Hello fellow citizens of the internet! Kira here. Welcome to today’s edition of web_crawlr.
Today’s top stories are about: kids enacting their civil liberties on Roblox, a hilarious new excerpt from Britney Spears’ memoir, Ted Cruz bringing bad vibes to Astros games, and an airline pilot who wasn’t quite sober.
After that, we’ve got David’s “Deplatformed” column for you.
See you on the flipside,
— K.D.
⚡ Today’s top stories
👾 INTERNET CULTURE
Kids are attending pro-Palestine protests within Roblox
Roblox players are “doing more for Palestine than politicians,” said one X user.
📖 CELEBS
‘Fo’ shiz … What’s up, homie?’: Britney Spears describes Justin Timberlake’s awkward encounter with rapper
Michelle Williams narrates a particularly hilarious passage in Britney Spears’ new memoir. You have to hear it to believe it.
⚾ VIRAL
‘STAY AWAY’: Astros fans blame Ted Cruz for Championship Series loss
Is the Astros’ 0-5 record Ted Cruz’s fault?
✈️ WTF
Off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot who tried to crash a plane with 83 passengers blamed it on taking mushrooms for the first time
He also tried to open an emergency door, according to court filings.
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🚉 Deplatformed
By David Covucci
Senior Politics and Technology Editor
Struggle Sessions
Deplatformed is a weekly column that looks into the nether reaches of the internet—outside the big few that everyone already covers—to tell you the political discourse online. It runs on Thursdays 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.
🏢 A TikTok user reveals the secret to finding the perfect ‘lazy girl job.’
💵 A Target customer shares her experience being scammed by Target with their ring camera “deal.” It may very well be fraud.
🗳️ People are convinced a GOP congresswoman is cursing House Speaker nominations. Is it true?
🍣 Controversy erupted when an Australian woman opened an ‘Australian Sushi’ restaurant in NYC. She’s been accused of ‘colonizing’ Japanese food.
👬🏻 Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are becoming BFFs. No one is surprised.
📷 A parent received her son’s school photo and discovered it had been highly edited. They even gave him dimples.
🚗 From the Daily Dot archive: Is social media spending on drunk driving campaigns making a difference?
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📝 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.
ARE YOU TEAM BRITNEY OR TEAM JUSTIN?
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👋 Before you go
While you could take a sleeping pill (or cocktail) to knock you out on a plane, one woman’s dad has a much more creative approach: sleeping on the floor of an airplane.
“You have ur Airport dad, I have my Asian dad,” TikTok user Natalie Bright (@bynataliebright) wrote on her video. It shows her dad lying on the ground, where passengers’ feet usually go. “Flying economy for 15 hours? No problem,” the text overlay continued.
“More room for everybody,” the caption read. By giving up his seat and opting to sleep on the floor, Bright’s dad gave her the free space to put her legs up on the seat and spread out comfortably.