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Woman books handyman on Facebook, realizes it's his birthday and surprises him with cake

She went all out to show kindness to a total stranger.

totsionna/Instagram

Woman surprises handyman who helped her with birthday cake.

Everyone needs a good handyman for those big (or small) projects around the house. Whether it's a task you've been avoiding or requires a skill you simply can't perform, they are there to save the day. So when Totsionna (@totsionna) went searching for a handyman on Facebook to help her unmount a large TV in her home, she found Reggie (@qualitylabor614).

After she booked him, she saw on his profile that the day he was set to unmount her TV was his birthday. So, she decided to surprise him with a birthday cake–even though he was a total stranger.

"Booked a guy on Facebook to unmount my TV & seen it was his birthday," she captioned the video of her epic surprise for him.

In the video, she walks into her living room where Reggie and his co-worker are getting to work unmounting the TV. And in her hands she is holding a birthday cake with white and yellow icing that says 'Happy Birthday Reggie' on it with six lit candles. Once she turns the corner, she says, "Happy Birthday, Reggie!"

Once he sees it, a smile lights up across his face, and he tells her, "You're crazy!" She hands him the cakes and says, "Here you go!" And he responds, "Appreciate it."

He takes the cake in one hand, and puts his drill in the other. They all begin to sing 'Happy Birthday' to him, and Reggie's co-worker pulls out his phone to record the special moment. Everyone is beaming and taking in the moment. Reggie blows the candles out, and his co-worker is so touched that he tells Totsionna sweetly, "Thank you so much!" Totsionna laughs and jokingly ribs him about why he's saying thank you given it wasn't even his birthday surprise. But he is clearly touched by her kind and thoughtful gesture.

Reggie notes that it is Ramadan so he can't enjoy the cake just yet, but he will. Totsionna's friend asks Reggie how old he turned, and he replies that he is 30. "That's a big one!" she says. Totsionna asks him what he's doing to celebrate, and he says he has something planned in two weeks. He invites her to join, and she says, "I'll come!"

Totsionna's heartfelt birthday surprise was praised by viewers.

"homie gon think about ts all his life 💯💯this was so sweet !!" one commented.

"'Why you sayin thank you?' lol he appreciates the love being shown, and the energy rubbed off! ❤️ We love you Tot you always doin random cool sh*t."

"This so wholesome and he saying thank you cause he was happy for him he just enjoying the moment 😂 😂😂😂."

Another touched viewer summed up her good deed perfectly: "I love people who are considerate of others💚 who would’ve thought to come to work and receive a birthday cake from a stranger basically? This speaks volumes about your personality. I think we did a great job with helping to make this special person famous🏅. 🫡💜🔥👍🏾."

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Identity

Facebook is finally 'freeing the nipple' thanks in part to how it censored one harmless photo

It's a major win for inclusivity.

Photo by Taylor Harding on Unsplash

Grayscale photo of woman in bikini.

Facebook has been a great place for people to bare all when it comes to their emotions. But when it comes to baring all with regards to bodies, Facebook has always seemed as if they’d rather people bare none of it. Facebook has received criticism for over-sexualizing breasts, but a new recommendation from Meta’s advisory board says the nipples can come out for nonbinary users.

Recently, Facebook censored two posts from a transgender and nonbinary couple that featured the couple appearing topless. Even though their nipples were covered, an AI system took the photos down for "violating the Sexual Solicitation Community Standard" after they were flagged by a human user. The couple appealed to Meta, and the photos were reinstated, but it was enough to catch the attention of Meta’s oversight board, which advises Meta on content moderation policies and is made up of academics, politicians and journalists.

After looking at the issue, the oversight board suggested Meta change their Adult Nudity and Sexual Activity Community Standards "so that it is governed by clear criteria that respect international human rights standards."

According to the board, Meta’s policy was "based on a binary view of gender and a distinction between male and female bodies," making it "unclear" in how it deals with intersex, nonbinary and transgender users.

"We are constantly evolving our policies to help make our platforms safer for everyone," a spokesperson from Meta told The Guardian. "We know more can be done to support the LGBTQ+ community, and that means working with experts and LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations on a range of issues and product improvements."

How free the nipples should be on the social media platform has been a source of contention for more than a decade. Breastfeeding moms have been leading the battle of the boob, duking it out with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over their ability to share nursing photos on social media. They’ve gone so far as holding a "nurse in" at Facebook headquarters to protest the ban on breasts.

woman, breast

Woman holding her hand over her breast.

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

In 2020, Instagram loosened up its nudity policy thanks to a campaign started by Nyome Nicholas-Williams. While nipples are still a no-no, Instagram now allows breast cupping, hugging, and holding. And in 2021, the oversight board gave the okay for "health related nudity," allowing for photos of nips if they’re related to things like breastfeeding, birth-giving, breast cancer awareness, or gender-confirming surgery. Acts of protest are allowed as well.

Facebook has received criticism for the platform being lax on hate speech but tough on boobs. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerburg has said this is because it's "easier to build an AI system to detect a nipple than what is hate speech," which might explain why Meta is going to use "human reviewers" to "quickly assess both a user’s sex, as this policy applies to 'female nipples,' and their gender identity," according to the board.

Topless man with black background.

Photo by Дмитрий Хрусталев-Григорьев on Unsplash

The new nipple rules are only applicable to transgender and nonbinary users. "The same image of female-presenting nipples would be prohibited if posted by a cisgender woman but permitted if posted by an individual self-identifying as nonbinary," the board noted in its decision.

While the nipple might not fully be free on Facebook, it has taken one large step forward out of its cage. However, Facebook’s over-sexualization of breasts might just be a reflection of society, and in order for the nipple to run wild and out in the open, we might need to change the way people think about breasts in general.

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Parenting

Mom gets savvy and tells her daughter to defrost dinner via Roblox

21st century problems call for 21st century solutions.

ChaCha Watson Facebook

Mom gets savvy and tells her daughter to defrost dinner via Roblox.

Parents have been contending with kids and video games since the first arcade game was introduced. Kids get immersed in the fictional world and forget—or sometimes downright ignore—that there are responsibilities to take care of outside of the game. A mom from Chicago, ChaCha Watson, used the Roblox video game to get her daughter's full attention.

Watson repeatedly called her 11-year-old daughter, Miracle, to tell her to take dinner out of the freezer to defrost but Miracle didn't answer. Instead of jumping to the worst-case scenario, Watson knew exactly what her daughter was up to and how to get her attention.

Miracle was immersed in the video game Roblox instead of answering her mom's phone calls, so Watson decided to join. Yep, the savvy mom hopped into the Roblox game from her location and jumped into the car with her daughter's avatar to tell her to take the lasagna out of the freezer. She shared the screenshots of the exchange on Facebook where it went viral.

Watson told Today, “She just so happens to be in the beginning stage when you first pop up on the game. So when I popped up, she just so happened to pull up. And I said, ‘You see me calling you!’ and then she was like, ‘I'm sorry mom.’" Roblox has been around for a while now. It's an interactive game where kids can create avatars that look like them, build things and apparently, drive cars. Watson had been playing the game with her daughter as a way to bond with her, she told Today.

If you've ever been a "latchkey kid" or just the oldest child at home while your parents step out, then you know the cardinal sin is to forget to take the food out for dinner. There's really no way to fake your way out of unthawed food because the rock solid item will tell on you every time. Before video games, parents didn't have the luxury of popping into one of their kids' video games to remind them to unthaw dinner.

Parents across social media are loving this mother's ingenuity of getting her daughter's attention. One parent tagged a friend and said, "We gotta figure out how to do this."

Another person replied, "Screaming! It was the 2nd pic 'It’s your mom, I know you saw me calling you,'" with multiple rolling on the floor laughing emojis.

It seems that most parents commenting on the post are planning to download Roblox and Minecraft to drop in on their kids when they're being ignored. But Watson advised that parents actually try playing the game with their kids and not just download it to tell them what to do, according to Today.

Watson told Today, "Being a single parent, you just want to make sure that you're spending time with your kids. That's really important to me — to make sure I'm spending quality time with her. So I downloaded Roblox and … that was just one of the best things ever."

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Animals & Wildlife

Horse ranch raises $17K to rescue two mustangs from abuse—thanks to a viral Facebook post

Clare Staples and her Skydog Sanctuary have saved hundreds of wild mustangs and burros, bringing them back to a freedom they deserve

Photos courtesy of Meta Community Voices
True

Horses often invoke feelings of passion, freedom, and graceful power. And though they might not get the title of “Man’s Best Friend,” horses share a special bond with humans.

Just ask Clare Staples, founder of mustang and burro rescue organization Skydog Sanctuary who recently raised a whopping $17K to help two horses —simply by writing a heartfelt post on Facebook.

“I grew up in England where there is a huge culture of horse loving people,” she told Upworthy. “When I was growing up I lived in a sort of imaginary land where I rode everywhere on an imaginary horse, which is a bit crazy, but my love of horses was born at such an early age. I'd be going on long car rides with my family and swiveling my head to look in every horse trailer or every field to see if I could see a horse.”



Growing up, horses became Staples’ “happy place.” In particular, she loved watching American TV shows like “Bonanza” and “Little House on the Prairie”, along with other westerns where “you would see a band of wild mustangs gallop through and steal the mares.”

Considering the image as a “romantic symbol of the American West,” Staples was shocked and sad to later discover that the American mustang’s reality was much less glamorous. As she explained, mustangs who run free on public lands get rounded up by the Bureau of Land Management, making more room for mining and livestock interests. “It makes the American government a lot of money and wild horses don't.” These captured horses and burros receive a Bureau of Land Management “BLM” brand, then get sent to kill pens or get auctioned off.

Staples became determined to offer her hooved friends a place of refuge, so she founded Skydog Sanctuary—a 9,000 acre ranch near Bend, Oregon where wild mustangs and burros can live out their lives peacefully in their natural habitat. The sanctuary also has an 11 acre location in California. In addition to rewilding equines, Skydog aims to raise awareness about the plight they face, in order to bring about change.

horse, ranch, barn, Skydog Sanctuary, Facebook

Earlier this year, two young mustangs caught Staples’ eye, as they bore an uncanny resemblance to one of her own horses from Skydog. Sure enough, by looking up their BLM IDs, Staples confirmed they were related. She then posted a Facebook fundraiser to get the siblings reunited.

Within only two weeks, people rallied enough support to reunite the two mustangs—now named Rising Sun and Presley, in homage to Elvis—with their native family.



With around 220 horses and 50 burros to look after, and no grant money, Staples relies heavily on her ever-growing social media community. Luckily, Facebook doesn’t take a percentage of their fundraisers, which gives people all the more incentive to donate, since they know exactly where their money is going. Plus, the platform has expanded Skydog’s reach tenfold—with nearly half a million followers, and fundraiser videos racking up nearly 20 million views.

Staples is especially excited for Giving Tuesday, when Meta, Facebook’s parent company, matches funds up to a total of $8 million dollars. “It means a lot to our followers to know if they donate $10 we're actually getting $20. Every year we just break records for ourselves. It's a really fun day. I feel like Facebook are our partners, because they've helped us grow and then [GivingTuesday] is a real day where we can celebrate them too.”

Connecting with people who care and want to help, combined with the power of social media, gives Skydog the resources needed to rescue horses from the very worst of situations. And for Staples and her followers, “seeing them come back to life and watching them heal on this land is just the most beautiful thing. Rewilding them and giving them their freedom and space back is one of the most extraordinary experiences. It never gets old.”

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