The Art Of Hard-Launching A Friend Breakup

Last year, the Hot Girl Talks podcast community simmered with speculation: Had the Hot Girls’ relationship grown cold? Its hosts — influencers Halley McGookin, Jaz (who goes by her first name only), and Carly Weinstein — had built a fan base by branding themselves a “typical 20-something best friend trio.” But, a year into the show, fans began to notice there were far fewer Instagram stories of the girls hanging out, and even fewer posts on one another’s grids. On Nov. 22, 2023, Weinstein confirmed their fears with an episode titled “I’m not crying you are.”

Because the Hot Girls had kept their troubles offstage, the triumvirate was free to script their sign-off. “I never had an issue with just being honest about what was going on [but] someone else in the group was like, ‘OK, so what's your story? How are you going to present it?’” Weinstein, 26, tells Bustle. “The truth [is] I had other goals... like motivational speaking and writing a book and the podcast was taking up all this time. It wasn’t the whole story, but it is the truth.” Within weeks, McGookin and Jaz went on to rebrand Hot Girl Talks as Delusional Diaries, and Weinstein went solo with REAL with Carly Weinstein.

Weinstein and co. are far from the first female friends to publicly fall out. The early aughts can be charted through the ebb and flow of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie’s frenemy-ship; Kylie Jenner and Jordyn Woods’ breakup was one of the most shocking moments of the 2010s. And lately, the podcast space has become rife with such riffs: Take Alex Cooper wresting Call Her Daddy from the hands of her former roommate and co-host, Sofia Franklyn, or the current unraveling between Plan Bri’s Grace O’Malley and Brianna LaPaglia. And in the age of influencer snark Reddit, TikTok sleuths, and people living in the comments, any attempt to silently part ways doesn’t stand a chance. In fact, the internet now demands its public figures hard-launch their friend breakups. And podcasters and influencers are happy to oblige. After all, it’s an easy, and often quite successful way to feed the content beast. Beyond Weinstein’s confessional, O'Malley and LaPaglia recently addressed growing tensions in a podcast episode, while Cooper famously aired her side in “The Funeral.”

Though there’s viral potential in a public split, there’s also value in keeping the band together. That’s why these women don't take their decisions to split lightly: ending a partnership is a consequential business decision in addition to a personal pivot. Weinstein, for one, seriously weighed whether to quit Hot Girl Talks. She and her co-hosts had only met a year prior — on a brand trip to the Hamptons — and become fast friends; they were also aware that there was commercial strength in numbers. “Anyone knows that when you have a friend group, content just performs well. I saw it as a really good opportunity,” Weinstein says. But a year in, “It was just [becoming] apparent to me that I shouldn’t mix my work [and personal] stuff,” she says.

Of course, this blueprint far predates social media. Let’s consider childhood besties Hilton and Richie as a case study. As rising stars on the celebrity scene in the early 2000s, they parlayed their habit of partying and getting papped together into a hit reality television show, award show co-hosting gigs, and enduring fame. Fans first followed their friendship via the tabloid press and stayed along for the ride as they developed their hyper-femme party-girl brand that culminated with MTV’s The Simple Life. Now, with social media, would-be duos in this mold are able to cut out the middleman, marketing themselves directly to audiences, crafting their own image, and controlling the rollout of their partnership. The business of friendship has never felt more within reach.

Enter author Natalie Beach, the woman behind what became perhaps the hardest breakup launch in recent history. In a 2019 personal essay for The Cut that quickly went viral, she chronicled the end of her friendship and collaboration with controversial internet personality Caroline Calloway. “Want to kill a relationship? Make it a brand. Monetize it,” Beach tells Bustle. “Real friendships are messy, dynamic, and constantly changing. Brands are curated, static, one-dimensional, and really only exist to make money. Pretty much the opposite of a real friendship.”

These days, everyone who participates in social media — no matter how small their following — is, to some extent, presenting a brand online. By extension, posting about a friend is more than just documenting that relationship — it’s brand alignment. That’s what happened to beauty influencer Andrea*, who in 2017 became IRL friends with an extremely online sexual health educator who had a significantly larger following. As their friendship and followings grew, their online identities also became further entwined, and eventually their followers associated them with each other. “I definitely was stopped on the street a couple times by her little fans to be like, ‘Oh, you're [her] friend, right?’”

As bright as the friendship burned, though, it soon flamed out. “She had a lot of people in her life she was only friends with so they could post each other, and being one of her only ‘real friends’ put a lot of pressure on me,” Andrea says. “Like she got major surgery, and I was the only person she told. Not any of her other ‘besties.’” Andrea began to pull back, and their followers took notice. “You see a lot of these people — those Reddit pages, like influencer snark, posting, ‘Oh, I don't think so-and-so's friends anymore because they're not posting together.’ It’s like a dating relationship,’’ she says.

When an influencer packages their life for consumption, she may be inclined to leave some details out of the public realm. But increasingly, followers demand to know the whole story. You might feel icky going down the rabbit hole of a private person’s friend breakup — but when you’ve spent hours of your life watching a public set of besties on their girls trips, sloppy nights out, and even sloppier hungover mornings? How dare they write off a character without explanation.

You see a lot of these people — those Reddit pages, like influencer snark, posting, ‘Oh, I don't think so-and-so's friends anymore because they're not posting together.’ It’s like a dating relationship.

Privately, Andrea was direct with the other influencer: “‘I do not want to be your friend anymore.’ Verbatim.” Publicly, she didn’t hard-launch the end until a year later. A major meme account with a Black culture focus had published an Instagram post about Andrea’s ex-bestie being racist and Andrea decided to share it on her own story. She says she has no regrets: “I'm not going to lose sleep trying to get revenge, but if somebody else is doing it, I’ll hop on and say, ‘Yeah, I agree that person sucks.’”

For the significantly less online Beach, bringing the battle back to her home turf was essential. As was laying claim to her role in the “Caroline Calloway brand.” Beach had collaborated on the lengthy Instagram captions on Calloway’s account that helped build Calloway’s initial following. She was the silent partner in the equation, often referred to as a “friend named Natalie” in articles about Calloway. “The essay was staking out my own existence in that story,” Beach says, describing the act as “self-mythologizing.” Don’t worry: After inserting herself into the story, Beach parlayed the experience into a book deal.

Erstwhile Hot Girl Weinstein, on the other hand, opted for what she saw as the high road. “It's always best to be as upfront as you can with your audience without dragging anyone, because the person that is dragging the other person never looks good,” she says. “Like when I left, Jaz and Halley both posted my podcast and vice versa. Just being supportive is always the best way, and it's a good example for your audience as well.”

While working it out on the remix has its advantages — friendship! — parting ways still has a silver lining of its own: more content.

*Pseudonyms were given where requested for purposes of anonymity.