A Guide to Child Culture for Adults Who Have Lost Touch: What the Hell Is “Don’t Hug Me, I’m Afraid?”
It’s hard to really understand what young people are doing these days because the relentless algorithms that shape our culture have divided us all into ever smaller and more insular groups. But, on the other hand, that same alienation can provide entertainment that previous generations could not have imagined. For example, “Don’t hug me, I’m scared ” and TikTok videos about dental procedures.
Viral videos of the week: “Don’t hug me, I’m scared” is back
This month, the second season of Don’t Hug Me, I’m Scared was released in the UK. It started online with a series of whimsical shorts that have amassed millions of views on YouTube, but the new season is full, half-hour episodes that combine bright colors and cheery children’s programming songs with absurdist humor, surreal horror, and scathing commentary on postmodern epistemology (true ). It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen, I promise.
The show has not been officially released in the US, but so far no one has objected to the fact that many fans of rips are posting on YouTube. The first episode , in which Red Guy, Yellow Guy and Duck are introduced to the soul-killing concept of the job, has been viewed over a million times on YouTube alone. If I were you, I’d check it out now before it gets taken down or becomes so popular that you won’t be cool anymore if you find it sooner.
Feet fall in Meta’s Horizon Worlds
At this week’s Meta Connect conference, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off the next Quest VR headset, but also made a bigger announcement, an announcement that will surely change everything for Horizon World ‘s widely ignored virtual chat company: They’re adding legs!
The official account for Horizon Worlds breathlessly tweeted : “Feet coming soon! Are you excited?”
I can barely contain myself, Mark!
If you don’t have a VR headset but still want to test your legs (and everything else about that weird Horizons thing that no one, not even the people who make it , care or understand), the Nightmare Platform version is coming to PC . and mobile soon. So check it out. Or not. I’m sure using Horizon Worlds will become mandatory soon.
Nintendo fans react to Super Mario Bros. movie trailer
Last week, Nintendo released the first trailer for The Super Mario Bros. film . It looks pretty normal to me, but “pretty good, I guess” is definitely not a reaction from die-hard Nintendo fans . They are nothing if not passionate and they don’t like this movie.
The main point of contention is the choice of Chris Pratt to play the voice of Mario. I think Pratt did an acceptable job, although I briefly thought, “Wait, isn’t Mario supposed to have an offensive accent?” while watching the trailer. Then I forgot everything. Nintendo fans don’t forget. As you’d expect, there’s a lot of Nintendo drag on the web, a lot of “you ruined my childhood” drama. Some fans light candles instead of cursing the darkness. Someone remade the trailer, reportedly using an AI voice to play Mario . Someone else did this funny movie casting sketch . Nintendo, I’m quite sure, is aware of Pratt’s fan grievances, but considers them a vocal minority.
Another, more serious problem with the trailer is Mario ‘s butt. Less in the movie than in the game. Every gamer knows that Mario’s dump truck is an integral part of his character – it helps him jump on the turtles with more power! I’m sure the movie company is trying to avoid the NC-17 rating by minimizing Mario’s juicy badon, but I can’t accept that. I need to know where to sign the petition, which senator to write to, and where to get a lantern and a pitchfork.
Time Travelers TikTok
Ino Alaric is a time traveler from the year 2671, and he has news for all of us living in the present, news that he for some reason decided to reveal on TikTok: big changes are coming. In the next six months, the celebrity will reveal that he faked his death ! Alaric also gave us five dates for exactly when catastrophic events will occur in the near future:
- December 19, 2022: Space X will launch its first orbital defense satellite.
- January 14, 2023: The moon emits a strange light that “causes strange events happening around the world.”
- February 8, 2023: A new drug is introduced to increase the lifespan of humans.
- March 2, 2023: The north and south poles switch places, which “connects the continents.”
- May 25, 2023: A natural disaster disrupts the US political system.
Alaric enters a time travel competition with Bracken Smith , who lives in the year 2714, has over a million followers, makes suspiciously similar videos , and seems to enjoy riding motorcycles off-road – in the future .
There’s also @timevoyaging , who doesn’t reveal where they live in the future, but whose videos have tens of millions of views . And then there’s @realtiktoktimetraveler who makes similar videos and predicts…you know what? TikTok is full of time travelers, and each of them is really from the future, and each of their predictions is sure to come true.
Teeth zooming takes over TikTok
TikTok is very into teeth scaling videos, judging by the fact that #scaling has over two billion views. For many, the close-up shots of people scraping tartar off their choppers seem to fall somewhere between disgusting and satisfying. Plus, it makes you feel better about not flossing enough – at least you didn’t let it get as bad as that poor guy , right? (You didn’t, did you?)
Dokter Gigi Tri Putra is the king of TikTok video upscaling. More than three million people follow his feed, which consists almost entirely of videos about dentistry. It has orthodontics , cavities fillings , and teeth whitening , but it’s that sweet, sweet scaling that really draws people in. Of course, Dr. Wei Jian is a dentist with a much larger following, but I don’t approve of the lecturer’s tone of the video. this is how it is . Those are my fucking teeth, I’ll open bottles with them if I want to.