The world is currently obsessed with the break up of Zach Bryan and his girlfriend, Brianna LaPaglia, who unfortunately goes by the name Brianna Chickenfry (because she posted a viral Vine about her leg looking like a Burger King chicken fry, and it stuck—I can’t make this shit up.) He’s a 28-year-old Navy vet turned country music star; she is an influencer and podcaster who is involved in two shows I have never piped through my AirPods: PlanBri Uncut Barstool Sports and the BFFs Podcast, which she cohosts alongside Josh Richards and Barstool founder Dave Portnoy. The drama began when Bryan announced in a dramatic Instagram post that he and LaPaglia had broken up; LaPaglia responded in posts of her own, claiming this was news to her and that she’d been “blindsided” by Bryan’s announcement.
Allegations that Bryan had either created or reactivated a Raya profile immediately following the breakup migrated from X and Reddit—ground zero for psychotic gossip—to the Daily Mail. Things got nasty, but the real headline grabber was LaPaglia’s claim that she’d turned down the staggering sum of $12 million to sign an NDA, and her account of the ways in which Bryan had allegedly emotionally abused her during their relationship, including a weeklong fight allegedly precipitated by LaPaglia’s singing Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” around the house. These very serious accusations led, for some reason, to Portnoy getting on the mic to rap an abysmal diss song, and then when that one was pulled down for copyright reasons, dropping another one. Bryan meanwhile posted a black-and-white picture of Jack Kerouac with a quote from On the Road: “I didn’t know what to say. I felt like crying, Goddammit everybody in the world wants an explanation for your acts and for your very being.”
Celebrity gossip has always been something I enjoyed. I fondly remember the days before in-flight Wi-Fi, when I’d buy copies of the latest issues of US Weekly, Star, and OK at Hudson News before boarding every plane. Looking back, it was almost an innocent time for celebrity gossip as a medium. It was printed, once a week, with blurry supporting photographs (or pristine glossy images that were obviously provided by a conspiring publicist.) The subject matter was often the same as it is now: divorce, drugs, kids, innocent shopping in Beverly Hills. But wow, have times changed. The celebrity gossip business is booming, and between the rise of social media and stan culture and our overall desperation to escape the current goings-on, we’ve entered an over-information zone that feels precarious and makes even me look in the mirror and say, “Get a life.”
DeuxMoi, the crowd-sourced Instagram page that has ruined every good restaurant by identifying which celebs have been seen there, should bear a lot of the blame. Good luck even looking inside Via Carota or Giorgio Baldi. The account’s “Sunday Spotted” is a recurring Instagram Story feature that posts anonymous people’s celeb sightings, no matter how minute they might seem. If Bradley Cooper walks his dog with a Pearl Jam mesh hat on, it will be reported here. DeuxMoi’s founder is somewhat anonymous (although you can find her with minimal internet sleuthing) and she is making a fortune. Merchandise, books, an upcoming TV show. But that’s to be expected. Trivial yet distracting intel on famous people—even Brianna Chickenfry-level famous people—is big business. And with Donald Trump back in office, that’s one thing that’s unlikely to change. If the tone of the non-Trump-supporting public’s reaction to the election over the last week or so is any indication, we are about to become an escape-seeking culture like never before. The days of breathwork, yoga, meditation, kombucha, and early bedtimes are waning. I expect to see a rise in shopping, drug use, general reckless behavior, and—of course—gossip.
But this story, which I have followed since it broke, has done something I previously wouldn’t have thought was possible. It’s made me feel guilty about consuming celebrity gossip for the first time. It isn’t really funny or that salacious. If I were Zach Bryan, I wouldn’t want my girlfriend singing Morgan Wallen songs in my house either, but it’s all just profoundly uncool. The Portnoy of it all gives it a real stink. People want to escape, me included, but there has to be a better way.
