Slate’s Icymi Hosts On Their Online Obsessions And Wildest 2025 Predictions 

Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay are the hosts of ICYMI, Slate’s podcast about internet culture.

Here at Mozilla, we are the first to admit the internet isn’t perfect, but we know the internet is pretty darn magical. The internet opens up doors and opportunities, allows for human connection, and lets everyone find where they belong — their corners of the internet. We all have an internet story worth sharing. In My Corner Of The Internet, we talk with people about the online spaces they can’t get enough of, the sites and forums that shaped them, and how they would design their own corner of the web.

This month, we chat with Candice Lim of Slate’s internet culture podcast, ICYMI, and her new cohost, Kate Lindsay, about their first online obsessions, internet hot takes and predictions for 2025.

What is your favorite corner of the internet? 

Kate: My group chat. I’m a full-time lurker on platforms like TikTok, to the point where I have time limits on my phone, but when it comes to actually participating in the discourse or sharing my life, I now only do it in a space where I’m pretty sure everyone likes me.

Candice: There’s this TikTok account called @petunia_rocks, and it’s run by a college student who voices a stuffed hippo named Petunia. Her account is full of cute little things like, Petunia’s nighttime routine, Petunia cold-calling frat guys, Petunia going to her grandparent’s house for Thanksgiving. And Petunia has a very cute voice, but she also has this adorable growl (hmmmmph!) that I use in my daily life all the time. I stan Petunia and she does, indeed, rock.

What is an internet deep dive that you can’t wait to jump back into?

Kate: I want to know what happened to the 2010s-era YouTube BritCrew. Almost all still post but not all are still friends, and I need to know what some think of the direction that others have taken…

Candice: I have a few that I check in on every year: What’s the nature of Mindy Kaling and BJ Novak’s relationship, what finally made Charli XCX break up with her ex-boyfriend Huck, what really caused Aaron Rodgers and Shailene Woodley to call off their engagement, what is the hour-by-hour timeline of Olivia Munn and John Mulaney getting together, what really happened when Edith Zimmerman profiled Chris Evans for GQ, and was there an actual love triangle between Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, and Joshua Bassett.

What is the one tab you always regret closing?

Kate: The spelling of “grey” vs. “gray” because I always forget and just have to Google it again. I still don’t know right now.

Candice: Drew Starkey fancams.

What can you not stop talking about on the internet right now?

Kate: How it’s making us lonely! The internet should be for news, seeing what my high school classmates look like now, and fandoms. It should not be a single replacement for working, shopping, socializing and ever needing to leave the house.

Candice: Same as Kate. Maybe we’ll even make an ICYMI episode about it soon

What was the first online community you engaged with?

Kate: Mugglenet and FanFiction.net, for the same reason: to see if Harry and Hermoine ever kiss.

Candice: I would say MileyWorld.com, which was a Miley Cyrus fan site that I was obsessed with. It had this MySpace feel to it, where “Miley” would leave messages, videos, and notes for her fans to comment on. There was a paid subscription element to the site, which I feel like is a bit gatekeep-y especially when it’s catered to 12 year olds. But the reason I stopped going on there is because I was catfished by someone who claimed to be Mandy Jiroux, Miley’s best friend whom you may know from the iconic program, The Miley and Mandy Show. “Mandy” and I were in the DMs, and on the front page of MileyWorld, they would spotlight one fan every day, and it was a big deal. It was like Reddit Karma points. And I had such a nice conversation with “Mandy,” that she promised she would make me the spotlighted fan on the homepage the next day. I was so excited and bragged about it at school. But I forgot that I had a basketball game the day of my alleged crowning, so I went straight from school to the game, and I came home and conked out. And to this day, I will never, ever know if I was really MileyWorld’s fan of the day.

If you could create your own corner of the internet, what would it look like?

Kate: MySpace plus the ability to post videos, minus the requirement to publicly rank your friends.

Candice: It would combine: KindleTok, hopecore, Bella Hadid’s aesthetic and those TikTok tarot readings where they don’t have any hashtags or captions on the posts so you totally know that video was meant for you.

What articles and/or videos are you waiting to read/watch right now?

Kate: I’d love to open up YouTube and see that one of my various English mums has posted a 40-minute long vlog of them cleaning their house and running errands. I just checked and one has

Candice: I really love Wishbone Kitchen’s content. Her TikToks have leaned away from “day in the life of a private chef in the Hamptons” and toward her daily cooking rituals as someone who just bought a house in the Hamptons. And usually, when an influencer buys a home, they get hate (envy) for it but I am really happy for Meredith because she showed the work that it took to get there, and her content doesn’t strike me as braggy. Instead, she nurtures her garden, she takes her dogs on a walk, she microplanes local cheeses, and it’s very Cotwaldsian to me. She feels like American Taggie from Rivals. I’ve been saving her 45-minute Christmas and Thanksgiving dinner videos for those cozy nights in when you’re cooking a big bolognese and you want something light and bright that encourages you to be patient while cooking. I like her videos because audio-wise, there’s something really satisfying about hearing the garlic sizzle and short rib sear and her videos make everything seem doable.

What’s your wildest internet culture prediction for 2025?

Kate: Digital wellness as the new self-care — mindful consumption, logging off, physical media (and then posting about it all online, of course).

Candice: I think a big celebrity or influencer will sue @PopCrave for forgetting to say they “stunned” in a photo.

Kate Lindsay is a writer from Brooklyn, New York and author of the internet culture newsletter Embedded. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Bustle, and GQ, launching viral phenomena like the millennial pause and “rawdogging” flights. Previously, she was a newsletter editor at The Atlantic and a staff writer at Refinery29.

Candice Lim is the co-host of ICYMI, Slate’s podcast about internet culture. She comes to Slate from NPR, where she was an assistant producer at Pop Culture Happy Hour. Prior to that, she was an intern at NPR’s How I Built This, the Hollywood Reporter, WBUR and the Orange County Register. She graduated from Boston University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and grew up in Orange County, California.

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