Hello fellow citizens of the internet! Andrew here. Welcome to today’s edition of web_crawlr.
Our top stories today are about: How massive outages at Facebook and Instagram sparked conspiracy theories because it happened on Super Tuesday, how a meme from Veep mocking Nikki Haley’s primary win in Washington D.C. got more likes than she got votes, a shopper catching a grocery store charging double for eggs after changing the packaging to say “cage free,” and how people are skeptical of a viral “hack” at Little Caesars.
— A.W.
⚡ Today’s top stories
📱 CONSPIRACY
‘Practice run for November?’ Massive Facebook outage on Super Tuesday sparks claims of deep state sabotage
After services such as Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Messenger became unavailable on Tuesday, far-right users began suggesting that the outages were linked to the multiple primaries across the country known as Super Tuesday.
🗳️ POLITICS
‘Veep’ meme mocking Nikki Haley’s D.C. win gets more likes than Haley got votes
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley pulled off her first victory in the Republican primary contest on Sunday, but a tweet quickly racked up way more votes than Haley got, leading to mockery online and comparisons to Julia Louis Dreyfuss’ bumbling vice presidential caricature Selina Meyer in Veep.
🥚 WTF
‘They’re tricking people’: Shopper catches supermarket charging double for eggs after changing packaging to ‘cage-free’
In a video with over 100,000 views, one person alleges that shoppers are being “scammed” when buying eggs.
🍕 VIRAL
‘This is actually real if u go in like 5 mins before they close’: Does this Little Caesars trick actually work?
A video of a man showing a Little Caesars “hack” that went viral earlier this year has sparked a wave of debate and skepticism among viewers.
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.
⭐ Decoding Fandom
By Kira Deshler
Assistant Newsletter Editor
Who screamed at Rebecca Ferguson? Fans want to know
In each edition of web_crawlr we have exclusive original content every day. On Wednesdays our Assistant Newsletter Editor Kira Deshler dives deep into the world of fan culture in her “Decoding Fandom” column. If you want to read columns like this before everyone else, subscribe to web_crawlr to get your daily scoop of internet culture delivered straight to your inbox.
🕸️ Crawling the web
Here is what else is happening across the ‘net.
🍽️ Like a high stakes game of culinary roulette, the decision to tip lies at the hand of the consumer. That’s why one server went viral for calling out customers who don’t tip when the problems were actually the kitchen’s fault.
💵 A woman threatened to sue a 99 Cents Only location for overcharging her by one penny on each item. Turns out they’ve been legally doing this for years.
🚗 Two Jack in the Box drive-thru customers went viral on TikTok after sharing the bizarre exchange they had with a worker there.
🛏️ One IKEA shopper says she went to repurchase a mattress she originally bought in late 2021, but was shocked to find that the sticker price had jumped by almost half of what she originally paid.
💼 A woman says she was fired from her job after she arrived to work carrying an Hermès Birkin bag.
🚘 When you take your car to a dealership for maintenance, you expect to get it back in tip-top shape. One Honda owner recently had quite the opposite experience.
👮 From the Daily Dot archive: A background check company is secretly paying cops on TikTok to push its services.
📝 Question of the Day
Everyone’s got opinions, and we want to know yours. Just click a button below to answer the question, and tomorrow we will let you know how fellow web crawlers like you answered.
HAVE YOU SEEN (OR ARE PLANNING TO SEE) DUNE: PART TWO?
To answer questions like this in the future, sign up for web_crawlr here.
👋 Before you go
An Expedia customer shared a warning about “fake” car rental companies that are allegedly scamming customers through the travel website.
Chelsea Gerbeshi (@sagittariusicedlatte) has had viral moments in the past when she shared her experience working as a Starbucks barista and being fired from another serving job by a boss who assured her that her job was safe. Recently, Gerbeshi hopped on TikTok to warn others not to fall into the same trap she did with her rental car company.
“I was scammed pretty badly using Expedia, and if I were you, I would think before booking anything through them,” she says at the start of her video.
🎶 Now Playing: “Ripples in The Sand” by Hans Zimmer 🎶
