TikTok Changed the Meaning of a Follow 

Alex Burriss and Roi Fabito, known online as Alex and Roi Wassabi, have been making videos for 17 years. As “O.G. YouTubers” who have amassed over 10 million subscribers since the platform’s early days, they’ve been attending VidCon, an annual convention for fans to connect with their favorite online personalities, for nearly a decade. Back in the day, they used to know the vast majorit…

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Will Smith Addressed Slapping Chris Rock During His Oscars Acceptance Speech for Best Actor

Will Smith had a complicated night at the 2022 Academy Awards. He won his first Oscar for his lead performance as Venus and Serena Williams’ father, Richard Williams, in King Richard. But Smith spent the bulk of his speech addressing an unscripted and unsettling moment from earlier in the night when Smith walked up on stage and slapped Chris Rock. Smith had taken offense at a jok…

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What to Know About The Crown’s Sydney Johnson

The British royal family is not exactly known for its diversity, so it’s no surprise that the characters depicted in The Crown are predominantly white. But in its fifth season, the Netflix drama makes space for some of the people of color who were previously connected to the institution.

Airing on Nov. 9, the show—which Netflix has taken pains to emphasize is fictionali…

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The Story Behind ‘The Secrets of Hillsong’

The Secrets of Hillsong, a four-part FX documentary series streaming on Hulu on May 19, traces the rise and fall of the controversial megachurch Hillsong.

Expanding upon source material from a 2021 Vanity Fair exposé on the church, which revealed cracks in the church’s picture-perfect facade, the series features interviews with former p…

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The Economic Impact of the Eras Tour

You don’t have to be a Swiftie to have been touched in some way by Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, a stadium arena experience that kicked off in March. The tour, which pays homage to every era of the artist’s illustrious 17-year career, is set to become the biggest tour of all time only a third of the way through its run.

If you live in one of the 20 locales Swift, 33, performed…

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TikTok Trend Normalizes Disordered Eating

A viral new TikTok trend using audio of model Bella Hadid’s voice has raised concern online for normalizing disordered eating and making light of eating disorders.

The audio, originally taken from a video of Hadid from an i-D cover shoot, features the model’s voice saying, “My name, my name is Bella Hadid.” While it was originally set to a supercut of Hadid …

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Why Beyoncé Uses So Many Songwriters

A week ahead of its release, Beyoncé revealed the track list for her hotly anticipated upcoming seventh studio album, Renaissance. The album will drop in the wee hours of the morning, at midnight on July 29, though it reportedly leaked two days ahead of its scheduled release. A single which dropped in June, “Break My Soul,” suggested that the album might be stro…

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What to Know About the Defamation Trial Between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard As It Resumes

After a scheduled weeklong break, the high-profile defamation trial between actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard resumed on May 16. The trial, which began on April 11 in Fairfax, Va., centers on a defamation lawsuit Depp filed against Heard in 2019 over a 2018 Washington Post op-ed she wrote about domestic abuse.

In the piece, Heard referred to herself as a survivor of domestic ab…

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Zac Efron Delivers The Greatest Beer Run Ever

Former Disney Channel heartthrob and song-and-dance man extraordinaire Zac Efron should be a much bigger star than he is, though maybe it’s better this way: those of us who love him can be happy whenever he shows up, without having to worry about Efron overkill. In Peter Farrelly’s Greatest Beer Run Ever, Efron plays Chickie Donohue, a young Merchant Mariner from the Manhat…

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