Is Brittany Tomlinson a celebrity?
Tomlinson, better known as Brittany Broski, commanded national headlines (including one in The New York Times) for tasting some kombucha in a TikTok video, then parlayed that 2019 viral moment into a Super Bowl ad, two popular podcasts, red carpet interviewing gigs and, now, the launch of a music career with a cover of the Harry Styles song “Adore You.”
But Tomlinson, or Broski, is not a household name — or if she is, it’s only in the rooms where people use TikTok. As micro news cycles and influencers edge their way into mainstream media spectacles, the line between 15 minutes and bankable celebrity is a fuzzy one. Figuring out who is famous in earnest can be a full-time job.
It is one for Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber. In their podcast “Who? Weekly,” the two pop culture journalists parse the celebrity gossip ecosystem to categorize people into two categories: “who” for sweatily grasping would-be stars and “them” for bona fide celebrity names.
“Now, it’s easier to become a ‘who,’” Weber said. “Everyone has at least a thousand hard-core fans. You don’t even have to be that famous to have a dedicated audience.”
The podcast, which started in 2016, is a roundup of developments for notable “whos” — and for teasing out who is a “who.” Recent episodes have weighed the celebrity of the actor Jason Isaacs, who entered the zeitgeist for his awkward commentary on his nudity in “The White Lotus,” and that of the former “America’s Next Top Model” contestant Yaya DaCosta, who addressed modern viewers’ criticism of that reality show. Both are interesting, but nowhere near front-page news.
Weber and Finger say it’s only recently that influencers and meme subjects have reach approaching that of actors and musicians.
“We kind of tried to not cover those types of people because we didn’t think it was really a thing,” Finger said. “But over the years, it has become legitimately a kind of thing.”
When Weber and Finger started paying attention to celebrity gossip in the 2000s, glossy magazines reliably demarcated legitimate stars from up-and-comers.
The pair met when they followed each other on Tumblr in 2009, and soon after created “Who? Weekly” as a gimmicky blog, using an edited version of the Us Weekly logo and presiding over news about the bottom rungs of celebrity, mentioned in passing in magazines or on gossip sites.
But as print magazines were supplanted as tastemakers by a chaotic online scrum, celebrity became more subjective. Andrea McDonnell, an associate professor at Providence College who focuses on celebrity and gossip, said the public embraces viral stars to continuously feed the machine.
“The pace of ‘celebrified’ culture has just become so frenetic, where there’s space in the discourse for an increasing number and an increasingly niche kind of individual who comes to the forefront of the public consciousness for a time,” she said.
They’re also increasingly welcome guests on the old-school celebrity circuit. Be it the snack-reviewing squad of the Rizzler and the Costco Guys appearing on “The Tonight Show” or the longtime YouTube personality Trisha Paytas popping into “Saturday Night Live” and her own one-night Broadway show, viral stars are increasingly breaking containment.
“These kinds of established media entities, which arguably have less influence than they have in the past, nevertheless provide a kind of legitimizing function,” McDonnell said.
That cultural exchange flows the other way, too, as “thems” are more frequently adopting attention-seeking “who” behavior like starting podcasts and collaborating with brands. Weber said that’s because audiences are more forgiving of money grabs, but the enterprises are still stratified: “Thems” have alcohol brands, while “whos” are “selling vibrators on Instagram,” Finger said.
Lines are being drawn on “Who? Weekly.” The podcast’s call-in line, where listeners leave voice mail messages suggesting potential “whos,” is vital in determining when someone crosses the threshold into “who”-dom. Weber and Finger said they typically receive 300 to 400 calls a week from listeners.
While some micro-celebrities and viral stars are more distinguished than others, most have yet to rise to the level of household recognition to be a “them” or even the quasi-recognition to be a “who,” Finger and Weber said.
It helps to have a career that ventures into traditional platforms, like the TikToker Addison Rae, whose graduation into “who”-dom was prompted by her pivot to music, including her song “Diet Pepsi” and a featured slot on a Grammy-nominated track from Charli XCX’s “Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat” remix album. Last year’s viral Olympians, the rugby player and body-positive content creator Ilona Maher and the “Pommel Horse Guy” Stephen Nedoroscik, qualify as “seasonal, vocational Olympic ‘thems.’”
Virality on its own does not qualify, Finger and Weber say, a judgment seemingly borne out in the months after “Hawk Tuah,” the woman-on-the-street interviewee born Haliey Welch, first gained attention.
In addition to creating a podcast and merchandise, Welch promoted a cryptocurrency coin called $HAWK. It crashed in price hours after its launch, and onlookers accused her of orchestrating a “rug pull,” cryptocurrency parlance for when a founder runs away with the profits. The coin’s creators were later sued by investors who say they failed to register it as a security. Welch, who was not named in the lawsuit, said she was fully cooperating with the legal team representing those affected by the coin’s crash, but has otherwise been silent.
Her once-weekly podcast, “Talk Tuah,” has not released an episode since December. A true “who” might have kept right on posting.
“Craving attention is really ‘who’ behavior,” Finger said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/arts/who-weekly-podcast.html
