The Other Side of Viral

when the internet comes for its pound of flesh

Our new book, Brave New Meal: Fresh As Fuck Food For Every Table, comes out in a few days. Some of y’all might’ve already gotten yours in the mail. We’re so excited to share this with you but to be honest, book launches have always been awkward, confusing affairs for us. 

babies signing books at Powell’s in 2014

In general, we dislike the spotlight. It took us forever to pivot to video because we both hate being on camera. Our book launch parties have always been private with mostly close friends and family instead of self-congratulatory galas full of industry people we’re hoping raise our profiles. We love to be silly as shit online and to help people eat better but the rest of running a food brand has been a harder slog than we were prepared for. There’s no easy way to go viral.

It doesn’t feel how you’d expect. The instant rush of praise is quickly replaced by the creeping feeling that the millions of eyes on you are bound to find fault. Our anxiety, which had always been manageable, suddenly became unwieldy. In 2014 we weren’t media savvy creators who had been waiting for our big break. We were two broke people with a Tumblr that got incredibly lucky. Getting to quit our shitty jobs and write a cookbook was a twist in our lives that we never saw coming. We remain so grateful for everything we’ve worked towards since our first little brush with fame but there is a cost to all of this.

a fever dream of meeting a cooking queen that anxiety has nearly wiped from our memories

We had never been on TV until we walked on stage at The Rachael Ray Show in 2014. None of it felt real. The first big piece of press we had ever received -an interview in Epicurious- had just published a couple days prior. Then suddenly there were hundreds of articles, videos, podcasts, and think-pieces by fellow authors who had never spoken to us, all about who they assumed we were. It felt like being underwater. We read them all. Google Alerts worked back then.

Immediately the death threats came rolling in. They ranged from hilariously improbable to disturbingly specific and they kept coming, for years. Luminaries -who now star in anti-bullying documentaries- gleefully joined in our flagellation on Twitter. It made Michelle’s skin itch until she scratched it raw. Matt couldn’t sleep more than a couple hours in a row. We both were prescribed antidepressants for the first time in our lives. We’d stay in our apartments, sleeping for days. The internet is a hard place to work.

two very normal, totally not depressed people here 📸: Robyn Von Swank

It’s difficult to explain how experiences like these change you. We both held our breath through the next two books- and for a few years after. When you birth something into the world you have to hollow yourself out. But what do you fill back up with when all that stays in your heart are the worst things you’ve read? The people and platforms who publish incendiary pieces move on to their next target or attempt at relevancy, but you don’t. You just sit in the burned-out wreckage of your self-image trying to figure out what part was real; what was true in your public dismantling and what was for show. Some days, it feels like we’re just learning how to be people again. 

It isn’t for us to say if our experience was deserved or not. When you create any type of art you don’t get to control how it’s received. You listen, you learn, and you try to be better than you were the last time around. A tumult of praise can be just as disorienting as an avalanche of criticism. Trust us, we had both at the same time. It will make you crazy.

another satisfied customer

So as we inch closer to the release of the new book we feel our stomachs tighten and our self-doubt simmer to the surface. Despite how much we and the world have changed in the last several years, we can’t help but feel old wounds rip open that we thought years of therapy might have healed. We are sharing this with you, our beloved supporters, because we think it’s important to understand the amount of blood, sweat, and tears we’ve put into our books. Especially this one. Without y’all, we would not have come this far. Thank you.

We’re so proud of the work we’ve done in Brave New Meal. Hopefully, after all these years, we’ve made you proud too.

Michelle and Matt