Quick Hits

• "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" leaked in high quality: A massive bootleg of the Marvel blockbuster hit X and raked in millions of views before getting yanked down just before the film's big theatrical weekend.
• Lollapalooza drama and surprises: Lil Uzi Vert canceled their headlining set but dropped a surprise birthday EP hours later, while Charli xcx brought out Lorde to perform "Girl, So Confusing" live.
• The Adam22 and Lena The Plug legal nightmare: A literal mystery man is terrorizing the couple, filing both a fake divorce and a fake restraining order on Lena's behalf.
• The Inbetweeners is officially back: Netflix is reuniting the original Brit comedy cast for a brand-new movie.
• Met Gala drama: The Costume Institute announced its next exhibit honoring John Galliano, instantly sparking fresh conversation on r/popculturechat about the designer's infamous past.

What's Trending

The internet is in absolute shambles today. Let’s start with Marvel chaos: a high-quality bootleg of Spider-Man: Brand New Day somehow leaked onto X, and millions of people legitimately watched a pirated camcorder version of a massive blockbuster before it got scrubbed. Who even goes to the movies anymore when the leaks are this accessible?

Meanwhile, over on Reddit, pop culture fans are side-eyeing the news that John Galliano is getting the next Met Gala exhibit treatment. It's a stunning choice that is already causing a stir given his history. And if you need a palate cleanser from all the heavy stuff, Black Twitter's July roundup just dropped, proving once again that nobody on the internet delivers elite comedy quite like them.

Music

Lollapalooza really said "give the people what they want" (and then changed its mind at the last second). Charli xcx and Lorde officially worked it out on the stage! Charli said performing "Girl, So Confusing" together live made the track feel "more special," giving us the brat summer moment we needed.

But if you were hoping to see Lil Uzi Vert at the festival, you were out of luck. Uzi canceled their set at the very last minute—but being the absolute icons they are, they tried to make it up to us by dropping a surprise eight-track EP hours later for their 31st birthday. We love a chaotic pivot! Yungblud also made a triumphant return to the Lolla stage after having to cancel an earlier show this month.

In other music legal chaos, Drake’s "fraudulent streams" lawsuit is officially on ice. A judge sent the claims—which allege Drizzy helped inflate his streaming numbers via an online casino—to arbitration. Elsewhere, J-pop royalty BE:FIRST is plotting their massive US takeover after dominating Japan, and the SOCAN Polaris Song Prize shortlist dropped up in Canada, giving us some incredible indie picks (shoutout to PUP and Martha Wainwright) to stream.

Movies & TV

Netflix is feeding us this week. Not only is The Inbetweeners getting a reunion movie with the original lead cast (the bus won't even be able to handle this reunion), but the streamer also just announced a massive August slate, including the Fast & Furious franchise and Field of Dreams.

If you want something a little more unhinged, Gregg Araki’s erotic thriller I Want Your Sex is coming, and Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman apparently used a literal 1-10 pain scale to prep for their intense BDSM scenes. Wilde reportedly "hit him really hard" during prep, and Hoffman rated it an eight. Method acting is absolutely wild! Over on Apple TV, the Cape Fear finale just dropped, completely flipping the script on the Scorsese original to deliver a truly shocking ending. And if survival horror is more your vibe, The Devil’s Mouth is bringing the blood, with director Jeff Wadlow revealing that Lana Condor and Kathryn Newton actually swapped roles because the demanding shark stunts were just too intense.

Celebrity Tea

The saga of Adam22 and Lena The Plug is getting increasingly bizarre. After a random mystery man filed a fake divorce on Lena's behalf, he has now escalated things by filing a fake restraining order against her. Literal psychopath behavior!

In slightly more nostalgic (but still messy) news, a list of 18 celebrities who were forced to hide career-threatening secrets is making the rounds. One jaw-dropper includes a Disney Channel star who was secretly married, plus an iconic actor whose team literally forbade him from taking photos with his boyfriend to hide his sexuality. On a much lighter, thirstier note, TMZ has a massive SKIMS guessing game up today, challenging us to guess which influencer with 10 million followers is serving absolute looks in a revealing black set.

TikTok & Internet

TikTok is having a bit of a mid-life crisis. The app is suddenly pushing photo carousels hard, and users are big mad about it. The consensus on Reddit? If they wanted to see random pictures of flowers with two likes, they’d just go to Instagram. Speaking of annoying features, people are begging for a way to turn off the app's new spammy notifications without having to nuke all their alerts entirely. Algorithmically, creators are also panicking because videos are randomly tanking in views, and nobody knows why deactivated accounts are still showing up in chats with their follower counts visible.

But it’s not all complaints! The live-streaming side of the app is as delightfully weird as ever. There's currently a guy going viral for walking around for two to three hours at a time just carrying donations. I don't know who needs to hear this, but if you're donating to the Walking Donation Guy, you are a foundational pillar of the internet.