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Well, That
Escalated Quickly
by Franchesca Ramsey
c.2018, Grand Central Publishing
$27.00 / $35.00 Canada
256 pages
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Truth Contributor
You sat down to check your email.
And there you were an hour later, still logged on. Your
email was checked but then you watched a newsfeed,
four kitten videos, posted three opinions, RSVP’d to two
grad parties, and wasted 60 minutes. And judging by the new
book Well, That Escalated Quickly by Franchesca
Ramsey, you got off easy.
The internet was practically a toddler when Franchesca
Ramsey posted her first YouTube video, a tutorial on hair.
That was in 2006, just a year after YouTube was founded;
before then, Ramsey secured her own domain name and had
already blogged about her life, so she knew her way around
the web and the drama and trolls that go with it.
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Six years later, she finally found fame through a video she
calls “SWGSTBG,” which took advantage of a craze lampooning
racism. That millions of people saw her video in a very
short time was a surprise – a pleasant one that led Ramsey
to look for new ways to make it as an online entertainer.
She was the star of other videos, but they didn’t have quite
the appeal as SWGSTBG. She won a YouTube contest, and a
week-long series of classes-as-prize let her learn from the
pros. Another contest allowed her to rub elbows with
Hollywood’s elite and hone her interviewing skills. By this
time, Ramsey had an agent, cash in the bank and a strong
online presence.
She also had internet trolls, who hurt her feelings day
after day. She says she spent many hours in workplace
bathrooms, crying, until literally, Ramsey had the last
laugh: after a disastrous SNL try-out, she landed an
MTV show and a gig as a writer for a Comedy Central series
while she continued to boost her presence online. Today,
she’s a comedy writer, social justice advocate and MTV host
and, though she cautions that she’s not an expert on the
subject, she offers this: there’s a way to avoid racist
terms, misogynistic words and accidental offense. Trying to
get it right is absolutely worth it.
So you’re not all that into computers, and social media is a
foreign language. That’s the first thing you’ll want to know
about this book: it’s steeped in web-ese, so Well, That
Escalated Quickly may not be for you.
But then again, while internet natives will eat up the
memoir and backstory of an online personality they’ve come
to enjoy, the latter part of this book is different: it’s
more about the social justice, equality, and
dealing-with-racism side of author Franchesca Ramsey’s life.
This is, in fact, where Ramsey does magic, explaining
nuances, new meanings, and unintentional hurts from language
and attitude. It’s where anyone, from any angle, can learn
to do no harm.
For Ramsey’s millions of fans, this book will be a true
delight, and an insight to their favorite star’s life. If
you’re not so versed but still need the social justice
aspect of what it so thoroughly teaches, then Well, That
Escalated Quickly is a book to check out. |
