A Guide to Children’s Culture for Disengaged Adults: Grand Theft Auto 6 Trailer Breaks the Internet
This week’s Out-of-Touch guide features one of the most viral videos of all time – the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6 from RockStar Games. On the opposite side of the mass appeal spectrum: Artistic musician Laurie Anderson becomes an unlikely TikTok star, and I finally have a resource to help explain all the internet jokes I don’t understand.
Viral video of the week: GTA 6 trailer instantly breaks the world record for virality
The trailer for Rockstar Games’ upcoming open-world crime simulator Grand Theft Auto VI went extremely viral this week, breaking the world record for the most views of a non-musical YouTube video on its first day in history. In just 24 hours, the trailer received over 90 million views. This is the third day I’ve been writing this, and the total number has already exceeded 130 million. Add to the total by clicking the button below.
This game takes place in Vice City, the series’ equivalent of Miami. This is the first GTA game with a female protagonist. The trailer features images inspired by real-life viral videos filmed in Florida , and it looks absolutely stunning.
As you might expect, playing GTA with a Latina as the main character has led to tiresome claims of “wokeism” from the worst people on the Internet , as well as unsubstantiated rumors that Lucia is transgender .
Dummies’ opinions aside, Rockstar does have a cultural balancing act to do. Much of the shocking “we hurt everyone the same” parody of the Grand Theft Auto series was pretty dated when GTA 5 came out back in 2013, and it definitely wouldn’t work today; not because people are too “sensitive” or anything like that, but because this style of confrontational comedy is as outdated as mother-in-law and Andrew Dice Clay jokes, especially for young people.
Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait until 2025 to see Rockstar thread the needle and determine whether the game truly lives up to the stunning first trailer.
Reddit Meme Explainer: Peter Explains the Joke
Have you ever seen a meme or joke online that you just didn’t get? Maybe something like this:
Or that:
Well, now there is a subreddit that will clear up any confusion. Just visit r/PeterExplainsTheJoke and you’ll find over 300,000 people willing to break it down for you (a service that fossils like us often need). To keep things from getting too pedantic (which is a problem with explaining jokes), the subtitling style is to post comments in the voice of Peter Griffin from Family Guy, as the title suggests. I’m not sure why; This is another internet joke that I don’t get.
Explanations (not Peter Griffin style):
Meme 1 : The bartender asks if everyone in the group wants a beer. Each of the first two logicians wants beer, but they don’t know what the others want, so the only logical answer is “I don’t know.” The third logician now knows that the other two want beer (if they didn’t, they would answer “no”), so they answer “yes”. (everyone wants beer.)”
Meme 2: This is a picture of cosmic radiation. The issue in question is a seemingly impossible glitch discovered in 2013 during a livestream of the Mario 64 game hosted by TeabagSLR . Problem: Mario was suddenly able to jump higher than he should have, but only once. The Mario 64 speedrunning community has come together to try to reproduce the glitch, going so far as to offer a $1,000 reward for an explanation. They were unable to reproduce this even using the same input data that Teabag used, leading to the theory that a stray ionizing particle from space accidentally flipped one bit on Teabag’s Nintendo 64 at exactly the right moment to improve his running speed – an astronomically unlikely occurrence . this was (possibly) confirmed when pannunkek12 figured out exactly which byte had flipped when, and then recreated it manually, ultimately duplicating the event .
TikTok Unveils New Christmas Cliche: Red Trucks Carrying Christmas Trees
Have you ever heard a new word and suddenly see the word everywhere? Red pickup trucks hauling Christmas trees are like this: Once you recognize this cliché illustration of a cozy, homey Christmas, you’ll see it everywhere you look, from Thanksgiving to New Year’s.
TikToker mello_yoshi first spotted the images on the holiday ornaments his mother gave him, showing off a total of 12 Christmas tree truck ornaments and repeating the phrase, “The little red truck is hauling a Christmas tree!” in a delightful way. This has led to videos of others posting their own little red trucks hauling Christmas trees, both from holiday decorations and from real life, usually imitating the distinct sound of mello_yoshi. If you want to see little red trucks hauling trees, you can either visit the hashtag that 14 million other people already have, or just look around at your own holiday decorations. I bet you’ll find at least one.
Why is “Oh Superman” Going Viral on TikTok?
It’s amazing when old music suddenly goes viral, whether it’s The Mountain Goats or Fleetwood Mac . What is it about this particular tune at this particular time that suddenly captures the imagination of a generation of people who weren’t born when the song was released? Case in point: The kids meet 1980s experimental singer Laurie Anderson. Never particularly popular when she was relevant – Anderson was too highly artistic for mainstream appeal – her iconic, enigmatic track “O Superman” is gaining traction on TikTok, linked to videos that might make you pause while you ponder the great mystery of existence . Anderson’s lines “Well, you don’t know me, but I know you, and I have a message” are highlighted and used for videos illustrating the connections we have with our ancestors , connections with which the Universe sometimes surprises us , as if to say: ” You know , you actually came from somewhere .” This trend is in its infancy, but I really hope it gets bigger; I can’t get enough of these weird, haunting videos and hope to see more of them.