We all know many of the stars and online influencers we follow on social media use all kinds of tricks to enhance their image, but a recent Chinese duo revealed just how far digital editing can go, by comparing their altered social media photos to the original versions.

Exposing online idols has been a very popular pastime on Chinese social media lately, with dozens of reported cases of internet celebrities with thousands, sometimes millions of followers exposed as frauds after accidentally turning off their filters and revealing themselves as looking totally different than what their fans thought. But this story is about a peculiar case involving a pair of social media idols who recently exposed themselves, by comparing the original photos of themselves to the altered ones that they usually posted on their profiles.

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A viral TikTok video of what looks like a concrete fence decorated with hundreds of iphone 6 smartphones has been doing the rounds online in Asia, sparking a heated debate about its authenticity.

Ok, so the iPhone 6 isn’t the newest Apple handheld, but I actually have a couple of friends who can’t afford to upgrade to a newer iPhone and are very happy with their sixth generation Apple smartphone, so to see this model used as decorative tiles for a fence was a bit of a shock. And I apparently wasn’t the only one surprised by the TikTok video posted by Vietnamese user @minhhienapple last week, as his clip showing the fence of a rural home decorated with hundreds of iPhones has so far been viewed over 1.7 million times.

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“Chiseled physique” is not a phrase you would normally use to describe the appearance of a 6-year-old boy, but in the case of Arat Hosseini, the shoe fits perfectly, as they say.

Instagram star, soccer prodigy or expert gymnast are just some of the flattering labels people have used to describe Arat Hosseini over his short but very eventful life. He first made headlines around the world a couple of years ago when a video of what many originally assumed was a girl dribbling opponents on the soccer pitch went viral on social media. That ‘girl’ turned out to be a long, dark haired Iranian boy whose father had been training to become an athlete since before he could walk. Soon pictures of his tiny six-pack abs and videos of his training routines were doing the rounds on the internet, and Arat’s career as an international social media star took off.

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Restaurants have been among the most hard-hit businesses by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, but one venue in Bangkok, Thailand has come up with an ingenious way to stay afloat in these troubled times – using hunky models as food deliverymen.

76 Garage, a restaurant in Bangkok’s Lat Phrao District, was known for its attractive and friendly staff long before the new coronavirus turned the whole world upside down, but now the owners of this popular eatery are actively relying on their reputation for having attractive male staff to boost their revenues. Last month, 76 Garage launched an ingenious promotional offer, which allows anyone in a 5-kilometer radius to have their food delivered by a muscular hunk if they order costs 300 baht ($9.5) or more. Not only do customers get some eye-candy with their food, but they can also have their picture taken with the friendly deliverymen, if they so desire.

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Believe it or not, the Vietnamese province of An Giang, in the Mekong Delta, is less known for its breathtaking natural attractions than for the giant loaves of bread that went viral online a couple of years back.

It all started in 2018, when lifestyle and entertainment website Brightside published a list of the world’s strangest foods, including a giant loaf of bread that was supposedly very popular in Vietnam’s An Giang province. There were those who claimed the accompanying photos of the bread were either photoshopped or shot from a certain angle to create the illusion that they were much larger than ordinary loaves, but then other photos and videos of the unusual bread started going viral online. Vietnamese media started giving the giant loaves a lot of attention, and soon the whole world knew about the now famous giant bread of An Giang.

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“A group where we all pretend to be ants in an ant colony” has to be one of the most popular and at the same time strange Facebook groups ever created. It’s basically 1.8 million people pretending they are ants and worshiping their queen.

Being stuck at home for weeks on end makes people do crazy and unusual things, and the rise of Facebook’s now famous “ant group” is a perfect example. Created in June of 2019, A group where we all pretend to be ants in an ant colony numbered a respectable 100,000 members in march of 2020, but then the Covid-19 pandemic started wreaking havoc everywhere prompting social distancing and isolation measures, and the number of members skyrocketed to over a million in less than two months. At the time of this writing, the Facebook group where everyone “worships the Queen and do ant stuff” has over 1.8 million members.

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Looking at photos of Chinese cosplayer CROME拉面猫就是星空萌 dressed up as some of the most famous anime heroines, you would never guess that the person under all that makeup and female clothes is a man.

A former art teacher, CROME拉面猫就是星空萌 now works as a full-time cosplayer, regularly posting new photos and updates for his legion of online fans, attending events and working on new costumes. He reportedly started trying on women’s clothes in secret, in 2007; it was nothing fancy, he didn’t experiment with makeup at the time, and he didn’t tell anyone about it, but he considers those days the true beginning of his female cosplaying career. It wasn’t until 2012 that he was comfortable enough to go out in public dressed as one of his favorite anime characters.

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A 35-year-old Russian influencer got a lot of backlash after announcing her upcoming marriage to the 20-year-old stepson she helped raise for 10 years.

Marina Balmasheva, who rose to fame in Russia for documenting her weight-loss adventure online, is getting a lot of attention these days, because of her controversial new romantic relationship. Shortly after divorcing her 45-year-old husband, to whom she had been married for 1o years, the Instagram influencer announced that she was romantically involved with her 20-year-old stepson, Vladimir. The couple reportedly plan on tying the knot in the near future and having children of their own…

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Lee Su Jin, a 51-year old dentist from South Korea, has amassed quite an impressive online following thanks to her incredibly youthful looks.

The first time we featured Lee Su Jin on Oddity Central was back in 2016, when photos of her went viral on Asian social media, along with the heart-to-believe information that she was 48-years-old. It turned out her age was correct, and we subsequently learned that she was already popular in her native South Korea, having already appeared on several television shows. She has since solidified her reputation as a “goddess of eternal youth”, as the years keep rolling by, but she simply refuses to age.

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Let’s face it, the internet is full of photos of beautiful girls, but it’s not every day that you stumble upon beauty that takes your breath away. 11-year-old Amina Ependieva is one such striking beauty.

Despite getting a lot of attention on Russian social media over the last five months, Amina Ependieva remains a very mysterious figure. Discovered by Chechen photographer Amina Arsakova, the 11-year-old made quite an impression when photos were posted on Arsakova’s Instagram account. Her post usually received about 1,000 likes on average, but the photos of Ependieva received over 10,000 likes, and hundreds of comments either praising her unearthly beauty or asking if she was a real person.

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Blaze, an outgoing Labrador Retriever from Finland became an overnight internet sensation after photos showing his color change from black to white went viral on social media.

Blaze was born with a pure black fur and stayed that way for most of his life, but last year, his human master, Santeri, noticed a small white patch on his ear. He didn’t think too much of it, but the patch kept getting bigger, and before long it spread to the 10-year-old pooch’s face and torso, gradually turning his black coat, white. A photo showing Blaze’s transformation over the last year was recently posted on the Facebook group Dogspotting Society, where it received over 32,000 likes and nearly 3,000 comments from people all over the world.

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A California woman is being praised for going above and beyond to ensure that a cracked duck egg she found in a park hatched, by incubating it in her bra for over a month.

Betsy Ross, an independent contractor from Visalia, California, was walking with her family in a public park when her kids noticed that someone had maliciously smashed up all the duck nests that were there. Miraculously, one of the duck eggs had survived the massacre with only a small crack. It wasn’t leaking, so the kids begged her to save it and try to help it hatch. She had never hatched and egg before, and she didn’t think she could save it, but the children were already upset because of the nests, so she said yes. That was the start of a remarkable journey that saw the young mother of three carrying a duck egg with her everywhere she went for 35 days.

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An Indonesian fashion designer/Instagram ‘rich kid’ recently found himself at the center of an online controversy because of a fashion handbag he allegedly created from alligator tongues and an “ethically sourced” human spine.

Arnold Putra originally showcased the controversial fashion accessory on his Instagram account back in 2016, but it went relatively unnoticed until a a few days ago when a tweet about it went viral, sending thousands of people flocking to the young designer’s Instagram, to check if the bag is real. Scroll down Putra’s page to content from 2016 and, low and behold, the creepy bag shows up complete with a description that reads “alligator tongue and human osteoporosis spine bag by me”. Obviously, people started asking questions…

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Avenida Iztacalco 9 in Mexico City was one of the most searched addresses on Google Maps this week, after photos of a creepy, doll-covered house located there went viral on social media.

It all started with a short TikTok video shared by user Fernando Mata, who runs a segment called “Weird Things on Google Maps”, where he gradually zooms in on strange things found on the popular platform. In episode three of his series, he featured Avenida Iztacalco 9, an address in Mexico City where a creepy-looking building is supposedly located. With dozens of old and dismembered dolls hanging on its facade and on the fence around the building, it’s not hard to understand why warnings like “Do not search for Avenida Iztacalco 9 on Google Maps before going to bed!” went viral on Twitter and Facebook.

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Be honest, looking at this hyper-realistic drawing of a squid, could you ever tell it apart from a real-life cephalopod? Most people couldn’t which is why Japanese illustrator Yuuki Tokuda’s artwork has been getting so much attention on social media.

Yuuki Tokuda is a talented illustrator whose cartoony characters have been immortalized in books and magazines. But the Japanese artist has recently been enjoying praise for his hyper-realistic drawings as well, particularly that of a mind-blowingly realistic squid done with a pen, pencil, airbrush and a copic marker. Looking at his masterpiece and the level of detail he has been able to achieve with such a limited arsenal of tools, it’s easy to see why Tokuda’s pictures have been liked and shared by hundreds of thousands of people on Twitter alone.

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