New rebrand just dropped. Please Like Me has a whole new vibe and we are thrilled to finally share it with you. This newsletter is a weekly group project by the girlies of the BuzzFeed News social news team — reporters Steffi Cao, Ikran Dahir, Ade Onibada, Kelsey Weekman, and me, your humble editor, Amber Jamieson— and now our design reflects that slightly chaotic scrapbook energy. Shout out to the endlessly patient art team of Ben King and Olive Burd. In recent months we've been rolling out new weekly Please Like Me columns and today we have an extra special one: "social media made me do it," with Steffi trying (and only mildly flopping) with a TikTok makeup trend. If you see products, trends, or something you'd love us to try out, drop us an email, tweet, or Instagram DM. And most importantly: don't forget to like, comment, share, and subscribe AKA please forward Please Like Me to your most Online friend and tell them to sign up (alternatively, send it to your friend who desperately needs our broken brains to help them understand the latest influencer and internet culture news). TYSM! |
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Madison Smieja was in the car with her family on the way to her great aunt Patsy's funeral when her phone buzzed with her daily BeReal notification. She recorded a quick selfie video of herself panicking that featured the caption, "pov: my Be Real went off," before snapping the BeReal photo — which takes a pic from both the front and back of a phone camera — of herself and her family, dressed in all black together in the church pew as they waited for the service to begin. "She was so greatly loved," the 19-year-old from Minneapolis told me. "I was sad to see her go, but I knew she would have wanted her family to be joyous that day." Smieja posted her aunt's funeral BeReal, with her smiling next to her sister and cousin, on TikTok. The post quickly got nearly 100,000 views. "We were all happy to see family we haven't seen in so long and we were just goofing around, and I thought it would be a funny way to honor her and that day," Smieja said. The BeReal app is having a moment right now, with people now prepared for their daily pic after months of practice. Regular users have gotten into a routine of knowing what they want to post or actively staging the setup — which has morphed into a TikTok challenge of asking strangers to take their photos, unaware the BeReal app will take a pic of them as well. Users either screen-record the process so that they can use the footage for their TikTok account or capture others using the app in the wild. Some will just be waiting for the perfect moment regardless of the allocated two-minute window, happy to post better content later. The popularity of the app has led to Instagram introducing a filter that copies the "dual photo" aspect of BeReal, but it hasn't taken off just yet. "It's such a fun way of being candid," Smieja said. She first got BeReal in May and hasn't missed a single day since downloading it. The randomness of the timing keeps it spicy. A search for "BeReal funerals" brings up dozens of TikToks, with the one video having 10 million views. Others are posting IUD appointments, toe surgery, and even a car accident. One girl posted a TikTok joking that she had taught her surgeon how to post a BeReal if the notification were to go off during her breast reduction surgery, while another made a meme about her BeReal alert coming through during a breakup conversation. While content featuring dark humor may seem to be the most likely to go viral, there are lots of people using the app to mark positive life highlights. Azaan Iqbal knew that he wanted to do something special to commemorate his graduation from the University of Manchester with an English and history degree last month. |
He'd been thinking about a selfie on the graduation stage, and then while he was awaiting his name being announced onstage, his phone buzzed with the iconic "⚠️It's Time To BeReal ⚠️" alert. "I heard the notification and everyone who had BeReal looked at each other," Iqbal told me. He got a friend to record him as he got onstage to receive his diploma to make sure he got footage from multiple angles. He said his family were very supportive, and he could hear his mom shouting, "Oh my god. That's my baby. That's my boy," when he posed onstage for the selfie. One person in the audience even commented on his TikTok afterward: "I was there! I loved this — you threatened to outshine my own child as the star of the graduation ceremony." His TikTok of the graduation BeReal now has over 160,000 views, with people tagging their friends and writing comments such as "us in two years." Although Iqbal has now taken a job at a recruitment agency, he has called himself "an aspiring full-time TikToker." Because of the nature of the app, which prevents likes or shared content, becoming a BeReal influencer is pretty much impossible — that's why people like Iqbal and Smieja are focusing on posting videos about their noteworthy photos in an app outside of it. The official TikTok account for BeReal actively encourages people by not only commenting on their videos but also posting its own viral content. As time goes on and more users join BeReal, TikTok might become reminiscent of Tumblr being inundated with Twitter screenshots prior to its eventual decline. As BeReal users remain reliant on third-party apps such as TikTok or Twitter to share their content, I am watching to see if any changes will happen to stop the most viral BeReal moments from taking place on a different platform. Until next time, Ikran | The term "Douyin makeup" has taken over my TikTok For You page, and nothing makes me want to try something more than a bunch of people telling me I should. Douyin makeup combines several East Asian beauty trends into one specific look that has trended all over the app, and is now being popularized in the West. The style has been called the Xiao Hong Shu look, or "Little Red Book look," because of its pink pigmentation. Asian American creators have primarily taken it up and made it viral on TikTok. In case you weren't familiar, TikTok is the international version of the app Douyin. They're both owned by ByteDance, and TikTok in essence has the same function as Douyin, but how you add people (Douyin has ID numbers, not usernames), how you discover trends and hashtags, and how you search and find content is all different. Which means Douyin trends that trickle over to TikTok are hard to trace back because the infrastructure is unique to the domestic version of the app. There are a few key features to the Douyin makeup trend. Pink eyeshadow under the eye and blush placed high on the cheeks is a must. The eye look has to highlight the undereye fat known in Korea as aegyo sal. Distinct and sparse eyelashes that are longest in the middle of the eye (think K-pop idol lashes) is achieved with individual fake lashes clumped together with mascara. The center of the lips is pigmented but fades out toward the upper and lower edges — the gradient lip look that has been one of the most recognizable East Asian makeup tricks since the early 2010s. And glitter. Lots of glitter. |
I had to try the Douyin makeup look twice, largely because it's far more finicky than I anticipated (here was my inspo photo). My fingers were smudged with mascara from trying to clump my lashes together, and I could have concealed the edges of my lips a bit better. Next time I think I might try to buy strip lashes specifically for this kind of look! Also, while I looked really pink IRL, it didn't exactly pick up on camera. However I think my aegyo sal is more highlighted here, and I did smack on a ton of glitter, which I think is the most important part. The Douyin makeup trend is so fun and introduces many interesting techniques that differ from the American ones I'm used to. I will be attempting it again! —Steffi |
Welcome to where we discuss online community micro dramas — thoughts, feelings, suggestions for us? Email pleaselikeme@buzzfeed.com |
As if furries haven't been through enough, a collective known as the Anthro West Open Organization (AWOO), multiple members of which have been linked to the far right (though the group denies any political association on its website), hosted a Free Fur All convention last weekend in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Concerns that the furry community has a far-right or Nazi problem have been spreading since 2017. But activists have been hard at work calling out radicalized individuals, many of whom are well known in the community. The majority of furries are not associated with the far right, and they say it's frustrating that they even have to denounce its hateful ideology. Backlash following the announcement of Free Fur All prompted AWOO to release a statement saying the venue had to change due to threats of unrest and declaring the conference "uncancelable." Once people started sharing photos of furries who were associated with Nazi icongraphy at the convention, other furries decided that, in addition to drawing attention to the extremist viewpoints, it was OK to make fun of those in attendance. Onlookers dubbed the convention "FashCon," a play on the failed DashCon for Tumblr fans that also had a sad-looking ball pit in the middle of a room. At one point, there seemed to be a live snake in the pit. One Twitter user said the spectacle looked like "the straight pride parade of furry conventions." |
Free Fur All included sparsely attended events, a furiety show, a fascinating group fursuit photo, a set from an anti-woke comedian, a deserted dance floor, Disney-themed karaoke, allegations of fursuit design theft, a solitary party light, live tortoises, and plenty of memes. Accounts with fursona profile photos did most of the teasing, but some furries cut through the noise to condemn the convention once again when it was over. "As funny and cringy as #FreeFurAll22 has been, we need to remember that these people are completely serious," @shinyraticate tweeted. "and there's more than just the ~80 ppl who went to oklahoma. there's SO many cop furs and military furs and american nationalists in other cons. This isn't a small problem." —Kelsey |
The girlies from the social news team share what's been living in our heads. |
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