Have a "white girl problem" and don't know where to turn? Babe Walker, Twitter's snarky, self-obsessed socialite has produced the definitive guide on how to deal with life's trivial issues in a new novel out this month.
A lot of work has gone into producing the "White Girl Problems" brand. What started as a phrase coined during an alcohol-fueled conversation one night in 2010 between friends, quickly became a business plan as brothers Tanner and David Oliver Cohen and friend Lara Schoenhals realized they had a viral trend at their fingertips.
The next day, they registered the Twitter handle @WhiteGrlProblem, then began tweeting quips such as "It's 5:16. How much weight can I lose by 8:00?" and "Judging me will only make you fat," with the hashtag '#whitegirlproblems.'
"We all realized Twitter's amazing and we thought this was incredible and a real opportunity to get out there," said Cohen, who also registered the website domain WhiteGirlProblems.com.
When Valentine's Day actress Emma Roberts quoted White Girl Problems on her own twitter account, the netizen team saw their trend come to life as thousands of new followers flocked to them with their own "white girl problems."
The three writers developed a universal voice for their Twitter account and accompanying blog, creating Babe Walker, a self-obsessed 24-year-old profanity-spewing college graduate and spawn of wealthy Beverly Hills parents who is annoyed by many of life's mundane tasks.
"She's an amalgam of everything that is going on right now in pop culture, all the socialites and real housewives and these women that we kind of aspire to be, but we also think their lives are ridiculous. She is an accumulation of all of that in one explosive package," said Schoenhals of Babe.
Unlike Babe, her three creators don't hail from Beverly Hills or the incredibly wealthy upbringing of their creation.
Oklahoma City native Schoenhals, 27, serves as the "post-college white girl" of the creative team, while the Cohen brothers David, 31, and Tanner, 25, are natives of Washington, DC, and both actors supplement Babe's acid wit.
The Cohens currently live in New York, while Schoenhals lives in Los Angeles.
Reuters - Global Times