A young Japanese couple have come up with an ingenious way of making their one-year-old son stop crying whenever he notices that his mother isn’t around – life-size cardboard cutouts of the woman placed strategically in the room he is playing in.

Fuki Sato recently became an overnight sensation after photos of her life-size cutouts went viral all around the world. It’s not that they’re unusually life-like – although they do seem very well done – it’s what they are used that has gotten the family so much attention online. Apparently Sato and er husband had been having trouble calming down their one-year-old boy, who would start to cry whenever he noticed that she wasn’t around. Since staying by his side 24/7 really wasn’t an option, they decided to have her be around the child all the time, while not really being there.

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When their 15-year-old daughter broke the rules by sneaking in boys at a sleepover party, her parents gave her a choice between handing over her phone for a month, or giving them access to her social media for two weeks. She chose the latter and the internet is so grateful for it.

Madelynn Sumpter’s social media takeover by her parents, Tawnya Ford and Larry Sumpter, began early in November with an Instagram post that announced she had chosen to hand over access to her social media for two weeks, so her follower could expect “some amazing Instagram posts, snapchats and tiktoks from her parents”, and boy did that live up to the hype. On November 11, Maddi’s dad had already began his hilarious quest to embarrass his teen daughter, by posting a selfie captioned “Felt cute. Might delete later”. But that was only the beginning, and by her dad’s third post, the teen was already begging her parents to take away her phone for a month.

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A young copywriter for an advertising agency in New Zealand recently made international headlines for bringing a professional clown as a support person to a company meeting in which he he expected to be fired.

Employers in New Zealand are legally required to offer employees the chance to bring a “support person” to so called pink slip meetings, to help them cope with being laid off. But while most people opt to bring a close friend or a family member, one young copywriter decided to bring a professional clown. Upon receiving an email from management regarding a discussion of his role in the company, and the mention of a support person, Josh Thompson expected the worse, so he prepared for it. Only instead of asking a someone close to accompany him, Thompson spent $200 to hire a professional clown. It turned out to be one of the most awkward pink slip meetings in history.

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The German city of Bielefeld, in the north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, has announced that it is offering a €1 million prize to anyone who can prove that it doesn’t exist.

To have any hope of understanding this bizarre offer, you have to go back to 1993 when the famous “Bielefeld? There’s No Such Thing!” conspiracy theory appeared on the internet. Formulated by a computer student named Achim Held, it basically claimed that Bielefeld – a city of around 330,000 inhabitants, which has historically been around for around 800 years – didn’t actually exist, because, unlike other German cities, it wasn’t really known for anything in particular. The hilarious conspiracy theory spread online and gained a life of its own, with many proponents postulated that a group called “SIE,” or “THEY” in German, created an imaginary illusion of the city, or that it had a secret city center where “dead” celebrities like Elvis Presley and Kurt Cobain had been taken away to.

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The “Delusion Splash T-shirt” is an intriguing Japanese garment that cleverly uses shading to trick people into thinking that you look much better than you actually do.

Japanese clothing designers seem to be on a quest to help consumers achieve the toned physique they’ve always dreamed of without actually stepping foot in a gym or turning to plastic surgery. After the Super Macho T, an inflatable undershirt that artificially enhanced skinny men’s muscles, and the Illusion Grid t-shirt, a women’s shirt that used distortion and shading to create the illusion of an ample bosom, we now have yet another white t-shirt designed to create the illusion of an enhanced physique. Created by the brilliant minds at ekoD Works, the new Faint Muscle Mousou Mapping T-shirt is designed to look sheer, revealing the wearer’s impressive assets.

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Political press conferences don’t usually enjoy much success on social media, but an official address by Pakistani regional minister Shaukat Yousafzai gained international attention last week after someone accidentally turned on the cat filter on Facebook Live, turning Yousafzai and other party members into adorable kittens.

Politician Shaukat Yousafzai and his colleagues in the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party had intended to discuss important decisions of the provincial cabinet in Peshawar last Friday, but their live-streamed official address abruptly turned into a joke after the social media team handling the broadcast accidentally turned on the cat filter on Facebook Live. This gave Yousafzai and a couple of other PTI members digital cat ears, whiskers, and rosy cheeks.

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A computer programmer in China caused quite a stir on social media recently after posting that he created a custom chatbot to answer his girlfriend’s texts 24/7, because he was too busy to do it himself.

Li Kaixiang, who works as a software development engineer for Chinese internet giant JD.com, said that he was often too busy at work to answer his girlfriend’s daily texts, but he also didn’t want to hurt her feelings by ignoring her, so he came up with the idea to create a chatbot to answer and send messages on his behalf. He even posted some screenshot of the chatbot’s conversation with his girlfriend on WeChat, and it definitely looks like the software did pretty good. He also mentioned that on the first day that the chatbot went online, it exchanged around 300 texts with his girlfriend, which kind of explains why he created it in the first place.

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In a desperate attempt to get a break from his nagging in-laws and regain his privacy, a Reddit user allegedly took advantage of his mother-in-law’s severe arachnophobia by getting a tarantula as a pet.

Reddit user “ProbablyAssholeGuy” isn’t really into tarantulas. He thinks they’re cool and all, but he wouldn’t have actually gotten one as a pet if weren’t for the added bonus of keeping his wife’s mother away from his house. In a post that recently went viral on the social network, the man said that his traditional Chinese in-laws had really been getting on his nerves with their unannounced visits and blatant breaches of privacy, but despite complaining to his wife about it for years, she just ignored his concerns. So when he notice his mother-in-law’s reaction to simply seeing a spider sitting in the corner of the house, he got the idea to use her arachnophobia to keep her away.

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The Resistencia Sport Club, a small football club in Paraguay’s second division, is the first in the world to make a tree growing in the stands of its stadium an official supporter, even offering it a membership card and complimentary jersey.

Resistencia’s evergreen supporter is as old as the club, so both the team and its human supporters consider it part of their history. It was around back when the stadium was a mere football field in the middle of a wasteland, so 20-years ago, when the club decided to built concrete stands for its fans, it never even considered the possibility of cutting down their oldest supporters. Instead, they asked the architects and engineers in charge of the project to come up with a solution that would allow it to thrive. So they built the stands around it, allowing human fans to watch home games in its shade. A couple of years ago, when Resistencia celebrated its 100th anniversary, management decided to honor the tree by making it an official member of the club, complete with its own member card and jersey.

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A 59-year-old man from Taiwan has become an internet meme thanks to his ridiculously square hairdo that makes him look like a real-life Minecraft character.

Wu Goren first made news headlines back in 2014, when photos of his bizarre square hairdo went viral on social media. Taiwanese news channels quickly tracked down the middle-aged man and questioned him about his unique hairdo. As it turns out, Wu, who works as a medical scientist at National Taiwan University Hospital, adopted the look after being rejected by a woman, as a way of making himself look like a man in his 20s or 30s. It’s unclear how he came to the conclusion that square hair makes someone look younger, but there’s no denying that it is eye-catching.

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A Chinese man wound up with two large “play” triangles shaved into his new hairdo after asking his hairstylist to use a paused video on his phone as inspiration for the haircut.

It’s not uncommon for people to show their barber photos of haircuts they’d like to try, but one man in China made the mistake of using a paused video on his phone as inspiration for his hairdo, and the detail-oriented hairstylist ended up incorporating the “play” symbol into the haircut as well. To be fair, the video had been paused at just the right moment and the large triangular icon on the screen looked like it was actually part of the hairdo. What are the odds of that happening, I wonder?

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If you mess up in your marriage, trying to earn back your partner’s trust with an apologetic chest tattoos full of typos is probably not the best idea. A cheating husband learned that the hard way after a photo of his chest tattoo went viral on social media.

A man named Jose L. Torres, presumed to be from Houston, Texas, allegedly wanted to prove to his wife that he was seriously committed to changing his ways, and decided that the best way to do that was to get a statement permanently inked on his chest. In the apology/confession inked nipple to nipple and all the way down to his belly button, the husband starts off by emphasizing that he is the tattoo voluntarily, and then goes on to say that he is doing it as a way to earn back his wife’s trust after causing pain and suffering in their marriage. He then confesses to being a ‘liar’, ‘cheater’ and ‘manipulator’, among other things.

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Imagine working as a shop assistant at a jewelry store and having to jump over the glass counter to stop a potential client who’s sprinting towards the door with an expensive necklace around their neck. You’re about to lay your hands on them when they abruptly stop in front of the mirror to admire the jewelry, as if they had never planned to run off with it. That’s the world Chinese shop assistants are living in these days, because of a viral jewelry-stealing prank trend.

Chinese social media has been flooded with videos of people putting on expensive jewelry at jewelry stores and then pretending to run out only to stop in front of a mirror, while an accomplice films the poor shop assistants desperate attempts to stop the apparent theft. Some will leap over the glass counters, others will try to go around them, but they all embarrassingly turn around the moment they realize the potential client’s intentions. It’s funny to watch, I will say that, but you kind of feel bad for the poor jewelers at the same time.

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A university student who recently had his laptop stolen allegedly received an apology email from the thief, in which the person tried to justify the crime by claiming that they were really poor.

The apologetic email went viral on Twitter after Birmingham-resident Stevie Valentine shared a screengrab of it captioned “So my flat mates laptop got stolen today, please pree what the thief sent him”. The thief starts off by writing that he/she is “very, very sorry” for stealing the laptop, and then tries to justify the crime by stating that he/she is “extremely poor” and “needed the money”. The alleged laptop thief then goes on to write that he/she could have also taken the victim’s phone and wallet, but chose not to. “I left your phone and wallet, so I hope that slightly makes up for something,” the email reads.

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A young Lithuanian couple recently got their five minutes of online fame after spending a whole day replacing over 100 framed stock photos at an IKEA store in Vilnius with photos of themselves without attracting any attention from the staff.

Erikas Mališauskas and his girlfriend found the stock photos at their local IKEA in Vilnius, Lithuania, so boring that they decided to do something about them. Last week, the young couple did a little reconnaissance in the furniture super-store and counted over 100 framed stock photos that needed replacing. It was more than they expected, but luckily their Instagram archive provided more than enough images of themselves to choose from. Next, they went to a local shop to print some of their social media photos, and on Saturday they went back to IKEA to make it their own, so to speak.

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