A Guide to Children’s Culture for Out-of-Touch Adults: the Couple Drawing Trend on TikTok
There’s a fine line between laughing at people and laughing with them, and it’s often blurred online, so to be clear: I laugh with TikTok couples who spend their dates drawing terrible portraits of each other. But I laugh at the Florida cops who open fire because an acorn fell on their police car. When it comes to text-to-video AI tool Sora , I don’t laugh.
Couples draw each other on TikTok
Young couples on TikTok can be incredibly annoying when they refuse to wear shoes , but there are also heartwarming trends for couples, like at-home date videos where couples draw portraits of each other. The videos that are made on these evenings are great – you wait for the images to unfold, in suspense, but no matter how terrible you think the picture will be, it is somehow worse . At the same time, there is something charming about the sincerity of this art , and I really love videos of people in love laughing uncontrollably . Plus, this trend is so new that I can’t find any “real” artist couples taking amazing photos of each other because they’re so much better than everyone else, and there aren’t any unfunny parody videos that are readily available.
Viral Video of the Week: Acorn Cop Incident
The viral video emerged this week thanks to the body cameras of two Florida law enforcement officers and the Freedom of Information Act. In both a hilarious and chilling video, we see Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Deputy Barney Fife, uh, sorry, Jesse Hernandez, approaching his patrol car parked on a quiet street. A handcuffed suspect waits inside to be taken to jail. Suddenly, an acorn falls from the tree, and Hernadez responds by shouting, “Shots fired!” while tumbling. He adds: “I got it!” and takes out his weapon.
Nearby, Sergeant Beth Roberts talks to a witness. She hears a noise and pulls out a gun; both officers then begin shooting at Hernandez’s patrol car. Roberts shoots Hernandez, who takes cover from an angry squirrel behind a nearby car. The pair fired at least 20 bullets into the car, and an unnamed witness at the scene urged them not to kill the man in the car.
The acorn was ultimately unharmed in the shootout. The suspect in the back seat of the car also escaped injury – a miracle given the number of bullets fired at him – and Officer Hernandez resigned while the incident was investigated. Don’t worry, the officers were cleared of all criminal offenses.
The video was posted by YouTuber PoliceActivity on February 13 and quickly went viral, spawning response memes like this:
and this:
Let’s hope the acorn cop case also inspires a serious national conversation about how absolutely insane the police are and why do we even allow these fools to have guns?
What is Sora?
This week OpenAI , the people who brought us ChatGPT, introduced their newest threat to humanity: Sora . The generative AI model transforms user text into strikingly realistic (or surreal) videos that are superior to any AI videos that have existed before. These clips are rich in detail, containing full camera movement, multiple objects, complex lighting, etc., all created in seconds from a few lines of text. At first glance, or even upon longer inspection, Sora’s videos are virtually indistinguishable from the “real” videos. Just click on the demo above to see what I mean: all of these clips were supposedly created directly by Sora. Sora is not yet available to the public. OpenAI says it “takes several important security measures” by “working with red teams—experts in areas like disinformation, hateful content, and bias—who competitively test the model,” which isn’t exactly scary.
Nintendo Direct Highlights
This week, Nintendo showed off a slew of upcoming third-party games coming to the Switch console, announcing some new games and revealing release dates for others. I’ve embedded the video above, but if you don’t have 25 minutes to spare for Nintendo, here are some of the highlights:
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Grounded , an action game from Obsidian in which players are shrunk down to tiny sizes and must survive in their backyard, will release on April 16th.
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Pentiment , also from Obsidian, is a narrative game set in early sixteenth-century Bavaria. It will be available on Switch on February 22nd.
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Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed will release sometime in 2024. This is an improved version of 2010’s Epic Mickey.
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Turn-based strategy Unicorn Overlord will be released on March 8th.
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Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection is the first two Battlefront games with new playable characters and maps.
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World of Goo 2, the sequel to the beloved puzzle game, will be a Switch exclusive and arrive on consoles on May 23rd.
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Endless Ocean Luminous , the sequel to the underwater adventure game Endless Ocean, hits the Switch store on May 2nd. It features an online game where up to 30 players can be in the same ocean.