#DMTBeautySpot #beauty

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For as long as there have been hard times — whether that’s a long winter or a pandemic — people have been chasing coziness. In recent years, cozy trends like Denmark’s “hygge” and Sweden’s “fika” have been embraced, both in real life and on Instagram. These trends defined“cozy” for millennials, making the word synonymous with friends cuddling around a fireplace in flannel pajamas or sipping warm cider over a casual chili dinner at a glamping site. This version of “cozy” soon approached its own obsolescence, best embodied by the Christian Girl Autumn meme that calls to mind herds of Starbucks fans in infinity scarves, sorority-posing at a pumpkin patch.

Ever since the pandemic brought about an early winter in March, though, our concept of “cozy” evolved to meet our desperate need for comfort. Our new stay-at-home lives have given birth to a New Cozy, a post-millennial aesthetic for what coziness and comfort look like, a product not only of life during a pandemic, but also Gen Z’s rise to cultural prominence. 

For young people in 2020, this is what cozy looks like: Forget candlelit dinners with friends. Instead, you’re in bed under a dollop of comforter, watching something on your laptop maybe, or FaceTiming or playing on your Switch. The room around you glows red, blue, or possibly pink. There is a diffuser puffing Muji’s lemongrass scent in the corner. A chill-hop playlist thumps gently from a speaker. The hardest part of your day is when you reach out to grab the warm mug of tea or coffee that’s steaming away on your nightstand.

You probably already know what the New Cozy looks like, whether from making it a part of your own life or by seeing it when brands try to sell it back to us. But the New Cozy doesn’t just live on Pinterest and TikTok, it lives in our bedrooms, where so many of us spend most of our days. And it’s a direct evolution from the earliest days of quarantine when we were forced to acclimate to our new lives.

Think back to Season One of the pandemic: We bought monochromatic sweatsuits to add some comfort to working from home and bring some style and cohesion to our house clothes. We had more time than we knew what to do with, so we joined TikTok in droves and brought the LED lights from those teens’ bedrooms into our own homes. We made cloud coffee and cloud bread because we even wanted food that looked like pillows and reminded us of anime skies. We bought out all the Nintendo Switches so we could immerse ourselves in what might be the coziest video game ever: Animal Crossing. These were all just trends at first, but we’ve since folded them into the fabric of our lives — the New Cozy is part of the new normal.

Nowhere is the rise of this aesthetic more evident than on YouTube, where searches for “2020 room transformation” and “cozy room tour” yield bedroom after bedroom outfitted in LED lights, fluffy comforters, and minimal furniture. The preferred color scheme isn’t millennial pink or bright primary colors — it’s no color scheme at all. 22-year-old Cel Sang of Chicago chose an all-cream palette for her room in her parents’ home, one that didn’t compete with the house’s wood molding. While a cream-and-brown color palette is almost aggressively bland, Sang feels like it does the job of creating a serene space: “Think of a warm cup of coffee or a warm cup of hot chocolate. It looks the same to me. It has the same feeling as drinking a cup of coffee and snuggling up in my room. I feel warm inside when I’m here.” The New Cozy favors neutral bedrooms that do a good job of reflecting natural light that aren’t too distracting during the workday — but that will also be transformed when it turns dark and the LED lights come on.

In Brooklyn, New York, 19-year-old Allison Nicole is a student and part-time YouTuber also living and attending school from her family home. While her room is very small, all she needs is her guitar, her Switch, and her LED lights to make it feel cozy and peaceful. “That’s number one,” she told Refinery29. “My bed is a third of my room, so this is just a place to sleep, watch TV, chill and it’s very calm and serene.” She watched a lot of productivity videos and studying from home vlogs in the early days of quarantine and they inspired her. “When I watch study-YouTube or productivity-vlogs, it keeps me calm, because our environments are similar.”

Today’s standard of coziness is unique in that it doesn’t compete with or disavow technology, it embraces it. If hygge and Christian Girl Autumn emphasize putting your phone away and reducing screen time, the New Cozy acknowledges that technology isn’t inherently good or bad. The LED lights don’t just blur the line between on- and off-screen, they also create harmony between those worlds. So when we turn away from the RGB glow of our phones or iPads, we can better relax as we sit back in a room cast in a similar glow. 

And once we turn off YouTube or put away Animal Crossing, we can turn to chillhop and lo-fi playlists to ease us back into the silence. Most of Spotify and YouTube’s most-popular lo-fi and chillhop playlists come with art depicting cozy home offices and cute characters working late into the night, if not around the clock. You’re meant to play them on your TV as background music while you work on your laptop and procrastinate on your phone. These kinds of playlists boomed in popularity over the early months of quarantine and the characters wearing headphones and studying alongside millions of listeners, have become companions and memes — especially Study Girl, the animated brunette with the headphones studying diligently while her cat sits in the window. Once we all started working from home, some people on Twitter were quick to note Study Girl had been in quarantine for years.

The New Cozy, then, is all about softening life’s harsh edges: Diffusers that blow delicate puffs of steam to scent our rooms. Cloud foods for when we want something fun and whimsical — and squishy — to eat. Soft music and LED lights cast a warm haze all around us. The New Cozy is self-soothing. It’s the bare minimum we can muster when we’re too burned-out and depressed and anxious to chip away at our reading lists and workout challenges. It’s neither productive nor social. It’s an endless state of recharge that is at least honest enough to admit that, sometimes, all we want is to waste time online and in real life.

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Michelle Santiago Cortés, Khareem Sudlow

#DMTBeautySpot #beauty

We’re eight months into a pandemic, and still, a lot of people don’t think it’s real. The sitting president is likely planning a coup against the president-elect. The state has been escalating violence against its own citizens, primarily Black people. So if you do join your family for Thanksgiving, you’ll have plenty to talk about. But this holiday season won’t be of the Hallmark movie variety. This is more like a Blumhouse Productions holiday special about talking politics with family.

Maybe you’re coming home to a whole family of conservatives. Maybe you only have a great aunt or distant cousin to worry about. Or maybe your family agrees with you on some things, but not everything, not some of the things you think are most important. In any case, you’re probably thinking about a specific fight, probably from 2016, that still clings to you like a ghost. We’re all worried about how this year’s big events will show up at the dinner table (or Zoom call) – an impending jump scare sure to hurt feelings and strain relationships. For a lot of young people, though, school shutdowns and closures have kept them in their childhood bedrooms since March. They’ve been watching the news, quarantining, going to protests, and voting while sharing a roof with parents and elders who may have very different politics. And they’ve been having Thanksgiving-level screaming matches about it pretty much all year long.

For 22-year old Jeanine of Oahu, Hawaii, the year has been defined by arguments with her dad over Trump and the novel coronavirus. Her parents immigrated from the Philippines and gained entry to the U.S. thanks to her father’s military service, so they’re hardcore Republicans. In her house, talking about politics is a “one-way ticket to a screaming match.” On one hand, her parents brag about having a healthcare worker daughter “on the frontlines,” lauding her bravery to anyone who will listen. “But behind closed doors,” Jeanine tells Refinery29, “They were like: ‘You still don’t know what you’re talking about, coronavirus will blow over because that’s what Trump said.’” She realized that she and her parents live in separate worlds and it hurts that they don’t care to acknowledge hers.

Her dad believes Trump’s claims about hydroxychloroquine. He refuses to listen to her when she explains the science behind why it doesn’t work. “It was such a disconnect for me. And they would just keep arguing until they were blue in the face. Saying things like ‘you’re wrong, you’re too young. You don’t understand.’” 

All their arguments seem to fall into a pattern Jeanine has learned to recognize. It goes like this: Her dad watches Fox News. He turns to her and asks her thoughts. And this is where everything freezes and our protagonist has a choice to make. Lately, she’s been opting out of any serious conversations about politics, so she says things like, “Oh, I don’t think much about it” to avoid getting into it. “Because, you know, they’re not actually asking you what you think. They’re just picking a fight so I try to step away as best I can.”

When she thinks about all the fights and confrontations she’s had with her parents, mostly with her dad, Jeanine sounds disheartened: “Some days I wonder how I came from them. Like, how did I come from that kind of environment where you don’t care about others and I’m going into a profession where you do care about others?” She wishes her parents felt like they had space to learn. “Maybe it’s just how they were brought up – being wrong was not acceptable – but I wish they knew like it’s okay to be wrong.” 

In Richmond, Virginia, 17-year-old Sophia has noticed that her conversations with her parents (especially her dad) also follow a similar pattern. “I’ve always noticed it’s a joke,” Sophia says. “They say they’re kidding. But it’s not, it’s not really a joke.” Like Jeanine, Sophia often walks away from these discussions feeling small and belittled. “I get discredited a lot because I’m 17 and ‘don’t know anything.'”

We see the same pattern taking place on a wider scale: Trump uses Twitter almost exclusively to taunt and push other people’s buttons. And it’s not just parents making sideways comments looking for a fight, it’s that white supervisor at work that goes out of his way to say he “can’t be himself,” lest he is reported to HR. It’s the cohort of famous writers and academics decrying “cancel culture” when they feel they are being challenged by people they consider intellectually inferior. No wonder we’re seeing this dynamic play out in our own families. 

Like most people, Sophia just wants her parents to respect her and not resort to low blows about her age or gender to win a debate. “There’s a whole different life that I have that they don’t have anything to do with and I’ve kind of gotten to experience a world on my own instead of them like teaching it to me and it’s become something I noticed like every single day,” she explains. Before quarantine, Sophia said she was happy to go along with what her parents thought. She had just started middle school when the 2016 election was taking place and they didn’t seem eager to discredit her when she was going along with what they wanted. “I don’t expect them to change how they think. I would love for them to listen to me more. I would love to just have a conversation and not an argument.”

But a lifetime of being an older sister has made Sophia a pro at de-escalating the situation, and when screaming matches are avoided, she says she often learns a lot from having conversations with her dad. Her strategies for avoidining conflict include changing the subject, giving a soft answer, and hoping they lose interest and move on. Alternatively, though, you might want to engage. It’s important to have these hard conversations, especially with those closest to you; your energy is best spent meeting your loved ones where they are instead of sparring with random people on the internet. But these are also the harder conversations to have, and there is no audience to shower us with likes when we do. In which case, make sure you have extra patience and a snack to fuel-up between emphatic nods.

Jeanine says she has friends who find themselves in more dangerous situations, where a fight about politics blows up past a screaming match. As a friend, she makes herself available to them – they go out for boba, drive around, kill time. Personally, she’s slowly divesting from political conversations with her dad. “I just don’t see the value in pissing myself off and raising my blood pressure,” she says. “The best I can do is just tell him, like, ‘you know, I don’t want to do this right now.’” If they did anything fun that day she’ll remind them of the good time they had, because, she says, “I want to love you at the end of the day.”

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Michelle Santiago Cortés, Khareem Sudlow

#DMTBeautySpot #beauty

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, we’ve had memes to explain, critique, and immortalize every moment and hot take. We’ve shared memes about how coronavirus restrictions apparently only apply to certain people and even memed the president’s COVID diagnosis. Through it all, the pandemic has been grossly and criminally mishandled, costing hundreds of thousands of lives and devastating Black, Brown, and low-income communities specifically. Many say the pandemic pierced the veil that hid this country’s nasty inner-working but if you look at these memes, you’d think all we can do about it is laugh.

In true season finale fashion, Pfizer and Moderna each produced their own very impressive COVID-19 vaccines in record time. America has lost a lot of the little progress it initially made in slowing the spread of the virus and new daily cases are currently at an all-time high. But now we do have two syringe-shaped lights at the end of the tunnel, so which one should we pick?

This is how the Pfizer vs. Moderna meme was born. It’s a meme about the ridiculous choices of capitalism. A potential immunization against a virus that’s killed 200,000 Americans is great news. Having to choose between two major pharmaceutical companies’ offerings, one of which was developed thanks to Dolly Parton’s sponsorship, feels absurd.

pfizer vs moderna… a classic jacob vs edward choice

— mikaela (@okmikaela) November 17, 2020

Can’t wait for @wirecutter to tell me which vaccine to take.

— Sachin Agarwal (@agarwal) November 16, 2020

i keep reading it as “MODENA might have a 95% effective vaccine” and i’m like well makes sense they do make a good balsamic

— Delia Cai (@delia_cai) November 16, 2020

This must be the competition people talk about that supposedly produces the best version of every product and service imaginable. And slowly, the internet has started to wonder how these mega-companies are managing their feelings. Some of the funniest memes depict moments of jealousy and friendly rivalry.

Pfizer, when they learned that the Moderna vaccine is slightly more effective and doesn’t require a -80 cold chain pic.twitter.com/LteO41OzUb

— Ilan Schwartz MD PhD (@GermHunterMD) November 17, 2020

It certainly is season finale material, a swelling climax with a promise for season two. It’s even a sign of hope after a year of intermittent progress and so the Pfizer vs. Moderna meme folds itself into the “2020 Writers’ Room” memes.

The Pfizer vs Moderna battle is the thrilling end of year match that nobody saw coming

— Land of Size (@LandofSize) November 18, 2020

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Michelle Santiago Cortés, Khareem Sudlow

#DMTBeautySpot #beauty

It’s been a minute since we last feared we’d lose TikTok forever. But, despite being on thin ice for the last four months, TikTok has been as vibrant and surprising a platform as ever, serving as a much-needed home to debate memes, reactions to Trump’s COVID diagnosis, presidential prank calls, boys in maid outfits, and so much more.

November 12 was supposed to be a big day for TikTok. After the Trump administration’s attempt to quickly ban TikTok — a swift, merciless slashing of China’s connection with American consumers — failed, becoming a drawn-out series of lawsuits, court orders, and injunctions, the platform reached an agreement with Walmart and Oracle in September. The president approved. But that wasn’t the end of the problems for TikTok, because the U.S. Commerce Department had given TikTok until November 12th to resolve the very nebulous “national security concerns” that triggered the ban in the first place.

The process has been frustrating for TikTok: The Walmart-Oracle deal met Trump’s requirements that the U.S. operations of the app be transferred over to an American-owned company and that a portion of that transaction go straight into the U.S. government’s pocket. But the U.S. government had yet to approve the transaction. There was a real fear that yesterday could be a dark day for TikTok lovers. Earlier this week, TikTok’s comms team Tweeted: “Facing continual new requests and no clarity on whether our new solutions would be accepted, we requested the 30-day extension that is expressly permitted in the August 14 order.”

And, according to TikTok, working with this administration is just like doing all the work in a group project. The earlier Tweet also noted that the company has provided “detailed solutions to finalize that agreement – but have received no substantive feedback on our extensive data privacy and security framework.” It seems the administration is setting deadlines it then ignores and is making unending requests with no intention of working with TikTok to address anything. 

The good news, though, is that the government’s ineptitude has extended to its decision not to implement the TikTok ban yet. In part, that may be because the Trump administration is throwing all its resources into contesting Biden’s victory and securing a second term. Also, it turns out that major sales of huge international social media platforms between countries with decades of trade animosity aren’t as easy as you’d think. There are international laws to consider, trade agreements to honor, Chinese laws, American laws, regulatory bodies to consult, and plain old business interests to take into account.

TikTok is safe for now — and it has been focused on fighting for its right to survive in the U.S. market. But with a president who is also fighting for his right to survive, it seems like TikTok might have to resolve its ban all by itself.

Refinery29 reached out to TikTok for comment and we’ll update the story as soon as we hear back.

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Michelle Santiago Cortés, Khareem Sudlow

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TikTokers are back to trolling Trump. This time, they are sharing videos of prank calls to his campaign’s voter fraud hotline and encouraging others to do the same. It’s like TikTokers Troll Trump’s Tulsa Rally: The Remix.

Ever since Biden won the 2020 presidential race, Trump has been making slow and not-so-subtle moves to maintain power. While the prospect of a coup is no laughing matter, a lot of the Trump campaign’s more visible attempts to undermine the election have been remarkably ridiculous (see: the Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference). Among these efforts, is a voter fraud hotline, which is meant to collect instances of voter fraud, presumably to help strengthen the number of lawsuits the campaign has filed against key states. But that’s not how TikTokers are using it.

According to ABC News, the hotline has become “a nightmare” and staffers “have been bombarded with prank calls from people laughing and mocking them over Biden’s win before hanging up.” Other prank calls shared on TikTok show folks using the automated message as a sort of scene partner for comedy sketches.

Trump supporters are using the platform to film themselves dueting videos that show the hotline’s URL and 800 number, along with instructions to “report every case of fraud” and spread the word. Anti-Trump TikTokers, on the other hand, have simply adapted the same tactics to undermine their efforts.

@ktzbtch

it would be a real shame if everyone called tr*mp’s fraud hotline and did this🤭 #fyp

♬ original sound – kt

@cheesecaseacita

I called the Trump voting fraud hotline and you can too Call: (888) 503-3526 #itbelikethat #fucktrump #biden2020 #fyp

♬ Elevator Music – Bohoman

@itscaitlinhello

She is ✨scared✨ #fyp #foryou #foryoupage #waspmom #election2020

♬ original sound – Caitlin Reilly

@sewpheeyuh

do NOT blow up the link in my comments & definitely don’t share the voter protection hotline #voteblue #progressive #biden2020 #leftist #votehimout

♬ original sound – sofia!!

This year has seen a pattern of Trump supporters gathering online, be it on TikTok or under white supremacist hashtags on Twitter, only to be swiftly and mercilessly intercepted by left-leaning teenagers with extra time on their hands, like with the Tulsa Rally. During the summer’s uprisings for Black lives, K-pop stans crashed the Dallas Police Department’s iWatch app by flooding it with fancams, as well. This wave of virtual counter-protesting brought sheer joy and glee to our timelines. 

This strategy of overwhelming hotlines, overwhelming the streets, overwhelming police departments, and overwhelming racist hashtags — moves that rely on strength in numbers and create room for humor and whimsy — is a welcome antidote to 2020 malaise.

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You Don't Need To Feel Empathy For Trump

Trump Wants "Election Defense Fund" Donations

Megyn Kelly Talks "Feelings" After Attacking Biden

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Michelle Santiago Cortés, Khareem Sudlow

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Since Election Day we have been lucky enough to be peppered with amazing memes; from Gritty to Michigan, every kind of meme has had its moment in the sun. Shortly after the media projected Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential race, however, the Trump administration unintentionally gave the internet its best meme yet: Four Seasons Total Landscaping. 

Unless you’re a Philadelphia local with gardening needs, you likely only just heard of Four Seasons Total Landscaping this weekend. But the rest of us learned about the company amidst our celebration of Trump’s defeat, when the president announced his team was holding a press conference at the Four Seasons in Philadelphia. In fact, the president was mistaken and there would be nothing at the stately luxury hotel. Rather, the campaign would be holding a press conference in the parking lot of Four Seasons Total Landscaping, a local business with a similar but very much distinguishable name. The result was a divinely laughable and ridiculous affair that saw Rudy Giuliani baselessly claiming voter fraud (with the help of a convicted sex offender, no less), all in a gravel parking lot under an unusually cruel November sun.

Rudy Giuliani has arrived for his presser at the Ritz… pic.twitter.com/eOnuBxtCMY

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) November 9, 2020

New background for your Zoom calls this week. You’re welcome. pic.twitter.com/kFU1Cwjblm

— Alan Ferrier (@alanferrier) November 9, 2020

Though people were at first joking that Giuliani must have confused the two venues, sources confirm that the campaign fully intended to appear at the local landscaping firm all along, Trump caused some confusion by tweeting that it would be at the City Center hotel, only to delete his tweet and publish a new one with the amended information. This cross-communication can’t be anything less than what the meatier vs. meteor meme predicted. 

To clarify, President Trump’s press conference will NOT be held at Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia.
It will be held at Four Seasons Total Landscaping— no relation with the hotel.

— Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia at Comcast Center (@FSPhiladelphia) November 7, 2020

We’re grateful for the confusion, as it led to some very amusing memes, but even without the hotel mix-up, Four Seasons Total Landscaping’s neighboring sex shop and crematorium would have already made for a set of jokes designed to send us over the edge — some might even say the adjoining businesses are the perfect picture of Trump’s range.

Metaphorically speaking, aren’t we all nestled between a sex shop and a crematorium?

— Ali Davis 🏳️‍🌈 (@Ali_Davis) November 8, 2020

Four Seasons Total Landscaping is also my secret code name for a bikini wax.

— Emmy Rossum (@emmyrossum) November 7, 2020

the tumblr ball pit deflated so four seasons total landscaping could fly

— JP (@jpbrammer) November 8, 2020

So while there’s usually very little to laugh at when it comes to this president and administration — it’s just too dark to be truly funny — Four Seasons Total Landscaping gave us all that release. Just in time to say goodbye to Trump forever.

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You Don't Need To Feel Empathy For Trump

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Michelle Santiago Cortés, Khareem Sudlow

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You know when you have a song stuck in your head and the depth of your being says: “we can’t go on unless we figure out what this song is.” So you examine the artifact in search for clues: Do you remember the lyrics? Did someone you can contact play it? Were you close enough to the sound to get a good Shazam of it? If you come to the devastating conclusion that your answer to all these questions is “no,” you’re likely used to telling yourself you’ll never find the song and kiss it goodbye. Finally, there’s a solution to this irritating issue.

This week, Google released a new feature called “Hum to Search.” In order to use it, you’ll need the latest version of the Google app. When you select the microphone icon and ask Google, “What’s this song?” or select “search a song,” the stage lights come on and you have to give your best 10-15 second rendition of the song for Google to get the job done.

Do you know that song that goes, “da na na na na do do?” We bet Google Search does. 😉 Next time a song is stuck in your head, just #HumToSearch into the Google app and we’ll identify the song. Perfect pitch not required → https://t.co/xOFYTukjOk #SearchOn pic.twitter.com/3LRN4HJMKG

— Google (@Google) October 15, 2020

If all you have is a tune, you’ll no longer have to choose between forgetting the song and singing it to a friend to find out what it is. You don’t need perfect pitch and if anything, this is a good enough tool to save you the embarrassment of having to sing to a friend in order to find a song. 

This new feature doesn’t even begin to solve anything in this world that could be remotely called a “problem.” But it is the tool we’ve all secretly hoped would one day exist.

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Michelle Santiago Cortés, Khareem Sudlow

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This isn't your funky aunt's to-go cup collection. Last year, Starbucks served us a collection of glittery, bedazzled, and opulent hot cups and tumblers for the holidays. And while those go perfectly with long nails and a wrist full of bangles, this year, the coffee chain has taken a decidedly different turn. This year's theme is gradients, pastel hues, and almost psychedelic colorways. However, this is a holiday collection, so it's not without its glittery tumbler.

It's also worth pointing out that this year's gift card is especially elegant and stylish. Starbucks is also launching a foursome of festively-packaged Christmas Blend ground coffee. This year, the Starbucks superfan in your life is having a hard time without access to their daily fix, so it might be worth putting together a kit of supplies they need to make their favorite brew at home.

As with years past, Starbucks' holiday hot cups and tumblers are exclusively available in Starbucks stores in the U.S. and Canada. Be sure to head your local CDC's recommendations before setting out to track the cup you've set your sights on.

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Michelle Santiago Cortés, Khareem Sudlow

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In a series of escalating actions against China and American youth culture, the Trump administration deals another blow to Chinese-owned apps TikTok and WeChat.

On Friday, the administration announced that TikTok and WeChat would no longer allow the app stores to carry those apps starting September 20. For WeChat, this means that the app is essentially banned in the U.S. starting Monday at midnight. But for TikTok, it’s not so absolute: You will be blocked from downloading or updating the app starting Monday at midnight, but the app will remain on your phone and function as normal.

If TikTok is able to close a deal with Oracle and address the administration’s national security concerns by November 12, then this ban could be lifted. If not, it marks the beginning of the end for TikTok, and the app will be fully banned.

The administration continues to claim its attack on TikTok is purely motivated by a concern for national security and for the protection of Americans from “the threats of the Chinese Communist Party,” the commerce secretary told the New York Times. But this week, the president also signed an executive order to establish a “national commission to promote patriotic education.” This move shows that the government doesn’t care about the First Amendment and its citizens’ civil liberties like it used to.

TikTok plans to fight to the bitter end. In a statement, a TikTok spokesperson told Refinery29 that the app, “will continue to challenge the unjust executive order,” and maintains that the order, “was enacted without due process and threatens to deprive the American people and small businesses across the U.S. of a significant platform for both a voice and livelihoods.” Currently, over 100 million Americans use TikTok and creators have said time and time again that they can’t simply migrate their business to another platform.

The ban comes just days after TikTok came to the administration with a proposed deal with Oracle, a tech company best-known for its very pro-Trump co-founder. With Oracle as a “trusted tech partner,” all of the American user data would be stored and protected by an American company.

When India banned TikTok earlier this summer, it also started by blocking WeChat and TikTok from app stores. Now, many Indian citizens use Reels. Since Reels isn’t all that popular, if the administration keeps going down this path, we might have to head over to Triller, where Mike Tyson and the Sway House boys await.

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When your cause is in dire need of some publicity, you call the Kardashians. For the latter half of their show’s decade-long run, the Kardashian sisters have worked with clean beauty advocates, parents of cancer survivors, senators, and lawyers to help causes gain publicity and reach the people they need. Most public, of course, is Kim Kardashian West’s work on prison reform and her ongoing efforts to become a lawyer.

Last night, Kardashian West shared on Twitter that she will be taking part in a Facebook boycott as part of #StopHateForProfit’s campaign to demand major platforms take misinformation seriously. Her thread announcing the freeze reads, “these platforms continue allowing the spread of hate, propaganda, and misinformation” and that it’s not enough “only to take steps when people get killed.”

All day today, Kardashian West will “freeze” all activity on her personal Instagram and Facebook accounts. She also announced that Skims will be going dark on Facebook and Instagram and it pushed the launch of its maternity collection to September 17.

I love that I can connect directly with you through Instagram and Facebook, but I can’t sit by and stay silent while these platforms continue to allow the spreading of hate, propaganda and misinformation – created by groups to sow division and split America apart pic.twitter.com/XkxzABn7qw

— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) September 15, 2020

The #StopHateForProfit is a campaign dedicated to holding social media platforms accountable for the misinformation and hate groups that find a home with them. It’s a coalition between the Anti-Defamation League, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Color of Change, and other organizations. If you’ve heard of it before, it’s because this is the group that led the Facebook ad boycott that joined Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia, Starbucks, the Coca Cola company, and many more in withholding their ad dollars until the company made a worthy effort of stopping online hate.

This time, Kardashian-West is joined by Katy Perry, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Sascha Barron Cohen. The September 16 freeze is part of a week of action that started on Monday and will end on September 18.

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In early August, at the peak of a pandemic, President Donald Trump set his sights on TikTok, the app where Gen Z was producing culture like never before and making fun of Kaitlin Bennett for pooping her pants. Trump’s TikTok ban was primarily motivated by suspicions of and competition with the app’s Chinese origin. Trump gave ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, 45 days to sell the platform to a U.S.-based company and give the U.S. government a cut of the deal. Otherwise, he’d ban the app for good. The 45-day deadline got extended to 90 days and now, we’ve finally arrived.

TikTok confirmed today that it is submitting a proposal to the Treasury Department that it believes “would resolve the Administration’s security concerns,” a spokesperson told Refinery29. Oracle beat out Microsoft in the bid to take over TikTok’s U.S. operations. A source close to the situation told The Wall Street Journal that Oracle will be TikTok’s “trusted tech partner” and would primarily be in charge of safekeeping U.S. user data.

What’s next: The White House has to approve the sale and so does the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. Treasury Department Secretary Mnuchin confirmed they’ll be looking over the paperwork this week. The last time ByteDance was involved in a sale this big was in 2017 when it bought Musical.ly. On August 2, 2018, Musical.ly fans woke up to find TikTok’s logo in Musical.ly’s place, and the rest is history.

A few things to know about Oracle: It’s a cloud-based server company co-founded by Larry Ellison. After acting as CEO, Ellison is now chairman and chief technical officer of Oracle. He is also one of the richest Americans alive and he’s used his great deal of wealth and influence to get Trump elected, again.

What could this deal mean for the TikTok that is currently on your phone and that you log into almost every day? Chances are little will change. A last-minute Chinese law that limits the sale of artificial intelligence means that TikTok’s fire algorithm will not be part of the deal. So your For You Page will probably look exactly the same unless you primarily followed the creators that abandoned the app out of concern for its Chinese ties.

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Travel requires a lot of confidence and certainty because, despite the kind of people we wish we were, travel rarely brings out the spontaneity in us. There is simply too much to plan — you need to make sure you have somewhere to sleep, understand the language, have the local currency, know what places are safe. And if you so much as dare to change your plans, expect to blow your budget on fees, fees, and more fees.

We’re currently experiencing a level of sweeping change that nobody expected. Countries and states are reopening, then closing, then reopening. You could buy a ticket when the coast is clear and have your plans fall apart by the time you leave for the airport. Traveling in a pandemic is risky, and usually unnecessary, but it’s made all the worse by how committed airlines are to making any kind of change very expensive.

This week, however, several major U.S. airlines announced they’re doing away with change fees, for good. On Sunday, United Airlines announced that it’s getting rid of its $200 change fee. From now on, you can change any domestic flight for free. American Airlines followed with no change fees on domestic flights and one-upped United by canceling change fees on short-haul international flights as well. Delta’s $200 change fee is also a thing of the past.

Travel expert Ashley Les explains how you can best use this to your advantage: “This doesn’t mean that they’ll refund your ticket. If you book a flight, you’re not going to get a refund, you just do not have to pay a change fee if you change your destination.” As an example, Les noted that a few weeks ago, the Bahamas opened then COVID-19 cases went through the roof, and travel closed once again. “If you were flying on United, you could see the Bahamas closed and change your flight to another destination,” she explains, “It doesn’t mean you get a refund and it doesn’t mean there won’t be a difference in fare (which you’ll have to pay for). You just don’t have to pay a change fee.”

Anyone that held onto their wishful flight tracking alerts through the spring will tell you it’s heartbreaking to see costs drop for months only for them to soar when it’s finally safe to book. But Les warns that it doesn’t make sense to book a random ticket for the sake of locking in a cheap flight. There are smarter ways to take advantage of the no change fee.

“If you’re thinking about traveling in December or for February vacation or next summer, yes, there are some places where prices will be rock-bottom, but what’s going to happen is, next summer, people are going to start rebooking all the vacations that were canceled. It will get really busy, prices will be really high because people are trying to get out and they haven’t traveled in over a year.” So if you are confident things will be better next year and have the money now, you can book a trip with some peace of mind.

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