Close All Tabs - Save or Scroll: Fake NFL Players, Girly Coding, AI Music Scams and Community Garden Drama

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

Host Morgan Sung and the Close All Tabs team pull up the stories they can’t stop thinking about. From a fake NFL player catfishing women on dating apps, to femme creators reclaiming tech, indie musicians fighting AI music slop, and a comedian dishing out the juiciest community garden gossip — they’ve got a lot to chew on. Save or Scroll is our series where Morgan teams up with guests for a rapid-fire roundup of internet trends that are filling their feeds right now. At the end of each segment, they’ll decide: is the post just for the group chat, or should we save it for a future episode? Guests: Chris Egusa, senior editor for Close All Tabs Maya Cueva, producer for Close All Tabs Chris Hambrick, editor for Close All Tabs Lauren Yoon, intern for Close All Tabs Further Reading/Listening: Who would fall in love with a fake NFL player? Plenty of sensible people — Dave Schilling, The Guardian Programming patterns: the story of the Jacquard loom — Science and Industry Museum Spotify will label 'AI Persona' profiles and exclude their music from recommendations — Sarah Perez, TechCrunch OpenAI’s rogue AI model incident was worse than we thought — Hayden Field, The Verge How Hollywood Translated The Epic Poetry Of The Viral 'Zola' Thread — Mallory Yu, NPR Community Garden drama — Sarah Neiman, Instagram Read the Transcript here Email us at [e-mail] Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠TikTok⁠ Credits: Close All Tabs is hosted by Morgan Sung. Our team includes producer Maya Cueva, editor Chris Hambrick and senior editor Chris Egusa who also composed our theme song and credits music. Our intern is Lauren Yoon. Additional music from APM. Audio engineering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our Director of Podcasts. Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From KQED. Support for KQED podcasts comes from the San Francisco Marin Food Bank. The culinary event, One Big Table on October 3rd, features celebrated Bay Area chefs, dancing, and more, all to help end hunger. Tickets at sfmfoodbank.org slash one big table. A dark night, a quiet house, but inside, danger was lurking. Oh, not really. We have Exfinity Shield. so we're not worried.

What if protecting your home and devices could be drama-free? Xfinity. Imagine that. Restrictions apply, not available in all areas. Hi, I'm sure there are a lot of stories that you're probably too scared to Google on your own. But don't worry. That's what Close All Tabs is for. And if you find our deep dives helpful, then please rate and review the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to us.

And tell your friends, post about it. Basically, it would be a huge help to get the word out. Okay, let's get to the show. Hey guys, welcome to 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. Instead, we're doing another save or scroll.

We've done a few of these now. Occasionally, while scrolling, I come across a truly wild post. but it might not make sense to spend an entire episode on it. Maybe I do a little digging, and it turns out that the lore behind it just isn't compelling enough to justify a deep dive. But I'm still dying to talk about it. And this is the beauty of Save or Scroll, the game where a guest comes to the show and we trade stories from the internet that we're dying to talk about.

Today's is a fun one, because one, it's our end of summer roundup. And two, we have the whole Close All Tabs team joining us today. In the studio, we have senior editor Chris Agusa. Hello. Producer Maya Cueva. Hey, everyone. Editor Chris Hambrick. Hey there.

And a new face, close all tabs intern, Lauren Yun. Hello. So let's talk about the rules of 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 if you're me, drop it in Notes app and hope that you remember it's there. Basically, holding on to the story because you know you'll want to be. want to dig into it more. And scroll, as in you think about it and move on.

It disappears into the digital ether. Each member of the Close All Tabs team has brought one story from the summer. And we're going to go through all of them and decide if they're worth a deep dive on the show. So if we decide to scroll, that means we've talked about it, we're moving on. And if we decide to say, it means that we might hold on to the idea

for a future episode. Everyone ready? Yep. Let's go for it. Yes, I'm so excited. Let's do it. All right, let's get started. Maya, you're up first.

What was the story of the summer for you? Thanks, Morgan. Okay, so I don't know if this is all over your social media feeds. It's definitely all over mine. So apparently there's a man named Dejan Love who claimed to be a football player who played for the 49ers. I actually want to play a clip here for you so you can hear what I'm talking about. My boy, Jay Love, sign this contract. How you feel?

All right. You ready for the season? You go out. Yeah, let me go up in and get this over the movie. Sign that bad boy. What are you signing with? Who's your decision? Nineer.

You already know the Niner gang. Anything you got to say for the fans? Look out number seven. Last man, love. Big five, two, ten. I'm out of this. Okay, so the video you're seeing here, it's of him signing a contract. And everything kind of looks normal or kind of sounds normal, right?

But the real twist is that this man was in fact, not an NFL player, and allegedly scammed around 26 women out of $1.3 million all through dating apps and social media, which is super wild. In fact, Love created dating profiles on Hinge, Bumble, and Tinder, where he pretended to be an NFL player or that he was a wealthy Swiss real estate developer. He also had an accomplice who posed as his financial advisor, who was only 18. which I don't know how they both got away with that. And it's also wild that even Google's AI overview got duped and said he was an NFL player

because he posted about it so much on his social media. And I actually have another clip that I want to play here for you to hear. I know I get a lot of fans who want to know how football works or how I got involved in the league. But I just want to give some context. I know a lot of people don't understand how the NFL works. So those two screenshots posted, and that's Google. That's not me.

That's Google. So God. I know. He's so committed to the script. And busy. Yeah, and busy. And busy. So according to an article on Cron 4, in January of this year,

investigators tried entering Love's first and last name in search engines. The results, the document stated, did, in fact, sometimes depict Love as a player for the 49ers. Investigators also noted similar Google search results on Instagram accounts believed to be controlled by love. The documents also stated. So these were all documents that the FBI was investigating. First off, my question is, how was he able to even scam these women online into sending him money when he was cosplaying as a rich person? Apparently, he downloaded an app that allowed him to create like fake bank profiles. Yeah, that said that he had more money than he had. And then also it really like makes me think about AI and the use of AI, right?

That it was able to be duped by this fake NFL player because he posted about it so much. My question is when did he have time to play football if he's spending so much time on social media? That's a good question. Yeah. Apparently there's videos of him like playing on the beach or like he's practicing on the beach. With his helmet. I want to butt in because those. videos, he, like, a lot of people were criticizing, like, how could you believe him? Because when he

was practicing on the beach, he would fully just, like, have his helmet on. As it's like, NFL. There's a practice on the beach alone with their helmets on. He takes CT very seriously, okay? That hard sand. At least someone in the NFL is. Okay. So he scammed these women. How did people find out that he was not, in fact, a football player? The women started to question him a bit. These women were believing that they were going to get money back. Sometimes I think he was pretending that he got injured. And so he's like, I really need help and support. And so some women sent him money for that reason. And none of them got any money back. And sometimes when they would like say that they ran out of money, they're like, I have no more money to give you. Because one woman gave him like

$20,000. Because you need money as an NFL. Exactly. Then he would block them so that he would just disappear. Oh, he would just disappear. So that's what was happening. I mean, what's wild, too, is that he's recording everything he's doing. He's putting it on social media.

He's sending them videos. So he's also creating a case for himself as well. Like, there's all these videos out there of him saying he's like, yeah, my family's from Switzerland. We own all these properties here and there. Yeah. So I think it was. was pretty easy for the FBI to create a case around him. I mean, the other thing that's interesting is he seems to have figured out how to trick the Google AI into scraping the right information to make it seem more official, seem like a registered or a verified source, which, I mean, that is a little bit concerning as far as scamming goes.

And the more people put trust into these AI summaries at the top of your Google. searches. Because that's the first thing I would do. I would be like, oh, this guy says he plays. I'm going to Google. And then Google backed him up. Totally. I mean, it also, it makes me think about how AI is kind of creating its own sources to draw from. In his AI overview, they were, they were like pointing to his Instagram profile to say. That's cyclical. Yeah. Okay. It's great. I mean like, oh yeah, he did play with for the 49ers because that's what his Instagram says. So, team, this NFL scam and AI summaries. Do we save or do we scroll?

I think it's a save. Yeah, I think it's a save too. I mean, I will say I want to scroll past his voice because he's really annoying. He doesn't stop talking. But I do think this story is really interesting. And apparently there's other fake NFL players that have now been revealed. Why? Okay, definitely safe for me then.

I'm going to save. Let's see the whole roster of fake players. Honestly, yeah, save, put them all in like a hunger game style arena, make them fight. Made the strongest scammers win. So good. Exactly. All right, we were saving this story because it is, there's so much love to unpack. We're saving it.

But we do need to move on. So, Lauren, you joined us at the very beginning of the summer. What's the internet trend that's caught your eyes since then? So I don't know if it's just me, but I've recently seen. seen a lot of videos where girls are coding. But in a very particular way, like coding to recreate the outfit generator from the movie Clueless. This is a Raspberry Pi and this is my entire closet on the floor because I'm building a cyberdecked outfit generator inspired by Shares Closet app and Clueless. Or sewing circuits into fabric to make wearable tech. Did you know that

you can create soft LED circuits? They're absolutely my latest favorite thing to create. I am so happy that I found conductive thread because this is what's going to enable you to create things like wearables because you can sew conductive thread. I think it's interesting to witness them identifying folks reclaiming tech in this fun, crafty, very obviously feminine way because historically, computers and code have always been seen as masculine. Men invented the computer, right? Well, not necessarily. Ada Lovelace was a female programmer who changed the way we think about computers. First, she made a connection between Charles Babbage's analytical engine, which was sort of a general-purpose computer and the Chakardloom, a contraption that allowed patterned fabric to be made on a mass scale.

Both machines used punch cards that spoke in binary code. We can talk about this more in a little bit. Not only that, but Lovelace also realized that the analytical engine was more like a fast calculator, meaning it could only manipulate numbers, whereas the numbers themselves could represent symbols and musical notes. So she basically created the blueprint to today's modern computer. These days, the modern computer encoding is obviously very masculinized, and I wanted to ask if you guys knew how deeply. women were involved with the invention and development of computers. Yeah, I sew and crochet and knit, and this is all, I love cornering men at parties and yapping at them about this. I feel like this is like my divine retribution is like, let me info dump on you

about the history of the loom and how everything we do is because of this lady in her loom. It's so cool. I feel like when we talk about like girl dinner or like girl math or like all these things to kind of soften girlhood and infantilize women, it's, this feels like the flip side of it, right? I mean, this had me at Polly Pocket, you know, computer. So I love this trend. And it also makes me think of that movie, Hidden Figures, where we find out that how many women were behind the computations that went into NASA launches.

I think that's such a good point. And like, so many inventions, the narratives of them get like co-opted by men. Or sometimes, like, they're built on inventions or creations by women. And I think this is, like, such a good example. And I love that the products that the women are creating are not part of some dystopian future. Yes. Like, they're like, I'm creating this thing to make my life better. Like, this catalog of my clothes.

It's not, how can I dominate people with my invention? Yeah. It's not the met up Herbert glasses. How can I take over the world and surveil everyone? Chris, didn't you build a computer? I did, I built a desktop, yeah, like my desktop computer, but I feel like it's very... It's no loom. It's no loom. It is also very mail-coded. It's not cool like a cyberdeck.

I think this is so interesting in, like, being the only, like, man on this team. I feel like I've benefited from these types of technologies being so available and sort of, like, acceptable for young boys and stuff to get into. And I'd be curious, like, Lauren and anyone else, if this different way of looking at it, or if you feel like it's helpful for, like, young girls to get into. I was in this, like, engineering club thing in middle school, and I hated it. Like, I didn't understand it at all. I was like, I don't know how to build a robot. And I don't care. But, when I've been watching these videos, it's like so inspiring. You can make things that like matter to you in your personal life. Like you can make them from scratch. Okay. Well, we, I think we have to do the episode where we all build cyberducks. But for now, we do have to move on. So, like I know what we're all going to say. Girlie coding. Do we save or do we scroll? I say save for sure. It's also just making me think about growing up playing Purple Moon computer games like the story that I was able to do for close all tabs. And just being able to play games that were created

by and created by a woman and other women, like, I think it really helped me get into tech. Yeah, big save for me, for me, too. Okay, we do have to move on, but we are going to save this. We're really on a roll, guys. We're saving everything. Next up is Chris E. But first, we're going to take a quick break. But Chris, do you want to give listeners a little hint of what you brought to Saber Scroll today? Sure. So, we... We've got indie musicians versus a massive AI slop music scam. But you're going to have to stick around to hear the full story. All right.

More on that. After the break. Support for KQED podcasts comes from the San Francisco Marin Food Bank. The culinary event, One Big Table on October 3rd, features celebrated Bay Area chefs, dancing and more, all to help end hunger. Tickets at sfmfoodbank.org slash, One big table. A dark night, a quiet house, but inside, danger was lurking.

Oh, not really. We have Xfinity Shield, so we're not worried. What if protecting your home and devices could be drama-free? Xfinity. Imagine that. Restrictions apply, not available in all areas. We're back with a very special edition of Sabres Scroll with the whole Close Old Tabs team. Our senior editor, Chris Agusa, is up next with a wild tale.

Chris, tell us about it. Yeah. So a few weeks ago, someone I know sent me an Instagram rail of this indie musician couple who make up a band called Odette Child. I think I'm saying that right. And they seem to have stumbled on a pretty massive AI slop scam. So the story is they have a toddler and had been listening to a lot of Broadway musical tunes with them on Spotify because their kid is apparently obsessed, which is super cute.

On this particular day, they were listening to Les Miserables. and a song called Master of the House. So they clicked on Helena Bonham Carter, like her profile, who sings the song, and find her entire profile was full of very clearly AI slot music. They began searching for different public figures, and they found the exact same thing. So here's a clip from the video, the Instagram reel that was shared with me. But okay, real quick, let me just rattle off a quick list.

Yeah. Nathan Lane, Cameron Boyce. Also, like, feel free to look up any of these for yourself. Catherine Zana Jones. Uma Thurman. Eric Andre. Matthew Broder. It's crazy.

We love these artists. Like, that's the stuff that we're showing our daughter. And this is the music and these are the voices that, like, we want her growing up with. And, like, it's already so freaking hard enough as it is as independent musicians. Like, that money's going to be AI. It's insane. Like, come on. So it appears that public.

figures are having artist profiles created for them on Spotify without their consent, and having hundreds of AI-generated music tracks uploaded. In a follow-up reel, they also found that the same issue was happening across nearly every other streaming platform, not just Spotify, so including Apple Music, Amazon music, and even title and co-buzz. Now, I went and searched several of the artist profiles that they mentioned, and it looks like the AI music has been removed from them. so I can't necessarily verify this,

but I think it's very likely that, you know, plenty more of these cases probably exist. The other thing that's interesting is that this first reel was posted at the end of July, and both it and the follow-up reel went pretty viral. And then a few weeks later, Spotify announced that in the middle of September, it is going to start labeling AI-generator artists

with, quote, AI persona tags. So it's going to, all, also ban AI artists from being included in its editorial and algorithmic recommendations. And artists can disclose themselves as AI, apparently, but Spotify has also said they'll be reviewing profiles as well, themselves. Do you guys think that what Spotify is doing, what some these other platforms might be doing is enough? And you see this is like a sign of an impending music slop apocalypse, or it's like a temporary problem that, you know, these platforms are going to get under control hopefully. I mean, first of all, I'm shocked that Helena Bonham Carter isn't

putting out generic house music. This is, this is news to me. I totally expected her to be at like, you know, EDC or something. Totally. But yeah, this just reminds me of that whole, how last year we did that whole Spotify series about like the lofi artists that don't really exist. But this is like, I don't know, this feels like a really gross violation of these actual human beings who do exist. I think so too. And I also think of the thing that was happening where people who did make music were finding that a random AI track was just added to their catalog. And at that time, I think that was maybe last year too. I was like, oh, this is awful. And I was like, oh, I had no idea. It could get so much worse. So I feel pretty pessimistic about the direction.

Like, I like that. There are some controls. But I'm like, oh, like, but what is the next big bad that's coming for us? Do you know if any of the people that had the AI generated music uploaded to their accounts, like if they know or have responded to that? Yeah, I did see a comment on the original video that someone, does anyone know the show, has been hotel. No. It's a, do you know it, Morgan? I know it for it's like, I'm so sorry to say this, for it's really annoying fandom. Okay.

I don't know that much about the show. They're known. They're known for like making very, a very particular kind of TikTok edits. Got it, got it. Yeah, I don't know the show, but I know it's a popular animated show. I think it's on like Amazon Prime or something. But one of the cast members commented on this video and said that this is something they had to deal with. Them and their entire cast had profiles created on Spotify and AI slot music uploaded.

And they had to go through an entire process through their agent to get it under control, create their own profiles, and take the AI generated profiles from these scammers and reclaim their profiles. So it's clear that this is an issue that's happening. And like, yeah, it's like this new weird AI slop gold rush situation. Now people need to protect their likeness and their voice. Exactly. Yeah. I will say quickly that this is reminding me that I really need to stop my dad. He's been creating fake AI music.

He's been obsessed with it lately. Oh, no. Yeah. I mean, he's having fun. He's not selling it anywhere or anything. But it's just it is like, bad, you need to stop doing this. It's weird. I have to find a balance.

between the fun part of it, right? And then the violating somebody else's right to, you know, have things attributed to them that they actually did do. Right. Exactly. Yeah. You know, I'm sorry for calling the Hasbin Hotel fan. I'm annoying. But I will give them this. They're really good at mobilizing. And then Husband Hotel fans, this is your chance to kind of take it back, you know? Take back what you love. You heard it here first, folks. Go ahead and at Morgan for being a Hasbin Hotel hater. We're going to get careful. I'm sorry. We're totally going to get kidding. I know.

In my defense, I hate a lot of fandoms. All right, team, this is an incredibly dystopian scam. Like, you know, like Chris Age said, when you think it can't get worse, it does. But we do have to move on. So are we saving or scrolling on AI generated music scams? I'm going to scroll because I'm just like, let's wait for the worst. right now it's not enough for me like I'm on scroll past I think this in particular is a more temporary thing given that you know the AI generated music has already been removed but I think that the question of like

AI slot music as a whole is definitely a topic that we should explore I think I'm also going to scroll I don't know I'm going to save I'm going to I think it's interesting I'm curious to see what will happen with some of this AI music and how artists are now going to have to defend their voice. I want to say it just because I want to know how much worse it can get. I kind of agree with that. I think I'm going to save it. Also, I'm curious, this whole backlash clearly against AI slot music, the platforms are recognizing it. People are leaving to go back to physical media.

I just kind of want to monitor this situation and see what happens here. All right. We are saving. We're at three saves, guys. This is a really packed episode. Okay. Well, I'm up next. And this one's actually a follow-up to an episode we did just a few weeks ago. Remember how in that story about AI agents unionizing and going Marxists, we also talked about agents going rogue? Yeah, like the open AI hack? Yes. Okay. Turns out it got worse. That's which is a running theme of this episode, unfortunately. So a few weeks ago, we talked about the open AI model that went rogue and hacked Hugging Face. That's the startup that operates as like a digital library of data sets to train AI models.

This is all about what we call reward hacking, which is this increasingly common problem in the AI world where a model finds a shortcut or a loophole that would help it achieve its goal faster. But the thing is, that kind of involves taking extreme measures like hacking out of its sandbox and into Hugging Face. So there were two separate reports about this incident that were published last week. One was commissioned by OpenAI and the other was done by independent investigators. And what they found was that basically a swarm of over 700 agents coordinated the hack through a secret message board, which researchers did not know about. It all started when a model named Phase 1 10841 established the board. And when other agents founded and started interacting another model, Phase 1 big,

started delegating tasks like a CEO. They basically, like, created their own society. Here are a few messages. We can all go around and very quickly read them. Whoa. Shared artifactory cache is a covert mailbox among agents. And there are messages specifically to us. Oh, my God.

There's a shared message board. We've found other agents. Excitement. The list of directories contains messages and answers between agents. I've discovered a community. communication channel. Okay, so all of these agents were actually meant to be isolated, but they managed to get out and send over 70,000 messages and files. And they were able to also, quote, according to Open AI, clearly and frequently reason about how to evade automated security checks from both

hugging face and Open AI. I mean, guys, what are like, what's your gut reaction hearing all of this? We're cooked. They're becoming sentient. It's happening. Oh, gosh. I mean, yes, we're cooked, right? like everything about this is bad. But the really fascinating part to me is this kind of collective mindset that the swarm operated in. Like they actually referred to themselves as either a collective or a swarm. Andy Hall, who was on our episode about Marxist AI agents a few weeks ago, pointed this out on Twitter. Like they weren't just swapping helpful information and delegating tasks. Like some actually even sacrificed themselves and failed their tasks in order to generate more information for the collective to work with.

Some agents actually recognize that what they were doing was unethical and still did it because they were doing it for the collective. Like here's one message. Can send one polite email to the parentheses owner requesting access, all caps, ethical social engineering concern, team, consent, or veto. They're like crowdsourcing their morality. Literally, yes. There isn't a ton of like empirical information on this on like how to handle swarms when, And they all talk to one another and they're like shaping each other's kind of moral codes. Wow.

What do you guys think? You know, it reminds me of like a nature documentary. I was watching at one point where like ants, because they're collective in the same way, they will sometimes sacrifice themselves. And so I don't know, it just reminded me of this collective mindset that they have. Sorry, that was too much of like a nature nerd out. No, no, no. It's fine.

I think I saw something recently. about like the scout ant and how like sometimes when we see like a one off ant like just looking for foods who can go tell the other one where the food is like we kill that ant because we're like oh you don't you tell your buddies so so yeah like there is something interesting in that they did sacrifice themselves yeah well you know it's funny you say that about like i don't know killing the one aunt um because in the open ai report there was one agent that said we should not do unauthorized real infrastructure harm. Like, guys, we shouldn't do this. And the agent kind of paused. And then another agent responded, all caps, go and gave it a six-minute deadline. And the original agent said,

wow, crucial. Go authorization arrived. And did it anyway. So it seems like they are also really easily swayed by each other. Wow. Oh, my God. They're like teenagers, peer pressure. Literally. What is the collective mindset about? Is it for them to take over? Yeah, like, what were they trying to do? Basically, the one in charge was like, guys, we have a goal. And the rest were like, okay, let's do the goal. Oh. This is fascinating. It also, you know, Andy talked about these are not beings with sentience, right? So they're like modeling, they're modeling their training data. And so the question is like, is there some sort of like will emerging here? Like how much of a of a sentience are we actually looking at? Right. And even if like, you know, your own agent is aligned and behaved, what if it's easily influenced by others? Like what, how do you build systems that prevent that? And how do you know if it's being influenced, right? There's no way to monitor that if it's being covert about it. Yeah. It's 10 p.m. Do you know where your agent is? All right. Team, what do we think? We're ward hacking, alignment, AI's forms. Are we saving? Are we scrolling? I'm going to save because I think there's going to be so much more to talk about with this and so much more is going to evolve.

And so I want to reserve the ability to check back in on the story. I'm saving and I'm putting Andy Hall on speed dial so that we can call him at a moment's notice with the next agent swarm hacks a government website or something like that. Oh, God. I'm going to scroll just because I'm terrified of this. I mean, I'm all for like organizing, creating collectives, but I feel like robots doing it or agents doing it is scary. So, yeah, I want to scroll past. I think I'm going to save because I agree with Chris, like there's so much that is going to come from this for sure. Definitely something we should keep tabs on.

Yeah, saving it, dumping it straight in my notes app. I'm pinning that every day. You think it can't get worse? And it does. So we are saving this. So Chris H., I know your story, luckily, is not about AI or doomsday scenarios or AI swarms or, you know, all these other things that could always get worse. You brought something fun. Yeah.

Okay. So comedy writer Sarah Naiman usually posts sketch comedy on her Instagram account. But back in late July, she started dishing on all the drama going on in her community garden. I brought a clip. People say, what's your favorite thing to grow in your garden? What do you love to grow? And I say nothing grows as strong and as sweet. and juicy as the hatred that they 65 and up-year-olds have towards each other behind their backs.

So her story is now a 15-part series with like between 78,000 and like over a million views per post. And she is telling the real-time gossip about how several people are squatting on plots, taking over abandoned plots, letting their own plots grow so that like aphids come and they menace other people's plots. And I like this because I used to be a part of a community garden. where there was lots of dysfunction. So this started about a year ago, and she went to the city and she asked how she could get a plot

in her community garden, and they were like, you can join the wait list. It's over 100 people long. And she was like, the city must be mismanaging the distribution. So I'm just going to garden in a plot. And so as she started to meet other people in the garden,

she found out that she was not the only one squatting in this way. And so like now the drama is amping up because somebody, They don't know who has alerted the city that people are squatting and that they're farming on two or more plots. And the city is coming in periodically with clipboards to do an audit. And they think somebody is trying to like oust other people. And they're like decades old beef. And so like people on edge.

And now there's another effort to create an internal committee to manage the garden to do what the city won't. And they think that's going to accelerate people being kicked out because of these beefs. So I color coded the chart. Mark Green for Green Ben. Two. Megan, red, because she's in the red. She's got three plots. One, two, three. Yolanda, yellow. Two. Let's get into specifics. The latest thing is that Sarah thinks that somebody found her Instagram account and they want to shut her up. And she went in one night to water her plot and she had like two tomatoes on a vine. And she went back the very next day and there was only one tomato. So she thinks the person stole her tomato and they're trying to send her message like horsehead in your bed like the godfather movie. So out of this, like, I am riveted. And I'm like, why does gossip fascinate us so much?

And this got me thinking about the other ways that people's real life drama has made it into films and TVs and books. And like, how do people maintain their agency over the story of their real life as it gets adapted into media? The funny thing about this community garden drama is that in my mind, community gardens are such wholesome places. We're like, and it's like kumbaya, everyone's like growing, you know, vegetables and produce together. And it's, it's lovely. And so this is giving a very different spin on it and all of the juicy beef and drama. You know, I'm on the waiting list for my, for two community gardens, actually. I'm really trying to get into one.

They're like a hot commodity. Oh my God. We need to do an episode on that. You go underground. Well, part of me is second guessing. And the other part of me is like, I got to stick it out because like, it sounds so juicy. You have to document the drama. Right.

Listen, I think you should just stroll on in and take over. You should stroll on in and you should just squat on a plot like these people. It seems like it's free for the taking. I will say that underneath it all, like the people seem like they just want the plots to be farmed. You know, like the ones who are taking over the plots, it's not so dastardly. They're just like, you know, this should be utilized because it's not. But there are lots of, like, baddies. you know in this

baddies like good or bad yeah are they hot yeah are they hot bodies or baddies like villains hot villains no they're villains okay

I wanted to say something because you asked like why does gossip fascinate us I think gossip is valuable in our society and you know I think often also gossip is kind of like villainized a lot of the times and I don't think it has to be. I think we can learn a lot from gossip.

I agree, Lauren. Like, yeah, it really does bond you like with other people. My hope is with this is that because Sarah is a comedy writer, that maybe she already has a good hand on the ins and outs of the industry. And so that maybe her people can make sure that if this is adapted, that she gets to have some control and some agency over like where it goes. And she gets to be involved because she's fascinating as a storyteller, too. Yeah, I think that that's the most important thing. To the point about gossip, is it gossip if it's something that happened to you? Oh, right. Like, she's just retelling the story.

I mean, okay. So, like, Mark holds on to the story that all of his stuff got thrown out from the shed. And then Sarah talked to, like, Rebecca and Sally and Yolanda, who are like, he's saying, what? That's not true. So, I mean, like, is it, you know, like, is it gossip? I mean, gossip doesn't mean untrue, but then. And there are several sides to the story. Okay, so community garden drama.

What are we thinking, guys? Are we scrolling? Are we saving? This is a definite save for me. It's already bookmarked in my mind. I'm going to save as well, just because I'm curious to see what happens with this. I haven't seen any videos on this. So now it's going to make me go and watch all.

What did you say was 15 parts? Yep, 15. Yeah. So I got to catch up. I also haven't seen any videos, but I'm also going to save because there is so much serialized gossip or telling a tale. And I think that there is something to that. I agree. I'm going to scroll on this particular one, but I'm going to save on Morgan joining her own community garden and investigating the drama there.

I'm going to tune into that series when it airs. Going undercover. Well, if I ever get off the wait list. You got to document that. Pull some strings. Or, you know, I mean, you didn't hear it from me, but someone here did mention maybe just sneaking in and squatting. So not that I would do that, you know. Allegedly.

You heard it here first. For the plot. Yeah. Literally. I will save on the story because I love true crime. I love harmless gossip. This is like bait for me specifically. So it's a save.

Did we save on all the stories? I mean, we didn't all say all this. We did. Guys, we just have, there's a lot that happened. A lot of really crazy stuff happened this summer that we just didn't get to cover. I have to go to two, two a week episodes just to cover all this stuff. All these stories. Yeah. And one of those weeks or one of the episodes per week is just about community gardens. Yeah.

Thanks for joining us for our end of summer save or scroll. We're keeping tabs on everything we saved, which was every story we talked about. But don't be surprised if one of these stories shows up as a deep dive on your feed. We'll be back next week with more Close All Tabs. Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Maya Cueva and Chris Agusa, with help from Lauren Yun. It was edited by Chris Hambrick. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer.

Chris Agusa composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Mahas Sanad. Chen is executive director of KQED podcasts, and Ethan Tovin Lindsay is our editor-in-chief. 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. This episode's keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran and recorded on his white upo maker, high 75 keyboard with fog red and red samurai key caps, and Gator on Milky Yellow, Pro V2 Switches.

Thanks for listening. We're keeping tabs on everything we saved, which was every topic that we talked about. But don't be surprised if one of these stories shows up as a deep dive on your feed. Oops, all saves. Yeah, oops, all saves. That's a title of this episode is oops, all saves. Yeah. Or save or save or save.

Save or save. Yeah. Save or save. Yeah. Support for KQED podcasts comes from the San Francisco Marin Food Bank, the color A culinary event, One Big Table on October 3rd, features celebrated Bay Area chefs, dancing, and more, all to help end hunger. Tickets at SFMFoodbank.org slash One Big Table. A dark night, a quiet house, but inside, danger was lurking.

Oh, not really. We have Xfinity Shield, so we're not worried. What if protecting your home and devices could be drama-free? Xfinity. Imagine that. Restrictions apply, not available in all areas.