Episode Transcript
This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.
Morgan Sung: Hey guys, this is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Except today, we aren’t opening any tabs. We’re doing something a little different. Sometimes while scrolling, I come across a truly wild post, but spending an entire episode talking about it just doesn’t work out. Sometimes we don’t have enough time to cover it because we have so many other stories to cover. Sometimes I do a little digging and it turns out that the lore behind it just isn’t compelling enough to justify a deep dive. Sometimes there’s no lore at all. A lot of things online aren’t always a multi-tab journey. It can just be juicy gossip for the group chat.
So today we have Candice Lim joining us. Candice is also a journalist who covers the Internet and is a co-host of ICYMI, In Case You Missed It, from Slate. Candice and I have been Internet friends and real-life friends for a while, and she is one of my favorite people to gossip about the Internet with.
Candice Lim: Hello, Morgan.
Morgan Sung: So, Candice, we have been internet friends for awhile, but the first time we hung out in person, we couldn’t stop yapping. And because we can’t resist the content mines, why not turn hanging out into content?
Candice Lim: Absolutely.
Morgan Sung: Candice and I are here to play a game called “Save or Scroll.” Save as in when you see a post on TikTok or Instagram or X and you bookmark it, add it to your saved folders or drop the link in Notes app because you know you’re gonna wanna talk about it later. Scroll as in you keep scrolling. So we each have a handful of posts that we can’t stop thinking about and we’re gonna take turns and see if they’re just for the group chat or if they are actually worth a deep dive. If we decide to scroll… It means we’ve talked about it, we’re moving on. If we decide to save, it means that we may hold onto the idea for a future episode. Ready, Candice?
Candice Lim: Yes.
Morgan Sung: I’ll go first. So today I come to you with a truly perplexing trend. This is what I’m calling the alpha male get ready with me videos. Are you familiar with these?
Candice Lim: I actually have not seen these until you brought them to my attention.
Morgan Sung: So this all starts with this fitness influencer who goes by Ashton Hall Official on Instagram and he’s this mega jacked dude who posts videos of his super elaborate morning routines. It starts with him getting up at 3:52 a.m. and he pours his first glass of Saratoga spring water. Yeah. Then he takes it to the balcony and starts doing push-ups. And then at like 4:40 a.m. He records himself journaling, but then he opens his notebook to the first page and it’s clearly never been used before. At 5:46 a.m., he dumps ice into this giant glass bowl and pours more Saratoga Spring Water and like dunks his face in it. Then he goes to the gym, showers and gets dressed, and at 9 a.m., this faceless pair of women’s hands brings him another bowl of ice water for him to dunk his face again. Was there anything that really stood out about this routine for you?
Candice Lim: So, I unfortunately saw this, and then I’ve been seeing other videos, which are basically, let’s call them just “Manosphere Day in the Lives, and a l ot of things I’m seeing in common. Number one, all of them wear mouth tape, which they like wear during sleep, they peel it off, and honestly, you should keep it on the whole day. Second, seeing a lot Bibles. I’m seeing a lot people opening Bibles, not really reading them, interesting. And third, all them dunk their face in ice water, which I really do not understand.
Morgan Sung: Something thing that also stood out to me was when he makes a show of getting on his computer and being on a meeting and everyone’s like clowning on him for this one part because it sounds so “fake business bro.”
Ashton Hall: So looking at it, bro, we got to go ahead and get in at least 10,000.
Morgan Sung: At least 10,000?
Candice Lim: 10,000 of what? Yeah, dollars, views. What I also find very funny is that all of these guys, they usually start their day way too early. I’m thinking 3.52 a.m., 4 a.m. I know exactly where this came from. It’s because Mark Wahlberg once said that he gets up at like 4 a.m. to do his workout. I’m just saying you guys don’t need to wake up that early and guess what? Life doesn’t have to be this hard. That’s my motto for the year. Life doesn’t have to be this hard.
Morgan Sung: Exactly. One thing that stood out to me, women are in this but like they’re always facing away from the camera and they’re always like performing some sort of like subservient domestic duty for these men like steaming their clothes or cooking them breakfast?
Candice Lim: Yeah, there is a woman present who basically cooks and feeds him food. She’s faceless. Maybe that is her choice. I definitely noticed how he kept in a lot of footage of hospitality workers, of people giving him towels. There’s class commentary there, but I don’t wanna comment on it. on it. Okay, do we save? Do we scroll?
Candice Lim: Save,.
Morgan Sung: Okay. Yeah. All right, let’s save it. Do you like organize your save folders? Like your saved videos?
Candice Lim: I do, on TikTok? Yeah, I do.
Morgan Sung: I try to, but then sometimes I get lazy and like overwhelmed by like, but I’m like, “Oh my God, it’s a new category.”
Candice Lim: It’s difficult. If you pay me 10K, I’ll do it for you, Morgan.
Morgan Sung: I don’t have 10K.
Candice Lim: Okay, well this guy does.
Morgan Sung: Maybe I need 10,000 of that, maybe I need to start making these videos. So we chose save on the alpha male warning routine videos, which means we’re gonna hold onto it for a possible future episode on the manosphere. Okay, so now it’s your turn. What did you bring?
Candice Lim: Morgan I am bringing to you the Haley Bieber seven part video. Have you heard about this?
Morgan Sung: I have seen posts about it, but I have limited my intake because I’m like, Candice will just explain it.
Candice Lim: Oh, I got you, and let’s start from the beginning. Okay, in August, 2024, a YouTube channel called Internet Oddities, they posted this like 18 minute long video, it is called Hailey Bieber’s Dangerous Decade Long Obsession. This video is about how Hailey Baldwin, now Bieber, allegedly plotted to date and marry Justin Bieber before, during, and after his relationship with Selena Gomez, and they do call it stalking.
Internet Oddities: Haley would also appear at Justin’s Toyota Concert Series performance in Rockefeller Plaza before following him to Los Angeles to attend the premiere of his movie, Never Say Never, where she can be seen watching him from the sidelines as he walks the purple carpet.
Candice Lim: The reason we’re talking about this now is this video was posted six months ago. It’s making the rounds again because someone on TikTok, they like broke up the 18 minute video into a seven part series. In terms of why now I do think it’s important to note that this person who broke up the video is a self-professed Selena Gomez stan account.
Selena Gomez just released an album with her fiance, Benny Blanco. And a part of me does wonder if this Selenator like reposted this video because look, if Selena does indeed marry Benny Blanco, there has been this cyclical narrative on the internet that’s like wishful thinking that some people think that Selena and Justin might get back together. And if she indeed marries Benny Blanco, that illusion is a little over.
And I think what is different now is that Hailey is now, according to TMZ, quote, considering taking legal action against these allegations that she’d stalked Justin. And I would just say that this doesn’t really mean anything until we see a docket, until we some papers filed in court. But I do think this is about celebrities coming for anonymous fans and haters who speak ill of them. I mean, can a celebrity prove that the rumors being put out on something as ethereal as the internet. Are they malicious enough that they deserve to be silenced completely? I don’t think so.
Morgan Sung: I’m curious. Would she be going after the person who made the original 20 minute long YouTube video six months ago or would she be going after people who like reposted or like shared the video or like cut it up and then posted it online in seven parts?
Candice Lim: That’s a really good question.
Morgan Sung: Who does she go after then?
Candice Lim: Yeah. And that’s actually the real difficulty and why maybe we haven’t seen a celebrity or an influencer fully come after like successfully legally snark pages or internet criticism.
Morgan Sung: We’re out of time. Save or scroll?
Candice Lim: I’m gonna say scroll.
Morgan Sung: Scroll? Yeah, I would keep tabs on it, but I don’t think it’s worth like a full save.
Candice Lim: Like bookmark it, but don’t keep the tab open.
Morgan Sung: Yeah, yeah, I’m into that. Anyway, the whole idea of snark pages and like who’s held legally liable kind of brings us to our third story that I bring you, which is about the potential repeal of section 230. Are you familiar with section 230 by any chance?
Candice Lim: A little bit, but I think this is the first time I’ve thought about it in a complex, analytical way.
Morgan Sung: Okay, so basically, section 230 is part of the Communications Decency Act, and people say it’s the 26 words that created the internet. This is what it says, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
Earlier this month, the information reported that there’s a bipartisan effort to like repeal it. And what Section 230 does is it basically protects internet platforms and also users from any legal liability for what other people post. So if someone on the snark page was bad-mouthing Hailey Bieber, a platform like Reddit that hosts that snark page wouldn’t be held liable thanks to Section 230. The idea is that only you are responsible for your own speech online and not other people’s even if you like reposted or something. But it also means that tech platforms have less incentive to crack down on hate speech or harassment or misinformation since they aren’t legally required to.
A lot of experts worry that repealing section 230 without any other meaningful reform can have massive repercussions for free speech online. And if it’s repealed, it means that platforms like Reddit can be sued for what users say on their site. But it’s also affects individuals too. Without Section 230, you can be held liable for not just what you post, but what you repost. You can be held liable if you write a take on Substack and someone else comments on it. You can be held liable for just forwarding an email. But my question is like, will repealing Section 230 kill snark culture online? Like what does the internet look like without snarking?
Candice Lim: Yeah, this is very tough because Section 230 has bipartisan repeal efforts because there are some people who think it is not doing enough to protect kids online and there are some people saying it’s doing too much to protect like free speech. I think this is one of those situations where repealing the whole thing is not the best option because we have a start, we just need to make it better. And that’s the other issue. We all know that legislation does not always catch up to modern society. And so I think having something like Section 230 is already a big deal, but it is a bit behind the times.
Morgan Sung: I feel like this is like a common thing with tech policy and internet policy, where regulators don’t necessarily think about the real use cases of the laws that they’re trying to enact when it comes to the internet.
Candice Lim: Yeah, I just think a genuine thought I always have when we hear stories about this or even stories about censorship in countries like China, India, who have kind of gone this way of they have watered down versions of TikTok. I’m like, you guys keep going after social media, but you’re not going after the dating apps, which is what we really need laws about. I’m so serious. You can’t tell me you’re 36 looking for a long term, maybe short term, open to monogamy relationship.
Morgan Sung: Okay, so with this, do we save? Do we scroll?
Candice Lim: Oy. Save. Because this may impact our future of our beat and our jobs.
Morgan Sung: Okay Candice, what else did you bring?
Candice Lim: This is so dicey, and it makes me feel icky, but I have to do it for you and for me. Luigi Mangione. A lot of us are aware of this man. He is accused of killing the CEO of United Healthcare. There have been so many headlines about him, but the one that has been stuck in my brain for at least a month is the fact that a source told Radar Online that Luigi Mangione has allegedly made upward of 20 sex tapes. Let’s just sit on that.
Morgan Sung: 20 is a high — that’s pretty high for a what, a 26 year old man?
Candice Lim: Quantity over quality. And Morgan, I’m gonna stop you right there because when this came out, someone emailed Luigi’s lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, and she emailed them back, saying, quote, “hopefully everyone realizes these are fake and not Luigi.” And this came after a sex tape broker claimed to have footage of this nature, and he was selling it for a five.
Morgan Sung: I’m sorry, a sex-tape broker?
Candice Lim: Yeah, he’s not a good guy. He has a very dicey history of doing things like selling Paris Hilton sex tapes as well. And I think off the bat, this is an extremely odd allegation. It’s a weird story to run, but the good news is that TikTok is not taking the bait.
Tiktok Video: So you guys found out that Luigi filmed some sex tapes and what I’m asking is that you guys don’t watch them please because I didn’t look good in them. My hair wasn’t done. I mean during that time I wasn’t my best
Candice Lim: But let me stop. Morgan, do you want to jump in with thoughts?
Morgan Sung: First of all, does a sex tape exist? Have we seen the alleged sex tape? And then second of all is that actually Luigi?
Candice Lim: Okay, so here’s the difficulty. There is no footage that Luigi’s lawyer is saying is his. What this sex tape broker was trying to peddle was that he claimed that he had footage of someone who looked like Luigi performing acts in a bathroom. And here’s a deal. Even if that tape is Luigi, even if that tape does not exist, let’s say the tape does exist, but it’s someone else. Does this person have the consent to sell footage of that stranger for $500,000?
Morgan Sung: Right.
Candice Lim: Knowing that they’re probably not gonna touch that money at all? There’s consent right there, right? The second part of it is that supporters of Luigi are obviously rushing to deny this narrative that the tapes even exist, insisting that this is the media, this is places like Radar Online and Daily Mail trying to smear Luigi’s name, especially when he is being held, especially when cannot defend himself against allegations like these.
Morgan Sung: Yeah, I mean, it seems like a really shitty attempt at capitalizing on people thinking that Luigi Mangione is attractive, and it just seems like they’re taking advantage of people wanting to sexually harass him or this poor stranger who might happen to look like him.
Candice Lim: We are definitely having conversations about media literacy, which is not only about considering the source, but also not trusting the source in front of you. I think that’s really pertinent in not falling for headlines like these, which is click bait because the media knows that social media has been riding for Luigi and they have been weaponizing his appearance to draw in both haters and defenders.
Morgan Sung: Ok let’s wrap it up. So do we save or do we scroll on Luigi’s sex tape?
Candice Lim: Save.
Morgan Sung: Save. Ok! That brings me to the story that I have brought you today, which is also Luigi related. Are you ready? Yep. Okay, so this is about allegations that Reddit is banning pro Luigi content. People were saying that like they upvoted a Luigi meme and then were banned for just like upvoting it, not even for like posting it, which seems to be part of this bigger crackdown on like people trying to really rally in support of Luigi online.
So this seems to have started in early March after a Reddit administrator announced that the site was taking a pretty significant shift in its approach to content moderation. And Mia Sato from The Verge reported that Reddit started flagging content that just mentions the word Luigi. So like Reddit’s auto-mod is flagging posts about Luigi’s Mansion 3, the video game that came out in 2019 that has nothing to do with Luigi Mangione.
Candice Lim: Uh huh.
Morgan Sung: And Reddit told The Verge, there isn’t a site-wide filter. They don’t expect people to stop talking about Luigi. But like, what’s the truth, babe, right?
Candice Lim: Yeah.
Morgan Sung: This kind of brings up questions about this larger internet-wide crackdown on free speech across all social media platforms. And you had your own experience with some Luigi content that got taken down, right. Do you want to talk about that?
Candice Lim: Okay, so I’ve been personally affected by this, which is that on TikTok, I posted photos of him just from the courtroom on TikTok. I didn’t say I loved him. I didn’t say I hate him. I just said, fave Luigi photos. And I’m not gonna lie to you, I had a hit because within two hours, I did get 9,000 likes. And let me tell you what happened. Hours later, I get a notification from TikTok that says, your post has been removed for violating community guidelines.
Morgan Sung: But what guidelines?
Candice Lim: They wouldn’t tell me. They would not tell me which guidelines, they wouldn’t me how I infringed upon it. I think what’s really funny is like, literally prior to this video going up, I was a completely private account that made no content. And so they kind of swarmed on me immediately, the video was taken down. I got so angry.
Morgan Sung: Yeah, they didn’t tell you what community guidelines you violated. And that’s kind of similar to Reddit, too, where like, yeah, there are people like, you know, advocating for violence, whatever, Reddit cracked down on that. But then there are also examples like upvoting pictures of Luigi in court in his little sweater and like people getting banned for doing that. And people were like, OK, well, what’s the truth? Are you trying to crack down on free speech? And Reddit is, of course, saying like, “No, no. Of course not.” But I do think that this is just happening online everywhere. Which brings me to my next question. Do we save or do we scroll?
Candice Lim: We must save.
Morgan Sung: I think we have to save this. Like I think that, oh, we will be doing a Luigi deep dive. Alright, more saving and scrolling with Candice right after this break. I have a fun one for you, and it’s a little bit unhinged. Are you ready?
Candice Lim: Yes.
Morgan Sung: Are you familiar with Bryan Johnson?
Candice Lim: Sadly, yes.
Morgan Sung: So for listeners, Bryan Johnson is this millionaire, and he basically was like, “I’m going to use my fortune to stay young forever.”
Bryan Johnson: It’s a total plasma exchange which means I’m going to remove all the plasma from my body and get new stuff put in. Everything I do is an attempt at discovering what slows down my speed of aging and reverses my aging damage.
Morgan Sung: Literally, he has a whole, jokingly, what he calls a cult called “Don’t Die”, and it’s this movement dedicated to like anti-aging regiments.
Candice Lim: Right.
Morgan Sung: So he takes dozens of daily supplements and he went super viral for doing blood transfusions with his teenage son, and he’s obsessed with like optimizing his sperm count and erections.
Candice Lim: Mmmhmm.
Morgan Sung: Anyway, he usually posts very tech founder-y things, like his latest biohacking results. But then a couple of weeks ago, he suddenly gets funnier online and starts participating in meme culture. He’s posting like pictures of him in this Ebenezer Scrooge getup and sunglasses and being like, “don’t forget to go to bed.” He’s speaking to a certain audience, right? He’s really endearing himself and like humanizing himself.
Well, the New York Times did a huge expose on him and they say that he makes everyone in his life sign like confidentiality agreements from his employees to his ex fiance. One of the agreements says that his employees have to like be okay with him walking around basically naked and that they’re okay with hearing about his boners and that his behavior won’t be quote, “unwelcome.” Anyway, it’s a whole mess, but people are still rallying behind him and being like, “Oh dude, you’re so funny. You’re just like some weird guy who loves to post online.” And so it makes me think that this entire rebrand was preparation for this article to drop.
Candice Lim: Oh.
Morgan Sung: I don’t know, have you seen this before where like the new crisis PR is meme culture?
Candice Lim: Yeah. So this is super interesting because it’s kind of obvious that Bryan probably has hired a social media consultant to tap into this market that will hopefully find him likable, so likable that they may or may not read the New York Times piece and go, “Ah, like Bryan’s one of us.” And the thing about Bryan Johnson is that I think maybe even going all the way back to those alpha male day in the lives we were talking about earlier — maybe those are the people who find him interesting. I frankly find him boring. And on top of that, I kind of remember when he first kind of like became a news item, especially with the blood transfusions, there was some sentiment of like, he wanted to look as young as his teenage son. Yeah?
Morgan Sung: Yeah.
Candice Lim: The thing is, if you have ever been the daughter of a mother, you’ve been in those trenches. You’re not new, Bryan.
Morgan Sung: Do we save or do we scroll?
Candice Lim: I would really love to scroll on Bryan Johnson. I never want to hear from him ever again.
Morgan Sung: Ok. Candice, what’s our last story for today?
Candice Lim: Let’s end on a happy note, which is that, breaking news, breaking news! Trinity Rodman and Ben Shelton are dating! Do you know who I’m talking about?
Morgan Sung: I have no clue. I don’t follow sports. What’s happening? Tell me.
Candice Lim: All right, ESPN parlayers, clock in. So this story is not really about sports. This story is about the art of the hard launch and how one can take a soft launch and parlay it into a hard launch.
Let’s define some terms. A soft launch: it’s when you are softly, subtly, telling your audience that you are dating someone, but you are not revealing the identity of said person. An example, you post an IG story. You have two drinks in the frame. You see one hand and another, but you don’t tag the hand. You don’t show face, and that is a soft launch! The hard launch is basically when you post your significant other on grid. There’s a tag, there’s a caption. It stays on the profile until you break up with them.
And this story, is about the soft and hard launch of Trinity Rodman, who is a soccer player, and Ben Shelton, who was a tennis player. Trinity, lovely, lovely girl. She won Olympic gold. She plays for the Washington spirit. Her dad is Dennis Rodman, the basketball player. Ben Shelton, tennis player, up and coming. Slowly been raising his profile, and I think more people actually know Trinity than Ben, and I love that. They are both young. They’re both like 22 years old. They love to troll the audience. They’re known for being kind of funny and having personalities on the field. So we go to March 6th. Ben, jumped on this trend that starts with a GloRilla verse, which contains the lyrics.
GloRilla: They say shooters, shoot. Uh, uh-huh, Duke Dennis, what’s up with you?
Candice Lim: “They say, shooters shoot, Duke Dennis, what’s up with you?” And on TikTok, in place of Duke Dennis people will like write out the name of the person they have a crush on. So, Ben does this trend and in place of Duke Denis, he writes the letter T with six asterisks which does line up with Trinity. And at first people are like, “ha ha ha, nice try Ben, you think you can get her.” But then, the same day, Trinity posts a TikTok, same trend. For the name, she puts three underscores and people are like, “oh, B-E-N. And so what’s up with you.” March 17th.
Morgan Sung: It’s like leaving little clues.
Candice Lim: Exactly.
Morgan Sung: They’ve been like teasing us.
Candice Lim: Yeah. March 17th, Ben Shelton posts an Instagram carousel on the last pic of the carousal, it’s a photo of Trinity kissing his cheek in an elevator and the world stops.
Morgan Sung: Hard launch, baby.
Candice Lim: Hard launch. And look, I think this is wild and bananas because my personal theory is that I wonder if Trinity and Ben were already dating or had already connected and instead of like hard launching on the gram first, they decided to play with a TikTok trend to soft launch, to tease, to prime people up to the idea of them shooting their shot at each other. And so by the time that they post the IG, you’re either thinking, “Oh my God, Ben shot his shot and it worked”, or you’re thinking, “Oh my god, they’re so funny. They were playing with us the whole time and they used TikTok to do it.” And either way, I’m here for it.
Morgan Sung: I love a good hard launch. I love like a good soft launch into a hard launch, but I agree. It is an art. It is like you are kind of like teasing people. You are like easing them into the idea of like no longer being single.
Candice Lim: Now Morgan, not to turn the tables on you, but uh, should we save or scroll?
Morgan Sung: Oh, I’m saying save. I want to do a whole episode on the art of the hard launch. So Candice, do you have any takeaways about the internet, the state of the internet, based on our stories that we have gossiped about today?
Candice Lim: You know, I think what’s really hard about covering the beat that we do is that like oftentimes the stories that kind of breach surface that are worth an episode that are with headlines are kind of dark and dire and like kind of unhopeful. And so I think it is always important for us to hold space and find joy.
Morgan Sung: All right, Candice, thank you so much for joining me today on our first Save or Scroll for Close All Tabs. And thank you for adding to our infinite pile of episode ideas.
Candice Lim: Thank you for having me.
Morgan Sung: Candice, if anyone wants to follow your work, where can they find you?
Candice Lim: You can absolutely find me on the Slate podcast, ICYMI, In Case You Missed It. I’m there twice a week talking about internet culture with my cohost, Kate Lindsay.
Morgan Sung: Did you hear any topics on this episode that you wanna hear more about? Anything that piqued your interest that you wish we had spent more time talking about or something we scrolled past that you wished we hadn’t? Anything we should cover in our next save or scroll? Let us know. Drop a comment in CloseAllTabs’ Discord channel at discord.gg slash KQED. Follow us on Instagram at CloseAlltabsPod or hit us up at CloseAllTabs@KQED.org. And if you’re interested in learning more about what we talked about in this episode, check out our reading recs in the episode description.
Morgan Sung: Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. Our producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts and helps edit the show. Sound design by Maya Cueva. Original music by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard.
Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager and Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local.
Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink dust silver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron red switches. If you’re enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple podcasts or whatever platform you use.
Thanks for listening.
