A Child Culture Guide for Disconnected Adults: Why Are ‘alpha Males’ Trending on TikTok?
Gen Z is turning their collective eyes skyward this week, but they still find time to poke fun at venomously male podcasts, catch video game scammers, and laugh at blunt-nosed monkeys.
NASA birthday photos go viral
NASA’s Astronomical Picture of the Day site was launched a long time ago in 1995 (and it looks like the HTML has never changed), and it’s only now that it’s really going viral. The site has been showing you NASA photos for every day since the mid-90s, with kids on TikTok entering their birthday and then posting the result. #Nasbirthday has over 17 million views.
The fun with trending is that you don’t know what you’ll get. Your birthday party might have an otherworldly and beautiful image of “pillars of light” over Alaska , or a kitchen strainer on a T-shirt .
Bullying “alpha males” TikTok
A TikTok filter that adds stubble, blue eyes and a septum piercing has spawned a hilarious new trend: to use it to mock “alpha male” podcasters. Credit goes to Elsa Lake , who made the first video of the genre by applying a filter and commenting ” if I looked like this, I would start a podcast “. Other users cheered for the idea, and soon the front lines of hashtags like #alphamale and #highvalueman – once the home of real toxic masculinity – were filled with parodies revealing who the real alphas were. Unlike actual human sphere podcasts, these videos are actually entertaining .
Cheating in the “Guitar Hero” community
The cheating scandal rocked the Guitar Hero community . Few people still play Guitar Hero – it came out in 2005, after all – but there is a small community of high-end players who have stayed with it and taken the game to extreme, almost superhuman levels. Among this rare company, a 20-year-old named Shmui was the best of the best – or so people thought . Turns out the videos of Shmui’s incredible record were fake.
YoutuberCarl Jobst posted a detailed video, but the thumbnail is that although Shmui is actually a surprisingly good Guitar Hero player, he is not the best, so in order to set world records and boost his reputation, he completely falsified his video. after the shame of being summoned, Shmui removed his channel and slipped away into the underworld.
Cheating in the YouTube gaming community
Guitar Hero cheating is embarrassing – imagine spending years faking videos just to convince some nerds you’re good at video games – but the recent cheating scandal surrounding YouTube gamer Paul “Ice Poseidon” Denino is definitely insidious. Self-proclaimed Internet detective Kofezilla uncovered a scandal in which Ice Poseidon tricked his followers into “investing” $500,000 in a worthless cryptocurrency and then kept $300,000 for himself, allegedly buying himself a Tesla. Even more egregious is Ice Posiedon’s reaction to being caught: he told Coffeezilla that he didn’t plan to return the money because he was “taking care of himself.”
“Part of the responsibility lies with [the fans] for putting too much emotion into it,” Ice Poseidon said, presumably twirling his mustache on the steering wheel.
Viral Video of the Week: The Real Facts: Proboscis Monkey
This week’s viral video belongs to internet legend ZeFrank .True Facts: Nose monkey dives deep and merrily into the world of monkey noses. Why does the “nosed monkey” basically have no nose at all, while the big-nosed monkeys have a huge, hanging schnozzola?
This is a more interesting question than you might think, and it brings us to the intersection of comical evolutionary traits and primate sex appeal. I had no idea that proboscis monkeys have erections all the time and that humans are the second primate with the biggest nose. While I definitely clicked on this video hoping to make fun of some big nosed monkeys, I ended up being the joke. As the host of the video points out, “If you want to make fun of a monkey with a big nose and a funny looking penis, call a friend and get naked. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper than going to Borneo.
Generous side of TikTok
Looking at the world of young people through the lens of the Internet, one can hear many stories of scandals, stupid behavior and superficiality. But the youth Internet has a more inspiring side. TikTok user @annabellegracestephens made this come true by uploading a video of elderly Doordash driver Kerry Judd with the caption: “Tell me I just didn’t get the cutest doorbell.” Commentators were moved by the sight of such an old dude who apparently had to deliver food to make ends meet, and set up a GoFundMe that quickly topped the six-figure mark .
Twist: Looks like Judd likes a side job. “I love sharing my DoorDash experience with others so they can generate income and be successful in their dashing experience,” Judd wrote on GoFundMe.
(I realize that this can be looked at cynically, and I note that Judd only got his windfall from crowdsourcing because of the ageist belief that a 71-year-old needs donations from his grandchildren’s peers. And he doesn’t give money to just anyone. because they are “cute” in the video disgusting? But give me one thing, okay?)