Prepare for a Summer of Slurpee Selfies Courtesy of 7-Eleven's Mustache Straws

7-Eleven is now offering its Slurpees with hipsterlicious mustache straws and cups shaped like Mason jars.

Be warned: they ain’t free. It’s a cool 99 cents for the stache straw, and a full $2.99 for the Mason jar (though you get your first Slurpee free).

The four stache styles include a British upper-lip, a hirsute handlebar, a Ron Swanson special, and the Hulk Hogan. The entire promotion seems perfectly geared for social sharing with Instagram and Facebook. You should expect to see more of these sort of photo-friendly promotions tailor-made for the selfie crowd.

According to ABC news, the straw sales have already surpassed expectations, and it’s only the start of Slurpee season. Get your summer sippin’ on before they’re all gone.



Evil App of the Day: SkinneePix Makes Your Selfies Skinnier With a Tap of a Finger

Looking a little plump in that vacation selfie? That's what a few too many poolside margaritas and a nasty sunburn can do. Care to slim that down before you share with the world? Sure, there's an app for that.

SkinneePix, created by a female-led, Phoenix-based company called Pretty Smart Women, says it can shave five, 10 or 15 pounds off that bloated iPhone self-portrait with the tap of a finger. No cardio or Photoshop required!

One of the developers told the Los Angeles Times that she didn't intend the app to replace actual physical work on a user's girth, but instead to provide "inspiration" to shed a few pounds. SkineePix is defending itself against some haters on Twitter by noting that it's "not a diet app."

What is it, according to Pretty Smart Women? "Simple. Fun. Our little secret," and it can be the "equivalent of sucking in your tummy." If you have the stomach for it, that is.


    



Here’s a Perfect Illustration of How Fast ‘Private’ Photos Get Around

Here's a simple and clever way to show why it might be a bad idea to share that supposedly private photo.

Brazilian agency Propeg recently submitted this to Ads of the World, though it's hard to be sure if or where it actually ran. "The Internet can't keep your secret," says the ad for SaferNet Brasil. "Keep your privacy offline."

SaferNet is a nonprofit dedicated to fighting Internet crimes like identity theft and child pornography.

Some will surely argue that the ad is a form of "slut shaming" since it seems to put the onus of blame on the woman taking her own picture and not on all the dirtbags who pass it along. But the ad would work just as well with a guy sharing sausage in the mirror, and I think we can all agree it's a pretty accurate illustration of the way photos seem to get in all the wrong hands faster than you can say "duck face."


    



How a ‘No Makeup Selfie’ Trend Suddenly Became a Cancer Awareness Effort

In an age when social media has made us even more aware of how we look at any given moment ("A picture? Now? Wait, how's my hair?"), asking women to take photos of themselves without makeup and upload them to social channels seems risky. And yet, thousands are doing it in the U.K. in the name of cancer awareness.

A "No makeup selfie" campaign grew organically in Britain in recent weeks, and ended up raising several million pounds for Cancer Research U.K., even though the group initially had nothing to do with the effort.

Author Laura Lippman apparently started the trend to support actress Kim Novak, whose looks were criticized at the Oscars. Others picked up on the idea, and somehow the hashtag #breastcancerawareness and donation links to Cancer Research U.K. started getting added to the selfies. "It's brilliant it's raising so much money. It's totally unexpected because it wasn't something we planned," a rep for the group tells Britain's Telegraph newspaper.

Because most interesting ideas need a fun spinoff, the hashtag #manupandmakeup also started trending, as men put on makeup to raise money for Prostate Cancer U.K.


    



Infographic: How Brands Became Selfie Obsessed

If you still needed proof that selfies have taken over the Internet, here's a telling infographic about how brands went into pic-snapping overload in the past year.

To help promote the upcoming deadline for entries (Feb. 18) in The Shorty Awards' Best Facebook Campaign category, contest sponsor Unmetric decided to analyze how major businesses embraced the selfie in all its ego-stroking glory over the course of 2013. From Target and Samsung to Aflac and Beggin' Strips, all manner of brands created selfies or hosted selfie-centric promotions, with the numbers climbing steadily throughout the year. 

While relatively few of the branded selfies are truly compelling, a few worth noting are GoPro's image from a fan atop Mount Everest, shown above, and Samsung's #TogetherWeRise campaign, which created a massive mosaic of LeBron James out of selfies submitted by fans.