Kath Ebbs, JoJo Siwa and the cost of people's lives becoming entertainment
For weeks, the name 'Kath Ebbs' is all over my TikTok. Ebbs, an Australian actor, presenter, writer and content creator, is also at the centre of international news headlines, their smiling face plastered on the homepages of TMZ and People and OK! Magazine.
While Ebbs (who uses they/them pronouns) has had a somewhat public career, they're not used to this kind of fame. The kind that compromises your privacy and your safety. The kind that involves being hounded by journalists overseas, being tagged in tens of thousands of comments, being fodder for a viral conversation online. Millions of people around the globe are clicking on Ebbs' name, but Kath Ebbs, the person, is not OK.
When I meet them about a fortnight after the storm has died down, Ebbs describes it as 'some of the darkest times mentally that I've had in my adult life – really distressing, really confusing, really overwhelming'.
Six months ago, Ebbs started dating American singer, dancer, actress and media personality JoJo Siwa. Siwa, 21, first appeared on popular reality show Dance Moms when she was 11 years of age, and has since released music that has been streamed billions of times. Siwa's line of hair bows were so popular that schools in Britain had to ban them. She's featured in films and TV shows on Nickelodeon, performed world tours, competed on The Masked Singer in the US, as well as Dancing with the Stars, and has been a judge on So You Think You Can Dance.
In April this year, with her relationship with Ebbs already in the public eye, Siwa flew to London and entered the Celebrity Big Brother UK house. The attention began when Siwa appeared – on international television screens and in countless social media clips – to be falling in love with English TV personality and sports presenter Chris Hughes. Then, following the finale and the afterparty, where Ebbs was dumped in a 'humiliating' way, the attention turned to the fallout. And fallout is blockbuster entertainment.
Ebbs posted a 13-minute video that they deleted, then re-uploaded, then deleted again. Siwa addressed the break-up in podcast and television interviews. This fallout caught fire and followers, and even those who didn't follow, couldn't help but read and inhale content about this high-profile lesbian relationship.
Last year, actor Blake Lively started trending on TikTok for her 'tone-deaf' promotional tour for the film It Ends with Us. A few clips were stitched together to build an image of someone who was behaving in a way that was too cavalier, too self-involved, too light-hearted for a movie about domestic violence.
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