About Us
There’s a romance playing out in your hand. Or maybe it’s a comedy, or even a thriller. Only it’s not a story you’re watching. It’s a story you’re living. A phone is how we experience the modern world, so Phony is inventing a new genre of narrative content that turns the uniquely private world within our devices into the language of cinema.
Our team is story-obsessed and driven by a traditional writers’ room discipline. By balancing old-school techniques with modern behavior, we are creating binge-worthy entertainment through the drama of our screens and reimagining how universally relatable stories can be told in a digital first world. We’re not doing it to disrupt the system. We’re doing it because we discovered a bold new canvas for telling stories with the power to entertain the masses.
How do we communicate the heartbeat behind the doom scroll? The nervous smile behind a first date text? We’re building a design language that plays on the tension between us and our screens. Phony is transforming the art of original storytelling through the portal of living, breathing technology.
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Simon and Jesse are brothers who grew up in the Los Angeles area. They founded Phony in 2018 after they noticed a cultural shift toward digital-first communication and the need to modernize the formula for a situational comedy by reimagining it for mobile audiences. They realized that the old coffee shop and bar banter they grew up on, now happens in private group chats and asked, “What happens when you script those moments?”
This question led to the birth of Phony, a chat fiction network that scripts text message conversations. Today, Simon, Jesse and their team writes 9 original stories weekly and have grown to a network of 25M+ followers and over 2 Billion minutes watched. From scripted text message conversations to scripted FaceTimes, Phony Texts is now in 7 different languages and continuing to find innovative ways to tell stories.
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Evan leads post-production at Phony Content, overseeing editorial across our digital channels and premium slate. With five years at the company he has built and managed the editing pipeline behind over a billion views of scripted social content. He is the editor turning group chats into cinema.
His favorite emoji is: 🥸
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Chuck keeps Phony Content running at scale. Over the last five years he has built the operational infrastructure behind one of social media's largest scripted storytelling networks, managing a global team across the US, South America, and Europe, overseeing post production workflows, hiring, and the systems that power over a billion views across 7 languages.
His favorite emoji is: 🙌
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MC showruns our Phony Texts show. Her favorite emoji is: 🐸
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Ashley writes for Dead Zone. Her favorite emoji is:
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Kunal writes for Phony Texts. His favorite emoji is:
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Carly writes for Deadzone. Her favorite emoji is: 🙈
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Avery produces our International Channels. His favorite emoji is: 🕺