An Out-of-Touch Adult’s Guide to Children’s Culture: Who Is Sneako and Why Is He so Dangerous?

There’s a lot to learn about Gen-Z this week, so pay attention. Study Questions: 1) Who is Sneako and why is he the most hated person on the internet? 2) What does “leave it lemon” mean? 3) Does “copyright” even exist in the age of YouTube? And for extra kudos: Which federal government agency released an album full of hip-hop and EDM songs this week?

Viral Video of the Week: Sneako Meets Her Fans

A viral video this week offers a glimpse into a disturbing trend among Gen Z boys: misogyny, homophobia and bigotry fueled by online influencers. At the center of the drama is Sneako, aka Nicholas “Niko” Kenn De Balintasi, a 25-year-old who, as a teenager, found early fame on YouTube before becoming an online infamy.

Sneako’s early videos were sweet and good-natured, and he was charismatic enough to get noticed by the king of YouTube, Mr. Beast. Beast offered Sneako a job on his channel and all the internet fame that came with it. But something happened to Sneako on her way to YouTube celebrity. His work with Mr. Beast was short-lived, and he began to heavily snort the paint fumes of the alt-right hate machine. He began posting ranting videos about familiar targets of right-wing nutcases until his channel was banned, then he began hanging out with Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, posting on Rumble and Incel message boards such as r/redpill on Reddit, eventually turning himself an outcast to all but impressionable boys and young men.

In the viral video , Sneako is confronted by a small group of young fans in public. After posing for a selfie with their hero, one of these children (who must be no older than 13) begins chanting “fuck women, fuck women.” Sneako says, “No, we love women.” Children respond with statements such as: “But not transgender people,” “fuck gays,” and “all gays must die.”

Originally posted on Twitter, the video was viewed 65 million times in just a couple of days. I think this is so widespread partly because the evidence caught on film of indoctrinated children openly hating is shocking, but also because of Snico’s reaction. There’s a moment where he looks at the camera and says, “What have I done?” Maybe he’s being a bully or trying to be funny, but I read it as sincere. There seems to be a split second where something breaks through the rhetorical wall of “irony”, “it’s just jokes” and “free speech” that terrible people use to defend the indefensible, and he actually wonders how his content is polluting these children. intelligence. Or maybe he’s just an asshole.

Release of a secret album from the Consumer Product Safety Commission

The Consumer Product Safety Commission shocked everyone this week by releasing a surprise concept album. We’re Safety Now Haven’t We features six original songs ranging from EDM to K-Pop, all of which are about trying to stop kids from doing stupid things that will get them hurt, like not wearing a helmet when riding a bike or Do not start fires when cooking. Sample lyrics from “Protect Ya Noggin” include: “I’ll put my helmet on and zoom in, yeah, yeah/Sittin’ straight on my head/Low on my forehead, you can’t see me.” Bars!

The music and cover have such a strong “we know it’s corny” vibe that I thought it would actually work, at least for irony-prone teens. It goes so far as to say, “How are you guys?” territory that I thought would come out the other end as “really cool” and maybe inspire a skater or two to don a helmet. I was wrong.

I played it for my teenage son; he snorted derisively and said, “They are 30 years too late.” And he added, “It sounds like demo music from Garage Band.” Oh. Either way, you can download the album for free (your taxes paid for it, after all) or stream it in its entirety on YouTube .

What does “leave it lemon” mean?

According to KnowYourMeme , the phrase “keep it lemon” has been seeping beneath the surface of teen slang for about a year now. It means something like “keep your cool.” According to TikToker , “hold the lemon” originated among online FIFA players, and then became popular among “charvas” or chavs – young roughnecks in the UK who favor tracksuits and drum and bass music. Whether this phrase will catch on beyond a small subculture on a forgotten island remains to be seen, but I hope so. I like to say, “Keep it lemon.”

Skibidi creator Toilet taking copyright hits to other YouTube creators?

YouTuber DaFuq!?Boom! The series of weird YouTube shorts Skibidi Toilet has gone from zero to 30.3 million subscribers and perhaps a billion views in just a few months, but with success comes controversy.

Animation channel GameToons recently reported that the creator of Skibidi Toilet had placed a copyright strike on his channel for publishing Skibidi-related content. Judging by this Twitter thread , people who care about this sort of thing are mostly angry about hypocrisy. YouTube’s strike system is intended to prevent posters from stealing other artists’ work, but as GameToons notes in a public note on its channel l, Skibidi Toilet primarily uses characters someone else created for the video game Garry’s Mod . Additionally, Skibidi’s most famous music is a mixture of several already existing songs . So it’s difficult. To add to the complexity, GameToons largely exists to create unfunny “parodies” using other people’s characters, including clips from Poppy Playtime, Rainbow Friends (a Roblox mod), Shrek , and countless other sources. Their content seems designed to appeal to young children who don’t know the difference either. Also: We don’t even know if GameToons actually got hit with copyright strikes – we only have word, and creators of childish and frivolous content on YouTube stirring up controversy by attacking a larger competitor wouldn’t be a surprise.

In other words: I spent too much time studying this today.