The Bachelor hasn’t even started yet, but one contestant already has the Internet’s heart: Brianna, or “Bri” for short. The model, whose worst dating fear is “farting too loudly” (relatable), adopted a fake Australian accent for her first meeting with suitor Colton Underwood. 2019 is officially the year of the scam, people, and Bri is the mascot.
Here’s what happened: In a teaser for the Bachelor‘s first episode, we see Bri exit her limousine to hug Colton for the first time. She’s fully committing to this Australian accent and Colton asks her, “Where are you from?”
That’s when the brilliance really jumps out. “The accent, it’s Australian,” Bri says. “I was hoping you’re kinda a sucker for accents. I didn’t know what you’d think about it.” Colton’s response? “I love it.”
Notice how Bri technically doesn’t lie here. All she says is that the accent is Australian, not that she is. “I’m not really Australian,” Bri later says in an interview. “But you have to do what you can to stand out.”
Every single person who’s ever attempted a fake accent is shaking. Ross Geller in that Friends episode where he pretends to be British? Canceled. Kristen Wiig’s rendition of Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones? Never heard of it. Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, and Margot Robbie are stunned!
Watch Bri’s masterful plan unfold for yourself, below:
Naturally, people on Twitter are living for this deception. “I might watch The Bachelor for the first time ever just to see how this unfolds,” one person tweeted, but be warned: Once you join Bachelor Nation, there’s no going back.
Earlier this week, obviously-very fake photos of Travis Scott cheating on Kylie Jenner made the rounds, and it turns out they were a prank orchestrated by some troll trying to “fool the Internet.” Jenner is (rightfully) peeved by this stunt, and she took to Instagram Stories last night to air her grievances.
“Idk if this is really a social experiment to some people but you’re messing with real people, real relationships, real family,” she posted next to a screen-shot of the “prank.” “I’m happy my relationship is strong because this is getting out of hand. The Internet scares me sometimes for real.”
PHOTO: Instagram
Jenner’s family, obviously, rallied behind her. “I hate that I am bringing attention to this but this is absolutely disgusting that you would find this funny to mess with Travis & Kylie who just started a family together,” Kim Kardashian tweeted. “This is really damaging to relationships, families and is just so wrong!”
Khloé Kardashian also expressed her disapproval of the incident. “People are absolutely disgusting,” she wrote, also on Twitter. “The mind games this would do to somebody… That is so completely not OK! This person should be so ashamed of themselves! What filth.” This no-doubt hits close to home for Khloé because of the cheating scandal that plagued her relationship with basketball player Tristan Thompson earlier this year.
Last month, a Reddit user and former Sunday Riley employee started a thread on Reddit titled PSA Sunday Riley Employee: We Write Fake Sephora Reviews. “A lot of the really great reviews you read are fake,” the user explained. “We were forced to write fake reviews for our products on an ongoing basis…I saved one of those emails to share here.”
The following screenshot of an internal email had Twitter rumbling. There it was: proof that the one of the biggest resources beauty shoppers use to solicit authentic and unbiased opinions was no longer such. The email detailed directives employees were given to hype up the brand’s products in reviews, including talking points like, “please address how cooling it felt, the green color, the non-drying mask effect, radiance boosting, got rid of your acne after a couple uses,” as well as instructions on how to set up a VPN, or virtual private network, to hide employees’ identities.
The news came as a shock to loyal fans of the brand; many of whom wondered why it needed to take such measures given that the company’s products are revered for their ability to transform your skin. (Good Genes is often cited as one of the best exfoliating serums out there.) A lone nugget of honesty in the memo seemed to point to a rationale: “The power of reviews is mighty, people look to what others are saying to persuade them,” one line read.
That’s exactly the problem—and not only in the beauty industry. Fake reviews are rampant within e-commerce, since online shopping eliminates the option of touching, testing, or swatching a product for yourself. Studies have shown that just having a lot of reviews can actually boost a shopper’s interest in a product—even if a comparable one with fewer reviews is of higher quality. (The reasoning behind this: The more reviews a product receives, the more popular and therefore more desirable it must be.)
And the beauty industry, in which brands face stiff competition and need to find ways to set themselves apart from the crowd, is ripe for all sorts of fakery. (Influencer reviews, which are a whole different beast, also recently came into question over shady practices.) It’s no wonder Estée Laundry, an Instagram account that dubs itself an Anonymous #BeautyCollective, has recently appointed itself a watchdog, calling out fake reviews, copycats, and company scandals. It already boasts 30,500 followers.
The repercussions for these behaviors go way beyond a public shaming. (Not to mention fake reviews could pose legal issues, though they’re usually too small-scale for the FTC, which has strict rules regarding endorsements, to pursue.) Online beauty reviews require some level of trust—namely, that the reviewer actually used the product and is sharing their genuine opinion. The breakdown of that trust can have lasting effects. “Trust and authenticity are keys to buyers today, particularly millennials,” says Russell Winer, Ph.D., a professor and the deputy chair of the marketing department at NYU Stern School of Business. “If that is destroyed, a company can be seriously hurt.”
Sunday Riley, for its part, owned up to it. A few days after the Reddit thread was posted, the brand took to Instagram. “First, you can be assured that the only way that our brand will communicate on all channels, including sephora.com, is with our official brand badge,” the brand said in the caption. “Second, we are going to have our business practices and company culture audited by a third-party and will publicly release the results. Lastly, we are actively listening and would love your constructive feedback on what you would like to see from us.” They followed it up with a post tagged with #TransparencyxSundayRiley.
The issue poses a unique challenge to big-box retailers and e-commerce sites, some which get thousands of shopper reviews a week. Sephora was quick to address the matter with the brand, according to a statement given to Glamour. “Sephora has very strict brand rules regarding our Ratings and Reviews, which we know are an important decision tool for our clients,” the retailer says. “Additionally, we have teams dedicated to protecting the integrity of our Ratings and Reviews, ensuring through detailed moderation that it’s a constant trusted, unbiased, authentic source for all.”
In some cases, retailers enlist third-party companies to sift through reviews. “There’s software that companies can use to spot fakes with high accuracy,” says Winer. Ulta Beauty partners with a third-party agency, PowerReviews, to help them manage their review process and covers both product reviews and product Q&As, according to a representative. It also takes steps to identify “Verified Buyers” with a badge attached to the review. That indicates it’s been written by someone who purchased the product directly from Ulta Beauty—thus minimizing the chances that it’s inauthentic.
Legitimate reviews for MAC’s Studio Fix Fluid SPF 15 Foundation.
While Amazon declined to comment for this story, the site has made headlinesfor issues with fake reviewsin the past. It’s inevitable, really, with that amount of inventory. “Anything that has a really high margin, is highly competitive, and has a low cost of goods—like, I imagine, beauty products—has a problem with inauthentic reviews on Amazon,” says Tommy Noonan, the founder of ReviewMeta.com, a website that analyzes the trustworthiness of Amazon reviews.
An elephant in the room is the retailers themselves. After all, they don’t always have a lot of incentive to take down fake reviews—especially if they’re positive. “The conflict of interest is glaring,” says Noonan. “The higher the rating of the product, the more it’s going to sell.” Sift through the foundations on Sephora and you’d be hard press to find a formula that falls below three stars. (Although, there are products in other categories with 2.5 stars or less, they’re often found buried on page six or seven of options.) Ulrike Gretzel, Ph.D., a senior fellow at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism and the director of research at market research company Netnografica, agrees. “Retail platforms often display products based on rating scores, and the average rating score is often the only thing consumers see right under the product name,” she explains. “This means that consumers will not even look at products that receive low average ratings.” And if they’re not looking at them, they’re probably not buying.
That leaves a lot of the sleuthing up to us. Aside from looking for vetted reviews, like those that stem from verified purchases, you can take matters into your own hands by looking for the hallmarks of a fake review. “The main one is a lack of detail about the product implying that the reviewer hasn’t actually used it,” says Winer. “Sometimes, a bunch of fake reviews show up at once if the competitor’s employees have been told to do this; check the timestamps on the reviews.” Fake reviews will also often be shorter—since posters may not put as much time or effort into it if they have a ton of them to write.
He also recommends that you focus on the reviews that fall in the middle of the range—so, if the rating is one to five stars, look at the reviews that give two to four stars. “The fives are generally uniformly enthusiastic, [while] the ones are the opposite,” Winer explains. “You get more information from the middle group, as they usually list pluses and minuses, which help more.”
It’s far from a perfect system and it’s disappointing that there aren’t more ways to deter fake reviews. Not only do they undermine truly good quality brands, but they also hurt and mislead customers who spend money on products that work—or so they think. While verifying purchases and, yes, maybe calling it out when it happens will help, in the long-run, brands and retailers alike need to continue to hold themselves to a higher standard. After all, if a product isn’t getting rave reviews, maybe the solution is to re-work the formula instead of simply duping fans.
After releasing the most civil break-up statements of all time, Gigi Hadid and Zayn Malik have been spotted out and about again, leaving their wild fandom wondering what the heck is going on. They’ve been pretty quiet about things, with Zayn going so far as reminding people (correctly) that he doesn’t need to label his relationship for others. But when someone posted a message on Instagram taking jabs at the couple, Gigi quickly spoke up.
The Instagram caption, posted to a private account (but one that Hadid definitely seems to be aware of), read, “Confession: Whatever zigi does for promo. Fact is that, Zayn is not going to follow gigi or ever post her picture on his Instagram again.”
Gigi, who implied that it wasn’t the first time the account had tagged her in a negative post, responded with a long comment that gently urged people negatively invested in her private life to focus on something else.
“Seems like u guys tag me in a new post every day … pls stop.. it’s just negative, I really have no hard feelings towards you I just know what a beautiful world there is togo out and live in instead of trying to dissect a relationship between two people that you don’t even know and that you do not see 99% of… for someone who is virtually inactive on the app, I don’t need his follow- my eyes are tattooed to his chest,” she wrote through her verified Instagram account. (More on that tattoo here, by the way.)
It’s not the first time the model has taken Internet trolls to task. Back in April, she did an interview with W Magazine, where she discussed the scrutiny she faces online, particularly around her body image. “Most of it is just nonsense,”she said. “But it can still hurt.” And she also hasn’t shied away from confronting people directly. When someone criticized her for appearing too skinny a few years ago, she responded by saying, “Your comment won’t get me down, but next time, please think about the young women who may read body-judgement comments and judge themselves as they see their bodies growing and therefore naturally changing, too.”
Her response to the Instagram account analyzing her relationship was also pretty direct, but she wrote that it wasn’t coming from a bad place:
“The energy you put into this does not serve… your life in any way kids…. truly ‘beating a dead horse.’ You guys can call it promo but I just post about my boyfriend like anyone else, whether I support z or he supports me is out of love and excitement for one another. There’s nothing to figure out all the time… give it a break. this is my last comment on this matter but I hope u know it’s not coming from a bad place, just would love for you to find something else that inspires you in life…. x.”
Hopefully that keeps the speculation at bay for a while.
Putting on fake eyelashes is not a quick-master thing. By maybe the eighth time you do it, it goes okay—but before that, it’s a steep learning curve full of sticky substances and becoming intimately familiar with the feeling of your eyelashes falling off. Hilarious, horrifying, it can go either way (depends how much glue is involved). The good news is that no one starts out a pro, so we challenged 50 women to put on fake eyelashes, and gave them a couple of pointers along the way. See for yourself where they started from, and maybe pick up a couple tips yourself.
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Just a handful of weeks ago, we were celebrating the most diverse Emmy awards in history. Lena Waithe was the first black woman to win a writing Emmy, The Handmaid’s Tale took home 8 trophies, and Reese Witherspoon’s call to “bring women to the front” was met with a loud applause from the audience. It’s dizzying to recall how much the entertainment industry was patting itself on the back for being progressive when the two months since have begun to reveal a seedy underbelly that hasn’t changed as much as award ceremonies would like us to believe.
While Louis C.K.’s bad behavior has been rumored about for some time, the revelation that he, too, is a part of the problem underlies a new, troubling pattern among these stories of harassment and assault: that men have learned to fake a performance of ally-ship in order to serve their own purposes.
To many, Louis C.K. was one of the good guys. He attracted an audience of progressive men and women and often used feminist issues as fodder for his standup. Take this bit from his 2013 HBO special, for example, in which he wonders, “How do women still go out with guys, when you consider that there is no greater threat to women than men?” It’s hard not to cringe at the question now. He was seen as a prophet of nice dudes, a guy who got it. But…evidently not.
Besides the five women who have accused the comedian of grossly inappropriate behavior, there are still more women who have been used by Louis C.K. and who bear the burden of his crimes. Yesterday, comedian Tig Notaro, whose show One Mississippi was executive produced by the comedian, voiced a fear that he intentionally used their professional relationship because “it was going to make him look like a good guy, supporting a woman.” Notaro’s comment is similar to something Kai Cole, Joss Whedon’s ex-wife, wrote back in August. In an article for The Wrap, Cole wrote that Whedon, who has also been praised for writing overtly feminist content, routinely cheated on her with women in his professional circle for 15 years. More concerning, she says she felt like she was used as his “shield…so no one would question his relationships with other women or scrutinize his writing as anything other than feminist.” While Whedon has not been similarly accused of harassment or assault, the pattern is the same: By aligning themselves with women and seeming to promote equality, they were able to hide their bad behavior in plain sight.
Louis C.K. is far from the only shocking twist in this season of revelations. Kevin Spacey’s performance as the country’s first bisexual president in House of Cards was initially lauded as a step in the right direction for bisexual visibility on TV. Former head of Amazon Studios Roy Price won awards for groundbreaking Transparent, and yet he’s the same guy who passed on Big Little Lies because there wasn’t enough female nudity. Even Harvey Weinstein, whose improprieties opened the pandora’s box of horrifying allegations within the industry, produced a number of important socially progressive films (Carol, The Imitation Game, and Silver Linings Playbook, to name a few).
These men manipulated issues that are important to women and the LGBTQ community in order to attract audiences that they never respected in the first place. Even if representation of women has gotten better in recent years (and, objectively, it has), these cases make those gains feel like a smokescreen for what continues to happen in boardrooms and hotel rooms across Hollywood.
And yet Louis C.K.’s and Whedon’s betrayals cut especially deep. These are men who have worked overtime to gain the trust of female fans. Today, it’s not just the overtly sexist men that women in entertainment have to fear. Even the “good guys” are using different means to the same end: They’re profiting off of women’s bodies and ideas, coercing them into silence because they still hold all the power.
In his statement responding to the allegations, Louis C.K. admitted that he “wielded that power irresponsibly” and denied none of the accusations against him. For the most part, it seems that he knew what he was doing was wrong even as he was doing it. He understood that his behavior undermined his status as an ally to women. He just didn’t care…until he was caught.
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