Robby Kelly’s Based Inquiry Into Online Relationships (Human Pursuits 16/9/22)
Throwing Fits’ resident memer on Matty Healy, authentic style, and embracing the trolls
VANCOUVER — Some day, in the not so distant future, they’re going to hang memes in a museum. Sure, that museum will exist exclusively in the Metaverse and, sure, it will cost all of your DogeCoin to get in. But there will be an entire installation dedicated to the predominant visual language of our time. And when that happens, you can bet they will devote an entire wing to Robby Kelly and the gang over at Throwing Fits [TF]. For the past few years, Robby has served as the popular menswear podcast’s resident memer, helping to shape its acerbic and, sometimes, moronic wit. After following him for a little while on Instagram, I realized he was also into The 1975. Clearly we had a lot to talk about. Our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, touched on his early journalism days, Matty Healy’s shit posting, and why podcasts need to acknowledge their trolls.
ES: We’re wrapping up New York Fashion Week… I’m interested in getting a scene report. What are you seeing in the city so far?
RK: I’m not a big event person, but we’ve done a couple of things through TF. I know last year was technically the first “post COVID” NYFW but I think this one feels probably the most normal. People are definitely out and about, acting pretty feral in Bushwick. I think more brands are going casual. It might also just be because there’s a lot of those smaller mid-range New York brands that probably don’t have the budget or the resources to do a full blown runway show, so they’re throwing parties or pop ups instead, which I kind of like. It’s all just shaking hands and kissing babies anyways.
ES: For people who maybe aren’t familiar with you, how did you get started with the Throw Gang?
RK: I went to school for journalism. After I graduated, I freelanced for a while, which basically meant moving back in with my parents in Pennsylvania and pitching stories. I got to write some cool stories for GQ and the Guardian, and do stuff that I was proud of. But, the money was atrocious… this is back like 2016. I was making no money. And so after like a year or two, I was like, “OK, I need to diversify my skill sets.”
I had been a fan of Fashion Bros in college, so I knew Failing Upwards when the podcast first started. I ended up making a subreddit for it because I realized that anytime a Failing Upwards link would get posted on the Barstool subreddit it would just get torn apart [Editor’s note: Failing Upwards is a previous iteration of Throwing Fits which was owned by Barstool Sports]. I was like, damn, it would actually be kind of cool if the other people listening to this show actually wanted to talk about it. Long story short: someone found it and it got some traction. That’s how I got in contact with [TF hosts] James and Lawrence originally. After six or eight months, I pitched them on helping out with their social media. I was just looking for anything to do. That was a little over three years ago.
ES: The memes are such an integral part of the TF brand. Are all of the memes coming from you or is it a collaborative thing?
RK: It’s definitely collaborative. A lot of the content is the result of our group chat. I think everyone makes memes for their friends, even if they’re low quality. It’s just kind of how people communicate, in my opinion. I’ve worked now with a lot of older people in both media and fashion who you wouldn’t think know anything about memes… but like 50-year-old people are sending memes to each other. My dad knows what memes are. It’s a dominant form of communication on the Internet. I think brands don’t engage with memes because they think it’s too low brow, but because TF never had a stuffy brand in that way, we were like, “Yeah, of course we’re gonna post memes.” It was natural because we’re not trying to do anything stuck up or pretentious. Why would we not make memes?
ES: I think TF has such a strong perspective on things that memes are a shorthand for what your values are.
RK: Definitely. The podcasts are an hour to two hours, sometimes more, twice a week. That’s a lot of content. I don’t get too involved in the analytics, but a lot of [our fans] are not listening every week, or maybe they’re only listening to parts of an episode. Four hours of podcast every week is a fuck-ton of content, so I think if you can break it down into bit-sized content for social media it helps people stay up to date on the TF world. The goal is to make it just a little bit more accessible, so people feel comfortable diving in and out of the podcast.
But, yeah, we try to be opinionated and not necessarily hold back, but we make fun of ourselves as much as we make fun of other brands. I’ve noticed within the past couple of months, as more casual followers have joined in, that I maybe take that for granted too much. People don’t always get self-reflexive-ness of our humour.
ES: Was social media something you were interested in when you were doing journalism or is this a skill set you developed through working with TF?
RK: When I first started studying journalism in college, I was writing for a music blog that had a decent following. This was from 2011 to maybe 2014, so the dying embers of the blog era. I would go to my journalism classes and other students would be really excited about writing for the local newspaper and more traditional stuff. They were probably doing more serious or better work than me, honestly, but I was more interested in the blog. I knew that I had slightly different interests that weren’t being taught in most journalism schools. I was always open to non-traditional forms of communication as it relates to media. I guess going from blogs to media isn’t that crazy of a jump, but it was never thought out. It wasn’t like “Oh, I need to get into memes” because this is what the kids are doing these days.
ES: What was the name of the blog?
RK: It was called College of Music, which is a terrible name, but it definitely blew up. The woman who founded it, she’s very talented, but she had posted an early Macklemore song. This was pre-iTunes, he wasn’t on a label, and it took off. She would post a bunch of Macklemore and stuff that would always do really well. It was all in that Pacific Northwest hipster rap sphere and later more “serious” hip-hop.
ES: Were you also writing about music that you liked, though?
RK: At that time hip hop was pretty much all I listened to. I didn’t get into The 1975 until a few years later.. My indie knowledge from 2011 to 2015 is so stunted because at that time I literally was not listening to anything outside of hip-hop.
ES: One thing I wanted to pick your brain on is the meme lord [and 1975 front man] Matty Healy. But, in your opinion, are the memes dank? Or are they based?
RK: It’s pretty good. I like him name-searching himself and posting his thoughts. I think it’s funny. And people are talking about him. A lot of people assume celebrities don’t read the comments, so I think by him going on and engaging, whether it’s actually replying or posting on his story being like “It’s funny”… I don’t know, maybe people will be a little bit more thoughtful. It seems like he’s maybe thinking of it from a place of self-reflection, but it’s good shit posting… It feels a little bit more authentic. Whether or not it is, you know, only he can answer that. But from a consumer perspective, it feels like there isn’t as much a barrier between him and the fans, or the critics.
ES: I was going through some of your old tweets and I saw the one saying any retrospective on Tumblr that doesn’t include the 1975 is false. Is that 2015 Tumblr era the one that you prefer the most?
RK: Not really. Whenever I tweeted that was around the time Indie Sleeze and Tumblr-2014-core that the Nylons and the iDs of the world will write trend pieces on, which I think is funny. The first time I saw or really started listening to The 1975 was when I went to Coachella in 2019 for a journalism story that never got published, and I never got paid for. But I got a free ticket to Coachella. I actually just seen Sophie [RIP] perform, and it was fucking crazy. I was exhausted, I felt like I just got hit by a truck. It was insane. I was just kind of dazed. And I just sat down in one of the fields and there was a band playing on the main stage. And it was The 1975… I was like “Oh this sounds good.”
My one friend whose opinion I trust on music and movies and stuff had been trying to get me to listen to them since the self-titled but that’s when I was still only listening to hip-hop. “I don’t want to listen to this hipster shit.” But that’s when I went back and really started listening to all the albums. I’m more of a 1975 enthusiast rather than a day one fan, following them from chapter to chapter.
I’m a big fan of the Killers too, like that’s the band I started listening to when I was very young and have followed. My relationship with them is more critical, I’d say, but there’s more emotion built up into it as opposed to The 1975, who I got into later. I’m just along for the ride.
ES: I’m probably more on the obnoxious end. I have so many opinions about this band, I think about them constantly. It’s been interesting, with this album cycle I feel like I’m seeing more people in the menswear sphere gravitate towards the band, which is unusual cause I’ve often felt there’s not a lot of men who listen to this band, even though there’s always been an undercurrent of fashion in everything they do.
RK: I think I can break that in two, in terms of fashion, and then also media-slash-fashion heads getting into it. I love their stylist, Patricia Villirillo. She’s fantastic. I just love her work with the whole label, because I think she does the other Dirty Hit acts too. A lot of stylists in entertainment or music,, they’re trying to craft outfits for the moment, whether it’s a red carpet or a music video. And so you often get outfits that are crazy just for the sake of being crazy, to catch people’s eye, or it’s got some brand hook… But I think her styling comes off really tasteful and authentic, while still accomplishing some of that.
I think it’s hard. I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of a celebrity and have to constantly put together outfits, knowing they are going to be seen by millions of people. Like, I do have sympathy for the ones that we make fun of [on TF] that dress poorly. It’s hard to care about clothes and be a celebrity because you know it’s gonna get picked apart and you know that it’s also part of marketing yourself.
As for the second part, there definitely has been an uptick in media people interested in Matty… I think he’s maybe said a couple things about cancel culture that have hooked the ear of the downtown media set, to be honest. I don’t wanna yeah use that phrase too much. But… I feel like he was getting canceled before like canceling with a thing, so he has a good perspective on that stuff. I think that’s probably caught the ear of the dirtbag media if you wanna put it that way, which is why they’ve maybe accepted him more as a person. I mean, I don’t think Chris Black gives a fuck about The 1975’s music. [Editor’s note: In 2020 Healy deactivated his Twitter after being heavily criticized for a tweet linking the band’s song, Love It If We Made It, to the death of George Floyd].
ES: Serendipitously, How Long Gone just dropped a 1975 episode. As a fan of the band, were like “Fuck they got them [on the podcast]”?
RK: All I’ll say is that I think Matty, the way he communicates and the type of person he is, is better geared towards an in-person podcast than a Zoom or video call. Any of the media entities or podcasts that manage to wrangle him in person are very lucky.
ES: As someone who is, unfortunately, a How Long Gone completist, I do know that he seems to have only recently started listening to the band, for whatever reason.
RK: I know he is a proud Jack Antonoff hater [Editor’s note: Antonoff co-produced the ‘75’s new record]. I’m not going to shit on How Long Gone or Chris for having them on when they clearly don’t have any interest in the music because that’s just media. That’s just podcasting. You get people on. There have been guests on TF that we obviously don’t agree with, or aren’t fans of. You have them on to have the conversation.
ES: I also think Chris is willing to change his opinion on things. I don’t think he’s completely disinterested in the band. Like I think he maybe listens to the newer stuff. But even with the Antonoff stuff… I think Chris knows how to get people riled up… but I also think a lot of it is tongue in cheek, where he knows it’s getting you riled up and that’s funny. But I also think Chris respects money and success. Jack Antonoff has both.
RK: Chris is also a unique figure because he’s the contrarian of this scene, you know? When that’s the case, people have their pitchforks out. They’re ready for you to do a 180. Chopping at the bit. It’s the same with Anthony Fantano. They are ready for you to slip up, so they can say “See? See? You were wrong about this tweet.” And he’s also aware of that. So the fact he is willing to change his opinion or have a conversation is commendable. He’s not unaware there’s a section of his own fan base that is guns pointed, locked and loaded. That’s why people like How Long Gone. It’s very entertaining.
ES: What is the best lesson that you’ve learned from TF when it comes to community building?
RK: Around the time I started with TF was also around the time the Chapo Trap House subreddit got banned, and the Cum Town subreddit also got banned. I remember watching those spaces, almost from a business perspective. At first they were sort of aspirational. Like, here is a 100,000 person subreddit in a similar sphere. But when they got banned I was like “Holy shit, maybe I shouldn’t have been following these.” I thought for a long time about that. With both podcasts, the relationship between the product and their community got so toxic. The Cum Town guys were pleading with Reddit to ban them. It was crazy. They had such an antagonistic relationship with a community that was paying them $90,000 per month, or whatever.
If you’re going to run a community, you have to take responsibility for your messaging and how the things you say affect that community. Like, Joe Rogen is obviously an example of the opposite… Very casual, very laissez-faire about what he puts out there and then unwilling to take responsibility for how his community interprets things. Even if it sucks, there’s always going to be trolls that join these communities to piss you off. But that’s the job. You can’t just ignore them and be like “We take no ownership of this.” You have to address it and you have to engage with it in a way that is down to earth and not elitist, because if you ignore things get out of hand very quickly.
Robby Kelly makes memes and does other things for the Throwing Fits podcast. He lives in Brooklyn, NYC.
