Once upon a time, the hilarious Safiya Nygaard was a video producer on BuzzFeed’s incredibly prominent series Ladylike. Since then, she’s branched off to form her own YouTube channel, amassing just about 2.5 million subscribers. She has some really popular videos about buying products Facebook or Instagram ads recommend and even one about why she left BuzzFeed that has gained almost 10 million views! However, since she separated herself from the company, it seems like BuzzFeed (mostly Ladylike) has started to produce eerily similar content.
On January 31, Safiya posted a video titled “Creating A Custom Lipstick At The Bite Lip Lab“ where she went to the Bite Lip Lab in NYC and made two custom lipsticks, talking about how cool it was she got to personally name the shades. Then, BuzzFeed posted a video on March 25 titled “I Made My Own Custom Makeup” where Crissy went to Giella Custom Blend Cosmetics in NYC and wait for it, talked about how she liked being able to name her makeup. Similar, huh? Well it’s probably likely that when you click on one of them, YouTube will suggest the other one because even its algorithm can detect the similarities.
And while this may just be a coincidence because makeup videos are so prevalent on the platform, the plethora of other examples might make you think it isn’t so accidental.
On March 28, Safiya posted “Beauty Blender vs Egg,” where she and guest star Candace (who also left BuzzFeed) did half of their makeup with an egg and the other half with the Evie silicone blender. On March 29, Buzzfeed posted a very, very similar video titled “Women Try Hard-Boiled Eggs As Beauty Blenders” where four different women try using an egg as a beauty blender. And while Safiya was definitely not the creator the idea (she credited who she was inspired by in her video), it seems as if once her video was pretty successful, BuzzFeed posted theirs right after to capitalize on the virality.
Safiya posted a video on May 23 where she tried out Lipsense (a liquid lipstick said to last up to 18 hours) and of course Ladylike posts a video almost a month later testing 24 hour lipstick specifically with Lipsense. Ok, now that’s just an uncanny resemblance.
But here’s the kicker! As you would probably assume, BuzzFeed records its videos in advance. In the video, the two women talk about how they are going to be getting crazy that night at a birthday party. But wait. What day is her birthday? May 23? The same day Safiya posted her video and Ladylike was probably looking for an idea? So even though it was posted a month later, it still seems a little fishy they would record a similar video on the same day Safiya released hers.
On January 27, Safiya made a video titled “Cheeto Bronzer vs Actual Cheetos” with Freddie (the co-creator and current video producer of Ladylike) testing the Cheeto bronzer versus actual Cheeto dust. Coincidentally, on March 1, Buzzfeed posted a video where they do snack-inspired makeup looks. And guess who stars in the video? Freddie! I wonder where they got that idea from?
So while nothing is definitely confirmed, it surely raises suspicions as to whether or not BuzzFeed is truly copying Safiya. However, BuzzFeed isn’t new to allegations of copying ideas without credit. In fact, check out another one of our articles on how BuzzFeed is probably stealing ideas from Black Twitter.
Images Credit to Safiya Nygaard and BuzzFeed
