Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hi everybody, Jamie here again reminding you
Speaker 1: that if you're in the Los Angeles area, I am
Speaker 1: taping my very first special called The Tiny Man Is
Speaker 1: Trying to Kill Me on December fourth. There are two shows.
Speaker 1: The first one is basically sold out, but there are
Speaker 1: still tickets available to the nine point thirty. I have
Speaker 1: the link in the description and I hope to see
Speaker 1: you there. Enjoy the episode. Early twenty twenty one is
Speaker 1: the time many of us have complete memory holes for,
Speaker 1: and not without good reason. In the US, COVID was
Speaker 1: still ravaging the country after the spread of the virus
Speaker 1: had been repeatedly sabotaged by conspiracy theorists in and outside
Speaker 1: of the government. Lockdown restrictions were reaching the year mark
Speaker 1: after an extremely contentious election where COVID missed the opportunity
Speaker 1: to do the first and only funny thing it could do,
Speaker 1: which was killed Donald Trump. There was something that happened
Speaker 1: on January sixth of this year, but I can't quite
Speaker 1: recall what it was. It was a bad time, and
Speaker 1: collectively I don't know that we really remember it. There's
Speaker 1: some science behind this complicated issue, but the short story
Speaker 1: is that your brain can protect you from a traumatic
Speaker 1: memory or event or period of time. You know, when
Speaker 1: you're listening to this set, the moment it comes out,
Speaker 1: you probably won't remember this time very well if you
Speaker 1: live in the US soon either because for most people
Speaker 1: and surely to different degrees depending on what your day
Speaker 1: to day was like during COVID and if anyone in
Speaker 1: your life was personally affected, this was a terrifying time.
Speaker 1: Add this to Black Lives Matter demonstrations being met with
Speaker 1: violent reprisal from police forces and no vaccine in sight
Speaker 1: until the very end of twenty twenty, with a long
Speaker 1: line before it got to non essential workers, and by
Speaker 1: early twenty twenty one, a lot of people were reaching
Speaker 1: the ends of their ropes. Really think about where you
Speaker 1: were at around this time. I had it comparatively easy.
Speaker 1: Podcasting is not essential work, if you can believe it.
Speaker 1: And even still, by the top of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: I was a fucking wreck. I was terrified for my
Speaker 1: immunocompromised parents across the country. I was trying to get
Speaker 1: out of the house to do outreach work and I'd
Speaker 1: gotten arrested at a protest in front of Eric Garcetti's house. Whoops,
Speaker 1: and I'd do it again. The lockdown era was horrendous
Speaker 1: for Americans' mental health. There's extensive reporting on how anxiety, PTSD,
Speaker 1: and depression increased tremendously during that year and into today.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone could look back at their social
Speaker 1: media at this time and think, Wow, I was hanging
Speaker 1: in pretty well then, And if you can, you are
Speaker 1: the fucking weirdo. It was an age where people were
Speaker 1: knowingly or unknowingly posting their l's every single day, NonStop,
Speaker 1: because unless you were an essential worker, what the fuck
Speaker 1: else was there to do? But one L posted during
Speaker 1: this time made Internet history, bringing people together collectively to
Speaker 1: say oh my God in a way that was not
Speaker 1: centered on a global catastrophe. Of course, plenty of commenters
Speaker 1: took it too far immediately, but for a single moment
Speaker 1: on February third, twenty twenty one, all of TikTok wasn't
Speaker 1: focused on COVID disinformation or insurrection analysis or sorry, objectively
Speaker 1: bad mental health content. No, we were all talking about
Speaker 1: gorilla glue.
Speaker 2: Hey, y'all, But those of y'all don't know me, know,
Speaker 2: my hair has been like this for about a month now.
Speaker 2: It's not much choice. No, it's not much choice.
Speaker 1: Tessaka Brown, the woman who used gorilla glue in her hair.
Speaker 1: Your sixteenth Minute starts now, Joys sixt Welcome back to
Speaker 1: sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take a look at
Speaker 1: the Internet. Main characters talk to them about how their
Speaker 1: moment affected them and what it says about us and
Speaker 1: the Internet. My name is Jamie Loftus, and today my
Speaker 1: phone connected to an ex boyfriend's WiFi when I was
Speaker 1: walking by in a neighborhood I didn't know he lived in.
Speaker 1: Guess he moved. And today we're talking about the infamous
Speaker 1: early twenty twenty one gorilla glue hair incident. And look,
Speaker 1: I've already ptsd'd you by bringing up the later days
Speaker 1: of the pandemic, and you don't deserve it right now,
Speaker 1: but bear with me. I really want you to dig
Speaker 1: into your sad little brain and pull out where you
Speaker 1: were at in early twenty twenty one. Because today's subject
Speaker 1: Tessaga Brown, and yes we got the interview. Baby was
Speaker 1: in the same position as everyone was in the world,
Speaker 1: only she was having to run a full time daycare
Speaker 1: called Tessica's Little Angels in the middle of COVID for
Speaker 1: folks in her neighborhood who still had to work. Plus
Speaker 1: she was the mother of five. We were all at
Speaker 1: the end of our rope. But as you'll see, Tessica
Speaker 1: didn't get very much grace in the moment or in
Speaker 1: the public's memory. So let's go back to the dark place.
Speaker 1: Come with me if you dare to. February twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's second impeachment trial raged on in Washington, d c.
Speaker 1: Fat lot of fucking good that did. Meanwhile, the US
Speaker 1: reached a five hundred thousand person death toll to COVID,
Speaker 1: and in Violet, Louisiana, Tessica Brown ran out of got
Speaker 1: to be blasting freeze spray and needed a quick solution.
Speaker 1: Was what she did. The smartest decision of anyone's life. No,
Speaker 1: but hear her out. It's February second, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: Tessca has a lot of stuff going on in her
Speaker 1: personal life, which she references in our interview, and there
Speaker 1: is a lot going on in the big disgusting world.
Speaker 1: She is a lifelong Louisiana resident, a place where COVID
Speaker 1: had affected about half a million reported people since twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: before vaccines were made widely available. In fact, this whole
Speaker 1: thing happens two days before vaccines were made available to
Speaker 1: people sixty five and over in Louisiana and the States.
Speaker 1: Relationship to vaccines is complicated regardless. Sometime in early January,
Speaker 1: Tesska mistakenly sprayed gorilla glue into her hair out of
Speaker 1: running out of got to be and the next month
Speaker 1: was rough. Gorilla glue if you don't know, and you
Speaker 1: really should, is no joke.
Speaker 3: So this guy I thought he could lick the glue off. Basically,
Speaker 3: he took some gorilla glue and he put it on
Speaker 3: the edges of this cup and then put it on
Speaker 3: his face. And he thought he could lick the glue
Speaker 3: off and get this cup off of his phase. Well,
Speaker 3: that didn't really work out very well for him.
Speaker 1: It's a super glue that's been on the market since
Speaker 1: the nineties, eventually prompting the phrase gorilla grip, which has
Speaker 1: been a term of inspiration among Keagel's TikTok for years.
Speaker 1: And I refused to expand on that sentence. You can
Speaker 1: do your own research, but super glue existed in general
Speaker 1: since the nineteen forties. Because yes, as every episode of
Speaker 1: sixteenth Minute inevitably leads to super glue. Say it with
Speaker 1: me is the product of colonialism and warmongering. We don't
Speaker 1: need to talk about it, but hey, let's talk about
Speaker 1: it for a second. Switch the music a little, let's
Speaker 1: make this fun. Super glue was discovered by an inventor
Speaker 1: named doctor Harry Wesley at kodak as in the Photography
Speaker 1: Company during World War Two while pitching in to make
Speaker 1: new gun sights for Allied forces. He didn't end up
Speaker 1: trademarking the material until the nineteen fifties, but by that
Speaker 1: time it had taken on any number of practical and
Speaker 1: frankly horrifying uses over the years. The Military Times reported
Speaker 1: that Wesley's invention was later used as a liquid bandage
Speaker 1: on soldiers in the Vietnam War in order to stem
Speaker 1: bleeding until someone with an open wound could get to
Speaker 1: a military hospital. Really think about that gross, But it
Speaker 1: did sort of work and was later tweaked into what's
Speaker 1: now known as actual liquid bandages like derma bond and
Speaker 1: trauma seal. And if you had a liquid bandage fanatic
Speaker 1: like my mom, you will know that these products really
Speaker 1: hurt on sensitive skin because while effective, these extreme adhesives
Speaker 1: are not comfortable with that in mind. Enter Tessica, who
Speaker 1: at forty had the expected social media for a person
Speaker 1: of that demographic at that time. What I'm saying is
Speaker 1: she was a Facebook mom, and she promoted her business
Speaker 1: and shared family photos and live streams primarily there and
Speaker 1: on Instagram, and she posted a lot, but her audience
Speaker 1: was fairly limited. From what I could find. She mainly
Speaker 1: stuck to the Zuckerberg products Facebook and Instagram, where she had,
Speaker 1: as she tells me, only a few thousand followers at
Speaker 1: the time of the gorilla clue incident. Fast forward to
Speaker 1: the day she sprayed the glue. It did not go well,
Speaker 1: but at first, as with any major l Tessica kept
Speaker 1: it to herself, not even telling her mother or sister
Speaker 1: at first. Days later, not only was it not coming out,
Speaker 1: her scalp was starting to hurt and it was feeling
Speaker 1: like it was constricting. She tried everything to try to
Speaker 1: slow this effect, googne, rubbing alcohol, coconut oil, tea tree oil,
Speaker 1: you name it. But it became clear that this may
Speaker 1: not be a google able problem. So she swallowed her
Speaker 1: pride and she reached out to the women in her
Speaker 1: life her mother, her sister, her daughters, but that didn't
Speaker 1: do much either, until, according to Tessica, one of her
Speaker 1: daughters said, hey, maybe someone on TikTok will know what
Speaker 1: to do. Yes, this is a TikTok story, and per Tessica,
Speaker 1: she has no idea how or why this particular TikTok
Speaker 1: went viral because prior to the gorilla glue story, Tessica
Speaker 1: had only used TikTok twice two posts. One was of
Speaker 1: her daughter in late twenty twenty day while wearing a
Speaker 1: face mask, and the other was Taska herself lip syncing
Speaker 1: to a cover of Countdown by Beyonce. You know the
Speaker 1: song you Weren't Born Yesterday?
Speaker 4: Mom?
Speaker 1: Content right? And then Tessica's daughter, a true kid of
Speaker 1: the COVID era, says, hey, Mom, maybe people on TikTok
Speaker 1: will find you and have some ideas on how to
Speaker 1: get the glue out. Because not only had TikTok experienced
Speaker 1: tremendous growth during COVID lockdown, particularly with people her kid's age,
Speaker 1: it had also become notorious for becoming a place of
Speaker 1: hyper niche discussion. And so Tesska does with the self
Speaker 1: assurance of a consistent poster, just not a TikTok poster.
Speaker 1: So she's in her bathroom filming on her phone and
Speaker 1: a hot pink hoodie with full makeup and a long braid,
Speaker 1: and as in all her posts, Tesca looks great. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there is something clearly going on with her hair. It's
Speaker 1: you know, it's super glued to her head. Here's the
Speaker 1: fifty nine seconds that made her famous.
Speaker 2: Hey, y'all, but those of y'all that knew me know,
Speaker 2: my hair has been like this sub about a month now.
Speaker 2: It's not much choice. No, it's not much choice. When
Speaker 2: I do my hair, I like to, you know, finish
Speaker 2: it off with the little got to be glue spree,
Speaker 2: you know, just to keep it in face. Well, I
Speaker 2: didn't have any more got to be blue spas, so
Speaker 2: I used this gorilla glue spree.
Speaker 5: Bad, bad, bad idea. Y'all. Look my hair. It don't move.
Speaker 5: You get what I'm telling you. It don't move.
Speaker 2: I've washed my hair fifteen times and it don't move.
Speaker 2: Stiff Well, who my hair?
Speaker 5: So I'm gonna tell y'all like.
Speaker 2: This, if you ever ever run out of got to
Speaker 2: be golose spring, don't ever ever use this so.
Speaker 1: That clicking noise is the sound of Tessica's nails on
Speaker 1: her own scalp. And this post does go viral on
Speaker 1: TikTok basically immediately. Tessica says she posted it before bed
Speaker 1: with no hashtags. TikTok doesn't really respond to that as much.
Speaker 1: It's just captioned stiff ware my hair, which is a
Speaker 1: reference to a meme where a black mom and her
Speaker 1: daughter are joking around in a car while the daughter
Speaker 1: is wearing a new wig. Maybe you've seen.
Speaker 2: It right back on Ooh no bam, Yes, yes, ooh
Speaker 2: ooh stiff wall stiff whia.
Speaker 1: If you haven't, go watch it. And Tessica has definitely
Speaker 1: seen this because she's pretty online and for all intents
Speaker 1: and purposes, she's just a normal person posting a weird,
Speaker 1: kind of stressful TikTok. But when she wakes up the
Speaker 1: morning after posting blues still in her hair, her TikTok
Speaker 1: account has gone nuts. She has officially been sucked into
Speaker 1: the algorithmic vortex. And she asked herself fucking how well.
Speaker 1: As we've discussed on the show before, that's kind of
Speaker 1: the whole question with TikTok. Most if not all social
Speaker 1: media algorithms are completely diabolical by nature. And again, if
Speaker 1: you want to know more about that, I will shout
Speaker 1: out friend of the show, Max Fisher's book The Chaos Machine,
Speaker 1: which breaks down how algorithms have increasingly informed how we
Speaker 1: consume news and ourselves in the space of the last decade.
Speaker 1: The section where he unpacks a period of time leading
Speaker 1: up to the twenty sixteen election where the top brasset
Speaker 1: YouTube just let the algorithm run itself lives rent free
Speaker 1: in my mind forever. The point is the way that
Speaker 1: algorithms function remains very opaque to this day, something that
Speaker 1: seems like should maybe not be allowed, given the fact
Speaker 1: that these algorithms have disproportionate influence on how we receive
Speaker 1: information and often disinformation. And in case you're not aware,
Speaker 1: there's a bit of an infinity saga with TikTok and disinformation,
Speaker 1: with the platform itself repeatedly vowing that they are definitely
Speaker 1: taking steps internally to combat disinformation as recently as this
Speaker 1: past fall, although I will say I have some doubt
Speaker 1: on how effective that's been. I don't really know what
Speaker 1: this kind of announcement does to imply TikTok's accountability. It
Speaker 1: seems more kind of like they're passing the buck to
Speaker 1: their users. Take a listen.
Speaker 6: If you try to share content within unfair verified claim,
Speaker 6: we may also ask you to reconsider before sharing, especially
Speaker 6: during emergencies and unfolding events. This helps prevent the spread
Speaker 6: of misinformation. You should still think critically about content that's
Speaker 6: not labeled as unverified and report potential harmful misinformation so
Speaker 6: our safety teams can assess it.
Speaker 1: Okay TikTok give us less. A twenty twenty two report
Speaker 1: from NewsGuard indicated that when it came to hot button
Speaker 1: issues like vaccines, election information, and even things as specific
Speaker 1: as the January sixth insurrection, around one in five TikTok
Speaker 1: posts contained disinformation of some kind. So let's hope a
Speaker 1: commitment to combating disinformation is true. Because TikTok has a
Speaker 1: very strong influence on Internet users. Right now, it is
Speaker 1: by far the most addictive platform, with the Digital twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four Global Review Report estimating that the average user
Speaker 1: clocks in around thirty four hours of TikTok use a month.
Speaker 1: That's followed by YouTube at twenty eight hours and Facebook
Speaker 1: at almost twenty Its base is also young in comparison
Speaker 1: to other platforms. Over half of TikTok users are teenagers,
Speaker 1: and eighty percent of users say they primarily use the
Speaker 1: platform to find something entertaining. And if you've ever used it,
Speaker 1: the TikTok algorithm is good at figuring out what you
Speaker 1: specifically will find entertaining. Here's what's in my algorithm on
Speaker 1: TikTok right now, because making this show has destroyed all
Speaker 1: of my algorithms, thank you so much. And the fact
Speaker 1: that someone called me the buffalos fairy godmother because I've
Speaker 1: been telling people where to get their sameless songs so they're.
Speaker 2: Not with you.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: What did you guess?
Speaker 7: See that video of that girl who started crying because
Speaker 7: she started chewing remineralizing chewing gum in her cavities.
Speaker 5: Lily went away.
Speaker 1: I heard talk. He's trying to do livestream. It's flopping.
Speaker 1: But for the sake of this story, we're talking about
Speaker 1: the TikTok algorithm in twenty twenty one, specifically, an algorithm
Speaker 1: we can assume is somewhat different from the crack that
Speaker 1: they're putting in the TikTok algorithm today. And here's what
Speaker 1: we knew at the time, according to a report from
Speaker 1: The New York Times Ben Smith at the end of
Speaker 1: that year. The report reviewed internally leaked documents from the
Speaker 1: China based company called TikTok Algo one oh one, which
Speaker 1: stated the four core tenants of the app at the
Speaker 1: time were user value, long term user value, creator value,
Speaker 1: and platform value. And it is worth mentioning that TikTok's
Speaker 1: being a non American company does affect how it's discussed
Speaker 1: in Western media. Enough time to unpack it fully, but
Speaker 1: suffice it to say, yes, social media and big tech
Speaker 1: are quite evil, but they're nothing next to Senator Tom Cotton.
Speaker 1: Here's Senator Tom Cotton talking to TikTok's CEO, Showsey Chew
Speaker 1: in January twenty twenty four.
Speaker 8: So you said, today, as you often say, that you
Speaker 8: live in Singapore of what nation? Are you a citizen
Speaker 8: Singapore is? Are you a citizen of any other nation? No, Senator,
Speaker 8: Have you ever applied for Chinese citizenship? Senator, I serve
Speaker 8: my nation in Singapore.
Speaker 9: No, I did not.
Speaker 8: Have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party, Senata,
Speaker 8: I'm Singaporean?
Speaker 1: No? Wow, So much more of this to look forward
Speaker 1: to in the next four years. Really cool the app's
Speaker 1: ultimate goal in twenty twenty one at the time of
Speaker 1: the Tessica Brown post features a term we've also heard
Speaker 1: in the story of YouTube or getting as many users
Speaker 1: as possible to spend as much time as possible on TikTok,
Speaker 1: and this almost always leads to the algorithm pushing content
Speaker 1: that is manipulative in some way. This Times report detailed
Speaker 1: a tendency for TikTok to focus on quote unquote sad
Speaker 1: content to get people to keep watching, and even provides
Speaker 1: a little equation that details how it ranked which posts
Speaker 1: to boost, relating to likes, plays, comments, and time watched.
Speaker 1: It goes on to detail the ways in which TikTok
Speaker 1: aims to keep people engaged by recommending similar but not
Speaker 1: too similar content in order to avoid boredom. Again, this
Speaker 1: is an echo of the YouTube algorithm story that can
Speaker 1: and has led to users getting coaxed into increasingly extreme content.
Speaker 1: With these qualifiers in mind, it's not super surprising that
Speaker 1: Tessica Brown's video performed well within TikTok's outcome rhythm. The
Speaker 1: video is kind of long, you're definitely not sure how
Speaker 1: it's gonna end. The subject is sad and upset and
Speaker 1: even now. Tessica says in our interview that she understands
Speaker 1: that in some sick way, it could be entertaining to
Speaker 1: watch her struggle, or at very least you can't look away.
Speaker 1: And when Tessica's TikTok went live under her.
Speaker 4: Username I'm underscore d underscore old Lady, pretty funny, viewers
Speaker 4: could not look away, which prompted a very polarized comment
Speaker 4: section hit the music, Why why why would you do that?
Speaker 1: Girl? You're lucky it didn't get in your eyes, ears hands?
Speaker 1: What the fuck is wrong with you? This better blow
Speaker 1: the fuck up?
Speaker 9: Because dam I'm sorry girl.
Speaker 1: Girl, I'm so sorry, but this is so funny.
Speaker 6: Baby oil, googn dawn dish, soap and nail polish remover
Speaker 6: last resort.
Speaker 1: Girl, please update us.
Speaker 6: This is literally a plot of a Victorious episode.
Speaker 9: Baby, you made a helmet. You could survive an actual
Speaker 9: disaster when in Nabrica. Never hear unstoppable.
Speaker 1: Okay, Hopefully I'm not the only person that wanted to
Speaker 1: fact check that next to last comment. Was there an
Speaker 1: episode of Nickelodeon's early twenty tens tween show Victorious. About
Speaker 1: this subject. What is this for?
Speaker 2: Oh that's glue?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but why is it with your makeup supplies?
Speaker 2: What's the problem.
Speaker 1: This is grizzly glue. It's like an industrial cement.
Speaker 9: Hey, cat, tell me you didn't use this on Tory's face?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 1: Yes? Indeed, this was a Victorious episode from twenty ten
Speaker 1: in which a character played by one Ariana Grande super
Speaker 1: glues a monster mask to Victoria Justice's face. I love culture,
Speaker 1: but it's here where the gorilla glue story splits in
Speaker 1: two because Tessica has become a main character off of
Speaker 1: her third TikTok. Ever, and as she hints at in
Speaker 1: the post, she's also starting to be in a lot
Speaker 1: of physical pain from a month's worth of ever constructing
Speaker 1: super glue. I'll let Tesska share the more specific details
Speaker 1: in our interview, but this Burt and what the TikTok
Speaker 1: comments on this ever growing post. At present, it sits
Speaker 1: around fifty six million views. Confirmed was that she seemed
Speaker 1: to have tried everything that was possible to do from
Speaker 1: home in the month the glue had been in her hair,
Speaker 1: but still she kept trying. The next day, Tessika posted
Speaker 1: a TikTok of her squeezing a hand full of panteen
Speaker 1: into her palm, rubbed it into her hair, and showed
Speaker 1: that where there would normally be a leather, nothing happened.
Speaker 2: Like this is the life that I guess I'm.
Speaker 5: Happy to live.
Speaker 7: Yeah, noo, noop No.
Speaker 1: This is a hard clip to watch. She's close to
Speaker 1: tears here and you can hear the business of her
Speaker 1: household continuing just outside of the bathroom. Later that day,
Speaker 1: Tessca posted again, acknowledging how viral her first post had gone.
Speaker 1: While continuing to ask for help. She writes, thanks for
Speaker 1: you guys encouraging and ideas to get rid of this
Speaker 1: forever ponytail. I will try some today when I get
Speaker 1: off from work, and I will keep you guys posted.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you see me walking around with
Speaker 1: a headscarf, just mind your business. Well, so from the jump,
Speaker 1: Tessca had a good sense of humor about the incident,
Speaker 1: even as the pain and the mocking comments continued to
Speaker 1: roll in.
Speaker 6: You are the reason items have instructions.
Speaker 9: Call Gorilla Glue customer service after they stop laughing.
Speaker 5: They may give you a commercial deal.
Speaker 1: But it's clear that as time goes on, Tessca was
Speaker 1: becoming increasingly desperate updating her increasing online following on solutions
Speaker 1: that hadn't worked, until finally, on February sixth, she checked
Speaker 1: into the Saint Bernard Parish Hospital nearby to seek professional help,
Speaker 1: and after that visit, she wasn't much better off. The
Speaker 1: hospital estimated that using acetone and sterile water would make
Speaker 1: the whole process take about twenty hours, and Tessica opted
Speaker 1: to go home and continued to work at it with
Speaker 1: her sister instead. Once back home, video footage shows Tesska
Speaker 1: panicked and completely beside herself as her sister used actone
Speaker 1: wipes from the hospital to try and loosen the glues hold.
Speaker 1: But it's worth mentioning Tessica does lean into posting updates
Speaker 1: on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram immediately. There's not really a
Speaker 1: time where she's rejecting the attention. And this isn't a criticism.
Speaker 1: It actually reminds me quite a bit of our Ken
Speaker 1: Bone episode. He was very baffled when he became a star,
Speaker 1: but you never really saw him resisting it. But of
Speaker 1: course the difference between these stories is significant. Tessica was
Speaker 1: in many cases being openly mocked instead of celebrated like Ken.
Speaker 1: She is also a black woman and subject to all
Speaker 1: of the misogynir that comes with that. But it does
Speaker 1: feel worth mentioning that she doesn't really resist the attention
Speaker 1: around this story. What she does resist is people and
Speaker 1: the press misrepresenting who she is and what really happened.
Speaker 1: So Tessica has become a TikTok main character quite literally overnight,
Speaker 1: and mainstream media is pretty quick to catch on to
Speaker 1: this story. I think in part because media was generally
Speaker 1: faster to catch on to online stories in general during
Speaker 1: lockdown because of the intensity of eyes on TikTok. At
Speaker 1: the time, we're seeing headlines.
Speaker 6: Like woman's gorilla glue hair style on TikTok has everyone baffled.
Speaker 9: Tessica Brown is not just the gorilla glue girl. Her
Speaker 9: message to.
Speaker 6: The internet Gorilla Glue said, it's sorry to hear about
Speaker 6: the woman who accidentally glued her hair in place.
Speaker 9: The undeniable hold of the gorilla glue girl, and what
Speaker 9: it says about the empathy of the internet.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Tessica's support system was not satisfied with the options
Speaker 1: that the hospital was offering. We talk about that more
Speaker 1: in our interview and on Sunday, February seventh, the family
Speaker 1: starts a GoFundMe for Tessica in the hopes of getting
Speaker 1: money for an actual solution. The goal for the fundraiser
Speaker 1: was only fifteen hundred dollars, but because of the number
Speaker 1: of eyes on the story, the account quickly surged to
Speaker 1: over twenty three thousand dollars, and of course, Gorilla Glue
Speaker 1: couldn't resist getting in on the free pr Once Tessica
Speaker 1: had returned from the hospital. On February eighth, the company
Speaker 1: tweeted the quote.
Speaker 6: We are very sorry to hear about the unfortunate incident
Speaker 6: that Miss Brown experienced using our spray adhesive on her hair.
Speaker 6: We are glad to see in her recent video that
Speaker 6: Miss Brown has received medical treatment from her local medical
Speaker 6: facility and wish her the best.
Speaker 1: However, Gorilla Glue stood their ground, saying in the same
Speaker 1: post that it was not you know, intended for hair,
Speaker 1: but I was heartened to see that the comments around
Speaker 1: this post Moss are pretty firmly on Tesska's side. Commenters
Speaker 1: suggested that Gorilla Glue should just donate money to Tessica
Speaker 1: to show good faith. Some mention that the spray does not,
Speaker 1: in fact explicitly say it shouldn't be used on hair,
Speaker 1: and others warned that Tesska very well may have a
Speaker 1: good lawsuit on her hand, even comparing it to the
Speaker 1: McDonald's Hot Coffee lawsuit of nineteen ninety four. I'd recommend
Speaker 1: the You're Wrong About episode on that topic if you
Speaker 1: don't know more about that lawsuit. And there were rumors
Speaker 1: that Tessica planned to sue gorilla glue that were mentioned
Speaker 1: in a couple of news sources, but Tesska says that
Speaker 1: this was never true or a plan of hers, and
Speaker 1: to be fair, she was a little busy to be
Speaker 1: organizing a lawsuit at this time to split between trying
Speaker 1: to get this very painful problem figured out and documenting
Speaker 1: that process and posting it online. And that appears to
Speaker 1: be it. So checking in. It's been nearly a week
Speaker 1: since Tessaka went public with her saga, and still nothing
Speaker 1: has been figured out except that the Internet was wrapped
Speaker 1: with attention as vaccines continued to be disseminated across the world.
Speaker 1: And I'm not joking. Benjamin nettan Yahoo was on court
Speaker 1: for a bribery charge. Time is a flat circle and
Speaker 1: you'll notice from what we've even discussed so far, there
Speaker 1: is a pretty wide range of reactions to Tesska's story,
Speaker 1: and I think that this is because you can easily
Speaker 1: trace a wide range of diversity in the race, age,
Speaker 1: and gender of accounts that are replying to support her
Speaker 1: or not. By the time Tessco went to the hospital,
Speaker 1: prominent figures had begun commenting on her situation as well,
Speaker 1: including Chance the Rapper, and more relevantly to what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to talk about, Sunny Houston of The View, who
Speaker 1: tweeted the following.
Speaker 9: So many are being dismissive of hashtag gorilla glue girl
Speaker 9: given the history of how black women are targeted and
Speaker 9: still battle the pervasive belief that our natural hair is unprofessional, unkempt,
Speaker 9: and in some way a statement please show her some
Speaker 9: grace and understanding.
Speaker 1: Tessica's story is tied into the historical relationship with Black
Speaker 1: women and their hair, a topic that has been spoken
Speaker 1: on extensively over the years. Some major examples are the
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine documentary Good Hair, hosted by Chris
Speaker 1: Rock and the Oscar winning short film and best selling
Speaker 1: children's book Hair Love by Matthew cherry, just to name
Speaker 1: a few. My name is Ziri, and I have hair
Speaker 1: that has a mind of its own.
Speaker 2: It kinks, coils, and curls every which way.
Speaker 1: But I'll link more resources in the description as well.
Speaker 1: And Tessica's story is one of the iconic main character
Speaker 1: moments that revolves around black hair. So many of the
Speaker 1: top comments come from black users on TikTok. Of course,
Speaker 1: plenty of these users are teasing Tessica and are baffled
Speaker 1: at the choice in using gorilla glue in the media.
Speaker 1: Clap back at Tessica specifically reeks of misogynir and this
Speaker 1: was thankfully called attention to although not with the same
Speaker 1: frequency as the click baity you won't believe what happened,
Speaker 1: how embarrassing style of post not by a long shot.
Speaker 1: But these essays do exist.
Speaker 2: I do exist.
Speaker 1: This is from a February eighth, twenty twenty one piece
Speaker 1: from Essence by Candice Benbo.
Speaker 9: Perhaps all this history is what joined so many of
Speaker 9: our hearts to Tessica's plight. We may have never had
Speaker 9: an industrial product for styling purposes, but we've done things
Speaker 9: to our hair and to ourselves we wished we hadn't
Speaker 9: We were endeared to her because we know what it's
Speaker 9: like to be judged by the biggest mistake you've ever
Speaker 9: made and not to be given the compassion and empathy
Speaker 9: necessary to move through its implications. All across social media,
Speaker 9: there are scores of people suggesting Tessica is attention seeking
Speaker 9: and deserves whatever she gets. She should have known better.
Speaker 9: In a world where hacks are celebrated and people become
Speaker 9: Internet sensations overnight for discovering new uses for old products,
Speaker 9: Tessica is villainized because her attempt resulted in failure. Why
Speaker 9: is it so easy to dehumanize black women when we
Speaker 9: make mistakes? Why must compassion for us be measured and mediated?
Speaker 9: How different would the response to Tessica be if she
Speaker 9: were white.
Speaker 1: We don't have to wonder.
Speaker 9: Too long about the answers to these questions. We know
Speaker 9: them already. We know Black girls and women have to
Speaker 9: be perfect. There is no room for error, and when
Speaker 9: we mess up, we know it was nobody's fault but
Speaker 9: our own. And we know we live in communities that
Speaker 9: won't let us forget it either.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, a lot of what Candice is describing here,
Speaker 1: the quickness to demonize and shame. Tasaka Brown does bear
Speaker 1: out a number of times in the days that followed,
Speaker 1: and I also want to mention that, yes, many people
Speaker 1: did accuse Tessica of spraying gorilla glue in her hair
Speaker 1: just for attention and just to go viral, which I
Speaker 1: think is pretty clearly not true, but also speaks to
Speaker 1: the Internet brain of what we are can addition to
Speaker 1: believe people will do for attention, including hurt themselves. Right
Speaker 1: moving on, another piece from the King County Hazardous Waste
Speaker 1: Management Program adds to this.
Speaker 6: While most would never dream of putting gorilla glue anywhere
Speaker 6: near their body, sometimes black women need to venture outside
Speaker 6: the hair care aisle to find products that work. Castor oil,
Speaker 6: olive oil, mayonnaise, and superglue are all used for hair
Speaker 6: styling purposes. Also, many products marketed exclusively for black women
Speaker 6: include chemical based products like hair relaxers, texturizers, and bonding glues.
Speaker 6: Research over the years has shown there are fewer non
Speaker 6: toxic options in black hair products than there are in
Speaker 6: those marketed to the general public. Although understudied, there's growing
Speaker 6: evidence that a high number of products marketed for black
Speaker 6: hair care contain known harmful chemicals linked to cancer, reproductive problems,
Speaker 6: hormone disruption, asthma, and other adverse health effect.
Speaker 1: In the coming weeks, Tessaca Brown would be very forthcoming
Speaker 1: about how a cultural emphasis on whiteness factored into how
Speaker 1: she had felt about her own hair in the past.
Speaker 1: Later in February, she reflected on her early life, telling
Speaker 1: ABC Chicago about her experience in middle school, she said, I.
Speaker 9: Thought, if you have another flaw, if your hair is together,
Speaker 9: you know you look better. If I can't do nothing else,
Speaker 9: I'm gonna make sure my hair is on point. This
Speaker 9: has been a problem for me for a long time.
Speaker 9: If I wouldn't have cared so much about my hair,
Speaker 9: I wouldn't be going through this right now.
Speaker 1: So again, it is really overly simplistic who characterized Tessica's
Speaker 1: action as beyond the pale ridiculous. Even if, like Tessica
Speaker 1: says now, she's embarrassed by making the mistake, it's a
Speaker 1: decision that exists in a far larger context, one that
Speaker 1: ranges from historical racism and misogyny to the fact that
Speaker 1: she was working full time during a pandemic and was
Speaker 1: likely just as burned out as anybody was. It was
Speaker 1: a mistake, but as the days continued, people didn't seem
Speaker 1: to get tired of making fun of her. As the
Speaker 1: situation reached its peak, on Monday, February ninth, Pessica gave
Speaker 1: her first interview to Kiss ninety two to five in Toronto,
Speaker 1: saying that she was waiting to shave her head as
Speaker 1: a last resort and felt quote some type of way
Speaker 1: unquote above people making fun of her fair enough. On Tuesday,
Speaker 1: things really kick up behind the scenes, and unbeknownst to
Speaker 1: the public at the time, Tessica had been reached out
Speaker 1: to by manager Gina Rodriguez. Not that one. This Gina
Speaker 1: Rodriguez is a reality and viral star manager, including a
Speaker 1: number of names. You know some of the Real Housewives,
Speaker 1: Mama June of Here Comes Honey Booboo, Scott Dissick of
Speaker 1: the Kardashians, Tory Spelling, the Ocean, Spray skateboard guy, Nathan
Speaker 1: appadaka Gina Rodriguez answer my email, I want to talk
Speaker 1: to him. The list goes on right, and when Gina
Speaker 1: heard about Tessica's story, she both seemed to see a
Speaker 1: person who needed help and a potential business opportunity. Rodriguez
Speaker 1: got in touch with Tessica to connect her with a
Speaker 1: plastic surgeon who she knew in La One, who claimed
Speaker 1: that he had the ability to save her hair and
Speaker 1: would do the procedure in Beverly Hills for free. Enter
Speaker 1: doctor Michael Obang, who has over twenty years of experience
Speaker 1: in the industry, and finally it seemed like Tessica had
Speaker 1: a solution. She announced she was heading out to Beverly
Speaker 1: Hills in an emotional interview with Entertainment Tonight that same day.
Speaker 2: I'm not that person y'all trying to meet me out today.
Speaker 2: I'm not that person. I'm not this whole gorilla blue girl.
Speaker 2: My name is Tessica Brown.
Speaker 5: Call me.
Speaker 2: How's old theology know exactly who I am?
Speaker 1: And on Wednesday, February tenth, Tessica Brown arrived in a
Speaker 1: red hoodie in a mask to Lax where there was
Speaker 1: and I'm not joking, literal paparazzi waiting for her as
Speaker 1: she headed out to doctor Oban's office. This story was big.
Speaker 1: The procedure was done that evening, and while Tesska recovered,
Speaker 1: the good doctor got a little prn by giving CBS
Speaker 1: Los Angeles an update.
Speaker 6: Tessica is doing well. She's awake, the haircrew is doing
Speaker 6: her hair.
Speaker 1: This interview also revealed maybe one of the most impressive
Speaker 1: things I've ever heard, which is that doctor Obeng literally
Speaker 1: created a new chemical product to remove the gorilla glue
Speaker 1: and it was successful. He invented a whole new thing,
Speaker 1: and TMZ classy as ever, filmed and posted the whole procedure.
Speaker 8: If you feel anything, if it's too uncomfortable, let me know.
Speaker 1: We can get you more payments, okay, which is a
Speaker 1: potential insight into why this twelve five hundred dollars procedure
Speaker 1: was done for free. Look, I'll be honest, I could
Speaker 1: not bring myself to watch the video of the procedure.
Speaker 1: I'm too squeamish. But the final procedure is said to
Speaker 1: have taken four hours while Tesska was under a light
Speaker 1: anesthetic for the la times. Doctor Obank's potion was a
Speaker 1: combination of medical adhesive remover, alo vera, olive oil and
Speaker 1: actone mixed in a way to prevent harm to her scalp.
Speaker 1: The healing process was estimated to be about two or
Speaker 1: three months, and thank god it worked. And yes, of course,
Speaker 1: doctor Obank mentioned he was considering selling the product in
Speaker 1: the future put a pin in that. So finally, a
Speaker 1: week after this whole TikTok Soga began, and over a
Speaker 1: month after the glue had been put in her hair
Speaker 1: in the first place, Tessica's head was gorilla glue free,
Speaker 1: and now she was Internet famous, complete with an entertainment
Speaker 1: manager and a full blown press tour that ranged from
Speaker 1: network TV to more prominently forever growing social media feeds.
Speaker 1: She was liberated from the glue with Rodriguez signed Heesseca
Speaker 1: Brown showed no signs of slowing down. She launched an
Speaker 1: official merch site on February twelfth, featuring her image from
Speaker 1: the viral TikTok with the caption bonded for life. Pretty
Speaker 1: good and Sure people clowned on her for printing merch
Speaker 1: over a one social media moment, but people were watching
Speaker 1: and buying the stuff, with an estimated million and a
Speaker 1: half social media posts about the gorilla glue incident by
Speaker 1: the middle of this month, and like William Hung and
Speaker 1: Ken Bone before her, Heessecka Brown even broke through to
Speaker 1: appear in a middling SNL sketch on February fourteenth.
Speaker 10: So it happened, So you your worst night, Miss.
Speaker 7: We've all been there. You ran out a half product
Speaker 7: and you used Gorilla blue instead, and it turned.
Speaker 10: Your beautiful lush's made into a hard candy sheep.
Speaker 1: That's Keenan Thompson and Regina King. Not shabby. And throughout
Speaker 1: this time, Pessica was adamant about who she is, and
Speaker 1: to me, it's admirable how she continued to remind reporters
Speaker 1: and online randos that she didn't appreciate being called the
Speaker 1: Gorilla Glue girl, and that her plan was to forge
Speaker 1: ahead with her business and the dance team that she
Speaker 1: had coached her daughters on before this incident. In a
Speaker 1: profile of her from Vox by Melinda Facuade on February nineteenth,
Speaker 1: Pessica said.
Speaker 9: Clout is something I will never chase. I promise you.
Speaker 9: The dance team was in a commercial, they were in newspapers,
Speaker 9: they were in a magazine. That's enough clout for me.
Speaker 9: I don't need all of this because this was just
Speaker 9: lay way too much, and truly, who would want to
Speaker 9: go through that pain I went through for clout?
Speaker 1: Again, this is Tessica having to stave off the accusations
Speaker 1: that she had done the whole very painful ordeal for attention.
Speaker 1: But the Internet couldn't let go of the gorilla glue moment.
Speaker 1: There were, from what I could find, at least two
Speaker 1: copycats who were ostensibly trying to like bust the idea
Speaker 1: that super glue could have caused this much damage to
Speaker 1: Tessica Brown's hair and life. And the results, drum roll.
Speaker 1: Both of these MythBusters went to the hospital. Great job, guys, mythbusted. Look,
Speaker 1: if you know anything about the Internet, this is nothing new.
Speaker 1: Social media has always been a place where random challenges
Speaker 1: that could possibly kill you rule the algorithm. Examples in
Speaker 1: the early twenty tens the Cinnamon challenge, where someone puts
Speaker 1: a spoonful of uncut ground cinnamon into their mouth with
Speaker 1: no water. All right, so here's the cinnamon, all right,
Speaker 1: all right, here'll go. Or how about the tide pod challenge,
Speaker 1: which was a twenty seventeen eighteen social media craze where
Speaker 1: users were mainlining laundry pods because they were colorful. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I have no insight. People died eating. Those
Speaker 1: eight deaths were associated with ingestion of the packets, two
Speaker 1: children under one year old and six in adults with
Speaker 1: the history of dementia. This will never stop, and as
Speaker 1: disinformation gets worse, I think we'll see these kinds of
Speaker 1: things get more dangerous. But the copycats going to the
Speaker 1: hospital is just another way that Tessica brown saga continued
Speaker 1: kind of much longer than your average social media main character.
Speaker 1: For some expected reasons. Pessica was willing to engage with
Speaker 1: the story, and it was also a rare social media
Speaker 1: moment that continued to develop as the days passed. I
Speaker 1: remember observing this story you would want to check in
Speaker 1: on how she was doing. All of the commenters are
Speaker 1: wanting updates, wanting to know that she's okay. But once
Speaker 1: the procedure with doctor Obang was complete, of course, things
Speaker 1: began to sort of die down. But by this point
Speaker 1: Tessica had a following. It was this weird mistake that
Speaker 1: brought her to prominence. But Tessica is funny, she's attractive,
Speaker 1: and she was interested in continuing to post and see
Speaker 1: how this fluke could potentially improve her quality of life.
Speaker 1: And it really seems to have a few quick things.
Speaker 1: So there has been some speculation about how the money
Speaker 1: from Tessica's GoFundMe was dispersed after she received the hair
Speaker 1: procedure from doctor Obang for free. This is a report
Speaker 1: from the New York Post, so take it with a
Speaker 1: heavy grade of salt, but they stated that the GoFundMe
Speaker 1: had been put under investigation by the platform when Tesska
Speaker 1: announced that she would be donating at twenty three thousand
Speaker 1: dollars raised in the early days of the gorilla glue
Speaker 1: panic to local families and other causes. And to be clear,
Speaker 1: there's no doubt that she did give a chunk of
Speaker 1: that money, in the form of one thousand dollars big
Speaker 1: checks to local families in Louisiana in need, and she
Speaker 1: says to have donated the rest to doctor Obing's nonprofit
Speaker 1: Restore Worldwide, Incorporated, to support his ongoing effort to provide complimentary,
Speaker 1: reconstructive surgery to people in need abroad. Moving into late February,
Speaker 1: still less than a month after her viral fame began,
Speaker 1: Pessica became a news item again after returning to doctor
Speaker 1: Obing for a follow up about her hair procedure, which
Speaker 1: it turns out was also a consultation for additional work
Speaker 1: with the doctor, including a breast lift, implants and some
Speaker 1: liposection per the New York Post at the time. There
Speaker 1: were lumps detected in Tessica's breast in these early consultations,
Speaker 1: which were thankfully removed and she announced were benign. And
Speaker 1: from there she moved ahead with the procedures, also including
Speaker 1: some complimentary dental work from another provider in the LA area.
Speaker 1: And so accusations lingered in her comments section that these
Speaker 1: procedures were where the remaining go fundme money actually went,
Speaker 1: but there is no proof to show things went one
Speaker 1: way or another. But now with manager Gina Rodriguez at
Speaker 1: her side, Pasica continued to forge ahead. And can you
Speaker 1: guess what she did next. That's right, Pessica Brown released
Speaker 1: a hair care product named Forever Hair just a couple
Speaker 1: months later in June twenty twenty one. And yes, the
Speaker 1: comments to this are what you'd expect. Now, it might
Speaker 1: be gorilla glue in it, lol, get the bag, sis,
Speaker 1: et cetera, and on and on, but this product got
Speaker 1: press and I can understand why people would be curious
Speaker 1: about it. At launch, Forever Hair sold to products an
Speaker 1: eighteen dollars growth stimulating oil and a fourteen dollars Forever
Speaker 1: Hold spray. And while these products didn't stick around on
Speaker 1: the market, they did sell out, another testament to Tessica
Speaker 1: Brown's staying power and the work taking place on her
Speaker 1: management side. And before twenty twenty one was over, she'd
Speaker 1: gone viral two more times, once for trying to dye
Speaker 1: her graze before her scalp was healed enough to handle
Speaker 1: more chemicals.
Speaker 5: I decided that I was going to win my real hair.
Speaker 2: But when I looked at it, you know, I had
Speaker 2: a gray hair here, a gray head there, So me
Speaker 2: thinking that my hair is strong enough to say chemicals, dude, No.
Speaker 5: It wasn't.
Speaker 1: And another time for doing what at least two other
Speaker 1: sixteenth minute subjects have done in the past by my math.
Speaker 1: Hasska made a play at a music career when she
Speaker 1: released a rap single in November twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: Almost went in a panic when I ran out, I
Speaker 2: got I had a problem. I had the US Gorilla
Speaker 2: Glucius assaulted over with Psilka the South Shot. I watched
Speaker 2: it with everything I could think of, but nothing was
Speaker 2: making progress.
Speaker 1: I was stopping with to do It's fun whatever. And
Speaker 1: through twenty twenty two, Pessica continued to post regularly to
Speaker 1: her platforms while continuing her business Yes, and in early
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, she made it all the way to
Speaker 1: cable TV and appeared on a season of the Food
Speaker 1: Network competition Worse Cooks in America after auditioning, I'm Tessaca Brown.
Speaker 2: I'm a daycare provider from Valla, Louisiana.
Speaker 5: What are you famous for?
Speaker 2: Already at a handsbress break over loo glue my house?
Speaker 9: Oh your gorilla, my help?
Speaker 5: It don't move in these days.
Speaker 1: Almost four years later, Tessca Brown's life is pretty similar
Speaker 1: to what it was when she first became a viral star.
Speaker 1: She still runs her daycare, she's had another child's and
Speaker 1: by her account, she's now in a much happier relationship
Speaker 1: than she was at the time. The difference of four
Speaker 1: years mainly is that she also has millions of eyes
Speaker 1: on her lifestyle content across platforms, mostly Instagram and now
Speaker 1: a facet of her life TikTok and when we come back,
Speaker 1: I speak exclusively with Tessica Brown herself. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: sixteenth Minute. My name's Jamie Loftus and I just started
Speaker 1: taking EIGHTYHD medication. I feel like half of my body
Speaker 1: is underground and the other half is forty feet above
Speaker 1: sea level? Is that how the human experience is supposed
Speaker 1: to feel? Please discuss on the Reddit board. And today
Speaker 1: we are revisiting the twenty twenty one saga of Tessica
Speaker 1: Brown getting gorilla glue in her hair. As you've heard,
Speaker 1: this story was wild and continued to stretch on. Tessica
Speaker 1: is still active on Instagram and TikTok to this day,
Speaker 1: and she recently switched management teams to continue expanding on
Speaker 1: what she can do with her story and her online fame.
Speaker 1: But now that it's been nearly four years since the
Speaker 1: original event, I wanted to hear Tasaka's story in her
Speaker 1: own words, and thankfully she was generous enough to give
Speaker 1: us some of her time. So, without further ado, here's
Speaker 1: my talk with Tasaka Brown.
Speaker 4: Hi.
Speaker 5: My name is Tessaka Brown.
Speaker 2: I'm forty three years old and I'm from Saint Fanol Parish,
Speaker 2: New Orleans, Louisiana.
Speaker 1: I want to start by talking about your life a
Speaker 1: little bit. Where are you from, how did you grow up?
Speaker 1: I want to know a little bit more about you
Speaker 1: prior to this moment.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm from Louisiana, but I'm from like a little
Speaker 2: small town right outside of New Orleans. It's called Saintanov Parish.
Speaker 2: If you had to raise the children anyway, this will
Speaker 2: be the place I'll go. I have five sisters, well,
Speaker 2: four sisters, two brothers. I have five kids. I've been
Speaker 2: on my day camp for ten years now. I had
Speaker 2: a dance team when the glue thing first happened. I
Speaker 2: made the dance team for my girls.
Speaker 8: Cool.
Speaker 1: Are you still running the daycare now?
Speaker 2: Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 1: Yes, amazing because you were in your late thirties early
Speaker 1: forties when this happened, and I talked to people with
Speaker 1: such a wide age range for this show. What was
Speaker 1: your relationship with the internet, like at the time that
Speaker 1: this happened, did you post a lot? Yeah? What was
Speaker 1: your relationship with the internet?
Speaker 5: I had one video on TikTok, only one.
Speaker 2: I used to go live a lot on Facebook, Like
Speaker 2: Facebook was my thing, you know, because my kids was like,
Speaker 2: you know, this is where you belong on Facebook? I
Speaker 2: guess because you know, Yeah, that's so I heard. I
Speaker 2: did a lot of posts, right right. I did a
Speaker 2: lot of posting on Instagram, and like I said, I
Speaker 2: went live a lot on Facebook, but only had one
Speaker 2: video on TikTok.
Speaker 5: I had like a little singing my intro to TikTok.
Speaker 5: That was the one video. Then came the Girl in Glub.
Speaker 1: You'd been using Facebook and Instagram for a long time.
Speaker 1: Did you have audiences sort of like outside of your
Speaker 1: general family or circle or was it?
Speaker 5: Okay, yes, I had.
Speaker 2: I had on Instagram. I had like I want to say,
Speaker 2: like ten thousand five. And I feel like that was
Speaker 2: because like I have the daycare, and we do I
Speaker 2: do prom for the daycare.
Speaker 7: I do.
Speaker 5: Uh yeah, I do. I have pictures if you want see.
Speaker 2: I do parades every year, and I feel like I
Speaker 2: got a lot of followers doing that.
Speaker 1: Like especially when you're a small business owner figuring out
Speaker 1: how to make social media like kind of work for you.
Speaker 1: So you had some idea of like how to make
Speaker 1: social media work for you?
Speaker 2: Okay, right, yeah, now always to the point where I
Speaker 2: post something. Now I'm looking to see how many people
Speaker 2: watched it, who come in. Yeah, it's totally different from before.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting. I'm very excited to talk about that
Speaker 1: sort of shift. But first, of course, we got to
Speaker 1: go through the day itself. So I've seen the original
Speaker 1: series of videos many times, what motivated you to post
Speaker 1: this to TikTok, specifically my little girl, my daughter. So
Speaker 1: she suggested, like, well, maybe someone here will know what
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the thing is, I kept saying, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know what else do? I don't know because
Speaker 2: I was scared even tell them Mama, because I figured
Speaker 2: she was gonna come over here, you know, slap me
Speaker 2: in my head. You know, you shouldn't have did that.
Speaker 2: So that's why I didn't want call her. But when
Speaker 2: it got to the point where the ponytail just kept
Speaker 2: getting tighter and tighter, it felt like my skelp you
Speaker 2: know when your ladies fall asleep. Yeah, that's what it
Speaker 2: felt like inside my head, like just tingling, yeah, just
Speaker 2: singing all the time. So I'm like, you know what,
Speaker 2: I have to call her mama, And we like to
Speaker 2: call mama doctor Quinn medicine woman because she know pretty
Speaker 2: much how to do. No matter what you say, this
Speaker 2: lady could tell you exactly what to do and how
Speaker 2: to get rid of it. So she came and we
Speaker 2: did a whole bunch of stuff, and it's before the
Speaker 2: TikTok gotcha, and absolutely nothing worked. Nothing, nothing she did
Speaker 2: work and I knew if my mama didn't know, I
Speaker 2: have to go you know, social media. So my baby
Speaker 2: was like, MA put it on TikTok. Yeah, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: I only have like one video on TikTok. She said, MA,
Speaker 2: put it on TikTok.
Speaker 5: So I put it on.
Speaker 2: TikTok that night, and I'm thinking, I'm guessing like nine
Speaker 2: o'clock at night, I put it on TikTok. Got up
Speaker 2: the next morning, you know, getting my children ready for school.
Speaker 2: Girl jumps up because I wake them up. I go
Speaker 2: to the doors and I start waking everybody up. So
Speaker 2: the oldest one after she got up, you know, she
Speaker 2: check her phone before she even get up and rushed
Speaker 2: her teeth. Yeah, she she come running and I'm like,
Speaker 2: what's drowm Ma? You got over a Meetian followers?
Speaker 5: Girl? You going viral?
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, wait, did somebody say you know how
Speaker 2: I could get it off mine?
Speaker 5: You word but the wrong thing.
Speaker 2: I'm like, you know what, dude, I need somebody to
Speaker 2: help me get this off. She was word with the numbers.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to, you know, get this off or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I started going through the comments. Oh my god, those.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was this first wave of comments like listen.
Speaker 2: I promise you I knew it was going to be
Speaker 2: like people around here, that's gonna be like, oh, you
Speaker 2: know that was stupid or that was dumb. I didn't
Speaker 2: think for one second the world was gonna you know
Speaker 2: what I'm.
Speaker 5: Saying, yea.
Speaker 2: And it got to the point where they telling me,
Speaker 2: you know, of course I'm dumb.
Speaker 5: That was stupid.
Speaker 2: And then letters started coming to the house. I literally
Speaker 2: got a letter to the house. And the thing is
Speaker 2: they had my they had my address because of course
Speaker 2: I have the daycare.
Speaker 5: So everything was and I.
Speaker 2: Didn't think again, I didn't think that there was ann
Speaker 2: do like it did, because I probably would have took
Speaker 2: all that off first. But I just thought, you know,
Speaker 2: it's gonna be people around here. They started sending me stuff.
Speaker 2: They was called the phone. The phone was just ridiculous.
Speaker 2: I ended up taking my phone and through my phone,
Speaker 2: I'm not answering absolutely nobody else because again my phone
Speaker 2: numb was on social media, so I mean, they called
Speaker 2: you stupid, soon answer the phone, you dumb like it
Speaker 2: was bad.
Speaker 5: And then the letter, when the letter came, it was.
Speaker 2: They drew me right, yeah, with my head cut off
Speaker 2: with I'm.
Speaker 5: Holding it like this.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 5: It was some bad, bad people, it was.
Speaker 2: And the thing is, you know, like sometimes you think
Speaker 2: like people think this stuff, but for you to really
Speaker 2: say this stuff and do this stuff, I thought it
Speaker 2: was completely a line because I can say a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff on social media, but I don't I would
Speaker 2: send it in a text message to my sisters.
Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: I'm never gonna post that that was really really hurtful,
Speaker 2: and don't say like maybe three days after it happened,
Speaker 2: dragged me for two weeks.
Speaker 5: She called me a nothing girl. She didn't put this in.
Speaker 5: I hate they kept saying I was cloud chased. So
Speaker 5: let me tell you that. Man, if anybody that really
Speaker 5: know me, I don't like to be embarrassed.
Speaker 2: I hate being embarrassed if I'm outside, and I hate
Speaker 2: being embarrassed.
Speaker 5: So that me doing that.
Speaker 2: Trust me, I wouldn't did it if I If I
Speaker 2: had knew, I would have just probably died in my
Speaker 2: head like that. I would have never put it, I
Speaker 2: promise you, which is so unfair.
Speaker 1: I mean, I totally hear you. And part of what
Speaker 1: kind of confuses me about people's reactions. I mean, people
Speaker 1: are just out of their mind and always looking for
Speaker 1: someone to be cruel to. I mean, I feel like
Speaker 1: that's rule number one of the Internet. I've been so
Speaker 1: confused about how the TikTok algorithm works. I feel like
Speaker 1: everyone is just erasing the fact that you weren't trying
Speaker 1: to reach anyone outside of like your general area. But
Speaker 1: because no one knows how the TikTok algorithm works, it
Speaker 1: just got sucked up and like regurgitated to everybody. And
Speaker 1: how was that your fault?
Speaker 5: It was bad.
Speaker 1: I mean I want to go back to those first
Speaker 1: couple of days as well, because I mean, just going
Speaker 1: back through the story, it seems like you're not only
Speaker 1: dealing with suddenly the eyeballs and attention of millions of people,
Speaker 1: but you're also still dealing with the physical problem. So
Speaker 1: how do you manage those first couple of days where
Speaker 1: there's like two really stressful things going on.
Speaker 2: We started looking at some of the comments and they
Speaker 2: were saying, well, use this, use that, use this, So
Speaker 2: now glogle be going acetone the stuff I started using Now,
Speaker 2: of course it was pretty you know, as I'm trying
Speaker 2: to keep getting off myself. But now I'm following what
Speaker 2: they're telling me. So now I got cotton bowls stuck
Speaker 2: to it. The inside is it's not just tingling is burning.
Speaker 2: That first day, Judy, Judy called me and that's from
Speaker 2: Colleida School.
Speaker 1: Did you just find the TikTok?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she of course again my number was on it.
Speaker 2: She said, oh, well, I'm about to send you a
Speaker 2: bunch of stuff.
Speaker 5: Okay, thank you. You know it's something that's gonna being there,
Speaker 5: you know, get it off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh no, this is to grow you have back. Well,
Speaker 2: we're still trying to get it off at this point.
Speaker 2: So my sister was like, you know what, like when
Speaker 2: it all started, she said, you know what, You're gonna
Speaker 2: have to have surgery, you know what I'm saying to
Speaker 2: get this off. Like, dude, nobody gonna give me surgery,
Speaker 2: you know, to get this off. So now she's answering
Speaker 2: my phone. She gave me the lady Gina, a lady
Speaker 2: named Jane. She said, call on him on the side.
Speaker 2: I ended up calling Gina next.
Speaker 5: Morning and.
Speaker 2: Eventual, but I'm still wondering, like when is somebody gonna
Speaker 2: tell me, you know, like what I can do? You
Speaker 2: know what I'm saying, everybody's trying to tell me what
Speaker 2: they can do for me and what they can get,
Speaker 2: but I'm still have a headache.
Speaker 5: My head is burning now, like it's just nobody's telling
Speaker 5: me what to do.
Speaker 2: So she called me back and said, well, I talked
Speaker 2: to a doctor and the doctor said he could take
Speaker 2: it off, and not only can he take it off,
Speaker 2: you're gonna take it off for free. Three days later,
Speaker 2: I was in Los Angeles, and.
Speaker 1: So is this all happening in less than a week?
Speaker 5: Kind of less than a week?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 5: Okay, I was in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: What he did when she first called him, he thought
Speaker 2: it was a joke until she was like, no, I'm
Speaker 2: really really serious. So he went and bought a can
Speaker 2: of gorilla glue and he sprayed it on a mannequin head.
Speaker 2: So he went to putting all kinds of stuff together
Speaker 2: to see if you could take it out, and whatever
Speaker 2: he put together, he was able to take it out
Speaker 2: the mannequan head, and they flew me out there, and
Speaker 2: I tell you, they flew me out there. It took
Speaker 2: four hours for the surgery, and when I woke up,
Speaker 2: I was able to Oh my god, I promise you.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to wrap my head around what a crazy
Speaker 1: week that is for you. You start, I mean because
Speaker 1: the day, the day you posted the TikTok, it was
Speaker 1: just a normal work day, right, you Right? And then
Speaker 1: a week later you're in Beverly Hills getting a surgery
Speaker 1: that was developed just for you.
Speaker 2: Like even my parents that were coming to the door,
Speaker 2: they was like, oh girl, I just thought you liked
Speaker 2: that hairstyle, like nobody nobody knew why it was like that.
Speaker 5: But that long?
Speaker 1: How long was your hair stuck before you posted to TikTok?
Speaker 5: Over thirty days? Okay, old the thirty days.
Speaker 2: And it's just like it, just like I said it,
Speaker 2: just the ponytail thing is just kept getting tighter and
Speaker 2: it was tangling in the inside, and it got to
Speaker 2: the point where I just couldn't do it any more.
Speaker 2: I'm taking a vlpms like I'm eating M and m's.
Speaker 1: When this starts to go viral, When you start to
Speaker 1: get this like absurd amount of attention that no one
Speaker 1: could be prepared for it, much less with their scalp
Speaker 1: on fire, How did your family and friends react, How
Speaker 1: did they come together for you? I think it's very
Speaker 1: funny like the generation gap of your daughter being like
Speaker 1: the numbers.
Speaker 2: Oh no, well, listen, my sisters was like that too.
Speaker 2: My mama was the only one that sat there and
Speaker 2: cried with me. My little sister, she was there with
Speaker 2: me through the whole thing. I'm talking from coming from
Speaker 2: the hospital because you know, I ended up going to
Speaker 2: the emergency room because after they was telling me all
Speaker 2: the stuff they use, this is when it got beyond
Speaker 2: I can't even take it in the moment. I went
Speaker 2: to the emergency room and the lady was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I just seen you.
Speaker 5: She just seen me on TikTok. Oh my god.
Speaker 2: So she get me in and she she has this
Speaker 2: act tone stuff and she's trying to get it out.
Speaker 2: So it's took the point where I'm going to be
Speaker 2: in this hospital. So it's either me being in the
Speaker 2: hospital all this time and end up having a heart
Speaker 2: attack because as she's taking the stuff off, it's burning
Speaker 2: so bad to my pressure kept going up. It was
Speaker 2: so I asked her, can she give me the stuff
Speaker 2: and then I could go home and do it, and
Speaker 2: then you know, my sister and Mama they could take
Speaker 2: their time and you know, do it some at a time,
Speaker 2: but it was just burning so much. And then like
Speaker 2: the next day, that's when Gina told me about doctor.
Speaker 2: So we just stopped and just waited to go out there.
Speaker 2: Right before that, my sister started. My little baby said
Speaker 2: she started the goal fundme because she was like, you know,
Speaker 2: you're gonna need surgery. Then she said, once she's gonna
Speaker 2: be bold, you're gonna need wigs. And if anybody know,
Speaker 2: these wigs not cheap these days. So she started to
Speaker 2: go fund me and I think she put it for
Speaker 2: I think it was like five thousand dollars she put
Speaker 2: for the goal fundme.
Speaker 5: The goal fund Me raised twenty six thousand dollars. Wow.
Speaker 2: Then they started saying that I'm suing Gorilla Glue. Now people, oh,
Speaker 2: they want their money back from the goal fundme. And
Speaker 2: this is when people went crazy.
Speaker 1: On Wait, can you just where did that rumor come from?
Speaker 5: I don't even know.
Speaker 2: I don't even know because listen when this happened, when
Speaker 2: I seen the numbers and every everybody was talking about it,
Speaker 2: I emailed girla Glue myself and I told them I'm
Speaker 2: sorry for all of this, you know attention, I love
Speaker 2: y'all products.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry and that was it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's super any bad. Yeah you didn't know that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because I didn't want that. I didn't want that.
Speaker 2: I didn't want that, and I didn't want no negative stuff.
Speaker 2: But then gorilla glue and seeing something like, you know,
Speaker 2: just a bunch of pre publicity. Everybody was buying it
Speaker 2: just to make these videos.
Speaker 1: So this rumor came up that you were suing gorilla
Speaker 1: glue and then people got upset. How did that play out?
Speaker 2: Uh, this is I did it on purpose, just the
Speaker 2: super gorilla glue. And here's the thing again, I have
Speaker 2: a daycap. I've been having this daycap for ten years. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm okay, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, I didn't
Speaker 2: need I felt like I'm gonna say this. I felt
Speaker 2: like with the whole daycap, I was doing way better
Speaker 2: in life before this happened.
Speaker 1: I understand why no one trusts anyone on the internet,
Speaker 1: but it's so obvious you didn't post a lot to TikTok.
Speaker 1: You have a whole life and you can't control what
Speaker 1: goes viral on TikTok. Like it seems completely random. How
Speaker 1: How does where do things land? With the with the
Speaker 1: gofund me in the longer term.
Speaker 2: Okay, with the GoFundMe, I ended up taking it down
Speaker 2: and because I even had to make it do a
Speaker 2: whole appeal because they messaging the go fund me people,
Speaker 2: so we had to do a whole appeal. And then
Speaker 2: when he sent this to me three thousand of the dollars,
Speaker 2: I came back home and I gave three different families
Speaker 2: one thousand dollars. And then with the rest of it,
Speaker 2: I gave the doctor obain because he did the surgeon
Speaker 2: for me for free. He did the surgeon for free,
Speaker 2: and then he goes to Africa. He goes all kind
Speaker 2: of plaghana, He goes everywhere, and he do all of
Speaker 2: these surgeons for you know, like the baby with the
Speaker 2: klep lips, and he really do like all kinds of
Speaker 2: free surgeries. So I felt like, if I give this
Speaker 2: to him, that can help him help a lot of
Speaker 2: more people. Then they told me, oh, that was dumb.
Speaker 2: You should have never gave them money. Like nothing I did,
Speaker 2: nothing I did was okay. Everything I did was wrong.
Speaker 2: They fussed at me for doing the go fundme, they fussed.
Speaker 5: At me from giving it away. It was just nothing.
Speaker 5: Absolutely nothing I did.
Speaker 1: It was Okay, we'll be right back with more of
Speaker 1: my talk with TESSAA Brown. Welcome back to sixteenth minute.
Speaker 1: I never used chat GPT because I'm ethically opposed to
Speaker 1: it and it scared me. However, last night I was
Speaker 1: missing my dad, and so I went on chat GPT
Speaker 1: and I asked chat GPT who was Mike Loftis, hoping
Speaker 1: to read something like nice about my dad and folks.
Speaker 1: Chat GPT told me Mike Loftus was comedian and podcaster
Speaker 1: Jamie Loftus's ex boyfriend or ex partner. So I dated
Speaker 1: my dead dad according to the scary computer love that
Speaker 1: that's what the historical register will show. And here's the
Speaker 1: rest of my conversation with Tessaca Brown. So you go
Speaker 1: go to LA. Thankfully you're able to get this resolved.
Speaker 1: I guess before because I want to talk about how
Speaker 1: the management stuff sort of came together originally. But I
Speaker 1: do want to talk about there were also some copycats.
Speaker 1: How did that come to what?
Speaker 2: Okay, the girl with the purple hair, boy, I don't
Speaker 2: know if it was a girl, but I'm sorry, I
Speaker 2: don't know, but that person did it. They didn't do
Speaker 2: her as nearly as bad as they did me, and
Speaker 2: she was trying to prove a point that oh, you
Speaker 2: can put this on the ticket right off, and she
Speaker 2: ended up in hospital. Then it was another man that
Speaker 2: put gorilla glue on a cup. He had to get
Speaker 2: the top of his lip cut off. I'm telling y'all,
Speaker 2: don't do this, like this is serious, right, They like
Speaker 2: I didn't. I didn't get that at all, But nobody
Speaker 2: said nothing about them talking about me like I was
Speaker 2: the dumb one.
Speaker 1: You have that stuff. And then there's also, I mean,
Speaker 1: the media starts to pick up on this, How did
Speaker 1: you manage that? How did you decide who to engage
Speaker 1: with or who not to all, well, you're with this
Speaker 1: medical emergency.
Speaker 2: I talked with Jess hilarious, okay, I like talk with
Speaker 2: her on the phone and his thing. I've been loving
Speaker 2: her since long time ago, and when I seen that
Speaker 2: she was calling me, I was scared to answer because
Speaker 2: I know she's a comedian, so I feel like you're
Speaker 2: going to be like, you know, But she was like test, babe,
Speaker 2: you know what's going on. And I've told her what happened,
Speaker 2: and she was like, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 5: That made me. The love for I had for her
Speaker 5: win a thousand plus.
Speaker 2: It was a lot of people like saying, you know
Speaker 2: it's gonna be okay, you know you're gonna get through this.
Speaker 1: But then it was those other ones you specifically mentioned
Speaker 1: the Wendy Williams coverage. As those things come through, how
Speaker 1: do you take that in stride? How does that affect you?
Speaker 2: Before Wendy would said everything, she was saying, I love Wendy,
Speaker 2: you know me and mind watching Windy.
Speaker 5: All the time, like you know how you doing all
Speaker 5: the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what happened was as she just kept every
Speaker 2: day this later had my picture on her screen, my
Speaker 2: mama called the show and she played it on a show.
Speaker 5: She played it. My mama called this show and say, Wendy,
Speaker 5: my baby made a mistake. You know, I love you.
Speaker 5: My baby made a mistake. Can you please cut us
Speaker 5: some slack?
Speaker 2: And then after that she bought a bunch of shirts
Speaker 2: for everybody that was in an audience.
Speaker 5: I said, I don't like her, but you know okay.
Speaker 1: So I want to take you back to LA. You've
Speaker 1: gotten this surgery done successfully, you can finally think a
Speaker 1: little clear more clearly, and you've been connected with Gina.
Speaker 1: So how does how does that relationship come together. And
Speaker 1: how did you decide to be like I need a
Speaker 1: manager to to sort of navigate this time.
Speaker 2: Well, she called me, like I said, and I called
Speaker 2: her the next day and she was like, you know,
Speaker 2: this is big.
Speaker 5: I know you're trying to get it off, and but
Speaker 5: this is big. I can do this and I can
Speaker 5: do that.
Speaker 1: What kind of things she.
Speaker 5: Was honey, booboos, manager, I know a lot of people.
Speaker 5: You know, I can get it.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: She told me like she can find somebody.
Speaker 2: I didn't know she really gonna find somebody, but she
Speaker 2: was saying she could find somebody and she can and
Speaker 2: helped me through this whole thing.
Speaker 5: And that was it. It was a lot of people
Speaker 5: wanted to.
Speaker 2: Do interviews and I didn't, you know, know what to
Speaker 2: do or how to So she set up like she
Speaker 2: would send me a whole like layout, you have an
Speaker 2: interview at this time, interview at this time, interview at
Speaker 2: this time.
Speaker 5: How do all the interviews?
Speaker 4: Call it?
Speaker 5: Lot a noise done?
Speaker 2: Get ready for the next one. And like I said,
Speaker 2: the biggest thing I didn't care about the interviews. The
Speaker 2: biggest thing she did for me was finding doctbang because that's.
Speaker 1: Like life changing.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 1: This is something I've talked with a lot of people
Speaker 1: about in the past of you know, going from your
Speaker 1: everyday life to all of a sudden having a spreadsheet
Speaker 1: of like, here are my interviews for the day. What
Speaker 1: does that change like where all of a sudden you're
Speaker 1: like a public figure overnight.
Speaker 2: But let me tell you the thing was, I feel like,
Speaker 2: if I can do all those interviews over now, it
Speaker 2: would be better because every interview I was doing, I was.
Speaker 5: Crying, like ugly crying every interview.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they asked me questions, and I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: it's just it had just happened. I'm ugly crying on
Speaker 2: it re interview.
Speaker 5: Listen. I lost twenty pounds and everything.
Speaker 8: It was bad.
Speaker 5: It was, it was really really bad.
Speaker 2: And then like two weeks after we got the glue off,
Speaker 2: you know, he.
Speaker 5: Gave me these.
Speaker 1: Oh really, mm hmm, wait what walk me through that?
Speaker 2: He did a mommy makeover two weeks later, and you know,
Speaker 2: since I since I've been through so much, he was saying,
Speaker 2: i'mna do your mommy makeover. So he gave me breasting
Speaker 2: plants and he did a he did lightful suction.
Speaker 5: On my stomach.
Speaker 1: Wait the doctor who did the same doctor. Yes, wait
Speaker 1: hold on, so wait do you ended up? Do you
Speaker 1: stay in LA for a little while after after after
Speaker 1: the glue thing?
Speaker 2: I think I stayed for like two days and then
Speaker 2: we came back home. Two weeks later we went back.
Speaker 1: You flew you flew out to UH to get implants
Speaker 1: and what else.
Speaker 5: A tummy tuck and then they gave me the dose.
Speaker 1: Wow, So like this is okay, this is like the
Speaker 1: craziest month every So you go back to LA, you
Speaker 1: have these procedures done. What happens then, because now it's
Speaker 1: like if like you like became a social media star overnight.
Speaker 1: You go through this first wave of interviews where I think,
Speaker 1: very understandably you're very emotional. I'm always curious about that
Speaker 1: turning point of like, Okay, now that the immediate huge
Speaker 1: moment is over, what am I going to do now?
Speaker 1: How much do I want to engage with this moving forward?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 2: What happened was I went to LA for something. I
Speaker 2: don't know why I was going, but I was going
Speaker 2: for something else. Right, I get off the plane and
Speaker 2: my phone it's messages out of missed all kind of
Speaker 2: so I called them I'm like, what's going on? You
Speaker 2: need to talk to your daughters and talk to them now,
Speaker 2: Well what is going on? The teacher came to one
Speaker 2: of my children and say, oh, we're so sorry for
Speaker 2: y'all lost. So they're thinking I went on this plane
Speaker 2: and a plane crashed. The internet SAIDA died. It was,
Speaker 2: it was listen, it was everywhere. So now it got
Speaker 2: to the point where.
Speaker 5: I'm on Live.
Speaker 2: Oh I thought you died, And still to today, I
Speaker 2: can get a Live and somebody's gonna say, oh, they
Speaker 2: told me you passed.
Speaker 5: Away, like they literally killed me. So then a lot
Speaker 5: of stuff started dying off.
Speaker 1: And so how long after the original incident was this?
Speaker 5: Oh this happened maybe with a month after I died.
Speaker 1: So gorilla glue incident, surgery interviews that implants dead dead.
Speaker 2: Like I said, all right, so if you know, if
Speaker 2: anybody that really really know me know me in this situation,
Speaker 2: I always try to make it as a joke. I
Speaker 2: always try to make light of any situation, just like
Speaker 2: I tell people now right now, if I watched the video,
Speaker 2: I understand why people thought it was funny. I understand
Speaker 2: why people thought it was a joke because you know
Speaker 2: what that was stupid that was done. But I understand
Speaker 2: now why people thought it was funny. I didn't understand
Speaker 2: then because I was so angry. Sure, but I understand now.
Speaker 2: I already thought it was funny.
Speaker 1: You had you started developing a hair product from there? Yes,
Speaker 1: how did that come about? What was that process?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 2: Like I said, doctor Bang put some stuff together and
Speaker 2: my hair like all the little ball spots that I had,
Speaker 2: I had like ball spots here, but I still had
Speaker 2: some hair. But I went got it cut like shorter
Speaker 2: than after I first had the surgery. The stuff that he,
Speaker 2: you know, had my head growing with, we bottled it up.
Speaker 2: Now I was scared, Don't get me wrong. I was
Speaker 2: scared to put it up because all I'm thinking, if
Speaker 2: I was somebody, why would I want to buy something
Speaker 2: for my hair from up?
Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: That first date, I made seventy thousand. I didn't make
Speaker 2: you all, not me personally, but yeah, I had to
Speaker 2: split it with, you know, the people that was putting
Speaker 2: it together, the manager seventy thousand dollars in the first day.
Speaker 2: And then we added edge control, we added some hair spray.
Speaker 2: But what happened with that demand was too much because
Speaker 2: the people that I was doing it was like, you know,
Speaker 2: like a little there weren't no.
Speaker 5: Big time company.
Speaker 2: The demand couldn't keep up with what they was doing,
Speaker 2: and we couldn't find nobody else to do it. So
Speaker 2: that was a man. That was it. It was going
Speaker 2: after that, and everybody keeps saying, when are you bringing
Speaker 2: them back? Because the thing is they worked. You know
Speaker 2: how people be like, oh, I'm using this, you know,
Speaker 2: just so I can get people to buy it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It really he really grew from there.
Speaker 1: I mean because at this point we're kind of like
Speaker 1: a few months out for me original you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: like your attitude towards social media changed significantly. What does
Speaker 1: that mean interacting with social media after this first wave
Speaker 1: of craziness had passed.
Speaker 2: Before the craziness it was, you know, like I said,
Speaker 2: go on live talk about a football game.
Speaker 5: I'm just at the poke with my kids. We just
Speaker 5: you know, live whatever. Now I'm on live.
Speaker 2: Hey, y'all, tap the screen, share the live Let's get
Speaker 2: these number.
Speaker 5: Why am I doing all this? You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 2: I post a video every five minutes. I go back
Speaker 2: to see how many views I shouldn't be doing it,
Speaker 2: Like I feel like that's crazy. I have never worried
Speaker 2: about numbers before.
Speaker 5: It changed you.
Speaker 2: It changes you, It really changes you. I try to
Speaker 2: keep my hair done now. Once upon a time, baby,
Speaker 2: I would get on social media and just like yo,
Speaker 2: you know whatever, whatever.
Speaker 5: But now I have to make sure my lashes is done.
Speaker 2: I got to make sure because at this point, because
Speaker 2: I have a couple of videos after that that went viral.
Speaker 2: So now I'm like, oh, well, I don't know what
Speaker 2: video and go viral. So I got to try to
Speaker 2: make myself presentable. Like even my children, they'll come show
Speaker 2: me now it's you know, at first it was they
Speaker 2: were just posting stuff. Now let me see this, bring
Speaker 2: me this phone, let me see this video.
Speaker 5: I need to see what's in the background. I need
Speaker 5: to see if anything on the floor.
Speaker 2: It's draining. I'm gonna tell you that it's draining.
Speaker 1: It sounds like the kind of thing that once it
Speaker 1: starts like, you don't you don't really go back right now.
Speaker 2: Some people, if they do, you know, God bless them.
Speaker 2: But I would have never thought this is how I
Speaker 2: would be when it comes.
Speaker 5: To social media at this point. Now, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 2: I still post like me and my kids dancing like
Speaker 2: you know, just you know, little cute things.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't post nothing. Oh well, let's do this
Speaker 5: because it's gonna go viral. I don't do that.
Speaker 1: The answer is either like quit or you have to
Speaker 1: totally like go with it, like get off altogether.
Speaker 5: Because you know what's another bad thing? Don't recomments?
Speaker 2: That what every ready keeps telling me, stop reading a comments,
Speaker 2: stop reading the comments. Of course me reading the comments
Speaker 2: crying of the crime, because God them people in those comments.
Speaker 2: My thing is because this is a lot of stuff
Speaker 2: that I see that I could go make a comment on,
Speaker 2: but I wouldn't make a comment. I'll screenshot it and
Speaker 2: make the comment and send it in my sister's group.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna go on social media. Another thing is
Speaker 2: if I wasn't as strong as I feel like I am,
Speaker 2: I would have underlived myself a long time ago. This
Speaker 2: is how bad it was.
Speaker 5: This is how bad it was.
Speaker 2: And one boy he ended up coming in my inbox
Speaker 2: and he was like, I'm so sorry, miss Tessaka, but
Speaker 2: I'm in this troll.
Speaker 5: Group and we go around and we just troll people,
Speaker 5: and I'm sorry, this happened to you this.
Speaker 2: I blocked them because you're not gonna play me, you know,
Speaker 2: in my face over here and then try to come
Speaker 2: in my inbox and tell me you're sorry.
Speaker 5: So I ended up bl I saw it blocking. Listen.
Speaker 2: I think I hit like a thousands of people that's blocked.
Speaker 2: And one of my sons was like, no, you don't
Speaker 2: block nobody. You know, any engagement is.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, no, no, I'm blocking you.
Speaker 2: It's to the point where when I look on social media,
Speaker 2: unless I'm like, when I look on social media, the comments,
Speaker 2: I would think everybody in the.
Speaker 5: Road just loved me, But no, I had my son.
Speaker 2: He's on it and he's just taking off all the
Speaker 2: bad ones before before I can see him.
Speaker 1: I think it's so cool and also just like from
Speaker 1: a like internet culture perspective, interesting that your kids are
Speaker 1: helping you navigate this too, because they, you know, were
Speaker 1: like born with phones in their hands. I'm assuming yeah,
Speaker 1: just because of like the generational difference, How did they
Speaker 1: sort of help you through this moment? Was there anything
Speaker 1: where their feelings about what you should do or how
Speaker 1: you should interact with social media was different?
Speaker 2: Okay, this was the week I didn't even have it
Speaker 2: off my head yet. When this first happened, there was
Speaker 2: a picture going around with a lady like with pieces
Speaker 2: of hair like everywhere, and of course they say that
Speaker 2: was me.
Speaker 5: So I let them know, Hey, you know, y'all know
Speaker 5: that's not me. Look at my head. You know it's
Speaker 5: still here, y'all know that's not me. Go to school.
Speaker 2: Nobody told them about that. But they started singing the
Speaker 2: Gorilla Blue Girl's song. So my baby came home crying.
Speaker 2: I just let her know, Hey, you know what you do,
Speaker 2: learn the song and next time they sing it, y'all
Speaker 2: singing with them. But then I'm trying to encourage them.
Speaker 2: And now go in the bathroom and I'll start crying
Speaker 2: because it's like because I put them, you know, I
Speaker 2: would go cry because you know, I felt like I
Speaker 2: put them in that situation and I didn't want my
Speaker 2: children to be bullied behind something you know that I did.
Speaker 5: But those same.
Speaker 2: Friends, yea, now it's like, oh my god, it's miss Tessica.
Speaker 5: They won't take pictures.
Speaker 1: It seems like, I mean, a lot has changed, and
Speaker 1: also not a lot has changed, right? Has your day
Speaker 1: to day shifted that much since the whole ordeal.
Speaker 2: No, I still get up at five thirty in the
Speaker 2: morning do my daycare. On a Saturday, I try to
Speaker 2: put a bunch of videos together so I can have,
Speaker 2: you know, stuff to post during the week. When it's
Speaker 2: time for the dance team to do anything, we still
Speaker 2: have practice. No, it's pretty much the same thing, except
Speaker 2: for anywhere I.
Speaker 5: Go, No matter where it is.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I went to Angola to go see
Speaker 2: my uncle. Like, now I think all of that stuff
Speaker 2: is cute, like when people call me a girl, little girl,
Speaker 2: and now it's like, hey. At first, I kept saying
Speaker 2: my name is Tessica. I cried so much, my name
Speaker 2: is Tessca. But now it's like whatever, I'm gonna go
Speaker 2: ahead on and run with it.
Speaker 1: What motivates you to maintain this relationship with social media?
Speaker 2: Those little girls, my little girls, and it's a lot.
Speaker 2: Listen in between all of this, I promise you it's
Speaker 2: so much. But next month we start shooting the movie
Speaker 2: about what happened?
Speaker 1: Well, wait, how did that come about?
Speaker 2: It's his name is Elvin Gray. He's a director that
Speaker 2: usually well he just posts. He makes movies about people
Speaker 2: that went viral. This movie I'm going to.
Speaker 5: Be in it.
Speaker 2: Like the other movies that he make pretty much just
Speaker 2: taking stuff from TikTok seeing how it went. Oh, you
Speaker 2: takeing stuff from the headlines. But with this one he
Speaker 2: has all the information from me.
Speaker 1: So is that going to be made like you're acting
Speaker 1: in it or is it documentary?
Speaker 5: I will be in it. I will be in it.
Speaker 2: I will be playing myself. Yeah, they're gonna see. They're
Speaker 2: gonna see, like what happened right before I put this
Speaker 2: glue in my head? Well, if I was a normal
Speaker 2: human being that bullied me, I would be like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, this girl was really going through a lot,
Speaker 2: and we just put more People have no clue what
Speaker 2: I was going through, like in the house by myself
Speaker 2: before this glue thing, Like yeah, the day this glue
Speaker 2: thing happened, right, But they'll be able to see it
Speaker 2: in the movie.
Speaker 1: Outside of that, what is next for you? Do you
Speaker 1: have like bigger social media aspirations or is it just
Speaker 1: sort of maintaining your normal life.
Speaker 2: Well, I have a new manager now, and I was
Speaker 2: telling him that, you know, I wanted to do a
Speaker 2: swim suit line. It's a couple of things that I
Speaker 2: want to do because like even when this first happened,
Speaker 2: was like, girl, you have to leave that daycare, loon.
Speaker 2: This is what I've always wanted to do. I worked
Speaker 2: at a daycare for seven years before Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane
Speaker 2: Katrina came and we was, you know, displaced for like
Speaker 2: two years. We came back and I seen that things
Speaker 2: were happening around here. I ended up getting a job,
Speaker 2: ended up quitting.
Speaker 5: But this is what I love.
Speaker 2: I would never I don't care what happens. I will
Speaker 2: never ever let this daycare go.
Speaker 1: My final question is just sort of reflecting on these
Speaker 1: like last couple of years at this point, and the
Speaker 1: emotional and also like life changing dirty you have been
Speaker 1: on when you reflect on it now, would you do
Speaker 1: anything differently? And was there anything that really sort of
Speaker 1: surprised you?
Speaker 2: Okay, so as far as would I change anything, promise
Speaker 2: you wouldn't never used the.
Speaker 1: Girl, Well yeah, never, wouldn't.
Speaker 2: Have never, and then everything I'll just be, you know,
Speaker 2: still normal. Yeah, but I think that's the biggest thing.
Speaker 5: Look, don't use it. If you don't have it, go
Speaker 5: get it. If you can't get it, go without it.
Speaker 5: That's it.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much to Tessica for her time and
Speaker 1: her insight and keep your eyes peeled for her upcoming projects.
Speaker 1: You can follow her on Instagram or TikTok at. I'm
Speaker 1: underscore d underscore Old Lady, and if nothing else, I
Speaker 1: hope this is the kind of sixteenth minute story that
Speaker 1: reminds you that people are people first. If you had
Speaker 1: been stressed enough to post an egregious l this could
Speaker 1: have been you. So have some grace. And when it
Speaker 1: comes to capitalizing on these random internet moments, again, consider
Speaker 1: who that capitalizing is supporting. If it's an already rich
Speaker 1: person exploiting followers to become richer, because there are Mormons
Speaker 1: who took PPP loans to Buya Chanelle purses, get them
Speaker 1: check the list of episodes. But if they're capitalizing on
Speaker 1: their moment to keep getting by with joy and aren't
Speaker 1: hurting anyone, chill out. Tessica's awesome. Thanks for listening and
Speaker 1: for your moment of fun. Here's some more Regina King
Speaker 1: as tessaka brown by Beat.
Speaker 10: Every day, as many as one people fall victim to
Speaker 10: use the gorilla glue in place of a beauty product,
Speaker 10: and they deserve compensation.
Speaker 7: We all do. You should not have to go through
Speaker 7: life with hand like a lego man. Because one time
Speaker 7: you use gorilla glue instead of that's way of Greece, we.
Speaker 5: Will get you moneys for gorilla glue or the next.
Speaker 7: Best Thing, a lifetime supply of gorilla glue.
Speaker 1: Sixteenth Minute as a production of fol Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: It is written, hosted, and produced by me Jamie Lostis.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Sophia Lickterman and Robert Evans. Denas
Speaker 1: and Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Speaker 1: Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is
Speaker 1: from Grant Crater and Pet. Shout outs to our dog
Speaker 1: producer Anderson. My Kat's for you, Casper and my pet
Speaker 1: rock Bird. You will outlive us all. Bye m