Harry Styles Also Hates Getting CAPTCHA’d

Don’t think that just because you’re a pop sensation, a former One Direction member, and a one-time star in an Olivia Wilde movie, that you are free from the subjugation of CAPTCHA authentication. No one is free. CAPTCHA must authenticate us all: Even you, Harry Styles.

In a recent cover story for W Magazine, Styles sat down with comedian Julio Torres to discuss their shared loathing for CAPTCHA. (What’s that saying about running out of new sentences?) CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart—but is better known as the “select the squares that contain traffic lights” test, or the robot test you might fail if you don’t have your contacts in. 

The two landed on the subject after discussing Styles’s three-year break from touring, the importance of “dancing next to a sweaty stranger” (Harry’s words), and finding ~beauty~ in the mundane.

“Everything in our world now is about being productive,” Styles said. “How do we grow this and optimize everything? Almost exclusively, my favorite things have come in moments of being incredibly unproductive.” Then, he zeroes in on his real issue of the day. Excerpt below:

Styles: You know those things on websites where they say to verify you’re a human, and you have to tick the boxes that have bridges in them?

Torres: Yes. It’s like, What is a bridge? Or when they say, “Check every box that has a bicycle”—what if there’s a sliver of a bicycle? Who am I to say that box does not contain a bicycle?

Styles: Where’s the line?

Torres: I wish one could give a subjective answer verbally.

Styles: Someone has to sit in front of you, and you could explain why this was.

Torres: Why, to you, the shadow of a bicycle represents enough of the bicycle.

Styles: Actually, it’s just a picture of a bicycle. You’re not a human. Don’t ask me if I’m a human. Where do you have the gall!

Clearly, selling out a 30-show residency at Madison Square Garden is not proof enough that you are not a robot. If anything, it makes you more of an efficiency beep-boop. (Still, better than the clone allegations, because there is no amount of evidence you could provide that would satisfy the cohort of online cloneheads. Just ask Selena Gomez.) But leave it to Styles and Torres to make me over-intellectualize the meaning of a bicycle, first thing in the morning.

• Speak of the devil…Styles and his fiancée, Zoë Kravitz, walked 8 miles in loafers. [Deuxmoi]
• Addison Rae thinks most people these days, including her, are very lonely. [Instagram]
• Chris Hansen is not a fan of his upcoming A24 biopic Primetime, but I wouldn’t be complaining if Robert Pattinson played me in a movie… [TMZ]
• Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, and Aubrey Plaza’s baby on a walk in NYC is the chicest thing you’ll see today.  [Twitter]
• Busy Phillips survived a rare brain tumor. [People]
• Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Jane Fonda, and more paid tribute to the late great Dolly Parton. [New York Times]

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