From The Ground Up

🏋️‍♂️ Bro, but make it vertical. Tiffany is on tour again, which means Jieun is back on her solo adventures and this time she’s digging into micro-vertical dramas on Instagram and TikTok. This week, we’re talking 'From the Ground Up', a tiny but surprisingly heartfelt vertical created by Lukas Silva and Andrew Campen. And when I say tiny, I mean this is a true micro-vertical: short, character-driven, and built around something we don't see nearly enough of: the bromance. (Male loneliness epidemic where?) Lukas Silva stars as Jackson while Andrew Campen plays Philip, aka “Gym Bro,” and the entire story asks a surprisingly simple question: What happens when your girlfriend leaves you at your lowest, but your bro stays and helps you rebuild your life...from the ground up? Jackson suffers an injury after being pushed into the water, loses his girlfriend, and finds himself struggling with a body that no longer works the way it used to. Enter his best bud bro, who talks him through his panic attack, admits that he's experienced them himself, and then basically says, “Okay, in gains we trust.” And somehow, it works. We talk about the friendship at the heart of this story, male vulnerability, why vertical dramas could do SO much more with friendship-centered stories, and why sometimes you don't need a billionaire, a mafia boss, a dragon, or five Alpha Kings to make a story work. Sometimes you just need a good bro. Then we take a little field trip to Backstage to see what the vertical world is casting right now, desperately hunting for Christmas verticals. And because this is a solo episode, there is, of course, a little Tea Time. Is it good tea? Debatable. Is it mostly Janelle Evans and her internet swamp people drama? Unfortunately, yes. So if you have 15 minutes to kill, why not spend them watching a tiny bromance instead of doomscrolling? And if you know of other vertical dramas living outside the usual 50+ apps, SEND THEM TO US. 🎙️ Talk Drama To Me drops every Wednesday wherever you listen to podcasts. Follow us on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Substack for the clips, thirst traps, and theories.