By Sophia Fineza

i’m kind of scared to write this lenZ piece. and by “i’m scared” i mean i’m scared of the ~d’amelio~ stans coming for me. 13 year old girls can be ruthless, man. i’m not ready to have them tear me apart cause i criticized their ‘best girl’ like f*ck dude. let’s just get into it.

so the d’amelios! they are people. that exist. some background, if you don’t know much about them. starting off with their parents, marc and heidi. marc is a republican politician (with that information, make your own assumption about him, i refuse to get political with this) and heidi is a model. the d’amelio girls are teenagers (charli’s 16, dixie’s 19) that are HUGE tik tok stars, and arguably two of the most famous people in the world right now. charli is the first creator to hit 100 million fans on tik tok! they first blew up in the summer of 2019, around the time that the renegade dance became popular. remember renegade? i still know every move of that sh*t. in fact, renegade (arguably) is what got charli her fame. she danced to it, (keep in mind that it wasn’t her original choreo, she “stole” it from creator jalaiah harmon, which we’ll talk about later) which led to her dancing videos becoming very popular on tik tok. charli pretty much kickstarted the trend of dance videos on the app, and is the queen of “straight” tik tok. her older sister dixie is also a very popular creator on tik tok, reigning in about (at the time of writing) 45 million followers on tik tok. she’s known for her song “be happy” which has been remixed TWICE now (just why). the girls are brand ambassadors for brands such as hollister and morphe. they’ve been on talk shows, charli danced with freaking j.lo, and is also releasing a book (?!!?!) in december 2020. wow, girls! that’s a lot!

recently, the two have gotten into a bit of controversy (if you could call it that). in a recent youtube video on their family channel, they had a family dinner with none other than beauty guru james charles, and some SH*T went down lol. basically, during this little family dinner ft. james, a private chef served the family paella for dinner, which sounds fancy~. anyways, as a joke, the crew decided to put snails in the paella. dixie questioned what it was, they told her it was a snail, and then she decided to eat the snail. she then proceeded to run outside and throw up?? all the while charli goes “do we have any dino nuggets?” see, i love dino nuggets more than i love my boyfriend, but you don’t just ask the personal chef that made you fancy dishes if they can give you some dino nuggets instead. that’s straight up rude. also, their parents proceeded to just go ah yes, classic dixie, yes that is our adult daughter puking because she CHOSE to eat a snail that she could have just not eaten. and then they just moved on like it was nothing? big mistake. later in the dinner, charli didn’t outright say that she was ungrateful for her followers, but she went “imagine if i hit 100 mil a year after hitting a mil?” and james goes “was the 95 not enough for you?” and yeah, maaybbbeeee charli’s was attempting a joke here, but your fans aren’t just numbers (also if it was a joke it’s got to be the worst flop of the year, yikes). you’ve gotten millions of people to follow you, and to say something like that gives an air of ungratefulness for every single person who enjoys and follows your content. again, rude. 

sooo just so i could justify my thoughts about the d’amelio girls, i asked my instagram followers how they feel about them. a good amount of people said that they don’t understand why they’re famous, that they’re only big cause of tik tok, that they got lucky. which is all very true. these girls didn’t REALLY do anything original. as i mentioned before, charli used jalaiah harmon’s original renegade choreography and didn’t give her credit until much later. i also got a lot of responses saying that they get a lot of hate for no reason, paired with no opinion of them or liking them. on the complete flip side, i got “no. just no.” and “fake” and “i never really liked them.” a lot of people defend them based on the fact that they rose to fame very quickly, and might not know how to handle it yet. “they became famous really quickly, which is definitely not what they were expecting, but they haven’t done anything wrong and they’ve used [their fame] for good things.” and “their drama is just being blown up for no reason. people just try to find something to tear them down for. it’s dumb, they didn’t do anything” being two cases where people came to their defense. i also got a response that they’re “doing their best” but there’s a difference between ‘i’m trying’ and ‘i’m doing my best’. a few people also brought up their platform in a negative light, mentioning how they don’t wear masks in public and are going to parties, and that they don’t deserve this big of a platform if they’re gonna show this kind of behavior as ‘okay.’

if the girls didn’t get a wake up call like this and weren’t shown that their actions affect their audience (most of which is younger teens and kids) it’s unclear that they would have ever learned their lesson. am i justifying adults telling them to end their own lives? absolutely not. that should NEVER happen. here’s a response i liked: 

“they cannot and should not be expected to be perfect or know how something they do will affect them online. they tried to do a bit and it made them look bad. this is also the first major scandal that has happened to them. the feelings they must be having, and all the death threats and hate mail they are receiving are probably doing serious physiological harm.”

 no one should be told to commit s*icide. ever. what i’m saying is that someone needs to put them in check. it’s pretty obvious that they don’t really know how to act in these kinds of situations, which is not good especially considering that they’re such large role models to younger kids. i’m not saying that they haven’t done ANYTHING good with their popularity - they’ve advocated for mental illness and body/skin positivity, but if you pair it with this? it isn’t right for anyone to be judged or praised for everything they do. the d’amelio’s are being worshipped and demonized in a world where everything is shades of gray.

now onto the responses i personally relate to, starting with one saying “it’s fun to make fun of them, but sometimes i feel bad cause they’re just kids.” i mean, yeah, i wouldn’t want people to make fun of me, but when they are shocked over the hate they get, i just am so confused. you made that decision to step into the limelight. no one FORCED you into it. you have to know that not everyone is gonna love you. i also really agree with this response: “i feel like the thing where charli wanted 100 mil instead of 95 is pretty dumb like you realize you got famous for dancing and living in LA, we respect the hustle but let’s not be ungrateful.” no one’s expecting her to be perfect, but it’s kind of just common sense not to be….rude? and just be happy that you got here in the first place! there are so many more talented people out there who never even get a chance in the spotlight, who work for years and never even get a SMIDGE of what charli and dixie have. i of course am not discounting the work that charli and dixie do, they obviously put in time and thought into their brand, but they’re not gods.

i really thought that the d’amelio’s and tik tok would be a trend that would die pretty quickly. genZ does kind of do that a lot. i swear, i’m talking about something new every week, but these two have stayed pretty constant. people put so much attention on someone who doesn’t even really seem to have an original idea or front. take this response that i got: “people are overly critical of children but the family overall is boring and overhyped.” there. that sentence right there sums up the d’amelios. they are people. they exist! but they’ve gotten too big and honestly no one should care this much about people being rude because that’s just a normal human thing. people are rude because they are not perfect, and normally life would continue, but these people are some of the most famous figures atm so now it’s a huge deal. it is up to us to decide if we want to perpetuate the drama by continuing to talk about it. i think we can think of something a bit more important to talk about than a girl who consumed a snail.