Dixie D'Amelio on PlanBri & The Secret I Kept From Her #BEANGATE

Picture this: You’re 18 years old and counting down the days til you leave for school, when all the sudden your little sister becomes a viral hit sensation overnight. Now, you AND your whole family are stars of a reality show on Hulu about your lives.

Sound familiar?

Although there are similarities in their stories, the key one we’re all thinking about is not a factor in the rise of the D'Amelio's. In fact, the D'Amelio's are saints in comparison to those “god damn Kardashians'” (as my grandma calls them). Kim may have been doing some kind of dance in that video, but the D'Amelio sisters have remained to be both PG rated and brand safe with their moves these last few years. (Shout out Heidi and Marc, the whole family has remained so cool and normal through all this.)

So it was such a pleasure to have Miss Dixie(land) the delight on PlanBri; where the three of us were able to have a candid pal to pal conversation. (We’ve only met a handful of times, let me just pretend we’re good friends.)

In the episode, we dive into what it was like for Dixie to enter the world of social media, her music career, and she and Bri discuss their “lost at sea” debacle. 

One thing I "forgot" to mention during this episode, is how my former co-worker (Bobby D’Angelo) and I convinced the internet that Miss Dixie keeps a plastic baggy of beans in her pockets at all times. A harmless prank, yet a weirdo move on my part. 

Here’s the blog I wrote about it at my previous job in 2021:

Somehow, Bobby and I pulled off quite the prank on TikTok superstar Dixie D’Amelio.

Bobby, the mastermind of the operation,  had the idea to convince the internet that the queen of being really really really really sad stays strapped with baked beans in her right pocket. 

I wasn’t sure it would work, but I underestimated my co-workers ability to troll. 

Bobby (for questionable reasons) has an account on Facebook that he keeps just to mess with people. Depending on the scenario, he’ll switch up the profile to suit the scenario.

For this scenario, Bobby strategically decided to be Mellisa Trusoz, a middle aged school teacher from Connecticut: 

He decided to run with the idea that Mrs.Trusoz was Dixie’s humble bragging elementary school teacher, who helped her overcome her fears with the help of baked beans. 

(Might I say, Bobby is suspiciously good at posing as a 50 something year old white lady)

Here is Mrs. Trusoz lovely testament to her “little bean girl” :

On paper, it sounds blasphemous…but the internet ate it up like it was free pizza at a darty. 

At first Bobby posted his own TikTok about the claim and his post gained about 6,000 likes. But the post was taken down, which then unjustifiably got his whole account swept from under him. 

That’s where I come in…

Basically, Bobby did all the work and I just presented it to an easily swayed audience. 

At first, it wasn’t getting much traction. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the app, it’s to never under estimate the algorithm.

Over time, it started doing the numbers we were hoping for, and thus #BEANGATE began. People rapidly started picking up on Miss Trusoz’s closing remarks “Little Bean Girl.” Reasonably so, these guys couldn’t get enough of the phrase. So much so that they started commenting on the phrase in all different variations on Miss Dixie’s TikTok.

To the point where Dix decided to delete the video entirely. 

But it didn’t stop there, keyboard warriors jumped platforms and began heckling bean related commentary on her Instagram. Which drove her to disable her comments for a brief time. (Grace here making a note on 9/19/23 as I read through this old blog: After today’s episode of PlanBri, I now realize that this contributed to her hate comments and I truly feel bad about that. At the time it was just a silly prank.)

The funniest part of this whole thing is, Dixie had people flooding her social media claiming she keeps beans in her pocket and she had no idea where all this was coming from. 

After about 12 hours, Dixie found my account and confirmed her teacher’s claims. Simply stating “YUPPPP Cowboy Emoji”

Dixie also found a clout chasing fan in the comment section claiming to have done crew with her, when she was amongst us common folk. To which she replied “u dated my cousin LOL” which made me laugh and assured me Dixie has a good sense of humor going on.

The whole narrative that… Dixie D’Amelio was once a stage fright ridden youth who overcame her challenges by stuffing bags of baked beans in her pocket with the help of her childhood teacher AND still does so til this day…is the most comical internet scenario that has taken off in quite a while, and I’m just so happy to have been a part of it. 

Dixie, I know how you religiously read TFM so you’ll obviously see this, so I want you to know…we really didn’t think this would go as far as it did, but I truly appreciate you being such a good sport about it. Who knows, maybe we can talk about it some day on your show. (Grace here on 9/19/23: What a crazy turn of events to have her on our podcast almost 3 years later)

Like most rumors, our prank slowly lost traction and faded out. Ending with Miss D'Amelio herself posting this except on her story: