A Guide to Children’s Culture for Out-of-Touch Adults: International Women’s Month
Saturday, March 8th, was International Women’s Day. March is a whole women’s month , even if Google has removed it from its calendar. So, I look at young women – and not in a creepy way. I want to know: what is it with young women? What are they about? What are their dreams? What do they feel deep down? So I’ve been browsing the female-centric corners of Reddit, listening to Doechii and Call Her Daddy, and consulting with some “psycho doctors.”
The state of young women in two subreddits
To try to get some insight into young women aged 18 to 25 or so, I took a look at some Reddit communities supposedly for and about women.
I started with TwoXChromosomes on Reddit. with over 13 million subscribers: it’s by far Reddit’s largest female-centric community, and it’s dark . The top posts of the week are dominated by stories about creepy dudes , sexual violence , violence – violence and even creepier dudes . Every now and then something funny/cute happens to lighten the mood a little, but overall it’s bad : ” Growing up is realizing how much the world hates you,” as Redditor gaycat21 put it.
To make the women’s subreddit less depressing and more interesting, check out the NSFW meme subreddit R/LetGirlsHaveFun . With only about 100,000 subscribers, that’s a lot less than TwoX, but it goes to show that being rude and uncensored in online culture doesn’t have to be misogynistic, and it’s much funnier this way. According to its creator , Let Girls Have Fun is a place where “girls can post their crazy thoughts from a female perspective” because “girls can also enjoy edgy and crude humor.” Posts like this , this , or this seem like open rebellion against society’s endless set of rules and expectations for women, expressed in the most explicit way.
Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy is the most popular podcast among young women
Almost everyone who listens to the Call Her Daddy podcast is young women. According to market research firm Edison Research , 70% of CHD’s audience is female, with 70% of them under 35 years of age. As many as 93% of his listeners are under 45 years old. The podcast made news when it featured an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris in October, but politics is not a regular topic of the show. Host Alex Cooper has been described by The Hollywood Reporter as “the queen of Gen Z podcasts” and “the female Howard Stern.” She tends to focus on sex and relationships when she’s not interviewing celebrities like Miley Cyrus and John Mayer. Like Stern, Cooper is frank, open and raunchy. In the early days of her show, she focused more on sex, but the topic has expanded to topics such as female empowerment, self-love, and pop culture. Unlike popular boy podcaster Joe Rogan, the Call Her Daddy host doesn’t regularly fall prey to believing bullshit that isn’t true .
AI-created “pussy doctors” have invaded TikTok
When someone calls themselves a “psycho doctor,” it’s probably safe to ignore any medical advice they offer, especially when they’re online and not actually human. Over the past few months, weirdos and/or algorithms have been using an app called “Caption” to spam TikTok with hundreds of videos of realistic AI-generated avatars calling themselves “pussy doctors,” “butt doctors,” ” tata surgeons ,” ” boob doctors, ” and ” Korean butt doctors ,” followed by terrible medical advice. These videos usually start with a variation of the phrase, “I’ve been having sex for 13 years and no one believes me when I say it,” followed by some dubious health advice aimed at women, such as ” rubbing fig seeds on your breasts will take them from saggy to perky ” and ” sea moss is a great way to cleanse your colon .”
It’s worth noting that these tips don’t cover the pussy or the ass, so these medical professionals are working outside of their area of expertise. These videos usually end by encouraging viewers to search Amazon for a specific “wellness” product. It’s as if all these medical professionals are giving advice just to extract money from gullible people!
“Meeting with GM” and the mystery of the meaning of the word “GM”
A few weeks ago, TikToker @myak.tt posted the video you see above, a short, random clip with the caption “Meet the GM.” It has since been viewed more than 11 million times and sparked an online debate about what GM is .
My first thought is “game master”, a more meaningful form of “dungeon master”, but I’m a damn nerd and that’s almost certainly not what Myak.tt meant. Others suggested “gang member,” “gunslinger,” or “grandmaster.” It’s frustrating because the video doesn’t provide any information and the young woman who posted the video has yet to provide any explanation.
This video inspired similar reconstructions with 99% accuracy:
and this one:
But they also give no indication of what GM is. Maybe an equally big mystery: why did this video become popular? Why did TikTok’s algorithm decide to share this with the millions of other short, meaningless videos posted on the site all day? I don’t have the answers.
(For a glossary of slang words that I’m pretty sure I know the definition of, see Mewing, Sigma, and Other Gen Z and Gen Alpha Slang You Might Need Help Deciphering ).
Viral Video of the Week: “Anxiety” by Doechii
Rapper, singer and songwriter Dochii, born Jayla Jimya Hickmon, has risen to popularity over the past couple of months. Thanks to a legion of fans using her song “Denial Is a River” in their TikTok videos, as well as a standout performance at the Grammy Awards, Dochii has become so popular that her old songs are being dug out of mothballs and becoming popular. This week’s viral video, Anxiety (Visualizer) , was posted to Doechii’s YouTube without fanfare and was viewed by nearly three million people online in the first two days alone. The original video for the song was released back in 2020, and features Doechi rapping in his bedroom to Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” in the COVID era. But part of Doechi’s song “Anxiety” was also used in rapper Sleepy Hallow’s track for his song called “Anxiety.” You know what: Here’s Doechi explaining the deep history behind this song:
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