Twitch, the popular live-streaming service behind some of the world’s most popular streamers, is now offering gift cards.

The site joined the vast majority of restaurants and retailers around the world in launching an official Twitch gift card, which non-Twitch users can purchase for friends and family members with an account. Here’s everything you need to know about Twitch’s new offerings, from where to find them to what they can be used for.

How and where to buy Twitch gift cards

Purchasing one of Twitch’s new gift cards is simple, even for those without a Twitch account. Interested purchasers can simply head over to the Twitch website, where a full page is dedicated to various versions of the bold purple card. Most digital purchases will go through Amazon, where you can find a variety of options — from birthday wishes to graduation celebrations — and select the correct price point. Digital Twitch gift cards are purchasable for any amount between $25 and $200 for the U.S., Canadian, and Australian shoppers, between €25 and €100 for European shoppers, and between £25 and £100 for British shoppers.

Twitch gift cards can only be redeemed by users with a Twitch account, so ensure your recipient still spends plenty of time on the streaming site before purchasing. Redeemed cards will appear in a user’s Twitch wallet, and can only be redeemed and used in the same currency they are purchased in.

Physical gift cards are also available from most major retailers, according to the Twitch website. These will function similarly to their digital counterparts, but allow purchasers to exchange a physical gift with their recipient. These cards are mostly customizable, and can be purchased in any amount between $15 and $200 for most users. Canadians can boost their physical gift cards to up to $500, but most European users will have to stick with digital for the time being.

Who can use Twitch gift cards?

Twitch gift cards purchased in a certain country can only be redeemed by users in the same country. That means that gift cards purchased with U.S. dollars can only be redeemed in the U.S.

Gift cards are currently available for users in the U.S., Canada, the UK, Australia, and the following 25 European countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain.

What are Twitch gift cards used for?

Twitch gift cards can be redeemed for a variety of things on the site, from channel subscriptions to bits and gift subscriptions. U.S. dollars can also go toward Turbo, which provides users with ad free viewing, a chat badge, expanded emoji selection, extended broadcast storage, and custom chat username colors. Turbo is not available with a gift card purchase using any other currency.

Twitch gift cards cannot be used to purchase Twitch merchandise or prime gaming.

Image via Ironmouse/Twitch

VTuber Ironmouse is rocketing to popularity on the live-streaming service Twitch.

The Puerto Rican VTuber recently became the most-subscribed streamer on the platform, cinching the sought-after title following a subscriber-collecting subathon. She also boasts a follower count more than 1 million strong. As a VTuber — or virtual YouTuber — followers are only familiar with the animated version of Ironmouse, whose voice is provided by the real-life creator behind the account. The pairing of Ironmouse’s consistently popular streams and the virtual character’s charming personality aided greatly in her journey to the top of Twitch, where she’s been breaking records left and right.

Who is Ironmouse?

Ironmouse is a cute, pink-haired, anime-style VTuber whose account appeared on Twitch in 2017. In the years since, Ironmouse has risen high enough to compete with some of Twitch’s top streamers, raking in subscribers in the tens of thousands. She recently became the most-subscribed-to channel on the platform, a goalpost which she celebrated — along with her loyal fans — in a recent stream.

The popular streamer made a name for herself through several years of gaming-centric content, uploading streams of herself enjoying titles like 7 Days to Die in her early days and transitioning to more relaxed titles like It Takes Two in recent years. Her popularity has undergone a major boost over the last several months, following her arrival at 500,000 followers in mid-2021, according to Kotaku. Since then, her star has been steadily on the rise as the creator racks up fresh followers on a near-daily basis.

This is aided, in large part, by her streaming schedule. While many streamers struggle to maintain consistent release schedules, Ironmouse is hyper-focused on her Twitch presence. Much of her current popularity can be attributed to a recent subathon, which remained ongoing for a truly impressive amount of time.

Why is Ironmouse so popular?

As noted above, there are multiple factors behind Ironmouse’s Twitch success. She built her follower base for years before signing onto VTuber agency VShojo in 2020. Since then, she’s been a mainstay among some of Twitch’s most prominent streamers, varying uploads between a range of content types. Most of her content sees Ironmouse enjoying a game or chit-chatting with her followers, but it occasionally branches out into reaction videos or casual, rambling IRL content.

The sudden recognition behind Ironmouse has a lot to do with the VTuber’s subathon, which kept the streamer busy for right around a month straight. The subathon — a marathon stream intended to boost a creator’s follower count — started on Feb. 4 and concluded on March 7, according to Upcomer. Ironmouse presented the subathon with simple rules, stating that each fresh follower added during the stream would add 15 seconds to her stream timer. In total, she gained 171,818 followers over the course of 31 days.

The lengthy stream aided immensely in Ironmouses’s rise to fame and saw the chipper creator break several records along the way. Over the course of her ceaseless month-long stream, Ironmouse hurtled past massive creators to seize brand new records. By day 11 of her subathon, Ironmouse surpassed Miyoung “Kkatamina” Kim as the most-subscribed female streamer on Twitch and soon after cinched the record for third-most concurrent Twitch subscriptions in the entire history of the site.

In just four years, TikTok, the short-form video-sharing app, has gone from a popular fad to a Gen Z cultural touchstone. In the last year or so it’s become something else as well — one of the best things that can happen to an up-and-coming musician, especially one with eyes on the Spotify Viral 50.

And for one aspiring Atlanta artist with a penchant for sweaters and Cardi B, he owes a big debt to TikTok for making a splash on Spotify.

Lil Shordie Scott’s “Rocking A Cardigan In Atlanta” is currently in the Top 20 of both the U.S. and Global Viral 50 playlists on the streaming service. That’s almost purely on the weight of its TikTok presence, proving that the platform is becoming as indispensable to emerging artists as radio play was to what your elders knew as “rock ‘n’ roll.”

TikTok omnipresent and ever-changing dance trends have certainly helped a fair share of established names such as Megan Thee Stallion and Doja Cat remain on the popstar A-list, but it’s helped the careers of more than a few obscure acts as well. “How You Like That” by Blackpink, “Beggin” by Måneskin, and “Astronomia” by Chiky Dee Jay are just a few of the many songs that have had a spotlight shined upon them by TikTok virality.

In the case of Lil Shordie Scott — according to his YouTube page, he’s a “youngin from the southside of Atlanta with a different style and vision” — it took two months for “Rocking A Cardigan In Atlanta” to go from debuting on his SoundCloud account to becoming a TikTok dance jam.

The track seemed to take off, according to Scott’s genius.com page, following a cover video by TikTok user @runuppercy. The video, admittedly quite different from Scott’s flow, gathered over one million likes (and counting) and, more importantly, sent users in search of the original.

The song got another unexpected TikTok boost when Jenelle Evans, star of Teen Moms 2, posted herself twerking to Scott’s original version of the song following her revelation that she was suffering from fibromyalgia. In the video, Evans dances along to the song using moves that have gone viral in one of the platform’s many dance trends. Users across the platform have posted their own videos — generally featuring more than one person dancing— all following the same steps.

Of course, virality doesn’t guarantee last fame, but Lil Shordie’s fairly distinctive flow and vocalization, pitched many times above most of the raps coming out of Atlanta right now, may prove a key to success. (That piano intro’s pretty fantastic as well.)

Time will tell whether his time as a TikTok trend was a momentary supernova of infatuation, or if he’s here to stay in the firmament for a while.

Image via Pixabay

In a statement released on March 29, video-sharing app TikTok announced an exciting new feature it calls “Library.” Library is an in-app creation tool that will integrate material from GIPHY, the searchable online database of GIFs, clips, and memes, allowing users to splice the content into their own videos.

According to the statement, Library will allow users to utilize “clips from their favorite shows, GIFs, memes and more by seamlessly integrating them into their TikTok videos.” Library will initially be populated with material directly available from GIPHY including GIPHY clips – GIFs that also feature audio content. Users will be able to grab content directly from Library and “incorporate it into their unique storytelling on TikTok.”

Clips available upon launch will include:

Reactions: much like GIFs, content that captures a raw emotional reaction and are relatable to users make perfect Clips

Quotes: memorable catchphrases and quotable moments from notable personalities

People: fandom is real, and people look for their favorite celebrities, athletes, etc. to help express themselves

Iconic moments: whether it’s an awards speech, beloved TV characters, or game-changing play, these big moments are bound to be shareable conversation starters

– via TikTok’s statement

TikTok hopes to expand Library’s content over time and grow to include “additional content sources, audio and sounds, text templates, creator content, and more, as we continue to innovate and spark creativity for our community.”

TikTok began rolling out the feature on Tuesday. If you don’t currently have it, expect the service to become available on your TikTok app very soon.

Once Library is available, there are only four steps required to use it:

1. Launch TikTok, and click the ‘Record’ button to open the camera.
2. Click the ‘Library’ icon in the sidebar. This opens the Library function.
3. Now use the search bar to find content. You may also scroll through the trending content to see popular content being used in other clips.
4. Make your selection and trim the clip to the desired length, then return to the shoot page to continue capturing content.

Have fun and good luck! Your next video clip interaction may just be the new TikTok trend.

Trends on TikTok come in all different flavors, from goofy dance trends to eye-rolling dad jokes, to jaw-dropping filters and everything in-between. The latest to hit the app just may bring a few happy tears to your eyes. Users across the video-sharing service are using a new app called TravelBoast to virtually reunite themselves with boyfriends, besties, and loved ones that have moved away. Coast to coast, users are reminiscing about relationships that will never be taken for granted.

The trend uses three ingredients. First, is the TravelBoast app, which is a cartoon mapping app that lets you make an animated video showing a route to any location on the globe featuring virtual cars and planes. Second, an assortment of photos of a user and a loved one currently living far apart from each other — sometimes even continents away! Lastly, Coldplay’s “Paradise”, or at least that seems to be the traditional sound clip for the trend. Users have been combining the three elements into videos that can be just as heartwarming as they are heartbreaking.

If you want to join in on the trend it’s easy. You will have to download the TravelBoast app to make your map though. After that, it’s just a matter of tracking down some of your favorite memories and posting the video to TikTok. Just follow the steps below:

1. Download the TravelBoast app compatible with your phone’s platform
2. Open the TravelBoast app on your phone.
3. Click ‘Start point’ in the top left corner, and type in the first location – generally your hometown.
4. Next, click ‘Destination’ in the top right corner, and enter your second location – the city where your SO, BFF, or family member currently lives.
5. Tap on the orange line and drag it to create a new dot. This will make the animated trip seem more dynamic and lifelike.
6. To change your vehicle, for example, to a train or airplane, just press and hold the car icon at your starting point, and select the appropriate vehicle then click the back button.
7. Once you’ve mapped your route, just press the play button on the bottom of the screen.
8. After the app your video is created, just select ‘Save video to camera roll.’

Now that you have your travel video, just upload it to TikTok and add whatever photos or footage you like to enhance it. You can add any music you like – although as stated, “Paradise” has been the hands-down favorite choice for the majority of trending videos.

Once you’ve posted, sit back and bask in the nostalgia. Share it with your absent person and enjoy the memories. Who knows? Your travelogue may be the next to go viral!

The British crime drama Top Boy has had a successful run and found an audience on Netflix, and now the streaming service has announced viewers will get one more season of adventures in London’s Summerhouse estate to follow.

The company posted the trailer above to YouTube earlier today, featuring 60 seconds of shakedowns, staredowns, shootouts, and flames. The show stars Ashley Walters and Kane Robinson, and Netflix also hinted their characters might not walk away to safety.

“There’s a time for everything. There’s a time for family and times we let them go. There’s a time to come together, and a time to ride out. There’s a time to build empires, and a time to burn them. Every top boy has their time, and that time is coming.”

Filming for what is being called the final chapter begins this summer. Apart from Walters and Robinson, other performers on the show include Shone Romulus, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Xavien Russell, Kierston Wareing, and Michael Ward as Jamie Tovell. The series currently has a 95 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and for Jochan Embley of the London Evening Standard, its reputation is well-earned.

“It’s all bleak, but it’s also riveting. Top Boy tells painful stories, but ones that need to be told. By the eighth and final episode [of season two] things reach breaking point. The ending – and what an ending it is – suggests another season could be in the offing. You’d be surprised if it wasn’t.”

Photo by Mark Mainz/Getty Images

At this point, everybody who hasn’t been hiding under a rock knows that Will Smith and Chris Rock have history. But what they may not know is how far back that history goes. Not only Have Smith and Rock worked together back in the 90s when both of them were still climbing the ladder to Hollywood A-list status, but Rock has a working history with Jada Pinkett that goes back years as well.

As social media has exploded in the wake of Will Smith slapping Rock at last night’s Oscar ceremony, some people are remembering Rock’s long ago 1995 appearance on Smith’s breakout sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in an episode that can be categorized as “problematic” at best when seen through the lens of 2020s standards.

The episode in question, entitled “Get a Job,” was filmed in the sixth season and first aired on Sept. 25, 1995. In the episode, Smith’s character Will attempts to become an assistant talent coordinator for his cousin Hilary’s talk show. Will scores a big chance when he is told famous comedian Maurice, played by Rock, will do the show if Will dates his sister and the evening goes well. The sister is played by Rock as well, and the date goes predictably badly, full of vaguely transphobic and otherwise face-palm-inducing 90s vintage wacky hijinks.

The episode was filmed when Rock’s career was in a transitional phase. He had left SNL, and though he was still working regularly as a stand-up, he had not reached the level of success his stand-up special Bring the Pain would bring him just one year later in 1996. Similarly, Smith was widely known through Fresh Prince but had only acted in a handful of films by the time the sixth season was filmed. It would be two years later, in 1997, that Smith would shoot to superstar status following his performance in the first Men in Black feature.

Rock has a shared history with Pinkett Smith as well, the pair co-starred as Marty the Zebra and Gloria the Hippo, respectively in the animate franchise Madagascar. While Rock and Pinkett Smith were likely not hanging out in the sound booth at the same time while filming, they definitely accompanied each other on press tours for all three movies and have undoubtedly been colleagues at the very least. In 2012 Rock shared the information that his own daughters were fans of Willow, Smith and Pinkett Smith’s musician daughter, during a joint interview with Fuse. “Hey, my kids listen to your kids! ’21st Century Girl’ Oh my god,” said Rock.

The three have all hung out socially in the past and have been spotted out and about with each other and with their families ever since 1995, when Smith first began dating Pinkett. However, the trio’s friendship may have taken a turn for the worse after Rock made the couple’s decision to boycott the 2016 Academy Awards — which Rock hosted — due to a lack of diversity in the wake of the “Oscars so white” controversy.

I understand. I understand you’re mad—Jada’s mad her man Will was not nominated for Concussion [Smith’s 2015 film],” Rock said in his monologue. “I get it. Tell the truth. I get it. It’s not fair that Will was this good and didn’t get nominated. It’s also not fair that Will was paid $20 million for Wild Wild West.“

Whether last night’s incident was the case of too many straws for the camel to bear or just the wrong remark at the wrong time, only Smith can say. For the present, Sean “Diddy” Combs has assured the press that the incident is behind them and the two men are mending their friendship. “That’s not a problem. That’s over. I can confirm that,” Combs said. “It’s all love…They’re brothers.”

Image via TikTok

Dance crazes and wacky challenges are a big part of what keeps TikTok one of the most popular social media platforms in the world, but there’s another cornerstone to the app’s content that never seems to fail to go viral: pranking your friends. TikTok’s latest way to make fun of the people who love you is a fake Google search that falsely predicts how long someone has to live based on a particular characteristic.

The “prank” is pretty simple to pull off. Users display a search result ⏤ typically from Google ⏤ from a life expectancy calculator based on a certain characteristic of the person they want to prank. Typical parameters are “how long do tall people live,” “how long do emos live,” or “how long do idiots live.” The prankster then shows a message featuring lyrics from “I’ll Never Forget You” ⏤ either the Noisettes or the Zara Larsson version ⏤ with the track in question playing throughout the video.

Perhaps it’s not the most sophisticated joke you’ll hear online this year, but the video call-outs seem to be a hit, with some of the videos receiving hundreds and thousands of likes and views.

The trend is the latest to prominently feature “Never Forget You.” Though the Noisettes and MNEK songs are two different songs by different songwriters, both trended prominently last year in videos TikTok users produced to highlight a person or pet that had significantly impacted their lives. However, those videos tended to be much more heartfelt than the newer trend.

Image via TikTok

Like most social media apps out there, TikTok counts on a bit of a Mobius strip when it comes to user engagement. Users come to the platform to indulge in other users’ content, and often become content creators themselves, if only to recreate some of TikTok’s many viral dance and song trends. But the company’s higher-ups aren’t above hedging their bets when it comes to keeping viewers amused. TikTok’s newest viral challenge is “in-house” for a change — a built-in interactive game users can play themselves.

The Stacking Challenge is an interactive game that is part of the platform’s effects menu. The goal is straightforward enough; simply attempt to build the highest tower you can, by placing a repeating series of colorful blocks on top of each other. Of course, the challenge only appears easy on its face. In reality, the process is deceptively difficult. You can stop the blocks by blinking, but they must line up onto each other exactly. If they don’t, the overlapping part will fall off — resulting in an increasingly smaller surface to stack upon. Users playing the game can find themselves rapidly running out of space.

Some challengers are pulling in substantial likes by demonstrating their prowess. One user, _saddestnightout, even managed to go viral with 314 thousand likes when he demonstrated his own hack of blinking in time to the game’s soundtrack, in a video entitled “The Beat is All You Need”.

If you’d like to give the challenge a go yourself, you should be able to immediately, if you already have TikTok on your device (and if it isn’t available — the game hasn’t made it to every country just yet). To play along, follow the steps below:

1. Launch your TikTok app
2. Tap the Discover tab
3. Enter “Stacking Challenge” in the search bar
4. In “Effects,” tap the pink record button next to the challenge
5. Tap on “Try this effect”
6. Point your screen-side camera at your face and watch as the blocks float by. You must stop each block by blinking when they line up.
7. Once you miss, the game is over, and you can try again

Once you get a result you like, share it. Maybe your high score might be the next to go viral!

Brian Johnson is jacked. Incredibly so. Cartoonishly so. Johnson, aka “the Liver King” has been muscling — quite literally — his way into user’s video feeds across TikTok lately. He’s lifting weights, sleeping on wood planks (in his mansion), he’s simulating prehistoric “hunts” and — above all else — he’s trying to get you to eat raw meat.

While humans have been consuming raw foods for all of history, raw food advocacy has seen a recent uptick in recent years, with celebs such as Heidi Montag touting the diet’s supposed benefits, including providing enzymes “lost” through the cooking process — although there is no current, peer-reviewed science to back up said claims. The Liver King’s advocacy goes beyond just the occasional —or even weekly — plate of steak tartare, however.

Johnson advocates an entire “back to nature” philosophy, dedicated to a style of “ancestral living” supposedly based on the diet and habits of primitive man. He even refers to his many dedicated followers as “primals”. His videos, almost all of which have hundreds of thousands and even millions of views, feature his over-the-top workout regimes, his “simulated” primordial hunts, self-help positivity messaging, and of course, meals that often cross the line from gustatory to disgust-atory, including raw bull testicles, animal organ smoothies, and his trademark — one entire pound of raw liver and sea salt ingested daily.

And, not surprisingly, Johnson uses his now well-established platform to hawk his own brand of supplements — how our primal ancestors had access to them is anyone’s guess — that go hand in hand with “ancestral tenets” as eating “naturally” and going to bed early. Follow the routine, Johnson implies, and you just may find yourself looking down on a sculptural eight-pack set of abdominals all your own. Start with liver, get some really good sleep, move like Liver King, eat like Liver King, shield like Liver King. Live like the ancestral man, and you’ll have the hormone profile that’s double or triple of the manicured modern man.”

Claims like this are hardly a rarity on TikTok. Although the platform is far better-known for its popular dopamine-inducing and time-wasting dance craze and challenge videos, the so-called wellness industry has taken to the format practically en masse. Scroll through any given user’s feed, and you’ll find at least one video extolling the benefits of frozen honey, rice water hair baths, push-up challenges, or dry scooping your protein powders for every five videos of zoomers dancing to “Corvette Corvette.”

However, eating a mostly raw meat diet isn’t exactly common sense, “hormone profile” or no. Whatever devotees of the extreme diet might claim, there is little to no hard data that proves raw meat is in any way more beneficial for you than cooked meat, and raw meat is most definitely a breeding ground for potentially harmful food-borne pathogens. Salmonella, Clostridium perfringens, E. coli, Listeria monocytogenes, and Campylobacter can all be found in raw meat, but are generally destroyed by cooking processes.

The Liver King is definitely a standout in a crowded field; his New Agey ancestor worship helps allay the bro-ness that hampers a lot of insanely over-muscled wellness creators on the app. And his relentless positivity — well-tempered, with a “by your bootstraps” capitalist tinge — makes him more approachable than many of the “woo woo” body, mind, and spirit types as well. It’s a combo that has made Johnson one of the platform’s stand-out successes. He has over 1.8 million followers thus far, and counting. Not bad for a lifestyle entrepreneur who, only seven months ago, had little digital presence whatsoever.

Johnson’s approach to the platform was navigated by his PR firm, 1DS Collective, a management agency that specializes in branding through social media. Johnson approached the firm to develop his brand and create businesses based on his “ancestral tenets” philosophy. “Brian Johnson AKA Liver King has made a fierce debut across social platforms this month. Led by yours truly, the team at 1DS Collective. It’s been an honor to set the stage for Liver King,⁣” 1DS wrote in a September 2021 Instagram post.

Although TikTok has spread both Johnson’s message and his sales, he is adamant that isn’t his main focus. “I don’t give a shit if I change one person’s life,” he told Buzzfeed News. “I give a shit about changing millions of lives. The narrative we’re faced with today, whatever’s happening mainstream, is not working. I’m convinced there’s a better way to do life.”