A Guide to Children’s Culture for Out-of-Touch Adults: Why Is Everyone Talking About Saltburn?
This week the children endure the long winter as they watch Saltburn , say goodbye to a hugely popular YouTuber and get stuck in bins. Plus, the tunnels somehow remain noteworthy .
What’s the story with Saltburn ?
The entertainment landscape is different than it was before the Internet. Technology allows us to hone our personal interests with such intensity that shared cultural experiences are rare. That’s why Saltburn is cool. This is one of those “everybody’s talking about it” movies that don’t come out too often these days. And that’s actually good! If you’re not aware, Saltburn hit theaters in November, earning a modest $21.3 million, but has found a second life on Prime Video .
Taking inspiration from A Clockwork Orange , The Talented Mr. Ripley and late capitalism, Saltburn is a dark comedy about a depraved young man obsessed with wealth and excess who is willing to do anything to get it. It is deliberately confrontational, leading to controversy over its depictions of sex and violence, best expressed in this quote/hidden blurb from professional enthusiasts at ParentPreviews.com : “This film contains so much negative content that we don’t expect our reviewers, look.” (That’s fearless journalism, folks.) Saltburn was directed by Emerald Fennell and stars Barry Keoghan as anti-hero Oliver Quick. The film’s ending spawned copycat memes , leading to accusations that rich people dancing proudly in their expensive homes had completely missed the point of the film. It’s a classic class battle: rich people are inexperienced and poor people are angry because rich people don’t really care what they think. In another echo of the film, Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s semi-obscure 2001 retro disco track ” Murder on the Dancefloor ” has resurfaced and been enjoyed by far more people than upon its release.
Urn Guy is the first guy of 2024!
The Guy Stuck in the Vase, or the Urn Guy, is the first Internet Guy of 2024! He joins guys like “Blinking White Guy” , “Ancient Alien ” and “Funny Photogenic Guy” in the Internet Guy Hall of Fame. The trash can guy earned his spot when a video of him getting stuck in a trash can went viral in early 2024. Supposedly his name is Connor, and his stuck antics reportedly took place at a house party in Mountain Brook, Alabama. His fame began with a post on X (formerly Twitter) describing the situation . “At first he was laughing, but now he’s starting to get upset. The women try to console him. There is talk of an attempt to break the ballot box,” reported @CasualThursday on X. A video was published at the same time. The rest is Internet history. Connor (if that’s really his name) was unharmed and was eventually freed from prison using a sledgehammer. @CasualThursday reports: “The guy with the ballot box is up and moving around, but now without his pants, which were apparently lost or damaged in the incident.”
Nintendo Switch 2 Rumors
Over its long life (the company was founded in 1889), Nintendo has built such an ardent and loyal fan base that any move it makes sparks waves of speculation in the gaming community . This week, Nintendo quietly stopped releasing physical copies of many of its top games, such as Super Mario Odyssey and Splatoon 2 , leading to speculation that the company may be planning to release a Switch 2. Really? Do you think so? There’s a definite generational divide between people who are excited that Nintendo might release a new console and people like me who think, “Nintendo Switch made a lot of money, and Nintendo has been releasing new consoles regularly since the 1980s; so yes, it is unlikely that they plan to repeat this cycle.”
The tunnel craze continues
Tunnels are having a cultural moment. Last week we learned about an intriguing tunnel girl (she’s an amateur engineer who built an underground lair under her country house). The Girl from the Tunnel is out this week; There are Jews in the tunnels. Hasidic members of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement were discovered to have recently been digging an extensive tunnel under their headquarters in Brooklyn. In contrast to Tunnel Girl’s seemingly solid structure, their mole-like antics caught the attention of authorities and raised fears that they had caused structural damage to their historic synagogue. The purpose of their tunnel is not entirely clear, but it has divided the community into pro-tunneling and anti-tunneling camps. Since we live in a depressed world, anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists immediately seized on this story and added it to their long-running historical fan fiction about “elites” doing unspeakable things to children in hiding, rather than simply enjoying the strangeness of the situation.
Viral Video of the Week: MatPat Farewell Video
This week’s viral video , “Goodbye Internet,” is a farewell message from kids’ much-loved YouTuber MatPat, whose channel The Game Theorists has over 18 million subscribers. The 25-minute video has been viewed more than 14 million times since it was posted a couple of days ago. According to MatPat, he’s giving up because he’s getting old—he’s 37, which is old by YouTube standards—and mostly because he wants to have more time and fun in his life. His final Game Theorist video will be posted in March, after which the channel will be taken over by an unknown person or people.
This is no doubt a generational issue, but I don’t understand the appeal of this dude and this whole sub-genre of gaming videos. MatPat’s promotion is to create elaborate fan theories about popular video game franchises such as Five Nights at Freddys , Minecraft and the Legend of Zelda . The good thing about its popularity is that kids enjoy content analysis of the media they love, but I find it insufferable. MatPat’s amplified speech is exhausting to listen to, and his theories inevitably make me think, “Yeah, maybe, but who cares ?” It’s the online equivalent of smoking weed with your dumb friends and talking about whether Darth Vader was really right or what’s really going on with Scooby-Doo , but without the weed and the connection with other people.