Get Involved, Internet: A 30-year-old goth needs your help becoming a Hot Topic ambassador
2020, a year in which My Chemical Romance fans have scrambled to re-pierce their eyebrows and shimmy back into those pinstripe black pants in time for a reunion tour, represents a perfect opportunity for former emo kids and mall goths across the world to embrace their true, haunted selves. No one embodies this better than Vera Drew, a 30-year-old woman who’s hell bent on becoming a Hot Topic brand ambassador.
In order to achieve her dream, Drew has launched Hot Topics With Vera Drew, a web series described as “the only show with the expressed purpose of getting me sponsored by Hot Topic.” The first episode begins with an animated introduction showing a cartoon Drew holding a bouquet of black roses, hanging out in graveyards and the flames of hell, while bats squeak and a narrator explains that the project will follow “a 30-year-old woman finally having her emo phase on Hot Topic’s dime.”
The rest of the episode follows in this vein, Drew hosting a grainy public access-looking show where, helped by an assistant in a black vinyl bodysuit and corpse paint, she explains her goals and the challenges ahead. The greatest of these is Hot Topic’s requirement that Drew have at least 5,000 followers, a problem she hopes to fix by explaining how perfect she is for the gig. (“I am deeply involved in the occult,” she says at one point. “I do create masturbation sigils once a month! I think I’d be good for your brand. I’m a dark and scary woman!”)
“As a trans woman who came out in her late 20s,” Drew continues. “I never got to experience my high school emo girl phase. And boy did I want one. I mean, I used to sneak into Hot Topic and pretend to look at South Park merch and Napoleon Dynamite posters while daydreaming about wearing pentagram dresses and Nightmare Before Christmas eye shadow palettes.”
Drew caps this all off with a wonderful commercial for her first Hot Topic product pitch: A make-up brand called “Illuminaughty,” which is a “Freemasonry-inspired eye shadow pallet designed to not only make you look glam as fuck but also empower you with the wisdom of a 500-year-old men-only esoteric secret society.” The shades include “Golden Dawn Gold,” “Psy-Op Black,” and “Reptilian Green,” all to help buyers “finally have a shadow palette for all three of your eyes.”
If for nothing else, this ad is worth giving Drew a sponsorship. Check it—and the rest of the episode—out by clicking on over here.
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