In the column Straight Nonsense, columnist Moises Mendez II takes a queer eye to the insanity of straight culture.
Online fame is similar to the story of David and Goliath: The more famous you get, the more you feel untouchable, but all it takes is one email chain from 2019 to deflate all of the public’s goodwill towards you.
This is exactly what happened with Cole Walliser, better known as the face of the Glambot (also the director) — you know, the high-speed, slow-motion camera that is at every major awards show and has lensed everyone from Taylor Swift to Lady Gaga to Jennifer Lopez. The latter of whom is the reason for the most recent controversy.
At the Golden Globes earlier this month, social media users were turned off by JLo’s turn at the Glambot, not because of the final product, but because of the interaction between her and Walliser. In the video, she doesn’t seem to acknowledge him and basically stands on her mark, looking down for the majority of the time. After the camera stopped rolling, he thanked her for her time, and she waved as she walked away, barely exchanging any words with Walliser. The video quickly shot up to its current 39 million views, as many people argued that Lopez was being “rude” and saying she was “the worst.”
Walliser attempted to tamp down the discourse, saying that he’s been asked multiple times who was the meanest person he’s interacted with — acknowledging that JLo’s name is in the conversation online, but diplomatically saying that there isn’t one celebrity that’s earned this title (which we all know isn’t true, but whatever). “These celebrities are at work, they’re there to do a thing — to promote their show, to be a guest, to be a presenter, they’re working,” he said in the video. “Some people, chatty at work, some people, not so chatty at work.”
Walliser curried public favor with this video because people knew he wanted to calm everyone down before the discourse spiraled out of control (there’s no stopping that, I’m afraid). But not too soon after his video was posted, the media company Pop Crave amplified a video of an email chain between him and a woman named Yinka Animashaun from 2019 that she uploaded to X on January 18. In their exchange, she inquired about the cost of having the Glambot at her wedding. He thanked her for the message and wrote back, “It is not cheap, if you feel like something like this might be within your budget range, then I am happy to discuss further.”
She responded by saying that it’s something that’s within her budget, to which he replied, “I don’t see how you could be since I didn’t say how much it was and could be between $10,000 and $1,000,000.”
They exchanged more messages, attempting to figure out logistics, before Walliser said, “It’s $300,000 I’ll take a 10% deposit to secure the gear and once I have the deposit I can do a contract. Ready to get started?” Animashaun said she’d reach out by Monday, which was met with another message from Walliser, saying, “If you wanted to know how much it costs you just needed to ask, you don’t need to pretend you are going to book it.”
This interaction caught people off-guard for a number of reasons — the main one being that Walliser is known to be very personable and respectful to the celebrities in the videos of him interacting with them on red carpets. It was surprising to see him apparently turning his nose up to someone just because, seemingly, she wasn’t a celebrity.
However, if you really have $300,000 to spend on just one aspect of your wedding, do you really deserve the sympathy of the general public? Two things can be true at once — he shouldn’t have interacted with a potential client in such an odd way, and if he was being this unprofessional, go throw that $300,000 somewhere else! He’s the one fumbling a huge bag because of his ego.
The Glambot’s original creator, Joseph Kahn, got into the conversation and claimed ownership of the original idea. “I keep hearing my name and Glambot. Yes I created it back in 2016 for E! The lighting, camera work, lens choices, and methodology are all my design. I ended up having to both operate and win a Grammy at the same time at the Grammys lol,” he wrote in a post uploaded to X. “It was too much. It’s fun but I’m busy.”
He then made a snide comment towards the discourse, saying, “Do you want to operate a glambot? Here’s how you do it. Put your iPhone on a selfie stick. Record in slow motion. Swing it at someone really fast. Stabilize it with editing software. Slow it with a good app. Congrats. You just made $300,000 at a wedding.”
This whole ordeal is a constant reminder that no matter how unproblematic or wholesome the content you put out online is, there are people praying and waiting on your downfall. And once it does happen, and that incredibly high fall from grace comes, they will be the first ones waiting to dance on your grave. The internet thrives off of spectators who watch your every move out of hatred or with ill intent (because views are engagement regardless). These people are waiting for that “gotcha moment,” the concrete, undeniable moment to dogpile on someone and “cancel” them for good all over the simple fact that they don’t like that person.
What Walliser said is not illegal by any means. Was it gross and demeaning? Yes. Should he have said it? Absolutely not. But at the end of the day, the world will keep on spinning, and the internet will continue searching for cold, hard proof that Walliser doesn’t deserve a platform. Until then, the miserable spectators will be standing on their marks, ready to pounce.
Moises Mendez II is a staff writer at Out magazine. Follow him on Instagram @moisesfenty.
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