An Indian teenager was accused of emotional blackmail after going on a hunger strike for three days to pressure his poor mother into buying him an iPhone.

A short video shot by a smartphone shop owner in India went viral last week for featuring a teenage boy who confessed to going on a hunger strike for three days to convince his mother to buy him a new iPhone. The woman, who reportedly makes a living by selling flowers outside a temple, is also featured in the video and has a facial expression that pretty much says everything about her inner struggle. Shared by Indian journalist Abhishek on X (formerly Twitter), the video has been viewed over a million times and has sparked a heated debate about gadgets as a status symbol and the entitlement of younger generations.

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A Japanese couple known for uploading wholesome family videos on YouTube sparked controversy after filming their 2-year-old daughter crying inside a locked car on a hot day for about 30 minutes instead of getting her out.

At the end of May,  ラウなのファミリー (“Rau-nano Family), a YouTube channel that documents the daily life of a Japanese couple with their three children, uploaded a video titled 炎天下の中…2歳娘が車に閉じ込められました (“Under the blazing sun… my 2-year-old daughter was locked in the car,”).  The shocking title hints at the couple’s goal of grabbing attention and boosting viewership, but while the video managed to do just that, they didn’t anticipate the criticism coming with their new-found fame. That is surprising, to say the least, as the controversial video shows the father of the family casually filming his 2-year-old daughter as she cries desperately for about 30 minutes after accidentally getting stuck in the family car on a hot summer day with no windows open.

The disturbing video, which has since been removed from the Rau-nano Family YouTube channel, shows the head of the family placing the older daughter, two-year-old Nanoka, in the backseat of the family’s Toyota, and preparing to do the same with her younger sister. It is at this moment that Nanoka, who is holding the car keys as her father handles the little sister, accidentally locks herself in the car.

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Amateur MMA fighter Lukasz Bukovac recently went 0-2 in one night despite having fought just one opponent after getting his marriage proposal brutally rejected by his girlfriend in front of 20,000 people.

They say you should never kick someone while they’re down, but some would say Lukasz Bukovac brought it upon himself when he decided to propose to his girlfriend inside the octagon, after losing an MMA fight. Even if he had won, there was no guarantee the girl would say yes, but getting rejected in front of 20,000 spectators is so much more painful after a loss. Unfortunately, Bukovac had to just stand there on one knee and hear his visibly embarrassed girlfriend shoot down his marriage proposal for alleged infidelity, in front of tens of thousands of people. To make it worse, the whole thing was filmed and the video is now going viral around the world.

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A slow-moving river of millipedes crawling on the ground in unison was recently spotted in a mountainous area of Taiwan and the video of it is enough to make your skin crawl.

On April 27th, tourists visiting Hsüeh-Pa National Park in central Taiwan witnessed an unusual phenomenon that local guides have never seen before. While accompanying a group of seven tourists through an area west of Dalu Forest Road, Yang Xiaozhong, a tour guide with an experience of 11 years, noticed that the path he knew seemed to be covered with fallen leaves. At first, he thought the brown leaves must have been brought to the ground by heavy rains but then he realized that the foliage was actually moving. On closer inspection, the leaves turned out to be millipedes, thousands of them moving in the same direction, like a living river.

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A video doing the rounds on Chinese social media these days has gone viral for showing how easy it is to use AI-powered deepfake technology to transform into virtually anyone online.

App filters and deepfake technology have been around for years now, but the advent of artificial intelligence has elevated them to a whole new level, one which makes it almost impossible to tell what is real on the internet. Take this recent video shared by a Chinese engineer where he demonstrates how easy it is for him to pass as an attractive young girl. All he has to do is put on a wig, enable a piece of software and the AI takes care of the rest. It is able to replace the man’s face with that of an attractive girl but otherwise mimics all of his actions, including eating with chopsticks, pinching his own face, and speaking with the appropriate mouth movement.

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A Chinese makeup artist known as Tuzi (Rabbit) has been getting a lot of attention on social media for her ability to completely transform her clients to the point where they are impossible to recognize.

Tuzi runs the Starlight Rabbit Portrait Studio in Yunan Province, but she gets most of her clientele from social media, particularly Douyin (China’s version of TikTok) where she regularly posts clips of impressive makeup transformations, where she either makes her subjects look decades younger than they actually are, turns them into heroes of Wuxia tales, or simply makes them unrecognizable. Over the years, she has had collaborations with fellow influencers and celebrities, including celebrities, actors, and singers.

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A video of a lightly-clothed yogi meditating in the middle of a snowstorm in the Himalayas has gone viral online sparking a heated debate about its authenticity.

We live in a time when the old saying “seeing is believing” just doesn’t apply anymore. The advent of artificial intelligence and deepfake technology has made it possible to create virtually anything and make it look authentic. Realistic-looking AI news anchors and digital influencers are a part of this new reality, so you can’t blame people for doubting their eyes. Case in point, a viral video out of India showing a yogi with his hair and beard caked with snow meditating high up in the mountains during a snowstorm. He looks so comfortable in one of the harshest environments on Earth that many people rightly believed it was staged or the result of AI digital manipulation.

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A Mexican beauty salon has been getting a lot of attention on TikTok because of its promotional videos, many of which seem to show some “horrible” makeup examples.

TikTok is a great marketing tool, even when the product or service you’re promoting isn’t exactly the best money can buy. Case in point, a Mexican beauty salon that has been gaining followers on the popular video-sharing platform primarily because of its unflattering makeup clips. Ohio Esthetic’s most popular TikTok videos are precisely the ones showcasing the salon’s most bizarre makeup. With names like “Makeup to Go Sign the Divorce” or “When You Thought You Would Be Single on Valentine’s Day,” these viral clips show young women completely transformed with thick layers of makeup, but definitely not in a good way.

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A Spanish woman sparked controversy after claiming that dripping urine into her eyes cured her myopia and astigmatism.

Urine therapy or urotherapy is a form of alternative medicine popularized by British naturopath John W. Armstrong in the early 20th century. Advocates of this unusual form of therapy promote the application of human urine for medicinal or cosmetic purposes, including massaging one’s skin, or gums, with one’s urine, and even drinking it. However, TikTok user and “assistant metaphysical counselor” Suama Fraile claims that urine is also much better at treating eye problems than the chemical-infused medicine prescribed by most doctors. The woman claims to have dripped urine into her eyes daily until it cured her astigmatism and myopia.

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Moana Bikini, a swimwear company founded by Australian body-positivity influencer Karina Irby, has come under fire for having a male model pose in a women’s swimsuit.

Australian swimwear brand Moana Bikini sparked controversy after posting a video of male “Moana babe” Jake Young parading in a white women’s swimsuit on its Instagram page. The backlash was almost instantaneous, with thousands of people leaving critical comments and slamming the company for going too far with what they called a “marketing scheme”. The company and its founder have hit back at critics, claiming that Moana Bikini has been empowering “ALL bodies” for years, so a man in a women’s swimsuit shouldn’t really shock anyone.

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Toyota recently teamed up with Japanese artist Masumi Yamaguchi to celebrate the return of the iconic Land Cruiser 70 SUV to the market in a unique way.

SUVs aren’t known for being the lightest of cars, but the one created by Masumi Yamaguchi is probably the lightest ever made. Even though it is a 1:1 model of the legendary Land Cruiser 70, it can easily by lifted by just two people. That’s because this special SUV is actually made of styrofoam parts sculpted and assembled by Yamaguchi. Everything from the body of the car to the windows and the tires is made out of styrofoam and then painted to create the illusion of a real vehicle. The only things that give it away are the reflectionless windows and the unusually matte paint.

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An android waitress working at a restaurant in Chongqing, China, went viral last month, mesmerizing viewers with its precise robotic movements, but she turned out to be nothing more than a choreographed illusion.

With the threat of AI-powered robots stealing humans’ jobs looming over the world these days, the sight of a humanoid robot seemingly working as a waitress at a restaurant in China scandalized a lot of people when videos of it started circulating on Douyin (China’s version of TikTok). Some viewers were in awe of the android’s human-like appearance and its ability to interact with real people, greeting them as they entered the Chongqing restaurant, taking their orders, and bringing them to their tables, but others declared themselves a little creeped out by it, a relatively common reaction to the uncanny valley effect. But it turned out that the android waitress was more lifelike than people thought…

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China’s hospitality sector routinely holds bed-making competitions that both showcase the skill and dedication of hotel employees and motivate others to achieve the same level.

In order to provide guests with the best hospitality services, Chinese luxury hotels require their staff to undergo intensive bed-making training, and the very best of them get to participate in bed-making competitions hosted by the hotel chain, or held at a regional or national level. And these contests are no joke! Participants need to be masters of their trade to stand a chance of convincing the jury that they deserve to win. Apart from speed – the first contestant to finish gets bonus points – competitors have to abide by certain rules and make sure that they pay great attention to detail.

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Makeup artists on TikTok are busy freaking out their followers with a new style of makeup called “uncanny valley” and inspired by the human-like yet unnatural appearance of androids.

The term uncanny valley is used to describe the hypothesized uncomfortable feeling triggered by seeing an entity appearing almost human but not quite so. It is used mainly in relation to humanoid androids that try to mimic our look and mannerisms to perfection but don’t quite succeed. These days, the phrase is going viral on TikTok thanks to a new makeup trend used to transform fleshy humans into creepy cyborgs. The trend is believed to have been sparked by Zara (@alkiiwii), a TikTok user who transformed herself with layers of foundation, concealer, eyeliner, and mascara. Her viral video tagged with #uncannyvalleymakeup has been viewed and shared tens of millions of times, inspiring other makeup enthusiasts to post their own takes on the trend.

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23-year-old Nichola Kratka, a self-described ‘extreme eater’, deliberately ate a fish infested with tapeworms and filmed himself doing it in the hopes of going viral on TikTok.

It’s shocking what some people will do for a bit of online attention these days. Take this young Florida content creator who, after catching a tapeworm-infested bass while fishing on a lake. Instead of throwing away the fish after discovering the parasites, he decided to eat it, knowing full well that he could become infected. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t long until he started experiencing side effects like stomach aches, diarrhea, nausea, siziness, and weakness. In the end, he had to seek medical help and start taking deworming medication. Still, Kratka said he had “no regrets”…

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