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Nazem Kadri had a goal and two assists, Hunter Miska stopped 16 of 18 shots and the Colorado Avalanche held on to beat the Arizona Coyotes 3-2 on Friday night. The 25-year-old Miska was playing in just his fourth NHL game and nearly earned a shutout until the Coyotes scored two goals in the final two minutes. Arizona had a sleepy offensive performance until Phil Kessel scored with 1:36 left and Drake Caggiula added another one with 53 seconds left.
Chinese officials have signalled that Beijing plans sweeping electoral changes for Hong Kong, possibly as soon as next week, when China's parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC), opens in Beijing. WHAT IS BEIJING PLANNING? Xia Baolong, director of China's Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, has said the electoral system in the global financial hub needs to be changed to allow only "patriots" to govern.
IFC MidnightThere’s no culture or faith that horror cinema has left untouched, and that goes for Judaism as well, be it with 1915’s The Golem, 2009’s The Unborn or 2015’s Demon. The Vigil is another work in that tradition, mining Jewish customs for a disquieting tale about unholy things that scream, claw, and corrupt in the dead of night. Writer/director Keith Thomas’ feature debut cannily filters its suspense through the prism of personal—and inherited—Jewish trauma, and given that it concerns a lonely, tormented man going mad while trapped inside a house, it also has a quarantine creepiness that amplifies its potency.Now available on VOD (following its debut at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival), The Vigil focuses on Yakov Ronen (Dave Davis), a young New Yorker whom we first meet at an evening get-together with fellow Jews who are striving to acclimate to everyday mainstream life now that they’ve fled their Hasidic communities of Borough Park, Brooklyn (à la the men and women depicted in Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s 2017 documentary One of Us, as well as in last year’s Netflix hit Unorthodox). One look at Yakov in the bathroom mirror, swallowing a pill and mustering the courage to join the group, is enough to convey his unstable state, which we soon learn is partly due to his bumpy transition into secular society. Having failed to get a job because he didn’t have a resume (which he then tried to write on loose-leaf paper), and still amazed at the fact that his smartphone has a flashlight, he’s a figurative babe in the woods, struggling to learn—and accept—the myriad aspects of this strange new world. ‘Cherry’ Sees Spider-Man Rob Banks, Shoot Up Heroin, and Fully Commit to a Very Messy MovieYakov is committed to his new path but hasn’t fully extricated himself from his ultra-orthodox ties, as evidenced by the fact that after this meeting (and his clumsy handling of a woman’s date proposal), he’s met on the street by old friend Reb Shulem (Menashe’s Menashe Lustig), a rabbi who wants him to sit vigil as a Shomer (i.e. watchman) for a recently deceased man named Ruben Litvak. As is Jewish practice, the Shomer must provide comfort to the dead by spending the night with them, reciting Psalms as a way to comfort their souls and protect them from evil spirits. Having just broken with his religious family and friends, Yakov has no interest in this job. Yet with no means of paying his rent, Shulem’s cash offer—which Yakov gets him to increase—is too good to pass up, and he begrudgingly accepts the task, figuring it’ll be merely a five-hour inconvenience.That other Shomers have already bailed on this gig (apparently out of “fear”) is the initial tip-off, to us and to Yakov, that something is amiss here, and The Vigil doesn’t waste time getting down to supernatural business. After meeting the spooky Mrs. Litvak (Lynn Cohen), and learning that her husband was a Holocaust survivor and recluse who never left his house and was estranged from his children and grandchildren, Yakov settles down for the night. Almost immediately, things take a turn for the worse, beginning with movement from beneath the sheet covering Mr. Litvak in the clan’s dimly-lit living room. Yakov takes a nap in an armchair beside the corpse and has a dream about a harrowing prior incident in which he and his young brother were assaulted by anti-Semites. When he wakes, he has a bizarre message on his phone: a video clip of himself, slumbering in the chair, shot by Mrs. Litvak, who’s seen caressing his hair and cheek.More unnatural events soon follow, including the appearance of another dead body lying in the kitchen, an unhelpful conversation with his therapist (Fred Melamed), and a drinking glass whose water suddenly turns dark and icky, causing Yakov to gag and choke on whatever it was he’d just consumed. Shortly thereafter, answers come to light courtesy of Mrs. Litvak, who reveals that she deliberately alienated her brood in order to protect them, as well as via an old home movie that Yakov finds playing in the residence’s basement. In it, Mr. Litvak states that he’s plagued by a Mazzik, an ancient parasitic demon that followed him home from the Buchenwald concentration camp and appears with its head turned completely around. Thomas has already provided glimpses of this WWII incident in an oblique prologue sequence, and he now has Mr. Litvak explain that the only way to prevent the Mazzik from gaining control of one’s soul is to burn its true face on the first night it appears—something Mr. Litvak apparently failed to do, resulting in his continuing damnation.Even after disclosing the nature of its insanity, The Vigil remains a consistently unsettling endeavor, thanks to patient camerawork that glides along Mr. Litvak’s in-repose body and through the house’s hallways like a specter stalking its prey, and portentous compositions that ask viewers to inspect them for signs of paranormal activity. Matching those sharp visuals is a soundscape that segues on a dime between malevolent din and ominous silence, the latter of which is routinely employed to nerve-wracking effect. Even when the action itself is somewhat familiar, Thomas’ enveloping aesthetics are chilling, and in the accomplished Davis, the film boasts a sturdy dramatic center of attention.Most inviting of all, however, is the writer/director’s depiction of his highly particular milieu, and the rules and rituals that govern it. Specificity is key to both the material’s scares and its empathy, which mounts as the film divulges more about Yakov’s anguish and guilt, and the way it makes him vulnerable to the forces intent on consuming him. The Vigil is a story about Jewish suffering, whether today or during the Holocaust, and how it feeds on its hosts, isolating, warping, and debilitating them. Moreover, it’s about the futility of trying to simply shun, or run away from, that distress. With efficient and unnerving skill, it melds traditional genre conventions with uniquely Jewish elements (for example, the tefillin, which Yakov dons toward the end of his ordeal) to paint a somber—and tentatively hopeful—portrait of the need to directly confront the past in order to overcome and escape it.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
Habibu Iliyasu/AFP via Getty ImagesABUJA, Nigeria—Days before gunmen stormed a secondary school in Nigeria's northwestern Zamfara State and kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls, school authorities and local security agencies had been warned that there was danger looming in the town, particularly in the area where the school is located, according to local residents.On Friday, heavily armed militants seized at least 315 girls who were staying in the Government Girls' Secondary School in the town of Jangebe. The militants arrived on motorcycles at about 1:30am local time and marched the kidnapped girls into the nearby forest, leaving family members of the victims distraught and anxious. Residents said “strange men” had been patrolling the school area and intimidating local community members in the school’s vicinity days before the kidnappings took place.“All of a sudden we saw strange men on the street [leading to the Government Girls' Secondary School] at night acting as if there were vigilantes,” Danlami Umar, who lives near the school, told The Daily Beast. “They were stopping passersby and questioning them about where they were going.”The men had been occupying the neighborhood around the school for two days prior to the incident, harassing pedestrians and prompting residents to alert police officials of their activities.Officials Probe ‘Foul Play’ After Crash of Military Plane Close to Finding Abducted Nigerian Schoolboys“As soon as we reported them, they disappeared from the area,” said Umar. “We then told police officials to beef up security around the school area but that wasn't done.”But those living close to the school weren't the only ones to express concern about the security situation in the area. Some family members, The Daily Beast learned, had asked school authorities to close the boarding house and allow the girls to attend classes as day students because of growing reports of criminal activity in nearby areas. Their pleas fell on deaf ears.“People were complaining that their homes were being raided at night by gunmen and that their children are constantly being harassed by these hoodlums, so some parents asked that the school closed the boarding house just in case these criminals decide to one day visit the school,” Jibril Abubakar, whose niece attends the school but isn't among those missing, told The Daily Beast.“Unfortunately, someone in the school said the authorities couldn't close the dormitories on their own, claiming they needed to get approval from the state education ministry before doing so,” Abubakar added.Concerns about the safety of their children had forced some parents to prevent their kids from returning to their dormitories, instead having them attend the school as day students, according to Abubakar. The move might have saved more girls from being abducted on Friday.“Some parents saw this coming and did what was right by keeping their daughters away from the boarding house,” said Abubakar. “If not, we would have had more than 500 girls from the school missing today.”No group has yet claimed responsibility for Friday's abductions, which came more than a week after 42 people, including 27 schoolboys, were kidnapped in a similar attack on a government school in Nigeria's north-central Niger State. The boys have not yet been recovered.Nearly 24 hours after the Jangebe schoolgirls were seized, a joint operation involving the police and army has so far failed to identify their location. “There's information that they were moved to a neighbouring forest, and we are tracking and exercising caution,” Abutu Yaro, Zamfara State Commissioner of Police, said at a press conference late on Friday.Growing insecurity in parts of northwest and north-central Nigeria, especially after hundreds of schoolboys were kidnapped in Katsina State last December, has forced state governments in two regions to close boarding schools in vulnerable areas. The Zamfara government waited until Friday's abductions before taking similar actions. But for many in the troubled town of Jangebe, the move came too late.“If they had acted on time, the girls would have been with their families and no one would be begging the military to find their daughters,” said Abubakar. “This nonchalant attitude of government must stop.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
Feb. 26—WHEN, Where — Saturday, noon, Hiester Lanes, Reading. Format: Each of the 24 boys and 24 girls will roll six games. The top six boys and girls will then qualify for the roll-off finals, with the top two qualifiers drawing byes. Berks boys qualifiers: Riley Celmer, Muhlenberg; Alex Horton, Daniel Boone; Ayden Davis, Antietam; Ethan Reimert, Exeter; Derek Witkowski, Wilson; Keith Lerch, ...
Dave Einsel/GettyAlmost fifty years ago, on a Sunday morning in late November 1974, a team of archaeologists in Ethiopia unearthed a three-million-year-old skeleton of an ancient early human. The remains would turn out to be one of the most important fossils ever discovered. That night Donald Johanson, the paleoanthropologist who discovered the fossilized remains, played a cassette tape of the Beatles and as the group listened to the sound of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” reverberate through the campsite a colleague suggested that he name the female hominin Lucy. She represented a new species—Australopithecus afarensis—and a visit to almost any major natural history museum in the world will give you the opportunity to see an artist’s rendition of how she appeared in her own time.Visit more than one natural history museum or flip through a handful of scientific textbooks, however, and you’ll quickly notice how much disagreement there is about Lucy’s physical appearance. No one can agree on what Lucy or “AL 288-1” looked like. Why is that? In a new article on “Visual Depictions of Our Evolutionary Past,” published this week in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, a team of scientists from the University of Adelaide, Arizona State, the University of Zurich, and Howard University set out to discover why this is and to compile their own, scientifically grounded, reconstruction.The differences in the depictions of Lucy are not small and, as the authors of the study show, reflect ideological biases about the past. For example, the Creation Museum in Kentucky, which is run by Answers in Genesis, depicts Lucy as a knuckle dragging ape. This is despite the fact that, as Adam Benton has discussed, there is a broad consensus among scientists is that Lucy was a biped who walked on two feet. As the authors of the new study write, “the decision to reconstruct this specimen as a knuckle-walker is an obvious error” but it has significance for whether we see Lucy as important evidence about our ancestors or “just an ape.”Even in less extreme cases, there are considerable differences in the way that artistic reconstructions show Lucy’s ribcage, facial features, hair, and skin tone. As Karen Anderson has written in an important work, the problem is widespread in hominin reconstructions, which “often convey inaccurate scientific information.” Maciej Henneberg, one of the co-authors of the study, explained to The Daily Beast that depicting a hominin’s body and face involves the reconstruction both of hard tissues (bones and teeth) and of soft tissues (muscles, skin, guts, internal organs, etc). Along the way, numerous decisions have to be made and these decisions, Henneberg told me, substantially affect how people relate to the reconstructed specimen (be it Lucy or another example). Facial features are especially important in this process, Henneberg said, because “Humans communicate by looking at each other’s faces, so we pay a lot of attention to faces of others. Thus, the reconstruction of the face of an animal or a human ancestor gives important personal information - the ‘first impression’ of the reconstructed individual. Incorrectly performed reconstruction may change public opinion about the reconstructed fossil specimen, for example reconstructing the face of a sophisticated human like the Neanderthal (who used jewelry, cared for injured people, cooked food) using ape-like muscles and skin, makes him into a brute.”“To make matters worse,” the authors argue, “most hominin reconstructions…[are] presented without any rigorous empirical justifications.” Even when those involved in reconstruction describe how they based their reconstructions of facial features and body proportions “this research has never been formally verified nor published in any scientific literature.” Ryan Campbell, the lead author on the study said via email, that the variability in how museums and textbooks depict ancient hominins “has occurred as a result of a lack of effort from the scientific community to hold soft tissue reconstructions to the same level of scrutiny as peer-reviewed scientific research. Most reconstruction methods are unreliable or are not used in favor of artistic interpretation.” A museum visitor might think that they are seeing a rigorous piece of scientific reconstruction but often artistic sensibilities take center stage.An additional problem with depictions of our biological ancestors is the way that they tend to present evolution as a kind of inevitable linear progression towards a particular Eurocentric goal. Rudolph Zallinger’s famous March of Progress illustration, which was commissioned by Time-Life books in 1965, is a case in point. Not only does the series of images present the erroneous idea of linear progress that eliminates variety, the progression “from animal to ape, to ape-man to the so-called “Negroid race” and then to the “Caucasoid race”” is wildly Eurocentric and racist. The same problems, Campbell and his team write, are implicit in more recent treatments. They argue that John Gurche’s reconstructions at the Smithsonian present a similar “linear progression” from one genus to the next that ends with a photo of Gurche himself, a man of European ancestry. “Consider,” the authors ask “how young, would-be academics of minority groups feel as they are readily encountered by not just unscientifically substantiated material, but material that echoes a history of racist attitudes toward groups that look like them. One could understand how visual material of this sort can discourage interest in science.”In their own reconstruction, undertaken over 6 years as a collaboration between the scientists and Cuban-American artist Gabriel Vinas, clearly explains the group’s decision making process. Vinas explained to The Daily Beast “For the image showing Lucy and Taung, we produced it to highlight how different choices in surface treatment, color, and hair quantity can differ immensely based on the whims of practitioners or their expert consultants which can result in the kinds of inconsistencies we see all over the world regarding these features.”Rather than relying upon “intuitive” methods of reconstruction, which the team found “too imprecise” they inferred muscle proportions from previous studies. They are transparent about the gaps in our knowledge. As Vinas told me: “Lucy’s cranial bones are almost entirely missing … ‘putting a face’ quite literally to the celebrity-status skeleton can seem like a minor form of procedural trespassing; in a way, ‘a white lie’ that parents are comfortable telling their children.” In Vinas and the team’s facial reconstructions Lucy is reconstructed with bonobo-like features while the reconstructed Taung child (another well-known set of remains) is shown with skin tone “more similar to that of anatomically modern humans native to South Africa.” The rationale for the difference in skin tone, we are told, is that scientists do not have “an empirical method for reliably reconstructing” the melanin concentration in austalopithecines. Some scientists may disagree with details of these reconstructions, but at least they (and we) know why these choices were made. Vinas added, “to remain intellectually consistent, we must say that none of these models or images in this publication should be touted as representative of the actual appearances of those individuals regardless of how technically impressive they are.”The larger problem of bias, Diogo Rui of Howard University told me, is not unique to facial reconstruction. “Human evolution is plagued by the use of both art, and scientist biases, and societal prejudices. They can relate to sex, or to gender differences, or to racist ideas.” The depiction of “cave men” with sticks, for examples comes from baseless Hobbesian views about the brutishness of the past. Images of the invention of fire, stone tools, of cave painting, Rui added, only depict men as involved in these innovations. The assumption, he told me, is that women were “passive players.” Such educational reconstructions “are hugely important,” he said because “they are the most direct, efficient tool to perpetuate enculturation, and thus systemic misogyny and racism.” Rui and his co-authors acknowledge the important role played by museums in generating excitement about scientific work and the role of artists in producing images of the past. They note, however, that “unless there are clear plaques and context giving aids revealing that the body and its proportions are speculative” images have the potential to mislead the public.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
Chinese officials have signalled that Beijing plans sweeping electoral changes for Hong Kong, possibly as soon as next week, when China's parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC), opens in Beijing. WHAT IS BEIJING PLANNING? Xia Baolong, director of China's Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, has said the electoral system in the global financial hub needs to be changed to allow only "patriots" to govern.
With dangerous new variants of COVID-19 appearing worldwide including California, manufacturers are racing to keep their vaccines a step ahead of the virus.
The actor was infamously fired from Two and a Half Men in 2011 after a series of wild media appearances
Feb. 26—Daniel Boone's Chris Guiliano and Wilson's Shelby Kahn will have to look no farther than their own backyards for their toughest competition in the District 3 Swimming Championships, which will be held Saturday, March 6. Guiliano, who won District 3 Class 3A titles in the 200- and 100-yard freestyles last year, is seeded first in both events — two of the 11 top seeds earned by Berks ...
Feb. 26—As companion bills to bolster the New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District advanced through the Legislature this week, the University of Hawaii has stepped up its campaign to gain a larger voice in the facility's future. Two similar measures, Senate Bill 1423 and House Bill 1348, made major progress with SB 1423 sent to the House Wednesday and HB 1348, which was passed out of the ...
Bill Maher sat down with former Fox News and NBC News personality Megyn Kelly for the leadoff interview Friday on HBO’s Real Time, but their discussion didn’t focus on her former employers or her controversial past at all. Instead, they had a frank talk about race, social justice and 21st century “victimhood” in America, especially how it pertains […]
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Warriors G League guard Jeremy Lin shared on social media that he experienced an act of racism on the court. Golden State coach Steve Kerr said he will support Lin and denounced any discriminatory act that caused Lin to speak out about racism targeting Asian Americans. In a heartfelt social media post, Lin didn't go into specific details about what happened except to reference he had been called ''coronavirus'' on the court - without saying when or where this happened.
Police are investigating a triple stabbing in Brooklyn that left one person in critical condition Friday night.
Eli Ade/AMCNegan better watch his back, because Maggie Greene is back in town. On Sunday night, The Walking Dead returned to close out its super-sized penultimate season with six more episodes—and kicked things off by giving Maggie a chance to explain what she and her son, Hershel, have been up to, and why it’s been so long since she touched base with Team Family. But the real question of this week has less to do with where Maggie’s been, and more to do with who the hell she’s managed to antagonize. It seems we’ve got a new villain on our hands, and they apparently have it out for her.It’s a rough week for Maggie: First, she comes face-to-face with Negan, who’s now at large in Alexandria after Carol sprung him from prison. Then, the onetime leader of Hilltop expressed her desire to return home there with her son and a group of survivors only to find out that the place has been reduced to a pile of rubble and bodies. And then, Maggie has to hear from Carol that Negan was actually with the Whisperers when they leveled Hilltop. “Alpha needed to die, and Negan was our best chance,” Carol explained. “We were gonna lose everything; Negan’s the reason we didn’t.”Maggie seems sympathetic, but she’s understandably not thrilled.But the group must press on—so Maggie, Daryl and Kelly head out for the settlement where Maggie’s been staying, along with her friends from the camp, Elijah and Cole. After a long day of walking (and murdering some walkers to take refuge in a storage container) Maggie reveals to Daryl that, like her old friends, she’s borne witness to a lot of tragedy over the past couple years.When Maggie first left Hilltop, she’d set out with a woman named Georgie, whose group helped nascent communities learn the farming and engineering skills required to make it in the apocalypse. “But it’d always go sideways,” she said. The group had been helping a community in Knoxville, Maggie continued, but when Georgie left to check out another community, things collapsed and she and Hershel ran. When Daryl asked what happened to the village Georgie had built, Maggie simply replied, “Not now.”“It’s actually good to say some of it out loud. Just can’t say all of it,” she said. “I almost came home after Knoxville; maybe I should have. Maybe I should have.” After the collapse, Maggie said, she brought Hershel to a place that used to belong to her grandmother on the coast—a place, she said, where she and Glenn had talked about visiting after her sister, Beth, died in Season 5. One night, she and Hershel stayed up late talking about his family. “He asked how his daddy died,” she said. “I knew he would; I knew it was coming. I told him that a bad man killed him. He wanted to know if that man got what he deserved. He wanted to know if that man was dead.”“The truth is I left home because I couldn’t have Negan taking up any more space in my head,” Maggie said. “And when I realized I didn’t want to bring Hershel back to that, the next morning we met a whole community of people who needed us as much as we needed them. And it felt like it was meant to be. But that’s over, too.”Daryl emphasized that things remain up in the air with regard to Negan—a thread that will certainly return later this season and, perhaps, beyond. Because the next morning, Maggie and the group arrive home—only to find it burned to the ground.Turns out, there’s a group called the Reapers hunting people down one by one in the woods now. We see several people Maggie had been staying with shot down before a man comes for Maggie—only to be surrounded by her group. But the man, dressed in military fatigues, refuses to answer any of Maggie’s questions. Instead, he tells her, “Pope marked you”—and then proceeds to blow himself up.There is no group called The Reapers in the Walking Dead comics; there isn’t even a group that seems particularly analogous, from what we’ve seen so far. It’s fascinating, given that we’re just on the verge of truly meeting the Commonwealth—another yet-unexplored community that appears to be the show’s endgame—that the show has now introduced another group to content with. They could be, as The Wrap posits, affiliated with the Civic Republic—villains of the spin-off World Beyond. But so far, it’s hard to guess at who these people are or what they really want.Lauren Cohan returned to Walking Dead during what would have originally been its season finale last year, after a brief trip to ABC for the now-defunct Whiskey Cavalier. Despite how long this series has floundered, both before and especially after her absence, Cohan’s presence feels like a refreshing return to form for the zombie drama—especially as it shuffles toward its final season. (She was always, and remains, one of the most emotive and compelling performers in the cast.) Nothing will ever fully atone for Glenn Rhee’s poorly executed, excruciatingly graphic death in Season 7. But it’s still somehow a little sentimental to see his son walk into Alexandria hand-in-hand with his mother. That said, however, in light of this week’s brief scare—which found Maggie racing through the woods looking for her son after finding the camp burned to the ground—I will say this: If Hershel dies, as so many children on this series have, we riot.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas on Friday cut Griddy Energy’s access to the state’s power network, according to a Reuters report.
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photos via TikTokThe woman in the 10-second TikTok sports the Gen-Z uniform: matching purple tie-dye shorts and a crop top, chunky white sneakers, bunched up crew socks. Over the infectious sounds of the song “Photo ID,” she vamps for a selfie, then turns the camera to pan the length of the doctor’s office in which she’s sitting. It ends with a shot of her in the exam-room chair, kicking out her legs and giggling.“It’s a great day to have an abortion,” the caption reads.The video is a stark and unapologetic depiction of abortion—the kind movement activists have been attempting to push into the mainstream for years and abortion opponents have deemed “sick and depraved.” It is playful, transgressive, an instant hit.It’s also completely fake.“I just started posting videos of me at random doctor’s appointments and saying ‘I’m getting an abortion,’” the creator of the video, a 21-year-old college student who goes by the handle @abortionqweenn, told The Daily Beast. “I was at urgent care.”TikTok, the default clubhouse of Gen Z, is also a bellwether of adolescent activism. This summer, as the Black Lives Matter movement surged, users uploaded videos on victims of police brutality and footage from racial justice protests. (According to one analysis, TikTok users were twice as likely as non-users to have recently attended a Black Lives Matter demonstration.) In June, TikTokers helped tank attendance to a Trump rally by buying up tickets they had no intention of using.And last February, a video of a young woman getting an abortion brought the existence of pro-choice TikTok to the forefront. The clip, which appears to have been shot and uploaded by her friend, starts with a positive pregnancy test, then cuts to the outside of a Planned Parenthood, then the inside of an exam room. It’s set to Bruno Mars’ “It Will Rain” and features a shot of the woman fist-pumping and laughing. By the time the creator deleted the video, it had been seen thousands of times, and sparked a fierce conservative backlash.“When society celebrates abortion, should we be surprised to see this kind of cruelty,” tweeted Lila Rose, president of the anti-abortion group Live Action. “What happened to ‘abortions should be safe, legal, and rare’?” added Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk. “Now they’re celebrated and streamed on social media.”Feel Their Faith in 15 Seconds: Meet The Christians Conquering TikTokThe account that posted the video was ultimately deleted, but the genre proliferated. Just last week, Autumn Lindsey, a spokesperson for Students for Life, uploaded a video decrying the “trend” of young people posting their abortions on TikTok. “This is disgusting and heartbreaking and should not be a trend on the internet,” she said in an Instagram Live video. “Videos like this prove the pro-abortion side celebrates abortion.”“Absolutely unreal!” one commenter wrote. “THANK YOU FOR SPEAKING OUT!”In fact, many of the videos may be literally “unreal.” The Daily Beast found more than a dozen clips of people claiming to be at abortion appointments, which ranged from obvious jokes—a woman swinging her feet off the exam table beside the words “when he texts you to have a good abortion”—to straightforward shots of an exam room with the hashtag #abortioncheck. In most of them, the women are smiling, dancing, and lip-syncing to whatever song happens to be trending—essentially, doing what everyone else on TikTok does.The Daily Beast attempted to contact all of the video creators. Only one, @abortionqween, responded. The student and her girlfriend, who goes by the handle @abortioncounselor, both work in reproductive rights, and both make content almost exclusively about abortion and contraception. (They actually met on TikTok and recently moved in together.)At one point, @abortionqween said, she realized that filming her doctor’s appointments and passing them off as abortions was a recipe for an instant hit.“I think a lot of my followers know that I’m not getting like 50 abortions a month,” she said. “But people will just see that and I guess like normalize it. People will also get very angry about it. But it always goes viral.”The strategy seems to have worked. The pair have garnered a combined 165,000 followers and more than 20 million views, despite having their accounts blocked repeatedly by TikTok moderators. (TikTok says it does not have a policy prohibiting discussion of abortion. After The Daily Beast reached out, the women’s previously blocked accounts were restored.)Many of their videos contain medical advice about the abortion procedure or information on how to get one. Others are meant to be irreverently humorous: One of @abortioncounselor’s first videos shows her dancing to the Megan Thee Stallion song “Thotiana,” under the text “my fetus dancing right before it was aborted.” Another features a drive-thru and the words “in-n-out after an abortion hits different.”To those used to the stoicism of the mainstream abortion debate, the videos’ playfulness can be surprising. Even some abortion rights advocates take issue with some of the pair’s tactics. But to Amelia Bonow, the founder of Shout Your Abortion, the videos are the latest step in normalizing a procedure that has historically been stigmatized and kept quiet.Bonow actually hired @abortioncounselor as an artist-in-residence for her organization, which publishes and publicizes abortion stories, because she felt they needed a larger presence on TikTok.“The idea that abortion is always a serious and sad thing is antiquated, not reflective of reality, and it definitely hasn’t done our side any favors,” she told The Daily Beast in an email. Abortion TikTok, she said, “is a nail in the coffin of the old way of doing things. We can talk about abortion however we want, it doesn't always have to be heavy. Sometimes it’s hilarious.”Behind all that humor is a kernel of truth: Both @abortionqween and @abortioncounselor have had abortions within the last six years. When she had hers at age 18, @abortionqween said, she knew of only one other person who’d undergone the procedure. Reading and watching stories of other people’s abortions online brought her comfort, and inspired her to start making videos of her own.“We get so many DMs every week from young people like, ‘I’m pregnant, I want an abortion, what do I do?’” she said. “Obviously I’m not able to respond to everyone but I just like, even through my videos, being someone that I didn’t have.”“It’s not a matter of if it’s true or not, it’s that they’re being exposed to positive messaging surrounding abortion,” her girlfriend added. Especially for those living in conservative households, she said, “this might be the first time they’re seeing something positive about abortion, and just having that seed planted can really change people's lives.”The Year TikTok Took Over the World—and Drove Trump MadThe two are not the only abortion provocateurs on TikTok. In Charlotte, North Carolina, a group of Gen-Z “clinic defenders” has gone viral many times over for videos of them taunting anti-abortion protesters outside a local clinic. In one, they blast Whitney Houston out of a parked car and ask a protester to come dance with them. In another, a clinic defender reads the lyrics to “WAP” to drown out a man reading the Bible. The latter has more than a million views.While popular, the tactics are not without controversy: In August, on the same day the WAP video was posted, four of the organization’s board members resigned, citing “hard and emotional growing pains.” Under the announcement on Facebook, one commenter wrote: “Just shocked at the direction I see this organization going on the social media platforms. If this is the way the clinic is heading I have lost so much respect.”Videos from inside abortion clinics are controversial too, even within the movement space. If clinics are identifiable in the videos, providers say, it can put them at physical risk. And videos shot in clinic waiting rooms can pose a privacy threat to other patients. Even the fake videos, like @abortionqween’s, have the risk of spreading misinformation, according to Mona Walia, the owner of All Women’s Health Clinic in Tacoma, Washington. Maybe someone will recognize that urgent care and assume it provides abortions, she said, or maybe they will compare that fictional experience to their own.“As providers we want to normalize abortion,” she said. “We just need to find a way to do that so that it's out there, but that information is accurate."Planned Parenthood, the largest single provider of abortions in the U.S., was supportive of the clinic videos, saying in a statement that there should be “no expectation of silence or shame” about the procedure.“Many organizations and individuals have worked for years to end stigma around abortion, and we’re proud to work alongside them,” senior communications director Erica Sackin said in a statement. “Eliminating abortion stigma and its impact on patients, staff, and policies is an important culture shift that can’t happen quickly enough.”For @abortioncounselor, the critiques of her work—whether they come from well-meaning advocates or abortion rights opponents—are beside the point.“I didn’t join TikTok to make videos for people who already support abortion,” she said. “I made them for people struggling with their decision. And I also made it to educate young people on their rights and options.”She added: “There’s just so many things that have changed as as result of our videos that a pro-choice person not liking it does really not faze me, because again, our videos just aren't for them.”And for everyone saying abortion shouldn’t be a laughing matter, the joke may be on them. The original viral video, in which the teenager goes to Planned Parenthood for an abortion, appears not to be real, either. According to ScreenRant, the creator posted a second video—also since deleted—claiming her friend wasn’t getting an abortion at all, but simply going for an ultrasound.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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