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Unaired 'Selfie' episodes will get a second chance on Hulu

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The ABC comedy Selfie got the axe after seeing lackluster ratings, but its unaired episodes will have an afterlife on Hulu

On Nov. 24, series creator Emily Kapnek announced on Twitter that six unaired episodes would air on the streaming site. ABC canceled the show earlier this month, after just seven episodes. 

Perhaps the show would have fared better if it wasn't attempting to be a modern retelling of My Fair Lady. Karen Gillan (Doctor Who) plays Eliza Dooley, a narcissistic, social-media-obsessed woman who doesn't quite understand life without virtual followers. Her coworker Henry Higgs (John Cho) is enlisted to help her "rebrand" and interact IRL. Still, Cho and Gillan's comedic chemistry is solid, and Cho in particular is the funniest part of the show, as the straight man to Gillan's bumbling, free-spirited Eliza. It was also notable that an Asian actor was playing the lead role, not something we often see on prime time. 

But viewers didn't quite latch on to the social-media-centered premise, which did feel a bit patronizing and unrealistic in its portrayal of Internet-obsessed millennials. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the show's debut only captured 5.3 million viewers, and that number went down as the show went on. 

The first unaired episode debuts today. 

H/T The Hollywood Reporter | Screengrab via Hulu 


Rapper Killer Mike delivers stunning onstage speech after Ferguson verdict

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Last night, Run the Jewels, a hip-hop duo comprised of rapper Killer Mike and rapper/producer El-P, played a show at the Ready Room in St. Louis, Mo. At the same time, about a 20-minute drive north, the city of Ferguson, Mo., was tearing itself apart in the wake a grand jury's decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for fatally shooting Michael Brown.

During the performance, Killer Mike, whose real name is Michael Render, gave an impassioned speech about what was happening only a few miles away.

(Warning:Video contains strong language.)


"I would like to give all thoughts and prayers to all the people who are out there peacefully protesting," he said, before paraphrasing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "I also give thoughts and prayers [to those] who could not hold that anger in because riots are only the language of the unheard."

He continued: 

"We usually come on to Queen’s '[We Are the] Champion[s]' and I just gotta tell you today that, man, no matter how much we do it, no matter how much we get s**t together, s**t comes along and kicks you on your a**, and you don’t feel like a champion. So tonight, I got kicked on my a** when I listened to that prosecutor [Bob McCulloch, who failed to secure a conviction for Wilson]."

Choking back tears, Mike talked about how much he fears for his two sons growing up in a country where they can be killed by police with impunity.

"It is not about race, it is not about class, it is not about color," the Atlanta native added, reflecting on his own mortality by noting that both he and El-P are the same age Dr. King was when the the civil rights leader was assassinated by a white supremacist. "It is about what they killed him for. It is about poverty, it is about greed, and it is about the war machine. I might go tomorrow, I might go the day after, but there's one thing I want you to know: It is us agains the m*****f*****g machine."

On that note, the band immediately launched into a blistering performance of its eponymous song, "Run the Jewels."

This show wasn't the first time Mike had rendered his opinion on Ferguson.

Four months ago, he posted a photo on Instagram of Brown's mother, Lesley McSpadden, and accompanied it with a plea for the recognition of the fundamental humanity of African-Americans.


He followed that post up with an essay in Billboard magazine about the social problems underlying the chaos in Ferguson. He wrote:

We trust police with the power of life and death and with that trust comes a greater responsibility to be better than the current standard of policing I see across America everyday. Being a cop must be hard. My dad was one, and never wanted any of his children to follow in his footsteps. Being a cop is often seeing the worst of the human condition and behavior. With all of that said, there is no reason that Mike Brown and also Eric Garner are dead today -- except bad policing, excessive force and the hunt-and-capture-prey mentality many thrill-seeking cops have adapted.

According to Metacritic, the group's recently released album, Run the Jewels II, is the best-reviewed hip-hop album of 2014.

On a related note, Public Enemy just reissued both It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Fear of a Black Planet.

Photo via k.par.photo/Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Let YouTube and Vine stars destroy objects you hate in this new webseries

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Do you ever get so mad that you just need to smash something? Thanks to Astronauts Wanted's newest series, you can have YouTube and Vine stars do the smashing for you.

SmashUp pairs YouTubers and Viners with objects that viewers suggest on Twitter, then documents them destroying those objects in high definition glory. You almost can't ask for a purer form of interactive video entertainment.


The series will feature digital stars like Scotty Sire, The Gabbie Show, Vincent Cyr, and Kaitlin Witcher, who between them boast millions of followers. Fans are encouraged to use the hashtag #SmashUp to start suggesting items to obliterate, although in an unfortunate wrinkle, that hashtag is already in use among fans of a card game with the same name, so things are apt to get confusing until the web series takes off on December 1.

H/T VideoInk, screengrab via Astronauts Wanted / YouTube.

Taylor Kitsch and Rachel McAdams to star in 'True Detective' Season 2

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HBO's True Detective Season 2 has two more cast membersFriday Night Lights' Taylor Kitsch has been added in a major role, and Rachel McAdams and Kelly Reilly (Black Box) are slated as the female leads. 

Kitsch will be playing Paul Woodrugh, a police officer with the California Highway Patrol who is "running from a difficult past." McAdams plays detective Ani Bezzerides, while Reilly is playing wife to Vince Vaughn's Frank Semyon. In September, Vaughn and Colin Farrell were announced as part of the cast, with Farrell playing detective Frank Velcoro. 

Photos from the Los Angeles set have already started popping up online, including shots of Farrell looking especially detective-y.  The plot of Season 2 hasn't been revealed yet, but fan theories are already abundant. 

Fast & Furious' Justin Lin will direct the first two episodes. 

H/T Entertainment Weekly | Photo via Eva Rinaldi/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

This new photo of Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily is terrible PR for 'Pan'

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The first images from the new Peter Pan reboot were published yesterday and, oh boy, does Hugh Jackman look badass in his Blackbeard costume. Amongst photos of pirates and flying ships, the poster of Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily almost slipped under the radar. 

Almost.

Rooney Mara was, as they say, a “controversial” casting choice. Pan takes a lot of liberties with with the classic Peter Pan story, but casting a white woman as Tiger Lily is a more meaningful decision than rewriting Captain Hook as an “Indiana Jones-like figure.

Ridley Scott’s Biblical epic Exodus: Gods and Kings has spent the past few months being publicly criticized for selecting an all-white cast to play African and Middle Eastern characters, and Pan should expect a similar backlash. Basically, there is no good explanation for rewriting a Native American character so she looks like this:

On the one hand, it doesn’t look like they're trying to give Rooney Mara a supposedly Native American appearance, as The Lone Ranger infamously did with Johnny Depp. This isn’t an attempt at redface, but that indicates they've simply deleted the character’s racial background. The new trailer includes a mention of her "tribe," which seems to be made up of people wearing brightly-colored fantasy costumes.

When Mara was first confirmed to play Tiger Lily, the Wrap claimed that director Joe Wright was trying to make the film “very international and multi-racial, effectively challenging audiences’ preconceived notions of Neverland and reimagining the environment.” The end result is a movie where the central characters—Peter, Captain Hook, Blackbeard, and Tiger Lily—are all white. The "multi-racial" part presumably refers to the fact that one or two supporting characters like Hook's sidekick Smee are being played by actors of color.

Admittedly, Peter Pan is not known for its sensitive portrayal of Native American culture. The story has been adapted multiple times since the debut of J.M. Barrie’s play in 1904, but few versions have dealt well with Tiger Lily. Disney’s iconic animated movie even includes the song “What Makes the Red Man Red?” Still, this doesn't mean Peter Pan's potentially racist subtext can be removed by rewriting Tiger Lily as a white character.

Pan was an ideal opportunity to write a respectful version of Tiger Lily, one that moved beyond the stereotypes of earlier adaptations. Instead, the filmmakers have taken the easy way out by erasing Tiger Lily's Native American background—a decision that is implicitly racist in itself.

Photo via Warner Bros./jposters

'Dancing With the Stars' levels up with a Super Mario-inspired freestyle

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This season of Dancing With the Stars has given us plenty of indelible pop culture moments, perhaps the most memorable being Alfonso Ribeiro breaking out his signature Fresh Prince of Bel-Air moves with the long-awaited Carlton dance. But last night, a performance courtesy of Duck Dynasty star Sadie Robertson and her partner Mark Ballas gave the crowd a Nintendo-inspired throwback that literally took things to the next level.

After a samba performance that earned the twosome a 38 out of 40, the duo decided to step up their game with a freestyle performance inspired by everyone's favorite plumber and princess. As soon as the 8-bit music began to play and the two emerged from their respective green pipes, it was game over as the duo performed a Super Mario Bros. routine complete with Luigi, Toad, and of course a question mark block.

The freestyle earned the duo a perfect score, advancing them to the finale and sent YouTuber Bethany Mota back to her a life online faster than a Koopa shell. 

H/T Kotaku | Photo via DancingWiththeStars/Youtube

DJ Flula Borg beatboxes Christmas music, magazine staffers aren't impressed

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DJ Flula Borg normally creates his beats for an adoring audience of almost half a million subscribers, but on a recent trip to the Entertainment Weekly offices, his antics were falling a little flat.

The German performer made an appearance in an empty cubicle to beatbox popular Christmas tunes like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman.” He was probably expecting a diferent reception from the reporters and staffers around him. 


The EW employees may look confused, but perhaps that's just because a rising movie star is in their midst. Flula was recently spotted in thePitch Perfect 2 trailer as the lead male vocalist for Das Sound Machine, the Bellas' rival World Championship group. Pitch Perfect 2 premieres May 15, 2015, so expect to see a lot more Flula in your pop culture coming soon.

H/T Tubefilter | Screengrab via Entertainment Weekly.

'Staff Room' webseries tries to show us the secret lives of teachers

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When you think about the people you know who became teachers, you may shudder just little, especially if they weren't the judicious, level-headed, authority-minded kind of people that you'd want to see guiding your children through a crucial stage of their development. In some cases, your teacher friends may be people you wouldn't trust with your plants while you were away.

But as long as you're friends with one teacher, you'll undoubtedly think back on the stern, stentorian figures who were instrumental in your own development. You'll ask yourself: Was this what your teachers were like when they were younger?  

A new British webseries called Staff Room won't answer all your questions about teachers, but its depiction of them—swimming in career uncertainty, booze, and relationship failure—will make you want to hop in a time machine, set it for high school, and snoop around the faculty lounge for gossip.  

Staff Room, written and directed by its two stars, Adam Brown and Ryan McDermott, is hardly revelatory in its premise, nor is it particularly funny. Sure, there are some deft call-backs, but these are cancelled out by a glut of predictable punchlines. Yet to its credit, Staff Room brings in Brian Capron to play the principal. Capron is best known in Britain for playing a serial killer on EastEnders, and he brings an infectiously pleasing ignorance to the job of school principal.

What's interesting about Staff Room is that the schoolchildren for whom everyone toils are never spoken of, let alone seen. Kids often imagine that following each class period, their teachers leave the classroom and retreat to the break room to talk about their students. What else, frankly, would they have to talk about? Kids see teachers as remarkably boring people who have only their students as common ground. But the teachers from Staff Room have relationships—however dysfunctional—and they treat their profession as a regular job rather than the undeniable calling that some people suggest teaching to be.


That this version of teachers never occurs to so many students says a lot about our younger, self-obsessed selves. Only after watching this series do things like math teachers retreating to the computer room begin to make sense. If Staff Room is to be believed, below the guarded professional guises lurk a seething tangle of immorality. It's enough to make one feel sad about missing it all.  

Despite all this, Staff Room isn't the comedy that it wants to be. It’s hard enough to get noticed when your writing is razor sharp. This series raises a host of interesting questions about our childhoods, but thanks to its tired dialog and flat acting, it mostly inspires apathy.

Screengrab via Wildseed Comedy/YouTube


Netflix's 'Example Show' is the greatest thing you can stream while high

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On one hand, the Internet is a wonderful, lush cascade of joy and information. On the other, far less cared-about hand, this explosion of access has quickly erased the custom of secret-sharing via bargain bins and grainy VHS.

Case in point: Example Show, a glitchy, trippy 11-minute video shot on Netflix’s Los Gatos, Calif., campus in 2010.

Throughout middle school, I recorded videotape for my personal collection and, more importantly, for sharing with my friends. I spent hours nabbing episodes of The Sifl and Olly Show, collecting music videos (I once stayed up way past my bedtime to finally put the “Mo Money, Mo Problems” video to tape), trading street fights, porn (often bestiality?), and Faces of Death. The rarer the find, the sweeter the showings. There were so many moments of bliss, sitting on a friend’s living room rug, giddily swapping tapes, huddled in cathode blue.

The particular happiness of discovery, the unique satisfaction of sharing, has vanished.

Of course, this tradition of “content trading” continues in Gchat windows, the dark expanses of Vine, and drunken pre-games kneeling at the altar of YouTube tabs: “Oh, you have to see this one.” But with the Web’s massive library so easy to navigate, the particular happiness of discovery, the unique satisfaction of sharing, has vanished. Which is why the accessible technical video on Netflix’s servers, Example Show, is my favorite find in years.

Although not as immediately comedic as Netflix’s glitched synopses, this “show” is a slow burn. Example Show is a seemingly random collection of scenes used to test audio sync and frame rates. The clips will make complete sense to anyone in the AV industry: a running fountain; shots of our hero running, moonwalking, ball-bouncing, juggling; a monologue from Julius Caesar performed with violent diction. 

I’m sure you’ve had the displeasure of trying to watch your favorite show with the dialogue a fraction of a second late, giving that slight “kung-fu dub” effect (an occurrence my parents seem to never notice: “It’s fine! Just watch the pictcha show! Grissom’s about to solve the case!”). That, among other technical reasons, is why this video exists. 

Needless to say, this makes for great drugged viewing.

Although uploaded four years ago, and covered on HuffPo and Gigaom, the show is largely unknown. I haven’t told one person about this who already knew what it was, which allows me to show them for the first time, and I get a good fraction of the joy I experienced in sharing a video of my seventh-grade math teacher losing his shit on the local news about Colorado’s property tax. 

There are many enjoyable scenes, ranging from comedic to soothing, which I won’t detail here. I hope you can enjoy them with fresh eyes. The 293 member reviews also contribute to the comedy fodder, as does the repeated subtitle of the never-heard line “There’s no crying in baseball!”

Our “actor” is a poster child for those dedicated to perfect sound—if you went to film school or recording college, you’ve undoubtedly met a version of this man. 

The episode description reads: “An example of a show. An example of a show. An example of a show. An example of a show. An example of a show.” Needless to say, this makes for great drugged viewing, especially if you’re a huge stoner like me. But more than that, I suggest watching it late at night, in a room with your closest friends—preferably some who’ve never heard of it before.

Screengrab via Netflix

Seth Rogen's sad tale of Thanksgiving denial

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Pity poor Seth Rogen. Who could imagine a childhood without turkey and all the trimmings?

According to Rogen’s one minute vignette on Funny or Die, while growing up in Vancouver, B.C., his parents informed him that Jews did not celebrate Thanksgiving. Woefully, Rogen sat peering out the window as his friends and their families gathered in late November for a yearly megafeast.

After arriving in America, Rogen learned from some Canadian friends (depicted in this skit as The MacKenzie Brothers) that Jews actually did celebrate Thanksgiving. Sad over missed meals of Big Bird, stuffing, and the aftereffects of l-tryptophan, the actor finally was able to honor the pilgrims thanks to his then-girlfriend, now-wife and her clan.

If the Funny or Die bit is accurate, Rogen has yet to confront his parents about their deception. It could have been worse—his parents could have told him Jews don't celebrate Christmas.

Screengrab via Funny Or Die

Spotting the next generation of YouTube stars at Playlist Live

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Los Angeles may be the epicenter of YouTube culture, but all eyes were on New Jersey this past weekend as fans, creators, and businesses descended on Secaucus—just a few miles out from New York City—for Playlist Live Tri-State, a spinoff of the flagship convention annually held in Orlando.

It wasn’t the first time fans had the chance to meet their favorite YouTubers—VidCondraws thousands every year in Anaheim, DigiTour goes all over the country (most recently this past summer), and Fullscreen, a multichannel network that represents some of the biggest content creators around, created INTOUR so fans could interact with creators.

As Buffalo cleaned up after a monstrous snowstorm northwest of Playlist Live, New Jersey had its own share of wintry weather, something many of the guests who traveled across the country to attend weren’t used to. 

This was most noticeable in the tented garage next to the Meadowlands Exposition Center, where fans waited hours to meet their idols. It’s where Playlist Live put many of the YouTube meetups, but the promise that the garage would be heated didn’t last long—the fire department turned off most of the heat. Fans had to wait in 30-degree weather for the chance to talk to YouTubers like Tyler Oakley, Hannah Hart, and Troye Sivan.

While those creators may not be household names, for many teens, they’re even more popular than traditional celebrities. They’ve joined Beyoncé in a national campaign, they’ve become New York Times bestselling authors, they’ve reached the top of the iTunes charts (and even hit the Billboard charts), and they’re getting on television. Their fans may help them win a reality competition. But many of them also know how they got to where they are today.

With only a space heater more suitable for an office desk to keep the YouTubers warm, they greeted each of their fans with the same enthusiasm as the last. Everyone there may know Hannah Hart’s name and could probably point her out in a crowd, but with every new fan who approached, she put on a smile and said, “Hi, I’m Hannah.”


While YouTube’s bustling industry is centered in Los Angeles, some hubs remain in New York, including a new YouTube Space in Chelsea that opened earlier this month. But if you want to make it as a full-time YouTuber, you should probably move to L.A.

The first day of Playlist Live, as with VidCon, the focus was on the creators who were interested in learning about the industry and how to make it. They could find out the pros and cons of joining an MCN, growing their channel, and how to build that channel into a business from fellow creators who already did it. No matter how much business jargon and chatter they passed on, many of them stressed one thing: it’s still about community.

YouTube is the top social network among teens, Epicsignal’s Brendan Gahan said during his keynote speech, with around 97 percent of them actively watching videos, and many of the creators they watch are getting better numbers than television.

“Being a fan really stands for something,” he added.

Traditional media has often scoffed at YouTube and new media, but just as movie stars transition to television, more celebrities are crossing over to YouTube and Vine. Pitbull is working on multiple webseries with Endemol and meteorologist Al Roker—who moderated “A New Wave of Talent: Working with the Next Generation”—is experimenting with the six-second videos. A recent collaboration with Thomas Sanders, a Vine star who has more than 4.3 million followers, has been looped over 3 million times.


“Everything changes, but yet, at the end of the day, in a sense, it’s still television,” Roker told the Daily Dot. “Whether you’re looking at it on a screen on your phone, or a tablet. And people watch content for people. All these young people out here—they’re like the stars that you used to see growing up, when I saw TV personalities. These are the same people, they’re just on a smaller screen. They don’t need necessarily a traditional television studio or broadcast network to be stars.”

YouTubers are actually the next reality stars, Big Frame’s Lisa Filipelli argued. But instead of having a network edit in drama, the creators control what we see. The creators, along with the people who are only just starting out, have to maneuver a thin line between staying authentic and selling out when they accept endorsements—something that might help creators early in the process make that move to Los Angeles.

Something that’s easier to determine? What not to reveal in a video. Michael Buckley, Hannah Hart, and Olga Kay advised creators not to put every aspect of their lives in videos—and they’re not alone.

“I think there’s a pretty clear line,” Meg DeAngelis said, in regards to what she does and doesn’t put on camera. “I think of [my fans] as friends, so I pretty much share everything, except [if] it has to do with my safety and my address, I’m not gonna share that. But everything else, I’m really, really open about, to be honest.”


It’s easy for people to compare the young teen girls who screamed whenever one of their favorite YouTubers walked by to the fangirls of the ’60s spotting the Beatles. Impromptu YouTube and Vine meetups caused pedestrian traffic jams in the Meadowlands Expo and many of the young (mostly female) fans started to shout whenever they spotted a YouTuber. Unlike VidCon, when it came to the actual lines, things were more organized.

In one of the more extreme examples, fans crowded the doorway of a smaller panel room Connor Franta had just left. As he was lead away by his manager and event security, you could hear them discuss what had just happened. One girl asked if someone grabbed Franta’s hair when he walked out of the room, while another shouted, “I grabbed his abs! I grabbed his abs!”

One girl asked if someone grabbed Franta’s hair when he walked out of the room, while another shouted, “I grabbed his abs! I grabbed his abs!”

In reality, the comparison is more complicated than that.

Unlike fans of the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, or new bands like One Direction and 5SOS, YouTube fans get an intimate look into the creators' lives, not just what they may end up revealing in interviews or tweeting out. You don’t always see them on their best days. Even with the YouTube fame, they’re living a mostly regular life. They’ll share insecurities. Even if they are marketed to death, many of them still feel real and authentic.

They’re not just idols. They’re like your friends, even if some fans will never get to meet them.

“I work real hard doing science, and people like [Hannah Hart] really help me de-stress,” Casey Zakroff explained. He attended the business panels on Friday to learn more about the industry and wants to make educational videos to encourage people to get into science.

At 26, Zakroff is hoping there is a place for him on YouTube. He’s based in Cape Cod—not Los Angeles or London—so he’s unable to attend most of the conventions, and he’s trying to appeal to a smaller niche than vloggers.

While some attendees who would’ve benefited from a business pass may have been deterred by the price, they did get a first-hand look at what it takes to make vines during a Vine workshop. Collab’s Will McFadden and Eamon Brennan paired the audience off with a number of Vine stars to brainstorm and film a clip in 15 minutes, and then vote on the best one.

Creators are already inspiring a new generation of YouTubers: They're even influencing a 60-year-old bald man, as Roker put it to his fellow panelists.

“I’m actually here for that other aspect of starting a channel,” said Krissy Montuoro, who attended Playlist Live with her daughter, niece, and one of their friends. “I do [know what I’d make], but I don’t want to say it because I don’t want anyone to take my idea before I do it.”


Parents hung out in a nearby lounge set up specifically for them, and offered looks of exhaustion as their children, more energized than ever, became excited for the next big thing on stage. Some of them sat on rugs placed in the main room, armed with an iPad or a book to combat the boredom.

Some were baffled by it all, but others are informing themselves about the culture. After all, this could one day be a reality for their children.

“I have to tell you, I’m enlightened,” said Linda Kline, who came to Playlist Live with her 14-year-old daughter, Samantha. “My daughter wants to do this for a living, she wants to be a YouTuber. I kinda downplayed it because I want her going to school and having a traditional life. I now see that there are a lot more people like her here. I see why she fits into it more than the people at home.”

“My daughter wants to do this for a living, she wants to be a YouTuber."

Although Kline wants Samantha to keep a balanced life, she still wants to support her and is even buying her some of the items she’ll need, such as an iMac and a camera, for Christmas.

Even some of the volunteers are broadening their horizons.

“Actually, last night [my sister and I] were Googling everybody on YouTube just to make sure we recognized the guests,” Deb Newton, who volunteered to help with the YouTube meetups, told the Daily Dot. She was impressed with what she’d seen so far but wished it was a little bit warmer.

Noticeably missing from the convention was a conversation on the recent scandals in the YouTube community. A "Women on YouTube" panel only covered what it’s like to be a woman on YouTube, but panelists were asked more gender-neutral questions by the moderator. It’s a balancing act between covering issues many women are worried about and only talking about the issues. Jack & Dean, a YouTube duo with more than 395,000 subscribers, performed a song about consent for the crowd, who enthusiastically sang along.


Another panel, titled “I Came Out on YouTube,” brought some of the more prominent LGBTQ YouTubers together onstage, but it only represented part of the spectrum. Nobody was trans. Everyone was white, reflecting YouTube’s privilege problem.

“I went to the ‘I Came Out on YouTube’ panel and I’m pansexual, so that was something that inspired me to get into creating,” Emma said. “Because there’s one bi guy who has a base and then there’s a bunch of lesbian and gay YouTubers, but there’s no one who’s pan who’s really out there.”

It’s something the YouTube community is aware of and the panelists acknowledged, but they still have a long way to go. It may end up inspiring more people to speak out on YouTube about their experiences and become into the site’s next big stars.

Photos by Michelle Jaworski

Here are all the titles leaving Netflix Dec. 1

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It's time once again to say goodbye to all the titles leaving Netflix at the end of the month.   

You'll have to get your Dirty Dancing fix elsewhere. You'll also say goodbye to Mr. Mom and Mission Impossible III, leaving a chunk of films missing from your holiday binge-watching.

Here's the full list of what's disappearing Dec. 1: 

1941 (1979)

An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)

The Apostle (1997)

Audrey Rose (1977)

The Believers (1987)

Better Than Chocolate (1999)

Blood & Chocolate (2007)

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)

Chaplin (1992)

The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County (1970)

Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)

The Constant Gardener (2005)

Count Yorga, Vampire (1970)/The Return of Count Yorga (1971)

Cry-Baby (1990)

Dirty Dancing (1987)

Double Indemnity (1944)

En la Cama (2005)

Event Horizon (1997)

Eye for an Eye (1996)

Fairy Tale: A True Story (1997)

First Knight (1995)

Five Easy Pieces (1970)

Free Men (2011)

Funny Lady (1975)

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)

The Girl From Petrovka (1974)

Going Berserk (1983)

The Great Waldo Pepper (1975)

House of Voices (2004)

How to Frame a Figg (1971)

I'm Not Rappaport (1996)

Imagining Argentina (2003)

Invaders From Mars (1986)

Ishtar (1987)

Joe Gould's Secret (2000)

Joe Kidd (1972)

Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

King of the Hill (1993)

Lonely Hearts (2006)

Magic Trip (2011)

Magicians (2007)

Mission Impossible III (2006)

Minnie and Moskowitz (1971)

Monkey Shines (1988)

Mr. Mom (1983)

'Night Mother (1986)

Night of the Creeps (1986)

Opal Dream (2006)

The Other Side of the Mountain (1975)

The Other Side of the Mountain Part 2 (1978)

Our City Dreams (2008)

The Paper Chase (1973)

Paradise Alley (1978)

The Parole Officer (2001)

The Pirates of Penzance (1983)

The Presidio (1988)

The Promise (1979)

The Proposition (1998)

Reds (1981)

RoboCop 2 (1990)

School Ties (1992)

The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)

Spice World (1998)

Star Trek: Generations (1994)

Swashbuckler (1976)

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

They Might Be Giants (1971)

The Untouchables (1987)

The Vampire Lovers (1970)

Walker (1987)

Year of the Horse: Neil Young & Crazy Horse Live (1997)

Young Sherlock Holmes (1985)

H/T Now Streaming | Screengrab via Mission Impossible III/Paramount Pictures

How to make a webseries: A 'Zombie Basement' case study

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Just before Halloween, when the world is at its peak saturation of all things ghastly and ghostly, a 77-second teaser for a zombie-themed webseries dropped on YouTube. It packs a punch of high production values and a slate of recognizable names, but it was missing a key element: a release date. That’s because the fate of Zombie Basement is still undetermined.

The shifting attention of Hollywood to the digital space has inspired many to enter the Web world for creative endeavors, with more and more critical attention being placed on Web over traditional media. However, that doesn’t mean big budgets have always followed, and the nature of the medium leaves a lot of ideas fighting for far less cash than is available for even a subpar Hollywood film. It’s in that cutthroat environment that the creative forces behind Zombie Basement find themselves—on the hunt for the perfect way to fund their creativity.

The story of Zombie Basement begins with writer David Schneiderman, who started feeling creatively lethargic while working on Level Up on Cartoon Network.

“A couple years into it, you start feeling very hamstrung by the network and by the rules and regulations of what you can do,” explained Schneiderman. “It became for me a little bit like I couldn’t express myself all the way. So every Christmas I go to my in-laws house and I try to write something while I am there. I’d had this idea. I’m just going to write this little thing, and I think I was really just trying to fall in love with writing and creating again. The basic idea was Wayne’s World during a zombie apocalypse.”

With YouTube as one of the last forms of entertainment left on the planet, a duo of guys trapped at home broadcast an array of interviews, commentary, and “sports” (air hockey is all they have left) from their basement while zombies roam overhead. Their costars are the few remaining survivalists around them: Joel’s mom, a super hot neighbor, and competing YouTubers online.

Schneiderman sat on the idea, which he envisioned as a quick little thing that eventually snowballed into a proper 30-page pilot, as he continued to work on Level Up. As that series ended, his wife began to ask him over and over again when he was going to do something with what became known as Zombie Basement. It was Scheiderman’s wife, film editor Tia Nolan, who connected him with Brian Dannelly, best known for his work on cult film Saved!.

Nolan worked with Dannelly editing 2012’s Struck by Lightning, the indie screenwriting debut of Glee’s Chris Colfer. Dannelly and Schneiderman met, determined Zombie Basement was destined for the Web (not television, as initially thought), and went from there. Dannelly brought in fellow director and executive producer Randall Whittinghill to help create the world of Zombie Basement.

“We started thinking about all the opportunities you have with a webseries,” said Dannelly. “Shooting with GoPros, putting them on guns or helmets. We got excited about shooting this in a way that you couldn’t normally shoot for TV.”

Schneiderman says he doesn’t have to look far to understand the value of YouTube—just as far as his own children.

“I have an 8-year-old son, and his dream is to be a YouTuber,” he said. “Both my son and my daughter have YouTube channels. My son will sit around and watch his favorites, and it gave me a window into that world.”

Through that window, Schneiderman and the rest of the creative team have realized the possibilities on digital platforms that aren’t available in the traditional world where most of them have spent their creative time in the past, from transmedia opportunities to different types of filming techniques. Additionally, the world of webseries offered Schneiderman, Dannelly, and the rest of the creative team a welcome wave of creativity, even if their pockets aren’t deep enough to fully realize that creativity.

“I’m a writer; I get paid, a lot of the time, to write something that ends up sitting on the shelf,” explained Schneiderman. “You write pilot or a movie, and it doesn’t get made because the actor they wanted drops out, whatever. There’s a real desire on everyone’s part here to be making stuff. When you start thinking about the Internet, you start realizing the possibilities are really easy to achieve, and the stakes are a little bit lower because that cost to make something is reasonable, in Hollywood terms. For all of us, just making stuff feels great.”


To bring Zombie Basement from idea to reality, they decided to go ahead and shoot two episodes of the nine they had written, to be able to show potential investors exactly what they were capable of as a team. But that hinged on finding the perfect leads, Joel and Guffy, two affable guys surviving the zombie apocalypse and entertaining themselves with their own YouTube basement show. The search proved accidentally easy when they unknowingly stumbled on two real-life roommates, actors Daryl Sabara and Graham Rogers, who independently snagged auditions.

“We had just started, it was like a week and a half of being roommates,” explained Sabara, who plays Joel. “When we were living together, we’d run sides together, so I’d ran the Guffy sides with him a week before. The next week I got an audition for Joel, but I already knew the sides. The week after I went it, we both went in for a chemistry read.”

“We had such an advantage,” joked Rogers, who plays Guffy. “We’d worked out our own little handshakes, stuff like that.”

The rest of the cast is filled out by friends and favors. Schneiderman brought in Max Martini, a well-known action film actor. Several other Struck by Lightning alumni also joined forces, both behind the camera and in front of it, including Angela Kinsey and Rogers, who knew Dannelly from working on the film. Even Colfer himself makes a cameo as a “Celebrity Zombie” in the early episodes, and his fellow Glee star Ashley Fink takes on a main role as part of the competing YouTube series, Zombie Makeover.


But having a great idea, a script, and even a cast attached isn’t enough to realize the type of higher-budget project they’re intending. For now, Zombie Basement is just a trailer, but fans have already amped up their excitement, viewing it just shy of 10,000 times, which bodes well for an eventual release, although that’s not something the team expects to happen until 2015.

“We won’t be able to play the episodes until after the new year, but I would hope that we find that partner in order to make the rest of it by the end of the year,” said Schneiderman.

The Zombie Basement team is still in the exploratory stage, determining where to go to find the right kind of funding partner or partners. Many other series, especially those on the lower budget end like Classic Alice or The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy, have gone the self-funding route, although that’s not solely the domain of the indies. Even big-buzz projects with backing from digital strongholds have turned to crowdfunding, as Rooster Teeth did for upcoming film Lazer Team. The second season of super-popular Bee and Puppycat also relied on crowdfunding to get produced. However, despite having big names in entertainment attached, crowdfunding is not the first choice for Zombie Basement—although the team hasn’t ruled out completely.

“We thought of a couple different options for [crowdfunding], but we didn’t know if we could get the amount of money required to do it,” explained executive producer Thomas Hartmann, who worked to integrate brands into the initial episodes. The show features Roc Energy Drink, Lemonheads candies, Threadless shirts, and more. They’re open to more brand funding in the future, as well as potential partnerships with a distributor.

“I feel like we should say, ‘We have no idea what we’re doing,’” laughed Dannelly. “Our job is to make the best show that we can. If we thought about what we’re going to do [financially], I just don’t know this world. But as directors, we’re very aware that everything’s going to be on the Internet. You have to figure it out. but in the process we’ve learned that nobody knows anything.”

As for the potential distribution partners, Schneiderman says there haven’t been any negative responses to their work as they’ve started to show it around. However, the obstacle they see is finding a company that sees Zombie Basement as fitting in with their own creative mission.

“I think they have to figure out what their company does, and how this would fit into the mold of what their company does,” he said. “That’s sort of the rub. What we want is someone who joins us creatively as well as financially. We’re hoping someone will see the potential, and see how they can lend their expertise to our unit. As Brian says, we don’t know what we’re doing, except that we’re determined to keep this going.”

Screengrab via Zombie Basement/YouTube

Roseanne Barr entered the Bill Cosby conversation with a crude joke

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Comedian Roseanne Barr stepped into the Bill Cosby conversation with a now-deleted tweet containing a crude joke about Cosby, who is currently facing more than a dozen rape and assault allegations spanning multiple decades.

Early this morning, Barr tweeted a photo with the caption “tussle w bill cosby.” The photo was a close-up of her face, which was swollen and covered in blood. She then attached the photo to a tweet, adding, “U shoyld [sic] see that mfer.”

Barr later—of course—deleted the tweets, but she re-posted the picture on Twitter. She wasn't in a tussle with Cosby, she explained; it was something a lot more innocent. Granted, the real story doesn't make the photo any less gruesome—and it definitely makes getting a chemical peel less appealing.

In the past, Barr has said that she isn't a fan of censorship when it comes to comedy, and that includes crude or potentially offensive humor.

Although Cosby has been kind to Barr in the past, she is firmly on the side of the accusers, crude jokes and all.

H/T NY Daily News | Photo via monterey media/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Meghan Trainor wrote some Thanksgiving tunes for your terrible relatives

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It’s that time of year when we all remember the parts of Thanksgiving that make us dread the holiday.

Although there’s more than enough Christmas and holiday carols to get us through December, there’s very little fanfare when it comes to one of the most gluttonous, tryptophan-induced days of the year. Thankfully, “All About That Bass” singer Meghan Trainor already worked on an album covering the hits, and it’s guaranteed to apply to the entire family.

Start off with the delayed flights, serve up those awkward dinner guests, conversations, and racist relatives, and finish off by sneaking out to get drunk with your friends (and the people you went to high school with).

Wait, why do we come home for this again?

H/T Digg | Screengrab via Jimmy Kimmel Live/YouTube


Mansplaining gets shut down in this heroic hip-hop CNN remix

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Remember that catcalling video? Remember that unnerving conversation on CNN where author Steve Santagati tried to mansplain how women think and comedian Amanda Seales gave him epic side-eye?

You may have missed it, but it has a hip-hop remix and it’s pretty glorious. The video features all of the best eye-rolling moments and shut-it-down rebuttals from Seales chopped, edited, and looped to a catchy beat.

It’s a terrific antidote to the next time some troll tells you the “truth” about street harassment. Check it out and share it with your local mansplainer this holiday season.

Photo via The Garner Circle PR/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Comedian Julianna Jones on how to cook for one on Thanksgiving

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There is no crying in Thanksgiving dinner prep.

Well, in the case of chef/comedian Julianna Jones, we can make an exception. In her video, Cooking for One: The Crying Chef, we hear a tale of woe as this Tampa, Fla. native evokes sadness as she is forced to spend Thanksgiving away from friends and family. “Getting home for the holidays is not always easy and not always possible,” Jones mockingly moans as she spatchcocks a poussin (baby chicken) on a layer of aromatic vegetables.

The four-and-a-half-minute segment has a split personality. Jones is quite skilled as a cook and tackles her solo feast with proper technique which is spelled out with little onscreen cards. As a jokester, when she turns to the camera in aside mode, the webisode falls flat. Making a double entendre over using a spatchcock method of cooking, she turns and says,  “That’s going to sound dirty... that’s going to sound raunchy... so the dirtiest thing we're going to do today is oil some breasts.” Wink, wink.

There’s also a sight gag that is a major fail. Showcasing a family heirloom dinner plate Jones stole from her mother, that she intends to use as a serving vessel, everyone can figure out what comes next—crash, it lands on the floor in several pieces. Every comedian knows timing is everything.

Jezebel says this Thanksgiving segment is the first episode of The Crying Chef; one can only imagine what sadness is in store for Valentine's Day.

Screengrab via New York Picture Co./YouTube

Creed singer Scott Stapp uploads shocking confessional to Facebook

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Creed singer Scott Stapp has fallen on hard times. In a 15-minute video uploaded to the band's Facebook page Wednesday morning, Stapp claims to be living in a Holiday Inn and "penniless." Before that, Stapp said, he was living out of his truck and didn't eat for two days. 

While reaffirming his commitment to his Christian faith in the video, Stapp is seen visibly angry and seeking retribution, claiming that there are people in his circle spreading a "vicious attack" on his character, sobriety level, and personal finances. He said a personal audit eight weeks ago revealed that "a lot of money was stolen from me or royalties not paid and that's when all hell began to break loose."

And while he had "nothing but forgiveness" for his assailants, Stapp said that his three kids are on the receiving end of verbal attacks in their peer circles and that is at the heart of why he decided to upload this video. Stapp also said that the IRS has frozen his bank accounts and that his civil rights have been violated, although how, specifically, is never revealed. He also claims to have recorded phone calls with his bank's customer service representatives.

"I'm going to expose and I'm going to fight every single individual that is responsible for this," Stapp said.

To do that, Stapp solicited an "honest, good attorney" from, hopefully, a fan in his network. Stapp also mentioned the Ferguson verdict and said that "America's not right... This is not the country I grew up believing in."

The rant comes in the same month where Stapp's wife filed for divorce. According to a Miami Heraldreport, Stapp has "become a paranoid shell who has threatened to kill himself and harm his family."

Photo via Gonzata/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

The 4 most insane Thanksgiving movies on Netflix Streaming

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In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I decided to compile a list of the most insane movies related to the holiday that could be found on Netflix Streaming, which turned out to be every movie that was neither animated or Planes, Trains & Automobiles. Then, like any good holiday bender enthusiast, I binge-watched them.

Dutch (1991)

Speaking of Planes, Trains & Automobiles, this first movie on the agenda was Dutch, a movie written and produced by John Hughes and directed by Peter Faiman. It’s about Dutch Dooley (Ed O’Neill) picking up his girlfriend’s (JoBeth Williams) adolescent son, Doyle, (Ethan Embry) from a private school and driving him home for Thanksgiving. The kid’s biological father is a huge jerk, and the screenplay gets over having to explain this by just casting Christopher McDonald and letting his face handle the exposition. All the pieces are in place here for a Thanksgiving classic (it’s basically a quick rewrite of Automobiles), but something must have been amiss behind the scenes. My bet is that Hughes had a problem with over-the-counter cough syrup when he was writing the screenplay.

Though not directed by him, this is unmistakably a Hughes movie—all the moonlight is purple, every car is either a Buick or a Peterbilt semi-truck, nobody ever looks at the road while driving, and it uses that classic comedy formula: (plot + funny thing happening three times in a row) * 4 = movie. But this movie feels like it's 600 minutes long. At least 200 minutes are Dutch doing things that make no sense to try and win the affections of Doyle. He shuffles a pack of racy playing cards around in his Buick while jazzy funk music plays and he keeps eye contact with the kid for what seems like 30 minutes. Nothing. He shoots off a whole bag of fireworks in the snow in another montage that’s somewhere between 30 and 40 minutes long. Nothing. At one point (around the 200-minute mark), he kicks Doyle out of his Buick and makes him walk 50 miles to the motel. This gets a response, but that response is Doyle faking his own death by stealing Dutch’s Buick and parking it in the street, where it’s hit by a Peterbuilt, which probably wouldn’t have happened if the driver had been looking at the road.

About 300 minutes of the movie consists of Dutch and Doyle discussing the working class, and a bonding moment occurs between the two after they’re robbed by call girls they’ve hitched a ride with. It feels like this was maybe Hughes’s Bad Santa, the screenplay where he was finally going to just go bananas, but it never made it to theaters that way. Somewhere some really dark, R-rated material was crudely hammered into a PG movie and logic was lost in the transition. This is literally the film’s dialogue during that change of heart scene, when the titular character reminds Doyle that they’ve been robbed by call girls and can’t get home:

Dutch: This isn’t working out. We’re not masters of the highway. We were robbed by homebound hookers.

Doye: Only because you fell asleep, and… I… uh… horny.

Dutch: You did?!

And then they high five, and that’s it. I had to watch it five times to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. It’s the film’s big turning point, and a whole line seems to have been edited out with nobody caring that it reduced the scene to nonsense. In some film archive, somewhere, there is footage of an adolescent Ethan Embry telling Ed O’Neill that he received a hand job in the back of those girls’ Camaro, and it will be discovered and a great GIF will be made. As it stands, though, this is the only movie on the list that’s even close to receiving a blanket recommendation for suitable family viewing, and it's worse off for it.

SPOILER ALERT: The movie ends with Dutch teaching Doyle’s biological father a lesson in parenting by punching him in the forehead, sending him on his way to drive home severely concussed in the snow, and then going to inside to shoot Doyle in the ass with a pellet gun. It’s a pretty solid ending.

Poultrygeist (2006)

After the watered-down Dutch, I needed to go straight to the movie on my list that was put out by Troma, the nation’s longest-running independent film studio. As with all their in-house productions, it’s directed by Lloyd Kaufman (look for him among the prisoners in Guardians of the Galaxy; James Gunn got his start with Troma) and takes place in Tromaville, a land where every wall is a blank canvas awaiting the spattering of bodily fluids, and where a positively disproportionate number of citizens have their nipples pierced.

Poultrygeist revolves around the opening of a new fast food joint in Tromaville that serves fried chicken. Of course, it’s built on an ancient Indian burial ground—which allows both a lot of chicken-zombie stuff to happen, and also ample opportunity for Troma to be offensive toward Native Americans. Within the first five minutes: a woman is topless, a zombie puts its finger in a guy’s butt, a pantsless man masturbates, the man’s guts are ripped out by zombie (through his butt), and the main character says, in utter sincerity, “Wendy, my mom’s a retard and my dad’s blind!”

This is a punk rock movie: a movie that hates everything and everybody, with a budget somewhere around the cost of that purple light used in every night scene in Dutch. It’s also sort of a musical, with a few song and dance numbers thrown in the film that are, in all honesty, extremely catchy.

I can’t safely recommend this movie under any sort of guidelines whatsoever. There are maybe 200 total frames in it that aren’t offensive in one way or another; it’s a bit of a marvel, really, and if offensiveness weren’t so subjective, this movie would hold a place in the Guiness Book of World Records for being the most consistently offensive movie ever made. Even as an atheist, it makes me kind of scared, spiritually, that I loved watching it.

FUN FACT: Despite being on Wikipedia’s list of Thanksgiving-themed movies, Poultrygeist actually has nothing to do with Thanksgiving, proving that a user-edited encyclopedia will always be vulnerable to classic Troma marketing strategies.

The Ice Storm (1997)

And now, onto the only film on this list to have competed at Cannes. It’s tough to be humorous with this one, because it’s just really good, which is probably why I’d never watched it before. “It’s just really good,” is kind of a hard sell for a movie, but that’s what people usually have to say about The Ice Storm.

Directed by Ang Lee, the movie opens with Tobey Maguire reading an issue of The Fantastic Four. The fact that Lee and Maguire would both go on to be involved in film adaptations of Marvel films is all the proof I need to confirm that Lee does, in fact, have supernatural abilities. This film also reinforces the idea that the best films about America almostalways come from foreign directors making period pieces.

Storm takes place over a small town’s 1973 Thanksgiving, where all the adults, and their kids, are getting restless to the point of complete societal destruction. The news is saying that a terrible ice storm is on the horizon, so, naturally, every character leaves home in order to be in a really awkward situation. The film solidified Christina Ricci’s role as the 1990’s avatar of realistic female adolescence; and, by placing them both in the same film, made audiences finally realize that Tobey Maguire and Elijah Wood were different people. It has some of the most realistic sex scenes ever filmed in that they are painfully sad and awkward.

I’m not sure I’d recommend watching this movie with people. It’s the kind of movie you watch alone, that you take a soul journey into the woods to watch. 

The House of Yes (1997)

This was the fourth and last movie on my binge list, and my brain was fried enough to respond to seeing Josh Hamilton in the credits by thinking: oh, cool, the former Texas Rangers outfielder is in this. It’s a movie about an unstable woman (Parker Posey) living in a mansion with her mother and brother (Freddie Prinze Jr.), and her brother (Josh Hamilton; not the baseball player) coming home for Thanksgiving in 1983 with an unexpected fiancée (Tori Spelling).

Thirty minutes into this movie, I was convinced it would be the only good movie on this list that I could broadly recommend for family viewing. Based on a play by Wendy MacLeod, the dialogue was silver-tongued, but void of cursing; it was the sort of cynical thing that even Grandma could enjoy. Alas, halfway through the movie it’s revealed that SPOILER the whole dramatic dynamic hinges on past incest between Posey and Hamilton’s characters, which was a big relief to me, because I’d started worrying that this film wouldn’t qualify for this list at all.

As previously mentioned, the dialogue in this movie is consistently great; and when you combine that with the fact that it has the best dad joke ever told (go to the 68-minute mark for it), it’s really disappointing that it isn’t a better movie overall. It’s clear that the story originally contained a strong feminist message, with a story involving two twins sharing a sinful act that results in the destruction of the female’s mind and leaves the male unscathed (at one point, the dialogue even revolves around some yellow wallpaper in the mansion). Sadly, the film version of this story decides to focus more on the This Woman’s Crazy angle than the feminist one.

In the end, I’m pretty sure the message of the play was slightly different than that of the film, which can only be interpreted as “don’t bring anybody home for Thanksgiving, ever.” It has great music, though. And the actors are all fantastic. Even Freddie Prinze Jr.

Screengrab via LionsgateVOD/YouTube

One Direction’s Liam Payne suffers from selfie fatigue

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It’s a hard life being a young, handsome, rich, incredibly talented musical sex icon: Just ask One Direction’sLiam Payne.

While attending the Aria awards in Australia (where the boyband snapped up the award for best international artist, no less), the pressures of fame and fortune got a little too much for the 21-year-old crooner. 

Snapping selfie after selfie after selfie after selfie with his adoring fans outside, Panye lets his carefully constructed cheerful mask slip for a moment—revealing the utter emptiness within.

Stay strong, Liam.

H/T Reddit | Photo via themikeroberts/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) | Remix by Rob Price

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