Photos of a vibrantly-colored fish that looks too flashy to be real have gone viral on Japanese social media, prompting many to ask if it was the result of too much digital editing.

Last Friday, popular YouTube channel Fishing Gang Azusa took to Twitter to post a very intriguing picture of their latest catch – a flashy fish that almost looked painted. People started asking if it was real or just a case of too much Photoshop, but it wasn’t before Azusa posted a video on YouTube of them catching the fish that the photos went viral. The footage shows the alien-looking fish in all its splendor, leaving many viewers with their mouths wide open at the thought that such a creature actually exists.

Read More »

A photo of what looks like a creepy zombie foot peeking from under a log has been doing the rounds on Twitter this week, confusing a lot of people and blowing the minds of others.

Believe it or not, this picture shared online by Indian Forest Service officer Susanta Nanda isn’t taken out of a horror movie, nor is it showing the toes of an actual zombie or a real-life White Walker. Nanda actually challenged his followers to identify the animal, which was just as misleading as the photos, because what you’re looking at isn’t an animal but a fungus aptly named “Dad Man’s Fingers”.

Read More »

Thai social media has been abuzz about a particular skin whitening cream after a number of online promoters published before and after photos which suggested that the cream worked a bit too well.

Skin whitening creams are big business in South-East Asia, with many brands competing to attract the millions of people obsessed with having a fairer complexion. One of the best ways to do that is social media promotion, only some so-called influencers often try too hard when pitching a product to their audience, as was recently the case with a whitening cream called Milk Lotion Whitening Skin. Before-and-after pictures doing the rounds online this past week showed some pretty dramatic changes, with users’ skin going from light brown to a macabre white.

Read More »

Benny Harlem is not only one of the most successful hair influencers on Instagram, but he’s also a Guinness Record holder, for the world’s tallest high-top fade.

California-based male model and artist Benny Harlem rose to fame in 2016, when photos of his impressive afro hairstyle went viral on social media. The fact that his daughter Jaxyn, who obviously inherited his hair genes, also featured in most of these photos only made them more popular. Harlem has always been a promoter of natural hairstyles and he has instilled the same kind of love in his daughter from a very young age. To maintain their regal locks looking fresh, Benny says that he and Jaxyn only use natural shampoo that they make at home, using natural ingredients.

Read More »

A 40-year-old Thai woman has been getting attention on Asian social media for her ingenious strategy of selling second-hand clothes online. Since most of her garments come from dead people, she decided to cosplay as a zombie during online livestreams.

40-year-old Kanittha Thongnak, had been selling second-hand clothes on the streets of Chon Daen, in northern Thailand, for three years when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and while she never made huge profits, she could at least support herself. Things changed drastically once the lockdown came into effect, so like many other vendors, she decided to try her luck online. Selling second-hand clothes, most of which were left behind by the deceased, was always a taboo niche, but the lockdown only made things worse. Kanittha only had a handful of viewers during her livestreaming sessions and hardly made any sales, but luckily she came up with a brilliant idea – to embrace the thing people feared the most about her job by becoming an undead.

Read More »

We all know many of the stars and online influencers we follow on social media use all kinds of tricks to enhance their image, but a recent Chinese duo revealed just how far digital editing can go, by comparing their altered social media photos to the original versions.

Exposing online idols has been a very popular pastime on Chinese social media lately, with dozens of reported cases of internet celebrities with thousands, sometimes millions of followers exposed as frauds after accidentally turning off their filters and revealing themselves as looking totally different than what their fans thought. But this story is about a peculiar case involving a pair of social media idols who recently exposed themselves, by comparing the original photos of themselves to the altered ones that they usually posted on their profiles.

Read More »

A viral TikTok video of what looks like a concrete fence decorated with hundreds of iphone 6 smartphones has been doing the rounds online in Asia, sparking a heated debate about its authenticity.

Ok, so the iPhone 6 isn’t the newest Apple handheld, but I actually have a couple of friends who can’t afford to upgrade to a newer iPhone and are very happy with their sixth generation Apple smartphone, so to see this model used as decorative tiles for a fence was a bit of a shock. And I apparently wasn’t the only one surprised by the TikTok video posted by Vietnamese user @minhhienapple last week, as his clip showing the fence of a rural home decorated with hundreds of iPhones has so far been viewed over 1.7 million times.

Read More »

“Chiseled physique” is not a phrase you would normally use to describe the appearance of a 6-year-old boy, but in the case of Arat Hosseini, the shoe fits perfectly, as they say.

Instagram star, soccer prodigy or expert gymnast are just some of the flattering labels people have used to describe Arat Hosseini over his short but very eventful life. He first made headlines around the world a couple of years ago when a video of what many originally assumed was a girl dribbling opponents on the soccer pitch went viral on social media. That ‘girl’ turned out to be a long, dark haired Iranian boy whose father had been training to become an athlete since before he could walk. Soon pictures of his tiny six-pack abs and videos of his training routines were doing the rounds on the internet, and Arat’s career as an international social media star took off.

Read More »

Restaurants have been among the most hard-hit businesses by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, but one venue in Bangkok, Thailand has come up with an ingenious way to stay afloat in these troubled times – using hunky models as food deliverymen.

76 Garage, a restaurant in Bangkok’s Lat Phrao District, was known for its attractive and friendly staff long before the new coronavirus turned the whole world upside down, but now the owners of this popular eatery are actively relying on their reputation for having attractive male staff to boost their revenues. Last month, 76 Garage launched an ingenious promotional offer, which allows anyone in a 5-kilometer radius to have their food delivered by a muscular hunk if they order costs 300 baht ($9.5) or more. Not only do customers get some eye-candy with their food, but they can also have their picture taken with the friendly deliverymen, if they so desire.

Read More »

Believe it or not, the Vietnamese province of An Giang, in the Mekong Delta, is less known for its breathtaking natural attractions than for the giant loaves of bread that went viral online a couple of years back.

It all started in 2018, when lifestyle and entertainment website Brightside published a list of the world’s strangest foods, including a giant loaf of bread that was supposedly very popular in Vietnam’s An Giang province. There were those who claimed the accompanying photos of the bread were either photoshopped or shot from a certain angle to create the illusion that they were much larger than ordinary loaves, but then other photos and videos of the unusual bread started going viral online. Vietnamese media started giving the giant loaves a lot of attention, and soon the whole world knew about the now famous giant bread of An Giang.

Read More »

“A group where we all pretend to be ants in an ant colony” has to be one of the most popular and at the same time strange Facebook groups ever created. It’s basically 1.8 million people pretending they are ants and worshiping their queen.

Being stuck at home for weeks on end makes people do crazy and unusual things, and the rise of Facebook’s now famous “ant group” is a perfect example. Created in June of 2019, A group where we all pretend to be ants in an ant colony numbered a respectable 100,000 members in march of 2020, but then the Covid-19 pandemic started wreaking havoc everywhere prompting social distancing and isolation measures, and the number of members skyrocketed to over a million in less than two months. At the time of this writing, the Facebook group where everyone “worships the Queen and do ant stuff” has over 1.8 million members.

Read More »

Looking at photos of Chinese cosplayer CROME拉面猫就是星空萌 dressed up as some of the most famous anime heroines, you would never guess that the person under all that makeup and female clothes is a man.

A former art teacher, CROME拉面猫就是星空萌 now works as a full-time cosplayer, regularly posting new photos and updates for his legion of online fans, attending events and working on new costumes. He reportedly started trying on women’s clothes in secret, in 2007; it was nothing fancy, he didn’t experiment with makeup at the time, and he didn’t tell anyone about it, but he considers those days the true beginning of his female cosplaying career. It wasn’t until 2012 that he was comfortable enough to go out in public dressed as one of his favorite anime characters.

Read More »

A 35-year-old Russian influencer got a lot of backlash after announcing her upcoming marriage to the 20-year-old stepson she helped raise for 10 years.

Marina Balmasheva, who rose to fame in Russia for documenting her weight-loss adventure online, is getting a lot of attention these days, because of her controversial new romantic relationship. Shortly after divorcing her 45-year-old husband, to whom she had been married for 1o years, the Instagram influencer announced that she was romantically involved with her 20-year-old stepson, Vladimir. The couple reportedly plan on tying the knot in the near future and having children of their own…

Read More »

Lee Su Jin, a 51-year old dentist from South Korea, has amassed quite an impressive online following thanks to her incredibly youthful looks.

The first time we featured Lee Su Jin on Oddity Central was back in 2016, when photos of her went viral on Asian social media, along with the heart-to-believe information that she was 48-years-old. It turned out her age was correct, and we subsequently learned that she was already popular in her native South Korea, having already appeared on several television shows. She has since solidified her reputation as a “goddess of eternal youth”, as the years keep rolling by, but she simply refuses to age.

Read More »

Let’s face it, the internet is full of photos of beautiful girls, but it’s not every day that you stumble upon beauty that takes your breath away. 11-year-old Amina Ependieva is one such striking beauty.

Despite getting a lot of attention on Russian social media over the last five months, Amina Ependieva remains a very mysterious figure. Discovered by Chechen photographer Amina Arsakova, the 11-year-old made quite an impression when photos were posted on Arsakova’s Instagram account. Her post usually received about 1,000 likes on average, but the photos of Ependieva received over 10,000 likes, and hundreds of comments either praising her unearthly beauty or asking if she was a real person.

Read More »