Happy Anniversary Hellogiggles!

Fifteen years later, I’m thinking about what we built, what we lost, and why I suddenly want to start again.

Fifteen years ago today I launched the website HelloGiggles with Zooey Deschanel and Molly McAleer. The vision was simple: a female Funny or Die or College Humor (comedy destinations — sketch videos and absurdist content before YouTube made everyone a comedian.) We wanted to make smart, humorous, culturally obsessed content for women made by women who were genuinely funny and had things to say. Back then you actually had to say that. For women. Like it was a niche. Like it needed a disclaimer, because it did!

At the time, everything online felt like it was either how to wear the dress day to night or Perez Hilton gossip style. We wanted something for the fangirl who was also fashionable. The culturally obsessed person with seventeen tabs open who needed somewhere to put all of it. Video was too expensive, so we did what you do when you have a dream and no money: we got creative. We shot a branded video content for Teleflora and used those profits to build the site. Zooey was our aesthetic queen, our compass for everything beautiful and special. Molly had a background writing for publications like Gawker and built the contributor model. We asked fifty friends to write for us. I was the business. Zooey was the beauty. Molly was the brains. Quite the trio.

Early pieces were about loving Babysitter Club books, favorite gummy bears ranked, Erin Foster’s Single girl’s guide, Lies I tell my kids, and so much nail art. Like SO MUCH nail art.

We launched when sites like Refinery29 and PopSugar were coming up, back when you could still use Facebook for traffic before it became Meta and decided to charge you for access to your own audience. But we thank them, because they gave us oh so much traffic! We worked from my apartment because I had watched my best friend Katherine Power and her partner Hillary Kerr (substack queen) build Who What Wear from a bungalow apartment, and I thought: we have a framework, we have passion, LFG (well, we just said let’s go then.)

We brought in incredible writers. Then we brought in the adults who helped us build real infrastructure. Our COO Radhika Delfosse and CFO Penelope Linge gave us systems and sanity. We did live shows. Book tours. We would’ve had a podcast if podcasts existed yet. We were already doing the thing, we just didn’t have the container for it.

None of it would’ve been anything without contributors and the amazing editors . A million people I’m probably forgetting to thank. That’s the thing about a contributor model: it takes everyone. Every writer who sent something in. Every friend who said yes. Every voice that trusted us with their words.

At our peak we had twenty million views a month. Mothers and daughters reading the same content we used to say. A cozy place online. That wasn’t something we planned. It happened because we weren’t trying to be whimsical and we weren’t trying to be wise. We were just trying to be a connected community. A place where someone could express themselves and find someone else who got it.

The office was a millennial dream and straight out of my vision board. Wild vision boards work! Our DTLA space had contributor artwork on the walls, Sweet Valley High on the shelves. Our sales director Evelyn said it best: “I was a fangirl before I worked here. This office is exactly like reading the site, but in real life.” That was the goal.

My friend Iliza calls us elder millennials now. She’s not wrong. And we are still online. We were blessed to sell to Time Inc. at the peak of the website era. I would be dishonest if I said I wasn’t heartbroken too. It still exists now in name only. Time Inc. sold to Meredith. Meredith sold to People Inc. They own the name. They took down all the posts.

I miss it so much it catches me off guard sometimes.I miss giggling with coworkers. I miss the editorial room energy, the conversation that was always half-finished and all in, the pieces that never got written, the rabbit holes we went down together.

I didn’t enjoy it enough when I had it. Mostly because you don’t really enjoy things when you’re young and in the hard work. But here’s what I know now: I love media and I loved working in media. I loved being a girl boss. Less a boss, if I’m honest. I’m a terrible manager. I love the initial idea and the vision. Management was where I always felt like I was disappointing people ( I was.)

But what if I want to do it again? That’s where I am.

I’ve felt frozen with fear for most of the last eight years. Frozen. And lately I feel the fire under me melting. Life got bigger and quieter at the same time after HelloGiggles. Blessed is the right word. Muted is also the right word. When you come from not having much and then suddenly you do, there’s a version of you that grips stability so tightly you forget what hunger felt like. No one feels bad for the Girl Boss!

There’s a Jewish concept I keep coming back to: the pintele Yid, the inextinguishable inner spark. Mine was always there. It just needs somewhere to go. HelloGiggles doesn’t need to come back. It needs to grow up. The thesis is still the same. We want escape. We want to encourage each other to self-express. We want something driven by curiosity that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Tumblr was then. Substack is now. Niche media is back. Individual writers are building real audiences and having real fun. I still have so much fun online. I know that sounds like a strange thing to admit, but I do. My friend and advisor Ricky Van Veen, who co-founded College Humor and was one of the original inspirations for HelloGiggles, once told me: write about things that are relevant, not topical. Topical dates. Relevant compounds. That’s the only rule here.

So here’s what I’m thinking….

A curated editorial hub for women who have outgrown the algorithm. A digital salon. The problem isn’t that there isn’t enough content. There’s too much. Brilliant writers are scattered across hundreds of Substacks with no shared home. The model is a contributor model because that’s the only model I’ve ever believed in. Established Substack writers and emerging voices publish under one umbrella while keeping their own platforms and their own IP. I wanna curate. I wanna cross-promote. I help build the audience infrastructure so writers can focus on the writing. The pitch deck version is simple: make your art, we’ll help people find it.

What I want to cover: modern love, divorce and affairs so many affairs happening! Fertility and non-fertility. Ambition and reinvention. Faith, food, and fashion. Money wealth and nervous system health. The aesthetics of adult life. The cultural conversations happening everywhere in fragments that deserve a center. Back then it was all about nostalgia and now it’s all about wellness. I guess we were nostalgic for things we didn’t know we had and now we are not well? Or just forever optimizing!

If you’re a writer or really an editor and this sounds like a place you want to be, reply to this email. If you’re a reader and this sounds like a place you’ve been looking for, subscribe and tell a friend.

This is how HelloGiggles started. Not with a business plan, but with fifty people who said yes. I don’t know if astrology is real, but I’ve been told I’m in some eight-year cycle that’s ending. Sure, I believe it.

So in honor of fifteen years, I’m doing a little teshuvah, returning to the original reason. For those of us who never stop having opinions. Who still stay up too late reading. Who are done doom scrolling and ready to gather and giggle.

Here are the types of posts I wanna talk about!

Are Dot cakes that good?

The original is The Dotcakes — a bakery in Roslyn Heights, NY. You can also get them at Butterfield Market on the Upper East Side for about $11 a cup. They ship online, four cups for $32. Sell out fast so you have to order ahead or make that at home it seems pretty easy just look at tik tok!

Water Is Life — I got my first colonoscopy this week (I had to lie to get it) and couldn’t drink water for four hours beforehand. Lying there in that hospital bed having a tiny cup handed to me afterward, I understood something I’d spent my whole life taking for granted. WATER IS LIFE! Which led me to my first civic idea: Los Angeles, a city with 23 billionaires and $193 billion in combined wealth, cannot figure out how to give kids clean cold water at school. I heard about A $45,000 quote for a fountain because the pipes are too old. An adult flushing the system every morning before first period. Meanwhile airports do it. Pilates studios do it. Here’s what I want to see a brand sponsors a water station at LAUSD schools and everyone moves on with their lives. Twenty-three billionaires in LA choose your cause, choose water!

Are We Being Too Hard on Belle Burden? — Her memoir Strangers is a #1 bestseller. Her husband had an affair during COVID and left her and their children. The New Yorker wrote about what her divorce filings say about her finances. And now there’s a pile-on about whether a wealthy woman is allowed to be devastated. I don’t care how much money she had. This man left her in cold blood. She can write whatever she wants. AND I TOO WOULD”VE MADE THE SANDWICH! SUE ME!

Kylie Jenner is a great girlfriend — and I mean that as a genuine compliment in an era when publicly supporting the person you love is apparently cringe. Watching her boyfriend cry in the arms of athletes who just ran around winning while he sat watching, didn’t give her the ick. She looked proud. Great girlfriend.

And anyone who has ever dated or been friends with a Knicks fan knows: this is their time to shine. GO KNICKS!

The Puerto Rico Song — Bill Stiteler — a guy from Pittsburgh, not a musician. He wrote the lyrics himself after a trip to Puerto Rico, then generated the music using the AI app Suno. He posts under the TikTok account Saxboy Billy. The song hit #6 on iTunes and has been used in over 46,000 TikTok posts. He’s not a musician — he just wanted to add comedy to his travel videos. I’ve had it in my head for four days. MI HIJO!

Off Campus: Books are back and they make fab TV shows.

Amazon Prime show, just dropped May 2026. Based on Elle Kennedy's beloved book series — college hockey romance, fake dating that goes real.Already renewed for season two before it even premiered. BookTok has been obsessed with the source material for years so the built-in audience was enormous. — the fandom was so loud it became a TV show.

Obsession:

Horror movie, out now. A guy uses a supernatural toy to make his childhood crush fall in love with him — and it goes horrifically wrong. The best-reviewed wide-release movie of 2026. $82 million at the box office. The premise is essentially: be careful what you wish for, specifically when it involves someone else’s free will. It’s a horror movie about obsession but also quietly about what it actually means to want someone to love you versus actually being loved.

If any of this sounds like the editorial room you’ve been missing, subscribe, share, reply.

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