they’re cringe as hell.) We also discuss Pam and Tommy (not to mention Putin’s crush on Pamela Anderson), the millennial musical theater aficionado the 32-Bar-Chef, and crown a special Himbo of the Week. by Don’t Let This Flop

47 min listen

Don’t Worry, Darling, About Harry Styles’ Oral Sex Scenes (feat. Luke Cook) by Don’t Let This Flop

63 min listen

The Eel Daddy Has Logged On (ft. Nick Tobler) by Don’t Let This Flop

50 min listen

Kelly Ripa's Aversion to Chewing Foods Is Bumming TikTok Out (feat. Carley and Mercedes) by Don’t Let This Flop

50 min listen

Why Is Al Pacino Obsessed with Shrek? (ft. Mythical Kitchen chef Josh Scherer): We kick off this week with a classic troll: a viral video of "Spokane-style pizza," a concoction featuring canned salmon, mozzarella, fry sauce, and fresh strawberries that is not at all from the eastern Washington/Coeur d'Alene region. Created by DLTF guest Josh Scherer, a video of him making "Spokane-style pizza" went viral on Twitter and TikTok, leading to a slew of death threats because the internet is a very normal place to be! Other topics discussed this week: Britney's pregnancy reveal, the underrated genius of Lindsay Lohan's Beach Club, a high school musical theater director having a major power trip on TikTok, and why the fuck Al Pacino is always photographed with wire headphones. by Don’t Let This Flop

46 min listen

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Taylor Swift, Astroworld Conspiracy Theories, and Hilary Duff’s Weird Shoulder Dancing

Taylor Swift, Astroworld Conspiracy Theories, and Hilary Duff’s Weird Shoulder Dancing

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