by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
At the moment, I’m living in oblivion and could easily walk off the side of the earth without anyone noticing for a few weeks. So, when I saw what happened to the one semi-famous person I’ve actually interacted with I was rather surprised.
Elisa Jordana
You see, there once was a very curious streaming “program” online called Kermit & Friends. It was hosted by Elisa Jordana and at its height had a very small — but obsessive — following. This was a number of years ago, even before the rise of MAGA and Trump, if I remember correctly.
I only got involved with KAF, as was called, because I was “power user” of a video chat service known as Blab and people from the KAF community would occasionally drift into the Blab community. Given that I was a user of note on Blab, I realized it was inevitable that the KAF people would swarm me.
So, rather than wait for that inevitable event, I plunged into KAF and would occasion appear on the show. The key issue about KAF was it was trying to be like the Howard Stern show — on which Jordana was once a writer — but it totally missed the point of the show.
Yes, there are some very grating, crass elements to The Howard Stern Show, but Stern has, over the decades, become probably the best broadcast interviewer. It is surreal how he surrounds himself with such…unique…people and then can turn around and evoke a very, very compelling, though provoking interview.
But back to Jordana.
What was so interesting about KAF was Jordana — who is demonstrably attractive — was she seemed to want to use her air of celebrity to exploit the anonymous middle-aged men (like me) who were ecstatic that someone like her would give them any attention at all.
The whole thing was surreal and EXTREEMLY DIFFICULT to properly explain to anyone who had not actually watched KAF. Given how obsessive the audience of KAF was, I’m SURE there are any number of clips of me being on the show floating around.
One notable element of the KAF community was how intense it all was. Every Jordana twitch was debated and scrutinized to an bonkers level. And that doesn’t even begin to address how *I* became to focus of some of that insane attention to the point that people would dig up shit I posted online twenty years ago and demand I give the an explanation for it.
To a certain extent, this reminds me of what happened to me at the height of ROKon Magazine. That, too, was a moment in time when I felt like I had some sort of “image” I had to manage because people actually, like, uh, cared about me.
Jordana hitting her boyfriend during a livestream / New York Post
One curious element to the KAF community was there was a real need for some sort of WWE-like “storyline” that people could follow. As such, a number of KAF people were OBSESSD with trying to romantically link me to Jordana even though it was clear she was just using me — and everyone else swirling around her — for content.
This absurdity came to a head when I went to NYC one time and called her bluff — I suggested we meet up while I was in town. I’m sure she was both alarmed and bemused that a loser like me (relative to her at the time) would propose such a thing.
It was around the time of the untimely, tragic death of the late Annie Shapiro that I got fucking fed up with KAF. They were so obsessed with things they thought might be true — even though these possibilities were, well, impossible — that they made insinuations that left me enraged.
Anyway. I don’t like to think about that.
But, back to Jordana. She made news recently for beating the shit out of her boyfriend. From what I can tell it’s understandable that she freaked out on her boyfriend, but…maybe violence wasn’t the best course of action? And especially not while you were livestreaming in your car.
From what I can tell from the New York Post article about the incident, she still has some sort of KAF show on YouTube? Maybe? I’m too lazy and leery of getting involve in that particular situation again.
But what gets me about this whole incident is the Post coverage. It makes me wince at how they would describe me if I somehow got into the spotlight. It’s very unnerving.
Anyway, I’m completely indifferent to all of this. I just want to be left alone by anyone still somehow connected to KAF or Jordana. I probably shouldn’t even write this post, but I can’t help myself because this is actually something interesting I have some connection to.
