Happy Thursday! 

I hope we’re all gearing up for a relatively offline holiday weekend (although Godspeed to all the Swifties out there keeping track of her rumored Madison Square Garden wedding to Travis Kelce this weekend). 

Is it me or does everyday drama not really hit anymore? For a while there, it seemed like there was a new viral saga every week, with each series documenting the petty fights regular people get into all the time. Today, it doesn’t really hit the same and I really came to this realization after seeing this recent NYC roommate drama on my FYP. I have some thoughts on why below.  Subscribe to the Yapper tier so you don’t miss it. 

For a long time, it seemed that people online were very invested in everyday drama. But a recent roommate saga has reinforced my belief that we’ve reached the end of that era.

TL;DR: Emily Dukes (who goes by EK or @cozygrocery on TikTok) made a multi-part series calling out her roommate Marlyn Rodriguez (@marlynlikethefish) for putting her in a “horribly traumatizing situation.” What is this situation, you ask? Well, Dukes signed a two-month sublease for her apartment with Rodriguez, who was uninterested in resigning with her once the lease was done at the end of June. As a result, Dukes, a full time artist, said she was “blindsided” and faced housing insecurity because she wasn’t sure if she could qualify for the apartment on her own. She also set up a GoFundMe, which received nearly $5,000, in order to pay for her living expenses and potential relocation costs. 

Rodriguez pushed back on Dukes’ characterization of her and the situation, saying subleases are temporary by nature and insisting her roommate had plenty of notice to find a new tenant. As you can imagine, there’s been a lot of back-and-forth. And although most people who are invested seemingly have sided with Rodriguez, there are also a number of folks who find both parties to be exhausting. 

I don’t find the whole saga to be that interesting, frankly. And herein lies the issue with this kind of content these days. We’re all kind of tapped out from these banal online feuds, making it more difficult to harness sympathy these days.

There has always been—and always will be—an audience for gossip on the internet, from early aughts bloggers like Perez Hilton to OG storytime creators like Tana Mongeau. Eventually, the hunger for drama seemed to grow beyond celebrities and influencers, later including the small disputes of everyday life. 

And for the past five or so years, it has become commonplace to bring interpersonal conflicts to the internet. I attribute the rise of this content to one particular moment that occurred in May 2021, in which a man overheard a group of girls shit-talking a young woman named Marissa and turned to TikTok to warn her about her bad friends. (It was also around this time that the seeds of what would eventually become the popular podcast Normal Gossip—which recaps an anonymous piece of everyday drama—were sown, further legitimizing interpersonal conflicts among regular people as a form of entertainment.)

Following this unfortunate viral friend fallout, the girl, Marissa Meizz, went on to discover the video and launch a social events company called No More Lonely Friends. In this case, Marissa wasn’t the one to bring her drama online, rather she was forced into the spotlight after someone else chose to do so. Still, upon seeing her success after being so publicly wronged, it appears that people took that as a sign that they too could air their dirty laundry, get millions of views, feel affirmed, and maybe end up with a platform of their own.