Amanda Hirsch: The Notes App Apology Era Is Done

0:00Amanda Hirsch, the host of the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast, talks for a living on camera. Dear Media, the company that puts out the podcast, films for a living. So when it comes time to apologize, they typed it out. Let's talk about why that's a problem.

0:30Hey there, welcome back to the PR Breakdown Podcast. I'm your host, Molly McPherson. This is the podcast where they break down and then I break down precisely what happened. Now, I'm going to start right here by saying this is not a hate post, hate podcast about Amanda Hirsch. Bluff, bottom line up front, this is not about her. It's about something that she was involved in, which is the bigger problem here. focusing on the notes app alone is a red herring. And in this podcast episode, I want to explain why. Now I'm someone who breaks down crises for a living. I'm inside of them. So I'm always looking at the moves, looking for the patterns.

1:18Why did this happen more than once? What is behind this person doing this or saying this? And I think this PR crisis has all of it. And it comes out at the end with a theory that ties in to my last podcast about Good Good Golf and Calloway, the collaboration that went awry quickly. There's a pattern there, and that's what I want to talk about. Now, last week, the Lindsay Clancy trial resulted in a mistrial. So that was on Friday, September 4th. So there was five weeks of testimony, 80 plus witnesses, six days of deliberation. I just finished a live on Substack, every week on Substack, kind of break down these crises together in real time.

2:08Then I hop on here and record this. So we were chatting about that for a bit as well. The Lindsay Clancy trial does have something to do with this crisis because that's what ties in the narrative. Now, the Lindsey Clancy trial was the primary content of the summer. It was the story of the summer. Not only was it in the news, it was in local news, national news, international news, but that was a type of news that created a lot of chatter, not just for the heartbreaking testimony and the story behind it, all the other sub threads that came out of it and theories and conspiracy theories that came out of it.

2:46And then certainly it hit the true crime, you know, of it all, which certainly is something that, you know, triggers the algorithm. And that's why another reason why it was such a big story was the algorithm. This story, this, this notes app apology ties into that because on that same day, on that same Friday, Amanda Hirsch, who is the host of the Not Skinny, But Not Fat podcast, posts a sponsored reel. And you can see what that post said right here. Of course, it was taken down, but screenshots live forever. On Polymarket, it was predicted the verdict would be not guilty. Are you surprised? Question mark, hashtag Polymarket partner.

3:32Now, were people surprised, Amanda? Oh, absolutely. They were surprised that you would post an ad in content about not just a trial, but incredibly tragic trial. And one that was triggering to a lot of people, created a lot of conversation about mothers, new mothers, the health system, postpartum care. I did content myself around it because I did news interviews about it. I did a news interview with NBC News, both broadcast and on their blog as well, you know, talking about Kevin Reddington and talking about why, you know, this was such a big story. And then I got so many other requests to talk about it.

4:17I just didn't want to talk about it anymore because I just didn't want to be in all these other narratives. And as a content creator, I had a lot of people give me grief in my DMs. And then I thought, I don't even want to be in this algorithm. So that's why it's curious that Amanda Hirsch would choose to force such conversation in a reel by discussing Polly Market. Now, for so many people, the ad was so off-kilter for very, very obvious reasons. And I got to be honest, I don't know Amanda Hirsch. I do not know if Amanda Hirsch has a publicist. I do not know what happens behind the scenes at the podcast or Dear Media as a company.

5:02But there are moves here that fall into my field guide that I want to share with you that tells me what I think is happening here and what's going on. Now, Friday into Saturday, there are a lot of replies on the post, depraved and indecent, shockingly poor judgment. People were just saying it was just insane. I mean, you can, the post is down, but you can go to Reddit and you can see a lot of the comments that were there. And of course, the press picked it up as well. The post comes down, but on Saturday, she's back to regular stories like Instagram stories. Now, there's a move right there to go into stories because stories is a way to still be present and not completely shut down.

5:45Because if you go dark, then all of a sudden that becomes a narrative. And that also becomes a response to the bubbling crisis that's happening there. If you stay on stories, you're in a little kind of protective cove because you're not on the grid. You're not on the Instagram grid. You're not in TikTok, the main algorithm. You're just in your stories. There's no comments in there that people are really scrolling down. A lot of it is DM driven and things can still be shared there. But you're also going to get a read on how people feel. So it's multipurpose why someone would stay on stories. So it's understandable, not that I would give this advice, but it's understandable why Amanda Hirsch would still be on stories.

6:32You can get a read. Well, I would assume that Amanda Hirsch received a lot of negative feedback. So now that moves into Sunday where we have the apology. It is your classic Notes app apology. It's on Instagram. Three paragraphs. Let's read that apology together. September 6, 2026 at 1257 p.m. Posting about the Lindsay Clancy trial in the same breath as a brand partnership was completely insensitive, wrong, and out of character for me. A little short dash. I should have known better, comma, and space, space, I feel sick that I didn't see that in the moment. As a mom, this case has really affected me.

7:21I've been following it so closely, talking about it constantly, and feeling heartbroken over every part of it, period, space, space. I became so consumed by the trial that I completely lost perspective and didn't stop to think about how grossly inappropriate it was to discuss something this tragic in that context. I made a terrible judgment call and I feel so effing awful about that. I know deleting it doesn't erase it. Believe me, I'm horrified by the choice I made. And please know this lapse in judgment does not represent who I am as a person. I am so deeply sorry. Okay. Now I'm going to tell you something about this apology.

8:02I think it's a true apology. I do. I think it was written in a way to show remorse and true feeling there. Anyone watching the Lindsay Clancy trial can feel it, certainly. Mothers can certainly feel it. And I will say that personally, I found that trial to be very triggering. I did a post mentioning, I, when I lived south of Dexbury, Mass., which is where Lindsay Clancy lived with her husband, Patrick, and their three kids. I lived south of that. And there was a time, at that time, I was in a military marriage, but I was home alone with four kids. There was a time when my oldest child was two and I had four children.

8:49So this case really was triggering for me. So when another mother writes about it, I can feel that and I can buy it. And here's my argument. I'm going to say that everything she wrote here, she means. However, I think it was intended to tell a different story. When she talks about feeling sick that she didn't see it in the moment, that she said in the same breath as a brand partnership was completely insensitive, wrong, and out of character for me, I believe her. I believe everything that she's saying here. But what she isn't saying is the crisis. She's not really saying what the crisis is because the crisis isn't that Amanda Hirsch, a host of a podcast, posted a reel about Polymarket promoting the predictive market, which is taking over everywhere.

9:45It's that the company that she works for, Dear Media, is in partnership with Polymarket. Amanda Hirsch, in my opinion, all she's doing is her job. She's a part of this network. Her show is a part of this network. Polymarket is a sponsor. She's just doing her job. She's not a random content creator out there who's just working independently. And she decided to partner with Polymarket and then had to apologize for choosing to do it. The company she works for is working with Polymarket. And this is where it has the feels of the good, good golf with Callaway, the two coming together. Because the bigger story is about the collaboration, content creation, eyeballs, algorithm, and money that comes together.

10:43The crisis is Polymarket. The crisis is that Deere Media is in collaboration with Polymarket, and it collided with public opinion. Same thing as Good Good and their video ad collided with the public when it was a collaboration with Callaway. And Callaway set Good Good Golf adrift, particularly the CEO, Matt Kendrick. The last podcast I did, I talked about Good Good Golf, but it was recorded before Matt Kendrick went on X at 3.38 in the morning and put Callaway on full blast. He was angry because he was just doing his job, making an ad for Callaway that Callaway approved. And then the public backlash happened and Callaway set him adrift.

11:31good good golf i said it in my my last podcast that they kind of fell into the barstoolification of of the problem here that's the collision the point is it's a format targeting a very specific like micro audience of predominantly males it made a lot of money off an algorithm that drove men to Good Good Golf. That's why Callaway wanted to partner with Good Good Golf. They wanted that young male market, traditional golf. Why wouldn't they want that market? So on paper, it makes sense. But the collision happened in the public discourse. This is the same type of crisis. And that's why I'm saying it's not Amanda Hirsch's fault.

12:18She's just a part of it. She's like a Matt Kendrick, but she's an employee. Amanda was just doing her job. So that's why in this apology, I actually think she's speaking from the heart. I feel sick that I didn't see it in the moment and where she lost perspective and didn't stop to think about how grossly inappropriate it was to discuss something this tragic. She's not saying it as a content creator. I would argue that she's saying it as an employee of Dear Media, because Dear Media is in partnership with Polymarket. And it's not just the ad. You may or may not know that Polymarket and Dear Media are teaming up for a weekly podcast called What Are the Odds?

13:04This podcast, I believe, started in June. But the idea of the podcast is it's a weekly podcast that blends celebrity news, internet moments, and real-time prediction data. So it has rotating hosts. Amanda Hirsch happens to be one of the hosts of the podcast. So now there's another entity that she represents. So she can't come out and ding Polymarket. She has to fall on the sword because Polymarket isn't just sponsoring the real. They are a collaborator and a brand partner with Amanda Hirsch's employer, Dear Media. So it's much bigger than that. So I'm arguing in that apology that Amanda Hirsch is apologizing for what she had to do.

13:53So that's why I believe what she's saying, but she had to take the hit for it. It's really Dear Media is the one who should be responding to this crisis because Dear Media partnered with Polymarket. We haven't heard anything from Dear Media. We haven't heard anything from Polymarket at all about this because they don't want to talk about it because it's a collaboration. That's why they made Amanda Hirsch fall on the sword. And the reason why the apology falls flat, not just for me as a crisis manager, look at the public. Everyone else knows why it's falling flat. It's falling flat because they're not apologizing for the right thing.

14:30Amanda Hirsch could be in her writing just apologizing for the choice of being a part of a team that is working with Polymarket and being the host of this new podcast that's in collaboration with Polymarket. The predictive market is becoming a huge, huge financial windfall for companies there, but it's creating a lot of murky area, whether it's sports, programming, anything where people can interfere with outcomes and then gambling is involved, the predictive market, it's messy. It's really messy. And that's what happened in this crisis. Two weeks ago, I appeared on CBS News to talk about Good Good Golf.

15:14And one of the things I mentioned was the apology for the ad is a red herring. It's not about apology for the ad because they're not apologizing for the ad because there's money behind it. Callaway Golf approved the ad. So what's there to apologize for? Everybody approved it. It's the public that said, hey guys, this isn't cool. Like we don't like this. So they're trying to assuage the public so they feel like they have to write an apology. That's why this Amanda Hirsch apology fell flat because she never named what she was apologizing for, really, and she's not naming the bigger crisis. is that Dear Media is partnering with Polymarket and profiting off of it.

16:00Now, if we can go back to the Notes app for a moment, I have to tell you, the format of the Notes app is over. There was a time that it was effective, 2015 to like 2021. Think back, Ariana Grande with the licking the donut moment. Taylor Swift also has done a Notes app. Logan Paul, Justin Timberlake did it twice. The Notes app was built to look like it skipped the publicist. It is someone just sitting there on their phone, you know, writing in this heartfelt note, which is the other reason why I do not like the Amanda Hirsch Notes app apology. There is no way whatsoever that Amanda Hirsch is sitting at home on her phone, writing it, and then hitting post and sending it out there without Dear Media, Michael Bostic, Polly Market being a part of that apology.

16:55Okay, let's call it what it is. More people were in that apology, red line. The other reason why I don't like it, it's so performative that we have one space. And all of a sudden, out of the blue, from someone who is not Generation X or a baby boomer, putting in a double space in there. I have my double spacers, the diehards in there. This is no criticism, no shame. I get it. I was in the same typing classes in high school that you were. There are people who will die on that hill to keep that double space in there. You'll see it in, it's prevalent in academic writing. There are certain formats where it is expected, not just accepted, but also expected as well.

17:41So there's no shame in it at all. However, most people nowadays, because of computers and typing, we don't need the double space anymore. So someone in this younger generation all of a sudden throwing a double space in there shows that kind of haphazardness in there. And then also she swears in there. She has the random dash in there. It's so haphazard, but it feels very performative that it's supposed to appear that she's showing us how deeply hurt she is. but to show that true empathy, it wouldn't be written in a notes app. Notes app is designed to look like it skipped the publicist or skipped the people redlining.

18:23Apologies. And I don't believe for a second that Amanda Hirsch was doing that alone. There were other people kind of redlining that notes app. So if you work in comms and anyone tells you to do the notes app, apology, where you're a content creator and you screw up, you think, okay, if I do the notes app, I can just post it, turn the comments off and walk away. It won't work. Now, it is a choice. There are some benefits to posting an apology, certainly. The benefits is you're not triggering the algorithm as much. I don't love video apologies. I gotta be honest. I don't love them. There was a time when people would sit down and tape up their apology on the camera and they would read it and it would sound as stiff and formulaic as it actually was.

19:10You know, there was just so many mechanics behind it that it never rang true. That's the reason why we don't like Notes App apologies, too. It's just so tried and dried out. It just does not work. Now, right now, as of this recording, the apology is still up on her account. So kudos to Amanda Hirsch and the Dear Media team for doing that. But by turning the comments off, that's essentially, if you were doing a broadcast interview, it's saying no comment, like while running away from the photog. It's just as bad as no comment. There's a reason why anyone in the media training game tells people never say no comment is because it destroys trust.

19:51Turning off engagement destroys trust. If you're a podcaster who sits on video and gets people to open up to you and you are a video production, like you're a media company, but then when trust is on the line, there's no media. All of a sudden we're just posting up white background, black letters or notes. You're busting trust. So it might favor the algorithm for you, but you're breaking down trust and everyone can see it. And that's why these simply do not work. They're trying to detach from the apology. Now I wrote an article in Substack on Monday. This was on Labor Day morning because this story just kind of hit all the levers for crisis management.

20:34So I had to dive into it and read it and explain why it just does not work. But as I mentioned in the beginning, there is a bigger theme here. There's a much bigger theme here. And that is that collision between public opinion and sponsored content. That is the crisis in Good Good Golf and Callaway. And that's the crisis here. One of the subheads in my Substack article was a line from my favorite movie of all time said by Hal Holbrook and all the president's men, follow the money. In a crisis, that's what you need to do. You need to follow the money. A choice, the decision, the collaboration, the partnership, the NDA, whatever.

21:15Usually there's money behind it. yes, power, yes, ego, yes, cover, yes, fear. We don't want to get called out, all those things. So often it's tied to money. So often tied to a payout. This is a crisis about a collaboration. This is polymarket. And where Good Good Golf and Callaway was about reaching young men, that's why Good Good Golf increased on YouTube. That's why they became big on YouTube. I could argue, and this came up in the conversation in my Substack live chat, someone mentioned it. They're going after females. This is to drive females to the prediction market, to make them gamblers.

21:57Gambling right now is so sports heavy, male heavy. Why don't we open up the door to females? And that's exactly what Dear Media is doing. That's why they have the partnership there. That's why Polymarket wanted to partner with them. So the bigger pattern here is who are they after? This is a crisis about the prediction market trying to reach women and using a media company to do it. At the end of the line is a podcast host who wrote a script and was talking about content that she was told to talk about because people were betting on the outcome of the Lindsay Clancy trial. Now, I'm not saying that anything hinky is happening with Dear Media and the podcast and Amanda Hirsch, and they were told to say certain things, and Polymarket wants them to say certain things.

22:49But when Dear Media goes into partnership with Polymarket for the What Are The Odds podcast, it is a weekly pop culture podcast where your favorite hosts break down what the world thinks about stories everyone's talking about. I said this on my SubSec Live. This is what we all talk about. This is what I do. That's my format. But the difference is I'm not sponsored by Polymarket. And I'm talking about things that I think are going to happen, which encourages you females to go place bets on Polymarket. That's what's happening here. Follow the money. Follow the intention. So if you're to watch this crisis with me, has Polymarket or Dear Media said a word?

23:29No. Will they say a word about this? No. Not likely at all. Will the Lindsay Clancy content stay up in the archives? Not likely. Maybe. But also, if the Lindsay Clancy trial gets retried, will they talk about it again? Will there be bets on it? Will it be content for what are the odds? So everyone, I want you to look at the moves here. Now, I practice as a crisis strategist and crisis communicator under laws. I have crisis laws that build my crisis doctrine. That's in my job. That's the shortcut in my job. I'm just looking for the laws and when these laws are broken. And in this story, there's a couple of laws that are broken.

24:16The moves kind of make up my field guide that we see happening all the time. The notes app apology, that's a move. Writing the notes app apology to make it look like you are so heartbroken and so upset with yourself that it's messy writing and you're swearing in there, that's a move. It's a performative move. But the laws here, this is where the laws hit in this crisis. Law number three, it's never the thing. It's the response to the thing. That's the spine of the law. The polymarket ad was the thing. The apology is the response. It had one job to do. Do not make it worse. And the apology made it worse.

24:59Another law, law five, silence gets filled and it never gets filled by your friends. If you turn off the comments in your apology, that's silence. You are silencing the community. You're silencing your people. Yes, you're silencing people who are complaining about you, the critics, but that conversation is going to go someplace else. And that's exactly where it went. Amanda Hirsch started posting again. Where did the conversation from the comments being off go? To those posts. So now it's spread out on other posts. It's on Reddit. It's in a lot of different places there. So silence always gets filled.

25:39Law number seven, the hard decision is invariably the right one. The easy decision was to go with the white card notes app. The hard one was for dear media to come out and say the right thing. Keep the comments open. Have Amanda Hirsch apologize because she was the one who made the reel. But be honest while why the reel was made. Say the name Polly Market. Say that it was a sponsorship. Fear is what drove the easy way out. Now, I got to tell you, most companies would have done the same thing. Most companies would have done it. And they're just taking the hit. but it still doesn't make it right.

26:18Another law, number two, the crisis comes from inside the house. If you follow the money, that's where the crisis is. This was a business decision. And I'm sure Amanda Hirsch is mad at herself for doing that post. She's probably mad at herself as well, because she's kind of put herself in this corner with her podcast, being a part of the Dear Media Network. And now they're collaborating with Polymarket. And now she's a host on the Polymarket podcast. I couldn't make that choice personally. So it makes you wonder how she feels about it, how people inside, but that's kind of what the law means. The crisis usually comes from inside the house, choices that were made inside the business and the big law.

27:01And that's why it's number one. Trust is the filter. Podcast ads work because listeners trust the host. And it's not just Amanda Hirsch. I see this in a lot of categories, okay? Especially in the medical community. Anyone who's credentialed, financial, whatever it is, if someone is an expert, people trust you as that expert. But when that expertise gets rented out, that's where things can go haywire. And that's why the apology didn't work here because the apology never mentioned the problem. And the problem was the collab with Polly Market in discussing the Lindsay Clancy trial. It wasn't that she said something off kilter about the Lindsay Clancy trial.

27:47It said she was driving people to make bets about the Lindsay Clancy trial, an incredibly tragic trial. That's where it went sideways. So the takeaway is this, because the moves that we saw here, like the Notes app, apology, that is a move. The white text with the black words, it's a very kind of stark comparing, it's very stark compared to other reels that you're going to see on Instagram or her podcast, which comes to life because it's video. It was posted at a strategic hour. It was on Sunday. It was engineered to look like it was a dashed off note from a very heart sick, hurt, you know, podcast hope.

28:28But the typos, the no clean paragraphs, it feels very raw, but it has legal fingerprints on it. In my personal opinion, I think it was redlined. I think a lot more people were in that apology other than Amanda Hirsch, which the appearance was that it was just Amanda. And cutting down the comments, turning off the commentary, that's also a move as well. And for her to say in the apology that it's out of character for me, that's a tell as well. She's separating herself from the apology. Amanda Hirsch is separating herself from the crisis. But Dear Media and Polly Market completely separated themselves from the crisis.

29:13They left her to fall on the sword. The answer is when you want to get through a crisis, you want to get through it with your trust intact or you're actively repairing. So you are regaining that trust. And how you do it is you name the crisis. And to name the crisis means you choose accountability and you take accountability for exactly what that crisis is. That's why we've had two weeks of brand crises that happened with Good Good Golf and Callaway. And even this week, the day of this recording, Wednesday, September 9th, the New England Patriots are playing tonight. And Mike Vrabel still has a job, but the trust factor is low on him.

29:55I didn't think he was going to lose his job and I didn't necessarily think he should lose his job but what we're going to watch for is the narrative. If the Patriots kind of like punted all season and they don't do well, are they going to blame the team? Are they going to blame the owner? Or are they going to blame Vrabel? Vrabel is going to get the heat on him. That's why he has to have a Super Bowl winning season to kind of get through this crisis because in the end, a crisis is all about trust. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks so much for listening. Bye for now.