Franchesca Ramsey
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Franchesca Leigh Ramsey (born November 29, 1983), also known as Chescaleigh, is an American comedian, activist, television and
YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
personality, and actress, who has appeared on MTV and
MSNBC MSNBC (originally the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company) is an American news-based pay television cable channel. It is owned by NBCUniversala subsidiary of Comcast. Headquartered in New York City, it provides news coverage and politi ...
. She gained media fame quickly after her YouTube commentary on racial issues went viral, and she built a career as a writer, producer, and performer based on her unintended activism, being thrust into a role as an advisor or coach on social issues.


Early life and education

Ramsey was born . She is an only child who grew up in
West Palm Beach, Florida West Palm Beach is a city in and the county seat of Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. It is located immediately to the west of the adjacent Palm Beach, which is situated on a barrier island across the Lake Worth Lagoon. The populati ...
. She was using computers early, having a website in high school during the 1990s. She attended a performing arts high school, and studied graphic design in college, after trying acting but finding it emotionally painful, and even "abusive". She moved to New York City in 2009 with her future husband when he got a scholarship to study law at St. John's University.


Career


YouTube

Ramsey had been working in graphic design at Ann Taylor when her 2012 YouTube video "Shit White Girls Say...to Black Girls" went viral and led to interviews on the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
, Anderson Cooper and
NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...
. Ramsey's YouTube channel contains topical and socially conscious comedy sketches and song parodies among other videos. Her ''chescalocs'' channel is about
natural hair The natural hair movement is a movement which aims to encourage women and men of African descent to embrace their natural, afro-textured hair. It originated in the United States during the 1960s, with its most recent iteration occurring in the 200 ...
. In 2008, Ramsey won the ''
People A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
''/YouTube Red Carpet Reporter contest, which greatly increased her channel's popularity. In 2015, Ramsey became the host of the MTV News
web series A web series (also known as a web show) is a series of scripted or non-scripted online videos, generally in episodic form, released on the Internet, which first emerged in the late 1990s and became more prominent in the early 2000s. A single in ...
''Decoded'' where she discusses
racism Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonis ...
and cultural issues. Several of Ramsey's videos have appeared on MTV, ''
The Huffington Post ''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...
'',
CollegeHumor CollegeHumor is an Internet comedy company based in Los Angeles. Aside from producing content for release on YouTube, it was also a former humor website owned by InterActiveCorp ( IAC) until January 2020, when IAC withdrew funding and the websi ...
, ''
Jezebel Jezebel (;"Jezebel"
(US) and ) was the daughte ...
'', and '' Glamour''. In 2017, the show won a Webby Award in the Public Service and Activism category.


Online harassment

Ramsey has been a target of
online harassment Cyberbullying or cyberharassment is a form of bullying or harassment using Electronic communication network, electronic means. Cyberbullying and cyberharassment are also known as online bullying. It has become increasingly common, especially ...
,
trolling In slang, a troll is a person who posts or makes inflammatory, insincere, digressive, extraneous, or off-topic messages online (such as in social media, a newsgroup, a forum, a chat room, a online video game), or in real life, with the i ...
and
doxing Doxing or doxxing is the act of publicly providing personally identifiable information about an individual or organization, usually via the internet. Historically, the term has been used interchangeably to refer to both the aggregation of this in ...
. According to writer Ijeoma Oluo, Ramsey is one of a group of African-American women who "face regular, coordinated campaigns of abuse aimed at forcing them off of the internet." After winning the ''
People A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
''/YouTube Red Carpet Reporter contest in 2008, Ramsey became the target of racist harassment, beginning with a comment thread stalker posting racial epithets. That person started sending harassing emails to Ramsey's work email address, and then making malware attacks on her employer's email server. The stalker then began posting personal details meant to imply that he was physically tracking and watching her. Ramsey said she had a good relationship with YouTube personnel in attempting to prevent the harassment, and was selected to participate in a survey of YouTube creators about changes they would like. She said she wanted the ability to block users by IP address, and limit comments to channel subscribers. YouTube did not respond, and the harassment continued. Ramsey discussed minorities being targets of harassment in a 2013 SXSW panel, in which she said she tries to ignore trolls, or hold them up for ridicule, to laugh them off. Ramsey was one of five YouTubers to receive a grant from
John Green John Michael Green (born August 24, 1977) is an American author, YouTube content creator, podcaster, and philanthropist. His books have more than 50 million copies in print worldwide, including '' The Fault in Our Stars'' (2012), which is ...
's Creators for Change project, to "amplify the voices of people who are not traditionally heard". Green's goal is to help those in a position to speak out and build online communities opposed to hate speech, xenophobia and harassment. Ramsey says her long experience online has helped her ignore online harassment. She said that she has not hesitated to speak on issues, but has learned to avoid mention of YouTubers by name, speaking in "generalities" instead, knowing that angering a fan base will bring "100,000 twitter messages from children" calling her racial epithets or targeting her husband, or harassing her at work. She advises girls to choose their battles when confronted with harassment or open prejudice, and to find ways to educate individuals in a work environment, and that it gets easier with practice.


Television

In early 2016, Ramsey joined
Comedy Central Comedy Central is an American basic cable channel owned by Paramount Global through its network division's MTV Entertainment Group unit, based in Manhattan. The channel is geared towards young adults aged 18–34 and carries comedy programmin ...
's ''
The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore ''The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore'' is a 2015–16 American Late night television, late-night panel discussion, panel Late-night talk show, talk show hosted by Larry Wilmore that aired for two seasons on Comedy Central. The show was a spin-o ...
'' as a contributor and writer. Ramsey has also appeared in television series such as '' Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell'', ''
Broad City ''Broad City'' is an American television sitcom created by and starring Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson. It was developed from their independent web series of the same name, which was produced between 2009 and 2011. The sitcom, like the web series ...
'', and '' Superstore''. In April 2017, Comedy Central announced that they were developing a late-night comedy pilot to star and be executive produced by Ramsey.


Podcast

Ramsey hosted a podcast with her husband Patrick called ''Last Name Basis'' where the couple talked about their lives and the world around them. The podcast began in January 2015 and ended as a result of their divorce in March 2019 with a total of 112 episodes.


Book

Ramsey's 2018 book ''Well, That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist'' is a collection of essays that describes her unintended role as an activist on racism and online harassment after the sudden media attention to her YouTube commentary. She says the book is intended to help others navigate the online world, including her own mistakes. She admits falling into 'troll behavior' herself, and writes about why she and others have sometimes used destructive behavior online to deal with offline personal pressures and disappointments. She offers strategies for surviving online abuse, encouraging logging off for a time, and regrets engaging rather than ignoring online harassers.


Personal life

Ramsey married Patrick Kondas in 2013. The two divorced in 2019. Ramsey first publicly discussed being bisexual on
National Coming Out Day National Coming Out Day (NCOD) is an annual LGBT awareness day observed on October 11, to support lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people ( the LGBT community, sometimes also called the queer community) in " coming out of the closet". Fi ...
, 2020.


Works

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Filmography


Music videos


References


External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ramsey, Franchesca 1983 births American television personalities American women television personalities American YouTubers Living people American television actresses American film actresses American women podcasters American podcasters African-American actresses African-American women writers African-American writers 21st-century American memoirists MTV people Internet activists 21st-century American women writers American women memoirists Bisexual comedians Bisexual actresses LGBT African Americans 21st-century African-American women 20th-century African-American people 20th-century African-American women American bisexual actors LGBT YouTubers Victims of cyberbullying American LGBT comedians American bisexual writers