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Gay dad of twin girls, bestselling author, and a menace with a microphone. Joseph Tito rants about the bullshit we all put up with: the school that lost its funding, the politician who deleted the comment, the grocery store shrinking your yogurt. He's usually implicated. He's always loud. New episodes every Monday. Got a mess of your own? Send it to info@jeopublishing.com. This is Joseph Tito, and I bitch so you don't have to.
Apparently, I am too much for the gays and exactly enough for women hiding in their pantry from their children. 200,000 people follow me. Mostly women, mostly moms, almost no gay men. Honestly, that tracks. Welcome to Bitch Fest.
Joseph Tito:I'm Joseph Tito. Gay dad, twin girls, husband, author, publisher, content creator. I've been doing this for almost nine years. Nine fucking years of Instagram, stories, reels, TikTok, brand deals, algorithms, unboxings, transitions, whatever the fuck we're calling content this week. And before I roast this entire industry, let me say the part that keeps me employed.
Joseph Tito:I am part of it. This is how I make money. Brands pay me to create content and sell products, and thank god they do. Now that I've said the emotionally mature part. I fucking hate about 70% of what we all do online, including me.
Joseph Tito:Especially me. Because after nine years inside this circus, I've seen the tricks. I've done the tricks. I've been the trick. So let's begin.
Joseph Tito:This episode is sponsored by Glitz Jewelry on Major Mackenzie. And before you ask, yes, everything I own came from there. Every chain, every ring, the bracelet I told people was a gift to myself, which is the sentence adults use when they don't want to say I have a problem. Ask for Lina. She's front of house.
Joseph Tito:Front of house is a job title that means professional enabler. Her brother Daniel is the designer, and I need you to understand what that means. You walk in, you describe a ring, and he designs it. Not orders it out of a catalog, designs it, Which is dangerous, because I have never once walked into that store and left with the thing I walked in for. I went in for a watch battery.
Joseph Tito:I came out with a bracelet. And if you grew up in a family like mine, you already know why a place like this exists. We don't do cards. Babies born? Gold.
Joseph Tito:Gold. Confirmation? Gold. Gold. One occasion in my entire family has ever been marked with a card.
Joseph Tito:My grandmother would have taken it as a personal insult. Glitz Jewelry. 2396 Major Mackenzie. Unit 8 in Vaughan. 15% off through the BTC Magazine app, which is free and which I am absolutely going to plug again later in this episode, because I have no shame.
Joseph Tito:Tell Lina I sent you. She'll charge you exactly what she charges everybody else because they are professionals and because I have zero leverage in that building. Okay. Back to the bitching.
Theme song:To get guilty. Oh, la la bitch fest. Okay.
Joseph Tito:So nine years of this and the seventy percent I can't stand. Where do we start? We start here. The fucking nail tapping. Why?
Joseph Tito:Why does every product need percussion? Tap tap tap tap tap. What are you doing? Are you reviewing a serum or trying to summon somebody? Just open the bottle.
Joseph Tito:This moisturizer completely changed my skin. Tap, tap, tap. This is the best foundation I've ever used. Tap, tap, tap. Jennifer, stop playing the bottle.
Joseph Tito:I can see it. And yes, before somebody goes digging through my content to find me doing it, I have. Of course I have. A brand pays me enough money, I'll tap the fucking bottle with my teeth. Daddy has bills.
Joseph Tito:Then we have because everyone has been asking. Who? Who has been asking? Give me one name. One.
Joseph Tito:Show me Patricia. Show me Patricia in the comments going, Joseph, please, before I die, tell me where you bought that coffee table. Nobody asked. You wanted to tell us. That's fine.
Joseph Tito:Just fucking tell us. I like my coffee table. Here it is. Done. Why are we inventing a public inquiry?
Joseph Tito:And we do it with everything. Everyone's been asking where this jacket is from. No. They haven't. The jacket was visible for three seconds.
Joseph Tito:Your dog was licking his balls in the background. That's what everybody saw. Then let's do a fit check. Let's fucking not. Shirt from Zara, pants from Aritzia, shoes from Prada, underwear from stop.
Joseph Tito:I don't need the ancestry of your outfit. You are wearing clothes. Congratulations. So am I most days. My fit check is shirt, cleanish.
Joseph Tito:Pants, whichever pair currently forgives me. Socks, not related. Underwear, private. Look, complete. And then there's, I wasn't going to talk about this.
Joseph Tito:Yes. You were. You set up a tripod. You put on concealer. You checked the lighting.
Joseph Tito:You added interruptions. You chose sad piano music. You absolutely planned to talk about it. Nobody accidentally makes a seven part series. I really didn't want to bring this online.
Joseph Tito:Then don't! There was a beautiful moment before you pressed record, where this could have remained private, and you said no. The internet needs to know Danielle didn't invite me to brunch. Call CNN.
Theme song:To get tilted. Oh la la bitch fest.
Joseph Tito:And here's where I think this whole thing went sideways. Social media used to be a place where we showed pieces of our lives. Now it feels like we're living pieces of our lives. Because we know they can
Theme song:be
Joseph Tito:shown. We're not documenting the moment anymore. We're creating the moment so we can document it. And once you see it, you cannot unsee it. Take food.
Joseph Tito:Every burger has a close-up, every sandwich has slow motion, and there is always a french fry breaking in half directly beside the microphone. It's a french fry. It's not going to perform a trick. Eat it. And every normal human activity now needs production.
Joseph Tito:You got a haircut. Okay. You made coffee. Lovely. You cleaned your kitchen.
Joseph Tito:Congratulations. Come with me while I return a package. Why? Why am I coming? I have my own shit to return.
Joseph Tito:Spend the morning with me. No. I have children. I don't even want to spend the morning with myself. And grocery shopping.
Joseph Tito:My god. Every item gets its own shot. Milk. Cut. Eggs.
Joseph Tito:Cut. Cheese. Cut. Bananas. Cut.
Joseph Tito:Bread. Cut. Avocado. Cut. How many editors does it take to buy guacamole?
Joseph Tito:Just put the fucking groceries in the cart, we know how shopping works. Nobody is watching going, oh, so after the eggs she gets bread. Pulitzer. Then there are the experts. Everybody is an expert now.
Joseph Tito:One viral video, and suddenly, here are three things you need to know about relationships. You're 23. You had one boyfriend. He sells crypto. Sit down.
Joseph Tito:Here's how to build wealth. Sir, you rented a Lamborghini for the video. Here's how to regulate your nervous system. You own a ring light. You are not the Mayo Clinic.
Joseph Tito:Everybody becomes a therapist, nutritionist, financial adviser, relationship coach, dermatologist, and trauma specialist before lunch. And then by dinner, they're doing a clothing haul. Pick a lane. And why are all the motivational speeches filmed in parked cars? Something goes wrong, and people turn into Socrates in a Hyundai.
Joseph Tito:If they wanted to, they would. Who is they? What did they want? Why are you whispering? Kyle forgot to text back.
Joseph Tito:We do not need a philosophy department. And the crying videos. Listen, I cry. I'm Italian. Crying is practically cardio.
Joseph Tito:But I have never been mid breakdown and thought, you know what this needs? A tripod. People are crying, then setting up the phone, checking the angle, walking back into frame, and resuming the breakdown. Imagine doing that without social media. You're sobbing.
Joseph Tito:Hold on. Hold on. The lighting is terrible. Then the caption: I almost didn't post this. Yes you did.
Joseph Tito:You edited it. You added subtitles. You picked a thumbnail. You almost did nothing. Then we have the fake candid.
Joseph Tito:And I love this one because I know exactly how fake it is. The video starts with somebody already laughing. Who pressed record? We're supposed to believe the camera just happened to be there? Oh my god, I didn't even know you were filming.
Joseph Tito:Yes, you did. You're wearing a microphone. And I know this because I've done the same shit. I have walked into rooms more than once. Think about how ridiculous that sentence is.
Joseph Tito:I have entered my own house, watched the footage, and thought, no. I entered my house wrong. So I went back outside, closed the door, and entered my own fucking house again. Casually. Take two.
Joseph Tito:Because apparently the first time I naturally entered my own home was not natural enough. Influencing is the only career where you can spend forty five minutes creating spontaneity. Just be yourself. Okay, take 14. And then there's selling products, which is where I become the biggest hypocrite in the room, because I sell products.
Joseph Tito:I've sold food, cleaning products, skincare, medicine, you name it, and I'm grateful for every campaign. That work paid bills. That work helped me raise my children. But when a video starts, you guys, you need this, immediately, I don't trust you. No human being is that excited about a mop.
Joseph Tito:This changed my life. It's a blender. Calm down. Did it change your life or did they pay you $5,000? Those are two different testimonials.
Joseph Tito:And again, I do this too. That's the point. I'm not outside the zoo criticizing the monkeys. I'm in the enclosure throwing shit and getting paid for it. And the unboxing.
Joseph Tito:Let's open this together. Together, you already opened it. The box has Scotch tape on it. You know what's inside. The brand knows what's inside.
Joseph Tito:I know what's inside. We are all participating in theater. Oh my god. Really? You read the campaign brief two weeks ago.
Theme song:To get guilty. Oh, la la bitch fest. And
Joseph Tito:yet I still love the job. That's the fucked up part. Because social media changed my life. It gave me an audience. It gave me a business.
Joseph Tito:It gave me opportunities I would never have had. And when I became a single father to two little girls, it gave me something more important. It gave me the ability to be there. I could work after bedtime. I could answer emails from the kitchen.
Joseph Tito:I could shoot content around naps and school and pickup and bedtime, whatever life looked like that day. I didn't have to disappear from their childhood to build a career. And I will always be grateful for that. So no, social media isn't evil. It's worse.
Joseph Tito:It's family. I love it. It changed my life. And some days, I wanna throw it out a fucking window. That is family.
Joseph Tito:And since I brought up being a single father, that's the short version. The long version is a book. My memoir is out now. It's called The Dad Diaries, and it's published by Cormorant Books. It's about how I had my girls.
Joseph Tito:I was 38. I've been living in Bahrain running a production company, and I gave all of that up and moved into my parents' basement in Richmond Hill. My relationship had ended. My daughters were being carried by a woman named Grace in Kenya who I have never met, and I did it on my own. It took five embryo transfers to get there.
Joseph Tito:So the book is that. It's the waiting and the paperwork and the part where nobody could tell me whether my own children would be allowed into this country. There's a line in it I think about a lot. I'm grateful I didn't get the life I thought I wanted. I'm grateful I got this one instead.
Joseph Tito:Signed copies are on my website, thedaddiaries.com. It's also on Amazon and Indigo. And one more thing. This whole show started at Between the Covers, which is my magazine. And it's free.
Joseph Tito:App Store, Google Play, just search BTC Magazine. Download it, subscribe, make a middle aged man in King City feel like this was all worth something. But after almost nine years, the thing I hate most isn't the nail tapping. It isn't the grocery montage. It's when the content becomes more important than the thing that was actually happening.
Joseph Tito:Dinner can just be dinner. A haircut can just be a haircut. A breakup can just be horrible without becoming a seven part series. Your kid can do something funny, and you don't have to make them do it again because you didn't get it on camera. You can eat the french fry.
Joseph Tito:You can walk into your own fucking house once. And yes, I understand the hypocrisy of saying this into a microphone for a podcast that I will then cut into clips, put captions on, and post on every platform I just spent fifteen minutes roasting. So clearly, I've learned nothing. Nine years. 200,000 mostly women and moms.
Joseph Tito:Very few gay men. Still bothered by that, by the way. Guys, what did I do? Actually, don't answer that. I know.
Joseph Tito:We are all fucking ridiculous. The creators, the audience, the brands, the algorithms, me, especially me. And if you ever see me post, everyone has been asking, I want you to comment, who, Joseph? And I will immediately block you. Because self awareness has limits.
Joseph Tito:Until next time, tap the bottle, do your fit check, film the groceries, cry in the parked car. Just understand that somewhere I am watching, judging you, while probably filming myself doing the exact same fucking thing. This is Joseph Tito, and I bitch so you don't have to.
Theme song:Well, darlings, that's our scene tonight,
Theme song:but the tea's still hot and the sparks still ignite. So stick around, honey, for the next contest. We'll see
Theme song:you soon at the next Bitch Fest.