Jervisgate: How an X Factor auditionee is at the centre of a Gay Twitter civil war

There’s sort of an unwritten rule when you’re a gay person within a certain age bracket – and it’s that if you spent your formative years living within the culture where The X Factor truly ruled the zeitgeist, you have an intrinsic urge to know every X Factor audition word for word. I guess it wasn’t until gay Twitter took off in the mid to late 2010s that I realised it wasn’t just me who had every facet of The Chawners many auditions memorised word perfectly. Gay Twitter became a sanctuary for quoting Debbie Stevens, Ariel “Holisitic Vocal Coach” Burdett, Dawn the Jockey and “evil” Rachel Lester. But it was Holly Jervis who rose above the rest – and has had an enduring legacy on Gay Twitter that has created division, and increasing discourse in the ethics of obsessing over a process of auditions that existed to exploit. This is how Holly Jervis from The X Factor divided, and continues to divide, Gay Twitter.

Why Holly?

Holly Jervis’ audition is stuff of X Factor legend. Auditioning for season five, “sunny” Isle of Wight resident Holly walked into the audition room with an unshakeable confidence. The X Factor auditions were formulaic – you could usually tell which hapless hopeful they were setting up to be bad – exploiting their confidence and excitement to amuse mid 00s viewers in a time where we were much less sensitive to the wellbeing of contestants on reality TV than we are today. With Holly, it was hard to tell which way the audition was going to go. She didn’t necessarily look like someone there to be laughed at, her confidence and professionalism seemed palpable and at first the judges liked her.

Her rendition of Big, Blonde and Beautiful from Hairspray, combined with the narrative that she spoke too much and too intensely and with Simon Cowell cruelly telling her her mouth was too big when she sang and that it “looked like a cave” resulted in four nos for Holly, and advice that the experienced holiday camp singer should change career to “preachin’ and speechin'”, in the words of Cheryl.

I don’t think Jervis, ITV, Cowell or anyone involved with the production could foresee the legacy and the eventual division that the three minute audition of Holly Jervis ended up creating.

In 2021, everything changed

Whilst Holly Jervis and the horde of other LoveOfHuns X Factor auditionees have always had their place in the meme culture of gay Twitter, in 2021 Jervis’ audition took everything a step further. Holly Jervis clips, memes, snippets, quotes and other footage of her post-X Factor career circulated Twitter more than ever before. It’s hard to trace the origins of how this phenomena really took off, but in the summer of 2021 the reign of Jervis took to the throne. It wasn’t long during this time before the endless Holly Jervis began to divide the Gay Twitter timeline into two – the ones that found the increased Jerv presence funny and the ones who found it the most annoying turn Twitter has ever taken.

The issue is, the joke of the entire Holly Jervis subculture on Twitter IS the oversaturation. The more the naysayers said it wasn’t funny, the more it pissed people off, the more the audition would circulate. It’s a meme that’s working like its intended when people are annoyed – with any anti-Jervis tweet being quoted by the Jervis gays featuring any clips of Holly they can find. This has been going on for months, and it’s still happening right now. The divided factions aren’t backing down.

We’ve seen eras of clips and memes on Gay Twitter before, but it’s all had its sell-by date. Things have come and gone, but Holly Jervis culture and divided discourse is still here to say. But is the constant and unrelenting content of one woman’s audition the right thing to do?

How does Holly Jervis feel about it all?

One look at Holly Jervis’ heavily edited Wiki page shows that since her time on The X Factor she has gone by 29 different aliases and pseudonyms. This involves her changing her name on social media and professionally via LinkedIn, seemingly trying to distance herself as much as possible from her days as an X Factor auditionee. Holly has never spoken out much about how she feels about her X Factor past, but many auditionees have and have said their audition was manipulated purposely to make them look worse. Notably, P!nk impersonator Zoe Alexander has spoken extensively in a YouTube series about how the show set out to make her look as bad as possible for the purpose of entertainment. It’s likely due to Holly’s consistent efforts to change her online presence to more private that she feels the same.

Whilst the incessant Holly Jervis culture is a lot, and exists to amuse, I do think that the intentions of the Jervaholic side of the debate have a lot of love for her. Whilst we all look back in amusement at these auditions, often in a grim way as we realise the nature of production exploitation all these years later, there’s a LoveOfHuns adoration for the women involved. You can take Kelly Peakman as a prime example. Known for her iconic lines after getting rejected such as “Where’s your brain, in your middle toe?” and “Very, very ‘arsh”, Kelly circulated Twitter for a long time. But unlike Holly Jervis, Kelly Peakman capitalised on her viral fame. She’s released a range or merchandise, recorded a single and performed with Drag Race UK star Baga Chipz and has proved on several occasions that her vocals aren’t really that bad after all.

Of course – this is up to the individual, and Kelly’s embracing of the renaissance adoration she found on social media all these years later has no bearing on whether Holly Jervis should do the same – but if she ever did, it’s clear that she could pretty much headline a Pride event at this stage. There’s certainly a lot of love for her camp flair and confidence, and most of the anti-Jervis sentiment comes from her commitment to staying private and wanting to respect that.

Where does Jervisgate go from here?

It’s hard to say if there’s an end date in sight for the Holly Jervis war the X Factor audition has created on Gay Twitter, but by the looks of the timeline there’s certainly no hope for a truce. The ethics of the phenomena is the real issue here. Jervis culture has taken it all too far on numerous occasions, breaching the privacy Holly is clearly striving to keep for whatever reasons she might have. Jervis gays on Twitter have posted pictures from her Facebook after tracking her down under the various different names, and have also posted screenshots of her LinkedIn. This is completely wrong in my eyes, and if I was Holly I’d find it particularly uncomfortable. It probably puts her off embracing all the love there is online for her.

I also think that there’s an issue with policing content that comes from an X Factor audition clip. The anti-Jervis faction demanding an end to the onslaught of Jerv memes when they come from her audition which is all over YouTube for anyone to see isn’t really their place to pipe up on. People are free to use their Twitter to be ridiculous about an X Factor audition as much as they see fit – if you don’t like it don’t engage. But at the same time, it’s right to call out breaches of her privacy.

Until Holly Jervis more publicly comments on the gay Twitter phenomena surrounding her X Factor audition, the war rages on. One scroll of Holly’s X Factor Wiki page can clearly showcase how far this has all gone, with factions editing it in ludicrous detail. It’s parody – it’s online meme culture of the variety that would vaporise a Victorian orphan, and it’s unprecedented. This battle is the real World War III. I just hope Holly herself is doing okay, and if she’s reading this, she knows there’s so much love out there for her. The real winners of The X Factor all these years later in the online world are the ones Cowell set out to make a mockery of, and I think that’s kind of wonderful.

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