NINA LIN: swatted on STREAM, sneaking into the MET GALA, and Funny moments

Nina Lin walked out of a New York City grocery store at 2 a.m. during COVID with two bags of food, no Ubers running, and a long walk ahead. She saw a garbage truck speeding down the avenue. She hopped onto the side of it, held on, and rode it downtown. The video hit 20 million views. New York City Sanitation emailed her to say she was never allowed to touch one of their trucks again. She did two more videos anyway.

That story, told on the Pretty, Not Smart podcast with hosts Louie and Yoatzi Castro, captures the throughline of the episode: Nina Lin operates on a simple internal rule — "why not?" — and that instinct has carried her through swatting incidents, sneaking into the Met Gala, getting free meals at expensive restaurants, and surviving a betrayal by a YouTube group she helped build.

The Met Gala: How she talked her way in

In 2021, Lin decided to test whether the Met Gala's security was as tight as people claimed. She bought a suit from Banana Republic, kept the tags on (she returned it afterward), and bought a lanyard for two dollars from a hunchbacked woman in Chinatown. She clipped her real ID to it — "because that's what real reporters do" — and studied Getty Images photographers on Google to learn how they dress: white shirt, no tie, a step stool, a carabiner.