Confusing car park signs, the youngest black cabbie and clubbing on a cruise

On the show:

**What's Gone Viral**

Aussie DJ Liam Stapleton drives Gunners mad with ‘Arsenal tears’ video - but why some Liverpool fans are unhappy with him too

What happened when a man tried to sue users of an Are We Dating The Same Guy? Facebook group in Chicago, their parents and even Facebook

Celebrating Mo, the youngest black cab driver aged only 21

**What It’s Like To Go Viral**

How quirky content creator Zoe Bread captured the nation over her dogged (and successful) campaign over a misleading sign on a street in Manchester for where to buy your car parking ticket

**The Timeline Cleanser**

Saff’s superb TikTok making it cool to go on a cruise ship again

**Links to all the content**

Arsenal tears: https://www.tiktok.com/@mrliamstapleton/video/7498090140879834375?lang=en 

Are We Dating the Same Guy? Court documents:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68194904/1/d-ambrosio-v-meta-platforms-inc/

Youngest ever black cab driver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6U_nlz2pjM
https://x.com/tfltph/status/1915069617627660492?s=46

Zoe Bread v Manchester City Council playlist: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNdSBXYSt/ 

Saff’s holiday on Celestyal Cruises ship:
https://www.tiktok.com/@havealaffwithsaff/video/7497876856415292694

Seen a story we should cover? Get in touch with us!

Email: sorryyouwentviral@gmail.com
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Instagram: Instagram.com/SorryYouWentViral
TikTok: TikTok.com/@SorryYouWentViral

Transcript

0:10

Hello and welcome back to Sorry You Went Viral. All about the stories setting social media alight, and the human stories behind those popular posts. I'm Tim. And I'm Hannah. Lovely to see you all.

On today's show: 0:24

a football fan down under falls foul of some fans up north. Also coming up, we've got

wisdom beyond his years: 0:32

Meet London's youngest cabbie and are we dating the same guy? There's a teaser for you. It's been a long time, I admit, but you may remember, a video we featured last year about a guy called Liam Stapleton who was terrorising his wife. I don't think his wife Sarah's quite got over it. But, she did send him off, or whether he sent himself off over 17,000km from Australia over to England. Being a big Liverpool fan, he wanted to be there in the action to celebrate Liverpool's title win. But being Liam, he couldn't just do it modestly, he had to wind a few people up. Well done, Liam. Celebrating your victory by really rubbing the people in second place and their noses in it. Which is wonderful for, and not so wonderful for the Arsenal fans, of course, who, got particularly wound up, let's say, about this, particular piece of content going viral. Some of the Liverpool fans, as you can imagine, they absolutely loved it. Others, though, saying, you know, that you won the league and the first thing you think about is Arsenal. Another, you know, over a thousand likes for not a Scouser in sight as well. And of course, remembering Liam's an Aussie. And there he is, like, celebrating, back in Blighty, his, his club's win and then 1,700 likes for this comment. Only reason Liverpool won this year is because every other team had an injury crisis and Liverpool got lucky on injuries. Now, I'm no football expert here, I'd say you probably are on this one. But that's a bit of sour grapes there, I'd say. Look, football rivalry is big anyway, but when you add social media into the mix and when you add that kind of antagonistic video into the mix. Yeah, he knows his market, doesn't he, Liam? I mean, like, the last time it was Borat and he's a comedian anyway. So fine, you know, you know, you market on there, you know your audience but then you know, if you, if you start tapping into the football audience as well, I mean it's quite clever. I doubt whether he's at all sorry that he's gone viral. No, I did see there's very different kind of views on, he posted on Instagram and he responded to the nicer ones and just left the kind of criticism the other fans to pile in on one another. But I think it's actually really funny and clever. You know, I didn't, being a Liverpool fan when Liverpool won, you know, I didn't kind of think about the antagonistic kind of side. I admit, I did do a LinkedIn post, kind of joking, you know, those kind of stories about, you know, this is what it taught me about B2B sales and whatever, and I can't remember, I wrote something about what Arne Slot's management taught me about life. I was like, I don't care, Liverpool won the league! We're great. Out of interest though, did you ever, do you ever get any stick for not being a Scouser though? Because I mean this guy, he's got a load of a load of stick, hasn't he? From Scousers as well. Liverpool fans saying, you know, there's one guy and let's just have a little look at this post, it says I've tried my best not to be full of hate after what was the best day of my life. But it's got to me now. This guy comes to our city from knows where, takes the piss out of how we speak, our culture and the people of the city and then claiming to be a Liverpool fan too. I mean so, you know, I just wonder whether you've got the same amount of vitriol with any of your posts. No, but to be fair, you know, he did do kind of a very, comedic Scouse accent, played to the cliches and I can see how it can annoy people. But at the end of the day it was just a bit of social content, having a bit of laugh. You know, I I know people in Liverpool didn't take it seriously in terms of that. And you know he did indeed. Liam to be fair did acknowledge the criticism and showed how he's been, you know, his close connection to the club for years and years gone back. And he posted on Instagram some of these pictures of him at Anfield. And he said boyhood dream came true, welling up emoji, featuring some of the worst haircuts known to man. They are proper, you know, 2000-era haircuts. We teased at the beginning of the show saying are we dating the same guy? I mean let's face it Tim, there's every chance with us. But anyway I've seen that guy before, I've seen him hanging around. I did send a picture of you, didn't I? I was on the running machine at the gym and just seeing him there and you know, I wasn't sure. Is it the sweat from the running machine or was it just looking at him in his suit and tie? Oh anyway, honestly. Well, the story we're talking about is there are lots of groups on social media sites across the globe, all about ostensibly trying to support other women, mostly heterosexual women, who are dating and they're just other women coming together saying oh we actually, are we actually dating the same guy? Just to make sure that, that women who join these groups know whether they're maybe dating someone who's a serial multi dater or maybe got an unsavoury background or something like that. So it's all really about just sort of like kinmanship and safety. However there's one guy pictured here, his name is Nikko D'Ambrosio and he actually sued not only a Facebook group, in which his picture appeared, but also the organisers of the group, the women who have any link and related to the group. So the women that he was dating, and he's gone one step further. He's tried to sue Meta as well, the owners of Facebook of course. So the judge who heard this case has, has thrown it out. He had gone viral for reasons that he didn't like as I just said. So he tried to sue this group. And yeah this is a judge in Illinois, in the US has thrown out the lawsuit against the Chicago-based Facebook group moderators, the women who dated him, etc, even their parents apparently. And he had sued them for defamation, invasion of privacy and doxing as well. You know what doxing is? What is it? It's basically kind of revealing personal information, kind of names. Right. Identifiable information. So even addresses or details, numbers, who knows, could be different things. But the idea is you're doing it online, that people can identify you and potentially track you down. So the judge in this case wrote that D'Ambrosio had failed to allege any false statements and none of the statements included would fit the per se defamation category, that the women's words were inherently damaging. So that was all thrown out. Now these groups are private and they are only open to women who must pass vetting checks to be admitted into the groups. The administrators will then sort of root out any new profiles and decline any profiles that look fake. So as I said at the start, they are ostensibly out there as a sort of a safety mechanism and a sort of a kinsmanship support, support, site for people to join. You know, they're so popular around the globe. There's a group in New York City that's got 164,000 members. Los Angeles group has 79,000 Toronto, 81,000 Londoners as well. There's a group, for Facebook in London, which is, has got 170,000 women in it. I mean it's been a long, long time since I've been on the dating scene, but with more and more people kind of, you know, dating online now, then I suppose it's quite, you don't just have your friend down the pub kind of like, who knows, someone they want to introduce you to anymore. Like now you just need to sort of rely on the knowledge of strangers to say, like, does anyone else know this guy? I'm dating this guy. And yeah, I'd like to know if anyone else is dating him as well. But, you know, he obviously didn't want to go viral. He's had his case thrown out. But, one wonders whether, you know, it's going to put off other people from posting images of, or details of other men, other individuals to these groups for fear that they, they then might be targeted by, by the courts, who knows? Yeah, excuse me. When I was looking purely for research, I should say for the show, I was just seeing what. It's Facebook as well, which is kind of a bit of a, in terms of a social site, it's a bit older, but there are loads of these kind of are we dating same guy? Facebook groups across the country, across the world, as you said. And I looked on the London one and you can see you can't obviously can't join it, but they set out the rules below. You know, very clear. No screenshots, no personal information. They say it's about protecting women, not judging men. No libel or defamation. And yeah, you said these groups are private. It was interesting in the Guardian, who did a piece about these groups, and they quoted lawyer Mark Stevens who says there is a defamation risk. You know, even if these groups are private, it's unlikely that people have the kind of time, money and resources. But some may. And you've really got to be so careful even in private groups about making these claims. And it's really tricky, I mean, to read some of what was, these women claimed he sent in terms of the messages, the tone of the messages, you know, very kind of offensive and threatening to some of the women, named in the lawsuit that he put together and is publicly available, through the US court system. You know, you can see why they feel like they need to group together. But that is not going to be the case for every guy who might be dating multiple people at the same time. You know, sometimes it is just simply a case of you're just dating more, more than one person. There's no, there's nothing wrong with that. There's no crime, committed there. So if they're being called out and their privacy is being exposed or interfered with in some way, just because people feel hard done by then that I could see why that would be potentially quite tricky. So an interesting one. We'll, we'll keep an eye on it if any more of these sort of stories come up as well. But in the meantime, we're moving on. And again, this is one of the stories that we teased at the beginning of the show. London's youngest black cabbie. So I don't know what you're like about driving, around London or talking about doxing, don't want to say exactly where in the area. But, how are you with your driving and getting around from kind of one place to another? I'm first, I'm an excellent driver and I'm a superb parker, I should say as well, I've been. Yeah, my husband's even said that to me, which is quite a feat. However, I couldn't even get out of Richmond upon Thames without a sat nav. Google Maps just can't do it. And within a mile radius of where I live. I'm, I'm lost. So full respect for anyone who can sort of like make their way, you know, into London, into a big city, into you know, even, you know, across a field or something like that. I just, I don't know. North is straight ahead. That's how bad I am. Well, you know, next time I'll offer you off me for me to have a lift. I'll just take a tube instead or a black cab. We're going to introduce you to Mo who at 21 is London's youngest black cabbie. He explains the story behind it all. So yeah, we are both kind of London based. So we've got an idea of London black cabs. But I don't know if you realised the amount of effort and the brains you must have to be able to be a black cab driver. So there's a thing called the Knowledge which has been around for about, I think it's about 130 years. Well I wouldn't know that exactly. But yeah, I think most of us who've lived in and around London then we all, everyone's heard of the Knowledge, not that anyone could do it. For those who don't, you have to memorise the locations of thousands of streets and kind of landmarks, big, you know, well known places along the way, within kind of six mile radius of Charing Cross, which is kind of like central London. So they'll, you know, they will test you on things. I'll just go through a little bit of it. So you get multiple choice tests at the start. So you need to say, okay, how do you get from Charing Cross to Buckingham Palace? Okay, sounds straightforward. But in your head read out the directions, like a visual sat nav and the road you take and the ways you go and what you pass along the way. And you've got to get a 60% pass mark to get that past first stage. And then you have, what are called appearances, where, you have to do four questions. You've got to say the shortest route between any two points in London. So within thousands of different streets, they'll give you, you've got to then make sure, I think it's like you're gonna get, a majority of them right, to get that location from one to another, which just blow my mind. I've watched videos online seeing people do this and it is just incredible. I think, you know, getting from one tube stop to another, I thought it was kind of an achievement, but I know I couldn't even tell you all the stops on kind of like on the Victoria Line or something like that. And I, you know, I do it all the time. And so, yeah, I would fail. I would fail indeed. And the last thing you got to learn, for some reason you got to know the suburbs, London suburbs as well. So outside that radius, an additional 25 routes. Once you pass that, easy and you get your badge. I mean, it's just incredible. And you know what's amazing, is that Mo did it in two years. So it normally takes about three to four, five years, which in itself is astonishing, isn't it, to think that people have. That's a long time of study. I mean, like, it's like doing medicine or something like that. So Mo's story and success was highlighted, on Twitter. There's Transport for London. They've got an account about taxi and private hire. And they posted this photo and they said, congratulations to Mohammed B, our youngest taxi driver who passed the Knowledge of London in two years, age 20. And apparently, I didn't realise this, you can't actually be a taxi driver, until you're 21, or an official black cab driver. So you can vote, you can go to war, you can drink, but you can't be a taxi driver, till 21. And, yes, this got 1.6 million views. And, you know, being social media, there is a mixture of reactions, lots of people praising him. Someone said, actually I met him a while back and, you know, he said, you finally picked up your badge, mate. The wait's finally over. Congratulations. See you out on the road, which is great. Love it to see, you know, unfortunately there were. There's a target of, you know, offensive and racist abuse. And we've seen a lot of that with Twitter, other social sites as well, but increasingly so. And you know, the idea of a guy at 20 years old or 21 being a cab driver, colour skin and just like kind of really pretty depressing. You look at that video we showed earlier, you know, what a lovely guy he seems, you know, he's got shy but yeah, just wants a career that, following his dad's footsteps. And also, I mean a lot of people kind of saying welcome to the, welcome to the job mate. You know, look forward to seeing you out on the road. But there was also a couple of comments from people who clearly are kind of like a bit sinister or just a bit jealous or something like that about the fact that he'd done it in such a short space of time. There's one message on X and it says, all I can say is someone must have shine a light on him because it took me four and a half years, seven days, nights a week, till 10pm at night. I left, I left school, went home. So someone, so someone who could do it in two years without taking anything away from the young man. I think standards, you know, suggesting that standards have slipped somewhat, which is which is a real shame because to all intents and purposes, as far as we know, and you know, we've just heard from Mo himself. He seems like a really hard working young man. It's a great achievement and why shouldn't we all just be proud and, and wish him well rather than suggesting there's anything underhand that's, that's happened, you know, it's a shame I think, I mean, BBC London posted on Facebook about the story and one of the comments was about, you know, why bother with the test and the knowledge anymore because life's moved on. We've got sat navs. Well, if you've used sat navs to get round places you don't know, particularly if you follow their shortcuts. Oh, I know I did shortcuts in London recently actually and it would took me the weirdest route as well. Like, you know, obviously you don't really need a 4x4 in London. I don't have a 4x4 thankfully, but it was such a kind of like bumpy, cobbled, random route. There wasn't really even a road that went down. I was like, you need a kind of tractor to be able to do this safely. So, yeah, so as much as I am completely and utterly reliant on Google Maps and I wish I had Mo in my pocket. I'm, I'm still going to get, I'm going to get stuck. Maybe that means I just stick to the rest of TfL's offerings instead and just get on public transport or just get in Mo. Indeed. Sherbet, who is the cab firm basically rents the cab from, who made that film with, with Mo, at the start.

They said, about Mo: 20:29

At Sherbet, we could not be prouder. Mo represents everything we stand for. Ambition, professionalism and community spirit. His story is inspiring a new wave of young Londoners to see black cab driving not just as a job, but, a career filled with opportunity, independence and pride. And they really are, like, really proud of him. There's, lots of kind of videos on their site, pictures of them celebrating his achievements. Yeah, good for him. It's just, you know, hopefully just not seen a lot of that nonsense online. It's just a great achievement and something she really celebrated. I would love for him to drive me around London, rather than me trying to get my way around relying on sat nav or Google Maps. As you said, we should keep an eye on him as well, because you never know, there could be some kind of, like, savvy content creators out there who are going to try and track down, though, and get in his cab and then we'll have some footage or some content that's actually from his cab going some obscure route across London as well. So, watch this space. Mo might still go viral again. You never know. Now it's What It's Like To Go Viral. And for this person, we're going to feature, they've gone viral a lot. But Zoë Bread is a very popular content creator. I've been enjoying her TikToks for many years. But she's really gained popularity, mainstream popularity, for this campaign that kind of just started out because she got a parking fine that she felt she didn't really deserve. Take a look. So what I really like about Zoë is kind of, it's kind of very quirky approach to making content. Really kind of, natural, videos really suited for TikTok and Instagram. But there's also a bit of like a real kind of journalism behind it, kind of new style of journalism really, exposing where people are not really meeting standards or there's unfairness. And obviously this one is really big for her. She felt Manchester City Council had a misleading sign confusing things. She thought she meant to pay at one, you know, pay machine. Actually she meant to pay another because of this sign pointing the wrong direction. She made 32 TikToks at time of recording about this. Wow. But the reason is that not because she was so obsessed with it, but because it was so hard to get an answer out of the council and to get anywhere in sorting this story out. And she gained some really high profile supporters, including Sarah Jessica Parker. Sex in the City, don't think it's ever been set in Manchester city, but, you know, she was delighted that Sarah Jessica Parker shared the story eventually after a month of campaigning, but in a really kind of engaging, funny way. The council agreed to quash any existing penalties and fines and refund those who proved, in their claims of their appeal, that they had actually bought a ticket, but from the wrong machine. We tried to speak to Zoë. Understanding she's very busy, she doesn't tend to do kind of on-video things. So she did give an interview, a quote to the BBC who covered the story. And she said the only part of this whole story is that I think it's bad the amount of effort it took to get heard, which is obviously not possible for a proper person to do. She added, the system doesn't work, but my system does. And she put the success down to being persistent and annoying. And I'm totally with her on that as well. But I have personal experience with this recently. Just trying to sort out, kind of get in touch with an electricity company on behalf of my mum. And I had to kind of like it wasn't because of any profile I've got or that, but I had to use social media to put a message out there saying, can someone tell me how to get in touch with this company because I need to make a complaint about X, Y and Z. And eventually because of me being persistent and annoying and vocal, someone got in touch with me and we were in the process of resolving it all. But I think she's spot on when she says it's the amount of effort that it takes to get heard. It's not just like the good old days where you kind of just called customer services and then you hope to get it resolved relatively quickly. Customer services, as all of her content shows is so bad across the board, it's so difficult to actually speak to someone who can help. You're either speaking to like a chat bot or something like that online, or you just don't really feel like you get it resolved. And I wonder whether this kind of like consumer journalism that's happening a lot now, these, this sort of campaigning that she's leading, whether that's going to actually force organisations to kind of change how they deal with Joe Public and actually, you know, deal with their customers. Look, I'm sure we all know about councils really struggling with money and you can't have the customer call centres as such, but in one of the videos she showed the kind of frustration she had. This guy called John from Complaints she got hold of, you know, raises issues, said, fine, I'll look into it, I'll give you a call back. She had an answerphone message saying, hi, sorry, missed your call, we tried to call you, could you call me back? No number. She tried to repress the number, like the redial function on the phone and it just said, no, you got, you know, you got to call back. And basically this horrible loop of things. And yeah, you're right. I think what's really interesting as well, it's not just this. Then, you know, ITV, featured the story like, like we are doing now, using her content. And you know, she was like, okay, yeah, fine. But then ITV had also put a copyright strike against her because she used a small snippet of ITV's copyright. And again, it's that kind of approach of going, well, hold on, that's not fair. If you're doing that to me and you're using my content that's not fair and it's a fairness thing, which she does really well, but in a kind of a strong way, but not in like a kind of hectoring way, but really kind of engaging, where we can really empathise and sympathise with her situation. I think, as far as I know, ITV have taken off that strike against her. Is that right? Yeah. So hopefully that, that sort of resolved that bit. Maybe it's just a misunderstanding. But, yeah, I think all of her work is just. And all of her content is highlighting that there is a bit of there's a gap at the moment between, you know, the relationship that organisations have with their customers, whatever the size of the organisation. It is time for our, Timeline Cleanser. Now, Tim, tell me, have you ever done a cruise? Fancy doing a cruise? No, because I'm kind of like, stuck on a boat, for a long time. Don't really like that. What about, have you ever woken up with a hangover in all of your clothes from the night before? Not really quite sure about what's happened? Well, you're not alone. A long time ago. You're not alone. We've all been there. But meet Saff now, who's definitely been there and has the content to prove it. Don't ask. I've woken up still fully dressed from last night. Don't go there. I've done some things and it doesn't mean. Today I had a dance off with, like, a guy who was over 50 and I couldn't keep up with him because he was danced that fast. What's his secret in life? I mean, it's just fantastic, isn't it? We can all relate and it's just the way that, the way that it's all filmed and edited is just so, so spot on as well. 5 million views on TikTok. Saff was actually on this cruise. It's with the Celestial Cruises. She was gifted a free stay and then produced all this content. And what's brilliant about it is that there's loads of comments on the content. Obviously, you know, 5 million views. Lara said, obsessed with your journey of overcoming your agoraphobia to breakdancing on the dance floor with strangers. And then, brilliantly, Saff then replies to some of these comments. So she's replied saying, finally feel like I'm living. So she's, like, living her best life, even though she looks like she's at death's door in the video. And on a cruise where you can't even hide the next day, says Dawn Blue. She replies, exactly. I've just seen the bar lady. And she said hello and laughed and I definitely feel like that was a deja vu for me reading that. I was like, I feel like I've been there before. I've been in that that film before. Yeah. Sherry says the worst thing is bumping into him and acting like you, you weren't best, you weren't BFFs. And she was like she said, dreading it. I assume by that they mean her breakdancing partner. Yeah, she talks about her, one of the comments about her agoraphobia and you know, she's actually talked really openly about her struggles with that. I didn't know that until, you know, I just saw this video of, of her just having a great time but very, very hungover. And I think she's so, so kind of like open and personal about it, which kind of really resonates with people. And maybe it will encourage more people to then go on a cruise as well rather than dreading it, thinking, what if that happened to me? It's actually, just like actually in that whole kind of like you know, face your fears being in a confined space with people who you've made a complete fool of yourself with in previous hours and then go and have to sit down and have you know, breakfast or a cup of tea with them the next morning. Oh, I mean, I don't know, maybe that encourages some people to spend the money, splash the cash. Well, it's interesting, that video, actually she is part of like a paid or a content partnership with, I can't remember the cruise. Celestial Cruises. So I think something like she got a free stay and she made content. But what's so good about it? I think it's really good for Celestial Cruises as well is 5 million views on TikTok and that kind of really kind of isn't that polished kind of Judith Chalmers, look at this beautiful sunset. She's showing people kind of fun on these cruises. Different ages and probably you know great advertising for them as well. So it's a bit of a win win because I was enjoying myself that much. It was too good to keep it away from youse. 11 million people were tuning in to my videos in the seven days. People in South Africa, Greece, Botswana, Sweden and not forgetting the UK. I've never been on a cruise and I had the time of my life. I've also had so many direct messages off lovely people saying, Saff, I'd never thought about going on a cruise, but you've made me want to go on one. And, thank you to everyone who's already booked the Celestial Cruise. Will I be going on another adventure soon? I don't know... Being in agoraphobia recovery for a whole year, I'm back to the Saffy that I once was, and I'm just, I'm just feeling good and I can't wait for what the future holds. God knows I want to break free. Ahoy. But I don't think I would want to have a hangover at sea, trapped inside, and then have to go, she then had to go off and do a sightseeing tour that day. It's like, oh, I just want to lie in bed. No, at least you got to be on dry land. Let's face it, if the cruise company wants to host Sorry You Went Viral for a series of shows We're there, we're there. Sign us up. We can even do the breakdancing as well. Get Mo to, you know, drive, drive the ship? Dunno if you drive a ship. You kind of steer a ship, don't you? With his skills. What, his knowledge along the River Thames? Exactly. River Thames. That's doable for me. I don't mean, like, across the Nile, you know, it takes weeks away. There we go. All ties in so nicely. That's the end of this week's show. Thank you for joining us again. It's a delight to be back and sorry we took so long recording again, but we won't leave it so long next time. We will be posting all the links to the videos and posts that we talked about in the show on either the podcast or in the YouTube description so you can see them. And also we clipping up the best bits, and tagging in the content creators for you to engage with them. But, thanks again, Hannah. Lovely to see you. We'll be booking that cruise, with Lewis again. You know, now we've got our, you know, our little threesome together. Now we're sharing the same guy. Anyway, I think I'll probably finish there before I get myself in anymore. You start suing us. Yeah, exactly. That's probably a good place to end it. Good to see you again, Tim. Thanks so much, everyone, for joining us and we'll see you again soon. Bye. Bye.