Second of all, we know it’s hard to compete in the fast-paced world of fashion, especially when people are just copping online these days, but making knock off pieces is really not the wave. That’s the shit that pushes the culture backwards.
Now, trying to capitalize off the trend of cooked kicks, specifically the Balenciaga Triple S sneakers (which go for $850), Zara has now released their own trash version.
Going for $89 USD, they’re actually something like a Balenciaga x Raf Simons hybrid, perfect for getting roasted when you go to school. At this point, you might as well pull up to Payless and cop some Shaqs!
Realistically, whether it’s Zara, Balenciaga or Raf Simons, they’re all probably made in the same factory. No one makes real shit anymore!
You telling me these 3 kicks doesn't look alike?!?!? People hating on Zara's because it ain't Yeezy or Balenciaga. It's probably made from the same factory! pic.twitter.com/Omi7tBXiJW
I guess it really comes down to if you’re a hypebeast or not. Anyone who pays $850 on sneakers and isn’t named Young Dolph is an asshole in my book because you already know half these kids who are copping are using their parents’ money!
Sure, these cooked dad-shoes are the wave today, but are they really gonna be poppin’ by next summer? We don’t know.
One thing we do know is that whatever is the wave by next summer, Zara will be ready like some vultures to make a knock off of it.
You ever been high as shit walking into the train station and some brazy looking dude asks you for a Metrocard swipe?
First of all, hell nah. Secondly, FOH!
Most New Yorkers don’t pay these people any mind, let alone make any eye contact, but what happens when that person you deny a swipe is actually a psychopath?
Tim Hann Rivera, the same guy that brought you the wildest wrestling video of the summer, is back with a cautionary tale about what happens when you’re at the wrong train station at the wrong time.
Straight out of a horror movie, the random dude finds his way on to the platform and just when you thought he would be Gucci after making it on the train already, of course he starts asking for some bread.
What ensues is every New Yorker’s worst nightmare, when a wild homeless dude just won’t leave you alone. But it gets even worst.
What would you do if this dude was chasing you from car to car? Following you off your stop into you own apartment building?!
Sure, you could give him the hands real quick, but no one’s tryna even make physical contact with a cracky looking dude. Sorry if that’s insensitive but it’s just straight facts.
The rest of the video gets crazy and this is truly anyone who’s way too smacked to be on the subway’s ultimate worst case scenario that they think to themselves in their head as they’re baked out of their mind under the 6 train’s terrible lighting.
The part where he fucked up the most is when he stopped to tell the dude sorry. You just gotta keep it moving and be on your way.
If you’re not from New York, watch this video and just know that this is exactly what not to do.
Just because you’re born white doesn’t mean that you’re not Filipino.
Wait, WTF?
One very white man by the name of Adam has the internet going brazy today after the story about him identifying as a Filipino man went viral. Of course people are upset and some are even calling him the Filipino Dolezal!
According to his interview with USA Today, the man from Florida is what’s known as ‘transracial’ and is not alone in his identity crisis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkYM2AtOaXk
I guess years of peeping the culture on television and trying all the food really made this man feel at home. Who are we to judge? Adam said,
“I’d watch the history channel sometimes for hours you know whenever it came to that and you know nothing else intrigued me more but things about Filipino culture.
“Whenever I’m around the music, around the food, I feel like I’m in my own skin.”
Of course, there’s the whole discussion about this being cultural appropriation, or that it’s a result of his white privilege, but realistically who gives a fuck?
The fact that people are still getting tripped up about what people want to call themselves is beyond me but what else is the internet for?
"Whenever I'm around the music, around the food, I feel like I'm in my own skin." No, dude. No. That's not how this shit works. https://t.co/ubAc9QVVfj
this is low key racist, because you think that being another race feels different, 'oh i feel like a filipino', in actual reality we are all humans and we are all the same, race isn't anything but a colour, CULTURE IS DIFFERNT TO RACE, if you are fond of their culture their is https://t.co/uPpFa2i9oO
This is what white privilege looks like. Trans racial won't be a valid thing until a black person can avoid being shot, by telling the police, "wait, I identify as a white person!"
As a young Flip myself, I truly don’t give a fuck and find this shit hilarious.
No lie, this is one of the most bizarre headlines in a while but it’s 2017 and if motherfuckers who ain’t Filipino wanna say they’re Filipino, then let them! It ain’t gonna change your life!
I’m not saying this guy is the greatest of ambassadors but who else is really claiming to be Filipino these days? Not even Filipinos themselves! All we got is Manny Pacquiao and who else bruh?!
There’s really nothing we can do at this point to stop this dude saying that he’s Filipino. I say we just let him rock and hope he doesn’t do anything too hotboy. Then we can fax his ass.
A new phone game will let you take out all of your frustrations about the current political landscape of the world.
The game, ‘Politics AR‘, allows you to pick a politician and duke it out against your rivals in a hilarious bout of fisticuffs.
Politics AR comes from Providence VR, which describes itself as “an award-winning immersive content company committed to the development of augmented and virtual reality experiences for entertainment, education, medical simulation and branded content.”
The game will allow you to pit world leaders against each other and settle their differences in the ring. From the Politics AR website,
“Politics AR, an Augmented Reality mobile boxing game, pits world leaders and political heavyweights against one another in real world scenes. Gamers can to take out their frustrations on their favorite or least favorite candidates, including Donald Trump, Barrack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Vladimir Putin, Bernie Sanders, Bill Clinton and George Bush.”
Providence AR sees an opportunity to bring people together through virtual reality death match,
“You may not be able to control the election outcome, you may not be able to sway the opinion of your romantic partner. If you are spontaneously combusting due to severe political frustration, Politics AR is a great solution. As a group of millennials, we saw an opportunity to alleviate the harshness of politics and bring both parties together with knock’ out gameplay.”
It’s a pretty great idea. It might even be sort of therapeutic. People are upset about the way politics are going, perhaps pretending to beat the shit out of opposing leaders will make you feel better.
He goes on to list Ray J’s wild accomplishments including playing a role in the careers of The Game, Kanye West, the show Moesha (shout out to his sister Brandy), and that Ray J caused the (alleged) decline of Fabolous’ career. To sum it up he said,
“Everything that we love is directly related to Ray J.”
Now continuing on with that legacy, it appears that Ray J is now making moves in the tech world and was recently a part of an acquisition for Raycon, an electronics transportation brand he started in 2015 that just sold for $31 million, according to Business Wire.
Yeah, motherfucker. $31 million.
How much Ray J is walking away with is undisclosed but the fact that he’s the CEO and making these types of moves while everything he pretty much created continues to rise, is a testament to this man’s powers.
His company was acquired by NYC-based Cowboy Wholesale who’ve sold already a collective $1 billion in sales of consumer electronics.
Raycon has been responsible for the popular Scoot-E-Bike and now with the sale of his company, Ray J will transition into a role overseeing marketing and global branding strategy. In a statement he said,
“The world is moving towards renewable green energy, and electric transportation is a big part of that. With the Raycon movement, we are going to make sure we are one of the first ones there.”
It’s insane that Ray J is really out here on the tech tip selling companies for tens of millions of dollars, but can anyone truly be that shocked?
Shout out to this man for flipping work and being a living legend.
When you think of Stockton, California the first thing that probably comes to mind is Nick and Nate Diaz, the badass weed-smoking UFC brothers who’ve been repping the 300,000-person town for over two decades now.
Other than that, it’s mostly known for being one of the most dangerous cities in the US with 1,408 violent crimes a year, according to Forbes.
But now Stockton, California is making headlines for a different reason.
After electing Michael Tubbs, a 26-year-old mayor (who’s now 27) last year, Stockton is experimenting with an innovative program that will offer residents a universal basic income of $500 a month, or $6,000 per year that lasts for a three-year period.
The program is called the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, or SEED, and is helping combat the very harsh struggles many of the residents go through.
In addition to having one of the highest crime rates in the country, one in four people in Stockton live under the poverty line. In fact in 2013, they became the biggest city to have to file for bankruptcy, according to CNBC.
The solution of SEED came when Mayor Tubbs did his research on the poverty going on in his city and how the wealth is distributed. Growing up as a part of this community, Tubbs understands what his residents go though and what they realistically need.
He told Vox,
“Growing up in poverty and seeing how much of some of the stress came from trying to stretch dollars to pay for necessities, like bills or school uniforms. When things came up unexpectedly it would cause a lot of hardships.”
According to Vox, the first $1 million from the program is coming from the nearby Silicon Valley Economic Security Project, “a pro-basic income advocacy and research group co-chaired by Facebook co-founder and former New Republic publisher Chris Hughes.”
Stockton isn’t the first city to experiment with a basic income program for residents. Cities from Ontario, Canada to cities in Finland and Kenya have all assisted their people to help deal with poverty.
Tubbs is far from the first elected official to try this out but at 27 years old, the youngest mayor of a town with a population higher than 100,000, he may set the trend in US cities going forward. He continued telling Vox,
“The stress isn’t because people don’t have character. It’s because people don’t have cash.”
The more cities start to elect people who understand their residents like Tubbs, the better the solutions we’ll have to help those who really need it.
When it comes to longevity in the rap game, it’s all about having a vision.
Steve Stoute once said there’s only 10 artists in the game that truly understand the music industry, and that’s because most rappers are just looking for record deals rather than knowing what goes into their contract and focusing on the long game.
This is the exact reason why you ask yourself why ‘so and so’ isn’t as big as they should be or where the fuck did this other dude go?
Then there’s the moguls who’ve been able to transcend hip-hop and create something for themselves that will last longer than their music careers. Guys like Shawn Carter, Sean Combs, and Andre Young have all used hip-hop as a stepping stone into accomplishing much more and that’s because that same hustler mentality they had with rap translated into other areas in life, especially into their businesses.
With most rap artists starting from the bottom, hustling in the streets, and doing whatever it takes to fuel their dreams, it’s the ones who have the vision from the very beginning, take those same principles, and apply that to whatever else they do in life that are most successful.
One artist who’s paving a lane all on his own, and who could very well be the next great rap mogul, is none other than LA’s Nipsey Hussle.
While he’s one of the most prolific emcees out of the West Coast, it seems Nipsey is even more known for his business acumen and decision making, which he keeps as no secret. In fact, if you peep some of his interviews, you can see that he’s always trying to put people on game. You just gotta pay attention.
What’s most impressive is that judging by even his earliest interviews, before he blew up, he always had the same mentality and humbleness that turned him into one of the savviest minds in hip-hop.
From opening his own store, Marathon Clothing, just to employ people from his neighborhood, he created a lane for people to tap into the culture and help rehabilitate an area that is often forgotten by the rest of society. By opening a business in the hood, he’s doing more for his people and community than any politician could even try to do.
But even before that, he was hustling in the streets, getting locked up, and struggling like the rest of his homies. He used his talents as an artist to get out of those situations but Nip never forgot where he came from.
Now, he’s making moves today that you’ll be hearing about five years from now.
Nipsey was one the first rappers to invest in cryptourrency when he acquired stock in Follow Coin and he even flew out to Amsterdam in the middle of making an album just to ink the deal.
It’s these types of moves that make him different than most artists today. Nipsey has an insane wealth of knowledge ready to be shared and distributed to anyone who will listen. From the streets to the boardroom, Nipsey is straight killing it.
But whether you’re listening or not, he’s gonna be making these moves. Peep the video above to see the hood prophet in action.
Why people stream their everyday movements is beyond me.
But in this case, it might’ve saved one young woman’s life.
Live streamer Caroline_Burt on the platform Twitch learned that you need to keep your head on a swivel when you’re trying to interact with the virtual world, while also living in the real one, or else you can land yourself in a sticky situation.
Jumping into a car while talking to her friends online, she immediately made herself comfortable with who she thought was her Uber driver… but realistically it was a dude who thought he just hired a hooker!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pK6Gq_nAQQ
From this short clip here it looks like a giant misunderstanding.
Caroline thought she was on her way to her destination while this unidentified dude thought he was about to clap some cheeks for the low.
Off the jump, the guy was a little shook and couldn’t understand why she was recording in the first place. Her explanation sort of put him at ease but you could tell something was fishy. Once she buckled that seat belt, and he started asking some weird ass non-Uber driver related questions, she immediately made him stop the vehicle.
Not much is revealed after that but assuming by her tweets, we’re guessing that she’s Gucci now.
In the end, it could’ve been the streaming that saved her life. Even if this dude did try some funny shit, the internet would’ve helped rescue her from the situation and as we all know, the internet is undefeated.
Also, side note, who’s dad is this? He’s got some explaining to do with the whole family.
You can’t be driving around in your wife’s whip trying to solicit prostitutes. Now you’re on Worldstar, bruh. SMH.
First is that former rapper and model Mark Wahlberg made the right choice, financially, by transitioning into acting back in the ‘90s. And second: the gender pay disparity in Hollywood is wide.
Emma Stone, who was the highest paid actress, came in at No. 15 in the list. She was one of only three actresses who earned more than $20 million in 2016, as opposed to 16 actors who reached that mark. All in all, the 10 highest paid actresses earned approximately one-third of what the top 10 actors accumulated.
It’s a trend that, unfortunately, isn’t unique to Hollywood. The inequality is also rampant in Bollywood, which hires more people, produces more films, and sells more tickets than its Los Angeles counterpart.
Looking at the bigger picture though, this long-standing dilemma is present in every industry. The World Economic Forum declared that “there is no country on Earth where women make as much as men for the same work.”
If you’re a career woman, this is not entirely surprising. Newsweek reported that women earned 83 cents for every dollar men earned in 2016, a gap that hasn’t budged since the year prior.
Although the rift narrowed since 1980 – when women earned 64 cents for every dollar men earned – it’s not closing fast enough. This is still the case even if women have been making great strides in terms of presence, influence, educational attainment, and skill levels in the workplace.
For instance, the pay gap is lowest in New York, where the ratio of female to male earnings was at 89 percent. The largest, on the other hand, is in Louisiana, where women earn 70 cents to every dollar earned by men. That’s well below the national average.
Receiving a better salary isn’t as simple as moving to New York either, since age plays a big role in the amount men and women earn. While wages increase for full-time workers of both genders as they age, the pay gap tends to widen as women hit their late 20s.
By age 45, the rate of increase goes down for women, with earnings decreasing after they hit 55. This means that 20-year-old women are more likely to earn wages closer to their male counterparts than 50-year-old women.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume you moved to New York and managed to stop aging. Still, your industry is a limiting factor. Finance and insurance, collectively, has the largest pay gap at 29.1 percent.
Public administration comes second with 25.6 percent, followed closely by the professional, scientific, and technical services with 25.2 percent. The pay gap is even worse for racial minorities, with Hispanic women earning just 54 percent of what white men earn on average.
However bleak it seems at the moment, the good news is that certain people and organizations are trying to close the wage gap faster and condemning gender inequality. Among the high-profile and outspoken figureheads in this regard is Simon Cowell, the music mogul and owner of several reality show franchises.
Due to his standing in the industry, Cowell is in a good position to talk about the issue, considering the success of his creations. His top talent competition series The X-Factor, for instance, has spawned a variety of off-shoot projects including TheX-Factor Official Music Merchandise Store and TheX-Factor Games digital platform.
Recently though, the show made headlines due to the revelation that Cowell is paying his female judges Nicole Scherzinger and Sharon Osbourne more than Louis Walsh.
Digital Spy specified that it was a response to the report about the top earners of the BBC that showed a massive disparity in terms of pay, which he described as “hugely embarrassing”.
When it comes to the potential of e-sports, the surface has only been scratched.
According to CNN, the industry of professional competitive gaming is expected to smash beyond the $1 billion mark by 2019, which means 2018 was one of the most pivotal years for gamers and studios alike.
With one of the fastest growing titles, Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch, starting to take form as one of the major franchises to be embedded into the culture, the launch of the Overwatch League in 2018 will further solidify its place in the e-sports stratosphere.
Since launching in May of 2016 with 7 million players that number has tripled in the following months. Today, there are 30 million players and counting. The Overwatch League will now curate the best of the best in a unique league format comparable to any pro sport that people watch today.
With 12 teams set to play in its inaugural season, the games officially begin in January and it all culminates in the July playoffs in the new Blizzard Arena in Los Angeles. But players are getting ready now and preseason matches begin as early as December.
These professional players are now stars commanding worldwide respect and pay checks that allow them to drop everything else they’re doing to use e-sports as a legitimate career path. In 2017, e-sports is providing a lane like never seen before and Overwatch is a crucial part of the evolution.
With teams already established in cities like New York, Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Seoul, and Shanghai, it’s only a matter of time before every major city has their own Overwatch team.
The other thing is that you don’t even have to be competing to take part in it all. With pro gaming viewership at an all-time high, an estimated 427 million people will be watching by the year 2019.
And who knows, maybe those people watching will be the next Overwatch champions inspiring the next generation. E-sports is the real deal.
