With over 72 hours of footage uploaded every minute, it’s physically impossible to keep track of the content on YouTube. But in YouTube Guide, the Daily Dot will curate its five favorite finds for each workday.

1) Devin Graham, “Far Cry 3 in Real Life - First Person”

Devin Graham already did Assassin’s Creed, so he naturally took the next step in real-life gaming videos: First-person shooter. In a video based on the upcoming Far Cry 3, an unknown shooter rescues a comrade and they try to escape off an island together.

2) Buzz Bishop, "Watch 25,000 Bears Fly at Teddy Bear Toss”

Every December many Canadian Hockey League teams hold a Teddy Bear Toss in which fans throw a teddy bear onto the ice when the home team scores its first goal for charity, and when the Calgary Hitmen finally scored, the crowd definitely did not disappoint.

3) Chad Neidt, “Songs About The End of the World”

If you believe the Mayans, the end of the world is near, and musician Chad Neidt plays every song about the apocalypse as part of “One Minute Mash-up,” although some of the songs go by a little too quickly to flow smoothly.

4) The Warp Zone, “Talking Consoles Welcome Home Wii U”

The Nintendo family is awaiting the new arrival of Wii U, and the multi-generational family is left to speculate what to expect from the bundle of joy. The systems don’t get much play, but at least they’re not banished to the closet like Virtual Boy.

5) Daniel Kim, “Mashup of 50+ Pop Songs”

Instead of 50, why not make it one? Daniel Kim takes some of the biggest pop hits of the year and put them into one mashup, reminding us of our favorite songs as well as the ones we’d like to forget.

Photo via Devin Graham/YouTube

Every evening, the Daily Dot delivers a selection of links worth clicking from around the Web, along with the day's must-see image or video. We call it Dotted Lines.

• Google launches a new Gmail app for iPhone and iPad.
• What do Wi-Fi signals actually look like?
• Hackers could be targeting your Instagram account.
• Karma: Wireless Internet that gets cheaper if you let other people use it.
• The 10 most horrible ways to get more Twitter followers.
• We’re all “creative”: How people in different countries describe themselves on LinkedIn.

Above: More than 21,000 teddy bears were thrown onto the ice at the Calgary Hitmen junior hockey team’s annual Teddy Bear Toss. The bears were bagged up (with some help from the home team) and donated to kids in need.

Here at the Daily Dot, we swap GIF images with each other every morning. Now we’re looping you in. In the Morning GIF, we feature a popular—or just plain cool—GIF we found on Reddit, Canvas, or elsewhere on the Internet.

British Olympic diver and bronze medalist Tom Daley knows his strong points: an appealing smile, a gift for 10 meter platform diving, and a propensity to show off in public nearly naked. What’s not to like?

Recently the 18-year-old joined fellow Olympians and Paralympians in dancing on the street to “Do Your Thing” to support the BBC’s Children in Need program, which gives grants to deserving underprivileged children. The website explains, “Our vision is that every child in the UK has a childhood which is: Safe, Happy and Secure, [and] Allows them the chance to reach their potential.”

It seems a long way from that mission to a video that includes the Queen’s niece dancing “Gangnam Style” in front of someone in a horse costume. Nonetheless, the video has proven extremely popular, with over a million views since it was first uploaded to YouTube Nov. 16.

Naturally, with a production that big, there were a few bloopers, and this is one of them. At about 1:53, Daley is supposed to turn around, rip his clothes off, and fling them offstage. We can all get behind that, especially for a good cause, right? Well, on one take it didn’t quite work out that way, leaving the bronze-winning god looking just a little more human.

Posted to the Royal Stuff and Nonsense Tumblr two weeks ago, the photoset has garnered 117 notes and a predictably low score from the judges.

And finally...

Via Royal Stuff and Nonsense/Tumblr

If you’re looking for this year’s best pop-song mashup, you can stop now. Daniel Kim’s “Pop Danthology 2012” is so good, no other effort comes close.

From Adele’s “Set Fire to the Rain” to Zedd (featuring Matthew Koma)’s “Spectrum,” the Canadian DJ has cut and pasted together 55 of the year’s biggest pop hits to create an eight-minute aural opus that’s impressive, intricate, and just plain fun to listen to.

Also making appearances are samples from some of the Internet’s favorite musicians, including Carly Rae Jepsen, Gotye, and Psy.

The video, which was first uploaded to YouTube on Dec. 2, has already amassed more than 500,000 views, more than doubling the view count of the song’s 2011 edition. “Pop Danthology 2012” also enjoyed popularity on social news site Reddit, receiving more than 2,000 karma points.

The track took the talented DJ over three months to complete. The first month was devoted entirely to collecting the songs, the second to breaking them down and categorizing them by key and tempo, and the third to arranging and mixing them.

So why spend so much time creating a track and video that won’t make him any money? 

“I do it simply because I can,” he writes. “That is what I believe separates us passionate artists from the rest of the world.”

Though elaborate, the mashup does exclude some of 2012’s favorites.

“I extracted some of the audio parts of [Taylor Swift’s] ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’ and really wanted to use it,” Kim explains. “Unfortunately, the tempo of the song is too different from the tempo of the section of my mashup that is in G major (the key that Taylor Swift’s song is in).”

You can currently download the track at Kim’s Facebook page. 

For those looking for a tracklist of all 55 songs sampled, the DJ has helpfully included it in the description section of the video, republished below:

1. Adele - "Set Fire to the Rain"

2. Adele - "Skyfall"

3. Alex Clare - "Too Close"

4. Calvin Harris feat. Ne-Yo - "Let's Go"

5. Carly Rae Jepson - "Call Me Maybe"

6. Cher Lloyd - "Want U Back"

7. Chris Brown - "Don't Wake Me Up"

8. Chris Brown - "Turn Up the Music"

9. Christina Aguilera - "Your Body"

10. David Guetta feat. Chris Brown & Lil Wayne - "I Can Only Imagine" 

11. David Guetta feat. Nicky Minaj - "Turn Me On"

12. David Guetta feat. Sia - "Titanium"

13. Demi Lovato - "Give Your Heart A Break"

14. Ellie Goulding - "Lights"

15. Enrique Iglesias feat. Sammy Adams - "Finally Found You"

16. Far East Movement feat. Justin Bieber - "Live My Life"

17. Flo Rida - "Whistle" 

18. Flo Rida feat. Sia - "Wild Ones"

19. Fun. - "Some Nights"

20. Fun. feat. Janelle Monáe - "We Are Young"

21. Gotye feat. Kimbra - "Somebody That I Used To Know"

22. Gym Class Heroes feat. Neon Hitch - "Ass Back Home"

23. Jennifer Lopez feat. Pitbull - "Dance Again"

24. Jessie J - "Domino"

25. Justin Bieber feat. Big Sean - "As Long As You Love Me"

26. Justin Bieber - "Boyfriend"

27. Karmin - "Brokenhearted"

28. Katy Perry - "Part Of Me"

29. Katy Perry - "Wide Awake"

30. Kelly Clarkson - "Stronger"

31. Ke$ha - "Die Young"

32. LMFAO - "Sorry For Party Rocking"

33. Madonna feat. M.I.A. & Nicky Minaj - "Give Me All Your Luvin'"

34. Maroon 5 - "One More Night"

35. Maroon 5 feat. Wiz Khalifa - "Payphone"

36. Nelly Furtado - "Big Hoops (Bigger the Better)"

37. Ne-Yo - "Let Me Love You (Until You Learn to Love Yourself)"

38. Nicky Minaj - "Pound The Alarm"

39. Nicky Minaj - "Starships"

40. One Direction - "Live While We're Young"

41. One Direction - "What Makes You Beautiful"

42. Owl City & Carly Rae Jepsen - "Good Time"

43. P!nk - "Blow Me (One Last Kiss)"

44. Pitbull feat. Chris Brown - "International Love"

45. PSY - "Gangnam Style"

46. Rihanna - "Diamonds"

47. Rihanna - "Where Have You Been"

48. Rita Ora - "How We Do (Party)"

49. Swedish House Mafia - "Don't You Worry Child"

50. Tyga - "Rack City"

51. Usher - "Climax"

52. Usher - "Scream"

53. The Wanted - "Glad You Came"

54. Will.I.Am feat. Eva Simons - "This Is Love"

55. Zedd feat. Matthew Koma - "Spectrum"

Photo via kimaginati0n/YouTube

To the delight of a Internet users everywhere, two adorable elderly cats named Gizmo and Chihiro had trouble figuring out how to use their new webcam.  The entire thing was recorded and uploaded by friend Jay Martinez.

“The whole exchange is just hilarious,” said Martinez.  ”They just keep staring into the camera and trying to figure out how to turn it on, all the while broadcasting the entire thing online!”

Martinez said he uploaded the video to YouTube because he thought it was cute and funny, not to make fun of his friends.  He said Gizmo and Chihiro thought it was funny too, once they were let in on the joke.

Via Jamie Ambrosy.

It appears that Hailie Mathers never, ever meant to cause all that outrage.

Eminem’s One Direction-obsessed daughter is apologizing on Twitter for her mischievous tweets Tuesday blasting Taylor Swift for dating Harry Styles, her apparent dream man. She told Swift for “whoring around” for the sake of writing of albums.

“Wow. I didnt mean for people to react to my tweet in the way that they have it was just a bit of fun! Sorry @taylorswift13 for my immaturity,” tweeted Mathers Wednesday morning. Obviously hoping to calm things down before the winter formal, we presume.

She defended her tweets, writing that she’s entitled to her own opinion. “I don’t understand why there are ‘news’ articles written about it!” she tweeted. (In our defense, it was very amusing!).

For the past day, Mathers has been the target of insulting tweets from One Direction fans for hatred about “Haylor.” Many tweets directed at the 16-year-old were laden with unprintable expletives.

But not everyone was pro-Haylor, with many users commiserating with her hate for pop music’s newest power couple.  A fan tweeted her “you go girl,” while another tweeted“i really hope haylor is a publicity stunt :'(”

We all good, girls?

Photo via Hailie Jade Scott Mathers/Facebook

Last week, sound engineer John Stewart celebrated the eighth anniversary of Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album by releasing a remastered version via Mediafire zip file.

That’s an awkward benchmark to examine the revolutionary mashup project, which layered Jay-Z’s vocals from The Black Album over warped highlights from the Beatles’ eponymous 1968 masterpiece that fans collectively branded The White Album. For starters, few pop culture moments this side of John Kerry’s fear of gay marriage make 2004 feel more dated than The Grey Album’s now also-ran cut and pasting.

The tale of Grey reads like the plot of a ‘90s hacker thriller where someone accidentally dials up a 56K connection and finds a code that could change everything: million-dollar company sues starving bedroom artist and makes him the most-wanted producer in America along the way. The issue actually bypassed the freshman interest-group debates about Napster and Metallica entirely, because Danger Mouse’s crime (real name: Brian Burton) was not initially Internet-based. He produced roughly 3,000 copies and peddled CD-Rs independently like a Memphis rapper, and then EMI (the major label that’s survived on the Fab Four’s catalog) brought in an army of Machiavellian lawyers to squash it.

It was this excess force that spun a classical freedom fighter firestorm about digital copyrights and fair use and statutory license. On Feb. 4, 2004, the now-defunct Worcester, Mass.-based Downhill Battle and nearly 200 sympathetic websites hosted the album for free on their servers for 24 hours to counter EMI’s efforts, and 100,000 people downloaded in civil disobedience.

Eight years later, apparently, The Grey Album endures as one of the most heralded, important, and influential albums of the 21^st century. Thank well-earned martyrdom coupled with one pretty-cool-at-the-time idea.

By mashup standards, however, the album doesn’t hold up—and it barely did eight years ago. The Avalanches’ 2001 LP Since I Left You, for instance, packed 3500 samples into one coherent, hour-long work. 2ManyDJ’s 2003’s As Heard On Soulwax is similarly full of drag and drop showmanship and evokes dancing. Here, the “99 Problems” loops don’t even sync with the distinct cadences of "Helter Skelter.” The “Dear Prudence” riff that accompanies “December 4’s” verses is the only instance on TheGrey Album where the mashup outduels the song its leeching.

Within the culture, it’s one giant unlistenable crime against hip-hop because it cheapened the creative spirit of a genre it was supposed to champion. The Black Album is the best album from the most prolific commercial rapper of all-time because of two key items: Jay-Z raps like a sultan and selects beats like a scholarly dork. Jay-Z’s most underrated talent as a musician has always been his curation of beats. The “Fade to Black” documentary about the creative process behind The Black Album shows him tirelessly skimming potential tracks without pretention or favors; 14 people wound up with producer credits, including nobody duo, The Buchanans. They’re still relative nobodies, but they gave us rap song for the ages, “What More Can I Say?”

To the former point, producers were so quick to pirate his ‘hood favorite vocals and remix them that Jay’s people released an acapella version of The Black Album specifically for bootleggers to flesh them out with their own beats. I had a buddy who spent most of a semester smoking weed and working on his own Black Album and the result was somewhat naïve in ambition but a great and worthwhile exercise in composition. Once the Grey Album made Pazz & Jop’s top 10, the game plan for producers changed.

The notion of juxtaposing pop music into mashups was nothing new eight years ago. That’s what’s made hip-hop such a fresh and interesting genre for four decades. But this was more direct and calculated. Peer-to-peer file-sharing by off the grid DJs helped spurn the practice while standardizing it: stack vocals over beats forged from cheeky origins not commonly found in the hip-hop genre. To make it work, one just needs to be a learned media guardian—urban kids who know suburban culture can gather and disseminate and live off their all-encompassing taste. (See the Radiohead/Jay-Z mashup, Jaydiohead.)  

It should be noted that Danger Mouse, the producer, has shed his party crasher aesthetic and blossomed into a wonderful engineer, songwriter, and producer. His tight drumming on Beck’s Modern Guilt is virtuosic, human, and passionate. After the lawsuits his next two national projects—collaborating with eccentric masked rapper MF Doom on the hilarious and thumping Danger Doom LP and owning pop during the summer of 2006 by way of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy”—left Grey in the dust with an army of opportunistic mashups.

I’m just not sure why it’s back.

Screengrab via YouTube

This is it. It’s over. Gangnam Style is officially dead.

The following video is supposedly from Spartan High School in New Holland, Penn., but it was actually engineered in a top secret government lab with the sole purpose of destroying the most obnoxious dancing trend since the macarena and that Gap-inspired swing dance revival.

This video is a black hole of awful, so powerful even your I’m-so-embarrassed-for-these-kids laughter cannot escape. Watch as it devours the innocent souls of millions who once actually enjoyed Gangnam Style.

“THIS IS NOT MY VIDEO,” writes the YouTube user who uploaded the parody. “This is from my high school. And I hate my high school, so no shame. Feel free to hate it and share it with the world!”

Somewhere, Psy is sobbing as he performs the horsey dance on a mountain of cash and feels nothing.

Screengrab via Cym4tic/YouTube

After taking flak from gossip blogs and One Direction fans, Hailie Mathers, repentant scourge of Taylor Swift, deleted her Twitter account. 

“OK so I’m deactivating my account now … The media is BS,” Mathers tweeted at noon ET. A few minutes later, her @hailiejade_x Twitter profile, which had 37,000 followers, disappeared.

Her Facebook profile is still active, however, despite no recent updates since late November.

Eminem’s social media–savvy daughter first tweeted her disapproval of Taylor Swift’s rumored relationship with walking Topman peacoat (and One Direction singer) Harry Styles on Tuesday. 

Mathers’s profile doubled in followers, but at a cost: She’d enraged the fleet of One Direction fans, who barraged her with expletive-laden tweets.

We’ve collected a sampling—some measured and mature, others a bit more reactionary:

Photo via Hailie Jade Scott Mathers/Facebook

What do you do on a Sunday? Chances are you’ll take it easy: Maybe go to church, catch a game, spend some time with your family.

Not so for Vin Diesel, at least if Twitter has anything to say about it.

Since September, tweeters far and wide have been imagining what the star of four out of five Fast and Furious flicks might say and do on the Sabbath as he explores the world, using the #VinDieselSunday hashtag. The results are frequently hilarious.

Comedian Gavin Speiller started the tag, riffing on Diesel’s “look of bewilderment and a vocal timbre.”

The characterization of Diesel as a simple-minded gentleman venturing into an unfamiliar landscape is one which is ripe for humor. Meanwhile, the real Diesel is probably spending his Sunday afternoon playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Photo via sandokanw73/YouTube

More 800 million YouTube users need their YouTube news. Andy Smith is determined to give it to them.

Since 2007, the Ohio-based YouTuber has delivered the latest in community news, with stories ranging from the alarming to the heartwarming. Smith's on the topics that you want to know and the stories that you need to know, and he'll tell you how they'll both affect your time on site.

Every Wednesday, the Daily Dot spotlights a video from Smith's triweekly updated Lion's Den channel.

In this episode, Smith talks about Toby Turner getting fired from CuteWinFail, "Your Daily Dose of Epicosity."

He also hits on the arrest of bank robber Hannah Sabata, Ryan Leslie's big bad promise, and a few industry changes on which to take note.

Photo via The Lion’s Den/YouTube

Rapper Snoop Dogg took a break from his schedule of smoking"81 blunts a day" Wednesday to stop by Reddit and participate in an Ask Me Anything, something that's probably never been said about a G-Funk era rapper ever in history ever before.

The Compton legend—real name Calvin Broadus—whose catalog includes such hip-hop staples as "Gin and Juice," "Gz and Hustlas," and "The One and Only," popped into the social news site in a not-so-concealed effort to promote his new single,"Here Comes the King," the next in a line of reggae songs the rapper is releasing under the moniker of Snoop Lion, a name that apparently "chose him."

More than 5,000 commenters stopped by the AMA to ask Snoop the questions they've always wanted to have answered—Snoop even took the time to ask one of his own!

Believe it or not, some of those questions turned out to be about topics other than the Doggfather's legendary love of marijuana cigarettes.

For the aforementioned—if you're just dying to know the longest period of time in which Snoop has gone without smoking—you can turn to his AMA. For the most interesting of the alternatives, see below.

Photo via Keith Urbowicz/Imgur

On his name change

Photo via nrk p3/Flickr

On his favorite album to listen to while getting high

Photo via EMI Music/YouTube

On his, um, Snoop

Photo via The Come Up Show/Flickr

On his favorite movie

Photo via Random Presents/Facebook

On reggae

Photo via nrk p3/Flickr

On his women

On his taste in women

Photo via Jason Persse/Flickr

On his dream smoking partner (Sorry, we had to)

Photo via nrk p3/Flickr

On Reddit

Photo via Man Alive!/Flickr

Photo via SnoopDogg/Instagram

With over 72 hours of footage uploaded every minute, it’s physically impossible to keep track of the content on YouTube. But in YouTube Guide, the Daily Dot will curate its five favorite finds for each workday.

1) John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, “I Think You Might Like It”

The Grease co-stars are finally reuniting, but this probably isn’t what people had in mind. The music video brings homage to the movie that made them stars with an old car and minor dance moves, and song’s the title only begs to be proven wrong.

2) FPSRussia, “Far Cry 3 Weaponry!”

If you’ve got about $20,000 to spare, you can easily purchase all of the weapons seen in the upcoming Far Cry 3. Guns and explosives enthusiast FPSRussia shows off his purchases by unloading a few rounds into life-size mannequins of characters from the game.

3) Eight Foot Manchild, “‘Humbug’ - The Christmas Carol Supercut”

No matter your favorite version film adaptation of A Christmas Carol, there’s bound to be a humbug or two to be had, and this supercut captures them all from 32 different Scrooges. Bah!

4) CGPGrey, “Can Texas Secede from the Union?”

Texas was one of the 20 states that petitioned for secession following the 2012 election, and some have previously voiced their wish to secede. However, C.G.P. Grey points out that the once-independent state won’t be able to leave the U.S. and become its own country unless the U.S. lets it.

5) pipocalVFX, “First Person Goomba”

In the eyes of the Goombas, Mario is enemy number one, and one unlucky Goomba sees his entire life flash before his eyes as the foot of the world’s most famous plumber draws near.

Photo via OliviaNewtonJohnVEVO/YouTube

Here at the Daily Dot, we swap GIF images with each other every morning. Now we’re looping you in. In the Morning GIF, we feature a popular—or just plain cool—GIF we found on Reddit, Canvas, or elsewhere on the Internet.

Carpet bombing: not generally a term associated with GIF art. But then, Psykzz is not your typical GIF artist. A geometric mixmaster, Psykzz’s GIFworks typically ride the thin line between the attractive and the mathematically oppressive.

In today’s GIF he has taken an archetypally ’70s floral medallion carpet pattern and animated it, making explicit what was previously only visible to acid-tripping hippies. A green and black masterpiece, it flows front to back in relentless Day-Glo fabulousness, like a casino foyer eternally laying itself out for a fresh crop of tourists.

You might think this aesthetic would be somewhat recherché, not something to appeal to the majority of viewers. Strangely (and we lived through the ’70s; this is strange to us too. We would never have bought that pattern) it’s one of Psykzz’s more popular GIFs, having collected 1,579 notes since its posting two days ago. You could say it’s gone over like a Led Zeppelin.

GIF via Psykzz/Tumblr

YouTuber and musician Alex Day needs your help to make history this Christmas.

Day, an unsigned artist, made his start on YouTube six years ago and was previously known for making fun of a little book called Twilight. One of the earliest YouTube partners in the U.K., he has refused to sign with a label.

“I’ve had talks with all the major labels,” Day told Forbes, who called him “the future of music” in June, “but I reckoned they were trying to sign me in in order to squash me; they hate the fact that I proved you can get songs out there without any corporate involvement.”

He defied critics—and the odds—with two Top 20 singles and over 300,000 downloads in the past 11 months. His song “Forever Yours” debuted at No. 4 on the U.K. charts last year, and he now holds the Guinness World Record for the highest-ranking unsigned single.

But this year, he’s aiming even higher, ReadWrite reported.

“I’m releasing a new single on December 16th to try and get to Christmas Number One in the UK,” Day wrote on r/Music. “If I succeed, I’ll be the first ever unsigned artist to get to #1.”

The video for “Stupid Stupid” premiered Tuesday on YouTube. Day dances, hip thrusts, and shakes around his family in a crazy getup as he plays out their day-to-day conversations.

And that’s before he breaks out the mankini.

Day wants to see “Stupid Stupid” beat traditional acts on the U.K. charts and even plans to donate 50 percent of the profit from the song to Save the Children because he doesn’t “wish to be mean-spirited” by competing against charity singles.

The video has had 79,815 views, and with over 14,000 likes, it seems to be a hit with viewers. Not everyone in the comments section seems to be singing his tune, but that's a mindset Day is able to respect.

The song is currently available for preorder, and physical and digital copies start going out on Dec. 16 with Day hoping his subscribers and fans will be able to launch him to the top of the U.K. charts.

Photo via Alex Day/YouTube

Local dog Marlowe bounded down the stairs in full reindeer regalia Wednesday morning, ready to dive into a pile of presents. Trouble is, today’s not Christmas.

“Her calendar was about 20 days off,” says Jenny Hicks, a source familiar with the situation. “Not sure if she was reading it in dog years, or what. But, she was pretty embarrassed when we broke the news to her.”

Via wil.

Did Hailie Scott Mathers actuallystart a rumble with Taylor Swift on Twitter earlier this week?

A rep for Eminem told E! News that claim is so false: @hailiejade_x is an impostor and has no connection with Hailie.

On late Monday, tweets from the account in question told Swift to back off from swapping spit with One Direction singer Harry Styles. She also told the singing Cracker Barrel breakfast platter to stop “whoring around” with guys. 

Mathers, 16—or whoever is behind @hailiejade_x—shuttered the account Wednesday after a barrage of media attention and a tidal wave of incendiary tweets from Swifties and One Directioners. 

The E! News’ report might have shaken an already fragile nation’s trust, but the Daily Dot investigative unit doubts Eminem’s rep’s claim. On multiple occasions, @hailiejade_x has posted convincing claims that the account is indeed Hailie’s official Twitter:

1) When it was active, the Twitter was linked to an Instagram account with plenty of photographic evidence documenting Hailie’s life. 

2) Also, she has tweeted that her 60,000-fans-strong Facebook account is her only presence on the social networking site (except for an unsearchable private account.)

3)Hailie’s “best friend,” who goes by “T” on Twitter, privately confirmed via direct message to the Daily Dot that the Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts were real, and really Hailie’s. But could the best friend be fake too? The mystery deepens.

We’re going to go read a book or something.

Photo via Hailie_Mathers/Instagram

Do you enjoy being held hostage and being electrocuted with jumper cables? If not, maybe you shouldn't be selling decorative birdhouses made from reclaimed wood on Etsy.

On Dec. 4, the folks at Funny Or Die called upon the services of Rachael Leigh Cook, Tracey Gold, and Mark-Paul Gosselaar to tell the story of fictional Etsy head Ellie Harper. Harper, the mind behind the "site women turn to when their poetry careers don't take off," is portrayed by Cook as a maniacal dictator who resorts to violence and intimidation when Etsy sellers fail to stay in line.

"eBay is for nerds selling busts of Doctor Strange...craigslist is for sex offenders," states the Queen of Etsy, a twinge of mental unbalance visible in her eye as she speaks. "If you need Etsy, you need me."

When Etsy seller Maggie Chester (Gold) goes on the record claiming that Harper broke her "quilting hands" for refusing to pay a 20-cent protection fee, Detective Michael Peck of the FBI's San Francisco Division (Gosselaar) looks into the case. He determines that Harper has been responsible for the deaths of over 200 arts-and-crafters.

Harper does not deny the claims but instead embraces them. At a board meeting, she beats a board member to death with a rhinestone-encrusted baseball bat to assert her stature.

In the video's climax ending, Maggie Chester approaches Harper and pulls a gun. Harper follows suit, but both women forego a bullet-riddled ending in lieu of a shower of compliments on their weapons of choice: "personalized six-shot .38 revolvers with ribbons, glitter, gemstones."

Viewers of the video were happy to see Gosselaar, who began his acting career as wise-cracking teenager Zack Morris on Saved by the Bell, make a return to comedy, but it seems the jokes about Etsy’s domination of the online craft market were lost on many.

"RACHEL LEIGH COOK HOT video not funny," Richard Gonzales wrote on Facebook.

"Don't get it. Not funny," bmore commented on a Huffington Post article detailing the video.

Photo via newyorkinsider/Flickr

The White House is buzzing this week over the news that super countrystar Taylor Swift has recently begun hooking up with Harry Styles, a member of One Direction and her 39th boyfriend this year. We're having a hard time keeping track of every man in the universe, so we've assembled here the definitive Rolodex of Taylor Swift's past loves.

With no distinct "type" aside from white dudes (she dates 35-year-olds, high school students, international film stars, and unemployed college kids), it's difficult to read the madness. But as with any work of abstract art crafted by a wild and violent master, there are a couple lenses through which one can interpret Taylor Swift's romantic past.

1. Taylor Swift Is a Beard.

Taylor Swift, shrewd businesswoman that she is, is making bank off her services as a no-sex-games-or-funny-business professional handholding companion. Nothing makes a boyish movie star's face more handsome than a beard.

2. Taylor Swift Is a Freak-a-Leek.

Taylor Swift is the most popular freak-a-leek in the world right now. More popular than Rick James, more popular than Olivia Munn: Taylor Swift voraciously plows through guys like a DEMON and then writes songs about how they were mean they were to her that one time. (Exhibit A: Harry Styles recently arrived at Swift's hotel at 4 a.m. and left with the morning sun. People knock on your door at 4 a.m. for two reasons: to initiate sex or to tell you you've been accepted to Hogwarts – congrats.)

So who is the real Taylor Swift? Did she go through puberty at birth? Has she yet to go through puberty? Is she a witch whose sleep two teenage sweethearts disturbed one night while driving up to Lovers Lane?

Study this guide, a tableaux of beaux, and draw your own conclusions:

(Note that, while every gentleman on this list is given a corresponding song, many of them were, in fact, the subjects of multiple songs.)

Joe Jonas

When did they date? Summer 2008
I thought he was gay?: Correct. (Probably.)
Age difference: + 1 year (Jonas is 23)
Corresponding song: Forever and Always
Hidden message:
(every Swift track carries withIN it a hidden mesSAge, spelled out via letter capitalizatioNs In The lYric notes)
"IF YOU PLAY THESE GAMES, WE'RE BOTH GOING TO LOSE"
Sample lyric: Was I out of line? Did I say something way too honest / That made you run and hide like a scared little boy?
Rebuttal: "It's flattering. It's always nice to hear their side of the story." (Swift alleges he broke up with her in a 27-second phonecall.)

John Mayer

When did they date? 2009
I thought he was gay? Correct. (Probably.)
Age difference: + 13 years (Mayer is 35)
Corresponding song: Dear John
Hidden message: "I LOVED YOU FROM THE VERY FIRST DAY"
Sample lyric: Don't you think nineteen's too young to be played with? / Your dark twisted games when I loved you so
Rebuttal: "I know she's the biggest thing in the world, and I'm not trying to sink anybody's ship, but I think it's abusing your talent to rub your hands together and go, 'Wait till he gets a load of this!' That's bullshit."

Taylor Lautner

When did they date? 2009
I thought he was gay? Correct. (Probably.)
Age difference: - 2 years (Lautner is 20)
Corresponding song: Back to December
Hidden message: "TAY"
Sample lyric: I miss your tan skin, your sweet smile
Rebuttal: Polite applause.

Cory Monteith

When did they date? 2010
I thought he was gay? Correct. (Probably.)
Age difference: + 8 years (Monteith is 30)
Corresponding song: Too boring to warrant one. Here's Cory Monteith performing "Losing My Religion" from Glee.
Hidden message: "MURDER MURDER MURDER"
Sample lyric: That's me in the spotlight / Losing my religion
Rebuttal: Being boring.

Jake Gyllenhaal

When did they date? 2010
I thought he was gay? Correct. (Probably.)
Age difference: + 9 years (Gyllenhaal is 31)
Corresponding song: Red
Hidden message: "SAG" (Swift and Gyllenhaal are both Sagittarians. Also he's in the Screen Actors Guild. Also he and Maggie have saggy puppy dog eyes.)
Sample lyric: Fighting with him was like trying to solve a crossword and realizing there's no right answer
Rebuttal: A deafening, disapproving silence.

Men She Met While She Was Paying Them to Appear in Her Music Videos

Who? Lucas Till, Toby Hemingway, This Motherfucker
When did they date? 2009-Apocalypse
Where did they meet? Set of "You Belong With Me"; set of "Mine"; set of I Knew You Were Trouble"
Age difference: +0 to 7 years (Ages 22-29)
Corresponding song: Mine
Hidden message: TOBY
Sample lyric: Flash forward and we're taking on the world together / And there's a drawer of my things at your place.
Rebuttal: Fading into obscurity.

Conor Kennedy

When did they date? Summer 2012
I thought he was gay? Might be a rumor Jessica P. spread in homeroom. We haven't heard that.
Age difference: - 4 years (Kennedy is 18)
Corresponding song: Everything Has Changed
Hidden message: " HYANNIS PORT"
Sample lyric: And all I've seen since 18 hours ago is green eyes and freckles and your smile in the back of my mind
Rebuttal: Skipped the first annual Kennedy Family Celebration of Taylor Swift.

Robert F. Kennedy

When did they date: The 1945-era OtherWorld she visits when she dreams
I thought he was gay? Unlikely.
Age difference: + 65 (Kennedy would be 87 today)
Corresponding song: Starlight
Hidden message: FOR ETHEL
Sample lyric: I met Bobby on the boardwalk, summer of '45
Rebuttal: Sponsored the first annual Kennedy Family Celebration of Taylor Swift

Harry Styles

When did they date? Spring, Autumn 2012
I thought he was gay? You might thinking of the other One Direction guy. Harry's taste generally run to British entertainment hosts (TV or radio) in their 30s. He recently helped break up a marriage, by having an affair with a 32-year-old woman when he was just 17.
Age difference: - 4 years (Styles is 18)
Corresponding song: I Knew You Were Trouble
Hidden message: "WHEN YOU SAW ME DANCING"
Sample lyric: A new notch in your belt is all I'll ever be
Rebuttal: Reappeared 9 months after their first break-up with Taylor's baby. "I thought you should meet your son."

Johnny Depp? At Some Point, Probably, Right?

When did they date? Future date TBD
I thought he was gay? Correct. (Probably.)
Age difference: + 27 years (Depp is 49, timeless)
Corresponding song: Necklaces and Cravats
Hidden message: "EDWARD TAYLORHANDS"
Sample lyric: I met Johnny on the boardwalk, summer of '45
Rebuttal: "Taylor in Perpetuity" tattoo altered to read "Taylor is Perp"

By Caity Weaver // Hidden messages decoded by Taylor Swift's official fan forum // Images via Avia AP

After collecting more than 3,500 submissions for the first large-scale GIF art exhibit, the curators of Moving the Still have selected eight original works to be featured at Art Basel Miami Beach.

The exhibition was the brainchild of Paddle8, an online auction house, which strove to further legitimize the growing GIF artist community.

“The GIF also presents the unique opportunity to work with both established artists and creators in conjunction with bloggers and other avid Internet users—it is truly one of the most democratic artistic mediums, and one that we wanted to shine the spotlight on,” Paddle8 editor Collin Munn told the Daily Dot in October. 

The winning GIFs were selected by a panel of artists chosen by Paddle8. One of the winning animations was “camouflage,” an animation featuring a 2-D man walking in a linear world.

“I went into it thinking that I wanted to make a silhouette using parallel lines that blended in closely with the background. I thought I'd see if I could make something that was sort of like an optical illusion and would cause headaches,” artist Zach, who declined to give his last name, told the Daily Dot in January. “After about an hour and some deep soul-searching, I finally realized that I had I completely failed.”

In the end, Zach ultimately succeeded. And in a big way.

Other winners of Moving the Still:

1) Ira Chernova, "b\w 1." Selected by Inez & Vinoodh

2) Veinventvou, "camouflage." Selected by James Frey

3) Vlad Lunin, "Skater." Selected by Michael Stipe

4) Hector Llanquín, "Smeltley.gif." Selected by Nicola Formichetti

5) Monica Dimperio + Lisa Frame, "Oh, hi, O." Selected by Ryan Trecartin

6) Erdal Inci, "Self in galata." Selected by RoseLee Goldberg

7) Mars Dolschon, "Prtcl_Sphere_03." Selected by Richard Phillips

8) Connor Crawford, "Voice Of Cyber-Space 1." Selected by Rodarte