Dear Jackie and Claudia,
Anyone that knows me knows The Morning Toast. My family, friends, coworkers, bosses, therapist – have all heard me rave about you for 3 years now. They’ve seen my popsocket, my merch, my photos from camp, they’ve heard me try to explain why I’m in group chats with people I’ve never met and tried to understand why I had celebrity gossip before everyone else.
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Back in August of 2017 I came across The Morning Breath while endlessly looking for more and more information on the Bachelor in Paradise scandal from that summer. I had followed Jackie on Twitter for years and loved her Bachelor commentary, so I checked it out. I immediately fell in love with what I saw – two young, relatable millennials talking about reality tv.
Just a few months prior, I had gone through the messiest breakup of my life. While I love mess when it comes to reality tv, this mess really had me personally in a place I wasn’t sure I could come back from. I was feeling more alone than I ever had when I stumbled upon your morning show that happened to come with endless Facebook groups filled with people just like me.
I was accepted into The Morning Breathers Facebook group on March 19th, 2018. Since that day, I have joined upwards of 200 subgroups from everything to my favorite shows to skincare to mental health to dogs to my favorite fast food restaurants. Suddenly, I was immersed in a world where I had tens of thousands of friends at my fingertips. I went from feeling completely alone, overwhelmed, scared and depressed to looking forward to watching you every week day and chatting with my new friends about any and everything.
Thats why, shortly after, when you were cancelled – in the literal sense – I stuck with you. Not only did I stick with you, I spent hundreds upon hundreds of dollars in merch – even a “Disgraced Queen” t-shirt. I spent hundreds of dollars and used my vacation time to drive four hours into the woods to spend a weekend with you – and 300 strangers. I subscribed to your Patreon for years. I spent hundreds of dollars and more vacation time to travel to see Claudia’s show. Even when you planned an ill-timed merch drop at the beginning of a global pandemic, I still bought it. And, I even bought it for 20 other Toasters (with help from others) because what the community meant to me at the time meant being a part of something bigger than myself – and making someone feel that bit of hope that I did back in 2017.
That’s why I put up with way more than I should have.
I’ve listened to you for at least an hour a day for 3 years. Now its time you listen to me.
I let it slide when your racist tweets came out in 2018. I told myself you were young, didn’t understand, and have changed. How can we ever expect people to learn if we don’t give them a chance, right? So I kept listening.
I let it slide when we found out who your mother is in 2018. I told myself, you’re not her. Don’t we all have family members who we disagree with? We all have family members we’re embarrassed of, right? So I kept listening.
I let it slide when I arrived to Camp Toast 2 and didn’t have a bunk assigned. I was alone, scared, uncomfortable and was told my name wasn’t on any list. I let it slide when I met 20+ girls in the same situation, crying because they weren’t assigned a bunk, kicked out of a bunk, or ostracized. This had to be on the camp, right? There’s no way they just care that little, right? So I kept listening.
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I let it slide when Jackie made insensitive comments about shootings only happening at movie theaters with lower ticket prices. We’ve all said stupid things, right? She didn’t mean it like that, right? So I kept listening.
I let it slide when Claudia victim blamed a sexual assault victim on her Instagram story. She didn’t mean it like that, right? She said she would do better, I should believe her, right? So I kept listening.
I let it slide when you both laughed hysterically over the idea of a pitbull being malicious and attacking another dog, even when there was no contextual need to be discussing pitbulls at all. They just don’t get it, right? They’ll understand why that wasn’t ok, right? So I kept listening. (I would like to publicly apologize to my dog, a rescue pitbull, for that not being my breaking point)
I let it slide when you had a birthday party in the middle of a pandemic.I let it slide when you intentionally hid your mother from your photos.I let it slide when Claudia posted and deleted a TikTok using Trump’s “Chinese Virus” sound.I let way too much slide, and I’m embarrassed to have ever been a fan of yours.
The first time I ever felt embarrassed to be a fan of The Morning Toast was in January of 2020 when I traveled to New York City for the final leg of the Dirty Jeans Tour. I was by myself, got a hotel room, and spent the weekend in the city. I met someone unrelated to the Toast and she was a travel writer who asked me what I was in the city for. When she took out her phone to type in the name Claudia Oshry, I “got a pit”.
In that moment, I realized she would Google you and read about you, and use that to form her judgement on me. I told you everyone that knows me knew about you, but they knew me – they knew my values, what I believe in, and who I really am. This person didn’t.
From that day forward, I started to wonder if I was sacrificing my values to be a fan of you. If it made me a bad person to listen to your show everyday and laugh. But, I still did.
There was no final straw for me, it was more like a collection of straws that just kept weighing me down until I couldn’t take it anymore. I slowly backed away, rather than ripping off the bandaid. I slowly started only listening when there was a story I was interested in. Then I cancelled Patreon, then I requested a refund for Camp Toast 3.
But today, I’m done.
I am a firm believer that people can always learn and grow, and we should let them. We should allow for the painful and uncomfortable moments to happen, because it means we can acknowledge the issue and grow from it. We talk about it, we hear other perspectives and we move forward together.
Instead, you completely silence those who disagree with you. You delete instagram comments and block your fans. You shut down your Facebook group when a nurse in the middle of a global pandemic kindly expressed why your behavior was concerning. You then posted an episode calling your fans trash. You went on a red-faced, barely breathing rant this morning about how you don’t care about your sponsors and threatening the “Social Justice Warriors” who contacted your previous sponsors.
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Who I thought were two relatable millennials turned out to be two completely out of touch adults with no accountability for their behavior and the consequences of their words and actions. You let your Muslim fans feel at fear for their life and need to walk out when your Mother was paraded through the audience at Claudia’s Beacon show. You never once denounced her views or the harm she has done globally, instead you just make sure she – even her hands – can’t be seen in the background of your photos. You made healthcare workers on the front line of the pandemic feel completely silenced and attacked by your loyal fans because, as you say, “Real Toasters Know”
When your mother posted an outrageous and insensitive tweet about George Floyd’s death, you used that to – without acknowledging or denouncing it directly- pivot into a performative allyship to keep your views up. You didn’t have a show on Juneteenth in “observance” but you really were in the Hamptons. You watched a few Netflix originals about systemic (not systematic, Jackie) racism but tell your fans to “do as they see fit” in a pandemic without acknowledging the disproportionate effect on the Black community this pandemic has.
I understand that growth doesn’t happen overnight, and that you have a lot to learn. But I also understand now that you truly do not care about your fans, or those who ever called themselves a fan. If you’d rather make the decision to no longer have live shows, and instead pre-record them and screen what you say instead of actually taking the time to educate yourself on why what you say and do is offensive, there is a problem. And, still, even with a pre-recorded show – you chose to include a 1 minute 40 second rant about your former fans and how they choose to hold you accountable in an episode titled “The One About Growth”
But, it doesn’t matter, because sponsors don’t keep the lights on, right? The fact that you don’t recognize the privilege behind that statement and Jackie found the entire thing to be hilarious is astounding.
The message I keep seeing today after that rant Today was “Who has the time?” “Who is taking time out of their day?” – which is probably what a lot of your “RTK’rs” will have to say about me for writing this. But guess what, I do have the time. And I’m going to use it to let others who feel like me know that they’re not alone.
In a strange way, we’re grieving a loss. No matter how long we were fans or how long it took us to find our way out, there was a time we all supported you, listened to you, watched you and really believed in you. Until slowly the mask was pulled back and we all saw how deep we had gotten ourselves into something that was hard to crawl out of.
I will forever be grateful for the friendships I made and even some of the products I was influenced into buying. But as of today, I’ll never wear a TMT merch item out of the house again. I’ll never give you a view, a listen or even a like on instagram.
To those that are still fans of yours, I don’t judge you. I was you, many times. I fought the inner battle of loving your content and all that comes with it, but all that comes with it has simply become too much for me.
I do hope that you learn. I do hope that you really dig deep and work on yourselves to become empathetic, self aware and genuine with your intentions. I hope that you hear this and sit with it, instead of going on a laughing, screaming rant about how I’m trash, need to find something better to do, am a social justice warrior or just get blocked from ever speaking in your direction again.
Sincerely,
A Former Toaster
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