Stephanie and Erika: Bi Buy Bye

[OnceSane]

Stephanie, 29 (Yonkers, NY) and Erika, 24 (Australia)

 

As a social media influencer, Stephanie didn’t consider the idea of finding love online until she entered into an online relationship with one of her fans, Erika. The two have been together for the past three months, and Stephanie plans to leave New York to meet the woman she loves. However, getting her family to accept her decision may be difficult since she has not told them about her sexual orientation and has a rare bone marrow disorder.

[Christina]

Here is their into clip from TLC

Stephanie, the American, has aplastic anemia, a rare blood disorder and is trying to get a documentary of her life filmed. She also has a Youtube channel and a Patreon where you can pay to watch her take off her clothes. 

The Australian doesn't seem to have any leaked info about her, but this is a post on her IG about filming this show. You can click on either of their IGs to go to their accounts and review their stuff, if you want. It looks like Erika made it to the US in 2019 and has photos on her IG, but I didn't look through them.

 

 

[blubld43]

7 hours ago, Christina said:

Here is their into clip from TLC

Stephanie, the American, has aplastic anemia, a rare blood disorder and is trying to get a documentary of her life filmed. She also has a Youtube channel and a Patreon where you can pay to watch her take off her clothes. 

The Australian doesn't seem to have any leaked info about her, but this is a post on her IG about filming this show. You can click on either of their IGs to go to their accounts and review their stuff, if you want. It looks like Erika made it to the US in 2019 and has photos on her IG, but I didn't look through them.

 

 

Well I'll be watching!  Although I think this Aussie woman is in for a rude surprise.  She doesn't seem to understand how reality shows work, "kind and loving" has no place here!

[RealReality]

On 2/21/2020 at 4:59 AM, blubld43 said:

Well I'll be watching!  Although I think this Aussie woman is in for a rude surprise.  She doesn't seem to understand how reality shows work, "kind and loving" has no place here!

Exactly.  Her pleas for everyone to be nice to her or whatever are misplaced.  90 DF is not where you go for people to be nice to you.  

Also, something horrible must have gone down if she is trying to draw the sting. 

Edited February 24, 2020 by RealReality

[Frozendiva]

People can turn on a dime and are not kind, loving, and genuine. The fangs will be flying.

[mamadrama]

Not a word about her great love...This is all for publicity IMO. And yeah, I bet something went down.

[OnceSane]

I'm drawing a blank on subtitles for them...help a sista out, please!  

[hookedontv]

On 2/21/2020 at 3:39 PM, RealReality said:

Exactly.  Her pleas for everyone to be nice to her or whatever are misplaced.  90 DF is not where you go for people to be nice to you.  

She may be the only person who doesn't realize there's very little "reality" to these shows. Plus, I'm sorry, you put yourself out there for all the world to see - we are going to judge. You want a private life? Keep it private. 

[mamadrama]

I don't trust the American girl at all. She's as fake as a Louis Vuitton on Canal Street. To me it's clear that she just wants to be on TV. I will reserve judgment for the other one, but I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't cook this up together. 

[Spike]

Lust in Yonkers

I Cyber Kissed a Girl and I Liked It

 

[Christina]

13 hours ago, mamadrama said:

I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't cook this up together. 

That has been my opinion since minute one.

Stephanie is doing a Q&A about her risque Patreon, if anyone wants to join in.

 

[Gobi]

Title: Bi, Bi Love

[talktoomuch]

Stephanie and Erika: Bi Buy Bye

[monagatuna]

On 3/6/2020 at 8:05 AM, OnceSane said:

I'm drawing a blank on subtitles for them...help a sista out, please!  

I think the nothing is perfect for them. There's nothing there. Aside from the "shocking" "outrageous" outfits, tattoos, and over-done makeup, they are about as flat and boring as you can get.

[magemaud]

Not to open another tattoo conversation but, The Little Mermaid? Really, Erika? 

[AZChristian]

Stephanie and Erika:  Too boring for a title

[Spike]

An Anemic Relationship

Czech Yourself

[OnceSane]

For Stephanie and Erika: Bi, Bi Love, click the pink heart.

For Stephanie and Erika: An Anemic Relationship, click the yellow lightbulb.

For Stephanie and Erika: Czech Yourself, click the orange smiley face.

For Stephanie and Erika: Bi Buy Bye, click the green surprised face.

[Christina]

Stephanie expected a boudoir shoot to air. 

 

[Christina]

Apparently, and I didn't follow along when it was happening, Stephanie was taking heat about saying her mom didn't know about her bisexuality when she had old YouTube videos discussing it, so she posted the following to her stories:

Three slides, the arrows are hard to see

Everything I've read about her is complaints about her attention-seeking and boring, fake story, not her sexuality, but I'm sure she did get comments believing that is fake, too.

[Christina]

Having never to had to reveal my sexuality to anyone, I always take no position on whether I believe someone struggled with it and just give them the benefit of their claims. With these types of posts, though, I can see why people are calling bull

 

 

[Christina]

Filming time frame info in this caption

 

[Christina]

Someone on Reddit has summarized her YouTube videos. Because of the length, I'm going to drop in a spoiler, so the formatting is a bit off, but this is a paragraph from it. Link to the post.

Quote

My final opinion looking at her channel's data is that she might have been somewhat of an "influencer" a few years ago, but these years are long gone and are very unlikely to ever come back. The silver lining for her is that she can't go much lower, because you can't have negative video views. Now that you have the FACTS, what is your opinion? What do YOU think?

Spoiler

While going through my reddit feed this morning, an ET article with an interview from Stephanie popped up. In this article, she straight up called herself as a "social media influencer". Given that I had never seen this woman in my years on youtube, I was skeptical. Also my skin crawls when people try to convince others that they are high status or are a celebrity. In short, I felt compelled to check if her claims were true. The goal of this post is to provide you with some data so that you can make your own opinion about her "influencer" status.

The first number that everybody looks at when it comes to youtubers is their follower count. I looked at Stephanie's youtube account, and she has 351k followers. It looked pretty underwhelming to me, given that she says she makes a living by posting youtube videos. In fact, a look at socialblade.com shows that there are 54,212 channels on Youtube with a higher subscriber count. She's not in the top 1,000, not in the top 10,000, not even in the top 50,000 channels. I know many youtubers with bigger subscriber counts who have a day job and just consider youtube a hobby. At that point, my impression was that she can't make more than a very modest salary, which probably explains why this sOciAl MedIa iNfLuenCer lives in a one bedroom apartment in Yonkers.

That being said, the problem with follower count is that (1) you can't tell the portion of users who are still actively following an account, (2) you don't see any trends, and (3) youtubers are paid by views and not by subscriber count. She could have a low subcriber count but a very active fanbase. I decided to scrape the main page of her channel to look at the data in more details. I collected the title of the videos, how many views they got, and when they were posted. Aggregating views by year, I could see a very steep decline in total views after 2017. The issues with total views per year, however, is that it does not account for the number of videos posted each year. Alhough her total views are declining, it was still possible that she was making fewer videos but was getting more views per video. For this reason, I decided to compute the average views per video, and then a year over year average to highlight if her views have been going up or down.

As you can see in the chart above, her average views per video increaed a lot in 2015 (compared to 2014), in 2016 (compared to 2015) and in 2017 (compared to 2016). After 2017, it's a steady downhill for Stephanie. She did manage to get a few hit videos using clickbait and nudity, but nothing that compared to her "glory" of 2015-2017. Excel calculated a linear trend, which I think clearly shows what's going on with her channel. If you have ever taken a marketing class and if you consider her youtube a "product" that she offers, then her channel is not in the growth or maturity phases, but definitely in steep decline. Things are not looking like they will improve, however. Even with her new coverage on TLC, her 2020 videos have been viewed 17k times in average with not a single big hit. Not that the girl didn't try, though. Every single of her video titles is clickbait, with recent videos claiming that she says "goodbye" (whatever that means), that she got "rich selling nudes" that she "ruined" her "life", and that someone "moved in". In terms of content, things are not better with most of her 2020 videos featuring her showing off her boobs, trying sExY LinGeriE, and eating a bra.

So what is going on with Stephanie? Why is her channel declining so fast? Given the titles above, a quick linguistic analysis of her video titles was warranted to get to the bottom of it. I took the titles of the 738 videos she posted, and removed all the stopwords (e.g. how, me, I, and, etc.) and punctuation. Then I computed a simple word frequency in that dataset to get an idea of what she actually talks about on her channel. The top 20 words she used the most in her titles are: haul, sexy, boyfriend, experience, worst, new, crazy, story, huge, date, czech, tinder, questions, routine, truth, something, secret, hair, girl, and boobs. Just to give you an order of magnitude of how much she rambles on the same topics: she made 54 videos with "haul" in the title, 34 videos with "boyfriend" and 14 videos "boobs". Note that I did not even lemmatize the words, nor looked for synonyms. Although I did not look at word frequency by year, you can have a look at her youtube channel and see that thee words are evenly spread.

She did get more than a million views with eight of her videos, but just a look at the titles shows you that it's all clickbait, nudity, and shock value. I doubt that any of these videos brought her more than a fleeting crowd of horny guys, who are very unlikely to stick around to watch her boyfriend or haul videos. Here are the titles, for you to judge:

Dating a Married Man. The Truth Exposed (1.1 million)

I Cheated on My Boyfriend. The Whole Story (1.5 million)

How I Got BIG Boobs! (1.6 million)

My Shower Routine. Let's Shower Together! (1.8 million)

Drunk and Naked in St. Martin! (1.8 million)

My Lingerie Collection. Try On Haul! (2.2 million)

Finally Releasing My Nudes! (2.3 million)

Trying on Sexy Clothes & ANOTHER ENGAGEMENT?! (4.1 million)

Looking at the words she uses the most in her video titles, what struck me the most was that only one word seemed to be specific to her: "Czech". And that's not even THAT special: according to Wikipedia: "there are 1,262,527 Americans of full or partial Czech descent, in addition to 441,403 persons who list their ancestry as Czechoslovak" as counted in the US 2000 census. The rest of the topics she discussed are just plain, cliché and boring. Just going by word frequency, she sounds like a basic girl (haul, boyfriend, date, tinder, routine, hair) who inflates her stories (worst, new, crazy, huge, secret, truth) and desperately tries to look sexy (boobs, sexy).

In my opinion, her issue lies right there: Her channel is dying because her and her content are not special. She had 8 videos with more than a million views, but they most likely attracted guys who are not in her target demographic. Everything she does looks dated, nothing stands out, nothing feels fresh or new. You can find dozens of her on youtube (hundreds?), who use the same strategies (mostly clickbait and sex) and get the same mediocre views. She uses old recipes hoping she will offset the decline, but she is failing.

My final opinion looking at her channel's data is that she might have been somewhat of an "influencer" a few years ago, but these years are long gone and are very unlikely to ever come back. The silver lining for her is that she can't go much lower, because you can't have negative video views. Now that you have the FACTS, what is your opinion? What do YOU think?

PS: I am not addressing her illness here because I do not have any information about it. I am purely looking at her youtube channel from a data and linguistic perspective, no judgement on her as a person. As a human to a human, I wish her the best in her health journey.

 

 

[talktoomuch]

On 3/9/2020 at 9:35 AM, OnceSane said:

For Stephanie and Erika: Bi, Bi Love, click the pink heart.

For Stephanie and Erika: An Anemic Relationship, click the yellow lightbulb.

For Stephanie and Erika: Czech Yourself, click the orange smiley face.

For Stephanie and Erika: Bi Buy Bye, click the green surprised face.

I'm so irrationally excited. I've never won naming rights!!!!! 😁

[Polliwollidoodle]

1 hour ago, talktoomuch said:

I'm so irrationally excited. I've never won naming rights!!!!! 😁

I was actually just coming to post that the title of this is outstanding. Then I was wondering who names them, and there you are. @talktoomuch ----- be proud! Well done!

Signed, 

A fan.

[Scout Finch]

I think her mom looks so much like Nicole's mom, Robbalee.

[Spike]

Mixed with Exene Cervenka.  

[Auntie Anxiety]

22 hours ago, talktoomuch said:

I'm so irrationally excited. I've never won naming rights!!!!! 😁

Congrats, @talktoomuch. I won the Ed and Rose sweepstakes and I felt like I had finally arrived! 

[Frozendiva]

Geoffrey and Varya for me.

[Mrs. Hanson]

These two are, as Zied would say, "So much boring."

[magemaud]

If you’re interested in Stephanie’s quarantine advice...

 

[Takitaki]

I don't understand their timeline. They said they've known each other for like a year (or something like that?) But only "in a relationship" for about 4 months. Yet they've both said they applied for the show after they had been talking for 3 months. So when they applied for the show, they were not in a relationship?

To me it's obvious Stephanie wanted to be on tv and realised this would be a show she could get on, started chatting to one of her "fans" that had a crush on her and went from there. True love.

[silverspoons]

9 hours ago, Takitaki said:

I don't understand their timeline. They said they've known each other for like a year (or something like that?) But only "in a relationship" for about 4 months. Yet they've both said they applied for the show after they had been talking for 3 months. So when they applied for the show, they were not in a relationship?

To me it's obvious Stephanie wanted to be on tv and realised this would be a show she could get on, started chatting to one of her "fans" that had a crush on her and went from there. True love.

I was looking forward to the first same sex couple on the show but I also get the feeling she is in this for fame. Something does not add up , between her family not knowing about her sexuality, she acts so innocent on camera (but her channel she is very different), and the meeting was awkward.  Either Stephanie came up with her perfect story line or she is very willing to follow the production company's one. 

[Christina]

TIL Clown Couture is a thing

 

 

[RealReality]

6 hours ago, silverspoons said:

I was looking forward to the first same sex couple on the show but I also get the feeling she is in this for fame. Something does not add up , between her family not knowing about her sexuality, she acts so innocent on camera (but her channel she is very different), and the meeting was awkward.  Either Stephanie came up with her perfect story line or she is very willing to follow the production company's one. 

I want to see a same sex Trainwreck.  

Is that true about Marie Antoinette?  

What I know to be true is that she had at least one male lover...axel something or the other.  

Im not sympathetic to the French monarchy, particularly Louis XVI.  But, I think that history has shown that Marie Antoinette unfairly painted as a loose whore who slept with anyone who moved as a way to discredit her. 

It's bothersome because unless there is some evidence I've missed making MA out to be some bisexual icon is just cosigning the historical slut shaming narrative the revolutionaries used against her.  

That kind of thing should make these woke bisexual girls uncomfortable.  

[Christina]

Here is part of their casting tape

 

[Teri313]

I don't get these two. Didn't Stephanie say that Erica was afraid that her friends wouldn't like her (Stephanie)? That Erica and her friends were really outgoing and that Stephanie would be too quiet and boring for them? Now we see Erica in her environment and she apparently lives in the middle of nowhere and her friends don't seem particularly wild. I feel like their social media identities are a lot different than reality, and I agree with whoever here said that it looks like they cooked this thing up for SM attention.

[Zevious Zoquis]

The vocal fry is getting worse with each episode.  I ff over pretty much the entirety of the bi-girls segments...

[Christina]

They are both posting on IG Live about how insulting they feel about comments questioning their sexuality. You must have to follow them to see those posts, though. Steph did post this on her IG

 

[Spike]

If she has a low libido why acting all sex kittenish on YouTube all the time?  Oh, yeah.  $$$,

[Teri313]

I'm just tired of hearing her explain her illness every time she's on the screen. We heard it the first 64 times. We get it. And I don't understand having to justify why you don't want to have sex with someone you (really) just met.

[Spike]

Did she pack dental dams?

[RealReality]

1 hour ago, Teri313 said:

I'm just tired of hearing her explain her illness every time she's on the screen. We heard it the first 64 times. We get it. And I don't understand having to justify why you don't want to have sex with someone you (really) just met.

Everything with her is just TMI.  So thirsty for attention.  

[Christina]

From Reddit. The left panel is Steph and  the right is Erica.

[Teri313]

Does anyone else wish that they would have cast a real gay couple instead of these two? I can't take them seriously. I feel like they're two kids playing house. Maybe experimenting. I don't know. It just seems silly to me. I would really like to have seen two serious adults that are really gay and out and no angst about being out or not. Just normal people - but with as much dysfunction as any of the other cast members.

[mamadrama]

Their sexuality has nothing to do with why I think they're a fake couple. 

[Christina]

There is supposedly a gay couple on the next season of The Other Way. Men, I think, but can't remember which country and don't think it's been confirmed yet. 

57 minutes ago, mamadrama said:

Their sexuality has nothing to do with why I think they're a fake couple. 

Same here. They don't seem to have anything in common or actually know much about each other. Stephanie is always "on" and seeking attention. Everything about her screams FAKE. I don't doubt her aplastic anemia diagnosis, but she's so flippant about it.

[RealReality]

11 hours ago, Teri313 said:

Does anyone else wish that they would have cast a real gay couple instead of these two? I can't take them seriously. I feel like they're two kids playing house. Maybe experimenting. I don't know. It just seems silly to me. I would really like to have seen two serious adults that are really gay and out and no angst about being out or not. Just normal people - but with as much dysfunction as any of the other cast members.

Yes, this.  It's kind of disrespectful that these two were cast as the first "gay" couple.  These two attractive, young bi girls seem more like a nod to the plot of a soft core porn and not a way to be more inclusive.

Also, they are boring and tryhard. 

Edited April 1, 2020 by RealReality

[Gobi]

Stephanie's tortured explanation of her sex life (posted earlier), if true, seems like something one would mention to a potential spouse before flying halfway around the world to meet them.

[mamadrama]

1 hour ago, RealReality said:

Yes, this.  It's kind of disrespectful that these two were cast as the first "gay" couple.  These two attractive, young bi girls seem more like a nod to the plot of a soft core porn and not a way to be more inclusive.

Also, they are boring and tryhard. 

I know this is the third time this movie's been brought up (and I seriously thought I was the only person in the world who had seen it) but it all reminds me of KISSING JESSICA STEIN. And that these two are what my gay friends refer to as "lipstick lesbians" I'm even more turned off (no inference intended). I'm sure TLC thought that they'd be more "palatable" for certain viewers since these ladies are pretty, happy, and friendly. And while Erika is a little offbeat, she's not SO weird that she'd be a turnoff to the more conservative viewer. (My dad's family is gung ho Pentacostal Holiness and rip on any female in pants with a haircut so I gauge their reaction to most things to see what that part of the audience thinks. They like Erika/Stefanie so there's that.) 

I believe that Sharp came up with the idea of the boob class. I think they come up with a lot of the ideas for what these couples see and do. And why wouldn't they? They want to film shit that's interesting. They don't want their couple to go to the cinema or sit in a coffeeshop for 5 hours. Boring. I also think Stephanie knew about it beforehand.