A Guide to Children’s Culture for Out-of-Touch Adults: Starfield Reviews
The video game Starfield this week stopped all activity among people who don’t have jobs. The kids are all gone to their little rocket ships, and what little time they don’t spend in space is spent listening to people yapping, watching the new Doja Cat video, and hating on overweight squirrels.
Gamers react to Starfield
The massive, life-sucking sci-fi RPG Starfield just came out, and the game has taken over the cultural conversation among people who love video games (i.e., anyone under 30). Reviewers love it, giving it a score of 87 out of 100 on Metacritic , but the audience score is 5.4 out of 10. So mixed reviews, but not mixed like everyone says “I guess it was ok” but mixed like half the people rave about how great it is and half say it sucks. Opponents mainly complain about invisible walls , a system of encumbrances, or some strange cultural self-interest. Yes, and PlayStation users are angry because they are not counted at all.
Starfield also has a ton of glitches, but it’s a Bethesda game, so I’d be disappointed if it weren’t full of hilarious bugs like creepy-staring NPCs , random chat with floating heads , conversations with companions that seem to have broken backs, and vendors who suddenly fly into space .
There’s also the weird “It’s Too Woke ” crowd, who seem to be angry that there’s politics in the game, that Starfield’s imagined future is partly a commentary on today’s reality—keep that stuff out of science fiction, right? Anyway, the trope of these nerds is this jerk who has a kink, because in the character creation screen people are asked what pronouns they prefer.
However, my favorite reaction to Starfield is from fans who use the game unintentionally. They always advertise these types of RPGs by saying that you can have any gaming experience you want, and some people like to see how far they can go, like this absolute legend on Reddit who turned Starfield into a potato harvesting simulator. They collected over 20,000 potatoes and loaded them into their spaceship. It’s a testament not only to the weird ingenuity of gamers, but also to Starfield itself: the potato physics are simply ridiculous .
Slang clock: what does “yelp” mean?
The word “yelp” means “stop yelping!” is not new, but children use it to describe a certain style of presentation in online videos. Authors who talk too much about nothing are called “yappers” or “yappers.” This is usually meant in a mocking way, but not always. The kings of Yap are @bag_and_cj from TikTok, who have adopted this style on the channel, proudly watching tons of reaction videos. They practically elevate yapping to an art form – check out the hashtag #yipandyap to see what I mean.
Does Reddit hate fat squirrels?
The fatsquirrelhate board on Reddit, a subreddit dedicated to the “public shaming of greedy and obese squirrels, groundhogs and other woodchucks,” has more than 120,000 followers. The sub features photos and videos of obese rodents with captions like: ” That damn fat squirrel ruined my nice walk, damn fat guy” and ” Shitty fat idiot keeps sitting on my bed, I have to deal with it every night.” Fat squirrels are of course the best and I could stare at them all day, so I guess these Redditors are doing the old swap.
TikTok Trend “How to Dress to Attract a Man” Explained
Like the fat squirrel haters who actually love squirrels, TikTokers posting videos called “How to Attract a Man” aren’t actually trying to attract a man. Instead, they take sexist relationship/fashion advice like “show some skin” and “always keep a pleasant face” and do the exact opposite. The trend started with a video by @veronicashavie , which generated thousands of responses from young women who were struggling not to attract a man .
Viral Video of the Week: Doja Cat – Demons (Official Video)
I hate everything about the end of summer, except that it means Halloween is right around the corner and musician Doja Cat is kicking off the season with an epic video for her song “Demons.” This stylish, creepy video has been shared nearly 10 million times in the past few days, but I’m willing to bet that many of the young people digging it aren’t aware of the source of Doji’s haunted imagery. The homages to The Shining and Poltergeist are pretty obvious, but Doja Cat’s video is so deep that I reached out to horror writer Greg Burkhart to try and figure out which classic horror films are being homaged here. Doji’s appearance is a reference to the obscure 1983 British horror film Gothika (or maybe the 2015 documentary Nightmare ). There are also riffs on Paranormal Activity 2, The Babadook , Lamberto Bava’s Demons, A Nightmare on Elm Street , The Witch , The Entity and God knows how many others we don’t recognize. In other words, it’s the greatest music video ever made.