A Detached Adult’s Guide to Children’s Culture: the CEO Killer and Tua the Hawkgirl
This week, youth culture offers us both a hero and a villain. Oddly enough, the online world named accused murderer UnitedHealthcare CEO Luigi Mangione first and Hayley “Hawk Tua Girl” Welch fifth, and the reasons why are hard to understand. I’m also going to expose you to “Sigma Boy”. Sigma Boy,” the most annoying video on the internet (by far).
The Internet rallied around the killer
Twenty-six-year-old Mangione is an unlikely vigilante. The son of a wealthy and powerful Baltimore family (the Mangions aren’t just country club members, they own a country club), he was valedictorian of his class at the elite Gilman School and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a master’s degree. in computer science. But then something, as yet unknown, distracted Mangione from his expected trajectory in high society, and he was eventually accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a New York City street corner. He is currently facing charges of second-degree murder, weapons possession and other crimes.
Considering that he is supposedly a merciless killer, you might find it strange that Mangione has gained widespread internet fame since his capture. There are many memes about him, merchandise has been created in his honor , and people have offered to pay his legal bills . The veneration of murderers and outlaws is nothing new: bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde left behind bodies during the Great Depression-era crime spree but still became a public sensation , which speaks at least partly to the anger many people felt about the then destructive economy. Indeed, on social media, people of all political persuasions are hinting at (if not outright stating) the belief that even if what Mangione did is not entirely admirable, given that almost everyone has a health insurance horror story to share , that was at least understandable.
Although in reality this was not the case. No matter how much we may hate insurance companies and how much blame for their incompetence we may place on the people who run them, extrajudicial killings rarely end up the way you might imagine – instead of Robin Hood stealing from the rich and wealthy . giving to the poor or even the Punisher gunning down villains the justice system won’t touch, you get nightmares like the KKK and Salvadoran death squads. And instead of planning to change the capitalist policies that cause suffering, you get companies planning to strengthen the security of their top management .
However, generally, young people on the Internet are not interested in moral complexities. They have decided that Mangione is a hero and are finding different ways to honor him. Such as:
Saying he’s similar to the Riddler: In keeping with their understanding of how things work on a comic book level, conspiracy theorists imagine that Mangione left cryptic clues in the header of his X account, including an image of the Pokémon Breloom, pokedex #286, which is believed to be this is a reference to Proverbs 28:6 : “Better is a poor man who walks in integrity than a rich man who crooked in his (But it could just as well be Leviticus 28:6: “An earthen pot in which meat is cooked must be broken; but if it is cooked in a bronze pot, the pot must be cleaned and washed with water.”)
Indicating that he’s hot: It’s hard to argue with, but noticing Mangione’s attractiveness has become a popular topic for memes.
We are expected to contribute (monetarily) and help him: various crowdsourced legal defense funds have been created (despite the fact that the Mangione family is likely at least as rich as his alleged victim), and # FreeLuigi is trending everywhere.
Comparing him to fictional characters : He has the same name as the Nintendo character , but he looks like the chef from Ratatouille .
Thinks he’s just like us : he listens to popular music and writes shit on X.
However, Mangione is not like us, at least I hope so. Because I think it’s better if we all don’t think of ourselves as just killers in waiting.
The Internet Hates Hawk Tuah Girl
Back in September, I suggested that Hawkgirl Tua Welch should monetize her 15 minutes of fame as thoroughly as possible, but that’s not what I had in mind: About a week ago, Welch launched a new memecoin (HAWK) on the Solana Blockchain. Memecoins are a cryptocurrency based on memes because that’s what people are doing now.
According to Welch and her manager, it was not a scam. “We don’t want to violate securities laws,” Welch’s manager Johnny Forster explained to Fortune . “We’d say we’re almost tokenizing, in a sense, Hayley’s fan base.”
The coin’s price skyrocketed after it was offered to the public, reaching a peak market capitalization of $490 million. But in a development that no one could have foreseen, HAWK soon collapsed, crashed, crashed and burned. The price fell more than 90% in just a few hours because someone appeared to have bought 17.5% of the memcoin supply – worth $993,000 at the time – and then sold all 135.8 million of those tokens about 90 minutes later HAWK. Total profit: about $1.3 million. Wow! Who could it be?
Welch denies that her team had anything to do with it, writing on X:
This tweet is currently unavailable. It may be downloading or has been deleted.
She later added:
There are rumors of lawsuits over this imbroglio, but should there be any? No one should lose money to unscrupulous financial marketers, just as no one should be gunned down in cold blood on a New York City sidewalk, but it’s hard to think of too much sympathy for someone who “invested money” in Hawk Tuah. memcoin. Eventually they would exchange that money for magic beans or something like that.
Explanation of “Sigma Boy Sigma Boy”
From the heroes and villains of youth culture to their annoying little brother. The latest soundbite/meme/song to gain popularity among the brain group is “Sigma Boy Sigma Boy,” an excerpt from a Russian song by Betsy and Masha Yankovsky called “Sigma Boy.”
Below is a video for the song, but I advise you not to watch it.
It’s pretty annoying, but wasn’t annoying enough to really infect the brain until TikToker Dahoodapollo made it faster and shriller and added Roblox characters. Please don’t click on this:
Then other children began to make their own versions , where they added incomprehensible nonsense , or removed everything except the text , or added ducks . None of this means anything, but each of the videos I linked to have been viewed tens of millions of times, and there are over 240,000 videos using this song on TikTok alone. Something is wrong here? I think there’s something wrong here.
Viral Video of the Week: “Rankin Bass Guy”
Young people are clearly having a bad week, but I don’t want to end this on a positive note, so I’ll point out something that will make you smile: a video by @cameronCortinas . This TikToker’s account is blowing up (not Sigma Boy’s blowing up, of course) because he’s perfectly recreating those timeless stop-motion Christmas specials from Rankin Bass.
Watch the famous dance number from the movie Santa Claus is Coming to Town :
Unusual, right? How about a Heat Miser joint from The Year Without a Santa Claus ?
He uses some kind of filter to give it a jagged look, but it’s really all about the dude’s performance . He brings these characters to life and demonstrates an almost frightening ability to get the details right. Other TikTokers work on the same side of the street , and many of their videos are interesting , but the original is a master.