Phoebe Bridgers is known for having a way with words, and she has a few choice ones for abusive fans.
The “Motion Sickness” singer recently opened up about some of the less savory sides of fame in an interview with Them, and her Boygenius bandmates Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker backed her up.
The paparazzi were hounding Bridgers as she walked through a Los Angeles International Airport terminal with comedian and “Promising Young Woman” actor Bo Burnham this January. She had announced the death of her father with an Instagram post days before, and she was en route to his wake.
“I’m coming from a place of literally — I’m feeling it in my body as I’m saying it, but — people with my picture as their Twitter picture, who claim to like my music, f— bullied me at the airport on the way to my father’s funeral this year,” she revealed.
Rumors of her late-2022 split from “Normal People” actor Paul Mescal had been floating around for a few months when the airport photos with Burnham went viral.
Fans had been (too?) invested in the Bridgers-Mescal pairing, per the Daily Beast, since witnessing their blooming love story via a 2020 Instagram live video — preserved on YouTube — where Mescal interviewed Bridgers. Their chemistry was reportedly palpable.
It was the pandemic, people were locked inside their homes, and there was a love story happening remotely right before their eyes.
So when the “I Know the End” singer was spotted alongside Burnham, Bridgers said, her father’s passing didn’t stop fans from ruthlessly responding.
A quick search for “Phoebe Bridgers Bo Burnham” on Twitter pulls up an endless feed of social media comments condemning the two together, complete with gifs of people gagging and screaming.
“If you’re a kid and the internet somehow taught you that that’s an OK thing to do, then of course I hate capitalism and everything that led you to believe that it’s OK to do that,” Bridgers said. “I, at one of the lowest points of my life, saw people who claim to love me f— dehumanize me and shame me and f— bully me on the way to my dad’s wake.”
In the videos of the two at the airport, Bridgers is heard asking someone off-camera to please leave her alone.
“It’s not like they didn’t know my dad just died,” she continued. “A lot of the top comments [were] like, ‘Hey, her dad just died, what are you guys doing?’”
“I f— hate you,” Bridgers said to those who harassed her but also use her face as a profile photo online, “and I hope you grow the f— up.”
Happily, Bridgers said most of the people she encounters “light up her life” and remind her what she loves about her job. But she doesn’t have to grin and bear it when it comes to bad behavior from fans.
“My two best friends” — her bandmates — “are helping me with the boundary of I don’t have to sit here and be f— grateful that that happened and that that’s a part of my job. It doesn’t have to be, and it wasn’t five years ago, so I appreciate being able to look at two other people and be like, this is dehumanizing abuse, horrible s—.”
“It’s abuse,” Dacus confirmed. “We’ve talked about this to ourselves, but I’m glad you’re gonna say it to people who actually need to hear it.”
Boygenius dropped their debut album, “The Record,” on Friday through Interscope Records.
