The Internet Is Team Ciara in the ‘Summer House’ Scandal

When Watch What Crappens podcast hosts Ben Mandelker and Ronnie Karam first heard the rumors about Summer House cast members West Wilson and Amanda Batula secretly hooking up, they didn’t believe it. Sure, Wilson had established himself as a known Bravo fuckboy, but they didn’t think there was any world in which Batula would “betray” Ciara Miller since the two have been best friends on- and off-screen for years.

But once Wilson and Batula confirmed the growing speculation with a shared statement on their Instagram Stories on March 31, saying, “Our connection grew out of a genuine, long-standing friendship, which made it especially important for us to approach this with care,” Mandelker and Karam said the rest of the day on the internet felt like being in one big newsroom for Bravo fans.

“It’s so fun because to us, there’s this pressing world situation and we feel like we have a duty to report back to everyone,” Karam explained. “We’ve got to get the details, and we’ve got to be levelheaded about this and make sure the community stays calm. You just have this kind of ridiculous sense of responsibility over truly nothing.”

While Deuxmoi and other gossip accounts had been sharing blind items for weeks about Wilson and Batula, it wasn’t until the end of March that the rumors spiraled beyond their control. Bravo fans tapped into the situation acting as detectives, trying — and, ultimately, succeeding — to get to the bottom of whether or not there was any validity to these rumors. And Bravo fan accounts have been leading the charge, building hype and fueling rumors with blind items and anonymous tips. Is all the chatter painful for the individuals involved? Certainly. Is it invasive? Probably! But it’s also just business for the countless podcasters, Instagram creators, and TikTokers who talk about reality TV for a living — and whose offline takes can start shaping onscreen narratives before cameras even roll.

“It happens in the wake of people going through real-life pain, but as a Bravo fan it’s really kind of fun for us because we do come together. We’re all chattering, texting each other, and sending each other links,” Mandelker said. “You do have that excitement of being able to talk about a specific piece of pop culture that everyone’s on the same page about.”

The eruption of “Scandoval” in March 2023 has been a natural, if imperfect, point of comparison to this latest drama. “Initially this Summer House news was unbelievable in the way Scandoval was. How could Tom and Raquel be together? That’s so shocking, that’s so crazy,” Dana Regan, who’s behind The Bravo Investigator podcast and Instagram account, explained. The scandal sent fans into a tizzy and drove engagement to countless Bravo commentators.

“We all became private investigators, breaking down every little piece of information and seeing if we could figure it out. That was the fun part about Scandoval, going back and then watching the newer episodes with that information in mind. We get to know something in retrospect and then be able to analyze it from a different perspective after the fact.”

As with Scandoval, fans are now rabidly consuming every last piece of information they can get when it comes to this Summer House scandal. They’ve been following more accounts on social media, sharing more posts, and even commenting. The anonymous person behind the social-media account Queens of Bravo said engagement on their posts have been “insane.” Summer House viewers have always been a passionate fandom that typically yields the most engagement on their pages, they explained, but this scandal has been next level. “Our followers are locked in on this because it’s just so surprising,” Queens of Bravo said. “At this point, people who aren’t even Summer House fans kind of know the general idea of what’s going on and they’re looking for information, too.”

B from Bravo and Cocktails added that her traffic has also been way up, and she hasn’t seen these kinds of numbers since Scandoval. “I feel bad because I like to engage with my community, but it’s nearly impossible to get through all the DMs,” she said.

And the takes don’t always stay in the DMs. Kaya Wilson, who co-hosts the Bravo! We’re Black podcast and runs its corresponding social-media accounts, said that social-media accounts run by Bravo fans can shape the trajectory of the scandal’s fallout in real time. “We’re in an age where everyone wants to be a content creator. Everyone wants to say that they know something, that they heard something, or report on something,” Wilson said. Who gets the most lucrative brand deal? Who gets the best seat at the reunion? Fan perception can play a role. “Everything lies in the hands of fans, because fans will make you and fans will break you.”

The flames can certainly sting. Since the news broke, Batula has removed comments from her social-media posts and her estranged husband, Kyle Cooke, has spoken about the double standard in how fans are reacting to Batula compared to how they’re treating Wilson, who has reportedly gained 50,000 followers. “As we know, women always will suffer more than the male counterpart,” B from Bravo and Cocktails said. “Women are given very little grace in the Bravo space and in every other space, and West, even though he’s not as famous, will survive this better than Amanda will.”

But we can’t talk about the role gender plays in the fallout without also talking about the role of race. In a Summer House episode just a couple of weeks back, Miller opened up about the backlash she’s received as a Black woman dating on a mostly white reality-TV series. “I was the first Black person in this house, and then dating publicly, dating white guys publicly, it’s like a whole contraption that I don’t think you guys even understand and/or can even empathize with,” she said in the episode. Bravo! We’re Black’s Wilson highlighted how Batula’s decision to romantically entangle herself with her friend’s ex in light of this is not just messy but deeply dissonant.

“Everyone keeps telling me to stop bringing race into things. But it matters. We just sat here and watched a white woman watch her Black friend talk about how hard it is to be a Black woman who has dated mediocre white men who have embarrassed her in front of the nation. And she sat there and held her hand,” she said. “How can you sit there and watch your Black friends say that, and then go and hook up with that same guy?”

Are we wrong to turn what appears to be a very painful friendship breakup into public spectacle? The people behind these Bravo fan accounts told me that ultimately it’s fair game to scrutinize reality-TV stars who opt for a public life. As Wilson put it, “They want to be in the spotlight.”

“Unfortunately that comes with good and that comes with bad. So while I have sympathy for reality stars, they chose to be reality stars,” she said. “And once you step into the social-media Zeitgeist, you’ve got to take the good and the bad.”

Queens of Bravo pointed out that the Summer House cast members are real people grappling with the realities of their own lives, but they’re also aware that “this is the assignment.” “There is always that possibility that this could happen, and it’s happened to other cast members before too. We saw Hannah Berner deal with a lot of this scrutiny years ago,” they said. “It’s part of the Bravo culture, unfortunately. You just have to know how to play the game a little bit better.”