In partnership with

Hi everyone. Have you ever wondered what pieces of media shaped your favorite culture experts? 

Well, you’re in luck. I have a special treat for you today. We have our very first Lore Drop!!!

Behind every chronically online person is a digital footprint that goes crazy. Lore Drop is an interview series from Yap Year asking culture writers and makers about the formative interests and experiences that have led them to where they are today. 

There is no paywall today, so all subscribers can enjoy this juicy piece of lore. Upgrade to the Yapper tier to get more Thursday newsletters like this. Thank you to 1440 Media for partnering with the newsletter today; read more about them and subscribe below!

Receive Honest News Today

Join over 4 million Americans who start their day with 1440 – your daily digest for unbiased, fact-centric news. From politics to sports, we cover it all by analyzing over 100 sources. Our concise, 5-minute read lands in your inbox each morning at no cost. Experience news without the noise; let 1440 help you make up your own mind. Sign up now and invite your friends and family to be part of the informed.

Sign up today!

ICYMI’s Candice Lim

Candice Lim is the co-host of Slate’s internet culture podcast ICYMI and a former producer for NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour. From Facebook group-fueled exposés to forays in fanfiction, Candice has graciously given us a look into her lore.

Listen to Candice on ICYMI wherever you get your podcasts. Read more about her key culture lore below.

Exposing my high school teachers through Facebook groups

In high school, I found a blog written by an angry parent who really hated my school district. They posted a spreadsheet of the entire district faculty’s salaries, bonuses, and years of tenure. 

I ate this up: I found out that my history teacher — the teacher who impacted me most and made me love AP US History — got paid the least in her department. I found out that my AP Econ teacher — who to this day I want to fight in a ring — was getting paid almost $200,000 a year when he was the biggest bozo I’ve ever met in my life. 

I was incensed, angry, and bored. So I asked a friend to publish the spreadsheet in multiple Facebook groups affiliated with my high school and just let it filter through the pages. The next day, it worked. At the beginning of every single one of my classes, my teachers went up in front of the class and started defending their salaries, giving bogus explanations about how they’ve been there forever, they don’t even get to touch most of their bonus, taxes take away most of their salaries, etc. It made me disrespect them more. I’ve never seen a platoon of 45-year-old white guys more threatened by a girl with a Facebook account.

My mom found my Zac Efron fanfiction

The first fanfiction I ever wrote was about Zac Efron, who I still love thanks to High School Musical and who I forgave even after those salacious beach photos of him and my fellow AAPI sister Vanessa Hudgens dropped. 

I typed it up on Word and it was maybe 3.5 pages. I didn’t want it to live on the family laptop, so I printed it and deleted the original file. I treasured this literature so I kept it under my bed. The synopsis was: I had a friend who said hey, do you wanna go to my friend’s house? That friend was Zac Efron. We meet, we hit it off instantly, and while everyone’s asleep, Zac and I take a moonlight dip in his Hollywood Hills pool and make out. 

That is where the story ends, and this story was boldly titled: “My Night with Zac.” So imagine my horny horror when my mother is cleaning up my room and she says the words, “My Night with Zac? What’s this?” I explode, I grab the paper, and throw it away. That was the first and last copy of “My Night with Zac” to exist in human history. 

I am a Jonas Sister 

My first experience with fanfiction was reading Jonas Brother fanfiction on YouTube. Essentially, these channels would break up lines of fanfiction into iMovie with Comic Sans over bright pink backgrounds and usually they’d play a Jonas Brother song underneath it. Sometimes, they’d put a picture of Nick or Joe or Kevin (depending on who was speaking) and it felt like a play. 

After I ran through the Rated R Jonas Brother section (I was a Nick girl), I then discovered the Jonas Sister section. The lore here is that, if you ignore Frankie Jonas for a second, the Jonas Brothers had another sibling — a sister. 

She would tour with them, and go with them to mall signings and album release parties. She’d hook up with Cody Linley, the Sprouse twins, Justin Bieber or anyone who could’ve hypothetically been in the Carlos Pena-edited “Call Me Maybe” music video parody. 

I loved being a Jonas Sister. It made me realize that I didn’t want to just date my celeb crushes, I also wanted to be them. Living tangentially to their fame was just as fulfilling, if not more, to my maladaptive daydreams about what every 12-year-old girl dreamt about: getting Disney Channel famous. 

This also helped exercise my frame of narrative expansion, meaning I felt more agency to just add characters or storylines to movies and shows without needing to play within the lines of who was available to me. To this day, I do think creating characters and building worlds is often more important than what happens in the plot. Therefore, be the Jonas Sister you want to see in the world.

“Boys” by Charli XCX 

It’s the summer of 2017. I’m driving 1.5 hours each way to an internship I really, really hate (for legal reasons: I didn’t hate it because of the people there — it was just an unpaid internship in an office 4 days a week). I’m losing my will to live when on July 26, Charli XCX drops the song and the music video that canceled my depressive episode: “Boys.” 

This video had everything: Joe Jonas, Caspar Lee, Riz Ahmed, Chromeo, G-Eazy, Aminé, Rostam, Tom Daley!!! Charli directed this music video by pulling all these guys aside at music festivals, renting a studio, and asking them to just be cute. I was so jealous of Charli because I wish I had this idea. This song saved me that summer and it felt like my cells were turning over. Alex Hagen recently sampled it in his new song “Thinkin’ Bout” and it’s wild how good “boys” still makes me feel.

Joe Sugg, aka @ThatcherJoe on YouTube 

The Jonas Sister illness is chronic because my biggest YouTube crush was Joe Sugg, the brother of makeup YouTuber Zoe Sugg (@zoella). Zoella ended up having children with Alfie Deyes, whom she met via the Brit Crew, a friend group of mainly British YouTubers who made a killing on the platform and the Playlist Live/VidCon circuit between 2011 and 2018. 

Joe was my guy. I wanted to be Zoella’s friend, so it makes total sense for me to have a crush on her younger brother, who was 5 years older than me. He was funny and fit into the annoying, goofy, younger sibling role. He was roommates with Caspar Lee and they would vlog their apartment life together, which created this potential narrative in my head where I’m dating Joe but in a will-they-won’t-they dynamic with Caspar. 

Joe had a job before YouTube. He literally thatched roofs (meaning he built them out of straw). There was something about him having a blue-collar past and working with his hands that really appealed to me. But also, the Brit Crew and Kate Middleton’s wedding indoctrinated me into Anglophilia. They absolutely fed into my choice to study abroad in London with the hopes of falling in love with a Brit (like Joe) and moving there. Joe is now dating his dance partner from Strictly Come Dancing and honestly, I respect it. 

Other things I want to share with you

• YouTuber iDubbbz revived his “Content Cop” series and aimed his criticism toward H3H3 Productions. This is his first Content Cop since 2017 and the video received nearly 3 million views in 24 hours. The lore here is crazy and too much to get into in a Yap Sesh. But if you’re familiar with these creators and watched the video, what did you think?

• Fyre Fest 2 has been “postponed” and tickets were refunded. Who could’ve seen that coming???

• Kajabi, which helps online creators monetize, reported that 59% of creators identify as entrepreneurs — a 16% increase YOY. Social media has always been a hard career to navigate, but with TikTok’s uncertain future, creators are taking their fates into their own hands by building their own businesses.