I feel like it must be so, so hard to watch your 31 year old daughter make one bad life decision after another, and at some point you probably have to wonder if too much kindness/support makes you an enabler.
First, your media/fame obsessed daughter who idolized Alex Cooper of all people aggressively pitched herself for a content personality job at Barstool Sports. But a lot of loud blondes do that, so your daughter doesn't stand out. Then, she gets a brilliant idea to pitch them something more unique: A mother/daughter duo podcast. Barstool finally takes a look. Despite the fact that you're retired and live comfortably in Oklahoma, you love your daughter endlessly and agree to live part time in New York as your daughter needs you for her vanity project to be possible. Also, you feel a unique sense of safety doing this because your daughter married a sweet, stable guy who's also supportive and also comes from a billionaire family (basically, there's no risk of "crashing and burning" and ending up on the street if this "dream" doesn't work out... right?).
Fast forward a few months. You're the oldest employee at Barstool, but it's not so bad. You become the "office mom" and bake cookies for everyone and make fun new cocktails and share the recipes, the young ones all love you. You and your daughter interview D-List celebrity mothers on your show. It's not the most popular show at Barstool by any means, but it's as wholesome enough and family friendly by Barstool standards. Your daughter & her husband seem to be settling in well in New York, and your daughter making new friends at the office by getting them box seats at the Knicks vs. OKC Thunder game. Your mild-mannered, sober son in law is busy with grad school and is happy that your daughter is staying busy and following her dreams.
Fast forward a little bit more. Your daughter is loving Barstool -- both the job itself, where she's seeking any and all content opportunities, and the post-work social hours. It's clearly overwhelming for a sheltered woman from small town Oklahoma, so much so she has to "quit caffeine" for a bit to manage anxiety... But she powers on. One day after work, there's a Barstool party and your daughter drinks one too many margaritas, and may have abused her adderrall perscription earlier in the day. She passes out in a booth at the bar, which the incredibly sweet office admin finally notices, taking Alex's phone to try and get in touch with her husband to help. While trying to do this, the office admin answers a call from another female barstool content personality who berates her for "trying to hang out with content" (basically indicating Alex's involvement in the "content" vs. "non content" haves/have-not attitude that some of the personalities have at barstool). Graham gets an Uber for the incoherent Alex, and she got banned from Uber due to bad behavior in NY already.
Your daughter then goes into work and gets called a "mean girl" for her behavior, so she and another one of the "mean girls" decide to start a "Mean Girls" podcast. Truth be told, that was Alex's goal here -- be the next Alex Cooper, and look! she found a brunette partner, there's an opportunity! Your daughtr begins pouring all time and energy in her mean girls podcast, basically ditching you -- the only reason she got this job in the first place, who moved all the way out of retirement, to NY from Oklahoma. Your daughter's new podcast is NOT wholesome... She starts saying a bunch of insane shit for shock value. People think she's stupid -- maybe she is. She airs family dirty laundry. She airs her husband's dirty laundry, talking about their sex life in great detail. Thank god your son in law is so chill and supportive, and his aging family members don't watch Barstool anyway... right?
Your daughter keeps chasing the highs of internet fame. She keeps going to parties, sans her husband, expecting to return home for him to take care of her. He's doing the chores around the house while she blames her ADHD. But he thinks that starting a family is just around the corner, like he and Alex always talked about (wanting 5 kids)... But she keeps kicking the can down the road. First it's "just wait until after rough and rowdy", then it's whatever big new york party she wants to be able to drink at. And her "podcast" gets increasingly more unhinged, the behavior gets wilder, and the son in law you'd thought would be a part of your family forever finally throws up his hands and moves out.
You go to visit your daughter in summer 2023, but your son in law is nowhere to be found. Your daughter tells you he moved out, and they are considering divorce. Because theyre "in different places"... Your daughter has spun the story to appear like her decision, and you're not sure if she's just lying to you or is so insane that she might just actually believe it to be true. She spends her summer partying in the Hamptons, and when the entire public notices her husband is absent from her life as of late, she turns it into a hashtag and begins "teasing" the fate of their relationship for content. A month later, he's made up his mind that divorce is the move.
You notice your daughter is in a bad state so you offer to take her to a spa retreat with you. Yes, you're technically supposed to be working at Barstool, but you don't "need" the job and your podcast tanked once your daughter left so you'll let your contract run out. You figure your daughter did whatever she needed to take the time off work, her one real lifeline and semi-stable thing left. Come to find out, though, your daughter has been neglecting work too... She believed her "mean girls podcast" was the next "call her daddy" and started acting like those personalities despite bringing in $0 of the revenue. She's also expecting a large divorce settlement due to her marriage to a billionaire heir with no prenup. Her contract doesn't get renewed. She's out of a job and a husband. And lo and behold, the husband's money is all in trusts... she's entitled to none of it.
Your daughter comes to you frantic, begging for a loan or funding or something to start her own "media company". she insists she has the connections and skills from barstool. she presents a manic business plan. You love her, you give her the money. She has a launch party and invests in decent press to start, so you're optimistic. Her mind is fully focused on the "media company", and she's not partying as much. Cool. Don't make any rash decisions.
Enter the piece of human garbage that is Hairy Smuglyman, who your daughter is completely enamored with. She hasn't dated in awhile, and doesn't realize that "i wanna marry you" and "lets make babies" is run of the mill fuckboy pillow talk. She misses christmas with the family because she "can't face oklahoma" and spends it with the new douchecanoe. She's so into him, she's spending less time with her "media company" than she promised you, her "investor". After the new year, she wants to introduce you to this "new boyfriend" and reveals they're pregnant. Pregnancy has your daughter basically stop puting all effort into this "media company" altogether, but adding a new "podcast" where she basically just answers extremely personal questions on camera for the public. More oversharing, more dirty laundry. The thing that got her into this mess in the first place. Your Oklahoma friends are beyond embarassed for you.
You also don't like this new boyfriend. You wanted to be a grandmother so badly, but not like this. He's everything Graham wasn't -- a douchey piece of shit. He's awful to your daughter, who moves them from NY to Austin, TX. But your daughter loves him, and is putting his family first. His sister gets to be the "god parent". Your daughter's visiting less. And while you want to be as close with your daughter as you once were, and love and support her, you can't help but wonder if all that "love" and "support" is what got you/her into this mess. Maybe it's time to try a new version of "love". Maybe, just maybe, if you hadn't said "yes" to join up with your daughter to work with an internet media company, you'd be with two grandbabies with two loving parents and another set of sweet grandparents in Oklahoma. Maybe your daughter could've leveraged her billionaire in-laws' connections to get a supporting role on an Oklahoma-based Bravo or HGTV show. She had all the money and connections in the world to have a career like Jenna Bush's, but no. God what a mess.
The most ironic thing in all this: Alex Cooper, who Alex Bennett idolized, had a goal of marrying as wealthy as possible, preferably to a man in pro sports (an athlete, or some other financier/upper manager). Alex Bennett was married to a billionaire heir, 6'8 ex-college basketball player whose family owned the OKC Thunder... Which she threw away in hopes to be like the more successful Alex. And now Alex Cooper is married, with a heavily PR/media curated interview centric podcast, having stepped back from producing unhinged content. Wild.
Written by u/cummingouttamycage.