Founder of Overheard LA, Which Pokes Fun at the City’s Pretensions, Is Unmasked



Photo

Jesse Margolis, center, the creator of the Instagram feed @overheardLA, at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. Credit Emily Berl for The New York Times

After decades as the butt of jokes by Johnny Carson, by Steve Martin, by Larry David — basically, by everyone — Los Angeles may seem beyond satire. But over the last year, the West Coast capital of excess has been a target for parody from an unlikely source: random citizens, courtesy of an Instagram feed called @overheardLA.

The account, which has caught on with celebrities like Vanessa Hudgens, Jennifer Lopez and Kat Dennings, and even the city’s mayor, Eric Garcetti, is a repository of random conversational snippets submitted by thousands of eavesdropping Angelenos as they hang out in the city’s nightclubs, cold-pressed juice bars and yoga classes.

The submissions skewer the city as brilliantly as any stand-up hopeful at Hollywood’s Comedy Store, even if many appear to have been uttered in all seriousness:

“Sometimes, I think I want to have a baby and then I just think I am not even responsible enough for white jeans.” — Sept. 16

“She has 22K likes on a picture of a gourmet donut and I can’t get anyone to read my script.” — Aug. 1

Overheard LA popped up, unsigned, in August 2015 and quickly became popular with the city’s entertainment class (it now has 281,000 followers and an East Coast spinoff, @overheardNewYork). Despite efforts to unmask its founder, he has remained anonymous — until deciding to reveal his identity to The Times.

He is Jesse Margolis, who works in development for reality TV and docu-series.

Mr. Margolis, who was born in New York and lives in West Hollywood, Calif., asked that his age not be printed, in order to keep some mystery alive. He also declined to have his face photographed for this article. But he was happy to discuss what the crowd-sourced humor — or is it sociology? — reveals about the ever-evolving relationship between America’s warring cultural capitals, New York and Los Angeles.

Q. Where did the idea come from?

A. I was sitting around this health food store in West Hollywood, and these two women were having this long, rambling conversation that led from egg freezing to pit bulls. I wrote it down and posted it. Instead of the usual 12 likes, it got 30, and a screenwriter friend of mine said, “You have to do a page!” A couple of weeks later, Ireland Baldwin, who is Alec Baldwin’s daughter, found it and reposted it. It just took on a life of its own.

More than half your followers come from outside California. Why do they care?

A lot of the trends start here — hot Pilates, aura photography — and a lot of culture gets exported from here. Or anti-culture. People all over the world see the Kardashians in Calabasas, “The Price Is Right” from the CBS studios on Beverly Boulevard. At the end of the day, they care about Los Angeles because it represents an ideal reality. It’s where the myths have been made for the last hundred years.

Isn’t Los Angeles outgrowing its role as America’s punch line?

L.A. has gotten a lot cooler and a lot more interesting. You have all the tech companies here now. It’s a lot more international, with better food, art and fashion. But the stereotypes are real for a reason. It still remains a wonderfully superficial fantasy land. A lot of my close friends from New York have moved out here in the last five years, and they are always saying, “I’m taking New York with me.” But even the hard-core New Yorkers end up getting overly attached to their yoga teacher or getting acupuncture for their dog. The culture of L.A. inevitably converts you.

In cities as big and crazy as those two, do you get bombarded with material?

We get close to 100 submissions a day, by D.M. or email. I do my best to curate it. I like one-sentence pearls of wisdom about what younger people are going through on topics such as dating, fitness, work, partying, ennui. I like each post to feel like a six-second sitcom.

Are the New York “overheards” different from those in Los Angeles?

There is definitely a lot more harshness in New York, and the conversations are about the relatable struggle, like the struggles of where you’re going to live. The intimate moments come from forced situations between strangers: on the street, in a park, on the subway. In Los Angeles, the material tends to be from another planet: fantasy stuff about your “social media brand,” or about longevity fads or your dog’s zodiac sign. One quote we recently posted was an effusive dog owner telling her friend, “I was reading my dog his horoscope the other day and I was like ‘Oh, my God, Bronson, this is so you.’”

Are the two cities still polar opposites?

The cities are a lot closer than they ever were before. There are a lot more New Yorkers in L.A., and L.A. has a lot more to offer, the way New York always has. And also, New York is more scattered than it was. The New York where I grew up, everything existed in Manhattan. Now there are seven different “cool” parts of Brooklyn, there are cool parts of Queens. Now you can have a long-distance relationship in New York the way people joke about having one in L.A. Even so, in New York, you’re searching to get a tiny bit of space to yourself, and in Los Angeles you’re lonely and searching to be around people.

How do you weed out potential fakes?

Honestly, we do our best. I will always ask someone once or twice: Is this real? Is this a friend or a stranger? I’m sure there are people who are drunk or goofing around and just want to get on there to get a laugh from their friends, and we certainly try to vet that out. But at the end of the day, comedy is more important. If it’s a genuine piece of gold that represents something funny about the city, I think that is more important than trying to be overly serious or journalistic. It’s an Instagram account, not a news source.

Is there any topic you won’t touch?

We’ve got tons of submissions about things that celebrities have said, but we just don’t post them. It’s not a gossip page. It’s really about comedy, and hopefully, a little bit of community self-reflection: “This may be extreme, but I’m 10 percent like this.”

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