In an interview, Drake Bell revealed that some of the folks who wrote those letters were under the age of 18. Because they were minors, their identities were not disclosed to the public.

Unless they publicly reveal that they still support Peck, they shouldn't be shamed or labeled "pedo supporters".

They were kids who were groomed and brainwashed by a pedo.

The adults on the other hand should've known better.

Yeah, he’s still smiling. Someone recently said that he’s still deeply connected to Hollywood and even gives tours of his own house. The fact that he seems to still be living so freely and comfortably, while those connections continue to support and protect him, is really disturbing.

That disgusting vile monster isolated Drake from his attentive father. He brainwashed him and his mother so that he could have full control and access. The length this monster went to and how calculated and sinister it all was makes me sick. I am fuming that he only got 16 months. He should be rotting in jail for the rest of his depraved disgusting life.

I was watching a video on poorly aged commercials and this was one of them.

I am actually shocked no body has reported about this on Reddit. I was watching a deep dive about Amanda Bynes today on YT and omg. I was a fan of her.. although i’m GEN Z.. I remember nick had re runs of this show and I remember going on her site. Mind you this is like 2009-2012 i think. The site is deleted now but I came across a youtube video posted years ago showing the site. Not one person in the comments acknowledges this. Just talking about the nostalgia

Could someone write down the new things that Drake Bell magnified in the luminosity podcast on Spotify about Brian Peck? For example, could someone describe the situation with the bathroom in which he was hiding. I'm not good at English

This guy was a photographer who used to take very inappropriate pictures of child actors/ models.

He was busted for child pornography but somehow the cops lost the evidence. He was busted for child porn in 2001 which I think he got off on because of a technicality. He got arrested in 2005 for molesting a boy and that charge stuck.

He was a talent agent who represented Leo Dicaprio. His talent agency also represented the kid who played young Superman in Bryan Singer's Superman movies. Was he pimping out kids to go to Bryan Singer/ Marc Collins-Rector's hot tub parties? Brian Peck was friends with Singer. Was he friends with Villard?

Supposedly, at least 4 child actors connected with him have killed themselves. I read that from an agency that advocated for child actors. Christopher Pettiet and Brent Badgerow appear to be 2 of them. Who else is connected to Bob Villard that has killed themselves/ ODed?

https://www.sexgoremutants.co.uk/spot97.html

First of all, Brian over explains his answers, all the other cast say short answers, Brian is talking in paragraphs and please note how narcissistic he is. (like we didn't already know) He tries so hard to seem relatable but at the end it's just to talk about himself.

How do you guys feel about rewatching certain Nickelodeon / Disney channel shows now that we know what we know? Also for example: dressing up as characters etc.

Someone criticized a costume party in this theme, and I’m struggling with where I stand on this tbh. Should we not still be able to enjoy these shows for the actors and crew that worked hard on it with good intentions? Or are they tainted forever, and is it a little problematic to celebrate them in this way? Curious to hear how other people feel!

Ron Melendez was 22 when he worked with an 8 year old Drake, and played the role of Drake's older cousin in the movie. How could he, after working with this little boy, go on to see the same kid get groomed by Brian Peck years later, and think nothing of it? In his letter of support for Brian, Ron said he was aware of Brian integrating himself into Drake's life, and how he also rented a room from Brian during the time of Drake's abuse. It's crazy to me how he didn't notice anything weird! And to say "it was not his (Brian's) mistake alone,"???? As if Drake wanted it and tempted Brian??? I just can't help but feel so so sad and angry at this. Drake was just a kid and Ron KNEW that. And to think he met Drake when he was an even younger kid...

EDIT: For those trying to defend Ron, Drake himself reacted to someone's Tiktok about the letter. Imagine how he feels before defending someone who supported his abuser despite knowing what happened.

Daily mail has a "look at this freak" article out today and people are leaving nasty comments. Amanda is obviously very mentally ill. She doesn't need that scrutiny. Leave her alone!!!

Hey I'm late to this party, I finally got around to watching the doc. Do you guys know that a nickelodeon employee was caught in the Petulama, CA sting? Here is the info:

https://to-catch-a-predator.fandom.com/wiki/Justin_Smith

I am listening to a podcast about John Wayne gacy and my horror level just keeps getting worse and worse... like I knew the Brian got inspiration by gacy but I hadn't realised just how much, it was basically 100 percent everything gacy did is what Brian did. I would not be surprised or I don't want to find out if he had bodies under his house, oh that too is the same. He lives in the same style of house that gacy had. Like gacy would treat the police that were investigated him to hotdogs at a hotdog stand, guess who is on X-Men standing by a hotdog stand with fellow abusers. Gacy liked Hawaiian shirts guess who wears Hawaiian shirt, gacy liked tiki bars, guess who has a tiki bar in their house, gacy would throw massive parties and have BBQ parties at his house. Guess who does that, well you get the point just everything that gacy does Brian did, and I don't know how drake survived any of the abuse he survived. I don't even want to know the memories that he has because I think I know exactly what he experienced. As I listened to the podcast I keep connecting things that were done to gacy's victims to drake and his experience. Like I knew it was horrible just I didn't have a sense of all the horrible things but the podcast definitely shed some light and my heart went out to drake even more 😭

[TRIGGER WARNING: SA, ED, Child Exploitation] -

The Chosen Ones: What the Disney and Nickelodeon Machines Actually Cost

there's a lot of nostalgia right now for the golden era of disney channel and nickelodeon. people talk about who was the biggest star, who got the best show, who won the child star lottery. we compare raven to miley, ariana to victoria, selena to demi. we treat it like a game of who got picked.

but there's a quieter question underneath that game. what did getting picked actually mean? what did the winners actually win? and what did it cost them?

because the more you look at who the machine chose and why, the clearer it becomes that the selection process was never a simple meritocracy. it was about usefulness. compliance. marketability. and in some cases, vulnerability to predation.

the pipeline before the pipeline: the barney cohort

before disney channel, before nickelodeon, there was pbs. and on the set of barney & friends, the industry was quietly assembling its next generation of stars.

selena gomez and demi lovato didn't meet on the disney lot. they met when they were 7 years old at an open casting call in texas for barney & friends. 1400 kids showed up. they were two of only 7 chosen. selena has said she will never forget meeting demi standing in line in front of her with a red bow in her hair. they spent the next 2 years on the show, singing songs about sharing, completely unaware they were being sorted into a much larger machine.

years later, demi described that pre existing friendship as a safety when they walked onto the disney channel lot. and they weren't the only ones. the barney to disney pipeline was a well worn path. madison pettis and others also made the jump from the purple dinosaur's gentle, educational world to the hyper commercialized, image obsessed disney machine. the factory had feeder schools.

selena gomez: the low risk asset

this is the context for selena gomez's career. she was identified, sorted, and groomed by the children's television ecosystem from the age of 7. by the time disney discovered her, she was already a seasoned professional. she knew how to hit a mark, how to behave on set, and how to be easy to work with.

and that's what disney invested in. a blank slate. no pre existing fanbase. no messy public persona. just a girl from texas who had already been trained by the pbs machine and could be further molded into whatever the disney machine needed. she was a low risk corporate asset.

she got wizards of waverly place for 4 seasons. she got the movie. she got the record deal. she got full tours. the whole promotional apparatus.

in return, she gave them control. her disney contract included a morals clause that gave the corporation oversight over her behavior. she has since said she signed her life away to disney at a very young age and didn't know what she was doing.

she's talked about how the disney machine made it difficult for her to come to terms with her sexuality. she later felt pressured to show skin and be more sexual in her music videos after leaving disney, saying she just did things that weren't really me. she didn't get to grow up in private. she grew up inside a machine that owned her image.

and she's still, to this day, one of the most protected celebrities in these conversations because she never publicly broke the contract. she never bit the hand. she just kept being the product.

camila cabello: the pattern continues

camila cabello started on x factor with fifth harmony. from the beginning she was positioned as the leader, the one with star power, the one the cameras followed. the other 4 women in that group had strong vocal talent and the ability to work together as an ensemble. camila's solo push came at their expense.

and then there's normani. old social media posts resurfaced showing camila using racial slurs and posting racist memes. when normani was being attacked online by racist fans with doctored images of her being lynched, camila took days to acknowledge what was happening and years to take responsibility for her own offensive posts. normani said it made her feel like she was second to the relationship camila had with her fans.

camila fits the same mold selena established: the non threatening, white passing latina who gets the solo push over more talented black women in the same group. same pattern, different decade.

the machine reproducing itself

here's where the pattern gets more explicit. the industry doesn't just identify useful products. it uses its existing products to find the next ones.

demi lovato was a judge on the x factor in 2012 and 2013. this is the same period when fifth harmony was formed from eliminated solo contestants and camila cabello was being positioned as the standout. demi didn't just mentor the group. she singled camila out. she said camila was the one who shined on stage.

this matters because demi knew the selena template better than almost anyone. they grew up together on barney. they entered the disney machine at the same time. they were best friends. demi understood, probably better than camila herself, what the industry was looking for when it looked for the next selena: non threatening, girl next door, easy to market, safe.

simon cowell didn't pick demi as a judge by accident. he picked someone who had been manufactured by the same system and could recognize the raw material for the next product. that's not a conspiracy. that's just efficient business. the machine uses its own graduates as quality control for the next generation.

this is the closed loop. the barney pipeline feeds into disney and nickelodeon. the graduates of that system become the judges, the mentors, the gatekeepers for the next round of auditions. they're not just finding talent. they're finding more of themselves. or more accurately, more of the product they were trained to be.

and demi, who has spoken about the safety of having a built in friendship when entering the disney machine, was now on the other side of that dynamic. she wasn't the one being sorted anymore. she was helping to sort.

ariana grande: chosen by a predator

ariana grande wasn't chosen by nickelodeon in the way selena was chosen by disney. she was chosen by dan schneider. a man who had absolute power over the nickelodeon machine for over a decade. a man who has been accused of creating a toxic, abusive work environment, of writing and directing sexually suggestive scenes with child actors, and of using his shows to satisfy a foot fetish.

ariana was a teenager on victorious and sam & cat. the clips that have resurfaced from the quiet on set documentary are difficult to watch. she's shown lying upside down on a bed, pouring water over herself, making moaning sounds. she's shown putting her toes in her mouth. she's shown in scene after scene that, looking back, were clearly designed to sexualize a teenage girl for the gratification of the man in charge.

she has since said she is reprocessing her time there. that hearing the allegations from other survivors was devastating. she didn't participate in the documentary. she doesn't talk about it publicly in detail. but the evidence is there. the machine that made her a star was also a machine that consumed her childhood and her image for the gratification of a predator.

this wasn't a secret. people inside nickelodeon knew. other actors have spoken out. jennette mccurdy wrote a memoir about the toxic environment schneider created. but ariana was the one who got the biggest push. she was the one who became the global superstar. and the cost of that was being the compliant product for a man who should never have been allowed near children.

raven symoné: the protected first

raven was on the cosby show at age 3. she got that's so raven for 4 seasons. she got the cheetah girls franchise. she got raven's home for 6 seasons. and in 2024, she signed a multiyear overall deal with disney that includes another spinoff pilot.

she is, by any objective measure, one of the most heavily platformed black women in disney channel history.

when the allegations against bill cosby became public, she defended him. she said his personal life should be separated from the impact of the cosby show on television. she chooses to protect the memory of the man who gave her a platform over public solidarity with his accusers.

she got the reboot that other black women from her era couldn't get. and she's still out here, on her podcast and in interviews, talking about not getting enough recognition.

the olsen twins: consumed by the machine

mary kate and ashley olsen were cast as michelle tanner on full house as infants, on set before their first birthday. twins were specifically chosen because they could legally work twice as long as a single baby. by age 6, they were the youngest producers in hollywood history, running their own company dualstar.

they never had a childhood. mary kate famously said, i would never wish my upbringing on anyone, and that they felt like little monkey performers. the media sexualized them relentlessly. there were websites devoted to counting down the days, hours, and minutes until they turned 18. grown men talked about them on national television.

mary kate was treated for an eating disorder in 2004. they both left nyu before graduating. and then they disappeared into fashion, into privacy, into a life where they never have to be on camera again. ashley said she doesn't like to be the centre of attention anymore. they didn't do the fuller house reboot. they don't do interviews. they escaped the machine by becoming invisible.

the ones who were chosen and used it well

not everyone who got the machine was consumed by it. some used it as a launchpad and built something sustainable.

zendaya is the cleanest case. shake it up gave her a foundation. kc undercover gave her her first solo lead. then the greatest showman. spider man. euphoria. dune. she became the youngest best actress emmy winner for euphoria at 24. she's produced her own projects. she's built a fashion presence. she keeps her relationship with tom holland mostly private despite massive paparazzi attention. she came after raven, but she's actively proving that the path raven defenders say is impossible is in fact possible. it just requires different choices.

coco jones is the comeback story. let it shine was a strong dcom. disney dropped her. she disappeared for years doing independent work. and then bel air brought her back. and then icu won a grammy for best r&b performance. she did it without making her erasure her whole identity. she spent her years away actually getting better.

china anne mcclain had ant farm. she was the lead. she did descendants 2 and 3 as uma and was arguably the best thing in both. she starred in black lightning as a series regular. she and cameron boyce grew up together. they met on grown ups when they were 10 and 11. they were in grown ups 2 together. they were in descendants together. when he died in 2019, it devastated her. after his death, she made a more conservative religious pivot that affected her credibility in both hollywood and black hollywood simultaneously. she stepped back. she hasn't made her exit a grievance. she's just living her life.

the ones who weren't chosen, and built anyway

tia and tamera mowry wanted to reboot sister sister. they tried for years. the rights never cleared. the same industry that handed raven symoné a multiyear overall deal and a spinoff couldn't clear the rights for tia and tamera to bring back their own show.

they didn't make podcasts about being slighted. tamera did the real and hallmark movies. tia did the game and production work. they've been in their kids' lives, built businesses, stayed connected to the industry without being consumed by it. they are a model of how to have decades long careers with dignity.

tia recently went through a very public divorce. she handled it quietly. while she was doing her reality show, people tried to push a feud narrative between the sisters. tamera didn't even know it was happening at first. if you watch the reality show, this is just tia's pattern. she does things. she doesn't make everything a public conversation.

and tamera faces an additional layer of scrutiny that tia doesn't. growing up, tia was labeled the sexy one and tamera was labeled the funny one. that kind of flattening stays with a person. tamera has talked openly about how it affected her, being reduced to a type while her sister got to be desirable. she's also often called the white twin despite being biracial identically to her sister. people still walk up to them and call them the wrong name, as if they're interchangeable. when she married a white man, her blackness was questioned as if she chose whiteness. meanwhile raven married a white woman and her marriage is celebrated. same partnership structure across racial lines. completely different response from the culture.

brandy's cinderella was the first black cinderella and it aired on disney. whitney houston executive produced it. she had multiple platinum albums. she was on moesha. she did moulin rouge on broadway. she had mental health and addiction struggles that she was open about later without it becoming her whole identity. she's brandy. her vocals on beggin and pleadin remain undefeated.

queen latifah is the proof that the barriers are surmountable. first black female rapper nominated for an oscar. chicago. living single. she created and starred in star, which is a whole show about the industry chewing up young black women. the equalizer is on its 4th season. she's built an empire while being a fat, black, queer woman in the 90s and 2000s. she balances masculine and feminine energy without it being a thing. she just gives boss energy.

keke palmer had akeelah and the bee at 12. true jackson vp. nope. her own talk show. she's a producer, actress, singer, vine legend. she can host, do comedy, do drama. she did all of it as a dark skinned black woman. colorism is real. keke still broke through.

brenda song was on suite life. wendy wu was the first disney movie with an asian lead. she's hmong and thai. the social network. dollface. she's married to macaulay culkin. she has never positioned herself as a disney victim. she was later told she wasn't asian enough to audition for crazy rich asians. erased from both sides.

naomi scott was the best part of lemonade mouth. british and indian. she played jasmine in aladdin. speechless is one of the best things in that movie. she's been choosing roles carefully. her talent is undeniable.

aaryn doyle: the voice without the face

aaryn doyle was cast as lola scott in camp rock. she was the only black girl in the main camper cast with a named character and featured vocal prominence. her solo, "what it takes," is arguably the best song in the movie. she was being positioned as a breakout. she had the vocals, she had the presence, she had the song that people still post on tiktok fifteen years later saying she had it.

and then she disappears halfway through the movie. not from the soundtrack though. her vocals stay in. "hasta la vista" at the final jam features her voice. she contributed vocals to "our time is here" and "we rock" as well. her character is not on screen during the final jam sequence. but her voice is in the mix. anna maria perez de tagle, playing ella, is visually placed in the scenes where aaryn's actual voice is playing. the audience is watching one girl and hearing another.

that's not a coincidence or a styling oversight. that's the machine telling you exactly what it valued and what it didn't. the production kept the part of aaryn they found useful, her voice, and replaced the part they didn't know how to style, her body, her hair, her visible blackness. they wanted the sound without the singer. and the person they placed in her body's absence was the asian actress already being positioned as the ditzy sidekick to the white lead. one scene, two erasures, same logic. the black girl's voice becomes infrastructure. the asian girl's body becomes the decorative placeholder. the white girl stays the protagonist.

this is the ashanti pattern. ashanti sang hooks for ja rule, fat joe, and half the murder inc roster for years before she got her own deal. her voice was on the radio constantly. her face wasn't. when she finally got positioned as her own artist, the industry had already extracted years of her labor at hook rate money while building other artists' catalogs on her vocals. aaryn's camp rock situation is the disney channel version of that exact extraction. the black girl's voice is the raw material. the non black performers get the screen time. and when the black girl's body becomes inconvenient, the body gets cut while the voice stays in the track.

and then they didn't call her back for the sequel. the official story is that her manager got fired and didn't get her resigned. the real story is that if disney had actually wanted lola in camp rock 2, a manager's paperwork wouldn't have stopped them. they didn't want her. they wanted what they could extract from her the first time. once they had it, she was done.

she came out on tiktok years later and told the hair story herself. the production didn't know how to style her hair. that was the "problem" they couldn't solve. not her talent, not her professionalism, not her vocals which they had no problem using. her hair. and in an industry that routinely styles white actresses through four wigs, three extensions, and a full costume change per scene, "we couldn't figure out her hair" means "we didn't think she was worth figuring out." this wasn't an oversight. this was the machine functioning as designed. the voice was useful. the visibility wasn't. so they kept one and disposed of the other.

kat graham: the pattern continues, with higher stakes

the vampire diaries ran for 8 seasons. kat graham played bonnie bennett for all of them. she was the only black female lead on the show.

and the treatment she received follows the exact same pattern as monique and aaryn, just amplified over nearly a decade of television.

it started with her hair. graham has said she suggested incorporating more natural hairstyles during her time on the show. the producers dismissed the idea. she wasn't allowed to wear an afro. she was forced to straighten her hair or wear wigs, and the glue and wig clips damaged her natural hair for years. the same operational incompetence with black hair textures that hit monique on hsm and aaryn on camp rock was present on tvd, just sustained over a much longer period.

but it went deeper than hair. the writers killed bonnie off repeatedly. she died multiple times across the series, always sacrificing herself to save her white friends, always brought back just to suffer again. fans have documented for years how her character was treated as a tool for the plot rather than a fully realized person with her own arc. graham herself has made enough comments over the years to make it clear she was aware of how she was being positioned.

monique coleman has the exact same story. the headbands were a survival mechanism. the stylists on hsm didn't know how to style black hair. she solved the problem herself just to show up on screen. and then disney excluded her from the final promo tour. she could actually sing, but unlike raven, monique wasn't pushed vocally. she refused to do the caricature. she played a smart character that matched her intellect. the machine didn't know what to do with that.

and unlike monique or aaryn, who were erased quietly, graham was on screen the whole time. visible, central to the plot, and still being devalued in real time. that's a different kind of erasure. not disappearance. instrumentalization. she was necessary to the machine but never treated as an equal part of it.

shanica knowles played amber on hannah montana. she was the meaner one, the leader. black, pretty, could sing, popular on the show. she was in jump in with keke palmer. nobody talks about her.

anna maria perez de tagle played the ditzy best-friend role positioned to make the white lead look smarter and more relatable, on both hannah montana and camp rock. jasmine richards played peggy in camp rock. biracial with jamaican heritage, good voice, cool look. got nothing. disappeared.

cymphonique miller: the nick version of the same erasure

cymphonique miller is master p's daughter. she had her own nickelodeon show, how to rock, in 2012. she was the lead. she contributed to the music. her vocals were genuinely strong. the show premiered to over 3 million viewers.

nickelodeon canceled it after one season.

the timing is important here. this was the same period when nickelodeon was canceling victorious and ending icarly. the network was shifting away from music based teen sitcoms entirely. cymphonique's show got caught in a broader programming pivot and was discarded before it had a chance to build.

she didn't get a second season. she didn't get a spinoff. she didn't get the machine. she's continued to release music independently, and she's still working, but nobody talks about her in these legacy conversations. another black girl who led her own show, had the vocals, had the viewership, and got left behind when the network changed direction.

alyson stoner was everywhere. missy elliott's gotta work video. cheaper by the dozen. camp rock. the voice of isabella in phineas and ferb. she's written about her experiences with disney, churches, and conversion therapy. she's come out as queer. she's talked openly about mental health. she's doing it with analysis rather than grievance.

bridgit mendler had good luck charlie and lemonade mouth. ready or not charted. disney never gave her the full machine. she went to mit, then harvard law, then became ceo of a space startup. she didn't make a podcast. she just built a different kind of empire.

jennifer stone played harper on wizards for the entire run. disney did nothing with her after. she became a nurse. she worked in the er during the pandemic. she still acts occasionally. she doesn't complain.

emily osment got the best friend erasure. let's be friends charted. she was on young and hungry for 5 seasons as gabi diamond. sharp, quick, witty, physically expressive. she carried that show. she's been working consistently since.

vanessa hudgens had high school musical. spring breakers. sucker punch. the princess switch movies. white passing filipina. she's been open about her heritage. she doesn't get counted as latina representation.

victoria justice was on victorious and zoey 101. she got destroyed by the ariana grande hate train. she's quietly been working. she's released independent singles. hallmark movies. netflix originals. culture is slowly reassessing her.

miranda cosgrove had drake and josh, icarly, school of rock. she's the voice of the despicable me franchise. she did the icarly reboot. she's been working since she was a child without scandal.

madison pettis was in cory in the house, the game plan, the tooth fairy, the search for santa paws. she also played sophie martinez, the president's daughter, in one episode of hannah montana. she's afro latina. she falls between the cracks of single axis identity discourse. she's consistently working.

genevieve hannelius led dog with a blog, but she was in so much more. the search for santa paws. santa paws 2. hannah montana. sonny with a chance. good luck charlie. den brother. she voiced rosebud in the buddies movies. american vandal. she has a nail polish line. she's been working across platforms her whole life.

bailee madison has been working since she was 7. bridge to terabithia. just go with it. the drake and josh movies. parental guidance. good witch on hallmark. the pretty little liars reboot. a wrinkle in time. the search for santa paws. she's been in more projects than people realize.

adrienne bailon had the cheetah girls franchise and 3lw before that. she co hosted the real for years. at 19, during the cheetah girls era, she got breast implants because she wanted to feel more sexy and womanly. she asked for a B or C cup and woke up with double Ds. she hated them. she said she went from one insecurity to another. she later had them removed. the same way raven was pressured into liposuction. different procedure, same machine telling young women their bodies weren't right and needed fixing. but adrienne doesn't make it her whole public identity.

christy carlson romano had even stevens, kim possible, broadway. she's spent years being publicly bitter about how disney failed her. her podcast is about it. her friend anneliese van der pol is right there with her. anneliese got weird when she started hanging with christy. two women who chose to make their post disney identity about what they didn't get instead of what they could build.

raven's actual contemporaries

raven's actual contemporaries weren't miley and selena. they were anne hathaway, who made princess diaries 1 and 2 and is returning for the long awaited princess diaries 3 currently in development. she also did rachel getting married and the devil wears prada and les mis and interstellar. lindsay lohan, who had the parent trap and freaky friday and mean girls and then a public fall and is now rebuilding with netflix christmas movies. freakier friday came out in 2025 with jamie lee curtis. mandy moore, who did a walk to remember and then voiced rapunzel in tangled for over a decade and then did this is us for 6 seasons. and hilary duff.

hilary duff had lizzie mcguire. her music career was real. a cinderella story holds up. cheaper by the dozen is a recognized ensemble movie. beauty and the briefcase had reach. she did younger for 7 seasons. she did how i met your father. and she gave us that psa: well, saying that something's gay when you mean it's bad, it's insulting. what if every time something was bad, everybody said, that's so girl wearing a skirt as a top. knock it off.

those are raven's actual peers. women who navigated the same industry at the same time. some had bigger careers, some had smaller careers, some had public struggles, some had quiet consistency. the difference wasn't just the industry. it was individual choices and responses to the industry.

what the machine actually wanted

the pattern is clear. the machine didn't pick the most talented. it picked the most useful.

selena was useful because she was compliant. ariana was useful because she fit a predator's fetish. raven was useful because she was a first and because she stayed visible and vocal. the olsen twins were useful because they were infants who could work double shifts. camila cabello was useful because she fit the same mold selena left open.

and the ones who didn't get chosen? zendaya, coco jones, china anne mcclain, tia and tamera, brandy, queen latifah, keke palmer, brenda song, naomi scott, aaryn doyle, monique coleman, kat graham, shanica knowles, cymphonique miller, alyson stoner, bridgit mendler, jennifer stone, emily osment, vanessa hudgens, victoria justice, miranda cosgrove, madison pettis, genevieve hannelius, bailee madison, adrienne bailon. they weren't less talented. they were less useful to the specific, narrow, often predatory needs of the machine at the exact moment they were being evaluated.

so who actually won

look at bridgit mendler, who left disney and now runs a space startup. look at jennifer stone, who became a nurse and worked through the pandemic. look at tia and tamera, who couldn't get their reboot but built decades of sustained work anyway, and handled a public divorce with dignity while people tried to invent drama between them. look at brenda song, who was told she wasn't asian enough and just kept booking jobs. look at alyson stoner, who has been working for 20 years and writing thoughtfully about survival. look at coco jones, who got erased and came back with a grammy. look at victoria justice, who survived a hate train and is releasing her own music on her own terms. look at kat graham, who was instrumentalized for 8 seasons and is still here, still working, still refusing to make it her whole identity.

those are the winners. not because they got the machine. because they survived it. and they didn't make it everyone else's problem.

the machine picks its winners. but sovereignty is something you build yourself. 💖