The Reddit sub r/ Hilaria Baldwin was created on November 30, 2020. The online community for the ‘Discussion of all things Hilaria Baldwin, Alec Baldwin’s wife,’ has 20,548 subscribers, who generate an average of 109 posts and 2364 comments a day. And it is bonkers.
In his memoir Alec Baldwin described his wife as ‘a truly extraordinary woman, singular in ways beyond the limitations of attraction, who seemed to have a light shining on her.’ A beautiful Spanish yoga teacher, Hilaria was hired as a lifestyle correspondent on Extra, co-hosted a podcast, starred in fit-mommy-to-be prenatal yoga DVDs, and launched a Hamptons-inspired clothing line with a shirtdress named after her husband. In 2014 she posted a #yogapostureoftheday on Instagram. She did a headstand in a bowling alley and the warrior pose in stiletto heels and the dolphin plank with her husband’s Emmy award balanced on her back. The Instagram account was the sine-qua non of her business model, where she interacted with followers and shared family videos and clips of herself working out in lacy lingerie. She documented five pregnancies and fans replied like friends to her posts (‘Hilaria, you look radiant‘). Her content farm was harvested at People, Hello! and Us before it was plucked off the shelves by the proletariat of the attention economy (‘Keep scrolling to see Hilaria’s breast-feeding photos over the years.’)
During the first eight years of her marriage Hilaria, who was born in Boston, never discouraged the assumption that she had been born and partially raised in Mallorca, which was listed as her birthplace on her agency’s speaker’s page. At her wedding she wore a mantilla veil, carried a flamenco fan, and had their rings inscribed ‘Somos Un Buen Equipo.’ ‘I like that I brought in a bit of my culture,’ she told People magazine. Baldwin often spoke with a Spanish accent–her husband felt confident enough to mimic his wife during an appearance on The Late Show, explaining, ‘My wife is from Spain… I don’t mean to be racist when I put that accent on’–but she walked a fine line, careful enough that the word ‘Spain,’ never appeared in her book, The (wait for it) Living Clearly Method.
In 2015 Hilaria asked Telemundo’s Evi Siskos, ‘How do you say in English? Cucumbers?’ as she demonstrated how to make gazpacho on The Today Show, a moment which became the sub’s ‘When the president does it, that means that it’s not illegal.’ Old classmates and Boston acquaintances started posting on an epic Hilaria-themed thread on DC Urban Moms. ‘People were on to her,’ recalled McNasty420, the moderator whose December 29 post, ‘How the whole thing unfolded, from the beginning’ is the sub’s Aeneid. ‘Lots of people. Some of the links were already there, I provided them with the cucumber video lol, and the links to her mom speaking. The more Hillary kept posting these underwear pictures and naming her kids Spanish names, the more people started contributing to the thread. Media just was not picking it up.’ McNasty420 said the DCUrbanMoms thread kept disappearing and returning with missing posts. ‘There was no way I was going to let this thread disappear, so I created the subreddit, since nobody else was doing it.’ The story remained limited to comments sections and social media until December 22, 2020, when a single tweet by the mysterious @lenibriscoe of Brooklyn[1]precipitated the unravelling of Baldwin’s carefully cultivated persona: ‘You have to admire Hilaria Baldwin’s commitment to her decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person.’ Not yet one month old,r/Hilaria Baldwin released the kraken.
Cyberspace investigators litter-picking on the information superhighway, they ferreted out her family’s old blog posts and videos of The Accent, and once the Internet had been mined of yearbook photos, they kept digging. They logged every Instagram story, and tracked the Baldwin family’s pets and the provenance of the images on the walls of their homes. They made mocking videos and memes and bombarded the businesses she tagged in her posts then mounted the apologies on the sub. They fretted that she was going to appear on Dancing with the Stars. They harangued her for the clutter in the background of her selfies, for hiding nannies, for wearing shoes that look like flayed intestine, for never putting down her phone. They accused her of child abuse and posted open letters begging her to get psychological help. ‘Attractive without filters?’ a poll wondered. ‘Based on a previous post some of us find her more attractive without filters, or at least attractive enough not to need all the distortion.’ Two hundred and thirty people cast their vote. ‘She’s nuts,’ one post was headlined, ‘How many selfies/outfit changes has this been in one day?’ The post ‘I didn’t believe she edited her hands/face in photos much until I saw this…’ received 223 comments. The sub marked Martin Luther King Jr. Day with examples of Baldwin racism, including Hilaria’s sub-famous MLK Day Instagram post, infinite reflections of two mirrors.
The subscribers call each other the ‘pepinos.’ The best posts are awarded the Golden Pepino Award (one month of ad-free browsing, access to the r/lounge and 700 Coins a month). There is a convivial sense of fraternity and pride. ‘Hola, mi gente,’ began one. ‘WOW!! Almost 11,000 of us Cucumberitos. How do you say “That’s Amazing in English.”‘ ‘This is my favourite sub filled with such kind people,’ someone replied. They praise themselves and each other for caring and learning from their mistakes. They say they post because they care about the Baldwin children, and address them by name: ‘Once you are old enough come to Reddit, and we will support you!’ Some of the subscribers drawn to the sub by their outrage over cultural appropriation have quit. ‘This sub is increasingly getting toxic and more hypocritical as the days pass on,’ neighbourhood nympho wrote in a (since deleted) resignation post. ‘I wish this sub was more centrally focused on the damage Hilary is doing to actual latina women of color. Instead this sub is a bunch of Becky blancas upset Hilary made them feel fat ragging on her for facetune.’ Some regulars supplement their activities with YouTube channels, creating videos like: ‘Hilaria Baldwin aging 8 years in 40 seconds’(8.4K views). ‘Just literally ran into them at the museum,’ a member posted, linking to a blurry picture of Hilaria and her children. ‘She’s my neighbour,’ (1.7 K upvotes and 774 comments) is one of the sub’s most popular posts.
A number of long-haulers are convinced that Baldwin has faked multiple pregnancies. Each successive pregnancy-faking post has members posting a version of ‘I didn’t want to believe it but you guys have finally won me over,’ beneath slideshows of pregnant Hilaria paparazzi photographs and bathroom mirror selfies. It is often concurrent with a certainty that the Baldwins have a marriage-for-show and the family resides in three separate apartments in the same building: one for each parent, and one for their nannies, who live with the children; still others are convinced that a woman convicted of stalking Alec Baldwin is telling the truth. Reading the sub is a master class in selective exposure theory. ‘If you had any doubts that she faked her pregnancies you can know(sic) put them to rest,’ Hurtin Head wrote over a photograph of Lil Nas’ fake pregnancy photo shoot.
In the summer of 2021 Baldwin began responding to the sub on Instagram. ‘I know… I know, sleuths… my skin is darker and my kids’ is lighter,’ she captioned a photo of herself holding her baby daughter. ‘Yes, they are mine. Trying to keep up with all these ideas.. I have to say, you have quite a bit of time on your hands.’ Members were outraged and accused her of muddying the waters. ‘This is a very warped, clever way of deterring criticism and steering the ship away from the obvious,’ Big Ad posted. ‘Keep in mind, she occasionally trolls’ Both Initiative warned. ‘She wants us to react so she feels in control….. This sub and Hillary’s ego are un buen equipo.’ In late August Baldwin posted a five-minute video addressing the topic of trolls and online bullies. ‘Delete, block, ignore. Don’t engage, and don’t do what they say.’ Her five-minute video hit the sub like a rocket. It was met with triumphant jubilation and inspired multiple posts, including: ‘She big mad,’ and, ‘A transcript of Hilary’s rant from her Hamptons bedroom.’
‘My God,’ wrote Quiet Argument. ‘She’s a mess.’
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In the days following @lenibriscoe’s tweet People published a powerful essay by Ale Russian explaining ‘Why the Hilaria Baldwin Scandal is Painful for Immigrants–Including Me,’ before returning to business as usual. On September 9, 2021, People.com carried two stories: ‘Hilaria Baldwin Shares Footage from Birth of Son Edu to Celebrate 1st Birthday’ and, ‘Hilaria Baldwin Shares Photo with All Six Kids During Family Outing,’ while the Today Show posted the video, ‘Watch Hilaria Baldwin count in Spanish as she encourages son’s first steps.’ Baldwin bridges the dividing line between old and new media. The sunny, positive updates which occasionally alluded to the ‘heritage scandal’ served as an analgesic to the alternate universe that is r/Hilaria Baldwin, where posts that day included, ‘We did it Pepino’s (sic). 11K and counting. Never forget,’, ‘Pretending she has girlfriends,’ and ‘The return to the city has driven her to the edge.’ When magazines like People and Hello! refer to Hilaria ‘fighting back against trolls,’ they’re talking about the sub, even though Reddit remains an unspeakable online space in their genteel publications, a country they refuse to officially recognize.
The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s 1932 Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics theorized that groups are more likely to behave badly than individuals. Emboldened by anonymity, a member of a group is able to disengage morally from their actions. Rationality and moral consciousness are warped in the service of the overwhelming self-interest of a group; the herd immunity of the Reddit thread. It explains how a person finds themselves storming a vaccination center, or winning an award they helped to create by posting 14,574 times on a hate-sub about a famous actor’s wife. The former Vice President of User Growth at Facebook has admitted he feels ‘tremendous guilt’ for his role in creating the ‘short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops of likes and hearts.’
‘I think in the back, deep, deep recesses of our minds, we kind of knew something bad could happen.’ Chamath Palihapitiya told graduate students at Stanford. ‘But I think the way we defined it was not like this. It literally is a point now, where I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works… eroding the core foundations of how people behave by and between each other.’
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On October 21, 2021 a revolver being used as a prop by Alec Baldwin discharged on the set of the movie ‘Rust.’ The director Joel Souza was injured and the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, a 42 year-old wife and mother was killed. ‘Halyna, you were a gem,’ read a tribute from one heartbroken colleague. ‘Halyna inspired us all with her passion and vision,’ her husband Matthew said. ‘Her legacy is too meaningful to encapsulate in words.’ An investigation by the Los Angeles Times described how ‘a cascade of bad decisions appeared to create a set chaotic even by its low-budget status.’ On the morning of the accident six crew members had walked off protesting working conditions. Three accidental discharges had already occurred on-set. Baldwin, who was starring in ‘Rust’ was listed on the call sheet as one of six producers. A haunting photograph of him bent over in despair in the parking lot of the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office was everywhere in the hours after the shooting. ‘Alec Baldwin has long lived at the center of a storm,’ read one headline. ‘Now comes a hurricane.’
The Baldwin family travelled to Vermont, where they pulled over on the side of the highway to answer questions by the paparazzi who had followed them out of state. ‘There are incidental accidents on film sets from time to time, but nothing like this,’ Baldwin said, as cars raced past behind him and his wife circled, wielding her phone. ‘This is a one-in-a-trillion episode, a one-in-a-trillion event.’ Subscribers to r/Hilaria Baldwin almost doubled between August and December of 2021. The sub began spotlighting her most egregious historical offences alongside the usual dissections and florid tributes to Hutchins. Subject and subscribers resumed their symbiotic animosity. ‘We were just saying she needs to get those children out more, and see some of the city they live in,’ wrote HoneyDijon-45 after a member spotted Hilaria and her children at a museum. ‘She lives here.’ Many members have said that Hilaria reminds them of their mother. Others mention angry dads. They have vowed to pursue her like Hamlet’s ghost, the Javert to her Jean Valjean: ‘She won’t come back. We simply won’t let her because she will not have changed and we need to protect consumers against unapologetic liars and unethical influencers.’
The Baldwins periodically post video diaries to their Instagram accounts. Hilaria has of late focused on bullying, online trolls, and upsetting encounters with photographers in posts captioned: ‘Have you ever been called fake? You are in good company. #powerupladies, we got this together.’ In one recent wide-ranging post, her husband addressed both the disappearance (and reappearance) of a Splenda packet with a fan’s supportive message and the reasons for his delay in complying with a warrant to turn his phone over to authorities, then admonished the New York Post for not featuring the death of Sidney Poitier on its cover before returning to the ‘Rust’ investigation. ‘I have no worries about that, I have no worries about that. That’s all going to work itself out,’ he said in his familiar gravel basso profundo, the voice of Jack Ryan, the Boss Baby, Capital One.
And what of the lurker? Tut-tutting at the Baldwins and the sub, a fire and brimstone preacher caught with a mistress, ‘just checking’ to see if the sub is still terrible, above it all and yet somehow still… involved. Transfixed. There have always been people who can’t look away, both the Mrs. Danvers’ of the world and the people who really ought to know better but click anyway, because the algorithms have grown stronger than their better natures and they’re powerless, unable to resist the screens and the hearts and the tweets and the Instagram Stories and the YouTube clips of decade-old yoga demonstrations on morning broadcast television.
[1] ‘People were asking me don’t you have anything better to do and the answer is: No, I don’t,’ she told the Daily Mail, ‘It’s a pandemic, it’s cold outside, and I don’t celebrate Christmas.’
The Intermediate Period 