We never forget where we were or how we found out about big news.
I was in high school when my keyboarding teacher, who loved me because I was an insufferable teacher’s pet, whispered at me and called me over to look at the tiny TV she had on her desk. The Twin Towers had smoke billowing from them.
I was in a ballroom in Pasadena at the Television Critics Association listening to Mark Harmon talk about the new NCIS prequel series when I got a text from my brother that there was an assassination attempt against Donald Trump.
And I was hungover and scrolling through X when I saw a tweet from the account PopCrave that Joe Biden was stepping down as the Democratic nominee for re-election.
The social media account PopCrave is known for posting breaking entertainment news, ranging from celebrity breakups to the release of a pop star’s new single to screenshots of actors attacking each other on Instagram.
In recent months, however, the account has been posting breaking national news. Because it has so many followers, and because it is so quick in publishing, the Extremely Online community is now learning about headline news from the account’s posts. The phenomenon has become a meme in its own right, with people posting “I can’t believe this is how I found out…” in relation to major national news, a response to PopCrave posting on X about it.
PopCrave was incredibly fast posting about Biden exiting the presidential race. And, because of X’s algorithm, it is an account that is prioritized for me, a person who works in pop culture and whose social media interests skew heavily towards news about pop divas and problematic celebrities. So when I opened my X app on Sunday, the first post on my feed was from PopCrave. But instead of an urgent update on what celebs attended Taylor Swift’s latest concert, it was a post about the most consequential news on the future of this country that has happened in my lifetime.
It appears I wasn’t the only one. Here’s a smattering of posts from people who first saw the Biden news, not because of The New York Times or The Washington Post, as one might expect, but because of PopCrave.
Journalist Ashley Spencer posted a screenshot of not just PopCrave’s post, but also one from the controversial account , which posts about the deaths of public figures as well as things like restaurants that are going out of business and, apparently, political campaigns ending while the 78-year-old entertainer is still alive.
At the time of writing this, PopCrave’s two most recent posts were about Biden and Kamala Harris. Prior to that, the account, which has 1.7 million followers, alerted followers that Shawn Mendes had just released a new video, K-Pop group 2NE1 signed with new management, and Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow” achieved 900 million streams on Spotify.
All the news you need.
