wikiFeet

wikiFeet is a photo-sharing foot fetish website dedicated to sharing photos of celebrities' feet. In 2016, it was described by Vice Media's Lauren Oyler as "...the most extensive online message board and photo gallery of women's feet on the Internet".[1][lower-alpha 1] It mostly includes images of the feet of famous actors, actresses and other entertainers, though some politicians' feet are also featured on the site.[3][4]

wikiFeet
Available inEnglish
Founder(s)Eli Ozer
URLwww.wikifeet.com
CommercialNo
Launched2008 (2008)
Current statusActive

It was founded in 2008 by Eli Ozer, an Israeli former computer programmer and animator who now runs the site full-time.[1][5][6] According to Ozer, the site gets about 3 million views a month (as of July 2017).[7]

In January 2019, WikiFeet was involved in debunking a hoax involving US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; a picture of a woman's feet in a bathtub, purported to be a nude posted online by Ocasio-Cortez in 2016, was determined to be of someone else by users of the site, with the picture's short toe length being a key piece of evidence.[4] They were determined to be the feet of Sydney Leathers, involved in the Anthony Weiner sexting scandals of 2013,[8][9] which she confirmed to Washington Babylon in January 2019.[10]

In 2021, journalist Laura Bassett discovered that a 58-year-old man named Robert Hamilton had been posting pictures of her feet to wikiFeet, by copying photographs from her Instagram feed. He agreed to be interviewed. He said that he considered himself a foot fetishist and had admired women's feet since his childhood.[11]

Since June 2021, the website does not allow visitors from the European Union to browse full-resolution images because of a new EU Copyright Directive.[12]

Notes
  1. WikiFeet Men is a counterpart to the site focusing on men's feet.[2]

References
  1. Oyler, Lauren (2016-03-17). "Something's Afoot: The War Inside the World's Largest Celebrity Feet Forum". Broadly. Retrieved 2017-12-13.
  2. "Warum Socken heute rocken: Einst Synonym für Spießigkeit, heute modisches Statement" [Why socks rock today: Once synonymous with stuffiness, today a fashion statement]. Der Tagesspiegel Online (in German). Retrieved 26 September 2022.
  3. Texas, Virgil (2016-09-15). "Foot Fetishists Are Freaking Out Over Hillary Clinton's Feet". Vice. Retrieved 2017-12-13.
  4. "wikiFeet: how online foot fetishists debunked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's fake nude". The Guardian. 2019-01-09. Retrieved 2020-11-11.
  5. Bogle, Ariel (2016-02-28). "The utter weirdness of finding your feet on a foot fetish website". Mashable. Retrieved 2018-09-16.
  6. "WikiFeet.com: A Wik-ed website for celebrity foot fetishists". Evening Standard. 2013-01-17. Retrieved 2017-12-13.
  7. Glazer, Hilo (2017-07-10). "The Israeli Behind the Internet's Largest Foot Fetish Website". Haaretz. Retrieved 2017-12-13.
  8. Ritschel, Chelsea (2019-01-09). "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez foot photo identified by foot fetishists as someone else". The Independent. Retrieved 2020-11-11.
  9. Lapin, Tamar (2019-01-09). "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bathtub photo debunked by foot fetishists". New York Post. Retrieved 2020-11-11.
  10. Leathers, Sydney (2019-01-08). "Sydney Leathers Apologizes to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Those Are My Feet". Washington Babylon. Retrieved 2020-11-11.
  11. Bassett, Laura (Apr 7, 2021). "An Interview With the Man Who Keeps Uploading My Feet to WikiFeet". New York. Retrieved 2021-04-15.
  12. "Changes due to the EU Copyright Directive". wikifeet.com. Retrieved 2021-06-09.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.