I’m Lainey Lui, and you’re watching Western TV.
Hey, I’m Laura Robinson
I’m Shannon Marks
And I’m Connor Malbeuf, and we’re with Lainey Gossip. Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for having me
Like, you’ve done it all: co-host on the social, etalk reporter, founder of your own
blog (which started as a newsletter) and for those who don’t know, you’re an associate
prof here. So how did that all happen?
Well, on my blog we discuss celebrity gossip in a way that is more than just ‘who’s
dating who’ and ‘who’s wearing what’. It’s meant to be an introduction into broader
social conversations and discussions that affect us all, celebrities or not.
But I did end up taking more firm crusader position arguing on the value of gossip, which
lead me to my Ted Talks which ended up being a Walrus talk here at Western…
Which, she actually was at
First time I met you, but you probably met lots of fans
Well that day, you were there you know, I argued on behalf of gossip as an art form
and form of communication and the Dean of the Faculty of Arts was there and he remembered
it and he invited me to teach a class.
So you talk about gossip as an art form, and in this day and age we’re in it’s ‘Fake News’,
Trump…how do people decipher ‘Fake News’ from gossip?
Well, people who’ve been gossiping and following celebrity gossip have been doing this ‘Fake
News’ thing and moving around it for a long time. I mean, that’s what the National Inquirer
was, ‘Fake News’ about celebrities. So if you are educated in celebrity gossip you
already have a developed muscle of how to detect bullsh*t and how not to.
We’re more willing to acknowledge gossip as apart of our humanity. We all do it, like
it or not.
So gossip, this is one thing I wanted to ask, in terms of children it feels, I know I experienced
gossip, rumours and lies as bullying when I was younger. So where do you draw the line
between bullying and gossip? How would you explain gossip to a child?
Well, I don’t know if you need it explained because it’s already happening. It’s happening,
especially now in this generation on social media, where they’re posting about their
friends who ‘I went to this person’s birthday party and we had a good time’.
Well whoever wasn’t invited to the birthday party who sees it on Facebook or Snapchat
automatically that is a gossip generator.
So I think gossip is just a form of communication.
You talk in your Ted Talk and you talk so much on you blog about the celebrity ecosystem,
for our viewers who might not have seen it, how would you describe it to them?
Well it’s like any ecosystem. You have a marine ecosystem, for example, that is about
the organisms, the fish or whatever to make it very simplistic. Fish, water, algae…
What’s Angelina Jolie considered, a mammal?
We’re talking about the ecosystems, and he goes, “huh, animals?”
Exactly! So that’s a regular ecosystem and in a celebrity ecosystem you have: your celebrities,
you have agents, publicists, you have the media, you have the paparazzi
and you have the fans.
That’s the celebrity ecosystem
If you remove one component of that ecosystem, it falls apart. In celebrity ecosystem, you
remove the media, well then who is the celebrity going to promote their work?
You remove the manager of the celebrity, then how does the celebrity manage their deal,
their book deal, their social media deals, their film deals? So that is what the celebrity
ecosystem is and my job is to study, like a scientist, the celebrity ecosystem almost
as if it’s a laboratory.
Like anthropology almost.
So what happens to the ecosystem when social media is introduced? I was observing celebrities
have their own platform now, so they can speak out against rumours and speculations on their
own terms with their own voice. So they can almost silence some rumours already. I know
I was looking at Josh Brolin’s Instagram and he takes selfies when a paparazzi takes
a photo of him so he can own that image before they can. Does that make gossip an endangered
species for other parties in the ecosystem?
I think what social media has done is just become another gossip generator. Celebrities
might claim to be using social media to shut down gossip, but they’re also using social
media to create gossip.
So based on that, you’ve been doing this for a long time. You saw the beginning when
Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt began to break it off, that was about 10 years ago…
More I think
Now, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are breaking it off, have you seen or do you feel that
you change how you cover their stories 10 plus years apart? Is there a way of covering
them now that’s different than covering breakups back then?
I think that breakups and hookups and love triangles are one of the essential components
of any good romantic storyline. Shakespeare was writing about breakups, hookups and love
triangles. I will say that, there was a time when people of my generation were not speaking
about issues in a very positive, constructive way that we’ve all learned to do now.
As we have all progressed as a society, and we’ve learned from very smart people who were more
aware and much more ahead of the curb than the rest of us.
We’ve all modified, even in our daily lives and not just our gossip lives, but in our
daily lives the way we speak about eachother, the way we speak to eachother. You don’t
see it just with gossip columnists, you see it in art. There are some movies that would
not be made today given the content how homophobic they are. But those are representations of
the time, so I would say that’s what’s changed.
Now, before we get into our game which I’ll tell you in a second, have you ever posted
an article or covered a story and you posted it and you just felt so guilty about it?
No, I wouldn’t say that in the moment I would say I feel guilty about it. What I will
say to go back to that previous answer is, would I write certain things differently and
use different language now verses something I wrote 10 years ago? Sure, of course.
Think about comedians. There are some jokes that comedians used to tell 20 years ago that
they could not get up on stage and tell, but if you ask them, “Hey, 20 years ago did
you regret telling that joke?” they’re not going to say yes because that joke killed.
Yeah, if that joke was appropriate, or if it was called appropriate at the time.
Exactly, and you’ve seen it almost weave into even news. I don’t know if you follow
the Globe and Mail scandal, it wasn’t really a scandal, but Dan Levy called out a writer
in the Globe and Mail for using the word ‘fey’ and he totally got called out and totally
got backlash. Maybe back then it would’ve been appropriate but not now.
Learning within politically correctness and what’s ok and what’s not.
So we have the 5 biggest headlines, arguably the 5 biggest headlines of the year or throughout
the years, and we want to find out if it’s either a true story or a P.R. scam.
Okay
So we’re going to read them out and then you’re going to say A: True or B: Scam.
Got it
So the first one: The Kim Kardashian robbery in Paris. True or scam?
True, yeah.
Okay, Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber back again, true or scam?
Scammy-true?
We agreed on that, semi-true
I definitely think they’re back together and I definitely think that they can’t quit
eachother, but I also think that they super enjoy us talking about it.
Okay, number 3. Kylie Jenner, 20 years old, pregnant. True or scam?
See, I’m not a Kardashian/Jenner expert. From what I’ve seen out there, true?
And leads dating in movies and TV shows, Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens and we saw now Stranger
Things they’re dating, now Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. True or scam?
Sometimes scam, sometimes true. Like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie ended up being true
right? The big one that people recently, in the last 5 or 6 years or 10 years, that people
have doubted was Robert Pattison and Kristin Stewart.
So yeah, I would say that one was true too, just because there was so much angst involved.
They’re not that great actors.
And our last one, Katy Perry and Taylor Swift. That feud, that bad blood. Katy seems to talk
about it a lot more than Taylor. Katy seems to say that it’s over and I've tried
to reach out and forgive her, but Taylor doesn’t really talk about it much other than if she writes
a song about it. True or scam?
True. For sure true.
The reason why it’s true is because Taylor Swift is too competitive
to make it a scam. Like, when you think of a conspiracy theory it means that two people
have to buy into a scam and mutually benefit eachother, which means you have to subscribe
to the theory that Taylor Swift would have willingly agreed to form a partnership with
Katy Perry in order to also help Katy Perry. Is that what you know of Taylor Swift?
Taylor Swift is not interested in helping anyone, except Taylor Swift. So that’s why
you have to believe it to be true.
Lainey, thank you so much for being here. Make sure to like, share and subscribe. We’ll
catch you later.