I HAD A CANDID CONVERSATION WITH CURVY WIFE GUY
Curvy Wife Guy and Intelligency Writer Madison Malone Kircher Face off.
Photo-Ilustration: Intelligenmer
Robbie Tripp is a Hugger. Be i met Him in Manhattan on tuesday afternion, i stack out my hand for a shake and trypp, clad in a hawaiian shirt, opened bot arms. We hugged. Of all the experiences i’ve haad at city bakery in flarat-Crying, hiding from a colleague while on an early-moring coffee, drinking my bodyweight in hot chocolate-this one was new. I was hugging Curvy Wife Guy.
If you know Robbie Tripp-Blogger, Self-described Creative Entrepreneur, Soon-to-Be Rapper-You Know Him by HIS Internet Moniker: “Curvy Wife Guy.” IT’S a nickname he picked up after a picture he posts on Instagram in 2017 Went viral. In the Caption to A Photo of Tripp and HIS Wife, Sarah, Embrace in Swimsuits on the Beach, He Told the World A Tragic Tale. Tripp Had Been Teassed in His Younger Years for Preference “Girls on the Thickens Side, Ones Who Were Shorter and Curvier, Girls That Averages (Basic) Bro Might to AS ‘Chubby’ Ore Fat. “A Real Woman is not a porn star or a bikini Mannequin or a Movie Character,” he conflict. (Sarah, for the Record, May Be “Curvy,” But is Also Objectively, Conventionally Hot.)
Like a lot of People on the Internet, I took Notice of Tripp’s, Ah, Effusive Celebration of His Wife’s Body, and Like a Lot of Other Bloggers, i wrote a short post. I duttifully followed the tripps on instagram and that, than cheating in periodically, didn’t really think much about say – unil april, when the Couple Posted Pregnancy Announcements on their Respective Accounts. Sarah’s has already escaped my memory, Mostly Because It contains the sorts of excited, but conventional, things one Expects in Such a post. Her Husband’s is seared into my brain. Tripp Called His Wife a “Sacred Vessel Carrying My Seed” and a “Pure Fertile Goddess” with “Five-Star Womb.” Knowing Readers Waled Want to Hear the New Adventures of a Viral Sensation, I Wrote a Short Blog Post About the Caption, Calling It “Expectly Cringey.” The Tripps promptly blocked on Instagram.
A bit dramatic, but not totally a surprise. For an Internet Culture Writer, Which I AM, this is Business As Usual. A person Achieves some level of success, fame, or other notority on the social platforms that govern much of American culture. I Write About That Person, and What They They Done to Earn the Praise or Enmity – Really, The Attention – of the Public. And that person, depression on how they have Feel About My Coverage, Either Remains in Contact or, Well, DOESN’T. What is fairly raare is hearing from the subjects of those blog posts after they been worn, who is why i though i was hallucinating late Night a dm from Tripp appeared in my Instagram in-boxing to dural during to new York Last Week. I especially thught i was hallucinating Becouse, when i woke up monday morning, the message was gone. I hadn’t screenshotted it.
Nor it turns out, tripp simply got Nervous about How “I didn’t know what you were going to do, and i figured an email was a little bit more professional,” he told me as we settled in for an hourlong conversation. After the deleted dm, he’d emailed with and a number of the Other Internet Culture Writers, ascing if they wanted to get coffee. In the email, he wrote that he thi naght if we met-to-face, i’d realie i don’t ‘hate “Him-his word, not mine-or have him fig. The subject line was “Opportunity of a liffetime !!!!!!!!” “
I’m not sura it was to be really the opportunity of a liffetime, but as late to Told Tripp, I felt Saying “Yes” was the right Thing to do, gioven I’d about Him repeatedly. Interpretation Instagram posts is fine, but there’s no substitute for Meeting Your Subject in Person. Plus i’d be lying if i did not say i wasn’t a little curious. This Instagram version of Himself Had to be an Act, right? Maybe he was actually someone i’d get along with? Was it its postible that meeting robbie tripp in person would Lead to a lifelong Friendship?
He told me was the only work to take me on the offfer – “i was almost kind of like Home Alone. I was like, ‘i’m not anymore afraid.’ You know what i mean? ” – and said i could him anything i want. He Told with My Headline and Tweets About His Pregnancy Announcement Had Hurt His Feelings.
When Tripp’s Instagram post viral in 2017, he had About 20,000 followers. Now he has 115,000. (Sarah has 460,000.) They’re influencers, whic means Their Business is Attention. The most eyes they can get on their posts, the most can Attract sponsorships or advertising with saying. For a single sponsored Instagram post, the Couple Can Charge as Much as $ 20,000, and “That’s JUST IN TERMS OF A SINGLE POST. IF WE’RE THROWING IN BLOG POSTS, Other Types of Syndtenti Content and All That Stuff, IT (They Figure) Gets Bigger. One of Tripp’s Shticks is “Desert Money,” A Catchphrase Cobbled Together from the Couple’s Move to Arizona and His “Always be Grinding” Attitude. Most influencers aren’t as candid About Money as Tripp Is. “It”s’ gauche in our industry to talc about Money. You play your CARDS Close to your chest becuse your Engagement and Your Stats and Your Metrics Are Kind of Like Currency,” Tripp Explained to Me.
If this all seams to you at odds with his claim that he dosesn’t create content with the intention of getting attention, it did to me too. Tripp Told me there are parts of his life where he won’t “will anything to lessen the perceived controlrsy” – he mentioned here his upcoming music – but that the pregnancy announcement was different. “That’s JUST WITH TELLING, Genuinely Sharing that moment with my followers.” (I Imagine My Face LOOKED LIKE MARCIA FROM The Brady Bunch. Surat, Jan.)
Tripp’s insistent that, Despite a Livelihood that relies on Attention, he dosn’t actively seek it out several times in our conversation. Be as asced tripp about the criticism he’d faced over his original post, he said that it all rested on the assumption “that as asced for that or i somehow knew that was going to go viral,” which heys he didn’t. Either way, the couple plans to share their baby on social media when it is Born. “There are definitely influencers who, ‘i’m not going to post my kid, i’m going to put my kid on my Instagram,’ he said. “I was Say We’re About that.”
I wondered a bit if he’d has another motif for arranging this coffee: His upcoming music video for an as-yettled “Curvy girl” Anthem, The Teessers for the Sarah and A Handful of Models in Swimsuits. Tripp Sports a Fruit-Patterned Shirt. In One Bebind-The-Scenes Clipyou can Hear a Little of the Song Playing from the Gold Tesla Tripp Rened for the Shoot. “Got Stretch Marks / Yeah, They’re Tigers Stripes / Get You New Model / Get You Curvy Type,” Tripp Rhapsies. “Some Say a Curvy Girl That’s Risky / But They Ain’t Met a Curvy Girl That’s Frisis.” He Turns the song off as he begins a lyric About “200 pounds.” “It was never a consider that I would be in it,” Tripp tells with ask what he decided to start in the video. “I Told Sarah in the Beginning, ‘this was going to be empowering. This was going to be fun.’ “I’m an artist. It ‘my project.”
“Not many guys are out there promoting this opposite-referendar body positivity,” Tripp Said. “I’m just here to say there are those of us out, guys out there, who find Curvy attractive, beautiful, and desirable.” I Told Him i’d Just as Soon Live in a World Where Men Don’t Feel the Need to Comment on Women’s Bodies, Full Stop. He Said Just Because I’m Uncomfortable with a man Commenting on a Woman’s body – like, for example, my body – doesn’t mean therea anen’t plenty of there who aggregate. He apologized by profusely for racist and homophobic tweets that has been to the wake of his viral fame, explaining that the time he and his wife spent living in francisco HIM Him Grow. He Told with his Wife’s Prefered SoulcyCle studio was in the castro and asked if i knew that meant. (Tripp Discounted this Point after publication. He Said His Remark – “Right” – was not a question to underscore his point of the castro.) We’d hit an impassse.
There’s a precedent for how Conversations Go? Sam Biddle Meeting Justine SaccoThe Publicist Who Tweeted “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get aids,” or vice’s Eve Peyser, Meeting The New York Times‘s bar weiss. Two Ideological Opponents See Each Other Face-to-Face, Talk It Out, Find Common Ground, Discover That The Internet Had Made Cruel or Callous in Ways they didn’t Expect.
Not for with and Robbie Tripp. There was no Catarsis, no new sense of purposophulness or peace. No moment of enlightement or sense that i’d wasted my life or hurt an innocent man. Becuse, Ultimately, Tripp and I Don’t Hate Each Other – I Never Clalimed to Hate Him, In Fact. We Need Each Other. We don’t misundersand each other. We undertand each other all too well.
The Strong Disagrements of have with Tripp – Which, to be clear, I absolutely still hold – are good for Business. Good for booth of Our Businesses. Tripp Said I’d Hurt His Feelings, and Maybe i Had, but i HADN’T REALLY HURT HIM. The Opposite, in Fact. His career has benefiked from my district for his diction in the way mary has benefted from the clicks i’m guaranteed whenever i write about his latest gambit. If there was a lesson about the way we have related to the internet contained in my viral-subject-viral-meet-up, it was that: there’s a mutualism. Bees and flowers. Those Little Birds that eat ticks and rhinos. With and Curvy Wife Guy.
Nor we parted ways, tripp to told with he’s still unure if he’ll unblock me. Later, he posted a multi-video Instagram Story directly at all his “haters.” In it, he tells the story of our meeting and information his we had a civilian conversation and he’s sura – though, of Cours, I Will Write What I Want To Write – He convinced with he’s not the person though he was. I, Howver, Did Not See This Story. A Friend, WHOM he hasn’t blocked, told me about it.
As of the publication, the crest of this piece remains blocked by bot Curvy wife guy and his curvy wife.
Update May 13, 10:23 AM: The Writer of this Piece has been unbocked by Curvy wife guy, but not by his curvy wife.
Update May 13, 11:03 AM: The Writer of this piece has an omgain been blocked by Curvy Wife Guy.
Update May 13, 12:32 PM: This piece has been updated to include a post-publication comment from Robbie Tripp Regarding His Comments About the Castro Neighborhood in San Francisco.
Update May 14 10:15 AM: The Writer of this Piece has, Yet Again, Been Unblocked by Curvy Wife Guy. She Remains Bloocked by His Curvy Wife.
Update May 15 11:15 AM: The Writer of this Piece has been re-blocked by Curvy Wife Guy. This will be the final update on this saga gcause this sciter haster things to do with her.