by Brenna Ehrlich 12 mins ago

Well, this is quite the contrast to the bubbly birthday snap that Beyoncé shared this past weekend. Bey just posted a mysterious photo to Instagram and it looks like…she might be crying?

Captionless, the photo is a close-up of Bey’s face with what look to be artful mascara tracks wandering down her cheeks. The queen gives us no indication as to where the photo came from, but it does look suspiciously like album art — or, as it were, single art.

Could ‘Yoncé be planning to release new tunes soon? Our resident psychic, Licorice Root, did predict that upcoming music would deal with “heartbreak, pain, longing and triumphing over loss,” and the below photo certainly looks darker than images accompanying her previous, self-titled release.

We love ourselves a good myster-bey!

by Alex Zalben 38 mins ago

Art by Gavin Alaoen

On September 7, word started to fly around the Internet that Durex, the makers of finer safe sex products everywhere, were going to be releasing the most seasonally appropriate prophylactic ever made. Specifically, a pumpkin spice flavored condom:

Unfortunately for aficionados who would like to follow up their latte with a lotta something else, the picture is a hoax, as MTV News found out when we reached out to Durex.

“Durex has heard that people are saying we launched a ‘Pumpkin Spice’ condom,” Durex said in an official statement. “We can’t claim this one, but we do love it when people spice it up in the bedroom.”

Zing!

And though the pumpkin spice condoms aren’t real – and maybe shouldn’t be – the level of interest around them suggests that the safe sex industry might want to look outside the, er, box for other flavors. If so, we’ve got a few suggestions.

Birthday Cake

Gingerbread Latte

Peanut Butter

Potpourri

Spinach

Pulled Pork

No matter the flavor, you should protect yourself. Learn more about your birth control options at ItsYourSexLife.com.

by Brenna Ehrlich 16 mins ago

Hold onto your rapidly shrinking wallets — Twitter is introducing a new way to shop, all without leaving the microblogging service. That’s right, a “buy” button will now be nestled among those 140 characters. Right in time for Christmas, am I right?

Twitter announced the new feature Monday (September 8) via its blog, explaining that it’s launching the “buy” button with the likes of Eminem, Panic! At The Disco, Pharrell, Paramore and Wiz Khalifa — to name a very few accounts, which also include organizations like GLAAD and brands like Burberry.

So how exactly will you be able to buy, say, Em’s new single while scanning passive aggressive tweets from your ex and checking in with Miley Cyrus’ new art habit?

Basically, soon you’ll see a new “buy” button popping up in tweets from the aforementioned accounts, which will offer up products, services and opportunities that one can only purchase within Twitter. After tapping “buy,” you’ll be asked to enter in the usual payment info (address, credit card number, etc) — all without leaving Twitter. Once you’ve bought one item, this info will autofill and you’ll be able to spend money with a click from there on out. Dangerous, to be sure, if you’re as into buying special edition music merchandise as much as I am.

Still, for bands, this feature could be a boon — as artists with a strong social following will be able to more easily get concert tickets and tunes in the hands of the people ...

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by Brenna Ehrlich 2 mins ago

As Lorde’s “Royals” was inspired, in part, by baseball, it’s only fitting that the 17-year-old singer should have her own collectible card. For her show in Philly last Friday, it seems, The Mann Center created a custom baseball card for Ella.

“the mann made some cute lil baseball cards for tonight,” Lorde wrote on Instagram, sharing a snap of the card, which features an illustration of the Pure Heroine singer all kitted-out like a ballplayer. Although the purple-lipped one doesn’t really seem like the athletic type, the homage is actually fitting.

Lorde previously revealed in an interview with VH1 that her #1 hit was inspired, in part, by a photo she saw in National Geographic of Kansas City Royals’ legend George Brett, who spent his entire 21-year career with the team, led them to a World Series title in 1985 and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1999.

“I had this image from the National Geographic of this dude signing baseballs,” Lorde said. “He was a baseball player and his shirt said ‘Royals.’ And I was like ‘I really love that word,’ because I’m a big word fetishist, I’ll pick a word and I’ll pin an idea to that. It was just that word and I was like ‘This is really cool.’”

Eventually, she went on to meet the athlete.

This isn’t the first card Lorde has spawned, however. We created our own Ella collectible late last year, in ...

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by Brenna Ehrlich 13 mins ago

Beyoncé was pretty stoked with all the birthday wishes she got from the BeyHive last week. (And from us, we’d like to think.) So stoked, it seems, that she was doing backflips this past weekend — and in swimwear, no less.

Bey posted a snap to Instagram over the weekend, featuring the “Pretty Hurts” singer doing a backbend in a bikini, the caption reading: “Thank y’all so much for my birthday wishes! 33!!!!!”

Related: Will Beyoncé Have Another Baby? We Asked A Psychic

We hope she waited at least an hour after eating that cake Blake Lively whipped up for her before hitting the pool.

by Alicia Lutes 1 hour ago

Okay so this one has officially terrified us: the brave, intrepid, and intelligent folks over at asapSCIENCE have done it again. It’s no secret that social media and technological advances have had a huge effect on our society and the world at large. But did you know that it’s also changing us on a biological level? And not necessarily in the best ways?

It’s true and here’s the video proof to terrify you into never wanting to tweet an embarrassing #TBT selfie ever again (or will it?).

1. It’s As Addictive As Drugs To Our Brains

AsapSCIENCE

Though it’s mostly a psychological issue, it’s still a fascinating one: 5 – 10 percent of Internet and social media users are physical unable to control how much time they spend online. Why? Because the Internet is as addictive as drugs, and alter the brain in identical ways to drug use in the parts of our brain that control emotional processing, attention spans, and decision-making. Um, scary much?

2. Your Brain Cannot Block Out Distractions and Interferences

AsapSCIENCE

Forget the old adage that says social media users are better multi-taskers. Turns out frequent social media use actually makes people worse at it, unable to filter out distractions and white noise compared to those who use it less, making it harder to commit things to memory.

3. It’s Re-Wiring Our Nervous Systems

AsapSCIENCE

This might be the scariest of all. In the study, the participants’ brains essentially reacted to stimuli as a ...

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by Caitlin White 8 mins ago

In the wake of the scandal caused by the racist comments that Los Angeles Clippers’ owner Donald Sterling made, Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson has decided to sell his shares in the team after self-reporting a racist email from two years ago.

According to AP News Levenson sent the email in question approximately two years ago in August 2012 to the team’s co-owners and manager Danny Ferry. In the email he outlined his concerns about the team’s predominantly black fanbase and commented that the crowds were 70 percent black, the cheerleaders were black and the music choices were hip-hop, among other concerns.

An excerpt from the email touches on these things:

“My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a signficant season ticket base. Please don’t get me wrong. There was nothing threatening going on in the arean [sic] back then. I never felt uncomfortable, but I think southern whites simply were not comfortable being in an arena or at a bar where they were in the minority.”

Now, he has called the correspondence “inappropriate and offensive” and decided today (September 7) that he will sell his share in the Hawks.

“I have said repeatedly that the NBA should have zero tolerance for racism, and I strongly believe that to be true,” Levenson said in the statement. “That is why I voluntarily reported my inappropriate email to the NBA. After much long and difficult contemplation, I ...

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by Alicia Lutes 12 mins ago

Well that certainly took awhile. Reddit, the Internet’s favorite proverbial watering hole for all the weird, gross, fascinating, and terrible that humanity can conjure, has put an end to “The Fappening” and “Fappening” — the mega-sized subreddits that were created for, and contained, the 1,000s of stolen, personal photos of stars such as Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Jill Scott, Victoria Justice, and others. But don’t get all congratulatory towards the site just yet.

In a blog post from CEO Yishan Wong, it was explained that the website would not be changing any policies on its frequently dicey material, let alone banning wide swaths of content uploaded onto the site because “reddit’s platform is structurally based on the ability for people to distribute, promote, and highlight textual materials as well as links to images and other media.”

“We understand the harm that misusing our site does to the victims of this theft, and we deeply sympathize,” he explained, but insisted that reddit was “unlikely to make changes to our existing site content policies in response to this specific event.”

Moments later, the subreddits /r/TheFappening and /r/Fappening were banned, causing a slew of confusion amongst the site’s users, declaring it “a disservice by censoring content,” while most of the rest of the Internet cheered.

Reddit

In a more detailed post from one of the site’s systems administrator with the Read More →

by Britt Julious 29 mins ago

Dreamboat alert!

Tom Hiddleston continued fanning the flames of his status as Supreme Hottie with his latest stunt: crashing a music festival to perform a Hank Williams song.

Hiddleston made an unannounced appearance at Michigan’s Wheatland Music Festival where he performed Williams’ classic “Move It On Over.” The performance – equal parts dreamy and joyful, I might add – was not just a sporadic occurrence. The “Thor” villain is set to star in the biopic, “I Saw the Light” about the beloved American singer.

The film begins shooting in Louisiana in October, giving us an ample amount of time to prep for potential future appearances of Hiddleston singing the classics. Until then, check out a clip of his performance below and prepare to swoon. Did we mention he’s got a great American drawl for an Englishman?

by Alicia Lutes 13 mins ago

People in Bay Village, Ohio and folks around the country are rallying to support the victim of a truly terrible prank. On Thursday (September 4), a boy with Autism was conned into believing he was participating in an ALS Ice Bucket Challenge video only to have urine and fecal matter dropped on him by several bullying teens: a truly reprehensible act.

Now, a nationwide network of support for the teen has developed and his community has come together to reject this act of intolerance.

On Friday evening, a rally was held to show support, with WKYC.com reporting that people were chanting “No Hate in Bay” and “No room for hate” while wearing blue: the color brandished by many an Autism awareness group and also one of the colors of Bay Village High School.

“To me, it’s reprehensible… that these kids would take advantage of a vulnerable teenager,” explained Bay Village police chief Mark Spaetzel. He went on to say the video of the incident was one of the more disturbing things he’s ever seen in the entirety of his career in law enforcement.

Elsewhere, in the comments of a Cleveland.com story, many commenters echoed the sentiments of disgust for the prank and support for the bullied teen. User Davey Doodle wrote “As the father of two children on the Autism spectrum, this video underlines one of my many fears for my children. I can easily see my child in this video. He is ...

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