Today we’d like to introduce you to Alexandra Tweten.
So, before we jump into specific questions about your work, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I moved to LA nine years ago for an internship at Ms. magazine. I was only supposed to stay here for four months, but after a week I knew I never wanted to leave. I love LA so much!
I’m now an author and public speaker, but I’m most known for creating the Instagram account @ByeFelipe. I started it on a whim one night in 2014 as a funny inside joke between me and a bunch of friends. We were talking about how common it was for men to suddenly become hostile if we turned them down, and a bunch of people were sharing screenshots of crazy messages they had received on dating sites. I put them all on Instagram so we could make fun of them together, and thought of the tagline: “Calling out dudes who turn hostile when rejected or ignored.”
A few weeks later, someone at The Atlantic magazine reached out to me about an article they were writing about online harassment, and after it came out, @ByeFelipe went viral going from 600 followers to 30,000 in a week. Now it has almost half a million.
Since then, I’ve applied my background in journalism and women’s studies to speak publicly about online harassment, sexism, feminism and toxic masculinity. I wrote a book that came out in August 2018 called “Bye Felipe: Disses, Dick Pics, and Other Delights of Modern Dating,” and now I’m working on my next book and creating a TV show based on the first book. Besides that, I recently spoke at The Sydney Opera House at their All About Women Festival, and at SXSW 2019. I also have a comedy podcast that I co-host weekly with Alison Stevenson called V Single. We talk about dating and interview comedians about their love lives.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I never really thought I would quit my day job to work on Instagram. I always assumed that no one would care about it next week. When I started @ByeFelipe, I was working at Ticketmaster and I just posted for fun on my off time. But when I sold my book, there was no way I could have written it with a full-time job, so I quit in August 2017.
Writing a book is really hard. My first deadline was only three months from when I started writing. I’d written articles before, but never anything this long. It was a transition, and I had to figure out how to get all of my ideas down and then organize them. It’s kind of an isolating experience, and you have to completely trust yourself. I definitely wasn’t prepared for it, but I eventually figured it out. Now that I’ve done it once, I think writing my next book will be a lot smoother.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
When I quit my job to start started writing, my number one and only goal was to finish a book and publish it. Originally, I never thought I’d write a book, but when the opportunity presented itself, I wanted to try it just to see if I could do it. Now that I have, I want to try creating other things too.
I never really think of myself as a “business,” but I guess my business is just me. I’ve always wanted to make my ideas known, and my ultimate goal in life is to use my voice to help others, especially people who may not have been heard before. Sometimes I get messages from women saying “thank you for giving us a voice and making our problems heard,” and that’s when I feel most proud.
What were you like growing up?
My mom says I was a pretty easy child to raise. I was kind of eccentric. I’ve always been pretty creative and there are a lot of artists in my family. I went through a lot of phases, like changing my name to Patty Duke when I was 4. (“The Patty Duke Show” on Nick at Nite was my favorite TV show.) There was a period when I was 5 when I only wore black. My friends and I were obsessed with the musical “Cats” in fourth grade and the Spice Girls.
From second grade until I was a senior, I grew up in a very small town in northern Minnesota called Climax. It had a population of 250 people, and I graduated with ten people in my class. It was the smallest K-12 school in the state. People in LA are always surprised when I tell them that, but it’s all I knew. We had to get creative and make our own fun because we were so isolated. We did have the internet, though, so I wasn’t completely clueless.
Pricing:
- “Bye Felipe: Disses, Dick Pics, and Other Delights of Modern Dating” – $15.99
Contact Info:
- Website: www.byefelipe.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/byefelipe/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/officialbyefelipe/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/bye_felipe
- V Single Podcast: https://podcasts.
apple.com/us/podcast/v-single/ id1364781455
Image Credit:
Anel Salgado
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
