Weekly Internet Roundup: Negging Boyfriends, Burning Man Chaos, and the Legacy of Smash Mouth

Hello. We're back with another ode to the endless insanity of events on the recent internet. Much like any other week, this one hasn't disappointed on this front. Let's get started.

The Burners' Struggle

It takes a special kind of person to willingly rock up in the middle of the desert for a week and just kind of see what happens. When the chaos that was Burning Man this year unfolded over social media, many of the uninitiated were shocked to learn that it's not, in fact, just a music festival with a slightly edgier name.

While the event that prides itself on “Communal Effort, Gifting, and Radical Self-Reliance” is no stranger to things going awry, but this year proved particularly difficult. First up, climate protestors blocked the road to the dried up lake bed in the Nevada desert that gets transformed yearly into Black Rock City. Then, Burners were prevented from actually leaving the site thanks to torrential rain turning the place into a mud bath. 

Top it off with a false yet widely believed rumor about an Ebola outbreak, and the whole thing became an irresistible posting sh*tstorm. Fyre Festival 2 is really going to have to outdo itself to compare. 

Tinder Swindler 2.0

Who doesn't love a good story about meeting someone insane on a dating app? This latest saga to have gripped a corner of the internet has it all: thievery, deceit, and some controversial shoe choices. 

Self-described "NYC fashion girlie" @NextLevelLexuss posted a TikTok over the weekend calling out a man named Josh, who she had met on Tinder and been on two dates with. She claimed that they had hung out at her apartment on the second date, after which she noticed her $900 Margiela Tabi shoes were missing. Josh had also deleted his number from her phone. 

As if that wasn't enough, further intel revealed that Josh had a girlfriend, who he appeared to have gifted the stolen Tabis to. After a great deal of online shaming and memeing, the Tabi thief was eventually recorded handing back the shoes to their rightful owner. Congratulations to this shameless man for overshadowing the start of New York Fashion Week. 

RIP Another Meme Legend

Lovers of all kinds of Shrek meme lost a real one this week, after the tragic news that former Smash Mouth frontman Steve Harwell passed away at the age of 56. It probably isn't fun to have a lifetime of hard work distilled down into a glut of memes that focus on a singular song (just ask Rick Astley), but you know what? The internet is still mighty appreciative of that contribution. Thank you for your services to humor, Steve.

This Dirty Talk Sucks 

It's been weeks since a woman went viral by revealing to the internet something weird and bad that her partner has done, so thank God that Twitter personality Aella graced us with a truly depressing anecdote to baffle at. 

An infamous controversy baiter on a platform that has no shortage of such types, Aella has previously graced these pages after posting her end of year statistics that suggested she barely showered, pooped, or went outside. Recently, we learned another disturbing fact about her life: she has a boyfriend who doesn't find her attractive.

After another woman tweeted that she thought that a man with a girlfriend should always act like she is “the most beautiful woman [he's] ever seen”, Aella saw fit to share an apology card that one of her partners had given her after suggesting that she was not pretty.

There is, as the saying goes, a lot to unpack here. The smiley face sticker and Sharpie combination is an affront to the eyes on its own, but the fact that the card implies they were in the middle of intimacy at the time is enough to give anyone chills. To no-one's surprise, Aella has ardently defended this dude throughout. Polyamory is a trip. 

So ends another edition of the roundup. Time to sit back and look forward to another week where yet more absurd viral stories and memes arrive to make us think twice about how many hours a day we spend on the internet. Bye!