Shoe Gate 2026 - "Bethenny Frankel Is a Weirdo" And We’re Questioning The Expectations Of Influencers
5/19/202651 min
Hey Lifers!
Have we been scammed by Meta? Britt is trying to learn Italian but she’s faced some hurdles! We talk about Meta ad scams and the great bot clear out of 2026.
Laura shares a story about… how do we encapsulate this?? a reformer Pilates machine, a spread eagle and someone who shouldn’t have been there to see it.
We also talk about a new phase of parenting that Laura has entered: her kids have worked out how to play Matt and Laura off against each other. How do you get back on the same page when your kids have found the gap?
Shoe Gate 2026.
An influencer fight that none of us should care about as much as we do.
Here's the timeline:
- Female founder Lexi Ioannou (daughter of Real Housewives' Dina Manzo) sent a pair of shoes from her brand Nou to Bethenny Frankel.
- Bethenny wore them multiple times but never tagged the brand.
- However, when a follower directly asked where the shoes were from, Bethenny linked an affiliate dupe instead.
- Lexi posted a now-viral callout video.
- Bethenny said that she did this because the shoes were sold out and that would annoy her followers, and that Lexi has played the ‘short game’ and has some business lessons to learn.
We unpack both sides: the value of celebrity endorsement even without a tag, whether the exchange is ‘fair’, whether the affiliate link is the villain, and what it means when a small female-founded brand watches their product get replaced with a paid link.
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - Britt's in Italy and may have been scammed by a language app
9:16 Laura's nanny situation and the thing she shouldn’t have seen
16:00 New parenting phase: the kids are playing mum and dad off against each other
25:19 Shoe Gate 2026: Bethenny Frankel, Lexi Ioannou and the affiliate dupe
49:46 Suck and sweet of the week
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Hosted by Britt Hockley & Laura Byrne
Hosted by Britt Hockley & Keeshia Pettit
Video Produced by Vanessa Beckford & Lachy Pugsley
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsBrittany Hockley· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Hi, guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. [sighs] I'm Brittany. I think I've been scammed. Is it too early to just, like, jump straight into my life, my life problems? [laughs] No, I think you should start right there. [laughs] What happened? So I don't know if it's a scam scam or a mini scam or if it's not a scam at all and it's just a real technical error. So what do the young kids say? I C Y M I. In case you missed it, I live in Italy. [laughs] Laura, you look so confused. Because I was like, "What?" [laughs] I Y K Y K. I C Y M I. I am 40 years old when I realize that that's what that stood for. [laughs] Oh, really? So it's great. Well, Laura, in case you missed it, no, I am, I'm over in Italy and I'm, I'm living with Ben over here. It's great, but I am still trying to learn Italian and, Laura, you've spoken about it before, Keisha, I think you have, too. I think you might have bought your little sensor lights from there, but, like, how easy it is to get sucked into ads on Instagram. I've kind of slowed down on it, but I'm a real Meta whore. Like, if I get a good ad- [laughs] ... you better believe I'm buying it. Like, so long as, like, if you target me right, I'll buy whatever. I've got things I never thought I needed. Actually, yeah, no, no, we're not going into that. [laughs] Continue. You go, Britt. You go. I've got a new foot scrub. [laughs] Obviously, your Instagram spies on you, right? Like, we all know that Zuckerberg spies on us, so it