Lea Michele Catches a Stray From John Oliver About Illiteracy

John Oliver was doling out plenty of strays on Sunday’s episode of “Last Week Tonight,” and this week, it was Lea Michele on the receiving end of a particularly brutal, but common one. The HBO host’s main story this week centered on subscription models, and how they’re designed to trick customers as much as possible. Among companies’ methods to do so is the use of colored buttons. Oliver cited Amazon Prime as an example, as they typically use a yellow button to confirm checkout. But now, they also use a yellow button as a sign-up button for Prime. “Yeah that’s pretty sneaky. And it is easy to see how someone could fall for that, particularly if they speak English as a second language, or are older and little less tech savvy, or they can’t read at all,” Oliver said. As he offered up that last possibility, an image of former “Glee” star Lea Michele appeared onscreen, earning a big laugh from the audience as Oliver moved right along. For those unfamiliar, this is a long-running joke surrounding Lea Michele — one that she’s aware of herself. It stems from her old social media habits, when she would largely just post emojis on Instagram captions, and misspell words when she did use them. Eventually, people started joking that it’s because she can’t read, and it spiraled from there. To this day, people still like to try and offer “proof” that she can’t read. She’s even been asked in interviews to read something she’s never seen before on the spot. You can watch John Oliver’s full story on subscriptions in the video above.