A Guide to Children’s Culture for Adults Out of Touch With Reality: Why Is the Series “Gentleminions” Banned?
The main thing that distinguishes children from older people is not a technological gap or that children have not fully internalized the inevitability of their own death. The fact is that young people have much more free time than we do. Freedom from having to maintain oneself and clean everything up leaves enough time to take part in the mass movement around a silly kids’ movie, discover the benefits of “brown noise” and eat at every goddamn Rainforest cafe in North America.
Why are #gentleminions banned from theaters?
Last week I informed you that kids all over the world are planning to dress up in costumes and dresses to watch Minions: The Rise of Gru . Well, the crazy bastards really did it. Inspired by TikTok videos and chic clothing, hordes of “gentlemen” visited The Rise of Gru over the weekend. They responded enthusiastically with cheers and cheers, boosted the box office, and posted about seven million #gentleminions videos on TikTok to prove it happened. They even brought bananas, the favorite food of the minions.
So, some kids had a good time at the movies, and the studio made a monstrous amount of money – everyone should be happy, right? Of course not. Some theater owners, apparently unhappy with the influx of paying patrons enjoying the film, began kicking the gentlemen out of their theaters. In some places , the police were called in to arrest the well-dressed hooligans . Some theaters in the UK are banning “unaccompanied children” in advance from screenings of The Rise of Gru if they are dressed too neatly.
I’m sure some teenagers were incredibly obnoxious and messed up the nuances of Minions: The Rise of Gru for other cinephiles, but maybe people need to lighten up? At least Universal Pictures is happy. The company tweeted : “To everyone who appears on @Minions in costume: we see you and love you.”
Brown noise is taking over TikTok
I’ve heard of the “brown note” before, the mystical frequency that will make anyone who hears it have a bowel movement, but brown noise is new to me. The audio trend taking over TikTok unfortunately has nothing to do with forcing people to shit out of control. Instead, it is like “white noise” that is played to drown out other distractions and help you fall asleep. Difference: White noise consists of sounds covering a wide range of frequencies, from very low to very high. Brown noise contains only mid and low frequencies, completely excluding high frequencies.
According to Brown Noise, sound drowns out internal distractions and allows for better focus and relaxation, especially for people with attention deficit disorder. I was ready to dismiss the whole thing as just another silly trend, but there is real science supporting the benefits of white noise for people with ADHD , so it’s not that hard to think that brown noise can work too. But the real thrill came when I visited the #brownoise hashtag and watched a few videos. Damn if it’s not relaxing!
Plastic sheet treehouses and ridiculous food: the virulence of willful incompetence on the internet
A video depicting a break-in at a campsite went viral on Twitter this week. In the clip , a woman in a wooded area starts building a treehouse out of rolls of plastic wrap. It’s fascinating, but commentators have almost universally pointed out that it’s a terrible idea: it’s expensive, wasteful, time-consuming, there is a risk of suffocation, why not just buy a tent, and so on.
The video doesn’t provide context, but I’m pretty sure it’s a matter of incredulity and that no one really thinks it’s a good idea to build a structure out of plastic sheeting in nature. You should comment “this is the dumbest thing ever” before sharing it on your feed. It combines “food no one will ever cook or eat” and “life hacks no one will ever use” in this sub-genre of showcasing purposeful incompetence, like this guy in the cat jellied recipe , those stupid life hacks, and lots of 5-minute DIY content (although they may not do it on purpose). I’m pretty sure nothing like this has ever been posted on Lifehacker.com…
Viral Video of the Week: I went to every Rainforest cafe in North America
I love travel documentaries, pointless challenges, and ephemeral pop culture that should be gone but somehow survives. This week’s viral video has it all. In ” I Went to Every Rainforest Cafe in North America “, YouTuber Ted Nivision and his partner Eddie Burbuck do just that. They drive almost 10,000 miles to visit malls from California to New Jersey to Canada, just to experience the inexplicable atmosphere of the Rainforest cafe, where the animals are animatronic, the food is mediocre, and there is a thunderstorm every 22 minutes indoors.
The chain was founded in 1994 at the height of the themed restaurant craze, and somehow it’s still alive today, unlike the closed bad food ideas of The Fashion Cafe, Mars 2112, Dive! (a chain of Steven Spielberg restaurants dedicated to the submarine) and WWF New York (a restaurant about professional wrestling). Unfortunately, the entry may be on the wall for the Rainforest Cafe. There were once 34 locations in the US, but there are only 17 left, so don’t delay your visit.
This video is one of those projects that divide people into two groups: Those who say: “Why do you need this?” and those who say, “Why would you do anything else?” I’m totally in the second camp because, as Nivision put it, “This is the dumbest, most ridiculous restaurant in existence, and I love it so much.”