Hello fellow citizens of the internet! Andrew here. Welcome to today’s edition of web_crawlr.
Happy Friday! Our top stories today are about: A Taco Bell customer finding something disturbing in her Gordita Crunch order, how Aaron Rodgers fans are flooding the internet with doctored images tying Jimmy Kimmel to Jeffrey Epstein, why Meta’s chief AI scientist is getting slammed for being hypocritical, and a look at all of the memes that feature actress Selena Gomez.
After that, our Trending team shares with you their pick for “Main Character of the Week.”
Also: It’s Friday, which means it is time for our weekly news quiz. Just scroll down below to answer the question. If you guess correctly you might win a “Jingle Blogs” shirt.
See you tomorrow!
— A.W.
⚡ Today’s top stories
🤢 WTF
‘I looked down, it’s blue’: Taco Bell customer finds something unexpected in her Gordita Crunch. They won’t refund her
One Taco Bell customer was appalled to find a gross foreign object inside of her Gordita Crunch. Even more appalling, she says, is that the restaurant wouldn’t refund her for the cost of the menu item.
🔍 DEBUNK
Aaron Rodgers fans push doctored images tying Jimmy Kimmel to Epstein following unredacted document release
Right-wing users are flooding social media with fake content following the release of Epstein court docs.
📚 TECH
Meta’s chief AI scientist slammed for saying authors should give books away for free—while selling his on Amazon for $20
The hypocrisy was swiftly noted.
👀 MEMES
Selena Gomez memes are an enduring internet favorite—despite her wish to ‘never be a meme again’
Selena Gomez is aware that she is the star of many memes—so much so that she posted on her Instagram story denouncing her meme stardom after this year’s VMAs.
We crawl the web so you don’t have to. Sign up to receive web_crawlr, a daily newsletter from the Daily Dot, in your inbox each day.
✏️ Take our weekly news quiz!
Are you the most online reader of web_crawlr? Prove it by answeringour question of the week! The answer can be found somewhere in one of our newsletters from this week.
If you answer correctly, you’ll be entered to win our brand new “Jingle Blogs” shirt, and we’ll shout out five people who won the shirt!
Which Republican senator do Texas sports fans want banned from attending games because he is bad luck for teams?
Think you know the answer? Sign up for web_crawlr so you can answer next week’s question!
👑 Main Character of the Week
By Ramon Ramirez
Managing Editor
Main Character of the Week: People who actually like snacks from TJ Maxx and Marshalls
Main Character of the Week is a weekly column that tells you the most prominent “main character” online (good or bad). It runs on Fridays in the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter. If you want to get this column a day before we publish it, subscribe to web_crawlr, where you’ll get the daily scoop of internet culture delivered straight to your inbox.
🕸️ Crawling the web
Here is what else is happening across the ‘net.
🧇 Some restaurants are known, loved, cherished, and even reviled for the special sauces they serve to their customers. Waffle House sauce is no different.
🍴 One of the joys of shopping at Costco is the chain’s tendency to give out free samples of the products it’s selling. So one customer’s video claiming they were reprimanded for trying to grab a sample is getting a ton of attention.
🛍️ While pickup orders via couriers have made life a lot more convenient, they also come with a host of issues of their own. And this is something one TikToker learned the hard way after her Kroger pickup order “couldn’t have gotten it more wrong.”
🧹 A user on TikTok has sparked discussion after making a video about an alleged incident involving the family she nannies for where she was asked to clean the house because she was spending a holiday dinner with them.
💸 Working at tourist traps has a lot of negatives: customers are usually demanding, argumentative, and worst of all, they are angry over prices the server can’t control.
🍔 A woman went viral after she posted a video where she says her boyfriend ate 3 McDonald’s burgers before her family’s holiday meal.
🕖 A Target shopper recently claimed that 7 a.m. was the best time to shop in-store because it’s a low-traffic hour. There’s just one problem with that.
🤖 From the Daily Dot archive: Distorted TikTok sounds hurt marginalized creators—and AI is making it worse.
*The Daily Dot may receive a commission in connection with purchases of products or services featured here.
👋 Before you go
Pay-it-forward chains are pretty much universally hated (except by the people who start them). Workers and customers alike have complained about these chains.
For workers, it makes their jobs more difficult by making “everything confusing.” And for customers, it puts them in the awkward position of having to either continue the chain by paying for an order that may be way more expensive than theirs or end the chain with them—and probably feel like a horrible person.
As it turns out, they can also be day-ruining.
