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you're listening to Into It from Vulture and

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New York Magazine. I'm your host Sam Sanders.

1:33

In this episode, what is

1:35

the deal with Britney Spears? I

1:37

mean, actually, what is the deal with Britney Spears

1:40

fans? If you

1:42

spend enough time on TikTok, you will

1:44

soon see there's a subset of

1:46

Britney fans who have become, just gonna

1:49

say it, conspiracy theorists.

1:52

Seriously, there's this one TikTok all

1:55

about Britney's teeth. Especially

1:57

Britney, her bottom teeth have always been

1:59

a

1:59

part of her smile. It's got this

2:02

creepy music playing and

2:04

these computer-modulated voices

2:06

talking over all these pictures and video clips

2:09

of Britney. We always used to see her

2:11

top and bottom row of teeth quite frequently.

2:14

She never has had missing teeth on her bottom

2:16

row and she has never had all gum on the

2:19

bottom row.

2:21

And these voices are basically saying, Britney

2:23

Spears' teeth look different now and

2:26

all the social content she posts. This person

2:28

looks like a baby's mouth when

2:31

they start to cut teeth.

2:33

We don't see the bottom row of teeth. Here

2:36

looks like a row of gums. And

2:38

for that reason, these superfans

2:40

argue that Britney has been cloned

2:44

or disappeared or

2:46

that the Britney we see is all AI.

2:49

Yes, there are a lot of people on

2:52

Al Gore's internet arguing

2:54

that Britney Spears, as we know her, is

2:57

actually some QAnon-level conspiracy.

3:00

Ask yourself this, why has

3:02

her smile completely changed? We're

3:04

going to get into all of that this episode with

3:07

a colleague of mine who has spent months on

3:09

this very story. Her name is Rebecca Jennings.

3:12

She's a reporter at Vox and she

3:14

just published a piece for New York Magazine

3:17

all about Britney's most intense fans

3:20

and what the hell they're doing online. There's

3:22

so much to unpack here, so let's just

3:24

get into it.

3:25

Here's Rebecca. So the story

3:28

is about how the Free Britney movement

3:30

in the wake of the end of her conservatorship

3:33

in November of 2021 has kind

3:35

of split into at least two

3:37

factions. And those two factions are people

3:39

who are like, great, we did our job. Britney's

3:42

free, leave her alone. And the

3:44

faction who are like,

3:46

Britney may actually not be as free as

3:48

we think she is. And it's sort of telling

3:51

the story of how that split happened,

3:54

all the tiny little directions

3:56

and really, really weird and really dark

3:58

directions that the theories have.

3:59

and whether

4:02

any of them have any legitimacy, and how Britney feels about

4:04

it. Yeah.

4:06

Yeah.

4:06

So, we cannot

4:09

talk about these factions

4:12

without talking about Britney's

4:15

last 15 years. You know, I mean, people

4:18

know the big, broad strokes. Britney Spears

4:21

had some mental health issues, and then

4:23

she ended up in a conservatorship for 13 years.

4:26

And then she got out of it. I

4:29

guess to start,

4:30

how did her conservatorship start? And

4:32

remind us what exactly a conservatorship

4:35

is.

4:35

So, a conservatorship

4:38

is a legal situation in

4:40

which someone is deemed not to have, you know, control

4:44

over their finances, or their personhood, or their well-being.

4:46

And so, the court or people around that

4:49

person designate people to

4:51

handle those things for them. And

4:54

a conservatorship in general is quite a controversial,

4:56

even concept for obvious reasons. Because

4:59

when you decide that someone else is unfit

5:01

to take care of themselves, it becomes very difficult for them

5:03

to win that trust back from people.

5:05

As Britney kind of emulates, it

5:07

took her 13 years to prove to people that she was

5:09

capable of being on her own. But

5:12

Britney was first in a conservatorship because

5:15

of, you know, a series of incidents that

5:17

took place in 2007, when

5:20

she was deemed kind of

5:23

unfit by really the entire world. It's

5:25

kind of a cliche to say, but, like, we are

5:27

all kind of complicit in the framing of this woman as,

5:30

you know, a crazy person. People were...

5:32

Well, in that moment, it was so visual, right? I remember

5:35

when she cut her hair. We've got this photo now

5:37

from thex17online.com. And

5:41

it appears to show the pop star

5:43

shaving her own head. I remember when she stormed the paparazzi

5:45

vehicle with an umbrella. I

5:48

remember a lot of stuff around

5:51

whether or not she was fit to have her kids. ...the 26-year-old pop star was brought

5:53

to court after

5:55

being brought by ambulance to a Los Angeles hospital

5:57

from her Beverly Hills home.

5:59

another chapter in her long running custody

6:02

battle with ex-husband Kevin Federline

6:04

over there two sons. Right.

6:06

There was a lot of that and yeah just mental health issues

6:09

in general. So this is this

6:11

all stems from you know that

6:14

one pretty pretty rough year. Yeah

6:16

and so she ends up in this conservatorship

6:19

which basically means people around her are

6:21

in charge of her affairs and her business

6:23

dealings and her money. But what

6:25

I found so interesting during that entire 13

6:28

years was that for most of

6:30

it she kept working.

6:32

She kept putting out songs. She kept

6:34

touring. She had a Vegas residency.

6:37

They made her work. Yeah and that's sort

6:39

of one of the central kind of paradoxes of the

6:41

conservatorship because you know you would think that if

6:43

a woman is so incapable of running her life

6:46

how would she be releasing multiple albums

6:48

doing tours things like things are that are very taxing

6:51

on a person and part of that it's sort of become evident is

6:53

because she was such a cash cow

6:55

for her conservators. It was very expensive

6:57

to employ people in the conservatorship

6:59

people who Brittany had no ability to decide

7:02

who they were because she was already deemed unfit

7:04

to make her own decisions. There's these layers

7:07

and layers of sort of

7:08

abuse and potential abuse. Yeah.

7:12

So let's talk a little

7:14

bit about how she

7:16

gets out of it before we get into where

7:18

her superfans stand now. Everyone

7:21

can remember the flurry

7:24

and the media frenzy around

7:27

the court case that eventually got her

7:29

free.

7:38

Talk to us briefly about what

7:40

happened with all of that and how

7:43

Brittany fans helped

7:45

start that process. Yeah it definitely

7:47

played a part of it. One of the biggest

7:49

turning points in the Free Brittany movement

7:52

was in 2019 when a kind

7:54

of whistleblower from from Brittany's

7:57

team told the podcast Brittany's

7:59

Graham which

7:59

which was this podcast run by these two women who

8:02

kind of like decoded her funny Instagram

8:04

posts. We got a voicemail from an anonymous

8:07

source that we have verified worked

8:09

as a paralegal in an office involved in

8:11

Britney's conservatorship.

8:13

But basically told them that

8:15

Britney had been placed against her will

8:17

in a mental facility. And during that whole

8:19

time, Britney was forced to lie about

8:22

it and say, you know, I'm fine. I'm just taking

8:24

some time off my tour because my dad is

8:26

sick. But meanwhile, she was in this mental facility.

8:29

So that was a huge kind of wake

8:31

up call to a lot of people who had already been paying attention.

8:34

And ever since then, you know, the movement's only

8:36

grown. We had multiple documentaries

8:39

about Britney's conservatorship, a couple

8:41

sort of exposes about what happened behind the scenes.

8:44

And then Britney gave a really

8:47

harrowing testimony in court about

8:49

her experience of life under the conservatorship.

8:52

After I've lied and told the whole world I'm okay,

8:54

and I'm happy.

8:55

It's a lie. I thought I just maybe

8:57

I said that enough. Maybe I might become

8:59

happy because I've been in denial. I've been

9:01

in shock. I am traumatized.

9:03

Now that she's free,

9:05

what does her life look like? So

9:08

I think what's interesting is that her life looks,

9:12

I think to the public, largely the same.

9:14

You know, she's still posting her sort of quirky

9:16

Instagram photos of herself dancing

9:19

in her house, posting, you know,

9:21

lots of emoji captions, which she's always loved to

9:23

do, posing selfies. Got

9:25

married to her boyfriend of a few years, Sam

9:27

Asghari, in June of 2022. And

9:31

since then, she's been on vacations

9:33

to Mexico, Puerto Rico, Hawaii. She's

9:36

released two singles. She just announced

9:38

that she's her memoir, which has been

9:40

like, I mean, it will probably be like the hugest

9:43

celebrity memoir of recent.

9:44

Let me tell you, yeah. Prince Harry who? Prince

9:47

Harry who? Spare ain't got nothing

9:49

on Britney. Literally. So

9:51

that's coming out in October. You know, she's been

9:53

busy. She's been working. She's been on vacation.

9:56

She seems to be, you know, enjoying life

9:58

despite these kind of.

9:59

of unfavorable stories coming out about

10:02

her in the tabloids.

10:03

Yeah, well, and this is a thing. It's like,

10:06

I thought once she got out that

10:09

she was kind of just living her life and being free. We've

10:11

all seen the numerous TikToks

10:14

and Instagram reels where she's just like at our

10:16

house dancing. And

10:18

she looks like a woman that has like been through

10:21

it but found some peace and light on

10:23

the other side. And I'm generally just like, good

10:25

for you girl. Yeah.

10:27

But there are a lot of Britney

10:29

fans who were part of the free

10:31

Britney movement who now see those videos

10:35

and see conspiracy and who

10:37

see secrets and lies. So

10:40

one of the factions of this

10:42

former free Britney coalition, they've

10:45

become full on conspiracy theorist about

10:47

the state of her health and her life. What

10:49

is that about?

10:50

So yeah, so obviously that they would not call

10:52

themselves conspiracy theorists and-

10:55

Would you? I think

10:57

there's nuance in everything. I

11:00

also think, one important thing to note is that

11:05

the mainstream media thought that free Britney

11:07

altogether was crazy until basically 2021

11:10

almost. And

11:13

so I think that we have

11:15

to acknowledge the fact that

11:17

there were so many times

11:19

that free Britney in its kind of original

11:21

version before she was out of the conservatorship looked

11:24

to regular people as a conspiracy

11:26

theory and that

11:29

the people who are still kind of pouring over every

11:31

Instagram or every like career move

11:33

she makes and sees conspiracy, it's sort of like,

11:36

well, can you blame them? Because- Can you blame

11:38

them? That's kind of the way that this movement

11:40

has always operated. Having

11:42

said that, yeah, I think that there's

11:45

a big part of the movement that has been really, really

11:48

laser focused on

11:49

what they see as abnormalities

11:51

or oddities or glitches maybe

11:54

in some of her posts. There's

11:57

theories that she's been held in a mental

11:59

health-

11:59

against her will just as she was in 2019, and

12:02

then that she's been replaced with AI or

12:05

a body double or a clone or whatever. I mean,

12:07

those are the most extreme theories. And

12:09

then there are people who say

12:12

that actually she's still kind of

12:14

in this conservatorship. We just don't know about

12:16

it because it's all in the secret document

12:18

that happened after

12:20

the conservatorship was quote unquote over. And

12:22

those people, they blame people who

12:25

Brittany is surrounded by. They think that they

12:27

are using her for money and controlling

12:29

her so they can profit off of her. More

12:33

on all the conspiracies of Bea-non

12:36

and a wellness check of Brittany that went viral when

12:38

we come back. But first, listeners,

12:40

before we go to break,

12:42

I'm going to remind you, as I always do, tell

12:45

your friends about this show, rate and review

12:47

this podcast wherever you listen to this show, make

12:50

this show as viral as those wacky TikToks about

12:53

Brittany's teeth, and leave Brittany alone.

12:56

Okay? Thank you. Fox

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So of this Free Britney movement, once

14:49

she got free, a lot of those fans

14:52

said, good, we did it. And they actually

14:54

moved on to help with other conservatorship

14:56

issues with other people. But there is

14:59

this faction you speak of that doesn't

15:01

think that all was well with Britney and that something's amiss.

15:04

When you start to dig through the

15:06

evidence that faction posts

15:09

online to make their case, it

15:11

gets kind of creepy. I

15:13

came upon this TikTok

15:16

in which they analyze one

15:19

of those videos of Britney Spears dancing at

15:21

her house. And it's this weird

15:24

like AI computer

15:26

voice in a low horror movie

15:28

tone, basically telling

15:30

me over the course of a minute and a half that

15:33

those aren't Britney's teeth.

15:35

And by the end of the TikTok, they're trying

15:37

to make the case that it's not even really Britney. This

15:39

is the level of discourse

15:43

within this faction of fandom. Some

15:46

people don't even think that we're seeing her.

15:48

Right, exactly. TikTok plays a

15:50

huge part in this

15:52

faction of the Free Britney movement. Because

15:55

for a few months, at

15:57

least after the conservatorship ended,

15:59

most...

15:59

free Britney people were like, okay,

16:02

great. Like, this is awesome that we did

16:04

our job. We did it. Yeah. We did it. And

16:06

it wasn't really until after Britney

16:09

got married where this kind of

16:11

content really began to go viral on

16:13

TikTok especially. Why

16:15

did the marriage trigger that? So the

16:17

wedding was not

16:19

the typical celebrity wedding that

16:21

I think people are used to seeing. She married Sam

16:24

Asghari in June at her house in 2022.

16:28

People have always commented on how Britney posts

16:30

kind of like low res quality photos

16:33

of herself and videos of herself. And people have always

16:35

been kind of suspicious of that for one

16:37

reason or another. The photos that emerged

16:39

from her wedding were similar. There

16:42

were kind of these glamor shots of Sam and

16:45

very few photos where you saw Britney's

16:47

face or there was a lot of ones taken from her from behind.

16:49

People thought that her hair wasn't done

16:52

properly, which is, you know,

16:54

like this is kind of nasty speculation. Like,

16:56

why doesn't she look better?

16:57

Her hair extensions were weird from the

16:59

start and I'm not gonna hold that against her. I'm sorry.

17:02

I always knew their extensions back there.

17:04

Yeah, like that's just how Britney's hair has looked for

17:06

the past 10 years. And people noted that

17:08

certain celebrities were there. Some of them were like,

17:11

okay, of course, Paris Hilton and Madonna are gonna be

17:13

there. They've long been friends with Britney. And

17:15

then others, you know, like Selena Gomez

17:18

and everyone was like, what?

17:19

Well, and she even talked about how weird the wedding was

17:21

like on a late night show later, right? Yeah. Selena,

17:23

I wanted to ask you about this

17:26

wedding. You went to Britney Spears' wedding

17:28

last week, right? Yes, I did, yes. A

17:30

Thursday wedding. Doesn't that usually indicate that

17:33

the bride and groom are trying to get like a discount?

17:35

I

17:38

wouldn't know. Oh yeah, and also the next

17:40

day, Britney posted an Instagram saying that like, I

17:43

had a panic attack before my wedding. Like, this

17:45

was a crazy day, but it ended up being really fun.

17:47

Well, and her ex-boyfriend

17:50

stormed the gates. Yeah,

17:52

her ex-husband of like three

17:54

days of a Jillian years ago, attempted to break

17:56

into her house like hours before the ceremony and

17:59

was.

17:59

Armed with a knife. I talked to

18:02

people that are close to her and they were terrified.

18:05

And that's obviously a crazy

18:08

thing to happen right before you get married, so... But

18:10

I think, you know, part of the actual weirdness

18:13

has been... It's drifted away from

18:15

its original context, and now, like, people

18:17

are, like, ascribing all sorts of other

18:20

different meanings to these kind of off

18:22

images. Yeah.

18:24

So people in this distinct

18:27

faction of the Free Britney fandom, they

18:29

have big questions about the wedding, but

18:32

they also have big questions about

18:34

the so-called care plan she's been under

18:36

since she left the conservatorship. Yeah. What

18:38

is this care plan and what are the issues with it?

18:41

So, okay, when people talk about the

18:43

care plan, they're talking about this thing called

18:45

a termination plan, which really is this

18:47

document that after the end of the conservatorship,

18:50

they had to do some, like, administrative

18:52

changeover things where,

18:54

you know, Jodi Montgomery, who

18:56

was, like, fiduciary, and she was Britney

18:58

Spears' personal conservator for many

19:01

years, she and Britney's team of doctors

19:03

developed this termination plan about just

19:05

kind of handing over the records for her medical

19:07

history and information about her sons. Again,

19:09

like, we don't know what's in this document

19:13

because it is sealed for her privacy. It

19:15

says it's to ensure that there are guidelines in place

19:17

for some supportive decision-making to help

19:19

her adjust and transition to life outside the conservatorship.

19:22

In all, it seems like a pretty boring document,

19:25

but

19:26

certain people within this kind of newer

19:28

Free Britney faction believe

19:30

that

19:31

what it really is is kind of a secret quasi-conservetership,

19:35

which is sealed not because of

19:38

health sensitivities and privacy, but because

19:40

they don't want the public

19:43

to know that she's still being kept in some kind

19:45

of conservatorship. And I would just like

19:47

to point out some ironies in that theory.

19:49

This goes along with another theory where people

19:52

think that the people who are, quote-unquote, controlling

19:54

her social media are making her look bad

19:56

intentionally so that they can force her into

19:59

a new conservatorship.

19:59

and that they're the ones making stories to the

20:02

tabloids so that the public

20:04

will be on team, that

20:06

Britney needs to go back on a conservatorship of some kind.

20:09

Obviously the great irony there is if Britney was really in a conservatorship

20:11

already, why would they need to do that?

20:14

Yeah, they could just take her away from public eye totally and be like,

20:16

we got her. Exactly. And

20:19

it's sort of like any conspiracy theory where

20:22

the next piece of evidence, people

20:24

will find a way to kind of explain it away

20:26

for whatever. This is

20:28

the thing.

20:29

This is the thing. I want to talk about how

20:32

far these fans have gone because

20:34

there was one instance where one of the

20:36

superfans called the police to

20:38

Britney's house to do a wellness check after

20:41

seeing a video or not seeing something.

20:44

I want to talk about how far they've gone,

20:47

but I also want to just take a second to

20:49

say

20:51

that kind of sleuthing online

20:53

and conjecture and drawing conclusions

20:57

feels very QAnon. And

20:59

in fact, some of the OG

21:01

Free Britney people have referred

21:03

to this faction as BAnon.

21:06

Wow. How

21:09

big are the QAnon similarities in

21:11

your opinion, having covered this now?

21:13

So it's kind of funny actually because

21:15

before she was out of conservatorship, there

21:18

were like Matt Gaetz, the creepy

21:20

congressman, he had a Free Britney

21:23

era for a minute because what he

21:25

saw and what a lot of other QAnon people saw

21:28

as laid out in this QAnon-y documentary

21:30

called Slave Princess by Liz Crokin,

21:32

who's a big QAnon lady,

21:35

what they saw was a beautiful

21:37

blonde woman being controlled by the Hollywood elite. So there

21:39

are similarities, is what you're saying. Yeah. I

21:42

mean, when you're talking about theories that

21:45

kind of defy or sort of skirt

21:47

the lines of logic, I think you're always

21:50

going to attract a certain type of person

21:52

who thinks a little bit more extremely

21:54

than others. Yeah. So there's always

21:56

been kind of like that strain. No one

21:59

that I talk to that kind of...

21:59

of believes in the sort of what

22:02

we would call like conspiracy theories, like

22:05

the term be anon. They're

22:07

like, we are not QAnon. We

22:09

are just looking at the evidence. They're

22:12

pretty reasonable people to talk to. So

22:15

it's interesting

22:17

to have that comparison, but I understand

22:20

the desire to sort of label that faction

22:23

as sort of radical

22:25

or something.

22:26

What are the furthest lengths members

22:29

of this faction have gone to? I mentioned

22:32

one of these intense fans calling the police

22:34

to go to Britney's house to do a wellness check.

22:37

Yeah. Talk about what happened there and tell me if anything

22:39

bigger and crazier has happened with these fans.

22:41

Totally. So in late

22:43

January of this year, Britney

22:46

posted a photo on Instagram of

22:48

a car, the Porsche 911 Carrera. Great

22:50

car. Do you know it? I

22:53

mean, I see it. I'll never have it. Go

22:55

ahead.

23:00

And what they thought was like,

23:02

why would anyone post the exact

23:05

make it model of the car if they weren't like

23:07

crying out for help for someone to call 911? A

23:09

while after that, she deleted her Instagram altogether,

23:12

which she has done in the past. She continues

23:14

to do sometimes and never for

23:16

very long. There was a few people

23:18

who were TikTokers in this free Britney space

23:20

who got on a call together and

23:22

they were talking about like what they should do.

23:25

And you

23:26

know, I've talked to one of the people that was on

23:28

that call.

23:29

He regrets it. The other woman

23:31

also regrets it. She posted an apology

23:33

review video, but they were talking. They

23:35

went on TikTok live. We're talking about

23:37

the situation. One person,

23:40

another woman

23:42

came on the live and offered

23:44

to call the non-emergency

23:47

line to the Ventura County Sheriff's

23:50

Office. Britney Spears.

23:52

There's

23:58

been suspicious activity. online

24:01

and now her account has been deleted. And

24:03

they were like... It's so wild. It's wild. Yeah,

24:06

it's wild. I mean, looking back, it's so wild. And

24:09

they were like, okay, it felt like

24:11

the right thing to do. No, don't be nervous, girl. You got

24:13

it. You got it.

24:15

Just be like... Great job. Great

24:18

job. Thank you. This is the thing. The

24:23

video of this superfan calling the

24:25

police on Britney's

24:27

behalf, that goes viral.

24:29

Yes. And it

24:32

didn't go viral until after

24:34

it happened, someone posted

24:37

a video of it to Twitter. And that

24:39

is where it was just like, go get

24:41

them. And so

24:43

the entire fandom obviously was like, that's

24:45

not okay. Guys, time

24:47

to let Britney live life on her own terms and

24:49

stop trying to control her and control

24:52

the narrative. Just allow her to be.

24:55

Britney even responded. She was like, y'all crossed a boundary,

24:57

which of course they did. And

25:01

one of the people on the call deleted their

25:04

entire internet presence. The other person

25:07

posted an apology video. They were sort of like

25:09

enemy number one in the fandom

25:12

for a really long time. And

25:14

everyone expressed regret about what

25:16

they did. Totally. So

25:18

Britney responded to that incident. In

25:21

general, does she respond to any,

25:23

all, most of this stuff? Every

25:26

day, every few days, some of these superfans

25:29

are

25:30

doing the thing where they're

25:31

thinking she's not okay. She must see it. Does

25:33

she respond?

25:34

She doesn't really respond to these kind

25:36

of theories. What she responds to or tends to respond

25:39

to is the articles that come out about

25:41

her and TMZ and the

25:44

Daily Mail and Page Six. These are the tabloids

25:46

that have been on like the Britney beat for

25:48

a long time, obviously. And that

25:51

kind of stuff seems to warrant

25:53

a response from her. But the kind

25:55

of stuff that goes viral in TikTok, I have no idea how

25:57

much time she spends on TikTok. It seems to be

25:59

like she's mostly.

25:59

and Instagram girly. I've heard from sources

26:02

who are close to her, like she does see

26:04

like more than people think, which I think is the case

26:06

for many celebrities. Yeah,

26:09

I know it's awful. It's awful.

26:11

Do you think she's okay?

26:13

You've been reporting on this story for a while.

26:16

I'm guessing you're as big of a Britney fan as

26:18

I am, if not more. We're all concerned

26:20

about her because we love her. Do

26:23

you think she's okay?

26:24

I think that how could anyone be

26:26

okay when you have this kind of

26:28

attention on you? Your whole

26:31

life has kind of been destroyed by your own family,

26:33

by the kind of system that made

26:35

you famous. That is what has destroyed you.

26:38

Who can you possibly trust? How can you ever

26:40

feel okay again? All the money in the

26:42

world can't replace that sense of trust

26:44

and freedom that she was robbed

26:47

of. But I hope that she's okay

26:49

as she can be. Whenever she posts pictures of herself dancing,

26:52

she seems to be so joyful. It's just

26:54

what she was put on this earth to do is

26:56

perform and she seems

26:58

to love it. It seems like

27:01

all that stuff, it's probably much

27:03

better off dealt with in private. Do

27:06

any of the suspicions that these fans

27:08

have, any that you've reported on

27:10

and covered for writing this piece, do

27:13

any of them hold weight to you? Like me personally,

27:15

I don't get the teeth stuff. I'm like,

27:18

celebrities' teeth, you never know. They're celebrities

27:20

and they can pay for teeth if they want to. But

27:22

some of the wedding stuff, I'm like, does

27:24

any of this stuff make you say, huh?

27:27

Yeah, I mean, I think to be fair,

27:30

I think that a lot of this stuff is a little bit odd.

27:32

And what I will say about the teeth

27:34

is I talked to someone who has

27:36

been in free Brittany, Jared Lipscomb, he's been in the

27:39

OG free Brittany crew for a long time.

27:42

He was a hair and makeup artist for celebrities. And

27:44

so he knows through the grapevine of people

27:47

who have worked with her and whatever. But that a

27:49

lot of the confusion among this

27:51

other faction is that they just don't really understand

27:54

about what LA celebrity culture is.

27:56

One of which is that people

27:57

think that she's being trafficked because she's dining in hotels.

27:59

but it's like, no, celebrities dine in hotels

28:02

because there's like a private entrance for them to go in. There

28:04

you go. Yeah. And like, why

28:06

are her teeth moving? It's like, well, she probably doesn't have to wear her

28:09

retainer anymore because she's not being controlled.

28:11

Or like, you know, he was like, I know her hairstylist,

28:13

like she hates having her hair done and that's why her hair

28:15

is not done the way that people want

28:18

it to be done. And so I think things

28:20

like that are like, yeah, you know,

28:22

she isn't a normal celebrity, but also because

28:24

she has not never had the normal celebrity

28:26

kind of life and experience. But

28:29

I think

28:29

so much of this can be explained by

28:33

mental health and expecting consistency

28:35

from someone who has,

28:38

you know, a history like Britney's.

28:40

Yeah. Like you can't expect consistency.

28:43

And when you see inconsistencies, that doesn't mean

28:45

that it's anyone else controlling her or that she's

28:47

in danger. It just means that she

28:50

contains multitudes and way, way, way

28:53

more multitudes than like anyone should ever have to deal

28:55

with. And so us not understanding that

28:58

is understandable. All

29:00

right, when we come back, we'll talk more about

29:02

this age of TikTok sleuthing

29:06

and the extra scrutiny that female celebrities

29:08

are always under. Before we

29:10

go though, I've got to remind you, I've said it here on this show before, we

29:13

got a little book club going on.

29:15

I'm reading a book, you should be reading a book. It's

29:17

by Brandon Taylor, one of my favorite new authors.

29:20

The book is called The Late Americans. Read

29:23

it, send us questions about the book and I'll take

29:25

your questions to Brandon Taylor himself later

29:28

in August for an episode that we'll publish

29:31

towards the end of next month. It's gonna be good.

29:33

Book clubs are fun. The Late

29:35

Americans by Brandon Taylor. Read

29:38

it, write us about it. We'll talk

29:40

about it soon.

29:41

You can email questions to intuitatvulture.com.

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30:43

I want to spend a little time, just a few

30:45

minutes, on getting into how

30:48

these internet detectives do their sleuthing

30:51

around Britney. Does

30:53

TikTok make it easier to do the sleuth

30:55

work? I will say the most

30:57

resonant thing about the Free Britney

30:59

movement, content-wise, that I've seen was

31:02

that really weird TikTok about her teeth.

31:05

And I'm like, oh, this worked so well

31:07

because it was video kind of made just for

31:09

this platform. Something about TikTok seems

31:12

like it would make

31:13

the work of a Free Britney truther that

31:15

much easier. Because something about those videos just feels

31:18

so much more visceral than a tweet or a Facebook

31:20

post.

31:20

Oh, very much. And I mean, as most

31:23

of my reporting experience at Vox has been

31:25

covering TikTok. And so I am

31:27

very aware of how TikTok is so,

31:30

so much better than any other social platform

31:33

at like spreading a single idea and

31:35

making it very, very, very viral because

31:38

of the pathos that you can watch

31:41

on TikTok. It's someone talking to you.

31:43

It's visual. It's sound. It's,

31:46

you know, the algorithm that can kind of take

31:49

one random person's video

31:50

and shove it in front of millions of people's faces.

31:52

Like it is unparalleled in terms of like

31:55

spreading an idea or a single

31:57

video or a trend or whatever. And I think.

32:00

like Free Britney has absolutely been caught up

32:02

in the sort of tornado of

32:04

TikTok trends.

32:06

Well, this is so interesting

32:08

to me because we had a conversation

32:10

about a totally different scandal, scandal

32:13

of all in the Bravo universe,

32:16

but a lot of diehard

32:18

Vanderpump fans became TikTok

32:20

sleuths and were making these videos to like

32:23

show the evidence of when the affair started

32:25

and who was harmed by it. And that's

32:27

a very TikTok thing. The way you

32:29

can remix these videos, it allows

32:32

you to play detective because you can take this

32:34

part and extend it or put that part

32:36

with this part. You can kind of build a puzzle

32:38

yourself. That feels very

32:40

TikTok-ian. Oh my gosh, yes.

32:43

One of the kind of truthers that I talked to, she's

32:45

kind of big on TikTok and her bio is

32:47

just like, I'm a professional Britney Spears investigative

32:49

journalist. And so there's so much of like playing

32:51

journalist or playing detective, which

32:55

has always been part of the Free Britney movement because again,

32:58

the mainstream media wasn't really

33:00

paying attention to it for so long. And so

33:02

people were sort of stepping into that

33:05

role of like, okay, well then we'll figure it out. And

33:08

when people try to be journalists, sometimes it gets messy.

33:11

And I don't like, I'm not trying to gate keep. I'm

33:13

just saying, the reason

33:15

why this story has taken so

33:17

long is because there's fact check. There's multiple

33:20

interviews with every single person named

33:22

in the piece. We have multiple editors

33:25

reading over the story. We

33:27

have a thousand

33:28

bajillion drafts. I don't think it's a final

33:30

draft. So yeah,

33:32

it takes so many people, so much work,

33:34

fact checking cannot be understated. So

33:37

there's a difference between one person trying

33:39

to play detective and a publication

33:42

publishing a story. And that's why I think

33:45

stories tend to not be quite as

33:47

grabby and

33:49

addicting as a TikTok video might be because

33:52

A, they're short, you can watch them and be

33:54

like, oh my God, like I just learned so much in 60 seconds.

33:57

Whereas something like this,

33:59

and read 5,000 words by some random

34:02

lady, me. And

34:07

yeah, it's a completely different kind of

34:09

thing.

34:11

You know, there have always been super fans,

34:13

like always. My

34:16

mother, fun fact, really big Elvis fan, always

34:18

surprised me. I'm like, baby, there was better

34:20

music, anywho. Right? But

34:22

there's always been super fans. But

34:25

I wonder, is the level

34:27

of super fan

34:29

present in this Free Britney,

34:31

Truth or Fandom,

34:33

is that level of fandom only

34:36

possible

34:37

in the era of social internet?

34:40

You couldn't do half of these things

34:42

before platforms like TikTok, Facebook,

34:44

Twitter, whatever, right? It makes for a different kind

34:46

of super fan, no? Well,

34:48

I think that you could do them. It's just that no one would know.

34:51

Like no one, like the only reason

34:53

that this is, I think even a story is that

34:55

this is all public and this would not

34:57

be public if we didn't have something like TikTok

35:00

or Twitter, which are

35:02

reasonably good discovery tools. This

35:05

is why these have gone sort of mainstream,

35:07

not saying that these ideas are mainstream. But I

35:09

have people who are like, you know, my offline

35:12

friends who aren't journalists or don't work in the media,

35:14

they'll be like, don't you think Britney's Instagram

35:16

is weird? Or they'll

35:17

have seen a TikTok and I'm like, no. It's

35:21

fine. Yeah. Yeah,

35:24

so it's my view is that once

35:26

it becomes to the level of like,

35:29

this is now in the public realm of

35:31

discourse, then we kind of have to contextualize

35:33

and explain it. Whereas I think before when

35:36

people do things in private or just

35:38

at like closed fan conventions, it

35:40

doesn't enter the public conversation. But now that

35:42

we live in a world where everything is

35:45

in the public conversation, it becomes part

35:47

of it.

35:48

I'm wondering if you

35:50

have big thoughts in wrapping

35:52

this story,

35:54

if there's something to be said here about the way our

35:57

society

35:58

and the way these free. Britney truthers

36:01

treat women in the public eye, particularly

36:04

women who start being celebrities pretty

36:07

young. Yeah. I mean,

36:09

I think there's such a kind of paternalistic

36:13

instinct that a lot of us have with our favorite

36:15

celebrities, especially a celebrity

36:17

that we've known since we were kids,

36:19

or that, you know, a lot of these people are similar

36:22

ages to Britney, maybe a couple years younger, and

36:25

they feel they want to protect her because in a way

36:27

they're sort of protecting themselves, like

36:29

the younger version of themselves. And so I totally

36:32

understand that instinct. But at the same

36:34

time, I think that

36:37

we've been taught by the celebrity

36:40

machine to look out for any kind

36:42

of inconsistencies,

36:44

because that would mean something

36:47

much, much bigger than a simple inconsistency. That

36:49

would mean that someone's in trouble, especially someone

36:51

like Britney who has such storied

36:54

history of not following the script of

36:57

a typical celebrity. You know, she had the very public

36:59

breakdown, and I hate to use that word,

37:01

but that's what people called

37:04

it. And

37:06

now it's sort of like everyone's

37:09

on the lookout for that to

37:11

happen again, or this instinct

37:13

that we're like, there's nothing

37:16

protecting Britney except for me. I have

37:18

to keep posting my videos and my tweets

37:20

so that everyone stays vigilant and

37:23

like raising awareness. You know what these people are

37:26

doing, they think is important, and they think it's

37:28

really good. And I think no matter how many times

37:31

Britney herself says, like, please stop invading my

37:33

privacy, how many times she locks her comments,

37:35

because the whole time people are just like, where is Britney?

37:37

Where is like, are you real? Do you

37:39

need help? Like, she, they're gonna

37:41

find excuses to not believe it.

37:43

And I think it's hard to put

37:45

that back in the box once it's open. And

37:48

I find it's a thing that only happens to women. Yeah,

37:51

how many men in

37:52

the public eye go through all

37:54

kinds of stuff and are going through

37:57

trauma and showing erratic behavior.

38:00

There's not the wellness check to their house. I remember

38:02

when Brad Pitt was down bad for a little bit.

38:04

There were allegations of him being abusive. He was

38:06

an alcoholic and admitted it. At

38:09

no point

38:10

did a Brad Pitt super fan say,

38:12

let me call the cops so they can go do a

38:14

wellness check at his home.

38:15

Right? It just feels like this is not a thing

38:18

that happens to men.

38:19

No, totally. Obviously, probably

38:21

people felt like they didn't have to call the cops because it

38:23

was already in litigation.

38:26

But still, no, I think you're absolutely right. We don't

38:28

feel this need to, quote

38:30

unquote, protect men the way

38:32

that we want to, quote unquote,

38:34

protect Brittany, even though I would argue that it's

38:36

not protecting her at all. But I

38:38

think we feel a lot more entitled to women's

38:41

lives and personal lives as though if they're

38:43

not sharing everything about their lives with us and

38:45

they're keeping secrets, whereas men

38:47

are allowed to be mysterious, whereas a woman,

38:49

it's like

38:50

she posted a kind of weird Instagram,

38:53

like she needs help. Yeah.

38:56

It's funny, speaking of men who don't get this treatment, my

38:59

colleague Takas just slapped me and said, yeah,

39:02

Ben Affleck.

39:03

Yeah, dude. Ben Affleck has been down

39:06

bad. Down bad. And

39:08

ain't nobody calling Ben Affleck's

39:10

house except J.Lo.

39:12

You know, there are no wellness checks on Ben Affleck.

39:14

And you knew when that dragon tattoo showed

39:16

up on his back, so it wasn't right. Yeah,

39:19

dude. Like, oh my god. Like, it's

39:22

so annoying. Yeah.

39:25

Do you see any silver lining in this piece?

39:28

Does anything from your reporting give

39:30

you hope about Britney Spears,

39:33

about the way fans treat celebrities,

39:35

about the way our culture treats women?

39:37

I actually have a lot of hope for

39:40

Britney herself. After talking to a couple people

39:42

that are close to her, I just am

39:44

really rooting for her. And I think everyone I've talked to

39:46

for this piece is rooting for her. It's just the matter

39:48

of showing it in different ways. It made

39:51

me kind of realize that you might

39:53

see a wild

39:55

TikTok post of something

39:57

where you're like, oh my god, how do people get this idea

39:59

in their head? I think you've talked to them and it's like they're

40:01

reasonable people. You know, it's... I

40:03

think people's intentions are good, basically,

40:06

is what I'm saying. And it sort

40:09

of made me empathetic to all sides

40:11

here.

40:14

And in a way that kind of surprised me. I was

40:16

sort of like... When I first started

40:19

reaching out to people or like seeing like the most wild

40:22

theories I could find, I was a little nervous, you know? Like

40:24

as a journalist, a lot of this

40:26

corner of the internet is pretty skeptical

40:29

of the mainstream media and I definitely got a lot

40:31

of that. But for the

40:33

large part, I was sort of like they think that

40:35

what they're doing is good, even though I might

40:37

not agree with it. Yeah.

40:39

How worried are you about the reaction

40:42

you're going to get for this piece? I...

40:46

It's... I

40:48

don't... It's hard to say. I mean, I

40:50

hope that the people in the piece can

40:53

extend me the same kind of grace that

40:55

I've

40:56

extended them, I would like to say. But

41:00

also, I can handle it. I'm

41:03

not worried. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

41:06

I have gotten yelled at by

41:09

some people already and

41:11

you know what?

41:13

They're just doing their job and I'm doing mine.

41:16

Yeah. Yeah.

41:18

Reading your piece and talking with you today,

41:20

it like reminds me that

41:23

Britney Spears, is

41:26

the most tragic pop star of

41:28

our time. Like she

41:31

gave away so much and she lost so much

41:33

and so much was taken from her, but the

41:36

whole time she kept just trying to give us

41:38

good music and help us dance. I

41:39

know. Literally. I know. Like

41:42

she gave up her adolescence to become

41:44

a pop star way young. She,

41:47

you

41:48

know, lost her young adulthood

41:50

and lost her children over

41:53

mental health stuff and then still kept giving us

41:55

music. She lost control

41:57

of her career and her business

41:59

dealings.

41:59

and she still gave us music, still toured,

42:02

saw the Vegas residency. More

42:04

than any other pop star, it feels like she just continues

42:06

to die for our sins

42:08

and give us more and give us more when more is just

42:10

taken from her. And even now, she

42:14

is still trying to give us fun even as we

42:17

take her peace of mind from her. Like,

42:20

I don't know.

42:21

My whole feeling with all of this is just like, I

42:23

hope Britney Spears finds peace and I hope that

42:25

we as a society let her have it.

42:28

Because the only thing she's ever done for us is given

42:30

us stuff. She's given us bop. Totally. She's

42:33

given us choreo. She's given us moments. She's

42:36

given us amazing and we've just taken from

42:38

her. So I hope we stop taking and I hope she

42:40

finds peace. That's it.

42:42

I love that. And anyone can

42:44

look at moments in their life and there's

42:47

a Britney Spears track associated with every

42:49

moment almost. It's like, she gives

42:51

us so much joy. Who doesn't get excited when a Britney

42:54

song comes on?

42:55

Literally. There are exciting

42:57

songs that

42:59

are just referencing Britney and the Britney

43:02

song was on. Like, that's

43:04

how great her songs are. Even the songs referencing her

43:06

songs are hits. Yes, exactly.

43:08

Her music has populated

43:11

our lives with so much joy and so many memories.

43:14

And I hope that that's

43:16

what sticks out when we talk about her.

43:19

Yeah.

43:20

I mean, dare I say,

43:22

I think my concluding thought for this conversation is

43:25

it's cliche, but leave Britney alone.

43:27

Yeah. That's it. Everyone just wants

43:30

a piece of her. Yes,

43:32

yes. Oh, hey, well, thank

43:34

you for doing this work. I

43:36

hope your experience after this article publishes isn't

43:39

horrible. And we'll

43:41

talk offline about our favorite Britney Spears songs. Yay.

43:44

Toxic, toxic, toxic. Piece of me, but

43:48

close, close.

43:51

All right, Intuit is hosted by me, Sam

43:53

Sanders. The show is produced by Janae

43:55

West, Travis Larchuk, Gabby Grossman,

43:58

Jelani Carter, Taka Z. and Olawakimi

44:01

Aladesui. Our fearless

44:03

editor is Yolanda Hokeman. Our engineer

44:06

is Daniel Turek. Our music is composed

44:08

by Breakmaster Cylinder. And honestly,

44:11

Breakmaster, if you're hearing me now, I challenge

44:13

you to make a Toxic

44:15

remix. It's my favorite Britney song.

44:18

Remix it, dude. I want to hear it. All

44:20

right, the executive producer of audio at Vox

44:22

Media is Nishat Kerwa. Listeners,

44:26

we are back on Friday with a brand new episode. Until

44:29

then, I said

44:29

it before, I'll say it again, leave Britney

44:32

alone.

44:33

Bye.

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