If you have ever received a passive aggressive thumbs up emoji you may be entitled to financial compensation

By Claire Carusillo

Hobart Magazine is in turmoil over writer Alex Perez’s words about tote bag women and cancel culture

On September 29, the literary magazine Hobart published an interview with Alex Perez, a writer who attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2009 after his ambitions of being a pro baseball player fizzled out. Born in Miami and raised in a working class immigrant family, “the Iowa pariah” describes himself as a “heterodox” writer of “masculine fiction.” After Hurricane Irma nearly hit Miami in 2017, Perez says he stopped being a “pussy,” dropped his lit agent, and “started writing about all the stuff I was secretly talking about with friends.”

The interview with Hobart editor Elizabeth Ellen is a wild ride that covers all sorts of ground from “rich whites” in publishing, wokeness, and the extended grift that comprises the MFA world.

“My dream of being the next Alex Rodriguez was wiped away, so I decided to give the writing life a shot—maybe I could be the Cuban-American Ray Carver,” Perez told Ellen.

The initial publication didn’t cause too much of a stir, but almost two weeks later on October 11, a Twitter thread by Evan Fleicher (one of Hobart’s own editors) denouncing the interview started gaining traction. The ensuing response led to five editors resigning from the magazine yesterday. Continue reading

By Fran Hoepfner

The omnipresent producer went from directing One Direction music videos to rebranding the Kardashians. What's his end game?

The first name you see at the end of every episode of Hulu’s almost disastrously boring The Kardashians is not a K-named member of the Kalabasas Krew, but instead: executive producer Ben Winston. Though our society worships those who produce — and those who executive produce, even more so — the nature of who or what a producer is and does still baffles. Producers, well, make things happen. They procure money, they meet people, they fix and execute solutions. It’s all amorphous in the way that business, in general, is amorphous, in which case Ben Winston might be one of the most amorphous producers there is, his hands on so much of what we talk about, whether we like it or not. But who the hell is he?

A cursory search will tell you that Ben Winston is a British producer and sometimes director who founded the production company Fulwell 73. His Twitter photo is of himself walking down a hallway with the late Queen Elizabeth (cool?). Apparently he directed the Friends reunion on HBO Max. Okay.

Perhaps the most telling piece of information about Ben Winston is not anything in his latest body of work — Grammys producing, Adele One Night Only, the Kardashians — but a nearly 10-year-old One Direction music video. Continue reading

By Kelly Conaboy

Everyone who knows the couple is Team Gisele

“There is a side. We picked one.”

Those chilling words haven’t left our mind since we first heard Vanderpump Rules star Scheana Shay’s horrible beefy husband Brock say them on some podcast about the divorce of Tom Schwartz and Katie Maloney — and today, they are just as relevant. It seems Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen’s friends have, too, chosen a side. And for Tom Brady, this turn of events isn’t a “touchdown.”

“Gisele and Tom’s friends are upset at Tom for going back on his word and coming out of retirement,” a source told Us Weekly. “They hate the way Tom is refusing to bend for Gisele.”

Yes, they hate it. “BITCH! BEND!” they’re texting to him, and of course we agree. But in case you think Brady’s ravenous and unyielding dedication to his beloved American football is not the first problem he and Gisele have faced as a couple, well — you’re wrong. Continue reading

By Allie Jones

And now they're bringing the Toms into it?

In the grand history of Bravo television, there have been some real bummers. Remember 100 Days of Summer, a one-season wonder about six “professionals” living in Chicago (derogatory)? Or Miss Advised, a reality series following sex columnists including the one and only Julia Allison? And then of course there was The People’s Couch, a show about people watching Bravo shows. All of these made me sad, but no Bravo reality program has ever depressed me as much as Winter House, a series in which the stars of Summer House and Southern Charm collide with random Instagram models at an Airbnb in Vermont to drink themselves into oblivion. The second season premieres on October 13.

Winter House is a product of the pandemic; the first season was shot during the depths of winter 2021 and reflects the hopelessness and claustrophobia of that time. Everyone was so, so drunk. The kitchen table in the rental was never not covered in 47 solo cups, Cheeto dust, and half-eaten pasta salad. The one bright spot was the introduction of Andrea Denver, a handsome Italian model who was not connected to anyone in the house in any way but somehow ended up on the show. Continue reading

By Olivia Craighead

Everybody relax

First they came for Louis C.K., then racial slurs, and now… the thumbs-up emoji. No person or thing is safe from being canceled — at least, that is what every media outlet right of center would like us to believe. Over the last 24 hours, news sites whose main purpose is to scare boomers into leaving cities and buying erectile dysfunction medication have all aggregated the same so-called story: that Gen Z thinks the thumbs-up emoji is passive-aggressive and needs to be shipped to Canceled Island to join free speech champions and older women who yell at Starbucks workers.

This entire news cycle stems from a single post on the “Adulting” Reddit forum, where one user posed the question, “Am I not adult enough to be comfortable with the ‘thumbs up’ emoji reaction?” The poster had apparently recently started an “adult job” where their coworkers routinely use 👍 to react to messages. “I think it’s normal for to [sic] ‘thumbs up’ messages, but I still feel like it’s such an unsettling response. Does anyone else feel this way?” they asked. Continue reading