An Out-of-Touch Adult’s Guide to Children’s Culture: Are Young People Killing the Film Industry?
Teenagers used to be considered the lifeblood of the film industry, but judging by the dismal box office performance over Memorial Day weekend, they don’t seem to care anymore. However, they care about passionate four-hour YouTube videos, heart-wrenching love stories, and how to get really, really high.
A Very Bad Weekend in the Movie Business
This Memorial Day weekend was a box office disaster for the film industry, its worst in nearly 30 years (COVID-adjusted). None of the weekend releases ( Fury Road prequel Furiosa and Garfield ) made more than $30 million, largely because young people just don’t care about movies like they used to.
There are many theories about the epically bad weekend: tickets are too expensive; we see the result of the actors’ strike; this is part of the “follow-up fatigue”; neither Garfield nor Furiosa are very good, but here’s my take: It’s part of a generational shift away from cinema in general, partly due to the industry and partly due to larger cultural forces.
As of 2019, the 18-24 age group still made up the largest share of moviegoers, and Hollywood really missed that mark this weekend. Furiosa features teen hero and bankable star Chris Hemsworth, which should appeal to young people, but it’s also based on a series that started back in the 1970s. There’s another key demographic that Hollywood appears to have missed this weekend: young children who are persuading their parents to take them to the movies. Garfield , based on an ancient comic book, didn’t seem to capture their imagination.
More broadly, no matter what you put on screen, I don’t think most young people get the same cultural vibe from films that they used to watch. Instead, it comes from their peers online, which is a much faster and more relevant form of feedback. Movie theater attendance is down across the board in the US, and the convenience and low cost of watching movies at home doesn’t seem to match the hassle and expense of the local multiplex.
What does “egg blinker” mean?
The term “egg blinder” has been trending in the drug-addicted corners of TikTok this week. This refers to the method of smoking weed from a vape pen (also known as “dabbing”). “Flickering” is slang for drawing on a vape pen so long that it begins to flash, indicating a stronger-than-expected pull. ” Egg blinker “, a term coined by TikToker 448smokes in this video, means hitting the handle for five seconds, then a quick break, then inhaling for four seconds, quick break, four more seconds, quick break, four more seconds, quick break , four more seconds, then hold everything for eight seconds. This is something to keep in mind for anyone who’s high, but it supposedly causes an egg-like sensation in the throat and seems to result in a very, very high effect. I know there is no lethal dose of marijuana, but if I tried it, I would definitely die, or at least I would have to watch the video below several times.
TikTok trend #lostmymind: What did you do for your lover?
Remember when you actually cared about another person enough to fall in love with them? Me neither! But TikTok’s young romantics are sharing the cringe-worthy and embarrassing things they’ve done to impress their crushes in a series of videos that might melt your icy heart. Examples include putting a love spell on them , asking your dad to take a paparazzi-style photo of you, trying to play beer pong , pretending to like anime, or Bruno Mars . I admire the courage it takes to post these videos because they are truly embarrassing but also heart touching. If you want to have fun, just watch the videos that use this sound clip .
Google’s AI feeds the internet with misinformation, then disappears
Google rolled out AI search this month, with the search engine often returning results generated by Gemini’s AI instead of the links people expected. To call it unsuccessful is to say nothing. Users quickly noticed that Google’s AI gave completely unintelligible answers. He advised users to glue cheese on pizza , suggested eating rocks every day, claimed that dogs play professional sports and that the cure for depression is to “jump off the Golden Gate Bridge.” Google reportedly responded by manually deleting the answers to the questions. these specific questions, and they seem to reduce the frequency with which AI results appear in searches. (I say they “appear” to be reducing the number of queries because if you search for “Has Google disabled AI search results?” you won’t get an answer to that question.)
Viral Video of the Week: A Spectacular Star Wars Hotel Failure
A viral video this week highlights the power that fans can have over huge corporations. YouTuber Jenny Nicholson recently posted a video detailing her experience at Disney’s Star Wars: Star Wars: Battlestar Galactic Hotel. Over the course of more than four hours, Nicholson describes and shows footage of every aspect of the experience and concludes that it was pretty bad and the cost of about $6,000 for the weekend was too high. (This matches the Lifehacker review.)
Even if it were free and worked great, staying in a Star Wars hotel sounds like a nightmare to me, but Jenny comes at it from the opposite perspective: she’s 100% a fan. She paid for it as a vacation and desperately wanted what Disney promised—a completely immersive Star Wars weekend—but seemed to be thwarted at every turn. She’s exactly the kind of person who should come away from the experience delighted, but instead of a galaxy-spanning role-playing experience, Nicholson says guests are treated to “extras” at every turn and not much is actually said about it. works.
Her disappointment is sincere, and her logic is impeccable. As a result, the video was viewed millions of times and was picked up by CNN , NPR and other news sources. The Star Wars Hotel may be closed, but hopefully Disney and other owners of beloved intellectual properties will take a few hours to consider what happens when you do a poor job of managing a creative product that fans love.