Famous singer surprises patients at Mass. hospital before back-to-back shows
The Grammy-nominated artist surprised patients at Boston Children's Hospital Wednesday ahead of her two-night run at TD Garden.
Abrams visited patients across the hospital and sang in the Seacrest Studio, according to a TikTok from the hospital.
'Gracie brought the warmest hugs and joy to patients, siblings, parents and staff,' the TikTok's caption read. 'We'll remember this day forever.'
'People have no idea how much these visits mean to patients,' one TikTok user commented on the video.
Others called the 25-year-old 'a beautiful person, inside and out' and 'the sweetest person ever.'
After playing TD Garden Wednesday night, Abrams will be back at the venue for her second sold-out show Thursday night.
Click here for information on where to find last-minute tickets.
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WIRED
a minute ago
- WIRED
From Cheating Exposés to Dating Background Checks, TikTok Detectives Are Thriving
Jul 28, 2025 7:00 AM Private investigator influencers are staking out suspected cheaters and vetting dates for their clients, posting the tea for their followers. But there's a dark side to morality-based surveillance. Illustration: Jacqui VanLiew; Getty Images It's a dark November night in Los Angeles. The car in front is lit by its rear lights only. After driving for 20 miles, it stops, suddenly, in the middle of the street. A man in a dark t-shirt gets out and runs towards an apartment. A woman appears and jumps up, wrapping her legs around him. They start making out before going to get tacos and, later, returning to her place. At 6 a.m. the next morning his car is still outside the woman's apartment. A few hours later, they emerge holding hands, heading to a local farmer's market where they kiss and hug publicly. The whole time a private investigator named Stephanie A., who goes by Your Fav Investigator online, has been sending videos of the interaction to the man's wife, who she says hired her to sleuth for suspected infidelity. Once presented with the video evidence, Stephanie says she never heard from the wife again, but the video remains on her social feeds. While the man's face is obscured and no personal information is revealed, the video of his misdoings has been 'liked' by over 85,000 people on Stephanie's Instagram. Infidelity stake-out videos on Instagram and TikTok titled 'Trust your gut… CASED CLOSED!' and 'Pickleball or cheating?' are her bread and butter. 'I love everything about [being a PI]' Stephanie, 39, explains over Zoom. 'The investigation prior to the case, the adrenaline rush during surveillance. I really enjoy helping people find peace of mind or clarity in their situations.' She did not want her last name used due to the nature of her work. 'It's like riding shotgun into someone else's drama.' With a family history in law enforcement, and a background in loss prevention, Stephanie is at the vanguard of a new wave of very online private investigators, often focused on outing cheaters, with each of them sharing the ins and outs of the PI life to massive TikTok followings in the US and beyond. And true crime-obsessed audiences are eating it up. 'People love the tea. It's like riding shotgun into someone else's drama,' says Stephanie. Once relegated to hidden-camera reality shows like Cheaters, dozens of prominent social media PIs have sprung up over the last few years, focusing on topics like insurance fraud, missing persons, and even high stakes heists. But by far the most viral videos center on infidelity, with the most popular internet PIs carrying out surveillance and even background checks on men their clients have deemed suspicious. 'It still shocks me how bold some people are, not just lying and cheating openly in public, but sleeping over and playing house while their spouse is out of town,' says Stephanie, who has been working as a private investigator for 12 years. The boom in these investigations comes at a time when online shaming around cheating seems to have reached a fever pitch, the most recent example being former Astronomer CEO Andy Byron, who was caught tightly-embracing his company's chief people officer, Kristin Cabot, on the jumbotron at a Coldplay concert in Foxborough, Massachusetts on July 16. The couple scattered from the jumbotron's gaze—Byron literally diving out of frame—prompting Coldplay frontman Chris Martin to quip 'either they're having an affair or they're just very shy.' Predictably, the footage went massively viral, resulting in both Bryon and Cabots' resignations and Byron's wife being inundated with Facebook messages from strangers offering their sympathies. The moment has also been endlessly memed, turned into a video game, and online betting companies are offering odds on whether the ensnared couples are going to get divorced. It's easy, in what to most is an entertaining internet lark, to forget that people's very real lives are impacted by exposés such as this. And while many people believe that justice is being served in public cheating scandals, others feel that intense surveillance tools should not be deployed on strangers, particularly ones who are not public figures. Still, there's no denying that there's a massive audience for the cottage industry of influencer investigators. Jamie Cohen, an assistant professor in media studies at Queens College, City University of New York, and a writer on internet literacy, says there's a rawness to these social media stings that appeals to the public. 'We like watching true crime content [on social media] because we can lean into a plot that isn't scripted or gate-kept by traditional media; there's no executive producer or editors, it's happening in fairly realtime.' Like all good crime novels, the best stakeouts have numerous twists and turns. Lisa Allen-Stell, who runs her own agency, Pink Lady Investigations in California, recalls being hired on a two-year contract by a married man who wanted to make sure that his mistress—who was also married—wasn't in a third relationship with his married best friend. Keeping up so far? It turns out that the best friend was spending most of his time with men, not the mistress. Allen-Stell got into online investigating after a 'horrible' divorce and custody battle made her empathetic to the plight of women in similar circumstances. So far she's racked up 1.4 million likes on various stakeout videos and stories about her work as a PI. All of the PIs interviewed for this piece have completed the relevant training in their local jurisdiction, but certification requirements differ across states and countries— some, like Idaho, don't require any. And while PIs like Stephanie and Allen-Stell don't market themselves as influencers, they do utilize popular TikTok formats in their posts. Stephanie often posts rundowns of her meals when she's tailing suspects in restaurants or does her skincare routine in her car, noting, 'everyone seems to love it.' In her recent videos, Allen-Stell demonstrates how to sweep a hotel room for hidden cameras, and talks about the HydroJug cup she's "obsessed" with, taking it on stakeouts and flights. Taken as a whole, their channels offer a mix of authority and accessibility—a marked shift from the PIs of old, or at least our collective perception of a PI. Philip Marlowe and Jake Gittes never broadcast from the front seat of their car, wearing a Yankee's hat and under-eye masks, but for Stephanie, it's her preferred stake-out attire. This unvarnished relatability has helped Stephanie and Allen-Stell blow up, with both able to make a living from their work. Stephanie charges a minimum retainer of $650 for surveillance cases, and says she's built a 'comfortable and growing' career, with most of her cases coming via the internet and her Instagram and TikTok pages fueling 'major growth.' TikTok's Creator Rewards Program, which is open to accounts with at least 10,000 followers and 100,000 views in a 30-day span, even pays for views, with partnerships across both platforms adding another income stream to her work. Allen-Stell offers background checks from as little as $20, with surveillance costing clients $125 per hour in most cities, and slightly more in Los Angeles and San Francisco due to higher overheads. For Stephanie, a financially successful business has brought her closer to her dream of building an all-women surveillance team. She says her clients—particularly the ones who found her via Instagram and TikTok—are almost exclusively women are women, . 'Investigative work includes critical thinking, discretion, patience, and being quick on your feet,' she says. 'I've found that women tend to blend in more easily during surveillance and often have a sharper eye for detail.' PI work calls for empathy and emotional intelligence, she adds, 'especially since the majority of my clients are women navigating deeply personal situations. Plus, it would be cool to have an all-woman team, especially in a male dominated industry.' Based in Queensland, Australia, Cassie Crofts, AKA Venus Investigations, is also focused on safety, with a team of investigators offering women background checks on potential dates or flatmates. Marketing herself as 'Part detective, part BFF, 100% confidential,' her confessional-style TikToks have racked up over 39,000 likes to date. Crofts got into the industry when, over a glass of wine, a friend confided that she thought her partner was cheating. The group wanted to find out more, but the obligatory socials search aside, they didn't know where to begin. Hiring a traditional'old man in a trench coat' didn't really feel like an option, so Crofts, a 37-year-old radio journalist, earned her private investigator certificate after months of formal training and classroom time. While she does offer in-car surveillance like Stephanie, she more often focuses on background data for definitive proof, accessing databases available to PIs. In one case, she traced a man's supermarket rewards card to a town miles from where he told his wife would be—a town where his ex-girlfriend happened to live. She also might ask for information around shared bank accounts. Sometimes, it's even simpler than that. 'There was one case where they had access to each other's phones, and I said to check his most frequently used emojis. There was an eggplant there, and he wasn't sending her eggplants,' Crofts says. Like Stephanie, Crofts says the majority—'80 to 90 percent'—of her client base is made up of women and non-binary people, and with good reason. '[Suspecting your partner of infidelity] could be the most heartbreaking, devastating moment of your life,' she says. 'The idea of going up to a middle-aged man in a suit and spilling the deepest worries about your relationship and the love of your life is a really hard thing to do, let alone to someone who doesn't feel like they're an empathetic presence. We try to provide that sort of support to people when they're going through this scenario.' Nicola Fox Hamilton teaches cyberpsychology at Dublin's Institute of Art, Design and Technology, and co-hosts the In bits cyberpsychology podcast. She says safety is one of the reasons these investigations resonate with women. 'You have men taking ideas from the manosphere, be it extreme people like Andrew Tate, or people who are more benignly misogynistic. Women are aware that there are quite a few men who think this way, and it's probably increased their fear so they want to know more about men before they meet them, to filter out that stuff and to actually meet a partner who is a decent human being and who values them as an equal.' But not every case is focused on infidelity. Allen-Stell says that one of her most harrowing cases involved a 17-year-old girl hooked on heroin and being trafficked. Allen-Stell claims she and the girl's parents cornered the traffickers at a roadside motel. She says the parents went in and got the girl and they waited for police. 'She was super skinny and vomiting, but I protected her with my life, like she was my kid,' Allen-Stell says. According to Allen-Stell, the girls' father then began slashing one of the perp's tires, causing Allen-Stell to tap out, not wanting to be caught in anything illegal. Naturally, online audiences want to know how the stories they get so invested in turn out. Stephanie says her followers often ask ''Can we know what your client did after? Did they leave? Did they stay?'' But, beyond vague details, no good PI will reveal personal information about their clients; protection is paramount. Licensed PIs are protected by law, but amateurs could be putting themselves at risk of harassment, or stalking lawsuits by doing so. When Allen-Stell and Stephanie do share videos online, they say it's always with the client's approval. Just one client of the PIs WIRED interviewed wanted to share her experience for this piece, and only briefly. Chloe (not her real name) worked with Allen-Stell when she had concerns over her daughter dating a 'significantly' older man. 'I specifically chose a woman for the job as I felt her insight and intuition would be invaluable in a sensitive situation,' she says, adding that she would recommend Allen-Stell to anyone seeking a PI. While sleuthing comes with potential pitfalls, the subjects of these investigations can also be at risk. The true crime audience has a voracious appetite for seeing the guilty party punished, particularly when cheating is involved. 'Some private investigators are sharing way too much,' says Allen-Stell. 'I hope they're not on surveillance showing the person's actual house. What if a neighbor happened to see 'Oh, she's doing surveillance, so that means this person is cheating?' I don't think it's fair to out people publicly.' But, if the internet wants to know something, it finds a way, as a viral June 2024 video tracking down a man accused of cheating on a domestic US flight, proved. The video, posted by a TikTokker who had no connection or background info about the man, detailed the flight number in question and details about the alleged cheater's family. In the case of Byron, of Coldplay concert infamy, there are multiple articles asking 'who is his wife?'and speculating about his family. As 404 Media writes, the incident is 'emblematic of our current private surveillance and social media hellscape,' where TikTok commenters are using facial recognition tools to identify random people online. 'I think shaming is the extension of the algorithmic flow toward extremism,' says Cohen. 'The internet normalizes content as it progresses, meaning anything extreme must continue to become more extreme … We're also living through a period of perceived lawlessness and true crime investigations and shaming seem like justice, albeit amateur, vigilante justice.' Writing on Reddit in 2023, user Electronic_Gur_843 appealed for advice after being 'blasted publicly on the internet' for a 'mistake.' 'It was a traumatic experience that resulted in me being torn down by hundreds of thousands of people. It was on me for making the mistake, but it was also blown out of proportion. I don't want to reveal too much but I can assure you it was nothing illegal or bad enough to deem me a 'bad person.'I was just young/naive about the power of the internet and stirred up some drama.' They say their google results turn up 'pages of articles' about them, adding the whole experience left them 'severely depressed.' According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 17 percent of adolescents have been cyberbullied and 9.5 percent of adolescents have made a serious suicide attempt, as of 2023, meaning that putting a stranger's business on main can have real, and sometimes devastating consequences. 'The aim of public shaming is to hold people accountable for their behavior that operates outside of the social norms, or is considered to be offensive,' says Fox Hamilton, adding that this is usually done with the aim of creating a society where everyone toes the line. But this mentality also means if something bad happens to someone—like being caught cheating online and having your family messaged by strangers as a result—we're more likely to victim blame, because we see them as deserving it. Ironically, Fox Hamilton says that 'people who have that belief in a just world are often more likely to publicly shame or jump on the bandwagon with stuff like this, because they think 'you did a bad thing, it's your fault, and I'm not responsible for anything bad that happens here.'' There's also a slippery slope when we start policing people according to our own morals and assumptions. In response to the Coldplay concert scandal, right-wing influencer Matt Walsh wrote on X, 'One of my least popular (but still correct) opinions is that adultery should be a criminal offense punishable by serious prison time for both parties involved.' It's not hard to imagine how that logic could be used to apply to a woman trapped in an abusive marriage, or people who don't subscribe to monogamy. When the target is a public figure, like a CEO, audiences can feel even more justified in attacking. 'There are so many issues going on in the world at the moment with big tech companies, and I think to some people Andy Byron represents that in a symbolic way,' says Fox Hamilton. Whether they're posting a video recounting a case, or posting active surveillance, the PIs interviewed by WIRED all say they are careful to obscure faces, and any identifiable landmarks to protect the identities and locations both of the accused, and the accusers. In Stephanie's case, she sometimes goes a step further, reenacting cases for video—a step taken to make sure of her client's confidentiality. None of their clients or clients partners have been doxed online. Allen-Stell agrees the public can take things too far—describing the Coldplay show fallout as a 'witch hunt.' 'What started out as holding people accountable has turned into the sport of public humiliation,' she says. 'It's reckless. The internet is not a courtroom, and random users are not investigators.'
Newsweek
28 minutes ago
- Newsweek
Millennial Man Can't Cope With How Gen Z Answers the Phone: 'Can't Be Real'
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. There are many things that Gen Zers do that leave millennials perplexed, but their latest habit to leave internet users stunned is their phone etiquette. Millennials (people born between 1981 and 1996) have a lot to say about their younger counterparts, from their fashion sense to their quirky behavior. We have had to accept many things about Generation Z (people born between 1997 and 2012) ultimately, but one millennial man can't hide his shock any longer, and he has taken to social media to share his thoughts. Josh Levesque from Long Beach, California, shared a video on TikTok (@joshblevesque) to criticize Gen Z's questionable phone etiquette. He highlighted the idea that Gen Zers will supposedly answer the phone without uttering a word, just staying silent until the caller speaks to them. The idea of not greeting someone when they call is "insane" behavior for Levesque to comprehend. He even wondered if it is a weird prank that Gen Z are playing because it seems too absurd to be true. Josh Levesque talking about the Gen Z phone habit. Josh Levesque talking about the Gen Z phone habit. @joshblevesque / TikTok After taking to TikTok to share his thoughts on Gen Z not saying hello when answering the phone, the video has gone viral with more than 917,800 views and over 55,700 likes at the time of writing. Newsweek has contacted Levesque via Instagram for comment. We could not verify the details of the video. During the clip, Levesque said: "I'm not asking you to fully initiate conversation with like a prepared monologue. I don't need you to recite a f****** poem; I need, 'Hello, this is Josh.' Just something. That's phones, that's how phones work." Given how tech-savvy Gen Z are, you would think they'd understand simple phone etiquette—but apparently not. Levesque even weighs up several of the Gen Z arguments for why they don't speak first during a call. This includes the idea of it being a potential scam call, or the idea that the caller has come into their space so it is on them to introduce themselves. Neither of these points seems sufficient for Levesque, who says, "This can't be real." He adds in the video that he was introduced to this behavior by a recruiter who claims that Gen Zers often remain silent when answering his scheduled calls for a phone interview. While Levesque says that he doesn't have to call any young people so he hasn't experienced this himself, he saw a lot of commenters and social-media users unashamedly stating that this is something they do. The TikTok caption alongside the video reads: "I refuse to believe this is a thing that is actually happening. Please tell me you at least say hello … like everyone who's ever answered a phone in the history of telecommunications." Since the clip was shared online on July 12, it has certainly captured plenty of attention and generated discussion about this latest Gen Z habit. Many TikTok users have taken to the comments section to share their thoughts, leading to more than 8,300 comments on the viral video so far. One comment reads: "So they basically just Gen Z Stare when they answer the phone?" Another TikTok user wrote: "I call you and I don't hear confirmation that the call went through, I'm hanging up." A third person replied: "Instantly, throwing away the application and not hiring that person." But not everyone agrees, as one commenter added: "nah you called me. introduce yourself, explain yourself and maybe ill respond." Do you have any viral videos or pictures that you want to share? We want to see the best ones! Send them in to life@ and they could appear on our site.
Cosmopolitan
31 minutes ago
- Cosmopolitan
Love Island spoiler: Shakira's mum's awkward run-in with Harry after she slammed his behaviour in tense video
Things are about to get a little awks on tonight's episode of Love Island, particularly for Harry Cooksley. Harry recoupled with Shakira Khan on Sunday night's episode after weeks of being with Helena Ford, and now the family and friends are on the way to the villa and Shakira's mum isn't happy. In a recent TikTok video, Shakira's mother Sukina went off on the 30-year-old footballer, calling him a "d***head". She said: "When I think of the villa I just think of a cesspit, it is just a cesspit and she is surrounded by snakes. Sukina, who owns an online tarot reading business, continued: "She will be getting a deep spiritual cleanse when she comes home and I am just going to add this - Harry needs to shut the f*** up about Shakira. "Seriously, the only person that's trying to give life to that little situation is that d***head. There, my love and light slipped for a about as negative as I got, d***head." Ouch! A teaser at the end of Sunday night's show revealed that Monday night's episode (28th July) will see the family and friends visiting. In the clip, Toni's mum could seen entering the villa along with Cach's family as she called out: "Is Toni here?" causing a very surprised Toni to scream from the terrace: "Mum!" as Cach uttered: "Oh s**!" It's now been confirmed that Shakira's mother Sukina is one of the relatives who'll be visiting Shakira in the villa, and judging by that video we're sure she'll have some choice words for Harry. Last week, Harry revealed he wasn't completely over Shakira and wanted to revisit things after weeks of being in a couple with Helena and going exclusive. Helena then learned of his true feelings during The Grafties as his behaviour was broadcast on the screen for all the Love Island 2025 cast to see. As a result, she decided to call things off, and Harry chatted to Shakira about rekindling their relationship. While Shakira wasn't convinced, a daytime recoupling on Sunday's episode saw the boys having to choose who they wanted to couple up with and Harry picked Shakira, saying: "I'd like to couple up with this girl because she possesses qualities I see in a longterm partner. I think I've sat on a lot of feelings and buried a lot of my emotions recently and two conversations brought that back to the surface. I think I've disappointed myself, I've disappointed people in here. "I know I'm not perfect, I'll never pretend to be, but I wanna be a better person for myself and for this girl. I know she doesn't believe a word that I say right now, but I want her to know that the feelings have always been there, I was just trying to ignore them. As I said to this girl yesterday, I'm either leaving here alone or I'm leaving with her." Well if Shakira's mum has anything to do with it, Harry, you, could very well be leaving the villa alone... New episodes of Love Island air on ITV2 weekdays and Sundays.
