A Guide to Children’s Culture for Out-of-Touch Adults: What Is Black Myth: Wukong?
This week in the world of youth, gamers are watching a Chinese video that is shaking up the industry; people eat cucumbers; and everyone is tired of being very modest and very attentive. (This is all actually a Clairo shade.)
What is Black Myth: Wukong and why is it so controversial?
Video gamers are responding positively to the just released video game Black Myth: Wukong . The action-adventure boss fight series is based on the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West and has received rave reviews from critics and fans alike. A couple of days after release, the game had more than 2.2 million concurrent players. So it’s a successful game, but it also causes some controversy.
Black Myth: Wukong was developed and published by Game Science, a Chinese company that is moving into the Western gaming world, but in China they do things differently. When codes for advance copies of the game were sent to influencers and game reviewers on TikTok, YouTube and Twitch, they included a list of topics they were not allowed to discuss, including “feminist propaganda,” “fetishization,” politics, Covid. -19, as well as Chinese policy in the video game industry.
Some people have outright refused to review the game, and some streamers have challenged the policy, including Twitch’s Moonmoon , who titled his stream Black Myth : “Covid-19 lockdown, Taiwan (real country), promoting feminism.”
What is Clairo’s shadow?
This image of a cake with the words “Shade of Clairo” and the caption “The whole party is low-key like a shade of Clairo” was shared hundreds of thousands of times on Twitter this week, so I dug deeper into the meaning of this very online piece. slang.
“Clairo’s Shadow” is something that people who work at work usually don’t have time to understand, but here it goes: “Shade” is a common slang that means a subtle insult. “Claire” is the stage name of 26-year-old singer Claire Cottrill. When she was 19, Clairo released a video on YouTube for a song called ” Pretty Girl “, a lo-fi, vaporwave and bedroom pop song that feels very homemade and mainstream.
As “Pretty Girl” climbed the YouTube charts, online haters and detractors began to suspect that Clairo was an “industrial plant” – a pop star who appears simple but is actually a product of the music industry’s star-making machine. (Read more about what an industrial plant is here.) The main evidence of her factory status is that her father is a marketer. I don’t know or care if this is true, but people have started posting a lot of subtle and non-subtle messages. Clairo is a plant” online (“Clairo’s shadow”).
But the phrase ironically caught on when Clairo fans, rushing to her defense, apparently saw examples of Clairo’s shade in completely unrelated things like Katy Perry’s album cover .
So people started saying “Does anyone feel like it’s Clairo Shade?” literally to everything that had nothing to do with Clairo. For example, when President Joe Biden mistakenly referred to the Ukrainian president as “Vladimir Putin,” some asked whether it was really Clairo Shade. So, “Clairo’s Shadow” is a joke about how Clairo fans (and fans in general) often view the larger world through the tiny lens of their fandom.
On a deeper level, knowing enough about what Clairo fans think is also a myopic worldview. For example, if you look at a cake that says “Clayro shade” and think, “That’s a funny joke,” then the joke is on you.
Everyone is already tired of the word “very modest”
The phrases “very humble”, “very attentive” and “very nice” quickly went viral with the question “ what does that mean ?” to “ha! Funny!” to “oh my god, this is so annoying. Stop it” in record time. It’s only been about a week since people noticed TikToker Jules LeBron’s videos explaining how she is very humble and considerate, and decided to repeat this again and again.
But the life cycle is coming to an end. The meme goes the way of all internet memes, from “something a smart person came up with” to “something less smart people noticed”, “something dumb people started repeating”, and the ultimate death of all things interesting: “something that people use to advertise and promote things.” Here are just a few examples:
NASA described Saturn’s rings as “very thoughtful, very approachable, and very discreet.”
Dunkin Donuts has jumped on the trend.
United Airlines is keeping a “very low profile.”
JLo and Kim Kardashian are jumping on the bandwagon.
The US President on Instagram called writing off the debt of five million Americans “ very thoughtful.” Very modest.
Stop it? Please?
Why is everyone online talking about cucumbers?
It’s hard to say why something as mundane as the word “humble” suddenly took on cultural meaning, but it happens. And this is happening now with cucumbers. The humble vegetable that tastes almost like nothing else and is in every salad you’ve ever eaten has suddenly become the spiciest food on TikTok. Cucumbers are now so popular that demand may be contributing to a cucumber shortage in Iceland , and mandolin-related cut fingers are on the rise. So where did this cucumber mania come from? Mainly TikTok home chef Logan Moffitt (known as the “cucumber guy”), who posts cucumber salad recipes that often receive tens of millions of views. These are solid salad recipes like the ” bagel salmon salad ” or the cucumber and mushroom Din Tai , and there’s something about slicing a whole cucumber with a mandoline straight into a takeout container and then tossing something else in there that makes is definitely inspiring. confidence in new chefs.
Viral video of the week: Cybertruck durability tests
YouTube channel WhistlinDiesel has made a name for itself with videos about how to destroy things that cost a lot of money, like a $400,000 Ferrari, in funny ways, and build ridiculous cars like the aj et-powered monster truck . They recently touched a nerve online by testing the durability of the Cybertruck .
The videos tap into a culture surrounding masculinity and cars, calling into question whether the Cybertruck—with its powerful tank-like design and high price tag—is actually weak and poorly designed. We can all say it’s not pretty, but what happens when you load up the Cybertruck is simply shocking. You’d think it would be able to tow things without falling apart.
Next up, WhistlinDiesel will try some of the same testing on the Ford F-150, and the comparisons will be fascinating. I’m sure 95% of Ford F-150 drivers don’t actually need a heavy truck, but at least they get one when they pay for it.