Sydney Battle Was Bullied Into Making an Insta by Aaron Carter

Thanks to the coronavirus, comedians are now trapped at home like the rest of us, so we decided that while we’re all self-quarantining, we’d do something a little different from our usual “Follow Friday� column. Instead of interviewing up-and-coming comedians we love on Twitter, we’re going live on Instagram every week to check in on some of our favorite people in comedy and get a firsthand look into how they’re handling the pandemic. So welcome to our new version of the column, now titled “Follow (From a Safe Distance) Friday.�

This week, I somehow convinced Sydney Battle (UCB, the Emmys, doting Brooklyn mother to her beautiful Atticus) to meet for a digital chat about how she’s keeping it together during … all of this. She told us how she’s feeling about becoming Twitter famous in the middle of a global pandemic, got introspective about her time as a nanny for an emotionally unstable little girl, and shared her favorite colorful insults from online trolls. She also told the story behind what convinced her, as a young millennial, to download a certain social-media app. And it’s a hell of a story: “I got Instagram because Aaron Carter yelled at me at a concert on my college campus.�

You can find Sydney Battle on Twitter at @SydneyBattle and on Instagram at @sydbattle.