This May 2014 email chain records BuzzFeed picture editor Matthew Tucker agreeing to buy a CEN picture story headed “Shrink Wrap Couples To Preserve The Essence Of Being In Love”, replying: “Thanks, we’d like to take this for our usual rate.” The forwarded CEN alert includes the underlying copy and image references for a Japan-based story about photographer Haruhiko Kawaguchi, also known as Photographer Hal, shrink-wrapping couples together as part of his “flesh love” photographic series. The document is significant because it shows BuzzFeed actively purchasing a CEN viral picture story in the ordinary course of editorial business in May 2014, around the same period in which BuzzFeed staff were also receiving CEN alerts, asking to add colleagues to the mailing list, and buying other unusual international stories. In the wider evidence chain, it helps document that BuzzFeed was not merely observing or investigating CEN from outside: it was selecting, using and recording purchases of precisely the kind of attention-grabbing international material that it later criticised as part of the CEN ecosystem. Read alongside the other BuzzFeed/CEN usage records, it adds to the pattern showing BuzzFeed’s practical client relationship with CEN before the later allegations hardened.