Best Podcast Reviews

“Who? Weekly” Challenges the Notion That Pop Culture Is Low Culture

March 30, 2021 2:59 pm

Last updated on June 1st, 2021

What is a Wholebrity? Who? Weekly, a podcast that’s about “everything you need to know about the celebrities you don’t,” would define it as such:

Rita Ora is THE Who. What’s a Who? It’s a celebrity you don’t know. The celebrities you do know are Thems. Here are some examples if you’re confused.

Rihanna: Them
Charli XCX: Who
Chris Hemsworth: Them
Luke Hemsworth: Who
Zendaya: recently a Who; now a Them

Someone can be a niche Them, but a general Who. Am I making things easier or harder? I’ll give an example. After the pandemic started, everybody forgot about the absurd Peloton promo from 2019 and bought a Peloton. You probably know somebody who knows somebody who owns a Peloton. The Peloton instructors are Peloton Thems, but general Whos. Lindsey Weber and Bobby Finger, hosts of the Who? Weekly podcast, know things get a little sticky here, but they’re always ready to explain further.

Lindsey Weber and Bobby Finger started Who? Weekly in 2016 to primarily discuss the aforementioned Wholebrities, previously called D-List celebrities because it became apparent there was more to talk about than boring, elusive A- and B-List stars. With the rise of social media, people didn’t need to follow a traditional actor, singer, or athlete trajectory to be famous. People can become famous from YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok. (Keep in mind that you have to add a dash of nepotism or a sprinkle of edited unattainable good looks on one of those platforms.) There’s also more content about more stuff than ever before, and if you don’t pay close attention, you’ll miss the next Selling Sunset or Anna Delvey scam story. Selling Sunset is no “prestige television,” which has its own charms like Nicole Kidman walking around the Upper East Side in luxurious velvet coats, but it is a part of the culture.

In 2021, when people speak about something being part of the culture, it’s typically about something that might also be labeled as pop culture. But should it still be called pop culture, which by the very notion of it being labeled something other than “culture,” denotes that it is other and/or less? Absolutely not.

Maybe it’s easy for people to do so because people tend to look at culture from a historical vantage point, with a hefty dose of institutional racism and patriarchy weaved throughout. Historically, pop culture has always been shuffled off to the side as the uninformed trashy cousin of true culture: art (who gets to decide what art is?), opera and classical music, theatre (not including contemporary musicals – the horror!), books (certainly not fantasy unless it’s written by an old English man), and the more recent sibling, film and television (which definitely does not consist of reality tv, comedies, and horror).

In hindsight, it’s very clear that popular culture was originally coined “pop” as a way to gatekeep. If something has mass accessibility and appeal, then it can’t be high-brow culture worthy of intellectual discourse by the elites. Weber and Finger discuss Wholebrities controversies and scandals, like the sexual assault allegations against Armie Hammer that got lost among the cannibalism memes and Hilaria Baldwin’s Spanish appropriation and lies, with the same weight given to discourse around the first purely digital NFT recently sold by Christie’s. (Disclosure: I currently support Who? Weekly on Patreon where they also discuss Thems’ scandals.)

Information about these stories can come from Instagram accounts, Alec Baldwin’s atrocious podcast, and/or tabloids, among other sources. The discourse around celebrity scandals, no matter how famous the celebrity, affects the way people talk about media, mental illness, sexual misconduct, and a multitude of other topics.

Weber and Finger also use Millenials’ greatest asset to tackle the never-ending horror witnessed every day on Who? Weekly: humor. When they spent an hour on the Patreon line discussing the Meghan Markle interview with Oprah (Meghan Markle is now a Them, but just a few years ago, she was a bona fide Who. A Who is dismantling the British monarchy.), there was an in-depth analysis, but there were also some jokes. What person doesn’t want to find ways to laugh when every day there’s more Covid news, coups, and cannibal allegations? Finding the absurdity in a topic doesn’t make it less of an important part of the culture.

Every day, people are inundated with advertisements. It’s harder to discern when something is being sold to you, particularly when it’s a celebrity. Weber and Finger decipher the #spon, sponsored content, that Wholebrities hawk. Not only is it just plain fun to talk about Kristin Chenowith eating Town House Crackers (Sure Jan) or Emily Ratajkowski’s bikinis from her aptly titled Inamorata bikini line supposedly looking good on all bodies (??), but identifying the ways celebrities are selling sponsored content is an important skill. Thanks to social media and the ability for Wholebrities to now sell Flat Tummy Tea and FabFitFun boxes, marketing has gone through several life cycles in the past decade alone.

If that isn’t changing the culture, then what is?

how depressing

our society has failed to provide ambitious role models to our children pic.twitter.com/oKBIXSIvnu
— delian (@zebulgar) March 22, 2021

And that’s what we call getting ratioed.

Whether it’s by Weber and Finger’s sarcastic tone or a very pointed comment, they frequently note that Wholebrities usually want to be talked about. That very notion is crucial to understanding today’s culture. A desire to be noticed and discussed by the general public is achievable on a scale never seen before. It influences children’s career paths; my 16-year-old niece can be a reality television star, a TikTok star, or an Instagram Influencer. It shifts the way people get their news; celebrities might post about politics and bring attention to a topic that somebody didn’t know about previously. This information is edited, filtered, and/or highly biased, so there’s also a direct convergence with the general theme prevalent in today’s culture: what is trustworthy and authentic news? What’s real and what’s fake?

The year of the scam (2018) was when I realized I didn’t just like pop culture, but I loved pop culture. I wanted to know every single detail about the doomed Fyre Festival and talk about which documentary was better (this is my Sophie’s Choice, but I lean towards Hulu) in 2019. Everybody was talking about it. If everybody is talking about it then it’s a part of the culture. Is it less culturally relevant than the 2018 Winter Olympics? I argue it’s not. It shined a light on the rising scam culture that people weren’t yet talking about. Lindsey and Bobby are talking about these cultural touchpoints and celebrities on Who? Weekly from a place of compassion and humor because all of it is a part of the culture. I don’t know if Lindsey and Bobby know they’re dismantling the toxic notion that pop culture is low-brow culture, but I hope they know I’m thankful they’re doing the work.