Spill Sesh's Kristi Cook Spills the Tea on Running a Gossip Channel (EXCLUSIVE)

Anyone who is chronically online knows that gossip and rumors keep the internet running — and there's no shortage of gossip channels talking about the latest tea being spilled. These accounts can have hundreds of thousands of followers, and some of the more-known ones have been credited with breaking some jaw-dropping celebrity news.

Popular YouTube channel Spill Sesh has been sharing pop culture news recaps since 2019, dishing on the drama happening in online communities for her followers to comment on.

After running the account anonymously for four years, the woman behind the channel has finally decided to come forward with a face reveal — and she spoke exclusively with Distractify to share a look behind the scenes of her popular gossip channel.

Kristi Cook came forward as the woman behind the popular gossip channel, revealing her true identity in a YouTube video with fellow influencer (and the first person she posted a video about) MannyMUA.

"I felt like there was still curiosity out there," Kristi said of the decision to come forward with her identity. "[It was about] really expanding the possibilities for content that I can create now that my identity is out there."

Before running Spill Sesh full-time, Kristi was a photo coordinator at TMZ for a few years. Now Kristi has more than 730,000 subscribers on YouTube, where she regularly posts recaps of celebrity and influencer gossip.

Though gossip channels tend to have some overlap in their content, Kristi takes a much different approach than her infamous competitor Deux Moi. Deux Moi (who has continued to remain anonymous) often posts blind items and rumors about celebrities and influencers, many of which are submitted to her.

"People are seeing the information exactly how I'm getting it, not editorialized," Deux Moi told Distractify in 2021. "I'm not putting my opinion on it, I'm not changing their quote ... but if I'm just posting a DM, that's exactly the information I'm getting. It's an honest and not-watered-down piece of information."

Instead of trying to be the first to break a story, Kristi's approach is a bit more laid-back and strategic; she says she'll wait out more controversial topics to see what's officially reported and confirmed before putting together a video to lay out the facts for her followers.

"Anything that's really serious, I'll wait a little bit and see some other coverage just to make sure that I know what I'm talking about," she says.

But Kristi says that seeing how her followers react when they have all of the information laid out before them is sometimes the best part of running her account.

"When you go on online, you're seeing all these different opinions, and some people only see a certain side, or they only heard about this one thing," Kristi says of her editorial process. "And then to read how people react to seeing everything — I think that's kind of fun."

Neither account is known to double-check with publicists or primary sources before posting, but that comes with the territory of running a gossip channel.

Kristi admits that she's tried reaching out to confirm rumors before, but "if they're not going to speak out about something publicly on their own then they're probably not going to give comment on it."

Deux Moi recently found herself under scrutiny from Taylor Swift's publicist Tree Paine, who called out the gossip channel for her continuous claim that Taylor and Joe had a "ceremony" of sorts, which led to the rumor that the now-split pair had secretly wed.

"Unless Taylor Swift is telling me herself that there was a ceremony, I just can't be like, 'I'm gonna die on this hill,'" Kristi says. This is why she's continued to approach her channel in the way that she has: waiting until she has all the information possible before sharing it with her followers.

"[I'm] just trying to keep it as factual as possible, especially when it's something serious, and not give my opinion," she says.