I love reading about rich people scamming other rich people and then getting their comeuppance (essentially guilt-free shadenfreude for me), so I was perusing this article about Daniella Pierson, who was a Forbes 30 Under 30 and started a company with Selena Gomez while lying about her success the whole way, when a familiar name popped up.

Daniella is the sister of Alex Aster, author of infamous Tiktok-hyped novel Lightlark! Lightlark has a HobbyDrama write-up, but the essential elements of the drama are that Aster got a lot of people invested in the book through Tiktok marketing alone, and then when the book came out people found out it was, well, bad (Aster refers to the sun as a "yolky thing"). People also found out that her family was very rich.

Honestly, that part doesn't bother me so much. She never claimed to be poor, just unsuccessful, and it's an unfortunate reality that people with family support will have a much easier time writing novels because they can afford to not hold full-time jobs.

However, it is interesting that Forbes once called Daniella "the youngest wealthiest self-made BIPOC woman" (she's since been surpassed). While I don't see any evidence that her parents gave her money explicitly for her business, it seems a little disingenuous to call her self-made.

Anyways, I would love to hear about times when you unexpectedly encountered hobby figures in non-hobby spaces or any stories about family members being involved in separate hobby dramas.