An Out-of-Touch Adult’s Guide to Children’s Culture: a Memoir of Hurricane Milton
This week, young people create their own disasters with memes, convince their boyfriends to do interpretive dances, make a star out of their local judge and complain about a caricature. So, just a normal week, except for the once-in-a-lifetime storm twice a year.
Hurricane Milton Memorial
The lead-up to Hurricane Milton was terrifying, with meteorologists warning of a catastrophic weather nightmare. Luckily, it was a glancing blow and not a direct hit—a bad storm, but far from the worst-case scenario. However, hurricane memes may be in poor taste, but that has never stopped the internet.
The meme began with this dead-serious tweet from RNC member Amy Kremer:
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A very touching image, but as noted in the community post, it is a fake created by artificial intelligence. And this is obvious. So people started tweeting their own AI-generated rescue images to illustrate:
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And then there’s the story of Caroline Calloway, an influencer and self-proclaimed grifter who vowed to stay in her home and litter during a hurricane , despite living in a mandatory evacuation zone and despite having to be rescued by the military when she refused get out of the way of a hurricane in 2022 . I don’t wish bad luck on anyone, but the amount of attention she received and her survival will likely lead to more people deciding to ride out storms in the future. And given Calloway’s track record, she could be posting from Canada.
Another hurricane jerk: Lieutenant Dan , who decided to wait out the storm on a boat . It was a terrible idea, but the question of “will he survive” was so compelling that a clever “crypto casino” took bets on him . Dan’s story was told by TikToker Tampa Terrance , and although it ends with Dan surviving , the code is cruel: online sleuths dig into his past and accuse him of doing it all for views and money . In other words: Lieutenant Dan is the duck -milkshake of the storm.
More light-hearted hurricane memes include people referencing office space and imagining that Milton came to Florida to return his red Swingline stapler , as well as the return of the OG meme: ” We Will Rebuild .” But seriously: don’t mess with hurricanes . Influential people and everyone who doesn’t evacuate are the worst people in the world.
Guy’s interpretive dance
Hurricanes weren’t the only thing worrying people this week. There were also boyfriends. With all the stunning beauties , hustlers and pick-up artists on the Internet, it’s easy to see that heterosexual romance is completely ripe for the age of social media. Contrary evidence is the “Make My Boyfriend Do an Interpretive Dance” meme that is gaining popularity on TikTok. Women play bongo music and ask their boyfriends to shake it in exchange for some kind of reward, usually a “night out.” The result is hilarious clips of guys dancing awkwardly, a good reminder that there are still fools in normal relationships. Look at this guy:
Or he:
Or this lanky guy:
Better yet, spend about an hour on the music video page and watch a bunch of videos. It’s better than doomedly scrolling through election news.
Extraordinary YouTube Star: Judge David Fleischer
There is an upside to constant surveillance: it allows us to make celebrities out of people who truly deserve it, like unlikely YouTube star Judge David Fleischer. His Honor is from Harris, Texas and deals with misdemeanors, the types of petty crimes we rarely see or do podcasts about. Fleischer is a shining star in the weird corner of YouTube where people copy and repost court case videos. Videos of Judge Fleischer ruling on ordinary crimes regularly receive hundreds of thousands of views .
Fleischer’s popularity is due in part to his personality and bookish charisma: the dude wears wise old owl glasses paired with colorful outfits, usually including a bow tie, and he talks quickly and wittily into the microphone. But beyond his “you’ll be stuck like Chuck” catchphrases, Judge Fleischer actually seems to care about the losers in front of him. He is known for quickly denying accusations that he ” went black ” and forced people to pay recognizance. But he’s also no slouch, especially when he feels his community is threatened. Man, we want all judges to be like this.
Why is everyone crazy about the horror anime Uzumaki ?
In another Lifehacker post, I praised Adult Swim’s new anime series Uzumaki for its strange, gripping plot and memorable black-and-white animation. I would like to withdraw my praise. I’ve only seen the first episode. The second episode came out this week and it looks cheap and terrible. The second episode of Uzumaki looks like cutscenes from a PlayStation 4 game, and by the second episode the careful spell the series had cast over the pilot had completely disappeared. Everyone who cares about anime has gone from hardcore fans saying “finally someone did horror manga right” to “oh my god, I hate this” in one week.
So what happened? No one knows for sure, but the show’s executive producer posted and then deleted several tweets that shed some light on the matter: “We knew this was coming… I can’t speak to what happened, but we were duped.” and the options were: A) don’t finish and air nothing and call it a loss, B) Just finish and air episode 1 and leave it unfinished, or C) run all four, warts and all. Out of respect for the hard work, we chose C.” He went on to say, “Unfortunately, I can’t tell them who to blame for this… but someone is definitely at fault here and we all just had to do the best we could when it all fell apart.”
Viral Video of the Week: Video of Guy in Gorilla Suit Punching Video
This week’s viral video is a throwback to the genre’s glory days. This is a little video that will blow your mind and you will watch it 85 times. “Gorilla Suit Guy Punch” is a travel video showing guests riding the Dinosaur Island ride at a theme park in the Philippines. The animatronic dinosaurs are impressive but not unexpected, but then a dude in a gorilla suit, a real person, appears and appears to punch some of the passengers. Like the best viral videos, the pacing is impeccable. You really should watch this: