Attenzione, Pickpocket! How Online Were You in July?

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Hanging by a Thread

After years of launching copycats of Snapchat, TikTok, and BeReal, Instagram finally came for Twitter. Threads, its new text-based app, dares to answer the question, “What if the accounts I follow for product recommendations and home-décor inspiration instead started talking aimlessly about politics?”

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Wonka gone wonky

You know a movie is going to be A Lot when this harrowing picture of Hugh Grant as an Oompa Loompa was just the teaser before the full trailer dropped. Thanks to the uncomfortable whimsy of Timothée Chalamet’s Wonka performance and the sheer needlessness of this fictional origin story to begin with, Twitter and TikTok dined out for days.

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Bitch, I’m a mother

There’s no point clapping back at misogynistic comments online, even if they’re coming from the father of your child. Instead, when her boyfriend used Twitter to shame her for an outfit she wore to an Usher concert, Keke Palmer took the high road: She made merch out of it.

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Girl Dinnerupted

You know it’s a slow news season when a couple cubes of cheese and a glass of wine somehow become a viral New York Times trend piece.

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Wedding cash-ers

Kim KarDASHian was … not at beauty influencer Mikayla Nogueira’s wedding, but pretty much every other online celebrity was. The creator, who has been in and out of drama for her fair-weather Boston accent and appearing to use false lashes when hawking a mascara, married husband Cody Hawken on July 1 in front of friends, family, and your entire TikTok FYP. James Charles, Chris Olsen, and Dylan Mulvaney were among the A-list influencers in attendance who wasted no time sucking out every bit of content from the celebration, which some criticized for appearing to be heavily sponsored by E.l.f Cosmetics.

“You only get married once,” Nogueira told People. “Why not have a massive party with people who love and support you?” Except, apparently, if they’re an actual, non-influencer friend, one of whom was allegedly shafted from the invite list.

Why it’s a 2: Nogueira joins titans of industry like Pentatonix’s Scott Hoying and former “Rich Kid of Instagram” Karen Shiboleth in the hallowed halls of People’s exclusive wedding photo gallery, elevating her “TikTok influencer” status to that of “side character in a Bravo reality show.”

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Prime Suspect

There isn’t much video evidence of Amazon’s July 11 Prime Night, which featured creators like Alix Earle, Jake Shane, and Aliyah Bah competing in a series of games to promote the company’s annual mega-sale, and for good reason. The entire operation was a technical mess from start to finish, with awkward silences, poorly contrived games, one near incident of accidental blackface, and host Atsuko Okatsuka doing her best to hold it all together. In the most-talked-about segment, Earle sits behind Shane and uses her hands to apply makeup that she can’t see. In doing so, she grabs a contour stick, and unknowingly smears dark makeup all over his face. The rest of the story is best told by the comments that began flooding the live:

“Oh no.”
“ALIX STOP NOW”
“Jake is gonna get canceled at Amazon Prime.”

Shortly after, the live cut out. Amazon blamed this abrupt ending on “technical difficulties,” but many suspect the company pulled the plug after realizing things were going south. Two dollars off printer paper was not worth enduring that mess.

Why it’s a 2: TikTok x Amazon should have been a slam dunk. The #Amazonfinds hashtag alone has 56 billion views on the app. But Amazon royally fumbled the bag in the same month that TikTok launched its own Amazon competitor, TikTok Shop. That sound you hear is a bunch of Bytedance execs popping champagne.

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Stream queen

At any given moment, creators on TikTok Live are ladling wood soup, playing video games, or selling wigs. It’s such a well of bizarre, uncanny-valley content that you have to be doing something extremely unique to stand out. Popping popcorn with a hair straightener and slurping while repeating “Ice cream so good, yes, yes, yes”? That’ll do it. 27-year-old Pinky Doll, real name Fedha Sinon, broke out as a viral TikTok live star for “NPC streaming,” based on the “non-playable characters” found in video games. Like an NPC, Sinon cycles through a limited number of phrases and mannerisms, which she repeats in response to digital gifts sent to her by followers. These gifts can add up to between $2,000 to $3,000 per stream.

Sinon has gained over 730,000 followers on TikTok, but it was Twitter where she really exploded. Screen recordings of her livestreams went viral on the app, to the delight — and horror — of its users.

“The internet was a mistake,” reads one reply.

Why it’s a 2: Sinon’s livestreams, which were covered by the New York Times and the Washington Post, have inspired a larger trend on the app. Other creators like Haley Kalil and Trisha Paytas have put their own spin on NPC streaming, and artist Timbaland — reportedly a top viewer of Sinon’s streams — even remixed her voice into a song.

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Boss moves

Just as it felt like we had reached peak artist-trying-to-blow-themselves-up-on-TikTok, Flyana Boss came sprinting into frame with the actual song of the summer. The hip-hop duo, made up of Bobbi Lanea and Folayan Kunerede, has earned over one million followers on TikTok for their song “You Wish,” and more specifically, their videos lip-syncing the song while running through various locations. From the streets of Los Angeles to Disneyland to the Google offices, the pair’s videos routinely receive millions of views, and the song has been featured in almost 140,000 different posts.

Why it’s a 2: This isn’t just another fleeting TikTok song. Lanea and Kunerede’s talents earned them a write-up in Rolling Stone, over 12 million streams on Spotify, and, perhaps most telling, a spike in Google searches for “kanekalon.”

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Crimped comeback

Brianna Penrose appears in just 20 seconds of an episode of Dance Moms (season four, episode five, starting at 21:50 — since I apparently have to do everything myself around here), but she left a lasting, crimp-shaped mark. Her clip from the 2014 episode resurfaced on TikTok and was memed across Twitter for the brutality, but also accuracy, of Abby Lee’s comment on her hair.

“The girl with the bad haircut, get out here,” Lee says in the clip. Seemingly without any prompting, Penrose steps forward, a blonde triangle bob crimped to hell upon her head. Lee calls out Penrose’s mother for limiting her potential with her haircut. Ten years later, it appears she took this advice to heart. Now, Penrose is almost unrecognizable, but commenters on Instagram won’t let her forget her 20 seconds of fame. “cut and crimp ur hair again bc it was a SERVE!” reads one of many comments on her latest post.

Why it’s a 3: A singular screenshot of Penrose in this episode has transcended its humble Dance Moms origins and now exists as a standalone meme on Twitter, particularly in the Taylor Swift fandom. But watch out — something tells me Penrose is about to enter her Reputation era.

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TikTok pickpock(et)

When we say ACAB, that doesn’t include the “attenzione pickpocket” woman on TikTok. In a series of viral videos, a 57-year-old Italian named Monica Poli identifies and scares off local pickpockets by shouting her now-infamous catchphrase: “Attenzione, pickpocket,” or “Attention, pickpocket!” Poli is part of an organization called Cittadini Non Distratti, meaning “Citizens not distracted,” which is responsible for posting the initial viral videos. And not more than five seconds after her New York Times interview, she milkshake duck-ed.

The initial videos are meant to showcase how the group is combatting organized crime in Italy — so naturally, the internet turned it into a meme. It’s now a trend to yell “Attenzione, pickpocket” at passersby, or use the audio over clips like your cat stealing food. But perhaps no one has championed the trend better than 22-year-old Amine Ouadrhiri, who lives in Paris and has amassed over one million followers for his chaotic on-the street videos in just ten months on the app. Ouadrhiri has repeatedly gone viral for yelling “Attenzione, pickpocket” at unsuspecting victims.

“I’m not gonna lie, I’m so stupid,” he says. “I feel like this is Gen Z humor that only us will understand.”

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Crowd-work callout

Ashely Gavin is one of a number of comedians who rose to fame on TikTok for their sharp and sometimes aggressive crowd work. She became a prominent figure in the online LGBTQ+ space, particularly for her podcast, We’re Having Gay Sex, which frequently touches on mental health. However, when TikTok user Olivia Neely attended Gavin’s show on June 16, she says the comedian singled her out for her cheering and told her to commit suicide.

“And I jokingly, but also very seriously, was like, ‘I already have,’” Neely says in her video. “She proceeds to tell me to go unalive myself over and over and over again.”

Audio of the incident was later obtained and posted by creator TheCliffnotesGal. In it, Gavin can be heard screaming things like “You’re an annoying person, try harder to kill yourself” at Neely and her friend. This damning encounter prompted a wave of Gavin backlash across TikTok, either from people who had similar experiences at her shows or from former fans who were upset with her behavior.

“In this particular interaction, I let my emotions get the best of me,” Gavin later said in a July 3 apology video. “I took it way too far and I am so, so sorry.”

Why it’s a 4: Gavin’s “cancellation” — she’s already back posting videos as normal — was a reckoning that saw the explosion of two of TikTok’s most volatile communities: lesbian TikTok and mental-health TikTok. As a prominent figure in both camps, Gavin’s fuck-up was so intensely discoursed that even creators associated with her had to come forward and address the situation. Outside of TikTok, however, the showdown barely earned itself a Distractify article.

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True-crime rewind

It’s ironic that the platform that likes to true-crime-ify everything might be the place that finally cancels true crime. While My Favorite Murder, a long-running true-crime podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, has been no stranger to backlash, a series of videos posted on July 12 by Nashville bartender and former MFM fan Jennifer Arnold has put the podcast under renewed scrutiny. Arnold details a number of problematic elements surrounding the show, including the hosts’ reluctance to promptly and authentically apologize for mistakes — like when they released camp-themed merch in 2018 that featured a tepee design — and the ways the online fan community can be hostile to members of color who point out the podcast’s missteps.

Arnold’s videos sparked a larger reckoning with true-crime comedy podcasts in general, from Sword and Scale to Last Podcast on the Left. We hopped on a Zoom call with Arnold to talk about this shift and where true crime can go from here.

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Blindsided

TikTok has led to the popularization of a number of previously unthinkable phrases: cheugy, girl dinner, and something called “blueberry milk nails,” to name a few. But “time blindness” may be the one responsible for the most pointless discourse. User @chaotic_philosopher posted a video in which she tearfully describes the negative reaction she received when asking if a job had “accommodations for people who struggle with time blindness and being on time.” While the initial video made it seem like this happened in an interview, the creator revealed on TikTok live that it was actually a conversation with her mom, who told her she wouldn’t be able to get a job if she wasn’t able to be on time.

Time blindness, or the inability to recognize when time has passed, is a real thing, and is most commonly experienced by people with ADHD. As many people with ADHD in the comments pointed out, however, a simple accommodation would be “setting an alarm.”

Many people used this video as an opportunity to dunk on Gen Z or claim the world has gone to hell. In reality, it’s someone — who appears to be a minor — exercising their God-given right to be embarrassing online, and accidentally ending up in front of a huge audience.

Why it’s a 5: If this conversation actually mattered beyond becoming Fox News rage-bait, then perhaps it could eke out a 4. Instead, it’s just LibsOfTikTok fodder.

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Hell Nair

What happened to “Hello”? “How are you”? These days it’s just “Removing BUTT HAIRS Using NAIR Cream - A Visual Guide!” Creator Kevin Leonardo frequently catches attention on TikTok for his intimate, straight-to-the-point videos on gay sex education and care, but only on YouTube does he show hole in the first 25 seconds. The viral video, first posted on June 25, has since received 36 million views on the platform, and prompted not one, but two follow-up apologies, one even in the style of Colleen Ballinger’s “Toxic Gossip Train.”

“The fact that this man is apologizing for showing his entire ass on YouTube and he still did it better than Colleen is crazy,” one commenter wrote.

Why it’s a 5: Our generation had “Two Girls, One Cup,” Gen Z has “Removing BUTT HAIRS Using NAIR Cream.” At least this one is easily accessible on YouTube and won’t give anyone’s computer a virus. The downside? It’s easily accessible on YouTube, and won’t discourage anyone from watching by giving their computer a virus.

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Chef Island

Some jobs, like mixing paint at Home Depot or sorting pills at a pharmacy, are just made for TikTok. But perhaps no profession has taken off more than that of private chefs in the Hamptons. Meredith Hayden, Reilly Meehan, Bri Marriott, Rob Li, Juliana White, Seth Boylan, DyAnne Landoli, and Kara Fauerbach are all Hamptons private chefs who, by next summer, will surely be featured on some kind of themed Food Network series. Until then, TikTok user @pamelawurstvetrini is doing the Lord’s work.

On June 21, she began recapping each week of the chefs’ work in the Hamptons, from cooking mishaps to car breakdowns, and ranking their culinary pursuits à la the Dance Moms pyramid. At least no one has let any of these contestants near a crimper.

Why it’s a 5: While @pamelawurstvetrini’s initial video got hundreds of thousands of views, only the truly dedicated have continued tuning in week after week. But with just a month left of summer now, this is officially your sign to start. There are twists, turns, and new players coming into the fold as the weeks progress — everything that can fill the Love Island U.K.–shaped hole in your heart.