w.soundcloud.com

On Dec. 11, 2015, R&B singer Cassie posted on her Instagram a photo of a sleeping baby with the meme “how I sleep knowing nobody’s cheating on me.” The meaning of the post seemed clear: She had broken up with her boyfriend of seven years, music mogul Diddy, and he had been cheating on her.

Just 12 days before, Bossip, a pop culture site with a focus on black celebrity gossip, ran an article, “Is Diddy Cheating On Cassie With This Fallen Bad Boy Blonde???” It showed flirty text messages between Diddy and a beautiful young singer on his label Bad Boy Records, Seriya Gebru.

The problem is, Seriya Gebru doesn’t exist. Seriya’s 178,000 Twitter followers are almost all bots. The album on iTunes by Seriya Gebru is actually a mix of songs by Dream, a girl group created by Diddy in the late ‘90s. The text messages must have been faked — even if someone were able to get ahold of Diddy using the persona of a sexy singer, Diddy would have been well aware that this person was not actually signed to the record label he owns.

Cassie and Sean Combs at the 2015 Met Gala.

Larry Busacca / Getty Images

It turns out Seriya Gebru is not an isolated case of a fake sexy chanteuse. She was just one of several characters created by a serial catfisher. BuzzFeed wrote about the catfisher this past July, when one of her characters, Lucia Cole, was revealed to be a fraud by the sleuthing of die-hard Ariana Grande stans. [See “How Teen Boys Uncovered The Greatest Catfish of our Time” and BuzzFeed’s Internet Explorer podcast episode for more on the story.]

These catfish characters share common themes: They are mostly up and coming singers, with albums on iTunes, Amazon, and Tidal that turn out to actually be music from other late '90s/early '00s pop singers, renamed with slightly altered song titles. They are often from Louisiana, and biracial. Two of the characters even used the same stolen photos of a real person.

But the most notable common thread all these characters share is a romantic relationship — real or rumored — with famous men. Some of these rumors have turned out to have insidious consequences.

When her character “Nahla Rowe” was found out, the Seriya Twitter account, which had been previously dormant, came back to life and admitted that she was behind all the accounts, and has plans to make new ones.

Here are the catfish accounts we know of:

Original Trey Songz Catfish
Occupation: unknown
Purported romance with: Trey Songz
Photos used: unknown
Dates active: pre-2014

When one of her other characters was exposed, the real person behind it posted a long apology on Twitter, saying that her reason for creating the character was an attempt to get back in touch with R&B singer Trey Songz, whom she had previous catfished and had an online romance with. When Trey broke it off after being frustrated that she’d never meet in person, she was desperate to get him back with a new character, a sexy singer. Trey Songz appears as a common thread throughout all the accounts — they all follow him on Twitter and have tweeted at him or had “fan” accounts (sock puppets also created by the catfish) tweet how Trey should duet with the singer. We don’t know for sure if this romance ever happened — it could easily have been a lie that she had successfully catfished Trey Songz. Reps for Songz did not reply to requests for comment.

Erica Mendez
Occupation: fitness coach
Purported romance with: Odell Beckham (not likely)
Photos used: model Dior Patterson
Dates active: spring 2014

Mendez ended up in the news in spring 2014 when rumors appeared in RadarOnline, apparently sourced from sports message boards, that she was the fiancé of NFL player Odell Beckham. Not only that, but she had discovered Beckham cheating on her with a pair of strippers. Beckham denied vigorously that any of this was true, and even went so far as to hire a private investigator to find out who was spreading these salacious rumors. Not long after, Mendez was exposed as a fake, and the New York Post ran a story, “Odell Beckham’s ‘fiancee’ was an elaborate internet hoax.”

Lucia Cole
Occupation: singer/songwriter
Music stolen from: early Jessica Simpson
Purported romance with: record executive Keith Nafly (didn’t happen), NFL player Kenny Vaccaro (probably didn’t happen, but she edited his Wikipedia page to say she was his girlfriend)
Actually talked to: NFL player Mychael Kendricks
Photos used: fashion designer Reese Crowell, and a second woman
Dates active: late 2014 until revealed July 2015

Cole was a pop singer whose album on iTunes was actually a Jessica Simpson album from 1999 (the song order and titles were slightly altered). She convinced Bossip to do an interview with her for their new music section. When I spoke to the managing editor of Bossip about how Cole was able to trick them, she said the writer did some standard fact-checking and there were a few red flags, but they decided to give her the benefit of the doubt since they like to support up and coming artists. One especially weird note is that one time Shaq tweeted about how great her music is and linked it — which means Shaq actually likes old Jessica Simpson albums.

The real Reese Cromwell, whose photos were used for "Lucia Cole" and "Nahla Rowe."

instagram.com

Philadelphia Eagles player Mychael Kendricks got an email, sent to his manager, from someone claiming to be part of Lucia Cole’s “team” saying that Cole wanted him to appear in an upcoming music video of hers, and she was willing to pay — $16,000. It was the offseason, and a good chunk of change, so Kendricks agreed. After back and forth between their managers, Kendricks and Cole texted and talked on the phone. Cole opened up to him about her life, her past relationships, her difficult childhood. Kendricks’s degree is in social work from UC Berkeley, and its in his nature to want to help someone. “She really made me feel like she like a bruised bird,” he told BuzzFeed News over Facetime. “She tried to make me feel for her.”

But he was still interested in doing the music video since it was a business deal, and the fact that her photos were so easy on the eyes didn’t exactly hurt. “She’s bad, bro,” he said about Reese Crowell, the real woman behind Cole's photos ("bad" meaning "hot"). Cole tried to flirt with him and asked him to send photos of himself, but he turned her down. He wanted to keep the relationship professional. “As a social worker, you understand how to keep barriers that are appropriate for both parties,” he explained.

Eventually, Cole was exposed as a fraud, and Kendricks’s friend sent him a link about it. “I was like, I knew something was weird as sin! I fucking called it!” But he was also upset about it. “I was mad. I messaged her and said, ‘This is such a bitchy thing to do. I don’t know who you are on the other line, but you need some help.’”

Cole’s downfall was her hubris at the hands of Ariana Grande’s loyal fanbase, known as the Arianators. Cole had tweeted that she was going to do an upcoming collaboration with Grande, and the Arianators excitedly started looking into this new singer whom their idol endorsed. One fan, Leo Loera, was familiar with Jessica Simpson’s early work and recognized it was all a copy. Google reverse image search revealed the photos were of another woman, and word of a catfish spread on pop culture message boards like ATLR.net and Lipstick Alley. A Tumblr, Pop Culture Died in 2009, put all the pieces together and the post went viral. Lucia Cole was over.

Seriya Gebru
Occupation: singer signed to Bad Boy records
Music stolen from: girl group Dream
Purported romance with: Diddy (not credible)
Photos used: model Allie Silva
Dates active: fall 2015

Photoshopped album art for "Seriya" on iTunes.

Twitter: @Seriyaxo

Remember Dream? They were a late '90s girl group assembled by Diddy for his label Bad Boy Records that had one hit, “He Loves U Not.” That’s the music Gebru was using on iTunes. This persona is a singer signed to Bad Boy at age 13, who modeled for a while and recently got back into music.

Tweeting from the Seriya account after it had been revealed, the catfisher wrote, “Seriya Gedbru was created too soon. Seriya Gebru wasn't discovered till I wanted her to be. She reached her peak awhile ago.”

Nahla Rowe
Occupation: singer
Music stolen from: Katharine McPhee
Purported romance with: Kenny Vaccaro (probably not credible)
Photos used: designer Reese Cromwell
Dates active: fall 2015 until revealed January 2016

When Reese Cromwell discovered via Twitter that someone was using her photos to catfish again, she got upset. The first time it happened, Cromwell shrugged it off. But after the second incident, Reese worried that this person was going to persist in using her image to try to seduce famous men, and was concerned that her reputation in her business might be tarnished by this.

“I’m pissed. At first I thought of it as just someone who was not secure with themselves, so you feel bad for them. But now it’s gone too far,” the fashion designer of ThinkReese told me in an interview for BuzzFeed's Internet Explorer podcast. “Now you're fucking with my personal and professional life. ... People might not engage with me — my business thrives off of social media. Or people won’t take me seriously because it seems like I’m bouncing from career to career. Or because you’re making me out to be some sort of jersey-chaser, which is so far from the truth.”

Rowe was particularly interested in NFL players from the New Orleans Saints and followed several current and former LSU football players on Twitter, some of whom followed back (the allure of a very pretty follower is apparently very compelling). She created a fake music news site, Pop Music Insider, which ran an interview with Rowe, where she claimed to have dated Kenny Vaccaro and that she was childhood friends with Odell Beckham.

This December, the catfisher tried to create a Wikipedia page for Nahla Rowe, but editors noticed something fishy, and deleted it. They realized the page was for a fake singer. Some Googling led them to the BuzzFeed article and podcast episode about Lucia Cole, and two editors reached out to me to tell me that they believed it to be the same person. Eventually, the same message boards and Tumblr that exposed Cole started posting about Nahla Rowe, delighting in the fact that Cole had returned.

This January, when the Nahla account was imploding, the Seriya Twitter account tweeted at me, saying, “Lucia here. Thanks for making me famous, girl.” After that, we DMed a few times. I asked her why she does it. “Honestly, it's something interesting to do with free time,” she wrote back. “In a sense, I'm bringing these people's music back to relevance. Can you really name any 2006 Katharine McPhee song, besides maybe ‘Over It’?”

There’s a handful of reasons people catfish: loneliness, the desire to escape from something bad in real life, or simply wanting to be someone new. In this case, perhaps it was wanting to experience the feelings of “fame” — having interviews on websites, getting attention from celebrities. Perhaps part of the attraction is to show the folly of today’s digital landscape: You can create a person out of nowhere that looks not only totally real, but famous; then you can manipulate online media where the crunch for getting up new content fast means less than strenuous fact-checking. But it also seems likely that a big motivation is the age old reason: wanting a romance with someone out of your league.

There was a tantalizing lead on the real identity of the catfisher, but I was unable to confirm it.

The blogger behind Pop Culture Died in 2009, a high school boy who wishes to remain anonymous to protect his reputation at school, did a surprisingly thorough investigation into Cole and Rowe. He found a website that appeared to have been created to bolster Rowe’s online persona, and looked up website registration, which led to a home address in Louisiana. He then found the name of a woman who lived at that address, and her Facebook page, where she was a fan of Odell Beckham Jr. (although it is likely that many people in Odell’s home state of Louisiana are fans). He tweeted the real name at Nahla Rowe, and she immediately blocked him and went private. The IP address that was used on Wikipedia to create her fake accounts traces back to the same small town of 8,000 people in Louisiana.

I called this woman and asked her if she knew anything about a singer named Lucia Cole. She sounded confused and said she knew nothing about any of it. Her confusion and denial sounded credible. She has a sister who may live with her and who, according to a local news story about her going missing, has schizophrenia. The woman I spoke with told me there was no one else at her address who could've created a website.

Jessica Simpson will probably get over the loss of a few bucks from the handful of people who may have bought the Lucia Cole album on iTunes. Mychael Kendricks thinks of this as a funny story, and at worst kind of an annoyance that he didn’t end up with the 16 grand he expected. Pretending to be someone else on the internet isn’t necessarily harmful to others by itself. But this may have had real life, heartbreaking consequences for two people completely uninvolved.

It’s unclear if the online rumors about Diddy and Seriya Gebru are what ended his relationship with Cassie. Another cheating theory has appeared: the gossip site LoveBScott.com had an anonymous source claiming that the woman Diddy cheated with was named Gina Huynh. It’s also not actually clear if Cassie posting a meme about cheating means that they actually even broke up. Neither party has made any official statement about the status of their relationship. (Reps for Cassie told me they do not speak to her about her personal life.) In January, Diddy posted an enthusiastic Instagram of the poster for an upcoming movie Cassie is acting in, saying he was so proud of her. It’s possible that they’re still very much together, and Cassie’s cryptic Instagram wasn’t a comment on the status of her relationship.

Whatever actually happened — if anything — between Diddy and Cassie, the intention of the fake rumor about Diddy cheating was to cause harm. It was not just boredom; it was mean-spirited.

Whoever is behind the serial catfishing seems to have no intentions of stopping. She's used the Seriya account to announce her new plans of creating a star, complete with recycled music. It's hard to guess how we might ever know about this next catfish — perhaps we won't.

The most important breakthrough in technology of 2016 so far.

The app Fetch and its site What-Dog.net scans images to tell you what dog it is.

It accurately identified BuzzFeed SF Managing Editor John Paczkowski's Great Pyrenees dog!

Good dog. Very cute sleeping face.

Kim Kardashian is a poodle.

Twitter: @KimKardashian

I am a Shetland sheepdog.

Yep, strong barker.

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For most of us, the mere idea of handing over our smartphone to another person, or letting someone peep into our email inbox, probably induces a sort of clammy panic and moaning dread. But for a few of us, at least, that moment of vulnerability is a thrill. For these people (mostly men), losing control of their digital life is the ultimate turn-on. They get off on surrendering their systems to digital dominatrixes who offer the thrill of being hacked, of being owned, without the normal repercussions.

"I don't think it's necessarily the ultimate form of submission, but a modern form for the digital age," explained a dominatrix who goes by @TheDataDomme on Twitter, whose newest service she offers is installing spycam software in a client's computer so he feels like he's being watched. "It's very different from the traditional view of BDSM (leather whips etc.) and is not a physical submission or abuse. But it is a submission of control all the same ... it's a feeling of helplessness most are looking for."

This hacking role-play is typically a subset of financial domination, or “findom,” which is basically when one person gives another control of their finances as a form of humiliation. On Twitter, you can find people tweeting hashtags like #walletrape and #paypig or using slang like “rinsing” (as in the way you’d describe someone losing in the stock market as getting rinsed). One findom who goes by Goddess Jasmine explained the allure to me over email: “my most famous line is: The sexiest thing about a man is the bulge in his wallet.”

For findoms, the exchange can be relatively lucrative. Broadly interviewed a woman who claims to make between $500 to $5,000 a day with computer takeovers; other people told me they knew of findoms who have bought houses purely from donations from men. However, one woman who goes by Goddess Kendra, an 18-year-old who has been doing this since October, told me, “it’s not about the money.” For her it’s the thrill. Goddess Kendra is blonde and attractive, and when she tweeted to her followers that I planned to interview her, I was flooded with DMs from fans who urged me to submit to her. (She herself also sent me DMs telling me I should submit to her. I respectfully declined.)

Had I given in, here’s what I might have encountered. To feel truly powerless, submissives will allow a findom to take over their computer, typically using software like TeamViewer. TeamViewer is fairly boring remote access business software meant for, say, a salesperson to lead a team through a training exercise. But because you can use it to give a remote person temporary access to your computer, it makes for a perfect hacking role-play solution. It lets you feel owned without being actually pwned.

Why would anyone get off on having someone else access their computer? “I think they like the thrill of having a woman have complete power over their private information,” a findom who wishes to remain anonymous explained to me. “With one click of a mouse you can access emails, photos, bank accounts, PayPal. They are literally just watching as you take their money right in front of their eyes, and there's nothing they can do about it.” And there’s more to it than the money. “I've gone through photo albums and emails and his social media messages and they like the thrill of threatened blackmail and exposure,” she explains.

But while the anonymous findom says she may threaten to make his embarrassing private photos public, she won’t actually go through with it. It’s just role-playing of hacking, with all the terrible feelings of anxiety and dread, and none of the lasting consequences. You don’t have to lock down your credit, or get a new social security number.

One Twitter findom, @MissNycbitch, says men love it when she takes over their computers with TeamViewer. “They beg me to destroy them, take their photos, their finances, exploit them. It's their fantasy to be destroyed by a hot and powerful woman,” she explained over Twitter DM. “They have this desire or fantasy to be wrecked by a woman. Destroyed financially… They worship powerful women. So if I have taken over their personal computer, that is the ultimate sign of power.” She also explains that it is always consensual, and the “hacking” aspect is merely role-play, not actually harmful.

Even though the men want to participate in this, as you might expect, a desire to give away your money as a way of sexual relief can be problematic. One man who goes by @oinkpiggieoink told me that last year he made over $75,000 but saw none of it, since he gave so much away to findoms. “All of this can actually be very dangerous for the slave but it is a drug, an addiction. Brain washing and rewiring if you will. I have had a couple of Goddesses I happened to serve for a decent amount of time that I formed trusting bonds with that I gave in to and gave access to my twitter, email, bank account login, femdom clip studios logins, things like that,” he explained. “I often find myself in regret when they have put me into an almost hypnotic mindless state, and cause me to struggle with bills occasionally. But the rush and the need to please and be used always overrides it in the end.”

Another findom submissive named Joshua says he feels the same addictive rush, but that it’s harmless. “The rush of spending money on beautiful women is like a high I've never experienced before. People say I'm getting taken advantage of but that's not true. I believe women are superior and men should always make a woman he is interested in happy no matter what. I can afford it. So why not?”

At their core, financial domination and computer takeovers are the same as the more familiar 50 Shades of Grey type of sexuality that in the year 2016 isn't particularly surprising, or even unusual. They share the same concepts of submission and trust, just perhaps with a higher price tag.

The best way to the heart is through the nose.

smell.dating

Are you single af and sick of trying to find someone to smash genitals with based on outdated things like looks, personality, or common interests? Well guess what. You're not really in luck because you'll probably die alone, gradually liquifying into your couch as you are eaten by your own cats. But MAYBE there's some hope: now you can date people just based on their smell.

Smell Dating is an experimental dating service from the artists Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne of Useless Press (a jokey, fun, experimental, digital art group). Daters exchange smelly worn t-shirts, and chose matches based purely on the smell of the shirts.

For $25 (a pittance when you are considering the possibility of true love and/or dying alone) daters receive a t-shirt in the mail, along with instructions to wear it for three days. Smell Dating recommends its clients avoid deodorant or perfume because these mask natural smells, but it's fine to get the shirt smelly with other things that indicate lifestyle choices — like cigarette smoke or a campfire.

After three days, mail back your funky shirt, and you will receive 10 other people's shirts in the mail. Take a strong whiff, and pick the one that gets your motor running. If it's a mutual match, you'll be given each other's phone numbers.

Disney / Via giphy.com

Yes, this is mostly a stunt-y gag. But there is science behind the connection between our sense of smell and our romantic attractions. The Smell Dating team spoke with scientists who study scents, and cite several academic studies as part of their inspiration.

Smell Dating asks for almost no personal info of its daters, not even gender or sexual preference. This is purposely to let your nose guide you. "It's about trusting subconscious intuition and not falling back on inevitable preconceptions and prejudices," Tega Brain told BuzzFeed News. "You can't control what you like the taste or smell of, you have to trust your sensory system."

For now, Smell Dating is limited to 100 people (35 have signed up so far), and is only available in New York City. So, if you're horny, smell terrible, and live by yourself in the one of the most expensive cities in the world, things are looking up for you.

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Here’s what the game is like.

Kendall and Kylie Jenner just launched their own mobile game on Glu Mobile, the same company that makes their sister Kim's game.

instagram.com

You start off as a basic nobody renting out a crummy apartment in Santa Monica.

Kendall and Kylie swing by the salon you work at and are totally nice.

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Syrian Refugee children outside a school at the refugee camp in Osmaniye, Turkey.

Adem Altan / AFP / Getty Images

In December, Adnan Akil, a 26-year-old working in tech in San Francisco, sent money to his aunt over Venmo. His family is Syrian-American, and his aunt was raising funds to help Syrian refugees. Akil was happy to help. But a few weeks later, he received an email from Venmo asking him to explain his transaction, which he had described as “for Syria” in the required note field. Venmo wanted more details about who it was going to. Eventually, Venmo did allow Akil’s transaction to go through — but not before a long and, for Akil, frustrating process.

“I was trying to do a good thing and was then talked to like I did something wrong," Akil told BuzzFeed News. “I started worrying about how much evidence they would need to believe me. If there ever could be enough.”

Akil is not alone — many people informally raising money among friends, family, or school groups for refugees have run into this problem. Clint Lalonde, a Canadian citizen, had his payment delayed by PayPal when he collected donations from relatives for his 8-year-old daughter’s school fundraiser. He got an email from PayPal asking him to clarify the donations, which had “Maggie’s Syrian fundraiser” in the notes. He wrote back a detailed explanation about the school fundraiser, but two of the payments were rejected and two were suspended in limbo for over a month.

Another person — who requested anonymity for the sake of the safety of her friends working with refugees overseas — had a similiar experience. She had friends send her donations over PayPal and Venmo, which were then passed along to contacts overseas who used the funds to purchase warm clothing and medical supplies for displaced children and women. Friends who sent her payments with “Syrian refugee donation” or “Syrian medical supplies” had their payments suspended and eventually canceled by PayPal.

It appeared that any transaction with the word “Syria” or Syrian” triggered an investigation, even when the note seemed clearly to be for refugees or charity.

According to a spokesperson for PayPal, this is a result of the company’s obligation to abide by U.S. government rules about financial transactions going to Syria. “In this particular case, processing funds is not compliant with the laws set forth by the OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control), which controls Syrian Sanctions,” the spokesperson explained. (PayPal and Venmo are owned by the same parent company and have the same policy on these transactions.)

The U.S. government has sanctions against doing business with Syria, similar to the ones we have with Cuba or Iran. However, there is an exemption for charities and humanitarian aid for Syria. Here’s where it’s tricky: Charitable nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) can send money and supplies to Syria, but an individual person can’t — unless that individual gets a special license to do so. According to the Office of Foreign Assets Control, “U.S. persons can give a charitable donation to U.S. or third-country NGOs, but U.S. persons cannot send such a donation directly to Syria or a Syrian entity without a specific license in order to try to protect the donations from being misused.”

An email from PayPal describing why a Syrian refugee donation is being held for review. This particular payment ended up being rejected.

Basically, if you’re taking up a collection among friends to write one big check to Doctors Without Borders, that’s fine. But it wouldn’t be legal, at least without that special license, to pool money to send directly to a hospital in Syria. When PayPal sees “Syrian medical supplies” in the notes, it doesn’t know which one you’re trying to do, so it’s obligated to ask.

The frustration, of course, is that people who are trying to do a truly good deed are getting blocked from doing so. And moreover, it looks like what PayPal is doing is some sort of ham-fisted terrorism screening where they think anything that mentions Syria must be code for giving money to ISIS.

The idea that PayPal and Venmo are essentially racially profiling transactions with any sort of Muslim or Arabic words in them isn’t exactly a paranoid delusion. This fall, Gizmodo reported about a transaction on Venmo that was investigated after someone jokingly wrote “iced coffee obama nsa inside job syria” as the note.

In 2014, another Venmo user had her account frozen after she made a transaction with a note simply listing the name “Ahmed.” Venmo said this may have been a mistake, and they were reaching out to the customer to apologize.

People who want to help the refugee crisis should make donations directly to an organization like UNICEF, write a check — or just write “for the drinks last night” in the note.

What they mean, depending on who’s using them.

Facebook now has emojis to select when you "like" something:

When your friends use this: They don't care too much about you.

When your aunt uses this: She doesn't know what the other emojis mean.

When your crush uses this: Bad news. He/she's not into you.

When your ex uses this: This is a faint apology but also a passive-aggressive way of letting you know they've moved on.

When your friends use this: They love it.

When your aunt uses it: She wishes you'd have kids soon.

When your crush uses this: Oh hell yeah, it's ON.

When your ex uses this: They are still masturbating thinking of you.

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*turns into dust and dies*

Agony.

buzzfeed.com

Dread.

buzzfeed.com

The feel of the hot breath of death on your neck.

buzzfeed.com

Fuuuuck.

buzzfeed.com

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Many of us can related to the pains of having some ~thing~ about our names. Maybe it's hard to spell or pronounce, or maybe it has some rhyme that people joked about on the schoolyard.

And plenty of people have a particular subtype of name frustration: They happen to have the same name as a famous person. Usually, this famous person became famous after they were born. I'm sure somewhere out there there's a 45-year-old man named Justin Bieber who is pretty annoyed right now.

Recently, a young woman messaged me saying she had a particularly interesting story about her name, something that has caused her a lot of grief over social media lately: Her Instagram handle is her maiden name, which is the same as a male celebrity, and she's being constantly tagged in Instagram photos of him.

What's truly incredibly about her journey is that she was born with a celebrity doppelgänger name, but when she got married, she took on her husband's last name, which meant she now had the same name as a very recently famous fictitious character.

This is the story of a woman born Christian Slater, who became Christian Gray.

Christian Slater as a disaffected teen pirate radio DJ in Pump Up the Volume

New Line Cinema

Let’s start at the beginning. When were you born? Was it before Christian Slater was famous?

I was born in 1992. My parents claim that they did not know of the actor at this point (I still question that to this day). My parents were born and raised in small-town Tennessee, so I assume that this could possibly be true. The story I have always gotten is that my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother's maiden name was Christian, and that is where I got my name from. I am sorry to say I have never really checked into this. My middle name is Nicole, because every female born in the South in the early-to-mid '90s' middle name was Nicole.

Wait, seriously. Christian Slater was a hugely famous movie star by 1992. Pump Up the Volume came out in 1990; Heathers was 1988; Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was 1991 and that was a huge hit! It was the second-highest grossing movie that year. How had they never heard of him?

I, too, wish I had a reasonable explanation for this. I do have a theory that they were just embarrassed after deciding to name me Christian Slater and they have denied it to this day that it was after the actor. However, I have never gotten a confession from them about this. I also never saw any Christian Slater movies until I was in middle school, which people usually find odd.

I actually just called my mom just to make sure I was getting it right but she claims she picked the name out in 1990. She says she honestly did not know he was famous until I was about 3 or 4 (1995–1996). This really doesn't surprise me that much. Just to give you an idea of my family, I was raised in a very religious household. I can't remember ever listening to anything other than Christian music until I was in middle school. As for other people telling her about him, the people she was friends with were very religious. I don't know if this makes sense, but for small-town life it's pretty common, especially before the internet.

Jamie Dornan as Christian Grey in 50 Shades of Grey

Universal Pictures

So you got married, and now your name is Christian Gray. Like the 50 Shades of Grey character. Did you know about the book before you got married?

I got married in August of 2014, right before the 50 Shades of Grey movie came out in February of 2015. This has really been the horror of my name. Although I don't get as many "shout-outs" on social media because my name is spelled Gray, instead of Grey like the character, I get more comments in real life from my name now than I ever did with Christian Slater. As you can imagine, the comments about 50 Shades of Grey are much more uncomfortable because of the content.

Probably the most uncomfortable one I have encountered is my dental hygienist talking in detail to me about the explicit parts of the movie while cleaning my teeth. My gynecologist's office staff is also exceptionally obsessed with my name(s). I started going there before I got married so they consistently comment on Christian Slater and Christian Gray. It's also super awkward when I have my (male) gynecologist's fingers in my vagina and the nurse is talking to me about the 50 Shades of Grey book.

Ugh, why are doctors always SO obsessed with names? Every doctor or dentist I go to becomes an amateur genealogy sleuth and wants to know all about my Greek last name (Do I speak Greek? Have I been there?) even though I’m barely Greek. Do you ever regret changing your name to Gray?

I do not regret taking my husband's name. I feel like since I have had a famous name from the beginning it was a nice change from Christian Slater. It really just changes things up enough for it to not be boring anymore.

A Chrome extension so you can “Haha” or “Sad” to your friends’ posts with with The Donald.

You know how Facebook just added those new reaction emojis last week?

Here's a Chrome extension that turns Facebook's new smileys into Donald Trump's face.

The Chrome extension is made by François Grante, the founder of another actually useful Chrome extension called Email Hunter.

Why? Who knows. Don't ask WHY. What better way to show your friend you love their baby photo than with Donald's loving face?

Of course, only YOU see Trump's face. Your friends with the baby just sees the "love" reaction. It only changes the reactions for the person who is using the Chrome extension.

Or if my friend posts about wanting to see Steely Dan, I can be angry. Not just regular angry, but TRUMP-ANGRY.

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A marketing firm contracted by Disney has been reaching out to furry groups asking them to post to Instagram with the movie hashtag in exchange for freebies.

Disney

Furries have been speculating that Disney's latest animated movie Zootopia is tailor-made for them. And apparently they're not wrong. BuzzFeed News has obtained an email that a marketing agency working with Disney sent to the furry Meetup group Furlife, encouraging furries to post photos of themselves in fursuits to Twitter and Instagram with the movie hashtag, even offering posters or movie swag to those that do.

It's easy to see why Zootopia — which is set in what's basically human world but with animals wearing clothes and doing human jobs — would be appealing to furries. The plot centers around a female rabbit rookie cop who teams up with a wily male fox con artist (confox?) to solve a big crime together. The fox character is a near doppelganger of the fox from Disney's animated Robin Hood, which has been hugely popular in the furry community, both as something they relate to and also want to yiff with (have sex with).

And so here we find ourselves at the nexus of the two truest internet axioms: "furries ruin everything" and "if it exists, there's porn of it" (aka Rule 34). Furries themselves are the first to claim they ruin everything, sort of an in-group joke. And indeed, there are already furry artists at work drawing the female rabbit character in the nude (link NSFW for a nude rabbit with human breasts and vagina).

But as much as they might joke among themselves for being deviants, furries are... kind of normal. They just want to have a good time, just like any other under-represented group, when a movie that seems to appeal to them comes around, they're excited. Some of their MeetUp groups are planning group outings to the movie on opening night, and the reality is whatever kids happen to be there will get a kick out of it, and it's not like they're going to be ruthlessly cranking off in the theatre.

In the case of Zootopia, furries' bad rap is underserving. It might seem like furries are just so twisted that they've adopted an innocent children's movie for their own sick gratification. But in reality, Disney purposely is being a knot-tease.

Here is the email sent by Allied Integrated Media, a digital marketing company contracted by Disney, to a furry Meetup group:

The screenshot is a little hard to read, but it says:

Hello Furlife,

My name is [name redacted] and I am representing Walt Disney Studios. Our next film being released is ZOOTOPIA and it is about a world inhabited by animals all living in peace together. The pictures of the members of your group all looking like animals are incredible and align perfectly with the film. All of you could live peacefully in Zootopia. It would be great for you all to share these photos on social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter. You can take new photos of each other and share these new photos online using the hashtags #Zootopia and #ZooU. You can be representing ZOOTOPIA and the participants can receive film based items such as the poster and rabbit or fox crowns. This can be a lot of fun and your group seems perfect to participate. If you are interested start posting the photos today and email me at xxxxxx@alliedim.com. Thanks!

A representative for Allied had no comment. Disney did not respond to BuzzFeed News' request for comment.

View Entire List ›

Julia Cordray

Last October, a two-person tech company based in Canada gave an interview to The Washington Post to talk up their new app, Peeple. The idea — “Yelp, but for people” — was, to put it lightly, not popular. It immediately kicked off a wild outburst, prompting furious reactions on every social platform imaginable and a glut of thinkpieces pointing to the app as a sign of the end times.

Peeple was reviled by the internet at large and Julia Cordray, its co-creator, received the full weight of that outrage. The general consensus boiled down to a collective belief that reviewing other human beings is a bad, bordering on dangerous idea. The cheery, somewhat tone-deaf nature of the app didn’t help — it was a purely hatable phenomenon. A lot of people even thought it was a hoax; surely such an app couldn't really exist?

Despite a huge number of people saying, loudly, “we don’t want this thing to exist, ever,” Cordray stuck to her gameplan, making slight changes to the app but maintaining its core idea. Today, Peeple comes out, with a few changes from the original version. First, only people who opt into the app are eligible for review – you can’t create profiles for anyone. The app requires a Facebook login to ensure valid identities, and you can only be reviewed if you opt in. You can now block and report abusive users and reviews. And, crucially, if you get a negative review, you can hide it — but anyone that pays for a yet-to-be-released premium version of Peeple will be able to see those negative reviews.

Cordray talked to BuzzFeed News about what it was like to have the whole internet yell at you, and why she still thinks Peeple is a good idea.

Peeple

Let’s talk about October 1, 2015, when the Washington Post interview with you came out, and the backlash started. The level of venom was insane. What did that day feel like for you?

[Laughs] First of all, I didn't eat that day at all. Because we were getting calls from every talk show, every media outlet possible. LinkedIn messages, thousands of emails, hundreds of phone calls. It was so intense that I booked a flight for my colleague to fly from Calgary down to San Francisco the very next morning to help me navigate it all. I just couldn't handle the amount of inbound information. I didn't anticipate it. We spent 20 hours a day just monitoring and taking notes on all the feedback. I just wanted to understand: what is it that the world wants, what is it that they're upset about, where is the confusion, what can I do about it, and how can I better explain it?

That day I was like, "whoa... this is amazing. We may have created the biggest app launch in tech history, but oh my god, we're not even available yet." It's fascinating, because it was compounded with my private information being given out, me being bullied on every single social media platform, including ones I thought were actually safe (which weren't). That fueled me even more. It made me want to build this app even more to make a safe place for people to manage their online reputation.

If you look at me alone, I'm the perfect example of what's wrong with our current social media, and why you need something like Peeple. It was such an ironic twist of fate, and I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful for it. I've transcended most of my fears.

When the whole world hates, you, what's left, right? What are you scared of? Nothing.

That's an extremely zen approach. But there had to have been some moment where it felt bad.

Yeah, the day it felt bad was the first Saturday of October, when our website was hacked multiple times and taken down, when we got death threats on YouTube and all over the internet. That was the low point – where I ended up calling the San Francisco police and the Canadian police. My home address was given out but it was an old address of the house I had just sold, so I was worried about the safety of the person currently living in it. It was just nuts. That was the low day.

That day for sure impacted me and my team, but the reality was, "with fear comes anger". They were just scared. They made those death threats for whatever motivations they have, but when it comes down to it, they're scared. And they want to create such a ripple on our end that we take action. What we decided to do was go radio silent for two weeks, to calm everybody down. So we went quiet until we ended up on the Dr. Phil show.

How serious did you think the death threats were? You went to the police – were you scared for your safety at any point?

I was at one point. What would happen is that every time I would pull out of my house in San Fransisco, people were recognizing me. I remember I went to the Traction conference – that was happening during our media storm. I showed up halfway through the conference and people just started surrounding me, and I got nervous. They were recognizing us, and they wanted to take pictures with us. And they weren't angry, they were admiring us. But I was worried about some of the people that might be angry. So I talked to the hotel about having some security people watch us at all times, because I was nervous. It was overwhelming. It was shocking how quickly we became recognized in public.

Was there ever a moment where you thought, maybe these people are right, maybe my idea isn't so good? Did you ever doubt yourself?

No. I still and always did firmly believe in what we were doing. But I think what was more important is the way we were going to do it, and the way we were going to execute, and what product we were going to bring. So I'm grateful to have made those changes. Because that feedback just made our product even better. I never doubted us. I always held firm to the concept and why we were doing it.

Part of the backlash was that the objections seemed really obvious – people are going to get hurt and trolled. How did that not ever come up during the process of building it, and working with a lot of different people? That this could be used for evil instead of for good?

We had a lot of people involved in building this company and product. We have a lot of shareholders who saw our presentation and pitch deck and what the product is going to become. And I guess what the public didn't know is all the safety features we had in place to protect our users. All they heard was bullying, and "it's a bullying app". Which, we already knew we had built these failsafes and check and balances and terms and conditions into the app to hold people accountable. But that never got heard, because people were so focused on what they thought the product was. Whereas our team knew what it was. I think that was the disconnect.

To answer your question, no one was concerned about bullying or anything else. Because we had already done of all of that.

Do you think if you had been a male tech founder, people would've reacted the same was as they did? Some of the online reaction that was so over the top, venomous, and hateful – maybe because you're a woman.

I think if I was a guy building this app we would've gotten hi-fives around the boardroom table. It's just interesting how rude people were because we were female. Photoshopping us into porn, or degrading us, or calling us names, saying anything about our physical selves. I don't think they would've done that to a male.

The other thing which is so fascinating, is that during the media storm, I'm driving back from California, I'm feeling excited, injured, confused, all these emotions. And I arrive back in my hometown where there's a million people, and most of them are talking about me. And I was nervous – nervous to go out in public, nervous to show my face. And you know what? there was nothing to be scared of. I would go out, and people would be so excited. They wouldn't be mad at me at all. They would ask questions, they were curious, they were starting controversial conversations, and they just loved that they got to hear it from me and they felt so much better and they got so excited about the concept.

So whatever I thought was reality, wasn't reality. And still isn't reality. The online community that doesn't like us? There's a hundred more that do that are coming forward, telling me nice things over LinkedIn, supporting us, signing up for beta testing. It's incredible.

Peeple

What is "Truth License"?

It doesn't exist right now in the current app, but basically the Truth License is a paid upgrade in the app to see all the recommendations that were not published on people's profile.

Would that include ones people had flagged for being inaccurate, right?

No, whenever there's any sort of reporting or blocking going on, we're paying close attention to those recommendations. We are leaving it up to the user to police what's going on and bring things to our attention. But if there's a recommendation that breaks our terms and conditions or is inappropriate, we have the right to remove those recommendations and delete them forever. We also have the right to remove users from our app.

To be clear, when the Truth License does come out, you'll actually have the ability to rebut anything that anybody has said about you. But more importantly, you'll be able to see all the recommendations that someone has written about others to really get a good read on what that person's character is like, too. So it's not just about what you receive as a recommendation, it's also about how others treat each other.

If you're going to leave a negative recommendation for a lot of people, and I can see all those recommendations that were never published, it looks like you're a pretty negative Nelly and I can't believe a word you say.

[In a follow up call, Cordray clarified that Truth License would reveal hidden negative recommendations that didn’t qualify as harassment or violations.]

There's already a lot of places for professional recommendations – you can give endorsements and recommendations on LinkedIn, there's industry specific sites for doctors or babysitters. What will drive people to use this instead of going to those industry specific professional sites?

Because we're not anonymous. RateMyProfessor.com or RateMyMD.com – great sites, but what what they miss is the anonymous portion. It's not fair to have a system where you can game it to say whatever you want. Doctors could be writing reviews of other doctors and the reviews can be completely fake just to take that doctor's reputation down a notch.

That's our problem with Yelp – it's anonymous. I don't believe in making anonymous recommendations; I don't think they're as useful as when you really are who you say you are. Too many of those systems can be gamed.

There’s a “nearby” feature that shows the profiles of people near you. Is this something that you have to both have to be actively using at the same time, or if you're at a bar and want to see who's around it just automatically pulls up who's around?

It's the second part. So if you're at a bar, and you and I both have the app, you'll be able to see that I have the app and that I'm nearby, and you can see within a 10 mile radius and you can click on my profile to learn more about me and make your decision from there on how to approach me.

Does that seem like it might have a privacy problem? If you're on the app because you want people to know about your skills as a teacher, and then you go to a bar and some random guy now knows your name?

Have you heard about Badoo? Badoo is famous for this exact feature. It allows people to connect when they see someone nearby.

But Badoo is a dating app.

They are a dating app, but remember we have a dating section in our app that allows you to be recommended romantically. So this is important to find out about people if you're interested in this romantically. And if you're NOT single, you can actually de-activate the dating section of our app by just going into your settings and toggling your "single" settings.

Will that deactivate your location settings? If you're a married dentist and you want it just so that people know you're the best dentist, you might not want single people at a restaurant knowing you're nearby.

Yeah, I get it, but when we looked into what other features would make the app useful for the majority of the users, this is something that they really liked. And you'll start to see a lot of geographic location features in apps because people really like them and they have more benefits than disadvantages.

[In a follow up call, Cordray clarified that location services are opt-in, and you can also turn them off in your app settings].

You had mail, but you had to wait ’cause your mom was using the phone.

Having your parents begrudgingly agree to allow you to have a pager.

And then learning pager code:

3579 : This is weird
1423: I want to die
143: I love you
187: I want to kill you

Via 90s90s90s.com

Rocking a JanSport backpack, which you, of course, one-strapped and would customize with a Sharpie or Wite-Out pen.

And maybe, if you had to, an Eastpak. MAYBE.

Via etsy.com

Using your TI-83 graphing calculator basically just to play Space Invaders with.

Of course, occasionally pulling it out to do a math problem.

Via csc.villanova.edu

View Entire List ›

On Super Tuesday, BuzzFeed News experimented with Facebook’s relatively new Live (livestreaming video) feature. This meant letting our homepage editor Gavon Laessig get drunk and comment on the primary results as they came in for several hours. Weirdly, a lot of people tuned in.

Even weirder, they really seemed to like this demented public-access-on-Four-Loko version of CNN. So we started doing more Live videos: trying out a bunch different formats, from a closeup feed of someone’s hands popping bubblewrap during the GOP debates to celebrity interviews.

Facebook Live is relatively new ground, so we’re figuring it all out. But one thing that became clear very early on was that there was a very specific trolling happening in the comments: Our livestreams were being flooded with people all saying the exact same comment.

“m9 slamber city”

The BuzzFeed employees doing the livestreams were stumped. What the hell did “m9” mean and where was Slamber City? Why were people saying this on a livestream about politics? What was this new internet slang that no one at BuzzFeed had heard of? (We’re usually pretty up on that kind of stuff.) WTF????

It turns out it was nothing we could’ve expected. The trolls weren’t from 4chan or Reddit, aggro Bernie Bros or Trump Troopers mad at our politics coverage, nor even Russian spambots. They’re from a Facebook group for British car modification enthusiasts called Slamber City. In that group, “m9” is a purposeful typo of “m8”, which is itself slang for “mate” (kind of like “pwn” for “own”). "Slamber" is slang for cars with cambered wheels, a weird modification when you angle your tires like this for some godforsaken reason:

Cambered wheels.

motortrend.com

But why was a car modification group trolling BuzzFeed? Well, it turns out we weren’t the only ones. The Slamber City crew was doing it to plenty of other Live videos on Facebook. There’s even a YouTube compilation where various livestreamers are massively confused about what “m9” means:

A compilation of people confused about what "m9" means:

youtube.com

Joe Watkins, a 25-year-old from northern England, and one of the admins of the Slamber City Facebook group, explained it to us. “M9'ing isn't trolling in my opinion, it's fruitful spamming,” he says.

The Slamber City group has almost 54,000 members — so there are an awful lot of people ready to m9 at a moment’s notice. “Like, everyone who likes modified cars knows Slamber,” says Mike Hopkins, one of the other admins from Blackpool, UK. Unsurprisingly for a group of people who mostly want to talk about car modifications (Hopkins’ particular interest is souping up early ‘90s Volkswagens) the coordinated effort doesn’t really have that much coordination. “Someone will share a livestream feed on Slamber, then people just go to them.” OK, m8.

Facebook: 604554879658968

The group sometimes compares itself to 4chan and, like 4chan, it’s not always quite so nice. It has the normalized racism and misogyny, revenge porn, and harassment that is typical of anonymous young male online socializing (Reddit, BodyBuilding.org’s “misc” board, 4chan, parts of Twitter). Slamber City's particular flavor of toxic masculinity is lad culture, which among other things, means calling each other the C-word a lot. Oddly, unlike those places, this all takes place under people’s real names and Facebook profiles, which suggests anonymity isn't the main enabler of being a jerk online.

A meme from the Slamber City Facebook group.

Hopkins acknowledges the problems, but says that the admins are vigilant about banning people who act out. They also have formed a tight-knit bond. He and his fellow admin Joe (there’s about 10 admins for the page) met on the group and formed a close friendship. “Me and Joe are best mates. I love the guy,” said Hopkins. He also excitedly told me that Watkins has the lowest “mk1 caddy” in the UK (apparently that’s some sort of modified VW Golf).

Unlike hardcore trolls who might flood comments with hateful racism, or harassment, the act of posting obscure, misspelled British slang for “friend” over and over is playful and kind of funny. It’s maybe confusing for the victim, but it’s not hurtful. M9'ing is a rare classic form of trolling: creating harmless mayhem just for the sake of mayhem and reaction, not for evil.

In fact, the Slamber Crew are such nice trolls that after spamming British radio DJ Majestic's livestream with “m9” comments, he reached out to Hopkins and other admins because he was charmed. He created a techno song in honor of Slamber City called “Takeover”. Majestic’s idea was to have proceeds from the iTunes sales of the song go to two charities: one for suicide prevention and another that supports domestic abuse victims. The single made it as high as No. 39 on the UK iTunes dance charts, and has sold over 900 copies according to Hopkins (that would net around $700 for charity).

View Video ›

Facebook: video.php

So I guess…. Go buy the song on iTunes and support a good cause. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but: Support your local trolls.

View Video ›

Facebook: video.php

Why. Why.

Damien Leonhardt, 17, who went by the name "Jessi Slaughter" online in 2010.

Damien Leonhardt

“You dun goofed!” was the line that turned Jessi Slaughter into a meme, the accidental start of a viral video seen over a million times in just a few weeks in 2010. Jessi was only 11 years old. In the video, Jessi wears a zebra-striped T-shirt and cries while Gene Leonhardt (Jessi’s dad), down one one knee, screams into the camera, pointing his finger. “I know who it’s coming from, because I backtraced it … you’ve been reported to the cyberpolice … And if you come near my daughter, guess what? Consequences will never be the same.” His malapropisms and bumbling misunderstanding of the internet only fanned the flames of the exact trolls he was trying to ward off.

Jessi, at 17, now identifies as Damien and prefers they/them pronouns (the surname Slaughter was sort of a nom de emo). Damien talked with BuzzFeed’s Internet Explorer podcast about how the video impacted their life and why the internet in 2010 was such a mean place.

youtube.com

Leonhardt’s over-the-top rant ensured that the video blew through the tiny corner of the internet that birthed it and found a much more mainstream audience, one that was just happy to chuckle at a funny video during the office lunch break. The video was picked up by a number of blogs and websites (including a nascent BuzzFeed), and eventually the family even made an appearance on Good Morning America.

youtube.com

However, the series of events that led up to the video was more disturbing than most people who got a mild laugh out of “you dun goofed” realized. Damien, as “Jessi Slaughter” (their real last name was Leonhardt), was a big emo music fan and was active on Myspace, along with fellow “scene kids.” Damien was very aware it was the last gasp of the platform’s days.

They also were active on Stickam, a streaming video platform popular with teens and younger people, especially scene kids (somewhat similar in concept to today’s YouNow live-streaming platform). A site called StickyDrama acted as a sort of gossip page to discuss various popular live-streamers. Someone on that site wrote a post claiming that some scene kid who went by Jessi Slaughter had hooked up with the singer of a popular emo band, Blood on the Dance Floor. It was written in a way that scolded and condemned the 11-year-old for promiscuity. Damien denied this on their Myspace page.

The singer, whose stage name is Dahvie Vanity, was about 25 at the time, and Damien was a child. This wasn’t a rumor about a groupie and a rock star; it was a suggestion of child sexual assault. When BuzzFeed spoke with Damien, they told us they could not discuss this topic (persistent rumors spread online that Vanity had sexual contact with other very young fans). In any case, it was at the very least spurious internet gossip meant to slut-shame a young girl.

The allegation, along with other brash and profanity-laced videos Damien had on their YouTube account, attracted the attention of 4chan. (Damien believes it was someone from school who initially posted the video to 4chan.) It was this harassment — of a possible victim of a heinous crime — that caused Damien’s father to scream into the camera, trying to protect his young daughter.

The video came out over summer vacation, so the impact on Damien’s school life wasn’t immediate. However, when they came back that fall, things had changed. “I kind of lost all my friends and had to make new friends,” Damien says. “I had a clique of friends — the emo kids — in sixth grade, and none of them wanted anything to do with me after."

Life was not kind to Damien in following years. Not long after the video, they were placed into foster care. “My dad was really abusive toward me and my mom,” says Damien. “You kind of saw the anger issues with him [in the video], and that put extra stress on the family, which made him even angrier.” In 2011, their father died of a heart attack, and in 2012, Damien moved back in with their mother in a small town in Florida.

The harassment never stopped. “At first it was just comments on YouTube and stuff like that,” says Damien. “And that was like, well, it's public and people are dicks. But when people are actively seeking your stuff out to send you hateful messages and harass you, that's scarier to me.”

Six years later, Damien has some perspective on what happened. They have an active Tumblr, where despite some trolling, there’s a positive community. They get messages to their Tumblr from people asking for advice and help dealing with harassment. “I want to use my experiences to help other people, and also to help myself grow as a person and to get more involved with things that can help other people.”

The internet is a very different place now that it was in 2010. Even though the internet wasn’t new or frightening then, it wasn’t like today, where everyone’s aunt is on Facebook and has a smartphone and understands the basic concepts of social media. And somehow, in the years in between, the internet has become something of a nicer place in many ways (although of course harassment still exists).

The way we understand patterns of harassment has completely changed. Cyberbullying isn’t just something you hear about on the news relating to teenagers — online harassment is a very real issue, even to many adults. No one knows this better than Damien. “Nowadays, people are a lot more understanding that, yes, there's a person behind that photo, there's a person behind that video,” they say. “It’s not just a funny picture that has no meaning when you share things. It has a meaning to the person who put it there. We're connected; it's not just a cold screen. But even now, I feel like people still sort of don't understand completely that what they do has an impact. Even if you're not meaning it to be harassing or harmful, it still has an impact.”

Listen to BuzzFeed's Internet Explorer podcast's interview with Damien, part 1 of our series on years that changed the internet:

Subscribe to the Internet Explorer podcast on iTunes.

Replies are back, baby!

Tumblr

Last year, Tumblr did a redesign that got ride of one of its beloved features: the ability to reply (instead of reblog with comment) to a post. The Tumblr community HATED the new redesign.

Starting today, replies are coming back (it'll rollout to users in the new few days, so if you don't have it right now don't freak out). You'll also be able to reply to yourself, not just others, which is a completely new feature. So if you're the one who thinks up that great pun on your own post, GO FOR IT. And you can reply to your own blogs, if you're that self-obsessed.

The new reply features has some enhanced features for privacy and harassment prevention:

• Everyone can reply
  
• Only people you follow and people who have been following you for a week (no new friends or lurkers) can reply
  
• Only people you already follow can reply (safest mode)
  

A new redesign of Notes also lets you see how people replied more easily. There's a simplified Notes view where you can see only replies and reblogs with commentary, and the plain likes and reblogs get compressed at the top.

常識でしょ。

NBC

If you wanted to watch all 236 episodes of Friends in a month, you’d have to clock around seven to eight episodes a day, just under three hours per night. Any varsity binge-watcher could easily tear through the the antics of Ross, Rachel, et al. in a few weekends.

The Friends DVD box set costs about $75 on Amazon. Or you could also stream it all — all 118 hours of Must See TV — for $7.99 through Netflix.

This is the easiest decision you’ll ever make (unless you’re one of those jabronis who still collects DVDs and arranges them in alphabetical order in a tower you bought from Sam Goody in 2001 along with a Staind poster).

Duh, Netflix is a good deal. That’s why people like it. To watch full, glorious seasons of TV each month for less than most city-dwellers drop on a single below-average cocktail is fantastic. And obviously, $7.99 for unlimited streaming is a great deal when you compare it to the relative costs of obtaining physical media or renting/buying digital copies of individual movies and shows from iTunes or Amazon. Netflix isn’t just a good value; it's like putting a dollar in a vending machine and accidentally getting two bags of Funyuns.

So why in the world aren’t we paying more? Look, don’t hate me for saying this. I don’t want to pay more anymore than you do. But come on, admit it: If Netflix raised the price of a subscription, you wouldn’t quit.

Sure, you might complain a bit. When Netflix raised the price of its most popular streaming plan to $9.99 from $8.99, the backlash online was feverish. Even with a two-year grandfather clause for existing customers, people tweeted up a storm about how incensed they were at being asked to pay an additional 12 bucks a year. And yet…do you know anyone who actually canceled their account over it? Me neither.

Anyone with a bit of disposable income (or who knows someone with some) and enjoys pop culture will be hard pressed to find somebody they know who doesn’t have Netflix, or at least access to Netflix through login-sharing with parents, friends, exes, whoever. These are people who are also more likely to be cord-cutters — ditching cable for just some a la carte streaming services like HBO Go or Hulu, buying/renting from Amazon or iTunes, or just plain illegally torrenting. Compared to cable, which is basically only a medium for watching Donald Trump say and respond to outrageous things, Netflix is a huge bargain.

“They are trying to give you lots of content for a low price, and to love them,” said Richard Greenfield, a media and technology analyst for BTIG research firm. “Netflix wants you to love them. No one loves their cable provider.” True! No one has gotten laid by inviting someone over to Comcast & chill.

Twitter: @KrystieLYandoli

But what if Netflix weren’t quite so cheap? How not-cheap could it get before you’d give up?

Netflix knows that subscription pricing is a delicate balance. The company gets lots of new users precisely because it is so inexpensive. At $7.99 a month for the company's most basic plan, it feels like almost nothing, an easy risk to take. In a fall 2014 earnings call, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told investors the company felt its pricing really was firm and that it couldn't go higher.

But Hastings made that point just prior to the debut of the second season of Orange Is the New Black, Netflix's second foray into original programming after House of Cards. Today, the company is producing even more critically acclaimed and voraciously consumed shows — Making a Murderer, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Daredevil — that rival what's offered on cable outfits like HBO. HBO Go, the a la carte streaming version of HBO (for those who aren’t just using their parents’ or friends’ cable logins) is $15/month. And beside Game of Thrones, what feels super necessary to watch on that network? Vinyl? Lmao.

And so Greenfield argues that Netflix could probably follow HBO’s lead without sending most subscribers packing. “When you have HBO at $15, it’s easy to see how a $15 price point is attainable for Netflix,” he told BuzzFeed News (Netflix declined to comment on this point or any of my other idiotic ramblings, which, fair enough).

So would you pay $15? Totally, right? But what about $20? Don’t lie, you would. Keep in mind that Netflix is adding lots more original content. The company was a top buyer at the Sundance Film Festival this year; it's also inked a deal with Disney that will add a bunch of new family programming to its catalog. Go ahead, parents, and try to tell me that you wouldn’t pay $20 each month to keep the kid quiet while you and your partner unwind with a glass of sauvignon blanc and some light chitchat about Bernie Sanders’ actual odds of catching up to Hillary as primary season winds down. That’s what I thought.

Look: I don’t want to pay more for Netflix. I hope Netflix isn’t as much of a genius as I am and never realizes that it could probably charge us more. I hope it keeps my $9.99 subscription tier in perpetuity. But I’m just being realistic here. The company's going to wise up at some point. Best steel yourself for the inevitable and maybe set aside a few clams in a rainy day binge fund. I know I am.

The most important breakthrough in technology of 2016 so far.

The app Fetch and its site What-Dog.net scans images to tell you what dog it is.

It accurately identified BuzzFeed SF Managing Editor John Paczkowski's Great Pyrenees dog!

Good dog. Very cute sleeping face.

Kim Kardashian is a poodle.

Twitter: @KimKardashian

I am a Shetland sheepdog.

Yep, strong barker.

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