The weirdest and wackiest stories that defined not-so-popular culture in 2013 on Dazed Digital
A family who sunk over 100,000 big American bucks into the plush Ty® Beanie Babies kingdom has since regretted it. Go figure. Chris Robinson, son of the obsessive collector, made a documentary about his dad and family, Bankrupt by Beanie Babies. We posted the story back in August after coming across the doc on Vimeo. Then the Sun picked it up, Gawker, and it found its way onto those tiny screens in the back of NY taxis in an ABC News segment. We're just patting our back here…
Walt Disney may or may not be "chilling" in the Disney vault, but cryogenics is a real thing – that is, choosing to go into cryostasis, a version of freezing yourself so you can wake up disoriented 60 years from now with no friends or family. Whether or not it's a good idea is strictly up to you.
Did that lion just bark at me? Zoo-goers in the People’s Park of Luohe, China, were snubbed after paying a hefty entry fee, only to discover the resident lion on display was actually a dog. China pulled one over on us again, and here we pay tribute, couting down the most radical and odious counterfeits.
If you can read this, this article probably can't help you. A bevy of radical researchers believe that amphibians can teach us to regenerate ourselves. So The Princess & the Frog wasn't just a fairy tale…
MAKING GABBA FROM RADIO DISNEY
Remember that guy from Sailor Moon who threw the rose into the ground? I just googled it: Tuxedo Mask. Remember him? Imagine if he sang and then his vocals were pitched up to mach speeds. There is this weird genre of music called nightcore which does just that, pitching the vocals of Katy Perry's E.T. paired with bug-eyed anime visuals. It's super catchy.
"You don't understand, this is an Alaia!" spouts Cher Horowitz at gunpoint in Clueless. Thing is, her valley girl accent – a lower register like, duh! – is actually known as vocal fry, a growing vocal trend that has been adopted by the Kardashians and mass marketed to everyone via E! Are you guilty of the throaty croak?
TEN OUTRAGEOUS PRODUCTS TO 3D PRINT
Shoes, faces, and killer robot armies: 3D printing has come to town and brought along a landslide of the stranger products which can now be 3D printed.
The next body part to bling out? The whites of your eyes. For those who are brave and willing, you can "tattoo" your eye with a platinum implant for the humble price of $3000. If your eye is lacking that lustre and your pockets are bulging, this painless procedure will be sure to offer a twinkle.
What's that smell? As the darker corners of the internet blink up with men licking and sniffing high tech sportswear, Pinar & Viola wonder about this very particular sort of shoe fetishist.
From AI-enabled gnocchi to lab-grown meat, we take a look at how technology is hacking your dinner: cheese from your own tears, chemicals that can erase memories Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind-style – it gets creepier. Stay away, Monsanto!