Close All Tabs - Save or Scroll: ICE + Influencers, Data Hygiene on Grindr, and Labubu Desserts

Episode Date: July 30, 2025

In another installment of Save or Scroll, Morgan teams up with internet culture writers Daysia Tolentino and Moises Mendez II to dig into the stories they can’t stop thinking about. From people calling ICE on influencers, to Grindr’s new age verification, to the Labubu matcha Dubai chocolate craze (yes, you heard that correctly), the three of them have plenty to scroll through.  Save or Scroll is our series where we team up with guests for a rapid-fire roundup of internet trends that are filling our 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:  Daysia Tolentino,  Yap Year founder and writer at Entertainment Weekly Moises Mendez II,  writer at Out Magazine Further reading/listening:  5 reasons 'Love Island USA' went completely off the rails this year — Daysia Tolentino, Entertainment Weekly  The Obsessive Fans Playing God on ‘Love Island’—and Living for the Crash-Outs — Jason Parham, WIRED Grindr introduces age verification for UK-based users — Aaron Sugg, Attitude  Grindr accused of treating gay man’s medical data like ‘piece of meat’ | UK news — Robert Booth, The Guardian  'Labubu' is a plush toy that is causing a frenzy. Here's its origin story — Juliana Kim, NPR How Relooted, A Game About Reclaiming African Artifacts From Western Museums, Ended Up Being Shown By A White Guy At Summer Game Fest — Nathan Grayson, Aftermath  Reddit Trolls Are Weaponizing Government Agencies Against Creators — Fortesa Latifi, Rolling Stone  Read the transcript here Want to give us feedback on the series? Shoot us an email at [e-mail] You can also follow us on Instagram Credits: This episode was reported and hosted by Morgan Sung. Our Producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts, and also helps edit the show. Sound design by Maya Cueva, Chris Egusa, and Brendan Willard. Original music, including our theme song, by Chris Egusa. Additional music from APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager. Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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From KQED. 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 saver scroll. Occasionally, while scrolling online, I come across a truly wild post, but it might not make sense to spend an entire episode talking about it. Maybe I do a little digging and it turns out the lore behind it just isn't. compelling enough to justify a deep dive. Sometimes, there's no lore at all. Not everything online is a multi-tab journey. It can just be juicy gossip for the group chat. But that doesn't mean that these

topics aren't worth yapping about. So, joining us today to do just that are some of my favorite group chat regulars, Deja Tolentino and Moises Mendez II. Hey guys. Hello, it's good to see you. Hi, thank you so much for having us. Thanks for being here. Okay, so you're both very accomplished internet culture journalists. Do you want to introduce yourselves? Hi, my name is Moisa S Mendez, the second as we are all aware now. I recently was a culture reporter at Time Magazine, and now I am a staff writer at Out Magazine, so I cover everything from movies, television, to the internet and beyond. Yay. Deja, what about you? Yeah, so I'm currently working at Entertainment Weekly covering podcasts and celebrity stuff, but I historically

cover internet culture and I cover the internet for my own newsletter, Yapier. We love Yapier here. So we 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 because you know you're going to want to talk about it later. And scroll as in you keep scrolling and it disappears into the digital ether. So we've each brought a handful of posts that we cannot stop thinking about. And we're going to take turns to see if they're just for the group chat, or if they're actually worth a deep dive on the show. If we decide to scroll, it means we've talked about it. We're moving on.

If we decide to save, it means we may hold on to the idea for a future episode. All right, any questions? How are you feeling? Are you ready? I'm so ready. I'm so ready. All right, let's jump in. Deja, what did you bring us?

Tell us about the Love Island drama. Lord, I don't know if you guys watched this most recent season of Love Island, but it was basically a mess from the start. Welcome to Love Island. Warning, the following program contains love, lust, and the most attractive, unemployed people you've ever seen. Love Island is a reality TV show that puts a bunch of singles together into a Fiji villa.

And basically, everybody couples up over the course of six weeks, and people are obsessed with it because last season was the first USA version of Love Island, which originally started in the UK, to really take off. And then the issue started arising with Ulyssa Escobar getting kicked off early on the second episode of the show. Due to resurface posts in which she says the N-word, another contestant Sierra Ortega was also asked to exit the show because of an old Instagram story that she had posted. in January 2024, saying the anti-Asian sea slur. And, you know, people were upset that action wasn't taken sooner because apparently it had resurfaced earlier in the season. But essentially, Sierra came out of the villa. She made a apology. Sorry, not apology. She explicitly said it was not

an apology video. It was an accountability video. And, you know, she agrees that she had to face the consequences and experience of punishment for her behavior. She was getting death threats, rape threats, and ICE threats. People have called ICE on her family. You know, Sierra is a Latino woman. And she was kind of talking about while showing these screenshots, is this still accountability? Is it accountability that she people are still looking for? But my question is, what is enough? What is the line of punishment when somebody does something wrong? And obviously, there's no excuse for using racial slurs,

and people do need to be held accountable for the things that they say. But that doesn't justify the messages that she got as a result of this controversy, right? Yeah, I mean, for me at least, you know, being... an Asian woman who has been literally called the slur. I do have to wonder how many of the people unleashing this vitriol are actual like allies to Asians or it's just easy engagement, you know? I'm like, a lot of times I'm kind of skeptical. I'm like, do you actually care about, you know, the people who were hurt by the use of the slur or is it just an outlet? You know what I mean? Moises, what do you think? I have only two brain cells left. So one of them is dedicated

to internet, the others dedicated to pop culture. But Love Island doesn't fit in that. So I don't watch Love Island. But I think that when it comes to this culture of like looking for accountability from public figures online, what is the line? Like where, like if the person is apologizing for the thing that they are being called out for, what more is next? You know, but, you know, we've talked about how like the accountability culture that exists. online right now is more just harassment and bullying than it is, like, people actually repenting for their sins or making any sort of tangible change. I think, obviously, with the calling of ICE on Sierra's family, that to me is almost

fighting racism with racism. And at that point, accountability is not the goal. And that's how we get to a point where this idea of cancel culture or accountability has become so diluted because people would rather have blood than some sort of harm addressed and repaired. Yeah. Absolutely. So on this, to be saved or to be scroll, what is this? What do you think? I definitely think that we should save. There's a lot to talk about, not with just this example, but there's so many others that we can delve into. What about you, Deja? I definitely think that the bones of this conversation are worth saving, which is that ultimately, like, these internet dog piles

happen almost every week with a different person. And it's one of those topics where we have to figure out a solution about accountability without basically telling people to die. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Sorry, God forbid that's the solution. Some actual, like, change and, you know, growth. No. nuance discussion maybe. No, nuance on the internet? Absolutely not. I'm going with Save 2 on this.

I think we should save it. I think this is a conversation that's going to continue happening for as long as the internet exists because no one knows how to be normal online. Unfortunately. Okay, let's move on. Moises, tell us about Grindr and the current Grindr drama. So Grindr is a queer social networking app. but it's basically used as a queer hookup app or dating app.

It's a way for people to find the people closest to them, specifically queer people, but it's mainly for gay men. They're non-binary people and trans people that also exist on the app. The thing about Grindr is that for as long as it's been around since 2009, there has been some mess that's going on in the background. There wrote a story for the Atlantic about how miners are circumventing these age restrictions and finding their way onto these apps and having conversations with adults. It's been a topic of conversation for child safety advocates about having age verification

on these apps. And most recently, Grindr announced that in the UK, it would be implementing an aid verification tool. There is a lot of conversations about whether this is actually to keep minors off the app or another way to police queer bodies. But, There's pros and cons to this issue. The pro is that maybe it'll be a way for kids to have a roadblock to finding their way into having conversations with adults, because there has been so many reports about Grindr in the last couple of years of minors being sexually assaulted or killed through police reports that they found. But the con is, do we want Grindr to have our data? And do we want these big tech companies handling our personal information? Because in the past, Grindr has not had a really great history of handling our data.

Back in 2018, they admitted to sharing users' HIV status to third-party companies. In 2021, they were fined over $6 million in Norway due to data breaches and sharing data without users' consents. And in 2024, a gay man who is HIV-positive said that the app treated user data like a piece of with me after his medical data was misused by the app. So there is a lot of conversations about whether or not this is a good thing. I would like for there to not be such an easy route for children to find their way onto these apps. But then I don't want Grindr to have my personal data. And it just becomes this push and pull.

And we just don't know exactly how this is going to play out until it actually is implemented. But in the U.S., they said that they don't have plans right now to implement age verification in the United States, but they said we're always evaluating the best ways to ensure our app is a safe space for adults to make meaningful connections. So who's to say we just have to wait and see? My question is, how is Ryder going to conduct these age checks? Are they going to store that information? And then, great, they're just going to have a registry of queer people. That seems safe and very normal in this current. political environment?

I mean, in the UK, Grindr said in their statement to me that Grindr will utilize age estimation and ID verification technology from FaceTech while independently managing all data processing to ensure privacy is protected. So it seems like there will be a third party involved, but who knows what that third party is going to do with the personal data that's being used. So do we save or scroll on this story? What do you think, Moises? I mean, I'm definitely going to save.

It's something that I have saved in my back pocket because I've followed it for years now. And there's definitely more conversations to be had. I definitely plan to speak with data privacy experts about this issue and what's the best route forward. What about you, Dacia? Yeah, I definitely think so. I think age verification is an ongoing issue among not just people in the UK, but in the U.S., especially with these anti-porn laws. I mean, data privacy is such a huge topic

that we kind of fail to address time and time again, especially in America. And so I think this is definitely one of those examples of why we should be paying attention to these measures to protect kids that are also putting our data at risk. Yeah, I'm going with SAVE 2. I think this conversation is just going to repeat itself. like over and over again until the U.S. has any kind of comprehensive data privacy policy,

which, you know, who knows if we'll ever get that? What a pipe dream. We'll get back to more saving and we're scrolling after the break. Support for KQED podcasts comes from Star One Credit Union. Give your savings account the love it deserves. When you keep your money with Star One, you keep more of your money. Star One credit union in your best interest. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank.

Okay, we're back. Deja, will you tell us about Labubu, Macha, Dubai, chocolate? Labuuu matcha, Dubai chocolate. I just want to say one thing really quickly, which is that I... do not subscribe to the Labubu agenda. I have not fallen for the propaganda. And I say this as a Potmart girlie. And for those who are unfamiliar, Potmart is a Chinese toy company that creates these designer figurines and toys. And Labubu is just one of the characters that have really blown up from Potmart. But like any fad, we got to roll everything.

into one thing to get as much out of a trend as possible. And so we have seen Labibu Macha Dubai Chocolate on the rise. For those who are uninitiated into the Labubu cult or into the Popmark cult, Labubu's are these little plush keychains that you can clip onto your bag. It's a cute little thing. It's like a little plush monster toy. I've seen people compare them to like Beanie babies or Funko Pops or like Jelly Cat's and squish mellows, but it's a blind box. You don't know which one you're going to get.

You just keep buying Labuboos until you get the one you want. And it like incentivizes you buy more and more and more because you're not trying to collect them all. You're trying to get the one you want. 100%. So Dubai chocolate is a trendy kind of candy right now. It is chocolate that is full of pistachios. And I think filo dough and it, you know, has kind of taken over my 4U pages and and everything, but people have started to mold Dubai chocolate into the shape of a Labubu, which, you know, Labubu is a fuzzy little monster with crazy, pointy teeth. So they have created these chocolate molds in the shape of the monster and, you know, add them onto like matcha shakes or matcha drinks, chocolate matcha drinks.

I feel like we have these food trends and, you know, icon trends, if you will. Every few years, every generation has one, and now we have this one. And it's funny because I think this idea of underconsumption core really rose last year as a way to combat these really fast trends that are just clogging up landfills. They're taking money out of your wallets. It's very easy to fall for, you know, the hot TikTok shop item of the moment. that pops up on your for-you page incessantly. And so I think this is a really interesting example of both the worst impulses and maybe weirdly the best things about micro-trends.

Moises, what do you think of Lubu's? Are you a lobooboo-hater? See, I don't know if you could tell I was a little quiet because I really don't like the bo-boos. I'm trying to just take away that demonic energy out of my space. How long do you have them? How long do you get annoyed of them? They take up space.

They're not like family heirlooms that you can pass down to like generations. How dare you? Hey back to the woman with a 24-terat Labouou. Guys, my question. That's my queen. I love her. Oh, God, don't tell me you have one. I bought a Laboo-Boo-I was back home. I was in Queens, right?

Like, homeland of the Lubuos. Okay. And so for journalism, right, out of curiosity, I dragged my sister to Flushing to Tangramal. And I was like, for this episode, I'm going to go Luboo hunting. My sister and I went to five locations looking for a Labubu. We went to an anime store sold out. We went to another store sold out.

We went to the pot mart vending machine. Gone. I go to the last stop. I'm like, I'm going to go home if this isn't it. So I pull up. And my sister and I were like, okay, they have Labibu's. I bought one. I got the one I wanted.

I was like delirious. I was like, just give, hand it to me. I'm like going to pick out an outfit. My sister and I bought little outfits. We were also overpriced. And I took a picture, went home. It was so adorable. And then I flew back to LA yesterday, like last night.

And as I was on the plane, my sister texted me, you left your child at home and just sends me a picture of the Luboooooooooooo left on my parents' dining table. No. All of that work. No. All that toiling. All that money's wasted.

And it's just sitting in its little fake Dodgers hat on my parents' dining table. Anyway, that was my Laboubu story. My sister and I got home and she was like, I feel sick from consumerism. She was like, I need to like cleanse myself. I need to touch grass. That's what consumerism will do to you. Exactly. Exactly.

That is, that's the moral of the story here. So do we save or scroll on Lububoos? Yeah. We are scrolling, girl. In a year from now, when loboos aren't as crazy and hyped up, are you going to want those 50 libububu's? Scroll, girl. What are you going to do with them? Yeah.

Scroll. Scroll. I'm scrolling. I'm a man. I already abandoned my libubu child in New York. You already scrolled physically. Like you literally abandoned you said. She can't even take care of one Labubu.

She can't have one. I can't. The courts won't let her. Okay. So I have a story for you. Are you familiar with a video game Relooted? It's not out yet, but I don't know if you've seen drama about this. Okay, so Relooted was one of the showcase games at Summer Game Fest last month.

What stands out about it is what it's about. Basically, it's about repatriating artifacts that were stolen from African countries and are now being held in Western museums. So it's a puzzle game, you know, in each level you have to go into these, like, fictional museums and steal back these real-life artifacts. So museums in the game are fictional, but the artifacts themselves are real,

and they're like symbols of a very violent colonial history. Yeah, I guess what do you guys think of it, like, so far? I think it's an interesting premise. I mean, the idea of returning artifacts back, to the countries are from, I think should be a no-brainer in real life, but is obviously more contentious than that in practice. I also think it could kind of raise awareness in a way about the issue if people started playing it a lot and thinking more about the actual real-life situations in which, you know, artifacts are kept in colonial museums.

essentially. What do you think, Moises? I mean, I'm definitely a video game person. I talk about playing Fortnite with my friends, and I love a story game. And I definitely would eat this game up just because, like, the premise is really fun and interesting. I think there's a lot of games that they don't really have a larger societal issue to talk about. I think it's definitely exciting to consider. So I saw the videos of the guy presenting it, right, at Summer Games. And the guy who presented the game is the game's creative director Ben Myers. And he's a white South African guy. And so I had the same response, right?

That felt like really important information. I was like, okay, who is this guy to be the face of a game about repatriation? But turns out he was the one to present the game because the deaf team is from all all over Africa like Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, the studio itself is based in South Africa. It turns out he was someone to present the developer who was supposed to be the face of it and present couldn't get a visa into the United States. And so Ben Myers, the creative director, thinks he got a visa because he has a South African passport, an Australian passport, and a British passport, and he's a white guy. And meanwhile, the developer who was denied, they said

that the consulate in South Africa kind of like denied them instantly and that they approved a white visa applicant right after denying theirs. And so the game itself is an inherently political statement, but the circumstances of the game's debut has also been now the symbol of this cultural war.

This whole thing opens up a really interesting conversation about many things, right? Which is, first of all, South Africa, is still contending with the aftermath of apartheid and to this day, right? And obviously seeing a white man from South Africa present this game, feelings toward that are obviously going to come up. And then you have this added context of, no, actually, the person who was supposed to actually present the game was denied

because of our racist visa system in America. and the layers of ultimately oppression in this are just so complex. I mean, the ultimate message of this game is talking about ownership and returning artifacts to where they are rightfully from. And the people who want to share this message can't even go to like conferences in the U.S. or, you know, events to, continue to share this message. So it's just a double like slap in the face of oppression there. Exactly.

Yes. So on this, save or scroll, my sense, what do you think? I think that this is definitely a save because there definitely might be other instances like this and that are going underreported. What about you, Deja? I'm saving. I'm going to play that game when it

comes out. I'm saving it. It's called Reluded. Who knows when it's coming out? One day. One day. I'll order it. Yay. Okay, I'm saving.

Last story for today. Moises, tell us about what's happening with Reddit snark pages. So right now, a Reddit snark page is at the center of a very interesting controversy. These snark pages are dedicated to specific influencers to gossip about them, make comments about things they're doing and, you know, basically just there's a community of people who like to talk about someone. So there's this influencer named Adam McIntyre. He's a drama influencer, so he basically recaps podculture moments. He talks about other influencers and the dramas that they have going on. So Adam is an Irish influencer who came to the U.S. to do a couple shows. He got an

01 visa, but some of the members on his Reddit snark page circulated the photo that he posted of his visa and said that he was issued an R1 visa, which is for people entering the United States to perform religious work, which is not exactly what he did. Some members of the R-Slas Adam McIntyre Snark page reported him to ICE. So he announced that he was going to take legal action against the Reddit snark page. And two days later, the start page, was taken down. So it is this really interesting conversation about the way that not only Stark pages, but people who are not fans of certain influencers, are trying to de-platform the people that they don't like,

but they're also trying to put them in harm's way. Because a lot of what's going on right now with ICE, especially in Los Angeles, and across the country, is a really dangerous moment for immigrants, or just people who are visiting here. Yeah, I mean, this whole story is, like, horrific because, I mean, we've heard about the ways people react to people that they don't like or disagree with.

Harassing people, never okay. But sending someone hate mail is one thing. And then to call ice on them as an act of violence is just on another level. It just reminds me, again, of the violent situation we've gotten to a point in internet culture where being a fan of someone or being an ante of someone, rather, is not enough. Hating on them and talking about the negatively is not enough. I think a lot of people think this is a freaking game, and it's not.

Because people are already being brutalized in ICE detention centers, being held in the most inhumane conditions. And then you want to subject people to that just because you don't like that. like them when they're here legally on a work visa. And whether people understand it or not, what they're signing up for is enacting harm on these people like Adam. Right. So for me, this is a save. Moises, what about you?

Save or scroll? Definitely a save. For sure. Deja? A hundred percent a save. And do we have any closing thoughts on the state of the internet after this wonderful save or scroll set? I've been so tired by the internet lately because I don't understand how people can care this much about that many people who are honestly just random people, especially with the Love Island people.

It's like, I don't know. That pool boy is a pool boy from Florida. Yeah, I don't expect them to have the perfect Instagram history. Yeah, yeah. I mean, my closing part would be that people just need to be. be a little bit more normal online, but given that all of these tech billionaires that own these platforms that allow for there to be some of the worst, most vile humans to share their opinions online, it's only going to get worse from here. Will you be going offline? Will you be logging off? Given everything you're... It's hard when you're in a little bit of order to log off. It's almost like throwing your job away. It is. It's basically impossible. Everybody needs a break. Everybody needs a break, even if it's a few days.

Yeah. Thanks so much for joining us. Of course. Thank you so much, Morgan. This was so much fun. Thank you for having us. And that's it for Saver Scroll. We're keeping tabs on everything we saved,

so 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's song. Our producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Agusa is our senior editor. Jen Cheen is KQED's director of podcasts and helps edit the show.

Original music, including our theme song, by Chris Agusa. Additional music by APM. Sound design by Maya Kueva and Brendan Willard. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Mahasana. Katie Springer is our podcast operations manager, and Ethan Tov and Lindsay is our editor-in-chief. Support for this program comes from Be Wrong Who,

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 Gatoron Red switches. If you have feedback or a topic you think we should cover, hit us up at close all tabs at kkwED.org. Follow us on Instagram at close all Tabs pod or drop it on Discord. We're in the close all tabs channel at discord.g.g slash KQED. And if you're enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or whatever platform you use. Thanks for listening. Support for a key QBD podcast comes from Xfinity. Thanks to the Xfinity five-year price guarantee, you're guaranteed five years of reliable Wi-Fi with our best equipment, no annual contracts,

and no fees. Plus, get online in minutes with same-day Wi-Fi. Lock in your cry sand unlock the possibilities. Xfinity, imagine that. Restrictions apply, select plans only. All right, class settle down. Today's lesson is on the Arco Rewards app. Try to stay with me. The fundamentals are simple.

Earn at least five cents a gallon in rewards, then redeem them later for up to a dollar off every gallon. Now here's where it gets complicated. Oh, wait, it doesn't. It's as simple as downloading the Arco Rewards app to get started. Class dismissed. Savings of up to $1 per gallon redeemable with $20 rewards dollars in your loyalty account. At participating locations, terms and conditions apply.

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